THE MAKING OF light green leaves by little wings - FEATURING kyle field

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

Little Wings formed in San Luis Obispo, California in 1998 by Kyle Field. The debut Little Wings album, The Wonder City, was released in 1999. Discover Worlds of Wonder came next that same year with Wonderue following in 2002, completing “The Wonder Trilogy.” Light Green Leaves was also released in 2002 by K Records with three completely different versions on three different formats.

In this episode, Kyle Field looks back on how Light Green Leaves came together. This is the making of Light Green Leaves.

Kyle Field: Hi, this is Kyle Field from the group Little Wings and we’re talking about Light Green Leaves from 2002. At that point, it felt quasi-New Age, almost quasi-religious and maybe too positive for early 2000s independent music. I feel like it’s aged well but I think when it came out, it felt a little innocent or like I heard someone was like, “this is like Raffi or something.” “Here’s this guy that listens to Ram Dass from the Central Coast of California with the lavender sweatpants on (laughs) like trying to tell me how awesome it all is?”

It was the first record I made where I knew maybe there was going to be more of an audience for it than I’d ever had before. Just because it was my second record for K. And this was a record about the fall, about the autumn, but I recorded it in the spring for it to come out in autumn. And so I hadn’t made a record in about a year and a half when I conceived of making Light Green Leaves. I never try to repeat myself but I feel like I always build on what I’ve already done. I think I’m always consciously trying to evolve in some sense but like fog of war-style, probably lose track of it when I’m actually doing it. So with Light Green Leaves, that was in the basement in the house in Portland that I shared with about five or six other people, it was kind of a predominantly music house, there were probably three to four different kind of musical entities that were just single people’s bands but have a band name. That were housed under that roof so between all of us, there was every instrument, not every instrument you could want but like an organ with a drum machine on it, so there were the resources there and so I think if my memory serves correctly, I’d borrowed a reel to reel 8-track for three weeks so I think I had three weeks to make that record and I mostly made it by myself and in cahoots with like one other person, for instance, Jona Bechtolt from YΔCHT, pre-YΔCHT, played drums on a few songs and I would just have him, I would just have someone come over but it was usually just me and another person putting different instruments or different layers on different tracks. I just had time to work on it so definitely like putting three vocals on one song and it all being my voice was kind of a backbone, a spine of that record. To me, the psychological work of people sitting around a studio, watching you do overdubs, is the hardest thing to do so if no one’s down there at all, I’m hard enough on myself that I want to get something right, but if I’m not using up someone else’s time and I’m the one hitting the red button and then walking over there, there’s a comfort in that to me. And it’s not stressful and it doesn’t seem time consuming cause you’re just present in every moment that you’re doing it and it’s exciting cause you’re actually, you know you’re making a record. 

I was collecting songs you know to make a new record and for me, I guess it felt kind of comforting to spread those songs out over a few releases even though it’s hyper-indulgent and probably someone older than me (laughs) at that time would’ve thought I was a little full of myself to do something like that but I think I went kid in a candy store a little bit and made like a collect them all sort of thing. Where it would be fun to make a different version per format, you know. The cassette essentially was just my handheld tape recorder, the songwriting tapes that I was using to make these songs and the vinyl version was recorded in one night with Phil Elverum and I. I asked Phil if we could record some songs and then I just kind of played all of the songs that I had and we were done with it and he was like, “That’s a cool record. Like maybe that’s it?” Cause I think I already had the name that I wanted it to be called Light Green Leaves and so I think I decided...I don’t know why (laughs) I decided to record a third version of it but I think I wanted to do more overdubs and have more time than one day to work on (laughs) a record. And a few more songs came so that’s another major difference between the LP version and the, what was the CD version, now has kind of become the classic version of that record. 

“Boom!”

