INTERVIEW WITH DAVID ROUSH FROM ECCE SHNAK (PART 2)

WHERE PUNK MEETS POETRY:
A CONVERSATION WITH ECCE SHNAK (PART 2)
Interview with David Roush from Ecce Shnak by Benjamín York.
Photographs by Thomas Krause.

PART 2
THE MIX OF THINGS ART.
Literature, Philosophy, and the Mind of David Roush.

Ecce Shnak, a quintet consisting of David Roush (vocals, electric guitar/bass), Isabella Komodromos (vocals), Chris Krasnow (electric guitar), Gannon Ferrell (electric guitar/bass), and Henry Vaughn (drums), blends pop, classical music, and punk, creating songs about love, sex, death, change, courage, and food.

Since Roush formed the band in the mid-2000s, Ecce Shnak has walked a tightrope, constantly leaping from one style to another. Throughout these musical explorations, Roush's boundless imagination always takes center stage. Equal parts provocative and entertaining, Ecce Shnak's performances are as vividly theatrical as they are intellectually captivating, defying every expectation.

We had the opportunity to speak with David, and we've divided the interview into two parts. In this first installment, we'll get to know the band a little better.

Before their ‘Dandy Variances’ album arrives later this year, New York art-rock collective Ecce Shnak is turning heads with their delightfully off-kilter new single "Eddie, Legalistic Homeslice," a garage-rock celebration of friendship wrapped in operatic vocals, angular guitars, and fearless experimentation. With an sound that is unmistakably all their own, they’ve earned praise for crafting music that is as technically ambitious as it is wildly entertaining. We spoke with composer, bassist, and baritone vocalist David Roush, who tells the stories behind their journey, their creative process, and how Ecce Shnak manages to balance humor, heart and musical chaos to become one of New York City's most distinctive rock acts.

When you’re writing for Ecce Shnak, does a song typically begin with a lyrical concept, a bass line, a harmonic structure, or something more abstract? Can you walk us through your creative process from initial spark to finished composition?

For me, any and all of those musical elements can start a songwriting process. In addition, each of those musical elements suggests things about each other. I allow myself to stumble around in one musical element until something sticks and suggests something else, and then I follow that and see where it takes me.

Melodies imply a range of chord progressions, and how I harmonize a melody depends on my mood on that day or my understanding of what I am writing about. On the flipside, if I am intrigued by a chord or chord progression, I just start ululating and free-associating over it. I try to tell my Inner Saboteur to go kick rocks, and that is certainly part of the process.

But if I hear somebody say a funny phrase or if an interesting thought comes to me, words have a kind of “music” inherent in them. Each word has a rhythm and even a kind of melodic shape that suggests music. I think the term “prosody” relates to this phenomenon.

Finally, I grew up playing drums, so sometimes a drumbeat will come to me and I know immediately that a song will arise from that. A drumbeat, again, implies both melodic options for the voices and the string instruments, as well as emotional themes that can inform a lyric.

As best as I can tell, songwriting is a process of being open to all of those elements as much as one can and realizing how they suggest and integrate with each other into a meaningful artistic image. It is turning the wild mix into a gestalt, or finding the gestalt in the wild mix.

What are you reading, watching, or otherwise immersing yourself in lately that’s feeding your imagination? Are there particular writers, filmmakers, or experiences that are subtly shaping the direction of your work right now?

With regards to standout literature, I keep coming back to Franz Kafka’s book The Trial. It is quite a short work, but there is so much psychological, philosophical, and political insight in it. Kafka deals with such weighty themes as authoritarianism, capital punishment, and political gangsterism with remarkable compassion and focus.

To me, the often-used term “Kafkaesque” refers to a situation in which there are all the conditions of something humorous—the irony, absurdity, setup, and punchline—but there is too much misery in the circumstances to laugh at it.

I am admittedly a Davey-come-lately to this, but my bandmates Bella and Chris have finally gotten me to come around to David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.

My loved ones among my friends and family continue to be the primary inspiration for a lot of the art I engage with, both in my own creativity and in what I appreciate in other artists’ work.

