There's nothing quite like embarrassing yourself in front of people you look up to. Wouldn't you know that after hesitating to interview Joan of Arc, my feeble attempt at doing so would end up with me feeling kinda stupid. After their commendable set played to a crowd of about 20 people in Columbus, Ohio, and a few goofy covers as an encore, I approached Tim Kinsella and asked for a moment of Joan of Arc's time.

Since it was too loud inside the venue, we decided to head outside and do the interview out there. But outside it was 30 degrees, so we decided on either sitting inside their van, or inside the car that, somehow, we thought was theirs and they thought was ours (yet in fact was neither of ours). So, after five minutes of trying to decide which to sit in, we, of course, picked the car. Next we all stood there dumbly waiting for someone to unlock the car doors, and when I finally realized what was going on, it was too late to salvage the situation, and we all felt quite silly. The interview that ensued, with Tim and bandmate Jeremy Boyle, was incredibly awkward and scattered on my part, and let's just say I've done better. But at least the boys did their best to provide me with some interesting insight into the phenomenon known as Joan of Arc.

Did you record your new CD yet?

T: We're about 3/4 done with it.

J: We have five songs that we did with Casey Rice again, we did it at Electrical Audio.

T: Steve Albini's new compound, 40,000 square feet.

J: He wasn't there, he was at Abbey Road in London recording the new Page and Plant.

T: But I was there for the Albini family.. We recorded on Christmas day cause we had to finish the last mixing there, and so it was just me and Natalie [Natalie is Tim's girlfriend] and Casey, and the Albini family Christmas happening in the next room, it was kinda funny. Steve Albini's girlfriend, heather, was opening her gift when I walked through, and she was like, "Don't mind me, I'm just opening my present from Jimmy Page," and I'm like, "Oh, okay..." Then I walked back through a minute later and she was reading something out loud about wizards and lions and stuff. Merlin.

Is the new album different from what you've previously done? Did you try anything new?

T: No.

J: Most of the songs we played tonight, all but three, are on our new album. So, it's very similar, I think it's just that maybe we had more of an idea of what we were doing. The songs may have come together a little bit more, that's all.

There seemed to be more singing in your set -- is there more singing on the new album?

T: Yeah, there is, actually. That wasn't necessarily intentional -- it wasn't intentional that there was more singing on this one, but it wasn't intentional that there was less singing on the first one.

J: We really didn't think about things very much.

T: I don't think we've done enough yet to know if we're doing something different yet. I hope we don't get to some point where it's like, "Oh, let's try something different," cause that would mean that we've been doing the same thing, over and over.

You spent a lot of time on the last album putting all the songs together.... Is the layout of the songs as important this time?

J: I would say that we probably aren't going to have some of the opportunities that we had last time to sit around and arrange it, because last time we were able to dump everything into Casey's computer and do all the sequencing and all that stuff on computer. We were able to put everything where we wanted, and add beginnings or ends, put a little of this there, and so on... And we're not going to have that this time to do, so I think that it will be just as important but done in a different way. The songs will all have relations to each other and it will be really important which order they're in, but it won't necessarily be as obvious that it's important as it was in the other one, where it was obvious that it was important because this part of the song would be here and reoccur somewhere else. Those things won't happen.

And didn't you change a lot of the songs to make them go together better?

T: I think the last record seemed odd and scattered to a lot of people, although it felt completely natural to us, and I think this will seem less odd and scattered. It will just be song-song-song-song... It might be more user-friendly. Well, that's not a good way to put it. It will just seem less fragmented than the first one.

J: Yeah I think that this time the songs were a little more complete to us, and it didn't take all the ties and so forth, and all the different additions we made and all the segments that we made to fit the certain areas, they didn't really seem as necessary.

Is the new album the first thing that you are going to have coming out?

J: That will be coming out in April.

T: Well, the Dianogah split seven-inch will be out before that.

J: We're doing a split with them and it's just a matter of finishing it up and it will be out. The recording is on it's way, it's been started but not finished.

