GUY BLAKESLEE
Hi Guy, thank you for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology & congratulations on your latest record Postcards From The Edge.
Thanks! It’s my pleasure.
A beautiful album with so many amazing tracks and the opener Sometimes with your quivering vocals is beautifully paired with slow horns. Was the choice of instrument an immediate thought when crafting the track or one that eventually came to the fore?
As with most of the songs on this record, ‘Sometimes’ went through many phases. Originally I was trying to make the record completely on my own with a cassette 4 track. By the time we were recording with Enrique Tena Padilla in New Orleans I had been singing the song at many shows and had made countless demos, each with a totally different sound and feeling. The song had evolved into a kind of mantra, a spiritual anchor for the rest of the album, a reminder that the whole point was to go beyond the known and forget the familiar. The house engineer Matt who was assisting us had mentioned that he was an amateur trumpeter and we chose to enlist him for the song instead of any of the world class Jazz virtuoso's who were hanging out in the kitchen (the studio was a house that serves as a kind of headquarters for the Pres Hall Jazz Band) - I wanted it to sound fragile and lost, like a child was playing it. It was an idea that came to life in the studio and we recorded it right away and it really completed the song. That’s one of the things I love about making records, the way a sudden and spontaneous flash of inspiration gets captured for the ages.
Following on is the captivating title track Postcards From The Edge with the frenetic, disorientated monochrome video clip. The clip appears to visually mirror the lyrical sentiment but can you elaborate a little more on the tracks subject matter and also of the filming?
‘Postcards From The Edge’ also had many incarnations before the version that is heard on the record. By the time I made the video with Lael Neale on her family’s farm in rural Virginia (where we have been living since April) my life had been through many significant changes. I got hit by a car on March 13 in Los Angeles and was inside the hospital as the rules about staying at home were changed. Lucky even to be alive, I came out of being unconscious and was in a completely different world. A lot of the things I sing about in the songs, which I didn’t understand at the time, came to be prophetic in different ways. I was sent to the edge of consciousness, to the edge of life itself, and came back changed into a changed world. A lot of the time I was writing the album I was traveling and moving around and getting into all sorts of trouble. Now I live a very stable and comfortable life, one that I never expected to experience, and I’m able to release these recordings and share these stories about those crazy days from a more centered place. The video was made with a lot of limitations - there’s nobody else around, for instance- so we had to be inventive and keep it simple. I’m a big fan of Maya Deran, an early experimental filmmaker who used stark and simple imagery to create surreal juxtapositions and tell dream-like stories.
It is always interesting to hear the transformative development in a track from initial demo to what is eventually laid down on tape. The ‘melted piano’ demo of Postcards From The Edge is a haunting track in its rudimentary form with its cavernous echo creating such an atmosphere. From a compositional point of view, what is your general approach in fleshing out a track and adding what is needed (and removing what is not needed) to reach a position of completion that you feel comfortable with?
My general approach is to experiment until something clicks. It’s very important to me that a song can be presented in its bare essence and exists as a song even if all of the embellishments are stripped away. So I could sing it to you with a piano or a guitar without needing any fancy equipment, and any further exploration of sound and texture is like icing on the cake. The cake needs to be substantial and not just made of icing, if that makes sense. With this song I made a lot of demo versions that were based on a drum machine or a loop of some kind and were more rhythm oriented, but for some reason this one night I was alone, really high on MDMA, and recording ideas and this “melted” version came through. It was before I really understood basic things about recording, so it’s very distorted which gives it that "underwater" feeling. I still have new melody ideas forming in my mind for these songs. The record is just a snapshot of the moment of recording, like a greatest hits compilation of all of the ideas up to that moment.
Another track that stands tall on the record is Hungry Heart and the sonic excursion it takes towards the end of the song. It feels as if it hangs in the air and floats along with its back masking and electric fuzz out as the competing sounds all jostle for attention. Is the auditory push and pull something you were really striving for on the track to accentuate a certain point?
‘Hungry Heart’ is the kind of song I’d hope someone would listen to lying back with headphones and eyes closed, surrendering to the sound. There’s a voyage of release that follows a realization of love, of overcoming the fear of loving and taking that risk- a cosmic reward for putting your heart on the line. We were conscious during the recording that people’s attention spans are shorter and more fragmented now than ever before, but we didn’t want to dumb it down, we wanted to respect the listener and trust that they just might be willing to voyage with us for however many minutes. I think the word psychedelic is way overused, almost to the point of being meaningless- but there’s a psychedelic idea behind the recording- that there are all these sounds and they’re vying for your attention, so each time you might notice something different. Honouring the intelligence and the patience of the listener, offering them something that challenges their sense of sonic space. And we’re always holding on so tightly, whether we realize it or not, so sometimes music is meant to give us that feeling of just falling and falling.
