Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Body Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today view James mcmurtane, who has a fantastic
Speaker 1: new album, The Courses in the Hut. James, good to
Speaker 1: have you on the podcast. I'm good to be here, Bob. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're on the road touring now right, Um, yes, I'm
Speaker 1: currently in Albuquerque. So what's it like being on the
Speaker 1: road during this Delta era. That's a little different. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a solo acoustic tour, but rather than staying
Speaker 1: in hotels like we used to, or staying in airbnbs,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to be in elevators and hotel lobbies.
Speaker 1: And basically, you know, we find a central location and
Speaker 1: just base out of there for a few days. So
Speaker 1: you know, right now, we played Albuquerque last night, be
Speaker 1: going up to Santa Fe today and coming back after show,
Speaker 1: and then tomorrow go up to Taois and play a
Speaker 1: show up there. And what kind of venues the two
Speaker 1: show is, the Big Barn Dance and the kick Carson Park.
Speaker 1: All all of these shows on this run have been
Speaker 1: outdoors except for Phoenix, and Phoenix was was a little
Speaker 1: strange to start because I had I thought I had required, uh,
Speaker 1: mask and facts only and they were checking backs cards.
Speaker 1: But you know, we looked out there right before the
Speaker 1: show and nobody's got a mask on. So I talked
Speaker 1: to the management and they said, well, we can hand
Speaker 1: out masks, and said, well please, and so they did,
Speaker 1: and all but two people masked up. And how do
Speaker 1: you know the two people weren't you just saw him
Speaker 1: in the audience. They the management told me about them.
Speaker 1: There was anything they could do at that point. It's Arizona.
Speaker 1: I don't really understand. Also, yeah, they weren't told when
Speaker 1: they got there that they had to have mass on,
Speaker 1: so I can kind of see. But it's very strange that,
Speaker 1: you know that artists can't require safety protocols. And we
Speaker 1: used to be able to require non smoking shows back
Speaker 1: before smoking bands went into effect, and a lot of
Speaker 1: promoters didn't like that because they wouldn't draw as well,
Speaker 1: but eventually that became the norm. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: see smoking shows much anymore, except in tobacco growing states.
Speaker 1: So how hesitant, if at all, were you to go
Speaker 1: on the road? Quiet hesitant? And then I canceled everything
Speaker 1: beyond Hoos. I was supposed to fly from Albuquerque to
Speaker 1: Atlanta in a couple of days and getting the rent
Speaker 1: car and go driving around the southeast and up as
Speaker 1: far as actually up as far as Detroit and back around.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't get any of the venues to honor
Speaker 1: my safety protocol, so we just dropped it. And your
Speaker 1: safety protocol was vaccination and mask. Yes for indoor shows.
Speaker 1: I want to see you. I want I want to vaccinate,
Speaker 1: vax cards and masks, you know, as much as you can.
Speaker 1: I mean, I so you gotta take them off to drink.
Speaker 1: But you know, I want everybody working against the virus.
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel like I'm out there working
Speaker 1: for the virus, drawing people together where they're going to
Speaker 1: get infected. And you know it. Austin opened back up
Speaker 1: a few months ago, and immediately we started getting breakthrough
Speaker 1: cases among musicians, mostly because they'd be inside in these
Speaker 1: little clubs and you know, a crowd of people, some
Speaker 1: of them vaccinated, some of them not. And if you're
Speaker 1: a singer or a drummer or in some bands, anybody,
Speaker 1: any musician, you're breathing down to your toes. If there's
Speaker 1: any you know, a viral load out there, you're gonna
Speaker 1: catch quite a bit of it. And you know the vaccines,
Speaker 1: don't you know, they're not a hundred percent protection against
Speaker 1: contracting the virus. They tend to keep you out of
Speaker 1: the hospital, you know all that. Most of the musicians
Speaker 1: I know that that contracted COVID. You know, they had
Speaker 1: mild cases, uh meaning weren't hospitalized. But the problem is,
Speaker 1: you know, the crowd spreads it amongst themselves, and maybe
Speaker 1: they're vaccinated and they get my old cases, but they
Speaker 1: take it home to their kids who can't get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: And now you know, we're seeing kids in I see you,
Speaker 1: especially in Texas where they don't allow mask mandates. You know,
Speaker 1: Houston has something like fifty kids. And I see you,
Speaker 1: and the whole state's running out. I see you, Beds Now.
Speaker 1: You live in the Austin area, right, I live in Lockhart, third,
Speaker 1: thirty miles due south of the Austin Airport. I haven't
Speaker 1: been there. What's Lockhart like? Well? And this pretty cool
Speaker 1: little town. I mean ten years ago it was a
Speaker 1: kind of a dried up farming town, you know, boarded
Speaker 1: up storefronts on the square and you know, mostly agricultural base.
Speaker 1: And that they got a new guy on the Chamber
Speaker 1: of Commerce, and they wanted to revitalize the town and
Speaker 1: he told them, well, first thing you need to do
Speaker 1: is start issuing liquor licenses. You can't be a dry
Speaker 1: county anymore. And expected right, and so they did. So,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of young people started moving down
Speaker 1: from Austin because they couldn't afford it anymore. And they're
Speaker 1: starting businesses. There's you know, cafes and bars with sidewalk service,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, and it's kind of it's starting
Speaker 1: to thrive. It's and it's interesting how you know, the
Speaker 1: locals that have been there a long time, they they
Speaker 1: kind of accepted us because you know, they have an
Speaker 1: economy now. And how long have you lived there? I
Speaker 1: moved there in twenty nineteen, February of twenty nineteen. So
Speaker 1: you moved as part of this arts exodus? Shall we say? Well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: my my landlords passed away a while back and their
Speaker 1: errors finally got the place out of probate and they
Speaker 1: offered it to me. I was runing. I was actually
Speaker 1: running both sides of a duplex because I figured out
Speaker 1: I could write off one side for rehearsal and storage,
Speaker 1: and it worked pretty well, but you know, there was
Speaker 1: no way I could buy it. You know, the ground
Speaker 1: under it was worth three fifty grand and the building
Speaker 1: itself was a tear down. So how am gonna get
Speaker 1: financing for that? You need a developer with a pile
Speaker 1: of cash if you're going to sell something like that.
Speaker 1: But they were nice, they didn't They didn't run me out.
Speaker 1: They gave me time to get my act together and
Speaker 1: find a place I could buy. So you own in Lockhart?
Speaker 1: I own in Lockhart? Yeah, what kind of place you go?
Speaker 1: That's just a little house in a little subdivision that
Speaker 1: sticks down between a grain field or maze field rather
Speaker 1: and a couple of pastures. And uh, it's actually across
Speaker 1: the pasture from the Lockhart Airport where they do flight training,
Speaker 1: and there's a Cessna plane that circles around all day.
Speaker 1: We call it the Incessant Cessna. It took a little
Speaker 1: while to get used to, but it's just part of
Speaker 1: life now. So how big a house? How much property? Oh?
Speaker 1: Virtually no property? I think you know, quarter acre, lot
Speaker 1: um square feet something like that. Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: always wonder I'm a lead night person and wherever whenever
Speaker 1: I live close to people. I always upset them. I'm
Speaker 1: up too late, the music is too loud. Have you
Speaker 1: encountered any of those issues? No, Um, we're pretty quiet.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't, you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: crank up an app at home very much. I do
Speaker 1: that in rehearsal spaces. So so far, I haven't. They
Speaker 1: only I did to annoy him. My neighbors, because when
Speaker 1: I first moved down, there had five cats and they're
Speaker 1: all outdoor casts. We had to cage them up for
Speaker 1: a while, and they had been feral cats, but they
Speaker 1: sort of moved in and we got them fixed and
Speaker 1: all we're down to three. I'm not sure what predators.
Speaker 1: And I think an awl got the last one because
Speaker 1: I found al feathers across the street, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what got that other one. The coyotes don't come
Speaker 1: into into the neighborhood like they will in an urban
Speaker 1: area because you know, rural coyotes get shot at. They
Speaker 1: like to stay away from dogs and people. When you
Speaker 1: say we who's living in the house with my girlfriend Kelly?
Speaker 1: And I know you've been married this lady. How long
Speaker 1: have you been involved with her? Twenty one years? Twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty years. You lie. Now, I've been involved with my
Speaker 1: girlfriend for sixteen years and I'm not married. Why are
Speaker 1: you not married? Huh? Didn't we just I don't know
Speaker 1: that's that important to us, and it would mess with
Speaker 1: her Obamacare. Okay, you talked about living in Lockhart. You
Speaker 1: say you don't rehearse there. Where do you rehearse San Marcus?
