The Ledge - set to play nugget (rgj.com)

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110908/...Nugget-weekend

Lindsey Buckingham gets reflective on new album; set to play Nugget this weekend
12:53 PM, Sep. 8, 2011 | 1 Comments

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James Ball
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For Lindsey Buckingham, there is the Big Machine and there is the Small Machine.

The Big Machine is Fleetwood Mac, the band he’s played with since 1975 alongside Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and, until recently, Christine McVie. The Small machine is Buckingham’s solo work, which will be thrown into the spotlight when he performs Saturday night at John Ascuaga’s Nugget.
It’s a symbiotic relationship, Buckingham said last week in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home.

“What happens with a group like Fleetwood Mac, is that it is a brand,” Buckingham said. “There’s an axiom in business where you define the brand, find the formula and you exploit the brand; then you use up that formula until it is used up and you move on, which is a great business formula.”

But, he points out, “It isn’t really a very good formula for someone aspiring to be an artist in the long term.”

Which is where the solo work comes in.

“The solo work, because it’s inherently for a smaller audience, it does sort of tap into the left side of my musical palate, because there’s nothing commercial to uphold,” he said. “It’s been the solo work that’s allowed me to maintain my ideals and to let me aspire to be the artist.”

Bukingham’s Nugget concert is the first night of more than 30 shows across the United States in support of his most recent solo album, “Seeds We Sow.”

The longtime Fleetwood Mac guitarist offers another analogy to describe the process of recording the album, on which he wrote, performed and produced a majority of the tracks. If working with Fleetwood Mac is like making a big-budget Hollywood film, then the solo work is like a painter sitting quietly alone with a canvas, he said.

“It’s a more meditative thing, and the work will start to define itself and lead you off in directions you might not expect to go,” Buckingham said.

Over the course of the 11 tracks that make up “Seeds We Sow,” Buckingham gets reflective, talks about karma and finds himself in a good place.

“It seemed to be a culmination of a lot of the things I’ve learned over the last five, six or seven years, and perhaps the point I’ve arrived at being a father and a husband, with all of that having happened relatively late,” said the 61-year-old Palo Alto, Calif. native who has three young children. “I got to the end and went, ‘Wow, this turned out great.’ It could be really the best solo work I’ve done.”

Buckingham said the album’s title reflects the fact that we all make choices and that, sooner or later, there are consequences.

While the first 10 tracks are original Buckingham compositions, the closing song is The Rolling Stones’ “She Smiled Sweetly,” a cover he recorded a few years ago and has been trying to find a home for ever since.

“It’s not the first Rolling Stones cover I’ve done (he included the Stones’ ‘I am Waiting’ on 2006’s ‘Under The Skin’). ‘She Smiled Sweetly’ seemed like a great ending and it seemed to fit in with everything else,” he said.

He said his Nugget show will consist of one-third solo acoustic performance and about two-thirds with an ensemble.

“You’re going to see a greater number of songs with just me on acoustic guitar, because as I’ve grown and matured, I’ve started to value what’s essential and what’s the center. I’ve come to realize that the guitar is, in fact, my center,” he said. “You’re going to see a few Fleetwood Mac numbers, as well, but all in the context of something that’s presented with a little more rigor.”

One of the Fleetwood Mac songs he has transformed into a breed of its own is the chart-topping “Big Love.” Buckingham said the first time he stripped the song down and played it without a band behind him, something clicked.

“That was a real defining moment in time. I don’t even remember what the impulse was behind taking a song which had been recorded as an ensemble and I honestly can’t tell you why it ended up that way, but I started doing that and it was going down in storm onstage and I was thinking, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “That song became a kind of a template for many other songs that I’ve tried to approach in a similar manner, which is to try to get one guitar to more or less do the work of one whole track, but then still put production values over that.”

Buckingham said he can’t decide whether he enjoys performing solo more than with Fleetwood Mac.

“They both have their benefits. The funny thing about Fleetwood Mac, (on the last tour) I began to realize that people were not particularly interested in hearing anything new from us, and that’s OK,” he said. “At that point, it ain’t what you’ve got, it’s what you do with what you’ve got. And so, again, the small machine allows me to bring a vitality and a freshness back into that situation.”

Lest he winds up getting too philosophical, he cuts himself short and sums it all up.
“It’s hard to pick and choose which one is more valid,” he said. “But I love it; it’s so much fun working on this.”

Lindsey plays 'Big Love' solo