A Conversation with Mark Olson – HuffPost 7.1.10

Mike Ragogna: I’ve been enjoying “Little Bird Of Freedom” from your new album Many Colored Kite. Tell me a little about that song and the guest artist on that track?

Mark Olson: “Little Bird Of Freedom” is a song about the things we start out in life, and what we hope to do and hope to become. What happens to us when those things don’t work out for us, and how we adjust ourselves and keep going is the basic morality tale of the song. I worked it up on an electric guitar, but I messed around with it quite a bit over the course of a year.

We toured a bunch, like three hundred shows, and I would come off the road and keep messing around with little ideas and little songs, things I thought I would work-up live because I’d been playing live a lot. And I’d been playing with this Norwegian woman who plays the Djembe and the harmonium and sings, so we thought on this song, we would try to have a guest singer.

I met Jolie Holland about eight years ago, somebody gave me her number and I called her up and she said, “Come on over!” We walked around San Francisco talking about music, and we played some songs together. She was just a natural person to ask. I admired her singing and her songwriting and it all worked out, so that’s the end result that you hear in “Little Bird Of Freedom.”

MR: Who was the Norwegian woman that you referred to?

MO: Her name is Ingunn (Ringvold), and she’s been playing with me now for about three years. She played on the Mark and Gary album, Ready For The Flood. I met her and she just has a lot of natural musical ability, so she can play a lot of instruments and she can find a nice spot to sit in when singing on a song, and she’s just got a lot of positive energy, she’s been a really positive force in all the touring I’ve done. I’ve toured all over America many, many times over the last couple of decades, and when you tour with someone who has never been there before and you can show them things, it’s just kind of interesting. Things like a Waffle House become a little more exciting.

MR: And you get to see Americans through their perspective, right?

MO: Exactly, that’s really interesting. I enjoy her company and she’s a great musician.

MR: That’s great. Let’s talk about “King Snake.” That seems to be one of the more fun songs on the album, can you tell us a little bit about that?

MO: Well, a lot of my songs are about things that happen right before my eyes and later on, I’ll write a song about it when something else has happened. I put two things together, usually a physical thing and a spiritual thing, and I try to make a song about it. In this case, there was a snake that was trying to get into a birds nest and I kicked it down. It was a big snake, about six feet long, and it got really pissed at me but eventually, I got it out into the yard and off it went. King snakes are good snakes because they don’t do anyone any harm, but we were just trying to avoid the scene of watching the bird get eaten right then and there. So, I just used that basic event for a number of the lines in the song, then I got to thinking about how snakes represent something to people, and I got to thinking about roads because I travel so much. Sometimes, when you travel a lot, it’s like you’re on these roads that have always been there, and now they’re building new roads in new directions and some of the places they’re going were never really meant to have roads, so I tried to put that all together.

MR: You mentioned that you travel a lot. It seems a couple of the songs on the record, “Little Bird Of Freedom,” and even the title track, “Many Colored Kite,” were written in Oslo, right?

MO: Well, “Little Bird Of Freedom” was written more in America, but definitely “Many Colored Kite” was written in Oslo. I have a dulcimer and I went out into the park because when I make records, I try to book demo sessions for a couple hundred dollars, I’ll book a studio or somebody’s house for a day or two and I’ll try to get together some new songs. It’s kind of a fun, exciting thing I like to do. I guess some people like to go camping or white water rafting, but I like to book a session. Maybe I’ll have a couple of ideas, but once it’s booked, then I have to write some songs. So, that’s what happened, I had booked a session and I went out into the park and I started working on that song, and there was a stranger milling around. For some reason, when you play the dulcimer, it seems to attract people–they’ve never seen it before or heard it before. So, over he comes, and the song kind of took place with him asking me questions. And as I was half-paying attention trying to answer his questions, I just came up with the chord progression. Throughout the course of the day, I just kept at it, and I basically had the song then.

MR: It’s really interesting when you go to another country because of its culture and what you’re witnessing geographically. It’s like a different kind of creativity occurs in U.S. artists when they go abroad.

