Retribution Gospel Choir

Listen to "What She Turned Into" from Retribution Gospel Choir

Reveille: Unlike a lot of bands today, Retribution Gospel Choir gigged around for a couple of years before you got around to releasing your first proper record. Was having that seasoning period before you put out a permanent document like an album intentional?

Alan Sparhawk: The band really started as just a part time thing where we would play occasionally when I was less busy with Low stuff. I think this whole start-the-band-and-immediately-make-a-record thing is a newer phenomenon just because it’s easier to record and put things out now than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I’m from a different generation, this band is fun to play with live and it’s always sort of mutating so I didn’t really feel pressure to put a record out right away. It was really Mark Kozelek who encouraged us to finally make an album and had some ideas about how to make it work.

Reveille: I assume you and Mark Kozelek knew each other over the years just from playing music on a similar circuit. What was it like having Mark shift over into the role of producing your music? Are there moments on the record where you feel like you can hear his influence?

Sparhawk: A lot of what made the relationship with Mark as a producer work was his attitude and the facilities he was using. He had worked with Aaron, the engineer, for a number of years and it was a good fluid situation where everyone was sharing ideas. He helped with arrangements on a couple of the songs, beginnings, endings, musical transitions. It was mostly simple pointers. I think a lot of artists get nervous having others produce them but for me it’s really freeing to just concentrate on playing the songs well. The producer has to be someone you trust and someone whose vision of your music you can believe in. It was nice to do that with Mark and I was really happy with the results. Over the years I’ve learned that if you can somehow leave as much up to chance as possible when you go into the studio, or to others perceptions, it generally helps push you in ways you don’t expect and the outcome is more interesting.

Reveille: If there’s been any agenda behind the last few albums you’ve done it would appear to be having that openness of doing something new you just mentioned, a real insistence on not repeating yourself. It’s easy to imagine people loving certain Low albums by you and being alienated by something like Retribution Gospel Choir and vice versa. Do you consciously avoid repeating yourself?

Sparhawk: In order to stay creatively engaged you really have to. There’s definitely that temptation to fall back on established things from the past that you know your precious audience likes though. If you’re trying something really new and different not only do you often start questioning what other people think you frequently question yourself. Is this something I can even do? Do I only write certain kinds of things well? You have to do it anyway. Low’s been around making records for long enough that we know we can try odd things and many of our fans will follow us. The last few records I’ve been involved with it’s really been a given going in that the mission is to try and do something further off from what expectations are. There’s different ways to do that. With the last Low record we very aggressively set aside the instruments we normally use to build songs and used new ones, we tried building in a more naïve way. For the creative process to still be satisfying at this point I have to force myself to look into something unfamiliar and hopefully find my voice within it. I learned that years ago and it’s been really fun to feel that freedom ever since.

Reveille: I recently re-watched the documentary Low in Europe which is a number of years old now but I was struck by how integrated your family and musical life felt in the film and how you brought your children out on tour with you. The standard mentality is sort of that the rock ‘n’ roll life and being a present husband are irreconcilable. Your life would seem to refute that. How do you feel your family life has informed your music?

Sparhawk: Having children adjusts your perspective, in a certain way you become more determined. Parenthood put more weight on what I was saying with my music. Before I was content to have my lyrics vaguer and let people come to me. After I had children I felt bolder and realized mortality is real and there’s a certain amount of influence I can have and some of it’s very intimate and some of it is public. I looked harder at what I was saying as an artist. I wanted to make my songs more pointed and not pussy foot around as much. Also just the process of watching your children grow up and seeing kids and the way they interact with music reminds you how simple and beautiful music can be. I’ve never been one to write terribly complicated music but my kids made me want to be even more direct and simple.

Reveille: You’ve been a fixture in Duluth now for more than a decade and are successful enough with your music that at this point if you wanted to move to a larger metropolis you certainly could afford to. Since it’s not the cost of living, what is it about Duluth that makes it feel like a good home base as an artist? Do you see yourself staying there long term?

Sparhawk: I think for sure we’ll stay here long term. Mim and I grew up in really poor farming areas in Northwest Minnesota. Coming to Duluth to go to college was as much a step up as we could handle (laughs). Once the band got going and we were traveling around there was that thought of moving somewhere else. We sort of kept our eye out to see if a move to some other city would make sense, but it never did. We’re close to family here. We’re close to the East Coast, close to the West Coast, it’s a good place to start a tour from. We were never the kind of people who though we had to move to a big city to make it happen career-wise. We have friends all over the world we’d love to be around more but it’s a small world and where you are that day is your home anyway. It’s a charmed existence in that way because we have made really dear friends over the years and become familiar with towns and places all over the world, but it’s still always really nice to come back to Duluth.

Reveille: To some degree music is always informed by a sense of place. Do you find the Duluth music scene serves as an inspirational creative space for you?

Sparhawk: There’s something about Duluth that’s just separate enough that it keeps the art made here interesting. There’s always this overhanging cloud of ‘Oh well it’s Duluth we can’t be taken terribly seriously,’ but there’s enough of a crowd of people that show up and check things out and are supportive that things keep happening. It’s not big enough for cliques and competition. It’s nice because it becomes very eclectic, the same crowd that goes out to the hip-hop show will go to the Cars and Trucks Led Zepplin light show and to the All the Pretty Horses show. Ultimately I think that intermixing of everybody’s ideas creates its own inspiration.

Retribution Gospel Choir's MySpace

COMING UP: Retribution Gospel Choir plays its CD release show on Saturday, March 22, at the Turf Club . With opening acts iamtheslowdancingumbrella, His Mischief. 9 p.m. $TBD. 21+. For a chance to win a pair of tickets to this show, send your name and phone number to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it