Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: In July, Malcolm Gladwell taped a live episode of Broken
Speaker 2: Record at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City.
Speaker 2: It was a wonderful night of conversation and music. Drew Holcombe,
Speaker 2: a Memphis native who has spent the past twenty years
Speaker 2: performing with his band The Neighbors, joined Malcolm on stage
Speaker 2: for the recording. On today's episode, you'll hear how growing
Speaker 2: up with strict Christian parents shaped his artistic sensibilities through
Speaker 2: the handful of secular artists who was allowed to listen to,
Speaker 2: and how the crisis of faith he faced after his
Speaker 2: brother's death led him to leave seminary and pursue a
Speaker 2: life as a singer songwriter. You'll also hear stripped down
Speaker 2: performances of his own songs, including a debut, and you'll
Speaker 2: get a taste of his favorite Bruce Springsteen track, Highway Patrolman,
Speaker 2: with impromptu background vocals from none other than Malcolm Gladwell himself.
Speaker 2: This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations.
Speaker 3: Back in the spring, I was part of a traveling
Speaker 3: variety show called No Small Endeavor. It's put on by
Speaker 3: a friend of mine, a theologian from Nashville, named Lee Camp.
Speaker 3: A bunch of us got in a big tour bus
Speaker 3: left Nashville for Louisville, then Indianapolis, then Grand Rapids. Lee
Speaker 3: and I told a story about the famous showdown between
Speaker 3: the Suffragettes and the anti slavery movement in the mid
Speaker 3: eighteenth century, and then a bunch of musicians played music
Speaker 3: to help us tell a story. It was one of
Speaker 3: the most fun things I've ever done in my life. Anyway,
Speaker 3: when you're traveling on a tour bus, you spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time talking to everyone else on the tour bus.
Speaker 3: And along the way, I got to know the musical
Speaker 3: headliner on the show, the singer songwriter Drew Holcombe, and
Speaker 3: I found him so thoughtful and fantastic and full of
Speaker 3: life that I invited him to come to New York
Speaker 3: and sit down with me at eight twenty fours newly
Speaker 3: reopened Cherry Lane Theater. And to my delight, and I
Speaker 3: hope your delight as well, he said, Yes, Drew is
Speaker 3: in his early forties. Beard lives in Nashville, but he's
Speaker 3: from Memphis. He's maybe a country artist, although he would
Speaker 3: dispute that description. His band is called The Neighbors and
Speaker 3: they've been together forever, and if you've never heard his music,
Speaker 3: you're going to hear more than a little bit on
Speaker 3: this episode. Because I gave him only one rule before
Speaker 3: we had our conversation. You have to bring your guitar
Speaker 3: and it can never leave your side.
Speaker 1: Good evening, I'll get it started with a song.
Speaker 4: All right, I am fairly well now, I am strong,
Speaker 4: I am goodbye, long way from home.
Speaker 5: I am orchard at the start of spring. I am
Speaker 5: a mocking bird. I love to sing it.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.
Speaker 4: I am an old road walking on my feet. I
Speaker 4: am laughing me weeping willow trees. I'm a dog barking
Speaker 4: a honey bee steam.
Speaker 7: I ain't any angel, bud.
Speaker 4: I've got my wings. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.
Speaker 7: I'm going to fly.
Speaker 4: I am moving, I am flashing balls.
Speaker 7: I am a gunshot.
Speaker 6: With my micruve phone.
Speaker 4: I'm a boy at the window as the summer sun.
Speaker 7: Sets, an old man in winter. Then more, nothing less.
Speaker 6: I'm going to fly. I'm going to fly.
Speaker 7: I'm going to fly.
Speaker 3: Okay, tell me why you chose that song to start.
Speaker 1: With, Well, that's my favorite one I've ever written. I
Speaker 1: was figure, when I get nervous, just play something you like.
Speaker 3: You know, when when did you write that song?
Speaker 1: I wrote that song probably January of twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: I always tend to write a lot of songs right around,
Speaker 1: mainly after New Year's It's a good time to kind
Speaker 1: of get in your feelings and introspection about your life,
Speaker 1: about the world around you, and it tends to be
Speaker 1: a creative season for me.
Speaker 3: How do you decide you say that's the favorite your
Speaker 3: favorite song you've ever written?
Speaker 1: Probably?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Why what is it about that song?
Speaker 1: Now? Well, it was it was something about the song
Speaker 1: kind of came out of this. I just turned forty
Speaker 1: around that time, and I actually enjoyed all the way
Speaker 1: things that I felt after turning forty. Everybody told me
Speaker 1: I should be afraid of them, but I actually really
Speaker 1: enjoyed them. Also, was kind of born an old soul.
Speaker 1: My mom said, I was born an old man. I
Speaker 1: felt comfortable in that transition already, just because of sort
Speaker 1: of how I am. I started writing that song with
Speaker 1: the lyric started I'm a Boy at the Window as
Speaker 1: a summer sunsets. I had this keen memory for my
Speaker 1: childhood of being told to go to bed before the
Speaker 1: sun went down in the summertime, you know, and staring
Speaker 1: at the window and seeing my neighbor whose parents let
Speaker 1: him stay up, and and being sort of full of
Speaker 1: jealousy but also sort of full of wonder And and
Speaker 1: then also I, even though I'm not old, I feel
Speaker 1: certain I feel old in certain ways. And I sort
Speaker 1: of this song is kind of in the tension. Is
Speaker 1: me just sort of embracing the tension of that, And
Speaker 1: that tension feels more and more what I see when
Speaker 1: I look in the mirror, And so I'll play that
Speaker 1: song I feel, I feel it's like a blanket for me,
Speaker 1: you know. And I also finally let myself admit that
Speaker 1: I like my own music. You're not supposed to do that,
Speaker 1: But I do like my own music.
Speaker 3: Why you're not supposed to do that?
Speaker 1: Oh, it's just so you know the cultural thing you
Speaker 1: shouldn't you know, you get if you drive down the
Speaker 1: street and see an artist listening to their own music,
Speaker 1: you might think, man, what an arrogant guy. But which
Speaker 1: that happens to me with my kids sometimes because they
Speaker 1: want to hear my songs. I just look at people,
Speaker 1: you know, hey, yep to me listen to my own song.
Speaker 3: How would you describe the genre that that song belongs to?
Speaker 1: You know, I growing up, was the music that I
Speaker 1: listened to a lot sort of fit in either categories
Speaker 1: of folk or rock and roll, some country, soul, folk
Speaker 1: rock was sort of how I framed it before this
Speaker 1: sort of ubiquitous word of Americana kind of came around,
Speaker 1: and it felt like they created a sort of a
Speaker 1: an institutional home for artists like myself who are definitely
Speaker 1: not country in the sort of commercial sense, and we're
Speaker 1: not rock in the sort of new radio sense, and
Speaker 1: we were a bit homeless. There's a lot of us,
Speaker 1: and so it kind of created this. So that's what
Speaker 1: I say now is Americana. But one of the great
Speaker 1: things about being in a you know, quote unquote Americana
Speaker 1: artist is there's not really a lot of rules about
Speaker 1: what you make, how you make whether the song has
Speaker 1: five stanzas and no chorus or you know, horns or whatever.
Speaker 1: You can kind of do whatever you want. It just
Speaker 1: has to be sort of made by real people in
Speaker 1: a you know, in a real sense.
Speaker 3: You're from Tennessee and you live in Nashville, but you
Speaker 3: take great pains to distance yourself from country music.
Speaker 1: Well, it all started. I'm from Memphis, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: two hundred miles west and south of Nashville, and we
Speaker 1: were raised Memphians are sort of it's baked into your
Speaker 1: childhood and you're upbringing to Haye Nashville. Yeah, it's part
Speaker 1: of how you're raised. For instance, my parents, every fall
Speaker 1: we would drive to Knoxville, where they attended school, and
Speaker 1: we'd go to a Tennessee football game. And that's a
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty seven mile drive. So in eighteen years,
Speaker 1: let's say we did it. I don't know, maybe sixteen
Speaker 1: times in my childhood that that I can recall. And
Speaker 1: so thirty two times through Nashville stopped zero times and
Speaker 1: I forty goes right through the middle of town and
Speaker 1: my dad would just say, there's a state capital.
Speaker 3: Keep on moving.
Speaker 1: So we grew up admiring. You know, there was some
Speaker 1: country that that sort of leaked into my childhood. I
Speaker 1: think there's perceptions of folks outside the South that like
Speaker 1: everybody in the South was listening to country music. We
Speaker 1: listened to Motown and Bob Dylan and Amy Grant, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was this interesting mix of like gospel music
Speaker 1: and you know, black soul music and then all the
Speaker 1: my dad loved all the sort of contemporary seventies songwriter stuff,
Speaker 1: and so there was not a lot of country music
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my childhood.
