photo by Peter Ellenby

Scott Kannberg’s latest was intended to be a garage-rocker banged out in a week.

It’s been eight years since Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg’s last solo album, The Real Feel, was released. In the interim, his old band, Pavement, reunited and toured, he became a father, he relocated from Seattle to Brisbane, Australia, then back to the United States (L.A.) and most recently moved to Mirada, Mexico.

“I just did everything besides make music,” Kannberg explained. “It wasn’t that I was trying not to make music, it’s just that time went by pretty quick.”

The new Spiral Stairs LP, Doris and the Daggers, was originally intended to be a garage-rock affair banged out in about a week. The tone of the album took a heavy turn when Kannberg’s longtime go-to drummer, Darius Minwalla, passed away in his sleep shortly before recording commenced.

“This record’s dedicated to Darius,” Kannberg said. “His death really changed the whole focus of the record and made it into much more of an emotional record.... It was nice because the people who all played on it were friends of Darius’s and had a connection to him.”

Larry Bergin will be covering drumming duties for the current tour. He’s a longtime golfing buddy of Kannberg’s whose résumé includes stints as a professional golfer, golf-store owner, and drummer for the White Trash Debutantes.

“He was born and raised in Del Mar,” Kannberg explained. “He was like a country club kid who played against Phil Mickelson in the old days. He’s got some really great stories about golf down there.”

A nifty relic from the original run of Pavement is live footage from a 1999 show at Canes that was shot for the HBO program Reverb. Kannberg particularly relishes the work of the show’s soundman, who gave his playing more respect than their regular soundman did.

“That was the only show that I actually heard myself because it was some other guy mixing it,” Kannberg concluded.

In other Pavement news, Kannberg is optimistic about future shows:

“It’s been, what, seven years? Everybody’s still healthy and I don’t think we want to wait too much longer to do it because people still like it. It’s still fun to play those songs.”