A Conversation with Dan Wilson – HuffPost 10.1.10

Mike Ragogna: Let’s start by talking about your new album Live At The Pantages.

Dan Wilson: Cool.

MR: When was it recorded?

DW: It was recorded last Winter, and it was a show in Minneapolis. I had been touring after my solo album Free Life came out. I had been touring for about two years and I did about half of my shows solo, busker style–just with an acoustic guitar–and I did about half my shows with a full band, which was a crew of my friends from Minneapolis. Occasionally, I’d also get a chance to play with Brad Gordon, who is a multi-instrumentalist from Los Angeles. So, when we scheduled this big gig in Minneapolis to sort of rap up all the touring and put an exclamation mark on that period of time which had been so important to me, I wanted to make a show for Minneapolis that was almost like a sampler of the last couple of years. So, I ended up doing a set of solo songs, then a couple of songs with Brad Gordon on piano, and then a full set of me with my Minneapolis based band–John Munson on bass, Eric Fawcett played drums, Steve Roehm played vibes, and Brad Gordon played piano, pocket trumpet, clarinet, and various other things. My engineers and I recorded the album and kind of assumed we would grab the best of the whole batch and make a single CD. But I liked it so much and was so happy about how it sounded that I ended up deciding to do a double CD–one with the solo set, and one with the band set.

MR: And both discs cover all periods of your career.

DW: As the show approached, I got so many requests from fans about what to play, and I think I must have hyped it a little bit and told them what I was planning to do. Everybody started clamoring about what songs to play, and I ended up being able to put together, in the first half of the show, a series of songs that, at least maybe secretly to me, told this story of my musical life, and the songs all kind of linked together in a nice way. It was a retrospective almost.

MR: Yeah, and there was obviously much thought involving your sequence, with “Across The Great Divide” going into the Semisonic song “California” which has the line “Across the great divide” right there in the lyric.

DW: I tried to do that several times in the set, sort of to entertain myself because I wouldn’t talk about it too much to people. But there are a bunch of moments like that. I’ve put out several live records over the years, and they all have a really different function in my life and a really different feeling. This one just felt kind of like a celebration and a tour for me of ideas I’d had and things that I had tried. It was really, very important to me.

MR: Can you tell us the Dan Wilson story, including Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic?

DW: Okay. Well, I grew up in Minneapolis, and my brother Matt and I grew up making music together. We learned how to play guitar together–he took up the drums, and we had a few bands with him playing the drums. At one point in our early twenties, he was in Minneapolis starting this band, Trip Shakespeare, and I was out in San Francisco. When Trip Shakespeare the trio, as it was, started to sound really good, he began lobbying me to move back to Minneapolis and be in his band, so that’s what I eventually did. So, I was in Trip Shakespeare for maybe six years and we put out a bunch of albums. At the end of that period of time, I started a new band with the bassist from Trip Shakespeare. Trip had decided to take a break of some kind which continues to this day. That was probably ’93, which is a long time. So, John Munson from Trip Shakespeare, our friend Jacob Slichter, and I started the band Semisonic, and that was pretty much actively touring for the next ten years. We put out a lot of albums, EPs, and got a chance to basically travel the world several times, partly because our second Semisonic album, Feeling Strangely Fine, had several hits on it, and that really paved the way for a lot of interesting things to happen. Then, in about ’02, I started working on what I thought was going to be a kind of quick solo album–kind of a break from Semisonic–and somehow, that project turned into my solo album Free Life, which attracted the attention of Rick Rubin. I got signed as a solo artist to American Recordings–that’s probably the twelfth or thirteenth record label that I was on at that point. So, I worked on Free Life for a couple of years, and then it was stuck in what you would call “record label purgatory” for about three years, and then it finally came out in late ’07 or something like that.

MR: Thank you for the catch up, that was great.

DW: How was that? Was it long? Short? Was it quick or a slow burn?

MR: (laughs) It was perfect. What was it like working with Rick Rubin?

DW: It was really kind of exactly what I was looking for at the time, interestingly. I guess I met Rick in ’03, and at that time, I had been telling everybody I knew that I was looking for a musical partner or mentor. I was looking either for somebody old–I was kind of imagining it might be like a jazz piano player or something–or somebody who knew more than I did about some things. I wasn’t sure what that kind of person was going to be, but I definitely wanted a partner, and I definitely wanted to learn something. Just by chance, my early recording from Free Life, from early ’03, ended up in Rick Rubin’s hands through a series of friends. He sent me an email when I was in Minneapolis and said, “Hey, do you want to come over and talk?” But I think he didn’t realize that I was, you know, thousands of miles away. I actually happened to be traveling to Los Angeles the next week, so we met and he became–I guess what you’d say is that in some areas, like recording–a mentor to me. And in the music area, he definitely became a partner. He’s a huge appreciator of great songs and he seems to think that I write them.

