david: it looks like august.

Bruce: it's "control"?

David: yeah.

Bruce: i know there was like somewhat of a theme or concept to "winners never quit", is the new album going to be like that too?

David: there's a theme, but not so much of a linear narrative, like i tried to do with "winners never quit".

Bruce: when you write an album like "winners never quit", did you have an outline of the story you wanted to tell beforehand, or was that something that developed kind of as you were writing the songs?

David: well, it basically started with, i wrote, the very first song that i wrote is what's now called "never leave a job half done", that was the first one, and that was pretty directly inspired by the movie "rope", it's an alfred hitchcock movie, it's got jimmy stewart, it's really really a good movie, but then i wrote the very last song which is now called "winners never quit", and then without really seeing a total connection, i knew that there was some connection, but i didn't know what it was between those two, and i wrote the first song, "slow and steady wins the race", and then i started to realize just their tone, and the way they were sort of arranged in my mind, it seemed like "slow and steady" would make a really good first song, to sort of introduce the idea of a couple of characters, in a way, and then that i wanted to kind of end with "winners" and so that put the other one in the middle somewhere, and then all of the sudden, a story started kind of coming, and then the other songs just started filling in.

Bruce: i, when i was getting ready to do this, i read a lot of interviews that you've done, with different you know, here and there... well, i read a lot of them beforehand anyway, but really in all of the stuff you've said and written in your songs i just have like huge respect for the way that you have stayed true to your relationship with christ without trying to... or becoming fake... or without trying to shove it down anyone's throat or anything, and when i've read some of the things, especially on the web, where people can respond to what you've said, often times people see that as their soapbox where they can step up and (say) "well, you're wrong, and this is what the true way is", and i was just wondering, is it hard for you to maintain the honesty and the meekness that you seem to have in the face of people like that?

david: it just depends, i mean, it's also a situation where i probably seem to people that don't like hang around me all the time to be maybe something a little different than i actually am, and that's not intentional, by any stretch, but i think that it exists, and so i get really frustrated, just with... i don't mind, in fact i enjoy... i mean people disagreeing i think is just a natural part of things, but people disagreeing in an intelligent, non-emotive or just reasonable and thoughtful way can be really inspiring, but the other thing that usually happens where people are just totally reacting on their assumptions about what they think is true, or what they think is true about us or me or christians or non-christians or whatever, wherever they're coming from and just being jackasses, it really is frustrating, and so that's the only part of it that gets kind of weird sometimes, like we talk about it in the van a lot and i try to be honest with people as much as i can when i'm talking to them, like if they kind of piss me off or just whatever, i try not to be like "oh that's cool", because that's kind of my nature, just to be a bit of a coward, so it's not like a narrow path or anything like that, it's just like... i'm compelled, i try to just reduce what i do to what i'm compelled to do, because it's the only things that i can really stick with, and i just try to order my life in a way that you know, i'm compelled to make the music and the hopefully art or whatever that i do because i feel a certain way about things and i want to communicate that, you know and then there's other things that i hold really dearly that i'm really hesitant to communicate too, because i think that, especially the joy and the positive aspects of how i feel are so profound that it just bothers me to think that i would put it into a song and cheapen it by just like... until it comes out just right or until there's a valid context for it to be in, it jusf freaks me out, and so because of that, it's nothing that i feel like i'm staying true to except for just my impulses, and they do whatever they want, i guess, and they're informed by other things that are negative and some things that are really positive, and it's sort of stabilizing also and this is totally meandering...

bruce: no, no. i mean, the thing that i'm struck with the most, like i wrote here (on the piece of paper that i wrote the shambles of what "questions" i had) especially with (the songs) "promise" and "the secret of the easy yoke", well especially "the secret of the easy yoke" is just, i mean the brutal honesty, when i read the line that you wrote that was like, "if all that's left is duty, i'm falling on my sword, at least then i would not serve an unseen distant lord" i was just hit by that so much just because i try to write things often times, and it's so scary to me to be that honest, like about... and like "some days i don't love you at all"

david: i was definitely really freaked out when i wrote that, but part of it was because i already felt so distant from god, but then also just my misconceptions about things, i honestly had thoughts like... i was writing it in a tour van when i was on tour with this other band and i thought, "i should probably wait until we get out of the van, because if i get struck by lightning i don't want these guys to..." you know or whatever, and there were just these really clearly irrational thoughts of fear in my head about writing that song, but then when it was done, there was some immediate feedback from people that i knew that were just like, "dude, i feel that way" or whatever and then just the feedback that's constantly going to me, when i played it over and over again live before we recorded it, or before i recorded it and john (ford) helped, i just really sensed that it was kind of healing to be able to just work through those thoughts on a really regular basis, and now there's little extra parts to the end of the song...

bruce: i read in an interview that you were hoping to produce the next damien jurado album, do you know if that's going to happen or not?

