Wymond Miles Captures His Own American West on 'Call By Night'

Photo by James Holden

On Wymond Miles's soon-to-be-released third LP, Call By Night, things feel close. His voice is clear, high in the mix, confident in its concise poetry, though not immune to wavering when the subject becomes overwhelming. It's a record about the West, in a sense, the expanses that Miles grew up in. But like Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, another album that sought to capture a waning regional sensibility, it's about the people that make the place what it is. His lens focusses in on violence, loneliness, war and the trauma that all that brings; it's all set to vast sounds, rarely less than wholly intimate, often engaging with old-fashioned songwriting conventions, but always bold. It's the first album that the Fresh & Onlys guitarist has released since 2013's Cut Yourself Free and it is his best work yet.

The album's opener "Summer Rains," premiering on Noisey today, captures all this in its slow grace, Miles's voice dipping into dramatic baritone while the Hammond organ holds in the background, driving a simple melody and a straightforward, quietly distraught lyricism. It's a counterpoint to "Divided in Two," released at the start of the month, more pensive than the wide open melodies that that track led with. It's also the perfect introduction to a record that walks through a personal history without ever falling into self-referential nostalgia.

We emailed Miles to ask about the record and what went into it.

Noisey: First off, tell me about the writing process for the record. It’s been three years since Cut Yourself Free and four since Under the Pale Moon. Did these songs come out in a fit of creativity like Cut Yourself Free or was it a more steady accumulation like …Pale Moon?
Wymond Miles: After Cut Yourself Free I should have felt artistically defeated. No one paid attention to that album and I couldn't find support helping me tour after its release. I thought it was more confidant and expressive than the previous LP [Under the Pale Moon, but I was still creatively insatiable and I was eager to explore a different facet of my writing. As with all my records, they're a mix of what I'm immediately writing blended with older songs stored away in my heads repertoire of material that is complimentary.

Songs seem to arrive in groups of two or three, so by the spring of 2014, less than a year later, I had the album assembled; in fact I was trying to convince the label to indulge me in a double concept LP, which I was promptly schooled on how stupid and expensive that would be in this current music climate. I also realized how I rarely enjoy bloated works and find concise pieces to be bolder statements. I'm thinking now of how the precise sentence structure of Joan Didion's writing was so novel to me and influenced that choice. The album was done mid-2015 and has just been sitting around waiting for both me and the label to have some space to properly promote it.

Time goes by so fast if you're not aggressively managing it, which I certainly do not. Honestly I needed a break from the hustle of promoting music that's expected these days. We had another child born at home in 2014 and there was more life to live, learn and grow from in that experience. My other band, Fresh & Onlys, also released House of Spirits in that period which needed my attention. We had a blast touring that album but we knew the rewards would only diminish if we continued on.

A lot of these tracks—in particular “Summer Rains”—seem to draw from a very personal history. What’s your process like when it comes to writing such songs? Did you visit the towns in the West that you were growing up in like you hint at on “Summer Rains”? Were you looking through old books or photos to get into that history?
No, I'm not a nostalgic person at all. Although I recognize how the feeling in the music would suggest otherwise. I do see how our bloodlines and ancestry informs our patterns of behavior and needs our conscious attention to not form a fucked up Jungian shadow that unconsciously takes ownership in unhealthy ways. There isn't much of "me" in the autobiographical sense on this record per se, ("Rear View Mirror" may be the only exception) but I do think it's a wise rule of thumb to write what you know.

Looking back now though I do remember driving the tour van back home to San Francisco from Denver at the end of my Fresh & Onlys summer tour. I was on my own, everyone else went their separate ways. I picked up my old friend to join along and make me laugh, and oddly along the way we picked up two girls traveling across the US from Europe. I had done this drive across the barren west several dozen times times since growing up between Colorado and Nevada and all the road-dog touring, but I got to see it through their eyes for the first time anew. At one point in Nevada it was raining and the light lulled this otherworldly blue. We had come over a steep ridge when this wide open vista stretched out before us with the sunset protruding through shafts of rain; we all kind of gasped and laughed at its beauty. We felt alive and connected to a shitty Kinkade landscape cliche. Coming west, everything felt ripe with possibility for them. The dream of the west: how many thousands have left something behind to begin anew somehow? I was returning home to my commitments and responsibilities that middle-aged adult life brings with it. But don't misunderstand, there's honor to be found in diligence.

Photo by James Holden

How did composing much of the record on the piano affect your writing? Was it a conscious decision to turn away from the guitar and find a new method or atmosphere?
With the last record I was aware of my age in the sense that I didn't have many more years to write such brazen, angular guitar music effortlessly. Touring the …Pale Moon album with my friends at loud volumes had me very amped on making another record refining that live momentum my friends had given me. But then I just needed time away from that approach.

I've got this old, very tall upright piano from the 1880's at my house; a few-mallets-functioning-only-because-I've-rigged-them-with-dental-floss kind of beast. One December night—blue from classic post tour come down, ears blown out, thousands in debt, feeling guilt for abandoning your family to indulge your artistic merits thick in the air—I wrote "Stand Before Me" in a night. For my skill range, it's a fairly complex chord structure in an odd time signature, but it was so effortless, I knew this is where I was to head next. "Bride Of The Lamb," which was recorded with me singing on that piano at my place that December too, sounded too contrived when I tried it again at a studio. All to say the record's identity revealed itself, I just had to assemble the means to document it.

