Lee Ranaldo returns to his former label full of exciting musical approaches that moves him further away from the band he co-founded, Sonic Youth.
His latest solo release, Electric Trim, marks a successful collaboration with producer Raül “Refree” Fernandez who encouraged the veteran musician to explore new sonic territories and production techniques that involve electronic beats and samples along with live players including Nels Cline (Wilco), Sharon Van Etten, Kid Millions (aka Man Forever), the members of his previous backing band, The Dust, (Steve Shelley, guitarist Alan Licht, and bassist Tim Luntzel) and his son, Cody.
“Moroccan Mountains” and “Uncle Skeleton” reflect his renewed interest in playing acoustic guitar while Van Etten sings on six of the tracks and duets with Ranaldo on “Last Looks.” It also includes lyrical collaborations with award-winning New York author Jonathan Lethem.
The nine-track album marks a return to Mute Records, which according to Ranaldao is a “homecoming of sorts as Sonic Youth’s early records were released on Blast First/Mute. To me Mute has always been a true artist’s label, concentrating first and foremost on the music. I can’t wait for everyone to hear this music.”
Among other subjects our conversation discusses the making of Electrim Trim, the influence of the Grateful Dead on his recent work, his experience at the Fare Thee Well shows, his return to acoustic guitar playing and his latest works as a visual artist.
JPG: On your previous album it was Lee Ranaldo & the Dust but this one is just your name yet you use some of the same musicians. Any reason for going back to being billed as a solo artist?
Well, I’m not actually just using the Dust guys on this, and there was another interim band in between. I went to Europe with a band called El Rayo, which includes Raul Fernandez who is the producer of Electric Trim. He’s still in the band but because it’s not all of those people, we’re not calling it El Rayo either.
The guys in the Dust, Steve Shelley, Alan Licht and Tim Luntzel…Tim Luntzel just passed away. So, that puts the kibosh on the Dust as far as my thinking about it goes. Steve’s been playing a lot with Thurston [Moore] lately and he’s not been available. So, right now, I’m just calling it Lee Ranaldo Band. Just make it simple. There’s no real band name right now. That’s where we’re at with it.
JPG: Before talking about the new album, I wanted to bring up that the last time I spoke to you, I ran into you on Michigan Avenue in Chicago and we were both on our way to Fare Thee Well at Soldier Field. So, we discussed your interview with Mickey Hart in Relix and our thoughts on the previous night’s two shows. And then, I ran into you when the show was over.
LR: Do remember which night that was?
JPG: It was the final night, Sunday.
LR: That was a thrilling night for me. We ended up backstage, which was super cool. I went out there to merely play the after party the first night, and they gave me tickets to that first day [of FTW]. The gig was so amazing that I was like, “I can’t leave now. I’ve got to see tomorrow night.” Then, tomorrow night came and I said, “I’ve got to see the last night.”
I have three really close buddies from high school that I’m still very close to and we shared a lot of Grateful Dead experiences back in the day. When they heard that I was going up there for the show, one after the other said, “Oh man, you’re going? I want to come.” A second friend said, “I’m gonna meet you there.” And then a third one until all four of us were there. So, all four of us went to the first night. Initially, that was all that was planned. Then, one guy went home and three of us said, “We’re staying!” and we went the next night. After the second night another guy went home. Finally, just my super-close friend that I went to a lot of shows with and I went to the last night, and I ended up backstage somehow. So, that was really fun.
JPG: Those were some great and emotional times.
LR: I would definitely say that. It’s taken me awhile to come back around to the Dead. The last five years have really been about that for me. Those shows were just so emotional in so many ways in terms of just bringing me back to all the shows I saw in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.
JPG: It’s always interesting to hear musicians such as yourself who were part of punk rock/college rock/alternative rock talk about their affection for the Grateful Dead because for the longest time that was never mentioned in music articles or interviews. That changed in the last five to 10 years.
LR: It was like a lot of people were always in public and in print down on them. I never was down on them. I always admitted that I loved them once upon a time and I would always say, “I’m just not there anymore.” But, a lot of people that talked down about them all of a sudden have come back around and have been like, “Oh, I was always into the Dead.” (laughs) It’s kind of funny.
