ANITA LIBERTY: What's the dynamic in the household with the four cats and three dogs? Like, who gets along with who? As you've witnessed it in your own private little microcosm of the wilderness.

SAM BISBEE: Well, Stevie [the Doberman mix] is blind. Everybody is terrified of Stevie.

AL: Why? Because he's unpredictable?

SB: He runs around in circles opening and closing his mouth very quickly.

AL: I can see how that would be frightening. When in your relationship with Jackie did you realize that she had this many animals [they're all hers]?

SB: The first time I ever came over here.

AL: Were you overwhelmed?

SB: She actually hid all the animals.

AL: (laughs) She did?

SB: For two months. She pretended she had none.

AL: And then what? She'd let one cat out and then it's like, "It's my cat. You haven't seen my cat?"

SB: (laughs) Yeah.

AL: And she has the three black ones, so that could really be just one.

SB: Yeah. (laughs) I thought they were all aging very rapidly because she started out with just Little Girl cat, and I thought that Little Girl grew to the size of Spooky in just about a week. Jackie was very deceitful. (laughs)

AL: (laughs) And you're still really not quite sure what's the truth.

SB: Have you been here when Jackie feeds the cats?

AL: No.

SB: The cats get one can of fancy feast a day, and if you look around some of these animals are looking a little bit overweight. Which Jackie's in denial about.

AL: Really?

SB: Yeah, I mean I'm trying to make it a once-a-week fancy feast thing.

AL: They shouldn't get a fancy feast once a day because then they have nothing to look forward to. They should have it once a week.

SB: Yeah, then it's not a fancy feast anymore. It's the usual.

AL: Right.

SB: So Jackie has to shut the cats in the bathroom with the fancy feast, although Little Girl has not been able to go in there because Jackie does admit that Little Girl is getting fat. So she's been locking Little Girl out during the fancy feast. (laughs)

AL: That's mean.

SB: Very mean. So when the cats are eating in there, Betty [the pit bull] sits right by the door and there is no way to get her away from it. And then as soon as the door opens she cleans the rest of the plate off.

AL: So she gets fancy feast leftovers.

SB: Yeah.

AL: Do they get one can between the three of them? (laughs) Who's to say Morris isn't eating all of it?

SB: We have no idea what goes on in there.

AL: I would love to be here for a fancy feast feeding.

SB: (laughs) Wouldn't you want to be a fly on the wall during that? So then I basically walk the dogs two or three times a day...

AL: So you think maybe that Jackie started going out with you because she needed a dog walker?

SB: (laughs) Hmm...it was strange. Pretty soon after I moved in she fired the dog walker. (laughs) But it's very hard to find dog walkers for these sorts of dogs.

AL: They're not conventional animals.

SB: No.

AL:Jackie rescued all of them?

SB: (laughs) Yes. Jackie, um, they rescue animals from bad families.

AL: Who's "they"?

SB: They have a group...sort of a paramilitary group, and they dress head-to-toe in the gear, at night, and they rescue animals.

AL: Usually, I think people who do that have a pound that they bring the animals to. I don't think they take them all home.

SB: Uh, they rescue animals.

AL: Have you written any songs about the dogs?

SB: No.

AL: The cats?

SB: No.

AL: Have you written songs about Jackie?

SB: Uh...yes.

AL: Like what? Is there anything on the CD?

SB: There was a song on the CD that had some of her in it. And about two weeks after I met her...I hardly even knew her and I wrote a song called "Carnivore." It's about an animal rights activist, but when she makes love she's a carnivore.

AL: Oh. Okay. A little too much information. Thanks.

SB: (laughs) The first line of the song was "Vinyl pants hide fake fur underwear." (laughs) I sang that to her over the phone when we hardly knew each other.

AL: She must have loved that.

SB: Well, she did, even though it's a pretty bizarre song to get in the first two weeks when you hardly know someone.

AL: Is it easier to write love songs or depressed, breaking-up, angst-ridden songs?

SB: I'm trying to write songs at the moment that aren't about sex or love.

AL: And not about your animals.

SB: (laughs) And not about animals.

AL: So what are they about--sitting in your apartment trying to write songs?

