by John Golden
On Community College’s sophomore album SCHMOMCO, there is a sense of urgency within patience, unrest in the quiet tales of the ordinary that are playfully captured by John Margaris’ lyrics. The opening track “Blue Fizz” sets the pace slow but the bar high. What “Novacaine” did for their debut album, comco, “Blue Fizz” does in a brighter, less melancholic way. The line “only catch me if I frown” is carefully spoken while a driving chord progression and steady drum beat wake the band from a drunken slumber of yesteryears.
The cast that star in this album play a part in highlighting Margaris’ more imaginative and developed songwriting. A drunk group of friends trying to get home from the bar, a longtime cashier at a deli, not to mention, a communist Santa Claus. While they all have their specific place in SCHMOMCO, they embody a sense of what it means to feel human in an absurd monstrosity of a world that we have built for ourselves. Rocking harder than ever while still taking it slow, Community College paints us an uneasy picture of what it feels like to be stuck in late capitalist America and the small efforts made to “push the feeling down” and “force my feet around”.
Experimenting with new arrangements and recording methods, Community College continues to shrug at the trivial and chuckle at the mundane with SCHMOMCO. I was lucky enough to chat with Margaris about the album, the beginnings of Community College, the Boston scene, and being intentional in more ways than just writing music.
photo credit: Bradford Krieger
John Golden: It’s been about a year since SCHMOMCO dropped. How are you feeling about the release?
John Margaris: It will be a year on the 15th I think? I feel compared to comco, it felt a little more planned out. The first album was recorded completely live in the room (Big Nice Studio), even the vocals. It felt like a very honest representation of what was going on and how the band plays together. This time around we still did a lot live in the room, mostly drums, guitars, bass but we had more overdubs for guitar and vocals.
JG: How were the shows during the tour following the release?
JM: They were fun! We played Julia’s War Fest in Philly and a week after that we did a small run of shows. I struggle with booking and planning the Community College shows because we tour so much with Horse Jumper (Horse Jumper of Love) but I am trying to get more excited for the shows we have coming up for Community College. If I book something and it’s coming up, I kind of have this automatic “oh fuck, I have this thing!” feeling and I’m trying to be more intentional and grateful that people are listening and want us to play out and that is what makes it all worth it.
My friend Alex, whose project is called Alexander, played our New York show and that was awesome. It’s great to have more flexibility no matter the iteration of our live band and just enjoy the acts we were playing with this time around. It was also my brother Dan’s first time on a longer run of shows. It was just nice to be more present this time around, enjoy the shows and just play, like not just force it while playing the show but to be like “if I’m gonna this, just do it,” sorry, that’s a stupid sentence but yeah it was super fun and I had some help booking more of the shows this time around.
JG: It must be hard to have so much going on with HJOL with this big Spring and Summer run with Alvvays and DIIV and then also be in the headspace of, “oh lets do my songs and project full on as well” but to be able to do both in any capacity is awesome.
JM: Yeah, it’s definitely a lot but it’s also nice. I’m just trying to make more time for this stuff and like tomorrow, I’m playing a show solo which would usually stress me out but being more present and not holding onto the idea of how the thing should sound or has to be has been feeling good. I’m thinking of trying to maybe have an iPad and do some Garageband drums or something else to not have it be so emo. Either way, it feels good to just get out there and do the thing rather than stress about if it’s going to sound the “right” way or whatever.
JG: How did the recording process and experience at Big Nice Studio differ this time around?
JM: We still did this record pretty quickly. I think in just two days. The main thing for me was that this record, I recorded sober the whole first day and then people were drinking the second day but for comco, I was just inebriated the whole time, which was just kind of what my life was like at that time. I definitely did not try to stray too far away from the sound of the first record and the way we went about it. Time limitations are great for me though. I didn’t want to overthink it all and knew we had to finish it in two days.
