Interview - Colin Stetson (Boston, MA; Spring 2009)

With the guest list “on the way,” but with 30 minutes before taking the stage, Colin Stetson was kind enough to come out on Lansdowne Street to get me into the House of Blues. I didn’t recognize him at first; actually, it was that Colin didn’t fit my image of a rock saxophone player. Of course that is because my brain went to LeRoi Moore and Clarence Clemons, and Colin is not close to being mistaken for either. Sipping on an Italian beer, he offered extremely reflective answers to my extremely rushed questions.

melophobe: It’s been a year since New History Warfare was released. Any celebration of the anniversary?

Colin Stetson: Not really. Its release was not like a typical rock album, with a firm release date and a central tour to promote the album. 

melophobe: With all your touring with Bell Orchestra and Arcade Fire, it is amazing that you could even get studio time at all.

Stetson: The process was quick. We recorded in just five days, only using single takes and no overdubs. [Producer and sound engineer] Joel Hamilton at Studio G was great with my ideas, and it worked well. 

melophobe: Regarding the sound of your music, many critics attach the label avant-garde or experimental.

Stetson: When you play the saxophone, the initial thought is that your music will be jazz or maybe classical. I think of the music as challenging, that it does not sit lightly. In recording, we used a range of microphones to capture tonal qualities on the horns. There’s not any manipulation of the sounds, just gating of different pitches and timbres. Almost like the music is zeroing in on all the tonal elements together at once, creating a three-dimensional replication of the sounds. That’s the aim in the recording. 

melophobe: The sound certainly is challenging - almost cubist with all elements being experienced at the same time. 

Stetson: Recording the album, I thought of it cinematically. Like the Dogma approach, with having these rules that demand more attention to the process of creating the music. This comes in part from advice Tom Waits gave while recording - that you take on a character; enter into a persona with the music. He’d toss out character sketches as how he wanted the instrument to be played. 

melophobe: So how has it been playing the music live?

Stetson: Today I looked at a scathing review of the other night in Toronto. It was deserved; the crowd didn’t really go along with it. 

melophobe: What happened?

Stetson: There were people there who appreciated it, but the Kool Haus is this massive concrete structure, and from the back some 20 or so guys yelled all through the songs. It was tough playing through that. With these songs, the nightly goal is to get into everybody. 

melophobe: Just so the crowd listens?

Stetson: More than that even. The rafters, the whole structure, each person impacted by the music. Playing live gives a bliss of bringing it all to life. On stage, I try and make it look easy, but in fact it can be fucking tortuous. 

melophobe: You have had an eclectic musical trajectory. You graduated from a traditional conservatory, formed a successful jazz group, collaborated with electronic artists, and have joined bands from Antibalas to The National. Was there a conscious decision to choose a musical path?

Stetson: These musical steps have all been right time, right place. They were what interested me at the time. My only guide has been to not censor any genre, both as it pertains to style and instrument. So I am playing the saxophone, but also clarinet, flute, trumpet, and now the french horn. I have a real affinity for any woodwind instrument, and that has taken many forms.

melophobe: In Arcade Fire and your work with Jeremiah Lockwood’s Sway Machinery, these are bands bringing “secular” rock music into sacred places. What are your thoughts on working in these bands that seem to be after something beyond the casual concert experience?

Stetson: That transcendence. It’s very much true for their music. I love these bands and their fearless leaders: Win and Jeremiah both have a lofty goal: to tell truth. That is what attracts me to their music. It isn’t some fashion, putting on traditional sounds, but a music that is cathartic when it is performed. When you go to an Old World church or synagogue, there is an emotional depth. Like the passage of human shit over time, the combination of blood and rock. This is an overwhelming feeling, and what I seek out in my own musical work. 

melophobe: What do you see for your next solo work?

Stetson: Songs are coming together, almost 85% done with an album. There’s an influence of this five-disk anthology Goodbye Babylon through the songs. It’s a Dust-to-Digital collection of field recordings - all kinds of spirituals, rough music, but using the doorway of faith to tell beauty. I see my music as a personal doorway devised over the years to do the same thing.

melophobe: At melophobe, we try to help people’s fear of music. So here’s the heavy existential last question: what are some things you fear?

Stetson: The inability to change. That’s myself, the people in the audience, the whole world. The fear last November with elections. Complacency I guess.

Some Related Entries:

Interview - Brandon Bethancourt (AKA Alaska In Winter) (Seattle, WA; Spring, 2009)

Interview - The Acorn (Part 2)

Interview - Jason Collett

Interview - Cut Copy

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