Words by Jonathan Stout
There’s a growing list of reasons for bands to break up or take a break, but we can ultimately boil it down to one simple culprit: life. Whether it’s a growing need to be around family, a desire for financial stability or a need for individuality – the same things that break up normal friendships ultimately affect every sector, even the arts. Band members are after all, human beings like anyone else. And just as life can serve us exciting changes, there’s no doubt it can serve up tragedy just as swiftly. Unfortunately, the members of Portland’s The Taxpayers were served up heaps of the latter in their time spent in hiatus, and they’ve outlined these experiences on their upcoming album Circle Breaker, out March 21 on Ernest Jenning Record Company.
Rob Taxpayer, a principal songwriter of the band, experienced the loss of friends who were tragically gunned down at a house show down the street, which he almost attended. “I learned about this as I held my baby in my arms, grappling with the fact that my friend had been murdered a handful of blocks from where my baby slept,” Rob explains. “That night, I lit a bundle of old dried lemongrass and walked a protective circle around my home”
Then, as work had begun on the new record, Andrew (guitar) had a family member gunned down at a park near his home. “The next day, the city came and cut down the cherry tree in front of his house. A week or two later, Andrew texted me a picture: the gnarled stump of the cherry tree had sprouted new growth. A new tree being born from the old. Death, taxes… and life.”
This message is articulated through the cover artwork of Circle Breaker, displaying a small stump sprouting a skinny, but healthy, branch. The genre-bending, folk punk of the songs blend the experimental DIY sounds of Neutral Milk Hotel/Elephant 6 with the intense folk lyricism of AJJ or early Mountain Goats – and maybe a vague dash of Crass? It’s the kind of stuff that grabs you with its musical hooks, but reels you in slowly with its emotionally impacting lyrics, ultimately letting you go, to make personal sense of what you experienced. It’s emotional and inspired material, clearly made by people with a genuine intent of self expression.
Off Shelf: You all took a hiatus for many years. What brought you back together? Was it easy to get going again?
Rob Taxpayer: By the time Big Delusion Factory was released in 2016, we were spread out over several states in different corners of the country, so it was already getting hard to get together for shows and for recording. But we had always planned to sort of do the Fugazi thing – never really break up, just take long breaks whenever we needed to.
Maybe it was the culmination of all these big life events combined with the state of the world. We were having kids, friends of ours were dying, authoritarianism was rising globally, the effects of the climate crisis were actively destroying the places we lived. And the songs I had been writing about those things seemed like they ought to be Taxpayers songs. So we decided to get together at my house in Minneapolis and see where all that led, which was eventually to this new album, Circle Breaker.
OS: What is the songwriting process for this band? Do you bring songs to the other members who help flesh it out or is the writing done together?
RT: A little of both. Sometimes Andrew – “Everything is Dreaming” from this album, “Drinking With Mickey Mantle” on an earlier record, or Nasrene – “My Papas”, will bring the skeleton demo and we’ll build it out from there. Often, I’ll send the skeleton of a demo to the band and say, “what do you think about this, is it worth pursuing?” If it is, then we’ll come up with some different parts, and then get together to work it out. Then, as we’re working it out, we’ll discover what works and doesn’t work about it. We’ll collectively edit and tinker until we’re happy with where it’s heading or decide to scrap it. Sometimes we’ll work on a song for months or even years before deciding to scrap it. Sometimes it comes out of the box nearly shiny and perfect without much work.
Once we’re all together in one place, we’ll usually write a couple songs collectively on the spot. The process for that is a little more loosey goosey and free flowing. Someone suggests a vibe or a riff based on the mood of the other songs and we build it out from there. For this record, we wrote a couple of instrumentals collectively that didn’t make the cut. For “Nightmarish Population,” we used the William S. Burroughs’ cut-up method and grabbed compelling phrases out of various books that were lying around in the basement and smashed them together into something that seemed like a message.
So yeah. I suppose it depends on the song.
OS: This is a concept album in the respect that the songs deal with the topic of circles. What inspired you to take this angle with your songwriting?
RT: As the songs took shape, the overall themes tended towards tragedies, finding meaning in those tragedies, and the things that help heal those tragedies. When you look closer into that, you start seeing circles and cycles in those things. Some of them are dark and full of pain: the cycles of addiction and abuse and violence that lead to misery and death over and over. Some of them are protective and full of hope: the new growth of a chopped down tree, the occult circle of protection from the opening song, the seasons marching onward in spite of it all.
OS: As always, but especially with this album, the subject matter can be incredibly personal and raw. Processing such feelings through songwriting can be very cathartic, but do you ever feel self conscious while performing the songs in front of large audiences? It can take a lot of courage to open up like that in front of strangers.
