Interview: Eef Barzelay (Clem Snide)

An hour or so after emailing Clem Snide’s publicist to request an interview with Eef Barzelay, the singer/songwriter behind the moniker, I was surprised to see a response from Barzelay himself pop up in my inbox.

“Hey friend, thanks for the offer,” he wrote. “I have no secrets.”

It was an apropos reply from an artist who’s weathered his share of strikes and gutters throughout his three-decade career with go-with-the-flow agility, humility and humor.

Clem Snide emerged as Napster-era favorites with a jangly, countrypolitan sound anchored by Barzelay’s sardonic-but-sweet wordplay — delivered in a nasally deadpan — that fell somewhere between Ben Folds and Silver Jews on the turn-of-century indie rock fringes. They put out several critically acclaimed albums, notably their 1999 major-label debut, Your Favorite Music, and The Ghost of Fashion, which included the minor hit (and theme song for the NBC comedy “Ed”), “Moment in the Sun,” but fell short of being the Brooklyn band’s breakout thanks largely to its ill-timed release just before 9/11.

The group dissolved a few records later, sending Barzelay — a married father of two young kids — into bankruptcy. Forced to reinvent himself from his family’s new home base in Nashville, he found creative, direct-to-fan ways to keep making music and a living entirely on his own. He released Kickstarter-funded covers EPs, wrote commissioned songs for listeners based on their personal stories, did voiceover work for Chobani yogurt, penned songs for the indie film Rocket Science, launched a podcast, and played hundreds of intimate house concerts across the country.

The Tel Aviv-born, New Jersey-bred Barzelay — who NPR called “the most underrated songwriter in the business today, with a sneakily firm grasp on poignancy and humor” — also put out a few albums under his own name before reclaiming the Clem Snide nom de plume (a recurring character introduced as “a professional asshole” in William S. Burroughs novels) for 2015’s Girls Come First.

Barzelay’s decade of hustle began to pay off circa 2016, when Scott Avett of Avett Brothers fame discovered his music through a Jason Molina Pandora station and binged the Clem Snide catalog. They started a conversation and long-distance collaboration that ultimately resulted in 2020’s Forever Just Beyond, which Avett produced at his farm studio in Concord, N.C. Avett’s harmony vocals and light-touch production bring an easy earthiness to Barzelay’s signatures — quirky romanticism, pop-culture-laced existential ruminations, gonzo poetry, and muted chamber-pop — delivering a collection that served as Clem Snide’s unofficial comeback.

Asheville Stages spoke to Barzelay a few weeks into his current tour, which hits The Grey Eagle on Tuesday, Oct. 17. As promised, he was an open book.

Jay Moye: Where am I catching you today?

Eef Barzelay: I’m in Manhattan, Kansas, right now. I’m playing Kansas City tonight.

JM: Ah, the other Manhattan. How’s the tour feeling so far?

EB: It’s good. Two weeks in, I caught a cold and have been feeling kind of rundown. But otherwise, the shows are going great. It's just been hard to sing.

JM: You're on your own for this one. How do you like performing solo versus with a band?

EB: There's pros and cons. I talk a lot more, tell more jokes and stories and stuff, because I can only make so much sound with my mouth and acoustic guitar.

JM: Your songs and stage presence certainly suit the format.

EB: I feel like the singer/songwriter genre — one person up there with an acoustic guitar — is not the most exciting genre of live music. It can seem tired sometimes.

JM: Do you see that as a challenge to keep things interesting for the audience and yourself?

EB: Yeah. I’d never want to go see some dude with an acoustic guitar. I wouldn't go see myself! But I'm not doing this for me. Maybe just because I'm older now. It was more exciting back in the day. There were more pretty girls up front. Now it's just old dudes. (laughs)

JM: I'm one of them. Clem Snide started out as more of a punk thing — is that right?

EB: Yeah. When we first started in Boston, it was very screamy, very noisy. Then when Jason [Glasser] and I moved to New York [City] in the mid-’90s, we went to almost the opposite extreme and tried to make the softest, slowest, quietest music we could. And put the focus more on the words. When it first started, we didn't even really write songs. We were all young and full of angst. Just pure energy. But as it matured slightly, I started writing more songs.

JM: Did anything in particular inspire the transition from louder stuff to more nuanced songwriting?

EB: Not really. I never knew what I was doing, and still don't. There's never any plan or conception behind it. Things just feel right in the moment. We were always carelessly stumbling into things, for better or worse. I both envy and resent bands that have their shit together. (laughs) Clem Snide just never really did. It was always kind of a wing and a prayer.

JM: Was that intentional, or did you just not know any better?

EB: It just worked out that way. We were simply friends playing music together. I don't think any of us thought we’d make a living at it. Or if we had those ambitions, we never said them out loud. Then things started happening, and the next thing you know we’re getting a record deal and managing a small business together.

I think bands that succeed are those that get their business squared away quickly and everyone's on the same page. With Clem Snide, unfortunately, that was never really the case.

JM: When the band broke up, you put out a few records under your own name. What was going through your head at the time as an artist? How did your songwriting evolve?

EB: Everything sort of bottomed out around 2010, 2011. I started doing all the Kickstarter stuff. One thing I offered was writing a personal song for someone. I wasn't even sure how it would work. I did that for 12 or 13 years. I couldn't tell you exactly how it affected my songwriting, but it definitely opened it up. I wrote hundreds of those songs, and doing it over and over again revitalized me.

Songwriting is difficult in the sense that there's not much to it. You're working with real basic stuff, harmonically, using the same chords. My palette is pretty simple, so finding a new phrase or some new words, and having people open their hearts and offering themselves in a really sincere way, helped me find new ways into [the writing process].

JM: What types of stories did you channel through these commissioned songs?

