RS: That sounds like a Leslie guitar sound, no?

JF: There’s a Leslie guitar as well. It’s actually not a Leslie, it’s just going through a stereo pedal that has like a delay. Pretty much all the electric guitar on the album is super affected. I just wanted to take it out of (jokingly) ‘hey! classic electric guitar!’, y’know. And I wanted to make it kind of a more abstract thing.

RS: What guitar was most heavily used on the record?

JF: Yeah, well the main guitar on the record is a guitar that I bought right before I started that and I just totally fell in love with it. It’s a ‘74 Tele Custom with the big Fender humbucker in the neck position. Again, not the most sought after guitars, but I love those guitars. Y’know Keith (Richards) played one. So I used that and I also have ‘65 non-reverse Gibson Firebird that I love. I just love those guitars. I have a ‘66 Epiphone Riviera that I use and then the Martin that I had is a 00018, the little tiny Martin. But then I actually ended up trading that and getting a D-28, a ‘65 D-28. The 00018 was a 1943. That’s the main guitar that’s on the album. I went really nuts with some of the vintage guitars. But I’ve been collecting that stuff for about ten years. And then I just sort of have a plethora of weird pedals. I kind of collect anything that most people go, ‘ahh, no I don’t want that.’ And I’m like, ‘ahh, I’ll take that’ (laughter). I’m the guy that scourers the country when I’m touring, like ‘what’ya have in the back, that you either don’t think anybody’s interested in or you’re ashamed that you own?’ (laughter) And they’ll pull out something like a Guit-organ and I’m like, ‘holy shit, yeah I’ll take that!’.

RS: On your take of "I’m Only Sleeping" there’s some great electric guitar with strings. That song is perhaps the ultimate Beatles dreamtime song.

JF: Yeah, thank you, that’s my favorite one. My opinion changes all the time, but as we speak, "I’m Only Sleeping" is my favorite one on the record.

RS: Is there any reason why you ended the album with "Long And Winding Road" - maybe that’s still looked as their big breakup song from Let It Be?

JF: I know, it’s really weird. I haven’t paid much attention to that song and I also didn’t know any of the history of that song. I didn’t really know that Paul was unhappy with the finished product. That was a Phil Spector production, right? I think it is and somebody was telling me while I was making it, one of my Beatle aficionado friends, was saying, ‘yeah, why are you doing that? Paul didn’t even like that.’ Because I didn’t know any of the baggage that came with the song. As a kid I loved that song. The cyclical melody. It is such a beautiful melody. And even Paul’s vocal on it just kills me. There’s a couple of points during that song that I still will almost well-up with tears, the way he sings that song. Yeah I agree it does sort of sound like the book-mark of the end of The Beatles. It’s this kind of tragic optimism that really affects me. I put that at the end just because again, it just seemed like a book-mark for the end of the album. Between you and I, it’s not one of my favorites the way it came out for me. So I just sort of nestled it at the end. I also made it, it’s kind of hard to tell, but I made it quieter than the rest of the album on purpose in mastering because I...well one reason was because hopefully the person listening to the record, child or adult, is pretty much sleeping (laughter) by this point and so it’s just a sort of, final caress at the end of the record.

RS: Despite the album being marketed as a children’s lullaby album, the album really transcends age and marketing concepts.

