Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Marty Stewart has dedicated his life to playing and preserving
Speaker 2: old country music. During his forty plus years as a
Speaker 2: solo artist, Marty has released more than twenty albums and
Speaker 2: racked up numerous honors, including five Grammys and being inducted
Speaker 2: into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Marty started his
Speaker 2: career at the age of twelve, playing mandolin in a
Speaker 2: gospel band. By twenty one, he joined Johnny Cash's touring
Speaker 2: band and eventually became a solo artist who combined classic
Speaker 2: rockabilly sounds with bluegrass and cosmic country. His latest album
Speaker 2: has a sweeping, spacious feel that's meant to conjure up
Speaker 2: visions of desert horizons and endless stretches of two lane highways.
Speaker 2: For today's episode, Bruce Hedler met up with Marty Stewart
Speaker 2: at Bridge Studios in Brooklyn. Marty shared stories about first
Speaker 2: going on the road with his Sullivan Family gospel singers,
Speaker 2: and the very first show he ever played backing Johnny Cash.
Speaker 2: Marty also talks about how a star studied studio session
Speaker 2: with Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis gave
Speaker 2: him the confidence to pursue a solo career in country music.
Speaker 2: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Bruce Hadlam with Marty Stewart.
Speaker 1: So I do want to talk first about your new album.
Speaker 1: It's your first one in.
Speaker 3: Six years, Altitude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So tell me how this one came about. Your
Speaker 1: albums in the last fifteen years have been so they're
Speaker 1: like concept albums. They seem so carefully planned. How did
Speaker 1: this one come about?
Speaker 3: Well, this one was ready to go. Were me and
Speaker 3: the band rehearsed it. We were on tour. We were
Speaker 3: touring with Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn celebrating the fiftieth
Speaker 3: anniversary of the Sweetheart of the Rodeo record. We were
Speaker 3: doing shows with Chris Stiffleton, we were doing shows with
Speaker 3: Steve Miller Band, and I was just in the presence
Speaker 3: of these gargantuan songs, just one great song after another,
Speaker 3: night after night, and I have no but it was
Speaker 3: the Birds shows that really touched my heart. I love
Speaker 3: Roger and Chris, they're like big brothers. And the sounds
Speaker 3: of Roger's twelfth string Rickenbacker and my guitar that I
Speaker 3: played blunk to a fellow named Clarence White that played
Speaker 3: in the Birds Chris Hillman's singing and his bass playing.
Speaker 3: So I have no idea that that did not follow
Speaker 3: me back to my writing tablet. But we had this
Speaker 3: record really hot, rehearsed and ready to go, and then
Speaker 3: the pandemic crashed in on us. So the idea became, well,
Speaker 3: we were going to Hollywood to Capitol Studios to make
Speaker 3: the record. They shut down, so we made the decision.
Speaker 3: The soldier threw and put on mask and stand six
Speaker 3: feet apart in the drudgery of that in such a
Speaker 3: space as this, But we got it done. And we
Speaker 3: sat on the record for over two years, so it
Speaker 3: wasn't quite six years, but the pandemic took a bite
Speaker 3: out of that. I used my time wisely during that
Speaker 3: time made two more records that are ready to go.
Speaker 3: So I love making records. I still love making records.
Speaker 1: Now, tell me about Sweetheart of the Rodeo for you,
Speaker 1: because of course when that first came out, that wasn't
Speaker 1: popular in Nashville. They got booed at the rhyman famously.
Speaker 1: Do you remember listening to that growing up with When
Speaker 1: did you first encounter that?
Speaker 3: I don't think it was popular anywhere. I think even
Speaker 3: Birds fans went, I don't think we're buying this journey
Speaker 3: with them. I bought it in a used record in
Speaker 3: a record store at a shopping mall in North Nashville
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy three. I remember it was two dollars
Speaker 3: in ninety nine cents. I still have the record with
Speaker 3: the rapper still on it. And I was playing in
Speaker 3: Lester Flats band at the time at the Grand Old Opry,
Speaker 3: and I liked the record because it was the first
Speaker 3: time that I'd ever heard rock and roll and country
Speaker 3: and honky tonk and folk and bluegrass and gospel music
Speaker 3: collide kind of successfully in the group of one record,
Speaker 3: and so it had an appeal to me because that
Speaker 3: just just something about it worked for me. And right
Speaker 3: after that, Lester Flat was kind of an aging Grand
Speaker 3: Ol Oppry star that was loved and highly regarded. He
Speaker 3: was as one of the master architects of the culture.
