The Rizdales Interview

The Rizdales are a hardcore honky tonk band from London, Ontario lead by husband and wife Tom and Tara Dunphy (got to be an Irish connection there somewhere). Their sound is influenced by the classic country greats, such as Ray Price, Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn, they sing about love, loss and reality without ever taking themselves too seriously. They have released 5 critically acclaimed albums, were handpicked by the Queen of Rockabilly Wanda Jackson to be her Canadian backing band and have played festivals, hole in the wall bars and concert halls from Ottawa to Austin, performing alongside such greats as Dale Watson, The Derailers, The Mavericks, and The Good Brothers.

The Rizdales play country music. Why?

It's what comes naturally to us, probably because it's the music we love. When we sit down to write a song, we don't intend on writing a "country" song, we just write the music and lyrics that move us and once it's all put together, it's a country song. Or rather, an Ameripolitan song!

You both do shows outside of the Rizdales. Does that give you the chance to step outside the honky-tonk direction of the band?

If anything we head even more in that honky tonk direction with our side projects! It's just an opportunity for us to dig a little deeper in to the history of the music, find those little gems that have been forgotten but are so much fun to hear and to play. We save our original material for the Rizdales so the shows we do on the side are a chance for us to play our favourite covers and also find some inspiration.

You have released several albums with original songs but it seems that the Ray Price tribute Blue Ain't The Word has hit a particular chord. Is that something that, on reflection, might seem to take away from your own material or is the album a stepping stone to wider recognition?  

Our plan with Blue Ain't The Word was always to honour Ray and we are so proud of the recording and it's success.  The songs may not be ours but we play them like they are, and I think the album fits really well alongside our originals. It's funny, so many Ray Price fans that have enjoyed Blue Ain't The Word have become Rizdales fans, picking up our older albums while so many new fans who didn't know Ray Price are now going deeper into his catalogue - it's worked out really well for everyone, I'd say! 

When you set out to record the tribute you choose song that meant something to you but you approached them as if they were Rizdales songs. Was making that choice an easy enough process?

Tom and I thought it would be a breeze but as it turns out, Ray has so many songs that we both love that deciding on the final list was really difficult! We went over and over the songs and I think the final selection is a great representation of Ray's music.

For the Rizdales how do you deal with the "Country Music" issue when what you do is far removed from what mainstream Nashville is currently disceminating. Is the Ameripolitan label the way that makes most sense now?

We're very proud to be a part of the Ameripolitan movement, it's a celebration of the true roots of country music that isn't being represented in the mainstream country scene, and more and more artists are beginning to identify as "Ameripolitan" because they don't fit into what "country" has become. The bottom line is that everything evolves, and while it's unfortunate that the name of our music has been hijacked by pop music, what matters is that the music itself is as alive and vibrant as it's ever been.

There seems to be a very healthy and varied scene in Canada with acts like Lindi Ortega and Daniel Romano getting recognition. How has it been for you?

It's been great, we have a fantastic music scene in Canada with so many true music fans that support the artists.

 

You seem to be serious about what you do but are not taking yourselves to seriously. How do you find the balance there?

We love what we do but we don't ever want anything to be too precious, if you know what I mean. Tom and I have such a great time playing and every recording we've done has been approached with the same idea - lyrically it has to be interesting to us, there's got to be a twist, or some humour to keep it from getting to heavy and musically, we have to be able to recreate it live which means no sweeping orchestras or wild instrumentation.  We just want to make honest music that is enjoyable and interesting to the listener and to us.

The Rizdales play as the backing band with Wanda Jackson on her Canadian dates. Sound likea lot of fun.

It is so much fun! We're heading into a string of shows with Wanda in October and she's a real firecracker, she's an incredible performer and a very sweet person. It's been a thrill, we've worked with her for over 10 years now and she always puts on an amazing show.

Growing up when did you realize that Country Music was something you wanted to play and what other influences were you listening to in the past. Do those formative listening experiences have a part to play in how you approach your music now?

Tom grew up listening to country music because of his parents, but the first time the light bulb really went off for him that this was something he wanted to play was when Elvis Costello released Almost Blue. Tom was (and is) a huge Elvis fan and that was a turning point for him, he started going back into his parents library of music and rediscovering all the classics. I was brought up on Irish music, so I listened to the Furey's, the Dubliners, that kind of thing and then I discovered the Beatles and it wasn't until I was about 20 that I started listening to country music. Listening to the Rizdales original material you can really recognize those influences, it just comes out naturally in our writing.

What's the best and worst thing about playing in a band with your partner?

The best thing is working together on something we love and the fact that we get to travel together for our shows and truly share in an incredible experience. The downside is writing can be contentious at times - we're both pretty stubborn when we want something! It's also difficult because we have a family and being in the band together means both of us have to spend time away from our children, something we try to limit as much as possible.

What are the pitfalls of keeping a band like the Rizdales together?

I don't know, we've been doing this for about 13 years now and it's still going strong so I guess we haven't discovered any yet!

You obviously enjoy playing music together and performing. What are the best gigs done to date? 

One show that was incredibly special to us was our Ray Price Celebration at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas that took place last July. We had the most amazing musicians take part, Johnny Bush, who was a Cherokee Cowboy, played drums, Redd Volkaert on guitar, Kevin Smith on bass, Neil Flanz on pedal steel plus a bunch of wildly talented friends got up and sang with us. When you're standing on stage with these guys and you've got James Hand singing and a dance floor packed full of folks have a ball, there's just nothing better.  We're very happy to announce that our Ray Price Celebration in Austin will be an annual event, and we're heading back next July to do it again!

From your perspective what is the future for country music in the traditional sense?

I think it's flourishing as Ameripolitan music. Dale Watson has done an amazing job of increasing the profile of our kind of music. There are fantastic musicians all around the world playing honky tonk, classic country, western swing, rockabilly, etc. and the Ameripolitan movement has given them a banner, or a name to work under. The music will always survive but for too long people were so busy walking around complaining about the state of "country music" that they weren't moving forward, it was stagnant. That's done now, let the title "country music" stay with the folks who've got it, the name doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the music and it's alive and kicking.

You have plans to tour Europe next year. For many bands it is something that has to be set up with care given the restrictive costs involved. How do you approach both setting that up and the anticipated result?

We're in the planning stages of that now, we're looking for Ameripolitan friendly venues and we're excited to bring our Ray Price show over seas. It's probably the least fun part of the job, arranging all these details and managing the costs, but it'll be worth it in the long run!

Interview by Stephen Averill

Sam Outlaw Interview

With the release of his latest album Angeleno (following a self-relased album and an EP) Sam Outlaw has received favourable reviews and great exposure. The Californian has taken his take on classic country to the next level, recording with producers Ry and Joachim Cooder. after Joachim heard a demo tape and contact was made. Ry Cooder came to some live shows and asked to sit in with the band. He decided then to us the core of Outlaw’s band, including bassist Danny Garcia and steel player Jeremy Long. “From there I also added Bo Koster from My Morning Jacket. It was my call to add Bo on Wurlitzer, and fortunately Ry really liked his playing so it all worked out great.”

The new album revisited some of Outlaw’s material from his previous releases as well as new songs. This was a mutual decision between artist and his producers. “I knew that this album would get heard by significantly more people than anything else I’d released before, so I considered all my songs fair game. The recording process is, and should be, a learning situation. “I learned that my favorite way to record music is to start with the whole band tracking together. From there I can over-dub vocals if necessary, but there’s no better way to capture the “life” of a song than to just play the song; as opposed to building each track one instrument at a time.”  

Using your own band, rather session musicians, is something that happens more often in the indie area but after the recording the next step is playing live which can be done solo, with a small group or full band. Outlaw’s preference was to use his own regular band where possible; “I prefer to record songs with my regular players. There’s a better groove and by playing the songs live you get the chance to fine-tune the songs before you’re paying money for takes in the studio.” This is something that forms part of his mind-set when he writes;  “I write and arrange my songs typically with a full band in mind. Lead instruments, harmonies, etc. So playing solo is always a challenge for me since I typically have to re-work the arrangement of the tunes. Playing with a small acoustic group is significantly less challenging and much more fun than playing solo, since I enjoy performing music with people. The chemistry of live music is what I really look forward to at each show, so playing a whole set solo is admittedly not my favourite.”

For this album he has signed with Canadian label Six Shooter and that experience has been a positive one. “Six Shooter has been awesome. Having a team of people that believes in you and helps you pursue your dreams goes a long way.  I can’t say enough how thankful I am for that team and how much it encourages me to have some help along the way.” It reinforces the fact that having a support system - manager, label, crew etc - is something that most artists can benefit from. It also allows him to concentrate on his writing and performance as well as reaching a wider audience along the way. “I don’t think about bringing my music to a wider audience beyond wanting to play bigger shows. I’m just going to do what I think sounds and looks good and if other people like it – great! And fortunately I have a manager and good team of people who can help guide the marketing. I’m going to focus on being a better songwriter.” 

Being a songwriter is the core of what Outlaw is. His songs deal with the emotions and trials of love to a large degree. This is a universal subject, especially in country music, but one that needs to be considered from different emotional angles. “Every song can’t be about the same subject matter or you’ll just bore yourself to death. I don’t know if any emotion is necessarily (more) profound than lost love, but certainly some of my songs are about other emotions.” He feels his inspiration can be hard to pinpoint, but  overall was something that “comes from God, I think. I don’t really know”. Location, he opined, was a positive factor in his writing. “Angeleno could not have been made in any other place with any other players. A big part of the sound of this album comes from the life in Los Angeles and Southern California.” 

Much of Outlaw’s live performances have been in the US to date, but he recently completed a tour of Australia with Justin Townes Earle that proved successful on a number of levels. “I got along great with Justin and his fans were incredibly generous. Justin has developed an impressive following in Australia and the shows were all sold out. What more could I ask for?”  He has also played with other upcoming singer/songwriters like Cale Tyson. Both are part of an interesting resurgence of artists who draw on traditional country music, as well as other sources, that are currently quite different to what seems to be the staple of mainstream country radio. “If I had to take a wild guess, I would say audiences who want more ‘traditional’ or ‘classic’ sounding country probably aren’t dissatisfied with mainstream country radio because they don’t listen to country radio at all.” Outlaw also hopes to play dates in Europe next year.

In some pieces his choice of stage name has been a subject of comment and perhaps even controversy. Due in some part to the preconceived notion of what Outlaw music in country might be. “I’m not sure that using my mother’s maiden name is controversial. The Outlaw family is just as part of my blood as the Morgan family and I’m fortunate to feel love and support from both sides. I love the fact that I get to talk about my mom and her family and that using her maiden name provokes those conversations. And if the nature of the word “outlaw” prompts someone to check out my music who otherwise wouldn’t give it a shot then, great.” 

In the end that is what it comes down to. The music. Right now Sam Outlaw is making some of the best country music around. Take the time to listen.

Interview by Stephen Rapid. Text editing by Sandy Harsch

Gerald W Haslam’s book Workin’ Man Blues covers the rich heritage of California country music from the singing cowboys up to Dwight Yoakam and the artists in the 90s what do you feel about that tradition and it’s legacy?

The California country music in Haslam's book is nothing short of outstanding. Miraculous in a way. California has a reputation around the country and world that is, sadly, quite disconnected from reality. What is California? An aerospace mecca? Yes. A wine mecca? Yes. An entertainment mecca? Yes. A farming mecca? Yes. A Tech mecca? Yes and on and on. I can see why people don't think of it as a folk/country/roots music mecca, but they should. It's all here.

What is the current scene in LA and California like today, is it a healthy one or does it struggle to survive?

With the very rare exception an artist's life is always a struggle. The pay is low. The indignity high. Things tend to progress in tandem. It's easier than ever to record and release music, AND there is so much music flooding the world that fans can't make heads or tails of it. Those two things are both true, and connected.  It is so hard to catch someone's attention in this world, and even harder to hold it. That makes building a fan base harder than ever, BUT you have more tools to do it than ever. 

From an artistic standpoint LA has a rich scene of roots music. Lots of artists, lots of perspectives, lots of recordings and live shows. Are there enough fans to support this scene? It waxes and wains, but as the means of selling records in order to make a living has withered away ... so has the opportunity to break out in a big way. There's a reason that Dwight Yoakam is the last LA country music star on most people's lists. There's very little business left here to break artists to the nation or internationally.

The last three albums show a development of your direction as a musician do you intend to continue to explore the possibilities with a traditional country music frame work or do you see your self moving beyond those parameters? 

The answer to this question depends on the day of the week and my mood. Buck Owens. I love Buck and he kind of invented a style of music. But there was very little variation in what he did. If you ever sit and listen to a Buck Owens LP, you find he did one or two things and that is all. It can get boring. But he knew how to build a brand, and people knew what they were going to get from Buck Owens. 

The worst thing you can do with your career when you're trying to make a name for yourself is swing from style to style. the world needs a handle for you, and you're making it hard to find the handle when one record is honky tonk and the next one is reggae and the next one is modern country. Willie Nelson can do that now. Elvis Costello can do that now. They've earned the right to play in these other genres, but lesser known people better not.  

So, you have to balance the business concerns with your artistic desires. I love many style of music. It would thrill me to make each recording very different. Texas Swing! Singer-songwriter! Bluegrass! Countrypolitan! That would be a blast. But I have to do these things with some sense of the audience and who I am to them. 

So, the answer is I have to be me AND I have to be aware of my public personae. It's that duality again. 

What are the key sounds that have influenced your musical directions?

This would be a book that I should write someday. It is a ridiculous collection of disparate sources and sounds. Van Halen guitar is one of the most moving sounds I've ever heard. Lyle Lovett's band has had a profound affect on me. Loretta Lynn's voice. Rush is how I learned how to play the guitar. Johnny Cash's ability to be deadly...DEADLY and then funny. That music makes me wanna to jump for joy. Then there's BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, who I consider the most important solo artist in rock music, and a huge influence on me.

If I had to pick one artist that I consider my north star it would be Merle Haggard. The range of songs he can write, his voice, the way he combines a simple song with a complex rhythm that makes things more interesting, but never gets in the way. He is a master. 

Do you agree with the notion that striving for authencity in country music is somewhat false in that the lifestyles of those who initially played and listened to that form of music have radically changed?

I'm not sure what "authenticity in country music" would be. For example, if The Carter Family wrote a song about a mountain stream in 1925, I could write a song about that same stream in 2015. Both could be authentic and effective. If Hank Williams wrote a song about being poor in 1950, I could write about being poor in 2015. The details should be different, if you are going to include details. But the power of the song would be unchanged. 

I wrote a song called, Not That Kind of Cowboy about an experience I had that seems to touch on your question. I was in a club and a woman got in my face because she thought my cowboy hat would not be effective out on the range. She thought I was being inauthentic. I had to tell her, "I don't ride the range. I'm not pretending to ride the range. My hat is for something else." She couldn't understand that. As long as artists don't pretend to be a farmer, or a hobo, or something else they aren't I don't see that its a problem to write about the unchanging elements of the human condition. 

How relevant is the music now and It would seem that it is with what you are writing, such as one song mentioning an enlarged prostrate?

My songwriting is driven by the stories I want to tell. Simple as that. If I want to tell the story of a man in 1960, I use that world as my reference point. Whatever I need to tell a particular story I use. If it's relevant to make use of the words "cell phone" in a song I'll do it, even though it may date the song eventually. 

In that light country music with more traditional roots seems to have found a second home in Europe which is, in truth, very removed from an link to a specifically American environment.

This is a very sad truth. Dale Watson, who is one of the true American country artists working today, posted some time ago that he was having a hard time selling tickets to a show, in a pretty small venue, in Birmingham, Alabama. This had a tremendous affect on me. Alabama, my home state and the home of Hank Williams and others is one of the cradles of country music. Yet the people there have been so captured by the Red State Rock/Pop Country coming from Nashville that he couldn't sell 200 tickets in Birmingham. 

That said, I couldn't be happier that people in Europe understand and value this music.

You look like you had fun making the video for Trouble Knows which has the band visually reflecting the changes in style in country music since the 50s. Which of these eras would you have most liked to have performed in?

That's a hard question to answer honestly. It's easy for me to say, "I'd love to be playing country music in 1950." But of course, I don't know anything about what it was like. I can imagine riding around the south in a car, selling records out of the trunk, eating road food, and being ripped off by promoters...and it sounds pretty similar to making music in 2015. I can tell you I love the country music of 1950, and 1965 and 1978. After that, things get less interesting from a mainstream stand point until the early 2000's when Americana music become an important force. 

How hard is it to keep a consistent band from tour to tour and album to album. Does it need blood to bring new opportunities?

I have not found it hard to keep a band together. That probably has something to do with the music and with how I treat the people in my band. I try to write the best, most honest music I can every time I'm at bat. I don't coast. I don't say, "Well, this one is shite and doesn't matter." I take it seriously and I think players want to work with someone who loves the music and treats it with respect. I also love musicians. I know some bandleaders that loath the people in their band. They see them like dogs or horses to whip and discard. That's bullshit to me. We're a team and you're not on my team unless I like the way you think about music, the way to talk to our fans, and the way you treat your band mates.

I'm also have a deep respect for them creatively. Yes, I write the songs. but we sit in the studio together and arrange everything. I may have veto power, but I want every drop of creative juice these people have to give me. You don't get that by ruling with an iron first. We've got to jive together.

It can be fun to bring in a new person. That's fresh and exciting. But I want deep rich relationships with the people in my band. I want to raise my eyebrow and have them know what I'm saying. That only comes with years of brotherhood. 

  

Was punk a part of your musical upbringing as it seems to be a factor in a lot of people playing country now?

I always liked the attitude of punk more than punk music. Check that. I loved original punk. British Punk. First generation American Punk. I couldn't follow where punk went in the 1980's. It stopped being about change and started being nilistic. That doesn't make any sense to me. I played in bands that were rooted in punk rhythms and sneering lyrics, but compared to the punks of their day we were light weight.

The reason so many country people embrace punk is because the sense of being an outsider with nothing to lose is common to both worlds. When I see Hank Williams III swinging between honky tonk and punk it makes sense. It's the music of the downtrodden. 

Your blog about not streaming your current album Hope Your Happy Now makes some very valid points. What has been the reaction?

Tremendous reaction. Clearly it struck a nerve with musicians and fans. I've had some people follow me in the direction of no-streaming, and some fellow musicians say they just can't take the chance. Daniel Lanois' company touched base with me and asked if I had an interest in participating with their company which streams and pay artists 50% of the revenue. It's a good opportunity to clarify my thoughts on the issue. I'm not against streaming, per se. I'm against artists not being compensated for their work. They can be cheated out of this compensation in two ways. One, a company could refuse to charge listeners a fair amount for the stream of music. Two, a company could charge a fair amount and then keep most/all of the money. Either way the creator of the music has no incentive to participate.

Then there is a third issue that complicates this streaming business. The market will bear very little cost. In other words, if a company wanted to do the right thing and charge listeners a reasonable price, there's a good chance that the business would fail because people have been conditioned to believe that music should all be free or almost free. Given all these facts, I think it's best to just walk away from the whole mess. 

Do you feel that the mainstream push for an ever expanding audience by adding pop, rap and hair metal will eventually, if it hasn’t already, make the name country music irrelevant?

It will be interesting to see how Pop Country finally explodes. In the USA, country music could hardly be more relevant. It's the dominant CD sales format. It's the dominant radio format. It's got 4 or 5 yearly "award TV shows" which are just promotional platforms for the artists. The business side of it has been a phenominal success. It is largely indistiguishable from pop or rock music. Is Taylor Swift a country artist or a pop artist? Who knows? There's no difference. Yet it has succeeded in ways that pop or rock have not. There are large and successful country music labels, for example. In the rock world labels have largely died.

