Double Bill : A Conversation with Bill Frisell and Bill Morrison

Albert Einstein once remarked, “Art is standing with one hand extended into the universe and one hand extended into the world, and letting ourselves be a conduit for passing energy.” This perspective rings true regardless of the particular format taken by such art. However, a specific magic can emerge when two or more art forms combine into a cohesive whole. This is perhaps best seen with the meeting of film and music. The two idioms have a long and intertwined history. The earliest films in the silent era relied upon live musicians to help bring out the emotional depths of the images portrayed. One may have expected this interaction between music and film to wane after the invention of the talkie. But, if anything, it only magnified. Whether Ennio Morricone, John Barry, or John Williams, the history of film is replete with composers who have used music to help make the director’s vision a reality. But these outings are often very pre-planned and scripted. How does composing in the moment – improvisation – enter into the picture? Enter “Double Bill,” a live collaboration between Bill Frisell and Bill Morrison. The duo will provide a special performance at Roulette Intermedium on June 24, 2024, intended to support the incredible venue financially.

Taken in its most technical sense, “Double Bill” is the pairing of a guitarist and a filmmaker – with short films, newsreels, loops, and cat cam videos at his disposal – who fully respond to one another live and in the moment. But such a project is feasible only in light of the background behind it. The heart of “Double Bill” lies in the decades-long friendship – evident in our conversation – between the artists. First meeting when Morrison was a dishwasher at the historic Village Vanguard, the two have since collaborated several times. In more formal settings, they acquired a deep knowledge of each other’s unique artistic language. This familiarity has allowed them to powerfully tell stories like those of a Library of Congress clerk who rescued early film reels from destruction (The Film of Her (Fabrica, 1996)) and the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 (The Great Flood (Hypnotic, 2012)). 

It should come as no surprise that both artists are great friends. Not only are both premier artists in their chosen craft, they also create in surprisingly similar ways. Morrison has honed an idiosyncratic voice by using materials, even the forgotten and decaying, left by those in the past. He carefully crafts these materials together to make a story all his own, with the antecedents as merely a guide. His works have earned the filmmaker a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award. Similarly, Frisell – who likely needs little introduction to most readers of this site- fuses sonic artifacts of jazz, Americana, folk music, country, and rock into a distinctive and thoroughly contemporary sound. In the process, the guitarist has established himself as one of the most impactful voices in modern improvised music; someone the National Endowment for the Arts should consider soon honoring as a Jazz Master. 

We sat down with both gentlemen to discuss their friendship, Paul Motian, their films together, and the magic of creating in the moment.

PostGenre: You first met one another thirty years ago at the Village Vanguard.

Bill Morrison: Wow, thirty years, man.

Bill Frisell: Yeah, probably more.

BM: What was your first week at the Vanguard Bill? Do you remember?

BF: I always forget exactly what the group was, but the very first time I played there was with Jim Hall. I think that was around 1987 or 1988. [Vanguard founder] Max [Gordon] was still there. And from that gig with Jim, I was able to get my own gig there not long after. But I can’t remember exactly when that was.

BM: You certainly played down there the first Fall I was there, in 1991. You were with Joey [Baron]. I can’t remember who else was in that band.

BF: Probably Kermit Driscoll.

BM: Hank Roberts?

BF: Yeah, that sounds familiar. And you and I met as soon as you started working there.

BM: Well, yeah. The way the club is set up, the dishwasher has privileged exposure to the musicians. Depending on the personality of the dishwasher and the personalities of the musicians, they’re going to bump into each other one way or another.

PG: And Bill M., you also got to know Paul Motian through your time working at the Vanguard. Of course, Bill F. played in a trio with Paul and Joe Lovano played for many years. What do you feel you learned the most from playing in that trio?

BF: Oh man, I mean, that was such an incredible thing. There is so much there that I don’t know if we have time to fully discuss it.  Playing with Paul was a huge part of my life. It was life-changing to meet Paul and then play with him until he passed away. We played together for thirty years. He had such a gigantic impact on my music and my life. Playing with him was the most incredible opportunity to be myself. I mean, I played a guitar, but I felt like with him, it was so much about him wanting me for who I am, not a specific instrument. His only request was that I be my own self. I’ve been pretty lucky all along that way with people tolerating whatever I do. I’ve been very lucky. But with Paul, I felt that he took me more seriously than many other people have. 

When I played with him, he had stopped playing sideman gigs and was very committed to writing his own music. I spent a lot of time with him. In the beginning, there were a lot of rehearsals, and I would go over there just the two of us. I was really in on the process of his writing and was in a privileged position to get to play those songs before anyone else.

