"I feel like I'm on the other side of something."
Q&A with Bill Nace
This week Bill Nace celebrates the release of Through a Room, his second solo record on Drag City, with a pair of shows at Union Pool, in Williamsburg. It’s a who’s-who of Nace’s many musical collaborators and friends, including Samara Lubelski, Mark Morgan, Steve Gunn, John Truscinski, Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux), Matt Krefting and others.
Through a Room is a sister to 2020’s Both, each was engineered by Cooper Crain. Separated from Both by a pandemic, Through a Room finds Nace using a mix of new(er) and familiar tools (electric guitar, hurdy gurdy, tapes, taishogoto) to explore the shadowy corners of the world he began mapping in Both. But that’s what he always does, live or recorded, solo or in collaboration: he’s always listening, responding, evolving.
Last week, over a smorgasbord of Japanese sweets, Bill and I talked about the new record, the impact of isolation on artistic creation, the impossibility of explaining music, the state of music journalism, and getting excited about playing guitar.
I wanted to talk about your upcoming release shows. I was thinking about the lineup, the people you have involved, it's kind of like the Bill Nace Rolling Thunder Review
[Laughs mid-sip of seltzer, runs to the kitchen to spit it out] I don't know why that hit me.
It’s mostly people you’ve worked with, but it's an interesting variety of people even just within that criteria.
Yeah, it's a mix of people I do stuff with a lot, or that I’m trying to build [something with] that’s maybe new.
Haley and I played together four or five years ago at Cropped Out. I sat in on a song with her. And then we did the show in Chicago this past winter. So I wanted to build on that. And then, Patrick Holmes had just asked me and Chris [Corsano] to do that trio show in New York … so it was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to ask him to play solo.’ He works [at Union Pool] too, so it's like, a no brainer.
So it’s a mix of fanning the flames of some newer stuff, and then people I’ve been collaborating with forever. Or like Angel [Deradoorian], I’ve been friends with her [for a long time] but I’ve never seen her play.
I was in touch with you while you were making Through a Room in a way that I don’t think I was for Both. So I think I have a better sense of how this one was put together than I did the last one.
Well Both was also made over a longer period of time. All the tracking for it was done in Chicago, and then it took forever for me and Cooper to get back together again. And [with] the mixing, he took the ball and ran with it. So that was over a much longer period, between tracking and when it was finished. This [new record] was kind of just boot camp. We would work from noon to 10 or 11 every day. For, like, 10 days and then that was the end of it.
[Through a Room] was picking up where the last one left off. I don’t think I knew exactly what I wanted [Both] to be. I think I was holding on – I don’t want to say holding on like it's a bad thing, but … A lot of the recording I did [in the past] was about capturing a really good live performance, or a performance I was happy with. And that was it. So, I still had that in my head as a starting point. I knew I wanted to do something different with it but I didn't know exactly what it was going to be.
Whereas this, I knew I wanted to pick up where Both left off. So [tracking] was totally different, it wasn’t like “Let’s get two hours of good live performance and then mess with it.” The whole thing just started with messing with it. So if I was playing live, I was playing to get what I needed out of it. It wasn't a whole performance with an arc to it, or something that would reflect what I’d do in a live show. It was like, “Oh, I want this sound, I’m going to throw that down right now and we’ll have that to use.”
So what were you drawing on from your past creative life that allowed you to work that way? It seems like it would be hard to approach a record that way after mostly recording live.
You mean for Both?
Yeah.
Oh. So what I was just describing was what I did for the new record.
Oh. Well regardless, I guess.
I think if you rewind, you’ll find that I explained all that, and you were in Snackland.
[Laughs]
I had done stuff before [that involved] playing around with a recording after the fact, but I think the lion’s share of the recording I’ve been doing for years — a lot of it because it was collaborative — was just a live recording. I don't mean like a gig, but a representation of what happened in the studio: Maybe [we’d] trim the ends off a piece but that’s about it.
I think just getting a straight-up recording of me playing guitar was how I started [Both] because that’s what I’d been doing up till then, that’s how I was used to working, that’s how I wanted to work, using something that was very familiar to me as a basis and then kind of playing with that. And, I don’t know, I felt like I had toured so much solo, and I always put off recording and then at a certain point I just didn’t play like that anymore. That was a lesson learned, I was bummed I didn’t record that stuff.
That you didn’t capture…
That I didn’t capture it and then it was gone. I had changed. So I think I brought some baggage…
To making Both?
