Q&A: KURT WAGNER

Given the release date of FLOTUS being so close to the election, the title seems somewhat serendipitous…

It’s totally by coincidence. Dude, we turned this record in over a year ago, and they gave us a year-off release date and I continued to do stuff. They’d test-pressed the album but then I added the first song [“In Care Of 8675309”] because I was pretty excited about it.

The title was personal, because of my wife’s role in politics. I’m essentially trying to design and invent a record that she’d like, but what she does now is part of my life. Politics have become a daily part of our lives, due to her position. It feeds into the notion of being supportive of your partner; FLOTUS is a supportive role, and it was curious to me that this is my role now. If we go to an event together, I am FLOTUS.

The whole LP seems to be a tribute to the miracle of an enduring relationship.

Well it’s kind of worked out that way. I don’t even think my wife’s aware of all this – it’s something that she’ll probably read about in your article. But that’s who I’ve always been as a writer, I just reflect upon the things around me that make an impact, my friends and loved ones. This is no different, it’s just a more in-depth thesis. Other people write about love from their own point of view, but it’s inclusive to your experience.

That’s one of the things that make “The Hustle” so moving and so profound, I think.

When you go to a wedding as a couple, it’s an emotionally loaded event where you’re bound to reflect, at some point. At a Quaker wedding, where there’s no-one officiating, it’s even more apparent, because the couple just address each other, maybe people from the audience are moved to stand up and express something, and it all starts to build; it’s really quite moving. It magnifies the experience more than just having a preacher up there, and then everybody cuts loose. The song’s a pretty literal, almost journalistic description of that experience. A colleague of Mary’s got married and it was a Quaker wedding out in the country. There was a rainstorm in the middle, then everybody was getting down at the end. I didn’t know why all these people knew how to synchronise their dancing, and then Mary explained to me it was the fucking Hustle.

Did you always have a clear concept for how FLOTUS was going to sound?

Not really, it started several years ago. I was just trying to figure out how to take the things we learned from making the HeCTA record [Wagner’s 2015 electronic side project] and apply them in some fashion to what Lambchop does. So as you can tell on “The Hustle” [the first track recorded for FLOTUS], the vocal isn’t yet integrated in the way it is on the rest of the record, and it’s because I hadn’t yet discovered how to live process. That was a pretty significant thing for me. I was fortunate enough to stumble into a Shabazz Palaces performance where I saw them using this piece of equipment.

I’m still kinda like a hillbilly or a hick. I mean, I’m not super-sophisticated about this stuff, I’m just trying to use these tools to be soulful and expressive, and go about it in very limited ways. This piece of gear I’m using is pretty standard stuff; they invented it for singer-songwriters to accompany themselves in the mall. It happens in real time without a whole lot of fuss, it’s just a silly little box. So that’s perfect for my way of working.

There’s an irony that a band initially known for large numbers of people on stage has now been liberated by a bit of technology that allows one person to do it all.

I wrote the record myself – apart from “The Hustle”. I didn’t even play guitar, dude, I was just using my voice and this simple software programme and this crazy machine. That was it. It was incredible, I could do anything, because I wasn’t limited by my feeble guitar stylings. It literally allowed me to sing in any way I wanted to.

It helped you back up to the high notes.

Exactly.

We missed them…

Me too, man!

Has there been any awkward feedback from your more traditionalist fans?

Strangely enough it’s been crazily positive. I honesty didn’t expect that. I mean, maybe I’m a little insulated from shit I just felt this was an honest way of going about what I do as an artist. I’m always developing, if you check out anything over 20 years, there’s been some changes.

So it wasn’t some wicked attempt to alienate and subvert the entire Americana community?

No, if anything it was just an attempt to think about the music that my wife liked, and think about what was in there, and do something she’d maybe pop on her phone. That was the biggest failure. I made this stuff and thought she was really gonna love it, and I played it for her and she said, ‘Man, I really loved your voice the way it was.’ Damn!

She’s come around since, I think.