WEBVTT - Joe Henry 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:14.280 Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.280 all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist, 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.360 which you can find a link to in the show 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.160 notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced 0:00:23.160 --> 0:00:28.360 in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right. 0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:32.800 Enjoy the episode. Joe Henry is likely one of the 0:00:32.880 --> 0:00:36.559 best living singer songwriters that you've never heard of. But 0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:39.720 even if you don't recognize his name, you've probably heard 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.839 his work. He's been at it for thirty four years, 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:47.800 having released fifteen solo albums on three Grammys, and produced 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.960 music for the likes of Elvis Costello, made his staples 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:56.320 Bonnie Rait and his sister in law Madonna. Yeah that Madonna. 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.000 During her cowgirl phase in the early two thousands, she 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:02.560 turned Joe's song Stop into her hit Don't Tell Me. 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.319 Joe Henry's latest studio album, his fifteenth, The Gospel according 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:11.119 to Water, was released in November, almost exactly a year 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:15.000 after he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. In 0:01:15.000 --> 0:01:17.520 this interview with Bruce Headlam, Joe talks about the artist 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:20.479 who gave him strength after his diagnosis, and also about 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.199 working with Elvis Costello. In the late great New Orleans 0:01:23.280 --> 0:01:30.800 legend Alan Tucson, just weeks after Katrina. This is broken 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:34.080 record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmonds. 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:42.360 Here's Bruce Headlam and Joe Henry from Pasadena, California. Joe 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:44.759 starts things off by playing something from his new album, 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:49.760 a song called the Fact of Love. Thank you for coming, 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.600 thank you for having me. And that was a song 0:01:53.680 --> 0:01:55.680 from your new album, which we want to talk about. 0:01:55.680 --> 0:02:01.080 But by way of introduction, longtime singer writer, probably one 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.280 of the best songwriters of the last one thousand years 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:08.040 or so, So tell me about that song first, the 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:11.160 Fact of Love. It's called it was the last thing 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:16.320 I wrote before recording the new album. When I recorded 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.480 this new record, I did not know I was making 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:21.720 a record. I needed to record some demos. I had 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.399 this rush of new songs. I'd never had a batch 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:28.359 of songs appear so quickly, to the point where I'd 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.400 not even made iPhone demos, you know, to keep track 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:36.000 of the basic architecture. And I can't read or write music. 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:40.240 So when I learned something it's no I wish I had. 0:02:40.320 --> 0:02:43.640 I wish I had How do you write the lyrics down? 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:45.799 And then I just think that if I go back 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.480 to them, the music will be embedded, and mostly it is. 0:02:49.560 --> 0:02:52.639 Once in a while something slips away, which is why 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:54.280 I try to get into the habit of making a 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:58.240 really just rough phone recording of something when it's brand new. 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.760 But these songs came in such a flurry that I 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:04.720 would have a new song and think, oh, I should 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.839 just quickly sketch this out, and then another song would 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.880 begin to appear, and I think, oh, I better pay 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:12.720 attention to this one, and then I just do both 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:14.960 of them. Well, pretty soon I had ten or eleven 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:17.920 songs that had no reference at all other than lyrics 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.239 written on a page, and I thought, I really need 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.679 to document this in some way so I don't forget them, 0:03:25.760 --> 0:03:28.600 and also so that I can stand back and evaluate 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:31.079 them in some way, which you can't just do as 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.640 readily when you're performing them to hear them. So I 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:39.320 went to an old friend's studio downtown and just blew 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:43.440 through everything with a few friends. Didn't even listen to 0:03:43.480 --> 0:03:46.200 playbacks of much of it, just trying to get them down. 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.400 And I got home with them and realized that something 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:54.520 more had happened. But also say that the songs came 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:58.000 in such a rush, Bruce that at one point I 0:03:58.000 --> 0:04:00.600 just wanted them to stop, which is not a common 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:05.320 thing for a songwriter to think aspiring songwriters, Oh, they 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.440 just showed upday, somebody just on the front law. Sometimes 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:14.080 they grow up like dandelions overnight, you'd be amazed. But 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:16.320 I really needed to get them in hand. I really 0:04:16.360 --> 0:04:19.160 wanted to play through them enough to get fluid with them. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.560 And it's a really different engagement for me to be 0:04:21.680 --> 0:04:26.760 practicing finished songs than writing songs. Maybe two days before 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:29.919 these sessions that we're supposed to be demos, my wife 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.240 was finishing a piece of sculpture. She's a visual artist, 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:37.039 and I said, I was walking past and I said, 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:40.400 there's a piece of unearthed stone that looked like a 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.200 torso and she was painting on top of it. And 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:45.719 I said, what do you call that? And she said, UM, 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.279 it's called the fact of Love. And I remember just going, fuck, 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:55.920 I hear it sounds spring loaded. I know that if 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.800 I pay attention to this for a moment, that there's 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:03.040 a song there and there, and very quickly, And once 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:05.719 I finished that one, I kind of thought, Okay, that's 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:08.560 that feels like a pretty complete bracket when I think 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.760 about what the earliest of these songs is, and I 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.560 really realized that that needed to happen, and then I 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:19.640 could step away from that part of the process. Was 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:22.040 your wife happy you took the title for I think 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:23.800 she was. I didn't change the name of it to 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:29.640 my pending divorced I think she was really pleased. Um. 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:33.560 You know, I find a lot of songwriting begins that way. 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.080 For me, A phrase, an image, a word that I 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.240 don't know how it was to describe it, except that 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:42.720 it is spring loaded. And I have this sensation that, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.599 very much like opening a bottle of champagne, you sort 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:49.520 of get one time for the cork to really pop, 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:52.720 and if you're not prepared to deal with with that, 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:55.679 you don't. You don't engage that because it'll go flat. 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.920 Did that that opening phrase and some of the guitar work, 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:03.040 did that come with the initial song or those things 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.040 you put on later? Or was at on a separate 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.120 track somewhere? How did that Does it come together? As 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.640 it happens differently all the time, Bruce, But in the 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:16.440 case of that song, I'd heard that title late in 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.440 the evening. The next morning, I was up very early 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.159 it was still dark, and I picked up a notebook 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.760 and I just remember kind of writing essentially those three 0:06:24.880 --> 0:06:28.680 verses in chorus. Just wrote it down like I was 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.280 taking dictation. A lot of the records sort of appeared 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:34.520 this way, and for whatever reason, and this is not 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:38.520 common necessarily, I walked through the room. I have a 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:43.960 lot of guitars laying around, and picked one up, put 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:46.080 the capo on the fourth fret as if I knew 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:50.200 that that's where it lived melodically as a key. I 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:52.440 didn't know that. I had no reason to think it 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:55.400 was in F sharp. I just put the capo there 0:06:56.160 --> 0:07:01.479 for some unknown reason, and just put the guitar my 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:05.360 lapp and played that opening motif. I didn't think about it. 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:10.800 I just reached and it was sort of there. I'm 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:15.720 making this aw sound very mystical because it is. I'm 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:19.160 not being evasive. It's just the way that it happens. 0:07:19.200 --> 0:07:22.120 You know, there's a there's an inherent quality to music, 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.880 as there is to living, that is inherently mysterious. And 0:07:27.520 --> 0:07:31.080 I do think, and I've said it in other moments, 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:36.560 our job is never to dispel mystery. Our job is 0:07:36.600 --> 0:07:41.680 to abide mystery and stand with it, be an alliance 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:45.679 with it, because there's a big part about living that's 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:50.520 just inherently mysterious, always has been, always shall be. And 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:52.800 the sooner we make peace with the fact that there 0:07:52.880 --> 0:07:55.520 is something else at play that we do not control, 0:07:56.040 --> 0:07:58.800 I think the more we can sort of be in 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:03.280 collaboration with whatever life is asking. You know, I think 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:06.920 back to Joseph Campbell when he said, you have to 0:08:07.000 --> 0:08:09.040 let go of the life you imagine so you can 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:11.440 have the one that's actually waiting for you. And there's 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.920 a certain kind of surrender that I think is essential 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:19.200 to almost all productive living, but creative life in particular. 