Two Ann Arbor, Michigan-based musicians, Jim Roll and Brian Lillie, interview each other via e-mail about their latest albums-- Jim's Lunette (New West) and Brian Lillie and the Squirrel Mountain Orchestra's Good Luck Fire Chief (Thursday). Several topics were covered, with Jim providing terse, Zen-like answers and Brian writing short novels. No animals were hurt during the making of this electronic gab-fest...

 

B: Your first album (Ready to Hang) is quite a piece of work-- kind of a scruffy post-punk quilt of roots music and alt-country-folk. If I remember correctly (and please stop me if I'm putting words in your mouth), Hang came together as a series of sessions with different musicians and settings, with an experimental "try anything" spirit. Lunette comes across as a much more layered and nuanced affair. What can you tell me about the process of making the new one, compared to when you recorded your debut?

J: Well you are right in a sense. The difference in recording technique was dramatic: actually both records were recorded with two big waves of band sessions and then a few overdubs-- but very little. So your first point isn't as striking as your second with regard to nuance and layering. The real difference was in how methodical Lunette was. With Walter Salas-Humara (of The Silos) producing, he brought a sense of patience to the acquiring of rich tones and the time required for interesting arrangements. He is actually a drummer first (this was news to me) so he paid a lot more attention to pacing, tempo, tone and finding "parts" than I did on Ready to Hang -- where I was producer (except for the song YOU produced!)....

B: Great production on that song, by the way!

J: Yeah, anyways... As I was saying: on Ready to Hang, I basically set up the mikes, kept the sound as clean as I could, and said 'roll it' -- no arrangements, no tone checks, no click tracks, just spontaneity. And it had its charm all right, but there is a lot to be said for Walter's production.

J: I want to take a slightly different tack with regards to your new (3rd) album Good Luck Fire Chief. We will get to production, as that is a highlight of the new record, but first I want to ask you about writing. I am always struck by your lyrical phrasing and it's daring forays into language that borders on being highly conversational. I am thinking of the now infamous phrase ' ...sitting around in my underwear, that just gets old, and your butt gets cold...' from Rowboats (2nd album). You are truly fearless in this regard perhaps as only Jonathan Richman, Daniel Johnston, and Loudon Wainwright III, and as with those writers your songs maintain their integrity as if they thrive on that vulnerability. So my first question is -- who are you writing for? In other words, what is your first concern as a songwriter? And secondly how does the writing of the new songs on GLF mark a progression from that of Rowboats and Waking Up in Traffic?

B: Heh-heh, you said "butt"... I usually write songs from the perspective of wanting to hear a particular thing or feeling or whatever that maybe I haven't run into before on an album and think of that process as being inextricably linked to my love of certain songwriters and their bodies of work.

Like, for example (and as you well know by now, Mr. Roll), Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are HUGE influences on me. It used to be that I sounded exactly like a cross-pollination of those two cats (not quality-wise, unfortunately!), and it has taken a long time to reach the point of being influenced by them more in "spirit" than in physical terms. What I mean is that I now feel pretty plugged into the traditions that these two writers have come to symbolize for me-- songwriting that is less about commerce or craft concerns and more about honesty, integrity, feeling and commitment. So, nowadays, after having written songs for twenty years, I finally feel like I have the credentials to say "Where should this lineage go from here?", and then try to do my part in nudging it along.

With the actual writing, I have this habit of not wanting to be one of those self-obsessed "diary" style songwriters, while also not wanting to tread too heavily into the land of complicated dense imagery and intellectualism. Those more conversational kind of lines you mention I like because they tend to break the "bubble" of separation between me as a person and the listener as a person. It's hard too get too pretentious and self-important when you just talked about your butt or how you used to visualize heaven as crawling with friendly spider monkeys. At the same time, I have absolutely no investment in the world finding out about the "real" me. I don't operate as a writer in order to self-disclose, but I'm not above using any tact to have my evil Machiavellian constructions do my bidding! (insert mad scientist laughter here).

As far as the progression of the songs on the three albums... Waking Up In Traffic was written about the time that my first major relationship broke up, which I have since discovered has been the catalyst for just about every crowning artistic achievement in the history of mankind (most people don't know that Beethoven's heralded Fifth Symphony was about a chick, for example). So it's kinda mopey and sad-sackish, but what I like about it is that it was the first time I was able to let go of my fears of speaking more plainly and less intellectually.

On Rowboats, I made the concerted effort to not be depressed and nihilistic in the songs, and to make the feeling part the most important. I also wanted to see if it was possible to write about death and dying in a straight forward, non-depressing way, and to see if it was possible to fit both the beauty and the sadness of life together in the same song. Who knows if it worked? It sure was a heck of a lot of fun to make.

