Interview with Musician Susan Oetgen of Likeness to Lily

June 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr Kent: What a great tune, False Hopes, from the album Farewell, Recruit, and the band is called Likeness to Lily. Welcome to the show, Susan, I’m going to say your name incorrectly.  Why don’t you tell me how to say it.

Susan Oetgen: Thank you, my last name is pronounced “Oetgen.”

Dr Kent: “Oetgen,” oh great.  I slaughtered it earlier.  Well, what an incredible track.  There’s a little bit of out music in there, there’s some classical, there’s some jazz.  Tell me about this.

Susan Oetgen: Well, that’s a piece that I co-wrote actually with the pianist in my band, Tony Malone, who trained, really as like a jazz pianist, and one of the reasons that I’ve loved writing this tune with him is because he really sort of brought that improvisatory and kind of off the rails sensibility of the jazz and improvisations you have, and we invited Peter Huff to play the clarinet, and Franz Nicolai who is on that track playing the accordian.  He’s also, I think maybe if you know the band, the whole study, Franz (inaudible) is the whole study, and they’re kind of old friends of all of ours from jazz circles and old circles in New York. It was just kind of a tune that we wanted to get pretty free form and let everybody have their way with.

Dr Kent: Well, it’s so cool.  How did you all find each other in the first place?

Susan Oetgen: The band? Likeness to Lily?

Dr Kent: Yes.

Susan Oetgen: Well, I started the band in 2003, and at the time I gathered together a group of musicians that I had worked with on different projects, and piano-based drums and guitar at the very beginning.  Ian Riggs and I are actually the only two originals who sort of started with the band.  But after a period of time, we were looking for a different drummer, and Ian suggested Evan Pasner, who he knew from lots of different projects around Brooklyn.  Then Tony Malone went to, I guess Ian and Tony met each other when they went at Oberlin, so he came on board a little while after that, and that’s been the quartet for the last two years, two and a half years.

Dr Kent: When you’re writing a tune like this, with a great piano player like he obviously is, and this crazy arrangement, what do you do? Do you start with some words? Do you fish out a little tune here and a little tune there?  What’s your process?

Susan Oetgen: Well actually I think one of the things that makes Likeness to Lily a unique, and sort of have the unique sound that it has is that it’s a very collaborative setup, the four of us are really good collaborators.  But every song that we’ve written so far…

Dr Kent: You still there? I think I might have lost Susan, but hopefully we’ll try and get her back.  Are you back? I lost her again. Their website is likenesstolilymusic.com, and it’s really inspiring music, incredible lyrics, and I’m pretty amazed by their whole sound, and it’s a mix of classical, jazz, and this and that.  I’m going to play another song from it, and in the meantime we’re going to get Susan back on the line, she’s the lead singer from Likeness to Lily.  So I’m going to play a track from their album called Farewell, Recruit, and we’ll talk to her about it right after the little pause here.

(music)

Dr Kent:  And what a beautiful tune that is.  That was called Farewell, Recruit, by Likeness to Lily.  And we’ve had some technical difficulties today, talking with Susan, but she’s going to be calling in here in a minute, and we’ll talk to her live on the show.  In the meantime, the band Likeness to Lily is four members, she’s Susan Oetgen, and there’s Tony Malone on piano, Ian Riggs on bass and Evan Pasner on drums.  And I think I have you live on the air again, Susan.

Susan Oetgen: Hi.

Dr. Kent: How are you doing?

Susan Oetgen: I’m good, I’m good.

Dr. Kent: We lost you for a minute there, but we’re now back.  That was a beautiful tune, my goodness, tell me about some of the other tunes from the album, including the one we just listened to, which is called Farewell, Recruit.

Susan Oetgen: Oh, sure.  Well, the record has six songs on it, there are twelve songs in total, but six of the songs on the record come from a piece that I was commissioned to write by the Brooklyn Philharmonic last year, where I was invited to bring Likeness to Lily and combine Likeness to Lily with chamber musicians, violin, cello and flute, and create a piece for a series that the Brooklyn Philharmonic does at the Brooklyn Museum, which involves collections, like the paintings or images in the museum’s collection.  And the program that I was invited to write this commission for was based on the Islamic Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum.  So I had been working really with material related to the Marine Corp and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and somehow it kind of all came together when I went to the museum to research the actual paintings, and saw these really beautiful works of art that told the story of two lovers called Leila and Maglilan, which is sort of like the Romeo and Juliet of Islamic literature.  So I created a piece with six songs that told the story of Leila and Maglilan in a kind of updated version of a United States Marine and a woman who meet and fall in love and then are separated because he’s deployed, which roughly follows the same story line as the two lovers Leila and Maglilan, who are separated for various reasons.  So the song Farewell, Recruit, I think really sets the stage of that story and kind of introduces the rest of the record as like a sort of story that incorporates contemporary ideas as well as a more poetic and ancient one, too.

