Between Writers
Myshkin interviews Kreg Viesselman (part 1)

Both Myshkin and Kreg Viesselman are songwriters who we have admired for a long time, and we are very lucky to be working with them in the UK. A Norwegian domiciled Minnesotan, Kreg's last album 'The Pull' was probably our most played record of 2006-7, and the writing simply blew us away when we heard it. Myshkin has the opposite heritage, born in Europe and raised in the USA, and has been on our radar since her time touring with Mike West (producer of Kirsty McGee's The Kansas Sessions album), and her voice is an elemental force to be reckoned with. Both artists are working on long-awaited new albums and will be touring the UK this year.
We are lucky to consider them our friends, but we felt it was time we introduced them to each other. We put them in touch, they swapped songs, and they organised a two-way interview for this week's 'between writers' series.

Between Writers - Myshkin interviews Kreg Viesselman (part 1)

M: Are you Norwegian or American or both? What do you love about Norway? (I know it's beautiful!) Can I come visit?

K: My maternal great-grandparents were Norwegians, and settled in Minnesota. What I love about Norway? Quite a lot. They have a much more practical and complete relationship to Nature as a culture. That is not to say they are more environmentally minded, per se, but they are not estranged from their natural surroundings in the way that most other Westerners, particularly Americans, are. I could write pages about it, but I will sum it up by mentioning the idea expressed in the word 'Allemannsretten', which means 'everyman’s right' to roam the landscape as, where, and when they will. No groveling to landowners. A person can just ramble here. It’s a birthright. And you are more than welcome to come for a visit (you don’t even have to ask permission)!

M: I really love that ‘Man Without A Care’ song [Kreg Viesselman – The Man Without A Care], it feels really timeless. What instrument is doing that lilting string line? When and where did you write it? When you are performing a song, does your mind go to the place you were in when you wrote it?

K: The instrument is a Kora, played by Boubacar Diebatè of Senegal. I wrote that song while hitchhiking around Ireland about 5 years ago. I got a ride in the wrong direction and was stranded out in the country for the night, so I camped out in a little woods in a pasture (northeast of Killarney) and wrote that song by fire light, and finished it at an old castle a few nights later that had been converted into a hostel…Foulksrath, I believe it was called. It was a rainy, cold night. I was all alone in the stone dining hall, and the only person staying there, with just the old warden (who actually went into town for a pint). It was perfect for a guy like me. But creepy. Oliver Cromwell, on one of his murderous rampages, had allegedly lynched the castle’s noncompliant owners from the front gate, which was still standing.
It is a traveling song written quite underway. I am glad you like it. Yes, my mind does go there when I am in the right mood while performing.

M: What do you like most about touring? About being home? Do you write on the road? What's your favorite place on earth?

K: I enjoy the aspect of discovery. I end up in towns and places I would not necessarily choose myself as a destination. By virtue of that, each tour ends up being a bit of an unexpected pilgrimage. Of course, I love to perform in interesting rooms, for interested people. At home, I love the expected - the other side of the coin - and being with the people I love that are there. Cooking, visiting familiar places, looking for mushrooms, and other fairly nerdy pursuits. 

In terms of a favorite place, I don’t know if I could name one. Lately, though, I have found myself thinking an awful lot about the north side of the island of Madeira. Lovely walking to be had there. 

M: Is there an instrument or genre/style you really want to learn?

K: I want to un-learn everything with regards to genre, and let a style develop by way of it.  I would like to start playing the piano again.

M: Your writing is lovely! Do you have favorite poets? Do you carry around a book to write in? What feeds the writing? What distracts you from it? What do you hope the songs will do for the listener?

K: Thanks! That is a kind thing to say. I am very fond of Wendell Berry. Also Stephen Crane. I went through a little Greek phase last year. I like Henry Miller’s writing. Just finished a couple of collections by Leonard Cohen that I thought were excellent and varied. On the whole, though, I tend to just read what I come across, find something I enjoy, and then promptly forget who wrote it.

For my part, I tend to write lyrics while walking around. I pretty much always carry a notebook and pen. I have never been very good at just sitting down at a desk and writing lyrics in the way that some manage (although both 'The Well' and ‘Halfbaked News’ were written in that way). I have to be kind of distracted, yet mindful of my thoughts - grabbing what I like and capturing it on paper before it goes - so I walk around doing nothing special. The trick has been to be patient enough to stop walking, take out the notebook, and write down the thought. Still, most of it is pure crap. Sometimes I write while I play guitar, too. I really don’t know what feeds writing. I guess I just think it is fun, or necessary, or worthwhile or something... I don’t really know why. I just get a kick out of it.

M: Do you feel at home in the 21st century? Is there a past era you find yourself drawn to? What do you want your future to look like?

