Joe Dillstrom Interview
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: Music was a formative influence in my childhood, although I didn’t pick up an instrument until early adolescence. I basically grew up in a breakfast diner—Aunt Martha’s Pancake House, many years closed now but immortal in my mind—and there was a jukebox that always seemed to be playing Hank Williams, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, early Bob Dylan, etc. Those sounds, the patrons, the diner’s textures and its general aesthetic were remnants of the postwar Route 66 culture that formed the halcyon days of my regional heritage, and I fell in love with this elusive ‘Old America’ that seemed imminently in reach but also just out of grasp. I did not know then that this milieu would inform my love of traditional American roots music and the singer/songwriter tradition. Somewhere along the way I picked up a guitar, ingested unhealthy amounts of Bob Dylan, and began trying to give voice to the emotional content that this setting grounded me in.
Q: You mention your recent release Highways & Byways is a narrative about the open road. Can you go into more detail about what you mean?
A: As I was writing these songs, and specifically after I wrote the title song, I realized that the phrase ‘Highways & Byways’ unified all of these composites of experiences both real and imagined. It’s simply the journeys we take and the roads we find ourselves on. Once I determined that the overall writing was finished and I sat down to sequence them, I realized that there was a sub-structure to the songs. The songs “One More Moment,” “Exit Next Right,” “Highways & Byways,’” “In A Violet Night,” and “Take A Page (Out of Me)” depict the journey of the central speaker starting at sunset on the highway and ending a number of days later at dawn. “Magdelena” and “Charlie’” tell the story of two star-crossed lovers from opposing points of view. “Montgomery,” “Tecumseh Blues” and “What A Long Goodbye” form a triptych about a teenager who takes a joyride (and naturally, doesn’t have a license). “Mosey On Over, Babe” and “Johnnie Walker Red” are sketches of two kinds of people (barflies and motel drunks) that you’ve undoubtedly met somewhere before. So as the album plays you’re grounded in this central ‘I’ speaker, and you visit these different skins and experiences from the other perspectives, and you check back in with and ultimately end through the lens of the original speaker, who hasn’t achieved any resolution and is still out there on the road somewhere (“When you take a page out of me / write what you like”). This sub-structure isn’t really necessary to enjoy the album (at least I hope)—and frankly it’s a tall order to expect anyone to pick up on this novelistic/short-story scheme on a first listen—but taken as a whole it forms a tapestry of different people searching for meaning in their lives (or being waylaid by circumstance). This ‘roving narrative eye’ was probably inspired by the roving camera eye of Robert Altman, my favorite film director. In short, this album is about ‘the open road’ insofar as it is concerned with voicing those small, potent moments of self we might find, grapple with or discard along the way.
Q: Can you talk about your creative process?
A: For Highways & Byways, those songs took shape over the course of about two years, but they were not written with intent as they came to me. That is, I didn’t say, ‘This song, X, is about ___, and it fits with Y and Z because ___.” I just followed whatever creative or musical intuitions were present moment to moment. Within the music of the Highways & Byways songs were suggestions of motion and of journeys, and these vague intuitions eventually culminated in that set of songs. When I stumble upon a piece of music (be it a melody or a chord progression) that excites me, it generates images in my head. I feel something just behind the music. They’re not always tangible images, but the strength of a song for me is usually proportional to how closely in sync the music and those images are. The marriage of the music and those images guides the melody, and the melody generates (or allows, or suggests) a sentiment, phrase or scenario I can write towards (and, more practically, sets the parameters for the lyrics—syllable count, vocal phrasing, etc.). But essentially, it all boils down to the melody. Within my approach the melody is always sacrosanct. After assembling several of these, there may be some thematic, emotional or musical connections that begin to suggest a larger structure. It’s only in retrospect that the stuff of an album or a larger work begins to take shape for me, and I still believe in the album as a fundamental unit of organization for a songwriter. I approach songs as pieces of fiction, even if the song isn’t a narrative song. Thus they’re all personal, but rarely autobiographical, because my own life and experiences aren’t particularly interesting—I’m after the internal, subconscious world of the songs and the melodies.
