After taking a decade off for academic and other pursuits, singer/songwriter Jim Roll gathered up the songs he had been writing all along and relaunched his musical career with 1998's Ready To Hang. He followed that release up two years later with Lunette. Another two years has passed, and sure enough, there's another new Jim Roll album coming out. Inhabiting The Ball is his most ambitious effort to date, taking more musical risks and introducing his collaborations with a pair of the leading literary lights of the day, novelists Denis Johnson and Rick Moody. There's a new label, too, The Telegraph Company, and an endorsement from the literary journal McSweeney's (the album is "Released with the hearty support of McSweeney's.") Consider it endorsed by this Cosmik writer, too.

The album's due just in time for Roll's annual trek to Austin for SXSW, and that trip will launch a national touring schedule to support the release. He was kind enough to take a break from a busy rehearsal schedule to engage in a Cosmik Conversation, which was almost as much fun as listening to his new release.

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Cosmik: You're 36. It took you a while to get start doing music at this level.

Roll: Yeah. When I was 21, 22, I was in a small band. Then I took about 10 years off, but writing songs, and then 4 or 5 years ago I got serious about it.

Cosmik: ...and you're from Chicago.

Roll: Right.

Cosmik: ...and moved to Ann Arbor to go to school.

Roll: Yeah. I moved here to go to social work school in '91 and I've been here pretty much ever since.

Cosmik: Why social work?

Roll: I guess I had worked a little bit in that field when I was younger. A lot of the jobs I had, had been in prisons or working with teenagers who had been dually diagnosed with drug problems and mental illness. I had kind of a knack for that. Actually, I applied to 12 law schools and one social work school and ended up going to the social work school.

Cosmik: Good thing. If you were a lawyer I probably wouldn't even want to talk to you.

Roll: Give me a break! (laughs) You're right. I'd worked in courtrooms and a lot of it was listening to people argue all day and thinking I could probably do that better. Who knows. But social work was just something I was good at and involved in when I was younger, but my goal, whether I went to social work or law school, was actually to teach. I took my Masters more in research than counseling, but then I gave up the teaching thing. It was kind of dry for me, I think.

Cosmik: So did you use your degree at all?

Roll: Actually, I work part time for the University of Michigan on some surveys. I'm more a research guy right now. I work half time and have benefits, which works well for touring.

Cosmik: And there's a tour coming up for the new album. There are some dates on the website. Is the tour still expanding?

Roll: Yeah. It will be mostly the midwest and south until May, and then in May we'll be coming out to the west coast. We're looking for a full month touring out there and back. I have an interesting band. The guitarist plays bass and keyboards and the drummer also plays bass and I switch to banjo. We try to have as much fun with it as I had with the record.

Cosmik: Well, that's one of the hallmarks of the new record, that eclectic sound, both instrumentally and stylistically. Do you have a name for the kind of music you're doing?

Roll: Not really. I used to think of myself as a kind of garage folk band, but on this record we had a little more fun with it. I think what tied it together is working with my producer, Brian Deck. He's really good with making electronic noises sound organic and vice versa. But I don't know. I really don't have a name for it.

Cosmik: Well, there are some folk things, some garage rockers, some stuff that's uncategorizable. Did you do the sequencing, did he? How did that work?

Roll: Well, I did some of the sequencing, at home, actually, and he did some at the studio in Chicago. It was kind of a split. We mixed everything together, except for the last song. The way this record fell together, with the authors, I was doing demos. A few of the songs with Denis Johnson were for a play he was doing, so I would work them out and send the demo to Denis and he would send me feedback. He liked them all, but I had this stuff that included drum machines and shit, and then we went into the studio with Brian Deck and he's a master of that stuff. He was able to manipulate the sounds, whether it was a real person or a drum machine or something. He was able to take it and give us all those kind of cartoonish sounds behind this routine music.

Cosmik: Well, to be honest, when I first listened to the album, having read a little bit about your music, the title track, which leads the album, was almost a little off-putting....

