The Ophelias | Interview | New Album, ‘Bare Bodkin’

The Ophelias are a psychedelic rock band formed in San Francisco in 1984 that recently issued a new record, ‘Bare Bodkin’ via Independent Project Records.

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The Ophelias are led by singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist Leslie Medford who formed the band in October 1984. The band have been signed three times, first by Strange Weekend Records for one album, then by Rough Trade Records, for whom they produced two albums and an EP, and most recently by Independent Project Records.

The latest record collects 15 of the bands most definitive tracks (including 5 previously unreleased studio tracks), hand selected by frontman Leslie Medford, all remixed and remastered for release via digital services, and (for the first-time ever) on compact disc, with a vinyl version due later this year. The retrospective includes extensive, new liner notes by David Fricke in a 24 page booklet, as well as new artwork and iconic die cut, letter-press packaging by Independent Project Records label founder Bruce Licher.

“The Ophelias were a strange band, impossible to pigeonhole and categorize”

It’s great to have you. How are you doing in these weird and pretty uncertain times?

Leslie Medford: O man, horrible. Truly awful! I try to keep my head down and not think about human beings…well, only a very few. Things are SICK! (all hipster slang aside!)

Well, Klemen, we’re off to an uplifting start!

Where did members of the Ophelias grow up and what can you tell us about the local scene? Did it have any impact on who you became as a musician?

I’m from rural Virginia, Terry’s (Terry Von Blankers) from rural Washington State (a town with windmills, like Dutch windmills actually). David’s (David Immerglück) from Berkeley, Edward’s (Edward Benton) from outside Sacramento. When you ask a question like this I will answer as regards The Ophelias “classic lineup.” But in the first and second line-ups there were no Californians at all. Sam’s (Sam Babbitt) from Boston, Massachusetts, and Ruben’s (Reuben Chandler) from Florida. Then Geoffrey Armour’s from Indiana, and Keith Dion is from New Zealand.

My rural upbringing in a weird Southern family has had a profound effect on my life, and my music, if that’s what you mean by “the local scene.” I was isolated geographically and culturally far beyond what you would find normal in Sixties America. I’m sure all of us in the band were tremendously affected by where and how we were raised. David Immerglück would seem to be my polar opposite – Berkeley, intellectual agnostic-if-not-atheistic liberal family, middle class, open floor plan and lots of love! But we collected mostly the same records, just from very different stores!

You’ll have to ask the others, but I can tell you that I’ve personally never been a member of any “local scene.” I usually only have one or two close friends, that’s just the way it’s turned out for me. I played on a lot of sports teams, and was a camping Boy Scout, though. (I’m an Eagle Scout.) But my records and books and being alone in nature shaped me – as did my parents, of course.

Take us back to your teenage room and tell us what kind of records, singles and fanzines would we find there?

No fanzines whatsoever. They just weren’t around my little town in the countryside. Nor would they have been allowed in the house! No comic books either. Just school books, library books, the Bible. But the family was musical, my mother taught piano, and I began buying vinyl at ten years old. Essentially what money I had – and I worked for it – went for records and stereos and bicycles. Also, my family knew giving me a record for Christmas or my birthday would make me happy. They even surprised me sometimes with records I didn’t know about that turned out to be awesome. Like my sister gave me Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Bookends’ for Christmas one year, and the Strawbs’ ‘Bursting at the Seams’ for my birthday another time. Total unknowns and total bullseyes! But I purchased most of them myself. I vividly remember where I bought many of my first albums. For instance, because my father was a Marine, my mother and I would go to the Commissary at the naval base, and they had a record section there. I bought The Doors ‘L.A. Woman,’ Iron Butterfly ‘Ball,’ and the Guess Who’s ‘Share the Land’ there, all tremendous records. ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ from a shop at the mall, which led to ‘Meddle’ and ‘Atom Heart Mother’. I often was going backwards in time in my purchasing, because I was catching up to bands in the early 1970s which already had half a dozen albums out. The real record stores were in the larger towns 45 minutes or more away, so those were rare excursions with my parents. The Kinks were quite obscure then because of their having been banned from playing in the US, and when I became smitten with their song ‘Victoria’ – which was the first thing I ever heard of theirs – I found the single locally but had to wait until my mom was going into Lynchburg to try to find the album. ‘Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)’. There was a record store run by blacks in Lynchburg that knew their stuff: Country, Soul, Folk, Bluegrass, Gospel, Blues, Jazz and Rock’n’Roll. Small and packed to the gills, but they had several Kinks albums, one of which said “An orgy for ears” on the cover, which my mother took exception to! That store was the first connoisseur type record shop I was ever in.

