American Songwriter » January/February 2010

Robert Plant: The Unlikely King Of Americana

Austin L. Ray — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 16:39:27 +0000

Buy This Issue A fiery orange color dominates the sky above Clearwater, Florida, as the sun begins its descent. The air is hot and humid, and it feels kind of like you might imagine it would feel if you wrapped yourself in a dripping-wet thermal blanket and went for a long walk in the heat of the day. Meanwhile, Robert Plant is getting a little ahead of himself. “Goodnight, sleep tight / The big, bright sun has gone away,” he sings on a cover of Los Lobos’ “Angel Dance,” from Band Of Joy, his new album with a literal band of joy for Americana fans: Buddy Miller (production, guitars, vocals), Patty Griffin (vocals), Darrell Scott (multiple instruments, vocals), Byron House (bass, vocals), and Marco Giovino (drums and vocals). Tomorrow, Plant will bring this band to the Tampa Bay area for the first time, to play its eleventh show ever. Miller, 57, co-produced Band Of Joy with Plant, 61, and talking to the people surrounding the record, including Plant himself, it’s clear that Miller is the man behind the curtain. But to hear him tell it, it's as if he and Plant got together one afternoon and made Pop Tarts. Asked if the recording process came naturally, he quickly and tersely responds, “Oh, yeah.” Asked for details from the studio, he glosses over it as if they cranked out Band Of Joy’s dozen songs in a single morning. “Robert pretty much came over armed with a lot of songs and a notebook,” Miller says. “We talked a lot on the phone before he came over. I would suggest songs or send songs over, but he pretty much knew what he wanted. Then we recorded a batch of songs and then rethought it a bit.” Sending songs over, indeed. Plant speaks with a fond awe of the 86,000 selections on Miller’s laptop, a much-talked about figure that, when brought up, Griffin clarifies has now reached 87,000. Miller interrupts. “Eighty-eight,” he corrects with a satisfied chuckle. “The word ‘encyclopedic’ comes up a lot on this tour because both [Plant] and Buddy have this mass of knowledge, particularly of American roots music,” Griffin says. “Robert kinda carries his up here [pointing to head], whereas Buddy’s actually got the collection.” Miller’s vast knowledge and appreciation of music history served him well on tour with Plant and Alison Krauss supporting their 2007 collaboration, Raising Sand. It was those shows that convinced Plant to ask Miller to form a band for his next album – a band that could play a dozen interpretations of some of the best songs bouncing around in Plant’s mind and on Miller’s laptop. “We had a lot of music in common,” Miller says. “The first Zeppelin tour, I got to see that. I liked a lot of the psychedelic stuff that was going on in the ‘60s that he still loves. We would listen to that and talk about it all through the Raising Sand tour, so we had a common language and points of reference when we approached the songs.” Following the tour, Plant gave Miller free reign to recruit players for Band Of Joy. The name itself is a reprise of one of Plant’s earliest acts, which he played in with future Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham in 1967, and the similarly freewheeling nature of that early band and this current one is what led Plant to bring the moniker back. “I think there were only about four or five people who agreed with that at the time,” Plant remembers. “When I started working with Buddy for real, post-Raising Sand, I got the great, expansive feeling that everything was possible, and I had a completely clean and open canvas. It was a joyous experience and I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to do this sort of thing before I implode.’ So it seemed like I had almost the equivalent sensations to what I had when I was 17.” Plant isn’t the only one feeling young again. “He has a way of bringing things out of people,” Miller says. “Certainly I can attest to that with guitar playing. I’m going places I haven’t thought about since I was 14.” *** “Fuck the purists!” Patty Griffin just perked up. She, Miller and I have been having a pretty reserved chat backstage at Tampa’s Ruth Eckerd Hall, where the band will play in a couple hours, discussing their time working with Plant on the Band Of Joy record and the 10 shows that have happened so far. That is, until they’re asked whether they thought there was a certain weirdness to a British man stepping to the stage to accept an Americana award in Nashville, a weirdness that perhaps wouldn’t sit well with purist appreciators of the genre. It’s at this point that they both get visibly riled. “[Plant’s] more enthusiastic, too, about [American roots music] than a lot of the purists are,” Griffin continues. “About more of it.” “Purists are a drag,” Miller piles on. “That’s why bluegrass is a drag and jazz is a drag, unless you get people like Brian Blade or Darrell Scott, who go outside that whole narrow way of seeing everything.” Regardless of his intentions, and despite how unlikely it may seem, Plant is poised to become the new and perhaps-surprising leader of a rather expansive genre that Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association, defines as “contemporary music that honors and/or derives from American roots music.” Those words perfectly describe both Raising Sand and Band Of Joy, the former of which Hilly calls a “major milestone.” “I think it did something different,” he explains. “O Brother was a significant record, and it established the viability of American roots music as commercial product. It also happened to coincide pretty much with the existence of this organization; we started in ‘99, our first conference or community gathering, if you will... You know, that was a huge boost for us. I’d certainly put Raising Sand up there.” Hilly considers Raising Sand and its success a major contributor in the tipping point that was the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences creating the very first Best Americana Album Grammy award, given to Levon Helm’s Electric Dirt in early 2010. “I think [Band Of Joy’s] gonna be bigger,” Hilly says. “I think this record is our greatest opportunity to make a dent in the terrible music that the mainstream media has been subjecting us to.” Plant and Hilly each literally laugh out loud at the prospect of the former’s crowning as the Unlikely King of Americana. But whereas Plant politely demurs, changing the subject to a tricky debate on semantics, Hilly gives it a very real consideration. “Without question,” he says in response to the possibility. “I think it’s a much broader thing that’s really – I think he could, just as he was in that other world. I don’t think he was trying to be... He knows that he’s been called the king of other things too... [It’s] incredible, too, you know. I mean, Picasso did that, right? He pushed the boundary.” *** “They got these liberal, low-flow toilets,” a man I’ve never met before in my life is saying to me from somewhere outside my scope of vision as I wash my hands in the men’s room of the Intercontinental Tampa. “Guess Obama is working out.” These are the wonderfully non-sequitur first words I hear as I await my conversation with Robert Plant, and they’re a refreshing blast of randomness amidst the bustle of a very busy establishment. Located in Tampa’s cluttered Westshore district, the Intercontinental boasts a fairly regal lobby, arcing fountains, tall glass columns of windows everywhere, flat-screen televisions and posh seating areas just as ubiquitous. People in suits talk loudly in every corner and drinks start to flow quickly as the six o’clock hour approaches. Despite the racket of the hotel lobby, the tree-dotted oasis in between its buildings is eerily quiet, scattered marble tables on black metal legs everywhere. The table we’re situated on either side of is positioned too high in proportion to its chairs, and it feels almost as if two youths have chosen this discreet spot to conspire mischief and discuss strategies of fort-building and cootie-avoidance. Plant is chipper and talkative from the moment we sit down in the courtyard and he doesn’t waste a second, starting in before I’ve even turned my recorder on. “I feel like a naughty, naughty boy,” he says, a grin widening across his face as he attempts to position himself above the table with his elbows. Half a moment later, apropos of nothing, he recalls the last time he visited Tampa. “I was banned from here for life,” he begins. “It was a Zeppelin concert at the stadium and the weather turned. In those days, there were no isolating transformers or anything to stop electrocution from water and power. So we had to stop the show and then the crowd got a little restless, and so the police moved in rather vividly with sort of Perspex, see-through shields. There were 57,000 people. The authorities decided it was our fault and that would be the end of it and we wouldn’t come back together as a group again. But I can creep in on my own now, under cover.” At no point during our conversation do we discuss mudsharks, the meaning of “ZOSO” or what might prompt a man to utter the words “I am a golden god.” While Plant did, in fact, once write the line: “When your conscience hits you, knock it back with pills,” he’s now the wizened man who says things like, “I traded drugs for Rand McNally. And you know what? It’s better than drugs.” He sounds energized, too, clearly invigorated by the recent direction his career arc has taken him. This direction, two albums in, has consisted almost solely of cover songs, so I ask him why he’s relying on the material of others. “I’m through with trying to express stuff in three minutes until I’ve got something really interesting, ironic or humorous. I’ve got books and books of anecdotes and one-line quips. Sometimes, I’m so funny, I catch myself going forward and trip over, because I see a lot of funny things and a lot of ironies as I get older. But I was looking for substance to get my head around it and my motive to project into other people’s songs, you know. I just think there’s so many different strains and filigrees in our record, which require a different mind to get into them as a singer, to tell them.” Band of Joy’s cross-section of music history cuts a wide swath, Richard Thompson (“House of Cards”) making an appearance after Los Lobos (“Angel Dance”), The Kelly Brothers (“I’m Falling In Love Again”) preceding Milton Mapes (“The Only Sound That Matters”). Townes Van Zandt (“Harm’s Swift Way”) gets a treatment, as does Barbara Lynn (“You Can’t Buy Me Love”), a standard or two and a poem put to music. The only act that gets two songs is Minnesota “slowcore” duo, Low. “They can have two hundred if they like,” says Plant. “They can come and live at my house if they want to. [Laughs] I mean, they’re in my car, they’re in my head and they’re on stage now.” “He’s an interpreter of song,” says Low’s Alan Sparhawk. “I think it’s a compliment to American songwriters, or at least the history of music in America, that someone of that caliber and that taste keeps coming to that material,” he says. “Specifically pertaining to us, it’s really sort of amazing that he’s not just watching. He’s listening to music, you know? He’s drawing from a lot of things. I don’t know where he picked us up or who handed him our CD or where he got stuck having to listen to us over and over again.” Indeed, he’s not just cherry picking classics for his albums. As Plant talks in the hotel’s courtyard, it becomes increasingly clear that he’s lived a life of music almost to the point that it’s all he knows. He namedrops like none other, but it’s not exactly namedropping. Nearly every answer is peppered with artists, influences, stops on the never-ending trip through music that his life has been. At one point, during the course of a two-minute answer, he references more than a dozen musical personalities. He’s enthusiastic to a fault, and a conversation with him requires much googling afterward. But he’s not just interested with the past. For every Howlin’ Wolf, there’s an Arcade Fire. For every Chet Atkins, a Low Anthem. He has no use for resting on his laurels or subscribing to any particularly restraining line of thought or path to discovery. “Raising Sand was great because it swung and it was quite, well, it was dark at times. Pretty dark. Whereas this thing here now, it’s wide open. Its arms are open. It’s just kind of a great exhalation.” For Plant, it doesn’t matter than he’s a British man in an American man’s genre. It doesn’t matter that he was once the singer of one of the biggest rock and roll bands of the ‘70s. If someone is bothered by his stepping into their territory, they’ll just have to deal. “All that possible, you know, encroachment,” Plant says. “It doesn’t have to exist in this. Everybody can go back to wherever they come from. You know, I’m not. I’m sticking with this, whatever it is.” *** The specter of Led Zeppelin hangs heavy over Robert Plant’s current work. A platinum album, a stack of Grammys – these haven’t changed things. Maybe never will. This is unsurprising, but also sad in a very specific, nostalgic way. Yes, Plant once sang for one of the most popular rock bands of all time, but if he’s ready to let it go (unlike, say, The Rolling Stones), why can’t his fans? As I circle Ruth Eckerd Hall a few hours before show time, I come upon a small mass of them, awaiting with a mixture of hope and exhaustion. It’s troublesome, though, going to a show like this one where so much of the audience and appreciation is based on something that is so clearly long gone. Plant, a thoroughly professional interviewee after 40 plus years of answering people’s questions, refers to the idea of Led Zeppelin playing more gigs together as something that’s “not even a talking point,” quickly taking the opportunity to steer the conversation to a talking point of his own, songwriting, and how he’d like to get back to it someday with the help of his new friends from Nashville. And yet, that legendary band is seemingly all anyone in this part of Florida cares to talk about today. “First time seeing Zeppelin?” a man in line for beer asks me. At first, I think he’s looking for a year, perhaps to compare notes. But then I realize his actual question. “Tonight, you mean?” I respond, and he smiles, eagerly nodding. “We’re not seeing Zeppelin tonight,” I say cautiously, hoping I don’t upset whatever it is he’s expecting. He looks a little embarrassed and a little disappointed. “This is about as close as it gets,” he says, resigned. Plant, Miller, Griffin, Scott, House and Giovino will play seven Zeppelin selections tonight, spread throughout a 20-plus song set that also includes solo Plant material from the ‘80s as well as a couple of Plant/Krauss songs. The Zeppelin material, despite its sometimes-drastic reworking, draws a raucous standing ovation every time. “I know it’s very difficult to sit through a lot of new songs, but this is the beginning of a new career,” Plant says to the capacity crowd of 2,200 toward the end of the main set, before the encore. He sounds pretty earnest, but he’s also an entertainer who wants to please the folks who have bought him houses over the years. So, he continues, “What’re you gonna do? But, slowly, the door opens, and...” The band launches into back-to-back renditions of “Houses Of The Holy” and “Over The Hills And Far Away.” The people are exceedingly happy to be here. But it’s clear that it’s the material of these last couple albums that is making Plant truly happy these days. On this tour, he and his Band of Joy are ending their shows with the old chestnut “And We Bid You Goodnight.” With its slow, swaying pace and repeated refrain of “goodnight, goodnight,” it’s a fitting ending to a show, but more importantly, it’s a holy grail of sorts for Plant, a long-coming accomplishment. “I know what I’m doing, but there are so many things that I don’t know,” he says. “There are so many techniques and bits and pieces of gifts that I can hear in all these voices, and the last song of the show is six voices singing, and it’s a song I’ve wanted to sing since I was very young. Jimmy and I always vowed we would end our Led Zeppelin shows with it.” I ask him if that ever happened, and he’s quick to reply in the negative. Softening, though, he smiles. “But it does now.” The king looks fulfilled.

