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Speaker 1: Pushkin.

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Speaker 2: Joe Henry and Mike Read brought two distinct but complimentary

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Speaker 2: legacies to their new collaborative album, Life and Times. Joe

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Speaker 2: was a celebrated producer and songwriter known for his atmospheric,

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Speaker 2: deeply literary approach to Americana. Over the decades, He's produced

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Speaker 2: albums for artists like Solomon Burke, Bonnie Rait, and Elvis Costello,

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Speaker 2: while cracked in his own work that blurs the line

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Speaker 2: between folk, jazz, and rock. Mike Read, a former NFL

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Speaker 2: defensive lineman turned Grammy winning country songwriter, has written hits

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Speaker 2: like I Can't Make You Love Me and has long

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Speaker 2: explored the tender spaces between strength and vulnerability. Their album

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Speaker 2: Life and Times captures conversations between two seasoned storytellers, their

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Speaker 2: voices and perspectives interweaving across songs that examined memory, mortality,

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Speaker 2: and the passage of time with unflinching honesty. On today's episode,

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Speaker 2: Bruce Helm talks to Joe Henry and Mike Read about

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Speaker 2: how they developed a deep friendship over their shared love

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Speaker 2: of poetry at a songwriter's retreat. They also discussed the

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Speaker 2: artists and songs that first drew them to songwriting, and

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Speaker 2: they reflect on their individual creative processes and how they

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Speaker 2: found new ways to inspire each other's work. This is

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Speaker 2: broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Hedlam with

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Speaker 2: Mike Reid and Joe Henry.

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Speaker 3: I Show from the Grave. It's the show lumberd On.

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Speaker 4: It's curtain and ladders climbing up with a dawn that

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Speaker 4: breaks like a heart, and house like a yawn of

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Speaker 4: the stretching and wild rolling sea, ever so fully.

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Speaker 5: Cafe's with a ghost who sits down beside me with

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Speaker 5: tea and with toast in a rattle and sleeper. Carn

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Speaker 5: Trason the coast through the darkness between.

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Speaker 6: You and me.

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Speaker 7: Flag a Man down way.

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Speaker 3: Comes back this way.

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Speaker 7: I'll cut run it over, and there's hell to pay

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Speaker 7: for all we've been giving.

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Speaker 8: And did not give away. Flag down a man going back.

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Speaker 3: Maybe time yet we.

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Speaker 8: Can try.

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Speaker 3: Well.

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Speaker 9: The barreling in couples and buffalo phones wave to the

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Speaker 9: cheering to those who would call with a look out below.

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Speaker 8: I'm good luck to you all. Just as they drive

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Speaker 8: the nails.

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Speaker 10: And hold back the years into keeping the lid close

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Speaker 10: for the roll on its side. Well as she goes

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Speaker 10: it's a drop in the bucket heard of her life,

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Speaker 10: fanst we know he see is how real love begins.

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Speaker 8: Flag a man down when he comes back this way,

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Speaker 8: our plup on and.

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Speaker 7: Over and their hell de pay all we've been giving

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Speaker 7: and not give away.

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Speaker 11: Flag down a man going bad, Maybe timing, and we

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Speaker 11: can try.

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Speaker 12: Well we have in our favor the time at our

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Speaker 12: backs were chasing our tails, and I could train on

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Speaker 12: the tracks, steaming and blowing.

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Speaker 3: It's a most awful life.

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Speaker 13: Of the too many words we have.

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Speaker 3: I could rest here.

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Speaker 8: On the rails for the night. I can go with

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Speaker 8: me in.

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Speaker 7: The face of such flight of the engine that cut

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Speaker 7: all and on, not just.

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Speaker 8: Carry us. Saw the way home.

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Speaker 7: Fag a man down when he comes, stand in his way,

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Speaker 7: I would fall and old. And there's held the pain

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Speaker 7: for all we even giving and did not give away.

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Speaker 7: Flight down a man go in by.

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Speaker 14: Maybe time yet we can try, Maybe time yet holding,

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Speaker 14: Maybe time yet over there, Maybe time.

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Speaker 15: Yet, time yet we can try.

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Speaker 1: It's beautiful.

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Speaker 16: Thanks you.

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Speaker 17: So we're welcoming to great songwriters, even legendary songwriters. Mike Reid,

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Speaker 17: who a dozen number one country hits.

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Speaker 18: You know I've been told Bruce it varies from twenty

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Speaker 18: down to a dozen, and you never know what publication

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Speaker 18: they're referring to, so I guess maybe that has a

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Speaker 18: lot to do with it. I have feelings about Number

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Speaker 18: one records too, that you know, they're not only a

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Speaker 18: handful of them are really authentic hits. And when I

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Speaker 18: say hit, I even sort of regard that slightly differently.

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Speaker 18: To me, it's whatever song impacts people's lives, whatever they

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Speaker 18: take into their lives, and sometimes commercial hit songs are

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Speaker 18: a little more than distraction. That's fine, you know, if

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Speaker 18: you can write something that speaks to someone's life, good

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Speaker 18: for you.

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Speaker 1: Just tell me you cash the checks?

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Speaker 3: Ah I did.

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Speaker 18: That's a very very fair thing for you to say,

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Speaker 18: by the way, Yes, I had when it came to that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know all the number ones.

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Speaker 18: That one well, well, you know, the terrible thing for

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Speaker 18: me to say is that that's sort of principal thinking

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Speaker 18: is an affordable commodity.

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Speaker 3: So you had to be careful not take yourself too seriously.

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Speaker 17: I think maybe what you should say from now on,

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Speaker 17: it's not the number ones, it's the zeros.

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Speaker 16: Tell you if you want a shorter answer, just ask

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Speaker 16: me how many number ones I've had.

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Speaker 18: Yeah, but I would ask you how many impactful songs

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Speaker 18: you've written, Absolutely, songs that have that are deeply woven

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Speaker 18: within the fabric of people's lives.

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Speaker 1: I mean, isn't han Jo isn't that sort of Well

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Speaker 1: that is the hope.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that is the hope.

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Speaker 18: And I think even if you're you know, Bruce, if

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Speaker 18: you're a commercial quote whatever that means songwriter in Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah,

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Speaker 18: there's an element, I suppose where it's the business, there's

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Speaker 18: an element you have to be careful about the cynicism

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Speaker 18: of money. But I'd have no reason to think those

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Speaker 18: kids writing songs now don't want to do the same

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Speaker 18: thing that Joe Henry has done, which is impact people's

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Speaker 18: lives with the words and his music.

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Speaker 17: Well, you jumped in and introduced Joe for me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Good.

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Speaker 17: When I mentioned Joe to people, I always say a

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Speaker 17: great producer of many many know Elvis Costello, Bonnie Ray,

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Speaker 17: Alan Toussant, But as a songwriter I think was Roseanne

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Speaker 17: Cash said you're the one who keeps raising the bar

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Speaker 17: for the rest of us.

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Speaker 16: So well, that's high praise coming from her.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, and you've done it again.

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Speaker 17: You guys got together to produce this album Life and Times.

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Speaker 17: We just heard the first song, Sleeper Car. Can you

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Speaker 17: tell me how this came together as.

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Speaker 16: Far as how we came together to begin working at all.

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Speaker 16: We found ourselves both part of the so called faculty

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Speaker 16: at a songwriting camp in Nashville in August of twenty

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Speaker 16: twenty two that my dear friend Rodney Crowell runs.

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Speaker 17: I have to stop you there because that sounds like

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Speaker 17: an insane amount of fun.

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Speaker 16: Well, let me just say it's intense work because people

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Speaker 16: come from far and wide and they pay no small

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Speaker 16: sum of money to be there in hopes of learning

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Speaker 16: something that I don't know that can be taught. So

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Speaker 16: I have some high anxiety. In fact, you.

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Speaker 17: Don't say a songwriting can be taught.

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Speaker 16: I like what Rodney says. I don't know if it

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Speaker 16: can be taught. I believe it can be encouraged. And

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Speaker 16: I think people who have anything going on, and it

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Speaker 16: doesn't have to be something that I respond to, Is

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Speaker 16: it something that they are responding to. I think what

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Speaker 16: we can teach is refinement and strategies around just personally speaking,

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Speaker 16: just getting into motion, because I think that's the biggest

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Speaker 16: obstacle for people is just beginning, and they're all kinds

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Speaker 16: of things that I've learned to do for myself over years,

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Speaker 16: just to trick myself into some kind of motion, because

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Speaker 16: when that happens, invariably I encounter something that I can

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Speaker 16: work with.

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Speaker 1: What are those tricks?

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Speaker 16: This is going to sound over the obvious, but if

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Speaker 16: I'm sitting in a hotel room, for instance, or in

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Speaker 16: a moving vehicle, as I was when I wrote a

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Speaker 16: lyric just the other day, I just start somewhere describing

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Speaker 16: something that I see, and somehow just a descriptive gesture

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Speaker 16: will lead to you know, what's the response to that

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Speaker 16: thing that I see? And who is that character responding?

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Speaker 16: And next thing, you know, you're in the kind of

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Speaker 16: in the middle of some kind of a story. It

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Speaker 16: might not be a line your narrative, but something starts

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Speaker 16: to emerge if you pay attention to it. And I

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Speaker 16: just encourage people in that case to stay in the

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Speaker 16: seance of it as long as possible before you're ever

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Speaker 16: thinking about whether it has any use to you or not.

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Speaker 16: You know, John Cage said, don't confuse the creative mind

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Speaker 16: with the analytical mind. They both have a purpose, but

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Speaker 16: they're not the same animal. I like to try to stay,

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Speaker 16: you know, in that part of the river that's sweeping

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Speaker 16: you away for as long as possible before I get

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Speaker 16: up and climb out onto the bank and start looking

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Speaker 16: down at it and evaluating it, because once that's happened,

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Speaker 16: you're not being swept away, You're not being seduced any longer.

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Speaker 16: How long can the seance be sustained? So you're just

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Speaker 16: spooling off raw fabric, and then it's quite easy in

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Speaker 16: some regards to come back later to that raw fabric

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Speaker 16: and then you know, fashion a pair of slacks out

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Speaker 16: of them that you can walk around in. But that

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Speaker 16: first generation of raw fabric is the thing that stymies

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Speaker 16: most people. You know, how do you just get that

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Speaker 16: wheel turning to begin with? And then you can decide,

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Speaker 16: based on what kind of spools around you, where you

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Speaker 16: might go with it.

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Speaker 17: You know, I would say, as someone who's been an

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Speaker 17: editor his whole life, I think those animals are actually

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Speaker 17: enemies in the wild. And I've seen this particularly in

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Speaker 17: other editors, really brilliant editors I've worked with at The

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Speaker 17: New York Times and elsewhere. They have to stop writing

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Speaker 17: because the analytical part of it just overams for sure.

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Speaker 16: I mean, if I find that voice, if I'm in

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Speaker 16: the midst of writing anything in that first burst, if

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Speaker 16: I find myself for a moment even wondering, you know,

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Speaker 16: is this any good? Do I like it? Will my

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Speaker 16: wife like it?

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Speaker 3: Well?

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Speaker 16: Anybody who cares about what I do like it. I'm

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Speaker 16: done for the day, or at least for that period

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Speaker 16: of time, because I know I've taken myself completely out

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Speaker 16: of the stream, and it's easy to get there. It's

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Speaker 16: easy to stay in that analytical, judgmental part of it.

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Speaker 16: You know, how long can we stay free of judgment?

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Speaker 16: I mean that's translatable to so many aspects of our lives,

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Speaker 16: as much I so frequently.

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Speaker 3: Is I agree with Joe.

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Speaker 18: I don't think it can be taught like in that

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Speaker 18: when Joe and I were at the Rodney's camp. You know,

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Speaker 18: it's sort of like instructing or teaching people about the

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Speaker 18: fact about the experience of their own lives. Stanislavsky said,

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Speaker 18: acting is behaving truthfully in imaginary circumstances. And it may

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Speaker 18: be you don't have to have lived what you're writing,

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Speaker 18: but you have to. I think you have to understand

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Speaker 18: the emotional atmosphere of the thing, you know, and very

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Speaker 18: often I find in those camps, Joe, do you that

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Speaker 18: the people come and they think, you know, they're going

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Speaker 18: to find some you know, some technical secret. Yeah, more

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Speaker 18: complicated than just Hey, I'm sorry to tell you this,

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Speaker 18: but writing and teaches writing. If you can't spend all day,

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Speaker 18: I get that. But you can spend a chunk of

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Speaker 18: every day addressing it. I don't care, you know, if

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Speaker 18: it's fifteen twenty minutes. The more you get in the

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Speaker 18: habit of sitting down. Mary Oliver writes a beautiful ideas

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Speaker 18: about showing up for that part of you that desires

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Speaker 18: to be given voice to I always tell young writers,

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Speaker 18: you know, talent commitment. They're fine, that's fine, but they're

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Speaker 18: not quite enough. You have to be compelled to show up.

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Speaker 18: If you do that over the long haul, I think

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Speaker 18: things begin to happen you might not have thought would.

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Speaker 1: And you were very disciplined in your writing, weren't you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 18: I get up every morning and often Joe and I

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Speaker 18: will text. He's in Maine, I'm in Nashville. We text

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Speaker 18: over the first wonderful cup of coffee, which is the

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Speaker 18: great sublime moment for both of us.

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Speaker 3: I think, and.

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Speaker 18: Then I will yeah, I will see what's on my mind.

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Speaker 18: But now lately I stay with him the piano because

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Speaker 18: as an old person, my hands have a tendency to

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Speaker 18: want to go to comfortable, familiar places. So when Joe,

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Speaker 18: for example, when Joe sends me a lyric of words,

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Speaker 18: I will often print them and walk take a walk

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Speaker 18: around the yard with them, or into a wooded area

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Speaker 18: there around the house, and into nature. Get them out

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Speaker 18: into nature, get them and I will speak them out

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Speaker 18: loud into nature, into the air to get the sound

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Speaker 18: of them in the world. And then that helps me

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Speaker 18: get a little closer to understanding what is the atmosphere

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Speaker 18: these words are conveying, and then can I find what

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Speaker 18: the musical sound might be.

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Speaker 17: You know, when I talk to you, Joe, and this

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Speaker 17: was years ago, you would talk about using open tunings,

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Speaker 17: different tunings, anything to get your hands out of.

