Uncle Biscuit on Uncle Biscuit

An interview with the anonymous fourth member of Gypsy Bandwagon.

When I was first given the assignment to interview myself for GB I considered it a challenge. Obviously, I needed no introduction to the man who is me. My own accomplishments and failings being, in a word, firsthand to me. I’d actually been called on in the past to write this man’s résumé, and so I knew a lot about me to start with, but I hoped to dig deeper with this interview. To bring you, the reader, a little information about me that you might not have been aware of.

But the assignment wouldn’t be easy. First of all I knew myself to be very reticent about giving interviews (since a disastrous interview with a high school guidance counselor that led to three years in the “stall muckers” club). At first I would only consent to being interviewed via telegraph, but later I acquiesced and decided on a “face to face” meeting with myself. The following article is the result of that meeting.

UB: So what were your first thoughts when asked for this interview?

Uncle Biscuit: It’s funny you should ask that. When I told my wife, Karin, about the interview she said, “what are you going to say?” I responded, “it depends on what I ask me!”

UB: Now, your wife Karin, she’s in the band too?

Uncle Biscuit: As a matter of fact, she is. She plays more instruments than anyone I’ve ever met before or since. And the number keeps going up. Some people don’t believe that she could possibly play as many as she does, but I’m really proud of her.

UB: What caused you to join a band like Gypsy Bandwagon?

Uncle Biscuit: That feeling that it’s not as easy as it once was to get all the spoons in the silverware drawer.

UB: Huh?

Uncle Biscuit: You know! Like maybe you’ve thrown out the carrot peeler with the pig slop?

UB: What are you talking about?

Uncle Biscuit: Oh come on! Like, as long as you’re driving around in Utah anyway, you might as well grab a chili dog at Wienerschnitzel?

UB: What’s with all the obtuse metaphors?

Uncle Biscuit: What was the question?

UB: So how did it come about, you joining the band your wife’s in?

Uncle Biscuit: What else was I going to do? Karin had been playing with Lance and Carissa Moore in a celtic band in and around Waynesville, NC. But there had been some offers to go out of town. The three of them started performing as “The Mountain Minstrels” and I’d go along with them just to be near my wife. I was afraid that if I didn’t go along I’d never see her again.

UB: But I take it something else developed?

Uncle Biscuit: Oh sure! There was a kookiness to the whole dynamic that appealed to me. I got to spend more time with Lance and Carissa and we became friends. Lance had been playing with the idea of forming a different band that would play original material. He tried a couple of configurations before realizing Carissa and Karin were a big part of the sound he’d imagined. I was busy working on the band logo at the time. I am an artist by day, you know. Lance and Carissa had commissioned the piece and I was working on it at the time. It was about then that Lance told me that they were going to try out some drummers, and to simply add a drummer’s arm hanging out of the back of the wagon.

UB: Were they considering you at all?

Uncle Biscuit: I honestly don’t know. I feel, in retrospect, that I was sort of like Mary Stewart Masterson’s character in “Some kind of Wonderful”. I didn’t KNOW I was going to get the place in the band, but I THOUGHT that I might. They tried out several drummers, but none of them clicked. There was one guy that I was almost certain was going to get the job, he had a great résumé, really knew his stuff. I remember Karin was going over to Lance and Carissa’s to practice with him and I stayed at my studio. I was on pins and needles all evening!

UB: But he didn’t get it.

Uncle Biscuit: No, whew! I didn’t realize how much I wanted to be in the band until that night, but I didn’t want to push myself on them. It was almost like having a high school crush. You know you’d like to be with a particular person, but they’re busy with someone else and you don’t want to get in the way. I kept telling myself I’d be content just to hang around with them, but I really wanted to be more involved.

UB: So you equate being in a band with being in love?

Uncle Biscuit: It’s amazing, it’s very similar in a lot of ways. I’m not going to put too fine a point on it, but there IS a lot of similarity in the give and take, feelings of mutual accomplishments, that sort of thing…Of course my WIFE is a big part of the band, so it’s not all that strange to make that comparison. So try not to read anything sick into that idea. It’s just a comparison.

UB: Let’s talk about the other members. What’s your take on Lance Moore?

