Together We Reign

Barely a year has gone by in recent times that Mark Lanegan hasn't jumped on a plane and made the long journey to Australia for a tour with one of his lauded projects. Last year he visited with Isobel Campbell, before that under his own name, while prior to that it was with The Afghan Whigs' Greg Dulli as The Gutter Twins that he made the journey to our corner of the world. This time he tours with the Mark Lanegan Band – which is the name that is credited to the creation of this year's Blues Funeral – and while one might expect him to have some solid reasons as to why he finds our country so endearing, he's quite low key in response to being asked.

“I've always enjoyed it,” he announces in his distinct, deep voice from his Los Angeles home. And the things he looks forward to aren't any different this time around to his previous visits. “Same thing I always look forward to, seeing friends, playing music and getting some good food.”

The aforementioned Blues Funeral is the first release credited almost solely to Mark Lanegan in a while.

“I really like it,” he says. “I like the songs, I like the way it sounds but I really enjoyed the process of making it, it was a really relaxed and enjoyable process so that's part of the reason why I like it.”

The process was an interesting one. Working with producer and former Queens Of The Stone Age bandmate Alain Johannes, Lanegan had no concept of any of the album's songs before they started making the record.

“My last record Bubblegum [2004], I did the second half of it with Alain Johannes, who I also played with in the Queens and have various other things with. After making part of my last record with him I always knew that when I made another one I would make it with him. So that was in the back of my mind even though I didn't really plan on making a record, I just realised that I had some time and it had been a while since I made the previous one so I started writing songs and recording them.”

Literally. Lanegan would pen a tune and then take it into the studio. “They were all written while I was making the record,” he explains. “So I started with none, wrote one, started recording it and wrote another one, so on and so forth. So they were all written specifically for this record while it was being made. I just started making them and once the song was done it sort of tells me what the next one is gonna sound like, so on and so forth.”

Lanegan is quick to give Johannes credit when it comes to the final product. “I'd write a song, show it to him, describe elements I'd like it to have – how I'd like it to sound – he would achieve that and then he'd bring about a hundred more things to the table as well. So it's definitely a 50-50 affair.”

Collaboration is one thing Lanegan does a lot of and, unsurprisingly, it's something he does pretty damn well. “Unless I was playing every instrument by myself like Prince, even records that have my name on them are collaborative. One of the things I enjoy about making music is working with others.”

It's something that's made easier when you have such talented friends. The guest list on Blues Funeral might not quite hit the heights of Lanegan's previous record Bubblegum (which boasted the likes of PJ Harvey, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri of Queens Of The Stone Age, Greg Dulli and Guns N' Roses' Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin), but it's pretty impressive all the same.

“I need not look any further than my circle of close friends to find a bunch of guys that I'd love to have on a record and they're usually guys that I've already been making music with, sometimes for a lot of years,” he says. “So, I knew that I wanted to have [Afghan Whigs'] Greg [Dulli] on something, I knew that I wanted to have Josh [Homme] on something, I knew that I wanted to have Chris Goss on something, so I specifically looked for places to have those guys and the same was true of everyone who was on the record, really. They were all guys that I wanted on the record and asked to play on it.”

Even though he knew he wanted them on the record, he wasn't thinking of how they could fit when writing the songs. “No, but I look for opportunities.” he says. “I look for the thing that might fit them the best. But when I'm writing I don't really think about anything other than just writing the song.”

As far as whether there's anyone he'd like to work with outside of his group of friends, a dream collaborator if you will, Lanegan acknowledges there are definitely a few, but draws a blank. “I get asked, maybe not this exact question, but some other question quite often, probably because I do a lot of collaborating,” he says. “I almost always go completely blank; it's like when people ask me what I'm listening to right now, I just absolutely have no idea. My answer is that I know there are a million people I'd love to work with if the opportunity presented itself.”

He's not one to over-think the power that collaboration has on his own writing skills, but he acknowledges that it is there. “Not that I can specifically give you an example, but I know – well I hope – that there's things that I learn from every project and I know that I'm taking something into the next one, whether it be another collaboration or a solo record or whatever,” he says. “The beauty of working with other people is that you get the opportunity to do things that you might not do left to your own devices and see things through somebody else's eyes and share a vision at the time.”

Likewise, he doesn't make much of the fact that it has been eight years since the last Mark Lanegan record was released. He's been busy and he's been enjoying himself and the only reason this album came to life was because he had nothing else to do. “Just because I did a lot of other things in the in-between years, made multiple records with some of those projects and did multiple tours with all of them and, you know, it really wasn't something I really gave a lot of thought to, making another Mark Lanegan record, because I was enjoying all of those other things,” he says. “But eventually the time came when I looked at my calendar and I didn't have anything happening and realised how much time had gone by. I didn't really intend for so much time to go by between them.”