Jason Beiler has quickly become a beacon in the world of prog rock. He is releasing his third record with the Baron Von Bielski Orchestra, called The Escapologist, which continues his evolution of combining the experimental, traditional, and his ever-present sense of humor into modern prog masterpieces. Jason recently took some time to discuss the record with me.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Jason Bieler interview –
On what the title, The Escapologist, means to him – I’ll have to ask the voices in my head. Pick the best one. I don’t know that I have a definitive meaning. It’s just one of those things that I came across. It felt apropos for what was going on because there’s a lot of, not just metaphorically escaping themes throughout the songs and obviously there’s the overriding overarching space lyrically throughout some of this stuff. But also, just escaping life, escaping the day-to-day insanity that we’re all dealing with. Escaping oneself, escaping, it just felt like it really kind maybe getting away from all the noise and the other things in life. So that could be escaping a tragedy, escaping bad influences within your life, social circles, stress, escaping life choices that maybe didn’t serve you ultimately the way you had hoped and all that kind of stuff. That’s really the main gist of it.
On the history of some of the tracks that were released over the past year – I’m always writing constantly. I’ve just kind of come to this battle where some of the people in my circle have pointed out, I’ve always released these kinds of writing demos on band camp over the years that are kind of sketches. Then every once in a while, it’s brought to my attention, “That’s a great song. You should really do something with that. It doesn’t need to sit there in that skeletal format. So maybe you should revisit that.” The Bandcamp thing’s been wonderful and it’s developed this whole little cultural following, but not being deluded to thinking Bandcamp is the wider world. Sometimes, they’ll let these songs just die in the boneyard of writing demos is not the appropriate thing to do. Plus, I’m always writing new music. So, it’s this constant juggling. I guess, it’s a good problem to have, but there’s literally hundreds of songs in various stages of completion that I’m always kind of (having). I want to do new stuff, but I don’t want to leave my friend behind that deserves another shot. So yeah, I’m already five songs into the next record.
On if he enjoys the freedom of being an independent artist as opposed to working with a label – I think I have the opposite problem of a lot of artists who spend all this time. To me, this whole thing started in terms of the Baron Von Bielski Orchestra as kind of a writing experiment originally on Bandcamp. So, my thought was having been a studio owner and had Neve consoles and analog tape machines and all the bells and whistles and all the outboard gear you get, there’s just this tendency to sit and work on a snare sound for six months and never do anything, never actually get a song done. The original challenge was I want to write, record, release, mix these ideas in 24 hours. I just want to get into the process of being a better writer. I think there’s only one way to do that, and that’s to write all the time. But also, not get hung up in the, “I’m going to stay on this for nine months before I tweak it”.
So that’s where the real impetus for the whole kind of thing started to come from. I’ve never, to my detriment, I’m sure, I don’t ever listen to the labels and even going back to working with Jason Flom and Atlantic and who are all good people. I don’t mean this in a sense of, they don’t have valuable input because they all had valuable input. But even Jason would sit with me, who’s like a legendary A&R guy who people who don’t know. He would go, “Dude, I have no idea what the hell you’re doing. I really don’t know. Do it.” He never stopped me from doing it. But he was like, “You are going to hang by your own rope, or you’ll be successful. One of those two things.” Everyone likes to paint the labels to be these horrible killers of creativity. In my case, I can’t speak to every other artist, but he was just like, I don’t think he ever understood what the hell I was trying to do in the first place. I think he knew there was something there, which was nice. but wasn’t sure what it was. So, his really thing was like, “Look, let’s just do it and figure it out. It’s either going to work or it won’t.” So that was kind of really freeing.
I think the beauty of doing it this way and releasing it, and it’s again, I hate bitter artists who say the radio and the manager and everybody’s, it’s not about that. I think everybody’s got really cool input and can, I’m sure can shape things for me. It’s just been really freeing, because now I can do what I want, like a stubborn, petulant little child, “It’s my toy!” For better or worse, I get to do exactly what I want to do, and it’s been the most rewarding thing, because I feel like, strangely enough, at this point in my career, most artists don’t get this opportunity to be rediscovered or walk away from their past, not walk away from it, but, I’m in the unique position of having a large contingent of people who have no idea where I came from or what happened, they’re just discovering it now. That’s an amazing problem to have, There’s very few people, I think me and the singer from Fastway, he was in Flogging Molly. The only two guys that walked out of, don’t really realize separate careers. Which is a gift. So, yeah, I’ve been really fortunate and happy.
I think my base and the prog people in general that have been so kind to me have really just blessed me with this ability. They come to this ride to be thrown off. So, there’s not this burden of expectation of like you have to make a driving, just straight rock record, or you have to make a country western record, they literally want a left turn. I have worse success by a formula than anybody else probably would because people have supported me have been really embracing of that.
On putting out a shorter record after two double albums – I think it was pretty self-indulgent to make two double records as the first two records. I’m very proud of what we did, but I also realized just the nature, and it wasn’t an artistic decision, but I think it was just a factor that I wanted to get to the point maybe a little quicker. Also be respectful to people, not everybody has a long weekend to spend with me to digest the full thing. So, I might be better served by focusing down to only 10 songs and then doing another record in six months or eight months or whenever that may be might serve me better than trying to jam these concepts down.