I mostly skipped singles – “45s” we called them – and went straight to albums. But my few early 45s were tremendously important, and I played them over and over. The Kinks: ‘Victoria’/’Brainwashed’; Leon Russell: ‘Roll Away the Stone’/’Hummingbird’; The Guess Who: ‘No Time’/’Proper Stranger’; Elephant’s Memory: ‘Mongoose’/’I Couldn’t Dream’; The Tee-Set: ‘Ma Belle Amie’/’Angels Coming in the Holy Night’. That’s an awesome collection right there, man!!! One thing about growing up in rural Virginia at that time, the two AM radio stations we received clearly that played rock, also played black pop music and Country. It was a wide variety of stuff. I heard all those singles I just mentioned on AM radio in 1970!

Were you or any other members part of any other bands before forming The Ophelias?

Well yes. All of us except Terry Von Blankers – I think The Ophelias were his first band.

But if you mean bands that had signed recording contracts and played original music, then by far the standout would be our second drummer, Geoffrey Armor, who was in the original MX-80 Sound in Bloomington, Indiana! Tremendous band! He moved west to San Francisco with them. We were his second signed band.

The only other band I was previously in was several years before, while I was in college – a quite successful dance band that played all-British covers for high school dances, university frat parties, and military bases. We fuckin’ rocked! And made good money. Beatles, Kinks, Who, Stones, Bowie, Zep, Roxy, Fleetwood, Queen, Bad Company, Free, Wings, Elton, et cetera. ‘Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey’. You get the picture.

We recruited our third drummer (Edward Benton) from a San Francisco band called Bad Habit. They played out and were quite good. No records. Our second guitarist Keith Dion was in a New Zealand band called Ponsonby DCs. They had a record and were on the telly down there.

“Classic Oafs lineup” member David Immerglück, of course, deserves special mention. He was gigging in the Bay Area from an early age, and engineering at a studio called Polymorph. You’d have to ask him his band chronology…I know he was sitting in on albums, “doing sessions” or whatever from the mid-80s at least, and he joined Monks of Doom while he was with us. The Ophelias were his first real band, first signed band. And of course, after The Ophelias he joined Camper van Beethoven, then John Hiatt, then Counting Crows, with whom he’s been for ages. He’s always playing with various bands and individuals. The Monks of Doom continue to put out records occasionally. He’s in The Third Mind with Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and Michael Jerome (Richard Thompson) and their first album has a killer cover of the 13th Floor Elevators’ ‘Reverberation’ with our Davy on lead vocals! You can read about dozens of involvements on his wiki page.

What led to the formation of The Ophelias? Did you have a certain concept when starting the band?

I began playing guitar and writing on the instrument in 1978. Self-taught from records and a chord dictionary. I was writing songs from the get-go – I had so much music to get out of me. It’s why I picked up the guitar, to let the songs out. I recognized I needed to become good enough to get my songs across, and my tutors were the Beatles, Hammill, and all my rock heroes, but also the giants of the British Folk Revival of the 1960s and onward. I learned Bert Jansch songs like ‘Reynardine’ and ‘Nobody’s Bar’ and ‘Wayward Child’. Roy Harper, Nick Drake. I could sound like Syd Barrett and I kind of specialized in him for a while, and I’ve performed many acoustic Peter Hammill songs, like ‘Time For A Change,’ which became a mainstay in my set.

Point being, I learned from masters on the turntable, and four years in, I could play some rather complicated guitar stuff, and my own songs passably well. When I began playing live in cafes and restaurants in mid-1982 it was obvious to the people in charge of hiring that I was an unusually good player and singer, with an unusual repertoire. By the end of 1983 I had played around 200 paying solo gigs and was known as The Syd of The City, haha! But really no one paid attention to solo acoustic players out west at that time. It was a stepping stone for me anyway, for my songwriting and my guitar skills. I was born to rock! I was ready to put a band together and electrify!

I should say that I am currently – with the Fifth Ophelia, Carl Salbacka, my tech-savvy right hand man since 2016 – releasing several albums which cover this early period of my music career. Rough early recordings of dubious origin! ‘The Voyage of the Dark-Eyed Sailor’ was just released on Bandcamp January 1st, and there should be another one called ‘BrowBeat’ in a couple of months, and several others this year. On it!