Speaker 3: I want to talk a little bit more about Memphis
Speaker 3: in Nashville in your mind. What is the difference between
Speaker 3: Memphis and Nashville.
Speaker 1: Well, practically speaking, I mean, Memphis is a very it's
Speaker 1: a hometown city, meaning that most of the people that
Speaker 1: live there grew up there. I had family from there,
Speaker 1: grew up in the surrounding, you know, one hundred mile radius,
Speaker 1: Whereas Nashville attracts people from all over the country, especially
Speaker 1: in the last fifteen to twenty years, and so it's
Speaker 1: a much sort of more use. Those two realities create different,
Speaker 1: very different cultures. In Memphis, everybody knows each other, and
Speaker 1: you know, where'd you go to school and who do
Speaker 1: you know. It's a bit of that small town, big
Speaker 1: city experience, whereas in Nashville, so many young people move
Speaker 1: there because of what the city can offer them, the
Speaker 1: opportunities that may springboard out of living there, and then
Speaker 1: it's a center for I mean the big employers in
Speaker 1: Nashville or the music business and healthcare, which are both
Speaker 1: sort of booming and transient jobs, whereas Memphis it's you know,
Speaker 1: these big blue collar companies like FedEx and AutoZone, and
Speaker 1: so just creates very different cultures. And then you know, racially,
Speaker 1: Memphis is majority African American town. Nashville is very lily white,
Speaker 1: you know, so they're just they're they're very different. My
Speaker 1: favorite story to tell about about Nashville and I moved
Speaker 1: there was Memphis is a great food town, especially cheap food,
Speaker 1: you know Tomali's and barbecue and great unique pizza, and
Speaker 1: it's just a very you know, being a river town
Speaker 1: with a lot of transients over decades, so you get
Speaker 1: a lot of unique food. And Nashville had basically nothing
Speaker 1: that I that I wanted to eat, and I would
Speaker 1: just complain to my wife. I was like, that's nice here.
Speaker 1: I know you're from here, and that's why I moved here,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing to eat here that I want to eat.
Speaker 1: And then fast forward almost twenty years and it's one
Speaker 1: of the greatest food towns, you know, in the country.
Speaker 1: Everything's there now, so it's changing. It's it's a very
Speaker 1: sort of evolving and fluid place.
Speaker 3: Maybe you can explain my favorite joke. It's my favorite
Speaker 3: joke because I feel it has many, many layers, many
Speaker 3: of which I don't understand. Okay, it's a joke from
Speaker 3: the Civil Rights Movement era. Black man in Detroit wakes
Speaker 3: up in the middle of the night, it's one of
Speaker 3: those people who come off from the South, you know,
Speaker 3: and then turns to his wife and said, I had
Speaker 3: a terrible dream, and she said, what happened? He said,
Speaker 3: I dreamt that Jesus came to me and told me
Speaker 3: to go to Birmingham. And she says, did Jesus say
Speaker 3: go with you? He says, Jesus said it go as
Speaker 3: far as Memphis.
Speaker 1: That's a great joke, is it.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's my favorite joke of all time. It is,
Speaker 3: like I said, because it's a joke about Jesus who
Speaker 3: said he would be with us always.
Speaker 1: But but not in Birmingham.
Speaker 3: Not Birmingham. It's a joke about Birmingham.
Speaker 1: Like it's definitely a joke at the express dark Birmingham.
Speaker 3: Dark dark joke. But like, why did Jesus stop at Memphis.
Speaker 1: Well, because I mean, Jesus would love Memphis. There's there's
Speaker 1: great food, there's great hospitality, there's great music. Like Jesus
Speaker 1: would thrive there. Yeah, that was my experience. Jesus thrived
Speaker 1: in Memphis.
Speaker 3: You listened, well, I want to go back to that
Speaker 3: mixture of things you were listening to as a kid, Motown,
Speaker 3: Amy Grant, what.
Speaker 1: Was the third one, Bob Dylan.
Speaker 3: That's a fantastic and unusual mix of things to be
Speaker 3: exposed to. This is is this your father or your
Speaker 3: mother's doing? Let's push both both.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So my dad grew up in the in the
Speaker 1: you know, my parents met in the third grade, and
Speaker 1: so they they grew up seven or eight like blocks
Speaker 1: from each other. So there's this very sort of I'm
Speaker 1: one of twenty eight grandkids. It's like a very yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on there that's just on my
Speaker 1: mom's side, that include my dad's side.
Speaker 3: So wait, there's twenty eight grand kids on your mom's side.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, and I'm number fourteen or fifteen, I
Speaker 1: can remember, but yeah, yeah, so very like it'd be
Speaker 1: hard to overstate how sort of like central Christianity and
Speaker 1: religion was to my upbringing. Part of that was that
Speaker 1: when I was apparently when I was like, I don't
Speaker 1: even know how old, three four five years old, someone
Speaker 1: from the church came to my parents' house and they
Speaker 1: were everybody in their church was doing like a record
Speaker 1: clean out of things in their house that weren't honoring
Speaker 1: to God, and so they would get rid of all
Speaker 1: these records that when I heard about this in high school,
Speaker 1: I wept. I was like, oh, Dad, you had all
Speaker 1: of these great records and original copies that they made
Speaker 1: there out because it was the Devil's music that was
Speaker 1: really too bad. You know, a lot of led Zeppelin
Speaker 1: got thrown out and things like that. You know, I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, yeah, gotta get rid of it, which we could.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to this. But my first record I
Speaker 1: ever bought was Pearl Jams ten. I was eleven year
Speaker 1: I actually got it for Christmas from Santa Claus and
Speaker 1: my dad broke the record by five pm on Christmas
Speaker 1: Day because we had to go through the liner notes
Speaker 1: together and there's drug references and he's like, you're you're
Speaker 1: too young for this and break. So this was you know,
Speaker 1: an intense an intense scene, but that some of the
Speaker 1: things that made it through the gauntlet was Bob Dylan's
Speaker 1: evangelical records of course, you know, slow Train Coming Saved
Speaker 1: and there's another one. And then because he still made
Speaker 1: it in there somehow his old records also got a pass.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got grandfather in Yeah, and he was Jewish, so
Speaker 3: there's like a thing.
Speaker 1: There too, you know, you're allowed to have records made
Speaker 1: by Jewish artists. So and then Motown was like it
Speaker 1: was all you could listen to Motown except for like,
Speaker 1: what's the you know, the great the market record. I'm
Speaker 1: just blanking on off course, well yeah, yeah, but the
Speaker 1: name of the record, what's going on?
Speaker 3: What's going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh, which sexual healing would have.
Speaker 1: Been was on that record, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: You know, what's going on is earlier? Sex I was saying,
Speaker 3: sexually is so far beyond.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, you can only hear that the only
Speaker 1: the only way you could hear that in my childhood
Speaker 1: was at a wedding by the by the cover band
Speaker 1: you know, and and so, and it still felt awkward
Speaker 1: for everybody, but so, yeah, there was so then any
Speaker 1: Christian music was okay. Bob Dylan was okay, and motown
Speaker 1: was okay because it was just a bunch of love
Speaker 1: songs and clean oldies stuff, you know, before the music
Speaker 1: business cut. You know, Amy messed up.
Speaker 3: Can you explain to a heathen New York City audience
Speaker 3: who Amy Grant is and why she's important?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Amy Grant was sort of I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: genre of contemporary Christian music was there was Southern gospel,
Speaker 1: which is a whole different thing. So it's basically take
Speaker 1: the songwriter model, and people started applying it to their
Speaker 1: faith stories, which this all predates the whole Now, the
Speaker 1: big thing is all this big ensemble worship stuff, which
Speaker 1: was basically like every all these church bands trying to
Speaker 1: sound like coldplaying you two. So Amy Grant was like
Speaker 1: this young songwriter and she was. They created an old
Speaker 1: radio sort of format around artists like her, and she
Speaker 1: became the most famous and successful. And then she had
Speaker 1: a crossover pop hit called Baby Baby that sort of
Speaker 1: sent her into regular superstardom. And yeah, she was just
Speaker 1: a very beloved woman, and she's she's also as a human,
Speaker 1: she's like, she's honestly one of the greatest ones I've
Speaker 1: ever met. You know, her, I know her because my
Speaker 1: wife knew her. But I moved to Nashville again sort
Speaker 1: of like country and Christian music. This town sucks, you know,
Speaker 1: And then I got to know these people. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: these people are all really great. This is tough.