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Speaker 16: That yeah zone, anything to disorient me a little bit.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Mike, you've played piano for a very long time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, since I was a kid.

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Speaker 17: How do you you can't well, you can't retune a piano,

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Speaker 17: but you really don't want to do that. Is there

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Speaker 17: something you do with the piano to try and defamiliarize

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Speaker 17: your your fingers with what you're doing.

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Speaker 18: Can I show Joe this little thing, Bruce, This is

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Speaker 18: what I do. And if someone's listening, they may because

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Speaker 18: we tend to sit down in an instrument. We you know,

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Speaker 18: we're gonna maybe look for some kind of progression, some groove, might.

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Speaker 3: All those things you know how to do.

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Speaker 18: So what I do is to get away from that

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Speaker 18: is I imagine a room of four people, right, and

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Speaker 18: no one is going to say anything until they absolutely

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Speaker 18: have something undeniable to say. So we'll start with a note.

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Speaker 18: And this note for me might be silence, might represent silence.

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Speaker 18: And this may go on in my little over that

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Speaker 18: first cup of coffee for minutes, you know, four or

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Speaker 18: five minutes until my left hand because that note is

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Speaker 18: going to tell me to go somewhere. The two decidedly

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Speaker 18: different things. One resolves attention. This creates a little bit.

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Speaker 18: So I start extremely small like that, very small, with

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Speaker 18: very small elements. Maybe at that point then a melody.

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Speaker 18: I have Joe's words in front of me. I may

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Speaker 18: begin to hear the sound of what they might sound like,

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Speaker 18: the voice driving them. And sometimes we'll write a verse

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Speaker 18: not write a verse. I will discover a verse with

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Speaker 18: just playing that one note or two notes. So that's

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Speaker 18: what I do to get away from those. And then

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Speaker 18: if you go to too, you know, you'll eventually find

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Speaker 18: your way back to something. But then I will go

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Speaker 18: and say, okay, this is I don't I'm not a

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Speaker 18: mystic of any kind, you know, but I think Arthur Miller,

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Speaker 18: the great playwright, referred to it as the hidden narrative.

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Speaker 18: You know, there is something that wants to be, that

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Speaker 18: wants to come through, and I do my best, and

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Speaker 18: I usually fail. I do my best to stay out

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Speaker 18: of the way of that and listen for it and

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Speaker 18: try to hear it before I insist me into the proceedings.

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Speaker 17: And you said there were four people in the room

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Speaker 17: you started. We started with one, then you had the two,

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Speaker 17: the two, and then the next.

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Speaker 3: There's three.

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Speaker 17: Okay, you're not adding harmony, then.

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Speaker 3: Well you may. It may be there's four notes.

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Speaker 18: There four people who have decided I must speak.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 18: Now at some point they're gonna they're gonna arrive at

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Speaker 18: some hopefully some reasonably agreeable conclusion. And so that you

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Speaker 18: might get that may arrive at that. I mean it's

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Speaker 18: a little thing that I do, and it could be

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Speaker 18: very possibly. I spend too much time alone in my

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Speaker 18: little workroom, and I end up doing unnecessary things. I

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Speaker 18: like small, small, small, small small. When I'm when I'm

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Speaker 18: lost and confused, I think less less less less might

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Speaker 18: be not more.

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Speaker 16: You know, I've learned some of those tricks from you

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Speaker 16: know that that John Cage used to to do with

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Speaker 16: word play. Uh and and people like William Burrow's kind

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Speaker 16: of picked up on it from Cage. I think, well,

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Speaker 16: I'll just, you know, pick up you know, the nearest

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Speaker 16: book to me. There's always something close by, and just

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Speaker 16: open it at random and decide that at the top

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Speaker 16: of the left hand page. You know, I have to

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Speaker 16: incorporate a verb and a noun that I find one

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Speaker 16: or the other, and just by insisting that I utilize it,

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Speaker 16: it's going to suggest something, you know, And you can

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Speaker 16: try as hard as you want. It's impossible to put

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Speaker 16: two words together that mean nothing, because the mind is

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Speaker 16: trained to find some kind of sense, some kind of

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Speaker 16: gesture toward narrative in there. When you start looking for relationship,

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Speaker 16: you invariably find relationship. There's no such thing as no relationship,

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Speaker 16: you know, even if it's complete what we would call chaos,

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Speaker 16: that is a relationship to something interesting.

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Speaker 17: You describe it that way, because I would say, and

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Speaker 17: this is going to sound like an insult, and I

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Speaker 17: don't mean it to be an insult. Your lyrics make

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Speaker 17: the listener work a little harder. I think you're going, yeah,

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Speaker 17: I know, like that's a bad thing. I want to

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Speaker 17: hit d it.

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Speaker 16: I think it's perfectly fine that that people are invited

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Speaker 16: to be active as listeners. Almost every single night I

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Speaker 16: play a show, I make a point of saying to

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Speaker 16: an audience at the end of the night, listening is

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Speaker 16: not a passive activity, and I appreciate anybody who brings

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Speaker 16: their attention and time to bear. So yes, I expect

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Speaker 16: that people, if they're paying attention to what I'm doing,

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Speaker 16: they might have to work harder than they do when

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Speaker 16: they engage other things. I don't know, but I I've

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Speaker 16: had this conversation with Brad Meldal, the great pianist, who said,

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Speaker 16: you know, you can't read Shakespeare without really bringing your

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Speaker 16: full intellect there. You can't read Blake, you can't listen

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Speaker 16: to Beethoven, you can't listen to Coltrane without bringing your

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Speaker 16: real attention there, and that's part of what activates the process.

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Speaker 16: That's part of what makes music a vibrant connection between people.

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Speaker 16: If I'm only broadcasting out, that just sounds like pure

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Speaker 16: ego to me. The electrical current only is complete when

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Speaker 16: it becomes a circular loop. If I'm not feeling something

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Speaker 16: back from a listener, even if it feels abstract, even

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Speaker 16: if I'm home alone, something activates me into believing that

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Speaker 16: there's a vibrational element to what I've just written that

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Speaker 16: does not just belong to me. I don't believe that

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Speaker 16: I can alone have that experience. If it's buzzy to me,

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Speaker 16: it's because I believe that there are other people who

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Speaker 16: will catch that. If I push it.

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Speaker 1: Forward, it's like lightning. It meets in the middle.

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Speaker 16: Yeah, and I do think it's a mystical I sometimes

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Speaker 16: am shy to talk about it in mystical terms, except

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Speaker 16: that I just think that it is.

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Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Mike Read and Joe

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Speaker 2: Henry after the break.

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Speaker 17: So, as listeners, when you got together, what did you

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Speaker 17: hear in each other's work that you thought would that

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Speaker 17: this would be a fruitful partnership.

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Speaker 16: I can answer that question Honestly, I have no idea

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Speaker 16: when we met on that first day of this camp.

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Speaker 16: We just, by happenstance found ourselves walking across the grass

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Speaker 16: at Vanderbilt where this camp was hosted, and in line

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Speaker 16: together it's the dining hall. Thus we sat at a

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Speaker 16: table together, and we found ourselves really quickly. I didn't

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Speaker 16: have one notion that Mike knew who I was in

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Speaker 16: any sense, but we found ourselves really quickly talking about

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Speaker 16: the poets that we love in common, and that connection

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Speaker 16: was energizing to me to the point where in the

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Speaker 16: subsequent days, every time there was a coffee break, I

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Speaker 16: was looking for Mike. I was looking for this conversation

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Speaker 16: to continue. Yet when we parted company, when everybody left

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Speaker 16: the camp, we didn't communicate for a couple months. But

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Speaker 16: one day, I've been visiting my dad in North Carolina,

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Speaker 16: and I was stripping the bed before we left, and

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Speaker 16: I heard a couple of sort of unspool in my mind,

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Speaker 16: and for whatever reason, I stopped what I was doing

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Speaker 16: and I texted Mike and reminded him who I was,

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Speaker 16: and asked him what he'd like to try to write

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Speaker 16: some together. I don't really know other than the fact

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Speaker 16: that I understood that he comes from a different musical

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Speaker 16: tradition than I do, and I wanted to get out

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Speaker 16: of the same habits that he's talking about his hands

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Speaker 16: having at a piano. You know, I know because I

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Speaker 16: come out of a folk in country blues tradition. Melodically,

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Speaker 16: even though I studied the Great American Songbook, you know,

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Speaker 16: I'm a Duke Ellington freak. I've put myself into that

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Speaker 16: music as deeply as I can. I don't have a

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Speaker 16: lot of facility articulating music in that way, though I'm

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Speaker 16: my imagination is fired by it. And I'm sure that

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Speaker 16: I recognized in what Mike does and what his background

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Speaker 16: truly is that has little to do with so called

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Speaker 16: country music, that he understood a lot of nuance and

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Speaker 16: a lot of the elements that create that kind of

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Speaker 16: architecture that the Great American Songbook standards share. And I wanted.

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Speaker 16: I wanted to get free in that way. I wanted

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Speaker 16: to be able to move into that kind of nuanced

404
00:25:56,676 --> 00:25:58,796
Speaker 16: melodic invitation. I wanted to know what it would do

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Speaker 16: to me.

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Speaker 1: Do you remember what the couple it was?

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Speaker 16: Sure, it's the It's it opened, It's the beginning of

408
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Speaker 16: the song Room, which is song three on the record.

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Speaker 16: It's the first thing we wrote. I waked to a

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Speaker 16: room with a story to tell. Its silence was iron,

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Speaker 16: the strike of a bell. That's what I had. I

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Speaker 16: knew that that wasn't just a flat wall. I heard

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Speaker 16: that couple as a door that might be opened. That's

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Speaker 16: a pretty specific phrase to just announce itself in your mind.

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Speaker 17: I mean, the reason I ask is that I know

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Speaker 17: my I reread some interviews you've given, and you talk

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Speaker 17: a lot about rhyme and how.

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Speaker 1: You react to it. How did you react to that one?

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Speaker 18: To underscore Joe's story about us meeting at that songwriting camp,

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Speaker 18: I did know his work, and when I was very

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Speaker 18: I was very anxious about setting across the table from

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Speaker 18: him because he did what I suspected in within myself

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Speaker 18: but couldn't get to. And I was such an admirer

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Speaker 18: of his that I thought I will have nothing to

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Speaker 18: offer this guy. But then that dissipated the minute we

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Speaker 18: began to talk about poets that we both loved. And

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Speaker 18: your idea that Joe's words make people work, I don't

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Speaker 18: really feel that way, Bruce. Joe's words immediately and starting

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Speaker 18: with room, and from then on my sense here's the

430
00:27:30,476 --> 00:27:33,556
Speaker 18: word that I used. They were summoning me towards something.

431
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Speaker 18: They were summoning me into a place that I suspected.

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Speaker 18: I knew it was alive, but maybe I couldn't get

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Speaker 18: there on my own. And when I started working with

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Speaker 18: these words and finding, you know, melodic snippets here and there,

435
00:27:52,116 --> 00:27:54,476
Speaker 18: it's the very first thing I said to him. He asked,

436
00:27:54,836 --> 00:27:57,396
Speaker 18: you want to write? And I said, well, I don't

437
00:27:57,436 --> 00:28:01,876
Speaker 18: know what I'm doing. I'm very slow. But if you

438
00:28:01,916 --> 00:28:04,796
Speaker 18: want to push off the dock into the fog, I'm

439
00:28:04,796 --> 00:28:05,236
Speaker 18: your guy.

440
00:28:05,716 --> 00:28:06,636
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.

441
00:28:06,716 --> 00:28:09,836
Speaker 18: The minute I think, what did Elliott say? One only

442
00:28:09,876 --> 00:28:12,236
Speaker 18: in the four quartets, one only gets the better of

443
00:28:12,356 --> 00:28:15,596
Speaker 18: words for the thing one no longer has to say,

444
00:28:16,796 --> 00:28:19,396
Speaker 18: or the way in which one is disposed to say it.

445
00:28:20,156 --> 00:28:23,876
Speaker 18: I'm not putting down commercial music or pop songs that speak,

446
00:28:24,476 --> 00:28:28,676
Speaker 18: you know, romantically to people's lives. That's wonderful. I think

447
00:28:29,316 --> 00:28:33,956
Speaker 18: we're here one time love something. You know, I happen

448
00:28:34,036 --> 00:28:38,396
Speaker 18: to love the things that summon me into a place

449
00:28:39,756 --> 00:28:40,996
Speaker 18: that is, by the way, not.

450
00:28:41,236 --> 00:28:42,116
Speaker 3: Outside of me.

451
00:28:42,676 --> 00:28:46,796
Speaker 18: They're summoning me within their asking. One never knows when

452
00:28:46,796 --> 00:28:50,276
Speaker 18: you're getting close to that hidden narrative, it happens and

453
00:28:50,796 --> 00:28:53,796
Speaker 18: it's exciting. But when it doesn't happen, I have found

454
00:28:53,836 --> 00:28:55,316
Speaker 18: there's not a lot you can do to fix it,

455
00:28:55,356 --> 00:28:58,596
Speaker 18: other than maybe a good night's sleep, get away from it.

456
00:28:59,116 --> 00:28:59,356
Speaker 3: You know.

457
00:28:59,516 --> 00:29:04,756
Speaker 18: I love, I absolutely adore the people in his songs

458
00:29:05,796 --> 00:29:10,756
Speaker 18: because every living thing, you know, every living thing has

459
00:29:10,796 --> 00:29:16,236
Speaker 18: a pressure exerted on it by simply existing. And who

460
00:29:16,276 --> 00:29:19,596
Speaker 18: we are physically, what we look like, what we say,

461
00:29:20,356 --> 00:29:22,956
Speaker 18: do we have tattoos? Do we have no tattoos? Is

462
00:29:22,996 --> 00:29:28,076
Speaker 18: a response to that pressure. And Joe's people in his

463
00:29:28,236 --> 00:29:35,516
Speaker 18: songs are often confused but looking for light, always looking

464
00:29:35,596 --> 00:29:41,316
Speaker 18: for light. And so that's me, I think, confused and

465
00:29:41,356 --> 00:29:43,916
Speaker 18: looking for light. I hadn't thought of that to this moment.

466
00:29:44,156 --> 00:29:48,116
Speaker 18: That perfectly describes me even now, at this point in life.

467
00:29:48,276 --> 00:29:50,676
Speaker 17: Well, and it describes a lot of the songs as

468
00:29:50,716 --> 00:29:51,676
Speaker 17: well on this album.

