Lonely Planet: In Conversation with Michael Grigoni & Pan-American’s Mark Nelson

Through their own creative histories, perhaps one would consider Michael Grigoni and Mark Nelson’s collaboration an obvious one. Their alliance, making as much sense on paper as it does in practice, and while these two facets don’t always produce the desired results, that’s not the case on the duo’s excellent debut release, New World, Lonely Ride.

Throughout Grigoni and Nelson’s respective solo endeavours, the one thing they share is an aim to keep moving forward in search of new terrains.

Grigoni is an exponent of the dreamscape. Embedding the ideas of bluegrass into an ambient post-country aesthetic, through his solo works (led by the excellent 2019 release, Mount Carmel) and in collaboration alongside the likes of Olma (Tusk I & II), Chihei Hatakeyama and Stephen Vitiello (Earth Awhile), and Bill Seaman (The Long Sky), the Durham, North Carolina-based multi-instrumentalist has taken experimental composition to inspired places.

So too has Nelson. The mastermind of Chicago ambient drone legends, Labradford, and later with the equally vital body-of-work under the Pan-American guise, over the last four decades, Nelson has been one of the most trusted voices in ambient composition. Since the turn of the century, his unique ability to illuminate new corners inside the Pan-American sound world, one of the most fascinating in the new music sphere. Like Grigoni, Nelson has also afforded room to collaborate; most notably alongside multi-instrumentalist and producer, Kramer, with the pair releasing last year’s Reverberations of Non-Stop Traffic on Redding Road.

Together, Grigoni and Nelson reach new levels. Nelson, also a master of the hushed dreamscape, and alongside Grigoni it’s underlined from the first note of New World, Lonely Ride’s eponymous opening track. A woodsy emotional vista that wets the corners of the eyes, New World, Lonely Ride reaches the kind of depth that won’t be matched by anyone this year.

So captivating, it’s hard to see how pair would better it, but in truth, New World, Lonely Ride’s title track acts as a portal that leads to new possibilities. Sun Morning Sun, Dream of Someone and Silver Streams, sequences of beautiful interplay between the two; Nelson’s soft strings, led by Grigoni’s pedal steel inflections that are like wandering echoes that stretch all the way to the horizon.

Then there’s Omni Country and Black River Song. Multi-layered majesty that amalgamates Grigoni and Nelson’s strongest ideas; the pair, feeling their way through the darkness in search of that path to redemption. And while the likes of Mirage/Afternoon and Blue Tears Never Dry feed into the contemplative nature such journeys command, it’s South Canyon that ties it all together. Like a transmission between the orbits, it sees Grigoni and Nelson communicate in their own language, searching for those inner grains of sound.

Ultimately, New World, Lonely Ride sees Grigoni and Nelson intersecting song-based composition with deep listening. The latter isn’t immediate, but these pieces, so delicately crafted and rich in emotional depth, are equal parts fragile and hypnotic. The duo, challenging themselves and each other to reach beyond the frontiers they have conquered in the past. And they do so emphatically. It’s why collaborations are so vital, and with New World, Lonely Ride, Grigoni and Nelson have produced one of the best this year.

Midway through March, the pair spent some time with me over Zoom, sharing the story of their collaboration, the making of New World, Lonely Ride, their inspirations, and much more.

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Sun 13: Do you ever reflect on your past creative accomplishments, or are you someone that always looks forward to the next thing?

Mark Nelson: “In general, I don’t really reflect. I used to do that or just imagine it as a whole or a continuing story, in a sense. But now… I like the process of doing it, and I tend to just move forward and be focused on whatever the next thing is going to be.”

S13: That’s interesting because going through the Pan-American catalogue, there is such a difference from one release to the next, but your unique identity in sound remains…

MN: “Maybe too, it’s been to my detriment that the sound hasn’t always been consistent, you know? Or maybe it’s easier to follow an artist if they have a very specific signature sound, and then you see the slight variations and refinements, or very mild detours. I love that kind of approach, but I guess I follow curiosity more. That drives me more than trying to establish an identity and stick within it. If I’m curious about something, I want to see if I can incorporate that. I appreciate you saying that there’s a consistency to it as well, an identity. I hope that that maintains across different approaches.”

