Like many before him Mac Leaphart landed in Nashville with the intention of taking Music City by storm, writing commercial chart-topping hits and winning Grammy’s. When things did not quite go to plan for the South Carolina singer/songwriter he returned to his previous existence as a self-managed performing and recording artist. With two full albums and an EP under his belt, it is his most recent album MUSIC CITY JOKE that has finally brought him the attention his hard-hitting and somewhat tongue-in-cheek writing merits. Setting his sights high, he engaged Brad Jones (Hayes Carll, Josh Rouse, Chuck Prophet) to produce and brought Nashville top session players Fats Kaplin, Will Kimbrough and Matt Menefee on board for the recording. The album – it spent over ten weeks in the Americana Radio Album Charts – combines some frank insights into the less glamorous side of Music City alongside deeply personal ballads and side-splitting fun songs. We caught up with him recently via Zoom to talk about the album and his 10-year experience in Nashville.
Can you talk about your move to Nashville and your expectations at that time?
I moved to Nashville from South Carolina in 2012, almost ten years ago. I came here to do the typical Music Row songwriter thing. I wanted to write songs for other people and I put a lot of time and effort into that. I was trying to write commercially viable songs and I thought I wrote quite a few good ones. My problem was I did not know how to get them heard or get them into the hands of people who could get the songs on the radio. After a few years of doing that, I decided to do the artist thing instead. It got frustrating to be spending so much time for the songs not to go anywhere. They were not songs that I had intended performing myself but songs that I thought would suit other artists.
Did you record any of those songs?
Actually, one of the songs I wrote back then made MUSIC CITY JOKE. The song is called The Same Thing and I wrote it with Tim Jones from the Los Angeles band Truth and Salvage Company and Whiskey Wolves of The West. Tim and I wrote that one and I thought it would be a cut for somebody. I actually forgot about it until Brad Jones, who produced my record, asked me if I had any more ballad type songs for the album, which I did not. I dug up that song and sent it to Brad and he loved it. It is actually a lot of people’s favourite song on the album. I am glad that it got in because there is something about the slower songs that does not strike me. I like to write songs that are fun to play live. The slower songs can be good to listen to but it can be hard to put them in a show when you are trying to keep everything up and flowing.
Were you also performing alongside writing in those days in Nashville?
In the early days I was doing a lot of writers’ rounds. In Nashville there would normally be probably ten writers’ rounds happening every night. I actually hosted one for a couple of years called Southpaw Supper Club. It got that name because it was at a pizza place. I’m actually starting to host it again but at a different venue, so we’re calling it the Southpaw Social Club this time. The name Southpaw came from the sound being somewhat left of centre and not typical Nashville. I was doing a lot of writers’ nights back then and meeting other writers and writing with them. I guess that if you stick around Nashville long enough and write with enough people, eventually somebody is going to put one of those songs on an album. Some of the songs I wrote made it onto other people’s albums, which is kind of vindicating as well as frustrating.
Your two previous albums LINE ROPE ETC and LOW IN THE SADDLE, LONG IN THE TOOTH were self-produced. You opted for handing over the reins to another for MUSIC CITY JOKE. Why?
I did both those earlier albums with a great engineer but we didn’t really know what we were doing. We just had some songs and did the best we could editing them. I felt I needed a producer this time. For a decade I had just been bouncing around playing bars and making records, and I hadn’t figured out how to get people to listen to them. For this one I thought I would put everything into it and get a strong team together. The first member of the team was hiring the producer.
What drew you to Brad Jones to produce this album?
Brad had been on my radar from TROUBLE IN MIND that he worked with Hayes Carl back in 2008. I really liked that album. I had a mental list of people that I would like to work with and Brad was one of four or five producers that I talked to. I sent him some of my songs and I liked his vision for them the best.
You surrounded yourselves with a lot of talent in the studio. Did you hand pick the players for the recording?
No, that was Brad’s doing. I brought in Logan Todd on drums and Brad brought in Fats Kaplin on violin and pedal steel, Will Kimbrough on guitar and Matt Menefee on guitar and banjo. Brad also played bass and also got Carey Kotsianis, who is just a great singer, on backing vocals. It was really cool because I had never worked with session players before. Normally when I made an album, I played all the guitar and maybe a little bass. This time I had a sonic vision for the songs and to get the sound that I did from those musicians was great.
How did that sonic vision develop? Did you have an absolute feel for the music to accompany the songs before recording?
Not really. Brad doesn’t like the players to hear the songs before they get to the studio to allow for spontaneity. In the mornings we would get to the studio, have some coffee and just talk about the songs. The guys would make their notes and we would decide to try fiddle on this song or steel on another song, and that’s how it ended up working out. I guess Brad knew that he also wanted this album to have this Fats Kaplin vibe to it. Those players had all worked with Brad a lot, which I think helps. We were all on the same page because Brad was the conductor, so to speak.
