Pitchfork conducted a Q&A with Michael Lenzi a few months back. The wide-ranging interview touched on his musical career and history with the bands Number One Cup, The Fire Show, Resplendent and others. Here is the interview in full. When you’re done, check out Michael’s newest project, Tough Solar, out now on Sweet Pea Records.
Q: In addition to your music, what would you consider to be your job, i.e. what keeps the lights on?
A: I left Washington, D.C., and drove to Chicago in early 1989 in a snowstorm, without a job and pretty clueless. The only thing I could think to do as a job, besides waiting tables or working in a store or something, was to try to become a teacher. I didn’t have a teaching certificate and hadn’t ever taught other than tutoring kids.
I found a job working at an adult literacy not-for-profit called Literacy Council of Chicago. Since then, that is the only type of professional work I have ever done. It is good work for my personality, and I have met many great people and have been to some very out-of-the way places in the city.
Music has never really made me any money. I did have a phase from around 1995 to 1999 where I didn’t work much and devoted myself to touring and recording with Number One Cup. There was a brief little period there where it seemed like an indie rock band might be something you could do, at least temporarily, as a job.
But in the end, I had to go back to teaching because it is the only thing that ever felt like a career. At the end of 1999, the first job I got after Number One Cup broke up was working as a GED teacher in the Cook County Jail. I did that for five years. That was a very illuminating experience. It showed me how the world really works.
After the jail, I worked at a school for children with emotional and behavioral disorders and then I returned to literacy work and have worked since then in Rogers Park at the Howard Area Community Center.
I did the Fire Show with Seth Kim-Cohen, my band mate in Number One Cup, from 1999 to 2002. He went to graduate school in London in the fall of 2002 and the band ended. After that, I did Resplendent by myself. So making money doing the Fire Show or Resplendent never seemed like a possibility.
Q: In an interview I saw in 2006, you had mentioned a teaching gig where you worked with developmentally challenged and at-risk children. Is that something you still pursue? How did you get into that field?
A: I was an aimless young man like so many others. I knew that I was not going to be a corporate dude or a salesman or a lawyer or whatever. I have always been someone who didn’t want to do what others did. Working to help people who didn’t quite get a fair shake is something that appealed to me and still does. I grew up in D.C. in the ’70s and ‘80s and was raised around politics and hippies and liberal-minded people. I was not interested at all in politics, but helping people seemed cool. Yeah, and I was into D.C. hardcore, and that whole social justice streak made sense to me.
Q: In the time since the Fire Show disbanded, indie rock, while still not a lucrative field by any means, has gone overground, abetted by festivals, the O.C., movies, soundtracks and the like. What was the Fire Show’s idea of success back then? Were there certain scene principles?
A: Hmmm. I didn’t think that we had a chance at a career with the Fire Show. The music’s appeal seemed very insular to me. I can’t comment much about the scene at that time. We became friends with the Perishable records crew of Brian Deck, Tim Loftus, Ben Massarella and Tim Rutilli. Things started from there.
Seth and I thought we made it just by being asked by Tim and Ben to record albums for Perishable. I still am very proud of those records for what they were. We made what we wanted to hear. The music made sense to me and is inspired. That is all I ever wanted to do. I have no regrets.
As for what indie rock has become, I have no idea. Everyone has a theory. It seems like people still make music because they love it. I don’t think that has changed.
Q: Did The Fire Show or Resplendent ever feel like a sustainable career to you?
A: No. Even though the Fire Show broke up in 2002 and the Internet was a force at that point, I still felt like we were in the previous era of the Yellow Pages and phone booths and paper maps. We missed that wave.
Resplendent was my thing, and I did it for myself. I love making music. I have taken breaks now and again but I always come back to it. Whether anybody notices, I can’t control that. I have isolated myself sometimes because I don’t really participate in the game, but so be it. So pushing to have a music career seems beside the point when I have a job that I like.
Q: Was there a certain point where you realized that you had a career that put music to the side?
A: Music never seemed like a job path to me. It is not like I am some gifted musician or something. I taught myself how to play drums at 23 or 24. No one told me I should do it and that it was a good idea. The notion of a career at it seemed absolutely far-fetched. A glimmer of hope appeared in the 1990s then disappeared again fairly quickly. It is cool that people can do it and sustain it, but I have the wrong personality for that kind of life. In the past, I broke a lot of instruments out of frustration. Doing it professionally would eat me up.
Q: The Fire Show appeared posthumously on our top 50 LPs of 2002 list, do you wonder what might’ve happened had the band been able to capitalize on the recognition of that LP?
A: I think that record is strange, baffling and bracing. I cannot however imagine what might have happened if we’d stuck around. It seems like an impossible idea right now from this vantage point. Sometimes bands are not well known or even known in their time.
I grew up loving Dischord bands that would last only a year or so. Some of the records, like the Embrace LP, came out after they broke up, yet the music they made sticks with me still. It is incredibly influential.
Void released a split LP with Faith and had three tracks on the Flex Your Head compilation. That is the only music they put out in their time. They were a band that had a fairly short but potent life. They left behind insanely good stuff. I still listen to them to this day.
Ending the Fire Show with Saint the Fire Show seems somehow appropriate. The other stuff about career and money … I don’t know.
Q: What were some of the main takeaways both good and bad that came from the early 2000s? What was your greatest success, and subsequently, your greatest regret?
A: It is hard to keep going if you run out of steam. I think Seth and I knew that something had to change. We did the final tour for Saint the Fire Show as a duo with looping pedals, a guitar, a bass rig and a drum set. We couldn’t keep a band together. But it was a pretty hard experience, and I was relieved when we got home. What we were able to do is make music that we were enthralled by. We did it on our own terms.
I like where I am now and do not regret anything. Perhaps, if pushed, I would have liked our last Fire Show gig at the 7th Street Entry in Minneapolis to have been a bit more momentous. But it was suitably cathartic, and we destroyed our gear on stage. That was great. We needed that release. I like breaking stuff.
If something is over, then fuck it. Destroy it. Time to move on.