MR: (laughs) So, with Live At The Pantages, you cover a lot of ground and a lot of notes, your vocal on “Across The Great Divide” jumping all over the place with ease and in pitch without pitch correction.

DW: It’s live, so you’re definitely not going to be able to do a lot about flat notes.

MR: You basically start your album with “Hand On My Heart.” What is the story behind it, and why was “Tangled Up In Blue” tangled up in “Hand On My Heart”?

DW: You know, “Hand On My Heart” sometimes almost feels like the story of my life in a few short snapshots–each verse is a picture of something that happened. Basically, the week before the Live At The Pantages recording was made, I kind of realized that I had lifted some essence of the guitar chords at the beginning–not lifted, but it was similar to “Tangled Up In Blue.” So, I decided to just make it even closer and use that “Tangled Up In Blue” guitar riff for “Hang On My Heart” because Dylan has been an enormous influence on me and sort of a hero of mine in a twisted way because of his mysterious nature. He’s been sort of a hero of mine for my whole musical life, basically, and before I even wanted to be a performer, I was very, very taken by his early records. So, while I was practicing my little mash up of “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Hand On My Heart,” I just couldn’t resist throwing in my favorite verse from “Tangled Up In Blue” into my song.

MR: I’d like to talk to you about some of your songwriting achievements, and some of your biggest involved The Dixie Chicks. You worked with them on their record Taking The Long Way which won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and you co-wrote many of its songs, even “Not Ready To Make Nice” which was Song of the Year. What was it like working with The Dixie Chicks?

DW: We had fun, that’s my main memory of it. I had not met them before we got together to write songs. It was kind of a musical blind date put together between the Chicks and me by their producer Rick Rubin who I had worked with. Rick played them a bunch of songs from my solo period and they really dug them, and I think we knew that we were going to have an interesting time. They are very collaborative in the sense that they contributed a lot. It wasn’t, you know, “pro songwriter,” filling in all the blanks for the artist while they get their nails done or shop online. It was definitely a real, full on collaboration. They had strong ideas, as you can imagine given their reputation, and lots of musical ideas. We just basically talked and laughed about experiences that we had shared and also experiences that they had had. It was almost like those conversations led to the titles or the lines of the songs. It was very, very natural.

MR: When you got down to co-writing with them, was the experience more like pals getting together or was it more of a formal sit down?

DW: The first time we got together was in a studio in Los Angeles, and we all showed up at eleven in the morning and met for the first time. I asked them to sing me a bunch of the songs they were working on at the moment, just to get me in the mood and get me up to speed because I wanted to be where they were at to some degree. So, they sang me a bunch of new songs they were working on, and of course, secretly, that was a thrill for me just to be sitting in the room while Natalie, Martie, and Emily sang and played these songs. My memory is that the first day was mostly spent laughing and telling stories, and I was very curious to hear about their political misadventures. Natalie had criticized President Bush during the run up to the Iraq war, then the band got black listed from country radio, and they really took it on the chin and became the whipping boy for the pro-war movement, I would say. I thought it was really interesting from the outside. For them it sucked, but I just wanted to hear about it, so I mainly just made them tell me stories about the terrible things people had said about them, the death threats, and the sense of their utter rejection and annihilation of their radio career. It’s a bummer, but it was really interesting, and they’re the kind of people who can laugh about misfortunate things, so we just had a really interesting day talking. We had a couple more days after that, and after that first day, we had material for a bunch of songs.

MR: I’ve interviewed Martie and Emily on their group Court Yard Hounds project forHuffPost. We talked about that adventure, and, like you said, they had humor about it. But I think they opened the door for discussion because, if it weren’t for them, people wouldn’t have had the glimpse into the censorship and bully pulpit tactics of the era.

DW: Yes, I think that politics is a hard ball game where people don’t mess around, and when an artist is drawn into politics, I think it can be painful and it can really hurt your career. But for them, and in a smaller way for me, it’s also an opportunity to be part of the larger conversation. Before their political upheavals of that time, they were probably thought of as a cute, fun country trio that kind of crossed over into pop and sang great and played great, obviously. And their taste in songs–people don’t really realize that part of the reason they had all those hits is that they had impeccable taste in songs. But I don’t think they would have been known for their opinions, their integrity, or their moral point of view unless they had gone through that terrible experience of being slammed so badly. So, I think it became a larger opportunity for them.

