photo by Jeffrey Dupuis
There is a strange symmetry between an Anders Osborne performance and the forces of nature. To watch him play the guitar, to hear him sing, is to witness a whirling dervish of electricity and motion, power and grace, his amps so driven, the tubes develop blisters.
With a voice that recalls equally the blues of the Delta and the singer/songwriter scene of ‘70s California, Anders Osborne seems the iconic American musician. Ironic, then, is the perfect fit between this native of Sweden who’s hitchhiked across the globe, and the stream of inspiration he’s found in post-Katrina New Orleans, where he’s lived for the past 25 years.
We caught up with Anders as he prepared to open his nationwide tour, supported on this sold-out show in Los Angeles by fellow NOLA drummer Stanton Moore and his trio. Osborne’s latest release, American Patchwork (Alligator Records), had just hit stores.
LS: First off, congratulations on your new album, American Patchwork. I haven’t stopped listening to it. There doesn’t seem to be a community in this country that has needed the simultaneous healing and celebration that music provides like New Orleans has needed it. As a favorite son of that city, did you feel any pressure to write songs that contributed to either the healing or celebration following the travesty of Katrina?
AO: Not pressure, but I have been affected by it. It’s a relationship that you have with the city. When you go through something of this depth, it affects everything. It affects how you relate to people for the rest of your life. How you handle yourself, in general. It affects everything. With regards to writing, I get more encouraged than pressured. People will tell me about a song that they really liked, they’ll suggest something, just talking about things; stories about their lives, something that happened, and I get filled with empathy or sympathy, and I get involved. It can trigger wanting to write something. Watching Treme right now on HBO, I see certain scenes, I see my friends on there, hear the music, it makes me want to write a certain song like this or like that again.
LS: Such as?
AO: Like, hearing something that’s damn beautiful. Like, I want to do another dirge. I haven’t written a dirge in a long time. And what would it be, what would it be? Then you start playing and writing. It affects you constantly. Your personal life happens as it happens, but to have a source like the devastation of Katrina- it’s pretty unusual to be able to tap into that, and constantly wanting to express it.
LS: You’re taking an experience and attaching words and sounds to it so that others that have gone through it can relate, or others that haven’t gone through it, can connect to it. Having said that, I felt like Coming Down (Anders first post-Katrina release in 2007) was an extremely intimate record, almost soul-revealing, yet at the same time felt connected to a larger community.
AO: I have no intentions of anything when I write or record it. They are very selfish acts as they go down. You’re just doing something, you’re playing it. What happens when the recording goes down right, and you’re listening back, or even as you’re recording, and it feels extremely elevating and magical- then, you’re happy. I don’t think I ever spent time thinking of a bigger picture. It’s just a very in-the-moment situation with the players you have. If the players are great players, they take the song to a whole new level and help me make the song sound like, “I never thought it could sound this good.” It shows we’re doing this together, and then I’m satisfied. How this resonates with other people? If it resonates with us in the studio, there is bound to be somebody liking it. That’s how I look at it. If we like it, somebody’s got to like it. It can’t be just four or five of us thinking this is cool, and nobody else likes it. That seems kind of odd.
LS: Have you ever written a song and thought, “This isn’t for me, this is for somebody else.”?
AO: Yes. Sometimes you write and they are not good songs. It’s like practicing your chops on the guitar or keyboards. Sometimes you just practice your writing chops. You have to write stuff that doesn’t become great songs, or even complete songs. The pressure I think a lot of writers have is from being frustrated that they can’t finish a song. Why do you keep trying to finish it? It doesn’t have to be finished. It’s just you sitting down practicing and honing your craft of writing. When they get finished, it means they get finished. It happens sometimes that I write and it doesn’t feel right, but somebody else might like it. I didn’t get the words right to connect with me and my life, and I wasn’t truthful to me for some reason. Again, that’s just me practicing songwriting.
LS: Because the inspiration isn’t right, or because it’s too derivative?
AO: Sometimes I hear an idea, like an Otis Redding thing, or an old blues tune. Somebody I heard the other day got me going- (sings), “When I was rich, I was filthy rich. I had a house full of friends.” I thought, ‘That’s bad-ass.’ The way he delivered it. So if I go home and write off of that, usually it will be several songs before I make it my own. The first few of those are not going to be mine. They are going to be a copy of what I just heard. Those lay around.
LS: Your material always sounds original to me, but rooted in the history of many genres of music. Do you consciously run away from influences and inspiration to avoid being derivative?