469
00:29:51,756 --> 00:29:55,156
Speaker 18: Well I think, so, I think, so, I hope. Look,

470
00:29:55,356 --> 00:29:58,396
Speaker 18: I'm not convinced the music that I found for these

471
00:29:58,436 --> 00:30:01,676
Speaker 18: songs is up to those words, and I won't be.

472
00:30:02,116 --> 00:30:04,196
Speaker 18: I can make a peace with it, and I can

473
00:30:04,276 --> 00:30:07,316
Speaker 18: accept what's there, and I hope that the song, the

474
00:30:07,396 --> 00:30:09,436
Speaker 18: music does not get in the world way.

475
00:30:09,876 --> 00:30:10,516
Speaker 3: They tend to be.

476
00:30:10,596 --> 00:30:14,196
Speaker 18: Very protective of Joe's worth, and yeah, would I like

477
00:30:14,276 --> 00:30:17,516
Speaker 18: to go out there, Sure, but then there's the composer

478
00:30:17,636 --> 00:30:20,436
Speaker 18: obscuring the words, and I don't want to do that.

479
00:30:20,476 --> 00:30:23,756
Speaker 18: I don't know if you've ever listened to Copeland Zenmilie

480
00:30:23,876 --> 00:30:28,676
Speaker 18: Dickinson song cycle or Samuel Barber songs, particularly Sure in

481
00:30:28,716 --> 00:30:32,196
Speaker 18: the Shining Night at Great James a g and Barber

482
00:30:32,316 --> 00:30:35,316
Speaker 18: of being a great composer. But it's so in support

483
00:30:35,396 --> 00:30:37,916
Speaker 18: of those beautiful, beautiful words.

484
00:30:37,556 --> 00:30:40,516
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm old.

485
00:30:40,316 --> 00:30:45,476
Speaker 18: Now and I'm confronting my limitations, and so anything that

486
00:30:45,516 --> 00:30:49,196
Speaker 18: gives me a chance to maybe exceed them, or at

487
00:30:49,276 --> 00:30:51,996
Speaker 18: least bang my head against them, I'm going to do that.

488
00:30:52,556 --> 00:30:56,116
Speaker 17: It's interesting you mentioned how the music interacts with the words,

489
00:30:56,956 --> 00:30:59,396
Speaker 17: because when I sort of re listen to the album

490
00:30:59,436 --> 00:31:03,076
Speaker 17: as a whole, they are they're piano ballads, and I

491
00:31:03,116 --> 00:31:06,436
Speaker 17: almost started to think of this album could have like

492
00:31:06,476 --> 00:31:10,596
Speaker 17: an old nineteenth century Oh wonderful, you know, piano ballads

493
00:31:10,876 --> 00:31:14,596
Speaker 17: cover and particularly some of the phrases you used to

494
00:31:14,716 --> 00:31:18,956
Speaker 17: introduce the songs almost sound like a kind of Stephen Foster.

495
00:31:19,236 --> 00:31:20,956
Speaker 1: Oh that's a.

496
00:31:20,956 --> 00:31:24,036
Speaker 17: Thing to say, well, Bruce, but then the lyrics are

497
00:31:24,076 --> 00:31:26,156
Speaker 17: not in June what.

498
00:31:26,196 --> 00:31:29,756
Speaker 18: A nice That was never the intent. You know, that

499
00:31:29,876 --> 00:31:32,396
Speaker 18: was not the intent. But I love you because look

500
00:31:32,476 --> 00:31:36,716
Speaker 18: to Joe's point earlier, we must no matter if it's

501
00:31:36,796 --> 00:31:40,156
Speaker 18: a little, you know, simple little three chord country song,

502
00:31:40,516 --> 00:31:42,676
Speaker 18: if it's a great blues song, if it's a Joe

503
00:31:42,676 --> 00:31:47,796
Speaker 18: Henry lyric, a Wallace Stevens Elizabeth Bishop poem, that kind

504
00:31:47,836 --> 00:31:51,476
Speaker 18: of work is asking us to open up the bags

505
00:31:51,476 --> 00:31:55,036
Speaker 18: of our lives on it. What does it fire within me?

506
00:31:55,476 --> 00:31:58,516
Speaker 18: Joe's never sent me a lyric, Bruce that it didn't

507
00:31:58,596 --> 00:32:01,556
Speaker 18: fire something in me. Now could I explain that to

508
00:32:01,596 --> 00:32:04,236
Speaker 18: you at this moment? Probably not, Or I could and

509
00:32:04,356 --> 00:32:06,796
Speaker 18: take up a lot of hot air, a lot of gas.

510
00:32:06,836 --> 00:32:10,516
Speaker 18: We don't need that. But Joe never sent me words

511
00:32:10,596 --> 00:32:14,316
Speaker 18: that didn't fire something in me. A relationship to with

512
00:32:14,476 --> 00:32:17,796
Speaker 18: the character. Because I don't see Joe. You should speak

513
00:32:17,836 --> 00:32:22,316
Speaker 18: to this. I don't see Joe. Necessarily, to Joe's point,

514
00:32:22,356 --> 00:32:25,516
Speaker 18: you cannot put two words together without meeting something. So

515
00:32:25,596 --> 00:32:28,796
Speaker 18: it comes out of Joe Henry. He is he is

516
00:32:28,836 --> 00:32:32,076
Speaker 18: the vehicle through which it passes. So it's going to

517
00:32:32,116 --> 00:32:36,276
Speaker 18: be But I don't necessarily, Joe, think your songs are

518
00:32:36,316 --> 00:32:38,876
Speaker 18: all you. I mean, I'm thinking my episode.

519
00:32:38,916 --> 00:32:42,556
Speaker 16: No, No, I could count on less than that single

520
00:32:42,636 --> 00:32:45,756
Speaker 16: hand the times that I think I've written something that

521
00:32:46,356 --> 00:32:48,316
Speaker 16: you know where I am in some way the character.

522
00:32:48,836 --> 00:32:51,356
Speaker 18: Actually, and yet let me let me interrupt you, Joe,

523
00:32:51,476 --> 00:32:54,276
Speaker 18: because I I have an obsession right now with the

524
00:32:54,356 --> 00:32:57,796
Speaker 18: Joe Henry song and it's only going to get worse.

525
00:32:57,996 --> 00:33:00,916
Speaker 18: I know this is a song on this album. No Oh,

526
00:33:00,916 --> 00:33:04,396
Speaker 18: it's the short Man's Room album. Yeah, and that's the

527
00:33:04,476 --> 00:33:08,756
Speaker 18: song Shortman's Room because I am so passionately in love

528
00:33:08,836 --> 00:33:13,436
Speaker 18: with the character in that song. And what do I love, Joe,

529
00:33:13,596 --> 00:33:17,036
Speaker 18: What do I love about that is that it came

530
00:33:17,116 --> 00:33:21,636
Speaker 18: through Joe. So you know, it's not why you're not

531
00:33:22,076 --> 00:33:25,556
Speaker 18: totally not on the fringes of that.

532
00:33:25,676 --> 00:33:25,836
Speaker 7: Oh.

533
00:33:25,876 --> 00:33:29,716
Speaker 16: I don't say that I'm not involved, you know, I'm

534
00:33:29,716 --> 00:33:32,396
Speaker 16: just saying I might just be the ring bearer, but

535
00:33:32,476 --> 00:33:36,476
Speaker 16: I'm not necessarily the bridegroom of the story. And look,

536
00:33:37,076 --> 00:33:40,356
Speaker 16: I won't pretend that I think that, Oh, I'm just

537
00:33:40,476 --> 00:33:44,516
Speaker 16: visited upon and I don't have any relationship. But I'm

538
00:33:44,556 --> 00:33:48,276
Speaker 16: not conscious of that. And if I was conscious of

539
00:33:48,316 --> 00:33:52,396
Speaker 16: writing about my own life. I think I would. I

540
00:33:52,436 --> 00:33:55,316
Speaker 16: think I would pull back. Not because I'm afraid of

541
00:33:55,716 --> 00:33:59,116
Speaker 16: revealing too much or you know, my privacy or whatever.

542
00:33:59,756 --> 00:34:03,996
Speaker 16: I just feel like my personal experience is too finite

543
00:34:04,036 --> 00:34:07,836
Speaker 16: a space, you know, from winch to you know, launch

544
00:34:07,876 --> 00:34:09,076
Speaker 16: any real discovery.

545
00:34:09,356 --> 00:34:09,556
Speaker 9: You know.

546
00:34:09,636 --> 00:34:11,916
Speaker 16: I've thought of that a lot that you know, in

547
00:34:11,956 --> 00:34:15,716
Speaker 16: the seventies, when I was a young person obsessed with

548
00:34:15,796 --> 00:34:18,716
Speaker 16: songs and trying to figure out how they came into being,

549
00:34:19,516 --> 00:34:21,996
Speaker 16: and it was there was the singer songwriter of movement

550
00:34:22,036 --> 00:34:25,036
Speaker 16: that seemed to suggest, the more honest you were to

551
00:34:25,116 --> 00:34:27,756
Speaker 16: your real life, that's how you know, that's how good

552
00:34:27,756 --> 00:34:30,836
Speaker 16: this song was, you know. And in that regard, I

553
00:34:30,836 --> 00:34:34,356
Speaker 16: think honesty is completely overrated or what are you being

554
00:34:34,396 --> 00:34:39,076
Speaker 16: honest to? My own personal life is such as finite

555
00:34:39,116 --> 00:34:42,076
Speaker 16: space to explore, But I take the same lens and

556
00:34:42,196 --> 00:34:46,956
Speaker 16: point it out. I'm still witnessing through the lens of

557
00:34:46,956 --> 00:34:51,156
Speaker 16: my own life experience. I'm not the goal, isn't you know,

558
00:34:51,156 --> 00:34:53,476
Speaker 16: not like Cage who was looking for ways to create

559
00:34:53,556 --> 00:34:56,756
Speaker 16: music that hadn't no trace of his ego in it,

560
00:34:56,796 --> 00:34:58,956
Speaker 16: just to see what that would sound like. I'm not

561
00:34:58,996 --> 00:35:02,076
Speaker 16: pretending that that's my goal. I just don't want to

562
00:35:02,116 --> 00:35:05,116
Speaker 16: be limited by my own imagination. I don't want to

563
00:35:05,116 --> 00:35:08,196
Speaker 16: be limited by the own you know, just the small

564
00:35:08,396 --> 00:35:11,236
Speaker 16: experience is that as certainly when I was a young writer,

565
00:35:11,556 --> 00:35:13,276
Speaker 16: you know that i'd had I didn't think I'd lived

566
00:35:13,356 --> 00:35:18,596
Speaker 16: enough life to write about. But my desire to reach

567
00:35:18,796 --> 00:35:23,476
Speaker 16: out and create character, like Felinius to say, I just

568
00:35:23,516 --> 00:35:25,916
Speaker 16: create a character and find out what he or she

569
00:35:25,996 --> 00:35:28,996
Speaker 16: has to tell me. That's how I felt about songs,

570
00:35:29,436 --> 00:35:31,956
Speaker 16: like I want to begin a song in whatever way

571
00:35:31,956 --> 00:35:34,356
Speaker 16: I can, and then see what it does to me,

572
00:35:34,836 --> 00:35:38,036
Speaker 16: See what is asking me to do in service of it,

573
00:35:38,636 --> 00:35:41,316
Speaker 16: not in service of me? How can I be in

574
00:35:41,356 --> 00:35:44,316
Speaker 16: service to it? And how can it tell a story

575
00:35:44,316 --> 00:35:45,676
Speaker 16: that's bigger than I am?

576
00:35:46,156 --> 00:35:49,476
Speaker 17: Are there any parts of you that you think launch

577
00:35:49,596 --> 00:35:50,556
Speaker 17: some of these songs?

578
00:35:51,876 --> 00:35:54,996
Speaker 16: Sure? I mean I was just telling this on stage

579
00:35:55,036 --> 00:35:58,556
Speaker 16: the other night. There's a song called stray Bird, and

580
00:35:58,596 --> 00:36:00,916
Speaker 16: you know, I frequently I don't know where the beginning

581
00:36:00,956 --> 00:36:03,316
Speaker 16: of a song comes from. It just seems to be there,

582
00:36:03,396 --> 00:36:05,756
Speaker 16: like somebody sees the ladybug on them. There it is

583
00:36:05,996 --> 00:36:08,716
Speaker 16: you want to deal with it or not. In this case,

584
00:36:08,916 --> 00:36:13,156
Speaker 16: the song Straybird, my wife Melanie and I were visiting

585
00:36:13,636 --> 00:36:17,796
Speaker 16: my sister in law in the Hamptons on Long Island

586
00:36:18,316 --> 00:36:22,556
Speaker 16: a couple of summers ago, and watching our young nieces

587
00:36:22,556 --> 00:36:26,276
Speaker 16: in the pool at dusk, and I just happened to

588
00:36:26,316 --> 00:36:29,476
Speaker 16: look up and notice that the side of her house

589
00:36:29,596 --> 00:36:33,916
Speaker 16: was on fire. The chef had left the heating grill

590
00:36:34,276 --> 00:36:38,236
Speaker 16: too close to the cedar shingled house. And I look up.

591
00:36:38,796 --> 00:36:41,876
Speaker 16: The house is on fire, not a big fire, but

592
00:36:42,276 --> 00:36:46,756
Speaker 16: was asking for attention. I grabbed somebody else's jacket, it

593
00:36:46,796 --> 00:36:52,076
Speaker 16: didn't need to be mine, and put the fire out.

594
00:36:52,356 --> 00:36:54,796
Speaker 16: Now I have this wonderful young niece, and I knew

595
00:36:54,796 --> 00:36:56,836
Speaker 16: that she was writing poetry in school. I think she

596
00:36:56,916 --> 00:37:00,356
Speaker 16: was probably about nine in that moment, so I challenged her.

597
00:37:00,436 --> 00:37:04,196
Speaker 16: I said, hey, Stella, let's both write a poem about

598
00:37:04,276 --> 00:37:06,796
Speaker 16: what happened tonight and read it to each other at

599
00:37:06,796 --> 00:37:09,956
Speaker 16: breakfast in the morning. Now, Stella, just Stella didn't do

600
00:37:09,996 --> 00:37:14,436
Speaker 16: the assignment, but I did, and it got me started.

