Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Andrew Bird + Jimbo Mathus

Transcript

Andrew Bird + Jimbo Mathus · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin listening to Jimbo math this and Andrew Bird's new
0:24
Speaker 1: album These Thirteen. It's like taking a trip down South
0:28
Speaker 1: a century ago. Forgot to Get Oh, forgot to get Oh,
0:35
Speaker 1: got to get getting on Toome, forgot to get open Ontome,
0:40
Speaker 1: Forgot to Get. It's new territory. For Andrew Bird, it
0:46
Speaker 1: classically trained multi instrumentalists from the Chicago suburbs, who's been
0:51
Speaker 1: a successful indie folk singer songwriter and also recently acted
0:55
Speaker 1: on the fourth season A Farm Now. But for Jimbo,
0:58
Speaker 1: as a Mississippi resident, some of the music can hit
1:01
Speaker 1: too close down, surrounded by the ghosts in old battlefields
1:04
Speaker 1: of the Civil War. Some songs he finds almost two artists,
1:10
Speaker 1: Jimbo and Andrew first met musically playing for the sprol
1:12
Speaker 1: Nut Zippers in the mid nineties, a key part of
1:15
Speaker 1: the swing revival of the time. In twenty eighteen, Andrew
1:19
Speaker 1: and Jimbo got back together, exchanging voice memos and new
1:22
Speaker 1: song ideas. Over the course of two years, they recorded
1:25
Speaker 1: their new album The Old Fashioned Way, singing into a
1:29
Speaker 1: single microphone. In this episode, Bruce had them talks to
1:33
Speaker 1: Jimbo and Andrew about the varying ways they came to
1:36
Speaker 1: master their instruments, and now hanging out with Jimbo down
1:39
Speaker 1: South freed Andrew from the constraints this formal training. They
1:44
Speaker 1: also talk about how they managed to sneak a line
1:46
Speaker 1: about cell phones onto an album that pulls its inspiration
1:49
Speaker 1: from one hundred and fifty years ago. This is broken
1:56
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmonds.
2:04
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Head them with Andrew Bird and Jimbo matthis.
2:08
Speaker 1: You've got the terrific new album these thirteen. So let's
2:12
Speaker 1: just talk about how this album came about, what was
2:15
Speaker 1: the genesis of it. I've always wanted to make this
2:19
Speaker 1: record for the last twenty some years. You know, Jimbo
2:23
Speaker 1: and I worked a lot together in the late nineties,
2:26
Speaker 1: and I always just wanted to get him alone with
2:32
Speaker 1: me to do a stripped down duo record because he's
2:38
Speaker 1: he just has something in his playing and his singing,
2:41
Speaker 1: in his musicality that brings something out in me. For one,
2:46
Speaker 1: and it's also I just feel like people need to
2:49
Speaker 1: hear it. It's kind of a lost touch that he
2:52
Speaker 1: has with phrasing, and that's that's kind of been ironed
2:57
Speaker 1: out of music since the advent of radio in the
3:01
Speaker 1: music industry. But I just haven't really, you know, had
3:05
Speaker 1: the right moment to bring him out here and to
3:07
Speaker 1: do this this project. So it took me quite a
3:10
Speaker 1: while to get around to it. But once we did,
3:12
Speaker 1: we you know what surprised me is how much writing
3:17
Speaker 1: we did together, what a collaboration it was. I thought
3:19
Speaker 1: it was just going to be us doing a bunch
3:21
Speaker 1: of Mississippi Sheiks covers and Charlie Patton covers, and it
3:25
Speaker 1: turned into a big writing collaboration, which is kind of
3:28
Speaker 1: a revelation. Yeah, I mean, bird Bird he kind of
3:32
Speaker 1: sketched out the idea to me, but he was like,
3:34
Speaker 1: you know, do you have a couple of songs maybe
3:36
Speaker 1: you could send me. So, I mean I ended up
3:39
Speaker 1: sending them probably twenty songs or something, I mean, just
3:42
Speaker 1: because I like to just throw ideas out, you know,
3:46
Speaker 1: And so it kind of started taking more shape that way,
3:49
Speaker 1: like like he described, and became a much more a
3:53
Speaker 1: personal and original record. I think that neither one of
3:58
Speaker 1: us envisioned at the time how much we enjoyed it
4:02
Speaker 1: and how easily we were able to cobble these songs
4:05
Speaker 1: together and of course, I knew playing would be no
4:07
Speaker 1: problem and record and we've always had that. Now, when
4:12
Speaker 1: you guys were playing in the nineties, you were doing swing, Andrew,
4:16
Speaker 1: how did you know this was something you wanted to
4:19
Speaker 1: do with Jimbo? Were you backstage one night and he
4:21
Speaker 1: started playing a song and you thought, that's the sound
4:23
Speaker 1: I want. Yeah, when we met, you know, I met
4:26
Speaker 1: I was aware of the school the Zippers in their
4:31
Speaker 1: first record, and I met him in North Carolina when
4:34
Speaker 1: I was at a festival there. We were both into
4:37
Speaker 1: this early twentieth century American music, and for the Zippers
4:42
Speaker 1: there was just this convergence of a strange national trend
4:49
Speaker 1: popular trend with that that they were on the same
4:52
Speaker 1: path of. But there was way more going on there
4:55
Speaker 1: than just pop culture thing, because I really think of
4:58
Speaker 1: the Zippers is not so much a swing band as
5:01
Speaker 1: like one of the many eccentric Southern bands like say
5:05
Speaker 1: the B fifty twos or you know. I think of
5:07
Speaker 1: him more and like a broader than just that era
5:11
Speaker 1: of swing dance lessons and Martiniz and whatever. I mean.
