  Elvis Costello and his wife Diana Krall. (QMI Agency files) |
Elvis Costello has the workin' man blues.
Granted, his paycheque has a few more zeroes than yours and mine. He's more or less his own boss. And at the end of his shift, he goes home to Diana Krall.
But that doesn't deter the singer-songwriter from identifying with the common man and lamenting hard times -- or from lambasting Wall Street wolves -- on his latest CD National Ransom.
"I don't know about you, but I've worked every day of my life since I left school," the 56-year-old Costello says from the Vancouver digs he shares with Krall and their twin sons. "Somebody else profits from it. Obviously, I've made a pretty good living. But I've earned my money. I don't apologize for it. I don't do it at anybody else's expense. And I can't say that's necessarily true of some of the people that are referred to in National Ransom.
"But really, it's not me saying anything different than Merle Haggard's Working Man Blues. It's the same message, you know: We persevere."
Musically, National Ransom finds Costello picking up where he left off on last year's Secret, Profane and Sugarcane, delving into nostalgic American roots music with the help of producer T-Bone Burnett and VIP guests like Buddy Miller, Vince Gill and Leon Russell. With National Ransom due next week, the garrulous Costello gave us his thoughts on keeping busy, refreshing his back catalog and making a spectacle of himself. The highlights:
If I've got my math right, this is your 30th studio album in 34 years. Which begs the question: When are you going to stop loafing around?
Yes, I know! (Laughs) It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it.
This one feels like a continuation and expansion of Sugarcane. Did you feel there was unfinished business there?
Only in the sense that we immediately went out on the road after making it, and I sensed there was a much greater range of possibility. I really am very fond of Secret, Profane and Sugarcane. It was a very vivid but very austere record, deliberately so. It was recorded in three days, so it was the first meeting of those six players. And really, the six never played simultaneously until we went out on the road. So the minute we got those songs out, they all changed. They became bigger and more colourful. And I began to sense what we could do.
Several of these songs are set musically or lyrically in '20s and '30s. What about that era and its music appeal to you?
I just like the little structures you can use. I'm not going to make any claims to it being rigidly authentic. I think you can hear the playfulness with it. I like the idea that we're not wedded to the notion of rock 'n' roll in leather trousers and teased-up hair. There's other kinds of rock 'n' roll too, you know. I think it's good to remember that.
You've remained very prolific at an age where many songwriters lose touch with the muse. What's your secret?
I suppose certain people would give you different views of whether I was connected with it or not, depending on how much they like my last recording -- or my last 12 recordings. (Laughs) I love people telling me how great my early records were, when they were mostly roundly ignored. But I never have really done anything out of routine. And I sort of feel like I can do it with much more freedom because I have access to a lot of different music and different techniques.
Is there anything left on your musical to-do list?
I've never thought ahead like that. I never even thought we were going to end up realizing this record to this degree of variety. I didn't go, 'I want to do all these things on this record.' And I'm not even thinking about the next record. I'm not even thinking as far ahead as the next performance. I know there will be some. But the shape of them is something I have great freedom about. I could play with The Imposters or The Sugarcanes, or I can play solo. Solo gives me a lot of freedom because I can go back into the catalog and pull songs out that sit with these.
Do your songs change their meaning over the years?
I think they do in company with new songs. With The Sugarcanes, I found -- not surprisingly, perhaps-- that King of America songs and Delivery Man songs sat well with Secret, Profane and Sugarcane songs. But I also found a way to play some songs that were well known, like (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes and Alison and Everyday I Write the Book in arrangements that sounded like they belonged. So those songs became really fresh to me again. And I enjoyed singing them. I never put a song in simply out of routine, but inevitably, if you have sung it lots and lots of times, you have to go that little bit further to find a way to make it fresh.
Are you doing another season of Spectacle?
At the moment it's in suspended animation. The most important thing is that having done 20 episodes, I'm happy with what we did. We had a great variety of people. And we came very close to getting a couple of people that would have been fantastic, but just at the last minute something happened. So I'm grateful for the opportunities that gave to me.
