One Last Heist - Singer/Songwriter Wesley Stace a.k.a. John Wesley Harding. His Finale?

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show.I'm Ted Bonnitt.

And I'm Phil Proctor.And I'm remote today from Nova Scotia.And we're looking down on America and watching all the crazy things happen.

Get in line, Phil.

Take a ticket.

So you're gonna come back to our great nation, aren't you?

Yeah.So coming back to celebrate the fall foliage in New England, we have a.

Musician, Wesley Stace, AKA John Wesley Harding.And he's going to talk about his music and his novels.He just put out a new album and it's.This is the title track called One Last Heist.

There'll be one last heist Before I finally retire I want one more payday One last away day Before I hang my holster by the fire.There'll be one last heist I'll have my final fling One last fandango A climactic tango Roll credits and let everyone.And I've got to get out oh, I've got to get free My reactions are what they used to be There are kids lining up they all got degrees once that was me There'll be one last heist how they reel me back in Teams reassemble But they don't resemble anyone I knew way back when.And I've got to get out oh, I've got to get free My reactions are what they used to be There are kids lining up they all got degrees it's like they can't see an old man like me.If I can just get through this if the world plays along I'll be home and dry if nothing goes wrong if nothing goes wrong if nothing goes wrong if nothing goes There'll be one last heist before my curtain falls it's late in Act 5 and I'm barely alive and maybe I don't want to give up I don't want to give up I don't want to give up at all.

That is One Last Heist, a new track from our guest, Wesley Stace.Wesley, welcome to the Phil and Ted Sexy Boomer Show.

Hello.

How are you?

Very well, thank you very much.We really love your new record.You are an English born singer songwriter who spent years on stage and on record as John Wesley Harding, A name borrowed from Bob Dylan, who borrowed it from a guy named John Wesley Hardin, who was a serial murderer.So you're also a novelist and you're the host of the variety show in New York, Cabinet of Wonders.

Your career has spanned so many changes.You started as a hard rocker.I've been looking at some of your YouTube videos and you've transmogrified yourself over the years and by the work that you've done with all these other interesting artists.You know, you remind me a lot of the work of Rupert Holmes and this album, which I just love because it tells stories in wonderful ways, wonderful musical ways as well.Different styles.But like Rupert Holmes in his album Widescreen, it is.Are you acquainted with his work as well?

Totally.He's a.He's certainly.He's somebody that one disdained a little bit when one was younger because of the Pina Colada song.But then when you look a little.When you look a little deeper into it and see the albums that led up to that, it's obviously high quality work.

And tell us some of the other influences on your own work.

It has.It's been a journey since the beginning.I started off pretty much as a folkie, a folk rocker, a singer songwriter, and I was lucky to have the Attractions play on my first couple of records.But the influences for me then were almost exclusively white male singer songwriters.Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright, John Prine, that kind of thing, some protesting.And of course, in that kind of music, you get the chance to have your say, to protest a little, to tell stories.That's all part of that narrative tradition.As I went on, I just.My defaults are kind of folk rock, which means I've had the Jayhawks be my band on one album and the Decemberists be the band on another.Just kind of find the bands I like and make albums with them.But all.And I've made traditional folk albums as well.But my tastes have developed as I went along.And over the last few years I've just been leaning more and more towards jazz.And when you think of those people, when you might.I'm.I was thinking, I can't really do that.It's not really my world.But then you think, Mose Allison did it, Lyle Lovett did it.Randy Newman's jazzy, Joni Mitchell certainly did.Those great singer songwriters of today don't think twice about it.Nora Jones.So there was no reason not to do it except for my limited musical chops.And so I got.I got my musical director guy called David Nagler, who's the guy from the Cabinet of Wonder show you mentioned in New York.We've done it in L. A too, but mostly in New York.And I got him to collaborate on these songs.So he helped me out with the.Wrote the melodies and did the arrangements.And so the album has a much more Expansive feel where I think the.The music and the lyrics go hand in hand a little bit more.