Dr. Kent: I’d like to talk about the words for a minute, before we get disconnected.  We were kind of talking about that, whether you were talking about the process of how Likeness to Lily is special to you, and I was asking you about words first, music first.

Susan Oetgen: Yeah, sure.  I think that the thing that makes Likeness to Lily unique is that really the songs start as poems or stories that I write and then set to a melody and then create for, and then bring to Tony and Evan and Ian, and as a group we arrange those melodies and create the songs that you hear on the record.  I think that as we’ve developed as a band one thing has become really clear to us, and that is that the music is really, it’s very storytelling, not just in terms of the lyrics, which are always, you know, really most of the songs have a really narrative point of view, they’re about characters or portraits of characters, and that sort of thing, but the music itself also contributes to that storytelling, because I think that what we create I the moment, either listening to the songs on a record or live, is a way to kind of escape into another universe where as an audience you can kind of have a keyhole viewpoint on a different story or different people living out a different story line. So yeah, they always sort of start with the lyrics, that’s for sure.

Dr. Kent: And one thing I like about Farewell, Recruit is in the middle of the song you talk about September 11th, and it’s such a visual story. This guy goes to become a member of the Army, and it’s definitely from the woman’s perspective, and she says, “Was it really so brutal?” It’s an interesting part of the story that we don’t often hear about, but it’s kind of the result of all these, there’s so many military men that are committing suicide and this and that because their relationships are, you know, people just can’t understand.

Susan Oetgen: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: A really powerful story for these times.  In what sense, how do you incorporate words? Are you like a poet that gets up every morning and does ten minutes of poetry? Or do you sort of explode with it?

Susan Oetgen: I think it sort of comes in little segments here and there.  Sometimes just a phrase or a word will seem really interesting, and then all of a sudden it will sort of spin out into a lyric, kind of of its own energy. But I think it’s mostly just because, as a way of communicating, language is so natural. I trained as a classical singer, and I’ve been a singer more than I would say a musician for most of my life. So the medium of words and language is something that is really natural, and I’ve spend a lot of time studying.  Like in classical singing you really study the words of an opera, or the words of an art song, because a lot of times they’re in foreign languages, and you really have to know what you’re singing about.  So in a way, I think that you, yeah, I heard of, I think it was E. Ennie Poole, the author who in an interview said that she gets up every morning, and it’s like any other job, she just sits down at the desk, and for like 8 hours, what she does is she writes.  I definitely am not like that.  I wish I had that kind of discipline, but it’s more just like, you know, words and images, or like a story kind of comes to mind and then it’s like a little bit of work at it whenever it seems inspired, you know.

Dr. Kent: Well, very cool.  I’m going to play one more track here, and I’ll say goodbye to you know, but it’s Helen the Blessed.  Tell me a little about that one.

Susan Oetgen: Oh sure, yeah. That actually, that piece is based on a poem that was written by my aunt, my father’s younger sister. She wrote a poem, which I adapted slightly to make it into more of like a song format lyrically, but it’s a song about my great grandmother on my father’s side, and her three sons, so she was, she lost three of her four sons before she died, and the fourth son I think was a priest. So in a way it was like saying good bye to all four of her sons, and it’s just, I thought that was an inspiring story because it seems so different than the kind of modern stories that you hear, like in the time of war there really is this thing where people have sons and daughters that go away, more than one, and it really affects the family life.  So I thought it was, even though it’s a song about a different place and a different time, it’s kind of topical to what we live today in our society today.  But it is about my great grandmother, a true story, if you will.

Dr. Kent: Well, very cool. Thank you so much for chatting with me.  I’ve been speaking with Susan, the lead singer of Likeness to Lily, and their website is likenesstolilymusic.com.

Susan Oetgen: Thanks so much.

Dr. Kent: I’m going to play a track from Likeness to Lily, from their last album, and that’s called Farewell, Recruit, of course named after that gorgeous song we just listened to, and this song is called Helen the Blessed.  Let’s listen to that.

