Beth Custer is a very active musician in San Francisco. She has played in Club Foot Orchestra, Trance Mission, Clarinet Thing to only name a few and composed / performed / recorded many other projects ranging from Cartoon soundtracks to commisioned works for Theatre. I was able to catch up with Beth this summer and talked with her about her many activities and her latest collaboration with Christian Jones called 80 Mile Beach.
This interview was conducted in August 1998 then transcribed and edited to it's present state. Read on and learn more about this interesting artist of the thriving San Francisco musical melting pot.
MH = Mike Honeycutt
Beth = Beth Custer
MH: What's your current project?
Beth: I am an artist in resident at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts. I have three months out in this glorious nature reserve in an old army barracks. We each get a bedroom and a studio and we get meals five nights a week. And I get to compose music all day, so it's really fun.
MH: That's your commitment for living there is you have to make music all day?
Beth: yea, i'm forced to. (laughter) And i get a stipend. It's like one of the best deals goin as far as residencies go.
MH: So you've been in Club Foot Orchestra how long?
Beth: I'm like a lifetime member of that. 13 years.
MH: Yea, sounds like it. So as long as they're showing silent movies, you've got to play in Club Foot.
Beth: yea
MH: Speaking of films, you worked on the soundtrack for Felix the Cat Saturday morning cartoon series?
Beth: Yeeaaa. We did the music for that. It lasted for one season. That was a blast. It was kinda fulfilling a lifelong dream. I had always wanted to play in a cartoon orchestra. So it was, you know, our own version. (Breaks in to laughter)
Certainly not like Hollywood style, but it was great.
MH: I read in another interview that when you're writing you like to compose on piano or you sing while driving in the car. Is that how you do a lot of your work?
Beth: Actually a lot of times while I'm walking I often put the rhythm that i'm thinking of in my feet and in my legs and have the melody in my head or sing it out loud. It kind of has to do lot with a reflection of where i'm at at that time or my body rhythms or something. I get a lot of stuff done in the desert. I go on a regular trek once or twice a year to the desert. Camp and take long walks and that's where get a lot of my lyrics. Writing in nature, i'm very much into nature and...
MH: Solitude? Getting away from the city?
Beth: Solitude and nature. and well I like community too. I'm not like a total loner, I'm pretty social. I think most people when they go into a creative state it's kind of a solitude thing. And I know too many composers that compose in a group (a short laugh) you know that's kinda what Club Foot did. Compose individually, but then come together as a group and play each others pieces.
MH: Let's see, you've got a friend of yours, Gino Robair?
Beth: Oh yea, Gino we're long time collaborators. He produced the Felix the Cat show.
MH: Oh yeah?
Beth: He produced and composed with the Club Foot Orchestra the music for that series.
MH: He has his own label too?
Beth: yes. Rastascan
MH: I've play some of the things on the label.
Beth: It's a great label. He's really keeping in the forefront of improvised music from the Bay Area and the world actually. And also I know he's maintained some recordings that were you know kinda dormant.
MH: Is he pumpin new life into stuff like that?
Beth:Yes. It's quite a scene out here, I don't know what it's like in Memphis, but there's quite a improvising scene out here.
MH: Like Splatter Trio?
Beth: Splatter Trio, Rova, Myles Boisen, Willie Winants...Fred Frith blows into town occasionally.
MH: Really?
Beth: yea there's a lot of free imporv. It's pretty happening in San Francisco.
MH: Is it basically in San Francisco or does it bleed over into Oakland?
Beth: Oh yeah the whole Bay Area. I always say San Francisco... San Francisco centric (quick gush of laughter)
MH: Yea? Well that's great tho...I've visited a couple of times. Just how many projects do you have?
Beth: Well currently i'm out here at the Headlands for a residency, writing Vinculum Symphony... I've had this idea...I've worked with experimental instrument builders over the past ten years or so. Trimpin, Oliver DiCicco, Chico MacMurtrie and various people who make instruments that are also sculpture.
MH: Like Harry Bertoia?
Beth: Harry Partch?
MH: Well there's another guy, Harry Bertoia
Beth: Yea, I learn of new ones everyday. I'm always learning new things, but my proposal to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts which they accepted is Vinculum Symphony, a piece for twenty piece chamber orchestra with ten experimantal instrument builders. Vinculum (to unify) will bring the two groups together in a full-length orchestral work. What I'm doing out here is holding these chamber concerts the first of which is tonight. And doing tiny incremental steps towards the larger symphony concerts.
The premiere will be next fall in '99 at the Yerba Buena where I will hold another residency and curate the experimental instruments as sculpture in the gallery.
And you know my main love right now is Eighty Mile Beach, the only band I'm participating in right now. I've kinda pared down my forays into band world, keeping it down to just one band. Singing my own lyrics, playing my clarinets and collaborating with my co-writer Christian Jones who's a DJ and bass player and genius at making rhythm loops. We've been collaborating for about four years now. Got signed to OM records about two years ago, made a recording and it just came out about a month ago.
MH: Besides the CD, you've got a couple of twelve inch's out.
Beth: Yea, we've got two twelve inch's out with re-mixes from mostly local re-mix guys. Sky Juice remixed' Arboleda de Manzanitas' on our first 12", Solstice and Thievery Corporation remixed our second-'There Are No Right Angles Found in Nature'. It's been a blast. It's something I've always wanted to do. I got interested in down-tempo kinda trip-hop and I've always been interested in hip-hop since the beginning of hip-hop. I love the down-tempo stuff that came out like MoWax, of course Portishead, Tricky, Massive Attack... I consider it sort of jazz-hiphop. I was always playing my horns over MoWax compilations (laugh). And the guy who started Grassy Knoll called me up one day. Bob Green asked me to work on his demo tapes before he got signed and I played all over those things bass clarinet mainly. I really decided I needed to do my own project in that style of music cause it just excites me so much. So I started working with Christian Jones whom I met at Mobius Music where I recorded solo projects and with Trance Mission.
MH: Mobius Music is a studio right?
Beth: Yea, it's a great music studio run by Oliver DiCicco.
MH: Do any of the players in the concerts have recordings out?
Beth: The first concert was with Tom Nunn who has a few recordings out and a book on improvisation. The other builder was Darrell DeVore. Not sure if he has any recordings out. The next concert will have Brenda Hutchinson who does have recordings and Oliver DiCicco who just made a CD and it's not out yet. The final concert of the series will have Bart Hopkin, the editor of the mag EMI, Chico MacMurtrie the artistic director of Amorphic Robot Works, and Peter Whitehead. MH: Do you know of any other information on experimental instrument music? Beth: There's a local magazine put out by Bart Hopkins and it's called EMI-Experimental Musical Instruments.
MH: Good luck with your projects and thanks for doing the interview. Beth: Thanks Mike.
The second 12"-'There Are No Right Angles Found In Nature', a Buckminster Fuller quote.
You may E-mail Beth Custer at: b1custer@sirius.com
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