The American Glass House

Our Transparent Nature

Glass House Was Built In America For A Reason

Much has already been written on Philip Johnson's Glass House. The pinnacle of modernism, most of what you read about Glass House is concerned with its themes of minimalism, geometry, transparency, and how it encourages reflection. These are all significant elements. As with a lot of architectural criticism (actually, all arts criticism), the essence of the structure is lost when design jargon is used to describe it. 

Glass House is obviously special for a number of reasons, but it occurred to me recently that something about it is supremely American. As Michael Pollan writes in A Place of My Own, the roots of modernism can be traced back to Thoreau and the "American romance of nature." We are a young country and much of our early architecture is defined by stuffy European notions of shelter, to be protected. We have never let go of those ideals and probably never will (its manifested in our territorial nature and demand for privacy). But as our culture has progressed, it's become obvious that we are a restless people. Since we are a culture defined by contradictions, our territorial, private nature has manifested in a desire to spread out. Further, the fact that we spread out and push against the landscape clashes with our romance with nature. 

Glass House is, ultimately, a reflection on the American notion of personal space in the modern world. There are few things more American than building a place to inhabit, one that is yours and yours alone. Glass House's minimalism (living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath) does not encourage long-term visits from friends and family. This might seem cold, but more than most societies, it's our nature as Americans to move away from home and define ourselves. What shapes us as individuals is what we experience out there. This has been our reason for pushing further and further out into our country. But what helps define us is also what ruins our surroundings. Our need for space has scarred our natural world with suburbs, exurbs, and freeways. It's also killed a lot of lovely views with monstrous, bulky structures.

Because Glass House is a work of art, it doesn't resolve any of our conflicts. But it certainly speaks to them (albeit very quietly). Who could observe Glass House and not walk away pondering what it means to have a room of one's own in America? We want our homes to be a comforting bosom, but we can't deny our nature to push away from it, to explore everything that's out there. We want what's out there and can't help but claim a piece of it for ourselves and no one else. 

New Work: Interview With John Morefield Of Architecture 5-Cents

(Photo: Mohini Patel Glanz)

(Architectural Record, 3.25.09)

BRIAN JAMES BARR

At the farmers’ market in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, people can’t help but ask John Morefield what he is selling. “We’re selling architecture!” he answers. “Have questions about your house? Kitchen too small? Bathroom not working? Drop a nickel into the cup.”

Architectural advice is an unusual service to be hawking at a Sunday market known for its organic produce. Then again, these are unusual times, and Architecture 5¢ is just one man’s way of weathering the economic crisis.

Inevitably, passersby see the 27-year-old Morefield behind his plywood booth—built to resemble Lucy’s psychiatry stand from the Peanuts comic strip. Intrigued, they slow down out of curiosity and Morefield explains his mission. More often than not, the person actually has a project they have been mulling over, such as remodeling their kitchen or adding a cantilevered deck. They drop a nickel into Morefield’s tin cup and he tells them if it’s feasible, and if so, how it can be done. If they are serious about moving forward, they jot down their name and e-mail address so Morefield can follow up with a proper appointment.

Morefield’s idea has brought him a fair amount of media attention, from local new outlets to National Public Radio. In an interview with RECORD, Morefield explained how the recession has allowed him to transform a clever gimmick into an entrepreneurship.


Brian James Barr: Tell us a little about Architecture 5¢ and how it developed?

John Morefield: I was laid off twice last year and decided to go at it on my own. Frankly, there are no jobs out there anyway. I worked at the Pike Place Market selling fruits and vegetables one summer when I was in architecture school and fell in love with farmers’ markets. So, when it came time to drum up business for my own design firm, a farmer’s market seemed an obvious choice. I’d had this idea for years as a way of bringing architecture to the people. Many people find architects unapproachable, or they think that their house in nowhere near requiring an architect, or that their project is too small. But a lot of architects, like myself, we’ll answer questions, most of us are approachable, and a lot of the people we talk to here have small projects that just need a little bit of guidance. I built this booth and set it up shortly before Christmas just to see if it would work. On the first day, people were asking questions, then the local paper did a story on me, and people started finding me on blogs and Web sites. The word of mouth has been amazing.

