Interview: Zak and Jamie of Smalltalk. Too Late to Promote the Show, But There's a Video...

Smalltalk played Asbury Park Yacht Club this past Saturday. But you probably knew that already.

Why So Serious?

Smalltalk played a show at Asbury Park Yacht Club this past Saturday. They had a really good turnout following the Social Distortion show. That was no thanks to me as, through some email SNAFU, I didn't get their answers to my interview questions until after the show had already happened. Something about the generally spammy nature of emails I get from Zak Kaplan or something. I don't know.

Anyway, here are the -- as always -- very serious answers to all of my questions from guitarist / lead vocalist Zak Kaplan and drummer Jamie Goldfarb. I left in the stuff about the "upcoming" show at APYC just for the hell of it. Read on to find out about the band's love for geocaching, their un-embracing of the Internet, and father-to-be Zak Kaplan's future plans.

I also included a video from the APYC show, so you can see how it all went. It's a live performance of "June / July" which appears both on the band's latest release, Smalltalk IV, and the Little Dickman Records Summer Bummer compilation. Pics are here.

Head over to smalltalkplus.bandcamp.com where you can purchase the band's latest EP on black with white haze vinyl. The center label even features a nice photo from a local, amateur photographer.

You’re getting ready to release your fourth 3-song EP. How do you feel your songs or your sound have evolved from EP I to EP IV?

Zak: We’ve been this amazing the entire time.

Jamie: And when you’re designed this perfectly, you don’t evolve.

You’ve kept everything pretty much in-house up to this point – from recording with your guitarist, Pete Steinkopf, to screening your own record sleeves.  Did the process get any easier for you from the first EP to the fourth? Are you just able to crank these out like some kind of modern rock machine at this point?

Jamie: Second verse same as the first.

Zak: It’s been the same, release to release, the exact same. If nothing else, we are consistent.

Speaking of machines: It was pretty amazing to see Pete up there with you guys at 1 AM for a H4TH after-party in December right after he’d finished a full Bouncing Souls set. Is Pete a machine?

Zak: Was he even there? I hadn’t noticed.

Pete is, obviously, still very active with The Bouncing Souls whose sound differs quite a bit from yours. Have you found that those fans have come along for the ride? Are you playing to an entirely different set of people? Can you even tell?

Jamie: No, and honestly, I’m just glad people want to check us out.

Zak: It probably works against us. Everyone knows that “members of” bands are total rubbish. We use our associations to our advantage when we can, but for every punky kid who comes to see Smalltalk because it has a Bouncing Soul in it, there are two cooler-than-you hipsters who would never give us the time of day for the exact same reason. Jamie and I wouldn’t be caught dead at a Smalltalk show if we weren’t in the band.

There will soon be a dozen Smalltalk tracks out in the world, enough for a full-length release. Any plans to package them up into an album or some type of compilation?

Zak: What we do is secret.

Jamie: Cassette tapes of every EP will be hidden around New Jersey; like a scavenger hunt, when you find one you get a clue to where the next tape is.

Zak: We’re big in the geocaching scene.

You said something in one of our earlier interviews about originally tossing around the idea of being a video-only band. There are three videos out there now. Any plans for any more?

Zak: We’re going to try to make one later this week. The video side of things has been a bit more of a struggle for us. I don’t think any of us really like doing them. It’s awkward and weird. Turns out it’s just not really our thing. But we will keep making them nonetheless.

Any plans to take Smalltalk on the road or are you just going to rely on 21st century communication to spread the word for now?

Jamie: We’ll be around. There are five of us; one with three kids; one has a dog; one has a cat; and there is another baby on the way. But there will be shows in other cities and states. We just don’t know when.

You’re playing close to home at APYC this last Saturday. It’s a special spot for you, the place where you made your official debut as a band. People will be were able to pick up all the EPs there? Say hi? Pose for uncomfortably staged meet and greet photos with you?

Zak: Please don’t.

Jamie: We will have [had] the the fourth EP and a few of the third EP on vinyl, and some Vinyl Heart, which is a compilation we did with some local bands last Valentine’s Day. Everything is digital, so you can go to smalltalkplus.bandcamp.com for that stuff.

Zak: Actually, I removed all the digital content from there the other week. So pick up the vinyl or watch our music videos. We’re taking it back to the 80s for the time being.

Jamie: Saturday, come drink [everyone drank] wine and feel [felt] fine.



Anything on the calendar after that?

Jamie: Babies man.

Zak: I’m going to start a website called UnCoolDadMusic.com and go to shows even less than I do now. It’s going to feature dirty diaper photography along with interviews with me so I can brag to great lengths about how my child is better than yours.

Thanks for answering my questions.

Zak: Thanks for asking them.

Interview: Zak Kaplan Talks Smalltalk and Vinyl Heart

Modern Rock at the Jersey Shore

We're a little less than two weeks away from the release of the Vinyl Heart compilation EP. The brainchild of Smalltalk frontman Zak Kaplan, Vinyl Heart brings together four Asbury Park bands -- Smalltalk, Dentist, Seaside Caves, and Trans Charger Metropolis -- on a four-song compilation to be released on heart-shaped vinyl the night before Valentine's Day at Asbury Lanes. For Dentist, Seaside Caves, and Trans Charger Metropolis, I believe this will be the first time that any of their music will be available on vinyl, which is exciting. Smalltalk, Zak's collaboration with Jamie Goldfarb, Tara Jones, John Chladniček, and Pete Steinkopf, are no strangers to interesting vinyl releases; but this will definitely be their first time on a heart-shaped record.

