There’s a certain frailty to human communication and this is certainly the case with Chris Salveter of Judson Claiborne. Thinking I was headquartered in the UK he tried to set up the interview at a time that would be convenient for me, while I, living in his hometown of Chicago tried to find a time convenient for him, only to discover he was in New York dealing with the results of family exposure to Covid-19. Once the parameters were finally set, a lively discussion ensued.
The obvious question was why trade under the name of Judson Claiborne rather than his own moniker.
“I think it was a time when I was just starting to think more about my own identity. Late ’20s, mid to late ’20s. It was a known fact that’s the name that my dad wanted to give me. He wanted to call me Judd after some dudes on his side of the family that he liked. And then Claiborne is my middle name. That’s also from my dad’s side of the family, but it was inspired by my friend Dan Johnson, who had a band called Judah Johnson. Judah was the name that his dad wanted to give him but didn’t make the cut. So yeah, it was inspired by that.
“I like the way that the syllables worked, and it sounded nice to say. And it had this, had this family connection. So, I was just thinking more about my identity in terms of my family history and where I come from and Claiborne is the name apparently related to the first non-colonial governor of Louisiana who is apparently a real jackass, who was just given the job and didn’t speak French and didn’t last very long. So, no. It’s not much to be proud of, but apparently Liz Claiborne is part of that lineage as well. But I know just a little bit about genealogy. I think they’ll probably be some point in my life where I really dig into it.”
Which led to asking one of those questions that seems almost too obvious, do people ask you which one is Judson?
“Yeah, they definitely do. I mean, I think that it’s a weird thing and I think about it in terms of the way that Will Oldham I think, thinks about Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and that he sees Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy as if I’m not wrong, I think he sees him as himself, but also a bit of a character that’s an extension of himself, and then he sees himself. I feel I related to that1. I read, I think it was Alan Licht’s book, it’s Will Oldham, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, or something like that. And I really appreciated that, and it helps make sense of the name for me too, in that it’s a band and we talk about it as a band.
“It’s a musical project. It’s not a single person, but it also is very specific to my story and my identity in a way that it isn’t so much with my band mates, but I’ve always felt that I don’t really make records without other people. I haven’t really yet done a record that’s just written, recorded and arranged by yours truly. I’ve always felt I’ve needed a band and wanted a band and wanted to share songs and recordings that were communally made. I think there’s something different about calling it Judson Claiborne than just calling it Chris Salveter or something.”
Having turned 40 during the age of Covid it seemed sensible to ask what if anything he had learned as he entered his fourth decade.
“I think that the things I’ve chosen to get into in life, be really involved with making music mostly is who I am and it’s what I want to do, and it’s what I want to keep doing. I feel I really know that about myself now, that it’s not something I can ignore or should ignore, and so that feels good. I ultimately feel getting older is great. In terms of just knowing more who you are all the time, I feel like that’s one of the meanings of life is to figure out who you are and where you’re coming from and who you are in your community and just a bigger scope of the human species.
“Being 40, I think helps with that, just having more time in the planet, more time to think and feel, and have experiences and reflect on … the older I get, the more I feel I want to be focused with my song writing too, and just making sure that a song really communicates something that’s clear and have an intention behind it to whereas before I feel I was just thinking about … probably throughout my twenties and thirties I was just thinking more in terms of just creative expression and just being committed to whatever the expression of the moment was, and not so much coming back around a few weeks later and saying, “Yeah, but does that say something that’s engaging or interesting?
“I guess music is that thing where it’s like music communicates all kind of stuff by just being music and the words doing other things. So yeah, I guess I’m speaking more about lyrics and words because music itself… it’s so mysterious and beautiful and not … I haven’t gotten to the point where I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to write a song and in this key with this time signature, because it does this.” But I am feeling way more, I want to do that with words, just really, really make sure that I’m creating an experience, whatever, a three and a half- to eight-minute experience that’s worth having in a song.”
When I listened to When a Man Loves an Omen, one of the things that struck me was a lot of it seemed to be very much minor key. It felt sad, but at the same time, it also felt really beautiful. And that was something that just fascinated me. And I was wondering how the set of songs developed.
