Best known as a member of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, David J Haskins has been very active with other collaborations and side projects. His latest is a deeply personal work consisting of a 5-song album of spoken word set to music, The Mother Tree, and a poetry book, Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer.
Haskins wrote the album’s title track in 1997 after the passing of his mother, as a tribute to her. “Incantation To Herne” was written in 1995 while he was still living in his hometown of Northampton, England and immersed in the study of magick and folklore. “Elegy to Beale Street” was written during a trip to Memphis in 1990. Haskins wrote “Saviour in the City” in New York City around the same time, contemplating how Jesus would be received if he visited the city in modern times. Initially, Haskins thought he would handle all of the music himself, but a chance meeting led him to collaborate with the band RAQIA.
Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer collects poetry Haskins has written over the course of many years, encompassing a wide array of experiences, places, relationships, infatuations, and obsessions. Through poetry he also pays tribute to his dad, as well as departed cultural icons like Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, Mark Linkous, Jeff Buckley, and Jack Kerouac.
Over Zoom, Haskins discussed the inspirations and process behind the album and book.
Was releasing a book and album at the same time the idea from the start, or did one lead to the other?
David J Haskins: The initial idea was just to make the album. And it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time, spoken word with music. I’ve always dabbled with that. I mean, going right back to the first album, thinking about it, Etiquette of Violence, which was 1983, there’s some spoken word with music on that, and successive albums have often had at least one track of that kind of thing. So I had this idea to do a whole album of spoken word with music, and initially I thought I’d be going in myself and just multi-tracking the instruments, but then I chanced to see this great band RAQIA play a gig in downtown LA, and the only reason I was there was to check out a friend of mine, Nora Keys, who I happened to bump into in an Indian restaurant. And I hadn’t seen her in a while, and I asked her what she was doing.
She said, “Oh, I’ve got a new group now. It’s a duo. We’re playing tomorrow night if you want to come down.” So she told me where it was. So I went down there to check it out just on my own, and she was great, and I was getting ready to leave. And then this group started setting up and I thought, “Well, I’ll check these guys out, maybe stay for a song.” And they came on and they just kind of blew me away. It was all instrumental music, but it was riveting, and they were obviously really accomplished musicians. I spoke to them afterwards and it turned out two of them were graduates from the Berklee School of Music, and the other guy, John Bernstein, was of that stature. And they were just so locked in with each other. It was semi-improvised, and I really liked that, and I could see them all just feeling each other out as the set progressed. The set evolved and it was a beautiful thing. And I thought, “Wow, this could really work with spoken word.” So I put the idea to ’em and they were up for it. And we were in the studio within a few days.
We recorded “The Mother Tree” in one take. I did the vocal simultaneously with them. So it very much was that feeling each other out and responding. They’re great responsive players. And then that went so well, we ended up sticking with that format for the album. We added a really good percussionist for the other tracks. We couldn’t get back in — this was Covid times. So when we could resume was dictated by that weird situation, to a degree. When we could go back was a couple of months after the first session we did. And we just had a two-day session and just banged out the rest of it.
So you mentioned that initially you thought that it might be something that you would do yourself, multi-tracking the music. Once you started working with a group of musicians, what was the process like?
David J Haskins: Well, I sent them the poems and just let them… I gave them carte blanche, really, as to the music that they would come up with. I wanted them to put something of themselves in it. I didn’t want to be dictatorial in that area, but when they brought that music to the studio, they just played me a sample. I didn’t want to hear the whole thing. I wanted to be surprised by it and excited by it as we were recording. So I didn’t want to be that familiar with what they were doing, and I wanted us to really feel it as we went. And so that’s what they did. I said, “Well, what have you got in mind for this one?” And they’d play me that sample. And mostly, I just said, “Yep, that’s it.” Or maybe, “Slow that down just a little bit,” or, “This is the right mood, but make sure there are dynamics within it. Really take it down. Just follow me. Just be sensitive to what I’m saying. Just listen.” And they’re such good listeners, really good listeners. I mean, extraordinary. And then just feel it. And it was just a very natural, free-flowing, organic process.
Did the Covid-related gap have any impact on how things went once you got back together? Did the gap perhaps give you time to reflect on the initial session?
David J Haskins: Not really, no. It was just a practical issue of being careful and isolated. And we were wearing masks, and that was weird. And we buffered off areas, and I did the vocals in a separate part of the building. It was just a small room, like a storage room at the back. And that was funny. I went in there and the first one I did was the “Incantation to Herne.” And funnily enough, somebody had left an antler on the table in there. And that’s very symbolic and associated with Herne, the Cernunnos spirit of the wild wood, the ancient God of nature, who would be depicted as a man in furs with antlers. So I took this as quite a good omen, and I was wielding this antler around as I was doing it — it was giving me inspiration.