K: That is a very striking question. The answer to the first part is Yes. I guess if I didn’t belong here and now, I’d be somewhere else (or not). As I look around, I am in a state of constant wonder and amazement. This is a good time...as good as any other. Aesthetically, there are aspects that might appeal to me more from other eras, but in terms of humanity, I think we are unfolding in a generally positive direction.

I think it is easy to romanticize eras past, but in a thousand years people will do the same to our time. Having said all of that, I wouldn’t mind seeing a dinosaur or two. 
A far as the future goes, I try not to think about it too much, as hard as that can be sometimes. I guess I would like to spend more time in the forest than my current lifestyle allows. I assume it is that way for most people.

M: So to wrap this up, can I ask you a question you asked me: What draws you to artists or songs?

K: I like the way you worded it - 'heart driven intelligence', or something to that effect. You know, I used to think lyrics were so important, but then when I started thinking over which artists I found myself listening to, it wasn't all brilliant poets (with some notable exceptions). Or perhaps more accurately, not all 'intellectual' types. Melody is veeeery important. As far as lyrics go, they strike a chord or are clever in terms of uniqueness (meaning, expressing a perspective in an original way) . I like a certain mood that is aesthetically pleasing to me, apparent authenticity of the artist, even if that means they are an authenitic fake, and most of all, absolute sincerity . And when the performer carries it all off with absolute conviction, that can be powerful medicine...and I tend to like them. I like to feel as though the artist doesn't need me to be listening, but maybe appreciates the fact that I do?

 

Kreg Viesselman's new album 'If You Lose Your Light' is due for release in May 2010.
Part two of this interview will be published here on Friday.

Ten Questions
Little Red Rabbit Collective - Ten Questions for Anna Kashfi

Little Red Rabbit is an artists' collective record label based in Manchester but with tendrils that reach out across the UK. The roster stretches from the singer-songwriter folk-pop of Anna Kashfi and Samson & Delilah through to the psyche-post-rock of Fuzzy Lights via the sprawling collective Last Harbour.  It works on the basis that each release is an artwork with its own distinct identity, and that each artist takes control of how their work is presented and of the means by which it's made.
If you want to get a taste of Little Red Rabbit then 'Trace' (LRR017) is a good place to start.  It's a compilation that brings us up to date with all the album releases so far.  With new artwork by in-house designer K. Craig, it includes songs from the highly acclaimed new albums by Last Harbour and Anna Kashfi plus back catalogue music from Fuzzy Lights, Samson & Delilah, Lazarus Clamp, Kalbakken and Crazy Man Michael.

 

Little Red Rabbit Collective - Ten Questions for Anna Kashfi

Anna Kashfi and Last Harbour have released highly acclaimed new albums on Little Red Rabbit in early 2010. Both feature in the band a singer/lyricist who doesn't play an instrument, so we thought it'd be interesting to hear their take - they had the same questions and were given 30 minutes in an empty room in which to provide answers.

ROUND 1: SIAN WEBLEY - ANNA KASHFI

1. Why do you write?
Because I have a creative desire to do so

2. What usually comes first: rhythm, melody, an image, a phrase... or something different?
Yep, all, in that order

3. What's the balance of fact and fiction in your writing?
I write stoies that are factually relevant to me

4. And how do you see the territory between the two?
It's important to live ones life as authentically as possible, so I am always honest in expressing my feelings

5. Describe something that triggered a recent lyric. [Anything from a complete song to a single phrase - you're welcome to quote the lyric if you like but you don't have to.]
I'm writing at the moment something based on the difficulties of wishing to remain anonymous, triggered by something I read recently. I read a lot and often something I read will trigger a thought process.

6. Neither of you has an instrument when playing live.  [Apologies, but I'm discounting shakers and percussion here!]  What does it feel like to hear the music around you?
It feels great!

7. Are you conscious of an effect you want your words to have on a listener?  Not necessarily 'all your words ever' - more, 'does it occur to you?'
I hope they enjoy them. I hope they can hear them!

8. Thinking of a recent lyric you discarded [again, you don't have to quote it], why didn't you use it?
James [Youngjohns - other founder member of Anna Kashfi] usually discards my lyrics for me

9. The classic advice, right or wrong or in-between, in writing classes is to 'write what you know'.  Is that the more the beginning, the middle or the end?
Draw on whatever is around you. Try and use the good stuff.

10. Finally, Leonard Cohen once said that, "You donít really want to say "the tree," you want to say "the sycamore."  What do you take from that?
The sycamore is a much maligned and useful tree. It should be reinstated properly into the literary arboretum.

 

Anna Kashfi's latest album, 'Survival' was released in February 2010.

