The One Man Band Chronicles #5: Ghostwriter Interview

Ghostwriter (b. Steve Schecter) is an Austin, Texas based singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist. Born in an Oregon ghost town forty-something years ago, he has been traveling the highways of America as a one man band for the past fifteen years playing his own distinctive hybrid of punk-rockabilly-folk-blues-roots -whatchamacallit music in bars and concert halls all over the U.S.

I met Ghostwriter a few years back when we were both performing at The Black Sheep Cafe in Springfield, Illinois as part of Evan Mitchell's Onemanpalooza festival. We shared a drink at a bar across from The Black Sheep where he shared a few amusing road tales. I found out just how extensively Ghostwriter has traveled when he revealed that he not only knew where the small Ohio Appalachian town that I live in was located but that he was actually good friends with another musician from the same town! Small world.

In addition to spending a good portion of the year on the road, he is a prolific songwriter and recording artist having, to date, released seven full length albums. His latest, "String Noise And Dust" , is a roots rock rave-up featuring twelve great original tunes. "Folks" ,"Ohio " (Okay, I may be biased on this one), "Shoreline" and "Gdmt" are a few of my favorite  tracks.

Ghostwriter is gearing up for his upcoming tour which will kick off in late October. You can check his website, www.endofthewest.com for details.

CASEY REDMOND: Tell me about your early days.

GHOSTWRITER:  I grew up with one older brother in a ghost town called Friend, Oregan.  We went to school in a town called Dufur, fifteen miles away until my family moved to the Portland suburbs when I was in the sixth grade.  Growing up in Friend in the late

 "Downtown" Friend, Oregon

seventies and eighties was free and easy.  We didn't watch TV because we didn't have reception and it wasn't important to my parents.  We rode BMX bikes on gravel roads and shot at bottles and cans with BB guns and .22s. There were a lot of hours with just my imagination in the woods.  The only downside was an extremely long bus ride to Dufur School where I never really wanted to be.  But all my friends were there, everyone knew everyone,  and there was nowhere else to go.  Dufur was a town of about 500 people and Dufer School had about one hundred and fifty kids, K-12th grade all in one building.

CASEY:  Tell me more about Friend, Oregon.  What was it like growing up in a ghost town?

GHOSTWRITER:  Friend is a rural community thirty miles south of The Dalles in the Columbia Gorge, so it's a couple hours east of Portland on the other side of the Cascades.  My parents moved out there from Portland around 1970 with a few other friends of the back-to-the-land mentality and worked in the woods as tree planters and fallers.  I was born in '76 and I am actually the last person ever born in  Friend. That is only because I was a home birth.  After me,  people have opted for birthing at the hospital in The Dalles.  Friend really is an Oregon ghost town with just a few

buildings and homesteads still standing.  But through my life the area surrounding the former town is still Friend and usually has twenty or so people living there.  No store, no gas, no cops. Nothing.  So the move to the suburbs was a bit dramatic, in hindsight.  My sixth grade class had more kids than the entire Dufur School. I took it all in stride for a couple of years but by the end of eighth grade, I was in full rebellion mode.  I went to high school for two years and a couple of months before getting my GED.  I managed to get kicked out of enough classes that  staying in school was a moot point anyway.  But it was in high school where I met my first bandmates and where I first started to perform and record. I always disliked school and I did poorly enough that it had become a real negative thing. Once I moved on, I was able to focus on positive things like work and music.

 CASEY:  What was the first record you remember buying?

GHOSTWRITER:  When I was growing up in Friend, the stereo was a real focal point. I always loved listening to music and I think my parents had pretty good taste which was fortunate since we were pretty isolated.  Albums by The Blasters, Rank & File, Dave Edmunds and Elvis Costello are some of my early memories.  That's what they were listening to when I was five and six years old.  I vaguely remember my mom playing Everly Brothers stuff when I was really young. I was always interested in what was being played and remember being enamored with record covers way before I could read them. Oddly for a kid from rural Oregon, one of the earliest bands I remember relating to wholeheartedly was the Ramones. My brother and I watched Rock N Roll High School on Beta when I was like in the fourth grade. It slayed us and we saw that our dad had the albums, Rocket To Russia and Subterranean Jungle already in the house.

