Leaving the Castle and embracing the void – Lukas Nelson interview Part 2

by Doug Heselgrave

Promise of the Real – Anthony Logerfo, Tato Melgar, Lukas Nelson and Corey McCormick

DH: You’ve talked a lot about what your new band is all about. Do the other people you play with share the same goals? Are these people you’ve developed a real chemistry with?

LN: Yeah, Tato Melgar the percussionist I’ve been playing with him for fifteen years. I grew up with him and he’s an amazing player. You’ll see him tonight. Anthony Logerfo, the drummer, I met at a Neil Young concert. He’s a badass dude.

DH: Yeah, he’s got the Crazy Horse drumming thing down. I listened to the new EP this morning and he really creates a big open-ended sound that supports all the stuff the rest of you guys are doing.

LN: What did you think of the new EP?

DH: Well, to tell you the truth, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I’d heard you do the straight blues – Stevie Ray style – thing you used to do at your dad’s shows and that was what I was prepared for. This is a lot more interesting I have to say.

LN: The thing about the blues is that I love the blues, but I just love to play music. I’m not a purist. There’s so many comments on Youtube about how shitty a blues player I am. But, there are some really bad looking videos of me up there. I can’t control that. They put up crap and I’ve grown so much since a lot of those videos were posted. There’s a video of me doing ‘Hootchie Cootchie Man’ and I get the shit ripped out of me a lot for that one. This one guy watched it and said I was the ‘Steven Seagal’ of the blues.

DH: Nice one.

LN: I was like ‘fuck man’ that hurt, but at the same time I don’t like those purists and I wonder why do you have to be so critical about the blues. Blues is just a form of music like anything else.

DH: That’s an interesting comment. The blues is always criticized for being dated and being in need of a real kicking. The clichés need to be revitalized. So, where does the blues fit into your mix and how do you shift it around?

LN: Yeah, yeah. Well, I play the blues. I just try and put my heart and soul into everything I play and to me that’s what the blues is. You put your utmost passion into what you do. I’ve had a lot of pain in my life, you know. I’ve had a great life, but just like everybody I’ve had a lot of pain.

None of us are sheltered from that.

LN: No, no. None of us, no matter what kind of life you live, there’s always….Have you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning?’

DH: By Victor Frankl? Yeah, in college a long time ago.

LN: Well, it’s all about how we all have our different thresholds of pain and how we all find our happiness in the worst situations. I think it all works out no matter how different the spectrums of life we’re experiencing.

DH: I remember him talking about context and how certain people can find ways to be happy in any situation – like the character Adrian Brody played in ‘Life is Beautiful’ – the movie about living in a concentration camp.

LN: Yeah, I know. It’s like if you grow up in a really rich neighbourhood or environment you still have the full spectrum of emotion. It’s just from different things. You might have material wealth and happiness, but your personal spiritual life is empty. So, you get unhappiness from that and….

DH: Are you responding to an accusation that you can’t know the blues because you personally have grown up with privilege?

LN: Not specifically. I don’t think that that’s true. I wasn’t alluding to that necessarily, but I guess my experience of life has shown me that rich and poor people can be equally unhappy.

DH: It’s just a different set of problems.

LN: Exactly! It’s just a separate set of things to torment you. I’ve had some really nightmare scenes with shit and…. But, everybody has those things.

DH: No, wealth – or anything else in itself for that matter – can’t protect you from suffering.

LN: I’ve spent a certain amount of time curled up in a ball, crying with passion. That’s how I got into music. (laughs) I’ve been so happy since I’ve made that choice. I’ve been able to let it all out on stage.

DH: Did you hesitate to get into music at first? That’s something we haven’t touched on.

LN: I was afraid of letting go into that void, but I did. I never was that afraid of it because I took a lot of drugs – mostly psychedelics and they showed me a lot.

DH: I can guess what your answer will be, but what did they show you? They were pretty transformative for me at a certain age…..

LN: Yeah, me too. I haven’t done them for some time, but I went through that whole thing early when my hormones were kicking. So, it was cool. It changed how I see things. Ever since I had those experiences, I have felt more free. It opened a lot of doors with me.

DH: For me, it made me see games, fears and structures that I hid behind.

LN: Oh yeah! I saw so much baggage that I was carrying. They helped me drop a lot of baggage that I had, and felt so stoked afterwards. I thought now I can play music for the rest of my life and constantly chisel out my issues and work on my life and be happy and spread love and be cool. I want to be real to everybody as much as I can. I’m not perfect, but I try to be real.

DH: So, you were mentioning jumping into the void….was there a first time you remember experiencing that while playing music?

LN: There’ve been so many times. I do remember the first time I played ‘Texas Flood’ and the crowd cheered and I was so stoked and knew that this was what I wanted to do for my life. I probably wasn’t even that great back then, but I was eleven or twelve and the feeling was so great.

