the ugly hug

Around the time Combat Naps released Tap In back in 2023, I got to interview Neal Jochmann about the project and his creative practice. Combat Naps was such a mystery to me at the time, first discovering the project playing in the legendary B Side Records in Madison, WI – doors be propped, tunes be cranked – where it was easy to get lost in the whimsy of these stories and melodies that often felt too good to be true. But there was an eagerness to the music that forfeited any and all expectations of what counts as inspiration, where each song plays so close to real life, allowing Combat Naps to be so accessible. And in that initial conversation, Jochmann reflected on the project as it pertained to its larger purpose, saying, “I have so many corny, sappy and sweet little things in my songs. But this is a punk music experiment, you know? Make it sweet. Make it obvious. Make it do that. Don’t shut that out. It might lead to a nice impression of versatility”. 

To this day, Combat Naps continues to be something entirely of its own. Jochmann began exploring the versatility of the simple pop song back in 2016 as he began to frequently share songs on bandcamp, collecting EPs, singles and full length albums in this vast, almost obsessive catalog of DIY imagination and melodic extra-ordinaries. These songs became a clear and animated response to Jochmann’s creative spirit and passion to fill in the gaps of undesirable silence with something worth exploring. And sometimes these stories get ahead of him, but that’s where he prefers to be – an observant scythe, a determined pawn, a reserved dad crying to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a lucky individual lucky enough to have infinite luck – all characters that allow Jochmann to become an observer rather than the story’s maiden explorer.  

Combat Naps returned this year with a major vinyl reissue of This Was the Face, an album previously released digitally to bandcamp only, and now getting full treatment from Will Anderson’s [Hotline TNT] label, Poison Rhythm. This Was the Face is a tried-and-true pop joyride – door be propped, tunes be cranked as it goes. As a collection, these songs live in moments, flashes of thoughts scribbled on the back of a junk mail, gum wrappers or the cover page of your most current novel excursion, just to make a note before the thought is running right past you and straight outta town. And to his credit, the Madison-based project has held to that mission Jochmann once stated two years ago; this is a punk rock experiment, a release of linguistic agency, where Combat Naps revels in demonstrative boldness, empathetic deliveries, and what it means to give up control for once and work from the back seat. 

I recently caught up with Jochmann after night two in Chicago while on tour with Hotline TNT. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Alright Neal, I haven’t chatted with you since Tap In came out. That was probably almost exactly two years ago I believe. What’s new with you?

Well, a big new thing is this whole album that just came out now. The re-release of something I recorded last year, with a couple bonus tracks, and then this tour that you’re catching me on. That’s pretty new. And I also got two new cats this year. I got Simon and Penelope, and I love them. I want to just use them to sell records [laughs]. It could be a mutually symbiotic relationship. I love my cats. And then also I’ll post them, and then maybe people might be like, ‘oh my gosh, beautiful cats, I’ll listen to this song’. 

You released This Was the Face last year, just self-released on the internet, and then you took it off. And now you’re doing this whole vinyl reissue followed by this massive tour. What were the conversations around these decisions like as it was coming together? Did you ever see this as a possibility?

Not necessarily, no. I mean, I didn’t think it would be done up this well. Basically what happened was that Julia saw Poison Rhythm’s call for submissions, and asked me to send a CD in.  I love burning CDs, and I love mail. Turns out Will [Anderson] loves burning CDs and sending mail too. So I sent a CD with a bunch of music starting with a couple songs from This Was The Face. And then Will and I were chatting about things we liked, and he was like, ‘you know, I was thinking the next release could be a good reissue of that album. I was just game. Maybe it is an exciting listening experience to listen to something pressed to vinyl that was written not anticipating that. Maybe it’s kind of a fresh thing. Maybe there’s kind of a lack of expectation on the part of the musician, i.e. me. So I got it mastered through Justin Perkins for vinyl and everything. I always think it’s kind of interesting, like, what is it like to put out an album? It’s a very mini version of things I’ve seen other bands that I’ve known do. The sort of album cycle where you have a single and a video and you have a whole story.

Just your bandcamp alone, you’re a prolific cataloger of music. We call you a pop song factory over here. You just keep pushing out these excellent songs. But being a self-released artist for many years and now working with a label, was it what you expected? What was your mindset going into it? Were you game for anything or did you have expectations for yourself and the project?