Roll: Right. (chuckles)

Cosmik: It wasn't really what I expected to hear, and I almost thought "Should I take this off and put on something like what I expected to hear?"

Roll: Right....

Cosmik: But the more I've listened, the more I've realized that that song serves a purpose. It throws you into an alternate universe where almost any kind of noise can happen in the context of almost any kind of song...

Roll: Exactly. I have two other records, and on each of those we kick off the record with probably the most representative, catchiest song, because it's such a competetive world, this music thing. I wanted come out of the gate strong with something people could grab ahold of, because if you're an indie artist a lot of people will judge you by that first song. But on this one, I just said screw it. I wanted to do exactly what you just said. Exactly what you said. I have nothing more to add. It creates a doorway to this other universe where anything can happen....

Cosmik: Like the first track on a Firesign Theater album....

Roll: Right. Exactly. I'm sure that to a second degree people will have to get past the first song, but it's short and at least the second one comes roaring out with kind of a low-fi pop thing.

Cosmik: That second song, Bonnie And Clyde, is probably my favorite song on the album.

[Pictured: Faye Dunaway]
Roll: Yeah. Mine too, and a lot of peoples'. But it's what you said. There are a lot of things going on on this album, so I wanted to set that tone at the opening, to be ready for anything. "Bonnie And Clyde" is probably my favorite song to play with the band. I like a lot of things about it. It's simple, but it's got legs. You don't get tired of it.

Cosmik: It has great imagery. I guess that if you're of a certain age, that image of Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde just conjures up all kinds of thing for me...

Roll: Me too.

Cosmik: I don't know if the kids who listen to college radio will get it....

Roll: (laughter) I don't either, but I was watching that movie and it made a real impression on me, her character in general.

Cosmik: So that one is all yours, but a lot of the noise about the album involves your co-writers. It's like the book of the month club of albums. How did that happen? Did you set out to do that intentionally?

Roll: When I was doing my west coast tour a couple years ago I was taking the train, and that's when I first read Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son. It was on that train trip that I fell in love with Denis Johnson's writing, but in both of the authors cases, I just fell in love with their books and they both used really strong musical references, so that combination put the idea in my head. In one of the books, Denis Johnson actually had a character read a poem and another character said "That should be a song...."

Cosmik: Which became Desperadoes In The Parking Lot.

Roll: Exactly. So I just went, shit, why not? So I gave it to Denis and he liked it, and then he gave me the songs for the play. But it wasn't really a concept. After I got Denis responding positively, and Rick did too, I thought maybe I should contact some other authors and do a whole record of it, but I was just really into both of their writing and Rick had mentioned the Silos in the introduction to his first book and I had the Silos on my last record, so I had these little musical connections to these guys and it just fell together. I just wanted to have some fun, and I wanted to do something a little less reflective, less "I'm a songwriter and I'm in love and it's not working out." I wanted to bring in some authors and maybe it would help me write more narratives and less reflective, standard songwriter stuff. So it was more an exercise than a huge concept.

Cosmik: Had you worked with collaborators before?

Roll: No, I'm not a big collaborator, typically. I had one song on each of my other albums where someone helped with a bridge or something, but the way I write songs is like a pressure cooker, I just sit down with a guitar and songs just come out. They're simple songs, usually, and they just come out together. So I usually don't collaborate. I just wanted to challenge myself, and to involve these heroes of mine, so when they said they'd give me some lyrics it was kind of a no brainer.

Cosmik: Well, if the goal was to inspire more narrative in your own writing, it seems to have worked with Eddie Rode The Orphan Train, which is straight narrative. That's about a friend's grandfather?

Roll: Yeah, a drummer friend of mine, who played on my first two records, his wife ended up settling in Arkansas, and I tour down to South By Southwest every March and last year or the year before she said "I've been trying to write a story about my grandfather and I can't. Can you try to write a song?" and I said sure, but I was really intimidated by it, because like you said, it's such a narrative song and I thought "I hope I can write a song about this without sounding all corny." I'm real happy with the way it worked out and she loves the song and she's had no desire to write the story now. The song purged the story for her.

