GENRE: Garage Rock
HOMETOWN: Nashville, TN
ARTISTIC APPROACH: Making art within time and resource limitations.
www.pujoldotcom.com
Out of Nashville outfit MEEMAW, PUJOL was created as a 3-4 piece side, then main project of Daniel Pujol. “I’ve done [music] since I was about 15, and it keeps on working out to where I can keep doing it. I learn other things in between the pockets of me doing music, making records and touring,” he explains. Those ‘things’ include bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science/international studies, working at Rocketown teen center, packing records at Third Man Records, and keeping a steady girlfriend with whom he raises two rabbits (perhaps the basis for “Black Rabbit,” produced by Jack White).
Since 2010, PUJOL has released several 7-inch singles, a live album (Live at Third Man Records), an EP, and two full-length studio albums, including the latest, United States of Being (Saddle Creek). The lyrics and musical arrangements are his own.
“I think that it is a compulsion that I have, to create things. It is a way for me to take in a lot of stimuli, being alive, and it’s a good way for me to sort it out and order it and then remove it from myself completely, so I’m not so affected by it. I think it would make my head explode if I didn’t get it all out,” he states.
“I try to make up fun music, then I put real words to it. I just got done writing about interpersonal space between people, what can happen in that space and not really siding with either person in that space, as sort of a third party observer.”
In a live setting, PUJOL’s current lineup is the first to be open to the idea of using capos in order to get the droning or “one chord” sound that appears on recordings. Pujol plays rhythm guitar on a Fender Telecaster and an Epiphone EP60 amplifier with a removed speaker run through a 212 Marshall cabinet. Lead guitarist Brett Rosenberg plays a 1959 DC reissue Danelectro through an Ampeg 112 tube amplifier. Bass player Clayton Parker plays a short scale Fender Mustang through a 115 Acoustic transistor bass amp. Drummer Doni Schroader plays a Mercury 1960s drum kit with a tuned down Timbali as a rack tom that Pujol likes to play near live.
photo by Jonathan Kingsbury