 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
A Conversation with Joe Henry (continued)
JH: I started running a drum machine through an amp and miked, and I'd make a loop for myself of something to write to, which got me into a different frame of mind.
PM: That was really brilliant on his part.
JH: Well, that was kind of an accident on my part, because he set me up so that I could come home and do vocals and just kind of work on my own time. But once I had a little setup at home, I became really liberated by the idea of what I could get away with just sitting and not being on somebody else's time.
PM: Yeah. "I have a bass, I've got a signal chain. I'm all set."
JH: Exactly. And I borrowed a drum machine from somebody, and didn't know how to program it, but started--it had, like, 500 presets. So I started setting up writing assignments for myself where I would just find some loops and say, "Well, I've never written in this shape before. What would that do to me?"
PM: Wow.
JH: And I also consciously started using fewer and fewer chord changes. Because I realized that with the singer songwriter mentality, where you're sitting and writing with a guitar and waiting for a song to come out, you find yourself building in every idea through the guitar. So there are too many passing chords, there's too much going on where you try to teach that to a band later, like you have to take everyone down this very narrow path and this very snaking path, where people can only follow what you're doing and do the same thing. It's not very open. So I started using fewer and fewer changes, and that really opened things up.
And I also realized that I always, as a writer, used too many words because I was articulating rhythmic ideas with syllables. If I wanted a song to have a real aggressive kind of tumbling groove to it, I used a lot of syllables to articulate that idea of rhythm.
PM: Wow, right.
JH: But once I'd put a specific rhythmic idea in place, once there was already a rhythmic integrity described, as a lyricist I was completely free to throw a few words out, maybe in a much more languid fashion, and then let the rhythm continue, and then meter it out in a really different way.
Once I got to that idea, realizing how I had gone astray as far as that was concerned, it was a whole new world for me. And I just started allowing myself to think very differently. At the same time, I wasn't thinking that differently, letting myself follow the ideas that I've maybe always had.
On that record I worked with some really different types of musicians. I worked with Page Hamilton from the band Helmet. He was the rhythm guitar player.
PM: Wow. I don't have Trampoline, so I don't know some of this. This is great.
JH: That was just kind of the beginning for me.
PM: Page Hamilton.
JH: Yeah. I used a lot of samples. I played a lot of things on my own. I worked with a drummer named Carla Azar, who's one of my favorite drummers. She had toured with Wendy & Lisa and Mick Jagger and--she's just fantastic.
PM: Wendy & Lisa are so amazing.
JH: Yeah. They've become really good friends of mine quite recently, which is unusual, because I worked with a number of people who came out of their crowd.
PM: Wow. That was cool music they did for Carnavale.
JH: Beautiful.
PM: Yeah.
JH: Really, that's kind of what happened. I probably told you more than you really wanted to know.
PM: No, no, no. Not for a second. It's fascinating, great stuff.
So...what happened then?
JH: I made Trampoline with them. The next record after that was Fuse. And I was working a similar way, but where I was groping my way in the dark with Trampoline, I had a method in place when I started working on Fuse. My second child was an infant at that moment, and I was just working at home doing a lot alone, working on it when she was napping. I had to really find times when I could get away with working.
PM: Wow.
JH: And again, it was another kind of game of figuring stuff out from obstacles, what they do to you. But John Cage always did, and I'm a big fan of Cage. I didn't look at it as a limitation, I looked at it as that idea of one more color on my pallet. It's afternoon, and my daughter is asleep. I may have 45 minutes, I may have two and a half hours, who knows?
PM: [laughs]
JH: And I found that I wasn't getting any less work done. And I was sort of bringing people in, here and there, to replace things I had played on my own or augment it in some way.
PM: Right.
JH: And at that point I felt like the gloves were off. And whether I was sampling Dizzy Gillespie, which I did on that record, or bringing in another trumpet player, I was wide open to that as an idea, and wide open to everything as an influence. I mean, I tried really hard to--I find very few people that I've wanted to work with have told me no.
I really wanted Dr. Dre to produce Fuse, and I couldn't get him interested. But I was determined that was a great idea.
PM: Well, it was a great idea. Was he just too busy or was it too weird?
JH: Well, I just don't think he was interested in what he heard of mine, if he heard any of it.
PM: Right.
JH: But I had fairly direct access to him because I knew somebody at Interscope and I got him a packet that I know he received, but whether he ever paid any attention to it or not, who knows. But it was an idea that I was dedicated to.
And because I started making that record with that idea in mind, I started off making what I thought would be a Dr. Dre record, and found out I had no idea how to do that. So what it became had nothing to do with that.
PM: Right.
JH: But it was certainly set in motion by an idea of wanting to work like I saw him working.
PM: Amazing.
JH: I got through that process, and I felt pretty satisfied about what I was learning. But also, as time went on, I became a much more sophisticated listener. I'd always been a jazz lover, but then I started listening to jazz--I don't want to say exclusively, but as far as entertainment, if I was turning to music, I wanted to listen to something that had nothing to do with what I did. I didn't want to hear other singer songwriters. I didn't want to be bothered by inadvertent comparisons, the way my mind races and--comparing myself to what other people are doing who seem to be in my camp. So I would put music on that was beyond me.
And that let me to go back to being a listener. I listened to Mingus and Ellington and I'd think, "Well, these guys are so beyond me that I can't even compare what I do to what they do. So there. I'm free just to be a listener again."
Or I'd listen to Edith Piaf, or something that I love, but I saw it completely from a different orbit. And I'm sure that that's what led me to say, "Well, I love how that instrument works, or that kind of progression works. I don't have to go back to a guitar there because I'm a quote, unquote, singer songwriter from the rock era."
PM: Right.
JH: "This stuff still exists and it's still alive, and I'm allowed to access that." You're kind of told in none-to-subtle ways that you're not really allowed to go there because it's not yours.
PM: Yeah, right. "You can't play that, per se, and so you can't use that." Bullshit.
JH: Yeah. I mean, I'd think, "I could hire a sax player the same way I hire another guitar player."
PM: Exactly.
JH: But I went back to what John Cage said when he was first studying Zen, and he worried whether it was his to study. And then once he got deeper into it he realized that was completely a foolish idea. Of course it was his! If he wanted to take it on, it was his. And I thought that way about jazz as an idea. I certainly wouldn't allow myself to be told that those tonalities weren't available to me. I decided that was ludicrous; I wouldn't limit myself that way. And if I wanted to hear things expanding and just going in a different direction--if the song took me there, then it was legitimate for me to go there.
PM: Absolutely. continue
