JT/GK/NC chat ahead of Wilco’s L.A. concerts

[Albert Tatlock]

http://latimesblogs....a-concerts.html

 

Not so much a chat as a few words in the corridor, but anyway ...

 

Jeff Tweedy chats ahead of Wilco’s L.A. concerts

 

 

January 9, 2012 | 6:07 pm

 

 

In advance of Wilco’s mini-L.A. residency, with dates at the Palladium (Jan. 24), the Wiltern (Jan 25) and the Los Angeles Theatre (Jan. 27), band leader Jeff Tweedy reflected on the band's last decade and a half, while sharing thoughts on the band’s new album, “The Whole Love.”

On Wilco’s live philosophy: “I like the audience being on the same level — a figurative stage. We can put on a pretty good show as entertainers, about half of a show, usually, but then the seriousness has to go away. The ritual of it being a performance needs to be broken in order for it to feel like you achieved your goal. The goal is to join the audience, or make them feel comfortable joining you. I don’t feel like I’m supposed to be up there pretending to be worthy of being looked at.”

On the importance of nonsense: “For a lot of this record I started with the sound. The original version of ‘I Might’ is all sounds. There’s hardly any discernible words in the first take. I sat and listened to it a million times until they started to sound like words, and then I wrote them down. I tried to stay out of the way and not inject too much ego or meaning. I did a version where I sang the words over the grunts and sounds that were there, and it sounded like a tight double.”

On starting its own label, dBpm Records: “We’re trying to prove to ourselves that we’re good enough at putting our own records out. If that proves to be the case — and I never wanted to be a music mogul or be on that side of the table — I can see how it would be gratifying to have a band you love find a comfortable home with our label. But we have to be honest about whether or not we have the energy and the resources to do a good job for anybody other than ourselves. I wouldn’t want to get somebody mixed up in this.”

On the warts-and-all look at the band that is the 2002 documentary “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart:” “The movie has calcified people’s opinions of our personalities, or at least mine in particular. So that’s a reason not to do it again, really, but it’s not a reason to regret it. I know it helped us too. It helped get the word out. I would rather have a mythology to live down than to still be trying to reach out and just get some interest in order to be heard.”

 

One of the links from that page I had not seen before:-

 

Wilco's riveting 'Art of Almost,' an oral history

 

October 4, 2011 | 4:32 pm

 

It began as a slow jam. Those who have heard the first track on Wilco's "The Whole Love" know it ended up as something far different. It's a 7½-minute melodic collage unlike anything else in the band's catalog, opening with a crush of digital thunder and ending in a torrent of guitars and rhythms.

In between are mysteriously plaintive vocals ("I'll never know when I might ambulance"), the dirtiest, fuzziest bass in Wilco's catalog and a ping-pong of digital grooves. Occasionally, a restrained guitar makes its way to the front of the electronic soundscapes, as if completely oblivious to the carnage that's about to happen.

"I had a pretty great title, I thought," Jeff Tweedy said recently during a visit to Wilco's two-story Chicago loft. "I had a song that went with that title, and a lot of the same lyrics and same melody. But it had a completely different feel. There was a guitar riff that doesn’t appear at all in this version."

What follows is an attempt to trace the evolution of a song, in this case Wilco's "Art of Almost," from as many different perspectives as possible.

 

SANSONE

It started out as sort of a late-night slow jam. When it was on our CD of demos, my subtitle for it was "Sade Song." It had an '80s, slow-soul feel. I got more involved in the track later in its process.

CLINE

In some cases on this record, the versions of the songs you’re hearing are the first version. We retooled them a little, but they were supposedly demos. In the case of "Art of Almost," it wasn’t simply retooled. It was reinvented. We went from recording this sort of loping, Richard Thompson/Crazy Horse song in a mid- or down-tempo. Then, the next thing I knew the groove had become subdivided. It’s basically a double-time groove, and Mike is layering analog synth grooves on top of it.

TWEEDY

A lot of time, when you get through the shape of a song, and you know you’re not really recording, it’s license to screw around and explore the theme. Glenn started playing a super-cool drum beat. Everything before that was sounding, "Eh, this could work. This is passable. We can make it sound pretty." But that drumbeat just made me wonder, "Can I sing over that same melody?" So we mocked it up on the computer.

