Antilogy Magazine
Reviews and Interviews
NATE WOOLEY Interviewed by JEREMIAH CYMERMAN
Nate Wooley is an internationally celebrated Jersey-City-based trumpet player who has been radically redefining the language of his instrument in New York City for over a decade. A contemporary of Greg Kelley, Peter Evans & Axel Dörner, he has performed in thousands of concerts with artists as diverse as Paul Lytton, C. Spencer Yeh, David Grubbs, John Zorn, Chris Corsano, Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton and many others. His current projects include a long-standing duo with European improv luminary Paul Lytton, an ambitious 7-part series of abstractions and additive processes on the theme of ecstaticism entitled “Seven Storey Mountain”, a duo with trumpeter Peter Evans, and most recently his own quintet which pays tribute to his upbringing in the jazz tradition and features Josh Sinton, Matt Moran, Eivind Opsvik & Harris Eisenstadt. Whether he’s working as a sideman in a conventional jazz setting or playing solo amplified trumpet concerts in DIY spaces, Nate always brings a striking honesty and an inquisitive nature to his performances. I spoke with Nate in my apartment on April 10th, 2010. Over the course of two hours and several fine crafted Belgian beers we spoke on improvisation, releasing albums and what makes music meaningful to us.
[l to r: Nate Wooley, Jeremiah Cymerman. photo by Yuko Tonohira]
JC: I've been thinking about how economy influences the choices that I make as a composer/conceptualist. Improvisation has always been central to the way that I make music and I’m beginning to feel like I need to focus on it more because from an economic standpoint it seems to make more sense…
NW: I'm not sure that I feel the same way. I think that we're both trying to be better improvisers but I’ve never really thought about it in terms of economics. Although it's a pain in the ass and it's expensive to go into the studio and make a record I am different from you because my studio projects are not necessarily as far reaching as yours. The idea of bringing a string quartet into the studio is not something that has never crossed my mind. To me the idea of studio versus live recording or improvising versus composition is that the things that I do in the studio can be done at home so the composition aspect for me has always been "how can I make this work economically or how can I just make a composition that I can just work on at home alone?" So almost everything that I've done compositionally in the past five years has been tape related because I can do it at home and it's very cheap. And that way if it doesn't come out it doesn't come out. I feel that in that way I follow much more the model of the noise musician where they'll figure out a way to get it out if they believe in it. It may not be in this pristine way that an improviser or jazz musician would want it to come out, on a large label with lots of backing, beautiful cover art, etc. It's definitely much more of a lo-fi, do-it-yourself vibe...
JC: I've always gotten the feeling that that was a central part of your aesthetic from the get-go...
NW: Yes, that's it, it is a personal thing. Those are the records that I like to hear anyway. I can get turned off really quickly by a record if it sounds slick to me. For me that is the number one thing that will kill a record for me. If it sounds slick, if it sounds over-produced, if it sounds edited to take out mistakes and remove the humanity of it... This is what happens a lot in classical music recordings right now, especially for trumpet soloists, is that they will punch in almost every note and you can hear it. Those sorts of things have always turned me off and I feel like they're missing something that can be heard in a cassette release that's super lo-fi, that you can tell was done in one shot, warts and all. It's the same thing that excites me about the old British guys, they would play for 45 minutes and the record is 45 minutes long. There might be some parts that sound horrible because they got lost but you start to hear how they get out of it and what is exciting is being let into that process.
JC: So what we're talking about is the documentation of a moment or event versus the creation of a multi-layered sonic creation. My latest record is not a representation of four musicians sitting in a room. I would say it’s the sound of my reinterpretation of four musicians sitting in a room. I really wanted to take the role of composer/producer to a hyper-realized place…
NW: But I would say that it straddles a line because you can re-recreate it live but you also have lee-way to change the parameters in live performance and there is room for improvisation so it seems like you're covering both sides of it and I think that it does it successfully which is really hard to do. It doesn't sound like an improv record but it does have these elements; I've heard the record and I've seen live twice and it matches up but I still got the feeling that I was hearing three distinct performances. That's something that I think is really hard to do, even in something like jazz music, where you write tunes and that's the point, you write a tune because it's re-creatable but at the same time gives this freedom and space for the musicians to do something different but it's hardly ever successful for me ,where as a piece like yours is successful. I don't know what it is about the parameters that you set that make it more successful to me; it might just be subjective...
