1 Left to right: Dan Matz, Jason McNeely, Gianmarco Cilli, Anna Neighbor
photo by Ben Swanson
Letting go and sticking together with Windsor for the Derby
By Erik Adams
Published: May 19th, 2008 | 2:05pm
By Jason McNeely’s approximation, he and Dan Matz have been friends for 26 years. They grew up together, experiencing the phases of their lives in tandem. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that they decided to build a band around that friendship, a band they named Windsor for the Derby, a band that has just released its sixth LP, How We Lost (Secretly Canadian).
“Dan and I played music together and talked about music for at least 10 years before we played in a band together,” McNeely said. “That’s not true — we played in bands that weren’t really real bands. We hung out and talked about what we wanted to do for at least 10 years before we actually made a record.”
A few weeks before the release of How We Lost, I met McNeely on the bric-a-brac patio of the Austin, Texas, hipster hangout Spider House. I came with the intention of having a discussion about the records that stick with you, like the ones that — according to Secretly Canadian press materials — inspired the sound of the new Windsor for the Derby record. However, McNeely’s aversion to name-dropping steered things more in the direction of the people that stick with you.
“Dan’s the best thing that’s ever happened in my life,” McNeely said.
While the sounds they make have changed — an evolution from free-form experiments to near-pop structures — the dynamic between McNeely and Matz is the same as it ever was.
“I’ve been waiting for it to change, but it never does,” McNeely said.
To put it in broad pop culture archetypes, Matz is the Felix — a suburban Philadelphia full-time teacher, who gardens, makes breakfast for his wife and daughter, and bookends his days writing and recording. McNeely is the Oscar — an occasional concert promoter in oh-so-laid-back Austin and a self-professed “prodigal son,” a status made more evident by the ironic trucker cap and few-day’s stubble he wore to our interview.
“Although I think I tend to be the more grounded person around the people in my life, I’m still the chaotic one of the two,” he said. “I’m the one that everyone’s always waiting for in most circumstances. I think that that’s part of the chemistry that makes Windsor for the Derby what it is and I know that Dan appreciates that and he’s patient about it, as well as I’m patient with Dan being a square.”
The consistency in Matz and McNeely’s relationship is contrasted by How We Lost’s advocacy of moving on, embracing change, letting go, and other new age-y ways of saying “growing up.”
“That’s definitely something that’s on my mind a lot: Getting to the next chapter,” McNeely said. “You’ve got to let go of a lot of shit constantly, you’ve got to be constantly cleaning house and that’s kind of what that record is for us.”
On the record, the band (fleshed out by Anna Neighbor, Gianmarco Cilli, Charlie Hall, and a slew of guests) gets maximum sound from minimal arrangements. Drums sit high in the mix, rarely busy, while loping bass gives counter-melody to lead vocals that alternate between reserved recitation and incantation. It’s all wrapped in a few layers of gauzy atmosphere, which takes precedence on white-noise numbers “Robin Robinette” and “Trouble.” Unsurprisingly, the word “friend” makes several lyrical appearances. With several songs hinging on slow builds, How We Lost is a record that rewards patient listeners, the kind that don’t mind waiting a few years for McNeely and Matz to fine tune a new set of songs.
“I listen to a record as a whole thing, so I get thrown off if something is on an album that doesn’t fit,” McNeely said. “I think one of the reasons that it takes us as long as it does to make a record is we’ll have the songs it takes to make a record way before we record it. But putting it together so it’s cohesive and it makes sense to us, it takes a really long time.”
The dovetailing of the main Windsor’s listening habits has led to some uncanny circumstances, like when McNeely was going through a recent infatuation with British space rockers Flying Saucer Attack (a name-drop, yes, but only for specificity’s sake).
“I thought I dug that one out way out of nowhere,” he said. “And Dan sent me this recording that he had just made, straight-up sounded exactly like the music I was listening to. I was like, ‘I really want to work on this; it sounds a lot like what I’ve been listening to.’ And Dan’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been listening to a lot of Flying Saucer Attack and stuff like that.’
“It happens to us every year, we’ll reference the weirdest thing, and we’ll both be referencing it at the same time, and that’ll be what gets us excited about starting a new project.”
And so it will continue to happen, because, as McNeely said, he and Matz plan to never stop.
“Dan and I, we’ve made our goal: Windsor for the Derby exists solely out of friendship. It’s just based on him and me perpetuating something. It’s the longest friendship and the longest project that either of us has maintained, so it really means a lot to us that we perpetuate it.”
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