New York at Night: Willie Nile Reflects On His New Album & His Resilient City

Willie Nile has been calling New York his home base for his more than forty years in the music industry. Drawn to the the Village by the call of the Beat poet and acoustic scene, he started performing, and stayed. Though he's become a "citizen of the world" through hitting the road to serve the songs he creates, he often writes songs that refer to New York, and you'll find a few on his new album, New York at Night. The title track celebrates a vitality in the city that's been under check, but one you'll see captured in the recently released video for another song on the album, "New York is Rockin'" Now, maybe more than ever, holding a mirror up to New York's resilience in the past may help build a better future.

Willie Nile is a Rocker, Folk-singer, and songwriter taking in a number of musical styles over the years, but live performance is a particular feature of his process, and he's recently taken to releasing live performances from a friend's studio for fans on Facebook and his website which you can check out. Meanwhile, it isn't long before a new album arrives called Willie Nile Uncovered, on which 26 of his classic songs are performed by other artists in tribute to his achievements.

Willie Nile spoke with Tower Records from his home in the Village and gave us a bird's eye view of his favorite city's recent upheavals, as well as a tour through his album New York at Night.

Hannah Means-Shannon: Where are you located at the moment?

Willie Nile: I’m in the West Village. How is it where you are?

HMS: Not too bad, I have to say. Supplies were at times a little limited and people were a little aggressive about getting them. I wish everyone would wear their masks. I think that’s something that they are working on.

I was aware that if you were in New York, you’ve really been in the center of everything. How has it been for you?

Willie Nile: It’s been really interesting. I was here for 9/11. I was here during the blackout, Hurricane Sandy, and it’s really great the way that people pull together. But the empty streets are fascinating. It’s bizarre. Sometimes to go out at night, it feels dangerous. But the streets are beautiful. The empty streets of New York still have a majesty to them. It’s haunted in a fascinating way.

People, by and large, keep their distance. Like if you’re passing someone on the sidewalk, they’ll keep a wide berth. A lot of people have masks, which is encouraging. But there’s a beauty to it. Who ever would have thought that this city would get so quiet? I remember crossing Broadway a couple of times, looking North and South, and seeing a total of three cars in either direction. It’s like The Day the Earth Stood Still. It’s scary times. I’m being as vigilant as I can. I wear a mask, I wear gloves when I go out. I’ve lost some friends. Some people have died from this. It’s serious stuff.

HMS: I’m sorry to hear that.

Willie Nile: Hal Willner was the producer of Saturday Night Live since its inception, and he was a great producer. He had a unique genius for putting people together. He had Ralph Stanley, the Bluegrass legend, who sang at the Grammys one year, playing and singing “Oh Death” on the mandolin or acapella, record a version of The Velvet Underground song “White Heat, White Light”. A friend of mine told me that they played it for Lou Reed in the studio and Lou just cried. One time it was Halloween, and in Saint Anne’s church in Brooklyn, he had Alan Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Debbie Harry, Garth Hudson from The Band, Abel Ferrara, a film direction---this eclectic group of people. They were reading Edgar Allen Poe poems.

HMS: That’s incredible.

Willie Nile: And hell, they had the whole place lit with jack-o-lanterns. Just a brilliant guy. He was so interesting and intriguing. The kind of outsider you’d find fascinating and a sweetheart. He died in early March, and it was like, “What the hell?” Then John Prine, another real sweetheart.

HMS: For Hal, I think they did a tribute to him on one of the Saturday Night Live from quarantine episodes, right? They sang a Lou Reed song for him.

Willie Nile: Yes. When Lou died, it was just Lou, Hal, Jenny Anderson, Lou’s wife, and Jenni Muldaur, a close friend. Just the four of them. He was really close with Lou. If you knew him, you would really treasure him because of how unique he was, and brilliant, and kind-hearted. He was definitely one “outside the box” guy. This pandemic is something else.

My father is 102 years old and he’s in Buffalo. He’s doing great, knock on wood. And he was born in 1917, and was born at home because of the Spanish Flu, the influenza epidemic. He and my mom were both born back then. Mom’s gone now, but he made a comment, “I was born during a pandemic and I’ll go out in one!”. He’s such a sweet guy, tough as nails. I try to call him as often as I can.

