Travelling The Pilgrim Road | A Conversation with Robert Fisher | Willard Grant Conspiracy

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If you have clicked through from ElectricGhost Willard Grant Conspiracy Special Issue welcome. This is the full full version of the interview referred to in our Special Issue.

Interview: Lee Edwards/ElectricGhost
Photos: Iona Macdonald/Doghouse Roses
March 5th 2008

After the Regard The End album in 2003 you moved back to California. In my mind I had you very much down as a Boston person.
Yeah well for 3am, Flying Low, Mojave and Everything's Fine all those records were done in Boston. The band has always included people outside of Boston as well as in Boston. But I was there and so was Paul [Austin]. Then when we were recording Regard the End Paul decided that he was leaving the band just before that. With Regard The End we didn’t intend to record an album it just happened. We had some time off between Festivals and we ended up in Ljubljana in Slovenia and I asked Chris Eckman [The Walkabouts] if he knew of any good studios we could hang out in since we had five days off and we might as well do something fun. He recommended Studio Metro and we went in and within a day of recording we knew we had started the record. We didn’t intend to, it just happened because the magic was there for whatever reason. I had to talk Paul in to playing a couple of things on the record because he was in the studio but then he moved to Seattle and started Transmissionary Six with Terri [Moeller, The Walkabouts] after about a year or so.

What struck me about the new album Pilgrim Road was how much it reminds me of Regard The End rather than your last one Let It Roll which had a much rockier kind of feel.
It’s definitely that, I see it as an extension of Regard The End. The truth is I knew we were going to make this record, although I didn’t know we were going to call it Pilgrim Road, before me made Let It Roll. Malcolm [Lindsay] and I had already started talking about it six years ago. So in my mind this is a kind of an extension of that album. It’s an interesting thing when you do interviews about, or when you read a review of, a record that you’ve done and everybody wants to compare to like the record before it. Like some sort of continuum thing and I’ve never thought of doing records that way you know, like they need to be sequentially like a development of some process you know. Let It Roll is very much the live band – the rock band version of what we do. And when it came out people were so “wow this is so different you’ve changed direction”. We never changed direction I mean if you go back to Mojave and you listen to Go Jimmy Go, Sticky, The Visitor or any number of things your going to…. if you can’t figure out the band plays with volume sometimes you need to have your hearing lesson [laughter]. Its kind of a funny thing though its depends where people come in on the band. If you got introduced to the band on Regard The End then Pilgrim Road sounds more like that and you got introduced on Mojave then Let It Roll was not going to be a big surprise to you.

And it certainly wasn’t a big surprise.
I hope it was something of a surprise.

Oh Yeah [laughter] and I’ve gotten used, over the years, to you going your own way and following your own muse. What was it that really influenced you to move back to California? I knew Paul [Austin] had moved to Seattle.
It had nothing to do with music. It had everything to do with family really. That had more to do with the fact that I had been away for 23 years and it seemed like it was time to go back, and be a sort of family in a way that you can’t be if you’re across the country. I certainly wouldn’t move to LA because I like the scene or that. A lot of people were “oh are you trying to get into movies or what”. Well no, I have no clue how to approach that stuff. Well that’s not strictly true. I don’t like the city that much. I grew up there and there are aspects of LA that I appreciate and there parts of old California that is still there. But there are parts of the city that I can’t stand which is why I live in the desert and away from it. I selectively choose to go into it and indulge when I want to as opposed to having to live in it all the time.