MR: There was also this depth that was added to their image. Like you were saying before about them being perceived as cute and fun, the controversy added this depth to them. Do you remember that Rolling Stone cover with the tattoos on censorship all over their bodies?

DW: Oh, yeah.

MR: That event became sort of a rallying cry, and thank God for folks like them who understood just how dangerously this country had flirted with fascism.

DW: That phrase “Not ready to make nice” I guess was one of my contributions to that song, and that was basically my way of describing where Natalie stood on that issue at that time. But it’s sort of a Midwesternism–it’s kind of a part of my Midwestern upbringing that I heard people saying things like that. When my brother Matt–who is deeply into the left wing, liberal blogosphere, which I am not–reads all the latest rants online, and during the period of time when Taking The Long Way was out and very much in people’s sights, my brother kept seeing that phrase, “Not ready to make nice” cropping up as the headline or title of posts by his lefty, liberal blogosphere idols. I think I actually ended up on Matt’s radar more because of that than the music. He was very impressed that that song became kind of a flag that people could wave at the time, and that’s a pretty huge honor. I think it takes both sides to create a democracy, so I don’t want to shut anybody up, and I think one of the themes of that song is, “No, I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to speak my mind and I’m not ready to chill out and stop arguing.” I think it’s important to keep saying your piece.

MR: Let’s look at some other projects that you’ve worked on. You’re just finishing up a Josh Groban project?

DW: Correct. Josh and I wrote, I think, nine songs for this current album that’s just about to come out for him. Not all nine are going to make the record and I don’t actually have the list, but someone mentioned to me, “Oh, I heard you wrote most of the songs on the new Josh Groban album.” That’s definitely not true, but another person said, “Oh, I hear you wrote half the songs on the new Josh Groban album,” and that’s at least conceivable, that I wrote several. The new single of Josh’s is called “Hidden Away,” and Josh and I wrote that together.

MR: Nice. In the past, you’ve worked with Jason Mraz, and you might currently have a song on his new project, right?

DW: Yeah, Jason Mraz and I wrote two songs together on his Mr. A-Z record, two albums ago, and we worked together on one song for his last album too.

MR: And Keith Urban.

DW: I wrote what I think is a great song with Keith, but I haven’t heard from him whether it’s going to make the album. I know he recorded it though. It’s funny because I think a lot of what I do is sort of get in sessions with people and help them finish songs or I start things from scratch with them, and we make a great demo of it, and then I’m not really in the habit of asking whether they are going to use it. So, it’s usually kind of a nice surprise for me, like with the new Josh Groban album, I didn’t know they were going to use “Hidden Away” as their first single, so that was a nice surprise. I have a song on the brand new Weezer album called “Ruling me” of which I thought the demo Rivers Cuomo and I made was really fun, but then I didn’t really hear much more about it. Then, when I saw the track listing of the Weezer album, it’s the second song on the record. They must like it too.

A similar thing happened with a song I wrote with Sam Endicott from The Bravery. Sam and I wrote this song called “Ours,” and we didn’t really know what was going to happen with it. But we knew we liked it a lot, and I guess it got swept up by the latest Twilightmovie, Eclipse. They used it in that movie and on the soundtrack album, and it’s third in the sequence, so, once again, someone must have liked it.

MR: (laughs) So many great songwriters are constantly writing songs, collaborations, song doctoring and participate on many levels of creativity. That’s great.

DW: It’s a fun time for me because I’ve got Weezer, Josh Groban, The Bravery, maybe a Keith Urban song–I don’t know what’s going to happen with that, but even just working with Keith was fun.

MR: And what about KT Tunstall?

DW: KT Tunstall and I wrote a song that’s called “Boy,” and I think it’s in a movie that is either out or coming out called Kid. I don’t know what the timing is going to be on that, but yeah, KT and I wrote something. I’ve got a couple of things that I’m working on with Rachel Yamagata. Gabe Dixon and I wrote a couple of songs for his new jam–there are a lot of really varied things going on with really different styles and different kinds of worlds. I’m having a lot of fun kind of floating from zone to zone.

MR: With all the writing you’re doing, I imagine by the time you’re ready to do your next solo album, that’s going to be a killer.

