GOSPEL TRAILS
With a résumé that features such Grammy-winning and epoch-defining records as U2’s The Joshua Tree, Peter Gabriel’s So, Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, and Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind, alongside various and sundry masterpieces by the likes of Robbie Robertson, Neil Young and Willie Nelson, Daniel Lanois doesn’t exactly have to cold-call artists and managers looking for work.
“I sort of operate by invitation,” Lanois tells us. “A lot of times, I’m very flattered and surprised when somebody wants to get together and try something. It’s like you go on a little journey to see if you can find a new sound or a different manner of expression.”
Lanois is between production projects right now. But that could change at any moment. “You never know when the stars might align,” he says. “I got a call from Beach House the other day and they’re going to send me a few things to listen to. So we might do a little work together.”
Sometimes, while driving around in his old Crown Victoria police car, Lanois will hear a track on the radio that intrigues him. But he laments that he never knows who he’s listening to. “It’s got a stock radio that doesn’t list what it’s playing. I’ll be tuned to a hip-hop station and the songs will have some cool samples and really great bottom-end. I’ll think, ‘My goodness, these people are really onto something’. But I don’t know what they are. I need to get a new sound system.”
If there is a Daniel Lanois sound, it exists more in aspiration and intent, although the albums he touches do share
