This is our last show. We’re breaking up the band. Jon the drummer and I just can’t face each other anymore since the breakup. This is a song I wrote about our problems. It’s called “Like a Fool,” because, well – I was a fool.
—Jim Wilbur, at a 1995 Superchunk show in Detroit.
Wilbur and Wurster on the road in Van Horn, Texas, in the mid-1990’s.
On a Saturday night in late July 1994, Laura took the stage before a capacity crowd at the Cat’s Cradle. Though she’d done battle with an unruly Moog synthesizer earlier that evening as part of Double Dynamite, an infrequently convened cover band featuring Phil Morrison, Bob Lawton, and Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, she wasn’t there to perform. She wanted to thank the crowd, and the bands, for coming to Merge’s fifth anniversary “hoo-hah.”
“It was so great everybody came,” she said. “I’m so happy you were here.” It was, says Laura Cantrell, the most effusive she’d ever seen Laura.
Back in 1988, Mac and Wayne Taylor had kick-started the Chapel Hill scene by booking sold-out five-band bills at both the Cradle and the Brewery to celebrate the release of the ludicrously ambitious box set. And now here was a five-year-old Merge riding the crest of that wave and upping the ante a bit, with three nights of sold-out five-band bills at the Cradle. Polvo played a dissonant cover of the Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle” on the final night; the Archers of Loaf, who had done one 7-inch with Merge earlier that year but had already signed a disastrous and onerous contract with Alias Records, headlined the first night. Chuck Garrison even showed up to play with Pipe, the fast and furious adolescent punk band he started with Ron Liberti after his ouster from Superchunk. In true insular Chapel Hill fashion, Pipe ended up releasing two 7-inches and a full-length on Merge, Garrison’s hard feelings notwithstanding. “They’re such a great live band,” says Mac. “Ron is the ideal punk-rock frontman. He’s aggro but really funny about it. And he has an arsenal of hilarious dances.” (As for any lingering bitterness on Garrison’s part, Liberti says, “We have a saying here: ‘Chapel Hill it.’” In other words, learn to quash whatever inconvenient emotional hang-ups you may have with your fellow Chapel Hillians, because you’re going to run into them on the street every day.)
Also playing was Squirrel Nut Zippers, a hot-jazz revivalist combo featuring former members of Subculture and Metal Flake Mother. The Zippers released a 7-inch of three creakily recorded, anachronistic torch songs on Merge in 1994 before jumping over to Mammoth a year later; by 1997 they had become the most commercially successful band to emerge from the Chapel Hill scene, with the genuine MTV hit “Hell” and a platinum record. They performed at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and at President Bill Clinton’s second inaugural. At the Merge show, they played before Butterglory.
Merge also marked the occasion with Rows of Teeth, a compilation CD of songs that were either previously unreleased or released only on vinyl. Rows of Teeth was Merge’s 10th full-length release and its fourth in the previous year. The Touch and Go deal meant more money, more records, more boxes, more promo materials, more phone calls, and more hassle for Laura operating a label out of her home. She got sick of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to answer calls from Europe on the Merge phone in a little room reserved for the label in the house she shared with Amy Ruth Buchanan, only to find herself still in there three hours later, in her pajamas, working. She also started to get strange visitors – fans who wanted to see Merge HQ up close, including a couple with two children in tow who knocked on her front door one day and just wanted to hang out. Laura politely entertained them on the hammock in her yard before sending them on their way.
In mid-1993, Merge moved from Laura’s house to a shabby two-room office space above a burrito joint in downtown Carrboro. When the Armadillo Grill fired up its neon sign each morning, Merge’s phones would stop working.
The same year, Mac and Laura hired their first employee, John Williams, who worked with Mac at Schoolkids, to handle mail-order and run the show when Superchunk was on tour. A few months later they brought on Stacy Philpott, known as Spott, who was at the time serving as music director of WXYC, to handle publicity. It was Spott’s first and only real job interview; he showed up hungover and pale. He got the job and has never left.
Of course Superchunk played the Merge anniversary, too, still blushing from an appearance three weeks prior on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Their fourth record, Foolish, released earlier that spring on Merge, had sold 40,000 copies and was widely considered a landmark step beyond indie rock’s postcollegiate affectations and into denser, more complex, and more grown-up territory. The band and the label were firing on all cylinders. Mac and Laura were not. The show was widely rumored to be Superchunk’s last.
