Jeff Schroeder, Former Smashing Pumpkins Guitarist and Transgressive Outsider

Mixed Asian Media - January 9, 2023

By Meeja Kinsey

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As a longtime core member of the iconic band the Smashing Pumpkins, musician Jeff Schroeder has been beloved by alternative rock and shoegaze fans for years. You’d think with such a solid track record, that would be his main identifier. However, Jeff’s sense of identity, especially in relation to his Korean heritage, is more complex and nuanced.

I was lucky enough to sit down with him to get a deeper look into what his roots mean to him. From a truly mixed childhood, to getting his PhD in comparative literature (with a specialization in Asian American lit), Jeff’s relationship to his roots is as complex as his musical expertise.

*THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN EDITED FOR CLARITY AND LENGTH.

What were you doing before you entered the music industry? 

Before I was in the Smashing Pumpkins, I was getting my PhD at UCLA in comparative literature. So, I was very immersed in academia and intellectual endeavors. Even though I was in the comparative literature department, we had to declare three different areas of study. When you kind of go on the job market, you have to market yourself as one thing. And so I was a specialist in Asian American literature; that was my area of specialty. But I kind of did global ethnic literatures basically as my larger framework.

What inspired you to start forming bands and get more involved with music?

Music was kind of always around me. I had an older brother who was eight years older than me. He was very into music and had kind of dabbled in playing music a little bit himself, and had friends that played guitar, so it was around in the air.

And I think, by the time I was like 8, when you really start coming into consciousness about things [you] like, it was really the beginning of things like MTV and videos. So then it wasn’t even just audio culture, it was like a video culture where you got to see those people playing instruments on a stage through videos and the whole deal.

I was very attracted to it. I begged my parents for a guitar and you know, they were sweet enough to actually get all that stuff for me, and I just started, kind of figuring stuff out, and then eventually took lessons. And once I took lessons, that really sped up the process.

I was lucky. I got a really cool, great teacher who was able to teach me things I wanted, but also turn me on to other things as well. I think because, for whatever reason, he saw that maybe there was like an extra bit of talent there, he definitely gave me some extra time and attention.

So I really appreciate those things now because I've taught students myself, and I realized how difficult it is to give extra time when you're just trying to make a living teaching.

I know we connected because we're both mixed Korean, but do you identify differently? And when growing up, did your cultural heritage influence any of your music interests?

I think in the big scheme of things, depending on what your audience is and how nuanced people want to get with their terminology and definitions, I'm comfortable saying I'm Korean American because, you know, I am. But of course, if you start delving into those names and what they all add up to, it can be a very kind of ambivalent space. There's simultaneous attraction and repulsion to any of those types of things. 

From an artistic standpoint, I kind of like the more transgressive type of artists, who are about breaking down ideas and identities. And so I think that's why I was very attracted to avant-garde art. [Someone] like Teresa Cha, in particular, was someone who highly influenced me and whose work I was very drawn to for those reasons.

So if it's a political situation and you're looking for political representation within the government, it's good to be like, OK, we're Asian American or Korean American, and we can work together to work on these sets of issues. But then maybe within that community, you might be essentialized in a way that doesn't really fit who you are as a person. So you actually want to break down that term and what that term means. I think it's very situational how we have to think about it. 

Like how those things play into my artwork, I'm more on the transgressive side of things. I'm trying to break things down rather than build things up.

There’s that brainpower I'm talking about. Maybe to simplify that, do you feel it’s because you don’t want to be put into a box? 

Well, it's also not even being put into a box, and this is something that we've kind of spoken about in our exchanges because we're mixed race.

And so that's a whole thing in and of itself within Asian American discourse. My feelings about that is there's really not a lot of language out there for which to even discuss what the experience is like. So I think it's really about people like you and I — you through what you're doing through your social media sites, and me throughout music — to start building a wider vocabulary for people that maybe someone in the future might find useful, in terms of thinking about what does it mean to even be mixed race and what that experience might be like.

As much as I've experienced racism, I grew up in a predominantly white suburban type of environment in the late ’70s, early ’80s), I came into more of an Asian American/Korean American consciousness within my college years. 

Within academia, I think people are much more sensitive about how they say things, because they're maybe informed by things like theory and stuff. [However], within the social situations, hanging around with other Asian Americans, I felt like I was very rejected from that side of things too.

