Plateprat med Gill Landry

If someone offers to buy you a drink, what do you order?
Not a big drinker, but I do enjoy a good mezcal or tequila with grapefruit.

Describe yourself using at least five words.
Someone generally uncomfortable answering a question like this.

If you were to choose a pseudonym or artist name, what would it be?
Wind in the trees & the refrigerator hum

If you ever wrote an autobiography, what would the title be?
Pourquoi Pas?

Which song do you put on to get people dancing?
“Little Demon” – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

What’s your relationship with libraries?
I used to live in them. I’d say I’m a fan.

What are your five favorite albums?
Impossible question, but here are 10 I can listen to most anytime:

• Black Snake Blues – Clifton Chenier

• New Morning – Bob Dylan

• Long Journey – Michael Hurley

• Palm Wine Guitar Music – S.E. Rogie

• First Take – Roberta Flack

• You Want It Darker – Leonard Cohen

• The Heart of Saturday Night – Tom Waits

• Gunfighter Ballads – Marty Robbins

• The Red Headed Stranger – Willie Nelson

• Ascenseur pour l’échafaud – Miles Davis

What are your five favorite songs?
Another impossible question with an ever-changing answer, but here you go:

• “Cold Cold Ground” – Tom Waits

• “James Alley Blues” – Richard “Rabbit” Brown

• “Born on a Train” – The Magnetic Fields

• “Dying Crapshooter's Blues” – Blind Willie McTell

• “Nobody ’Cept You” – Bob Dylan

What have you been listening to lately?
Wind in the trees & the refrigerator hum

Is there an album you think is underrated?
Many. But far more that I think are overrated.

Is there a classic album you've never quite connected with?
Depends what you mean by classic. Most likely, yes.

What are your three favorite album covers?

• Whipped Cream & Other Delights – Herb Alpert

• Maggot Brain – Funkadelic

• Trout Mask Replica – Captain Beefheart

Do you collect records – and if so, why?
I used to collect a lot of records. Now, unless it’s something made by a friend or acquaintance, I only collect what I consider perfect records, basically, any record where I don’t want to skip a single song.

This has been amended to: any album where I don’t want to skip more than one song. One interesting thing that runs through the majority of them, for one reason or another, is that they were recorded or released in 1972.

What’s the biggest difference between when you started collecting and how it is today?
The gold mine is just a cave now. They’re all picked over, even in the most backwoods nowheresville towns. The internet has basically taken away everything I once found pleasurable about it. I’ll never forget the first time I took a record to a cashier in an antique store and he got on eBay to price it.

Favorite physical record store?
At the moment, Healing Force of the Universe in Pasadena, CA.

What was the last record you bought?
The Cradle by Phi-Psonics

What’s the best record purchase you’ve ever made?
I found a near-mint Elvis Sun 78 at an antique store in Clarksville, TN for $1. But besides financial, First Take by Roberta Flack was a surprise that keeps on giving.

Which three records are currently at the top of yourwant list?
They’re all 78 RPM:

• “Devil Got My Woman / Cypress Grove Blues” – Skip James (Paramount)

• “Stop & Listen Blues / Driving That Thing” – Mississippi Sheiks (Okeh)

• “Hang It on the Wall / Revenue Man Blues” – Charley Patton (Vocalion)

In your opinion, what’s the greatest guitar solo ever recorded?
“Bésame Mucho” – Oscar Alemán y Su Quinteto de Swing (1943 version)

What’s your favorite song in a language or dialect other than your own?
“La Chanson de Prévert” – Serge Gainsbourg

Who’s your favorite lyricist of all time?
Cliché as it may be, Bob Dylan.

What’s your favorite movie or TV series?
Almost anything by Wim Wenders or David Lynch.

Vinyl, CD, cassette, or streaming – what’s your preferred format?
Vinyl, but cassette is a close second.

Would you describe yourself as an audiophile?
No.

What kind of setup do you use to play music at home?
Califone 1450 model

If you were to create a mixtape or Spotify playlist to celebrate love, which three songs would you include?

• “Nobody ’Cept You” – Bob Dylan

• “That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” – Leonard Cohen

• “Right In Time” – Lucinda Williams

Which novel has left a lasting impression on you, and why?

So many, but the first that comes to mind is In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan because it leaves me with many questions and takes me to a place of dreams and possibilityin thought and in what a story can be.

What non-fiction book would you suggest, and what makes it worth reading?
How It Is by V.F. Cordova. It’s one of the only books I’ve read where a Native philosopher lays out an actual Indigenous worldview not filtered through Western lenses. She breaks down how differently Native thought sees time, being, and our place in the world.

She explains how Western philosophers, even the so-called secular ones, have mostly been shaped by a worldview soaked in Judeo-Christian metaphysics, whether they admit it or not. So their perspectives are hierarchical, disembodied, and often obsessed with control and separation. Cordova flips that on its head.

What’s your favorite quote?
“Keep it simple, stupid.”

If you could assemble your dream band, with musicians from any time, who would you choose?
Jim Keltner on drums, Jerry Garcia on pedal steel, Professor Longhair on piano, Mark Ribot on guitar, Thelonious Monk on bass, Noah Lewis on harmonica, Stéphane Grappelli on violin, Bunk Johnson on trumpet, Clifton Chenier on accordion, Brian Eno on theremin, and lead vocals by Joseph Spence. I can’t even imagine what they would come up with.

What’s a memorable music moment that stands out to you?
Getting booed off the stage at the Ryman Auditorium. It was glorious.

Which concert will you never forget?
Too many to name, but if I must: Tom Waits at the Fox Theatre in St. Louis.

What’s your favorite festival?
The Oregon Country Fair

If you could travel anywhere to experience music, where would it be?
The Congo

How do you think your friends perceive your taste in music?
I couldn’t care less.

How old were you when you "discovered" music, and what made you fall in love with it?
I was a child, and to this day I still can’t answer what made me fall in love with it. Escapism, I suppose, but escapism that thankfully blossomed into exploration.

What kind of music did you listen to during your teenage years?
Anything I could get my hands on that wasn’t in the mainstream.

Has your taste in music evolved over time?
It’s still evolving. Mainly, if it makes me anxious or sounds like bullshit, I don’t like it.

Which album can you still listen to when you're tired of music?
I have yet to find that album.

If you had a time machine, which musical decade would you travel to?
The 3030s

Do you consider yourself nostalgic?
No. I used to be, but I cured myself.

Is there something you'd like to learn?
Everything I can.

Who do you think is the best-dressed musician?
Usually the one in the band who could benefit from spending more time deepening his/her craft.

Do you consider yourself vain?
Not particularly.

Would you be willing to show us a tattoo?
No.

Are you a maximalist or a minimalist?
Minimalist in the streets, maximalist in the sheets.

Do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?
I’m both.

How old do you feel mentally?
Insane—in the best of all possible ways.

What excites you?
A lover who really sees me and feels truly seen in return.

What are you afraid of?
The power of stupidity.

If you could be reincarnated as a plant, tree, or animal, which one would you choose?
An Icelandic raven or a California redwood.

Foto: Ómar Runólfsson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What’s your favorite food?
Crawfish étouffée

What’s your favorite sport?
Women’s volleyball.

What’s your favorite vehicle or mode of transportation?
Type 2 Volkswagen Transporters

Foto: Sven Storbeck , CC BY-SA 3.0

If you were to describe yourself as a car, which model would you be?
A horse.

Foto: Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0

What’s your life philosophy?
Always smell it first.

Do you have a relationship with religion?
More of a healthy disdain.

If there is a God, what do you think He would say to you when you meet?
“Gotcha, muddafugga.”

What would you want Him to say?
Lol.

Is there anything that annoys you?
Don’t get me started.

Is there something you regret?
There are a few things I would like to be able to see the outcome of had I moved differently, but ultimately, no.

What is your relationship with music journalism?
I don’t really have one.

How do you keep yourself updated on music?
I play it daily if possible. If you mean how I keep updated on new music from others, I don’t.

Do you have any connection to the record industry?
Thankfully, not anymore.

Are there people who have influenced your taste in music?
Too many to even know where to begin.

Who is your role model, or a mentor from whom you’ve learned something special?
My greatest mentor is Lissa Driscoll of New Orleans.

What inspires you?
Nature.

What’s your favorite instrument?
The mind.

Who is your favorite producer?
One who listens with a creative, open mind and isn’t driven by money or the spirit-crushing tides of conformity.

What’s your favorite studio?
Whichever one I’m working in.

What’s your favorite record label?
Okeh

What’s the best or most beautiful song for a funeral?
“Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground” – Blind Willie Johnson

Is there a musician or band that you think has received far too little attention?
Pretty much all of my favorites. Too many to name. Tragically, as long as escapism is the driver, mediocrity rides.

Is there something you’d like to ask yourself?
Why? I ask it daily. The common reply is: Why not?

Who do you think I should have the next record chat with?
I’d like to hear the answers of Ian Felice.