Edward Burch: The Wilcopedia Interview Part 2

                     

This is the second part of my conversation with Edward Burch, a St. Louis-based musician who works at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. In the first entry, we talked about Burch’s collaboration with his friend Jay Bennett, a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, on their superb 2002 album, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), which will make its vinyl debut on Record Store Day (September 26).

Here, we talk about Bennett and Burch’s tour for the album in 2002-2003, and also touch on Bennett’s solo work that followed The Palace at 4am, and the years leading up to his death in 2009.

Daniel Johnson: “Now, the tour for The Palace at 4am started out with just you and Jay, but at some point, you actually gained a band.”

Edward Burch: “Yes, so we had Will Johnson from Centro-Matic on drums – Will is a phenomenal drummer – and Scott Danbom, also from Centro-Matic, and he was playing keyboards and occasionally violin. I love those guys - they’re amazing. Then on bass, on one leg, we had John Horton from The Bottle Rockets, and I think it was shortly after he joined The Bottle Rockets so Jay and I were not familiar with his guitar playing. Bob Andrews, who was managing us was also managing The Bottle Rockets. He shows up and he’s completely great and wonderful on the bass.

On one particular day, John just picked up a guitar, starts playing, noodling around, and Jay and I just turn to him like “holy shit!” We didn’t know you could do that! We were this close to switching Jay to bass on tour and letting John play the electric guitar. We also had a friend from Champaign, Derek, also a great bass player. So the full band versions were always pretty fun. We got to play a little louder, get a little more rocking, than we could do when it just Jay and I as a duo.”

DJ: “I have a bootleg from that tour that’s credited to Overserved.”

EB: “Yes, Bennett/Burch Overserved.”

DJ: “During those shows, you guys broke out some interesting covers. Warren Zevon’s ‘Gorilla, You’re a Desperado,’ and Elvis Costello’s ‘Green Shirt.’”

EB: “The bootleg that is probably most circulated of Bennett/Burch Overserved was the final leg of the band tour which was at the Hideout in Chicago. On that one, we also did the Badfinger Song ‘The Name of the Game,’ which I adore; and we also did a very hard-rocking version of the song by Bread, ‘Everything I Own.’ When we were live we were usually very loose in every sense of the word, but there were definitely some moments that were extremely magical. There were also some moments that completely fell apart, and there were some moments that as Will Johnson once later described it in remembering Jay after his passing, some nights it was like walking on a tightrope and you don’t have a net, and somehow you manage to hold it together and you never fall.”

DJ: “That tour seemed like such a necessary thing for Jay, having been in a band that was playing arenas, playing really structured shows with a crew, and then it’s just you guys playing these shows, and I bet it was a blast for him to get away from that structure, that machinery.”

EB: “We had tons of fun, and, on those tours, we were our own loading crew, and all that kind of stuff. Jay was a seasoned touring veteran, but for me, it was the first time I ever went out on a full on national tour. My musical experience prior to that was playing shows in Champaign, St. Louis, Chicago, and just like the general Midwest sort of stuff.”

DJ: “So how did it come about? Jay leaves Wilco – does he give you a call and goes like ‘hey – I want to keep this momentum going, I’ve got a bunch of cool songs, I want to keep playing out live’ - I mean, how did that go?”

EB: “Jay and I had been recording material, some of it had actually started from before he joined Wilco, and we were constantly recording stuff when he would be home on a break from being on tour, and we just sort of kept working on stuff of our own. So we had various songs in various stages of completion. So when Jay got the word that he was dismissed from Wilco, my then girlfriend, who I will refer to now as my then future ex-wife, were staying in a little rental apartment for the summer in Champaign, and then getting a different place to lease for the following year. So it was about 3:30 or so in the morning, and the phone rings, and I get a call and it’s Jay. I’m talking with him, and he’s in a slightly emotional state about being dismissed from this band, but says ‘hey, we’ve have a lot of material and we can go into the studio, start finishing things up, and put out a record, and tour on it – do you want to do that?’

And of course, 3:30 in the morning and I don’t have my sensibilities together, but even at that moment I was like ‘yes – of course.’ Because I’ve always loved working with him.”

DJ: “Did you contribute to any of the albums Jay made after Palace?”

EB: ‘Well, there are tracks that popped up on a few of his records, post Palace, that were left over recordings from those initial sessions. And then I did work with him on the record that he made that came out on Ryko (The Magnificent Defeat) with some instrumentation, backing vocals and minor song-writing contributions and things like that.

So when the touring ended for Palace, there had been a moment where I had had enough of in this case mainly cocaine, the constant drug use that was happening. It was your basic standard rock ‘n roll cliché kind of bullshit. And granted, even though I was fed up, I was also at times a willing participant. Finally, I was like hit this wall, alright, this shit has to stop. This is fucked up.

So that tour is done, we go out in February of 2003. So it’s Jay and I, Steve and Diane from Dolly Varden. There was one show in particular that was a total meltdown that was in Pittsburgh. When that tour was done, and Jay’s divorce is in progress, he moves all of his studio gear out of the house in Arlington Heights into a studio loft in Chicago. His drug use at that point even gets worse. And, of course, we’re all worried about him. We all love him and care about him. There was literally an intervention scheduled.”

DJ: “My impression was that he really became a recluse. Is that correct?”

EB: “I think that there is some truth to that. I think that in part it had to do with him not coming to terms with his pill abuse situation. And so we dragged him to rehab, and he stayed there for a few days willingly – ultimately he was convinced to sign himself in as opposed to him being unwillingly signed in. After that happened, I didn’t hear from Jay for – I mean, I tried to contact him many times – I didn’t hear from him for a year and a half. My guess was that he was pissed that I chose to be among the folks to drag him to rehab – anybody who deals with substance abuse, addiction, things like that, they’re never gonna change what they have going on until they decide for themselves. Okay, now is the moment to make a change. Once he did, I heard back from him.

When I got the call that Jay had died, I was shocked.  I was living outside of Austin, Texas, I ran to Lowe’s to get something and I didn’t bring my phone with me. In those days I didn’t give a fuck about having my phone with me. I get home and my wife’s like ‘you had two calls on your phone while you were gone.’ One was David Vandervelde and the other was Jonathan from Private Studios. I’m just thinking, the only reason any of these two people would be calling is something regarding Jay. Before I called anyone back, my heart sank, because I felt that I knew at that moment what the news was going to be. Of course, when I called – yes, that was the news. I miss him to this day. Because, primarily, he was a dear friend. We enjoyed doing our music together.

One of the things I often say is if I had gotten that call three years earlier – I wouldn’t have been surprised. Because he ultimately got his shit together and was feeling good overall, except for the hip pain, and he unwisely chose to get a fentanyl patch to deal with the hip pain, and it’s pretty common knowledge that he got the hip patch clandestinely – he didn’t get it through a doctor because no doctor would give a fentanyl patch to a patient who wasn’t terminal because those patches can fail, and that’s exactly what it did with him. But at the time he wasn’t using drugs, he was occasionally having a glass of wine, was in great shape except that he had this excruciating pain. And it was the same thing that happened with Prince.

I remember in all the publicity around Prince’s death, Paul Stanley, of all people, making the comment because he also dealt with excruciating hip pain, from all his prancing around the stage with Kiss, and saying ‘everyone dogging on Prince because he chose to take these drugs to deal with that pain, has never really experienced how excruciating that pain can be.”

Coming soon: Part 3 of the Wilcopedia interview with Edward Burch