“Boom!” as a few of these songs came out of just everyday life, which I love when that happens. I have a good friend that I’m still friends with, Tim Bluhm, from the band Mother Hips, and he’s kind of been like a surrogate older musical brother to me for twenty plus years and definitely went further as far as making a living at it than I did, before I did. And he used the word “boom” a lot. Like “What time is it?” “Boom” and he’d just show you his watch, you know. “Boom” was an affirmative just like instead of saying yes. It’s like, “Are we going to go get Indian, the Indian food buffet, are you thinking that?” “Boom” I think I was just like, I’m going to write a song called “Boom.” And then at the time, I was remembering this, thinking about this record, there was a Levi’s commercial for big jeans. And it was like, “Levi’s Big Jeans” and the tagline was “make room,” like (intones) “make room.” Like make room inside the jeans because they were big. And so I stole that from a Levi’s commercial, the “make room” part. And I’m not even sure if I ever saw this commercial cause we weren’t watching much TV in the early aughts or didn’t have TV maybe but just had a TV and VCR and we’d just watch the same two Mr. Show VHS tapes that Phil Elverum’s younger brother had taped. It’s a very Little Wings song, kind of Joseph Campbell-y, there’s a quest, the hero’s journey.

“Boom!” was kind of like a Bob Marley song, like keeping hope alive or “I Will Survive” sort of thing. “How am I gonna get out of this one, I keep falling into this pit, but I know I’m not Elliott Smith, like I believe there is hope.” I can’t have no hope at all and just sit in that place because I’ve tried to do that and I kind of wore out that kind of mopey 90s paralysis thing by this time in my life and realized it didn’t work for me. That was kind of de rigueur, especially in the late 90s in Portland, and it’s weather-based, I truly believe. It’s really easy to get depressed and go down a dark hole and then write songs about that and then regurgitate that and stay in that feeling forever and ever. 

“Look At What The Light Did Now” 

“Look At What The Light Did Now,” it tries to be meaningful and talk about about life beginning and ending and that’s another theme with the record is “fall, the leaves are dying and the light that green leaves” as well as like “light green leaves” and as well, “the color light green leaves and turns to a brown leaf,” you know. And the first line is kind of like the spring hare myth or something (laughs) like, that’s how I see it, it’s not like a human hair, it’s like a rabbit, “hare it like a pounce upon the peak.” And then “bear it like a bounce upon the beak” was autobiographical and it wasn’t “bear” like “bear the weight,” it was that in the fall of 2000, I actually hit a bear in my truck on my way to Portland, driving by myself, like pre-cellphone days. And I was driving really late at night and it was super scary to hit something like maybe a juvenile black bear, I don’t think it was fully grown, but the way that we collided, it felt like it was running towards the headlights. That’s what that line references and the other lines are just rhymes (laughs). 

It’s rather Steely Dan-ish, almost like “Doctor Wu,” which I didn’t realize at the time but I’m not super unique or original, I think I’m a sponge that thinks I invent things but I’m just kind of recycling things that I’m gathering. And I think the title came...sometimes I just like to write, even though I’m not writing a song, and so I’ll just write to write. And those become pages in my notebooks just full of words, which are kind of just musings or free-writing or whatever, however you want to label it. If a piece of music comes, which I think is the case with “Look At What The Light Did Now,” I think that the chords came by sitting down and playing on the guitar and coming up with something that felt new to me. I think sometimes in those cases, I will flip through and look through those big bodies of words and I’m 99% sure that there was a page on it in the notebook and somewhere in that body of words there was “babababa look at what the light did now” and I think I just took that out of context and wrote it at the top of a different page.

I knew it was a special song just because it was fun to play and sing. Some songs feel like you’re walking uphill the whole time in a way and they don’t get played very much because of that and sometimes those don’t even get recorded. But I don’t know why it’s universal, maybe the repetition that that phrase gets repeated so much and it’s a fun phrase to say and maybe it’s about observing and that seems wise to some people I guess, is to kind of sit back and watch or maybe it’s a command to do that. 

“Next Time”

I remember we were sitting, we being probably Greg Olin and I, I can’t remember if anyone else was out there, but we were on the front porch. And that definitely came out of him and I goofing around, doing like a polka, saying, (sings) “Next Time de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de.” I can’t exactly remember who came up with it first but I kind of think he might have and I don’t know why but I was like, “Oh ah that’s funny! I’m gonna write that. I’m gonna go write that right now.” It was just kind of a repetitive rhyme scheme that kind of felt infectious. That’s what I always like when something starts sliding downhill. You know what the pattern is and then things can start stacking up higher and higher and hopefully get funnier and funnier. 

