 Howe Gelb |
But this Tucson, Arizona, art rocker is prolific as hell - after two decades of recording, I still can't figure out how many albums he's birthed. The number must be enormous. So, I ring up the charismatic band leader to find out.
"I think 40, give or take a couple," he says after some contemplation. "Forty, including the ones I do with my little label, like this tour-only CD I'm putting together right now. It might seem like a lot, but then, you know, it's really not a lot as far as lithographs go."
Sonic lithographs. That's what this fruitful frontman/solo artist calls his cut-and-paste, elastic recordings. "I make my prints, so many of them. And I just do that all year round. I don't wait every two years to go back to work. I just do it all the time, putting all these extra scraps that don't fit on official releases onto tour-only CDs that provide support on the road."
On the road for Gelb and Co. on this particular tour (first time in three years) means one gig for us at Time and Space Warehouse in Hudson on November 13. Gelb is looking forward to it, due to his fondness of the Hudson Valley. But first stop is Holland. Gelb generally resides in Denmark a few months out of the year, bringing his wife and kids with him. When he's there, he says, he longs for Mexican food. "I miss the chili rellenos," he laments.
Gelb, as an artist, is like a chili relleno. His music has substance and pizzazz - it's extraordinarily inventive, exhaustingly complex and intimately minimalistic at the same time. This think-outside-the-box lithographer is constantly searching for sonic textures to utilize. Frequent comparisons run the gamut from Lou Reed and Neil Young to Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. Does this bug him?
"Oh, hell no. There's a nice old guard there. You gotta use popular mileposts for comparison. I guess that happens to everybody." He chuckles. "Yeah, 'cause life is short, man. You gotta get to the crux and move on." Gelb doesn't really see much comparison to Cave and Cohen, however, saying their songs are filled with great writing, good story lines. "Although Lou has his grand moments, too. Neil and Lou are kinda non-singers, so there's that neighborhood of non-singers where I might have a piece of property. I don't sing like a singer. I sing like a map drawer, just pointing the way, showing where the road goes." And just when you thought he might hand you a compass.
Gelb is constantly being referred to as eccentric or weird, but it doesn't faze him. "I always figure that must be a comparative value. The sentiment is sane, but the application is a little off the beaten path maybe. I think my stuff just gets more and more normal, or at least logical. But then the world has gotten weirder, so there you go."
Getting old isn't necessarily bad, especially if it means you just get hipper. This cosmic cowboy and his cast of thousands debuted with the off-kilter Giant Sandworms a quarter-century ago. Thereafter Giant Sand became the lifelong project that has been predictably unpredictable with its ever-changing lineups and borderless territory, running amok through a desert of song styles, a melting pot of alt-country, psychedelica, red neck roots, blues, gospel, soul, abrasive rock, avant-garde noise, acid jazz...have I missed anything? Long-time musical compatriots Joey Burns (bass) and John Covertino (drums) departed a few years ago to focus on their work with Calexico, which upset the fan-base apple cart a bit. But Gelb felt it was time to retire the old originals who'd been with him throughout the second decade.
"It was feeling sluggish, like there was a weight attached to it. It was more tiring than inspiring. The term of being tired too many times got retired and retired. We had a little party, said goodbye to each other. When I started to tour with this band I have now for my solo record last year, it occurred to me that this is what Giant Sand always had been when it was at its best. That's when I figured I was onto it again."
The latest release (number 39?) is an official studio CD on Thrill Jockey Records, aptly titled Is All Over...The Map, which was recorded in Denmark with the new band, all Danes - Anders Pedersen on lapsteel, electric slide, and mandolin; Thøger T. Lund on upright and electric bass; Peter Dombernowsky on percussion; John Parish on drums, mellotron, and guitar; and Gelb on guitar, piano, and non-singing. Produced by Parish (one-time PJ Harvey collaborator), these 15 tracks are as expected/unexpected as ever: unique, poignant, poetic, raucous, beautiful, and sometimes bizarre.
Gelb takes us out for a gnarly spin on "Flying Around The Sun At Remarkable Speed," a fast favorite with just enough hairy dissonance to chew on. "Don't go getting yourself in a rash," he non-sings with distortion, "We're in the middle of nowhere, way out in the great beyond." "Anarchistic Bolshevistic Cowboy Bundle" finds Gelb's daughter Patsy wielding the anarchistic punk of a charming Sex Pistols cover as daddy rants, "Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be Tolstoys." " Zippy "Fool" taunts a more disposable relationship with stacks of literary loops: "Somersault like some assault against gravity / the simmer of summer has some kind of hold on me / there's levity in brevity, I suppose." The French "Les Forcats Innocents," sung by Gelb's wife, Sofie, adds some Euro-flavor, and the Latin-tinged, loungey bolero of "Napoli" adds world music and word musings: "Rectify, Rectifier / Wrecked if I do and wrecked if I deny her / Luster of olive skin / lust or love and wine flowin'."
As far as politics go, Gelb slips in a lyric or two on the pulsing, restrained "Classico" (with a brilliant reprise featuring Vic Chesnutt and Bjork-like vocalist Henriette Sennenvalt): "Down in Italia they have a word for such and such / and they tell ya when it's all much too much / when the tragic is so classic, they say no, it's classico...now the news is telling me they're confused and yelling at me / another bomb is going to blow / and even that has become so classico."
I ask Gelb if he's political at all. "Probably, but I don't let it override. It can depress me and anger me. But I also know it's usually term-related. It's here for a little while, and then it'll change again. If you step back from it all and look at the grand pendulum of human nature and social existence, it swings one way, then it swings back to the other. It always does that, always has done that." Our interview is pre-election. I tell him I know a lot of scared people. He laughs.
"I already have a Plan B. If things go the way they did the last election, I figure Hillary has a pretty good chance for 2008. It would cover so much ground, it would make up for so much. Getting a woman in the White House and getting Bill back in there, too. Yeah, a nice little piece of revenge. She's been through so much that she could probably handle all this crap really well."
"And that's your Plan B?" I ask.
Chuckling again, Gelb replies. "Yeah, that would be a hoot. But just in case that doesn't happen, Plan A is just to raise the kids up as best as we can and replenish this whole place."