5:15
Speaker 1: Jimbo would invite me down down to North Carolina and
5:17
Speaker 1: down to New Orleans and was introducing me to all
5:20
Speaker 1: these eccentric folks and playing music all the time and
5:25
Speaker 1: kind of hard living and wild life. But when when
5:30
Speaker 1: he brought me down to New Orleans to do songs
5:32
Speaker 1: for Rosetta, which is his tribute record to Charlie Patton
5:36
Speaker 1: and to his daughter Rosetta, then that's that's when I
5:41
Speaker 1: got really turned down to Charlie Patton, which is Jimbo's
5:44
Speaker 1: sort of personal touchdowne I guess creatively, and it was
5:49
Speaker 1: it was less of a swing thing and more of
5:51
Speaker 1: this sort of strange, exotic Southern music from the early
5:56
Speaker 1: twentieth century. And that's where really the idea for this
5:59
Speaker 1: record started, was that I just wanted to sort of
6:02
Speaker 1: showcase show people what Jimbo was doing that maybe in
6:06
Speaker 1: other projects of his. You don't quite here is clearly
6:11
Speaker 1: like Andrew said, um, I came from a real rural
6:15
Speaker 1: area with a lot of family music, so the whole
6:18
Speaker 1: folk music thing. It's just odd that we met over
6:22
Speaker 1: the era when he was both interested in the early jazz,
6:26
Speaker 1: vaudeville cabaret and so was I. Incredibly, we haven't neither
6:31
Speaker 1: one of us has done that particular style since then,
6:36
Speaker 1: but in our meetings and our hangouts back in the
6:41
Speaker 1: nineties when he would come to North Carolina. You know,
6:44
Speaker 1: we would do like I did growing up, which was
6:47
Speaker 1: set out under the tree and just share songs, you know,
6:50
Speaker 1: from the folk cannon and Jimbo. You're your parents started
6:55
Speaker 1: you out on mandolin, is that right? I started out
6:59
Speaker 1: on mandolin, you know when. And the way I grew
7:03
Speaker 1: up with music is very untrained. I played by ear
7:08
Speaker 1: like Andrew, but coming from a different site. It was
7:11
Speaker 1: just social music. There was no microphones or stages or
7:16
Speaker 1: anything or audience. It would just be the family and
7:18
Speaker 1: the friends, you know. That's the way I grew up,
7:20
Speaker 1: so it'd be a lot of drinking, you know, not
7:25
Speaker 1: me when I was six, but one of my uncles
7:28
Speaker 1: got a little kneebred and left his mandolin over at
7:32
Speaker 1: the house, you know, and I guess maybe for a
7:34
Speaker 1: few months he forgot where he had left, and by
7:38
Speaker 1: the time he came back to pick it up, I
7:40
Speaker 1: had learned the rudiments and was figuring out I wanted
7:44
Speaker 1: to play with the with the older guys and gals,
7:48
Speaker 1: and so at that point they had to buy me
7:50
Speaker 1: and mandolin. But your parents weren't musicians, right, it was
7:54
Speaker 1: just a tradition in your family. Yeah. They weren't professional musicians, no,
7:59
Speaker 1: not at all, but they were quite good and really
8:02
Speaker 1: just the social reality of music and just doing it
8:08
Speaker 1: for your own entertainment, your own enjoyment. It's like a
8:12
Speaker 1: pre TV lifestyle, something to pass the time. Of course,
8:18
Speaker 1: you do play funerals and family reunions, important milestones, you know,
8:25
Speaker 1: we would that's where we would perform, and that's where
8:28
Speaker 1: we would set up camp, and hours and hours and
8:31
Speaker 1: hours of music would pass, and sometimes days, you know,
8:34
Speaker 1: of just playing music, singing music, socializing and learning these
8:40
Speaker 1: songs and sharing the cannon. So I probably knew a
8:43
Speaker 1: couple of hundred songs by the time I was twelve
8:46
Speaker 1: years old, you know, just the roots. Now, Andrew, you
8:51
Speaker 1: come at this music from a completely different direction. You
8:53
Speaker 1: were classically trained. I think it went to the conservatory
8:57
Speaker 1: at Northwestern. Yeah, I mean I grew up on the
9:00
Speaker 1: north shore of Chicago and did the suzuki thing from
9:04
Speaker 1: early early age, which is sort of a prefab oral
9:08
Speaker 1: tradition if you think about it. It's it's a method,
9:13
Speaker 1: you know, by this Japanese doctor to teach children at
9:18
Speaker 1: a young age to learn music the way they learned
9:21
Speaker 1: as their learning language. So you're learning you know, Mozart
9:24
Speaker 1: Buck but also go Talent Roady and you know folk songs.
