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Nels Cline should sound weirder.

The man has made a career out of weirdness – whether in ambient-noise collaborations with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore or in his own experimental music. Sometimes it’s beautiful; sometimes it sounds like a guy making noise.  But, rarely is it normal.   Speaking with him, however, leaves one with a very firm impression of normalcy.

He’s also genuinely polite and seems quite happy with his life and work.  Cline is a 53-year-old California native who grew up with the sunny pop music of the late 60s and early 70s.  In fact, he’s even occasionally made some of that sunny pop music himself.  But, right or wrong, Cline is generally lumped in the avante-garde camp.  This is, after all, the man who recorded a remake of John Coltrane’s prodigious improvisational mind-fuck,Interstellar Space, with a guitar.

So, when Cline joined Wilco in 2004, right after the group had released its two most expansive and weirdest albums ever, it seemed an obvious move for both.  Although he did not play on either of those two masterpieces (2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s A Ghost is Born), Cline quickly became an indispensable part of the band’s live show, adding his mind-melting guitar solos and Frankenstein-with-a-seizure stage presence to the mix.  It was that live show that culminated in one of the best live records ever made – Kicking Television – which captures one of the most interesting and important bands of a generation at the absolute pinnacle of its prowess.

Cline joined Wilco in the studio for the last two albums – 2007’s seriously underrated Sky Blue Sky and 2009’s fairly disappointing Wilco (The Album). In between, he has continued his solo work, most recently with the experimental collage Coward.  Cline recently talked to Thriller about the new Wilco, his solo work and just why he loves that whammy bar so much.  As he spoke, the band was preparing for a show in Toronto and the strains of a Wilco soundcheck wafted in the background.

Wilco (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?

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 quite 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.

I actually wanted to ask you about “Bull Black Nova.”  The lyrics are very dark, and the actual song plays kind of like what an anxiety attack feels like.

Yeah, in fact, when we were working on the mixes just north of L.A. where Jim Scott’s studio is, Johnny Marr came by.  He was in L.A. and he had been hanging out with all those guys in New Zealand where the record was recorded – I wasn’t there for that – but he was listening to the mix for “Bull Black Nova,” and I think it almost gave him a heart attack [laughs].  He seemed exhausted by the end of it.  It’s a tense number.  It’s been really intense live, and I think it’s consistently powerful to my mind, if I may say something positive about our music.

It’s one of those ones that catches your ear the first time you hear it.

That’s cool.  I heard there was controversy about it at first.  I don’t read any of the Internet chatter, but I hear about it sometimes.  I guess there was pretty polarized opinion about that song at first.  It was like the worst Wilco song ever or one of the best, which is pretty much a good sign, I think.

As long as people are having strong reactions to it . . .

Yeah, strong reaction means there’s something going on there.

You talked earlier about how Wilco (The Album) is kind of a big sounding studio record compared to something like Sky Blue Sky, which has been described as being more of just a band playing in a room.  How does that translate to the live show when you’re playing songs from a “studio” album?

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.  I realized that I could do this with this double-neck – capo the baritone neck and open tune the six-string regular guitar neck to a diminished chord.  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.  It’s kind of fun to be that literal and I don’t think that’s been the normal procedure for us since this band convened.  It’s a good thing the whole set’s not like that.  At the end of the show, we just rock out.  It would be perhaps a little inhibiting to stay in that mode for the entire show.  I’d start to feel like I was in Yes or Genesis or something.  I enjoy thinking, although I can’t be sure, that the audience is also enjoying the diverse textures that we’re conjuring.

How much of a sense do you get when you’re performing of what the audience thinks about a song or about the performance?

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.

That song definitely has some of the most interesting guitar work on any Wilco song.

It’s kind of a mini-guitar symphony or something, and I have to do it every night.

From reading interviews with Jeff and other band members, it seems like everyone feels like this is the best incarnation of Wilco, and it certainly has the most musical chops of any lineup that Wilco has had.  Do you discuss that in the band or think that’s true?

Well, I wasn’t in any of the other lineups, so I don’t know.  I can say that this is the longest solid personnel lineup ever in Wilco history.  We’re having a great time and we get along really well, so there’s that.  I won’t speak to the musicianship aspect, but I see this going on for a while, personally.

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?

*CLICK TO LISTEN* 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 [Nels Cline] Singers.  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.

It’s interesting because the most signature aspect of your guitar playing is the way you use the whammy bar . . .

Oh, you mean the wiggle? [laughs]

Yeah, the sound of that is similar to the physical motion you go through when you’re doing it.