JPG: In regards to your work, I see a connection with how going acoustic on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty energized the Dead creatively and that seems to have done the same with you playing songs and shows on acoustic guitar. Re-energized may not be the right word but it’s definitely inspired you.
LR: Yes, definitely. I wouldn’t say re-energized but I would definitely say energized. What’s funny for me is that it in a lot of ways it tied me back into…I started on an acoustic guitar when I was first learning guitar. I pretty much played acoustic guitar through my whole life; all through the Sonic Youth period and everything, just never in public.
It came about when a promoter friend of mine in France, five or six years ago, said, “I want to do a solo gig with you at my festival but I insist that you play acoustic guitar.” I hadn’t played an acoustic guitar show in probably 20 years at that point. He kept hammering at me and I finally agreed to do it. It was right when I was writing those first songs for [2012 solo album] Between the Times and the Tides. I was like, “Okay. I’ll figure out how to do it. I’ll play a couple of Sonic Youth songs and some of my new ones.” It worked. It just tied me into so many different things that I loved. I love the Dead’s acoustic period. I love that Neil Young bounces back and forth between electric and acoustic…Dylan and a lot of other people. It opened up a whole new thing to me.
People sometimes say, “You moved from being in a really radical music situation to now being in a really traditional music situation” just because that’s what they think of when they think of acoustic guitar. I always say that for myself in a way this is the most radical transition I could make after 30 years of electric sound music to acoustic guitar. So, I feel like some experimental troubadour. (slight laugh) That’s the response I give to them.
JPG: That’s interesting because in my research for this I watched your episode of Amoeba Music’s “What’s in My Bag?” When I heard “Moroccan Mountains” on the new album, I thought of you picking the Sandy Bull album. I wonder if there’s a connection there.
LR: In a way I’m’ getting back in touch with a lot of that stuff. I love that music — Sandy Bull, John Fahey — and so many different things that have become reemerging touchstones for me as I started to get more involved with acoustic guitar. I’ve always loved Joni Mitchell, just a brand new appreciation of all of her tunings and chord patterns; people like Leonard Cohen and David Crosby, especially a lot of people that worked with open tunings like Joni and Crosby and people like that. That stuff is so inspiring to me.
A lot of that stuff is music I cut my teeth on and now I’m coming back around again, which is cool.
JPG: Going back to your music. After the announced hiatus/split of Sonic Youth, you released Between the Times and Tides. The opening two tunes on that album versus the opening songs on Electric Trim are very different. Back then, you hear the remnants of what you did with Sonic Youth but now, except for a break in “New Thing,” this is Lee Ranaldo 2017…totally…as a solo artist.
LR: You know what’s funny. All the guys in the Dust are on it and Nels Cline and Sharon Van Etten and Kid Millions but my real collaborator on this record was Raul. His whole intention when we first started talking about it was, “Why make another record that’s in that same mold? Let’s push the envelope a little bit. I know you can do other stuff.” He wanted to make a record that sounded different. “Let’s have different rhythms. Let’s have different drums. Let’s not have Steve playing on every song” Something like that. That was a real critical thing for me.
JPG: I think that’s why I like this album so much in comparison to the others.
LR: Yeah. Me, too. It opens up so much new territory for me that in a way it’s not funny. It’s great!
JPG: On “Last Looks” I hear Nick Drake. “New Thing” I hear a ’60 pop element. “Circular (Right as Rain)” I hear psychedelic rock in there.
LR: Yeah. I would say it’s all accurate. It’s all in there. “New Thing,” I don’t know why but when I was working on that one I always thought of a Lou Reed song from the end of the Velvet Underground period. I’m really not sure why that was what came into my head.
All of those influences are in there. Like I was saying earlier, in some cases I’m revisiting influences that were super strong on me in one period. Then, Black Flag came along and Talking Heads and Television came along and Pavement and Nirvana came along and you went down other roads. I’m kind of coming back to a lot of that early stuff that was so very important in a way and just really digging it.
JPG: You mentioned about collaborating with Raul, what about collaborating with novelist Jonathan Lethem’s lyrics on six songs?
