Catching Up With... Wilco's Nels Cline

It has been nearly four months since Wilco the band released Wilco (The Album). The band just finished up its fall tour and recently announced plans for a “TransCanada” winter tour, beginning in February with three dates in the States and then heading to Canada. Paste caught up with guitarist Nels Cline over the phone, as the strains of the rest of the band sound checking before a Toronto show floated in the background. The guitarist discussed how the album is going over live, his most recent solo album and Wilco’s plans to begin recording new material in January.

Paste: The album has been out for a few months now. When you make an album, you probably have your own personal feelings of how it came out, but once you start playing it live every night and seeing audience reactions to it, does your relationship to it change?
Nels Cline: Actually, not that much, at least in the case of this record. I think in the case of Sky Blue Sky, maybe it changed a little because the live sound was so ramped up. But, this new record is a little bigger sounding, so the rock tunes sound like rock tunes and the quiet tunes sound quiet. We haven’t played “Solitaire” live yet. We played it at a sound check or two. “Everlasting Everything” hasn’t been on any set lists lately, but we were playing it for a while. Now, “Country Disappeared” has been on the list, so that’s the low-key song on the record that we’re playing at the moment. It’s really fun to play “Bull Black Nova” and “Wilco (The Song),” “You Never Know,” and some more of the rock material.

Paste: You mentioned how Wilco (The Album) is kind of a big-sounding studio record. How does that translate to the live show when you’re playing songs that have more of a studio feel to them?
Cline: Generally, it hasn’t been a problem. But, there are definitely a couple of dilemmas here and there for me because of the overdubs that were involved. Trying to recreate it live can be an interesting challenge. I think I may have overachieved on “You Never Know,” trying to play the rhythm guitar part and then play Jeff’s solo, he plays the little solo break on the record, and then play my little George Harrison homage slide part. So, I’ve got this double-neck guitar and I’m trying to switch back and forth and keep this slide on my finger. It’s been a bit of an acrobatic act and I’ve really blown it a few times [laughs]. I’m not sure it was necessary to be that literal, but it was a fun challenge. And then something like “Everlasting Everything” or “Deeper Down” also presented some fun challenges. You know, Glenn on “Deeper Down” has this plastic tubing where he’s inflating and deflating his floor tom to change the pitch, and I’m playing an octave 12-string and a lap steel and switching with an A/B box. To me, I love both those songs, so to hear them get even close to the studio sound is satisfying. I enjoy thinking, although I can’t be sure, that the audience is also enjoying the diverse textures that we’re conjuring.

Paste: How much of a sense do you get when you’re performing of what the audience thinks about a song or about the performance?
Cline: Well, not always much for me because I get kind of in a zone and I’m also having to make rapid switches between songs, not just maybe a guitar but mostly pedal settings. I have to stay really focused on little nuances that are very important for me to get right. But sometimes it’s really obvious that the reaction is either tepid or extremely overwhelming. When we played “Impossible Germany” in Spain earlier this year, I don’t think any of us knew that that song was probably the best-known Wilco song at that time. People were flipping out when we played that song. We were really surprised and it was really obvious because there was prolonged ovation.

Paste: I read an interview of yours where you were talking about the difference between playing rock ‘n’ roll and jazz, and you said that, physically, your body was in a different place in relation to the guitar when you play different styles of music. I found that interesting because your style is so physical, anyway. You’re kind of playing the guitar with your whole body. And music can be such a physical experience. What do you feel is the connection?
Cline: I think when playing with Wilco, there’s a certain aspect to it that I guess is kind of classic rock ‘n’ roll pageantry. You’ve got lights blinking and changing color and you’ve got a big sound system. And then there’s just the force of the sound itself; we’re not pushing a million watts on stage or anything, but it’s a lot of sound. And there’s grooving involved. So, I feel that in my whole body. Generally when I’m playing music, unless there’s something bumming me out or something’s not working, I feel totally immersed. So, it’s easy for me to get in that zone. But when I’m playing someone else’s music that’s maybe extremely quiet, or relaxation is important, or maybe it’s a situation where I have to lay out a lot, in certain jazz settings, you just don’t play all the time, it tends to be a completely different thing. And when I’m that loose and relaxed, I can certainly play with a lot more fluidity. I find there’s a certain tautness to my whole physical presence or my being when I’m playing other types of things, including my own music with the Singers, a trio I do with Tim Berne and Jim Black, where we improvise, where it gets pretty intense, it gets pretty raucous. So I tend to sometimes throw my whole body into that. It has caused problems with my skeleton, but I can’t really help it. I’m not really sure that it’s a good thing. I just can’t seem to help myself.

Paste: It’s interesting because the most signature aspect of your guitar playing is the way you use the whammy bar . . .
Cline: Oh, you mean the wiggle? [laughs]

Paste: Yeah, the sound of that is similar to the physical motion you go through when you’re doing it.
Cline: Well, yeah, it’s a kind of spasm. There’s a certain grotesque, spasmodic quality to me and I try not to think about it. It’s hard to watch when I have to see it later if somebody films it.

Paste: Let’s shift gears for a minute and talk about your solo album, Coward. The most interesting parts of that album are the parts that don’t really make sense; they don’t really have much structure and are experimental, for lack of a better word. Does that kind of experimenting help your brain get ready to go into Wilco where you have to do more structured, kind of standard songs?
Cline: I think that I spent most of my life doing so-called experimenting, and I played a lot of what I guess would be loosely called kind of a chamber jazz style of acoustic guitar with a group called Quartet Music for years and years. That was simultaneously free, but also very structured and very harmonically specific. I think my brain just is comfortable in both worlds. One doesn’t really refresh the other or reset the other, but I think I do need to strike a balance in life to find the most satisfaction or happiness, if you will. But my life is damn good right now, so I’m happy. Just to be able to play is some kind of weird miracle.

Paste: When you’re getting into things that are less structured, how do you make decisions? How do you decide when you’ve got it right or when you need to keep working?
Cline: It’s a hard question to answer. I’m not sure there’s any methodology involved. I just seem to know. And the other thing is I set time limits on myself. I don’t go over and over things, especially those types of things, because then they’re just going to start to sound really contrived to me. So I have to leave happy accidents in, or I have to leave bad accidents in sometimes, just because it sounds more real to me. When you’re doing something, which essentially on that record is like playing with yourself, it can sound really kind of stale or overly controlled. But frankly, the decision to do those pieces, it’s just because I enjoy listening to that sort of thing.

Paste: Do you know what’s coming next? I’d imagine after you finish an album, there’s so much time in between that maybe Jeff has begun writing new songs. Is there any sense of what the next one is going to be like?
Cline: I think most of what people tend to predict within the band never happens. I think that sometimes it starts something and then it changes and takes on a life of its own. We’re going to start recording new ideas in January and just start that process and keep it going. I know that there have been ideas bandied about, and the rest of it is like quips, like “Oh, the next record should just be one long drone instrumental,” and things like that, and you know that’s not going to happen. It’s mostly just cheekiness.