Q&A: (Maktub)

The typical image many people conjure when they think of Seattle's music scene is one of a band of scrawny-looking white kids, wearing flannel shirts and playing Nirvana covers in their parents' garages.

For those who believe the Seattle music scene is just that, they've obviously never heard the music of Maktub, a quintet of 30-something guys who give new meaning to the Seattle-based band, adding to the already symphonically diverse atmosphere that's been brewing in the greater Pacific Northwest for quite some time now.

Maktub, pronounced "mock-tube" - which translated from Arabic means, "it is written" or "destiny," and inspired by Paul Coelho's novel "The Alchemist" - formed in the mid-1990s by singer/lyricist Reggie Watts, bassist Kevin Goldman, drummer Davis Martin a.k.a. The Nightclasper, and former keyboardist Alex Veley, who later moved to Brazil in 1999. Guitarist Thaddeus Turner and keyboardist Daniel Spils joined the group following Veley's departure.

Davis and Turner, both of whom grew up in Seattle, met Watts who grew up in Great Falls, Mont.; Goldman, originally from Phoenix, Ariz.; and Spils who hails from Anchorage, Alaska; within the thriving Seattle music scene.

The group independently recorded and released its 1999 debut album, "Subtle Ways," and its most recent work, "Khronos," in 2002, produced by Steve Fisk. Since then, Maktub has toured with a handful of noteworthy live acts including the Dave Matthews Band, India.Arie, Spearhead, Soulive and Ben Harper.

The New York City-based record label Velour released "Khronos" in 2003. For the sake of clarity and brevity, Maktub describes its music as heavy soul, which is quite the understatement. The group has documented its success with its two studio recordings that rope in sounds trademark to 1970s psychedelic rock and 1960s soul, with elements of hip hop, rhythm & blues, and funk.

Of the members, Watts' vocal range is somewhat mesmerizing in that he has the ability to cruise over grooves reminiscent of 1970s funk with sweet, sultry falsettos or rip into heavy and thick guitar-driven tunes with an imperious baritone octave. Turner is the one who gives many of the rock songs on "Khronos" their meat and potatoes whereas Martin's time and rhythmic patterns on the drums are what provide each song with its pop-melody backbone.

The Beach Reporter recently sat down with Watts, Martin and Turner and discussed "Khronos," the group's concepts for a new record and the Seattle music scene.

The Beach Reporter: Reggie, you're originally from Montana. Did growing up there have any influence on your own individual musicianship or the band's sound as a whole?

Watts: Yeah, there's not really a music scene in Great Falls. There were some musicians but not really a scene per se. The people who were there were really passionate about the music they were into. Back then, there wasn't a lot of accessibility to other forms of music besides MTV. On the other hand, a lot of my friends were into really cool music and I had a band out there, and it was good to be able to grow up and play whatever you wanted to because there is really nothing to compare it to.

Is Seattle a fairly close-knit community in terms of its music scene?

Martin: Yeah, it's really a small town, but it's still a city. We have a professional football team (laughs). It's very small-town oriented, it's an amazing musical community. We haven't found anything like it in any of our travels across the states. We've had similar experiences but nothing like Seattle. There's a combination of some really up-and-coming and great musicians, brilliant blue-collar musicians and some older musicians, mentor-type of people like Michael Shrieve - the original drummer from Santana - and Lee Oscar from War. The music scene there is unlike anything else. There are a lot of musicians who are able to make a living playing nightly, two or three times a week. The scene has nurtured a style of music that has developed into a style of music based on just improvising, but not so much in the jazz tradition where you have a chord structure and a melody that you improvise off. Seattle is very important, musically. You have a lot of bands coming out of Seattle and the Northwest that are and have shaped music for years. From grunge to all the stuff that's going on right now - the independent music or what is truly alternative music - it's influenced everything like bands like Death Cab for Cutie, the Postal Service and so on.
As far as writing songs, everyone has an equal hand in the process where every member in the band is credited with writing the music of at least one song on the record 'Khronos.' How would you describe the variations in the approach to writing songs and the kind of ideas each one brings to the rest of the band?

