Nels Cline’s story disproves F. Scott Fitzgerald’s maxim that there are “no second acts in American lives.” Cline was nearly 50 when he went from being a well-respected, Los Angeles avant-jazz guitarist and composer to a rock-guitar god as a member of Wilco. In that band, Cline is granted ample opportunity to demonstrate his sheets-of-sound soloing, scraping behind-the-bridge noises, feedback wails, and Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Delay manipulations that fans of his ongoing experimental work have come to love over the years with his own band, as well as in collaboration with others.
The Nels Cline 4- From left to right: Scott Colley, Nels Cline, Tom Rainey, and Julian Lage.
So it was a little startling when, a half-dozen years ago, Cline began performing duets with guitar prodigy Julian Lage using a Gibson Barney Kessel straight into an amp. Also surprising was their uncanny empathy when performing their modern take on chamber jazz. It was like witnessing a conversation between two old friends, each with a unique personality, but with a shared sensibility.
Lage’s prodigious technique had, until then, been employed in the service of more traditional jazz and acoustic roots music, but the young player had no problem matching Cline’s more adventurous ideas. It was only a matter of time until they added a rhythm section, and The Nels Cline 4 was born. On the group’s debut recording, Currents, Constellations [Blue Note] the effects are still absent, but the chemistry remains.
When did you and Julian first play together?
We met about six years ago at something called “Jim Hall’s Crony Lunch.” After the lunch, we kept talking outside the restaurant. At some point, we got together, improvised acoustically, and that was it—instant chemistry. I can’t overstate how immediate it was. It was instant composition, telepathy, the