9:28
Speaker 1: And so I didn't learn to read music until high
9:31
Speaker 1: school and it was a bit trial by fire. And
9:34
Speaker 1: by that time my ear was so big I could
9:36
Speaker 1: learn faster by ear, And yeah, I was. I went
9:41
Speaker 1: through conservatory. That was, you know, I was always kind
9:44
Speaker 1: of bucking against the tradition and it was it was social.
9:50
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until I started going to like Irish
9:54
Speaker 1: music sessions on Sundays when I was in college and
9:58
Speaker 1: drinking a Guinness and everyone's sharing tunes where you know,
10:02
Speaker 1: if someone would start a tune and by the time
10:05
Speaker 1: then a third or fourth time it goes around, you've
10:08
Speaker 1: tried figure out the nooks and crannies of that melody.
10:13
Speaker 1: So that was, you know, remarkable, very much more of
10:18
Speaker 1: a relaxed social type of context like Jumbo's talking about,
10:23
Speaker 1: compared to like during the weeks being in an orchestra.
10:28
Speaker 1: You know what interested me listening though, is your tone
10:31
Speaker 1: on the violin. Because it's one thing to learn the notes,
10:35
Speaker 1: but you have a you have a very different tone
10:38
Speaker 1: playing this kind of music than you often do in
10:40
Speaker 1: your own music. It has a more country kind of flavor.
10:45
Speaker 1: I you know, remember when I was a kid seeing
10:48
Speaker 1: you know, your hoodie Manuin and eat Zoc Peerlman trying
10:51
Speaker 1: to do jazz. It wasn't all that successful. No offense
10:55
Speaker 1: to you, hoodie menu and he really didn't have the
10:57
Speaker 1: gypsy soul. No. No, what's it like to have the
11:01
Speaker 1: kind of classical chops you do and then say, Okay,
11:03
Speaker 1: now I got to play this other kind of music
11:05
Speaker 1: and maybe some of the things you relied on in
11:07
Speaker 1: classical music don't necessarily translate. Yeah. I mean from an
11:12
Speaker 1: early age, I would like listen to something on the
11:14
Speaker 1: radio and I would try to play it because that
11:18
Speaker 1: was how the Suzuki thing worked, you know. It was
11:21
Speaker 1: like a one room schoolhouse, you know, just learn the
11:24
Speaker 1: repertoire by year. But that age of like from eighteen
11:29
Speaker 1: to twenty two, I was just ravenous for new kinds
11:34
Speaker 1: of music to learn, and it did. I did have to.
11:38
Speaker 1: Playing with drummers did help me kind of break up
11:40
Speaker 1: the phrase and be my own drummer and playing the
11:43
Speaker 1: Irish music. You have to play your own backbeat with
11:46
Speaker 1: the way you're boeing, and it's a feel thing. It's
11:48
Speaker 1: not like Uhoti Minumen trying to play jazz. That's like
11:53
Speaker 1: a transcription of maybe a Grappelli solo or something that
11:57
Speaker 1: he might be playing, and it's just you know, you tried.
12:00
Speaker 1: I tried to do that first. I got a book
12:02
Speaker 1: of like transcriptions of Stephen Grappelli solos, and I was
12:05
Speaker 1: trying to read it, and of course doesn't make any
12:09
Speaker 1: sense musically, and it can't be really taught that way.
12:13
Speaker 1: It's just an intuitive feel thing. And it took a
12:15
Speaker 1: couple of years to kind of unlearn some things or
12:18
Speaker 1: break down the way I bode, mostly because it's mostly
12:22
Speaker 1: in the right hand. Now, I think I played more
12:24
Speaker 1: like a tenor saxophone player than a violinist. You know,
12:28
Speaker 1: there's a lot less articulation. I think where a lot
12:32
Speaker 1: of classical players revealed their stripes is in articulate. They're
12:37
Speaker 1: over articulating everything, and it's just painful to listen to. Sometimes.
12:42
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Andrew Bird and
12:44
Speaker 1: Jimbo Matthis after a quick break. We're back with more
12:51
Speaker 1: from Andrew Bird and Jimbo Matthis. When I was listening
12:55
Speaker 1: through the album this week, I was trying to imagine
12:58
Speaker 1: if I were to say to people, you love this album,
13:00
Speaker 1: if you liked and I think in the first few
13:03
Speaker 1: minutes it was like, if you like the Stanley Brothers
13:05
Speaker 1: or Willie Nelson or Steph Smith, their son House or
13:08
Speaker 1: Johnny Cash or Ricky Skeggs or Django Reinhardt or Clarence
13:12
Speaker 1: Ashley the band. And it just went on and on
13:14
Speaker 1: and on from there. So it's not I don't want
13:17
Speaker 1: to give people the idea that this is some antique style.
13:21
Speaker 1: It's basically kind of American music in a very broad sense.