BJB: How much actual business have you been able to generate from the booth?

JM: Everyone asks: “Well, this is great and all, but are you getting work?” Yeah, I am. My plate’s almost full. The projects are all small and they’re fast. I’m not nailing two-year-long gigs. I mean, I had an entire project that was budgeted for under $200—all it involved was just sitting in this couple’s condo with a cup of coffee and redesigning some things and finalizing their drawings. They DIY’d the rest of it. But then I had a project that involved designing an entire 3,000-square-foot addition for a house. Those people had found me through the local media and they told me, “We wanted an architect, but we didn’t know where to look.” But they read about me, found me online, and gave me a call.

BJB: A few years ago, an architect I know was venting about the misconception that hiring architects is something only the wealthy or upper-middle class would do. By positioning yourself in the farmer’s market, are you looking to change that perception of architecture as a more utilitarian service?

JM: From a public standpoint, I think that perception is true. I read a statistic that only 2 percent of the homes in the United States are designed by architects. Developers and contractors are doing most of the homes. If I can change that and we can get to a point where architects are designing homes for the middle class again, that would be amazing. We’d have better design all-around.

BJB: Obviously, you’re not the only architect in Seattle—or the U.S.—to have been laid off. What are some of your fellow architects doing to get by?

JM: I know some in Seattle that are working at Starbucks and Crate and Barrel. I’ve heard stories of architecture students heading straight into food service after graduation. The market is so thin right now, and the pool of talent is so large. It’s unfortunate that we’ve got recent graduates with no professional experience doing battle in the job market against 15-year veterans who need work just as badly.

BJB: You built the booth yourself, and you have to pay a fee to set up at the farmer’s market. How much money have you sunk into this venture so far?

JM: The booth cost a little over $100 in materials. I’ve been at the market probably eight times—a little over two months—at $40 a pop. I make probably $3.65 each week in nickels, but all of that I donate to the Ballard Food Bank, as well as the “digital nickels” I make online at www.Architecture5cents.com, where people can come to the Web site, drop a nickel, type up their question, and hit “submit.” Honestly, the Web site is where 95 percent of the jobs I’m getting are coming from. They may have seen me here or picked up my card, but something about them coming to the Web site, it’s like they’ve already made a commitment to hire an architect. I can sit here are talk to people and get them jazzed about their project, but then they leave their e-mail address and I follow up with them and they’re, like, “Mmm, we’re gonna hold off a little bit.”

BJB: Besides using the booth to hustle up work in lean times, do you have a larger goal for Architecture 5¢?

JM: My goal is to take the booth to a national level and have Architecture 5¢ Manhattan, or Boston, or some smaller neighborhoods like the Bronx. And the online system I’ve set up of communicating with clients and just using the booth as an overall marketing approach, seems easily replicable. Of course, there’s a lot that goes on in the back end that makes it look simple on the front end.

BJB: Such as?

JM: Just the way the Web site works and keeping track of how many visitors come in and come out.

BJB: Did you design the Web site yourself?

JM: I did. It’s all DIY. I built the booth, I designed the Web site, and rolled them out the same day.

BJB: Your idea is trademarked, I assume?

JM: It is. I hired a couple lawyers to help me. And during this whole time, I’ve been working with a group called Washington C.A.S.H. (Community Alliance for Self-Help), a small-business entrepreneurship organization that’s been assisting me with basic business planning. Working with them was really the biggest turning point for me. I was in a Washington C.A.S.H. interview, where they teach you basic business skills like how to do financing, how to pay your taxes, how to do profit forecasting, how to do marketing—all things you need to run a business but they never teach you in architecture school. It was that moment that I realized the business of architecture was not special. I came out of that interview knowing: I’m an architect, I offer a service, and that service needs to be run just as well as any other service-related entrepreneurial business. And no offense to the people who originally laid me off, but that’s where I saw shortcomings, the business side of things.

BJB: One factor I think a lot of people don’t realize is that when an architect is hired for a job, other people are hired for a job—contractors, electricians, painters. Currently, those people are in need of work just as much as architects. Has Architecture 5¢ been able to provide work to locals in those fields?

