Promise of the Real – buzzing with Lukas Nelson Part One
The Burnaby Roots and Blues Festival, August 14, 2010
by Doug Heselgrave
On one of the hottest days of an already scorching summer, Lukas Nelson and his band ‘Promise of the Real’ played at the Burnaby Roots and Blues Festival at Deer Lake – a few miles east of Vancouver, BC.
I was scheduled to meet Lukas for a ‘short talk’ before his afternoon set, but our allotted twenty minutes stretched into well over an hour as we sat on a grassy hill watching kayakers slowly drift by and chatted about music and life.
Looking very much like a younger version of his father, Lukas Nelson has obviously inherited his easy charm and unaffected personality. An immediately likeable fellow, Nelson smiled readily, laughed heartily and seemed to be exactly where he wanted to be touring North America with his bandmates and playing music.
Like most roots music fans, I have seen Lukas play in his father’s band over the years and have noticed him develop from a talented kid who sang and played like Stevie Ray Vaughn into a singer and songwriter with his own creative vision.
Lukas’ new band, “Promise of the Real’ wears its influences proudly – encapsulating Hendrix, Cream, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young with a few dashes of reggae thrown in to spice up the mix. If this description is enough to send you running in the opposite direction, I don’t blame you. But, it’s impossible not to hear Nelson’s love of music in every groove of the new Brando’s Paradise Sessions EP. From the first listen, Nelson’s impassioned vocals and the open ended musical structure that the band’s chemistry creates make a convincing argument that the Promise of the Real are a serious band with big ideas. They’re also a Hell of a lot of fun to watch and listen to live.
In the first of a two part interview, Lukas and I discussed his childhood, early music influences and the decision not to become a country star.
DH: So, you were telling me that you spent a lot of your childhood in Hawaii. What was the music scene like there while you were growing up?
LN: Most of the time I was in Hawaii, but I did go back and forth between there and Texas quite a bit. The music scene was a real Jam band scene. From listening to that kind of music, I learned to play from my heart, get really stoned and play. Just get stoned and keep playing….
DH: Explore that two chord progression forever!
LN: (laughs) Yeah, you know I like jam band music, but I like playing it more than I like listening to it. Our music isn’t totally that way.
DH: I like listening to jam band music live when it’s really good. There’s something in the moment that can be magical and unpredictable when a band is playing with a lot of intuition and sensitivity, but I’ve later heard recordings of shows I loved that leave me cold when I listen back after the fact.
LN: Yeah, I know what you mean. I hear you. Something gets lost.
DH: What is important about the live music experience as distinct from listening to a recording?
LN: That’s kind of what we’re about. We have recordings. We just did a great album that will come out this year, but we’re a live band. We put a lot of energy out there and that’s what it’s all about. The energy transfer between the crowd and the musicians all comes together. If you’ve got the right ‘set and setting’ as they say then you’re going to have a great trip. That’s the way it works.
DH: Is that what you’re getting at with the name of your band – Promise of the Real?
LN: That’s it man. We’re promising to be real, who we are, for better or for worse. We are who we are. We don’t use tracks. I’m not pretending to be a country star, and I’m not pretending to be my dad or someone else like him.
DH: Would that have been an easy route for you to take?
LN: Yeah. There was no push to do that, but I can sing like him. I can sound exactly like him if I want to. I think as a novelty, I do that sometimes just for fun. It might have been easy to do that, but for me it’s not about setting up the easy way. I just want to have fun, enjoy life and do what I want to do and play music. Some people aren’t going to like what I do. I don’t care. I’m happy. I like to play and see the reactions of people because a lot of people seem to like what we do.
Do you know what you’re going to do before you go on stage? You say you like jam band music, but you’ve played with your dad quite a lot and his set has been well – set – for years.
LN: I mean, you know, it depends on what the type of gig is. If we have a long show we can really play around, but for tonight we have forty five minutes so we have to put some songs in there that we’ll play. We never play the same way twice. All of my songs are built on that foundation of jamming of rock and roll. There’s a lot of Hendrix, Cream type of improvisations within the groundwork.
DH: I hear a lot of Crazy Horse in your new EP
LN: Definitely Crazy Horse. Neil is my favourite. We’re going to play a Neil song tonight. It’s a song that he never re-released called LA from the ‘Time Fades Away’ album.