What I love about your work is you also have a really great sense of humor.And obviously that has sustained you in your career.You don't seem to take yourself too seriously.And that communicates to your audience.And I think it's a tremendous asset to the power of your work as a troubadour.

Thank you.Of course, humor is all a part of that.When you see Don't Look Back, the Bob Dylan movie, sure.One, you're bowled over by the majesty of It's All over now, baby boom, Mr. Tambourine Man.But you're also seeing him on stage going, I looked in the closet.There was Donovan and that kind of thing.And everybody laughing out loud and.And of course, that's a big, like, John prime, very funny.Randy Newman, very funny.It never even occurred to me not to be as humorous as I could be.You know, my first two things were.That were vaguely successful were a cover of Like a Prayer by Madonna, which was funny in inverted commas.There was nothing funny about the version, but it was funny because I was on Sire and it was 1989.I recorded it and they released it, and nobody was doing stuff like that then.Now there's whole serious channels devoted to folkies covering anything you like.And then the next thing was a song about Live Aid, a very scurrilous, satirical song about Live Aid that I wrote.A very satirical song indeed that probably would get you banned nowadays if you did it.And so that was just always part of the equation when you go and see Richard Thompson, one of my favorite songwriters and guitar players.Yeah, he knows.Knows full well how to leaven a set with humor.Some people might just want to hear Walking on a Wire and Shoot out the Lights and the Great Valerio.But he knows that a show can't only be that.And he is a consummate performer of those kind of things.So I think that's all part of the performing solo thing.

You talked about working with the attractions you get compared to Elvis Costello.You have similar sensibilities, you sound somewhat alike and your arrangements are wonderful.

Elvis Costello certainly is a comparison people make.And I've heard in my career a similarity in our vocal tones, for sure.And I probably have a slightly more humorous and sunnier disposition.

When he first came to America in, what, 79, and he had that controversial lyric, one Less Little White, and he had to have a press conference and I was sitting next to him and he was like one of those people looking at a firing squad aimed at him.

Also at the same time, he'd also said that thing about Ray Charles, hadn't he?Which also got him into a lot of trouble.But he was just being an angry young man.And I'm certainly not here to.To defend or say comment on Elvis Costello in the least.

No, he was.You're absolutely right.But that was part of the attraction.

It was.Yeah, it was absolutely part of the attraction.I was never part of a punky or confrontational world.I just.That was too early for me.I just have a slightly biting sense of humor every now and then.But also it's as much turned upon myself as it is on anybody else.

I think it comes from your English background.Don't.

Absolutely does.

We're absolutely famous for making fun of things, especially yourselves.Right.I beg your pardon, but I just love the fact that you sing with your English Persona, but you're also capable of singing in a pop voice, which is like your song.We'll always have New York or.Right.You're putting on a slightly American.I should say an American singing style.But you can still.But you can because you're talking about your experience.

People in America always tell me I have such a British accent.But of course, when I go back to England, people tell me how they can hear the American twang in my voice.But I think actually it's more the phrases you use than the accent.So in other words, if you say awesome or something, it just sounds very American to an English mindset.

Yeah.

And as for my singing voice, I don't really know about that.One of my big inspirations, you wouldn't necessarily think so because I don't sing in the same register or really the same type of songs.Is Colin Blunston of the Zombies.And he was always famous for singing with an English accent.That was his calling card when all the kind of.The other bands of that era was trying to be as American as possible.He was really pushing the English side of his voice and I always really admired that.And of course, the Kinks.

Absolutely, yes.

Can you explain the late 80s British folk and then the anti folk scene?No.Okay, good.Thanks.

