Guitar wizard Nels Cline has performed with everyone from Wilco to Charlie Haden; one of his most recent collaborators is 27-year-old jazz guitarist Julian Lage. “I’ve played with a lot of simpatico individuals,” Cline said, “and I continue to, but there is something I’d have to say that’s special about this duo in terms of chemistry.”
Cline and Lage released the instrumental album Room last year; they’ll perform Wednesday, July 1 at 10:30 p.m. at the Gesù, 1200 Bleury St., as part of the Montreal International Jazz Festival. Tickets cost $42 to $49.35 via montrealjazzfest.com.
Cline spoke to the Montreal Gazette’s Jordan Zivitz earlier this month, as he prepared for a typically intense bout of activity. Here’s the full transcript of the interview.
Montreal Gazette: Could you tell me a bit about how you and Julian found each other? It was through Jim Hall, right?
Nels Cline: Yeah, kind of more specifically through a man named Brian Camelio. Brian runs the label ArtistShare that Jim did his last recordings on, and he’s a friend of Jim’s who’s also a guitar player and was sort of managing Jim in Jim’s later years. And one of the things that he would do is have these lunches, which he called the crony lunches, literally at the end of the block where I live here in New York. And he read a piece I had written in JazzTimes: 10 tracks by Jim Hall. They had asked various musicians to write about 10 tracks by an artist of their choosing, and I had chosen Jim. I ironically found out later that Julian had also chosen to write about 10 tracks by Jim Hall, but I beat him to it. But anyway, there was a woman named Emma (Franz) from Australia making a film about Bill Frisell. Which I think she’s still working on. I’ve known Bill for quite some time, and so she asked to interview me here at the house, in the West Village. And sent me from Brian a copy of an ArtistShare record of Bill and Jim. And said, “This man wants to get in touch with you. You know that Jim Hall lives a block from here?” And then I got this invitation from Brian to come to one of these lunches. I was eventually able to make it, and I kept hearing about this Julian guy — and I had never heard of Julian. So eventually I would be able to make these things, and eventually Julian made it to one, and that was it. We really hit it off — he’s from northern California, I’m from southern California, we just got to geeking out and talking, and I invited him down the street to look at a guitar, and the rest is history, really. Ironically, once I got to know him, I realized that at a certain point in his life, when he was living in the northern California area, his trio was my band — Devin Hoff and Scott Amendola were playing with him in a trio. But I had never heard of Julian. It also turned out that I had met him quite casually outside the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma, California, after my band the Singers had opened for Charlie Hunter’s trio. And he had gone to this concert with his dad when he was about 16 to hear Charlie Hunter and missed my band. (Laughs) But he had heard me play, I guess, and said, “Hello, I’m Julian and I like your playing,” and I shook his hand. But I don’t remember this at all. (Laughs)
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MG: So what was your reaction the first time you heard him play?
NC: Well, I YouTubed him, and I kept hearing about him from Jim’s lips. Jim was like, Julian this and Julian that. And Scott Colley was usually at these things, and Scott and Jim would maybe tell some funny stories about Julian on the road, or some kind of thing. I could just sense the amount of respect but also camaraderie that these people all experienced with this young man Julian. So I looked him up on YouTube and saw a couple of things. There was a duo with Jorge Roeder, there was his solo version of Autumn Leaves — I mean, this stuff was just jaw-dropping to me. And it was that combination that I think everyone is aware of where Julian is concerned: astonishing virtuosity combined with an amazing musicality. It’s not just some sort of gymnastic event. This man has real ideas that he’s able to execute with astonishing finesse. So anyway, I was quite blown. This was daunting.
MG: The way you described him is the way I would describe you. I’m not asking you to describe yourself in those terms, obviously, but did you feel a sense of being kindred spirits in terms of how you both play?
