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This is the first year I'll have made a living playing music," admits 41-year-old Nels Cline. "But making a living has never been the goal. I exist to have feelings wash over me and then destroy me. That's what playing guitar is all about-pure surrender, total immersion." Cline's been immersed in work lately, appearing on the critically acclaimed Geraldine Fibbers' new Virgin disc Butch, former Minuteman bassist Mike Watt's adventurous new Columbia outing Contemplating the Engine Room, and two independent projects with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. He has also cameoed on upcoming releases by MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer and singer/songwriter Mary Lou Lord, and plays in the group Banyan with Jane's Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins.
A well-schooled though willfully anarchic player who recalls Marc Ribot, Tom Verlaine, Bill Frisell and Lifetime-era John McLaughlin, Cline has always kept one foot in the avantgarde and one in rock. He grew...