JF: Well I’m glad to hear you say that, because I really feel that strongly as well. Because I didn’t talk down to my targeted audience, which was babies, it’s definitely not a kids album. It’s just a really sweeping, gentle interpretation of these songs that we all know and love. The only direction that I got from Sony was...the first song I did didn’t make it on the album, so there’s one out take and that is "I Will". I did "I Will" like I would have...because it was the first one. I think when I agreed to do this project I was kind of resisting the intent of the project which was to lull your kid to sleep. So the whole thing was really, strictly... gentle, putting people to sleep. And I kind of resisted that for the first song and I made kind of a kid’s version. I did "I Will" and I was really happy with it. And it had really simple drums that came in about half way through. But it was kind of more a pop arrangement with this kind of wide-stereo bass-voice thing. And it had alot of swirling synths. It was really cool. And I sent that over to the people at Sony and they were like, ‘well, we love it, but it’s not really what this record is’. And that’s when I first realized, ‘Oh, OK’ (laughter). I hadn’t accepted what the album really was and I had to do that first song my way and then realize ‘OK, no drums, no click tracks’, because I didn’t want a real strict sense of time in the song so from that point on everything was done either Wurlitzer or piano or acoustic guitar first. So everything kind of moves around. From that point on, everything I handed in they were like, ‘yes, next, perfect.’ I’ve been really lucky when I hear about other people’s situations, going back to when I was on Elektra with the two records I did with them. You know I never had anybody ever tell me what to do. I kind of demanded that I be put in this position where I’m left alone. It can come back and bite you on the ass, too. When I did the first record on Elektra I was playing that whole, ‘nobody listens to anything, no tapes go out, I’ll only play finished mixes.’ And I did this whole thing, y’know? And I think because I never involved an A&R person, I never involved anybody in that record, people didn’t think they had any involvement in it so they didn’t really feel any pride when it came to the record. They’re basically playing this guy that’s signed to the label who they have nothing to do with. And the pros of that are obvious in that I had total artistic control, but the cons I hadn’t really considered. And those are that nobody’s gonna go running around their city saying, ‘this is my new boy, this is Jason Falkner, I told him to turn the guitar up right there’ (laughter). People need to feel like they’ve contributed and if you shut them out of that, those are the consequences you pay unless the record just blew up on it’s own. It takes alot of people to work something.

RS: How come your name isn’t on the cover of the CD?

JF: Well that was my choice. They said whatever you want. Basically because it was a project that had a specific intent and it came from this idea to be an album that you play for your child, I didn’t feel at first like it was the way I would have done the record had I been left to my own devices. So I said that’s fine, it’s a Sony Special project thing and my name will just be on the back or obviously inside. Now that the record’s been released I regret that I also didn’t take a little bit of control over the packaging and also have my name on the cover. But I think it’s the kind of thing that, anybody who’s aware of me is gonna find out about it anyways and the other people who aren’t aware of me, which make up the other 99% of the population, are going to either like it or not like it and it doesn’t matter who did it. It doesn’t really bother me but I do kind of in retrospect, wish that it did say Jason Falkner on the cover. Like I said the main reason was because if I had done a cover of Beatles songs it wouldn’t be exactly like this. I would have done some that had drums, for instance, and some that had a little bit more of a dynamic range...

RS: I’m a big fan of your last pop album Can You Still Feel? But I went back to Can You Still Feel? and I’ve been playing the song "Revelation" quite a bit during these past few days. On a related note, the most recent pop album to move me in a similar way is the new ELO album Zoom, which was almost totally performed by Jeff Lynne with a little help from George and Ringo. Perhaps it’s more than mere coincidence but you’ve also contribute a new cover of "Do Ya" to the Jeff Lynne tribute CD on Not Lame.

JF: It’s pure coincidence but some people don’t believe in coincidence and I’m kind of on the fence, so whether I believe in coincidence or not I just think it’s all related y’know? People who think similarly and who try to live a certain way are sort of tied in to this sort of consciousness and those people end up having something to do with each other however random it may seem. I certainly feel like that’s why I got the call to do this record. Anybody could have been called. They could have called Jeff Lynne, you know what I mean? (laughter). To do this Beatle album. I feel so privileged and just proud of the fact that I got to do it and that it came out the way I like it. I’m really proud of the record.

RS: The Beatles album or the Jeff...

JF: The Beatles...I’m so proud of it. The implications are outrageous that whoever buys this record and plays it for a baby or their kid or themselves...you know I might be the introduction to my favorite band in the world for a generation of kids, which is amazing! It completely freaks me out.

RS: So I guess you’re a big Jeff Lynne fan too. How did you come to work on the tribute CD?

JF: It’s pretty simple. This friend of mine who owns this label, Not Lame. I met him when I was in The Grays and we were up in Aspen. He just called me about this Jeff Lynne thing and it was hard because I didn’t have alot of time, because this whole year I’ve been devoted to playing with this group Air. The "Do Ya" thing, I had like 3 or 4 days off here, and I just had to go for it. There was a time when I thought I wasn’t gonna be able to do it. I was getting ready to go back to Europe. Yeah it just came together like that. "Do Ya" was not my first choice. I was talking to them about doing "Eldorado", or it was something that was a little more of an obvious choice for me. Well they were like, ‘well we kinda thought that if you want to do "Do Ya", we’ve been kinda saving that for you.’ And I listened to it and I was like, ‘my God, yes of course!’ ‘Cause I hadn’t listened to that in a long time.

