Backstage Pass with... Johnathan Rice

“Keeping it Real”

An Interview with Johnathan Rice

By Debi Rotmil

When Johnathan Rice was in his late teens in September 2001, he left his family home in Virginia to embark on a music career in New York City. He was unaware that he’d soon meet up with destiny, not just his own, but ours as well.  “My mother drove me up on September 9^th, so my first day there was September 10^th,” he says, incredulously.  “Everyone knows what day September 11^th is, but for me, I know it as the day my adult life began.”

An epic start to a new life would have made a meek soul get back in that car and drive back home. Not Johnathan Rice.  “It didn’t make me think of leaving – not even once”, he says with steely determination. “I haven’t met or heard of anyone else who moved to New York City that day.  If anyone did, I’d love to meet them sometime.”

Amongst the swirl of melting songs and lush strings on Rice’s CD “Trouble Is Real” (Reprise), one can hear a solid voice of affirmation among the melodic and hypnotic verve. Rice’s vocals are world weary, like he’s weathered the miles.  He’s not singing about tragedy, nor will he tap into that September 11^th memory.  Life in general holds him.  On “Trouble”, each song creates a new atmosphere, whether it’s an amalgam of lofty violins, or Americana backwater folk, that heads straight back into tracks of banging rock, Rice stays grounded amongst the eclectic whirlwind of sound.

Given his rich background, it’s no wonder Rice remains rock steady in this chaotic world of music.   Born in Virginia, and raised between Scotland and the United States, the Folk/Rock greats, such as Neil Young, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Band and Van Morrison, to name but a few, were the soundtrack of his childhood home.  His fondness for “the classics” fueled an interest to dig deeper in the roots of his idols, thus building the foundation for his own life in music.

After finishing his album, touring, and portraying Roy Orbison in a film about the life of Johnny Cash called “Walk The Line,” Rice is gearing up to go on the road again, this time, to coincide with the release of “Trouble”.  His days living in Scotland and Virginia have given his diction a splash of Scottish brogue with an American feel.  Now based in L.A., Johnathan Rice speaks to me via phone.  I find him charismatic and content as we talk about his life and what’s ahead.

Tuned In: Do you like living in Los Angeles?

Johnathan Rice:  Yeah, sure!  It couldn’t be more different.  But that’s why I went.  I love New York and I’m going to go back there.  I’m not done living there, that’s for sure.  But the thing about LA is that there is some genuine stillness and quiet here that is in short supply in New York.  I’ve got a lot of songwriting to do, and I like to work all the time. And over here, you can be at home for four or five days, and no one will come up to your door.

TI: When you first moved to New York, you lived on the Upper West Side, and shared an apartment with a porn star and his drug dealer boyfriend.  How did you cope?

JR:  Yeah, it was pretty seedy company.  If there is any social lesson to be learnt from it – you should never advertise for a roommate in the Village Voice. (laughs). Pretty much, they are complete strangers, and you have to manage to live with them.  I actually wasn’t particularly uncomfortable there.  It’s strange, because I left my family’s house in Virginia and went straight to New York when I was 18, and I’d never seen anything like it before.  I had to live with those people because I couldn’t afford to move anywhere.  I could barely afford to stay where I was. I looked at it all like, you have to throw yourself into your new life.

TI:  “Trouble is Real” comes out in April. But you’ve been working on it for quite some time.   What took so long for the official release?

JR:I recorded most of it a while ago.  But I recorded the rest of it, just a few months ago.  I made the record, but I wanted to tour some more before it came out.  I got signed to a big label when I was real young. I’m 21 now, but I was 19 when I got signed. So I had to get right on it and perform. It took me a long time to get the record right for myself - the way I wanted it to sound and everything. And I didn’t have a lot of time to tour.  I spent most of the time recording.  So I wanted to take at least a year to hit the pavement in the US and Europe and the UK.

TI:  You recorded it in Nebraska?  What lead you there?

JR:  I recorded it in Lincoln, Nebraska.  All the kids who play music on it are pretty much from Nebraska – from Omaha.  There is a big scene in Omaha.  You know Bright Eyes?  Conor Oberst? That’s all Omaha.  And he runs a label out there called Saddle Creek that a lot of really great bands record on, and they are all really great friends of mine.  I heard the albums they were making, and I liked the way they sounded.  So I met Mike Mogis (Producer) through them, and then recorded the record with him.

