Willard Grant Conspiracy - An alt-country conspiracy

Robert Fisher is a storyteller; he has been one for more than ten years with his Willard Grant Conspiracy, one of the most exciting and skilled bands on the American folk-rock scene, and he was one throughout the good hour I spent chatting with him in a Milan hotel, on a sunny spring afternoon.

He's a torrent when he talks, always passionate and endlessly deep and kind, the kind of conversationalist you very rarely come across. Sitting and talking with him was truly an enormous pleasure.

After seven albums and more than twelve years of career, it's fair to say you've been around for quite a while! Did you expect to get this far when you started out?

I had no idea, I just hoped for it more than anything. You see, I started playing back in the Eighties, and before anyone took notice of what I was doing, many years - and several bands - had already gone by. In some way, the approach has always been different from that of other acts; I never thought in terms of "now I'll get a record deal, make an album, then we'll go on tour". From the very beginning it was a kind of inner force pushing me to make music, it was and still is something I have inside me that has to come out. When we make a record, I always hope people will like it, but there's nothing calculated behind it, and I'd keep playing anyway even without a record deal.

It's something that has more to do with your life than with a career...

Yes! And actually I wouldn't even call it a career. I make my living doing another job; whatever the band earns always gets reinvested back into the band itself, and often the expenses outweigh the income. The very idea of a career feels a bit limiting to me. It's truly an honor to be known both at home and abroad, to be able to travel the world bringing your music to people you know follow you and listen to it. As a musician, all of this makes you feel a great responsibility toward the audience, and toward the music itself.

With "Pilgrim Road" you left behind the electric atmospheres of "Let It Roll" to reconnect instead with something closer to "Regard The End". Can you tell me how this latest record came about?

That's a fair observation. While "Let It Roll" was an album with a live-band feel, "Pilgrim Road" shares the same roots and starts from the same ideas as "Regard The End". Even back when we recorded that record, I knew that at some point I'd return to those ideas to develop them further and push them even more. It was actually during the "RTE" tour, when we were in Glasgow at the 13th Note for a show - one of those gigs where everything goes wrong right from the start, with a ton of technical problems and a whole string of mishaps. After the show, which we got through doing our best, this very shy guy came up to talk to me, speaking in a really quiet voice. He introduced himself as a classical composer and offered to collaborate with us. At first I was rather skeptical - we'd already used strings, horns, and piano on our records, and as I said, I never plan anything too far in advance. That guy was Malcolm Lindsay, who co-wrote the entirety of "Pilgrim Road" with me.

The new record shows off some new influences compared to usual; it's still rooted in Americana, but then it also touches on chamber-music territory and a few jazzy shades...

I don't think there's any jazz in it... I see it as a combination of different elements. Malcolm is a classical musician, but he's also played guitar in rock bands, and he's well versed in folk music. We have similar backgrounds. When you collaborate with someone, you bring all your previous experiences along with you. For this record we set out to write and record everything at the same time, working mostly on instinct and less on reasoning. We wanted to avoid doing what those bands do when they write a song and then call in an arranger to slap strings on top of it — I wanted those parts to be an integral part of the very structure of the songs, a meaningful emotional voice of their own. I wanted to use violas, violins, cello or vibraphone in an unusual, unconventional way, and set them within structures that were themselves non-classical. A track like Painter Blue, for instance, doesn't have a chorus. Or rather, the chorus is represented by a musical score, as in a symphonic movement. Then, of course, there are also more traditional tracks that you can hum along to easily, songs with pop appeal placed in a slightly different context. Another thing we paid close attention to was keeping things minimal, avoiding sounding pompous or overblown. We worked according to the motto jazz less is more.

When I said jazz earlier, I actually meant it as a mood...

Yes, "Jerusalem Bells" has a jazz mood without actually being jazz, and so does "Water And Roses". "The Great Deceiver", on the other hand, has a blues mood even though structurally it's a folk-song.

Who is the girl singing on "The Great Deceveir"?

Good ear, eh? Her name is Iona MacDonald, she's part of a duo with her boyfriend, who plays slide guitar; they're called Dog House Roses, they're from Glasgow, and their record should be coming out in a couple of months. We met through MySpace, and while I was in Glasgow recording the album I noticed they were playing and went to see them. From there to asking them to collaborate on the record was a short step.

There's real care put into the arrangements on "Pilgrim Road".

Malcolm and I worked intensely on them for ten days, without being needlessly fussy but giving ourselves the chance to work through them thoroughly and make them as detailed as possible. This time, too, I wanted to be a little less passive than usual with the other musicians: I gave them precise, fully defined instrumental parts to play, making clear that I'd accept suggestions, but always starting from the parts I'd presented to them.