As far as a “concept?” Well, yes, in that I would most likely provide most of the material. I didn’t set out specifically to find another songwriter, or even songwriting partner, though I wasn’t opposed to finding either…I set out trying to find good players, with a four-piece guitar-driven rock band in mind. I knew I already had a bunch of excellent songs. I’m primarily an “ideas man.” I had settled on The Ophelias as the name, and advertised on musicians-wanted pages with “The Ophelias seek guitarist.” But it was just a name that, to me, conveyed psychedelia and literacy. There was certainly no strategy to purvey some sort of Shakespearean theater or anything. One of the songs I suggested at the start was John’s Children’s (Marc Bolan’s) ‘Midsummernights Scene’ from 1967…yeah, a certain implied element of Psychedelic Ophelia was there from the start, but that was the extent of it, to make use of Hamlet the play’s profundities, and Ophelia’s good looks and strange behavior as a psychedelic calling card; and throw in some Bowie/Bolan glam androgyny – since chances were the band would have several guys at least, and yes, though we first offered the drum chair to a beautiful longhaired blond female, we ended up as an all-male band, to further excite and confuse everyone, haha.

Oh, and lest you think otherwise, Shakespeare is most definitely not hip to stupid-ass, anti-intellectual Americans, teenaged, twentysomething or otherwise. The vast majority of the rock audience in America didn’t know who Ophelia was, let alone whiff a concept! I recall reading Ray Davies said, when asked why he chose The Kinks as a name, he said, “Because it’s something people don’t want.” Funny that our fantastic and fantastically “classical” name would prove somewhat the same: something people don’t want! (if it has anything to do with Shakespeare!)

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. for instance, calling it the “song of the year”

What do you remember from working on your debut album? The record was self-released, right? Did you send it to a lot of stations and labels?

Actually, our debut album was not self-released. Its catalog number is SWR 0004, which translates as Strange Weekend Records – fourth album. Strange Weekend was indeed a 2-man operation (Artie West and Keith Dion) from 1985 to 1987. Based in San Francisco, they put out two compilations of New Zealand bands, and five things in total. Yes, they’re about as indie and fly-by-night as it gets.

Briefly, here’s the story. In May of 1985 the original lineup of The Ophelias entered Tom Mallon Studios, SF, to record three-songs at our own expense. I think it was a total of 6 hours at $15 per hour, super quick, super brief. We were well rehearsed. The purpose was to have a pro-sounding cassette to give to clubs and help get gigs. That exercise completed, our drummer Ruben, in a heroin haze, fell off a ladder and broke his arm, and decided that he would, without telling anyone, rip off his landlord and abscond to Florida. The other three of us were left with mouths open, thinking “what the fuck!” We had been right on the verge!

We didn’t immediately know how to react, so we delayed to see if Ruben would come to his senses and reappear. We took a couple of months break. Our guitarist Sam gave our 3-song cassette to a local scenester named Mark Zanandrea, and Mark loved one of the songs, ‘Mister Rabbit’. It turned out he was putting a compilation album together called ‘SF Unscene’ – all unsigned bands – and suddenly in September this compilation was released, ‘Mister Rabbit’ getting the lion’s share of attention from press and radio. Zanandrea knew how to push it, not just in SF, but onto underground and college radio stations all over the US. It took several months, of course, but ‘Mister Rabbit’ became, in the spring of 1986, a pretty big deal in the national underground, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. for instance, calling it the “song of the year.” In May, SPIN magazine had The Ophelias picture above a little review of the compilation, which only mentioned us by name.

Spurred on by these events, we had conducted some drummer auditions, and ex-MX-80 Sound drummer Geoffrey Armour was most impressive with his chops and enthusiasm. He joined and we played our first gig 19 February 1986. We were the headliner and the place was packed. That’s the kind of buzz that was created by “Mister Rabbit” on vinyl, and rehearsal-cassettes of ours getting played on Bay Area college radio. I say this not to brag, but to communicate how quickly we rose to the top of the local underground in SF. We were the talk of the town, and our first 8 shows were wildly successful. Indie record labels were taking notice – we knew record label approaches were in the offing. We kept our mouths shut and our heads down.