For me it was like, 'Is this real?' I got way into those records.  Living in Friend, you had to travel pretty far to buy a record.  When we had a reason to go to Portland, like visiting my Grandma, we would sometimes stop at Djangos Records on Burnside.  It was a great spot and my dad was always way into it. I remember going down there shortly after my Ramones kick and finding Too Tough To Die. On later visits, I found Road To Ruin and their self-titled album from the year I was born. Djangos was mostly secondhand records and because my brother was so analytical, I always marveled at the year albums were released. I remember buying Animal Boy brand new on cassette the same year it came out, in like '86, and being so happy that my heroes still existed. I basically listened to everything I could find by the Ramones for three straight years starting around the fifth grade.  Those are my earliest record store memories.  It sounds cool in  hindsight but I was totally in my own bubble.  I had long hair, for a kid, and wore tattered jeans. The Ramones were ugly and the songs were catchy and I just loved it.  They weren't cool at that time. It was a band that my dad listened to. My brother and I grew up listening to tapes but we would usually buy records and dub then to cassette using my Dad's stereo.  Store bought tapes
were pricey and didn't always sound that good.  He taught us to use a tape deck where you can set the record level and that it sounded best to bring it right up to that red line, saturating the tape. That's a principle I still rely on, saturating the tape.

 CASEY: What other bands were an influence on you when you were growing up?

GHOSTWRITER:  By the time I was in high school and playing music Mudhoney and The Jesus Lizard were probably my top two. I got to see them numerous times and still listen to them both today. I had dabbled in hair-metal/hard-rock in the late eighties but by the stroke of luck, this was now the early nineties in the

Pacific Northwest.  Through my bandmates, one in particular who has remained a close friend, I was turned on to a lot more underground stuff that was happening. It seemed like an endless amount of prolific bands were recording and touring at that time. There were a couple of all-ages venues in Portland where we got to see Northwest bands like Mudhoney, Gas Huffer, The Melvins and touring bands like the Jesus Lizard, the Cows and Reverend Horton Heat, who came through at least once a year. Within a

Ghostwriter

couple of years, I was getting into older American roots music through gateway bands like Flat Duo Jets and Bad Livers and revisiting stuff I heard as a kid like the  The Blasters.  It became important to see the bands live and I was in a good spot for that. I even got to finally see the Ramones on their Adios Amigos tour. I was seventeen or eighteen by then and they killed it.

CASEY:  What was the first guitar you ever owned?

GHOSTWRITER:  My first electric was a Hohner Stratocaster copy. Yes, the harmonica company.  It was a cheap knock off of the day that came with a practice amp and a free lesson for $250. I bought it with summer wages just before my Sophomore year in high school.  Before that I noodled around with a nylon string acoustic of my Mom's.  After quitting high school, I started working  full time and soon bought my first "good guitar" a 1974 Gibson SG and sold the Hohner.

CASEY: Tell me about the first time you played in public.

GHOSTWRITER: Some friends and I started a band called, Darwin's Grab Bag when I was fifteen years old.  We were too young to be very good but we wrote original songs and practiced a lot.  Right away, we started playing parties for kids at our high school. Most everyone thought we were terrible. Then we started to play clubs in Portland.  I was sixteen the first time we played "New Band Night" at Satyricon in an area called, Old Town.  Satyricon was a bar, the other guys in the band were only slightly older than me, but you could perform in bars underage back then.  At the time it was a well known punk rock dive, if there ever was one, and we were teenage suburbanites wearing flannels.  Our shows there all blend together now but I remember it was always really intense and often rough.  We were bad at our

X-Ray Cafe. Portland, Oregon

instruments and even worse at performing.  We got heckled regularly by crusty, intimidating assholes ten years older than us. One night when it was going particularly badly, I remember a guy shouting, 'Play a song about my mommy', in this meanacing voice in an otherwise silent, dark room.  It still sticks in my head and it's hilarious now but I remember being petrified at the time.  As rough as it could be, over the next couple of years, we worked our way up to some weeknight opening slots at Saryricon and eventually played The X-Ray Cafe. I was nineteen and living in Austin by the time of my second band, a drums guitar duo called, Billy Swamp. We were fearless on stage by comparison. Maybe too much so, but more learning needed to be done.