LR: He’s an old acquaintance. When I was making the last record, Last Night on Earth I thought to ask him to collaborate with me and it just didn’t happen at the time. When it came to this record I felt like I was in such an experimental place with Raul in terms of the way we made this record…I’m used to making a record with a band in a room. You’re in a room. You rehearse the songs. You hang the mics, and you jam out and play them.
This record was made in such a Pet Sounds, _Revolver, Sgt. Pepper kind of way where the studio was the main instrument we were using. I felt like it was very experimental. I wanted to go somewhere similar on the lyrics. And I have to say quite frankly that part of the reason had to do with the reemergence of the Deadhead in me and my re-appreciation of Robert Hunter’s role in that band.
I worked on this Day of the Dead project that the guys from The National put together last year. When I went to do my track, I was up at the studio and they were like, “Listen to this one. Listen to this one.” First of all, I understand some people are not into half hour jams and that the Dead turns them off for that reason. Listening to all these songs with all these different people singing them and playing them, it really drove home to me what an amazing body of songs they created. Just unbelievable! That’s a lot of Hunter’s doing. The words are just phenomenal.
I was thinking about that and I was thinking about Dylan’s work with Jacques Levy on Desire or Dylan’s work with Hunter on a couple different points in time. It just made me want to have someone to give a different point of view from my own. Basically, I felt like I didn’t want every single aspect of the record to have to spring forth from my brain. Raul was adding all this new stuff from his end and the same with Jonathan. We were passing stuff back and forth. Some of those songs, maybe, he contributed a few words or a line or two and other songs he contributed huge amounts. It almost didn’t matter. The collaborative thing we had going was very significant between us.
JPG: Was that Jonathan or Raul’s input or you deciding to do the spoken word passages on Electric Trim ?
LR: Mostly the spoken stuff was mine. Like the way “Moroccan Mountains” opens it’s kind of retelling an actual event that happened a couple years ago in the south of France. I worked it into this song that was basically inspired by trips to Morocco and in particular sitting on this Moroccan carpet when I was creating the tune for that song.
JPG: Going back to the Day of the Dead why did you decide to cover “Mountains of the Moon?”
LR: It’s a funny story, and it also connects directly with some of my tunes. I was obsessed with that song just a couple years ago. When I was making “Last Night on Earth” I was, for some reason, obsessed with that song. I kept listening to it and feeling like…I was obsessed with that period of the Dead in particular. I was listening a lot to Aoxomoxoa and Anthem of the Sun, and just really loved that song.
When they asked me to do something I chose that song in part because I was so obsessed with it when I was writing the music for Last Night on Earth and during that period I did this weird concert in Holland where I worked with a string orchestra. I wrote a piece for them and we wove in a couple of my songs from Last Night on Earth and other things. It was a very interesting experiment for me – a 20-piece orchestra and me onstage with electric guitar. On the same bill was this amazing woman from Berlin that played harpsichord. She played a baroque piece from the 1600s with a small string quartet, and I loved the sound of it. I went up to her afterwards and told her I was working on this song on my record, it’s called “Late Descent,” and said, “Would you be interested in trying to play something on this song?” I was thinking about “Mountains of the Moon” and thinking that I could use a harpsichord on one of my songs. She was into it and we went through all this back and forth through the mail.
Harpsichords have this weird pitch that they are tuned to so we had to slow the tapes down before we sent them to her and all this crazy stuff. But, it worked out and I got this weird harpsichord thing on my record. Then, when the National guys came calling I was like, “I know exactly what song I want to do” and it was that one.
Did you ever see the Playboy After Dark where they do that song? Oh my God! That’s so amazing! I know they played it a little bit in that period but I have never heard many tapes of them playing it, and seeing that on that show, and there’s a great story of that show about how they dosed everybody, it’s an amazing version of the song with Tom Constanten on the harpsichord. I don’t know. I just really love that song. I find it to be a really special one in their repertoire.
JPG: The song, “Thrown Over the Wall,” accidentally ended up referring to the Resistance.
LR: Yeah.
JPG: I’m curious about doing something that was just a song at one time and is now considered defiant. Also, interested about it because your work hasn’t been associated with politics very much. The only thing I can think of is Sonic Youth doing something for Rock the Vote.
LR: We did stuff for Rock the Vote for sure. We had this song in that period called “Youth Against Fascism.” We were a little bit involved. We were never a highly-political band but I think “Youth Against Fascism” was as political as we ever got. But, we did a bunch of stuff for Rock the Vote, PSAs and things like that.
