What does an extrovert do when lockdown is announced? These pandemic years have taught many of us things about ourselves that we never knew. For some, it was that human connection is a visceral need that needs replenishment; for others, strict social limits afforded head space as well as physical space that proved surprisingly welcome, and overdue.
For California native Chris Thile, a mandolinist, singer, songwriter and inveterate collaborator equally at ease in the classical, bluegrass, jazz and folk worlds, and an unapologetic extrovert, the pandemic forced him to interrogate much about who he is and what makes him tick. And along the way, it led him to record what he describes as his first truly solo album with voice and mandolin, and nothing else.
Laysongs, on Nonesuch Records, was released in June 2021. It’s a fascinating exploration of belief and doubt, by an artist raised in an evangelical household who now describes himself as an “amiable agnostic”.
“For me, the initial stages of lockdown were like having to quit something cold turkey,” Thile admits, on a Zoom call from his home. “It showed me the extent to which I had been relying on live performance for communion, the kind that I initially received in my life from actual church.
“Even from a very early age, I was particularly taken by communion. Not the words, but just that we would all be thinking about a thing together, and that that thing would not be us, ourselves. Music is that for me. The early days of the pandemic forced me to reckon with my need for communion and how to get it when deprived of it. Now I find myself going back to the concert hall with a newfound appreciation for it and a keener awareness of how important it is to me. How essential it is to have the opportunity to come together with my fellow human beings over something that is not about us.”
The National Concert Hall is one of my favourite-sounding rooms and having got to play it a number of times, I feel that it enhances that sense of communion
Anyone who has seen Thile perform live, whether as a solo artist or in the company of his bands Nickel Creek or The Punch Brothers, or on tour with Brad Mehldau, will be familiar with this ants-in-his-pants performer with a lodger’s reach that extends to the furthest row in the balcony. Thile is a consummate communicator who thrives on the energy that live performance generates. Having been forced to abandon his stock-in-trade for an extended period, he’s returning to the fray with an altered sense of what it’s all about.
“It’s helped me to become a less self-absorbed music maker,” he muses. “If I put my money where my mouth is, what I’m presenting shouldn’t be about me, because if we’re going to experience real communion, it needs to be about the world, about the collective rather than any individual. The National Concert Hall is one of my favourite-sounding rooms and having got to play it a number of times, I feel that it enhances that sense of communion, and if there’s anything that I’ve learned during the pandemic it is the enhanced appreciation of these moments.”
Thile’s search for communion of the social kind led him to ponder the religious impulse, since this was such a formative experience for him, growing up.
“Loneliness and fear of being alone is something that prompts that impulse, I believe,” Thile offers, “and it’s about looking for fellowship. Now that I don’t look for that from any organised religion, I’m all the more curious about its origins, and this record dives pretty deep into religious symbols.”
It’s not the first time he’s questioned faith and its absence or presence, having recorded an album in 2001 titled Not All Who Wander Are Lost.
“It’s a life obsession,” Thile admits, “but religious language plays a huge part in my language as a lyricist, and that language pervades all of literature, tapping into some sort of global fear and ways of dealing with fear.”
I think that we as human beings are capable of producing and appreciating beauty, and for me, that is evidence of meaning that I do understand. Maybe it’s God, whatever it is
Thile’s Laysongs album exists in a liminal space where evangelism, agnosticism and atheism comfortably coexist on a spectrum. Refreshingly, he eschews a lazy route that would allow him to condemn or deride beliefs to which he no longer subscribes, opting instead for a thoughtful meditation on what it means to listen, to accommodate and to learn from one another.
“I know a lot of people who are deeply resentful of the religion of their youth”, he says. “I’m not, because I feel like its ostensible utility is so understandable. All of us have questions about why we’re here, what we ought to be doing and whether it means anything. For me, I look for any excuse not to slide into rank nihilism and I think that the existence of beauty is all I need.
“I think that we as human beings are capable of producing and appreciating beauty, and for me, that is evidence of meaning that I do understand. Maybe it’s God, whatever it is. Where I start getting very confused is when the pursuit of that meaning lands you in a place where you start to look askance at the meaning other people arrive at.”
At the heart of Laysongs is a song suite titled Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth. Inspired by CS Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, it mines deep beneath the surface levels that tend to define so much public and private discourse in recent years.
“That’s the record’s heart and soul for sure,” Thile offers. “It’s a result of recognising within myself the tendency to derive a greater sense of self-worth through the condemnation of others. We have a tendency to look down on others in an effort to not feel so bad about ourselves.”
CS Lewis’s book left a deep impression on Thile when he first read it many years ago.
“Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth is inspired by CS Lewis’s account of a senior demon instructing a junior demon on best practices in the fine art of soul corruption,” he explains. “The piece is inspired by feeling those demons in myself. In my initial steps away from Christianity, I would look at people who were involved in any organised religion and how I saw them feeling better about themselves than other people, and I would feel, how dare they. All the time, feeling better about myself. And now I feel the same thing about anyone who expresses a strong opinion about anything. How dare you think that you’re right.
“So I feel it’s a very human experience that’s at the core of our current issues: having such a hard time coming to the table with love and respect for each other, despite how different our opinions are about very important things. It just seems to me that I’m having less and less beers with people I disagree with, yet I think should be having more beers with those people and having a civil conversation – even if it’s about sport. And of course, social media pushes us towards that kind of behaviour too.”
Stitched into Laysongs is a delirious freshness in perspective. His cover of the bluegrass singer Hazel Dickens’s song Won’t You Come and Sing for Me is as sweet and innocent as the day is long.
“That gorgeous Hazel Dickens song is one I grew up with,” Thile recalls. “There was something that hit me hard about that song. It was one of the very first songs that actually wrenched my gut, and now I feel like I understand: there’s this very subtle disavowal of self that she’s advocating for. She doesn’t say won’t you come sing with me. She says: won’t you come sing for me.
“I think there’s power in that: there’s power in ceding the floor, to really appreciate what the world around us has to offer. Stop making noise. For a musician, that’s particularly hard. Making noise is our bread and butter. It’s what we do. We just have to remember that that needs to be in the service of communion, enabling transcendence by the people who are sustaining us by coming to the shows and buying or streaming our records. It’s not about us showing them what we think we can do. It’s just providing that table at which we can all sit down together. That’s the power of gatherings, be they sacred or secular.”
Chris Thile plays a solo concert at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on November 15th. nch.ie