Speaker 3: Wait what so wait? What what denomination were your parents?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They they were They went to like an independent
Speaker 1: Bible church. Yeah, so it was non denominational. It's very
Speaker 1: they're very proud of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was asking you about other music that that
Speaker 3: that made it in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think basically my parents were pretty okay with
Speaker 1: all the class So we would go see you know,
Speaker 1: you could go see Paul Simon. They built the Pyramid
Speaker 1: in Memphis when I was a kid, which was a
Speaker 1: new arena where the Memphis Tigers played, And so I
Speaker 1: got a job there in high school as a part
Speaker 1: of the event staff. And so I got to see
Speaker 1: all these concerts for free by telling people to stop smoking,
Speaker 1: you know, and had my little yellow shirt on, and
Speaker 1: you know, anything from boys to men as easy Top
Speaker 1: to whatever could sell fifteen thousand tickets. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: exposed to at a certain point that sort of the
Speaker 1: rules weren't really that well enforced. It was a sort
Speaker 1: of a young when we were young, it was very
Speaker 1: much that way. But our alarm clock every day growing
Speaker 1: up was my mom played piano and she would play
Speaker 1: hymns like that was get up and go to school.
Speaker 1: It was like up from the Gravey Rolls. You know.
Speaker 1: She was like a whole her like whole play on
Speaker 1: get up and go to school. You know.
Speaker 3: But that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was great. Yeah, daily sense of humor. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I have a theory which I very grandiosely call Gladwell's
Speaker 3: theory of asymmetrical parenting, which is that at any given moment,
Speaker 3: when we account for our parental influence on our lives,
Speaker 3: we only talk about one parent. It can change over time,
Speaker 3: but you try to sound on somebody. You ask somebody, yeah,
Speaker 3: so what are your parents? People will never talk about
Speaker 3: their parents. They will the minute you dig into it.
Speaker 3: They only talk about one for a while. So I
Speaker 3: would like you to give me an asymmetrical parental theory
Speaker 3: of the jew Holcomb childhood.
Speaker 1: I completely disagree with that theory.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that you only get only one matter.
Speaker 3: I'm saying that at any given moment, only one matters.
Speaker 1: In a particular story.
Speaker 3: Toggling, right, So it may be from you know, in
Speaker 3: high school, it's only your mom, and then in college
Speaker 3: it's only a year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I my parents are going to listen to this probably,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's the whole point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think we were actually talking earlier back
Speaker 1: backstage about how as dads you sometimes get this free
Speaker 1: pass that it's almost like, and I've seen this. I
Speaker 1: have three children that, especially with my daughter, she sort
Speaker 1: of defaults to dad, You're doing great, You're awesome, even
Speaker 1: if my wife Ellie has done all of the hard
Speaker 1: work that day in the parenting space. So with that said,
Speaker 1: I think that that's probably true in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways that my dad had sort of an outside influence.
Speaker 1: What did your dad do well? He was a dentist
Speaker 1: and then he hated it so he quit and became
Speaker 1: a financial advisor. Seriously true story.
Speaker 3: This reminds me my one of my favorite stories about
Speaker 3: a friend of mine whose dad was an investment banker
Speaker 3: and he once had a long heart to heart with
Speaker 3: his daughter and my friend about how he felt his
Speaker 3: career had been misspent and he made a series of
Speaker 3: terrible choices and he had squattered his life in a
Speaker 3: profession with no meaning. And she was very moved by
Speaker 3: this because she didn't realize her father had this other side.
Speaker 3: And she said, Dad, so what do you think you
Speaker 3: should have been? And he says, I think I should
Speaker 3: have been a tax attorney. That's kind of like kind
Speaker 3: of what you're hearing here is kind of like, but
Speaker 3: your dad did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, he said that he was just very he
Speaker 1: was very sort of bored by the monotony of dentistry
Speaker 1: and now he's he's very extrovert, and he was trying
Speaker 1: to have conversations with people and they couldn't because you know.
Speaker 3: Oh, he was one of those annoying dennists who's like
Speaker 3: asking you questions and you.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think, honestly, I think it was a
Speaker 1: It was a serious crossroads for him because he'd spent
Speaker 1: he put himself through dental school selling jewelry out of
Speaker 1: a tackle box. This is like he he worked his
Speaker 1: way really hard to get himself this you know, job,
Speaker 1: and and this career. But then a decade in he
Speaker 1: realized how much he really did not enjoy it and
Speaker 1: found a way out of it. Took him. It was
Speaker 1: it wasn't like an immediate transition. He went to one
Speaker 1: day a week to doing the other thing, to two
Speaker 1: days a week doing the other thing, to half and half,
Speaker 1: and then eventually, when I was in high school, sold
Speaker 1: this practice and went the full time the other direction.
Speaker 1: He loved music, and he had wanted to pursue music
Speaker 1: in high school. He wanted to be in a like
Speaker 1: in a in a garage band. And his dad, who
Speaker 1: was even more strict, you know than my parents' generation,
Speaker 1: you know, he has a story, he says. He tells
Speaker 1: the story about my grandfather. They're driving in the car
Speaker 1: and my grandfather smoked cigarettes non stop and Bill Withers
Speaker 1: Lean on Me was on the radio and Dad was
Speaker 1: like fourteen years old in the passenger seat, and it's
Speaker 1: that part of the song where if you need a friend,
Speaker 1: call me, you just call me. And my grandfa was
Speaker 1: a jazz guy. He hated popular music. He said, finally
Speaker 1: takes a dragon cigarette after about this the seventh or
Speaker 1: eighth to call me, and he goes, well, just call him,
Speaker 1: damn it. So he had this like weird relationship where
Speaker 1: his father squashed his creative dreams. And so I think
Speaker 1: when I sort of showed interest in this he he
Speaker 1: sort of just launched fully in with me. Oh really, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the first thing I told him I wanted
Speaker 1: to pursue music. I had like an okay guitar, and
Speaker 1: he's like, well, let's go to the guitar shop. Let's
Speaker 1: get you let's get you something nice. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're really going to work hard at it, I'm in
Speaker 1: your corner.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was his two rules, where if you're going to
Speaker 1: work hard at it, and then he said, and promise
Speaker 1: me that if it's not working, you'll know when to
Speaker 1: walk away move on with your life. And he could
Speaker 1: say that from experience because he walked away from something.
Speaker 1: You know, he didn't just stick with the career that
Speaker 1: he chose as a nineteen year old, really because he
Speaker 1: started dental school. Back then, you didn't have to get
Speaker 1: a college degree to go to dental school. You just
Speaker 1: had to get the prerecs, which he did in three
Speaker 1: semesters and then started dental school as a nineteen year old.
Speaker 3: So did you play another song?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Sure, all right, since this is sort of symmetrical. Asymmetrical,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go down the street to my grandparents' house.
Speaker 1: I grew up five doors down the street from my grandfather,
Speaker 1: who was this sort of lion of a man. He
Speaker 1: was a bit of a big fish personality. He would
Speaker 1: tell these stories. He didn't know how much of it
Speaker 1: was true and how much of it was fiction. Lived
Speaker 1: a very interesting life. Was a surgeon, was the chief
Speaker 1: of surgery in Tokyo immediately following World War II. Operated
Speaker 1: on Admiral Dagano two weeks before he was executed. Like
Speaker 1: he just has these like wild stories in his life,
Speaker 1: and one of them was that he told his story
Speaker 1: about how he went to England with his friend who
Speaker 1: raised Labrador retrievers, who got invited to this dog trial
Speaker 1: at the Queen's of State, and so he went and
Speaker 1: he was very old and couldn't walk around very well,
Speaker 1: and he came back with this wild story about how
Speaker 1: he got to ride around the Queen's of State in
Speaker 1: the Queen's Land River with her driving it, and we
Speaker 1: were all like, sure, you know, sure you did. And
Speaker 1: he passed away about six years later, and we got
Speaker 1: a letter from the queens Secretary sending her regrets of
Speaker 1: his passing and sharing how much the queen enjoyed the
Speaker 1: day she spent with him driving around her estate. In
Speaker 1: her land Rover, So.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: I wrote this song about him many years after he died.
Speaker 1: He just had a huge influence on me, and songs
Speaker 1: called dragons.
Speaker 6: I was climbing the mountain.
Speaker 5: A sleep in the moonlight goes to my grandpa came
Speaker 5: to me in a dream. As a star hung above us,
Speaker 5: he started singing this chorus. He laughed loud as head
Speaker 5: and said this to me. Take a few chances.
