Q&A: (Willie Nile)

Country artist Lucinda Williams once said, “Willie Nile is a great artist. If there was any justice in this world, I'd be opening up for him instead of him for me.”

Nile, who is a favorite among many songwriters, has yet to garner the kind of mainstream commercial recognition as his contemporaries Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, both of whom he is likened to.

Nile's most recent release, “Streets of New York,” has earned him acclaim from the likes of Lou Reed, Bono, Graham Parker, Jesse Malin and Adam Duritz.

Nile was born in 1949 in Buffalo, N.Y., where he grew up in a musical household thanks to his Irish-Catholic family members.

“My brothers would bring home rock 'n' roll records like the Beatles, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, the Stones, Dylan and in my home there was a lot of classical music so I was really blessed with a lot of music around,” he said.

His parents observed a policy in which houseguests from all over the world came to stay with the family for extended periods, which had a profound effect on Nile.

Growing up on the East Coast, Nile developed a penchant for the ocean from family vacations (a tradition maintained through the generations beginning with Nile's grandfather) to the coast of New Hampshire.

“The ocean is magical,” said Nile. “Years back when my kids were little, my youngest son, someone gave him a teddy bear that had the sound of the mother's womb in it, so I was curious to hear it and when I did, it sounded just like the surf coming in and out. It was identical and that's one of the reasons why the ocean is so hypnotizing. I couldn't believe it.”

Nile also loves literature and philosophy, and reflected on English poets John Keats and Percy Shelley who had an impact on him in high school. He later became enthralled with the work of William Blake, Alexander Pushkin and Walt Whitman, and considers “Song of Myself” very “hip” and “current.” Nile graduated from the University of Buffalo with a degree in philosophy and was one course short of a bachelor's in literature.

Within his lyrics, Nile offers references to William Shakespeare, Shelley, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and Busby Berkeley, a Los Angeles-based director known for his complex musical productions. He also paints romantic images of Manhattan through character studies of Bo Diddley and a retired Broadway star. Nile's other songs range in subject matter from the 2004 terrorist train bombings in Spain to wealthy globetrotters.

“I think we are really talking about things that are inspiring whether it be a certain neighborhood tree or the clouds passing by on a spring evening, things of beauty, such as songs ‘Like a Rolling Stone' to ‘No Woman No Cry' to ‘Police on my Back,'” said Nile. “Whether you're writing about a small boy pushing a paper boat across a puddle or alluding to a nation mistakenly going into conflict - an illusory ideal - I love when I can make the leap. I don't do it as a conscious thing but I am aware if I am writing something if it has more than one meaning, which is all the better.”

In the same vein as Allan Ginsberg and Dylan, Nile arrived in the creative community of Greenwich Village as a starving artist, attracted to the city's poetic electricity, hoping to find inspiration among the diverse mixture of New York's masses. He does believe that New York City still has its place among the starving artists in the same way he was drawn to it.
“I'm sure that now as we speak it's still the home of struggling artists, and geniuses and brilliant people looking, searching and doing their work,” said Nile. “Much like the Pacific or the Atlantic, it is an ocean of people living in such close proximity.”

Nile said that the title track is his love song to the big city of dreams that he characterized as “big,” “dark” and “fascinating.” From its art to music to the mixture of people from the very rich to the poor, Nile compares it to Paris in the 1850s or London during the time of Charles Dickens and believes it to be a very enriching environment for writers.

“I didn't set out to make a tribute album or a New York concept album, it was just a collection of songs. Early in the process as I gathered the demos together, I realized there was a lot of New York imagery. I then realized all the songs kind of reflect my experiences of living here,” said Nile on the phone from his home in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood he has lived in for the past 30 years. “ The songs wouldn't have been written had I not lived here all these years, so it is a very New York album. I love New York, but I never set out to write one.”

Nile took about two years to complete “Streets of New York” and shopped it around for another year. Nile's work features many musicians including guitarist Andy York who plays with John Mellencamp, and said the work took longer than expected because York was only able to record during certain periods of the recording process due to tour schedules and ordinary happenings such as moving.

“I was able to keep the thread, the live sound and the present tense that it has. It never got stale, which is great,” said Nile who also noted that a number of the songs are live. “‘Back Home' is a live performance I did in my apartment, my piano was a little out of tune, but I wanted to get it down while it was fresh. I sang it top to bottom and when I played it for the band to record it, they said, ‘Well, no way are we doing that, it is done.' They liked the piano and the vocals, and I later added a few things to it like an upright (bass). It's telling a story, really,”

Two other live versions include “Bo Diddley in Washington Square” and “Streets of New York,” which has Jakob Dylan from the Wallflowers on backup vocals. Another Wallflowers member, Rami Jaffee on keys, played on the song “Game of Fools.”

“I met Jakob many years ago when he was younger, but also a few years back at a Mellencamp show where the Wallflowers were opening,” said Nile. “ He was really nice, played me demos for the new album and said, ‘We've got to sing together sometime.' So when I was making this, I thought it would be great to get Jakob. So I called him up and asked him and he said, ‘Just say when and where and I'll be there.' He was so nice about it.”

“Cell Phones Ringing in the Pockets of the Dead” was written after the devastating terrorist attack on train travelers in Madrid that killed 191 people.

“I live about a mile from the site of the World Trade Center and after 9/11, I was on one of the first flights out of JFK going to Spain for a tour,” said Nile. “I get to Spain and the reaction, I was really struck by the compassion and concern and how sincere the Spanish people were about New York at that time. So in 2004, when the Madrid train bombing occurred, I was shocked like everyone else and it brought that memory back to me of how nice the Spanish people were. Two days later I read a headline in one of the New York newspapers that said, ‘Cell phones ringing in the pockets of the dead.' I read it and discovered that cell phones were going off inside the body bags lined up along train tracks and the workers were having a very difficult time. It was a riveting image, and I immediately started writing and it was my way of fighting back, reacting in anger or sarcasm to this mad world, very dark-aged notion that man still hasn't gotten it together, there are still wars.”

Nile, who is now in his mid-50s, recorded his debut album in 1980 and later “Golden Down” on the Arista Records label. He then moved to Geffen and later Columbia where he recorded “Places I Have Never Been.” In 1999, Nile made “Beautiful Wreck of the World” on River House Records.

“Streets of New York” also has a cover of the Clash's “Police on my Back” and “When One Stands,” a reggae-inspired tune by both Nile and Frankie Lee. Nile wrote it by asking himself what would Bob Marley write about the current world if he were alive today.

For those Nile fans out there, stay tuned for more as Nile said that he already has written two more albums.