JPG: Does it feel good or strange that “Thrown Over the Wall” is now viewed as your political song?
LR: It feels really good because it gives me a chance from the stage to talk about all this stuff. I’m kind of a news junkie and I had a lot of strong feelings about it. The funny thing was…there’s this film made about the making of my new record and the guy that was making the film was listening to that song come together in the studio – maybe because it had this imagery of a wall – he was the one who suggested, “If by some fucked up chance Trump gets elected, this could be your song of the Resistance.”
I did a bunch of shows in September and October before the election and I thought it would fun to introduce it with this anecdote about, “Ha ha ha…if Trump gets elected this is the song of the Resistance.” And I figured that come election day I’d have to come up with a new intro to the song because it wouldn’t be of any use anymore (slight laugh) and here, lo and behold, it’s almost of more use than ever.
It’s funny because the words come right out of the headlines, especially the verses which are largely Jonathan’s. It’s got this political bent anyway – “Hide your submarines” and “Disguising your faces with names” – but almost by virtue of saying this is my song for the Resistance it took on this whole other character in a strange way.
I’ve been singing it here and there for the last year as I’ve done gigs in advance of the album release. I was just down in Brazil for a few weeks and I was there a year ago too and I was singing it. They’re going through their own completely crazy political upheaval. It really resonated down there, too. I discovered a bit about their political situation and wove in some of that as well as the Trump stuff. They were just as moved by the idea, and any other places in Europe where there’s this conservative rise, it seems like it was hitting home with people just in the simple terms of being able to talk about that stuff. It’s allowing me to talk about that stuff from the stage as well. So, works pretty good for me.
JPG: I saw the official trailer on YouTube for “Hello Hello Hello: Lee Ranaldo: Electric Trim,” the documentary on the making of the album. Is that going to be released or available on a streaming service?
LR: It’s got a whole bunch of festival screenings and local screenings here and there. I’m sure the film will be available in one form or another at some point. Right now, it’s just doing the festival circuit and one-off screenings.
It’s interesting that the reason that got made is my friend Fred Riedel, who made it, when he heard that Raul was coming over the week we were starting for the first time to work before we even knew where we were going to go or get to with this whole project, he said, “I have no idea how one makes a record.” He’s a guitar player but he’s never made a record. He was like, “Can I come in and bring my camera and just shoot a little?” He got so inspired that he came back through the whole time we were making the record and cut this film together. But, it’s funny because normally a film like that at some point in the sequence involves seeing a band playing together in the studio or live in concert, and this film was made in such a strange way none of that is there.
So, it doesn’t have that final penultimate catharsis of the band kicking the songs out live or something like that. But, this record, it was such an interesting process to make it. It was a good record to capture because it was done in such an unusual way. It was a happy accident that he chose to come by and do that.
JPG: I think you’re a good person to ask this. Now, to set it up I was listening to a Lou Reed CD compilation that came with “MOJO” magazine. It goes from the beginning of his solo career to “Mistrial” and includes “Metal Machine Music Pt 1.” (Lee laughs) Now, I must admit I avoided listening to “Metal Machine Music” for years. Then, I finally relented and, while it’s not something I’d play often, to my older ears it’s not that frightening. There’s kind of an arc to its squelching soundscape. Which brings me to this, is there a line where noise is just noise and noise becomes beauty and melody and does that even matter?
LR: Well, I think that line is probably inside everybody’s individual head. For me I would say there’s stuff I like and there’s stuff I don’t like. Certainly, over the years, I’ve listened to a lot of, for instance, harsh noise as they call it coming out of Japan where it’s really really harsh noise. Lou’s record is somewhere in between. It has a melodic side. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.
I try not to separate things out in what’s noise and what’s music. To me it’s all elements of music and it’s really about what you do with it and how you structure it. Music is structure across time. Whether it’s a beautiful melody or some kind of harsh screeching of the #1 Train pulling into Time Square or whatever it might be, if you’re structuring it in a certain way and calling it music then I’m fine with that. It doesn’t mean I’m gonna like every bit of it. I think people draw that line in their head.