I guess I just anticipated that it would be a beautiful vinyl album because I knew they were going to use Third Man Records pressing. And I think that my expectation was to use it as a spiritual exercise to kind of surrender to it a little bit. Because I don’t want to be the dogmatic guy who’s just like, ‘oh, there’s just always got to be shit out’ and you just throw it in there and it’s worthless. Because that’s not how I feel. I think I’ve only ever done that just because it’s just a habit. But I wanted to follow recommendations; let’s release it down this time, let’s release a video, try to learn that kind of patience and also try to use that as an opportunity to get a fresh perspective on the music. Because one of the disadvantages of putting things online immediately is that you don’t always give yourself a chance to think before you speak. That can lead to situations later where you’re like, man, that is kind of cringe to me now. It was validating to have a thing by the time it was released, I still kind of fucked with it. It was a cool kind of experiment, to give it that time. And then in September when it’s out, if I still like it, maybe I did a good thing and wasn’t just scratching a publication itch.

Once you took the original release of This Was the Face off the web, it’s been quite a long gap in releasing music for you. Now on the opposite side of that gap, and breaking that habit as you said, where are you sitting now looking at your back catalog but also looking at what could be next for you?

I’ve asked myself this question a lot. I guess there are some mornings it feels strange to just go right on back to more or less insignificant, unceremonious releases. And that has its appeal. Maybe there could be some sort of system whereby there are constant small releases of a type, and also, as a different animal, something worth being excited about – some massive statement that actually might sound rather different from the singles. It could be cool to try to split personalities and be like, I want to go deeper into both things. Maybe go even harder with the kind of first thought, best thought EP and throw it out there and just be proud of it. And then go even harder with something 40 minutes long that you’re not ready for. I don’t know, maybe the songs are longer than they’ve ever been. Maybe the songs are more non-fictional than they’ve ever been. You just kind of try to break new ground with the album and try to wave hi to people with the singles. 

I love your lyricism so much because it feels like a healthy blend of nuance and nonsense. You create this world that is singularly Combat Naps. Do you find yourself placed in this world that is Combat Naps? In the world created by the amalgamation of stories, maybe even viewing them as a collection of linked stories?

Maybe like a king in a castle. Or maybe a journalist. A Studs Terkel, maybe? He’s this Chicago writer who made these amazing books full of first-person testimony. So, he has a book called Working, where it’s all interviews with people about their jobs, kind of this massive compendium of different first-person perspectives. And he also has a book called “The Good War”, which is all about World War II, and one about the Great Depression, called Hard Times. I think that’s kind of where I situate myself. I’m not really an authority on anything in the world, but I’m interested in talking to people in the world about what’s there. And that is kind of a justification for trying to write songs where I talk about experiences I didn’t have.

So you don’t think you have authority in the stories?

Ideally, you want to be an impassive observer, because that would allow you to write the surprising lyric. It would allow for some sort of simulation of ‘life is stranger than fiction’, where you’re just letting stuff happen, and you’re allowing things into the lyrics on the grounds that, yeah, if this is life, it’s stranger than anything I could come up with. So you’re allowing nonsense, for instance, things that don’t really quite make sense to you at first. And then I guess as it pertains to nuance, you’re allowing details that feel disproportionate to the story. For instance, like in the song “Queen N Pawn”, a small detail would be the orchard keeper has a scythe, and I feel like the scythe, I don’t know why they’re scything the streets, some sort of street sweeping thing, but allowing the scythe in there is a small detail that feels impassively observed. So I’m kind of excited by the story, almost in the way that Studs Terkel is excited by the first-person perspective of the people he interviews. So maybe something like that, a collection of first-person perspectives. But maybe a fictional version of that, kind of like Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, where they’re clearly all inventions of the same voice and limited as such. And so they can’t be nearly as good as Studs Terkel, but they can be like Faulkner. Where someone is trying to fracture themselves and getting some of the way there, but also failing, and not being faithful to the character at times.

Do you find yourself, as the storyteller, failing these characters at all?

