— CiaoCatherine

Interview with Will Oldham

This autumn, I had the pleasure of interviewing Will Oldham, aka, Bonnie Prince Billy.

One of my favorite pieces of music journalism, “The Pretender” by Kelefa Sanneh from the January ’09 issue of The New Yorker has left a lasting impression on me. I felt fortunate to be able to interview an artist I respect so much artistically, but really know very little about, as a person. Conversation flowed naturally, and he had some fascinating responses. It’s good to be able to dig a bit deeper sometimes than “Tell me about the new album,” however topical. I especially loved this exchange below:

You’ve performed under several names over the years. I read a quote of yours that said, “The primary purpose of the pseudonym is to allow both the audience and the performer to have a relationship with the performer that is valid and unbreakable.” How do you think this bond is affected with each new pseudonym, if the heart of the artist is the same? Is it easier to write in a specific way if you have a different name? Is there an alter-ego associated with it?

A lot of my recognition of mass-produced media and arts as a powerful medium came from my experience as a kid watching movies, and getting enthralled by cinema, specifically, the old Hollywood cinema of the 30′s, 40′s, 50′s. There are these people like Marilyn Monroe or Cary Grant who have names that they weren’t born with but they are fully allowed to occupy these grand titles. If you are going to be perceived by the audience as something, and rather than be disarmed, or alarmed, or confused by what they see, it seems to be a productive move to be among the audience in terms of perception of this identity. You can create an identity that everyone is looking at, from one angle or another, but that everybody is looking at.

I’ve never been able to have perspective on my birth self, this Kentuckian that is the son of my parents and the brother of my brothers, or a guy with a Social Security number. I still have no idea who that person is, but I don’t want to be singing from a stance of ignorance. I want to be singing from some sort of confidence, or some direction and I can do that by inhabiting the identity of the pseudonym. It’s the created structure, character, being, similar to Marilyn Monroe saying, “This is the person that everybody is looking at in a photograph or a movie, and this is the identity I’m developing, in conjunction with the points of view of the audience.”

Fascinating, no? We also chatted about his role in R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet and how he came to star in the music video for Kanye West’s “Can’t Tell Me Nothin’” with Zach Galifianakis. When you’re done reading, check out the interview my friend Alexandra Gutierrez did with Oldham for KUCB in Unalaska, Alaska here.