(music)

Dr. Kent: That was a beautiful tune from Likeness to Lily, and that one’s called Helen the Blessed from their latest record called Farewell, Recruit.  Well, it’s been a great show this week, thank you so much for tuning in.  This is Dr. Kent, and I’m tuning out. I hope you have a safe one, and I hope you crack a book, and I hope you go to Likeness to Lily’s website and check out their music, what incredible sounds.  So be well, enjoy the new spring we’ve got and have a great weekend.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Experimental, Folk, Classical, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, Jazz, PODCAST 

Mariam Adam of the Imani Winds

May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: My next guest on the show is a musician, of course. On the fourth part of every show we feature authors of sound and we’ve got the Imani Winds up ahead.  I’m going to play a little piece by them, by Ravel, this is Le Tombeau De Couperin, I’m not very good at French.  It’s by Ravel, beautiful piece by Imani Winds.  We’re going to listen to that, and then we’re going to talk to the clarinetist.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous rendition of that.  And it’s my honor now to speak to a member of the Imani Winds.  I’m speaking with Mariam Adam.  Are you there?

Mariam Adam: Yes, I’m here. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: What a gorgeous sound.  Tell me first about that Ravel piece.

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s a piece that was originally for piano and then rearranged by Ravel himself for the orchestra, and that’s probably on of the more well known versions of the Le Tombeau De Couperin, and it was a piece that was actually dedicated to his friend that had fallen in the first World War. But then it was transcribed for the wind quintet by a horn player actually.  And it’s one of the few pieces that has transcribed well for the wind quintet, and is written in such a lush way that you don’t often get to hear these five instruments. So I think for that reason alone it has an appeal to every type of listener, classical, contemporary, and even some people hear a little bit of the jazz element in the movements.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, that’s a fascinating thing about your music is that it’s got a real edge to it of, it’s got the jazz in it.  We’re going to listen to some piet solo later, and you’ve got a whole bunch of different elements coming together in all of your music.

Mariam Adam: Yep, that’s our M.O. (laughter) Have to put in a little bit of everything.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about the group. Where do you guys play?  You’ve got all these things going on, and of course something that’s very fascinating about the group is you’re all African American players.  Talk about all of that.

Maiam Adam: Yeah.  Imani Winds is a group that definitely looks the way that we do for a reason.  Valerie the flutist had the name of a group before she even had the members of the group about 11 years ago and I knew her from summer festival out at Aspen.  We moved to New York at the same time to go to grad school, got this group started, had no idea where it was going to go, although she always says that she did, and I believe it.  But the group started out as African American, Latino musicians in classical music, one, to give the composers a similar background of voice.  Another reason to give younger players that look like us role models that we feel we didn’t necessarily have growing up on our instruments.  And also to really give a new direction to chamber music, and maybe a little bit of evolution of what chamber music is coming to.  You know, we’ll always have the classic pieces like Ravel, and for us classic pieces also mean Milton and Carter and things from the 1940’s and 50’s.  That’s about as recent as we get for the great works. But that led Imani Winds to take a path that was, one, educational, as well as slightly groundbreaking just for the reason that there weren’t many wind quartets out there doing what we do, and having two composers in the group, and think that is really the unique trump card that we have.  That we have two composers who don’t just transcribe things, they write original works, and they’ve had us as their guinea pigs for many years, so they’ve gotten quite good at it.  It has allowed us to expand into many different genres and bring it to our audiences.  And there’s always a little bit of something for everybody on our program. And the places that we end up playing.

Dr. Kent: And on your website, imaniwinds.com, that’s i-m-a-n-i winds.com, there’s some incredible information about your group.  And the bio page is just an incredible collection of folks.  A number of awards, the degrees like you said, the composers, the incredible jazz and classical performers.  What’s it like to play in such a small group with so many fantastic people?

Mariam Adam: Well, it’s wonderful.  It really is wonderful.  I think because we get along.  People see that, and it comes through in our music, and I think that is also a rare thing that people say in chambers, in the groups, is that we have fun on stage, we have fun with the music.  Everybody is really kick butt on their instruments.  It’s a technical term.  So we have a lot of freedom because of that, and not a lot of restrictions. Also, when it comes to our proper on stage, and we have stage etiquette, but also we speak to the audience and we allow them to respond to us, and we try to break down that wall that has been the stigma of classical music concerts.  So we’re at Carnegie Hall and Alice Kelly, and all the big halls of New York, and all the big venues across the state.  But we definitely want to celebrate the joy that we have in music and bring that infectious energy to other people.  And that’s not something you get to see all the time, and I think that’s why we’ve had the longevity that we’ve had, because we love doing what we’re doing, we know we’re very lucky, to be a full time touring wind quintet.  But we also work very, very hard with it, and that includes getting up at 8:00 in the morning, 7:00 in the morning, to go play for little kids in schools in every city that we visit, to bring this love of music to them.

Dr. Kent: It really is extraordinary also, for me, I have a background as a composer, and I went to Stonybrook, which I know you’re horn player did. You have a specifically, a commissioning project that’s aiming for people that wouldn’t necessarily be writing this kind of music, and featuring, well talk about that a little bit.

