Cody ChesnuTT: The Final Frontier (Interview)

In 2002 Cody ChesnuTT was being hailed as the latest saviour of classic soul with his impressive double-disc debut album, The Headphone Masterpiece. He seemed well on his way to becoming one of the biggest acts of the new millennium with a collaboration with The Roots soon after, and even a trip to New Zealand in 2004. But then he seemed to drop out of sight and his Headphone Masterpiece looked to be a one-off bit of musical magic. A decade later, Cody ChesnuTT re-emerged with a new album, Landing On A Hundred and a new lease on life. Now, he’s on his way back to New Zealand to play a show at Auckland’s Tuning Fork (adjacent to the Vector Arena) on October 22nd. The 13th Floor spoke to Cody ChesnuTT and found that he has been busy exploring “the final frontier”.

Click here to listen to the conversation with Cody Chesnutt:

Or, read a transcription of the interview with Cody ChesnuTT here:

MD: What kind of live set up are you coming to New Zealand with?

Cody: Um, I’m coming with a strong rhythm section actually.  Just peel it down but um it’s been working really well. So I’ll be there with the rhythm section that recorded the album with me.

MD: Oh great, fantastic. And I know you’ve probably been asked the question a thousand times and I kind of want to talk in depth about the album itself. But people want to know what you’ve been doing over the course of since The Headphone Masterpiece was released. If you can give a brief overview of why it happened and we’ll take it from there.

Cody: I took time off to live life, to gain some perspective and clear my head and get a new sense of direction. I became a parent, I’ve got two children, so I just really wanted to embrace that new phase of my life and allow it to nurture my growth. I’m a human first you know and then let the music reflect that growth and that’s really what happened with Landing On A Hundred. I really had the time to observe my surroundings. I really spent a lot of time with myself. You know, my children, which I really I give them the credit for…purifying my head my soul, so to speak, giving me a clearer temple to work from. And I just took off all these different things and allowed it to just work on me. I became a better listener, you know and all these things informed the body works with what you have right now. It was really about just getting some new life experience and then breaking it.

MD: The title of the album, Landing On A Hundred, what does that refer to?

Cody: Do you even chill out to hip-hop at all?

MD: A little bit.

Cody: Ok, well a very common term in Hip-Hop is “keep it one hundred,” which is another way of saying “keep it real,” which is also another popular hip-hop term. So “keep it one hundred” became a term people would say to mean keep it truthful, keep it honest.

MD: In the time between the two albums of yours there’s been a kind of growing movement of vintage or classic R&B singers…the Daptone people and things like that… which I guess is kind of similar to what you are doing. Did you keep an eye on this scene while you were making this record? Do you think taste is catching up with what you’re doing?

Cody: Oh no, not at all. To be honest with you I didn’t discover that movement until I started touring the record. That’s when I was really in my own element, just living life you know, just saying what I wanted to say. The only vintage style record I was really aware of; actually there were two. I was familiar with Raphael Saadiq, what he did with his record. But in terms of Charles Bradley, Daptones, Lee Field all these different bands. I didn’t even know, I knew about the Daptones years ago but I didn’t know about the quote unquote “movement” until I began to tour Landing On A Hundred. And that’s when I began to hear about what’s been going on.

But what I think that that is…I think people are really trying to get a feeling back because in my opinion man so much of the feeling has disappeared from music. You know you hear a lot of sounds and interesting tracks and composition and percussion things. But in terms of the feeling that you know music can really offer, in my opinion it’s missing. That’s why people are gravitating toward the new movement that you’re talking about. People just want to feel it again.

MD: Do you feel that’s been mainly because of your vocals or is it about the instrumentation or the songs themselves? How do you get that feeling across?

Cody: For me it all works together. It’s really hard to separate it because for me they inspire each other you know. Vocal line can inspire certain types of expression on an instrument or an instrument does the same thing. It can cause you to uh, uh phrase a lyric a certain way and put a certain type of emotion on it. So I think they work together. It’s hard for me to separate them. But they all come together to give you that…to touch you emotionally, the way that you want music to touch you.

MD: Now if we can get to talking specifically about some of the songs on the album, I’d like to hear some insight into what you have to say about the songs. Maybe the first one we can discuss is I’ve Been Life. You seem to be roll calling some of the African nations and there’s almost a reggae feel to it. Maybe you can tell me what’s behind that one.