“I think in terms of how the album feels. I think there’s probably a tone. I mean, if you were to probably go back through all the songs that I’ve written over the past 20 years, they’re probably mostly minor keys songs, and mostly have that quality that you described as somewhere in between sad and beautiful because I think that when it comes to writing songs or playing songs on my radio show or something, I’m just like, I move in that direction.
“Today I went through Pitchfork’s top 100 songs of 2020. I listened to everything. And I would say there’s maybe a dozen songs out of that hundred that I just bought them right off the bat. And I would also say that all those songs probably have that in-between sad and beautiful feeling. And I think also if you maybe analyze the BPM of all my songs, they’re somewhere in the in-between 65 and 90 range. I live at a certain BPM and in a certain key most of the time, I guess, which I haven’t totally identified.”
How do you determine the things you want to write about? Because your take on the Million Dollar Quartet, “Twenty Dollar Quartet” is just fascinating to me.
“Actually, I had a conversation recently with Tim Kinsella of Joan of Arc, we did an in-conversation thing, and we were talking about that song. While we were talking, I was remembering a handful of things about the writing of it that I guess I had just forgotten. I grew up in a household that was very Elvis centric. My mom was the reason for that. She’s always been of the mind that there’s other kinds of music and there’s other music out there, but Elvis is the best of any of that.”
As Chris continued talking about the song “Twenty Dollar Quartet,” he recalled some of the influences that lead to the writing of that song and in particular the line, “Jerry (Lee Lewis) says that a woman should be trained like a bird dog.”
“That was an early memory of watching that movie (Great Balls of Fire) a few times as a kid. That always stuck with me. I think the reason I chose to say, “Didn’t Jerry say that?” in that it’s not completely confirmed. It might be the script writer who really leaned into that and created that. But after reading the book, “Hellfire,” the Nick Tosches biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, it’s not hard to imagine that being said by Jerry Lewis. So I feel like, “Well, I could probably say this and just even though it’s not a confirmed fact, but even still, you just get a sense of Jerry Lee Lewis as a person through reading Tosches’ book, which it’s so intense.
“In terms of Elvis, I mean, it was just a very sad thing, obviously he’s a natural born performer and a great singer. And then his dad and the Colonel got their claws into him and like so many other huge pop artists, just couldn’t let go when it was obvious the thing they needed to do was give the guy a break, man. But yeah, I mean, it’s a question, right?
“We say Elvis and we say Michael Jackson even though I guess the Elvis and Michael Jackson comparison is off, but I guess I’m thinking about the names Elvis or Michael Jackson or Jerry Lee Lewis or whatever, these names represent individual people. But they’re also the names of bigger operations that many people are tied to like the Colonel and Elvis’ dad or Sam Phillips or whatever. Quincy Jones made these records and the musicians on the Michael Jackson records and made them sound the way they sound and that’s part of the reason we love them so much. It isn’t like Michael Jackson did everything, and that’s part of the tragedy of the figures Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, that they’re appropriating black culture and commodifying the hell out of it and not paying any royalties to the original writers of the compositions because they don’t have to, because copyright law doesn’t protect the original writers of the composition.
“And so it just becomes this crazy exploitation, yet another example of mass exploitation of African-Americans in the United States. And it doesn’t all land on Elvis’s shoulders alone, but I guess for the time being, this is what we have to work with is these names, Michael Jackson. It’s like, “I can’t listen to Michael Jackson anymore.” It’s like, “Yeah, it’s true, but it’s a shame, man, because he’s one guy in this huge community of people that made this album sound like it does, or this song that you love so much about Michael Jackson or whatever.” So I guess it’s the tricky thing about the “Twenty Dollar Quartet” song too, in that it’s Elvis and it’s Jerry Lee Lewis and it’s Johnny Cash that we’re talking about.