A lot of your earlier material that I have heard does seem to reference Boston in some way or other so would you say that the move to California has influenced your writing?
To a certain extent yes. Obviously Boston is an incredibly rich place to make music in. There is a great level of talent that’s in Boston. The amount music and musicians is great. The notion in Boston is that you can play with a lot of people and its encouraged. There is also a very non-mercenary aspect. So a Boston versus a New York or LA, those sorts of things, is really important if you want to develop music that is outside the mainstream. If what you want to do is create music that is signed by a major label and ticks all the boxes that some people are looking for then go to New York or LA. But if you want to follow your muse and develop music organically, something that is not mainstream, then go to place that’s got a good community of musicians. And a place that’s far enough away from the overview of the music business to let you develop your music in peace. Boston’s great for that, there’s so many clubs; it’s a University town. It has a great history of jazz folk music and indie rock. I mean everything exists there. Where I live in the desert now it’s more isolated there’s not really a music community out where I am at all. There are people that I play with in LA but in order to do that you have to make serious plans because everybody has to travel and it takes hours of time. It’s not like it was in Boston where you say “were all getting together at my house on Tuesday and everybody jumps on a train and is there in ten minutes – there more to it than that. There are great musicians in LA but it’s more organizationally challenging to make something casual happen. But there are people that I play with like Kurt Swann who was one of the original members of the Boston band Dump Truck and Robert Lloyd who plays with John Wesley Harding and Steve Wynn and Tom King our drummer lives there. There are great people that I play with there but it’s a little more formalized than the Boston sessions. Maybe it’s also a process of age you know the further along you get the less casual people are and their wives letting them disappear on a Tuesday night for six hours on a regular basis to make music.

A name that comes to me is Howe Gelb who I loved for years.
Yeah, you and me both.

I’ve just downloaded his last album Sno Angel Like You and it’s a great record and I’m thinking, him with choir, it shouldn’t work but it does. Everything I’ve read is that he has had a great influence on this loose way you work with musicians to run this band.
Yeah I’ve actually thanked him in person for that. It was him and a few other people who did that. It was the Giant Sand framework that made feel this could be done but of course folk music, jazz and country all has this ensemble approach. You will find people in all those disciplines playing with as many people and as many various arrangements as they want. Only Rock ‘n’ Roll seems to have this notion of the Three Musketeers kind of thing you know. This is the band and anything outside this closely defined thing of the band is not the band. I’ve never understood that. Even when I was in bands I didn’t really understand it. I valued the notion of being in a band. Do you know when you’re eighteen or nineteen years old and you’re in a band that’s a cool thing. It’s kinda like being in a gang or something. It’s like us against the rest of the world. I don’t undervalue that and I think it’s really important especially if you’re trying to make music that is organically and chemically driven out of yourselves. Really great to have comrades in arms that you go into battle with and that what it’s like when you’re doing something different and unusual as a young band. But the further down the road people get the more difficult that becomes to sustain. Just in terms of realistic notions like… well we were just talking about the life people get involved in and bands don’t always take a precedent to that, and if you don’t shift your expectations about your band members then you end up with no band. So when we started Willard Grant Conspiracy, which we did accidentally, or it started to roll and we started playing live the first couple we played out taking from just basically a living room jam session into a live arena so to speak I just decided at that moment there was no reason to change the dynamic from the living to the stage. The idea was that whoever showed up in the living room on the night was who was playing. That made for a sense of immediacy and vibrancy that you don’t get from a band that’s rehearsed and rehearsed. I thought well let’s see if we can do that on stage. At the time that was my instinct and once we did it I started looking around and realized that there were only a handful of other people that were doing similar things and I was one of them but also Kurt [Wagner] of Lambchop is another and of course all the folk people and jazz people that I listen to and country people.  But the whole notion was, I guess, born out of a reasonable and rational kinda of way of organising something after having gone the band route for fifteen years and discovered the limitations of that. I’m not sure it always works to be honest. It always works musically, but I think if your goal as a musician is to ‘get there’ in quotes I think it’s probably not the way to go. [laughs] Because the truth is it’s still a McDonald's world and that fact is that people like a certain level of certainty and the way we do things, and the way Howe [Gelb] does things, there always a level of uncertainty there and for an audience that like the notion that their music is going to change all the time that’s OK. If you go and see a band and you want to see exactly what’s on the record then it’s unlikely you are going to happy with seeing Willard Grant or seeing or Howe [Gelb] because the kind of music we do is in the moment music and it’s music of that moment and will not happen again exactly the same way twice. So the organisational structure has to do a lot with the way we like to make music and the way we like to present it. But whether that’s the most successful way well…  If this was a primer for young bands trying to get somewhere I’m not sure [laughs] I’d recommend it. It’s still a McDonald's world and people tend to like to know that they’re going to get exactly the same hamburger whether they’re in Parma Ohio or Parma Italy you know. They like knowing that it’s going to be mediocre at best but at least it’s going to be consistent.

Consistently mediocre
[laughter] Yeah Yeah.

