"Lovers" with Nels Cline

Graham is joined by composer and true guitar polymath, Nels Cline. Through his 2016 mood music album "Lovers" released on Blue Note records, they discuss creativity and explore the abstract nature of inspiration.

📻🎚️
Nels Cline “Glad To Be Unhappy” (2:53)
“The Night Porter” (7:56)
“Cry, Want” (9:15)
“So Hard It Hurts” (10:22 )
“Secret Love” (35:55)
“It Only Has To Happen Once” (37:16)
“Max, Mon Amour” (46:01)
Victor Young Orchestra “Beautiful Love” (48:55)
Nels Cline “Beautiful Love” (50:05)
“Introduction / Diaphanous” (54:58)
“The Bond” (56:10)
“The Search For Cat” (58:15)
“Snare, Girl” (63:49)
Sonic Youth “Snare, Girl” (64:40)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Major Label Debut, the podcast about
major label debuts. I'm Graham Wright. Here's a broadcast style
rhetorical question for you. Do you have any long held
dreams somewhere you've always wanted to go, or something you've
always wanted to make, a project, a goal, you know
that sort of thing. I know, I personally am lugging

(00:29):
around all kinds of ideas I've come up with over
the years. You know, like when I was seventeen, I
came up with a really cool idea for a movie,
and then that idea just stayed lodged in my brain,
and over the years up to right now, every once
in a while, I'll have a new thought about it,
and I'll get all excited all over again. There's a
purity to an idea that exists only in your mind.

(00:50):
There's a kind of imagined perfection that in reality is
probably unattainable. And when an idea sits and marinates in
that it changes. And the longer it's in there, you know,
the more flavorful the idea kind of becomes. All of
which goes to say, Before Nell's Klein became widely known

(01:12):
for playing some of the coolest guitar parts ever played
with Wilco before he distinguished himself as an exceptionally skilled
and imaginative and brilliant guitar player across a whole wide
variety of genres. He was, like so many musicians, a
kid working in a record store, and that is where
he had this great idea to make a record of

(01:34):
what they call mood music. That's the kind of music
you'd expect to find on a record where the cover
is like a soft focused photograph of a red rose
sitting on a velvet tablecloth next to a glass of
red wine. It's the kind of music you put on
to seduce your date after you cook her dinner, right,
that kind of thing. It is not, let's say, the
most fashionable genre of music. And that was also true

(01:57):
when Nells hatched the idea. The record store or where
he was working, used mood music records to decorate their bathroom.
People treated it like a joke, and maybe in part
because of that, young Nell's clein did not rush straight
to the studio to make that record, but the ideas
stayed with him. It lived and evolved in his mind
over the ensuing years. While he was also out making

(02:20):
just one hell of a name for himself, and eventually
his reputation grew to the extent where the legendary jazz
label Blue Note Records said to him something that most
musicians can only dream of ever hearing from a label.
Nell's clein, if you could make any record for us,
what would that record be? And that here comes the segue.

(02:40):
That is how a record store daydream became Lover's. Nells
Klein's major label debut. Lovers is an audacious record, maybe

(03:22):
not in the way people usually mean by that. It's
not dissonant, it's not jarring or challenging or alienating. In fact,
it's kind of the opposite. It's a genre of music
that's been out of fashion for such a long time,
in part because it's so easy to listen to that
it's difficult for a lot of people to take seriously.
So for an artist of Nell's Klein's stature to engage

(03:44):
seriously and earnestly with this kind of music is a
really interesting and yeah, a really audacious creative act, and
at least in this case, it made for a really
great record, thoughtfully conceived, beautifully arranged, and brilliantly performed. By
a whole murderer's row of kick ass players. So I

(04:05):
was pretty excited to talk to Nell's clein about the
idea behind the record, about how it all changed shape
over the years it spent marinating in his brain, and
hearing him describe how the vision slowly came together to
become Lovers was just so fascinating. Nell's unsurprisingly has a
great perspective on music and art and sound, and he's

(04:29):
really eloquent at articulating it, which I admire and envy.
So truly a privilege to talk to Nell's clin about
his major label debut, Lovers. And here now is that conversation.

(04:53):
I was curious if you remember the moment of inspiration,
the moment that this project of making you know, fifty
style mood record, if you like, first occurred to you,
And what the first song was you thought you wanted
to do that with.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
Okay, I don't remember the first moment, but I think
if I were to hazard a guess, I was thinking
about all the years I worked at a record store
in West Los Angeles called Rhino Records and which eventually

(05:28):
also became the label. But I and others had plastered
the bathroom, not in the original store, but when they
rebuilt the store with all these, I guess you would say,
alluring kind of sexy objectification album covers of a lot
of these records that were what we called nickel records.

(05:50):
And then moving forward and working in an art book
store for many years, realized that some of these album
covers were really kind of coveted by esthetic individuals. These
were small German publishers, and some of these album covers
appeared in, you know, a compendium of sorts of you know,

(06:14):
exotica and mood music album covers. And I think that
it was this combination of interest in the genre itself
and of the idea of a mood music record that
never interested me when I was putting the album covers

(06:37):
up in the bathroom, but really began to interest me
a little bit later. I'm reminded just now that my
good friend Karla Bosolich, with whom I played music for
a long time, after the Jodine Fibbers, she did a
performance at the Shindler House in West Hollywood in Los

(06:57):
Angeles area called the Fake Party, and one of the
things that she did was source a lot of these
records that we had picked up in thrift stores and
you know whatnot as part of her program. And I
think that it was when I heard there was a

(07:17):
version that she used of Lost in the Stars, you know,
Kurt Bile, that was actually quite remarkably arranged. And so
I think that it was around this time, and this
was around the year nineteen ninety nine, two thousand or something,
that I sort of made more concrete plans to make

(07:40):
this record somehow that I had thought about in the eighties,
you know. And I think that the first song, well
are they kind of came to me in a clump,
a small clump. One was the theme from The night Porter,
the movie The night Porter, which is a very transgressive

(08:01):
film controversy will probably even today for some certainly in
its day it was there was a lot of protest involved.
When I'm screened. Well, anyway, I found this movie'd be

(08:32):
pretty compelling, shall we say, And I do have this
kind of long standing fascination with and love for Charlotte Rampling,
the actress who stars in the movie along with Dirk Bogard. Anyway,
so that theme and that movie I think probably cemented
the idea of a darker, more aberrant twisted mood music

(08:57):
record that would still be romantic, because I think that
The Night Warders, for all its aberrant qualities, it's actually
very It's a love story of sorts, very romantic in
a very dark way. So that might have been the
first inkling. But then along with that came the Jimmy
Jeffrey piece Cry Want, an instrumental piece performed by the

(09:20):
Jimmy Jeffrey three, the Second Iteration, the New York Iteration
with Paul Blay and Steve Swallow. So I think those

