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The Original Harmony Ridge Creek Dippers
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"I'm feeling pretty good," says Victoria Williams, answering the consistently asked first question of any interview she conducts. "It's beautiful here in Minneapolis. The trees are leafy, and there's flowers in all the trees. And it's just ... bursting out."
That description could well apply to almost every facet of the professional life she and husband Mark Olson have constructed over the past several years. The pair have just wrapped work on their fourth recorded-at-their-Joshua-Tree-desert-home project under the unwieldy mantle of the Original Harmony Ridge Creekdippers, tentatively titled Someone to Talk With.
"The first where we hired an engineer," laughs Olson.
To help support the July release, the Creekdippers (Olson, Williams, Mike "Razz" Russell, and upright bassist Chris Burney) have returned to Olson's Minnesota haunts to rehearse for a brief tour.
Once the Creekdippers have navigated this circuit, Williams and Olson will hit the road in June to open for Lou Reed on his first major tour in almost three years. This tour will coincide with Williams' first solo album of all new material in almost three years, Water to Drink, slated for a July 1 release.
And once all that excitement has subsided a bit, Olson and Williams will be able to begin sorting through various indie label deals that have been proffered over the last few months in an effort to widen the scope of the Creekdippers.
Now that the idea of good things happening in threes has been expanded, it's down to Olson and Williams to make them happen in, and with, order. To that end, Olson recently purchased a 1969 Ford Econoline van for the Creekdippers' jaunt, a van they have rechristened "The Turtle." The name could mean a variety of things, but it comes down to a tie between the mountain near Olson and Williams's desert home and an almost Seussian story about their dog Ruby, who ate a turtle recently. She is along for the tour and ironically riding around inside of The Turtle.
Whatever the derivation of their van's name, the Creekdippers are assembling for a rare national tour. The band tuned up with a California gig before heading to Minneapolis for real rehearsals.
"The show went well in San Diego," says Olson. "We have good bookings and good press so far. We're doing some songs from the new one, and some from all of the other three records. It's nice, because we've amassed all this material and now, after making four records, we've started to rehearse for the first time. Now we have to go out and play it."
Much of this scenario could be considered odd, since the Creekdippers were originally conceived by Olson as a way to get off the fast track, a career path he chose when he left the rising fortunes of The Jayhawks, just after the release of Tomorrow the Green Grass. The Creekdippers were supposed to be the antithesis of all he had experienced, as well as a practical method to create music and be able to negotiate the limitations of Williams' well-publicized multiple sclerosis. Olson admits his path has been somewhat circular, although he is still a long way from where he was with The Jayhawks.
"I liked playing with Vic and Mike at the house, and it seemed like something to do where we could actually write some songs, play and record them, learn about that whole thing from having to do it, and not have other people involved," Olson says of the 'dippers beginnings.
"Just kind of do something for awhile. Once you get companies or managers involved, it gets complex, and I was really into simplifying my life, I guess. And I certainly simplified it. I'm starting to see the light. I would like to get out and get some records in stores. I have a little more ambition these days."
Although Olson has deliberately kept the Creekdippers lo-fi, he has moved the band's delivery capability toward high tech with at least a rudimentary Web page (www.thegrid.net/creekdipper/) that offers information and merchandise. As proof of the effect all this has had on the principals, look no further than the fact that the Creekdippers have released four albums in as many years, while Williams, solo, has managed five studio discs and a live album since 1987.
"There's something there," says Williams of the couple's synergy with the Creekdippers. "Mark's got an unusual, beautiful voice, and I feel so fortunate to get to sing with him. I can't sing like Gary (Louris, Olson's singing/songwriting partner in The Jayhawks), but I can sing with him. And we've got the love factor, that's really strong, and you can't deny that. That's real good."
"The reason we put out that number of records is because we're out in the desert and we make these homemade records really quick," Olson says. 'It's a week and we're done, and then I start mixing and that's done real quick. It's a different way of working than with a lot of musicians, and a studio, and a producer, and things like that. It's been freeing to do it this way."
That freedom has been made at least a little easier by Williams' continued success as a solo artist. 1998's Musings of a Creekdipper was a critical success and a decent sales generator, and is likely to be matched in every way with the release of Water to Drink. Unlike the intimate performance route of the Creekdippers, Williams had much help on Water, including appearances by Greg Leisz, Don Huffington, Petra Haden, and D.J. Bonebrake, with arrangements by the legendary Van Dyke Parks, among many others. But just like the Creekdippers' lo-fi gems, Water to Drink was recorded at the couple's Joshua Tree home studio.
"I first cut the record as a bunch of covers," says Williams. "I was going to do covers of really old songs that are hard to find, and we recorded a lot of things. Then my manager said, 'Oh, they don't want to put out a covers album, they want to put out your original songs.' So then I started recording original songs."
The spirit of some of the original recordings was held over to the newer material, leading to Parks' involvement, a natural since he has contributed to at least three other discs by Williams. The limitations of the home studio environment didn't bother Parks in the least.
"What Van Dyke did was write the string arrangements around what we had played," says Williams. "Like I was playing kalimba (a small 'thumb piano' instrument), and it was in my vocal track mike, and that was just it, you weren't going to get rid of it. Van Dyke called me up and said (effecting an arty air), 'I want you to know, Victoria, that the kalimba is an integral part of this arrangement.' He's just so beautiful. I really love him.' "
Williams characterizes the new album as the next logical step after the bare bones melancholy of Musings of a Creekdipper, which had also been done at home, but without any outside sweetening after the fact.
"We added a lot of strings and things later," Williams says of Water's production genesis. "When I took it into town, I overdubbed stuff at Mad Dog Studio, like the strings, and we had some Gospel gals come in. I'd say it's a step further. I really like it, and the record company seems to like it. They should ... I was given like half the budget of Musings, and I think I really did a lot with it by doing most of it at the home studio."
With two new albums in the wings, two imminent tours waiting to be performed, and label negotiations to be entered into, it would seem that there just isn't any room in the Mark Olson/Victoria Williams planner for any more, and yet they've found a way. Sweet Relief, the organization that arose from the benefit to defray Williams' medical bills after her original diagnosis of MS, continues to spread the message of hope and peace of mind with an increasing number of fundraising activities. One recent event surrounded the release of the new Jeff Buckley live album, and Buckley himself could be given the Sweet Relief tribute treatment to raise even more money for the foundation.
For the moment, however, there is only the Creekdippers' tour to prepare for, and taking a chance on an Ethiopian restaurant with a Help Wanted sign in the window. As if Victoria Williams doesn't have enough going on in her life, she considers adding another bullet point to her resume.
"If they need a cook, we'll get bad food," she surmises. "If they just need a waiter, we might be able to help them there."
THE ORIGINAL HARMONY RIDGE CREEKDIPPERS perform at the Southgate House on Sunday.