DH: You’ve come a long way. Like I was saying, your EP had a lot more than I expected in it as far as musical ideas, risks, that kind of thing.

LN: Well, thank you. This new album we’ve done is a concept album, and I feel really special about it. It’ll come out in the next few months. We’re going to figure out who’ll release it and what label to put it on. We’re putting together the sleeves, lyrics, and artwork and it’s really fun to work on that stuff. OK, shit, I just remembered….the biggest time I jumped into the void was not that long ago. It was two years ago when I quit school. I quit college. I dropped out and stopped going to class. I didn’t feel like it anymore, man. I’d had heartbreak. I’d been in love. Y’know and there were tears everywhere.

DH: I think everyone has to quit college at least once for love.

LN: For sure. I did. I quit college. I went on tour and that was the one thing that just saved my life. I would have been so miserable still if I hadn’t. That was the one void. Obviously not knowing what was going to happen. Not knowing if I would be able to pay my bills. I try not to borrow money from my parents. I would accept a gift if they imparted it to me, but they’ve always been pretty strict on having me do things on my own. I’ve learned the value of work and I’ve been pretty self-sufficient since I quit school and I’ve been pretty proud of that. But, at the same time I slept on couches for a while and lived in my car for a lot longer. It was fun. It was an adventure.
DH: A transition phase…..

LN: It was like, and I don’t want you to think I think I’m exactly like this by using this comparison, but it was like Siddhartha leaving the castle. It was like leaving the comfort of the familiar and begging and being part of that whole Brahmin culture.

DH: Were you ever scared? Did you ever look back and wonder what you’d done?

LN: Man, I was so heartbroken! No, I wasn’t scared. It was all ‘Fuck this! Fuck this life!’ I was so heartbroken that I didn’t care. I didn’t have any regrets. I hated school!

DH: What were you studying?

LN: Music! (huge laugh)

DH: I can see how that would be a huge stretch and you’d hate that!

LN: (still laughing) Well fuck! It was classical music! Now, I love classical music, but….

DH: So do I, but somehow I can’t picture it….

LN: I love Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven and Franz Listzt. I love and really dig all of those guys, but I didn’t want to sit and learn all that shit. I wanted to play music and I know how to play music.

DH: It’s a totally different discipline to be sure. It comes from an oral tradition where you learn to replicate something that already exists.

LN: It’s a different thing to be sure. It’s a different trip. I was playing classical guitar. When I knew it was wrong when my teacher made me go and put fake nails on my right hand because you need nails to play classical. I bite my nails and don’t have any nails on that hand, so I walk into that place – that Vietnamese nail joint – and I got so high in their from the smell. I was sitting there with my hand out having my nails painted and it was at that moment that I started re-evaluating my life. (laugh)

DH: Hard to imagine why.

LN: Yeah. Oh shit. The nails stayed on until they rotted off. They turned green and all that shit and I didn’t get laid the whole time I was wearing them.

DH: Part of the Siddhartha renunciation thing, I guess –

LN: (huge laugh) Exactly! It was funny. So, yeah, that was my void.

DH: Sounds like life’s good now.

LN: Super good.

At this point, Lukas and I sat for a while taking in the sun and started to talk about kayaking and swimming in the lake. He mused about how he never has time to hang around anywhere that he plays and that appearing at the Burnaby Blues festival was like a holiday because he didn’t have to jump on the bus right away and that he could hang around for Taj Mahal’s set. Squinting into the sun he recalled that he’d been in BC a few times and never seen anything other than the bus and stadium. “Whenever we were with my dad he always gets out of a place. To be smart, I try and do that, too. When I’m on tour, I play a show and leave that night because you can get in a lot of trouble hanging around and partying. Lots and lots of trouble. (laughs) My dad taught me that.”

We chatted for a while longer and parted just as Lukas and his band mates prepared to take the stage. I found a spot in the shade and took in The Promise of the Real’s one hour set, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the heartfelt music that Nelson and his pals shared with an enthusiastic crowd. Sure, he played to the audience by prowling the stage and strutting like a young Mick Jagger. And, yes, he pulled out ‘Hootchie Cootchie Man’ and ripped into the solo Hendrix style by playing with his teeth. And like others have said, he copped Hendrix, Clapton and Stevie Ray riffs all over the place and quoted classic blues lines liberally, but he pulls it off with such unaffected style and joie de vie that it’s impossible not to get caught up in the excitement he obviously feels when he’s playing. In the end, a huge part of the appeal of Lukas Nelson’s music is he doesn’t take himself too seriously and having spent his life on stage, doesn’t get caught up in the glamour of it and let it affect what he does. Mostly, he succeeds because he’s real. As promised.

This posting also appears at www.restlessandreal.blogspot.com

Check out www.promiseofthereal.com