When I was doing my research for this interview I came across some information that you had produced an album for Rhode Island band Barn Burning. I think it was called Weatheredbound. We got the Werner’s Ghost Truck album from Tarnished.
I’m on that as well [laughs]

You are indeed.
Yeah everybody keeps trying to get me to sing on things. I say my voice doesn’t sound that good on your stuff and they say “ No“ and then I end up doing it.

Well Barn Burning was kind of our introduction to Tarnished Records.
It’s a great label…

…and then they took on Viarosa in the States and I know you’ve got connections with them.
Well I like them.

Yeah and Josh Hillman who plays viola on your new record…
Well Josh has been in Willard Grant longer than he has in Viarosa. I sort of think of it the other way around. He’s newer to Viarosa than he is to us.

We also like Palodine at lot.
Great band.

And I thought there was a kind of similarity with the spiritual or religious imagery that I could hear coming from you.
I can see that. There are probably a few people mining that kind of stuff like David Eugene Edwards [Woven Hand] and Nick Cave. Although I think it’s partly because of our baritone voices. I love Nick Cave and David Eugene Edwards but think we all come at it from different angles. Going back to Tarnished. That Seattle thing Paul [Austin] is there now and of course The Walkabouts. That’s a very significant part of the Seattle community. And of course Chris [Eckman, Walkabouts] and I share some similarities like themes in song writing if not style. Chris is a much more narrative writer in terms of songs than I am. He’s a great songwriter we shares similar themes and also instrumentation. Referring back what were talking about earlier, where there are cities in which there’s a real music community effort. Seattle’s one of those places were everyone cross-pollinates and everybody plays with everybody else. That’s healthy, that’s a good thing. I think part of that is also the perspective. Big fish little pond concept doesn’t work there. You have people like Jesse Sykes coming from there and Tucker Martine [record producer and musician] who works with Paul [Austin] and also The Decemberists. A lot of creative mix going on.

When Paul Austin left the band I hear you took on more guitar duties and you saw yourself as the singer, but on this record [Pilgrim Road] you’re credited with the vocals alone. Malcolm [Lindsay] brings in Piano, Acoustic and Electric Guitar, Vocals etc is that a change back to how it was before.
No I have no ego about my guitar playing so if somebody’s in the room and plays better than I do then I’m gonna let them do it. I don’t see myself as a guitar player, I see myself as aiding and abetting the cause. If I can play guitar and sing at the same time then that helps. I have a healthy ego but not about things like that. The acoustic guitar player in the band that’s not what I am about. And in this case, this record, the way the record developed was really a head to head collaboration between the two of us

With Malcolm [Lindsay]
Yeah we just sat in a room with gear and wrote and recorded the songs as we went, so it was very immediate. There was no formal, well here’s a bunch of songs Malcolm please arrange them. It was really like writing intuitively and immediately in that moment and recording at the same time as we were doing it, and just trusting ourselves to know if we had done some thing we didn’t like and self-edit it as we went along. The end result was that we ended up, between the two of us, completely arranging the entire record. Then what we did was that we went to the rest of the members of the band, and the people that I go to for these kinds of things like Chris Eckman etc and said here’s the record, here’s the arrangements can you use your instruments and do basically what’s there. So to everybody on this record we also said if you really think there should be something there that isn’t there tell me first and we’ll talk about it and then go there but in the past I’ve just said record what you want I’ll work with it in the mix. In this case I asked people to stay with the arrangements because we worked really hard on the notion of them and one of the conceptual points of the record was to use these orchestral instruments along with the instruments we normally use, some of which are orchestral instruments to write with not just to arrange with and there’s a significant difference in my mind and… Most bands when they use strings and horns it’s like the George Martin thing. It’s brilliant strings arrangements but they’ve just shoved the strings up the ass of a song basically. It’s not like the songs couldn’t be played without them. And in this case although the songs can be played without these instruments they are lessened without them being there, I think, because these instruments are really emotionally significant parts of these songs. It’s like when you go to see a really good movie and every action has an emotional truth behind it and you walk out thinking I’ve really witnessed something that’s not only transformative but also doesn’t have any flaws in terms of the emotional continuity of it. That’s what I was trying to get at with writing with these instruments.

I’m getting the sense that Malcolm was a very important part of the conspiracy of this album.
Absolutely.

