"Ideas are Coming at You All the Time": An Interview With Pall Jenkins of Three Mile Pilot and Black Heart Procession

Scott Thill: Halloween 2001

Halloween in California tends to be a warm, amiable experience, certainly not the type of impending doom that Ray Bradbury described in The October Country. And a Halloween in San Diego's historical Gas Lamp District is even hotter -- there are nearly naked people partying their asses off on every corner.

Such was the vibe inside the Westin Hotel as a slew of bands -- including The Black Heart Procession, Rocket From the Crypt and El Vez -- geared up for the The Casbah Halloween Bash, a blowout free-for-all taking up three of the Westin's floors. I caught up with Pall Jenkins on the balcony of the Harbor Room as the rest of BHP tuned up for their late-night appearance, the only performance I found out later that transmitted the holiday's penchant for disorientation, play, and dread.

Luckily, I got a chance to pick Jenkins' brains clean on the subjects of everything from both the mysterious Black Heart Procession and the groundbreaking Three Mile Pilot's upcoming albums, his creative processes and instincts to why he has to memorize the roster of the San Diego Chargers whenever he runs into his fellow Pilots.

Scott Thill: Black Heart Procession seemed to me to be an impromptu thing that kind of ballooned from there. Did you plan on sticking it out as a side project to Three Mile Pilot or going forward full-steam with it as your main project?

Pall Jenkins: It's been my main project for about four years now. We're trying to get Three Mile Pilot going, slowly working on another record. Obviously, Black Heart has been more important for a little while now and Three Mile Pilot's been on the backburner, but I don't look at either one as a side project of the other.

ST: Is it harder to get everyone together to do stuff?

PJ: Yeah, that's the problem usually, you know? Pinback's touring or Black Heart is touring so we can't always seem to get it together to make it work. But we still do --- we've been managing to get together and we're trying to do it more.

ST: Do you guys mostly convene in San Diego?

PJ: Yeah, San Diego. Black Heart has recorded our three albums up in Seattle, but we're from San Diego so we do a lot of our recording from here, as well.

ST: You work in so many areas as an artist -- music, writing, art. Which one do you usually feel comfortable starting with?

PJ: Music, usually. I used to do more writing on the side at first, but that doesn't happen so much anymore now. Now if a song happens, I'll write to it, take notes with it. Or I'll have a story idea -- it just depends on the song. Sometimes, I'll have the story idea or a melody, and we'll figure out what music goes around it. But usually it's the music and then applying the lyrics later, and building on it from there.

ST: Is your primary instrument the guitar?

PJ: Usually guitar or keyboards. It's usually one thing that starts a spark, and it could be anything like a guitar or a piano line, and then we'll just go from there until everybody figures out what they want to be playing on the song.

ST: Is Black Heart Procession recording a fourth album and do you have any new instruments you plan on bringing in?

Reading the writing on the back of his eyelids. "You just wait for those moments throughout the day and they just kind of happen."

PJ: Yeah. I've been buying a bunch of recording equipment so we're going to be recording a lot of the next one ourselves, and I'm sure there are going to be some different things going on because we'll have a lot more time to experiment. But really, after this show tonight is when we start writing and working on the next Black Heart album. This has been our deadline like, "Ok, we quit playing shows now and start working on stuff." Right now, we have an open palette to do whatever we want to do.

ST: So it's going to be Black Heart "4"?

PJ: (Laughs) We might change the title, I don't know yet. The whole thing is open and we're not sure, that's the good thing. We just get to start thinking about the new record and see where it leads us.

ST: There's a recurring tendency to being open in your work, where you explore parts of yourself musically and lyrically and kind of put yourself out there. Do you find that not thinking about what you're going to do works better for you than sitting down consciously and putting something together?

PJ: Yeah, definitely. It's almost like the more I think about it, the worse it gets. Or the more cynical I am towards it. The more I get myself in a state of feeling open about writing and accepting things, the better -- moving along where you get in these zones and it's just coming out of you, and then you get it all down and then kind of take it, look at it, get a bit more perspective and go, "Oh that's cool," or "I don't like that, that didn't turn out right, I'm must not have been thinking right" --

ST: Or "I was thinking too hard."

PJ: Yeah, exactly. But usually when things are good, they just plop into your lap like they fell out of the sky. That's usually when it's the nicest.

ST: Does that spark usually come from somewhere like an experience, or another film or song?

PJ: Sometimes. Sometimes, maybe I'll smoke a joint or something. (Laughs) No, I'm kidding. But, yeah, it can be anything. Sometimes I'll go to a movie and all of a sudden, I'll feel really inspired to do something . . . (Someone howls on the balcony of a nearby hotel room) . . . or I'll have a few drinks like that (Laughs), or watch a band play, and I'll come home at one o'clock in the morning and stay up until five writing. But usually I get up at my house and mill around all day, have some coffee, then at three or four start thinking about music and get going. You just wait for those moments throughout the day and they just kind of happen and you're there to capture them and write them down. I feel like ideas are coming at you all the time and hopefully, you take the time to be open enough to receive them. And then it goes to some ideas are good and some aren't -- you have to be picking the right ones out at the right moment.

ST: Do you find that work better geographically, like at home in San Diego or up in Seattle? You work well on the home front?

PJ: Yeah, at home. But also, Black Heart did a lot of writing and recording up in Seattle, too. I really like the idea of being able to be in different places to write. I've always wanted to go live in Sicily -- where my family is from -- and spend some time there and write. I think that's a big part of it. But then again, we're from San Diego and we write this kind of music that we do, so it never really makes sense. I also feel like some things can influence the opposite, you know? I think the two really have something to do with each other, but I can't really explain it. (Laughs).

Next --> "I really like looking back on the Three Mile Pilot lyrics. On some of them I just go, 'What was I thinking? That's pretty cool. Why can't I do that again?'"