Typically things only fail when they are compared to something else. Hair Metal died the day Nirvana hit the radio because in comparison Hair metal seemed fake and ridiculous. Is there a Nirvana of country music out there? Could be, but the business is now much better at shunting off threatening acts into sub channels they own. You're never going to hear me or Justin Townes Earl on mainstream country radio, whereas Nirvana was all over rock radio and MTV. They've got CMT Edge for real country and that's where they stash things that don't help them sell records but lend credibility to their effort. It's a ghetto and they own it. 

If I was forced to predict where the whole modern country thing will be in 10 years, I suspect that smart people that run that business will let enough real country in to maintain their credibility and keep enough beefcake and hot young chicks to sell to the mainstream. So, there will be a few lucky winner from the California Country and Texas Country scenes...a few.

What are your hopes for the future of your music and the genre in general?

I think Americana/Roots music has a bright future, especially here in the states. The more people become tired and jaded with fake, silly music the more their hearts will ache for something authentic. They will want a music made by real people, talking about real human issues. They will pay more for it because it will be handmade and not mass produced. It would be great if we could build a system to serve this music to people in a measured way, instead of the insane music firehouse of content we have now. There must be some gatekeeper that helps us maintain quality, but I think we'll figure that out. I know this much. If people listen to the music I make, they tend to like it. So, that makes the challenges pretty clear.

You founded California Roots Union with fellow musician David Serby what are the aims for it?

We want to make California Country Music as well known as the Nashville and Texas varieties. It's that simple. When you start from zero, which is where the awareness of this branch of the genre is at right now, it's easy to make a big impact. We want to promote the acts that live, write and perform in California. We want to make this style a brand that exports to Europe as well as to other parts of this country.

Interview by Stephen Rapid

Interview with Dar Williams

In a career that has spanned over 20 years, Dar Williams has arrived at the top of her climb towards international recognition as an artist of great empathy, insight, and literacy.

As a performer and writer she has delivered an impressive body of work that has been praised for the depth and scope in tackling many different subjects, the human condition and the manner in which we encounter matters of the heart. She can be regarded as a tuning fork for the emotional landscape that we negotiate, whether looking internally or externally, in trying to bring change to our external environment.

In recent years she has broadened her horizons to become a published novelist, lecturer, music teacher in schools and colleges, humanitarian worker and her focus on a broad literary palette has sparked these complimentary interests that also serve her song-writing muse.

Just before her recent concert at the Workman's Club in Dublin, Dar sat down with Lonesome Highway to chat about her career and her current state of mind, among other topics.

You are here to showcase Emerald, which is your 9th studio release. I should ask if the title has been inspired by previous trips that you have taken in our Emerald Isle?

Perhaps a little bit... The title track has a line that says "unbeknownst to my pride I have filled my memories with these hours of golden Emerald light." The song refers to the fact that the beauty of some places I travel to became what my memories look like. I don't remember the small detail of the days but more the sense of open spaces, fields and beautiful sea coasts and I was aware that that would lean towards an Irish experience.

It has been 3 years since the last release ‘In the Time of Gods’ which was inspired by Greek Mythology. Can you tell me a little about the songs on the new release and what has inspired them?

A lot of them are pretty loose and about different kinds of relationship. There is some taking away some of the epic curtains of the last release and there are a lot of friends on Emerald who helped me write it so there is a lot of friendship in the songs. I took off the Valkyrie costume and there is a lot of one-on-one influence.

A visit to an orphanage in Honduras inspired one song (Girl of the World) where teaching girls to write poetry was potentially dangerous. Learning to speak your mind to find out your poetic sensibility is like letting a Jeanie out of the bottle. So you are allowing yourself to understand what is really true for you in a country where you have to fit yourself into your role, both as a female and as a citizen of Central America, which has been used as a drug corridor, the supermarket of the United States; that has been used and abused. Speaking your mind can be subversive. Every person in every country and culture has that moment where you realise that expressing yourself is somewhat subversive but you still have to do it because it is what makes you feel alive. What I loved about the experience was that the girls down there were acutely aware of what the stakes were.

How do you approach the process of writing a song; is it usually a lyrical idea first or a melody that you develop?

What usually happens is that they come together. When I was in Ireland in 2003 I was walking down the road and heard a line ‘who’s afraid of the sun’? I thought what a taunting question, almost neo-conservative. So I thought, why would you be afraid of the sun and I thought of the Sun King and then the subject of Empire arose for me as the United States was involved in a lot of quasi empire building with George Bush just come to office. So I sat with this as the first line of a new song (Empire 2005) and then rolled it out slowly to try and understand the voice that was saying that line in my head.

You are also open to co-writing songs and I wondered if it is constraining having to work with the compromise of another songwriter influence or does the discipline that it brings carry a greater reward? 

The discipline is good, keeping yourself on track and focused is always good. Then there is a moment when that person says something that you don’t agree with fundamentally and you have to use your songwriter skills to come up with a language that says ‘no-way’ - so you shift your song-writing expertise to your diplomacy expertise and you work your way out of the ditch of not seeing eye to eye and you go forward. It’s always good for certain songs. Once you have revealed things about yourself, you talk about your highs and lows, to establish that you are safe in that vulnerable place, then you can go forward and establish trust.

Is the same true for working with producers on your recordings? Do they always bring what you had originally imagined in your mind’s eye before you hired them?

No, for example, on my record the Green Room I tried to micro-manage what I heard in my head but everything that I loved on that record was something that I didn’t like at the time, but it grew on me. It made me realise that musicians have their own thing and it can be funny when you get a bad review about the production; it can be because you let somebody try something.

99% of the time, letting a person do what they do is the right thing. Sometimes you may just have the wrong musician and that can be difficult. Producers that I love tend to bring in musicians that I love.

You are very inclusive with inviting famous musicians to play on your records. You do not seem to be threatened by their fame and take the approach of ‘come one, come all’.

Everybody I know is like that and they are people with established solo careers  and they bring their ingredients in. You can tweak it also to suit what you hear in your head. There is a funny little elfin voice that tells me to listen to the suggestions of other musicians or producers, be it a subtle chord change or a harmony idea.

You grew out of the folk music scene and I wanted to ask whether the media inclination to box you into that genre is frustrating? 

It’s not a real issue. What is nice is that I teach a course about music movement and I lead song-writing retreats. I weigh in with socio-political issues and am invited to art openings, so in a sense whatever I am has been placed inside the larger culture and academic musings of what is going on – I am as much what I am, as Emmylou Harris or anybody, so I feel like people don’t talk as much of my genre but more about me and my sensibility in general and that has broadened. I feel like a grown up!!

Emerald is the first release that you have crowd funded. How did you find the experience?

I loved it but there is an enthusiasm to push it as just this fan-based thing. The wider expectation that someone will end up with your signed sneakers is something that is strange. The more we deflated the celebrity then the more comfortable I felt. In reality, it is just another way to pre-order a record, another new model of commerce.

It paid for the album and you want a stand- alone product that pays for the studio, the musicians, their expertise and you want to support the eco system of music makers. Producers do what I cannot do and then you are mixing it, mastering it, packaging it and promoting it – labels did all of that. Record labels sell units whether digital or physical.

It was good for me, fun for me and profitable for me but it is not a sustainable model. A lot of people have left the industry or pared down activities. It is up to the audience, if they want to hear great music and see great bands, then the ethos has to change. Music has to be bought.

Your touring pays for your music and your lifestyle. I teach song-writing at university and it is exactly what I want to be doing right now but in a couple of years I guess that I would not have a choice. Spotify has been a real issue and why would a person ever buy an album again if they can get it immediately for free? Bjork asked that artists be put on Spotify a year after the album is out, so first people will buy the music. There is a different listening experience now and people are trying to address these issues.

The insight and compassion that you bring to your writing has endeared you to so many. What is your perspective on the essential glue that binds us together?

I am writing a book right now that has to do with how when you start with your values of love and peace and you say I am going to build the world around these values, then it just kind of falls apart in hypocrisy. But if you don’t try to build community; just open a café where a depressed teenager can sit for a couple of hours and not be kicked out, or plough a hill and invite people to bring their sleds. I think the glue is that we truly all want to meet together in the comments but there is always language that we have inside and outside ourselves that bristles at intimacy.

What I have noticed in towns and cities that succeed is that no-one talks about love and peace but they have these things as part of the environment and tolerance. We need to create all of the right conditions, for one another, to make room for each other and this is my post Aquarian philosophy. 

You still include many of the old songs in your set. How do they look from your older perspective when you look back now?

I recently did the 20^th anniversary of the Honesty Room and I was cringing a little because I thought that I would not like these songs. They were written with a lot of care at the time and I’m a different person now.  That album ended up being a letter to myself, to go ahead and radically change your life, because you have to. I see a girl in a car heading out on her breadcrumb path. It is not who I am now but I can still access that.

Do you feel the weight of expectation when you write now?

No, but every song that you write has a whole bunch of voices telling you that it’s boring, too derivative, too long, too short… The one thing I have learned is to just push them aside and keep on walking. Whether it is other people or in my head, it doesn’t matter.

Between touring schedules you keep busy with a number of other interests and projects, a number of which you have already mentioned; college and school workshops, song-writing camps, two books written for adolescent market. How fulfilling is this?

Once I opened the door to trying something different, then I never closed that door again and so I developed into these things. I wrote a Green Blog for the Huffington Post for a year and interviewed a congressman about hemp and marijuana use. Then I looked at American town building and gave a lecture about this, plus I have a book contract and teach a course in music. 

Everything that I go into, as long as I reach my hands out to the left and right and take people along with me, I have these instincts but am more than happy for guidance and input. Whether musically or on a new endeavour, it is all just looking beyond one colour and I have a different life than before which is very fulfilling and where I want to be right now.

Interview by Paul McGee.   Photograph by Ronnie Norton 

Interview with JP Harris

JP Harris was born in 1983 in Montgomery Alabama, which claims it is Hank Williams’ Snr. hometown. “You know the song (Kaw Liga) about a wooden Indian statue? Well my parents used to go to a diner where they had that wooden Indian that he wrote the song about standing outside”. But it was in punk rock where JP first made a musical mark and that experience was a formative one. “I’m still a punk rocker at heart. I think that the DIY ethos of punk music and culture is what really stuck with me in my later life. It drove all the decisions I made outside of music. I feel fortunate to have grown up in my teenage years in punk. I gained a lot of useful life skills from it”. I wondered; was he influenced by the 80’s cowpunk movement at all? “Well my whole crew listens to a lot of different stuff and there was so much of that hillbilly/outlaw stuff crossing over into what we did. There was a peripheral rockabilly scene but we were really into a more 70s and 80s stuff from England and Sweden. I’d heard country music a lot when I was growing up. But it was when I left home at 14 that I started to identify more with the Johnny Cash and Hank Williams message. It started to make sense to me a little more”.

We talked about our respective musical paths and my involvement with punk through my band The Radiators from Space. I told him of my journey to country via punk and electronic music. JP explained how for a time he moved away from loud electric guitars and listened to a lot of old time music. “There is an inter-connectedness with all times of music, but there was a time when I was disillusioned with punk. I think I grew out of some of it while other parts of it I still absolutely loved. It was more I grew out of the culture of inaction in the scene. There was a lot of rhetoric that wasn’t backed up. So when I was 16, I left cities for good”. He spent the next 13 years living in the country where he did a variety of jobs including logger and carpenter as well as working with heavy machinery such as bulldozers, and also a time sheep herding for some Navajo ladies. In the live show he spoke of an injury sustained while trying to multi-task - hauling a bulldozer balanced with logs while trying to text a girlfriend!

He listened to lot of early country music and immersed himself in old time string bands and at 18 he started to play the banjo. He also then worked with a banjo maker learning how to build them. “That became an all consuming life for me. All I wanted to do was go to fiddler’s conventions all summer long and play music till the sun came up. So, at that time, I was really opposed to plugging anything in, even people putting pickups on their guitars”. He played at a lot of square dances playing around the single condenser microphone the way it had been done in the past. “I reset my musical clock. I’d started with music from the Civil War and earlier and progressed through the Carter Family. It’s a very powerful community and I basically forged my career out of that old time music. The more I became a singer the more I began to get into the country and bluegrass stuff and that progressed into the kind of country I play now”. That sound incorporates some western swing and 70s country as well as Bakersfield, outlaw and truckin’ elements. It is an overview of classic country at its best.

JP began to notice that many of the people he played with also played with other bands. He has toured as a duo with Chance McCoy opening for Old Crow Medicine Show. “I became aware that they played old time as an inner passion but had other options to play”. He knew that he had a base of people who potentially would come and see him because of his reputation in the old time music scene. That spurred him back to the idea of playing electric music again. He misses that side of his music but will doubtless revisit it again. I mentioned how JD Wilkes had balanced his work as a solo artist with the Dirt Daubers and The Legendary Shack Shakers. “Over the years people have asked if I’m ever going to incorporate any of the old time stuff into the set. But while I love that stuff, it was more to do with the community aspect and [while] I do appreciate the people who perform it professionally, it has never called to me although I had an old time band just before I started this”. He had realized that in playing the acoustic music outside of that community, he was beginning to water it down. “We were used to playing banjo tunes for 5 to 10 minutes and now they need to be around 2 minutes. When me and Chance got together to tour that was a way to step back into that, but with his schedule with Old Crow it’s a little harder”. But it was an opportunity for both to step away from what they were doing with their main bands. “It was a way to reconnect with that music”.

Bluegrass and old-time have obvious similarities but JP reasoned that bluegrass was more of a performance format while old time was meant more for dancing to. Both, for him, are more oriented to a back porch setting that to bars and smaller venues. He sees the music growing as an important part of the music developing and noted the inclusion of drums to the Old Crow lineup as adding a new dimension to their sound. As is the bringing in of pedal steel - an instrument I have seen but not heard in the mix at recent more mainstream acts gigs. “Jimmy Martin used have a snare drum but then there was this weird new traditions thing that didn’t allow it”.

Much of the old time music was used as dance music and what he does with The Tough Choices is similar. Indeed back in the States people nearly always dance at the gigs. Not so here though, as we are often more reserved at gigs and being seated doesn’t usually help. But there is another side to what JP is doing. “For me playing country music is that it is just as important that it be a community function as it was when I played old time music”. He thought that musicians often evolve by pushing the limits of what they do, and try to reach a broader audience by branching away from traditional county which is something that, at this point, he has no intention of doing. We discussed the current crop of major label acts who add rap and soulless rock to their definition of country, while alt. country acts should also shoulder some responsibility for taking the music away from its roots. Some of those albums were really just singer/songwriter style, which may have included a banjo or steel guitar, but that didn’t make them country. Country really can’t stray too far from its roots before it becomes something else. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it belongs in another genre. JP thought that “over the last three or four years I have really softened that edge, it’s the same detriment to a style of music that to reference it by name but to water it down by bringing in a lot of other influences so it barely resembles the original thing. Adding a Telecaster doesn’t make a country band in itself, that would be like saying that the Drive by Truckers were a traditional country band which they weren’t. The same thing is true of modern pop country. It would be great if we could name what we do as hillbilly rock or something”.

“The biggest crime in the whole thing and I’m not going to feel bad for myself about it is that there are a ton of people for whom it is almost a family tradition to be country music fans. Their parents and grandparents listened to country music so they’ve just grown with it and they don’t hear it”. He knows that there are a lot of people coming to his shows who tell him they are so sick of what’s being played on country radio, that 1 in every 40 songs is a country song. But he also feels that there may be recognition of the fact that there is an audience for something truer. The success of Sturgill Simpson is an indicator of that. As is Jamey Johnson, who he feels makes music that is very commercial and modern. “There’s a message, a vocal style and a song writing capacity, that is very true to the original themes of country music in what he does even if he has a glossy Nashville production and some rock guitars in there. I think that the doors are going to have to slowly swing open”. Amen to that. JP hopes for a time like that when Dwight Yoakam got through the cracks and showed that there were alternatives to the mainstream that could still sell a lot of records.

There was a time in the 90s that he felt the older generation could hear in Alan Jackson or Randy Travis a continuation of the music they loved, but would now not recognise it at all. I know from experience when you went down to Robert’s back in the day, there were couple in their 90s dancing along side 19 years olds which is something that wouldn’t happen now outside of some small local honky tonk when the right type of band is playing. “Nobody’s grandparents particularly want to listen to Jason Aldean” he opines.

I asked JP about the sort of country he felt most at home with and he said that he’d been aware of the 40s and 50s music for a while and there were a number of bands that reference that era very closely in sound and who were perhaps a little stagnant. He never wants to be pinned down in any one sub genre of county music and he felt that in some ways he has ruined old time music for himself. He explained “Once I went on tour with this old time band in bars and clubs and I realised that while this is the environment I wanted to be in, these instruments don’t have the power to hold their own in these places”. He had been listening to a lot more of the 60s and 70s country and it had opened his mind up to that music. “I feel that the 60s are really the heyday”. We talked about Buck and Merle and that Bakersfield sound. (JP Harris has in recent time become friendly with the great Red Simpson and plays Simpson’s songs in his live set). “You had hillbilly bop and honky tonk two-step which then led, at the tail end of the 60s, to the outlaw sound”. The airwaves were open to hard Buck Owens next to the Beatles next to Otis Redding on the radio; an openness that now, sadly, for the most part has been lost. It was an era he felt that revolutionised and revitalised the music. Times were changing and that was having an effect on songwriting too “the lyricism then became a little deeper, people were better educated so writers could be a little more analogous about the stories they were telling”.

On his new album there is one song he said the band call the “arena hit” because it could be a George Strait song from 1983. Then there are songs that sound like they could be from 1962. He doesn’t feel the need to pigeonhole himself to one sound. He hopes that the recent success of the indie label which released Simpson, an act whose music he really admires, might become even more so when his next album on Atlantic Records is released. “I think Sturgill covered a wide range of topics and sounds on both his albums. County music often recycles sounds and themes and there’ve been psychedelic country records in the past, but no one has done that in so long and he did it with a cool, individual approach. He and I had several conversations about the music”.

He concluded by saying “my music is personal and is current. I’m not just trying to recycle the same ideas. The title track of my first record is about an answering machine. Back then in 1960 when the sound of that song was set, an answering machine didn’t exist”. In other words this is an evolving music, one that remains true to JP Harris, his life and the language and mores of today, yet it would be recognisable to someone who was a fan back in the 1960s. That’s the way it should be.

Interview by Stephen Rapid   Text editing by Sandy Harsch  Photography by Ronnie Norton

 

If like me you are a recent recruit to April’s Army then you’re probably familiar with Miss Verch’s career to date but a first time visitor can be prepared for an acoustic musical experience quite a bit different from their previous expeditions into the Trad/Old Timey/Roots Americana world. April Verch and her two on stage pals are here to listen, assess audience reaction and deliver an evening that sort of defies categorization. If you want a pre taster then go no further than the first track, Belle Election from her most recent CD The Newpart a 14 track tour through as many musical styles as I can count on both hands. Belle Election is an audio nutshell of the performance to be savoured from these three fine musicians. With stunning fiddle, exquisite flatpicking, solid base and an jntro to April’s intricate dancing that will have you on your feet and joining in from the first few taps,

I’ve been a fan since I searched April on the web a few years back following the release of That’s How We Run a mind-blowing album featuring the traditional music of the US rather than her usual fare from her native Canada. It featured an A-List  of players too numerous to name here but a mention of Bobby Hicks and my heroes Riley Bauguss and Dirk Powell should help to set the bar for your listening pleasure.  She followed this in 2013 with another blockbuster, Bright Like Gold a twenty track beauty and I’ll just say that having Sammy Shelor, Mac Wiseman and Bruce Molsky on board may have been responsible for me almost wearing a hole in the CD from constant replaying in my car.

Her latest release The Newpart will I’m sure form a goodly part of her concert material and is a tribute to her family history and that room back home that nurtured her love of all things musical and gave us the consummate musician that is today’s April Verch. She is without doubt one of the world’s best traditional fiddlers , a singer of such style that would have many of the “Chantoosies” of many a gin joint green with envy and a step dancer who can tap, clog and perform leaping twirls that put me and my camera to the pin of our collars just trying to keep up.