Some people have really specific lines drawn where they’re like, “I’m not crossing this line because it’s not music anymore” whether it’s John Cage or [Karlheinz] Stockhausen or Merzbow from Japan or Sonic Youth for that matter and other people’s lines are more sketchy and movable. So, I think it’s a personal thing. I try not to ever say, “That’s noise and not music.”
A year or two ago, I posted this thing on instagram because I thought it was so so funny and so great. There was an eight-second long track that got leaked on to the web from Taylor Swift. She was working on her 1989 record at the time. It was an eight-second track of absolute white noise that was credited to her on itunes. It was up for a few days and shot up the charts. (laughs). All these people were like, “Oh, something new by Taylor Swift” and they just clicked and bought it. Then, they listened to it and it was an eight-second blast of insane noise. I just thought, “Okay. The biggest selling noise musician in the whole world is Taylor Swift.” (laughs) That gave me a real kick. So, I put together a little instagram headline post about it.
JPG: When you mentioned Japanese noise rock artists, I remember The Boredoms opened for Sonic Youth.
LR: Yeah! They’re stuff always seemed so totally insane but they were super well-rehearsed. They could create the same insanity every night after night and stop on the same dime every night. It was something just unbelievably disciplined about what they did.
In the avant garde days there were people smashing pianos or pulling a violin down the streets of New York and calling it a concert. We first were turned on to them when we first went to Japan in ’89. People were telling us about this gig they did in a little club where they drove a bulldozer through a wall of the club. Our jaws dropped. “That’s amazing!” It was at the same time that you had in Germany Einsturzen Neubauten bringing power tools onstage, grinding metal and shooting sparks and calling it music.
It’s not a huge leap from the stuff that people like Cage and Stockhausen were doing and someone like [avant-garde classical composer Luciano] Berio who Phil Lesh studied with and that influenced what the Dead were doing in the early days. If you’re in that river we call music, it all kind of washes around and bumps up against each other sooner or later.
JPG: The video for “New Thing,” I just wonder did it hurt your eyes staring at that bright light or did they add that in post-production?
LR: (laughs) No, it was like an LED thing that was taped on to that old black & white TV set, a ‘70s four or six-inch black & white TV screen, which was kind of ridiculous because these days there’s no analog signal left. So, there was no signal to get on that thing when we tried. It had an AM-FM radio that still had a pretty good sound. But, we taped on there this LED thing that photographers use and you could regulate how bright it was. It wasn’t bad. Sometimes, it was like when you get a bright flash on your face when somebody’s taking your picture. It was a little like that but mostly it was okay.
JPG: I watched it and felt bad for you, thinking you’re temporarily blinded after doing so many scenes with it.
LR: I think it’s more the way it looks on camera. It wasn’t so dramatic in a sense because I was carrying it around all day long.
JPG: Do you have any updates on your next art exhibit or art book?
I’ve been doing a lot of art these days. I do a lot of drawings of highways when I’m out on tour and they’ve taken a new turn recently. That’s been really cool. And, I do a lot of etchings. I was trained as a printmaker and I do all these prints using old vinyl records that I’m scratching the hell out of and then making small edition prints of them – editions of eight or 10. So, I’m showing a lot of these new highway drawings and a lot of these new record prints at my gallery show. Then, I’m showing an amalgam of older work in this other museum.
Right now, I feel like it’s funny to embark on almost like a new career in my early 60s but my music is in a really good place and the art is in a really good place. A lot of things are just coming together for me. There are new book projects in the works but not far enough along to talk about yet. There’s a couple foreign translations of old books about to happen and there’s a guy in England working on a compendium of selections from all the different books I’ve done over the last 20 years or so. I’m still keeping my hand in that regard as well.
JPG: And finally, from someone of Italian descent to another, it’s great to hear you in another interview talk about making Wedding Soup.
LR: (laughs) That’s one of my favorites. My kids just absolutely adore that soup. Every once in awhile we’ll be somewhere and we’ll have one and they’ll be like, “Yours is way better.” Especially in the colder months, I like to make that one a lot. I’m a soup maker. That’s one of my specialties. I leave most of the cooking to Leah who is a much better cook than me but when it comes to soups and pies I’m right in there and I can do pretty good. I can hold my own.
