{"id":3542,"date":"2023-12-20T12:09:46","date_gmt":"2023-12-20T18:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/?p=3542"},"modified":"2025-10-08T12:22:45","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T17:22:45","slug":"nels-cline-a-guitarist-for-all-seasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/nels-cline-a-guitarist-for-all-seasons\/","title":{"rendered":"Nels Cline, A Guitarist For All Seasons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Ross Boissoneau<\/p>\n\n

Guitarist Nels Cline isn\u2019t a name necessarily familiar to those who follow the charts, even though he\u2019s been a part of the popular band Wilco since 2004 and he\u2019s contributed to hundreds of recordings, as a sideman, studio guest, or bandleader or co-leader. That includes seven with the ironically-named Nels Cline Singers, despite the fact there\u2019s nary a vocalist in sight.<\/p>\n\n

Not bad for a man who describes himself as a \u201csonic explorer and guitar renegade\u201d on his website. Seems pretty appropriate. In some ways that\u2019s been fueled by the fact he was never content to play the hits of the day \u2013 any day \u2013 in a cover band. \u201cI never played in bar bands,\u201d he says. Nope, he\u2019s always made his own way in the music world, initially alongside his twin brother, drummer Alex Cline, with whom he still occasionally collaborates.<\/p>\n\n

Among his influences are such disparate names as Bartok, Weather Report, Pink Floyd, Television, the Allman Brothers and the Grateful Dead. He cites three other artists as his primary inspirations: The Byrds, Ravi Shankar and Jimi Hendrix.<\/p>\n\n

\"Nels

Nels Cline<\/p><\/div>\n\n

So it makes perfect sense that he\u2019d join a multi-hyphenate alt-rock country-folk band while maintaining a solo career at the further ends of the jazz spectrum. \u201cI play jazzish music once in a while, but my first influences were rock and roll and the blues,\u201d says the 66-year-old guitarist. \u201cI gave up (those forms) in the mid-70s and got into improvisational music and progressive rock.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

A funny thing happened on the way to joining the likes of Return to Forever or King Crimson. \u201cPunk galvanized me,\u201d he says, pointing to artists like Patti Smith, the Minutemen and the aforementioned Television. Their attitude and energy pushed him to new paths of expression. Plus there was the fact his previous experience seemed woefully out of touch. \u201cIt was suspect to play anything in a jazz-related idiom,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n

That still doesn\u2019t really explain his joining Wilco, the band fronted by singer\/songwriter Jeff Tweedy, which mines the veins of alternative rock, Americana, even country and folk. He even joked to fellow guitarist Julian Lage, with whom he also shares a band partnership, that he wasn\u2019t born with the Americana gene. Yet here he and they are, 16 years into a musical partnership that\u2019s showcased Cline\u2019s contributions to the band\u2019s alternative folk\/rock sound. <\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s clear from conversation that he immensely enjoys the music and his musical comrades. He\u2019s got nothing but praise for the band, including \u2013 perhaps especially \u2013 bandleader Jeff Tweedy. \u201cI verge on awe of Jeff\u2019s songwriting. The songs just fly out of him,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re always fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic brought a halt to performing, writing and recording with Wilco or any others of his fellow musicians. Some musicians took that time to re-energize, even record multiple albums remotely. For Cline, the result was anything but positive. \u201cI\u2019m still reeling from having too much time to gaze at my navel,\u201d he says, noting that self-doubt was his biggest enemy. \u201cI looked back on my personal recorded output and think, \u2018Did I feel that entitled? What the hell was I thinking?\u2019 There was too much pandemic time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

As the restrictions eased, he found himself playing again with his musical compatriots. That included recording with Wilco, which released Cruel Country in May of 2022 before touring Europe and America. Cline says the music flowed out of Tweedy, and he and the rest of the band embraced it all, and 21 songs made it onto the recording. \u201cHe was writing a country song a day. Certain songs I heard, I thought, \u2018I don\u2019t know if these are Wilco songs, but I love them.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n

\"Wilco\"

Wilco<\/p><\/div>\n\n

He also embraces sharing the studio and the bandstand with fellow axe-slingers, whether that\u2019s Lage or Pat Sansone of Wilco, who he calls \u201ca bad-ass guitarist.\u201d That moniker could also be applied to Cline, of course. But he says he tries to avoid any guitar heroics or overplaying. \u201cI just try to stay out of the way, play what the songs want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean he doesn\u2019t embrace the opportunity to rock out when the situation demands it. Such as on the tune \u201cMany Worlds\u201d from Cruel Country. \u201cWe jam at the end,\u201d he says of his work with Sansone, though he still thinks of it as less a musical duel and more an exchange between them. \u201cIt\u2019s more like lattice work with tandem guitars. Conversation, not heroics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The latest iteration of his solo career is Share the Wealth, a 2020 release with an expanded edition of his long-running project The Nels Cline Singers: saxophonist and punk-jazz iconoclast Skerik, keyboardist Brian Marsella, bassist Trevor Dunn, longtime collaborator and drummer Scott Amendola, and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista. The All Music Guide says its influences are clear: electric Miles, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock\u2019s Headhunters, John Coltrane primary among them. Skerik\u2019s frenetic sax does echo Coltrane in places, while Marsella\u2019s overdriven electric piano stirs memories of Bitches Brew. But it also bows to the droning sound of Indian music, and Cline\u2019s guitar takes it places those predecessors seldom if ever went.<\/p>\n\n

All told, he\u2019s contributed to more than 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader or co-leader. Cline has received many accolades, including being anointed as both one of 20 \u201cnew guitar gods\u201d and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n\n

Not bad for a guy who considers himself fortunate to have been able to embrace all his musical options without spending time at a so-called day job. \u201cI got lucky. I never tried to do anything to make a living other than play. I did music I liked with people I liked,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n


\n

Ross Boissoneau is a regular contributor to Something Else! Reviews, Northern Express and Local Spins. He’s written for the All Music Guide, Jazziz and Progression Magazines, and is a member of the Downbeat Critics Poll.<\/i><\/p>\n\n

\"Ross<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ross Boissoneau Guitarist Nels Cline isn\u2019t a name necessarily familiar to those who follow the charts, even though he\u2019s been a part of the popular band Wilco since 2004 and he\u2019s contributed to hundreds of recordings, as a sideman, studio guest, or bandleader or co-leader. That includes seven with the ironically-named Nels Cline Singers, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3542"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3546,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3542\/revisions\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}