By Sonny Smith
I kept seeing this guy at all the shows, always with the big Grizzly Adams-type beard, with a flannel shirt and cowboy boots. A tall man, long hair, large features. I met him outside the public library once. It was raining, and he stood there spouting some convoluted scheme to make art across the country. I couldn’t puzzle together what the hell he was talking about.
Every time I see him at a show he’s setting up little microphones all over the mic stand and the stage, and then video taping it, too. He’s got a big Samsonite suitcase full of digital tape. He’s probably got about one hundred thousand billion hours of live local music - not to mention video. The Oh Sees, Jolie Holland, Michael Musicka, Entrance, etc.
“I like the idea that music actually makes a difference” he said to me. “More than just a soundtrack to people’s lives. I wanted to shoot stuff and put it in the context of my life, the story of my own life, so the songs tell my story. Isn’t that what a mix tape is all about?”
I’m always wondering where all this footage is, where all this music is. Is it in storage? Is it at a friend’s house? Will there be a 32-hour documentary made some day of the local scene? Even when I interview him I don’t really get the answer. He appears to be sort of swimming through all this stuff. He’s documenting it, but he’s moving on as well.
“I went to the Folk Yeah thing - there was a lot of trash left behind. A lot.”
“My first interview was with Calvin Johnson. He didn’t like it. He said I was stupid. I said, ‘I know. That’s the point.’ I wanted to ask the dumb regular questions and get his reaction. I was going to edit it so the dumb questions were off-camera, then have his reactions. But he terminated the interview."
There is a very old interview of Elliot Smith. I saw this one once - a little collage of footage he showed at ATA. He put a song of my own to some crack-addled junkie living on the street. There was some footage of Jolie Holland and some other folks I didn’t recognize.
“I liked Michael Musika," Arnold said. "He’d play some show - he’d get under a table, crouch with his guitar under a table, and play a song. I thought, OK, I can follow this guy around with a camera.”
But how do you make money?
"I work up north every fall. In three to five weeks you can make five or six grand. If you work two months you could maybe make ten grand. I have a friend who has two farms. I was looking for farms between Ohio and California at one point. I called him one day, and he said, ‘I’ve got you covered,’ so I work for him.
His old man was a migrant worker, Arnold told me. I think he’s a migrant worker, too. He’s always coming in and out of town. But he’s not following watermelon or picking peaches up the coast - he’s following music.
“I’m looking for another music spot. Portland, sometimes. Something varied. With different kinds of music," he said. "Or I’ll go live on a farm for a while. Maybe up in Firebaugh [in San Joaquin Valley].”
Arnold has no apartment and no car. I get the sense he’s always traveling. It seems like he’s here or there - I can’t keep track because he’s moving all over.
“In Colorado, I was in Crestone on a friend's pirate radio station," said Arnold. "We played your song 'Bad Cop,' then we played 'Fuck tha Police' by NWA.”
He told me once about these water tower sessions. He’d found an old empty water tower up north in the woods, and invited some musicians up there to play guitar inside the thing. The water tower's interior had this incredible reverb - it was like playing inside a reverb chamber.
“I brought the guys from White White Quilts," he recalled. "Then the second time around, it got out of hand - too many people. Someone wanted to bring a generator, get serious about it. We got busted. It was illegal.”
Why don’t you work on film more, make money doing documentaries?
"There are all these people documenting things," said Arnold. "They’re just documenting to document. They just sit there with their camera, holding it steady. There’s no art to it. It’s not human. Plus, I don’t like all these faux documentaries that are made.... Once they get behind the camera, and there is some commercial agenda, it’s dead."
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