S13: Labradford’s material has influenced so many of the younger generation, too. There are definitely echoes throughout so many new releases…

MN: “That’s nice to hear. I think we did different things on each record, too… we were trying to not repeat ourselves. Again, maybe to a fault… it made that a part of the point for us was to do something different and to not repeat.”

[Michael Grigoni joins the conversation]

S13: How long had you known each other before deciding to make music together?

MN: “We didn’t know each other beforehand, so making the record has sort of been a document of us getting to know each other. I knew Michael’s music, and that’s what made it seem like a good idea. But we hadn’t had any personal contact before we started working on it.”

Michael Grigoni: “I had reached out to Mark via email maybe a year or so before we started the project… kind of out of the blue. I remember emailing [him] asking how one makes a living in ambient / experimental music in today’s day and age, and I think [he] brought me down to earth rather quickly with the response of, ‘Keep your job. Mike’.” (laughs)

S13: The internet has made it feel as though the experimental world is small. Particularly over the last decade, there has been more and more collaborations, which is great. I guess what you’ve just said underlines that…

MG: “Yeah, I think that’s right. It’s been a joy and a real privilege for me to work with Mark, given his several decades of music making in association with kranky. It’s just amazing how the internet and digital technology and everyone having a studio in their bedroom, how that sets up conditions for people to connect and collaborate in ways that transcend geography. I’m in North Carolina, Mark’s in Chicago… I don’t think we met in person until way after the record was done.”

S13: Can you tell us about the process behind New World, Lonely Ride?

MN: “It was done via text conversations, WeTransfer links, and passing sounds back and forth and adding layers and taking things off. It took a long time, but I think that was a product of how Michael and I like to work. That was a pleasant surprise… that you don’t know someone, so you’re just launching into an idea. It really was an idea before it was a project or a record.

“One of the questions is if work habits are going to be compatible, and I think one thing Michael and I share is a comfort and patience with time. That’s probably what made it possible. I’m a pretty patient person in general. It’s something I value and aspire to.

“The time brings another dimension to the music. The time not working on it, the time listening or thinking or just having something exist in your world for a week or two or three or four before making another movement on it… that’s important to me. Whether that’s just out of convenience with having jobs and families, whether it’s a necessity or making a virtue of necessity, I think it is.”

MG: “That all resonates with me really deeply, too. What I liked about this project and the process was that I never felt rushed. We really took the time to listen to the tracks that were being brought to space of collaboration, and we were really deliberate and intentional in terms of what we were adding. The 10 pieces seemed to merge very organically over a couple of years. Is that right Mark?”

MN: “At least two years. I think maybe more.”

MG: “I don’t think I’ve been in a collaborative project quite like this… that had this sense of openness, temporally. It was really great.”

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S13: The title is really striking. Had you come up with it before writing the eponymous song?

MN: “No. I don’t know if I dragged Michael into my world on that kind of thing, but titles are always the last thing that I ever do. Has that worked for you in the past, Michael?”

MG: “Yeah, I think I’ve always come to the written word after putting a set of compositions together. The process has always been feeling my way towards written language after the musical language is in place, and I think that’s what happened here, too. I can’t quite remember… where did that title come from, Mark?”

MN: “There was one point of the discussion about having a name for the band that was not our individual names. I had been listening to a lot of Sons of the Pioneers’ music, so I think the song titles and obviously the album title was all taken from cut up versions of songs of [theirs]. I spent a couple hours listening to things and pulling out words and phrases that resonated. So we had the song titles, and then I think Michael identified New World, Lonely Ride, as a good album title.”

MG: “I think it summarises a lot of different things within the record—and beyond—for us.”

MN: “It’s kind of taken on more meaning than I thought it had at the time, which is cool.”

