Interview: Crosses' Chino Moreno and Shaun Lopez open up about their elusive band

(Photo: Tyler William Parker)

It didn’t receive a whole lot of fanfare when it was released on August 2, but there it was for the internet to enjoy: †, a five-track mini-LP from CROSSES, a new band starring Far guitarist Shaun Lopez, Deftones frontman Chino Moreno and producer Chuck Doom. Unlike the other aspects of the participants’ careers (not to mention the rapid, ADD-driven saturation style of the ’net) nearly everything about Crosses—from its roots, intentions, execution and public image—has been allowed to grow at an organic pace.

Last year, Lopez and Doom were making music at the Far guitarist’s home studio, and were wondering who they could get to sing on the tracks they had created. Lopez played them to longtime friend Moreno, and asked if he’d like to contribute to a track or two. Moreno was so into Lopez and Doom’s moody, arcane work, he immediately agreed to supply lyrics and vocals for the whole project. (At various junctures on the EP, the trio are joined by Far drummer Chris Robyn and Loaded bassist Duff McKagan).

Stylistically, † is sonically closer to the textured atmospheres Moreno was exploring with Team Sleep; the vibe is similarly laid-back, but with sophistication that’s lacking in much of the DIY bedroom-ambience that today’s hipsters worship as “witch house.” (On Lopez’s Tumblr account, he posted a mock-up image reminiscent of Shepard Fairey’s first Andre The Giant campaign with a photo of Moreno and the legend CHINO MORENO HAS A WITCH HOUSE BAND underneath.)

The trio’s attitude about the business end of the work is similar: Fans can go to the band’s official site and download the tracks and accompanying artwork for free, while hardcore enthusiasts may have ordered the limited-edition vinyl version of the EP or participated in the band-sanctioned remix exercise.

Lopez and Moreno spoke with Jason Pettigrew about their friendship, aesthetics, spirituality and working arrangements, as well as the things that piss Moreno off. (Hint: look in a mirror.)

Shaun, you and Chino have been buds as far back as the legendary 1997 public teaming up doing Jawbox’s “Savory.” People worship that moment like some sort of Cali-rock talisman.
SHAUN LOPEZ: Yeah, that was back in ’97; it was a lot of fun. It [came out of] a random idea we had. I think we were actually driving back to Sacramento; the Deftones were mixing Around The Fur and [Far] were heading back to Sacramento, and for some reason I think we were down in L.A. playing a show. We were going back up and I think Chino and Steph [Carpenter, Deftones guitarist] wanted to ride back up with us. We were just listening to that song and somebody said, “Dude, we should do this song together.” So that’s kind of how it came about. It was cool and we ended up putting it on a little promo EP that we had.

There’s YouTube footage you uploaded of you guys playing it at some gig in some club in Sacramento; it’s considered this really special thing by both Far and Deftones fans alike. You’ve been buds for such a long time, so why has it taken you so long to do something together?
LOPEZ: I don’t really know. We live literally, like, a half-mile away from each other in L.A., and we’ve kind of just been hanging more since it was like that. Before, it was like either he was out on the road or I was out on the road. I seem to remember back in those days, me and him always said, “Man, you and me have to do something together one day.” It took a long time, but it was worth the wait, you know? I’m a friend of his, but I’m also a fan of what he does.

Is there some kind of similar aesthetic you guys share? What were the discussions about the direction like?
LOPEZ: It’s cool. It kind of came about in a very natural way. I was actually writing some music with this guy Chuck…

The one they call “Chuck Doom.”
LOPEZ: He’s like the Invisible Man. He’s a guy that I met a couple years ago; we met through a friend of a friend. He was like, “Hey, I’m looking for a good, low-key studio in L.A. to work at.” My buddy was like, “Oh, you gotta hook up with my friend Shaun.” At the time, he was making some music with this guy Mackie [Jayson] who’s in Bad Brains and Cro-Mags. We started working together in the studio, but it wasn’t what we are doing now—it was a much heavier sort of thing. I was just engineering and producing that stuff, and kind of trying to line them up with a good singer. That didn’t really end up happening, but we were still kind of working in the studio when I had time. Eventually, we started talking more about music with a lot of atmosphere and cinematic music and stuff like that. Our initial plan was to do a record where we’d have three or four singers on the record and maybe give two tracks to each singer, you know, similar to a Massive Attack or a Gorillaz record, something like that…

Which you obviously played for Chino…
LOPEZ: Yeah. Chino heard it. He was back from tour and he’s always wondering what I’ve been working on. I played him a couple tunes and he was like, “Oh man, I really like this. Who are you going to get to sing on this? I’ll do a couple tracks.” I was like “Cool. Right on!” He started hearing more and more of the material and he was like, “Yo, I don’t want anyone else singing on these tracks.” He kind of staked his claim. It was pretty cool. I think for him, it was really a good thing because with Deftones, he has a lot of people to answer to and all this anticipation for each release. They’ve done seven records now; I think for him, it was probably a nice change because nobody was waiting for it.

