Raymond Cummings: How did you first start making music? What pushed you to say “I want to see what happens when these sounds come together”?

Leslie Keffer: It really happened in college. I always was recording music, growing up - since I was a kid, I’d hold up two tape recorders together to overdub. I’d write songs on my guitar, and sing.

I went to Ohio University for audio production and my minor was music, and as I was learning how to record stuff in the studio, they would tell us not to do certain things: “Don’t put stuff in the red, you don’t want feedback, you don’t want blown out distorted things.”

I would listen to the mistakes people were making, and think “that sounds amazing.”

I bought a mixing board – we had to record a local band for a final project. I don’t know, I grew up listening to a radio Walkman, and sometimes I would just dial into static radio, and found it musical. So it occurred to me, “oh, maybe I should play these radios and see if I can make a song with them.”

I was doing the things I was told not to do and it became my sound.

RC: Was this tour the first you ever did, these recordings that became Represents?

LK: No. I started touring in 2004. My first tour I ever did, I just went out by myself for like two weeks - the East Coast, and Nashville. And then I went on tour with Indian Jewelry twice, playing with them and opening for them as well. Then my next tour was the Represents tour, because my first tour with the Laundry Room Squelchers was the summer after that spring of No Fun Fest, so I guess it was my fourth or fifth tour.

RC: What do you remember about this tour?

LK: I actually kind of remember a lot. I remember the first show was at The Union in Athens where I live, and it was always funny for me to play there, because I bartended and also set up shows, and helped – there was a guy that booked them, but I would come in and be like “oh, can I book this band?”

I would put myself on a lot of the bills, and people hated it! Nobody liked it, nobody got it.

One time I booked myself with Skeleton Witch, this metal band from Athens. The metal dudes thought it was awesome, but they made me stop halfway through [the set]. (laughs) Another show, someone just unplugged me so I would stop.

But this show, that’s on Represents, I played the whole thing and I think people were really excited I was going to New York and playing this festival, not just, like – that there was another world out there where people did this stuff, and it wasn’t just me making fun of music and blasting noise and doing it as some form of anarchy or something. I felt super supported at that show. It was interesting, because that set was kind of like the louder stuff I was getting into, but the qualities of more intricate, softer tones were in there.

I was still in Athens with those radio stations tuned in to static, but as the tour progressed, in the bigger cities, every station would come in clearly. I had four or five Walkmans to dial into different stations to blend together, and I’d have 10-15 minutes to set up, and normally at home I could take that 15-20 minutes and really find the tones I wanted to use. I didn’t have control like I did at home – I had to just go with the city and the audience.

Radios pick up the frequency and the energy of a city or a room, so I learned that I can’t let my vibe out; I have to interact with the cities and the audience, and I’m actually channeling their energy more so than my own. So it was a different experience for me because I had to learn to accept that and still do my thing.

RC: So it’s a very, very, very pure improvisation every time, right?

LK: Oh, yeah. Because I play radios, I could never do the same set twice. I started trying to write songs when I moved to Nashville, which was like 2007, 2008, but those first five years it was all improv.

RC: When you were doing these shows, was there a general number of radios you were using, or did it change from show to show?

LK: I usually used four or five. I think for Represents, it was four, because the pictures from No Fun Fest, I was looking at my gear, I used four, and then three radio DJs, which is what I ran my vocals through. I’d dial my radio to 1040 AM and whatever I said into the microphone transmitted to that radio station. So I could sing clearly that way, or I could kind of radio around and it would get distorted and bleepy, but it would be my voice.

I would always wonder if someone was driving and going through the radio stations, and hear me – (laughs)

It’s really cool. I did it when I played with Thurston [Moore] at No Fun Fest, too - I stage-dove and was just screaming into one of those radio DJs, and it was picking up on my gear on the stage! I had a tape player; I never did [this], but you could put tapes in and just broadcast to radio stations, and I always kinda wish I could’ve prerecorded something for that. But it was something that didn’t occur to me until later.

RC: Was anyone else along for this tour?

LK: I think I toured by myself.

RC: Were you excited? Were you scared? How were you feeling?