13:24
Speaker 1: But did you have particular people in mind when you
13:27
Speaker 1: were doing this, or did you have a particular sound
13:30
Speaker 1: in mind when you were recording this. There's definitely no
13:34
Speaker 1: conscious template that we've set out to achieve, you know,
13:38
Speaker 1: or some recreation of anyone else. And my influences are
13:42
Speaker 1: so myriad. A lot of the people you just mentioned,
13:45
Speaker 1: of course play into that. But you know, the way
13:48
Speaker 1: I think about it's like the old Harry Smith, you
13:52
Speaker 1: know the Smithsonian collection. You know of folk music, how
13:56
Speaker 1: it goes from everything from Cajun to African American music
14:00
Speaker 1: to songs that are practical to like build a railroad
14:04
Speaker 1: to or you know, those are more than the bed
14:09
Speaker 1: rock templates that I use. Um not necessarily copying an artists,
14:13
Speaker 1: no never, but in the tradition, in the vein of
14:20
Speaker 1: a style of music, a region of music, it's not
14:24
Speaker 1: a reading of any antique forms or that's just who
14:28
Speaker 1: we are as people, and that that's true when you
14:31
Speaker 1: you listen to the Even when we were working in
14:32
Speaker 1: the early jazz vein, it was still original songs and
14:38
Speaker 1: original ideas, and some of which wouldn't have made sense
14:43
Speaker 1: in that era. We weren't like, you know, we weren't
14:45
Speaker 1: going around wearing vintage clothes thinking, God, I wish it
14:49
Speaker 1: was nineteen thirty two. You know. But uh, what surprised
14:53
Speaker 1: me when with the writing of this record is like,
14:57
Speaker 1: because we both usually work alone on our songs, and
15:01
Speaker 1: we kind of tapped into a little bit of what
15:04
Speaker 1: clarity and efficiency of like songwriting teams. You know, where
15:09
Speaker 1: Jimbo would throw out something like dig up the hatchet,
15:13
Speaker 1: you know where he's talking taking some like somewhat familiar expression.
15:18
Speaker 1: You know, he was we have the expression bury the hatchet,
15:21
Speaker 1: and he's like, let's dig it up, like, let's have
15:24
Speaker 1: a real knockdown, drag out fight, just because it maybe
15:28
Speaker 1: is an aphrodisiac or whatever. I don't know what he's thinking,
15:31
Speaker 1: but I take the I take that idea in and
15:34
Speaker 1: kind of run with it. And because I see exactly
15:36
Speaker 1: what he's doing. If it was in my one of
15:39
Speaker 1: my own songs, I would be have this obtuse internal conversation.
15:45
Speaker 1: But when it's two people immediately externalizing their ideas and
15:50
Speaker 1: there's a kind of a nice, clear, bouncy conversation going
15:54
Speaker 1: on with the lyrics, and that's it came together so
15:59
Speaker 1: quickly and gratifyingly compared to the internal torture that we
16:04
Speaker 1: go through to write our own song. Sometimes. You know,
16:07
Speaker 1: you know, that might be my favorite song the album.
16:09
Speaker 1: I think it's my favorite lyrics on the album. I
16:12
Speaker 1: was going to ask you, did you get that from anywhere?
16:15
Speaker 1: Dig up the hatchet, because now that I look at it,
16:17
Speaker 1: it's one of those that seems so obvious. I write
16:21
Speaker 1: from titles. You know, I get the title first, and
16:25
Speaker 1: so if I have a good title that I think
16:27
Speaker 1: is somehow intriguing, it almost spells out what the song
16:32
Speaker 1: can be about. So I don't have to sit around
16:33
Speaker 1: and dig up some idea or emotion or something to
16:38
Speaker 1: create a song. Because I start from the title. My
16:41
Speaker 1: mind kind of likes to flip things over like that,
16:44
Speaker 1: and especially colloquialism's regional dialect, things people say but don't
16:49
Speaker 1: think about it, you know. So it's like, yeah, why
16:52
Speaker 1: didn't somebody think of that? Well, I mean, that's could
16:55
Speaker 1: be true of any great song, you know, but that
16:59
Speaker 1: one is particularly cool in the language that it flips
17:03
Speaker 1: on its ear. But I had the title dig Up
17:06
Speaker 1: the Hatchet laying around in the notebook for probably I
17:09
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe fifteen years really, But I have to
17:13
Speaker 1: ask you, do you remember thinking of the phrase? Yeah,
17:16
Speaker 1: of course I do. Do you remember where you were?
17:20
Speaker 1: I was in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and my grandmother's driveway, you know,
17:25
Speaker 1: you know, it made me chuckle, So I knew, I
17:27
Speaker 1: knew there was something there. I just and so. As
17:30
Speaker 1: Andrew and I progressed in our writing, I realized, well, shit,
17:33
Speaker 1: I can just go back and just dig up some
17:35
Speaker 1: old song titles and I might have a scrap of
17:39
Speaker 1: a napkin or something that had I think that was
17:42
Speaker 1: the fewest lines of anything I seen him, but he
17:46
Speaker 1: you know, I had two or three lines. You did
17:49
Speaker 1: have that that bit of the bridge where it's the
17:52
Speaker 1: cell phone thing mentioned in pictures you uh, you found
17:56
Speaker 1: on my phone, which I raised an eyebrow at at
17:58
Speaker 1: first because I thought that that seems that seems almost
18:02
Speaker 1: too current. But I like it now. I think it's
18:07
Speaker 1: we needed some of that. The other line I wanted
18:10
Speaker 1: to ask you about because you know, with songs, even
18:13
Speaker 1: with modern songs, people you know, people like older technology.
