A Musician's Intuition
An Interview with Loren Connors
By Robert Becraft
Photographs by Emily Evans
Loren Mazzacane Connors has been making unmistakable, ethereal work with the guitar since the 1960s. Unlike many underground
musicians, Connors' music has gained him more than just a cult following; his fans-turned-collaborators include Lee Ranaldo
and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Chicago-bred experimental musician Jim O'Rourke and legendary Japanese psychedelia-noise
musician Haino Keiji. Although Connors has not received due props from the mainstream or many underground circles, and
essentially remains an under-underground legend, his sound is what is NOW and what is to come in experimental music. His
freest string music affirms the limitless potential of the electric guitar and the inimitable "forceful fragility" of his
work has secured him a place as a landmark musician.
Connors had a humble beginning that was nevertheless musically encouraging. (His mother was an operatic soprano.) He played
violin as a child and the trombone in high school before picking up the guitar, thereafter trying to find similarities between
brass and strings. While his single-note oriented style of playing owes much to his trombone days, Connors has long had an
attachment to stringed instruments. "Actually, it all started when I saw Walt Disney's [character] Darby O'Gill. I fell in
love with the fiddle completely. And then, all teenagers play guitar, don't they?" says Connors.
Also a visual artist, Connors studied painting in college. But, while the strength of Connors' music perhaps implies that he
would consider music to be more of an involved and intense art form than visual art - both for the audience and himself - he
modestly suggests a different answer: "It's all the same stuff, [there is] no difference when you get inside yourself and are
faced with truth." Connors concentrates on music, finding himself to be more original in that field, but he does not advocate
privileging one art over another. "Truth is the answer here, and the discovery of it is everything you need to know in the arts.
As Keats said, 'Beauty is truth, and truth beauty.'"
The challenge to seek truth has led Connors to pursue various artistic activities. It's rare to find an artist with interests
as diverse as "drawing, haiku poetry, diary-type memoir writing, film, photography, dance, and all things sexy," who are still
able keep their specialty unfailingly spellbinding.
Politics are central to Connors' work. Albums like Hell's Kitchen Park, dedicated to the turn-of-the-century NYC Irish slum,
offer lyrical renditions of history. His albums are composed as suites; some represent a piece of history, others interpret
fables. His music often draws empathy for these situations. "Internally speaking, my stuff is a combination of the poetic and
the political. [It] is mystical, too," says Connors. "[I have] a declaratory style. ... I rely on the flower to convey, not
so much the vine." He further explains, "Truth in music is universal and can speak to anyone of any time and place. The[se]
stories just give it a face." The joy, sadness and serene, stark sincerity in his music defy clumsy musical categorization.
Connors' suites resonate from and speak without words to the human experience.
The Little Match Girl, Connors' recent record (forthcoming on the Portland label RoadCone), exemplifies his bitingly sad yet
unsentimental, celestial yet earthly, blues-inflected style. His careful, grand, expansive and textural guitar playing is the
result of much personal exploration. "It was all hard work and determination to discover truth through my music. You have to
work relentlessly at it, all your life, to reach discoveries deep inside yourself." Perhaps the sublime nature of his sound
also has to do with his rootedness in the legacy of American music. In the mid-1960s he was listening to Muddy Waters LPs
and English blues-based bands. "I'm basically a blues player. Everything I play is blues in some way. I don't know or care
for it to be any other way," says Connors. "[But more so] I'm rooted in the need for discovery."
Indeed, lasting art that continuously awes its audience must have an element of mystery and invite exploration. It must raise
questions: how was it done, towards what is it grasping, what does it mean? - and these questions must remain at least
partially unresolved. This idea is inherent in Connors' music-making. "I'm surprised all the time by [what my albums sound
like]. I'm surprised that [they] came out of me. But that's necessary - because if you don't surprise yourself, you won't
surprise anyone else either."
Most of Connors' songs are based on singly played notes, usually heightened by lush reverb and an ephemeral sense of time.
But what makes his music so captivating still remains, in part, ineffable. For Connors, "aesthetic intuition [is] everything -
what moves your spirit and how aware you are of what moves it. What moves you today might not move you tomorrow. You have to
stay on top of your own development and get more sophisticated in your feelings. You have to challenge yourself all the time.
You have to learn what is real and what isn't and recognize that real creation is that discovery of truth."
Connors operates under the rather unorthodox ideal of never looking back - a fact to which his consistently exciting work is
probably indebted. "Artistic development has little to do with what you want. If you're real, you're usually out of control
as to what direction you take," he says. "Stay on top of your stuff and direct it, but don't bully it and want things. Let
whatever happens happen, and don't stand in your own way." Conventional musical practice has never stood in Connors' way. He
is well-known for his distinctive "tape sound," a sort of tape hiss resulting from his frequent practice of recording on
four-tracks at home. This process instills his notes and the spaces between them with purity and atmospheric weight, rather
than the average low-fidelity one might expect. For Connors, this method is more than just a solution to make due with few
resources. "I can't afford studio time, [but] I don't work like that anyway," he explains. "[This way I can] record things
whenever I feel like it. And my style is linked to the sound I get on the tapes."
Although Connors has maintained a highly original sound for years, his discography is not without variety, open experimentation
and development. He emphasizes the multi-faceted nature of music, stating that "the human spirit is everything, and is
everything all at once. So is great music - everything all at once."
His works, ranging from studio to live recordings, evoke mood and vigor, strandedness and vast plains. When musically
interpreting the classic fable The Little Match Girl, Connors' plaintive guitar playing achieves an immediate connection
to reality. If a guitar could truly weep, it would be Connors'. The clarity and sincerity of Connors' music enables it to
make an impact, to seep in and cause chilling, almost bodily responses. "My stuff is about moving forward and the mystery
of making what is heard more and more present’" Connors explains. "It's got to have freshness and clarity. I don't understand
anything else."
Today many artists lack a sense of craft, and instead are too caught up in theories and flagrant excess. Connors proves, with
beautiful, palpable sound, that the outcome is everything. "It's what's being said that counts," he says. "Don't restrict
yourself or follow rules of any sort, but distrust anything final; don't tell lies, or what you do will be superficial."
There's truth to that.
Note: Connors has a new CD coming out in May on RoadCone called Portrait of a Kid. A live recording
of his band Haunted House is in the works for future release.
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