I've had people tell me to my face, “Well, you're not really Asian, or you're not really this, so you get it from both sides.” So then you're kind of like, well, who am I performing all this for? I feel like, is it even for me at this point? What benefit is it to me to even use these terms?

They're not necessarily adding up to anything positive. So I think that's why I started looking towards more outsiders within art, because I feel like that's kind of more like the feeling and sentiment that I've always gotten.

Regarding outsiders in art, are you looking specifically in the mixed-Asian diaspora, or are you talking about generally people on the fringe, and is it only in music? Is it in art? Is it also in academia? Where are you gathering from?

I would say, people that were not necessarily self-proclaimed outsiders. If it was even someone like Teresa Cha, or someone like me [with my] cover of Haenim, which was written by Shin Joong-Hyun [and performed by Kung Jung Mi]. He was kind of an outsider within the Korean community, you know. And right now I'm really into the writer, Kathy Acker, who wrote about being a New Yorker, you know, but not Asian American.

I love French writers and people like George Bataille from the ’30s and ’40s — people combining different types of schools of thought together to create new frameworks to create new ways of thinking. [Those who] try and break down whether they're critical structures, societal structures, religious structures; to kind of break free from imposed ways of thinking about, such as the self.

That's a really interesting point because I think people are always concerned or worried about us as mixed Asians, thinking we have this identity crisis all the time. In reality it can be a superpower that we are so conscious of all these identities. It's not just people of mixed race, it's people having these experiences in their lives that come together.

Yeah, yeah, very much so. I never thought about it that way, but it’s true, and I became very conscious of it very young, because you're a kid on the playground and someone calls you a racial epitaph. I had to think about it, but it took me a long time to find the framework with which to even understand it.

To piece it together at first, it wasn't Asian American discourse. It was more like, I'd read a novel by Richard Wright or Zora Neale Hurston from the African diaspora. That really piqued my interest and really put me down like you know down a path with which I really wanted to investigate all this.

I want to go back to your Haenim cover. I shared that with the Mixed Asian Media crew and it got such a big response. People were so excited. Can you walk me through how that all started and where your inspiration came from? 

I always thought it was just a beautiful, simple, pretty folk song. And I didn't even know what it was about. I took three years of Korean when I was in graduate school, so I could figure out a few things, but I didn't really know what it was. I just kind of liked the sound.

Somewhere during the early pandemic, I listened to the song and I said, oh, I really want to do a cover of this, and I could just hear like the version that I wanted to do in my head. I wanted to do this kind of very blurry, shoegaze-y version of it. 

And then I thought of my friend who sings who would be perfect, because she's very much into kind of spiritual, mystical things as well. Then through talking, I asked what the lyrics were about and she responded, “Oh, they're just about wandering around the countryside. They're kind of these cool psychedelic lyrics.”

I thought that's really cool, because I felt like during the pandemic, it was something nice to put out there. Looking for a little bit of rejuvenation, like a rebirth of spirit, and looking for just a bit of peace during a very tumultuous time.

It was a lot of hard work to get it right. [I] had to get the sounds the way that I wanted. I worked on the guitar a lot too, cause there's a lot of layering, and my friend Josiah who mixed it in L.A. did such a great job. I mean, we spent a lot of time doing it, but it came out perfect.

I'm very proud of it.

That's awesome! Are we going to be able to hear more of projects kind of like this cover? Do you have a Korean fan base?

Yeah, so I had another band before called “Night Dreamer” with another Korean American, Mindy Song, who’s doing her own thing now. It's really hard for me to do a band project because Smashing Pumpkins takes up so much time. I never really wanted to be a solo artist in that way. I feel like a very reluctant solo artist. I like to be in bands to collaborate with other people. 

But I actually have already recorded 10 new songs that are almost done, they just need vocals. And since that time, I've written another batch of songs I'm going to record once this tour finishes. So I think I'm going to put out two releases next year, back to back. 

I've been back in L.A. for three years and I've met so many great, talented musicians, so I plan to have a lot of cool guests on the record. I think it's going to be fun.

Jeff is currently living in L.A. and producing other bands as well as pursuing a solo career. Since leaving the Smashing Pumpkins, Jeff has been working on a few different projects that he plans to release in 2024. These collaborations include Vice Cooler, Emily Retsas, Andrea Wasse, and William Cashion from Future Islands. Stay up to date with his new adventures at @jjjschroeder.