In two
years, the Spokane, Washington-based five-piece Paper Mache - which
will be performing at Mixtapes in East Moline on September 3 - has
gone through more than a dozen members.
You might assume that singer/songwriter Chelsea Seth Woodward is difficult to work with, but to hear him tell it, it was simply a process of shaping Paper Mache.
"It started off as me doing a singer/songwriter, solo acoustic," he said last week, "but the intention was always to have the songs that I wrote have open interpretation, that we could play with them and I could have different members join and see what fit, and then develop a sound from there."
Woodward does sound demanding. He wants his band members to give in several ways. "Every person in this band has given up something for it," he said. "When people have equity in something, they're responsible."
And he's not just looking for people who'll do what they think he wants. "In the beginning, it felt like a lot of people were playing along to very simple acoustic songs," he said. "Now it's developing into something that's interesting in all parts."
There was probably another factor in the band's churn: Woodward believes the main path to success is touring, and he had to find people willing and able to live on the road.
"My expectations were that we would keep an ongoing tour schedule, and not a lot of people can just jump straight into that," he said. "I prefer to be on the road most of the year. It took a little bit to find some guys who wanted to be out all the time and that could put in the hard work for several years before we might even ... see any payoff."
Of course, the payoff is by no means guaranteed, but there are some good signs. The band's proper debut, Easier to Lose, is well-crafted, emotionally naked rock. (I'm tempted to label it "emo," but that suggests a certain level of artifice and pandering.)
Woodward's writing style might be confessional, but not painfully so. "Mixtape" covers a topical range from infidelity to consumerism to aging, and it's got big guitars, a strong hook, and some cryptically alluring lyrics: "Are you feeling / Like a paperweight / On a letter / That hasn't been written yet?"
Woodward isn't copying diary entries. In the search for "complete" songs, he said, he charts out ideas, brainstorming and developing themes. "I don't think of a melody first," he said. "I definitely write down a lot of words."
Because it bares so much and sounds so honest, Paper Mache is often the beneficiary of audience generosity. Merchandise sells well at shows, but it's more than that: "People watching feel like they know us. And they feel like we're singing about them at times," Woodward said. "Because of that connection ... you have a lot of people who really want to give back" - with gifts, snack baskets, and pizza, for instance.
Much of Easier to Lose is autobiographical, and Woodward said it's sometimes difficult to perform songs delving so deeply into his pain, such as the overdose death of his roommate and best friend.
"I've found that there are certain songs that I almost regret writing, because I don't want to have to sing them for the rest of my life," he said. "Sometimes it's hard because I don't want to have to think about something that's happened in the past. Sometimes I need to sing it."
He added: "We're not depressed guys. We leave it on stage."
While the band's sound has evolved - it's now "a little louder, a little more ambient, [with] a little bit more rock to it, a little more edge," Woodward said - Paper Mache has been careful to remain faithful to the record it's supporting. "We wanted to make sure ... not stray too far from it," he said.
The band plans to record an EP in September and release it in October, and Woodward said he wants to record another full-length over the winter.
But he's not in any hurry to sign to a label, saying that he doesn't think the band is ready. Many acts, he said, get signed but quickly cut because they hadn't built up enough of an audience to make a label money in the short run. Everybody loses.
"I don't want a label dumping a bunch of money into us that they don't get back right away and drop us, because it didn't grow properly," he said. "Right now we figure we're going to pay our dues, and we're doing fine. We're ... savvy enough that we can make money doing this and have a good time."
Paper Mache will play on Wednesday, September 3, at Mixtapes, 830 15th Avenue in East Moline. Cover is $5.
For more information on the band, visit MySpace.com/musicbypapermache.
