Howe Gelb, The TVD Interview

Lots has been happening in alt-country legend/Giant Sand founder Howe Gelb’s world these days. Gelb, the Arizona prophet of slightly skewed sound, released The Coincidentalist on New West Records in 2013, and it’s mad brilliant. And on the heels of reissuing the entire Giant Sand catalog, Fire Records has assembled a box set of Howe’s entire output of solo recordings, Little Sand Box. The result is a flood of music not unlike the deluge that destroyed his childhood home—and despised piano—in Scranton, Pennsylvania and led his family to Arizona, where he still lives.

Gelb is touring too, and he’ll be playing Washington D.C.’s Black Cat on Saturday, January 11. And just as only a fool would have answered our question on Elton John’s “Somebody Saved My Life Tonight” (Gelb wisely ducked it), only a fool will stay home and watch “America’s Most Cretinous Chefs” when Gelb, who hasn’t showed his sun-weathered face in D.C. in some two decades, is in town. We had a chance to ask Gelb a few questions, and he proved to be an amusing interviewee whose replies were every bit as elliptical and cryptic as his music. He’s an odd guy; who else in the world would say his favorite author is Illya Kuryakin?

You don’t actually have tin foil on your windows, do you? (He says as much in The Coincidentalist’s wonderful opening track, “Vortexas”).

Only from 1976 till 1986.

Giant Sand is still active, right?

HELL YEAH!

What would you say is the difference between the work you do with Giant Sand and your solo work?

Simple: Giant Sand has always been a group affair… the same group for a season of years upon every episode until that season changes up the membership and then it begins again with the next generation of cluster. Whereas solo endeavors are anything goes with no one else in particular.

How do you choose your musical collaborators? Convenience? Friendship? Or do you actually hear a specific voice or musician as you’re composing your songs? Related to this, how do you determine whether you want a male (as on “Vortexas”) or female vocal collaborator (as on “The 3 Deaths of Lucky”) on a specific song?

I’m afraid answering this question would prove tedious and boring to any readership and thus am taking the 5th on it.

You’re one unnaturally prolific guy. How do you account for this? Don’t you have any, like, bad habits or lawn work to do?

Ok… I like that. Thanks (unless it was your spell check correcting “unusually”) cause I love that “unnaturally.” No, no lawn work in Tucson… we have no grass here. That probably is the real reason the desert is in my music making. It asks nothing from me … otherwise I don’t think it’s in my music as much as my music is in it. They both regard erosion as a routine… and I love that steady change no matter how unsteady.

Also, I am by “nature,” according to social standards, a seemingly severely lazy fellow. But really, I just need exaggerated spans of time to be able to qualify my own thoughts. Therefore, my enormous output must be a cry for help.

Who would you call your biggest musical influences? Do you have one musical hero/inspiration who looms above the rest?

Clint Eastwood…I love the way he gets things done.

I can’t hear “Explore You” without thinking of Gram Parson’s concept of “Cosmic American Music.” Would you say that’s an apt description of your work? If not, how would you sum up your music in a phrase?

If I could answer that question, I would then afford myself the luxury of deciding if I should. Gram Parson is an interesting topic; I believe he exemplifies what happens when a man of means (family money) is left to his own devices and can develop at an alarming rate (if talent indeed lies embedded) coming up with astonishing works at such a young age. As opposed to being beaten by the fates to a pulp attempting to survive in this country where the arts are not funded and your edge is sharpened by the school of hard knocks and something like rock n roll, country, jazz, and blues result instead. But I’ve said too much…

How did you decide upon a band for the tour? I take it (well, it’s obvious) you wanted to keep it small?

Necessity is the mother of reinvention too.

How young were you when you started to play music? What was your first instrument? What bands/types of music inspired you when you first started playing?

I was 8 when I saw Alvino Rey and his singing guitar on TV during the King Family hour… it was a horrible show for a kid, until that singing guitar came outta the bag. I tried playing the piano shortly after that, since no one knew what the hell I was talking about when requesting a singing guitar. And it proved so infuriating, sounding nothing like the radio, that I stopped playing altogether. The piano struck back, feeling neglected and jealous of my clock radio, and like the jilted lover it was, fell in with a random current love that would happen along. That current however belonged to the Susquehanna River, which came knocking on our door one day to discover that said piano was still spending the night with me … and thusly splintered that piano to bits.

Later in life, in celebrated lament, I finally embraced the piano again, and will never let the river take it away again. Which could further explain the desert’s influence even more properly.

I read a critic who said, “Occasionally it can be confusing, but if it wasn’t, this wouldn’t be a Howe Gelb album”— How would you respond to that comment?

I notice when I become too predictable in song, some folks complain… and when I remain somewhat challenging to the listener, the others complain. Those complaints make me feel loved. That they care so much … sigh.

This question is related, I think, to the previous one. “Like a Store Front Display” is one of the greatest and slightly out-of-kilter rock songs I’ve ever heard.

Aw man… the eye moistens. Thanks… seriously.

I don’t know how to ask this, but here goes—are you allergic to writing a song in a nice clean linear fashion? Does it go against the grain? Or are you just doing what comes naturally? I mean, does “Like a Store Front Display” sound like a straightforward song to you?

My ear is tin, man, tin. That’s how I started writing my own music … because no one recognized my cover songs. My ear is so forgiving it confounds other players and drives them mad. These things you mention sound regular to me—normal, straight—I don’t mean them to be upsetting or bizarre.

But at the same time, I consciously do not want to offer up something that’s been done over and over again… there is so little time on earth to be concerned with reproducing something that has already been done, but was originally something new and startling and had the breath of evolution in its every particle.

This is why jazz is huggable… it understands what music was always meant to be, in a constant state of change. Until the advent of “recordings” blew that notion out of the water and way too many players adopted the life style of duplication instead of evolution.

But I digress… as I am getting older, I understand better what the limits are of listenership, and very much enjoy toying with the notion of selected reproduction on a nightly basis … somewhat.

It all comes down to duende.

When that lil’ sucker has its way… the room changes.

You’ve always had a wide-ranging sound that makes it difficult to pigeonhole your work. Do you think this has hurt you commercially?

HELL YEAH!

Your albums really do take multiple listens before they take hold. Related to the previous question, do you think this has had commercial consequences?

More than likely … but the music I have loved forever has all had that same effect on me. I had to play it several times [then it would] never let me go. I also tend to believe fame is annoying … so I think it all worked out.

You’ve done some truly inspired covers. What led you to record a version of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”? And given the choice (at gunpoint, for instance), would you sooner cover Grand Funk’s “We’re an American Band” or Elton John’s “Someone Saved My Life Tonight”? (Personally, I think you could do a tremendous version of the latter.)

Well, Carly Simon’s cover was a Vic Chesnutt-inspired thing. We just chimed in … I think. Or maybe it was the other way around … no clue now. In either case, without someone like Vic to carry the ball, I’m sure no one would recognize any other cover I might plunctuate (sic).

Talking about covers, you typically tweak them a good bit, taking them a great distance from the original. But your cover of “The Weight” is pretty straight up (and great.) Why the relatively orthodox treatment in that case?

Because I was in between things—punk rock and counterculture sonics. I tended to wanna deliver some of the best of what I thought was great to the post punkers we were a part of, and that Band track was one of ‘em. It was also at a time when I could handle such a thing.

I thought for sure that was Neil Young singing on “Pedal Steel and She’ll.” You weren’t consciously imitating him, were you? Hope that doesn’t sound insulting…

That song was completely made up on the spot… every inch of it. I had the idea and went with it and everybody tried to follow along, which was always very much fun … like riding a sonic wave to the shore… without tipping over. But I would try and also make that Farfisa organ sound like a dueting voice at the moment of impact. Those kinds of things crack me up and keep us at it for years to come.

What led you to rework “Plane of Existence” from Dust Bowl for The Coincidentalist? Dissatisfaction with the original?

No, I love both versions. But the 2nd was an experiment. What would happen if I played all the instruments (aside from drums)? And so I tried it and liked it too.

What do you mean by “I come from a long line of coincidence?”

Thought that spoke for itself.

“Mystery Spot” has interludes that sound like they come from the 30s or 40s. Are you a fan of that era of music? Similarly, “Instigated Chimes” leads me to wonder if you have a love for lounge jazz. True? Who would you say your jazz influences are?

That track was a haunting… and I don’t mind haunting. Jazz standards are a thing of rare beauty on this planet .. and I would like to be able to add something to that remarkable tangling of tone whenever the fates may allow.