|
Elvis Costello is a man of many songs, and a big part of the buzz around his ongoing solo tour is that few if any of them seem to be off limits.
That tour brings Costello to the Mobile Saenger Theatre in March, and he recently took time to answer a few questions about the upcoming show. The appearance in Mobile might be a first, but Costello is no stranger to the region: In 2004 he released The Delivery Man, a full-band studio album recorded in Mississippi. Two years later, he and New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint put their voices together on The River in Reverse, a project motivated by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Costello's career spans everything from New Wave and punk to country to straight-ahead adult pop to folk and American roots music, including solo work, band recordings and various collaborations. His most recent release is Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs, a 2013 project in which he worked with equally eclectic hip-hop band The Roots.
Costello plays the Saenger at 8 p.m. Friday, March 13. Tickets are $47.50 and $82.50 plus fees. Advance tickets are available through Ticketmaster and at the Saenger box office. "I hear that's a beautiful place," he said of the Saenger. Such old theaters are "my absolute favorite places to play," he added.
You've worked in Mississippi and New Orleans, two places that are culturally close to Alabama and Mobile in some ways. And you'll hit Mobile the night after a sold-out show in New Orleans. Do those experiences create any particular expectations for you?
I suppose it would be 10 years ago now, since that work, it seems impossible to think that it's that long ago. But of course we made one record in Oxford and Clarksdale, Mississippi, and then after that, of course, my collaboration with Allen Toussaint. That picked up from a beginning that actually came in the mid-'80s, I mean, we actually first worked together then, and then he contributed to the album Spike in 1989. And although I had seen him over the years, we hadn't actually been on stage — well, we'd never been on stage together until after he was forced to relocate after Katrina ... You think about it, he lived and worked based around a studio for his entire career, and then completely remade himself as a touring musician. As a number of people were obliged to do. A lot of people relocated, of course. And Allen of course is back in New Orleans now, and is much essential to things down there as he's ever been.
But it's my great fortune that out of the terrible sadnesses of all the losses of that time, that we got to work together again, and write songs, and go back to the songs of his that I'd loved and recorded, and go back to New Orleans, as soon as we were allowed. You know, while the place was still actually under curfew [we had to] get home from the studio every night early, we had to get off the streets and there was only one hotel open. It gave it a special atmosphere, of course, to make the record in such circumstances. He could say better than I what it meant to go back and get back to work. Because it's what you have to do after a catastrophe. There's nothing really better than breathing in and out and singing and being all together and trying to put out something for people to listen to that — You know, the songs that he'd written had already told the tale, really, and it was "Who's Gonna Help a Brother Get Further?" and songs like that, he'd already said everything that needed to be said. And the few little things that I said after that, from my own point of view, such as the lyrics of "Ascension Day" and "The River in Reverse," they were not just specific to those events. It's an everyday matter of, you know, not passing by, always, the person that needs your help. We all do it, but we know we shouldn't.
A solo tour can present a challenge, in that listeners might have a hard time imagining how some songs can work in that context, while to the songwriter they might well have started out that way before developing into full-band recordings. Are conflicting expectations an issue?
No songs of mine that I can think of ever began as full-band performances ... We definitely, with The Attractions and latterly with The Imposters, we expand with different arrangements of songs, and when I worked with The Roots we did a lot of cut and paste because that was the record where we began with beats, you know, and then built arrangements around them, and then erased a bunch of stuff and then moved it around and created new structures.
All of those ways to work are all valid, but in the main, I could sit down and play you 98, 99 percent of the songs I've written, and just play them to you ... I could play you drafts of them that I haven't released, earlier versions where you can see where they've traveled. Different rhythms, different lyrics, different melodies even. So which is the more truthful rendition — I suppose that's a matter for the heart, isn't it? Peoples' memory of the song is their first acquaintance, which is likely to be the recording. It's been my experience that people are curious to hear the song, to see whether the song will lose anything without all of that paraphernalia around it, without all those decorations. And sometimes you can take a song down to its essentials and it will actually have a more emotional core than the recording will suggest. That would be true of "Everyday I Write the Book" [from the 1983 album Punch the Clock], which is actually very light on record but sounds a lot more emotional when you play it solo. It's not a trick that I'm trying to pull with every song — I'm just calling it a trick — but I do sort of hear the possibility of the song to reveal itself in the moment of the performance.
I'd venture to guess that at this point, your audiences are mainly made up of people who appreciate your career, not just a single or two. Does that hold true?
Anybody that's bought a ticket has got a different reason for coming. For some it's just a Friday night show or whatever night of the week show, and they just fancy going out. Other people have every record you've ever made. Some people just like that one song and are really kind of maybe, [they] have a very sketchy or even slightly, you know, incorrect idea of what you do. But hopefully they'll hear something they're there to hear, or they're in the theater long enough to find out if they like it.
I've had some songs that have ended up being hits overseas that don't really represent what I do, but they're sort of my calling card and they've got me the invitation to go and play in that country, like in Korea or Turkey or somewhere, and then you get there and they get a surprise when you turn up with a repertoire of 300 or 400 songs that are completely different than the one they knew you for. And then it's my job to persuade them that it's worth their time.
It's a little bit different in America, where a lot of people have seen me over a lot of years, 35 or 37 years now. There are some people that have been in there from the git-go, and they've got their opinions about which time and place in my career they like best. Some people go along with you, some people wish you'd stayed the same, it's all possible. And I'm aware of that."
The audience is there to be entertained and you're there to entertain them. Beyond that, is there anything you hope they take away from the experience?
You won't likely see something like this any day of the week. That's the truth of it. I'm not blowing my own trumpet. I guess I am. You won't. I have a lot of songs, I try to make the best of them, I try to find the story in one song to lead me to the next one. I don't come on with a set plan that I'm going to do the same show every night for the whole tour. I try to look at the theater and try and think about what that summons up to me, look at my own songs and say, "What's the tack I want to take tonight?" I've got some beautiful instruments so I can change the sound of the way I play the song. So I might sit down at the piano for a couple of numbers and I sit down and hunch over a guitar, because you sort of feel differently when you sit down.
I'm not sitting down because I'm tired, I'm sitting down because I want people to lean forward in their seats, and listen in for maybe those few more quiet songs. So then when I get up, we can have some fun. And I've got a few surprises that I don't want to give away. You'll have to trust me that we've got a few new tricks in this show, which I hope people will like. And we're just going to have a big time.
|
