Thollem McDonas: The Beauty of Never Going Back Home€¦ · there in order to study with Aiko...

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Thollem McDonas: The Beauty of Never Going Back Home

By Published: August 7, 2013

What is often forgotten about improvised music is that it can come from anywhere. Though its

history is inextricably intertwined with jazz, improvisation is part and parcel of a myriad of

musical cultures. Pianist and composer Thollem McDonas is not just aware of this fact, it is part

of his daily existence. About 10 years ago, McDonas burst on to the improvised music scene;

fully formed and with a sound all his own—one that owes surprisingly little to jazz-piano- as-we-

know-it. Yet, McDonas is not disdainful or insecure about his relationship to jazz. If anything,

jazz is just one of many streams from which the forty-something pianist takes a measure of

creative nourishment.

The sheer energy with which McDonas plays is equaled only by that with which he approaches

his musical career. Possibly the most prolific improvising pianist to come down the pike since

Satoko Fujii, McDonas has released approximately 30 full length albums since 2005. It's worth

mentioning that most of these recordings are critically acclaimed, and that most of them are

co-operative projects on small indie labels with musicians whose backgrounds span the worlds

of classical, jazz, indie rock, experimental, and electronic music. Like Fujii, McDonas maintains

several longstanding creative partnerships—those with the Italian rock group Tsigoti, the Italian

classical contrabassist Stefano Scodanibbio [now deceased], Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich,

and saxophonist Rent Romus stand out—while constantly forming new alliances with musicians

as diverse as singer-songwriter Jad Fair, guitarist Nels Cline, and bassist William Parker.

McDonas is also known for his rapturous solo piano work which, again, transgresses genre

boundaries as much as it transcends them. And while his solo piano oeuvre is remarkable for its

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stylistic breadth and depth, McDonas has more pure technical ability than most musicians would

know what to do with. Yet technique is not his focus: he sees it as a tool to extract ideas using

his instrument of choice, the acoustic piano. Interestingly, McDonas has started experimenting

with electronic keyboards of various sorts, primarily—as he points out—to find "technological

solutions to musical ideas that can't be solved using an acoustic instrument." The electronic

work, in turn, informs the acoustic work, and so on.

A committed social activist, McDonas is, at this point in his life, in a state of perpetual travel.

Possibly one of the hardest-working improvisational musicians around today, he is constantly in

motion, playing solo concerts, concerts with various groups—both established and ad hoc—and

leading workshops and clinics. The sheer number of deep and lasting musical relationships he's

formed over the past decade is mind-boggling, and the quality of music that emerges from

these groups is stunning.

Thollem McDonas: OK, so tell me a little bit about yourself...

All About Jazz: [laughing]...you know far too much already! So, this is your first interview for

All About Jazz, and I'd like to discuss your development as an artist and get a sense of your

musical history, and how that intertwines with your personal history— particularly the time you

spent as a social activist; so, the first record you made came out in 2005. It is really great, yet

I never knew about it.

TM: Few do... [laughing]

AAJ: The drummer, Rick Rivera, is great; and you were obviously already playing at an

incredibly high level.

TM: Thanks; that was my first album that was officially released. And it got some press... all

really good.

AAJ: It's beautifully crafted music... it's clearly not completely improvised.


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TM: Yeah, those are all compositions of mine, specifically written for a piano and drums duo. I

wrote the lyrics as well.

AAJ: Just out of curiosity: what is Rick Rivera doing now?

TM: He's primarily a straight-ahead jazz drummer, and we met in Pacifica, where I was living at

the time. We became friends and he became interested in my music—it was a good challenge

for him at the time—and we made that album, plus another. So there are two albums of Rick

and I playing.

AAJ: You're from the Bay Area, and you started playing piano as a child...

TM: Well, my mother forced me to play the piano, actually [laughs]. I had to play the piano. It

was required.

AAJ: So, she was a musician—were both your parents musicians?

TM: Yeah, my mom was a piano teacher. And my dad played the piano; mostly in piano bars.

My mother forced me to play up until I was about 13, and that's when I began to make the

piano my own. And then I had this epiphany. I literally woke up and realized that I had all of

these ideas, and a lot of technical ability, and a broad knowledge of the last 400 years or so of

music history...

AAJ: Did that knowledge base include jazz? Or was it purely European classical music?

TM: I was studying purely classical music. But I did listen to a lot of jazz, and we lived pretty

close to Kuumbwa [Jazz Center] in Santa Cruz. They had a tradition of Monday night concerts.

Touring jazz musicians who played in San Francisco or Oakland or Berkeley on the weekends;

they would play at Kuumbwa on Monday nights. It was just a tiny little place back then. It's

much bigger now. It's still great, but it's way bigger these days, but back then, it seated maybe

35 people. And we all sat on these aluminum bleacher seats right up against the stage. You

were so close to the artists... I literally got sweated on by these guys. I saw players like

McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones and saxophonist Pharoah Sanders there. So hearing that, and being in

that environment, was incredibly important for me, even though I was exclusively studying

classical at the time. I never studied jazz per se, though I listened to tons of it.