We'll move on.I don't know anything about anti folk at all.I know what it was, but I can't explain it.It was the Greenwich Village folk scene that popped up in the 80s after the real.In inverted commas, Greenwich Village folk scene of Bob Dylan and Dave Van Rock and Phillips, after that had all died of death.Greenwich Village didn't have a kind of a focus or a center.And so they started up this.This thing called the anti folk movement.And I think they had a magazine and the people in it were maybe, I don't know, maybe Lucy Kaplanski, maybe Roger Manning, maybe.I'm trying to think.I don't.But anyway, it was absolutely nothing to do with me.I'm just parading my knowledge of American folk scenes.I have no link to it at all.And also folk people have never been terribly welcoming of me.I don't.You'd think I play solo all the time, but you wouldn't.You'd think I might get asked to play folk festivals, but I generally don't.There are notable exceptions like the Philly Folk Festival where I live.I happen to live in Philadelphia, so they accept me.But quite a lot of the folk festivals aren't interested in me.I'm not quite sure why.Possibly because I'm not very good or possibly because.Possibly because I say, I get myself into trouble saying things at certain times.So it could be either one of those things.

Now, you're also, of course, a writer of very interesting novels and you have been a music critic as well.So you've really.You're a very unusual, usual Renaissance man.You're looking at the business from different perspectives.

Yeah.In fact, I very rarely, I think, if ever have reviewed music.What I review a lot is books.And in fact, I'm reading one.I'm reviewing one right now on Creed Taylor for the Wall Street Journal.So I do a lot of that and I very much enjoy doing that.And I also do have done.I'm not at the moment, but I have done quite a lot of teaching of literature and also creative writing and also songwriting and lyric writing.

Did you study this in school?

I did.I studied English literature at Cambridge.

The book I've been reading is Wonderkid.That's a funny story.It's about a rock and roll band that wants to be cutting edge and turns out that their audience is kids.

Yeah, people thought that when I had kids that might result in some children's music, but it's didn't result in any children's music.What it result.What it resulted in was this novel really thinking about children's music.And yeah, it's the story of a band who don't have any success making their new wave music.But when that same new wave music is repurposed for young children because of a strange series of events that lead to a record company a and R man hearing it that way in his head, suddenly that become.They become a huge smash and so they're playing rather than to teenagers and grown ups.They end up playing to 5 to 12 year olds and more importantly those 5 to 12 year olds, mothers and their habits as a rock band haven't changed particularly.So that's the nub of that story,.

You know, it's something that's quite, quite feasible really.

Yeah.But joking aside, I think you do generally have to have a pretty broad portfolio to be in the arts these days.Yes, quite right.

How much of your writing is influenced by your musical experiences and vice versa, or are they really separate?

Of course I think about music a lot generally, but my novels have tended to me to be a little bit more set in the past, before I even picked up a guitar.And not about one's about classical music.But that's not really my world either.Set in the 1910s of the.Of the 20th century, the early bit before the First World War.

Is that the one about the cross dressing Victorian?

No, that's the first one, Misfortune, that took me about seven years to write and that is set in a kind of somewhere between when Henry Fielding wrote Tom Jones, which middle of the 18th century.

Right.

And a kind of up to when Henry Mayhew was reporting on the London streets in Victorian Britain in the late 19th century.But it's been an imaginary Britain of around that time.

Where did that come from in your imagination?

I wrote a song on an album called Awake called Misfortune.I'd written with two words, Miss Fortune.I'd written the first line, which is a disgusting line.I was born with a coat hanger in my mouth.I wrote that in Cambridge in about 1985 or 6, having seen an abortion scene at the beginning of a French historic movie.I don't remember what the movie was, but I wrote that line, wow, that hung around for years and I began to extrapolate in it and I know the way that words kind of bounce off for me.So it's I was born with a coat hanger in my mouth.I was dumped down south.And that would just be mouth and south rhyming.And then to cheer myself up after writing two such miserable lines, the next line was I was found by the richest man in the world.Not too many rhyme options who brought me up as a girl.So that became the first four lines of a song.And I then used the next 20 lines of the song to explore what might have been that character's fate and etc etc.I thought about the song a lot and decided to turn it into a novel.But what you can do quite automatically in an incredible shorthand, in a song, in a novel, you want proper psychology for.And proper.So why was he brought up as a girl, this child?What would been the.Perhaps because the guy who found him the richest man in the world, perhaps that guy needed a boy to inherit the house because a girl wasn't good enough.Oh, okay, that makes sense.So who's he fooling?And suddenly, suddenly, very slowly, the entire novel came together.