Then Sam Babbitt – the second Oaf! – inexplicably decided to leave us in May to play with a wannabe-Replacements act, with…wait for it…Mark Zanandrea and the blond drummer girl who had almost become the third Ophelia in December of 1984! Very disconcerting…but it was at just this moment that Strange Weekend Records approached us, offering to fund our debut album. They were very Johnny-on-the-spot, and Keith Dion’s New Zealand accent and manners, along with their full-speed-ahead attitude despite Sam’s departure, convinced the three of us to take the deal. The plan was: “Mister Rabbit” and the other two songs recorded at Tom Mallon Studios would go on the album, saving money and cashing in on “Mister Rabbit”’s popularity. We would use Dancing Dog 8-track studio in Emeryville, a comparatively new and inexpensive one-man (David Bryson, later of the Counting Crows) studio, saving more money still. And we would start recording immediately, as a three-piece – me playing all the guitars – and we’d audition for a new lead guitarist, if necessary, and as we went! The alternative was no album and grinding to a halt, loss of momentum, auditions, no live shows for a period of time, and who knows what else? Strange Weekend Records would cover all the studio time, tape costs, mastering, manufacture, and distribution of the record housed in a black and white gatefold album jacket, and we would owe them nothing. They would, however, pocket all the profit from the first 4000 albums. They said, “yeah, our New Zealand compilation albums are going gangbusters, and we’ve got JEM as our distributor! We know what we’re doing!” It’s unlikely they did know what they were doing, but neither did we. We had no money or connections at the time, had just lost our charismatic lead guitarist, and this alternative was definitely a rung up the ladder – a record! It wasn’t a bad deal in the end, it kept us advancing, it impressed those who heard it, and though Strange Weekend couldn’t really effectively get it in the stores nationwide, let alone internationally, and it never went to a second pressing, and they went out of business when we left them the next year, it advanced us a few important steps. It should be said that more than a few fans consider this record to be our masterpiece, several critics writing it was the best debut album by a west coast band in many, many years.

As far as the contents of the record: it had 8 songs, 40+ minutes of music. 3 songs by the first lineup recorded at Tom Mallon Studio, SF. 5 songs recorded at Dancing Dog, Emeryville. 3 of those entirely by the 3-piece Oafs, and 2 incorporating additional electric guitar by Keith Dion of Strange Weekend Records.

What did the early gigs look like?

We headlined our first three shows, and they were very well attended. Small clubs but full. Then we got several important opening slots at the much bigger I-Beam on Haight Street at Ashbury. Green on Red, Gene Loves Jezebel, and Chris Isaac in short order. ‘Locals Outshine Stars’ was one headline. Sam Babbitt, our first guitarist, was a charismatic SF scenester at that time. You may not know exactly what people are saying about you, because they rarely say it to your face, but I know what they said about Sam…he was a very popular dude. Unlike me, he was known as an underground SF hipster. Unlike me, he had a particularly outgoing personality. He brought in a lot of people who thought, “Well if Sam’s in it, it’s going to be great!” All four of us were pretty darn good out of the gate, both in terms of skill and stage presence. Our ‘Green Girl’ live performance album which covers this period, proves it. We rocked, looked good, and were certainly like no one else!

What were the circumstances behind signing to Rough Trade?

Rough Trade Records, having a corporate branch in San Francisco at that time, were particularly aware of the buzz around town about The Ophelias. I’ll never know what was said behind closed doors of course, but I’m sure at the time they didn’t want to miss out on the new SF darlings, if for no other reason than to avoid the potential of embarrassment should SST or 4AD or someone else swoop in and sign us out from under their noses, and we went on to make big money. So they made a good pitch for us, stressing their integrity and that all rights to the music (including the tapes) would revert to us five years after the release date of any record, that kind of thing. They were known for being “artist friendly” and it was implied that our albums would be released – or at least distributed – in Europe. The negotiators were all nice, polite and British. The recording budgets proposed for three albums were pitifully small, true, but subject to revision upward should something sell like hotcakes.

To be honest I was a psilocybin-eating stoner who couldn’t be bothered, as long as we were putting records out with regularity. Our lawyer said the contract looked all above board and decent enough. We signed the three-album deal.

