Jeremy
Wilson, Elena Powell and the Glitter Folk, James Angell
Berbati's Pan 231 SW Ankeny St., 248-4579
10 pm Thursday, Dec. 9
$5
Jeremy Wilson's Dodge Ram van rattles through Northwest Portland.
We're trying to find a place to park in the infinite ranks
of sport-utes and upper-middle-class-mobiles bordering Northwest
21st Avenue. The van's a robust, war-ready vehicle that refuses
to fit into the yuppie-occupied neighborhood, physically or
otherwise, so we've been patrolling for a while.
"When I moved up here to Portland, I was 18 and had no
fuckin' money in my pocket and a broken knee," Wilson says
as he hunches over the steering wheel, eyes open for a spot.
"Nothing you see here was here then. This was considered
a run-down old neighborhood, an artists' neighborhood.
"For me at that time, Portland was this amazing place where
you had bands like the Miracle Workers and the Wipers. The
cool thing was, it was truly a fledgling scene. There was
a true underground. The city itself was really unaware that
there were bands playing original music here. There was
no pretension. It was really a great place to be young and
creative."
Wilson is 31 now, which hardly makes him a graybeard. Still,
after years of toil with era-marking Portland bands Dharma
Bums and Pilot--stints highlighted by pure musical triumphs
and sullied by business chaos--he's no dewy youth, either.
Both bands parlayed Wilson's soul-dredging songwriting and
sweaty, wide-eyed stage style into brigades of devoted fans.
Both also suffered high-stakes losses to labels big and
small; the cathartic 'Bums never cashed in on their popularity,
while the artistically ambitious Pilot twice got downsized
in mega-label mergers just as albums headed for release.
Both dissolved without fulfilling their promise.
Wilson, then, has the dubious distinction of having been
trampled by both the grunge stampede of the early '90s and
the industry's frantic search for the next big thing at
mid-decade. Most people would chuck music for good after
reaping such a bitter harvest.
Not Jeremy Wilson.
"I've had all the rock-and-roll dreams demythologized before
my very eyes," he says later, with the van safely stashed
and beer on the way at a too-cool-for-school eatery. "When
Pilot signed to Elektra, they told me that they considered
me a modern-day Cat Stevens or Neil Young. They actually
said this. I've heard all of that stuff, and I am so happy
to be living in total and complete groundedness."
After seeing Pilot through its debacle-scarred end and
chafing for a few years under the tyranny of Microsoft millionaires
in Seattle, Wilson returned to his family's farm in microscopic
Scott's Mills. There, he helps out with his dad's carpentry
business and lays plans for a new musical tomorrow. He's
put together a band--a solo project in name, it includes
John and Sam Densmore of Olympia's Frequency dB and Raphael
Rudd, sometime collaborator of The Who's Pete Townshend.
After a scattering of shows like this Thursday's showcase
at Berbati's, Wilson plans to hit the streets with an EP
documenting the band's rootsy sound.
Wilson radiates an almost painfully earnest passion for
his chosen life in sound, a path that has left him financially
busted and emotionally depleted more than once. He admits
to reaching some dark depths when Pilot was mired in permanent
coitus interruptus with Elektra and Mercury. As a lifelong
follower of Eastern philosophy and the true rock craftsman's
calling, though, he says he found salvation in odd places.
"This is going to sound weird," he says with half-mischievous
delight ringing in his voice. "But I stayed at Leonard Cohen's
house in L.A. for a few days when Pilot was on its last
tour. I cannot express the transformation that seeing that
man--in his 50s at least, alive, healthy and talking about
art with the enthusiasm of a child--brought about. I was
so touched by the experience of meeting him. He sort of
lifted this black cloud that had descended around me.
"I suddenly realized that I didn't have to worry about
whether people thought I was too sensitive. Because I am
fucking sensitive, goddamn it."
Wilson says collaboration with Rudd, a pop auteur par
excellence, helped him unleash his decidedly non-alt,
groove-oriented roots tendencies and brought his inchoate
plans for a solo project into focus. While three solid weeks
of rehearsal this spring in an antique theater in Mount
Angel and a packed show at Berbati's convinced the loose
group to stick together as a band for a while, Wilson says
the geographic space separating the various members is liberating.
"John and Sam live in Olympia, Raph lives in L.A., I live
in Scott's Mills," he says. "We don't have that whole 'practice
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, play some shithole on Saturday,
practice on Tuesday again' thing. It's great."
This new project may not work the PDX club circuit often
enough to become a local fixture. For Wilson, though, this
seems perfect, exactly perfect.
"I'm not out to reinvent the wheel," he says. "I'm about
trying to sing it straight from the heart and make people
move. Yes, I went through a lot of bad shit, but all the
bad shit has brought me to a place where I can see through
the veil, and that's a great feeling."
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 8,
1999
|