RS: Your cover of The Left Banke classic "Pretty Ballerina" on the Japanese import of Everybody Says It’s On is really great. Even though you’re not old enough to have lived through the ‘60s British Invasion, you obviously have a great fondness for the ‘60s pop music that us aging hippies used to listen to on our trusty little AM radios. Do you distinguish between the different periods of music since the ‘60s, ‘70s and so on?

JF: Yeah! I don’t really distinguish. I guess that’s the answer. I have such a fondness for the sort of ‘60s British invasion stuff mainly just because that’s when the whole thing opened up. I mean that was the beginning and I get a feeling of that when I listen to that stuff. I get a feeling of this kind of urgency and this uncharted territory that these guys were starting to mine that is such an infectious feeling. I just really get off on that for the same reason that I get off on some of more melodic post-punk stuff like The Buzzcocks or some later Wire stuff. But I don’t differentiate between any of it. I mean if I hear something that moves me I don’t check the date. I mean I’m pretty well versed in like years of when everything came out and all that stuff ‘cause I’m just kind of a geek like that. For the most part it’s not really important to me. I don’t know why I was so transfixed on the ‘60s pop culture stuff when I was in my teens and through till now but really I immersed myself in that stuff in my late teens and early 20s.

RS: I like your rocking cover of Joni Mitchell’s "Both Sides Now". I like the way you revved it up while keeping the songs’ emotion in tact.

JF: Thanks. That song my mom used to play, but she used to play the Judy Collins version of that song.

RS: You also do the Kinks’ "Wicked Annabella". That was a pretty strange choice from Village Green Preservation Society. Are you a big Kinks fan?

JF: Oh yeah, well that’s my favorite Kinks record hands down. And that song is just so much fun to play live. It’s so mischievous with that paranoid, perverted vocal (laughter). At first I was going to do "All Of My Friends Were There". I just opted for the more rocking thing.

RS: That was one of the most rocking things on Village Green. "Big Sky" was another favorite of mine.

JF: Oh "Big Sky" is brilliant. I would’ve probably done that one as well had I not heard a version by The Mock Turtles earlier that year of that song. It had been covered so it was tainted for me (laughter), I’m gonna cover things that have never been covered before, obviously with the exception of "Both Sides Now", which has been...Neil Diamond, Bill Withers, everybody. I used to sit around and record, when we first got a VCR that was the size of a microwave oven (laughter), I used to record the ‘60s programs that were on like A&E. There was a thing on the year 1967, a big documentary had all the footage of the bus driver, driving a bunch of sort of older tourists through the Haight-Ashbury and they’re all just appalled at the haircuts and the drugs and everything. I just felt a real alliance with that movement. I really did. The heart was in the right place. I don’t think that there has ever or will ever be a youth movement that’s that unified and that has the right intentions for the most part again. So maybe it’s kind of me looking for this idyllic place and the only real way to find it is to kind of look back way before my time, because I was born in 1968. My dad’s record collection really impacted me in a huge way, because I was a little kid. I was really musical. I learned how to play piano just by ear when I was barely walking, I was playing the piano. I was playing Elton John songs when I was 4 years old. Playing "Crocodile Rock". The first record I ever bought was Endless Summer by The Beach Boys. I had some of my first real emotions as a person to that music.

RS: So with all your great music, what’s it gonna take to get another Can You Still Feel? or something better from you?

JF: I gotta get a record deal! (laughter) I gotta get somebody to give me the money! (laughter). That’s really it. I have about three quarters of the album finished, as far as written. And I have pretty elaborate demos done on my 16 track, one inch tape machine, but I wanna re-do all of those. They don’t quite have the focus that I want the record to have. But I’m definitely ready. Doing the tour this year with Air was a really good thing for me ‘cause it kinda lit the fire under me again to not be apathetic and sitting around going, ‘how did I lose my record deal?’... Who cares about that, I mean there’s so many complaints about the music business and I have only a few of them...