“Without music, life would be an error,” Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols. The Twilight Singers are the latest side project of Afghan Whigs lead singer Greg Dulli, an endeavor born in New Orleans during the summer of 1997 and finally released this month on Columbia Records.
The songs, jointly titled Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers, are a softer, more electronic version of the usual rockin’ Whigs material, decidedly influenced by the heat and humidity of New Orleans. Dulli was accompanied on the project by vocalists Harold “Happy” Chichester (of Howlin’ Maggie) and Shawn Smith (of Brad, Satchel, Pigeonhed, etc.), local players Kermit Ruffins, Corey Henry and Roderick Paulin, and the British ambient duo Fila Brazillia. To paraphrase Neitzsche, “Without the Twilight Singers, your CD collection is in error.” Or, if you love Moby, you’re really gonna love this.
Dulli, speaking via telephone from his home in California, concurs: “I love Moby and if people who don’t normally listen to rock ‘n’ roll are inclined to listen to a different side of my musical personality based on a comparison to Moby, I’m all for that.”
New Orleans, for a spell, was Dulli’s home. As he explains: “You live in my favorite city. I would still live there except for I have no willpower and that’s not a good place to live if you don’t have willpower. I definitely wanted the album to have the feeling of the town–I used a lot of local musicians to play on it. Kermit was the first person I asked and Kermit introduced me to Roderick, who ended up on 1965 [the Afghan Whigs’ last album, also recorded in New Orleans]. And Corey Henry, who’s one of my favorite trombone players of all time. They’re very low in the mix–they’re on ‘King Only’ [inspired by a Henry Butler recital at the Funky Butt] and the song ‘Twilight.’
“I wrote all but three songs in New Orleans. When I came down there three years ago to first start working on it, I was in a depressed state of mind so I kind of used the New Orleans underworld to comfort me. A lot of it came from my love affair with Decatur Street. Even though you can get in a lot of trouble down there, there’s something very cleansing and spiritual about the town. It helped glue me back together actually.
“New Orleans doesn’t even seem like it’s part of America. It seems like its own country. If I could compare it to anything, it’s a little bit of Amsterdam, a little bit of Paris, a little bit of Vegas, a little bit of L.A., a little bit of New York City–all smashed together with a Southern point of view. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio–very different from New Orleans, let me tell you.
“I think what I loved most about New Orleans is the nonstop musicality of the place. I went out every night. I have been to Ernie K-Doe’s lounge many times–he’s nuts, man. You hear music just walking down the street in New Orleans. If it ain’t somebody actually playing an instrument, it’s somebody jacking their stereo.”
Perhaps the most intriguing title on Twilight is “Verti-Marte,” named in honor of the French Quarter grocery store and soon to be widely misinterpreted by rock theorists around the planet. Dulli favors the store’s po-boys and thus, the nod. He likewise nods his head in disbelief at what listeners think the song is about: “The funny part is I’ve heard from people analyzing the songs on the Internet and they think that ‘Verti-Marte’ is ‘Verti-Merde,’ meaning something like ‘green shit.’ They couldn’t be more fucking wrong–it’s about a grocery store!
“The people talking on the song are me, Steve Meyers from New Orleans and this girl Sophia, who worked at Kingsway Studio. I just taped everybody–with their permission, of course–and then cut it up and put it in a sampler and played everybody on a keyboard. I didn’t have a name for it. A lot of times, you just have working titles so I called it ‘Verti-Marte’ and I could never think of anything better so I left it as ‘Verti-Marte.’ I never spent a lot of time at Verti-Marte–their delivery people spent a lot of time coming over to my house, bringing me food. I hope they like it. It was done with love and that’s for sure.”
As for other secrets, the song “Clyde” is about a cat and “Annie Mae” is not an actual female: “Annie Mae is a product of my fertile imagination. I’d love to know her, though. I’m sure she an amalgamation of ladies that I’ve known from the past.”
Tananarivo? Atakama!
It’s not often that we encounter one of Norway’s top rock stars in New Orleans–in fact, never. Such was the case when we recently made the acquaintance of Mohawked Heidi Marie Vestrheim, one of two female vocalists in Atakama, a Norwegian rock band whose Lush CD has been a permanent resident on our stereo during the last month. Lush is cool, danceable and pays homage to two of our idols, Charles Baudelaire and Dolly Parton.
What does the word “Atakama” mean? Besides being the name of a Chilean desert, one of the most arid places on Earth, it’s derived from a previously-banned book by Agnar Mykle, the “Henry Miller of Norway.” Heidi Marie gave us the lowdown: “He’s a Norwegian writer who wrote a novel [Sangen Om Den Røde Rubin] about this boy who’s really having a problem communicating with women and he wishes there was a language that would really simplify the things between men and women, like getting to bed. He was really sleeping around a lot. He thought it would be better if you could just ask ‘Tananarivo?’ and the women would answer ‘Atakama’ and everything would be great.”
The band Atakama has been together for a bit over two years, headquartered in Bergen, Norway. The recording of Lush was a multinational affair: “We were recording for two months in Provence in France because they had a studio there we really wanted to use because it has all analog equipment. And Provence is romantic and beautiful. Bergen is rain, rain all the time. In Provence, it was peaches and grapes and sunshine. Then we went to Wales and did most of the vocal tracks there. Then we went to London and mixed it.”
Asked to choose between Gotham and New Orleans, Heidi Marie opts for the hereabouts: “We just came from New York and the people in New Orleans are so much more friendly ’cause they have more time and the weather is quite beautiful. We went down Bourbon Street and there was music everywhere you go. We saw Baby Wolf [Kipori Woods] play. Besides that, we’ve been to a strip club which was really nice. I’ve never been to a strip club before–it wasn’t uncomfortable or anything. It was just a good thing to do. We went to the one with the legs sticking out [Big Daddy’s]. The strippers were so-so. They aren’t really good dancers–they just kind of wiggle around. And we went to a gospel church on Sunday–for four hours. That was amazing!”
One thing that perplexes Heidi Marie about the United States is the nation’s lack of support for the arts: “In Norway, you can say, ‘I’m a young artist and I want to release a CD but I haven’t got a record deal–can you help me make a demo?’ And the government will give you a thousand dollars.”
While we’re holding our breath, waiting for Washington to send us a big check for our next artistic endeavor, we asked Heidi Marie what she would do if Lush sells a zillion copies. Her answer was short and sweet: “Buy a house in New Orleans.”
