Q&A With Don Fleming

Even if you don’t know Don Fleming by name, chances are you own a ton of records he’s helped make. As a producer, he’s collaborated with the likes of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, Screaming Trees, the Posies and Hole, to name just a handful. He works for the Alan Lomax Archive and has done archival work for the estates of Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey and others. He’s fronted such groups as the Velvet Monkeys, B.A.L.L. and Gumball and was a member of the band that provided the music to 1994 Beatles biopic Backbeat. Fleming also runs the Instant Mayhem label, which recently reissued the Velvet Monkeys’ 1982 debut Everything Is Right and is about to release the solo Don Fleming 4, which features Kim Gordon, Julie Cafritz and R. Stevie Moore. If all that weren’t enough, Fleming is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. We recently caught up with him via email.

The Velvet Monkeys’ “Everything Is Right” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/EverythingIsRight.mp3

MAGNET: You have been a professional musician for more than three decades. What do you think of the state of the music industry now, and how do you think it compares to previous decades? What has changed that you wish hadn’t and vice versa?
Fleming: I started as a DIY musician making music that was meant to be outside the homogenized crap that was coming out of the major labels. When those labels started embracing the kind of bands that I was involved with, I knew that it was a temporary phase and that most of the bands would not be served well by doing those deals, my band included. I thought that the esthetic of those musicians might have an impact on the “music biz,” but they didn’t. In the end, it was the internet and digital technology that crushed the old-school music-biz model. Now I feel more empowered than ever to be a DIY musician.

Your Instant Mayhem label recently partnered with a digital distributor and plans to reissue your back catalog as well as release new stuff from other bands. What do you have coming up? How active do you plan on the label being going forward? Are you only going to be doing digital releases?
The first two releases that I have out are a reissue of the first Velvet Monkeys release from 1982, Everything Is Right, and a new solo EP of songs I’ve done over that past couple of years. Then there’s a new To Live And Shave In L.A. album that I produced and mixed. I have several other reissues of my old bands and projects in the works. I’m doing the digital release on my label Instant Mayhem, then I’m licensing the physical release through different labels. Thick Syrup is doing the first two on CD, and Fan Death is doing vinyl of the To Live And Shave album.

You moved to NYC in the late ’80s, right? Do you miss the way the city and its music scene was in the old days? Would it have been possible for the Velvet Monkeys to relocate to NYC with how the city is now?
When I moved to NYC from D.C. in 1986, I was used to a scene where everyone knew each other, and musicians from somewhat disparate styles—punk, go-go, rock, indie freaks—played shows together and supported the whole scene. NYC always seemed more isolated to me; people didn’t mix and match and often didn’t even mix with musicians playing the same style. And I don’t think it’s changed that much in NYC. It’s a great place to live and play, but it’s never gonna be a communal scene.

What’s the current status of the Velvet Monkeys?
The last time we did a proper VM show was 2002. We’ll play again when the circumstances are right, but the band is scattered and we are very patient. If we got an offer from ATP or something along those lines, we might pull it together.

Don Fleming 4 is your first record since 1998. What prompted you to release something now? In the past, you have often played all the instruments on your records, but on 4‘s “My Little Lamb,” you let R. Stevie Moore do all the music. Did that feel at all odd for you?
I did three collaborations on the EP where I based the songs around other peoples’ music. For the Kim Gordon and Julie Cafritz track, I used guitar pieces that they recorded and added the other instruments and vocals. With the R. Stevie Moore track, he played all the instruments. I like the idea of working with each of their styles to create the collaboration instead of me writing the music and having them just add a part. The final song, “Remember Adam’s Fall,” is all me and more similar to my past solo stuff.

Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, Screaming Trees, the Posies, Hole, the Smithereens, etc. At times during the ’90s, it felt like you produced most of the records in my collection. Looking back now, what would you say were your best and worst experiences working with all those bands? Who haven’t you worked with that you are dying to? Anyone you did work with that you wish you hadn’t?
I loved working with all those bands and love the creative process in the studio. The only down side was dealing with the labels and being the buffer between them and the bands, who I usually felt like I had to protect from the bullshit that often goes down during the process. For example, on two of those that you mentioned, TFC and the Smithereens, the labels flaked out during the sessions and weren’t paying the studios. So I had to mediate the meltdowns that came from that. At a certain point, it became a drag when I found myself being in high demand and I was working with “baby bands” being signed to major labels. At that point, I stepped away from it and now only do occasional projects that really appeal to me. I was fortunate to get back into the kind of archival work that I had first done in the early ’80s. I’ve been working at the Alan Lomax Archive for the past 10 years and have also done archival work for the estates of Hunter S. Thompson, Ken Kesey and Tuli Kuprberg. I really love the work, and it’s given me the incentive to go back and start the restoration process for all the tapes of my own bands and music. If there is one fantasy production gig for me I think it would be to work with Todd Rundgren. I learned about producing through his work and think I could bring something interesting to it.

You were part of the Backbeat Band with Thurston Moore, Mike Mills, Dave Grohl, Greg Dulli and others. What was that like? Would you ever do something like that again?
Doing the Backbeat Band was a blast. We cranked out those songs with no rehearsal and usually in one or two takes. Dave is such a great drummer, so it was just a fun time. We tried to get Little Richard in to play piano on a couple of tunes and even had the piano set up and ready to go, but he flaked at the last minute. And Henry Rollins came in and did vocals on one song, but they didn’t use it in the film. I really like playing one-off type projects with a variety of people and hope to do more.

What do you have lined up production-wise in the future?
I’m working on some mixes with a musician named Paul Grimstad. He’s an amazing songwriter who is mainly a writer and also a professor at Yale. He’s totally DIY and plays everything himself. I also started an album with R. Stevie Moore, but we got sidetracked. So hopefully we’ll get back to that one.

What do you have planned for the rest of 2011?
Mainly I want to keep going on new releases for Instant Mayhem. I’ve been putting together the source tapes for the first band that I was in, called the Stroke Band. We put out one album called Green And Yellow in 1978, and we were the only punk/new-wave band in south Georgia that I know of. The singer and leader of the band was Bruce Joyner, who went on to have a band on Sire called the Unknowns and now has a band called Bruce Joyner & The Reconstruction that I produced some tracks for recently. So I’m working on putting out a Stroke Band release of the album, our one live show and some unreleased tracks. And I have more solo tunes in the works. And I’m restoring tapes by friends like Robert Lester Folsom (from south Georgia) and the Nurses (from D.C.) for release. Whatever seems the most fun to work on, that’s my priority.

—Eric T. MIller