Mariam Adam: Yeah, the Legacy Commissioning Project started out as a commissioning project to celebrate being ten years together, same people.  And it’s really evolved into a mission and a movement to get new music into the chamber music repoirtoire, especially for the woodwind quintet, because there’s a lot of woodwind quintet pieces out there, but they’re not all very good.  And because people don’t have a group to write for a lot of the time, and to experiment with, they tend to write in a very similar style. So we’re getting composers like Jason Moran who is an incredibly, eclectic avant gardi and yet contemporary and down home swinging jazz pianos. And then you have Stephan Harris, who is also just multi talented.  Percussionist, vibrafonist, composer, band leader, and Tanya Leone.  Simoncho Hin is a ute player from Palestinian background.  And these are all people who come from completely different angles but we’re forcing them, essentially, to write for us. But with the idea that they get to collaborate and we get to come back to them and say look, this is an amazing idea, why don’t you expand on this.  Or, guess what, this doesn’t work.  So we have feedback with the piece, and that is also to ensure that the piece is going to have legs beyond the premiere, and beyond this first world premiere that would happen.  Because a lot of times that’s what would happen with commission pieces and then you never hear about them again.  And we want to make sure these pieces stick around, so that they’re written well and that the person who’s writing kind of outside of their norm, ends up feeling comfortable in it, and successful.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely.  I encourage everybody to go check out imaniwinds.com.  I love your last album, and we’re going to play a track from that coming up ahead, Liver Tango from Master Piazzolo, which is a very brave piece to play, and it’s an incredible version of it. Are you working on any new recording projects?

Mariam Adam: Absolutely.  We always have a couple in the pipeline, but one of them right now is going to be the Legacy Commissioning project pieces. We have one by Alvan Singleton. We have the piece by Jason Ran, we have a piece by Stephan Harris coming up soon.  We also have a great piece that was part of the commissioning project by Roberto Sierra that’s written for string quartet, plus wind quintet, which I think is going to be a new genre.  I’m so excited about it.  I love the sound, I love the power that we get with these two groups together.  And Valerie Coleman, our flutist, also wrote a piece to go with the concerts, with this collaboration of the string quartet. So we’re going to be recording that. We have a wonderful piece by Bucky (inaudible) who wrote (inaudible) for us called (inaudible) over Havana, and we might be putting out things in singles. But we also have a couple albums that we’ll put together from these Legacy Commissioning project pieces.  And there’s always something new on the horizon, so yes, please get into our website and check out Alejandro.  So we’ll probably be near somewhere near somebody soon. We’re all over the place.

Dr. Kent: Well I love it, incredible music.  I hope to talk to you again after some of these CDs come out.  It’s great stuff, and keep doing it.

Mariam Adam: Absolutely, and make sure you check out the Christmas album that we had, that’s the one that keeps giving back every year.

Dr. Kent: Oh, Ill bet, I’ll beat it does, yeah.

Mariam Adam: It’s great fun.

Dr. Kent: No Christmas songs here, but I want to play the song from their last Grammy nominated album, and this one’s called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzolo.  Thank you so much for chatting with me, Mariam Adam.

Mariam Adam: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Kent: And the website again is imaniwinds.com. Go check out their music. It’s amazing stuff.  So we’re going to listen to the whole track called Libra Tango from Aster Piazzoli, by the Imani Winds.

(music)

Dr. Kent: What a beautiful piece.  I’m going to cut it off right there, but if you want to listen to more go to imaniwinds.com.  That’s a piece called Libra Tango by Aster Piazzola, as performed by the Imani Winds.  Check them out. It was such an honor chatting with Mariam Adam about her group, and her performances on the clarinet.  And earlier in the show today we talked to Paul Austin.  I could have talked to him for several hours about his riveting stories from the ER.  And before that we talked to John Gilmore about his memories of Marilyn Monroe.  And at the very beginning of the show, of course, was the incredible, inspirational story of Missy Jenkins, who not only survived a school shooting, but she’s starting to really get her story out there into the world, and she changes so many people’s lives with it.  Well, have a great week, today is the first day of spring, and I hope you have a great one, and pick up a good book in the meantime.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, Experimental, Classical, Jazz, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Sarah Watkins | Nickel Creek Singer & New Solo Record

April 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Sarah Watkins | Nickel Creek Singer & Fiddler [21:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I loved speaking with Sarah Watkins about her brand new solo career, tour and record, after so many successful years with Nickel Creek. Check out the tunes and conversation in this interview! More about Sarah’s new album from her MySpace page:

In 1989, Watkins, barely out of her childhood, started playing in a nascent version of Nickel Creek at the seemingly unlikely venue of That Pizza Place in Carlsbad, California, along with her guitarist brother Sean and mandolinist friend Chris Thile (and chaperoned, of course, by her bluegrass-playing parents). The prodigious young trio built a reputation in bluegrass, folk, and country circles, then catapulted to mainstream prominence in 2000 after releasing an album produced by Alison Krauss. When not on the road or in the studio with Nickel Creek, Watkins guest-starred as fiddler and/or harmony vocalist on albums by Bela Fleck, the Chieftains, Ben Lee, Dan Wilson, Richard Thompson, and Ray La Montagne, among others. In addition, Watkins and brother Sean established an informal get-up-and-jam residency called the Watkins Family Hour at L.A. club Largo, “an uber-cool but cozy music and comedy club in Hollywood,” as Sean has put it. Watkins brings the spirit of the long-running Watkins Family Hour to her debut. It was there, in fact, that she developed and fine-tuned the repertoire for the album: “I had lived with a lot of this material for a while. It was tested and tweaked through the years playing at Largo. Songs would come and go; these are the songs that have stuck. Some are newer than others—’Lord Won’t You Help Me’ was a deliberate choice for the record. Some I had done for years, like Jon’s ‘Same Mistakes.’ ‘Too Much’ is a David Garza song, and I always loved it.”

John Paul Jones, who’d briefly toured during 2004 with Nickel Creek and Toad the Wet Sprocket lead singer Glenn Phillips in an ad hoc group called Mutual Admiration Society, had long encouraged Watkins to make a record of her own, offering his services well before she was ready to hit the studio. As Watkins recalls, laughing, “A couple of years ago we saw John Paul Jones at the Cambridge folk festival. He came up after our performance and said that if I didn’t let him produce my record he would never speak to me again. I was thrilled that he was that excited about it. He actually stayed with it and kept in touch. At that point, in Cambridge, I believe we had already talked about winding down the Nickel Creek touring, so it was a really convenient time and it helped me stay focused. It was a perfect moment to start transferring over the creative energy.”

Jones kept a familial atmosphere, and maintained an unobtrusive presence, in the studio, says Watkins: “I think he was allowing the band to be a band and play for each other, rather than have us play through a song, then look to see if that’s what he was or wasn’t looking for. Eventually, John would give us his feedback and directions to guide us in. I think that has a lot to do with the sound of the record being band-oriented, especially considering there were a lot of different musicians coming in.” Cutting John Hartford’s “Long Hot Summer Day” was especially inspired—with Rawlings playing “caveman drums,” Welch strapping on an electric guitar, and Watkins revving up everyone with her fiddle playing. The compellingly straightforward arrangements she and Jones devised allow Watkins’ personality to come through, illustrating both her sensitivity and her strength. Theses sessions had been a long time coming, but it’s clear that Watkins has only just begun.

—Michael Hill

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Pop, Folk, Jazz, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Sarah Watkins | Award-Winning Nickel Creek Vocalist Releases New Album & Talks About It

March 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That’s a beautiful tune off of a brand new upcoming album by Sarah Watkins and that’s of course Any Old Time, by Jimmy Rogers if I’m right!  Welcome to the show Sarah Watkins!

Sarah Watkins:  Hello! How are you doing?

Dr. Kent:  I’m doing pretty well.  So I didn’t know the name of that track when I put it in, all I knew was track 6 and track 9 of the upcoming album and of course that’s Any Old Time.  Tell me about that tune.

Sarah Watkins:  Well I heard that song off Tony Rice record.  I think it was church street blues, his recording of that song and I just loved it and over the years of songs that I liked it sort of stuck around and ended up on the record.  It was really fun to record.  Tim O’Brien is on there too and that was fun to do.

Dr. Kent:  Yeah, Tim O’Brien is the best.  So lets get into right away, now you’ve been in the bluegrass scene for a long time for somebody whose 27 years old.

Sarah Watkins:  Yeah, I grew up playing in a band called Nickel Creek and we were together from the time I was eight until a little over a year ago now so this is my first solo record and that’s actually the only song of that style on the record.  Most of it well there’s a lot of different things on there, but that is definitely the only two-steppable song on there.

Dr. Kent:  I love the steel guitar and nickel creek towards the end was also you were starting to develop a real edgy sound and do some really interesting things and of course Chris Telay has gone off and done his own stuff; incredible mandolin player and you are a great fiddle player.  Do we hear some good fiddle playing on this album?

Sarah Watkins:  Well there’s fiddle playing, you be the judge of how good it is!  But its yeah, there’s a couple fiddle tunes on there and true to form when doing interviews on the phone there’s always a siren that goes by whenever I’m on the phone with somebody.  I hope it’s not too loud but yeah a couple fiddle tunes on there and I play a good amount on the record actually, probably on almost every song.  That steel stuff is awesome, Greg Reese plays all the steel stuff on the record and he’s amazing.