601
00:37:14,476 --> 00:37:17,556
Speaker 16: It wasn't the whole lyric, because then it went somewhere

602
00:37:17,596 --> 00:37:20,836
Speaker 16: else where. I wanted to make reference to her in

603
00:37:20,916 --> 00:37:23,316
Speaker 16: some kind of way, not her. I just wanted to

604
00:37:23,436 --> 00:37:25,596
Speaker 16: use her name by way of connecting it to her

605
00:37:26,236 --> 00:37:29,156
Speaker 16: but it does start. You know, the house caught fire

606
00:37:29,276 --> 00:37:31,876
Speaker 16: just after dark on a cold night in July. That

607
00:37:31,996 --> 00:37:35,916
Speaker 16: is precisely what happened, and that's what put that song

608
00:37:35,956 --> 00:37:40,236
Speaker 16: in motion. My reaction to that moment and realizing that

609
00:37:40,236 --> 00:37:44,116
Speaker 16: that wasn't the biggest drama happening in the story. That's

610
00:37:44,156 --> 00:37:47,196
Speaker 16: just a place that came out of a real life experience.

611
00:37:47,556 --> 00:37:50,516
Speaker 16: Not writing about myself. I'm writing something about my reaction

612
00:37:50,636 --> 00:37:51,716
Speaker 16: to an actual moment.

613
00:37:53,276 --> 00:37:56,996
Speaker 17: Okay, But then the song goes on and I quote,

614
00:37:58,156 --> 00:38:01,916
Speaker 17: there's like a sixty minutes interview. Suddenly, yeah, I'm all

615
00:38:01,916 --> 00:38:05,036
Speaker 17: here for the man I was just yesterday is scarcely

616
00:38:05,076 --> 00:38:08,716
Speaker 17: here to stand his every sway now stripped away the

617
00:38:08,756 --> 00:38:10,636
Speaker 17: bird it leaves my hand.

618
00:38:10,996 --> 00:38:13,956
Speaker 16: No, I know where this is going, and I can't.

619
00:38:15,076 --> 00:38:17,996
Speaker 16: I can't right now say that you're wrong because I

620
00:38:18,036 --> 00:38:20,556
Speaker 16: hear what you hear. But you know, was that a

621
00:38:20,596 --> 00:38:23,796
Speaker 16: conscious thought in my mind? Absolutely not. And had I

622
00:38:23,836 --> 00:38:28,516
Speaker 16: have been aware of how potentially revealing that phrase is,

623
00:38:29,396 --> 00:38:31,636
Speaker 16: hats off to you for coming up with it so quickly,

624
00:38:32,196 --> 00:38:35,036
Speaker 16: I would have steered around that fucking thing with everything

625
00:38:35,036 --> 00:38:38,396
Speaker 16: I had, probably, But when I saw it later, I

626
00:38:38,476 --> 00:38:39,756
Speaker 16: was like, oh.

627
00:38:39,596 --> 00:38:41,596
Speaker 17: Well, this is sixty minutes. It's like I'm showing you

628
00:38:41,676 --> 00:38:43,036
Speaker 17: internal company documents.

629
00:38:43,156 --> 00:38:46,476
Speaker 16: Yeah, and you're like, well, I'm not sure. I'm sure

630
00:38:46,476 --> 00:38:47,556
Speaker 16: that's not my signature.

631
00:38:47,636 --> 00:38:52,436
Speaker 17: You know that came through another part of the company.

632
00:38:52,716 --> 00:38:55,596
Speaker 17: It's just such a beautiful I mean, sway does a

633
00:38:55,636 --> 00:38:56,356
Speaker 17: lot of work there.

634
00:38:56,516 --> 00:38:57,636
Speaker 16: Yeah.

635
00:38:58,076 --> 00:39:01,756
Speaker 17: Sway also means power influence. Yeah, and it also means

636
00:39:02,236 --> 00:39:02,876
Speaker 17: your balance.

637
00:39:02,956 --> 00:39:03,276
Speaker 3: Yeah.

638
00:39:03,396 --> 00:39:06,156
Speaker 17: And a bird flying away, which would seem almost weightless,

639
00:39:06,156 --> 00:39:06,956
Speaker 17: how it would affect that.

640
00:39:07,156 --> 00:39:07,356
Speaker 19: Yeah.

641
00:39:07,596 --> 00:39:12,356
Speaker 16: And I love words that both are specific enough to

642
00:39:12,476 --> 00:39:16,836
Speaker 16: be committed, but that have more than one way to

643
00:39:16,836 --> 00:39:19,476
Speaker 16: be heard. So you're not nailing anything down to the floor.

644
00:39:19,516 --> 00:39:22,436
Speaker 16: You're not limiting anybody's response to it. As you know,

645
00:39:22,556 --> 00:39:24,516
Speaker 16: there's only one way in and out of this house.

646
00:39:25,036 --> 00:39:26,596
Speaker 16: I try to leave as many doors in the window

647
00:39:26,596 --> 00:39:29,196
Speaker 16: as open as possible so that people can enter them,

648
00:39:29,356 --> 00:39:32,676
Speaker 16: however they might. I might not know what's the most

649
00:39:32,676 --> 00:39:35,356
Speaker 16: significant part of any song. I know where I think

650
00:39:35,396 --> 00:39:39,916
Speaker 16: the drama is. I think when I've written something, but

651
00:39:40,436 --> 00:39:43,916
Speaker 16: I frequently find out that people have really other responses

652
00:39:43,956 --> 00:39:45,876
Speaker 16: than I do to it as a finished piece. And

653
00:39:45,916 --> 00:39:50,436
Speaker 16: I would never suggest that my interpretation once it's done

654
00:39:50,676 --> 00:39:53,356
Speaker 16: has any more relevance than somebody else's.

655
00:39:53,556 --> 00:39:55,996
Speaker 17: Okay, well we're going to go from the Hampton's to

656
00:39:56,036 --> 00:40:00,996
Speaker 17: Pennsylvania where you grew up. Tell me when music first

657
00:40:01,356 --> 00:40:02,076
Speaker 17: entered your life.

658
00:40:02,556 --> 00:40:05,396
Speaker 3: Oh, wonderful, wonderful question.

659
00:40:06,036 --> 00:40:12,156
Speaker 18: My grandmother, my father's other We grew up next to her,

660
00:40:12,396 --> 00:40:16,836
Speaker 18: right next to the house, and her mother, my great grandmother,

661
00:40:16,996 --> 00:40:20,236
Speaker 18: lived on the farm, on a farm, oh maybe seven

662
00:40:20,636 --> 00:40:25,196
Speaker 18: six miles away, and uh, there was an old on

663
00:40:25,236 --> 00:40:26,676
Speaker 18: that my grandmother's son porch.

664
00:40:27,076 --> 00:40:28,876
Speaker 3: There was an old upright. You know.

665
00:40:28,996 --> 00:40:32,356
Speaker 18: A lot of the keys didn't work, but I remember, Bruce,

666
00:40:32,436 --> 00:40:36,316
Speaker 18: my first memory of life is probably about three, when

667
00:40:36,356 --> 00:40:39,356
Speaker 18: I was three, sitting on that bench banging on the keys.

668
00:40:39,876 --> 00:40:43,116
Speaker 18: And then my great grandmother, when she got very old

669
00:40:43,156 --> 00:40:45,116
Speaker 18: and need to be cared for, they moved her down

670
00:40:45,156 --> 00:40:49,076
Speaker 18: from the farm and I would play for her in

671
00:40:49,076 --> 00:40:52,436
Speaker 18: that sun porch. And what I would play for her

672
00:40:52,596 --> 00:40:56,196
Speaker 18: was really I think. You hear a lot of things,

673
00:40:56,276 --> 00:40:58,836
Speaker 18: you know. The Cage's point, you know, about four minutes

674
00:40:58,916 --> 00:41:02,836
Speaker 18: and thirty three seconds is his idea is that there

675
00:41:02,916 --> 00:41:05,196
Speaker 18: is no such thing as silence. You know, you hear

676
00:41:05,236 --> 00:41:08,876
Speaker 18: a lot of things, but intentional listening, you know. So

677
00:41:08,956 --> 00:41:11,876
Speaker 18: to play for my great grandmother who would sit there

678
00:41:11,916 --> 00:41:14,836
Speaker 18: in the summer heat, wrapped in blankets, you know, and

679
00:41:14,916 --> 00:41:19,196
Speaker 18: due to circulation hymns and I think the first music

680
00:41:19,236 --> 00:41:23,876
Speaker 18: in my life that I became aware of intentionally listening to,

681
00:41:24,916 --> 00:41:29,796
Speaker 18: or the hymns in church. I loved, not necessarily praise hymns.

682
00:41:29,916 --> 00:41:35,516
Speaker 18: I loved those songs of surrender where people say, you know,

683
00:41:36,676 --> 00:41:38,236
Speaker 18: I'm lost, I'm broken.

684
00:41:38,676 --> 00:41:39,836
Speaker 3: Where do I go from here?

685
00:41:40,476 --> 00:41:43,116
Speaker 18: And I think in many ways that sort of those

686
00:41:43,636 --> 00:41:47,316
Speaker 18: that music informs even to this day.

687
00:41:47,836 --> 00:41:49,356
Speaker 1: And what was the what was the church?

688
00:41:49,436 --> 00:41:51,756
Speaker 3: Well it wasn't It was just a yeah.

689
00:41:51,796 --> 00:41:53,356
Speaker 18: I would love to be able to sit here and

690
00:41:53,436 --> 00:41:56,356
Speaker 18: tell you it was Baptist and we were rolling in

691
00:41:56,396 --> 00:41:59,316
Speaker 18: the aisles, But no, it was an old Methodist, just

692
00:41:59,396 --> 00:42:03,636
Speaker 18: the Methodist denomination. And whatever the hymns were. I always

693
00:42:03,716 --> 00:42:05,956
Speaker 18: I always tell young writers. They say, well, you know,

694
00:42:05,996 --> 00:42:09,236
Speaker 18: in this climate, why write, you know? And I well,

695
00:42:09,276 --> 00:42:11,196
Speaker 18: you got to get it into the world, get it

696
00:42:11,236 --> 00:42:13,796
Speaker 18: into the world. John Newton got off a slave ship.

697
00:42:14,156 --> 00:42:15,676
Speaker 18: I thought he was a captain of it. I don't

698
00:42:15,716 --> 00:42:17,916
Speaker 18: think he was, but he was on a slave ship

699
00:42:17,916 --> 00:42:21,276
Speaker 18: and he had epiphany about what was going on, and

700
00:42:21,316 --> 00:42:24,116
Speaker 18: he went home and he prepared a sermon for the

701
00:42:24,156 --> 00:42:28,956
Speaker 18: following Sunday, and during that sermon that were preparing that sermon,

702
00:42:28,996 --> 00:42:33,196
Speaker 18: he wrote the words amazing grace, how sweet the sound

703
00:42:33,236 --> 00:42:36,436
Speaker 18: that saved a wretch like me? And I always tell

704
00:42:36,476 --> 00:42:38,956
Speaker 18: young writers, you cannot tell me. John Newton thought, well,

705
00:42:38,956 --> 00:42:40,756
Speaker 18: in two hundred and fifty years, the whole world to.

706
00:42:40,836 --> 00:42:43,836
Speaker 3: Know those words. No, you got to get it into

707
00:42:43,876 --> 00:42:46,596
Speaker 3: the world. You know, get it. But I heard that.

708
00:42:47,636 --> 00:42:51,036
Speaker 18: I just I love those that kind of music. And

709
00:42:51,076 --> 00:42:54,396
Speaker 18: then when I was thirteen years old, my father was

710
00:42:54,636 --> 00:42:56,836
Speaker 18: worked in the I think it was a miner when

711
00:42:56,836 --> 00:42:58,796
Speaker 18: he was younger, and then worked in the job to

712
00:42:58,876 --> 00:43:00,596
Speaker 18: have in those days when I was a kid was

713
00:43:00,596 --> 00:43:01,876
Speaker 18: in the Pennsylvania Railroad.

714
00:43:01,876 --> 00:43:02,836
Speaker 3: He worked in the railroad.

715
00:43:02,876 --> 00:43:05,556
Speaker 18: Mom sold shoes when my brothers and I were able

716
00:43:05,596 --> 00:43:09,876
Speaker 18: to take care of ourselves, and he rode my bike

717
00:43:09,916 --> 00:43:13,996
Speaker 18: across town. I was about thirteen to a deer buddy

718
00:43:14,076 --> 00:43:17,596
Speaker 18: Dave Berry, and he played me Van Klibern and Fritz

719
00:43:17,636 --> 00:43:22,236
Speaker 18: Reiner's recording of the Beethoven Emperor. And I had no

720
00:43:22,356 --> 00:43:25,276
Speaker 18: idea in thirteen years of living on this earth that

721
00:43:25,396 --> 00:43:29,956
Speaker 18: such a sound existed. So those two things, I think

722
00:43:30,036 --> 00:43:33,956
Speaker 18: were things that kind of the hymns were a gradual thing.

723
00:43:34,316 --> 00:43:38,476
Speaker 18: The Beethoven, the Emperor and the birth of my children,

724
00:43:38,516 --> 00:43:40,596
Speaker 18: I think, are the only things that I can say

725
00:43:41,676 --> 00:43:46,356
Speaker 18: changed me in a moment really that made me. I

726
00:43:46,436 --> 00:43:49,316
Speaker 18: missed the experience Joe had, you know, being touched by

727
00:43:49,396 --> 00:43:52,436
Speaker 18: the people he was. I was very slow, you know,

728
00:43:52,476 --> 00:43:54,876
Speaker 18: for example, I would be lying to you. I was

729
00:43:54,956 --> 00:43:58,036
Speaker 18: very slow to Dylan. I was very slow to the Beatles.

730
00:43:58,476 --> 00:44:00,836
Speaker 18: You know, they were up and almost broken up by

731
00:44:00,836 --> 00:44:04,116
Speaker 18: the time I discovered Let It Be or Abbey Road.

732
00:44:05,076 --> 00:44:05,356
Speaker 3: You know.