KOTCHE

Jeff had a lyric and a chord change, and the first time we tried that I was playing to a drum machine with a CompuRhythm loop that I set up. It’s a groove in more of a soul, low-key thing. At the very end of the song, when the tune was over, I was just messing around and they let the tape play and didn’t press stop. Jeff heard that beat and then we re-tracked the entire thing so that beat starts the song.

SANSONE

I think the idea was to see if we could take the vocal and put it on top of something a little funkier, something that had a little more momentum. Glenn had this drumbeat that he had been wanting to use in a song for a long time, so we brought that drum in. Then we chopped up Jeff’s original vocal from the slow jam and made it work with this new beat. Then I did some Mellotron and then it just kind of unfolded from there. It was really an experiment to see if the vocal could work on a new rhythm. It did, and it set the tone.

TWEEDY

It came together so quickly from that point that everybody could start to see it. How much other stuff from the version could we bring in? Let’s bring in the tremolo pick guitars and stuff and the little cloud of sound. It was a collage over many months.

CLINE

The song became this science project of a song, seemingly in the time it took me to get from the kitchen in the loft back to the mixing console.

KOTCHE

I told John this. I said, "Finally, you will get your due." Not that he hasn’t in the past, but there are sides of John that I’ve never heard, and I’ve played with him 11 years. Like "Art of Almost"? John can play funky? I didn’t know that. Wilco isn’t necessarily a funky band, but I don’t think there’s any other track where his fuzzed bass is sticking through.

SANSONE

It was such an in-the-computer, in-the-studio exercise. That allowed us to let our guard down. We didn’t have to feel like we had to make these songs feel like they happened organically. We could do stuff that sounded studio. That gave us freedom and allowed us to make a record where we do a lot of editing.

KOTCHE

Mike suggested the ending part -- the double-time thing. I was really opposed to that. I thought it was going to turn into "Freebird." It’s such a cliché to go into double-time at the end, but he saw it. I didn’t see it. I doubted it and didn’t see what it could be. It turned into this amazing guitar raga, weird, punk thing that is a perfect complement to the first half.

CLINE

 

Jeff imagined this coda at the end with me basically trying to rage on the guitar. That’s not something he asks me to do. It’s usually the exact opposite. If he asks me anything, he’ll say, "Can you play that same idea but as though your fingers are all tied together?" In other words, slow down or play less slick. When I heard Jeff was pondering starting the record like that, I was ecstatic.

TWEEDY

It was going to be first on the record for a long, long time. Whether that song was first or not, I married myself to the idea that I wanted to hear a record start with the sound of hard drives. You can’t really hear them, but they’re in there. That’s part of what that sound is at the beginning. It’s the sound of broken hard drives, and the sound of data dying. That song started casting such a big shadow.

CLINE

The sound of hard drives trying to start up? That was fun to record. I think this was [Jeff's] idea of knowing that everything will be listened to in the digital domain. It’s going to be listened to on laptops, on iPods. So, opposed to everyone making things like they sound like scratchy vinyl, I think he wanted to make it so digital -- so digital that it was actually messed-up, vintage digital.

TWEEDY

It opened the door to having the next record be whatever we wanted it to be. You can put anything after that song and people will be ready for it.

 

[Doctor B]

Interesting tale of how Art... came to be. First time I heard it I thought they were channeling Brian Eno-John Cale....

[Shug]

I want to hear the Richard Thompson/Crazy Horse version that Nels described! Is that the same as the Sade slow jam version?

[Albert Tatlock]

Another related snippet from the L.A. Times.

 

Capitol City field recording from rollcall from a fire drill at a Leeds hotel ...

 

Drum lesson: Wilco's Glenn Kotche on found sounds

January 10, 2012 | 6:13 pm

Todd Martens

Drum aficionados, this is a good month to be in Los Angeles. This Saturday, Guitar Center will stage its annual "Drum Off" finals at Club Nokia, with a host of session-aces and band members performing mini rhythmic flights of fancy.

Some heavy hitters will be on hand as judges, including Peter Criss from Kiss and the Mars Volta's Dave Elitch, while drummers including Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), Mike Portnoy (Avenged Sevenfold), Dennis Chambers (Santana), Brooks Wackerman (Bad Religion) and Jabo Starks (James Brown) are scheduled to play short sets with other musicians.

But drum geeks have another reason to rejoice: Wilco's string of shows in Los Angeles. The Chicago band plays the Palladium Jan. 24, the Wiltern Jan 25 and the Los Angeles Theatre Jan. 27, which means their stellar drummer Glenn Kotche will be there too. The former drum teacher -- himself once a classical percussion student at the University of Kentucky -- has a wide-open view of the instrument. "When I am playing solo, there’s a mission. I am out to prove that this can be music," he said.