SB: Yeah, I'm writing songs about sitting in the apartment. I wrote one about sitting over there. Because you've got to keep changing your environment while you're writing, so now I'm writing one from the point of view of someone sitting over here.

AL: (laughs) And which one's the ballad?

SB: This one.

AL: Sitting here?

SB: Yeah.

AL: Sitting there was like rock & roll?

SB: Upbeat. Everything's-going-my-way kind of tune. (laughs)

AL: That's good. Everything's going my way cause I'm over there.

SB: (laughs) Yep.

AL: Now I'm over here.

SB: I mean, the further away you are from the front door, I think, the sadder it gets. Do you feel weird when you take naps during the day?

AL: I don't usually take naps during the day.

SB: Sounds so disciplined. (laughs)

AL: .No, it's not that, I'm just so fearful, because I'm only minutes, maybe only seconds away from a sort of all-consuming depression. And I think that sleeping is a sign. So that means I just don't sleep, except at night.

SB: I know what you're saying. See, I'm so happy that the naps just make me happier. (laughs)

AL: How many songs have you written in the past two weeks?

SB: None, okay? (laughs)

AL: No, that's not true.

SB: In the past two weeks?

AL: I don't think that's true.

SB: No, I've been trying to write, but I had a lot of things that I finished like three weeks ago, and now I'm just trying to gestate some new things.

AL: What's the writing process for you? Do you come up with an idea for lyrics or music first?

SB: It changes.

AL: Let me ask you about competition. Do you feel competitive with people who are doing what you do, or are you good at sort of keeping the blinders on, staying on your own path and...

SB: Well, I don't feel competitive like someone will push me off of what I'm doing. Yeah, I have blinders in terms of what I'm doing. I mean, do you feel competitive? Does it fuck you up?

AL: Yeah. I have my days.

SB: Do you find that people realize you're competitive?

AL: I'm struggling with it right now. I'm trying to work against it, you know? I think it's cool to be graceful and focused and know that what you're saying is the only way that something can be said, because you're the one who's saying it. So no one else is going to take that away from you, but I watch people get to certain points in their careers and I get frustrated and jealous and competitive and it does fuck me up. I mean it makes me think I have to do something different and everything's a cliche. And how can I make what I'm saying different than what everybody else is saying about being single and alone and frustrated with relationships and breakups...it's like I feel there is one topic in the world, right? Human interaction.

SB: Universality of experience?

AL: Yeah, universality of experience where you want everybody to feel the way you do but you want to be able to say it in a different way. I mean, do you ever find yourself writing a song and you're kind of like, "What's different about this song?"

SB: I never really think that. I tend to just write things and then I might interpret them afterward. I never really think about whether or not anybody else is going to be able to relate to it.

AL: But that's the best thing, just to write out of your own experience. And know that because it's truthful, people are going to relate.

SB: Because in a weird way I guess I trust my own taste. I guess you have to just trust your own taste.

AL: But don't you, as a songwriter, write something and go, "Fuck, that sounds exactly like..."

SB: Oh yeah. That happens all the time. It's happened to me a couple of times where you just hit a chord and you'll go, "Oh shit! That's 'Freebird'!" (laughs) You know?

AL: That can't happen more than once.

SB: Well, it did happen once, though. I literally wrote the chord progression from "Freebird." It was like, "Hey, this is kind of nice." And obviously it's extremely depressing, but every once in a while I'll be like "Oh, whatever." Because once you're done writing it, it's not "Freebird." Like Elvis Costello, I saw him do a taping for this VH-1 thing. And he openly admitted that he stole the opening chords to "Alison" from an old Spinners tune. He was being very honest. And I mean, how can you not hit the raw sort of chord level or groove level or...it was all so simple. Obviously you can't really do anything too original, but no one's ever going to put the same words and the same notes together.

AL: I feel like you have a really unique sound. And I really like your lyrics. I feel like you're really lyric-driven. But some musicians aren't, you know? I really respond to your lyrics, which is why I wish you had printed them in your liner notes.

SB: I know. I was going to print them, but then I realized that all of them are so sexual. They don't come off so sexual in the music, because that's not what it's about. I mean, it goes a lot deeper than just sex. But then I realized that if you just see them printed, you can almost get the wrong idea.

AL: Because you have a song about a dominatrix...a vibrator...

