WITH JONO MANSON
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You sound really happy on your new album-is there good stuff going on in your life?
Yeah, actually a lot of good things are going on in my life, although a lot of those songs I wrote during some fairly dark times. We made the record really quickly, we recorded most of it in one day, and as the stuff started coming back, that's why I ended up calling the album
Summertime
, [because] when we were mixing the first song on the record, my friend who I co-produced the album with, Craig Dreyer, said, 'When I listen to this song, I feel like I'm driving to the beach with the top down and the wind blowing. Wow, it's just such a summertime record.' Also I consciously wanted to make kind of a lighter album, regardless of what was going on in my life. Sometimes you make the saddest songs when you're feeling the best, and vice versa.
Why were you shooting for a more upbeat sound?
In some ways it's more of my roots, because the bar bands I played in, like 20 years ago in New York, they were kind of just good time party sort of R&B bands. The band I was in for 10 years was a horn band and I haven't made a record with horns on it a long time, so I kind of wanted that bar band vibe again. And there's some funny songs on the record and some sarcastic ones, but there's definitely some serious ones on there too. I think you open people up with humor a little bit and then you get your message in there.
That's particularly notable on one of my favorites, which is the didgeridoo song…
A lot of people tend to gravitate toward that one. That song I co-wrote with my friend Bruce Dinola and I think I can speak for both of us when I say that, personally, I have nothing against the didgeridoo per se as an instrument, but the point of that song is that in the hands of the unqualified, it can become a weapon of mass destruction. It's not about any particular experience, but almost everyone who hears that song says, 'Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about-that guy's on the Plaza right now,' or, 'in the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert,' whatever. And so if you listen, if you get to the bridge of the tune, the real message is that what you do needs to come from someplace real inside of you, and if it doesn't people are not really gonna feel it. While I do have something to say to that particular person-I'm not gonna try and deny that-that's really the message I'm trying to get across-if you want to use that as a metaphor, there's lots of people who play the didgeridoo in their lives.
Who plays that bit at the end where there
is
a didgeridoo?
Actually it's a sample, because to try and invite a didgeridoo player to be a guest on that song was going to be kind of tricky. Although, just after I wrote that song, before I recorded it, I was at a barbecue in Rio en Medio and there was a jam and there was a guy playing didgeridoo and I said, 'Hey, I've got this song and we can jam on it,' and I actually sang the song with a didgeridoo player. And about halfway through he was like [makes confused face], 'I'm sure if this is funny or not.' Lighten up, you know!
It seems like that particular genre of player is the most humorless…
Look, I was a long-haired freak in my teens too, you know, and beyond; now I just wear my long hair on the inside. But if you have to work that hard to say, 'Hey, man, I'm so free, relax'…I don't want to generalize, but when you get down to it, they are the most uptight. I was having a conversation about this with some friends-because I spend a lot of time in Europe, I've lived on and off for the past four years in Italy-and I've got friends there who are, like, Italian hippies, but their brand of being hippie is a different thing, it's more like what I remember as a kid. Now it's like the superficial trappings of that lifestyle versus the substance.
What is your connection to Italy?
My connection started by accident. In 1995, I had a record on A&M, a major label-which by the way was one of the most disastrous years of my career. That record got distributed in Italy and there were a few DJs that picked up on it, and there was one guy who in particular was playing it regularly on his show, and he wrote me a letter, which I still have, that was the most beautiful broken English, saying, 'I have read some articles about you and I hear you have some other records available in the States. How much money must I send at you?' So I sent the guy a bunch of copies with a little note saying, 'If you know any little labels who might want to put out my stuff…' and about a month later I got a fax from an Italian record company. That was in 1998, they put out one record of mine and now I have six on that little label, so I started going over there to tour. And I started making a lot of friends. And money. So a few years ago I figured I had such a support system there I should try living there.
What do you have to do there to be able to be a foreign working musician?
Italy is fairly lax when it comes to artists and performers and in general many European countries, perhaps with the exception of the UK, have a lot of legislation that really encourages artists to come and live there. In the little town where I was living, I was the only American there and it is often very difficulty to be accepted in these small communities, but [being a musician was] one of the reasons I was accepted. I would walk through the plaza of the small town and they'd call out, 'Buongiorno artiste'-they call you 'artist.' Whereas, you walk into a club in Santa Fe and they're like, 'Yeah, you can move that table and set up over there. Don't turn up too loud because people are eating.'
Jono Manson will be in Italy this week, but returns to turn up too loud while people are eating for regular gigs. Check Hear, Here weekly for his schedule. Summertime is available at
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