As co-founder of Minneapolis' critically acclaimed band The Jayhawks and, later, successful Americana/folk band the Creekdippers, Mark Olson has spent decades making his living as an innovative journeyman trekking into new heights of music.
While the wealth of knowledge and prestige a resume like Olson's brings might lead to a notion of coasting into the future playing it safe, the singer/songwriter's recent plunge into to the life of a solo musician has found led to new doorways into music.
For Olson, ever the thinking man's musician, it seemed like the perfect time to share his own vision, which he did on 2007's "Salvation Blues" and the recently released "Many Colored Kite." (In between he also collaborated with Jayhawks cohort Gary Louris on 2008's "Ready for the Flood.")
"I sat down by myself and played the guitar and sang and I thought I better do that while I have the chance," says Olson. "I just want to write sit down with my guitar and write some songs and put them front and center because I've worked in the group dynamic for 20 years."
Olson's knowledge stems from those years of experience with his two bands, which Olson calls a lengthy apprenticeship, and he kept his eyes opened as he picked up little things.
But now, music's not just about playing music for him: it's about how he wants to play music, travel, and what he feels right. And especially of late, it's created somewhat of statement.
"If you're going to find somewhere in your soul that you feel the best you've got to keep your eyes open and go for that," says Olson.
"You can't just expect to find where your soul's going to feel good because other people are going to feel good there. You have to look out and see what feels right to you. How does it feel to travel? Who are your friends? Where do you want to be with your life in five years?
"All of these questions lay into these kinds of things and try to solve some of them with ("Many Colored Kite"). I thought ‘This is it Mark Olson, no more goofing around. No more saying you're in this group or that group and you're singing this or singing that.'"
The philosophy he's developed over the years about music has led to openness to the world and ideas, something vibrantly apparent on the upbeat folk musings of "Many Colored Kite."
OnMilwaukee.com caught up with Olson to talk at length about the singer's methodology of making a song connect and growing into his own vision.
OnMilwaukee.com: The title "Many Colored Kite" in a way is fitting given your culmination of different experiences over the past decades whether with a band or lately solo. How would you say they've added up and where do you see yourself as a musician today?
Mark Olson: When I was young I listened to some folk records my aunt, my mom and my grandma had. And I also listened to the things they said about books and their opinions about life. Then I listened to the radio some and then when I moved back to Minneapolis.
After high school there was a classic country show on radio. When I got together with Gary Louris we were listening to that and recording that on cassette and learned how to write songs. And it's been a journey since then as far as me developing my own voice, my own guitar style, and figuring out how it is to speak from inside yourself about things you've experienced in life, the way of giving it meaning within your family, and the universal versus the personal.
I don't know what's going to happen next, nobody does in their life. I've always tried to keep my eyes open and keep myself in a position where I can play music. I've been doing it for 20 years and hope I can do it for 20 more.
OMC: With this record you worked with two others contributors: Norwegian singer and multi-instrumentalist Ingunn Ringvold and Italian violinist Michele Gazich.
MO: It's how I like to work. I like to work with one or two other people. I've experienced all sizes of them. I really like playing off one or two other people so that's what I've been doing for the last four years. Ingun and Michele on the "Salvation Blues" tour, Ingun and Gary on the "Ready for the Flood album," and now it's just going to be Ingun and I. That to me is the thrill: to create a sound around that using everyone's strengths.
OMC: You've mentioned that's its very important to be direct when it comes to lyrics. Could you talk about how you apply that?
MO: The lyrics are the things I first things in music I got interested in really. It was probably because of Buffy Sainte-Marie, who by the way wrote one of the best songs of all time, "Universal Soldier." It has such a unique way of looking at that question. It puts it out in a beautiful song.
And there's Bob Dylan. When you're a kid and hear Bob Dylan all of a sudden you probably go to the library and start checking out poetry books because you want to know what the heck's going on, what is this guy really talking about. So you go to the library and check out poetry books and you're like "Oh, he's kind of an existential guy." For me I personally prefer more on the realistic level, more on the romantic level. I like to portray people in my family, like coming up with a decision they have in their life and how that decision is going to play out.
Also with my lyrics I have a conversation now and how that happens is that it's an event in my life versus the emotional and spiritual feeling I have about something. Those two things talk back and forth and within that I can write the lyrics to the song pretty much now without editing.
In The Jayhawks days I would write a lot of lyrics and edit them down. Now I pretty much just write it right from the get go and get through it. It's something that interests me. Every one of my first lines I've ever written if you've listened to any song that I was involved in it has a personal meaning to me. Hopefully that first line poses a question to the listener, "Here's a subject, what do you think about the subject? What is in your heart about this or experience about this?" And I build it from there.
OMC: You've sometimes called them moral stories.
MO: They can be hopeful or they can be totally void of meaning. There are things in life where you're like "What, how can something like this happen?" The moral of that story is chaos basically. I have a few of those too.
OMC: What for you makes a song complete?
MO: It has to have two elements -- first you need the strong conviction of what you're going to write about to advance the story. Within that conviction you need to have a point of view, something you're going to try to relate. It can be on a lot of different levels.