Speaker 4: A few early rommanss, go swimming in the ocean on
Speaker 4: New Year's Day. Don't listen to the critics.
Speaker 6: Stand up bed.
Speaker 8: Witness, go slay all the dragons.
Speaker 6: That stand in your wing.
Speaker 1: You stayed up and talked until the sunrise.
Speaker 7: Of war and love and sorrow.
Speaker 5: He said, stop spending all your money on forgiveness of sins.
Speaker 5: Today's all you've promised. Don't trouble with tomorrow. He faded
Speaker 5: into the forest, proudly singing this hymn.
Speaker 4: Take a few chances, a few early rommances, go swimming
Speaker 4: in the ocean all New Year's Day.
Speaker 6: Don't listen to the critics.
Speaker 7: Stand up bell winness.
Speaker 8: Go slay all the dragons that stand in your roy.
Speaker 1: Woke up with a fever.
Speaker 5: Surrounded by lightning. All my windows were open. I let
Speaker 5: the rain flooding. The past felt like the present, with
Speaker 5: the future uncertain, a sing like a speral lost.
Speaker 6: In the wind.
Speaker 4: Take a few chances, you earthy romances, go swimming in
Speaker 4: the ocean. All New Year's damon. Don't listen to the critics.
Speaker 4: Stand up in bed, witness, go slay all the.
Speaker 8: Dragons that standing your way, go sway the drags that
Speaker 8: stand in you.
Speaker 6: Wa mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Incredibly beautiful tribute.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Yeah, he's a beautiful man.
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. Let's talk a little bit about, uh,
Speaker 3: the role of faith in your life and work. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: you so you grew up in a very religious family.
Speaker 3: You went to seminary in Scotland. Tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Yes, I I think I've always sort of grown up.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people that grew up in
Speaker 1: a world that I grew up in sort of either
Speaker 1: chose to just join into that space as adults, or
Speaker 1: they sort of run the other direction and go through
Speaker 1: a deconstruction phase where they, you know, on a spectrum
Speaker 1: of sort of kindness to full vitriol. They depart from
Speaker 1: that space and instead I tried to navigate sort of
Speaker 1: a third way, which is I didn't have a personal
Speaker 1: experience with faith that sort of mirrored what I was
Speaker 1: told it was going to be like, and that it
Speaker 1: would bring all this meaning and stuff to my life.
Speaker 1: And when I was seventeen, my brother passed away. He
Speaker 1: was born a spine of and had all sorts of
Speaker 1: health issues, but still suddenly out of nowhere. I was
Speaker 1: out of the country when happened on doing like a
Speaker 1: summer of Spanish immersion in the American Republic, and it
Speaker 1: passed away and got home. All the sacraments and words
Speaker 1: and instruments and communities of faith were sort of bubbled
Speaker 1: up in me, and it wasn't making sense for me.
Speaker 1: So I had sort of a crisis of faith, and
Speaker 1: instead of turning away from it, I was still sort
Speaker 1: of trying to figure it out. But music was really
Speaker 1: the thing that kind of helped me make sense of
Speaker 1: my life. I'll never forget. There were two records in
Speaker 1: particular in that era. One was Van Morrison's Moondance. The
Speaker 1: other one was David Gray's White Ladder that I was
Speaker 1: just drive in my car and just listen to these
Speaker 1: records and sob and those records weren't even necessarily about grief,
Speaker 1: but they were grief records for me and so but
Speaker 1: I also didn't My experience with faith and the faith
Speaker 1: community was that while I was struggling to believe what
Speaker 1: they told me was the right thing to believe, I
Speaker 1: also was experiencing a lot of love and affection from
Speaker 1: them and had from a young age. And so a
Speaker 1: lot of people's hurt and deconstruction is fed off of
Speaker 1: abuse or mistreatment or you know, and that was not
Speaker 1: my experience, and so I couldn't have that same sort
Speaker 1: of departure because I was loved well. And so it's
Speaker 1: created this really interesting tension in me because I was
Speaker 1: also expanding the way my worldview is expanding in ways
Speaker 1: that didn't line up with a lot of what I
Speaker 1: grew up around. But also we're talking about it, you know,
Speaker 1: it's easy to lump people into these categories, and really
Speaker 1: the spectrum of people who helped raise me, they all
Speaker 1: have different different sort of spectrum of beliefs about different things,
Speaker 1: whether cultural, cosmic, theological, cultural, political, et cetera. So I
Speaker 1: don't want to speak about that community as one monolith,
Speaker 1: but at the same time where what I was finding
Speaker 1: and who I was becoming was getting farther from that.
Speaker 1: And part of the way I part of that was
Speaker 1: going to seminary. I went to Scotland. They had a
Speaker 1: program at Saint Andrew's University, or I could go for
Speaker 1: two weeks a semester twice a year and then write
Speaker 1: my papers. And so you know, I was just I
Speaker 1: was searching, but I was enjoying the search. You know.
Speaker 1: It was like it was less of a like frantic
Speaker 1: looking for the lost keys when you're trying to get
Speaker 1: out of the house, and more of a like I
Speaker 1: just want to keep look at I'm finding a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting things. I'm reading a lot of interesting people.
Speaker 1: Just allowed myself to engage in reading and in music
Speaker 1: and in ways that was sort of open to it
Speaker 1: instead of looking for a fight. And that's sort of
Speaker 1: the way I would say that I was raised is
Speaker 1: that the church in that era, the school that I
Speaker 1: went to, was a wall and is more of a
Speaker 1: wall and less of a bridge. It's more about protecting
Speaker 1: the flock instead of building a bridge to the world.
Speaker 1: And I would say my faith now is much more
Speaker 1: of like I just want to be a bridge Builder.
Speaker 1: But I haven't necessarily, I haven't rejected some of the
Speaker 1: sort of central teachings of Christian Orthodoxy. But I have
Speaker 1: certainly rejected sort of American evangelical culture. And that's cost
Speaker 1: me a lot of fans. But that's okay.
Speaker 3: Memphis to Scotland is a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. My senior high school English teacher took a trip
Speaker 1: every year to the UK and the first place we
Speaker 1: went with Scotland, and that immediately, within three days on
Speaker 1: that trip, I said, I'm going to study abroad here.
Speaker 1: This place is Edinburgh's just this wonderland. And you know,
Speaker 1: I loved English literature, I loved English history, you know,
Speaker 1: and honestly, like the South was settled by Scott's, so
Speaker 1: a lot of it, you know. So there was like
Speaker 1: when Brave Feart came out, every Southerner in the world
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Was there any about the music of Scotland that appealed.
Speaker 1: To Yeah, yeah, there's a There was a there was
Speaker 1: a pub down the street from my flat, Sandy Bell
Speaker 1: was the name of it, and every night they had
Speaker 1: traditional Scottish music, you know, people playing instruments. I didn't
Speaker 1: even know what they were, but they buy these traditional
Speaker 1: Scottish folk songs and they're always in with loch Lomand you.
Speaker 4: Take the high Rule and I'll take the little Ruin
Speaker 4: and I'll be in Scotland before you For me and
Speaker 4: my true lover. They're to meet again on the Bonnie
Speaker 4: Bonnie banks of loch Loo.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's in the quarter, crying about me
Speaker 1: and this mythical woman I'm going to meet at the
Speaker 1: Bonnie Banks of Loch Loman.
Speaker 3: Scottish accent's pretty good.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of practice. My kids are always
Speaker 1: asking for it. But there's something about the Scottish weather
Speaker 1: in the story that sort of that's where I started
Speaker 1: writing songs. I was still sort of in the throes
Speaker 1: of my grief and I was trying to process that grief,
Speaker 1: and so as a student, I decided my senior thesis
Speaker 1: at in my program was going to be an oral
Speaker 1: history about my brother's life and death from everybody that
Speaker 1: knew him, and sort of the question was why does
Speaker 1: a severely handicapped child have such like so, because when
Speaker 1: he passed away, there were like two thousand people funeral
Speaker 1: two thousand. Yeah, there were like one hundred nurses from
Speaker 1: the hospital that had met him over the last fifteen
Speaker 1: years came, and school, the entire elementary school he went to,
Speaker 1: had a day out of school and they all came. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was this incredible celebration of a very short but
Speaker 1: very sort of thorough life. And so my sort of
Speaker 1: analytical side of my brain with the creative side of
Speaker 1: my brain, was like, what if I just wrote an
Speaker 1: oral history of his life and interviewed s, doctors, teachers,
Speaker 1: his neighbors, his cousins, and why did Jay matter so
Speaker 1: much to you? So I was working on that in
Speaker 1: Scotland and that's when I started writing songs because I
Speaker 1: didn't really know anybody. I always say that at that
Speaker 1: time I was alone. I wasn't necessarily lonely, but I
Speaker 1: was alone, and I had taken my guitar and I
Speaker 1: just started writing. And when I got back home from
Speaker 1: that semester, I started playing these songs for some friends,
Speaker 1: and I think they were all expecting something completely different
Speaker 1: from my life. I got laughed out a couple times
Speaker 1: before the songs, like wait, you wrote songs, and I
Speaker 1: know you play music, but like, aren't you going to
Speaker 1: be like history lawyer guy or something? And I'm playing
Speaker 1: these songs and they're like, oh, these.
