| At the end of this
2009 profile in the The New Yorker, Will Oldham says "I don't
know. I really hate press. And it's . . . . yeah." And so a few years later
he's published an official 400-page interview that can be used in lieu
of ever doing interviews again. If someone wants to write a profile about
him they can simply consult the master interview, recently published in
the UK and due out in the fall in the US. For fans, it textually manifests
the fantasy of sitting down for a few hours/days to chat with Will about
his music
and history and performance and identity and the Incredible
Hulk. Also fantastic to turn down pages to look up so many musicians
I didn't know: Solomon Burke, Oum Kalsoum, Roger Miller, Roy Harper, June
Tabor. Otherwise, I first heard "For
the Mekons et al" on the Hey Drag City compilation soon after
it came out my first year after college and have kept up with every major
release (and most minor ones) since then and seen
him live maybe a dozen times, so as he talked about each album it brought
back memories. It's clear that the music helped define so many personal
eras/locales/situations, especially in the Nineties when I was extra-susceptible
to exploring the songs, deeply associating with them, co-creating them
over and over as I drove around. As I changed, so did the songs, so hearing
him talk about how his approach matured meshed with things I've thought
about my own maturation. Also great hearing about his collaborations with
his own personal holy trinity of Johnny Cash, The Mekons, and R. Kelly.
Would have liked some more talk about his family and relationships and
all -- there's a suggestion of family wealth that had always been the rumor
("Oldham County"?): international family travel to India, Scotland, elsewhere,
plus cabins on plots of lands in the woods, philanthrophy, etc) but he
also delivered pizzas in Providence. Maybe would have liked thoughts on
how class influenced the art he and friends made, especially the idealist
indie approach? I can't think of another book-length interview, although
Renegade
by Mark
E. Smith comes close (loved BPB's references to MES and the Fall, too).
Would love to read Volume II in 2030 after BPB records another 20+ good
albums (something to look forward to). Otherwise, for Will fans, this is
major and essential. I read it slower than I usually do because I didn't
want it to end. Would be interested in the opinions of people unfamiliar
with his music, although I can't imagine anyone reading this who doesn't
know everything from "The Ohio River Boat Song" to "Quail and Dumplings."
Odd, also, reading this right after reading Conversations with David
Foster Wallace -- it felt like taking the pulse of the two most important
younger figures in music and lit I've followed since college ended. As
Will says about David
Grubbs at one point, it feels good to know that, early on, I put my
money on winning horses.
Just saw BPB with the Cairo Gang (Emmett Kelly) and Angel Olsen in Philadelphia.
As you can see, Will wore yellow shorts and a pink long-sleeve dress shirt
and little blue sneakers. Angel Olsen in particular commanded the crowd
with stares and smiles and at times looked a lot like Anna
Karina. The chemistry among them made it mesmerizing, not to mention
the new campfire sing-along strummer renditions of old hits ("No
Gold Digger," "Ohio
River Boat Song," "I
See A Darkness") and new faves, especially when Will put down the guitar
and sort of did his Matewan
boy-preacher thing on "Merciless
and Great" and "Go,
Folks, Go". Will joked after "The
Seedling" about how the song was about killing your creative offspring,
which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but people get very upset
when anything is done to actual offspring -- for example like what's in
the news lately in Pennsylvania; at least in Kentucky we keep it in the
family, he said. For the encore, before launching into "Quail and Dumplings,"
they sang a few verses of the Frogs' classic, "These
are the Finest Queen Boys (I've Ever Seen)." They could have played
a few dozen more songs but otherwise I couldn't have hoped for a more memorable
night. |