I would say on the song “Next Time,” you hear a drum machine and that is from the organ that lived down there. So like, (mouths drum beat), I think I just recorded that first and then played guitars over that. I can’t remember what I used for the gavel but I know for sure one of the things I used was my mouth. When I was in third grade, my friend Arash Mobayen taught me, (mouths clicking sound), how to put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. It’s really weird. It’s kind of like gleeking. It’s nothing that you might stumble upon on your own, it’s almost like someone has to show you that it exists. For anyone who’s listening that doesn’t know what gleeking is. I have kind of dry mouth from coffee right now so I can’t demonstrate it, but you kind of raise your tongue up. It’s odd. It’s like a human doing a snake thing, like a spitting cobra thing. But you can kind of throw your tongue down and it activates the saliva glands underneath your tongue and you can kind of shoot some drops of water out. Kids used to do it in elementary school, like gleek on you at recess. This thing never had a name, but it’s (mouths low clicking sound). The junior version of it was (mouths high clicking sound) in the front of your mouth but this one you’re pulling your tongue up (mouths clicking sound) and back towards your throat. I think I might have done that with my mouth and doubled it by like hitting on something too so I think there might be two sounds over it, maybe hitting it on one of those fish that’s ribbed (mouths trilling sound) and I think that that fish is also used on the song “Sandbar.” I think I bought it at the beginning of Little Wings and it just came with me for a long time. 

“If words are the wrist then music’s the perfume,” (laughs) I think that’s probably my favorite but that line has been told to me, “If words are the risk, like ‘k,’ then music’s the perfume.” And then I could only assume that that person had never worn perfume in their life. Like what does risk have to do with perfume.

“Sandbar”

With “Sandbar,” I had a dream that I was in the ocean and on a longboard and knee paddling but I was kind of like paddling around a whirlpool that was spinning and it was just kind of this achey, longing dream that I really missed the ocean and getting in the ocean frequently. You could go in Portland but it was quite a drive and you didn’t know what the conditions were going to be. So I kind of just wrote about that dream because I saw a younger kid waxing his surfboard and it was about the winter werewolf and looking in the mirror and this and that. And that became the song “Sandbar,” which on the vinyl version has lyrics. (sings) “But I was a-sleeping, I was down at the shore.” But for the CD version of Light Green Leaves, I decided to turn it into just an instrumental because I liked the variety of that and it being able to transform. And the album kind of seemed like it wanted an instrumental there. 

And I based it on The Sandals’ “Endless Summer Theme,” which has always been one of my favorite songs. And I’m pretty sure it’s in the same key and uses a lot of the same chords and even uses a melodica and uses (laughs) a very similar tempo. And “The Endless Summer Theme” was really important to me. For a long time, we rented that movie on VHS, probably when I was thirteen or fourteen. Back in the bad old, the good old days of VHS, you could rent a VHS machine also at the video store and so what a lot of people did was you would rent a few movies, rent a VCR player, plug it into yours back home and make duplicates. So we had made a copy of Endless Summer, which I think one of my younger brothers taped a football game over it years later and I lost it, but that “Endless Summer Theme” just sounds like surf adventure or the carefree days of exploration and not exactly knowing where you’re going. 

“Fall Flood”

