Twilight Singers Interview

Here's an interview I did with Greg Dulli of The Twilight Singers, previously of The Afghan Whigs. It was published in a heavily edited form in Alternative Ulster Magazine. Greg is something of a musical hero, hence the wealth of geeky fan related questions. He's also a super friendly guy making this one of the most fun interview experiences I've ever had. Enjoy...

You can check out The Twilight Singers incredible cover of Massive Attacks "Live With Me" featuring Mark Lanegan here

The impact of Hurricaine Katrina was felt all over the world. We watched helpless on as an entire region of the worlds richest country was practically destroyed in a matter of hours, it was a human tragedy of immense proportions. In New Orleans particularly, it wasn't long before the impact on the music community was felt, musicians such as Fats Domino, and Big Stars Alex Chilton were air-lifted off roofs while Kanye West's notorious "George Bush doesn't care about black peole" outburst focused attention on the Dubya and his governments' woefully inadequate response. All of which leads us two the new Twilight Singers album "Powder Burns", the long awaited follow up from to the 2003s rapturously received "Blackberry Belle"

"Powder Burns" is yet another classic album of epic, passionate, dark hearted rock 'n' roll from former album former Afghan Whigs frontman, Greg Dulli. It's also one of the first records to emerge having been significantly affected by and dealing directly with the disaster. I'll let Greg take up the story...

I did a lot of the basic tracking in New Orleans in July and August before I went to Europe. I was in Italy when the hurricane hit. I've lived in New Orleans on and off for the last ten years, so it's a very dear place to me and watching it unfold and watching the non-response from the government, the emotions I was feeling went from rage, to despair to sadness to feeling "I've got to get there!" back to anger but I had jobs I was doing in Italy so i couldn't get back. I got back as soon as I could and it was surreal. To work in an environment of a city that is probably one of the wildest cities on earth and have it be under marshal law with a strong military presence was fucking strange, and very surreal. I mean, I haven't seen tanks in a city since the last time I was in Belfast! So I ended up writing three new songs when I got back to town and those songs were those that were most affected by the hurricaine. Starting the record before the disaster and finishing after, there's very much a ying-yang quality, it's up and down. The more hushed songs were definitely written after wards "Candy Cane Crawl" "Bonnae Brae", "I Wish I Was" where written later on and "Underneath The Waves" is probably the most direct reference to the hurricane.

What's it like in the city now, any signs that it's getting back to normal?

Well I didn't go down for Mardi Gras because they shortened it from one week instead of the usual two so that should give you and idea of where it's at. I left town in December, and It was still under curfew. The curfew has been lifted now but there's still very few people there, the population is still only half mast and unless your in construction or demolition, jobs are hard to come by, a lot of businesses have pulled out. But we're starting a tour in may and we're playing in town on June 6 th which we are going to film for our DVD, and I like to point out that June 6th this year is going to be 666! So watch out!

Anyone who's ever seen The Twilight Singers live will tell you, that's going to be one hell of a party. How does this record compare to the other Twilight Singers albums?

I think the thing that's different with this record as compared to the other Twilight Singers records is that I kind of threw off the yoke of convention and allowed it to sound like it wanted to be. With the other records I had a preordained idea of how I wanted them to sound so "Powder Burn" is not limited by my initial concept of what I wanted the Twilight Singers to be which was as atmospheric kind of project. This one's a little more rock and roll, more wide screen cinematic.

Who's playing on the record?

For my live band I use a pool of about 10 musicians and all of them are on there. On backing vocals I have Ani Difranco, Joseph Arthur, Scott Bennet from Brian Wilsons' band, and John Curley from the Whigs plays bass on one of the songs.

The last record you made that was strongly influenced by New Orleans was the Whigs "1965" which was very joyous, I guess this is a bit different...

This is it's alter ego. "1965" is literally the happiest record I've ever done, it's my favourite Whigs record and Whigs fans will fight me to the end of time on that and I don't give a fuck! It was one of the happiest times of my life and you can hear that, this album It's definatley not as dark as "Blackberry Belle" but there is a darkness, y'know when death and destruction float through your life, it's hard to party.

"1965" was recorded very quickly after abandoning what would become "Twilight" the first Twilight Singers album. Likewise you're solo album "Amber Headlights" was abandoned to make "Blackberry Belle" after the death of Ted Demme (film director and the man who brought you "Yo! MTV Raps") You really seem to run with inspiration when it hits...

I make records based on the circumstances of my life at the moment and abandoning "Amber Headlights" was the thing to do at the time, I wasn't that person any more. On this one, the New Orleans that I left and that I came back to were very diiferent and I had to try and reconcile that. It kind of tore me in half and I think both halves are on there but I think there's a heart in the middle of it.

While "Powder Burns" has been a long time coming, even longer in gestation is the long mooted Gutter Twins project, a collaboration with Mark Lanegan that has fans salivating at the prospect. What's the deal man? People are waiting!