Dr. Kent:  So is there a point in your career when you started playing with people and saying wow, these are some amazing musicians and on this record of course you’re being produced by John Paul Jones and you’ve got all these amazing musicians.  Tim O’Brien singing harmony vocals, Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings on here, I mean at what point in your career did you all of a sudden say man, its pretty fun?

Sarah Watkins:  Oh a long time ago I started saying yeah.  It’s been great especially this last year working on this year working on this record has been really special and I’m so grateful and so glad to have all these musicians play on it who I have known and loved for a very long time. Some of them I know on a more personal level than others, but everybody who’s on this record means something to me, professionally, personally, very often both.  I’m so grateful to have that kind of connection with the record where I wasn’t necessarily having to pay for everything just to get it the way I wanted to buy the help that I needed to have.  It has so much more of a more personal attachment to me because I love Greg Reese, I love playing with him, I’ve had the privilege of playing with him over the last five years and now his music is a part of my life and I could say that about every musician on this record.  Each one of them has a special place in my life, whether it’s just musically I’ve grown up listening to them or I’ve just played with them over the years.  It was great to have Shawn & Mark Shaft and Christie Lee on the record, which have been for so very long, so there’s a deep attachment to all these songs and the performances that came out on the record.

Dr. Kent:  Here’s a question for you; Shawn is your brother, right?

Sarah Watkins:  Yes.

Dr. Kent:  Being on the road with him and Christie Lee and your bass player when you were young and being on the road, did you get into some pretty vicious fights?

Sarah Watkins:  Oh yeah, of course, every brother and sister and brother obviously get into fights and every band gets into lots of fights so it’s a great combination to have both in there!  but we also I don’t know if you have siblings but most people that I talk to, the best part about having siblings that you get along with on any level is you can have these huge blow out fights and just five minutes later you’re like alright, you’re my brother, your still here, hang out and move on to the next thing.  That’s a really great relationship to have in a band because you do live together and you’re traveling on the road and that’s a helpful basis for a relationship.

Dr. Kent:  Did you ever get sick of it?  Like the Ben Claiborne complex where he was famous so young and said I got to get out of the public eye.  Was there a time when you said this is too much?

Sarah Watkins:  No, I’m not in the public eye.  I mean nickel creek fans were really enthusiastic and totally into us and they made us feel like rock stars but that is a very small world and I don’t think we ever felt like it was too much for us or that it was an unreasonable amount of exposure.  The world is very big and nickel creek was very small so we didn’t have to deal with it.  I felt that I got tired of touring a lot because in that machine there’s five or seven years where I had not been home more than two months at a time and very often it was only a week or two weeks at a time.  After awhile it changes your relationships with your friends and family and I got tired of that.  So it’s nice to be home for over a year and be able to nourish those relationships back to functionality [inaudible].  That was what I got tired of and I’m really glad to have had some time and now I’m actually ready to go back out again and really excited for the record and all that.

Dr. Kent:  What’s it like so far the difference for you between being on the road with Nickel Creek and now being out there under Sarah Watkins, your own name?

Sarah Watkins:  It’s a huge difference.  I’ve done limited amounts of touring by myself, I went out and opened for a few people this year; for [inaudible], and a couple others and its completely terrifying at first and then after awhile, I started remembering I can do this, this is fine, people do this, I can do this.  It’s a matter of getting used to it and making changes in how I perform and I can learn how to be a better entertainer.  Its an adjustment but its really fun to realize more and more that I actually can do it and I’m not going to be out there all by myself a whole lot this year, I’ll be out with one, two or three other people depending on the trip, or if I open for somebody or do my own show, I’ll have a band.  It’ll be a huge range of situations this year and I’m looking forward to experimenting with each scenario and just you know having fun with it.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this record.  Its self titled as far as I can tell and it’s coming out on the None Such Label.  We heard one song off it, you’re western swing tune, tell me about the rest of the tunes.

Sarah Watkins:  Well half are mine and half are songs that I borrowed from other songwriters and they’re not terribly far off from Nickel Creek stuff, except there’s not much mandolin because one you play with Chris Deeley it’s hard to play with others and we have the shining crewship of [inaudible] playing mandolin and John Paul Jones on one.  So it’s represented.  Chris plays mandola but the songs I wrote are well, you’re just going to have to listen to find out.  It’s not super crazy but I was glad to be able to play some songs that my friends had written that have come close to my heart in recent years and it’s good to record them.