18:18
Speaker 1: People want to write about trains and cadillacts. I think
18:22
Speaker 1: actually Rick Rubin had this conversation with Jack White on
18:25
Speaker 1: our podcast because Jack White was trying to figure out
18:28
Speaker 1: how to put tesla in a song, and he's like,
18:30
Speaker 1: it just doesn't work. But somehow in that song, the
18:34
Speaker 1: it's the line about those photos you found on my phone,
18:37
Speaker 1: it works. It maybe the first example of like new
18:40
Speaker 1: technology and an old song. I thought it was so great.
18:44
Speaker 1: You know, It's just I was just thinking, well, what
18:46
Speaker 1: are the things that cost the most conflict? Cell Phones
18:49
Speaker 1: causing more problems with people. You know, it's like the
18:52
Speaker 1: biggest contributor to you know, arguing and things like that.
18:56
Speaker 1: And yeah, so it seems like the most obvious thing
18:59
Speaker 1: that somebody would would bring up when you're digging out
19:02
Speaker 1: the hatchet, you know, And I thought Bird might just
19:04
Speaker 1: take the line out. But I mean I didn't have
19:06
Speaker 1: but a couple of lines. I thought about for a minute.
19:10
Speaker 1: I don't know that kind of stuff. Like, you know,
19:13
Speaker 1: before you had the Lone Gun songwriter singer songwriter, the Dylan's,
19:20
Speaker 1: the Joni Mitchell's, there were songwriting teams, and there's a
19:24
Speaker 1: certain division of labor and the sort of conversation that
19:29
Speaker 1: is kind of appealing. Yeah, you can make a simpler
19:32
Speaker 1: song that way. Actually, you can boil it down to
19:35
Speaker 1: the to the to the bone because you're not stepping
19:39
Speaker 1: on each other's toes. You know, it's a clean line.
19:42
Speaker 1: You cover a lot of you know, psychological territory. The
19:46
Speaker 1: lyrics start in LA, which is that where you did
19:49
Speaker 1: the writing. That's where I was located, and Jimbo was
19:51
Speaker 1: in North Mississippi, but he he started writing that song
19:55
Speaker 1: in LA based on his observations as someone not from there,
20:00
Speaker 1: seeing just how shocking the homelessness was in such a
20:05
Speaker 1: prosperous tourist destination spot as such as downtown Hollywood and
20:11
Speaker 1: then I he pretty much had that song fully written
20:15
Speaker 1: and recorded before, but I heard that line look down
20:19
Speaker 1: and see the stars, look up and see the gold,
20:21
Speaker 1: and I thought, that is, like, that's that line as gold.
20:26
Speaker 1: It's that's like your John Prine, like it contains multitudes
20:30
Speaker 1: in a few words. So I grabbed onto that and
20:34
Speaker 1: that was Yeah, that kind of sets the stage for
20:37
Speaker 1: the whole record in the sense that here's Jimbo, you know,
20:41
Speaker 1: coming from his environment as a songwriter and observer, and
20:47
Speaker 1: this is what he sees. And then I wrote a
20:50
Speaker 1: verse that says what I see, which is as someone
20:52
Speaker 1: who lives in basically in this neighborhood and drives my
20:56
Speaker 1: kid to school through it, you know every day, the
20:59
Speaker 1: people that live there that are are seeing it and
21:02
Speaker 1: trying to keep their humanity and when they see such
21:06
Speaker 1: in humanity, you know, and not be numb to it.
21:09
Speaker 1: And so that was the flip side that I was
21:12
Speaker 1: trying to offer to the song. It was a great
21:15
Speaker 1: flip side, you know, just don't you know, if you
21:18
Speaker 1: look away and you close the blinds, then even though
21:21
Speaker 1: you can't maybe change what's you see, but if you
21:24
Speaker 1: look away and ignore it, then you are doing a
21:28
Speaker 1: disservice to your fellow man, you know, and then if
21:32
Speaker 1: you look away, you won't see an avenue of help.
21:36
Speaker 1: You know, you won't see an avenue too when it
21:38
Speaker 1: opens up to you or it appears to you to
21:41
Speaker 1: actually make a difference. So it was a beautiful verse
21:45
Speaker 1: there that he wrote. We'll be back with more from
21:48
Speaker 1: Jimbo Mathis and Andrew Bird. After a quick break, We're
21:56
Speaker 1: back with Andrew Bird and Jimbo Mathis. A lot of
22:00
Speaker 1: the lyrics I found very direct, very vulnerable, certainly, Andrew
22:05
Speaker 1: maybe more direct and vulnerable than you're used to writing.
