Dreams and Church Bells: Saintseneca's Zac Little Talks the Band's New Album Pillar of Na

Transcription by Sandy Dodge

Saintseneca have come a long way since forming at Ohio State University roughly a decade ago. What started as an acoustic quartet with percussion played on a trash can lid pilfered from a campus art building has blossomed into an ambitious alt-folk collective featuring a rotating cast of musicians including Maryn Jones of YOWLER, Steve Ciolek of the Sidekicks and, most recently, Caeleigh Featherstone of WV White. The band’s fourth album, Pillar of Na, is a thirty-minute blast of beguiling melodies, eclectic instrumentation, and clever wordplay. KEXP spoke with Saintseneca leader Zac Little about dreams, church bells, and other inspirations for the new album. Catch the band tonight (Oct. 19) at The Sunset Tavern in Seattle, Wash.

KEXP: How is the tour shaping up so far? 

Zac Little: So far it's been cool. We were out for about three weeks or so and then we had a little break and now we're back. The shows have been good. People seem to already be latching onto the new record, which is always sweet. 

Yeah, shows can very much be influenced by the audience, just as much as the performers. 

I think it's almost more the audience than the performers, honestly. Obviously, you have a lot to do with it but the people there kind of define what the thing is going to be. 

And you have a slightly different lineup? Or mainly, Caeleigh has joined you on this tour? 

Yeah, Caeleigh. My friend Andy Cook is playing because Steve Ciolek, who plays in the band and played on the record, is on tour with The Sidekicks right now. Andy’s actually been doing all of the US touring on this record. 

How has that been jelling? Has the sound of the songs shifted at all as you bring in different members with their different backgrounds? 

It definitely, hopefully, I would say, impacts the sound. I think that's always my philosophy on it. Rather than trying to force people into the mold of what somebody who is involved did in the past, I think it's good to try to find what is special and what is unique about any particular group of people. I think it's always a matter of feeling that out and letting go of some things that you thought you had to do and redefining what you can do. I think that's always the most inspiring facet of making music with other people. Figuring out what exactly this group of people can do that no other could. 

Yeah, you're not making music with four or five clones of yourself, you're making it with four other people who have totally different listening histories and backgrounds and experiences and gifts. So it makes sense that the sound would slightly adjust to fit those talents. 

Yeah, exactly.  

I saw some photos of your recent shows and it looks like there’s this large, glowing strawberry hung at the back of the stage. Can you tell me about that piece of stage design? Did you make that?

Yeah, Matt and I put it together. It's basically taken from a painting that I did for the record cover. I printed it out on backlit film and then we built this little lightbox with some LEDs. Matt figured out how to coordinate it. Just a little touch to try to make the stage set up a little more special and interesting. 

At what point did this image of a strawberry come into your mind? While you were writing the music? Or was it something that you thought would look cool on the album cover? Were there any symbols that we were grounding you as you wrote the music for the album? 

Definitely. As I was writing the record I was finding a lot of fruit imagery as sort of useful. I had this idea for a long while of some kind of fruit framed by a sort of architectural feature. But I wanted there to be a reason. That was the generalized image in my mind. I could just do any random architecture thing, but I wanted it to be specific and I wanted it to be connected to the record but I wasn't sure what it would be or why. 

For a while, I was debating whether it would be a strawberry or an apple on the record, cause I think I mention both in the lyrics. I settled on the strawberry because I liked that it could be itself but also be morphed to look like a heart shaped symbol. And there just seemed to be something powerful about that shape or form of a strawberry. Like if you saw it, it would jump out and grab your attention. 

And what about the arch?

As far as the architectural frame, I knew I wanted that classical arch. Eventually, I found this story of this arch that was actually in Columbus from this old train station that had been torn down. It was this beautiful train station that was on the registry of historical places. This consortium of companies decided that they wanted to tear it down to build a convention center, so they just did it in the middle of the night. People managed to stop them in time. I mean it was like this thing where the company was planning on doing it but people were pushing against it and the company just decided like, 'oh well we're going to go ahead and do this even though you say we shouldn't.’ And it was actually run by this defense arms developing company that's based in Columbus. So maybe even more sort of weird or insidious in some ways. 

The company started tearing down but people stopped it and they kept that arch. That was the only remaining piece and so they moved it and rebuilt it in a park. I just felt like it was interesting. It tied into the theme of the record as far as this talisman or artifact that would make you remember this bygone time. 

One thing that I've heard about your songwriting process is that you like being surprised. What was one aspect of writing Pillar of Na that surprised you? 

Sure. That's definitely a place I try to find or inhabit when writing. When you're manipulating an actual physical object, like an instrument, you become so familiar with where the notes are, you can begin to fall or crystalize into the same pattern. So you're trying to find strategies of breaking out of that. For me, a lot of times it's just looking for new instruments. 

An example of that is the song 'Good Hand.’ That one took a long time to write. It started with some chords I had played on the bouzouki. I never could quite figure out what to do with it, but I knew that I really liked the chords. Later, I wrote the vocal melody over a guitar part. I was like, ‘yeah, I really like this melody, but it doesn't seem interesting enough over these guitar chords.’ It kind of finally came together when I picked up the mandola, which was a new instrument for me. I realized that I was able to bridge the gap between that guitar and vocal melody that I was doing and then play the same old chords from the bouzouki. It was an exciting moment when I realized that all those pieces could be connected through the mandola. 