My first live encounter with April was at last years Ulster American Bluegrass Festival in Omagh, Co. Tyrone, where she and her band entertained us over three days delivering different sets each time, winning new fans with each performance and the thing that fascinated me most was to see her join in as many off stage jam sessions as she could squeeze in. I recently asked her for her thoughts on jumping into jams and her answer took me a little by surprise. She loves to jam and will always leave having learned a new tune or song but she would never presume to upstage the jammers, preferring instead to just join in at her comfort level, admitting that Bluegrass is not her strongest genre, and enjoy the learning experience.

Her dedication to improving her musical skills is summed up in this story, how years ago at a local fiddler’s monthly dance in her native Ottawa Valley, this young prodigy much loved and encouraged by the older players, noticed that when she played a waltz the dancers didn’t fill the floor even though she felt she had the correct tone and technique. Her Dad persuaded her to listen to how the older and sometimes scratchy fiddlers’ playing got the folks up dancing. That lesson lives with her today and honed her ear to the timings and traditions that move the dancing soul.

April was born, resides in and returns regularly to her family home in Pembroke Ontario in her beloved Ottawa Valley. Her Mom and Dad still live in the old family schoolhouse with the Newpart extension now celebrated in her most recent CD. This is her cocoon where she recharges her batteries after her many trips abroad, topping up on the people and culture, so much a part of her young life and which she feels compares very favourably with the culture of this green and mystic isle.

Her earliest musical experiences were listening to her Dad’s Country band playing at the local dance halls. Her parents were and still are huge music fans. So much so that she grew up thinking that every kid must have had the same love for music that she had right from the cradle. She was nurtured by the local musicians who recognizing the future that lay ahead of this cute but talented  child prodigy, schooled her in all aspects of her obvious career. They especially trained her in the business side of a touring musician’ life to avoid the pitfalls that might take the gloss off a shining stage career.

When I asked if she hated being dragged to music lessons she hesitated slightly but honestly replied that her dancing lessons came first, in group sessions which she loved. She started fiddle lessons at about 9 years old and flourished in her old timey styling but some interested observers suggested to her Dad that she was in danger of developing some bad habits and playing techniques which might be impossible to correct later. So classical lessons soon followed that although she later appreciated them, took her attention away from her preferred old time fiddle tunes. So like all youngsters she persevered and those classical lessons laid the foundation for the impeccable fiddle playing which has lifted her to the pinnacle of her profession.

I was very curious as to which came first the fiddle or the dancing shoes and with a grin she referred to some old family photos that prove she was dancing before she could even walk. So she strapped on her dancing shoes to follow in awe in the footsteps of her older sister Tawnya, picking up her fiddle along the way and the rest as they say is history..

April constantly refers to the Ottawa Valley style, a culture which like many other Canadian styles is historically driven by the settlers in any region. The Ottawa Valley drew many settlers to the lumber camps from Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany and Poland. And it is that distillation like a fine blended whiskey, of all these cultures that gives rise to those hard driving rhythms with a particular emphasis on dance music.  She proudly announced that the first music at a local wedding is when all the assembled guests gather for an Old Timey dance. How beautiful that must be to experience.

April will be travelling with two amazing musicians and since this is an equal opportunity band you can expect full participation from all involved. Cody Walters from Kansas has been with her since 2007 and lays down a solid backbone bass but with base or his clawhammer banjo he is never too shy to step out front and entertain. Hayes Griffin joined the band three years ago and his flatpicking guitar style much influenced by his hero Tony Rice, has to be up there with the best I’ve ever heard. These guys are a serious group of dedicated musicians who constantly seek to push the envelope on their many styles by searching, listening and working together while on and off the road to bring the best they possibly can to each new audience.

Every artist has musical heroes and April is no different. When quizzed on who would she most like to play with she had no hesitation in lamenting the fact that although she had met him a few times she never did get to play with the great John Hartford, a musicians musician who is close to the heart of all of us who love the sound of an old time fiddle or banjo. There is also a whole list of local musicians that she still has to tick off her must play with bucket list.  This led to an obvious question from me as to which of her recorded projects still gives her goosebumps. Modesty again took over and she admitted to seldom listening to her previous recordings but the project that her Dad recorded and the recent albums with Sam Bush, Mac Wiseman, Riley Bauguss and Dirk Powell hold a very special place in her heart.

Finally digging into her chill out time I discovered that she has stashed away a copy of Pink’s Greatest Hits that gets headphone time and an opportunity to bop away in private hoping that nobody gets to see.

As an aging folkie from the 60’s I have had the chance to enjoy many live performances through the years but this little lady and her two partners on stage  offer a visual and musical treat that I will value for many years to come.

Text and photography by Ronnie Norton

Interview with Krista Detor

 

Krista Detor works closely with her partner and producer, David Weber. She released five albums Mudshow, The Silver Wood, Cover Their Eyes, Chocolate Paper Suites and Flat Earth Diary since 2006. An acclaimed singer songwriter she was the only American woman invited to The BBC’s Darwin Songhouse Project. She is a seeker of inspiration wherever and whenever she can find it. She recently spoke to Lonesome Highway.

Your debut release is 2003’s A Dream in a Cornfield. The cover photo is a little girl with angel wings standing in a clearing; is that you dreaming of the future?

I had struggled so long with not having the courage to push forward with the songs I had written, so the idea of having a solo album had been taken off the table. I had a daughter and was trying to raise her when I met with David Weber and the possibility of recording my songs started to become a reality. It felt like a dream come true

David produced it with you and you gave him the following tribute; “He gave the whole thing wings with his talent, brilliance & faith; and who called me back after a year.” Can you elaborate?

I had been playing with some musicians in a rock band and we recorded a session at David’s studio. I thought if I was ever going to be taken seriously with my music, I could not be affiliated with this rock band approach. We were a rag-tag bunch called the Wolfpack and David wanted to know where I had met these guys. We ended up playing some of my songs and he suggested we do a recording. Some months passed and he called to say that he had not forgotten our conversation. I told him that I was still writing songs and we eventually said ‘ok, let’s do this’. 

It seems to have been a meeting whose time had arrived. Sometimes people come into our lives for good reason. Your words have always displayed an independence of thought and a very literate quality. Do words and song concepts come easily to you or is it something that reveals itself from playing and writing melody?

I think that sometimes a song can come by way of a melody, The World Is Water for example, but for the most part, I’ll have a song idea and a notion in my head. Usually the song and the lyric come in at the same time but the fleshing out is the musical part.

You released Mudshow in 2006 with David Weber producing again. It is essentially a different group of studio musicians with David engineering and playing a greater role as both player and co-songwriter. We are given striking imagery of elephants and of you walking a tightrope across a city skyline, with strong circus imagery and a theatrical feel to absorb. Was this a metaphor for the world as you saw it?

I think it was the way that I see the world. At that time both David and I had become personally involved and his background is actually the circus. We were in the midst of a political circus with the reaction of America to September 11th, where both bad judgement and lack of foresight had occurred. 

The elephants for me represented power and control and the feeling of being squashed by a domineering political party. Beyond that, I have a strong connection with the notion of the elephant, hunted almost to extinction for their tusks, and their sensitive nature. I have been involved in wildlife trusts for the protection of the elephant. So there was a duality.

You now find your music distributed across Europe by the record label CoraZong. This extends your musical reach and you are in the media to a much greater extent. What impact does this have on your life?

It changed pretty much overnight with a high level of press, radio and TV commitments. I was not experienced in touring and had a steep learning curve. Carrie Newcomer in the USA had taken me out on the road previously and I had learned some of the ropes, but to suddenly be in Europe and spending seven weeks on the road was a big change for me and who I was; essentially a songwriter. 

People expected that I had all this road experience because I was not a teenager, but this was not the case. At the time music was a ball & chain around my ankle that would not leave me alone. I saw myself as someone who just needed to put a down-payment on a house and trying to find a way to be ok with that. 

I had suffered from stage fright in my early 20’s and to be a touring song-writer was not something on the cards. David had faith in me however and through his support and trust I found a way to overcome it without resorting to Beta blockers. David deserves great credit for his belief and he is the reason why I overcame this.

In 2007 came the release of Cover Their Eyes which arrived with more arresting art work and elephant imagery, Kurt Vonnegut quotations about the need for kindness and a very fertile creative period for you.

After the incredible critical reaction to Mudshow, which was not very radio friendly and had a more ambient feel with both dark and pensive moods, Cover Their Eyes was then given the boundaries of trying to be more radio friendly. That can cut into the heart of what you are trying to do and I didn’t feel that it was my most authentic work as a result, even though some very good songs did come out of it. 

Listening to it, there appears to be a sad acceptance of the fragility of life and the impermanence of things with a certain melancholy present.

It was there. Between David and I, we had three small children and had come from being one thing to another; the confines of a small recording studio to being everywhere, all the time.

You are always having to redefine yourself and think about touring and how time flies on the road. As a touring musician, you are never where you currently are, but always about one year ahead, in order to remain working down the road.

We wanted to explore the dream we both had and people should never have to give up on those dreams. Part of being a good parent is showing your children what can be accomplished in life, but we had to negotiate this. 

In 2009, you were in Shrewsbury for the Darwin Song Project; eight musicians, seventeen songs and an album and live performance completed and delivered in a week. Was this collaborative experience one of liberation? Did it lead you to write or arrange in a different way?

The amount of true writing collaboration was not that much. The musicians did collaborate but the writers worked under extreme deadlines and this was liberating to me as it changed how I viewed myself a songwriter. I work well under deadline and I tend to be pretty creative.

I have a friend who rates Clock of the World as the best song he has ever heard and it moves him to tears every time he plays it. How does it feel to hear such stories and to realise the musical imprint you make?

I have heard that from a number of people and I am very moved when I hear such comments. It was really important to write that song and sculpt it out of the clay; to carve and polish it. I only ever wanted to be the best possible writer I could be; a writer’s writer. This is what I equate to success.

You released Chocolate Paper Suites in 2010, a song suite in five parts. With the same distribution through CoraZong in Europe, David at the controls, more stunning artwork and you, as an artist at the very top of your game.

That was my response to Cover Their Eyes and the direction that the record label had wanted me to take. It was a very personal work and has a beautiful, stark, vibrant imagery and is dedicated to Madeline Krause ‘as she drifts like wishes in the orange blossom air’. She was an autistic child who committed suicide and she was the daughter of close friends. 

International travel took over for a few years as you lived some of the imagery of your words with a “great big boat and a steamer trunk”. This included trips to India, Nyaka Aids School, Wildlife Reserves and some acting and some writing (The Art of Science & Sustainability). A sabbatical of sorts & a chance to gain perspective and renewal?

I took time off to spend more time with my children and to become involved with musical collaboration in theatre and university projects. My career had reached a point where I was being allocated a slot in the folk genre of recording artists and I wanted to take a break from where I had arrived.

In 2013 came Flat Earth Diary with new songs, new markets and different challenges. This appears to be a more personal release with the songs reflecting a look back in the rear view mirror.

Yes, the songs were from a more personal perspective and songs like Marietta, Just Because and Hear That reflect old memories that I have. This release came together as the result of a boat trip where there was nothing to contemplate but the horizon, no land in sight and no distractions. 

A number of the songs came out of that experience and also, the thought that in the past the world was considered to be flat by all the great minds of the time. It seemed appropriate to revisit our preconceptions and the way that we look at things. 

I have always admired the song-writing craft of Krista Detor and her ability to perform at an intimate level with an audience. Words like mature, wistful, literate, elegant, reflective, refined, poignant and whimsical come to mind, bound together by a very theatrical element that runs through her songs.

I return to that first recording and a credit to her children, Aurora, Lena & Isla – ‘for all the wide-eyed wonder.’ This seems to capture the essence of Krista Detor, and this feeling has not diminished over time. We have been given the gift of a talented woman at play with the world and long may she run. 

Interview by Paul McGee

Interview with James House

Lonesome Highway met James House in Belfast, here for a songwriter’s festival before a UK tour. House looks pretty much as he did when we last spoke at his home in Nashville in 2002. He is touring behind his new album Songwriter’s Serenade, his most recent since Broken Glass, Twisted Steel was released in 2014. Previous to that he released an album, Troubadour Kings, which he had recorded with fellow contemporary songwriter/singer John Brannen. House did some live dates with a band of that name but Brannen was not involved. 

In 1989 House released his Tony Brown produced self-titled debut. That was followed a year later by Hard Times for an Honest Man, his last release on MCA. James moved to Epic to release his acclaimed Days Gone By album in 1995. This was produced by Don Cook and sold close to 200,000 copies. It made the top 5 in the country album charts and delivered James’ one Top Ten hit This Is Me Missing You, a song that recently made number one in the line-dancing charts some 20 years after its original glory. That feat in itself was something that brought House back to the UK.

Since then House continues to write and co-write songs, six of which appeared on Steve Azar’s Slide on over Here released in 2009. Another song, Born to Be Blue, co-written with Raul Malo, was included on the Mavericks In Time album. James also wrote In a Week or Two, a hit for Diamond Rio and Ain’t That Lonely Yet with Kostas, covered by Dwight Yoakam. Both tracks appear on his last album, where House did his versions of many of his co-written songs that had been picked up by other artists. These songs were responsible for James getting his deal at Sony and Days Gone By, an album he still considers his finest. His modus operandi was, and still is, that he is always writing for his next album. That is his goal.

The writing partnerships and those currently writing hits have a different sensibility, something that House thinks is because “they are reflecting what they are listening to. They’re putting rap in their iPhones and mix it with country. Kid Rock was doing it.” He feels a big factor is the way that radio has changed. “In 1996 they changed the law in the United States. Before that you could only own two country stations and the FCC changed that to allow as many stations as you wanted. At that time there were 2500 radio stations and 80% were Mom and Pop owned so you were able to break a record regionally. That was a great tool for breaking records, even in rock, people like Bob Seeger. Texas is about the only place that (still) has a local scene. They’re very protective of it and that’s why they’ve kept it. But that really changed the scene so that we were all singing for one station, so four or five guys has the control. Which is why a lot of stuff sounds the same, as it’s being dictated by four or five companies and it all sounds the same. They’re not in the music business they’re there to sell advertising”.

That situation meant a change in the direction of songwriting and James feels that he doesn’t know how to do that kind of formulaic writing. “I don’t know how to do that, I’m still chasing that elusive great song.” During the time between his 90’s album and the current two releases James recorded an album with John Brannen. “I always wanted to make a duet record as I love that sound.” Before that he spent time with a company called Friday Records. “They came into town with some money and I cut a Christmas record and a full album with them but they folded and that had taken about three or four years for that all to happen”.

After that opportunity passed, James felt that he needed to do something different so he invested in a recording studio which he set up at his house. He then spent around three years learning the recording and engineering process. It is where he has cut the bulk of his two recent albums. “I sent Brent (Mason) the tracks and he can add his parts in his home studio”. This is a process that is now common, with parts being added to tracks sent via the internet in different studios, although House can and did cut some tracks with the musicians at home in Dream On Studios.  

Of the new freedom this label-free situation he said “it’s good and it’s bad. The good part is that I control it completely and the bad is that I control it completely (laughs)”. This means that he has to step back and consider what he has which means at times something was great or then not so good. “I play the songs for my wife and she is just brutal with me. She would say ‘that sucks’ or ‘that has potential’ or ‘that’s good’. That honest opinion is a positive asset in assessing what he was doing.

Lonesome Highway’s last conversation with James was when he was playing a series of dates in The Wildhorse Saloon. But after that he took a step back from music to look aft his son Jordan, who he had gained custody of in 2003. House is proud of the fact that his son is now going for his master’s degree in psychology. About four years ago James got back to music. Alone in the studio he could turn up the music and just concentrate on his next step, including a number of co-writing sessions in his house. 

Those co-writes included Mike Reid, Bill Anderson and Jamey Johnson. “It was a house full of music and it was really fun”. Johnson he had met at a function at the famous Studio A. The studio is owned by Ben Folds, who is managed by House’s’ wife Sharon. House and Johnson spoke about all the music that had emerged from that room, the many countrypolitan sounds with orchestration that had come from the studio. That particular conversation then led to them write their own countrypolitan song.

Another co-writer was Jim Lauderdale “I have this great image of Jim. He was coming out of the writing room and he has my son’s shoes on, kinda baby shoes, and somehow he’s walking in them and I took a picture (laughs)”. The new song he felt was a great combination of their two styles. Again they had met at a listening party for a Billy Bob Thornton album. “Billy Bob had that thing were he’d repeat a line three times, which I love but often forget about, so I had this title before Jim arrived and I wanted to use that. He stood at the kitchen table and worked on the lyrics while I walked around the house working on it. It was great to write with him”. They performed the song together later on Music City Roots.

Natalie Noone, the daughter of 60s pop star Peter Noone, is another guest whom he co-wrote with and she duets on Over Getting over You. “She’s a friend of Danny Flowers’ and he invited her to the Bluebird a couple of times. Then I saw a showcase that she did and I was knocked out. She has more of a California country sound than anything. She obviously listens to great vintage music. I heard she wanted to write so I invited her over and I had that title hanging around for awhile so we wrote it together. Peter was at the showcase so I’ve gotten to know him a little too. The thing is, back in the 60s we all heard the Beatles but the next thing we heard was Herman’s Hermits. In fact, my girlfriend at the time was Debbie Brown, so Mrs Brown you’ve Got a Lovely Daughter was special. Plus as a writer I always remember their lyric ‘Second verse same as the first’ from their hit Henry VIII - a genius whoever came up with that”. When he returns to Nashville they are going to do more writing for her upcoming album.

Veteran writer Bill Anderson is another co-writer with House for this album. Anderson continues to write, often with much younger artists and House feels that Anderson “Has got his chops as good as they ever were. He still has a ‘Bill Anderson’ song, he showed me something new he was working on. I gave him an idea ands he immediately took it and worked with it. That’s how he stays young and fresh. He’s just written with a new guy called Mo Pitney, you’ll hear a lot more of him soon, Bill’s got his new single. Bill knows how to structure a song, he knows what’s needed. That’s why he’s as good as he is and writing with him confirmed that”.

House feels that things have changed, so it is a challenge to get your music out there. Getting a cut on a TV show or film can help with exposure. But writing is the essential ingredient.  “I always got my cuts when I was writing for my next record so I have to move forward with that”. However, he has found an audience in the UK, specifically after This is Me Missing You went to the top spot in the UK dance chart after being chosen by line dance choreographer Yvonne Anderson. That helped get him back into focus again. He is also shortly going out on a tour in the US with John Berry and Deborah Allen, using one band and one bus. But he wants to establish a strong link in the UK and hopefully Ireland.  “I want to keep coming back as it works for me”.

House has also been writing with Joe Bonamassa and says he has had a lot of fun doing that and will see him play in London during this current tour. He also feels that a lot of today’s artist grew up with a heavier rock influence than may be true in the past and the influence of rock can’t be discounted. “A lot of it is 70s rock. To me there was the Eagles. I grew up around the music played at home. They loved Buck, Merle, Eddie Arnold, Ray Charles - all those records. They were part of my DNA”. Not that that source was always foremost in his musical memory as he reminisces. “I tell story that when George and Tammy were at the Opry on the last night of the duet tour in the 90s, they invited me up to do Will the Circle be Unbroken and they’re all taking verses. Johnny Russell was there too and George looks over at me I’m ‘Go away I don’t know the verses’. I’m just singing the choruses. I didn’t go to church (laughs). Then the next time he comes over and says ‘It’s your turn son’. So I have to mumble something that kind of sound like a verse” 

Of the current crop of song writers and singers he feels that a lot of what he hears (and he doesn’t listen too often to the radio) sounds more to his ears like a jingle rather than a song but he understands that times change as did the demands of radio. He does feel that his generation had a different approach; “We’re lucky as we’ve seen the evolution of music, of rock ’n’ roll” He observed that while teaching a class recently with young art students in Florida, “kids from all over the country, 15, 16, they had good structure to the songs they were writing. But in these songs I heard such melodies as Let It Be and a whole lot more and it stuck me that, unless we evolve to a whole other place as human beings, where can music go? Someone’s going to be original and someone has a good voice but, in the end, the structure of music is there now. There is no forward movement at the moment, a band like the Beatles were always looking forward”. He reckons that writing formats are pretty much set to a template right now. Although the vagaries of life and of love lost in particular were grist to a writer’s mill, House feels that as people get older they tend to look for something different. “When you’re young relationship are more raw and new to you. Everybody goes through that. The first time your heart has been broken and you get older you might not be readily willing to pay that price to write that song again. I know that Hank Cochran fell in and out of love purposely to write songs”.