JC: It could also just be the relationship that you and I have as individuals. Maybe if you had never met me before you would say this record is really stupid, or you wouldn't like the record as much which makes me wonder about who are our audiences. When I am working on a piece of music, whether I'm writing, recording, mixing or whatever I do think about specific individuals. I think about you, I think about Matt Welch, about [Jessica] Pavone or any other number of people in my peer group who I work with, who I respect and whose opinions mean a lot to me. How will they feel about this music? Will they find this interesting? And that seems to be the extent to which I think about people taking my music in and sometimes it makes me wonder if I am setting traps for myself because I am perhaps building walls around myself that I cannot speak beyond...
NW: That could be true if the only people that ever came to hear your music were me and Pavone and Welch but that's not the case. I'm the same way, I'm always making music for specific people whether or not I'm actually being overt about it. Say I'm making a piece of music where I'm really thinking about you, if I feel strongly enough about it to deal with an aesthetic that has you in mind you are one person but that doesn't preclude anyone else having the same set of interests that you have. So I don't think of it necessarily as putting up walls of audience as much as I think of it as sending the product, and please pardon that expression, to a very specific audience. If I make a piece of music that I feel that you will like than I am making a piece of music that people like you, who have similar interests will like. I'm not doing it in a way that is "Oh I will capture this particular market" but just because things are the way they are and people are the way they are there will be some people who identify with it in a similar way that you identify with it or they'll have parts of what you have that make you interesting that would make them interested in that music. So when you're doing your string quartet and maybe you're thinking of Welch, there are people out there who have some part of his personality that would also latch on to that music.
JC: Yeah, Matt comes from somewhere, I come from somewhere, you come from somewhere...
NW: We all have our history and it's more like you're tapping into an audience that has a history that can relate to what you're doing so I've never really seen any problem with that because in a way it's silly to make a piece and then throw it up into the air and let the seeds fall where they may because that's like leaving things up to chance. If you're thinking specifically of not necessarily an audience but of what you're trying to do and whoever may encompass those ideas to you then you have a better shot of actually finding an audience. I think. Or maybe that audience finding you or you creating something that has a specific trajectory that may draw people in that you may not know.
JC: Wouldn't that be something! It's sort of a humbling thing and a difficult thing to admit but it's nice when people come to your show that you've never met before!
NW: Exactly. It's really nice and when they like it it's even better! I like people that I don't know. For all my self-imposed monastic behavior I like being at shows and people come up that I've never met and want to talk about music. That's really great.
JC: I guess the other side of why I build these walls would be partially based on fear in that I want people to really understand and be kind towards the music that I am presenting and I guess that I feel that there is no way that someone who doesn't know me really well can really get that and offer the ear that I would want the music to be met with. It's like we put out these records and because of the way that things work they're not accurate representations of what we're up to now, they're representations of what we were up to a year ago, two years ago...
NW: Especially at our age things move really fast. The way that you refine a language at a younger age is different (in most cases, although there are exceptions) to someone In the 30th or 40th year of their creative career. At their age, the changes are more subtle and abstract, while we are still dealing with large stylistic shifts.
JC: How do you deal with reconciling recent aesthetic choices that you might find regrettable so soon after you make them? For example, in my own case I look at the liner notes from my solo cd [In Memory of the Labyrinth System, Tzadik, 2008] from two years ago and I see that I quoted Jacques Attali from his book Noise and now I feel like that was an incredibly arrogant and brash thing to do...
NW: Why arrogant?
JC: Because what the fuck does a 27 year old know about Attali? Maybe a lot but now it just seems presumptuous that I would align myself with him. Certainly he is talking about something that relates to anyone who engages in creative music making but I guess what I'm saying is that when I look and listen back sometimes all I hear are mistakes, you hear stuff that wouldn't do or you would do differently or perhaps you second guess. It seems like when we're 60 the picture will be clearer, maybe because most of our trajectory will be behind us, and we will see how all the pieces fit together and inform one another but in the present it's really difficult. How do you deal with listening/looking back over the last few years and coming across things that maybe you wish you would have done differently?