We hope to finish it soon. When I get back from doing this we have ten days booked in Joshua Tree, and hopefully it's going to come out next year. It's taking a while as we're both busy guys but it's coming together. We actually did a Gutter Twins show in Italy in September. We only played one of our original songs as Italy is so bootleg happy, and we didn't want anything to slip out but it gave me a great idea, of what our live show is going to be like and fuck! It's going to be a good time! Between the two of us we probably have about 500 songs we can play, so i think it's going to be very eventful. Some of it is so orchestral and sweeping that I don't know how we'll be able to pull it off unless someone ponies up for an orchestra for it, it's very 70s, Jack Nitzsche, Jimmy webb, sounding, downright epic....

I'm wondering how it will work live, he's very withdrawn and intense and you're very flamboyant and outgoing, do you think you'll be able to bring him out of his shell at all?

You can't bring him out! He's going to be him and I'm going to be me. I said to him, ‘look dude I'm going to go to bring it full force’ and he's like ‘Well, I'm not going to dance around like a monkey!’ I think it's going to work well, we'll be yin and yang. It worked at the Italian show, I'm very demonstrative and he's very intense and once we started playing we'll spark off each other. If I start talking he'll talk back, believe me, I can get him talking like no-one else.

Yeah, I've met Mark too and I have met him and despite his fierce reputation but he's a really nice guy...

He's really one of the nicest people I've ever met and he's one of my best friends. I've seen a side of him that no-one else has and at the same time, I've been the piano player in his band and watched him scare the shit out an the audience. One woman had the fucking balls to heckle him...

Oh no...

..and he destroyed her. If she didn't go home and hang herself I'll be surprised, and one point even I was like "Whoa! Dude! Pull off!" It was the dumbest thing I've ever seen, there's a recording of it floating around the internet and you can here me laughing into the microphone, it's fucking hilarious...

OK even though we've out-ed him as a nice guy, you still don't go around heckling Mark Lanegan...Your lyrics are renowned for being, deeply intense and personal, do you ever worry about putting too much out there or have you ever held anything back because it was too personal?

There's some things I haven't put out out of respect to my family, and I would say the Gutter Twins stuff is as naked as I've got. "Powder Burns" is also pretty naked, I don't mind it. It's shedding a skin and moving on and it's liberating, I'm not afraid to do it. There are certain songs from my past that I don't really feel comfortable playing but there's always a new one down the line.

Do you find you get further away from stuff like Gentlemen…?

I haven't listened to "Gentlemen" in a while and there are songs on there that I'm not comfortable playing. I was 26 when I made that record. Someone asked me the other day "do you think you could do that again?" I was like "fuck no!" That was 12 years ago, are you the same person you were 12 years ago? They say people don't change but they do. I did some Whigs stuff on the last tour, that was the one album i didn't touch, except for a little bit of "If I Were Going" but that one felt comfortable to me and I did it in a place in the set that was designed for release. I don't know, I was actually thinking of "Fountain and Faifax" the other day and I don't even know why, maybe because I drove past it. If I were going to do one, that'd be it, it was always the most fun to play live. My hands feel good on the guitar when I play that, it's a nice ripping riff. It's strange, bands with incredible longevity like The Stones or Aerosmith or even someone like Neil Young, you watch them do songs that are 30 or 40 years old and I'm kind of amazed by that. Like "Wow! Is this sincere or are you just hawking a product?" Like The Stones have so many great songs, why the fuck do they still gotta do "Jumpin' Jack Flash" It's not like you're going to be bummed if they don't play it! Why not play, "Rip This Joint" or "Back Street Girl" or even "Monkey Man" Fuck! Come on man!

When you played in Whelans a few years ago you seemed more comfortable with the more upbeat songs off "Black Love" and "1965"

Definitely. Doing "Faded" in particular is very natural to me. Of all the songs I wrote in the Whigs, it's the most comfortable. I used to say it's my "Purple Rain", the big show closer. It's kind of timeless, it's almost like a cover to me now, it feels almost older than me. "Gentlemen“, really took it out of me. That was the big record for us, we went from playing bars to big theatres and it was kind of a shock to the system. I mean I wasn't singing "Jumpin' Jack Flash". I was singing the darkest corridors of the mansion in my head, y'know. It's interesting, I still haven't decided if I'm going to do Whigs songs on this tour, I've now done as many records outside of the Whigs as I did when I in them. I probably will though...

Yeah, it's nice to hear them but at the same time, you have done enough great stuff outside that people wouldn't be annoyed, you don't need to rely on them...

Yeah, we did a couple of shows at SXSW and didn't do Whigs songs and nobody was bitching so it was fine. I think I'll do them if I'm feeling it but I'm not going to do them out of any form of obligation

A long standing feature of Afghan Whigs and Twilight Singers shows is the mind boggling array of covers spontaneously dropped into the set. A feature which reached it's logical conclusion with the release in 2004 of "She Loves You" and album of covers by artists as diverse as Bjork, Mary J Blige, Stevie Nicks and Billie Holiday. The album was the first of three planned covers albums, what's in store number two?

