Harp
WILL OLDHAM:
WILL POWER
Will Oldham is bouncing around like a hyperactive child. In fact, looking at him right, now it’s hard to believe that during an free set in an independent record store in Cleveland a few hours earlier, Oldham admitted he was tired and depressed because the 10-date all-ages tour was coming to an end. Maybe it’s due to the espresso, chocolate ice cream and iced tea bottle of Maker’s Mark he’s currently consuming inside the coffee shop next door, but Oldham is clearly ready to talk.
Our three-hour interview starts with him explaining the logistics behind his current tour and ends with Oldham blasting the Misfits and 2PAC in his Subaru Forester (to show off the merits of his subwoofer, of course), but rarely does Oldham touch on his haunting new disc, The Letting Go. Aided by Faun Fables crooner Dawn McCarthy, the album shows Oldham exploring new sonic textures while continuing the hymnal folk tradition he’s explored on various other albums via monikers like Palace Music and Bonnie “Prince” Billy.
Then again, Oldham has always shied away from talking about his music, preferring to let it speak for itself. What follows is a rare glimpse into the method behind his madness—explained via Star Trek and Meatloaf metaphors, of course.
Why did you decide to play a small record store tonight instead of a traditional club show?
The main reason for doing these shows is to get myself into an environment where I can take in as much as I’m putting out, and I wouldn’t feel right about that in a venue because I’d be taking money for it. I feel free to do this in a way that I don’t feel like I have to give anybody his or her money’s worth immediately. Instead, I feel like I have to give people their money’s worth for money they’ve already spent on records.
When you make decisions like doing this tour are you thinking about the bigger picture or solely what feels right at the moment?
It’s both. The great thing about making music is it’s a time art, so what you learn ideally is something about the microscopic things. Interviews definitely shouldn’t be a big part of what’s going on; it’s not the most rewarding part of this whole thing. The question Drag City and I get a lot is, “Why did you do the thing that doesn’t makes sense?” I don’t know how to answer that. I ask what’s the problem with it and generally people say, ”There’s no problem, its just other people aren’t doing it this way.” Ultimately it’s the question that has faults, not the process. Did you see the first Star Trek movie?
Sadly, no.
It was not a good movie, but in order to become the captain of the ship in this star fleet there was test. Basically, it’s a no-win situation; it’s just a test to see how the prospective captain would deal with this situation. Everybody fails, but in that movie Kirk passed the test, and the way he does it is to go in and reprogram it before he took it so that he knew how to beat it. People say it’s impossible to do this in this way, but all you have to do is just go back a few steps and figure out why the problem doesn’t have to exist in the first place—be it distribution or advertising and promotion or weird live venues or playing on bills with bands you despise. People assume that you have to make these compromises all the time, but you don’t.
Most artists who have a record coming out in a month would pad their set with new material, but you took requests from the audience instead. Is that one example of your challenging those stereotypes?
Exactly. On this tour, it’s just nice to play in front of people and see what they can and can’t digest.
Isn’t the new material more exciting for you to perform?
The new songs are exciting because it’s a new kind of progression, new kinds of melodies, new kinds of lyrics. But the old songs can always shifted into a different key or played in a different style, and playing in front of people is a good place to learn how to do that. I don’t believe in learning confidence alone, you learn confidence among people. That’d be terrible, you learn how to do something and you practice until you finally got it right and then when you played it for people they didn’t like it? What does that teach you? It teaches to sit at home all the time. That’s not a good lesson. [Laughs.]
Do you feel like you’re still learning and improving?
Always. Some of my big heroes like Ben Chasny and Faun Fables can do things that I feel are lacking with the music I’m able to do. It may be enough just to listen to their music, but I think it would be better to try to go and try to learn about why their music is so powerful.
It seemed like there are a lot of love songs on The Letting Go, but at the same time much of the darker existentialism is still present. Does that seem to always creep into your work?
There are a lot of things that I’m using to represent love, although there’s no single tangible object of desire. With magic words like “love” or “god” or “death,” it could mean a thousand different things—and if you want to write a song that’s about more than a thousand things, you can begin by assuming that every way of jamming words together can be as literal as you desire and still be taken in a different way by every listener. In that way, these words take on another level of being. It doesn’t matter if you’re singing about a basement or Jeffery Dahmer or Bruce Lee. I have always loved “Bat Out Of Hell.” Do you like that song?