The problem is I have so much music that what winds up happening when I don’t release stuff is it just starts stacking up and then it feels like this never-ending pile of music to get out. I think I’ve quoted it before. I think it was Stephen King who was talking about try to figure out how to say the impactful line with less words. If that makes sense, you don’t need to have nine paragraphs to just articulate a thought and but that doesn’t mean like I won’t do a 45-minute ambient orchestration of some kind of show tune next record. It just felt like I wanted to get this record. Also, these songs tended to, while thematically all different maybe stylistically, there is a kind of weird thread that kind of follows through them.
On where his lyrical inspiration comes from – I think it’s really going back to like the story I’ve told before, but when I was like very young my step grandmother, I mean like six, gave me an Edgar Allen Poe anthology, especially the short stories. That’s fantastic. But maybe a little dark for a six-year-old, maybe a little scarring. When everyone else is kind of Dr. Seussing it and the bunny went here. I’m like, “Any buried the guy in the wall kind of stories?” So that probably always had a shape in the back of my head.
There can be no good story without a tragic element to it. Then, just in general, I think it’s in my head. I always bring my wife into it. It disturbs her tremendously when she hears songs like “I bought a human head”, and things like that. She’s like, “Do I need to worry about you?” I think it’s just in me like there’s just an “in me” thing. I love Barry Manilow, and I love positivity and I’m not a negative person, but I’m just that kind of guy like, “There’s a rainbow, there’s probably an amputated foot in the gutter”. Just the way my brain works.
On if he plans on touring – Absolutely. That’s the goal this year specifically. I wanted to build it and we’ve been very fortunate that the support’s been growing, and our little world is kind of expanding slowly, but surely. I just wanted to be able to do it in the capacity where I can bring the musicians I want with me. I didn’t want to have to cut corners or, not that there’s anything wrong with just bouncing around the country aimlessly, but I wanted to have, these certain caliber of musicians to bring this to life the right way. I feel like judging by even just today’s results, which are super humbling. It feels like it’s in my little world. My heart grew a few times today. It’s growing. It’s rewarding to see that, I feel like I’ve been wandering around for 30 years waiting to find people that would go like, “No, I get it. I get it”. I finally feel like, “Oh my God, finally, where have you people been? “Better late than never.
On if the current version of Saigon Kick will continue – We did two shows. We did Chicago, which was just unbelievably amazing and Tampa, which is (great). The passion and love that people have for those records is just really special. That being said, and I’ve said this before, Saigon Kick is like the Poltergeist house. It’s built on an Indian burial ground, and regardless of anybody’s intentions, people are going to wind up screaming and crying shortly after our assemblage. Not because of anybody’s fault in particular. But we definitely would do that. I don’t know. The beauty of it is like, I love Jeff (Scott Soto) like a brother, and Stephen Gibb, I couldn’t speak more highly of a human being. Phil (Varrone), it’s so nice that we kind of had this horrible past that I think somehow as adults, we were like, “What the hell was that about?” To be able to just, more importantly than even the shows, to be able to not be in a room and want to kill each other was a huge victory. We rated the shows on the “lack of violence” success meter. No one actually choked anybody. That’s pretty good. It’s a win. That’s like a hit single for us.
It was great. We’ll do it as it pops up. There’s been a lot of people, I shouldn’t tell, but people have been asking, “Would you do this festival? Would you do that?” Then between, Jeff, who’s like the Sammy Davis Jr. of heavy metal, he’s working every single possible event on earth at the same time, and Steven has his own band that’s doing great called Kill the Robot. Phil’s doing, he’s a really successful video editor at the moment doing all kinds of cool stuff. If they’d line up for everybody and we can do some stuff, we definitely would consider it.
On possible upcoming Soto/Bieler dates – That’s been a just an unbelievable treat as you know, because it’s just grown into something really special. Anytime we get to spend time with Jeff, he’s just a brilliant singer and a great dude. There’s no stress. The beauty of that, and I think why it works, is neither of us are writing music with each other. It’s totally about going out, interpreting some of our favorite songs and just goofing around, in all fairness. So, we’re doing the Monsters of Rock cruise again, coming up, obviously, in about a month, which is just a family reunion between the Queensryche guys, and Extreme, and all these friends of ours. We’re doing a bunch of the City Wineries again next year and our annual show in Boca is being assembled at the moment and back to the West Coast and things like that. So, yeah, it’s something that’s just so great to do because we can do it anytime you want.
On upcoming plans – I’m really happy at the moment. Especially because it’s been growing and that makes the decision a lot easier. The freedom we have and the musicians I’m dealing with, a dude who’s playing on drums on this record named Andy Blacksugar, who’ve been my kind of nucleus collaborators and Robert Merrick, who’s been doing the artwork. It’s been one of the more rewarding experiences of my life in terms of just the joy of being, and not to mention all the guests over the years, whether it’s Bumblefoot or Devin Townsend or David Ellefson, the list goes on and on of just people that have been lucky, Butch Walker and God knows who else. We’re in a really good spot. Also, I just feel like there’s a lot of musicians who are fantastic at it. They do everything. They’re in eight bands and they tour constantly and they, every day is a new project and a new single and a new this. For me, it confuses me, and it feels like I want to try to do one thing really well. I think it’s hard to do that when you do everything all the time. In my opinion, and let me preface that by saying screw me, I don’t mean that as to disparage anybody else’s career choices. I’m fortunate that I can do that. But that’s just kind of where my head’s at. I like to like live in my own little demented world.