733
00:44:05,876 --> 00:44:07,836
Speaker 18: Did you ever see the movie two thousand and one,

734
00:44:07,836 --> 00:44:12,196
Speaker 18: The Stanley Kubrick, You know the scene of the apes

735
00:44:12,236 --> 00:44:17,276
Speaker 18: around the monolith, right, and they're not sure. They're compelled

736
00:44:17,356 --> 00:44:20,276
Speaker 18: into it and they're frightened of it. That's what music

737
00:44:20,436 --> 00:44:24,316
Speaker 18: was for me. I was drawn into it. I had

738
00:44:24,356 --> 00:44:28,276
Speaker 18: no real natural ability in it. My abilities were in

739
00:44:28,316 --> 00:44:31,396
Speaker 18: the physical world, were in the athletic world. But I

740
00:44:31,476 --> 00:44:34,236
Speaker 18: was so compelled. And I must say, you know, the

741
00:44:34,276 --> 00:44:36,836
Speaker 18: physical comes and goes, as you well know, I'm towards

742
00:44:36,876 --> 00:44:41,396
Speaker 18: that dissipating time, but the thing being compelled into music

743
00:44:41,436 --> 00:44:43,956
Speaker 18: has only gotten stronger and continues.

744
00:44:44,356 --> 00:44:46,996
Speaker 17: You said you were compelled towards it, but afraid of it?

745
00:44:47,036 --> 00:44:48,036
Speaker 1: What were you afraid of?

746
00:44:48,196 --> 00:44:51,916
Speaker 18: I was overwhelmed. I didn't know what that was. I

747
00:44:51,956 --> 00:44:54,036
Speaker 18: didn't know. And then it went from the Emperor. I

748
00:44:54,076 --> 00:44:58,476
Speaker 18: remember back in those days, he Atlantic and Pacific tea company,

749
00:44:58,516 --> 00:45:02,476
Speaker 18: the MP Supermarkets. First classical record I ever bought was

750
00:45:02,516 --> 00:45:05,556
Speaker 18: a rock Mountain of Second Symphony for twenty nine cents

751
00:45:05,876 --> 00:45:08,676
Speaker 18: in a bin there and I brought that home. Then

752
00:45:08,756 --> 00:45:12,196
Speaker 18: there was a Richard Rodgers Victory at Sea, which is

753
00:45:12,276 --> 00:45:15,996
Speaker 18: sort of a hybrid theater poppish classical.

754
00:45:16,396 --> 00:45:19,716
Speaker 3: So it was just a gradual, just a gradual discovery

755
00:45:19,996 --> 00:45:20,396
Speaker 3: of that.

756
00:45:20,356 --> 00:45:23,556
Speaker 18: Music all the while when the pop you know, there

757
00:45:23,596 --> 00:45:25,956
Speaker 18: was a record by the Walker Brothers that I love,

758
00:45:26,276 --> 00:45:29,956
Speaker 18: early Elvis. I can't say that I was that I

759
00:45:30,036 --> 00:45:33,996
Speaker 18: am or was an Elvis fan, but those early Elvis records,

760
00:45:34,036 --> 00:45:37,436
Speaker 18: I remember Joe do you you're you're not old enough

761
00:45:37,476 --> 00:45:38,116
Speaker 18: to remember?

762
00:45:38,876 --> 00:45:38,996
Speaker 6: Was it?

763
00:45:39,076 --> 00:45:45,196
Speaker 18: Bobby Darren split Splashed you guys, of course? And then

764
00:45:45,316 --> 00:45:49,076
Speaker 18: Danny and the Juniors record called at the Hop and

765
00:45:49,676 --> 00:45:54,076
Speaker 18: along with the you know, Beethoven and Bach then and

766
00:45:54,476 --> 00:45:57,916
Speaker 18: I was later on twentieth century, but I love pop music.

767
00:45:58,036 --> 00:45:58,796
Speaker 3: I just loved it.

768
00:45:58,836 --> 00:46:00,836
Speaker 17: But then how did you did you start lessons? How

769
00:46:00,876 --> 00:46:01,156
Speaker 17: did you?

770
00:46:01,476 --> 00:46:01,676
Speaker 3: Yeah?

771
00:46:01,716 --> 00:46:04,076
Speaker 18: I started when I was They brought that My uncles

772
00:46:04,076 --> 00:46:07,396
Speaker 18: and dad hauled that that upright up the hill to

773
00:46:07,476 --> 00:46:10,076
Speaker 18: our house and put it in our in our house,

774
00:46:10,156 --> 00:46:12,036
Speaker 18: got the got a tuner to come out and get

775
00:46:12,156 --> 00:46:12,716
Speaker 18: things working.

776
00:46:13,276 --> 00:46:16,196
Speaker 17: And it's very daunte and listening to Van Clyburn and

777
00:46:16,996 --> 00:46:19,516
Speaker 17: well again that second and not knowing how.

778
00:46:19,356 --> 00:46:22,556
Speaker 18: You know that was the apes around the monolith? You

779
00:46:22,596 --> 00:46:24,836
Speaker 18: know that was I was an ape around the monolith

780
00:46:24,876 --> 00:46:27,676
Speaker 18: saying what is this? I could put my hands on

781
00:46:27,676 --> 00:46:30,236
Speaker 18: the keyboard, but I mean equating it with what I

782
00:46:30,316 --> 00:46:30,796
Speaker 18: was hearing.

783
00:46:31,356 --> 00:46:35,196
Speaker 17: Now we haven't mentioned that. You, I'm pretty sure, are

784
00:46:35,236 --> 00:46:38,116
Speaker 17: the first Broken Record guests to have played in the NFL.

785
00:46:39,116 --> 00:46:39,756
Speaker 1: So you were.

786
00:46:39,996 --> 00:46:43,196
Speaker 18: I always say, listen, I can't believe I get to

787
00:46:43,236 --> 00:46:46,876
Speaker 18: work with Joe Henry. I can't. I was just literally

788
00:46:46,916 --> 00:46:49,676
Speaker 18: even now Joe thinks I'm girming him. I don't mean

789
00:46:49,716 --> 00:46:51,676
Speaker 18: to I really And I always say Joe and I

790
00:46:51,676 --> 00:46:54,236
Speaker 18: when when I say things that Joe, I always what

791
00:46:54,276 --> 00:46:54,916
Speaker 18: do I say to you?

792
00:46:54,996 --> 00:46:58,116
Speaker 16: Joe trying to take this as a compliment.

793
00:46:57,996 --> 00:47:01,516
Speaker 18: Yes, because I don't mean it. I mean it. Bruce

794
00:47:01,596 --> 00:47:02,756
Speaker 18: Moore as a statement.

795
00:47:02,436 --> 00:47:04,836
Speaker 17: Of Yeah, how about this. Try not to take this

796
00:47:04,876 --> 00:47:07,116
Speaker 17: a compliment. You played for the Cincinnati Bengals.

797
00:47:09,236 --> 00:47:12,276
Speaker 18: You know, Yeah, I said I won't say what I

798
00:47:12,316 --> 00:47:13,836
Speaker 18: was going to say. What I was going to say

799
00:47:13,956 --> 00:47:16,796
Speaker 18: was going to sound mean. But even though I'm working

800
00:47:16,796 --> 00:47:20,276
Speaker 18: with Joe Henry in this opportunity, I am the absolute,

801
00:47:20,676 --> 00:47:25,036
Speaker 18: I know, unquestionably the greatest pianist ever produced by the NFL.

802
00:47:25,716 --> 00:47:30,116
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know I may hear from.

803
00:47:29,876 --> 00:47:32,756
Speaker 17: That now, right, Yeah, someone's going to come out now.

804
00:47:32,796 --> 00:47:35,916
Speaker 18: Yeah, there's a defensive ends. He's the kid who's so

805
00:47:36,076 --> 00:47:40,156
Speaker 18: dominant for the Cleveland Browns. I can't remember his name

806
00:47:40,236 --> 00:47:42,836
Speaker 18: off the top of my but I read he's in

807
00:47:42,876 --> 00:47:45,876
Speaker 18: love with poetry. He writes poetry. I've not read any

808
00:47:45,916 --> 00:47:48,076
Speaker 18: of it. I don't know, but I know he loves

809
00:47:48,076 --> 00:47:49,276
Speaker 18: it and he writes poetry.

810
00:47:49,436 --> 00:47:52,636
Speaker 17: So, and you played for two years at Penn State,

811
00:47:52,716 --> 00:47:56,316
Speaker 17: I think two. Well, you guys were undefeated those years.

812
00:47:56,836 --> 00:47:59,636
Speaker 3: My junior red shirt, junior and senior year.

813
00:47:59,676 --> 00:48:01,476
Speaker 18: I was red shirted, tore up a knee in a

814
00:48:01,516 --> 00:48:05,556
Speaker 18: wrestling National wrestling tournament, so I was held out for

815
00:48:05,596 --> 00:48:09,276
Speaker 18: a year. And then yeah, we were undefeated in s

816
00:48:09,436 --> 00:48:10,516
Speaker 18: at sixty nine.

817
00:48:10,556 --> 00:48:13,196
Speaker 17: Did the I guess I should ask you. You played

818
00:48:13,196 --> 00:48:15,916
Speaker 17: for Joe Paterno back when he was starting.

819
00:48:16,116 --> 00:48:18,916
Speaker 18: My sophomore year. This is I'm going to date my

820
00:48:18,956 --> 00:48:22,276
Speaker 18: salf here. My sophomore year was Joe's first year as

821
00:48:22,316 --> 00:48:22,796
Speaker 18: head coach.

822
00:48:22,876 --> 00:48:24,636
Speaker 17: Wow, what was he like in the first year as

823
00:48:24,636 --> 00:48:25,196
Speaker 17: a head coach?

824
00:48:25,476 --> 00:48:25,676
Speaker 3: Very?

825
00:48:25,836 --> 00:48:30,636
Speaker 18: Very very He had that Italian, fiery, Italian temperament. And

826
00:48:31,196 --> 00:48:34,276
Speaker 18: I lived in fear of him. Not because I couldn't

827
00:48:34,316 --> 00:48:36,836
Speaker 18: fill my hands with his little throat and that'd be

828
00:48:36,876 --> 00:48:41,676
Speaker 18: the end of that. It's because I feared disappointing him.

829
00:48:42,556 --> 00:48:44,756
Speaker 18: We since and I have buddies. I talked to an

830
00:48:44,756 --> 00:48:48,556
Speaker 18: old buddy, Steve Smear today. We had a sense, when

831
00:48:48,556 --> 00:48:50,596
Speaker 18: you're a kid, you don't know these things. But we

832
00:48:50,636 --> 00:48:52,876
Speaker 18: had a sense we were in the presence of a

833
00:48:52,996 --> 00:48:57,676
Speaker 18: unique human being, and we had no problem having faith

834
00:48:57,676 --> 00:48:59,956
Speaker 18: in what he was telling us to do. And that

835
00:49:00,276 --> 00:49:04,076
Speaker 18: was the beginning. It became something else. Apparently, of course,

836
00:49:04,156 --> 00:49:09,596
Speaker 18: when it grows so monolithic, it's a very easy to

837
00:49:09,636 --> 00:49:13,436
Speaker 18: lose one's self and all that, And that's a long

838
00:49:13,476 --> 00:49:17,036
Speaker 18: conversation about you know what. But in the beginning, Joe

839
00:49:17,116 --> 00:49:19,756
Speaker 18: was young. He had been there as an assistant for

840
00:49:20,116 --> 00:49:24,036
Speaker 18: fifteen years. I think you could tell when he took

841
00:49:24,076 --> 00:49:27,156
Speaker 18: over that he was ready for that job. He added

842
00:49:27,596 --> 00:49:31,756
Speaker 18: his own ideas about how to make this thing work well.

843
00:49:31,876 --> 00:49:33,876
Speaker 2: Last break and we'll be back with Mike Reid and

844
00:49:33,956 --> 00:49:38,676
Speaker 2: Joe Henry.

845
00:49:38,756 --> 00:49:43,116
Speaker 17: You've said that the football made you depressed even in college.

846
00:49:44,476 --> 00:49:45,956
Speaker 3: I look back on my life now.

847
00:49:46,236 --> 00:49:49,116
Speaker 18: I'm at the age where you do an assessment of

848
00:49:49,156 --> 00:49:52,236
Speaker 18: what your life has been, you know, and I think

849
00:49:52,276 --> 00:49:55,276
Speaker 18: the last time I loved playing that game I was

850
00:49:55,276 --> 00:49:55,956
Speaker 18: in high school.

851
00:49:56,836 --> 00:49:58,836
Speaker 16: I think you've told me the same have I told

852
00:49:58,956 --> 00:50:01,676
Speaker 16: you were by the time that it was a profession

853
00:50:01,796 --> 00:50:05,036
Speaker 16: for you that you didn't you knew you did it well,

854
00:50:05,076 --> 00:50:07,956
Speaker 16: but there wasn't a passion for it.

855
00:50:07,956 --> 00:50:09,036
Speaker 3: It could have been the profession.

856
00:50:09,116 --> 00:50:13,716
Speaker 18: Well, Joe's son, Levon is a can I say, Joe

857
00:50:13,796 --> 00:50:16,556
Speaker 18: or maybe you should talk about Lee. He's a unique,

858
00:50:17,716 --> 00:50:22,076
Speaker 18: a unique carbon life form, this boy. And I don't

859
00:50:22,076 --> 00:50:25,396
Speaker 18: even want to use the word talent, Bruce. He's he's

860
00:50:25,476 --> 00:50:28,796
Speaker 18: such a well look at me, I'm struggling. But Lee

861
00:50:28,956 --> 00:50:33,036
Speaker 18: has said that he worries about pursuit life in music

862
00:50:33,596 --> 00:50:37,196
Speaker 18: for fear that the economic parts of it will disturb

863
00:50:38,276 --> 00:50:40,796
Speaker 18: what he is going to try to do or find

864
00:50:41,076 --> 00:50:42,716
Speaker 18: am I saying that right, Joe?

865
00:50:42,916 --> 00:50:43,676
Speaker 16: Well, pretty much.

866
00:50:43,796 --> 00:50:43,916
Speaker 6: You know.

867
00:50:44,036 --> 00:50:47,116
Speaker 16: Levon has said he's concerned that doing it as a

868
00:50:47,156 --> 00:50:52,836
Speaker 16: business might might damage his love for music, and I'm

869
00:50:52,876 --> 00:50:56,876
Speaker 16: sure that his witness of my career, which has been

870
00:50:57,356 --> 00:51:03,436
Speaker 16: both incredibly rewarding and also you know, difficult. I've spent

871
00:51:03,516 --> 00:51:07,036
Speaker 16: a lot of my working life out in the margins,

872
00:51:07,796 --> 00:51:12,476
Speaker 16: and I think lee Von has witnessed both my devotion

873
00:51:12,916 --> 00:51:16,196
Speaker 16: to what I do and also observed that it has

874
00:51:16,796 --> 00:51:21,676
Speaker 16: been extraordinarily hard for me at times. And the difficulty

875
00:51:21,716 --> 00:51:24,356
Speaker 16: has not necessarily been about I can't write a song.

876
00:51:24,636 --> 00:51:28,076
Speaker 16: My difficulty has been, you know, the people who I

877
00:51:28,116 --> 00:51:32,076
Speaker 16: connect myself with in hopes of carrying these songs out

878
00:51:32,116 --> 00:51:36,756
Speaker 16: to whatever life they may have beyond me. And I'm

879
00:51:36,756 --> 00:51:39,516
Speaker 16: not surprised at all that he has looked at the

880
00:51:39,556 --> 00:51:44,036
Speaker 16: business of it and wanted to protect as sacred his

881
00:51:44,196 --> 00:51:48,836
Speaker 16: relationship to music, because it's easy to get demoralized. He

882
00:51:48,956 --> 00:51:51,716
Speaker 16: certainly has seen me demoralized. And I'm not trying to

883
00:51:52,396 --> 00:51:54,676
Speaker 16: pretend as if you know, my life has been so

884
00:51:54,796 --> 00:51:58,596
Speaker 16: extraordinarily hard, but my life in music has not been

885
00:51:58,596 --> 00:52:02,716
Speaker 16: made easy either by the way the business is constructed

886
00:52:02,916 --> 00:52:07,876
Speaker 16: or the kind of songs I choose to pursue. Though,

887
00:52:08,316 --> 00:52:10,636
Speaker 16: you know, Mike and I quote this to each other

888
00:52:10,716 --> 00:52:13,436
Speaker 16: all the time. You know, Rob Bryaner recently made this

889
00:52:13,756 --> 00:52:17,796
Speaker 16: wonderful film documentary about Albert Brooks, and at one point

890
00:52:17,836 --> 00:52:21,396
Speaker 16: Albert Brooks manager. He's telling the story to Rob that,

891
00:52:21,876 --> 00:52:24,276
Speaker 16: you know, his manager had said to him at some point, Albert,

892
00:52:24,356 --> 00:52:27,716
Speaker 16: you always take the hard road. And Albert said, you

893
00:52:27,756 --> 00:52:30,556
Speaker 16: know the problem is you think I see two roads,

894
00:52:31,756 --> 00:52:34,396
Speaker 16: and that's how I feel about my working life. It's

895
00:52:34,436 --> 00:52:38,356
Speaker 16: not like I've chosen, you know, the harder path. I'm

896
00:52:38,396 --> 00:52:41,636
Speaker 16: walking the only path that I see, and in fact,

897
00:52:41,676 --> 00:52:44,316
Speaker 16: it's a path that I can't see. You know, what

898
00:52:44,396 --> 00:52:46,556
Speaker 16: does the dial say? You know, the path that can

899
00:52:46,596 --> 00:52:49,076
Speaker 16: be named is not the path. If you recognize it

900
00:52:49,076 --> 00:52:52,116
Speaker 16: as a path, you're probably on somebody else's. It's not

901
00:52:52,156 --> 00:52:54,636
Speaker 16: like I've chosen to be difficult, or I've chosen to

902
00:52:54,676 --> 00:52:58,636
Speaker 16: be an acquired taste or all the polite ways people

903
00:52:59,116 --> 00:53:02,556
Speaker 16: talk about music that is not exactly what we would

904
00:53:02,556 --> 00:53:06,196
Speaker 16: call popular. And I'm not disparaging myself. I'm just making

905
00:53:06,196 --> 00:53:09,996
Speaker 16: a I've not really learned how to full, you know,

906
00:53:10,076 --> 00:53:13,396
Speaker 16: monetize what it is that I do. You know, it's

907
00:53:13,476 --> 00:53:17,316
Speaker 16: it's not a natural fit for everybody. And I understand

908
00:53:17,356 --> 00:53:19,476
Speaker 16: that I grew up listening to people who were not

909
00:53:19,676 --> 00:53:23,036
Speaker 16: natural fits for everybody. I was really accustomed to going

910
00:53:23,076 --> 00:53:26,236
Speaker 16: to high school and being in love with music and

911
00:53:26,276 --> 00:53:30,116
Speaker 16: expecting that nobody that I knew would have any idea

912
00:53:30,236 --> 00:53:33,556
Speaker 16: about it. So I've just always understood that the people

913
00:53:33,556 --> 00:53:37,356
Speaker 16: that I held most sacred were somehow some kind of

914
00:53:37,476 --> 00:53:42,476
Speaker 16: secret because because I had it and nobody else did

915
00:53:43,916 --> 00:53:45,916
Speaker 16: not that I didn't think that I was good at it.

916
00:53:46,316 --> 00:53:48,596
Speaker 16: But I think about the old, you know quote from

917
00:53:48,596 --> 00:53:51,196
Speaker 16: Mark Dwaine, you know, to be good is to be lonesome,

918
00:53:52,276 --> 00:53:54,996
Speaker 16: And I I that made sense to me when I

919
00:53:55,036 --> 00:53:56,876
Speaker 16: heard it, because when I was doing the work that

920
00:53:57,036 --> 00:53:59,676
Speaker 16: I thought was the best work I could do, it

921
00:53:59,796 --> 00:54:02,636
Speaker 16: was frequently the things that were the least resonant for

922
00:54:02,716 --> 00:54:03,596
Speaker 16: other people.

923
00:54:04,636 --> 00:54:05,036
Speaker 3: You know.

924
00:54:05,316 --> 00:54:07,756
Speaker 16: When when I was on a label that was owned

925
00:54:07,796 --> 00:54:11,436
Speaker 16: by Disney, when I made the record called Scar, I

926
00:54:11,476 --> 00:54:13,876
Speaker 16: got called into the president's office, who would never be

927
00:54:13,916 --> 00:54:17,036
Speaker 16: paying any attention to somebody like me in that moment,

928
00:54:17,556 --> 00:54:20,636
Speaker 16: I got called into Bob Cavall, who's office. It was

929
00:54:20,676 --> 00:54:22,916
Speaker 16: like I've seen it from a movie. He closed the

930
00:54:22,956 --> 00:54:25,756
Speaker 16: door with a remote control. You know, I walked into

931
00:54:25,756 --> 00:54:29,316
Speaker 16: this big mccoggany door just slams behind me as if,

932
00:54:29,556 --> 00:54:34,956
Speaker 16: you know, as if by will. And he's just heard

933
00:54:35,116 --> 00:54:37,876
Speaker 16: this song that I've recorded with on thatte Coleman. And

934
00:54:37,956 --> 00:54:40,756
Speaker 16: he said, you're not really going to put this on

935
00:54:40,796 --> 00:54:43,356
Speaker 16: a record. I said, put it on a record. It's

936
00:54:43,436 --> 00:54:47,636
Speaker 16: my opus. It opens the record. He said, you know,

937
00:54:48,196 --> 00:54:50,076
Speaker 16: you know, we got into a little bit of you know,

938
00:54:51,116 --> 00:54:54,196
Speaker 16: of a scrap about it, and he thought I was

939
00:54:54,236 --> 00:54:58,676
Speaker 16: being difficult. He thought it was the most puzzling thing imaginable.

940
00:54:58,756 --> 00:55:00,076
Speaker 17: Was that the Richard Pryor song?

941
00:55:00,196 --> 00:55:04,916
Speaker 16: Yes, yeah, he also made that difficult. He said, you know,

942
00:55:05,076 --> 00:55:08,156
Speaker 16: you can't use Richard Pryor's name in a song title

943
00:55:08,276 --> 00:55:10,716
Speaker 16: without his permission. And I said, sure I can. He's

944
00:55:10,756 --> 00:55:12,516
Speaker 16: a public figure. And by the way, on the same

945
00:55:12,556 --> 00:55:15,676
Speaker 16: record there's a song called Edgar Bergan. You're not saying,

946
00:55:15,916 --> 00:55:20,316
Speaker 16: you know, get Candy Bergen's permission or it's over. But

947
00:55:20,356 --> 00:55:23,156
Speaker 16: they were so afraid of Richard as a volatile figure,

948
00:55:23,236 --> 00:55:26,316
Speaker 16: even though at that moment Richard was strapped into a

949
00:55:26,316 --> 00:55:30,316
Speaker 16: wheelchair up and thensino unable to speak, but the idea

950
00:55:30,396 --> 00:55:34,756
Speaker 16: that I was going to somehow transgress and open them

951
00:55:34,876 --> 00:55:38,236
Speaker 16: up to an altercation with the Richard Pryor family.

952
00:55:38,796 --> 00:55:38,996
Speaker 3: You know.

953
00:55:39,276 --> 00:55:41,156
Speaker 16: They said I couldn't do it. They said, you have

954
00:55:41,236 --> 00:55:43,916
Speaker 16: three choices. You can leave the song off the record,

955
00:55:43,956 --> 00:55:46,916
Speaker 16: which I wasn't willing to do. You can change the title.

956
00:55:46,956 --> 00:55:48,876
Speaker 16: I said, I can't. That tells you how to hear it.

957
00:55:48,916 --> 00:55:51,716
Speaker 16: I never mentioned Richard in the song. I'm singing in

958
00:55:51,796 --> 00:55:56,316
Speaker 16: first person, or you can get his permission. The Path

959
00:55:56,316 --> 00:56:00,156
Speaker 16: of least Resistance was the last one, and through some

960
00:56:00,276 --> 00:56:02,876
Speaker 16: wild serendipity that my life is full of, which you

961
00:56:02,916 --> 00:56:06,876
Speaker 16: don't have time for right now, I found Richard and

962
00:56:06,916 --> 00:56:10,196
Speaker 16: it led to me writing a screenplay, being asked by

963
00:56:10,316 --> 00:56:12,596
Speaker 16: him and his wife to write a screenplay based on

964
00:56:12,636 --> 00:56:16,316
Speaker 16: his life, and then when that fell apart as an enterprise,

965
00:56:16,676 --> 00:56:18,796
Speaker 16: my brother and I wrote a book about him. It

966
00:56:18,836 --> 00:56:22,356
Speaker 16: put all kinds of things in motion. Great bo insists,

967
00:56:22,356 --> 00:56:25,716
Speaker 16: thank you, insisted that I that my only choice was

968
00:56:25,756 --> 00:56:28,516
Speaker 16: to find Richard. They didn't know what they were doing

969
00:56:28,556 --> 00:56:31,316
Speaker 16: for me in that regard, As my friend Allen Tussaint

970
00:56:31,596 --> 00:56:34,556
Speaker 16: used to say to me, here you are off the

971
00:56:34,556 --> 00:56:35,476
Speaker 16: beaten path again.

972
00:56:36,236 --> 00:56:36,716
Speaker 1: I wasn't.

973
00:56:37,116 --> 00:56:40,276
Speaker 16: I wasn't. I wasn't trying to live over there. That's

974
00:56:40,316 --> 00:56:41,756
Speaker 16: just where I could afford the housing.

975
00:56:44,876 --> 00:56:46,516
Speaker 17: I do want to talk a little bit because I'm

976
00:56:46,556 --> 00:56:50,316
Speaker 17: interested very much in how you wrote melodies. We haven't mentioned,

977
00:56:50,316 --> 00:56:52,076
Speaker 17: you know. Probably the song you're best known for is

978
00:56:52,356 --> 00:56:54,916
Speaker 17: I Can't Make You Love Me, which is first recorded

979
00:56:54,916 --> 00:56:58,276
Speaker 17: by Bonnie Raid and since has been recorded by everybody.

980
00:56:58,476 --> 00:57:01,516
Speaker 17: The number of covers it's been called. Dawn was called

981
00:57:01,556 --> 00:57:06,196
Speaker 17: it the best song ever written, So it's up there.

982
00:57:06,796 --> 00:57:09,476
Speaker 18: It's ever written. What Joe, come on, you got a

983
00:57:09,556 --> 00:57:10,596
Speaker 18: comment to make on that?

984
00:57:10,956 --> 00:57:11,396
Speaker 3: What's that?

985
00:57:11,516 --> 00:57:15,116
Speaker 18: The equivalent declaring something the best song ever written is

986
00:57:15,116 --> 00:57:15,596
Speaker 18: is like what?

987
00:57:16,316 --> 00:57:16,716
Speaker 8: Uh?

988
00:57:16,796 --> 00:57:18,596
Speaker 16: Well, I wish I could. I wish I could entity.

989
00:57:18,716 --> 00:57:20,836
Speaker 16: I'm just somebody who stands in that line. I think

990
00:57:20,876 --> 00:57:23,676
Speaker 16: it's a I think it's a towering achievement. And the

991
00:57:23,716 --> 00:57:27,036
Speaker 16: reason I think so is purely because you can listen

992
00:57:27,076 --> 00:57:30,916
Speaker 16: to how flexible it is. You know, listen to Bonnie's version,

993
00:57:31,276 --> 00:57:34,196
Speaker 16: Listen to Bonnie Vere's version, Listen to Prince. I was

994
00:57:34,236 --> 00:57:36,756
Speaker 16: just saying to Mike and the cab we were talking

995
00:57:36,796 --> 00:57:39,276
Speaker 16: about it. Listening to Prince do that song, It's like

996
00:57:39,756 --> 00:57:44,156
Speaker 16: watching you know, a grown man ain't candy just devouring

997
00:57:44,236 --> 00:57:46,836
Speaker 16: it and the flexibility of that, and in all those

998
00:57:47,356 --> 00:57:49,356
Speaker 16: there's nothing about any of those versions. There's not one

999
00:57:49,356 --> 00:57:52,636
Speaker 16: of those that doesn't doesn't pierce me. You know.

1000
00:57:53,036 --> 00:57:54,516
Speaker 1: It's Nancy Wilson.

1001
00:57:55,036 --> 00:57:58,396
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's my favorites, you.

1002
00:57:58,356 --> 00:57:59,996
Speaker 16: Know, but it's what the you know, the great film

1003
00:57:59,996 --> 00:58:02,716
Speaker 16: directors might typically say, you know, to an actor, I

1004
00:58:02,756 --> 00:58:06,196
Speaker 16: don't need you to be overly emotive. Just deliver the words.

