Photo courtesy of Solid Gold
Canon Blue’s sophomore full-length Rumspringa is a mysterious concoction of highly diverse influences. The album, released in August of last year, has a title from Amish culture, song titles named after American cities, compositions that take inspiration from 20th century minimalism and a sound delivered by renowned Scandinavian groups Efterklang and Amiina, of Sigur Rós fame.
Nashville native Daniel James, the brains behind the moniker, has captured the eyes of critics nationwide with this unique mix. The result is a driving, forward-moving album similar to a journey, with each track offering different scenery yet still part of the same coherent picture, a concept not unlike the original creation of the album itself, written while James was on tour.
We caught up with James in December after a busy year of touring. Catch him live at Schubas with Plants and Animals on Thursday as part of Tomorrow Never Knows fest.
Rumspringa was written in Copenhagen and recorded with Efterklang in Iceland. That’s really interesting. How did you meet Efterklang and how did this collaboration come about?
I first started emailing with Casper [Clausen] from Efterklang probably six or seven years ago. When I originally recorded my first record I just did it by myself. I turned that to them just because I was a fan. They ended up liking it and they put it out on their label. Over the years we’ve gotten to know each other and I started playing the guitar for them on a couple tours. I was working on the album while I was out with them so we kind of just naturally left it to them to produce it, recording in Copenhagen and Iceland.
How did the collaboration with Amiina (the string quartet who's worked extensively with Sigur Rós) come about?
They did all the strings on the record, except for one song. Two of the members played with Efterklang right at the beginning, so they have been good friends for a long time. We contacted them through Efterklang and they were up for the project.
So how does your album translate to a live set?
It’s definitely different. We have a couple samplers and we definitely had to rearrange the songs and approach them in a different way, which I kind of like anyways. It kind of gives the songs new life, so you’re not just regurgitating what you’ve already done. It allows the songs to develop. It’s just kind of more interesting, and I welcome the idea. But at the same time, it would be nice to have, you know, 12 people on stage to fully realize the album.
I can tell the album has some Efterklang influences, and Scandinavian orchestral influences in general. How did working in northern Europe influence your compositions?
I grew up listening to a lot of Icelandic and Scandinavian music, so it just seemed like a very fitting place to record. Most of the songs are kind of written in the U.S., though. So I think, if anything, the influence came before, just because of the records I was listening to. Once I was there, everyone that played on the record for the most part was Danish or Icelandic, so they brought their own particular, I guess, Scandinavian-ish to the record.
But then you have U.S. cities as subtitles for your tracks. What’s the meaning behind that, and how do these two dynamics of European influences and American namesakes work together?
The city names come from when I was initially on tour. I decided to take a couple weeks and write a new idea every day, and whatever city I was in at the time when I wrote the idea is what I would name the song, just to keep track of them all. Once I got down the road and finished the lyrics, I kind of wanted to have a title that was attached to the themes of the song. But I also kind of liked it being grounded in the initial idea in the geography of where it started, so I just kept them in.
The title of the album, Rumspringa, is a term from the Amish community. How is this connected to the album?
I had this weird fascination with words. I have this long list of words I find interesting, or visually interesting, so [Rumspringa] was one of them. So I actually had the title before I even started writing the record. I got the title originally from watching a documentary called Devil’s Playground, which is about the Amish community and the kids when they’re turning 16 and 17. They’re allowed to do whatever they want. I was drawn to the idea of these people who are brought up in a very restricted environment, then all of a sudden, overnight, they’re kind of allowed to do whatever they want. I just thought that was a very interesting thing to explore, how that affects our nature. They’re very extreme situations to be placed in, I think, and I think it brings about very interesting things in human dynamics. It’s kind of just an abstraction on freedom and how it affects people.
I read that you have a lot of minimalist composers as influences, like Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and I’m a huge fan of both. Can you elaborate on the influence of contemporary classical music on your own?
Up to that point when they came to the forefront of music, I think a lot of people like John Cage and [Karlheinz] Stockhausen were doing very interesting things, but they were very challenging to listen to. I think what Philip Glass and Steve Reich and Terry Riley did was they were able to bring back melody for something to grab a hold of, but also do it in a new way with the rhythm and the syncopation and repetitiveness. Actually, I got to see [Reich's] “Music for 18 Musicians” in Ireland earlier this year [when Efterklang played for Reich's 75th birthday celebration], which was insane. It’s like being put in a trance. It’s kind of like a dance almost, because people were moving from instrument to instrument, they’ll trade off. One guy is just playing two notes for 20 minutes, he looked miserable, but when you sum it all up together, it’s very interesting. I’m not directly trying to copy what they’re doing, but I’ve listened to it so much that I think it just comes out in my music.
Your video for "Bows & Arrows (Vegas)" has a very mystical, tribal feel to it. What was the inspiration behind that?
I read a lot of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, these guys who did a lot of studies on mythology and psychology. The idea was more like a manifestation of the brain and the emotions and personifying them and acting out this idea of something in your personality having to die or having a ritual of death in order to move on to the next stage of life. It’s kind of like a weird play representing the psychological process.
Finally, I noticed that your Facebook biography has got to be one of the most creative I’ve seen. How did you come up with that?
I’ve had that for ages. I had a phase where there was a certain feeling I would get. Different types of film, like the technical type of film that was used in the 60s and the 50s that just created this weird feeling in me that I want to call joy or bliss or something. I started cataloguing everything that made me feel that way and kind of creating an environment of, if I could have all these things in one room, that would be my heaven, or my purest form of joy, I guess. So it’s just like a catalogue of different things I enjoy that bring about that feeling in me.
Did you have those specific images in your head when you were composing Rumspringa?
Probably not those specific ones, but I would have films going while I was working, just on silent. I have stuff all over my walls in my room and studio that kind of speak to those kinds of things. So it’s not those specific things, but things very similar to that were probably around while I was working.