Q: Can you talk about your musical history?
A: Music was a formative influence in my childhood, although I didn’t pick up an instrument until early adolescence. I basically grew up in a breakfast diner—Aunt Martha’s Pancake House, many years closed now but immortal in my mind—and there was a jukebox that always seemed to be playing Hank Williams, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, early Bob Dylan, etc. Those sounds, the patrons, the diner’s textures and its general aesthetic were remnants of the postwar Route 66 culture that formed the halcyon days of my regional heritage, and I fell in love with this elusive ‘Old America’ that seemed imminently in reach but also just out of grasp. I did not know then that this milieu would inform my love of traditional American roots music and the singer/songwriter tradition. Somewhere along the way I picked up a guitar, ingested unhealthy amounts of Bob Dylan, and began trying to give voice to the emotional content that this setting grounded me in.
Q: You mention your recent release Highways & Byways is a narrative about the open road. Can you go into more detail about what you mean?
A: As I was writing these songs, and specifically after I wrote the title song, I realized that the phrase ‘Highways & Byways’ unified all of these composites of experiences both real and imagined. It’s simply the journeys we take and the roads we find ourselves on. Once I determined that the overall writing was finished and I sat down to sequence them, I realized that there was a sub-structure to the songs. The songs “One More Moment,” “Exit Next Right,” “Highways & Byways,’” “In A Violet Night,” and “Take A Page (Out of Me)” depict the journey of the central speaker starting at sunset on the highway and ending a number of days later at dawn. “Magdelena” and “Charlie’” tell the story of two star-crossed lovers from opposing points of view. “Montgomery,” “Tecumseh Blues” and “What A Long Goodbye” form a triptych about a teenager who takes a joyride (and naturally, doesn’t have a license). “Mosey On Over, Babe” and “Johnnie Walker Red” are sketches of two kinds of people (barflies and motel drunks) that you’ve undoubtedly met somewhere before. So as the album plays you’re grounded in this central ‘I’ speaker, and you visit these different skins and experiences from the other perspectives, and you check back in with and ultimately end through the lens of the original speaker, who hasn’t achieved any resolution and is still out there on the road somewhere (“When you take a page out of me / write what you like”). This sub-structure isn’t really necessary to enjoy the album (at least I hope)—and frankly it’s a tall order to expect anyone to pick up on this novelistic/short-story scheme on a first listen—but taken as a whole it forms a tapestry of different people searching for meaning in their lives (or being waylaid by circumstance). This ‘roving narrative eye’ was probably inspired by the roving camera eye of Robert Altman, my favorite film director. In short, this album is about ‘the open road’ insofar as it is concerned with voicing those small, potent moments of self we might find, grapple with or discard along the way.
Q: Can you talk about your creative process?
A: For Highways & Byways, those songs took shape over the course of about two years, but they were not written with intent as they came to me. That is, I didn’t say, ‘This song, X, is about ___, and it fits with Y and Z because ___.” I just followed whatever creative or musical intuitions were present moment to moment. Within the music of the Highways & Byways songs were suggestions of motion and of journeys, and these vague intuitions eventually culminated in that set of songs. When I stumble upon a piece of music (be it a melody or a chord progression) that excites me, it generates images in my head. I feel something just behind the music. They’re not always tangible images, but the strength of a song for me is usually proportional to how closely in sync the music and those images are. The marriage of the music and those images guides the melody, and the melody generates (or allows, or suggests) a sentiment, phrase or scenario I can write towards (and, more practically, sets the parameters for the lyrics—syllable count, vocal phrasing, etc.). But essentially, it all boils down to the melody. Within my approach the melody is always sacrosanct. After assembling several of these, there may be some thematic, emotional or musical connections that begin to suggest a larger structure. It’s only in retrospect that the stuff of an album or a larger work begins to take shape for me, and I still believe in the album as a fundamental unit of organization for a songwriter. I approach songs as pieces of fiction, even if the song isn’t a narrative song. Thus they’re all personal, but rarely autobiographical, because my own life and experiences aren’t particularly interesting—I’m after the internal, subconscious world of the songs and the melodies.