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:24.400 You know, you just sort of have to surrender into process. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.760 And I don't mean surrender as in resignation. I mean 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:35.199 surrender as in radical acceptance. Speaking of resignation radical acceptance, 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.079 you had a tough year and a half. Do you 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:43.240 want to explain a little bit of that? Sure? A 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:48.160 year ago Thanksgiving? So you know, what is that fourteen 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.360 months ago something like that, I got a diagnosis of 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:58.280 stage four prostate cancer. And when I got that phone call, 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.360 and it really was like a movie, you know, picking 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:04.120 up the phone very innocently one day, you know, I 0:09:04.160 --> 0:09:09.360 felt like Bob Newhart, Hello, and there it was. You know, 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:11.960 It's like somebody opened a door onto a cyclone and 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:16.120 my family and I all stepped into it. I was 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:18.559 not prepared, even though I'd been in some i'd head 0:09:18.600 --> 0:09:21.160 back pain for well over a year. I had been 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:25.400 misdiagnosed three times. And I also, you know, I'm a 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.000 touring musician in my late fifties, and I was in 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.560 a really serious car crash when I was a teen. 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:35.840 So back pain is something I've just sort of learned 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.679 to live with. It's not intense, but it's present. It 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:41.680 has been enough often enough that it was easy for 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:44.360 me to think, I've just come off the biggest touring 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.200 cycle of my entire working life. And I don't know 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:50.520 any musician in their late fifties to tours who doesn't 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:53.520 have back issues. It was easy to just sort of 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:58.040 accept that it was no significant thing until it was. 0:09:59.160 --> 0:10:01.800 And next thing I know, there's somebody. I'm sitting in 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:06.480 front of a doctor who very irresponse, irresponsibly I've I've 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:09.080 learned he had very little to go on, just sort 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.400 of blurted out to my wife and I that he 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:15.720 thought I had like three to seven months to live, 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:21.080 you know, And I lived with that as a new truth, 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:24.520 you know, for a full week until I met my 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.760 oncologist that I worked with at UCLA, who assured me 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.040 that's not, in fact what I was forced to accept, 0:10:33.760 --> 0:10:35.120 you know. He said, I look at you know, I 0:10:35.160 --> 0:10:37.640 look at your whole life, not just this diagnosis. And 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:41.439 you know, I think of this as as chronic disease management. 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:43.680 It's not a terminal diagnosis. We help a lot of 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.840 people like you. But I really did live through, you know, 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.600 a week of real terror. The terror didn't end there. 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:57.120 It changed shape, became a little bit more stealth, but 0:10:57.200 --> 0:11:00.200 I still had a you know, a pretty rough go 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.520 and even though I responded to treatment almost immediately, I 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:09.400 mean almost immediately, I was out of pain physically, but 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:14.000 the psychic specter of that shadow is something real, and 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:18.480 it changed me, you know. I mean it's kind of 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.000 supposed to. What did it do to your songwriting? During 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:27.319 that time, I was writing with a new urgency. I've 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:30.360 always written a lot. I try to be writing all 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:32.080 the time. Does mean that I always finish a lot 0:11:32.080 --> 0:11:35.400 of things. But at the time when I was first 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:39.200 diagnosed and my wife Melanie was encouraging me to maybe 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:41.400 seek out a support group. There's a lot of good 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.520 ones around. They help a lot of people. And I said, look, 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:46.600 I don't know that I won't get there eventually, but 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.320 that's not how I process things. I don't see that 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:53.720 as my path right now. I'm going to have to 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.440 write my way through this, because writing is how I 0:11:56.480 --> 0:12:01.079 sort of process anything of significance in my life. And 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:04.280 I realized that the way that fear and sadness had 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:07.880 put a cap on my