NC: No, actually, I thought this guy was on some whole other level. And I also thought of him as pretty much a jazz guy, because what I was listening to was jazz repertoire, even though it was not played in a stodgy way. It was when we started hanging out … around the time I met Julian, I was at this what I might call personal and maybe even artistic, but certainly musical low, where I was really, really burned. I had been touring a real, real lot with Wilco, and I was just bone tired and I was sick of myself. Sick of my playing. And I really needed to break through to something to refresh my whole artistic, esthetic being. Anyway, among the things I was thinking of doing around this time was a sort of chamber jazz group — a drumless ensemble that would draw on elements of so-called classical music in terms of the esthetic, not in terms of the writing. But with a lot of improvisation, something very modernistic that would have minimal amounts of writing, and then directed improvisation — very much inspired by the Jimmy Giuffre 3, or by some of the things that people like Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne were doing in L.A. in the ’50s. Stuff like that, and Paul Bley Trio — things I’m generally obsessed with and have been for a long time. So I had this in the back of my mind. So Julian came over to the house not long after I met him, just to hang out, and we informally started improvising together on acoustic guitars, and something just happened there — and it’s continuing to happen. It was just this complete connection of spontaneous composition and deep listening. It was just one of those things. It was chemistry. And it was so in keeping with this idea I had about this ensemble that I asked Julian if he’d be interested. Since he was not known for spontaneous improvised music and whatnot, I didn’t know if this was something that he just thought would be fun to do with me in the house, but maybe not go out and do — which I would have respected. So I asked him sort of gingerly if he would be interested in pursuing this type of endeavour more earnestly — or more publicly, or however you want to put it. And he said, absolutely, this is like a dream come true for him. So I thought, “Oh my god.” I started thinking along the lines of doing an ensemble with Julian, but I was originally going to enlist a cellist friend of mine. And my friend Bruce Gallanter of the Downtown Music Gallery here in Manhattan asked me to play a concert for them, so I said “OK, here’s what I want to do, and it’s with this other guitar player” — who he didn’t know, actually. (Laughs) And then the cellist wasn’t able to make the gig. He was going on tour that day. And so I asked Julian to make the decision as to whether we should perform as a duo — which of course musically I knew was going to be fine, but I had done so many guitar duos in the past, and continue to. Which I love to do. I just thought, “Damn, am I really going to do another guitar duo?” Even though I was also thinking this might be one of the best things, or at least one of my favourite things I’ve ever done, guitar duo or not. But he said, “Yeah, let’s do it as a duo.” And that was it. There was no looking back after that. And of course, it’s not really that much like the other guitar duos I do (laughs), which have been with G.E. Stinson and Thurston Moore and Elliott Sharp and Marc Ribot and Jeremy Drake — there’s quite a few. (Laughs)
MG: So when you started doing the actual writing and recording, did you set out any parameters of what kind of sound you were going for?
NC: Yeah, I started writing these micro themes that we call squibs. The idea was to see if I could have this minimal amount of writing be this kind of connective tissue with either spontaneous improvisation or directed improvisation. That was how we started, and that was what I think is still probably the main thrust of what we do. And this way we had a collective identity as one big guitar — it’s not about playing a theme, setting up some changes and then exchanging solos so much. We don’t do a whole lot of that. So that’s kind of how I set it up, and that’s pretty much how we continue to operate — although there are some things on the recording that we now play that I was reluctant to present, just because they’re kind of finished songs. Or if they weren’t finished songs, they became finished songs immediately after starting to play parts of them for Julian. We tend to arrange everything together — if I have an idea that’s half finished, he’ll say, “Let me hear it, though” and then next thing we know, basically we’ve got a new song and we’ve arranged it within an hour or something. And there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to eschew effects pedals and all that, because that’s one of the things I basically wanted to do with this so-called chamber esthetic, which harkens more maybe to music I did in the late ’70s and ’80s with a group called Quartet Music. Which I find extremely freeing to have the limitation of … in this case I thought initially just my so-called jazz box. But which has actually expanded to include acoustic guitars, except when we play live — I just can’t bring all those guitars. So that was something that we didn’t really discuss — it just seemed implicit. And I guess that’s something that we’ll probably continue. I don’t find it limiting in any way. I always find it a little surprising that people aren’t really aware of the fact that I can play without pedals. (Laughs)
MG: I liked what you said about the freedom of limitation. I guess if you give yourself rules, they don’t have to feel like prison chains.
