#sunday interview

My first thought upon hearing Stanley's rendition of "O Death" was that there was no way that the singer of this song could still be alive. He sounded too far off, too much a part of America's distant musical past, like such long dead icons as Robert Johnson or Hank Williams. But a few weeks ago, in a bizarre twist, I found myself speaking with Ralph Stanley on my cell phone. It was another reminder that life can be very strange sometimes.

Stanley, of course, is far from dead. Despite being just a few years shy of his 80th birthday, he still spends a good portion of his year on the road. While most people his age waste away their days in retirement homes, Stanley is playing to packed houses with his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys.

When I ask him what keeps him going, Stanley chuckles. "I've gotta make a living somehow, don't I?"

Stanley has been "making a living" with his music for nearly 60 years now. Born in rural southwestern Virginia in 1927, he first came to prominence as a member of the Stanley Brothers, a bluegrass duo with his older brother, Carter.

"Music was always a big part of my life," Stanley says. "My mother played a little old-time banjo and I'd hear groups like the Carter Family sometimes. I really liked their style of playing."

The Stanley Brothers made their first recordings for the Rich-R-Tone label in 1947, which are collected on Revenant Records' excellent Earliest Recordings.

Even at this early stage, the elements that Stanley would build his career on were present. Ralph's claw-hammered banjo and high lonesome tenor blended with Carter's guitar and baritone vocals to create a sound as elemental and haunting as any put to tape.

"Some people call it bluegrass, some people call it country, some people call it old-time music," Stanley says of the genre he helped create. "Actually, I think of myself as a soul singer."

The duo played together for nearly 20 years, writing and recording dozens of American classics for the Columbia and Mercury labels, as well as touring the country several times over. Tragically, the Stanley Brothers' career was cut short when Carter fell ill and died in 1966. Ralph carried on his brother's legacy by forming the first incarnation of the Clinch Mountain Boys, a group that has included at one time or another such bluegrass luminaries as Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Larry Sparks and Charlie Sizemore, who all eventually graduated to distinguished solo careers.

While Stanley has always been revered in bluegrass circles, he was exposed to a much wider audience when the aforementioned O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack was released in late 2000. The album sold millions, won countless awards and cemented Stanley's status as a bona fide living legend.

"I can tell the O Brother record made a big difference," Stanley says. "My audience has gotten a lot larger—a lot of younger people have been coming out to see me. That makes me very proud.

"We just loved that title," says guitarist Ira Kaplan, who formed Yo La Tengo with his wife, drummer Georgia Hubley, in 1984. "It's such a great, powerful name. Once that title came up, no other ideas for naming the record could really compare."

As for the origin of Ass's title, Kaplan is keeping mum.

"It's kind of like the name of the band itself," he says. "Obviously, there's a story behind it, but I'd rather not have it tied down to one single anecdote. I'd rather it kind of stand on its own. What makes a name good isn't the story behind it, but that it has its own power and resonance."

But enough talk of titles. What really matters is that Yo La Tengo's new album is a sprawling masterpiece, a kaleidoscopic showcase for the myriad styles and song-forms the band has perfected over the years. Ass is perhaps one of their best efforts yet—no minor feat for a band this deep into their career. But the band has never played by the rock 'n' roll rulebook. They appeared on the scene in the mid '80s with Ride the Tiger, a pleasant, if somewhat forgettable album filled with the kind of jangly college rock that was in favor at the time. Kaplan and Hubley spent the rest of the decade touring and making a few more records with an always-revolving cast of backup musicians. But in 1990, the band's lineup solidified with the addition of multi-instrumentalist James McNew. Beginning with 1993's Painful, Yo La Tengo have constructed a string of uniformly excellent records—records that have grown increasingly ambitious and confident as the trio jumps effortlessly from whispered pop songs to feedback-laced epics, and pretty much everything in between.

"We've never really had a master plan as a band," Kaplan says. "I think that as time has gone on, we've just become better at following our instincts musically. Not that we don't still go through moments of total insecurity, of course."

Getting started on the making of a new album required some inspiration, however.

"Having an entire album to be made in front of you—that blank slate—can be daunting," Kaplan admits. "This time around we kind of procrastinated. But we were asked to play a benefit for a club in New York that we really love called Tonic, and we ended up putting a lot of work into preparing for that one show. And a lot of that preparation ended up kind of spurring us on into the making of the new album. Sometimes that's what it takes, just focusing on something small, rather than the big picture."

For the making of Ass, the band traveled to Nashville, where their longtime producer Roger Moutenot has a studio.

"We've been going down there for more than a decade," Kaplan says. "It's really appealing for a number of reasons—Roger being one of them. He's really become integral to the process. He knows what we've liked doing that we want to do again; he knows what we haven't liked doing that we don't want to do again. And he knows what we haven't liked doing that we want to try again, for whatever reason."

So we've already established that these sessions resulted in a rather masterful record. But let's discuss Yo La's other, not so masterful, 2006 release—the aforementioned Yo La Tengo is Murdering the Classics. The CD's 30 songs come from several years' worth of annual fundraising radio sessions on the Jersey City station WFMU, wherein listeners make requests and the band (with barely any preparation) attempts to fulfill said requests.

"It was really hard to compile that record, because we had to find the songs that were butchered in just the right way," Kaplan says, with a chuckle. "In some ways, it's our most personal record. It's just us."

Among the songs that made the not-so-distinguished cut are BTO's "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," Yoko Ono's "Don't Worry, Kyoko" and Burt Bacharach's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." Kaplan is especially pleased with the band's utterly shambling rendition of Yes's bloated prog-rock epic "Roundabout," here slimmed down to a hilarious two minutes.

At your recent show in Denver, you encored with "Doll On A Music Box," a song from [the semi-obscure mid-60s flying car movie starring Dick Van Dyke] "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." I was curious as to how you chose that song to cover.

On the tour for the last record, we used that soundtrack as opening music, and we decided to work it into our set. We're just fans of it. We actually recorded a version of it in Europe a little while ago. We had been doing these kind of heavier covers -- stuff like New Order and the Pretenders -- and we thought we should do something a little more low-key. James [Walbourne] my piano player, was going through a heavy spell of listening to that soundtrack, as well as the "Willie Wonka" soundtrack. Those records are just unbelievable -- there's no irony there in our covering that song.

I was surprised to see that Thom Monahan (bassist/co-producer) was missing from your touring lineup. Where'd he go?

He's taking a leave. We've been together for 10 years now, but he recently moved out to L.A., got married and has been working on a bunch of different recording projects. He just needed a break. We haven't made any big decisions, it's just that he had been working with some other bands, and it turned out that if he came out on tour with us, he'd have something like a single day off in between.

Like you said, you and Thom have been making records together for ten years. Why is he such a good collaborator for you?

[Pause] I don't know. [Laughs] We just hit it off. We've been working together since the second Scud Mountain Boys record in 1994, I think. We're both pretty headstrong guys, but we've learned how to not let things escalate if there are arguments in the studio. And there are arguments. But all of the guys I work with, we like working long hours. It's just fun for us. [Guitarist] Peyton [Pinkerton] and James, those guys would stay in the studio forever if they could. Time goes by so quick in there -- it'll feel like two hours and it'll actually be nine hours. Even when it's a pain in the ass, it's still fun.

Can you imagine making a record without Thom?

Oh, sure. It would be different, but I think different can be good. There are a lot of good people to record with out there. The more musicians I meet, I find that there are more people who are like us -- people who love to spend a lot of time in the studio. I haven't given it too much thought, but a change could be good. As a songwriter, it might be a good thing to have a little change.

From the liners, it looks as though you recorded the new album all over the place.

Yeah, we did some tracking in New York when Thom and I were both living there and then I did some on my own in Boston and Toronto and then we finished it up in Los Angeles.

Was it challenging to make a record in such a piecemeal fashion?

It wasn't a problem. It's good to get away from it sometimes. I think if we had done it all in one place, I still would've wanted to have the breaks that we had because of moving. Having some time off from a record can give you some space, some perspective on it.

The other mainstay in the band is Peyton Pinkerton, who's played on all the Pernice Brothers records. How'd you originally hook up with him?

We were all living in Northampton at the time. I was in grad school and Peyton had his band the New Radiant Storm Kings. It's really a kind of small town, so everybody sort of knows everybody. When I was putting together the first Pernice Brothers record, I asked him to come along and it's evolved from there.

It seems as though he's taken a more prominent role on the last two records. Do you pretty much give him free reign in the studio, in terms of guitar parts?

Sometimes. It's both. Sometimes there'll be a set idea I have for a guitar part. I'm a hack at best on guitar - no matter how much I practice, I'll just never be that good at guitar. I can hear guitar parts, but I can't play 'em. So I'll hum a part to Peyton, or I'll say "Can you do something like this?" And he can play it and change it a little and make it better. But he'll show up with a lot of ideas, too, so it's both. There's a lot of editing and forming that goes on in the studio.

Is it safe to say that a song on the new record like "Amazing Glow" -- with its mentions of changing cities and lifestyles -- is autobiographical? Or do you shy away from that sort of songwriting?

Oh no. Most everything that I've ever written comes from a real event or thing. But I try to step back from it at some point. I try to see what's the better story I can tell, even if it's not necessarily true. It's fun to see where a song can go, just to step back and let it take a left turn, regardless of what really happened or not.

Personally, I think it'd be pretty boring if I was just up there spouting the truth all the time. But that particular song did come out of something real and true. And it probably is true.

Another song from the new record, "My So-Called Celibate Life" -- is that your commentary on Los Angeles? (Sample lyric: "All the stars out in disguise / Look at all the money that money buys.")

Yeah, it's something I finished while I was out there. It's crazy, you go out to eat at a diner or something there and literally everyone there is working on a script or a project or something. I don't know if I was just going to places that were script workshop places, or what?

Have you caught some of that bug yourself? I was just reading that you're working on a script based on your novella (Meat Is Murder, a fictionalized memoir centered around the titular Smiths album).

Yeah, I've been working on a script for that with someone for about a year. It's getting pretty close to finished. But I'm not interested in selling the script. The plan is to produce it in a real DIY kind of way. It's almost done, and the hope is that early next year, we'll turn up the heat in terms of organizing the whole thing.

So you've got a book of poetry, a novella and now a film script. Can you foresee a time when these concerns might take precedence over music?

If I start to enjoy those things more, sure. I really take the path of least resistance. If sitting around alone in my house writing a book is more fulfilling than making music with people, than that's what I'll do. I just have to go with what I love.

We mentioned the Scud Mountain Boys earlier. It's been a decade since you put out those records. How do you view that band and that era?

I haven't listened to the records in a long time. The last time I did, I remember thinking they sounded pretty good. It was a really brief burst, when I think about it now. We put out three records in about two and a half years, maybe less than that. More like 15 months. But I think we made three good albums, we made our stamp. It was an exciting period. I felt I had hit upon something really good in terms of songwriting. I wrote most of those songs really quickly, in a matter of months, I think, with a few exceptions. I was writing a ton of songs back then, because I had just started really writing and taking time with it. It was just a really inspiring time. And everything started happening really quickly.

What's funny is that back then I was going through a heavy Jimmy Webb thing, and I had just started listening to Nick Drake and Burt Bacharach, too. So even though those early records have some undeniably country elements, that had a little more to do with the set up of the band, with pedal steel and mandolin taking such prominent roles. In fact, I remember the two records I listened to the most around that time might have been Dinosaur Jr's Green Mind and [Guided By Voices'] Bee Thousand.

Yeah, I was listening to Massachusetts recently and though the knee jerk reaction to that record would be to label it "alt-country," there were a lot of songs that didn't really fit into that category at all.

I'm going to start with my most conceptual question.

Oh, good.

A couple of years ago I read an essay you wrote—I actually can't remember where I read it now—but it was about your personal criteria for what makes a "classic" album. One of the criteria that struck me the most was your idea that great music should be "on the verge of collapse," that there had to be some sort of danger present in the music. Can you expand a little on that idea?

I think my favorite records, and the best music, really, are the things that are not fully formed, where things are a little bit not quite right, a little bit messed up, where there are a few cracks here and there. Because it shows a human side. I like the feeling that what you're hearing happened that way one time and could never happen that way any other time. You're hearing a unique moment in history.

When records are polished too much, when you can hear all the work that went into them, all of a sudden it just sounds like a factory spitting out some kind of product. I like that feeling of danger—that sense that things could fall apart at any second. You feel like "Man, I don't know how they held it together, but they did it." And you feel it—that excitement—from hearing that kind of music. It's not a quality I've had in every one of my records. It's a quality I've had in all my favorite records, and I've realized that recently. With Here Come The Miracles, I think I got it all the way.

So is that sense of danger something you can consciously recreate in the studio or is it just something that happens randomly?

Well, if you go in and have that great session, that magic moment or that fantastic day or week or month or whatever, and you get it on tape and put it out the way it is, it's a great artifact. But you can't invent a moment. You can't invent a perfect artifact. The sessions I've had that I've been most frustrated with have been those where I chased down some type of moment, where we've almost had it, but we replaced guitars and the bass and the vocals. And eventually we might get something really cool, but we also might get some kind of patchwork thing that sounds like nothing. So, for me, the best records I've made were just where that moment happened. You can't force it to happen.

Also, as you get older and you make more records and have more experience, you want to do what you do better than you've ever done it before. So there's that temptation to say: "We can get a better drum sound, we can get a better guitar solo." That's a dangerous trap to fall into. The philosophy I had [with Here Come The Miracles] was "Sometimes better isn't better." And it's true. You can improve everything, but is that gonna make something more exciting, more interesting, more listenable, more long-lasting? Probably not.

Does it depend on the players, or is it the circumstances—were you are at certain point in your life?

All of those things. This record worked particularly well because all the players on it were people I had played with for a long time and we trusted each other and understood each other. We had a history together. But then again, another record that worked really well was Melting in the Dark. I made that a few years back with Come, here in Boston. That record, we barely knew each other, but it worked because we were all trying to impress each other. We were relating to each other, but I didn't know them that well and they didn't know me that well. So it's hard to say. There's no magic formula. I wish there was. Because then, you know, I'd do it every time.

Here Come The Miracles has been out for over a year now, right? Are you pleased with the response it's generated?

Extremely. Extremely.

Does the response seem different than other records? I know you're no stranger to critical acclaim, but this one has gotten a lot of attention.

Yeah, I've made, at the most, probably about a half dozen records in my life that have gotten this kind of response. There were the first couple Dream Syndicate records, the first Gutterball record, maybe Melting in the Dark. [Those records] are the handful of records that everybody got into, where everybody understood it and liked it. But I've seen very few bad reviews on this new record. Which is nice, but it also puts the pressure on the next one. By now I know to be ready for the backlash, but you never know.

You said you're always trying to top yourself. Is that something that's always in the back of your mind when you start recording a new album?

Yes, and in the past I've always made records in reaction to the previous one. A lot of times I'll try to go in the opposite direction entirely. On the next record I may not do that. I'm not going to make a carbon copy [of Here Come The Miracles], but I am going to record with the same people, just because it went so well. I want to see what else we can get out of that.

Yeah, even though Miracles is credited to Steve Wynn, it really sounds like a "band" record, just in terms of cohesiveness and focus. Is that a goal for you, that band sound?

Almost always. My first couple solo records weren't that way. I think that was because I'd been playing in a band for so long and I wanted to try playing with a whole bunch of people. Both Kerosene Man and Dazzling Display had that real patchwork kind of feel to them, like—"this song we're gonna have this kind of guitar, this song we're gonna have a sitar or whatever"—just all the things I never had in a band. But aside from those two records, everything I've ever done has been in a band situation; whether it was solo, whether it was Gutterball, whether it was Dream Syndicate, it's always been a band. Every record I've made since those two albums, I've put together a group of people that I enjoy playing with. Even though it's my name on the cover, we approached the record like a band covering my songs.

Was it always your intent to make a double album?

Oh no, not until the record was done. We did a ten-day session down in Tucson and then waited about a month to do some overdubs, and then we waited a bit longer. And in that time I kept trying to figure out which songs to keep, which songs to get rid of and no matter what I did, I kept coming back to the fact that all the songs belonged together. When I made it into a single record, it got worse rather than better. The way it came out finally, there's a lot of variety there, and it just made more sense to do a sprawling record like that.

Obviously, a lot of Here Come The Miracles is inspired by the state of California. A lot of songs have references to that, different place names pop up throughout. Is there something in particular about California that inspires you as a songwriter?

You know, it's funny, because I hadn't really written about California for a long time. I moved away years ago, I moved to New York in '94. I never really thought that much about writing about California, but for some reason the theme ran through a lot of the songs. It wasn't a "concept" album at all, but the songs all started being about California, I don't know why.

I like a lot of noir literature, which is a very California thing—Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy and all that. That's not all I read by any means, but it is something I like. That kind of thing makes more sense in a California setting than it does in a New York setting. But, then again, other records I've made have been very Southern—the Gutterball records had a lot of things about the South on them. But once I saw the California thing happening on this record, it made it easier to write the rest of the songs.

Speaking of California, maybe we can talk a little about one of the great southern California bands: the Dream Syndicate. The Days of Wine and Roses was reissued by Rhino Records last year. Does it surprise you how well that album has stood up over the last 20 years?

No, it doesn't surprise me at all. It's a great record. And I say that without being boastful. When we made the record, we knew it was good. The day we finished it, I took the finished mix of it and drove to my day job and listened to it, and I said: "This is it. This is all I've ever wanted to do." I wanted to make a record like this one time. I thought, "I could quit now and be happy."

I knew it then, and it's held up very well. It's a very natural, real, emotional, organic kind of record. It wasn't of the time. It's not of any time. It wasn't in fashion then. We were against the grain for '82, so it's equally in and out of fashion now as it was then.

It does just seem that a "guitar" record like that does have a timeless quality about it. You'd think that would go out of date sooner or later, but it doesn't. Something like [Television's] Marquee Moon or [Neil Young's] Zuma sounds just as fresh as it did the day it came out.

Yeah, Marquee Moon sounds so much more up to date now, this minute, than most records made in the last ten years. And you look at Marquee Moon with that picture on the inside where they're all sitting, playing facing each other, and [the equipment] they're playing is probably all from the '60s. And even tonight, half the things onstage with us are things from the '60s and early '70s. So even the stuff we're making the music on goes way back. And I think that helps it hold up a bit. Not just the gear, but by not trying to be "up to date." I'm always wary of that.

The things I've done over the years that I'm least happy with—maybe an overdub on this record, or a mix on that record—it's always when I've tried to use the thing that everybody else was using right then. Whether it was like a weird synth in '86 or digital reverb in '88 or a certain kind of drum gating in the mid-nineties. Whenever I was influenced to think: "This is what people are doing right now." I rarely fall for that trick. But there is stuff where I go back and listen and think "Man, that sounds so nineteen-ninety-one and a half."

Are you still inspired by records like Marquee Moon or old Stones records? When I listen to Miracles I hear some of those influences.

A lot of garage rock, too. The Dream Syndicate was very influenced by things like Nuggets and the Pebbles series. Before this last record, I did go back and listen to a lot of those old garage records. A lot of the organ, the guitar riffs, things like that, came from there. It's a kind of music I really love, and I hadn't really thought about that stuff in a long time. But, you know, things like Dylan, or Television or Neil Young or the Velvets, those things are all still important to me. Even if I don't play those records that much anymore, they're still there. Those people just have a formula for making music that I like. They all take very traditional types of songwriting and blow it out with no respect for the song at all. And that's the kind of thing a lot of people won't do.

So do you have specific plans to go into the studio to get started on a new record?

We'll be going back to Tucson in September. I've got a lot of songs written, and I'm just going to keep writing until then. It's kind of what I did last time. I was writing until the time we went in to the studio. The last weekend before we went down to Arizona to record, [drummer] Linda [Pitmon] and I wrote three songs together and we were so happy with them they all made the record. So I'm sure the same thing will happen again, I'll just write and write. I really enjoyed working out there. The mood and the process was so laid back and open to random things happening, and I really like that and want to do that again. So I've got a lot of songs, but I don't want them to be too fully formed.

It makes sense, since Tucson is Giant Sand territory and there seem to be things happening by accident all the time on their records.

Whether it's performed by the Everly Brothers, Bob Dylan, Norma Waterson, Michael Hurley or by you on Dear Companion, "The Cruelty of Barbary Allen" is one of those songs that always stops me in my tracks. What do you think it is about this 500+-year-old song that gives it such a powerful resonance even today? How did you come to record it for the album?

My version came from an amalgamation of Michael Hurley's version from Sweetkorn and another from a Jean Ritchie recording with a totally different melody — these are my two favorites. I learned this one just for Michael actually. About three years ago, he agreed to try and record a few songs for a few days with Espers during a stop on his spring east coast tour — just to see what happened. This was one of his top recommendations to try so of course I learned it just in case.

Perhaps the resonance of this song is a little bit cumulative? For a contemporary listener, if you've made a decision to actually forgo your healthy cynicism for all the maudlin associations genuinely attached to this sort of material, then you are listening with a pretty well primed imagination. The main storyline here is so straight — two young ones eventually killing themselves over a misunderstanding in a lover's quarrel. But the way each scene unfolds gives us all the vantage point to protest "No, don't do it, it should all work out!" just like we would in any horror film or melodrama. It's a very unifying populist pastime to hope that it will all work out, when we know that it won't. This experience can so easily become twisted into pure manipulation, but here it can feel wonderful — like a chance to just experience a feeling in a spectrum of feelings. The colors in this world seem so vibrant, the perception of history so vibrant. You've made these scenes all yourself, and they seem safe from being diminished by the elements.

Listening to Dear Companion (not to mention your work with Espers) I'm reminded of this old quote from Dylan: "What folk music is... is based on myths and the Bible and plague and famine and all kinds of things like that which are nothing but mystery and you can see it in all the songs … All these songs about roses growing out of people's brains and lovers who are really geese and swans that turn into angels … and seven years of this and eight years of that and it's all really something that nobody can touch ... (the songs) are not going to die." What do you think – is this an accurate summing up of the so-called folk tradition, or was Bob just blazing on amphetamines when he said that?

Probably your last theory about amphetamines is true, but aside from that, this is a pretty adept description of mystery in folk song. Although it is a really amped up, exceptionally urgent description, it also seems in keeping with a tone used very commonly at that time. His urgency especially makes sense with the last line, about how "(the songs) are not going to die." Maybe I agree with this very believably passionate depiction of being moved by this music, but perhaps I don't get to share in his blazing confidence in its immortality.

What/who was the album/song/artist that really turned you on to folk music? What made you think: "I want to do something like this."

I'm sure it is a really long, ongoing series of events, but one flash moment like the one you describe, particularly in relation to straight traditional music, happened when I was 19 (reasonably well-versed in the college radio canon of the time) and my sister Laura took me to a Sheila Kay Adams performance. I certainly did not ever think that I could do anything quite like that, but it literally opened up a world of possibilities of what music and performance can do, in addition to helping me see ways around some of the obstacles that can come up around identity hang-ups concerning audience, format and other limitations sometimes imposed by self-flattery. I got a chance to meet her a few years ago and tried to thank her and tell her about this experience I'd had, but all I did was burst into tears like a crazy person. Hopefully she understood something good in my maligned attempt to communicate my extreme appreciation.

The spare, uncluttered sound of Dear Companion really makes it stand out from much of the music being released today. Was making such an austere record your intention going into the recording process? Do you imagine that your subsequent recordings will continue in this vein, or do you have string sections and trumpets and backup singers in your future?

Sparsity and warmth were definitely guiding intensions. I used overdubs to add some imagination to the record and save it from being too literal. By the final mix, I thought it would be fun to think of vocal and guitar overdubs as my only allowed effects or "tricks" For this reason, I got a great kick out of selecting only one brief moment of Space Echo-drenched electric. With the rest of the record being so spare, it was a really enjoyable method to try and emphasize this effect to its maximum.

I don't know yet how I'll record the songs I'm writing for the next record. I'm sure that I will want to try something new, but seeing now just how clearly I totally over-thought the sparsity issue, I guess that new approach could really take any shape.

I'm familiar with a few of the artists whose songs you cover here – Jimmy Webb, New Riders of the Purple Sage – but Fraser & Debolt are completely new to me. What can you tell me about them and this fantastic song you've included, "The Waltze of the Tennis Players"?

I know very little about Daisy Debolt, Allan Fraser or Ian Guenther much other than that they are Canadian and they made this completely amazing record together that a good deal of people seem to truly love. (I think that the "hit" was their knockout version of "Don't Let Me Down") "Waltze" in particular must be one of the most imaginative songs on the subject of courtship that I have ever heard. The whole record is incredibly tender, raw and earthy; seemingly fueled by the same kind of human will and warmth that keeps a person alive through the winter. Despite how outwardly folky this record is, it has always reminds me a great deal of Dead Moon. A really nice, in-depth fan Web site is maintained for Fraser & Debolt.

Tell me a bit about the recording process for Dear Companion. What did your Espers band mate Greg Weeks bring to the proceedings? Were there songs that you attempted but that didn't make the final cut?

I recorded this album on a few long, spare afternoons during the recording of [Espers'] II. My plan was to prepare madly for the taping sessions and get everything on tape in very early takes. I had been playing some of these songs for years, some only for a month, but all of them required a great deal of rehearsal for these sessions.

Greg brought his incredibly adept engineering ears, great gear sensibility and some really gutsy approaches to the recording levels that wound up having a pretty interesting effect over the whole record itself. It was also great to have someone so talented to bounce tracking ideas off of and to double check on my performance quality. We work together all the time, so of course Greg was able to really help me keep to this goal of recording these songs very quickly and comfortably with little fuss or ramp up time.

I dropped the bridge from "Waltze" because the original creates a level of blasting off that I truly couldn't pull off to any good effect. Among other missed selections, my version of Peter Hammill's "(On Tuesdays She Used to Do) Yoga" will just have to remain mine for private enjoyment.

Now that the album is soon to be out in stores, what are your plans? Are you going to play any solo shows? What's next for Meg Baird!?