I can hear him supply the music did he supply any lyrical material?
No, no lyrics, but it was a collaboration in terms of the music. It’s not that he just said “Oh here’s some music”. That wasn’t the way it worked. I mean they really are co-writes.

Co-writes but the lyrics are all you.
Yeah.

Except, of course the two covers you know Phoebe and Miracle on 8th Street. It’s also very interesting because there’s a lot of extra people I am chasing up because of this record. Malcolm Lindsay is for example a very interesting guy.
He is. He’s the original guitar player for Deacon Blue. With Rick Ross in 1984 who went on to form the Moors with Stuart Duffin who’s also on this record. That’s funny because I had a Moors record back when they put it out and even when I met Malcolm I didn’t connect him with that.

Also you met with him in extraordinary circumstances. You had just played, it says in the press release, a harrowing gig in Glasgow. Was it the nature of the gig that sparked what kind of material that appears on this record?
Not particularly. He approached me at the gig and said hey by the way if you ever want to do something with classical instrumentation I’m your guy. At the time I kinda said well that’s a really lovely idea but I have no idea of what I’d want to do. I know wouldn’t want to do the ordinary thing. And then we just kept talking about it for the next few years every time we played Edinburgh or Glasgow he’d show up. Also we’d talk a little bit more, trade emails, whatever. I found out he did The Delgados’ record Hate. Worked on the strings for David Byrne for his soundtrack for the film Young Adam. So we had a pretty good start there. Then my friend Jackie Leven ask me to sing on his record Elegy For Johnny Cash and we went to Bangor to record it, and Malcolm came down for that session and brought with him these CDs of music he had just written for the Moscow String Quartet for a World premiere that was happening both in Scotland and Moscow. Jackie and I heard this night in an amazing little cottage probably from the 1700s. With a peat fire going you know, the whole nine yards. It was like the first you hear Romany Gipsy music. It’s a soul stirring experience. And we both kinda looked at each other like whoa [laughs] this is intimidating actually because it’s so good. And I thought well you know if I’m going to do something collaborative again in terms of song-writing, everything Willard Grant does is collaborative, but if I’m going to work with somebody I’d like it to be with somebody whose a challenge you know who can really push me in places I wouldn’t go by myself. Hopefully I would also do the same for them. Then about a year later we had the opportunity when I did that solo tour, that you saw, well it wasn’t really solo but it was more a duo tour [with Erik Van Loo on double bass]. I had the opportunity to be here for ten days so I went to Glasgow and we just sat down face to face in his studio and wrote the record and that was great. We’d tried it a bit over the internet but the idea of sitting with somebody and dealing with them, and the ideas and the synapses and connectivity of that is much more entertaining than working on the internet. So it worked out really well. The records got an embarrassing amount of really good players on it.

Yeah so I noticed. I just got the album a day or two ago. One of things that I noticed, as an artist, as I am a painter and printmaker…
Do you know Stuart’s work [Stuart Duffin did the cover art and plays bass on the album]. He’s great.
Yes I am passing his details onto friends of mine who will love the spiritual nature of his work. Also he works with Malcolm Lindsay. I came to this seeing him as the art on the cover and then a musician on the album.
Well he also the person who recorded the bells for Jerusalem Bells [track on Pilgrim Road]. It was recorded from his painting studio in Jerusalem. He stuck a microphone out the window and recorded the bells across the valley.

Yeah he’s a guy I want to get in touch with because we might feature a showcase of his work.
Oh Cool