HMS: I’m relieved to hear that he’s somewhere a little more remote, though I’m sure everywhere is dangerous right now.

Willie Nile: It was fascinating to be here when it was raging. I’ll never see anything like this again in my life. I could have laid down in the middle of Sixth Avenue. I didn’t do it! But it was fascinating.

HMS: So in all your history with New York, in all that timeline, is this the biggest, weirdest version of New York you’ve seen?

Willie Nile: There’s a lot of ‘big weirds’. But this is probably the biggest weird. 9/11 was really pretty weird. I lived about a mile north of it. I bought a gas mask, because when the wind would blow north, if I was sitting in my living room watching the television or playing guitar, you could smell the smoke. It left after a while. That was pretty bizarre, and I lost a friend in that as well. But this has been pretty bizarre. I can remember the blackout and Hurricane Sandy, and if you walked downtown, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. That was weird. I would walk with one of my sons and you could not see your hand. If there was a car coming a mile down the road, you’d see a little light, but nothing else.

But this is as bizarre as it gets.

HMS: Where you are, in the southern part of Manhattan, you’ve actually been even more exposed to some of these events in the past.

Willie Nile: Yes. What’s that saying, “May you live in interesting times”?

HMS: Yes, I said to a friend of mine recently, “I never thought I’d live in such interesting times.”, referring to that. I never thought crazy, global stuff would happen in my lifetime.

Willie Nile: A lot of global stuff going on now, with the pandemic, the climate, and more. It’s indeed a crazy time.

HMS: Does that sort of stuff make its way into your music for you?

Willie Nile: Oh, of course. I write about whatever’s around me, whether it’s a party on a Saturday night song, or a love song, or a song about politics. Or human misery. I just write what comes to me. I don’t sit down and think, “I’m going to write a song today.” I just wait until something hits me.

The title track of the new album, New York at Night—last summer, I knew I had a collection of songs and I had plans to go into record. I can always sense when there’s a nice amount of core songs, a solid collection, a good meal. One Friday night, I went up to The Iridium, which is Les Paul’s old club, north of Times Square, to see a show by myself. I came out at 10:30 at night onto Times Square, then I take the subway down to West 4^th Street in the Village. I’m coming down the stairs, on an average, busy Saturday night. A train is pulling into the station as I’m coming down the stairs. The doors in the back car open. I start to walk towards it. I notice on the ground next to a man’s foot is a can of whipped cream, a tall can of Reddi-wip. It was in the pathway entering into the train, and I thought, “This is bizarre.”

Then I realize, coming into the train, that both this guy’s feet, his calves, his thighs, are in two inches of whipped cream. Both legs completely covered. I thought, “I don’t know what that is, but I think I’m going to give it a wide berth!” So, I didn’t turn to where he was, but I turned to the left, since it was crowded, and people were sitting there, and five feet away was this guy covered in whipped cream. I get to West 4^th street, and I come up the stairs, and here it is, quarter to 11 at night on a Saturday night in summertime in New York City. It’s buzzing. There are tourists, panhandlers, long limousines parked outside of The Blue Note.

It was an alive night, and coming from that experience I’d just had on the subway, I thought, “Wow. New York at Night.” And as soon as that thought crossed my mind, I thought, “Man, that’s a song. Is that ever.” I walked two blocks home and started writing it while I was walking. I got upstairs, got my guitar, knocked it out. I thought, “Wow. This is a perfect title. This is a perfect anchor for this album.” Because it’s not a New York tribute album, but there are so many references to New York on the album.

HMS: The question I have to ask is, are you surprised that you never wrote that song before? You’ve experienced so much.

Willie Nile: Well, I’ve written other New York songs. In 2006, I put out The Streets of New York, and that’s the title track. The next year, I put out a live album, Live From The Streets of New York. There’s a song called, “The Day I saw Bo Diddley in Washington Square”. There’s lots of references, tons of them.

On this album, there’s the track, “New York is Rockin’” and the video for that has been released.

HMS: Wow! I’ll have to go look at that.

Willie Nile: I’ve been dying to put it out. We did it February 28^th. That’s when we filmed it.

HMS: Oh, boy, you just got it in under the wire.

