The weekend of June 28-30 welcomes the return of the Solid Sound Festival to the lively village of North Adams, in western Massachusetts. The festival takes place every other summer at Mass MOCA, the celebrated modern art museum in the Berkshires. The event is organized and curated by members of the seminal alt-rock band Wilco, including guitarist Nels Cline, a critically acclaimed musician who was ranked 82nd all-time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2011.
I spoke to Cline, who has played both Newport Folk and Jazz in various forms – as a member of Wilco, with his band the Nels Cline 4, and as a guitar-slinging duo with Warren Haynes. He’s certainly looking forward to the festival, although he explained that he’s not directly involved in curating the artists who play it. “It’s basically something that Jeff (Tweedy) works on here at the Wilco loft,” he said. “I make suggestions, and usually my job, if I may generalize, has been to add the one jazz or improvisational band.”
In addition to the host band, Solid Sound has several familiar stars performing this year, including headliners Jason Isbell, Nick Lowe, and Iris Dement, as well as a full slate of comedy led by John Hodgman. But it’s also an event where eclectic new artists are introduced. “A lot of the stuff that gets booked, is stuff that Jeff, his sons, family, and bandmates in the Tweedy band really like; I’ve never heard of half the bands,” he laughed. “They’re looking for stuff that they like.”
Cline looks forward to experiencing many of those new bands, as well as reconnecting with old friends. “I don’t think I can understate how excited we are to re-unite with Nick Lowe,” he said. “Our experience touring with him years ago when he was playing solo was incredible. Everybody falls in love with Nick. The combination of his artistry and his personality, he has this affability and this approachability.”
In addition to a pair of Wilco sets on Friday and Saturday, Cline is looking forward to jazzing it up with the Saccata Quartet on Sunday. “For me, it’s always a goal that I do something a little different,” he explained. “I’m looking forward to playing with the Saccata Quartet. This is one year where I’m not even doing my own project, the general idea for me was to try not to repeat.”
When he’s not busy recording or touring with Wilco, Cline mainly works with improvisational jazz artists, recently collaborating with guitarist Hedvig Mollestad in Norway, and fronting his current band Consentrik. “I’ve been recording with Consentrik, it’ll be out next year on Blue Note,” he announced. I asked if transitioning from a rock band like Wilco to jazz combos is a challenge for him.
“I don’t want to sound pretentious, in any way glib or dismissive, but it’s just not hard for me at all,” he answered. “It’s just a natural state of being. I think if I were to pick something I feel the most confident doing, it would be completely spontaneous improvisation. Everything else is kind of hard. In the case of Wilco, there’s a lot of songs, so just trying to keep on top of knowing them can be a challenge, but we do rehearse once in a while,” he laughed.
Indeed, those rehearsals might take on extra meaning as the band embarks on a rare “Deep Cuts” only show on Friday night. “It’s been a fun challenge so far, we’ll see how it goes,” he said. “We’re all kind of excited and a little nervous, we want it to be super badass.”
“Early on in the band we played a New Year’s Eve show at Madison Square Garden with a lot of covers in the set. Jeff really wanted to do “Love Will Keep Us Together” by the Captain and Tennille, and boy, is that a hard song for a rock band. Just to get it even close to sounding like something that honors the sound of that recording was incredibly challenging. Playing ABBA, for example, in our covers set – when you listen, you think, these are such catchy songs, but for a versatile rock and roll band like Wilco, it’s challenging. The “Deep Cuts” things will be a little easier because we played all the songs at least once, and it’s kind of our language.”
Since forming in 1994, Wilco has remained an essential band on the alternative rock music scene. How do they manage to stay together and, more importantly, stay relevant?
“We get along,” he said. “We have chemistry as players, but also we have chemistry as friends. There’s mutual respect; we’re adults, and we’re not trying to feel our way through our early 20s or something. Dare I say that might make us mature individuals, really kind of boring, we’re adult music nerds who like playing together.”
“The leader of the band, Jeff, is very prolific, and always has some idea of what he wants to do, he always has some direction, and doesn’t just take one approach,” continued Cline. “I wasn’t looking to join a prominent respected rock band. One of the reasons that I took on the assignment to join the band, not something I saw in my future at that time, was that I knew it would have a lot of unpredictable twists and turns artistically, a lot of versatility and variety. It’s an interesting band, we don’t just do the same thing all the time. It’s not quite at the legacy act thing yet,” he laughed. “There’s growth possibility, artistically and musically.”