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.

Well, I’ve seen several Wilco shows, and when you go off into that thing, that’s when people start going wild.

Oh, really? [laughs]  I just got that sound in my head, I think, because of listening to John Cipollina from Quicksilver Messenger Service as a kid, and hearing Tom Verlaine who has vibrato like that, and when I heard Tom do it, I said, “Wow, that sounds like Cipollina,” and then the next thing I knew, I started kind of doing it.  I think it has a certain vocal aspect to it, maybe.  I don’t know.  It’s something that I’ve started doing only in the last 10 years, maybe a little longer than 10 years.

It’s effective.

Thanks.  Well, that’s good.  Because I’m kind of really into it.

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?

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.

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?

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.  Some of the free pieces that are acoustic on that record really just are, I realized later, some sort of strange versions of this group I formed years ago called Acoustic Guitar Trio.  And so, I was a little chagrined when I realized that I was, in a way, just doing an all me overdubbed version of Acoustic Guitar Trio on some of those things, but that group and that sound is pleasing to me.

One interesting aspect of your collaboration with Wilco is that Wilco has this status of being originators – and it even goes back to Jeff Tweedy’s Uncle Tupelo days – they’re given credit for pushing the envelope and creating new things.  I think you’ve done that as well in your solo career with things like the Coltrane album you did.  Do you feel like you are originators of anything?

*CLICK TO LISTEN*I don’t really think of us as that myself, but I think that Jeff has a kind of probing mind, and I never know what he’s going to want to do.  The advantage to me of the band, and the reason I can continue to do it and not just think, “Oh, gee, we’re just playing songs” or something – because I’m not actually really like that, but people think I am – we’re absolutely free as far as what we can do at any given time.  Jeff has his own agenda about what he wants to do in the show because he wants the audience to like the band and to be entertaining and to go away feeling like they were part of the show, not just watching a show.  And he’s good at that.  But we never know what the next move is going to be, and I think that’s the beauty of it.  It’s still going to be songs, it’s still going to be words, it’s still going to be Jeff and it’s still going to be us, but as to what direction it goes or what sounds you end up hearing, it’s wide open.  And that’s incredibly freeing, and I think maybe that’s more what this novelty is about, because the songs are pretty accessible, for the most part, in my opinion.  And certainly, the early records are pretty much classicist type records.  They work from a classic template that I’m extremely familiar with from growing up with certain late 60s and 70s rock music and folk rock.  I don’t think it’s like so much bold innovation going on on A.M. or Being There, but you have great songs and you have a certain perspective or point of view in the songs and a general feeling.  But, things do get a little more novel as they progress.

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.  Do you know what the next one is going to be like?

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, but I don’t think any of it is really worth mentioning because it might not stick.  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.

You’ve worked with quite a few very strong front men, like Mike Watt and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) . . .

And Carla [Bozulich].

Yes, and front women.  How is your experience of working with Jeff Tweedy different from that?

Everybody is really different.  Jeff has a fairly low-key way of leading and, you know, Mike Watt has a pretty not low-key way of leading.  They’re both very strong personalities and they both are very, I think – you know, they have a certain amount of success with their own aesthetic.  And Carla has changed over the years, grown and absorbed a lot of different aspects of music making.  With the Geraldine Fibbers, even though it was Carla’s band, it was hard for her to be authoritative.  Not because she’s not authoritative, but because a lot of times people don’t want to listen to a woman who’s kind of this amazing visionary but not so musically schooled.  That was just an attitude problem, in my opinion, because she’s so brilliant.  But everybody’s different.  The thing is that we aren’t working with Britney Spears where it’s like, you lose your laminate, you’re fined $125 or if you say hello to her, you’re fired, you know what I mean?  We’re a band.  We have give and take.  Jeff is the leader, but it’s not like, “Here comes Jeff – step aside in the hallway.”  We’re kind of like a family at this point.  I’ve never done anything like this.  I’ve never done anything that was really successful, so it’s really bizarre.  The first gig with Wilco terrified the hell out of me.

Really?

The audience screamed so loud when we walked out on stage, it scared the hell out of me.  So I was like, “Wow, they like it already.  We haven’t even played yet.”  It’s been nice to see that side of things too, not just the sort of trying to pound up from the underground.

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Buy these albums now:  Wilco – A Ghost is Born, Kicking Television:  Live in Chicago | Nels Cline – Interstellar Space Revisited.

Check out the Pitchfork review review of Wilco (The Album).