Lambchop interview
When asked what the “Nashville Sound” was, producer Chet Atkins responded by clinking his pocket change, but for the band Lambchop, it’s less to do with money and more to do with the character of the city itself. Lambchop very often recalls some of Nashville’s countrypolitan sounds of the 1970s — think Charlie Rich and “Behind Closed Doors” — and it’s a sound that singer and founder Kurt Wagner recalls from his childhood. Countrypolitan wasn’t a movement so much as a production technique that was utilized by producers like Atkins and Billy Sherrill regardless of which artist they were working with. It was the sound of country music reaching out to the mainstream. Lambchop was born in the same studios that created countrypolitan — alternately ambient, loungey and funky, Lambchop veered from what would be considered traditional country and yet is still very much a Nashville band. Their most recent album was “Damaged,” released in 2006 — band leader Kurt Wagner is currently on tour with Yo La Tengo. Here he gives some insight to his musical roots and Nashville as a musical womb.
JM: Did you grow up listening to country?
KW: It was probably the last thing I wanted to listen to. I was a teenage
kid wanting to listen to all that stuff that was on the radio, TV and
stuff. It was going on and you really couldn’t get away from it, it
was part of Nashville culture, especially back then, there really
wasn’t a whole lot happening in Nashville in the 1970s. It was a
pretty smallish music industry town and that was about it, really.
To me, I always thought that it didn’t go much further than Nashville,
I didn’t realize at the time that it had such worldwide appeal.
JM: The appeal for you was more in the production technique.
KW: In my mind it really was, it was the stuff by Chet Atkins and Billy
Sherrill, people like that, creating, whoever the artist was. It was a
kind of sound that they created that played off the great posers,
players, everybody—engineers, everybody working in Nashville at the
time—it was their idea of taking this hillibilly sound and really
fancying it up.
It really was, in my mind, about the sound and the facilities that are
here in Nashville that influenced the way we sound as a group and not
so much the content or me as a singer or whatever. I was looking at it
in the same way, why not use those things that are available to you in
Nashville? We are from Nashville and it was just taking my point of
view and putting it in that situation.
JM: Did you like any sort of country music?
KW: Oh, I liked it okay, but there was these whole other things going on
called the Viet Nam War, the civil rights movement, and stuff like
that and one couldn’t associate that type of music without considering
its fan base at the time, which was definitely not what I was about.
It took me moving to Memphis, moving away from Nashville, to even
start truly appreciating it. That was in the mid ‘70s where I started
saying “Wow, this stuff is cool!”
Suddenly I was discovering soul music big time and rockabilly
and stuff like that that Memphis was known for. Blues of course. Just
being away from that Nashville thing, I realized there were
connections t here. I realized that there were connections in soul
music and connections in rockabilly to country music. I was also into
those early country rock bands like Burrito Brothers, New Riders of
the Purple Sage and all that stuff. Suddenly that was changing my
mind, too, and I’d say ‘Who’s this guy Sneaky Pete?’ and I’d realize
his connections with that world. The Dylan stuff that was happening
too, “Nashville Skyline” also sort of changed my mind that Nashville is
kind of a cool place.
JM: Did you have any conscious plan to be a professional musician?
KW: Something I always did. I liked it, but I never really thought about
being a musician, I was interested in becoming a visual artist. Music
was something I did for fun and I never thought much more of it than
that. That continued for quite awhile, even into when we started
making records, I was thinking of it as something fun to do, another
outlet for creative expression or something.
About late ‘86, ‘87, I started moving around with friends and we were
always making goofy little cassette recordings, but it never really
occurred to us to go much beyond that, that was just a way to capture
this thing that was happening at the time. It was a lot later, as we
started to need more people doing that, realized that it was possible
to make seven inch records – they make them right here in town. It just
grew out of that.
SB: You were able to make use of the resources at your fingertips — pretty unique resources.
KW: Nashville has a huge area of recording studios of every type and kind
and some quite historical places. You go into some of these places
which, at that time, were on their way out as far as being a
fashionable place to record, but you find out all these amazing things
were recorded there or done in a room or that kind of board was used
for whatever recording and that was kind of shocking - and yet these
places all seemed sort of rundown, but there they were, they were
still around. You started to realize that, yeah, this is part of some
history. Even as goofy as we were. That was interesting to me, because
we were from Nashville and that stuff was there.
There were engineers who were bored with just your standard fare that
would be coming through, songwriter stuff or the country thing, and
they’d see some nuts like us and say ‘Well, this is interesting’ and
get a chance to do something other than just your straight, normal
stuff.
If you had an idea of a sound you wanted to make or you wanted a choir
or you wanted a harp player or whatever, you could find one in
Nashville. If you needed a string quartet or someone who plays the
oboe or bassoon, you could find somebody and they were amazing
musicians. All that was there and you weren’t limited by anything.
All you had to do was think of something you wanted to try and do.
JM: I’m guessing you learned a lot about production technique during that period.
KW: Each time we made a record, I loved the whole process as much as
anything just because there was just so much to learn
When we finished making our first record my eyes opened up, all these
possibilities really were apparent. It was really just up to our
resources and our imagination as to what we want to do.
JM: Country music is pretty big now and some critics say it’s not country, it’s
just pop music, but on the other hand, isn’t it really just country
music that’s been fiddled with and, in that way, no different than
what you do? It’s just Lambchop goes a different direction from the beginning than the likes
of Shania Twain.
