Jacob Collier

Photo: Dyan Jong

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Jacob Collier Decodes The Magic Behind 'Djesse Vol. 3,' Talks Working With Tori Kelly, Daniel Caesar & More

The GRAMMY winner dives deep into the latest piece of his ambitious and awe-inspiring quadruple-album puzzle

GRAMMYs

Sep 17, 2020 - 6:03 pm

Anyone who knows anything about him, knows: Jacob Collier is on another level. The prodigious British musician, composer and arranger extraordinaire has notched tens of millions of YouTube views and four GRAMMYs with his effortless command of the medium of music. And even though, traditionally, transparent geniuses are hard to come by, Collier shares his heart and mind for music quite openly, leading in-depth workshops and Logic session breakdowns of his songs and his process. Yet, in speaking with him – even for all of the gobsmacking talent and insanely cool theory wizardry – his dominant trait manages to be his reverence for human instincts.

"The thing about when I make music," Collier told GRAMMY.com, "is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings. It's based in an emotional decision."

Most recently, Collier has been channeling those decisions into an epic quadruple album, releasing its latest puzzle piece, Djesse Vol. 3, just last month complete with top-notch features from the likes of Tori Kelly, Kiana Ledé, Tank And The Bangas, Daniel Caesar, Jessie Reyez, T-Pain and more. The album shows off not only Collier's approachable, but his remarkable vision for what music can do and how it can connect people across the world, even during a pandemic. Feeling all of this from an artist who just turned 26 years old last month produces a hope we need more than ever right now.

We tapped into Collier's fascinating world, catching him over the phone from his increasingly famous music room in his home in North London to talk about Djesse Vol. 3 and its stunning collaborations, what he's learned during lockdown, his process of sharing his abundant musical knowledge and even what he does to unwind. Enjoy...

A quadruple album is an ambitious undertaking, and I read somewhere you said you're treating it like a big puzzle. How does Djesse Vol. 3 fit into that puzzle for you?

So this whole quadruple album thing was something I dreamed up about three years ago, two or three years ago now, I suppose. The goal was how can I build bridges between all these different musical faculties that I've been listening to and loving for all these years, and get them all to make sense within each other's contexts? I've been an avid listener of all these different kinds of music for so long. I was brought up on Bartok meets Beck meets the Beatles. And then you've got Björk, and you've got Joni Mitchell and you've got Stevie Wonder and Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire. All these styles and different languages and different parts of the world and different histories converged for me as a teenager.

I just became fascinated with the idea of making it all make sense with each other, so combining different elements. I made this album, I suppose, about five years ago called In My Room, which is my first album. I made it in this room I'm currently in, in my home in North London. And that was really the first time I'd ever written songs. It was good fun.

After that album came out and I toured it about, and I really wanted to do something a little more epic. I set about this four album process delegating my musical ideas as they came out into these different rooms, different boxes. So Djesse Vol. 1 is the birth of the whole thing, the gestation of the sound world. And it's very large. It's a big, expensive work. There's an orchestra present, they are choirs present, the acoustic space taken to great heights, that was the space. And I collaborated with the incredible called the Metropole Orchestra on that record. Djesse Vol. 2 is still acoustic, it's still in the real acoustic sounds world, but it's a much smaller space. So more about songwriting and folk music, world music, a little bit of jazz thrown in, and some music from Portugal, music from Mali, Africa, all sorts of things. So that was a smaller acoustic space.

And Djesse Vol. 3 was always the one I was most excited about because it enabled me the space to explore a lot of the negative space type sounds, sounds made in the digital sphere, electronic stuff, which I suppose lends itself to hip-hop and R&B, and you've got soul music in there, and you've got funky music in there. And pop as well. I always wanted to explore those things.

And the fun thing for me was bringing the aesthetics that I've have been creating and I've been fascinated by for the last 20 years and trying to invent these sounds that I loved listening to in my own terms. And then Djesse Vol. 4 it's going to be the culmination of all these different ingredients thus far.

There are so many great collaborations on Djesse Vol. 3. Does your ability to be so self-sufficient and play every instrument yourself help you when you work with someone?

Well, it's a blessing and a curse because on the one hand, when you've done things yourself for a long time I think it's easier to fall into your own habits and to come into any situation with a preconceived notion of how you'd like it to go and how you'd imagine it could go. In my brain... For example, walking into the room with Tori Kelly, it's like, well, I could go many directions with a voice like Tori's, because Tori's voice is like this kind of music acrobatic machine. It can do so many wonderful things, emotive things.

And so in some ways that stuff is not helpful baggage because it just gets in the way of the present moment. And so with Tori, it was one of the first times really in my musical life where I walked into a room, and I discarded all of my previous ideas. I didn't have a song that I'd written for her. I didn't have an idea, a framework for something I wanted her to be a part of. We walked into them cold and we just started jamming. And so that process to me has proven to be really quite fantastic. And actually, sometimes more effective than when I walk into a room feeling like this is the entire song, can you just sing the melody? Which also can work quite well.

I think for me, it's always about trying to make room for somebody else's musical intelligence and not let my own experience of creating stuff just get in the way, because everyone has their own standpoint. And I think the thing I'm most interested in with all these different collaborators is that some of their standpoints are crazily different from mine. Someone like Jesse Reyez or T-Pain, both of whom are on a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "Count the People." They come from really different times, different generations of music making. And they have very different reaches in terms of who listens to their music and have very different experiences. And they have totally different voices, but for me I was pretty excited by the idea that these two different musical entities could exist within the same breath.

And same goes, for example, on Djesse Vol. 2. There's a song where Steve Vai, the rock guitarist, is playing in harmony with Kathryn Tickell, who's a Northumbrian pipes player from the North of England, and some of the language is quite similar. I love finding these ways of joining these flavors together. So the Daniel Caesar song was another example where I hadn't planned too much of it and we walked into the room, and Daniel's very natural process of coming up with words, lyrics just fell right into the pocket of this groove that I've been working on. We ran with it and that felt really cool.

Wow. What strikes me about your approach to all this is your awareness. You're not short on talent or ideas, but your awareness is really the missing link. In this last six months, where we've all been on lockdown, can you tell us a couple of things that you've discovered or maybe even rediscovered about yourself musically?

Yeah. I think it goes without saying this is a time where a lot of people have gone back to square one or even pre square one. And it's like, "what is a square?" [laughs] And for me, I was so busy with touring and I was so busy with just scampering around the world, doing mad stuff. And if I wasn't touring I was trying to finish something or directing a music video or editing a music video, or trying to keep up with the social stuff or whatever. There's all these different elements. I think when a lot of these things slowed down, the cool thing was we had to take stock of what the hell is going on and actually what's important.

A lot of people that I spoke to, friends and musicians, I think realized that a lot of the stuff that feels really important is not important. And one of those things maybe is rushing and doing things fast and things having to be done now. And if it's not done now, it's going to be too late. It's always urgent. I really think urgency a massive construct. And I think it's been really nice in the last, couple of weeks since Djesse Vol. 3 has come out to remember that actually it's nice to not rush stuff. I finished Djesse Vol. 3 by the end of March, I was ready to go with my 10-week tour, which got thrown out the window when the pandemic hit. And I then spent four months making the album just so much better than it would have been otherwise. It's so much deeper and so much more sonically satisfying.

I'm really grateful for the time, but honestly, I haven't really stopped in quarantine because I've been challenging myself to all these different kinds of things. I mean I've been teaching master classes from home. I performed on TED. I did a Tiny Desk from home. I made a video for Jimmy Kimmel Live. I made a video for Jools Holland in the UK. I made a video for Stephen Colbert. And on top of that, I was mixing my album and producing that. I was directing the videos and I was editing the videos and all this stuff too.

I think for me, it's been a really interesting period of time. Without being able to actually be with people, how do you get stuff done that's collaborative at all? And one fun solution I found is best explained through a song on Djesse Vol. 3 called "In Too Deep," which featured Kiana Ledé. I actually mailed Kiana a mic and I installed this program called Source Connect on her computer, which meant that I could move her mouse around on her laptop. So far as to install Logic Pro. I taught her how to put the mic in and stuff, and she was super brilliant at that. She sang her tracks and I could hear what she was singing in real time, and printed the tracks into her computer. And then I sent those tracks to myself at the Dropbox here. I continued mixing my song.

That was a really amazing moment where you think actually collaboration is completely enabled by the tech that is existing, but you have to be courageous enough to follow these things through and to be determined to find solutions to things that might feel weird. I think I've enjoyed being a bit of a problem solver in the last six months or so.

You mentioned the workshops. There's so much of what many people would call genius in your process, but there's also so much transparency. Can you talk about what the process means to you versus the result?

Yeah, it's funny because finishing stuff was something I was really bad at. For the whole of my teenage years I was really bad at finishing things. I wanted to get good at it. So the best way to get good at it was just to practice it. So I practiced finishing stuff. The four-album project was like, this is going to make me shed finishing stuff. I'm going to have to get good at this because otherwise I'm going to suck. The fun thing I think for me is learning how to step away from your ideas when you can. But the last year, or four or five months or so, I rediscovered the joys of going right to the very deepest corners of your process having officially finished the song. It's like, how do you get the song to spring off the page, as it were, and feel alive?

A lot of the purpose of doing that is, for me, even more interesting than what some of it ends up sounding like… And also, I love explaining it because I think by explaining it to others, I explain it to myself, and I've realized the connections that maybe I don't realize just by sitting and doing it all day long.

