If you want to be the best, learn from the best. That’s exactly what’s going to take place at The Banff Centre when musical Renaissance man Daniel Lanois shows up with Garth Hudson in tow to discuss with students the art of making music.
Lanois first made a name for himself with his collaborative work with Brian Eno. He then went on to produce the likes of U2, Bob Dylan, The Killers and Neil Young. He’s now come full circle with his latest album Flesh & Machine, a return to spacious, experimental instrumental work that he first explored with Eno in the ’70s.
Daniel Lanois and co-headliner Garth Hudson play The Banff Centre’s Shaw Amphitheatre on Aug. 10.
“The record’s done, we handed in our final sequence and it’s nice to be spanking the baby,” Lanois said from his L.A. studio. “I went into the studio and as usual the work that you come up with and think sounds best will pretty much dictate the direction you should go in, so I like to pay attention to what succeeds.
“A day in the studio pretty much tells you what magic moments you have to work with. I always found it’s best to abandon any preconceptions about what one should be doing in the presence of a few magic moments and ingredients, so I’ve always worked that way.
“I can’t fight what comes to me naturally and that seems to be the best direction, so that’s what’s happened this time,” Lanois said of Flesh & Machine. “It’s an instrumental record. I have a lot of songs, lyrical songs, but I don’t want them with me right now, I want to pursue this direction and what’s nice about this is I want to take it to the stage, I want to bring some of my equipment that I use in the laboratory to the live stage and I’m going to build a few pillars to operate from and those pillars will be technological pillars because having played a lot of festivals over the last few years, I’m very aware of what I call the long throw communication, things that people respond to in masses.
“You got 20,000 people in front of you, that’s different than 500 in a nightclub. Those kinds of settings are like certain expressions, and I believe my new record has those expressions in it and there are a couple of tracks on the record that embrace the ambient values that I operated by in working with the great Brian Eno, so some of the textural work is beautifully symphonic. It’s not a replication of what I did with Brian, but it’s carrying the torch into the future I hope.”
Lanois says he’ll ship some of the gear he used on Flesh & Machine to The Banff Centre for the upcoming performance.
“Our bass player Jim Wilson (Mother Superior) will have an added set of colours to work with,” Lanois said. “I use these Moog Taurus pedals that sound terrific through large PAs. He (Wilson) plays conventional hand-played bass, but will also have access to these other tones that are more electronic and powerful, especially in the sub-harmonic area, those low frequencies that you feel in your organs.
“It represents the line that I’ve always walked. I’m a studio rat so I have to embrace technology, and we like to think that soul is the fundamental driving force through the flesh part. That’s it, but it’s a more technological sounding record than any other record I’ve ever done and I think I’ve broken some symphonic ground.
“There are symphonic sounds that are not represented by conventional symphonic instruments, but the button of symphony gets pushed by these sounds. There is a part of us that allows us to respond to those beautiful classical sounds and I think Flesh & Machine pushes that button with sounds that have never been heard before so I’m quite proud of it.”
Lanois says one of the keys to his musical success lies in preparation. “I’ve been asked to do a day in the studio with students at the Banff School of Music and I asked for Garth Hudson to be my subject because I want students to hear his incredible harmonic knowledge.
“He’s a beautiful man and a beautiful player and it’s hard to have access to people that kind of knowledge and we’re lucky to have him. But prior to his arrival in the studio I want to be in there with the students to show how my preparation works, because as soon as an artist sits down at an instrument you have to be recording within a split second,” Lanois said.
“The worst thing you can do is be fishing around looking for cables and stands, mics and ways of plugging things in and getting things going while somebody is there. There’s an ergonomic system that I embrace where you can see everything from a distance, everything’s flagged so even if somebody who’s not part of the setup can walk in and make sense of it very quickly, all in the name of capturing the magic moment. That’s the way I do it now and that’s the way I’ll show it to the students when I see them.
“When you’ve got your tools and your skills then you can respond to an emergency ... but when the magic moment is happening – you better be recording because it’s not going to happen again.”
Lanois says another key is to be able to hone in on unexpected circumstances and, “just treat it like a glittering little moment in a big pile of ashes. You find that one little moment that’s special to the day or to the project and that can happen anywhere. It might come from a little guitar riff or it might come from a line of poetry. It might come from a beat, so I like to stockpile my little beginnings and when I get into a studio situation I can drop them into my mainframe, if you like, and off we go.”
