EC: I only know the most obvious and acclaimed of the bunch which is Jim O'Rourke and he's fantastic. Would you be open to working with him?
JF: Yeah, of course I would. He's playing in…In April I'm going with Vincent Gallo because we're performing on the Sonic Youth day of All Tomorrow's Parties. He's playing another show at Royal Albert Hall with Jim and Steve from Sonic Youth are his backing band, and I might play mellotron on a song. So I will be working with him if I do that. I think he's one of the best producers. I think Jim O'Rourke he does everything so well---he's such a great guitar player, he does folk-type things really well and the electronic stuff, the noisy stuff and he's just a master.
EC: Yeah I know, "Halfway to a Threeway" was mind-blowing for most of us.
JF: Yeah, it's great. EC: In a way that a lot of your stuff has been. I'm going to change gears & talk about your new record a little bit. "Time Goes Back" "Every Person" and "In Relief" are three of my current favorites from your new cd. They're just gorgeous. They seem very personal and at the same time speak to the universal experience of simply being a human. Can you reflect upon your songwriting muse, where it comes from and what your intentions as an artist are? JF: That's kind of a few questions in one.
EC: Those songs touch my heart. They're very immediate. I have a very visceral reaction when I listen to "Time Goes Back" I think about my relationships to people. They're abstract, they're sort of like abstract paintings, but they say very specific things about being a human and feeling your feelings. There's something really nice about them; you're doing something very original and I want to congratulate you for that.
JF: Thanks. I think the feelings in my music were suggested to me before I even had the ability to play music. And this whole period of time of gradually working at being a better guitar player and songwriter have gradually led me to the point where I feel I'm doing a clearer representation of the thing that I've been feeling inside me since I was four years old. It's something that I definitely don't feel responsible for that feeling that's there. I realize that it's me but I always think of it as me combined with all these other energies that've been carrying me since I was a little kid. I would say a lot of the emotion in what I do is a sort of a thankfulness for those energies being around, because there's been points in my life when they weren't around, and it's a real sort of miserable existence. So when I feel the spirit upon me it's something I don't take it for granted, and I don't think I'm solely responsible for these things.
EC: There's a Northern California poet Robert Hass who has a poem called "Privilege of Being" and that kind of speaks to that, that we're lucky to be here at all.
JF: Yeah, I really like being alive. But I definitely don't have any intentions as an artist. I write songs because I have to write them, and if I didn't I'd be doing some other kind of music that didn't require a song. It's just something that I have to do, and I'm at the point now where I'm just doing it and it's not something that I feel like anymore that I'm doing it because I'm told to do it. I just feel like the songs that come out are the songs that come.
EC: Keith Richards used the metaphor of just sticking his creative antennae up & seeing what sticks to them. Would you say the process is similar for you?
JF: Yeah see what's out there & if something's out there it starts coming through you & you just sit there and try to be disciplined about it and take it to its state of completion. Or nothing comes of it and you just do something else.
EC: Where do you see your music fitting into the landscape of the current rock scene, or is that not your intention with your solo work, particularly? Are you looking for mainstream airplay?
JF: I don't want to fit into it at all. I don't want to be on the radio. I don't want to be on Mtv. I feel like I'd like to continue putting out records and start putting them out more rapidly than I have until now and for me if I can keep selling the records to the fans that already like me that's fine. And if a few other people come along who discover my music because they in some natural way come across my music, cool. I'm not interested in forcing my music on people, and that's what the whole music industry nowadays is based on is forcing stations to play it, forcing people to listen to it. In the Chili Peppers I'm a part of that world in a pretty big world and that's just the way it is. I don't let it affect the music I write for the Chili Peppers. I try to put the same spirit into that that I put into any other music endeavor I'm involved in. As far as my solo record, I don't want a gold record or anything, I'm happy to be small and to have the people appreciate the music who really like me for being me.
EC: Is it true you already have another new cd's worth of material ready to go that you recorded with Fugazi bassist Joe Lally? Can you talk about that now or is that supposed to be a secret?
JF: It's two cds, it's all finished & ready to go.