RB: Yeah it’s even going kind of further out now, maybe even into the realm of something someone won’t want to hear. (laughs). I’m working on a project now – I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not – but it involves speaking parts that are non songs or, parts that are spoken over non-melodic harmonies with extra sections and it’s a direction I really want to explore. And I’m getting to because of a project assignment. Which project assignments are great for - making you pursue something you wouldn’t normally pursue. It’s nice to dig up what you can and see what kind of holes you made.
SJ: Well I’m excited to hear what you come up with next. It’s never a dull moment with you…
RB: (laughs)
SJ: As I know from touring and traveling with you way back! Never a dull moment with Rick Buckner on the road.
RB: Oh my god. (laughing) I’m a much more disciplined writer now. I wish I had been writing down the things that happened over the last 25 years but with my mind things have been lost or things written down incorrectly. I wish I had more of those notes over the years.
SJ: Some big adventures I’m sure..
RB: Yeah you look at things and think that would make a great story. But the excess of vices or the after effect of them, you don’t see it how it really happened.
Over the years, especially when I go back to places I haven’t played in a long while, people will bring up things and ask ‘remember this?’ and I think, ‘That didn’t happen. I don’t know what you’ are talking about’.
I’m telling this to a guy at a club last year. We were talking about things and he told me some story that I swore didn’t happen and I said well I’m trying to put these things together now. Put together a bunch of short stories. I’m working on them now. And I then thought you just gave me a good concept for this book: Things that never happened.
SJ: I like that! I have vague memories of when we did some shows together, and they’re entertaining, and funny I know that much.
RB: Yeah the details disappear sometimes but I remember it was a good time too. We did have a good time too. I remember we were both sort of on the same trajectory and we were trying to get through things and also trying to make the most of the moments we had from the situations we were in. And the way we thought about things at the time. And what we thought we could pull off,. And whether we did or did not pull it off, we weren’t aware of at the time.
SJ: Ah, the road was our oyster. So obviously you’ll be heading out on tour to support this. Are you bringing other musicians or …
RB: No, there’s no money. I swear to god, one of these gigs the minimum payment on the contract is between one and ten dollars.
SJ: Are you kidding me?
RB: No. So there’s really no way, I’ve really lost my shirt a bunch of times over the years taking chances, and bringing people out. Even though I budget tours and I’m very careful about that, something always happens that screws me. Once again the label is asking who are you taking on tour. How are you going to do this? And well I recorded the songs all alone and I can’t bring someone else with me.
They’re just going to be what they are now in the way I’m playing them. Which is good? Because over the years I try and change up my actual way of playing and in the last few years I’ve done away with the pedals, and even the picks and I’m just using my fingers. Mostly my thumb and a couple fingers, trying to re-form the arrangements and see all the songs in a way that’s different than the way they would have been played on the record or in the past years.
I think that is making other things happen with the songs and changes your own dynamic, therefore making the shows much more individual.
SJ: Now that sounds wonderful, no doubt will make each show unique. And you solo onstage with just your songs is plenty to fill a room and make a wonderful musical experience..
RB: If the audience allows it. If the audience and club allow it, it’s a great thing. It’s about half and half sometimes.
SJ: Audiences need to be polite, supportive and then it’s all systems go. I think it was Eric Heywood who told me a crazy story once. He played on the new album and ...
RB: He sounds great on your record. He has such great tone. He totally matched the tone of your songs and your voice I thought that was a great choice using him.
SJ: Oh thanks so much, I did too. He’s wonderful. I remember he and I were talking about audiences at one point and he told me a crazy story, about how you two were on tour doing some shows, and some guy in the audience had brought a harmonica and was trying to play along to you in during a super quiet passage of a song.
RB: That’s happened a few times. There have been a few incidences where there were altercations..
SJ: That is so rude though, I mean, if you go to see a show you are there to soak it in not be obnoxious and interlope. Damn get your own gig if you’re so desperate.
RB: those kinds of people. They’re there for themselves and they’re unaware of the world around them. They are there for themselves and some people need to be reminded that their presence is a black hole. And they should just experience what they were there to experience and not push their needs on the rest of the world.
SJ: Yeah I’ve had people be disruptive somehow, mostly when someone’s inebriated and has no rationale. And hopefully you’re in a club where they actually have staff that can deal with it. But that’s not often the case.
Big turn of subject, but are you superstitious? Do you have anything you bring…
RB: No nothing will satisfy the inner voices with me. (laughing)
Although lately what I try to do is not be at the club except the moments I have to be there. I do sound check, I leave until right before I play, and try to leave as soon as I’m done. Because I don’t want to see or hear more than I have to see or hear. Hopefully, I’ll just be able to get on stage and do my thing and get out of there without having any kind of commentary on it. Which is very hard when you do stick around. That’s why I don’t stick around and sell merch after. Because I don’t want to have conversations about anything with anybody. I don’t want to have the accidental critique afterwards or hear any comments. Because you don’t want it to get to you. But you do take people’s words to heart and whether you believe it or not it affects you and I don’t want to be affected by someone who might have a fucked up vision.