It seems to me that pretty much all the songs on "Pilgrim Road" deal with the theme of spirituality. Would you say there's a clear connection running through the songs that make up the album?

Not particularly. Not all the songs deal with the same theme, and even when they do, they approach it from different angles. In "The Great Deceveir" the protagonist asks to be shown the devil so he can recognise God, which makes it a kind of inverted hymn, and makes it very different from "The Pugilist", where the focus is on a fighter battling to fulfill his own desires while trying to hold on to his spirituality. Maybe these are unusual subjects, but if you think about it, themes like faith are very much debated in the world today. In any case, I didn't set out to write about these things deliberately — in a way, by the time the record was finished, I was surprised myself. I just tried to write as honestly as possible, without worrying too much about the final result or the bigger picture that would eventually emerge.

There are some words that come up again and again in reviews of your records: sad, melancholy, gothic. What do you think about that? Does it bother you?

I think it's a very easy shortcut to sum it up that way, to just say: it's sad! Melancholy, on the other hand, is a term I think is appropriate: a lot of music, films, books, especially from the '50s and '60s, are melancholy — a term that carries within it a certain sweetness, even though nowadays it's used almost exclusively in a negative sense, which I think is wrong. It's a term that actually implies some form of reflection; people often don't have the time or the desire to reflect on things that aren't working, they just look for a quick fix to problems, without really dwelling on things like loss or pain. Pop a pill and everything's solved. But there's a lot to learn about yourself, about life, through those things. In the end, people, reading those words in a review, end up associating them with things like boredom or sadness for its own sake, which of course isn't what it is at all.

Probably a lot of those terms are also used as synonyms for intense, emotional...

It's a bit the same problem as when you slap labels on records. Like when you tell someone who hates country music that a record is a country record, and that alone is enough to put them off getting to know it any further, maybe closing off the chance for them to discover something that could actually mean something to them too. I'd rather people didn't say what my songs are about — I'd rather leave it to the audience to interpret them for themselves and put something of their own into them.

You've very often recorded your records in Europe; what draws you to the Old Continent in this sense?

The place where I record is actually just dictated by practical reasons tied to whatever's going on at the time. I've recorded pretty much everywhere — Glasgow, Boston, Slovenia, Holland. Recording around the world, often while on tour, opens up possibilities you wouldn't expect, a bit like with the Dog House Roses I mentioned earlier. Recently I recorded my vocals for a track by Cesare Basile while I was in Holland, while he was in the studio with John Parish who knows where. It was completely improvised, almost accidental, but beautiful if you think about it. Modern technology makes these things possible, and it's a real achievement, fantastic to have at your disposal. Jackie Leven also had a song he absolutely wanted me to sing; so we went off to Wales, to a cottage in the middle of the snow, to record it. They're all great adventures and wonderful experiences, which shape a kind of community, a big family. "Pilgrim Road" was recorded in Glasgow because Malcolm lives there and I was on tour in Europe. Where you record doesn't matter that much, you rely on a sort of mental geography, though the particular grey, rainy atmosphere of Glasgow did influence the final result a little.

Do you notice differences between American and European audiences?

It varies a lot from country to country; in places like Ireland or Holland people just keep on talking through the shows no matter what, while in Germany everyone's very quiet. I'm a storyteller, so in countries like Spain or Italy I have to hold back a bit because I know not everyone speaks English. But rather than dwelling on the differences, I prefer to think about the universality of musical language and how it can be received in a fundamentally similar way, regardless of cultural context, spoken language, or a country's history. It's really all a matter of honesty in the presentation, emotional intensity, and of course technical quality. I was in Portugal recently and fell in love with fado, even without understanding a single word of what's being said in the songs. In that sense, generally speaking, Americans tend to reject music that isn't in English — it throws them off, they don't really make the effort. In the rest of the world there are countries that have preserved their own musical roots, like Italy, where you can hear great music sung in Italian and where you have an incredibly rich cultural tradition, and others where that musical tradition has instead been abandoned in favor of the dominant global models.

Are you interested in the political side of songwriting?

Good question! Generally speaking, I tend to write songs that are detached from any specific point in time. I believe lyrics should be able to float free of time, so that even a hundred years from now, or at any other moment, they can still feel fresh and relevant. I never write about politics in a specific way; when I do tackle political subjects, I do it without getting into current events, without pinning down exact dates or events, trying instead to approach things in a more universal way.

