Claudia Gonson

Claudia plays drums with Stephin Merritt's brilliant pop group, The Magnetic Fields (who are working on their 6th album to come out on Merge Records next spring or summer), and Honeybunch, a pop band featuring Jeffrey Underhill of the Velvet Crush. She is the manager all of Merritt's bands: The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths, Future Bible Heroes and The Gothic Archies. Her most recent musical incarnation is as the singer for Future Bible Heroes, a new wave electro-pop band featuring Stephin Merritt on alternate lead vocals and Christopher Ewen on synths.

We recently spoke to Claudia about music, drumming, the monkees, and everything under the sun. So read on and then check out some of the links listed at the bottom of the page to find out more about Claudia's projects.

Drummergirl: When did you start playing the drums?
Claudia: I bought my first kit when I was 17. It was an impulsive decision. I was at a party in the suburbs of Boston with Stephin and our friend John, and we all fought over which one of us would buy the used Gretch kit we found for sale at the party for 80 bucks. I shouted the loudest and had the money and transportation readily available so I won. I still play that kit. It's the same kit Micky plays in the Monkees.

Do you play any drums other than a kit (anything exotic, trash cans, etc)?
I play other instruments (piano, guitar), but not any other exotic percussion, at least not well.

Out of a lack of resources, I once put together a drum set from paint cans, plaster buckets, tin cans filled with change, and a snare drum that my friends father stole from a car that he towed one day...it didn't sound too wonderful though. Have you ever created your own percussion instruments, or anything like that?
One time the Magnetic Fields were playing a bedroom show for a friend, and someone forgot to bring my snare so I ended up playing on plastic dinner plates. It wasn't bad. In the studio, we often substitute other objects for standard drums, to make the sound more interesting. For instance, we did a song (now an out take) where I play the spokes of a bicycle wheel, which sound quite lovely if you run a straw over them, and on a different track I played the sound of two glasses being bumped together.

Last year I saw some fella play drums with a long metal chain that he would throw on the set, and nerf foam sticks...
In my pre-Magnetic Fields band Lazy Susan I would wrap the tops of my sticks in toilet paper and duct tape to imitate tympany sticks. Eventually I shelled out the 20 bucks each for the proper sticks.

On the Magnetic Fields albums, Wayward Bus and Holiday you are listed as playing "coctail drums" and "toys," respectively. Care to elaborate?
"Cocktail drums" means that we didn't have a full kit set up, I just played various percussion instruments and a snare and probably some sort of tom. To tell the truth, I don't exactly remember since it was 6 years ago. On Holiday, the toys were musical instruments, including xylophone, porter's bell, sleigh bells, and such things. Stephin and I have an impressive collection of musical toys bought at toy stores.

Did you ever take lessons? Can you read music?
I took piano lessons for 15 years and can read music. My only formal drum lesson was sort of unpleasant and I didn't go back. This is the reason I accidentally learned the drums backwards, and now play left handed from the waist up.

How about singing? Do you sing and play drums at the same time?
Yes I do. It's a hard thing to learn but once you learn it it's not any harder than getting all your other limbs to coordinate. I regard the voice as just another limb when it comes to drumming.

Who were your early role models and influences?
Dave Narcizo from The Throwing Muses is an excellent drummer, but I wouldn't say I learned anything from him, he's just someone I completely admire. Malcolm Travis (Ex-Sugar, The Zulus, Human Sexual Response) is a fantastic drummer who I tried to imitate when I started off. But my biggest influence was Palmolive from the Raincoats. I directly tried to imitate her from the beginning, listening to her on headphones and imitating the patterns. And, of course, my life long influence is a drum machine. Being the drummer for The Magnetic Fields means the goal is to imitate a drum machine, and I strive to sound as drum machine-like as possible.

What about current influences?
There is a local band here called My Favorite who I think have a really good drummer. What I admire most in drummers is a kind of loose, ambidextrous quality, the ability to play equally with left and right arms.

Tell me about your first band...
In high school, Stephin and I had a band called the Zinnias with our friends John on bass, Johny Blood on tuba, and Charles on voice. Stephin wrote most of the songs or co-wrote them with John. All of our songs were under 2 minutes, and of course extremely brilliant, albeit a bit silly at times. We broke up because I went to college. Then, I was in the fabulous 3-piece Boston girl group Lazy Susan.

Do you have any side projects at the moment?
I play with Jeffrey Underhill's band Honeybunch. (Jeffrey is also in the Velvet Crush) Occasionally, I play with Dave Derby (Dambuilders)'s side band Brilliantine. And I am the singer for Future Bible Heroes.

How about home recording? Are you a bedroom rocker?
I am an extremely insecure bedroom rocker. I have written songs which I attempt to record but never seem to get very far. I really enjoy playing other people's stuff on the guitar though, camp fire style.