Willie Nile: Well, we were going to put it out and then the shit hit the fan. It’s a song championing New York, and here New York is going through this absolute nightmare. The climate wasn’t right for it. But I’m really thrilled with it. It’s just a real feel-good, fight-back, New York come-back song. It wasn’t meant that way, but now it is that way.

We put something at the beginning of the video to the effect of: This video celebrates the great city of New York. It’s down, but it’s not out. New York will rock again. I didn’t want to have a deaf ear to what’s going on, but it does celebrate New York.

Am I surprised I haven’t written “New York at Night” before? Not really. I write all kinds of stuff, and I feel like a citizen of the world, really. Wherever I am, I’ll write about it. But I’m in New York a lot, so it makes its way into the songs.

HMS: That’s great. It’s interesting about that video of New York, that when you made that video, you didn’t know the normality of New York was so threatened.

Willie Nile: No idea.

HMS: So it captures that beforehand, and then when people see it, they are going to react like, “This is what we need. This is what we need to get back to.”

Willie Nile: That’s exactly it. This country is obviously a very complicated patchwork of people, but I think for the most part, neighbors are willing to help neighbors.

I always say, let’s say it’s a cul-de-sac, and Sean Hannity lives on one side of it, and Keith Obermann lives on the other side. And if there was a little, seven-year-old boy who got hit by a car, I would think they’d both run out and see what they could do to help. That’s where my politics start.

I have a story for you. My dad is a great storyteller, and growing up, at the dinner table, he would always tell stories. He would talk about the Depression, we’d talk about the 20s, the 30s, the 40s, very colorfully. He’d talk about the ways that people came together to help each other out in the Depression. This past winter I was visiting him up in Buffalo, and my whole point is about the resilient spirit of people in this country, and of New York, New York.

So it’s the middle of December in Buffalo, and it’s 4 below. He’s getting up to church. He’s 102 years old and he goes every day, except now they are still closed. He’s a devout catholic, a good guy, who would give you the shirt off his back.

HMS: Wow. Just wow.

Willie Nile: Yeah. So he’s just got his shirt on, and he’s about to step outside to get the paper. And I said to him, “It’s really cold out there. It’s like 4 below.” So he stepped out, got the paper, and came back in, and he said, “Yeah, that’s cold.” Then he stopped for a minute, and goes, “Bring it on!” And he meant it. This guy is 102. That resilient spirit is what I recognize again and again. I love it. New York is like that. New York is resilient.

The video is all upbeat, full of fire, and New York City looks great in that footage.

HMS: That’s going to be personally reassuring to me. I’ve lived near New York for about 15 years, and I’ve spent a lot of time there with friends. And even though I’m not a resident, it means a lot to me. It has a lot to do with the arts for me, and different career choices and opportunities which I owe to New York.

Willie Nile: I always tell people that you can come here for two weeks, and if you experience something, and feel it, you can become a New Yorker right away. You know New York, you’ve been here many times. I wasn’t born here either, but you know New York through experiencing it, and there’s so much to experience here, that’s for sure.

HMS: I find New York very welcoming, actually, and I have so many great friends there who have made that possible.

Willie Nile: That’s great. Me too.

HMS: Your new album came out in May, but I was also going to ask you about the other album that’s coming out in August. It’s a large compilation, an “Uncovered” album where other artists are performing your songs, right.

Willie Nile: Yes. I got contacted last Fall by these guys with a label out of Brooklyn. They wanted to do a tribute album and have artists sing my songs. It was embarrassing. I thought, “I’m very flattered.” They asked if I was okay with that, and I said, “Of course.” But it was a little embarrassing. They did an amazing job. It’s a 26 song collection. I’ve been in New York City on and off for 48 years, and to come to the point where other artists I admire and respect would take the time to record one of my songs—I’m excited about it.

HMS: Why is it embarrassing?

Willie Nile: Well, it’s like: “Hi, Hannah. This is so-and-so from Random House Books and all these famous writers are doing a tribute book to you and your writings.” It was like, “What? Why me?”

HMS: [Laughs] Yeah.

Willie Nile: I don’t mean it’s so embarrassing that I hide my face when I go outside. I’m acclimated to it. But my goal is not to become some kind of icon, some kind of American idol. It was always about the songs. It’s the music. Like you say, you like New York because of the sensibility, the artistic timbre of the place. Painters come here, sculptors, crazies, you name it, wannabes.