1005
00:58:06,276 --> 00:58:08,956
Speaker 16: Let it's a great script, Let it do the work.

1006
00:58:09,316 --> 00:58:11,996
Speaker 16: You just have to be here and let it move through.

1007
00:58:12,636 --> 00:58:14,636
Speaker 16: I think this is one of those songs, not that

1008
00:58:14,676 --> 00:58:19,076
Speaker 16: it doesn't invite people who can really dig into a

1009
00:58:19,156 --> 00:58:22,756
Speaker 16: song and take it somewhere, but you have to do

1010
00:58:22,956 --> 00:58:26,876
Speaker 16: very little, I think, for that song to put you

1011
00:58:26,956 --> 00:58:27,956
Speaker 16: in its crosshairs.

1012
00:58:28,436 --> 00:58:28,716
Speaker 3: Whatever.

1013
00:58:28,756 --> 00:58:32,356
Speaker 17: The famous line is, we all long for somebody who

1014
00:58:32,396 --> 00:58:33,076
Speaker 17: longs for us.

1015
00:58:33,796 --> 00:58:38,196
Speaker 16: Yeah, I mean it gets sounded something that's that fundamental.

1016
00:58:38,996 --> 00:58:41,196
Speaker 16: And when its time waite say, you know, I love

1017
00:58:41,836 --> 00:58:44,196
Speaker 16: beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.

1018
00:58:45,316 --> 00:58:45,796
Speaker 8: You know, it.

1019
00:58:47,436 --> 00:58:51,876
Speaker 16: References something that is heart wrenching, and it does so,

1020
00:58:52,396 --> 00:58:56,076
Speaker 16: carried along by the sublime melody. You know, I can't

1021
00:58:56,116 --> 00:58:58,836
Speaker 16: imagine any great singer who wouldn't want to take it on.

1022
00:58:59,316 --> 00:59:01,196
Speaker 17: It's interesting when I was re listening to it and

1023
00:59:01,276 --> 00:59:04,036
Speaker 17: listening again to this album in the light of it

1024
00:59:04,076 --> 00:59:06,956
Speaker 17: is it's interesting how the melody is kind of stretched

1025
00:59:06,956 --> 00:59:10,396
Speaker 17: across the harmony. The melody is actually and it's a

1026
00:59:10,396 --> 00:59:13,116
Speaker 17: slow song, but it's quite syncopated. Yeah, in a way,

1027
00:59:13,116 --> 00:59:15,276
Speaker 17: that's sort of an expect that kind of song.

1028
00:59:15,596 --> 00:59:16,956
Speaker 3: Well, look, I'm thinking of it.

1029
00:59:17,116 --> 00:59:21,676
Speaker 18: I saw a piece on William Goldman and he said

1030
00:59:21,756 --> 00:59:25,596
Speaker 18: he asked Sondheim in a conversation, Steve, when you write,

1031
00:59:25,596 --> 00:59:28,996
Speaker 18: do you know what you're doing? And Sondeim said it

1032
00:59:29,036 --> 00:59:33,196
Speaker 18: didn't even hesitate. He said, absolutely not. No, if I

1033
00:59:33,276 --> 00:59:35,596
Speaker 18: knew what I was doing, I would have never written

1034
00:59:35,596 --> 00:59:38,996
Speaker 18: a bad song. And I have done that, you know.

1035
00:59:39,676 --> 00:59:42,716
Speaker 18: So look, if I knew when that music came out,

1036
00:59:42,796 --> 00:59:46,556
Speaker 18: that came out after that was a different song. For

1037
00:59:46,636 --> 00:59:49,196
Speaker 18: like months and months, my friend Alan Shamberlin and I

1038
00:59:49,276 --> 00:59:53,076
Speaker 18: worked on it, But when that particular phrase came out,

1039
00:59:53,876 --> 01:00:04,636
Speaker 18: you know, I didn't even think of those we had.

1040
01:00:04,636 --> 01:00:06,996
Speaker 18: I had two lines, I can't make you love me.

1041
01:00:07,276 --> 01:00:09,956
Speaker 18: You can't make your heart feel something. If you don't

1042
01:00:10,516 --> 01:00:12,716
Speaker 18: you can't make your heart feel something. That it won't,

1043
01:00:13,236 --> 01:00:17,476
Speaker 18: and I wrote it as Mike would write, as an

1044
01:00:17,556 --> 01:00:21,996
Speaker 18: up tempo bluegrass song, and then we couldn't get any

1045
01:00:21,996 --> 01:00:24,076
Speaker 18: more lines, and so I would put it away and

1046
01:00:24,116 --> 01:00:27,676
Speaker 18: we would go at something else. So that's all to say, Bruce,

1047
01:00:27,716 --> 01:00:29,916
Speaker 18: that if I knew what I was doing, I would

1048
01:00:29,916 --> 01:00:33,196
Speaker 18: have written ten more of those. You know, I managed

1049
01:00:33,236 --> 01:00:36,956
Speaker 18: to be musically out of the way and be allow

1050
01:00:37,156 --> 01:00:40,436
Speaker 18: something to happen and then say, okay, let's continue to

1051
01:00:40,476 --> 01:00:41,276
Speaker 18: pull that thread.

1052
01:00:41,596 --> 01:00:44,236
Speaker 16: It must be said, though, that sometimes knowing what to

1053
01:00:44,276 --> 01:00:49,996
Speaker 16: do is knowing how to surrender to a song's emerging authority.

1054
01:00:50,716 --> 01:00:54,116
Speaker 16: You know, I have a dear friend, the poet who

1055
01:00:54,156 --> 01:00:57,956
Speaker 16: lives in the Bay Area, Jane Hirschfield, and everybody who

1056
01:00:58,036 --> 01:01:00,556
Speaker 16: knows me has heard me repeat this because it was

1057
01:01:00,676 --> 01:01:02,276
Speaker 16: so important to me. When she wrote it to me

1058
01:01:02,876 --> 01:01:06,196
Speaker 16: in an email one day, she said, Joseph, don't ever

1059
01:01:06,236 --> 01:01:09,316
Speaker 16: forget that the poem has an intelligence the poet it

1060
01:01:09,316 --> 01:01:12,516
Speaker 16: does not possess. But you have to know a fair

1061
01:01:12,516 --> 01:01:17,756
Speaker 16: amount understand the fundamental truth of that. You know, the

1062
01:01:17,876 --> 01:01:21,036
Speaker 16: song knows something that I don't know. And that's not

1063
01:01:21,196 --> 01:01:24,116
Speaker 16: me claiming to be some kind of you know, mystic

1064
01:01:24,196 --> 01:01:28,556
Speaker 16: character that just gets visited upon like nobody else does.

1065
01:01:29,156 --> 01:01:32,956
Speaker 16: I'm just saying I'm recognized over and over again that

1066
01:01:33,036 --> 01:01:38,796
Speaker 16: when something is in motion, I'm attending to it. I'm

1067
01:01:38,996 --> 01:01:42,876
Speaker 16: involved and I'm committed. But I know that I'm not

1068
01:01:43,836 --> 01:01:44,876
Speaker 16: I'm not the driver.

1069
01:01:46,036 --> 01:01:49,236
Speaker 17: You guys are determined not to let need to mystify

1070
01:01:49,236 --> 01:01:54,036
Speaker 17: a songwriting, aren't you? Because my whole jobs journalists, I

1071
01:01:54,036 --> 01:01:55,356
Speaker 17: feel so badly for you.

1072
01:01:55,556 --> 01:02:00,716
Speaker 16: Yeah, because mysteries, you know, the great mysteries are not

1073
01:02:00,876 --> 01:02:05,316
Speaker 16: are not to be dispelled, to be abided. Well, but hey,

1074
01:02:05,516 --> 01:02:06,356
Speaker 16: take your best shot.

1075
01:02:06,956 --> 01:02:09,396
Speaker 17: I'm going to dispel a small mystery then, because I

1076
01:02:09,476 --> 01:02:13,276
Speaker 17: notice you use a technique on a couple songs here

1077
01:02:13,316 --> 01:02:16,116
Speaker 17: that i've seen you well, particularly walk on Faith, your

1078
01:02:16,156 --> 01:02:17,756
Speaker 17: song which was a that was a hit.

1079
01:02:17,636 --> 01:02:22,356
Speaker 18: For you, right, yeah, yeah, it was research wow, Bruce,

1080
01:02:22,516 --> 01:02:25,796
Speaker 18: Yeah it was. I had a marvelous life going on

1081
01:02:25,916 --> 01:02:29,276
Speaker 18: as a little songwriter, people cutting songs. I had two

1082
01:02:29,316 --> 01:02:33,356
Speaker 18: little kids, and Willie Nelson recorded a song.

1083
01:02:33,276 --> 01:02:36,916
Speaker 3: Called there you Are. It's called there You Were.

1084
01:02:37,476 --> 01:02:41,196
Speaker 18: And Bob Montgomery, the late wonderful, the late great bab

1085
01:02:41,196 --> 01:02:45,196
Speaker 18: Montgomery was that it was Columbia then before it became

1086
01:02:45,316 --> 01:02:48,316
Speaker 18: Sony said, boy, I love Willie's record.

1087
01:02:48,316 --> 01:02:50,356
Speaker 3: I love that song, but I really like your demo.

1088
01:02:50,356 --> 01:02:51,516
Speaker 3: Why don't you make a record?

1089
01:02:52,516 --> 01:02:55,556
Speaker 18: And I went, well, okay, well that's no way to

1090
01:02:55,596 --> 01:02:59,596
Speaker 18: make a record, you know. So I did tripped over

1091
01:02:59,676 --> 01:03:02,276
Speaker 18: myself and the next thing I know, I'm flying, leaving

1092
01:03:02,316 --> 01:03:04,796
Speaker 18: my family, flying down the highway and a bus with

1093
01:03:04,876 --> 01:03:07,236
Speaker 18: a bay full of T shirts with my picture on it,

1094
01:03:08,116 --> 01:03:14,076
Speaker 18: and wondering, Okay, what is this. Let's accept the adventure.

1095
01:03:14,156 --> 01:03:14,796
Speaker 3: But I was not.

1096
01:03:15,196 --> 01:03:18,036
Speaker 18: I was too young and too stupid and too close

1097
01:03:18,196 --> 01:03:22,636
Speaker 18: to really understand accepting the adventure.

1098
01:03:23,076 --> 01:03:24,876
Speaker 16: Have you got any of those T shirts? And medium

1099
01:03:24,996 --> 01:03:26,636
Speaker 16: I do, Yeah, I do.

1100
01:03:27,236 --> 01:03:29,956
Speaker 17: They're still in the cannon. He's going to fire into

1101
01:03:29,996 --> 01:03:33,396
Speaker 17: the crowd tonight. Well, let me talk about the song,

1102
01:03:33,996 --> 01:03:36,036
Speaker 17: because you do something in that song which is and

1103
01:03:36,076 --> 01:03:37,836
Speaker 17: I think it relates to your love of.

1104
01:03:39,316 --> 01:03:39,596
Speaker 1: Rhyme.

1105
01:03:40,276 --> 01:03:42,596
Speaker 17: But I love that there's a little delay before that

1106
01:03:42,636 --> 01:03:45,836
Speaker 17: and the last line is I'm sorry, trust and.

1107
01:03:45,676 --> 01:03:46,836
Speaker 3: Love, Trust and love.

1108
01:03:46,916 --> 01:03:49,916
Speaker 18: Yeah, right, So that's not really First of all, I

1109
01:03:49,956 --> 01:03:53,716
Speaker 18: got into speaking of some tim wonderful because he was

1110
01:03:54,156 --> 01:03:58,596
Speaker 18: He was fierce about perfect rhymes, and I know you

1111
01:03:58,676 --> 01:04:01,396
Speaker 18: invoke Rodney. That's one of the things he tells the

1112
01:04:01,476 --> 01:04:02,996
Speaker 18: people at camp right.

1113
01:04:03,236 --> 01:04:09,716
Speaker 16: Yeah, he's very much a stickler for you know, the clean,

1114
01:04:10,116 --> 01:04:14,436
Speaker 16: hard rhyme. Yeah, And of course I'm not in the

1115
01:04:14,516 --> 01:04:19,076
Speaker 16: least no. No, I think sometimes like the half rhyme

1116
01:04:21,356 --> 01:04:25,276
Speaker 16: is is just a complete delight. There's something very human

1117
01:04:25,476 --> 01:04:30,516
Speaker 16: about about the near miss that I'm just you know,

1118
01:04:30,636 --> 01:04:32,676
Speaker 16: I'm just you know, sort of in love with that.

1119
01:04:32,796 --> 01:04:36,596
Speaker 16: I'm probably you know here, I am being more revealing

1120
01:04:36,596 --> 01:04:39,436
Speaker 16: than than about myself, than than maybe my songs have

1121
01:04:39,516 --> 01:04:42,956
Speaker 16: ever been. But I just, you know, it just seems

1122
01:04:43,036 --> 01:04:45,476
Speaker 16: so human to me. I don't feel that I'm a

1123
01:04:45,556 --> 01:04:49,596
Speaker 16: lazy writer. I've been accused of that by a particular

1124
01:04:49,916 --> 01:04:53,716
Speaker 16: peer of mine, and I mean in a loving way,

1125
01:04:53,876 --> 01:04:58,476
Speaker 16: because I I don't write to a strict meter, like

1126
01:04:58,476 --> 01:05:01,796
Speaker 16: like like a Burt Backerac song, where every every word,

1127
01:05:02,076 --> 01:05:05,116
Speaker 16: you know, matches of a value of a note. I

1128
01:05:05,156 --> 01:05:07,356
Speaker 16: come out of a much more of a blues tradition

1129
01:05:08,476 --> 01:05:11,276
Speaker 16: where you know, if the right word is, you know,

1130
01:05:11,796 --> 01:05:14,636
Speaker 16: if the right phrase is it has a few too

1131
01:05:14,636 --> 01:05:17,996
Speaker 16: many syllables. If there's not a really smart way to

1132
01:05:18,196 --> 01:05:20,916
Speaker 16: make that work any other way, you're sing something as

1133
01:05:20,916 --> 01:05:23,596
Speaker 16: a pickup note, that's perfectly fair game.

