"Will Oldham on Bonnie 'Prince' Billy"

I cruised through this book via Interlibrary Loan yesterday on the airplane. It is one long interview with Will Oldham conducted by Alan Licht. For the most part, it held my interest though I kept wishing for more personal revelations than choices behind album cover art & lyrics to obscure songs. The most fascinating parts were:

1) meeting Johnny and June Cash when Johnny was recording I See a Darkness;

2) his relationship with audience (particularly interesting coming from a recluse)

3) how acting and the storytelling arc of a movie has influenced Oldham's song writing

and

4) identity and more clarity on Oldham's need for recording albums under many different names

My favorite quote comes from page 62:

"I am not of the group of people who make music or other kinds of art who feel they have inherently within them something that needs to come out or is worth coming out. I feel like everything informs and helps add value to anything that does come out. For me, it's by pursuing, absorbing, or just complacently being bombarded by things from all over or that have value to me but are discovered in different times, locations, etc. So that is what I would say is gained, but it's only because inherently I don't have the ability to sit still."

                                                                                         - Will Oldham