Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Just a quick note here. You can listen to all
Speaker 2: of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
Speaker 2: which you can find a link to in the show
Speaker 2: notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced
Speaker 2: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
Speaker 2: enjoyed the episode?
Speaker 3: Do you recognize who that is? That's one of the
Speaker 3: most distinctive voices in modern music, Roseanne Cash Country Music Royalty.
Speaker 3: She's been making extraordinary music for forty years and that's
Speaker 3: the beginning of the title track to her latest album,
Speaker 3: She Remembers Everything you know. I recently looked back at
Speaker 3: some country music charts. Thirty years ago, the average age
Speaker 3: of the artist in the top ten was thirty five.
Speaker 3: Today is twenty. Country music is losing interest in its elders,
Speaker 3: which is a shame, because it's elders are better than ever.
Speaker 3: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to broken Record This week.
Speaker 3: My colleague Bruce Headlam sits down with Rose end Cash
Speaker 3: and her husband and musical partner John Leventhal at the
Speaker 3: Bridge Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to play some amazing music
Speaker 3: and tell a few stories.
Speaker 1: The name of the album is she remembers everything, which
Speaker 1: it's an ambiguous, difficult song. The phrase on its own
Speaker 1: seems to have taken a lot a lot of meaning.
Speaker 1: Right now, how did you intend that to be received?
Speaker 4: I intended it as both a threat and a common
Speaker 4: And I wrote the lyrics to this song in Sam Phillips,
Speaker 4: who is just a beautiful woman in a beautiful song writer.
Speaker 4: She wrote the music. It was the first time we
Speaker 4: ever wrote a song together, and I was when I
Speaker 4: wrote the lyrics. I was thinking about trauma, early trauma
Speaker 4: and a woman's memory and how many things we lock up,
Speaker 4: and that it there's some comfort in thinking that it
Speaker 4: was a woman's memory is like a library. You may
Speaker 4: not know right off the bat every book that's on
Speaker 4: the shelf, but you could go in there and pull
Speaker 4: it out. And there's also some rage in that song.
Speaker 4: In a way, it's prescient because this was before the
Speaker 4: Me Too movement, before the Kavanaugh hearings, you know, when
Speaker 4: every woman I know felt completely crushed and discounted, and
Speaker 4: you know, we were told that we couldn't even trust
Speaker 4: our own memories. And the song actually took on greater
Speaker 4: residence for me after that.
Speaker 5: It's striking how it did, and we both really I
Speaker 5: remember the day we both realized it, like we just
Speaker 5: looked at each other and go, you have just entered
Speaker 5: the zeitgeist at the exact right moment.
Speaker 4: But it was personal and it's not like all those
Speaker 4: things didn't exist before for millions.
Speaker 1: Of women, you know, was that the kind of trauma
Speaker 1: you were talking about? Assault?
Speaker 4: Let's say I have my own stories, and I don't
Speaker 4: feel the specifics are as important as the fact that
Speaker 4: the story is believed and valued, just like every other
Speaker 4: woman I know who has these stories. And the trauma,
Speaker 4: I think childhood trauma, any trauma, it rearranges you in
Speaker 4: a way that you start acting in the world differently.
Speaker 4: And I started thinking, how long does it take to
Speaker 4: get out of that? How long does it take to
Speaker 4: become yourself? You know, in your sixth decade, are you
Speaker 4: still working on this? You're still crawling out from it?
Speaker 4: Are you still walking through the world like a thief
Speaker 4: trying to steal a little moment of joy or you know,
Speaker 4: some attention for yourself?
Speaker 1: Do you have an answer for that? No, because I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear it.
Speaker 4: I don't have the answer oh that, And in fact,
Speaker 4: I like that songs don't provide answers, they just provoke questions.
Speaker 1: Did the feeling you're talking about did that precede the
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh hearings?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the expression of that politically. Did
Speaker 1: that go back to the election? Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: I didn't stop crying for ten days after the election.
