In my most recent Kreative Kontrol newsletter, I mentioned that I’d done a long-form interview with Will Oldham about his 2019 album, I Made a Place, but it was only used for a print piece, not for this podcast because, at the time, he was feeling ambivalent about being on pods. Sometime in the last couple of years, I asked Will if I could share this phoner widely, and he said yes, so here it is finally, virtually unedited.
The conversation lasted about an hour and took place on Monday, September 29, 2019 at 11:00 AM ET, and you’ll hear us discussing topics like, me attempting to call him using the telephone app on my Macbook, as I often did at the time, but for some reason my computer perplexingly launched a program I’d never used before called Zoom, the return of Bonnie “Prince” Billy music after a long absence, the albums of songs he made written by the likes of the Everly Brothers, Merle Haggard, Susanna, and Mekons, wariness about oversaturated streaming culture, recording a Ramones song with David Berman (who’d died on August 7, just weeks before this conversation) and thoughts on DCB, Will’s love of Jake Xerxes Fussell, the Oldham family’s lengthy history with and a then-recent pilgrimage to Hawaii, and much more.
The wonderful new Bonnie “Prince” Billy album, The Purple Bird, is out now!
To hear this entire conversation, subscribe to Kreative Kontrol on Patreon at the $6 tier or higher (a reminder that an annual subscription includes a discount compared to a monthly one).
Related episodes/links:
Ep. #944: Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Bonnie “Prince” Billy (2006) – Teaser
Bonnie “Prince” Billy (February 2011)
