Ry Cooder Crafts Offbeat Tribute to Fifties Los Angeles

It's almost as off-kilter as My Name Is Buddy, which was sung from the point of view of a cat, a left-wing mouse and a blind toad migrating to California in the 1930s. "People didn't get Buddy," Cooder says with a light drizzle of contempt. "Too much of a stretch for them. Oh, OK, you never heard a fable before." The music on I, Flathead ranges from country to mariachi to gutbucket blues, unified by Cooder's raspy vocals and his lyrical guitar playing: light on flash, heavy on feeling. It was recorded earlier this year at the Silverlake apartment of engineer Martin Pradler. "I had guitar amps in the bathroom and bass amps in the closet," Cooder says. "We just played those tunes once." The atmosphere was casual; when they recorded "Johnny Cash" — a rockabilly tribute to Buk's hero — Cooder's son, Joachim, was in the next room watching The Dead Zone and refused to get behind the drum kit until the movie was over. "You've seen that film 30 times," Cooder remembers complaining. "Give me four minutes, won't you?"

With his California trilogy finished, Cooder wants to spend more time writing short stories and rescuing plants from the roadside trash. "I'd like to rest a little," he says. "I haven't had a vacation in 10 years." This year, Cooder produced an album of Latin-flavored R&B for Latina singer Ersi Arvizu, which came out in May. (Highlights of his production career include Mavis Staples' We'll Never Turn Back and the Buena Vista Social Club.) He's overseeing the forthcoming live album from those legendary Cuban musicians — a recording of their Carnegie Hall engagement in 1998. "I'm calling it 'Last Paycheck Social Club,' " he cracks. "That was an amazing show. It has tremendous energy and verve but no aggression at all."

According to Cooder, he's playing the guitar better now than ever — no small feat, since he was probably the world's leading slide player already. "Since the Cuban experience, I am at least a hundred percent better. Before, I knew some moves, and I thought of three good ideas. But now everything is more fluid with the rhythms."

Wait — what were his three good ideas? Cooder answers without hesitation, "Putting a banjo tuning on the guitar was a very easy, good thing to do," he says. "Another tremendously good idea was playing against the tuning key — if you're in open G, play in the key of D. You get these inverted chords. And rhythm mandolin was a pretty good idea — if there's three guitar players on a session, why would you want to be the fourth?"

[From Issue 1059 —August 21, 2008]

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