JM: I’ve been preaching the ripple effect. One nickel turns into one conversation, which turns into one local design job, which is billed by a local contractor who hires a local painter who buys from a local supplier. So, every local dollar that’s spent in a neighborhood is worth three-fold in the economy. If I can start as many ripples as possible in Seattle and assist others, like me, in starting other ripples in other cities in the U.S., we can start a wave of opportunity to carry us through this. Some people come to me at the booth and say: “Do you know a good landscaper?” Yep, I do. The ripple effect is real and it will be a driving force in what fixes this economy. The construction industry especially—the more money that goes to construction, the more money that goes to designers, to municipalities, to suppliers, to contractors, to painters, to delivery truck drivers, to concrete pourers. The list goes on and on, and all those people take their money and buy groceries and pay their gas bill and buy new trucks.

BJB: Because you only charge a nickel, have other architects criticized you for devaluing the profession?

JM: Yeah, the impression they get is that I’m only charging 5 cents for architecture. But I’m not issuing legal drawings from this booth or from my Web site. The nickel is just my way of starting conversations with potential clients. Every architect has had those times at parties where a friend of a friend comes up and says, “Oh, you’re the architect. I have a question for you.” I’m doing the same thing, only I’m collecting a nickel for it and donating it to the local food bank. At the end of the day that nickel will hopefully turn into a client that will be on a normal, billable rate.

New Work: This Is My Will Oldham Costume

SF Weekly, 3.25.08

Unmasking The Man

Beware of the real Will Oldham

Brian James Barr

Will Oldham masks his feelings with a thick beard, a devilish grin, and a stage persona known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy. The 38-year-old songwriter makes no apologies about the fact that Bonnie is an act, a vehicle for his music to hide behind. As Oldham recently told The Wire music mag, watching the public overanalyze his songs made him uncomfortable. In response, he invented Bonnie — a character fans could look to for answers. Because of this double identity, many critics have treated Oldham as one of indie rock's more puzzling figures. But his songs, by contrast, are simple and plainspoken. They are heartfelt confessions about what binds us or pulls us apart. And, over time, these tunes reveal the soul of Bonnie's creator, as his latest release, Beware, clearly shows.

Oldham came onto the scene in 1993 in a different guise. He released albums under the names of Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace Music. His lyrics were a tug-of-war between purity and perversity — in Viva Last Blues' "Work Hard Play Hard," for example, Oldham sees sex as the ultimate reward, but payable only after a solid day's labor (otherwise, he warns, it's just filth for filth's sake). He sings in a weirdly strangulated voice that creaks with an adolescent unsteadiness. Add the allusions to incest and an obsession with "father and mother," and it was hard to take his Palace facades seriously. But since 1999, when he dropped the Palace theme in favor of the no less pretentious Bonnie "Prince" Billy, his music has become more personal and a lot harder to dismiss.

As Bonnie, Oldham's voice has grown warmer and fuller with age, and his albums have equally matured. Though the singer has stressed that Bonnie is separate from him, each record has shown where one man resides inside the other. Over five albums, from I See a Darkness to Lie Down in the Light, Oldham has been the lonesome romantic, a lovable fool, and a constant seeker. Beware offers more of the same, only instead of boasting your average love songs, he revels in the pitfalls of intimacy. And after years of being so antiself-reflective in interviews, in song Oldham sounds rather celebratory about what he's learned about himself.

Portrayed on Beware's cover in stark black-and-white, Oldham looks rather Neolithic. This, paired with the ominous album title, makes the album seem as forbidding as his ode to isolation, 1999's I See a Darkness. But Beware is a jubilant--if meandering--reflection on coming to terms with answerless questions (Have I made the right choices? Why am I unmarried? Is this all there is?). Oldham kicks off the album opener by declaring, "I want to be your only friend" (on "Beware Your Only Friend"); when a gospel choir responds, "Is that scary?," it's like having Oldham's subconscious amplified.

Musically, Beware is a Nashville fever dream of violins, echoey guitar, and horns, while lyrically he evokes the single man tormented with late-night thoughts. On "You Don't Love Me," love has caught him off-guard ("I wanted a woman who loves who I am and what I do/Then I met you"). Similar handwringing abounds on "I Don't Belong to Anyone," in which he weighs bachelorhood vs. married life. But he undercuts the weighty subject matter with musical arrangements that are oddly cheerful, like the soaring triumph accompanying first single "I Am Goodbye."

Listening to the humanity exposed on Beware, it's no surprise that Oldham counts Leonard Cohen and Merle Haggard as idols — these men have likewise crafted intimate public personas. Each successive album is an elaboration of Oldham's real character. Coupled with Lie Down in the Light, Beware suggests that the older he gets, the more he recognizes he's not in control. He seems to think he should stop looking for answers, and instead "lie down in the light" and soak up the mysteries. But Oldham, like Bonnie, is just a man. He can't help but keep searching.

New Work: The Temple Is Built By Hand

(Architectural Record, 12.16.08)

By Brian James Barr

Rising on a 358-acre monastery on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is an architectural feat rare in today’s world: a 3.2-million-pound stone structure built entirely by hand.
Arguably the most elaborate Hindu temple in the United States, the $8 million white granite San Marga Iraivan Temple, designed by V. Ganapati Sthapati for the Saiva Siddhanta Church, is intended to last 1,000 years. Construction began in 2001 and is scheduled to be finished in 2012.

Hundreds of temples serve the 2.2 million Hindus living in the United States, but the Iraivan (meaning "He who is worshipped") Temple is the only one known to be built without modern equipment. Since 1990, 75 sculptors have been working in Bangalore, India, to create the building’s intricately carved stone blocks, which are then shipped to the Kauai monastery 8,000 miles away.

Once they arrive, the blocks—some weighing as much as 4,000 pounds—are physically shoved into place by nine local stonemasons who work full-time on the project. Six Saivite monks also are helping build the structure. "We have the last team capable of building this way," says Paramacharya Palaniswami, a Hindu monk who has lived at the monastery since its founding in 1970.

When completed, the building will measure 71 feet wide by 179 feet deep, and will stand 35 feet from its base to its gold-leafed capstone. The 4-foot thick foundation was formed by a single pour of crack-free, 7000 psi fly-ash concrete and required 108 cement trucks. It was the first, non-laboratory single pour performed since Roman times, according to the foundation's designer Kumar Mehta, a materials scientist at UC Berkeley.

Palaniswami says the temple is the fulfillment of his guru's vision. The monastery’s founder, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyasami, whom the monks call “Gurudeva,” reported seeing the Hindu god Siva walking on the grounds in February 1975. "He took it as a sign,” says Palaniswami, “that Siva wanted to live here." Gurudeva, who died in 2001, outlined three parameters for the temple: that it last 1,000 years, follow traditional design according to the Saiva Agamas (popular Hindu scriptures), and be built without machinery.

Palaniswami says many Hindus in India are happy to see their traditional building heritage take root in the West. "In the West, we build fast and cheap. We don't tend to look upon our architecture as holy," he says. "This is a holy place. We're building a home for Siva."

New Work: Thoughts On Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's Beware

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New Work: Phosphorescent Review In SF Weekly

(Originally Appeared in SF Weekly, 3/9/09)

Phosphorescent

To Willie 

Brian James Barr

In 1975, Willie Nelson recorded a series of covers called To Lefty from Willie as a tribute to his musical hero, Lefty Frizzell. Despite Nelson's efforts, Frizzell remains one of the more underappreciated country musicians, but Nelson's intent was essentially to say "thank you" — from one Texan singer to another. It's in this spirit that Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, recorded a Nelson covers album, the warm and airy To Willie.
The difference between To Lefty and To Willie is that Frizzell's legacy needed bolstering, whereas Nelson's mug could one day very well appear on U.S. currency. To Willie isn't an attempt to rescue Nelson from obscurity. It is, however, an attempt to rescue some of his finest songs, which have been inadvertently buried by his iconic status and mountainous back catalog, the latter of which grows by at least three new albums per year.
Houck mostly sticks to Nelson's sparse Western numbers, like "It's Not Supposed to Be That Way" and "Too Sick to Pray." He uses his cracked, lilting voice to convey weariness, loneliness, and exhaustion — aspects of the Red-Headed Stranger the public often bypasses in favor of the grinning On-the-Road-Again Willie. Fittingly, the Phosphorescent band plays the few upbeat numbers ("I Gotta Get Drunk," "Pick Up the Tempo") as if they were swimming through a hangover, which gives the tunes the woozy, sunbaked tone they deserve. But the bleaker numbers are the most successful, especially when Houck employs Nelson's riveting between-verse pauses. On a song like "Can I Sleep In Your Arms Tonight" Nelson's pauses lent a hair-tingling emotional gravity. When Houck pauses in the same place, it's an acknowledgement — a reminder of the gaping void Nelson will leave behind when he's gone.

