RR: Your musical career began right around the time of the Dawn of the Video Age. How did that transform, or deter you, from what you wanted to do as a musician? In any way, do you look back and think that it would have been nice to have come of age in a different era, or do you feel videos ultimately benefited your career?
MC: Well, initially, it did benefit us because when MTV first started (big laugh)…they did play our stuff a lot.
RR: They did.
MC: That really had a big impact at that moment. The radio thing was a little spotty, but MTV was real solid and supportive of us in the beginning. This was even before…I remember talking with Lenny Waronker [Warner Brothers executive and producer] about
it, and it wasn’t on his radar at all. It certainly got on his radar pretty quick. But, yeah, that did help us. I didn’t have a problem with it. In fact, I miss it now just as somebody who watches T.V. once in a while. I thought it was great in its heyday.
RR: You were a song-oriented artist who focused on the song itself, and in the 1980s, it did force an artist to create a visual idea in some way. Whereas in the 1970s, you could find a musician very easily going up his own ass with an idea.
MC: Well, I will say—on the other hand—in contrast to what I just said, I don’t think I really ever had any great sense of how to deal with the video thing. I never had any real vision about it. It was all about records for me. That was the whole deal. I don’t want to get any of the videos I made back then. I’m really glad that they’re impossible to find right now. But, you know, I wanted to do it; I just never got my mind around it. There was just too much going on, and it wasn’t my thing anyway.
RR: So it benefited you as far as exposure, but you didn’t see it as “well, this is something that I hold in the same esteemed way as the actual song that I wrote.”
MC: That’s right. Yeah. My thing was records.
RR: Over the years, there has been an evolution of your lyrical content and musical direction. Do you look back at your body of work and see the different eras and where you moved within your career with some sense of an overview? Or, are you still too much in the midst of it all, and not really looking back?
MC: No, I can see real clear divisions as I look back. The initial body of work that I came up with when I first created a style for myself—there was just absolutely nothing interfering with my thought process. And there’s like a real clear point of view that ties it all together. That’s the initial stuff like the stuff that wound up on my first and second album [ Field Day ].
After that, I’m in show business, and my brain is getting kind of badly scrambled by all of that, so there was a middle period that I think of where I am going forward as a musician and a music maker, but the lyrics aren’t really as nailed down as they were on the earlier stuff. I didn’t want to think a lot of the things I was thinking. I was trying to block out a lot of stuff I was thinking, and just kind of writing around my thoughts some of the time. And that lasted for a while until I got out of the major label thing all together.
When I got out of it, I feel like I slowly got my vision back to the point that the first album of mine that I was 100% happy with once I got away from Warner Brothers and MCA and all of that was this one called #447. I think it’s a really nice record. There’s this real sense of intimacy to it, there’s a lot of creativity going on with the music, and there’s some new wrinkles in my approach. That was the first one where I thought, “Yeah, I’m back on track.” That is how it looks to me right now at my age.
RR: You have stayed relatively consistent in your songwriting process over the years, but have there been dry spells like you mentioned, where the muse wasn’t there, or you just weren’t listening?
MC: I have done it in fits and starts over the years. When I’m not writing, I’m not writing. Yeah, sure, there were lots of moments—especially when I had deadline pressures, and A&R people looking over my shoulder—where I was just lost. But, I don’t know, I always found a way to somehow crank it out, and do something fresh musically, I think, at least. What I really like on my records, when I hear them now, is that I am really proud of the guitar playing, and the way that developed over time. I always listen to that and think, “There’s something cool going on there.” And, also, there’s always a sense of detail like the percussion is really interesting. That is what I like about the stuff.
RR: That is what intrigues me about your upcoming collaboration with Ira Kaplan. I think, as guitarists and musicians, the two of you will create some new avenues to explore on stage. My eyebrows really shot up when I saw that combination.
MC: Oh, that’s great. I’m so glad to hear that. Yeah, you know, it’s very cool. I agree. They really are quite great, I think.
RR: You also have a music subscription and vinyl series coming out on your site.
MC: There will be physical product, but it’ll be vinyl singles. That was my idea right from the start—to do three singles a year for the next two years; one every four months on a regular schedule. That was the initial idea. Of course, downloads have to be part of it. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about the Fleet Foxes’ record and how much we loved it, and he said that he bought it on vinyl and he only bought new records on vinyl. He said whenever you buy a vinyl record, you get an access code for really good downloads along with it. I just thought that was so cool.
RR: Was it also the sound and quality of a vinyl record that hooked you?
MC: Yeah, there’s all of that. I did my last CD that came out in June of 2009 and it’s called Jaggedland, and I love it dearly, but the gestation period for that thing was really long and really arduous. I just can’t imagine going through that process, again, right now. I think it would be a waste of energy. But, on the other hand, I make records. I just can’t help it. The first thing was “is it even possible for me to go forward with record making?” And, then, I got this idea, and I thought it was a great idea.
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