“I’d be kidding myself if I thought people hadn’t expected me to ‘weirdify’ or ‘noiseify’ Wilco,” he acknowledges. “But I felt no pressure of that sort while working on the album, and having already done a lot of music that’s not weird or noisy, it wasn’t exactly a stretch for me. Also, given the material, I’d be amazed if anybody actually thought those things would have been coherent additions to the songs.”

Cline mostly played his trusty ’59 Fender Jazzmaster on Sky Blue Sky, though he also used a Jerry Jones Neptune 12-string (“Side with the Seeds” and “On and On”), a “Frankenstein Fender Jaguar with one PAF pickup” (“Hate it Here”), and a ’71 Gibson ES-335 (“Either Way”). He experimented with numerous amplifiers—occasionally using small Kalamazoo,

Supro, and Swart Space Tone combos—but mostly stuck with his ultra-clean vintage Panoramic/Magnatone combo. Crunch and buzz-inducing pedals were primarily limited to a Klon Centaur overdrive and a Cusack Screamer Fuzz. The guitarist did, however, employ a device so secret that even he isn’t sure what it is.

“I used an old tube-powered box that’s just labeled ‘Echo’ to beef up the level and tone of the Panoramic by patching it between my pedals and the amp,” he reveals. “It’s actually this weird, bouncy tremolo unit that just sounds like a delay, but I only used it as a preamp on the record.”

The pedal-steel-like sounds on the album were coaxed from Cline’s National and Gibson BR-9 lap steels, played in standard guitar tuning and open G respectively.

Fans of Cline’s more experimental leanings will revel in the new Nels Cline Singers release, Draw Breath [Cryptogramophone], on which he, drummer Scott Amendola, and upright bassist Devon Hoff continue to push the limits of jazz and creative improvisation. Here, Cline focuses on his role in the creation of Sky Blue Sky.

Is there a typical way in which you go about crafting your parts with Wilco?
My habitual methodology is to begin by using the volume pedal to play something that underpins the harmony. I use the volume pedal both to wade into it, and because I don’t want to impose a bunch of stuff on the song right away, rhythmically or harmonically. What I play is more like adding an orchestral element, and perhaps a little harmonic color, rather than a country & western obbligato. For example, on “Side with the Seeds,” there’s one chord with a #5 in it that I play down low as a minor second. Pat [Sansone, keyboardist/guitarist] described that chord as “rubby”—which someone usually says when something’s out of tune. I said, “Yeah, its rubby, and I’m going to play it every time!” It’s like my Gil Evans-y brain kicks in, and I like to hear that kind of flavor—minor ninths and those sorts of things. So my first impulse is to play something that isn’t complicated on the harmony—in this case, just one chord.
After that underpinning process, if I hear a hole, or something that sparks my imagination, I’ll just develop ideas from there. Continuing to use “Side with the Seeds” as an example, when working with the chord progression in the middle section, I quickly analyzed the harmonic implications to find some common tones, and I came up with a little unison-fingering figure. Then, I played some minor seconds, and moved them up in a way that sounds a little like King Crimson—not in terms of what we’re playing, but in the harmony itself, with the sudden appearance of the #11. That’s my way of coming up with a part that has tension, even though it’s very simple.

How was the striking middle solo section on “You Are My Face” composed?
I had recorded some demos in Los Angeles, including a nylon-string and Dobro duet in 5/8. Jeff [Tweedy, Wilco’s frontman, singer, and guitarist] liked one of the parts—which became the melody that brings in that section—though he said we weren’t going to play it in 5/8. My demo was in B major with a #5, but Jeff played it in D major, so in order to accommodate that, I suggested we change it to B minor—off the VI chord—and it makes for a nice, unexpected modulation. Then, we spent a lot of time re-harmonizing that melody. For example, Pat said that since it was originally in major, we could slip one B major chord in there, and he had all these other different ways of thinking about it, but then we just let it go. Apart from that, Jeff had been working on the song at home, and he came up with new harmonic ideas—one of which was an A minor chord, so one of the melody notes then became a C natural. Pretty soon, the part had not only been re-harmonized five or six times, but also ended up recurring in a very dramatic way after the guitar solo and vocals in that middle section. That’s an example of how incredibly elaborate the path from start to completion can be.

The solo on that tune is surprisingly simple and to the point.
My first attempts at that solo were far busier—as is my wont, I suppose—and I was unhappy with it. So, I got the engineer out of bed early in the morning—before I’d had any coffee or anything—and I played it in my boxer shorts. That was it. I was much more successful at it while in sleepyhead mode [laughs].

What’s the story behind those interlocking melodic patterns on “Impossible Germany”?
The original demo of that song had a sprawling, jammy vibe without any worked-out parts. I came up with a few simple melodic ideas while singing along with it in my car, and then worked the parts out on guitar. My idea was to do a Tom Verlaine/ Richard Lloyd-style guitar thing, which Jeff liked, so he learned the lines, and the band started working on it. Then, Pat started playing guitar, so we had three guitars going at once, and we discussed having Jeff and me eventually drop out, with Pat continuing to play. But, instead, Jeff decided to disassemble one of my lines and play it in fragments, and then Pat began harmonizing that. At that point, we were laughing—and maybe cringing a bit—because with harmonized guitar lines you’re on Blue Oyster Cult, Allman Brothers, Skynyrd turf. But it was sounding cool, so Pat and Jeff got it all worked out—which left me sitting there with nothing to do. Jeff said I should just solo throughout the whole thing, which is ironic, because I originally thought it would be great for Jeff and me to play this worked-out part, with no soloing at all. Then, to layer irony upon irony, Jeff was so married to the solo I played on the demo that he had me relearn it, and play it almost note-for-note on the album. In fact, he likes it so much that he even has me play it that way live!

The following outtakes are from the story on Nels Cline that ran in the September 2007 issue of GP. In them, Cline talks about recording Wilco’s latest record (Sky Blue Sky), the differences between working on that album and his latest solo effort with the Nels Cline Singers (Draw Breath), monolithic influences, and the importance of rhythm.

How was Sky Blue Sky recorded?
A lot of people are either charmed or extremely disappointed that Sky Blue Sky sounds so completely normal. And the reason that it sounds normal isn’t just because the songs aren’t all that whacky, but also because the technology and the approach that was used is very intentionally old school, and the goal of that wasn’t to sound retro, it was to sound warm and real. Jeff [Tweedy, Wilco singer/guitarist/front man] is obsessed with recording analog with decent microphones and mic preamps, and our engineer, T.J. Doherty, who cut his teeth at Sear Sound, is an expert at this. Even the demos were all done on 2" tape. Jeff can hear immediately when its digital. Glen [Kotche, Wilco drummer] prefers drum sounds that we associate with the classic sound of the ’70s, and I think there are only two songs that have reverb added. Most of the tracks are also completely un-EQ’d. It’s purist in a pretty extreme way. I know there’s compression involved, because rock and roll and compression go together, but there’s just enough to preserve the dynamics. Jim Scott, who mixed the record, is like the mixer version of me as a bandleader, in that he doesn’t spend years and years agonizing over one song, doing variations. He basically just waits for that moment of inspiration, throws up the faders, and bam—that’s it!

The performances were mostly recorded live, with minimal overdubs, and the vocals for seven out of the 12 songs were live. Usually Mike [Jorgensen, Wilco keyboardist/guitarist] would have to replace his piano parts because the drums would leak into his mics to an unacceptable extent. And, if a solo sucked, and it wasn’t bleeding too much into the drum mics, I’d maybe get another shot at it.

 “Hate it Here” and “Shake it Off” sound as if they were influenced by the Beatles.
I actually thought those songs were not major contenders for the album when we were working on them at the demo stage. And then Jeff became really fond of them, and worked hard to finish them, and he liked that they brought a more casual, rocking flavor to the record. I also think Jeff just wanted to sing those lyrics. It was Pat [Sansone, Wilco keyboardist] that started the riff on the chorus of “Shake it Off” that you could describe as Beatles-like, or as my brother Alex said, the Move. So we reworked what Pat was playing to get it away from being more “familiar,” or cliché. So its still a bit of a cliché, but slightly reformed. Also, speaking of antecedents, the Faces were also a consideration. Beyond any references, there’s just a lightheartedness and a goodtime rocking vibe, whether it’s the Beatles or the Stones or the Move, its just something that we all love, but I don’t think it was ever discussed—its just a natural outgrowth of our interaction together.

What’s another example of antecedent influence?
Jeff and I had talked at one point about doing a dual-guitar harmony part like the Allman Brothers, and after we wound up playing the octave-melody parts together on “Side With the Seeds,” he turned to me and said, “So there’s your Allman Brothers.” He knew that I loved them. We all do, but I felt when I joined the band that maybe they were over the Allman Brothers in terms of it being something one wanted to talk about a lot, because sometimes we tend to shy away from things that had monolithic impact. I’m not saying that the Allman Brothers had monolithic impact on the members of Wilco, but I can speak for myself—to the point where I didn’t listen to them for years and years. The same is true of Yes for me [laughs].

And then I revisit these things at a time when it seems that for some reason I can’t live without them in that moment—or I just want to reset—and quite often I find myself—well, I’m rarely disappointed, let’s put it that way. I don’t want to go too far into it, but one day I was listening to Idlewild South in my car, and before “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” came on, I had this moment where I thought, “Do I really want to listen to this? Do I want to go there?” That’s because that song had such monolithic impact on my life. But I said, “Oh, what the hell,” and it came on and I literally started to weep, for so many reasons. I wept when Duane Allman died—that was sort of the last straw for me, and the end of me even following much rock and roll for a few years. But beyond that, to sit there in my car imagining these Southern boys, hippies, maybe inspired a little by Santana or whatever besides the blues and whatever else they were into, coming up with this music together—I was just so moved by how beautiful it sounded, and how much chemistry there was there, that they had captured in their lives. Maybe I’m romanticizing, but it still spoke to me with so much coherence and depth that I was unprepared for it, even though I’d heard the song a million times in my life.

Is rhythm as important a component of your playing as melody and harmony?
Rhythmic interest is always very important to me, and that means holes in the rhythm as well as any kind of groovy triplets or whatever. A lot of guitar players these days—and I don’t mean to sound like a curmudgeon or a whiner—don’t play very rhythmically, by which I mean rhythmic variation. They may play eighth-notes or sixteenth-notes for an entire solo—but the notes are often so smooth and connected that it just sounds like a big smear. And, as such, they provide no sense of momentum or propulsion. I think rhythmic interest is something that can really move a track along without necessarily trying to ramp it up too far. It creates its own tension and release, and that’s what keeps us all on our toes.

How does recording your own music with the Nels Cline Singers differ from recording with Wilco?
Playing my own music I’m the leader and the final arbiter, which I’m not in Wilco. And I’m not uncomfortable taking orders and being a sideperson. In fact, I seem to thrive on it. As a result, I find doing my own music is probably the hardest thing I do. Sometimes the music itself is hard to play, and because it’s a trio, it takes a lot out of me. I find myself really drained from the experience of playing in my own band, even though, of course, I love it. Because its not just the effort of fronting a trio, but also I find that a lot of the pieces—maybe half—are emotionally draining for me, because they are based on a feeling that created them. And others are what I call the “improvising and finger-wiggler” pieces, where we all get to weigh in, and I get to get out of my own way, and not be didactic and controlling.

But the real difference besides the obvious content of the music is that the Wilco record was recorded without headphones, at low volume, over a really long period of time—at least by my standards. On my records, because of the upright bass, which is unrealistic in combination with drums and amplified guitar, we need to isolate it, so we need to wear headphones—and that’s always a different experience, and nothing like playing live. And we do everything in two days, although on this record I got luxurious and booked three days, because I wanted to do my little guitar overlays. I like to double things sometimes with different guitars and just get a “chimey-er” sound with natural chorusing. It is liberating, of course, as I always like to play my own music, and I don’t get a lot of opportunities to do that. Because it’s so hard—in case anyone hasn’t noticed—to survive playing creative improvised music, especially on the West Coast. Thank God people love guitar. If I were a trombone player I’d be hurtin’! In that way, I always know that I am lucky and blessed.