Interview

As bands like Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors capture hearts and minds by breaking towards fussiness stylistically and eastern sounds hemispherically, The Shaky Hands, a four-piece rock outfit out of Portland, indulge in the musical equivalent of an In-N-Out Double-Double, i.e. fast, tasty, reliable American comfort rock, blessed with the divinely scratchy vocals of founding Hand Nicholas Dellfs. (PHOTO BY MIRANDA LEHMAN)
 
Although Nick would probably dispute the beefy metaphor. He wrote the songs on Let It Die, the band's third album, after a six-week pilgrimage to the holy Hindu city of Vrindavan in Northern India, where it's a sacrilege to crave anything, especially a slider. While abroad, he immersed himself in eastern philosophical and musical traditions and the study of Krishna consciousness. But as soon as he boarded the plane back to the United States, he pocketed the Bhagavad Gita and cranked the Tom Petty, infusing the Shaky Hands newest set of enlightened songs with the weightiest meatless riffs his band could muster.
 
We caught up with Nick before the Shaky Hands embark on a U.S. and European tour. We talked about the spiritual heavies he met in India, George Harrison's legacy of wrapping eastern thought in western sounds, and the importance of sticking to what we do best.
 
Alex Sherman: Are you from Portland originally?
 
Nick Dellfs: I pretty much grew up in the middle of nowhere, about three hours north of the Bay Area. The closest town was Mendocino, which is like right on the coast.
 
AS: How long ago did you move to Portland?
 
ND: I moved here almost six years ago to start the band. Almost everyone I started the band with are no longer in it anymore. I'm pretty much the only original member, but that original incarnation didn't last very long before Jeff and Dylan joined the band.
 
AS: Why'd you go off to India?
 
ND: Before I went, the band had been in turmoil. We lost our drummer last summer and I had all these unfinished songs. Not long after, Jake Morris joined as our drummer and all of a sudden it felt like a new band. There was something exciting about that feeling and it changed the songs, and then I went to India and was really inspired to write a lot. Many of the lyrics were rewritten there.
 
AS: The last song on the album, "Leave It All" quotes from the same Maha Mantra George Harrison brings into "My Sweet Lord," and even your album title is reminiscent of Harrison's All Things Must Pass. May I ask, let what die?
 
ND: It's taken from the very first song on the album, which explains it a lot. To put it straight forward, before I went to India I thought of growing as a person as the spiritual advancement you kind of gain, which can better your life or confuse your life or whatever. But in India I had this realization that it's really not what you gain, but finding this thing that's already existing within you. I guess to let it die is to let go of the kinds of attachments to things that will never truly make you happy.
 
AS: There's a kind of trend going on with indie bands incorporating global rhythms and sounds into what they're doing. West African guitar music is having a new wave in particular. You've gone East yet you have delivered something that's almost a reversal of that.
 
ND: After not playing guitar and not having western music for a month and a half, the first thing I listened to was the Tom Petty's Greatest Hits, and it was this amazing thing, like "Wow!" And in a lot of ways I didn't want to leave India. But I kind of missed that feeling. There's this thing about Krishna consciousness that the only way you can make any advancement is through sincerity. What I've noticed, and I really feel that George Harrison did it so well, is that he took the influence of this very potent philosophy but he did what he knew. He knew rock music. And not even just rock music. But he a very specific sound you can hear throughout all the Beatles. When George Harrison has a song, it's so much his own thing, different from other members of the Beatles. On his own he went even further into that and said all these things that were on his mind. Even though he used Indian instruments sometimes, he was sincere about it. He wasn't trying to sound deeper than he is, which is why I think he pulls it off.
 
AS: Why did you decide to split the album into a rocking first half and a mellower second half?
 
ND: I just felt like a lot of the rock songs really went together. I didn't want make it so every other song was mellow. It's a subtle difference, but I like albums that are done like that, like Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home. I just really love it when you listen to an entire album and have this whole experience, like when an album flows so well that when you get to the last song and return to the first song, it's like "What?!"
 
Let It Die is out September 29 on Kill Rock Stars.