Speaker 4: And I have four daughters and a son, and my
Speaker 4: daughters were devastated. And one of them said to me,
Speaker 4: she called up crying the night of the election, and
Speaker 4: she said, I feel like I don't matter, and that
Speaker 4: pierced my heart. Whenever I think of that sentence, I
Speaker 4: just it breaks my heart. And at the same or
Speaker 4: at the same time, our son was writing his college
Speaker 4: filling out his essay for college, and one of the
Speaker 4: questions was what would you change in this world if
Speaker 4: you could change one thing, and he wrote sexism. That
Speaker 4: just came out of the blue. We didn't expect that,
Speaker 4: he said, because I have a mom and four sisters
Speaker 4: and I see how it hurts them. Well, those are
Speaker 4: the people we hope rule the world. You know, young
Speaker 4: men who were that sensitive.
Speaker 1: Or young women or young women. Of course, right growing up,
Speaker 1: there were albums and I know, you like these artists
Speaker 1: who looked at albums that way, like Joni Mitchell or
Speaker 1: Linda Ronstad, but they've thought very much in terms of albums.
Speaker 1: Do you think still in terms of albums even in
Speaker 1: this age?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and the time and you know focus that
Speaker 4: we've been on sequencing an album because it is an
Speaker 4: album to us. You know, it's like, what is track three?
Speaker 4: How are we going to start it? How are we
Speaker 4: going to end it? And even if there's not a
Speaker 4: theme there, there is a melodic or a narrative arc
Speaker 4: to it that makes sense. I'm actually not very good
Speaker 4: at sequencing. John is much better. And Tucker Martin, who
Speaker 4: is the other producer on this album, half the album
Speaker 4: was produced by him, half by John. He he's also
Speaker 4: good at sequencing. So I kind of left that to
Speaker 4: the gentleman. But you're right, Joni Mitchell, that Blue was
Speaker 4: a really really important record to me up to that point.
Speaker 4: I mean I was young, but up to that point
Speaker 4: I kind of just thought men were songwriters. I didn't
Speaker 4: realize that a woman could be a songwriter and that
Speaker 4: her inner life was legit raw material to create songs,
Speaker 4: music art and put it out in a public forum.
Speaker 4: That was That was a startling and revelatory moment for me.
Speaker 1: Then we'll get to the other songs in a minute.
Speaker 1: But are all the songs confessional in that way? Are
Speaker 1: they all parts of you?
Speaker 4: I don't like that word confessional because it makes it
Speaker 4: seem like a diary. And there is an an art
Speaker 4: and a craft of songwriting and poetic license and a
Speaker 4: rhyme scheme and a melody and a backbeat and all
Speaker 4: of those things to have to work together to make
Speaker 4: a song work at the same time. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 4: outside of myself on this album. Not nothing.
Speaker 1: It's also and I regret using the word. It's a
Speaker 1: word that's used with women's music.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you don't hear about men's confessional albums.
Speaker 1: That's because we nothing to say.
Speaker 4: That's so not true.
Speaker 1: Well with that one, don't we try another song? What's next?
Speaker 4: Try being the operative word. We'll see how which one
Speaker 4: are we doing?
Speaker 5: Let's do Uh, let's do Jerusalem. But I need just
Speaker 5: hold hold the binary code in there for a second.
Speaker 6: I got to retune more broken record.
Speaker 1: After this, we're back with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. Uh.
Speaker 1: You talked when you were a young writer I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure what you were doing about sitting down and
Speaker 1: taking apart songs by your heroes Guy Clark, Town Van
Speaker 1: Zand and I'm assuming Joni Mitchell and others. Is that
Speaker 1: something you still do even all after all this time.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm asking is is songwriting like learning
Speaker 1: the alphabet or riding a bike. Once you know it,
Speaker 1: you know it? Or is it like playing a guitar
Speaker 1: you got to do your scales.
Speaker 4: Oh god, No, once you know it, you don't know it.