S13: My interpretation of it is two-fold. It could be construed as a reflection of getting older, but also it could be considered a political statement. Are politics something that intersects with your ideas, sonically?

MN: “I guess it intersects with everything. At this point in this country, it’s pretty hard to find anything too [far] away from the social and cultural moment, to put it in the mildest terms. How it would resonate and specifically be present in the music, I think maybe that comes back to patience for me.

“I just remembered my last record was called The Patience Fader.” (laughs)

S13: (Laughs) Of course.

MN: “I mean, patience is a very imperfect response to what we have going on here now, but I think it’s a necessary component. I don’t think of this music in general as an escape—sometimes it has that feel or that direction—but I think having a space of peace and contemplation certainly is necessary, so I’ll accept that. And also, I think we need some patience with just facing something that we’re not getting rid of anytime soon… patience with ourselves to stay connected to things that matter to us: families, communities, music, friends… and not lose heart completely.”

MG: “Yeah, I would echo what you said, Mark. I liked how you stressed this idea that music shouldn’t be about escape or disconnecting but rather about creating a place for contemplation. The idea that comes to mind for me in response to that is something like music for enduring, for riding this out.”

MN: “I guess if we talk about the title of the record specifically, I think it’s also the recognition of this not really being that isolated a moment in American history. It’s always been a bumpy ride. It’s a very lonely, disorienting and troubled history. This didn’t come out of nothing.”

S13: Michael, your solo work has been so far reaching and coupled with Mark’s ability to harness emotional intensity through his compositions, this feels like an album for these times. Was this something that you were both thinking about when ideas were being exchanged?

MN: “No, not for me specifically. But timing is everything. (laughs) For me, I don’t think this was ever part of our conversation. I had a sense that there was a personal compatibility between the two of us. Whether that meant that we agreed on everything culturally or not or had the same views never was part of our conversation. But I think it seemed we were close enough to work together.”

MG: “One song that made me really excited to collaborate with Mark was Shenandoah [from A Son] and the way in which his music is ambient in quality, but not at the expense of melody and harmony. What I get really stoked about with respect to New World, Lonely Ride, is that there are actual song forms in the album. It’s not pure texture or pieces that are thoroughly abstract. We actually have melodies and song forms and harmonic progressions. That’s part of the shared territory between Mark and I, our being situated within the ambient experimental space but being open to traditional song forms. I think that provided something of a bridge.”

MN: “I think that was definitely something we had in common… that desire for something more melodic and more song oriented. That was one of the things from Mount Carmel that really appealed to me. Hearing that record, and your approach, because it isn’t just that thick texture of drones and chords welling up with the pedal steel bending something in the middle of it, which seems to be more of an approach that’s well represented out there in the pedal steel ambient community. But your approach has more of a directly melodic element to it.”

S13: Talking about pedal steel, South Canyon has some lovely inflections. What Mark was just saying about the ambient post-country movement, there are some moments of that throughout these songs, and speaking earlier about Pan-American, you’re always exploring new space…

MN: “Yeah, I don’t think Michael and I ever talked about genre. It’s cool that pedal steel is having a little revival, and that people have an expanded interest and awareness of it. I don’t think it’s anchored to country music in the way that it had been. Michael’s background in bluegrass playing Dobro…he’s not coming from a strictly country background, either, so I guess my goal was never to do a version of my music that has a country tinge, but just to use those voices to make the palette wider.”

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S13: Speaking about the layers throughout the album, and the track that stands out to me is Omni Country…

MG: “To me, Omni Country is one of my favourite tracks on the record. Mark initiated this piece, if I remember correctly. It has a really nice acoustic guitar bed. There’s a nice harmonic progression that’s propelling the piece forward. I think this is one of the later tracks that we put together on the record, and as we moved through the process, I moved away more and more from pedal steel and lap steel in order to centre the Dobro a bit more. I think this came out of our thinking we should try to incorporate more acoustic textures into the record… to try and bring in other voices, but also to balance out the electric tonal qualities of the majority of the compositions.