Wurster outside the Late Night with Conan O’Brien dressing room, 1994.
Superchunk at the Merge 10th anniversary show at the Cat’s Cradle, 1999.
Brandon Holley Mac was getting a lot of attention, which I think was a little hard for them. Laura would get really annoyed at him.
Laura Mac getting a lot of attention was not the problem in our relationship.
Jim Wilbur “Why are you driving like that?” Or, “You forgot to brush your teeth!” Or, “You’re wearing that shirt again!” Or, “You’re being a dick to me!” And I’d just go, “No fighting in the van!” When we’d practice, or write songs together, it was like pulling teeth with them.
Laura Cantrell Mac was really entranced by her. And as their relationship matured, she shifted the dynamic, and started to feel her power. It was obvious that the tables were turned.
Jim Wilbur There was a time when Laura would let herself be bossed around. But she changed quite a bit.
Mac Laura didn’t really convey her affection for me, which fed the jealousy of a young guy going out with a hot girl. I probably drove her batty, and vice versa.
Jonathan Neumann They had this really unhealthy jealous thing. Laura could be really aloof, and seem unattached. And that made Mac very uncomfortable. It would turn into these little barbs and jabs.
Wendy Moore Laura broke up with Mac because he was a jerk. Because he was self-centered, and just didn’t care about anybody else but himself. I don’t think he’s a jerk. I think he’s a great guy. But speaking as a defender of Laura – he was a jerk.
Mac I take umbrage at that description of me. Even as a twenty-three-year-old!
Laura I started going to see a therapist, which I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t sort of waking up. I felt like Mac tried to talk me out of it. And I remember thinking, “Oh god, Mac hates that I’m going to see a therapist, because it means that I’m not going to put up with his crap anymore.” But I really think all these things that Mac “made” me do – Merge, and being in the band – were very therapeutic for me. It sort of dragged me out of this shell I had been in for my whole life. And I thank him for that.
Mac I was looking at the therapy through the narrow prism of our relationship, which was still pretty raw, and had freshly ended. I didn’t really know what it was. We had a pretty heavy conversation where it became clear that she wasn’t going to therapy to talk about me, or us, but about her whole life. I felt stupid that I was ever worried about it.
Brandon Holley She just reached a point where working with him, playing with him, and being his girlfriend was too much. And she cut out the part that drove her crazy.
Mac I had this stubborn idea that if we were together for long enough, she would become a different person. Happier, more affectionate. It’s that dumb impulse to try and remake your partner into someone more like yourself. Which never works. There was lots of agonizing about breaking up. There were a couple of conversations where we just knew that it wasn’t working, but literally weren’t able to call it a day. We’d sit there and say, “Let’s just not break up!” As though if we didn’t, we would just start getting along.
Jim Wilbur Laura’s not demonstrative. It’s not a flaw, it’s just a trait. Even just when I’d be driving the van and needed directions from her, she would never tell me the next turn until the last possible moment. I’d have to ask her at every step. She’s just uncommunicative – she doesn’t want to give it up. I can only imagine what that would be like in a relationship.
Jon Wurster Mac called me the night before the touring started for On the Mouth, in the spring of 1993, and said, “Laura and I are breaking up.”
Jonathan Neumann Thank god! Guys, move on! You know?
Jim Wilbur And then it was even worse! Their relationship was so bad that breaking up wasn’t much different from what it was. It wasn’t heartbreak. It was, “I couldn’t stand you when we were going out, and I kind of can’t stand you now.”
Mac One of the worst nights happened in South Carolina. We were winding up a tour with Unrest and th’ Faith Healers, and we were playing a crappy show in Columbia. Something happened onstage – Laura’s bass amp was on the fritz or something – and I was getting antsy to play the next song, and get the show over with. I made some comment to Laura and she snapped, “Fuck you!” And it turned into a little fight onstage. I remember thinking, “Is this really happening? We’re arguing on stage? What’s the point?” After the show, I had food poisoning and puked all night in the hotel bathroom. A night for the ages.
Laura No, it was not a fun moment. I think it was as hard on Jim and Jon as much it was on us.
Mac It seems pretty classic, looking back at it. Laura was incredibly quiet and withholding. Not deliberately; it’s just who she was. I was outgoing, but in some ways I was just as noncommunicative and immature emotionally. It’s easy to be outgoing and gregarious and get along with everyone if you never actually engage with people on a serious emotional level, which I had no idea how to do as a kid who was obsessed with music, and girls, and art, and hanging out, and having fun. So it was kind of a perfect storm for initially getting along great – because what’s not fun about the first part of any relationship that starts with late nights hanging out and drinking beer, playing music, seeing bands and taking road trips? – and then really not getting along later when the reality set in that our personalities were not what the other person really needed in their life.