"Katy's Wart [Animated Music Feelm Version]"

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote? What was it about, and at what moment did you realize that creating music wasn’t just a pastime, but something you needed to pursue seriously?

My band in sixth grade was called Grass. We had a song called “Happy.” It was a very silly piece of music, but I can hear it very clearly in my memory now. I faintly remember one of the lyrics. I think it went something like:
“Today was a happy day,
but yesterday was a crappy day,
because a horse kicked me and then said neigh.”

While this was arguably not the most timeless lyric ever written, the sense of love and care for goofy songs between my friends and bandmates in Grass, Alex and Leah, was probably the first time I said to myself, “I can’t not do this! However this goes, whether people care for it or not, I need to make these strange, funny, shared sounds with people I respect and trust.”

I would’ve said it differently when I was 12 years old, but I am quite sure my soul discovered that about itself at that time.

When you first founded Ecce Shnak, what was the core vision for the band—sonically, philosophically, even visually? And has that vision evolved or sharpened as the project has grown?

Ecce Shnak is music that studies, appreciates, and tries to articulate what I call the “Mix of Things”: the whole range of horrible, beautiful, and mediocre phenomena in life, and every color and shade of the human soul and the miraculous Earth in which we live that I can observe and hopefully make some sense out of.

This accounts for my attempt to synthesize the musical styles I write in, and it accounts for my openness to both lighthearted and very serious themes in my lyrics. I think I want to try to embody all of myself in my art—or, again, as much of it as possible—and to encourage others to find their own Wild Mix in my music, the other music they listen to, and the music they make themselves.

The album art for our upcoming album Dandy Variances is largely drawn from several fantastic works by the California-based painter Karen Barbour. She synthesizes subtle, skillful technique with mesmerizing, phantasmagoric imagery that is both figurative and abstract. I think her visual aesthetic is a big inspiration for us these days in terms of our stage attire and the way we would realize our live presentation if we are ever lucky enough to curate a very elaborate stage and light show.

"Jeremy, Utilitarian Sadboy"

Ecce Shnak’s work often feels theatrical, confrontational, and genre-defiant. Do you feel a responsibility to challenge audiences, or is that simply a byproduct of following your instincts wherever they lead?
I think it is a little more the latter than the former. I don’t believe that I have some special wisdom or artistic vision that others need to abide by. I absolutely respect artists who stay in one lane more, whatever it is: punk rockers, hip-hop artists, alt-country types, or any other more stable style of music.

I just know that for myself, whenever I have wanted to write something and express it to people, I can’t help but struggle with this “Mix of Things.” That Mix is always where my instincts lead me. Plenty of people don’t get it, and that is absolutely okay. My goal is to try to connect with anybody who can understand any of it, and then connect with them as deeply as possible, so that we can both say to each other, in great relief and excitement:
“Wait—you saw that weird/wonderful/grotesque/moving/hilarious part of the world, too? So did I! I thought I was crazy, but I just hadn’t yet found my kin.”

That said, I do hope to challenge bigotry. Plutocracy, xenophobia, queerphobia, jingoism, and so many other kinds of bigotry are expressions of broken and destructive parts of our souls. I hope to challenge bigotry in people’s hearts so that they might come to their senses and free the world from the harm they cause, knowingly or not. 

Please recommend one band for our listeners to listen to and one video or documentary to watch.

I would suggest your listeners check out the New Orleans-based hip-hop artist La Reezy, who just released a new record, Skiddle Bandana, a couple of weeks ago. This young man is wise far beyond his mere 22 years, is already a poetic wizard and cunning student of the human soul, and produces most of his own fantastic beats. If you’re a fan of Outkast, Mos Def, or Tyler, the Creator, you will appreciate this great artist!

I will pivot from the video or documentary prompt and encourage your listeners to check out the YouTube channel RM Brown. RM is a hilarious comedian and media critic in the tradition of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and Mystery Science Theater 3000. His hilarious and insightful commentary regularly mocks a number of right-wing media personalities such as Ben Shapiro, Tim Pool, Alex Jones, and others. He uses a collection of “drops”—small clips of media figures, politicians, and absurd, hilarious, or interesting strangers—that are funny in themselves while also expressing our often deranged zeitgeist.

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