NC: Yeah. If you get out of the way, I guess everything kind of has its own parameters or its own trajectory that you can just respect. You can upset the apple cart periodically if you want when things get stale. I’m not that easily bored, but also, I’m not really brilliant. So maybe I just toe the line a lot, but I do feel that there is something natural about whatever the parameters of our duo are. We’re going to continue to perform and record, and I’m hoping that we can continue this for a while. This is something we both really enjoy. We may ultimately record with a more expanded palette in terms of what instruments, what acoustic guitars or whatever we play, just to get different sounds. But as far as performing, we can’t travel with a whole bunch of guitars, so we’ll probably keep it to what it’s been. And that’s been great.
MG: You were describing the collaboration as sounding like one big guitar, and there seem to be a lot of unison passages on the album. How often are those actually meant to be in unison, and how often do you two fall into a kind of telepathy?
NC: Well, we’d have to sit down and go over that. I don’t know exactly, but I know there are a lot of things that happen together that aren’t planned. I can basically tell you that. There are pieces on the record that are probably far more improvised than one may think. That’s one of the joys of this to me. It’s rare. It’s rare in my experience. I’ve been very lucky — I’ve played with a lot of simpatico individuals, and I continue to, but there is something I’d have to say that’s special about this duo in terms of chemistry. There’s this piece on the record called Waxman, which is completely improvised. I was just in Japan and gave a copy of the record to some friends my wife and I were having dinner with, and they put the record on — which is always a weird thing (laughs) — but anyway, it was great! I actually enjoyed listening to it in the background. But when Waxman was on, I really was struck by the fact that there probably isn’t that strong of a likelihood that someone uninitiated would hear this and think it was completely improvised. And that was a satisfying feeling, that it sounds super obvious but it wasn’t really super obvious to me. I just take these things for granted. After a while I’m just like, well, it’s obviously improvised — it has both our names on the credits and blah blah blah. But no, it’s not really so obvious as I listened to it, and I said, “This sounds like a lovely, not so obvious, rather probing piece of music.” That’s fun.
MG: Yeah, I’m not sure I could go through and pinpoint what songs I think would be improvised and which would be more written. I mean, Whispers From Eve is so melodic that I’m guessing…
NC: Yeah, that’s a tune that I was reluctant to actually present to Julian, that I was just working on … it’s an homage, really, to my late friend Eric Von Essen, and I endeavoured to utilize his language, basically, that he was pursuing or mining in his writing in the late ’70s and maybe into the mid or late ’80s, before he became really much more of a jazz composer in some sort of classic and visionary Wayne Shorter-ish kind of sense. But Julian was encouraging, so we play it. But it is one of the most finished, “here’s the song with a solo over chord changes” kind of songs. But it’s nice to have balance. We can add this to our spontaneous playing and create what I guess is a more balanced presentation, a more balanced concert. There’s a couple other pieces, like this piece called The Bond, which is another kind of finished melodic piece. But Julian was very encouraging to let us pursue it, so there it is. And we have been ending our concerts with that piece, because the way it comes off, I think it connects with us and a lot of the audience members emotionally — not just as some sort of idea, you know? So we like to engage people on that level as well. It’s not just random. I mean, I’m kind of a vaudevillian, I guess. I’m always trying to present what might be termed a balanced evening of sonic and conceptual entertainment. (Laughs)
MG: It sounds very balanced on the album as well. Like following up Whispers From Eve with Blues, Too, where it sounds like you’re exploring around each other as you’re playing.
NC: Yeah. That piece is dedicated to Jim. I wrote it in 1991 — it’s one of the only pieces that I’ve played in various settings as though it was an actual real jazz tune or something. And I originally wrote it when I was playing sort of as a guest on a piano trio in Los Angeles, as something to do with these guys who were essentially jazz players. And I just brought it out and started playing it with the Singers. And there are certain directives of that tune that would get tossed out the window. I decided that because I had written this piece, that if Julian played the bass line on the guitar just to see what it sounds like, it would be really fun because of our connection to Jim. I was not palsy with Jim — I was just getting to know him before he passed away. Julian, on the other hand, had met him when he was a boy, and basically Jim had mentored him. And then Julian ended up playing in Jim’s group on and off. I mean, the first time I heard Julian play live, he was playing with Jim and Scott Colley and Joey Baron at the Blue Note. So Julian, I think, completely understood right away what my minimal directives were to make that piece successful from my standpoint. And so at this point, my favourite version or way to play that song is with him. I don’t even know if I’ll pursue it anymore. (Laughs) We go into this strumming thing in the middle, which is this prolonged A7 drone thing, which I started adding to the piece when I played it with the Singers, which is a total homage to Jim’s trio with Don Thompson and Terry Clarke from the ’70s. And Jim liked to do these idiomatic things on the guitar, which a lot of the so-called jazz genius guitar players kind of eschew, which is open strings and strings behind the bridge and above the nut, and all these kinds of sounds that Jim embraced that I love. And I cherish the fact that he was such an adventurous player but also could get down to something idiomatic; I guess you could say it’s kind of like folk aspects of the instrument. So when I started to do that with Julian, I said, “Do you want to do this?” And he totally got it right away. And we don’t always do it the same way — sometimes it’s in 6/8, sometimes it’s in 4/4, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s medium — but I think anybody who has listened to Jim and then when we go into that part kind of gets that that’s a part of Jim’s playing that maybe not everybody who is inspired by Jim really pursues. Because he’s known primarily of course as a jazz guitar wizard — and in my opinion, also a fantastic composer/arranger. To me, he’s not just a guitar player, obviously. He’s a world-class improviser, but also a really fantastic composer/arranger. So we just kind of want to touch on all these things, just because we’re inspired by these things and love them.
MG: There were a few times there when you were talking about playing with jazz artists, or being inspired by jazz artists, where it sounded like you have an outsider perspective on the music. I’ve always wondered how much of a jazz player, if at all, you see yourself as being.
NC: Ah. Excellent question. Well, I guess I’ve outed myself by discussing myself in this way. (Laughs) Because, no, I don’t think of myself as a jazz player, really. Not in the real sense. And I feel that when I’m described as a jazz player, or when my name pops up in the critics’ polls, I’m kind of bummed out. Because I see the people who are on those lists who are real jazz players, who are pursuing this art with an incredible vision and earnestness and dedication, and I’m definitely not one of those people. I’m kind of a jazz tourist. And I have some awareness of how to play this music, but I don’t have that real mastery or that insight that these players have. And really, because I haven’t dedicated myself to that. I’ve made other choices. And a lot of my choices have to do with possibly laziness, but also the fact that I’ve sort of been pulled in other directions in my life. When I started readdressing what I guess we loosely could term rock music, and started playing with Mike Watt and the Geraldine Fibbers, and then later with Wilco — that’s basically a huge chunk of the public’s awareness of what I do, but it’s something that really didn’t get going again until the mid-‘90s for me. I’d been playing in a rock band in Los Angeles for eight years before any of that, but not with any notice. And pursuing improvised music with Julius Hemphill and Charlie Haden and Quartet Music at the same time. But even that music … playing with Charlie, I was playing with the Liberation Music Orchestra; with Julius, it was his electric band, the JAH Band. It wasn’t straight-ahead jazz. And I have a record I’m trying to get out later this year, early next year, of orchestrated ballads. And yeah, there are some so-called standards on this record, and yes, I’m going to be blowing on changes and not playing with a bunch of fuzz, but no, I think that Jim and Julian and these guys, they’re obviously more versatile in terms of their artistic scope than some so-called traditional jazz players, but they have an intimate understanding, knowledge and grasp of the repertoire of jazz and the language of jazz, the discipline of jazz — the great American art form. So yeah, I take an outsider’s perspective. (Laughs)
MG: But jazz has become such a malleable term anyway, right?
NC: I guess, but I’m of Nordic descent in spite of my southern California roots, so I get really hung up and neurotic about stuff, about definitions and about all these things. I think what you’re saying is true, but I’m a little bit more rigid than maybe is necessary about certain things. And I do feel kind of like an interloper in the so-called jazz realm. And I don’t want to disrespect that incredible discipline and that artistry. I guess I’m a bit of a dabbler. I just like music that I like, and I try to play a lot of different ways. I don’t even know if I have a style. But I really, really like to play. (Laughs)
MG: It amazes me that you say you have a rigid outlook on some things, because that’s not at all what I hear in your music.
NC: Well, it’s gotten easier, certainly, than it was in the ’80s, for example, or the late ’70s, to be this polyglot individual esthetically. Somebody as random or wide-ranging as I’ve been in those days was regarded with great suspicion, particularly by the wider community. They were kind of protecting quote-unquote “the music” from all these outside influences. I can look back on that now and say to hell with that, but at the time I was kind of over-sensitive about it, because I didn’t want to destroy the music. But a lot of times I was doing what people I was playing with had asked me to do. Julius said something like, “Yeah man, just do some psychedelia.” I’d be like, “OK!” (Laughs) And so it’s definitely relaxed. Even in our post-Marsalis generation, we’ve been able to relax a lot of these definitions. But I still have this idea of what I think a real jazz player is, and I just don’t think I’m that.
MG: But you don’t think of yourself as a so-called rock player either, right?
NC: Well, no, I don’t. That’s the thing, is that I don’t belong anywhere in a way. I’ve been living in the cracks all this time, and I could have changed it. At certain times in my life, I certainly envied various artists whose parameters are far more easily defined, or narrower. And I don’t say narrower in a pejorative sense. Because I just feel like it would be such a relief to not feel pulled in so many different directions. At the same time, I enjoy my little assignments to expand things stylistically. And that’s certainly something that I get from playing with Wilco. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to do some stuff on the mandolin. (Laughs) Because it’s been subtly suggested that I might add it to my palette. So now I’m trying to tackle in whatever manner possible some mandolin. And I never really saw this as something on the horizon. So these things do come along. We’ve been doing all-acoustic songs and all-acoustic arrangements of our songs that we pretty much come up with at soundcheck or something. They’re not super-thought-out, really — they’re supposed to stay loose and fun. And I’m playing pretty much all square-neck dobro slide in open G on these things. And that’s another thing that I didn’t expect to be doing, but I think I have a real affinity for the sound of acoustic slide guitar. It’s just something I really like. Whether it’s Jerry Douglas or it’s Debashish Bhattacharya. That’s kind of an area I can really get with. But I don’t play it in the store — I’m not playing it with fingerpicks. I’m still a tourist, the way I play lap steel and dobro. But to fit into a group context and have the sounds sound appropriate, I guess, is in a weird way kind of enough for me. I’m not really going to stake any claims on virtuosity in that area, but I love the sound.
MG: And being a tourist, as you call it, has its own advantages. You aren’t as bound by tradition.
NC: I guess. I don’t know. Yeah, I’ll think about that. (Laughs)
MG: I mean, even in Wilco — I saw you when you first started playing with them in 2004 and remember being struck by how you ripped apart the guitar playing in the band right away. You weren’t bound by the band’s tradition … if it even had any at that point.