22:08
Speaker 1: Was that all a product of working with someone else? Yeah,
22:12
Speaker 1: I think, like I was saying, like in my own
22:16
Speaker 1: internal conversations that become my songs cannot often be a
22:20
Speaker 1: long drawn out process. The ones I write fastest are
22:22
Speaker 1: the most direct, but the ones that take years to
22:24
Speaker 1: write are very layered and psychologically complex, and working with
22:30
Speaker 1: Jimbo was kept things more closer to the surface. I
22:34
Speaker 1: guess you could say, I want to ask you a
22:36
Speaker 1: little bit about a couple of the songs Sweet Oblivion.
22:39
Speaker 1: How did that come about? There's a couple of songs
22:42
Speaker 1: that were all all Jimbo or all me and like
22:46
Speaker 1: beat Still my Heart was all Jimbo and Sweet Oblivion
22:49
Speaker 1: was something I had already written before that I just
22:51
Speaker 1: thought made sense for the two of us to play.
22:53
Speaker 1: I tried to make it for my finest work yet,
22:56
Speaker 1: and it didn't come out quite right. I think. The
22:59
Speaker 1: thing the good thing about that when was I was
23:01
Speaker 1: able to put that North Mississippi Hill Country guitar in there.
23:07
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a real, you know, something that
23:11
Speaker 1: really worked with that. Yeah, Jimbo's touched on the guitar.
23:14
Speaker 1: Is allows very simple things to be remarkable as opposed
23:19
Speaker 1: to just kind of simple or boring. You know. Can
23:22
Speaker 1: you tell me a bit what you meant by that
23:24
Speaker 1: by that guitar style. Uh, It's just one great thing
23:28
Speaker 1: about the Deep South still to this today, there's regions
23:32
Speaker 1: of styles of music that have been haven't been a
23:35
Speaker 1: race or or ironed out, as Andrew said earlier. So
23:39
Speaker 1: there's a little pocket of African American blues music on
23:43
Speaker 1: that's bass in North mississ Northeast Mississippi, in the hill
23:46
Speaker 1: country up there, they call it, and it's it's usually
23:50
Speaker 1: would be they didn't have a lot of instruments, so
23:52
Speaker 1: it would be a solo guitar piece, but it's very
23:56
Speaker 1: rhythmic and it's mostly on the bass notes. There's not
23:59
Speaker 1: a lot of treble and really in any of my
24:02
Speaker 1: guitar playing, but it's a rhythmic drive of a way
24:06
Speaker 1: to approach a guitar, and it comes from the like
24:09
Speaker 1: the old fife and drum tradition before they even had guitars.
24:13
Speaker 1: I mean, we didn't have guitars down here till after
24:15
Speaker 1: the Spanish American War, you know, when the veterans brought
24:20
Speaker 1: them back as souvenirs, you know, the Black soldiers. And
24:25
Speaker 1: that's a style they developed up here, as they call it,
24:28
Speaker 1: the Hill Country style, just like kind of drone droning, groovy, interlocking,
24:34
Speaker 1: not not so much soloistic and just just kind of
24:36
Speaker 1: interlocking patterns and grooves a little bit like North African
24:41
Speaker 1: very much. So it's very much from the like west
24:45
Speaker 1: coast of Africa. So we're talking Molly Synegal, you know,
24:52
Speaker 1: but that's the African Americans that were settled here as slaves.
24:56
Speaker 1: That's where they were from them by and large, and
24:59
Speaker 1: so they translated the memories that they had and then
25:04
Speaker 1: the banjo playing, which was before the guitar. They translated
25:09
Speaker 1: that into a dance social music, but it fit perfectly
25:14
Speaker 1: with Sweet Oblivion the style. So I'm basically just doing
25:18
Speaker 1: like what some gentlemen up here would have done, like
25:23
Speaker 1: Junior Kimbro or R. L. Burnside or Mississippi Fred McDowell
25:28
Speaker 1: or somebody. I'm accompanying him in that style. It worked
25:32
Speaker 1: really good. It started with a loop I made on
25:36
Speaker 1: the violin, like Pitscotta loop a couple of years ago.
25:39
Speaker 1: That was just kind of odd and odd phreeze, and
25:44
Speaker 1: I tried to make it work with the band and
25:46
Speaker 1: it just didn't. One of those things that didn't didn't click.
25:49
Speaker 1: It got too normalized every time I tried to bring
25:53
Speaker 1: other people into it, until I brought it to you.
25:55
Speaker 1: Of course, no chance of it getting normalized with you.
26:01
Speaker 1: So how did you record this album? Did you record
26:04
Speaker 1: it in a special way because you wanted so much
26:06
Speaker 1: space around the instruments and around the voices. We had two,
26:10
Speaker 1: you know, our SA ribbon microphones, the forty four. We've
26:14
Speaker 1: always used those. And also because the violin is can
26:18
Speaker 1: be a bit stride, and you know, see the ribbon
26:21
Speaker 1: old ribbon mics kind of take the edge off a
26:22
Speaker 1: little bit, and the tape is pretty key that we're
26:25
Speaker 1: no strangers to doing things that way. We didn't really
26:29
Speaker 1: have time for overdubs or to overcomplicate things. I'm a
26:33
Speaker 1: fan of realism in recording, you know. I don't. I
26:37
Speaker 1: can see right through productions, you know, the conceit of
26:41
Speaker 1: certain choices being made and producing a record. The biggest
26:45
Speaker 1: choices you make are like what instrument is within arm's
26:47
Speaker 1: reach and you know that there's that initial choice, but
26:52
Speaker 1: not I don't like the post production choices. I can
26:54
Speaker 1: hear them. They're so transparent, you know. And to keep
26:58
Speaker 1: things in the realm of performance, you know, is important.
