What A Hisser

You join us on the upstairs corridor of Whelan s, just a few yards from the venue s general boot-splashing facilities. Not quite the ideal location to conduct an interview, I ll grant you, but the keeper of the key to Howe Gelb s dressing room is nowhere to be found and with our own Stuart Clark as after-show DJ, there is nothing that could be called a quiet corner to retire to.
But no matter: Howe Gelb s show tonight was one gigantic feat of improvisation so why stop now? Shorn of his Giant Sand and OP8 bandmates, Joey Burns and John Convertino (who would, less than a week later, play one of the gigs of the year in Kilkenny wearing their Calexico hat), Gelb managed to somehow transform himself into a one-man band, juggling instruments and gadgets on stage as though he was a natural born son of the circus.
Electric piano and acoustic guitar, a walkman blaring out exotic sounds from Eastern Europe and the Indian sub-continent, almost as many pedals in sight than at the start-line of the Tour de France: Howe Gelb left himself a lot of work to do, but amazingly he pulled it off with style and then some. But why does he make things so potentially awkward for himself?
What you just saw was me trying to make up for the fact that it s just me on stage, says Gelb. I don t think anyone wants to see me sit down with just an acoustic guitar for an hour and a half. We d both get bored with that. I ve got to try and keep it fresh and exciting I never know what s gonna happen when I walk out on stage. I have absolutely no idea how it s gonna turn out or what pedal is gonna break down on me. Something usually does.
I try to keep it spontaneous. I don t even make out a set-list. It all depends on the night on the audience and the venue and what the vibe is. Some nights it all works out beautifully, other nights it s a shambles. That s the beauty of it, it s different every time.
The content as well as the form is also wide and varied. We get quaint Viennese waltzes, wracked country-folk that Neil Young fans will wallow in and an impulsive, experimental chicanery that adds an element of surprise and, whisper it, fun to proceedings. There s certainly no fear of Gelb just lazily reproducing the sound and songs of his new album, Hisser.
Recorded at his Tuscon home during a period of bereavement for his friend, the late blues maestro Rainer Ptacek, and the attendant re-evaluation of life which death brings, Hisser is a slouchy, slo-fi classic of impressionistic vignettes that are best understood as products of the instinctive left side of the brain rather than its more rational right-sided counterpart.
The album is as raw as they come, with an intentional hiss audible on many of the tracks. The almost timeless feel is partly due to the fact that Gelb used some 19th century
instruments that he accumulated over a period of time, such as a Salvation Army pump organ, for instance.
It s not as though I have some obsession with trying to get back to an authentic sound, whatever that means, explains Gelb. The fact that I ve used an ancient grand piano and a turn-of-the-century gut string guitar doesn t mean I ve an aversion to electronic instruments or modern technology. In fact, I ve always embraced that. It s just that Hisser was recorded at my home in Tuscon in a fairly basic way and those instruments were right for the feel I wanted to get on the record. I m hooking up with Jim Dickinson (producer of Big Star s classic Third/Sister Lovers opus NK) down in Memphis to do some new stuff and that will be a completely different experience, I should think, to Hisser. I ll have the band back with me for a start.
Whatever about the album, two of the more memorable moments from the gig were Gelb s use of the tapes of Romanian Gypsy folk singers in full swing and of a Hindu version of an Abba standard, sung live by two Pakistani sisters.
Near the end of the interview, Gelb breaks off, frantically searches his satchel for the walkman, forwards to the end of the song and scurries to the balcony to record the late night Whelan s revellers in full-blown karaoke mode during the B-52 s Love Shack . But he feels he missed the crucial moment and it appears that the chance of its use in future Howe Gelb solo shows is slim.
But it s fascinating nonetheless to experience first hand Gelb s obvious sense of wonder and delight at the world; to see a man who thinks, as well as talks, on his feet. n
Hisser is out now on V2 Records.