Wendy Eisenberg: A life of improvisation

Wendy Eisenberg is deep in thought. We’re sitting in a corner booth at Wendell Smith’s, a 74-year-old Nashville staple where the sides are abundant—it ain’t called a meat-and-three for nothing. The question on their mind? Whether a first-timer gets turnip greens, white beans, or coleslaw. “The coleslaw goes well with BBQ,” they decide, before lamenting the exclusion of white beans from their spread. 

Life is always an improvisation for Eisenberg, constantly rambling through various touchpoints and memories to create something new. Our conversation twists and turns, from Motörhead to Ween, Sunny Day Real Estate to Ben Monder. In a few hours, when Eisenberg plays a show at Random Sample, an art gallery around the corner, they will go off the cuff, sans setlist. But despite the ever-shifting nature of our conversation, we always return to one tenet: earnestness. What does it mean to create something that is true to the heart? How does one write a song that can represent the self, but also transcend into a universal feeling? 

The only way to capture the self is to illustrate the ever-changing present, it seems. This doctrine is the core of Eisenberg’s music, even when they work across disparate genres. Over the decade they’ve been a working musician, Eisenberg’s moved from free jazz to bedroom pop, art rock to folk; often, their records are confluences of all these genres and more. They’re also constantly collaborating with fellow musicians: in the past few years, they’ve released dreamy instrumentals with David Grubbs and Kramer, free-form math rock with Editrix, and angular works with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet. Eisenberg is halfway through their solo tour, and they just got back from a long weekend at Knoxville’s Big Ears. On Saturday, they played a solo Joyful Noise showcase and performed John Zorn’s Cobra, featuring John Medeski, William Winant, and others.

Cobra is a “game piece” Eisenberg has played many times, one which careens and shifts at a moment’s notice. The way it works is this: a “prompter” (in this case, Zorn) communicates with the musicians via multicolored signs, instructing the group to change what, when, or how they’re playing. For instance, “S” (which stands for substitute) means those who are and aren’t playing switch, or “1” (Sound Memory 1) means the musician takes a mental note of what they’re playing, which should be reproduced on command. The musicians, in response, can “call” for a specific sign by raising a hand, putting a fist in the air, pointing, or making eye contact with others on stage. The end result, more often than not, is pure chaos. 

“It’s usually people just doing fuck all,” Eisenberg says, laughing. They’ve performed the piece many times and have grown to embrace the chaos. “At first, I was just nervous about getting the signs right because you’re trying to communicate to a very demanding man…. I wasn’t improvising, and I think you could view that statement as metaphorical. The first couple of years as an improvising person with a career, I wanted to do what felt like improvisation correctly.” But this time, Cobra felt different. “I realized that I’ve really grown as a composer, and all the calls I was making were much more compositional. I made this call that Zorn texted me about afterward, where I was like, ‘we should have a coda.’ And he was like, ‘that was inspired. Your calls are really coming along.’ I think that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t played so many games.”

Growing into improvisation was a long journey for Eisenberg, and one that’s still ongoing. They started playing keyboard as a child, but stopped “as an act of rebellion” when their parents got divorced. They switched to guitar soon after, which unlocked new sonic possibilities, recalling that “it just felt instantly easier than piano.” As a teen, Eisenberg started composing jazz while attending a preparatory school in Maryland. An abusive high school teacher told them they didn’t have a good enough voice for jazz singing, which led to a short lapse in writing compositions. “Through jazz education, I wasn’t really writing creatively, but I was listening a ton,” Eisenberg reflects. They attended Eastman School of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music after prep school, but found themselves desperately lonely, so they sought community in experimental noise scenes, miles away from the classroom setting. “Slowly through the course of playing [with other noise musicians], I would start to write these little sketches. By the end of college, I was starting to write again.”

Eisenberg’s experience is one of somebody who is pretty entrenched in modern educational systems. It’s been a process of unlearning since then, but whatever they’re writing, it always seems to be indebted to jazz. “I really can’t get that out of my blood. Now I think the songs are less jazz, but they’re still using crazy ass diminished chords, you know? If they’re going to come out jazzy, they do, or they’re going to come out like a strummy type of Microphones thing.”

Before our food comes, Eisenberg looks around and quips, “real Diane-core.” There’s a thick-walled coffee mug in front of them and a small tape recorder in front of me. Sitting at a table so small our legs almost touch, it feels like a scene not too distant from the Double R in Twin Peaks. Even ignoring the three plates filled with BBQ pork and more sides than we can count (no cherry pie, though), we’re surrounded by bits and pieces of a bygone America. A “No Whining” sign hangs on the wood-paneled walls, alongside signed photos of country legends and Nascar drivers. “I really love how this looks,” Eisenberg says, gesturing to the taxidermy deer above us. 

IN A WAY, THIS AGING diner reminds me of Eisenberg’s new self-titled record, memories of an America long past its prime. The first single “Meaning Business” was written just days after David Lynch’s passing. His work means a lot to Eisenberg. Twin Peaks, in particular, represents a hazy, surreal microcosm of America. In the press release, they note: “[It’s] an especially important work to me and so many other people who have experienced sexual assault. Recovery from the trauma of that particular horror is a hallucinatory and psychedelic process because you’re reckoning with true horror – basically, the thesis of the Twin Peaks universe. This song sees me trying to find the little kid who I was, who endured that horror, and ultimately trying to free her from being trapped in that memory….”