I fell in love with that process a couple of years ago. And I've since really enjoyed just taking apart my Logic session. So I did one for this track called "All I Need," and I did one for "Sleeping On My Dreams." And in the past I did one for "Moon River," which was the arrangement that won a GRAMMY, I guess earlier this year, which is weird that things are still in this year. Also, "All Night Long."

It was fun just to think about, how do I present this as something that people can maybe understand at a broken down level? The thing about when I make music and how it feels to me is that a lot of the decisions that may feel quite technical are basically based in feelings, it's based in an emotional decision. I want gravity to come here or I want it to feel like you're twisting here, or deepening here, or some unconscious awareness that a breath will lead to another breath, or whatever. And these things I think, they're fun to take apart and think about in active terms.

Can you give us any clue on maybe what's to come for Djesse Vol. 4?

Djesse Vol. 4 is something I've almost deliberately not planned too much. But one thing I will say for sure is that I think it's going to be very centralized around the human voice. It's my favorite instrument of all instruments, my voice. I started as a singer, really. I started singing all the instruments before I could even play instruments, like the piano or the bass or the guitar. I was singing all those parts. I want to come back to my roots in that way. I want to do that, but obviously with human voice there's so many directions you can go.

One idea I have for the album, that is if I can go on tour within the next two years so I really hope I can, is to begin to use some of my audiences as instruments even more than I have been. In the last year or so I've been... When I was on the road last year I really enjoyed the concept of the audience singing harmony. I would split my audience into three or four or five parts and get them singing these notes, and we'd improvise these chords. So up and down arrows spontaneously dictates it to different parts of the room and it would be this ever changing chords, omnichords. It really inspired me to think about the voices.

I think maybe somewhere between the audiences of my live shows and the choirs that I love so much around the world and have built relationships with, and also some of my favorite musicians and artists in the world, who I guess I can't reveal too much of right now, but there was some extraordinary singers, vocalists, and people who I've been in touch with for a long, long time who are going to be involved in Djesse Vol. 4. I think it's really a celebration of all these different languages. Because for me, I think at this point with Vol. 1, 2 and 3, I've covered a fair few genres, but I think that it's about bringing it home to where it all started for me, which is the voice, and is the voices of the world.

And I think it's such an important time for people to use their voices in so many ways, right? As people and politics in the world and musically, I think a lot of people feel like their voice sometimes is not important, or that it's difficult to use their voice or raise their voice in certain situations. But I think for me it's like the keys to the castle. If you're able to sing, if you're able to speak, and you're able to be honest within that space, it feels like a really good starting point for the whole world of expression. And to me, I think if there's one thing Djesse Vol. 4, it's definitely intended to be, right now, it's to celebrate that, celebrate the voices that make us human.

That's beautiful, Jacob. It's high concept, but it's also rooted in basic human connection... I know that it's a tough time to be planning a tour, but maybe you could tell us a little bit about what you have in mind for the next time you hit the road?

Yeah, so this is a whole new idea that I was talking to this amazing company called Lyte about recently. We've unveiled this thing, which is kind of a new concept, but it makes sense to me. The idea is, I'm saying I'm going to go to these 91 cities, minimum of 91 cities, at some point in the coming years, and fans can RSVP to these gigs. They can basically reserve their place on the wait list for tickets. So no venue are announced, there's no dates announced because nobody knows when it's going even to be possible, but the moment that things are possible the gigs will go on sale and the people who've reserved tickets will get their tickets.

The coolest thing to me as an artist is that, that means whenever I do go on tour that the fans can dictate the sizes of the venues that we play, which is actually a foreign concept, because normally as a musician, you say, "Oh, I'm going to go play a gig out at the Wiltern and I just hope it sells out. But it might not. Or maybe it will be way too small and there'll be way more people, but we all got to squeeze it in. And it's difficult to move other gigs around on the tour because they're all confirm." So the cool thing now is that however many tickets we reserved in these markets over the next year or so, even if we're not on the road, we can still be planning and thinking and building relationships with venues and thinking how does it make sense to route this and stuff? So, yeah, obviously the exciting thing is the people can go on jacobcollier.com and they can reserve tickets to those gigs, even though we don't know when they're going to happen, there's still something that I can look forward to.

Definitely. Ok, last question. What are some of your interests outside of music?

Good question. Right before you called for this interview I was really deep on YouTube watching videos about Fourier transform and quantum mechanics, which actually is not something I'd normally do just to chill out. I like going deep on some of the concepts that make up our universe. That makes me happy and quite excited. And on a completely different axis, I also enjoy a good game of badminton.

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Rufus Wainwright

Photo: Barbara FG (Cleared for any usage with credit)

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Sacred Spaces: Rufus Wainwright, YUNGBLUD, Keb' Mo' And Others Reflect On The Independent Venues And Clubs That Changed Their Lives

As the majority of the live concert industry across the world remains on pause, GRAMMY.com chatted with a handful of artists about their cherished concert memories at some of their favorite clubs and venues

David McPherson

GRAMMYs

Aug 3, 2020 - 6:00 am

Though it's been more than 50 years since Café Au Go Go closed, Blood, Sweat & Tears frontman David Clayton-Thomas still recalls the cultural significance of this famed NYC basement bar. Formerly located at 152 Bleecker St. and operating from 1964-1969, the Greenwich Village hotspot hosted everyone from Cream, with Eric Clapton, to Jimi Hendrix.

"It was the place to be in those days," Clayton-Thomas reflects. "That is where Blood, Sweat & Tears started. We became the house band for a couple of months while recording our first album at CBS Studios on 52nd Street. We would work the club at night and record during the day. It's hard to forget a club like that. It will always be a part of my wonderful memories of New York."

It's not a stretch to say that the resulting Blood, Sweat & Tears self-titled 1968 album, which has sold 10 million copies worldwide and won the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year in 1970, would exist today without the band's experience at this small yet renowned club.

Clayton-Thomas' story illustrates exactly how independent music venues are more than four walls. Within the confines of these cramped clubs is a shared cultural history and community: collective stories of unforgettable nights watching your favorite bands and artists perform. The spirits of these artists—some long gone—are forever etched in the wood and ingrained in the stain-filled dance floors.

Exterior of Café Au Go Go in NYC in 1965 | Photo: Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the live music ecosystem, already hit hard by rising real estate prices, gentrification and urban sprawl, entered crisis mode. Seminal clubs across North America, from L.A.'s historic Troubadour to Toronto's legendary Horseshoe Tavern, lie silent.

Like concertgoers, club and venue owners, too, are eagerly awaiting the return of live music. In the interim, these entrepreneurs do what they can to keep their businesses afloat: Some launched GoFundMe fundraisers, while others turned to social media, patrons and local and federal government for financial support. The politicians are starting to hear these pleas.

Earlier this month, the U.K. government announced a £1.57 billion (approximately $2 billion) aid package for the arts, culture and heritage industries. In the U.S., a pair of senators introduced a relief bill: the Save Our Stages Act. The Recording Academy is also endorsing a pair of solutions: the RESTART Act and the Mixed Earner Pandemic Unemployment Assistance Act.

The sad reality: Without the leniency of landlords and the passing of stimulus acts by governments, many iconic clubs and independent venues will not survive the financial fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Even with these lifelines, the outlook could be grim. According to a survey from the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) last month, which surveyed nearly 2,000 music professionals across the U.S., 90 percent of independent venue owners, promoters and bookers said they will have to close permanently within the next few months if they do not receive financial relief from the government.

As the majority of the live concert industry across the world remains on pause, GRAMMY.com chatted with a handful of artists, including Rufus Wainwright, YUNGBLUD, Keb' Mo' and others, about their cherished concert memories at some of their favorite clubs and venues.

Rufus Wainwright

Venue(s): The Troubadour and Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles, Calif.; McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, Calif.; The Town Crier in Beacon, N.Y.; Ursa, owned by his sister Martha Wainwright, in Montreal, Quebec

Rufus Wainwright performs in Austin, Texas | Photo: Barbara FG (Cleared for any usage with credit)

Self-isolating these days at his home in Los Angeles finds GRAMMY-nominated singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright spending time practicing more, especially the piano. "I've been able to dive into the technical forest," he tells GRAMMY.com. Before the pandemic hit, he was on tour and starting the promotion cycle for his newest album, Unfollow The Rules, which he released last month via BMG. He booked gigs at many clubs, including The Troubadour, to promote the record. Then he had to cancel them.

"The Troubadour, for me, is especially poignant," Wainwright says. "I performed there a couple of times over the years, and I've seen many shows there. We were set to play there at the beginning of this tour. This album is very much influenced by the history of Laurel Canyon [in Los Angeles], songwriting and Hollywood, and we had this symbolic show booked at The Troubadour to emulate some of the grand history that occurred in that venue. Sadly, that opportunity got ripped away when the pandemic struck."

Read: Beginnings And Endings With Rufus Wainwright

Other touchstone venues for Wainwright in the L.A. area include: The Coronet Theatre, now Largo At The Coronet, where he regularly performed early in his career and McCabe's Guitar Shop on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica, where the artist played a series of shows before the pandemic hit.

"I am familiar with the smaller-venue situation mainly because my parents started out playing in coffeehouses in the 1960s and '70s," Wainwright says. "Places like the Caffè Lena in Saratoga Springs, [N.Y.], and The Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, Mass., are all part of the really vital, socially important folk music movement my parents [Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle] were a part of in the 1960s. For a lot of artists, these venues are like a trampoline that can catch your fall when you aren't necessarily the flavor of the month. I grew up witnessing this dynamic, and I started out in smaller venues. To dominate that dynamic is really important and harder than you think. A lot of big artists cannot play a small venue … it's too scary and too intimate, but I love them!"