Legends: Richard Thompson

Paul Zollo — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:00:07 +0000

It’s a crystal blue morning in Santa Monica, a few blocks from the Pacific, and Richard Thompson is waiting at a table in a little coffee shop. Around him, there’s a tranquility and a warmth, and although this legendary British songwriter lives in this vast city during much of the year, he seems untouched by the volume and vagaries of an Angeleno existence. When I first interviewed him about a decade ago, he answered my first query into his songwriting methodology with, “Hey, there’s a lot of competition, I’m not about to give away my secrets.” Reminded of that, he laughed and said, “The competition must have thinned out.” In fact, he’s right: so many contenders have fallen by the wayside, while Richard Thompson, somewhat miraculously, is still standing. Not only is he one of this world’s most gifted songwriters—as inventive and inspired with words as with music—he’s also one of the most prolific. As a teenager, he founded the folk-rock super group Fairport Convention, with whom he wrote a profusion of amazing early songs before branching out into a stellar solo career—and sometimes duo with his wife Linda Thompson—and for years, has consistently written solidly inventive and beautifully distinctive songs, the kind that don’t, as Van Dyke Parks put it, fall apart like cheap watches on the street. He also happens to be one of the world’s greatest and most distinctive guitarists, and, as an instrumentalist alone, he could easily have had a distinguished career—if not for the fact that he’s one of this world’s most gifted songwriters. He also happens to be an exceedingly thoughtful and eloquent man, which is why sitting down with him over coffee to talk songs is a privilege not to be taken lightly. Born in London in 1949, he absorbed all the music his family had to offer—from volumes of Irish folk ballads to his father’s jazz collection, his sister’s rock and roll and her boyfriend’s Dylan albums—so that his leap from folk to Django to Buddy Holly and beyond (a fusion forever instilled in his own work)—was effortless. They all live in his own songs: richly detailed narratives which reel like timeless ballads, propelled by the old ballads in her heart, the rock in his veins and the jazz at his fingers. Now, in a world where albums aren’t the norm and it seems that much of the music-buying public is downloading single songs, he’s determinedly swimming against the current, writing both a song cycle and a folk opera. “Songs like to be together,” he says with a wry grin. Does songwriting get easier over the years? Yes. I think you can refine what you do, and become more consistent. And you write better songs that have a better shape and a better feeling. You evolve into and out of things, and go through stages, but, ultimately, you do improve. You’re a phenomenal guitarist, yet you’ve said you like to work on songs without the guitar. I think that before you pin music down, while it’s still floating a bit in your head, it always sounds fabulous. It’s never that good again. It’s almost celestial when you haven’t quite figured out what it is yet, when it’s still floating around and you haven’t quite grabbed it and defined it. It’s almost like music of the heavens. But at some point, you have to bring it to earth and I suppose, at that point, you pick up an instrument. And you decide actually it’s in A and there’s three other chords. And it becomes a little more mundane, more of this world, and it’s a little bit of a sad time, but it’s rewarding that you capture it. It’s a bit like there’s a butterfly floating in the air, this beautiful butterfly, and you really enjoy watching it and you think, “I’ve got to have it.” So you get your butterfly net and your grab it and you’re really excited to see what it looks like when you take it out of the net, and you find the colors have all faded and it’s become this kind of gray thing. It’s become this sort of slightly less interesting object. Yet most songwriters use an instrument to capture that butterfly. I do that as well. Sometimes, if I have a chord sequence I like and I am looking for a tune, I find I can sit and play for awhile. But I also find it’s good to leave the guitar alone and go out for a walk—and stop thinking about chords, because things are looser in your mind. They’re not so defined. Your fingers fall into habits. If you think about guitar playing, rather than actually playing it, it’s a looser thing. You can imagine your fingers going places. You can see your fingers making chord shapes. But it’s not so defined. There’s a slightly more ambiguous element in there that can be created, that can take you other places. So it’s helpful to get away from the instrument. I do some rhythmic activity like walking. Or surfing. Do you surf? No. [Laughs] When you do take it to guitar, is it clear to you what chords will go with it? Usually, but, sometimes, the revelatory moment of writing the song can be when you do change the melody—just that one little twist somewhere. You think, “Whoa, that’s it!” I’m thinking of, like, Buddy Holly writing “Peggy Sue” and he gets into the studio and says, “How about the third time through we go to an F chord?” It’s the big moment of the song, the defining moment. Which otherwise is a 12-bar blues. So things like that. You find a harmonic opening you weren’t expecting. That can be a big lift as a writer, an exciting thing. Does living in sunny L.A. affect what you write? I don’t think so. I kind of think you carry a culture in your head. For me, Los Angeles is a blank canvas. It’s not as if someone has already painted the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean up there that you have to pay attention to. To me, it’s culturally blank. You can be who you want in this town. And creatively—internally—it’s a bleak Bronte-esque landscape. I could be lying on a beach in the Caribbean but still write grim and Dickensian. You’re one of the best songwriters at writing story songs. Did that come naturally to you? Every song really tells a story. Some are more fleshed out than others. Some are more linear than others. But most pop songs, apart from pretty basic dance music, is telling some kind of a story—usually a love story, sometimes a political story. In modern songwriting there is a lot of cinematic technique, where you jump into the middle of action. You might be writing in first person through the eyes of the protagonist. It’s a little cinematic scene, and you do hard cuts. And some more is left to the imagination. I do a lot of that in addition to the narrative songs, and I enjoy both. I’m surprised by how popular the ballads are, the story songs. So in a sense, I’m reacting to what the audience would like. Why does it surprise you that the audience likes those? Well, you wouldn’t think that that would be a way that people still enjoy receiving a story. In the 16th century, before the gramophone and the cinema, the way people heard news was not from newspapers; it was from ballads. You’d hear about the local murder and it would be a ballad. Today, I’m surprised that people have the attention span to sit through a long song. I’m glad they do. I’m rewarded to know that this process, which goes back thousands of years, still works in the age of distractions and so many ways of mediating information. Some songwriters feel writing story songs isn’t as relevant as writing about yourself. I don’t think there’s a difference. A story song expresses the songwriter’s world-view, his morality—whereas, a song about you might just be telling a story. It’s a process where you start out writing a personal song and it becomes universal, and you write a song about other people and it ends up ultimately being about you. When you are writing, are you consciously thinking about what the song will say? No. That can stop you in your tracks—you can outmaneuver your own subconscious. You want to get to the point where it’s almost a semi-conscious or unconscious act of writing. And if you’re looking at yourself the whole time, you’ll never get to that point. Making music, either creating it or playing it, is sort of a handshake between the two sides of the brain. The intuitive part of the brain is kind of flying, and the logical part of the brain interjects occasionally and says, “Four bars left,” or says, “key change,” or says, “F chord coming up,” or says, “What rhymes with ‘bush’?” Do you sometimes put up a rhyme and then work backwards from it? Yeah, absolutely. Totally. I think, sometimes, you can write a song totally backwards. You get this killer line that ends the song and you think about how you get back from there? Or you start from a title, or an idea. Something that sounds cool, an oxymoronic title or something. And you build from that. Do you find you can perfect a song, or do you have to settle sometimes? It’s got to be right. It has to be as good as you can get it. There is no perfect, but you do it as well as you can. Then you say, right, finished, done it. But then a year later or five years later you might say to yourself, “That’s a bad verse. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Do you think songwriting will continue to evolve, and are there new places to go with songs? I have to believe that’s true. Otherwise, I would not see the future as very interesting. I think it’s absolutely possible to write a song and go somewhere where no one’s been before, uncharted territory. In terms of content, I see limitations where there should be none. I know there are things I wouldn’t write about, but that shouldn’t be the case. You should be able to make a song out of anything, out of any situation. Edward Elgar’s wife said [to him], “You think you can write about anything, don’t you?” And he said, “Oh, absolutely. Anything is an inspiration.” So she said, “Why don’t you write about your friends?” And he went away and wrote “The Enigma Variations,” which is probably his greatest, most recognizable piece of music.

