Lori Goldston: American cellist on playing with Nirvana and David Byrne
Lori Goldston was the cellist on Nirvana's famous MTV Unplugged session. Pic: Jenny Riffle
A classically trained cellist that takes pride in her “rigorous de-training”, New York-born cellist Lori Goldston specialises in improvisation and blurring the lines between musical genres with her work.
Moving to Seattle in 1986, playing in bands and as a session musician, she witnessed the grunge gold-rush firsthand, joining Nirvana on the road in 1993 for US touring that included the now-legendary appearance on MTV’s Unplugged programme.
Among her other former collaborators are Talking Heads’ David Byrne, US drone outfit Earth, and ambient trailblazer Terry Riley.
“I moved to a place that was full of bands, full of experimental music. The University of Washington had a very good musicology department, so it drew a lot of people interested in all kinds of work from all over the world. All of my friends who had grown up there had either grown up in bands from when they were kids, or had been going to shows forever.
“It was a really nice environment to be in, and it was a bit of a shock when the [“grunge”] bands became famous, because there had been pretty nerdy musicians who had come there before, people who wanted cheap rent and to be around a lot of players. Nobody would have dreamt of coming there to be famous.”
“I toured with Nirvana, I did a US tour with them in 1993, prior to that session, that in a sense, was set up to prepare for that session - there was an acoustic portion of, of every show. It was a high-pressure situation, certainly, with tonnes of cameras around, and I adjusted pretty quickly to playing for very, very large crowds, extremely nerve-wracking at the outset.
“We had been touring and playing that material, and we rehearsed it in the days before, but there was a lot of trepidation - ‘how is this going to work, is it going to sound good?’ And to me, it felt a little bit shaky when we played it. I don't know why. Now when I hear it back, it sounds really good, but at the time I was surprised.”
“[Playing with Goldston’s band Black Cat Orchestra in 1997 on solo album Feelings] was just a one-off. It was funny, it was a case of the Hollywood trope of somebody being discovered while working as a waitress in a diner.
“He had been doing a book signing a few blocks away from where we had this very popular monthly gig, so everybody kept coming in and saying, 'oh, are you gonna go hear the Black Cat Orchestra afterwards?'.
So he came, and when he heard us, he had been wrestling with this one song that he wanted to have on his album [They Are in Love], but he couldn't quite figure out how to make it work stylistically.
“When he heard us, he's like, oh, great, that's how this sounds. He sent me a cassette of the song, I made an arrangement, and then he came here a month later, something like that, for a few days, and we recorded that track - he was very open.”
“Dylan [Carlson, guitars] and Adrienne [Davies, percussion] are both really like family for me, and it's wonderful to work with them. People always assume that Dylan and I had been friends forever, but I actually only met him right around when I started working with them. I was smitten with the music.
“I remember our Cork gig [at Cyprus Avenue in 2011]. Somebody came rushing up to us and started asking Adrianne, ‘when you do that one slam, are you hitting the kick drum first?’ And I was like, ‘what? What is this place?’. This is not somebody asking for an autograph, this is like a real musician town.
“We were only there for, I don't think even 24 hours, and I had just one experience after another like that. I heard so much good music just out on the street, in the lobby of the hotel where we were staying, somebody sang this long ballad to the band they were sitting with, it was just incredible.”
- Lori Goldston plays a run of solo cello shows in Ireland: Plugd Records in Cork on Wednesday July 6; Dolan’s Kasbah in Limerick on Thursday July 7; The Dock Arts Centre in Carrick-on-Shannon, Leitrim on Friday July 8; and Drogheda Arts Centre in Drogheda on Saturday July 9.