NW: I've always felt like there are two ways of thinking about improvising, and I've always thought of myself as improviser over a composer or jazz musician or anything else. That's always been the ideal, improviser with a capital "I". There are, in my mind at least, two ways that you can do that. One is to be a results based improviser. So that means when you create something, whether in concert or recording you do it to elicit a certain response and you do it to achieve some result, whatever that result is; becoming a very popular record or receiving critical acclaim or just making a certain sect of people feel something or whatever, whatever your result is. And then there's process-based improvisation which is more like what you were talking about, capturing a moment in time. We talked about it in a very clear-cut way, in the Derek Bailey school of "we captured this moment in time, 45 minutes and it will never be changed" and that is an extreme example but I've always thought of the records as being something that captured a particular moment in my development. So the first solo record is one that now I wouldn't do. I still deal with some of that language but the way that it was put together, some of the recording techniques, some of the actual language itself I wouldn't use. The pacing would be different, a lot of things would be different but I listen back to it and I say "yeah, that was where I was at that time". That has a lot to do with what "The Almond" or "Trumpet/Amplifier" too. You go from point X to point Y and look at the output, and this is a little bit of an egocentric way to do it, but when it's all said and done hopefully you can put the records in chronological order and you can get an idea of how the brain was working...
JC: Well that's the idea...
NW: My favorite record that I've ever done is the trio with Fred Lomberg-Holm and Jason Roebke [Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing, Porter Records, 2009] and it's the most warty... there are things that are just wrong on there, things that are uncomfortable, there are things that musically no one would ever do and we left it all in there and I'm really happy with it because it's a real process-oriented thing. It's where we were at that time and I think it's a really honest, raw record. So that's where my thinking is. I might go back and look at the way that I presented something and be upset about it and that's the process of me growing as a human being. Something like using the title "Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller" which is a fairly emo title, was where I was at the time and that's maybe not the title that I would choose to use now but at the time that's where my head was. That's where I was and now I'm in a different place and hopefully in ten years I'll be in another place.
JC: But let's say it's after a concert and you have all your cds for sale and somebody has never heard any of them and they want to buy either Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing or Wrong Shape to be a Story Teller what do you tell them?
NW: It's a good question and I think it's one of those rare points in time where you can actually really engage with someone about what you're doing and that has happened where someone has only had $10 and wanted to know which one to get. You kind of have the opportunity to go through the cds with them and say "well this is this and this is this... what do you like? If you liked what you heard tonight you might like this, etc"
JC: I feel like I'm at a place where if someone wants to buy a cd from me I sort of have to say "No you have to take these two or three because this one won't make sense without this one..." I'd almost rather give them a second one for free so that they can see how it makes sense, the arc...
NW: I've definitely done that. And we're in an era where you get paid in cds man. I've got cds and I'm happy to give them away. I don't want them in my apartment. I keep one for myself and the rest I want to get out of my apartment as soon as fucking possible. I would rather have some kid in Chicago listening to my discs than leave them in my house. It's not doing me any good there. I see what you're saying about things not making sense without each other but you also can't really present the whole picture to them. I have certain combinations of things that make sense in groupings. And I think you have this too, these branches of development; so you have one branch that makes more sense going along the solo clarinet record and one that makes more sense going along the string quartet record. I have one that goes along the jazz path and one that goes along a noise path. Then you can see what they're interested in and then say "maybe you'll like this side of the merch table..." I mean look at [John] Zorn, he's got like five or more paths. Maybe someone won't be interested in all five paths at once. I certainly have things of his that I'm less interested in than others but you can take one of those veins and follow it all the way out.
JC: I feel like as artists, the work really will not make sense to anybody, not even ourselves, until it begins to resemble a body of work that can be examined. It's not going to be two cds, it's not going to be 100 concerts, and it’s probably not going to be 5 cds and 800 concerts, or whatever version of this you choose... I really feel like you can make very few definitive statements until there's a body of work, however small or large, to look at and consider.
NW: It's interesting. Peter [Evans] and I had a conversation about that once, and I don't know how he feels about it now and I don't want to speak for him, but the idea was, if I remember correctly, his attitude was "I want to have a real control over my body of work. I put out a solo record, then I put out a second solo record and everything I do is keeping a really broad picture in mind where someday, 30 years down the road what will that look like" which I think I think is really beautiful and I think for him makes a lot of sense and I think that he will be well served by that, but for me I'm more all-inclusive, like “here's this branch that went somewhere and then died but it's still part of everything else that's gone on”. So for me I want everything to be out there in a way, you know? I want it to be like a huge, cloudy picture as opposed to what I think he wants which is a very clean, linear picture. I think that that is just a general difference in our aesthetics. That's the way that I view the idea of a body of work... How do you view it? You seem to put out very specific projects...
JC: Yes, and I would like to continue like that for a real variety of reasons. One part of that really goes back to what I think is really a prevalent attitude and working method in New York, and I'm not dissing it or saying that it's right or wrong, is the going in to the studio and making a record in four hours kind of thing. I've always been very slow and I just can't work like that. It's almost like and OCD kind of thing where if I'm working on something I have very little attention for other things. I really need to give 150% of my energy to a project. I also like to look really closely at the relationship between the projects so that at least I can understand how they relate to each other. I also don’t really want to release more than once cd a year. It just seems like one is enough and they’re each really special to me…
But I think a really good example of someone who works with a lot of seemingly disparate ideas in way that works is Matt Bauder. He is a phenomenal saxophonist and so far he’s released an eletroacoustic record, a doo-wop record, a jazz quintet and a chamber music record. And I kind of feel like with Matt, it’s really not going to make sense to a lot of people until you can put all these things side by side and together you see this really broad picture of a great artist…
NW: We’re in New York at a time where there is a generation that are all record geeks and have grown up with the internet and access to a ton of different music so yeah, it’s no uncommon and in fact it is expected to hear a musician who has a command of like 6 or 7 completely different styles of music or aesthetics. But with him I’m just constantly amazed at how many different things he really has a handle on AND is still able to sound like himself. It’s like he just bends his will into this box but he understands the math of it. There is a math to playing Afrobeat, there is a math to playing straight ahead and he understands that but can plug in his own kind of thing into the equation and make it work.
JC: I think the music really benefits when you have at least one strong touchstone. Like with Matt, he has a really strong relationship with his instrument and the history of his instrument. And you can hear that in everything that he does. It helps to center a lot of what he does I think. I hear that with you- even when you do the amplified trumpet thing, it’s still about the trumpet. I love Naked City and Mr. Bungle but I do feel like they have inspired some really second rate bands who have this idea that from a compositional standpoint you can just stack a bunch of different musical ideas up against one another and VOILA you’ve got a piece. I mean with Zorn and those guys, they really have a profound knowledge and love of all those forms with which they were working and that’s ONE of the reasons that their projects worked.
NW: Like talking about [William] Basinksi earlier, there’s a million people doing similar experiments with tapes but why is his so special? I was talking with Anthony Coleman about Ethiopiques records. In a way if you really divorce them from a lot of stuff they’re like bad funk records, you know? But there’s something about those records that sound just totally amazing. There’s something about the sound of the record, there’s something about the way that they play the grooves… But what’s the difference? What’s the difference between a guy like Matt who has a complete command of the history of the saxophone and the other million guys who just got out of college jazz programs who might have the exact same command over the instrument? There’s something to be said about the personality of the player I think. There’s just some kind of intangible that I don’t really have a handle on.
JC: Well, I think it’s a lot of things. I think one thing is that there is a big difference between what a 22 year old does and what a 35 year old does. And that thing is experience. Today anybody with a laptop, an Mbox and Myspace page is a recording artist. And that’s great but it can’t be just that. You can’t just be an isolated artist, not working with other people and expect the shit that you make to be on a higher level. It seems like the age that we live in encourages that type of isolation but, and especially as you’re coming up, you need to make music & make art with other people and play concerts. So what are we hearing in Basinksi’s music and in Matt’s music? I think it’s largely a matter of experience. And I think it’s having a big heart…
NW: Well, it’s different for every artist. if you listen to Lee Konitz now as opposed to Lee Konitz in 1950 it’s a much different thing and it’s an unquantifiable experiential thing obviously. That doesn’t happen with everyone though. I mean in a lot of ways Sonny Rollins was more valid musically in the 1960s than he is now so it’s really got to be a person to person thing. Why has Konitz gotten more interesting with age and Rollins less? But that could be their connection with experience too. Not everybody allows their experience to come out in their music. Why was Rollins more interesting in the 60s? It’s not necessarily that he was putting his experiences into his music; it may have just been that physically he was at the height of his power. Where as Konitz is now replacing the physical dexterity with experience.
JC: It’s obviously different to every person.