There’s a place on Washington Square Park where the NYU library now is, a big red building on the Southeast corner. There used to be, in the 1800’s, a rooming house there. They called it the “House of Genius”.

HMS: I think I know what you’re talking about, yes.

Willie Nile: I didn’t know about it [previously]. I saw photos of it in those photo books they sell at CVS, like New York Crime History, Ellis Island History. One of the books has pictures of “The House of Genius”. I love this stuff.

Steve Earle lives near me. Little Steven [Van Zandt] lives a block away. Other artists are around. It feels good. It’s inspiring. I love the Beat poets. I came here to New York from Buffalo for the whole music scene. I caught the whole CBGB thing, saw it unfold, was part of it. I was part of the acoustic scene. It’s just nice to go somewhere that is fertile ground.

HMS: Oh, yeah. Can I ask, when you came to New York, how much music had you done before that? Did you have experience performing yet?

Willie Nile: I never performed publicly before I got to New York. When I was in high school, I started writing poetry, and I went to the University of Buffalo. I took classical piano lessons as a kid. I learned guitar as a teenager, and then somehow combined the poetry I was writing with music. All through college at the University of Buffalo, I was writing songs. When I graduated, I wanted to try to come to New York to make records. I had no experience. I took my guitar, hitch-hiked to New York, and I would jump up and play open-mics.

HMS: Oh my god. That sounds absolutely terrifying!

Willie Nile: I know. Last week, I called my brother Joe, since he lives with my dad, and looks out for him in a beautiful way. I got him on Facetime and he pointed the camera at dad, who was talking to my sister Theresa, saying, “Yeah, I remember I bought him his first guitar when he was 16. The next thing I know, he’s hitch-hiking to New York City with the guitar to play a gig!” [Laughs]

I wasn’t 16 when I did that, but maybe 18 or 19. I came here because I loved the Beat poets, and for the acoustic scene, the protest scene, the Rock scene, from Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, to Frank Zappa. You name it. I just loved being in this environment. I still love it, even though so many people I knew back in the 70s are gone. It’s still interesting. It’s still fascinating.

There’s a majesty, there’s a presence that still fills my heart with fire. It still does. I still love it here.

HMS: Well, you need to be in a place that makes you feel like that. If you want to be a creative person, you have to find that place, I think.

Willie Nile: Yes.

HMS: It’s amazing and inspiring that in spite of all these crazy hardships, you still feel the same way. It’s reassuring.

Willie Nile: I don’t take it for granted. Every day I’m grateful to be here.

HMS: How important to you is the live aspect of performing with other musicians, or in public, versus recording by yourself, laying down tracks? Because I noticed that even though New York at Night is a studio album, it has a strong live aspect to it.

Willie Nile: I’ve got a great band. I’ve always been blessed with great bands. Jimmy Pisano on bass, Jimi Bones playing the lead guitar, Matt Hogan playing lead guitar, John Whitten on drums, and the guests I have on the album like Stuart Smith from The Eagles, who was in my band in 1991, and plays on all my records, Brian Mitchell who worked with Levon Helm and Bob Dylan, the great singer-songwriter James Maddox. He’s the best singer-songwriter that I’ve seen in New York. He’s from Leicester, England, but he’s been here 20 years. Frankie Lee, my dear brother, sings on it, with James.

But when we cut the stuff in the studio, we set up separation. I would say of the 11 songs on the album, 8 of them are just my lead vocals, intact.

HMS: Whoah. That’s even more live than I thought.

Willie Nile: We try to get as much live as we can in a performance. It brings life to it. There’s a lot of different ways to do it. But I like to do it that way. Then whatever overdubs you need afterwards. But this very much has a live feel to it, which I love.

I miss playing live! I had a tour of Spain and a tour of Italy cancelled. A lot of dates in North America, all cancelled.

HMS: I’m so sorry about that.

Willie Nile: Well, everybody is in the same boat. Musicians are doing a lot of stuff from home, livestreaming. I waited a while to do it, since I had already done a fan-funded thing on February 22^nd. Talk about getting in under the wire!