For the first record we just set up everything just like a show and this time around Bradford Krieger (owner of Big Nice Studio) helped us arrange some of the songs. He was in the room with us during it all and we had more fun with the recording process. We didn’t just play a set and hit record ya know? We sat on SCHMOMCO for about a year and then added like five seconds of keyboard on a song and other shit like vocal overdubs in the studio. It’s hard enough for me to sing in front of people, which is funny because I do this music thing, but funny enough, it’s just as embarrassing to have to sing in front of your best friends as opposed to a group of strangers.
JG: One of the things I find so special about both SCHMOMCO and comco is that I feel like there is a warmth to the sound of the room. It sounds like a lot of the bounces from the studio weren’t processed too much or at all to give it such a raw and emotive sound. Was this a conscious decision or just how they both ended up turning out?
JM: Yeah, he had some room mics in the room, not exactly where they were set up. He also had them in the hall of the studio. I agree though. I do feel like the room is just a part of the sound. I didn’t necessarily think of it too intentionally but glad that it sounds like a band is playing and not just like a track.
This time we also mixed more together, the four of us (John Margaris, Dan Margaris, Dimitri Ginanapolous, Bradford Kieger) and it sounds like we’re all playing together still, like Bradford played some keyboard, I’m pretty sure on “Walking Man” so yeah it was just more collaborative in general.
JG: I have read that HJOL came about after you and Dimitri met during a battle of the bands in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood. Him and Jamie’s band won, y’all didn’t talk for a while and then decided to hit each other up on Facebook to get drunk and watch Lord of The Rings. What led you all to start working on the first record?
JM: Yeah their band won the battle of the bands of the high school we went to. Jamie (Jamie Valal-Doran) and I went to the same high school for a year and we just knew each other more from watching each other's bands. Yeah, I think it was a few years after the battle of the bands, in my bong days, Dimitri and I started Facebook messaging about getting together and talking about playing music together but ended up just hanging out and not really playing music. We eventually got around to playing together as Horse Jumper. Dimitri and Jamie already had a lot of songs worked out and I jumped in and filled them out with them. I was a fan of Dimitri’s solo project The Meat Tree and thought he had some really cool tracks on Bandcamp. It was awesome to jam with them and feel so good about it instantly.
JG: When did Community College start playing together?
JM: This was a time when we were all playing in our parent’s basements and my brother and I were starting to work on stuff and eventually Dimitri started playing with us. Then Dimitiri and Dan encouraged me to put up my iPhone demos online. I had recorded some solo, rough drafts that we had been jamming. So the record at Big Nice didn’t happen until way later but we started playing shows at DIY spots and needed a name.
JG: What inspired the name Community College for the band/motif for the albums?
JM: My brother was going to Bunker Hill Community College at the time and I had dropped out of college and was thinking of going back to community college. I really liked one of Dimitri’s lyrics “community college suicide” from his song “Ur Real Life Dress” (Horse Jumper of Love) and Dimitri was like, “yeah that’s cool but I don’t think you can say suicide anymore, that might not be chill” so we ditched the suicide and just went with Community College. At one of our first shows, which was at a church and had an MC that said, right before we went on, “now time to hear one of the most un-Googleable bands, Community College!”. It was like a talent show vibe, eight band bill type thing. It was hilarious.
JG: How do you feel about the Boston scene? Has it changed a lot since you started out?
JM: I feel like there are increasingly less places to play shows. The cops just shut down the house shows really quickly. I feel a little less connected and maybe it’s just because I’m older now, but yes the scene is awesome and bands have been doing it for a while. Like Strange Manger, who we did one of our first tours with way back just played and I missed it because I have been out of the loop. I think it’s tough. I feel like art is inherently narcissistic ya know? So I feel like having a strong community is just so important and I know that so much good shit is coming out but it’s hard to not feel this melancholy at times feeling like all my favorite places are shutting down.
You can’t make shit in a vacuum. I’m 31 now and if I don’t engage in new art and go see shows then I feel like I won’t be able to do this thing much longer because making music can be so isolating. It’s just hard to push past the fact that our neighborhoods and communities are changing yet; good art has always been made despite the negative changes that have happened. It’s so easy to be that guy that is down about it all but that guy is just gonna get burnt out so I’m really trying to be more positive about it all.