A History Of Legendary Guitars

John Bohlinger — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:03:41 +0000

A HISTORY OF LEGENDARY ACOUSTIC GUITARS References to a guitar-like stringed instrument date back nearly a thousand years, but honestly, none of these lute-ish, uke-ish oddities qualify as a guitar. There is a lot of debate about when the guitar was invented, but it’s generally believed that a mere 150 years ago, a Spanish carpenter named Antonio de Torres Jurado created the instrument that changed our lives and our music. Yes, gentle reader, all those countless hours you spent sequestered alone in your room playing guitar, instead of studying, can be blamed on this one man; you would probably be an attorney or a doctor today had that damn Spaniard just stuck to making tables and chairs. Unlike the violin, which reached its design and production pinnacle in the early 1700s with Antonio Stradivari, the design foundation started by our Antonio de Torres Jurado has constantly been updated and improved upon. American Songwriter chose ten—some modern and others not so modern—companies who have developed the art and science of guitar building to points that would have made past luthiers’ heads explode. These ten instruments I reviewed convinced me that guitars just keep getting better—and there is no end in sight. --In the Beginning-- DELGADO GUITARS MARTA CLASSICAL HYBRID LIST PRICE: $6,900.00 The Specs: Reverse-matched East Indian rosewood back and sides, Canadian spruce top, handmade rosewood rosette and wood marquetry binding, African ebony fingerboard and bridge, L.R. Baggs Element Active pickup, bone nut and saddle, German gold Schaller tuners, bone nut and saddle with 18-hole bridge design. Many guitar companies embrace the McDonald’s business model: use technology to automate as much as possible, reducing the need for skilled workers. In contrast, Delgado Guitars remains nearly unchanged since 1928, when Manuel Delgado’s grandfather began painstakingly crafting instruments that were sought after by the world’s greatest guitarists. If Andrès Segovia was a repeat customer, then you are doing something right. Manuel Delgado (the living legacy of the Delgado family’s craft) works alone in his small East Nashville shop, building spectacular guitars using the knowledge, passion and some of the same tools handed down by his forefathers. In an age where corner-cutting has become the norm, Manuel remains an old-world luthier who uses only the finest materials and will spend 15 hours on an ornamental rosette, or an entire day fine-sanding the inside of a guitar to ensure that the sound meets no resistance. The work is so labor-intensive that Manuel can only build 12 to 20 guitars a year, but each one is a unique work of art. Cynics may think of this almost obsessive attention to minutiae as a waste of time, but those cynics don’t understand honor and artistry over commerce. Delgado’s quixotic quest is beautiful, heartwarming and a little sad; sad because a true artist making beautiful guitars like Delgado needs to be rewarded and recognized, but the pessimist in me is not sure our jaded age will get it. Thank God customers like Jackson Browne, Los Lobos, Jose Feliciano, Charo and Arlo Guthrie pay to play Delgados guitars instead of the free endorsement guitars offered by other companies. WASHBURN PARLOR GUITAR VINTAGE REISSUE - R320SWRK LIST PRICE: $1039.90 The Specs: Price includes hard-shell case, solid spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, mahogany set neck with vintage “V” profile, ebony fingerboard with vine inlay, ebony bridge, distressed hardware, aged natural finish. I love that Washburn, at 126 years old, is making a guitar that looks like it came out of their 1900 Chicago plant. The Washburns from the early 1900s were some of the most well-made, over-the-top, high-end guitars of their time. Their model 380 listed for $237.50 in 1912 which translates to about $5,233.74 today. By contrast, the R320SWRK is a bargain. Given the cost of wood today, I don’t know how they can keep these so affordable. Foreign labor keeps prices low, but the workmanship is solid, if not flawless, the relic-like finish looks authentic and they even send it in a “coffin” case that’s very 1900-ish. You have to let the R320SWRK be what it is, a Parlor guitar. It’s perfect to play at home, where its lack of volume is an asset rather than a deficiency. It’s the insomniac’s guitar; it can sing the player to sleep, but it won’t wake the family. Will it hold up in a jam session with our other legendary guitars? No, but that’s not its purpose. Keep the Parlor guitar in context. This guitar is for the player more than the audience; the gift players happily give themselves. --Things Get Louder-- A little before Charlie Christian helped popularize electric guitars, guitarists fought a losing battle with loud crowds and louder horn sections. The race was on to build something that could cut through to the audience. NATIONAL RESO-PHONIC NRP TRICONE LIST PRICE: $2,700.00 The Specs: Hand-painted, thin-gauge steel body, mahogany neck, Ebony fretboard and nut, National brand tuners, includes hard-shell case, two-year factory warranty. John Dopyera’s contribution to the race for volume ingeniously borrowed from the technology of Edison and the Victrola phonograph. In 1927, he and his partner George Beauchamp debuted the Tricones. That’s the serendipitous nature of invention; designs often fall short of their intended purpose, but create something so unique that nobody would have found it if they were looking for it. The resonator was abandoned by its intended demographic, but embraced by the blues men of the Delta. Here was an instrument that sang like a fallen angel, had a flashy look and a hard metal body that could stop a stray bullet in a bar room fight. National wasn’t made for the blues, but it was a perfect fit nonetheless. The NPR I test drove was beautifully made, coming out of the case impeccably set-up and ready to play. This is not a re-issue, per se. I was surprised to find that the original National Stringed Instrument Corporation did not produce a steel Tricone. This guitar is the Tricone counterpart to the NRP single cone, which is very similar in spec to an original National Duolian. This Tricone was warmer than other resonators I’ve owned, which is no small feat when dealing with an instrument nearly devoid of wood. Slide notes sustain for days with a minimum of effort. This is the quintessential blues machine. I took it to a session where it stole the show with its tone; the simplest melody made the engineer smile. Wait, there’s more: the NRP Tricone comes with some cool case candy as well; a fun, retro-y booklet replete with CDs and paperback-sized National Guitar trading cards. MARTIN OM-21 LIST PRICE: $2,699.00 The Specs: Includes molded, hard-shell case; East Indian rosewood back, sides, fretboard and bridge, Sitka spruce top, Dovetail neck joint, chrome tuners, Martin’s limited lifetime warranty. In 1929, C.F. Martin and Co. answered the call for a louder guitar with their OM, or “Orchestra Model,” which combined a long-scale neck with a small body. The OM is the original 14-fret guitar. This was Martin’s first innovation—prior to their groundbreaking Dreadnought. Though never as popular as their Dreadnought series (the most copied body shape of any acoustic guitar in history), the OM remains the go-to acoustic for players like John Mayer, Rory Block, Paul Simon and countless others with discriminating taste. Owning a Martin is like owning a Harley; you just can’t help but feel proud to own a tiny piece of something so historically significant to U.S. manufacturing. Through the many ups and downs of their extremely long reign, Martin has remained a family business. It has to count for something when it is your name on the label; undoubtedly, this has contributed to Martin’s consistent quality. Playing a new Martin can be a bit misleading; their true voice doesn’t become apparent until you’ve banged on them for a year of so. Then, they blossom into the legendary sound that’s made Martin what it is. The OM-21 I test drove—even in its not-yet-broken-in state—has a compelling, woody, full sound that’s well-suited for fingerpickers, a genre that can sound a bit thin when playing on shimmery, chiming guitars. Although the OM possesses a meaty tone, it still has an open and airy quality that eludes a lot of bigger, darker guitars. Martins remain a high-end guitar line and the OM-21 delivers a lot of bang for the buck. Another thing to keep in mind is that you’re rarely going to lose money on a Martin. Hold on to it long enough and you will sell it for more than you paid. Wait long enough and your grandkids will dump your treasures for a fortune. GIBSON 1942 J-45 LEGEND LIST PRICE: $9,030.00 The Specs: Includes handmade, replica 1940s hard-shell “redline” case; solid Adirondack red spruce top, solid Honduran mahogany back and bides; Madagascar rosewood fingerboard and bridge, handmade scalloped and tapered replica red spruce internal bracing with hide glue; dovetail neck-to-body joint bonded to body with hide glue, nitrocellulose finish, tortoise tear drop shape pickguard. My friend Larry DiMarzio, (mad scientist, genius inventor, tone guru, collector of killer guitars) owns an ancient J-45 that optimizes that pure Gibson magic. I’ve never heard one as good as Larry’s until I test drove this spanking new 1942 J-45 Legend straight out of the Bozeman, Montana plant. Master luthier Ren Ferguson set out to replicate a 1942 J45 owned by historian Eldon Whitford. Ren’s replication process included X-raying the original, copying the bracing (including the saw blade markings) and using hide glue throughout. Everything on this guitar is period-correct. Short of retrofitting a DeLorean with a flux capacitor and harnessing 1.21 gigawatts of power, picking up this ‘42 J-45 Legend is about as close to time travel as you’re going to get. This J45 is very light, which seems to be a trend amongst booming instruments. Paradoxically, it is dovetailed with a big, chunky neck that’s comfortable, in spite of its size. You feel like you’re playing a grown-up guitar here. The truly great Gibsons have a sweet spot that resonates with your body. You can feel it in your sternum. This guitar has that magic, particularly in open G. The sound is not quite perfectly balanced (the warm lows and mids slightly overshadow the highs), but with a tone like this, who cares? That’s just part of the charm. Perhaps it is the Gibson “X” bracing used on the top, but this ‘42 J-45 projects a natural compression when you really bludgeon those strings. No wonder the J-45 was nicknamed “The Workhorse.” It can handle anything you throw at it. Now, why would somebody buy a brand new vintage guitar when you may be able to find an old one for close to the same price? Because you’ll be hard-pressed to find an old one that plays this well and has such solid intonation. This guitar has that vintage mojo without the attrition of 67 years of hard living. Gibson’s Bozeman plant currently produces guitars that would have shined at any time during the company’s long, illustrious history. Who knows? Maybe the guitars from Gibson’s Montana team will someday be as revered as the work of Lloyd Loar in 1919 or the electrics that came out of the Ted McCarty’s tenure through the 1950s. GUILD D-55 LIST PRICE: $3,199.99 The Specs: Includes a hard-shell case, limited lifetime warranty, solid spruce top, solid rosewood back and sides, ebony fingerboard and bridge, scalloped braces, dovetail neck joint, nitrocellulose finish. In a 1,500-square-foot manufacturing facility on the second floor of a Manhattan building, Polish immigrant Avram Drong started Guild Guitars in 1953. Although Guild enjoyed quick success with many of their guitar lines, their flat-top put them on the map, helped in no small part by Richie Havens mesmerizing an audience of 400,000 at Woodstock, armed only with his voice and his Guild. Unlike the plain jane Martin “D” series, Guild pimps out its top-of-the-line D55 with aesthetic accouterments like deco-ish abalone and pearl fret markers, multilayered fingerboard and headstock binding, and an abalone rosette. More importantly, the D-55 I test drove featured AAA solid spruce top with very tight, even grain and beautiful, solid rosewood back and sides, which added to its warm, even tone. The D-55 remains basically unchanged since its introduction in 1968. The old-school nitrocellulose lacquer will help the sound blossom after a few years of playing and bouncing around in the trunk of the lucky owner’s car. The dovetail neck joint, which is all but abandoned by modern guitar makers, carries a certain low-mid tone that is hard to capture with a bolt-on neck. Perfectly set up with a comfortable low action, this D-55 played like a Les Paul, making it an easy transition for electric players. As stated inside its sound-hole, this guitar truly is “made to be played.” --The Designs, They are A-Changing-- TAYLOR XXXV-P LIST PRICE: $5,998.00 Parlor shape, Sitka spruce top, Madagascar rosewood back and side; ebony fingerboard, bridge and headstock, three-ring abalone rosette and bridge pins, bone nut and saddle, Taylor-designed Parlor bracing, Expression System ®, all-gloss finish. Includes a hard-shell case and lifetime limited warranty. Taylor celebrates their 35th anniversary with the release of an eclectic collection of limited-edition guitars. As the roman numerals might suggest, The Taylor XXXV-P is a small but powerful part of Taylor’s 35th anniversary run. Built as a response to customer requests, the XXXV-P features a parlor body shape designed by Taylor’s Larry Breedlove; that’s right, of Breedlove guitars. Bob Taylor, Larry and Kim Breedlove all grew up hanging out, playing baseball and music together, which eventually lead to their building guitars together. When Larry and Kim left Taylor in the early ‘90s, their first Breedlove Guitar shop was the Taylor Warranty and Repair Center of Oregon. It’s wonderful that in the cut-throat competitive world of guitar manufacturing, these three remain friends who respect and support each other’s work. All of this explains the deep similarities between the XXXV-P and the Breedlove Revival 000, which we touch upon next. They both share a 12-fret, slotted peg-head design, lightweight construction, effortless playability and an amazingly big voice. The XXXV-P features a beautiful Madagascar rosewood back and sides and a wide grain, Sitka spruce top. The bridge design, similar to the Taylor nylon series bridge, features shortened ends and scalloped contouring for extra flexibility to enhance top movement and tone while the parlor bracing provide clear articulation to the notes played either delicately with the finger or smacked hard with a pick. For those collectors out there, all 35th anniversary models come with a certificate of authenticity signed by Taylor co-founders Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug, and a “35” inlay on the upper fretboard. BREEDLOVE REVIVAL 000-12 FRET DELUXE LIST PRICE: $3,999.00 Includes hard-shell case, solid red spruce top, Honduran mahogany back and sides, ebony fingerboard and bridge, scalloped braces, tortoise binding, limited lifetime warranty. Breedlove, a company built on cutting edge innovation, manages to meld ingenuity and classic design with their Revival 000-12 fret Deluxe. This 000 is part of the Revival Series, which Breedlove describes as “a celebration of our favorite guitars from the Golden Era of guitar building in the 1930s and 1940s.” I own a 1946 Martin D-18, the real deal, so I understand the draw of “Gold Era” guitars. As big a fan as I am of vintage Martins, I do suspect that there have been some technological advances in the past 60 years that could, in fact, make these great guitars even better. Breedlove manages to apply technological advances with a sense of reverence, which keeps the most important traditional components in place. This 000 features forward X bracing and a graduated top thickness, which is thicker in the middle and thinner toward the perimeter, almost following the shape of a speaker, delivering a tone that is powerful and focused. This is the loudest little guitar I’ve ever played and can cut through a room full of dreadnoughts in a bluegrass jam. More importantly than its projection, the Breedlove 000 is perfectly balanced. Every string rings evenly so that no notes are lost in any chord voicing. Breedlove passionately embraces creativity. Look at their diverse product line from the beginning and you will find models unlike any others. Some guitar makers paradoxically allow their creative artistry to limit them; they refuse to explore charted territory. Breedlove manages to find new, undiscovered tones in the tried-and-true territory of traditional models. The Revival came about by request from Breedlove owners who wanted Breedlove quality applied inside the box, rather than outside, a bit like an avant-garde jazzer playing a straight country gig. This 000 has all of the vibe of its Gold Era progenitors with none of their shortcomings. It’s an addictive, fun guitar to play. MCPHERSON MG 4.O XP MADAGASCAR ROSEWOOD/REDWOOD LIST PRICE: $7,130.00 Includes hard-shell case, redwood top, Madagascar Rosewood back and sides, ebony fingerboard, bridge and head-cap, flamed Koa binding, bone nut and saddle, offset sound hole; non-adjustable, carbon fiber truss rod; Buzz Feiten intonation, L.R. Baggs electronics, UV finish. When Matt McPherson began designing the MG series of guitars, he started with a blank slate rather than following in the footsteps of other guitar designs. Whereas traditional guitar builders place the braces to accommodate the sound hole, McPherson’s top braces arch over each other, allowing each brace to resonate fully, which meant moving the soundhole to accommodate the sound. A novel approach, indeed. Innovation didn’t stop with bracing and the sound hole; McPherson uses a cantilevered neck, allowing the top to vibrate freely without any damping from the fretboard. McPherson also uses a non-adjustable graphite truss rod which is 22 times stronger than a steel rod of the same size. (This makes me a tad nervous. I remained locked in the old-school belief that life deals out a beating and eventually we all need an adjustment regardless of how strong we are. I may be wrong, but I like the option to tweak.) McPherson also installs a brass taper pin in the heel and uses a stainless steel screw to triangulate the heel structure. McPherson maintains “the use of the graphite, brass taper pin and steel screw give our necks strength and stability like no other neck on the market.” The company cuts their saddles using the Buzz Feiten intonation system, which allows the intonation to remain correct all the way up the neck. MG 4.0 is not a normal guitar; you can tell by looking at it. It sounds different and feels different than a conventional guitar. It is effortless to play and possesses a clean, ringing tone. The workmanship is flawless and the wood is stunningly beautiful. I think, if McPherson was your first guitar you would probably never feel at home on anything else, which would not necessarily be a bad way to go through life. COLLINGS MT – A-STYLE LIST PRICE: $2,350.00 Includes a hard-shell case, solid Engelmann spruce top, solid maple back and sides, ebony fretboard and extension, ebony bridge, ebony headstock veneer, radius fretboard, cast and plated Collings custom tailpiece, matte-finished nitrocellulose finish, nickel tuners and tortoise binding around the top. So why are we including a mandolin in our list of legendary guitars? To demonstrate the creative spirit of today’s guitar builders. These guys can’t leave well enough alone; they are constantly designing and exploring new areas of sound. Not atypical of modern guitar companies, Bill Collings began his alone in a garage with a few hand tools building instruments. Colling’s love of carving wood for 25 years led to building arch-tops, and mandolins seemed like a natural extension of that. Collings put a lot of time into researching mandolin designs and received lots of cooperation from mandolin greats Mike Kemnitzer and Steve Gilchrist. With that help and Collings own incredible knowledge of wood and how it works, plus his experience in designing, building and repairing instruments, he was on his way to becoming one of the premier mandolin builders in the country. The Collings’ MT mandolin carries all the quality and vibe of their much sought-after guitars. Though their Mandolin line may not yet carry the same cachet as their guitars, with quality like this, the sort of street credibility can't be far away. With a fully carved Engelmann spruce top and maple back and sides, the MT is undoubtedly one of the best values out there in a professional quality, A-style mandolin. It’s even, warm tone really sings. The A-style is a very comfortable shape. After playing it awhile I wondered why all of the mandolin greats work almost exclusively with F-styles? This A-Style MT is an unrecognized gem. --Wrapping It Up-- Regrettably, writing an article about ten different guitars can often read like a gear shoot-out, winner-take-all contest. That’s not the case here. I’m not one of those little league dads who wants both teams to win, but in this case, each instrument has its own unique purpose. We are not comparing apples to apples, but trying to demonstrate the ongoing development of an instrument that inspires creativity, not only in the music played on it, but in the very way that the instrument is built. The guitar will continue to evolve thanks to innovative luthiers like our legendary ten who continue to explore the possibilities of the guitar.