With so much drum expertise on the horizon, Pop & Hiss thought it a fine time to dedicate a post to the craft-- or at least to Kotche and his wildly inventive approach to the instrument. It follows yesterday's talk with Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy.

In Kotche's solo atmospheric work with On Fillmore, the drum set becomes an orchestra, bits and pieces of which have been explored throughout Kotche's decade-plus with Wilco, be it the aggressive, double-timed rock of "Art of Almost," the spacious, redemptive groove of "i Am Trying to Break Your Heart," or the found sounds, shuffling toys and back massagers that permeate parts of new album "The Whole Love."

Explain your approach to the instrument. "I think there’s a future in percussion. It’s been codified. ‘This is what it is. This is what its role is.’ I see percussion as a wide-open world. It’s like the last frontier in musical instruments, especially in classical music. It encompasses everything that isn’t a string or a wind instrument. It’s kind of limitless. So when I play solo, or any of the compositions I do, I’m trying to assert that this is an instrument capable of making music. I try not to make it too heady and I try not to make it too low-brow, like the traditional drum solo is the traditional time for the bathroom break. I try to make music."

There's a repetitive roll call in new song "Capital City." This was a field recording? "I made demos for Jeff [Tweedy] last year. He asked for material, so I threw him some drum beats and a collage of field recordings. I know it will never be on the record, but I send it to him. Maybe it will spark an idea? One of those Jeff remembered. It was a field recording we made on tour. We were on tour in Leeds, and there was a fire drill that went off in the middle of the night, and they had a roll call. They evacuated everyone. I recorded it. I record constantly. I have a digital recorder with me all the time. If I go on a walk, it’ll be with me. Anywhere I go, if there’s an interesting sound, I hit record. I’m always cataloguing sound. It’s all percussion, whether it's a baby crying in an airplane, or an amazing escalator vibrating thing."

Explain the back massagers."Some of that stuff I laid on ‘Sunloathe.’ Most of the band weren’t even in the studio. I had my back massagers and hand fans on all the drums, just vibrating and moving around, buzzing. That’s still in the mix. You put them on the drums, and then put some chains and bells on the drums, and you can get a weird drone. If people knew what I was doing, they’d be like, ‘That’s lame. Get out of here.’ But then they hear it and it works."

Talk about the experience of replacing Wilco's original drummer, Ken Coomer, in 2001. "Those guys at that point would be in the studio at 5 a.m., and then I had my first drum lesson at 7 a.m. out in the suburbs, so I was getting no sleep. When they asked me to join, I had no expectations of anything. I thought, ‘Here’s this band, and I don’t even know if I’m the right fit.’ I was wary of touring that much, and I thought the fans would hate me because I replaced Ken. Then the label dropped us. The future was pretty uncertain. People always say, ‘That must have been so crazy,’ but you know what? Not really. It was a functional situation. It was business as usual. This is how bands are. There’s usually a couple freaks and there’s a lot of drama and things don’t always go the way you want them to go. Worst-case scenario, we would have been on an indie label."

How closely did you adhere to what Coomer had done on Wilco's first three albums? "I had a lot of reverence. Ken was the right fit for those records. He sounds great on those records, and I wanted to honor that. So I played what he played. But I’m a fairly different player than him, and my own style would eventually come through. Once we started playing live, what was learned and studied would be left behind."

Rhythm plays a huge part on "The Whole Love." Wilco, for instance, has never sounded as funky as it does on parts of "Art of Almost" and "I Might." "There was a lot more freedom. There was a lot less micro-management. Look, the drums go first. People are always chiming in. ‘Can you go to the rise instead of the hi-hat?’ For ‘Sky Blue Sky,’ it was largely drums-by-committee. I would have my part but it may not work with what [multi-instrumentalist] Pat [sansone] was doing, so I’d change this little thing, and Jeff would have me change that little thing. But with this? This was our own label, no time line, our own studio. Jeff doesn't hold tight reins in the studio. He’s always open-minded and generous. But this one he was very clear: ‘Any ideas get explored.’ If someone had an idea, we did it."

[choo-choo-charlie]

This is the type of stuff that I wish they'd put in the liner notes of albums, particularly those deluxe releases. I'd much rather read about the making of the record than have a 52-page book with lyrics, artwork and a few photos.

[The Inside of Outside]

Reading the above interviews reminds me of another reason I like the band - they are articulate. In their print interviews, they come off as pretty darn smart (or smaht as folks say here in Maine).

[Albert Tatlock]

Nels this time.

 

http://www.csindy.com/colorado/whole-lotta-life/Content?oid=2416976

 

Colorado Spring Independent

 

Whole lotta life

Wilco's energetic new album finds Jeff Tweedy loosening up on the reins

by Alan Sculley

 

One thing that's immediately apparent in talking to Wilco guitarist Nels Cline: While founding frontman Jeff Tweedy is still in the driver's seat on the band's recent albums, other voices are definitely making themselves heard.

The eclectic axeman, who joined Wilco seven years ago and was immediately praised for the new sounds he brought to the band, says that multi-instrumentalist Pat Sansone is the member who's most come into his own on the critically acclaimed group's seventh studio album, The Whole Love.

"Pat has a lot of ideas generally, I mean, he's very vocal" says Cline. "There was certainly not a spoken alliance that emerged with Jeff and Pat on this record; I think it was an organic one. But the next thing I knew, Jeff was kind of sitting back and letting Pat try anything and everything."

Sansone's contributions were significant enough that he was given co-production credit, along with Tweedy and Tom Schick. It's the first time a band member other than Tweedy has been individually recognized as such on a Wilco album, although the band as a whole has gotten production credit on a number of past recordings.

Tweedy had always been Wilco's focal point, ever since he founded the group in 1994 after the split of Uncle Tupelo, the influential country-inflected rock band he co-fronted with Jay Farrar. And after a series of personnel changes prior to Cline's 2004 arrival, Tweedy and bassist John Stirratt were the sole original band members. Cline, Sansone, drummer Glenn Kotche and keyboardist Mike Jorgensen complete a lineup that's been in place since 2004.

"Everyone's personalities emerge strongly on this record," says Cline. "I don't think there is any lack of anyone shining on this record in some way — and not in the most obvious ways. I don't mean shine time like heroically, but musically. And I think that Jeff's lyrics on this record are some of his strongest ever."

 

Different directions

 

Although described by the New York Times as "one of the best guitarists in any genre," Cline isn't one to go on about his own talents. But when it's time to talk up his bandmates, he rises to the occasion.

"Mike had some amazing textural, sonic keyboard things that he did on this record," says Cline. "He'd just get all these synths going and all these programs going, and it really was fun to hear him concoct these events. Some of the stuff ended up on the record, and some of it didn't. But some amazing stuff went on."

Cline says a collaborative atmosphere has been present for all three albums this lineup has recorded, going back to 2007's Sky Blue Sky, on which Tweedy involved his bandmates at an early stage in the writing process. With The Whole Love, many of his songs were already fully formed, says Cline, but a spirit of adventure still came into play in the studio.

"There was a lot of freedom and a lot of experimentation and a lot of ideas just put out there," he explains. "We were able to see what made the cut without getting too precious about it."

On "Black Moon" and "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)," Cline says Tweedy really liked the early versions. "We just kind of refined them a little bit, and Jeff re-sung them, and that's that." But the album's opening track, "Art of Almost," was reworked from a down-tempo tune into a poppy track that liberally mixes electronics with traditional instrumentation, then shifts into a sonically dense and fairly furious finish that spotlights Cline's creative guitar soloing.

"Sunloathe" is another song whose arrangement underwent considerable change. "It became a completely different thing and went through many different phases as far as how to approach each verse, what the drums were going to do," recalls Cline. "The start-and-stop drumming was a later idea. That was just a song that could have gone in so many different directions."

 

Packing a punch

 

The Whole Love is also one of Wilco's more eclectic efforts. For a time the band even considered doing two separate albums before paring it down to the current 12 songs.

Gentle, largely acoustic songs like "Black Moon" and the 12-minute "One Sunday Morning" are interspersed with the compact, catchy "I Might," "Dawned on Me" and "Standing O." There are also enticing hooks on tracks like "Born Alone" and the "Art of Almost," which are bolstered with extended instrumental segments.

Looking back, Cline is pleased with the final result. "This record has some pretty strong bold rock with big choruses," he says. "It's not super heavy, but I think it still packs a punch. I think that's what I like about the sort of pop-rock songs on this record is that, as poppy as they might be, they still have some crunch and a couple of good blows to the breadbasket."