Speaker 4: I mean, part of the beauty of songwriting is there's
Speaker 4: mystery involved. You know, the same with any other really
Speaker 4: creative act. You start out not knowing what's going to happen,
Speaker 4: and then it starts to unfold, and then you can
Speaker 4: see the end of it, and then you edit, and
Speaker 4: then you just keep polishing, and you know, it's different
Speaker 4: every time. As far as examining other songs, absolutely, when
Speaker 4: I was really young and first starting out, I would
Speaker 4: write the lyrics down a Bob Dylan's song, Joni Mitchell's song,
Speaker 4: Guy Clark song and try to figure out why it
Speaker 4: worked and deconstruct the rhyme scheme. Where did they rhyme
Speaker 4: this one? And how did that work? And where did
Speaker 4: the bridge come? And does the chorus work? You know,
Speaker 4: and really try to dismantle it. I don't do that
Speaker 4: so much anymore because I think some of that knowledge
Speaker 4: is just intuitively gone in after forty years of writing songs.
Speaker 4: But I do pay attention and listen to how other
Speaker 4: writers create things and how they construct their songs, and
Speaker 4: you know, like a song that has a really subtle
Speaker 4: rhyme scheme and yet works and how did that happen?
Speaker 4: And chord changes, you know, all of it. It still
Speaker 4: is endlessly fascinating and wonderful and mysterious to me.
Speaker 1: If you hit a roadblock in your own writing, is
Speaker 1: that something you'll go back and listen to other things?
Speaker 4: Just for sure? I mean even I listen to other
Speaker 4: music and get inspired to you know, sometimes my competitive
Speaker 4: spirit gets inspired, like I really want to write something
Speaker 4: that good. I want to beat that Oh yeah, definitely yeah,
Speaker 4: And then yeah, it kind of makes you mad. And
Speaker 4: then other times it's just like, oh, I'm so moved.
Speaker 4: I want to find that thing in me.
Speaker 1: And then beat that person. That person is songwriting something
Speaker 1: you do for both of you every day? Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it you know what I the way I look
Speaker 4: at it. I don't sit down and write every day,
Speaker 4: but I am a songwriter every day. So I'm collating
Speaker 4: information and keeping notes every day and seeing something form
Speaker 4: just outside my peripheral vision every day.
Speaker 5: I try to be aware of it every day. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a little weird, Like I am compelled
Speaker 5: to write music in a way. I can't turn it off,
Speaker 5: you know, which is great. So a few times where
Speaker 5: I wish I could turn it off, I can't turn
Speaker 5: off that thing in my head that wants to create
Speaker 5: or come up with something that I that I feel
Speaker 5: is potentially interesting. It doesn't always turn out to be interesting.
Speaker 5: But like you saw me here today, before we even started,
Speaker 5: like I played something on the guitar that struck me
Speaker 5: as unusual and the first thing I thought of, like, oh,
Speaker 5: I could write a song around that.
Speaker 4: I keep old lyrics, you know. I have files and
Speaker 4: files of old lyrics, and sometimes if I get stuck,
Speaker 4: I go back to something I wrote ten years ago,
Speaker 4: five years ago.
Speaker 5: Sometimes she'll show me or I'll find a bit of
Speaker 5: lyric that she hadn't really thought about as being either
Speaker 5: worthwhile or a song, and I'll just look at it
Speaker 5: and go, oh my god, let me, can I please
Speaker 5: strit music to this? It's a there's I think the
Speaker 5: song we're.
Speaker 4: About to do is yeah, this song everyone but me.
Speaker 4: I had written these lyrics that I didn't think were lyrics.
Speaker 4: I just thought it was something I was writing for
Speaker 4: myself because it was kind of an anguished piece, and
Speaker 4: I thought, I'm not gonna turn this into a song.
Speaker 4: And then John and I were in the studio one
Speaker 4: day and we were writing. I think we were working
Speaker 4: on crossing to Jerusalem and he said what else you got,
Speaker 4: and just impulsively.
Speaker 1: And you said, well, I know who's crossing the Jerusalem first.
Speaker 5: Well, that possibility always exists in the marriage.
Speaker 4: Oh. I pulled these this raw thing out and I said,
Speaker 4: I just don't really think these are lyrics, and he goes,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, let me write music to this. And I
Speaker 4: swear I think it was the first time we both
Speaker 4: cried in the studio.
Speaker 5: Oh geez, here we go.
Speaker 1: No really, okay, Well, take me back, how did that happen?
Speaker 4: He wrote the music to those raw kind of lyrics,
Speaker 4: and we both had tears running down our face. It
Speaker 4: was very moving. It was a great experience.
