Anders Osborne- Respect & Admiration From Beyond (INTERVIEW)

Musicians in the jam band community have a tendency to get pigeonholed by the stereotypes and expectations associated with that style of music. This isn’t always negative, but it can be for a musician looking to grow beyond that community. Every so often an act comes along that manages to gain the respect and admiration from the jam community and beyond. New Orleans singer-songwriter Anders Osborne is one such act. Though he has been cranking out albums since 1989 and has long been a respected fixture of the New Orleans music scene, Osborne has recently caught on with a whole new legion of fans. His ability to balance heartfelt and well-written songs with blistering guitar solos and psychedelic improvisation has set him apart from a typical jam act, thus giving him the opportunities to play for seemingly any group of people, which he has happily obliged. Those lucky enough to catch Anders Osborne can attest to his sheer presence on a stage, and his power to suck you in with his lyrical and vocal talent and blow you away with his guitar playing.

These days Osborne is busier than ever, splitting his time between a busy tour schedule that includes shows with the Southern Soul Assembly and Phil Lesh, writing and recording his own new material, and writing and producing tunes for other acts. Recently, Anders Osborne took the time to chat while making breakfast at his home in New Orleans.

You tour and travel a lot these days. Do you write on the road?

I write in hotel rooms and get ideas going, but usually the real writing happens back at home. I’ll get the ideas going around on the road though.

Do you get bursts of information or sit down and make yourself work; what’s your process like?

I don’t think there’s an actual formula, but I think I do sit down – I don’t wait for inspiration. Every once in a while I’ll be inspired by something, like an event; you watch a little show about Alzheimer’s and then you want to write about it, or whatever it is. The majority of the time I sit my butt down and start messing around with an instrument. Usually, if there’s something really catchy or inspiring that starts happening, you work on that for a minute, record it or memo it, and you move on with more ideas, then you go back. You keep yourself active with 5 to 40 songs so you’re constantly working, and you give birth to a few here and there, if that makes sense.

That’s interesting you say that because on your most recent album the song “47” is one of the catchiest and it’s also kind of random. How did you end up writing a song about that age?

[Laughs] I felt the age was so random. Talk about an age that’s like – I don’t know what that age is! You’re not in your 50’s; you’re kind of past your 40’s even though you’re still in them. Honestly, the idea started out as a very solemn and somber hymn for my mom when she passed away. So the first verse basically was something I wrote eleven or twelve years ago. I just had that falsetto thing with another piano melody, and then we were in the studio and I thought this isn’t really relevant anymore. But I had this other thing, which was the song “47,” so I thought, I wonder if I can superimpose that first verse and kick start that song into that other thing. So I combined those and that kind of triggered the idea that you’re just kind of keeping things up at the age of 47, if you know what I mean. You’re just doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

Status quo kind of.

Yeah, there it is and you do what you do. If you have kids and family and mortgage and all that, then you’re just in the middle of this process of getting by. Your next phase will be looking towards retirement, but 47 – I don’t know what you’re doing, working your butt off all the time.

Sometimes your songs carry political undertones, and nowadays especially, is it hard not to write a song and go crazy with politics when the world’s so messed up?

That’s interesting you ask that, because I do think about it, but I’m a little bit conscious about putting my ass on the line when I know that through my life there are certain things that just change so much. I may have one opinion politically one year and then a couple of years later I happen to go through something and I feel very different about it. Politics are so much more than how we shape them right now. It’s not just about two parties and opinions, which is what we’ve done. We’ve created two groups and you have to choose, and I think that’s a little too black and white for me. I actually try not to get political because I don’t think it’s fair to the planet and to the human race. I think we are a lot more diverse than that.

Well wanting peace is a pretty stable position to hold down.

Yeah, I think everybody seems to have that one goal: they just want to have a good day. Can I just get one day with no hassle? A perfect beach day or a perfect Sunday watching football with your kids, or a nice walk in the park with your loved one. That seems to be what we’re working for. They’re bombing in Palestine right now just so they can get one damn day – can we get a day of peace? It’s all so convoluted when they bottom line is so simple. Can you just leave me alone for a day? You’re getting me going [laughs]!

Have you found peace with yourself, and do you ever get those days?

I think I find peace in the knowledge that I can’t always be peaceful. It’s easy to roll with that nowadays. Each time I feel a sense of joy or even sadness, I don’t mind embracing that. I know it’s not going to last forever. In that sense, I feel peace from time to time.

You’ve written a number of songs for other people who have had big hits with them. From a songwriter’s perspective, when you’re in that situation where you’re writing a song that may go to someone like Brad Paisley, do you come from a different place than you would if you are writing an Anders Osborne song?