TI: What is striking about your album is that you have beautiful string arrangements that appear on tracks like “Short Songs for Strings” and “My Mother’s Son."  Did Mike Mogis create that sound?

JR:  Those were actually done by Nate Walcott, he’s a friend of me and Mike’s. He’s an arranger, and really great horn player and he’s a hugely talented musician.  And I was always into Neil Young’s early solo work and Colin Blunstone of The Zombies, and they had these really string heavy records.  I was really into that.  I played those for Nate, and he wrote it all himself – I didn’t write any of that.  Although the album is in my name, there was a really healthy degree of collaboration between Mike Mogis, Nate and myself.

TI:  Are you thinking ahead to your next album?  Any new directions you’d like to follow?

JR:  Well, I don’t ever want to make the same album twice.  I’d like to make a pretty radical departure.  My second album is already pretty much written and ready to record.  I’m just going to wait until I’m off tour enough to record it, and have it for a while.  I don’t care when they come out.  I’m just concerned with getting them down.  When I tour with this album, “Trouble is Real”, there’ll be a lot of new songs in the set as well.  The set will always be changing.

TI:  Tell us about your tour, and where you’re headed to next.
JR:  I just finished a tour a few days ago. I just got home from the UK.  I’m going to do a bunch more press in the US and then go back to the UK, and then back to the US.  Don’t know quite all the details yet–but we’ll know soon.

TI:  You moved around a lot when you were growing up.  You were born in Virginia, but raised in Scotland and went back and forth…sounds like you were a military brat.

JR:  Yeah…my family moved around a lot.  But I wasn’t a military brat. We just had to move a lot, and I grew up all over the place. Mainly in Virginia near Washington DC, and Glasgow in Scotland.   Both of my parents are Scottish. My family is Scottish.

TI:  Your music does seem to have this lush, rustic feel that conjures the rugged beauty of the Scottish and Virginia terrain…

JR:  Yeah, it does.  They’re both very similar – Scotland and Virginia – in their way.  I can never decide which one I like better.

TI:  Your parents have a great album collection of classic rock.  Lots of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, which influenced you and led you into exploring their own musical influences such as John Lee Hooker, Willie Blind McTell…

JR:  I always want to figure out the root cause of something.  I always wanted to know where that sound came from.  Bob Dylan didn’t sound like anything else that was happening in the early sixties.  Early Bob Dylan sounds like music that was happening in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.  If you’re going to be a musician, you got to find out about music, just like if you’re going to be a lawyer, you got to find out about the law.  I love new music, and buy new music, but always fall back into my old ways.

TI:  Do you see any new Dylans or singer/songwriters coming out now that will be influential themselves?

JR:  I do!  I think Jenny Lewis, who sings in the band Rilo Kiley.  She’s one of the most promising songwriters I’ve seen in my own lifetime.  As a songwriter, she does things that I associate with the greats.

TI:  You unintentionally stumbled into acting.  You’re in a film called “Walk the Line”…

JR:  Yes. I’m in this movie.  It’s about Johnny Cash. I play Roy Orbison. Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon plays June Carter.  It’s coming out in November 2005.

TI: Did the cast take you under their wing?

JR:  Oh sure!  Everyone was really good friends.  We all went for drinks down there in Memphis.  They have this thing called a B&B – it’s Benedictine and Brandy, and we drank a lot of those together for many hours.

TI:  How did they get you to look like Roy Orbison?

JR:  Well, a bunch of makeup.  They cut off all my long, blond hair. They dyed it black, greased it back for a couple of hours, and blow-dried it.  They put me in an old suit, and had me dance around for hours.

TI:  Did you research the role?

JR: Yeah – But, I’ve listened to Roy my whole life.  I knew who the man was, and I knew how incredible he was.

TI: Where did you shoot the film?

JR:  It was filmed in Memphis, Tennessee; Forest Hills, Arkansas; outside Tupelo Mississippi – all different places.  These are the real sets.  You know, Johnny was a southern man, this was southern music.  You had to do it there.

TI: Will you act again in the future?

JR:  I don’t think so.  It’s not really for me.

TI: Sounds like your heart is really into the music.

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