Photo by Bill Flicker
I was previously unfamiliar with your work and story, but “The
Opposite of Time” is a really nice little record – sly, mature and
contemplative, it sounds very much like a cross between some of the classic
70s-era British pop and folk scene touchstones (John Martyn, early Dire
Straits) and some of the stuff that was going on in and around NYC and New
Jersey in the 80s and 90s. At the same time, it’s intimately sparse. Can
you tell me about its creation and influences?
I wrote & recorded THE OPPOSITE OF TIME pretty quickly.
I wanted to make a record that felt like it was recorded with all the
players in the same room with each other, which, most of the time was the case.
I can hear all sorts of influences there, some conscious, some way below the surface:
JJ Cale, The Kinks, Nick Drake, Bobby Womack, Big Star and Nick Holmes along
with troubadours like George Moustaki, Paul Siebel and Caetano Veloso.
You had quite an auspicious start to your career as a songwriter –
having your stuff vetted by famed 70s music scenester, Danny Fields – and were
a bit of a “Zelig”-like presence in several music scenes, hanging out with
everyone from Nick Drake and Sandy Denny to Vernon Reid and Robert Quine.
How did you find yourself in such an enviable position? What are some of
your most memorable experiences?
I spent all the time I could hanging out in the Village. The doorman at
The Cafe Au GoGo figured I must be one of Tim Hardin’s kids, as I was always
there when he played, and I looked about 10 or 11. It meant that for the most
part, I was invisible and could slip into clubs or rehearsals unnoticed.
One time, I’d gone across the street to The Tin Angel to
wait for The Au GoGo to open. I’d heard that there was going to be a jam later
that night, sort of private, but f you knew enough to be there, they’d let you
stay. The Tin Angel was packed, unusual for a weeknight, but I was on my own
and, as I mentioned before, I looked like someone’s kid who’d wandered off.
Instead of turning me away, the waitress asked if I’d mind joining some other
people. When I shrugged, she ushered me into the back area and sat me at a long
table filled with ….Holy Shit! The Royal Family!!! Eric Clapton & Mike
Bloomfield & Danny Kalb & Zal Yanovsky & Eric Andersen & Paul
Butterfield & Charlie Chin (from Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys)
and a few pretty girls who probably weren’t much older than I was. I was made
welcome, someone ordered me a Coke, and they all seemed flattered & amused
that I knew who most everyone was, that I not only had that first CREAM album
but had tracked down their first single (UK only - “Wrapping Paper”), that I’d
seen The Blues Project play, knew Eric Andersen’s electric remake of his 2nd
album, knew that Charlie Chin played banjo on Buffalo Springfield’s BLUEBIRD,
and loved Bloomfield’s solo on MARY MARY, especially that one note that tore my
heart out, pretty much the same blue note that Clapton plays on I FEEL FREE…the
note that opened more or less all the doors I subsequently walked through. They
talked about The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix and told each other where to get
English style polka dot shirts and bell bottoms and fringe jackets (The
Different Drummer, uptown on Lexington, was the shop of choice). I was in
heaven.
We all walked over to the Au GoGo. Someone ran around the
corner to see if Harvey Brooks could sit in on bass, and I wondered who was
going to play drums. And then…Disaster! There’d been a power outage, they had
no electricity downstairs at the club. And everyone just stood in the middle of
the street wondering where to go now. Someone suggested Road Runner cartoons at
The Bleecker Street Cinema. The pretty girls had disappeared, Bloomfield had
ducked into a phone booth to make a call, and Danny Kalb bought a paper and was
studying the racing section. “Horses", he said to me without looking
up. "Ponies and Telecasters. That’s all you need."
A scruffy guy that I’d seen before noticed us and made a
beeline for Clapton. He had a guitar on his back, and there was something rough
about him, he definitely wasn’t a hippie. Oh, right, he was a blues guitarist,
Paul Geremiah. I’d heard a record of his. I hadn’t liked it.
He edged over to Clapton.
"I heard that Blues Breakers album you did", he
told Clapton. Clapton nodded. "Where you did that Robert Johnson
song? Ramblin’ On My Mind?” He made everything sound like a question. but there
was more than a bit of defiance in it, as if he wanted Clapton to prove that
he, Paul Geremiah, had never ever heard that record, couldn’t possibly know it.
Clapton just nodded politely. He had hair out to here. it covered most of his
face, but i could see enough to sense that he was both naturally polite and
naturally awkward. The sort of person who’d stand up on the bus to give his
seat to an old lady but might step on her feet along the way.
“That version of Ramblin’ On My Mind", he told Clapton.
"You got the chords all wrong", he barked.
Clapton looked startled. i thought there might be a fight or
a showdown. But the roughness in Geremiah was just that, a roughness, not an
anger, and the politeness in Clapton was real. Maybe I got it wrong. Show me.
