The DJ Takeover is a program for listeners to discover their favorite artist's favorite artists, working to foster connection to the music and makers inside and outside our city. For the entire hour, we go down the rabbit hole of stories from their past, experiences of the present and goals for the future.
The lesson for all of us from our most recent DJ Takeover? Never underestimate someone wearing a Northfield Public Library card T-shirt.
I learned this after asking Neal Jochman of Combat Naps why he chose a particular song. He provided the following reply:
“It's about a pawn getting to the end of a chess board and changing into a queen … that, reimagined as a body-horror thing where they strap the pawn down and give it some gas or something, and it's very disoriented when it wakes up. ‘I thought that was the end of the board, now it's the start.’”
As I stared in awe at my guest across the room, it became very clear to me that my guest possesses an exquisite mind. For further proof, here are the lyrics to the last verse of Combat Naps’ “Queen n Pawn”:
And no it's not my home
Haven't been 10 minutes on the throne
I know what it is, still I think my mind is playing tricks
I thought that the sun was rising up through the trees
At the end of the world I was just praying on my knees
That they might let me die in peace
Much like that of an onion, Jochmann’s layers of sophistication were seemingly limitless. I found it hard throughout the interview to pick my jaw up off the floor and keep it from falling over and over again.
A self-taught musician, Jochmann was raised in Tennessee, making up songs with his sister, watching skate videos and reading books (he has evolved this hobby to a book YouTube channel). He went on to start Combat Naps in Chicago during college and has since set up camp in Madison, where he writes and records his songs from home.
Combat Naps have notes of “an optimistic Elliott Smith.” Jochmann attributed this to his adopted “Alex G” recording style. “You’ll get lots of notes of Elliott Smith with people who do what I do, the whole kind of Alex G routine. Because the techniques that are used to do his recording sound so effortlessly good, are so easy to pick up — like the double tracking and the chord changes and things, a whole kind of river of Elliott Smithiness.”
I sat there just trying to hold on tight to the well-polished wheels of Jochmann’s mind going 100 mph.
Neighboring talent Graham Hunt recommended Combat Naps when he was in the studio with me a couple months ago. As “Everyone Is My Friend” by OWLS came on, Jochmann told me, “Graham isn’t super easy to please with an album, but I played him this album, and he was just silent.”
Jochmann confirmed my suspicions about the OWLS song and its relation to American Football as part of what Jochmann coined “The Kinsellaverse.” Tim Kinsella of OWLS is the brother of Mike Kinsella, the songwriter of American Football.
With no shortage of original terminology, Jochmann explained what he and Graham Hunt call “song jail,” when you are “sentenced to a term” of listening to a song you are infatuated with until it’s served its time. “Everyone Is My Friend” has since begun its term in Carolann’s song jail cell.
Before my time with Combat Naps was up, Jochmann recommended a few Madison projects — Love Blaster, It’s All You Cowboy and The Central — illuminating his chosen approach to perform his songs with a “generous band of Madison musician friends.”
He’ll do just that when he returns to Milwaukee on June 1 for a Cactus Club show in support of two national bands with Midwest roots: Slow Pulp and Hotline TNT. The big event gets two performances that night, an early gig at 5 p.m. and a later show at 8:30 p.m.
DJ Takeover playlist: Combat Naps
- Combat Naps, “Queen n Pawn”
- Shocking Blue, "Send Me A Postcard"
- Novos Baianos, "Tinindo Trincando"
- OWLS, "Everyone Is My Friend"
- D'Angelo, "I Found My Smile Again"
- Cyndi Lauper, "I'm Gonna Be Strong"
- Sally Kellerman, "Paradise Alley"
- The Central, "Browne's Crystal"