Speaker 5: But I didn't. What's interesting is that, I mean, I
Speaker 5: really loved Roseanne's lyrics and I was I felt good
Speaker 5: about the melody I wrote. Because I get older, I
Speaker 5: feel like I've accomplished something if I've written something really
Speaker 5: simple but has a kind of elegance to it that's
Speaker 5: not beholden to any particular style of music. But I didn't.
Speaker 5: I experienced Rosane's lyrics I think differently than she did.
Speaker 5: So the song was saying something different to me than
Speaker 5: I think what she quote unquote intended when she wrote it,
Speaker 5: which to me is my favorite kind of song and writing.
Speaker 5: Where Roseanne may have had some narrative or some idea
Speaker 5: or thought about where she was going with this lyric,
Speaker 5: but to me it represented something so much more universal
Speaker 5: than what I think she was writing about, about a
Speaker 5: general idea of loss and I don't want to get.
Speaker 4: Online again, but again trauma coming out of Yeah.
Speaker 5: See, I didn't hear it as trauma. I heard it
Speaker 5: more as this kind of universal sense that at some
Speaker 5: point you're going to lose something that you love.
Speaker 1: Well, it's unavoidable, hopefully it is universal, and.
Speaker 5: How you navigate and how you express it and what
Speaker 5: you feel about it and what you do with it
Speaker 5: is universal, and particularly as you get older, it's like, you.
Speaker 4: Know, mortality looms in some places on this album.
Speaker 1: Well with that, let's hear it.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is called everyone but Me.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot that's a loaded song. There's
Speaker 1: a lot in it. It does talk about parents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And one thing I wanted to ask you about is
Speaker 1: people think, of course you were raised in Tennessee, that
Speaker 1: you were raised in the South. They're surprised to find
Speaker 1: you weren't. They might be surprised to find out you
Speaker 1: were raised Catholic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my mother was Catholic, and you know, I was
Speaker 4: born in Memphis. We moved to southern California when I
Speaker 4: was three, and I was raised in southern California and
Speaker 4: my mom was a devout Catholic. In fact, my dad
Speaker 4: had to sign papers when they got married saying that
Speaker 4: the children would be raised Catholic. And I went to
Speaker 4: Cormat School for twelve years and grew up in California
Speaker 4: listening to rock and roll.
Speaker 1: But like all good Catholics, you left the church, left
Speaker 1: the church. But your mother was now she from.
Speaker 4: She was from San Antonio.
Speaker 1: San Antonio, but Southern Catholicism is a kind of a
Speaker 1: whole different thing, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Well, she her family was Italian, her father, I mean,
Speaker 4: her father was only a second generation Italian or first generation.
Speaker 5: They were Southern Italians, so yeah, it was Italian.
Speaker 4: So I mean my mom had a uncle who was
Speaker 4: a priest. It was pretty serious, right, Oh no.
Speaker 1: It'S very serious. Yeah, it's almost like being a Catholic
Speaker 1: in England, which is yeah, yeah, this kind of your
Speaker 1: real mind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. I left the church at sixteen, broke
Speaker 4: my mother's heart, but just you know, she thought I
Speaker 4: was going to hell. I just found you had to
Speaker 4: be determined, yet to be determined TBD. I found it
Speaker 4: immensely cruel and cynical that my mother, who was such
Speaker 4: a devout Catholic, was for all intents and purposes, excommunicated
Speaker 4: when she divorced my dad and not allowed to receive
Speaker 4: communion anymore. And she still showed up and sat in
Speaker 4: the front row every mass, you know, and worked in
Speaker 4: the church and everything. And I just thought, how could
Speaker 4: they turn away somebody who was so devoted. I don't
Speaker 4: want to be part of that.
Speaker 1: Well, there is there is a kind of sense in
Speaker 1: a lot of your work. I would argue that you've
Speaker 1: got that Catholic, particularly that kind of Catholic sense in
Speaker 1: a lot of your songs, of this kind of fight
Speaker 1: between the world we believe in and then there's the
Speaker 1: world we live in, and you tend to look at it.
