Interview With Thomas Comerford

Thomas sat down with Andy to discuss his new album.

“Archive + Spiral” release party November 4 at The Hideout 1354 W Wabansia
Chicago, IL.

Thomas Comerford is a musician and filmmaker who teaches film and punk history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Born in 1970, Comerford originally studied sculpture, performance, and classical literature before turning to film in the early 1990s. He has been making a name for himself as a director of exquisitely quiet, meditative avant-garde and experimental films since 1997, and over the past decade he has explored the geographical history of Chicago and the Midwest in a series of films. His most recent film was 2010′s ‘The Indian Boundary Line’, a “landscape film” about the border that divided the U.S. frontier in Illinois from Native American territory.

However, Comerford is also the frontman for the band Kaspar Hauser. The band started in 1999 while Comerford was living in Iowa City. Upon moving to Chicago later that year, he began to assemble various lineups to do sporadic shows and recordings. After a few years Comerford began to devote more time to songwriting, recording and performing music, which ultimately led to Kasper Hauser’s release of 2007’s “Quixotic/Taxidermy” and 2009′s “The Sons”.

By the end of 2009, Comerford felt he had enough material to begin working on a solo project aside from Kaspar Hauser. With the help of friends Seth Vanek (Roommate), Justin Petertil (Love Raid), Ed Crouse (Advance Base Family Band) and former Kaspar Hauser contributor Gregg Ostrom, he formed sessions to work on this unrecorded material, and after a few meetings the group recorded the older material and began writing new material. The cohesive collection of 8 songs that Comerford settled on became “Archive + Spiral”, his debut solo recording that will be released on his own Spacesuit Records label in October 2011. Kaspar Hauser continue to work and play sporadically and in July 2010 they celebrated 10 years of live performance. The band has plans to record its new set of songs in late 2011.

http://www.thomascomerford.net
http://www.kasparhausermusic.net
http://www.myspace.com/kasparhauserchicago