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

Scott Thill

ST: But that's kind of what's great about it.

PJ: Yeah. I kind of just try to let things happen naturally, and I try not to argue with things too much. I used to really do that a lot with Three Mile Pilot, like "Oh these lyrics!" Really rework things and try to make them perfect. But nowadays, I tend to accept things as they are. My first idea is what I wrote down, and I like it or I don't. Hopefully, I'll like it so I can move on to something else, you know, and not have to battle with it too much. Because once you start battling with something, trying to rewrite a song five or six times to make it perfect, it gets further and further away from you.

ST: A very Zen approach. "First thought, best thought."

PJ: That's kind of how I go with it. But I also enjoy tweaking things sonically, getting in there and trying to get the right sound out of the guitar or something else. I enjoy that aspect of discovering how to make the environment conducive to the idea I have. I look at things as palettes, getting some nice layers put on, creating a mood to feel comfortable in. So I do enjoy a certain element of tweaking, but usually lyrics are where I try and just go with what comes out of me. Musically, I try and mess around, or just go quickly with it like, "Oh, that's a cool sound, let's move on." I like to try all kinds of things.

ST: It seems like there is something in language that tends to restrict meaning whereas music tends to just open it up. With words, it seems you just got to let it go.

PJ: Exactly. I used to get really bothered by my words when I'd write. "Ah, that's stupid. Why'd I write that? How could I do that?" And I still feel that way sometimes, but a lot of the time we'll play a chord progression and I'll feel like the words are just screaming to me. I have no choice.

ST: "Write me down!"

PJ: Yeah, "This is what it is!" Like, "It's a Crime I Never Told You About the Diamonds in Your Eyes." That song just happened -- I had no choice that those were the words, I didn't really have any control over it. That's what it wanted to say, so I just wrote it down, went with it and accepted it. You know, I hardly even remember writing that song. It's weird. (Laughs). That'll happen. I remember that I was driving in my car and came up with the change, so I pulled over and wrote it down. That'll happen a lot -- driving really helps. I love to drive and write. That's another thing -- just driving around having a piece of paper and a pen, pulling over right when you need to.

ST: It's funny because you say the song writes itself and some will listen to it and say, "What a gorgeous line." I felt that when I read the lyrics to "Inner Bishop." You're saying it just comes out of you then guys like me go, "Man, I could have never written that!"

PJ: Yeah, a lot of times with the Three Mile Pilot stuff, I still go back and read something I was writing back then and go, "Holy shit! What was I thinking then?" (Laughs) It's crazy. I'll look back and trip out on my own lyrics, because they are pretty weird.

ST: But they're amazing.

PJ: Yeah, but a lot of that stuff I don't really remember writing! (Laughs) With Three Mile Pilot, I used to write every night, anything that came out of my head, then rearrange it, take bits and pieces and apply them to lyrics. Black Heart is more like story ideas and atmosphere, and I tend to stick with ideas like that. But Three Mile Pilot was really open -- anything went. We did anything that came to us, especially lyrically. I'd just write stuff down, I had no idea what it meant -- it didn't mean shit to me until later on. Then after recording the song, it meant all these things to me. It was really fun, like a puzzle you would put together until all of a sudden it had meaning.

Poetry and motion. The lyrics to Three Mile Pilot's "Inner Bishop" read well enough on their own. Watch what happens when you add music and a dose of rage.

ST: There are some Three Mile fans that are gonna kill you for saying that, you know?

PJ: (Laughs) Well, a lot of it did have meaning to me; there were obviously certain things that I meant and felt in those lyrics, but a lot of it was getting myself in a state where I was just writing openly. I don't call it anything but zoning out and writing, but I think there's a type of method they call that kind of writing. I'm not schooled, so I don't know what it is. I didn't take that class.

ST: That's because they build the classes to explain people like you. "This guy wrote this awesome poem or lyric but he has no conscious memory of writing it."

PJ: (Laughs) You know, a lot of them were things I was just feeling -- words would just come out. 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?" (Laughs)

ST: Are there certain ones that stick out?

PJ: "X-Miner," I think. The tail end of that song is where I think that lyrically I was writing some pretty cool stuff. And I don't mean, "Hey, I'm writing cool stuff!" But, just in a retrospective kind of way, feeling neat about it. "Inner Bishop" is another one. A lot of Chief Assassin to the Sinister was lyrically a really cool moment for me.

ST: I think it really shows. That album tends to stick in your head.

PJ: At that time of my life, I was really, really insecure around a lot of people. We were playing a lot of shows and I was very nervous around crowds. I'm a little bit more comfortable with performing now, but back then I was . . . (he pauses) sometimes I wish I was more like that, you know, reserved and to myself. And I still am to an extent. But it used to be where I could hardly have conversations with people without feeling really uncomfortable. A lot of the time it was because my mind was always going, thinking all these things --

Next --> "But hopefully, we'll get this next Three Mile Pilot album done and we can do a tour with all three bands."