I think this record, for me, was sort of about not being from the Pacific Northwest and I was looking back, specifically on the fall of 1999 that I kind of missed and longed for. Kind of in the way that they say you’re never a saint in your own territory, from afar, the Central Coast of California seems so romantic like three years ago, this many miles away. The fall of 1999 was also when I turned twenty-eight, which by some counts is your Saturn returns, you know, where Saturn was in the same place that it was when you were born and it’s supposed to be a significant kind of point on the timeline some people believe. That where you’re at consciousness-wise or what not at the point of your Saturn returns is significant. And I’d kind of moved to the Northwest on some sort of a quest like there’s all these independent labels popping up there, there’s quiet shows where people actually listen, which was weather and culture-based as well. And it was kind of hard to get a frequent listening ear at that time in San Luis Obispo. The fall of ‘99 was kind of when I decided that I was gonna actually make a go of it, making music. Try to survive partially in my life as a part-time musician and what would that entail. So I decided to stop paying rent at that time. My friend, Tim Bluhm, that I mentioned earlier didn’t live anywhere. He frequently went camping, his band played quite frequently as well, and I was completely inspired when I found out that he didn’t pay rent. I made a decision to get rid of, to let go of my room, I didn’t even sublet it. I was kind of doing a major shedding of possessions and stuff. It felt a little bit scary when I was moving out of my room, I just trimmed my clothing down to what could fit in like two milk crates and I was just really pairing down. Upon finding out that Tim didn’t live anywhere and could get by just living in the back of his truck, I did that while still working at Sandy’s Liquor and Deli in San Luis Obispo, which is still one of my favorite jobs that I’ve ever had. I would say a few nights a week, I would just park in the parking lot of Sandy’s and sleep back there. I would also sometimes get off work at 11 and drive up to Big Sur for the night, which was an hour and half drive (laughs). In that day and age, in like 1999, you could still park on the side of PCH, there was no parking, no sleeping in cars signs like they have now. And so for me, it was kind of breaking free of some sort of culture. I probably thought I was doing my own sort of version of like a Jack Kerouac freedom whig. 

I think actually “Fall Flood” was another Phil and I collaboration because I think he wrote a song off of “Filled with Wonder” maybe? And he had something about blossoms unpacking and I don’t think he ever recorded that song. I think he went to Hawaii with his family, his parents or something and brother, sister and he (laughs) was like writing on the plane or writing when he was in Hawaii and I think he gave me the piece of paper or made a copy of it for me. We started doing that kind of writing off of each other’s songs like, “Hey, I made a ‘What Wonder Part 2’” or this or that, and I think because of the Wonder Trilogy, he made a book called What Wonder?, like question mark and was trying to negate it almost, playfully but also like, “Well what’s so wonderful about it all?” And so I think my song, now that I’m thinking about it, “What Wonder” was an exclamation and a response to his book that he had made to be like, “Yes, you’re right, what wonder!” Like “What wonder it all is.” 

To me, “Fall Flood” isn’t a water flood. It’s the flooding of the feeling of fall. It’s abstract enough that I’m thankful and surprised that I think people know what I’m talking about but I’m never quite sure. That’s probably one of my insecurities about that song. But I’ve always had a superstition, I’m a fall birthday, I’m born in November and I’m a little bit superstitious that my most creative season is fall because it’s around my birthday and that’s when I’m inspired and summer’s over and the weather hopefully cools down and your brain turns a little bit more inward so just kind of the romance and the nostalgia for the feeling. I guess that song maybe attempts to talk about that transition from summer into fall. Maybe there’s a nesting urge towards the end of the song of like, “But where’s my person or who am I gonna spend the winter with?” and then there’s a pause in the song and it’s like, “Pow!” like, “there they are!” or like “hopefully I get this epiphany moment right at the end of fall like right before it all shuts down for three months of the winter.” 

“Light Green Leaves”

This would’ve been the second album that I made where there were duets with someone that I was in a relationship with actually. Who was also not necessarily a musician or a recording artist or considered themselves a singer, beyond singing along, probably by themselves in their car or in their house. I don’t know, I like the uniqueness of people singing who don’t often sing. To me, it’s more interesting than someone who proudly considers themselves a singer and then kind of like perfectly hits all these notes and there’s no mistakes at all where it feels more like a victim of plastic surgery. 

The title track, I think that was written after I had the title for the album, almost just like a television show theme almost for the record (laughs). That was all about coming from Morro Bay back into San Luis Obispo and how I always felt kind of refreshed and kind of like the old man from the mountain coming back down into town, like for a few luxuries of town, like it felt old fashioned in a nice way. When I was living out of my truck occasionally I would decorate under the windshield wipers with some green sycamore leaves and then drive around and see how many of them could stay on and the cover of the LP, I definitely took that photo on like an Olympus point and shoot camera just through the windshield of my truck in the fall of 1999.

I thought she did a great job at it. I think I can be a little bit emphatic or insistent, especially with recording. I’m not proud of it but I think I can be a little bit pushy or bossy like, “Let’s just do it, ok that was perfect, now do another one!” And they’re like, “Wait, what? I’ve got to jump off the diving board again?” “Yeah we’re jumping off the diving board! You knew that’s what we were doing. Let’s do it!” I’m like that a little bit even though the end product doesn’t sound like that. But it’s kind of like Stanley Kubrick giving Shelly Duvall a hard time in The Shining to get the desired performance...maybe a rough example. Yeah I don’t know if she thought it was that fun or neat or cool at the time, but I’ve been told since then that she was happy that she did it.

“Under Your Blanket”

“Under Your Blanket” was sung by Sienna Falk, who also sings duet style with me on the record. I think at that point maybe the record was opening up to new and exciting possibilities and it seemed like writing a song for someone else to sing was a good idea. And would bring more variety to the record or to the experience of listening to it. And that she was singing it to me was also a part of it and that I was absent from the song. At the time, maybe there was a little bit of melancholy to that song. There are points in relationships where one person, maybe starts to think, “Ugh maybe this isn’t forever,” you know. And whether that feeling spreads to the other person by proxy where they’re like, “Uh oh. This person doesn’t think it’s forever,” or it just spreads because like, “Oh they’ve changed, maybe this isn’t forever. I’m just feeling that myself.” There’s a past tense-ness in that song which was maybe written about that feeling. That eventually maybe I knew we were going to let this go. Kind of like leaves dying, you know. And that might have been a coping mechanism within that relationship to have her sing that for me. 

I don’t really believe in the idea of perfection in a way because with my own music, I like something to sound natural for lack of a better word or even kind of casual. Nowadays that’s dying out probably more than ever, where you can fix, nip and tuck and do plastic surgery on everything. But there is something to a slight imperfection and wobble that makes it sound very human. And most of this record was very close to first take so that was kind of the way I was making it and the way I was needing to play, it was like hit record and go. What I kind of like about the limitations of something like an 8-track recorder where you don’t have just an unlimited amount of tracks that you can use, I feel like those limitations force a certain level of creativity and it kind of reigns in ambition in some way. And I think that those limitations can be really helpful for just helping a thing to get made because you run out of options at one point, you’re not gonna throw on that third shaker and you just have to work with what you’ve got, which is eight things. The group choir, the brute choir, that would have come out of all one night where it was kind of at the end of the record and “Let’s get…,” I think it was six people down there or eight people and maybe I had enough tracks to do two tracks of them? 

“III”

Well three’s my lucky number, my favorite number and so I like that that song title is also a Roman numeral III. And it’s also, “Ay yai yai!” That song was inspired by Karl Blau’s younger brother, Eddie Blau, who I was fascinated by the Blau brothers. And they were living in Anacortes or around Anacortes at the time. And I remember I saw Eddie play this song, I just remember thinking he was almost like Trey Anastasio from Phish but like on a local level version and that also maybe he wasn’t into Phish. And that maybe I liked him more than Trey Anastasio, seeing him live, but it felt like seeing a unique kind of jammy free musician in the wild that had no ambition of playing anywhere outside of his city limits and was happy to play at The Brown Lantern Tavern in Anacortes. And he just kind of had this wild song that seemed like it came out of nowhere and “III” has to have borrowed at least two chords from that song and the chorus “I-I-I go unto the day and I-I-I,” to me I hear it like “I-I-I go unto the day and die.” As if every day we’re living, we’re getting closer to death. And it’s also maybe a reference to Rastafarianism how they say “I and I” like “we’re both the I,” it’s a unity thing. 

