Rhode Island never gets the mythmaking treatment afforded places like New York, Los Angeles or Nashville—and Deer Tick saw that as a golden opportunity. On Coin-O-Matic (ATO), the adaptable indie-roots outfit turns its attention to the marginal characters and hardscrabble types that occupy the many blue-collar neighborhoods in its Rhode Island hometown. Providence is a working-class city at heart that also plays host to Brown University and Rhode Island School Of Design.
Deer Tick’s ninth LP takes its name from the cigarette-machine company that once served as the headquarters of notorious New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca. Really, though, the mafia is more of a backdrop to Coin-O-Matic, an album Deer Tick singer/guitarist John McCauley describes as “a country record set in an urban environment.”
Recorded mostly at the group’s own studio, Coin-O-Matic is also primarily self-produced—a first for the quartet—with drummer Dennis Ryan engineering. More recently at Deer Tick central, the band worked with Ben Vaughn on a project that sees the veteran songwriter/producer surrendering to the whims of his collaborators. Magnetic East: The Deer Tick Sessions is due October 30 via Yep Roc.
It took some time, but MAGNET’s Hobart Rowland finally tracked down McCauley, who proclaims his love for the Ocean State and its scrappy denizens. And explains why country music doesn’t always have to mean lots of pedal steel.
Rhode Island is a central character on Coin-O-Matic. What do you hope listeners unfamiliar with the place take away from the album?
I wasn’t really going for historical accuracy or anything. Most of the people and situations I write about on Coin-O-Matic are pure fiction. Sometimes in my travels, when I tell people I’m from Rhode Island, they go, “Brown University!” or “Newport!” It’s true that there are a lot of universities and colleges here. Providence is somewhat of a college town. And, yes, there’s Newport, with mansions, boats and old money. But I wanted to go a little darker and deeper into the neighborhoods I grew up in, which were made up of mostly working-class people. The generations before me … Most of them never graduated high school, never mind college. And some of them had to break a few laws to get by. It’s an album I wrote thinking about plumbers, electricians, veterans, the elderly, petty criminals and so on.
Some of the songs draw from organized-crime lore, but you seem more interested in ordinary people living on the fringes than in the mobsters themselves. Why was that distinction important?
I wanted the menace of organized crime to lurk in the background, just like it did in every city in the Northeast through most of the 20th century. I think writing an album solely about mobsters would be kind of a tough sell. Having one big crime-caper song in “ACI” was enough. “Exit Door” is a little bit of a mobbed-up song, as well.
This is Deer Tick’s first—mostly—self-produced album. How did taking control of the sessions unlock things creatively for the band?
Technically, Dave Fridmann produced “Exit Door,” but we felt ready to do it. We finally have a permanent studio space—and Dennis, our drummer, has grown so much as a recording engineer. It didn’t feel too different from working with a producer, to be honest—just one less opinion in the control room. We’ve never worked with any tyrant producers who we’ve had to wrestle with for creative control. I’d say the biggest difference with this one is that we got to take our time with it. For every album we’ve made since probably (2010’s) The Black Dirt Sessions, we really had to work fast and meet deadlines.
What aspects of Coin-O-Matic feel country to you?
By country I don’t mean we’ve got a bunch of weepy pedal steel on everything. I mostly meant in the writing: the stories, the sense of place, finding deep meaning in the ordinary. Instead of cowboys, there’s gangsters. Instead of Amarillo, it’s Providence. I think Rhode Islanders, for the most part, have a pretty good sense of humor and know how to take a joke. We can laugh at ourselves and our misfortunes. But don’t mess with Rhode Island, either.
After more than two decades together, how has your understanding of Deer Tick evolved?
I’d like to think we’ve become better musicians and writers. I really love the collective we have now, as opposed to when I was writing all the songs. I never wanted that. I found the Beatles fascinating as a kid because they were made up of four singers and songwriters, and that seemed like it would be a lot of fun.
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