From a songwriting standpoint, you seem to have spent a lot of time looking into very classical composition techniques. Was it a conscious decision to try these forms out?
I can't read music, and have no training, I don't know any scales (my band mates are shocked at my ineptitude sometimes) and wouldn't know how to take apart or study classical compositions, but when they evoke a mood I relate to, sometimes I can translate its essence in some crude way. Once I stumbled upon the song "Call By Night" (which again was accidental singing my son to sleep if you can imagine) I knew I had the album's cornerstone. It's just over two minutes long (again the concise Didion aesthetic) but holds more tonal complexity then most of my other material. When you say nods to Leonard Cohen I'm assuming you mean my voice, which was a break through for me. The wild feverish voice I'm known for is starting to feel like a former character I played, one that I'm afraid is a bit inpenetrable for many. The newer songs on this album ("Rear View Mirror", "Protection", "Call Before Me," etc) are delivered in a more stoic, conversive tenor, one I relate to more, and others might as well.

…and on that note, what were you listening to when you were writing and making the record?
You know I just made a Spotify playlist with some stuff I was spinning back then:

“Divided in Two” is a striking track that seems to be dealing with PTSD and the personal impact of war. Where did that come from?
It happens to be Father's Day as I write this and I just got off the phone with my pops (he's still driving a truck in his mid seventies, figure he won't quit anytime soon) and asked him if he cares if I publicly talk a bit candidly. Which of course he doesn't—it's me who's private and guarded because I know how sacred some privacy is these days. Again, write what you know. My dad's a proud Marine, served in Vietnam, wounded and sent home. The story never ends there, nor did it begin with him, but a lineage of military service in the family. He grew up as a kid in the bars "listening to the leathernecks" tell their war stories. I think the song's narration pivots around generations who have different perspectives on what being a soldier is in context to the time around them.

Talking about war and PTSD must be pretty challenging. How do you prepare yourself to write about those things?
I wrote "Divided In Two" back in 2007. Took me seven years to record it proper. Moment never seemed right. Realized its moment never would come, now was the only time. It wasn't challenging to write, it just happened out of nowhere one night. It's the song that made me find my voice, in that it was sudden and made me sing in a feverish bold manner. Took me years to process how directly my life was tied into it. I sang it for some relatives once and they were touched by it, it was all the justification that song needed. Vulnerability is the new sword these days so might as well put it out there to see if it might hold value in someone else's life too. I was also reading Martha Raddatz's The Long Road Home around then. I was likely processing how much the stories in that book shook me to my core.

We should all be looking for ways to discuss, process, and integrate trauma without shame, its hyper-prevalent in modern life. Trauma's also not just personal, it's cultural and generational. I can only hope methods for more wide spread reconciliation become more known - they're out there. Working with Phil Manley seems to have really nudged your sound into new places. But, much like for you with The Fresh & Onlys, this isn’t the sound that one might expect when they listen to Phil’s work with Trans Am or The Fucking Champs. How did you end up working with him and what did he bring to the process?
San Francisco is a small world but our net cast in music taste is wide I guess. I only met him as I was looking for new spots to do the Fresh & Onlys albums. We had recorded with Tim Green (Nation of Ulysses) who was in The Fucking Champs with Phil, but Tim relocated his studio to Grass Valley. We got on with Phil and liked all the natural light at his old studio, Lucky Cat. He had no preconceived notions of what the Fresh & Onlys sound should be, which was good because we were out growing our genre tag, and he was willing to do it all on 16-track analog for us.

I asked him to engineer this album because I was comfortable around him and after two Fresh & Onlys LP's and other EPs, we had an unspoken musical language going. He's also always been invisible in all the right ways. He just started at a new place called El Studio too. Its interior is very dark, cavernous, and elegant feeling with the piano and red curtains. I liked it. The sessions were fun, I'd bring some rare bourbon or wine in for the occasion and we'd get pretty blazed. My friends James Kim and Warren Huegal showed up to track drums live with me in the room and then I'd overdub my voice along with maybe a piano, and the rest I recorded on my own.

The decision to use vintage/analog equipment has brought a certain warmth to the record, but there’s also the sense that this album is reaching into the past in more ways than one. What brought on that decision?
Yeah, I'm just drawn to sounds of the past. They call to my soul I suppose. I was also teaching myself a bunch of old Cole Porter songs around this time too. Those are my favorite melodies. I prefer old 78rpm in many ways to modern fidelity, they're just more haunted or maybe honest in their execution and flawed degradation. I'm fascinated by those Harry Smith-esque captured sounds, or the Sun Studios single ribbon mic capturing the ensemble in the room recordings that are unreplicable. All this to say Call by Night is actually my first recording done on the computer rather than tape. We did use ribbon mics and tube equipment on the source but I fell in love with plug-ins like every other consumer out there. The access to harmonically rich sounds digitally is kind of incredible these days, but damn if it isn't making most everything contemporary sound more homogenous than ever. It's got everyone thinking on their toes on the backside of a project rather than front end.

Alex Robert Ross is on Twitter. Follow him there.