Alison: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. Whether you're listening on the radio, live streaming, or on demand, I'm really grateful you are here. We have a packed show today. Biosphere is a sci-fi comedy/buddy movie about the last two men on earth. Those two men are played by actors Sterling K Brown and Mark Duplass. They will join me in studio to discuss. We'll also speak with professor and James Baldwin scholar Rich Blint about the novel Another Country, which we all read as part of All Of It's Summer School Reading Series.

We're going to have some live performances right now. Blake Mills and Chris Weisman are setting up in studio to perform for you. Lloyd Cole will be here with the acoustic guitar. We've actually in the last couple months had amazing live performances here on All Of It. Jason Mraz has been here, Madison McFerrin, Brandy Clark, The Revivalists, all in studio. One of our recent guests Rufus Wainwright happens to be hosting a concert in Montauk tonight called Fifty Isn't the End, a 50th birthday concert to benefit the Montauk Point Lighthouse.

Rufus Wainwright will be joined by other performers, friends, and family, including Jimmy Fallon, Laurie Anderson, Tig Notaro, Loudon Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. When Rufus was with us, back in May, we talked a little bit about the planned concert as well as his latest album Folkocracy, which features duets with more musician friends from Chaka Khan to David Byrne and Brandi Carlile, even John Legend. He came into the studio with his dog Siegfried and played one of the songs featured on the album.

So in honor of Rufus Wainwright's benefit concert in Montauk tonight, here's a bit of a song Going to a Town played live in the WNYC studios.

MUSIC - Rufus Wainwright: Going to a Town

I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down

I'm going to a place that has already been disgraced

I'm going to see some folks who have already been let down

I'm so tired of America

I'm going to make it up for all of The Sunday Times

I'm going to make it up for all of the nursery rhymes

They never really seem to want to tell the truth

I'm so tired of you, America

Making my own way home

Ain't going to be alone

I've got a life to lead, America

I've got a life to lead

Tell me, do you really think you go to hell for having loved?

Tell me, enough of thinking everything that you've done is good

I really need to know

After soaking the body of Jesus Christ in blood

I'm so tired of America

I really need to know

I may just never see you again, or might as well

You took advantage of a world that loved you well

I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down

I'm so tired of you, America

Making my own way home

Ain't gonna be alone

I've got a life to lead, America

I've got a life to lead

I've got so to think

I've got a dream to hear you

That's all I need

Making my own way home

Ain't going to be alone

I'm going to a town that has already been burnt down

Alison: That was Rufus Wainwright performing Going to a Town live in WNYC Studio 5, where I am headed right now because we are going to hear a performance and have a conversation with Blake Mills and Chris Weisman. Their album Jelly Road, Jelly Road drops tomorrow. This is All Of It. This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Tomorrow is the release date for an album from two musicians who reside in two different musical worlds on opposite coasts. One in LA, one in Brattleboro, Vermont. Stereogum describes the guitarist, producer, songwriter and vocalist Blake Mills as "LA's do-everything music guy."

A Washington Post profile of him from a couple years ago was simply titled How Blake Mills Became Good at Everything?. Mills started out in a group that would spawn the band Dawes and worked with a touring guitarist for folks like Jenny Lewis and Lucinda Williams. He has since become a sought-after producer and session player working in the studio with Fiona Apple, Phoebe Bridgers, Perfume Genius, John Legend, Bob Dylan, and many more. In June, he appeared on stage with Joni Mitchell.

My other guest is Chris Weisman is a Vermont-based jazz guitarist and songwriter around whose names words like air of mystery often appear. He's said to have released 35 albums just the last 10 years. Their new album which they co-wrote and co-produced is called Jelly Road and it came out of another collaboration between the two of them on the music series Daisy Jones & the Six about this Fleetwood Mac-esque 1970s rock band. You may have heard our interview with Tony Berg and with the showrunners.

The show just earned nine Emmy nominations yesterday including for music supervision. Blake Mills and Chris Weisman join me now in WNYC's Studio 5. Would you start us off with a song?

Blake: Yes, we would love to.

Chris: Beautiful, thank you.

Blake: Yes, thank you for that lovely intro. This is a song called Press My Luck.

MUSIC - Blake Mills: Press My Luck

When you moved you made me

Clean up after your ass

And under all that clutter

Was straight-up broken glass

Don't worry

I won't press my luck

I know things get clearer

When they're fucked

Another wildfire season

Ripping through the face

I'm almost getting used to The futuristic hellscapes

Don't worry

I won't press my luck

I know things start getting clearer

When they're fucked

Robot arms can't hold me

The healing was a scam

Someone checks my vitals

But think I'm dying, man

Don't worry

I won't press my luck

I know things get clearer

When they're fucked

When you moved you left me

Burned another bridge

Carloads off to donate

Garbage in the fridge

Don't worry

I won't press my luck

I know things start getting clearer

When they're

Alison: That's Chris Weisman and Blake Mills, the new album is Jelly Road, it is out tomorrow. I know this is such a basic question but how does it feel on the eve of your album coming out? How are you feeling, Blake?

Blake: By the time the records come out, at least my experience, you get through most of the anxiety of whether you feel confident in what you're working on. At this point now, I think Chris and I have played maybe a dozen shows, the songs have started to evolve a little bit. The story is continuing for us, and it's exciting that we get to share the music with more people at the end of the week. To be honest, it feels a little like we know how the movie ends. We're hanging outside the theater, waiting to see people's faces when they're walking out.

Alison: Chris, how has the music evolved as you start to play it?

Chris: Well, a lot. When we wrote a lot of the music remotely and then some of it was recorded also, before Blake and I never even been face-to-face. Then I went out last year to LA for a while. I think it was five weeks and we recorded a lot of the album. Not all of it, but it got worked on after some and before some. It was definitely not like duo stuff. I don't play guitar on the record that much. My voice is on there more as a writer. My literal voice is on there, actually. I think on just one song as backup vocals. That said, I definitely identify with it.

As much as any artwork I've ever made, I'm extremely excited for it to come out. For me, it's coming out at midnight tonight. That's where I am. I came out to LA maybe six weeks ago or six and a half and we rehearsed turned it into duo material and rehearsed like nine days at Blake's Studio Sound City. Then we really did work everything out. We worked on it a bunch ahead of time too. There's a lot of work. I had to learn the music and we had to arrange the music and turn it into guitar. Then once we got on stage, something else just took over and it's like it happens every time.

It's great. It feels really, really good. It can be scary but we do have a plan of a way that it's supposed to go. We'll talk about little things. Blake just was like, "Hey, do this thing for the thing," and it's like, "Did I do what he just suggested?" It's like, "I did it again." It's like, there's this cool conversation between putting the work into thinking of it as a tied up arrangement and then both of us are improvisers. We're not telling ourselves we're going to improvise, but we just follow the music. It's cliché, but it just happens. It's fun.

Alison: Why was Chris, someone you wanted to work with on your record?

Blake: A lot of the stuff on the record came out of our experience, collaborating for music for the Daisy Jones & the Six television show. I'd reached out to Chris to work on that together because I was such a fan of his vocabulary on his records, his musical vocabulary. It's so mysterious to me and unique. I thought if I were just a viewer experiencing a show about music, which is terrifying, I would hope that the music had that much originality in point of view. I thought, well, the best way to try to arrive at that is to work with as many people who just do that naturally, as I could.

I reached out to Chris, about collaborating on that show. I think in keeping with all of that, a percentage of the ideas were not quite right for the television show, very inappropriate for the show.

Chris: [unintelligible 00:17:03] [crosstalk]

Alison: I've seen the whole show. That's funny.

Blake: Yes. We're fascinating things. They've just got set aside for a little bit. Once things had settled down in TV world, we went back to some of that material, and developed it. The idea of doing a record together was probably somewhere beneath the surface the entire time. Once we fully embraced it, things got really exciting. There was a lot of freedom. I felt even deeper in love with the collaborative process of co-writing with someone, with the ultimate goal of coming up with something that I could sing and feel like I was embodying that felt like a standard act of some kind. We totally got there and I love that about this record.

Alison: I want to pick up on a word that Blake used, he used the word unique, Chris. What's something that is unique about the way Blake works that you hadn't really seen before or experienced before?

Chris: Oh, well, there's a lot. Blake is one of the most incredible musicians I've ever met. The world knows that. I think the thing that impresses me the most is, and this is true of the greatest artists is that their early stage of development and they're wild. Maybe they want something great to happen, but the stakes technically are low. There's this incredible heady freedom. Then as pressures come in, particularly economic pressures or a desire for whatever, status or accolades or metrics or whatever, it can tighten somebody up, and it can mean less risk, and with less risk in art, there's less reward. The thing that gets me about Blake is that it seems like his fire gets hotter. The higher up he gets into like complicated situations, like working on the TV show, for example, and even just the record we've made, relative to the way that I make records, which is a loan with zero budget, and put them out myself, it's like the reason I work that way is because I don't think I probably have Blake's bravery if there's that many pressures going on.

The thing about him that's really crazy on top of all the music stuff, which I basically can't even talk about, is that incredible risk taking and tapping me for the Daisy Jones show is an example of that. Then even more so, collaborating with me on this record, it's like literally everybody in the industry is like, "Who is that?" It's like he pulled, like a semi crazy person out of the woods.

Alison: Oh, my gosh. Chris Weisman is my guest. Semi-crazy person pulled out of the woods along with Blake Mills. The album Jelly Road is out tomorrow. I don't know if I can follow that up. Blake, this is probably for both of you, but I'll ask you to start first. There is power in silence in music, right? Sometimes music, you write can be restrained or an intimate. When you think about the role of silence and the role of quiet in your music, what is it?

Blake: I think it's an opportunity for a moment to be defined by the listener. Maybe more than anything, it becomes this neutral for a performer. It's a very different sensation in the middle of a song or musical passage. To experience silent is a different feeling than what it's like as a listener because I've been on both sides of it. I think, in some ways, a little bit of a gift at times. It's generosity, but it's also an opportunity for people to be alone with their thoughts, for that microsecond, which is important. It's harder and harder to come by. What's interesting to you about silence in terms of music and what you do?

Alison: In terms of music, to your point, it's a little moment for imagination. Like, will there be a chord shift? Will there be a key change? Will there be a tempo change or am I being given a moment and then the song can go on?

Blake: Yes, I've noticed in podcasts, there's a fearlessness with silence. They use it almost like a wink sometimes where it's like they're waiting for you to get it, but it's still brave. It's kind of punk in a way to push silence just beyond the level of comfort.

Alison: Could we hear another song?

Blake: Yes, sure.

Chris: Yes.

Alison: Love to hear one.

Chris: Yes.

Blake: This is called the Skeleton Is Walking.

MUSIC - Blake Mills and Chris Weisman: Skeleton Is Walking

A skeleton is walking

A sacrificial cow

To the other side

To eat away a cloud

A skeleton is walking

A-coming here to make the peace

Origami dove

Snapping at the crease

A skeleton is walking

I pop a stick of gum

The envelope was bitter

That made my tongue go numb

A skeleton is walking

Someone's getting paid

Someone's building a fire

As someone's getting flayed

A skeleton goes walking

Our days ahead are forgotten

And spitting on my name

Wouldn't make theirs rotten

A skeleton is walking

Somewhere I can't say

A skeleton is walking

A-Come vouch for me one day

Vouch for me one day

Alison: That was Skeleton Is Walking. My guests are Blake Mills and Chris Weisman. Jelly Road is out on Friday. There's this great quote about that song in Rolling Stone, Blake. It said, "It was the first time where I felt like there was a real reason to have that instrumental voice on the album. The solo was saying a lot of things, the singer couldn't." What felt different about that song?

Blake: Different from what?

Alison: The idea that you felt comfortable with the extended guitar.

Blake: I think if there's going to be a guitar, a solo of any kind, I should revise that. I think everything should earn its place, earn its keep on a record if it can. Solos are tricky because sometimes they can feel gratuitous. I thought that when we were making the record, the extended solo on that song was the first time, at the insistence of Chris, to be more of a soloist, have more of a guitarist voice, instrumental voice, on this record, which is not my comfort zone when I'm working on my own music.

I took a stab at trying to express some things that I don't think are expressed in the lyric of the song. We were talking about silence, and the song is largely about that. There are some things that I discovered could be said or felt or expressed or examined as an instrumentalist that I'm not capable of doing as a lyricist or a singer.

Alison: Chris, why did you encourage Blake on this?

Chris: I understand the-- Blake has so many talents. Yhe thing you definitely don't want to do if you've got a ton of talent is to just use all of it all the time because then also it means you don't get to explore other stuff. I think if Blake had wanted to-- he could have been, whatever, a guitar prodigy, which he was, and he is still, but he could have just focused in on that. From where I'm sitting, it's like that's kind of the thing that there's a reason that he doesn't want to go hard into that because it could at least maybe 7 years ago, 10 years ago, before I knew him, it could have easily eclipsed or even cut off some of the other career stuff that he's explored. I understand it's like his playing is really powerful and it can be scary to have a powerful gift because it can silence other parts of other facets of your personality that might also want time to say something. I read a review of Mutable Set, his previous album, which is unbelievable and was a huge influence. It was, for me, aesthetically a really powerful stepping stone towards Jelly Road that came out while we were writing together. It came out in the pandemic, and so I was already collaborating with Blake, and then I heard this record, and I was like, "Oh my God."

We're also in the studio with Joseph Lorge, who Blake and Joseph are partners, and they were just making these incredible recordings, these two like painters, making the most beautiful music. The Pino album came out shortly after Blake Mills' Pino Palladino album, also made by both these guys. Incredible, incredible work. There was a review of Mutable Set, and it said like it applauded Blake, and this is whatever I don't want to get into all the politics of like, it's part of the punk thing of there was this excess, and then we had to cut that off and we had to go anti-virtuosity, anti-solo.

I'm like, I came up through jazz, so in the late '90s. I have like a lot of pain of being extremely uncool because I was trying to learn how to play. There'd be these indie kids and it was just, "Oh, you're what? You're going to go play Girl from Ipanema at a cafe or whatever?" It's like, "Yes, I love that song." I have a chip on my shoulder about let us flower. It was a review that complimented Blake on being a virtual who wasn't going to do a guitar solo. I emailed him immediately and I was like, "We're not going to--" and it was before we were even making a record together.

Alison: We will not let that stand.

Chris: We will not let the next record, say that on the next record, we're just not going to let that happen. It's not. The album is not-- people will hear it you know tonight at midnight everyone will hear tonight at midnight and it's not actually full of guitar solos there. It's balanced and integrated and but it is one I think aspect of Blake's gift that is extremely, speaking of generosity extremely generous to get to hear.

Alison: This is All Of It in WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are Blake Mills and Chris Weisman. There's a song dedicated to Wendy, of Wendy & Lisa, The Prince. Are you a longtime fan?

Blake: Oh, yes. A longtime fan. I knew that Chris was a massive Wendy & Lisa fan. One of the people that I had reached out to around the time that Chris was coming to Los Angeles was Wendy and just said, "Hey, sometime within these couple weeks, can you come by the studio?" I didn't tell Chris when that was going to be until about 24 hours ahead of time because I didn't want him to psych himself out. He did but what he did was he went into the other room like a kid on Christmas Eve and wrote a piece of music called Wendy Melvoin.

We decided that what was best would be to record it and put it on the album and present it to her in that way, rather than play her the sketch of it as it existed when she came into the studio, but it's one of our favorite songs on the record.

Alison: Everybody can hear that tonight at midnight. My guests have been Blake Mills and Chris Weisman. The name of the album is Jelly Road. It is out tomorrow and we're going to wrap this live segment, but we might get you to record the Wendy song.

Blake: You got it.

Alison: It was so nice to meet both of you. Thank you so much for being with us.

Blake: Thanks for having us.

Chris: Thank you so much.

 

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