Yeah. The idea of starting with the live thing had some baggage attached, but that was how I wanted it to be: Something I was used to hearing but afterwards, like, “How are we going to mess with it?” Whereas Through a Room didn’t have that [baggage].
I always have the image in my head of the solo stuff as like, turning something around. Like, it’s something familiar and you kind of twist it a little and get a different vantage point on it.
Fuck, I forget where I was going with that.
Now that you’re talking about this I remember that you were kind of worried about what would be captured on Both, what kind of mood, or energy or whatever. And then that record came out, what, two months into the pandemic?
[Laughs] Yeah
And then you recorded Through a Room as soon as it was possible to do it, in a burst. Or not a burst per se, but like, “We gotta do this now.”
That’s the weird thing about recording. I’m sure there’s more in common between all of these things than people allow, but I’m sure [if you’re a songwriter] and you have a batch of songs, the songs are pretty much going to stay the same. You get in the studio when you can and just do it.
But I think when you’re doing improvised stuff … I like to leave a lot of chance in the studio. Like, go in with ideas but then kind of surprise yourself. But you can trip out on that a little. Because it's like, “Oh, what if we did this two weeks later?” Or the previous month. It would be a totally different thing. Or, how different would it be? You kind of just have to focus and commit to the time you decide to do it.
Cooper and I, [after] we had done Both we were like, “Let's do another one, I feel like there’s more here, whatever this world is.” We had a weekend planned [to record in Chicago] and there was a big ice storm in the Midwest and then the next day the pipes burst in the place we were going to record. And then the third day I got covid and I was sick for like a month. So, that was obviously doomed. And Cooper said, “I’ll just come out [to Philly] with a roving studio thing,” and there was an urgency because we’d been talking about it so much and we didn’t want to, you know … [It] was still like, “Oh maybe covid is going to get really bad again …
More lockdowns or whatever ...
So we just wanted to just do it, keep the momentum of being interested in doing it, and also just doing it while we actually could. So yeah, in that sense it was like this concentrated burst.
And the first one was also different because that was my first time meeting [Crain] and we were kind of figuring out what it was going to be …I think, its not better or worse but because this was following on the heels of the other one and i wanted them to be connected I guess I knew what we were getting into. So we could just get to work right away.
Less of the trust -building.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you do anything to prepare for recording?
No. [Laughs] Cause I feel like I’m always playing shows. If I have a dry spell with shows, yeah, I’m going to the practice space and playing. Either I’m working on an idea or just playing to keep loose or whatever.
I do get slight studio nerves but it's not like going from a long break. There are always shows, always something happening. All the stuff that I've been working on in a certain space of time, I just bring that in with me. Stuff that’s maybe changed in my own playing or ideas that I’ve had that I want to try, or just like, things I’ve noticed that have come out in collaborations with people. Some of that is conscious and some of it is not conscious at all.
Honestly, I try not to think about it too much. I think I brought up the other thing a little out of context, but if I do think about it too much I start thinking, “Well why are we doing it today and not tomorrow, would tomorrow be a better day? Or last weekend…” and then you start thinking, “Oh, how is that going to affect the music?” And then you’re in your head.
One thing as I’ve gotten older is — whether it’s live, or playing around with things in the studio — I’ve learned to notice a fucking time hole when it’s coming up. You can really go down these time holes of trying to make an idea work, even when its not working. And I think I’ve gotten better at calling it, saying “Oh that's not working, let's get out.”
In terms of the direction the music is taking?
More like, trying stuff in the studio.
What were you listening to when you made Through a Room?
Man, I don’t even remember. And it’s kind of a weird thing about this record. Now I’m comfortable with it and I’ve let friends hear the digital version, it’s gotten out into the world and it has been able to breathe a little. But I think when I made it, and the year after, I felt like it came from such an insular place. Music all comes from an internal place, but not insular per se.
When it’s internal, you still have information coming in every day, stuff that you’re experiencing. Whether you’re conscious of it or not, stuff is getting processed and coming back out in the music in some way. I think with the pandemic, not having a lot of that, being home alone a lot, watching more TV and movies than I ever had, it seemed like [the music] came from an insular place. Which made it weird to know how to talk about it, and [hard to tell] if it translated, or if it was something that anyone would want to hear because they’d all been experiencing it too.
So I don’t know, I honestly don’t fucking know. [I was listening to] a lot of the same music I’ve been interested in for the past 20-30 years. But I really can’t remember that summer at all.