Legends: Rickie Lee Jones

Paul Zollo — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:00:28 +0000

She speaks softly, not unlike the way she sings—soft, soulful passages, almost like secrets to the closest of friends—punctuated by bursts of exultation. It’s much like the span of emotion in her work, and in her new record, Balm in Gilead, which veers from the pure, naked heartbreak of “Bonfires” to the elation of “Old Enough,” to the beautiful “Wild Girl,” which celebrates the 21st birthday of her daughter, while simultaneously reflecting on the unchained fervor of her own wild days. We met outside a Malibu café, where the sound of people lap-topping, cell-phoning and munching on lunches around us was punctuated by the shrill cries of seagulls. It was an unusually overcast day, one of those spectral afternoons when the lack of glaring light causes the colors to radiate like pastels on a canvas, and she seemed both somber and joyous as she reflected on the myriad musical paths which led her here. Unlike almost all her past record projects for which she isolated herself to write new songs, for this one she revisited songs she’d started before—some many years before—but never finished for one reason or another. Balm in Gilead is a gentle salve for her audience, as well as an anodyne for Jones, a reminder of what music can do both for the musician and the audience. As for “Bonfires,” the brand-new heartbreak song, she said, “It saved my life. It opened a door for me, that for a long time, I kept closed. I’d sing that song and when it was done, I was OK. Even now, when I sing it, I feel good. It soothes the heart.” Is it true that these are songs that have been around for awhile which you hadn’t finished till now? Most of “Wild Girl” was written in the ’80s. It was the first song written after Magazine. But I didn’t have the [polish to] finish and I kept playing it for people every few months; it never went away. It was a whole, intact song. I couldn’t forget it… it just was. Deciding who it was about helped me decide what I wanted to say. As long as it floated around body-less, you could say anything. I thought of my daughter Charlotte and, OK, here’s what I want to say. Then it finished itself, without being too revealing. Were you writing about yourself in it at first? I was thinking of that girl in high school that everybody sleeps with, but nobody likes. Who is she? What happened to her? And how could I save her? But songs are also amalgams. I was talking to me and to all the girls, when we get all dressed up and we’re gonna go out and have fun. What is the line between fun and not fun, and who set it? Did society set it? Did you decide to defy society’s line, and how happy are you now? Come back. That’s my guess. It is many years later. I was always expressing myself through other characters. And they’re real, too. There’s a bunch of stuff taking place. I’m talking to me, I’m talking to the future; I’m talking to somebody I don’t know. And I believe somewhere in the world somebody hears that and goes, “That was written for me.” And they’re right. That was written for them. And it was written for my daughter—who I hadn’t met yet—who will later find out what the spirit of that song was. My mother loved that song so much. She was the main reason I kept returning to it, because there was a point where it seemed really quaint and dated, but has such an innocent heart. So I don’t know how, but I did bring it in. I just transcended all the obstacles in my mind. It was right from my heart. That sense of innocent heart is a prominent aspect of your work. It is. I just started to get that picture. I don’t know how I got it—but I just started to see if there’s one thing that is my gift in music. That’s what it is. I have an absolute connection to my emotions when I sing… that seems to make people feel so healed. You’re able to capture the sense of extreme emotion in your songs, from deeply blue to genuinely joyful. I think I have to work to write a happy song. I write them carefully; they’re simple and they’re about when it’s fun to walk down the street. You know? Because that’s the best thing about when you’re happy. It’s just one little thing that makes you happy, and you’re making friends. The kind of thing I can do is capture this moment. But isn’t that what everybody’s happy song would be? Like The Rolling Stones are really good at writing happy songs. Even when their content is not happy, there’s something about their energies that makes it sound happy. The mystical thing is that the energy, the intention, is what gets translated. Your intention is to express this moment when things go wrong. But what you write about is a trailer court, and a blue car in a trailer court. Yet, somehow, when people come back to talk to you, they will say, “You know I listened to that song and it reminds me of when things go wrong.” They always understand what you intended. That’s the mystical thing about songwriting to me. We’re talking on these other levels that we don’t know. And the best thing you can do as a songwriter is trust the higher part that is writing, and don’t judge yourself or worry too much about it. Yes, the wrong word or wrong phrase can impede that process, but let it be. Trust yourself; trust your journey and your life; write the song. So when writing, you don’t judge it? If I do, it’ll die. The moment it comes through, the moment this little critic speaks up, it dies. You must really protect it from what you think someone who didn’t like you would say, like on the playground, you know. Because it’s so tenuous. I am so afraid of losing them when I’m writing. They seem so delicate. They are formed by my intention to them, as well as, it seems, their intention for something to say. It’s like the beginning of a love affair. It seems so tenuous. You say the wrong thing on that date and then they don’t call for two days and then you get mad and then it’s over, you know? Just in the beginning, you’ve got to be very courteous with your song. You need to play it every day. Every other hour, so it doesn’t die. Or you don’t forget exactly how you did that part. When you start a song, do you start with an intention of what the song is about? I don’t think I ever do that. I think it’s always just coming out of me. I never know where it’s gonna go or what it’s gonna be. I don’t watch my process, but I probably write a line or two and then know where I’m gonna go right away. Do I want to do a rhyme scheme or a rhythm thing, or do I want to write free verse? It will usually tell you a direction to go. And what the subject is will be revealed. But it doesn’t have the conscious in it. I just get out of my way—following, not leading it, not thinking about it at all. I can take the pen and write you eight lines right now. When it’s done, it’ll probably make sense, rhyme, because the part just behind my consciousness knows just what it is doing. If my consciousness gets in the way, then that unconscious part goes, “OK, you take care of it.” [Laughs] And then my ego enters, and the flow stops. So I have to not guide it, but just trust that I know what I’m doing. And again, not bothering with it. Like “Bonfires” was about 12 verses. There were a lot of beautiful verses, but I felt that I was going to lose the impact. What I was thinking about when I wrote that was Bob Dylan’s first record. I was thinking of how he played his guitar. This is where I am right now; it’s simple. And that’s how I wanted to deliver it. I didn’t want it to be like Fleetwood Mac; I wanted to be like Dylan. Knowing there’s no other way to survive heartbreak than to give love. When you write a song, do you ever choose a key prior to starting? No, I’ve done that in the old days. They do seem to come a lot in G. Do you think each key has its own color or characters? Yes. If I named each key, could you tell me how it makes you feel? I could try. OK. How about C major? C seems like it would be dressed in a nice cowboy outfit. Friendly, not bothering anybody. It could lead to the sad; it could lead to the happy. It’s a kind of middle-of-the-road. It’s a little low in my register; I think of it as a boy’s key. It’s very friendly. D. D’s much more of a challenge. It’s got more tension in it than C. I think of my mother a little bit. Seems like a feminine key. E. E is like the dirt. It’s where things fall to. E is something to lie down on. It’s really easy key to sing and play. It’s a good resolution. Masculine. F. I don’t know F very much. G. Celestial. Very expansive. A. I like A. Strength. It’s expansive but it’s consoled. It can be masculine or feminine. It can go either way. A minor? I like it. It’s sad, but it’s not without hope. E minor. Seems much darker to me. Sorrowful. It will accommodate rock. Powerful rock. It can be a pretty dire thing. Does it make you happy knowing that your songs live on? Yes. It’s like creating a universe. When we die, those little universes will be floating around. And people really enter this universe. We are creating places that people go into, and they go into the songs. It’s mysterious. I think making songs up might be much more important than we think. So when I’m gone, those all will be here. And they’re places all their own. That’s really incredible. I’m excited about that.