Peyton Reed (Director, Bring It On and The Break-Up) I was in a state of shock. Camelot’s over. They were living this indie-rock wet dream. Like, “Oh man, what if I could be in a really cool band, and my amazing, hot girlfriend is in that band with me and we start our own label!” So when they broke up it was like, “Are there going to be no more Superchunk records?”
Phil Morrison I was definitely worried. The fact that both this band and this label seemed to be implicitly in jeopardy was really scary. Right or wrong, there’s this feeling of, “You guys can’t break up! What are we gonna do?” And there wasn’t any sense of assurance from either Mac or Laura that everything was going to be okay.
Jon Wurster Not to sound callous or anything, but I didn’t allow it to impact me, or even matter to me. For better or worse, I was just always focused on the music. I loved them, but it was their thing. As long as the band keeps going, and it’s not weird, then I’m fine with it. And it never got weird, as far as I was concerned. Obviously, Jim was more in tune to it.
Mac What really brought it home for me was when, after we’d gotten back from Europe in 1993, Laura called me and said I needed to come by her place to pick up a birthday present she had for me. So I dropped by the house on a summer morning, and Laura came out to the car to give me the present, which was an empty photo album she had made. It was hot out, and I asked if I could come in and get a glass of water, and she hesitated. And I realized that it was because her new guy was inside. Ouch.
Bob Lawton I don’t want to sound like a backward-thinking guy, but just to make the point: Wouldn’t you just dump the chick bass player? There’s a mindset of what usually happens in those instances – she’d be gone. And you’d just get a new bass player. I am astounded, even now, that these two people said, “We’re not going to break up the band. We’re going find a way to make it work. We’re not going to break up our business relationship.” I don’t know how they did it. Who would even try?
Mac We never seriously really considered stopping. In some ways it all made it harder to break up, because it’s more complicated. That was one reason we dragged out our relationship. We had the band and the label. And my impulse is always, “On with the show.” To a fault, maybe.
Josh Phillips It was weird. There was certainly coolness between them, and there was some bitterness between them. There were even times where they weren’t talking to each other. But on the other hand, they were working together every day, and playing in a band. They would talk professionally, but that was it. There was definitely a period where it looked like Laura was going to be out. Like she didn’t want to be doing that.
Phil Morrison Certainly it was always a question mark about how much Laura liked being in the band. So that was a reason to be concerned.
David Doernberg (Superchunk merch guy) I think the fact that it was all guys made it difficult for Laura being on the road. She really wanted a girl to go on tour with them, and I don’t blame her. We were horrible. Horrible hygiene. You’re out all night. Showering was the least priority. Hearing guys tell horrible gross stories – Laura would just shake her head. I think she just got tired of it, and I don’t blame her at all.
Laura There were times when I thought about leaving it all. At one point I remember thinking, “I should move to Chicago. I really like Chicago. I like the people there. What’s keeping me here?” Well, Merge is. I can’t take it with me. And I really felt like I had nurtured it, on my own, for the first few years. It was my baby, kind of. Mac was away at Columbia for the first year, and I did all the day-to-day operations. It was in my house. So it was obviously easier for me to stay up all night doing Merge stuff. But I think in a way, me keeping it in my house as long as I did, I may have been like hoarding control of it.
Josh Phillips She developed a sense of herself as somebody who was actually doing this worthwhile thing, and was capable and intelligent. Once they broke up, that was part of what undergirded her new sense of self, and I think that she had an investment there. And obviously Mac had his own investments.
Laura And there was still a lot about Superchunk that I found rewarding. There’s something addictive about getting up in front of people and playing for them. Especially when you get something back. And I had a hard time with the idea of giving that up. And also the idea of, what if they replaced me? Like, would I always regret that? Would it make me angry?
Mac Being in the band, we did have the feeling – and still do sometimes, actually – that Laura didn’t really want to be doing it, but didn’t not want to be doing it, either. Like it was a burden to her. Which puts the rest of the band in a position where we felt like we were forcing someone to do something they didn’t want to do. But finding someone else is not an option that we ever considered.