DH: I just saw that on DVD
LN: Really, it’s out. Badass.
DH: It was hard to watch all at once, but if you can get into Neil’s zone and just relax, it all starts to make sense.
LN: Yeah man, it’s Neil man. He’s all about the vibe and I hope that’s what we’re about. People hated Neil’s voice and said he sounded like shit, but I love him. You’re not going to please everybody, but if you love him you really love him. It’s like Bob Dylan, too. People don’t like his voice.
I think he sounds better all the time. He’s more out there all the time and requires a certain approach and maybe forgiveness…
LN: To me Bob and Tom Waits are really similar. Bob now and Tom Waits now are very similar. If you listen to his new vocals you hear that – I don’t know what to call it – but it’s really great and I love Bob.
DH: He really is one of the world’s great living vocalists even if he’s terrible when viewed from a certain perspective.
LN: I love Bob so much
DH: Did you ever tour with Bob when your dad was out with him?
LN: I played with Bob. Bob asked me to join his band. He asked me to play guitar for him, but I wanted to play my own stuff. So, I said thank you Bob but I’m doing my own thing, and he said I could sit in with him when I wanted to. I’m honoured. He’s a hero of mine and I’m a songwriter.
DH: I think if we can put away all the hype surrounding his early career and look with some detachment he really does get better all the time. The three albums ‘World Gone Wrong’, ‘Love and Theft’ and ‘Modern Times’ are as good as anything he’s ever done. Better in some ways.
LN: He gets a bad rep because you can’t understand what he’s saying sometimes. Some shows are better than others, but he has one of the best bands out there. Tony and George are so cool.
DH: And they do a different show every night without making a big deal about it being a different show every night.
LN: Yeah, it’s so cool. The vibe. The first time I saw him I felt like I was watching – uh – have you ever been to Disneyland?
DH: When I was a kid.
LN: You know when you go on the train and you see the robots, the dinosaur robots that are moving, he kind of moves like that when he’s on the keyboards. He kind of moves like a robot, a mythical creature, a magical figure that is moving and he’s not real. It is so cool what he does.
DH: Yeah, it seems like the antenna is way up there picking up strange frequencies that zap him and channel through the keyboard. If you listen to the figures he plays, they’re out of this world – very creative and suggestive of something that I can’t quite put my finger on but that can be very unsettling.
LN: Oh man, so badass.
DH: Not everyone would say ‘I can’t play with you, Bob because I have to put out my own music.
LN: I know. People that I know who are successful have told me that I made a bad decision.
DH: Well, it sounds like a good stepping stone – to play Devil’s Advocate.
LN: I mean sometimes I think about it, but at the same time I think that life is short and his music is beautiful, but it’s his music. I want to play my music. For better or worse. I don’t want to play somebody else’s music even if it’s Bob Dylan’s. For instance, I wouldn’t join Clapton’s band. I love Clapton, but I would feel scared to be up there every time playing with him. I consider myself a good guitar player, but you know I don’t want to sit next to him.
DH: Would it just be too surreal to play the parts with him you’ve heard since you were a kid on records?
LN: Yeah, it would feel like…..If Clapton or Bob wanted to just jam and play my own thing, I would. I have. When I do that I always have in my mind not to play over – that less is more and all of that kind of thing. I think that that’s what they liked about it. If I had to play these certain parts every night, I don’t know if I could do it. I don’t know if I’m that trained to be able to do that. I’m not that great to do the same thing without fucking up.
DH: Have you even figured out all your own parts?
LN: Yeah, that’s it! I have my own thing to fuck up. So, it’s like Crazy Horse – the same deal.
DH: I know. I saw Neil a few years ago and he completely forgot the words to ‘Long May You Run’, but he turned it into the show’s best moment.
LN: Yeah, I love that about Neil. He’s human. He’s real. That’s what we’re trying to do. We want to create a vibe rather than perfect music. I think that humans aren’t perfect and I’m not perfect, so I’m just playing music that expresses who I am.
End of Part One
Part Two – coming soon – : Heartbreak, false fingernails, embracing the void and dropping out of music school
This posting also appears at www.restlessandreal.blogspot.com
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