Gregg Gillis can play that funky music, white boy. Better known as Girl Talk, the Pittsburgh-based sample artist has a gift for showing Lil Wayne his inner Elton John. The former biomedical engineer released his second album, Feed the Animals, as a pay-what-you-like download, in June. The 14-track album samples more than 250 songs. In anticipation of his upcoming Cat's Cradle performance, Gillis spoke with recess' Kevin Lincoln.
Could you give me an idea about the creative process that you go through when you come up with a track, any track from Feed the Animals or Night Ripper?
For both those albums, I built them as albums. So basically, I put them together as one piece of music. The track separation at the end is somewhat arbitrary, almost an afterthought. Putting together the album as a whole, I spend just every day sampling little bits of music, cataloguing and chopping up samples, and then I just try out some different combinations. Occasionally, something sounds good to me that I feel like I can use in some way, and then I try to integrate that into my live show, where it's all live sample triggering. If I come up with a little 30-second segment I like, I try to fit that into the set, take something out of the set, put the new thing in, so the live show is constantly evolving.
I'm trying out new stuff all the time, changing it up the next week based on the response. And things slowly take shape, you know, this part should follow that part should follow that part, a lot of experimentation. And then eventually the music takes its own form. When I sit down to do an album, it's like the whole thing is basically structured in my mind. For Feed the Animals, I knew exactly how I was going to begin it and end it, and most of the combinations and a lot of the ideas were already solidified.
It's not very intuitive for me; it's trial and error. For instance, most of the samples I sit down at home and isolate never get used. I'd say over 75 percent of the samples that I worked with in the two years prior to Night Ripper are not on Night Ripper. It's almost-I don't want to say rare-but not as common to find samples that work. On Feed the Animals, there's 300 samples. It wasn't like I sat down and picked 300 songs I wanted to use, in order to get those 300 samples I probably sampled a couple thousand songs.
You went to Case Western Reserve University and studied biomedical engineering. Is Cleveland as boring as people say it is?
Cleveland is very raw and exciting. I live in Pittsburgh, I'm from Pittsburgh, so technically you're supposed to hate Cleveland. You know, rival city, I hate the Browns definitely, but Cleveland as a city is pretty wild. There was a very good underground music scene while I was there. And then of course, Bone Thugs 'n' Harmony are from there, there's a nice hip-hop scene that's always been going on. Cleveland's cool. I think there's a lot of schools where you get attached to your college area and I definitely went out and played shows and attended a lot of shows in Cleveland, but Case Western is a completely separate world from Cleveland. The campus is just a very academic, kind of nerdy college, which is the opposite of its direct surroundings. I had a fantastic time there. I think a lot of college is who you run into, and I had a lot of good friends who helped shape the whole Girl Talk thing, especially in the early years. I had a good time in college.
Do you have any good stories about ridiculous things happening at your shows?
I've had multiple shows where people have had sex on stage. All of those situations have gone down like, people not really trying to be in the spotlight having sex, just a lot of people on stage are getting into it to the point where they're having sex on stage. That's happened three or four times in the past year. I've seen lots of nudity, I've knocked my front tooth out at two separate shows, so I've had shows where I've been performing toothless before. Lots of people dancing in costumes. I wish that would catch on more, even. I feel like when I travel to a city I can usually only get there once a year, a college once a year, and it's definitely a festive atmosphere, so I see no reason why people shouldn't just be dressed up at every show. I think if every show was treated like Halloween, it would be excellent.
How is playing a festival different from getting in a club with a couple hundred people, or even a living room with 40 people?
There's ups and downs to both sides. For me, the heart and soul of what I do is playing in a cramped venue with a lot of people around, but those shows are also very intensive. I've played many shows where I haven't been drinking or anything and I've vomited straight up after the show just from being exhausted. Also at the club shows I feel some degree of pressure to be able hang out with everyone. I have a standard in my mind of what the show should be like. I want to perform to a certain degree, I want to have a certain amount of interactivity with people on stage and me getting in the audience. It's tough when someone's paying a concert ticket just to see you and you're headlining. Whereas with a festival, it's a bit more like a walk in the park as far as performance-wise, because you can chill out a little bit more. At festivals, you can't be concerned with interacting with every human being. The festivals are actually really easy on my mind; it's fun, the set's going to be abbreviated. It's a big party really, these festivals.
Girl Talk performs Monday, Oct. 13 at Cat's Cradle, 300 E. Main St. in Carrboro. The show begins at 8:30 pm. Tickets are sold out.
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