Writing songs is at the very heart of what James House does, his latest two albums reaffirm his talent in that area. He is also a distinctive singer with a recognisable voice. He has a great foundation to build on and so far has survived the ups and downs of a fickle industry. His day are not, as yet, gone by.

Interview by Stephen Rapid with Ronnie Norton.  Edited by Sandy Harsch.

Interview with Ryan Bingham

Ryan Bingham is one of those artists who, because they tour in Europe on a frequent basis, has been regularly featured in Lonesome Highway. Ryan was touring his new album in a solo capacity so we took the opportunity to catch up with him and ask a number of questions prior to his Whelan’s performance on 31st January 2015.

Your new release, Fear and Saturday Night, has been well received. Are you happy with the media reaction to date?

Yea I am. You never really know what is going to happen when you put a record out. It’s always great to see that when you put a lot of work into something and you release it, that people are enjoying the music. That’s really the only reason why I tour and play so people come out to hear the songs. I really appreciate it.

On this album you secluded yourself away to write the songs. Was that an unusual way for you to work or did you feel the specific need to be alone with your thoughts?

I usually always need to be alone when I am writing songs and try to find some place where there are not a lot of distractions; no phones ringing and things like that. This time my wife found a guy in California who was living in the hills and had this old airstream trailer from the 50’s that he had refurbished, so he could rent it out to people for holidays and things. I went up there for a couple of days just to check it out and  it was an amazing place to hide out and just write songs, so I ended up going there for a few weeks at a time. I pretty much wrote the whole record up there. 

You start your writing process with the music rather than a lyrical idea?

It’s pretty much always the music first, playing around with a melody or a chord progression. It always seems that the music evokes the emotion. Speaking random words out almost spontaneously then brings the lyrics into play  

You made several changes this time out, working with producer Jim Scott and a set of new players. How much did that change the musical landscape?

Quite a bit. I just feel like I had a better idea of what I wanted to do on this record with sounds and other things. I really took a lot more time in just writing the songs and then I took ‘em back home and started recording demo versions that I would overdub with electric guitars and things. I was just trying to get the songs as close to how I heard them in my head before I sent them to the guys in the band and to Jim. These days we don’t have as big a budget as you do with the big record labels so we don’t have much money to really spend on a lot of time in the studio. So I was trying to get everything prepared before we went into the studio with everybody on the same page and having the same direction.

Five major releases in 8 years is very prolific by any standards. When you look back to 2007 and the Mescalito release on Lost Highway Records, how do you think your song-writing has evolved?

I hope it’s gotten better and matured a bit. I definitely feel like I have learned a lot with each record and with each song. The way I have written songs, they can tend to be pretty personal and autobiographical, just chapters of my life as I’ve grown older. Learning how to write and how to sing, how to perform, play the guitar and just get better. I think that is the biggest thing, that you try to get better every time.

Do you ever revisit the early songs from your two self-releases Wishbone Saloon and Dead Horses?

Yes, a lot of the songs on Dead Horses ended up becoming the songs on the Mescalito album but I definitely revisit a lot of those songs. A few of them are captured in their time and I can see that I was definitely 18 when I wrote some of them. Just seeing in the past 10 years how your horizons and perspective broaden from getting out in the world and thinking about the world differently. In those early days when I was writing songs I had hardly been outside of Texas or New Mexico, so my landscape for material that I could write about was pretty regional and just what I could see and what I was around. Then the more I could travel and see things, that was what I went home and wrote about; those adventures on the road.

Growing up in Texas gave you exposure to Mariachi music and playing the bar circuit honed your impressive guitar skills. How much is your creative muse influenced by those days?

Very much I have to say. Every time I start writing a handful of songs I always go back to that place from where it all started and then skip through the years up till the present time. I always seem to go back to those places, even visualising a lot of the images and those memories, some of those desolate landscapes. Those early memories still play an important role in writing for me.

The song Weary Kind featured in the movie Crazy Heart won a Grammy Award and a flurry of media attention and exposure. As a pivotal moment in your career, has that placed unwanted expectations on your shoulders?

It did, because for me, I think if I had recorded that song and just put it on a regular album without it being attached to that film then probably nobody would have gave it much attention. Just to the fact that it had so much attached to it with the film and with Jeff Bridges and T-Bone Burnett. I didn’t want that song to define my career and everything that I had done up to that point and the thought that I couldn’t keep growing and trying new things or experimenting with music. I didn’t want it to inhibit my chances of learning new things. It can put you in this spot where you are not expected to try anything outside of those walls.

Tomorrowland had a song dedicated to your parents, Never Far Behind. The passing of your parents is something you have previously talked about. How much do you think that the influence of childhood colours your work, especially on this album?

A lot, I think. It has influenced it from the very beginning, growing up the way that I did and being out on my own from a young age. Music and song-writing was always my voice and the way that I could process the world around me. I could write stuff in songs that I couldn’t say in conversations with people around me. It was never about wanting to be like the Beatles. I had this guitar and found a way to get things off my chest and it was very personal to me. The rest of it came later.  

On the latest release there is a trio of songs - Nobody Knows My Trouble, Broken Heart Tattoos and the title track Fear & Saturday Night - that seem to address what marks us in life and how we navigate a path through to renewed hope. How hard is it to balance the autobiographical exposure in your songs with the desire for personal privacy?

It used to be a fine line but as I’m getting older, I’m becoming a little less insecure. I think a lot of that has to do with my parents passing away. Back when they were still alive, a lot of those issues were what I was writing about and some of that stuff was still on the table. So, even doing interviews, it was hard to talk about family stuff, even just thinking that my parents or my grandmother could hear it and be upset. I don’t feel that anymore now that they have passed away and everything is out in the open. I feel that I don’t have anything to hide and I don’t have anyone to protect anymore with it.

Do you ever write songs in character or a third party perspective?

I have tried to experiment with that a lot. Sometimes people can take things out of context and think that every song is personal and that is probably my fault because of the way that I have written in the past. That is something that I have had to learn as a song-writer, to revisit songs and make sure that I am saying stuff in the way that I want to say it and that it is not taken out of context or referred to in a certain way. Even if I don’t want to write about something that has affected me in my life, subconsciously it can sneak  its’ way in there and a year down the road I will listen to that song and what I was really trying to get at in the song becomes clear.

Rugged outlaw or earnest, intimate artist? 

That outlaw cliché comes around really easily. The rodeo and ranching is what I grew up with. My great grandfather came out west in a covered wagon and staked a claim on the land. I grew up in a ranching family and all I ever wanted was to be the same as them. I started playing guitar on the rodeo trips and the places in which I learned how to play were really rough, where people came to pick up girls, get drunk and fight. It was not an environment that was tailored to listening to singer songwriters. They just wanted noise in the corner and the cash registers ringing. Chicken wire to catch the bottles. The first time I encountered a listening audience was in Europe when I came to Dublin and London. Whelan’s and the Borderline in London had audiences that were quiet and listening to us. I remember turning to the band and saying “fuck”, we better get our stuff together, they’re actually paying attention to what we’re doing.  It was a completely different environment.

You often write from the perspective of the outsider and the underdog. The comparisons with Dylan and Springsteen have been made and songs like Direction of the Wind show a socio-political side to your writing. How much do you relate to an image of modern protest song writer?

Not that much to the image of being seen as a protest singer. Just meeting people with different cultures and views on life has really woken me up and made me realise that things were not always as I was taught growing up in a West Texas town. Dylan, Springsteen and Woody Guthrie were influences to me growing up and I remember thinking that I had never heard anybody say those kinds of things in a song before. I just started digging into it a little bit more and realising that they were relating to what I was experiencing in my own life. 

This tour is as a solo artist. How much do you enjoy the intimacy of a small acoustic setting with stripped down songs to the dynamic of having the band out with you? 

I really enjoy it and this is like a brand new experience where I have really gotten back to playing for an appreciative audience who just want to hear the songs as they were originally written. It’s really easy to just grab my guitar and a bag and go on the road.

With a number of dates in different European cities how different are audiences in Europe and America?

A lot of it is different. Different cultures within America exist so it really varies. Certain places are more rowdy, boozed up and pretty wild. Then I can play in a city where everybody wants to just hear the songs. In Europe it can be less of a party and more for an artistic experience.

With the distribution changes in the music industry, as an independent artist, do you have concerns over the move towards free music and the apparent indifference towards the artist and his survival?  

In the big picture I probably would. It would be great to get compensated as an artist for your recorded work. For as long as I have been playing I never relied on that and I have been used to singing for my supper and playing live on the road. I learned a lot from touring with Willie Nelson in America and how to tour ‘bare bones’ and guerrilla style. Take a couple of guitars and a small crew and leave the big production at home. Just let the music speak for itself. We would play these big shows with Willie and they would keep it so simple. Selling merchandise and t-shirts is important and keeps you alive on the road, especially since we started our own label.

The case with Axter Bingham Records and the creative freedom it brings? 

Well t brings more control and having somebody that really cares about what you are doing out there. Unless you are a big band that is making a lot of money, the big labels do not have the same element of care for artists and the staff move around a lot in the careers without any artist loyalty. With my wife doing the organizing, I know that the details are going to be taken care of. 

You have been working on a film with your wife. What will be your involvement with that?

The film is now done and edited. My wife, Anna, shot it last September and October and I am writing the score and the soundtrack for it. It’s a project and story that she co-wrote and directed. It’s her first feature film and all her idea. I do some acting in it.  

On your website you have a series of songs under the heading Bootleg. What attracts you to these or any other songs?

A lot of them are songs that I have been a fan of myself or that inspired me. Others are songs that fans asked for. On social media, people say to do certain songs and it has been fun for me sitting down and learning those songs.

Finally, how do you measure your success?

Success is a funny word for me. I feel really lucky that I can play music for a living and have it put a roof over my head, have some food on the table at the end of the day. It is more than I could ever ask for and way more than I ever expected. I never expected that I would have the opportunity to play music for a living and travel all over the world and experience all the things that I have experienced. It has been a hell of a trip…!

Interview by Paul McGee

Interview with My Darling Clementine's Michael Weston King

What was the initial impetus to start the My Darling Clementine project, was it the possibility of working together or some other factor?

We both felt it was time we joined forces, rather than doing our own solo things. Lou had been out of the scene for a while, mainly due to being a Mom (though she still had found time to do a UK tour with The Brodsky Quarter and front the They Call Her Natasha stage show) but she had not made an album for quite a while and so working together seemed an good way of getting Lou back in the saddle.  I was looking for something different too I guess, and I had toyed with the idea of making a duets album before, but using different singers for each song. But, in my opinion, I am married to one of the best female singers in the country so I just used her for them all. 

After a fruitful solo career and playing with The Good Sons did you feel it was time to try something different?

Quite simply I wanted to get back into show business! Essentially I had been troubadouring for a long time, since The Good Sons split, and boy, it gets very lonely out there.  I also wanted the excitement of being on stage with a full band again, and even though some MDC shows are just Lou and I, more often than not it is the full 7 piece band which is so exciting when in full flow. I also looked at artists like Richard Hawley and Imelda May, who were having contemporary success with essentially non-contemporary music and felt MDC could do the same with the country duet

How easy was it to tap into that traditional mode of country and write songs that could easily have been recorded by the likes of George and Tammy?

Not too difficult, as I have been writing songs like that for a while but often they did not get used simply as they were too country, certainly for The Good Sons. And then when I started making solo albums, I was actively trying to move away from country so they did not fit those albums either. So, some of the songs on the MDC debut, How Do You Plead? had been lying around for a few years but, I also did my homework too. I listened to a lot of classic country back in the 80’s and I went back and listened all over again, and it was marvelous to hear how that music (Hank, George, Willie and Merle, Loretta and Porter and Dolly) still sound so bloody good. 

Are the songs in that genre more easy to write, I suspect from a craft viewpoint they take as much work as any of your songs?

Very much so. You are writing for two voices so that immediately is a different discipline, and in the great tradition of the classic county song, you are looking at 3 minutes in length too (even though we have stretched that on occasion) To say what needs to be said, to tell a story succinctly, clearly and poignantly in just 8 or 12 lines is very hard, that is why people like Hank Williams, Harlan Howard, Merle Haggard should be so admired. They are the masters of that. It’s much easier to ramble on over 10 verses. It is much harder to get to the point. 

Was the country music of the 50s and 60s a strong influence and how difficult was it to make the songs relevant to a contemporary audience?

We went into the studio (Gold Top in Chalk Farm, where Nick Lowe had made has past few “quiet” albums)  with the remit of making an album as if it we were in 1969 Nashville, and try and cut it just like a George and Tammy record. We handpicked the players who we knew totally got what we were doing and who understood the genre as good as anyone, and probably a damn sight better than most current Nashville sessions players.   

We did not really think about the audience we were aiming for at the time, we made the album initially for ourselves and we were we are at, both musically and in life as a married couple.  Some of the songs on How Do You Plead?  were scenarios we have made up, or been made aware of 2nd hand from watching other couples, but a number of the songs reflected what had been going on in our own lives. And we certainly continued that theme to a greater extent on the 2nd album The Reconciliation.  

The themes of the great country duets are timeless and apply to all people, especially couples of a certain age. Couples in their 40’s nowadays are essentially dealing with what couples in their 40’s had to deal with in the 60’, 70’ and 80’s.

The “bickering” couple is an entertaining construct and I’d imagine you are both able to draw inspiration from around you and from you own life. We’ve all been there at some time but how do you find translating those emotions into song?

Worryingly, a little too easy!  When it comes to being on stage, yes we play it for laughs at times, but some times, if we have just had “a moment” before we go one, than those barbed comments are delivered with a real genuine feeling. We have not yet had an actual bust-up on stage but we have come close a few times. With the writing it is different because even if you write when in an angry frame of mind towards each other -  it tends not to last so your feelings may well have changed when completing the song. The angry songs, the songs of regret are maybe little vignettes based on other peoples lives rather than ours.

How serious then do you see the songs being, how firmly is the tongue in your collective cheeks?

Lou often says that we take our music deadly seriously but not ourselves. I would tend to agree, but even the songs that may rise a wry smile such as I Bought Some Roses, No Heart In This Heartache are harking back to songs like Jackson, or We Ought To Be Ashamed, songs that were a little tongue in cheek but still fabulous songs, poignant too. There is a long tradition of ‘funny’ songs in country music so we do embrace that as well as the darker stuff. 

A song like Ashes, Flowers and Dust is much rawer and emotional. Is it important to balance the apparent humour with that deeper message?

I think so, it gives the albums an emotional variety that keeps the listener interested.  But at no point do we think “oh we had better write a song like this, or like that.”   Ashes, Flowers and Dust just had to be written. We had both recently lost a parent and as songwriters you are naturally going to reflect a huge moment like that in a song. And to some extent, No Matter What Tammy Said also. Domestic violence has been around for years and thankfully there now seems to be a real focus on trying to highlight it, and reduce it. It is discussed on the radio, in the press, on-line etc. and again, as a song writer Lou reflected something she/we felt strongly about. 

The fact we are working in a the classic country idiom then yes, we can follow a song on such a dark subject, with a light hearted kind of tounge-in-cheek song such as Leave The Good Book On The Shelf which is influenced by such early George Jones songs as That Ain’t Right. It makes for a nice juxtaposition on an album.

The two albums have been very well received critically and with your audience and have made inroads into the mainstream. Was that something that surprised you or did you feel it would be welcomed at a time when country music is in a constant flux?

I always felt these we would maybe reach a bigger audience than my solo work. These songs are very instant and very accessible so we found we could play a whole set of brand new songs to an audience that had not heard any of them before and they really got them immediatley. The songs are also high on melody, something which I am very passionate about so again, a strong melody sticks in peoples minds and connects immediately. 

You have played at the Americana Music Association festival in Nashville what was the reaction of the “coals to Newcastle” dimension of playing in the heart of the genre?

It was fabulous, but there have been many before us who have gone there and sung their own music back at them. Just a matter of it you do it well or not. We played one show at The Station Inn, one of the older, more trad. venues and we chose to end our set by singing She Thinks I Still Care which really could have gone badly and seen us bottled off. Thankfully it didn’t and we left the stage to a standing ovation. Maybe they were just applauding the song!

You are planning to record a third album next year and in doing so using a new producer and set of musicians. How does the change of players and producers affect the direction the recording will take?

He/they will have new and different ideas, may well have a new approach as to how we record, even what instrumentation used. Even though the MDC ethos is all albeit great players playing real instruments and the use of classic country instruments, I  would like to break away from the steel /fiddle/acoustic guitar set up for the next one. I was really pleased with how we used horns on the 3rd album and most definitely want more of that on the next one. That deep south Muscle Shoals kind of horns. 

Is there anyone you would like to work with?

As a producer, Joe Henry and hopefully we will have him on the 3rd album. I would also like to get Elvis out of “production retirement”, we could make a great album with him. Cowboy Jack Clement also, but sadly too late for that now. 

You have both released solo albums. Have you both put that option on hold to pursue My Darling Clementine for the time being?

We have. As I mentioned, Lou was on something of a hiatus anyway, but she is now back in the game totally as one half of MDC and not looking beyond that at the moment, but who’s to say she wont make a solo album again - maybe when she finally leaves me she will.  For the past two years I have been syphoning away songs that will make up a new solo album at some point. I would like to record it in 2015 and I have plans for where and how. Two of my favorite albums of the past year or so have been Robbie Fulk’s Gone Away Backward and Guy Clark’s My Favourite Picture Of You, and I think I would go down that simple, spare route for the next MWK album, certainly the new songs would suit that same approach that Guy and Robbie took on those albums.

The state of country music in the UK with acts writing, playing and recording original material seems pretty  healthy at the moment. Why do you think that is?

Country music, mainly in the guise of Americana, has now become acceptable and accepted, by a younger audience. It has inspired UK artists to emulate rather than copy. For years UK bands just played covers to keep the line dancer’s happy, There is a different circuit now and folk clubs have become acoustic music clubs which have embraced Americana, and roots music, and country influenced singer songwriters too (singer songwriter is also no long a dirty word, well two).  I don’t go to line dance places/country clubs were folks dress up but I guess there are still bands churning out hits by the likes of Georgia Florida Line,what have you, but there are more turned kids being influenced by the likes of Ryan Adams so, like him or not, that has to be a good thing.

Music stills seem to be your passion, have you ever lost that urge to write, play and perform?

Sometimes, for sure. It is a frustrating life at times, and it can often be a battle to carry on but I love playing and being out on the road -  it has been my life. When there is a break , the thought of going back out can seem daunting but once out there and you play a great show, and are all in the bar at the hotel after, then you remember why you love it so.  I love seeing new places. I get restless. Next month we are touring Austria, Germany and Switzerland and the month after that the west coast of the States. It is a lot of work and hassle and head scratching to keep it going, to make it happen, but you can’t buy experiences like that. It isn’t a job, it’s a vocation. Just like to Lou, I am married to music, for better or worse, for richer or poorer

What are you hopes for the future of My Darling Clementine and beyond?

Short term, that we get the deal and consequently the funding needed to cut the next album the way we want, where and with who we want. That we keep improving as writers and musicians and make a album better than the first two. Then for that album to build on what we have done so far, reach a newer and bigger audience and just keep on doing what we are doing, in a general upward direction

We are also busy with this new ‘music and spoken word‘ collaboration with best selling crime writer Mark Billingham, who has written a short story based around 7 of our songs. It’s called The Other Half  - it is set in a run down bar in Memphis, and tells the tale of various couples who frequent the bar as seen through the eyes of the faded glamour, aging waitress, Marcia. Mark reads, we play and the show is presented with great back projection images of the deep south and Memphis in particular.