The book contains poetry spanning a fairly long timeframe. Was it obvious which poems you wanted to set to music for the album?
David J Haskins: The main piece, “The Mother Tree,” is dedicated to my mother, and I wrote that just after she passed. I stayed up for practically three nights on the main body of that. And then it was concluded after I had received her ashes. And I also say what I did with those ashes in the poem, and then it was complete after I’d done that act. That takes up a whole side. It’s 20 minutes, nearly. And then there was an accompanying poem, which is about when I did receive those ashes in New York City when I was recording there with Love and Rockets in 1997. And it’s just — although we were recording quite a ways away from where we were staying in the East Village, it didn’t feel right to get in a cab, even though it was raining. I felt like I had to walk with those ashes and carry them. And I actually wrote that poem as I was on that walk to my place. So it was natural that that should be included. And that’s on the second side. And then I just wanted to open up the subject matter and diversify. And it was really the ones that I could imagine… I knew what the sound of the group was, and it was just imagining how they would interpret those poems and what would work best within the context of that particular group.
Could you elaborate a bit more on the composition of “The Mother Tree”?
David J Haskins: Well, I’d recently visited her. She was living in Australia because my parents immigrated there in the eighties. And I’d been over there, and I knew that was the last time I’d see her. She was on her last legs, really. But I had a wonderful connecting time with her, very bonding time. And she said she didn’t want me to come and see her again. And she also didn’t want me to come to the funeral. She wanted me to save my money because we’d just immigrated to America. And she just wanted me to have this memory of this beautiful time, this last time together. And I understood and respected that and honored that. But I did have my own funeral — more of a wake; she was of Irish descent — on the day in my backyard. And I do write about that in one of the poems in the book, “Forty Stones.” It was very powerful, and to me, much more meaningful than a conventional funeral.
It was just me there and the spirits. So that was why. I just poured out. It is such a big deal losing your mother. And how I tend to process — particularly how I tend to process loss — if it’s friends, personal friends, family members in this case, or people I’ve really admired, artists I’ve admired and lost, like David Bowie… how I process that is through writing. And it’s very immediate and it’s extremely cathartic. And it’s also wonderful because it’s shared outside of myself with the public. And I’ve had so much positive feedback and response to these kind of elegy pieces that people do identify with, and it brings them some sort of solace. So that’s just a wonderful, wonderful thing.
And I think this poem will do that. I know it’s already done it for a couple of friends of mine who I’ve played it to, whose mothers are also spending their last days here. And they’ve said to me it gave them a lot of solace.
What was the motivation behind releasing this album using your surname as opposed to just David J?
David J Haskins: Again, for literary stuff, like my memoir, I wanted to use my proper surname. It felt right. And I know that my dad, more than my mom, would’ve really liked that. So it’s sort of honoring the family. And then this one is so much to do with family again, it seemed appropriate to use my full real name, Haskins — the name she adopted, Haskins — so that’s why.
Will there be a live performance aspect to this project?
David J Haskins: Yes. I’m just in the process of booking some dates actually to coincide with the release, which is — the release date is June the 10th — and there will be a show in Denver on that day. And then we go to Atlanta, Asheville, which is the base of the record label Erototox Decodings. And then we go into New York, and then we’re coming back to LA. So short little run. And I’m inviting local poets, selected poets, and unconventional acts. I’ve got a great magician in New York. I’ve got a clown of some repute in Atlanta to MC it, so it’ll be unconventional and interesting.
Will this be entirely spoken word for you?
David J Haskins: No, I’m going to do — half the set will be spoken word with prerecorded backing, and then I shall pick up my trusty guitar and play a selection of songs from right across the career.
Last time we spoke, you seemed to have so many different projects going on. Is there anything else coming up that you’d like to mention?
David J Haskins: Yeah, the last thing that I put out by the auspices of the wonderful Independent Project Records was a collection of old demos — a three-album box set worth of demo cassettes. And how that came about was they approached me asking if I had anything in the area of demos, unreleased, lo-fi, that kind of thing, niche market. And it just so happened I’d just had all these cassette tapes transferred and digitized, just for myself. I wasn’t thinking of releasing them, but this offer came. So I said, “Well, yeah, I’ve got this. It’s a trove. Make what you will.” And they really liked it. They said, “Oh, we want to put all of this out.” I said, “Really? Are you mad?” But they did a lovely job on it, and they did a super deluxe box set version. It’s kind of an art project, really. And for that tier of release, I included one of the original, the actual cassettes. So there’s 70 of those. So everyone gets an actual cassette.