27:02
Speaker 1: Can you talk a bit about Stonewall eighteen sixty three?
27:06
Speaker 1: You mentioned performance, It's a very different kind of performance
27:09
Speaker 1: on this album. Yeah. I was watching the Ken Burns
27:14
Speaker 1: documentary on the Civil War. That's something I'm sort of
27:18
Speaker 1: haunted by and return to all the time, just because
27:22
Speaker 1: of where I live and the battle fields and the
27:25
Speaker 1: history that's here. It was just a line that was
27:28
Speaker 1: Stonewall Jackson, the general. It was just dying words, let
27:32
Speaker 1: us now cross over the river and rest needs the
27:35
Speaker 1: shade of the trees, you know. And I heard the
27:37
Speaker 1: narrator say that on the documentary, So what is such
27:41
Speaker 1: a beautiful way to go? No matter? You know, And
27:44
Speaker 1: he's shot and shattered and his body's tattered and torn.
27:47
Speaker 1: They're all blown apart. That one just really when I've
27:50
Speaker 1: really never sung that song before. It was just one
27:54
Speaker 1: of those moments I don't really want to sing that
27:56
Speaker 1: song too much, you know, it's like it's almost too
28:00
Speaker 1: painful for me, just back in my chromosomes somehow. Well,
28:06
Speaker 1: I'm also basing it on, like they call it in church,
28:10
Speaker 1: the primitive churches, when you're lining the songs out, so
28:13
Speaker 1: the preacher will say the word, the phrase it's about
28:17
Speaker 1: to be sung by the congregation. He says the next
28:20
Speaker 1: line that he wants them to sing in real time.
28:23
Speaker 1: And so I incorporated some of that old hymnal shape
28:27
Speaker 1: note singing in there, where I say the line and
28:32
Speaker 1: then you sing the line. And Viola had the idea
28:35
Speaker 1: to just take all the music away and just home,
28:38
Speaker 1: you know, And in a way, that's one of the
28:41
Speaker 1: most important parts of the album, just our two voices,
28:44
Speaker 1: just not even saying words, just syllables or just a
28:48
Speaker 1: home under your voice. Yeah, I mean, I was It's
28:53
Speaker 1: funny you mentioned the ken Burns thing, because he wouldn't.
28:56
Speaker 1: You'd think your inspiration is coming from you know, the
29:00
Speaker 1: soil down there, but not a PBS documentary. But nonetheless
29:05
Speaker 1: it's like an incredible document that film. And it was
29:09
Speaker 1: huge for me too because I I learned that there
29:13
Speaker 1: was like a kind of like a hit folk song
29:15
Speaker 1: that came out of that documentary, Yeah, which was written
29:19
Speaker 1: by Jay Unger, like a guy in upstate New York,
29:23
Speaker 1: and I became obsessed with it's player right, Yeah, he's
29:27
Speaker 1: a fiddle player. He and his wife Molly Mason, and
29:30
Speaker 1: they were on Prairie Home Companions a lot in the
29:34
Speaker 1: when was that nineties, which I listened to religiously at
29:38
Speaker 1: the time, and that song paid you know, I owe
29:43
Speaker 1: them royalties because I played that for every wedding, every funeral, everywhere,
29:48
Speaker 1: and people just I always felt something when I played it.
29:52
Speaker 1: It was just strange. This modern folk tune was so
29:55
Speaker 1: impactful and also paid my rent for the first you know,
30:00
Speaker 1: when I was in college. You know that in the
30:04
Speaker 1: Pocabell's cannon pretty much kept you in soup that went
30:08
Speaker 1: when some one would come to talk to me about
30:11
Speaker 1: doing their wedding, they'd ask for Taco Bell Cannon, and
30:14
Speaker 1: I would say, how about how about not Taco Bill Cannon,
30:18
Speaker 1: Let's do a choking farewell instead. You love it. I
30:21
Speaker 1: do want to ask you about in an album that
30:23
Speaker 1: has many songs about people on the other side, meaning death,
30:27
Speaker 1: suddenly you're just on the other side of a red,
30:28
Speaker 1: red velvet rope. But it seemed it seemed as impenetrable somehow.