On the new one I wanted to talk about love and lovers and all that gooey stuff, and at the same time talk about disillusionment, because I have grown to feel that disillusionment (the letting go of illusions, literally) is one of the main gifts that love gives us. So, the trick was to smush them together on the same album and see what kind of friction occurred. I love the challenge of talking about stuff that can get very sticky emotionally (like death and loss and delusion), while not getting caught up in it being "true" and "important". I don't know if that makes sense, but I am getting more into the feel of being alive and a part of all this weird stuff that's going on, than I am in making any particular emotional state seem very important to the overall scheme. What the hell am I talking about, Jim? Help!

J: I have no idea...

B: That's fair. Here's my next question for you: What effect do you hope to create with your songs? Like, if I was Joe Smith sitting in the audience of some bar in Austin listening to you, what is your ideal description of what would go through my head? What are the things about your songs that make them "Jim Roll" tunes, as opposed to somebody else's? And, for that matter, what were your specific artistic goals with the new album?

J: Well I gotta admit that I am not fully conscious of what effect I am shooting for with my songs. I imagine there are two schools of thought with regard to this question:

1) that the artist shares his vision and experience as honestly as possible and people naturally relate, or

2) that the artist feels he has options and chooses what it is he is willing to share with the audience

I suppose the third school is that the artist completely calculates his message. I fall in the first camp. My writing is largely subconscious (a lot of free associating in the midst of pop-length tunes) and so, then, is my effect on the listener. I guess I just think that honest art yields good results.

With the new album I was hoping to make a little more unified feel throughout than Ready to Hang and also to reflect a wider pallet of tone and feeling. I think we accomplished that.

B: Hmmm... (pulling out loaded gun). Okay, let me re-phrase that last question: I am going to shoot you unless you give us some insight into your writing. It may be subconscious, but that can't be the whole story! I mean, I have subconscious fears about corduroy, but it doesn't drive me to write songs about it. What motivates you artistically? Hurry up, I got an itchy trigger finger...

J: Uh, uh, okay!! Now just put that gun down mister! I misunderstood the question. As far as my writing I like to attach myself to as simple a feeling and melody as possible that creates intensity and expression. Most recently I have been attracted to compassionate images, the idea of life washing away pain in its own time... or rather acknowledging that suffering is a beautiful thing that shouldn't be avoided or attacked (in most cases).

It's really a twist on the subject matter of my first record which was looking at the same suffering from a much angrier and self piteous place. I like songs that move me emotionally without taking themselves too seriously. Hard to do.

J: In Good Luck Fire Chief I hear a variety of homages to various artists that I happen to know you admire. Yet it is very much it's own record. Can you talk a little bit about what you were listening to when you conceived and began producing GLF? And also your feelings on influences-- what should be retained and when an artist crosses the line into derivation?

B: I made a conscious effort to bulk up on good albums when we finally got to the stage where Fire Chief was going to be made. So, for a few months I only listened to stuff I considered brilliant. That meant a lot of Van Morrison (Astral Weeks, St. Dominic's Preview, etc.), miscellaneous Dylan, Elvis Costello, Liz Phair's first album, Stax stuff, Pavement, The Wild the Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, Court and Spark, and of course, Exile on Mainstreet. My goal was to carbo-load on greatness and to steal every cool idea I could wrap my grubby little mitts around!

I believe that influences are the key to everything, because they provide a very powerful magnetizing force that can drag you into your own greatness, if you let it. I am very suspicious of musicians in interviews who claim to have no influences at all-- these are usually the same ones whose entire written output is on their first album, and every subsequent release is just a rehash.

The best musicians, to me, are the ones who synthesize pre-existing forms and styles into something new. Dylan is a great example, taking country folk, blues, rock and roll, and imagistic poetry and creating one of the most singularly brilliant bodies of songwriting ever. Or Van Morrison, who weaves soul, Rhythm & Blues, folk, and jazz together effortlessly (just look at how he takes the standard R&B horn section and has them play using very non-standard Celtic-derived harmonies). These new conglomerations that they formed weren't created out of an academic intellectualism or bloodless reverence-- they came to be purely because of the passionate love that these men had for the music that moved them!

That's the best use of influences I can think of-- internalizing what is great about each one and smushing them together. If this process is done with the right whole-hearted feeling and love of your musical forefathers and mothers, then it can't help but serve to strengthen your own musical voice. What I believe is actually taking place when this happens is that you are being filled up like an apprentice, with all the energy of whatever traditions you love, until you get so filled up that it starts to spill out of you. And that spilling, if allowed to develop purely and naturally, is what we in music refer to as THE ****!

