NSL: Up first in your initial New York splash is a Friday night concert involving you, Bill, with Wye Oak, Metropolis Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. How did you come to intersect with Wye Oak? 

WB: Basically, it started because I was approached by the North Carolina Symphony to write a project that reflected back on my youth in North Carolina, and that project kind of quickly spun in a different direction away from the symphony, and I’m doing a different project with them now. But it got me thinking about the fact that I feel like a deep rifts between who I was when I was growing up and who I am now. And I felt like I had reached the point artistically where I needed to figure out how to how to take down that wall and allow those the two parts of myself to coexist.

A lot of that had to do with reckoning and re-owning my relationship with Christianity on my own terms, and sort of integrating that into my agnostic Buddhist perspective now. And also learning what to forgive about who I was and where and what I felt… and also how I was treated in the environment that I was in, and what to stay angry about. It also had a lot to do with working through my relationship with the people that I still know and love that are in that environment, and may be on the other side of the fence from me now in so many different ways in terms of political views or religious views or whatever.

I had been in love with [Wye Oak vocalist] Jenn [Wasner]’s voice forever. I feel like she just has one of those voices that’s just an emotional vehicle, and I just approached them early o. And Andy [Stack] from Wye Oak trained at Berklee. He’s a great reader, a wonderful musician that plays basically every single instrument. I just sent them some music, and they responded really well to it, and we just started this journey. The piece was sort of commissioned chunk by chunk: We did something with Alabama Symphony and Baltimore Symphony, and then actually Liquid Music with Kate, and then out in Palm Springs. Along the way, I developed the vision for it and after almost seven years it’s finally reaching the end point and moving into premiere and recording mode.

NSL: Can you explain what it is about your past life in the church and with that culture that you’re trying to come to terms with?

WB: A problem that I have with liberal culture is that it is sort of like can act elitist about its about its dealings with the unknown or what is beyond it, while existing in this kind of consumer culture. There is so much beyond us that that we will never understand or never know, and I think it’s okay to give that name. I think it’s okay to conceptualize that in some way, and the way that I was brought up conceptualizing that was through Jesus. The lightbulb that went on was actually something that Kate sent me, an interview with the scholar who said, basically the least interesting question you can ask about religion is whether or not it’s true. And when I heard that, a light kind of went on: I’m allowed to have my own relationship with this. Because, you know, as a self identifying Buddhist my son was sick when he was born, and I was I was in a very dicey situation. And the thing I did immediately was pray, and I hadn’t done that in a long time.

That was a wake-up moment for me. There’s something almost culturally that’s there – it’s almost like, why do I still love Def Leppard? Is it because I think it’s great music, or is it because it’s part of the emotional fabric of the way that I learned to navigate through the world? So for me, I don’t have a choice about whether Christianity is a part of my life, any more than I have a choice about whether North Carolina is, or Def Leppard is, or my parents are. It was such a huge part of the way that I learned how to navigate and find my place in the world that I need to figure out – I need to own that relationship instead of pushing it away.

NSL: Are you vocalizing at all in this piece, or has that aspect of your career ended?

WB: I’m done with that period. That’s one thing that working with Jenn really helped me with. It was always such a struggle for me to sing. I still have lingering vocal issues. And working with someone like Jenn – who can not only sing what you want to sing, but bring another 50, 80 percent to the table – has been really, really freeing for me. Anything that I give her, she can memorize and sing with orchestras without music. It’s really unbelievable. It’s been life-changing, working with her. So there may be some sampled Bill in there, but I’m not going to be onstage.

NSL: Did the Wye Oak orchestrations by yourself and Paul Wiancko come afterward, as something to fill out the evening?

TKNo, that was something we developed along the way – and I should mention that that one arrangement was by Paul Wiancko and Michi Wiancko, and that’s from Wye Oak’s new record. That’s a shorter arrangement that’s just for strings. The other ones are for full orchestra, and they were sort of commissioned along the way. I didn’t want the Spiritual America cycle to be more than 40, 45 minutes. I wanted to keep it concise, sort of like within two sides of vinyl. They were really excited about reimagining their songs, and these arrangements are really somewhere in between recompositions and arrangements. We haven’t decided exactly what to call them, but basically I lifted everything out except for the vocal part. I’ve changed harmonies; I’ve done a lot of different stuff. Jenn’s vocal lines are so beautiful, and the lyrics are so wonderful, that they really lend themselves towards adventurous orchestration. So it’s not Metallica with strings… I think they work together well, and I’m hoping to continue doing that with their new album that’ll be coming out soon.