Tag: Jason Burger

BGS 5+5: Dan Knobler

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Artist: Dan Knobler (Producer, Engineer, Mixer)
Hometown: New York, New York
Latest Album: Friends Play My Son’s Favorite Songs, Vol. 1

Which artist or producer has influenced you the most … and how?

Artist: There are a million I could cite for different reasons — Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark, Ray Charles, Lucinda Williams, Blake Mills, Derek Trucks — but probably the two that changed my musical path most dramatically are The Meters and The Band. My dad took me to see The Meters when I was a young teen at a time when I was really digging into the guitar and finding my voice. I was deep into the classic rock and blues legends and seeing that show and then exploring the early instrumental Meters records opened the floodgates for all sorts of groove-based and improvisatory music.

I followed that stream to the fertile soil of New Orleans music: brass bands and Mardi Gras indians (check out The Wild Tchoupitoulas if you don’t know) and Allen Toussaint-produced records. From there my horizons widened to other classic funk/soul/R&B which was hugely influential for me — Stax, Motown, James Brown, King Curtis (and all their respective rhythm sections) — and then onward to soul jazz like Jimmy Smith and Lou Donaldson and big bands like Count Basie and Thad Jones / Mel Lewis, then to various eras of Miles Davis and classic Blue Note and Impulse! records like Blues and The Abstract Truth and A Love Supreme.

Later on, during my early college years, I fell under the spell of The Band’s first two records. They too drew influence from a lot of the same soul and R&B records that I had come to love, but imbued it with elements of country and folk and the songs told stories with depth and mystery and characters that felt real. I followed their influences back to classic country and country blues, aided along by an impeccable playlist that my then-girlfriend-now-wife, Carrie Crowell, put together when she first took me to Nashville. Slightly later I started to follow the influence of The Band forward to great modern Americana records and songwriters, many of whom are now friends and collaborators.

Producer: Again, a million past and present who I respect and admire: John Simon, T Bone Burnett, Blake Mills, Josh Kauffman, Russ Titleman, Lenny Waronker. But the one who had the most direct influence on me is Joe Henry. The man is an artist and a poet and a songwriter of the highest order, but has also been at the helm of so many records that have shaped my musical sensibility. The one that looms largest for me is Solomon Burke’s Don’t Give Up On Me. It’s mysterious and deep and heartfelt and immersive and every single musician is playing with nuance and grace.

And that’s true of every Joe Henry record, whether his name is on the front or the back. He casts the room with the right players and emboldens them to be their best selves; he dismisses pretense and genre archetypes and leaves room for light to slip in through the cracks. Particularly with engineer Ryan Freeland at his side, Joe makes records that envelop you. I told him once that his records feel like a well-appointed lounge with the door left slightly ajar — if the listener feels so inclined there is an open invitation to walk in and sit down and feel welcome.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your work?

I love any well-told story, be it a movie or a novel or a great TV show. I do really love a great TV show. Any time there are characters and a world that continues to feel real in your mind and soul after you’ve put the story down is magic. I like photography; I like impressionist paintings; I like interesting architecture and great trees. I love a good meal.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I’ve been lucky enough to sit with Joe Henry and sip negronis, so I can check that off my list. I’m also extremely grateful to be surrounded by world-class musicians and songwriters here in Nashville. I’ve shared studio lunches and falafel plates and had late-night hangs with some of the finest folks to be making music in this town. I suppose I’m gonna dream, I’d love to split a belly ham pizza at City House with Randy Newman.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I hope I can spend my life making the kinds of records that people carry with them through the years, records that can be revisited and grow with you over time. There are certain albums and artists that were particularly meaningful or influential during certain eras of my life that take on a whole new meaning for me now. I want to make music that captivates and surprises people, with great people playing great songs; I want to create a sonic world for those people and those songs to live in that reflects their light most powerfully. I want to make records that the artist thinks is their finest work, that open doors for them and enable them to move through the creative world with more confidence and resources. I want to make records that I want to go back and listen to. I love making records.

What’s your favorite memory from being in the studio?

Here’s a smattering:

• The first time I ever played with Jason Burger. Not in a studio, but through the chaos of young musicians trying to prove themselves in a big open jam session at a Berklee summer program, Jason, bassist Zack Rosen, and I felt a magical rhythm connection that sparked years of playing together. Though Zack passed in 2019, Jason and I carry that spirit into every record we get to make together: a knowing that the sum is greater than its parts, a simultaneous summoning of interlocking rhythms, an endeavor to channel the deep power and beauty of communication through music.