Cosmik: And the other "true story" song on the album would be Blue Guitar, which is one of Rick Moody's family stories?

[Pictured: Rick Moody]
Roll: Yeah. Rick Moody wrote that about his sister. His sister passed away tragically really young, and I guess the blue guitar was something her husband had that Rick Moody's family reclaimed. There was a wrestling match over it, I don't know the whole story other than the song, but I know it was true. It was about his sister's guitar, which must have represented a lot for them.

Cosmik: I think it's my favorite of all the collaborative songs.

Roll: Right. And again, it's more straight ahead, it's not pulling any punches.

Cosmik: Well, your music is so good at setting a mood, and when you put a story together with that, it just makes really wonderful material.

Roll: Great, thanks. I think you're right. I don't know how objective I am, but I think my best thing is setting a mood. I feel like I can identify a mood before I can identify intellectual ideas. That's kind of my thing.

Cosmik: I think that's one of the reasons the opening track starts to work if you take enough time with it to get how it actually fits. You got Neal Pollack to write the liner notes, and he's a poet. He should have come up with a lyric or two.

Roll: (laughs) Yeah, I know. He just came out with his own record, though.

Cosmik: And he's part of the connection with McSweeney's, which I don't necessarily associate with music.

Roll: Well, they're getting more involved with it. Their issue number 6 actually had a full album of There Might Be Giants music. But there are many reasons for my involvement with them. I actually met Denis Johnson last year in Austin at a McSweeney's reading, and I wanted to tie together the literary world with the music world and to me they were the ultimate indie literary connection. They've gotten bigger than I thought they were when I started this thing. They've gotten pretty hip, which is great. But I wanted them to represent the literary end of it, and both Rick Moody and Denis Johnson have had stories printed in McSweeney's.

Cosmik: So what's the actual connection between Inhabiting The Ball and McSweeney's?

[Pictured: Neil Pollack]

Roll: Well, initially I wanted to put it out in McSweeney's, but they're just not set up to distribute records, so I thought it could be a double release between a publisher, which would be McSweeney's, and my record company, Telegraph. But financially, Telegraph is actually handling most of it, so we just did it more as sort of an endorsement, so it's really not much deeper than that. McSweeney's has published Rick Moody and Denis Johnson, and Neal Pollack did the liner notes, and I'm probably going to hit some bookstores with those authors eventually and do some readings with music.

Cosmik: So it's another avenue for promotion.

Roll: Exactly. And they're very open minded. To me it was just an honor to have them aboard a little bit, and I really like the idea of playing some bookstores in a different atmosphere, not just setting up at Borders and playing some songs but maybe going into some indie bookstores and having a reading and doing some music and just having some fun with it.

Cosmik: So this is your first album on Telegraph, right?

Roll: Yeah.

Cosmik: Does that look like an ongoing relationship?

Roll: I hope so. I'm particularly proud of the artwork on the album and that's all Telegraph's work. They're just really good people. There are four main people who run the label, and they all used to work for major film and music places in LA like Dreamworks and Disney and they said, "Hey, let's just do our own thing." They have a lot of good energy and ideas and I think I'd like to stay with them for awhile.

Cosmik: Well, they also have an interesting and eclectic catalog that you fit into well. You'll pardon the word "quirky..."

Roll: Oh, that's alright.

Cosmik: But your music has an offbeat element, it's not exactly button down music, and most of their catalog is like that, it's not strictly to format.

Roll: Right. It's not a genre label, it's not formatted. At first I was on a folk label out of Chicago, and then New West, which is kind of Texas roadhouse and alternative country, and my records have always been kind of eclectic so I think this is a pretty good fit.

Cosmik: So is the band you're taking on the road, the band on the album?

