How John Reis of Hot Snakes listens to music

Everybody’s favorite guitarist (Drive Like Jehu, Rocket From The Crypt, The Night Marchers and more) on listening to music as a kind of research.

From from The Thanks List:

You mentioned listening to a lot of different types of music. How do select the type of music that you’re going for? Is it more of the vibe that you’re in, or the vibe that you want to create? Do you have any go-to’s for certain activities, say doing chores around the house or in the car or just on the couch listening?
If I’m going to be doing stuff around the house I’ll put on an LP or I’ll even put on Spotify or the radio.

A lot of times I listen to music in what I consider a critical environment. I have a studio in my home and I’ll be listening to music in there on speakers that you would use to mix music. It’s not necessarily super hi-fi, it’s more of the listening environment and that you’re being critical. I have my turntable set up so that you’re facing the speakers while it’s being played, almost as if you’re going to be watching a movie — you’re just facing it and all your attention is about the music. The way the environment is set up is not to make things sound better or worse, it’s to accurately reproduce the way it’s actually sounding, so that when you take it out of that environment it will translate into other environments.

I write and record a lot of music myself in there as well so I like to listen to my favorite music in this kind of environment. Then if I hear something — it doesn’t have to necessarily be an idea, it could be just a mood or a feeling — I can listen to it in the same environment that I make my own music. That way, I can almost align these things that I want to do and these ideas that I want to try to translate and express, and try to achieve. I can put them all in the same place so that I have this idea of how my own music will translate or how to get my music to sound or feel a certain way, compared to the stuff that really inspires me. I listen to a LOT of music in this environment and it’s really fun. I just really appreciate listening to music like that, because it’s different from listening to music in your car, in your house as you’re doing a task, or even if you’re just kind of listening to it in your living room. Listening to it in that critical environment helps me in my own music making. More times than not, it’s just about recreating a mood. Like, “Oh, this song makes me feel this way, I would love to be able to do a piece of music that would have that same feeling.”*

The first thing that inspires me here is the idea that this hugely influential musician is still listening to music like a teenager — focused and intensely. There’s almost certainly a relationship between that kind of curiosity and Reis’ string of impactful bands.

The second thing is how he connects listening to making. Obviously there’s a focus to writing music but it’s very easy to make listening to music a passive activity where it’s always the background to something else. Reis makes sure to hear new music in the same environment that he hears his own music — basically training his ear to hear his own music on the same level as something he admires. This has an echo to something the painter Gerhard Richter refers to as the “storehouse of treasures” (which is an idea I’m obsessed with) and how he hangs his own small paintings on a wall with a handful of his favorite works. The goal being to see if his own works can literally “hang” with the greats.

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All The Thanks List interviews are really good and focused almost purely on what people listen to and are influence by so they’re kind of easy to read a ton at once.

*I made some minor edits to make this more concise

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