The band dirtclodfight started in Southern California’s Punk underground and has had different eras of activity, releasing several albums through Portland, Oregon’s Cavity Search Records. After a number of years in dormancy, frontman and poet Phil Merwin was called back into service at a prompt from his old label when they were discussing releasing a book of Merwin’s poetry in honor of the late Eric Johnson, former drummer for dirtclodfight. A book of poetry should be accompanied by a new album, they felt, and so Merwin got to work. He assembled the songs, and new collaborators, in his home of Eugene, Oregon, and eventually the dual releases were ready: the book Songs for Hungry Ghosts and the album, Amen! The Thunderbolt in the Dark Void.
Such an unusual album title must have a story behind it, and this one does. It goes back to Merwin reading Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums, and noticing a passage where Japhy Ryder explains that the Buddhist mantra “Om mani padme hum” essentially means “Amen the Thunderbolt in the Dark Void.” The image stood out and stayed with Merwin until his ideas surrounding new songwriting for the album took shape. And those ideas were about our human search for meaning in life, the void that we face, and the many ways in which we seek to fill it. Conditioned by loss, but also clarified by years of Merwin growing and changing as a poet and a songwriter, the new album doesn’t provide answers, but it speaks to our search and the pain that we encounter through self-awareness. I spoke with Phil Merwin about the genesis and development of these new songs, the joy of working with new bandmates, and the different eras of artistic activity he’s moved through in his creative life.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I saw that you had some release shows for the album. What was it like to play the album live?
Phil Merwin: We opened for Captured by Robots and it was really fun. It was really well-attended, saw a bunch of old friends, and it was like a family reunion. It was awesome. We also played one show in Portland, as well as one here in Eugene earlier this year. Then we had our record release party.
For those shows, we were just playing the new stuff. This rendition of the band was really put together just to record this album, and we wanted to play a few shows. We’ve pretty much accomplished what we set out to do.
HMS: That’s plenty to learn to play! I don’t imagine this album is easy to play. Each song has a lot of parts to it.
PW: [Laughs] Yes. One song that’s really kind of cool in its simplicity is “The Grinding Wheel’s Song”. It’s two notes, and it’s really just one. I ripped that off from Massive Attack, their song “Angel”, so it really just was one looping, bassline. It’s trance-like. I was trying to play that loop, then I came up with another simple element. About ten years ago, when I was still doing dirtclodfight, I bought a loop peddle and started to use it. It’s cool because I’m really just one guitar player. I wanted to do a song on the record that was one loop, like that.
The other songs are definitely more orchestrated. The last song on the album, called “In The Dark Void” was actually the intro to the first song, initially. And when we were mixing it, me and Scott, my drummer, who mixed it, we both came to the same conclusion, that we wanted “Amen the Thunderbolt” to be the first song, and we didn’t want an intro. The intro was kind of taking away from things, so I said, “Why don’t we make it an outro? Then it can be at the end of the album, and it gets a title, ‘In the Dark Void’, which ties the album together?” That’s why we decided to do that, and I think it worked out.
HMS: I found the way the album is ordered, and presented, pretty interesting, and I liked the position of the outro. To me, it suggests a kind of movement from one point to another. Was that an intentional idea?
PW: This is cool, because none of this was intentional, it just came out in the end. While we are doing it, I don’t know that I’m very mindful of it, but I know that during the process, an concept emerges that I’m working towards. The lyrics revolve around trying to find meaning.
We’re brought into the world into a void. And we try to fill the void with religion. And we try to fill it with drugs, spirituality, sex, mountain-biking, or whatever it is. But we’re always kept kind of waiting, because the void can’t really be filled. So the lyrics all deal with that. In the first song, “Amen the Thunderbolt”, I’m pointing more at religion, and I’m saying, “Hell, I’d even try that!” [Laughs] But I know it doesn’t work, so the cynic is in there, too. Or maybe I’m saying that I have even tried that, and I’m still trying to fill the void.
The second song, “Under The Influence of Her”, is about love. I’m saying that I tried to fill the void with love, and that didn’t work either. Then, the third song is “Mr. Mojo Resin.” It was an old song, really just a riff that I had sitting around. I thought it was a bit cheesy, since it’s a bit of a verse, chorus, verse song, and I didn’t think the dudes would like it, but I showed it to them, and they loved it! I didn’t have lyrics for it, so I grabbed this old poem and just made it work. For me, the poem was about how we hibernate, or retreat into our cave. We can’t fill the void, so we go to this place in us where there’s less of a void, but it’s more comfortable, right? But what the song is asking you to do is come out of that, and come back into the light.
With “Stay With Your Breath”, there’s a line in it that’s the pre-chorus, the “stigmata from the third eye.” The stigmata is like bleeding from where Christ was crucified. Sometimes it’s your eyes in Christianity. So this is about how I tried to throw a lot of eastern philosophy into the void, too, but that also comes up short. But what doesn’t come up short is the breath-work part of the meditation. That seems to work, which is why the song is called “Stay With Your Breath.” So the song’s telling you, “Stay with that part.” The ritual, the past lives, the reincarnation, is all well and good, but what really works is staying with your breath and meditating. You can do that anywhere at any time.
Then, the album ends on the poem in the last song, which is in one of the books of poetry that I’ve put out this year. I just flipped open to that page, and thought, “That one!” It’s like a newspaper headline that you hear over and over, but it’s all made up, it’s all mythology. It’s build-up, where we end up worshipping this boy, because we can’t help it. The whole album is: there’s this void, and we’re going to adapt ritual to fill it, and it’s not going to work. And I don’t have a solution, I’m just a witness. Part of the human experience is knowing that, and continuing on. I think that’s what the album is about.