DW: You know, it’s funny because I’m three quarters of the way through my next solo album, and I think what happens…when I collaborate with people, it’s usually just with a piano, guitar, and voices. We don’t really create an arrangement or a sound for the song until later. So, if I have a three-day session and I write two or three songs with somebody, usually what we end up with is as great a recording as I can make with just piano and voice or just guitar and voice. Actually, an example of that is when I did some songs with Adele, the British soul singer, and one of the songs in particular we just got a really beautiful version of her singing and me playing the piano.

MR: Nice.

DW: That’s kind of my ideal, and in a way, it kind of frees me from the whole world of style. I don’t have to think too much about style. Style is really important in pop culture and in pop music–it’s really, really important–but I somehow like to sort of have the song in the form that a fan would play it at a coffee shop. If you write a great love song and somebody is going to play it at their wedding, they’re not going to have like a big band, they’re going to have their friend sing it at the piano, and that’s kind of where you know whether you stand or fall–if the song really works with just one instrument.

MR: Yeah, everything pops out right there.

DW: I think for my new solo record, I took an idea from Live At The Pantages, actually, because I’m considering having one disk of busker versions with just one instrument and me, and then a second disk of full on band recording.

MR: Well, as I said earlier, man, your voice is so strong and wonderful. You haven’t destroyed it with tours and the like.

DW: No, luckily I haven’t destroyed it, but I’ve never been a screamer, and I don’t really know how to scream convincingly, so I never really got into that world. So, I probably have the advantage of never really shredding. I was going to mention something about a word you used earlier, “song doctor.”

MR: Yeah?

DW: I don’t know why, and I’m not offended by it at all, but I’ve never liked that term. I’ve always felt like it reduced songwriting to some sort of formula or it makes it sound like it’s a science to write a song. Almost every good song that I’ve written has been through the process of getting together with somebody, talking for a while, and sharing a little bit of, “How about this?” The “How about this” phase is like three words or maybe it’s a snippet of melody that’s five or six notes long or a guitar chord, and then we write the song totally from scratch. I rarely have gone into a situation where somebody had most of a song done and they needed doctoring, and I don’t think that’s where the best inspirations come from. I’ve done it a couple of times, and it’s worked out well, but it’s not the main. That’s like a minor sideline of mine. I’m much more into jamming with people and getting great inspiration happening right then and there.

MR: Cool. We’ve spoken about so much today, and I really appreciate the time that you’ve put into this, but I can’t let you go without you giving some advice to new artists that are coming up right now.

DW: Wow, okay. Well, I can only speak from my own experience, I guess. But I would say, in my opinion, the main thing to do is to find your audience. That means getting out in front of people. Don’t save your ideas, and don’t protect your songs from being stolen. Get them out in front of people and don’t worry about hoarding them until you have your great opportunity. Instead, just find an audience. Find people who will listen to you, and then some of those people will love what you do and you can proceed to build the audience. That’s the way to do it. The second thing I would say is find a community. Find a crew that you want to be a part of or find other people whose work you respect and just work with them. Don’t slave away on your own, alone in front of a computer making incredible tracks. Get out and jam with people, help other people on their records, accompany other people and just be part of a community. Because eventually those peers are going to be influential, and they’re going to be the people that turn to you when they need something important done.

MR: That’s really good advice. Thank you very much on behalf all of new artists to you (laughs).

DW: (laughs) You’re very welcome!

MR: Before you go–and I know I’ve already said it numerous times–but I think your voice is amazing. Some of the notes and intervals you were able to pull off here…

DW: Cool, man. I think I might be in a nice place in life where I know what sounds right coming out of my mouth, and I know what doesn’t. At the same time, I can try things because I haven’t necessarily lost a lot of range, but more than that, I think I just know myself and I know my instrument, so I can just sort of play around with it and have a good time. I read this interview recently with Rivers Cuomo, who is a very fun guy to listen to talk, and he said that he had recently beaten his voice into submission, and now it does anything he tells it to do (laughs).

MR: Yeah. It’s a shame Rivers doesn’t stick his nose out into the marketplace more often, and that’s surprising considering how talented he is and the devoted following Weezer has.

DW: I think this is a period of really interesting growth and exploration for him, and I don’t know what his next steps are going to be. But I’ve just been really fascinated by his recent moves and his willingness to try anything and do anything. It’s been really fun.

MR: So, Dan Wilson, formerly of Semisonic, what’s on the reunion front?

DW: We do a couple of shows every year, and I definitely have a dream to make another Semisonic album. It’ll be really sweet to get back with the guys.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney