Video: Willard Grant Conspiracy, "The Distant Shore"
“Sober, but not healthy, that’s the way I always refer to myself,” says Robert Fisher, who’s dressed in black, sipping hot tea, and nursing a bad throat at ZuZu in Central Square. “A long time ago, I outed myself on that. I don’t have a problem with that whole anonymity thing, because the way I look at it is: I’m still a fuck-up, so if some kid who’s struggling with things knows that and sees somebody can do it, that’s okay. Nothing wrong with that.”
The 49-year-old Fisher is the creative force behind Willard Grant Conspiracy — he’s to them what Howe Gelb is to Giant Sand. And as we talked, one of the many versions of Willard Grant Conspiracy, a sextet, were preparing to play upstairs at the Middle East. It was part of a showcase last month for the local Kimchee label, which was celebrating its 10th anniversary.
Depending on budget and time commitments, the WGC line-up ranges from one — Fisher on voice and guitar — to 16 players. Fisher has 36 musicians he can call upon, on two continents. (The only time he’s made money on tour, he says, was as a one-man band touring Europe for six months last year.) That’s not surprising given that he specializes in elegiac yet cathartic songwriting that’s gotten WGC likened to poetic mood merchants like Tindersticks and Leonard Cohen, as well as the dark musings of Nick Cave. On the new Let It Roll, which is released by Dahlia/Reincarnate and distributed by Sony/BMG, Fisher used a core of eight primary players plus guests like Steve Wynn and Jack Dragonetti, and he indulged his more rockist leanings.
During an earlier phone chat, he had called it a radical album. I ask him to amplify. “It’s a radical change from Regard the End. That was a sculptured record, created around the songs, and assembled like a collage. Let It Roll is really a document of the live band. The main elements of the record are live recording done in the studio while we were on tour. With the exception of a few songs, it uses the more rock-and-roll aspects of what we do and what we’ve always done. To people who’ve seen us in Boston, it may not be such a surprise that the band is loud. But in Europe, for example, where for the first years I had to tour without a rhythm section, they expect something a little quieter.”
He paid particular attention to the sound. “One of the things I wanted to do was to create a record that was like an old-fashioned record. I wanted dynamics. No record these days has dynamics because they squash all the compression in mastering it.”
The result roars like rolling thunder, sometimes with intense immediacy, other times with distant fury. It’s an appropriate setting for an album that Fisher feels is also a departure in terms of the themes he tackles. “It starts with ‘From a Distant Shore,’ which is an anti-war song. I was pissed off after the last election, not the mid-term, but the presidential one. Normally I try to stay away from politics on stage, because I don’t necessarily think it’s my job. Usually I prefer to focus on personal politics, because at the end of the day, if everybody were more worried about their personal relationships with people immediately around them, it would be a better world.”
That track is followed by “Let It Roll,” which Fisher describes as “a reworking of a traditional murder ballad. With most murder ballads, there’s some set-up of a horrific act and then the repentance. I wanted one where there was no repentance. I wanted one where the guy goes into the next life as angry as he was before.” And there’s a cover of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” that fits that mood perfectly.
Fisher is a master of the well-turned phrase, the poignant story song, but he prefers not to spend too much time interpreting his songs. “I feel like playing music is an act of communication, and by definition it’s a two-way street. When you play live, you get a certain amount back from people, and allowing a song to be inhabited by the listener is a way of making the communication work. So many bands create this wall: ‘Here’s us, we’re the rock people, you’re the audience, and everything goes out.’ I’ve always thought our music was more inclusive.”
Perhaps. But Fisher roams some fairly dark recesses of his mind in song. There’s drama in much of what he writes, and it’s supported on Let It Roll with violas, guitars, and crashing drums. In “Crushed” he’s come “undone” and “lost the faith.” In “Breach” he sings, “And all that matters/Turns to grieve.” “Skeleton” paints this image: “The door is kicked/The lock is blown/Half of everything is gone/From half of everything I own.”