Speaker 3: But if you remember, at that particular time, the Nitty
Speaker 3: Gritty Dirt Band had done a record call while the
Speaker 3: circle be unbroken. That opened up country music and roots
Speaker 3: music to an entirely different generation and maybe people that
Speaker 3: went to Woodstock. All of a sudden were discovering by
Speaker 3: way of this hippie band, country music and roots music.
Speaker 3: And then the movie Deliverance came out and it had
Speaker 3: that song duel in Banjo's in it, which lit a
Speaker 3: fire under a lot of people. But Lester had been
Speaker 3: doing duel in Banjo in his show for twenty years.
Speaker 3: And we worked a College Buyer showcase in Cincinnati and
Speaker 3: the bill that night was Lester Flat, Chicarea and Cool
Speaker 3: in the Gang, and I thought, man, they're gonna las
Speaker 3: laugh us off the stage, but it didn't work that way.
Speaker 3: We did Duel in Banjo's, which was a hot at
Speaker 3: the moment, and we encored nine times in forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: And the next day his agent booked either seventy two
Speaker 3: or seventy nine college campuses and rock festivals. One of
Speaker 3: the first shows we played was at Michigan State and
Speaker 3: the opening act was Graham Parsons and Emmy Blue Harris.
Speaker 3: Then Lester played it in. The Eagles were out touring
Speaker 3: Desperado and I saw Sweetheart of the Rodeo come to
Speaker 3: life that night, that record that Graham had been a
Speaker 3: part of, and it had inspired the Eagles, and it
Speaker 3: inspired me. And I remember going on the bus after
Speaker 3: the show telling all these old veterans I just saw
Speaker 3: the future of my musical life tonight. And I think
Speaker 3: they looked at me like, yeah, yeah, right back to
Speaker 3: the poker game. But that record had a profound influence
Speaker 3: on me.
Speaker 2: It did.
Speaker 3: That's a long winded answer, but that's how.
Speaker 1: It's a perfect answer. But you saw Graham Parsons before then,
Speaker 1: you heard the record, or you had the record by
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 3: I had the record, had the record. I had the record,
Speaker 3: and he was long gone from the Birds, and I
Speaker 3: think he was hanging out with the Stones, and I
Speaker 3: remember he had black fingernail poly seOne and talking in
Speaker 3: some you know, phony cock in the accent a little bit,
Speaker 3: but there was something. He was an impressive character and
Speaker 3: he filled up the room with his presence. And Emmy
Speaker 3: Lou was just this angelic, kind of hippie girl presence
Speaker 3: and I love her from the get go. I named
Speaker 3: her Queenie that night, and she's still queen e to me.
Speaker 1: She's my val and you've and you've played with her
Speaker 1: since she she sang on the Pilgrim.
Speaker 3: The Pilgrim, Oh, I mean it was like a sister.
Speaker 3: She is and she is one of the most fearless
Speaker 3: musical padres we have out there because and I find
Speaker 3: that when I finally get brave enough you're talking about
Speaker 3: the conceptual records or whatever, When I finally get brave
Speaker 3: enough to go down the road to some creative endeavor,
Speaker 3: when I get there, she's already been there. She's one
Speaker 3: of those. She has just blazed the trail for everybody else.
Speaker 1: I love her, uh. I think our first song on
Speaker 1: the Pilgrim is actually called the Pilgrim, and it's a
Speaker 1: very different sound for her. It's very commanding and a
Speaker 1: little operatic in a way that you don't associate.
Speaker 3: It's almost as you were standing in a cathedral addressing
Speaker 3: the congregation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she really, of course pulls it off because
Speaker 1: she's Amy Lou Harris.
Speaker 3: He's Gueeny.
Speaker 1: What was the thinking going on in this album? Then
Speaker 1: you had these the Sweetheart of the Rodeo songs in
Speaker 1: your head. It's not an answer to that record? Was
Speaker 1: it just inspired some of the songs.
Speaker 3: I think that maybe the sonics of it, just the
Speaker 3: attitude or the sounds guitar sounds, more than anything else. Lyrically,
Speaker 3: as you well know you're a writer, you know the
Speaker 3: blank page is the biggest spot on planet Earth when
Speaker 3: there's nothing on it, and songs just kind of come
Speaker 3: down from the sky and all of a sudden. I mean,
Speaker 3: I probably left fifteen songs behind, but there was a
Speaker 3: collection of songs that seemed to hold together. And I
Speaker 3: don't know that there was an exact theme that ran
Speaker 3: through this record, but it was just a vibe more
Speaker 3: than a theme. But I think lyrically it holds up. Okay,
Speaker 3: mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And the sound is beautiful, thank you. But a lot
Speaker 1: of your records sound beautiful, and I mean this is
Speaker 1: the highest compliment. They sound like records. They sound like
Speaker 1: great records. You can hear the studio when the drums
Speaker 1: come in in the first track, they sound like real drums.
Speaker 1: It's nicety hear yeah.
Speaker 3: And I tell you, I'm surrounded by four guys on
Speaker 3: stage and an engineer named Mick Connley. We are a
Speaker 3: tone freaks. We will go to the ends of the
Speaker 3: earth searching for yet a better tone. And I think
Speaker 3: the thing that's missing in a lot of records these
Speaker 3: days is air. The room is supposed to be a
Speaker 3: band member and a voice, and just understanding air and
Speaker 3: space and records makes a whole lot of different. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it took me a long time to get there, and
Speaker 3: less is sometimes a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? Is it peeling away tracks?
Speaker 1: Is it listening to the room? I know what you
Speaker 1: mean by that, but I couldn't tell you how you'd
Speaker 1: get there.
Speaker 3: Do you remember the great jazz singer Peggy Lee?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one of the greatest of all time. I can
Speaker 3: only imagine going to see Peggy Lee at the right
Speaker 3: place in Manhattan, and I would think that she was
Speaker 3: cool as eyes, and I would think by the second note,
Speaker 3: you were right. She brings you right to her right.
Speaker 3: Did you ever get to see her?
Speaker 1: Never saw her? Oh, I've got the records?
Speaker 3: Well, me too, me too? And I read one time
Speaker 3: that she talked about going to the studio. She said, Hey,
Speaker 3: we didn't go to the studio and look for chances.
Speaker 3: We knew what we were going to do when we
Speaker 3: got to the studio. And I like to rehearse it
Speaker 3: up to a point, leave maybe five percent for magic
Speaker 3: to find its way in and surprises. But Peggy Lee's
Speaker 3: records were one of those, and there we can just
Speaker 3: keep going. Dave Brewbeck Records, You know, I listened to
Speaker 3: all that stuff, but the sonics on those records are
Speaker 3: just so lush and they're so warm, and they touch
Speaker 3: your heart and they just seem to check off all
Speaker 3: the boxes, and you know, it's it's a lifelong mission
Speaker 3: to try to get there.
Speaker 1: Is it harder to do recording digitally?
Speaker 3: Not necessarily. There's a whole lot of value and tape
Speaker 3: and analog I love that, but it's slower. You better
Speaker 3: be well rehearsed, and it's hard to edit if you
Speaker 3: make a mistake. You know, that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 3: I just think if you have a great band, a
Speaker 3: great song, good instruments, great engineers, great microphones, and a
Speaker 3: room that sounds good if you play it right, what
Speaker 3: can go wrong if you capture it right? It's not
Speaker 3: rocket science. It's just having a great piece of material
Speaker 3: is the first and foremost thing.
Speaker 1: Though, Oh it's rocket science, I think, or magic. What
Speaker 1: was the room? Where did you record this?
Speaker 3: We recorded this at East Aris Sound, which is still
Speaker 3: a House of blues studio in Nashville, which you know
Speaker 3: the room we're sitting in right now. It has a
Speaker 3: music vibe to me. This is a creative box. And
Speaker 3: so many studios are gorgeous and they're cost a good
Speaker 3: jillion dollars and they're stiff and they're sterile. But I
Speaker 3: love rooms like this that are just a little bit
Speaker 3: funky that invites you in and say, you know, come on,
Speaker 3: show me what you got.