Eventually that developed into playing at the Vanguard every year with Lovano. We would do two weeks every year. We did that for many years. There was a point where Paul no longer wanted to travel outside of the city. He wouldn’t even go to Brooklyn. So that was the gig, two weeks every year at the Vanguard.

PG: As far as the two of you working together, you have done several films. The first, The Mesmerist (Hypnotic, 2003), came out over twenty years ago. How do you feel your collaborative relationship has changed the most over the years?

BM: Oh, well, I don’t know if Bill even knew I was a filmmaker when I worked in the kitchen at the Vanguard. But I used some of his recordings as temp tracks in my editing. I was listening to his music so much anyway. Sometimes, the danger when you use a temp track is that you fall in love with the music you are using, and the edits to the film reflect the music. So, I ended up naively using Bill’s music in the film, which I then released to film festivals. But it soon occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Bill for permission. I talked to him, and he explained to me about publishing rights and master recording rights and that I needed to check a lot of boxes.

So, I was pretty naïve with our first collaboration, and Bill probably wasn’t aware of it until after the fact. From there, I guess the shoe was on the other foot because then, with The Mesmerist, Bill asked me to make a film for some music that he was going to write. I used that music as a temp track and fell into the same trap. And, by the time it came to make another, we started from the ground up, with no temp tracks.

PG: Perhaps the most powerful films you have worked on together was The Great Flood, about the 1927 flooding of the Mississippi River.  How did that film come together?

BM: I had the idea of doing The Great Flood after [Hurricane] Katrina. There was a book – I forgot the author’s name. Bill, do you remember who wrote the book about the Mississippi River Flood?

BF: Yeah, it was “Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America” by John M. Barry.

BM: Yeah, that’s it. The book gave me the idea that the film was also telling a musical and cultural story, as well as sociological, geological, and meteorological stories. I know Bill responded to that idea of the work even before he read the book. It gave us both the ability to explore in our own ways.

BF: Yeah, that was amazing. The whole process, from your first inkling of an idea to traveling up and down the Mississippi River together with the band and seeing the flood happening in the river at that time, which we couldn’t predict. You couldn’t have planned anything like that.

BM: But that was also really excellent planning by [Bill’s managers] Lee [Townsend] and Phyllis [Oyama] because they organized a tour that, on the surface, was one of small venues. It couldn’t have been particularly profitable. But it did serve as a moving laboratory for this new music. And I remember the first time I heard any of that stuff was at the Vanguard, right?

BF: Right.

BM: That was probably around 2011. I was blown away by what I heard and asked Bill what it was. He said it was “The Great Flood.” I remember almost tearing up because it was such incredible music. From there, we went to New Orleans, and where else did we go?

BF: To Oxford, Mississippi. St. Louis. Iowa City. And up to Chicago. I’m probably missing another date in the South.

BM: Vicksburg.

BF: Yeah, Vicksburg. We landed in Memphis, and I remember coming in on the plane over the [Mississippi River]. It was so flooded.

BM: Yeah, we were standing on the levee there with the rest of the population of the town with everyone scratching their chin. There is a very strange, nervous feeling about a flood because there’s no sudden cataclysmic event. The water keeps slowly rising, and you’re hoping that there isn’t a cataclysmic event. You’re hoping it doesn’t breach the levees. There is a lot of anxiety. You see the roofs of houses and can feel the power of that river again.

Going back to Katrina, we’d seen all this footage on the news, and I was looking at old archival stuff that seemed to be from 1926 and 1927. That footage looked the same as Katrina. I was struck by how many of these clips said 1926 and 1927, so that’s when I started thinking, “Well, what happened then?” And from there I started researching. It was amazing that the river was so high that year we went. I think it was 2011 when we did our research tour. 

BF: I thought … going back to Paul Motion again, the last time I saw him was when he was in the hospital. And that night, we performed The Great Flood at… was it the Museum of Modern Art?

BM: No, we played it twice in New York. The first time was at Zankel [Hall]. 

BF: Oh, yeah. Zankel was a commission, right?

BM: That’s right. And the rest of that first tour we performed at Cornell [University] and Dartmouth [College], then Zankel. Then down to [Washington DC]. The Museum of Modern Art date came a few years later, in 2014, as part of my retrospective there.

BF: Is that when Paul died?

BM: No, he died in 2011.