“I ended up doing something with the Dobro there, where I ran it through this Red Panda Tensor pedal that I have, and it felt like I discovered something new with what I could do with the Dobro. It enabled me to express the Dobro in ways I hadn’t heard before. Then Mark’s electric guitar comes in later, and begins to have a dialogue with the Dobro, in a sense.

“For me, I think this speaks to the exploratory quality of collaboration. These possibilities can open up over the course of several months that allow for moments of discovery. I think this is what I really loved about Omni Country. It captures a lot of the joy that came out of working with Mark for me.”

S13: With regards to your writing processes, do you need certain tools, or need to be in a certain space to create?

MN: “To me, it comes from practicing. I like having a regular practice schedule. It’s such a random energy that arrives when something is creative or new or exciting… that threshold is crossed. You get that moment of excitement that something special is happening. If you’re just looking for that, it’s going to be a long and frustrating journey. I like doing it every day, or if I can do it every day, and then letting those moments come when they come.

“I think from having young children, one of the things I learned is how to keep an idea fresh over time. Because you don’t always have big chunks of time, but if you have 15 minutes here and 20 minutes there and the next day you have 30 minutes, you can keep a thread going from these broken up moments. That’s my idea of where creativity comes from. Repetition and paying attention to the practice.”

MG: “For me, I feel really fortunate. As you can see out my window [points the camera outside], there’s a lot of foliage around here in Duke Forest, in Durham, North Carolina. I have my gear just right here on the other end of this window. For me, turning everything on, getting everything going, making sure I don’t have to set up too much, just flipping a switch and getting the guitar plugged in and in my hands, I feel like having this dedicated space with this window is enough. I think the space really matters.”

S13: How much do you think your immediate surroundings influence your work?

MG: “We moved here 10 years ago from Bellingham, Washington. I spent a lot of time in Bellingham. I did my undergraduate degree there a long time ago and then moved back with my family prior to moving here, and we lived there for five years. In Bellingham, it was the same kind of thing where we were living in or on the edge of this forest. For quite some time, we’ve always lived in proximity to natural, undeveloped spaces, and I think that’s maybe contributed to my attraction to slower, more meditative forms of music. It’s hard to say, but there must be a connection.”

MN: “I live in the shadow of one of the most enormous metropolises in the country, but I don’t really consider myself a particularly urban person. I love the proximity of the city, but I’m always looking for a way to get away from people and from crowds of people. Chicago is on an enormous lake… basically an inland sea. We live a mile-and-a-half from that, so it’s an easy bike ride, or if we’re taking the dog, it’s a very short drive. So when I think of Chicago, I think of the lake and the lakefront and those landscapes and horizons, and not the skyscrapers and trains. I have gone back and forth about it, because we talk about trying to maybe move. But I do think I like having an urban environment nearby or accessible, but I’m not really drawn to cities. When I think about dreams of places to live or vacations, they’re not going to cities; they’re going to the desert or, you know, Iceland, or something.” (laughs)

S13: You’ve both been creating music for a long time. Do you ever think of a life without it?

MN: “I can see a life without putting out records. But I’m not motivated to not play music. If somebody forced me to, I would be okay, I’d survive. But it’s really pretty central to my day-to-day life that it’s hard to imagine not doing it.”

MG: “I can’t, either. It’s always been a part of my everyday life. Growing up playing piano, going to piano lessons, having my parents force me to spend 30 minutes with a timer every weekday, practicing scales and learning pieces. I think it’s just part of how I make sense of being alive. Whatever I experienced as a kid sitting there at the piano, it must be the same kind of thing I feel with a guitar… the feeling of being nourished by the physical experience of playing an instrument. The thing I love about the pedal steel is that it’s an instrument that makes you feel like you’re always starting over with respect to music. Because there’s just so much there. It’s such a deep instrument, and there’s always something to learn. It’s a bottomless well, so it’s hard for me to imagine not playing that instrument, because I feel like there’s still so much undiscovered territory.”

New World, Lonely Ride is out via kranky. Purchase from Bandcamp.