At the same time, I was thinking about the Dustin Hoffman movie, Little Big Man, where he goes through all these different phases of his life. His gunslinger phase, his Native American phase where he pretends he’s native and gets adopted by a tribe. And one of his famous quotes from that movie is to his Native American grandfather, “Grandfather, today’s a good day to die.” So it’s just another anthem, a twig and branch and bark anthem, which is kind of the theme of Light Green Leaves is kind of like “Bend like the willow, be tree-like, go unto the day and die,” like fearlessness I guess. And it definitely is casting some nature spells, “Sandy shorelines, the moon is full, feel it pulling,” which was also a reference to probably a Phil Elverum song like, “Feeling the pull of gravity.” “In scattered showers and whipping winds, it will come knocking so let it in.” Kind of open to the way, to the Tao probably as well and just the uplifting feeling of embracing oneness with it all, that grand old sentiment that can be really helpful and useful sometimes especially if you’re feeling some sort of isolation or inferiority or struggle. To just step on that foot and kind of look at the interconnectedness of it all and the general fabric. So yeah it’s like a chant, self-empowering chant, “I-I-I, go unto the day and die-i-i.” And it’s like a palindrome almost because of the “I-I-I” bookends I guess. 

“Fall Sweep”

I believe that was Rob Kieswetter’s keyboard but I could be wrong. It might have been Greg Olin’s but it certainly wasn’t mine. And I would just punch around until I found a sound that I liked. I almost felt like it had an 80s Don Henley sound that seemed like an interesting juxtaposition and maybe a nod or a reference to “Boys of Summer” or something. Yeah and I used that keyboard on the song called “Fall Sweep,” which is like “The Shredder, Part III.” What I think of “fall sweep” as, within the context of that song is us sweeping out this irrigation ditch that was on a property on the Central Coast and I think the keyboard intro maybe being in the Pacific Northwest was a slight nod to the Twin Peaks theme perhaps. Kind of collaging those two elements together, talking about something so far away, but maybe giving it a Northwest intro. 

I’m pretty sure I wrote that song, I think that one was one of the songs that came later after the first version of the record and I kind of thought it would be cool to have another Shredder song that didn’t have to say as much and it was just kind of like, “Oh we’ve mentioned this character on the last two records,” and for them to pop up within this context would maybe feel like it tied it all together even though supposedly this was a new theme. When I was twelve, when wide skateboards had come out, which they had come out years before that but we didn’t have them yet. I had a skateboard called the Vision Shredder, Vision was the company. And it was “Shredder 10 inch” on the bottom with checkers and this kind of very 80s, like 1984/85 thing. And it was stolen from my garage because we left the garage door open and I’m sure I got a new one but that was kind of like my Betsy, that was like my first one and it was just, that first ding hurts the worst. So that’s kind of where the namesake came from was that skateboard. It’s kind of like a song that talks about the generation just above you, who are like your mentors, your heroes, your idols and also maybe your bullies. Or like someone you’re in awe of but also afraid of. And so that’s probably about age too because from the younger perspective, you’re thinking, “Oh, this older guy in the black hooded sweatshirt’s got it all figured out but who knows if he feels lost too.” So I think it’s kind of seeing both perspectives on that at the same time. “I might feel better if I knew the Shredder felt old.” In the other Shredder songs, it kind of attempts to talk about the vulnerability of the Shredder but I think that the ultimate theme is that the Shredder is in every man. To someone, someone is the Shredder. Like someone thinks of you as the Shredder. It’s all a pecking order, it’s all an unbroken chain, you know. So even the lowliest seeming person could be thought of as a hero, depending on someone else’s circumstance. 

Yeah like the closing credits on that topic maybe (laughs). Which if we’re really gonna push it (laughs), maybe it was kind of like the end of that first, of my original California chapter and kind of coming to terms with that. 

“Uh-Oh It's Morningtime Again”

Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, was coming through on tour for the whole west coast and I had met him a few years earlier and we were in touch here and there and he had asked me if I knew of a keyboard player on the west coast that would want to go on tour with him and Rob Kieswetter was living in that house in Portland. And I asked Rob if he would want to play keyboards with Will and he wanted to and so he ended up going on a three week tour. I guess I got to open up one of those shows in Olympia and so Phil was helping book some of those shows cause he didn’t like the venues that the booking agent had picked out and he was trying to make it more all-ages friendly or something for the region. So I guess he had Will Oldham shows on the brain and he wrote me an email and I think the title of the email was, “Uh-Oh It’s Morningtime Again.” And he said, “Kyle, I had a dream last night. You were in Anacortes and so was Will. We had a show and then you and Will and a few people went out and got drunk and then I walked outside and you guys were like by a fountain, like a public fountain, laying in the fountain and singing a song called “Uh-Oh It’s Morningtime Again.” And so I wrote the song based on that email. 

A few songs came because I had that three week window or making the record so it’s almost like you turn the key and you activate this record so then it’s just acting like a net and capturing songs until the window closes again and so that was a good example of how if I hadn’t been making a record at that point, that song would’ve just gone on the next record but it was pretty exciting to be making a record, almost like you’re making a soup. And someone hands you something and you’re like, “Well obviously this goes in this soup, it’s not for the next soup, we’re making a soup now.” So I still try to let that happen, kind of like a spell has been cast and chanted and until you’re done making the record, anything can happen or fall into the pot. And I actually remember going to the club, it was called the Blackbird in Portland, just to see Rob and Will and Aram and Paul, while they were on their tour, and I was in the green room but I didn’t stay for their show because I had to get up early because I was mixing Light Green Leaves the next morning at like 8am. I said, “I would stay for the show but I’m gonna go to bed early because I want to be fresh for tomorrow,” and Will said, “I understand.”

“The Way I Deux”

If you’re gonna talk about the light side, I think with yin yang and such and such, I think it’s almost necessary. Otherwise you’re not fighting against that other thing by trying to focus on the light. And it’s interesting to talk about the dark forces of nature and the universe. There’s a lot that you can dwell on there but I think I like not ignoring one side or the other but trying to talk about them both in the same instance. “The Way I Deux,” it’s more self-help stuff and admitting one’s own darkness or admitting fault or flaw. “Behind the door I’m waiting, under the curtain my shoe,” like “I’m also the villain in this whole picture.” Which, maybe is actually a comforting place to get to if you’re trying to get better is to admit how bad you actually can be. And that “I’m evil incarnate too, I wish other people harm sometimes,” but maybe that’s a step in progress, the beginning of just kind of admitting flaw. 

“The Way I Deux” is a sequel to “The Way I Do” from the first record, The Wonder City, but I spelled it french. And the song that’s the second part, which almost seems like it could be a song called “The Gloom.” It almost seems like two different songs, there’s like a chord progression change and then there’s a new set of lyrics and I think those were side by side in a notebook and kind of got married in the studio when I recorded them the first time because Phil was just rolling. And I was kind of almost just demoing these songs and there’s a chance I didn’t have chords or music for those songs yet at that point and became cemented in that first version that I recorded with Phil. 

(Laughs) “Mouth on my mouth with a new wet warm tongue” did not go over that well at the time in the relationship that I was in. Because it sounds like maybe the next person (laughs) or the next people or something outside of the current situation. 

“What Wonder”

I think it felt fun to like use “wonder” yet again even though I had just made three albums with the word “wonder” in them. I think I mentioned before that it was kind of in response to a book by the same title that Phil made at the time called What Wonder?. And the reggae aspect of it, probably just as much musically it’s kind of faux reggae but uplifting themes. Trying to push forward and not be overwhelmed by just the struggle of human existence. Like these are all just those hopeful mantras that we were talking about that people could misread into believing that this is how this person’s brain works at all time, you know. Which isn’t the case, but it’s the goal, not the norm, I guess. The problem is, I wasn’t trying to create a persona. It’s like the person is kind of the messenger of the music or the carrier of the music and you can exist in song joyfully that way. But I think that trajectory backfired on me at some point or I felt like someone who only knew me because of the music would be like, “Well you’re just all about light and you’re all about positivity.” They could read into it to a fault and turn you into some sort of person that probably no person is. 

I think I had one reel to make Light Green Leaves and I ran out of tape and I had to eat into the actual master tape from Wonderue that was still there cause it all happened in the same house. And I had a new song called “What Wonder” and I was like, “Shoot, I’m going to have to record over ‘Filled With Wonder.’” Which was the first song on Wonderue. And I put it up and started playing around with the faders and I listened to the drums and I was like, “These drums, oh that would be funny. Like if I used the same drum track of the first track on Wonderue, like a bookend so the last song on Light Green Leaves uses the same track from the first song on Wonderue. So those are the drums that, that was the house that Jack built, those were the drums that Rob played to, if my memory serves correct. And I just recorded over every other track with the new song. It was kind of the hardscrabble times of having thirty dollars in my bank account (laughs) and like, “Well, I could save up some money and…” My rent was two hundred dollars I think and I read this book, Richard Brautigan’s book about the Confederate General of Big Sur and I still smoked cigarettes then and there’s a character in it, Lee Mellon or Mellon Lee, I think it’s Lee Mellon. And he has his rites of tobacco where he walks from wherever he lives to Gorda in Big Sur on one side of the highway and he has a paper bag with him and he collects cigarette butts and he walks on the other side of the road and collects cigarette butts. That’s when he ran out of money and cigarettes and then he gets back home and breaks open all the butts and makes this pile of tobacco and rolls, and can afford rolling papers and I did that once on Hawthorne in Portland when I had less than twenty dollars in my bank account and it was a Sunday. And I couldn’t get out even a twenty dollar bill. It was pretty gross. 

(Makes barking sound), which was me and I think I copied myself so there’s like two of them. It’s kind of when you’re performing for yourself in headphones, I think it’s easier to be funnier when you’re your own audience sometimes. If you’re the only audience then you’re not embarrassed to do it in that moment cause maybe someone else might second guess it like, “Do you want to get that silly on this record?” But I think there’s something about the privacy of that sort of situation where different selves could come out that maybe if someone was sitting there behind the board, there’s no way they’re going to be as invested in this album as you are and they’re like, “(sigh) God.” Nowadays they would hit record and then the worst case scenario, you would say that and expect them to be hanging on your every word but you’d look up in the booth and they’d be scrolling through their phone. And it might harm some of the magic of that moment (laughs). I think the mixing session for that record, I think I had in my notebook, I had notes for every song. By the time I was ready to mix it, I knew the record pretty well and I had all the pan assignments written down just in pen on paper so I just went song by song and I think we mixed it in like four hours or something and I didn’t look back. 

By the time the record was out, I went on tour and didn’t come back. When those personal relationships feel a little strained or don’t seem to be completely working. It doesn’t fit in in the context of the community either. So then the community that would be useful isn’t as useful as it could be. There were definitely a lot of people there doing similar things that I was doing but through that I also realized that it wasn’t that important to me personally to surround myself with other artists and other musicians. I didn’t feel like it necessarily helped my practice all that much. In fact, maybe made it feel a little bit less special to me or less unique. There’s a Henry Miller quote and he is someone creatively that I’ve resonated with. He said, “Humans don’t thrive in colonies. Ants do.” 

When it came out, I was really happy with the three versions, I felt proud that the material had gotten kind of interpreted in several different ways. My least favorite response to it was reading the Pitchfork review when I had never heard of Pitchfork before then and I googled “Little Wings Light Green Leaves” and then I called up Calvin after reading that. “Hello,” and then he said, he kind of gave me the Sinatra-esque, “Any press is good press,” which I think that theory has been disproven (laughs) by now. And my favorite response from it immediately was that Phil Elverum said, “I put it on and blasted it this morning.” Like maybe he got an advanced copy from K or something and he was like, “It’s so good! I put it on and blasted it so loud this morning, I love it!” And then some people since then have just been like, “Oh my son loves this record” or “We played this for our baby when they were in the womb and they still love it.” So it’s gotten a lot of love that I’m very appreciative of all these years later.

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Little Wings. You’ll also find a link to stream or purchase Light Green Leaves. Thanks for listening.

Credits: 

“Boom!”

“Look At What The Light Did Now”

“Next Time”

“Sand Bar”

“Fall Flood”

“Light Green Leaves”

“Under Your Blanket”

“III”

“Fall Sweep”

“Uh-Oh It's Morningtime Again”

“The Way I Deux”

“What Wonder”

All songs by Kyle Field, except “Light Green Leaves” and “Under Your Blanket” by Kyle Field and Sienna Fawn Falk.

© ℗ Starkville Music

© 2002 K Records

Theme Music:

“Winter Cold” by North Home

℗ Meladdy Music (ASCAP)

Intro/Outro Music:

“Follow Through” by The Yellow Dress

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Mixing assistance by Nick Stargu and Jeremy Whitwam

Mastered by Jeremy Whitwam