YUNGBLUD

Venue(s): The Crowndale in Camden Town, London, England; The Lock Tavern in London, England; The Electric Ballroom in Camden Town, London, England

YUNGBLUD performs at the Electric Ballroom in 2019 | Photo: Matthew Baker/Getty Images

Born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, British rocker YUNGBLUD left home at 16 and moved to London. "I ran away because the north of England is not a place for a kid in lipstick playing rock 'n' roll," he says. Once settled in the south, he discovered the live music mecca of Camden Town, north of England's capital.

"These venues shaped what I am as an artist today," he says. "I remember walking into Camden Town for the first time and my mind exploded; it was everything I ever wanted. It was Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. I had a golden ticket to everything I read about: The Libertines, Amy Winehouse, etc. I used to skive off work to get coffees and go to Camden for hours, telling my dad I had been mugged!

Read: Yungblud Talks Turning His Tour Postponement Into An Online Rock & Roll Variety Show

"Camden was really a big turning point in my career," he continues. "I've played every tiny venue in Camden, from The Crowndale for 10 people to a sold-out show at The Lock Tavern where Amy Winehouse played early in her career and who is a massive inspiration to me. She taught me being you is good enough. Later, I played the Electric Ballroom to 1,500 people. The Camden Assembly, formerly The Barfly, is where my guitar player [Adam Warrington] and I really connected and when we figured out we were going to play music together for the rest of our lives, bonding over our love of Joy Division, Blur, N.W.A, Foo Fighters and David Bowie.

"When I think about Camden, that spirit, and every show I've played in the clubs there, I remember why I'm here and what I'm doing it for … it's all about the passion!"

Colin Linden

Venue: The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern
City: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Opened: 1947

Colin Linden (R) with Robbie Robertson (L) performing at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern in approximately 1989 | Courtesy Photo: Colin Linden

These days, Canadian blues artist Colin Linden lives in Nashville, Tenn., but Toronto is where he cut his teeth. The GRAMMY-nominated songwriter and producer grew up fast, sitting in as an underage teen with local legends like Willie P. Bennett and David Wilcox at small clubs around town. Today, Linden figures this is the longest time he has gone without a gig in his 48-year career. "I feel a real need to connect with people," Linden says.

Toronto's legendary Horseshoe Tavern is Linden's seminal venue. He still has a scar on his forehead from a time he played The Shoe in the mid-1980s and bounded off the stage a little too recklessly. And in the early 1990s, he played there frequently with a secret band, which included Bruce Cockburn, called Bambi And The Deer Hunters.

"It is the place where I started playing as a kid and kept on playing over many years," Linden recalls. "It was an important venue long before I ever set foot in there. It's a place where I've had a lot of laughter and a lot of tears. When I think about the Horseshoe Tavern, I think about so many things. I remember sitting in the back alley in booker Peter Graham's car, playing him my demo and talking over my mistakes. I really wanted a gig there."

The most memorable night for Linden at this venue happened on March 13, 1989, when he shared the stage with The Band members Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Robbie Robertson. "That was such an amazing night," Linden thinks back. "I remember Robbie getting offstage and asking me, 'How can you guys hear anything?' I realized he had not been on a stage in more than 10 years and forgot how loud it gets in a club!"

Keb' Mo'

Venue: Harvelle's
City: Santa Monica, CA
Opened: 1931

Harvelle's | Photo: John M. Heller/Getty Images

Harvelle's, a popular West Coast blues club with a long history, is where Kevin Roosevelt Moore started playing in 1992 before he was known as Keb' Mo' and before he had a record deal. His first audition to play the historic venue failed. Later, he landed a gig at the club through a friend who needed a guitarist. After that, Moore played the venue regularly for years. One Tuesday, Moore was performing when television producer and composer Chuck Lorre was in the audience; an introduction led Moore to land the theme song for the popular CBS sitcom, "Mike & Molly."

"It's very important to maintain the local watering holes of our country," Moore, who this year took home a GRAMMY for Best Americana Album for his 2019 album, Oklahoma, explains. "For me, Harvelle's is the place where I figured out who I was. Harvelle's is where I became 'Keb' Mo'.' If not for Harvelle's, I, and many other artists I know, would not be where we are today. It's so important to make sure these local places that feed the community—socially, culturally, and artfully in a musical way—remain open. When you take away the starting point for musicians, you take away the connection. It's the local pubs and the local dives that make us who we are.

Watch: Keb' Mo' Reflects On The Journey To His 'TajMo' GRAMMY Nomination

"Even today, Lady Gaga, Bruce Springsteen, etc., all want to do a dive [bar] tour because the dives are what's happening," he continues. "It's about connecting to the people. It's raw, it's honest and it's genuine. The place you have to be most genuine of any place is in a dive, because when you play a fancy theater, everyone comes to see you and is expecting something. In a dive, no one gives a crap about you, so you have to go to them and figure out how to connect and reach them. In a way, playing a dive is way more difficult than playing a concert. Harvelle's and all the dives, coffee shops [and] restaurants of the world are very important to creating that connection and community within the music business."

Sarah Jarosz

Venue: The Cactus Café
City: Austin, Texas
Opened: 1979

Sarah Jarosz performs at The Cactus Café in approximately 2006 | Photo: Steve Oleson

At 29, New York City-based American Roots singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz has already won three GRAMMYs. (Her newest album, World On The Ground, released in June, features production from five-time GRAMMY winner John Leventhal.) Jarosz shares her love for The Cactus Café, one of the storied music clubs situated on the campus of the University Of Texas At Austin in her hometown. The venue has hosted a who's who of Texas songwriting legends and bands over the years, from Townes Van Zandt and Guy Clark to The Chicks and Nickel Creek.

Read: Sarah Jarosz Graduates to GRAMMY Winner with 'Undercurrent'

"Since I'm not able to play shows on the road right now, I've naturally turned my thoughts to some of the first venues I began playing in," Jarosz says. "I have a particular fondness for The Cactus Café. That's the first club I remember my parents taking me to as a little kid, even when it was way past my bedtime. I remember the smell of the coffee brewing, the clinking of the glasses at the bar tucked into the back corner, the warmth of being surrounded by kindred spirits and music-lovers.

"Venues like The Cactus are sacred spaces," she adds. "For the hour or two that you're inside them, the outside world disappears, and musicians and listeners alike find solace in the energy and the sounds."

Jane Bunnett

Venue: Jazz Showcase
City: Chicago, Ill.
Opened: 1947

Jane Bunnett performs at Jazz Showcase in Chicago, Ill. | Photo: Jim Funk

Jane Bunnett, 63, is a soprano saxophonist, bandleader and three-time GRAMMY nominee. The most recent ensemble the Toronto artist assembled is the all-female, GRAMMY-nominated Afro-Cuban jazz group, Jane Bunnett & Maqueque.

She holds a special place in her heart for Chicago's Jazz Showcase, started by Joe Segal in 1947. Legends from John Coltrane to Miles Davis have played this historic club. Today, you'll still find the 94-year-old NEA Jazz Master Segal hanging around, but his son, Wayne, runs the day-to-day operations.

The first time Bunnett tried to sit in and play at Jazz Showcase in the late 1980s, Joe refused to let her play. Flash ahead a decade. Bunnett was back in the Windy City for the Chicago Jazz Festival. After her set, musician Ira Sullivan introduced her to Joe, who didn't recall the incident. Amends were made. In the last five years, the club has become a regular anticipated stop for Bunnett & Maqueque; they were scheduled for another gig there this spring before the pandemic hit.

Read: 'Bitches Brew' At 50: Why Miles Davis' Masterpiece Remains Impactful

"I've got incredible memories of playing that room," Bunnett says. "Right behind the bandstand is a beautiful 10-by-12-foot photograph of Charlie Parker. I remember the first night I'm up on that stage, it was such a joyous moment. Joe sat right in front of my percussionist and just stared. I looked around the room at all the paraphernalia and history and just soaked it in. There I was with a bunch of young Cuban kids in their early 20s who didn't have a clue of who many of the artists pictured on the walls were."

Sierra Hull

Venue: The Station Inn
City: Nashville, Tenn.
Opened: 1974

Sierra Hull (R) performs with Justin Moses (L) at The Station Inn in Nashville, Tenn. | Courtesy Photo: Sierra Hull

At 28, bluegrass/roots artist Sierra Hull has already released four full-length albums. Her most recent, 25 Trips, released in February on Rounder Records, is the follow-up to her GRAMMY-nominated 2016 album, Weighted Mind.

"It's easy to take for granted that a venue like The Station Inn will always be there," she says. "It's a staple of the Nashville community and a musical home for so many of us. I've been deeply inspired by the concerts I've seen by both legends and peers there, and have played the stage myself countless times over the years. It's the type of venue that is perfectly small and intimate yet with a history that makes it feel larger than life.

Read: Sierra Hull Takes Her Place In Bluegrass History, Talks Legacy & New Music At Wide Open Bluegrass

"It really breaks my heart to know that venues we all love are struggling and could potentially go under during this pandemic. I hope and pray they can survive this for the sake of our community and the need we all have to gather together in places with so much history and meaning."