RT: Oh my god, yes. It can be really, really hard to perform certain songs publicly. “Nobody is a Lost Cause,” for example, which is about my friend Jeff’s suicide. We will sometimes put a song like that in the setlist with the understanding that one of us might decide to scrap it at the last second. I’m already an incredibly anxious performer. While performing can sometimes be a joyful experience, I have a lot of fear and stage fright wrapped up in it, and how I overcome that is by going fuckin nuts and just trying to lose myself in the moment. For a slow, bare song like “Nobody is a Lost Cause,” you can’t really do that. So a lot of it depends on your state of mind on that particular night, the mood of the audience, the rest of the band, etc.
OS: What led you to Ernest Jenning Record Co for this release?
RT: Pete, the co-owner and manager had worked with lots of our friends’ bands, and they all had good things to say about him. When we finally met with him after some back and forth emails, we hit it off. He’s fun to work with and he does a good job of letting people know about your record, the zines and blogs and radio stations and so forth. The publicity thing is the hardest part for most DIY labels and bands, but hey, you want people to hear the thing you worked so hard on, so having someone like Pete who’s a natural at it is awesome.
Also, interestingly, it turns out that Ernest Jenning himself, who the label is named after, was actually an old friend of Henry Turner who we wrote an album and book about back in 2012, “God, Forgive These Bastards”. That sealed the deal. Henry would have wanted us to pursue a relationship with his old friend’s label.
OS: I’m so sorry to hear of the incidents of gun violence that affected you and other band members during the making of this album. For our readers and your fans out there who have experienced similar grief, how do you navigate your sadness? Are there any words of support you could offer?
RT: The thing that helps me in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy is finding meaningful ways to be helpful, whether that’s through a job you care about, volunteering somewhere, or literally just going on a walk and picking up trash or something like that. Giving yourself an assignment, a purpose, and building from there.
Following one traumatic event, I decided to find work that was more meaningful to me. I had been teaching at an elementary school that was mostly rich kids, and while the kids were great, I felt this sort of loss of purpose. So I poked around in the local free weekly newspaper and found an ad for a free literacy program for adults through the YMCA. I called them up and offered up my time, since I had a background in teaching reading.
That eventually led to a job teaching GED classes for prisoners via the community college. Then when the next traumatic event hit those classes at the prison were my salve. Watching people seek to thrive and better themselves in spite of their horrific environment was instructive and sort of hopeful. Being able to support them in that process made me feel useful in spite of my pain.
OS: Were there any records, books or movies that helped inspire your writing process for this album?
RT: More than I can name. Right before we started recording this album, Noah, our drummer, turned me onto Moondog, this brilliant blind composer, poet, inventor dude who wore a horned helmet in the 60’s. Emahoy Gebru, who was an Ethiopian Nun who told stories via these beautiful and unique piano instrumentals. Probably “The Sunset Tree” for the whole dealing-with-trauma journey.
OS: In your press release it was mentioned that the making of this album was the result of trying to grapple with the many tough questions we’re facing with both contemporary society and aging in an ever changing, dangerous world. Were you able to come out the other side of this process with any new feelings of peace and understanding?
RT: No… Well, maybe it depends on the day and how I’m feeling. Every time I think I’ve found an answer to the madness that works for me, some new insanity arises. So I’m skeptical of people with answers, including myself. But that doesn’t stop you from trying, you know? And wanting to share the stuff you’re learning along the way, which is what Circle Breaker is.
But at the end of the day, there are some things you can always bank on. Try to always be kind and never cruel. Try to grow. We are here to try to understand each other. We are here to learn how to love each other. And geez, that shit is hard sometimes. But for me, that’s what the job of being alive is. Even if I’m not always up to the task.
OS: At this stage in your life how does it feel, writing songs and being in this band? How is it the same or different? What keeps you continuing with music?
RT: It’s the same as ever for me. Writing songs is a compulsion that I can’t control. Sometimes it’s a journal. Sometimes it’s a cry for help. Sometimes it’s just for the sheer joy of making something out of nothing.
OS: What are your plans for 2025? I saw that you are playing a couple shows, but can fans expect a larger scale tour any time in the near future?
RT: Probably not. We’ve got these album release shows in Minneapolis, Detroit, and Chicago in March. The longest tour I can handle is 4 or 5 shows at a time, since I don’t like being away from my toddler for very long and want to avoid burnout. And all of us have other life stuff happening in our respective cities – families, jobs, all that. So we’ll keep doing these little runs of short mini-tours and various places whenever the logistics make sense. And we’re already talking about the next album. Recording albums is easier, cheaper, and less time-intensive than touring. And for me it’s more fun and more fulfilling. So hey, if you wanna come to a Taxpayers show and there’s one nearby you, come hang out with us! Who knows when we’ll be by again. We probably will at some point, but it might be 10, 20 years from now.