INTERVIEW // Nat Baldwin
Comfort Music’s Ian Mahanpour sat down with Nat Baldwin to talk about their upcoming show on Friday, June 21st with Meghan Lamb and Jack Langdon.
CS: Could you speak a bit about your relationship to the double bass, particularly in light of the many stylistic changes you’ve made over the years?
Nat Baldwin: I was initially drawn to the bass as an accompanying instrument, especially because I started out playing traditional jazz. I love the function it serves in that music, but there's something exciting about trying to explore ways in which the double bass can be the center of attention, especially with the diversity of sounds that can be drawn out of it.
It's a huge instrument that lends itself well to exploration from different angles: there’s the body, the bridge, the strings, and all its various components as well as many different ways of approaching it with the bow—or even multiple bows at the same time. There are just endless ways to explore the material of the bass itself. So I went really quickly from playing more conventional jazz to exploring extended techniques and free improvisation within the context of solo bass. I actually made a recording under Jessica Pavone’s label Peacock Recordings called Solo Contrabass (2003). It has a lot of similarities to, at least in approach, to material on my Autonomia series from 2020.
I quit music for a little while after that, later getting inspired again through more traditional songwriting. However, my focus was to still play solo; taking the bass out of that background role and foregrounding it as a primary element in the music. I released a few albums during this period including People Changes (2011) and In the Hollows (2014), all of which feature more linear song structures as well as my singing voice. It all felt like it really was my own because there weren't many examples to look towards.
The desire to get back into the more experimental type of music I was playing on Solo Contrabass became really strong around 2018 or 19’. Inspired in part by my interest in experimental literature, I wanted to showcase various extended techniques and textures of the bass within formal compositional structures while still leaving room for improvisation. I recorded these pieces all in one take at Peter McLaughlin’s studio at Peaks Island off of Portland, Maine. I wanted them to just be documents of a performance, especially since they have a lot of improvisational elements; If I play those pieces every night, they're gonna come out totally different each time—which is a similar kind of material I'm playing on this tour. I know one sound world is going to move to the next, but I'm not exactly sure how I’ll get there.
Those sessions became my Autonomia triptych. All three of them came out in 2020 actually, which was not the original plan. Matt Mehlan’s label Shinkoyo put out the first record, Body Without Organs, on vinyl, so I planned out a ton of touring including a 2020 spring tour of the Midwest. Once I canceled the tour and it seemed like we were just going to be staying home for a long time, I ended up just releasing the other two in 2020 as well—a lot sooner than I had planned.
I’ve gathered some energy for new music that feels connected to Autonomia but also feels quite different in a lot of ways.
CS: What new music are you bringing to Comfort Station?
NB: This show is part of a two and a half week tour I’m playing on solo double bass. They are all loosely structured, delicate pieces that are based in improvisation. Even in moments of density, it's quiet.
Much of my recent music is about the minutiae of quiet environments. These sounds come to the foreground only when the music is at a low volume—it encourages a very close listening. Since it’s so quiet, I’ve been thinking about the kind of spaces that would work well with it, and so I’m especially excited about playing at a small, intimate space like Comfort Station—it’s an ideal setting for this type of music.
Meghan Lamb and Jack Langdon will also be on the bill for this show. I’m a big fan of Jack’s work—he’s collaborated with my good friend Weston Olencki, the latter whose music I’ve released on my label Tripticks Tapes. I’ve known Meghan Lamb for a while and have been a huge fan of her writing for a long time. I became connected with her and a whole bunch of other people in the literary community after I began writing short stories and fiction around ten years ago or so. It’s exciting to bring these two communities together.
CS: In 2022 you released a tape version of your book Red Barn with accompanying music on your label Tripticks Tapes—are you still interested in this cross-pollination of your literary and musical practices?
NB: I would love to do more of that—both for myself and others. I've been really excited about using text as a compositional component within music. Actually, a big motivator for this tour is that I have another book coming out next year. Bridge Books is putting it out—they’re based in Chicago—and the text of the book is actually my graduate program thesis that I just completed at Wesleyan University. I was in the experimental music composition program and, as opposed to a traditional academic research paper, I wrote some experimental literature that is stylistically reflective of the composing I was doing in the program. The book is called Antithesis and it's an experimental memoir. It collages multiple intersecting narratives based around my interests in both the literary and sonic worlds, tracing and contextualizing my work along its influences and inspirations, creating a kind of paratactical web of interactivity. There’s also text scores acting as foundational material in some chapters, as well as full chapter texts recreated as scores for musical performance.
The Red Barn tape is definitely a precursor to these two worlds coming together—a process which has been in the works for a long time now. It feels really exciting now to join these two practices even closer together.
CS: Why did you start your label Tripticks?
NB: Well, to start, my connection to labels in regards to my own musical trajectory has been huge. Once you find a press or label with a certain aesthetic, you begin to trust their curation and learn a lot through them. It's easy to go down rabbit holes through a label’s lineup and figure out all these fun musical connections—I'm sure anyone getting into music can relate. So to be able to contribute to the scene as a curator always felt like a good project to build community, especially outside of the mainstream structures of the music industry.
The push to start Tripticks happened a couple of years back when I was struck by how much great music there was, and it seemed like there almost weren’t enough labels to put it all out. It feels great to connect with new people and broaden my community through Tripticks—especially with people I would never meet otherwise. I'm gearing up to do some releases in the fall and next spring, and I’m excited about showcasing more of the scene that's proximate to me in Western Massachusetts.
I moved to Western Massachusetts in 2021, which has an amazing history of experimental music. My girlfriend Stella Silbert actually organized a series of events at our house last summer called Audible Bite. She cooked these incredible multi-course dinners and curated the music that occurred once a month from May through September last summer. We had concerts either in our backyard or in the garage, all of which I recorded; I just had become interested in field recordings, so I was recording everything at the time. Listening back, I thought it was such a cool variety of material, that I decided to edit it down for a compilation—which is also slated to be the next release for Tripticks.
CS: Do you ever find yourself wanting to explore different musical mediums outside the double bass?
NB: I’ve started messing around with a no-input mixer which is based around feedback of the noise generated by the mixer itself. Stella’s sound practice uses no-input with abstract turntable techniques, so she turned me on to it. I just love the unpredictability of feedback—which is so different from my solo bass practice. Even if I'm doing something that allows for unpredictability or surprise in my playing, I still have a level of control with the bass that would be impossible with the mixer. Playing a no-input mixer is not about the preparation I'm bringing—It's not really about me at all. It's a collaboration with this unpredictable machine that then I have to react to, not control. We're improvising together.