Mike Hill of Tombs interviews J. Bennett of Ides of Gemini
True friendship is a valuable asset in this material world we live in, especially among the ranks of musicians and industry types. I feel fortunate to have a tight inner circle of people that I consider friends. I’ve known J. Bennett for almost 2 decades; we met back in the 90’s when we both lived in Boston; it was a time before the internet when you actually had to leave your apartment to experience music, it was a hands-on, full-contact experience.
When J. gave me a copy of the Ides of Gemini demo a couple of years ago, I was intrigued. I’ve always known him as a writer; I was familiar with Sera’s work in Black Math Horseman, but I actually had no idea that Bennett had any musical ability. Any apprehension that I may have had vanished once I let the music wash over me. It was a study in the sublime and melancholy, yet the fact that my good friend was one of the key members in this effort, gave me a deep feeling of satisfaction. It made me feel satisfied that with will and determination, manifestation can be achieved from the ethereal world of ideas.
MH: When did Ides of Gemini officially start?
JB: I probably started writing the songs in like probably mid-to-late 2009. Black Math Horseman was originally supposed to go to Europe in early 2010 to play Roadburn and do a European tour. But we were literally sitting on the airplane when that Icelandic volcano that nobody can pronounce blew up and we got hauled off the plane. All the transatlantic flights were cancelled for a week or more, the tour was only going to be two weeks, so the band decided that it wasn’t worth doing the tour. As a result, we ended up with all this free time, so Sera and I recorded this stuff that ended up on the EP that came out in November of 2010.
And that EP was just the two of you with programmed drums right?
Exactly. Sera programmed the drums.
What motivated you to get a live drummer?
We wanted to play live with a drummer. I’ve seen bands play without a drummer like The Austerity Program and Godflesh and they seem to be able to pull it off but we don’t have that kind of industrial vibe that those band have where you can get away with it. As a new band I wanted to go out there with a live human drummer, our songs seem like they needed that and I couldn’t see myself getting up there and playing on stage with a machine like Joe Preston does or something. All these people I’m mentioning, I don’t mean to say it’s bad–they all do it well, I just don’t see it working for us. So yeah that was it; we knew early on that we needed a female drummer because we wanted someone who could do Sera’s backups and a lot of that stuff is just not possible for the male voice. Having a guy drumming and some woman standing there as backup vocalist… that’s just not an option either. We ended up with Kelly (Johnston) who’s like this rare, perfect person because she can sing and play the drums at the same time.
We met Kelly through a mutual friend, Scott Carlson from Repulsion. His girlfriend knew Kelly and we first met, I think, at a barbeque. We found out she played drums and she’d been talking to Sera about doing an all female doom group. I guess she got two-thirds of her wish!
Do you guys consider yourself part of that whole Doom trip?
I think we have an element of that. I mean I think if there’s anything doom about us, it’s the lyrics. There’s this sense of impeding destruction; they’re pretty bleak. So I think that if we had anything in common with doom it would be that.
I didn’t even know you played guitar; how long have you been playing?
It depends how you count it I guess…I started playing when I was sixteen, but honestly, before I was in Ides of Gemini I hadn’t touch the guitar in like ten years, so I had to relearn the instrument in a lot of ways.
I wasn’t playing at all; honestly, it was Sera’s voice that inspired me. I’ve hung out with band guys for my entire life and if I had been really motivated I probably could have gotten somebody to do something with me, but I just wasn’t. When I lived in Boston, you had all these band like Isis and Cave In, these are like bands that I love and I thought I can’t possibly do anything like that, so why bother? That was half of it, and the other half it was that I just didn’t want to start a band with a guy screaming in it. That didn’t really interest me, there’s so much of that and so much of it was being done so well and it just seems like the gap of that being done well and being done poorly is so narrow.
I didn’t really think about starting a band until I heard Sera sing.
