JD McPherson: Weird Stuff Is Going To Happen (Interview)

Hailing from the rural town of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, JD McPherson is fast-becoming one of the most exciting artists on the roots-rock scene. Citing influences from Little Richard to Led Zeppelin to the Wu-Tang Clan, McPherson has been tearing up the US with his latest tour in support of his second album, Let The Good Times Roll. Now JD McPherson brings his show down under with a gig at Auckland’s Tuning Fork on Saturday, February 27th. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke with JD McPherson recently and found the the Oklahoma native had recently made the move to Nashville.

Click here to listen to the interview with JD McPherson:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: So you’re on the road at the moment, doing shows and stuff, if you’re just outside of Nashville, right?

JM: Well actually, no. I’m actually calling this area home as of about three months ago. I just moved everybody here…everybody meaning my family. Yeah, the band is scattered all over the States…we got a guy in Rochester, a guy in LA, a guy in San Francisco, a guy in Chicago and now, I’m here in Tennessee.

MD: You were where before?

JM: I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, just outside Tulsa.

MD: So is that a big move for you, because you’re from Tulsa, right?

JM: I’ve never lived anywhere other than Oklahoma, so it was a really big decision. But, yeah, I’m enjoying it a lot.

MD: Was it a musical decision?

JM: Um, yeah, basically it was. I can get a lot more work here. You know, I’m a fiercely patriotic Oklahoman but, ahh, I mean, there’s a lot more I can do off the road here in Nashville than Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, unfortunately. Maybe things will change and I can go back. I do plan to go back one day but we’re just here for a little while to see how it goes.

MD: Cause Tulsa has a fairly decent musical legacy…that’s where Leon Russell is from, right?

JM: Oh, gosh, there is so much from Tulsa. However, these days, the Hanson brothers are still there holding down the fort but there’s not a lot of writing opportunity there. There’s been some really cool stuff happening there but, I don’t know why, man, everybody’s moving away, so I had to follow it.

MD: I came across a quote someone wrote about you where they refer to you as, “the second coming of the rock & roll saviour”. I thought, “Whoa, that’s pretty heavy!” I was wondering if you heard that and what your reaction would be to something like that.

JD: That sounds like such an overblown…it’s a great quote, I’ll take it. That’s a lot to live up to so I would abridge that to something more like, “guitar owner”.

MD: I also see that people seem to have trouble describing you in various reviews and things…anything from “rockabilly crooner” to “throwback rocker”. I was wondering how you would describe yourself and what you do.

JM: I’m a rock and roll musician. I mean, I love rockabilly but I would not say that’s where…the music I put out lands in the genre handbook. There’s certain things that have to happen for that to be accurate. If that’s the best word that people have to describe it, that’s fine with me. I love rockabilly, but to me it’s just rock and roll music.

MD: Yeah, you can hear all sorts of stuff going on in your music. One of the tracks that stood out for me on the latest album is Bridge Builder, the one you wrote with Dan Auerbach. To me it reminded me of The Flamingos’ I Only Have Eyes For You and I was wondering if that was the atmosphere that you were trying to achieve.

Click here to listen to I Only Have Eyes For You by The Flamingos:

JM: That song, and there’s another one, Mio Amore, by them, and then…well actually, The Flamingos had a huge hit with I Only Have Eyes For You so their next five singles sound exactly the same as that. But that sort of 12/8 slow, you know, hanging on one chord for a long time with lots of reverb is one of my favourite ideas. There’s a lot of songs that do that like, you know, there’s Connie Francis’ Among My Souvenirs, which is another one that I really love, and Love Letters by Kitty Lester, that’s like, among my favourite songs. They all have this 12/8 shuffle thing with all this space and that’s something that’s really stuck in my craw and so, Bridge Builder’s totally influenced by those kind of ideas. Yeah, it’s definitely out of that.

MD: And I think I saw a quote where you stated that for the music on your second album you “looked outside of the box” of what you did before. I was wondering what you meant by that.

JM: Well the first record was…I’d always wanted to make a record that sounded like that, that sounded like….you know, it’s a two-sided coin because for one thing, making a record that sounds totally, sonically accurate in regard to 50s rhythm and blues and rock and roll recordings, it’s a two-sided coin because A, it got noticed….2, that’s all anybody wants to talk about. So, it’s like, once you get past the fact that, you know, you only used a few microphones and you get everybody to play at the same time and you let everything bleed together and you roll off all the highs and you try to cut to tape as much as possible, then what else have you got to talk about? The main thing to me is that the songs are worked on and vetted out in that they’re pushing into new areas. Once I did the first record, the next record was a bit more experimental, sonically. But man, there’s nothing new under the sun, there’s a precedent for pretty much every idea on this second record. It’s like; moving into the early 60s there’s all this plate reverb and fuzz guitar to play with. You know, I’ve got a guy that can play five instruments in the band and I’ve got another guy who plays amazing Hammond organ and there’s a whole vocabulary there that’s available and then throw in a little bit of weirdo art school mentality and weird stuff is going to happen. That’s what the second record is. The second record is adding a touch of psychedelia to the rock and roll vocabulary and that’s a good thing. I’m very happy with the way it sounds.

MD: Cool. I think I picked up a bit of a Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs vibe to a couple of the tunes in there.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXn_O8yECCQ]

JM: We’re all really into that stuff, but also, there’s an example of things that come out of context like Marty Robbins has this song, Don’t Worry which is an example I point to a lot where something happened out of context. So, in that song, it’s a very sweet ballad with acoustic guitar and a nice reverb and he’s singing this really sweet song and then in the middle, there’s this fuzz guitar solo that comes completely out of, you know, Venus. And that kind of stuff is what was a big influence on the second record. It was like, “How can these completely oddball things fit into something so simple?” And that’s interesting.

Click here to listen to Don’t Worry by Marty Robbins:

MD: Yeah, I think that Don’t Worry is cited as the first example of distortion on guitar on a hit record anywhere. I notice on your set lists during your encores you went from an Art Neville song to a Sonics tune. How do you do that?

JM: Well, you know, Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age told me something one time and I’ll take it and I’ll just tell anybody when that question comes up is that, “you make your own continuity”. As long as you’re doing it within a continuum, then it fits if you say it fits. There are some times when a left turn is awkward but if you’re looking for an awkward left turn you can always make an awkward left turn. The other day we played a show in Greenville, South Carolina and it was a really interesting crowd because they’re country folks. We’re playing our stuff and then we brought up a home town girl and played a bossa nova, and she sang this bossa nova, and immediately it was like people looked so confused. They didn’t know what was coming next and it was great, it was really challenging and fun.

MD: I know you’re going to be here in Auckland at the beginning of next year. Are you bringing your whole band?

JM: It’ll be the whole enchilada. Everything’s coming with us; we’re bringing everybody with us. We’re going to do the set that we’re playing currently.

Click here for more info about JD McPherson’s show at the Tuning Fork.

 

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