AF:Who knows why they end up where they end up, you know? I just feel extremely fortunate and lucky in my life. I've been able to collaborate with such great people. I don't know why it happened . . . maybe some karmic debt was owed to me.
How did you get your start?
It depends. My only interest since I was four or five years old was music . . . I've been doing music my whole life. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and played in bands there. I knew I wanted to move to New York as soon as I was able to. I moved to New York in 1978 and immediately joined a band called The Feelies. As soon as I moved to New York things just fell into place for me for some reason.
The Feelies were a band that had built a following and were a really big band. When I joined they were like a month away from getting a record deal, you know, so I was extremely lucky in that respect. There are tons of musicians in New York and nothing ever happens to them, better musicians than myself.
Luck has an awful lot to do with what I've been able to accomplish in my life, but also I've been very single-minded, you know. Like I said, I knew from a very early age what I wanted to do with my life and it's just been a matter of doing it.
So did you just establish tons of contacts in New York?
No, I really didn't establish a lot of contacts. At the time in `78, if you wanted to make a living as a musician, there were three places you could move: New York, Nashville, or Los Angeles. Musically, New York was the most appealing to me, both in rock music and jazz music; that's where the people I knew worked.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Chicago.
Um, I really didn't see it at that time as a place you could go and make a living.
Do you play a lot of other instruments besides drums?
Well, before I started studying drums and percussion and rhythm, I studied piano for about five years. I mean, I'm terrible; I quit playing as soon as I was able because it's not what I do, and I knew that at a very early age as well. But I did gain a knowledge of music theory because of that, which helps me with songwriting and arranging and things of that nature.
Yeah, I was kind of interested in that. Usually when you think of people writing songs, you think of the songs starting with the singer or the guitar player. How does the songwriting work with you as a drummer?
At least on the last two Golden Palominos records, I started with rhythm and building a rhythmic concept for a piece of music. That is diametrically opposed to the way most songwriters work. I don't consider myself a songwriter in the traditional sense. I make music and I'm interested in creating sounds. I mean, someone like Lori Carson, my main collaborator, is a singer/songwriter in the truest sense of the word.
She plays guitar too, doesn't she?
Yeah. She kind of grew up in an age where girls who wanted to write songs were heavily influenced by Joni Mitchell records--records with a woman with an acoustic guitar singing very personal songs. . . . I don't have that background. Rhythm has always been the thing for me, the thing that I feel most naturally.
I made other Golden Palomino records where we didn't start with the rhythm--where we started with the keyboard or the guitar. But these last two records I wanted to make very personal records and I wanted to start with what was most personal to me.
So do you see yourself as sort of providing a stage for songwriting to happen on then?
Yeah.
How do you decide what artists to pull together then?
I've been a fan of Lori's for about five years before we even worked together. I heard a demo tape then and absolutely fell in love with the music. It just took a few years to figure out how to do it.
You know, I never work with strangers. I never just call someone up out of the blue and say, "Hi, I'm Anton. I do this project will you do a session for me for this much money, this is what I want you to do." It's not like that; there's a personal relationship I have with all these people. We're friends before we work together. Through the friendship comes a desire to work together, as opposed to through the desire to work together we become friends.
You've got a really diverse group of friends. I mean, you've got Herbie Hancock, Michael Stipe, Gil Scott Heron, Syd Straw . . . It's amazing that you have that kind of a circle to draw from?
Like I said, I'm very fortunate.
You're albums seem to have radically different feelings from one another. Do the songs just evolve out of whatever group dynamic happens to overtake you?
Well, they're very self-indulgent projects for me. When I set out to do a Golden Palominos album, I do it to satisfy certain urges I have creatively to explore areas of music that I'm interested in learning about. . . . It depends highly on my interest at the time, technologically, personally, musically.
When you chose to work with certain people, are you looking at them as someone who can teach you something?
Oh absolutely. All the people I work with on Golden Palomino records have very strong egos, both musically and personally. But that's precisely why I work with them. It's because of that essence, that thing that they have, that ego that I cannot duplicate. So the records are very much collaborations.
Does that ever get to be a problem when you have to deal with these egos?
Well, you take the bad with the good. I've got quirks. I'm extremely difficult. I think anyone who's really good at what they do has very strong opinions about what they do. I'm not going to agree with that a hundred percent of the time, but so what? That's the cost of doing business.
Have you ever been in a situation where artists get so pissed off at each other that the whole project falls through?
I've been in situations where artists get so pissed off at me that the sessions collapsed for that day. I mean, have we've had sessions that have ended up in a screaming match? Sure. But I think ultimately, it's a small price to pay.
Do you stick together because you have a higher purpose?
I believe all these people are friends. And there's mutual respect going on. People are given tremendous freedom when working with me and in return they give me what I'm looking for. It's a compromise. I'm not going to bring people here to do what they don't want to do, and people appreciate that. People appreciate not having to assume a position that isn't natural to them. That develops are certain amount of trust and people always ask each other, you know, "are you cool with that." And it's a great relationship.
Do you have any plans for the next group of people for the next Golden Palominos record?
Yeah, I think it's going to be a pretty similar arrangement.
Is Lori Carson going to be a part of it?
Yeah, I believe so.
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