I don’t think we ever talked about a band but we’d just write these songs, like four or five songs; we’ll put them out ourselves and see what happens and through that process people started getting interested. Simultaneously Black Math Horseman started doing less and less stuff because other band members were very busy in their personal lives, you know businesses and babies and all those kind of real life things that take up a lot of time. We just kind of ended up being a real band.
Has having Kelly on drums influenced the creative process?
Yeah, that’s just starting to happen now. On the first record, we rerecorded all the songs form the EP, so she just played the programmed parts, and we had other songs with the drum parts already written and on others we gave her a lot of direction for her drum parts. We’re working on the new record. I bring all the songs in and they’re all arranged and ready to go but as far as what the drum beats go, we’re kind of working together with her now. I’m sending her demos that I record with a kick drum to keep time and she’s writing parts and trying things out in the rehearsal space.
What was it like when you played your first show with Ides of Gemini?
In a lot of ways it was terrible, man! First of all, I had all the nerves that you would expect from being in front of people…my first time ever playing in a band! I was 33 at the time; I’ve never been on stage or done that in front of people, so it was nerve-wracking, but beyond that, I also had actual nerve problems in my spine, so I was in a lot of pain and heavily medicated for that show. I’m obviously glad we played the show and got it out of the way, but it was a fucking terrible experience in a lot of ways. It was horrible, I was fucking nervous and I was in a lot of pain. I was fucking out of it, I fucked up, I made a huge mistake in one of the songs; there was hardly anything good about it.
How is it now? Have you grown accustomed to being on stage?
Yeah, I mean, a little bit; I wouldn’t say I’m accustomed to it I mean we just played on Monday night and it was one of those situation where you get like a really brief line check, but the dude didn’t even line check my guitar. He was just like “Go!” and I was like you’re fucking shitting me! That situation just throws you off immediately. I’m definitely still getting my sea legs as far as being on stage, I’m way better than I was when I started but my comfort level I’m noticing has a lot to do with how much we’re rushed and if we get a real proper sound check.
You guys did some dates on the Decibel Tour with Behemoth, Watain, Devil’s Blood and In Solitude. How was that?
We just did the L.A. show. That was the biggest show I’ve ever played, incredible opportunity for us and it was one of the situations where it was a rushed line check. We were on first at like you know 6:30 at night or something and there were still a lot of people there because it was all ages and you know all the kids show up early because they want to get their spot up front to see Watain or Behemoth. We played to a lot of people. There was so much shit on stage, there was so much gear; four bands back lined up back there. We had ten minutes to line check before doors opened and I couldn’t even find a place to plug in my amp for like eight minutes. So it was like another one of those things: we got on stage and I was like going in blind like I had no idea what was going to happen. There was no room, we were pushed to the front of the stage so that we had to play in a row, next to each other like Kelly and then me and the Sera, all next to each other instead of set up like a real band. And you know how it is to have the curtain open and there are all those people there and it’s like “uhh…” man, that’s another one I was glad to have over with.
Did the Black Metal fans dig you guys?
I got to say their response was like surprisingly great; there was a line of teenage girls wanting to get their picture taken with Sera after that show.
I figured maybe people who were there to see the Devil’s Blood could get into us because you know the female vocalist thing, and they’re not as heavy as like Behemoth or Watain and the black metal people would just be like, “fuck this!” It seemed like they were into it.
Photo: Steven Duncan
How did the relationship with Neurot develop?
Scott (Kelly) and Steve (Von Till) heard the album online somehow and they contacted us before we even played our first show. I got an email from Scott and then like an hour later I got an email from Steve and they were both like “this is cool, we love this, do you want to put out a record?” Getting that kind of email from heavyweight guys like that…it’s an honor, man. Sera and I have been Neurosis fans forever and so to have though guys interested in putting out your music is a great feeling.
Having those two guys into your band is definitely an honor.
They’ve been around for a long time and they’re true artists. They’re not out to make money or move units or whatever; they want to put out stuff that they like and they want you to be happy. It’s awesome.
Where’d you guys record Constantinople?