HMS: It sounds like the process of creating this album has helped you map out your beliefs and the way that you see your existence right now.
PM: Yeah!
HMS: That’s a big work. Any work that contains that is a lot of effort and a big process. Because a lot of people have some beliefs, but it’s hard to interrogate ourselves, and really get to grips with what we do believe and what we don’t. Working that out means you have to be kind of un-flinching.
PM: The bigger question for me is: Why do I even think it? Is this something I’ve been impregnated with, and didn’t even ask for?
HMS: Right, like is this something that I’ve absorbed because of my upbringing, by osmosis, by cultural programming?
PM: Right. Because we suffer over it. This ideology that’s not even ours. You’ll be defending something, and you’ll stop and think, “Wait, this isn’t even my thing!” It’s just an idea, it’s just a concept. There’s nothing to stake a flag in, here.
HMS: There’s a lot of people, and even to some extent my younger self, who don’t get to that point, who don’t question that. Who don’t realize that ideas are separate from them, as a person.
PM: Most people are asleep. They live, die, get married in their sleep, and go through emotions. It brings a lot of suffering to try to be self-aware. I don’t think we choose it, but I just think some are, and others aren’t. A lot of people want to be on the surface, just trying to survive, and staying comfy, and don’t look underneath. For me, there have been these moments where I question everything, and it’s cycles of pain. You’re back into self-analysis: What am I doing? Some people dive deeper than others, and I think it’s kind of a blessing and a curse.
HMS: Something that’s suggested by the bio of yours that I read, and also by this album is that, for anyone there are times of opportunity to question things. Unfortunately, they are often unpleasant experiences, like losing someone we love, or seeing suffering close up. It sounds like for you, in the past ten years, a lot has happened that raised even more questions.
PM: It’s loss, really. I’m 57 years old, and I’ve lost people. I’ve lost a few people who mattered to me greatly. It rearranged my world to have to be in it without them. I’m working on my fifth book of poetry in the past three years, so I’ve written a lot. The reason we did this album was because one of my best friends, Eric Johnson, was the drummer in dirtclodfight, and he passed away. I went to Denny, from Cavity Search Records, and I said, “I want to put out a book of poetry for Eric.” And he said, “Wow! Yes, let’s do that. But you’ll also need to do another dirtclodfight record.”
I said, “Oh, I do?” I didn’t even own a guitar. When I moved back from Oklahoma to Oregon, I hadn’t touched a guitar in five years. But I had these songs, and these ideas, and this concept. But Denny got me in touch with Scott, who’s my drummer, and he’s amazing. He was in King Black Acid, and we’ve known each other since we were kids, but hadn’t been in a band together. But the poetry is what informed the album. It’s sort of ironic because I started making music because I was writing poetry, and I wanted to make the poetry musical. Then, I didn’t do music for a very long time, and when I did, it was through poetry again.
HMS: I’ve actually spoken to a number of people lately who have been combining work in poetry alongside work in music. Have you tried doing any events where you’re doing both? That might be more difficult to do a bookstore event with such heavy music.
PM: I’ve done a lot of readings, but we’ve only played three shows. I don’t know if we’re going to play more shows, or how the other guys feel about it. Playing is not such a priority to me, because if I do fewer shows, it’s more special, it’s more of an event. It is an event for me. That’s what it feels like.
HMS: There are plenty of people who make music just for release, and I know you’ve spent years being a live performer previously, so I can understand being in a different place in life right now.
PM: Oh yeah, from 1989 through 1996, I was putting out records and touring. I also worked in a mental hospital, but the music was my focus. I was playing music back then to play it live. I had a completely different feeling about it than I do now. I’d play anytime, anywhere for years. I was getting high off of it. That was my “drug” because I didn’t do any other drugs.
I did it until it didn’t feel like that anymore. It then felt like a job that I didn’t get paid to do. I was getting older, but then the mother of my kids got pregnant with my first son, so that was a big moment. I had to change a lot about my life. Then, music came back later, in the 2000s, after my younger son was born, and after 9-11. My brother had moved up from California, and we made releases, and played a lot live. When I ended up moving to Oklahoma, that fizzled out.
HMS: I think it’s pretty common to have different creative eras in our lives, in many forms of art, but certainly the musical landscape has never been harder. But then I see someone make a record like this one, and I recognize how much work has gone into it, and it’s really reassuring. I think this record represents a lot of your life over the years, and you did it because you really had an inward motivation to do it.
PM: Yeah. I just needed to someone outside of me to show an interest, like Cavity Search. Once Scottie was in the picture, I knew that it was going to be great. We have a really cool chemistry. I really love playing with him. He’s in another band, Metal Foil. Scott is also an airline pilot, so his schedule is wacky! That’s another reason that I don’t see us playing lots of shows.
HMS: I saw a note in your bio that you did allow the songs to change and develop based on input from the band, once you started playing together. What were their contributions to what we hear now?
PM: I think only two of them were close to done, so we really added a lot. With “Under the Influence of Her”, we added this whole outro thing that I wouldn’t even have thought to do. But I wanted to challenge Scott, so I told him, “I want you to Keith Moon-freak-out for a while at the end of the song.”
We loved it, and kept doing that, and got better at it. So the song was playing to him, in that instance. If he wasn’t there, it wouldn’t have been the same. Pat is a great bass player, and I don’t tell him what to do, and I don’t want to. I just want to hear it later, and say, “Wow, that’s cool!” I want them both to contribute to it, because it’s their painting, too. I have the vision, but I want them to feel it’s theirs, too.