‘The Night of Halloween’ EP wasn’t part of the deal. Its release on Rough Trade Records transpired during the “feeling out” process. An uncle of our bassist Terry von Blanker generously paid for recording costs and maybe the sleeve printing. To be honest I don’t recall who paid for which parts of the manufacture, but Rough Trade covered most, if not all, manufacturing, and all distribution and marketing. And they did get it out there, well in time for Halloween 1987, and got it played and reviewed all over the place. Tremendously larger amount of press than Strange Weekend was able to garner for the first LP (though they got us some good stuff). Rough Trade really seemed behind the EP.

‘The Night of Halloween’ / ‘Overture to Anaconda’ / ‘Wicked Annabella’ was issued before the two albums, right?

Yes. To be clear:

‘The Ophelias’ – Strange Weekend Records, SWR 0004 – 25 March 1987
‘The Night of Halloween’ – Rough Trade Records, Rough US 28 – 4 September 1987
‘Oriental Head’ – Rough Trade Records, Rough US 44 – 20 May 1988
‘The Big O’ – Rough Trade Records, Rough US 55 – 1 March 1989

What’s the story behind ‘Oriental Head’ and ‘The Big O’?

They’re good, adventurous albums, done on a shoestring budget. These are the records with David immerglück, who’s a world class guitarist and a gregarious, likable, extremely talented, extremely personable fellow. It’s our “classic lineup” who played by far the most gigs, did the most touring, had the most fun, and made The Ophelias, for a moment in time, a “player”… if only in the American university rock-o-sphere.

‘Oriental Head’ was made immediately after David joined, and there are places online where you can read his comments on his euphoria about the album, which he still considers one of the highlights of his career. The budget was tiny, I believe $3000. Consequently we chose a studio called Emeryville Recording which was the cheapest 16-track around, and had some technical issues, as it turned out. Davy not only played like a motherfucker, but he basically took over the en-gineering of the record at a few crucial junctures when our musical ambitions kind of overmatched the owner-operator, Randall Rood. We also used David’s Polymorph 8-track studio for one track, ‘This is My Advice to You,’ which came out spectacularly well, for free! We won the lottery with Davy, there’s no getting around it. Oriental Head ended up playing like a song cycle. We had no intention of making a concept album, but a pervasive atmosphere of heavy, heady, sexy psychedelia dovetailed with the album package artwork and came across as a “complete piece”. The Rough Trade spreadsheets show ‘Oriental Head’ to be our highest charting album, going to number one at a bunch of college radio stations around the country, top 20 at something like 150.

Slightly less successful in terms of charting and sales – but only slightly less so – was ‘The Big O,’ which we made with $5000 back at David Bryson’s now 16-track Dancing Dog. Though it’s the favorite Oafs album of many, (and I think it slightly outsold ‘Oriental Head’) it has a less warm and fuzzy vibe overall, it’s more a collection of separate songs. Personally, I think it has several of our best-realized recordings – ‘Holy Glow,’ ‘Glory Hog’ (on the CD only), ‘Pretty Green Ice-Box Eyes’ – but also a couple kinda half-baked quasi-failures. The Big O is a bit famous for its round album jacket, as well, though after the first 3000 another 5000 came packaged in a normal square. It was also the first of ours to be on Compact Disc as well as LP and Cassette, and the CD has two extra tracks.

Without us knowing, Rough Trade was already in a death spiral by late 1988, which in retrospect explained things we found inexplicable at the time. Why aren’t our records coming out in Europe, or at least Britain, where Rough Trade is based!? Why is Rough Trade not effectively proselytizing on our behalf to the national booking agencies and otherwise giving us tour support? Why does it seem like their enthusiasm has cooled? The Ophelias were a strange band, impossible to pigeonhole and categorize. We were just different from everyone else. I think they were nonplussed by the Sixties and Seventies hippie aspects of our sound and image, but mostly they had just run out of cash and were already contemplating how to get out of America.

Upon completion of ‘The Big O’ we were totally rarin’ to go! We certainly thought we would be making a third LP for the label in late 1989 with a contractually-obligated $15,000. We thought we would be going on a national tour supporting the fabulous Crime & The City Solution! Things looked grand!

Then it all went south.

What followed for the band?

