A Q&A with Wilco percussionist Glenn Kotche
You guys are playing the Grand for the first time this month. Have you been to Delaware before?
| Yeah, but mainly just driving through. Hawaii and Delaware are the only two states we’ve never played. |
You grew up playing in jazz and marching bands. How’d you discover rock ’n’ roll?
I actually got into rock the first year I started drumming. I’ve been in bands since fifth grade. It wasn’t until college that I got more heavily into percussion and a lot of classical music. |
Did you ever get into hip-hop?
Sure. The production has always been interesting to me. The Roots toured with us. I’m a big fan of Common. I loved the last M.I.A. album [Kala]. I remember the first time hearing Tricky, how the drum parts sounded like a revolver going off. That was the drum loop. It was amazing. We’ve been experimenting like that in the studio recently. We were in the studio and we lit firecrackers in the stairwell on one track. |
Wait—did you just reveal the direction of the next Wilco album?
| (Laughs) No, no. There’s just one track like that. We come in with a lot of ideas. We’ll be recording more in October and have a better idea then. One thing’s for sure, though: It’ll sound nothing like Sky Blue Sky. |
You came into the band at a time when they were becoming more experimental and unpredictable. Do you think you helped push the band in that direction, or were they going that way already?
The band was certainly going in that direction, which is why I was brought in. There were things I was doing that were outside what Wilco had done previously. Things with contact mikes, found sounds. Using the hammered dulcimer. It was the trajectory of the band, and I happened to fit. Y’know, it’s not a conscious decision to stump our fans or screw with the audience. The band is made up of curious, restless musicians. We also tour a lot, so we play the same material over and over, and it starts to evolve. Things come out that we want to explore more. |
The last couple of Wilco albums have gotten mixed reviews. But the band’s also more popular than ever. How do you make sense of that?
| Personally, I don’t try to. I think there was a big backlash against Summerteeth. Uncle Tupelo fans hated that record. Same with Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And I can remember reading scathing reviews of “Spiders” and “Less Than You Think” [from A Ghost Is Born]. People inherently resist change. |
What are you listening to now?
| Nonesuch [Wilco’s label] just sent me the Explorer Series [field recordings from the 1960s now being reissued]. Let’s see…the Sharp Wood Productions label—they reissued Hugh Tracy, who did a lot of field recordings in South Africa…I’ve been listening to some ambient and minimal electronic, stuff that’s coming out of Cologne, Germany. |
What can we expect at the Grand?
We’ve been playing all the way back to A.M. on this tour. We did that show [this past February], where we played everything we’ve ever recorded and released. And we have our website set up so fans can vote for songs they want to hear. So we’ll do some A.M. tunes, some Sky Blue Sky tunes, one or two brand-new songs, some B-sides. Plus there’s the stuff we always play, like “Jesus, Etc.”
|
You’re in Wilco, and you’re also a member of Loose Fur [a trio with Jeff Tweedy and Wilco collaborator Jim O’Rourke]. How do you classify yourself—band member, solo artist, multi-instrumentalist; all three?
They all go hand-in-hand. I just say I’m a drummer. (Laughs) People are most familiar with Wilco, which is fine. But there’s always been a hermetic side to me that needs to make music on my own. Wilco takes up most of my time, but the other things help balance it out. — Wilco play a sold-out show at the Grand Opera House on Aug. 10. But fans who already have tickets can go to the band’s website, wilcoworld.net, and vote for which songs they’d like to hear. And despite what other people will tell you, A Ghost Is Born is really, really good.
|