As a whole, the album is an attempt to speak to “little Wendy,” as “It’s Here” puts it. Full of quaint, plaintive songwriting in the vein of John Prine or Gillian Welch, that sound is achieved through sincere lyrics backed by the whine of a pedal steel and the chirps of a fiddle. As a child, Eisenberg’s father used to sing Everly Brothers and Gram Parsons tunes around the house. In that way, country music might be just as entrenched as jazz. Wearing a black pearl snap and Harley Davidson jean jacket they got a few days ago, Eisenberg admits they feel like an “outsider” in country music. But, then again, Parsons was an outsider, too. “He’s coming at it from this intellectual way, which I don’t want to always admit to,” Eisenberg notes. “And I’m embarrassed that I did.”

“I admire the economy of form,” they say of the country genre. “I admire the virtuosity of the playing. I admire a style that really self identifies as a style. I think country music and non-idiomatic improvisation have a lot more in common than you’d expect, which is that you always have to get something right, and it’s usually the process.” Eisenberg mentions how country music, more so than other genres, has a specific goal: “to convey what they believe to be an essentially human feeling” to the point where the songwriter transcends the self. We talk about “Pick Up The Tempo” and the line “time will take care of itself, so just leave time alone.” It doesn’t seem like Willie Nelson wrote it. In fact, it doesn’t seem like anyone wrote it, instead arriving via immaculate conception from some omnipresent figure floating outside of time and space.

When I ask Eisenberg which line they’re proud of, they mention a verse from “Will You Dare”: “​​I laugh when I think of the obviousness of my sorrows, I cry when I remember the lover who once made me laugh.” Rich with wordplay, “Will You Dare” is a song about time, but also a song about love. The chorus goes: “But time has a funny way of laying you bare, it pulls you and scares you and tangles your hair, asking: Will you dare?” It rings oddly true in conversation with Willie and Waylon. When Eisenberg plays “Will You Dare” live, they add an addendum: “Think about someone you love.” Listening to Wendy Eisenberg over and over again, it’s hard not to hear the pedal steel that floats behind Eisenberg’s vocals. Hearing the song solo, it’s quite jarring hearing just Eisenberg’s voice and guitar. 

On record, the pedal steel is played by Mari Rubio, who records as more eaze. They’re also Eisenberg’s longtime girlfriend. “It’s nice to hear them and have the memory of what Mari’s doing on the pedal steel, or have the memory of Ryan [Sawyer, their longtime drummer], and even though it’s not there, it’s still in the performance,” Eisenberg says. “The absence is something that I feel, which leads to, I don’t know… It’s not like I’m consciously expressing the absence of my friends playing with me, but like, a little bit I have to, because I can hear what they’ve done with it.”

Rubio and Eisenberg live and work together in Brooklyn—Eisenberg’s quick to laugh, citing the oft-memed “U-Haul” trope. The two traded production ideas for the new record, but the songwriting process was something that happened alone. “I’m on this road alone, which is a cliche, but I started out writing songs by myself, so I write all these songs by myself anyway,” Eisenberg admits. “On some level, they’re kind of at their purest form when I’m totally by myself.” The songwriting process itself begins by improvising a riff on guitar. From there, writing lyrics is straightforward. “One of the true gifts that I have on this earth, more than guitar, is that I can come up with stuff that fits a rhyme scheme really easily.” Lyrics feel cut from the same cloth of melodic improvisation, seeing what sticks, what fits the “original impulse.” Eisenberg writes songs to figure out what they mean or what they’re feeling.

Wendy Eisenberg came out of those complicated feelings entangled with self-growth—looking back and wondering if they recognize the child they once were. Moving to New York in 2020 was a “relief” for Eisenberg, as was meeting Rubio. When they emerge from the cave of songwriting, Eisenberg’s proud to show their partner what they’ve done, likening it to a “dog killing some kind of animal, just wanting to show off.” Smiling, Eisenberg tells me: “I’m in a period of my life where I’m literally dating somebody called more eaze! Like, I’m gonna try to write easier music. It’s too cute, but it’s just right there.” I ask them about the process of excavating memory, mentioning the fact that many, like myself, can barely remember their childhoods. “I think you’re usually cursed with what you can remember,” they respond. “Sometimes, the memories are insouciant or peaceful or innocent, but oftentimes they’re not.” 

We’re talking about “Another Lifetime Floats Away,” which lists details from childhood at length: the routine of meals on Mission Drive as a kid and driving on Maryland highways as a teenager. “My mother makes breakfast, she keeps me alive,” the song goes, “My father is working, he keeps me alive.” When Eisenberg plays it at Random Sample, they dedicate it to their father who now lives outside Nashville. “I want to play a song about childhood because my dad’s here, and he’s in this song. This one’s for him,” they say on stage. “Don’t blame me!” their father interjects from the crowd. Eisenberg laughs. “It’s a really loving song.”

While the audience sits in pensive silence, Eisenberg plays the version alone. In lieu of Rubio’s pedal steel and Sawyer’s drum fills, they add a slow, droning hum during the verses and unprepared jazzy guitar licks between. These improvisations wouldn’t be out of place at a jazz club, nor would they be at Big Ears, where harsh noise proliferates. But here, improvisation makes perfect sense, too, adding a certain unpredictability to a solo country-tinged set that changes night to night. “I can’t really see from where I sit,” the song concludes. “Is that how I wound up here?” For a split second, the crowd stays quiet. It’s a question none of us know the answer to, and perhaps one Eisenberg doesn’t know either.

Ben Arthur is a writer based in Nashville. His work has appeared in Bandcamp, BOMB, No Depression, and Aquarium Drunkard.

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