So that came out, and following that, the label thought it would be a good idea — and I agree with that — to go back into the studio, select about 10 of these tracks, and do them fully realized with a full band, fully produced and a single album. And I just finished that. We just finished recording that. It’s turned out really well. That’ll be coming out in the fall.
Looking back at these demos or revisiting other older work, do you see a progression of your creative output? If so, are there specific ways?
David J Haskins: Yeah, musical structure. I’m more structured now when I write my own songs. There’s more use of dynamics. The lyrics are much more refined and tighter. I mean, in redoing these songs from the demos, I practically rewrote all the lyrics. And I mean, some of the original lyrics, they’re very meandering. They’re very surreal. And it’s not really in my head now — it was back then. That was interesting. Yeah, there’s certainly some evolution going on there.
I know you’ve done visual art too over the years. Did you consider having more of a visual component to this particular project?
David J Haskins: No, because that’s handled by Bruce Licher, who’s one of the guys that runs the label, who’s a brilliant artist, and he does all the artwork for the label, the design work, and it’s just exquisite. So I’m really happy to just hand that all over to him. I pitch in and I’m quite hands-on. He’ll refer to me. I’m working with a great photographer, Mila Reynaud, who I had not worked with for many years. And what we’ve done is… see, with the original box set, we used a photo from the early nineties. It was an outtake that was from a session for an album called Urban Urbane. That was a great photographer, Mitch Jenkins. The photo he took for that album cover, it’s beautiful. He won some awards at the time, not surprisingly, but we had a couple of outtakes, and in the studio there was a stepladder. So I was just messing around with the stepladder — actually, it was for Mitch to get a higher angle — but I sat on it at one point and he snapped some pics. And I just thought, oh, that’s a quip in there, like a visual bit of humor in there. Like this is tracks from the attic. So it suggested me getting on the stepladder and going up to the attic to retrieve the tapes. So we went back to that, recreated it. We got another stepladder, and I’m sitting in a similar position just considering going back up there.
What about with The Mother Tree and Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer?
David J Haskins: Well, the cover for the book is a drawing by a friend of mine, Holly Albright, who is a great artist who I’ve been collecting over the years. I already had that drawing. I just loved it as a piece. And then when it came to thinking of ideas for the cover of the poetry book, that just came to mind and it could not be more perfect.
There’s two women — two semi-naked women — in what could be the Garden of Eden. They’re in this garden scene, and one looks kind of ecstatic, and the other one looks kind of sad. So one, to me, one is representing Rhapsody and the other one is Threnody, the two snakes in the garden.
And I like that. There’s all sorts of significance to the snakes that you can read into that. But there’s one significance in particular. And it didn’t occur to me until I put the whole book together and I was reading through the pieces. There’s a poem for my dad, the last poem of the Threnody section. And it was after he died. And it’s about what I did with his ashes. And it ties directly in with these snakes. What happened was I took those ashes down to the beach where I was living at the time — Swami’s Beach, which is a famous surfing destination. Surfers come from all over the world because the waves are magnificent. My dad was an old surfer and he would’ve loved that. And it’s a very spiritual place. It’s where the Swami Paramahansa Yogananda lived.
David J Haskins: And it is a very special place for me. So I took them down in a little box and went down to a particular spot, and it’s where the surfers come in, but just away from that little bit. And I’m looking up and I see one single air balloon right up there high in the sky. And what is on the balloon, painted on the balloon or printed on it, is the caduceus — the symbol of the snakes, intertwined snakes. And this is to do with healing and associated with Asclepius and the god of magic and healing medicine. And I’m looking at this, I’m just saying, that’s very beautiful. And then it starts to come down. I’d just released those ashes. I’m looking at this thing. It comes down all the way down, all the way down until it lands in the sea, and I see the two snakes kiss. So that was such a mystical blessing. The ocean, I’d just released the ashes into the ocean, and it was potent.
And I have the two snakes on the cover of the book, so it all ties in.
The Mother Tree can be purchased from djhaskins.bandcamp.com, and Rhapsody, Threnody & Prayer from www.erototox.com.
Be sure to also check out the 2022 interview I did with David J about Night Crickets, a collaboration with with Victor DeLorenzo (Violent Femmes) and Darwin Meiners.