• Setting up a makeshift studio in the unfinished basement of my in-laws’ house in upstate New York and making my college band Flearoy’s first record. It was winter and we were wearing coats while we recorded. We had bought a Leslie on the way up and left it in the back of keyboardist Matt Porter’s minivan for isolation, cables running through cracked windows. Carrie joined us and made meals and we all sat around the fire in the evening and laughed.

• My son, Willoughby, “drawing the sound of the song” in chalk on the studio patio while Anthony Da Costa and I were recording “Here Comes the Sun” for an album I made called Friends Play My Son’s Favorite Songs, Volume 1 and the feeling of listening to the songs I would record for him in the car on the way to school and have him request them on repeat.

• Any time I walk through the doors at Sound Emporium. That place is one of the world’s great studios; it sounds amazing, it feels amazing, it has been home to countless records I love dearly. Every single time I work there I feel deep gratitude that this is my job and a childlike giddiness that not only do I get to work in that particular sonic temple, but I feel at home there.

• Recording “Joyful Motherfuckers” for Allison Russell’s record Outside Child. That whole record was an incredibly beautiful and spiritual experience and every musician on the floor knew it was special from the first downbeat, well before there was any label support or critical praise. While we tracked “Joyful Motherfuckers” all those feelings were particularly palpable. It was the only song on the record that Alli’s partner in life, songwriter JT Nero, played and sang on. At first I thought it should maybe just be the two of them but I had all the musicians stay in their stations — instruments in hand — and said, “If you feel compelled to play, play.”

While Alli and JT sang and all the musicians in the room had their eyes closed, a spell had been cast. Drew Lindsay bravely played a few choice notes on piano at the end of a verse and somehow everyone else in the room just knew what to do: on the downbeat of the bridge we all came in, gently, subtly, but with deep power. As the take ended no one wanted to say anything because once we acknowledged what had happened, the spell would be broken. Most of us cried listening to playback. Luckily, one of the beautiful things about making records is that when you care to revisit a piece of work you get to experience it both as its final form but also as an opportunity to relive the memory and chapter of your life when you made it.

Photo Credit: Melody Walker

With Her Banjo and Best Friends, Allison Russell Delivers ‘Outside Child’ (Part 2 of 2)

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Allison Russell’s first solo album offers an intimate look into her life, yet it’s far more than just her musical vision that elevates Outside Child to one of the year’s most eloquent albums. Working with Dan Knobler in Nashville, she populated the studio with musicians like Joe Pisapia, Jason Burger, Chris Merrill, Jamie Dick, and Drew Lindsay, as well as exceptional guests such as Yola, Ruth Moody, Erin Rae, and the McCrary Sisters. She describes them as her “chosen family,” accompanying her as she shares stories about other families in her life.

Enjoy the second half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell. (Editor’s note: Read the first half of our AOTM feature here.)

BGS: You can feel that sense of community between the musicians on this record. Can you talk a little bit about what it felt like while you were tracking?

Allison Russell: These songs were recorded in four days. Everything that you are hearing, I sang live with the band. We did it at Sound Emporium Studio A. There’s a lovely, big room with glass doors that you can open up. Everyone was in a semi-circle. It was a magical experience. We would gather in the center of the room and work out an arrangement together and then we would record the song. Most of what you are hearing is the second take. That was sort of when it magically coalesced, when everyone was communing and free flowing.

Dan [Knobler] shares my deep conviction that it is not about perfection. It is about capturing the communication in as honest and as true of a way as you can. That has been my approach ever since working with Joe Henry four or five years ago on a record called Real Midnight. So what you are hearing is a community choosing to come together to uplift these songs. I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life, even if no one ever heard the record. That experience of getting to record that way with chosen family. I can’t imagine a more healing, supportive environment than I experienced.

This is your first solo record and though you’ve made many records with groups, I’m wondering if the feeling of picking the songs and the sounds was different for you as a solo artist?

