WHEN I heard the iconoclastic trumpeter Nate Wooley play at Dalston’s Cafe Oto in September I was drawn into his horn sounds, sometimes clear and icy, other times muffled, snorting and growl-toned.
I asked him about his new album Ancient Songs Of Burlap Heroes with the Columbia Icefield sextet.
Born in Clatskie, a small Oregon city in 1974, his parents were teachers.
“I grew up in the mouth of the Columbia. Its violent confluence with the Pacific always seemed wonderful. People spoke of the Columbia Bar, one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the US, with reverence, awe and a kind of anthropomorphism. When I was older I visited the Columbia Icefield, finding the same sense of awe in its quiet power.”
“I’ve been pretty much a professional musician since 12, as it’s defined by being paid to play. I needed supplemental work if I was going to play the way I wanted to, so I worked in bookstores and restaurants, did some office work and used my horn-on-the-face time to try to achieve the sound in my head.”
I asked him how much the Burlap Heroes album says about the US attitude towards impending ecological disaster of retreating glaciers and rising sea levels and their consequences for the US. “I don’t believe in the music saying something specific. All the ephemera around the album — my liner notes, Aaron Munson’s brilliant sleeve photographs tell you about that... I wanted to bring attention to the beauty and power of the Columbia, one of the strongest, largest and most shackled rivers in the world. I see the Columbia as a great serpentine god that is woefully under the thumb of a 20th-century vision of humanity’s defeat of nature.
“Its main stem contains at least 14 major dams, some of which are completely unnecessary for power production or flood mitigation. Some create reservoirs for recreation, others were simply good political projects for whoever was in power at the time. If anyone listens to the album or reads this interview, it may open the eyes of people not living near the river to the complexity of the situation there.”
What about the unique sound of his trumpet? “On any of my records there is the idea of the trumpet as a voice unlimited by our conception of what is beautiful, but including every small and large thing a human voice can do. Sing and scream, yes, but also cough and mumble and sigh. I want the trumpet to exist outside of its limiting historical framework in jazz or classical music, and become something that emulates a full human experience with all its beauty, ugliness as well the mundanity in between.”
Who are the “Burlap Heroes” of the album’s title? “It’s a phrase cribbed from novelist Saul Bellow, referring to persons struggling just to exist. Everyone has inner and outer battles to deal with at every moment. The Burlap Heroes are those who have a little more to overcome than most, who maybe aren’t always succeeding, but find a way to rise to their own challenges and find the strength to get out of the house or talk to another human being — the small victories that can mean a lot to certain existences.”
Wooley speaks proudly and warmly about his bandmates. Guitarist Mary Halvorson “is one of my oldest New York friends. I’m so happy she still surprises me with her playing.” Pedal guitarist Susan Alcorn’s “artistry is more organic than most, with more blood, guts, passion and humanity.”
Drummer Ryan Sawyer “is the rock of a lot of my groups, and the world at large should know what he can do on the drums.” Viola virtuoso Mat Maneri “has been a long-time hero and I have nothing but respect for his years of honing a language very specific to him.”
As for bassist Trevor Young, “I’ve been an admirer of his playing ever since I was living in Oregon.” Together they make intense musical heat out of the depth of ice, in a way which is rare and pregnant with meaning.
He’s a unique musician with new sounds, and a new world!
Ancient Songs Of Burlap Heroes by Columbia Icefield is released by Pyroclastic Records.