Interview: Jonathan Wilson, singer-songwriter

By AIDAN SMITH
Published on Thursday 2 February 2012 00:00

In love with the Laurel Canyon sound from a young age, Jonathan Wilson now finds himself at the heart of that hippie musical tradition

IT’S early afternoon in Philadelphia when I catch up with Jonathan Wilson. The singer-songwriter is with his dad, Al, and he’s doing what he always does in those downtown-downtime hours before a gig in a new place – drool over guitars. “Hey,” he says. “I’ve just seen a 1937 Martin acoustic, so gorgeously balanced. I think maybe I’m gonna have to trade some stuff for it.”

A Martin, I say. “Yeah, parlour-sized, a double-zero-18, you know?” Wilson, bless him, thinks I’m as big a geek as he is. That would be impossible, given he’s been obsessing about this sort of detail for a long, long time. When he picks up a guitar it’s probably not enough that the instrument has the ability to move from minor to major and back again in a sweet manner that would be perfectly acceptable to a general listenership. For him it must evoke this very specific time and place: Laurel Canyon, 1971, just as Joni Mitchell was releasing her Blue album, Jackson Browne was writing Take It Easy for the Eagles and the Byrds were making one last attempt at greatness with Chestnut Mare.

Wilson is the new prince of Laurel Canyon, that area of prime California real estate and, 40-odd years ago, solid-gold California music. His debut album Gentle Spirit revives the spirit of the age, even though he’s too young to have heard his hippy heroes first time around. At 37, he’s quite long in the tooth to be an emerging talent. He’s been around, but gently and quietly. Although he’s been dubbed “the best-connected musician you’ve never heard of”, those who pore over the small print of other people’s records many know him as a producer. He reckons he’s been a muso since the age of ten, and appears not to have had a haircut since then as well.

“That was how old I was when I first heard the original Laurel Canyon artists: Joni and Jackson and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,” he says. “Back in North Carolina, in the car with my brother, our parents used to play that music all the time. My brother is Brian Wilson and with that name maybe it would have been too tough for him to try and be a musician, so now he’s a computer guy. But me, I remember right away being really interested in the detail of the music, the particular sound of the tom drums and stuff. And it was those records that made me decide, ‘I’ve got to get to California.’”

No member of the Wilson family had before left the home state for 275 years. “It was quite a big deal, but everyone knew I was going to go; I was always quite antsy.” In his teens he got diverted by jazz. “It was my punk, at a time when everyone else my age loved Pearl Jam.” So he didn’t have many friends? “No, I suppose not,” he laughs. “The few I had were into guitars and gear like me. And almost all of them were a lot older.”

Performing in bar bands, which he’d done from 13, became a bit of a grind so Wilson taught himself how to make guitars and became accomplished enough at it to be able to pick and choose his gigs. The guitars paid for the studio he eventually set up in Laurel Canyon in 2005 and Wilson started to think seriously about an album that had been in his head for 20 years. “I suppose after being in love with the mythology all that time Laurel Canyon could have disappointed me; it didn’t. It’s a beautiful place, a special place and as regards making music there’s definitely something in the topography, in the air. It’s very expensive, but I got lucky and managed to rent a bungalow at a decent rate. It was right across the road from the Zappa house and the place where Houdini stayed.”

Frank Zappa famously hated hippies; Harry Houdini performed his final disappearing act 40 years before their arrival. On long songs, some lasting nine minutes, Wilson unashamedly sings: “Love it is a melody and beauty is a feeling closest to your spirit core.” The modern world, he reckons, is a “nasty mystery”. And he asks: “Can we really party today, with all that’s going on?” Overall, though, the tone is optimistic, maybe even as sunnily hopeful as it was, way back when. Wilson could have made this album ten years ago but there would have been no Fleet Foxes or Joanna Newsom or Midlake to pave the way. That it arrives now, however, is a happy accident rather than as a result of a marketing strategy. “It was always going to have to be made with people who were friends, guys I could share a bottle of wine with, and you can’t force that. Everything has to align.”

Does he mind that every single five-star review mentions most the debt to the singer-songwriter gods? “Well, I didn’t go to Laurel Canyon as a pilgrimage, not like this crazy stream-of-consciousness guy who heard my guitar from the street and thought it was part of the vision-quest – he was an actor who showed up every day until I pretended there had been a call telling him to get his ass down the canyon and back to France. Also, I didn’t intend that my album should be an homage.

“But if it sounds to people like something from the late-60s/early-70s then that’s fine. If it’s in my job description that I have to keep alive certain concepts and ideals from that time then that’s cool too. Routinely paying respects to my elders is something I do willingly and I’m proud to say that Jackson Browne and David Crosby have become good friends.” Not much has changed for Wilson, then. He’s still hanging out with the old guys.

• Jonathan Wilson plays the Arches, Glasgow, tonight as part of Celtic Connections. www.celticconnections.com

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