“Although I would say that Johnny Cash has way more responsibility on his shoulders than Elvis would. I mean, I guess you could spend all day saying… because there are plenty of differences between those four musicians in the Million Dollar Quartet. And it’s like, I don’t know, maybe 200 words or less in the song. But I mean, I think the song as a whole is more just about the worshiping of idols, of music icons and figures, just saying there’s nothing more American or nostalgic for me than Elvis or Johnny Cash or whatever, but after reading the biographies of these musicians, I’m just like, well, I can’t not think about how Johnny Cash was addicted to pills and up for three days and decided to drive a 100 miles on one of the rims of his car where the tire had busted and he just drove on the rim for a hundred miles, not realizing it because he was so fucked up and pulls into a wildlife refuge, shoots sparks all over the place, kills 50 endangered condors and goes fishing and pretended like he didn’t do it.
“And because he’s Johnny Cash and because he’s a millionaire, he was able to not spend life in prison, but if he was anybody else, he would have been in prison for the rest of his life because it was in Canada and they actually take that shit real seriously. Anyway, I guess it’s a bit of a tangent, but yeah, I mean there’s a lot there. I mean a lot to talk about, and I think that’s part of the reason why… I think that’s what songs are about in that, I like writing songs that are more… Right now, at least I’m liking writing songs that bring stuff up and bring conversations around the topic instead of saying, “This is how it is, this is the thing, yada, yada. I feel like the intention behind that song is like, “Let’s look at this.”
One of the other songs on the most recent EP was “The Trimmergrant,” about the people trimming marijuana plants in California who just seem to disappear.
“There’s a documentary series called “Murder Mountain.” That’s just about the lawlessness of Humboldt County. And I think it was probably shot maybe a little more than five years ago, so it’s relatively current. And I think a lot has changed actually in the past five, 10 years up there. I think one of the points of the documentary was to just illustrate how lawless this part of the United States is, a country that we see as having a certain amount of order to it, to see that there still are these mountains and miles of dark forest that have two cops.
“It’s also where so much of the world marijuana is grown. And because of that, it’s just a lot of pretty crazy activity. And then I think the other part of the documentary is to illustrate just how precarious their labor is up there, considering the lawlessness of the place that people go up there to work. I definitely have had friends who’ve done it and have heard of people who went there looking to make a bunch of money and they didn’t really make much money at all. But I mean, I don’t know anybody who’s totally disappeared up there, but it’s pretty clear that, that’s something that happens, that this labor forces can be pretty invisible and it’s really left to just the family ties, or a friend ties that these people have to try and track them down, if they go missing. And so yeah, that was pretty stunning to watch that and to take all that in.
“So, while I was in the throes of going through this massive documentary, mini-series thing, Josh, my bandmate sent me the guitar part that he had written. So, I was just like I had it, I was listening to it. And sitting with it while going through this documentary and it all really lined up in my mind, just the feel of the guitar part and also the feel of the subject of the documentary. And it just all lined up.”
On “Conditionals” certain lines just stood out for me, “So many people I meet / So many things I see / Make me want to have a vasectomy/ Extractivism, Capitalism, Patriarchy / These bullshit human projects don’t appeal to me”.
“There’s so many people in the world that I really love and care for and I’m glad exist. But just to feel the older I get, the more experiences I have with people and learn about human history, it makes me way less excited to continue this project.
“I think that’s part of why I wanted to put it out there is because I think that people are feeling these things and don’t often get to talk about it because so often the conversation is like, “Do you have kids?” And it’s like, “No.” It’s like, “Do you think you’re going to have kids?” Like, “No.” And then you become some Debbie Downer, but it doesn’t have to be that way because I think there are so many people who are childless by choice, but still really don’t hate kids. They have tons of nephews and kids’ friends that they love hanging out with and playing with. It doesn’t mean you hate kids or you have to be some downer, it’s just like, “Hey man, that’s just where I’m at with all this. Sorry if it’s cynical, but it’s just where I’m at.”
Chris Salveter is a remarkable musician mostly because he’s just like everyone else. He’s not special and doesn’t put on airs. He has the same problems as everyone else. Yet within the confines of Judson Claiborne, he is able to use his voice and musicality to entrance and enthrall simply by looking at the world and letting us know what he thinks. That is a remarkable gift.
When a Man Loves an Omen is out now on La Société Expéditionnaire
https://judsonclaiborne.com/music
Photo Credit: Alyce Henson
1Will Oldham on Bonny ‘Prince’ Billy edited by Alan Licht (available via Amazon UK)