Legends: John Prine

Paul Zollo — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:00:08 +0000

Straight from the streets of Maywood he came, a mailman with a chain of masterpieces. It’s Chicago, 1970, and word starts circulating around this close-knit folk music scene that there’s a new guy who must be heard to be believed. A songwriter who seems to have emerged fully formed with a voice like Hank Williams and songs that resound like some miracle collaboration between Woody Guthrie and Hemingway. His name’s Prine. And almost as soon as the denizens of the Windy City learned of him, the secret was out, and John Prine belonged to the world. He was then, and remains today, a genuine songwriter’s songwriter—in that he’s written the kind of songs other songwriters aspire daily to write. Evidence of which is the vast array of covers of his songs by his peers, including Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Johnny Cash, Rickie Lee Jones, Willie Nelson, and so many others. Even Bob Dylan, since the first night Kristofferson brought Prine and Steve Goodman into their Greenwich Village fold, has been awed. “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism,” said Dylan. “Beautiful songs… I remember when Kris first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about ‘Sam Stone,’ the soldier junkie daddy, and ‘Donald and Lydia,’ where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that.” Kristofferson, despite fostering Prine’s genius into the world, admitted to being intimidated by him. “He’s so good,” Kris said. “We’re gonna have to break his fingers.” We spoke to him on a bright Tennessee morning, his voice a low, raspy whisper since his recent bout with cancer and subsequent throat surgery. But his stories were punctuated with frequent laughter—laughter at himself, and at the sad folly of a world he’s written about so well for decades. Though talking wasn’t as easy as it once was, he enjoyed rummaging through the rooms of his own memory. Do you remember where the idea for “Hello in There” came from? I remember that I tied it, somehow, to the first time I heard John Lennon sing “Across the Universe.” I played that song over and over again. It sounded, to me, like somebody talking to a hollow log or a lead pipe—with that echo. I was thinking of reaching somebody, communicating with somebody, like “hello… hello in there…” When I was writing the song, I thought that these people have entire lives in there. They’re not writers, but they all have stories to tell. Some are very, very down deeper than others. See, you gotta dig, you know? I didn’t know what the song was going be about, actually, when I came up with “Hello in There.” I was a big fan of Bob Dylan early on and his song “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” I modeled “Donald and Lydia” after that song, as far as telling a story and having the chorus be the moral to the story. I had learned “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” It had about nine chords to it. I thought I should write a song with every chord in it I know—that’s “Hello in There.” I’m still surprised to this day that the chords came out that well and sound as pretty as they do. It’s surprising to hear the Lennon and Dylan influence, as their songs were quite abstract, while your songs tell clear stories with precise imagery and language. It’s what I was good at, but I thought it was a fault at first. I soon found out the reason that was on my mind is because that’s what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear what was in somebody’s purse, what paintings were hanging on the wall. I wanted to know whether it was a cheap refrigerator. Do you remember how “Angel from Montgomery” was born? My friend Eddie Holstein wanted to co-write a song, and I said, “What do you want to write about?” And he said, “I really like that song you wrote about old people. Let’s write another song about old people.” I said, [laughs] “I can’t, Eddie. I said everything I wanted to in ‘Hello in There.’ I thought for awhile and said, “How ‘bout a song about a middle-aged woman who feels older than she is?” Eddie goes, “Nawww.” But the idea stuck and I went home and started “Angel from Montgomery” with the words, “I am an old woman named after my mother.” I had this really vivid picture of this woman standing over dishwater with soap in her hands. I just kept that image in mind and I just let it pour out of that character’s heart. If you come up with a strong enough character, you let the character write the song. You just dictate from then on. I almost go into a trance. Once I’ve got a sketch in mind of who the person was, then I let them speak for themselves. Rather than me saying, “Hey, so here’s a middle-aged woman. She feels she’s much older.” It wouldn’t have been nearly as effective. Years later, I got asked how I could get away with writing a woman’s song first-person. And that never occurred to me, because I considered myself a writer. And writers are any gender you want. You write from the character and how can you go wrong? It’s so powerful how you paint the scene with pictures and let the listener feel it for themselves. I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks. Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you’re talking about intangible things like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation. I still tend to believe that’s the way to tackle it today. Do you generally have a very specific idea in mind before you start writing a song? Yes. Because, otherwise, I don’t see any reason in sitting down [laughs] to do it. A lot of times, I’ll have the song written [in my head], and I only write it down so I don’t forget it. I could write behind a steel mill. But it’s easier to get behind a guitar. You said that sometimes it feels like a trance. Is it easy for you to get to that place where songs start coming? No. It’s very elusive. You gotta learn patience. I know that I’m basically a very lazy person. As much as I enjoy writing, I would rather do anything in the world but sit down and write. But once I get into it, I’m into it. I mean, if you said, “Let’s go get a hot dog first,” I would always go for the hot dog. I know that about myself. So I have to balance out my patience waiting for the right thing to come along with my laziness, knowing I’m trying to avoid working. Some of the songs come so fully, it’s like they are pre-packaged. There have been a couple that came in the middle of the night. And I thought, jeez, I’ll never forget that. And went back to sleep, and it was gone. You’ll hear something years later that another songwriter that you respect writes, and you go, jeez, I think that was the remnants of that song that got sent to me. Can you recall how you wrote “Sam Stone”? Well, I had just gotten out of the service myself. I always thought one of the great mistakes they made in the service is if they spent half the time that they do getting you ready, and the intensity that they put you through in basic training for combat, if they spent half that time bringing you down and teaching you how to be a civilian, it would make a big difference. I would liken it to a person who has done prison time. They all speak of how difficult it is to be back on the street, and how difficult it is be to accept freedom once you get used to living incarcerated. So, all my friends that were over there were affected, like I said. I wasn’t writing about anybody specific. I made up the character of Sam Stone, obviously, just ‘cause he rhymed with “home.” I remember a story in the papers about some soldiers coming home from Vietnam in San Francisco. When they landed, some people at the airport were spitting on them, and saying they shouldn’t be over there killing babies and stuff. I was totally repulsed by that. I mean… to blame a soldier—maybe because I was one—I felt like they didn’t know what they were talking about. To blame the guys who are going over there because they didn’t run to Canada and say they’re not gonna fight for their country just seemed really awkward and stupid to me. I wanted to explain through a fictional character what it might be like to come home. Not to be there, because I was never in Vietnam. I was stationed in Germany. Songs like “Sam Stone” and “Angel from Montgomery” are such mature songs for a young songwriter to write. I was very nervous about singing the songs in public for the first time. I thought that they would come across as too detailed, too amateurish. I hadn’t heard anybody being that detailed, and I thought there must be a reason for that. But I knew the songs were very effective to me and they reached me. I was very satisfied with the songs, but I didn’t know how they would relate to other people, because I didn’t consider myself a normal person. [Laughter] Did audiences take to them right away? Right away. They were very effective. The first crowd just sat there. They didn’t even applaud. They just looked at me. I thought, “Uh oh.” [Laughs] I thought, “This is pretty bad.” I started shuffling my feet and looking around. And then they started applauding and it was a really great feeling. It was like I found out, all of a sudden, that I could communicate. That I could communicate really deep feelings and emotions. And to find that out all at once was amazing. Whereas it would have been different if I would have written a novel or something and waited two years until a publisher to write me back, and said, “I think we’re gonna take a chance and publish it.” That must be a whole different feeling. But mine was immediate. It was there before other people. Nobody knew me from Adam. It’s evident, knowing your work, that you can write about anything in songs, using content nobody else ever has. Yeah. I knew if I could get away with “Sam Stone,” about the veteran coming home, and a chorus like “there’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes,” even as powerful as it turned out to be, that I could write anything. But when I wrote it, it was very odd. When I’d sing that chorus, I’d be nervous and by the second time around, there’d be dead silence. And I just figured, yeah, you can write about anything, anything at all. As a matter of fact, the less familiar, the better. Was there ever content or an idea for a song you couldn’t get into a song? More often than not, I can’t jump into a song too quick because there’s always the danger of painting yourself into a corner. There are no tougher corners to get out of than the ones that you paint. You can’t change the rules if you made up the rules—especially if it’s a story song. You’d better be going somewhere. I think that’s what the listeners are always thinking that—hey, this is precious time I’m giving you, so you’d better be going somewhere. [Laughs] This joke better be funny. Do you generally write more and then cut stuff out? No, I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don’t like it. There’s no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist. I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, “Yeah, that’s it.” They appear before me and they fit. I don’t usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don’t know it. Sometimes,you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you’re doing. Do you remember the first time you met Steve Goodman? Yeah, he walked up to me. They were already playing a tape on the radio of Steve singing “City of New Orleans.” I had him pictured in my mind as a tall, skinny banjo-playin’ guy with a little beard. [Laughs] He was actually about all of 5’1”. He’d poke you in the chest when you talked to him, like Edgar G. Robinson. On stage, he was ten-feet tall. Would he criticize your songs? Back in the Village in Carly Simon’s apartment, 1971, my first record wasn’t coming out for a week. Kristofferson said to Steve and me to come over, said he had a surprise for us. So we come over and we’re sitting in Carly’s place, and there’s a knock on the door and in walks Bob Dylan. At this time, Bob Dylan was not doing any shows. He had just written “George Jackson.” So we’re passing the guitar around. Kris sings one. I sing one. Bob takes the guitar and sings that. Goodman looks at him [laughs] and says, “That’s great, Bob. It’s no ‘Masters of War,’ though.” [Much laughter]. And I sang “Far From Me,” and Dylan sang with me. He had an advance copy of my record that Jerry Wexler had sent him. And he already knew a couple of the songs, so he showed up at the Bitter End and played harmonica behind me on “Donald and Lydia” and “Far From Me.” It was like a dream.