Speaker 1: As I say, I'm Texas ignorant, we're San Sant Marcus
Speaker 1: is about eighteen miles east of Lockhart, and there's a
Speaker 1: good rehearsal facility for good rate. And my band is
Speaker 1: scattered around in several different directions, and San Marcus is
Speaker 1: fairly essential to all of us. So that's where we go.
Speaker 1: And just plotting in my mind where San Marcos relative
Speaker 1: to Austin due south, well, a little bit south and
Speaker 1: a little bit west. Keep forgetting I thirty five kind
Speaker 1: of runs at an angle through there. But okay, now
Speaker 1: you say you're doing this acoustic tour, can you talk
Speaker 1: about your band? How many you are on the road
Speaker 1: right now? That's just me and a tour manager right now,
Speaker 1: right So when you're on the road alone, you're being members.
Speaker 1: They're only getting paid when they're on the road with you. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they all they're they're pretty good carpenters. Okay, have you
Speaker 1: ever had to have a second gig since you've had
Speaker 1: your first record deal? So it has worked out for you. So,
Speaker 1: you know, Texas is in the news like crazy, and
Speaker 1: I realized Austin is like the hippest part of Texas.
Speaker 1: What's it like living in Texas? Now? Texas is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of Trump signs, a lot of
Speaker 1: don't tread on me signs, and they're always on the
Speaker 1: the richest looking ranches I ever see. They've got these
Speaker 1: big ornate you know, sheet iron gates with with always
Speaker 1: have the word ranching, and then they usually have figurines
Speaker 1: of cowboys open to something and and the cattle look
Speaker 1: like four h calves, you know, they look like they've
Speaker 1: been manicured. And then you'll have this don't tread on
Speaker 1: me sign and you want to go, you know that
Speaker 1: yellow flag with a put the rattlesnake on it, and
Speaker 1: you just you want to go knock on the door
Speaker 1: and say, who's treading on you? Like you're doing just fine?
Speaker 1: And those are all over the countryside out there, and
Speaker 1: you know, we keep hearing that Texas could go blue.
Speaker 1: I have a friend to listen for worth it says
Speaker 1: that's never gonna happen. From your viewpoint, what's going on?
Speaker 1: It should numeric numerically. But the thing is the Republicans
Speaker 1: have jerrymandered those districts for so long. And when I
Speaker 1: lived when I last lived in Austin, I lived in
Speaker 1: what was called the the Fajita District because it snaked
Speaker 1: its way from South Austin down through Beville and Kennedy
Speaker 1: all the way to the Rio Grand Valley, snaking us
Speaker 1: way through Republican strongholds, and Austin was cut up into
Speaker 1: a kaleidoscope like that just to keep us old hippies
Speaker 1: from having any cloud electorally. So, you know, we read
Speaker 1: about Abbott, we read about the abortion law, we read
Speaker 1: about the voting laws. Is it just going to continue
Speaker 1: to go in that direction or is something going to change? Well,
Speaker 1: I can't predict the future. Um they're gonna try to
Speaker 1: keep it going in that direction. They're trying to turn
Speaker 1: the clock back to their version of the fifties, which
Speaker 1: which means uh, segregation and women have no rights. The
Speaker 1: part of the fifties that they don't want is the
Speaker 1: sevent tax bracket. So if you're in Austin, is it
Speaker 1: like a bubble even though the state government is there where?
Speaker 1: Does this affect all walks of life and everybody's life
Speaker 1: in Texas? It's kind of a bubble. But I don't
Speaker 1: really I don't go into Austin much anymore because Austin
Speaker 1: it's turned into some version of California. I think we
Speaker 1: got all this high rise, multi use UH structure is
Speaker 1: going in and valet parking everywhere, and I don't recognize
Speaker 1: it even from two years ago. But Austin is known
Speaker 1: is a legendary nightlife music town. Is that an accurate description?
Speaker 1: It was accurate until about maybe five years ago. Now
Speaker 1: it's Disneyland basically. Can you amplify that a little bit? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it used to be you playing clubs and
Speaker 1: you get music aficionados coming in to see you. Now
Speaker 1: you get tourists coming in, sometimes on buses. They'll get
Speaker 1: off the bus and have a bunch of drinks and
Speaker 1: stand in front of the stage taking selfies and then
Speaker 1: get back on the bus. It's not about being there
Speaker 1: and experiencing anything. It's about saying you've been there. So
Speaker 1: if you're starting out musician's lost in a good place
Speaker 1: to be. It's a little expensive for a starting out
Speaker 1: musician now. I think the way the reason it became
Speaker 1: a kind of a music mecca is because the cost
Speaker 1: of living was so low for so long. But it's
Speaker 1: not that way anymore. One might ask the question, why
Speaker 1: live in Texas? What's the appeal? Well, I still live
Speaker 1: there because my band lives there and my girlfriend works there,
Speaker 1: and that's just just where I live. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would move here now, and I moved to
Speaker 1: Texas right now. What does your girlfriend do for living?
Speaker 1: She tends bar And you have a son. Where is
Speaker 1: your son presently living? He lives in uh Oak Hill
Speaker 1: over on the west side of Austin, Okay. So you
Speaker 1: have a new album, you're not on a rigid schedule.
Speaker 1: Why a new album now? That's just when it happened
Speaker 1: to finally come out. We made this record and we
Speaker 1: tracked it in June of twenty nineteen with Ross Hogarth producing,
Speaker 1: and and he's pretty busy, and that was pretty busy
Speaker 1: touring then, and so we after the tracking, we had
Speaker 1: to juggle our schedules to try to get the overdubs done.
Speaker 1: That took about the rest of the year. We were
Speaker 1: just about to finish up keyboards when California shut down
Speaker 1: and then the rest of the country shut down, and
Speaker 1: so we had to do keyboard over to his kind
Speaker 1: of piecemeal, with various different musicians and different locations. I
Speaker 1: did a couple of sessions with Buck Allen in Texas,
Speaker 1: and Ross had some guys that were emailing tracks in
Speaker 1: and so he finally got it all assembled and mixed
Speaker 1: this past year. And I don't remember what one the
Speaker 1: August release date came about, but that's just that's what
Speaker 1: the label decided on and and now it's out. Okay,
Speaker 1: did you make the album already have a having a
Speaker 1: record deal in place? Whould you cut first and then
Speaker 1: shop for a deal? Oh? No, I had a deal
Speaker 1: with New West Records. Um Logan Rogers, he owns a
Speaker 1: label called Lightning Rod. He did a couple of my records,
Speaker 1: and before that he was with Compoti Records and they
Speaker 1: did a couple of records. So I knew Logan. He's
Speaker 1: now a VP at New West, so he was kind
Speaker 1: of the key man on the contract. So you have
Speaker 1: a deal with them, they pay for the record. In
Speaker 1: today's marketplace, which is so different from when you started out,
Speaker 1: What is your label doing to get the word out? Well,
Speaker 1: I assume they're doing plenty of ads and they got
Speaker 1: al Moss working at the radio, so they seem to
Speaker 1: be doing a good job. Where I think we're number
Speaker 1: three Americana this week. So you know, you started out
Speaker 1: on a major label. As they say, the landscape change
Speaker 1: irrelevant of your career. You put out a record today,
Speaker 1: an album today. What are your personal expectations? What do
Speaker 1: you want? Well, what I want is to to get
Speaker 1: people in the clubs. And then when we when I
Speaker 1: started out making records on a major label, the business
Speaker 1: model was you put the record out and you tour
Speaker 1: to support record sales, and the hopes that you would
Speaker 1: sell enough records to recoup your cost and are enough
Speaker 1: royalties that you can make a living off the record. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, and that didn't work for me. I didn't
Speaker 1: sell near enough records. But I did get a foot
Speaker 1: hold in the touring business and learned how to tour
Speaker 1: pretty cheap, so I can actually profit on the road. Well.
Speaker 1: As the business evolved or devolved, however you want to
Speaker 1: look at it. You know, Napster and Spotify came along.
Speaker 1: Suddenly nobody's making any artists royalties off records. Everybody's having
Speaker 1: to scramble down the road. So at that point, everybody
Speaker 1: else was doing what we've already been doing. Um so
Speaker 1: we look at, you know, as at a record. A
Speaker 1: record is is a piece of art, but it's also
Speaker 1: a piece of advertising. We put a record out, I
Speaker 1: get to talk to you, I get to talk to
Speaker 1: all kinds of journalists. I get local press. When I'm
Speaker 1: coming to a town to play a gig, and people
Speaker 1: will know I'm coming and they might buy a ticket.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm looking for in a record. Okay, before COVID,
Speaker 1: and it's insanity, how many dates a year were you doing.