I didn’t want to be hitting the fans up again right away, saying “My cup’s out again.” So around May 22^nd, I went into my buddy Stuart’s studio in New Jersey just across the river. He said that if I wanted to come in and film something, I would have studio audio. So I went in there, and took a buddy of mine. We did a multi-camera shoot. It’s taped, but the performance is live, top to bottom. I start playing and I run through an hour of songs on guitar and piano.

You don’t have to be on Facebook---you can go to my website to see it. We usually put one up on Thursday night and leave it until Sunday night. The fans have been really supportive, and that’s my primary income right now.

HMS: That’s so great!

Willie Nile: It’s a different world, and you have to adapt to it. Right now, online presence is important.

HMS: It’s so cool that you’ve done this so quickly, since some people are still figuring it out. I’ve noticed that you’ve always given fans a lot of access. In the videos you put up, they are right there in the studio while you’re recording and stuff. You definitely open the doors to show fans what your music process is like anyway, rather than trying to keep everything more polished.

Willie Nile: Right. If it feels good, if it feels honest, you know? I’m a sociable guy. I’m a friendly guy. I very much appreciate it. If the audiences don’t come out to shows, then I have to find another line of work. They’ve been very supportive. They buy the records.

I’ve made so many friends. The one thing about traveling I miss is all the friends you see along the way. I’ve got so many friends in the UK, and Spain, and Italy, Canada, across this country. They are dear friends who I never would have met had I not been a traveling musician.

Being in that recording studio, by the second song of the very first show I did felt so good. It felt so good to play again! To sing into the mic. Even though there wasn’t a physical audience in front of me, that didn’t matter, I knew people would be watching. I’m there to serve the songs, really. It’s not about glory time for me. I’m there to share the songs with the audience.

HMS: That must also have been the whole rhythm of your life for so long, I can imagine that removing that from the pace of your life must feel unnatural. Getting back to doing that restores the balance.

Willie Nile: It felt good to get back and play live, which is what it was. And to speak. It was an intimate hour. It rocks. Episode 2, the last song I sang was “On the Road to Calvary” for my friend Hal Willner.

HMS: Oh, yes. I remember that song.

By the way, when musicians release these live streams or videos, it is very meaningful for fans right now. People are really responding to it. It’s helping a lot. It’s bringing a bright spot to peoples’ lives and it’s giving them some time for reflection.

I wonder if you would agree with me that a lot of your music has affirmation and positivity to it.

Willie Nile: Absolutely.

HMS: I know that can’t be true of every song every time, because that wouldn’t be true to life. But it seems like you have a really strong arc in your music.

Willie Nile: At the end of the day, if I’m going to do a show, or play a record out, a collection of songs, I want it to be uplifting. I can have a song like “Holy War”, which is about terrorism, “A cellphone is ringing in the pockets of the dead.” It was about the Madrid Train bombing, and 9/11 as well. Then there’s “It’s Getting Ugly Out There”, which is about the political climate, from the album Children of Paradise, a couple of years ago. I’ll write about whatever is real to me. But at the end of the day, when people leave my concerts, I want them to feel better leaving than when they came in. I want it to be uplifting. The music is uplifting to me. You ccan hear that in my voice. I’m still burning with passion for this.

It helps to make sense of life, number one. I love music. It’s fun to do it. I’m an eternal optimist. There’s plenty of stuff in the world that’s downright criminal, but I refuse…There’s a song on the last album called “Don’t”. The actual lyric is “Don’t let the fuckers kill your buzz.”

There’s so much in this world that can just get you down. And believe me, I’ve been knocked off the horse many times, and I will be again, for sure. That’s part of life. But I’m also resilient enough to fight back and say, “Don’t let the fuckers kill your buzz.”

HMS: That’s beautiful. Thank you. I think fans really respond to that, too.

Willie Nile: We did an edit for some radio event that went, “Don’t let the suckers kill your buzz.” [Laughs] But it’s a real rockin’ song. It’s pretty fun.

HMS: Well, there’s a new song that you all released a video for, “Under this Roof”. And that’s a really cool video, with all kinds of footage of family and friends. What was the origin of that song and video?

Willie Nile: It’s like home movies, you know? I wrote that song with my dear buddy, Frankie Lee. It was a love song, just a beautiful song, and when we recorded, it came out so beautifully. I just thought, “This is going to be a little jewel among these Rock ‘n Roll songs.”