Speaker 3: Are what's the first song you wrote that You were proud.
Speaker 1: Of a song called Nightingale that I don't remember, but
Speaker 1: I do remember it being about my then friend and
Speaker 1: much later became my wife, Ellie. But it was a
Speaker 1: it was a heartbreak song because she she had she
Speaker 1: had sort of ripped the heart from my chest in
Speaker 1: that era of my life.
Speaker 3: So is that why you don't remember?
Speaker 1: It's just a yeah, I got to move on from
Speaker 1: that song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't have forgotten all of it.
Speaker 1: No, I mean that was something like, well, okay, this
Speaker 1: is embarrassing. I do remember the first line.
Speaker 9: Cinderella was a fairy tale one, that's true.
Speaker 1: I don't remember where it went after that, but there
Speaker 1: was something about she sang like a nightingale.
Speaker 9: Something something that rhymes with true.
Speaker 3: Wait, did you play this for her after she broke
Speaker 3: up with you?
Speaker 1: Well, you made an assumption there that we dated in
Speaker 1: the first place.
Speaker 3: At what point in the trajectory of you and Ellie
Speaker 3: did she hear that song?
Speaker 1: I mean pretty soon after I wrote it, but I
Speaker 1: didn't tell her it was about her, you know, she.
Speaker 3: Didn't figure it out. No, she did not Oh, come on.
Speaker 1: Well that's according to her. That's you've talked to her
Speaker 1: about that. But yeah, so that I mean, that was
Speaker 1: that was the first song I sang and I was
Speaker 1: playing it like for my buddies in college in college
Speaker 1: and they're like, that's pretty good, you know. But that
Speaker 1: that was before Scotland. That was the first song I wrote,
Speaker 1: and Scotland's a We started writing songs that I I
Speaker 1: don't know, just something started to click, but really I didn't.
Speaker 1: It took me. I moved quickly into sort of what
Speaker 1: I would call my twenty to twenty three year old
Speaker 1: Steve ear Old Bruce Springsteen Ryan Adams imitation phase, where
Speaker 1: I was really trying to write the rugged third person
Speaker 1: minor chord songs and it wasn't me, but I needed
Speaker 1: to do that to find to find my path. But
Speaker 1: none of those songs are available on the internet.
Speaker 3: Which which Spruce Springsteen. There are many Bruce Springsteen's. Which
Speaker 3: is your favorite Bruce Springsteen?
Speaker 1: Well, my favorite Bruce Springsteen is Greenings from Raspberry Park
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. But I like them all, but the one
Speaker 1: I was imitating was like the Nebraska Tom Josey Nebraska.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to talk about Nebraska for a moment.
Speaker 3: I because I was obsessed with that record.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know it's funny because music like that doesn't
Speaker 3: just influence musicians, it influences writers.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the song that I always came back to was
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's called, but it's the one
Speaker 3: about the guy who is a police officer.
Speaker 1: How patrolman, hire patrolman. I played that song one hundred times.
Speaker 3: Man turns his back on his family.
Speaker 1: He just ain't no good, he just ain't no good.
Speaker 3: That was like as a as a kind of template
Speaker 3: for writing an emotionally powerful story. It's just stuck in
Speaker 3: my head.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It's so that song is so beautifully constructed. Well can
Speaker 3: you do you?
Speaker 6: Can you?
Speaker 3: Can you remember any of it? Can you calay?
Speaker 1: I can play the chorus probably.
Speaker 3: Yeah, play the chorus for those who don't know the
Speaker 3: song this is it's I think it's one of his
Speaker 3: finest songs.
Speaker 1: I can do a part of it.
Speaker 7: My name is Joe Roberts.
Speaker 1: I work for the State.
Speaker 5: Sergeant out of Burdenville, Bear snow Bury.
Speaker 3: I've always been an honest man, an.
Speaker 6: Honest man, honest as I could.
Speaker 9: My brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain't no good?
Speaker 3: Is it bad that I sing a lot?
Speaker 1: That's the audience. But then you know, goes on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're laughing and drinking.
Speaker 4: Nothing feels better than blood on, blood, taking turns, dancing
Speaker 4: with Maria.
Speaker 9: The band plays nowt of the jostyle flood.
Speaker 6: Catch him when he straight again?
Speaker 1: Yep, any brother.
Speaker 3: Would do, teach you how to walk that line.
Speaker 1: It's two different courses.
Speaker 3: Oh right, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, because.
Speaker 1: Because my favorite is like any like any brother would
Speaker 1: uh man turns his back on his family. Well, he
Speaker 1: just ain't no good. Uh. And then there's this, uh
Speaker 1: that line to me that that song. I love it
Speaker 1: song for a lot of different reasons. If you know,
Speaker 1: I'll just the song has been out for forty years,
Speaker 1: so I spoiler alert. Basically you know this this the
Speaker 1: narrator is a state trooper higher patrolman and his brother's
Speaker 1: a mess and he ends up injuring possibly killing somebody
Speaker 1: in a bar fight. And he gets called into the
Speaker 1: scene and realizes his own brother and his brother he's
Speaker 1: chasing him out of the state in Michigan, and uh,
Speaker 1: and he lets him go into Canada, you know, and
Speaker 1: lets him escape, and then he ends with that course
Speaker 1: and turns it back on his family. He just says,
Speaker 1: no good and uh, my brother, who's now been eight
Speaker 1: years sober. There was a lot of years where that
Speaker 1: was like, that was our dynamic.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I was the good rule following successful big brother and
Speaker 1: he was the you know, he didn't't mind me saying that.
Speaker 1: We were very close, but he turned his life around.
Speaker 1: But I thought that was going to be my life.
Speaker 1: Was like, I'm going to losen to his vice. And
Speaker 1: so I'd play that song all nights when I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard from him, and ill of that song. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of emotion in here, a lot of emotion in
Speaker 1: here in no in you. Oh yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: was a compliment.
Speaker 3: I did not. Just folks made I notice. But we
Speaker 3: June I met a couple of months back then, and
Speaker 3: the doing this thing which can't be described.
Speaker 1: And it's a form of a variety show, a variety show.
Speaker 3: We hung out together. It was on the bus with Drew,
Speaker 3: among other things, and you said something. There are a
Speaker 3: series of things I didn't know anything about you, and
Speaker 3: you said something to me that just so surprised me,
Speaker 3: and I would you said that. You just talked about
Speaker 3: how you have a you have you get angry. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I didn't see that. I didn't see it in you.
Speaker 3: And I was so surprised to hear that.
Speaker 1: I was sort of taught growing up that anger is bad,
Speaker 1: you know that. What I've since learned is that anger
Speaker 1: is not bad. It's rage that's bad, which is like
Speaker 1: sort of the that's not going to get all counselate
Speaker 1: on you guys, but it's been a big part of
Speaker 1: my journey as a as a person and as a musician.
Speaker 1: It's not the anger that's bad. Angers like the red light,
Speaker 1: you know, it's what you do with it. And so
Speaker 1: I've learned, instead of getting sort of physically upset, is
Speaker 1: to go, I'm so angry, what is it? It's usually
Speaker 1: some sort of injustice. Either it's me or the world,
Speaker 1: or my neighbor or my family, or is it's your
Speaker 1: yellow light that's flashing that you're lonely or sad or hurt.
Speaker 1: And so I've learned that it's like my superpower, Like
Speaker 1: when I'm angry, I know that I know that I
Speaker 1: got to figure out what's going on instead of trying
Speaker 1: to Tampa down.
Speaker 3: You know, have you ever written what is your what
Speaker 3: is the angriest song? I have an idea that you've
Speaker 3: ever written.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. It's a song called ring the Bells. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: you want to hear it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Wait, you have to give the context.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wrote this song with my I wrote the
Speaker 1: song with my friends Avner and Amanda Ramirez. Abner is
Speaker 1: a Cuban American. Amana is an African American. We wrote
Speaker 1: the song together, I think three days after the Charlottesville
Speaker 1: White supremacy rally, when some very famous sort of American
Speaker 1: Christians were both sides in the situation, and we got
Speaker 1: real pissed and wrote this song together.
