David Gideon has just released a brand new album that reinforces what is good about country music right now. As his bio points out he was born to artistic parents and often on the move, bouncing between Austin, Key West, and rural Tennessee during his formative years. Early on in his life he was given his access to a drum set. From there he trained in jazz and worldbeat percussion but broadened his skillset to include guitar and songwriting, too. He later headed west, where he performed hundreds of shows. He also worked as a DJ in clubs, logged multiple years as a ranch hand in Northern California, and eventually settled in Billy the Kid’s hometown, the rugged, remote town of Silver City, New Mexico. It was there he wrote many of the songs that would later be included on LONESOME DESERT STRUM. Being mightingly impressed with the album Lonesome Highway took the opportunity to ask David some questions. His honest answers are below:
How long did it take to put the album together? As it would appear some of the songs go back to the Drifter EP and possibly before.
The short answer is twelve years. The writing of my oldest song on the album; Movin' To The Country dates back to my time living in the mountains of Northern California. It was initially recorded for a seven song CD (which was never published) entitled Can't Keep Me Down. I toured the West Coast with that first CD and when it sold out, it was never reprinted. I went back to the drawing board with a much clearer direction and recorded a twelve song CD entitled; Southwestern Skies. Again, it was never published and I only printed a hundred copies. Although decent, it lacked the professionalism of my new work, naturally having been recorded in a home studio. It included early versions of songs like Southwestern Skies, Drifter and Red Boots which would later be re recorded in Nashville for the Drifter EP, three songs of which are on the album LONESOME DESERT STRUM.
Are you a prolific songwriter with a lot of material or how does that work for you?
I am not as prolific as some of my friends who seem to come up with songs in their sleep but I'm constantly milling about five different ideas around. I know I have a good one when it makes me form a tear. The good ones do. I think every songwriter knows that feeling. Lately I have taken to the Nashville tradition of co-writing with the likes of Wood Newton. If he didn't have a Grammy, I'd probably have passed on the idea. I'm certainly glad I didn't as Ashes and A Woman Like Her are two of my favourites from the new album, both written with Wood.
Where does the love of such a classic country direction spring from?
Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Austin, Texas and Southern Middle Tennessee, I was exposed to alot of classic Country. My mother dated JC, the bass player for Threadgill's house band in Austin, TX when I was a kid and Threadgill taught me to yodel at six. Since my dad lived an hour south of Nashville, I also grew up with Hee Haw on the TV, George Jones on the laundromat speakers and Hank Jr. and Alabama trading cards in the gas stations. While I have had my phases in life, you can't take that experience away and when your looking at who you really are, those early impressions last a lifetime. I suppose that's why, all said and done, I found my voice in Country. It's just who I am.
You put together a great bunch of players who excel on the album how did that come about?
I had someone who heard my music online invite me to Nashville to co-write and produce a song, which naturally I agreed to do. This was honestly my huge break and while that person isn't a name I drop, I owe them a lot. After being flown to Nashville and while at that session, I met Johnny Cash's five Grammy winning bassist; Dave Roe Rorick who took a liking to me and he invited me to work with him, Kenny Vaughan, Chris Scruggs and Pete Abbott to record anything I had in mind. I took what I thought were the best songs I had and rearranged them. The rest is history. I have been working with Dave, Pete and Kenny ever since. In fact we are cutting new stuff now.
Did you, as the artist, have the final say in how the songs went down or was it more a collective decision?
There was really nothing collective about the decisions outside of that time when we all were sitting in different rooms with headphones on discussing the feel or approach to a song. Kenny definitely made a few decisions about a certain vibe like for instance on My Birthday. We played it like my demo felt and then he decided that we should try it really groovy and slow and that's how it got cut. I'm a gigantic Fabulous Superlatives fan so anything Kenny said hit me like a ton of bricks. Most of these were recorded in an old fashioned, live setting with no click track. Some had to be cut remotely due to the pandemic. So other than the sequencing, no. I was open to suggestions in that process and my mastering engineer, Billy Stull lent a hand in that process. The final say on everything was most certainly mine. I was hands on for every tiny detail of the mixes as well.
It is undoubtably difficult to survive financially as an independent artist, especially in these times, so did you work outside of the industry to make ends meet?