Uncle Biscuit: Jock meets Poet. Odd combination. Hmmm, now that I think about it it’s more like Poet meets Jock. Yeah, put that down, “Poet meets Jock”. He’s also really good at guitar and vocals.

UB: What about Carissa?

Uncle Biscuit: She’s like an eleven-year-old girl trapped in the body of a thirty-something. No, really, she’s very silly, she’s got all this energy and when she and Karin get together it’s like hosting a slumber party!

UB: What’s your impression of the band as a unit?

Uncle Biscuit: Well organized chaos. It’s interesting, I had always been thinking of myself as more of the moody new-wave player, but never got to be in that sort of a band. GB has a sound that’s miles off of that! So when they asked me to play with them, one of the challenges was trying to figure out how the sound I was a student of would play with their sound. I had to latch onto bits and pieces of the stuff they were playing that were similar to what I’d heard in bands that I admired. I’d say something like, “I like that riff you just played, sounds sort of like Duran Duran”, or, “could we incorporate something like what The Cars did on this song?”

UB: How would they react to that?

Uncle Biscuit: With odd looks. But they actually are pretty open to my ideas. And they contribute their own wackiness to the whole mixture. I never would have thought they’d go for putting a flanger on that banjo!

UB: Yeah, what’s with that anyway?

Uncle Biscuit: I wish I’d been there for that mix. Of course if I had been the whole “Stole My Mule” album would have been waaayyy overproduced.

UB: Does having your wife in the band make it easier to get your way? Is it like having two votes?

Uncle Biscuit: If anything it probably makes it harder. No, Karin is too much a musician to let me get away with anything. She’s always pushing me to be more musical. Maybe it’s more like pulling me, kicking and screaming. I get some of the same blank looks when I bring some of this stuff up. Although she’s probably listened to more of the same tracks than I have and so sometimes I don’t have to explain it as much to her. But she would never compromise the integrity of the sound simply to please me. It needs a musical reason for being there, or a comedic one.

UB: Speaking of which, I’ve noticed that GB has more than a touch of the comedic to it. What is the origin of that?

Uncle Biscuit: My musical influences have almost always been somewhat comedic. My early childhood influences were bands like Kingston Trio, Smothers Brothers, The Monkees. I spent a lot of my school years studying comedy on television and in the movies. I’ve always been attracted to bands that don’t take themselves too seriously; Weird Al, Utopia, Steve Taylor, Newsboys, even Cheap Trick has their silly side. I’ve always appreciated an act that can make fun of itself. All the best comedy acts seem to have a musical bent as well; the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, Crosby and Hope, Martin and Lewis…I could go on but you get the picture. I think of music and comedy as forever linked, and that’s one area wherein Lance and I hit it off right away. We started adding funny stuff to the act almost immediately.

UB: And this was accepted by the other members?

Uncle Biscuit: I think they had comedy in mind the whole time. They were actually worried that I wouldn’t work out at first, since I’d been so quiet up to that point. It’s pretty weird, I get a little crazy in front of a crowd and go through a transformation. Fortunately that’s what they were looking for. The hard part is toning it down enough for us to get through the serious stuff.

UB: Okay, I have to ask the question, what’s with the name? Is it Jimmy, Doodle, Uncle Biscuit or what?

Uncle Biscuit: What’s in a name? Would a rose by any other name not smell as sweet?

UB: You’re quoting Shakespeare.

Uncle Biscuit: Well of course! It goes back to my days in community theater. I had the nickname “Doodle” in the family since I was tiny, but when I got interested in art and theater I took it public. It was a way to distinguish myself from my older brother.

UB: Okay so what about Uncle Biscuit? Where did that come from?

Uncle Biscuit: Originally it was just “Biscuit”. My wife tagged me with that one. Then Carissa’s daughter caught it and it became “Uncle Biscuit”. But Lance proclaimed it officially at one of our early rehearsals. It’s okay with me, I don’t think it causes me to suffer from multiple personality disorder or anything like that.

UB: This interview being a good demonstration of your mental health.

Uncle Biscuit: Exactly.

UB: So how do you respond to those who would say that interviewing yourself, besides being potentially ill-adjusted, is really a self-serving egomaniacal thing to do?

Uncle Biscuit: I’m not sure I like where this interview is going.

UB: Too late, you already signed the release form.