|
|
Talk It Out with Jodi Leib
October 2003
Santa Monica, CA
Photograph by Jodi Leib
Special Thanks to Janette Baxa and Interscope Records
Jodi: Hi Ory. I really want to know, what's the magic behind Woven?
What kind of web are you spinning?
Ory: I think the magic behind the music we create is diversity.
There are six guys in the group and every single person in the group listens to
completely different music. We do have overlapping music, for instance,
three members of the band grew up on Metal, I grew up on Punk, two of the
members grew up on The Grateful Dead, and then we started influencing each
other. We have common bands now, but in the beginning there were very few common
bands.
Jodi: What did you have in common?
Ory: The spirit of Improv. We would throw these parties at our
studio where the only spirit of party was Improv. No matter how good you
were at your instruments or what instrument you played. There were some
people that would play the Spoons. Some people would use their voice.
There would be a stage and all the instruments you could image, and everyone
would go up there and improv. That's how Woven started. It started
with hundreds of people, different people coming in and out, and there were
constants. Eventually we narrowed it down to who we wanted to be in the band.
Jodi: Improv is so hot right now! Why do you think that is?
Ory: I couldn't agree with you on that one. I think Metal is hot
right now. Hard music, any music with guitar or Low-Fi, like The White
Stripes. Maybe we're hitting the wrong scene, because, we always get a
reaction from our audience, but it seems like a lot of people want to hear
harder music. When we were on tour, the majority of the bands we played
with were Metal bands. I'd come off stage, and I do have some songs with
screaming on it, but most of it is mellower and like clockwork, people would be
like, "Wow, I really love your voice, but could you scream more? You
need to scream more." I'm like, "I'm not angry all the time, you
know?" Songs should really represent the life you're living and if I
were screaming all the time that would mean I am pretty angry all the time,
which is not the case. I wish Improv music were more popular.
Jodi: I love Improv and I just did an interview with Hiromi which is a
completely Improv act. I love to do comedy and my interviews are totally
Improv. So, I think pulling something out of the universe that is totally
unexpected is a cool art in and of itself.
Ory: It's amazing!
Jodi: Now, do you still do Improv on stage or was that just the root of
Woven?
Ory: We do actually. What we do is we play every single show
different. The last show we did two days ago, the drummer was screaming at
me. He was like, "We're gonna play half this song, and we're gonna go
on to this song." People just kind of call it out. That in
itself is really scary, to embrace that chaos. We weaved into three or
four songs and then we went into an improv jam after that, and then we went
right back into the first song. We definitely incorporate it. Some
shows, I find in LA, people have less patience for Improv, so we're not as
Improv based. We just gauge off the audience. If we improv and see
the audience starring into space and talking to each other, we'll go straight
into a song, and everyone's engaged.
Jodi: Cool.
Ory: It's a balance.
Jodi: I think it's cool. Are you finding with your fans that there
is a lot of anger in the world? Are you finding, if this Thrash/Punk vibe
is coming back or is very much alive in your fan base, what do you think people
are so angry about?
Ory: Well, I think just after 911, and there have always been wars, like
in Israel. We don't really know what it's like to be touched by that kind
of aggression. Because 911 happened so recently, I don't think people know
how to deal with it, and it's the classic, "Let's deny," but,
when you deny things, when you don't have empathy, it kind of turns to anger.
You know? It’s really hard to deal with the concept of war especially
when you have no control over it. So the way you choose to embrace it is
very different. Anger is an outward emotion. You're not thinking
about things. You have no room to get depressed. You have no room to
do any sort of analyzing. It's just like, throw a punch! Loud
guitar! Screaming, "Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't
think!" As opposed to kicking back and really starting to almost get
depressed. It's scarier.
Jodi: Yeah. To actually feel your emotions is scarier. To let
them go without a fight is the scariest. To be vulnerable is scarier.
Do you find people are really intolerant these days, both of themselves and
others?
Ory: I'm isolated because I hang out with artists and we're very tolerant.
I can't really say. There are tolerant and intolerant people.
Jodi: Are you connecting to your fans out there? Do you have a
website?
Ory:
Definitely. We've only toured twice as our band. We really
want to tour more, but the funds aren't there right now. The
little that we have toured, we have responded to them via email.
On our website, we have a message board, a chat room, where everyone
talks about different issues, or music. It's really awesome
getting positive feedback.
Jodi: Going back to the concept of Woven. What's your world
view? Are you a Peace Activist?
Ory: Schizophrenia is my world view. I think the thing
that's nerve racking about being a human is that you can feel so many
feeling simultaneously. I definitely don't have one world view.
I feel, sometimes, if you're being taken advantage of, you need to step
up and use violence. I feel that most of the time that isn't the
answer. I feel that my personal world view is to let people live
and let people do what they want to do and really encourage expression,
and really finding out what each person's gift is, giving them the space
to find out what they're about in the world rather than preaching to
them. That's really hard because a lot of people will say,
"This is my world and you don't agree with it!" But,
that's okay because there can be many different philosophies on life
simultaneously. It's just when you get these people that are so
bigoted and like, "This is the way!" They get scared
themselves that it's not the way, so in order to prove the point they
use violence to try to push people down. So, I guess it's more of
a peaceful philosophy.
Jodi: Yeah. I think it goes back to feeling vulnerable and
some people are totally unwilling to feel vulnerable because perhaps
when they have been vulnerable they've gotten hurt from it.
Ory: Yeah, that's true.
Jodi: So people have their defenses up. Everybody is like
two bulls hitting each other in the heads because they don't know how to
communicate peacefully, or through peace or through love or through
mellowing the emotions and not coming from such an emotional place.
Ory: That is totally true. And there can be many truths that
can exist simultaneously. We're so limited by what we see in the
world that we can have this huge truth, and we're picking at different
sides of it. They're all true. We're not even close to
figuring out the whole truth, that's why they can all exist
simultaneously.
Jodi: I'm always thinking of, "Is there a core? Is
there one answer?"
Ory: I don't think so.
Jodi: Everyone says, "Oh, everything is one. It's one,
it's one, and at the core it's one. There's one atom, one
molecule." From what I'm hearing is that, "No, there's
absolutely not." There are a zillion explainable
amounts of things going on. I tend to simplify life, to reducing
it to one. "Yes, that's the answer, it's ONE!"
Ory: It's a lot easier.
Jodi: It's much easier, but what you're saying is life is a lot
more complicated that we even acknowledge or even give it credit for.
Ory: But it's so complicated that there can simultaneously be one
answer and a million answers. There can be a total contradiction,
and both of them can be the truth. That's the weird thing.
That's the mental mind fuck of it all. You can have many layers
that are all the truths. Like, there can be one truth.
Jodi: What is at the center of Woven's universe?
Ory: Choas. You have six guys spinning this chaotic web with
different influences, creating this entity that I don't know if
sometimes if I would even listen to it, to be truthful, and it's, again,
the tolerance thing. It's really working out our differences and
coming up with compromises to create one vibe working together.
We're all different nationalities, different religions.
Jodi: It's wonderful to see your expression is so smooth, so
collaborative.
Ory: Thanks.
Please
visit www.wovenmusic.com
for
more information on Woven
Back to www.jodileib.com
Talk It Out with Jodi Leib's Woven Interview was taped in
October 2003. Talk It Out (c) Jodi Leib, 2003. Reprint by Permission at talkitout@jodileib.com.
Printer
friendly version
|
