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David
: How's the tour been going so far, I understand Nels
came down with the chicken pox which forced a few
cancellations ?
Glenn
:
Things are good. Nels flew in yesterday and tonight’s his first
show in Calgary. Nels was in a bad place with
adult chicken pox. Adult chicken pox is a bad
thing to have; he had a really high fever there for a
few days and all the sore that comes with it of
course. He’s far from 100% but hopefully
he’s good enough to get through some of these shows.
David
: How’s the tour been so far ?
Glenn
:
Good. We had a few weeks off and before that we were doing the
festival shows in Europe and before that the eastern
U.S. and let’s see… it was Australia before
that. It’s good to be doing our own shows
again because we get to play quite a bit longer than
the European festival shows, we can vary the
repertoire when we are on our own.
David
: How’s the reaction to the new material when
playing live ?
Glenn
:
It’s been really good. Of course with this band the songs tend to be a
little more amped up live and that’s just the
dynamic of playing live. It’s a little more
exciting. I think some of the new stuff sounds
better live with that boost of energy.
David
: When it comes time to record a new Wilco album, how
important is it for you to try to bring something new
to the table in your playing? Is it a case of
serving the song first or do you look at it as a
chance to push yourself every time out ?
Glenn
:
Kind of both actually. I look at it as a chance to push myself and
challenge myself but at the same time, serving the
song can be done in very subtle ways and this album is
a perfect example of that.
An album like “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, I was able to do tons of overt,
experimenting with different percussion with parts
overlapping and with my solo albums I can really
experiment where I couldn’t in the context of Wilco
where the primary focus would be Jeff’s vocals and
lyrics. What I do in a case like “Sky Blue
Sky” is if it’s something like we are recording it
live, I try to find subtle ways to experiment and
“Sky Blue Sky” was all about feel for me.
David
: I recently read someone describe Wilco as
"America's most consistently interesting band". When approaching a new album, does the
band make a conscious decision to push the envelope,
to change things up, to keep things fresh and new ?
Glenn
:
There isn’t any concept going into it, like “we can’t do that
because we’ve done that already’. It just
goes with how we feel at the time. For “Sky
Blue Sky” there wasn’t any songs written
before-hand. It was all jammed out in our loft
studio… well 95% of it was. So for that, there
was no way of predicting how it was going to come out,
we just go with what resonates with us. We had a
lot of songs that didn’t make this album. If
we have songs that sound like they could have gone on
a different album, that might not be so interesting
for us, so maybe that’s why from record to record
you see such a change. It’s not us
trying to mess with our fans, it's more us just
keeping ourselves motivated and interested in what we
are doing.
David
: So you hold back songs that might not fit in with
the overall album for later use ?
Glenn
:
Oh yeah, ever since I’ve been involved we’ve done that.
If it’s a case of we have a song that
doesn’t quite fit in with the other batch of songs
it kinda gets postponed and finished later. In
the case of “Sky Blue Sky” and I suppose for
“Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”
we had songs that just didn’t feel like they
fit in or added anything to the album. The album
would have been complete without them so they get put
on a B-side for Europe or maybe a bonus song for
iTunes or a lot of times we save them for another
record. The title track off of “Sky Blue
Sky” was actually a song Jeff wrote and demoed years
ago.
David
: Wilco is an amazing dynamic live band. Have
there ever been issues with translating that
excitement when recording an album ?
Glenn
:
We made that live album “Kicking Television” to capture that.
For “Sky Blue Sky” we did it live with all the
tracks bleeding through the others. There was no
isolation booths, no using headphones. Jeff was
singing the same time I was doing my drum tracks, so
it was recorded as a live band in a studio.
Obviously it wasn’t full on aggression like you
might see live. We’ve taken care of that with
the live album. I don’t think there is any
pressure to have that sound. They both have
their unique properties and we enjoy doing them both.
David
: Does Jeff bring in songs fully formed or does the
band tend to jam things out when writing material ?
Glenn
:
There have been songs that were already fully formed and really no
arrangement needed. Then there has been songs
that come in, that once you play it for a bit, you
kind of play with it like, “Let’s make it faster
here” or “Let's move this part there”. So
there's always lots of arranging that goes on.
Some more than others. For “Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot” I was brought in half way through that
album so I don’t know what was written before
hand. “A Ghost Is Born” I think most of the
songs were brought in by Jeff almost all done but the
new album is the most collaborative thing we have done
for sure.
David
: When touring, how does the band keep things fresh,
do you tinker with the set list ? Does the music
allow you to play the same songs differently every
night to prevent it from getting stale ?
Glenn
:
The set list does change. I personally would change it more
drastically but then I realize that wouldn’t go over
too well with the fans. There are songs they
expect to hear. There is always a core group of
songs that we have to play but we do play around with
others. We have a lot of albums now; we have a
lot of options…. it's tough to figure out what we
will play on tour. Some songs grow into their
own arrangements from playing it live. You might
play a song 5 times or 50 times before recording it or
you might play something 200 times before recording
it, and you find out things that work better.
You do things that seem to fit the song better, songs
tend to grow into their own arrangements.
David
: Do you read reviews of your live shows and album
reviews ? Do you even care what critics have to
say ?
Glenn
:
You know I do, a lot more when “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” came out but
this one, I’ve been too busy to notice. For
live reviews, we’ve usually left that town already
so I don’t see them. I suppose I could look
them up online but I usually don’t see those.
David
: Should we expect another solo album from you in the
near future, have you thought about that yet or is
Wilco all consuming right now ?
Glenn
:
The last one was released last spring. I’m not working on one now
as I am working on some other stuff. I’m
working on something with the Kronos Quartet. I
will be premiering that in October at the San
Francisco Jazz
Festival. So that’s a 25 minute, 7 movement
piece, string quartet with me playing with them. So
that’s taking up a lot of time and I’m working
with other ensembles now too… so to answer your
question, yes I will make another one and I have that
planned but it might be another year or two away cause
I have these other things that are priority right now.
David
: You're known in the music community for being one of
the premier drummers in rock. Is it a thrill or
childhood dream to appear on the cover of drummer
magazines and to be appreciated ?
Glenn
:
That stuff doesn’t really matter but course its nice to be appreciated
and to be on the cover of “Modern Drummer”
magazine is something I dreamed of as a kid. But
the older you get you realize that those things
don’t always go to the most deserving people and I
think the older I get the more humble I get and I
realize there's so much more I have to learn
yet. So even though it’s nice for those things
to happen, I don’t know….. I just get more humble
about it.
When you’re a kid you see those guys on the cover of those magazines
and you think “they’ve got it all figured out”
and then when you actually get to that place you
realize that, “man I got so much more to learn”…
musically, personally... and that kind of puts me in
my place.
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