Brandon Holley They still kind of drove each other crazy for a while. Things didn’t really settle down for a few years.
Mac This was about the time that I started doing stuff with Portastatic. It just came out of stuff I was doing anyway – recording at home on a four-track – before Super-chunk started. At some point in 1993, Tom Scharpling asked me about doing a 7-inch on his 18 Wheeler label, so I had to come up with a name for the stuff I was doing. My four-track was called the Portastudio, and there was certainly plenty of tape hiss and static in the recordings I was doing at home, so it made sense. Portastatic served a few purposes for me: I never felt like Superchunk was capable of making delicate music. We were good at what we did, but not terribly successful at branching out from that, which used to bug me. So Portastatic gave me a place to make music that was quiet, slow – whatever I wanted it to be – and to make records without too much pressure, whereas Superchunk records by that time had become such a big deal, with all kinds of expectations attached. It also allowed me to play with other people: Jennifer Barwick, Ash Bowie, Claire Ashby, Sarah Bell, Ben Barwick, and others. It was a great antidote to the Superchunk rock juggernaut. I did the first Portastatic full-length, I Hope Your Heart Is Not Brittle, in 1994. Laura and I had an argument about it that stayed with me a long time. She wasn’t sure if Merge should release it – wasn’t sure it would sell enough to make it worth it, as though her opinion was based strictly on Merge’s well-being. I said, “I didn’t start a record label so you could tell me I can’t put out my own album on it.”
In November 1993, Superchunk toured its way out to Cannon Falls, Minn., to record Foolish at Pachyderm. Nirvana had recorded In Utero, their follow-up to Nevermind, there in February with Steve Albini. To save money (this was Superchunk’s first record without the benefit of an advance, however meager, from Matador), the band booked four days that had been previously reserved, and then released, by Smashing Orange, an unfortunately named Delaware band then on MCA Records. When Smashing Orange decided they needed another day after all, Superchunk was down to three days to record seventeen songs.
They hired Pachyderm’s house engineer, Brian Paulson, a friend of Albini’s who had recently produced Uncle Tupelo’s Anodyne and Slint’s Spiderland, to produce the record.
Jon Wurster We just tried to do too much in too little time. The first song we did was “Why Do You Have to Put a Date on Everything?” And we went in and listened back to the first take. And the playback was so loud that I couldn’t really hear anything, and the song speeds up so much, and I said, “I don’t know. Can we hear it again?” And it was just like, “No. Let’s move on.” And we just kept rolling.
Jim Wilbur There was an element of making the record about their breakup – which I think was kind of glorified – while that was going on. I think Mac was writing lyrics at that time based on the breakup, but I think a lot of it is also made up.
Laura Brian and I got flirty while we were making that record. It was a difficult situation. It’s not a good thing to be a rock chick who has recently become single, who also happens to be on tour with her ex. Actually, I’ll say it was just not a good thing for me to be single, especially on tour. It may sound big-headed, but much to my annoyance, I was constantly having to deflect attention from men, though I felt flattered by it some of the time. Tricky territory. Mac and I had been broken up for a while at that point, but because we were around each other all the time, we hadn’t really broken up, you know? We were still keeping an eye on each other constantly. It was awkward.
Mac I was stewing, but we needed to finish a record, and I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.
The cover art for Foolish was a self-portrait of Laura wearing a blue dress with red dots. Hanging in the background, over her right shoulder, is a dead rabbit strung up by its hind legs.
Laura Mac just went ahead and did the covers for the first few records. And then I said, “I want to have a go.” And so we started taking turns. Obviously, I felt like that record was a lot about me and Mac. So I painted me. Then I thought, “Shit. What do I put in the background?” And I’d recently seen Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint, and I thought, “That’d be something.” On the one hand, the rabbit is me, kind of trapped and hurt and raw. But on the other hand, because I am so evil and bad, the rabbit is Mac. Look what I’ve done to him.
Laura’s painting for the cover of Foolish, now hanging in Amy Ruth Buchanan’s house.
Amy Ruth Buchanan She was painting it up in her room. And it is kind of a dark painting. And that was all I knew. It was sort of a solitary process of working on that painting, and it seemed – yeah, it seemed like a very dark, sad painting. She didn’t talk to me about it.
Spin ranked Foolish as the eleventh-best album of the year, calling it a “consistently exquisite piece of work” and an “expansive, almost cinematic look at suburban mixed emotions” with guitars that “sound like ghostly orchestras arguing across dark dewy lawns.”
