Bartees Strange on Horror, Alternate Worlds and George Clinton 

Bartees Strange is an experimentalist at heart, an artist who shifts effortlessly from sound to sound and genre to genre. As a listener, you may not even notice these subtle plays with form that Strange has become so masterful at, perhaps only experiencing it as a vague nostalgia or sonic familiarity. 

On his newest album, Horror, Strange channels the greats of pop, rock, R&B and funk. In an interview ahead of his upcoming performance at Kilby Block Party this May, I got the chance to dig into the goals of Horror, his personal transformation through the writing of Horror and the greatest of all time: George Clinton. 

SLUG: You performed at a previous Kilby Block Party in 2022 when it was held at Liberty Park.

Strange: Is it not gonna be there anymore? 

SLUG: It’s not. It got moved to the west side of town at the Utah State Fairpark, a much bigger space. 

Strange: Oh wow. Man, that’s good for y’all. That’s so sick, I enjoyed that festival. It’s one of my favorite ones that I played that year and it was cool. Like, Mac DeMarco played and a number of [other] great bands were playing. I felt really lucky to be a part of it. It felt more like a show than a festival, which I think is really cool. Honestly, it reminded me of Pitchfork [Music] Festival — how it was a big festival, but it’s mostly people that live there, which is super unique. 

SLUG: I think with [Kilby] you get access to one of the better music cultures in the United States: really concentrated, really passionate, all walking distance from peoples’ homes. 

Strange: It’s special. I feel like we’re in a weird place with music where so many — I don’t know how old you are — but I remember when I was growing up there was Sasquatch Festival and Eaux Claire Festival and all these kind of mid-major, and honestly cool, festivals. I feel like Kilby is becoming that and it’s just really cool. I’m just stoked to be a part of it. 

SLUG: I was in high school-ish when those were heavy hitters, compared to like something like Coachella. Some of that stuff doesn’t really exist in the same way that it did back then, which is a shame. I do think Kilby is carrying on in that tradition. 

I want to dive into your most recent album Horror and talk about kind of the goals that you set for the album: speaking on horrifying or scary things that are grounded in reality and tied to everyday life. Was the writing of that album, and the experience of performing that album, therapeutic or cathartic for you?

Strange: Definitely cathartic and therapeutic. I haven’t played it much yet. We did a few release shows and that was fun. We played every song from the album, which was really cool. I think that now [I’m] refining and making everything feel even better before we get into the final tour, which we’re nailing down this weekend. It’s cool, man. I feel like it’s a fun record to play, but I’ve had the record done for a little while, so I feel like once I was [done] making the record, it’s very cathartic and therapeutic, [to be] like, “I’m kind of done.” It’s theirs now. Which is cool. I’m just excited to see how people react to it and see how it touches their lives. That’s the cool part.

SLUG: Are you approaching the performance of this album differently than you have your past projects? 

Strange: Yeah, I’m doing more on the production side with the stage setup. I was able to incorporate some stuff into that I’ve always wanted to do. Otherwise, now I have four records to pick songs from, which is a gift and a curse. There’s stuff I want to play, and then there’s stuff [where] I’m like, “Do you even want to hear that song?” It’ll be fun to kind of figure out. It’s like, you have the set and you play a few shows and the set changes, so I’m curious what I’ll learn playing it.

SLUG: Is it conflicting to pick a deep cut, especially if it’s one that’s closer to your heart than the audiences?  

Strange: It is, but [it’s] my show, so.

SLUG: What did you learn about yourself through the process of writing this album? You’ve talked about the themes and even some full songs that had been completed before you were ready to sit down and create this project on the whole, and I have to imagine that’s a big exploratory process to like bring all of it together.

Strange: The only way out of a lot of stuff is through it. I feel as you get older, there’s these things that just keep coming back that you have to deal with, and then you end up in this world of your own. You start to realize, “The only way I’m gonna get to this next step as a human is to address this stuff.” That’s what the album flagged for me. It’s cool now that I’ve made the album and I can see it and hold it. I’m really proud that I was able to express myself so freely, which is always the gift of creation. I haven’t felt that on other [albums] I’ve made, but on this record, I felt like I was really able to do what I wanted to do. That’s something I’m really happy I got to experience. 

SLUG: Do you feel like that process is rare when it comes to writing music? 

Strange: I feel it can be. I think my first couple records — I love those records and I really love how they came out. I have no real edits, but I think the more you do it, the more surefooted you become, and the less you care about what other people think. You think more about, “I’m gonna play this every night, so what do I wanna do?” That’s a good place to get to, so it makes me excited about making more things. 

SLUG: It sounds like this album serves a creative or career milestone in terms of the ways that you’re visualizing yourself and how you’re approaching the writing process. 

Strange: Exactly. I’m just excited to do it again. 

SLUG: I want to dig into one of the tracks that I love a lot, “Hit It Quit It.” Within the first few seconds, you name dropped a lot of the biggest names in Black American music like Sly Stone, Bootsy Collins and Stevie Wonder, and the title itself is a reference to George Clinton and Funkadelic. Is this track about a complex nature of fame or talent and tradition? 