What an interesting thing.And of course you also wrote a novel called By George, which is a story of a ventriloquist family told from the perspective of the family and the ventriloquist dummy.

That's right, yes.

What do you.What?Who are you?

I don't know.But I can tell you that my.I do have my grandfather's ventriloquist dummy, George.And George is in the next room.So there are elements of slight family truths there.I wanted that George and I got in touch with the side of the family who thought, I thought might have George, because I wanted George.And I finally tracked him down.And as I was tracking George down, who's a shock headed 1930s or 40s ventriloquist dummy in schoolboy clothes, I suddenly thought, what if there was something inside him?What if there was a message from somebody?What would that message say?Would it be a diary?What would.And that was how the novel came.

About, came out of your family tree?

A little bit of stuff out of my family tree?

A wooden dummy out of your family tree?

Yeah.

Fascinating.

You're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer show.Our guest today is Wesley Stace.His new record is One Last Heist.Let's listen to something else that you've done.I love this particular song.It's called Thoughts and Prayers.

Thank you.

Yeah.Very timely.

It's always someone else until it's you it's somewhere else till it's in your house too.It's just a rumor, unconfirmed until it's true.They're someone else's kids until they're yours.Till they bomb you with someone else's war.So many facts and so much evidence.But you need more.Till then it's thoughts and prayers.Empty promises perfume the air.You do something if you really care.But thank you for your thoughts and pray.You're shocked it happened yet again today.How come the problem doesn't go away?You might consider coming up with something new to say.But you don't want it all politicized?You'd rather double down than compromise?Perhaps it's time to make a dime off of the the merchandise.To sell your thoughts and prayers.There's likes and mics and cameras everywhere?An empty suit, another empty chair?So thank you for your thoughts and prayers.Your prayers are bought and paid for in advance?Your silence purchased in return for the chance to get your hands upon some finesse.And now the ghosts are haunting everyone?You lock the door but there's nowhere to run?There were excuses to do nothing but now there are none?And so it's thoughts and prayers?But the lord can't fix the law down here it's up to you and you're just too scared?So spare us all your thoughts and prayers?Your thoughts and prayers.

That's Wesley Stace, our guest today from his latest record the cut Thoughts and Prayers.The record is called the Last Heist.It's beautiful song, Wesley.

Oh, wonderful arrangements too.And your instrument is guitar.Do you do keyboard well as well?

No, I'm guitar and harmonica.But actually I play very little guitar on these albums particularly I play all the songs solo acoustic.But yeah, it's mostly I'm a guitar player and a singer.

You have a collection of your works that I've heard something about called Secrets or something that is your acoustic works.

Yeah.In Covid I had the idea to as a kind of a project for me and for my fans, I suppose to re record my twelve loudest band albums as some acoustic recordings because I've never published the lyrics, so I thought it'd be nice.So they came out sequentially.Each one came as a number.There were 250 numbered books and if you subscribe to it, you got the same number each time.And in the end they make a little library of my best lyrics.And so what I did was with an introduction by me explaining what I was trying to do on the album and what it was like trying to do it.And then I recorded them solo acoustic.And that was the package, that's what you received.And that finished just a little while ago.And it was a very rewarding, very rewarding project indeed, I think for me and the secret series subscribers whom I love.

That's lovely.My friend Chad, Jeremy, rather of Chad and Jeremy also did something similar with a bunch of poems that he had in a drawer.He calls them the drawer songs or something.And they were.He produced them acoustically with a simple guitar and simple background music.But it's very Effective.I'm awfully glad you did that.

You grew up in England, obviously, but you came over here in 1991 and you became a citizen of the US just last year.Welcome to the Funhouse.

Thank you very much.

What brought you over here?Why Philadelphia?