Laura did an interview with a reporter from Alternative Press prior to the release of Foolish. He guessed, just from listening to an advance copy, that she and Mac had split. As with Superchunk’s previous records, Mac’s vocals are buried in the mix, lending the whole album the sense that he is struggling to shout over the crash of the guitars. But the lyrics, when discretely audible, repeatedly return to themes of betrayal, obsession, and emotional exhaustion. On “Without Blinking,” Mac asks, “Did you really do this without thinking / or was there some concentration at work? / ‘cause when you said ‘I’m sorry’ you were not blinking / you can’t pretend to not know how that hurt.” And on the single “Driveway to Driveway”: “From stage to stage we flew / A drink in every hand / My hand on your heart had been replaced / And I thought it was you that I had chased / Driveway to driveway drunk.”
Phil Morrison There was a “goodness gracious!” kind of moment, hearing it for the first time.
Josh Phillips Laura felt that there were songs being written about her. And that made her feel creepy, being on stage while songs were being sung about her.
Jim Wilbur Even before Foolish, just after I had moved down from Connecticut, Laura and I were at a party, sitting on the porch drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. And she said, “Every time we play a song, I feel like I have to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Laura Like it’s all my fault. I felt like every song was about me in some way. But of course when I would say that to Mac, he would deny it. We wouldn’t talk about it very often, and it usually wouldn’t go well. It would annoy him and make him angry if I suggested that I knew what any of his lyrics were about.
Jim Wilbur I think he used it as a springboard to get different imagery, but I don’t think it’s an autobiography of the breakup. With Mac’s approach to writing lyrics, only very infrequently does he write something that’s absolutely, “Holy shit! I know what you’re talking about!”
Laura When we started the tour for Foolish, I asked for Mac’s vocals to be taken out of my monitor mix. Because the words were making me cry. I would be on stage, playing these songs, and I would be crying. It was terrible. It was a hard tour.
Phil Morrison That sounds like a pretty good compromise. To have that record exist, but have Laura not have the vocals in her monitor. It doesn’t sound easy. It sounds pretty tough, and no fun, and difficult.
Mac It’s just not true. If I could sit down and decide to write a song about a specific topic and do it well, I might have done that. But I couldn’t, and I didn’t try. I read a Sammy Hagar interview one time where he said that you could have one girlfriend when you were fifteen years old and if she broke up with you, you’d have enough material to write songs for the rest of your life. I never thought I’d be citing Sammy Hagar’s wisdom, but he’s onto something. If you’re in the middle of a traumatic or tumultuous relationship, it may come out in your songwriting, and it certainly did on Foolish. But so will every other traumatic situation you’ve ever been in. Things get abstracted, details are pulled from every phase of your life, from fiction, from your friends’ relationships, from all over the place. Some songs start off about one thing, and by the end of the last verse you’re in a different country. Some things are completely made up, or a chorus is written around a certain word that rhymes with another word but that has no basis in any other kind of reality. But people just get convinced that they’re about what they think they’re about.
Laura It’s sort of hilarious. Because recently, Mac asked me, “Do you still have that boom box that ‘My Noise’ was about?” And I said, “Um, what are you talking about? Uh, what boom box? I didn’t know it was about my boom box!”
In her Alternative Press interview, Laura caused a stir and stoked speculation that the band might not survive by complaining that Superchunk’s songwriting process wasn’t democratic enough. “[Mac] is the dominant creative force in the band,” she said, “and unless more of us have creative input, I don’t think we can continue for very long.”
Josh Phillips There was a little bit of a rebellion there, where she and Jim all of a sudden wanted more input into the band. They said, “We’re sick of this just being all about you, and your songs, and your writing.” And Mac was a little disgruntled over that. He said, “If they want to be more involved, then let them write songs, and bring stuff. I’m not holding them back in any way.” It was definitely an issue.
Laura Yeah. And then I realized: I’m not really a musician. What the fuck am I talking about? I tried to write songs, and did write some that we ended up recording, but they sounded really weird. One of my weird songs is “The Mine Has Been Returned to Its Original Owner.” It’s freaky. I didn’t write the words, I just came up with the seed of the music. Jon and Jim wrote a couple songs, too. But Mac is generally better at writing the catchy songs. I never wrote any lyrics.
Phil Morrison Laura, around Foolish, went through a period where she was really intense on stage. It wasn’t so boppy. It was really kind of – almost scary. And she started singing backup around that same time, which she had never done before.