Speaker 1: I was out about half the year, and when we
Speaker 1: were home, we had a weekend gigs and regular gig
Speaker 1: at the Continental Club on Wednesdays. I also had a
Speaker 1: regular solo thing, so we're pretty busy. Well the same
Speaker 1: since then. I had to learn to stream, so now
Speaker 1: I do a couple of live streams a week, and
Speaker 1: and it was it was pretty good money at first,
Speaker 1: and then everybody's unemployment ran out and they don't tip
Speaker 1: quite so high, but but they're still pretty generous and loyal.
Speaker 1: So I've been very lucky with the people out there.
Speaker 1: So how frequently were you doing the live streams twice
Speaker 1: a week, once on Wednesdays and once on Sundays And
Speaker 1: what platform were you using? I use Facebook and YouTube
Speaker 1: and Twitch. For a while, I was just using Facebook.
Speaker 1: I usually have like two fifty a week or to
Speaker 1: fifty per show. At first it was somewhat more than that,
Speaker 1: and then I guess everybody got bored with my mercury.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but it's boiled down to, you know,
Speaker 1: two fifty loyal fans and from different places. You know,
Speaker 1: Wednesday night I do at at pm Central and then
Speaker 1: Sundays I do it one pm Central because that way
Speaker 1: I still get I get the Europeans that are still awake,
Speaker 1: and I get the Californias they're just getting up. So
Speaker 1: you have to thank globally on the net. And do
Speaker 1: you think it's the same Twitter and fifty people every
Speaker 1: gig where there's a certain number of die hards, a
Speaker 1: bunch of them, because well yeah, because you see their
Speaker 1: handles on Facebook scroll I use I use re stream,
Speaker 1: which goes multi format, so it goes out to UH, Facebook, YouTube,
Speaker 1: and Twitch. Twitch has the best technical aspects, best audio,
Speaker 1: best video, and about two listeners. We're getting another we're
Speaker 1: getting more unstable internet. UM YouTube has pretty good video,
Speaker 1: pretty good audio. But Facebook remains the most popular. I
Speaker 1: think it's because the interactive nature of it. People like
Speaker 1: to get together and shot amongst themselves. So if you're
Speaker 1: doing two shows a week on a presentation level, how
Speaker 1: do you decide what material to play? I try not
Speaker 1: to repeat UH songs more than you know every third
Speaker 1: or fourth show. So I just asked kind of rotate
Speaker 1: through my material, and I generally do one cover song
Speaker 1: per show, usually one that I've never played before. I
Speaker 1: just started surfing the internet and trying to jog my memory.
Speaker 1: So what are some of the cover songs you've played?
Speaker 1: I did Garden Party one time. That was interesting. I
Speaker 1: wasn't and I was like that. Sometimes I'll pull up
Speaker 1: hits that I remember when I was, you know, fourteen
Speaker 1: or fifteen, UM, please come to Boston. I really like
Speaker 1: doing that. You've done so many of these, You've learned
Speaker 1: what works most when you play the well known songs
Speaker 1: or when you tell stories. Yeah, what works for your audience. Well,
Speaker 1: depending on a live show, I don't talk so much.
Speaker 1: But on the Internet you have to. You have to
Speaker 1: sort of be kind of twisted, Mr Rogers, because you
Speaker 1: gotta tune these guitars, and everybody's right up in your face.
Speaker 1: They can they can see you, they can see your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So you gotta keep something going, some kind of pattern.
Speaker 1: But there's just some of the old songs that they
Speaker 1: really like. They always like Choctaw Bingo level Land, Painting
Speaker 1: by Numbers, that kind of thing. So do you personally
Speaker 1: know a lot of these hardcore fans or do you
Speaker 1: keep him at arms length? Uh? No, I don't know
Speaker 1: very many fans in general, and I don't do like
Speaker 1: I don't interact on Facebook. I don't do Facebook unless
Speaker 1: I'm streaming. Um. There was a little while where I
Speaker 1: kind of got drawn into the culture, and I just
Speaker 1: don't like that. I don't like to worry about it.
Speaker 1: I'll put my show out there and every now and
Speaker 1: then I'll post something just to see if I can
Speaker 1: get a feeding frenzy going, because for a while there,
Speaker 1: you you know, you get all kinds of trolls. That
Speaker 1: was fun. To watch. But if I'm mad enough, I'll
Speaker 1: post something. But I don't ever look at the comments anymore.
Speaker 1: I just, you know, I don't worry about what they
Speaker 1: think that much. But you're a guy who was not
Speaker 1: speaking in bland statements, and there's a lot of personal
Speaker 1: stuff and therefore bonds fans to you. And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: if one of the reasons you might keep fans in
Speaker 1: arms lengthens, you might have had some bad experiences. By
Speaker 1: the flip side, there's a lot of acts that depend
Speaker 1: on their fans to get the word out. They literally
Speaker 1: stay at their houses. Where are you in that game? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't stay at private residences on the road.
Speaker 1: And I'm just a little too old to be that accessible, because, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was starting out and making records,
Speaker 1: we were still in the business of selling exclusivity and
Speaker 1: myth and it's more fun to sell that than than
Speaker 1: than accessibility. I don't you know, I've gotten. I got
Speaker 1: where I didn't want to go to the merch table anymore.
Speaker 1: For for a while there, I had to because we
Speaker 1: had to make little extra money and and my drummers
Speaker 1: in the T shirt business. I wanted him to make
Speaker 1: a little extra money, And so I'd go out there
Speaker 1: and signed stuff I found that. You know, after you
Speaker 1: drive all day and then you check in a hotel,
Speaker 1: you take an hour off, you go load in, then
Speaker 1: you sound check, then you do a show, then you
Speaker 1: go out and try to talk to people, and you
Speaker 1: just don't have anything left but meanness, so quite off,
Speaker 1: and I'd get in a practice with a fan, you know,
Speaker 1: or you know, or I just let him know what
Speaker 1: an asshole I was. You don't want to let them
Speaker 1: know that. You want to keep them in the dark
Speaker 1: on that. And so it was better if I don't
Speaker 1: go near the merch table and sign stuff because one thing,
Speaker 1: it just takes so much energy, and you need that
Speaker 1: energy for the next day's show. And you know, there
Speaker 1: there are artists like Joe really who could talk to
Speaker 1: people all night long and get up and play a
Speaker 1: great show the next night. But me, it would wear
Speaker 1: me down after a while. And besides that, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's got a camera now, they all got a cell phone,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna get a picture with you, And it's
Speaker 1: just it takes a lot of energy to stand there
Speaker 1: and do that and just to be nice for that
Speaker 1: long when you're already that tired. You know, the freeway
Speaker 1: can make you grumpy. How big your business is? Your
Speaker 1: merch Um, you'd have to ask my manager a merchburg.
Speaker 1: I don't really keep tabs on that. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: like merch personally, but it's just necessary, okay. And you'd
Speaker 1: don't like merch because instance, because you got to carry
Speaker 1: it around and then somebody's got to account for it,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't it's not my craft really. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess the question I'm asking is if you don't sign
Speaker 1: and you don't sit there and talk to Fance, does
Speaker 1: that drive the numbers down? Definitely? But it's worth it
Speaker 1: to me to have more energy the next night to
Speaker 1: do a better show. Just the show is the product
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sell. And I feel better if I
Speaker 1: do a better job, and I do a better job
Speaker 1: if I don't bother with the merch table. Okay. You
Speaker 1: know your agent is Frank Riley at high Road Touring,
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, great guy, really dedicated. So how
Speaker 1: do you plan out your tours and going on the road.
Speaker 1: You call him and say this, how much I want
Speaker 1: to work and how much is involved in terms of
Speaker 1: the conversation. Well, um, actually, as Dave Rohan does most
Speaker 1: of the hands on work with my tours, Frank does
Speaker 1: sums that you know, he gets some good stuff coming
Speaker 1: to him. But basically, you arrange a tour, you get
Speaker 1: some good offers, you get some good money offers, and
Speaker 1: the trick at that point is to get to that
Speaker 1: money and get home with most of it. So you'll
Speaker 1: have your anchor dates that are high dollar and then
Speaker 1: you just take regular club dates for whatever the market
Speaker 1: will bear to get you there, so you can put
Speaker 1: gas in your van, you know, pay for the lodging,
Speaker 1: and pay for the payroll um per d MS, food,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. You're out now with just a
Speaker 1: tour manager. How do you decide when you go acoustic
Speaker 1: and when you go with the band? It depends on
Speaker 1: the offer. Some clubs will prefer acoustics, so they'll offer
Speaker 1: an acoustic show, and you know, so we'll do an
Speaker 1: acoustic run, which it's more lucrative. They'll you're getting the
Speaker 1: same money up front, but the overhead is a lot lower.
Speaker 1: Um that I wouldn't want to do nothing but acoustic
Speaker 1: because it wears you out. You don't get as much
Speaker 1: back from an audience and you don't have the and energy.