Legends: Townes Van Zandt

Holly Gleason — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:00:04 +0000

I used to wake and run with the moon I lived like a rake and a young man I covered my lovers with flowers and wounds My laughter the devil would frighten The sun, she would come and beat me back down But every cruel day had its nightfall I’d welcome the stars with wine and guitars Full of fire and forgetful - From “Rake” Those in the know say how it goes You plan on reapin’, you better sow You plan on sleepin’, you better keep movin’ Sleepin’ ain’t allowed around here you know Tell me, please, when the rollin’s over Me and my baby gonna have some fun Bury our backs in a bed of clover Smile in style while the sun goes down - From “Cowboy Junkies Lament” “There’s only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah.”-Townes Van Zandt

photo by Al Clayton

It’s 10 o’clock at night on an abandoned Music Row. The year is 1985. In a third-floor office in an old house that serves as the offices for the Oak Ridge Boys’ Silverline/Goldline Music Publishing, Steve Earle brings the chair he’s leaning back in down hard, flipping his hair out of his eyes for emphasis. He may be doing the very first interview for Guitar Town, an album that will bring the hardcore blue collar back into country music and fire the rock fringe to a steely edge, but there was a far more important point to make. Leaning forward, he announces, “Townes Van Zandt is the best damned songwriter in the world—and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Swagger? Bravado? The brazen declaration of a young man about to explode? Absolutely. But for Earle—and the quote heard ‘round and around the world—it was also a matter of homage to a man who set the bar for a maverick kid who couldn’t seem to walk enough of a line to get and keep a record deal. Never mind that his record would be cited by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, Spin, The Chicago Tribune and beyond as not only one of the year’s great debuts, but one of the year’s finest records, period. Nor that Guitar Town—along with Dwight Yoakam’s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., and the soon-to-be-arriving Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith and k.d. lang—would ignite a progressive/traditional country revolution, which Earle would deem “the Great Credibility Scare of the late ‘80s.” No, Earle was raised in the realm of the great Texas troubadours. For them the song was everything. The song was holy, the master to be served and honored. Indeed, the song was the reason for being. These were taskmasters pure and simple—and they kept their standards high. “I remember Townes was in the audience one night,” Earle said of their first meeting. “And I knew it was him. He kept yelling for ‘The Wabash Cannonball,’ and said, ‘How could I be a folk singer if I didn’t know ‘The Wabash Cannonball’?” And Earle, equally brash, silenced the sinewy songwriter with a dead-perfect rendition of TVZ’s wickedly difficult “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold.” It was the beginning of a Captain and the Kid mentorship that was both tough love and exacting standards—two things that define who Earle is today as a man, an activist and an artist. “Well, it wasn’t like Townes was gonna go down to Music Row and go ‘produce this’,” laughs Grammy-winning, Texas expat, artist/songwriter Rodney Crowell. “Those performances were moments—and the recordings were documents, not productions. That wouldn’t work, because you knew he was living that shit. “I mean, back in ’72, when Townes would hit town, staying at Amy Martin’s place, all us wannabe writers at the time would stand around roasting weenies, all wanting to write songs with him… and he’d be upstairs kicking dope. He seemed so exotic and hardcore.”

Legends: Bobby Braddock

Michael Kosser — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:00:23 +0000

What then do we make of Bobby Braddock, who came to Nashville in 1964, had his first country No. 1 in 1968, his most recent No. 1 in 2009, making him the only living songwriter having No. 1 country songs in five consecutive decades? These songs include “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” (one of Tammy Wynette’s career records), “He Stopped Loving Her Today” (repeatedly recognized as the one of the quintessential country songs of all time), “Golden Ring,” “Time Marches On,” “I Wanna Talk About Me,” Toby Keith’s career record and one of the most unique records in country music history, and, most recently, Billy Currington’s career smash, “People Are Crazy.” I wanted to know how he did it. What came out of our talk is a rare peek into the mind of a great songwriter that can help us understand the arcane art of balancing the desire to write great songs with the need to write hit songs. We all believe that great songs and hit songs are not necessarily the same, but I believe Braddock’s body of work proves that great songs and hit songs need not be mutually exclusive. Bobby Braddock is deadly serious in his dedication to being a songwriter, so when he decided to write his memoirs, it wasn’t surprising the amount of effort he put into the first volume, called Down in Orburndale, published by LSU Press in 2007. The result was a very funny yet soul-stirring book about growing up in Florida orange grove country. He is currently at work on his next installment (tentatively titled Hollywood, Tennessee), which covers his life from the time he arrives in Nashville to pursue his music career. Most successful songwriters tend to have their relatively brief era but then they go away. To what do you attribute your longevity through all the music changes over the past four-and-a-half decades? One, staying current on music of all genres over the years, not just country, and two, fear of running out of money. Would you care to elaborate? Whenever a new act came along, if I hadn’t heard anything by them, I’d go out and buy the album and listen to ‘em. I did that with Pearl Jam, Hootie and the Blowfish, with The Black Eyed Peas, Lauryn Hill and Eminem. I think staying hip to what everybody’s doing helps you in country music, since country music is not always all that country anyway. I mean, I know what country music sounds like. I’ve listened to it all my life. There was a period back in the ‘80s when you went a long time with almost no cuts, which was unusual for you. Looking back, what do you think was the reason? I was writing out of desperation, writing songs so personal that I couldn’t judge them objectively, and trying too hard to be original. Essentially, between 1984 and 1991, there were no hits. I think in the earlier part of that period, I was doing some of my best writing, but it was not necessary compatible with country radio at that time. Further on into the ‘80s, I think I started writing out of desperation. I can remember driving from my house to way south of Nolensville, Tennessee and back, listening to George Strait’s new album, and going home, and for about two, three nights trying to write something like what I had heard on the George Strait album. I look back on it now and think of myself as being kind of pitiful. I’ve talked about Bobby Braddock being a risk-taker when he writes. What do I mean by that? That I will risk looking like a damned fool in my quest for a hit song. I think that you probably—whose interview is this? I think you mean that I will risk looking like a fool or a crazy person in trying to do something that’s unique and different that people might like. Do you agree that you will go to those lengths? Oh yeah! But sometimes, I’ll do it without realizing I’m doing it. I’m just writing what I like. To illustrate the length to which Braddock will let his imagination wander, let me quote from a George Jones hit, “Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half As Bad as Losing You),” back in 1973: I’ve had the lit end of a cigar pressed against my belly Whupped on with a crowbar till my eyeballs turned to jelly Accidentally nailed my index finger to the wall Cut off half my toes and soaked my foot in alcohol I’ve had my pelvis ruptured by an angry kangaroo But nothing ever hurt me half as bad as losing you. Most of us have taken extreme flights of fancy with songs, but it takes a talent like Braddock to craft extremes into the kind of a song that will be swallowed by a hit artist (George Jones), a great producer (Billy Sherrill), nearly all the radio stations in the country genre, and much of the country listening public. “Nothing Ever Hurt Me (Half as Bad as Losing You)” was a No. 7 Billboard country hit. After all these years, do you still have the fire in your belly to write songs? If so, is that fire to write great songs and let them fall where they may, or is it a fire to write hits? The fire has moved from my belly up to my esophagus. I always try to write the best that I can, and try to make it as commercial as possible, in the hope that someone will want to record it. Right now, the fire is to write hits. I remember a time when I was going through a breakup in my marriage that had a big emotional impact on me. I was writing songs that were totally autobiographical, and I didn’t care whether they got recorded or not; I was writing what was in my heart, and I listen to those songs [today] and I think, some of it is really powerful stuff. Then there are periods in my life when I was trying to be [too] commercial, and I think a lot of it’s pretty crappy. The ones you were writing when you were emotionally stressed and trying to be cathartic, did any of those songs wind up being commercially successful songs? A few: “Her Name Is,” “I Feel Like Loving You Again,” “Texas Tornado.” But most of the cathartic ones, no. They meant a lot to me, and when I listen to them now, they still mean a lot to me. They say, “The song remembers when?” Well, I remember when because I wrote it. Why do you think so many of your cathartic songs were not successful? The ones that failed were probably tailor-made to fit my own heart. I don’t think their blueprints were what people were looking for in country music at that time. Can you define where country music is today compared to where it was in other eras, both in structure and in subject matter? In the 1940s through mid-‘50s, the sounds were more rural and the lyrics more self-effacing than they are today. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, they stirred about half a cup of pop into the country stew. From the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, it was basically country, but with sounds and themes broad enough to appeal to a larger audience. By the mid-1980s, the crossovers had disappeared and the neo-traditionalists were the new big thing. Garth Brooks songs were an entity unto themselves, because, instead of country crossing over to pop, the pop audiences were crossing over to country. In the 1990s and 2000s, although fewer people lived in rural areas and small towns, the trend was toward lyrics about life in those places or lifestyles reflecting those places, often to a very rocking beat. I like to call this “redneck swagger.” While grandpa hillbilly cried because his woman had left him, modern-day grandson hillbilly doesn’t cry much, and if he’s missing his woman, often it’s because he dumped her and is starting to regret it. And while grandma hillbilly used to denounce cheatin’, modern-day granddaughter hillbilly may rip up your car or even shoot you. There’s a lot of this in 2009, but country songs today are actually all over the map stylistically, and the records they’re making today sound better than ever. Look at concerts and just find out what kind of music people like, particularly a lot of young people. Country music is very popular now. I don’t know if it’s the most popular genre. I have no idea, I haven’t been doing any research on it, but I just get the sense that country music has a big following, especially among younger people. As there always have been, there are different branches and tributaries to the country mainstream. Some of these tributaries go to other bodies of water, like, Taylor Swift has a huge following. She calls herself country. I don’t think she sounds really country, but then again, what is country? I mean, it’s been a long time since country music was agricultural music, but the more country side of country is that redneck swagger music. For instance, the song protagonist of, say, the early 1950s is totally different from the one in 2009. For one thing, southerners as a group are different. In those old Hank Williams or Webb Pierce songs, the protagonist was crying. You don’t hear the protagonist crying today. The old protagonist was crying and gettin’ drunk; now they’re gettin’ drunk and partyin’, and singing, “Kiss my ass!” You hear a lot of “my town’s more country than your town.” About the “kiss my ass” songs, why on earth do you think their listeners assume that somebody out there doesn’t like them or their lifestyles? Where does the hostility come from? Who are they telling to kiss their ass? I think it’s supposed to be the country fans telling the rest of the world to kiss their collective ass. It’s a little defensive, isn’t it? Yes, is this related to— The culture wars. But when I write songs today, I think love songs are still universal and I try to do those. Are there particular songs out there that really speak to you? Each era has its magic songs and this era is no exception. If Brad Paisley couldn’t sing a lick, I think he would be one of the most sought-after songwriters in town. His song “Letter To Me” is a masterpiece. I hear some country records occasionally that I really love. They can be the really country ones like “Whiskey Lullaby.” I loved Blake Shelton’s record of “Home.” Back in the earliest part of this millennium, when I was managing a publishing company, I signed a young singer/songwriter named Blake Shelton to my company. Since I loved Braddock’s demos and I was trying to help Blake get a deal, I brought the two together. Bobby got Blake his record deal and produced three successful albums on him, each of which contained a multi-week No. 1 country single. But unlike a lot of producer/songwriters, Bobby did not try and jam a lot of Braddock songs down his artist’s throat. Instead, he spent many hours listening to thousands of songs submitted from the outside, and he and Blake recorded what they considered the best songs they heard. So during this interview, I asked him. When you were producing Blake you took very seriously the difficult job of listening to songs off the street. What effect did that have on your writing? Did it detract from your creative energy? One way it detracted was it impinged on my songwriting time. Bob McDill once said, “Garbage in, garbage out.” So I was listening to great songs that inspired me and not-so-great songs that probably hurt me. I used to get on the Natchez Trace Parkway—truly a parkway, because it doesn’t go through any towns and runs all the way from Nashville to south Mississippi—and I would take along several boxes of CDs, a picnic lunch, and set my cruise control on 45 MPH. I didn’t enjoy the OK songs, but I looked forward to the great songs that made me excited, and the terrible songs that made me laugh. During the time I produced Blake, I spent a huge amount of time and creative energy on those albums, and I certainly believe that I lost some songwriting time. But I really enjoyed producing Blake and it’s a pretty good feeling to know that the one opportunity I had to produce a new young artist, the work we did launched a country star. Why do your successful “novelty songs” seem to have more gravitas and career friendliness for artists than most folks’ novelty songs? I’ve gotten several novelty songs recorded, but the only ones that went to No. 1 were “I Wanna Talk About Me” and “People Are Crazy,” which were really serious songs presented in a fun way. In the former, a lot of people identified with having a friend who was a transmitter, but not a receiver, and in the latter, I think folks found the idea of an old man leaving his fortune to a casual drinking buddy to be a deliciously happy ending.