Speaker 1: I would say, probably in terms of relationships. But it's
Speaker 1: a very it's something you find particularly in a lot
Speaker 1: it's Southern Catholic. That is your Flannery O'Connor is a
Speaker 1: great example of that.
Speaker 4: That is so interesting. I never thought about it that way,
Speaker 4: and I think that's true. And I think on this
Speaker 4: record it's less about that happening in relationships and more
Speaker 4: about it happening inside myself. And you know, there's still
Speaker 4: a good Catholic girl inside of me who wants people
Speaker 4: to like her and wants to do the right thing
Speaker 4: and believes in good and evil and morality.
Speaker 1: It's a it just seems to be a theme that
Speaker 1: kind of runs through and particularly your views on marriage
Speaker 1: and relationships. You know, some of these I think two
Speaker 1: of the songs are are dedicated to your husband, but
Speaker 1: they're not simple, easy songs.
Speaker 4: No, Well, he's serving with an.
Speaker 1: Easy going guy he seems to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, well, yeah, when to see, marriage is complicated,
Speaker 4: it requires work, it's not it's not something you're given.
Speaker 4: You have to work for it. And you know, we've.
Speaker 5: Had work, work, work, We've had ups.
Speaker 4: And downs like any couple. And you know, there's some
Speaker 4: days I've wanted to get as far away from him
Speaker 4: as possible. But mostly, I mean, we really like being together.
Speaker 4: We've were together more than any couple we know, and
Speaker 4: we're really good friends. And we work together, raise a
Speaker 4: child together, live together, travel together. And it's not modern.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think a lot of modern relationships the
Speaker 4: people spend a lot of time apart. We don't, and
Speaker 4: we like it that way.
Speaker 1: Oh, both your parents ended up having relationships like that,
Speaker 1: didn't they.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where they were very close to the and with
Speaker 4: the other personal time. That's true, they did.
Speaker 5: Oh your dad in June had ways of yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, you're now at an age when when your
Speaker 6: father was a performer, when he was around your age,
Speaker 6: he was going through a lot of struggles commercially.
Speaker 1: I think at one point he was he dropped by
Speaker 1: his label that was then your.
Speaker 4: Label or yeah, that was just a dark time.
Speaker 1: Keep telling me how that happened.
Speaker 4: He was on Columbia, and really Colombia, that record label
Speaker 4: was built on the backs of him and Bob Dylan.
Speaker 4: You know, it was that that record label owed him
Speaker 4: so much. So he called me at home one day
Speaker 4: and he said, what's.
Speaker 1: Your royalty rate?
Speaker 4: Because I was on Columbia at the same time, And
Speaker 4: I told him, and he kind of rumphed. And then
Speaker 4: shortly thereafter the label dropped him, and I was furious,
Speaker 4: and I hated them for doing that, and I felt
Speaker 4: so bad for my dad, and I felt embarrassed about
Speaker 4: myself that I was still on the label. It seemed
Speaker 4: somehow disrespectful, even though I didn't have anything to do
Speaker 4: with it. You know, looking back at it, I thought,
Speaker 4: I think I should I should have left the label,
Speaker 4: should have just gotten off at that moment. But I didn't.
Speaker 4: And then Dad went to Mercury, and you know, then
Speaker 4: he had a real fallow period before he met Rick.
Speaker 4: And Rick came in like a spirit brother, and my
Speaker 4: whole family I think owes him a huge debt for
Speaker 4: what he did for Dad. I mean, he it was
Speaker 4: such a redemptive act.
Speaker 1: We should mention. You're talking about Rick Ruber It was
Speaker 1: one of the partners in this podcast and produced I
Speaker 1: think all your father's last five.
Speaker 4: Out the American recordings, yeah.
Speaker 1: Which are of course sort of landmarks.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I always thought of Dad like Matisse, you know,
Speaker 4: like Matis, starting with representational art and going into Impressionistic
Speaker 4: and then this burst of creativity at the end of
Speaker 4: his life. You know, when he did the Jazz Dancers.
Speaker 4: It's like he kept reinventing himself. And I think he
Speaker 4: that Fallo period on Mercury when he did all that
Speaker 4: kind of really some really shallow and pedestrian recordings. Then
Speaker 4: he just burst open when Rick came on.