NW: And I think that there are some artists that are never going to allow their personality into their music. I think that there are some people that just don’t have that path open to them. And it takes on a very different thing…
JC: I feel like a lot of it is how we choose to relate to the world and how accepting we are of what comes our way. I got to be around Anthony Braxton for an afternoon about 5 years ago when he was doing his tuba piece at the World Financial Center and I got to see him work as he was rehearsing the group and preparing the piece. And what impressed me was watching the way that Braxton was working with acceptance. Whatever issues came up he seemed to figure out a way to make it work. So I feel like it’s a matter of what you let in and just deciding at some point to let things out…
NW: And you have to be open but I think that not every single musician is open to it. Not even every single successful musician…
JC: When you see these composers who are 70 something years old and they have these stacks of scores, some finished, some unfinished, that have never been performed because they’ve just never jumped in in that way where that would happen… For whatever reason… At some point you need to decide that you’re ready and just begin your output.
NW: And you learn more from the mistakes that you make than from your successes. I’ve always felt that it’s better to just jump in and maybe the worst thing that will happen is that you’ll make a mistake but then you learn about it and the next time you do things better. So why not?
The kind or rarified air of making music to has always been a mystery to me and maybe it was the way that I grew up, playing with my dad very early on and it being a very commonplace thing to me but I’ve been around a lot of people that got really freaked out about whether their music would be this or whether it would be that… and especially with trumpet, if you have any doubt about the note before it comes out you’re fucked. You have to have this kind of no fear attitude about doing it. At the end of the day it’s just music, no one is asking you to diffuse a bomb. So what’s the worst that could happen? You put out a record that later on you don’t like so much? And I don’t mean that people should put out a record of everything that gets recorded- That’s stupid- but if there’s something that you really believe in and it’s something that’s beautiful in your mind and your heart then try and put it out. The worst thing that can happen is that no one will like it. Maybe then you look at the piece and you figure out why no one liked it or what you do differently but it’s not like you put a piece of music out and someone comes and burns your house down. The worst thing is that you get a scathing review in the Wire and who cares? It doesn’t matter at all and it goes back to this idea that you get a scathing review in the Wire and that may be the thing that connects with a certain part of an audience that really feels something for that kind of music. You know? And I want to make a point that this is different from making sure that your stuff is right on and where you want it to be. I understand your perspective of taking your time, putting one a record out a year and having it be as close as it can be to what you want. That I think is great. But people that don’t want to put something out because they’re afraid of how it’ll be received. To me that is counterproductive. You know? If someone has that much fear about something as simple and unobtrusive as putting out a cd… and I’m not trying to discount the power of music but putting out a product doesn’t mean anything. It is what you make of it. If you believe in something other people will too. Even if only one other person believes in it and you make a connection based on that then it’s worth doing. Why not?
JC: I honestly don’t know why a lot of people put shit out… I think people do it for a variety of reasons…
NW: I think so too. I’m not convinced that everyone puts stuff out because they believe in it. If you look at the jazz scene in New York...
JC: There’s a LOT of throw away records…
NW: There’s a lot of throw away records to “get over”. “I’m gonna make a record with X, Y, Z & A on it because I know I’ll get to put this out and it’ll get my name out there”. But do they believe in the music? In those cases it’s usually the last thing they thought about you know? That’s another thing altogether…
JC: This makes me think back to what is it we’re hearing in Basinski’s music, in Matt’s music? I think some of what we’re hearing is music that exists because it needs to exist. There’s a sweetness, a tenderness, a part of it that is acknowledging the vulnerable situation in which the musicians creating the music are putting themselves in. I need to be able to hear that.
NW: Of course. And it’s a real desire to communicate. It’s not just look what I can do, it’s a real reaching out to communicate with the audience and maybe that’s the difference… What’s the difference between Brad Mehldau and Bill Evans? Technically Mehldau is far superior to what Bill Evans was but you get a real feeling that Bill Evans was trying to communicate to you.
Here’s something that comes up in mind with noise often: I like noise but I only like a very small percentage of it and the reason is that John Weise, C. Spencer Yeh, Lasse Marhaug, with all those dudes, there is a real feeling that they are trying to connect with you. It’s not a fashion thing, There is a real feeling that this is something they have to say…”I want to feel something, I want you to feel something from my music and I want to get something back from you, I want to enter into a conversation with you as abstract as that is… “ I think those guys really have that. And then there’s a million noise bands that don’t have that, that are two guys with a suitcase full of electronics, twiddling knobs and in that genre especially it’s really clear cut, to me, when that special something is happening and when it is not happening.
Nate Wooley Quintet - "Shanda Lea" from (Put Your) Hands Together, 2011 Clean Feed Records
JC: You can hear it immediately.
NW: Yeah, there is a real dedication to each sound that you get out of Ben Hall that you don’t get out of just some kid from wherever that saw Tatsuya Nakatani once and decided that he could rub a cymbal on a snare drum and make shit happen. There’s a real dedication to what they’re doing. That just goes to art; painters, sculptors, dancers…
JC: I feel like all the music that we’re taking about has some basis in improvisation which is a process, not just in performance but really from the day that you commit to improvisation to the day that you die there's a real process happening. It's different from painting or architecture or something— it's similar and it's different—
I think about the recordings when it comes to improvisers and I think it's vital because if we're improvising then we don’t have scores, meticulously detailed scores and the recorded document is very important. How much can you learn from listening to a recording of Evan Parker playing solo saxophone in 1975 and then listening all the way up to a recording of Evan Parker playing solo saxophone in 2010? There's so much growth and musical development...
NW: Yeah, it's about the process. You can map it out and see how he's gotten there in a way. That example is interesting, because I think if you talk to a lot of improvisers, especially of his era, they would be happy to do away with the recorded document...
JC: They would?
NW: I think so. I think a lot of them have the attitude of the concert being IT, the live performance being IT. You'll never have the same feeling even if it's a recording of that live concert. To a degree I can see what they're saying because, for example, I was at the concert with Evan and Ned Rothenberg at Roulette that got recorded. It was one of the best concerts that I've ever been to. It was perfect and totally amazing. And to me the recording is disappointing mostly because my memory of the concert has affected my perception of the music and also just being in that moment in time there's a certain energy that doesn't translate to the recording. You know? But I see what you're saying, especially as an improviser that's learning you have to have that recorded document to refer to. Like my dad's generation, they had records but a lot of the stuff they learned was from seeing stuff when it came to town. There was a mindset of like the Basie Band is coming to Portland and they're going to play four sets on Thursday night and everyone is going to be there, watching and picking up everything they can and they've got four hours to do it, in real time. And then they walk away from that and they think about it and they've got their own thing. In a way that's kind of scary because you only have four hours as opposed to us, who have a bunch of cds and just have access to everything as many times as we want. So it's like I can listen to something over and over again and really get deep into it and understand what it is where as those guys only get this one shot to check it out and then everything is based on their memory. But then you also get a generation of musicians that all sound different because yeah they learned something from watching Marshall Royal play in the Count Basie Band but it's based on their memory so they're never going to just completely ape Marshall Royal's style because by the time they leave it's already been dirtied by all the other shit that's in their head.
Nowadays people have music and information at all times, iPods...
JC: And they are literally pounding it into their heads with an iPod!
NW: Exactly. Take the college kid who comes out of school with an incredible understanding of the tenor saxophone but they're a juke box. And that never happened until the last couple of musical generations.
JC: It's like that stupid joke: What came before Pro Tools? Pros.
NW: Yeah, it's true. Things have changed. The model has changed in a lot of different ways. Musically, economically... It's a whole different thing now. We're in an odd position because we're of the generation that bridges that gap. We're already in a place where we're seeing the next generation hit New York but we're still the young guys to Zorn and Marty Ehrlich or whoever. It's a strange place to be in.
JC: And I don't think that that's ever going to change. When we're fifty something years old we'll be looking at the 25 & 30 year olds and we'll be in a position where we'll have to wrap our heads what they’re doing it, we’ll have to adapt. If you want to continue to evolve your craft you need to stay plugged in and be open to change. Is there anything worse to listen to than somebody who is not plugged in?
NW: You know who is amazing about that to me is Joe Morris. I don’t know if you’ve ever spent any time with Joe but that dude is, in the most organic way, plugged into everything that’s going on. And not in this way of “what’s going to be the next new fad?” I feel he just genuinely still really wants to grow, he still wants to change. Everything he takes in he considers to be a potentially life-altering thing and he’s very open to all these new musics and he tries to incorporate them into his own playing and find out what they mean to him, etc, etc. I’ve never really heard him play the same way twice and he’s always pushing it. Paul Lytton is that same way too. Every single time he’s pushing it, he hears something new and he’s working it, he’s practicing all the time… If I can live that kind of life I will consider everything successful. Whether or not I make a lot of money or whether or not people know who I am won’t matter. To me if you can make your life that way you will be fulfilled.