david: yeah, yeah it is.

bruce: it is going to happen?

david: we're going to start working, i think the beginning of june on it so i'm pretty excited.

bruce: yeah, that should be really cool

david: should be really fun.

bruce: this is kind of a stupid thing that i came up with here, but i was going to ask you if you were planning on killing off damien jurado on your next album since he killed you off on his last one (the song, "ghost of david" from damien's album of the same name, refers to a dream he had where david bazan was dead)

david: oh, i don't think so, that was an interesting thing, because, well just think, everywhere i go i see... (pulls out a picture of the cover of "ghost of david") that's my wife too, so it's just kind of totally this eerie, like weird thing but i think it's kind of great, so i really enjoyed his imagination.

bruce: it's a great song, too.

david: yeah it's really nice.

bruce: let's see, what else do i have here? oh, the website that we do, the delhi conspiracy, we do some stuff with like books and movies and music, and i was wondering if you have anything new or old that you'd like to recommend to people, either something that you're into now, or something that's really impacted you in any of those?

david: well, the thing i just picked up... a buddy of ours, adam, who's on this trip, runs this publishing company called tni books, and he just came out with, it's kind of a lit mag, but it's kind of just really this great little magazine where there's just some short stories, a couple of comic strips, and a couple of interviews that are really great. i think it's totally awesome. it's totally inspiring to be a part of a community of people that have similar desires and thoughts about art and just understanding humanity, and just a lot of stuff. also, we've been really listening... we've been kind of obsessed with a show on npr called "this american life" recently and that's on national public radio and on the internet (thislife.org) you can listen to any of the episodes, and we were listening to some of them today in the car, because there's a "best of" cd set and some of them are just really super tragic, but in a way that is not farfetched and kind of really good or goofy.

bruce: is it fiction then, or is it non-fiction?

david: it's usually non-fiction, there are some fictional things, but it's just stories about people. one of them that we listened to was called "all hands on the hardbody" which was just an interview with a guy that won that contest that they have where everybody puts their hands on a nissan pickup at this dealership and whoever's left standing at the end of usually 3+ days is the winner of this thing, and it's just an interview with him, but it's just super engaging, and there's one about this thing that happened in like 1985 or something called "the apology line" in new york city where this guy started this phone line and he advertised it and it was just a place where people could call up and apologize and he would listen to the apologies, and you could call up and listen to people's apologies or just confessions about whatever, just different things like that, and it ends up all being super compelling, like there was a guy that called up, he was apologizing, he was really conflicted because his mom was dead, but he was apologizing for something he'd done to her. she was really sick and couldn't really get up and she needed somebody to wait on her, and he didn't have a job and he needed money, so he would charge her for him to get her stuff, like for a drink of water he would charge her 5 bucks, or for a sandwich he would charge her 10 bucks and he was calling up and he finished by saying, "i really wish that she could hear this, if there was some way, i don't think that she's going to, and i just really hope that i burn in hell for what i've done because it's the worst thing i could possibly think of anybody doing" and you're just listening to this like... i don't know, i just think it's really amazing stuff. yeah, there's tons. most of the things that i write are more informed by books and movies and things like this than rock, i think, and it's probably apparent, in a bad way, but there's definitely some rock too, some music obviously, but theme-wise, it's a lot of this kind of stuff.

bruce: i don't think it's bad, i mean i don't know how you feel about it, but bruce springsteen's "nebraska" was inspired by a movie for the most part, and that album, to me at least, is just amazing.

david: and that's kind of the thing with it, i think that all those influences have their place, and i think that record's really cool too on certain levels, but on a compelling music level, it's not, well... like there's some bands if you didn't know what language they were speaking, you'd still be floored because the music's so amazing, but with that, it's all about the lyrics, and that's kind of the thing that i think has been deficient in the past with pedro the lion, there's been a real heavy lyrical focus to the extent that sometimes the music is kind of boring or whatever.

bruce: so is the next album, then are you going to be focusing more on creating unique textures or things like that where the words not necessarily aren't as big of a factor, but the music is...

david: we're hoping to. yeah, i mean that's kind of the... we've gone through all these different incarnations of the band over the last few months in an effort to do that. we played a bunch of shows where it's guitar and then like an analog style synth and drums, and that's been alright, except for the guy who's playing bass tonight, he was playing the synth and he didn't really feel like he was playing music so much as just like fucking around with the computer or whatever and it's not super sensitive... it's not like a real thing where you hit it hard and it gets loud, i mean we programmed it to where it does some velocity sensitive kind of things, but not enough, and so we're just trying to figure out what the best way to go about doing that is, but i've got help this time too, which makes it a little easier, because i'm not necessarily amazing or anything at any of that so...

bruce: so "control" is going to be more of a full band thing or not necessarily?