Pianist Brad Mehldau has long been known to masterfully adapt compositions from outside of the jazz tradition into his own, idiosyncratic place within it. Over the years he has re-worked the music of Radiohead, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles and Bach into performances that reflect, converse with and reinvent their source material in consistently new and exciting ways.
His new album, Ride Into the Sun, is inspired by the late Elliott Smith, who died in 2003 at the age of 34. Smith, who took influence from folk, singer-songwriter and classic and alternative rock, was himself a one-of-a-kind artist whose influence has played a pivotal role across the musical spectrum since his life and untimely death. I recently spoke to Brad Mehldau about Ride Into the Sun and his relationship to the music of Elliott Smith, which you can read below. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
As a longtime fan of Elliott Smith, as well as your music, I was really excited to hear how you would adapt his compositions to a new style of performance. I note that you’re quoted as saying, about Smith, “the very first time I heard him play, what immediately drew me in was his particular feeling for harmony. It riveted me.” Do you recall what songs or albums you first heard and can you talk a bit about what it was in his harmonies that was, and remains, so striking?
I first heard Elliott live at the club Largo, sitting in on Jon Brion’s weekly Friday night gig there. He played two or three songs. Definitely one of them was “Bottle Up and Explode.” I thought the harmony was beautiful indeed. I had been listening to a lot of Brian Wilson/Beach Boys, and made a connection there, to songs of Brian Wilson like “The Warmth of the Sun” or “Til I Die.” The first record I heard was XO, which came out a little after that. I didn’t listen to his earlier records until a little later. Certainly “Tomorrow Tomorrow” and “Everything Means Nothing to Me” are examples of the intriguing, deep harmony that caught my attention. It’s hard to go into what I like about the harmony without working out in a digression that’s more in musicians’ vernacular. But maybe we can say what his harmony is not: It’s not music with a series of chords, where one fixed chord goes to another fixed chord. Elliott’s harmony is a series of more independent voices which move with their own melodic logic. A jazz or classical musician might say his music “has great voice-leading.” Also what’s special about Elliott as a harmonist is that he often communicates that in his beautiful guitar work, but also on the piano. He started out as a piano player as a kid, the story goes, and wanted to do that, but had a stepfather who discouraged him in a cruel way. We can hear Elliott’s beautiful piano harmony on “Everything Means Nothing to Me,” for example.
You performed with Elliott Smith on the Jon Brion show pilot in 2000. That performance includes a particularly remarkable version of Smith’s “Bottle Up and Explode.” Did you have any other experiences performing with Smith, or seeing him perform live? If so, what do you recall about those experiences?
I saw him probably 5 or 6 times at Largo, and they were all memorable. He never sounded bad. His performance was always focused. Someone might describe him as an introverted kind of performer, but I just felt like: this is all about the music. I could relate to that. I felt like I could relate to him. But I think everyone felt that in the audience - he invited empathy.
You collaborate with Chris Thile on this recording. I recall once listening to American Public Media’s Live From Here, when he was host, and having to pull the car over to give my full attention in listening to him play Smith’s “Waltz #2 (XO).” I think it was so affecting because you could feel how deeply he knew that song in his performance, kind of like letting the listener in on something that had previously been a relationship between just the performer and the song. How much had you and Chris talked about Smith’s music prior to this and was there a process in deciding the songs on which he would perform?
Oh that’s so cool. Yeah, Chris and I talked a lot about Elliott. We played and recorded “Independence Day” together already. We had tried to work up a version of “Tomorrow Tomorrow” back then, just in the duo format, but couldn’t quite find it. It was more my unsureness. Chris is never really unsure; he’ll always find a way. I definitely had Chris in mind on that one for that reason, because we had already dug into it. Yeah, Chris was an obvious choice for this project, right from the start, because of his deep love and knowledge of Elliott Smith’s music.
You also collaborate with Daniel Rossen on the album. I have to say, there is a moment on “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” when his electric guitar comes in, that immediately takes me back to some of my favorite dynamic moments of his work with Grizzly Bear, especially on Yellow House, a record that still blows me away no matter how many times I listen to it. How did collaborating with Daniel come about and how much time had you spent with his music prior to recording the album? What were your impressions of it?