Outside The Boundary Of The Civilized World

At The Locker Room in White Center. Photo by Kerri Harrop

If you want to visit a place just outside the boundary of the civilized world, walk south from our house on 13th Ave., take a right on Cambridge, turn left onto 16th, and cross Roxbury Street. If it's a Friday or Saturday night, the King County Police will likely be parked there, almost like gatekeepers while the ne-er-do-wells walk in and out of the bars to smoke. In the opinion of most Seattle residents, the neighborhood of White Center is an unsightly place, where the chief businesses are pawn shops, adult video rental, and working class dives that open in the early a.m., giving the drunks a place to get in out of the rain. This was also my opinion before M and I bought our house, which, while not technically in White Center, is only a few blocks away. 

My description of White Center is meant in jest. While it's certainly not an upper-class strip of trendy bars and boutiques, it's not a third world country either. White Center is probably the most maligned neighborhood in all of Seattle. But it's also the neighborhood with the most soul. 

The poet Richard Hugo was born and raised in White Center. In his autobiography The Real West Marginal Way, Hugo wrote: "When people from White Center applied for work in the 20s and 30s, they seldom mentioned White Center, either in the interview or on the application form. The smart ones said West Seattle. White Center had the reputation of being just outside the boundary of the civilized world." 

Today, a similar reasoning is often employed in real estate. The name "White Center" is a bit of a handicap if you're trying to sell. Better to say "West Seattle" and debate the formalities. Talk to any of the locals, however, and they'll tell you that the neighborhood has changed considerably, especially over the last few years. And though they are fiercely proud of where they live...quoth Hugo: "(White Center's) reputation was not without reason." 

Here's the deal: Roxbury Street marks the city limits and is considered by most to be dividing line (physically, culturally, socially, psychologically, legally) between White Center and the rest of Seattle. Everything south of Roxbury is considered unincorporated King County. There, everything is just a little bit rougher, grittier..where Seattle pushes its riff-raff so it doesn't have to deal with them. It's been the center of an annexation debate for over two decades. Each mayor that gets elected ignites an argument in favor of making White Center part of Seattle proper, which is ultimately shot down by city council who claim it would suck up more city resources (police, ambulance, etc.) than its worth. Still, the neighborhood has its champions in the council who feel, as most of us down here do, that White Center is Seattle's last great undiscovered neighborhood. An up-and-comer, in other words. I strongly feel the same and would wager that in about five years, we'll be looking at a radically different part of town. For proof, we have the two signifiers of every up-and-coming neighborhood. The first being the success of White Center's lone coffeehouse (and cultural core) Cafe Rozella, the opening of punk rock ice cream parlor and all-ages venue Full Tilt, and the spiffing up of W.C. mainstay the Triangle Pub, the latter of which was described to us by the new owner as "scary" before he bought it. None of these business are out to gentrify the neighborhood. Rather, when we've talked to the owners of each about their reasons for opening businesses, they say "Well, we've lived here for years and know the people around here wanted a safe place to go and hang out." It's true. And those places to hang out help draw people to White Center who would never even consider it. Some of them, like M and I, like it so much they think it might be a good place to live. Heck, houses are actually nice...and cheap! This is what helps draw that other big signifier of the up-and-coming 'hood: The creative class. The White Center vicinity is now home to Dave Hernandez of The Shins, singer-songwriter Damien Jurado, Dutchess & the Duke frontman Jesse Lortz, and actress and musician Sarah Rudinoff, to name a few.

