Emulating My Entire Record Collection – At Once

In August 1992, the Willie Wisely Trio (Peter Anderson on drums, James Voss upright bass, Willie Wisely arch-top guitar & vocals and Greg Wold on trombone) set up our gear in the tracking room and basement of Gark Studio in South Minneapolis. It was the beginning of a long journey and almost two years later the album would finally be released as PARLEZ-VOUS FRANÇAIS? on Chicago’s Pravda Records.

The Willie Wisely Trio had established ourselves as minor regional sensation across the midwest and Canada. And to be signed by an out-of-town label was a most excellent thing. Headed by Kenn Goodman, himself a musician, he’d signed us based on a couple wild shows we’d played, opening up for his group The New Duncan Imperials. The opportunity was a result of incessant touring, 100 dates a year. And that road work had created an on-stage chemistry unlike any band you know. Our goal for the album was to have it accentuate our strangeness – to emphasize the wiggy chaos and fearless genre jumping we ventured in the night clubs.

In an attempt to emulate my ENTIRE vinyl record collection all at once, I wrote songs for the band in any style that was obsessing me at that moment. The title track was pure Serge Gainsbourg. Our ‘hit’ “Cannot Love You Enough” totally The Monkees. “Robe In Glory” was Sister Rosetta Tharpe. “Lady Beware” Iron Butterfly. “Talkin’ Trash” straight up Ray Charles. “Motor Scooter” Elvis Costello & The Attractions. The Trio’s odd assortment of instruments, and the fearless (drunken) bearing of all involved made it possible that a punk-a-billy-swinging-rock group could actually find itself an audience in grunge-era Minneapolis. And somehow we did, as we emulated Led Zeppelin and then Joao Gilberto in adjacent live songs. And our intention was to cram all that into our records.

But 1992-3 was a chaotic time and the recording sessions for PARLEZ-VOUS would be started and stopped four times, each with a different production team and recording method, before the album’s odds-defying completion.

Our first stab at making the album was at Gark Studio with Ezra Gold producing (as he’d done for our first album RAINCAN). We rather bravely decided to try these sessions with no overdubs, even recording the vocals live. Listening to these recordings now, they should have been included on the album. But for reasons illogical and long-ago forgotten, we abandoned them. Years later (studio owner Dave Pinsky reminds me), I would approve the erasure of the multi-track tape. NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

In winter 1993, we took ourselves across town to The Terrarium in Minneapolis with Jason Orris behind the glass. We set up again to record live but then switched gears for more of a blended approach with some overdubbing and incorporating 4-track cassette demos I’d been making in our practice studio and my bedroom.

It was around this time that the band began to feel some centrifugal energy. James was starting a family and a business with his wife. Peter had Saucer, a band of his own. And Greg was nearly killing himself (figuratively and literally) managing a bar on the West Bank of the Mississippi River. Meanwhile I was running us ragged, compulsively booking gigs anywhere a club booker would return my phone call. The frenetic pace drove Greg to quit the band in summer 1993, which hit us all pretty hard, mostly because he was our beating heart – a gargantuan teddy bear of a fella who knew how to laugh and love and blow air through a metal tube too. He was our insane mascot. And even though the songs were mine, with my lead vocals, and my name in the City Pages ad, for some reason that lumbering slide trombonist held us all together.

Greg’s departure made for broken sessions. I struggled with focus, even muting his performances on a couple songs (to a detriment) and basically stewing in my own self-doubt.

So next we brought in Tommy Roberts (future founder of Z.VEX Effects) to make sense of what we’d created thus far. But I was demoralized and couldn’t find confidence in the material to create a full record, despite having recorded well-over an album’s worth of songs. In fact, so many extra songs that in 2014 I’d compile GOSPO FEEL, the “forgotten album” of this era when make-it-hate-it-bury-it was the mantra. Tempermental artists.

So, finally we went back to Ezra Gold at Gark and recorded four more songs there, this time building tracks from the drums up. Almost entirely overdubbed. Then lastly, we had Ezra remix everything to try to create a sense of cohesion.

This was one circuitous route to completing a record (who’s working title, fittingly, was “Shit Yeah”). But, it garnered a 1994 Minnesota Music Award for Best Songwriting and resulted in one of the most endearing recordings of my career, a fan-favorite to this day “Cannot Love You Enough”, the dreamy “No Surprise”, as well as the screaming rock feedback feast of “Lady Beware”, the chaotic high point of any Trio show.

I’ve often framed PARLEZ-VOUS FRANÇAIS?, not without some hubris, as my “White Album”. Like the Beatles’ sprawling 1968 double album, with songs as varied as “Helter Skelter” to the lullaby “Goodnight”, to “Revolution 9” and “Blackbird”. We pushed ourselves to know no limits and the Trio’s PARLEZ-VOUS FRANÇAIS? stands as a testament to that defiance and the refutation of linear thinking.