JC: I think what you’re talking about is living fearlessly. If you want to pinpoint what prevents people, and more specifically musicians, from living that way I would venture to guess that it’s a matter of wanting to not look bad, you know? Fear of failure…
NW: And it’s more work if you are constantly pushing forward. It’s more work to get your records out than if you are constantly sticking with a style or formula that you know is going to be successful. If you look at certain musicians, they’ve found a thing that is very popular and they’re in place now where whatever they want to do can get put out as long as it’s within those parameters so that’s where they stay. And I can understand that. It’s a pain in the ass to put a record out. In a way I don’t want to have to constantly re-invent the wheel to get a record put out because things are changing all the time but at the same time then you come to the question of “Why would I put it out in the first place if it’s just another in a series of records that sounds exactly like this?”. I feel like there are people who have been mired down in a certain place in their trajectory and a large part of their output just comes from that one place, without moving forwards or backwards, they just stay in that one place. And that is what I would like to avoid and that is what I think Joe avoids. I think it makes a lot for work for him to have constantly convince labels to put his stuff out or for places to book him…
JC: Is that something that you worry about? Do you worry about the need to be consistent with your output for the sake of not abandoning audiences as you go?
NW: What I worry about in regard to that is when I’m doing something more conservative. So for example my quintet, which is more based in jazz, I am more worried about that group than I am anything else that I do.
JC: You’re worried about people taking their shots at it?
NW: I’m not worried about that, I’m more worried about losing an audience. I feel really strongly about that music but I can view it in a way that it looks like a step backwards.
JC: You mean as one way that it could possibly be perceived?
NW: Yes, and that concerns me. But I’m going to do it anyway because, again, it’s one of those branches and I can’t go through my life denying that part of myself. It means too much to me.
JC: I get scared & sad because I think that being known for something is often largely a matter of generalizing what you do. The more people that you try to speak to the more you have to strip down the language and the nuances of the presentation. I think that you and I have a very different relationship with our instruments. I don’t think that I have the relationship with the clarinet that you have with the trumpet. So the record that I just put out, I don’t play on it all- it’s all other musicians but the record that came out before that was a really fucked up solo clarinet record. So maybe some people became aware of me through that clarinet record [In Memory of the Labyrinth System] and they probably have an image in their mind of what I’m about: “This is the guy that makes crazy sounds with the clarinet”. So to have this other thing come out, I think for people it can be like an etch-a-sketch that you shake it up and it erases the picture…
NW: But does it erase it or broaden it?
JC: My hope would be that it would broaden the picture, as that is certainly the goal…
NW: I think it does too and I think the audience does too…
JC: Do they? I hate to sound like an asshole but…
NW: I think they do, most definitely…speaking strictly about audiences. Or maybe I’m wrong. The problem that I’ve found and the thing that concerns me about the jazz thing, and it’s a little bit different, is that I also have this other branch as a sideman. So I’ve done a lot of records as a jazz sideman. The perhaps naïve part of me that just said that it broadens it for the audience wants to say “oh, those people, they hear those records and then they’ll go get one of my solo records and then realize that it’s another side, giving them a more complete picture of myself as an artist.“ But in my experience it’s usually more like “Oh you did this and I liked it, why did you do this other thing?” And that happens a lot. I think that the optimistic side of me wants to think that it doesn’t but you’re right, it does happen. Even reviewers… I see a difference when I was reading a lot of reviews. Some would say “Nate Wooley, known for his work with blah blah blah” and then they would note that if you liked the work that I had done with those other people then you won’t like this… And it happens on both sides. Very rarely, and we talked about critics earlier (OFF THE RECORD), there’s a handful of critics who actually will say “here’s a complete picture of an artist who has worked with Graveyards AND Daniel Levin. That is the kind of criticism that I find interesting. At least if they don’t like the record they’re reviewing it’s not from a lack of information! I’ve also noticed that these reviewers are the same ones that ask that you listen to the WHOLE record in one sitting, preferably with all of your attention, and that seems to be asking a lot any more.
JC: I think asking someone to listen to ANY record from beginning to end these days is asking a lot because people don’t listen in that way any more.
NW: Joe Morris and I had a conversation recently had a discussion about that. He had just gotten some Graveyards LPs and how he found it really freeing to get back into LP mentality. “This is going to be 18 minutes. I can spare 18 minutes. I can sit down and really concentrate on this for 18 minutes.” As opposed to a 72 minute disc where I know it’s already a losing proposition before I put it on because my life will not allow me to listen to all 72 minutes of this with attention, you know?
