Additional Information
On Wednesday June 24, I had the chance to have a conversation with Wendy Eisenberg in anticipation of their performance with Bill Orcutt as part of Suoni Per Il Popolo on Thursday June 25. Eisenberg shared their feelings going into this concert and what it’s like to go from their songwriting work to improvisation. They shared how their latest self-titled album helps them connect to their past self. This conversion illuminated the connections between musical practices rather than defining what separates them.
PAN M 360: So could you tell me about this concert that you’re coming to do? Because you’re doing it as a duo. And what shape is that going to take?
Wendy Eisenberg : So yeah, it’s just me and Bill improvising, presumably just on guitars, which is kind of a dream. This is probably one of the stranger duo concerts. things that I’ve ever done because Bill’s been a band leader you know for me for like a couple years now, like three years so we’ve never played like a proper duo in our entire time playing together but we’ve played next to each other internationally so I’m kind of nervous in a really rare way. Especially, because you know, I’ve been really so focused on song stuff for such a long time. This past year has been filled with, like, my songs, so returning to being an improviser is.
It’s not daunting because, like, that’s what I love to do, but it’s daunting because it’s like I’m playing with somebody who is/was kind of my boss and also playing in an idiom like duo guitar, which I haven’t really done with him. And he’s also got such a unique style. So I’ve just been trying to think, like, what kind of sound should I bring? What am I going to do? But in general, yeah, it’s just going to be us improvising together. It’s a pretty normal thing to do. Nevertheless I got to treat this one even more special.
PAN M 360: Yeah, having like the dynamics shift in a way seems kind of like an interesting energy.
Wendy Eisenberg : Yeah, it’s funny. I’m just kind of freaked out in a really hopefully generative way. I gotta say, it’s really exciting and before I started playing with Bill I was a huge fan. so it’s really cool to go kind of toe to toe and figure out how we’re gonna sound together.
PAN M 360: Compared to playing your songs that you’ve been playing for the last year, as you said, how does the mindset going into performing or your relationship to performing shift compared to improvising?
Wendy Eisenberg : The stakes are really the same for me all the time. It’s like, how can I open up, like, my heart in the music no matter what so that, like, the audience can feel that I’m doing that? Because with songs and with improvisation, it’s like they’re both really only successful if you’re playing something that you really mean. And it’s funny because, like, on the song side of things, the material you can think of as already existing, like, I’m playing this thing that I wrote before. But every single time you do it, it will feel different because you’re just in a different place and you’re like a different person related to the piece that you made. And it’s just, it’s weird.
Like, it’s almost like you’re still totally improvising, but it’s on a much subtler, almost like psychological level where how do I convey what I meant and also what I now mean when I hear these lyrics.
And when I write songs, I’m trying to make it so that every time I play them, I mean it for the first time. And I, like, I know that a song is good when I, like, I can imagine myself playing it when I’m, like, I don’t know, 50 years older and I still can feel how I felt. But with improvisation, because there’s no set-up on material, the stakes are kind of higher because you’re like ‘I have to make whatever’s happening really beautiful and urgent’ but you don’t have that much time to think about that because you’re just solving the musical problem.
So in either case you’re just trying to like clarify your mind and be like ‘okay, I know I love music, I know I love the people I’m playing with, so how do I get as far out of the way as possible so whatever’s happening it’s all intention rather than like all premeditation’ […] roundabout way of saying like it actually feels really similar but the thing like the audience knows what to listen for more in songs […] it has fewer parameter but we have to mean it just as much.
PAN M 360 : You’re very prolific, obviously, and you have so many albums of songs out. How much are you returning to these older songs? Are you always pushing forward? I feel like being an improviser feels like you’re interested in new things often.
Wendy Eisenberg : Yeah, one of the things that inspires me about Bill’s improvisation is that he’s kind of an improviser that’s not always interested in novelty, like he’s interested in action and intensity and emotion more than sound that I can make out of this thing. Because like his sonic power is just, he knows it’s amazing so he’s just kind of like, it’s not like he’s recombining but it’s kind of closer to somebody like Cecil Taylor than somebody like, I don’t know, SOPHIE, where it’s like what’s the newest sound that I can refine out of this thing? Yeah. But, yeah, like, with him, it’s more like I’m carving this sound that I’ve carved before, but it’s never going to sound like I carved it before. He’s got that thing that a lot of great jazz improvisers kind of have, too, where it’s, like, every moment that he’s playing, it feels like he’s discovering something new. And it is on the timbre level, but he’s kind of, he’s a little bit different than that.
And the reason I’m kind of bringing that up is like, you know, because it’s pretty far from the question you asked, is that I always want to play my older songs. I think that a lot of them are really good, and the only obstacle to it is that, like, they just have really dense harmony, so if I’m playing them with a band, it’s harder But when I’m playing alone, like, I’ll just dig something out from a record from 10 years ago and do it. Because it’s just amazing to see, like, the kind of, like, sonic choices just recur. Like, I’m still kind of trying to write the same, like, eight songs that I started off writing when I was 12.
You know, it’s a really cool question. But I think the improvisers mentality is how do I just really mean it in that moment? And sometimes that means going for like a sound I’ve never heard.
And sometimes it means playing a much more familiar song, except from the first person who’s discovered it.
PAN M 360 : I feel like you hear that in Bill’s playing anyways, the kind of idea of like, it’s like once it happens, it’s the most obvious choice, but it still can be surprising in that way, like in the way that like narrative can be, for improvisers it’s like well you had to do that like it’s almost like there wasn’t any other option, anyway I don’t know where I was going with that…
Wendy Eisenberg : yeah no I’m so that is such a perfect read of that and also like that thing that you’re noticing where it’s like yeah that would be the obvious choice and I’m surprised to me that’s like how you define like a hook in a pop song. Like, it’s so obvious that it always existed, but then you’re like, wait, no, it didn’t. And then now it’s the only thing that’s in my mind.
PAN M 360 : Yeah, it’s like the first, the songs that, like, stick with you probably for 10 years or since you were 12 are things that just have to exist in a way.
Wendy Eisenberg: Yeah, yeah like just beyond human and then you catch them or something
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PAN M 360 : Being possessed by the muses or something.
Wendy Eisenberg: I know, it’s so funny to talk about because it makes me sound like you’re wearing a beret, but it’s super true.
PAN M 360 : Also, you’re playing guitar, obviously, as you do. Wendy Eisenberg: I hope so.
PAN M 360 : obviously it’s the instrument you’ve played the most and has followed you for the longest time, but is there something beyond that makes it special in a way?
Wendy Eisenberg: Yeah. Oh, man, that’s such a cool question. Yeah, I mean it’s an amazing instrument for a thousand reasons, but what’s special about it to me beyond just it’s just how much it bears. The guitar is such a weirdly global instrument and every culture can mess with it in different ways.
Bill’s got the missing strings thing, which is so amazing. […] That’s not the only thing, but that’s an aspect of his thing. You know, like that’s one, it’s not even like a sonic lineage, it’s material, there’s not one way to play it. And then there’s people in Thailand who scoop out the frets and treat it almost like sitar vibes, but it sounds like the Delta Blues kind of style. And then there’s people obviously in the desert, various African deserts that have different playing styles from each other. And that’s another specific style. And what’s so cool is all of it just sounds exciting. Maybe this is settling me as a creature of the 20th century and not the 21st, but whenever I hear a guitar, I’m just excited. […] And, yeah, it just feels like an instrument that’s, like, mediated by technology in the same, like, it’s electric, in the same way that we are, which I’ve never really thought about, but I’m working, so I’m thinking.
PAN M 360 :Yeah, like, the fact that it’s so associated with voice, a guitarist singer is such a classic.
Wendy Eisenberg: Yeah I mean Leonard Cohen’s like different from Elizabeth Cotton but like they’re pretty close but they’re so far away. It’s amazing that they came kind of from the same century. I just think about Leonard Cohen all the time too, not just cause you’re in Montreal.
the guitar, it’s not subjugated under the voice but it’s a little pal for the voice, for so many people. So then when you’re in an environment like what Bill and I will be playing tomorrow It’s this thing of its own, and it’s actually somewhat closer to a bowed string instrument, like in a quartet, you know?
[…]
an instrument of accompaniment for the human struggle for so long. Yeah, yeah. It’s so beautiful.
PAN M 360 : This year your released wendy eisenberg by wendy eisenberg How do you decide now it’s the time for the self-titled kind of introspective album versus these countless other more collaborative projects
W : First of all, I do everything in my life, like, halfway unconsciously.[…]And for this self-titled record it wasn’t like, okay, now this is Wendy Eisenberg, so all of those other people who are billed as Wendy Eisenberg in all of these different collaborations was not the entirety of me also.
These are the songs that I’d written when I was younger and, like, didn’t have those, like, younger, like, 12. […] Like, it’s really, a working title for the record was Little Wendy. I was, as you can probably tell from the song, a sensitive, kind of dreamy kid. I really wanted to write songs to do it, to kind of learn every single thing about what makes a song good, from like jazz harmony, to all of this like massive study that I’ve done in my life, like has all been towards the service of like communicating what I wanted to have communicated as a child. […] And whenever I wrote these songs, I knew they were done because I felt like I was either singing to my younger self or as my younger self because like the life that she had wanted had finally arrived for me. So I don’t really know if I drew a line exactly, but I just wanted to do my little self a solid. It felt more humane to call her by our name. Even though Little Wendy is really cute.
PAN M 360 :That is really adorable. And I think, like, the, it’s kind of like the time-traveling album
Wendy Eisenberg : Oh, totally. Yeah. Thanks for knowing that. It’s so cool that you hear that. I’m so moved.
PAN M 360 :not, not a collaboration. It’s just one through time or something
Wendy Eisenberg : Time Machine! Time Machine collaboration. Yeah, I mean I think that when I wrote that I was like, maybe I need to get out of whatever I’m doing. A cool way to do that is probably time travel although I’ve only done it sonically.
What I will say is that the link is always, you can’t write a song without messing around on the guitar which is technically improvising.