MO: It’s more than that. When you go to a different country, you’ve got to get your head going, man. It’s a lot of stuff, everything you’re comfortable with gets yanked away from you, so I’ve really learned a lot. I still live in America, but because Inguun’s from Norway, I spend quite a bit of time over there. And I’ve definitely seen that, because of the language and the culture being different, I’ve had to learn how to navigate. Even though I’ve done tour managing for many, many years, living in a different country for a period of time, you learn how to get from one place to another. And that’s not just traveling, that’s in the direction of your life, basically. It kind of focuses on what you’re going to do personally. I don’t want to be in a place where I don’t know anyone unless I’m really focused on doing something there. I like to be at home around people I know and care about when I’m not doing too much because then I can enjoy their company.

MR: Earlier you were almost talking about a spiritual side to your songs. “Your Life Beside Us” seems to have that theme running through it. What’s going on in that song?

MO: I grew up in Minnesota, and I had some people that were in the Catholic church, I had a priest in Africa in my family. So, I’ve always been aware of talk and ideas my whole life on spiritual subject; basically, it’s always been a part of my life. That song is talking about someone in your life that has talked to you about meaning. I don’t really think of cars and homes and things like this. It’s nice to have them, obviously, but there are a lot more meaningful things in life. And if you can somehow find a way to experience those things, that’s kind of the struggle, isn’t it? Those are the kinds of things that drive me. I learned that when I was young, so that’s sort of what that song’s about.

MR: Also, there’s-I guess you referred to it as your miracle song- “Morning Dove”?

MO: That had to do with making it back. We did three hundred shows in various countries, under various situations. And through all the years, I started to think about The Creekdippers, and we did hundreds of shows and traveled. There was a lot of people, a lot of situations, and everybody made it home safe. There are times when you go out and involve people in your life and things happen. You can get into some real “tight spots” as they say. And we were able to keep going, and everyone got home healthy and safe, and I wanted to write a song about that, that I was really glad that that happened.

MR: Now, I’m talking to you from Iowa and, as I understand, you know a little something about it. In fact, you know about a certain park in Henry County, Iowa. Do you want to talk a little about that?

MO: Well, I have these books on gem and mineral collections and I have a rock saw with which I cut rocks and polish them in my spare time. I haven’t had any spare time in about three years so it’s been about that long since I turned on the rock saw, but I’ll turn it on again someday, and I know that there are geodes near Fairfield, Iowa because I saw it in a book and I tend to memorize these books when I open them up. The other thing–if people are interested in this sort of thing, in the Midwest–there are a lot of streams and a lot of rivers, and they have sand bars. So if you walk down the streams and look around in the sand bars, that’s where you really find the stuff because the river washes it over. I’ve done that in Nebraska and Kansas, and people think of gem and mineral collecting as being in the desert. But in the Midwest, you can find agates and things like that in these sand bars.

MR: Is this a hobby?

MO: Yeah, it’s a hobby. It’s something I enjoy to do. I just love to go out to walk around and look for stuff.

MR: Nice. Now, let’s go over your history a little bit. You mentioned you haven’t had much spare time the last couple of years as you’ve been working on your solo albums. Before that–I think most of our readers might know this–you, sir, were a founding member of The Jayhawks with Gary Louris, right?

MO: Yes.

MR: Can you go over the history?

MO: Yeah, it was in Minneapolis in the early to mid-eighties. We all hooked-up by knowing each other hanging out in rock bars, listening to bands. Marc Perlman and Norm Rogers were the two other originals with Gary and I, and they had a practice space, so we’d go up there and we’d practice three times a week.

We got our first gigs on Monday nights and Sunday nights in the rocks bars, and that didn’t go that great right away, so we ended up going over to the blues bars on the west bank of Minneapolis. We worked our way up to Friday and Saturday nights, it took a couple of years of rehearsing and playing, but we worked our way up there. Then we made our first record, we had a manager that funded that and printed up two hundred copies. We still made records then, it was one of the last years they just made records.

We put that record out and then we got on a little label in Minneapolis, Twin Tone, and from there, we got onto a bigger label, American Records, and we have all just kept playing music for most of our lives from then. The first five, six, seven years, we all had regular jobs and, basically, just played around Minneapolis and Iowa. We had a sound man from Iowa, so we went down there a few times, and Wisconsin and Chicago. After the first record, we got to New York and L.A., and then, as the years went by, we were able to go to Europe, and it’s been really good. It was just an example of sticking at something, basically.