KW: Growing up, it seems like the lines for what was country and what was
not was very strict and defined. In the late 60s, early 70s, there was
“This is not country,” you’d hear that a lot depending on what it was.
Then that all changed especially now, to the point that it seems like
country is what you decide to call it - if someone decides to call
something country music, who’s to argue with that?
In a lot of ways, when we started out as well, that was part of our
point of view, that we’re as country as the next guy just by virtue of
us saying that. Whether or not we sounded it seemed to be secondary
and a lot of people didn’t even pay attention and we found that to be
kind of funny. At the same time, I’m not just joking about it, I
actually do think that we really have some connection there more than
the guy from Minnesota who moves down here and becomes a country
artist, just by virtue of geography.
Suddenly, this alt country thing started and there we were, but, once
again, I don’t think we really fit in with that either.
JM: The term “alt country” always seemed like a designation for sales and airplay to me.
Lambchop doesn’t really sound like other alt country bands – not rockabilly based with a
country edge to it, or even country rock.
KW: As it grew more as a thing, it became, once again, a thing they really
tried to define - ‘Well, that’s alt country,’ they were really
struggling with that. At first, it seemed like this open ended
category just to put anything you didn’t quite what to call, just put
it there. To this day, you read about bands like My Morning Jacket and
they call them alt country and I’m like what? Yeah, they’re from
Kentucky or whatever!
It almost makes more sense when you’re in Europe and people talk about
that, because they look at what we do as American Music. Not
Americana, but music from America — and it doesn’t sound like music from
Poland.
JM: Do you think people are over-obsessed with giving the sound a name?
KW: I understand, as a writer, you and all the others have to somehow
articulate what it is we’re doing and provide some sort of a map.
Just the way music is assimilating itself in our world, all that
stuff’s shot to hell. It’s not the only place you get music is from
the radio anymore, it comes at you in car commercials and the
Internet, from any direction. You can get it from anywhere, so
therefore anyone can find something they like to hear from wherever,
walking around in the grocery store.
Nashville’s got this bad habit of, anywhere you go, they’ll throw this
live performer at you. There’s this thing that people bring their dog
out to once and year and they all roam around and, of course, there
was somebody, songwriters, a band, playing and singing and nobody
wanted to hear it, it was like ‘Who cares?’ You go to eat somewhere
and there’s a live performer. You go to the airport and there are
people sitting on a stage doing a writer’s night. It’s everywhere and
it drives my wife crazy and me too.
To me, music has to be an invited guest in your life in order to be
enjoyed. It’s not like a Mormon knocking on your door and trying to
give you a pamphlet.
JM: Your music seems very parent friendly.
KW: People’s parents come to our shows and we’ll play with a variety of
bands and I always wonder what are they going to say. They always have
some kind of comment. They stick it out because it’s their parents,
but you still have to wonder if they’re just dying inside.
I’m always happy when people tell me that their parents like the
music. And it’s interesting to me when it’s a father and a son at a
show, that’s always kind of funny. It’s like ‘Yeah, my dad dragged me
to this, but I really like it, it’s cool.’ Good for your dad!
JM: Is rock and roll a meaningless term now, does it really just describe a blob of sounds
from various genres?
KW: Our definition would be different from somebody who’s 20-years old and
even younger if you go to teenagers. I’m really fascinated by what
people our age’s kids think of music now and what drives them nuts and
what they like. It’s really interesting.
It’s really shocking. This friend of mine whose daughters are 8 or 9
now, they really don’t like most contemporary singers. They like
pretty singers, they like American Idol type of singers. The parents
are just like me and it’s typical, the kids just don’t like their
parents music, they like their music.
JM: You sang on Michael Nesmith’s most recent record.
KW: He’s probably the smartest guys I’ve ever met. In my mind, it’s like
meeting a great scientist. He’s one of the pioneers of a lot of what
we do today.
He surrounded himself with these incredible electronic toys and he’s
mastered them all and initially when I first heard what he was working
on, it reminded me of electronica from the’ 80s in Europe, which was
really freaky. As things went on, these things changed into songs and
these incredible intricate, layered productions that are mind blowing
and uplifting.
It was very strange, he just called me out of the blue one day when I
was in London, and just said “Hey, I like your stuff,” and I said
‘Whoa!’ So we met and I consider him a friend and I’m pretty much just
a blithering idiot when I’m around him.
He’s working in his own world, he has his own creative universe that
has nothing to do with popularity and doesn’t need that in order to
function and survive. Mine is the scaled down poor boy version of that.
JM: When is Lambchop appropriate to listen to?
KW: People tell me they like to listen to it when things have calmed down
at the end of an evening or when they’re birthing their child or
something like that. I’ve heard that several times and that’s kind of
freaking me out, but I guess there’s something calming about it all.
I don’t think it’s get up in the morning, wake your ass up music. I
think it’s for when people don’t want to be too agitated.
I don’t want to intentionally make it completely inaccessible to
people, I don’t think what we’re doing is all that weird, even though
it’s considered pretty strange, I guess. That’s just who I am, we
certainly aren’t presenting it in a weird or aggressive kind of way.
We’re not that scary.
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Tags: countrypolitan, Kurt Wagner, Lambchop, Michael Nesmith, Nashville