I've lived in Atlanta briefly, in LA briefly, San Francisco for quite a long time, Seattle for quite a bit.Quite a bit.And I ended up in Philadelphia about 16 years ago.And this is where my children have grown up.And I really just.People say, why now?Why on earth would you do that now?But it seems probably more pressing than ever that I should do it.And it was naughty of me probably not to be voting here sooner.And I think it gives me a little more right to be saying stuff about America if I'm an American citizen.I think I felt a little shy about that before because nobody likes people coming over and telling them what to do, however right they are.And I went to the ceremony.And I have to say, even in this time of cruelty and ludicrous press conferences and everything else that's happening, that ceremony was very moving because what we had in that ceremony was a lot of people who.That was the end of a long journey for them.The people from Somalia to my right and the people from India to my left, we were just there in alphabetical order.They're all coming here because they believe that America can do something great for them.And it's a prep.It's where they need to be to progress.And so that was all very moving, I found, and I'm very glad that I did it.

Good.Welcome.And why Philadelphia?

It's the home of American liberty, isn't it?

I was thinking of Liberty Bell, a little crack.

One of my songs, Kiss Me, Miss Liberty.The first line basically is in Philadelphia, the bell fell down, although I changed it to in Westminster.But anyway, it's the same bell.And the honest answer to Philip well, Philadelphia 100 is a great city for many reasons.It's always been good to me.There's a incredible radio station here called xpn.There's a great library here, the Free Philadelphia Free Library.There is literary history in the streets.There is fantastic parks and art museums.Everything's great like that.But also my wife is from here and felt quite at home coming back here.And therefore, this is where we came when we needed to flee from Brooklyn.

I hear great things about Philadelphia these days.It seems to be affordable and a real sense of city and yet, as you say, accessible to New York and dc.It's Kind of a great location.

There are things I don't like about Philly, but very few.And I'm not thinking of leaving here anytime soon.

Tell us about the Cabinet of Wonders.

It's a variety show.I got into this situation where I had two names and I was writing books and I was also making music and writing songs.And my press person at the time said when I had a new album out and they said, why do you try and keep these things so separate?Why don't you do a show where you do both of them?And I thought, that's quite a good idea because I have various friends in both fields.And it happened that years ago, before I even left England in the late 80s, I used to do a show called the John Wesley Harding Medicine Show.And it's true that my dress book wasn't very filled with famous names then.Nonetheless, it was the same thing, if a very small version of it.And so I started doing this show and 101, I don't know, 30 or something shows later, we're still going.And it's a wonderful show generally featuring four musicians, two writers and a comedian, and me and my house band.And who?The same band who play on this album.And it's a really great show to do.It's tough putting it together sometimes, but it's very easy actually doing the show.

You do it at the City Winery in New York.

Yeah, we've done it at Largo in Los Angeles.We did it at Largo with Golly.Who was on that one?Moby, Susanna Hoffs, Jonathan Letham, Bruce Wagner, Ricky J.The last show we did in la.

God bless Ricky J. Ricky J.Wasn't he something?

Yeah.Fantastic, Said everybody from Joan Baez to Salman Rushdie.

Hussein.I understand, right?

That's true.He did.He read as well.But then he did happen to get up and do the encore song with us, which was great.

Tell me, are these shows archived in any way?Have they been recorded?

Some of them are recorded, but they're not anywhere publicly.We did a few of them for NPR back.Way back when, and they're still online somewhere.I'm not quite sure they capture the proper spirit of the show, but sounds.

Like something better seen live, 100%.

It is.When it comes to that show, my heart is in the room that it's happening in at the moment, rather than some recorded and redelivered version of it.

I read something about your approach to your recording career, which I found very interesting, being a member of Firestine Theater, where we basically would Perform written material live in the studio and it would take on an energy of its own.And then we could mix it and play with it and do various things.But you really, at this point in your career at least prefer to do a live band recording, right?To get all those musicians together cooking for your basic track, right?Yes.

Particularly for this kind of music that.This kind of.The genre of music, whatever that is that the.That this current album is in.I feel like we made an album before this late style and it got completely covidd out and we couldn't really record it together and it was very difficult to do.I had to send the drop to get the drums put on to a friend of mine in San Francisco after the album was basically finished.That's not how an album that's meant to swing should be made.That the drums and the bass should be on there cooking that everybody else can play to.So we very much felt with One Last Heist, which has become the name of the second album of these, that we wanted to do something where we were all playing together, but not all the solos are recorded in that moment, but that we were really cooking as a band.And so for this kind of music, I mean, were I making slightly more electronic kind of music or studio bound kind of music, then wouldn't be so important.But we just felt that we owed it to ourselves to do it that way.