At the end of that song, there's this weird, surreal passage where these church bell rings come in. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with that part, and I was actually playing the bouzouki at a friend's wedding. They were having their wedding at a Renaissance Festival. So I played the bouzouki because I thought it looks like a renaissance-y looking instrument. When they walked back, I played that riff because they were just like, 'oh you know, play whatever you want' and I hadn't finished that song yet. They started ringing the bells for their wedding as I was playing that riff, and it was this murky, old bell that happened to be in key with what I was playing. It was really striking to me. So when we went to record, that was something that I want to conjure, that moment that had happened serendipitously when I was actually playing the song out in world, or a part of the song, before it existed. 

How do you pick new instruments to experiment with? 

I'm constantly looking for new things and generally just keep an assortment of things on hand. When I’m writing, it’s usually almost by a subconscious feel. I physically want to feel something in my body and I'm looking for the object that gratifies that. Sometimes you want to play something low and it happens to be on the bass guitar. But then another day, physically, it might be more gratifying to play something percussive and high like the mandolin or dulcimer or banjo or something like that. So it's an intuitive thing and a body thing almost. You're just looking to feel a physical sensation and then that will correspond to maybe the way you vocalize the melody to accompany that. 

Have you ever experimented with playing horns or woodwinds? I know you play a ton of different string instruments.

I've tried but unfortunately I lack the skill or coordination to actually make a pleasing sound. I've had dreams where I can play trumpet and play clarinet stuff and it's really great in my dream. Then I wake up and I'm like, damn I guess I don't know how to play that. 

I remember reading somewhere that "Circle Hymn" came from a dream as well, right? It seems like you have some fairly musical dreams. 

Yeah, definitely. I've always had pretty intense, vivid dreams. There have been a couple times where I've gotten lucky enough to actually hear a song in a dream. That was the case with "Circle Hymn."Then I had to find words that went with it, that felt like they suited it, or felt good enough. 

At what point in the process of working on the album did you happen upon "Circle Hymn"? It seems to fit well with the ideas that are at stake on this record. 

I would say the melody came pretty early on in the process. As far as solidifying it as a song, it took some time, and then I wrote a version of it and recorded a demo that plays all the way through. It had those refrains that bookend the album and the little melodic passage on 'Good Hand'. The first version I wrote had those plus verses. Later, I decided that I thought it would be cool to split it up and use it as almost like a narration or punctuation device over the course of the record. 

I think it works really well. I like the difference between you singing lead on the first part and then you have Caeleigh singing on the end. It gives it a nice consistency, but at the same time there's a change going on. 

Yeah, it's actually Maryn singing it on the end, so that was the other thing. We’re still buds. Caeleigh, she sings on most of the record but I just thought it would be cool because I've been such a fan of Maryn's voice. Even when people maybe aren't actively playing with us or in the band or whatever, having the fluid nature that it does, I always enjoy the opportunity to let people in and be part of the process in the world of recording. It felt kind of cool to have that opportunity for Maryn to punctuate the album in that way. 

That’s super cool that she’s on this record. That new Yowler record sounds pretty great. 

It's so sick. Yeah, it's awesome. And Matt, our drummer, he played drums on that record too. So you know there's just like a lot of friends trading talent. 

You've talked about how you come in with your demos but you also leave room for the contributions of your bandmates. I’m curious if there were any other particular things that other members of the group had contributed to this album, like specific melodies or anything like that.

One cool moment was when we were working on 'Frostbiter'. We were jamming on the song in a studio that we had rented to work out arrangements and there was a piano there. Once we got to the end of the song and let the big chords ring out, Jon switched over from this synth sound over to the piano and just started playing a little melodic passage that's on end of the record. I was like, ‘oh that's really sweet. We should definitely do that.’ Then when we were in Omaha recording, I thought it would sound cool if it felt far away, so we had him go across to the other side of the studio in a totally different like room. Then we were tracking everything and set it up so we were recording it through the hallway. Then through that little melodic passage that he came up with, it felt like this little space for some kind of audio or sample. I wasn't sure what it would be. I just knew that it should have a certain kind of nostalgic feel, like a voicemail or something like that. We had a break after our first recording session and I went and hunted through a bunch of home videos until I found that clip, which was from a VHS tape. My own family archives. It sat perfectly with that little passage, that space that John had created with that piano part. That was a special moment. 

One last thing I was curious about—this is a different category of things—but I noticed that a few of your songs reference radio. Specifically, you sing about Smashing Pumpkins on 'How Many Blankets Are In The World' and you mention Dolly Parton in the title track from Pillar of Na. Does radio hold any special significance for you? 

Radio actually had a really huge impact on me personally. When I was growing up, we moved around quite a bit, but when we finally ended up living out on this farm in the middle of nowhere Appalachia. It was so far out you couldn't even get TV reception. There wasn't Internet yet. Listening to the radio was sort of like my connection to the outside world. I had this little alarm clock radio that I would just constantly listen to. I was kind of obsessive about it. I would listen to the top 30 countdown every day and write down every song and take notes on everything. It was cool because at that time, mid to late 90s, there were a lot of cool bands on Top 40 pop radio. I can remember when they were playing Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, and that was kind of stuff that I was gravitating towards. I always was interested in music but maybe that in some way solidified that in a different way.

One last question. You've talked about John Steinbeck being a big inspiration for you. Is "Timshel" on the album a reference to East of Eden?

Yep, exactly. I'm glad you caught that. Even the themes of that story were an influence for the album... The Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the garden thing, and then the way Steinbeck uses that as a device to frame the stories of these families. I wanted to nod towards that. That's probably my favorite novel, too. A little John Steinbeck shoutout.