Kevin Johansen considers himself a “songwriter” rather than a singer-songwriter. /
Kevin Johansen presents today in Bilbao his very personal collection of his own adaptations and classics, “a universe of songs that marked me”
The iconoclastic Latin “songwriter” Kevin Johansen (Alaska, 1964) returns to Bilbao recycling his own songs and those of others with the “permeable” approach of his latest album ‘Tu Vé’. Having completed his tour of concerts overseas, this unique composer and singer with an Argentine mother and a Yankee father speaks from “the heat of Buenos Aires summer” about his home in Buenos Aires, who has been breaking authorial molds since the new millennium with records that, with ironic lyrical substance, they hybridize pop rock with everything with all kinds of genres and rhythms.
There are folkloric and popular echoes in his new installment ‘Tú ve’, which captures with an almost domestic intimacy his well-known love for reviewing the classics together with complicit colleagues. Jorge Drexler, Natalia Lafourcade, Silvia Pérez Cruz and his admired David Byrne have collaborated on his new and very personal collection of their own adaptations and classics by Leonard Cohen, Erasure, Violeta Parra, Talking Heads, Erasure or Merle Travis from ’16 Tons ‘ to which he recycles in a ballad, milonguera, country, Andean or candonbera key with the help of musicians related to producer Juan Campodónico (Bajofondo, Drexler…) Lou Reed (‘Perfect Day’) or Caetano Veloso (‘Oración al tiempo ‘) also performs with his daughter and singer Wiranda, who recorded the process in the documentary ‘Nothing is forever (except this love)’.
“It is a universe of own and appropriate songs that marked me,” says Kevin in full tour without his band The Nada that today he returns to the Kafe Antzokia (9:30 p.m., €28) in a trio format “without borders” together with Paco Leiva (guitar, keyboard) and the Uruguayan Pablo Bonilla (rhythm guitar, sequences and percussion).
– It is supposed that your live show in Bilbao will not be limited to the repertoire that you bring to your land on the album. After all, he has always done live and studio versions. A decade ago he already adapted Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ in a country key.
– Yes, it’s something I’ve been doing regularly, even with a project to that effect (K-Jo & (The Cover Lovers ndr). After the tours I’ve liked meeting colleagues like Jorge Drexler to do songs by Lennon, Violeta Parra, Caetano or Cohen, whose ‘Suzanne’ was very easy for us to ‘candombear’. In the end, making covers is the way to train as an open musician and to create your own ‘songbook’. I have the theory that in life we carry about three musical trays: one from childhood, another from adolescence and a third from more mature years that returns us to the original sources.I enjoy doing songs by others, although on this tour I try to focus on the songs on this album.
– Common to artists of all stripes, cover albums often get a bad press. They are seen as an easy resource for moments of transition.
– Yes, but, as I told Campodónico (producer) when preparing it, I am very much in favor of my comfort zone. Since we were in a pandemic, there was no need to demand new things from yourself. We chose to take advantage of the search that we began on those long nights by adapting great composers who have marked us.
– Covering great classics is also a delicate matter. How has Kevin Johansen faced it?
– Of course, it is always shameful to dare. How do you redo an unbeatable song like let’s say ‘Fly me to the moon’ (Sinatra)? There’s no chance. The only thing you can do is try something different from another angle. Good songs are above time and style. Our idea was to combine what we liked with a variety that could surprise. He insisted on doing some of my ‘classics’. The starting point was to turn it around, to get David Byrne to sing one of them in English: ‘Anoche soñé contigo’ (Last night I was dreaming with you).
– David Byrne seems like one of your references. In 2005 he dedicated his song ‘La fault de San Andres’ to her and has also recycled ‘Heaven’ by his group Talking Heads in a milonga. Did they know each other?
– No, but the possibility of doing something with it arose. Despite his reputation as a restless and sensitive type, I was reluctant because of the modesty one has with idols. In the end they convinced me and he responded with a list of 20 songs of mine that he loved. There he conquered me, with the famous humility of the greats, and everything was very fluid. I translated the lyrics for him, he made some changes and we recorded it in Manhattan taking advantage of some dates he had in New York. It came out so well that I invited him to sing it on my show. He appeared relaxed in the dressing room with a beer in hand, ready to have a good time. There I saw that David is a different type of classic. Then I dared to turn «Heaven’ into ‘Cielo’, a peasant milonga translated into Patagonian Castilian.
– The album and all your work suggests multiple connections with Jorge Drexler. It begins with a song from his album ‘Algo ritos’ (19) that has a song dedicated to the algorithm, both collaborate with their singing sons and share the same authorial sensibility. As if that were not enough, they are the same age.
– Yes, we are both from 1964 and we also started recording when we were in our thirties. We share the same musical ethics and aesthetics, which goes beyond genres. We try to put our stamp on a bossa, a milonga, a candombé or one of those Andean cumbias with charango and brass. This approach is applied on this album to songs by Lou Reed as well as Erasure, Talking Heads, Violeta Parra or that fascinating mixture of flamenco folklore and jazz that Silvia Pérez Cruz makes. We both believe that a musician has to be permeable to all kinds of influences. It is almost inescapable. I always try to be open to everything, even to what my 11-year-old son turns me on.
rockers and trappers
– Hence why he does not deny the criticized reggaeton and the entire Latin urban universe with which he already flirted on his last album.
– Yes, in the last song, ‘The most beautiful people’, I already mop or rap with La Shica and I say that you don’t have to be a Taliban of good taste. As the song says, “before the tangueros complained about the rockers / and now the rockers complain about the ragpickers”. Reggaeton is nothing new, part of Jamaican dancehall and also has a certain tradition of more than 30 years that refers to precursors such as El General. I claim musical and cultural appropriation, learning and apprehending other genres and traditions. We already know what purism of race and culture leads to. On my first album with The Nada I put the phrase “mixing is the future”, but in reality it’s the other way around: we all have a condition of mixing. A German invented the bandoneon, hallmark of Argentine tango. All genres are back and forth.
– In the more than two decades that have passed since then, you have established yourself as an unclassifiable singer-songwriter. How do you see yourself looking back?
– My central beat or genre is that of the song. I don’t like the term singer-songwriter, because it is associated with a certain rigor that I don’t have. I prefer to consider myself a singer. Singing in a somewhat minimalist way seems like a disadvantage, but it isn’t. It is a more poetic approach, it was even recognized with the Nobel that they gave to Bob (Dylan)’