DCist Interview: Girl Talk

Gregg Gillis studied biomedical engineering in college. He's also been playing music since he was a teenager. Combining that interest in breaking things apart and seeing how they work with his love of music, maybe it's not all that surprising that Girl Talk was the result. Girl Talk, as anyone who's been to a dance party in the past few years probably knows, is Gillis' stage name; he mixes samples of dozens of songs together to make unbelievably smart and fun songs in their own right. His recent album, Feed the Animals, worked its way onto most everyone's iPods after Gillis and his label, Illegal Art, decided to follow the Radiohead model and let people choose what they wanted to pay for a download. Tonight the Pittsburgh native is coming to the 9:30 Club, to put on a show that sold out long, long ago. We talked with him last week about old friends, Lil Wayne and the economic crisis.

When you do your live shows, I can't imagine that you're doing a lot of fly by the seat of your pants stuff. I assume it's mostly planned ahead?

I do think it's all very live. I do all the samples by hand. But the arrangements are all very thought out. I don't ever want it to be an exercise in improvisation or anything like that. I think people get into the albums and the live shows are more about composition. They want to hear what sounds good -- you know, this goes with this. For me, it's a very big trial and error process. It's not like you could throw out a song and be like, "what would that go good with?" I have no idea. It's a very long process, trying different things. I spend many hours trying to find something that works. So, in the live setting, the performance of everything is very isolated. If you're hearing a drum beat playing, that could be four different loops -- a kick drum loop, a high hat loop, a snare loop -- so at any time I could stop the snare, stop the kick drum, stop the high hat. So it's very interactive. But, it's so interactive that it's difficult for me to even change a little bit. For me it's like writing a song, and then you know, kind of going out and doing a loose interpretation of it each night. Even if I'm playing the same source material, I could never play it the same way two times in a row.

So I asked the people on DCist's staff if they had any questions for you, and one of them said that her friend used to be your pen pal growing up.

(laughs) That is not true.

Did you ever have a pen pal named Emily?

Wow, like an internet pen pal?

I'm not sure.

I don't know... maybe, well, it's weird. Back when the internet hit big, in my life at least, when I was in like 8th grade or something (like '95 or '96), it was crazy to be able to communicate with other people, and that was like the first time. I've never been into like... meeting strangers on the internet. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I think that's totally cool. And it's very commonplace these days. Many people meet their husbands and wives that way. And that's fine! I'm not talking trash on that, but that's never been my thing. But, when I was in 9th grade, I was on some mailing list for music or something or other, and you could like make your first internet friends. I had never thought of that prior, 'cause the internet wasn't around. But yeah, actually I had an internet friend named Emily that I have not thought of in 10 years. That was like one of the first people I knew... online. From somewhere else. But that was not a pen pal experience, that was more of a nerdy music experience.

Photo of Girl Talk courtesy Christos Schizas detroitartist dot org

Apparently she lives in Massachusetts now and wishes you well.

I hope it's her! I honestly hadn't even thought about that at all in a long time.

I really like the way your stuff strips away the idea of what constitutes "good music," and is all about fun. But it also reminds me of this postmodernism professor I had in college who talked about how our culture is so bereft that we have to strip different parts of different things and collage that together to make a whole again. And then suddenly your stuff seems very dark to me.

No, I definitely think it's a celebration of that whole postmodern idea. That's cool to me! I think that's an idea of all music and art; you can't really make music based on any truly original ideas. You have to learn to play your guitar or accordion or singing voice from somewhere. You're using a note structure, rhythmic patterns, all based on something. I think that's just the nature of making music -- you take a previous idea, you manipulate it, collage it together, put a slightly new sound on it, and call it your own. So I try to do that in a very physical sense, while still retaining something. When you hear the Rolling Stones, you can hear those bluesy riffs, and you can tell they're influenced by blues guitarists. Any music, you can hear what it's influenced by. I try to do that as well -- where you recognize the songs, but I try and do something new with them. Just kinda break down all the barriers. You know, I'm a fan of pop -- beyond the point of having "guilty pleasures" or thinking anything is cool or uncool. I just don't think in terms of that anymore. I just try and recycle a lot of ideas that people have emotional connections to and kind of play with that and try and make something new out of it.

This album's definitely gotten a lot more widespread attention, I know I read your name in a lot more places now, and hear a lot more friends talking about Girl Talk. Why do you think this one sort of struck a chord more, or why your audience has grown so much?

I think it is a successful release, but at the same time, the album prior to this (Night Ripper), I was literally playing to like 10 people and no one had ever heard of me. And that was fine, that was just kind of the world I existed in. That one just got a few favorable reviews, and that got the ball rolling. I think this style of music can appeal to a wide fan base. And when you start getting blog coverage, you get music nerds who read blogs getting into it, and from there, their friends telling friends and friends and friends. I think the word just spread, and eventually it reaches its potential market. You know, not all music can just be played on MTV or on the radio. Other, slightly more underground music has to find other ways of getting out there. I think slowly, that album came out and people took to it, and I just continually played shows. I think that's how it spread. The shows have gotten a pretty good reputation for being pretty insane, and I just haven't stopped.