Speaker 1: This was an old bean sprout factory, was it initially? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this was a Chinese part of town. How about so
Speaker 1: they grew because you can grow bean sprouts in the dark,
Speaker 1: so they would have these big pools with bean sprouts grinds.
Speaker 3: Also, yeah, well, you go back to rooms like Sun
Speaker 3: Records in Memphis. It's you know, half the size of
Speaker 3: this room, probably, but there's something magic in those walls.
Speaker 3: The little studio down in Muscle Shoals where they made
Speaker 3: so many great records. Studio B in Nashville, it's just
Speaker 3: a cinderblock building that was built for thirty thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: but it still sounds better than everybody else's twenty million
Speaker 3: dollar rooms. For some reason, there's just some rooms can't
Speaker 3: be explained.
Speaker 1: You do sound like Paul Simon because he was obsessed
Speaker 1: with the slap back in the Sun studio and he
Speaker 1: would play it for us and say, there are no
Speaker 1: drums on this record. I know it sounds like there is,
Speaker 1: but there isn't.
Speaker 3: So my friend Cowboy Jack Clement was the engineer down
Speaker 3: there for many years, and he talked about when they
Speaker 3: would put out a record and it didn't sell, of
Speaker 3: course they would return it to Sun and all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, he says, they're just kept becoming. This growing
Speaker 3: number of boxes along the walls of returned records in
Speaker 3: the studio kept getting smaller and smaller. One day, Sam
Speaker 3: Phillips came and said, get those out of here, and
Speaker 3: when he did, it changed the sound. I said, get
Speaker 3: them back in there, whatever it takes.
Speaker 1: People often talk about the Beatles influence on you. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you ever really spoken about it, but
Speaker 1: you can certainly hear it. Certainly a lot of your
Speaker 1: older songs. Were they an influence growing up for you?
Speaker 3: No, it's really strange. I was a really really late
Speaker 3: Beatles bloomer. You couldn't avoid it because they ruled the planet.
Speaker 3: But in the early sixties when they were taking off,
Speaker 3: the first three records Driver owned was Meet the Beatles,
Speaker 3: The Fabulous Johnny Cash and Flatten Scrugs greatest hits, and
Speaker 3: the Beatles entertained my feet. The other two entertained my heart.
Speaker 3: And I gave my Beatles record away, wow. And I
Speaker 3: always liked their songs, but I never went deep. And
Speaker 3: there's all three of the guys in the superlatives are
Speaker 3: Beatles officionados, and so they kind of drew me in
Speaker 3: in the last four or five years. Actually, right, actually,
Speaker 3: and so and I started listening to the Beatles channel
Speaker 3: on the satellite radio, and what I noticed immediately was
Speaker 3: the quality of the songs, just the power and the
Speaker 3: timelessness of the songs. And the other thing I noticed.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the drum sound on this new record was
Speaker 3: the sound of Ringo's drums, and I was astounded to
Speaker 3: find out that there are people out there that didn't
Speaker 3: think Ringo was a great drummer. It's like, come on,
Speaker 3: give me a break. He played the song. He is
Speaker 3: a brilliant drummer. And we worked really hard on this record.
Speaker 3: I think the song was sitting alone. I said, make
Speaker 3: it sound like Ringo's drums, and we're there, and I
Speaker 3: think Harry Stintson accomplished that with it. With the engineer
Speaker 3: Nick Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, Ringo's left handed playing a right handed set, so
Speaker 1: there's always he's always a little late, like he plays
Speaker 1: late on the beat because he's got to hit his
Speaker 1: right hand out of the way, which just makes that sound.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Certainly, when I hear something like don't leave her lonely
Speaker 1: or thanks to You, I hear a real kind of
Speaker 1: Beatles thing. So I'm amazed. That's it.
