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To make Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, Elvis Costello's new album that incorporates country, gospel and ragtime, the singer assembled a Nashville string band and hired producer T Bone Burnett, who has worked with artists such as Tony Bennett and Alison Krauss, and produced the soundtracks for O Brother, Where Art Thou?? and Walk The Line. Mr. Costello spoke to The Wall Street Journal about the project and his place in American music. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Some core songs on your album came out of a piece that you were commissioned to write about Hans Christian Andersen, The Secret Songs. How did that shape the project?
Rather than set The Ugly Duckling to music, which has probably been done, I was fascinated with Andersen's obsessive love for [Swedish singer] Jenny Lind. So many people feel themselves unfit and unsuitable for love, and Andersen, in this romantic era with a capital "R," had this tortuous relationship with love. Another piece of it came out when I got to the details of Lind's tours of America with P.T. Barnum. I like the idea of one man regarding Lind as his ideal, on a pedestal, and the other [Barnum] seeing her entirely as a commodity to be exploited. That had many possibilities for writing.
The story was set [around 1850] when some of the instruments we used [in the album] were the common instruments — fiddles, mandolins and such things.
The new album was recorded in three days, and your previous album, Momofuku, was also cut quickly, then released with little fanfare. What did you learn about that approach, either from the way it was received or how it sold?
I wasn't concerned with how it sold. That record was made completely accidentally. I'm not concerned with how any of the records sell any more. Otherwise, you're just destined for disappointment.
I'm mostly concerned with adding to my repertoire of songs. They can be part of a show, and the show is different every night. The story of the concert is made out of all these component pieces from over the years. I'm not doing that old showbiz cliché of "Now here's my little retrospective 20 minutes. Remember when I wrote this?"
For professional or personal reasons, did you ever consider becoming an American citizen?
I don't think so. I never felt particularly nationalistically English, but I was born in that country. I pay my taxes in America, so I never have any qualms about commentary that comes in song. I pay my share and if that money is being misspent, I'm entitled to my opinion. But it's not my main topic. My oldest son is English and my young boys are American citizens, but they carry English passports and I hope they'll carry Canadian ones, too. The amount of time we spend on the road sometimes feels like we don't really live anywhere.
Do you feel like you have a national identity when it comes to your music?
It has nothing to do with borders. It never has. I didn't relate that readily to English culture, as I understood it, growing up. I'm Anglo-Irish, so there's a little extra confusion. But I don't think it's about national identity. It's about what goes on in your heart.
It's all in your imagination. Writers, in particular, can imagine themselves murderers, test pilots, mountain climbers, lion tamers. They can create a character, which is probably some version of themselves or a person they admire. And a songwriter can add to that because the power of music is that it can also give you the feeling of what you're saying.
How did T Bone Burnett help you open up that channel to roots music?
He's one of the people who's judgment I trust about most things. I regard him like a brother. We've made four albums together over 25 years. He has a great degree of humility in not interposing himself between the artist and the listener. He also has clear ideas about how to deliver the music to people once it's made. He doesn't subscribe to this pathetically compressed digital version that sounds worse than AM radio.
You advocated to get [rockabilly pioneer] Wanda Jackson into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Is there anyone else who you feel deserves similar attention?
You know who should be in? [Johnny Cash's backing band] the Tennessee Two. Or the Tennessee Three even. And [Howlin' Wolf's guitarist] Hubert Sumlin. Their singular approach to their instruments is the foundation to the way people play guitar in so-called indie rock. The angular way they both approached the guitar just didn't exist before those guys played. Most others came out of bluegrass or jazz. For Hubert particularly, people who don't know his name are influenced inadvertently by the people who copied him.
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