30:32
Speaker 1: But Beat Still my Heart, which I just thought was
30:34
Speaker 1: just a lovely song, it had a very different sound
30:37
Speaker 1: to me. I'm not sure what style of song that
30:42
Speaker 1: is exactly. I was watching a friend of mine who's
30:46
Speaker 1: about my age. I'm fifty three. I think we're about
30:49
Speaker 1: the same age. And he's a great musician and he
30:54
Speaker 1: has been his entire life. He's very well known. I
30:56
Speaker 1: won't say his name, but he has pretty severe mental
31:01
Speaker 1: illness and its psychosis. And I was watching him. I
31:05
Speaker 1: hadn't seen him perform in a long time, and he
31:07
Speaker 1: was on stage It'll Bar Down in the Delta, and
31:11
Speaker 1: he was actually just really having a really hard time
31:14
Speaker 1: on stage. He almost didn't know where he was and
31:19
Speaker 1: he didn't know what he was supposed to be doing.
31:22
Speaker 1: Type of moment in front of people, and that's what
31:27
Speaker 1: I wrote for him. Yeah, but that that theme of
31:31
Speaker 1: the other side you brought up something I didn't even
31:34
Speaker 1: think about. That it's not just someone being on the
31:37
Speaker 1: other side of the velvet rope, but in Three White Horses,
31:40
Speaker 1: we're talking about the other side. Or I've been obsessed
31:44
Speaker 1: with the line over the years and pops up on
31:47
Speaker 1: almost every record of the Fatal Shore and the crossing
31:50
Speaker 1: the river to between, like the threshold between life and
31:54
Speaker 1: death or any kind of threshold has been always like
31:58
Speaker 1: a constant undercurrent in my writing. And you only think
32:02
Speaker 1: about these things in retrospect when you have to talk
32:05
Speaker 1: about them when the record comes out. But yeah, it's
32:08
Speaker 1: interesting how much that comes up. Can you tell me, Jimbo,
32:12
Speaker 1: you had trouble with that song before? What was it
32:14
Speaker 1: about this collaboration that made it possible for you to
32:17
Speaker 1: do that song. I think just Andrew's voice, you know,
32:20
Speaker 1: just he's got a such a We have such different voices,
32:24
Speaker 1: you know, they blend together very well when we're singing harmonies.
32:27
Speaker 1: Just the tone of his voice versus mind. Maybe he
32:31
Speaker 1: just had a fresh approach to it. I mean, did
32:34
Speaker 1: singing Jimbo's songs like Burn the honky Tonk in particular,
32:39
Speaker 1: it's one of my favorites to hear on the album
32:41
Speaker 1: because it brings something out in my voice that I
32:44
Speaker 1: don't often write songs myself to tap that tone in
32:49
Speaker 1: my voice and that that sort of Marty Robbins big
32:53
Speaker 1: crooner thing, and I guess Pete still has that too,
32:56
Speaker 1: just kind of like a big romantic approach. Most of
33:00
Speaker 1: my songs are like every syllable is accounted for and
33:02
Speaker 1: the melody has already worked out, So I'm just kind of,
33:05
Speaker 1: you know, it's a different process and kind of the
33:08
Speaker 1: same feeling you get when you do a cover of
33:11
Speaker 1: a song you like, you know, you find you can
33:13
Speaker 1: sing a different way, you know, But I didn't. I
33:16
Speaker 1: didn't quite know I had that in me. Is that
33:19
Speaker 1: what came out on or in the Honckey Talk? But
33:22
Speaker 1: it's such a so satisfying every time I do that song,
33:26
Speaker 1: I just like feel the resonance in my chest and
33:29
Speaker 1: in a way that doesn't happen on my own songs. Well,
33:32
Speaker 1: I guess that's what a great collaboration is supposed to do.
33:35
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for talking about this. I
33:37
Speaker 1: think it's a terrific album. I hope everybody hears it
33:40
Speaker 1: when COVID is over. Is it something you're going to
33:43
Speaker 1: tour with or do you have plans for it? Yeah?
33:47
Speaker 1: But plans no, We're just it's hard to have any
33:50
Speaker 1: plans that the only thing I'm hoping is that they
33:53
Speaker 1: might try to pull off Newport Folk Fest this summer
33:57
Speaker 1: because it's kind of a it's a fairly contained kind
34:00
Speaker 1: of festival. It seems like if anyone could maybe pull
34:02
Speaker 1: it off, it would be them. Okay, thank you so much.
34:05
Speaker 1: It's been wonderful. We appreciate y'all. Thank you. Take care
34:07
Speaker 1: so yeah, Andrew, Yeah, see Jim Bye buddy. Thanks to
34:13
Speaker 1: Andrew Bird and Jimbo for hanging out with Bruce and
34:16
Speaker 1: talking about the inspiration behind their new album These thirteen
34:20
Speaker 1: Do you hear? A playlist of our favorite songs from
34:22
Speaker 1: Jimbo and Andrew's careers, head to Broken Record podcast dot com.
34:26
Speaker 1: Be sure to subscribed to our YouTube channel at YouTube
34:28
Speaker 1: dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find
34:31
Speaker 1: extended cuts of new and old episodes. You can follow
34:35
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
34:38
Speaker 1: with help from Leah Rose. Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler,
34:42
Speaker 1: and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our
34:46
Speaker 1: executive producer is Mia Label Broken Record is a production
34:50
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries and if you like the show, please
34:52
Speaker 1: remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast.
34:56
Speaker 1: The music expect any beats. I'm Justin Richmond, bass,