JC: That is where I see a lot of silver lining to the digital era that we’re in. I see way more negative shit but one very positive thing that I see is that creating 45-70 minutes of recorded music for release is very much the construct of technology of creating records and CDs. If you make 25 minutes of perfect music why would you then feel like “well, it’s great but I need to fill it out with at least another 15 minutes to make it a record.”? We all do that. But why? And that’s the beautiful thing about the download…
NW: It is what it is. When I did that record with Chris Forsyth [The Duchess of Oysterville, 2007 Creative Sources). That record is 27 minutes long and that’s it.
JC: And it’s a perfect record…
NW: I love that record and Ernesto, who runs Creative Sources, said great. I think he asked us if we wanted to put something more on it and we said no, that’s the only piece and he was cool with it. But when the reviews came out every single review bitched about how short it was.
JC: Well, there’s another difference between critics and musicians. That was the record of yours that really turned me on to your music and made me stop and REALLY check out what you’re doing. The first time that I listened to that album, it kept my attention the entire time and when it was over I felt like completely satisfied and fulfilled as a listener. And it was just the right length. Would you go to Babbo or Per Se and complain that the size of the entrée wasn’t big enough? If you want to look at things in those terms you are welcome to but you are completely missing the fucking point!
NW: I did a duo with Christian Weber in Philadelphia and we had never met. We played two pieces and both pieces were under two minutes long and that’s how long that music needed to be. It was beautiful and it’s beautiful when you meet someone that recognizes that too. That’s the great thing about Forsyth. He totally gets that. And you’re right, generally you want to fill it out or cut it back to meet the demands of the technology and the digital thing does allow you to have a 4 minute piece of perfect music but it also allows you to have a 136 minute piece of perfect music that skips the problem that a label might have with the cost of issuing a double cd or that the music would have to be interrupted otherwise. So in that way it’s very exciting. The same thing goes for working in internet radio which I also do. The show doesn’t have to be an hour. You can do a show with Tom Johnson and then play the entire “Chord Catalog” as opposed to just a two minute snippet because it needs to fit into a 58 minute frame. So in a way what’s really been freed up is the concept of time. At the same time it’s really squashed a lot of audience’s concept of time too. People get very bored quickly.
JC: Yeah… I don’t want to get too bleak but I think that as a culture we’ve really infantilized ourselves to the emotional state of eight year olds, impatient eight year olds who want what they want when they want it. That really frustrates me as a listener. Not as a musician, not as a performer, purely as a listener. The music that has had the most impact on my life is the music that the first several times I listened to I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I had to go back to it and I think that the attention span of people today really disallows that sort of listening.
NW: There’s a really interesting Aldous Huxley essay from the 30s or 40s about art and the crux of it is what makes a good piece of art? And he goes through it with dry wit and what he comes to in the end is that the great piece of art is the one that when you leave you don’t know what it is but you want to figure it out, that there’s something there that you have to come back and check out but you don’t understand it all. The great piece of art is the one that gives you something for the rest of your life. And I think recordings are like that. You can listen to a recording like the Evan Parker Trio. There’s enough information in there to keep you going for the rest of your life. You can listen to that over and over and over again.
JC: And I think that’s largely because what you’re listening to is a lifetime of work.
NW: Exactly. There’s a lot of history in there. There are a lot of things that will unfold over a period of time. One of my favorite records in that kind of thinking is this Walter Marchetti record, De Musicorum Infelicitate. It’s a sixty minute long piano piece in 6 chunks and there are these eight minutes that sound like six angry monkeys beating on a keyboard. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what notes are being played. It literally sounds like four guys playing as fast as they can with no dynamics and no shift in the density of it for eight minutes and then it’ two minutes of digital silence. It just gets cut off. Then, BOOM, eight more minutes of this stuff, two minutes of silence, for sixty minutes. I do not understand that record at all and yet I’ve been coming back to it for five years, over and over again. I’ll listen to the whole thing and that’s what makes something like that totally great.
JC: And really special…
NW: But you have to be a critical listener, and I fear that we’re losing that ability as a society. There are a lot of people who would go “Ok, it’s just a guy beating on a piano for eight minutes and then taking two minutes off. Now I know what this piece is.” But the pay off is that there’s obviously something beyond that. Why is it that way, why did he do it that way? What’s the point of it all? Is there something deeper he’s saying about form? Is there something deeper about time? About density? I don’t get it. And there are other pieces of his that don’t affect me the same way. I hear them and I feel like I get it but that piece, for some reason, I feel like there is a key there that I haven’t yet figured out what it is. And that’s what makes a really special piece of art.