That wasn’t spoken. But it was shrugged.
“Here", Geremiah said. And he sat down on the curb
there on Bleecker Street, just across from MILLS MUSICAL HOUSE OF MUSIC.
Clapton sat down next to him. Geremiah played a couple of different
approaches to the tune, I couldn’t see his fingers well enough to know what he
was doing, but Clapton could see and nodded.
"See, on that record, you start off in the first position",
he said, "but what Johnson does is turn it around, start in the fifth
position and work backwards from the verses. Johnson’s always looking over his
shoulder, you know what I mean?”
The guitar changed hands a couple of times, cigarettes were
offered and by now the street lights were on and taxis drove by, and soon it
started to rain. And I had to get home. I had school the next day.
A week later I was back in the Village with my best friend,
Laurel. She was - and is - a year older than me, but always deferred to me in
anything musical. I had dragged her down to the Fillmore East to hear The Byrds
and Tim Buckley a few months before. All she could talk about was
how scrawny Tim Buckley’s legs were. She shared my devotion to The
Butterfield Band and Tim Hardin, but she went out with college boys and knew
things about life and sex and the abyss of depression that I had no knowledge
of. I told her about my night at the Tin Angel, and I think she believed
me.
Anyway, we were walking along Bleecker Street, past The
Figaro, past Pizza Box and The Village Gate, heading to Bleecker Bob’s record
store. The waitress from The Tin Angel saw me and waved. See, I nodded to
Laurel. These are my people! She just gave me a look. And there was Eric
Andersen stepping out of a doorway. I waved to him, but he must not have seen
me. I waved again. “Hey Eric,” I called. He turned my way and gave me his
version of the look I’d seen on Laurel’s face.
“Who the fuck are you?” he snarled before turning onto
Thompson Street.
I am always fascinated by musicians who are also professional
critics and rock writers, and you have written pretty extensively for Creem,
Rolling Stone, the Paris Review and several others. How do you separate
that part of you that creates (and consequently, is also a fan) from the
critical side? Does doing one inform the other at all?
I never planned to be a critic. While I was still in school,
I was part of a boy’s club at CREEM, where we all were trying to impress Lester
Bangs one way or another. But I changed pretty dramatically once I started
performing songs myself and trying to make my own records. I realized just how
hard it was to get anything done that sounded remotely like what was in my
head, and it made me a little more humble…a lot more humble! And made me want
to get inside the intention behind the sound. It made me more generous as a
listener. And that, in a weird way, made me more open to my own mistakes,
allowed me to try things I didn’t know how to do just for the fun of it.
Without the possibility of fucking up, it’s hard to make music that’s really
alive. And I think that’s what brings out the fan in all of us, the possibility
of something that just carries us away, whether there are mistakes or not. At
heart, I think we’re all just fans who can’t wait to share our record
collections, even if they’re now mp3’s.
It’s obvious that you put a lot of craft into your
work. What is your songwriting process like?
Every time I finish a song, I figure it’s the last one I’ll
ever write. If I’ve done it right, I have nothing left. But somehow, after a
while, other songs show up at my door. I don’t quite know how. And I’m not sure
I want to know.
I imagine your songs are like children – it’s tough to choose one
above the others. But let’s say you are asked to make a “Sophie’s Choice”; is
there one that you are particular proud to have written or one that is
particularly special to you?
I think I’d have a different answer for you tomorrow, but
today I’d have to say AND SHE SAID from the new album. Not because it’s the
best song I’ve written or even the best song on the album, but just because of
the way it came about. I was just a day or two away from finishing my record
and went home to listen, and it just seemed too moody, too sullen. I’m all for
sad songs, but I just sat there thinking it needed a lift, a song where the sun
would suddenly break through the clouds and radiate. And I didn’t have that
song. I had all the clouds in the world, but no sun. And somehow overnight I
conjured up something that felt like The Byrds and The Beatles and Moby Grape
and The Beau Brummells, something that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to play for
Doug Sahm if he stumbled into the bar I was in. And much of that is courtesy of
Jimi Zhivago’s beautiful guitars, Dave Berger’s full on drumming and Byron
Isaacs joyful bass; and some of that is just good luck, the planets all lining
up in the shape of a big transistor radio. Whatever it is, I’ll take it!
What’s on tap for you next?
A few years ago, I started producing an album for my friend
Byron Isaacs. Byron plays bass with me and sings on my album, but he was also a
founding member of Ollabelle and spent a long time playing with Levon Helm. His
record was just about ready last fall, but then he got an offer to join The
Lumineers, and he’s been traveling the world with them full time for the last 6
or 7 months. We got together in the studio last week just to listen to what we
have, and if all goes well, I think we can finish it this fall during a break
he has. Emotionally, musically, financially, we have to get it out in
2016.
And I can’t wait to start another album of my own. I don’t
want to let that slide.
