Nels Cline's lack of involvement with the last album

[AJ673]

To my knowledge the boys involved with the the Neil Finn project layed down most of the tracks without Nel's presence. How do you consienscly (sp? sorry!) create an album without an intregal band member? How does that fact forbode with the next album's generation?

[Shakespeare In The Alley]

I don't think it foreshadows anything. They recorded demos (essentially) when the time was right, then Nels added stuff on top of it. Not the same as creating an album without him.

[AJ673]

I disagree - to create music with people is completely different then creating on your own.

[AJ673]

How much of a creatice input could he have had?

[Shakespeare In The Alley]

Frankly, I've always though Nels is an auxiliary piece of the band to begin with. So his job is to embellish upon the tracks that have been laid down. I mean that in a good way, of course. I would imagine he gets a decent amount of say in what his guitar parts are. But I don't think Tweedy and the other 7WC guys laying down basic tracks, then adding Nels' parts is much different from Tweedy bringing his demos in to the studio and having the other guys lay their parts down on top of it. Or around it.

 

I could be way off, but I've never gotten the impression that Nels steers the songs too much on his own. Especially with all that he does outside Wilco, I don't think it's a big deal that the album wasn't put together with his constant physical presence.

[Bosco]

There was an article in Mix about this when the record came out, I believe that they were working on the songs (and actually had tracks on tape) long before the 7 Worlds thing, when they got to NZ they liked the sound of the room, so they recorded the basics all over again, Nels and Mikael just added their parts later. I'd say they were a part of the creative process.

[Three dollars and 63 cents]

I also remember reading (maybe in that same article) that Jeff said they'd rerecord the demos if anything sounded off after Mike and Nels added their parts.

 

I wouldn't read too much into it. Keep in mind that Wilco approaches the recording of each album really differently. Remember that for SBS they recorded everything live, with the six of them sitting together playing. They used the studio a lot more for W(TA). I'm really hoping that they'll use their departure from Nonesuch as a reason to experiment a lot more broadly on the next album. It does sound like they've blocked out a lot of the fall and winter for working on the new album, so I wouldn't guess they'll record the demos in bits and pieces like they did last time.

[Sweet Papa Crimbo]

How much of a creatice input could he have had?

 

You're looking for something that simply isn't there.

[Guest Speed Racer]

You're looking for something that simply isn't there.

 

This.

 

And, you're trying to defend the amount of creative input for the second-overplayingest member of Wilco.

[Bosco]

Music: Wilco

Aug 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Blair Jackson

CHICAGO SEXTET GOES “DEEPER DOWN” ON NEW ALBUM

Since coming onto the scene in the mid-'90s, Wilco has consistently been one of the most unpredictable and adventurous American bands, and leader Jeff Tweedy is among music's most intriguing figures. The three Wilco albums Mix has covered previously — their alt-country debut A.M.; the collaborations with Billy Bragg on songs by Woody Guthrie called Mermaid Avenue; and the eclectic and experimental Yankee Hotel Foxtrot — are all sonically completely different from each other, just as Summerteeth (1999) bears little semblance to the 2007 Sky Blue Sky. Wilco's latest is called Wilco (The Album), and while it doesn't represent a radical departure for the group, it's definitely another left-hand turn down an untraveled road.

“Having had records that people have claimed sound very different for so long…it's never been our intention not to sound like ourselves,” Tweedy mused this spring to writer Scott Timberg of metromix.com. “I think this [new] record incorporates most of the other periods into an overall package — if anything, it's like the Whitman's Sampler record.”

Why now? “This band — which for all of us has become the definitive lineup of Wilco — has been together longer than any other lineup and really feels like what the band was meant to be. When we did the residency shows a year or so ago [five nights at Chicago's Riviera Theatre in February 2008], this band became conversant with all those other records and able to claim some ownership. Whatever different styles we'd tried on those other records, this band is adept at them, and maybe this [new] record grew out of that experience. I think this record is the least self-conscious and most confident of all the Wilco records.”

As usual, it's difficult to characterize the songs on Wilco (The Album)because they cross so many stylistic boundaries and draw from many different influences. A lot of Tweedy's songs have folkish underpinnings, regardless of what style they eventually emerge as, and there are certainly several nods to The Beatles here — “I'll Fight” has a ringing Beatles '65 vibe in places; “Everlasting Everything” contains faint echoes of “A Day in the Life”; and the propulsive “You Never Know” sounds like the best song George Harrison never wrote.

But with Wilco, the flashes of familiarity always bubble up from within the greater, unmistakable “Wilco Sound.” That starts with Tweedy's expressive vocals — always up front, usually (but not always) fairly dry — and then wraps the band around that lead vocal. On this album, there's plenty of cool lap-steel and slide guitar, fuzzed drones, all sorts of tasteful keys — including piano, organ, harpsichord and an occasional synth — lean, solid bass lines, and drums and percussion that ranges from prominent pounding to subtle splashes, depending on the requirements of the song. The liner notes don't say who plays what on which song, but it's a good bet that bass and drums will be John Stirratt and Glenn Kotche, respectively; guitars by Nels Cline, Pat Sansone and Tweedy; and keys by Mikael Jorgensen and Sansone. There are various electronic effects tossed in here and there in small doses, and also a few nice guest spots: Dave Max Crawford on trumpet on a tune, Jason Tobias on slide cimbalom (!) and, most prominently of all, Leslie Feist as duet vocalist on the lovely, affecting folk tune “You and I.” With the notable exception of the edgy and insistent “Bull Black Nova,” Wilco (The Album) is a pleasing and sonorous ride through varying musical and emotional terrain.

This time out, Wilco shared the production responsibilities with Jim Scott, who has mixed Wilco albums dating back to Being There (1996) and certainly is part of the extended Wilco family. Scott, who has worked with so many big names through the years in production, engineering and/or mixing capacities — Petty, Sting, the Chili Peppers, Weezer, Dixie Chicks; the list goes on — and was profiled in Mix's February 2009 issue, says the invitation to get involved with Wilco at the tracking stage happened unexpectedly. In October 2008, the band invited Scott to The Loft — the Northside Chicago warehouse space that serves as their headquarters and studio — and asked him to watch them do some tracking and overdubbing on new material.

“They had recorded versions of almost all the songs that are on the new album,” Scott says. “It was fun watching that. I said, ‘Sounds good, looks like it'll be a great record,’ and then I left. I got a call from Jeff a couple of days later, and he said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I said, ‘I think the songs are pretty great, but it's not very exciting. I don't think it's as good as you can do. I know it can be better. I think everyone needs to work a little harder.’ I told him in the nicest possible way I didn't think he was ready to start mixing what I'd heard. And I don't think he was thinking it was ready to mix, either; I think he was asking, ‘Where do you think we're at?’ ‘Some good songs, but you need better recordings; let's shine this up. Let's do this right!’ So at that point, he asked, ‘Do you want to make a record with Wilco?’

“As our lives progressed, we found ourselves down in Auckland, New Zealand, in December, working with Neil Finn and a bunch of other really spectacular musicians on the 7 Worlds Collide project [an all-star benefit album and DVD, titled The Sun Came Out, to raise money for Oxfam, set for an early August release]. The plan was to do the Wilco record after this wintertime experiment in New Zealand.” In addition to enlisting four of the six members of Wilco (Cline and Jorgensen were not involved), this 7 Worlds Collide album also brought together Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien from Radiohead, Johnny Marr (of Smiths and Modest Mouse fame), Scottish singer/songwriter K.T. Tunstall, Soul Coughing's Sebastian Steinberg, multi-instrumentalist Lisa Germano and others. Finn's first 7 Worlds Collide album, which came out in 2001, featured much of the same cast of musicians, plus Eddie Vedder, but not Wilco or Tunstall. And whereas that album was a live recording, for the 2008-'09 version the musicians convened at Finn's Roundhead Studios complex, writing songs and recording together in all sorts of different configurations. “We had three studios going at once there,” says Scott, who cut 20 of the 30 songs produced during the month of sessions.