The thing about ElectricGhost is that it’s also about the art, which is why I nag people about covers and artwork. Anyway his artwork for the album was great it seemed like what I was hearing on the album. It seemed to me that both Malcolm and Stuart and yourself seem to have some kind of soul-searching happening.
I think, and I may be wrong about this, that Malcolm is a lay minister in a Baptist church. One of the early discussions that Malcolm and I had when we were recording was about the Lewis Island Hymnals work and the vocals and the vocal-work and how similar that was to shape singing in American churches. Music of the Sacred Heart, and stuff like that. You know the religious aspect, or spiritual aspect is the better way to put it, is not really about religion it’s about faith and spirituality. I think that’s a natural kind of interest for all of us. I think it’s partly a fascination with faith and what that means to people. The notion of Pilgrim’s Progress is the notion of life being some sort of journey hopefully towards some sort of enlightenment along the way. Regardless of where you find that and what philosophy wherever you get that enlightenment. That to me is a worthwhile discussion. I’ve never been really interested in writing about things that are, I won’t say trivial but… I’m having trouble with coming up with a better word. A lot of song writing is based in the mundane and I tend to work in areas, which are more universal. You know like Regard The End is thematically a treatise on mortality. The notion of faith is a pretty universal thing. No matter where you’re looking for it. It’s no mistake that’s there’s as much of it, as there is, in the world right now. There is a religious fervour from all kinds of quarters. We’re in a world that diminishes people’s worth as individuals. The more that happens the more people are going to look for something outside them to make them feel better. That’s an opportunity for certain religions to come in and misuse people, and what they are looking for.

I’m looking at the track listing of the new album right now. Do you see the way the tracks are put on the album, or something, that it being a themed album that they are all relating in some way? Or is it a bunch of songs that are in that order because they worked in that order?
It’s kind of a little of both I suspect. I think when you’re going to put together the order of the record; you’re dealing with what you have, so you’re trying to make it move. You’re trying to make a record be an experience for somebody. You don’t want it to be song after song after song. You want it to be like a live performance with an arc to it, or maybe a couple of arcs to it if you’ve got enough to do that with. So you want the listener to go on a journey with you, hopefully. Much like I was saying about the good movie, you come out of the movie and you walk into the daytime or night time and nothing look the same as when you walked in. Hopefully that’s what the experience of a good record can be. But having said that it’s really a collection of songs that were put into a form of shape, and part of that is as you work on a project like this it defines itself. You go in with certain ideas and things you want to accomplish and as you get into it you find that it takes over and start to define itself. Songs start telling you what they want and you just have to learn to deal with that as you go. So it’s a collection of songs that after you written them you realise there are themes there. That makes sense because it’s the things you are interested or involved in.

This album has got a kind of English American collaboration going or liaison.
I think the Scots would prefer we see it as a Scottish American collaboration [laughter]

The other thing that interests me is that two songs included, Mark Eitzel’s Miracle on 8th Street an Lal Waterson’s Phoebe are covers. Was there a particular reason to include them?
Yeah one because I’ve been playing the song live and it just fit. I don’t do many covers and if I do I try to bring something different to it from the original because I don’t see much point in it otherwise. Also Mark [Eitzel] is someone who I respect a great deal both as a songwriter and performer. He is remarkably brave as a performer and songwriter both and it’s one of those songs I wished I been able to write myself. When you find a song like that it’s a good indication to cover it if you feel that way about it. When I sing a song I have to mean it. I have to find a way to make that my own. It fits on the record and also it’s a beautiful song.

Also equally Phoebe [Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight]….
Do you know Charlotte Greg she lives in Cardiff? She’s a writer and a musician. She arranged a tribute to Lal Waterson recently that has a whole bunch of people on it… [Migrating Bird/The Songs of Lal Waterson]

And you were on the tribute…
…and we did Phoebe. She asked me if I’d do a song and she gave me a few. And Phoebe the way that I heard it from Lal was an accappela tune. So I changed it around a bit and wrote some music for it. It’s a beautiful song and quite mysterious. We recorded the same time as we were doing the record so musically it totally fits with the record and I didn’t see any reason not to put in on.

The interesting thing is that I listened to this album through two or three times and initially I thought they were all your songs.
If I felt that I could have written that then it’s a good indication that it would work. However it was a little more daunting when we did the Dylan song [Ballad of a Thin Man] on Let It Roll. I mean everybody knows that song. But I try to do the same with that stuff you know, make it our own.

I think we’re nearly there.
That’s OK I’m having fun

Well lets keep going then. [laughter] Recently I had an idea for a regular feature in the journal called Rear-View Mirror, which is looking back at a band or album that was, and remains, special. The first one was Last Town Chorus, only two years ago, with Wire Waltz. In Issue 03 we’ll be going back sixteen years and doing one on the band Come, Thalia Zedek and the album Eleven : Eleven…
It’s a great record…

Sure and I just found that Thalia Zedek has got a new album out [Liars and Prayers] and course David Curry who plays on that album is on your new one. Now, l really like viola players.
Me too.