CASEY: What made you move to Austin?

GHOSTWRITER:  I was nineteen and just wanted to go somewhere new.  I had been out of high school for a few years and was keenly aware that I had been in Oregon my whole life.  I knew a disproportionate amount of music I was listening to came from

Texas.  From singer/songwriters and roots rock n roll to noise-punk and everything in between.  In hindsight, it seems Portland would have been as good as any for a musician but the music scene was fledgling compared to Austin at that time.  To this day,  the Northwest's music doesn't cater as much to my overall tastes as the sounds coming out of Austin.  Especially back in the late nineties and early two thousands. My intention was not to stay that long but the living was pretty easy and the decade seemed to fly by.

CASEY: When did you start performing as a one man band?

GHOSTWRITER: I started playing solo in the form that would become Ghostwriter in two thousand and two.  My band had a short tour booked but dissolved at the least opportune time.  That had been my experience with bands up until then, just when things start to get rolling something happens or somebody leaves. I decided to do the tour myself. I played a ten date tour with a foot rig that scarcely resembles what I use today. I had played solo acoustic sets quite a few times by that point but that was the first time I tried to bring the volume and intensity that would work in the louder, rock n roll  barroom type venues.

CASEY:  What do you like about playing solo?

GHOSTWRITER:  I think what still appeals to me about playing solo is the independence and self-reliance, not to mention economics and creative control.  There are sonic compromises but the other elements make up for it.  I also like driving and being by myself, so it's been a lasting fit.

CASEY:  What other one man bands had an influence on you?

GHOSTWRITER: I loved Hasil Adkins and even got to see him a couple of times.  I discovered him delving through early, weird fifties rockabilly type stuff.  I saw Bob Log III and thought he was cool but he wasn't a big influence. There was also a local guy named Homer Henderson that played as a one man band with

The late great Hasil Adkins

drums and guitar together. He's really good and really fun to watch.  Homer Henderson still plays occasionally and is totally worth checking out.  But beyond that, the one man band wasn't something you saw very often.  For the record, as much as I dug Hasil and Homer, I never wanted to follow in that vein. I still don't dub Ghostwriter as a one man band unless I have to.  I prefer just to say, "solo".  I derived a lot from the self accompanied singer/songwriters of the  pre-rock era, like the twenties through the forties.  I was listening to the Harry Smith Folk Anthology around the time I started developing the Ghostwriter sound.

CASEY:  What was your initial one man band set up?

GHOSTWRITER:  It was pretty similar to now. I used two mics in the last couple of bands I sang in, so I kept that.  I played guitar and banjo and used a pretty primitive version of foot percussion rig that I still use today.

CASEY:  How would you describe your music? If you had to explain what you do to someone who never heard you, what would you tell them?

GHOSTWRITER:  I'd say edgy roots-rock or punk-blues or some form of post-punk American roots music.  There's never a quick description but I like to stress that it is rooted in well worn genres like blues and folk, even though more modern influences are incorporated too.

CASEY: Tell us about your new album.

GHOSTWRITER: It's called String Noise And Dust. It was released on vinyl and CD earlier this year on my own label, End Of The West Records.  It's all me, no other musicians.  I recorded it at

home in Austin using the same one inch tape machine that I used on my last couple of albums but with better mics and outboard gear.  I recorded it last summer and did the post production work in the fall.  I would say it is stronger and more diverse than my previous releases.  It is a good group of songs and I'm really happy with the outcome.

CASEY:  Where can we buy the new album?

GHOSTWRITER:  You can buy LPs and CDs directly from
www.endofthewest.com and it's available from all of the download and streaming sites like, iTunes, Spotify, CD Baby and the rest.

CASEY:  What new projects are you working on?

GHOSTWRITER:  Right now I am mainly trying to spread the word on the new album.  The upcoming tour will be in late October and November. I am working on putting that together and promoting it.  On the side, I recently put together a three piece band here in Austin called Beautiful Delilahs.  It's a straight up rock n roll thing, heavy on covers of fifties and sixties stuff.  The other players are killer and the few shows we've played have been a blast.  We are hoping to release a seven inch soon and hoping to generate a little more activity locally.
                                                       
Ghostwriter's Website.                 

Casey's Website