(09:49):
two pieces seemed like they belonged in my dark, romantic
mood music record. But then over time record became well
like shuffling repertoire endlessly, like sitting on planes making lists,
taking songs off, adding songs like oh no, I don't

(10:10):
have a Carla Bla song, What am I gonna do?
Which one? And didn't end up with one on the record,
but uh with Annette Peacock was another early choice for
example of touching, and then I added so hard at her.
It's just because I think we needed to address pain
on the record. It was sort of over time that

(11:01):
the record got lighter. It wasn't it did, And I
think just that parallel or had something to do with
my life being a little bit brighter and less obsessed
with dark energy and all that sort of stuff that
we love when we're in our twenties.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Well, it's so interesting to me the way that when
you have a concept that lives in your mind for
a long time before it comes into the world, the
way that you know it went, the fact that you
went through a phase where you were considering the entire
thing as darker or as steering into whichever emotions wherever
it ends up, all of that context informs it in

(11:47):
some way. You know, It's like a bay leaf. You
take it out before you serve the dish, but it
adds flavor to it in some ineffable way.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
I love that.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
When you were putting those nickel recks on the bathroom
wall at Rhino Records back then, who was Nell's Klein then?
And more specifically, what was your relationship like with the
guitar in those days?

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Well, I mean, well I was playing, you know, I was.
I've been playing. I started messing around with the guitar
starting at age twelve, but I didn't know anything about
how to really play. But if you flash forward to
this sort of nineteen eighties me. I was doing all
kinds of stuff besides working in the record store, which

(12:31):
is how I made my living so called. By the eighties,
I was actually kind of getting interested in rock and
roll again after having no interest in it for a
few years in the seventies. And I'd have to say
it was bands like Television and Patty Smith Group, and
then ultimately the Minutemen and DNA and bands like that

(12:52):
that really captivated my rock and roll imagination again. But
I was playing nylon string guitar twelfths, acoustic twelve string
and steel string in a group called Quartet Music for
many years with violinist Jeff Gotier and my brother Alex,
my twin brother and bassist multi instrumentalist Eric von Essen,

(13:13):
so that lasted for about eleven years. I was playing
in Charlie Hayden's Liberation Music Orchestra West Coast, playing nylon
string guitar. I was playing electric guitar with Julius Hemphill
and the JAB band would win Player Composer Extraordinaire. And
I was playing in a funk infused rock band called
Block Bloco Band for many years, and I hadn't started

(13:38):
my own band yet I started that in nineteen eighty nine.
I started the Nels Clin Trio, but so that was
in the eighties. I was the Indian import rock buyer.
In the seventies at Rhino, I was the cutout and
used jazz guy. It was actually Steve Winn from the
band The Dream Syndicate who left the store and that's

(14:01):
when I took his job as the Indian import rock buyer.
So I was kind of, you know, full on avant
garde jazz, jazz, you know, raga jazz, European jazz, Coltrane jazz,
Electric Weather Report, Herbie Hancock jazz, and at the same
time really digging the Minute Men and you know, local

(14:24):
bands on the scene, bands like X Yeah, And that
was me back then putting those album covers up. I
was kind of living a kind of multifaceted and it's
more than a double life. I guess it's like a
quadruple life.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Did you find that challenging to keep straight? I mean,
you're playing guitar and all these bands, but stylistically you're
you know, you're you're going into some pretty different neighborhoods
from band to band. Was that something that was hard
to keep straight in your head? Or was it just
a delight to be able to visit all those countries.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
It was definitely natural for me, but it was not easy,
and I think that I pressured myself back then. There
was a phase when I really almost quit playing guitar
because I felt I had to choose. I felt I
had to choose straight ahead versus avant garde, electric versus
acoustic rock versus jazz, all these different things, which I

(15:21):
think speak volumes about my dichotomous Western mindset more than
about my ability or inclination to do all these different things,
because that was natural to me. Honestly, I think the
biggest challenge to my direction was a blessing. But it
came along when I heard the band Sonic Youth, and

(15:44):
Sonic Youth became kind of an obsession of mine, honestly,
and I was very, very taken with their sound and
it made me want to basically forget everything I'd been studying,
and like, here I was, you know, when I started
working at the Records or like seventy six or so,
you know, as the guy with the Tibetan bag and

(16:05):
the muscle insured and trying to you know, figure out
what chords Ralph Towner was playing, and had really no
interest in rock and roll at that point. Yet I
heard everything because that was when punk rock hit and
everybody you know would form a band and two weeks

(16:25):
later have a seven inch single out that they brought
into the record store on consignment. So I heard everything,
but I wasn't really inspired by that music at the time.
You know, it took a minute for me to sort
of come around to it, But eventually Sonic Youth really
exploded my brain and my ears with their approach, the
way they were using guitars, the way the overtone sounded,

(16:47):
and their music and the decisions that they had made collectively,
and so I kind of wanted to chase that in
a way and at the same time honor my harmonic
sort of you know, fascination with music by obviously I
mentioned Ralph Towner or you know, John Era Crombie or

(17:07):
you know Maurice Ravel for that matter. And and actually
it got to be a little too much for me
to reconcile thinking that I had to make these choices.
So rather than quit, you know, what was I going
to do? The only things that came to mind we
were well, if it was music, I would play acoustic bass,
I'd play upright bass. I love the upright bass. Well,

(17:30):
I couldn't afford an upright bass, nor did I really
think carrying it around from gig to gig would be
all that fun. But then I thought, well, i'd either
be a visual artist or i'd be a writer. Well,
those are the other great ways to not make money.
But also, you know, solitary endeavors. You know, I really
liked the cabality of aspect of music making and the

(17:52):
kind of camaraderie that comes with it, the kind of
absorption that can happen to this kind of compelling into
a sound world while people are playing simultaneously. So I
started my own band instead and just decided I would
do whatever I wanted, whether people liked it or not.
And that turned out to be a very kind of
a weirdly wise decision for somebody who's done, I'm not

(18:17):
always making wise decision.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
Well, it ties into as well something that I find
so fascinating about your approach in general to music and
this record in particular. Lovers and reading interviews with you,
I've noticed you talking a lot about how much you
love sound, And I think that's such an interesting distinction
between music as sound versus music as genre, which you know,

(18:43):
you're the indie and import buyer at the record store
or these really harshly delineated genres you have to choose,
you feel between do I play jazz? Do I play rock,
do I play et cetera. If you just think of
music as sound, that kind of all goes away, because
any sounds can go together. And I find it so
endlessly fascinating to listen, especially these days when music has