Since moving to the White Center area, M and I have felt something we never felt living in other parts of Seattle...a sense of community.  And all great communities consist of people who look out for one another and take pride in their area. The majority of people do not want to live in a bad neighborhood, regardless of race, color, or class. Property is affordable in White Center, which is why it's been long desirable to immigrants and working people. Seattle boasts a lot about diversity, but the truth is the cost of living has (inadvertently?) rendered it one of the more racially segregated cities in the country. I've come to the conclusion, though, that White Center is the only truly diverse part of town simply because it doesn't go out of its way to make a statement about it. Reason being, people do not move to White Center for the ethnic diversity. They move to White Center because its affordable, and affordability means the same thing to everyone no matter what color you are. Here, the average two-bedroom home costs $$250,000-$275,000. Numbers like that are very leveling--you can assume everyone living down here makes about as much as you. Otherwise they would have bought elsewhere. Class is a bigger divider than race, and nearly everyone in White Center--black, white, Mexican, Samoan, Vietnamese, whatever--has an understanding and respect for each other because we all belong to the same tribe: The Working Class. We own our homes because we worked and saved enough to make the down payment. We go to work each morning so we can pay the mortgage. If one of us buys a new car, it's because we ran the old one until it wouldn't go no more. This isn't to say the neighborhood doesn't have its problems. There are break-ins, car-theft, gang activity, and drugs being sold on the sidewalks. But when one of us is affected by these crimes, we all feel it and take equal blame for allowing it to happen. 

I want White Center to change. Most everyone here would like to see it change. But none of us would like to see White Center lose its character in the process. So far, it hasn't. What change has occurred has largely been because members of the community wanted something better for their community. 

Cancel Your Vacation...Rodriguez Is Coming To Seattle

Yesterday, I swung by the offices of Light In The Attic Records, a Seattle label founded by my friend Matt Sullivan. I'm currently working on a writing project for the label, but while I was there, he informed me that the one and only Rodriguez finally scheduled a Seattle show. 

He'll be playing the Triple Door June 23rd. 

This is great news for a few reasons. For starters, since LITA reissued Rodriguez's phenomenal 1970 album Cold Fact last year, he's been playing shows all over the country to rave reviews while we in the Northwest have had to sit patiently waiting for enough local interest to build for him to schedule a show (meaning, those of us who were already fans spent a lot of time telling everyone we knew to get hip to this shit fast). Secondly, I am rarely successful in turning people on to music. When I like an album, I have a penchant for making grand, definitive statements about it to others along the lines of "This is one of the best American albums since (fill in blank)." Embarrassingly, their opinion normally falls short of my expectations. That didn't happen when with Cold Fact. Everyone I turned on to this record fell immediately in love with it, including my darling M. Which brings me to the third reason his scheduling a Seattle date is so awesome. Originally, M and I were planning to be in Montana June 23rd. When I told her about Rodriguez's show, her response was: "Well then we gotta change our plans. We have to be here for that show." 

My wife loves music, but she does not enjoy live shows (I have a slightly higher tolerance, but not by much). For her to say we need to change our plans so we can be in Seattle for a show is saying something. 

Yes, Rodriguez is that good. So good he'll move you to cancel your summer vacation. (Hey, Light In The Attic, I think I just wrote you a marketing blurb). 

I Don't Believe In Kicking Dead Horses, But...

In case there was any doubt that the Republican Party has run out of ideas, look no further than their method of defense. Listening to their arguments against health care reform and government's two-percent share in the economy, its obvious that they're retreating to Reagan-era philosophies. Expect to hear cries of "state socialism" for the remainder of this year and perhaps up through 2012. Though they have every right to be on the defensive, it's not going to do them any good. Post-partisan political theories aside, President Obama (and the Democratic Party overall) is profoundly lucky to have inherited this current crisis. Right now, it's glaringly obvious that nothing is working. Therefore, any idea the Obama administration has for fixing something sounds good to the public. Ultimately, that 80-percent approval rating of his has less to do with the good things he's done (it's too early for us to have seen results) and instead amounts to a wide-scale national opinion of "Sure, give it a shot!" Each time that small group of (admittedly boisterous) Republicans cries wolf at any of Obama's plans for reform pushes the party further and further into an isolated position and diminishes their political capital. When the majority of Americans are agreeing that something needs to be done and done quickly, any Republican argument against it is proof that they are only looking out for the best interest of the party, not the American people. 