Ondara

Venue: Cedar Cultural Center
City: Minneapolis, Minn.
Opened: 1989

Cedar Cultural Center | Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Ondara, previously known as J.S. Ondara, grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, listening to a lot of rock music before moving to the U.S. in 2013. His debut album, Tales Of America, released in 2019, received a nomination for Best Americana Album at the 2020 GRAMMYs. In May, the singer-songwriter released his follow-up, Folk N' Roll, Vol 1: Tales Of Isolation, an 11-song collection written and recorded by Ondara, in less than a week, while in lockdown in Minneapolis. The compositions speak to our times and collective quarantined experience. A direct response to the global pandemic, the album serves as therapy for Ondara.

Before moving from Africa to America, Ondara had never been to a concert. His first show was at the Cedar Cultural Center, a Twin Cities live music hot spot for the past 30 years. It changed his life.

Read: Kenyan Singer/Songwriter J.S. Ondara On Telling His Own 'Tales Of America' With Debut LP

"I was new to America, and I had spent some time with music unsuccessfully," he recalls. "Nothing was working out, so I decided to go to school. Halfway through my second semester, a friend invited me to a show to see Seattle singer-songwriter Noah Gundersen. I had a completely spiritual experience at that concert. I dropped out of school the following day and went back to focusing on my music and making my debut record. It was life-changing. The novelty of [it] being my first concert, along with my internal turmoil of my desires to be a musician being stifled, all played a part in the experience. It left a lasting impression. I honestly can't wait until I can be in a room full of people again and sing right in their faces."

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Grammys Newsletter

Harry Chapin

Photo: Courtesy of artist

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'Harry Chapin: When In Doubt, Do Something' Filmmakers Rick Korn & Jason Chapin Revisit Singer/Activist's Legacy At A Vital Time

The new documentary looks at the life of the late GRAMMY-nominated folk singer and how his message of hope and making a difference resonates so strongly today

Ana Monroy Yglesias

GRAMMYs

Oct 21, 2020 - 3:40 pm

In 1972, not long after signing to Elektra, a 29-year-old folk singer/songwriter named Harry Chapin released his debut album, Heads & Tales, spawning the hit single "Taxi." Later that year, he'd release his sophomore album, Sniper & Other Love Songs, and receive his first GRAMMY nomination, for Best New Artist at the 15th GRAMMY Awards.

Just two years later, in 1974, the Brooklynite released his fourth album, Verities & Balderdash, along with his most well-known song and only No. 1, the deeply moving "Cat's in the Cradle." The memorable track also brought his second GRAMMY nomination, for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 17th GRAMMY Awards.

Almost as quickly as Chapin rose to global fame, he began using his platform to make a difference in the world. With nudging and support from his wife Sandy Chapin, he and radio DJ Bill Ayers founded WhyHunger in 1975 to address the root causes of food insecurity and poverty. The "Shooting Star" singer, who died at just 38 in car accident, would spend the rest of his time on earth hosting and playing benefit concerts, mentoring rising artists, advocating in D.C. and raising money and awareness to fight hunger.

Now, with the release of Harry Chapin: When In Doubt, Do Something on Oct. 16, World Food Day, viewers get a deep dive into the inspirational man behind the music, along with the message that one person really can move make a difference when they put their mind to it. We recently spoke to the documentary's director, Rick Korn, and co-producer/Harry Chapin's stepson, Jason Chapin, about the film, what the great folk artist's legacy means to them and much more.

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Harry Chapin, When In Doubt, Do Something comes out soon, on October 16. What messages do you hope viewers will get from watching it?

Korn: Well, there are two messages with Harry's story. The most important thing is about his activism, his music, his way to really inspire generations of music artists, of people like myself. I think the most important thing for people to get out of this is it's a break from the craziness of what's going on in the world around us, it's a 93-minute escape into Harry's world, which is just so entertaining and inspiring. I hope that people look at it from that perspective. I know people that have seen the film have walked away from it thoroughly entertained and thoroughly inspired. That's what we hope people get out of the film.

Chapin: I'll add that my father's been gone for a long time, but over his 10-year career, he accomplished a lot musically. His music continues to be listened to by younger generations, which is great, but the humanitarian side, starting WhyHunger in 1975 and Long Island Cares in 1980 and being involved in a lot of other important causes and organizations, is also big. It's amazing that those organizations have grown so much and continue to help, literally, hundreds of thousands of people each year. If you think about today, hunger and poverty is a much bigger issue now, but, fortunately, because of my father's work and many organizations fighting against it, there's a lot being done.

The takeaway, I'm hoping, for those that see the movie, is that it's one individual who was motivated to do something, who inspired many others to continue to support what he did, but they also are doing great things on their own. It's really inspirational to know that one person can make a difference.

I feel like that answers this question a bit, but I still want to ask it this way. Why did you decide to make a documentary about Harry Chapin?

Korn: Harry was unique in a lot of different ways, and if this was a story about another music artist that focused on their vices and the destruction of their lives, we would not have been interested in making the film. What interests us about Harry is his prolific creativity and his ability to literally move people, to save people. What really blew our minds when we did our research on Harry was he was so incredibly effective in fighting for the underdog.

He could write a protest song and you can do a benefit concert, but Harry was more than that. He literally got his hands dirty doing the work, and figured out what the root causes of hunger and poverty are and attacked them in every way. He spent a good portion of the most vital 10 years of his life just trying to help people, and that is unique in the world, particularly in the world today. That's why we made the film. We made the film because I think the world needs a little bit of Harry today.

Chapin: One thing I'll add, maybe it's not known to a lot of people, but my father was a successful filmmaker before he became a successful musician. I think film helped him really understand stories better and made him a much better songwriter. It's also just amazing, so many years later, when Rick and S.A. Baron [who co-produced the film with Korn and Chapin] asked if we would be interested in a documentary, it was special to me because there had never been interest in a film about him. They saw a different subject matter that others didn't.

Also, it's just the right time, because there's so much going on that my father was passionate about and committed to, and, as Rick said, there's so much negativity out there, but this is the right film at the right time.

Why do you feel like it's so important to share this story and these messages now?

Korn: I don't want to say we rushed it because we didn't, but we really worked hard getting this film out now because of all the divisiveness in the world. Harry's story is unique from any other music artist because he really inspired a generation of music artists. You look at Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, Bob Geldof and Ken Kragen, all these people that created Live Aid and "We Are the World"/U.S.A for Africa and Hands Across America. Harry inspired these people in that way, and his music, on top of that, was just so moving and so incredible.

I want to follow up on something that Jason said about him being a filmmaker. One of the things that surprised me when we did our research, was that he was a filmmaker, and not only that, but an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and documentarian, but we learned that was the way Harry wrote songs. It's very similar to the way a director writes a film. His songs are these mini movies. His storytelling feels like you're the character, one of those two people in the taxi in the song, "Taxi." And you always feel like the parent in "Cat's in the Cradle." He and Sandy just had a way of making songs that you find yourself in, and that's the brilliant part of his songwriting.

Explore: It's The One: 45 Years Of Bruce Springsteen's 'Born To Run'

Do you have a favorite story or anecdote from any of the artists you talked to while making the film?

Chapin: I was at the Billy Joel interview and he told us a lot of things that I didn't know. I learned that he opened for my father and years later, my father opened for him, and they had a nice friendship, and supported each other. And Billy Joel started talking about how people would think that "Piano Man" was written by my father, and he really loved the way my father wrote songs, and he was describing how much he loved the song "Taxi" and how it gave him goosebumps. And then he was talking about my father as a humanitarian, and he called him a saint. I think that was probably my favorite experience with this whole project.

Korn: Yeah, the Billy Joel interview was certainly a great one because I didn't realize how close Billy and Harry were, just on a human level. The reason for that, I think, was the fact that Harry treated everyone like your kid brother. The fact that he would support Billy, which was so rare in the music business then, and even now, it just broke down whatever barrier or competition they normally would have with each other. That surprised me.

My favorite interview—there's so many, because after each interview, you love everybody that you interviewed because they loved Harry. You can't make a movie just with that one interview, but the two that stand out for me is DMC [a.k.a. Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC], because he taught us something we didn't know about, how he did "Cat's in the Cradle" [on 2006's "Just Like Me" with Sarah McLachlan] and they were one of the first rap groups. The fact that Harry was considered cool in the early days of hip-hop music blew my mind. He's a great guy. He's done so much for WhyHunger over the years, and he's just a really genuine guy, so I really loved that interview.

I have to say that the most entertaining interview for me that maybe I've ever done was Sir Bob Geldof, which ended up being a two-and-a-half-hour interview when my average interview is about 45 minutes. I literally asked two questions in the entire interview. He just went on and on and on. He would come back and say something about Harry, but then he would go on.

They all loved Harry. Harry changed their lives, just as he did mine. Harry came to my high school in 1974. Everyone in the school, teachers, coaches, janitor, everyone came into the auditorium, and he came running in and played for two and a half hours and talked about hunger and poverty, and it was the greatest lecture you ever went to in your life. It was inspirational.

Read: From Aretha Franklin To Public Enemy, Here's How Artists Have Amplified Social Justice Movements Through Music

What does his legacy mean to you?

Chapin: When I think of his legacy, I think of all the people that my father looked up to, and one of them was Pete Seeger, and I think he saw that Pete was doing great things over many years. He was completely selfless and hugely impactful. As I look at my father's legacy, it's the fact that so many fans can tell stories about meeting him after a concert in the lobby, so many fans talk about how they shared his music with their kids, and now grandkids, and the fact that he started these organizations and that continued to grow and help more people each year.