For me it’s a special sound that I associate with John Cale and it’s being use by a lot of bands now. It’s a very rich sound. I think it’s also an instrument that really fits and mirrors your voice.
That’s interesting because David’s been playing with us since Flying Low so the viola’s been a part of our sound for ten years or so. Viola was always a significant voice for our music partially because it’s a very human sounding instrument. The violin doesn’t have the same kind of chest, if you will. Much like a cello it has more body. It’s like when you use an accordion or squeezebox like when can hear the actual air being expelled out of a viola. Same kind of thing. If you mike it right there’s a real living quality to that. Josh [Hillman] plays both violin and viola. We have James [Youngjohns] from Last Harbour and Josh and David whose been the group longest. Yeah I think it’s an important part of what we do. Along with the mix of electric and acoustic instruments, mandolin accordion ect etc that we’ve played, it immediately says to somebody OK I’m in for something a little different. [laughter] It immediately makes that very clear. So I like it for that reason too.

Yeah me too [laughter] you think I’m in the right place.
The new Thalia [Zedek] stuff is really great. Well all her stuff is great.

She such a completely uncompromising woman you know. We’re reviewing her new album [Liars and Prayers] in the next issue [04].
Oh good. She’s lovely. She came with us on tour I think five years ago when we toured here.

Have you every thought of singing with her?
Yeah we have done. Not on record but we’ve done it live. Chris Brokaw is a member of Come, Codeine and Willard Grant. So there’s that connection too.

Another couple that are on this record is Iona and Paul of Doghouse Roses. They just sent me their stuff.
It’s great, really great.

Her voice kind of reminds me of Sandy Denny which is never a bad thing.
Yeah a little bit. Also, with a bit of Anne Briggs as well. Malcolm did that record..
Well they’ve got this album coming out in September, I think, which he’s produced.
Yeah, all three of them recorded it together.

Which kind of brings us to the tour, which is in May, [Europe and UK] and I’ll definitely be at the Bristol Trinity gig.
Oh Good

Now I’m not a stalker just warning you..
No it’s all right we’ll be happy to see you.

Well I may be a stalker anyway but would I tell you?
But It might be a clever way of..

Putting you off guard..
Yeah {laughter)

You said something about ten per cent of the band are involved, can you give me some idea who will be playing.
There’s going to be eleven people in the band.

Can you tell who that’ll be?
Sure there’s Malcolm [Lindsay] and Chris [Eckman] and Josh [Hillman] and Erik [Van Loo] and Tom [King] and Iona [Macdonald] and my friend John Songdahl who mixed the record, and Yuko [Murata] and am I leaving anyone out, and Denis Cronin. I think that covers pretty much everybody. Oh and Peter Harvey and myself.

You’re playing at particular venues because of the nature of the instruments.
Well I’ve tried to. We haven’t always been successful over that. There are some venues on the tour that may not be perfect for that. But with eleven people on tour you have to be very careful about all kinds of elements, organisational and economic, and also the quality of the show. I really want very much to make a statement about the record and present the record and some additional material for that ensemble. It’s costing me a lot of money to make the statement so I can’t afford to do thirty shows. I had a lot people ask if we could play say Leeds. I’d love to be able to do that and people who know us know that we’ll play pretty much anywhere but to be smart about it I can’t accept £350 a gig for am eleven piece version of the band.

Do you have any plans to video any of the concerts?
I do have plans. Whether they work or not is another matter. I will say that it’s my intention to document it somehow. But I would also say that if you can make it to a show it’s going to be better than any document of any show. I understand why people like documents of shows whether its video or recording but for me personally I’m not a fan of them because I sort of prefer to have my music live in the moment. Whatever show I do document for this tour there are eleven other shows that are all going to be different.

It sounds bit like monoprints because I can do monoprints and everyone will be different. I think what I am saying is when I work with real materials like oil pastels and such you make ‘mistakes’ and they’re part of the energy and beauty of the whole thing.
That’s absolutely true yes

And something that occurred to me on the back of that is that there are currently a lot of bands like Last Harbour and Transmissionary Six who go for non digital equipment to record with, and use old instruments.
It’s of course ironic because if in 1967 if you’d referred to that as lo-fi people would have looked at you as if you were crazy. In 1967, that was the best kind of ‘fi’ that you could get.