As far as the direction of the music, I’m just interested in making good music and whatever it may be. It just turned out that it’s this. It’s funny, because when my manager heard this stuff at first, he was like, “It must really bother you. You’re not really playing much guitar on this.” I’m like, “Not really man. I’ve played guitar a lot. I don’t need to play guitar.” Even in Crosses, there is a lot of stuff that sounds like keyboards, but it’s actually guitar.

When did the project commence?
LOPEZ: A lot of it was done during little breaks that he and I would have. When he’s home, we are working. He’s pretty excited and happy about it, because it’s definitely the fastest he’s gotten stuff done on a record in a while, which I think is a good feeling to him. But again—no pressure, no deadline, no expectation, no nothing. I think it works out that way. He works in a different time-space continuum than most people do. You can get away with that shit if you produce the goods, and obviously, he has proved he can do that. [Laughs.]

Chino, a lot of fans are digging it the same way they like your other project, Team Sleep. This might sound like a loaded question, but is this project a reaction to something, whether it’s a commentary on the music scene today, unfinished business or untapped creative energy?
CHINO MORENO: I hear what you’re saying. I honestly think, in some weird way, that Shaun, Chuck and I all have this same kind of taste for certain things, you know? The general feeling of this music aside from the specifics, is that it’s pretty dark, very moody. From growing up with Shaun and knowing a lot of influences we both had in music in general, there are a lot of similarities. Getting to know Chuck, I realized he has a lot of the same similarities, as well. If [we tried to do] anything consciously, it was actually trying to get a more up-tempo feel on some of the stuff, because a lot of it was naturally coming out very dark and down tempo-ish. I love that kind of stuff, but at the same time, there are so many moods to convey.

I never feel like we put up walls with Deftones. I always felt like we could do whatever we want, to some extent. I kind of keep that same mentality with this. What’s great with this project is there’s no pre-conceived idea what it’s supposed to be—and that’s what really made it fun. With Team Sleep, although it started off that way, once all the hype and all the record companies got involved, it got turned into a Deftones pt. II. The record companies were getting involved in the song structures and I’m like, “Dude, this is supposed to be a lo-fi project that we started on a four-track.” Obviously that was 10 years ago, and the climate was a little different. Nowadays, I think that things are a little more relaxed; with the internet and the fact that we can release music for free and on our own, it feels like there were no constrictions on what [the EP] had to be.

Shaun, if you couldn’t get this dude to sing on your record, who were you looking at?
LOPEZ: I don’t know. [Laughs.] I don’t really want to get into it.

The reason I ask the question is because obviously, it’s your work that initiated the whole thing. What type of vibe were you going for?
LOPEZ: I talked to one guy, Richard Patrick from Filter. He wanted to do it. Then, shortly after that, Chino was like, “Dude, I want to do a whole record,” and then it just made sense. Because in the beginning, the material was a little more scattered—it wasn’t as cohesive. There were songs that were really heavy and I didn’t think there was a way to mix those two things together. There are ways to be heavy without [having] loud guitars and crushing drums and all that. That’s all I talked to, really. We were thinking about [singers] but to be honest, I don’t really like that many singers. There were not many people we really thought of who fit over what we were doing. Chino was definitely one of them and luckily, we were friends.

What made you choose to offer the tracks for free?
MORENO: I remember when we were done with the EP, we hadn’t even figured out what we were doing management-wise or anything. We met with some people and went with the people we were with. We basically just called them up and we were like, “We want to do this, but we want to put this out in two weeks from now.” They were like, “All right. Let’s go!” For me, I think putting it out for free is a brand new thing. None of us expects every single Deftones fan is going to love this or buy this. Let’s just put it out and not even say anything. Just let people find it and spread the word. I think if we put it out for free, it’s going to be a lot easier to do that. It’s just cool to put it out and not say a word.