Roll: I played a lot of the instruments on the record, but the main guy that played other instruments, Jon Williams, will be touring with me. He plays piano, guitar, bass, all kinds of stuff. He's a really great musician. The drummer who's touring with me is not on the record, but mostly because the drum situation was really weird. Some of it I programmed, and some of it was Brian Deck, the producer. But Mike, the drummer who's touring with me, is a Chicago guy and it's really great because he plays bass too, so I can go to banjo and John plays the keyboards and he can take the bass on a song like "Kicking At The Traces," which doesn't have drums on it. It's a great little trio.

Cosmik: It's nice to have that versatility to serve the songs themselves, because that's the real strenght of the album. Any of these songs could be a strong song on an album of completely different music.

Roll: Thank you. That's the ultimate compliment, and I think I agree. I've always been really song oriented. I'm usually like, three minutes and out, a good solid song with a strong metaphor. So that's good to hear that, because that's what I'm shooting for.

Cosmik: Speaking of metaphors, I guess Moody didn't really like the lyric to In Flight Magazines, but you liked the metaphor. I think for writers in flight magazines are like Holiday Inn gigs.

[Pictured: Rick Moody]

Roll: Yeah, like getting stuck in the Velvet Lounge or something.

Cosmik: Exactly. It pays, but it's not what you grow up wanting to do, so the title just resonated with me.

Roll: Right. He thought it was the most stupid thing he'd ever written, but for a song you want that punchy title you immediately get an image for. I thought it was the most natural, easiest song to write based on what he had given me. He thought it was a joke, he didn't think it would become a song, but I thought it was the easiest one.

Cosmik: Well, novelists have a certain conception of what "real" writing is....

Roll: Right.

Cosmik: And while I don't write fiction, as a journalist I have a conception of what writing is too, and if I'm trying to write a song that can interfere.

Roll: That's the one thing I kind of recognize from working with Rick and Denis. They really don't write traditional songs. They have some extra thing in their head that I don't have and vice versa. You said it kind of well, but there's definitely a little twist in there that I haven't completely got a grasp on yet. They'll put words in their songs that I would never use. You don't use that many three or four syllable words in a song.

Cosmik: It's hard to rhyme them!

Roll: (laughs) Yeah. Like one of the words Rick used in "Blue Guitar," cherubim. I would never use that word in a song.

Cosmik: But you mess with the words a little bit....

Roll: A little bit. Not much.

Cosmik: Because the words as printed aren't exactly the words as performed. You had to kind of fix some of them.

Roll: I think I would occasionally, naturally, change the words as I was singing them without thinking about it. I tried to be as true to what they had written as possible, but I wanted to have some song structure about it, too, so I would repeat a phrase that they hadn't repeated, to create some congruency, especially when they weren't written as songs originally.

Cosmik: Because when you write songs, you think of the sound as a song, while if you're accustomed to writing literature you don't think as much about what it sounds like, but what it looks like, which may not be singable.

[Pictured: Denis Johnson]
Roll: I think Rick Moody, he didn't give me any melodies, but when he was writing he might have had a little rhythm in his head. He was thinking song. With a couple of the Denis Johnson songs, like "Desperado In The Parking Lot" and You, I don't think he was thinking about music at all. Maybe I'm wrong, though, because he said that when he wrote the poem "You" years ago he was thinking about a barroom full of people singing "Burgundy wine, burgundy wine...."

Cosmik: So the record will be on the shelves the 12th of March?

Roll: Yeah, I'll have it on the stage the first of March, but it will be officially out Tuesday, March 12.


If you want an early look at the new disc, you'll have to be lucky enough to live in Bloomington, St. Louis, Nashville or Louisville, Roll's scheduled stops on his route to Austin for four days of SXSW appearances (including a March 14 appearance with Neal Pollack at Book People). More dates and details are available on his website at www.jimroll.com.

Thanks to Susan Clary for setting this up, and Jim Roll for taking the time, and making the music.

(C) 2002 - Shaun Dale