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AAJ: And this ties into one of your new releases on the Wild Silence label, Dear Future. It's an

archival release comprised mostly of recordings from when you were a teenager. Were some of

them from cassettes?

TM: It's all from cassette tapes...

AAJ: I was amazed to hear experimenting with prepared piano. It seems you were familiar with

people like John Cage very early on. Was your early awareness of the avant-garde also from

your mother's influence?

TM: Yeah, through my mom. And while Cage wasn't at the forefront of my musical education,

he was in there. I had a really well-rounded musical education, from the Renaissance and

everything up to and including the 20th Century. So Cage was in there, and as soon as I

understood that there was 20th Century music, which was different from 19th Century music,

which was different from 18th Century music, and so on... I was fascinated.

I had always played around with the inside of the piano, long before I'd even heard of prepared

piano or John Cage. And people ask me "When did you start composing?" or "When did you

start improvising?" and the answer is: "I never stopped." Some of my earliest memories were

crawling up into the piano...

AAJ:...or sitting beneath the piano. Every kid wants to be down there.

TM: Oh yeah—that's totally where I want to be. Listening to the piano underneath is like

nothing else. And getting those different perspectives, hearing the piano from different vantage

points, was really exciting to me.

So, these recordings are from when I was in high school and college. I had some really

incredible teachers; Allen Strange and Dwight Cannon, both at San Jose State University.

Dwight Cannon founded the first Jazz Studies program on the West Coast, and Allen Strange

started the first Electro-Acoustics program on the West Coast. Allen was my composition

teacher. Lou Harrison taught there, and my mother took a lot of classes from him when I was

just a child. I knew Lou Harrison when I was a six-year old kid! My mom used to take me along

to his classes, and I'd see him all the time; I still get chills just thinking about that. But I went

there in order to study with Aiko Onishi, who was a great, great piano teacher. She could have

been teaching at any conservatory in the world, but San Jose was where she wanted to live.

Aiko had a very different perspective on music than Allen Strange did, for instance, but now I

see a lot of parallels between them. Both of them lived exactly the way they wanted to live.

That was really inspiring to me. I'm equally as inspired by the way a particular musician lived as

I am by the actual music they created. Seeing how they dealt with being a musician in the

context of their day-to-day life is interesting to me; especially in terms of my day-to-day life as

a musician.

AAJ: That ties really well into some of the decisions that led to your becoming a human rights

activist. You seem to have integrated your social activism and your music pretty thoroughly...

TM: It's pretty well-integrated now, but it wasn't so well-integrated in the past. I really

struggled with this. I quit college during the Persian Gulf War in order to protest, and I never

returned to the classical performance trajectory. When I look back on it, though, that was never

really my nature: being cooped up for hours a day in a practice room playing someone else's

music, wearing a suit and tie to partake in an athletic event. It's so absurd! It just wasn't my


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nature. I wasn't interested in piano competitions, and that's a significant part of what you have

to do if you want to succeed in that world. And I'm not putting concert pianists down or

anything—I have tremendous respect for those who have chosen that path. It's just that the

classical piano performance world itself is not my natural world.

So I quit everything during the buildup to the Gulf War, in 1989. I had started an animal rights

group at the university a year earlier, and we actually accomplished some things, which was

great. I was also involved in the environmental movement on campus, and I was interested in

grassroots organizing and had started to organize protests. And during the build-up to the

Persian Gulf War, I decided that I didn't want to partake in society anymore, at least not in the

normal ways. I decided that I didn't want to participate in the circulation of money anymore. I

didn't pay rent, so I was basically homeless for several years. I didn't work a job; the way I saw

it, my job was activism. I got a government grant in the form of food stamps [laughs] and I

basically lived out of a backpack, traveling up and down the coast, protesting.

I protested a couple of times at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site on Shoshone land, where I also

performed with my band, The Hundredth Monkey Generation. We were a post-Frank Zappa

protest band, of sorts. We never took any money for a performance, and we never promoted

ourselves. This is not something I'd recommend to people considering a career in music

[laughter]. That was just our choice at the time. We didn't want to have anything to do with

money, whatsoever. We saw our music purely as a form of protest, so we played

demonstrations and riots, and also at fundraising events. One memorable gig was a two- day

series of concerts before a five day-long walk starting at Red Rock, Nevada, to the Test Site.

[Singer- songwriter] Richie Havens also performed, and we opened for him. We were the dinner

band each night after each day's walk, out in the middle of the desert.

So, music was still part of my life. But I had to cut the umbilical cord, so to speak, from my past

musical life, and was trying to do something different with music. I never stopped composing or

improvising, but the whole idea of making a career out of it just didn't make any sense to me,

once I was off that classical performance trajectory. So, I had started doing a lot of ecological

work: restoration, urban farming, guerrilla farming. I stayed with that for a number of years,

and eventually started accepting jobs as a piano accompanist; ballet, opera, musical theater,

and for different types of soloists. I'm a very good accompanist. I'm good sight-reader and a

good coach. But I really, really did not want to be in that world again. So, it was strange for me.

I had this very specific skill, and I was really good at it, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

AAJ: I hear precision in your music. It's precise in the best possible way, because it still has

this tremendous forward motion. You sound like a man on a mission when you're playing, and

it's refreshing to listen to someone who has identified as an improvising musician who isn't

trying to hide that super-rigorous classical background. There's an honesty there that's really

inspiring. So, there were clearly a lot of aspects of the classical world that were just utterly

stifling you as an artist...


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TM: ...and many others that opened me up. The discipline it took to learn the standard classical

repertoire... I'm really grateful for that. My immersion in Western music history really gave me

a deeper perspective into the history of Western thought and philosophy. Music was a part of

that, and a reflection of that. All of that remains important to me now, as a musician. And I see

myself in that lineage; we're all part of that, whether we realize it or not. So I definitely don't

discount that.

AAJ: There are others who've integrated a rigorous classical background into their music; guys

like Fred Van Hove, Misha Mengelberg, and Alexander von Schlippenbach. The jazz aspect of

their work seems to be more informed by Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill, and Thelonious Monk,

whereas you are coming at it from a different angle. Do you feel like you stand apart, somehow,

from the mainstream in improvised music? Not that there's such a thing as 'mainstream

improvised music...'

TM: [laughing] Yeah, I'm definitely not a mainstream improvisor. As far as pianists go, I'm just

not as familiar with them. The instrumentalists I do know are the ones I play with regularly, and

most of them aren't pianists. I don't have the time to really listen to other pianists. I'd go so far

as to say that I'm not terribly curious about other pianists. I don't want to know too much

because I don't want to be influenced by them—positively or negatively. I don't know if I'm

right in this because I do know that most other people have the completely opposite viewpoint:

they want to study and listen to other pianists and somehow answer the questions that they

raise. But that's not where I'm at.

By the same token, if I share a concert with von Schlippenbach, for instance, that would be

great. I'd love to be there hearing what he does in the moment. In that moment. And that's

what's compelling to me: being present in the music in that moment. We could respond to each

other in a live setting. That's interesting to me. But I can't see myself sitting there listening to a

recording of von Schlippenbach; not that it wouldn't be rewarding or interesting to me, but it's

just not that compelling.

I spend most of my time working on my own recordings, and I don't sit around listening to

them once they're finished. I'd rather be outdoors listening to the birds and the wind and things

like that when I'm not working on my own music.


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AAJ: So, that ties into another topic: the multiplicity of directions your music has taken over

the years. Not only are you prolific, you're prolific across several really disparate genres. Even

you seem to have a hard time placing yourself in any sort of stylistic continuum. You refer to

one of your bands, Tsigoti, as a punk band, but I feel that some wouldn't agree. That said, I can

see where you're coming from, especially in terms of the music's energy...

TM: We call ourselves punk because that's our attitude. I really think of punk as an attitude,

not as a specific outcome. We composed, played and recorded each of the Tsigoti albums in

three days—there's four of them starting with The Brutal Reality Of Modern Brutality—which

came out under a different band name, War Is Terror, Terror Is War—and there's a rawness and

energy there that just doesn't give a shit about polishing things. All of the music comes from

spur-of-the-moment ideas. Our first album, I had a bunch of pages of words about war. The

words are all about the conflict between Lebanon and Israel that happened in 2006. I was in

Prague at the time and just wrote and wrote about this conflict without intending to turn the

words into songs. It was all I could do in that moment: write and drink beer [laughs]. I mean,

people are dying out there, and here I am drinking beer in a bar in Prague, writing about it

[laughs]. But that's gotta be done. It's my way of living in the world and contributing to the

world, and I've gotta trust that. So when we decided to make our first album I had those words

which I made into lyrics, and we went into the studio with this shitty piano and we all just

banged it out.

AAJ: Tsigoti is similar in sound and spirit to the music created by the Rock In Opposition

movement; bands like Zero Pop, The Ex, Unrest Work & Play... combining super-sharp social

awareness with relentless musical experimentalism. Listening to Tsigoti's music, it's hard to

believe your CDs were each written and recorded from start to finish in three days...


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TM: Yep. Three days from start to finish.

AAJ: So, you are constantly coming up with new projects. You always seem to be doing solo

piano concerts, and there's the new album with Jad Fair and the drummer from the Yeah Yeah

Yeahs, Brian Chase. You guys have the best band name...

TM: ...The Whistling Joy Jumpers [laughs]. That is a great name.

AAJ: So, you have a new album out, as well, Surprising Wooden Clocks (Thick Syrup Records,

2013). Is this a one-off collaboration, or is it an ongoing project?

TM: Well, it's basically a one-off, or it could be an ongoing thing. Jad and I have worked

together before, primarily with Martha Colburn, a filmmaker in New York/Amsterdam. We've

done some performances together with her films, and we talked about doing a musical project

as a duo pretty much from the outset. So, the next time I was down in Austin, TX, where he

lives, we got together and dedicated two days to making a recording at his house. And, later

on, I asked Brian if he'd like to contribute, so he overdubbed the percussion. But our approach

is totally 100% improvised. It's improvised songwriting. Jad had the words written on sheets of

notebook paper and we did everything in one or two takes. Every single thing on there. I

literally had no idea what his words were gonna be, at all. And he had no idea what I was going

to play, at all. And Jad's a really great improvisor. I listen to it and I'm fooled myself.

AAJ: It sounds so worked out.

TM: It sounds very worked out. But there is nothing worked out about it at all. Not at all. It was

totally spontaneous or on the edge of totally spontaneous. Jad was great to work with. He had

this big packet of words, and when we were ready to start recording I asked: "Well, would you

like to tell me what this is about?" And he said "No." So I asked: "Well, how about the title?" He

said something that I don't remember and immediately started counting the song in: "One...

Two... Three... Four..." just like that, and we were playing it. And when that one was finished,

he'd rip that page off, toss it aside and start right into the next one... "One... Two... Three...

Four..." and we were into the next one. And all the while I was scrambling madly to find

different sounds on the keyboard and messing around with the pedals—some of which were

mine and some that were his—so that each song would sound a little different. I mean, it was

as improvised as you can get!


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AAJ: So, it's not free jazz, but it is totally improvised. Only it's improvised songs.

TM: Exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's improvised songs. And I love that about it. In his liner

notes to the album, Clifford Allen also makes that point. Here's this huge canon of improvised

music from the last 50 years or so, and then there's this; and this is improvised music. And

where does this music fit in with all of that? I love that about this album. And with Brian- -I

asked him specifically not to listen to the songs before recording his parts. And I suggested

which sorts of sounds to use on which tracks, using items he had from his apartment—kitchen

implements, for example. I also requested that he record his parts very simply, just in his own

apartment. Because that's the way Jad and I made the recording: at Jad's home, very simply.

And Brian came up with some great sounds that way. It was perfect, really. The guys who

mixed and mastered the CD volunteered to do it for free, because they really just wanted to be

a part of it. It was so great for [recording and mastering engineers] Marcus Lawyer and James

Talambas to do that. And [label owner] Travis McElroy from Thick Syrup was way into it! It all

just came together so easily...

AAJ: ...and you've also launched a project that emphasizes a different aspect of your

improvised songcraft ethic. A series of duets titled Thollem Electric [note: this project has

subsequently been re-titled KeyngDrum Overdrive] which pits your electric keyboards versus

different drummers. Is it just going to be you with different drummers?

TM: Yeah, for the time being it's gonna be me and different drummers, for a long time. And I'm

really excited about this.

AAJ: So are those drummers!

TM: [laughing] I've got three drum/keyboard duets so far: with you in Santa Fe, with Csaba

Csendes, in Budapest, and with Andre Custodio, in San Francisco. There are obviously some

commonalities between the three sets, but each drummer has a very different approach which,

in turn, brings out different aspects of my playing.

AAJ: Do you have plans to attempt the same thing with different instruments—guitarists, for

example? Or in trio formats?

TM: It depends on what happens along the course of this series with drummers. What's gonna

emerge from that? I really don't know...

AAJ: It was frankly quite surprising to me that you were involved at all with electric keyboards.


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What's your history with electronics, or electric keyboards?

TM: There's not much of one, really. It's been less than a year for me. I've messed around with

other people's effects pedals on occasion, but never owned my own. Now that's all different. I

have my own pedals and have gone through a variety of synthesizers and Rhodes, and I'm

figuring it out as I go. It's a radically different jumping-off point for me. I've stayed disciplined

to the acoustic piano all of my life for a reason, and it's paid off. I really believe in applying

technological solutions to musical ideas that can't be solved using an acoustic instrument. To

me, that's what technology is for. That's my firm stand on this issue. Otherwise, I feel like I'm

taking shortcuts. At this point in my life, and at this point in my development as a musician, it's

time to jump into electronics. It's informing me in a way that is beneficial to my acoustic

playing. It's new, and it's really different.

AAJ: I really enjoyed the way you just jumped right into it. You're turning on all these effects,

twisting dials, stomping on pedals; and there's joy there.

TM: Well, it's the beginner's mind, really. When you try something out for the first time, there

are no expectations. I'm not a master of this stuff. I can either get out the instruction book and

read it thoroughly and examine it systematically, or I can just start flipping switches and

turning knobs, and see what happens. Me, I'm gonna jump right into it, you know? That's the

fun of it. And that's a form of improvisation. The difference is, for me, when I press a key on a

piano, I know what's gonna come out; if you give me a new effects pedal, I don't necessarily

know.

AAJ: You mentioned fun, and that's really interesting to me because many people see

improvised music as a very serious pursuit. Yet, there's a whimsy, humor, and human warmth

to your playing; is that something you are consciously projecting when you're playing?

TM: I'm glad you get that sense of warmth, but not really. I'm not joking around when I play

and I don't try to deliberately bring humor into my music. By the same token, there's a lot of

heaviness in life. And if you're awake to the suffering of other people and other species, and if

you're aware of politics, and you know where our food and our clothes come from... there's a

lot of heavy shit to think about there. It's just so much to deal with psychologically. It takes a

toll. And for me, one way to deal with that is humor. And yet, I have to look straight at the

horrors in the world. I have to look at them because otherwise I feel that I am living a lie. So,

there's gotta be the truth of looking at the face of reality, while at the same time finding some

lightness in the world. Otherwise, I can't live. I think that's what you might be hearing in my

music. Because for me, improvisation is very serious. I see improvisation as a serious endeavor.

A meditation. A practice that has implications and consequences on all planes of existence. So it

is serious to me, and when I'm playing, I'm completely focused.

AAJ: The first time I saw you play, you were tremendously focused and aware. It was a

workshop with a large, potentially chaotic assemblage of players—from first-timers to guys

who've been on the scene here for decades—and you drew some truly incredible moments out

of it. People were talking about that workshop for weeks! Is that something you do a lot as you

travel around?

TM: [laughs] I'd like to do more than I am. I started teaching music when I was 13, and it's

important to me. Even though large ensemble free improvisation can be really challenging...

and I'm sure you guys thought there was too much talking in the beginning, but the way it

turned out, it was all pretty necessary in the end. Large ensemble free improvisation can get

really frustrating and boring unless you agree on a certain type of focus.

AAJ: You were leading; but the whole process seemed really democratic...

TM: Well, I think that's one of the truly beautiful things about improvisation. It is democratic;

or, maybe, anarchistic. I see myself, in ideal terms, as an anarchist. And to me that means


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taking on a sense of personal responsibility to the table, as well as a sense of mutual respect.

And you have to realize that not everyone is going to have the same skill set, or the same skill

level. But everybody has an equally valid perspective, and if you ignore someone's perspective,

you're missing out on that perspective. And you miss out on the potential benefit of that

person's contribution. And ultimately, the entire ensemble misses out on that benefit. That's the

way I see it. That's much of what free improvisation is all about for me, that element of mutual

respect and listening. We have to listen in order to respond to and support each other...

AAJ: I hear a lot of that exact sort of interaction on an album you recorded recently with

Nels Cline and William Parker, The Gowanus Sessions (Porter Records, 2012). There's some

absolutely amazing interplay there. Tell us how that session came about.

TM: I'd heard Nels' recording with Thurston Moore [Pillow Wand (Little Brother Records, 1997)],

and then I heard Nels and Thurston, play live at the Wilco Festival two years ago. Nels had

found out I was in the area and he invited me to the festival, and I was really inspired by that

performance. Not just by the playing, which was amazing, but also by the opportunity to hear

their screaming music played over a powerful sound system in a large concert setting. This

was... so... huge.

I've known Nels for a few years. He'd written a composition for the Estamos Ensemble, which is

half Mexican musicians and half US musicians. I'd started that project because I wanted to

facilitate more cross-border collaboration between Mexican and American musicians; both

improvisors and composers. William Parker also wrote a piece for us, as did [composer]

Pauline Oliveros and Joan Jeanrenaud from the Kronos Quartet, and Vinny Golia. From Mexico,

the composers were Ana Lara, Juan Felipe Waller, and Jorge Torres. The double-disc album was

released on Edgetone a few years ago. So now, a subset of the Estamos Ensemble, the Estamos

Trio, is releasing a CD for Relative Pitch Records—a new label out of New York—which is coming

out this summer. The trio is me plus two Mexican members of the large Ensemble, [vocalist]

Carmina Escobar and [percussionist] Milo Tamez.

So, getting back to The Gowanus Session: I was working on this concept of hyper-tremolos to

energize the piano to get the overtones to pop out, kind of like Tuvan throat singing. Under the

right conditions I can produce the same sorts of effects on the piano, but it takes a lot of

stamina and physical strength to make it happen, and I don't know how much longer I'll be able

to do it to the level that I want! It's an athletic endeavor. So, the original idea I thought of, for

Nels, was to have him improvise melodically using feedback based on the overtones and

harmonics that he was hearing from the piano. He was totally into the idea!

People often ask me why I chose this person or that person for a particular project. And the

answer is that the people I work with are the ones that inspired the ideas in the first place. My

work with Nels is a good example of that sort of collaboration. Then I had this epiphany one day

to ask William to participate in this project with us, and he was totally into it too. His role was to

act as a conduit between Nels and I by playing both roles in his own way. I think Nels and

William were really excited to play together, and I love that I was responsible for them meeting

and playing for the first time. And it was very well recorded.

AAJ: This is a truly amazing trio—such an awesome combination of players—though somewhat

unlikely, perhaps...

TM: People do seem to think it's a strange combination of players, and I guess I can see that,

and at the same time I think, "What?" I mean, isn't that what we're really after, anyway?

Figuring out the beauty of the strange, putting stuff together in ways unlike anyone else has

done before? I'm not necessarily trying to be an innovator, but I'm intrigued with the whole

question of: "What would happen if...?" In fact, I call my approach, "What if? Why not?" music.

So, we were all able to meet in New York at the same time—which itself verges on the

miraculous [laughs]—and we had four hours in the studio. And we made this album. We had a


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great time before, during and after playing and I think that spirit comes through in the music.

AAJ: I wish I had heard it sooner, because it certainly would've been in my Top 10 records of

2012.

TM: Yeah, that album flew a little under the radar as well, believe it or not. I don't know how

that's possible [laughs]. Even with Nels and William playing together for the first time. It got

great reviews, too. Even the reviewer from JazzTimes had some interesting things to say, which

I particularly enjoyed [laughs]. It was fascinating because the first thing he said was along the

lines of: "Well, they've deliberately made a record that is impossible to listen to..." And you can

see during the course of the review writing process that he began to really grasp what this

record is all about. There was this process of evolution going on, and by the end of the piece,

he's saying: ..."and I can't stop listening to it." So, the pull quote for the publicity is "An

intentionally unlistenable album that I can't stop listening to." [laughs]

AAJ: [laughs] Well, you've nailed the demographic with that quote, because when I see

something like that in print, I'm thinking "I've gotta have that in my life!"

TM: I'm particularly proud of that record. I got Nels and William together, and set up the

recording session, did the editing, and it sounds absolutely amazing. The disc was mastered by

Bob Olhsson, who is a multi-Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer, and he did a great

job. He started at Motown when they were still in Detroit. He goes way back. As we were

working on the album, he was telling me about when Motown went from three-track to eight-

track. They were the second studio in the world to get that capability, and then he and all of the

other Motown engineers went to Abbey Road studios in 1968. It's an awesome story. He's

based in Nashville now, and one of his true passions is experimental music.

AAJ: That is amazing. It helps to have friends in high places.

TM: Indeed it does. Bob and I will be working on a new solo album of mine I'm calling Thollem's

Confluence: So Many Heavens, So Many Hells, in November. I'll be actively looking for a label

for that album soon.

AAJ: I would also like to discuss your project with John Dieterich, the guitarist best known for

his ongoing work with the experimental rock group Deerhoof. I take it you've worked with


12 of 17 8/13/13 7:03 PM

[drummer] Greg Saunier...

TM: I've been friends with Deerhoof for quite some time, and I have played a bunch with Greg

in the past, here and there, including the Blue Note in NY. It was Martha Colburn's idea to get

John and I together to do a live soundtrack for her films at the San Francisco Museum of

Modern Art.

AAJ: In The Valley Of The Cloudbuilder (Post-Consumer Records, 2013) is so different from the

other things you've done, yet the sound is unmistakably yours—and John's. This collaboration is

a free-standing aspect of your artistry; it's as if you both had this idea of what the record was

going to sound like before you did it.

TM: Oh yes, John and I work really well together. It's a bit uncanny. When we are editing,

without even thinking or looking at each other, we'd both say: "Cut there!" Very often. And this

would happen again and again. We have a great time working together, we both love to

collaborate, and we really trust one another. One thing we realized as we were putting the

record together was that this music is not really based in any sort of cultural framework at all.

In many ways, it's purely non-intentional music. We're not playing rock, we're not playing jazz

or free jazz, we're not playing noise, or classical, or post-classical, or whatever [laughs]. It's

completely genre-free! And it's not even intended to be genre-free. We had very, very specific

ideas about how the music was going to be structured...

AAJ: ...and these related to the images and thematic content of Martha Colburn's film?

TM: No, actually, John and I did an album [All for Now (Dromos Records, 2012)], which we

recorded the day after we performed the live soundtrack for Martha's film at SFMOMA. It's on a

label called Dromos Records, based in Portugal. They do everything by hand, all in limited

quantities.

AAJ: An artisanal record label!

TM: Yes, totally artisanal. So this is our second recording together. And we had this very

specific concept and very elaborate overall structure around the music. We were going to record

a bunch of large pieces, and these were going to be surrounded by smaller, shorter pieces

which were, in turn, going to be surrounded by even smaller shorter pieces. And the smaller

pieces were going to be repeated throughout the album, but in different ways. We had it all

mapped out. So we did the recordings, but then we lost the notes. And here we were with all of

this music recorded, and no idea—for the life of us—of how it was all supposed to be put

together. It's funny, because what you're hearing was created by a process that, itself, cannot

be reproduced! We created the music using a very fixed set of ideas that we essentially forgot,

and created an entirely different album based on this disparate material.

AAJ: You're right, that is an interesting process... [laughs]

TM: [laughs] Yeah, really interesting. There's absolutely no way we could repeat this unless we

somehow hit each other on the head simultaneously and got amnesia...

AAJ: ...so you'll continue collaborating [laughs].

TM: Oh yeah [laughs]. We're also working together in the Hand to Man Band, which is me,

John, and former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt. Tim Barnes was the original drummer, but now

we have Mike Guarino on drums. We just recorded our second album together.

AAJ: So, how many projects do you have running in parallel?


13 of 17 8/13/13 7:03 PM

TM: There are so many I haven't mentioned yet. We've just touched on a few of them here.

I've got a great trio, MAGIMC, in Italy with [saxophonist] Edoardo Marraffa - Tonino Miano and

[percussionist] Stefano Giust, and another one called the Soar Trio with [saxophonist] Skeeter

Shelton and [bassist] Joel Peterson that's based in Detroit. I'm working with [saxophonist] Rent

Romus in the Bloom Project, which has several records out. There's Electric Nashville, with

[guitarist] Ed Pettersen, [violinist] Tracy Silverman, [vocalist] Ryan Norris, and Dylan Simon on

electronics. I'm continuing to collaborate with [bass clarinetist] Arrington de Dionyso on 10,000

Tigers. It's music that we describe as being relentlessly ecstatic, and it is, man! We performed

at the Cecil Taylor festival last year at Issue Project Room.

I've got a quartet of incredible Italian string players in Daniele Roccato, Francesco Dillon and

Marco Rogliano. We've got an album coming out on Setola Di Maiale. Stefano Scodanibbio put

this group together not long before he died. Also a duo album with [percussionist] Gino Robair

on the same label. I've got a duo album with Lukas Ligeti coming out on Leo Records and a duo

album with [guitarist/vocalist] Sabrina Siegel as well. There's also a new project with The

Stooges sax man Steve Mackay, some solo explorations and performing live to Martha's films in

a full scale performance called Triumph Of The Wild. I've got a new band with Brian Chase and

Todd Clouser called Hot Pursuit Of Happiness; we're recording in August. I'm also in Matthew

Barney's newest film, which was shot in Detroit, and I've just started talking about making a

feature length film as a collaboration between Postcommodity and the Estamos Project.

AAJ: It's just endless... how do you keep it all going?

TM: Well, Angela and I work a lot; pretty much relentlessly. We collaborate on the travel and

documentation, and we're compulsively working on multiple projects; perpetually on the road,

participating with a wide of array of artists and communities. It's also very difficult financially as

an independent artist. We are really just barely breaking even financially, so we are always

seeking new ways to expand our audience and this continually brings out new ideas. Actually,

Angela and I have been thinking of spending a year in one place so we can compile and archive

our accumulation of videos, recordings, photos, and interviews of musicians and artists in the

various communities that we've participated in during the last 6 years of perpetual touring.


14 of 17 8/13/13 7:03 PM

We're also writing a book and considering an interactive installation that would, itself,

eventually go on tour. This would be a real happening, both experiential and educational. We

think our unique perspective and tons of documentation will be beneficial to many people!

AAJ: You are doing everything right, coming up with innovative ideas, still dreaming big, and

yet you're barely breaking even.

TM: We are! We're doing everything right. I get consistently great reviews internationally, and I

think people need to know—especially people outside of the music world—how difficult it really

is for musicians and other artists just to get by, let alone make it, in today's world. They may

not want to hear about it...

AAJ: And as the means for acquiring music and archiving music are changing, no one seems to

think about how an artist is going to get paid for what they're producing.

TM: Yes, that's correct. And musicians are stubborn. We don't want to admit that albums are

becoming insignificant, for instance.

AAJ: ...a lot of us are still dealing with the obsolescence of the album. Online music sources are

very much attuned to selling individual songs.

TM: And there's free music everywhere, available for download. We're bombarded with content

from the internet. And can we stop it? Should we try to? I don't believe it should be stopped, or

can be. We, as musicians and artists, must learn to adapt. I think that the information needs to

be free. It needs to be out there. After I die, what do I want my life to mean? I want my stuff

out there. In terms of making money off of it, aside from providing for myself and Angela,

having health insurance, and not suffering too much, there's very little I really care about,

money- wise. But what I really want to do, ultimately, is save the world [laughs].

AAJ: [laughing]...and music is, after all, the healing force of the universe.

TM: Well, there's one more thing I'd like to mention, concerning saving the world [laughs],

because we do travel perpetually, living out of backpacks. I play a lot of concerts, night after

night after night in a different city, and moving on. Sometimes we're able to stay in one place

for a bit—when I'm giving a workshop, for example. Sometimes I can stay for a week or two

and really collaborate with local musicians, artists, filmmakers, dancers, and so on, and develop

projects together. As a result, I have projects, ensembles, bands all over Europe and North

America. And the beauty of that, philosophically, is that I never go back home after a tour. I'm

continually moving forward.

Of course, I return to places that I've been to before, but I'm always moving forward, and never

going back. For me, this is a very important aspect of my work. I've been able to establish deep

and lasting relationships with people all over. I feel that this is another aspect of my activism

that branches out from what I've done in the past. So many of the answers to these bigger

questions we've touched on can be found when communities cooperate. Cooperation over

competition. Because of my lifestyle, I can really participate in a wide variety of communities

and often act as a conduit between them.

By constant traveling, being constantly in motion, perpetually crossing borders—musically,

culinarily, linguistically, ethically—is something you can't replace with technology. You can go

online, of course, and hear music from anywhere and look at pictures and videos of what those

places are like, but that doesn't even come close to the experience of actually being in a

different country, walking down the street. When you're there, you have to communicate

somehow, and observe the local customs. And if you want to go to places and play improvised

music, you become aware of the culture of the improvising musicians within each of those

communities. Because they're different everywhere you go. There are different approaches, and

different ways of interacting, within each of these communities.


15 of 17 8/13/13 7:03 PM

AAJ: Do you find that this sense of community is affecting other musicians? I get the sense that

a lot of young jazz musicians, for example, are getting in touch with their own roots in a very

fundamental and profound way. It's all leading to some very interesting and beautiful music.

TM: Jazz is America's classical music. It's also America's folk music. It's so deeply rooted in us

and, as Americans, we have a very deep reverence for it. Which we should. In Europe, they

have a reverence as well, but they hear it differently than we do. And, if you think about all of

the American musicians who've actually had to move to Europe in order to survive, they're all

on the cutting- edge of music. And that's where a lot of the influences come from in European

jazz: from the real innovators. The ones who couldn't make it in the States because their music

was too innovative. So many incredible musicians have wound up in Europe...

AAJ: ...only to record albums for BYG [laughs]...

TM: [laughs] That's right!

Tsigoti, Read Between The Lines...Think Outside Them (Post- Consumer, 2013)

Bad News From Houston (with John Dieterich), In The Valley Of The Cloudbuilder (Post-

Consumer, 2013)

Thollem McDonas, Dear Future: Archival recordings from 1983- 1989 (Wild Silence Records,

2013)

The Whistling Joy Jumpers (with Jad Fair & Brian Chase), Surprising Wooden Clocks (Thick

Syrup Records, 2013)

Estamos Trio, People's Historia (Relative Pitch Records, 2013)

Soar Trio, The View From Up (Edgetone, 2013)

Thollem McDonas, William Parker and Nels Cline, The Gowanus Session (Porter Records, 2012)

The Hand To Man Band, You Are Always On Our Minds (Post- Consumer, 2012)

Tsigoti, The Imagination Liberation Front Thinks Again (Post- Consumer, 2012)

Estamos Trio, JimpaniKustakwaKaJankwariteecherï (Edgetone, 2011)

Thollem McDonas and Arrington DeDionyso, Ten Thousand Tigers (Pine Cone Alley, 2011)

Thollem McDonas, Gone Beyond Reason To Find One (Edgetone, 2010)


16 of 17 8/13/13 7:03 PM

Thollem McDonas and Stefano Scodanibbio, On Debussy's Piano And... (Die Schachtel, 2010)

Thollem McDonas, Gigantomachia (ESP-Disk, 2009)

Thollem McDonas and Nicola Guazzaloca, Noble Art (Amirani Records, 2009)

Thollem McDonas, Two Revolutions—Box Deserter (Edgetone, 2008)

Tsigoti, The Brutal Reality Of Modern Brutality—War Is Terror, Terror Is War (Edgetone, 2008)

Thollem McDonas and Arrington DeDionyso, Intuition, Science, And Sex (Edgetone, 2008)

Thollem McDonas, Somuchheaven Somuchhell (Saravah, 2008)

Bloom Project, Prismatic Season (Edgetone, 2008)

Thollem McDonas, Racingthesun Chasingthesun (Creative Sources, 2008)

Thollem McDonas, Poor Stop Killing Poor (Edgetone, 2007)

Thollem McDonas and Edoardo Ricci, Sono Contento Di Stare Qua (Edgetone, 2006)

Thollem McDonas, Nuclearbomb Cavepainting (Pax Recordings, 2006)

Thollem McDonas and Rick Rivera, I'll Meet You Halfway Out In The Middle Of It All (Edgetone,

2006)

Thollem McDonas, Rent Romus, Jon Brumit, and Steven Baker, The Bloom Project (Edgetone,

2006)

Thollem McDonas and Rick Rivera Everything's Going Everywhere (Edgetone, 2005)

Thollem McDonas Related

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