We kicked it off last November with 4 performances which went very well. The last one was at The Crossing Border Festival in  Den Haag. Mark could not make that one so we had Graham Parker reading there. We were thrilled as GP long been a musical hero of ours

We have now cut an album of The Other Half which features Graham and also the fine actor David Morrissey.  The album will be out in May, released by the publisher Little Brown. We are launching it at the Laugharne Weekend in Wales in April, taking it to Edinburgh for a week in August and touring it on and off from May - October.

So,  I am excited to see how people react to that, and the album in particular - The album is in the spirit of those great Terry Allen albums, like Juarez, or that play he did with Joe Ely and others called Chippy. Maybe someone will make into to a TV drama or film, who knows. It is about time one or two of our songs made it into a movie.

Interview by Stephen Rapid      Photography by Ronnie Norton

Interview with Paul Burch

 

Paul Burch was born in Washington D.C.and began as playing in Nashville’s at famed Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge in the early 90s. He and his band the WPA Ballclub helped to make the Lower Broadway honky tonk scene a place to be again  The debut album Pan American Flash was hailed by Rolling Stone and Billboard critic Chet Flippo as “extraordinary, establishing Burch as a leader in marrying country’s roots tradition with a modern sensibility” and placed #5 in the Top 10 Country Records of the 90’s by the editors of Amazon.com when it was released in 1996. Since then he has released 10 albums. The latest is Fevers and it is one of his best.

He has also collaborated with artists as diverse as Ralph Stanley, Mark Knopfler, Vic Chesnutt, Beverly Knight, Ray Price and on the GRAMMY nominated comeback by Charlie Louvin. He acted as music consultant to the PBS film The Appalachians. 

Paul has featured in Lonesome Highway in the past and we were happy to catch up with his musing on Fevers  and his Pan-American music. 

First off let me say that I think Fevers is a great album.

Thanks a lot.

I wondered with ten albums under your belt including one with the Waco Brothers how you approach to writing and recording has changed through the years?

Each album seems different to me and feels different to me - probably because I tend to think about music impressionistically. I think in terms of moods and colors. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have glasses when I first needed them (laughs) but I like the blur and the detail in equal measure.  Today, I know I’m happier, more at ease and more curious about sound and what happens to our emotions when you hear a certain instrument. I’m more confident that as long as I’m enjoying myself it will all work out. If you were to look at my notebooks - what the scribbles look like - or looked at the back of the tape boxes, one wouldn’t find big differences. I still don’t record a lot of takes. I’d rather come back at a later time if a song doesn’t fall together. Some songs come quick.  Others have to simmer. I still record live - I still leave spaces in my songs for us to fill things in as we feel it at the session.  I use a lot of the same people but in different combinations each time.

I think the main difference is that though I’m aware of what’s going on I don’t feel like things will fall apart if I don’t pay close attention to every detail.  I like the surprise of listening back and not being quite sure of who is playing what. I welcome small disasters.  If the bass player can’t make it, then I make a record with just guitar and drums - which is a gas.  If drums can’t make it, we find a way to feel as if that instrument is there anyway.  I feel freer to take chances as I get older because I don’t feel like I can do any harm. A collection of songs written within a period of time and recorded within that same time period will have a ‘sound.’  And even though I work in the same studio and with a lot of the same musicians, even we notice how songs we recorded - say, the year before - will sound different than what we’re doing right now.  

I’m currently coming to my sessions a little less prepared than I used to.  I know the melody, the rhythm, and the feel, but I don’t make as many sketches ahead of time like I used to.  I allow a lot of room to make up mind on the spot, depending on how well I’m performing the songs for the band and what kind of mood they’re in.  Patience is a lot more satisfying than it used to be. When I first moved to town, I’d often hear more experienced musicians say that the difficult thing to learn was how to add more intensity without just reaching for the volume knob. So now that I’m a little older I think I know what they mean.  

My first years in Nashville were a bit hard. I was getting so much advice left and right that it was hard to loosen up.  I had to have blinders on to make sure I stayed focused on what I was after.  However a lot of people who gave me a hard time aren’t in the business anymore (laughs) and the people who did support me have thrived.  So, I stuck with the people who said “yeah - that’s good. Keep going.” And now my vision is much wider. 

How important is getting that balance between contemporary sensibilities and traditional roots play a part when you conceptualize the music?

I’m not aware if I strike a balance between the two partly because I’m not sure I can define what is traditional and what is modern.  It’s a good question but I don’t phrase it that way in my head.  I don’t feel that the Mississippi Sheiks are not contemporary. For instance, they have songs like “Bed Spring Poker” and “Blood In My Eyes.”  And I think there are plenty of people who can relate to the sentiments expressed in those songs.    

Are they traditional per say because their music is old?

The Sheiks were very contemporary in their time. And they were young—they were not old men talking about what used to be.  If one compares them to say, the Black Keys - who are quite good - I’d say the Black Keys are much more traditional than Jimmie Rodgers or the Mississippi Sheiks.  The Black Keys for instance mostly sound like things I’ve heard before - in fact very specific things I’ve heard before. Their songs are quotes upon quotes. I can’t tell who they are personally.   But no one sounds like Jimmie or the Sheiks - who were by the way good friends.  So yes, if you want the roots of the blues as we know it, listen to the Sheiks.  But there’s no reason you can’t arrange their songs for beat music or rock and not make yourself understood.  

In that light how much have your influences and inspirations changed during that time?

I think I’m in a normal cycle of immersion and substitution. Music from India or Central America, Eastern Europe, Africa - new, old - is more immediately interesting. I say that because the music of my childhood has been sold and resold so many times and in so many ways that when I hear it now, it’s a bit flat.  I can’t meditate to it - so to speak. I will come back to it and appreciate it but I need to give it a break.  From the 60s onward, music got very produced in that the artists were aware that rock and roll was not just a type of music but a social posture.  There’s little room for improvisation in - say - a song by The Beatles even though they were beautiful, creative people.  Dylan’s music suffers from the same sense of inflation.  I don’t want to hear “Tangled Up in Blue” as theme music to sell minty bathroom cleaner. I overheard Tom Petty say his generation would never have chosen their iconic musicians from a tv show. I guess he was referring to talent shows. Well then what were the Monkees? What was Jimi Hendrix on the Dick Cavett show?. Harry Nilsson’s the Point? Does that mean that Tom Petty has a grudge? Has he just not been asked to be on American Idol and he thinks he should?  Well, his generation produced those modern talent tv shows.  No one can thrust the knife deeper than the one that loves you. I get where he’s coming from, but once the rot sets in, you just have to open your heart and your ears and you’ll always find something out there that’s creative on its own terms.  Tom should shut up and play guitar. That’s what he’s good at. And he’s very good. 

Living and working in Nashville has the city changed a lot. There seems to be a much broader mass-market/pop ethos at work especially on Music Row. How has that affected you? 

I’m sure it has but I don’t have much traffic with what’s happening on what’s left of Music Row.  There are wonderful technical creative people there - world class talents for ensuring your music sounds good and is ready to be heard however you made it. Music Row - as far as the country music field -  used to be a place that embraced creative people who also happened to be pot smoking, pill popping, road educated wild dogs that might sleep until 4pm but also might write two or three songs a day.  They believed in the ethos of the poet as a siren and a broadcaster.  

Maybe that exists today but one has to be cautious and smuggle your way through.  Long hair, short hair - it’s all a disguise now.  The best artists are smuggling their way through life.  When you find someone who freely admits they want to make some money because they’re tired of worrying about making their rent, you’ve probably found a real artist.  

There’s a lot of people who will call themselves artists without having produced anything the same ones who claim they’re not in for the money. And that’s complete bullshit.  John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to say they’d sit down and say: “let’s write a swimming pool.”  Elvis wanted to buy his Mom a house. Robert Johnson wanted to buy a woman.  I wouldn’t trust anybody who says they’re not in it for the glory of art and also a little cash, too. 

Fevers has a broad palate in relation to the music yet has a cohesive whole. How wide do you think that the music can be before in begins to loose a central cohesion?

It may have already snapped for all I know.  But sometimes you have to do that to make break new ground. But that’s a good question.  I freely admit to not knowing the answer to except that sometimes it feels right to not worry about it.  A studio is after all a room—like an artist studio or a film studio.  The right performance for any medium is the one that feels right for that moment. The shot or the take or the stroke that achieves balance and harmony usually feels right to everyone involved.  There have been very few edits in my music.  Only one that I can think of and usually if there’s a mistake but the take is obviously very good, we just pick up right where we ran off the road.  So every take on the record - good or bad - is a performance, a picture. A planned picture but still the performance itself is all action. 

If you look at a Kenji Mizoguchi film, each shot has perspective and balance and harmony.  And so the story from a distance has harmony and even a resolution that’s not sweet or satisfying has harmony, too. If I’m committed and I feel that the musicians are enjoying themselves, it will probably turn out all right.  True, I’m not sure Fevers is cohesive.  But it felt like it went together and I’m ok if takes some time for me to figure out just how it worked or if, in fact, only half of it worked!  

An album is the format that’s called for these days but in the future, I might try to be more selective of what becomes an album and what’s a series of - say - singles.  But that’s not reflective of Fevers per se.  I embraced the fact that it was all over the place. It felt right at the time. In the future if another album seemed to be going that way, I might ponder another course, just so I don’t repeat myself. 

Since your early days on Lower Broadway it has changed to a thriving tourist area with a lot of music in a lot of bars. Do you think that is a good or bad thing?

Good or bad it was probably inevitable but I think it was a lost opportunity.  I would have loved for it to become a place where those of us in Nashville who love to perform could pop in and do a little show.  My feeling is the tourists would welcome a chance to hear songs in their early stages by well known artists.  But most artists are too insecure to hit the stage with no set list, no back drop, no handlers.  As for me, I’m ready to go. If someone calls me and says: “come play rhythm guitar right now” for a session, day or night, I’m ready.  There’s a lot of improv spirit in me. If there’s a community in Nashville that welcomes that spirit, I’d like to be a member.  

Through your career you have worked with a number of independent labels. How important a factor are these labels to an albums release?

It always feels good if someone likes your work and I think it’s good to be on a label. The sense of community is important. And if they wish to spend their money and their time to make you part of their group of artists, that’s a great accomplishment - even if it doesn’t work out. In the independent world, I take the risk to make it and they take the risk to see if they can sell it in the marketplace.  

It’s always been hard for me to be a salesman.  I love to perform but I don’t feel comfortable in standing up on a rooftop and declaring someone should set aside their entire evening - go to dinner, get a babysitter, pay for parking, pay for drinks, and pay for a ticket to come see me.  This attitude has confounded labels in the past.  “Why are you doing this if you don’t want to be famous?” - they ask me. But I wanted to be part of an artistic community. I thought if you’re on a label, then you should promote work among the artists on your label rather than have 12 or 15 different artists running in all different directions that don’t talk to each other or don’t know each other.  

You asked how I keep going after 10 albums. Because album number “11” is going to be really good - I hope! But I’ve always been given creative freedom and benefit of the doubt.  So there’s nothing to complain about.  Not everyone does business well together.   

I do appreciate Plowboy, my current label. Plowboy and I are in the same city - Nashville - so they’ve seen me solo, as a duo, trio, septet, electric, acoustic, rock and roll, country, even on Moog.  So when they have a suggestion or a critique, I know it comes from observation. When you can talk face to face - everything, even the misunderstandings—always point forward. The old labels made their money back but their involvement was very small—both socially and financially. They released the music and then never spoke to me again for the most part (laughs) so I have no idea - to this day - what their expectations were business wise. 

When you started out was it your aim to sigh with a major. Has that ambition changed?

I think when I started, I was very wary of major labels but I didn’t understand their system either - which is mostly gone. I felt at the time that my ability to be any good was a bit fragile. I just didn’t know any major labels that would have found me marketable.  Occasionally they come around still but sadly, it’s quite rare to find someone in the music business who is truly fearless.  Shannon Pollard of Plowboy is probably the only person I’ve met who just doesn’t blink. If he likes it, he likes it and nothing else about fads or the business is going to faze him.   

Last Of My Kind was inspired by Jim Earley’s book Jim The Boy which was a different process for you. Would you like to explore that way of working in the future? 

I’m currently writing a group of songs based on events in Jimmie Rodgers’ life –from his point of view.  And some of the approach is similar, including the concern that I’m not sure exactly how it will fall together. But the writing is very different and I like it so far. 

You have acted as musical director on PBS show The Appalachians. With the success of shows like True Blood and other series do you have ambitions towards working in that context again through TV or with a film? 

I really lucked into those instances. I’d love to score for film, but it would probably depend on someone with very little budget and great enthusiasm for my work for it to happen again. Not to mention great patience. I’d have a lot to learn for such an endeavor - doing an actual soundtrack.  But I think that way by nature.  A few summers ago, I stumbled upon a make-shift outdoor theater where someone was playing piano to a silent film by Buster Keaton.  I day dream about that scene all the time - the sound of the piano, the editing of the film, the lights that crisscrossed the open area where people had gathered to watch the film, a girl who sat off to the side, smoking a cigarette.  It was its own movie.  It was thrilling and I would gladly have written the soundtrack for that night on the spot.  

Having a studio do you actively seek work as a producer?

I say that I don’t but if I meet someone whose sound I like, I reflexively invite them over. But I’m not in the studio business.  I find I turn down a lot of artists—especially if I get a sense that they’re just hungry to have someone put an arm around them and tell them it’s going to be ok.  I need that more than they do!

My first impulse is to be generous, quickly followed by regret that I’ve allowed a crazy person to take over my life when all I want to do is to make some music (laughs).  But I’m sympathetic to how hard it is to have a good experience in the studio. I love being in the studio and I want to help. My time is precious too, so I have to be cautious.  Working with David Olney was great. He cut a master on the first or second take—vocal, guitar, drums—finis!  Garry Tallent of the E Street Band is making a solo album at my place.  And he cut everything in a couple takes.  You look at the reel of tape and it has 6 songs.  Now that’s what I call making a record!  I learn something new whenever someone comes in.  But a good studio experience means many things to many people.  

How difficult is it survive as a professional musician these days? 

I think it’s pretty hard. I’ve had a full time job during my time in Nashville. I think I’d have to hit a pretty big well to truly kick back and say “now I will only write.” But I keep digging.  

What’s next for Paul Burch? 

Digging for that oil, baby.  As Nick Cave sings, Dig, Lazarus, dig. 

Interview by Stephen Rapid

Interview with Willy Vlautin

Lonesome Highway has had the pleasure of interviewing Willy Vlautin on several occasions. It has always be an open and interesting exchange. We are fans of Willy's writing both his songs and his novels and his down-to-earth demeanour. Here we got his responses on some topics such as ...

On The Delines

Well the singer Amy Boone is the whole focus of the band. The songs are heavy on the country ballad, a country soul feel whereas Richmond Fontaine were more country punk and could be a lot of different things this is more of a late night thing with Amy’s at the forefront. So the songs I wrote where for her to sing, which was really fun for me. So the first thing was I really loved her voice and I wanted to be in a band with her. I like hearing the way she talks and I loved the Damnations, her band with her sister. So when I thought to write songs for her I suddenly realised I had more courage to write as she can pull of a lot of stuff that I can’t. There’s a lot of songs that she sings that I don’t have the guts to sing. I get embarrassed singing really romantic songs but I can write those songs for her. I can get closer to trying to write something more a classic country soul tune. I wouldn’t have the courage to sing that kind of stuff often. I tend to write songs around my voice and what I feel I can pull off. So that’s actually really freeing and fun. They’re the kind of songs I’ve always wanted to write and I’ve written a bunch of new songs for this project so I’m hoping it carries on.

On Colfax 

I wrote all the song for Amy, they weren’t songs I had other than one of the tunes I’d written as a poem/short story called “He told her the city was killing him”. Aside from that I wrote them all thing about her to sing. We’d been on the road together as she’d toured with Richmond Fontaine, she toured with us. Listening to her sing every night and warming up with the Bessie Smith type of songs she’d come up with. I though man, I really love to be in a band with a real singer, a good singer, it would be so much fun. I was saying to het that she should write so more of those soul style songs and she said to me “well then, why don’t you write me a record”. I think she was just joking and she doesn’t remember saying that but it was something that I wanted to hear. So when I got off the road I just started to write her songs. I probably wrote a good year’s worth of songs before I even told her I was writing. Then I did demos of them and wrote her a long thesis on why she should join a band with me and hen I send her the songs and thank God she wanted to do it.

On Richmond Fontaine’s next album

We’re mixing a new record right now but I’d like to keep doing this band too. I love marrying a Rhodes and Wurlitzer with pedal steel. I feel it creates a spaciness and I’ve always loved the soul ballads. I’d like to do both. So if I can pull it off I’d like to be in both bands and write novels. I’d be a happy man then. 

On receiving praise

I always feel like it’s dodging a bullet when somebody likes something I do. I tried so hard on that book and it about killed me. I think I spent about three and a half years writing it pretty much off the road. I rewrote it thirteen times and that’s before I even showed it to anyone. It was such a heated and personal subject for me. It was a tricky novel. I’m really happy people liked it but I’m also really happy that it’s behind me. I love writing more than anything and I guess that The Free is a little more complex in structure. You hope that you get better at what you do bit I do worry that maybe I’m getting dumber as I get older and I know that I’m not a master but I keep trying hard. Some days I look in the mirror and I think “Jeez, I’m looking worse every day” but you still try to wear a clean shirt. 

On doing a book tour

Touring a book is fun because you get to be in a book store. I just rode around to book stores and gave readings. It’s healthy. Most people who go to my readings are middle aged or older and no one’s dredging you out to go and get drunk every night. When I’m driving around I listen to books on CD and as I usually driving by myself going through state after state to talk about books at night. I try the best I can to not get suckered into going out after. 

On being interviewed by Roddy Doyle

That’s different. That night was like finding a million dollars on the side walk. It was just a lucky break for me. My grandmother gave me The Commitments when it first came out because she knew I liked music and she knew I was a big reader. So I’d followed his career from his very first book. To imagine that I’d get to sit next to him and that he’d read my book was something that’s hard to explain about how lucky it made me feel. Then to find out that besides from being a great writer that he was a really nice man, that he was really smart and really humble and has great taste in books, movies and music and that he was interested in people was great. He was one of the most down to earth guys I’d met. He knows he’s a good writer but he also know it’s not the most important thing in the world. A lot of guys who are famous get big heads, so I loved that night. He and I went and had a drink afterwards. Which I thought was really nice that he took the time to do that. I tried not to talk too much. 

On ego

I’ve toured with bands that right when they get to have a green room with a twelve pack of beer and some sandwiches they get a taste of it and then it’s “why aren’t these sandwiches on rye bread”. And you thing man, six months ago we were eating at 711 and sleeping on people’s floor. So I think it’s something that’s inside them. I’ve always been interested in that seeing when people get to a position of power or when people like what they’re doing that their personality changes. In every walk of life you have your moments when you do good and you do bad. 

On assessing his work

I’m really proud of Richmond Fontaine for sticking around and trying really hard over the years to make cool records, records we loved. If I had to narrow it down I’d say getting a book published was something I’d always dreamed about. Maybe some guys dream of owning a speedboat or marrying a model but I just wanted to publish a book. I also really love this Delines project so I’m really excited to be in this band too.