SB: Phone sex. I didn't realize until the album was done that it actually could almost seem like a concept album of just sex, you know? (laughs) I am actually trying to write things that have absolutely no sex in them.

AL: That will be fun.

SB: Yeah, we'll see how that works.

AL: So what do you think about success? How much does getting to the next level and becoming a huge rock star play into your creative process?

SB: Being a rock star seems so ridiculous to me. I mean, theoretically that is what I'm trying to do. But the part of me that writes...when I finally get to that place where I'm writing and it's happening, I know it's got nothing to do with any of that.

AL: That's when you get to the good place.

SB: Yeah.

AL: You have this cult following of frat boys. You do. At your performances, there are people who come back again and again and again, right?

SB: Well, there are some frat boys. For whatever reason there has always been a stronger female following than male.

AL: Do you look out at the audience sometimes and it's like a bunch of 20-year-old girls looking up at you, adoringly?

SB: Sometimes. But sometimes at the end of the show, the people who stay 'til the end, there are those unsettling moments when I realize that it's a bunch of 24-year-old frat males. And that's when my brain says, "This is not what I wanted." (laughs)

AL: "This is not what I aspired to."

SB: (laughs) Yeah. I was watching Bush perform on MTV at their Fort Lauderdale concert and at first all you saw was them, you didn't see the audience yet, and I was thinking, "Oh those guys, they're so alternative and so cool, look at them." But suddenly the camera flipped around from behind them and it was just a sea of probably 10,000 guys in white baseball hats, you know, just like jocks--going "YEAH!" (laughs) That's who the audience is.

AL: Because those guys have to let off steam and...

SB: And these are the guys who obviously...you probably didn't get wedgied in high school, did you?

AL: No.

SB: But these are the people who used to wedgie me in high school. We pack them in. (laughs)

AL: Do you feel like you're pursuing fame?

SB: I'm just pursuing a career.

AL: Yeah, but part of the notification that your career is going well will be fame.

SB: Yeah, but I'm really pursuing a career. (laughs) It sucks because to be successful in music means I go out on the road...and basically don't ever come back.

AL: And you have a life. You have a home.

SB: Yes. I wish I was 21 and getting ready to go out on the road, because now I like being here. I don't want to destroy my relationship through music, but (CLEARS THROAT) yes, I want to be famous.

AL: Do you think you will be?

SB: Yeah, obviously [there are days] when you wake up and you're like, "Oh my God, shit's going so well!" I mean, I get in my shower and I'm going to be really famous. But then of course, by the end of that same day you can be like, "I Suck!"

AL: "And why should anyone listen to me, or have anything to do with me?"

SB: Which is why it's so fucked up, because clearly then you are completely at the whim of people who might not know anything about what you're doing and the executives that you're meeting with who are looking at me from this totally objective point of view.

AL: Or a totally subjective point of view.

SB: Or yeah, who are totally subjective about me. I just heard today that some record label didn't think I had star quality.

AL: Well, those are the moments where either you continue, or, you know, you let this turn you into a paralegal.

SB: Uggh! I've been a paralegal.

AL: You have?

SB: Yeah. I'm well aware that I don't have, in any conventional sense of the phrase, star quality.

AL: But I feel like you have star quality because you have anti-star quality.

SB: Yeah, that's what I'm going for. Anti-star quality. I mean I like just being myself and being completely normal. I used to sit down at the bar at [the Ludlow Street Cafe] after a gig and someone would turn to me and go, "Hey man, this band is amazing. Do you like them?" And I would have to sort of look the guy in the eye and go, "I'm the lead singer." It's just cool to go from that energy onstage and to sort of immediately flip into the almost disguise of just hanging out.

AL: You're like, "Would anyone like to play backgammon?"

SB: (laughs) Maybe it's time for me to start becoming a complete asshole offstage.

AL: Do you think that's true?

SB: I'm not very good at thinking what these people want to see when they talk to you [after a gig]. You've got to think, if you were to suddenly be talking to Bono, would it bum you out if he was just like, "Hey man, what's up? How're you doing? Yeah. Cool, so what's up with you?" Obviously, part of you wants Bono to be like detached and sort of obviously in his own world with stuff going on in his head that you would just never want to fathom.