Speaker 5: This, well, Rick gave him permission to be the artist
Speaker 5: he really was, and not sort of a musical artist
Speaker 5: plugged into some sort of song slash hit making Nashville machinery,
Speaker 5: which at that point was just a very bad fit
Speaker 5: for your father.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean he needed someone to say, Johnny Cash.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you doing. You're Johnny Cash, let go
Speaker 4: of all of this. Let's just sit you down with
Speaker 4: the guitar, just you and the guitar, and let's get
Speaker 4: back to the basics.
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you then, now, at this point
Speaker 1: in your career. First of all, when you looked ahead
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, where did you think your career was
Speaker 1: going to be.
Speaker 4: I'm not good at that. I've never been good at
Speaker 4: five year plans or mapping out my future or anything
Speaker 4: like that. I'm really more of a what's next, what's
Speaker 4: the next step, what's the next step? Person? The overarching
Speaker 4: looking forward vision I've had for myself is just to
Speaker 4: be a better writer. I just wanted to be a
Speaker 4: better songwriter and I want to be a better singer.
Speaker 5: I don't think either of us have ever thought about
Speaker 5: our career. Yeah, we just don't think like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I've had to learn to think about some
Speaker 4: of that, you know, as the business has changed, you know,
Speaker 4: trying to adapt to that. But mostly I just want
Speaker 4: to write songs and be a better singer and be
Speaker 4: a better song and do good work, and do good
Speaker 4: work the work for the work sake. Absolutely, And the
Speaker 4: fact that I'm not burnt out at my age when
Speaker 4: I know so many people who are, I just feel
Speaker 4: so lucky and i feel like I'm still learning and
Speaker 4: getting better and what more could you want?
Speaker 1: Well, you actually are getting better. And I'm not just
Speaker 1: saying that because you're standing for feet from me. The
Speaker 1: people I know who've heard the record has said, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's actually getting better. And that's that's difficult for any artist.
Speaker 1: It's difficult for songwriters. Not many songwriters keep getting better?
Speaker 4: Is there Leonard Cohen did?
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen did? Yeah? Is there is there a magic
Speaker 1: a musical fountain of Well, I shouldn't even call it
Speaker 1: a fountain of youths because that's not what it is.
Speaker 1: You know what of age?
Speaker 4: You know what? There's for me? To avoid getting bitter
Speaker 4: is huge because you know, bad things happen to you suffering.
Speaker 4: We all suffer, we all have losses, we all have
Speaker 4: missed opportunities. And I know people who've allowed themselves to
Speaker 4: become bitter, and it really shuts you down. It shuts
Speaker 4: down your access points to art and creativity in my mind,
Speaker 4: from what I understand. And the other thing is to
Speaker 4: stay curious. I'm really still very curious. I feel like
Speaker 4: a beginner and maybe that's just part of my DNA.
Speaker 4: My dad was always like that. He was always curious
Speaker 4: about what the nineteen year olds were doing.
Speaker 1: He used to have them on a show. I remember, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I think.
Speaker 4: I did to get that from him, I got a good,
Speaker 4: strong work ethic and the ability to be curious for
Speaker 4: your whole life.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's go back and do some of that history,
Speaker 1: because you're gonna do a couple of covers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this song was on the list my album, on
Speaker 4: the list and on the original list my dad gave me,
Speaker 4: and it's you know, it's just at the center of
Speaker 4: American roots music in my mind. Okay, this is Long Black.
Speaker 1: Fail more with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. After this,
Speaker 1: we're back with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. That's Long
Speaker 1: Black Fail. Of course, many versions. Your father's Lefty Frizelle
Speaker 1: the band did a wonderful version.
Speaker 5: I think wonderful.
Speaker 1: Danko, you've been the singer on that.
Speaker 5: Just unbelievable.
Speaker 1: There are some songs that when you flip the sexes,
Speaker 1: when a woman sings a song that's traditionally the narrator
Speaker 1: is a man, it can work. You can't flip this one.