imagination, every time I could 0:12:07.880 --> 0:12:10.480 get something going, whether it was a palm or a song, 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:16.120 that my imagination re engaged, I could see beyond what 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:22.520 felt like an immediate and restricting way of thinking, and 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:24.640 all of a sudden, sort of psychically, the doors and 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:27.520 windows were open again, and I could see beyond, you know, 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:32.280 just the immediate fear of a moment. And so I 0:12:32.320 --> 0:12:36.040 just kept writing. And I know in retrospect that I 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:40.280 was writing to live, because that's that reconnected me to 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:44.320 myself in a way that my diagnosis when it first happened, 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:48.160 cut me off from who I believed myself truly to be. 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.439 Did it were your days? Though? That that fear just 0:12:51.440 --> 0:12:54.920 closed all that down sure, Oh absolutely. I still have 0:12:55.040 --> 0:12:58.480 days like that where I'm not fit company for anybody. 0:12:59.520 --> 0:13:02.360 There's less of that because I'm in remission. Now. I 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.079 feel better than I have felt in a couple of years. Actually, 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:07.679 last year I felt like I at the beginning of 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:10.480 the year, I was in a trench, And this year 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:13.400 kind of feels like it has begun, like I've I've 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:16.240 been shot out of a cannon. You know, when you 0:13:16.280 --> 0:13:18.160 were in that trench, what music did you listen to? 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:21.439 A lot of Lewis Armstrong, a lot of Charlie Parker, 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:27.040 a lot of Robert Johnson. Those were, Um, I've always 0:13:27.040 --> 0:13:30.600 been really important musicians for me, But for for I 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:34.640 started to say, for whatever reason is if I don't know? Um, well, 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:40.960 what's the reason that? Because those artists in particular, I 0:13:41.000 --> 0:13:45.080 feel that their humanity is so rawly and viscerally available. 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:48.120 You know, I hear music that was recorded last month 0:13:48.160 --> 0:13:51.320 and it already sounds like, you know, an artifact, like 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:53.640 one of those mosquitoes they bring out of the Pyramids, 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.520 trapped an amber. You know, I can see it, but 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:01.040 it's not alive. For me and time I've listened to 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:03.080 Robert Johnson and I've been listening to him since I 0:14:03.160 --> 0:14:06.600 was fifteen. He sounds like a living person jumping out 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.320 of a speaker. Charlie Parker does that to me too. 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:12.920 I can't. It's not background. To me. It is like 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:18.120 somebody walking into a room, and I am endlessly affirmed 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:22.080 by the spirit of that music. Not to mention the 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.880 fact that, certainly, in the case of Bird, he was 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:30.680 in other respects not the most functional adult in the room. 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:36.720 You know, he was a disturbed and troubled man. Yet 0:14:37.360 --> 0:14:41.400 not in spite of but I think because of he 0:14:41.480 --> 0:14:44.720 puts so much raw beauty into the world, and it 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:48.000 makes me think a lot about the African American experience 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:50.680 in particular, where I look back at some of my 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:57.440 greatest greatest heroes, you know, Lewis Armstrong, Duke Ellington in particular, 0:14:58.000 --> 0:15:02.240 and think about the brutality that experienced and yet their 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:09.040 response to it was incredible beauty. We'll be right back 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:15.560 after this break. We're back with more of Bruce's conversation 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:19.200 with Joe Henry. You know, you describe yourself primarily as 0:15:19.240 --> 0:15:23.360 a sort of a storyteller, and you you reject the 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:28.360 kind of confessional model of songwriting. I think you've literally said, 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.880 and I have the quote here the greatest misconception of 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:36.040 American popular music that if you're being honest, you're being entertaining, 0:15:37.960 --> 0:15:41.480 and you tend to tell stories even in your own work, 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:43.800 even the first and second person, but they're they're obviously 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:48.360 about characters. Yeah, did that change a little with this album? 0:15:48.400 --> 0:15:51.080 Are there are there elements of this album you feel 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:55.440 came directly out of your recent experience? Well, there's always 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:59.120 elements I can recognize after the fact. I don't often 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.880 and don't to be aware of that when I'm writing. Sure, 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:05.360 I mean, there are things that now look back and 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:07.680 going to go, well, that's that's really obvious to me, 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.440 why in that moment that's what would appear. But look 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:18.040 for starters, Bruce. I think that that all artistry, regardless 0:16:18.040 --> 0:16:22.640 of the medium, is storytelling, from the most abstract painting 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:26.960 to film to you know, I think it's all storytelling. 