Everything culminates with a show featuring all four bands at Asbury Lanes on Friday, February 13th. CoolDad Music, along with Holdfast Asbury Park, Russo Music, Chunksaah Records, Pirates Press, and Asbury Lanes, is a sponsor of the event. I jumped at the opportunity to help bring this project, which features several of my well-documented favorites, to life.

If you'd like to pre-order copies of the record, you can do that over at Arcade Radio.

Copies will also be available at Asbury Lanes on February 13th. You can grab pre-sale tickets for the show here.

I sat down with Zak Kaplan to talk a bit about Smalltalk and the Vinyl Heart project. You can stream our conversation below. I've also made it downloadable in case you'd rather listen to it in your car or while you run on the treadmill.

And keep it tuned here for a few more fun things as the release show gets a bit closer.

Interview: Zak Kaplan and Jamie Goldfarb of Smalltalk

Origin Story

Smalltalk are a five-piece band based in Neptune City. Composed of members from several area bands -- Zak Kaplan (The Ratchets), Pete Steinkopf (The Bouncing Souls), Jamie Goldfarb (Miss TK and The Revenge), John Chladniček (Zero Zero), and Tara Jones (The Get Rights) -- Smalltalk have a sound that calls to mind bands like The Wedding Present, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and other British bands I was listening to as a teenager.

The band introduced themselves to the world back in April with a show at Asbury Park Yacht Club that also marked the release of their debut, self-titled EP. They've added a couple of shows to their schedule with dates set for New Brunswick's Court Tavern on June 20th and Asbury Lanes on July 18th. I decided it would be good to get you all in on the ground floor with Smalltalk, so I sent some questions to founding members Zak Kaplan and Jamie Goldfarb. Check out what they had to say about Smalltalk's origins and what they have planned for the future.

How did the five of you decide to come together to start Smalltalk? How long have you been making music together?

Jamie: Zak and I had been talking about doing a band like this for quite some time but could never make it happen. Two summers ago we decided to start a Cheap Trick cover band with our friend John.

Zak: Well, we only worked up one Cheap Trick cover, and some Elvis Costello, Plimsouls, a few others I guess. I’ve been in various other bands with both John and Jamie for over a decade and I think we tried doing a similar type of thing like five years ago, practiced a few times, then I moved to San Francisco and that was that.

Jamie: Anyway, eventually we started writing our own songs. We asked Tara to sing and play some percussion, and then recorded at Little Eden with Pete.

Zak: At some point during the recording, Pete asked us what we were going to do with this stuff, and I said we were still looking for another guitar player. He asked if he could join. I thought he was just being nice, but then he harassed me about it for the next couple weeks so I knew he was serious. It was a no brainer: We would have thought to ask him in the first place, except we have no brains.

You come from a pretty eclectic set of musical backgrounds -- from punk to straight ahead rock to synth pop. What drove you all to start exploring the sounds of late 80s dream pop and early shoegaze?

Jamie: [The Wedding Present's] David Gedge drove us to it.

Zak: Yeah, we are a Straight Gedge band.

"Kill Me Fast" is an example of a song, I think, where the more rock and roll background of some of the members shines through. Can you talk a bit about what everyone's experiences in other bands bring to Smalltalk?

Zak: I dunno. Things just happen as they happen. I don’t think that song is particularly any more or less rock and roll than any of the others. If anything, it’s a little spazzy, has tempo changes, but it does have this very Stones-y chord thrown in there. I dunno. I hate music.

James: Weirdly, those three songs seem so long ago, like a demo or something.  They are, in fact, some of our older songs. I think Zak’s influence and my influence reign a little heavier with regards to those songs, whereas the new stuff reflects more our collective vibe. We're still new at it, learning each others tendencies and strengths. It’s a process.

I was 17 years old in 1987, driving around in my car, listening to FM106.3 here on the Jersey Shore. I hear a lot of those sounds -- particularly sounds that I associate with British bands of that time -- on the EP. Were you consciously trying to give the record a sense of time and place?

Zak: A pretty young lady came up to me after we played our first show. She probably wasn’t even born in 1987, and she said something to the effect that our music made her nostalgic for something that she never experienced in the first place. I thought that was a really nice compliment, but no, I don’t think it was a conscious effort to evoke a past time and place. I guess we just have a classic sound, which makes sense, since we only write instant classics.

Jamie: I thought it all sounded like the E Street Band until people kept mentioning the 80s and England.

I understand you already have a follow-up EP ready to go. Can you tell us anything about that? Are there plans for a full-length?

Jamie: The plan is to keep releasing 3 song EPs this year. Ideally, after this one, we’ll do two more and then collect them all on on LP at the end of the year. But it’s only June and Polygram or Geffen may want those songs for our major label debut release.

You have a couple of shows coming up: June 20th at The Court Tavern and July 18th at Asbury Lanes. What are your plans after that? Is Smalltalk a going concern or just a short-term project?

Jamie: We’ll be playing and making records. If people want us to then we’ll make more records and play more shows. If not, then obviously we are awful and should quit, for the sake of music.


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