I don’t expect that you are going to be appointed to the Nashville Tourism Board giving some of the lyrics on the album. Are they based on real life experiences or simply observations?
(Laughs). Both. Take a song like Music City Joke. It is kind of an exaggerated and I hope mostly funny take on my experience in Nashville coming here from South Carolina. I was listening to country radio and thinking that I could probably write songs like those before realising that there is a whole lot more to this game. There are also some very personal songs on the album. I wrote Every Day as a tribute to my wife. That was a very personal song and actually very hard for me to write. I was in a little bit of a slump with writer’s block and I wanted to write it because my wife was having a bit of a tough time then. It’s like Willie Nelson says, he would rather give you a song than diamonds and gold, so I did the best I could with that song. Window From the Sky literally came from a bird that got trapped in this building where I was living and I worked on the symbolism of that and the idea of not realising that the door is always open. Whether it’s a bad relationship or a job that you think you can’t get out of, the door is never closed. And then a song like El Paso Kid was just a story I had that came from the idea that adversity can lead to greatness. You read these stories about great personalities that accomplished a lot having started off in the slums. My life has been so different to that. I come from a whole lot of love and support from my parents and I often wonder would I be more driven if I did not have that background and sometimes that makes me feel uncomfortable. I was drawn to the character in that song as he really had to fight to get anywhere.
The song Division Street is also particularly graphic about an area where the less fortunate in Nashville often ended up?
Division Street is one hundred per cent accurate. It’s not the rough end of town now that it was years ago. When I drive down there now there is a bunch of luxury apartments and fancy restaurants, which were not there eight years ago.
The artwork on the album’s cover shows your good self with a sign reading ‘kick me’ on your back, which also tells its own tale about Music City.
I just thought that was funny, I guess. To use the term that you use over there, it is all kind of taking the piss, so to speak. I just thought that’s the way it feels like sometimes in Nashville. My buddy Gabe Ford, who takes all my pictures, went down to Broadway with me and I said ‘just get me standing in the middle of the street and put a kick me sign on my back’. I am hoping to do vinyl with the album this year because I think that would look really good on a full album cover.
How important is the artwork on an album for you?
I’m a great fan. Do you know that Moe Brandy has great album covers? He was big in the late 70’s and 80’s and one of those guys that is very Nashville country. He always has a great story on the cover of all of his albums.
How did the last twelve months pan out for you?
Fortunately for us my wife’s work in healthcare continued, so we didn’t really suffer financially but I did have that residency at a little bar not far from my house, that I felt was really getting off the ground. That was the Southpaw Social Club, that I mentioned earlier. It had been on for six months and I felt we were really getting people interested. For me there also was a lot of silver lining over the past year. Good friends of mine who live down the street started some outdoor neighbourhood concerts last year. They were fantastic and they are still doing them now that things are opening back up. I just played their last Friday and there was a few hundred people sitting out and chairs in the front yard. Also, I met and got to know all my neighbours. We just all hang out on the street with our kids and get to know one another. Everything kind of slowed down for me in terms of the hassle of trying to get out there and make things happen. Again, I am fortunate that I wasn’t depending on the gigs to feed my family and for me. When you play in bar bands for years, which I did, you sort of take the performance for granted. Sometimes you’re playing music that you don’t like, written by other people, in bars to people who are not listening. You can therefore take performing and the joy of playing music for granted. I’ve got shows lined up for the summer and the fall, and I have never been more excited about getting out and playing. Playing live music when you are in the room and people are listening to your music is a great experience. It’s an engagement that can’t happen with the live streams.
How do you intend to tour in the album now given that it is a mixture of ballads, story songs and some rockers as well?
If I go on the road with a band, it is probably going to be a three-piece. We have come a long way from Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band. I watch some old clips from The Old Grey Whistle Test and I wonder how anybody could afford to have a band like that and on the road. I don’t intend attempting to replicate the album exactly, as it would mean bringing a certain type of musician on the road, which is not practical. I intend to do a little bit of both, solo and with the three-piece band. Sometimes on the road you get gigs at a coffee house where they only want you to play solo and can give the other guys a night off. It is also unchartered territory for me because I have played a lot of bars and colleges in the past, so getting out there and trying to sell tickets and play for people that have enjoyed this album is really exciting. Most of my albums had just fallen under the radar until this one.
The album has earned great reviews including a nine out of ten on the Saving Country Music website.
I was really happy with that review because country in terms of music to a lot of people these days can be a bad word. It can mean something that is musically disingenuous because of what people perceive and hear on the radio as country music. ‘Trigger’ Coroneos has got a real community on his Saving Country Music page of people who are really into Americana and red dirt and traditional country music. I really appreciate you all writing reviews of the album and spinning it. It means a whole lot to me because I’ve been doing this a long time and it’s great to work hard and people enjoy your music, which is the point in making music. You all keep doing great work over there, we really appreciate it.
Interview by Declan Culliton