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:32.160 It's not all linear narrative, and yet they all seem 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:35.960 to provoke or want to provoke some sense of narrative 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.440 that we reach for. And I think musically is especially 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.680 potent because it, you know, it's not nailed to the floor, 0:16:43.720 --> 0:16:46.600 you know ingmar Bergmann said, that all art aspires to 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:50.960 work the way that music works, you know, because it's 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:56.400 it's there's no defense against it. It appears like weather, 0:16:57.920 --> 0:17:02.080 and it changes the day. And I think, certainly the 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:04.920 songs that have been most important to me my whole 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:09.600 listening life, our songs that are specific enough to engage 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:13.600 me and make me think of that something real is transpiring. 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.119 But they're not so overt as to nail everything to 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:19.879 the floor. There's not just one way to enter and 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.240 accept this story. I know that as a writer, I'm 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:27.080 fairly impressionistic. I do think I come out of a 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.840 very particular folk tradition. And when I say folk, I'm 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:32.040 saying that very broadly. And you know, I mean what 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.560 he got through as a folk singer. So is Joe Strummer, 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:37.600 you know. So was Bob Marley, you know, so is 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:43.080 Lewis Armstrong. You know. But it's funny that in only 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:45.520 just a few years ago I had a brand new 0:17:45.520 --> 0:17:47.040 record out. I'm trying to think which one it was. 0:17:48.040 --> 0:17:51.200 Maybe it was Reverie. Anyway, I had performed the whole 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:54.560 of it the night before in Los Angeles, and my 0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.080 son was in town from Brooklyn. He plays with me frequently, 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:00.840 and I was sitting out on the front yard under 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:04.000 a big pine tree the next morning with my wife, Melanie, 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:07.879 and my son lev On and my wife. You know, 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:10.520 we've been together. We've been married almost thirty three years. 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.280 We've been together longer than that. And I met her 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:17.200 when I was sixteen and she was fifteen. She said, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:20.480 it finally dawned on me. I don't know why it 0:18:20.480 --> 0:18:22.720 took me so long that you were a Southern writer. 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.240 You know. I mean, I'm from North Carolina. Originally, I 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:28.920 didn't really come of age there, but it is part 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.160 of my DNA. Both my parents are natives in North Carolina. 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.320 And she said, all the you know, your door, wealthy 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:39.639 Flannery O'Connor all makes sense to me now in a 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:41.280 way that it didn't before. I don't know what it 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:45.560 was about that batch of songs, that performance that allowed 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:48.000 her to hear me as coming out of a tradition 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:53.479 of Southern writers. Were your parents Southerners? They are still are, 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:56.360 They're still with us, and they still they moved back 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.120 to North Carolina, you know, we moved around a lot 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.000 when I was young. My father was an executive engineer 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.480 for Chevrolet, and not true anymore. But back in the day, 0:19:05.520 --> 0:19:07.719 if you were a lifer in that racket, you know, 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.640 all roads led to Detroit. So we moved to Detroit 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:13.760 area just as I was beginning high school the summer 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.159 before my tenth grade year, so that would have been 0:19:16.280 --> 0:19:21.600 summer of seventy five, and my wife, Melanie, her family 0:19:21.640 --> 0:19:23.399 lived there and we went to the same high school. 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:25.520 I met her there. I was friends with two of 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:30.080 her older sisters before I met her. But I feel 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:34.280 like I came of age, you know, among the Great Lakes. 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.520 But I do know that in my core, I am 0:19:39.200 --> 0:19:41.520 a Southerner, even though I spent a lot of my 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:46.080 early life trying to distance myself from that legacy, because 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:48.679 what I thought about the South as a young person 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.040 was not something I was proud of. Your parents were 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:56.360 also devout where they they are. My parents are Southern Methodists. 