LOVING AND LEARNING WITH JONATHAN RICHMAN

Jonathan Richman isn’t reading this. 

He might be building a pizza oven (he runs a stone masonry business in Chico, California). He might be writing a song in one of the five languages he speaks. He might even be painting in oil. But the last place you’re likely to find him is glued to a computer screen. 

He’s something of a luddite, his assistant confirmed. He doesn’t do podcasts. He doesn’t own a cell phone (he even wrote a song about it). If we wanted to email our questions, she would print them, mail them, and wait to see if his handwritten answers would be snail mailed back.

Gratefully, the mail came.  

In our correspondence with the most grounded man in music, we asked about his existential new album, Something About Mary, and what we’re all on this planet for anyway. 

SYL: Thanks for taking the time, Jonathan. And congrats on the new album. It’s astonishing. With its title track and closing track, it also feels like a meditation on some very big, very cosmic questions. Fair to say?

JR: I guess…you know, before we set up our gear to record, we didn’t know what the album would be a meditation on. That the album had a theme at all occurred to me after. 

SYL: “Only Frozen Sky Anyway” is your 18th studio album. Is the creative muse different than it was when you started making music at 19?

JR: You know I’m going to tell you it isn’t, right?

SYL: Your Modern Lovers bandmate, Jerry Harrison, produces and plays on the album. How did it feel to be back in the studio with him?

JR: One of the great loves of this life is my reuniting with my old partner in music, Mr. Harrison. He feels the same way. 

SYL: “But We May Try Weird Stuff”, a manifesto on giving earthly pleasures a go without shame, has one of the most satisfying back-and-forths between a singer and backing singers I’ve ever heard. Tell us more about those singers and how the track came together.

JR: Rather than a manifesto, for me the song is more a prayer. Sort of like telling the angels “I love the inner world. To really love we have explored and tried many things. We know you understand.” Like that.

SYL: Since our preoccupation here is soundtracks, I’d love to ask you a few questions about your role as troubadour in There’s Something About Mary. What convinced you to say yes to the film?

JR: 1. It sounded like fun. 2. We asked if we’d make as much money a week as we did on the road and they said “yes.”

SYL: Is it true that you wrote the theme song in just 20 minutes?

JR: Ten. I read the screenplay, saw that I had an idea, made up 3 verses and called up Pete Farrelly (co-director) and said -Know what your movie needs? -What? - A theme song. -Yah, it does. - Try this: and I sang it to him over the phone and that was the end of it.

SYL: Do you have a standout memory from the Mary set? Good, bad or in-between.

JR: Going to see the “dailies” every day: This was a learning adventure. Also, getting to talk color with the D.P.! (Exclamation point because I love talking about color to people who work in the field.) Also, watching 7 or 8 takes by Keith who played Mary’s step father. He did each take completely different. 

SYL: Fans might not know that you’re a literal guitar hero. During filming, you saved a Rickenbacker guitar from certain destruction. Tell us about that. 

JR: I’m afraid this is the only way I am a guitar hero. I just said I could not be a party to destroying a fine guitar. So, they found a $40 ancient guitar in a pawn shop for the last scene.

SYL: The real burning question: how long were you up in that tree?

JR: Oh, maybe two hours…

SYL: More recently, “I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar” was used in an episode of Euphoria. When two of the show’s leads are…dancing in the lesbian bar. Did you get a chuckle out of the on-the-noseness of that scene?

JR: I just noted how good it sounded on television! Especially the drums! 

SYL: So much of your music connects to everyday joy. It reminds me of something the great Kurt Vonnegut once said. “We are here on earth to fart around.” What do you think we were put on this earth to do?

JR: Learn! And that’s what the song “But We May Try Weird Stuff” is all about: Learning: To make the love stronger by learning. Oh! You asked about those 3 wonderful singers. Jerry put that trio together. They walked in and I said: “What I say, you say back to me, OK?” And so they did.