I guarantee I'll be ready for that'd second one when I get back from touring because, it just happens, it's nothing planned. The one song, I'm definitely going to do is "Flashback" by Fat Freddy's Drop and I may do "Forever" by Dennis Wilson, those are two songs that I'm playing with at the minute but somebody else's song will come out, and I will seize on it and make it my mine. I haven't even heard it yet and I'm already salivating...

I've got it in my head for some PJ Harvey of Tina Turner on this one...

Hey have you ever heard Tina Turner do "Whole Lotta Love"?

Shit no!

It's on an old album called "The Acid Queen" It's really amazing, really nasty, it'll break you in too, she looks hot on the cover too. Polly Harvey, I fucked with a couple of her songs in the Whigs "Down By The Water" in particular. There were two songs on "Songs From The City" that I thought I could do a mash up on and you've just sent me back in that direction James. She's ripe, ripe for the picking!

On the Whigs 1998 classic "1965" Greg also famously dropped a lyric form Queensbridge's finest Nas into "Omerta" Not many rock bands can get any with dropping hip-hop lyrics and not looking like idiots. That was awesome...

What's even more awesome about that is that, on the '65 tour, we did three shows in New York and on all three shows Ola Daru (Nas's da and famed jazz trumpeter) opened up and on the last night Nas came on stage and did a song with him and then stuck around. I spoke to him briefly, he was like "I heard you dropped me, I'm going to check you out" I'm like "alright man!" So he watched us from a table up one the balcony. I sang the lyric ("I never sleep,'cos sleep is the cousin of death") right at him and he nodded his head at me. It was awesome!

I love Nas

Me too man, he was really nice to me and his dad is a super stud.

Ha! Sticking with hip-hop, Greg also recently pointed out the remarkable similarity between Oukasts' "Hey Ya" and the Whigs "Uptown Tonight" via an incredible mash up of the two songs. It's a similarity he claims is no coincidence...

I know they heard my version because, a friend of mine is friends with them and Andre acknowledged that he'd heard "1965", but that was as much as he'd admit. I was like "Dude, I know what you did!" and I actually think it's fucking awesome.

Yeah, you can't deny "Hey Ya"

Hell no man, y'know I did it and the fact that they heard my version, I was psyched.

Greg has a close working relationship with Italian rock band After Hours. They're something of an unknown quantity over here, could you tell us a bit about them?

They're kind of the kings of Italy so I was aware of them having played a bunch in Italy and always having done well there and I met their singer at a wedding in Las Vegas so the next time I was over, I checked out their show and it was one of the most mind blowing and visceral rock shows I had ever seen, I didn't know any of their songs but it didn't matter, I was moved by them. Then they asked The Twilights to go play with them and when you play with After Hours in Italy, you're playing to 5 to 10 thousand people, they are a big fucking deal and have been a big fucking deal for 15 years. They asked me to do their record, I was like "fuck yeah man!" and they were doing it in May and June in Sicily so it was basically a paid holiday to the Italian Riveria. I co-wrote 4 of the songs with them, they are all amazing musicians and the singer is just incredible, like a cross between Iggy and Jeff Buckley and I ended up joining their band, I did 50 shows with them last year and I wouldn't have traded it for nothing. I loved being the sideman, I loved the no pressure role, played guitar and piano, and ended up singing a couple of songs. I sang a song in Italian at the end of the night, hadn't a clue what the fuck I was singing but the whole crowd was cheering so it couldn't have been anything too bad. They are awesome.

People are still raving about your show in Whelans a few years ago, when will you be coming back?

I'm pretty sure we're playing Oxygen and I think then we're going to come back do clubs and theatres in the Fall.

You still owe Belfast for the cancelled gig at the Empire...

Yeah man I know! It was the fucking snow storm! Touring in Europe in February is kind of silly because you're going to run into shit like that but it sucks man, I've only ever played Belfast once at Queens University and I had a blast. I remember I was at KFC, and I came out and nearly got hit by a tank! I was like, "Holy Crap! Just like on TV!"

There's not some many tanks around now which is nice.

That's cool.

Here's a kind of geeky question, have you ever played "Step Into The Light" live or ever intend to play it again. It's my favourite man! There's a long pause. I take that as a "no"

Don't take it as a no! Actually, I really love that song and I was actually, considering that as one of the songs I might consider playing again. I tell you what I'll come to Belfast and I'll play that song for you...

I'll hold you to that...

I actually started fucking around with it by myself on the piano and it works nicely as a piano song. I'll give that one a run. It's super stripped down. I actually play drums on it, and my friend Donal Lough, he's an actor and his parents are from Kerry, it's his favourite song and my granddad is from Cork, so maybe it's the Irish in us. Y'know what? It'd be my pleasure to play that song, I'm going to work it up with the band. You watch, we'll do that one then we'll hit you back with the PJ Harvey, give you some, double trouble.

Ok, I look foreward to it and I to checking out "Powder Burns"

I think you're going to like it, I'm as excited about it as I have been about any record I've ever done. It'll shock you in a couple of places I think…

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us Greg...

Nice talking to you James, have a good night...