Your album is very eclectic.It has many styles and many feelings to it and which I love.And you.You call it One Last Heist.And the lyrics of the.That first song kind of imply that you're going to hang up your holster by the fire.But.But knowing you, you're going to continue forever as long as you draw breath.So why did you choose that particular theme?

Because it's.I'm in that song.There's two things.Firstly, I thought of that character, that kind of Breaking Bad character who's drawn in for the last time, who's got it because they're threatening his daughter or something like that.So he's got to go back in because they need his particular skill.So it's his struggle.Does he want to do it?Can he afford not to do it?What if it works?Will he really be able to ride off into the sunset?And his conclusion there is.It's late in Act 5 and I'm barely alive.But maybe I don't want to give up at all is his conclusion.Maybe he just wants to keep going forever.By the same token, that's his last heist.This Album.One Last Heist might well be my last heist.There's no particular earthly reason for me to be spending thousands of dollars making a record.I can.I can make it, make the money back.But in the great scheme of things, is it a good way of spending money in the first.And I'm setting that up.I'm setting that up as a rhetorical question because the answer is, of course it's worth it, because absolutely, it's what I want to do.It's art.Art is its own reward.But the fact remains that it could be the last one I do.And it could be the last chance I get to spend this much money on an album, which is all my money.It could.All those things.So I do like the idea of the double edge, of it being.Yeah, it's his last heist, that character in the song, but it's also.It's also my last heist.

You end the record, I think, really addressing that too.I love this song.It's called Hello, Dead Horse.

That makes the metaphor explicit.

Hello, Dead Horse, Can I flog you again?I will use force.I need the money.Of course that goes without saying.Hello, Dead Horse.Can I ride you anew?I'll whip you round the course without remorse.Cause it's your fault.Hey, hey, hey.I know I said it was the end for you but let's reform the band.And I can tell you many reasons too.About 100 grand.And don't forget the fans.Hello, Dead Horse.Please think it through.It's money for a rope.Or we could make you soap.It's up to you.Did you think that you'd be sleeping Speaking tide for all eternity?We sold our souls and we did all right.But life won't let me be.You're in this thing with me.Hello, Dead Horse.Can I flog you once more?A last encore?Oh, I miss the applause.That goes without saying.Hello, Dead Horse.Just one last heist.Let's reconnect day let's resurrect.It worked for Jesus Christ.Hello, Dead Hors.Hello, Dead H. Hello, Dead H. Hello, Dead Horses.Hello, Dead.

Hello, Dead Horse.Wesley Stace from his new record, One Last Heist.I love that one.

Since you played that song, that's the metaphor that makes the idea of the heist explicit, because that is a band literally doing one last heist as their kind of late years comeback to make as much money before they die as possible.

You raise an interesting point there, because touring is really the only way bands can kind of make money these days.

That's true.

So do you have a busy touring schedule?

Yeah, particularly now, actually, because I'm not only doing my own shows for the album, which are some with the band, some solo, but also I'm singing with a band called the Smithereens.

Yeah, sure.

So I'm like one of their singers now.And so actually, I was just at a couple of shows with them in California.But in Northern California, you're gonna be.

Playing Fort Worth, Texas.Austin.

Yeah.

With the Smithereens.That's right.They're both smithereen states.

Cool.Where can people track where you're going to be?

Wesleystase.com There's a nice list of tour dates on there.Easily found.

Are you working on any new books?

Yes, I am.I'm smack in the middle of a novel.

Wow.

Thank you, Wesley.Thank you so much.Good luck with the record and we'll see you on the road.

Thanks a lot.

God bless.

Bye, Phil.

Get back to America.We need you here.

Okay.It's easy.All I have to do is fall from up here.Thanks for listening.