Click here to listen to I’ve Been Life from Landing On A Hundred:

Cody: Right. I wanted to give as much positive and uplifting energy as I could muster up to the African continent because there’s a lot going on; people all over have disagreements, politically and spiritually in a lot of ways, so I wanted to aid them. So music, as we know really pushes the culture and the direction which it needs to go. So with all these great new positives uh, how shall I say this, movement, I really wanted to make a contribution to that. And also, you get so many negatives on the African continent through the media, so I wanted to create a new visual and hopefully inspire a new generation to give them cultural pride and redefine what the perception of Africa could be and can be.

MD: The other song I was hoping to touch on was Don’t Follow Me. Musically has some jazz elements to it, there’s a nice little piano solo and muted trumpet. Also, the lyrics are notable as well. So maybe you could talk to me about that one.

Cody: Yeah, Don’t Follow Me, I was in church one night. I go to this church in my community, which I attend regularly, to write at night. I also played drums for seven years in this church. So I would go there and write at night sometimes and was there writing one night and these chords just came to me. I had my digital 8-track there and I just captured the moment. The words began to come out in a steady stream of consciousness. I set it aside for a while but then I came back and looked at it again and It really moved me. I didn’t think about it at the time but it revealed itself to me that I was talking to my son and talking about all the choices that I had made early in my life and I had become quite conscious now of how important is to be very clear about what you do in life and have a handle on things. So, I just wanted to pass that on to him, about judgement and choices that will be made from your life.

MD: Do you feel you could have benefitted from that in your lifetime…when you were growing up? Were you trying to kind of break that cycle of not getting that information to your offspring?

Cody: No I got the information.  My father was very clear about my choices. But he wasn’t a song writer you know. There was no way for me to listen to that or go back to it every single day. I put it in song for my son so he can always have it there for his moment when he feels like he’s in crossroads and he’s kind of challenged about the decision he needs to make. He can go back to that song and think about having his own mind and being aware of the things he chooses to do in life.

MD: Now the other song I was hoping to touch on is Chips Down(In No Landfill). You seem to be covering a lot of bases there in the lyrics…prison reform and talking about the economy. Do you feel that writing songs about these things is the most effective way you can get the message across?

Cody: Absolutely. Absolutely. I read somewhere recently nothing gets a message through quicker than a song. And I truly believe that. I really wanted to express myself and how I felt about current affairs because I wanted to hear it. I was so tired of just the shallow music that dominates the airwaves and the media. I wanted to bring the subject of conversation I was having with friends and that I was hearing other people have. I wanted to hear that and believe it.  I put down the things that I observed…I began to observe a lot of things. I wanted to put these observations in the music to find a way to communicate and share the thoughts that I felt and that I heard other people  express as well.

Chips Down (In No Landfill,) in essence, talks about how we have become so distracted by our own inventions that we, um, we haven’t gotten to the point where we have fully explored our own humanity. They’re exploring every different gadget that we can create; and that’s great, technology is great but I think its gotten to the point now where our humanity has been pushed to the side and things that we create are brought to the forefront. So, Chips Down, in reference to that, you need to get away from our own inventions and embrace creation in a very simple way and rediscover what really matters and then hopefully we maybe come back to the inventions and use them for better things.

MD: It seems like a lot of the stuff that is out there creates a diversion against the stuff that’s important. In the United States now there’s a lot of stuff going on. The government is shut down, you’ve got problems with guns and all sorts of things. It seems like that stuff gets brushed off to the side because people are so intent on listening to the latest Kanye West album or playing with their iPhone or whatever.

Cody: Exactly, exactly. And if you can get away from all of that for a little while you can maybe find some solutions to all the chaos that’s really going on and exploring the final frontier which is, I think, our highest form of humanity. To me, that’s the final frontier.

MD: So now that you’re back on the road and you’re going to be here in New Zealand in a couple of weeks, how would you say you’ve changed as a performer since the last time you were here?

Cody: I would say that I’ve matured in my communication and I don’t play guitar as much as I used to. I’m allowed to interact and engage a little bit more than I did before. I think that would pretty much sum it up, to me, the differences.  I’ve always tried to write the best songs that I could. But I think the way these songs are expressed and communicated and shared is the major difference.

MD: How do you feel the older songs hold up now ten years later?

Cody: Well I mean they hold up well, a lot of them. I don’t care to perform a lot of the ones that people may know me best for because they are in direct conflict with the man I am now and who I am at home with my children. People ask about them all the time but in terms of capturing the moment you know, I still respect them as a piece of art and for what they did for their time. But right now, the songs I’m singing now is more representative of who I truly am at this point in my life.