Strange: I end the song by saying, “Don’t fear what’s comin’” and there’s this line from Sly Stone, “Blood’s thicker than the mud,” from his song “Family Affair.” There’s also this world of thinking with all the Parliament stuff where Black people are from outer space, and that’s why the world feels like it doesn’t work for them sometimes. I love the idea of the character of the story starting to realize their lineage of music and where they come from, and knowing that those people are not really of this world — they’re from a different place, and I’m from the same place. [I’m] looking at that and understanding that, and then looking into the future and being like, “Okay, the challenges I’ll face, the things I’ll have to go through, are gonna be unique to the experiences that people like me have.” So that’s what the song is referencing and calling towards. All of these references that are pretty foundational to why I make music. 

SLUG: Yeah, that really raw, exceptional lineage that you tap into also comes through with your genre choices. I see that you lean a lot into R&B and funk, so that makes a lot of sense sonically, too. 

I want to dig into the the images that you produced for the album’s overall aesthetic. You talked about creating this character within yourself that’s darker and more evil. What different aesthetic sources did you pull from? Were there certain characters and pieces of media that you love that you wanted to lift some elements from?

Strange: I really love The Wiz. I love the person behind the curtain and I love horror movies a lot. It’s a thing I watch every day, and so I wanted to create a character that was a little scary. I’m into the idea of a world that looks like our world but is slightly different, and a little fucked up the longer you look at it. And the ethos of the whole visual aesthetic was, “How do we make something that’s familiar and normal, but a little bit out there?” So, we’re just trying to combine all of that to make something a little interesting. It [was] fun to do. 

SLUG: I’m interested about the line down your face. What’s the origin or meaning behind that? 

Strange: Honestly, I just thought it looked cool. I think my makeup artist was like, “Let’s just try it.”

SLUG: Do you have a dream musical collaboration that you’d love to do? Alive or dead, past or present? 

Strange: Prince. Every time I remember that he passed away, I’m like, “How did we let that happen?” It’s a societal failure that Prince is no longer alive. Of the people who are living, I would say George Clinton. 

SLUG: I love George Clinton. He’s been all over the place throughout his entire career, but his shift into hip-hop has been so interesting to see that lineage continued to hip-hop production. 

Strange: It’s so cool that rappers respect George Clinton, that they understand that so much of what they do is from the [genre] exploration of George Clinton.

SLUG: He has an unspoken reverence around him — it must be so rare to have that be so immediate for an artist. 

Strange: You look back even like Snoop Doggy Dogg [from “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?] — it’s George Clinton, all that stuff. 

SLUG: That song, and a lot of the original aesthetics for Snoop Dogg, are just taken off of that one track “Atomic Dog”, which is awesome.

Strange: It’s a whole world in his music, and in one song, he’s something else. I mean, everyone of course respects [him] and gets it, but when we talk about the greatest ever — Michael Jackson, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles. I’m like, George Clinton is The Beatles, that’s the level [he’s at]. He’s in a different place, it’s over there. 

SLUG: Do you think George Clinton is underrated? The artists that you named are so huge and nationally recognized, but I don’t feel like I hear George Clinton’s name in those conversations as much as I’d like. 

Strange: I think he is underrated, man. People don’t realize, if you listen to a Led Zeppelin record, a lot of those riffs are Eddie Hazel riffs from Funkadelic. This is like, [from the] late ‘60s up through the ‘70s, a lot of people were listening to Parliament and are very influenced by that music and [their] prolificness. Dozens and dozens of records from [them], so many iterations of him. I think he’s underrated, for sure. I’ve put him up there with The Band, Fleetwood Mac, George Clinton — it’s the same level of mastery for sure. 

SLUG: I think about how a lot of early grunge musicians in the ‘90s attributed their drumming style to the Gap Band and Funkadelic, which is insane to think about. Some of those beats are fully lifted — not even twisted around or change, just fully lifted. 

Strange: Gap Band, [an] amazing band from Tulsa, Oklahoma. That’s so cool that there were grunge bands in Seattle who were like, “These guys are the shit.”

SLUG: Do you have any last thoughts or anything you want to share with our readers and the folks heading to the festival? 

Strange: I’m just excited to be there again. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve played Salt Lake City more than any other place I’ve played in my music career — which is really random and funny — but I’ve played Salt Lake City more than any other place. It’s just how the routing has worked. Every support tour I’ve played there, and every headlining tour I play there, so it’s just always happened. Anytime I tour, I play in Salt Lake City. 

SLUG: Damn, do you have a favorite venue or memory from playing here? 

Strange: There was one show we played with Lucy Dacus. I cannot remember the venue name, but it was right across the street from a way bigger venue. The green room was upstairs and you could look down and kind of see the band playing. We were playing there and I remember hearing someone go, “Brandon Flowers is here!” I was like, “That’s so sick.” I forgot that those guys were from Utah. Utah’s such an interesting place.

Bartees Strange will perform at Kilby Block Party on Saturday, May 17 at 3:00 p.m. on the Mountain Stage. You can get your single day and three-day passed for the festival here!

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