New Work: Raphael Saadiq in Seattle Weekly

(Seattle Weekly, 3/4/09)

Raphael Saadiq sees no need to update the old R&B playbook.

By Brian James Barr

Raphael Saadiq just wasn't made for these times. Then again, maybe he was. To call him an "old soul" would hit the bull's-eye dead on. He prefers Stevie Wonder over Lil Wayne, Booker T & the MGs over G Unit, and Gamble & Huff over Def Jam. Out of step he may be, but not out of touch. His résumé boasts collaborations with R&B heavyweights like Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, and Joss Stone, all of whom have called upon Saadiq for production duties when they need something a little more "retro."

Obviously Saadiq is not dismissive of today's R&B, otherwise he wouldn't agree to work with those artists. If anything, Saadiq likes to think of himself as a "keeper of the flame"—he is to R&B what the Roots are to hip-hop, upholding the spirit of a genre as it existed in its heyday decades ago.
"There's a lot of music out there today that I like," Saadiq says via phone, his speaking voice as unhurried as Sunday morning. "Mostly indie rock and soulful rappers, y'know. I like Santigold and Kings of Leon, people that just get up there and... I don't know, it just seems like back in the day people were willing to take more risks and be themselves. Nowadays it just seems like everybody's in the same army, y'know?"
Whatever army it is, Saadiq is not a member. For 20 years, first as the frontman for new-jack-swing group Tony! Toni! Toné! and later as a solo artist and in-demand producer, he's been retrofitting yesterday's sounds for modern ears (check out the lush Aretha Franklin–supper club feel he supplied Mary J. Blige with for her song "I Found My Everything"). He's well aware of what era he lives in, though, and this in many ways makes him the only artist able to release an album of '60s/'70s replicas that still sounds current.
That set of Motownish jams, 2008's The Way I See It, is undoubtedly the finest retro-soul effort since 2005's Keep Reachin' Up by Nicole Willis & the Soul Investigators. Thirteen tracks of unabashedly old-school R&B,The Way I See It sounds weathered, but not just because of the production. Like Saadiq himself, the record has an unhurried, uncompetitive pace; unlike most contemporary R&B, the songs aren't jacked up to ecstatic highs or cartoonish lows. From the toe-tapping beats to his smooth-as-whipped-cream falsetto, the record harkens back to a feel-good era. Just as "My Girl" and "Just My Imagination" seem effortless, so does The Way I See It. Most will call it "retro," but Saadiq prefers to call it his "downtown" record.
"I was picturing that kind of a dress-up night," he says. "Like when you'd get dressed up to go see Cab Calloway or Duke Ellington, y'know, in Harlem or wherever. So I wanted it to be that kind of a record that made people feel like they were going out that night and feeling good."
Like Badu, Saadiq is an analog sage in a digital age—a throwback, if you will. And he's not ashamed to admit it. "I am a throwback," he tells me. "So that's fine with me." Every era needs old souls to keep the new ones in check, and that's what makes his latest album so vital right now. Talking to Saadiq, it's obvious he feels many things are missing from today's music.

These elements are all present on his recent disc. "Oh Girl" is a gentle crooner with lyrics ("You know you saved me from myself/You knew that I needed help") that are a reminder to male singers that they'd do well to tone down the machismo. On "Never Give You Up," a duet with Stevie Wonder, Saadiq's soft vocal delivery ("She's so sexy/The way she walks, the way she talks/Drives me crazy") draws the line between love-making sensuality and fuck-me-hard sexuality. Similar to a Marvin Gaye record, sex and social issues commingle here. "Somebody please tell me what's going wrong," he cries on the Katrina-inspired "Big Easy," his breathiness proving that fist-clenched anger isn't the only way to express outrage.

So how does an artist firmly planted in the modern world manage to channel such vintage moods?

"It was just about being in that frame of mind, y'know, putting yourself in that place," he says. "I gave my mind and body to the music. I wasn't really thinking about the label's reaction or if the TV bookers will get it or concert promoters or fans or whoever."

But rave reviews and plenty of bookings prove they do get it. And Mary J. Blige gets it. So do Q-Tip and D'Angelo, ?uestlove and Badu, Macy Gray and Bilal. Safe to say, few artists have stayed so successfully out of step as Saadiq.