Having released the album on your own label Entrance Records & Tapes, what musical and creative freedoms did you enjoyed by doing it this way and conversely what restrictions or limitations did you encounter?
The saying goes “with great power comes great responsibility” so I’m experiencing that now more than ever. I’ve worked with many different record labels in my life and have learned a lot from all of them. It is quite a challenge to do everything myself, and I think that what's being asked of artists in these times is to develop strength and take control, even if it can be overwhelming at times. The musical and creative freedom is truly unlimited. For instance, the demos that I’ve mentioned earlier in the interview are going to be released as a cassette that will be a companion version of the album, kind of like a window into a parallel universe or going behind the curtain. I enjoy communicating with everyone and I’m very focused on the quality of the experience more than the quantity. The quantity could be something that is limited for me as a totally independent artist- there will only be 100 tapes with handmade covers. I don’t have unlimited funds to reach mass audiences, so it’s a handmade grassroots project and I strive for the direct expression of my ideas instead of some kind of marketing strategy.
A pure artist, music is not your sole creative outlet but one of many that extend across multiple mediums. One of those relating to Postcards From The Edge is that of your ‘mail art series’ featuring original collage art / cut up poem on a postcard with a handwritten messages. When putting down the guitar and picking up the artist knife, is designing an artwork around the very piece of music you have created, the ultimate closed loop in terms of crystallising a conceptual sentiment into a musical piece which is coupled with an associated artwork?
I’ve always been drawn to making collages and cut-ups. Gathering existing elements to re-order them into something new, and playing with meaning. I think it’s a way of altering reality. The act of making the work has a meditative energy and it helps me to stay in a creative flow while giving my ears a break. I like your idea of a “closed loop” and I like the associations our minds can make between sound and image. I never set out with a very specific goal in mind, it’s more of a process of experimentation and discovery.
On the topic of art and the eclectic collages you create, can you elaborate on your process and what imagery ignites the flame of creativity for you?
The way that I got really immersed in collage was that I inherited a huge stack of really old National Geographic magazines. Many of them were from the 1920’s at my old house in Laurel Canyon. At the time I was very broke and didn’t leave the house much, and would spend hours which blended into days tearing out pictures and laying them out all over the floor, taping them together and taping them to the walls.. It was a kind of self-soothing that was very similar to how I got deeply immersed in music when I was younger, just going into that timeless place kind of like a fantasy world. I think that’s what art is all about. And those images were all of exotic cultures and from times and places long forgotten, which I think made a big impact on my aesthetic. Nowadays, those magazines are long gone but I gather materials wherever I can find them. It’s all about making new things out of whatever happens to be lying around.
Always busy but in the last year or two you have been rather active and prior to Postcards From The Edge you released an instrumental record Double Vision. The unfortunate circumstance of being hit by a car that was the catalyst for its creation resulted in a sublime record. Was an instrumental album a cathartically creative avenue to explore when dealing with such an unusual circumstance?
When I came out of the fog that followed my accident, I found that I had little interest in writing songs with words. Sitting at the piano and improvising became my main focus and I know that this practice played a big role in my recovery. I’m venturing more into that territory now and with the music I’ll be releasing in the future- because I think I made an unexpected breakthrough by using the piano to heal myself and I see that so much healing is needed in the world, and serenity. I want to contribute to that and music is the thing that I know how to do, so that will be my humble offering- healing music, or calming soothing music. I used to think there was something wrong with that approach, but now I see that’s the way for me to proceed. Working with sound and tones to create space and relief.
Having worked and performed with so many amazing artists and musicians over the years, during that time has there been any words of wisdom spoken to you that really resonated with you and in turn altered the way you approach your craft?
T-Model Ford, the Mississippi bluesman (R.I.P) once said to me: “Be like a tree - Grow until you die”
Lastly, on a personal level what does music give you that nothing else does?
Music is the only think that makes sense to me. Everything is music. All matter and energy is vibration and vibration is another expression of frequency. So through music we can get in tune with ourselves, with each other, with the larger world - being in tune, finding harmony - that seems like the most important thing!! Thank you.