No, there are two things I remember. One was Dilloway and John Wiese put out this Robert Turman box that had been originally put out as a cassette box and they put it out on CD. The first CD in that box I was listening to all the time. And also that Robert Fripp record Pleasure in Pieces, it's a bootleg. I was listening to those a lot. I mean I’m always listening to Fripp but I’d been looking for that particular one for a long time. Two Roberts. But … I really can’t remember. My memory is really affected by this [pandemic] shit.
You had a really bad case of covid and then pneumonia leading up to recording and that was obviously kind of traumatic…
Wait, so I had covid in March, right? Was that the March before I recorded?
Yeah, cause they had the flood at the recording space, and then you got covid.
Yeah, so this was only 4 or 5 months after…
And you were still kind of fucked up about being sick like that for so long.
Well that’s definitely what the title is: Having covid was insane, having a fever that long [15 days] was fucking insane. But also I remember when this shit started and being like, “Ok, I’m in the house.” I remember how I felt then and how I feel now, and I feel like I moved through something. Like something changed. Like I changed in some way.
Meaning, I think a lot of times you can go through something and whatever your baseline was before, you kind of snap back to that. This was long enough that I feel like I’m not snapping back, I’m on the other side of something. Not to be literal about it, [the record] is about a lot of stuff but …
The cover art is claustrophobic and a little scary, it's like, you see these pathways and you’re in this closed space but it also has all these paths leading to who-knows-what. Did you talk to Daniel [Higgs]...
Nope. I think Daniel just listened and fucking nailed it. It makes me think that he really listened to it and responded to it because it's also … I haven’t seen him do a lot of stuff that looks like that. Whether he liked [the record] or not I don't know, but it seems like he really responded to it and I think the cover’s perfect.
Do you hear that insular element you’re describing in other people’s recent music?
I don't know how much newer stuff I’ve been listening to, but also it's hard to tell because I have that as a listener too. We all have it, it’s kind of how everything feels now, it’s like a hall of mirrors.
Obviously you haven’t really been playing guitar live…
What's your relationship to the guitar right now?
Now I’m excited to play it. I took off what, a year and a half? I just did two gigs with Patrick Holmes and Corsano and I played guitar, and it made me really excited to play it again.
What was it that drew you to the taishogoto?
I wasn’t playing a lot [of guitar] at the beginning of the pandemic, I was more drawing and painting. But as I [started] to dig into playing again I was feeling like a cover band of myself. And I just wanted something that felt way out of my comfort zone.
But to be honest it's not that far out of my comfort zone, it feels like a lateral step from the prepared guitar stuff, which I like about it. But yeah, just having something new. It’s always nice to have something new, but … it was helpful to have to re-engage with something. But I also did this wanting to take a break and hoping that stepping away would make me excited again. Which it did.
Playing all these shows with the taishi, did it recontextualize the guitar in ways other than just being excited to go back to it? Does it give you new ideas?
I think it made me appreciate the things that guitar can do that taishogoto can’t do, things that I really missed and things that are helpful for playing with people. Just remembering how versatile it can be. So I don’t even know if it’s playing something new as much as re-hearing something in a way [that’s exciting]. I mean, it wasn’t that long a break, it’s not like I stopped playing guitar for 10 years. I still play, you know, I have three guitars here, I play guitar around the house. But in terms of, like, a committed way, all the gigs this summer, all the gigs this fall, even the release gigs — which I'm not playing solo and I'm not playing the songs that are on the record — I really just wanted to commit to taishogoto stuff. And after that I’ll probably start playing guitar again and figure out if playing this record live is something I want to do, and then how to do that.
How did you fall in with the taishi?
Jacy [Webster] has every instrument in his house and he had one that looked so fucking antique, I don’t even know if it’s playable. And we had joked about maybe each getting one and playing, which I don’t think he would do but I’m always trying to get him to play. But I looked at it and I did think of the prepared guitar stuff, and I thought immediately “I know what i would do with this.” So yeah, it fell into my lap, kinda.
Not that the taishi is so wildly different in the grand scheme of things but it’s funny that you were just going to shows like, “Yeah, I’m playing this now,” …which I guess is more of a thing in improv, like, “Oh, I’m playing this instrument tonight.”
You mean like, people have an expectation of one thing and you show up with this other thing? Yeah, but … you do one [new] thing at a gig now and 10 minutes later everyone’s seen it. Especially because the audience is so small. Cause I’ve had people say, like, “Oh, did you bring that thing? No one’s been like, “Oh man, where’s your guitar?” Cause it’s still stringed, it's still in that world, it's not like I showed up with a bass clarinet or something where you’d really have to deal with a different set of circumstances.
