Now widely known as Wilco's new guitarist, Nels Cline actually has quite an extensive recording and performing history behind him. Starting out as a jazz guitarist and eventually becoming a collaborator with such indie icons as Mike Watt, Thurston Moore and Carla Bozulich, Nels has more than just street credibility. Quoted by Jazz Times as "the world's most dangerous guitarist," Nels has the technical ability to play virtually anything, hence his in-demand sideman and session player status.

With a deep discography including his well-known early trio albums up to and including two albums with his newest trio, The Nels Cline Singers, (a brand new album, The Giant Pin and 2002's Instrumental's), Nels has become quite the musical chameleon. He took some time out of his tour with Wilco to sit down and chat with Junkmedia about touring with Wilco, playing with Mike Watt and his experiences with Sonic Youth.

You've been quite busy on the collaborative front lately, touring with Wilco and playing with Carla Bozulich and even the Blue Man Group. How has working with new people, especially vocalists, affected your playing style?

Well, I just enjoy the surrender to the whole. The funny thing about working with certain singers has been the occasional challenge of playing a straight triad and giving it the proper weight or emphasis. Learning to be direct and minimal has been an outgrowth of this kind of work, as I seem to naturally tend towards the oblique or prolix side of things!

How have fans been receiving Wilco on this current tour with you as their new guitarist? I assume the band's potentially noisier approach might be something some of the older fans are unaccustomed to. (At least it was to a handful of them the last two times I saw Wilco, even when they played with Sonic Youth.)

I'm not sure exactly what's going on further back in the hall, but the uberfans (as Wilco calls them) seemed to accept my presence almost immediately. Jeff asserts that each new wrinkle in the Wilco saga alienates about a third of their fans, then they acquire other fans who take their place. I can tell you that I was nervous about being accepted - part of my personality - but that the power of the music seems to have put me in a pretty good light. What really matters is that the band has been inspired and excited about the sound of the new lineup.

Since the tour with Wilco is well under way at this point, do you know if you'll be recording with them in the future, or is this just a touring gig for you? Or is it too early to tell?

I am in Wilco, and Jeff would like to start some sort of recording projects/ideas as soon as we can.

How collaborative are the pieces on The Giant Pin? I realize all but one are credited to you as primary writer, but how much interpretation ends up going into the arrangements? It seems Scott's electronics end up being more dominant in the mix than I would have expected, which is cool, I just thought most of the electronic mayhem was you alone!

Well, I think I can say that the arrangements are all primarily mine. Scott receives a fair amount of direction for the electronics, even if it's on "A Boy Needs A Door" where I asked him to sonically stage a rebellion against the written material. But I try to always listen to suggestions, as on "He Still Carries A Torch For Her," where Devin suggested that the opening phrases might be hipper as arcs of 3 repeats instead of the square 4...So I did it!

How did you meet up with [famous producer/soundtrack composer] Jon Brion? Did you write pieces specifically for Jon Brion and Greg Saunier [of Deerhoof] to play parts on? How has having guest musicians on your latest release affected either the sound and your conception of those new pieces?

Flanagan at the Largo Pub in L.A. introduced Jon to me one night after a solo set I had done there. He told me that Jon was a fan, but I truly knew nothing about him until my roommate Bobb Bruno started going to every one of his Friday night shows (they're legendary) and eventually started working as an assistant to him.

Carla Bozulich and I finally went to a show and we were truly amazed! Anyway, I sat in with him a bit, opened for him, all at Largo. Jon has been so enthusiastic about my work (and Carla's as well), so it became a bit of a mutual admiration society, I guess.

As for Greg Saunier, we have been friends doing shows together and coming to each other's shows ever since Carla added Deerhoof to a Scarnella gig in San Francisco about 7 years ago (note my dedication to Deerhoof on Instrumentals). I had learned from interviewing Greg and Satomi - I intended to write a tribute to them on my website and wanted answers to certain questions - that Greg had studied music at Oberlin or someplace and that his area of specialization was vibrato-less male singing of the pre-Renaissance, or some such thing!