I think the older I get and the longer I do this, the less I make that separation. But I would say the main thing I do is, if I write by myself, I only write the way I write. I may try to adapt to certain things, like right now I’m writing – it’s called cop lining I guess – that means they give me a track. They have something but they don’t have a melody or lyrics. I’m doing that for a few people right now, and when I do that they’ve already set the mood a little bit. They’ve figured out what the jam’s going to be, and I have to adapt to that. There’s a lot of stuff that goes on up in Nashville and Los Angeles where everybody gets together and they sit in a room and they write, and I did that for a long time. It’s not really my favorite; I think you can write some amazing songs and I’ve had some success doing that, but they don’t hit home as much, those songs, in my chest. Most of the time I don’t have the same passion that I get when I write my own stuff because it’s so personal and it’s my own sense of therapy.

You’ve always had that balance of being a really great guitar player who also writes great songs. Are there challenges both live and in the studio to not letting the jams overshadow the songs themselves?

It can be a challenge. Some people really want me to jam, like when you play in bigger venues and festivals you gotta play tough and hard, and really grab a bunch of people. It’s harder to play ballads and bring it down, but what I try to do – and I’m doing it more now than I have in the past – I try to break it down a couple of times. I’ll give everybody just the song and not stretch it out every time. It can be a challenge for sure.

You have a show coming up with Phil Lesh, who you’ve played with a lot. Were you always a big Grateful Dead fan and how did you connect?

I’ve always liked the music, but I didn’t know very much in their catalog. When I lived in California in the mid-eighties and “Touch of Grey” came out, we jammed on that. I always thought American Beauty was great too. Phil is a really remarkable artist in so many ways. By looking at different players and musicians, he puts together Phil Lesh and Friends and he gets to play the same songs he’s always done. But you get a fresh band several times of year, and that’s pretty smart because it keeps it fresh for him. There had been talk about me sitting in with them about three years ago at a festival in Telluride, and it didn’t work out for some reason. A few months later Phil Lesh and his camp reached out to Warren Haynes’ camp, and they were asking him for somebody who can really sing but can also play, and [Warren’s manager] suggested that they call me.

When you do a sit-in, is there an approach or basic strategy you take?

You try to listen a lot. I’d rather underplay for a few minutes to make sure that I can find my place and won’t step on the other guy’s arrangements or where they find themselves comfortable in the song. You lay back for a little bit and wait for an opportunity to communicate with the guys, maybe you just play basic chords, you find a little rhythm or pocket somewhere that nobody else is doing and make it a little special. I think the idea is to maybe bring something different to what they usually do when they ask you to sit in. You don’t just want to fit in; if you sit in with a blues band, instead of emulating what they do, make sure you do what you do well with their stuff.

With Southern Soul Assembly, even though you all play mostly your own songs, what about those guys made you feel like your material would work in a setlist with theirs?

I think the diversity of the four of us is what makes it so interesting, even though we seem to come from the same soil. We have something that’s similar; you have the soul music of JJ Grey, the boogie and front porch blues picking style of Luther Dickinson, then you have the R&B and pop side of Marc Broussard, and he sings so wonderfully. He’s a very musical cat. So I thought, the more straight up rock that I come from worked. I guess there’s a lot of New Orleans in some of the stuff I have – but I didn’t feel like it was just the New Orleans part of it. I think there’s a rock part of me that glues all of their stuff together. I could be wrong, but that’s how I felt. These guys have a defined stylistic thing and I like what it sounds like together.

You’ve been on a fairly steady run of getting material out. Are you working on anything at the moment?

Yes, I have a couple of projects. I’m producing this girl in a couple of weeks. Her name is Danielle Schnebelen. She’s the bass player and lead singer from Trampled Under Foot from Kansas and she’s making a solo record. I’ve been writing for my own record, which we are going to record in October or November right before the Southern Soul Assembly tour on the West Coast. Then this year is the 25th anniversary of me recording my own records – my first record came out in 1989 in my own name. I have a foundation I’m working with, so I want to put together a record and see if I can get all of these different friends of mine to help me sing and play on this record that goes through my catalog. So we’ll do a couple of songs from each of the eleven releases and then maybe add a few previously unreleased to make it 25 tunes. All of the money and proceeds will go to this foundation called Back On My Feet, which helps recovering musicians after they get out of rehab or once they get sober to structure their life so they can continue to work. Sometimes it’s hard to go back on the road with all of the drinking and drugs that are so prevalent out there and stay sober.

Sounds like you’re staying busy.

[Laughs] Like I said, it’s this age, I’m just doing work. This is the stuff I love doing. I’m a blessed cat.

Top photo by Jayne Tansey-Patron