Speaker 4: No, you can't flip it, And therein lies the beauty,
Speaker 4: you know. I love that old folk tradition of women
Speaker 4: singing about other women, women being narrators in a song
Speaker 4: and not changing the gender. You know, the Carter family
Speaker 4: did that quite a lot, and they're Gene Richie. There
Speaker 4: are plenty of other old folk songs where women didn't
Speaker 4: switch the gender.
Speaker 1: And is there a certain quality you think when a
Speaker 1: woman sings a what's a man's part?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean I think it.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 4: It provides a different kind of angle or prism to
Speaker 4: look at it through. I mean, I guess that people
Speaker 4: will hear it as a narrator rather than me talking
Speaker 4: about you know, it's almost like I come to I'm
Speaker 4: Rod Sterling or something and come to the front of
Speaker 4: the screen and present this story.
Speaker 5: I like the gender switch on that song a lot.
Speaker 5: It adds to the song in some ways to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was co written by a woman.
Speaker 5: Yeah, John Wilkins, Yeah, just an unbelievably great song. I
Speaker 5: mean I call this song the Humbler. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 5: your songwriter, show me you can do something like this,
Speaker 5: and we should go on to farewell.
Speaker 1: Angelina. Can you tell me a little why you chose
Speaker 1: that song?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I just love that song. I love
Speaker 4: the tradition he borrowed from to write this song. I
Speaker 4: love how obtuse the lyrics are.
Speaker 5: Talk about mystery.
Speaker 4: Yeah, talk about mysteries, right.
Speaker 5: And melodies and incredible.
Speaker 4: and then it's like all of this weird stuff going
Speaker 4: on in the verses, and then every time it comes
Speaker 4: back to farewell and Angelina. I mean, Angelina is such
Speaker 4: a beautiful name. Saying farewell, you know, in some very
Speaker 4: old world sense of saying goodbye, it just works perfectly.
Speaker 4: And I don't know many writers who can get away
Speaker 4: with lyrics this obtuse.
Speaker 5: He borrowed it from a Scottish song called Farewell Tarwathi,
Speaker 5: which was a Sailors song, but he just took it
Speaker 5: as Bob did in the previous first four or five years,
Speaker 5: and just recurploded it.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 1: It is one of those songs when I was listening
Speaker 1: to you. It is full of these very sort of
Speaker 1: two difficult metaphors, I suppose, but some of them seem
Speaker 1: to be It's also a song that there are times
Speaker 1: they seem very real. The fiends nailed bombs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, time bombs to the hands of the you know.
Speaker 1: what's happening with the sky. It just it seems to
Speaker 1: be a song that the kind of more outlandish images
Speaker 1: almost become concrete. Yeah, as time goes on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. And also it's very dream like, like
Speaker 4: you could, you know, the fifty two gypsies filing past
Speaker 4: the guards or something. It's like a film, you know,
Speaker 4: an abstract realism kind of film. You know. I did
Speaker 4: skip one verse, by the way. I hope Bob doesn't
Speaker 4: hear this. I know that I skipped the verse about
Speaker 4: the pirates.
Speaker 1: Have you written a song? Have you had this song
Speaker 1: in your mind when you've written another song, or have
Speaker 1: you ever tried to create the kind of effect he
Speaker 1: creates here?
Speaker 4: Well, my use of when I'm writing melodies, my use
Speaker 4: of minor chords just tends to this exactly. In fact,
Speaker 4: I would say overuse of that particular.
Speaker 1: Never heard a minor you don't love?
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was never an a minor to f that
Speaker 5: she does.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 5: I mean, I argue about it.
Speaker 4: John cautions me again, said, and I do love it
Speaker 4: so much, And he said, yes, all of humanity loves it,
Speaker 4: you know, but just back off a bit.
Speaker 5: That's that's a podcast, Yeah, all on harmony and chord changes. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and sort of the diminution thereof last thirty.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, not to get too serious about it, but
Speaker 4: this folk tradition of this use of minor chords is
Speaker 4: very compelling to me and I write me talk, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I love Bob's early chord changes and melodies and how
Speaker 5: he appropriated Scottish hymns and you know folk balance and
Speaker 5: just would have a twist on them both harmonically and melodically.
