Chris Thile
a.k.a.
Christopher Scott Thile
HONESTY TRUMPS ALL Chris Thile Tells the Truth About Deceiver
At the tender age of 23, mandolin master Chris Thile has a most impressive resume: five solo albums, two acclaimed discs with his band Nickel Creek, a side project with Toad the Wet Sprocket's Glen Phillips (Mutual Admiration Society), and some exemplary session credits with the likes of Dolly Parton. Thile's latest solo album, Deceiver, is a one-man-band affair rife with vibrant rock- and classical-influenced arrangements and intimate, confessional lyrics that brook favorable comparison to John Lennon's early solo work. During a break while on tour with Nickel Creek, Thile discussed the Beatles, his solo work, what's next for Nickel Creek, and more.
Barnes & Noble.com: Are your solo projects extensions of what you do in Nickel Creek or do you see them as completely separate entities?
Chris Thile: A little bit of both. For one, it's a great way to get your individuality out in a way that doesn't hurt the band. I'm always gonna be inclined to be a control freak. It's a facet of my character I'm not proud of at all. I seem to require a solo record just to not be a pain in the ass.
B&N.com: In contrast to your previous solo album, Not All Who Wander Are Lost, Deceiver has a lot of jagged edges, musically and lyrically.
CT: Right. It really couldn't be much more different from my other albums unless it was like a hard-core hip-hop album. Talking about the jagged edges, to me there's something beautiful about the music behind cartoons. Take away the cartoon and you don't necessarily have that much, but I wondered what would happen if you approached it like that, sonically, where you embrace very abrasive transitions, where you tried to find some sort of a balance between stopping and starting, and making everything completely and totally natural. I wanted to find a way to lead people and still surprise them, like a mischievous tour guide.
B&N.com: In a song like "On Ice," the lyrics express a lot of insecurity, but the music is very intense and anxiety-ridden, bumping up against that insecurity.
CT: For me, insecurity and intense anxiety are one and the same. I'm a fairly self-assured person, and when I start to doubt myself, it's not melancholic, a sweet sadness; it's pretty intense. I'm a control freak and I like to be in control and I like to feel like me being in control is going to be the right thing. That song is all about trying to get back in the driver's seat, kind of, but then also realizing that a certain amount of your control is actually based on limiting yourself from different options.
B&N.com: When you're performing these songs, it feels like there's an urgency to tell the stories. A lot of words are crammed into a lyric line, like there's so much to say and so much to say with such force.
CT: I want music to explode out of me; I don't want it to trickle. My favorite kind of music in the world is the kind of music I feel like might have killed the person who wrote it if they hadn't got it out. I don't want to make music that doesn't demand me to make it.
B&N.com: Are there any other artists you've been listening to or were listening to at the time this was coming together that influenced your choices of how to present the songs musically?
CT: Oh, everything. Everything I hear has an effect. I'm a passionate listener. Everything that I love requires me to deal with it and to figure out what I need to take from it. Discovering Radiohead was a big deal for me. I feel that those guys are at the top of the heap as far as bands go. Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot was a big deal for me. Also, I'm always studying classical form and counterpoint, the disciplines of tension and release. It's something that I strive to understand more all the time. Bartók was a huge discovery for me. I've always loved Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and just recently started to come to terms with more modern music. Most Romantic music still eludes me, but I love Debussy; I can't get enough of the Debussy string quartet, and it's freaking me out right now. I'm ready to explode about it.
B&N.com: I even hear little Beatles-ish touches in here, like what sounds like a string quartet on "The Wrong Idea," an "Eleanor Rigby"–like passage on there...
CT: Absolutely.
B&N.com: And in "Empire Falls" there's a harmony passage that sounds like it was inspired by the Beatles' harmonies.
CT: Man, I feel that the Beatles discovered some undeniable pop truths. I think that's one of the reasons they've stood the test of time; that they were such an incredible event when they happened and there's nothing that dates a Beatles record. I actually think some of Radiohead will approach the timelessness of some of the Beatles' work; I don't know to what extent it will. But the Beatles' music is tried-and-true and timeless, to a degree that most pop music has never attained. I think it becomes like a traditional folk tune: the folk tunes that last, they're undeniably right. I think the Beatles found that and I'm trying to study that stuff as much as anything else.
B&N.com: What purpose did the two introspective instrumentals serve, given what comes before and after? For instance, "Waltz for Dewayne Pomeroy" is followed immediately by that driving rock guitar that opens "Empire Falls."
CT: The instrumentals act as palate cleansers, in my mind. There's a lot of information being presented, especially musically. I felt like people -- and me -- needed a chance to catch your breath and just hear something really simple, at least texturally, simple mandolin. Mandolin is kind of my voice, my head, and I felt it would be a nice and honest breather to just play the mandolin a little bit.
B&N.com: On Not All Who Wander Are Lost, there's a song about a distant major league baseball player who was a relative of yours, Sam Thompson. Is DeWayne Pomeroy a person of note? Or even a real person?
CT: Actually, yes. That song has a sad story to it. DeWayne Pomeroy was in a documentary, probably made in the mid-'80s, about homeless children in Seattle. He was one of them, a really sweet kid but obviously depressed. It was a very heartbreaking documentary about what these kids have to do to stay alive; just existing was incredibly tough. During the course of the documentary, DeWayne ends up killing himself. Only his dad was there at his little makeshift funeral -- and they actually got his dad out of jail to come to the funeral. I felt this was the least I could do, to write the kid a song. It's a requiem, essentially, humble and short. There's certain things that only work as instrumentals for me. I couldn't put into words something like that; it's just too horrible. So to have instrumental writing as an outlet is a relief to me.
B&N.com: What's the status of the next Nickel Creek album?
CT: We'll be going into the studio right after this record, toward the beginning of November. It's our third record, and we place a lot of importance on third records. I feel like it's time to get serious about defining the band. We're starting to feel like a band, that mysterious entity that is a band, that makes people go nuts about a band, why every single adolescent wants to be in a band. We just want to make sure we get that out.
B&N.com: Let me congratulate you on looking so dapper in the CD booklet. Real GQ stuff there.
CT: [laughs] You know, I look funny in everything I've ever done, so I got myself a couple of suits. Things may change, but the suit kinda stays the same. So I'm gonna wear a suit.
October 2004
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