Walter Salas-Humara – The man behind the Silos turns on his Radar gun
ND: So you turned a Florida theater into a recording studio.
WSH: Yeah; isn’t that great?
ND: When the president of RCA was let go, did they just turn loose most of his projects?
WSH: RCA is owned by a German conglomerate, and they basically were looking at the bottom line. They hadn’t made any money in, like, five years or so. So they just said, “Times up …. next.”
ND: That’s too bad, because it’s a really good record and I think had it come out now, it would have an easier time selling.
WSH: They really didn’t have such a hard time selling it. The record was doing pretty good. The company totally stopped. They fired the top guy and everything ceased.
ND: Do you think they had a clue as to how to market your music?
WSH: Once everything changed, no. Once everything changed, they didn’t even know who we were. If they wouldn’t have fired [Bob] Buziak [the man who signed the Silos to RCA], that would have been the most happenin’ label. Bob was a very smart guy.
ND: The RCA record is the last one you did with Bob Rupe. Anything you’d like to say about that?
WSH: Bob is a real talented guy.
ND: Just time to move on?
WSH: Yeah, time to move on, and we weren’t even living in the same town anymore.
ND: So the Silos are a steady group of people or just a revolving cast?
WSH: Pretty much a revolving group of people.
ND: You also formed the Vulgar Boatmen early in your career….
WSH: At that time it was just me and the only other original member who is still in the band, Carey Crane. It was us, a saxophone and a rhythm section. It was very different then — sort of post-punk, kind of like somewhere between Pere Ubu and the Bush Tetras. (laughing) More of a party or frat version of the Bush Tetras.
ND: And how about the Setters project?
WSH: That’s kind of a crazy story. Michael Hall wanted to play this Berlin music festival and as kind of a selling point, he told them off the top of his head that he had this band and that Walter Salas-Humara was in it and so was Alejandro Escovedo. When they asked him the name, he just came up with the Setters. So they said “cool” and booked him on. He called me up and I said, “Yeah, sure.” I’d hardly met Al; we literally just met at JFK in New York when we flew to Berlin. We really lucked out; we got this loft above these musicians and we rehearsed with their gear and borrowed it for the gig at this jazz club. It was really fun. Then this guy who owned a record store over there came up to us and said, “Hey, I really like you guys, I’d like to make a record with you.” So we’re figuring, “Right, who is this guy?”, but he came up with the money. We didn’t really write any songs for the record, so we just used songs we had. Then the guy sat on the record for a long time. We recorded it in March of ’92. He kept saying he was gonna put it out, but he never did. In the meantime, I recorded another Silos record with some of those songs. Then, of course, the Setters record comes out at the same time as the Silos record. (laughing) I thought, “This is a bummer,” but what can you do about it?
ND: Will there be another Setters record?
WSH: I’m always up for it, but only if we had enough time to really rehearse and really do it.
ND: What music are you into these days?
WSH: I like the Pram record. They’re sort of like Stereolab. I’m into Pavement; they’re probably my favorite band.
ND: That’s funny you brought that up, because in “Evangeline” from your new record, it sounds like you’re saying Pavement in the chorus.
WSH: Yeah, I saw them at Lollopalooza and they were great. Sonic Youth were great too; I like their new stuff.