LK: I was definitely nervous and scared, because one, I didn’t know a lot of the bands on the lineup for No Fun Fest, but the ones I did know, it was like “am I on par with these people? How did I get asked, how did Carlos [Giffoni] even know who I was?” I found out later that he read reviews in Arthur, and that’s how he knew about me. At the time I didn’t know these people – so I was super, super excited and starting to build a name for myself. I’d always wanted to be a musician, so it was a huge step for me.

At No Fun Fest I played Sunday night, so I had all weekend to be nervous! All these amazing acts blew me away. “Oh my God, how can I do this?” I remember Sunday night being so nervous. “I’m not gonna be able to find static stations, what am I gonna do?”

I remember I got up there, and as soon as I started playing, all that went away. It felt like I played 30 minutes, but I now know I only played seven. It’s insane that I went all the way to New York to play for seven minutes! (laughs) Maybe that was all that needed to come out. And then I had such a warm response afterwards, and I met so many friends that way and was able to play shows with a bunch of new people the next time I toured. It was interesting because it was a very scary thing.

That’s kind of why I called the album Represents, because I had to represent myself - I’m not in a band, I don’t have these other people to balance it out if I screw up. But it was exciting - the most emotion I felt was excitement, and I was grateful.

RC: Was this the start, or a continuation, of you naming albums with “s” at the end of the titles? Pollutes is the example that comes to mind right now.

LK: Pollutes, Devastates … That was a thing – it wasn’t that I wanted titles that ended in “s” – I wanted the name on the spine to be a verb. Leslie Keffer Pollutes. Leslie Keffer Devastates. An active thing, to demonstrate action or energy.

RC: Lately I’ve been listening to a number of live noise or experimental sets released on/as records, and a lot of times I think “these are great, but they’re so long.” There’s just something more potent about short, concentrated sets.

LK: Yeah. Rat Bastard taught me that 15-minute sets are the way to go, because people will tune out or get bored, especially if they’re drinking or partying.

When I played at Tarantula Hill, Carly Ptak was like “you should’ve played longer,” and I got a little longer later, but not longer than 15-20 minutes.

I always stopped when I was done. The emotion in my soul was done, or out – so I could stop.

RC: When you listen to these performances now, what do you hear, or what do you think of them, or who you were, at that time?

LK: I did just recently re-listen to Represents [when planning and discussions began for this reissue] because I realized “I don’t even remember what that sounds like, it’s been so many years!”

I could hear how much I was immersed in each set. It was the tipping point of my more – I don’t want to use this word - I guess feminine noise, but it was more like not harsh noise or power electronics or something. As I started seeing other bands and getting influenced and inspired by them, my sounds got more abrasive and loud, or I found expression in that. And Represents is kind of between those things - a building block towards my next sound.

RC: Each set on this record has its own character. The No Fun Fest set strikes me as quizzical, then despondent, then relentless. And The Union set is a bulldozer, it’s just a crusher.

LK: (laughs) I like that!

See, I thought the crusher was the Tusco Terror House set in Akron, because I felt like that when I would play there. I went to high school with Tusco Terror, and then when Heresee released Dielectric Lull (2003), my first album, [Carly] sent me the website – where I could get it so I could send it to people – and I saw Tusco Terror on there and I hadn’t talked to them in a couple months. I hadn’t realized that they were gonna be on [Heresee], too, and it was this weird synchronicity, we both had our first albums released on the same label, on the same day!

So when I would play [at Tusco Terror House], I would feel at home, like I could be myself and there wasn’t the pressure to be good or to impress anyone – no matter how I sounded or what I did, I still had that love from everybody. I didn’t have to earn it.

RC: Was there any material from this tour that remained on the cutting room floor – that didn’t make it onto Represents?

LK: No! Actually, those were the only four shows I played [on that tour]. I think I drove directly from Athens to Baltimore and then up to New York for those three or four days, and then I played Akron on the way home.

It’s weird because I didn’t know the UTECH Records guy. I don’t remember his name. We didn’t talk much while putting Represents out and we never talked again after.

I remember feeling proud of those shows and coming home and feeling like I’d done good, that I had achieved what I set out to do musically.