Don’t ever try telling Dee Kesler that he is a perfectionist. Chances are either he’ll say it first or the artistic cogs in his head will be spinning so fast that he won’t be listening anyway.
The primary songwriter, singer, and arranger for San Francisco’s Thee More Shallows, composed of Kesler, Chavo Fraser, and Jason Gonzales, takes pride in indulging in his obsessive, creative tendencies. And having recently signed with San Fran’s Anticon, he may have found a group of artists as nuts as himself.
“There’s no other label we’d rather work with,” said Kesler. “They’re all super head-cases like me – total perfectionists.”
Aside from both being excellent drummers, Fraser and Gonzales act as Kesler’s better judgment when his obsessive nature takes over.
“They figure out the drum parts and then they’ll come in and play my better conscience and tell me to stop obsessing over things,” Kesler said. “I write the songs but there’s no way I could actually finish recording them without some sort of editor. They also play a big part in the recording process.”
“There’s a manic period where I’ll write a bunch of songs, usually in the spring. I go into a mania and I write; then I revise them for the rest of the year.” – Dee Kesler
With Thee More Shallows’ third LP, Book of Bad Breaks, due out on Anticon in the spring, the trio stray away from the more soundtrack-esque quality that sprawled their past releases. The result is a more focused and refined effort, exercising restraint more than excess, something that Kesler acknowledges as a step forward.
“Our last record wasn’t that widely heard but was infamous among those who heard it for being very atmospheric and having a lot of textures woven through it,” said Kesler. “This record is a little sharper-edged and more song-driven than our last one.”
Being a classically trained violinist from an early age, Kesler’s early training as a musician plays a huge influence in the creative direction of the group’s work.
“I learned to play [violin] by ear with the Suzuki Method,” said Kesler. “It doesn’t teach you to read music, but it really taught me about listening to a piece of music rather than just studying it. Even from age ten and onward I was always writing my own stuff.”
Thee More Shallows’ writing and recording process is a hectic, year-long affair, during which Kesler writes and subsequently dissects his art for Fraser and Gonzales to contribute to later.
“There’s a manic period where I’ll write a bunch of songs, usually in the spring,” said Kesler. “I go into a mania and I write. Then I revise them for the rest of the year.”
This may not seem like a conventional way to go about recording an album, but there isn’t much about Thee More Shallows that screams typical. And in this age of cut-and-paste, next-big-thing aspirers, that is most certainly a compliment.
– Story by Mike Affholder, photo by Becca Henry