BF: Oh, wow. The years all blur together. I just remember that we were doing The Great Flood when I visited him. It must have been the Zankel Hall performance. But yeah, I saw him for the last time in the hospital, and then we had our gig.

BM:  I don’t think I was even aware of that. Or maybe you told me, and I forgot. That’s super intense.

BF: But also to back up a little to The Mesmerist, that film is where we started performing together live. Bill M. had found some of my music that was previously recorded and used it in the film. Then we actually did a tour for that film.

BM: Did you do your Buster Keaton stuff then as well?

BF: I can’t remember what was out of that program. But it was so cool because The Mesmerist used music I had already previously written. I didn’t have to start writing from scratch. But having the experience of being together and playing it live let the music grow. We also got more of a feeling of what it’s like playing live to the film and responding to the film. It laid out a map for us so that the film becomes part of the band, you know? And then, when we went on to do The Great Flood, the experience was so organic. One thing just led to another. 

BM: Right, it’s true. It was a slow evolution that way, and an important step in that evolution was seeing how it could work together and the instrumentation. The recordings were from that record with Dave Holland and Elvin [Jones] [ed.: With Dave Holland and Elvin Jones (Elektra Nonesuch, 2001)], right?

BF: Yeah.

BM: When we were touring, Tony Scherr and Kenny Wolleson assumed the roles Dave and Elvin had. And that’s the same configuration we had with The Great Flood, adding Ron Miles, of course.

BF: And then, now with what we started doing, getting it more up-to-date, it’s become more and more spontaneous. Now with just the two of us, we are so flexible with the form and the line between structure, freedom, and improvisation.

The film isn’t set for our performances. Bill can change it from night to night or moment to moment. And I’m free to make choices with the way I respond to it. So it’s become even more and more like a band. 

BM: We’ve done these “Double Bill” sets only three times so far. But, over the years, we’ve established a great familiarity with each other. Now, we can figure out a composed tune that Bill does that would work with particular footage. We can suggest ways to fix stuff that is not working. And then, in between those, there are these improv moments that are set up with loops, unedited film,  newsreels, cat cam videos, or whatever, and Bill’s free to improvise or create from that. It has been a great combination of going from a structured piece to an unstructured piece.

PG: So, Bill, you mentioned how the film becomes a part of the band. When it is just the two of you, does it feel the same way as when you have done duo performances with someone like Jack DeJohnette, Jim Hall, or Gary Peacock?

BF: Well, I guess it’s different because the film is visual. But although the process of how you get there is different, what makes someone draw a picture or make a film comes from the same impulse that makes someone want to write a melody or strum a chord on a guitar. It’s all coming from the same place. In that way, it was very similar to doing a musical duo. Both are like having a conversation. Ideas still bounce off each other.

BM: I’d say there’s great trust that what we are doing is going to work. We believe in each other’s sensibilities, and that allows for a lot of leeway.

BF: Yeah, I mean that’s what’s great for me. Bill trusts me, and I feel safe to go out on a limb and try something. He’s not breathing down my neck with some preconception of what he wants. Instead, he trusts me to find something that fits. It’s kind of like when I first started to play with Paul. He trusted me to come up with something good. 

It’s very different when you’re working for someone who has some very specific thing in mind. It makes you feel like you’re not really there for your own personality. You’re just there to fulfill whatever their preconception is. That’s the opposite of what we are doing together.

BM: It was really interesting watching how Bill works with his collaborators, especially when we were out on tour with The Great Flood. He was writing music on staff paper, in longhand, and then give copies to the other guys in the band. And it was almost an open conversation because they’d have these different parts, and were working together to find ways to bridge from one part to another. It was amazing to see that creative collaboration happening between him and his bandmates. That is where the music was happening.

Of course, on stage, everything was recorded by Bill’s fantastic sound engineer, Claudia Engelhardt. And I had all these recordings to work with from that to build what I imagined the soundtrack of the film could be. Then it would go back to Bill to see if he could re-imagine it. But, by then, we were both working from the same skeleton.

BF: Yeah, and so, then Bill M. becomes like a composer as well, which is also really great. He takes our raw sound materials, and the film will dictate how he wants to use them. Then it comes back to me, and I see if I can try to maybe even curate an arc or program an arc from the recorded material that’s going to make up the arc of the film.

BM: Early on,  if it were up to me, it would all be ballads. I love all of Bill’s ballads. But he always punctuates each of his sets with something very upbeat, fast, sometimes like a [Thelonious] Monk-like piece or something. He was very adamant that we needed to include those for everything else to pay off. And he was right. That was a great lesson for me to learn that these different moments also serve a function within the whole arc of the program. 