Dr. Kent:  Immediately once you’re in the process of getting on the road to support an album, you’re already thinking about the next album because it’s been so long since you recorded that one.  Are you already planning the next one?

Sarah Watkins:  I’m not planning it.  I kind of feel like I’m not ready to start packing away ideas but I’m looking forward to it and I’m always trying to gather songs and thinking about what the next step will be but I’m actually still very anxious to look forward to see what happens with this record.  Since it’s my first one I don’t know what to expect, I don’t know if I’ll be touring this summer or working throughout the year, it depends on how people respond.  I’m just taking it day by day, month by month and see what happens.

Dr. Kent:  Now you got a couple shows coming up – you had one last night in LA and you have a couple more coming up?

Sarah Watkins:  Yeah, when I’m home off the road, we have a residency in Los Angeles at a club called Largo, which has basically my home club.  Shawn, my brother and I played there for six or seven years but we used to be our little outlet from nickel creek when we were off the road, it was our way of playing non-band material, songs we liked.  It was a safe plays to spin with songs we had written which we maybe hadn’t finished developing and since the bands off tour, we’ve played there more often.  Basically almost every Thursday we play so yeah, next month until I start traveling more promoting my record.

Dr. Kent:  Awesome!  The record’s called Sarah Watkins, it’s on None Such Records, and it’s coming out April 7, is that still right?

Sarah Watkins:  That’s correct, yep!

Dr. Kent:  I’m excited to listen to it and now you don’t know what track 9 is do you?  That’s what we’re about to play?

Sarah Watkins:  Oh shoot track 9, there are fourteen tracks on there so I have no idea what track 9 is actually.

Dr. Kent:  Okay well we’ll be surprised then.  It’s been such an honor chatting with Sarah Watkins of the very well known group Nickel Creek, with her own upcoming solo record, Sarah Watkins.  Thank you so much for chatting with me.

Sarah Watkins:  Thank you.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s listen to track 9 off Sarah’s upcoming solo album.

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That was a gorgeous track off the upcoming album by Sarah Watkins; its self titled on the None Such Label and we chatted with her about time with Nickel Creek and her upcoming tour and all of that with the new record.  Go out and buy that record, it’s beautiful.  Amazing vocal tracks; some originals and beautiful fiddle tunes like that one.  Thank you so much for tuning in to Sound Authors today, this is Dr. Kent and enjoy these last days of winter.  Pick up a good book.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Bluegrass, Pop, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, Jazz, PODCAST 

Dan Goldman of Luxury Pond | Live on Sound Authors

March 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  That was a little track called Le Metro, a beautiful track.  Tell me about that track as an introduction here Dan.

Dan Goldman:  Hey Kent!  Well that song is a bit of a reflection of the sound of the Montreal subway system.  A lot of the pieces on that record called the Revolution are sort of from my childhood and yeah, that ones kind of an audio collage, its sound bytes of various sounds I found while I was recording the whole record.

Dr. Kent:  I chatted with you briefly a few months ago and since then you sent me a disc of Luxury Pond, which is your new release and man there’s some great tunes on that one.  We’re going to play one at the end called Caving In from that.  What are you working on now?

Dan Goldman:  I’m working on a whole bunch of new songs actually.  I’m actually sitting in the house looking out at frozen Lake Erie and it’s pretty inspiring.  The lake is frozen in this windswept formation in what you might imagine the arctic might look like.  It’s pretty inspiring so I’m working on a collection of new songs.  It’s hard to say which direction they’re going they are still in the fermenting stage.

Dr. Kent:  The name of your group, Luxury Pond, almost has an echo of that frozen lake.

Dan Goldman:  Yeah I know, I keep coming back to water.  I’m a Pisces so water keeps popping up whether I like it or not.

Dr. Kent:  Your music fascinates me as a classical composer because you combine electronics with harsh vocals at times, soft vocals at times.  What’s your process of writing songs, recording them; do you have a four track?  What’s your thing?

Dan Goldman:  Well the last one we did was recorded on my laptop, I’m trying to think yeah all the tracks were pretty much recorded just in my bedroom and then I sort of set up the sample and really the last record Luxury Pond I wanted to do the opposite, I wanted to record the whole record in a day, live.  But I wanted to take the glitziness of the last record and as opposed to a live seating.  So we spent quite a bit of time arranging and planning the session, myself and Owen Powers, who did the string arrangements and then rehearsing the sessions.  Then I asked a friend Ryan Driver whose very talented analog well he’s a musician of multi instruments but particularly he plays an analog which is capable of creating a lot of glitchy weird broken sounds so I decided I wanted to have a live session, which comprised of heavy arranging components but also a rhetoric component, superimposed those very composed few to very chance things.