Speaker 3: If it got on me, it was just again because
Speaker 3: of the volume of their work and the intensity of
Speaker 3: their work throughout the universe. But again, I truly became
Speaker 3: a Beatles fan in the past five years. And I
Speaker 3: loved the film Get Back. Was that the name of
Speaker 3: the documentary. I watched the whole thing and just again
Speaker 3: to see the process of the songs come together so
Speaker 3: fast and the amount of work they put into it.
Speaker 3: And I tell you what else drew me into the Beatles.
Speaker 3: I had a night off we were on the road
Speaker 3: in Vegas. I went to see love that production out
Speaker 3: there and the way they used Beatles songs and Giles
Speaker 3: Martin's remixing of those songs and just the way they
Speaker 3: brought it in and I left there again it was
Speaker 3: just another layer of wonder going, how did those boys
Speaker 3: do that? I look at their body of work, Hank
Speaker 3: Williams's body of work, and those kind of guys, Jimmy Hendrix,
Speaker 3: they weren't here very long, and what they left behind.
Speaker 3: I don't know how you live up to that kind
Speaker 3: of work that comes that fast, and it is that profound.
Speaker 1: Your music came fast. You were like a prodigy when
Speaker 1: you were a kid. What started first? The mandolin of
Speaker 1: the guitar, guitar?
Speaker 3: I love the guitar, I just I mean my hero
Speaker 3: was Luther Perkins, who played in Johnny Cash's band, Roy
Speaker 3: Nichols who played in Merle Haggard's band, Ralph Mooney who
Speaker 3: played the steel guitar out there at those times. Those
Speaker 3: were the guys that I kind of kept my eye
Speaker 3: on as a kid. I loved the ventures, love surf music,
Speaker 3: Don Rich who played with Buck Owens. Those were telecaster cowboys,
Speaker 3: and I liked what they were up to. And then
Speaker 3: when I was twelve years old, I bought a seventy
Speaker 3: eight RPM record at a junk store of Bill Monroe
Speaker 3: and the Bluegrass Boys Quartet, and I fell in love
Speaker 3: with the mandolin, and my guitar went under the stereo
Speaker 3: for two or three years, and I went to the mandolin,
Speaker 3: But that part of it seemed to kind of come naturally.
Speaker 3: But as here comes the songwriting layer, then here comes
Speaker 3: you have to learn to sing layer, then produce records
Speaker 3: if you're going to do it. So it's been a
Speaker 3: lifelong process.
Speaker 1: Was your family musical what led you to the guitar.
Speaker 3: My grandpa, Stuart was a scratchy old Mississippi backwoods fiddle player,
Speaker 3: and my mom played a little pianot church, and everybody
Speaker 3: loved music at our house more than they played it.
Speaker 3: But our home on Saturday nights, when I I already playing,
Speaker 3: people in the community would come by and we would
Speaker 3: play country music, you know, sing those kind of songs.
Speaker 3: And after church on Sunday night, sometimes people would come
Speaker 3: to our house for coffee and there was a piano
Speaker 3: and they would sing gospel songs. So there was always
Speaker 3: music floating around the house.
Speaker 1: And then how did you end up touring with Lester Flatt?
Speaker 3: I went on the road in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two. I was twelve years old, and there was
Speaker 3: a regional band called the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers who
Speaker 3: were bluegrass gospel singers, and they had a television broadcast
Speaker 3: that came from Jackson, Mississippi, and they were cool looking
Speaker 3: people and they played spirited music and I just kind
Speaker 3: of liked the Sullivan's thing. And my buddy Carl Jackson,
Speaker 3: who was a professional musician in that part of the Mississippi,
Speaker 3: I was playing some shows with him and they played
Speaker 3: a church about a mile from our house and I
Speaker 3: call Carl said, do you think mister Sullivan would let
Speaker 3: me get up and play a song on the mandolin? Lot?
Speaker 3: Ask him, and the word came back, yeah, come on.