(19:04):
been evolving for so long and you can do so
much to listen to some top forty music now and
try and imagine it without all the context that I'm
aware of of, you know, what genre is it's imitating
or what's aspiring to and instead just say, what does
this sound like in a vacuum? What is this just
as sonic energy, you know, flowing into my ears? And
when you approach it from that angle, it seems so

(19:25):
much more. I mean, the possibilities become endless instead of
specifically limited.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Right yeah, oh wow, somebody, this is the doorbell here, by.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
The way, that's a beautiful central casting doorbell. Sound of actor.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
If there's people working in an office downstairs that will
eventually answer this. And I'm sorry it rarely ever goes off,
but it goes on forever.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Do you ever find yourself jamming along with it? It
has a lot of nice like speaking of sounds.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Actually not yet, I think I should, but I hope
somebody there's somebody working answers that will eventually answer the door. Yeah,
there we go. So back to what you were saying, Yes,
it's I think that my compartmentalizing of these things was

(20:16):
super external. You know. It was an external thing that
was kind of put on many of us who felt
like we had to justify our impulses to improvise, to
play instruments that we maybe aren't expert on. You know,
my brother Alex and I were very inspired by groups

(20:37):
like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and their massive array
of instruments that they would play, in some cases quite
expertly and in some other cases really just coloristically to
add all kinds of texture and lack of predictability to
their music. And this was very inspiring for us, you know,
And I think there's something very innocent about that, Yeah,

(20:57):
that just picking up an object and enjoying its sound,
no matter what the object is and whether or not
it belongs quote unquote in the music. You know, and
the writers in the seventies were very protective of all
kinds of so called jazz music. And you know, things
were a lot harsher in general in the critical world

(21:20):
in the sixties and seventies, and certainly in the classical
music world going way back, some very brutal prose and
powerful and unequivocal opinions being essays, you know, tossed about.
And I think that I took maybe too much of
that to heart and may maybe over analyzed things, hence
the neurotic sort of doubt infused mindset. But sound as

(21:48):
it exists in music became immediately fascinating for me at
an early age, and that was because of well, kind
of two things, I suppose. One, when I was ten
years old, I heard Indian classical music in the form
of Robbie Shankar and all A Raka a live World

(22:08):
Pacific record in my elementary school class, which I fell
in love with and became really really obsessed with the
seitar and thought I should play guitar. And then also,
I would have to say, psychedelia in popular music. The
infusion of all this color, sonic color, and all this

(22:28):
innovation and a certain degree of unpredictability in popular music,
you know, and the fact that the charts were all
one chart at that point. You know that Motown was
on the same playlist as the Electric Prunes. You know,
the sense of intoxication, if you will, that I would

(22:50):
get from these kinds of sounds, you know, in the
case of Jimi Hendrix, who's the reason I played guitar
for life, and Indian classical music, these kinds of sounds, obviously,
bands like the Electric Prunes in love and what the
Beatles ended up doing, and all the sonic innovation that
was happening is really where I come from. And that's

(23:11):
why hearing something like you know, Crossings by Herbie Hancock
made total sense, even though I hadn't heard form used
like that. And there's a kind of freedom, a relaxing
of form, and then a very articulate use of form
that happened simultaneously with that music, or with Early Weather Report,

(23:33):
or certainly Miles Davis. And that's just sort of the
land that I still live in.

Speaker 1 (23:38):
I guess you mentioned your twin brother, Alex. You guys
are mirror twins, am I right?

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Yeah, it's a type of identical twin.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
One is right handed, one is left handed. Your hair
parts on opposite sides. Fascinating, interesting stuff. And it strikes
me that you were making music together as kids. Obviously,
when you're a child, your creativity is much more uninhibited
and innocent, and you're not aware of genre and of
boundaries and delineations. In the same way was making music

(24:09):
with someone else collaboratively, but in that comparatively innocent state
of mind. Do you feel like that was important to your,
you know, later development. As someone who feels freer in
the world of sound.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
I would have to say, yeah, I've never thought about
it quite like that, but yeah, I'd say yes. It
was not exactly the best recipe for socialization. But also
Alex and I we got interested as we started to
sort of leave the rock world as listeners and participants

(24:42):
in trying to play. We basically had each other because
our friends didn't really come along on that ride. So yeah,
we did everything together. Just growing up, we did everything together,
so we were never competing and we didn't fight and
as any siblings do, even to and he's an incredible drummer.

(25:02):
Incredible musicians, so I always had this really great drummer
to play with, even though I didn't know what the
heck I was doing, and for years played with two fingers.
I didn't know any chords, but we just liked to
just get together and thrash things out in the back
room at my parents' house. And then we used to
make these conceptual tapes, like real to real tapes. So

(25:25):
we would go to the well, I guess it was
kind of a It wasn't a high five place, was
like a ham radio place, but they had these small
real to real tapes, and some of the record stores
had him too, so we'd get the really small ones
and then we would, you know, they were at this
big and then color code them with day glow stickers
and stuff, and then Alex would be the sort of

(25:48):
director of one, and then I'd be a director of another,
and we'd give them titles, and we would do everything
on this wall and sack tape recorder, real to real
tape recorder, and it was a lot of silly stuff
and a lot of flies of fans, but it was
also very very much inspired by what we were listening to,
which was you know, I guess intense rock and roll
like the Stooges, but also well, my brother was a

(26:11):
complete Frank Zappa obsessive, so we were drying off speed
vocals and all kinds of stuff that the Mother's invention
were doing yeah in those days, like Uncle Meat records
like that, and so so yeah, it was a very
innocent endeavor and had very little to do with the
idea of making a living playing music. You know. It

(26:34):
was just really really fun and we were completely obsessed
with bands and rock and roll the way everything sounded
and looked at that time, because this is you know,
nineteen sixty seven, sixty eight that we were doing this.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
Yeah, it's easy to say now it was silly, it
was flights of fancy. But in a way it seems
to me as a musician, I find I'm often really
just trying to get back to that feeling of pure creation.
One of your bandmates, Jeff Tweety, said about like, think
about trying to draw a picture when you're a kid.
You know, it's not about it being good, it's not

(27:09):
about it being saleable or anything. It's just about making
something on a blank piece of paper that wasn't there before.
And that's its own reward.