Speaker 1: It's like a band show that the energy is sort
Speaker 1: of circular. You're passing it between you and the band
Speaker 1: and the audience it comes back around, whereas with a
Speaker 1: solo show it's just you and the audience. It's linear.
Speaker 1: It's like a tennis game, straight back and forth. Um,
Speaker 1: it's great in some ways. You can you can really
Speaker 1: get your songs across. But you know, you do a
Speaker 1: month of those days. It's just where you're flat out.
Speaker 1: So when you do go on the road, how many
Speaker 1: dates a week do you tend to work? We try
Speaker 1: to work six days a week. We take Monday off
Speaker 1: for a travel day, um, because it's um, nobody goes
Speaker 1: out on Monday nights anyway, and you always travel in
Speaker 1: a van with a band. Yeah, if it's just a
Speaker 1: solo thing, then it's just right. Now. We're in my
Speaker 1: dad's old hun day As it's the best running car
Speaker 1: we got and you you go out. So how much
Speaker 1: equipment do you take? I'd take just to take a
Speaker 1: twelve string guitar, six string guitar, a couple of tuners,
Speaker 1: a couple of pedals. That's about it. Are you in
Speaker 1: equipment geek or you know he was. There are people
Speaker 1: who have a hundred guitars, whe other people really only
Speaker 1: have one. Where are you in that landscape? I have
Speaker 1: quite a quite a few guitars. I couldn't count them.
Speaker 1: I don't think um. Then, when I tear with a band,
Speaker 1: I usually have five guitars on stage. I thought about
Speaker 1: bringing a third guitar on his solo thing, because I
Speaker 1: gotta I gotta eight string baritone I've been messing with,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a hard shell case for it,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to bring it out because you know,
Speaker 1: stuff happens. And when you bring the five guitars for
Speaker 1: a band gig, what are those guitars? Main? Main guitars?
Speaker 1: A Parl Reid Smith, swamp ash special as I bolt
Speaker 1: you know it's got a bolt on neck and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've got a Jerry Jones baritone. Uh got
Speaker 1: a National Res electric and sometimes I bring Strat for
Speaker 1: a Sparry guitar. Sometimes I've got an old guild S sixty.
Speaker 1: You know, we're a weird looking things. Single pick up
Speaker 1: it sounds pretty good. I'll bring that sometimes. And I've
Speaker 1: got a Guild acoustic with a sunrise in the hole.
Speaker 1: You go on the road and you know, you say,
Speaker 1: it's kind of overbearing. Ever been in a car accident
Speaker 1: as a result of all this traveling? No, that only uh,
Speaker 1: only real automotive mishap. I remember it was on my
Speaker 1: first tour, or I guess maybe technically second. We and
Speaker 1: we put waste Land out and we've gone out and
Speaker 1: you know, toured as a band, opening up for the
Speaker 1: Bodines and then Nancy Griffith and then the delf Wages,
Speaker 1: and we're out for about three months and then it's
Speaker 1: about to go home and suddenly the Indigo Girls. I
Speaker 1: wanted an know winner, so I took my bass player
Speaker 1: at the time, Randy Garyvy, and he also played guitar,
Speaker 1: So the two of us went out as a duo
Speaker 1: and opened up for the Indigo Girls. And again we
Speaker 1: were jokingly termed ourselves the out you go guys. But
Speaker 1: we got down to San Francisco and the original road
Speaker 1: manager on that I managed to get deported. Actually I
Speaker 1: had a hand in that. I was rather stupid tipped
Speaker 1: off the border patrol by going back looking for my
Speaker 1: road manager who had crossed in a separate car. And
Speaker 1: as it wound up sending him back to Canada. It's
Speaker 1: from New Zealand originally, but but he had rented a
Speaker 1: Ford Taurus station wagon. And so we picked up another
Speaker 1: tour manager in Portland because I didn't know how to
Speaker 1: settle a show or anything. And he rode with us
Speaker 1: all the way down down the coast, and we got
Speaker 1: to Eugene, and I was supposed to fly ahead, and
Speaker 1: I was supposed to fly down to San Francisco and
Speaker 1: sit in a hotel all day talking to press while
Speaker 1: the tour manager and the bass player drove that tore
Speaker 1: us down past Mount Shasta in that way, and and
Speaker 1: they got there and the phone rang and and it
Speaker 1: was Dana, the tour enter. He said that we got
Speaker 1: a problem. This is well, what's the problem? He said, Well,
Speaker 1: the street car just rip ripped the driver's door half
Speaker 1: off the rent car, And so, well, are you hurt?
Speaker 1: He says, no, you're not bleeding or anything. He said no.
Speaker 1: So well, what's the problem, he says, Well, what do
Speaker 1: you want me to do? So, well, you're in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: So what you do is you empty everything and out
Speaker 1: of that car and you take it over to North
Speaker 1: beach and leave it on the street. That's gonna get
Speaker 1: swept in the morning, Carl will disappear, which you did.
Speaker 1: And then somebody got ahold of Max, the original tour manager.
Speaker 1: It was back in New Zealand at the time, and
Speaker 1: and he had been planning to ditch the car anyway.
Speaker 1: He wasn't going to play a budget a drop fee
Speaker 1: on a car that he picked up in Seattle to
Speaker 1: drop in San Diego. So he just called in it,
Speaker 1: you know, to the rent car company and say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I told you it's in Space sixteen in front of
Speaker 1: the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle. What do you mean it's
Speaker 1: not there, you know? So he called it and stolen basically,
Speaker 1: and they charged him seventy dollars on his visa card.
Speaker 1: But nobody got hurt physically. And when you're on the road,
Speaker 1: do you ever drive? I do most of the driving
Speaker 1: bass player and when I when I wear out, the
Speaker 1: bass player drives. And then if we have a night drive,
Speaker 1: the drummer drives. And how do you decide that? How
Speaker 1: do you decide you drive? Well, if it's if it's
Speaker 1: after show, the drummer drives. I usually I do the
Speaker 1: morning shift because that's when I'm best. And then bass
Speaker 1: player wakes up, you know, somewhere between one and three
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, and stopped for gas and he takes
Speaker 1: the wheel. And how many of these are long drafts? Well,
Speaker 1: we try not to drive too long, um, I mean
Speaker 1: eight hours in a show is is max for us,
Speaker 1: and it's usually between four and six in the West
Speaker 1: and the east it'll be shorter. It'll be you know,
Speaker 1: two to five hours because the distances are shorter back there.
Speaker 1: So you know, it sounds like a grind. And I
Speaker 1: realized this is what you do and you have to
Speaker 1: earn a living. Do you dig it? Do you like
Speaker 1: going on the road and going through this? I do
Speaker 1: once I'm out. I don't like leaving that much as
Speaker 1: it always have to work up to loading that van
Speaker 1: and getting out the front door. You know, the dogs
Speaker 1: look at you funny kind of cock their heads. They
Speaker 1: get all silky, and you know, if you get used
Speaker 1: to staying at home, it's harder to go back out.
Speaker 1: And it has in you know, since the lockdown. I
Speaker 1: have a different view of it all, um. And it
Speaker 1: didn't take long after I canceled that first tour. I
Speaker 1: was home for a couple of weeks and I realized
Speaker 1: my joints and my bones didn't hurt. I wasn't rattling
Speaker 1: down the road in that band. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: something about you. You hunch over that wheel, and it's
Speaker 1: that last twenty miles into town and you're trying to
Speaker 1: get in before rush hour locks the whole thing down,
Speaker 1: and it just gets really frantic. And that, you know,
Speaker 1: that talks me out pretty good. I don't miss that
Speaker 1: about the road. Now. The road is rife with people's
Speaker 1: stories of abusing drugs and alcohol just to copy. And
Speaker 1: you come off stage, you're all fired up. Takes you
Speaker 1: a long time to come down. Maybe you're traveling. How
Speaker 1: do you cope with that? Oh? Well, I've done my
Speaker 1: share of the alcohol, and and there's places I can't
Speaker 1: go back to you because of that. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things I'm not proud of. And at this
Speaker 1: point in time, the band members, how long did these
Speaker 1: particular members been playing with you? Darren and Tim have
Speaker 1: been with me twenty four years, and corn Bread, the
Speaker 1: bass player, he's been in about twelve years. I think, Wow, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the new album. So how did the
Speaker 1: songs come together. Was it like, oh I have an album,
Speaker 1: I got a right material, or is the collection what
Speaker 1: you've done for the previous five years. Well, I worked
Speaker 1: from a scrapile, scrap pile that I've worked on for
Speaker 1: the previous you know, thirty years, And basically what happened
Speaker 1: this time as Ross Hogarth called up after having waited
Speaker 1: a few months while I was messing around trying to
Speaker 1: finish these songs, and he said, look, we can get
Speaker 1: the Groove Masters in June. So I'm going to book
Speaker 1: the time and you're gonna finish the songs. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: did that work for you? Yeah? I got the songs done. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it's been you know a number of years since
Speaker 1: your last album. Were you're writing songs? Some people are
Speaker 1: would shipping all the time. They have extra stuff, they
Speaker 1: have throw aways. Other people they only have what they
Speaker 1: come into the studio with. What's your situation? I had
Speaker 1: less than when I came in the studio with. Actually
Speaker 1: I finished a couple of those songs, uh in the
Speaker 1: roadway in and Culver City, um, just because actually yeah,
Speaker 1: I was Darren the drummer and he told me said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I want that song about glasses. You know they did
Speaker 1: that once that at sound check and it wasn't finished.