1134
01:05:24,756 --> 01:05:26,756
Speaker 18: And I would hate to think, Joe, that you would

1135
01:05:27,596 --> 01:05:31,516
Speaker 18: encumber your words by saying though this has to be

1136
01:05:31,516 --> 01:05:35,716
Speaker 18: a perfect rhyme. It could be because the of the

1137
01:05:35,756 --> 01:05:39,236
Speaker 18: place you go down into where your lyrics takes one.

1138
01:05:39,836 --> 01:05:42,556
Speaker 18: I can give you a couple that I find enormously

1139
01:05:42,636 --> 01:05:47,836
Speaker 18: satisfying sometimes, Sweeney Todd, nothing's going to harm you.

1140
01:05:47,916 --> 01:05:49,036
Speaker 3: Not while I'm around.

1141
01:05:50,356 --> 01:05:56,396
Speaker 18: Demons are prowling everywhere. Nowadays I'll send them howling I

1142
01:05:56,436 --> 01:06:00,236
Speaker 18: don't care. I got ways now that's I find that

1143
01:06:00,396 --> 01:06:03,796
Speaker 18: enormously satisfying. But the meaning of what's being said there

1144
01:06:03,876 --> 01:06:07,356
Speaker 18: is pretty much on the surface of things. It's nothing

1145
01:06:07,396 --> 01:06:10,516
Speaker 18: to really nothing to figure out, nothing for the rhyme

1146
01:06:11,036 --> 01:06:16,156
Speaker 18: to obscure. There's another uh lorenz Heart. My romance doesn't

1147
01:06:16,236 --> 01:06:20,236
Speaker 18: need a castle rising in Spain or a dance to

1148
01:06:20,356 --> 01:06:25,476
Speaker 18: a constantly surprising refrain. I find that very satisfying. But

1149
01:06:25,596 --> 01:06:29,396
Speaker 18: those meetings of those two things are very on the surface.

1150
01:06:29,436 --> 01:06:31,356
Speaker 18: There's you're not you don't have to go down with

1151
01:06:31,476 --> 01:06:35,756
Speaker 18: a you know, light and try to do investigate. So

1152
01:06:35,796 --> 01:06:38,756
Speaker 18: in that sense, Shoe, I mean, I think perfect rhyme

1153
01:06:39,036 --> 01:06:42,276
Speaker 18: is something to shoot for. You know, some time was

1154
01:06:42,316 --> 01:06:44,716
Speaker 18: a stickler because he came from that in the old

1155
01:06:44,796 --> 01:06:47,916
Speaker 18: theater days, that was the tradition. And by the way

1156
01:06:47,996 --> 01:06:50,276
Speaker 18: and walk on Faith, you know, Bruce, it's a kind

1157
01:06:50,276 --> 01:06:53,996
Speaker 18: of sloppy rhyme really up with love, you know.

1158
01:06:54,196 --> 01:06:58,156
Speaker 17: It's not it's not the rhyme so much as as

1159
01:06:58,276 --> 01:07:01,156
Speaker 17: the pause before the last Oh, it's that that that

1160
01:07:01,276 --> 01:07:03,796
Speaker 17: it's what you do with it, and you did it

1161
01:07:03,796 --> 01:07:06,556
Speaker 17: a couple of times on this one, and I think

1162
01:07:06,596 --> 01:07:09,676
Speaker 17: it makes the last rhyme so much more satisfying.

1163
01:07:09,716 --> 01:07:15,276
Speaker 18: If there's that's that's a beautiful observation on your party.

1164
01:07:15,876 --> 01:07:20,716
Speaker 16: When a suspended moment of pause is the is the

1165
01:07:20,716 --> 01:07:24,796
Speaker 16: hook sometimes that is really really the case, whereas the

1166
01:07:24,876 --> 01:07:28,156
Speaker 16: absence is something that is is the thing that you

1167
01:07:28,196 --> 01:07:30,516
Speaker 16: can't take your ear off of, you know, waiting for

1168
01:07:30,596 --> 01:07:34,596
Speaker 16: that moment of suspension and then there's finally, you know,

1169
01:07:34,796 --> 01:07:38,356
Speaker 16: a relief of that, of that tension, and that is

1170
01:07:38,876 --> 01:07:41,796
Speaker 16: that's the payoff. It's not in a word, it's not

1171
01:07:42,076 --> 01:07:46,756
Speaker 16: in the concept. It's in an articulation of suspension and release.

1172
01:07:47,916 --> 01:07:50,996
Speaker 17: I've taken up far too much of your time. I

1173
01:07:51,036 --> 01:07:53,676
Speaker 17: was going to ask about just about every song on

1174
01:07:53,716 --> 01:07:58,116
Speaker 17: this album, and you know, City of Light, that beautiful

1175
01:07:58,156 --> 01:07:59,996
Speaker 17: line and I'd love to know when this occurs you now,

1176
01:08:00,036 --> 01:08:01,076
Speaker 17: is the prize all along?

1177
01:08:02,036 --> 01:08:02,236
Speaker 14: You know?

1178
01:08:02,436 --> 01:08:05,276
Speaker 16: I'm sure that was a moment where you know the

1179
01:08:05,516 --> 01:08:09,956
Speaker 16: beautiful thing about writing intentionally in rhy and it's interesting,

1180
01:08:09,956 --> 01:08:11,396
Speaker 16: you know, I read a lot of poetry, but I

1181
01:08:11,796 --> 01:08:14,436
Speaker 16: don't read rhyming poetry, and yet I write in rhyme

1182
01:08:14,476 --> 01:08:18,076
Speaker 16: all the time. I find that that reaching for rhyme

1183
01:08:18,596 --> 01:08:21,556
Speaker 16: frequently brings me to thought that I that I didn't

1184
01:08:21,596 --> 01:08:25,956
Speaker 16: have otherwise. I can kind of remember being surprised when

1185
01:08:26,316 --> 01:08:29,916
Speaker 16: that line landed. Now was the prized all along? Because

1186
01:08:29,956 --> 01:08:32,316
Speaker 16: I believed it when it happened. I believed it when

1187
01:08:32,316 --> 01:08:34,796
Speaker 16: I saw it land there on the page, but it

1188
01:08:34,836 --> 01:08:38,276
Speaker 16: was not. It was not anything I thought, like, it's

1189
01:08:38,316 --> 01:08:40,116
Speaker 16: a thought I've had. How can I say it pretty?

1190
01:08:41,316 --> 01:08:41,516
Speaker 3: You know?

1191
01:08:41,556 --> 01:08:45,356
Speaker 16: The rhyme invited me there, and then I just believed it.

1192
01:08:46,236 --> 01:08:48,636
Speaker 17: I also want to ask about the last song, So

1193
01:08:48,756 --> 01:08:51,716
Speaker 17: We May, which you know I mentioned to you the

1194
01:08:51,796 --> 01:08:54,756
Speaker 17: album almost reminded me of sort of a nineteenth century

1195
01:08:54,756 --> 01:08:58,756
Speaker 17: collection of ballads. This reminded me of a It's like

1196
01:08:58,836 --> 01:09:02,556
Speaker 17: a national anthem. The song almost So we May Well.

1197
01:09:02,836 --> 01:09:07,556
Speaker 17: It's about a possibility being laid out and do we

1198
01:09:07,596 --> 01:09:08,156
Speaker 17: pick it up?

1199
01:09:08,436 --> 01:09:10,876
Speaker 16: Yeah, I think it's I think it is about personal

1200
01:09:10,916 --> 01:09:15,396
Speaker 16: responsibility too. That's something I think about after the fact.

1201
01:09:15,476 --> 01:09:17,756
Speaker 16: Nothing I thought about when I was writing those words.

1202
01:09:18,556 --> 01:09:21,196
Speaker 16: And that's a situation where I think Michael, you know,

1203
01:09:21,276 --> 01:09:26,756
Speaker 16: landed a melody for it that sounded. Once I heard it,

1204
01:09:26,836 --> 01:09:28,956
Speaker 16: I couldn't. I knew it couldn't go any other way.

1205
01:09:29,636 --> 01:09:33,116
Speaker 16: You know, it just sounded absolutely inevitable to me. It's

1206
01:09:33,196 --> 01:09:36,116
Speaker 16: a song that I think, I dare say Mike and

1207
01:09:36,196 --> 01:09:40,396
Speaker 16: I are both particularly proud of. It happened like it

1208
01:09:40,436 --> 01:09:42,356
Speaker 16: was supposed to when I heard it. It's what it

1209
01:09:42,396 --> 01:09:42,796
Speaker 16: felt like.

1210
01:09:43,196 --> 01:09:44,596
Speaker 17: You guys have time for one more song?

1211
01:09:44,996 --> 01:09:45,276
Speaker 1: Sure?

1212
01:09:46,156 --> 01:09:50,396
Speaker 16: Why don't we play Life and Time? Since it's the

1213
01:09:50,436 --> 01:09:53,396
Speaker 16: title song and I'm in the right I'm in the

1214
01:09:53,476 --> 01:09:56,076
Speaker 16: right tuning for it. We play that and see now,

1215
01:09:56,116 --> 01:09:56,436
Speaker 16: don't we?

1216
01:09:56,556 --> 01:09:56,756
Speaker 19: Yes?

1217
01:09:56,796 --> 01:09:57,116
Speaker 3: We do.

1218
01:09:57,236 --> 01:10:05,236
Speaker 16: Oh that's good news for me. Okay, you ready there, buddy?

1219
01:10:05,476 --> 01:10:24,116
Speaker 20: Yeah.

1220
01:10:24,956 --> 01:10:30,836
Speaker 19: I went north when trouble came, I thought it had

1221
01:10:30,996 --> 01:10:32,676
Speaker 19: stayed behind.

1222
01:10:35,596 --> 01:10:37,676
Speaker 3: I worked my way through.

1223
01:10:37,476 --> 01:10:47,516
Speaker 14: Michigan, finally crossed the line, made.

1224
01:10:47,316 --> 01:10:53,876
Speaker 16: My peace with solitude. This year's pushed on by.

1225
01:10:54,876 --> 01:10:55,036
Speaker 6: Hew.

1226
01:10:55,076 --> 01:11:01,596
Speaker 3: Would you face this grace itself upon my life?

1227
01:11:01,716 --> 01:11:12,756
Speaker 13: And time on my life and time. Well, I know

1228
01:11:12,996 --> 01:11:27,636
Speaker 13: well what people say when I go to town.

1229
01:11:23,516 --> 01:11:29,756
Speaker 4: Go, I keep my business street, hold my tongue and

1230
01:11:29,916 --> 01:11:31,116
Speaker 4: my head down.

1231
01:11:34,556 --> 01:11:39,876
Speaker 7: Moving like the ghost that I've become within my line.

1232
01:11:42,476 --> 01:11:43,756
Speaker 8: Where I've spent.

1233
01:11:43,756 --> 01:11:52,436
Speaker 3: My days with you, throughout my life in time, throughout

1234
01:11:52,516 --> 01:11:53,436
Speaker 3: this life and.

1235
01:11:53,556 --> 01:12:04,556
Speaker 6: Time, I'll watch a storm approaching now from this open to.

1236
01:12:06,076 --> 01:12:11,076
Speaker 7: And welcome in my sweep away all that came before

1237
01:12:12,436 --> 01:12:13,076
Speaker 7: the end.

1238
01:12:13,036 --> 01:12:17,996
Speaker 8: Of them, be getting out, finish up, the sun.

1239
01:12:20,636 --> 01:12:20,996
Speaker 13: Drawn.

1240
01:12:21,236 --> 01:12:27,676
Speaker 8: And you don't known to you whose my life and time.

1241
01:12:29,996 --> 01:12:30,436
Speaker 13: Drawn?

1242
01:12:30,836 --> 01:12:36,236
Speaker 19: And you don't know to g whose pe my life

1243
01:12:36,276 --> 01:12:55,916
Speaker 19: in time? I went north wind trouble key, Have.

1244
01:12:56,156 --> 01:12:57,436
Speaker 3: I knew that I.

1245
01:13:01,556 --> 01:13:13,276
Speaker 8: Carried you like fools gold across the border line, leading.

1246
01:13:13,156 --> 01:13:19,316
Speaker 7: My peace well, living out years that passed me by.

1247
01:13:20,516 --> 01:13:23,876
Speaker 3: Now I wear them like it broke in crown.

1248
01:13:26,316 --> 01:13:27,876
Speaker 8: Upon my life and.

1249
01:13:28,076 --> 01:13:35,316
Speaker 3: Time were of them, like it broke in crown.

1250
01:13:37,516 --> 01:13:44,756
Speaker 13: If all my life and time, all my life and time.

1251
01:14:17,276 --> 01:14:18,396
Speaker 1: I think that's how we end it.

1252
01:14:18,396 --> 01:14:23,956
Speaker 17: Thank you so much, what on honor Bruce, Thank you.

1253
01:14:23,916 --> 01:14:24,676
Speaker 1: Just Craig.

1254
01:14:27,276 --> 01:14:29,476
Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a link to Mike

1255
01:14:29,556 --> 01:14:32,076
Speaker 2: Read and Joe Henry's album Life and Times as well

1256
01:14:32,076 --> 01:14:35,596
Speaker 2: as a collection of songs spanning both their careers. Be

1257
01:14:35,636 --> 01:14:37,956
Speaker 2: sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record

1258
01:14:37,956 --> 01:14:41,036
Speaker 2: Podcast to see all of our video interviews, and be

1259
01:14:41,076 --> 01:14:43,756
Speaker 2: sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Boy.

1260
01:14:44,116 --> 01:14:46,996
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Records. Broken

1261
01:14:47,036 --> 01:14:49,396
Speaker 2: Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing

1262
01:14:49,476 --> 01:14:52,476
Speaker 2: help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is

1263
01:14:52,516 --> 01:14:55,356
Speaker 2: Ben Holiday. Broken Record is production.

1264
01:14:55,116 --> 01:14:56,276
Speaker 3: Of the Pushcream Industries.

1265
01:14:56,436 --> 01:14:58,876
Speaker 2: If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider

1266
01:14:58,916 --> 01:15:02,476
Speaker 2: subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription

1267
01:15:02,516 --> 01:15:05,316
Speaker 2: that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four

1268
01:15:05,436 --> 01:15:07,716
Speaker 2: ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple

1269
01:15:07,756 --> 01:15:11,236
Speaker 2: podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember

1270
01:15:11,276 --> 01:15:13,356
Speaker 2: to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app.

1271
01:15:13,636 --> 01:15:16,156
Speaker 2: Are theme Music's by any Beats. I'm justin Richmond.