“Everything was going great, and the Wilco songs we recorded for the project were amazing. In fact, everyone agreed it was happening. The studio was great — it has a beautiful old Neve 8048 that came out of The Who's studio and then was at Bearsville [in upstate N.Y.]. It was summertime down there; just a great vibe all around.

“Like I said, the plan was when that working holiday ended, we were going to go to Chicago to make the Wilco record. But then Jeff said, ‘Hey, do you want to stay a few extra days and start cutting our tracks down here?’ ‘Absolutely!’ So we did; we stayed an extra week and cut them as a four-piece. We cut all the bed tracks for the songs. The vocals are live — Jeff sings and plays live, and when he's got it, he'sgot it. When he serves up the vocal and the groove, everybody plays great. It's not like, ‘Oh, we need a little piece of this vocal and little piece of that vocal, and here's a good chorus and here's a good bridge from that take.’ They're real musicians and they play well consistently. It's so refreshing and fantastic to be with a great band.”

Everything was recorded on tape and then transferred to Pro Tools, “and after we'd gotten all our tracks done, we went back to Chicago to work on it some more. So we went from New Zealand summertime to an ice-cold, freezing Chicago winter working at The Loft,” Scott says with a laugh. “The guy upstairs there has a machine shop and there are these presses going all day long — you hear this deep ka-chonka, ka-chonka. So there's this machine noise and there are also sirens. It's not built like a recording studio; it's not all soundproofed and isolated. So you grit your teeth. and say, ‘Okay, if there's a little siren in the background, that's the way it goes. If there's a big machine shop crunch in the middle of Leslie Feist's vocal, hopefully it will be in time. That's how it goes.’ They're used to it, and they're not the type of people that would be derailed by that anyway.”

On the song “Deeper Down,” for instance, “you can hear some of the sound of the workspace in there. We were saying, ‘Can you believe how loud it is and we're trying to make a record here?’ Well, you can't hide it, so we might as well put it on the record and put it where we want it. So we would wait for particularly loud [noises] and record them and sample them and move them into the music to help make the atmosphere.”

The Loft takes up an entire floor of a four-story building and is loosely separated into what Scott calls “little neighborhoods” rather than dedicated rooms. “There's a control room area, a performance area, plus you can make a ‘drum room’ with baffles,” he says. “There's storage down on one end [of the floor] and guitar racks and amps through the middle, and everybody who needs a desk has a desk. There are even bunk beds and some guys crash out there. The console is a late-'80s or early '90s Sony console, which was only used for monitoring.” For Wilco (The Album), Scott brought in his own Neve BCM-10 sidecars, which contain coveted 1073 and 1079 EQs.

As Cline and Jorgenson hadn't been in New Zealand for the basic tracks sessions, their parts were added back at The Loft. “Nels and I spent a couple of weeks together — he had two or three parts on each song,” Scott says. “I don't look at it like it was a real created, overdub-y record, but Nels had parts in his mind, parts they had worked out together during the pre-production period before I even got there, and then there were some experiments along the way. One thing always leads to another, and so Mikael would hear something and he's got some great [keyboard] sounds and really good ideas. All of those guys have a great sense of how to put parts together in interesting ways.”

When it comes to miking guitars, Scott says, “I'll usually use a Shure 57 and a Neumann 87. It's the good mic/bad mic thing — the 57 takes a beating and gets all the brightness and crispyness, and the 87 rounds it out on the edges and gives it some character. The combination of those will give you a good electric guitar sound every time.” Scott also called on Royer 121 ribbons on occasion during the Chicago sessions. “I actually prefer older ribbon mics — my [RCA] 44s and 77s — but I didn't bring them with me and the Royers were great. If it's the right sound coming out of the amp, the Royer will faithfully record it for you.” Scott also notes that “all the reverb and tremolos on those parts came out of the amps from Nels and Patrick,” rather than being added later during mixing. The song “Everlasting Everything” also benefitted from the addition of a retro-cool Mellotron string part.

For Tweedy's vocals, Scott used a Shure SM7: “We tried more expensive mics but they weren't right. Jeff knows that mic, he's real comfortable with it, and I am, too. I've used it on Anthony Keidis' vocals on Chili Peppers records. There are better mics for different people at different times, but that seems to work best on Jeff.”

Scott mixed the album at his Southern California facility, Plyerz Studios, which is centered around his own Neve 8048 console and is filled to the brim with vintage (and modern) outboard gear. Unlike many bands that quickly max out inputs with layer upon layer of tracks, Wilco generally likes to keep things fairly spare. As Scott notes, “I only have 56 inputs and we never got close to that; maybe 40 or so was the most, on ‘Deeper Down’ or ‘Everlasting.’” All the mixes go through Tweedy, of course, and Scott says, “He has great ears. He's very decisive and bold. If something's not quite right, you go give it another shot. He's not one of those, ‘Well, let's do a hi-hat up and a bass down, and a guitar on the left louder [mix]’ kind of guy. It's more like, ‘That sounds great; that's done. Thank you.’ I love that!

“I bet there aren't that many alternate mixes of our favorite records — when they were mixed by hand or early computers. When it was done it was done. They might have done a better mix, but not an insecurity mix. That's the way it is working with Wilco, too.”

[sinko25]

This isn't out of the ordinary at all for bands of Wilco's stature. People are busy.

[ChrisFFTA]

Gee I dunno... when I read this: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/07/nels-cline-singers-black-cat-initiate-wilco-new-album.php ...

 

... it makes me wonder if Nels always talks like or if he isnt happy with it all...

[lost highway]

Gee I dunno... when I read this: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/07/nels-cline-singers-black-cat-initiate-wilco-new-album.php ...

 

... it makes me wonder if Nels always talks like or if he isnt happy with it all...

 

Sounds like he loves being in the band and making music with different people.

[Guest Speed Racer]

On touring with Wilco:

 

"That was a great experience, I loved it."

 

On a new Wilco record:

 

I think we'd love to make a really up-tempo alienating record — I think everyone agrees that would be enjoyable — but the natural course of music-makingkind of precludes that.

 

On Jeff's creative input:

 

I'm sure he has an idea for how he'd like this next record to go, but once we start playing all bets are off, to me...I'm very curious.

 

Yeah, the man sounds positively at the end of his rope.

[Guest Jules]

To my knowledge the boys involved with the the Neil Finn project layed down most of the tracks without Nel's presence. How do you consienscly (sp? sorry!) create an album without an intregal band member? How does that fact forbode with the next album's generation?

Intregal is not a word.

[Shakespeare In The Alley]

Gee I dunno... when I read this: http://www.expressnightout.com/content/2010/07/nels-cline-singers-black-cat-initiate-wilco-new-album.php ...

 

... it makes me wonder if Nels always talks like or if he isnt happy with it all...

How did you take anything from that interview as proof of Nels not being happy in Wilco?

 

Nels is in a pretty admirable situation, as he gets to tour the world and make a presumably good living with Wilco, then do whatever the hell he wants when Wilco's not touring. Not much to complain about, I'd say.

[Atticus]

To my knowledge the boys involved with the the Neil Finn project layed down most of the tracks without Nel's presence. How do you consienscly (sp? sorry!) create an album without an intregal band member? How does that fact forbode with the next album's generation?

 

are you suggesting that Wilco made the album unconsciously?

[Guest Speed Racer]

I think he was saying they made the album unscrupulously and immorally.

[Guest Jules]

are you suggesting that Wilco made the album unconsciously?

That's a hell of a band.

[Guest Speed Racer]

Isn't ction the one who said SBS sounded like a "recorded nap"? Guess they're keeping on the tradition, in AJ's eyes.

[u2roolz]

It's really because Nels Cline is an anagram for Nellie CNS or Nellie Can Not Stand Wilco.

You see, Nellie's bandaid wields magical power over our main axeman.

Please send vibes to Nels to finally lift this voodoo magic from Nellie.

Look at him, will ya? The man looks guilty. He's treating Nels like his own personal voodoo doll: contorting him and shit.

[Ghost of Electricity]

Pat Sansone= On peasants

John Stirratt= North Tits Jar

Mikael Jorgenson= On Jokes Malinger

Glenn Kotchee= The Long Neck

Jeff Tweedy= Jet Defy Few

[ChrisFFTA]

How did you take anything from that interview as proof of Nels not being happy in Wilco?

 

Nels is in a pretty admirable situation, as he gets to tour the world and make a presumably good living with Wilco, then do whatever the hell he wants when Wilco's not touring. Not much to complain about, I'd say.

 

gee folks, calm down. the world wont end just coz i got a different impression than you guys.

 

 

» EXPRESS: Oh, really. Wilco has its own label now?

» CLINE: Yeah, I don't know the name of it. Jeff was basically not wanting to be on a record label for a while — he didn't renew his contract with Nonesuch — so we're striking out on our own, our own label. There might be a 7-inch or something, a little souvenir when we do this Mass MoCA [solid Sound Festival in North Adams, Ma.] I'm not sure, really. Basically, Jeff and [Wilco manager] Tony Margherita are the masterminds, so I'm just cruising with what they want to do.

 

» EXPRESS: Since we're on the subject, I do want to touch on the next Wilco record and what's going on with that. There was an interview from April in which [bassist] John Stirratt was talking about how you were planning to record this summer. Is that still happening?

» CLINE: All I can tell you is I don't know anything. I know we're recording next month a little bit and we're recording a lot in October. The process of making the next Wilco record is going to be long in terms of the writing and arranging and demoing phase. I think that phase could go on for a while before the mastering phase. But that said, who knows? We may have this amazing productive time in October. I have no idea and there's been all kinds of verbal ideas bandied about, about what direction this record will take, but I don't believe in any of that stuff because everything changes.

 

» EXPRESS: Has the Wilco writing process become a democracy in a sense, or is Jeff still leading the way and pushing you guys in different directions?

» CLINE: Well, it's different for each record. "Sky Blue Sky" was very democratic although it was very Jeff-generated because that's the way things go, but "Wilco (The Album)" was a Jeff album. It was a total Jeff album — look at the writing credits. He walked in with this batch of songs. Basically, he had a lump of songs that had exploded out of him so that was a Jeff record that we arranged. All the arranging is done collectively he has specific ideas and also gives us a lot of latitude and I'm sure he has an idea for how he'd like this next record to go, but once we start playing all bets are off, to me. I think that one should be open to music taking its natural course and so I don't know what's going to happen. I'm very curious.

 

So... just some random words here and there. As someone that has been playing in bands for a long time... this sort of wording is very familiar. In fact it is Bennett-esque. FLAME ON

[Vacant Horizon]

i have no idea about how nels likes wilco. however, listening to the new singers album gets me excited about the potential for the next album. would love to hear nels open up on some of the songs. not just noise, but in texture as well as arrangements and writing. like a classic tweedy ballad that has an all out nels white distortion jam in the middle then comes back to the song.

[Guest Speed Racer]

So... just some random words here and there. As someone that has been playing in bands for a long time... this sort of wording is very familiar. In fact it is Bennett-esque. FLAME ON

 

What you cited isn't "Bennett-esque," it's the words of someone who is not the driving creative force of a band. Jeff is, and always has been, the principle driving creative force of Wilco. If Nels knew everything about where the new music was heading that would be presumptuous and laughable, in my opinion. This not least of all because one of the lines you bold, "I think that one should be open to music taking its natural course" is referring to the dynamics of recording music, period - not Jeff driving the force.

 

As for "Jeff's" label - why can't Wilcoworld have a label that involves the primary creative force and the business guy? Who says Nels wanted to be a part of that? You're implying they've denied him or taken something from him that he never expressed any interest in having.

 

Now, saying that someone isn't the "driving creative force" of a band is not the same as saying they have no creative input whatever. You're holding up signs that say, "Nels is being forced from his throne as Wilco's chosen son!" when all the quotes you're using only support the statement, "Nels is only a supporting member of Wilco!!" the latter of which is true, and absolutely nothing new.