B: Speaking of influences, can you give me a run-down of who has influenced you the most, when? If you could trace it back to your first major run-in with music, and then up to nowadays, I think it would be interesting to see the whole line-up. And, what are your thoughts on the whole issue of influences?

J: Well, the big influences for me are Dylan, The Who, Hank Williams, Old Time Fiddle Music and Ballads, Lucinda Williams, The Band, Tom Petty, Alex Chilton, Bruce, REM, Green on Red, Steve Earle, Long Ryders, Beat Farmers, Neil Young, The Blasters, Richard Buckner, Elvis Costello, Beatles, Stones, Richard Thompson, The Silos, a whole host of sock hop 45's my parents used to have (Buddy Holly, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Big Bopper, Little Richard, Chuck Berry,) The Animals, Jimmy Reed, and then there is the indie records but I'll spare you that list for now...

Influences, as you said, are the core. You are so right when you say that what moves the artist in almost all cases are the artists that they loved and that energy has to come out in their music. It is like learning an instrument -- at first you are conscious of which notes to hit, how hard to press your fingers and after a while you lose that over-consciousness but all of those initial skills are still there. It's the same with influences. The consciousness might fade -- but the influences are there even if you are immersed in a problem, dilemma, story or feeling...

J: Brian, in Fire Chief you involved a host of musicians, and particularly voices, giving the record a real community feel. It's an interesting aesthetic and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about why you felt compelled to share the stage? What was your motivation there?

B: There are two reasons:

The main one is that I wanted to have a way to talk about interdependence, the fact that all of us are inextricably tied to each other in zillions and zillions of subtle ways. I mean, a simple way to see how huge our interdependence really is is to look around whatever room you happen to be in, at each thing that's there: there may be furniture that was purchased somewhere, built somewhere else, and based on a design from a whole other time and place; books written by countless people, using thousands of words that all had to be invented at some point by someone; clothes, art, even the fact that you live or work in a specific type of building that was built by a bunch of construction workers, who all went home at night to their own homes that are full of stuff with almost infinite histories, and ate foods grown by several different farmers. This is a really cool and amazing fact, if you ask me, and one that Americans especially tend to forget about in the light of our cultural propensity for feeling self-sufficient and individualized to the billionth degree.

The other reason is that I have always loved groups that pull off a more communal feel. Sly and the Family Stone and The Band are the two that jump to mind as being great examples. For someone like me who is not a genius or very technical minded, I feel like my real talent lies in working with other musicians in a very non-dictatorish way. I love all the nuances and brilliance that different musicians bring to a project, and would hate to be one of those composers who tells people what to do, down to the smallest detail (more power to you, if you can pull it off!). So, the natural progression of working that way is to try and honor the fact that any of "my" albums is a gigantic group project that involves the input and sweat of lots of folks. I suppose I could just write some kind of "We are the World" anthem to talk about the same thing, but that hardly ever seems to work without a major cheese factor. Better just to invite the world to play and sing on the album, if you ask me!

B: What are your plans now that Lunette is finished and about to be released (on New West Records)? Will you be touring a lot? Any plans for playing in Europe? As far as the whole touring thing goes, what has it been like for you so far? Do you enjoy it?

J: Well my plans are growing daily and exponentially. There has been a lot of energy swirling around Lunette. At first the national release was postponed from January 18th to April 11th! And I had a bunch of tour dates-- so that was hard. I played the dates and sold CDs off the stage, but it was a little awkward having press coverage and no radio. Anyhoo...

It has been fun touring. I get small to mid-size crowds that are enthusiastic. The only time they are not enthusiastic is when I accidentally swear at them like in Bloomington, Indiana, a few weeks ago when I said 'I want to thank you ***** for coming out...'' I meant to say you 'folks'. They laughed but coincidentally I did NOT sell any CD's that night!!

Yes, I plan on touring Europe this time for sure. New West has a bunch of connections in the Old World, and I have built up a nice following in Italy and Belgium, and parts of Germany and Great Britain.

The only hard part of touring has been playing with different line-ups from night to night. Sometimes I'll play acoustic shows with an accordion and then other times a complete rock outfit. It's almost always good -- but I have a little identity crisis at times -- as a result.

J: So Brian -- I must broach the subject. You have apparently retired from the BIZ side of the Music Biz, and some might argue at your creative peak. Why? What does it mean? Where will your energy go?