Crime & The City Solution stayed on in Europe where ‘The Bride Ship’ was excelling, and ditched the American portion of their tour. I have an apologetic postcard from Mick Harvey explaining the situation. He was an Ophelias fan and had lobbied their label MUTE to have us along. So we scrambled to cobble two west coast mini-tours from Vancouver to LA in the late Spring. Edward, our drummer, who had a son to support, decided his job as an electrician, contracting with the US Navy at their bay area shipyards, was too valuable to lose touring for peanuts. Alain Lucchesi heroically stepped in at the last minute and proved himself to be our heaviest and cleverest drummer yet. Returning from one little ‘Big O’ tour on which I introduced several new songs, we recorded four newbies on a DAT machine at our rehearsal studio. (Three of these – ‘Anywhere You Look,’ ‘Capitol,’ ‘Pretty Girl’ – have recently been released.) We were the entertainment at Rough Trade’s Anniversary Party in June of 1989 (having no idea it was to be their last) and we played several other great gigs on our home turf through August. Early September Rough Trade called me in for a meeting and I was informed we were being dropped – the option for the third Rough Trade Ophelias album would not be underwritten. As one of Rough Trade San Francisco’s first signings we were, I believe, the first band dropped, but it happened to the entire roster one-by-one, though a couple of bands got to release contractually-obligated albums in 1990 (like Mazzy Star, and Souled American).

Given our sudden label-less status and other frustrations, our Davy could not be blamed for accepting Camper Van Beethoven’s invite to tour the world with them as an auxiliary member, particularly with their one hit (‘Pictures of Matchstick Men’ by Status Quo) riding high in the charts. It was a sad, but seemingly inevitable demise, for the O-so-promising band named for Hamlet’s foxy, doomed heroine.

The Ophelias are not for everyone – to state the obvious – but they do fascinate people, particularly Europeans at a good clip – those willing to take more than a cursory audio-glance. They have an old-school, old-world complexity which may require a few concentrated listens before opening up, but the Oaf’s are, arguably, just as their fans often lament, “The greatest band you’ve never heard of.” Certainly they are one of the most interesting bands of the second half of the Eighties.

We are all extremely excited about the upcoming gatefold double-LP at 45rpm of ‘Bare Bodkin’. How long did you work on the album and would you like to speak about the songs featured on the album?

Getting ‘Bare Bodkin’ into the public realm has been a long labor of love. Work on it has happened intermittently since about 1995 actually, but for most of that time it was an idea only. In 2015 I knew it was time to get it done, and non-stop work commenced towards a ‘Bare Bodkin’ audio-visual presentation to be released on YouTube. And it was released on YouTube on 23 April 2017. It wouldn’t have happened without my partner-in-crime Carl Salbacka, now known as The Fifth Oaf. He is a computer expert with experience editing both audio and visual files, and just a smart, musical, groovy dude besides. I gathered and manipulated the music and visual art materials before Carl came aboard. Since it was essentially a soundtrack with images overlaid to illustrate or enhance the music – most of it band photographs and paintings – I had to get the old photos from storage, scan them, make choices, and choreograph each of the 15 chosen songs. Then Carl and I would sit down with his computer programs and try to make it real. So it was time-consuming in the extreme.

‘Bare Bodkin’ the CD, was released on Independent Project Records on 25 February 2022, with the double-LP now slated for Spring 2023. The CD packaging is superb, and we’re hoping for a spectacular gatefold LP package, a package which will be considerably different from the CD.

The song selections and sequencing is exactly the same as the audio-visual ‘Bare Bodkin’. Songs come from all our 1980s releases, but additionally there are 5 previously unissued tracks, 4 at the beginning and 1 at the end. The previously unissued songs are things we completed for our fourth album (third for Rough Trade) which didn’t happen as has been discussed before. Some really excellent unissued stuff! The other 9 tracks are artistic highlights from each released record.

Rewardingly, the CD has received a very warm response from several important critics, particularly in Europe, our spiritual home. Shindig out of England gave it 5/5 stars and we’re hoping for more of the same from some other publications, while the iron is hot! 

Are you planning to play any gigs?

There are no plans. Unfortunately, that would be a whole new mountain to climb logistically. David is very busy with Counting Crows and his many other projects, and those entities are trying to make up for time lost to the pandemic years.

It is much more likely that Davy and I will make some new recordings. There are a ton of Ophelias’ songs yet to be recorded, I can assure you, as good or better than what has come before!

What else currently occupies your life?

Great literature, music and film continue to be my mainstays, my close calls with beauty. I live in the country in a quiet, peaceful place, where I can walk and be in nature. My youngest daughter is about to turn 17 and she doesn’t enjoy hanging out with her old man like she used to, but we do stuff together. Fifth Oaf Carl lives far away from me now, but we continue to work on this Greater-Medford Music Project which will continue to chug out several albums a year. (And, yes, they’re just on Bandcamp now and for the foreseeable future, but we hope other CDs and vinyl can happen eventually.) In two weeks I’m going to be singing an Incredible String Band song for an album being put together by a San Francisco contemporary of mine. I’m still involved with the arts.