Q: Your music seems to be aligned with late ’60s folk. There is a lot of allure which keeps drawing people towards this idea of the wandering folk musician decades after its inception. Why do you think that is?
A: That’s a good question. While Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, etc. are certainly influences of mine, that particular image or notion is more a marriage of convenience to me than anything else. It’s an acceptable shorthand. My delivery system is similar, particularly on this record, but I feel that my chord progressions and melodies are rooted about one generation back in terms of American song forms—I feel a lot more beholden to blues and jazz traditions (particularly on “Magdelena,” “Charlie,” “Montgomery,” “Tecumseh Blues,” and the 12-bar songs) than I do the ‘three chords and the truth’ thing. But to your point, I think there’s an enduring strength in the archetype we’re talking about, and it probably has to do with a certain suggestion of authenticity or verisimilitude. It’s kind of similar to why the ‘private eye’ archetype of Philip Marlowe lives on variously through later neo-noir protagonists (The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, Blade Runner, David Lynch’s films, Drive) in film. If we set aside the historical context of ’60s folk and its associated troubadours, there remains a sense of a person who exists outside of time (as opposed to being timeless, which I would ascribe more to, say, Hank Williams) and there is perhaps an attraction to the sense of weariness and assumed wisdom that such an image suggests, particularly at a time when music as a cultural force, and its attendant industry, are so fractured and decentralized. In a word I think that within the allure of a ‘wandering folk musician’ is a yearning for a simpler time. All I can say for myself is that I just want to keep listening to Chuck Berry and to keep writing the best songs that I can.
Q: You said you were planning on doing versions of these songs with a full band. Is that still in the works? And what do you think that might bring to the songs besides additional instrumentation?
A: Yes, I still plan to make this happen, pending only the time and the funding. I did this set of songs initially as a solo acoustic record for budgetary reasons and to serve as a ‘proof of concept’ for my particular musical delivery system. I wanted to highlight the quiet, understated, nuanced and gentle character of both my guitar playing and singing. (As an aside, this particular ‘gentle’ touch and sensitivity comes from Tom Waits’ 1973 debut Closing Time which is my all-time favorite album and had a fundamental impact on me in my musical development as a teenager). This also paired nicely with the fairly solitary nature of the songs themselves. I took influence for this pared-down approach from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (1982), although the overall mood of Highways & Byways is warmer and less bleak. But nonetheless, by getting more sounds and nervous systems involved, there’s another life and another set of textures in these songs to be discovered. I try my best to write songs and melodies that legitimately function as solo pieces and that can be augmented by accompaniment. I like the duality afforded to the listener in having two versions of the same set of songs (Bob Dylan and Neil Young have done this a lot at various points in their careers), and it also helps satisfy the insatiable appetite for ‘content’ that streaming services have contributed to the culture. Two birds, one stone. Also, in my city of Springfield there’s a diversity of instrumentalists and a collaborative spirit in our music culture that I want to celebrate. Songwriters are lucky in that we get to build sandboxes for our closest friends and colleagues to fill in with their own sandcastles.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: What you’re really hearing in my songs is gratitude and appreciation towards anyone who has ever contributed to my growth and development as a person. There’s an invisible cast of characters behind each note, but they have made me who I am, and I’m trying to honor them as best as I can. My next two recorded releases are written and planned, and I’m working towards getting established enough to enter house concert markets, as those intimate settings suit my musical style and personality best. If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing I’m on the usual social media channels under my own name and my website is https://www.joedillstrom.com. There is a higher-res (.wav) version of Highways & Byways available on my homepage, and it sounds 10x better to my ears than Spotify and other services. And ultimately, to paraphrase Groucho Marx—“These are my songs. If you don’t like them, I have others.” Thanks for visiting with me. I really appreciate it.