Speaker 7: Ring the bells this time, I mean it bed hatred
Speaker 7: very well.
Speaker 5: Give back the pieces of my Jesus to take your
Speaker 5: counterfeit to hell.
Speaker 6: Thang the drums. This means war, not the cow and
Speaker 6: you waiting for.
Speaker 7: We say mercy won't be rationed here.
Speaker 6: It's what we're fighting for.
Speaker 7: Their fall is fair and loving war, Then what the.
Speaker 6: Hell is loving for?
Speaker 4: If we can't sing it loud enough, we'll keep on
Speaker 4: adding voice.
Speaker 5: Ring the bell, Ring the bells, Ring the bells, ring.
Speaker 1: Just a little bit of it.
Speaker 3: That's that's what I that's the what I had in mind.
Speaker 1: I was very angry when I wrote that song. Felt good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny, it's it's you're you. You play it
Speaker 3: like a man possessed.
Speaker 1: Well, I was watching Daniel Tiger one time with my
Speaker 1: daughter and there.
Speaker 3: Was I just love to segue from yah possessed to
Speaker 3: someone who there's a lot of It's very.
Speaker 1: It's very related to what we're talking about. So there's
Speaker 1: this scene where Danel gets upset and the mom says, Okay, Dane,
Speaker 1: we'll learn a song. If you feel so mad that
Speaker 1: you want to roar, take a deep breath, then count
Speaker 1: to four. And I was like, I'm sorry, Lemmy Lop,
Speaker 1: she's four years old. I'm like, that's not always true.
Speaker 1: Sometimes what you need to do when you feel so
Speaker 1: mad that you want to roar take a deep breath, Yes,
Speaker 1: get it out. You don't stuff that stuff inside of you.
Speaker 3: Will be right back with drews answers to the homework
Speaker 3: assignment I gave him. I asked him to come up
Speaker 3: with his five favorite country songs of all time so
Speaker 3: he could compare his list to mine. Can we talk,
Speaker 3: Let's talk about musical influences for a moment. Let's start
Speaker 3: with Amy Lou Harris. I would love to when we
Speaker 3: were thinking about this evening about our list of iconic
Speaker 3: country songs, and one of my one on my list
Speaker 3: is Boulder of Birmingham.
Speaker 1: Do you know that?
Speaker 3: No, that's the that is uh. It is the one
Speaker 3: of the few songwriting credits she has on her first
Speaker 3: I think she only has one songwriting credit on her
Speaker 3: first nine albums, and that's Boulder of Birmingham, which she
Speaker 3: writes about Graham Parsons.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and it is.
Speaker 3: Actually we're going to play a little bit of it.
Speaker 3: It is the most just play the first little like
Speaker 3: it's so heart wrenchingly beautiful.
Speaker 1: And the.
Speaker 3: I mentioned only because we were talking about grief and
Speaker 3: about emotion. It's a song. It's a song about grief,
Speaker 3: and it's a The articulation of her uh sense of
Speaker 3: loss and longing is just perfect. Anyway here it does.
Speaker 3: I think our r.
Speaker 6: In the Bosom, I would hold any sa race away
Speaker 6: from it about act act see.
Speaker 3: I would walk all the way from THEO to Birmingham
Speaker 3: if I thought I could see I could see your face.
Speaker 3: That's her. The way she articulates her sense of loss.
Speaker 1: She sings with so much agg too.
Speaker 3: Yeah did you do your homework?
Speaker 1: I did my own work. Yeah, your one assignment, I respect.
Speaker 1: I Yeah. I had some arguments with my wife when
Speaker 1: I picked this first one, because she's like, I don't
Speaker 1: think of that as a country song, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: it was like a number three on the country charts,
Speaker 1: and but I think my favorite country song, or what
Speaker 1: I think is the best country song is Witch Tall
Speaker 1: Lineman by Glenn Campbell. I need you more than want
Speaker 1: you and I want you for all time. There's a
Speaker 1: song about a Jimmy Web wrote the song, and he
Speaker 1: talks about how I think it was his uncle was
Speaker 1: a lineman. He always remembered see him up on the polls,
Speaker 1: work on electrical lines, and so the song came easy
Speaker 1: to him because he can imagine him, you know, being
Speaker 1: a from home for a long time, wishing for to
Speaker 1: be home with the one he loves. And it stood
Speaker 1: the test of time too. It's a very simple song
Speaker 1: about a workingman missing his love. But that's my number one.
Speaker 3: Your wife said that was not a country song.
Speaker 1: She said she doesn't think of it as a country song.
Speaker 3: What does she think of it as.
Speaker 1: That was not clear to me. We agreed on my
Speaker 1: second one, though, is which is Crazy by Patsy Klein.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, okay, I.
Speaker 1: Mean it's such a standard, but it is so good
Speaker 1: and I love that Willie Nelson wrote it. And then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later he kind of quit the industry,
Speaker 1: moves to Austin, Texas, and writes the most non commercial
Speaker 1: country record ever, that's Redheaded Stranger as a forty three
Speaker 1: year old, his career blows up. I just love the story.
Speaker 1: And we've played a lot. We've gotten to play a
Speaker 1: lot of shows with Willie over the years. I've sang
Speaker 1: with him a doesn't times, you.
Speaker 3: Know Willie Nelson, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we're not. We don't like to call
Speaker 1: each other because he's you know, he's he's an older guy,
Speaker 1: and but I have. Yeah, we've shared the stage and sung.
Speaker 1: He does this really neat thing every night where he
Speaker 1: doesn't medley of I saw the light, will the circle
Speaker 1: being broken and one other blanket on and he invites,
Speaker 1: you know, the opener to come out and sing it
Speaker 1: with him. So I've got to do that twelve or
Speaker 1: fifteen times. So he and Dolly to me are the
Speaker 1: two living legends left, you know, in that space. And
Speaker 1: then my third one would be Joe Lene as a Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And if I didn't mention a Dolly Parton song, probably
Speaker 1: couldn't go home. What's your other one or two?
Speaker 3: Uh? George Jones the Grand Tour, that's a sad song.
Speaker 3: It's you know I have. I might be more attracted
Speaker 3: to you, like are attracted to pure emotion, it seems like,
Speaker 3: and I'm attracted in country music too, over the top
Speaker 3: grandiosity and the Grand Tour. George Jones is like he's
Speaker 3: like the He is in the best possible sense of
Speaker 3: the word, a caricature of a country singer voice. We're
Speaker 3: gonna be able to make her play just the beginning
Speaker 3: of and play play the Grand Tour until the line
Speaker 3: chills me.
Speaker 1: To the bone.
Speaker 10: Step Rider, Come on, elfid Lock to take the Grand Tour.
Speaker 6: Along.
Speaker 3: So fantastic Wonga was Home Sweet Home.
Speaker 6: I have nothing here to sell you to come saying
Speaker 6: that I will tell you.
Speaker 7: Something things I know will chill you.
Speaker 3: To the bone. I mean the notion that you would
Speaker 3: write a song that, with a straight face, has the
Speaker 3: phrase chill you to the bone. And you know he's
Speaker 3: got nothing. He doesn't name any of the chili get
Speaker 3: to the bone. Some woman dumped him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: An empty house that this will chill you to the bone.
Speaker 1: My empty house, my empty ass.
Speaker 3: He's so I just can't get over the bath. He's
Speaker 3: so genius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you love the melodrama.
Speaker 3: I love them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I once back in the day of mixtapes, I used
Speaker 3: to make these mixtapes constantly, and they were always named
Speaker 3: after for reasons I forget now, they were always named
Speaker 3: after popes, So on the front of the CD case,
Speaker 3: i'd have an image of one of the popes, like
Speaker 3: you know, Pope Pious of twelfth or Emanuel the sixteen,
Speaker 3: and then the soul. Also, I made like ten of them,
Speaker 3: because there were a lot of popes. And I was
Speaker 3: once driving with some person who didn't know me very well,
Speaker 3: and I was playing one of these mixtapes, The Long Drive,
Speaker 3: one of these mixtapes after another, and after like the
Speaker 3: third one, this guy, Mike turned to me and said,
Speaker 3: what is the matter with you? Every single song was
Speaker 3: some kind of melancholy, over the top weeper. I'm happy
Speaker 3: if the tempo is never picked up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, songwriting, you're always pulling from your library, you know,
Speaker 1: and you hopefully your library just keeps growing and growing.