Street Smarts: Some Things Never Change

Michael Kosser — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:00:07 +0000

When I write this column, it’s a little too easy for me to slog my way back in time and talk about the way things used to be. Heck, the world is altogether too full of curmudgeons who constantly moan about how good things were then and how bad they are now. Of course, they were better then, when you still had all your teeth, most of your hair and plenty of pheromones left to attract lovers. Still, history is history and sometimes it’s educational to talk about the way things have changed without necessarily moanin’ the blues. Back in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and even the ‘70s, Music Row was one big open door. It just was no big deal for a songwriter to swing open a door to a Nashville publishing office, walk up to the receptionist’s desk and say, “I’m a songwriter. Is there anybody here who will listen to my songs?” Often there was somebody, and that somebody often knew something about songwriting and could tell you how to make your song better. When Hank Williams arrived at Acuff-Rose in the mid-‘40s, he found Fred Rose, an experienced, successful songwriter who co-owned the company and was thrilled to find a talented young man to mentor. As their relationship progressed, Rose would tell Hank, “This thing might sing better if you’d change such and such line,” and Hank might say, “Dang it, Mr. Rose, I cain’t ever bring in a song that you don’t try and tear apart.” Then, re-thinking his reaction, he might say, “I’ll think a bit on it.” And ol’ Hank might decide that Fred was right and come up with a new line. In the ‘60s, Hank Cochran was working for Pamper Music when he heard a young Willie Nelson singing in a Lower Broadway beer joint called Mom’s, later called Tootsie’s. Willie was singing some very good songs and Cochran wanted to know who published those songs. “Nobody,” said Willie. “Nobody wants them.” “You won’t be able to say that tomorrow,” Cochran replied. “Can you get out to my office?” That was the beginning of Willie’s songwriting career. His mentor, Hank Cochran, went on to write some huge hits himself. Likewise, Teddy Wilburn, half of a popular country duo from the ‘60s, mentored Loretta Lynn in her early songwriting career. Tom Collins mentored Kye Fleming and Dennis Morgan, writers of “Nobody” and “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” Marijohn Wilkin and Bob Beckham mentored Kris Kristofferson. Buddy Killen mentored Joe Tex, Curly Putman (“Green, Green. Grass of Home,” “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and many others). Curly mentored Bobby Braddock (“I Wanna Talk About Me,” “Time Marches On,” “He Stopped Loving Her Today”) and Sonny Throckmorton (“The Way I Am,” “Last Cheater’s Waltz,” “I Wish I Was 18 Again”) and me—well, you can’t win ‘em all. All this mentoring was a lot more than cheerleading. It involved listening to songs, commenting on songs, suggesting ways to make them better. It involved...involvement. How things have changed. The Nashville music industry was built around great publishing companies. Those companies were all bought up by worldwide conglomerates, most of whom have offices in Nashville. Those old publishers were happy when their companies made money. But when your company is publicly owned, making money is not good enough. You have to make more money than you did the year before so the stock prices will go up. Publishing is just a part of these major conglomerates, which also own record companies, movie companies, book companies, etc. To do their share in helping the bottom line of their parent companies, publishers spend millions buying up smaller companies. They sign singer/songwriters and hope to strike gold with these budding superstars. And they sign up hot writers for big advances by outbidding the small companies that nurtured those writers in the first place. These things are constantly on the mind of the executives that run these publishing companies. For most of them, there’s not much room in their daily schedule or in their skill set to sign a promising young writer and hold his/her hand while he/she goes through the awkward period of polishing raw skills into hit-making quality. In many cases, the same is true of the publishing staffs. The sync rights guy is busy combing the catalog for music to plug into movies and ad campaigns. The songpluggers are concentrating on their hottest writers, all a sweat to get enough cuts to keep their jobs for another year. And major publishers tend to hire pluggers who have demonstrated their ability to get a cut, not for their song-mentoring skills. They see songs as ready or not ready for demos, ready or not ready for pitches, not almost ready as in, “If you do this, this and that to the third verse, I think you’ll have a hit.” In fact, I’m not sure that songpluggers get as emotionally involved with songs as they used to, as in, “I love this song and I won’t stop pitching it until it’s a hit single.” Let a promising song go through a month or two of rejection or languish on an album without being considered for a single slot and the pluggers may forget about it. That’s not a knock on big company songpluggers. Sadly, a lot of the excitement has gone out of that part of the industry. That’s just the way it is. And yet there are still a lot of publishers left on the streets of Nashville, a lot of smaller companies, in three- or five-room offices with a secretary, a plugger and a handful of writers working on small or no advances. Some of those companies have not broken through and will soon fold. Others have had a bunch of cuts, but no hits yet to provide a little breathing space for them. Still others are competing out there, getting CD cuts here and there, a single or two or more, shaping their writers into recognizable brands, maybe even launching one of their own singer/songwriters. Lurking in the offices of some of these companies are publishers with instincts and skills like their esteemed predecessors. They can take a songwriter in hand and help to shape that songwriter’s skills and psyche. New writers in town who are or are not seeking a record deal need to seek out such people, and not expect them to be a mommy or daddy to them, but expect some wisdom and working knowledge. I may be naïve, but I believe there are still mentors on Music Row, not necessarily in the big companies, but there nevertheless. Those are the people new writers in town need to find. Michael Kosser is a Senior Editor at American Songwriter and author of 17 books. His songs have been recorded by George Jones, Charlie Rich, Conway Twitty, Ray Price, Tammy Wynette, Barbara Mandrell, Josh Gracin, Black Shelton and more. He is director of the Songwriters Institute at Cumberland University, where he teaches the craft and business of songwriting.

Guitar 101: You Are My Sunshine

Gary Talley — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:00:53 +0000

Remember the first song you learned to play? Do you remember exactly how and where you learned it? Do you still play it? I remember vividly sitting in the living room with my father, learning “You Are My Sunshine” when I was a kid. The circumstances that led up to this event were something like this: I’d been exposed to music my whole life, because my parents both played and sang frequently. My brother Don and I could sing harmonies when we were pre-schoolers. Neither of my parents “read” music, had no formal training and didn’t feel “qualified” to teach us anything. My grandparents had offered to pay for music lessons for my brother and me. For the life of me, I still can’t remember why we wound up taking accordion lessons. My grandfather would drive us to a store in mid-town Memphis one evening a week. The red and gold shiny contraptions weighed a ton; I felt like I was trying to pick up a piano and set it on my lap. I didn’t even like accordion music. We’d sit there and try to read simple melodies and I hated it, so I quit. I knew my grandparents were disappointed in me, but I just couldn’t stand it. My upper body did become stronger, however, as a result of wrestling this enormous calliope/beast. Soon after that, I told my father I really liked guitar better, and asked him if he would show me how to play a song. He said, “I don’t really know how to teach music, but I can show you what I do.” I said, “OK. Let’s try it.” He had an old Silvertone acoustic he’d played for ages. He played a G chord for me, and I watched his fingers move and apply pressure to the strings and make contact with the fretboard. Then, he handed me the guitar and I tried it. Ouch! I didn’t know it was gonna hurt! He told me it was normal at first, because my fingertips weren’t used to pressing hard like that—made sense to me. He took the guitar back, turned those little tuning keys a few times and made some funny “boing-boing” noises, then returned the guitar to me again. It was easier to press the strings down! He had de-tuned it about a step. Next, he showed me how to play a C chord. Wow, that really stretched my fingers! I said, “I don’t think my fingers will reach that far.” He replied, “Sure they will. Maybe not today, but if you keep practicing, your fingers will get stronger and more flexible.” Then he showed me how to make a D7 chord. He said I could imagine a little pyramid shape that my fingers made. That’s still how I think of a D7. (The D is an ice cream cone.) I tried making those three chords a few times. I couldn’t change very fast and forming the C was difficult. I couldn’t quite get that 3rd finger to reach all the way to the 5th string. After about five minutes, I was definitely a little quicker. Then he took back the guitar and said, “Now, watch and listen real close.” He played “You Are My Sunshine” about four times while I watched and listened. One of the things I noticed was that his fingers landed on each chord simultaneously, instead of one-by-one, the way I was doing it. Another thing I noticed was that he only played the D7 at one place in the song, right before the end. The other thing I noticed was that he stayed on the same chord G until he said the word “happy.” I already knew the words and melody, so I could tell when “happy” was coming around again. I also noticed that he went back to C again when he said, “You’ll never know,” right on the word “know.” Other than those two C places and the one little D7 near the end, the rest was all G chords. He told me the song was in the “Key of G.” He really didn’t know how to explain it, but he said, “G is the main chord. You usually start and end on it.” Then, he played the song in the key of C to give me an example. He told me you could do a song in any key you wanted to. Nobody ever told me this stuff in accordion lessons! I really didn’t understand about when and why you had to change chords, and told him so. And he said that magic word: “Listen.” He played and sang the song, but when he got to the “happy” chord, he didn’t change to C and stayed on G. It sounded awful! I could definitely hear the dissonance. Then he sang the melody and played a C chord. But why did that work? He said, “Look at my first finger. Listen to that note.” Oh, I get it! That’s the same note he was singing! It matched. I asked him why we played the D7 when we did, and he said, “Listen.” When he sang the melody, he showed me that the second fret of the G -string matched the melody note. A few minutes later, it occurred to me to ask him if I could play any chord that I wanted to that had that same melody note in it. He said, “No.” “Why?” “Some of ‘em don’t sound right.” And he proved it. Yes, I could hear the ones that “sounded right.” He said, “Every song has got three main chords in it, except ‘Jambalaya’ and a couple of others that only have two.” I watched him play “You Are My Sunshine” in the keys of E, A and D, and asked him why you did the same song in different keys, and he said, “To match people’s voices. Some sing high and some sing low.” He next showed me a strumming pattern. It was eight notes, but he didn’t know that, he instructed, “Just go up and down like this with the pick.” He then explained, “Some songs are waltzes. Then, you go like this: one, two, three, one, two, three….” Somewhere in there he told me, “Those chords with a seven on ‘em, like D7 or G7, usually lead back to the main chord.” He showed me which minor chords usually went in which key. He also told me, “Don’t play these little runs and things while people are singin’. It’s not polite. Wait ‘til they take a breath.” I learned my first song and had my first guitar lesson that Sunday afternoon with my father. He could have been watching a baseball game. Too bad he didn’t know anything about music. If you stop to really look and listen, every great song has many valuable lessons in it. Take any song you like and look at it in terms of chord progression, tempo, form, rhyme scheme, key, etc. If you have a recording, listen to the instrumentation. What’s the rhythm guitar doing? Does it have more than one guitar? What’s the lead guitar doing? Does it have a solo? Does the solo stay close to the melody? Can you tell the key by listening to it? Does the song have an ending or just fade out? If you record a song, remember you don’t have to have a set ending. You can take the chord progression of a song you like and write new lyrics and melody. Change the tempo. Not only can learning one of these classic songs provide you with years of fun, but it can open the doors to understanding basic songwriting and guitar playing too. Gary Talley is the original guitarist for Grammy-nominated group, The Box Tops. He’s toured and recorded with Willie Nelson, Billy Preston, Waylon Jennings and more. Visit GaryTalley.com to check out more.