AO: I don’t try to cover it up if I take inspiration from somebody else. It gets weird if you take it from those classic records that we all have. Those are perfect moments in time. The obscure moments of friends that give me a demo or from a live gig, that can really trigger my inspiration. The classic stuff that represents our generation, I copied more when I was younger, just to learn how it worked.
LS: Do you demo during your writing process?
AO: I just write it and if it sticks with me, it means the song is there. Every once in a while, I decide to demo the stuff, send it to the publisher, that pitches it to other people. Sometimes I think, ‘This is a big song.’ This is not just me expressing myself. This might be a little more than that. So, I’ll try and figure out if it should go to this person or that person, because they will make it really beautiful and big. It would have a different purpose than just me doing it.
LS: If you demo a song for the publisher, are you trying to record it with a fully-realized arrangement, or just simple with voice/guitar or voice/piano?
AO: Voice/guitar. Very clean. Every once in a while, I like a little backbeat and some bass, maybe.
LS: When you’re cutting a record, are you making the choices with regards to amps, guitars, microphones?
AO: Not mic choices. Whoever is producing, I let them tell me what they are hearing. Pretty often, they will push me further than I will push myself. I will play it safe in the Anders world. The guy I bring in, like on this new record, will say, ‘It’s got to be heavier, man. Heavier.’ Stanton (Moore, drummer and producer on the album) would say that. You’d think it would be Pepper Keenan (guitarist for Down, who played on American Patchwork ). Stanton was the one who pushed for those really heavy sounds. So I played through six, seven amps at the same time. I would play with it, adjust it with the engineer until we said, ‘This is killer.’
LS: So the tones you’re getting on, ‘On the Road to Charlie Parker,’ or ‘Darkness at the Bottom,’ you’re hearing those live, in your headphones? They’re not dialed in later in the mix?
AO: Oh, yeah, it’s all live, absolutely.
LS: Any overdubs?
AO: Doubling, adding tonal textures to get a certain sound that was initially so distorted, that you couldn’t hear the tone. You take a clean tone with brand new strings and double a line to get the sound in the center of that fuzziness. Melodic lines, interwoven with each other.
LS: Tracking the vocal live, as well?
AO: Yes, and when it doesn’t work, like trying for a higher energy or a lower energy, we’d go back in and overdub.
LS: What’s your preference with respect to amps and guitars?
AO: Lately, I like Marshall 100-watt, but I’ve been endorsed by Category 5, which I’ve just started to use. They custom-made an amp according to a combo of a ’64 Fender Concert that I have, but with more wattage, and a Super with the reverb. Then the Marshall 100-watt head with 4X12. The guitar is a Stratocaster with a ’68 body, with Seymour Duncan hot rails in the center and two original pickups. Birds-eye maple custom neck with an ebony fretboard.
LS: When you are producing, are you allowing the artist the same freedom of choice for gear?
AO: Yes. I work more on keys, tempos, making sure the atmosphere stays on track the whole time. I try to pull stuff out of them. Maybe suggest certain things, certain arrangement ideas. More guiding the whole process, but I let them play. They need to be comfortable. If they get stuck on a sound, I may suggest something, but the more the artists, the players, get to do it themselves, the better the record is going to be.
LS: In your live performances, you seem, from an audience perspective, to be tapped into an energy and you are channeling.
AO: I try to stay really focused on being believable with the lyrics, to think about what it is I’m saying. And then, to also tap into the musical aspect of singing so that I have that raw, strong power of music just flowing through me, letting it take over. I have to focus on being in that moment because it is easy to slip. The only time I step out of that is if I feel emotionally drained and I need to recharge.
LS: Do you listen to your own live recordings?
AO: Live recordings are one thing I don’t listen to. Not at all. I really can’t go there. I’ve tried but it really doesn’t work. It almost spoils the moment of what just happened.
LS: Beyond this tour, have you thought about what’s on the horizon?
AO: I’d like to push this to a level of vague finish line. I want to push this record to a place to where I say, ‘We’re done. Let’s do the next one.’ I’m staying very focused on tonight, but not beyond tonight. Outside of being in gig-mode, I’m trying to exhaust the life of this record- make sure I don’t quit too soon or go on too long. I want to feel that the excitement is constantly there for the record; for me, for the band, the crew, managers, radio, fans, everybody. Then, I’ll take a little breather, regroup, and see what comes next.