I think the overall, in terms of his legacy—he even says in the film that he wanted to matter. That's another way of saying he didn't want to be forgotten. The fact that people are still talking about him, people are still inspired by him is just amazing.

Korn: I'd like to tag on to that. When I think of Harry's legacy, obviously he was a great songwriter. Music is important, and his music is important, but when I think of Harry's legacy, I think of what is going on right now with this pandemic and the fact that what he and [N.Y.C. radio DJ] Bill Ayres and Sandy Chapin created in 1975—and Sandy and Bill are still at it—is still saving lives today. That is a legacy that is larger than life.

Can you talk a little more about WhyHunger's work and why specifically the issue of access to healthy food was so important to Harry?

Chapin: I think what's important to understand is that it was my mother who really nudged my father and said, "You should get involved in more things, not just do music." My father was interviewed by Bill Ayres on his radio show, "On This Rock," and they had instant chemistry. They started talking, with my mother at some of their meetings, they decided that they wanted to focus on something that would really have a big impact on a lot of people. They did a lot of research. They talked to a lot of experts, and they realized hunger and poverty was at the root of all of our issues, and if they tackled that, that could solve so many of our problems. They continued to educate themselves and talk to experts. They spent a lot of time down in D.C. talking to legislators, and they were really committed to being knowledgeable and informed and getting other people to understand.

I think what my father knew is that if you tackle hunger and poverty, you're also tackling social injustice, you're tackling women's issues, you're tackling racial issues, you're tackling so many root issues, and so I think it was very insightful for them to talk about that. It wasn't just about giving people food.

My father was very into being self-sufficient, so he wanted people to have access to education and work to become self-sufficient. At the same time, I think he wanted people to understand that people don't choose to be hungry or poor, that there were certain policies that were put upon them that created a lot of the problems, a lot of the barriers that they faced.

I think it's also important to say that the fact that we still have a problem doesn't mean that we're losing the war. It just means that there are more people that need to get involved in order to solve the problem. WhyHunger's job is not to solve the problem, it's to help other people it, so it's a very grassroots focus. They do a lot of work with groups around the country and internationally to help support what they're doing and connect them to other organizations so that they can realize their potential and do even more great work.

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Join us tonight for a very special Docu-Concert to inspire us all to DO SOMETHING AND VOTE! Harry Chapin is the original reason I love folk music. I listened to “Cats in the Cradle” on repeat as a kid. Very surreal to be a part of this event with him and more of my heroes @springsteen @blackpumas @kebmomusic @alabama_shakes @theheadandtheheart and @derekandsusan ! We’ll be raising money today for many nonprofits including @return2heart ! Tune in tonight (link in bio!)!

A post shared by RAYE ZARAGOZA (@rayezaragoza) on Oct 20, 2020 at 11:27am PDT

What do you each see as the connection between art and service?

Korn: Art is service in a certain way. We have a livestream docu-concert coming out called Do Something and there's an artist participating by the name of Raye Zaragoza. Raye is a young artist/activist. She's Native American and she's all about the environment and has devoted her life to it. She doesn't just write the songs. An artist/activist is someone, in my opinion, who doesn't just write and perform great music, but as Harry taught us, they get their hands dirty.

If you care about the pipeline going through South Dakota and the reservations, you're going to go to protests. You're in Washington. You're writing motivational songs. It doesn't mean you have to write motivational songs, because Harry didn't have many protest songs, but he understood his nature and human feelings and empathy, and he had tremendous empathy. I think that's the connection, that's what makes an artist an artist/activist.

Chapin: Yeah, and my father and my uncle Tom [Chapin] did a lot of benefit concerts, and I know they had a lot of conversations. My father was always fascinated with Pete Seeger's philosophy about being an activist, getting involved, and he said it was because he got to work with great people, people who were very passionate and committed. My father and Pete Seeger and others, I think they were getting more out of the experience than they were giving to the experience, and it made their lives richer.

My father, he spent a lot of time in high schools, middle schools and colleges talking to young people. He always felt that young people were the future, and he wanted to know what they cared about, what they were interested in doing, and to encourage them to get involved. It didn't have to be hunger and poverty, but just get involved, to commit to something. It was all about letting them know that they could make a difference.

Lastly, a lot of musicians, I think, tend to be a little bit self-centered, but my father was very generous when it came to other musicians. He used to do these songwriting workshops where he would spend time with a group of up-and-coming musicians, those who wanted to learn more about songwriting and composing music. My father had these regular meetings with different musicians on Long Island. I think the musicians who attended really enjoyed the experience of learning from my father, but my father also enjoyed the experience of hearing what they were thinking and collaborating with them. I think that was also very rewarding for him.

Read: From Chicago To Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Here's Who Was Honored At The 2020 GRAMMY Salute To Music Legends

It becomes so much more than the artist saying, "I care about this, you should too." When it's like, "I really care about this. What do you care about?" it feels different.

Chapin: Yeah. I think it's a beautiful community when musicians collaborate and they do things together. I think that really attracted my father's interest, he just loved other communities, whether it was other artists or not. He was really into a lot of intellectual stuff. He did a lot of reading. He was intellectually very curious, and I think he also liked learning from other people and finding out what motivated them and what inspired them. I think that gave him a lot of, I don't know, excitement just to be around people who were very eager and action-oriented.

Do you think art can change the world?

Korn: You know, I think that music is, by its very nature, a healer. I'm not saying it can cure cancer, but it can help cure cancer. Maybe that's an overstatement. I just mean it that it's got that power. People get moved by music. I was working with a gentleman by the name of Carl Perkins, who wrote the song, "Blue Suede Shoes." We were flying over to London [in 1997] to do a benefit concert with Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton and a bunch of people, and for the island of Montserrat after a volcano eruption. I asked, "Why is it that it seems like music artists are always the first ones to jump in and do benefit concerts?"

Carl's response was, "Did you ever meet a great songwriter that didn't grow up poor or have some sort of difficulties in their life? They just tend to be more empathetic towards the common man. They write about it." From that standpoint, I don't know if they can save the world, but I think Harry in a lot of ways has saved lives, and I guess that's your answer. [Chuckles.]

Chapin: Yeah, that was well said, Rick. I can't think of anything else that brings people together more than music. It's a universal thing, and once you bring people together and there's somebody who plants a seed as to something they should all work toward or work on together, then anything is possible. We know, going back decades, whether it was Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, the Beatles and their Concert for Bangladesh, or Live Aid or "We Are the World," we know when groups come together, anything is possible. They may not be solving all the world's problems, but they can certainly make a huge difference.

It's so true. I have to share, my dad grew up in Brooklyn Heights and went to Grace Church, so he knew all the Chapins. The first concert I ever went to was Tom Chapin—my dad took us to his shows all the time when we were kids.

Chapin: I'm so glad you shared that because that's where everything happened, at Grace Church. That's where my uncles Tom and Steve were in the choir. My father was a little older, so he wasn't as involved, but that's also where they met Robert Lamm from Chicago. John Wallace was also a member of the choir, and he ended up being a key part of my father's band. That was such a magical time back then, because there were so many musicians and they would all go into Manhattan and play at the different clubs and community events. Everybody wanted to be a musician or go listen to musicians. Brooklyn now is still—that's the hot borough in New York City. That's where the musicians want to live, and that's where they want to perform. It's a fabulous tradition.

Great to hear that you've been to some of my uncle Tom's shows. I don't know if you're aware, but my father had two GRAMMY nominations, but Tom won three GRAMMYs, so that's fun family history.

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Ariel Pink in 2007

Photo: Patrick Kwonbenedit

News

Pop Music Is Fun: Ariel Pink Looks Back On His Earliest Recordings

The lo-fi figurehead talks to GRAMMY.com about his first albums, which have hit streaming for the first time with the Ariel Archives reissues via Mexican Summer

Ana Monroy Yglesias

GRAMMYs

Aug 31, 2020 - 10:18 am

In music's current era, bedroom-pop artists, i.e., Billie Eilish, Clairo, Mac DeMarco, live next to major-label, studio-produced pop acts on the charts, festival lineups and sometimes even the GRAMMY stage. Back in the early-to-mid '00s, uploading your music to Myspace and slinging homemade CDs at local gigs were your best shots at getting homemade jams out to eager ears. Through it all, Los Angeles-born-and-raised lo-fi stalwart Ariel Pink has always found a way to get his music noticed—and remain relevant—while staying true to his do D.I.Y. and I.D.G.A.F. ethos.

In 2001-02, as the one-man-band Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Pink recorded Loverboy, House Arrest, Fast Forward and Scared Famous on an 8-track cassette recorder while locked in a cheap room he rented from monks.

Now, these projects and some of his other early LPs and lost tracks have made it to streaming and vinyl for the first time, thanks to the massive Ariel Archives reissue project released by Mexican Summer. The first two cycles of reissues dropped earlier this year, along with Odditties Sodomies Vol. 2, "a long-awaited second volume of outtakes and non-album tracks," with two more are coming before the end of 2020.

In celebration of the Ariel Archives, we caught up with the L.A. indie-pop architect to learn more about what the reissues mean to him, where he recorded the albums and much more.

We're in the midst of the Ariel Archives releases. What does it mean to you to share this sort of treasure trove of your early music in this way, in this format?

It's what the label wanted to do. I guess it's appropriate that it's the 20th anniversary of my initial recording releases and this is my career milestone or something like that. But yeah, it's sort of like the midway point. I made these recordings more or less when I was in my early 20s. Now I'm in my early 40s, so it's sort of been a lifetime since I started. Hopefully, there won't be any need to review my backlog and my "legacy" in another 20 years, because I'll be 60 then. I just don't want people to forget about me when I'm alive, that's all. After I'm dead, then they can forget about me all they want.

Obviously, the main way people consume music now is via streaming. So, if an album or a song isn't on Spotify and Apple Music, it doesn't exist to a large subset of music listeners.

Yeah. It's very dystopian of me to even speak of things in terms of an old mode, sort of historicizing things. I kind of think history is history. I've never really thought of myself as necessarily being worthy of being noticed or being singled out as being a special artist that has stood the test of time and has fought for every fan and their integrity every step of the way, blah, blah. I don't really think in those terms. I think, really, it's always panic mode. You sink or swim.

Wherever there's been interest, I've been showing up and then basically been like, "Oh, you rang? Okay, I'm right here." [Laughs.] That's not completely accurate, but I showed up to the job and I created the job for myself when there wasn't one. And in a sense, making music has never made me money. So, it's obviously not about the money, but the stuff that happens on the periphery of that, like playing shows, syncs, branding and sales and royalties.

All that stuff is what's made me be able to do what I want to do. In a sense, these are the things that are at stake in these trying times, these dwindling opportunities that rise up around the music, that have nothing to do with the actual making of the music. Making music never made me a cent, never did anything good for me whatsoever, except make me feel better.

But what am I trying to say with these archives? I mean, well, that they existed, that things existed more than two years ago, and just because I'm over 20 years old does not make me a Boomer.

Read: Billie Eilish, Saweetie, Selena Gomez, John Legend & More Will Share "Why I'm Voting"

What do you feel when you listen back to these early albums?

I'm very proud. I'm proud, and I'm like, "Wow, look at him go." I don't know how I did it. I mean, I can't do it now, that's for sure. I don't work the same way that I worked back then. I was firing off on all cylinders back then, I guess you could say. My brain was in peak fitness, and so I was basically able to tackle all sorts of Herculean tasks that I don't have the patience, skills, time or concentration for anymore. My workflow at the time was so infused with being single-mindedly determined, a me against the world kind of thing. That kind of desperation has been sort of chiseled out of me slowly over the course of 20 years. I'm definitely not as confident as I once was, just by having nothing to show for it.

So, I really do admire that 20-year-old me who just basically believed in himself so much that he was able to weather all those setbacks and all the naysayers, and all the things that were pointing towards how futile it would be to even pursue that line of work. I think it's really tough for people to really understand that nowadays, more than ever, because being different and marching to your own beat now is even more rare than it was back then. And despite the fact that I've been accepted, like I used to say, the world came to me and I didn't go to it. So, that's a really key point in all of this. And I think it would be equally Herculean for somebody to expect to get what I got from doing what I did nowadays. So, it's just a totally different can of worms. But I definitely would say, don't listen to me or anybody else who tells you to do differently. We don't know anything.

Well, I was going to ask if you could go back and offer your 20-year-old self any advice or wisdom, what would it be?

That's it. I would not listen to anything that anybody said, so I would do the exact opposite. It would be confirmation of the fact that I was right and they were wrong. If somebody agreed with me, I would have been worried. It would have been cause for doubt. What I'm saying is, to do what I did, you need to actually really be at odds with the world. I'm not saying I'm a serial killer or a lowlife, but what I was doing was practically suicidal. I blocked out the world in a very, very thorough fashion. I did not want to engage. I was extremely disaffected. If it was nowadays, I might not even have a phone or a computer. I would still be sending messages through the mail. I wouldn't even be listening to anything that was online. If I could find it online, I wouldn't even be doing music, probably. All those things were part of my identity, that I felt like a freak for even thinking about when I was in it.

So, that was me basically embracing my own individuality in the face of everybody else, and paying the price for it too. I was ostracized. I never got any kind of high fives or "More power to you, man. You keep doing what you're doing." People think that that stuff's going to help them, and I don't think it helps at all. People shouldn't get support if they're doing something different. They should expect to get no support, and that should give them the fire that's necessary in order to overcome that. If you've done something for 10,000 hours, which roughly works out to four years of five-day work weeks, you're going to be a professional at it and pretty much know what you're talking about. I've been doing my job now for about four times that amount.

So, I definitely feel like I know what I'm talking about, even with regards to the industry. Up until COVID-19, I could probably be a great manager for some band. I could put a band on the road and tell them exactly at what point they're going to break up in the tour based on how much money they were getting and how much the overhead would be. I have lots of practical skills I've acquired in my adult life that have really come in handy. But based on just pursuing this single-minded way of doing things, and never having had a manager. I'm open to one, but none of them could ever really explain to me how I wouldn't be basically shooting myself in the foot by having them. It's been an uphill battle, but again, my ambition is actually pretty low on the totem pole. I've got low overhead, and I'm basically just myself here. I've been doing it pretty well. I mean, I don't really rely on my parents at all for anything, and I haven't for 20 years almost. That's because I've lived in very cheap places and been like, "F*** you. No, I don't want your help."

Read: 4 Independent Record Stores Across The U.S. Weigh In On Their Struggle To Survive During COVID-19

When you first started recording music as Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, was your goal the same then as it is now? Did you ever imagine then that you'd have the fan base that you do now?

No, I never did. I expected to fail. I expected that it was basically going to be me working at record stores for the rest of my life, and I was perfectly happy with that. I was secure in that. Naïve little me thought that record stores would actually be there forever. I thought that was job security for me. Nobody would need to know that I made music, it would just be my inside joke with myself, and I'd be perfectly happy sweeping floors and working in a dusty old little record shop somewhere. That would be my revenge against my family, the powers that be, and all the haters. A very modest ambition, basically. I surpassed my goal at about 27 years old. At that point, everything had to change. I was not as prolific anymore. I guess I was just looking for love. I didn't even realize it.

And then I didn't write songs for five years. I basically just focused on getting my live presence back in shape, and make it feasible and take it seriously as a source of income, and to get signed, with the ultimate goal of getting signed to a real label. And I did that. Once I was signed, then there was the sort of reality check that it's not really anything to get signed, you need to get paid for getting signed. And I sort of had to get sued a few times to learn what friendship is and what being a boss is, too, and what being responsible is and what it isn't. Those are all very, very good lessons, which I'm grateful to my enemies for.

My ambition now is really to go back to being my 20-year-old self and having not a care in the world, basically chilling out. If I ever get there, you won't hear about it. But I'm halfway there. I'm not playing live anymore, so that's a good thing. I'm grateful I don't really have to do that. I can put myself in a place where basically I can roll out reissues and I can just do a few interviews and hopefully I won't have a dwindling audience. Hopefully, I'll still reach new listeners. And I've got syncs, people want to use my stuff in TV shows. I've got respect, and I've got all the things, basically, that Paul McCartney has, except for the kids. My new goal is to buy a house and to start a family. I'm single and I'm ready to mingle.

Well, no mingling yet.

No mingling yet, yeah. No creeping for me. Absolutely not.

In the period when you weren't making music, what did that feel like for you? Because it sounds like music is very much an outlet for you, as it is for many people.

To be honest, it was a little bit concerning at the time. But I always told myself that I would never do it if I didn't feel inclined to. At the time, I wasn't inspired to. I'm not really inspired these days either. That said, what I do feel is that it's a job for me. So, I'm grateful for every little bit I manage to squeeze out. The fact that it has any kind of audience whatsoever, however small, I'm just shocked and pleasantly surprised about, because I always feel like I'm yesterday's news pretty quickly. So, I'm grateful for the people that give a sh*t. I'm super, super psyched. I'm out of retirement! That's how it always feels for me.

The demands I put on myself with regards to music are much more lax these days, and I don't have as much integrity, per se, or single-minded determination. I'm really more slowly, kind of nervously, putting things together every once in a while, when I feel like I might be able to. And if people like the results, I'm like, "Yeah, I still got it." I'm pretty happy about that. I'm not as confident as I used to be, but I'm happy with whatever it is that I can do, and grateful for that.

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I think that's such a hard balance that you find with creative work. You want to do it when you feel inspired, but the world in not always the most inspiring place. If you get stuck in a rut, it's like, "How do I force myself out of here nicely?"

Well, I think that's been a problem with thinking about yourself as an artist from the get-go. I think people put a lot of undue stress on themselves, and their work suffers from it because they have to find themselves as an artist. They have to be making work because that's the only thing that makes them an artist. God forbid, they shouldn't work—will they be called out as not being an artist? Was it all basically a fraud?

First of all, being creative and being an artist is the last goal that anybody should have, honestly. It's not an ambition. It's something that you had at three years old. You had all that stuff and more back in the day, and you don't need to have any kind of degree. Of course you can f***ing be an artist if you want to be. It just means that you do stuff. And you shouldn't be so f***ing hard on yourself about the quality of it. Who cares what anybody thinks, if you want to do it?

I think of it as therapy. If it's working, it basically should bring you to a place where you don't need to do it anymore and you exorcize those demons, and that should be a cause for celebration, not for worry or concern. You should go do something else. Once you've purged that musical thing, go find another interest. Go get into astronomy. There's catharsis in it, and you shouldn't be doing art for your whole life. That means that you're not getting anywhere. I think it's a stupid thing to want to do, especially as a career.

I'm able to make music and make it in a way that basically conforms to a certain level of quality that my label can basically get behind. If I had it my way, I would just be sending my voice memos to them. Essentially, I don't care. I've already gotten all the props I can get from all of my releases. I don't really need any more acknowledgement. I really should get into gardening or something like that, some other hobby, at this point.