The Little Red Rabbit compilation album 'Trace' is available to download free from www.littleredrabbit.co.uk

Top Ten Hobos
Kirsty McGee & The Hobopop Collective

We've put our heads together for Spiral Earth to make a short list of people who have had an effect on the way we approach what we do. People who are real and fictional who have, in one way or another, what we perceive to be 'hobo' qualities. We occasionaly catch ourselves saying things like 'oh yes, that's very hobo', and knowing exactly what we mean, but these things can be difficult to qualify. Perhaps this will help.

So what is a hobo, in the broader sense of embodying that 'hobo' spirit?

Someone who's not afraid to make their own journey despite potential derision, hardship and inconvenience. Someone for whom the desire to move/think/create overrides pretty much everything. Someone who has never found a problem with sideways-thinking or straightforward integrity but who will often find a problem with authority. A maverick romantic with grit for sinew and deisel running through the veins.

Let's not forget that the encyclopaedic definition of hobo is of a migrant, homeless, hard worker, not simply a vagabond or tramp with no desire to put in any hard graft...

These things matter. For some time now we've been pushing this 'hobopop' wagon around the streets, collecting things that catch our eye and trying to sell them on elsewhere. The word has grown from the gap in industry genres that swallows up artists who love to swap between styles in order to express the breadth of their expreience of the world - we like to think of it as 'music of no-fixed abode'. The hobo's existence is a solitary one, and you have to rely on yourself to make it happen, but sometimes a friendly face or two will appear at your campfire and ask if they can sit down. They'll swap stories and ideas with you. If they have anything to eat they'll probably share it. Likewise, you might have a few crusts yourself. This is a list of people we'd like to have offered a tin can of coffee to over the years.

Top Ten Hobos, in no particular order.

1. Harry Partch (1901-1974): Boxcar-riding composer who invented his own instruments in order to make his music playable outside his head. His unique ideas on the development of music made him an outcast and forced him to live on the trains of 1930s America. His later works made wide use of sounds no-one had dreamed of before, and set the words of hobo graffiti to music. You can hear the sonic and philosophical effect of Partch's legacy in the work of later artists, especially that of Tom Waits.
Partch didn't have many friends in the art world, but the few he did were in high places. It's reassuring to know, for example, that these included poet and hobo-befriender W. B. Yeats.
Listen - Harry Partch – The Street (1950)
             Southwest Chamber Music – Barstow - 8 Hitchhiker Inscriptions: I. Today I Am A Man (1941)
Watch - BBC documentary on Partch

 

2. Jim Jarmusch (1953- ): Beatnik film-maker extraordinaire, Jarmusch seems to concentrate on the edges of lives, and on the beauty of communication through limited means. So often his characters have no language in common, yet we see the connections between them as if someone had drawn a line on the screen. His is a desire not to make films "for a specific audience," but to tell stories, "somehow in a new way." His films are famously made with almost no script (but mesmerising repeated lines) and often with musicians in leading roles (Jarmusch has filmed the likes of Iggy Pop, The White Stripes and John Lurie). His ability to attract Hollywood names into his slow, quiet world is astonishing.
Listen - Audio Interview with Jarmusch about 'The Limits of Control' (2009)
Watch - From 'Coffee & Cigarettes (2003)
              From 'Dead Man' (1995)
                 

3. John Steinbeck (1902-1968) - 'The Grapes of Wrath' remains one of the finest accounts of the American depression era, and along with books like 'East of Eden' and 'Cannery Row' it cements Steinbeck's authority as a genuine hobo of the people, concerned with injustice and the deep sadness of the contradictions within the human condition. He also charmed us with his later book, 'Travels With Charley', in which he revisits the American road as a 58 year old in a trailer with an outsized dog.
We considered it most auspicious that Nick, our bass player, was reading 'The Grapes of Wrath' during the day of the recording of 'No.5'. We even tagged Steinbeck in a facebook photo from the day, where he sits innocently in Nick's hand. Close your eyes when watching the youtube clip. It really does improve the thing.
Watch - Audio interview with Steinbeck with sinister 'fake' footage
Read -   The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

 

4. Omar Little (fic. 1974-2008) - Fictional character from the streets of Baltimore, New Jersey, as portrayed by Michael K Williams in 'The Wire'. Omar gives his address as "no place in particular... in the wind, so to speak," and does what has to, to survive "one day at time." He adheres with puritanical zeal to a fundamentally flawed moral code all his own. He owns the streets simply by being the perfect modern day Yegg. He is as comfortable robbing drug barons of their takings as he is taking his grandmother to church or giving false evidence in court. His hobo genius lies in his ascerbic wit and quiet intellect. There are no rules that can contain Omar. The Omarian style is clear in the youtube clip.
Watch - The Wire (Season 2) - Omar testifies against Bird

 

5. Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) - Freewheeling author of 1957 beat classic 'On the Road', and writer of countless 'Road Haikus', Kerouac must be the best known of the beat generation, and here as elsewhere he stands for them all, the Ginsbergs and Burroughses and all the proto-hippies who stood up and stopped caring about conformity. The thinly veiled real people in 'On The Road' were Kerouac and his friends, exploring their need to make their lives eventful, and their existence was put down via typewriter onto a single scroll of paper, carefully cut to size and stuck together by the author. You can go and see it at Indiana University's Lilly Library, where it sits as an example of the paradoxically fastidious nature of the creative hobo.
Read -  On The Road (1957)

 

6. Jack Black (1881-1932) - Tom Waits describes William Burroughs as 'Like a metal desk. He's like a still, and everything that comes out of him is already whiskey.' Burroughs himself created his first book, 'Junkie' after reading Jack Black's fictional hobo autobiography 'You Can't Win'. 'You Can't Win' is in fact quite a disappointing read, in which characters such as Foot-and-a-half George and the Sanctimonious Kid stretch credulity well in advance of any revelation of fiction. We don't know that Jack Black was his real name, but we do know that he spent most of his life as a travelling criminal (or Yegg, in hobo language), and that 'You Can't Win' is aimed at turning his fellows straight. He probably commited suicide in New York Harbour, with weights tied to his feet.
Read - You Can't Win (1926)

7. Tom Waits (1949- ) - Waits has trodden out his own crooked path since 1973. The archetypal hobo, he is continually reinventing himself. At 60, he is beatboxing and creating what he calls 'Cubist Funk'. From lounge crooner to industrial eccentric Waits has been an inspiration to more artists than you could begin to count, and he just gets better all the time. According to him, his father was an exhaust manifold and his mother was a tree. It makes sense.
He stars in several of Jim Jarmusch's films, and the two are joined by Nick Cave as members of the elusive secret society 'The Sons of Lee Marvin', a group of people who could conceivably be the late Hollywood actor's children.
Listen -  Tom Waits – Real Gone (2004)
              Tom Waits – Rain Dogs (1985)
Watch -  From Jim Jarmusch's 'Down By Law' (1986)
              Wait's press conference for his latest tour  

 

8. Boxcar Bertha (fic. 1907-1945) - Heroine of 1937 alleged hobo autobiography 'Sister Of The Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha as told to Dr Ben Reitman' (himself a hobo, gynecologist, writer, anarchist agitator and birth control activist). Bertha later turns out to be the author's own thrill-seeking fantasy. In between being genuine and fictional she manages to go through enough free-wheeling, free-loving romanticised hardship to make us all wish she was real. Seemingly fated to always be the victim of bad fictionalisation, Bertha appears for a second time as the heroine of Martin Scorsese's appalling 1972 film, 'Boxcar Bertha' that interestingly bears no resemblance to the original book but is just as self-gratifying. Clearly though, being twice fictional didn't stop Bertha having a great time, regardless of the world's views on such things - which surely is one of the most hobo attributes a person can have.
Watch - Boxcar Bertha Film Trailer (if you must).
Read -   Sister of the Road (1937)

 

9. Sissy Hankshaw (fic.) - Fictional heroine of Tom Robbins' 1976 book, 'Even Cowgirls Get The Blues', who is born with abnormally large thumbs and so naturally becomes the world's best hitch-hiker. After she loses the oversize thumb on one hand she simply turns around and travels off off in the other direction. It's hard to know what to add to that simple statement of zen hobo determination. Robbins' book dealt with free love, drug use, amoebas, body odor and animal rights. Gus Van Sandt's 1993 film adaptation dealt with very little, it seems.
Watch -  Film Trailer
Read -    Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1976)

 

10. Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin 1916-1999) - ­ Blind hobo-composer who lived on the streets of New York out of choice and invented several musical instruments. His early years were spent banging on cardboard boxes and attending a log-cabin school in Burnt Fork, Wyoming. In later life he could be found on the streets of New York wearing clothes he had created based on his own interpretation of the Norse god Thor. He wrote all his music in braille and has been cited as an important influence on many great musicians to follow, from Steve Reich to Mr Scruff. Hardin began using the name Moondog as a pen name in 1947, in honor of a dog "who used to howl at the moon more than any dog I knew of."
He also sported the greatest of hobo fashion statements, the glorious free-beard, a mythical giant chin-based creature with a will of its own.
Listen -  Moondog – Bird's Lament
              Moondog – Moondog's Theme
Watch -  Collage of amazing photos of Moondog set to his music