We met up with guitarist Bill MacKay to discuss Locust Land, his third long player for Chicago label Drag City.
A new Bill MacKay solo album is always something to get excited about, but he’s been on a roll recently, with the Black Duck self-titled record and BCMC’s Foreign Smokes making up two cracking side projects, so Locust Land feels extra tantalising. “I’m always about something new coming out, but this does feel like a special one,” Bill smiles. “It’s the third solo record out on Drag City and it’s been a while since Fountain Fire, so I’m excited.”
As on Fountain Fire and Keys, Bill’s wonderful album with Nathan Bowles, Locust Land is a mix of instrumental and sung songs, a detail he seems quite at home with. “Well it’s something I’ve always done,” he says. “So in a way it’s strange that I did such a run of instrumental records. It’s a direction that made sense with the players I was meeting in Chicago and my interests. But I’ve never really seen a big line between vocal and instrumental music, so when it came back it felt very natural. And I like the primalness of those songs,” he continues, after a moment. “They feel like there’s nothing wasted. There’s nothing that needs to be added or said to those songs, and there’s an elegance to that simplicity. I also want to do a shout out to Janet [Beveridge] Bean,” he adds. “She sang on Neil’s Field, doing a beautiful wordless vocal that sounds very evocative and angelic.”
It’s interesting that Bill mentions the elegance in the simplicity of the sung songs on the record, as it feels like across all of the tracks there is a sense of economy and confidence. “Well that’s gratifying to hear,” he smiles. “It does feel very complete in a way and although the songs all feel different, it hangs together as a picture. It’s what you really strive for and sometimes even though you think you’ve got there, as time goes by you start to see some cracks in the wall, but that’s natural. I’ve been able to listen to this one a lot this last year. I can enjoy it and I think there’s something solid about it.”
A first for Bill on Locust Land is his bringing in session musicians to enhance his songs, with Sam Wagster coming in on bass on a few tracks and Mikel Patrick Avery adding percussion to two. “I’d been thinking about that for a while,” he admits. “I realised I didn’t have to have them all be uniformly solo when it’s a MacKay record. But more importantly, I thought it would have been a shame to throw away the opportunity to make those certain songs larger with their input. And I think they have really enlarged them a lot and steered the way towards me bringing my songs back into a band context.”
What is very apparent upon listening to Locust Land is its focus as a piece of work, a detail that shouts confidence and clarity. “It’s nice that you have that perception,” Bill says. “It was in my mind to make it so that it was determined in that way. That’s not to say that I wasn’t going with an intuitive side, or that there aren’t things that are left open or those moments left to chance. But it was definitely an aim and I also felt that with Cooper [Crain, BCMC] and with Dougie [McCombs] and Charles [Rumback] on the Black Duck one, so that’s nice and when you feel that happen it’s like a new template in a way, or at least a reminder that it’s right to continue in that vein.”
Another note was the album’s length, which at just half an hour is neat and appropriate to the material. “It’s interesting that you picked up on that, because I thought quite a lot about it,” Bill says. “I was wondering how long it should be, because it can’t really be fifteen or twenty minutes. So I was close to half an hour and there was a chance to put another thing on there, but it just didn’t need it and it didn’t feel right. And it feels like there’s a density to the material that feels rich, so that makes up for lost time, you could say.”
This is an interesting point, especially when considering songs like Oh Pearl and Glow Drift, both of which have a drive to them that is less common in Bill’s solo work. “They’re some of the most driving and uptempo songs I’ve ever done,” Bill nods. “I realised it was an area of music that I hadn’t explored that much, because tempos can become integral to your creative backbone in a way and most writers tend to aim for certain tempos. So it was nice to hit that area and it felt natural, part of which was having the band too, I think. Oh Pearl is all me, but Glow Drift has Sam and Mikel on it and I think it really helps with that lift off. And when it comes to slow ones like Half of You, that shift of gears makes sense and shines a light on the other things.”
As well as this up in tempo on some of the songs and the driving rhythms, there is a sense in places on the album of some anxiety and unease creeping in and giving the music a different character to what we’re used to “Oh yeah I think so,” Bill agrees. “There’s a real searching thing going on and there is anxiety coming out of there too. It’s oversaid, especially by me these days, but the turbulence of our times worked its way into the record for sure. But then there is a cathartic element to me too of working things out and working out these anxieties. It’s present in the lyrics and the music. Radiator is quite a heavy track that could have had words, but it’s still in there and I’m trying to exercise that, I think.” All of these emotions are also reflected in the title of the album, with the locust having collected various metaphors and symbolism across the years and centuries. “It took a bit of study to see if I wanted to use it,” Bill admits. “I wanted to look into the symbology of locusts, because they’re so often linked to plagues and devastation, but interestingly, when you look further, they’ve acquired a lot of symbolic meaning across cultures. A lot is related to abundance, rebirth, fertility and so on, so it was a really wide ranging symbol that seemed very open to me at that point. I think that abundance, not just the emptiness, but the fullness of the life that we have felt important.”
Locust Land is released on 24th May via Drag City Records. Bill plays London’s Cafe Oto on 4th September (more dates below).
Pre-Order Locust Land: https://lnk.to/locustland
Bill MacKay Tour Dates:
US
May 23rd @ The Hideout – Chicago, IL
June 3rd @ State Street Pub Indianapolis, IN
June 4th @ Eulogy – Asheville, NC
June 5th @ Tabor – Charlotte, NC
June 6th @ Rhizome – Washington, D.C.
June 7th @ Public Records – Brooklyn, NYC
June 8th @ 90 King St. – Northampton, MA
June 9th @ Bop Shop – Rochester, NY
June 10th @ Moondog Café – Detroit, MI
UK
4th September @ Cafe Oto – London, UK TICKETS