A lot of D.I.Y. and alternative artists over the years have counted you as an influence. How does that make you feel, or does that matter to you that your sound and your approach influences others?

Oh, yeah. It's the whole thing, man. Those are the people that have the careers. I mean, the kids are the ones who are getting record deals. As long they get turned on to what I do, I seem to be somewhat successful in my ability to sort of influence tomorrow's record deals today. It seems like the people who were exposed to my stuff as teenagers went on to become artists themselves who got record deals, that had careers that far surpassed my own.

I'm happy that I get any kind of mention at the table, and it's really what makes it possible for me to do what I'm doing. I mean, this is the first time the GRAMMYs has ever gotten in contact with me. I've never been invited to a red carpet event. But any time Julian Casablancas says something nice about me, I f***ing glow up. I'm like, "Yeah!" And then if somebody talks shit about me, I'm like, "Yeah, exactly." I feel a little bit valuable in the world, in some kind of weird, sick and twisted way.

[Music] is a kids' game. Every day I'm not over the hill, I'm stoked to still be somewhat employed by my interests. It's key that other people shine a light on me. That helps. I'm aware of the people doing that, and I'm not asking them and I never have. And they don't call me up and just say, "Hey, I'm Billy Corgan, and I'm a huge fan." Nobody ever does that. I find out about it after it's been circulated. So, I'm kind of like the last one to find out about that kind of stuff.

What artists remain as influences to you to this day?

All the same influences, all the things I listened to back in the day. There're more artists out there that I like now. There's so much good music hitting the world, and it's always been that way. It's always been right next door to you, you just didn't know it. I don't really have the appetite and the time or the level of patience to listen to everything that comes my way.

I mean, I've got people sending links all day long, never-ending, like, "Could you listen to this and tell me what you think about what I do?" I'm just like, "Oh, no, no, no." If you like what I do, that's a red flag. I don't want anybody that likes what I do thinking I want to hear what they do. I don't necessarily love what I do or think very highly of myself or even listen to my own music, per se. So it's a much different kind of dynamic and I try to be polite about it, but it doesn't stop me from rubbing people the wrong way, almost as a rule.

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I would love to get a glimpse back into your life of when you were recording House Arrest and Loverboy. Where were you living and hanging out? What kind of music were you listening to at that time? Take us there for a moment.

So, I was living in a $300 bedroom, utilities included. I shared a bathroom with several other people in this house in Crenshaw. I answered a classifieds ad in The Recycler magazine. I thought it just was a cheap room. I went, and I got to the house in the ghetto, on a very dangerous street. It's right by where Catch One disco is, where Das Bunker was. Back then, there was nothing going on there. It was practically condemned.

But my house was the one that's overlooking the parking lot of Catch One. It was a top floor. There was this older Cambodian guy. He was kind of a hoarder. He was in the room right next door to me. Then there was this guy who was fresh off the boat from Hungary, who was doing chiropracting down the hall. The downstairs was occupied by a bunch of monks. It was a meditation center, an ashram. They didn't deal with money or with material things in this world. They have different homes, places around the country and around the world that are Ananda Marga centers. They welcomed these nomadic monks that go from one place to another, all of them coming and going. They'd stay for a week or two, or sometimes a couple months.

And then there was also some South American refugees that were upstairs in the attic. They didn't speak a word of English. They weren't part of the meditation center, per se. Then there was a guy downstairs who was a very handsome, tall, Black man from the Congo. His whole family had been murdered and he had just arrived in the United States. I think the monks did amnesty stuff, outreach around the world and good things like that. Every Sunday, Ananda Marga would do a food drive, sort of like a market, on the front lawn of our house. They were devoted to doing good things for the community. And they're still there. I went there with a radio show, actually.

But it was a very, very strange thing. I lived behind a locked door. I didn't adhere to any of the rules of the house. I should have been kicked out within seconds. The only thing I asked when they gave me the three-page list of restrictions, the things that I had to agree to in order to live there, I just asked if there was a lock on my door. They said yes. But I broke every rule in the book. You can't even bring onions in there. Anything with flavor, that was banned from the house. But I smoked. I messed around. I had people sleeping over. I had lowlifes that made noise all hours of the night. Not one noise complaint ever, and they were up early. I was really shocked.

I made four records there. I made House Arrest, Loverboy, Fast Forward and Scared Famous in the time I was there, just under two years. And in that time, I met my wife-to-be, and we broke up not long after I left there. I had another girlfriend before that when I got there. And I was working jobs. During the day, I was working at the elementary school that I had attended, Temple Emanuel. I was doing that from 7:00 in the morning to 3:00, 4:00 in the afternoon. I basically had no life and no friends, so I had all of my time open to devote to making music. When I wasn't working at that place, I worked at Rhino Records and at my dad's office. I was committed to being independent and not freeloading off of my parents.

It was a very magical time. It was a very, very dark time, too, in a weird way. I can't believe I managed to get through it. It was really amazing. I don't know how I had all the time to do all the things that I did. I just didn't have any friends. I was making the most of it.

Did you feel lonely at the time or feel strange being in a place of people doing something totally different from what you were doing in there?

That was the world. I never felt like I was a part of the world until fairly recently, about eight years ago. Being completely at odds with the world was the most natural thing to me, so I sort of blocked it out. I had this cognitive dissonance. I was a very troubled, A.D.D. kid. I was used to being left alone, at least that's what I wanted it to be. I had a very, very active private life that was just in my mind, and I just needed to be allowed to do that.

"It took New York discovering me for L.A. to pay attention. So, that's changed now, and there's a whole culture that's basically arisen around that because of me."

I'm sure that place had a specific influence on the music you were recording there. You've spent most of your life in and around L.A. How do you feel like L.A. has influenced your art and music, and why do you think you've chosen to still stay here?

I mean, I've never lived anywhere else. I guess I'm a country bumpkin. I never left home. I don't know what it's like to even imagine what being somewhere else would do to influence my music or my surroundings. If I were to leave L.A. and move to New York or anywhere else—I've never done that, and I've been asked this question hundreds of times—I'd be running away from something, from my family.

I've been one continuous stream. I don't start over. I don't understand what the disconnection is between people and their roots. I still walk down the same streets that I did when I was younger. For me, it's the most natural thing in the world to be in my element here. I'm not trying to advance or move anywhere else. I'm not even trying to make it back to the westside or anything like that. I don't even understand how people from the East Coast come here and become bi-coastal. They have means. So they all come out here, and they bring their rent prices with them. They're going to go back east eventually, but not before they f***ing make it impossible for L.A. people to live here. This place used to be cheap. I mean, L.A.'s just a shitty town like any other place. But it's my place and it's where my family is.

I don't need to move. It'd be weird if I just moved somewhere else. I'm very, very rooted and very anchored to my comfort zone, I guess. So that's the real reason I'm here. And like I said, the world seemed to come to me, in that regard. When I was doing the music stuff in the early 2000s, there was no indie music scene here. It took New York discovering me for L.A. to pay attention. So, that's changed now, and there's a whole culture that's basically arisen around that because of me. L.A. was just a place for Interscope Records, it was where the big industry was. There were no indie labels, there was no grassroots scene happening underneath the current. The audience wasn't here, is what I'm saying. We just broadcast careers across the world. It's sort of a behind-the-music place. That's changed now, and now it wants to think of itself as a hotbed of indie activity, which I don't engage with at all. I'm like, "You guys are f***ing suckers. I'm going to the GRAMMYs."

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Bruce Hornsby

Photo: Sarah Walor

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Bruce Hornsby Talks New Album 'Non-Secure Connection,' Working With Spike Lee And His Ongoing Support Of Civil Rights In His Music

The GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter tells GRAMMY.com about how his work with the revered filmmaker and his longtime affirmation of civil rights inform his latest album

Joshua M. Miller

GRAMMYs

Aug 15, 2020 - 2:19 pm

Bruce Hornsby is constantly on the search for new sounds to explore and fresh ways to express his thoughts. In 1986, the GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter set the tone on The Way It Is, his multiplatinum hit debut album with his original band, Bruce Hornsby And The Range. (The album ultimately helped him and the group score the Best New Artist win at the 1987 GRAMMYs.) He later made an impact during a stint on keyboards with The Grateful Dead and dabbling in a variety of genres on his albums, including ventures into folk, jazz, bluegrass and even classical music.

"It's just a byproduct of a constant search for inspiration, a constant search for the new, a constant search for growing and evolving and improving your craft and your creativity over a long career period," Hornsby says of his wide-spanning musical projects in a recent phone interview with GRAMMY.com. "And so, I'm just intellectually, musically curious or musically, intellectually curious ... I'm doing this for people who are interested in a little bit of musical adventure."

His latest albums—2019's Absolute Zero and the newly released Non-Secure Connection—find him exploring yet another genre: film scores. Thanks to his work on music for multiple Spike Lee films, including 2018's BlacKkKlansman, Hornsby realized he could turn a film score cue into a song. He uses piano as well as instruments like the electric sitar and Chamberlin to create atmospheric, cinematic songs.

"I think a filmmaker's telling the story, using music to augment the emotional quality of the film, and I'm doing the same thing here," he says.

Released Friday (Aug. 14), Non-Secure Connection features a wide array of guest artists and musicians who further enhance the songs: The Shins singer James Mercer, singer and poet Jamila Woods, Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid and Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon. Album standout "Anything Can Happen" features the late Leon Russell, who co-wrote the track and appears on it courtesy of a demo that he and Hornsby recorded together more than 25 years ago.