I don’t know that I really picked them. I think that the songs just poured out. So much of the sound is my community of artists. I would never dream of telling any of those artists what to play. I trust their ears and I trusted Dan Knobler’s ears, who produced the record. And I trusted my own ears too, of course, but really what we did was cast the room with people who we love and trust. What was different is that I’d never worked with Dan before and I trusted him bringing in two of his brothers, Joe Pisapia and Jason Burger to join the family of musical kindred that I’ve been part of. A lot of the artists who played on the record were artists that I’d met over my many years and different projects. …

And then since I moved to Nashville in 2017, I’ve been going to hear the McCrary Sisters and loving them. I really got to know them through Yola, because they formed a friendship at a festival in Scotland and I got to know them through her. I’m a huge admirer of them and their work and their harmonies. I reached out to them thinking I wouldn’t be able to afford them and they were so generous. They came and sang for way less than they are worth and worked within my budget. I was honored that they came. So it was really a matter of casting the room and then letting people shine the way they do.

I read your speech from the [2020] Women’s March [in Nashville]. It is really gorgeous, thought- and emotion-provoking. In it you mention that you are the hero of your own story which is wildly inspiring and important for us all to remember – that there are some things we can save ourselves from. Can you talk a bit about ways in which you save yourself?

I feel like connection with a loving community is what saves me every day. Art and music save me every day. I’ve been a book worm my entire life and I can’t emphasize enough, I don’t think I would have survived my childhood if I hadn’t had the escape of literature. Being able to go into other worlds and other imaginings and literally inside of someone else’s mind and take refuge and find inspiration and comfort and strength. Disappearing into books was the first kind of way that I learned how to try to be brave. It was reading about brave protagonists and people in situations worse than I could imagine. I got very obsessed in my tweens with reading first person accounts of survival of the Holocaust. It put into context what was happening to me, that if people could survive that, then I could survive what I was experiencing.

Being in a community with people that uplift you and see you and value you and you do the same for them, that is life-changing. I have that with my partner J.T. I have that with my sisters in Our Native Daughters. We wrote a whole record together, uplifting each other and bringing forward the perspective of Black women within the diaspora and within the historical record. Our particular demographic is so often left out of any kind of historical record in any kind of first-person way, with agency and lived experience. That has been a source of great strength and resilience.

And then to connect with my ancestors. To delve into all of the history. With all of the intergenerational trauma and abuse, there is also incredible intergenerational strength and resilience and transcendence. The ability to overcome circumstances I cannot even dream of. My many-times-great-great-grandmother Quasheba survived being enslaved. She survived being ripped away from everything she knew, her family and language and home. She survived the horrible Middle Passage. She survived multiple plantations and having her children taken. If she can survive all that, I can get through this.

Do you remember what prompted you to pick up a banjo for the first time?

I was in a band called Po Girl, that was my first baby band and the woman I started the band with, Trish Klein, played the banjo. She taught me my first few chords and I just kept playing from there. I met Rhiannon Giddens in 2006 at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and I was so excited to meet another Black woman that played banjo, because I was the only one that I knew. She told me about the Black Banjo Gathering, which I never got to attend. I’ve met so many dear friends who were a part of that, like Valerie June. All of us in Our Native Daughters play banjo and that has been a deep communion for us.

I think Rhiannon’s minstrel banjo is one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. I’ve adapted my little Americana Goodtime banjo to sound as much like that as I can by adding gut strings and a fiber skin head. I’ve modified the bridge a bit to give it that deeper resonance. For me the banjo has allowed me to access my songwriting in a different way. I’ve noticed this over time as I’ve picked up more instruments. Different songs come through on different instruments and now for me, the banjo has become my primary songwriting instrument.

This album is coming out hopefully at the tail end of the pandemic so I’m guessing some of the songs have not been performed in front of an audience yet. Are there songs you are particularly excited about presenting on stage and on the flip side are there songs you are nervous or trepidatious about presenting to an audience?

Basically none of them. Of course I’ve done some virtual performances here and there of a couple of them. But they have not been played live. I am always nervous about everything. I’m just a very anxious person most of the time. But where that stops, usually, is on stage, when I get to be in communion with my fellow artists and with the people who have come to listen. That is very much a two-way exchange. The answer is, I’ll be nervous about all of it right up until the moment we are playing and then I will be in the happiest place I know.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell here.)

Photo credit: Marc Baptiste (top); Laura E. Partain (in story)