Is there a producer you'd like to work with?

I wouldn't know how to answer that... I am one myself, and to my mind the producer's role is to facilitate and develop what's already in the band's head, pushing them beyond their own boundaries, into unexplored territory. It's a real challenge! Now, if that's what I look for in a producer, I couldn't tell you who I'd choose, because I'd need to know them personally to know if they could do something for me. I'm not remotely interested in some big-name producer, the one with that specific sound that would make my record sound a certain way. What I look for, instead, is a kind of purity, the natural sound of the instruments.

And what about artists, in any discipline, who have been important to you?

Oh, the list could be endless, spanning everything from Robert Rauschenberg to my grandfather (who played double bass, and I didn't even know that until two years ago!), who influenced me as a person, not as a musician. You always need to have lofty role models; what heroes are for, whatever talent you have, is to push you to keep doing better and to go beyond your own abilities. They push me to have their same courage and their same ambition — not to imitate their sound, though, but rather to draw from their attitude and take on their courage to experiment. A lot of bands make the mistake of wanting to imitate the sound of the music they love, rather than going out and finding their own true voice.

I think there's a strong cinematic quality to Willard Grant Conspiracy's music. Have you ever thought about writing a film score?

That would be great fun to do. I keep hoping someone will ask me sooner or later. Music has a very strong visual component, and I really like the idea that it can create spaces and times in the listener's mind, and that a single song can do so in countless different ways depending on the listener.

A track like “Vespers” makes you feel like you're walking into a cathedral!

That's a very strange song, just two violas and that kind of austere Russian male choir with Jackie Leven inside it. The musical part is an excerpt from music for a ballet that Malcolm had written in Scotland, and he could clearly hear my voice on it. From the moment he suggested it to me to the moment it was finished, only a few hours went by: I wrote all the lyrics in one go, almost in a kind of trance, and we recorded the vocal that same evening over the viola score. Everything went perfectly, like a gift from above. It's a song I love very much, intense, dark, not an easy one. Sometimes it scares me a little, like the whole record does, actually... I ask myself: “Did I go too far?” Tracks like “Jerusalem Bells” or “Water And Roses”, listening back to them, I wonder how I ever managed to get there. Will it be understood? I hope so!

Does songwriting come easily to you, generally speaking, or not?

It's essential to stay receptive to any source of inspiration. Our lives are so intensely scheduled that when inspiration does arrive, you're not guaranteed to have the time to take it in and act on it. Often you don't even get the chance to recognize it because you're focused on something else; as a songwriter, even though I have just as complicated a life as anyone else, I try to leave space to recognize and act on inspiration. You also have to be honest enough to judge its quality: what seems fantastic to you one day might turn out to be pure garbage the next. It sounds easy, but it isn't.

How do you see the music business today, and where do Willard Grant Conspiracy fit into it?

If it were a building, it'd probably be in the basement! [laughter] I don't think the music business is particularly different from other times today: there's a ton of crap but also a ton of inspired stuff, as always, with the former outweighing the latter (the 60s and the punk era are the exception, but those were extraordinary times). What has really changed is the cultural context: people no longer know how to recognize quality because they've been trained on very low standards, as if it were fast food. Record labels try to sell as much as possible in the shortest imaginable time, not giving a damn about nurturing artists in the long term but trying to squeeze the most out of the immediate moment; to do this they've flattened quality down to rock-bottom standards, through empty, inconsistent products that are as widely sellable and easily digestible as possible.

To finish up, I really have to ask you about something I'm curious about: why is "Malpensa" called that, like Milan's international airport?

[bursts into a booming laugh] Well, it's a funny story.. I had to fly from Zurich to Malta and was forced to make a layover in Malpensa, where I had a wait of more than four hours before I could board. My luggage had already been checked, the book I was reading I'd already finished, and I was listening to music on my iPod while looking out through the windows at the landscape and the other passengers around me. And then, bang, all of a sudden, a melody comes to me! Damn, I said to myself, this is a song! I didn't have any paper or pen with me, nor any way to record it or pin it down anywhere. I carried on for the next five hours, until I got to the hotel and could get my hands on a recorder, humming it to myself the whole time, nonstop. When I told this story to Malcolm, he suggested I name the song that, in honor of what had, in every sense, been the mother of the song, Malpensa! And for a song about leaving things behind, the name of an airport seems pretty fitting! [laughter] As for all the issues around Alitalia dropping flights and all the political aspects of the matter, I know little to nothing about it. That wasn't the subject of the song!

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