There’s a certain person out there who thinks of you as more of a modern-day Burt Bacharach than anything else—a writer, producer and interpreter of music as opposed to the more traditional notion of “performer.”
Oh, no, it would be very unfair to call me a performer. If you were here right now, I’d have a difficult time playing any of my songs on guitar or doing a good job of singing them. I can do those things, but it’s not my focus. I’m not studied as a performer, or learned even in my own catalogue. I write these things, and play them in the studio to the best of my abilities. But performing it is not my focus. If there’s a comparison that can be made to someone like Burt Bacharach, it’s that between the years 1962 to whatever he’s working on right now, he uses a “same” approach—it’s about the chords, about the melody, and he just lines them with neat flugelhorn counter-melodies and strings, which is very similar to the approach I take. I hold him in such high esteem, I’d be embarrassed to mention my name alongside his. I’m not fit to wash his feet. That’s actual humility there.

We should talk about the song on the new album that references Cardinal and how you guys left things, and where you and Richard are today in terms of your relationship. The received wisdom is that you guys split up under bad circumstances or what’s often characterized as “internal strife.” Are you in touch now, doing stuff together again?
Let me just go back in finer detail. It wasn’t that we broke up under bad terms; it was more that we didn’t “reunite well.” That next thing never happened, and there were some personal issues that occurred. But it really wasn’t a breakup; we just never planned on doing more than the one album. People were left to wonder what happened when we didn’t get back together. Truth be told, there were some issues and things I bring up lyrically in the song that point to those issues. In the end, it was a somewhat chilly 10-year period. But we are back together, we’re in contact, primarily business dealings. We’re reissuing the Cardinal album at the strike of 10 years from the release date, when ownership reverted to Richard and I. There’s not only the financial benefits of owning an album like that, but more importantly, it’s going to be back out, and we’re going to go about it in a first-class way. Richard and I are getting along very well: He is working on a new solo album and has asked me to dress it up like we did with Cardinal. He’s going to hand me his songs—I don’t know if it’s actually going to happen, but it’s what we’re talking about anyway—I don’t think we’re going to call it Cardinal. It’ll be a Richard Davies album. You’ll be hearing more of my arrangements in his music in the future. It’ll be interesting.

Cardinal came out when grunge ruled, when wearing flannel and turning it up to 11 was what was interesting to people. Maybe it’s in sitting next to a Mudhoney album that your music stood out. Did you feel ahead of your time, even back then? Especially now that bands like Hidden Cameras have emerged—groups clearly influenced by this element of orchestration you guys brought to your music 10 years prior?
I’d agree with most of that. It did have an impact, and it was a strange time. It was a terrible time for people like Richard and I, where most of what people were listening to was, at least to us, poorly done and in bad taste. The aesthetic of bands like Nirvana held nothing for us. I’m not yet convinced that Kurt Cobain was a great songwriter, but I’ll go along with the rest of the world and let’s just assume that there are some good songs there. I wouldn’t be able to appreciate them, the way they were done. So what we were doing was a reaction to that. Richard and I were very alike in our Bee Gees and Beatles appreciation, that’s what we were seeking to do. We didn’t care what was popular, we knew what was going on in the nightclubs at the time in ‘91-92 when we got together. We knew we were doing something different, that combination of his songwriting and what I was bringing in terms of production craft and orchestrations, we knew that people would take note. The one thing I knew for sure is that critics would love it. I remember sitting on the porch with my dad and he asked how it was going, and I said, “We’re making a great album, and one thing I know is that the critics will eat this stuff up. I don’t know if anyone will buy the album or if anyone will ever even hear it.” My dad thought I was little Bravado Boy or something, and I said, “Dad, you have to trust me on this. It’s so different than everything else right now, and it can’t be argued with, it’s something of quality.” It’s just so well done, you know? We had no choice but to get some notice. I have a copy of CMJ magazine around here, the 1994 year-end issue, I’m on the cover, we’d split it: Nirvana’s Unplugged and Cardinal. It was so funny to see that, one of those little documents of history that were two very different things but maybe the biggest impact albums of that year. Side by side.

When we were trading e-mail prior to the interview, you said that your music often included dark lyrics that obsessed over death. Going back to Unplugged, it’s clear now that Kurt Cobain is telling people “goodbye.” You don’t play a Leadbelly cover like “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” or “The Man Who Sold The World” without intending to make people believe you’re about to undertake something life-altering.
No doubt. I’m not quite familiar ... I know some of those lyrics, I guess, but yeah, I don’t want to talk about Kurt, really. Is there a question in there about how it relates to my foreboding?

Just that your fans might not grab that about your songs—that your angst is hidden by this ultra-poppy framework whereas Kurt’s demons were out there in the open for all to see. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco has copped to that same dynamic in Summerteeth—that he intentionally obscured all these awful sentiments by framing them with ELO/“shiny happy melodies” and a musical framework meant to obfuscate. But he was incredibly depressed and despondent and this all came out in the songs.
Hmmm, maybe. My stuff is—as far as lyrics that I perceive or know are derived from foreboding of terrible things or angst—are all very internal, don’t have much to do with the outside world or my dissatisfaction with people. So it’s hard to measure. The one thing that many of us “serious songwriters”—and I’m sure Kurt considered himself one of these as well—we’re all the serious artist type. And slightly crazy; extra-driven to despair at times.

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