Is there any unreleased material that we can expect to hear in the near future?

Yes. Carl and I continue to develop and release albums curating the music in my archives – almost all of it never issued in any form. I have three Bandcamp locations – The Ophelias, HighHorse, Leslie Medford – where there is exciting music to be heard, no overlap between these three locations.

‘Bare Bodkin’ is the best album to start with to catch the flavor of my work. It’s professional, and beautiful, if I do say so myself. Rockin’, multifaceted, adventurous, literary. But onward from that there are 4 more essential Ophelias releases which take you places that even our 1980s vinyl does not. Obviously, I like it when people collect our 80s vinyl, but streaming those albums on Spotify et al is not the way to go except in an emergency, hehe. Turntable, speakers, sweetspot, volume, that is totally acceptable!

But here are the four albums beyond ‘Bare Bodkin’ which Carl and I have prepared, and which I recommend for a true and deeper understanding of The Ophelias. They can all be found at Bandcamp/The Ophelias.
1- ‘Green Girl,’ a live performance collection covering 1984-1987, the pre-David Immerglück period.
2- ‘Thus spake Psilocybin,’ a live performance collection spanning our career. It’s the most bootleg quality of these, has many wild extempore pieces, and will blow your mind.
3- ‘O List!’, a live performance collection covering 1987-89, the Davy Immerglück period.
4- ‘Out of Thy Star,’ the companion piece to ‘Bare Bodkin,’ includes all the other essential studio recordings not on that collection, including some never-issued material and many alternate (better) mixes.

At Bandcamp/HighHorse is that band’s ‘Get Off!’ demo-album of 1990. A horse of a different color, this is wild Hard Rock like from the 1970’s! James Juhn is the lead guitarist throughout. James was behind the Low Flying Aircraft album of 1987 with David Cross, rock violinist with King Crimson, and Keith Tippett, experimental jazz pianist. So you know he’s got the goods. This album shows off Juhn’s rockin’est side. You just may be very, very surprised at how good this is! This is the band I put together after The Ophelias, which also features the last Oafs drummer, Alain Lucchesi.

At Bandcamp/Leslie Medford is everything else, exclusive of my work in The Ophelias and HighHorse. This is where most of Carl’s and my 2023 activity will be concentrated. Several collections have already been presented here, with many more to come:
1- ‘Leslie Medford’s Charm Offensive,’ a mostly Hard Rock collection of tracks with various musicians. A side project.
2- ‘The Heaven Insects,’ a folky, Acid Folk collection with myself on vocals and acoustic guitars, with a violinist; contemporaneous with HighHorse. My acoustic side.
3- ‘Pict by The Blue Druids,’ a five song collection. The songs are by my friend James Wright, who also wrote ‘Leah Hirsig’ for The Ophelias. A side project.
4- ‘The Voyage of the Dark-Eyed Sailor,’ a collection of my earliest recordings, 1978-1981.

 

What are some of the most important players that influenced your own style and what in particular did they employ in their playing that you liked?

My music collection is huge because I have enjoyed so, so much music! To limit my answer to the absolute top of the heap, I’ll only mention the three bands that utterly captured my imagination to the point of obsession at the time in my life when I was most vulnerable to hero worship. Before I name them I need to stress that I lived an isolated existence and there were only records. No magazines, no film or video, and I was too young to go to shows. I was a little kid, I shopped for records at places my mom went shopping for essentials. There was only radio playing the singles, albums with a full set of tracks, and the record covers. NO OTHER INFORMATION! My first obsession was the Kinks, and I had no compatriot in this; no other acquaintance of mine entered with me into the Kinks’ nostalgic, sentimental – but totally swingin’ and rockin’ – Sixties and Seventies England. The song ‘Victoria’ (I bought the 7” single first, then its album ‘Arthur’) was my real gateway into rock’n’roll. From there I went backwards with them all the way to 1964, but ‘Something Else’ and ‘Village Green’ just completely transported me! The opening number on ‘Village Green,’ ‘Do You Remember Walter?’ is an example of a song I would play over and over and over. What kind of Appalachian child does that!? A song of total English nostalgia! Of course it was the MUSIC, the melodies and instrumental hooks which fascinated me, even more than the lyrics, but still it is a Past-Worshipping song. The Kinks hit all the buttons for me. Good melodies, nice vocals, youth, brothers, kindness, respect and empathy for one’s elders and one’s country, and an Anglophilia and Britishness which was my racial inheritance. (Never mind that in reality they were a scruffy, squabbling, fornicating clan!) The Kinks 1964-1976 (importantly, their British period, not their American one after) will never be supplanted as transcendently important and precious to me. I love them to death, and their music moves me greatly still, in some ways even more so now, as the suggested nostalgia of their songs has – as I’ve aged – flipped over and become totally real.