Nice. Yeah, it was really great to have Daniel add that electric on “Everybody Cares…” because it was a bonus surprise for me. It put a smudge on the lens and gave the track some dirt it needed. What I asked Daniel for - and what he delivered in spades - was the difficult role of being the acoustic guitarist on a record of music from an unparalleled and utterly unique acoustic guitarist. It was Chris who suggested I listen to Daniel’s solo records, which are more recent, and which I wasn’t aware of. Particularly the live one, culled from performances in New Mexico, blew me away. Daniel has the depth of Elliott in terms of the harmonic subtlety, the density, and the rhythmic drive. And then he has his own thing. Daniel told me himself that Elliott was a big light for him when he was coming up. But that’s not why I chose him. He’s spectacular, and also has a kind of orchestration sense which no doubt comes from his years co-leading Grizzly Bear - a kind of production sense.
You include two non-Elliott Smith covers on the record, Big Star’s “Thirteen” and Nick Drake’s “Sunday.” “Thirteen” is a song that Smith covered, and I think for a lot of people, myself included, it holds a really special place as an example of just how much a little two-and-a-half minute song can achieve. It encapsulates this very specific moment of beauty and innocence. Can you talk a bit about your relationship to that song and how you approached the performance of it on the album?
Very much what you said. I discovered “Thirteen” from Big Star, and didn’t know Elliott’s cover of it. It’s on Figure 8 maybe, or some stuff that was released posthumously? Anyhow, once I heard Elliott’s version of it, I was happy that I had a pretext to try to record the song. I’ve loved it for years, exactly for the same reasons you described - this kind of innocence, like right before everything shatters. But I always thought that it was so simple and wasn’t sure how to do it justice. I kept it very simple here, and I think it’s effective, but specifically in the context of this story of Elliott’s musical world. And also it has a place in the narrative of the album, coming out of the orchestral music of “Ride into the Sun, Pt. 1” that precedes it. I’m happy with the track.
I was talking to my colleague Nate Chinen about your inclusion of “Sunday” on the album, which he likened to your inclusion of “Life on Mars?” on your 2023 record Your Mother Should Know. You describe Nick Drake as “Smith’s evolutionary grandfather,” can you elaborate on that and expand on how Nick Drake’s music has affected you?
Yeah, that’s apt; I would say it’s more of this connecting the dots between my favorite artists, and thinking about how they connect with each other. I put “Sunday” right next to Elliott’s “Colorbars”, specifically so the listener might hear the harmonic connections - the way both of them, as subtle harmonists, mixed the major and minor modes together in these bittersweet, dreamy cadences (also they are in the same key of E-flat, originally, and on my record).
There are four original compositions on this album: “Ride into the Sun” (Pt. I & Conclusion),” “Sweet Adeline Fantasy” and “Somebody Cares, Somebody Understands.” All of these include really complimentary work from a chamber orchestra directed by Dan Coleman, who you also collaborated with on your 2010 album, Highway Rider. “Ride into the Sun: Conclusion,” in particular, to me, feels like it kind of encapsulates the spirit of this record, with its orchestrated opening, solo piano segment, and then a really fitting crescendo that features you and the orchestra along with John Davis and Matt Chamberlain. What was the process of writing these original pieces and how do you feel they are a reflection, or a conversation with, Elliott Smith’s music?
Incorporating the orchestra, in retrospect, makes this what Bob Hurwitz at Nonesuch described as one of my “L.A. records.” It has overlaps, in Dan’s orchestra and Matt Chamberlain as well, with Largo, and more particularly, with Highway Rider. That second one was recorded shortly after Elliott passed, and I already included an elegy for him on it called “Sky Turning Grey.” But also, the kind of orchestral sound I’m working with here, and the formal aspect of my compositions within the context of the whole listening experience of the record, is related to Highway Rider. There is a cyclical aspect, namely, with a theme appearing that crops up in both “Ride into the Sun,” Parts 1 and Conclusion. “Sweet Adeline Fantasy” is informed by the guitar figure that drives Elliott’s original that precedes it, but also is a really worked out solo piano composition, which definitely has a Brahms strain, like so much of my music. “Somebody Cares, Somebody Understands” makes a connection between Elliott and Nick Drake - the first part of it takes up where Elliott’s “Everybody Cares…” left off, and then at the end, I invoke the atmosphere of Drake’s “River Man”. Within all of that, there are also connections to earlier music of mine, like from Highway Rider. I guess I’m interested in communicating a feeling of memory, and the passing of time, which music does so well, in all of this.
Again, thanks very much for your time in answering these questions, this new record is a gift for both fans of yours and for fans of Elliott Smith. Thanks for making it.
Thank you Julian.
Ride into the Sun is available now on Nonesuch Records. For more information, visit the album page on Brad Mehldau’s website.