B: Well, actually, I have only retired from the stuff I hate about the music biz, not the stuff I love.

I love to make records and play live. I love to write songs and hook up with great players and thinkers for collaboration and inspiration. I also love being a big music fan and having "crushes" on bands and helping my pals do their thing musically. I intend to keep going with all that stuff still, as much as possible.

What I hate is the schmoozing and the constant traveling by myself/touring deal. It got to the point where I had a very good tour last August in Texas and Missouri, got to open sets for Eric Taylor and Butch Hancock in Dallas and Austin and meet up with some friends in St. Louis-- but I was still miserable by the time I got home (!)

I guess some people have the personality to pull off long stretches of traveling through unknown places, by themselves, with no money-- but I ain't one of them! I figure I should leave that to the more hearty souls, and the ones who want to take over the music world on a bigger level. Me, I want to lead a normal life, with my swell wife, living on our farm with all our friends, and watching the seasons change from the same boring porch each year. That's the one lifestyle I've found so far that allows me to be sane, stable and happy, and why would I trade that up just so I could get somebody else to pay to put out my records?

My secret dream and hope is to have a small-scale, enriching musical "career" on a level that allows for enough sales to pay for the recordings, and where the most traveling I do to play somewhere is within a day's journey from my house. Or, if it's farther away than that, then it has to be WITH A BAND and for no more than a few weeks a year! No more driving through the deserts of Texas all by myself, trapped in a little car with only my highly un-entertaining mind to talk to! Yuck!

I love to play live and absolutely adore making albums. If I can finish out my life by only doing shows I consider to be successful as far as their effect on people, and only releasing material I think is worthwhile, then I will have accomplished more than I ever thought possible back when I was first steam-rolled over by the power of music. Hopefully the amazing revolution of the Internet will help this happen, both for myself, and for all the zillions of talented musicians out there who can't or don't want to pull up their tent stakes and become gypsies all for the sake of fame or "making it". Maybe something like musicianswithdayjobs.com, where all of us fringe dwellers could live!

That being said, I still believe everyone on earth should buy a copy of our latest album Good Luck Fire Chief, as it is one of the best albums ever made...

B: Speaking of best albums ever made, what are your personal favorite songs on Lunette, and why?

J: my favorite recordings on Lunette change as you might imagine. Currently I get real excited about:

"Bleed (if You're Bleeding)": just love fiddle waltzes and the fact that I have an amazing band playing one and Kevin Wimmer fiddling (probably the best of the new generation of fiddlers, if not the best). Just a great groove and great drumming. It's fun and the lyrics don't take themselves too seriously -- yet they can be meaningful if the listener is in the mood.

"These Winds": a string quartet with a hauntingly beautiful feel. The score is by Mary Rowell and is brilliant. She's been a heroine of mine since hearing the early Silos records -- and she's played in the NYC avante scene for quite a while as well as in the classical scene. she can do it all. I finally caught a decent vocal take on the last day of mixing and it was the last thing we did!

I like them all truth be told. "1955" and "Lunette" are still the stalwarts, and I still think they sound great after 500 listenings each. The real joy for me is having such brilliant players on the record. Makes repeated listening a joy -- discovering the depth of their playing.

J: So Brian how about you? Favorite tracks? It's always an interesting question to the artist -- because as all of the readers who are musicians probably know -- the artist typically hears the songs way too many times. and if they have favorites after writing, recording, mixing and mastering -- that alone is a miracle! So?

B: I pretty much like all the songs about equally, as far as the writing goes. As far as sonic stuff and fun recording: I love the string arrangement that our sickeningly talented drummer/pianist Brian Di Blassio did on the first track "My Voice"; I like the whole rowdy vibe of "The Sound of Pretense Dropping" with Ben Wilson's awesome piano madness and some guy named Jim Roll on Keith Richards guitar, not to mention Barney's electric cello solo!; we had a total blast recording the three tunes where The Original Brothers and Sisters of Love came in and acted as the band ("Good Luck Fire Chief", "Once You've Landed" and the Dylan cover, "Changing of the Guards"). The Brothers / Sisters are monstrously talented, extremely fun and friendly geniuses who will someday rule the world and I am glad to be on their side before the revolution happens.

Each of the tracks was fun and intriguing in its own way, and usually there was this moment when the right combination of musicians playing the right notes would click and the song would suddenly spring to life as an entity. That "click" feeling is the thing that everybody chases in the studio, and it's always very obvious when it happens.

I agree that one gets really sick of an album by the time it's done! You set out to make the ki