Then there is Keith Emerson. I had a few friends along with me now, as the Prog groups of the Seventies cast a magic spell of virtuosity and High Artistic endeavor. These bands dovetailed perfectly with my Methodist upbringing, with the classical music in my home, and the serious literature I was beginning to read in my adolescence. The Great Eight of Prog! (1-The Nice [1968-1970] / Emerson, Lake & Palmer [1970-1976]; 2-Van der Graaf Generator [1969-1978] / Peter Hammill [1971-1980]; 3-King Crimson [1969-1974]; 4-Yes [1969-1977]; 5-Genesis [1970-1975]; 6-Gentle Giant [1970-1977]; 7-Premiata Forneria Marconi [1972-1977]; 8-Henry Cow [1973-1979] / Art Bears [1978-1981]) along with Jethro Tull, Refugee, Pink Floyd, Gong, Kayak, Magma, Camel, Collegium Musicum, Triumverat, on and on (meaning the real Prog shit!)…well, I love this period of music, and real Prog – complex and classical (and analog!) – remains my overall favorite genre of music to this day. But back to Keith Emerson! He and ELP (and The Nice) were another obsession that came close to matching The Kinks. That I had friends with which to share this heavy music, on everyone’s first monster stereo systems, gave ELP’s self-titled debut album, ‘Tarkus,’ ‘Trilogy,’ and ‘Brain Salad Surgery’ the opportunity to BLOW MY MIND out of this world and into the next. I’ve never come back! Melody, complexity, virtuosity, Lake’s beautiful voice, hard rock, folk, jazz, classical, avant garde, analog-electronica, showmanship, adventure, European classiness…at the top of their game, ELP had it all!

In 1976 I made another discovery on my own: Van der Graaf Generator. Whereas ELP, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Tull, and, among my set, Gentle Giant, were all a shared taste, Van der Graaf’s first period (the pre-‘Godbluff’ albums up through ‘Pawn Hearts’) were completely unknown to us! I took a chance on ‘Godbluff’ one day (because of the album cover), and ‘Still Life’ the next, and it changed my life forever! Of course I immediately bought all their stuff from the beginning. Van der Graaf Generator has been my all-time favorite band since that mid-1976 day, and Peter Hammill the most fascinating rock musician of all. The vocal reach, the grasping intellectuality of the lyrics and the musical constructions, the churchy organ, the insane or beauteous sax and flute, the start-stop out-of-time-signature Prog of it! My total sweet spot had/has been found! How enormously satisfying it has been that they came back and still delivered the goods in 2005! All the other great prog bands tanked and embarrassed themselves eventually. (It should be stated: not Art Bears or Gentle Giant, who both retired gracefully and attempted no comebacks.) Only Van der Graaf Generator came back just as ferocious, uncompromising and brilliant as before! Solo, Peter Hammill’s standard has slipped despite genius stuff here and there, and David Jackson’s departure from Van der Graaf has lessened their charm, but the 3-piece version still mostly kicks ass! No other Prog group has kicked such ass since Art Bears retired in 1981, and Hammill and Banton were doing so in their 60’s and into their 70’s, for godsakes!!! The 1969-1980 Van der Graaf Generator period (including the Peter Hammill solo albums of those years) is the absolute toppermost of the poppermost for me! Complexity, intellectuality, melody, outstanding vocals, doom and gloom musical heaviness, their output is up there with the greatest Art humans have created.

These three groups most embody what it takes to turn all of Leslie Medford’s inner strobe-lights full on!

Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.

I stand with Greta Thunberg. And if I could live out my life anywhere, it would be in Norway with my books and music collection intact, and your sound system, Klemen!

Klemen Breznikar

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