PG: Do you feel the dynamic is different when it’s just the two of you with no other musicians involved, compared to when you are working with a larger group?

BF: For me, it’s just the nature of what we do. Working as only the two of us keeps things more open-ended. We’re not presenting one particular film. We are working in another world. 

BM: Yeah, with the band, it’s usually part of a tour of a program and involves Claudia, a sound check, a light check, and getting to a gig. We all know our roles. When it is just Bill and me, it is much more of a free-form and intimate affair where we’re figuring out what we’re going to do the day before or the weeks before, and then coming up with a program for that specific night. And that program is not necessarily going to be the same one we use the next time. That is very different from a band where you move in, do the gig, and move on. But to that end, I’ve known Tony, Kenny, and Claudia for thirty years, as well, and we’re all great friends. So there is great camaraderie there, it’s the nature of the music and the collaboration that is different.

BF: Claudia will be at the Roulette performance.

BM: Oh, she will? That’s great. It always goes smoothly when she’s there.

PG: In terms of the films themselves, Bill M. often uses old archival footage. Some of it is deteriorated and while very fascinating to watch, is not always the cleanest. Bill F, is it difficult making music when what you are responding to is deteriorated like that?

BF: I mean, it’s just part of the art. It is like looking at a painting. The deterioration is just a part of the beauty of what you are seeing, and a part of the emotion behind it. There is so much going on visually with Bill’s films, in an almost painterly kind of way. 

Some of the materials Bill uses were once part of someone else’s story. Someone long ago made a film, and something happened to it. Maybe the reels were left in a basement that flooded. Or they were left in a box that was thrown in the garbage. As a result, the film deteriorated. He recovers these materials and remnants of things and makes his own story out of what he found.

BM: Yeah, I mean, music is also a bunch of different layers, right? Some themes happen at one tempo, and things on top of it happen. I think with deteriorated film, you have a layer that’s like what Bill’s describing, where it reflects the intention of whoever shot it back when.  Then you have the layer of everything that’s happened to the film physically since then. That layer of deterioration is very different from that created originally. It is faster and more itinerant. You can sense there is no intention behind the layer. It’s not part of the film; it’s something that’s happened. But that deterioration level becomes, in a way, a layer of time or a way of looking through different layers of time back at this thing that was intentionally made. And I think that lends itself well to music. 

PG: How do you find these old abused films?

BM: Well, now people call and write to me about them. They go, “I got this old thing, let’s call Bill Morrison” Or, it’ll be a joke. Somebody will say, “Oh, nobody but Bill Morrison would want this.” And I’ll write, and say, “Hey, I saw that you said I might want this.” My name gets bandied around the Library of Congress. There are people who associate my name with stuff everyone else would want to throw out. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve tried to make the best out of it.

PG: Bill F., you have done many scores for films, including several in John Zorn’s Filmworks series. Is working with Zorn on those a similar experience to collaborating with Bill in terms of putting music to film, or is it distinctly different?

BF: It’s totally different. For one thing, whatever film music I have done with Zorn, I don’t think I ever even saw the films. That is a huge difference. It is a whole other world. 

PG: As a final question, what do you most appreciate about each other’s works, and how do you feel that element may have influenced your works when you’re not performing together?

BM: Bill’s been an enormous influence on me. I met him when I was in my twenties and was still finding my way as an artist. What he did to a room at the Vanguard when I saw him with my eyes and ears was a suspension of time. I was gobsmacked by that.

He has also been such a gracious and wonderful human being too. You see many people who can do amazing things with a guitar, but you don’t want to hang out with them. Bill is completely different. He was so open when I was a lowly dishwasher, and he treated me like I was a member of the band that was at least worthy of some attention. That was an incredible life lesson as well.

BF: I mean, I think I sort of answered it already. The importance to me in our working together is in how much we trust each other, and are friends. Also, neither of us is afraid of taking a risk. That’s where the real stuff happens; when we watch out for each other, and just go out on a limb. If you’re always worried about whether something’s going to work or not, are second guessing everything, or thinking too much, it squashes the possibility of something incredibly fantastic happening. From the first things we ever tried to do, that openness has always been there. There wasn’t any learning curve for us to work through. It’s been amazing.

The special “Double Bill” performance to benefit Roulette Intermedium will take place at the esteemed venue on June 20, 2024. More information can be found on Roulette’s website. More information on Bill Frisell can be found on his website. More information on Bill Morrison is available on his.