0:19:56.520 --> 0:20:00.800 Oh was out right, So I was, you know, I 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:02.679 went to church as a young person, just like I 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:05.960 went to school, which means if I wasn't sick, that's 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:09.760 where I went until I was, you know, fifteen, and 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:14.359 my older brother David was seventeen. We were very close 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:16.960 and at that point of our lives, we were staying 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.159 up you know, terribly late of a Saturday night listening 0:20:20.160 --> 0:20:23.800 to music and such. And it was one Sunday. My 0:20:23.840 --> 0:20:27.480 mother came and tried to rouse this out, and we 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.760 were not sprightly, and she said, well, I'm not going 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:32.399 to force you to go, and I said you're not. 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:34.479 She said, you're fifteen. You have to make your own 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.080 decisions about this, and then I didn't. I didn't return. 0:20:40.080 --> 0:20:41.840 I want you to play another song, but first I 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:44.320 do have a bone to pick with you at which 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:46.280 is I think maybe the first song I ever heard 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:50.880 of yours was the Ohio Plane Crash. And I mean 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:54.040 that song I just thought was incredible. It captured experience 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:57.520 so beautifully because when I was a kid, I saw 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:01.119 a plane crash on an air show on Lake Ontario. 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.040 And then I found out years later you made the 0:21:05.040 --> 0:21:08.359 whole thing up I did. Isn't it better that I 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:12.040 did it? Maybe? Well you either either that or I 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:16.760 now can only remember that experience yea through your song. 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:18.520 But your song is about a kid, right because they're 0:21:18.560 --> 0:21:21.280 la dangling. You know what that song was about? For me? 0:21:21.320 --> 0:21:25.440 If I throw my mind back, there was the idea 0:21:25.520 --> 0:21:29.159 and it's in some ways it's it hinges on a 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:33.600 concept that I learned from again I'm talking about I'll 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:35.719 talk a lot about short story writers. They've been as 0:21:35.760 --> 0:21:39.080 impactful to me as songwriters. Um, it's something I learned 0:21:39.119 --> 0:21:43.240 from both Raymond Carver and Alice Monroe. And I just 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:46.760 talk endlessly about Alice Monroe. I love her. But this 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:52.920 concept of telling a dramatic story and decidedly undramatic language, 0:21:53.320 --> 0:21:56.040 and the idea of the Ohio Airshow plane crash was 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.199 that with this tragedy as a backdrop, there is an 0:22:00.320 --> 0:22:04.800 estranged couple sort of you know, living within each other's proximity, 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.560 not necessarily comfortably in in a shared moment. And so 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:12.800 I thought the idea of staging this kind of bland 0:22:13.359 --> 0:22:19.520 disconnect between two lovers while as a backdrop this plane crashes. 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:22.679 You know, the plane crash is not the story. The 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:27.800 couple's estrangement is the story. The character speaking has is 0:22:27.800 --> 0:22:30.160 a strange from his lover, and he's at this gathering, 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:35.399 this you know, holiday, this air show and sees his 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.320 ex in the in the crowd, and he's and he's 0:22:39.440 --> 0:22:43.520 sort of reflecting on you know, not you know, that 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.479 odd magnetic poll or maybe the opposite side of a magnet. 0:22:46.560 --> 0:22:49.600 That is that you still feel that that there's energy happening, 0:22:49.840 --> 0:22:53.920 but it's repelling. It's repellent. It's not you know, connecting. 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:56.240 Could you play another song for us? And then, well, 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.480 I can. I played you the last song that I 0:22:59.520 --> 0:23:01.479 wrote for the new record. I'm going to play you 0:23:01.960 --> 0:23:05.760 the earliest of them, all right. My wife and I 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:10.879 were last fall for two months on the west coast 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:14.200 of Ireland. I was invited to do a writing residency 0:23:14.200 --> 0:23:17.600 at a small art college. I was starting to have 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:19.959 real pain episodes then. I don't mean to lean too 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:22.240 heavily into that. It just was a It was a 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:26.679 specter of what was happening, even though I didn't I 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:29.680 didn't know what weight to give it. But I only 0:23:29.680 --> 0:23:31.640 bring it up now because I hear this song now 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:35.160 completely sharing the same language of the songs that followed 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:37.760 after I knew what was going on, and I just 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:42.080 think I feel like, in some way, you know, my 0:23:42.280 --> 0:23:46.919 body knew the songs, knew something before I consciously knew something. 0:23:47.040 --> 0:23:48.320 You know what I mean? You should have gone to 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:53.200 the doctor and said, listen to this. Yeah, yeah, this 0:23:53.280 --> 0:23:58.000 is called mule. Based on our conversation. I don't want 0:23:58.000 --> 0:24:01.639 you to overinterpret your own work. But I would like 0:24:01.680 --> 0:24:05.000 to know where the line silence deepest sound came from. Well, 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:07.400 in this little village where we were on the west 0:24:07.440 --> 0:24:12.080 coast of Ireland called bally Vaughan, it just became really 0:24:12.080 --> 0:24:15.720 evident to me two things while I was there. The 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:21.600 silence that I heard there was unlike how I thought 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.840 to characterize silence. You know, it is not just the 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:29.760