Speaker 2 (27:17):
Yeah, he's very articulate about this, and I'm really really
happy that he disseminates this message to the world. Everybody
can just make stuff. We are all artists, you know.
If we make art so called, I mean, that's a
construct itself. That's like looking outside at something that's maybe
natural and comes from within, you know. Yes, So if

(27:41):
we remove that obstacle and just embrace our innate creativity,
Jeff's idea, and I think it's very well taken, is
that we'll all be happier. You know.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
I certainly feel happier the more tapped into that. You know.
I'll be working on songs and one day I'm writing
something and I'm floating an inch above the ground with
the love of it, and the next day I'm thinking
of it with my critical mind and I'm thinking, oh,
it's not saleable, or it's not co it's whatever. My
you know, we all have have these voices in our head,
and the lowness of that feeling compared to the high

(28:13):
of the feeling of making it, you'd think that it
would be obvious that you just should spend all your
time at the high. But I guess when you've spent
twenty years or longer making music professionally, it's not always
so simple alas.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Yeah, I mean it's it's I'm kind of amazed that
at my age and I am, you know, not young anymore,
that I, like, I just had this record, Concentricords hit
come out, and I have had to talk about it
a lot. But I realized that when I was making
the record, and I guess this is true of even

(28:45):
my singers records, all the stuff I've been doing my
old trio. Once I'm working on the material and recording
or whatever it is, I just kind of have this
full head of steam where I'm not really analyzing everything
in some kind of really external or non esthetic way.
And then later I think, why wasn't I worried about this?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
You know?

Speaker 2 (29:08):
I know, so I'm so much older now and I've
done so many different things. One would think that I
would go into this with maybe a few more concerns
or guidelines or something. Yet I seem to kind of
always just, you don't know, push through and then and
then have regrets later, which is very strange. But at

(29:31):
the same time, I also kind of know that I
can only do as well as I can. You know,
I'm really not. I'm certainly not trying to stake any
claims on you know, ultra shred guitar, certainly not at
this point. You know, things are slowing down, you know,
the bods not quite as responsive as it used to
be or as dexterous, but also aesthetically it's not as interesting,

(29:55):
and I think that you know, you're asking about Lovers.
One of the biggest challenges for me mentally about that
was that I wanted to base it on records like
stan Getz Focus or records where basically there's one featured
instrumentalist and then arrangements of a large ensemble, And the

(30:17):
idea of my generally unfettered guitar on Lovers carrying the
whole thing as a voice was very daunting. And I'm
no jazz wizard, you know. I wanted to play some
coherent stuff over these chord changes. I also wanted to
refer to so many different things. There were kind of

(30:37):
like all kinds of messages, little messages built in to
the record, mostly about guitar and guitarists, So I wanted
to make sure that those things were there and coherent,
but not get too scared because I was scared, you know,
scared I would suck, Scared that it would sound like
I'm kind of a jazz tourist. You know, I'm the

(30:58):
master of the Americans songbook in every key and tempo.
You know, I'm just not that guy. I'm really more
of a I'm kind of a rocker, really, you know,
who does jazzy things. You know. That's why I'm comfortable
with the pageantry of a rock show and with playing
in a small group for forty people in a tiny room.

(31:19):
I mean, I'm just equally happy in both places. But
the worry about lovers as the as the unfettered, mostly
unfettered guitar being the main voice was extreme. But I
did it anyway. And that's the other weird thing. And
maybe you're going to ask this, I don't know, but
having lovers as this kind of dream project in my

(31:41):
head was a lot easier than finally having to do it,
you know. So what happened was and maybe a couple
of other times before I met David Breskin, who produced it,
I was asked by one that in particularly, I remember
it was an A and R man for jazz label,
make a list of the different people that you'd like
to collaborate with that you haven't been able to collaborate with,

(32:03):
or any projects that you have, dream projects that you'd
like to accomplish that you haven't been able to accomplish.
And so this Lover's project was always on that list,
and there was interest in it from these A and
R people. I never got signed to those labels, and
so that never happened. And that's that and no big deal.

(32:24):
But David Breskin. When I met David, and he had
commissioned me to write music for a multimedia conceptual work
called Dirty Baby that was with Ed Ruscha's art and
David's poetry, and he would design he's a design wizard too,
he would design this book. That's how he met. And

(32:46):
then he asked me that question, like, hey, you know,
you know there's this organization that I founded in the
eighties and it's going to be resuscitated. It's called the
Shifting Foundation, and I think that if you have any
sort of dream projects, he should tell me because maybe
we could find some funding. And so I told him,

(33:07):
and then he really really wouldn't let it go. What's
happening with Lover is like how's it coming, and blah
blah blah, And of course I wasn't doing anything because
I was scared to start until I met Michael Leonard
through my wife Yuka, trumpet player arranger extraordinaire, and we
were hanging out eating pizza and we were just chatting

(33:28):
about this kind of stuff and talking about Quincy Jones arrangements.
We're talking about Henry Mancini, We're talking about a lot
of stuff. And then I told him about lovers and
he said, please let me help you with this. And
that's when it became a reality, honestly, because it was
it had built up so much in my head. I
was going to collaborate with a couple of other people

(33:50):
and that I would arrange some stuff, they would arrange
some stuff, and then it really ended up just being
Michael and me, and that's lover is now. So he
and David Breskin basically made it happen.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
I am really curious about that moment of sort of
going from the dream to beginning the reality of it.
Once you finally took that step again, you were scared
and you did it. Was it difficult at first? Did
you have to find your footing in the real world
after having lived in the dream of it for so long.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
It's weird, you know. I've thought about it now, it's
been ten years apparently since it was released.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
And I thought about the sessions because certainly it was
very super fancy, deluxe situation. We had this large group
and the only way we could really accomplish anything was
just to play the stuff in the studio, which means
really rehearsing. It also meant hearing, in my case the

(34:49):
arrangements pretty much for the first time every time, and thinking, hmm, WHOA,
how do I navigate this. I see that there's some
new harmony in here that Michael added. Now I have
to address it in my solo, and I'm making notes
and then I just basically kind of nose to the
grindstone got through it. And I wasn't super terrified while

(35:11):
we were recording, which is startling to me when I
reflect on it now. But I also was surrounded by
not just all the great players, like there were so
many people on the recording that I was familiar with,
either had played with and was friends with, or somebody
I had listened to for you know, sometimes decades. It
was a congenial and supportive atmosphere, so that really helped me,

(35:35):
you know. So it's five days of recording, which I'd
never done any of my projects for more than three days.
Most of them were two days and then an additional
day for harp and strings. Yeah, that was a crushing day.
That was a day that say I had on For example,
on Secret Love, I had chosen the key of the

(35:59):
same key that Jim Hall played played it in on
a trio live in Japan, Japanese import record that I
love and had become friendly with Jim through Brian Camilio

(36:23):
of Artists Share Records, and that's a whole other story.
But there are these little things that I'd put into
the Lover's record, and then that track of Beautiful Love
as well, that I thought would really really entertain Jim.
But anyway, the day we were doing those strings and
harp overdubs was the day that we learned that Jim

(36:44):
had died waiting to go to the doctor. He just
took a nap or whatever and never woke up. And
it was and you know, Julian laj was there with me.
He was playing acoustic guitar on these overdubs and Julian
and Jim had been super close and we're playing together
just you know that year. I mean I went to
go hear them at the Blue Note at Quartet, the

