Interview: Nels Cline

Special fifth-Tuesday post for paying subscribers!

L-R: Chris Lightcap, Nels Cline, Tom Rainey, Ingrid Laubrock (photo: Nathan West)

In 2025, three months will have five Tuesdays in ’em: April, July, and September. This is one of those special extra Tuesdays, and I am honoring that by providing something very interesting, exclusively for paying subscribers. I recently interviewed guitarist Nels Cline for Stereogum. And while we had a long and fascinating conversation, I could only use a small portion of it in the column. So today, I present the full transcript here, behind the paywall!

For those who don’t know, Nels Cline is a man who dwells in many worlds, and often finds a way to bridge them or make them overlap. Sometimes he’s a jazz musician, or at least a jazz tourist, as he puts it in our interview below; he worked with Julius Hemphill in the ’80s, and recorded an Andrew Hill tribute album I liked a lot, and the first thing I ever heard by him was Interstellar Space Revisited, his 1999 interpretation of the legendary John Coltrane/Rashied Ali duo album, recorded with percussionist Gregg Bendian.

He’s also done a million different skronky rock- and noise-related things, and led all sorts of other groups of his own over the years, including the Nels Cline Singers (an instrumental act) and the ensemble heard on his latest album, Consentrik Quartet: saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap, and drummer Tom Rainey. And there are no doubt thousands and thousands of people who don’t know anything about the music he makes on his own, but have heard him play guitar with Wilco, a band he joined in 2004.

We talk about a lot of things in the interview below, including Interstellar Space Revisited; his new album; his orchestral record Lovers; his collaboration with Anthony Braxton, Taylor Ho Bynum, and Greg Saulnier; and what the phrase “jazz guitar” means to him. It’s worth reading, so if you’re not already a paid subscriber, I hope it will entice you to become one.

If you’re a free subscriber, don’t worry, you still might get something out of today’s newsletter. I have an extra copy of pianist Matthew Shipp’s book Black Mystery School Pianists And Other Writings, and I will give it away to any US-based reader who wants it! Just email burningambulance@gmail.com with the subject line “Gimme” and it could be yours!