AL: But you can't contrive that.

SB: But I'm sure a lot of people have contrived that. I think most people probably do contrive that.

AL: Be yourself.

SB: Star quality is just...like if somebody met Michael Stipe, just on the street, would they have said, "Wow, that guy's got star quality"? No.

AL: The pursuit of fame is interesting because it's inextricably a part of what we do, because we're performers.

SB: I think I would be happy if I were just a writer...if I became just a songwriter. And other people were singing my songs. Or if I was a producer I would be happy.

AL: I don't think that's true, Sam.

SB: I think it is. I love doing film scores. I've been doing a lot of those. And that's unbelievably satisfying.

AL: You may end up making your name doing film scores.

SB: Yeah.

AL: But do you want people to recognize your name?

SB: I don't. (laughs) Yeah. Yes.

AL: I'm not trying to bully you, I'm just trying...

SB: I just want to play music and support myself. I don't want to be a paralegal. But it's just satisfying, writing music. It's really fun.

AL: I know. It is fun.

SB: I mean, sometimes I don't think it should matter if I'm a household name...

AL: Except in this household. I mean, wouldn't it be sort of incredible to walk down the street and hear some 20-year-old girl singing "C'mon, C'mon, C'mon?"

SB: Yeah.

AL: I mean, that's cool.

SB: So I'm probably just lying to you and to myself, but I think it's important to at least say that you don't care about that stuff.

AL: Either you say you don't care or you don't care.

SB: The most important thing to me is the creative end. You know? That's where the power is.

AL: And making sure that your point of view gets conveyed. All right, Sam is going to read from his journal now.

SB: "The windows are shut, the outside world is cold, I'm in here and everybody else is out there. Five billion other human beings, sleeping, working, fucking, blah, blah, blah...every one of us, five billion, trying to survive, trying to succeed, even if success means nothing more than eating, whatever. We are so bizarre, I see us out the window walking purposefully, driving our cars, stopping at red lights, starting at green lights. And we all feel special, or at least feel that we ought to feel special. Each of us refers to himself or herself as 'I.' Five billion people named 'I.' And for each 'I,' five billion others called "them." The statistics are daunting--with five billion of those, chances of anyone being truly special are small--but I am not persuaded by the statistics. I work and work and try and try and wait and wait for the moment when I will truly be singular. Out there I see nothing but singularity. Every person on the street is singular. There is no one else like each 'I.' Never has been, never will be. And so we are special. We are singular. Each of our own individual miseries and sufferings is unique. I am the only 'I' in this kitchen, at this table, sitting on newspapers to protect himself from cat hair. The only 'I' in this room torturing himself with a pen and paper."

AL: You do think about it.

SB: Well of course I do. . About the artist thing.

AL: I'm with you, and I think that we all feel it, but for me it's like it's not comforting. It's sort of almost...

SB: Oh, it's not comforting at all. (laughs)

AL: No. It's not. I mean it's like even though we're all going through it, it's still about waiting.

SB: Yeah. Why are you waiting? What are you waiting for? And there shouldn't be any need to wait in terms of your own personal writing or your own personal craft.

AL: So about those five billion other people. Would you rather be any of them other than you?

SB: Not really, at the moment.

AL: That's pretty good. I wouldn't rather have anyone else's thoughts, even though mine are painful sometimes.

SB: But we have no other perspective. I mean...what is going through that guy's brain, just walking down the street? Him?

AL: It can't be as interesting as what's going through my brain.

SB: But that's the irony...everybody thinks that what's going on in their brain is kick-ass. (laughs)

AL: I think that's a fine line, and I think that it can be misconstrued as arrogance. I think it's just confidence. If there is any pursuit of inner peace, it's that what you're thinking is what you're supposed to be thinking at that moment, and where you are is where you're supposed to be.

SB: Yeah, like I was brought up and told that I can do whatever I want. Which, if you think about it, is a hurtful thing to tell a child. (laughs) Because it's just not true.

AL: Yeah, but the reverse is hard too, because then you always feel like, "Why try?" If you don't have the highest expectations for yourself, what's the point?

SB: I know! I know! (laughs) I feel lucky that I'm a performer because playing music is unbelievable.

AL: It's fun, huh?

SB: It's incredible.