Of course.
Why? Have you ever had a motorcycle wreck? No, you haven’t. Has Meatloaf? I don’t think so. But I feel like it’s probably a translation of something that he knows. Maybe because he’s crazy, but people like Daniel Johnston can translate something literally from his life and put it into a song and have it be as weird and surreal and beautiful and powerful as Jim Steinman can with this motorcycle accident.
Do you feel like you’re able to achieve that emotional translation with your music?
I don’t know. I feel like the songs should be written in a way where I can approach them objectively each time and not feel like I’m going to burdened by the song.
Since you have such a huge body of work, I think it’d be hard not to reminisce about the things that happened during the writing or performing process.
It does happen that way sometimes, but they were made to be ignored on that level. Like today, making this set and juxtaposing all these songs you go back and remember juxtaposing those songs in their original construction and how that songs are interrelated—even though they were on two different records.
So why are you so depressed to go home?
Because I created a relationship to this kind of playing. With other tours, it’s really easy to put it off on everybody else and say I’m going to miss playing with other musicians, but I guess I’m going to miss with these audiences and playing this way. It’s a free tour and part of that freedom is the ability to construct sets in a different way. I built my life temporarily around that and now it’s going to be over.
But from here, you’ll move on to something else new and exciting, right?
Right, but you’re from here. When you are about to move somewhere else and change your life, two days before you keep thinking, “Why am I changing my life? There’s so much I’m doing right now that’s so valuable than this unknown thing I’m going to”—and the weird part about this profession is that happens all the fucking time. Could I do it forever? I don’t know. Maybe I could do it forever. Then again, we’re in the Midwest right now and it’s easy to leave the Midwest.
Not for me, I’ve been trying for a long time.
Oh, it’s hard to leave where you’re from. Why do I live in Louisville instead of Mexico? I don’t know, because my mom lives there and I know how to find the hardware store.
Well, you recorded The Letting Go in Iceland, so you probably get to see a lot more than most people who live in Kentucky.
Exactly. Between Iceland and today I’ve been all over New Zealand and Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Mississippi and Alabama. So yeah, I’ve been a lot of places.
Do you feel like all those experiences subconsciously affect your music?
Yeah. Early on in touring, I learned the structure and institution of touring with clubs and booking agents is not one that’s engineered towards experiencing the place that you play. Touring on my own schedule helps make the progression of time more bearable; it injects hope and aspiration into every moment because you think, “Oh, why was swimming so much more fun in this place than it was anywhere else?”
But as a musician you have a tangible album that represents all those specific experiences.
And rocks also; I collect rocks.
Do they have cool rocks in Iceland?
Oh god, yeah. Iceland is a volcanic creation that has tons of geothermal activity, so you’re dealing with all different kinds of crazy volcanic rocks and fresh sulfur sediments. Dawn [McCarthy] wrote me an email that today that her and her boyfriend are going there for three weeks of exploration. It’s a feast for the senses, but the cultural aggression is extremely slow. I like going places where you’re at the mercy of the culture.
That environment sounds strangely like today’s music industry.
Yeah, I think every industry is like that, but I do think that whatever quality you want from every industry it’s available to you. I know more abut music than other things, but I figure if you’re interested in bathroom tissue, the right bathroom tissue is available to you. [Laughs.] It’s just a matter of wiping your ass enough times with enough brands to realize who’s pulling the wool over your eyes and who isn’t.
Is there anything about the industry you like?
It’s nice to see the people who master and function within this terrible system and are still able to provide something of value. I would argue that R. Kelly and Johnny Cash both do that. Johnny Cash is probably the more popular of those two to argue for, but I do feel like those are people who use a terrible system and really are using it to the best of their ability. Something isn’t evil just because it sells millions of copies.
What do you think has been your secret to circumventing that whole cycle?
You wonder sometimes why a band makes a good record and then a bad record or two good records and then nothing worth listening to, but I don’t even think about that kind of thing [when I’m writing]. If you had to do that, that’d be motivation not even make another record. [Sighs.] I’d be like I need to get a job, something like that.