Speaker 1: But I just pulled it out and tried it. And
Speaker 1: he remembered that they get that song back out and
Speaker 1: finish it. Let's cut that. So so I sat down
Speaker 1: and finished it. Okay do you Some people, you know,
Speaker 1: they work got word by word. Other people wait for inspiration.
Speaker 1: How do you do it? I get a couple of
Speaker 1: lines and a melody, and I just keep picking at it.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Over time. If I think about the lines,
Speaker 1: I think, okay, who said that? Um? So, I can
Speaker 1: envision a character, and and if I if I can
Speaker 1: get the character, I might get a story and I
Speaker 1: can put it into a verse chorus structure. And that's
Speaker 1: how I get a song. I have to be careful
Speaker 1: sometimes those characters don't agree with me. And the trick
Speaker 1: there is to stay in character. If you you start
Speaker 1: a song and character and then you start pushing your
Speaker 1: own opinion, you're gonna break character and you'll have a
Speaker 1: sermon instead of a song. Okay. The opening track talks
Speaker 1: about a thirty year crush. Where did that come from?
Speaker 1: I just heard it in my head. You weren't thinking
Speaker 1: about somebody you knew thirty years ago. No, I'm a
Speaker 1: fiction writer. Okay, but in a world music where it's
Speaker 1: mostly auto biographical. Two people still think that this is
Speaker 1: your story. Of course. Uh, you know, people think that
Speaker 1: Raciel's song is my story. You know, it's Raciel's song.
Speaker 1: It's not song for Rachel. Raciel is the narrator. But
Speaker 1: it signed my voice. That's the thing about being a
Speaker 1: singer songwriter. You know, Tom T. Hall wrote Harper Valley Pta,
Speaker 1: but I don't think he's sang it, so he didn't
Speaker 1: have that problem. He pitched it to a female artist. Okay.
Speaker 1: Another song is Operation never Mind, which I'll just say
Speaker 1: is a political song. What's the backstory there? Uh, there
Speaker 1: is a little backstory there. I didn't have. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine was in the Army for a long time.
Speaker 1: He really liked it until until he got to Bagdad
Speaker 1: and got cross was with some contractors and the army
Speaker 1: brass backed the contractors over him, basically, and that's where
Speaker 1: I got. I got some of that story out of that.
Speaker 1: But my you know, my problem with a lot of
Speaker 1: our military operations sense Vietnam is that that we don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on because we don't allow actual coverage.
Speaker 1: We don't allow journalists. And the last time I saw
Speaker 1: a real freelance, you know, television journalism at a military
Speaker 1: operation wasn't was when Reagan sent the Marines into beyrout
Speaker 1: to guard the airfield as a symbolic presence, he thought,
Speaker 1: And he didn't think anybody would shoot at a marine,
Speaker 1: I guess. And these guys were, you know, they'd suffered
Speaker 1: some casualties early on from snipers, and at that time,
Speaker 1: YAM cameraman and reporters were just walking up to random
Speaker 1: Marines and asking them questions, and the Marines were allowed
Speaker 1: to answer, and they looked right in the camera and
Speaker 1: they said, why did you send us? This isn't our mission.
Speaker 1: We're an offensively trained unit. You know, you're having us
Speaker 1: guard something on low grounds surrounded by hustles on a
Speaker 1: high ground, and we don't get to go out and
Speaker 1: take the high ground. Why us? Then you know, the
Speaker 1: barracks blew up that somebody drove a truck bomb into
Speaker 1: a barracks and killed a whole bunch of guys. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure wine Burger and Reagan didn't look good.
Speaker 1: And pretty soon suddenly we're in Grenada, and nobody can
Speaker 1: really figure out why we're in Grenada. And the journalists
Speaker 1: that came ashore with US forces were detained aboard a
Speaker 1: US aircraft carrier for the duration of the action. Uh,
Speaker 1: I wasn't. I was talking telling that story to Scott
Speaker 1: Simon from NPR the other day and he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I've covered that war, but he didn't go
Speaker 1: in with US forces. He went in through Barbados with
Speaker 1: Grenadian citizens and just kind of snuck onto the island.
Speaker 1: So he knows a lot more about that action. But
Speaker 1: you know, but ever since then, you know, we we
Speaker 1: haven't had just you know, freelance journalism going on with
Speaker 1: and I guess the next major action. You know, in
Speaker 1: Desert Storm, we had Swarts cough Spoon feeding us the
Speaker 1: war to a press pool and a tent watching the
Speaker 1: video equips that he wanted them to see. And then
Speaker 1: now we do have in beds here that there's you know,
Speaker 1: out there with the troops and doing good journalism, but
Speaker 1: it's hard to get to there's so many sources. Now,
Speaker 1: during Vietnam we add Walter Cronkite and some other guys,
Speaker 1: and everybody listened to them, we had a center because
Speaker 1: we only had a few channels to listen to, and
Speaker 1: everybody listened to Walter Cronkite, and that war ended when
Speaker 1: Cronkite got enough of it. But you know, now we
Speaker 1: we don't have we we don't know what's going on,
Speaker 1: and so we can't make decisions as citizens. You know,
Speaker 1: Tennyson said from the you know, the in the Light Brigade,
Speaker 1: from the point of view of a soldier, he said,
Speaker 1: our ours is not to question why, ours is but
Speaker 1: to do or die. But as a allegedly free citizen
Speaker 1: in a free society, ours is to question why. And
Speaker 1: we're not doing that actively. We've kind of trained ourselves
Speaker 1: not to. But the flip side is we we don't
Speaker 1: know what to question because we don't have information. So
Speaker 1: that's that's part of what that song is about. Okay,
Speaker 1: So now it's certainly a different era from the three
Speaker 1: network era. And just to flip the script, one might
Speaker 1: say that the right wing and the Republicans, they are
Speaker 1: saying they are personally analyzing the information. Therefore they're not
Speaker 1: getting vaccines. Therefore they have their take on all these things.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have the informs. It is in
Speaker 1: looking for information. We have another segment believing they found
Speaker 1: the information. Where does this leave us? UM? I don't know.
Speaker 1: We're in a nest because everybody has their own reality. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got so many sources that you know
Speaker 1: you can you can find the channel is going to
Speaker 1: give you your own opinion back and reinforce your opinion.
Speaker 1: And I guess maybe that that sells more products than
Speaker 1: actual information. And if you could snap your fingers and
Speaker 1: change America, how did you change? UM? I would educate people.
Speaker 1: I would fund the public school system as much as possible.
Speaker 1: I would try to teach um critical thinking. I still
Speaker 1: got an unstable internet. No, I mean I remember being
Speaker 1: very frustrated as as a college student, which I was
Speaker 1: not a very good student, but I took a philosophy
Speaker 1: class and I would go in to these discussions and
Speaker 1: all anybody wanted to know was what was going to
Speaker 1: be on the quiz and the answers to it. Nobody
Speaker 1: was discussing philosophy. You know, it's about ideas, but we're
Speaker 1: not discussing ideas, and we're not we weren't trying to
Speaker 1: learn concepts. Well, I realized now that all that was
Speaker 1: an elective that fullfilled something, and all these kids needed
Speaker 1: it to get to something so they could be engineers
Speaker 1: or whatever they were trying to be. You know, they
Speaker 1: saw it as a process towards the Yeah, economic security,
Speaker 1: financial security. You know, I looked at it as school,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to learn something here. Um, stilly me.
Speaker 1: Did you finish college? No? I think I became a sophomore.
Speaker 1: But you know, we don't we we don't. We don't
Speaker 1: want people to think. It's much easier to govern people
Speaker 1: that don't think. So where did you get all this
Speaker 1: insight and all this knowledge? Was it from your parents?
Speaker 1: Your mother? Your father? Well, my parents were both academics
Speaker 1: when I was young. Um, you know, Larry made his
Speaker 1: living teaching creative writing up until the last Picture Show.
Speaker 1: You know, he had some books out, but in those days,
Speaker 1: you could keep putting out books, whether they sold or not.