(37:05):
two guitars when Scott Colly and Joey Barron, and I
just couldn't believe it. There are all these things that
I really wanted Gym to hear, you know. Yeah, and
then there's a few other things too, like you know,
it only has to happen once, the Ambitious Lover's song,
that's kind of an obvious like Mark Lebo Los Postisos,
the Electric twelve string homage, besides being homage to Arta

(37:29):
Lindsay and the Ambitious lover Is and a lot of
what was going on in the Lower East Side in
the East Village back when. So these little things that

(37:58):
I think may maybe nobody knows about a brow kind
of built into it along with the sort of Aberan
and now not so abran romance aspect.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
I'm not sure if this parlance is applicable when you're
making jazz, but this is live off the floor, so
to speak, with the core group, and are you doing
all your guitar playing at the same time as the
girls playing, well.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Yeah, I did replay a couple of solos that's stunk,
you know, So I did have isolation on the amp,
but no, we're all in the same space. Devin Hoff
and my brother Alex and Kenny Wallison, we're in isolation booths.
The nature of their instruments being you know, yeah, the
acoustic bass and vibes and marimba and drum set being

(38:42):
isolated certainly helpful for mixing, But all of the you know,
windwinds and brass, and my wife Yuka playing keyboards, we're
all in the same space. With Michael conducting well.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
One of the things that struck me about the record
is that so much of it is very quiet, and
I've always found playing genuinely playing quiet alone and even
more so with a group to be one of the
hardest things I've ever tried to do with music, to
stay quiet and to work dynamically within a smaller range.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
That's kind of the romance part, though, yeah, exact that
lean into it. It creates a sense of intimacy.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Is that what it is that made you know you're
back putting those records up on the bathroom wall in part,
I imagine because that music was not taken terribly seriously
when it was new and they were nickel records, and
to this day, you know, this music is looked at
by a lot of people as corny, cheesy, you know,
schlocky whatever. And yet that's genre and that's expectations and

(39:44):
like criticism. But the sound of it is not inherently schlocky,
because no sound can be inherently corny or cheesy. But
I'm curious what you're how that influenced how you were
thinking about the record. You must have been aware of
the perception of that style of music and you were
almost reclaiming it in a way, weren't you.

Speaker 2 (40:04):
Well, I don't know if I think that that the
orchestrations that some of which were my idea, most of
which were Michaels, that we weren't really trying to address
the language of the mood music record as it existed.
But both of us are aware that. You know, I
mentioned Stan Guett's focus, for example, Charlie Parker with strings,

(40:26):
or you know, these records that had a kind of
what we used to refer to as sweetening, Yeah, when
they had strings, or I mean Paul Desmond was strings
is a big favorite. I don't like the schlocky stuff,
and we certainly didn't want to use that that language.
I don't have any of. You know, my brother Alex
and I used to just really make fun of that.

(40:46):
That what we used to call mid range piano, and
it's like a piano that's really loud in the mix
from the mid range down playing a melody of some
song with lots of lots of little like glyss notes,
you know, like are blarning, blurning, burn this kind of sound,
and then string pad behind it and maybe arp is going.

(41:08):
Didn't want to do anything that seems small. Sy just
wanted to I guess, like you said, readdress or or
maybe upgrade the idea of an orchestrated record, and that
it had so much potential beauty, like that version of
Lost in the Stars that on that record that Carlabod
I think at the Goodwill, which was a really really

(41:31):
fantastic arrangement, which is rare I think in that in
that world. You know, I used to quip when the
record came out that, yeah, you know, the mood music record,
it became like hi fi became a thing. And then
having a stereo I think, like the concert in your
own living room, for example, and then so you have
you come home from the date and dude puts this,

(41:53):
you know, romantic music on the super duper stereo, but
not too loud that dims the life, it mixes the drink,
sits too close on the couch. These things are fun
to talk about as cliches, but at the same time,
this was kind of a utilitarian use of these records.
I think they were created two immediately have this atmosphere

(42:18):
that signals that everybody was getting and that's why I
wanted to do a dark version where it would be
not only potentially I guess, sort of aberrant or off center,
but also maybe more honest, because intimacy is sometimes terrifying
and sometimes it's also a really really bad idea, and

(42:39):
so I wanted to get a little of that in
there as well, I guess, or at least some doubt,
you know, because there's something so self assured about most
of the mood music records, and I didn't want everything
to be about being self assured, you know. I wanted
to be more varied than that, I guess, and more honest.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
That's so interesting, as like a delineation point, the idea
of like assuredness in the music as kind of being
one of the main factors that makes it sound schlocky
or whatever word we want to use. That sort of
it's not virtuosity, but it's yeah, it's this sort of
confident employment of you know, the harp, glissando or whatever

(43:20):
it is, that sort of everyone just knows right away
and in their harder, in their gut that there's something
about it that maybe makes you a little bit or something.
But then when when you hear like those beautiful muted
trumpet chords pads, for lack of a better term, you
hear air moving in the music, which you don't hear
a lot of air moving in a lot of music

(43:41):
necessarily these days, and it's such a I mean, it's
an intimate sound and it draws you in. You have
to go towards it because it's quiet.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Well, the other thing that's so interesting to me now
that you're talking about it, is that a lot of
the even the schlocky records, the engineering is incredible. I mean,
you're basically hearing performances. They're captured performances of very good
players for the most part, probably playing pretty marginally important arrangements.

(44:09):
But the sound sometimes is really really stunning. Yeah, and
that kind of is inherently inspiring to somebody like me anyway,
that's like a sound freak.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
It reminds me in a strange way of you know,
you mentioned the night Porter earlier, and I think, you know,
with a lot of movies, there's that idea of like
in the seventies and eighties and Roger Korman movies and
stuff that was looked at as perhaps tasteless in a
different way, but then when you look at it from
a you know, professional viewpoint or what have you, you

(44:41):
can see the quality of the work. The camera is
moving in this really assured, good, successful, effective way. And
just the notion that all of this art, whether it's
schlocky or trass or mainstream or independent or whatever, can
all contain, whether it's sound or visual or whatever, it's

(45:02):
all equally capable of embodying good work.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
It's absolutely true. I think this is you know, I
don't know. There are probably historians that are that have
codified this in some sort of extreme way in the
postmodern world. So called and the dissolusion or the dissolving
maybe is the better word of the boundaries or the
definitions of high and low art and all that, and
so I'm glad that I lived to see that little

(45:29):
wall crumble between high and low so called. Yeah, and yeah,
there's all kinds of enjoyment that comes out of everything
and pretty much. I mean, I'm not really into untowards
suffering and pain, but even though in permanence, well it's
a bitch, right it is.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
But it's a bitch that we all live with and
learn to get to know sooner or later.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Yeah, I got to deal with it. When you mentioned
the night Porter, I want to also say that it
is later that I added maximum amour, so it became
sort of this Charlotte Rampling mini suite. But that music
by Michelle Partall is a really good example of a
very very sparse bit of music. It's not a lot