To me, this happened at a very young age, and part of it was that I heard these songs by Victoria Williams (a founding member of the Creekdippers) and they spoke to me of childhood things I didn't get. I didn't see that and know the value of that. I learned about her songwriting that way in my late 20s.
It makes me wonder and makes me view my life in a new way.
The other element is the music. There are the major cords and minor cords and rhythm and there's tempo. That's the trick; you can have these really good lyrics but you have to frame them in some kind of music that lifts them up and emphasizes them. That's in the trick, that's in the struggle, that's what I've been trying to do.
OMC: Did you notice anything like that in The Jayhawks?
MO: Because the first Jayhawks album came out again I went back and listened to those songs and threw a couple of them in the set list. I realized I was onto this thing early on with a crazy song that made the critics wonder that would be nothing I'd write about now. It still has these elements in it, posing a question and taking off in rant in a way. Hopefully, I refined it but hopefully not too much because when a person has the inspiration for something the raw inspiration always seems to be the best.
OMC: Going back to the new album, I read that it came as a result of long touring from the previous album.
MO: The album came about because Michele, Ingun and I did about 200 shows together in Europe and America. In that time it was one of the best experiences of all of our lives, being able to get up, just play in a small group, travel together and do things during the day with each other. Oh sure we were tired, but it gave all of a sense of doing something we enjoyed to do and do it because neither of them had been able to tour internationally and play night after night.
Well, to keep going after that period of time we had to make another record. So I set about working on some songs and during that time the three of us went in and did demos. We did like two demo sessions so we knew at a certain point we knew that now that we had such and such good songs we were going to try to record them for real. So I came back to California for a month after rehearsing by myself, and got a competent engineer/producer in Beau Reyman.
We wanted to use all the elements ... The string section came about because Michele toured with us for such a long time but we didn't want to take all that touring and all the strings and strings parts and toss it out the window when it came time to do a new record. We wanted to so it right so instead of putting one violin part on it we stuck four. Ingun and I formed the backbone of the harmony. I played bass.
OMC: What do you think of the way it came out?
MO: I know that it comes out weird. I know the way my voice comes out is strange and the way I play guitar is different and the whole thing isn't typical middle of the road type music. It's definitely for someone who wants to take time to sit down and listen to it.
Maybe they'll like it maybe they won't. Maybe the questions I've posed aren't questions people want to talk about; things inside themselves like what you're dealing with on moral issues. Maybe they want to hear about love and lost love and that doesn't interest me. What interests me is framing the philosophies of our parents and grandparents had, what they told us and do they mean anything to us today, with the chaos around us.
OMC: Going back to the album's title, there's the big theme of being open to the world. Could you talk about that?
MO: The idea was that we were from three different countries and we all love music. I tried to instill that in my life that people from other countries have so much to offer each other. This is a really interesting time because travel has become affordable to pretty much most people that we can get around and meet people from all these different countries and we can learn from them.
The biggest thing I'm most thankful to The Jayhawks and American record labels is when they flew us to Europe I got to meet people for the first time and play for them and talk to them. If you get to know people from other people it's going to do nothing but enrich your life. We have a lot different but we have a lot common at the same time.
OMC: Let's talk a little bit about the individual tracks. What were some in particular that were special writing?
MO: "Beehive," because I was able to talk about a personal thing. I had a tree of life in backyard and a swarm of African bees came one day. I tried to relate that to a universal theme of what's going on in the world. There's a lot of religion involved in current events so I tried to put those ideas together. And transferring it back to a personal level of how we perceive ourselves when we look for a job, or a relationship, when it's things that are important to us and when it doesn't work out. So there's many theme within that song. It has one of most bizarre tunings of all time. It's really out there both lyrically and musically.
"Little Bird of Freedom" I wrote in my cabin. I was thinking because I was playing live I wanted sound and then break, sound, break. I realized that works so good live. So I came up with the riff and the break part. And from there I naturally went into the other part. As far as lyrics that's total basic idea of the ideas the people learned as a child what they want to do with themselves. What am I going to with it? How am I going to do it? You're reaching out for the answers to the hopes you have.
OMC: Any favorite Milwaukee or Wisconsin memories?
MO: I always enjoy Wisconsin and have relatives in Beaver Dam. There was one year with The Jayhawks we played at the festival under the freeway. It was a summer beer fest (Summerfest). In the early days we would go to Milwaukee and were very impressed as we were in our 20s that "Wow there's a bar on every corner. This is fantastic here."
OMC: What's next for you?
MO: I worked on songs with Gary Louris over summer and we're going to see about recording those. I'll also be going to Europe after the U.S. I'm going to go to places where I first played as a musician. I haven't played Midwest for a while.
OMC: What keeps you continuing to tour after all these years?
MO: Every show is different. I'm still experimenting. I just glued my guitar back together. I'm trying a second guitar for my weird tunings. There is no set way with music. That's one of the things -- you can call it frustrating or you can call it a blessing -- you just don't know what it's going to sound like each night ... I want to go up and find something new, that's the bottom line.