Speaker 1: That the polishers would let you run five or six
Speaker 1: books at least. Um, But he wasn't selling enough books
Speaker 1: to make a living, so he taught, and then finally
Speaker 1: he co scripted Picture show and got a foothold and
Speaker 1: screenwriting business. And that's mostly how I made his living
Speaker 1: after that. Um. But you know, he was an academic.
Speaker 1: My mother was an academic. Most of the people we
Speaker 1: knew were academics, and they got around they discussed books,
Speaker 1: and they discussed the ideas. And I guess some of
Speaker 1: it led off on me because I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: like to read. I still don't. I'm not a well
Speaker 1: read individual. And did you grow up your parents whole?
Speaker 1: Were you when your parents would up less than a year?
Speaker 1: I think I don't. I don't remember them being together,
Speaker 1: just be Were you raised by both the primarily your
Speaker 1: mother or your father and my father your father? So
Speaker 1: you grew up with your father? Yes? And was he
Speaker 1: the type of person giving you lessons or he was
Speaker 1: more hands off? No, he didn't give me lessons, As
Speaker 1: I recall, he was just there all the time. So
Speaker 1: he wasn't giving you a father leaf philosophy. Um, no
Speaker 1: of it. He taught by example in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very strange, you know, to see these
Speaker 1: politicians now just fighting so hard for white power. I
Speaker 1: would have thought that would have gone away. Um. I remember,
Speaker 1: I think it was about nineteen sixty eight in Houston
Speaker 1: before we left, before we moved to Virginia. Um, and
Speaker 1: my dad was driving. We were on Sunset in Houston.
Speaker 1: He was driving along. He was looking at this house
Speaker 1: across the street because I guess he he thought maybe
Speaker 1: he could buy a house at that point, and he
Speaker 1: was looking at his house for sale. And he rolled
Speaker 1: into the back of a delivery truck at five miles
Speaker 1: an hour, and I flew off the back seat and
Speaker 1: hit the back of the front seat because you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't have seat belts on in those days. And well,
Speaker 1: he didn't damage the truck in front of him, damaged
Speaker 1: the car a little bit, and we all got out
Speaker 1: and and the driver was black. And that's the first
Speaker 1: time I really never saw fear on the face of
Speaker 1: a grown man. And the first policeman that came up,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was a walking cop. They had
Speaker 1: those in those days. And big fat Dude and Larry
Speaker 1: spent twenty minutes trying to keep the cop from giving
Speaker 1: the driver a ticket, repeating over, nor, no, sir, it
Speaker 1: was my fault. He was just off to the stoplight.
Speaker 1: You know. That cop got so mad his face disappeared.
Speaker 1: He could not believe that the white guy wouldn't let
Speaker 1: him end. Take it on the black guy and a
Speaker 1: couple of young cops showed up in a cruiser and
Speaker 1: they kind of looked around a shrug and got back in.
Speaker 1: But that big walking copies kept at it relentless for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I didn't really take all that
Speaker 1: in at the time. It took a lot of years,
Speaker 1: but to realize that that was a brave act on
Speaker 1: where he's part and that time and place. You know,
Speaker 1: I recently watched the film Magic Trip, and although you're
Speaker 1: very young, two years old, Ken KESI and his bus
Speaker 1: and Mary Pranksters come and stop at your father's house.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect you to remember that scene. But while
Speaker 1: you were growing up, did your father interact with all
Speaker 1: those people that he knew from Stanford, etcetera. Well, he
Speaker 1: certainly interacted with Ken. I don't know if he interacted
Speaker 1: with Peter Beagle or any of the other people in
Speaker 1: that Stigner class, But I do remember the second time
Speaker 1: the bus came to that house. I was a little
Speaker 1: bit older. I was like six or seven then, and
Speaker 1: I took a liking to There was a prankister by
Speaker 1: the name of Hermit that I idolized. Hermit because he
Speaker 1: wore a big knife on his belt. And one time
Speaker 1: we rode the bus over to the astrodome and back
Speaker 1: and and the cops took Hermit's knife away, and I
Speaker 1: thought that was some kind of a tragedy. Even it
Speaker 1: didn't shake him up real bad. And of course Hermit
Speaker 1: turned out to be an FBI informant who eventually got
Speaker 1: a lot of the thone in jail. So careful how
Speaker 1: you take your heroes. You know. Wow, And since your
Speaker 1: father interacted with keys, he's a fascinating character, comes out
Speaker 1: of the shoot with a lot of success, and then
Speaker 1: he will literally say, well you can judge whether he
Speaker 1: fried his brains with drugs. What was your drugs? What
Speaker 1: was your perception of ken Um? I was about half
Speaker 1: scared of him. Yeah, very charismatic, and I liked the
Speaker 1: whole court and kind of control the conversation, and as
Speaker 1: I wasn't used to that kind of manic energy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: our house was pretty calm for the most part. Okay,
Speaker 1: you wrote, certainly in my eyes slung in the decade
Speaker 1: we can't make it here. Is there any power in
Speaker 1: political songs anymore? Certainly in the sixties they were woven
Speaker 1: into the culture anti Vietnam culture. What do you think now?
Speaker 1: I don't really know, and I just I wrote that song.
Speaker 1: I started it during the Clinton administration, and I finished
Speaker 1: it during the Bush administration, and I kept singing it
Speaker 1: on into Obama's years a little bit, but I don't
Speaker 1: I didn't expect it to have any kind of power.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it did either. But that was
Speaker 1: fun for a while. Well, we we work in a business.
Speaker 1: We've had success doing anything, especially in today's world where
Speaker 1: it's hard to get noticed, most people try to replicate it.
Speaker 1: After you have that success with that song, did you
Speaker 1: consciously not want to repeat it? Did people ask you
Speaker 1: to do something similar? No? I didn't set out to
Speaker 1: write a political song. I just followed the words where
Speaker 1: they led um And then the next time. The problem
Speaker 1: was I got pegged as a political songwriter at that point,
Speaker 1: and so on the next record, I had Cheney's Toy,
Speaker 1: which was political for sure, but it was more McMurtry ranting.
Speaker 1: It wasn't written from a character that everybody could identify
Speaker 1: it with, so it was fun, but it was largely misinterpreted,
Speaker 1: and people thought I was saying that the soldier was
Speaker 1: Cheney's toy, which I was really saying Bush was Cheney's toy.
Speaker 1: I was. I was referred to that era as the
Speaker 1: Cheney administration. I felt like Cheney was the puppeteer and
Speaker 1: Bush was the puppet. And you know, I'd read in
Speaker 1: the New York Times that Cheney would tell Bush you're
Speaker 1: the man every you know, day to get him to
Speaker 1: pump his ego up so he'd go out and sell
Speaker 1: his policies. And as I thought for some reason people
Speaker 1: might recognize that, Well, it turns out a lot of
Speaker 1: the country doesn't read the New York Times. So so
Speaker 1: I got a little bit of a bad rap for that.
Speaker 1: But you know, I should have been more careful. You
Speaker 1: do you read the New York Times, You keep up
Speaker 1: on the news every day. I did for a while. Um,
Speaker 1: I tend to read The Post now orson post. Um,
Speaker 1: the Time's got a little whimpy. In my opinion, the
Speaker 1: Post has rebuilt itself into a good paper once again.
Speaker 1: Can you go a little deeper in the difference of
Speaker 1: the two. Well, the Times seems to always have to,
Speaker 1: you know, hedge its bets and and try to look
Speaker 1: like they're being objective by giving the right wing a
Speaker 1: little bit of play, which the Post doesn't bother with
Speaker 1: that so much. You know, they own their liberalism a
Speaker 1: little more fiercely. So since you really do, even though
Speaker 1: you claim not to, you really follow this closely and
Speaker 1: have a lot of insight where's it going in America?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I can't I can't judge the future,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't surprise me so much. What surprises me
Speaker 1: is that, you know, people after Tim McVey blew the
Speaker 1: side off that building, we didn't do some kind of
Speaker 1: national psychological triage because anybody that's just driven around in
Speaker 1: the middle of the country knows that that was not
Speaker 1: an anomaly. You know, people out here have been trained
Speaker 1: to distrust the government and distrust elites whatever they call them.
Speaker 1: You know that they'll say they hate elite and then
Speaker 1: they'll vote, vote for a bush, you know that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. That this distrust of liberalism and government is
Speaker 1: deep seated and along seated, and it's it's bundled with
Speaker 1: the racism that's every bit is deep seated out here.
Speaker 1: So you know, right now, although there's a democratic administration,
Speaker 1: the Democrats controlled we mean well, they control the Congress
Speaker 1: and they control presidency. They certainly do not control the courts.
