A Conversation with Colin Linden

[We picked up our conversation the next day.]

Colin Linden: Hello.

Puremusic: Hey, Colin, it’s Frank. How you doing?

CL: Good. How are you doing?

PM: Very good. You in a proper place and space to finish what we couldn't do last night?

CL: Fifty-fifty. We're at Cracker Barrel waiting for some take-out food. I have a few minutes. You want to talk until the food gets here, and then if we still need more after that, we can continue?

PM: Absolutely.

CL: Okay, great.

PM: So, first of all, incredible show last night.

CL: Oh, thanks so much for being there, and thanks for the nice word.

PM: And what a great crowd.

CL: It was nice.

PM: Come on, Roseanne Cash shows up, Ethan Coen shows up!

CL: And Joel Coen, too.

PM: And Joel, too. I didn't meet him. I got to talking with Ethan's wife and didn't know who she was. And I said, "How do you know Colin?" And she said, "Well, Ethan knows him." And then Ethan came over and started talking, and it was only during that conversation that I realized, "Oh, this is Ethan Coen I'm talking to." I went, "Intolerable Cruelty, yeah, I saw that."

By the way, a minute on that, if you would. I didn't know when I was watching Intolerable Cruelty that you were in it--until up comes this singing preacher and I went, "Hey, that's Colin Linden unless I'm mistaken."

[laughter]

PM: How did that happen?

CL: Well, I'm in O Brother, Where Art Thou? a little bit.

PM: Right. That's right.

CL: And because O Brother was what it was, there were all of these musical events that went along with it. So I actually got to know Joel and Ethan and became friends with them during the making of O Brother and Down from the Mountain and all that.

Then they just called me out of the blue. They had this role, they thought I'd be cool for it, so they just called me, and said, "How would you like to do some acting?" And it took me about point three milliseconds to say, "Show me where to go, I'll be there, no matter what."

PM: [laughs]

CL: I asked him if he wanted me to audition for it. "Nah, you know what to do. Don't worry about it."

PM: [laughs] And so I hadn't heard "April, Come She Will" in about thirty years.

CL: Yeah, lord.

PM: Who picked that?

CL: They did.

PM: Wow, what a beautiful song. And you played it just like the original?

CL: Yeah, I played pretty close to it.

PM: Yeah.

CL: The guys say hello.

PM: Oh, thanks, yeah. What an incredible bunch of guys.

CL: Yeah. It's a nice group of people to be hanging out with. If you're stuck together with three other sardines in the can, they're three pretty good sardines to be stuck with.

PM: Whoa, those are some monstrous sardines.

CL: [laughs] Yeah, they're big sardines.

PM: It's a really superlative trio.

CL: Well, we really--and this includes Charlie, too, who is our soundman--did you get to talk to him?

PM: I talked to him out front. He was wonderful.

CL: He's a real part of the band. And really, the whole thing is mostly based around our friendship. That's the main thing. The most important part is what happens when we get together and play music for fun. And if we can extend that to the stage, that's great. But the friendship has got to come first. Sometimes when you start doing well, like we touched on yesterday, it's easy for those priorities to shift. Then sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit of a stick in the mud to say, "Hey, you know what? This isn't fun. Let's not do it." So anyhow, blah, blah, blah.  continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home