Not All Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

By Connect2Mason Director Grace Kendall

Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. In modern music, it’s those elusive three things which are obsessively sought by nearly every band. Musicians make headlines more frequently for their clothes and the chicks they’re scoring than for releasing new albums or going on tour. The music industry is full of decidedly sordid characters that care more about the glamour and the money than creating art.

Perhaps that is why it is so surprising to hear singer-songwriter Bob Schneider say that the only thing he wants out of music is to “feel good about being a human being.” Schneider is a performer based out Texas, whose brand of music is utterly inimitable. Drawing from a variety of influences and experiences, he slides easily between musical genres and expectations to subvert the obvious and create a unique musical experience every time he steps on stage.

“It depends on my mood,” he said. “Sometimes I’m very verbose and I talk a lot, say whatever’s on my mind . . . sometimes it’s like a big dance party and sometimes when I’m in a crisis it can be all super-slow sad songs.”

When Schneider performs, he’s as genuine as if you were hanging out with him on the street. Unlike most performers, he doesn’t even consider creating a set list. That can be a challenge for his band members, who are expected to know 200 songs.

“The best shows go through the entire emotional spectrum,” he said. For Schneider, that touches not only on the whole course of human emotion but reaches into the depths of musical genres. He switches on a whim between rough acoustic folk musings on drug abuse to up-tempo dance numbers to a smooth transition into an obscenity-laced rap. His goal is for the audience to never know exactly what’s coming—a show where fans know the words to all of his songs is, to Schneider, a complete failure.

“I want to play some songs that are known and put new energy on old material,” he said. “They should hear stuff they’ve never heard and wouldn’t expect me to do.”

But surprisingly, his audience has grown more difficult with time since Schneider has expanded his musicality to include new instruments and new styles. His performances have a reputation for being off-the-cuff and undeniably unique, but that’s got fans “expecting the unexpected.” Though Schneider laments this, he views it as a challenge and is constantly working to make sure that all of his music is captivating.

During the show, Schneider follows his gut instinct and experiments, switching between instruments including the guitar, keyboard, trumpet and steel drums. He also makes an effort to play new material at shows as much as possible to keep the audience surprised.
“I like to make the songs as interesting as possible, so I use little bits of my own experience and things that I’ve heard and then I’ll just make stuff up,” he said. Schneider is determined to make sure his songs are as interesting as possible, taking normal situations and emotions and expanding them until they become extreme.

“If I had a problem with drinking—because I did for a long time—drinking doesn’t have impact, so I’ll make it heroin so it carries more weight in the song,” he said.

An Austin, Texas native, Schneider considers himself on tour even when he is home. He has a regular gig playing the Saxon Pub on Friday nights when he’s in town, a venue where he’s found himself able to really connect with the local audience.

“There were moments when we were doing stuff that we’d never done before that had never been done before and that will never be done again,” he said about a performance at the pub on October 27. “It’s an electric experience, pretty magical.”

That unpredictable quality is both what fans of Schneider’s music have come to crave and what Schneider himself is determined to maintain. He doesn’t have regrets or wishes to change the world; rather, he draws on the situations he has lived through as inspiration for new material and embraces the challenges he faces. Even playing shows is something he fears, finding it “fun” to face the possibility of failure and humiliation each night.

“I really believe that as fucked up and scary as the world is, it seems to me [that] whatever is responsible for the experience we're having really thought it out and figured out the best way to make [it] as meaningful and as powerful an experience as possible,” he said. “So all this fucked-upness that’s in the world is, like, necessary for the experience to be meaningful and exciting.”

From the way he views the world to the way he approaches his craft, Schneider is an artist in every sense of the word. He creates his own posters, t-shirt designs and album art, drawing from the skills he developed as a young prospective artist and as a student in art school—before he dropped out.

“It’s what I was gonna do before I got sidetracked into music,” he said. “Ever since I was tiny kid, by the time I was six, I was going to be an artist. It was only when I got into college and played in a band and tried that to see how it worked out . . . now I’ve been doing it for 20 years.”

Though he spends most of his time these days writing and performing music, Schneider still considers himself to primarily be an artist.

“People who do any kind of creative thing—musician, actor, writer, whatever—something inside them says ‘I’m really good at this,’” he said. “I think anybody could do what I do if they told themselves they could do it. It’s not that hard.”

You can catch Schneider in the area on Tuesday at the Birchmere in Alexandria. For ticket information visit http://www.birchmere.com/ or check out his MySpace, http://www.myspace.com/bobschneider, to listen to tracks and learn more.