Speaker 5: I just thought was just exceptional.
Speaker 1: Is that a particular gift to be able to hear
Speaker 1: a melody? Because you know, I hear a lot of
Speaker 1: those old songs. I can't hear what other people are hearing.
Speaker 1: I can't hear what's modern and what would translate to
Speaker 1: something else? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Much?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: You know some people can take an old melody and
Speaker 1: say if you turn it around.
Speaker 5: And do this, and I'm like, oh oh.
Speaker 1: To me, the trappings of the song, the original kind
Speaker 1: of arrangement, everything about overwhelms my sense of what I
Speaker 1: could pull out.
Speaker 6: Of the song.
Speaker 4: Well, that does take a particular gift to reappropriate something
Speaker 4: that's old, and I mean the Carter family did it too,
Speaker 4: you know, ap Carter find those old songs that were
Speaker 4: kind of part of an oral tradition that came from
Speaker 4: Scotland and Ireland and reinterpret them into Appellation Ballad.
Speaker 1: I do want to ask you. You joked earlier about
Speaker 1: writing for True Detective that they wanted something dark and
Speaker 1: depressing that was right down your alley, But you do
Speaker 1: on this album, having listened to it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: It is about age, It's frequently about dying and seemingly
Speaker 1: impenetrable spaces between people. But there is a kind of
Speaker 1: spirit of optimism.
Speaker 4: I'm an optimist. I always have been as dark as
Speaker 4: I can go. I'm still an optimist walking into a nightmare.
Speaker 4: I'm still an optimist. I just don't go to despair.
Speaker 5: Your heart's too big.
Speaker 4: Oh that's very sweet.
Speaker 1: This is going to sound like an odd question. Does
Speaker 1: it make it easier to write about the tough things
Speaker 1: in relationships and the tough things about growing older when
Speaker 1: you're ultimately optimistic?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess so. I mean I have a thick
Speaker 4: skin and an open heart, and I try myself to
Speaker 4: go to some dark places and come back. And one
Speaker 4: reason I trust myself to come back is because of
Speaker 4: John Leventhal, because he's been a tremendous grounding force in
Speaker 4: my life. I think I probably would not have come
Speaker 4: back had I not met him. And because of our children.
Speaker 4: You know, it's too selfish to stay in that place.
Speaker 4: When you have kids, you have to come back.
Speaker 1: You mentioned some political things have made you cry for
Speaker 1: extended periods, But do you believe ultimately, I guess in
Speaker 1: the personal relationships and political ones, you believe the long
Speaker 1: arc of history Ben Steward's Justice.
Speaker 4: I have to say I felt incredibly discouraged in the
Speaker 4: last two years, and I do have optimism. I just
Speaker 4: don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime,
Speaker 4: which makes me really sad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it is a long arc, the long arc.
Speaker 1: So tell me now about feel me thing worth fighting for.
Speaker 4: I wrote the lyrics and t Bone Burnett and Lyra
Speaker 4: Lynn wrote the music. T Bone and I have been
Speaker 4: friends for thirty years and he was music supervisor on
Speaker 4: True Detective and he just called and said, would you
Speaker 4: write some lyrics for True Detective for this new season
Speaker 4: coming up? And I said, yeah, like what kind of songs?
Speaker 4: And he said, well, you know, songs that are about
Speaker 4: destruction and really dark and maybe a woman who has
Speaker 4: a lover who turns into a bird, and you know,
Speaker 4: he kept going on and on. I went, Okay, that's
Speaker 4: my wheelhouse. Sure yeah, And I sent him these lyrics
Speaker 4: and they wrote the music. But even these, there are
Speaker 4: two songs on the album I wrote for True Detective,
Speaker 4: and even those were not like commissioned pieces. They were
Speaker 4: not about characters. They were still me.
Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced by Justin Richmond and Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 1: with help from Miia Lobel, Jaquita Pascal, Jacob Smith, Julia Barton,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and of course Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amon Drum and John Leeman of Bridge
Speaker 1: Studios in Brooklyn. To hear the songs featured in today's episode,
Speaker 1: check out Broken Record podcast dot com. This show is
Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Bruce Headlock.