Speaker 1: It seems like the Republicans are gained the right wing,
Speaker 1: even though smaller numbers, are gaining evermore power. They have
Speaker 1: the state governments, and that's a big deal. And that's
Speaker 1: because they can, you know, they can gerrymander these districts
Speaker 1: where they can stay in power. But it's really strange.
Speaker 1: I mean, like they're supposed to be pro business, right, well,
Speaker 1: you haven't her Abbot back in Texas. He you know,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't like your policies, he'll come after you.
Speaker 1: And any club there that tries to do a mask
Speaker 1: mandate or a vacts mandate is immediately threatened with the
Speaker 1: loss of their liquor license. And for some reason, they
Speaker 1: where he's a precient you know, it's it's government oversight
Speaker 1: if the Feds tell Texas what to do. But if
Speaker 1: the state of Texas tells a private business that can't
Speaker 1: have a mask mandate, then there's that's patriotism. They're fighting
Speaker 1: for your individual freedoms. And I don't understand how he
Speaker 1: can spend that to his advantage, but but his followers will.
Speaker 1: They'll just do anything to keep from doing what the
Speaker 1: Liberals do. They'll take calf medicine I have relatives who
Speaker 1: take calf medicine, bovine and equine d warmer, and you
Speaker 1: bother to get into it with him. No, So once again,
Speaker 1: you know there's a long there's a big stand right
Speaker 1: now amongst the right wing and the white nationalists, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Even though the country is going more multi colored, shall
Speaker 1: I say, in the whites are decreasing in percentage of population,
Speaker 1: but certainly in Florida there are a lot of people
Speaker 1: Latinos who voted Republican and you're living in Texas. I mean,
Speaker 1: is it just gonna go on this way or is
Speaker 1: there going to be an inflection point? It'll it'll go
Speaker 1: on this way as long as they can keep it
Speaker 1: going on. I mean, they've always preached that the white
Speaker 1: men is outnumbered. Well maybe now he actually is. So
Speaker 1: they're freaking out. You know, they're losing their minds. We
Speaker 1: had a black president that freaked him out. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing a sign in in Utah or no it was
Speaker 1: in it was in Idaho. It's just on the outside
Speaker 1: of loww Pass, a big sign by this cabin in
Speaker 1: the middle of the woods. Congratulations, Jimmy Carter, you are
Speaker 1: now the second worst president in US history. There's another
Speaker 1: line in your new album talking about you know they're
Speaker 1: gonna need the Mexicans to actually build the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the last an idea that's been battered around. And
Speaker 1: Tom Russell wrote a song Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?
Speaker 1: I just I just made a different spin on it.
Speaker 1: So what is the backstory of the Glasses song? Uh?
Speaker 1: We Uh. There's a festival in the Florida Panhandle called
Speaker 1: the thirty A Festival and it takes place in January
Speaker 1: and multi stage, multi venue, a lot of bands coming
Speaker 1: in and out, and it all takes place along Florida
Speaker 1: Highway thirty Alternate, which runs from runs Pensacola out through Destin,
Speaker 1: Fort Walton Beach, goes all the way over Mexico Beach,
Speaker 1: Panama City. Um, but if I've played it a number
Speaker 1: of times yet to get in and out of that
Speaker 1: festival without freezing to the bone at some point, because
Speaker 1: when the wind blows out of the north in North Florida,
Speaker 1: it's the same north wind that goes through Texas, and
Speaker 1: it gets cold, especially when you know right there by
Speaker 1: the Gulf you got that damp cold, it just goes
Speaker 1: right to you and it can be miserable. So I
Speaker 1: don't know why I just started messing with words about
Speaker 1: you know, she woke up mad, trying to pick a fight.
Speaker 1: I got the thing going, UM written most of the
Speaker 1: song for it. The glasses was just supposed to be
Speaker 1: a placeholder, you know, I heard it in my head
Speaker 1: while I'll put that in there until I get to
Speaker 1: where I can write a real chorus. But then I
Speaker 1: hadn't finished the song. When I sang it. It sound
Speaker 1: checked just for a lark, and and it's stuck. Just
Speaker 1: you know, it seemed to sing okay, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: hurting the song. And you know everybody that heard saying,
Speaker 1: I'll just leave that in there. It's fine. Now there's
Speaker 1: a line there where you talk about the woman being
Speaker 1: in the shower and she's a lude. You know, we
Speaker 1: live in the meat too. Era. Needless to say, you've
Speaker 1: established that this is fiction. You're writing again characters. But
Speaker 1: do you ever internally blink saying, oh, I'm gonna write
Speaker 1: this and I'm gonna get blowback. Maybe I should maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't. Ah, Yeah, I mean I get some some places,
Speaker 1: I get a little twinsies singing Choctaw bingo and I
Speaker 1: wrote that a while back before the Meat Too era. Um,
Speaker 1: there may come a day I don't get to sing
Speaker 1: that anymore. Things mean different things in different eras, So
Speaker 1: I don't know right now. I'm still taking my chances
Speaker 1: and about what's the matter? Which I find the catchiest
Speaker 1: song and a great song on the album even though
Speaker 1: it's close to the end. How'd you come up with that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Decades of riding along listening to people talking on cell
Speaker 1: phones in a van, Yeah have been. I've been listening
Speaker 1: to that since the cell phone came about pretty much.
Speaker 1: And uh, how did you decide on the order of
Speaker 1: the record? The track listing? That is always always tricky. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you find one to start and you follow it. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be you have too many songs in
Speaker 1: the same key or the same groove, so you have
Speaker 1: to separate everything out that's going to cancel itself, you know.
Speaker 1: And this record was really tricky because I had three
Speaker 1: songs and six. Don't ever put three songs and six
Speaker 1: on the same record. You know. If I had it
Speaker 1: to do again, I'd have written one more song and
Speaker 1: bumped one of those sixes. But but we got it done.
Speaker 1: And how much of the record was written in the studio.
Speaker 1: How much the songs were pretty much finished? How do
Speaker 1: you do it? I probably had six really complete songs
Speaker 1: and all I finished decent. Man at that uh, that
Speaker 1: roadway in in Culver City. Um, i'd come rattling, and
Speaker 1: I've driven out there without the band. I was just
Speaker 1: driving a van full of gear and I came in.
Speaker 1: I got I got in just before rush hour, so
Speaker 1: I was just kind of tense and I got in.
Speaker 1: I got off the freeway, and first thing I did
Speaker 1: is fill up my tank because being from Texas, I
Speaker 1: assume when I go to California there's gonna be an earthquake.
Speaker 1: Sitting on a freeway for four hours trying to get
Speaker 1: out of there after the ground stopped shaking, so I
Speaker 1: better have a full tank. I filled up. Remember it
Speaker 1: was four dollars and nine cents for gallant regular. Um.
Speaker 1: I went down the street, checked into the motel, went
Speaker 1: next door and there's a pizza place that had a
Speaker 1: decent glass of all back and so just kind of
Speaker 1: recovering from that freeway. And then but I said that
Speaker 1: they're playing on the sound sets and they're playing all
Speaker 1: the most obnoxious hits from the seventies and eighties, and
Speaker 1: I can't enjoy it, and I'm just about to leave
Speaker 1: and just leave the wine on the counter and leave,
Speaker 1: and hear Freddie Mercury, You're saying, Mama, I just killed
Speaker 1: him man like. And then I remembered that decent man
Speaker 1: song that I started ten years ago and thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I gotta go back and finish that thing. So
Speaker 1: I did. That's that's how I wounded up on the record,
Speaker 1: because that the story, that song story came from a
Speaker 1: short story by Wendell Berry called Pray Without Ceasing, and
Speaker 1: I had read that and for some reason I started
Speaker 1: putting it the song from a different point of view.
Speaker 1: I put it from the murderer's point of view, and
Speaker 1: but basically just changed the season of the year and
Speaker 1: the chambering of the pistol. Otherwise, that's Wendell's story. And
Speaker 1: I actually I sent him a letter later saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: you want song credit on this. You want to write
Speaker 1: a credit because it's your story, And he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's a different medium. He left me. He left me
Speaker 1: a real nice voicemail about it. Cool. Now, anybody you've
Speaker 1: seen you live with the band knows you're quite a
Speaker 1: lead guitar player. Ultimately, David Grissom is brought in by
Speaker 1: Ross on this record. What was the backstory there and
Speaker 1: how much of the playing was you and how much
Speaker 1: was playing with somebody else? Very little of the playing
Speaker 1: was me. Um, it's not I'm not used to trying
Speaker 1: to track as a four piece, and the songs are
Speaker 1: so fresh that you know, I was just getting in
Speaker 1: the way. So I just put the guitar down and
Speaker 1: just sang to lead the session. And you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm not not that great in the studio, and I say,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're slowing a session down, you gotta
Speaker 1: cut out whatever slow You gotta keep the session moving
Speaker 1: as the main rule. And Grissom's the studio guy, so
Speaker 1: you know, he played most of the guitar. I played
Speaker 1: that that little hook on uh Glass on Fort Walton,
Speaker 1: the own thing on the right, and a little bit
Speaker 1: of acoustic guitar on Conola Fields, and I did the
Speaker 1: solo on I'm About Cattle. But now it's a studio record,
Speaker 1: you know, So when you're at home, when you're not
Speaker 1: on the road, do you pick up the guitar or
Speaker 1: you're checked out? When you're home. I do now, it's weird.