MR: And not only sticking at something, but you had a major influence, and almost created a new genre if you want to call it that.

MO: It was there for the picking, though. Punk rock was going on and it just seemed to me–and to other people in other places at the same time–that “Hmm, these acoustic guitars sure sound good. These country records sure sound good. Let’s try to play this.” Because everything seemed so loud and…I don’t want to use the word violent…but the music was violent at one point in the nineties. It was intense. I just enjoyed a different style of music, so I wanted to try to learn how to play it.

MR: For our readers, the genre called Americana or “roots” music was championed by groups like The Jayhawks, Uncle Tupelo, Wilco, Son Volt, and many others. Although these are very different sounding acts, had a renaissance. Many singer-songwriters and acoustic groups who followed credit The Jayhawks as being one of their major influences.

MO: Well, yeah. But there were a lot of people involved, and the time was right. The one thing I will say is that it’s never really gone over the top, as far as a public perception or a consumer buying power in this kind of music. To me, it’s still music that attracts people that want to play music. That’s something about it that I’ve noticed, at least, I guess I have an inside look on the thing. You have some fans in most cities around the world and most of them play guitar too. (laughs)

MR: (laughs) Yeah, it does seem to be a rite of passage. Speaking of that, let’s go into The Creekdippers. What’s the genesis of that?

MO: Basically, I’d kind of reached a point where I’d had enough of the full scale rock thing, and I wanted to bring it back down to playing folk music with Victoria Williams and Mike Russell, a friend of mine from Minneapolis. We made seven records in seven years, put out all our own records, toured all over Europe and America quite a bit, and played in all kinds of situations. We had a force of nature in the band with Victoria Williams.

MR: Yes. And Victoria’s Incredible.

MO: Well she doesn’t play by the rules. And most of the rules are that you learn the song, then you go out and perform it. She doesn’t do that, she’ll make them up. So, she has kind of a jazz sort of thing, and it was really sort of an adventure for myself and Mike and anyone who was in the group. Each night, every show was completely different. Some of them were fantastic, and some of them didn’t work at all. But we really learned how to listen as we were going along, and it was exciting. It wasn’t a really mass-publicized group, but it’s something I enjoyed doing with my time and my life.

MR: Yeah, and Victoria, like you said, is really a force of nature. I loved that when she was recording and performing with The Williams Brothers, people thought they were related.

MO: They sounded great together. I wish they would have recorded more because they sounded really good together.

MR: Before we go back to your solo material I wanted to touch on the Mark Olson/Gary Louris Ready For The Flood album. You talked about the tour a little bit earlier, but when you guys reunited for that, I imagine it was pretty fraternal.

MO: Yeah, I had a great time with Gary. For me, in the last years of the band, we didn’t communicate that much. And this time, when we went out by ourselves and Ingunn was there too, we just had a really good time together. We played all sorts of different places; we went to Australia together and really enjoyed that. It was really different, we played every day, and I just really enjoyed playing with him again. One thing maybe people don’t know is that we were in a band that was basically a rock band, but we wrote all the songs together on acoustic guitars. So, it was fun to go out and do that, just to play the acoustic guitars, and I really learned a lot. I learned a lot about singing harmony and playing guitar, which I always do when I play with Gary. It’s just a top-notch situation.

MR: Alright, back to your new solo album. I was listening to “No Time To Live Without Her,” and that had Vashti Bunyan on it, right?

MO: Yes. Beau, the engineer/producer had worked with Devandra Banhart, had her number, and I think he had recorded Vashti at some point. He brought it up and sent her an email, and she said she was into it. So, that was done the modern way, over the computer. It was sent to England, and she just sent back five vocal tracks layered on top of each other, and we just stuck it on and it sounded good.

MR: Ah, recording over the Internet.

MO: It was fun to send it off to her. We didn’t do that very much, we only did it a couple of times because I think you can go overboard on that. We basically just made the record with the people who were there.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney