Occasionally an artist comes along that defies musical categorization and Chris Thile is one such musician. His stint with Sean and Sara Watkins in the bluegrass band, Nickel Creek, introduced his considerable skills on mandolin and his subsequent work in Punch Brothers has just augmented that. He’s also got an impressive collection of solo albums as well as some surprising team-ups with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan and Edgar Meyer, with whom he won a Grammy for “The Goat Rodeo Sessions” in 2013, and in 2014 he and Meyer won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album for “Bass + Mandolin.” With Ma and Meyer, Thile released a collection of works from Bach called “Bach Trios” in January 2017. When I learned that he was coming to the Waterville Opera House, I put in for an interview — my first with him — and was thrilled when he called me from his home in Brooklyn. He’s performed in Maine several times over the years so I began our conversation by asking him if he’d ever played at the WOH before.

Thile: Not that I recall. I feel like I would remember such a thing, so no, I don’t think so. I’ve only played in Maine locales other than Portland a handful of times, and it’s been a while ago. I’m really excited to get up there though.

Q: Well, Joan Baez stood on the stage there and declared that it was one of the best sounding halls she’s ever performed in, and it was recently refurbished, too.
Thile: Oh, I can’t wait to hear it! That sounds like heaven, honestly, especially after everything that we’ve all been through the last year and a half. To me, getting back into a beautiful hall is just high up on my list of luxuries that maybe I under appreciated up until now.

Q: In preparing for our chat, I listened to “Thanks for Listening” and was pleasantly surprised because musically you’re all over the map with classical, rock, jazz and bluegrass influences present on those 10 tracks. What can folks expect up there at this performance in the opera house?
Thile: Well, this is a solo performance, just me, my voice and a mandolin, and so very different than anything on “Thanks for Listening” except for one track towards the end called “Balboa,” which is just mandolin and voice. But it will be very much like the record that this tour is in support of which is called “Laysongs,” which is only mandolin and voice, it’s my sole mandolin-and-voice record so far. So I’ll be doing things off of that but also things that are sort of weighing heavily upon my soul from throughout my activity thus far.

Q: Could you talk a little more about this new solo album of yours? What was the inspiration behind it?
Thile: I feel like the last year and a half has been a time for a lot of us and it’s a record that reflects that. It’s solo, much like so much of the pandemic has been for so many of us, and it’s a textural reflection of that but then also it’s sort of existential musing I feel like also reflects how the pandemic has been, at least for me and lots of my friends. Being able to get back to places like your opera house, this is what I’ve been looking forward to the most: to have a brand new batch of material and to be able to share it with y’all, that’s what I’ve missed the most, and the record kind of deals with a lot of that thinking, from the first song, “Laysong” and ending with the Hazel Dickens’ number, “Won’t You Come Sing for Me.” So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to that evening!

Q: Now is this album your own compositions — you mentioned a Hazel Dickens’ song?
Thile: It’s six originals and three non-originals. There’s that Hazel Dickens song and then there’s a poem by Leonard Cohen that Buffy Sainte-Marie improvised a song to that, then I sort of improvised based on her improvisation of this Leonard Cohen poem; and then there’s a piece by the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. Late in his life he wrote a solo violin sonata for Yehudi Menuhin, and I play the 4th Movement of it which is a bit of a barn-burner which lays out lovely on the mandolin. Those are the three non-original pieces.

Q: What about the six original compositions?
Thile: It was sort of an exercise in stitching a semi-coherent narrative out of seemingly disparate pieces of music. In the middle of the record there’s a solo mandolin piece that I wrote and then the record kind of fans out from there, if that makes sense, so it’s smack in the middle of the record but the record was sort of conceived with that at its core, so you press “play” and we’re kind of headed there, and then we get to that piece and then we sort of recover from it with the rest of the record (chuckle).

Q: What’s the criterion for the rest of the material you’ll perform over the course of that solo show?
Thile: Well, I think about where I am and I think about who I might be playing for, but that all changes when I step out onto the stage. I know that there’s a certain core that I want to get to, much like when I was making the record, I knew that “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” was going to be the core of that record, I know that this record is going to be the core of this evening’s material, so I can kind of fan out from there. So as I’m doing sound check in your beautiful hall I’ll be trying to get a read on the potential for the evening and what material it suggests to me. And then the lovely thing about playing solo is you’re really free to react to what you’re getting from any given audience. When human beings gather together in a space with common intent, it creates a path for a musician to wander down with the people. Maybe the musician is the guide and maybe the people that are there are the guides, and I feel like as a performer you should be open to either arrangement, so those are the kind of things I’m thinking about.

Q: You said early on that you’ve performed mostly in Portland in the past — what’s your impression of our fair state?
Thile: I’ve always experienced a real sense of community whenever I’ve been in Maine, there’s a real willingness to engage up there — I can’t put my finger on why that would be, it’s a beautiful part of the country.

Q: I think that willingness to engage you sense here is possibly due to the fact that up here we are not inundated by touring acts like, say, a Boston or a New York City is on a daily basis. I think that makes us more appreciative when someone comes up and wants to play for us.
Thile: Right, right, of course, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like absence makes the heart grow fonder or that which is hard to come by is maybe a little bit more valued.

Q: Exactly! Now, is there anything, Chris, that you’d like me to pass on to the folks reading this article?
Thile: I guess the main thing is, and I stayed up late at night pondering this, is just how essential the relationship between music makers and music lovers is, at least, to my happiness and I think to a lot of people’s happiness. The art of music is the collaboration between musicians and the audience. We have been largely deprived of that over the last year and a half, so these rare and wonderful evenings when we get to come together over music are so unquantifiably precious, and I really appreciate the opportunity to get up there and step out on stage and get a feel for the music we’re going to make together.

Lucky Clark has spent more than 50 years writing about good music and the people who make it. He can be reached at luckyc@myfairpoint.net if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.

« Previous

Up-and-coming country singer songwriter Hank Williams IV to make debut appearance in Madison

Next »

The Peacheaters to celebrate Allman Brothers Band Oct. 15