Josh Phillips The longer she was in the band, and the more she felt like she could actually handle the things at Merge and run a record label, she just seemed to get more and more confident. And that was projected on stage. She didn’t seem to be hiding so much anymore. And it was personal, too. She’d always been nice, and very welcoming to me and to other people, but she was always deflecting. She didn’t want to talk about herself. But after a while, it just felt like she had a certain confidence and self-assurance that let her interact differently with people.
It wasn’t all sturm and drang during the Foolish years. Mac recalls one particularly fun show on Halloween in 1994. Dressing up onstage for Halloween – which also happens to be Wurster’s birthday – is a Superchunk tradition.
Mac Halloween is also the birthday of former Guided by Voices frontman Bob Pollard, and we played a crazy show at Penn State with them. Guided by Voices went on first, and within seconds of their first song Pollard had done a leap and kick that propelled him backwards onto his ass and into my amp stack, toppling it backwards where it crashed to the floor with the speaker cable broken off at the jack. Somehow, our roadie DeWitt Burton had it fixed before we went on. When we did go on, I was wearing a nurse costume made for an eight-year old, complete with fishnet stockings, that I had somehow squeezed into. I spent a good portion of the show crowd-surfing in that outfit. Jim never dresses up for Halloween, but Laura does a good impersonation of Lemmy from Motörhead.
Halloween 1995 in Boulder, Colo.: Laura (Lemmy), Wurster (a priest), DeWitt Burton (Conehead), Mac (Satan), Wilbur (“an adult”), and Joe Hickey (Pope).
Superchunk tech Jim Norton and Mac onstage at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., Halloween 1998. The band dressed as the Misfits.
Wurster as Fred Durst in Montreal, Halloween 1999.
Laura We had this running joke where we would ask Jim what he was going to be for Halloween, and he would say, “An adult.”
A month before Foolish was released, Peyton Reed and Phil Morrison traveled to Chapel Hill to shoot videos for “Driveway to Driveway” and “The First Part.” They called in favors and recruited friends who were willing to work for free as crew members. Superchunk had made seven music videos up to that point, all for little more than the cost of film and shot by friends.
Reed came up with a concept for the “Driveway to Driveway” video: A black-and-white Philadelphia Story riff wherein Mac competes with a wealthy scion, played by Wurster, for the attentions of a Southern Belle, played by Laura. Laura was called upon to slap Mac in one scene. Wilbur played Jon’s butler.
Peyton Reed It was that classic Little Rascals thing of like, “Let’s get all these things together and put on a show!” That was really the feeling of it, which was great. But Laura hated it. Hated it. There was all that stuff swirling around about how much of what’s on this record is autobiographical, how much is about Mac and Laura? And we were shooting this video where they were playing opposite each other in this romantic comedy thing. And there’s even the moment where she slaps him. Laura got really emotional at one point, and I think there were some tears involved. Something became too sort of meta about playing opposite Mac.
Laura I can’t believe I didn’t just go, “No!” Because it was torture. I dreaded every minute of having to participate in that. I cried a lot. You can probably see it on my face in the video. It sucked. Mac and I were just barely talking then.
Phil Morrison It was tough. I felt like she was really being a champion for art.
Amy Ruth Buchanan Maybe that slap got a little bit too realistic. It seems weird to me that they did that video at that time, pitting them as a couple. You don’t like people talking about you, you know? But it was such a silly video. Maybe they said, “What the hell? Why not?”
Mac “Driveway to Driveway” is not about Laura and myself, but there was no point in explaining that to anyone, and I didn’t really feel like I should have to. Let people think what they want, because they’re going to anyway.
Laura There were some bad years. There were a lot of years of very difficult times, and bad communication, and irrational reactions to things and whatnot. Fortunately that’s all much better now. Each of us did certain things that just pushed the other one’s buttons, whether we knew it or not. And we were hypersensitive to it. And being around each other as much as we were, it didn’t allow us that distance that people are usually allowed when they break up and need to get over it. The strange thing about starting a band with people is that it never occurs to you that you are going to be in a very close relationship with those people for as long as that band lasts. I have spent more time together with Superchunk than with anyone.
Jim Wilbur There was still nastiness. That’s inevitable. But that changed. I’ve heard Laura say, “It’s the most important relationship in my life. That’s my family.” You know, it’s a dysfunctional family.