On being a writer

I never think of things that way. I decided a long time ago that I just wanted to be part of it. I like being around musicians and writers. I like aligning myself with that club. I want to be in that army in life. I’ve always approached things as a fan. It’s hard when you compare yourself to the greats - the great novelists - I read some and feel that it’s as far away from as the moon to be able to write as good as those guys. But to be a part of it is enough. Steinbeck said a really great quote that always stuck with me which was something to the effect that “I knew early on I wasn’t going to be a great artist, I didn’t have what it took, I didn’t have the brains to write a brilliant novel but I worked hard and I’m going to take the gift that hard work gives you. That makes  you feel decent about your self”. I’ve always looked at it that way and I’ll work until I drop to be as good as I can be. To make a record as good as I think I can get it and then move on. I feel good about that. Tonight I get to share the stage with great musicians and other great bands like the Lost Brothers - two guys who sing as good as anybody. If I didn’t keep trying I’d be at home just watching the TV. I get to meet other musicians and to hear about their adventures. If you stay in the fight and are open minded and you get a good run. 

On being in a band

The camaraderie of being in a band is a really hard thing to quit whether you’re good at it or not. I’ve always liked being a part of something. Being in this band is fun I can just be the guitar player where as in Fontaine I’m the singer and guitar player but I’m just a cog. But I like that. I like being a part of a group and I’ve never been able to shake that. To be with your friends after a gig is really fun and I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid. I’ve tried to quit it and ,a s they say, it’s like trying to quit a bad woman … it takes a long time. I haven’t figured out how to quit being a musician.

Interview by Stephen Rapid  Photograph by Ronnie Norton

Interview with Jace Everett

After signing to Sony Nashville Jace Everett released one self-titled album on Epic in 2006 before parting company with the label. Since then he has released independently, the live album, Old New Borrowed Blues and three albums through Humphead in the UK; Red Revelations, Mr Good Times and his current critically acclaimed album, Terra Rosa. Jace was touring Europe to back up the launch of his latest album.

We started our conversation talking about artists who, early on in their careers may have made a country orientated album, but are then, for the remainder of their career often found in the country section. kd lang would be a prime example. As Everett remarked “I haven’t called myself a country artist for ten years. I’ve made three rock records in a row and there are elements of country in them and that includes my voice.” He is mostly still to be found lurking in the country section of record stores. Indeed, to emphasise that, Wikipedia has his genre listed as country.

Country music is now a hugely expanded category that takes in a wide range of music. What is now generally accepted as mainstream country is a pop-orientated confection that is aimed at a young audience. This is nothing that hasn’t happened in the past though. “You can go back to the past when everyone talks about there being good country music, but it’s just like everything else; it was mostly crap with a little bit of really good stuff and as time passes you remember the really good stuff. That whole countrypolitan sound that Chet Atkins made famous in the 60s that wasn’t country either. You had a hillbilly singer with some songs about drinking and domestic life and they made a pop record around it. That’s just the same thing.”

I remark that it was said to me by a musician that much of what they hear in roots rock tends to sound not unlike Rockpile; a blend of good rock and roots elements. Everett agrees. “Steve Earle is the perfect example. On Guitar Town he sounds like he’s a rock ’n’ roller.” We talk about the rock influence that there is now, which is quite different from the harder edged music that emerged earlier as cow-punk with bands like Jason and The Scorchers. Everett’s take on that is that is that ”the songwriters in Nashville now, there’s about fifteen guys who write all the songs for all the artists and those guys grew up digging Bon Jovi, Poison and Ratt music that was crap then and it’s crap now! Those bands, God bless ‘em, they had their niche. They were faux metal. There was the real metal and then those guys with a pretty lead singer or guitar player and they wrote songs that Bobby Darin would be doing but with screaming guitar and screaming vocals. It’s the same thing as that. It wasn’t real rock. 

He further elaborates on the situation by saying “there’s some stuff like the new Jason Isbell album (Southwestern) which is phenomenal, it’s killing me. He’s set the bar so high. To me it’s really fantastic and it’s more country than whats on country radio. Both sonically and lyrically, to me, that’s what country music could be. He’s just sold out three nights at the Ryman. Here’s a guy with 55,000 Twitter followers and they booked out the show so that had to add a second and a third. You know why? Because people know that he’s real. They trust him and he puts on a great show and has a catalogue of great songs. He doesn’t have handlers, he does his own tweeting. To me that is authenticity, not the sound of the music you make, but the spirit of the music.”

As an Indiana born, Texas bred, Nashville based artist there is a natural flavouring of country music in Jace’s make-up which he accepts: “I write some country songs and sing some country songs but I also write rock and all sorts of other songs. But marketing wise, as the old marketing shtick says, you have to have a label to put on something to say that ‘this is what this is’ and we’re going to market it that way. They decode to mix it a certain way to put him in this kind of shirt, and make this kind of video, and make it this kind of thing. In your iTunes list you have rock, punk, jazz - you have it all and so does everyone else but they need to ghetto-ise it before you buy it. They don’t want to think for themselves. I’m hopeful that in the next ten years, if people aren’t lazy, then the internet will empower people to be more energetic and search, but it seems to have the opposite effect.”

Downloading seems to be the normal route for a lot of fans now, often as they can’t get what they want any other way. How, I asked, was the physical product he had for sale faring? “It’s doing well physically, especially with the vinyl. But I think that it’s 2014 and I’ve basically made a concept album about biblical themes and not stuck with a specific genre of music (which) means that it’s really hard to sell (laughs). But there’re people out there and that’s why they love it. They want to listen to all eleven tracks; they don’t want to go to just the song that they might have heard on this or that TV show. I don’t know and really I don’t care. I have to make the records I have to make. It’s a slower growth and it’s harder work.”

We talked about the way marketing at major labels (and some smaller ones) tend to want to package an artist as a brand and I argued that every band (or artist), to a degree, is a brand. It depends on how and why you market it. If some of the acts I admire got the same kind of attention as major label acts get, like heavy rotation at radio, they would stand a good chance of having a hit. Everett makes a point that that is not always the case and cites his own experience. “Bad Things is proof positive. That song, which is known globally, when we first put that out to country radio it didn’t break the Top 50 in the United States. We played it on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and it didn’t make a blip on sales. We had it as an iTunes download of the week and it had 220,000 downloads but that didn’t translate to anything.  But then it went into a TV show and now people who don’t give a rat’s tail about Jace Everett love that song. I think that perhaps 2% of the people who love Bad Things in True Blood have gone out and listened to Jace Everett. If they don’t hear five more songs that sound like Bad Things they walk. I don’t know if I have five more songs like that! (laughs) I think I may have three. If I was really in it for the money I’d try and make an album of Bad Things x 12. There was some of that on Red Revelations, but it was natural and organic. It was what I felt at the time.”

Could he define why the song has taken off in such a way other than being in the context of a successful TV series? "I think it’s the hook 'I want to do bad things to you'. That’s the cute country hook. Musically it sounds like twenty other songs, so you’ve heard it a hundred times already. It’s John Lee Hooker, it’s the Rolling Stones, it’s ZZ Top, it’s Chris Isaak. You’ve heard the riff and the groove so that’s comforting.” I wondered if there was any confusion between the Isaak song and Jace’s? “Yeah, he’s got Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing and people confuse the two songs all the time even though they’re really not that much alike except for the words “bad thing”. I tell that story because I ripped Bad Things off from Steve Earle. There’s a song on his I Feel Alright that if you go listen to Poor Boy Blues next to Bad Things and it’s the same chord progression but minor instead of major. I told Steve this when we did a gig together and he just looked at me like I was an asshole. We did a gig together back in Nashville at Christmas. There’s a band called the Long Players and they play a classic rock record from top to bottom and they do then greatest hits. Steve and myself and a few other guys were there doing Blood on The Tracks. It seemed appropriate to my situation at the time.”

Most artists at least have an idea of where they may go next with their music yet Everett has no firm plans, but ideas were forming. “I’ve got some ideas and Dan (Cohen), my partner in crime who plays guitar with me on all my records and who is my co-publisher and is touring with me, has a new record just come out called Bluebird and that is very different from Terra Rosa. He sings and writes and plays and it’s a whole different kind of animal, (but) there’s a juxtaposition between what we do together and when we’re apart. But I feel that the next record will be a more stripped down approach like Beyond the Wall and Love Cut Me Down on Terra Rosa. They’re much more live in approach, one take. So I think the next record may be that. I think every single song will be boy/girl situation. That’s what’s resonating with me as a writer right now. I’m pretty confident that I will work with Brad Jones as my co-producer again. Dan will definitely be on guitar (with) Derek Mixon on drums and James Cook on bass. Those guys have been pretty good to me so far.” It’s important, in that situation, to have the right players around you, the ones who understand the songs and who know what you’re trying to get out of the songs and the sonic environment. At least that’s what I have often found in the past. Everett concurs “You have four or five guys in a room who really are great players and me. My guitar is mixed quietly as I’m not really a great player, but I’m a good singer. They listen to me and I listen to them and we actually do the thing. Like the rock musicians of old without getting into Pro-tools.” Something that the Sound City documentary directed by Dave Grohl shows very well; the interaction of doing it for real, in real time. It’s not the way that everyone works or even the current way of building a track from the ground up. But if you want feel, this is the way to approach it.

On the other hand good results can come from other working processes as Everett explains. “The song No Place to Hide has been in four TV shows now. I did that whole thing, just me in a room. There’re just two real guitars on it, everything else I played in the computer, so there’s no formula for me (as) to what works. I think what’s authentic for me is to serve the song. Whatever the song requires, whether it’s a drum machine or a marching band, you make that happen.”

Would he consider making a straight country album, given that country music now means quite a different thing from when he signed to Sony Nashville? Jace gave me this answer: “I haven’t honestly and here’s why. Country in the States is a different thing than it is here. If I did one, it would be very Americana. Actually the record I’m thinking of doing is that kind of direction, but it won’t be considered country in the United States. A male country artist is a demographic thing. You’re writing songs for people, and I’ve nothing against them, who vote republican, who are white, people who do most of their shopping at Wal-Mart and who like to hunt, fish and watch sports. I’m white but none of those other things are true of me (laughs). Actually, I’m more  pink, but … that’s not really who I am, so I can’t be disingenuous and try and play into that. For better or for worse I enjoy being able to be me.” He further elaborates on his time within the belly of the beast. ”When I did the Sony album, I wasn’t in love with it.  I loved various tracks and there’re songs on that record that I have never played. Now the only track I play off that album is Bad Things. That pisses some people off, but I’m ok with that. I don’t mind pissing some people off! If I felt compelled to play a track from that album tonight I would but I don’t. It was a record that was made by committee. I made compromises and that’s fine, as it is what it is and I agreed at the time. I didn’t get bullied.”

Jace’s set consists of original material, but does he ever throw a cover tune in to the mix? It is often used as a way for an audience to relate to what an artist is, by comparing how they treat the cover song compared to the original. “I don’t do many covers, mostly out of laziness. I used to be to be in a covers band for ten years playing classic songs and top of the chart stuff. That’s how I ate, making 200 bucks a night. Since I don’t have to do that anymore I don’t want to do that anymore. I may have to do it again at some point but, in truth, I don’t think I would.  I’d rather go back to waiting tables or driving a truck.” But was the point about making a song your own a valid one? “Yes, U2 did songs like Fortunate Son on their b-sides and they explored the sound they were working with and I think that’s hip. It’s cool. I did that Howling Wolf song Evil with CC Adcock and with Dan and we made that our own. I’ve done some Buddy Holly. I’ve done some Cash and I’ve done some Waylon on stage, but I don’t feel compelled to do a bunch of covers. Everett then tells me about his first encounter with Adcock. “His first words to me were “Hey man, fuck you”. And I said ‘and you are?’ I’m not actually fazed by that kind of introduction. I think ‘have you heard about me or have we met before’ (laughs).” It turned out one of CC Adcock’s songs was also up for the opening credits on True Blood. “That’s how we met, at the premier of True Blood.” It must have turned out ok as they worked together on the aforementioned song Evil by bringing the best of their respective abilities to the song.

Jace Everett is a powerful performer especially with Dan Cohen and they should be seen live at every opportunity. After Dublin they were off to Europe to do some full band dates before reverting to a duo again at the end of the tour. Everett is honest and humorous and not the least cautious in his responses. I muse that the media training didn’t pay off, something as well as his music that we can be thankful for.

Interview by Stephen Rapid    Edited by Sandy Harsch   Photography by Ronnie Norton

Beth Nielsen Chapman Interview

Beth Nielsen Chapman was born in Texas in the 1958. In 1976, Chapman was playing in Montgomery, Alabama with the group Harmony for whom she played acoustic guitar and piano as well as singing. She later achieved success as a songwriter in her own right with many artists recording her songs. Beth has released 12 solo albums since 1980. The latest titled Uncovered came out this year.

When you started as a musician, who were your main influences?

Being brought up in an air force family we moved every few years all through my childhood. I think I was exposed to so many more types of music and culture.  But when I was around 11 or 12 and starting to write songs, I would say I was hugely influenced by the late 60’s troubadours to the singer-songwriters of the 70’s. Also, by then I was already dialled in on the great song writing of the 30s and 40s by way of my parent’s record player! Then throw in the Beatles and stir! 

Did you find it hard to gain a foothold in the industry when you started out and what was your first big break?

Initially in my late teens I found myself already signed to a publishing/artist agreement,  not a very good one.  But by 1980 I had signed with Screen Gems Publishing and Capitol Records.   I recorded my first record at the legendary Muscle Shoals sound studio with Barry Beckett producing.  The record came out at the same time as the huge blastoff of disco.  So it wasn’t to be my time. Ten years later I put out my second record on Warner Reprise,  so I guess you could say it as a long process!

With 10 studio recordings, spanning 20 plus years, what changes have you noticed in your approach to song writing over the time?

I teach a lot around the process of song writing. And I continue to re-learn myself that (the) best approach to song writing is always from a childlike place of play and openness. So after all the years of writing I’m still courting that fresh intuitive step off into the “unknown”.

Do your early songs stand the test of time or do you ever wish to review them and bring the perspective of an older view to bear, in hindsight?

In my very early songs there are a few gems I think still hold up today. But most are me trying things, and though they are good, there is still a lack of consolidation for the idea or what the song exists to say. Not that they all have to be super important, but there is an element of coherence and focus in a great song—no matter the subject matter---that illuminates it clearly and resonates. I don’t feel drawn to go back and rewrite from an older perspective. Too busy writing from now!

You have written many songs for other artists; Bonnie Raitt, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Willie Nelson, Bette Midler, Faith Hill, Waylon Jennings and Martina McBride to name just a few. Tell me about the challenges here and how you got started on this road

Not sure I understand the question; the challenges of having my songs recorded by these artists?  None whatsoever!

When you tour and hear your creative muse affirmed and celebrated by admirers all over the globe, how do you feel and does the affirmation encourage you to continue playing live?

All of the above! Performing feeds writing and writing feeds performing and both feed me!

I have heard you say that the creative spark flows through you when you open yourself to the opportunity – is this the secret to successful song-writing?

I believe that creativity is like air.  Like oxygen. It’s there for everyone to tap into and pull through the filter of each person’s perspective, history and heart. It’s like a flow that washes through us as we breathe it in and breathe it out with our renderings. Just like some people can take a deeper breath than others, I believe some of us are breathing into our creativity much more shallowly than we have to. There are many reasons for this, from being damaged, or discouraged, or being caught up in a belief that they are “not creative” masses of people live their lives defining themselves this way and by doing so limit their own experience of the “divine intervention” of the creative flow. Nothing pleases me more than seeing someone shift out of this prison and start to experience their birthright as a creative person.

If you have a unique insight into the creative firmament, it lies in the fact that so many artists have wanted your song-writing talents and a guiding hand – is this ever daunting?

Hmmm….well I do feel very fortunate to have had some incredible artists record my songs. It’s always a thrill and I’ve never had any feeling whatsoever of it being daunting. I’ve also enjoyed co-writing with some of those artists. But most are really great songwriters and don’t need me to write with them. But it’s such a blast to write together! 

You are very generous with your gifts and have mentored many young musicians over the course of your career. When I look at a local talent like Ruth Trimble, who now tours and plays with you on a regular basis; what does it take for artists like this to break through the queue of talented hopefuls to sit at the commercial table for the feast?

It takes great songs or the potential for great songs and also it takes a very centered good head on their shoulders. Ruth is very rooted and a joy to work with.I often tell her the biggest threat to me (who’s now grown to depend on her organizational skills!) IS the fact that she’s a very talented artist and writer and it won’t be long ‘til she’s going to be doing the full time “Ruth Trimble” career! Learning about the business is essential to a long successful career in music,  that and producing great music -  both very different muscles, but both important in the long run. It’s rare to find someone so young who’s got a command of both. But then Ruth was managing a Boots Pharmacy when I met her!  So coping with a tour is probably a walk in the park by comparison. Still she needs to make time to keep writing great songs. In other words….try to clone herself!  If only!

As an Irish Artist, how great a talent does Ruth Trimble have when compared to the long line of recognised singer-songwriters that you have worked with?

I’m not sure I’d make a distinction like “as an Irish Artist”. She stands on her own as uniquely talented and original. Where she can go with that is limitless.

You have toured Ireland previously and I wanted to ask about the reaction that you received to your body of work at the various shows?

I’ve always felt very welcomed by Ireland and aware of a deep appreciation for poetry and songs. It doesn’t get better than that!

You display a deep spirituality in your writing and you speak of the love of God in our lives. Given the cards that you have been dealt, with the death of your first husband and your battles against both breast cancer and a brain tumour; what do you draw on for continued strength along your journey?

I’m a very hopeful person generally and I have always felt deeply connected in my beliefs and at the same time have, even as a little girl, always believed that all cultures and paths of faith reflect back from the same source of spirit. (It is)as if humanity was a big diamond with lots of different angles, but one big gorgeous light shining through it all. That comforts me and as I draw from my spiritual roots for strength in my life~ and it also brings me a deep respect for other cultures and their way of celebrating their connection to the divine light of spirit. 

I wanted to ask about your approach to song writing, in that you can appear to write essentially from personal experience. Does this sensitivity and vulnerability, when you share difficult themes, challenge you in trying to strike an appropriate balance?

It’s interesting that in most writing the most specific incidental detail can illuminate and trigger a much broader emotion in a song. When trying to be broad or general a song ends up being very boring.  It’s the personal bits that connect folks to the stuff of life and the deeper meaning. I sort of write my way through my grief, joy and feelings. Even if not one of those songs ever went out the door, the writing of them has already had a value to me. Add in that a song can then go off into the world and lift someone else who hears it later and there’s the gift. 

Finally, having pleased your rural Irish fans with a recent tour, can we expect a return visit in the near future?

Yes!  I’m thrilled to be working with a great company MCD and Mission PR and will be back in September 27^th performing at Whelan’s and there will be other gigs coming throughout the south around that time!

Interview by Paul McGee. Photograph by Vincent Lennon

Moot Davis Interview by Stephen Rapid

1 Great jacket on the cover. A Manuel? It’s a contrast to the suited Moot of Man About Town. Which one is closer to your spirit?

Thank you, that suit was made by Jaime Custom Tailoring in Hollywood, CA several years ago. He makes stage clothes for Dwight Yoakam, Chris Isaak and ZZ Top. When I got hooked up with Pete Anderson back in 2003, I started going to Jaime to have things made. Believe it or not, I’m still paying off this jacket. 

After I take all the photos from an album shoot, I try to find ones that speak to me, that standout, that are evocative and tell a story.  This album cover is strong image and there’s mystery to it. And it’s the mystery that I identify with more so then the rhinestone suit or the business suit of “Man About Town”.

2 To the music now. The press release describes it as more roadhouse rock than country. Was that a natural development?

It’s a natural progression going from the honky-tonk stuff to more sort of classic rock and that’s really what I’ve been listening to a lot of. I still revisit the old “golden era” honky-tonk stuff every now and then but it seems to be on the more of a special occasion. “Man About Town”, had 3 or 4 rockers and the rest country/honky tonk, my plan was always to flip that on this album. 

3 You are using your regular band on this album. Did this allow you to work the songs up live in advance?

Yea, we worked on the songs for about a year and a half. I would write them and bring them to the band and I have a rough sketch but we really started beating the songs up and give them their own kind of sound as I would bring them in. So it was a really nice change to have my own guys (Bill Corvino, Joe Mekler, Michael Massimino)with me as opposed to using studio musicians which can be a little sterile. 

