A Conversation with Bill Frisell (continued)

PM: It's got to be an interesting relationship you have with your producer/manager Lee Townsend.

BF: Yeah, that's been... It just sort of developed into--I don't know what--I mean, it's all kinds of... We're just really, really good friends. That's the first thing. And then it's kind of a bizarre... But I think of us as being friends at the top of the list.

PM: Wow.

BF: But then there's all these other ways that we work together that are just on a business level--as a manager, he deals with all this business stuff that I could never deal with on my own, and he's like a buffer between me and all this...

PM: Nastiness.

BF: Yeah. Well, there's that whole thing, and then also a producer, that's a whole other world there.

PM: It's unbelievable that a guy could be all three of those things. He must be an amazing cat.

BF: Well, yeah. He's a good person. Yeah, I mean, it's just... I mean, the main thing is I just want to... I don't know, like we're friends first. I guess the friendship came... I first met him when he worked at ECM, when I did this Look Out For Hope album, and he produced that. So that was in 1980. It wasn't my first record all together, but sort of my first band--when I first got my band together. So he was kind of in on the very beginning of my whole trying to figure out what my own thing was, really.

PM: Right.

BF: And then we completely coincidentally... We both left--that was weird--that was sort of the moment when we knew there was something... We both left ECM at the exact same time, almost to the minute...

PM: [laughs]

BF: At ECM, that's where we met, and we did that album. And I had been sort of struggling with wanting to get out from there. So one day, I finally made this decision to leave ECM. And for me the hardest thing about it was that I had just started this relationship with Lee, and I didn't want to upset him. So I called him up at the office. I had just sent a letter to Manfred Eicher, saying that I wanted to leave. So I called Lee to tell him this, and I said, "Lee, I'm really sorry, but I just have to do this. It's time for me to get out on my own." And there was this complete silence on the phone. And he said, "I gotta call you back." So he calls back fifteen minutes later, and he said, "You're not going to believe this, but today I--we both did it at exactly the same time." He had decided to leave also.

PM: Oh, my God.

BF: And of course I'm sure it was perceived as some kind of conspiracy or something.

PM: Inevitably.

BF: But it wasn't at all. It was just a coincidence. But that was another thing that got us even closer together right there from the start.

PM: Manfred Eicher must have thought, "Oh, Lee's making his move. He's going to start his own label."

BF: Well, yeah, I'm sure it looked...

PM: "And he's stealing my artist."

BF: Yeah, but it wasn't like that all. It looked like that for sure, like we had been talking... But anyway, since that time, it was right after that he started doing managing stuff, and then he would produce maybe one record, and then somebody else would go--Wayne Horvitz has also produced a lot of the records. So I'd sort of go back and forth between Wayne and Lee a lot.

PM: Right. Whom might you like to work with in the near future, whether composers or songwriters?

BF: Oh, boy. Actually--I mean, there's always somebody, but--there's this thing I'm doing. I don't know if they told you anything about this German thing. There's a series of concerts that I'm going to be involved with in Germany over the next couple years. It's all based around songwriters.

PM: Really? I saw some dates on your site, but that didn't really spell it out.

BF: Well, the idea is it's this festival that goes over a long period of time. And they asked me to sort of--I don't know what my title is, it's sort of like I'm the musical director. Something like that. But it's more like I'm just going to be playing in these situations. The part that I'm involved in, it's called "The Century of Song," and they wanted to get songwriters to play their own songs, and then also to interpret other songs that had meant something to them.

Well, the very first one is with Vinicius Cantuaria and Mark Ribot, and then there's one with Suzanne Vega, and then there's one with Loudon Wainwright and Van Dyke Parks, and then Elvis Costello is going to do one. Then there's a couple more where I'm not sure who all is going to do it. But these are all kind of things where--I mean, I've never played with Suzanne Vega before. And Van Dyke Parks, I'm really excited about that. There'll be a whole orchestra and everything.

PM: Wow!

BF: Or a string section, big string section.

PM: And so does that go on all over Germany, or in certain--

BF: No, it's just in this one sort of--it's called the Ruhr. And it's kind of an industrial area, and they're refurbishing a lot of these old factory buildings. So the concerts are taking place in these amazing spaces, like some of these big old brick buildings that they've fixed up to have concerts in.

PM: They're real culture vultures down there.

BF: Yeah. And the thing I'm doing is just a small part of a much bigger... There's a lot of opera, and sort of more classical things. So this is just a part of that whole deal. But it's sort of a chance for me, again, to meet a lot of new people.

But there's always people that I'd like to play with. It would be impossible... I mean, there's always somebody. But at the same time, I'm really happy and inspired by the circle of people that I get to play with regularly. I'm so lucky to have this bunch of people that I'm playing with all the time.

PM: You've got an amazing circle of cohorts. It's really, really good. So over twenty years, probably a hundred records, one could say that there isn't much you haven't already done, but I doubt you'd agree.

BF: Well, yeah, there's always something else to do, that's for sure.

[laughter]

PM: And you've already scored a bunch of films.

BF: A little bit. I'd like to do some more of that, too.

PM: What else may lie ahead, undone?

BF: I don't know...

[long pause, then laughter] continue

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