Yes. I rolled sushi at Acme on Southern Broadway while recording these tracks and I also briefly was the chef at a well known songwriter joint named Belcourt Taps in Hillsborough Village in Nashville. I also worked for Gavin DeGraw at Nashville Underground for awhile. Lots of stuff. Painting houses in rural Tennessee, let's see.. I worked as a handy man in a house one of the Dixie Chicks lived in during that period as well and the house was being sold. The owner let me hold court there for months to the neighbors chagrin. I was playing at old bars around town like The Springwater, Belcourt Taps, Tootsie's, Betty's... Wherever I could. I should also mention I had private investors to boot as well as had to sell my mother's inheritance of some very old coins she had gotten while being the art director of Mel Fisher's Maritime Heritage Society in Key West where I spent grades 7-10. The museum and crew headquarters for the Atocha shipwreck is a place I spent a lot of time roaming the halls as a kid while my mother documented the treasure. Mel was like an uncle and to use those coins he found on the bottom of the ocean and which my mother got as part of her "division" to fund this album is the only reason we are talking, today. It took everything I have. Literally everything and then a whole lot more to make this album. I want people to know it was the hardest thing I ever accomplished and I've done a lot. There's real blood in those notes. Real tears. Believe it. A lot of nights living in a very poor section of Nashville with no power in the dead of winter. Popcorn and jolly ranchers for dinner. Yup.
Is Ashes a song that mirrors your own wishes in any way or a general nod to the spiritual places of country music?
Good question. In reality, I buried my brothers ashes in Tennessee and when my mother recently died, she wished to be buried next to him after her cremation. I knew there was a song in that and had concieved it to be, "Bury My Ashes". As the story goes.... Manuel Cuevas, the legendary clothing designer to the stars, dropped me off from his house to the "Dixie Chick" house where I was staying in West Nashville and I grabbed my guitar and walked to Neighbor's, a pub in Sylvan Park, owned by former Tennessee Titan, Zach Pillar. Zach asked me to play him a few songs on the little stage (which I informed him would cost him a pint) and upon hearing me, invited Grammy winning songwriter, Wood Newton (Something Said Love - Rita Coolidge, Riding With Private Malone - David Ball, Twenty Years Ago - Kenny Rogers) from off the golf course to hear me play and sing, as well (which I informed Zach would cost him another pint.) I played a few for Wood upon his arrival and after I did so, he took me out to the patio of the bar and played me one of his; I Got The Hank Williams Blues which he wrote with Jett Williams, Hank Sr's daughter. I then pitched him my idea for Bury My Ashes. He told me I should consider changing it to Scatter My Ashes and invited me to his office to write it. Upon arriving in an Uber to the address at the predetermined date, I realized I was standing in front of RCA Studio A on Music Row. We talked a lot about the direction of the song and the history of the recording industry that day. The song morphed into something about Tennessee's rich cultural heritage and that was fine with me although certainly not something I'm going to hold my friends too. Although, If they can pull it off ... Please do that for me, folks. Thank you.
What inspires you the most to put pen to paper?
A good chord progression or lyrical idea. I'll just write some crazy line down and find it later and add to it or dig through my old fashioned lined notebook and scrap an old lyric and fit it in to something I'm working on. Just a really half hazard process with no rhyme or reason. All I know is that the final product is all that matters. If I have to some words I don't like in the second verse because verse one and three are working for me, two will have a way of sorting itself in private performance. You know when it's feeling right and you know when you’re just making due to get through it. Two different feelings. There was very little making due on this record, lyrically.
Given the album title is the desert a place you like to visit?
I live in the Chihuahuan Desert in a mountainous region called "The Gila Wilderness". It is the birthplace of The Apache Native people. It also happen's to be Billy The Kid's hometown, Silver City, New Mexico. This is dangerous country. Kenny Vaughan made a reference to my playing in the studio as a “lonesome desert strum” and I just thought it was such a cool thing to say as is everything that man says, that I kept it as the title. I wrote the song to the title and not the other way around, to be honest.
You wrote the majority of the material yourself along with a couple of co-writes. Do you have a preference for either way of working?
While I prefer writing by myself for all the freedom it offers, lately I have had some really special co-writes go down which have me believing in there power more and more. Do I want to be stuck in some fancy room with five major songwriters? Not really. I'm only concerned with the song having my soul in it and the final product feeling like 'David Gideon'. I need to be feeling it. If I am writing with someone, there has to be a very special reason. A story.
There are currently a growing number of artists and bands who are following the path of traditional country rather than looking to the mainstream success at all costs. Do you align yourself with those contemporaries?