Lyrically, Hornsby has plenty to say on Non-Secure Connection. He muses on topics such as computer hackers, mall salesmen and the "Darwinian" aspects of AAU basketball. A longtime, ardent supporter of civil rights—his 1986 hit song, "The Way It Is," references the civil rights movement of the '60s—the singer continues to address the social issues of the time across the album.

"Nina Simone said it best: 'It's the artist's job to reference the time in which we live.' And it's a bit like folk music. Lots of folk music has reflected through the years the world in which those writers wrote. And so, this is me doing my version of taking Nina Simone's charge and running with it," he says.

GRAMMY.com caught up with Bruce Hornsby to discuss his latest album, Non-Secure Connection, his longtime affirmation of civil rights in his music and how working with Spike Lee inspired a new sonic direction.

Songs such as "Bright Star Cast" and "Non-Secure Connection" feel very timely, with lyrics about civil rights and connections with each other.

Certainly. It's all of a sudden timely again, not that it's never not timely. The problems of American racism are always evident; you don't have to look very closely to find them. But certainly, the George Floyd tragedy has galvanized the scene, galvanized anyone who was at all sympathetic to the race issue and Blackness in America.

It's sort of serendipitous … that I wrote this song "Bright Star Cast," which is an attempt at a civil rights anthem. But it should be no small surprise because my career started with a song about racism: "The Way It Is." And this will be now the seventh song I've written that deals in some way with the race issue in our country.

And you mentioned "Non-Secure Connection," which is a song about a hacker, and that's, of course, very much sort of au courant in the current zeitgeist.

Nina Simone said it best: "It's the artist's job to reference the time in which we live." And it's a bit like folk music. Lots of folk music has reflected through the years the world in which those writers wrote. And so, this is me doing my version of taking Nina Simone's charge and running with it.

Read: 'Black Gold' At 50: How Nina Simone Refracted The Black Experience Through Reinterpreted Songs

When it comes to singing about racial equality, do you feel there's a constant search for finding the right words to express your feelings about it?

Well, there's a constant search to find the right words to express really anything. If you're trying to do something of some worth, then that's not easy. I think in everything I write, it's difficult to find the best words, and I struggle with it, just like any songwriter who's serious about it probably would and probably should. But I can make also this statement about what's happening now to me. The George Floyd tragedy is a Bull Connor moment in our history, a second Bull Connor moment.

How so?

In 1964, during the heyday of the civil rights movement, especially in the South, there was a protest going on in Birmingham, Ala., and the police chief in Birmingham, named Bull Connor, brought out his force and turned hoses on the protestors. It was just a horrific scene, and someone captured this on film … As soon as they could, they showed [this film] on the national news ...

And so, this film of this terrible local response to a civil rights protest, again, it shocked the country when they saw this … that just made the country aware of what was going on, and they previously had not been. And several months later, [President Lyndon B. Johnson] and the Congress passed the Civil Rights Act Of 1964. And I think a large part of what enabled them to do this is that footage from Bull Connor's police-hosing moment.

And so, this is a Bull Connor moment right now, because the video of that terrible, basically murder of George Lloyd—that went viral in a way that they couldn't think of in '64, obviously, [without] the internet. It went around the world and inspired the same response; that's why I call this a Bull Connor moment.

And hopefully, it will have the same effect. I mean, that was a major law passed, the Civil Rights Act Of 1964. I refer to it in my song, "The Way It Is": "They passed a law in '64 to give those who ain't got a little more."

You wrote the song "Sh*t's Crazy Out Here" about AAU basketball. Can you explain that connection?

If you're a serious basketball aspirant as a child, as a young hopeful, and you have a very solid to great talent, you're probably going to be playing in what's called grassroots basketball, summer basketball, also known as AAU basketball. AAU stands for the Amateur Athletic Union. My son, Keith, went through that crucible from age 10 to 18. This song comes from some of his experiences that he would tell me about.

"Sh*t's Crazy Out Here" is a song about that dysphoria that occurs in this Darwinian world of summer AAU basketball, but it's also a metaphor for our crazy world now, and I feel strongly about that. But also, what may be of interest to some regarding this song is that to me, it's an odd musical juxtaposition of modern classical meets modern pop. I describe this song as Arnold Schoenberg and Elliot Carter meet The Beatles at the Boo Williams Sportsplex, which is the AAU basketball mecca of our area here in Hampton, Va.

Half of the songs on Non-Secure Connection were originally crafted while you were working on film scores for Spike Lee. What was it like getting exposed to his unique perspective and working with a different kind of music?

Well, I've been being exposed to Spike's unique perspectives for 28 years. We met in 1992 … The first time I worked with Spike, he directed a video for me for a song of mine off my fourth record called Harbor Lights, and the song is called "Talk Of The Town." It was actually one of those seven songs about race that I was previously referring to, and it's about the first interracial romance in my town and all the reaction to that. I've been working with him since '92.

Those five songs to which you're referring, they started off as film cues, as instrumental music, part of my score for various Spike movies in the last decade. I started doing this on my last record, Absolute Zero, and I've continued to do that. It was a new way of writing songs for me and took me to a different, more cinematic place for obvious reasons. I feel these two records, Absolute Zero and Non-Secure Connection, have that connection, that at least half of the songs come from that [film] world, hence the cinematic quality ...

[Spike is] an unswerving artiste, and he will go the extra length to get what he wants. That's always inspiring, and it makes me not want to settle in my own work. He has more stamina than two people in their 60s. He can just go and go all day, every day, from 5:00 in the morning to midnight—and then do it again, like I say, every day. He's a very inspiring person and just a great, longtime friend.

Film music is pretty conducive to storytelling.

I think that's true. Since I tend to be a storyteller in song, I'm not much of a "woe is me" writer, if you understand what I'm saying. I'm not much into the confessional writing. I love a lot of people who've done that, but they would mine that area a lot better than I would. I've tended to be more of a storyteller, or I guess a commentator, on the current scene. So yes, I think a filmmaker's telling the story, using music to augment the emotional quality of the film, and I'm doing the same thing here.

Read: 'Score': Soundtracks take us on an emotional ride

You invited a wide spectrum of guest musicians to play on the album, including Jamila Woods and Vernon Reid on "Bright Star Cast." How did you get connected with them for that song?

I wanted a woman to sing with me on "Bright Star Cast," and our great friend from Jagjaguwar, Eric Davis, hooked us up with one of their artists named Jamila Woods.

I wasn't familiar with Jamila, but I went and listened to her music and thought, "Wow, I love it. It's a beautiful and great sound." She's also a wonderful poet … She added so much to that track, as did Vernon Reid.

That track was a Spike Lee cue originally for a movie called Da Sweet Blood Of Jesus from 2014; Vernon played on the film version of that track. So I twisted and turned his performance around just a little bit to fit what we were doing, the song that I created on top of that piece of instrumental music and the film music. I've loved [Vernon] for years, a longtime friend and a great musician.

What did it mean to be able to pay tribute to your friend, Leon Russell, on "Anything Can Happen"?

Leon Russell was one of the two pianists that I heard when I was younger that made me want to play the piano. The first was Elton John. The second was Leon; he was one of my early heroes.

I met him years later after we had our career going fairly solidly. I met him at The Palomino Club in the San Fernando Valley, L.A., when I lived out in that area in California. We ended up getting together for a Rolling Stone photoshoot that they asked us to be a part of. I asked him if he wanted to try to get back into the crazy music game, and he called me.

About four months later—this is 1988—he called and said, "Well, I'd like to try it if you can help me." I was able to get him a record deal at Virgin Records in 1990. In 1991, we made the record gradually over the course of that year, and it came out in '92. I think the first song that we wrote together was sparked by him asking me to write him a Barry White track.

I tried my best to effect a Barry White feeling on a musical track. Then I picked some words that he'd written for him out of this notebook that he had full of lyrics. He sang it incredibly well, and that was the title song of that record, "Anything Can Happen."

In the end, I loved the demo we cut. This happens so often, that the demo is not really made much better, or it's actually made worse in the end, by polishing it too much. I always felt that the record we made was not as good as it could have been. I've always wanted to recut the song; this was my time to do it. We sampled a little bit of Leon from the original demo and flew it into the record. He's sort of a ghost behind me in the first part of the song. Then he comes in full force to sing harmonies with me at the end.

He passed about three or four years ago, and I spoke at his memorial service in Tulsa, Okla. Leon meant a lot to me, and we'd become good friends for many years. I guess it is truly a tribute to my old-hero-turned-friend.

Throughout your career, you've written albums in a variety of styles and have said that you're no trend-follower. Why do you feel it's still important to keep exploring in music even after 30-plus years?

I'd say it's not really about what's important. It's just a byproduct of a constant search for inspiration, a constant search for the new, a constant search for growing and evolving and improving your craft and your creativity over a long career period. And so, I guess I'm just intellectually, musically curious or musically, intellectually curious. And I'll deal with a broad range, stylistically, of music—from the most down-in-the-dirt, old-time folk and traditional music to the most avant-garde, atonal, modern classical music.

All of that is all that is used in my records. And some people really hate that, but I guess I'm not playing for that ... I'm not doing this for them. I'm doing this for people who are interested in a little bit of musical adventure. It's just the byproduct of my curiosity and, I guess you could say, insatiable search for new inspiration.

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