(46:14):
of music, and it occurs throughout the movie in this
really effective way, and Michael basically arranged it so except
for the guitar playing the melody, it sounds exactly like
the movie soundtrack to me. So every time that intro
comes in that sounds exactly like the Michelle Portal soundtrack

(47:01):
that I get kind of giddy.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
You know. It must have been so fun to play,
but it's also it was fun to play.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yeah, that was a simple one for a change. But
it's also a very transgressive movie, and that's why I
included it. It's not just because I love the music,
but you know, this is about a married woman who
basically has an above board affair with a monkey, you know,
with a chimp, you know, much to the frustration and

(47:29):
aggravation of her diplomat husband. But it's you know, it's
Oshima is that the Japanese director of you know, Great
Repute wasn't a big movie in its day, and it's
a fantastic comedy, especially when you sort of analyze the
husband character, the male character who has so many of

(47:52):
the shortcomings that lots of dudes have and just can't
see his way through it except until he has to,
and then you know, it's like kind of like kicking
and screaming that he has to just get with the program.
So those two movies, I think address a lot of

(48:12):
the non generic aspects of relationships and romance and whatnot.
And that's why also that David and I agreed instantly,
David Breskin and I that we would print the lyrics
to the songs that had lyrics on the inner sleeves,
because the lyrics are really important to so many of

(48:33):
these songs and the way they figured into how I
chose them, you know, it wasn't just well, for example,
Secret Love, I mentioned Jim Hall and his version, and
that's how I became aware of that song was from
listening to Jim play it. But the lyrics are pretty
interesting to Secret Love, you know, even Beautiful Love, which

(48:56):
is kind of the sweetest of all the songs. That
that was because while I became aware of the fact
that it's from the movie, the Boris Karlov movie The
Mummy's where it first appears. And the reason I know
this is because John Abercrov used to love to play
this with Ralph Towner and always I think he really
enjoyed educating us to this fact. But it certainly delighted me,

(49:19):
so of course then I had to, like, you know,
get a copy of The Mummy and wait for it.
And it's in three four and it's a vocal group
kind of thing. It's very uh, you know, old timy,
and I guess you would have to say, you know,
very classic and very unexpected in a movie like The mummy.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Yeah, beautiful, you're all a mystery, beautiful law What have
you done to me? What till you came along? Really
my soul with you.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
And that's why the intro is what it is, is
to speak to that when we go back and forth

(50:34):
in the blowing and the guitar solo between three four
and four four, which is kind of my little homage
to Bill Evans, you know, some of his methodologies and
another thing I thought would really entertain Jim all but
you know, oh well.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
I don't know enough to really speak to. But there's
some something spiritually cosmically significant about the timing. You know,
you thought about this record for so long and then
you finally, through circumstance, came to make it at this
exact moment that ended up aligning with Jim's passing through
the veil. And here you are in the studio conjuring

(51:18):
his little corner of the collective unconscious in maybe the
exact moment. And that's I don't know, that seems really
beautiful to me.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
It's crippy. I kind of wish he'd heard it, though,
but I know nothing I can do about that. You know,
they were initially the record was supposed to come out
on a different label. I won't mention because I don't
harbor any ill will, but it was I don't think
they ever listened to it, so so I only gave
him one other chance, a reminder, one other reminder. And
I was being managed by Tony Margharita Management, who also

(51:52):
managed Wilco and my day to day guy Ben, and
Tony suggested I self release the record, and I took
basically said, Okay, these guys aren't going to listen to it.
I don't want them to have anything to do with it. Yeah,
So David Presk and I I had this drawing that's
on the cover by my friend Angela di Cristofaro, and

(52:14):
I really wanted to use that, and I knew I
wanted to use this kind of wedding text writing, you know,
font So we basically got the whole cover done, the
whole thing laid out, everything was done, and then my
man Ben Levin ran into Don was somewhere in Los Angeles,
I believe, and mentioned the thing to him, and that's

(52:35):
how it ended up on Blue Note. Was that Don
and Rachel and at Blue Note listened to it and
liked it, and so This was very unexpected, to say
the least. Yeah, so they licensed it and it was
already done, everything was done, good to go. All they
to do is press it up and it's kind of

(52:56):
a weird miracle. You know. It made me think of
this when you were talking about this kind of weird
cosmic timing of things. Really didn't see that one coming.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
And it's interesting because you know this, you know, major
label debut podcast. I assumed, okay, this is that you
listen to the record and it sounds, yes, this is
a perfect Blue Note record. It speaks to tradition and
all of those things. And then to learn in researching
it that Blue Note came to the record almost too late,
you know, at the eleventh hour. Was yeah, as you say,
what a wonderful piece of synchronicity.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Really really fascinating, unexpected for sure. And then now I'm
still making records for Blue Note, which is also pretty
pretty crazy.

Speaker 1 (53:40):
I wanted to ask about the sequencing of the record
because it sounds like there's a huge amount of you know,
information contained in the way you chose the songs, the
way you played the songs, everything about it, you know,
the musical tributes that you have been talking about. Was
sequencing it difficult? Was that something you and Michael did together?

(54:02):
How did that all come to past? Because it seems
to me that it unfolds narratively in a way that's
very satisfying but also very subtle because it's quiet music.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Well, it's great to hear that it unfolds in a
satisfying way. I definitely had to work pretty hard on
it was my sequence, and the sequence had to be
altered for vinyl because everything has to time out properly,
shall we say, But it actually kind of did you know,
the same thing happened on my singer's record from twenty twenty,

(54:34):
Share the Wealth, which is a double vinyl record. For
some reason, I didn't have to do any crazy absolute rethinking,
massive adjustments. I didn't have to do much. I don't
remember the details of sequencing Lovers specifically. There were certain
things that I knew had to happen, Like one of

(54:57):
them is it had to open the way it opens.
It has to diaphanous, has to be the first piece,
even though it's very slight compositionally, but there is a
reason for this, and it had to do with when
I wrote it, which was in the nineties and how
it just kind of gets the ball rolling for me.
I don't know. It's probably a pretty slow start for
the world, but for me, it's the way.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
In well, it's like an overture. It gives you all

(55:47):
the sonic information and context you kind of need to
then proceed through the record.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Right, Well, that's how I thought of it. So thanks,
you're right, you.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Got it, you nailed it.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
But I also knew that towards the end of the
record that I had to have that Henry mancini Q,
which was actually an interesting story because certainly I wasn't
planning in the early days of ending the record with
the piece the Bond, which is dedicated to my wife, Yuka,
because I didn't even know her. And also that would
have been I would have been ending the record on

(56:20):
a very kind of an up even though I don't
play the major third on the last chord, it is
basically G major, so there's a very adult move on

(56:50):
my part. I would never have done that in my twenties,
would have had to end on a minor chord. But anyway,
the Search for Cat This is a Q from the
movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. This movie and I know there's
some not PC aspects of the Mickey Rooney character in it,
or like there are no PC aspects to that character.