Do you have any plans of doing anything different musically in the future? Is there anything you wanna try out?

I mean, this is basically my instrument. I probably won't veer far from sample-based music. It's something I've been doing in a band prior to Girl Talk, it's something I've been doing for about 10 years now. There's just an entire world to explore. I don't think it will always sound like it does right now. I think the last two records are kind of cousin albums... they're done in a similar style. And at this point I can't really imagine doing another one like that. I don't know where I'll go -- I never have a vision for the future, like, this is what I'll be doing two years later. I always just work on small little elements, just constantly playing around. And then, things pop up and we'll add that to the set and see where it goes.

Is there anyone you want to collaborate with? Because of the nature of your music, it's sort of really hard and really easy to imagine what a collaboration would sound like.

Right. Yeah, I haven't really done that much. There's a band I'm going on tour with -- I can't remember if they're playing the D.C. date or not, I think they are. Grand Buffet, they're a rap group from Pittsburgh. I've done a beat for them in the past; that was an interesting collaboration I thought went really well. Yeah, stuff like that I'd like to do. There's a producer in Pittsburgh who goes by the name of Sky Mall and he does some sample based works. I'm a fan of his work; we've sat down and worked on some things. And a guy I went on tour with last year, Dan Deacon, he and I have been talking about collaborating for a long time. We've been throwing around some ideas. I would actually like to make that a reality sometime, because I'm just such a huge fan of his.

D.C.'s, ya know, less than an hour away from Baltimore, so, Dan Deacon's...

Almost a local hero there?

Yeah, totally. Everybody loves him. So, I know you like to listen to the radio a lot. I do too. And Lil Wayne is on every 10 minutes or so. Is he mixed in every single one of your songs coming up?

(laughs) Yeah a little bit. I mean I love his album. I think it's great. But even beyond that, I think the Lil Wayne mania he's created is fascinating. It's great! He's like the first... to me, you have your Jim Morrisons and your Kurt Cobains -- people completely outside of what they do artistically or musically, when you get them in front of a camera or on an interview, you just don't know what they're gonna say. It's rock and roll! It's very exciting! Is this guy gonna be on drugs right now? Is he gonna say something completely abstract and make sense, is he gonna be sincere, you just don't know. I think we haven't seen a character like that in a long time. So much pop -- and even coming from the rap end, which is usually such a renegade style, and raw, rock music and big rock shows are so predictable with their style and what they're gonna do. I'm just so excited to pick up a magazine with Lil Wayne on the cover and see what he's gonna say. And I think everyone's like that, it helps fuel the music. Everyone's so excited for him to do something insane. I think the new album's great, and of course I've been mixing up some jams from it. Almost all those songs are hittin' the radio now, so you have your fair pick of what Lil Wayne songs you wanna mess with this week.

Who else do you like right now?

There's a new album by Killer Mike, a rapper I'm a big fan of. And he has a track with Trina called "Look Back At Me" that I think is amazing, and kind of, making a small dent on radio, but I don't know if it's gonna blow up. But mostly, just a lot of oldies. Like "Louie Louie." I'm kind of constantly surrounded by a party atmosphere when I'm on the road. I'm constantly playing a show and going to an after party, listening to hip hop and electronic music, that's sort of always around me. So when I'm at home, I usually sort of just listen to the oldies station and chill out. Just listen to some Stevie Wonder or something like that.

Do you have any economic crash, post-apocalyptic songs in the works?

No; I am fearing that though. Every day. It's exciting for me, though. Everywhere I go -- I mean, I have friends in Atlanta who can't get gasoline, and people whose parents are trying to move their money around because they don't think the banks will be able to protect it. It's a very tough time, but I'm also excited for it -- it's an unknown. I feel like something could be on the horizon here. It seems like a crazy era, something we can look back on. I don't know; eventually you reach the end of civilization, you run out of resources, and things start to collapse. It happens! I'm not saying it's happening right now, but the possibility is always there.

On a final note, do you know what you're going to be for Halloween?

I don't! I have a show that day, so I wanna lock it down. I feel like a lot of people are gonna be Heath Ledger's version of The Joker, I feel like that's gonna be the costume to be. So I don't wanna repeat that, but I did really like the new Batman, and I thought Heath Ledger was amazing. I was thinking about being him in the nurse's uniform. That's my first idea -- I can easily get a nurse's uniform. And I wanna get like a professional makeup job done that day. So I'm not sure... either that or maybe ALF or something.