Jimi Bones, my new lead guitar when we’re on the road, and his wife, Nefertiti Jones, went on a boat cruise, and they had nothing to do. So she decided she wanted to put a little video together of clips. So, unbeknownst to me, they reached out to some of my band, some of my family members, and they put together clips of home movies. It came out at the perfect time. When I first saw it, I cried. My 102-year-old father was in there!

It was a reminder of how things were in the midst of this complete shutdown. Nef did a great job doing it, and it really made an impact to people online. I’ll always treasure that.

HMS: That’s another one that’s great to unleash on the world right now, since it’s going to remind people of what they value. How important everyone is to each other.

Do you have any Tower Records stories? Were you someone who went to the big stores in New York?

Willie Nile: Oh, are you kidding me? Absolutely. I played Tower Records. Tower Records, for me, was over on Broadway and West 4^th Street, I think. It was a huge, city in itself kind of place. And what I loved and now miss about the record stores is that you could just get lost in there. “Oh, I forgot about that guy. Look at this female singer! That band!” It was a wonderland. Tower was ground zero for that because of its depth, and its size, and it was so well laid out. You could find anything in there, from Classical to International, to whatever kind of Soul, R&B, Mountain, Gospel, anything. When it closed, I thought, “Oh, man, that’s not a good sign.”

Now every single time I go by it, I look over and see it still.

HMS: Thank you for that story. I used to go to the one up at Lincoln Center and it was so impressive to me. It was giant. It had several stories.

Willie Nile: They were these cultural centers of beauty and brilliance, and passion, and drive, and thoughtfulness. The wide spectrum that music can be. These places were like temples of that. When I walked down the aisles of one of those stores, you felt surrounded by grace, you know? That’s a huge loss to the community, no doubt. It’s like somebody stopped singing. Like one of the birds in the neighborhood doesn’t sing anymore at 6AM.

HMS: Wow, that’s a great image.

The browsing ability, of learning about all these things that you didn’t know about before, like you mentioned, was so important.

Willie Nile: Discovery.

HMS: I know people can still discover, and they do so in different ways, but that form of discovery was really important to people.

Willie Nile: I totally agree. I remember when I was traveling in the Midwest a couple of years back, and there was a mom and pop record store. I wish that they could somehow incorporate a lot of the great mom and pop record stores, that are just disappearing left and right, under the Smithsonian umbrella. Because these are places of learning, discovery, history, all of the above. When you’re an artist, and you’re traveling, oftentimes you’ll play one of these stores. You’ll do an in-store. And they’re just disappearing.

The one in Fords, New Jersey is just great, Vintage Vinyl. I’ve played there half a dozen times, and it’s a great store. This country is not great at supporting the arts compared to Europe, compared to Canada for sure. I know bands in Canada where they get money to make a record and like 30 grand to make a video. They don’t support the arts in this country. I’m not pointing fingers in any particular direction but losing the record stores is like losing a music venue.

Well anyway, my job, our job, your job when you try to write about it, my job when I try to make it, is to lift peoples’ spirits. That’s what it is for me.

HMS: That’s awesome. Thank you. These locations perform a cultural service by being there, so it would make sense if they could get grants and things.

Willie Nile: I know you can’t save every one, but there’s a network of classic stores, from New Jersey to Denver, to the West Coast, all around. Save some of these jewels.

It’s hard to find a record store in New York now.

HMS: It is. I think the resurgence of vinyl has helped save some of these shops, or has had some more opening up, I just hope they can have longevity.

Willie Nile: Me too. I was happy to hear that Tower Records was still in existence.

HMS: Do you remember the Tower motto, “No Music, No Life?” or “Know Music, Know Life”? Did you ever see it on the bags?

Willie Nile: Now that you mention it, yes.

HMS: What might that phrase mean to you in your life?

Willie Nile: I think that’s nice. It has the double-edged sword with both spellings. I think “Know Music, Know Life” is true. Music reflects who we are. It helps us discover things about ourselves. It helps us go places in our spirits and souls that might not otherwise be visited. I think when I called Tower stores “temples”, very much so. It’s like the religion of music. It’s a belief system based on feelings, humanity, passion. It’s invaluable. For me, that makes a lot of sense, “Know Music, Know Life”. It keeps me alive and makes it worth living.