Dr. Kent:  Some of the words your using like glitchy, I like that term, but then when you talk about allotropic music; I know what that is but when did you start getting into that kind of experimental stuff?

Dan Goldman:  It’s always been something that’s been attractive to me.  Like even just from starting to put music out there was an element of improvisation.  I was always attracted to the weirder Beetles songs for instance, like I’m the Walrus, one the first examples of interesting collage in the pop world.  So its not a new thing, Strawberry Fields, Revolution No. 9, that kind of thing, that influenced me some so there’s a degree of that and I spent a bit of time studying improvisation as well.

Dr. Kent:  What kind of improvisation.

Dan Goldman:  Predominantly jazz improv.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about the construct of the album itself and your of course playing with great musicians.  On Luxury Pond you had a string quartet with you, but what do you normally play and how do you go about constructing it?

Dan Goldman:  Bits and pieces everywhere, I’m predominantly a guitar player and oftentimes when I come up with little ideas on the guitar I take some notes for over the course of several months of sort of lyrical notes.  At a certain point spend some intensive time kind of trying to put the puzzle pieces together.  So things kind of influence each other.  I wouldn’t say I’m really the type to write a set of lyrics and then set music to it.  I like the whole sort of fit together to kind of create a cohesive piece.  Sometimes like on the newest record Luxury Pond there’s some lyrics that are not necessarily linear, not storytelling like, and some are influenced by dream imagery.  But the fact that they’re not linear doesn’t really bother me so much as the fact that what I’m looking for is that the whole thing makes sense as a unit.  Whatever it takes to make the whole thing feel right together.

Dr. Kent:  That’s an interesting discussion too because I’m also a songwriter and I always start with the lyrics first.  It’s a fascinating thing to talk to someone about their process and that because we’re all so very different in that.  You can really hear in your records that it’s an organic whole; they’re not verse-chorus-bridge kind of tunes.

Dan Goldman:  Yeah.

Dr. Kent:  What are your influences in terms of songwriting?  When did you start?

Dan Goldman:  Like who do I listen to?

Dr. Kent:  Yeah and when did you start listening?

Dan Goldman:  Not until pretty late in my musical formation.  I started in my mid 20s, I’m in my 30s now and I’ve been influenced by a friend who is a poet and she sort of exposed me to modern poetry but these days my favorite artists are Smog, Wilko; Wilko is a good example of a band that uses lyrics that aren’t necessarily linear.  For some reason I studied classical guitar so I guess that’s where the form ideas come in the sense their not verse-chorus traditional song forms.  It’s more kind of a through composed concept a lot of times.

Dr. Kent:  I’d love to chat with you some more, we’ll have to have you on when the new record is out.  Is Luxury Pond available now?

Dan Goldman:  It will be available.  Since last I spoke with you there’s been some progress.  A company called Sonic Onion will be handling it in Canada but they won’t have it for at least another month or two.  For now the easiest way to get it is to go to myspace.com\luxurypond and you can just order one and I’ll be happy to send a copy.

Dr. Kent:  Awesome and it’s a great record I listen to it over and over in my car, I love it.  It’s hard to say, its syrupy or something like that, it’s got a great vibe to it.

Dan Goldman:  I hope its maple syrupy!

Dr. Kent:  Exactly, definitely northern syrupy, not your diet syrup.  Let’s listen to a track, tell me about the track Caving In.

Dan Goldman:  It doesn’t have any of the alimentary components we talked about; its just strings and voices and it’s probably the most linear in terms of the narrative.  It was the first song that Owen and I arranged and that way it kind of set the tone for the rest of the record.  Owen’s concept with the arranging was to; he was influenced by the 24 Preludes of Chopin in that Chopin took like one motif and developed it through the whole piece in a way where it doesn’t return.  So that’s what Owen was going for in the arrangement and he succeeded quite well and I’m happy with it.  Its one of the older songs of mine and something I keep coming back to, yeah, I hope you like it.

Dr. Kent:  Cool and enjoy your frozen landscape and we’ll talk to you soon.

Dan Goldman:  Thanks Kent.

Dr. Kent:  Dan Goldman is the artist and we can check out his MySpace account at myspace.com\luxurypond.  Here’s the track Caving In from his album, Luxury Pond.  Take it easy we’ll talk to you soon.

Dan Goldman:  Thanks Kent.

[Music]

Dr. Kent:  That’s a gorgeous tune from Dan Goldman called Caving In.  The album is Luxury Pond and his myspace is myspace.com\luxury pond.  Have a wonderful Friday and a safe weekend and we’ll see you back here next week.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Pop, Experimental, TRANSCRIPTS, Folk, MUSICIAN INTERVIEW, Jazz, PODCAST 

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