Legends: Robert Earl Keen

Matt Fink — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:00:46 +0000

As singer/songwriters go, Robert Earl Keen doesn’t seem like the kind of artist who could honestly be accused of sloth. But despite a catalog choked with characters and conversations pulled from a colorful life, he makes that very claim on “Something That I Do,” a track where he brags of his ability to not let work get in the way of an otherwise pleasant afternoon.

Such themes turn up now and again on The Rose Hotel, Keen’s latest study in spinning everyday observations into the ache for home and belonging, traced through the lonely lodger at “The Village Inn” and the technology-tangled protagonist of “Wireless in Heaven.” By the end, Keen hasn’t exactly convinced you of his capacity for couch-sitting so much as he has made an album that makes you want to sit still and listen. Listening to this record, I’m surprised by how much death emerges as a theme, especially for an album that doesn’t sound that dark. Right. Well, it’s always lurking there. [Laughs] The Grim Reaper lurks around every corner, and it’s not unprecedented with my stuff. I’ve got a huge body count in A Bigger Piece of Sky. I think 30 or 40 people die on that one. There’s a moderate body count on The Rose Hotel. In general, I think the thing has a good feeling. For instance, if I want to pick it apart piece by piece, “Throwing Rocks” is like a murder ballad that I could have made into a bluegrass song, instead of a blues song. It’s a classic murder ballad. And the thing in “10,000 Chinese Walk Into a Bar” about duct tape is a tribute to [musician] Blaze Foley, and he did die there in Austin. And the one on “On and On” is really, in a private way, my own mirror image. So that’s where that stuff comes from. I read that “On and On” is about your father. True? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying about it being a mirror-image thing. The very last verse, that comes from a very personal experience. My dad died in 1997 and my mom died in 2000, and when that happens to you, there’s an emptiness that’s never filled. Is it therapeutic to write a song like that? For me, it is. It captures a moment. One of the things that happens to me, and one of the reasons that I write narrative things, [is that] once I’ve written this thing, it comes from a picture in my mind that I see the same way every time I sing it and every time I read it. It’s like you could paint a picture and hang it on the way. It’s never going to change. Even if I do that in a mean-spirited way sometimes, if I’ve got a little inside joke that’s a jab at somebody, it’s there forever and it locks it in. I get to say what I want to say and have it there and not forget it. That’s better, for me, than a whole roll of film. Were your parents supportive of you as a musician? No. My dad said that music should be an avocation, not a vocation, and my mom was always a laissez-faire parent. She just wanted me to do what I wanted to do, and I think she secretly prayed and hoped that I’d find another career. But I’d have to say that she was pretty supportive. My parents were children of the Depression, and they were always really frugal, like, “Well, we got you a pair of socks for your birthday,” when other kids were getting a pony or a go-cart. I was always amazed by how they were so cheap. But when I decided—and it was late—to play the guitar when I was 18, when I was going to school, my mom, just out of nowhere, said, “We’re going to get you a good guitar.” So we went down to this guitar store, and she bought me a Martin guitar, as good a guitar as you could possibly get. I’m telling you, it was like socks and shoes, and maybe some kind of off-brand baseball glove, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, after 18 years of existence, she buys me the best guitar she could get. So, in that way, she was very supportive. I didn’t have to struggle with a piece of junk guitar from when I first started. I was also quiet about it. I had my own private dream and aspirations, but I didn’t go and jump into the world and say, “This is what I’m going to do, by God!” I just kept working at it, and playing in little groups and improving my little thing until I got out of school and went out and started playing. I had an 8-to-5 job, and I played all the time in the evenings. I didn’t really jump out there and tell anybody. Do you remember the first time you realized that you had talent as a songwriter? I can remember the first time the music and the lyrics came together. I could write rhyming poetry from the time that I could write, and it was often the only time that I really excelled in school, when they’d have poetry week in English or something. Then, bam, all of my stuff was all over the bulletin boards and in the yearbooks. When I started playing the guitar, I learned D, G and A, and went, “Wow! I can write a song.” So that all came together, and I immediately figured out that I could use this ability to write rhyming poetry and put it to a song. I’ve spent years, though, struggling with the format. I never did decide, “Oh, I’m going to write country songs,” or, “Oh, I’m going to write folk songs.” I always bounced around. I never did have a real good sense of format. So how long did it take you to really find your feet as a songwriter? I would say about a year. I was playing with this little band and playing guitar behind this guy that played the fiddle, and my other friend, Duckworth, played the fiddle too. So we were playing these string band things, like, Irish fiddle tunes. And they were trying to learn some bluegrass songs, and I was saying, “Why don’t we just write our own songs?” And I would write these songs, and they’d go, “Oh, man. We want to sing a Stanley Brothers song or a Bill Monroe song.” And I’d say, “Well, you know, they already sing those songs. Why don’t we make up our own songs?” So we learned those Bill Monroe songs, and I kept working on my own songs. Every once in awhile, I’d pull out one and say, “Let’s try this,” and I’d get batted down and would put another song in my back pocket. When I left that bluegrass/string band thing, I never looked back. I just decided that I was going to write the songs, but pretty much my entire college career was spent figuring that out. I’ve never been a quick learner. I’m not a quick study. I’ve always just moved along and made improvements. My strong suit is my longevity. So by the time you made No Kind of Dancer, you must have been pretty confident. Yeah. I had gone to Austin and I had got really into KUT radio. They had this “folkways” program, and I went on for about four hours on Saturday mornings. I went down to see them and I thought, “Wow, this is cool. If I made a record, maybe they’d play it.” That was the idea behind that one, that I could make a record and that someone I was pretty close to—as in KUT radio—might play it. That was all the impetus I needed to get started. In my office, I have this big frame that my cousin made, and it has the LP of No Kind of Dancer, and my letter that I sent to friends, and my prospectus about how I needed a hundred bucks from each one of them and how I’d pay them back in this particular time period. It’s really funny. Anyway, I borrowed a hundred bucks from each of them and I paid them all back. It worked out. Did you ever have aspirations to make inroads on mainstream country radio? I love country music and I’ve been a fan forever, but I couldn’t figure out in my mind exactly how I fit. I have all these acoustic leanings and stripped-down leanings, and I’ve always known that I don’t have a great voice. The center of mainstream country is these great voices. The people that I really admired were Lefty Frizzell and Marty Robbins, and Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson, and I never had that great of a voice. I never did put my mind to it a lot, and I never beat up people that I knew in Nashville much on that deal until I started hearing stuff that I didn’t think was as good as some of the stuff that I was doing. Then I put some effort in trying to have some inroads in some country markets, but the timing was bad on that one. It fell apart. I was with Arista about that time and Clive Davis closed the door on Arista Nashville, and that was the end of that deal. Right about the time I was making some moves with some of the guys there, they were getting behind me, and there was some talk about making some effort. I was just making pretty good records and selling plenty of them for them to justify me being there, but I wasn’t getting any country radio play. It must be gratifying that, now that you’ve been around for awhile, your name is tied to people like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. It absolutely is. They’re totally my mentors. Going out with Guy and Townes was part of my big springboard for being a touring person. Before that, I’d just done a lot of stuff on my own. I’ve always had the greatest respect for their writing and their work. I’ve heard it inside and out, and I feel like I’m pretty knowledgeable about it. I would say that they’re among the best that are out there. I feel like I was lucky in that way. Since Townes has passed away and has become bigger than life in so many of these stories about him, do you think people remember him as he was or has he been made into something he wasn’t? He was a very complex person and multifaceted. There’s that continued obsession with his alcoholism and his antics on stage, which go from really funny to really sad. It’s like a lot of stuff that goes on with how people are remembered, and I think all that overshadows a lot of great things like the fact that he had an amazing intellect. He was really smart and, when he was on his game, he was way quicker than anybody I knew. He could almost anticipate the next statement or next question. I think part of that whole alcoholism was to slow down an overactive brain. And then his poetry—with the exception of “Marie” and “The Hole” and “Waiting Around to Die”—is so beautiful and optimistic and full of color. It’s like how history buffs or poetry buffs only want to talk about Samuel Taylor Coleridge and his laudanum addiction and how he was a big mess. You forget the beauty of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” or the different poems that he created at the time. That personality overshadows the brilliance and the beauty of someone. One of my favorite things about Townes was that he could sit more still than anybody I’ve ever seen. He did not fidget. I remember playing a whole show in Northampton, Massachusetts, and he sat in the back. All I could see was his silhouette, and it never moved to the point that I thought I was looking at something other than a person. We’d drive around together and he’d sit there in the passenger seat like some old grandmother that was waiting to go to church. He’d be perfectly still, I guess just lost in his thoughts. I always thought that was kind of interesting. When you were with him did you talk songwriting? No. Not really. Now, I have this great yearning to talk to people about songwriting, but back then I was so afraid that I was divulging some of my secrets or stepping on their toes. I regret that, because I wish I would have talked to some of those people. Harland Howard would hold court and talk about songwriting at length, and it was beautiful. He would give you tons and tons of examples, and talk about compares and contrasts and what was strong about a song, and it was like getting a college education on songwriting. That was fascinating. I had some of those kinds of talks with Lyle [Lovett] when I was younger, but now, if I’m running across somebody that I know writes songs, I really try to get into, “How do you think about this? How does this work for you?” You want to know more about it, because there is kind of a magic to it that’s not real clear. It’s that sort of floating sun-like thing in your outer vision. It’s a little bit hard to grab a hold of exactly what’s going on with it. Does the process seem as mysterious as when you started or does it get clearer the more you’ve done it? No, it gets clearer the more I’ve done it. I don’t know exactly where the ideas come from, but when I get into a songwriting mode and it’s coming along, it’s like you’re on the front end of a boat and you’re going through the water, and the breeze is blowing through your hair and the water’s smooth, and you’re going out to sea. I love that feeling. Can you push yourself into that mode or do you have to wait for it? I would say it has to be the latter. It’s funny that you say about waiting for it, because my friend Terry Allen, one time I talked to him about writing songs. I said, “I haven’t really experienced true writer’s block, but I feel kind of dead sometimes. What do you do?” And he said, “Sometimes, Robert Earl, you’ve just go to wait. You just get in that chair and you sit there and you wait.” I said, “Why can’t you just do the dishes?” And he replied, “No. You can’t do the dishes. You can’t sharpen your pencils, and you can’t go clean your gun or any of that crap. You’ve got to just wait.” And you know what? He’s not lying. I’ve taken his advice, and I’ve sat in a chair for three hours and nothing happened, and then all of sudden something started happening. That’s one of my favorite things that anyone ever told me about songwriting.