JG: How did you all get hooked up with Julia’s War to put out the cassettes for SCHMOMCO? They have some impressive releases on their catalog for being a rather small label.
JM: Dimitri and my friend Ben (Ben Turok) encouraged me to submit the LP to them and my friend Doug who I was on a tour with a couple years ago helps run Julia’s War. Long story short: I got married over two years ago and stopped drinking around the same time and the day we got back from my honeymoon, I went on the road with Horse Jumper, TAGABOW (They Are Gutting A Body of Water) and Wednesday and that was just so much change and craziness all at once, but it was so inspiring and refreshing to see these bands with different sounds just do their shit. It made me feel like a kid at a house show again, I was just so hyped.
After we had ended our leg of the tour, I was actually supposed to go work a job with my dad and work on a construction site, but called out of that just to go see the TAGABOW and Wednesday show in Boston. They are just that awesome to see play. It really just gave me that boost I needed after months of huge life changes. But yeah, a lot of random connections led me to submit to Julia’s War.
JG: There seems to be a notion of unrest regarding late-capitalist horror that humorously is conveyed throughout the album. On songs like “X-mas” where you talk about working conditions for Santa’s elves and “Late” talking about the inevitable death of the sun and moon. Do you feel like songwriting is your way to cope or make sense of the way in which the world is going?
JM: Yeah I feel like working a job, shooting the shit with random people you work with and just living this very human life feels very silly. I feel like in my songwriting, I am just kind of making unintentional jokes. It seems like when I’m writing, it just comes out more naturally if I just write how I would shoot the shit with people, or my friends. I definitely don’t want to say that my writing is a joke or about making jokes in my lyrics but I just want to write what comes out naturally and honestly. Like, I don’t ever want to feel like writing is my crutch but more like a way to connect with people but in the way that I would do it like I am right now in this interview but yeah it definitely makes me revisit thoughts or think about what the fuck is going on in the world.
JG: When you sing the lyrics, “have you seen the prices at this bar?,” are you pissed that the prices are too high or amazed at how cheap they are?
JM: Yeah that is pretty much about me hanging at a bar, being a broke piece of shit, going to the liquor store and buying a pint of vodka that can fit in my pocket because I can't afford to drink at the bar. I do like to write lyrics that you can take in different ways but that line is about being a broke piece of shit and still needing to get drunk but also coming back into the bar and not buying anything.
JG: I read on the SCHMOMCO bandcamp credits that the lyrics for the song “Tuesday” were written by Dan. Did he write the instrumental as well or just the lyrics? It’s such a great track by the way.
JM: He wrote the lyrics and he sang that one. He had actually written it on a ukulele or something. We had this tune and I arranged it and wrote guitar for it. I wish we played that one live though, I know it is hard to to sing and play drums but maybe one day.
JG: Other than writing songs for Community College and playing with Horse Jumper of Love, what do you get up to?
JM: Well my wife and I have three cats so that takes up a lot of time. We just started an aquarium too. Last year we got really into fishing. We go to the Charles River in Boston and kill a couple hours fishing pretty often. But yeah, I’ve been sober for almost three years now so I have been trying to fill my time with other hobbies.
I definitely still have time-wasting or just like bullshit tendencies though. I’ll go scroll on my phone for five hours or waste time in other ways but the whole not drinking thing, it’s been a really good change.
Right when I got sober, I built a PC and have been playing some games in the last few years and that’s been super fun. It’s just fun to have something to tinker with too that isn’t always working quite right. I played this game Disco Elysium that I got lost in. It was the first time I disappeared into something like that in a long time. I started reading books again too. A lot of scifi and postmodern stuff. As I get older though I just feel like I have to be more intentional about even just enjoying the shit I do in my freetime.
I just started learning how to use a bunch of sound libraries. I started downloading a bunch of them and just spent dozens of hours working on this project for my friend Poppy (Poppy Lynch) who is a filmmaker. They asked me to write some music for a film they’re working on. It was really cool of them to trust me with their work even though it took me like 100 hours to do something most other people who do this work could have done in 20 but I’m grateful for it, it’s been awesome.