We recorded it with Chris Rakestraw at Sunset Lodge in Silver Lake. Chris has done a lot of work with Danzig. He also engineered the last Skeletonwitch record. Holy Grail just finished working with him; that band Huntress started recording their album with him the day after we finished.
Huntress, that’s that band with that blonde in it, right?
Yeah, when we finished Huntress went in the next day. And Holy Grail was right before us. He had us all lined up in a row.
We recorded and mixed the whole thing in five days. We didn’t have a lot of time to dick around, but we were very well rehearsed, we were all together as a band; we were rehearsing four days a week prior to going in there for like a month. Kelly and I would go in and rehearse an extra two days so Kelly and I were rehearsing six days a week.
How do you fund the recording process?
I fronted the money for the album. This is kind of embarrassing to admit but I actually went to school for recording and it was something I never pursued because I find it to be an incredibly tedious process. I got to say it’s a little less tedious being on the musician side because you know you at least have the feeling that you are creating something. I had never done that before you so I enjoyed that aspect of it but for someone like Chris, who engineered our record, you have to be a certain kind of person to be able to do that; you need to have a certain amount of patience and a certain demeanor to do that. I don’t have that patience nor that demeanor so I have no idea how guys do that for a living. I don’t have that thing, that’s why I honestly never pursued recording. It kind of ruins music for me in a way cause you just hear shit over and over and over again and you end up not wanting to fucking hear this ever again.
Yeah, that’s a common statement by a lot of people, you know.
You’ve spent most of your career as a music journalist, writing reviews, doing interviews. What is it like being on the other side of this, being in a band and having other people write about your band?
In a way I think it might be easier for me than most people who are starting bands. I think a lot of people are not good with taking criticism especially if you’re young, you know guys who’ve been around a while, they get a bad review it kind of rolls off your back, you don’t really care. I also know from years of writing reviews that the bottom line of any review is some person’s name and it’s only their opinion of your record. On the interview side, I have had so many experiences with people who either are not savvy enough to be able to give good answers or have done so many interviews that they are just over it and either have canned responses answer your questions with yes’s or no’s. I would fucking never do that man to someone who’s calling you and is interested in your band. I know what they need to make a good story, something that people want to read.
At this stage, what do you guys have coming up?
We’re going to Europe in September which kind of blows me away.
Who’s booking the tour?
Our friend Andreas, who does that label Exile on Mainstream; he puts out all Wino’s stuff in Europe and he put together the Black Math Horseman tour a couple of years ago. It was well-organized and he hooked everything up. He builds and rents all of the backline gear, its all top-notch equipment. He’s killer, he understands that we’re a new band and we’re not going to be getting huge guarantees so he cut us a deal.
Are you going over there on your own?
Well, it’s kind of a little bit of both; we’re playing a couple festivals and then we’re playing some headline shows and then we’re playing some UK shows with this band called Undersmile. I don’t know anything about them but apparently they’re getting really good press in the UK. And then we’re playing a few shows in Germany with that band Stinking Lizaveta. We have like maybe four or five shows with them.
We’ll be there for a month. We’re doing the UK, about a third of the dates are in Germany, a couple of Austrian shows, Belgium, a festival in Holland called Incubate where Mogwai and the Buzzcocks are the big headliners. There are a couple of shows in France and the Czech Republic. So that’s the big tour for us. We’re doing two shows with Old Man Gloom in L.A. and San Diego right before that. Like we literally do those two shows then there’s a day off then we go Europe for a month.
Have you done any touring at all in the states?
No. We’ve played that SCION thing in Tampa last month; we’ve played up in Oakland but that’s like the farthest. Tampa was the only show we’ve played outside of California.
You’re jumping right into it with this European Tour.
JB: Yeah totally – that’s always been my attitude about everything, trial by fire. I didn’t go to school for journalism, and I’m convinced that’s one of the only reasons that I’ve been able to do it as long as I’ve been doing it, is that I learned by doing it. The same thing with this band, I didn’t touch the guitar for ten years. I wrote songs and did it; I’m not saying any of this stuff is good, I’m just saying to me this is how you learn something: you just do it.
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