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Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.
 "Hello,
hello, hello!" It's late summer in Louisville, Kentucky, evening
time. Will Oldham has forgotten to charge his telephone. Despite
this he's bright as cotton, his voice jovial and trebly. "Ah!
How you doin'? I got a little telephone problem. The phone is
dead so I have to sit here by it and talk on the speakerphone.
Is that OK?" My voice echoes as he makes himself comfortable.
You can be forgiven for not knowing exactly who Will Oldham is. He has made almost 20 records in the past twelve years under a variety of guises: Palace, Palace Songs, Palace Brothers, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Bonny Billy, Will Oldham. He is the master of cracked poetic American folk music. Johnny Cash covered his I See A Darkness. Cat Power sang his Wolf Among Wolves on her last tour here in June. Bjšrk handpicked him to support her on a large-scale tour. Instead of bringing his guitar Oldham taught himself how to play the Autoharp, an instrument that is to Kentucky what the recorder is to Adelaide. He's a part time actor too: his next film 'The Guatemalan Handshake' sees him play Donald, a man who is best friends with a 9-year-old boy called Turkeylegs.
There is not a dud in the entire Will Oldham discography, from his collaboration with Dirty Three's Mick Turner, where Oldham sang the poems of Rabindranath Tagore's 'Gitanjali' over Turner's aquatic guitar, to his mesmerising version of Don't Cry For Me Argentina. At the age of 33 he is one of the greatest living songwriters of our time. He is also the possessor of one of the finest beards you're ever likely to see.
"The last time I played in Adelaide, I came to play with the Dirty Three and I played in Adelaide and Perth on my own. I thought that was the last time I came to Australia but I could be wrong." Indeed he is: Oldham brought his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy quintet here in the summer of 2002, although unfortunately Adelaide wasn't on the list of stops. But we're getting them this time, including The Wolfman Matt Sweeney ex-Chavez and Skunk on lead guitar and Will's ever present brother Paul on bass.
Oldham's latest release is a collection of reworkings. Fans voted for their favourite Palace songs for Oldham and friends to re-record. Recording in Nashville with Lambchop's Mark Nevers at the helm, Silver Jews' David Berman as vocal coach, and a bunch of slick session musicians, songs like the wracked and raw I Am A Cinematographer came up sounding bouncy, fluffy, country and western.
People thought Oldham did it to bewilder his critics and his fans. A number of people had begun to write him off. "Since it came out we've done one big tour and it was all in the south eastern United States and uh, everybody y'know, was as into it as they have been any other record I guess. Y'know I've heard things where people seemed to be disgruntled by it, but that was certainly in no way the intention. It's mystifying to me, as all music writing always is, about every record. It always confounds me as much as it seems to confound them, but I haven't seemed to come across as many human beings, as is always the case, who have anything that resembles the same opinion as people who were forced to write about it when it came out.
"I just thought of it as another record but I guess people think that it's a big conscious decision to so something funky or something. It wasn't really like that." So says the man who has just recorded a cover of Bob Marley's Babylon System.
On early recordings Oldham's voice was little more than an Appalachian yelp, a grizzly broken coo. On his latest studio record 'Master And Everyone' he sings clean and smooth, a man who has trained his vocal chords. His next record is "all songs that Matt Sweeney and I co-wrote together and then we recorded it at my brother Paul's place in Shelbyville, Kentucky. I think I can honestly say that the description would be that it has a fairly raw and intimate sound... we were just sitting in the room sometimes agreeing sometimes arguing over how things should be in the freezing cold in the winter with an electric guitar and a voice trying to put the songs down."
Oldham and his band of shaggy mountain men will no doubt play some of his new songs here, as well as trying to accommodate for the dozens of likely requests. Prepare yourselves for the show of the year.
Lenin Simos
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dB Magazine proudly presents Bonny "Prince" Billy at the Governor Hindmarsh on Wed 22 Sept. Tix available at dB Magazine ph.82314211
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