I was looking through a copy of 'Modern Drummer,' and mentioned, to a friend, that not one female drummer was featured in the entire issue, except for in some percussion advertisements. "Well I hate to say it," he said, "but it's not that the magazine is excluding women. It's just that there aren't many out there for them to write about. And if they are out there, then they are so underground that these guys never hear of them." Do you agree?
I don't agree that there aren't a lot of female drummers, but I do agree that "Modern Drummer" focuses around a kind of mainstream, "classic rock," jock mentality which is largely uncomfortable for most women drummers, or women musicians for that matter. But "Modern Drummer" wouldn't appeal to electro-pop musicians either; it's just jocky and mainstream.

What are your general thoughts about the state of women in drums today?
In the indie and especially queercore scenes, it's totally open and cool for women to play drums and I think they are even sort of worshipped. I think it's a basically cool time to be a woman drummer.

"Now women aren't good rock musicians, nor can they drive a car, etc., etc...but the flute and violin, OK, and cooking and cleaning, sure..." Are you ever tempted to play ridiculous riffs just to show people that you can play?
I actually don't regard myself as technically so impressive that have to prove myself. Drumming's not my profession, it's my hobby. I think if drumming were my life maybe I'd feel that desire to play "ridiculous riffs" and show off, but I am happy to play, to keep a beat, be a part of making music. That said, it is an amazing feeling to get a compliment from someone you really admire. A few years ago, Chris and Tina from Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club came up and complimented me on my drumming, and it was pretty damn exciting. Certain female drummers intimidate me, like when we did a little road trip with Yo La Tengo I was impressed and a little daunted by Georgia's drumming. She's great.

Do you ever find that people don't take you seriously as a musician? For instance, at clubs, music shops, etc. (...when I was younger, I always had to have the other members of my band vouch for me so that I could get into clubs we were playing. "She's just a groupie, right?")
I have been treated like a "girl" in music stores but the sales people always end up being respectful because in the end, they want to make a sale. Sound guys at shows are famous for being assholes but I don't know if that's specifically about my gender. The only place I've felt repeatedly spurned for being female is in the recording studio, when engineers and producers get annoyed at my having opinions. But even that seems to have gotten better in recent years. Either there's a new breed of cool engineers or I have gotten mellower. Probably both.

Growing up, I was the only girl in my town who played guitar. One day, I get a call from this guy at the local newspaper. "What's it like being the only girl in an all male band and the only girl out of the ten bands that are playing 'rockfest' this weekend?" Was I in an "all male" band? I hadn't noticed. So here I am getting this phone call because I play guitar and...oh wow, I'm a girl too. The sad thing is that I was the only female guitarist in that progressive, liberal, modern, diverse suburb of New York City... Do you ever find that you are singled out or given extra attention out for being a woman musician?
My band mostly plays in smaller, indie-friendly clubs where they are used to female musicians. When we play at big clubs like Roseland or Irving Plaza [New York City], I notice guys checking me out but that's less because I'm a female musician and more because I'm female. I don't really get that kind of, "wow you play the drums?" stuff, but it might be because I play in clubs I know, in a scene I am comfortable in. I do hate this particular exchange: I say to someone, I play in a band. They say, oh are you the singer? I say no, the drummer. They immediately say, all female band? This exchange has occured countless times in my life.

Can you recall any wacky or serious drum related anecdotes?
I once played drums in a Madonna "Hoot Night" in Austin Texas. Me and a bunch of rock chicks from Austin performed "Burning Up" wearing cone tits and corsets.

I read somewhere that you earned your PhD in a year...
I didn't really earn my PhD in a year-- it was a joke my girlfriend persuaded me to put in the bio, which has gotton me a lot of flack ever since. I did spend a year in a PhD program in English in 1995/6, and then took a leave of absence.

Where'd you go to college? Where you in any bands at the time?
I went undergraduate to Harvard and played in The Magnetic Fields. When I first started college I played in band called Lazy Susan with two women from Boston.

Now, I have to ask this... What kind of setup do you use?
My kit (*beaming with pride*) is a '68 Gretch kit, root beer, sparkle, very simple-- Floor and rack toms, snare, kick, two cymbals and a hi hat. What makes my kit distinctive is that it's so tiny. The kick drum is only 18" wide. The snare is a thin, marching band type snare with a built-in drum key.

How about some words of advice for our readers?
The right hand goes faster than the left. I learned it backwards, so I consider this valuable advice for right handed people.

By Donna Lichaw (Oct. 1997)
© 1997 - Drummergirl, The Media Factory
All rights reserved. No reprinting without permission

Claudia Gonson

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