EB: About as broad of the range of the human experience as you could think. There were super-heavy ones, like one guy whose young daughter was killed in a car crash, and people with parents who were dying. There were songs for newborns. And there were a lot of love songs.

I saw an interview with the actress, Michelle Williams, where someone asked her what she’d do if she didn’t act. She gave a real fanciful answer, trying to be cute. “I want to write love letters for people,” she said. And I remember thinking, “That’s kind of what I do.” Because for a while, I was just writing songs for people to express their love for each other. I even did a few proposals. I know of at least two where “Will you marry me?” [singing the melody] is the last line.

JM: Did you talk to the people you were writing for? What was the process?

EB: It was mainly through email. I wanted to keep a kind of anonymity. Sometimes they’d send me pictures, but I wanted to just imagine they were fictional characters. Those songs are based on people's own words. What I discovered — and this applies to things other than songwriting — is that when people open their hearts in a sincere, soulful way, that tiny nugget of truth is very inspiring. It's a little seed, and I just planted the seed because I had the soil ready.

Photo courtesy of the artist

JM: What itch does that scratch for you, artistically, to have a creative brief-like assignment to write a song for someone else?

EB: You’d think it would be counterintuitive. But the more I write for other people, the more I write for myself. The portal through which songs come widens.

Up to 70% of the songs I write don’t see the light of day. I don’t necessarily want to put all these songs out every, like, six months — which I could do, but my instincts tell me I shouldn't. I want to put out one record with the very best songs I can come up with every few years.

And I've certainly been advised otherwise. The people I work with — especially the younger ones — are like, “You gotta get stuff out! Keep feeding the algorithm!” But content and art are not the same thing to me, and I'm trying to make art. Whatever that even means.

JM: That process inspired you to create a This American Life-esque podcast called A Life In Song where you interviewed people and wrote and recorded songs based on their stories.

EB: During [the] COVID[-19 pandemic], I didn’t really have anything to do. And people were cooped up at home, so I just started interviewing people over the computer and editing their stories. Everybody's got a story. No matter who you are, your life is yours and yours alone. And that’s kind of amazing.

JM: You played the “ghost songwriter” role.

EB: I did. I don't particularly like being the center of attention. I prefer to be more in the background, so it worked for me.

JM: You also started doing house concerts around this same time.

EB: By 2010 or 2011, I’d basically dropped out of the music business. The label had folded, the booking agent was gone, the publicist was gone. I had to go direct to the fans. Playing home shows was how I was able to somehow keep this ball going for more than 10 years.

JM: What’s that experience like, playing in people’s living rooms or backyards?

EB: It’s a party, and I'm the guest of honor. People are psyched to have me there. They provide me with food and drinks, I play for a little bit, and they give me money. Can’t beat that! Sometimes the vibe is a little less than thrilling, like playing for a handful of aunts and uncles, and nobody’s really into it. I did one show for two people, which was kind of weird. But, more often than not, it's great.

JM: You said you put out maybe 30% of the music you write. What gives a song oxygen to come out into the world? How do you decide which ones make it?

EB: It's just a feeling. And if I'm making a record, all the songs need to somehow fit together. In the past, when all the stars align to make a record — because I don't get money to make a record anymore like I did 15 or 20 years ago — I’m inspired to write those songs. Not all of them, but if it looks like a record is getting made and everything's coming together with musicians and producers involved, that inspires me. Desperation and inspiration are very close kissing cousins. They go hand in hand for me.

JM: Did you have the Forever Just Beyond songs written before the sessions, or did you write in the studio with Scott?

EB: The record, soup to nuts, took four years to make from the time we first got together and started throwing ideas back and forth to the point where it was all mixed and mastered. During that period, Scott wrote a couple, we wrote some together, and I had a few already written.

JM: Do you enjoy cowriting?

EB: In general, it's not something I really seek out. Songwriting is more of a personal, private thing for me. I lived in Nashville for many years, and every now and again I’d have, like, some writing date with another songwriter. And it never went well. I didn't like it. But with Avett, we were connecting on this deep level, so it was exciting to do it with him.

JM: You’re not still based in Nashville?

EB: No, I now live in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I make big decisions in my life without really giving them too much thought. (laughs) My wife really wanted to live out there, and I really wanted to leave Nashville. So, that was the deal we struck. It's beautiful there.

JM: How’d you connect with Scott?

EB: Somebody sent me a video of him playing an obscure Clem Snide [song] as an encore at [an Avett Brothers] show. He had real Clem Snide infatuation for a moment, and I seized upon it. (laughs) He's great. He really likes collaborating and has such a generous spirit.

JM: Your vocals work well together. It seems to fit.

EB: My wife says she can’t tell our voices apart sometimes.

JM: What excites you about the path ahead for Clem Snide?

EB: I try not to look too far into the future, and just put one foot in front of the other. I’m making a new record right now, which I'm really excited about, with Josh Kauffman [Bonny Light Horseman; The Hold Steady] at his studio in Kingston, New York, upstate near Woodstock. That dude's amazing. He's a big Clem Snide fan from back in the day. We’ve got eight or so songs pretty much squared away and will try and get a couple more. My dream right now is to get to the point where I could have a few people playing with me and we could start doing bigger rooms. That’s what I’m working towards.

JM: That sounds like a nice horizon to be chasing. Thanks for the time, Eef. Tend to that cold, and we’ll look forward to seeing you here in Asheville next week.

EB: Yeah, man. I'll be right as rain by Tuesday.

IF YOU GO

Who: Clem Snide
When: Tuesday, Oct. 17, 8 p.m.
Where: The Grey Eagle, 185 Clingman Ave. thegreyeagle.com
Tickets: $17 advance (seated show); $25 premium seating

(Photo by David Barnum)