SJ: I completely know what you mean. I have a difficult time even forming a conversation after I play. Forming a sentence after a performance is something I’m just not…
RB: You’re in a stupor
SJ: Yes, You’re literally in a stupor. People come up and they want to have a conversation but I’ll just be staring at them. All they see is my dumb smile and tweety birds flying around my head like in a cartoon... I literally am not there in the present moment after a show. It takes me a long time to wind down or come to.
RB: And when even I’m writing and there are times. There are times for instance when my girlfriend comes home and we’ll take a break together. And I’m ready to have a break and I’m ready to have a conversation but sometimes I can’t talk. Because it takes me a couple hours to slip out of the concentration I was in trying to get that moment together. It’s hard sometimes to snap yourself out of the moment and not that you want to go out and be a social person and mingle with the humanoids, that’s not our goal anyway but it makes it even more difficult because you’ve just spent the last few hours deep inside some place that nobody else can get to . It’s like sometimes you wake up one way in the morning and maybe you take a nap, and after you get up from that nap, you’re a totally different person.
SJ: You’re totally right and you know, just the same as when you said earlier that someone really rocking out in the studio to their own shit is suspect, I’m also really suspect of people who can just go socialize and mingle immediately after a show..I mean how does one do that? I will have to go out and sell merch on the tour I’m doing because there’s no one else to do it, but I always feel obligated to explain to people they shouldn’t expect much of me afterwards. And please don’t tell me anything important and expect me to remember anything important afterwards. Because I wont really be there for a while.
RB: I know. I’m frightened. I mean it’s happened that I’m onstage and if I hear one little sound I’m frightened to death and have even jumped off my chair before thinking something was happening. There’s certain cubs where there’s no secure green room, and people come back and talk to you which is totally inappropriate.
There’s this one club in the south that I know very well, the guy is nice, the club is nice, but he had to help me get to my car afterwards to make sure no freaks were gonna run up. I mean last time I had to tried to get out of there I had a whole plan to get out after my show, he escorted me out through a back gate, I went to my car, he disappeared and as I’m pulling out somebody runs up to my car and bangs on it and it scared the shit out of me. And they thought it was funny and I drove off in this horrible anxiety attack because it was like a sasquatch came running up and tried to tip my car over.
You know it’s hard to keep that inner world intact. It was completely startling and inappropriate, not knowing what kind of state I was in. You know, but I’m like that anyway.
I remember another instance where I went downtown where I live to run some errands and a car came by, honked and someone yelled ‘Hey!’. And I was frightened and I didn’t turn around, and after a couple more times I turned around and it was somebody I knew but I don’t think they’ll ever do it again because I think I scared them more than they scared me. Because I was frightened.
I was a cornered animal. I don’t like to be snuck up on or approached when I’m not ready for it. Sometimes I can chat somebody’s head off and talk too much. But sometimes I can’t and if you can’t then your put in a desperate position and desperate things happen.
SJ: Yup, we hear about those things in the news pretty often. And its best to keep out of the news in all ways possible..
RB: It just takes a second for some wrong decision to happen and then pretty soon you and other people around you are screwed..
SJ: One false move. Oh, I’d like to get back to the album for a second. The overall sound, there are no drums really, it’s more ambient, atmospheric. And in the lyrics there is intensity, some drama, some sadness. But the music has this overall feeling of calm which surrounds what the lyrics are; it’s sort of a tense ambient calm. I know you used autoharp…
RB; One thing was I was trying to do was use things that had a little more of a human error element. Record the basic foundation of the song as a live performance but through something that is controlled like the autoharp or the Suzuki c chors with the percussive thing turned down (which still has the percussive element within the notes you’re hitting), or instruments through something like the Boss Slicer pedal which arpeggiates automatically.
So everything is based on that flawed foundation which gives it less of a robotic feel and more of a human element. I’m all about making the foundation of the recording and then after you’ve put on some layers, erasing the foundation and seeing what’s being held up, Jenga style. It creates more holes that you could put more ideas into but also eliminates the waste. You know those Eno oblique strategies…
SJ: Yeah sure do…
RB: Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re right on, but they’re always kind of appropriate. They’re so hypocritical sometimes but they do work and ideas like that do help.
SJ: Well, it’s really a beautiful sounding album and your process for this lends itself well here.
RB: Well, thank you. Since I figured I was going to be doing this at home again, I was really trying to put instruments away that I had already used or used a lot over the last years, and I did actually physically put them in my attic. And kept things downstairs that I hadn’t used. I think that’s important too. To keep yourself off autopilot as much as you can.
SJ: Absolutely. Autopilot is not your friend. Well it definitely feels like a big step forward, so congratulations.
RB: Oh well thank you.
Richard and I finish up our conversation with promises to catch up down the road. He’s off the hook. But as always, he’s still out on a limb, on his own, writing in his own tongue, and no one can touch him. No one can hold a candle to his own brand of song weaving. He’s sent you all a new and quiet, tense, beautiful sonic drama to receive when your ready to listen. In the form of his new album and text, ‘Surrounded’.