Wessell Anderson Gerry Hemingway Dave Stryker John ... - Downbeat

Marc riBot & neLs cLine
Ubiquitous New Yorker Ribot leads a bevy
of bands. Ceramic Dog is an aggressive trio
with a dreamy side. Spiritual Unity is an Albert
Ayler homage that searches for ecstasy in a series
of explosions. Sun Ship features guitarist
Mary Halvorson and parallels John Coltrane’s
rugged intensities. The Majestic Silver Strings
aligns him with Bill Frisell and leader Buddy
Miller, while providing a chance to sing “Bury
Me Not On The Lone Prairie.” His latest disc is
Silent Movies, an acoustic affair built on lyricism
and poignancy—two elements this occasional
wiseacre holds dear.
Of course, Ribot is known as a hired gun in
the pop world as well. A cagey colorist, he’s responsible
for vivid work with Elvis Costello,
Tom Waits and Robert Plant, dodging the obvious
at every turn and placing inspired filigree
into their tunes.
In Los Angeles, Cline created a similar career
arc, moving through scads of ventures that
found him broadening the guitar lexicon and
ElvIs CostEllo
on Marc Ribot
“After playing with so many people,
Marc’s sonic palette has gotten broader
and broader. He has stretched from the
angular, aggressive style he’s associated
with in one context, to beautifully voiced,
beautifully expressed stuff you can hear
on my ‘Jimmie Standing in The rain.’
There’s musicality in all of it—i understood
that the moment i heard him play
years ago. He’s never going for shock
value, or playing for effect.”
26 DOWNBEAT JULY 2011
autumn de wilde
refining an initially outré viewpoint. The Nels
Cline Singers—which, despite the name, actually
has few vocals—is a trio responsible for
a constantly morphing songbook. On 2010’s
Initiate, there’s a surging excursion here, and a
mysterious valentine there; breadth is the band’s
essence. BB&C, a hookup with Tim Berne and
Jim Black, recently dropped a gnarly free-improv
onslaught, The Veil. Cline can also lay
claim to some impressive hi-jinks with Jenny
Scheinman’s group Mischief & Mayhem.
But it’s Dirty Baby—a provocative collaboration
with visual artist Ed Ruscha and poet/
producer David Breskin—that’s had tongues
wagging of late. The elaborate project, which
finds Cline and Breskin providing a soundtrack
for Ruscha’s paintings, is a whirl of ideas that
never fails to fascinate. The guitarist is an insightful
orchestrator of ephemera, uniting myriad
echoes, buzzes and beats. Since 2004 he’s
also applied such skills as the lead guitarist of
Wilco. Of late, he’s been working with his wife,
JEff twEEdy
on Nels Cline
“nels can play anything. We struggle with his
spot in the band sometimes, but we always
come to a place that’s unique and interesting
because we did struggle, we did think it through.
The commitment we have to finding moments
for each person to express himself really pays
off. on the new record we have places where
nels can do his thing and other places where
maybe you don’t know that nels is doing his
thing, but if you took it away it would make a big
difference. He’s behind a lot of stuff on a lot of
songs. My 11-year-old son listens to rough mixes
on the way to school, and he says, ‘i’m always
pretty sure that if i can’t tell what it is, it’s nels.’”
James o'mara
Yuka Honda, in the duo Fig.
Concocting a steady stream of soundscapes
is job one for both of these guys. Odd then that
they barely knew each other before DownBeat
suggested this chat. But call them fast friends
now. Their mutual respect was obvious from
the start, and by the time the interview closed,
they promised to set up some sort of working
relationship in the near future.
DownBeat: You guys have met, but
don’t really know each other, right?
nels cline: We’ve never hung out. We had
lunch with Elliott Sharp eight or nine years ago.
Marc ribot: I was aware of your playing.
There are a lot of freaky parallels between us.
We’ve arrived at some similar places because
of thought and experience.
What was the name of your first
bands?
cline: In elementary school it was
Homogenized Goo.
ribot: I didn’t get my band together until
junior high. One was called Mirage, after the
film. Then we changed the name to Love Gun.
It’s symbolic of something…you’ll have to ask
Robert Plant or Sigmund Freud about its larger
implications.
cline: My twin brother, Alex, and I had
bands since we were 11 or 12. Psych, blues,
rock, whatever. At one point, the music was instrumental.
We’d drone and make stuff up; it
sounded like the Stooges without a vocalist, or
the first Wire album. Texturally and compositionally,
it became more interesting as we got
higher aspirations. We tacked on things without
knowing what we were really doing. In junior
high, we had a band I sang in. It was called
Toe Queen Love, which was a name taken from
the inside of the Fugs album It Crawled Into My
Hand, Honest.
Do you remember trying to figure
out the instrument back then?
ribot: I took classical guitar lessons, but
otherwise I’m self-taught. Years later I took 10
lessons with a bebop guy, but I was basically
on my own.
cline: Until high school I played everything
with just two fingers. My dad showed me
an E chord and of course the next day I had a
drone song with just an E and tons of fuzz. In
his autobiography, Keith Richards insists you
should start with acoustic to get the feel. I think
he might be right. But that’s not the way I did it.
ribot: Oh, I think there are no rules.
cline: Kids coming out of schools these
days are kind of taken with the sound of distortion.
It would take ’em awhile to come around
to what Keith’s saying.
ribot: I think the opposite is true. Anyone
studying classical guitar needs to spend a year