NC: I guess I could see it working in that context. I never really thought about it. I just like to bring it — be part of the orchestra and just try to make a contribution that’s not so much about adhering … I mean, certainly Jeff Tweedy’s not somebody who wants me to adhere to some kind of past legacy of the band, or to tradition, really. Even though we might do that, or try to do that. It just won’t be the full story. There will always be new wrinkles or more vague areas to ponder and attack. So I guess there is something that can work there … I don’t think about it too much. (Laughs) Not in a positive way — I tend to try to put a much more self-critical and insecure slant on it, so I’m gonna ponder what you’re saying and try to cut myself some slack.
MG: Yeah, well, I would think of it as you being more of an adventurer than a tourist. Going by what you were just saying, I think Jeff Tweedy is as much a tourist in Wilco in some ways as you are.
NC: Well, he’s a classic songwriter — that’s my opinion — and I think classic songwriters have to draw on tradition but still be themselves. We have this discussion sometimes hanging around in Wilco: What’s authentic? Basically, you are authentic. That’s it. That’s really what it comes down to. But I think that we’re all now so … well, not all of us, but let’s say I can be overly engaged with the dialectic of those who write about what has happened or think about what has happened or only listen to what has happened. In reality, we’re doing something right now and then everything is pushing forward, because that’s the nature of things. So we get hung up on all these parameters, and really, it comes down to what you’re saying: We’re just doing stuff, you know? And I don’t think there’s much point in trying to position oneself. I think that in my case, I’ve overthought a lot of this stuff and had to reject a lot of things, because it was driving me so nuts and making me so unhappy that I almost quit playing. That’s not why I started playing. I didn’t start playing to be part of some kind of grand school of thought. I started playing for a very simple reason, and the reason is apparent every time I start playing, which is that I love sound. I love playing. (Laughs) I love playing with people. I like the collaborative aspects of it, the communal aspect of it. And by communal, I also mean the fact that the audience is there, too, because they’re affecting what we do. We could just stay home and make recordings, but it wouldn’t be the same. There’s something about that dynamic that I cherish, and that I find endlessly exciting. So really, starting to play with Wilco, for example, a lot of improviser friends — I don’t think they understand how I can do the gig. Because they say, “Don’t you guys play a lot of the same songs?” Well, we don’t play the same set every night, ever. But yeah, a lot of songs get repeated. They go, “Oh, I just don’t think I could do that.” They just want to basically reinvent and improvise all the time on whatever thematic material they’re presented with. And I just don’t have a problem with it. Maybe it’s as I say, I’m kind of a vaudevillian, but also because we’re all doing what we’re doing with a shared sense of purpose and commitment. So really, that’s my happiness right there. That’s all I require. And that’s what happens when Julian and I play. We’ve now toured, and I think both have in the back of our heads this question: Well, are we able to manifest this chemistry automatically on command? Which is what you have to do when you all of a sudden step on stage and sit down and everybody’s there ready to listen to what you have to do. And the answer is yes! (Laughs) I don’t know if it’s surprising. It’s a little surprising, but at the same time there’s something so natural and so … I don’t know what the right adjective is. But it’s definitely a well that we haven’t drained yet. I don’t see any end.
MG: You mentioned how refreshed you were by working with Julian. Can you apply what you’ve done with him in some way to your other projects?