Anyway, I thought it would be a splendid thing to even have him burp on the record, I love him so much! And I love the vocal bits he does only occasionally in Deerhoof, who I maintain are one of the greatest bands EVER. As for having guest musicians, it's no big deal conceptually. These men were right for the job, so it was all effortless.

Do you plan on collaborating in the near future again with Mike Watt by any chance? Personally I feel you two have an uncannily perfect chemistry. Contemplating the Engine Room is an overlooked masterpiece in my opinion. What is it like working with him?

The entire session was so conceptually flawless in terms of Watt's envisioning of it, and the subject matter moves me so much. The 'live' version we did on tour with Bob Lee at the end of '98 was FIERCE. Apparently, Watt has a whole record written for that trio (The Black Gang), so that answers part of your question.

The question of what it's like working with Watt is too vast and complex to answer. Mike is simultaneously inspiring and enervating, collaborative and contentious. He's a brilliant and difficult man! And his tours are legendarily punishing - take a look at his tour schedule for his fall tour in support of The Secondman's Middle Stand.

My real problem playing with Mike these days is that he plays so much louder than I'm used to! He just loves that roar.

Tracks like "Square King" and "Fly Fly" have a very Sonic Youth-esque edge to them, and knowing you play with Thurston occasionally leads me to wonder what if any influence early Sonic Youth might have had on your "sound."

I think everybody by now is aware of the impact of Sonic Youth on me. In the eighties, I was a fully obsessed SY geek - pretty over-the-top. Their sound, as well as their outlook lyrically, had a huge impact on me. I had met them as far back as '82 or '83, but it wasn't until Watt put us together in the studio for Ballhog or Tugboat? that any of us played together.

You know, you kind of don't want to hang out with people who like you that much! As the members of SY have become confident improvisers, we have perhaps naturally found ourselves on an intersecting path. When I met them, I was playing in Quartet Music, as well as with Julius Hemphill and Charlie Haden, so they probably doubted our collaborative potential at that time. Anyway, SY are still an inspiration.

I realize free-jazz guitarists like James Ulmer and Sonny Sharrock's similarly aggressive style well preceeds their "sound," but for me, it was what attracted me to your music in the first place, coming at jazz years ago from a more punk rock angle. Your old trio albums sounded to me like what Sonic Youth would have sounded like as an instrumental jazz combo.

I can definitely see your point. The funny thing is that the mix of moods, structures and approaches on all my records is pretty much the same. One can almost always easily point to elements of Sonic Youth as well as those of Ralph Towner, John McLaughlin, John Abercrombie, Sam Brown, Paul Bley, and yes, Coltrane, my initial jazz inspiration.

The looming jazz/rock thing is still pretty big - all those electric Miles Davis records and the Weather Report/Herbie Hancock spinoffs from that. There needs to be a bloodcurdling scream to balance every caressing whisper, I guess.

While perusing your web site and reading the tech page, I noticed you don't tour with your own amps. I was at the Baltimore gig you did with Interzone and would never have realized you were using borrowed equipment. Now that you're touring with Wilco, I assume you have a regular gear set-up that you use each night?

Hah! Well, I sometimes use my own amps - it depends on whether or not the tour in question started in L.A. The tours with Carla Bozulich and with The Singers, for example, were with my little old Oliver amp. When I have to fly out to start a tour, the amp stays home. It's a fun challenge, especially as it feeds my improvisational world.

With Wilco, I am actually playing through a beautiful 30 watt Marshall re-issue of the earliest JTM 45 that belongs to Jeff Tweedy. Since I don't live in Chicago, I just started using some of his gear initially, and he's got a lot of great gear. He wasn't using the Marshall, so... I'm really surprised how great it is. They got me a less swanky backup head and it sounds equally fabulous.

As for guitars and effects, that stuff is all mine. I've got my beloved Jazzmaster that I bought from Watt 10 years ago that's on practically everything since then, plus a backup Jazzmaster, a beater JaguarÖ my old Gibson BR-9 lap steelÖ plus my whole pedal board, 16 second digital delay, and Kaos Pad - the whole science project.

Troy Collins
January 26, 2005