Elvis Costello dishes on "National Ransom"

[Refugee 7]

Story by Phil Gallo

SoundSpike Editor at Large

To promote his new album "National Ransom," which will be released Nov. 2, Elvis Costello has posted two interviews with one "Odile W. Husband" on his website.

In the meandering chats, filled with discussions of Catholicism, songwriting and Walter Mitty, Costello delivers a few revelations about the new album. Among them:

* The band had barely finished writing out charts for the song "All These Strangers" when recording began in Nashville. "This is the kind of high wire act that doesn't always come off, but on this occasion, everyone was simply listening to a story and responding. It is one of my favorite ensemble performances on the record."

* The combination of Mark Ribot, Jerry Douglas and Steve Nieve provides three contrasting instrumental voices, much like Moby Grape's three contrasting lead guitarists. Ribot has a "beautiful and elegant dialogue" with Stuart Duncan on "Jimmie Standing In The Rain." Douglas predominantly plays lap-steel rather than the dobro.

* The song "The Stations of the Cross" pulls imagery from Tom Piazza's book "City of Refuge."

* Hank Cochran came to the studio during the sessions with a film crew that was making a documentary on the country music legend.

* Of his use of rain and water imagery, Costello notes, "As to whether the weather is approaching or departing, I'd have to say that depends on your disposition to melancholy or optimism. I find fine rain very invigorating. To lie in the dark with rain beating on the window is thrilling, not threatening."

Other salient facts:

* By the end of his 2009 tour with the Sugarcanes promoting "Secret, Profane and Sugarcane," four new, unrecorded songs were appearing in the setlists. During the ride between Dallas and the final stop in Tulsa, OK, Jim Lauderdale and Costello wrote "I Lost You" and debuted the song that night. The next day Costello called T Bone Burnett to tell him the Sugarcanes had to record again, but between that conversation and the sessions, Costello wrote a number of songs that called for different musicians.

* All six members of The Sugarcanes did not play in the same room at the same time until rehearsals for the band's first tour.

* On meeting Doc Watson: "When I was first introduced to Doc, he took off into a testimonial or homily about his life and work, the things his father had taught him and lessons taken from scripture. He may tell a lot of people these things, but they rolled around my head for good while," Costello said.

* On songwriting: "I am a lyricist and storytelling songwriter, not a poet. I have my own sense of what works for me with the music, and that's a take it or leave it proposition. It is for others to labor and pour over the technical aspects. They do not concern me."

* On T Bone Burnett's work as producer: "T Bone's work was already done in setting up the circumstances and the surroundings that were so conducive to trust. ... T Bone and his team are now creating sound pictures of great nuance and resonance. You can hear that across all the records he is producing, regardless of the qualities the artists bring into the room."

* A supergroup in the works? "In the last couple of years Kris Kristofferson, Rosanne Cash and I have written a couple songs together. We actually plan an album together, but we are making slow progress because we live so far from each other. You can't get the pigeons, you know. "

* On not quite learning the guitar as a youth: "When I was a teenager I admired the Welsh master John James and all the people who recorded for Transatlantic Records, and tried to understand these printed transcriptions of Rev. Gary Davis and Mississippi John Hurt songs, but I never became that adept. "

* On "(What's So Funny �bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?": "That song becomes more complex and more poignant the further we get from the ideal. Heaven preserve us from all these blasphemers who think they know what God is thinking."

Costello currently has two concert appearances on his schedule: An Oct. 1 show at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall with Nick Lowe, and an Oct. 3 appearance with the Sugarcanes at San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.

[normandi 21]

I luvs me some Costello.