4 All your albums have been produced with a guitarist/producer. Do you find that’s advantageous recording with a working musician?

 Yes, plus I really love the sound of the guitar and I love people who know how to play it. I also find that communicating with guitar players who are also songwriters (both Pete and Kenny write some killer songs), makes a big difference.  So it’s the combination of them being a working musician and songwriter that I find this most attractive.

5 A lot of artist seem to be seeking a description to define what they play feeling that the straight term “country” is open to be misunderstood these days. What’s your take on that?

Well, I’m less interested in labels and terms and more focused on songs.  When I sit down and work with the guitar, I never know what’s going to come out. I mean, it’s kind of like a channel and if it works that day, you’re an open channel and I’m receiving some sort information from somewhere and whether that’s going to be country or roadhouse rocker or whatever, I really don’t know. And I try not to ask too many questions about it, I just try to dial  in the cosmic radio, to get the right frequency you know? 

6 You have worked outside the major label system but were you ever approached by a major label?

I did, SONY Nashville got very interested right around the same time I hooked up with Pete Anderson. They flew out to see us play in Los Angeles and we had dinner afterwords. They were all very nice, and they called me a few days later asking me if I wanted to play ball.  I had the gut feeling that I’d make better albums with Pete, and I knew that he would never go for their deal of “keeping Pete as producer but recording albums in Nashville”.  The SONY guy also said something to the effect of “we already have a “Derailers”, on the label so we would have to change your direction.” This is also before Pete and I had any of our differences, so I thought the right thing to do was to stay with Pete, loyalty wise and for the good of the music. So I told the SONY guy “I wasn’t much of a ballplayer” and that was that. 

7 Would you consider the major label route with all that that entails?

I would consider everything but the small labels that I’ve been on and I, we been doing what labels used to do, which is artist development. That’s where you get three or four albums to find yourself as an artist, to find your sound, to develop. We’ve been doing that on a shoestring for years and I think it’s really paying off. I’m very proud of the “Goin’ In Hot” album. 

8 You own the label, Crow Town Records, with Michael Massimino are you considering other acts for the label and why that name?

 I have a pretty singular focus on what I’m doing and I leave all that kind stuff to my business partner Michael. This is a pretty new venture for us and I think we’re going to see how this album does and then go from there. I know Michael certainly is interested in taking on other acts but the label has to be able to be profitable. Our namesake comes from the old west novels series “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry. I read all those books along time ago and was fascinated by this town “Crow Town” were all the worst of the outlaws hung out. The name has stuck with me through the years and it just ended up being our record label name.

9 Does your music sustain you or do you need to work in other areas? 

This year we are pretty busy so I don’t have to take up any secondary work, on years were not touring so much, I’ll do some behind the scenes work on film and television shows either New York or Los Angeles. 

10 When the studio you recorded the album in burned down did you feel that you would have to start the process again and if so would you have changed anything?

Yea, I was already trying to work it out in my head how we’re going to start from scratch again and rerecord the whole thing. You can’t quit, so I was just trying to see when everybody schedule would allow us to get back in the studio. I wouldn’t want to change anything really. I was concerned with recapturing what we had. 

11 The reaction to the album has been very positive. Does that make it worthwhile or do you have to have the commercial part?

You do need a little bit of the commercial part to stay in business and go on to make the next one. That being said, I’m really glad that the reaction to the albums been positive and it does make it worthwhile, this is a creative process and you do something privately and then you try and share it with people and you hope they like it. 

12 Is it a vital part of the process to have an album to back up a tour or can you survive without a regular album release?

My personal goal is to release an album the year for the next five years, or as close to that as I can get. It’s always good to have new product to sell when you’re on the road but there are a lot of places even in the United States were we haven’t been yet, so as time goes by, those are the areas we’re going to start focusing on in between releases. 

13 After your time in Nashville, where you recorded your gig sales album you hooked up with Dwight Yoakam producer Pete Anderson who also played with you live. Looking back why do you think that didn’t take off for you both?

I think it served it’s purpose, but I don’t know if that formula was ever supposed to really be anything other than it was. During our time together we toured all over the United States Europe and Japan, got several songs placed in films and made two really good albums. Did it come close to the success that he had with Dwight, no, nowhere near as close. But I’m not Dwight and my path is different than his, even though some of the same people show up in each career. 

14 You have played in Europe before but making the trip seems more difficult now, especially with a band, have you any plans to release the album in Europe and to tour also?

The album is distributed worldwide, so it’s definitely released in Europe and we’ll take any opportunity to come over there that we can. The last time we were there in 2013, we had a full U.S. band and we had a blast. It just seems that the economic troubles that our countries find themselves in, make it harder for offers to come perform.

15 As an artist what goals do you feel you would like to achieve in the future?

Again, the idea is to release an album the year or as close to that as possible for the next five years. Along with that constant touring both in United States and abroad, hopefully some more placements in film and television. That, and to continue to make new music. Those are my goals and that is my path.  

Interview with Jim Lauderdale

I first became aware of Jim Lauderdale when he had a track featured on the second volume of the Town South Of Bakersfield compilation. That collection was produced by Pete Anderson who went on to produce a whole album on Lauderdale that went unreleased at the time of recording (1988) though a couple of singles went to radio at that time. It was later released thanks to fan Tony Rounce on Westside in 2001. Planet of Love was the first Jim Lauderdale album to be officially released coming out in 1991 on Reprise. It was produced by John Leventhal and Rodney Crowell and contained Jim’s classic song about George Jones, King Of Broken Hearts. In support of this Reprise arranged a European tour that found Lauderdale playing in Dublin alongside fiddler Mark O'Connor and the band Little Texas as part of their label's sponsored tour of Europe.

I was totally taken with this slice of country that was in marked contrast to Little Texas' pop-orientated confections. Jim Lauderdale had brought with him a dream band that included the late Donald Lindley on drums, Dusty Wakeman on bass, Gurf Morlix on pedal steel and Buddy Miller on guitar. They were exceptional. Jim noted that that particular gig, in Bad Bobs, was one he still remembered as one of his all-time favourites. After their set I made it my business to meet Lauderdale and we have stayed in touch ever since.

During his career Jim has been with both major and independent labels and now releases albums at a pace to keep up with his prolific writing talent. His next release will be a double CD of country songs entitled I'm A Song. It showcases 19 tracks of new material and a new version of King of Broken Hearts and features such guests as Kenny Vaughan, Al Perkins, Patty Loveless and Lee Ann Womack. Lauderdale was in Ireland for the Belfast Songwriter's Festival and an Ubangi Stomp-promoted gig in Dublin.

Prior to the show Jim and I caught up and I started by asking Jim how technology had changed his life. He said that it had taken him a long time to get comfortable with the process and he only started to text in recent times but, aside from communicating, it had allowed him to co-write. "The two songs I co-wrote with Elvis Costello were written when we were on the road in two different busses. So I had to get someone to send him the ideas I had. Also with Robert Hunter I've written quite a bit with him over the internet".

This way of writing has enabled him to be more prolific with his album releases. In eighteen months Jim hopes to have released five albums. He has lately been releasing albums two at a time and he felt that at this stage in his career it can't hurt. "Though I love live gigs, my favourite thing to do is to go into the studio". Song ideas come to him all the time, but without a project in mind he may not finish a song without a deadline which becomes  an important part of the writing process. I wondered did he then go over his notes when he had a recording project upcoming? "Sometimes, but I'm very disorganised. There have been several instances where I can't find the exact melody. For instance there's a song called Vampire Girl that I thought might suit Buddy (Miller) and myself. I started to hum the melody when I was on a plane, I felt when we come to record we can do this. But when it came time to do the recording I couldn't find it so I started again and then lost that version. Buddy still liked the idea and so it wasn't until the night before we recorded it that it all came together". Other songs though, he has completed and knows where they can be found, but overall Jim finds that,  though it's stressful, working under pressure produces results.

Jim also has to remember all the song details, so that when it comes time to release an album he has to put all the writing credits together. Something he was in the process of doing for I'm A Song, so that copies could be manufactured for an upcoming Australian tour. He had been working with Jeremy Dillon, an Australian director who was doing a documentary on Jim. When Dillon arrived in Nashville there was no studio footage shot, so a session was booked. "I wanted to have James Burton and Al Perkins come in, so we went into the old RCA Studio A". The studio is leased now by the artist Ben Folds who rents it out. They spent a day recording and filming there and they cut around nine song in the old way,  all tracking together. But after the session Lauderdale realised that he only had these nine songs and he wanted to add a new version of King Of Broken Hearts. Jim thought about how George Jones had re-recorded some of his classic songs and he felt it might be a good thing to do,  as the original album is long out of print. He felt the need to add a couple more songs to complete the album. The list of possible songs kept growing and then a waltz melody came to him in the studio. Musicians like  Kenny Vaughan and Russ Paul were on a break. "I had no lyrics so I thought’ I'll send this melody right now to Robert Hunter’ and the very next day he sent me a lyric which was great". An old writing partner, Odie Blackmon, was his co-writer on a number of songs. He has also included a version of I Lost You one of the songs he'd written with Elvis Costello that was on the Costello's National Ransom album. Jim also expressed disappointment that Costello's band The Sugarcanes, which included Jerry Douglas, didn't have a longer run. They played Vicar Street during that particular tour to much acclaim.

Towards the end of 2013 he released a bluegrass album called Old Time Angel which he wanted to record in the old way, using just one central mic for vocals and a couple of other mics to pick up all the instruments. His man of choice for his bluegrass albums is Dobro player Randy Kohrs who produced Old Time Angel. The other album that came out around the same time was an album Black Roses, one that he'd had in the can for a while,  which he'd recorded with the North Mississippi Allstars in their studio. Spooner Oldham was on piano and David Hood was on bass. Both were musicians that he had wanted to work with. He described that as a "blues, baroque soul" style of album. There is also an acoustic solo album that he wanted to do called Blue Moon Junction a reference to the fact that he often tours solo and wanted an album to reflect that. That  situation has often been dictated by the expense of taking a band out on the road.

He justified this level of releases by saying that "I still feel like a newly signed act in a lot of ways and don't feel I'm hurting myself by releasing this many records and I really felt compelled to do them". There is also another album in the can, one he has recorded with Nick Lowe's band. Jim describes it as a combination of soul, mercy beat and a bit of rockabilly. He particularly wanted to play with Lowe’s band and producer Neil Brocklebank. "Nick has always been one of my favourites and I've always loved his band". He recorded the album in London but only arrived there with one completed song, thinking he would write the rest while there. It was stressful as he was writing after playing a series of gig. A further complication was added when his guitar hadn't arrived and he missed his flight so the time he had allotted to write was lost. He finished another song that he had originally sent to Costello as a title and melody. That song titled I Love You More turned out to be one of his favourites. For a second round of recording he had a number of songs he's written with Dan Penn. "He's such a terrific guy". John Oates (of Hall and Oates) was also another collaborator for the album's songs. "John actually has very deep roots and we really clicked as writers". 

We talked about the changing face of the Music Row styled song and how many writers were now out of favour, something that must have a deep effect on his career as a writer for other artists. "There was a period in Nashville when I was very fortunate, where people where recording my songs. Now that's over, pretty much. I will pitch some to George Strait, who's going to record soon, as he still has five records left after his farewell tour. But that practice is now ended unless someone comes along who wants to integrate that into today's country". Everyone has a time and he mentioned writers like Dan Penn, who had a lot of cuts for a time, and then directions changed and it got harder to place songs.

The last straight down the line country album that Lauderdale recorded was Country Super Hits, Volume 1 seven years ago,  so he felt the time was right to put out this new set of songs. However over the years with Jim's distinctive melodies and vocal phrasing I tend to think of it as all Lauderdale Music; that although the albums take different paths they come from the same place. He also made inroads back to playing and writing bluegrass which was one of his main musical influences growing up. It was an area in which he was having some success. Because they can no longer get played on mainstream radio, the economics of playing bluegrass are more favourable and many artist have also moved in that direction,  Alan Jackson being one such artist. Jim does mention though that Jackson's next album will be a country record.

There is a possibility that there may be some more traditional country coming from Nashville,  however the odds seem stacked against it. "Nashville still has much of the Brill Building days about it. You get in a room with somebody to try and write a song that will get cut. Oddly enough, that set up rarely worked for me when I paired up with somebody intentionally trying to write for somebody else". Most of Jim's cuts came from someone hearing one of his demos or an album cut. He doesn't listen to radio that often and feels that maybe he should be more in touch with what is current on radio, but just doesn't feel engaged by what he hears. He has recently done a panel discussion with other writers like Bruce Robison. They talked about writing for another artist and that it didn't feel true in some respect, but it would be hypercritical to say that they wouldn't be very happy if someone new cut a song they had a hand in. "But when I've gone through that process it always gives me a sinking feeling".

The quality of demos has been more and more finished in recent times. Sometimes songs being demoed for a particular artist are so close to the artist’s style and arrangement that all that need to be done was to take the demo singer’s voice out of the mix and drop in the particular artist's voice. It was back when Lauderdale was working with producer Tim Coats in Garry Tallent's studio that he realised that what they were doing were in fact finished tracks to all intents and purposes.

Buddy Miller has replaced T-Bone Burnett as musical director on the TV show Nashville. Lauderdale noted that Burnett was a fan of Miller’s and had been helping out when Burnett was one of the show's executive producers. “Buddy is putting a lot of time and effort into it and trying to give some young writers a break, which is good, as it helps nurture a community". He also noted that Miller had used a couple of Lauderdale's songs, one in the first season and one in the current run. One of the producers had spoken to Lauderdale and co-writer Odie Blackmon about some of the scenarios and  they had written songs to suit those specific storylines, but that, in the end, the network has the final say on the song choice. 

Having an agent is important for any artist, or rather having the right agent is important and Jim felt that he hadn't attracted the agency he would love to be with as he, at the moment, isn't sufficiently well known in his own right to draw a big enough audience. This again showed that Jim Lauderdale is a realistic person in understanding where his career is at the moment. Most of his Irish visits have been shows that he set up except when he came with Emmylou Harris and then later supporting Trisha Yearwood.

We talked about the ageing process and Jim said that photography was something of a hit and miss situation and he when he looked at photography now saw how much he had aged. "I really look like that!" being a common reaction to his own photo. This is something that all artist have to come to terms with as they grow older in the public eye. However he is still around and making records, while many of his contemporaries who started out  when Jim did are no longer in the business. That is a tribute to his talent and determination as well as his charm. He is still dedicated to his love of music and its expression.

Jim had been in Ireland a few years back to produce, at my behest, Bray Vista. He asked about them and about any new upcoming acts that are around at the moment. I mentioned a few names to him and the fact that there is a reasonably healthy live scene, especially on the acoustic side of things. Lauderdale reiterated his love of opportunity to come over to Ireland and Jim Lauderdale is a welcome visitor anytime.

 Interview by Stephen Rapid.  Photography by Stephen Rapid

Interview with Sturgill Simpson

Having released an acclaimed debut album Sturgill Simpson has been touring in the UK (opening for Laura Cantrell and doing his own gigs) to support the UK release of the album, He is also about to bring out a second album and is excited about that. He is the sort of person who is happier talking about his music than about himself but is, like his music, opoen and honest. Lonesome Highway took the opportunity to talk to him prior to his first Dublin date.

Do you find it liberating to be playing gigs in a solo capacity?

I did it before I … well, I still don’t consider myself a professional musician, but it’s how I started out. The first gigs I did were playing by myself. After a year on the road with the band, where you can stretch out a little bit, you still have to follow a bookends regime. But for sets like this I never write a list. It’s about whatever the crowd feels, I feel. But it is very freeing.

Your recording to date have been with a full band though?

Yeah, I think it’s important texturally and there’s still a lot of sonic exploration that I want to do. Doing that without a band is tough, but someday, I’m sure, I’ll get around to the old hauntingly sparse melancholy acoustic album. I don’t think it’ll be the second album though.

You previously front the trio Sunday Valley who can be seen on YouTube. Did you release an album with them?

We did but it didn’t really get released;  we just put it up on iTunes ourselves. We sold it at gig and I think I’m still sitting on 800 physical copies at my house that I ordered right before the band broke up. They’re sitting in a corner doing nothing.

Did you have a natural break-up or did you feel the need to move on?

No, it was definitely on purpose. It was a local band that I played with in Lexington, Kentucky for years. It was never really the music in my heart,  even though I was writing all the music (laughs)! I just kinda reached a point where I felt that this is not what I wanted to do. That’s not best for everybody. I was mainly yelling over the top of myself. It was such a loud band so I never though of it as singing.  

Was that the punk rock influence coming out?

No. It was the punk rock influence in a lot the other band members. I never listened to much punk rock if I’m honest. It was a lot of fun and we had a good following in a local setting. It was fun until it wasn’t. I had realised that I had to do this other thing that I was doing at home by myself 

You’ve stated the influence that your grandfathers had on the music you now play. How did that come about?

Absolutely. Both my grandfathers, really; my maternal grandfather very specifically. He was a big influence just in terms of what he played and the guys that he listened to. We watched Hee-Haw and things like that as a kid. I just wanted to emulate that more than anything. But as a teenager you find things like Led Zeppelin and you steer off the path. In  my early twenties I came full circle and it’s been kinda consuming ever since.

But before coming full circle you absorb the influence that Zeppelin had in their music too.

Yes, very much so. They had folk, blues and country elements in their music. I mean any good music to me is soul music. I was exposed to and absorbed so much traditional country and bluegrass as a young child that after a while your palate says “enough”. Then you got to go see what else is there. 

In those Zeppelin days the only people I was aware of wearing Western style shirts were rock acts. Country was more a red neck thing and thus avoided to some degree.

(Laughs) Yeah.  Zeppelin and Cream. The redneck thing is still a big part of it. Which is weird but it’s more so in the commercial side of things in the States where it’s almost a marketing ploy to put that stamp on your music. I run from it every chance I get. 

Do you have any association with that underground thing that’s going on?

I don’t really have much to do with that and it’s a bit of a scene with some of the punk rockers who had heard Johnny Cash records.

You moved to Nashville; was that a move to get closer to the roots of the music?

That’s exactly why I did that. At the risk of sounding like a cliche and extremely egotistical I wanted to make the kind of country album I wasn’t hearing anywhere else. I had a number of songs that I’d been sitting on for a few years, though most of the album (High Top Mountain) was written while we were recording it. There’s a few I wish I could take back but mostly I wanted to make what I was taught that country music should sound like, or my interpretation of that anyway.

You have said that there’s an element of psychedelia in your music too.

Definitely. I have a second album that’s coming out over here soon. It was recorded back in October and that is very much a psychedelic country record. 

Barefoot Jerry-ish?

No more like if Merle Haggard dropped a bunch of LSD. Which maybe he has (laughs)!

That sort of cross fertilisation is interesting. In the 60s you had both The Beatles and Buck Owens, for instance, aware of each others music.

I’ll give myself away a little bit. I shouldn’t talk as much. But sonically what introduced me to that was a lot of the early Gene Clark or Godson Brothers recordings from the late 60s in California which were so psychedelic and the production approach with people like Clarence White and interweaving acoustic guitar was just so beautiful. 

Especially something like the Byrds Live At The Fillmore where you hear Clarence playing Eight MIles High and blending two strands of music together.

Oh absolutely. 

We talked then about the famous B-Bender that Clarence White played. Marty Stuart now owns and plays it regularly.

Marty and I have the same manager so when they’re doing the TV show taping I get to stop by every once in awhile. I got to pick on it one day and it  feels so weird, it’s almost like playing a hollow body. I don’t know how he does it. Marty tours with that thing. 

We talked about the talent of Kenny Vaughan and how he can play such a myriad of styles that are influenced by Jeff Beck as much as Roy Nichols and so many other players.

What I love about Kenny is that he can hit eight or nine different facets of music in one solo. He’ll sneak it all in there.

