Sessions: Tim Easton

After a stop in Nashville for an AMA week show with label-mate Buddy Miller the week prior, Tim Easton was back through town long enough to meet with American Songwriter one sunny morning in September. Working on the recordings for a new batch of songs in Nashville, Easton previewed a few tunes for us that will likely appear on his next release as well as songs off 2009’s Porcupine LP, and talked to us about Alaska, bluegrass, and his life on the road.

Where does the inspiration for the song “Burgundy Red” come from?
The beginnings of rock and roll –Chuck Berry and stuff like that. I write blues lyrics all the time. I have a few typewriters sitting around the house and I just type a blues lyric into it and eventually there will be enough to match together. That song was written real fast.  Those are easier bits to do.  It even got rearranged on the spot. Making a record like that is fun, but this new one is way different. This new one, I was with a band. We were out in a rehearsal space in Ohio. We worked really hard on arrangements and everybody writing a part. I said, “I want everybody in this band to write a part to their song that is the hook. I want everybody’s part to be a hook so that everything is cool about it; kind of like a Clash record.

Is it more of a co-write then?
Yes, sure. I had the songs, but that is the future. We are looking at more of a socialistic kind of a thing with the band. I’ve made that mistake with bands before, and I just wonder if that had something to do with the internal problems. This time they did some arranging and some writing. Then, we went on the road for two weeks and we played them every night. So, when we got to the studio we never played anything more than a couple of times. I kept a few songs from them. There were a few I wanted them to work up in the studio.

Did those come out different?
Yeah, basically, I wanted that feeling where a band is just loose and jamming a bit. Rather than, “This is my part, I have to do my part.” There is a little of both. There is about nine songs we knew, and about three we did in the studio. There was basically a lot more purpose in this one than any other record I’ve made since I worked with the Haynes boys years ago. Every other record I’ve made, we all met right there at the studio and kind of worked it out there and everything worked out fine but I wanted to do something different.

So the band is bass and drums and you on guitar?

No, there’s another guitar player from the New York Dolls and the base player is Alex Livingston from a band called Grand Champagne from Austin. We got to together at South by Southwest and they played so well that I never had to worry about a thing.

You played the Ground Control party.

Right, and that band was so relaxing and fun to play with. I haven’t had that feeling where I had a band, so I was like I want to make a record with these guys.

And you write songs?

Yeah, I write a lot of songs. A lot more now than when I was in my twenties for some reason.

Why’s that?

I don’t know, man. I still hang out in bars every night. I’m in bars all the time, but I’m not partying so much so that’s probably something to do with it. I have a lot more energy during the day to get stuff done. I’m not, like you know, hurting so bad.

Well some people, like Guy Clark, I don’t think he started writing until he was about 30.

Slow learn is what I call it for myself. I was busy living. I was traveling the world you know. I was a gypsy vagabond for about eight years there.

Were you just through U.S. or in Europe?

Oh, yeah, all through the ‘90s I was in Prague when all the stuff was going on there, which was great.

You’re going back to Europe pretty soon, right?

Yeah, I’m going back to Europe in a couple weeks. They’re into the obscure Americana stuff over there so that helps. It’s really nice. I have great friends there and I was a street musician there for years in Ireland and France and stuff. That’s where I learned to write songs, basically.

So you guys live in Joshua Tree, an artist community?

Yeah, there are a lot of interesting people out there. It’s very remote, very extreme. There are a couple of cool home studios. We also have land in Alaska now, in Fairbanks, so we kind of have two extremes there.

So there are quite a few people in Fairbanks, right?

Yeah, I live closer to the airport in Fairbanks than in Joshua Tree. In Joshua Tree I have to go down a mountain to get to Palm Springs. Fairbanks is an actual city.

What’s Alaska like?

It’s fantastic. Great people, great storytellers. Amazing musicians. There’s a great bluegrass scene up there.

Do they go out on the road?

No, just homegrown, unpretentious musicians. They are that thing that we like so much and we romanticize about, people like Steve Earle and Guy Clark sitting around on porch jams and you think about them doing that because of that movie Heartworn Highways or something. That’s what it’s like every night there. It’s the same in Ireland by the way. I was in Galway in the ‘80s. I was a street musician and hung out there in the ‘80s and again in the ‘90s and that’s where I learned to write songs. They had these guitar pools where you had to sing or play a song or you couldn’t really hang out, you know.

Do you get a lot of unknown songwriters who just have great songs?

Yes, I do. I know a few. J.P. Olsen is one. He’s a guy who’ve I covered his songs and he just doesn’t want to be in the music business so much. He’s a filmmaker, but his songs are just amazing.

What about just people in Alaska, or just people you meet?

Like Utah Philips kind of characters? Yeah, there are all kinds. There are some who are trying to make CDs and going for it and have a Myspace page and there are some that just don’t want to deal with it. It would be an interesting article if you could get one song from each one of them and make a compilation. There are a couple up in Alaska that I just think are more interested in their life as a subsistence hunter than in songwriting.

Have you always been a bluegrass kind of guy?

Well, yeah, I’ve always loved Doc Watson. I learned his songs early on.

Is that something you picked up from just studying records, or just traveling around meeting people or-?

No, my brothers played those records when I was a teenager. Right off the bat, I was magnetized toward that. My brother taught me “Deep River Blues” when I was still a teenager.

These songs were recorded live at American Songwriter by Kyle Byrd.

[wpaudio url=”https://americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/1_Tim_Easton_Burgandy_Red.mp3″ text=”Tim Easton – Burgandy Red” dl=”0″]
[wpaudio url=”https://americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/3_Tim_Easton_What_Do_You_Li.mp3″ text=”Tim Easton – What Do You Live For” dl=”0″]
[wpaudio url=”https://americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/4_Tim_Easton_Baltimore.mp3″ text=”Tim Easton – Baltimore” dl=”0″]
[wpaudio url=”https://americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/5_Tim_Easton_The_Festival_S.mp3″ text=”Tim Easton – The Festival Song” dl=”0″]