But does that approach inform in anyway how you approach recording?
The answer to that is kind of yes and no. The yes part is I am not trying to achieve the one and only version of something on a record or even live. I acknowledge that there are probably a thousand good versions of a song to be played and to be heard. Like the monoprint thing each one of those prints is a good print for all the reasons that it is unique to itself. A song is like that, documenting it on a record is like we’re doing the best we can to capture all that what happens at that moment on tape and represent it correctly. But if you ask me if that is the ultimate version of the song I would say of course not that’s impossible. So in that regard yeah whatever sound will get me there I don’t care if it’s tape or digital or whatever. This record was recorded digitally; my goal is to make instruments sound like what they are. So whether that’s with a digital recorder or a tape recorder is to allow space around the instrumentation and get that sense of a room in the recordings. If you know how to do that it doesn’t matter whether you use digital gear or tape gear.

It sounds like there are some bands that are primarily live bands. Is it as you said you prefer performing live in your house or in front of a bunch of people to documenting it on record.
No it’s not that with me at all. It’s actually that I think of them as two different and unique things. I approach recording differently from how I approach live but also there are some similarities. The real trick in recording is to maintain a sense of immediacy and to maintain a sense of intimacy because the danger is that you over rehearse it and record it and it becomes stale. I mean how many time have you heard band’s say it’s a good sounding record but it’s not what I heard in my head. So my goal, whether producing ourselves or another band, is to make a whole experience. For me it’s a balance of architecture and primitivism. If I continue with the architecture notion, you’re trying to create a building that is skilfully designed and engineered but look like it came out of nature. The Frank Lloyd Wright approach, [laughs] to continue with the architecture metaphor. That sort of notion, that to me is what the recording process is about. Whereas the live thing is like building a good bonfire and letting it go.

And it’s also about the relationship you have with the audience there.
Yeah

And what they can inspire you to do. I’ve seen bands change song just on the feedback they get from an audience.
I don’t usually work with a set-list. I will on this tour because it’s impossible not to with eleven people. But at the Thekla that night I didn’t have a set-list I just played whatever was in my head.

Well you have that flexibility when it’s just you and one other.
Exactly.

Talking about doing something different every night. Pearl Jam did something quite interesting on one of their tours by releasing CD’s of a number of the gigs. Some people would get it because it was the concert they went to.
Well that’s a great advertisement for their live show. I am unfortunately not Pearl Jam [laughs] so we can’t do that.

The other thing that occurs to me, and we haven’t spoken about it, is that I’m very aware that you have an Election on the go in the US at the moment. I wondering how, as and American, that event is effecting you if at all.
In terms of music or…

In terms of your life.
Well it’s a huge thing. The last election was a profound disappointment. I think I wondered around depressed for three months after that. At times it’s really easy to say that politics is beyond caring about because there’s no guarantee to good politics. As much as you can say that, we’ve just had and example of how that attitude can aversely affect you for a really long time. Not only personally but also in your standing in the world. I think that in the democratic process as much as you can try to make decisions and vote in a way that is educated and matches your personal feelings; there’s no guarantee that if your candidate wins they’re going to follow through. But to not try is a worse sin. I think this is an interesting time in the world where there are a lot of challenges. There’s a lot of conflict about expediency over permanence and things like that. There’s a lot of conversation the world now about the 19th Century was England, The 20th Century was America and now the 21st Century is Asia. Yeah well the Asian economy is China. India and they’re booming. I think it’s a bit of a false economy. But they’re like a lot of economies right now including our own. There booming partially because they are ignoring the examples that have come before them. For example in China now they are ignoring environmental laws, slave labour, making cheap products. So it’s Western organisations like Wal-Mart and Primark that are taking advantage of those economic elements. With all the evidence to the contrary we have about global warming and the rest of it the notion that we are celebrating this emerging economy is riding on the back of such willing ignorance is… it makes whoever is going to be a major national leader whether US. UK or elsewhere it makes their job an extraordinary difficult thing. It’s not just about imperialism, colonialism; buzz words that are easy to get into polemic discussion about. It’s about other things that are maybe even more important. In the way of how this world is going to look in the next fifty years. So yeah it’s a very challenging time. Right now in my country there’s two decent candidates on the democratic side. One of them seems to be having a rock star moment. Which is an interesting thing because politics doesn’t generally have rock star moments. As with rock stars I have a general distrust of that. [laughter] Just on principle I think, that if anyone is treating you like a rock star the partially your asking to be treated like a rock star so right here alone that makes me a little distrustful of the concept. But what I really hope is regardless of which person comes out of it on the democratic side, that they can sustain a certain amount of excitement and interest when they win. It’s not an election to be a candidate; ultimately it’s an election to be a president. Also there are lot of elections around the world, at this moment, that are very critical for all of us.

