A Conversation with Tom Wilson (continued)

PM: I say to some of my American friends and Nashville friends, when I rant on about the Canadian scene, I say, "The thing is that they remember things that we're already forgetting."

TW: Yeah. That's really interesting. And I wonder why that is. Let's just say that that is really the truth, because it sounds really good to me.

PM: [laughs]

TW: I'd like to believe that that is the truth. Why do you think that is? I wonder.

PM: Well, I think there's a whole lot more bullshit going on down here.

TW: I got a theory about that. I got a theory about that in relationship to cities. If you look at music that comes out of Toronto, most of the people making great music and most of the people that you would know, they are not from Toronto. You know what I mean? Gordon Lightfoot was not from Toronto. Ron Sexsmith was not from Toronto. You know what I mean? Endless amounts of people that you figure are from--Neil Young, not from Toronto. Guess Who, not from Toronto. And look at New York--Bruce Springsteen, not from New York.

PM: Right.

TW: A lot of the great music that happens in major cities is not from the city itself. And as a result, if you're growing up in Hamilton, Ontario--or like Ron Sexsmith lives like half an hour away from me in St. Catherines, Ontario--you aren't influenced, and things aren't forgotten, and the trends don't change as quick in your life as they do in the big cities, and you're not as worried about keeping up. And I think that's almost the same as what you're talking about, maybe with Canada and the United States. Canada is kind of a little bit off the beaten path compared to the American culture. And as a result, we don't pay attention to it as much as maybe Americans do who are in the middle of it.

PM: And it turns out to be a beautiful thing.

TW: Yeah, I think so. It's honest, anyway, and it comes from the right place.

PM: Are you going to tour solo behind this record, or with a band?

TW: I'm touring with a band right now, with the rhythm section from Junkhouse and a guy named Jesse O'Brien, who plays with Levon Helm. He started playing with Ronnie Hawkins when he was ten years old. He comes from the Buffalo school of piano playing, Stan Celeste school of piano playing, which for a guy who's thirty years old, there's nobody thirty years old that plays piano like this. You've got to be sixty and over to play piano like this.

PM: Wow.

TW: So he's playing. It's just a four-piece band, me on acoustic guitar, and no other guitar player, just a keyboard player.

PM: Oh, so he's the solo guy.

TW: Yeah, he's taking solos.

PM: Beautiful. And is it piano, or he takes an organ out, too.

TW: Piano and organ. Yeah, he's got piano and organ and clavinet, and all that great stuff.

PM: Oh, beautiful. I love a band like that with no electric guitar. There's too many electric guitars now.

TW: Me, too. It reminds me of the first time I ever saw Elvis Costello. You know? Which was just Steve Nieve on keyboards, and that was it.

PM: So after this, what, the fourth Blackie will come out?

TW: Yeah, the fourth. We've recorded two albums worth, twenty-eight songs. We recorded it in Woodstock, New York.

PM: Where?

TW: Bearsville, the old Bearsville Barn.

PM: Really?

TW: Yeah.

PM: It's closed now, right?

TW: We were the last session in there.

PM: Damn.

TW: Yeah. And Garth Hudson came by and played, and our friend Malcolm Burn came by and played. Daniel Lanois has written a song for the album. A lot of great stuff going on for this record.

PM: So you recorded twenty-eight songs!

TW: In six days!

PM: Wow. Will they release the two albums separately, a year apart, or as a double album, or what?

TW: I think we're going to do them a year apart--maybe less than a year apart in Canada.

PM: Right.

TW: It's coming out in Canada on September the 15th, I think, and I hope it comes out in the U.S. around the same time. We're planning on touring. We're doing a bunch of dates in Canada through the fall, and then going to Europe and the United States in the new year.

PM: Great.

TW: So I mean, we just have to keep coming to the United States. We just find that people really like us.

PM: Yeah. And more and more people got to know about you. I talk up Blackie a lot myself.

TW: Yeah.    continue

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