T: We kinda record in pieces, because of school and work and stuff, we can never take one big block of time to record, it's always over a long period of time.

Are you going to finish the album with Casey?

J: We've done it in two sections -- one has always been with Casey and one is always with our friend Elliot [Dicks]. He had his studio in his loft and he just moved out of there and into a studio called Truckstop, so we did part of it in his loft, we've done part of it at Truckstop, and now we'll do the rest of it with him at Truckstop.

Hmmm... What else should I ask?

T: Why the dumb covers?

Sure. Why the dumb covers?

T: [laughs] I wish I knew.

J: How often do you hear a band cover Oasis? Oasis, Danzig, Van Halen and Slayer?

(At this point, my friend Maggie Bush asks her favorite band question....)
What were you guys into in the '80s?

T: I had a Whitesnake t-shirt.

J: I went to a Bon Jovi concert in sixth grade.

T: I met Megadeth once. I was wearing a Metallica t-shirt, cause I wasn't expecting to run into them in the mall, and I was superfucking embarrassed to be wearing this Metallica t-shirt, you know? Because of the bad blood and all... And they were all autographing my baseball hat, with the mesh on the back.

And how old were you?

T: I was like... 26 at the time.

Umm... Okay...

T: And Dave Mustaine, I was following him around and making a nuisance of myself, and he's like, "Man, kid, I don't know if I want you around. You like Metallica, those guys are ugly."

And Jeremy...? What is your '80s deal?

J: My '80s deal? Oh, I don't know, it was pretty scattered. I went to see Bon Jovi in sixth grade. That was the first concert I went to, my mom took me. In seventh grade I saw the Ramones. I did a little bit of a shift going into junior high, you know.

T: Yeah, that's when I turned punk rock. I saw Def Leppard and Europe, and Van Halen with Hagar, it was great. With my mom.

Geez, it always comes back to metal... Next question. What are all of you doing outside of the band, in terms of side-projects? Tim, aren't you doing something solo?

T: Yeah... I can't decide about it. I don't know; it's kind of an embarrassing, stupid thing. It would probably be a lot better if I just introduced the songs to Joan of Arc and let those four do what they want to do. They'd end up sounding a lot better than what I would do myself, so.... I can't decide at all. Natalie knows. She said I'm going to be the next Yanni, when she heard the stuff I had recorded. Jeremy makes music in school, kinda.

Kinda?

J: I make things that make music themselves. I'm a sculpture student and I build machines and things that perform music through sounds, or whatever you want to call it, on their own. Turn them on and let them go. I just made one thing that takes Bach's Musical Offering as a source of sound, and creates through mechanical... Well, it takes Musical Offering, which was a composition of Bach written in a tradition where he was called upon by King Fredrick of Prussia, who presentedhim with a theme. He created a three-part fugue on the spot from that theme. Then he went back home and created this huge piece called the Musical Offering, but then King Fredrick over time exaggerated what had happened and said that Bach performed this eight-part fugue on the spot, which is physically impossible for one person. So that's what my machine does, it performs an eight-part fugue using the Musical Offering as a source. I don't really have any control over what it does in the outcome, it just sort of does it.

T: I want to see this interview in print just to see how you spelled "fugue." Fugue, fugue, fugue!

Don't worry, I'll look it up!

T: Erik is in a band named Brass Knuckles for Tough Guys, and Mike is in a band called American Football. And Sam plays guitar, all day, every day. In his room.

J: [laughs] Or with the Green Man.

T: Yeah, or with this homeless guy that lives down the street named the Green Man.

J: Some nights it might be better not to ask Joan of Arc any questions....

T: [laughs] About anything.

After this, a bunch of random discussions ensued about the Sky Corvair, Oasis, South Park, and, of course, the Spice Girls. The interview finally ended when Mike Kinsella walked up to the van to give Tim the money from the show. He overheard my friend Austin complaining that his feet were cold, Mike overheard... at which point he (jokingly?) remarked, "So why don't you quit bitching and get the fuck out of here?" So, we did. The end.