(57:12):
But this movie is incredibly important to me and was
to my parents. My parents, especially my father was very taken.
You know, we grew up in Los Angeles. He grew
up in Los Angeles, but he was very taken with
New York City. He was very taken with Broadway and
with all kinds of plays and musicals, but also cinema.

(57:35):
So Breakfast at Tiffany's was something that my parents both
really loved, and when it would be on TV, they
would put on their robes or like their night clothes
in robes and drink champagne while they watched it. Wow,
And they never did anything like this with any other
movie or any other anything in this way, so it

(57:58):
had some kind of meaning and very romantic meaning for them. Subsequently,
moving forward, I started to really enjoy the film as well,
and the cue that Henry Mancini wrote when Holigo Lightley's
looking for the cat that she's cavalierly thrown out of

(58:18):
the cab in the rain, and then she's looking behind
the trash cans and it's an incredible minor chord or
minor mode creation on the Moon River Melody. It turned

(58:49):
out that Michael Leonard was also really obsessed with this cue.
But the cue is not on the movie soundtrack album.
There's not a whole lot of actual background music soundtrack
music on that record. It's like, you know, the Party,
the Latin party music and Moon River. So when Michael

(59:11):
learned that I really was committed to having this piece
somewhere on the record, he was really excited, and he
got in touch because he knew somebody in the Mansini
family or somebody who worked for the estate or something
to learn what the top real title was for this
piece and to get permission to record it or even

(59:35):
look to get a look at the actual score. There
was no title for this. It was called something like
number twenty nine or something. And the Search for Cat
on the soundtrack album is a completely different piece, and
so we just called it the Search for Cat, and
that's what it's going to be called for from now

(59:55):
until somebody takes issue with it. But it was kind
of fascinating to me that musicians like Michael and Dougie
and me were so completely obsessed with this cue, but
that it would really never existed on the soundtrack album,
nor was it ever even titled anything significant by Mancini himself.

(01:00:18):
It's just spectacular writing, and on Lovers it dissolves into
my piece for you because there's no improvising on the
Search for Cat. We just play it. You know, there's
not even any heavy guitar presence. Yeah, you know, it's
really just there because I had to have it there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
I mean, it's a beautiful way to end the record,
and it feels like, especially hearing you talk about everything
we've been talking about, almost the only way to end
the record, especially going from that more minor key thing
into the Bond, which is, as you say, sort of
an embodiment of the warmer and more positive angle that
you ended up taking on the record. And it's like

(01:00:58):
a perfect conclusion. It's such a beautiful piece, and it's
obviously not only intimate but personal to you, which does
seem like where else can you land?

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
Yeah? The Bond was initially recorded and performed by Julian
Lauge and me and our duo, and we would always
end our concerts with the Bond and people would cry.
There would be people crying, and so to me, This
was absolute. This is success with a capitalists. You know.

(01:01:30):
It's like people are crying, I've done something good for
a change, you know, because they're not crying because they're sad.
You know, they're crying because they were feeling it. And
it's one of those weird things. It's very simple for
something in seven four, it's pretty simple and orchestrating it
was risky because the duo version is really kind of

(01:01:55):
what I was hearing initially, and so trying to explode
it out into a large ensemble thing it felt risky
to me, like we might lose the feeling. And I
overdubbed the guitar solo later because I was convinced that
I couldn't play a good solo on it live because
that moment in our duo concerts, that's what's Julian solo,

(01:02:19):
and Julian would rip on that you just play the
most amazing stuff, and so I had a kind of
a I was putting it off. I think it's the
very last thing we ever recorded on the record was
that solo. In a completely different studio, Pat Dillit recorded
it kind of his almost almost Midtown's studio with Michael There.

(01:02:40):
I was really really felt jinxed by this solo, and
I stn't love the solo to this day, but I
do love the piece, and you know, it's a different
tempo than Julia and I played it. And I like
to think of Alex's drumming on at this being kind
of like his Mimi from Low kind of drumming. You know.

(01:03:04):
I was trying to get that minimalist brushes thing and
it didn't end up being too heavy, like too weighty.
I was afraid that it would just be too much
on it, you know what I mean, Like just you
have this kind of delicate structure and then you start
hanging big heavy things on it and then it starts
to collapse.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
Right, So it gets into what we were talking about
of the assuredness and the it can. You know, people
make fun of the phrase it insists upon itself as
being maybe slightly meaningless from a critical perspective, But I
think that's the danger zone you can get into, is
people know when you're trying to really pull their heartstrings,
you know, and feel this or you know, experience it
this way, and if it's not beguiling, you can start

(01:03:47):
to lose some of that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
Yeah, Yeah, I also, you know, in the case of
Snare Girl, the Sonic Youth song, you know, this is
a from A Thousand Leaves. This is not a everybody
these you know, probably top five Sonic Youth records. It
is for me, but of course it's hard for me
to pick Sonic Youth records because I'm obsessed with their music.

(01:04:08):
But you know, it's I just want to do kind
of a Bollywood version because it's a droner you know,
it's a droning piece, and our version is actually faster.

(01:04:31):
The Sonic Youth version is I think the first time
that that I recall Thurston actually kind of pruning a song.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
It's lack.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
And it's and I love the lyrics to this song,
and so it's kind of my spiritual love song on
the collection. Yeah, you know, Touching, which is abstract and
super intimate and then so hard at Hurt's to maybe
represent I guess the more painful aspects of intimacy and

(01:05:17):
sometimes I guess fetishes and whatnot. I don't know. Yeah,
that's totally not my scene, but I know it's out there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
But musically it kind of is. I mean, you're we're
talking about a quiet, beautiful record, But you're as well
known for sounds that are maybe more punishing and more
almost painful, and there's beauty and meaning in those sounds too,
And so you're clear you're acquainted with that notion at
least from one one standpoint.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
Definitely, definitely. And I blame rock and roll and I
blame Sonic Youth particularly, uh you know, I know it's
kind of started with Glenn Bronco with those guys too,
So there's that. I just like overtones, and that's where
I guess my love of these sounds comes from. But
some of them, Yeah, they can be a little stride

(01:06:04):
and then unpleasant for some, But for me, I guess
they're transporting, say love.

