Columbus Alive
Greg Dulli returns with a new Twilight Singers line-up and a new album
by Stephen Slaybaugh
Perhaps best known—especially around these parts—as the tortured lead singer of the Afghan Whigs, who sprung from Cincinnati in the early ’90s to offer a soulful antigen to its grunge brethren (the Whigs were initially signed to penultimate label of the era, Sub Pop), Greg Dulli has since ventured down a new gravel road with the Twilight Singers.
A loose conglomerate of musical partnerings, the Singers began as a side project to the Whigs when Dulli recorded the band’s debut record, Twilight As Sung by the Twilight Singers, with Shawn Smith (of Satchel, among others) and Columbus resident Harold “Happy” Chichester in 2000. After the album’s release, the “band” remained dormant, while in the interim the Afghan Whigs dissolved.
Dulli and a new cast of Twilight Singers resurfaced last year with Blackberry Belle. Featuring Mark Lanegan and Apollonia Kotero (yeah, the Apollonia) among others, the record is a return of sorts to the soaring dynamics and soul-seeped revelations of the Whigs while also incorporating elements of hip-hop and a broader palette of sounds. Dulli still sings from the gutter of heartbreak and over-indulgence—mixing come-ons with self-loathing—but here the music swings more wildly with his varied moods.
Dulli and a selection of Twilight Singers are currently on tour in support of Blackberry Belle. I caught up with him via telephone from Chapel Hill, where he was looking forward to playing Little Brother’s for the first time after spending so much time at its Stache’s antecedent.
You’ve never played Little Brother’s before?
I’ve never even been in the room.
It’s quite a bit different. It’s not as comfy as Stache’s.
Stache’s was like playing someone’s basement. It had “house party” written all over it. I saw a million shows up there. I played there about 10 times. I saw everyone play at Stache’s because bands would play Columbus before they’d play Cincinnati, so I’d have to hoof it up there. I’m looking forward to seeing my old buddy Dan Dougan again.
Will you have Happy join you while you’re here?
I don’t know. I haven’t talked to Happy in awhile so I kind of doubt it.
People are comparing this new record to the Whigs more than the last one. Was your approach to it more like making a Whigs record?
There was a Whigs when I made the last Twilight record so I was probably trying to do something as different from the Whigs as I could. The fact that we all walked away [from the band] led me to re-explore that sound.
This thing is always described as a collective. How exactly does it work?
I write songs by myself mostly. I split my time between New Orleans and Los Angeles and I’ve got a lot of musician friends in each town so I’m able to use people for their strengths. This is a band in theory only. To paraphrase Mark E. Smith [of the Fall], if it’s me and your grandma playing bongos, it’s the Twilight Singers.
Are you the type of person who’s constantly working on songs or do you tend to go through short spurts?
I used to go through short spurts. But the last three years, I’ve probably written more songs than the entire 15 years I was with the Afghan Whigs. It’s weird.
Do you see yourself continuing to be so prolific?
I must be. I’m making a record with Mark Lanegan as the Gutter Twins, and we have 12 songs already. I wrote one three days ago that we’re already playing.
Did you know Mark back in the grunge days?
Yeah, I did. I met him in ’89. We reconnected in L.A. about five years ago. I ran into him at a show, and then we started playing together. Then he joined [Queens of the Stone Age] and that stopped us from working together. He came back to do a Queens show and asked me about a certain song that we had been working on before he joined the Queens. That was “Number Nine,” and he came in and sang it in about an hour then went back and played with the Queens that night.
You also worked with Apollonia on the record. I know you’re a big Prince fan so that must have been pretty cool.
Thrilling. I’m constantly pinching myself. The fact that she is still a great singer, and even more so, her beauty as a person is unparalleled. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.
One thing I notice with your songwriting is that you often address a second person “you.” Do you usually have someone specific in mind or is it more of a figurative thing?
Sometimes that “you” is me, sometimes I’m talking to myself. Other times I’m being figurative or literal. When I’m being literal, the person I’m singing about knows who it is.
When you’re singing to yourself, what are your aims?
It’s like an inner dialogue, or at least trying to break some schizophrenic cycle. If I’m coming down on myself, that’s probably the hardest person I have to deal with—myself. Usually, I’m lecturing myself or giving myself a tour that the real me doesn’t want to look at.
Do you separate the person that’s the voice in your songs from Greg Dulli the person?
When I’m in that state, I don’t even acknowledge Greg Dulli. At that point, that’s my conscious and my subconscious speaking. I don’t mean to sound hippie, but it’s some sort of spiritual dialogue that could be going on with any person. It’s not even me anymore. It’s like transcendence.
I read somewhere that you had become acquainted with Elliott Smith before his death.
I actually knew Elliott 13 or 14 years ago when the Whigs had played with Heatmiser a few times in Portland. But when I bought a bar in Los Angeles, I was bartending and co-managing it when we first opened. If I was bartending on a Monday night and there wasn’t a lot of people there, that’s when Elliott would come in. We remembered each other from Portland and still had a lot of friends and music in common. I’m not going to tell you we were best buddies because that wouldn’t be the truth. But for about a year, he would stay after the bar closed and we’d listen to the Beatles and the Hollies on the jukebox, and I’d be able to pick out everything he was stealing. Beautiful man, though.
I told somebody that the thing I felt the worst about it was not that he did it or not that I wasn’t going to get to talk to him anymore, but that I had thought about the five minutes before the act, and I think that’s probably the absolute pit of loneliness and despair.