Speaker 1: And the trick is when I when I was young,
Speaker 1: you're imitating and then you get better at find you
Speaker 1: when you find your own voice, and then you're just
Speaker 1: sort of taking cues from your library or not copying anybody,
Speaker 1: but you're you're going, oh, that's interesting. That kind of
Speaker 1: reminds me of this. Let's you know, make it our own.
Speaker 3: And the people that you've mention do are important influences
Speaker 3: for you. We just mentioned we talked before about oh
Speaker 3: about Paul Simon. I'm curious what's the thread that links
Speaker 3: and also Tom. I know that Tom Petty is someone
Speaker 3: that has had an influencer. What what's the thread that
Speaker 3: links these influences.
Speaker 1: I think all those songwriters, I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: if there's actually a perfect common thread between them, but
Speaker 1: something about all those songs or all those artists, they
Speaker 1: made records that really connected with me and helped me
Speaker 1: sort of see the world, if you will, and help
Speaker 1: me feel the world. And that's the beauty of music
Speaker 1: is there's a bit of magic to it. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's scientific and sociological ways to explain them. I'm
Speaker 1: not really interested necessarily in hearing them because I like
Speaker 1: the magic of it. I like the myth that I
Speaker 1: don't know why this record speaks to me so much.
Speaker 1: But when I hear, you know, Tom Petty, these wildflowers,
Speaker 1: and I hear all I have to hear.
Speaker 7: Is you belong among the wildflowers.
Speaker 1: You belong in a boat out at sea. At that
Speaker 1: in and of itself is just a beautiful sentiment, you know,
Speaker 1: executed with this, you know, the arrangement, the sonic sort
Speaker 1: of landscape of it. None of the artists that I
Speaker 1: love seemed to sort of play by a certain formula.
Speaker 1: Maybe they do sometimes on certain songs or certain records,
Speaker 1: But Tom Patty's a great example. If you look at
Speaker 1: his sort of the arc of his career and listen
Speaker 1: to the records, they don't all sound the same. There's
Speaker 1: you know, the different producers have sort of different eras
Speaker 1: and fingerprints on his work. Jeff Lynn stuff is different
Speaker 1: than the Jimmy Ovine stuff, And I like that that
Speaker 1: they're always looking for something else to say, something else
Speaker 1: to sing, some new way to express human experience via music.
Speaker 1: And instruments and electricity and all this stuff that makes
Speaker 1: this makes it work.
Speaker 3: I asked you to sing one cover. Yeah, tell me
Speaker 3: what you chose and why.
Speaker 1: I well, I did. I chose this song because you
Speaker 1: and I connected over the song back when we met
Speaker 1: in April. And I just saw this artist play at
Speaker 1: the Rhymann, which is a my favorite venue in the
Speaker 1: world and a serious underplay for him. The last time
Speaker 1: I saw him in Nashville is the Bridgetone Arena. He
Speaker 1: then he retired, and now he's come out of retirement
Speaker 1: to do these intimate acoustic shows. I know that you
Speaker 1: have interacted with him a ton, and I've heard nothing
Speaker 1: but great things about him personally, and I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the great songs. I also think it
Speaker 1: has what I consider the best first line of a
Speaker 1: song that I can that I've ever heard. So this
Speaker 1: is this is Paul Simon's America.
Speaker 4: Let Us be loves, will marry our fortunes together. I've
Speaker 4: got some real estate here in my bag. So I
Speaker 4: bought a pack of cigarettes missus Wagners pies.
Speaker 7: And walkked off to look.
Speaker 11: Forerica, Kathy, I said, as we boarded a greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Speaker 11: Michigan seems like a dream to me.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 4: It took me four days to hitch hack from sagging off.
Speaker 6: I've gone to look for.
Speaker 12: A Manica, laughing on of us playing games with the faces.
Speaker 6: She says, the man in the gabardine.
Speaker 7: Suit is a spy, I said, be careful his bowtie.
Speaker 5: It's really a camera. Well, toss me a saga. I've
Speaker 5: got one here in my raincoat.
Speaker 6: No, we smoked the last one. And how will a go?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 7: I looked at the scene of read she read her magazine.
Speaker 4: As the moon rose over and open field.
Speaker 13: Okathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
Speaker 13: I'm empty and a king, and I don't know why.
Speaker 4: Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike day, all
Speaker 4: gone to look for Maerica, All gone to look for Maerica.
Speaker 7: We've all gone to look form.
Speaker 6: Come let us be loves. We'll marry our fortunes together.
Speaker 3: That was very fun, Thank you, you said, his concert
Speaker 3: at the Ryman that you saw earlier this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was Actually this was really sweet for
Speaker 1: me personally. But we played two nights at the Rymond
Speaker 1: on May second and third, and then he played three
Speaker 1: nights at the Rymond May like twelve, thirteenth and fourteenth,
Speaker 1: and I got to sit and watch a show right
Speaker 1: after I had played there, and to see one of
Speaker 1: my heroes in the same spot that I was in
Speaker 1: eight days earlier. And he had the same reverence for
Speaker 1: the room that I always have, and it was it
Speaker 1: was a bit of an emotional and joyous and overwhelming experience.
Speaker 1: And he did two sets. He did the seven Hymns
Speaker 1: record from front to back, and then he came out
Speaker 1: and did sort of all the songs that you would
Speaker 1: want expect to hear in the second set, and it
Speaker 1: was just a yeah, it was wonderful.
Speaker 3: So you were in the middle, you you you were
Speaker 3: in the middle of writing a song about Cormack MacCarthy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: Tell me how that came about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you are so.
Speaker 1: Cormick McCarthy is one of my favorite authors. You know,
Speaker 1: Southern Gothic, dark, violent, end of the world, apocalypse, human
Speaker 1: sort of morality play author, right, very sparse and yeah,
Speaker 1: no country, frilled men, all the pretty horses the road,
Speaker 1: so many great books that turn into great films, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So he actually grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is
Speaker 1: where I went to school, but he had he left
Speaker 1: there and lived all over It sort of landed in
Speaker 1: the desert and Santa fel Passo somewhere in there. Unrelated
Speaker 1: to that, seemingly was I love old cars, and so
Speaker 1: I get this email from a company that auctions old
Speaker 1: cars just because I love to look at them. And
Speaker 1: I get this email in April, early April. It says,
Speaker 1: Cormick McCarthy's Ferrari it's being auctioned off. And and so
Speaker 1: it kind of like blew a fuse in me because
Speaker 1: I'm like, Cormick McCarthy didn't drive as like sure he
Speaker 1: actually did. He drove this black Ferrari in the last
Speaker 1: years of his life. And so I had this idea
Speaker 1: of like writing a song Cormi McCarthy's black Ferrari, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't quite find my the end, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't find the ind I thought, no, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to drive Cormi McCarthy's black Ferrari through the
Speaker 1: desert and like and have a complete existential crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I feel like everybody right now is sort of
Speaker 1: we sort of live inside of existential crisis. That's that's
Speaker 1: like going to be the era that we live in.
Speaker 1: We look back on it, we're like, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the air of the existential crisis. There's just so much
Speaker 1: happening at such a speed that it's hard to keep up,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to know how to where to put
Speaker 1: your anger and where to put your your joy, and
Speaker 1: how to how to live. And I thought one of
Speaker 1: the ways it would help me is if I had
Speaker 1: Corey McCarthy's black Ferrari for a day. So I wrote
Speaker 1: this song and the first person I sent it to
Speaker 1: was you because we had talked about that interview and
Speaker 1: I love old cars too, yeah, and we also we
Speaker 1: could yeah we connected our old cars, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I I yeah. So I've never played this song before
Speaker 1: except for during soundcheck. So this is this is a debut.
Speaker 1: And I really liked this song. And if you don't
Speaker 1: like it, I don't really care that much because I
Speaker 1: like it a lot. So let's see if I remember
Speaker 1: how to.
Speaker 5: Walking on the sidewalk through my neighborhood. My neighbor's black
Speaker 5: cat is up to no good. There's something in the air,
Speaker 5: something in the streets, like a red tail hawk wading
Speaker 5: up in the trees. There's levees and tolls and roadblocks
Speaker 5: and speed bumps. Hasn't been a day, a week, or
Speaker 5: just a month. Unwanted packages by the front door screen
Speaker 5: and em deep pages in my diary.
Speaker 4: Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives.
Speaker 7: Across the desert on a.
Speaker 4: Sunday morning, and I'm dreaming about the wind in my face,
Speaker 4: nothing but my worn out suitcase.
Speaker 10: Driving that for like Corn McCarthy in my mind, In
Speaker 10: my mind.
