Obviously, your home life inspired this record to a large degree.
That is definitely what inspired these songs, the time right around when me and my wife moved in together and got married. I was listening to a lot of Chet Baker and Jimmy Scott, and I just started writing these little love songs for the wife. I wrote a couple and thought, “This is fun!” So I wrote a couple more and next thing you know I had enough for a record.

Does she love it, or does she punch you in the arm and tell you you’re a sap?
Every girl wants songs written about her. Even the most hardened tattoo-covered punk rock girl would love a nice ballad written for her. For her, right now, she’s so over these songs. She’s way past these songs at this point. She’s ready to give them up and let the world have them. Or at least 15 or 20,000 people living in the world. Hopefully more.

Both to your credit and probably commercial detriment, Clem Snide has never found its way into a marketable niche. You sort of exist on the periphery of alt-country, and maybe grab a few of the less-depressive Smog fans.
I think it’s unfortunate that we even have to talk about things that way, really. Maybe because rock music has been around as long as it has, it’s developed these micro-genres. I just write songs, like really simple songs, American songs. Whether it’s folk or pop or blues or whatever, they couldn’t be any more simple, I don’t think, musically, harmonically. When we go into record, it’s like, “What’s gonna sound good here?” and everyone just puts in their two cents. Beyond that, we never sit around and talk about whether something is too alt-country. Those words just don’t mean anything when it comes down to actually making music. We’ve been talking to the radio promotion guys, and there’s a station out here that plays Lucinda Williams, Dar Williams, that kind of thing, and they won’t play a Clem Snide record. They’re probably the station we’re the most akin with, and they said they didn’t want to play the record because it’s too strange, and would sound too bizarre next to anything else they’d play. What does that even mean? It’s so weird. That’s just the way people think, I guess. At this point, I don’t even care. I’ll open for anybody. I’ll open for fucking Guster, I’ll open for fucking System Of A Down, whoever wants us to open for them, we will. I don’t care if we’re too cool, or not cool enough, or too this or that. I’ve got better things to worry about. Rock music has just been around too long. It’s starting to get into that insular, ivory tower, academic-circle-jerk kind of thing that jazz and all the fine arts are deeply embroiled in. I sort of pine for the pre-Bob Dylan days when Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly just wrote these incredibly smart, yet fun, simple, awesome, sexy songs. They were just songs and people just listened to them and felt good; there wasn’t all that shit that went along with it. Maybe there was—maybe I’m idealizing that time in history.

You have to blame big radio to a large degree, but it wasn’t nearly this bad when we were younger.
On the other side, if you listen to the cool college station ... do we need three hours of Japanese-garage-freakout-experimental noise? That’s almost taking it too far the other way in rebelling against the commercialization. Can’t you play an Al Green song and then a Wilco song? What would be the crime in that? My whole life I felt like I was born too late. All through the ‘80s I was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and I never got to see Led Zeppelin. Then in the ‘90s I was listening to ‘80s music. I’m always 10 or 20 years late.

Were you fearful how people would react to the change in tone on the new album?
I was excited by the idea of surprising people in a way. And I thought this record might make us a chick band again.

You were a chick band before?
We were a chick band before, and then after The Ghost Of Fashion, a lot of bitter, angry, nerdy guys started turning up. I’m a bitter, angry, nerdy guy, so I mean that in the kindest way. But I think this will bring the ladies back. I like playing to the ladies.