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

Edward Burch: The Wilcopedia Interview Part 1

Not long ago, I had a great conversation with Edward Burch, a St. Louis-based musician who works at the Animal Protective Association of Missouri. Since this is Wilcopedia (The Blog), I was very interested in speaking with Burch about his collaboration with his friend Jay Bennett, a member of Wilco from 1994-2001, with whom he recorded an album after he left the band, and toured with in the early 2000s.

On September 26, Bennett and Burch’s 2002 release, The Palace at 4am (Part 1), will be released on vinyl for the first time for Record Store Day. In Part 1 of my interview with him, we talked about that superb record.

Daniel Johnson: “I am excited about this release on vinyl of The Palace at 4am. I really love that album – when it came out, I played the hell out of it. So I have some questions about it – how it came about, because Jay Bennett had been in Wilco for several years, and was instrumental in some of Wilco’s best recordings, and when he left he took some songs with him, and a few of those are on this album.”

Edward Burch: “Yeah, so there were two songs that were leftovers from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. One was, at the time, called ‘Alone.’”

DJ: “Which was ‘Shakin’ Sugar.’”

EB: “’Shakin’ Sugar,’ yeah – that’s what we called it. So the original Wilco demo was - ‘cause this was a period when Jay and Jeff (Tweedy) were often held up in the Loft studio in Chicago because at the time John (Stirratt) had not quite yet relocated to Chicago, and he was still in Nashville so Jay and Jeff (Tweedy) were doing a lot of stuff just together as a duo whether it was demos or otherwise. So they did this demo for this song called ‘Alone’ and Jay was playing pretty much everything – drums, bass, guitars, and Jeff did his vocal and then there were some other bits put on, and because that song never made the cut on YHF - I mean, it might’ve been a good song for that record, I’m not sure.

Because that song didn’t make it, I think Jay was being a bit, somewhat protective, maybe somewhat reacting in anger or disappointment to his removal from the band he decided that because they’re going to keep playing a bunch of songs that I had a lot to do with writing and arranging, I can take a couple other songs that I had a lot to do with although it was a Jeff lyric and put them on my record. I think that was kind of his mindset. So that’s how ‘Alone’ and ‘Venus Stopped the Train’ ended up on our album.”

DJ: “That’s a real stand-out to me. ‘Venus Stopped the Train’ was like this gorgeous, I don’t know if ballad is the right word…”

EB: “Oh no, it’s definitely a ballad.”

DJ: “Now, Wilco has never released a version of that. They could release their demo of it if they do a YHF Deluxe Edition, but it felt like that was one of those that was co-written that was given its rightful home on Palace.”

EB: “Well, that’s very kind. I obviously have heard, and I know the bootlegs circulate, that has the original demo that’s basically just Jay on piano, and Jeff singing. – obviously, it’s Jay’s music and Jeff’s lyric - but Jeff on that vocal, on that demo, to me it just kills. It’s amazing. I was happy to sing it on the record, and did my best with my capacities, but it’s a great song, and you have to work hard to fuck up a really great song.

So one of the things that Jay and I bonded over was definitely our love of Elvis Costello, and that certainly rears its head on Palace at 4am. We were very taken with the Rhino re-issues of Elvis’s catalogue. The album, Goodbye Cruel World, which in its original release – great songs, but its production was god awful, and getting to hear the early demos and the early working versions of material before they chose the production aesthetic they did, which was heavily driven by the Yamaha DX7, which ruined many great records in the ‘80s.

So we were listening to the extras on the second disc (of the re-issue of Goodbye Cruel World), and were like ‘oh, this is what those songs were supposed to be.’ That was very illuminating about how production choices can influence how a song can be received. So bringing this back around to the fact that Palace on vinyl is finally happening, we always intended that it would happen…”

DJ: “Vinyl in 2002 just wasn’t a thing.”

EB: “No, in fact the joke that we like to make – I say ‘we’ because I’m speaking for Jay even though he’s not here, but he would agree with this – when we mixed mastered that CD in 2002, that’s the period that recording engineers, and musicians referred to as the ‘great CD loudness wars.’ The way things were mastered were pushing things really up, and things could sound really brittle, or otherwise. Of course, our record was insanely dense with a lot of instrumentation, and Mike Hagler, god bless him, when we were initially doing the mixing, his first job was literally…we called him ‘the chainsaw.’ He would go through and cut a bunch of stuff out before we even began to start think about mixing this.

The end result, I think for me and Mike, and maybe Jay – it’s hard to say – we felt that we still might’ve left too much in. But what Mike Hagler, at Kingsize in Chicago – he worked on the Mermaid sessions, he worked on the Summerteeth sessions, he might’ve been briefly involved in Being There – actually what I learned today, I was searching on Discogs, because I was like, I want an LP copy of the My Morning Jacket album, At Dawn, so I was looking on Discogs trying to find a copy, and I scrolled down and was like ‘holy shit! Mike Hagler did the mastering on that record too!’ And that’s like one of my favorite albums of theirs.

So Mike, he was the guy that I chose to approach when Stephen (Judge) from Schoolkids Records got in touch with me, and said ‘I would like to put this record out on vinyl and I was like ‘that’s awesome - we need to make sure that we master it properly to vinyl because Jay’s not here anymore, and I don’t have the ears of a recording engineer to know the sonic specifics, and I know that Jay did, and I would not want to sign off on anything that would not be what Jay wanted for the record to sound like on an LP. I knew that Mike had worked with Jay enough that he knew what Jay would want a record to sound like. So like ‘are you willing to do the LP master for this?’ And of course, he said yes.

The first thing I heard before they did the test pressings was digital. I was like, alright – sounds like we’re in the right place. And then, when I got to hear the vinyl test pressing, I was completely floored. And also a bit emotional, but I listened to it, and like now, it finally sounds like the record that Jay and I wanted to release. The way the mastering happened, it brought certain things forward that you weren’t necessarily hearing in the previous mastering for CD.

One of the things that I absolutely love, and this was something that Jay always talked about, is ‘let’s master like they do for all the great ‘70s records where the drums are pushed a little back but they’re there, they’re definitely holding things together, but they’re not upfront and being loud and crazy, and that sort of thing. The only reason I agreed to get this record out on vinyl was I knew it was something that Jay wanted, and I realized that I needed really good professional help to make sure that we get this to sound the way that it should, and, thanksfully going to the source – Mike Hagler is one of the finest engineers – recording, mastering, otherwise – that our nation has to offer. He’s amazing.”

DJ: “It’s funny that when this album was first released – I think it was April of 2002 – it was the same day as Wilco’s YHF, and Paul Westerberg’s Stereo/Mono album. So it was like this embarrassment of riches that day.”

EB: “I’m as cynical as they come, but the cynical among us would assume that we chose to release Palace on the same day as YHF…”

DJ: “In what’s been written about Wilco, it is presented in that cynical manner with Bennett insisting that it was a coincidence, but I really doubt he had any choice in the release date. Did he?”

EB: “No. So our manager Bob picked a release date. At that point, we had no idea that YHF was coming out, and so when we had the release date then that generated all of the deadlines that had to proceed coming up to that – when we had to have artwork in, when we had to have the masters of the record in – all of that sort of stuff.

Then it just ended up that later we saw that YHF was the same day, and we weren’t displeased because Jay was like ‘hey, I have two records coming out on the same day.’ It was fortunate for us because that meant that a lot of people wanted to do a big story on Wilco, and do a little sidebar on us and we got a little extra publicity but I can assure you that it was never a calculated move.”

Coming soon: Part 2 of the Wilcopedia interview with Edward Burch