Speaker 5: UF fiasco falls like rain on our faces, a Mickey
Speaker 5: Mantle rookie card ruined in the basement, and nothing turns.
Speaker 6: Out like you thought it would.
Speaker 7: It's a little more barefoot than Hollywood.
Speaker 5: It's confusing, the losing the booze and excusing the stage
Speaker 5: fright and all the troubles shooting.
Speaker 4: Where do I fit in amongst all the matter in
Speaker 4: this party? He always feels like a lost soul's gathering.
Speaker 4: Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across
Speaker 4: the desert on a Sunday morning, and I'm dreaming about
Speaker 4: the wind and my face, nothing but a worn out
Speaker 4: suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy in my mind,
Speaker 4: in my mind, engine and fuel and pain and chrome,
Speaker 4: muscle and blood and skin and bone, engine and fuel.
Speaker 7: And pain and chrome, muscle and blood.
Speaker 6: And skin and bones.
Speaker 4: Cormac McCarthy's gotten black Ferrari.
Speaker 9: Dady drives across the desert.
Speaker 4: An Sunday morning, and I'm dreaming about the wind in
Speaker 4: my face, nothing but worn out suit case of driving
Speaker 4: that Ferrari, like Cormac McCarthy in my mind, in my mind,
Speaker 4: in my mind, I'm driving con mcmccarthy's black Ferrari my mine.
Speaker 3: I love that, hopefully. Why you said you couldn't figure
Speaker 3: out how to couldn't figure out your way in? What
Speaker 3: did you mean by that?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: I had this this like obviously the phrase in the
Speaker 1: rhyme Corey McCarthy's Black Ferrari. It was like, this song
Speaker 1: gonna be like a funny song about how could this
Speaker 1: modeling writer have such a you know, cultural toy like this.
Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 3: It should be a piece of old Chevy pickup.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that's like that's the imagination, right, It not
Speaker 1: that he had this car, so it's like a magnum
Speaker 1: p I car, you know. So then I was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not the right frame, because what I felt when
Speaker 1: I saw that that existed as a fan of his work,
Speaker 1: and it's also someone who would like to have a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine Testerosa just for a day. Even was that? No,
Speaker 1: even the saddest, most sort of Gothic, you know, the
Speaker 1: chronicler of American violence needed an escape, and so he
Speaker 1: had this black Ferrari and he would just go. I'd
Speaker 1: imagine him smiling, driving one hundred and twenty miles an
Speaker 1: hour across the desert in Santa Fe. And there's not
Speaker 1: a picture in the world that exists of Corn McCarthy's smiling. No,
Speaker 1: And so I relate to that. I relate. I relate
Speaker 1: to feeling the weight of of you know, life and
Speaker 1: all of it's like joys and tragedies, and that sometimes
Speaker 1: the simple pleasure might make it go away for a minute.
Speaker 3: Has that that song as it stands? Now? Have you
Speaker 3: worked on that with the band or is that all
Speaker 3: you at this point?
Speaker 1: Well, they've heard it, but we haven't. No, we wait
Speaker 1: till we all get in the room together before we
Speaker 1: sort of dive into it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, what will happen to it when when you
Speaker 3: all dive in.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we'll we'll go through several iterations.
Speaker 1: First thing we'll do is we'll make sure we're in
Speaker 1: the right key. We'll do some practical things, make sure
Speaker 1: we're the right key, figure out the tempo, and then
Speaker 1: we'll sort of jump into the approach. You know, like,
Speaker 1: what are the drums going to be doing? Are we
Speaker 1: are we? Is this acoustic sort of is that the
Speaker 1: main engine driver of the song, or are we going
Speaker 1: to do like a piano bassed drums thing? And then
Speaker 1: you know, just kind of like try a bunch of
Speaker 1: different things and then inevitably one of them, all five
Speaker 1: of us will go that's it. That's the that's the
Speaker 1: approach time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a really beautiful song.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you?
Speaker 3: Do I think we're I think our time is.
Speaker 1: I have no idea ho which time we've We've been
Speaker 1: up for a while though.
Speaker 3: We've been up here a while. Yeah, I feel people
Speaker 3: lurking how should we end this?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm like being sumptuous. So if I ask you to
Speaker 3: play one more so, sure, sure.
Speaker 1: I'll play a song I wrote there's a wonderful band
Speaker 1: in Nashville that has toured for many years called Old
Speaker 1: Crow Medicine Show Good. My kids go to school with
Speaker 1: some of Ketsch's kids, who's the lead singer and writer.
Speaker 1: And this is a great Nashville story. We're dropping our
Speaker 1: kids off at school and he's like, what are you
Speaker 1: up to this week? And I said, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: be in my office doing some writing and you know, working,
Speaker 1: And he said we should write a song this week.
Speaker 1: We'd never written a song together before, and so I said, well,
Speaker 1: how about tomorrow morning. So the next morning, we drop
Speaker 1: our kids off, we get coffee, about eight thirty, we're
Speaker 1: writing songs, and we wrote this song about ten thirty
Speaker 1: that morning. We both had just gotten back into doing
Speaker 1: normal shows again with a real with live audiences, and
Speaker 1: we had really missed that.
Speaker 3: So this is such a fantastic only in Nashville story.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. And then it was a great It
Speaker 1: was a great song for me. It ended up being
Speaker 1: It's the song is called Dance with Everybody, and then
Speaker 1: ended up getting picked up by the NCAA for two
Speaker 1: years straight as a theme song for March Madness, which
Speaker 1: a song is not about basketball, and b I am
Speaker 1: like one of the world's worst basketball players. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a big family of athletes. And so it brought me
Speaker 1: a lot of satisfaction that my song I was in
Speaker 1: I got to participate it in March madness. None of
Speaker 1: my athletics six three cousins did.
Speaker 7: So you walked into this room, you hardly knew anyone.
Speaker 4: See full of strangers, just crashing on the rooms when
Speaker 4: the band strikes. By the end of the night, strangers
Speaker 4: no more. I wanna dance with everybody. And you came
Speaker 4: through that door, whether you came here to party or
Speaker 4: you came here to cry wall that to meet somebody,
Speaker 4: cheat somebody, get little, get high. So come on, all
Speaker 4: you people with two feet on your floor. I wanna
Speaker 4: dance with everybody.
Speaker 7: And came through that door.
Speaker 6: WHOA, let it all go, WHOA.
Speaker 4: Shake up your soul, throw your hands in the air,
Speaker 4: throw your hat in the ring, grow your hips, in
Speaker 4: your heart into everything, get lost.
Speaker 6: In the crowd, get down on the floor.
Speaker 7: I don't wanna dance with everybody.
Speaker 6: And you came in that door.
Speaker 4: Well, come all your saints and sinners, poets, prophets and fools.
Speaker 5: Are you cowboys, tricks and zipss trying so hard to
Speaker 5: be cool? Are you dreamers and schemers thirsty for more?
Speaker 4: I want to dance with everybody came through that door.
Speaker 6: WHOA, let it all go? WHOA, shake up your soul.
Speaker 4: Royal hands in.
Speaker 8: The air, Royal hat in the ring, broyal hips in
Speaker 8: your heart and everything.
Speaker 4: Get lost in the crowd, Get down on the floor.
Speaker 4: I want to dance with everybody came through that door.
Speaker 4: Ohhe oh, heey, oh.
Speaker 7: Hey, well, let's put us oude our differences.
Speaker 6: We'll lace up our shoes. Let's narrow the distance.
Speaker 5: Between me and meet me in the middle.
Speaker 7: Let's quit keeping score.
Speaker 4: I want to dance with everybody came through that door. WHOA,
Speaker 4: let it all go, WHOA.
Speaker 6: Shake up your soul, Throw our.
Speaker 4: Hands in the air, Try our hat in the reader,
Speaker 4: throw our hips in your heart into everything. Turn the
Speaker 4: world on a string, turn the winds on a dime, turn.
Speaker 6: The wheel to the west, and the water the wine.
Speaker 7: Get lost in the crowd, get down on the floor.
Speaker 4: I want to dance with everybody came through that door.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Drew Thank you all. This episode
Speaker 3: of Broken Record is produced by Leah Rose and Nina
Speaker 3: Bird Lawrence, with Ben f Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our
Speaker 3: engineers are Nina Bird Lawrence, Clara Bregare, and Ben Holliday.
Speaker 3: Marketing by Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our executive producers
Speaker 3: are Jacob Smith and jessin Rich Miller. Special thanks to
Speaker 3: Wait twenty four, to Wallowise Linton, and to the whole
Speaker 3: crew over at the Cherry Lane Theater. My name is
Speaker 3: Malcolm Glasma.