Castanets: Ghost Writing (an interview with Ray Raposa)
Ray Raposa is Castanets. He’s been releasing slightly spooky, entirely beautiful folk music by way of rural swamps since his ‘04’s debut Cathedral hit the college radio circuit and ’done blew up. Since then he’s been drifting across the country, not staying in one place too long, and churning out astonishingly gorgeous/bleak records that seem to be moving a little closer to old school country with each one. His latest, Texas Rose, the Beasts, and the Thaw continues the tradition. Raposa took some time out of his day to tell us about the new album and how much he loves telling the story of riding the Greyhound around the country on and off for four years after testing out of high school at the age of fifteen.
Ghettoblaster: Is it kind of weird to have a
small moment of your life, like the Greyhound-
riding specifically, turned into a
part of your legend by the PR people?
Ray Raposa: Oh God, it’s terrible. If there’s one
thing I could change about the last six years of my
life it would be not allowing that anywhere near
the first press sheet, ya know. It’s been a burden.
I was a kid, and I really don’t think it has anything
to do with what I’m doing now, whatever work
it is, you know
GB: It just sounds good on a page.
RR: Yeah, it’s a hook. But, it’s a beaten, dead,
exhausted hook, you know?
GB: So you’ve got a variety of pretty standout
guests on the album playing with you.
You’ve got Pall Jenkins, the dude from
Rocket From the Crypt [Jason Crane] and
the dude from Bauhaus [David J]. How did
you get this particular line-up?
RR: They’re all San Diegans and people that I’ve
known for years, back from when I lived there.
So it really couldn’t be any more of a casual thing
working with them. It’s natural for me to want to
have Pall sing on a couple of songs and if we need
a trumpet, there’s really only one trumpet in San
Diego I’m going to trust, you know and that’s Jason.
It’s still a beach town down there, everyone
kind of has a couple of free hours a day to come
by and do their part.
GB: Before you signed up with Asthmatic
Kitty, you made your own albums, your
own CDR’s, what happened to that music?
RR: There’s one full-length before Cathedral that
is certainly online somewhere. My friend Nathan
and I, and Pall and Jason and all the San Diego
people are all on it. Asthmatic Kitty wanted
to put that out, but the pressing plant kind of
botched their end somehow and they ended
up putting these little two second iTunes gaps
between songs. It was just the most cheap, disastrous
pressing job ever… by the time we’d
figured out how to redo it, I’d lost interest in the
record entirely.
GB: Have you ever consider going down
the hip-hop alleyway?
RR: I think about that because I listen to a lot of
it and just love it so much… I just really don’t
think I have the production skills yet to really
pull off a beat I’m entirely satisfied with and I
certainly don’t want to be on the mic for it. It’s
not my place… which isn’t to say I don’t totally
try to write a decent hip-hop verse almost every
night before I go to sleep, but I can’t see myself
ever wanting to do anything with ‘em… maybe
ghostwriting.
GB: I read somewhere that you recorded
one of your Dad’s songs. Is that on here?
RR: It’s the last song on City of Refuge. I was in
Nevada making the record and he didn’t know
that, but he sent me a collection of his songs
that he’d just finished called 33 Without Music,
which was 33 songs he’d written. I got that email
and was just kind of reading through them and
an hour later I had a song… I sent it to my dad
like two days later and he was happy. We’re real
stoic with each other, so I didn’t tell him I was
happy to do it and he didn’t tell me he was happy
to hear it, but I could tell.
GB: So, I have one final question, and I’m
thinking it’s probably your second favorite
after the greyhound one. The book, what’s
the word on the book?
RR: I really don’t know… so, I had a storage facility
in San Diego when I moved out to Brooklyn,
and I put all my stuff in there, including the
notebooks that were sort of the drafts for what
wasn’t a very good book to start with. I moved to
Portland from Brooklyn and kind of just stopped
paying rent on my storage space, and, as they do,
they confiscate your room and I guess auction
off your stuff. So if it exists, it only exists in the
hands of someone who would have bought it at
a storage auction, which I doubt. But, you know,
I was a cocky kid, I was playing out of my league
there. I wouldn’t want to read it, I don’t think.
GB: Well at least it’s out of your hair then.
There’s no more pressure to try and get
it out.
RR: Yeah, no kidding. I’m not averse to coming
back to that medium at some point, but I don’t
think that was the one.
Originally published in the Winter ‘09 issue of Ghettoblaster, a quarterly culture and entertainment mag.