Peter Yorn
Peter Yorn is a classic singer/songwriter, classic in the sense that craft and musical progression is more important that following trends and keeping your name in the press. His new album Nightcrawler is an extension of this craft over fashion mentality and includes some very rich moments of melody and lyrical insight. I caught up with Peter while he was doing the interview rounds from an undisclosed location somewhere in California.
The new album completes a trilogy of sorts?
“It’s not a trilogy like Star Wars, where it’s a continuing story, it’s more a matter of me revisiting themes I’ve been writing about since the first record. Love and relationships, jealousy and our own mortality, materialism and all sorts of wonderful things. Just living my life is the biggest inspiration. So as I continue to experience more, my views on those topics continue to evolve. It’s like a later period in my life examining those things and that’s where the morning, day and night metaphor comes from.”
Has success changed your mindset or writing style?
“I always try to stay really grounded and stay close to really old friends of mine. I try to surround myself with people like that, I guess you could say that there are old school people in my life and they help keep me grounded. Even with being a professional musician and touring and recording albums, I try to never forget what it feels like being a fan.”
So you are comfortable with the personality that comes through in your records?
“The song writing thing is still mysterious to me but it came really naturally and it’s something I really wanted to do. Getting up and performing for people took a lot of work for me, I was never the kid who said “I want to be up on stage”, that was never my thing but I realized performing was a big part of it and I’ve had a lot of fun with it as well. I’ve learned to appreciate that side of it.”
You play a lot of the instruments on the new record yourself, when you reproduce them live, how will the arrangements change?
“With my first two tours I wanted every single thing on the record to be reproduced live and I kept a tight lease on my band and I had to have a certain type of player that was content with living in that kind of framework, whereas my new band is a lot more free-form and that makes the old stuff sound really fresh and the new stuff sound like it needs to sound. Everyone is kind of bringing their own thing to it and I’m really enjoying playing with this band right now.”
I really like the song How Do You Go On with its fade at the song’s end that really leaves you wanting more, that seems a natural to stretch out live.
“Oh yeah we’ve been going for it. I only played it once or twice on the acoustic tour but I really wanted to see what we could do with it as an electric version. It’s actually my favourite song on the album.”
Mine too. I also like how subtle the harmonies by Natalie Maines from The Dixie Chicks are on the track, The Man.
“I remember during mixing everyone was like “turn up the girl, I can’t hear the girl” but I thought it was right and she sang it a more subtle way that she does on her own records, I encouraged her to sing like that and I like the way it turned out.”
I also wanted to compliment you on the Warren Zevon cover Splendid Isolation; it was a nice nod to a great songwriter.
“Oh thank you, I really admired Warren, he had a great sense of humour in his writing.
During the recording process do you ever get lost and need to revert back to just voice and guitar to reconnect with the original idea of the song?
“Yeah hell yeah, with a lot of the songs we put too much stuff on it, I’ll purposely add a bunch of extra guitar and background vocals and then when we go to mix it, we’re like “OK get rid of all that shit I just want to hear the song.” So a lot of the time when we mix it, we strip a lot of the stuff away. We’ll end up with a more sparse mix but then other times when I strip it all back I realize the whole track is wrong and then we start from scratch.”
How much do fan expectations effect what you do?
“You always hope that your fans will grow with you and go with you wherever you are looking to go but ultimately the effect it has on the record is fairly minimal. I’m not out there doing research.”
Thank goodness the music industry is not adopting the movie industry proclivity for test marketing.
“That’s why there are no American films I want to see, you don’t know how depressed I am about the state of American film because I’m a big fan of the cinema. You’ve struck a real nerve with me. The dumbing down of American film has to stop.”
But then sometimes the opposite is true with art house films when they drown is a sea of pretension and obscurity.
“Yeah I agree and I’ve always said that about my music, that I always wanted to make music that I thought would be challenging but I didn’t want it to be obscure either. There is a fine line to it.”
Few artists walk that fine line with as much aplomb as Peter. For further proof check out the new album Nightcrawler, which is in stores now.
Rob Hudson
www.peteyorn.com