A: That’s a good question. While Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, etc. are certainly influences of mine, that particular image or notion is more a marriage of convenience to me than anything else. It’s an acceptable shorthand. My delivery system is similar, particularly on this record, but I feel that my chord progressions and melodies are rooted about one generation back in terms of American song forms—I feel a lot more beholden to blues and jazz traditions (particularly on “Magdelena,” “Charlie,” “Montgomery,” “Tecumseh Blues,” and the 12-bar songs) than I do the ‘three chords and the truth’ thing. But to your point, I think there’s an enduring strength in the archetype we’re talking about, and it probably has to do with a certain suggestion of authenticity or verisimilitude. It’s kind of similar to why the ‘private eye’ archetype of Philip Marlowe lives on variously through later neo-noir protagonists (The Long Goodbye, Chinatown, Blade Runner, David Lynch’s films, Drive) in film. If we set aside the historical context of ’60s folk and its associated troubadours, there remains a sense of a person who exists outside of time (as opposed to being timeless, which I would ascribe more to, say, Hank Williams) and there is perhaps an attraction to the sense of weariness and assumed wisdom that such an image suggests, particularly at a time when music as a cultural force, and its attendant industry, are so fractured and decentralized. In a word I think that within the allure of a ‘wandering folk musician’ is a yearning for a simpler time. All I can say for myself is that I just want to keep listening to Chuck Berry and to keep writing the best songs that I can.
Q: You said you were planning on doing versions of these songs with a full band. Is that still in the works? And what do you think that might bring to the songs besides additional instrumentation?
A: Yes, I still plan to make this happen, pending only the time and the funding. I did this set of songs initially as a solo acoustic record for budgetary reasons and to serve as a ‘proof of concept’ for my particular musical delivery system. I wanted to highlight the quiet, understated, nuanced and gentle character of both my guitar playing and singing. (As an aside, this particular ‘gentle’ touch and sensitivity comes from Tom Waits’ 1973 debut Closing Time which is my all-time favorite album and had a fundamental impact on me in my musical development as a teenager). This also paired nicely with the fairly solitary nature of the songs themselves. I took influence for this pared-down approach from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska (1982), although the overall mood of Highways & Byways is warmer and less bleak. But nonetheless, by getting more sounds and nervous systems involved, there’s another life and another set of textures in these songs to be discovered. I try my best to write songs and melodies that legitimately function as solo pieces and that can be augmented by accompaniment. I like the duality afforded to the listener in having two versions of the same set of songs (Bob Dylan and Neil Young have done this a lot at various points in their careers), and it also helps satisfy the insatiable appetite for ‘content’ that streaming services have contributed to the culture. Two birds, one stone. Also, in my city of Springfield there’s a diversity of instrumentalists and a collaborative spirit in our music culture that I want to celebrate. Songwriters are lucky in that we get to build sandboxes for our closest friends and colleagues to fill in with their own sandcastles.
Q: What else should we know about your music?
A: What you’re really hearing in my songs is gratitude and appreciation towards anyone who has ever contributed to my growth and development as a person. There’s an invisible cast of characters behind each note, but they have made me who I am, and I’m trying to honor them as best as I can. My next two recorded releases are written and planned, and I’m working towards getting established enough to enter house concert markets, as those intimate settings suit my musical style and personality best. If you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing I’m on the usual social media channels under my own name and my website is https://www.joedillstrom.com. There is a higher-res (.wav) version of Highways & Byways available on my homepage, and it sounds 10x better to my ears than Spotify and other services. And ultimately, to paraphrase Groucho Marx—“These are my songs. If you don’t like them, I have others.” Thanks for visiting with me. I really appreciate it.