Bonnie 'Prince' Billy: 'I’ve never had a hit song, and I never will'

“I don’t like when people fall in love with dead people,” Will Oldham, also known as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, says down the line from his home in Louisville, Kentucky. “When people address dead people, and say, ‘You were great! I miss you!” I feel pretty sure that person can’t hear people when they say that.”

Merle Haggard wasn’t dead when Oldham began making Best Troubador, an album of songs first recorded by Haggard. By April of 2016, Oldham had already played a live show of all Haggard material, and was well into the recording process. On 6 April, Haggard died, which changed things, but did not stop the album from happening.

“There was a nice moment a few months ago when I found an old magazine article – I think it was an excerpt from Merle’s first autobiography – where he discusses making his Elvis record, which he had done the lion’s share of the work on prior to Elvis dying,” Oldham says. “When Elvis died, he wanted to scrap it, because he knew it wasn’t the same record he set out to make. He wanted Elvis to hear it, the way I wanted Merle to hear this. But I really appreciated Merle saying, circumstantially, from beyond the grave, ‘I liked the record that I was making, so I decided to make it anyway.’ That’s how we felt.”

Oldham’s career as a musician began 25 years ago when he and some friends turned a well-known traditional Scottish ballad, Loch Tay Boat Song, into the Ohio River Boat Song, and released it as a single on the Drag City label under the name Palace Brothers. Oldham had intended to act, and had already appeared in the Hollywood outsider John Sayles’s film Matewan. That plan was derailed in favor of music, though Oldham never stopped acting on both stage and in film. (A high point is his quiet, uncanny performance in Kelly Reichardt’s 2006 film, Old Joy.) Ohio River Boat Song, and much of what came directly after, was an impenetrable sort of historical study conducted by researchers with no clear accreditation.

“I have no idea what I really thought then,” Oldham says. “It was so desperate and breathless, there was really nothing to say about it.”

Oldham recorded constantly, as he does now, using various monikers: Palace Brothers, Will Oldham, and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. In 1999, things turned a corner when he released I See a Darkness. No longer making songs that seemed to be about the various strains of Anglophone music that flow into America, Oldham was making the genuine article; in this case, a blackened set of quiet, murderous country songs.

In 2000, Johnny Cash covered the title track of Oldham’s album I See a Darkness on Cash’s American III: Solitary Man. Oldham’s profile changed from “American indie curiosity” to “respected writer and singer”, not only because of Cash, but because of public co-signs from PJ Harvey and later collaborations with the British psych-folk act Trembling Bells.

View image in fullscreen

Best Troubador is as far away from I See a Darkness as you can get. Though there are plenty of Haggard songs that investigate what Haggard himself described in song as “my checkered life”, the dark songs are not the ones that ended up on Best Troubador.

“I wanted to make a Merle record for the Merle that I was in love with by going through and finding the adorable side of Merle Haggard as a singer and as a songwriter,” Oldham said. “I wanted to show people that he’s awesome in a completely different way than I feel like he gets recognition for being awesome.”

Recorded with a cast of musicians drawn from Oldham’s friends in Louisville, Best Troubador is a warm and fuzzy thing. These songs are delicate, goofy, and sweet. Oldham is brave enough to let them be what they are. If there is even a quality like “hip” left in the world, it is not to be found here. This album is a loving, direct thing.

“I knew Merle was getting older and was always a single-minded human being, not necessarily open to modern influences,” Oldham says. “I knew that I wouldn’t catch his ear but I thought I should try. I wanted to make something that he could listen to.”

Oldham values a playful quality, especially if it skirts the perverse. Two albums released in 2016 show how he is dedicated to not denying his own curiosity and not worrying much about reaching any single audience over and over again. Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is an album credited to Bonnie “Prince” Billy and the Bitchin’ Bajas, a trio from Chicago, in which Oldham is a singer in a largely instrumental context, “repeating Chinese fortune-cookie-like mantras”.

The other 2016 release Oldham helped with is the deep inverse of Bitchin’ Bajas. As a writer, but not as a singer or recording participant, Oldham was among the sidemen assembled for John Legend’s well-received album Darkness and Light alongside the R&B heartthrob Miguel and rap’s latest evangelical, Chance the Rapper.

“[Producer] Blake [Mills] called out of the blue said he was working on a John Legend record and wanted to flesh out the writing on the record and asked if I had any interest,” Oldham says. “Specifically, how he defined it was that he wanted there to be a different kind of meat on the record, not more meat. There was a fair amount of inconclusive, non-specific pop song action and I didn’t know if there was an opportunity for something else.”

That song is the first on Darkness and Light, I Know Better, an intense blues gospel which Legend sings the hell out of. Oldham also came up with the album title, and wrote a song called Drawing Lines.

“The Legend album was a version of a dream I have been idealizing for a while,” Oldham says of the project. “I mean, I know what was a miserable time it was for Raymond Chandler, going to Hollywood and getting an office and being under contract and writing screenplays to order. It doesn’t always work, being hired. But being one’s own overseer can be a little draining. Being able to submit to somebody who can direct your efforts is a nice break every once and while.”

This break is real for Oldham, who hasn’t recorded an album of original songs since 2014’s Singer’s Grave A Sea of Tongues. Best Troubador is another kind of break, representing a different investment of energy than the Legend album. “I’ve never had a hit song and I never will,” Oldham says. “At this point, it is rewarding to begin explorations. Where is the audience that has not yet begun to learn about the possibilities of what they can find in the easily accessible swamp or ocean of recorded music?

“That is what this Merle record is. This music has been sitting right there, and you keep walking by it. I am putting it in front of you, and maybe the right 17 people will hear it. Hopefully, they’ll pick it up and use it wisely.”

Best Troubador is out now on Domino in the UK and Drag City in the US