As expected, your new album sounds great.
OK, cool, thanks a lot. It was a lot of work, but it was fun, y’know? It was fun to do. We recorded it right here in our hometown.
Do you have a studio here?
I have… a joint, where I bring stuff in. They’re liquidating a lot of studios now, studios are shutting down, so we threw our own studio together.
Studios are another part of the music industry being hit hard by the digital revolution, along with download piracy.
It’s awkward because it’s intellectual property. Basically, it’s a very mechanical process, putting a record together. You could say it starts with, like, music lessons, learning to play an instrument, and working your ass off ’til you can get a sound out of it, then taking your chances and trying to create just the whole act of recording, hoping you’re going to capture a bird in there, y’know? And then, of course, everything is compressed into an aerosol, regular or menthol, and it can go anywhere – what the fuck is it with that? If sofas were like that, the furniture business would be hurting. If you could buy an invisible sofa and just snap your fingers and have it. It’s really an awkward time, because when one industry dies, others die with it… it’s terrible.
When you write the songs, do you work in a particular study or studio, or is it wherever the muse catches you?
You go where it is, y’know, you hope to catch some of it – set a trap for it, y’know? My theory is that songs don’t really enjoy being recorded. If you’re not careful, you can mangle the whole thing in the recording process. I always thought songs lived in the air. Figure if you open up a window, they might float in, go in your ear, come out the other ear, and wind up on the radio. I remember when I worked in a restaurant, sweeping up by a jukebox, and thinking, ‘OK, how do you get in the jukebox and come out of it? That’s the real trick.’
The opening track, “Chicago”, reminded me of one of those John Adams pieces when it started, that intense rhythmic hubbub… then I realised it was a railroad rhythm.
Yeah, a train song. We had two horn players from New Orleans, from the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Clint Maedgen on saxes and Ben Jaffe on trombone and bass clarinet. I had never worked with horns that way, as rhythm instruments: pah! pah! pah! pah! As a choral, pulsing rhythm meister, it was something new to me, I loved it. We also used them as the backbeat on “Talking At The Same Time”.
On the new album, there seem to be quite a few songs about departure, and change, and people reaching the end of their tether. Everybody’s moving on: in “Chicago”, they’re going there; “Get Lost”, “Face To The Highway” – they’re all about departure.
Oh yeah, I see. Good point. I hadn’t thought about that. I guess there’s certain topics for songs that we keep coming back to. Cautionary tale, lullaby, train song, highway song, work songs, jump-rope songs – the interesting ones are where the rhythm of the song comes from the act of doing the thing itself. That’s why “Chicago” works so well – we’re going to Chicago, that whole migration thing, what they call The Great Migration.
I like “Hell Broke Luce”. It reminded me of that scene in The Glenn Miller Story, where they’re drilling on the parade ground, and it’s really dull, then Miller and his band put a little swing in it, and the soldiers start swaggering along. Your song might be just what today’s GIs might like to hear…
Well, Keith Richards said, “Y’know, the generals and officers are gonna fucking hate this song, but the enlisted men are gonna love it!” But I don’t want to be so presumptuous to think I might have a line on that subject, but I just felt compelled to do it. I just remember that line from when I was a kid: “I had a good home but I left, right, left” – ohh, man, that’s a heartbreaker, there you were but now you’re in. Those lines come from a real place.
You seem to have found a new voice, too. You’re always finding new voices, new ways of expression. There’s a hysterical edge creeping in on some songs.
Oh yeah, the rockabilly kind of thing! [Does little falsetto tic] I don’t know where that came from! Must be that I’m getting older and I want to be younger! It’s got a hiccup to it.
It’s a very bequiffed sound…
Oh, well, I’ll take that as a compliment! Betwixt, bequiffed, be-bothered and bewildered!