Speaker 1: For a long time I didn't touch a guitar if
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting paid too. It was like, at some
Speaker 1: point the guitar became work. I'm starting to come out
Speaker 1: of that mentality now. Or I'll pick up a guitar
Speaker 1: and just you know, play for twenty minutes, half hour.
Speaker 1: And I always feel better after I do it. But
Speaker 1: for a while there, I'd have to force myself to start.
Speaker 1: And if you have to do it all over again,
Speaker 1: would you choose this career path? Yeah? I believe I would.
Speaker 1: And how do you feel about your body of work?
Speaker 1: I I don't think about it much. It's the work
Speaker 1: in front of me that matters. Really, it's maintaining the
Speaker 1: ability to keep creating. Well, do you have a peak
Speaker 1: that you can mentally conjure you say, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to push the envelope a little bit more here,
Speaker 1: reach a certain height. I just want to continue And
Speaker 1: that usually means improving, at least slightly as you go.
Speaker 1: And what have you improved that as you're going on
Speaker 1: for thirty years, I've improved it singing a good bit,
Speaker 1: and that in turn has improved my writing Um. There
Speaker 1: was a point in the nineties when I would go,
Speaker 1: I'd start out on the road and we do a
Speaker 1: couple of days, and usually the third gig I would
Speaker 1: lose my voice entirely and I have to just kind
Speaker 1: of croak through the set somehow make it there and
Speaker 1: then somehow would come back forth or fifth gig. Well,
Speaker 1: my bass player at the time, Ronnie Johnson, said, James,
Speaker 1: you know, I know a good vocal coach. Just go
Speaker 1: get some vocal training so you get some some exercises
Speaker 1: so you don't lose your voice anymore and you don't
Speaker 1: have to struggle like that. So I did, and uh,
Speaker 1: I went. I went to Maydi case she's actually credited
Speaker 1: on this record, because I went back for a tune
Speaker 1: up so I could hit some of those high notes
Speaker 1: that I was clamming. And but one of the things
Speaker 1: I learned from Maydie is looking for vowels and consonants
Speaker 1: that sing well. If you know what sings easy, you
Speaker 1: will write better because you will write for a singer.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't matter so much in poetry or
Speaker 1: anything spoken word, but if you're writing for for the
Speaker 1: vocal instrument, then you want to pick your words you want.
Speaker 1: You want to pick words that roll off the tongue,
Speaker 1: that don't tongue tie you or hang you up or
Speaker 1: choke your voice off in any way. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: say vocal training has really improved my songwriting more than
Speaker 1: anything else. So you stated earlier you're not much of
Speaker 1: a reader, but then you quote Tennis and you quote
Speaker 1: the other person you based the song on. You talk
Speaker 1: about reading the wappo. How do you spend your time
Speaker 1: when you're not working? Oh, I do a lot of
Speaker 1: staring into space. But I used to hunt and fish
Speaker 1: a lot. I'm trying to get back into that. UM
Speaker 1: lately evans spending a lot of time cooking for appraisers.
Speaker 1: I'm sort of the wagon Boston Wagon wagon cook on
Speaker 1: the appraisal crew. And then, uh, how much TV do
Speaker 1: you watch? I don't watch any TV. UM. TV frustrates me.
Speaker 1: In the cabal era, in the satellite era, there's just
Speaker 1: too much. I was an avid watcher of Johnny Carson.
Speaker 1: When Carson went off the air, I just kind of
Speaker 1: never reconnected with the TV set. And how about all
Speaker 1: these streaming TV shows? The new era of television starting
Speaker 1: with the Sopranos. Some of that I did catch some
Speaker 1: of the Sopranos in various hotel rooms. I never I
Speaker 1: don't think I ever watched the whole episode all the
Speaker 1: way through, because it would always be you know that,
Speaker 1: flip it on and we got a half hour or
Speaker 1: four we gotta go to sound check that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but that's that was good TV. And then some of
Speaker 1: the uh and my son will will set me down
Speaker 1: and make me watch stuff every now and and I
Speaker 1: thought Justified was amazing some of those episodes. So you'll
Speaker 1: check into a hotel and you'll stare into the distance
Speaker 1: and let your mind come up with stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much. Or I'll catch up on emails that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And then spending a life in hotel rooms.
Speaker 1: You know, the roadway in is not the four seasons,
Speaker 1: as long as there's a bed, or do you have
Speaker 1: a certain level you don't like to go below, or
Speaker 1: you just see this pain of being on the road. Um, well,
Speaker 1: there are certain regions where the roadway ends about what
Speaker 1: we can afford. L A is a roadway in town
Speaker 1: for us. Now, I didn't used to be. We used
Speaker 1: to stay at the farmer's daughter. Farmers daughters went four
Speaker 1: dollars a night. Now you know we're not gonna do that. Um.
Speaker 1: There there was a great period where I could do
Speaker 1: I got real good at price Line, but then price
Speaker 1: Land took away the name of your own price function
Speaker 1: that put them on the map initially. So I don't
Speaker 1: really bother with that anymore. But price Land was great
Speaker 1: for a while. The main thing for me is proximity
Speaker 1: to the gig. If a nice hotel is going to
Speaker 1: add a half hour in a van back and forth,
Speaker 1: maybe a full hour after you've already driven a while,
Speaker 1: I don't want that. I want to limit the van time. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, like this tour here, this is a COVID tour.
Speaker 1: We're not doing hotels, we're basing out of airbnbs. So
Speaker 1: do you view yourself as suey generous just off on
Speaker 1: the landscape, Were part of the American scene or part
Speaker 1: of the continuum? Where do you see in terms of context?
Speaker 1: I don't think about it. And it's nice if there
Speaker 1: is a category somebody can put me in, because that
Speaker 1: usually sells more records, gets you a little more exposure. Um,
Speaker 1: it would probably be nicer if I were if I
Speaker 1: could make my own category like Willie Nelson, you know,
Speaker 1: somebody like that. But I'm kind of ambivalent about the
Speaker 1: whole thing right now, because you know, one of the
Speaker 1: problems with it, with with any kind of artistic field,
Speaker 1: is you gotta get famous. And um, the meager level
Speaker 1: of fame that I have attained up to this point
Speaker 1: can be as enough of a pain in the ass
Speaker 1: if I if I got bigger, it might be a
Speaker 1: problem for me. One thing about today, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to make new fans. Are you conscious of trying to
Speaker 1: make new fans? Do you think you're making them? How
Speaker 1: do you get them? What's your viewpoint on that. I'm
Speaker 1: not consciously trying to get them, because I wouldn't know how.
Speaker 1: But I have been lucky that my crowd is multi generational,
Speaker 1: and I'm playing to the grandchildren of people that were
Speaker 1: in my crowd thirty years ago, some of them. Um,
Speaker 1: and I've seen that. I've had people tell me that,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, my parents turn me me onto your stuff,
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, we need that. That's probably why we're
Speaker 1: still going down the road. And as you still go
Speaker 1: down the road, I'm gonna let you go here, James,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for giving us the backstory. And the
Speaker 1: insight and taking the time. Well, thank you, Bob, thanks
Speaker 1: for your help over the years. I'm a big fan.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know you're we met back in that
Speaker 1: was the complex, and we met at the Complex, and
Speaker 1: we also met at McCabe's one of your acoustic gigs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember you were doing candy Land at the Complex.
Speaker 1: I was definitely there with Mike, Yeah, Mike and Ross right,
Speaker 1: But then you know you're stuck with those guys. You
Speaker 1: know you're a loyal dude. But you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan. I'm always interested in what you have to do.
Speaker 1: And it's hard to listen to new music, not so
Speaker 1: much because I'm baked into the old. The people tend
Speaker 1: to either be repeating themselves or resting on their laurels.
Speaker 1: And when I found amazing about your new problem is
Speaker 1: you're speaking from an adult perspective, whereas so many people
Speaker 1: from your generation and older refused to do that. They
Speaker 1: want to say, well, if I don't get old, you know,
Speaker 1: I can fool people and you can't relate to him.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't fool the kids my way. They're too sharp. Okay,
Speaker 1: thanks again, until next time. This is Bob Left. SIDS,