Finishing up now is there anything you want to put on tape this afternoon about this new album or how you feel about it.
I’m probably the last person to ask that question to actually. I lived with this thing so…

You kinda want to hear what other people say about it.
Yeah. In some it’s like these things I get asked to participate in over the years. Paul [Austin] used to do that because Paul’s a very good writer. We laughed at seeing our own words coming back to us in the form of an interview or opinion from somebody else you know. Like with records the standard thing to say is what influenced this record, give me some names. In the music world the way it is right now there’s so much out there, to just give musical names that such an absurd notion to me anyway. This record is influenced as much by real life and art and literature as it is by other musicians but it just limits it. If I just say this is defined this way then it doesn’t allow for, or it doesn’t encourage people to, define it for themselves. And I think in terms of the overall aesthetic of what I do. I kind of believe that the songs are not mine at a very basic spiritual level. I think they have their own life and my goal is to create these songs that have enough room in them for a listener to invest their own experience and their own emotional storyline. So that the song, much like the monoprint we were talking about earlier, is unique to each person. If they can take that away with them then it can become, hopefully, a part of their lexicon of their experience. Once that happens it’s no longer mine. Whoever participated in that has got a part share in it. The traditional kind of music business thing where you say to an artist how do you define this. I’m always reluctant to do it. It’s a bit like labels like country. That immediately ghettoises it to a part of the audience who would never listen to anything labelled country. They’ve already made a judgement or pre-judgement. For me as a songwriter and a musician the notion of inclusiveness is a very powerful one. It resonates in how we organise and structure the band. It resonates in how many players are involved and the family or community that surrounds this band. It’s really remarkable and daunting when you think just how many really talented people is a part of this experience. The responsibility of the songs, the responsibility of the musicians, the responsibility to the audience is extraordinary. It’s all in service of this inclusiveness. Whereas so much if the music business is exclusive. It’s about maintaining the myth that we are somehow special as musicians and rock and rollers. We at talking about that brand of journalism “What’s your favourite colour?” or “What suit did you buy today to wear to this interview?” That this is somehow a part of the value of the music itself. Well maybe it’s a mark of celebrity but it’s not a mark of quality about what goes on in the art or music. So much a part of the standard music industry is about that exclusivity between audiences and musicians. I’m not interested in that I never have been. I don’t think Townes Van Zandt was interested in that, or Odetta was interested in that, or that John Coltrane was interested in that either. I don’t think John Lennon was interested in that. Maybe at one point in his life he was, but he changed. I think there’s a lot to be said about growing up in the business and learning what not to do. A bit what you were saying about a potential business partner. Having one that doesn’t work out teaches you more about what you want than one who does in some ways. I’m glad I had fifteen years of bands where I was able to make value judgements about what I don’t want. Very much in the way that in order to understand what’s really valuable in your life you have to go through some hardship to figure out the things that are worth something to you. That’s a long and rambling answer to a very open ended question.

My speciality [laughter] I enjoyed winding you up and letting you go [laughter]. I think also in the days of MySpace you are boxed in with genres. I like when some people just put ‘other’. But I do think you have a responsibility to communities who are going to be your first or initial fans who are more comfortable with genres. But part of what I have always liked about you is that you are genre defying.
That’s very nice. Thank you. I think its rather like the artist analogy of sitting and saying "I’m only going to use three colours”. That’s a viable thing to do. But having done that for twenty years you maybe want to open up the palette a bit. It’s my decision to only use three colours because I want to and not because I have too.

Absolutely. I think I have got all I wanted. Thank you so much for your generosity with your time.
That’s fine. I’ve really enjoyed myself.

© ElectricGhost 2008