Lyrics

Hello everyone
This is a little bit rich but that's will oldham also a _k _a _
Bonnie printer billy
Who
We had a wonderful to with just before everything shut down and poetically here
The next thing we see is us together on the road again as things open up and we
Are scheduled
Uh... into plate shows together
This fall starting october six through about though

15th, 17th, or 18th, somewhere in there for that two week period and we're gonna play in Wisconsin, Madison, together we're gonna play in Minneapolis, Iowa, right starts in Iowa City on the 6th I do believe at a theater there, and we're gonna play in Chicago for two nights and several other Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania yes? Yeah!

I think so. The Warhol Museum, I do believe. Oh really? That's great. And you're playing a show in Milwaukee too, one that we won't be there with you for. But anyway, I'm delighted because it was... I would watch them before me and Tommy and Nicole would play. I'd watch Will and Emmett. Is it going to be just Emmett or is Matt Sweeney also on this tour?
Matt won't be on it, because then we, yeah, no, Matt won't be on it. We're curi -but there's a guy I know who plays clarinet and flute and saxophone that I was thinking of inviting along. You like those instruments?
I like him with you. What I'm going to tell the audience now is I had the pleasure of seeing Bonnie Prince Billy's show the other week at a winery in Sonoma, California. And it was with Bonnie Prince Billy just singing and not playing guitar.
Now, Nicole says, "I'm going to give you a complex about your guitar playing."
I say, "No, that's not it.
It's not that you're not a good guitar player.
It's just that when you just sing, I like it."
So if you ask me, "What do I think about these other instruments?"
I say, "In conjunction with a guitarist as good as Emmett."

I'm fascinated just to see what'll happen. I really like it as a foil, both of those things, guitar plus the other instrument, whatever it may be, as a foil for your voice. What I like to see in you is this fresh, almost confusedness in you, like when something is new enough so that you're still figuring out what to do, which I sense is a good part of the time, right?
Sure, yeah, always learning. Yep, and so, then the words come as they come, and all kinds of strange stuff from the subconscious happens, which I find intriguing. Yeah, yeah, if you're not tethered, anyone who could afford it, it's respectful to the act of singing to devote oneself solely to that act.

That's right, that's what I'm thinking. And in my case when I play guitar and sing, one of the reasons I don't have any other instruments other than a drum is to make sure that I'm not too tethered. If I just sing and play guitar and there's just a drum, then I still feel untethered.
But if I feel as rhythm guitar part of the band and singing, for some guys it works great and girls too. But for me,
It used to work, but at this point I like it when I just sing and play guitar when I feel like it and then just put it down and pick it up again. Because right, that thing untethered, that is crucial.
Jonathan, how do you

Decide what you're going to wear when you perform? Oh, the same way I decide which guitar I'm going to take on the road this time. I've got a few guitars, I just sniff the air, strum a chord and go, "That's the one." And with wardrobe, a lot of times it's the same thing. I just go, "That's the one. That's the one." Except with one difference. Let's say Tommy's wearing a red shirt.

Sometimes well sometimes i go if it's a right red shirt i'll go well good now we're both in red
But if they're clashing reds that i think are clashing i'll go now he's he's got he's mr red
Tonight i'm gonna go blue or green but uh a lot of it is just um
Whatever is I brought with me that feels this is it for tonight
And as I say if Tommy's wearing something like sometimes I'll coordinate or intentionally discord
Coordinate with him.
-yeah.
And and uh... view like if you're out in the world and you walking by a little
Store sells clothing yes you see maybe a shirt in the window window do you ever
Do that you see a shirt in the window and you think i'd like to sing and play guitar in that shirt yes there's a store that i hope is still there
In downtown savannah g ia
And me and tommy both bought clothes there a few years ago and i loved it
Uh...
Yeah there was a
Yeah i wish
Could remember than him. It was this men's store that sold a lot of clothes that you'd wear to dance
Stuff like you know -oh, yeah -clubs it sold clothes like that and it sold church clothes to them both and
We found the coolest
Like I got a bright red shirt there and Tommy got a shirt. That was really great. So yes
Yeah, it's all impulse
Weird
Oh, there's these shoes lately that are made in Portugal and you can dance in them and you can walk in them. Let me see. Anyway, it's been mostly those lately. What about yourself with shoes? Do you think dance or do you just think hanging around?
Sometimes audibly and sometimes just in such a way that, you know, I don't want to too soft of a, either bare, you know, I could use barefoot but not too soft of a soul so it absorbs, you know, if you're trying to feel the...
All right, to the far right, way back there.
I'm sorry, go on, say again, say again.
No, just...
I like to have, I like to clunk the stage, clunk, clunk on it. Oh yeah, every once in a while, I'll bring combat boots and do that. That's true too, that clunking of the stage. Yes, combat boots. So anyway, you and me are both fans of the singer from Egypt who got her start in the 20s and sang all through the 50s, 60s and maybe 70s, Um Kul Sum. Yeah.
And one of the things that fascinates me about Um Kulthum is her use of the word. As it is written about her, sometimes she leaves the lights on when she sings. Lights on the audience too. It's this intimate
What's written about her is that her style of music is all about the world, in Arabic. Do you speak any Arabic? I would never presume that you didn't know something. Like me, you're curious about all different kinds of cultural stuff. I wouldn't have been surprised if you said, "Oh yeah, I took a year or two of that."
Anyway, her arab -I like to watch her performances, you know, whenever I can find some sort of a video of a performance of her where they subtitle it and continue.
And try to pay close attention to what she's doing and what she's repeating, but there are not many of those that I've found.
And repeating is just what I was going to get to, because what singers in her style sometimes do, and what she does, is she'll pick a word, you know,
And she'll just linger on it and repeat it several times, and the audience picks up the word, and they have a sort of an exploration of the word, like the way John Coltrane would explore, you know, he'd stop,
On a certain note or a certain phrase and just do it several times in a row and explore it
This kind of stuff is real exciting huh yeah yeah yeah there's a there's a it was um yeah it's so
Exciting i mean it's it's it's so exciting because of yeah where she puts her voice and
And then how she's saying oh have you read i loved you i loved you for i loved you for your voice
No, but I'm writing it down as we speak.
So there's a novel, there's sort of a novelization of her life.
That's a really good novel.
I think it's called "I Loved You for Your Voice."
I'll find it.
I think Europa published it.
And it's just, it does a pretty, as far as I can tell, a pretty nice job explaining to our minds.
Relationship of a singer
To a lyricist, to a composer, to an audience
In Egypt throughout the 20th century. Yes, for people watching a show like this, the
Ones who might be
Intrigued like the way we get,
Let's see, her first name is spelled U-M
And her last name is it
K-h-u-m
And sometimes it's an S and sometimes umkul sum
S-u-m and sometimes it's T-U-M
Like in Hebrew it's the same way sometimes
Depending on the fashion and the language, sometimes a vowel will be an S and sometimes that same vowel might be a T depending on what region and things like that.
And I think I first heard of her in France. I first heard of her in France and I got a CD that was put out by the AAA, something like Anthologie de la musique arabe, or somehow it was translated to AAA.
And they did a series of, I think, eight CDs of her recordings pre-1930 or something crazy
Like that.
And I first heard those in France, and there on the CD they spell it O-U-M-K-A-L-S-O-U-M.
Which took me such a long time to find more recordings by her because that's simply the
French, you know, way the French...
Transcribe. So good. This gives our listeners a chance a whole different choice of spellings. Yeah, and oh, um, oh, um, yeah, um, um, I've seen all of those spellings and cool soon. K U L T H U M K H A L S O U M everything in between. Yep. And there's a great book though, Voice Like Egypt. I think they made a little documentary called A Voice Like Egypt after the book by Virginia Danielson.
That uh... that uh... straight like academic biography of her but it and it
Did not give you another biography of her too
Did you give me maybe that one yeah but i know it was a
I gave you one with a blue cover
Because uh... i thought you might especially enjoy the part where they
Talk about how this is a style for singers to leave the lights on and all
You know what that's from actually
That's not from that it's from a book that i think you've already read
Uh... that you already have
It's about
Uh... music in the arab world it's a book called great great thing
By Recy, is that right? Yeah, yeah. So listeners, check out that book. Listeners to this show. Also check out, um, Music in the Arab World, and I guess, R-A-C-Y? R-A-C-I-E? R-A-C-Y, yeah. R-A-C-Y. Okay, another book to check out.
And it's exciting for me to talk to Bonnie Prince Billy right now about it because one of the reasons the tours are so exciting is because these interests that we've got, they come out in little ways in the tour and it affects the music and everything.
And I'd like to encourage other people who are interested in this kind of stuff.
Who are wondering where to look for exciting culture, some other ideas, you know?
It's right under our noses. Yeah. Yeah, I had years ago, I went to a, I think it was
A Folklore Society academic conference in Louisville because someone said, Oh, there's
Somebody who's going to be giving a paper about a friend of yours named Alistair Roberts
Who's a Scottish singer who sings a lot of traditional songs. Yes.
And so I went and I'd never been to an academic conference before and I was very excited by this academic conference on folklore, which covered all sorts of things, graffiti art and music playing and storytelling and, uh, how many classes?
Well, I just went for, I went for like a day and a half to that.
And then I thought, well, these things exist.
There's gotta be one that's a little more in tune specifically with my.
Brain and my interests and so I found the Society for Ethnomusicology and now I'm a
Card carrying member and I started going to their meetings, I don't know, 10 or 12 years
Ago and the first one I went to was in Mexico City and one of the first people I saw, I
Saw her name tag and it was the woman Virginia Danielson who had written the Mkul Sum biography.
So that was, I was,
I was just, I knew I was home, I knew I was in the right place.
Yes, I know the feeling.
I was so starstruck by her. And I went to one of her presentations which was just about
Archiving, about problems with archiving and you know.
And was that interesting?
Oh, it was totally interesting. I mean these things are exhaustingly interesting all day,
You know they start at whatever 730 in the morning and go till 630 at night and it's
Just presentation after presentation after presentation.
About kinds of music and then ways that music functions in different, you know, for different
People at different times.
Yeah, and it's all useless without feeling. It's exciting for me to watch you sing in a situation where I can see you searching. That's what I say when I say even a little bit awkward. In other words, I don't mean that in the sense of gawky, I mean that awkward in the sense of
Not knowing quite what's coming next in searching yeah yeah that's it yeah i know what it's all
About yes that's why we're in the room together yes and we will be in the room together in october
If i don't see you first and this is uh really exciting uh so i'm glad we're doing these things
Together and me too okay so anything more you want to say before we sign off for today
Happy Father's Day, Jonathan!
Oh, well same to you!
Alright!
Thank you!
Okay, bye Will, bye!
Thank you!
Thank you, bye!