NC: I think we all get to points where we need to replenish. So the replenishing aspect of it happened right away. The other thing is that if you ever meet Julian, you’ll understand that it’s not even just music — he really pulled me out of a funk because of his personality also. He’s a marvellous young man. He’s so empathetic and understanding, he’s charming, he’s all these things. So that was helpful, but the other thing that I did besides start playing this music with Julian at that time, in that burnout phase, was just go hear a lot of music. Because I play so much, and on the road I don’t actually listen to a lot of music, so I feel sometimes like I forget that I love listening to music the way I did when I was thinking I would just be this aspiring dude and I didn’t know if this would really be my life — it’s just what I wanted. And when you’re younger, you tend to listen obsessively — and maybe even as you’re older too, but I think a lot of people sort of lose that thread. And I feel very lucky to be living in New York, so I just basically went out and heard music. I said, “Wow, who’s at the Vanguard tonight?” And I went to hear Josh Redman’s trio. Or what’s happening at the Blue Note? That week it was Jim Hall and Julian and Scott and Joey. And then what’s happening at the Stone? Miho Hatori from Cibo Matto had a funky jam. I went out and heard a bunch of stuff that week, and really got replenished internally by listening to live music that was great. I mean, all this music that I described, in its own way, was really fantastic. And there are other things I do when I feel completely drained — I can just put on a recording of Jim playing, or I can put on a Deerhoof record. When I’m ever unhappy, I can put on Deerhoof and feel much better about life. Certain things work every time. Or I’ll put on some Ravel piano music. Then the wonder and joy of what I love about music, it’s right there. It doesn’t go away. I just forget sometimes to look outside my own self-defeating fear. (Laughs) … Actually, they’ve scheduled us at exactly the same time as Cibo Matto (at the jazz festival). Which is really ironic — I’ve even been playing some shows sitting in as a guest with Cibo Matto, which equipment-wise I don’t think I could have done at the festival, but it would sure be nice to hear them! (Laughs) But there’s a quality problem right there.
MG: And you’re doing just the one-off show here with Julian in the middle of the Wilco dates?
NC: Yeah. We do (Wilco’s festival) Solid Sound and then Julian and I will fly up there and play, and then I have to fly to Arizona to play a Wilco gig. And then the 4th of July will be upon us, so I’ll be in New York for a handful of days, and then I’m really gone most of the summer doing various things. The Singers will be up in Guelph in July, at their festival, and there’s a lot of Wilco.
MG: I don’t know how you toggle between these projects so easily.
NC: Well, actually, that’s not really the hard thing. That’s one thing I guess I can do. (Laughs) I did go through phases where I felt less prepared than I wish I had been on a lot of gigs of my own music, because I don’t do it quite enough. But we’ve had some pretty good runs this year with the Singers playing more than usual, so I feel a little more on top of my own music, but that sort of lack of preparedness usually came from the fact that we would never actually rehearse. I’d come from wherever and Scott Amendola’s in Berkeley, and Devin at various points when he was in the band was wherever he was that year, and now with Trevor (Dunn) he’s in Brooklyn, so I’m closer to him. Cyro Baptista is now in the band; he’s on the east coast. But it’s not like we just get together and have a couple of days where we go, “Hey, let’s try this” and then push to this new level. We just basically have to do it on stage. And it used to drive me kind of nuts. And I’m a procrastinator, too. I have this performance on Sunday as part of the Bang on a Can marathon here where I’m playing the Bobby Previte piece Terminal 1 with the So Percussion ensemble. I played it once live before, and I’m on the recording, but I’m actually promising myself to just go through and refresh my memory on it and play through some of these things, because I tend to wait till the last second and stress myself out. So I’m trying to learn to prepare also individually (laughs) and not just fly headlong into things. But that’s usually what I’ve done, and it’s not a good recipe. But at the same time, stylistically it’s not a problem. It’s not like I have trouble shifting gears. I mean, I am trying to tackle this damn mandolin. (Laughs) I don’t know to what extent I’ll be able to do anything noteworthy on it, but I’m pushing myself this week to spend whatever free time I have picking on this little tiny thing. God, it’s small.
jzivitz@montrealgazette.com
twitter.com/jordanzivitz
The Complete Conversation is an occasional series where the Montreal Gazette publishes full transcripts of interviews with musicians.
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Rand Paul meets with Cliven Bundy on Nevada campaign stop
Rand Paul meets with Cliven Bundy on Nevada campaign stop
Bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor as he drives to work
Bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor as he drives to work
Bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor as he drives to work
Bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor as he drives to work
Bomb kills Egypt’s top prosecutor as he drives to work
