A Conversation with Bill Frisell – HuffPost 9.6.10

Mike Ragogna: You have a new album called Beautiful Dreamers presented as a trio with you on guitar, right?

Bill Frisell: Yeah, Eyvind Kang plays viola, and Rudy Royston plays drums. So, it’s a slightly unusual combination, I think, for a trio. It’s a group I’ve been playing with for a couple of years, and guys that I’ve been playing with for many, many years. We’ve been playing gigs, and I wanted to do an official CD, make a record to have it be like a real band.

MR: You’ve been with them since ’08 with your first gig being in Eugene, Oregon, right?

BF: Yeah. I’ve known Eyvind for about twenty years or maybe even more. We’ve been playing in all kinds of situations, and Rudy I met maybe fifteen years ago. So, the connection goes way, way back. We hadn’t played as an actual trio, they hadn’t played together before ’08.

MR: The first thing one might notice is where’s the bass?

BF: If you look at it on paper, without listening to it, that’s the first thing people say. “Where’s the bass?” But then, if you forget all those preconceptions, it works. I think we’re conditioned into thinking things have to be a certain way sometimes. For me, it’s more about if the connections are strong between the musicians. It’s not so much about the instruments; it’s about how strong the communication and the connection is.

MR: Yeah, you have a very fine bottom end on this album, it just isn’t coming in the form of “the bass.”

BF: Right.

MR: You’ve embraced progressive jazz ever since your early ECM days. Didn’t your recording career begin when you recommended by Pat Metheny to play on a Paul Motian album?

BR: Well, not even an album. He just gave my name to Paul, and that was an amazing moment for me. I’d been living in New York for a couple of years and sort of struggling along, just getting pretty discouraged with things. I had known Pat from a few years before when I was in Boston, at school, and sort of out of the blue, I get this phone call from Paul saying, “Do you want to come over and rehearse at my apartment?” So, I was like, “What?” Anyway, it was an incredible moment. Then we played for almost a year before we actually did a gig, and then we did an album soon after that. I think that’s one of the first opportunities I had, where I was really asked to be myself.

MR: And not play a chart?

BF: Yeah, yeah.

MR: You’re considered a “beyond jazz” guitarist, as in you play many genres. For instance, you did the Nashville album, right?

BF: Uh huh.

MR: And you played on The Sweetest Punch: Songs Of Elvis Costello And Burt Bacharach.

BF: Yeah, I’ve just been so lucky. For me, with music, you just enter into it and one thing leads to another. All those categories, I mean they’re there, I guess, but when you’re in the midst of the music they’re not there. For me, it’s just an amazing world to be in–to just go wherever I want to go, and do whatever I want to do.

MR: You’re also a Grammy winner, receiving the award for Unspeakable in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category. The Grammys actually seem to get it right when it comes to jazz. One of your contemporaries, Herbie Hancock, has been one of the standard bearers.

BF: Now, that really blew my mind when he won. He actually won for Best Album. That was great.

MR: What I’m saying is it was nice to see you get that Grammy because, for the most part, this is a body of people who are traditionally interested in the most commercial music in the field.

BF: I still don’t really understand how that all works or what it means. I don’t think anything really changed for me after I got it, I still don’t quite know what it all means.

MR: Let’s get back to the record. On Beautiful Dreamers, you not only do your own material, but you’ve chosen some interesting covers. Of course, the title track is a variation of the song “Beautiful Dreamer” by Stephen Foster, and you did “It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine” by Blind Willie Johnson, “Benny’s Bugle” by Benny Goodman, “Tea For Two” by Vincent Youmans, “Going Out Of My Head” by Teddy Randazzo, and “Keep On The Sunny Side” by A.P. Carter. What went into choosing the covers?

BF: Oh boy. Well, when I knew I was going to have a chance to record this group, I wanted to have a completely new body of material that was just unique to this band. The idea was really to make it something separate from my other projects. So, a lot of the months prior to the recording, I was writing a lot and was actually thinking of maybe having it be all original music. But then I couldn’t help but let some of those other songs that I’d been thinking about creep in there, too. I don’t know how they appear, they just sort of come up somehow. They’re also songs that I hadn’t really been playing in any of my other groups.

Some of them were sort of around my whole life, like “Beautiful Dreamer” is one of those songs that I can’t even remember finding, and I must have heard it as a baby with my mother whistling it or something. That’s just one of those songs, growing up in this country, I think everybody hears it, and it’s just kind of in the fabric of things. “Tea For Two,” again, is one of those ones that has just been around in my subconscious or something.

MR: You recorded this at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, right?

BF: Uh huh.

MR: Is that the first time you’d recorded there?

BF: No. I’d been there a number of times, and it’s just a fantastic place. The history there is so…there’s a lot of stuff that’s happened there. I’m not sure how much was recorded there from the jazz world, but you walk in and there are all these album covers from things that I’ve been listening to my whole life. There’s a huge picture of The Staple Singers right when you walk into the room we recorded in — a big, life-size photo of The Staple Singers with Mavis Staples and Pops Staples just right there. It’s really inspiring for me there.

MR: Beyond jazz, the company carries the history of the old Stax label.

BF: Right. So, I guess that’s where The Staple Singers came in.

MR: And Creedence Clearwater Revival, and so many other acts. Now, I’ve got another question for you. From your first solo album, which was In Line, right?

BF: Uh huh.

MR: From your first solo album till now, how do your feel you’ve progressed as an artist?

BF: Oh man, I don’t know. I hope I’m progressing. That’s what’s so amazing about music; every time you start doing it, every moment is like you’re at the beginning. In a way, I feel the same way I did when I first picked up a guitar as a kid, you know? It’s like, “Whoa, what am I going to do with this thing?” There’s all the music out in front of you that you haven’t gotten to, and it’s infinite, what you haven’t done yet, you know? So, in that way it always feels kind of the same. I guess I’ve gotten somewhere, but I’m just in it. I guess if I’ve learned anything, I’m trying to be comfortable with that and see it as a good thing. If you think about that too much, it’s kind of overwhelming.

MR: Are you happy with where you are now as an artist?

BF: I feel like I’ve been just incredibly lucky, really, my whole life, with the people that I’ve come in contact with that have encouraged me with the music. On this new album, that title song, “Beautiful Dreamer,” I dedicated to one of my childhood friends who just passed away a couple of months ago. He was one of those guys, when I met him when I was twelve years old, he had an electric guitar and he showed it to me. He sort of stuck with me my whole life, coming to all my gigs and being a kind of cheerleader for me. There have been a lot of people like that around, and I wouldn’t probably be playing if it wasn’t for all of those people helping me out. I don’t think there’s anyway you can do this by yourself.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney