A mild-mannered sort, John Donovan spends many of his day hours working as a roaster for a popular South City coffee shop. His days as a behind-the-counter barista are largely behind him, so he’s not often dealing with the needs and wants of the general public. Instead, locked behind a glass door, in a wooden room that veers in temperatures from pretty-warm-to-hella-hot, he’s surrounded by machines that emit steady, yet insistent sounds of their own. We get a sense that those hours of solitude (and their complementary machine hums and burbles and churns and hisses) might allow him a little extra time to dream—whether about songs, written singly, or songs written collectively and released in great, big, massive bundles.
This week, Donovan offered the world his latest disc, Hype and Packaging. Of course, we wanted to discuss that project with him. But there’s another one that’s also been lurking on the web for a short period and it needs some love and attention, too.
Dubbed 50 States 50 Bands, Donovan wrote 200 songs, essentially penning an EP for a fictional band from each of the union’s 50 states. To repeat, with emphasis: Donovan wrote 200 songs, essentially penning an EP for a fictional band from each of the union’s 50 states.
With Donovan travelling this week, we conducted a digital Q & A, asking Donovan some questions about his new album—released under his name—as well as the dozens of other cuts that he recorded for his fictitious side project.
How about a short, 101 version of Hype and Packaging? For example, how long were these songs in gestation? Were these songs recorded at your home or at a studio? Who plays on it?
The songs on Hype and Packaging have been knocking around in my head and in scrappy demos since early 2015. Everything was performed and recorded and engineered by me at my home. A few times I thought about getting studio time, but I really didn't know exactly which songs would make the album until a few weeks before release, and studio time would have cost too much to cover all possible iterations of the track list. There are lots of outtakes. Nobody else plays on this album. A prideful part of me wanted to do every little bit of it.
Safe to say there's a general theme running through this? Or do we have here a collection of songs, unconnected by a common thread?
The album's skeletal narrative arc focuses on an artist's participation in (and demise at the hands of) a system that commodifies creative energy in an overall negative/destructive way. My own challenges and experiences and history make up the meat and fat and gray matter of the album. I tried to put together an album that could feel like both a work of concept and a mix tape your friend made for a road trip. The songs jump around between different sonic territories without much warning. But there is a design to it.
Are any of the other, associated acts of yours active (live or recording) right now?
I play guitar in Trotting Bear. We've taken a momentary break from live shows and recording but we'll be back.
Can we discuss how prolific you are? Not to embarrass you, of course, but (goodness!) you do seem to have quite the well of material at the ready. Has that always been the case?
My fiance is a talented and prolific fine artist. Sitting front row while she creates incredible concepts and drawings and series gives my own creative spirit a good kick in the butt. I haven't always written as much as I have in the past ~4 years, and Katie plays a big part in that. Also, at some point I started treating my songwriting like gardening or farming. I found that if I give my creativity the proper fertile soil (a clean room, a healthy diet, stress maintenance, good relationships, good work ethic) and the proper seeds (observing and internalizing anything: love, destruction, consequence, hatred, puppies, ingrown hairs, anything), a song or concept will eventually sprout. Properly nurturing those sprouts usually gives me songs.
And this album is available where, in what physical and digital forms?
Hype and Packaging is available digitally and in CD form at JohnDonovanMusic.com.
Let's move to 50 States 50 Bands. Describe the genesis of the project? You're at work, or at the grocery store or driving and think... here's a HUGE project that needs tackling? What was the initial thought?
In 2012 I made a pseudonym band called The Ruby Troupe. Their music made a bit of a splash on various blogs and radio stations. I got a big kick out of having an alternate persona that received attention. Sometime in 2013, I decided it would be fun to do that again on a bigger scale, so I started making music for one fake band per state. The 50 States project gave me freedom to make any kind of music that came out of me, and still have a place to release it. It also pushed me to write and write and write without taking too much time second guessing anything.
From that initial thought, how close did you come to nailing the original concept?
The original concept was to create one fake band per state, four conceptually connected songs/pieces per band, presented as a musical installation piece on the internet. I landed pretty close to that.
How many songs are recorded / in the can / ready to hear? And this is a purely digital release, yes?
All 200 pieces from all 50 bands have been released at 50States50Bands.bandcamp.com. Just a digital release, yes.
Address, if you would, how challenging yourself with such a project is good for songwriting? At least, I assume you found this a good way to way to approach such a mass of songs...
My songwriting became both more comfortable and more wide-reaching. I didn't have to steer myself away from the more avant-garde impulses that I think all creators have sometimes. Instead, if I wrote one super weird song, I was then forced to write three more that matched its weirdness so that I could put those four songs together under one fake band. A good example of this is the “Vultures of Vultureland” EP. I jokingly recorded a song (“Yesterday”) with a breathy British accent and cheesy dance synths, which would never fit as a John Donovan tune, but I still really wanted to put it out. So I had to write three more songs that convincingly fit the vibe.
What am I missing?
These are the official liner notes from Hype and Packaging:
Life is happening
And I've been practicing
But hype and packaging
Are always trapping me
Hype and packaging—the permeating loud glittery grease of any capital exchange—can be hard to escape. We are constantly made to participate in the process: first dates, interviews, album releases, campaigns, news feeds, family reunions. Our social / artistic / political / occupational successes are less and less a result of quality and innovation, and more and more a derivative of hype and packaging. What do artists usually wear to an opening? Did my shoes make an impression? Do I look good on a tiny screen? What hashtags will expand my base?
At their best, hype and packaging are necessary evils: wheels for the smooth, consensual delivery of content. But left to their own bloated devices, hype and packaging become bookends with no books, artists' statements with no art, singers with no songs, icing with no cake, beautifully presented nothingness. In the immortal, agonized words of Bobby Hill, "My sloppy joe is all sloppy and no joe!" Without the meat, we land on unhealthy extremes like focus group-bred artists, career clickbait writers, eternally unresolving politics, competitive quote culture, crowd-funded trust fund babies, and self help sequels. —J.D.