Turner: Well, a lot of times, Reggie will bring a chordal idea and a melody and then we'll expand on both with our own parts. There are other times when someone else will bring a partial idea and we'll work on that or Daniel might bring in a whole set of chord progressions or Kevin will come to us with a bass line that has a bridge. A lot of times, we'll start off with Davis just kicking off a beat. Daniel is the one who probably comes up with the most complete sketches of our songs, but it's different for each song. If I had to think of one song in particular, "Just Like Murder" comes to mind. I remember Reggie was humming something and it didn't really have a key or a chord, but it became the basis for that song. I took the rhythm he used and we fought a bit about how it should go, and we ended up with this great song.

Reggie, you write all of the songs' lyrics. Are you writing them simultaneously with the music of a song? Or do you wait until the band has worked through a song?

Watts: As we're writing a song, I'll try and write a few words, and eventually something kind of sticks or not, and I just make up a bunch of things that sound like words. Or, a word might inspire a phrase and so while we're working on the song, I'll usually record it, go back home and analyze what I was usually improvising. A lot of times, I'll just take the words along the entire improvisation, leave those words in their places and clarify the idea. A couple of times, I've changed things completely around but usually melodically I keep it pretty much the same. I try to reflect the idea that came out of the jam at the time.

Are you guys playing some new tunes as well?

Watts: Yeah, we have like 6 gazillion. Our sets are probably half or little more than half of new tunes.

Turner: It is a trip to breathe new energy into an older song and I think that's the challenge when playing old songs.

Watts: There is a certain vibe on "Khronos" and one of those two vibes of what we do is more of the psychedelic rock stuff. Generally, what tends to happen is we pick the strongest tunes from the record or at least what we think is strongest at the time, collectively. We stick with those in the set and now we have enough new material that we kind of fill in for stuff we would normally play off the entire record. When we have new tunes in the set, that's exciting and it gives us energy to play the older tunes. We are able to see the value again. I'm a little bit extreme where I think, "It's old, let's move on." But when we have new stuff in the set, it's gives me the ability to look at the old stuff like it's brand new.

So how do the new tunes sound different from the old tunes?

Watts: Some of the stuff we have, which all depends of what will be recorded for a new record, some of it sounds almost like Journey, that spirit of rock in the 1980s. Some other stuff is more down tempo, more introspective and we have some stuff that has a Simple Minds and OMD kind of vibe to it.

Turner: It's like the stuff we listened to when we were growing up.

Martin: We are just scratching the surface too. I'd like to make the next record in a less organic way as "Khronos." I'd like to do some more production beats and drum set beats. I want to stretch out a lot more. We're all huge DJ and hip hop fans. I love hip hop; I love the beats. I also like the vibes, darker stuff and the stuff that rocks (laughs). I guess I like everything.

Watts: This record is definitely more psychedelic and I think a lot of the material has that element of psychedelia to it that we realize is important because of the band's history and coming from that period. There has to be some kind of element when you hear a song it's got to evoke a mood and fill the room. There's a different reality for each song and that's something that is surfacing in a lot of the new material. We've written a lot of new songs and some of them we are really into while others we are more like, "Eh, we'll see what happens." But all of the songs we've written have had a strong, strong vibe with really cool hooks. I think the next stuff people will hear is going to be pretty divergent sonically that has been heard on past records, but it will be a strong representation of what the band is. Many of us in the band would say "Khronos" is a snapshot of where the band was at, but in our minds, we've always imagined things on a much grander production scale. I don't mean slick, but more textures and more intelligence and design in how the songs come off when you listen to it.

Martin: Our producer on "Khronos," Steve Fitts, really wanted to capture that 1970s rock vibe, which I think a lot of our fans really appreciate, but I think the next record will be a much bigger production. We've paid for and funded all of our records and I think if you have more time to experiment in the studio something different occurs from when you write in the jam space live, which is completely different than being in the studio.

Turner: I think we took two days for each song. We took one day to track and do the vocals, and one day to mix. We finished "Khronos" in less than 21 days.

Watts: Maktub comes up with some really amazing stuff that's on the fly. Some of our best energy, our conceptual energy of a song, has been from jam sessions. Some songs, you just can't get it back and so we just leave it, so it would be nice to be in the studio where everything sounds great and actually capture some of that.