David Byrne with KGSR's Music Director Susan Castle

Q: David we feel really lucky in Austin this year because - you were here in March for South by Southwest. And there was a show at the Backyard in August. And you were here last night taping an Austin City Limits. We feel a connection with our city and David Byrne.

A: I've also been touring with the members of [Austin's string section] Tosca... and some other players, too, to augment them. And it's just been great. We met when we did South by Southwest. And later on, we just hooked up and they became kind of part of the band for some of our tours.

Q: Had you ever thought of playing with strings before?

A: I tried it with a string quartet a while ago, just to put my toe in the water to see if it would work. And it worked, but I realized I needed…mmm….a little bit more than a quartet to do what I was doing -- what I wanted to do, to get the sound I was after. And I thought, well, if I can afford it, I'm going to give it a shot.

Q: And you had a vision for "Look Into the Eyeball" with the strings. Working with Thom Bell, who did the classic Philadelphia arrangements for people like the O Jays. What were you... What were you thinking (laugh) when you wanted to put strings on your record?

A: I had heard people use strings in, I guess, a slightly atypical, really, I thought, really interesting ways over the years, whether it was Thom Bell and kind of the Philly soul stuff, which was really beautifully done stuff. Very high quality and yet they were all successful pop songs. Recent stuff by Bjork, there's a Brazilian guy Caetano Veloso who did stuff with strings and Brazilian percussion. Theme from Shaft. All kinds of stuff is very string heavy but also very groove oriented. And I thought, well, there's a precedent for this and maybe I can kind of do something like that in my own way.

Q: Actually, now that you're talking about that, I'm directed towards the song, I think it's Neighborhood? Is that the --

A: That's the Thom Bell one.

Q: Yeah. Should we play that one?

A: Sure. Sure.

("Neighborhood" is played from the CD)

Q: Neighborhood. That's David Byrne, his latest album, "Look Into the Eyeball". And that was one of the songs with Thom Bell doing the arrangement.

A: Yeah. Thom Bell, who had done a lot of stuff for the O Jays and Spinners. He wrote a lot of those songs too. Not all of them, but he's a writer as well. And kind of like, I guess, in a way like Burt Bacarach. He wrote really odd things. If you analyze some of those songs, you'll be going along, there will be 4/4 measures, everything's going along. Then all of a sudden, there will be like a 3/4 measure or a 5/4 measure, because that's how it -- and, of course, the groove was important so it never felt like it was disjointed or you hit a bump in the road. It just went right on by. But there will be these things that, if you sit down and try and play it on guitar, which I would do, I'll get the songbooks and try and see how they wrote their songs, you find out there's some pretty serious stuff going on there.

Q: Well, imagine someone subverting a pop song with odd structures, Mr. David Byrne.

A: Yeah! (laughter)

Q: You know, I associate you with New York and that song Neighborhood, to me, because I'm a New Yorker. It has a New York vibe. But I found out that you were born in Scotland. Did you live there growing up or --

A: I only lived in Scotland for a couple of years and then my family moved to Canada and eventually to Baltimore. I grew up in Baltimore in a little kind of suburban town on the edge of the city. And I moved to New York, I guess, in the mid '70s, I guess it was. And this song was written while I was living on Barrow Street for a while. And well, I had to leave. My lease ran out and they doubled the rent. And I just said, "I am not going to stand for this. I love it here, but I am not going to stand for this."

Q: You mention living in Baltimore. You went to school in Rhode Island and Maryland. One was a design school, another a college of art?

A: Yeah.

Q: So now, these days, your artistic interests are so diverse, when you were going to those schools -- I mean, when I went to school, I had a hope of what I might do when I got out. Did you have a clue of how you would be able to -- or how you would want to express yourself in so many ways when you were in school?

A: Well, at that time, I loved the sense of freedom that a lot of visual art promised. It seemed like -- well, you could kind of do anything. And it looked like it was a lot of fun and exciting and kind of subversive. It felt like music, in a way. I was playing music at the same time, but I didn't have any hope, really, of a serious musical career. I just thought for that you have to -- I don't know. Just odds were just so far against me, that I just thought, I'm going to play this for fun because I love it, but I'm not going to take it seriously as a career choice. But, well, I guess we took a chance and played in front of an audience at a club and they liked it. And so that was it. The snowball started rolling.

Q: Well, I mean, music brought David Byrne to our attention, yourself and your band, Talking Heads. You affected popular culture. You affected our perceptions. But now you work from a much broader context: Art shows, books, photography, choreography. I guess, do the experts in all those fields view you as a dilettante because your first appearance to them was musical?

A: Surprisingly, people are really generous about you intruding in their field. They're really generous. And for the most part, I find that they, they like intruders into their field. The critics don't always like it, but whether it's writers or whoever else, they like it because they -- it shows that somebody's paying attention to the stuff that they do, too, if you're kind of working parallel to something that other people are doing.

Q: Well, when you worked with Talking Heads, you had a broad media base. You know, you were -- it was a popular culture thing. And now the things that you do aren't quite pop culture because they're, you know, photography or choreography or art shows. They have a smaller appeal. Were you motivated to appeal to a lot of people or what does motivate you as someone who creates art?

A: I think it was purely an accident. I wasn't motivated by -- I realized that working within the form -- and I still do -- of pop songs, that occasionally you get something that connects with a large audience, if you're lucky, if all the various factors kind of fall in your favor. But I found that, for myself, I can't plan it. Other people can. I mean, there's other people that can write -- know how to write a hit. And I don't think I can do that. But I know that every once in a while, the stars line up and some song that I wrote appeals to a lot of people. But I never thought I could plan it. So I just thought, well, occasionally, it's going to happen and other times it's not going to happen. And I kind of figure something similar might happen with some of the other things I do. I figure -- I approach it the same way, so who knows, at some point, some little book I do that's done for a small audience of friends or a small community, it might connect to a larger audience at some point.

Q: But the motivation is not the size of the connection. It's probably the connection itself?

A: Yes, exactly.

Q: There's a couple of songs on your latest album, Look Into the Eyeball, The Revolution and The Great Intoxication that deal with music and the like. I was going to play The Great Intoxication. Is there anything we should say beforehand or should --

A: There's a little story. It was -- well, musically, it's one thing. But that's hard to describe. It was written about a guy I know who was having an affair with a woman. And it was just -- he's a big music fan. You know, collects records, hordes his records, makes sure, you know, if it's something he's interested in he's the first person out to get it. And he hears it before anyone else. All that kind of stuff. And so I just -- and I loved watching him fall in love and then eventually after not too long, it fell apart again. But it was just a beautiful thing to watch. And so this was -- they don't know about it. But this was, in a way, written to her, telling her about him, because I knew him better than I knew her.

("The Great Intoxication" is played from the CD)

Q: It's good to have you here!

A: Thank you.

Q: This is exciting!

A: This was -- I was thinking of biking out here. I usually bring a bicycle around when I'm touring. But this was a little bit too far to come.

Q: You visited with us once before and you did bring your bicycle. We were in a different building at the time.

A: Yeah.

Q: We were like on the 7th Floor or something.

A: I thought you were there, so I thought, hey, they're not there. Where did they go?