I think so. I mean, that’s the little twinge you get when you’re singing the song, for instance, live in front of a bigger audience than you’ve ever played to. And you’re singing, and you’re like, is the character really flipping coins here? You get this little twinge, and it’s not really cringe, it’s just a little feeling of like, is that really what’s happening in the song? Am I telling the truth here? And I feel like that’s maybe what people refer to as authenticity in lyrics. That’s a lesson you have to learn the hard way by just getting up there and singing it. I don’t get those twinges very much from this set, luckily, because Logan [Severson] has selected songs that he thinks I’m delivering with conviction, that suggests I think I’m telling the truth in the song.

So, it kind of self-selects when Logan says, ‘we should do this song and this song and this song’. It turns out to be ones that I was able to feel were somewhat true. What’s interesting about this line-up that I’m touring with is it’s not the hometown line-up of me and Marley and Illich and Yvette. It’s hired hands who are able to do this big, long tour. But it’s people who have been to Combat Naps shows, so it’s interesting how that selection process happened. Because Logan just basically picked some songs. He was like, I think you should do this and this and this. And I was kind of like, you know, those are ones I feel comfortable singing.

And you said you felt good up there tonight. Way more relaxed than the beginning of this tour you mentioned?

I did feel good tonight. With the first few shows I remember we were being accurate. And then after one – one of Julia’s big insights that night was that we were very focused and we weren’t really looking at the audience at all. And tonight, it was fun to look at the audience. Of course it’s important not to read audience expressions and take much from that because people don’t display their emotions in their face. But it was fun to see impassive or kind of neutral audience members, unmoved audience members, and kind of sympathize with that and be like, you know, I am not moving very much either. And then see people who are dancing and being like, what are you dancing to? You know, it was cool to inquire that in the face of the audience. So that led to me being relaxed. Calvin, who played in early iterations of the band, showed me a voice memo of a song I wrote a long time ago about how I read expressions on people’s faces too much. I used to have that problem of if someone’s tired, RBF or whatever, I’m like, oh man, they’re pissed at me. You know, it’s just something you get to learn growing up, I guess. 

Do you find that habit to write as these characters, almost as you’re seeing someone’s facial expressions and putting meaning into it, even though it might not be your story to tell?

Oh my gosh, wow, good connection. I think a clean way of saying it is that there’s kind of an entitlement to speech that is both queasy about the whole enterprise, but it’s kind of essential to doing the exploration. It’s fiction or whatever. But it describes a feeling that I have a lot about songwriting. My mom used to always say, ‘Neal, I just feel like you don’t really have anything to say’. And she said it lovingly, and this was in the course of complimenting me on my music. But I think about that every time I write a song, thinking, what do I have to say? I think arguing with that question is great. It’s very productive. What I took from her saying that is to simplify and maybe make a cleaner premise to the song. I think every song on this album has an easily summarized premise, and I’m proud of that. Like that fifth song, “Drifting Halfway”, that’s about being an early riser and knowing that that can wake people up. And that weird thing of like, I gotta get up and do stuff, but I wish you could sleep and I’m sorry. 

You also run a YouTube channel called The Leafy Concern, dedicated to physical books. As a lover and a participant in literature, what does it mean to you having this, I’m going to call it an extracurricular, that’s outside of music, but still connected to the way you approach literature and the way you express yourself through literature? 

 It’s always vaguely connected to this desire I have one day of teaching literature or something. I always wanted to be like a cool literature teacher who makes kids love reading and books. But I guess it’s nice to be able to have that kind of validation from something. It’s not really validation; we’re kind of displacing attention onto these objects. I think that’s fun. I think maybe it kind of reacquaints you with the object as kind of separate from the artist, just like in a way that kind of reinforces a healthy separation. Because I feel like any attention, I get on those videos are not really because I ramble sometimes, they’re just want to see what’s happening in these works of art. And sometimes I give people a clue or give them my take. The book is kind of alive, you know? We don’t have to worry about ourselves. We just get to focus on that, and that’s kind of nice. It’s also just a nice excuse to keep a ledger in what I’ve been reading lately.  I’m always dreading the day when I’m going to log on and do a video that’s like, ‘you guys should all check out my music video’. It turns out it’s just a long game to sell two vinyls.

You can listen to This Was the Face out now as well as order it on vinyl via Poison Rhythm. Follow along with the Leafy Concern here.

Photos and Interview by Shea Roney