Entertainment, Music - Marine Corps Times

Improv awakens the creative spirit in Wilco’s Nels Cline

About 50,000 people got a new guitar hero at last year’s Bonnaroo music festival, watching guitarist Nels Cline — playing with Wilco — toss one blistering solo after another out into the massive field of head-nodders.

Since joining that band in 2004, Cline has preserved his edge with an unmistakable style that’s dizzying in its expressiveness and dexterity, but anchored by a wildly unique — and pleasing — melodic sense.

You’ll find those same qualities in Cline’s work with his improvisational trio, The Nels Cline Singers (an instrumental group, mind you), but it also revels in gaping sonic spaces and throbbing atonality. Cline spoke recently about how he balances time and creativity between jazz clubs and rock fest stages.

Question: You’ve said you recorded the latest Nels Cline Singers album in a “luxurious three days.” Do you tend to work quickly?

Answer: Yeah, except for Wilco, which is a whole different thing. I’m not the arbiter of any of that. There’s a long, collaborative process that’s involved, and I think with rock in general, at that level where there’s success and a lot of high expectations, and lots of songs to sift through. It’s a completely different process. I’m comfortable with both. Certainly, the reason I work fast has always been economical (laughs). But it’s not necessarily so anymore. When you’re improvising and playing a certain kind of material, you’re either going to get it or you’re not. You can’t just do 20 takes. You’ll squeeze all the life out of it.

Q: Considering you seem to like to keep things in the moment, how have you adjusted to committing long stretches of time to recording Wilco albums?

A: I’ve done it before. I just like to play with people that I like. That’s what Wilco’s like to me, and that’s the way it was with (the band) The Geraldine Fibbers and (collaborator) Mike Watt before that. ... I won’t lie and say that it’s never frustrating. Every once in a while you can just get to the point where you think, “Why are we still playing this song?” But it’s not very often. In spite of my seniority as far as years go, I have to defer to the experts. (Wilco frontman) Jeff Tweedy knows how to make records. He’s a successful guy, and he has ideas. If he wants to do something again, I’ll do it again, and if it’s really bothering me, I’ll say something. But overall, we have a lot of mutual respect.

Q: Has Wilco cut into time with projects like the Singers?

A: No, actually. I wasn’t really able to afford to tour playing my own music for the past few years. My attempts to do so were often failures. It’s maybe harder than ever to do in the underground, so I’m glad that I can do something above ground, and then be able to go out sporadically and do my own stuff. Wilco’s touring and recording cycles definitely add to my time away from home, but they don’t seem to take that much away from anything — other than all the gigs I was doing before that were paying less and less each year (laughs).

Q: Have you noticed a change in your fan base since joining Wilco?

A: I didn’t until the Singers toured this year. We sell my CDs at the Wilco merch table, and you know, you sell a few. Certainly playing on the West Coast, it didn’t seem very different because I play on the West Coast a lot ... but boy, traveling through the Midwest like the Singers just did? Man, oh man, there would have been no one at those gigs if not for Wilco. I think the Wilco audience is coming out of curiosity, and also support, and they seem to like it OK. I think the people that leave are those that come expecting it to be a jazz group.

Q: How did you react to Rolling Stone naming you one of the “20 New Guitar Gods”?

A: I was really surprised. I think the surprise was twofold. One, that I was in there. But the other one was that my little appellation was “The Avant Romantic.” I hate to admit it, ‘cause it sounds kind of pretentious, but I thought that was a really apt description of my (music) because I am a romantic. I think there’s romance and dreaminess in my music right alongside all the jarring juxtapositions and free playing. The fact that it actually seemed insightful was the most shocking part (laughs).

On the Web:

• Tour info for Nels Cline

• Tour info for Wilco