Everyone keeps asking me “Why are you doing this?” and I’m like “Why not? What else am I going to do with my time?” I make music. That’s what I do. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it. It’s that simple.

You just do good work and hope people respond to it. At this point, Crosses don’t need to be part of the machinery of a record’s promotion.
MORENO: Maybe a lot of that has to do with what I’ve experienced in the past anytime I ever recorded anything aside from Deftones. Deftones fans are very opinionated. I never go on [the internet] and read any of the fuckin’ message boards or nothing like that. Motherfuckers piss me off—they feel like they are in the fuckin’ band sometimes and they are so entitled. [Like they know what] we “should” do and what I “should” be doing. I end up getting pissed, so I don’t even pay any attention to that shit anymore.

My main thing with doing Crosses is, I already know there’s going to be a bunch of people, like, “Oh, here he goes again. He’s doing some mellow shit.” I know there are Deftones fans that just want to hear me fuckin’ scream my head off. That’s fine, too, you know what I mean? I do that sometimes, but at the same time, it’s like I’m doing this because it’s fun for me. I’m sure there will be a lot of people who will appreciate it, but I’m sure there will be a lot of people who just want to hate on it. The last thing I want to do is give anybody any reason to have any preconceived thoughts about what it is. It’s free. Listen to it. If you like it, that’s great. If you don’t, that’s great.

What’s the game plan regarding how you’re going to make music available in the future?
MORENO: I hate to sit here and tell everyone exactly how it’s going to roll out because it might change, but the idea is to keep putting out EPs and possibly compile everything and put them all on a record or a double record. Put it all together as one package and do a very limited special-edition so the people that really want it can get it.

We’re not interested in doing any major-label deal or getting in a van and touring across the country or anything like that. It’s more or less just putting out some music. I wouldn’t say we may never play [live]; we might, we may not, I don’t know. But if we do, I’m sure it would be a specialty type of thing. I think everything should be treated like specialty everything: limited, numbered packaging and if we are to do shows, specialty kind of things. I think if we start to look at this as it’s a band and a full-on thing, I think it might take away from the specialness of how it came about and what it is. I think the best part about this, though, is everything you hear was generated by us: three people with nobody else’s opinion, money, favors or whatever. [To Lopez] Not to hype you up too much, it’s pretty awesome that you pretty much recorded every sound on there and mixed it. There is no outside help as far as producers—I’m just not used to that. I’m used to always having a million people around like doing this and engineers. To me, that’s rad because I know that everything on there is untouched.

Last question, a typical Rock Journalism 101 one: Why the name Crosses?
MORENO: I think religion in general—the art of it and the mystique around a lot of things—has always been intriguing to me. The initial name for this project was to be the Holy Ghost. We went back to the drawing board and there were a few other names; they all had some sort of holy vibe to them. I think Shaun is the one who came up with the Crosses idea. Then, as we started to develop [musically], the initial idea was just to use crosses [as symbols] instead of using a name. Then we thought it would probably be too hard for people to find so we would probably have to use both. I think it fits along with the music. There were thoughts in my head like, “Are they going to be inverted crosses or regular crosses?” I didn’t want people to think we are a religious band, a satanic band or that we are a witch-house band. It’s difficult using a religious symbol, but at the same time, I think in an artistic way, it can totally go somewhere else and I think we are kind of walking that line.

It sounds like you’re seeking something spiritual and fulfilling, instead of some kind of specific religious dogma.
MORENO: It’s more of an artistic thing than anything literal. I think it’s awesome that I play with a lot of these things in the lyrics, as well. I’ve always been into religious art, the occult and a lot of different things—not because I follow [them], but because I am intrigued by it all. I’m always reading about it, whether it be on the dark side or on the lighter side of things. I’m always intrigued by it and I think it fits well with the dark, erotic kind of vibe of the music.

Usually when we are making this music, we usually put up some movie on the TV in the studio. A lot of the movies we put up are really weirdo, visual movies, usually from the ’60s and ’70s. A lot of them are weirdo, religion-sort-of-based and satanic-sort-of-based. I love visual inspiration while I’m making music. That stuff is always inspiring to me. Those movies—back in that era, before CGI and any of that—it’s just amazing to just have up whether you’re tracking a guitar, tracking bass, or singing. It’s cool to look over and see this bugged-out whatever. [Laughs.] alt