We were taking about all the different influences you have come through listening to country music.

Some people can get a little hung up on the tradition and purism side of things. This is 2014 and my producer (Dave Cobb) and I had a long conversation about that. He said “aren’t you worried that people will think you’re running from whatever the last record was?”  I said that I’d already made what I call a traditional record and I felt that I’m not running from it But I certainly didn’t want to turn around and do it again right after that. We incorporated a lot of things this time that will probably take people a little while to get used to. Then I’m not going to make a Merle Haggard record because he already did it and I’m pretty damn sure that I’d never do it as good as he did it (laughs). Taking it somewhere new is the only way it will survive.

We discussed how the better country retro bands in a live context do introduce a new audience to the music and artists of classic traditional country music that they may not come across otherwise. Music needs to be heard in a live context so that it becomes something living and breathing. But that’s only one aspect of the music that is now called Americana.

That can be a self made trap. Building a wall around yourself you become a novelty and I never want to feel that I’m putting a costume on. It’s a bit of a dangerous  road as you build a fan base and then that’s what they expect every night. But on the off-chance I ever play the Ryman I may want to walk out with a disco ball hanging from my suit though (laughs).

When you see an artist walking out on stage in a Nudie or Manuel suit and the light catches the rhinestones it’s like a light show and you know you’re going to watch that person. Jim Lauderdale does that …

… or Marty. He owns that. Jim and Buddy Miller though,  they crack me up. I did a radio show at Buddy’s house not too long ago and they’re both just the sweetest guys. They’re all about their shirts. They have a collection of amazing shirts. When Jim showed up he and Buddy spent about five minuets talking about the shirts they were wearing. I was like “what’s happening?”.

We enthused about how The Mavericks are a band who, while they have a respect for the traditional values they create something new that’s very much their own from a myriad of influences.

Raul is just about my greatest living musical hero right now. I love the In Time album. When the album came out last year I went down to the Siriuis station in Nashville as they were doing a little live in-studio acoustic concert. It was the best show I’ve seen in ten years. They weren’t even doing their “show” but it felt great and there were probably 40 people in this little room. It felt like it was levitating. It was just so good. 

Tell me something about your new album Metamodern Sounds in County Music?

We came off the road from what seemed like an infinite tour and we cut the whole think for a really good price in about four days. Our producer happened to have a week and a half off so I figured that we’d just done seven weeks of shows and we’re not going to get any tighter and I was sitting on a mountain of songs so we went in with my band to do the record. It was an honour and an extreme … I don’t know if privilege is the word … to have played with guys like Pig and those guys,  but I feel like I got my sound down a little bit more on this one. 

Your road band is you and your trio of bass, drums and guitar?

That’s it, just four little guys. We keep a very low stage volume. My guitarist plays through a little 5 watt Champ. I play my Martin and we kind of let the room do the work. We’re having a lot of fun. In Nashville if you walk in with anything over a 15 watt amp you don’t play there again. They say “well that guy doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing”.

Bluegrass was the next topic up for discussion and specifically the Station Inn. 

You never know who might walk in there. I’ve been in there and gotten free mandolin lessons from Ricky Skaggs. That was so surreal. It’s probably my favourite club in the world. We did our CD release there last year. That meant as much to me as playing the Opry. Bluegrass is what I absorbed and played the most. The first time I moved to Nashville was in 2005 (and) all I was doing was playing bluegrass. At some point, I don’t know, I just fell in love with a lot of the older writers and I started to write a lot. I used to just hang out in the Station Inn rather than playing with anybody other than infinite jam parties around East Nashville. I still don’t consider myself in the music business. I’m not going to meeting or anything. I’m just putting records out and going deeper in debt. 

Do you writing a lot?

I try to write everyday if I can. 

The first album you have said was, to a degree, autobiographical. Is the new one from a different perspective?

I probably don’t want to go into that too much but I kinda wanted to see if was possible to explore outside the box with lyrical themes and subjects through the guise of country music. As I said it is very much a psychedelic record. It’s introspective and everything else. There are no’ tear in my beer’  songs on this album. I felt I couldn’t sing another heartbroken song. I wanted to sing about black holes or Tibetan Buddhism or I don’t know what. It comes out on my label in the States and through Loose on the UK. I didn’t start my music career until I was 34 as growing up in East Kentucky everybody plays music but never in a way where you think I could do this for a living. You do it after work. So I did everything else first. With High Top Mountain I proud of all the songs but that first time as an artist and with a producer you’re feeling each other out. They have their ideas about what they think is best. With this new one I feel that I cleared my throat a little bit and got my sound. I’m pretty excited about the new record even though the first one has only just come out here. 

Finally on your travels have you come across anyone you could recommend or who has impressed you?

Yeah, we played a couple of shows with Jason Isbell and he’s just amazing. He’s a really, really sweet guy too. About half the times, unfortunately, when you meet people that you were just floored by or are in awe of, or you might just want to pick their brain,  they turn out to be giant assholes when you talk to them. They just can’t be bothered. A couple of times they’ve been real heroes of mine. At the same time I can understand it too. I definitely have some days where I shouldn’t be sitting at the merch booth. Outside of country there’s a lot of bands that kinda blow my mind like Tool. I admire what they do a lot. I thought that the last Daft Punk album was pretty incredible. I actually never leave the house when I’m home to be honest. If I’m on the road I don’t get out to clubs. So I kinda get into a hole where I end up listening to the same five or six record for six months. There’s three or four records that I listen to once a week. So I don’t know much about new music to be perfectly honest. But there’s a guy in Texas just put out a good album called Jason Eady (Daylight & Dark). I heard it in a friend’s house and I thought it was fantastic. Great writing is what tends to grab my ear.  

Interview by Stephen Rapid. Photograph by Ronnie Norton

Interview with Sam Outlaw by Stephen Rapid

Sam Outlaw is the performing name of California based country artist Sam Morgan. Outlaw is actually his mother's maiden name. He continues a long tradition of West Coast country music that always seem to be at least one step removed from Nashville. Its exponents generally deliver a more heartfelt, harder brand of honky-tonk, well documented in such books as Gerald W. Haslam's book Workin' Man Blues. Outlaw joins such similar minded contemporary exponents as Dave Gleason in keeping the true spirit of the music alive, yet each is doing it in his own way.

Nobody Loves is the title of Outlaw's debut album which is full of self-written songs that have a sound like the new-traditionalists of the 80s and 90s,  which is to say country music, but looking forward as much as it looks back. I'm not sure where I came across the name of Sam Outlaw on the internet but when I checked out his site (www.samoutlaw.com) it showed an accomplished, likeable and talented artist and one who appeals to an attractive coterie of ladies too, something that should never be discounted in achieving a lasting career. Some of the current crop labeled of underground outlaws seem to have, predominantly, a male audience. There is, however, much in Outlaw’s music that will have a broad appeal.

Lonesome Highway took the opportunity to contact Sam and ask him some questions. One of which was to enquire if the name Outlaw had caused anyone to accuse him of making association with the "outlaw movement" past or present. The answer was a succinct "no".

You come from South Dakota and now live in Southern California but your association with country music doesn't derive from your upbringing. Where does it come from?

I was home sick from work when I was 22 years old - channel surfing. I stumbled on CMT’s "100 Best Country Singers" or something like, and heard/saw George Jones for the first time. It totally blew my mind. I went out the next day and bought a George Jones album, along with music from Emmylou Harris and others. Before that, the only other good country music I had been exposed to was the Western Swing Revivalist group Asleep At The Wheel (Ray Benson). My dad was a huge fan of their music so their albums were regularly played in our home. Holidays, road trips, etc. 

There has been a strong tradition of honky-tonk in that region that you want to revive. Why do you think it died out and what has been the reaction to your music there?

Music historians could better tell that story than myself, but as far as the reaction to my music in So Cal it has all been pretty positive. The best compliment I can get is when someone says, “I don’t even listen to country music but I really liked your songs.” My guess is that most folks in Los Angeles think country music is only what’s on modern country radio and simply haven’t been exposed to something better.

The music feels right for someone who has experienced sad times. Has country music something to offer in these straitened times?

I think country  music is the best kind of music, so I’m always blessed to hear it. Good times, bad times or in-between. Sometimes sorrow can inspire creativity as a means of processing and exhaling a sad experience but I don’t think one has to “be sad” to write a good heartbreaker, nor is heartbreak a prerequisite for a good country song.  

Some of the best known exponents of California country music have been Buck Owens, Merle Haggard and Dwight Yoakam. How much an influence was that harder edged version of country music on you?

Those artists have been a massive influence on me! Not only directly,  but indirectly. For instance, the first time I heard the song Bottle Let Me Down was from Emmylou Harris’s album Pieces of the Sky. It wasn’t ‘til later that I heard Merle’s version. Dwight Yoakam is particularly inspiring because he’s done it all as an Angelino. 

Who are your main influences past and present?

Too many country influences and heroes to name, but here’s a start: George Jones, Willie Nelson, Ray Benson, Don Williams, Keith Whitley, George Strait, Dwight Yoakam. Non-country influences would mainly be The Beatles I guess. But that’s probably the case for everyone. 

At what point did you decide you wanted to play country as opposed to any other form of music and did you listen or play other styles previously?

When I first heard George Jones something just exploded in my head and heart. A few years later I decided to put a country band together and start playing my songs for people. 

You have released your debut album on vinyl (though it is also available as a download). Was there a reason you decided to do that at this time?

Vinyl is the best. And even though it’s expensive and I figured very few people would buy the album or care that it’s on vinyl it just seemed like the right thing to do.

On your website there are several well-shot short videos that give an insight to Sam Outlaw. Do you see that as a vital medium for spreading the word?

Video can communicate and influence emotions better than any other medium. It’s the best way to tell a story that goes beyond the songs.

How conscious are you of creating a look, an image? Do you have experience in that area?

Look and feel is very important to me. Not so much to create an “image” but to create a larger environment for which people can enjoy the music and feel part of something fun and authentic. I’m learning as I go.

Are you a full time musician or do you need to create an income in other areas in order to fund your music?

I’m a full-time musician with a full-time job to pay the bills (and the band). Ha ha! It’s a lot of work but it’s important to me that my players are paid for each gig and that I don’t have to always rely on favours. Otherwise I’d be asking other people to suffer for my art and that gets old really fast. 

What inspires you to continue to write and sing?

I suppose I’m most inspired by listening to great country music. 

Do you fear for the future of the more traditional forms of the genre as Nashville pushes further towards pop and rap affiliations?

No.

Another line from one of the videos is that you're just "a drifting cowboy looking for sushi" that seems to encompass the old and the new in one sentence. Is that something you're aiming for?

I aim to capture the spirit of country music in an authentic way - much like the “neo-traditionalists” of the 80s and 90s. George Strait records didn’t sound like Bob Wills records, no matter how much he might have wanted them to. Ha ha. I grew up in the 90s but the music I love is rooted in the 40s, 50s and 60s. It all mixes together in the end. 

Where are you hoping to take your music from here?

My short term goals are to make a music video for a new single I’ve just recorded - then record a new album. Label backing would be nice as I’d like to hire the best pickers in the land. The bigger picture has really nothing to do with me though. What I want most is for more people to discover how good good country music really is and to enjoy it with me. 

Interview with Greg Trooper

A New Jersey born singer-songwriter who has released twelve albums of crafted writing to date and who has had his songs covered by such respected songwriters as Steve Earle, Vince Gill and Billy Bragg. He has worked closely with a number of producer's including Garry Tallent, Buddy Miller and Dan Penn. His current album Incident On Willow Street was produced by Stewart Lerman and included the songs Living With You, Mary Of The Scots In Queens and One Honest Man. Trooper has long been a Lonesome Highway favourite and took the time to answer these questions.

You can look back over a career of over twenty years as a singer/songwriter. What reflections do you have of how things have changed or evolved over the years?

For me I’d say my songwriting has hopefully evolved. I’ve learned to take more time with a song and go over it and edit, edit, edit! 

Your ambitions will have obviously have changed over the years and the fact that you are still performing and recording suggest the core inspiration is the music itself. Would that be your inclination also?

I still have professional ambitions. Still want to reach a larger audience, still want to work larger venues but the youthful “rock star” thing is long past. I still believe, and maybe more so now, that the work is thing. What I mean by that is working at songwriting and performing and trying to connect with an audience is my priority and goal.

 The landscape for delivering music has changed dramatically over the last few years. How has that affected you?

’m now the artist, record label and publisher. This takes more time and effort away from concentrating on just being “the artist”. Kind of had to pay attention to it all before anyway but it’s a different psychology.

The digital age has it’s pros and cons. I can deliver my music on my own and see more financial reward right away from selling and downloads but no matter how much I pay out to promote my music I still don’t seem to have the reach I did when recording for a label. That may change. We’ll have to see. The first rule in this business is there are no rules.

The advent of such funding sources seems ideally suited to an artist with a reasonable fanbase. Does that make it easier or are things still as problematic as ever?

Funding is a huge issue for the independent musician. Kickstarter and the like have been a great asset but how many times can you go back to your fans for your recording and promotion budget? I’m hopeful this record can generate enough income to finance my next project although life and bills can be quite demanding.

Has the lived circuit changed too and has the age of the audience been a factor in how and where you play these days?

My audience ages right along with me. I’d like to see more young people at my shows but it’s a tough sell. I believe my songs relate to any age audience but it takes some convincing to get 20 somethings to a 50 something’s show.

You lost your friend the late, great Larry Roddy who was a great supporter of your music, Has that been a factor in not being back in Ireland in recent times?

Larry was not just an agent for me. He was a dear friend. I learned so much about so many things from him. It has been hard for me to tour Ireland with out him there to talk about Dylan, The Blues, and Irish history. I’ll be back though.

The new album Incident On Willow Street is another great addition to your fine body of work. Was there a particular inspiration behind the songs?

Not really. It was more subconscious than that. The songs have a lot to do with escape or finding a different path than the one you’re traveling. This all came out from the writing more than contemplating what I was going to write. I will say the songs are not autobiographical. That would bore the listener. I like to say my songs are reality based fiction.

You worked with some fine players on the album such as Larry Campbell and producer Stewart Lerman. How does the selection of the producer/players effect the outcome of the music?

Casting players for an album is key to the outcome. I’m lucky to know such great players. They’re musical instincts are just incredible. Couldn’t do it without them.

What are the highlights, for you, of the work you have produced to date?

Hard to answer that. I still look forward to every gig. Still love the writing and recording process. It’s all still fresh and amazing to me.

The nature of what you do can be lonely as you tend to travel a lot solo. Has that become more difficult as time goes on?

Yes and no. Alone can be productive and positive but there are those mornings you wake up, wash your face, look up in the hotel bathroom mirror and say “ oh no, not you again”.

Do you still draw inspiration from similar sources?

I look for it everywhere. Books, articles, movies, music, conversations etc. I just wish I could remember all the mental notes I take.

What are the next projects for you and for the future?

Right now I’m trying to work and promote this record as much as possible. As I go I’ll write songs and I’ll have to see where they take me. Hopefully Ireland in the fall of 2014.

Interview with Tom Bridgewater of Loose Music

 

Tom Bridgewater set up Loose Music the independent record label based in Acton, London in 1998.  Previously he was behind the vinyl only record label, Vinyl Junkie. With roots singer-songwriters, Americana and country providing the core direction they heave released music by the following artists: Giant Sand, M Ward, Mark Mulcahy, Neko Case, The Handsome Family, The Felice Brothers, Dawes, Deer Tick, Hurray For The Riff Raff, Johnny Fritz, Israel Grips Nash and  Danny & The Champions Of The World. Lonesome Highway took the opportunity to ask some questions from someone operating in that side of the process.

Your musical ventures have always been related to Americana/Roots/ Country music. When did you become aware and awakened by that genre of music?

An old family friend - the actor Kenneth Cranham - used to make us tapes to play on long car journeys. The beautifully decorated tapes were made up of music by the likes of John Prine, JJ Cale, Emmylou Harris, Randy Newman and Jesse Winchester. So I became unusually fond of country music as a youngster.  

Did DJing at Nashville Babylon point the way to releasing music through Vinyl Junkie and Loose Music?

I had already set up Vinyl Junkie (and then Loose Music) by the time that we found ourselves in Dublin in late 1998, spinning tunes and drinking Guinness by the gallon. But it was all part of the journey.

In the current climate it’s tough to sell records yet you seem to have found a balance to make it work. How have you done that?

Loose is run on a wing and prayer and we have always spent our budget of half a shoe-string. But we manage to trudge on heroically! People ask me “how’s business”? and I proudly say “well, we’re still in it”! I reckon thats no mean achievement these days. How have we managed it? Thanks to the good people who buy records by our bands. We salute you! 

For Loose is the physical product still outselling the downloaded versions?

Indeed it is, but digital sales are increasing while physical sales decline. We issue most of our albums on CD and LP these days. We usually make the LPs limited edition and numbered with download codes included. I think that the limited edition element helps. To me it’s all about the physical product. Having something to hold in your hands.

In the CD versus Vinyl debate where do you stand?

Personally I like both but if I really love an album then I will usually buy it on vinyl. Artwork is a big but increasingly forgotten element of records and obviously you cannot beat the sound of an LP. Thats been scientifically proven, by Neil Young! And some people say that records smell of bananas so thats good too.

There was a time when it was though a single act could break through for Americana - Nirvana style - and thus focus attention on the music. That look’s unlikely now but do you see a similar possibility for mainstream success?

We work with a number of bands that really could appeal to a wider marker: Danny & The Champions Of The World, Israel Nash Gripka, Treetop Flyers and Frontier Ruckus (if they write a chorus!) to name but four. However, to “break through” you need serious marketing muscle which Loose simply does not have. So we depend on good press, radio, online and TV where possible. If you can achieve all those four pieces of the jigsaw on a decent scale at the same time then you have a chance. With The Felice Brothers we had “Frankie’s Gun” on two TV shows at the same time: Outnumbered on the BBC and Skins on Channel 4. It soon became our biggest selling record.

How frustrating is it to know you have a great album on the label but the actual sales are not commercially significant?

I made a change in career about 20 years ago and started to put records out. It wasnt really that I saw myself swimming in a banjo shaped swimming pool and admiring my platinum discs on the wall of my Malibu beach house; it was because I wanted to see if I could enrich people’s lives with the music that I love. To me the best moments are seeing any sized venue full of smiling faces watching one of our bands that the crowd probably wouldn’t have heard of if we hadn’t signed them. Thats something that makes me very happy and proud. Its not all about commercial success, to me its about doing something worthwhile with your time on this earth, man.

In choosing which acts to release do you rely on your own judgement or are there any other criteria involved?

We have a very small team here at Loose and we all have to agree that its a good plan to sign a particular act. We sometimes play them to our distributors in other countries but really its down to us. You just have to go with your gut instinct.

You are based in London and have released a number of UK acts. In that light you must fell that these acts are as good a those from the US. Would you agree?

Some are. Danny & The Champs and Peter Bruntnell and Treetop Flyers definitely are. To be honest, I don’t really like comparing USA and UK acts but I certainly wish that here in the UK and Ireland we started getting more behind our own talent rather than giving disproportionate amounts of airplay and column inches to American acts because they come from towns with romantic sounding names.

What do enjoy most about running the label?

As I said before, seeing happy faces at gigs and that feeling of doing something artistic and creative with my life. It’s also good to be your own boss and just not turn up to work occasionally.

Has your love and enthusiasm for the music been diminished by the financial side of making music happen?

Not really, I find it more disheartening when we lose a band because some bigger label comes along and lures them away from us with offers of all the gold they can eat. If you want loyalty in the music business get yourself a dog! There are of course exceptions to this rule and I am forever indebted to those acts that have stuck with us through thick and thin. They know who they are and I love them.

What have Loose got in store for 2014?

Fabulous music from friends old and new. We just want to keep on keeping on.

Interview by Stephen Rapid

Link to current Loose Sampler:

https://soundcloud.com/loose-music/sets/loose-2013