Yeah, well that’s certainly true if you went out there with a clarinet.
I could do it! (laughs)
Is there anything you want to set the record straight on while we’re here? Any rumors you want to address?
Are you referring to something specific?
Just giving you the opportunity.
Throw me a hardball, let’s see what you got, Welsh.
Is there anything else you want to talk about? Where do you get your ideas?
Oh, God.
Is Sonic Youth gonna get back together?
I should say yes. Let people lose their minds.
Yeah, help me get some new subscribers.
I don’t like talking about this stuff in a certain context. If we’re just shootin the shit about music I love doing that, but when you know it’s going to be presented, it’s like …there’s a certain looseness that’s not allowed. To me … the music’s me figuring myself out. It’s all the same shit. My sense of myself, or me figuring myself out with the music, it’s all one thing. If you say something that you’re just kind of thinking about, it's like …
It becomes *something*…
And I just mean media. Ten people will read this and be interested in it. I don't mean like ..
Ten people!
I don't mean because of you. But you know, comment sections, or the way people write articles, they’ll just grab a soundbite from one thing and use it again, and its like this fucking picture of yourself that you don’t like that just keeps getting regurgitated constantly. So I like talking about it when it's not so set in stone.
It’s not bad, I’m not complaining, but it’s like you have the music and it’s this big, expansive thing, and then you have to talk about it. And, for me, I can feel the whole thing getting squished into this tiny little space. And I trip on my words, I’m not expressing myself the way I want to, and it's like, “Well this is why I play the music.” All these thoughts or ideas get to hold a space with other things, things that contradict them or whatever, and they get to hold this space. And then you have to go back to talking about it and undo the whole thing you just did.
You’re also talking about something that just happened in the recent past.
Yeah, it just happened! I wonder if it’s different for people who write lyrics, if there’s something more concrete there to sink your teeth into. Not that those people don’t get dumb questions…but you can enter into the songs through the lyrics, and from there you can get into themes, how they’re dealt with, how they’re written about, how maybe they play around with stuff, and then that can get bigger because you’re starting to talk about something. I feel like sometimes with instrumental music – and this could be my own shortcoming too – you feel like you've teased out all these bits of stuff in your life and you kind of made them big and expansive, and then you talk about them again and, to me, it feels like stuffing a bunch of stuff in a small container again, and it just doesn’t feel good.
That’s an existential struggle that I have with music journalism in general. I’ve always hated that famous Frank Zappa quote about how writing about music is like dancing about architecture, I always thought it was stupid, but now I think maybe it’s kinda true.
I always think “Oh, I’d kind of like to see someone dance about architecture.”
Certain people who write about music are really able to transcend some of these limitations, but in a lot of cases I feel like people who write about music don’t know how to write about instrumental music.
This happens in everything, not just music journalism, but people get into things for different reasons. Some people, it’s about how to make this thing about them, somehow. And now that’s even easier because you just, you know, have a blog, start a site. But to me, it’s rare that you see as much care go into the writing or the review as was put into the music and because of that there’s a dissonance. I don't think criticism should go away, I think it's important. But it’s also so hard right now. There’s so much fucking music. Now it’s so much shit every day, what’s even the point, at this point, of criticism. Unless you’re criticizing how we listen or whatever, but if you can’t find something you like then maybe you don’t like music.
I feel like if anything modern criticism is too nice. In the early 2000 when Vice was setting the tone for a lot of stuff, and Pitchfork too, being negative was really in style. I don’t think that’s how it is now, music journalism overall tends to be pretty fawning.
But then people think that being a contrarian is interesting in-and-of-itself. I think if something is presented as a blog or an opinion it’s fine. Like, “I listened to this, this is what I thought.” That’s not really music criticism, you’re writing down your response to music.
I would put that under the banner of music criticism.
Right, but I think it’s about context. If it’s presented as music criticism it should be held to a different standard than someone who’s just like, “Hey, I write this blog and it’s kinda for me, blah blah blah.” To me, that’s a different thing. But if you’re being presented in the New Yorker, or if it's an “esteemed” blog, I think it's a different criteria.
But I don’t know, I don’t give a fuck. I just get annoyed by it. But I don't want to get into this reverse thing where I’m criticizing what I don't like about music journalism. I don’t give a shit. I like to make music, that’s what I do, that's my job, and that’s what I’m going to do. Even when I catch myself talking about this I’m like, why? I’m just spinning wheels, and then you can see it getting into this endless argument.
I’m going to make music, that’s what I'm going to do, if someone wants to hear it, cool.
Enjoyed this!