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
It's meditating. I mean, we listened to that doorbell earlier
and it reminds me of There was a period of
my life where I was really my band was working
really hard on songwriting, and we were really trying to,
you know, hone our craft of like you're trying to
make a rock band better, whatever that means. And I
was exhausted by just thinking about music in terms of
structure and form, and I found myself maybe I was

(01:06:33):
losing my mind a bit in retrospect, but I found myself,
really I would listen to car alarms going off as
long as I could, as the sound went from being
ugly and it started to take on these new dimensions,
and you find it in the overtones, and you start
to hear music in any cacophony, in any sound, whether
it's musical or not. And I think that if you

(01:06:53):
can find your way into that, you can find as
much beauty in a car alarm or a doorbell resonating
as you can in a you know, a beautiful piece
of romantic jazz music.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Indeed, I could not agree more. I also have to
say that, speaking of sirens, I mean cars, the Doppler effect.
If you're not fascinating with sound after you hear the
Doppler effect, then I guess you really just don't like sound.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Would you give a quick science lesson on the Doppler
effect for anyone listening who doesn't know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
Oh, I don't know anything about it, except that I
know that sound travels pretty slowly, and that as it
reaches us, it's not like a straight line. So as
an ambulance moves down the street and the pitches change.
I think it has to do with the velocity of
the vehicle and maybe our stationary ears and physical space

(01:07:45):
that's occupying the space between that ambulance and our ears.
But I don't actually know the scientific Definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
It's almost as if you ask your average you know,
Joe on the street, what does an ambulance sound like,
they're going to make a sound with their voice that
includes that pitch shift. But if you ask maybe a
paramedic or an ambulance bay technician, what an ambulance sounds like,
they're going to tell you a different sound because they're
the only people that hear it. Standing still. We all
hear these sirens going past us quickly, and you don't

(01:08:13):
even think about that that's not what it actually sounds like.
That the sound is bending through the air as it
goes past.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
You, right, and how cool is that?

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Come on, well, what a perfect record to talk to
you about. I feel like, although this album does not
contain every sonic element of Nell's Klein, it does seem
to contain a lot about your dare I say, philosophy
of music, of sound, of love and life, and you
packaged it all into this gorgeous record that also functions perfectly,

(01:08:46):
as you know, when you bring your sweetie home and
you mix a martini and you sit too close on
the couch. It's a great record for that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Well, thank you so much. I've had a few people
tell me that it's kind of one of those things
they return to and listen to again again together and
all that sort of thing, which is heartwarming. I have
to say, it wouldn't exist without David Breskin. I mean,
there's no way. This took immense funds that were sort

(01:09:13):
of built up over a period of time between the
Shifting Foundation and Angel City Arts in Los Angeles, and
it was not even just funds, but his persistence and
really just bugging me with questions is what's happening with
lovers when you're going to finish it, what's going on?
You know, it would not exist.

Speaker 1 (01:09:35):
Yeah, when something lives in your head for so long,
often you need someone to help you pull it down
to the ground because left your own devices, it's easy
to just think and think and think forever.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
Yeah, don't.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
We've covered a lot of ground today and we've talked
about a lot of heady topics, but we always on
major label debut finish with what we consider to be
the most elementally important question about creation in general, which is,
of course, while you were enjoying your five luxurious days
in the studio making lovers, what were you eating?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Wow, I don't remember. I have no idea. Let's see, hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
Did you have catering in there since it was a
big group, or were you sending someone out to the
Delhi or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
I think that maybe it was a studio assistant situation.
I'm not going to say where we recorded because I
was so so angry with how they tried to actually
hold us up and renege on the business agreement on
the daily rate, and now the place is out of business.
But you know, we were supposed to do it at

(01:10:40):
what at the time was called still called Avatar in Midtown,
and they bumped us too bad.

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
Great room.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
I finally did record there a couple of years ago
with Wadattallia Smith, so I finally got to see inside
now that it's not Avatar, and it was great experience.
But yeah, I think it was kind of uh Sandwichye.
You know, my brother and his family were there. I
flew them out of Alex was the only person I

(01:11:07):
wanted to play on lovers from the very beginning, and
for so many reasons, and they have very strict dietary
restrictions I guess we call them. So everything had to
be at least healthy, and now that I'm older, everything
has to be healthy for me because we get older

(01:11:27):
and have certain issues.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Shall we say, you want to be able to play
guitar after lunch as well as before?

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yeah? Yeah, I just want to. As I'm told, I
have to last. I have to try to last. So
I think there was probably mozzarella involved, you know, maybe
a caprece or some sort of caprese ish sandwich situation.
I'm gonna have to ask David Preskin because if he remembers,
because he probably had to pull it all together. Ron

(01:11:55):
Saint Germain recorded it while he was simultaneously trying to
repair the console, thank god. That's a whole other story.
And Saint also mixed it in his home studio, and
that's one of the reasons it sounds so good sonically,
is because Saint knows what he's doing and he has
tons of experience older gentlemen recording instruments like that, you know.

(01:12:18):
And I'm really pleased that Saying and David were there
to be so invested in these details because I get impatient,
you know, I'm ready to go do the next record
or something.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
So well, it's a record that took a long time
to go from idea to reality, and it's a record
that reveals itself deliberately and at a beautiful pace. And
it's uh and it brings you into its tempo, so
to speak, listening to it, so it seems again it's
like it's a manifestation of everything that went into its

(01:12:50):
existence conceptually, physically, et cetera. Like it contains all of this.
So nicely done, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Thank you so much. I can't believe it. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
And thank you so much for the conversation. It's amazing
to talk to you and hear all of your perspective
on this stuff. And I feel like I'm gonna hang
up the phone after this and just make some sounds
for a while and bask in that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Oh nice, Yeah, I should do that too. I just
finished this little run with Concentric Quartet, and I took
a day off yesterday really just collapsed and today and
I need to be slightly more productive.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Nell's Klein on his twenty sixteen Blue Note Records Debut Lovers.
I don't think there's anything more I need to add
to that other than just to say thank you from
the bottom of my heart to Nell'sklein for a truly
great talk and also for all the amazing music he's
given and continues to give to the world. Nells is

(01:13:52):
touring with Wilco this fall. He has some shows of
his own. Nellsclin dot com is the website that contains
all that information. And if you only know Nell's from
his work with Wilco, do yourself a favor and check
out lovers. Check out Nels's many other solo records and collaborations.
He has made some really, really cool, great music and

(01:14:14):
it's really all well worth your time to check out.
Our show is produced by John Paul Bullock and Josh Hoop.
Those guys are the reason that it's ever good at all.
Our theme music is by Greg Assop. Love you Greg.
We're on social media, We're on the podcast apps. Our
content is available for you to like and subscribe to.
Operators are standing by. Thank you so much for listening.

(01:14:36):
I'm Graham Wright and Major Label Debut will return with
more tales from the intersection of art and commerce so long,