I look up to these people. I have met some of my modern heroes like Sierra Ferrell, Charlie Crockett and and I look up to them. They just have something nobody else can do. I also look up to anyone who can thrive in this business regardless, across the board. Doesn't mean I'm turning on the radio but you won't find me bashing Luke Bryant. I have no idea what he sounds like and I have used a steel guitar player he used. It's all music to me. I can't deal with those records coming from Nashville though. I just can't do that to my ears. I like raw and rough. I like dust on it. The old Country had more dust on it! I like when music was more like that.
Do you actually see a shift back to a more old school sound at radio?
Ummm ... No. While it's cool, nostalgia music is novelty music. Advancement is needed. There will never be another George Jones or Merle Haggard and some of these new artists never got that memo. It's ok to do your thing any way you see fit, though. Just my opinion. It's just good to be aware it is a box you’re in. I don't want people to be able to put me in a box and I dare them to try.
When touring comes back how difficult is it for an artist like yourself to put together a band both in terms of finding the right players and make it financially viable?
Well.... not for me. For others it might be. The reason being, I have come from the bottom up, been doing this forever and know a lot of people. If the price is right I'll bring you the players on my record or someone who can play those parts almost as well. The Texas and Tennessee music communities are like a family. There may be fights and squabbles but I think it's all about keeping country music and dare I say, the Country tradition alive. Now, I don't mean that in the way of holding on to the bad stuff or the whitewashing of the role of African Americans in the development of country music but rather the tradition of small farmers, old small town mom and pop joints, traditional playing of instruments in village and pub type gatherings, bon fires and cool vehicles, buisness of every ethnic variety thriving and of course ranching and farming. We all want that for the world and for our Country and we all have a common goal. The real question ... is the world ready for David Gideon? I don't know. That's up to you all to decide.
What are your hopes for the coming year?
I'd settle for living through the year. That seems to be more than many are able to ask these days. If I can wrap all my productions that are in the works currently, I'll be happy. I don't talk about it much but I produce music for other artists and the world will find out more about that in time. It would be nice if the pandemic went away as well as it's painfully taken some of our best. I'm gearing up to play some shows in Texas and Tennessee. Nothing big.
The Ballad Of Crazy Horse suggests you have an interest in historic storytelling. Do tend to read and research when writing about a subject like that?
I read three books about him, my favourite being The Journey Of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall III. I tried not to overstep my bounds writing this song and maybe it made me hold back a little more than I should have. As one critic stated, I made it sound like a football game. It was a slightly sticky subject in that I knew I'd be performing the song in rough Honky Tonks so how controversial did I really want to get in front of a bunch of drunk cowboys and how much license does a white guy from the South really have to sing about Crazy Horse? I just tried to keep it reverent, beautiful and factual.
How has the pandemic effective your life and music?
I was already a hermit so not much! lol. We lost some great people in music so that's been really horrible to me. John Prine, who I never got to see live and is one of my biggest influences for instance was devastating and Charley Pride really hurt. I could go on and on. As for music, Dave Roe Rorick and I work together to produce these tracks now, remotely, with him charting them out for Kenny and Pete and then I bring in steel and fiddle after we cut drum, bass and guitar tracks. Everything is done remotely now due to Covid. Luckily, most of the album was cut live, with all of us together in a studio. I don't mind working remotely as it saves alot of money I used to spend putting myself up in Nashville whilst recording but yunno ... Nothing like being in a room with those guys.
Do you write from a personal perspective or create characters and situations for the purpose of a song?
Most always from a personal perspective although my friend Donna Overbey, former back up singer on the Grand Old Opry with Connie Smith, and I, just wrote a song based on her friend Waylon Jennings' style. They were close and she wrote the song for me. It's called Love Is A Gamble and we cut it next week. That's my first time really telling a story that wasn't my own. Thank goodness cause this guy hangs. Wouldn't want that.
Who do admire as a songwriter in country terms or in other formats?
Townes, Guy, Joe Ely, Dylan, Steve Earle, Hank Sr., Willie. Johnny. The one's you'd expect. I also loved Nanci Griffith a lot. The Blues cats, as well. Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, etc. I always wished I could write and sing like those players.
Are you thinking about the next album or is it too early to even contemplate that?
I have six songs in production, currently. That would put me about halfway through my next album. Pete Abbott who plays drums on my tracks has been on tour with The Average White Band lately so it's been slowing things down a bit. What can you do? Being this album is just dropping, I'm feeling thankful to be that far along.
Are you happy with this album or would you have changed anything?
I can honestly say I'm happy with the album. I hope you are, too.
Interview by Stephen Rapid