Speaker 3: So I played that night and people applauded and stomped
Speaker 3: their feet for me, and I got the bug. And
Speaker 3: as the summer approached, Carl said, I said, what are
Speaker 3: you doing this summer? I'm gonna go out and play
Speaker 3: shows with the Sullivan family. They were playing camp meeting
Speaker 3: revivals and bluegrass festivals and George Wallace campaign rallies. And
Speaker 3: I said, he's all right, Yeah, I said, do you
Speaker 3: think that I could go along as well? I'll ask
Speaker 3: And so that was my stepping off place into the world,
Speaker 3: going on the road. So I was twelve years old
Speaker 3: and that summer I toured with the Sullivan family gospel
Speaker 3: singers throughout the back roads of the South, and we
Speaker 3: played those places I just talked about and I discovered applause,
Speaker 3: the spotlight. You can talk about music twenty four hours
Speaker 3: a day. You can wear your hair and your clothes
Speaker 3: any way you want to, and be around bohemian people
Speaker 3: that know nothing other than music, music, music, music. And
Speaker 3: I fell in love with all that that summer and
Speaker 3: probably made twenty one dollars I don't know.
Speaker 1: And you were on the bus every night, well, they
Speaker 1: were in a car.
Speaker 3: There were six of us cent a station wagon with
Speaker 3: the bass fiddle in there and the records and the costumes.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I thought it was wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I would
Speaker 3: have paid him be in there. And so at the
Speaker 3: end of that summer I had to go back home
Speaker 3: and go to school, and it was like being dropped
Speaker 3: off by the circus at the edge of town. And
Speaker 3: it killed me. It killed me because I knew that
Speaker 3: the band was out there playing. There was applause and
Speaker 3: girls and needed autographs signed, you know, the big things
Speaker 3: of life. And about two weeks into the ninth grade,
Speaker 3: I was falling apart. I just I was a pitiful
Speaker 3: excuse for a student. I took a country music song Roundup,
Speaker 3: which is a popular publication at the time, stuck it
Speaker 3: in the middle of my history book and I was
Speaker 3: reading it, and my history teacher snuck up behind me
Speaker 3: or just kind of eased that behind me and knocked
Speaker 3: it out of my hands. She said, if you get
Speaker 3: your mind off that garbage and get your mind onto history,
Speaker 3: you might make something of yourself, to which the genius replied,
Speaker 3: I'd rather make history than learn about it. Dismissed.
Speaker 1: Pretty good, Yeah, pretty good, dismissed.
Speaker 3: So I went home and called my mom, and I
Speaker 3: called a buddy of mine who worked with Lester Flat
Speaker 3: at the Grand Obberry, who I had met on the
Speaker 3: circuit the previous summer. He said, call me sometimes, maybe
Speaker 3: you could ride the bus with us, and so I begged.
Speaker 3: Lester said yes, and I begged for one weekend, one
Speaker 3: weekend to go up to Nashville. And I went on
Speaker 3: the bus with Leicester Flat and his guys to Glasgow, Delaware,
Speaker 3: to a bluegrass festival for two days. And Lester heard
Speaker 3: me play it in the back of the bus, and
Speaker 3: he put me on the show and the crowd liked it,
Speaker 3: and I could see his wheels turning, the old businessman
Speaker 3: going a new kid, new energy, you know. And at
Speaker 3: the end of the weekend he offered me a job,
Speaker 3: and next thing I know, I was gone.
Speaker 1: That was it, That was it. That was that day
Speaker 1: in history class, your last day of school.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to take a correspondence course, which was
Speaker 3: pretty useless. So I've since become a road scholar.
Speaker 1: Bruce, what were you playing? Were you soloing back down
Speaker 1: at the mandolin? Were you doing we singing?
Speaker 3: I was playing mandolin and guitar. I played guitar because
Speaker 3: Roland White played the mandolin, and they would hand me
Speaker 3: the mandlin and feature me on a couple of tunes.
Speaker 3: And I think what sealed the deal is Lester played
Speaker 3: at the Grand ol Opry and I begged my parents
Speaker 3: to let me stay one more weekend and Leicester said
Speaker 3: I could play at the Grand Old Opry with him.
Speaker 3: He had offered me this job. And they were going, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you have come up and go to school. But no
Speaker 3: self respecting family in the South would deny their child
Speaker 3: a place on the Grand Old Opry, you know. So
Speaker 3: they let me play and at the end of the song.
Speaker 3: The crowd just kept applauding and just kept applauding, and
Speaker 3: I thought I'd done something wrong on Electric Lester. So
Speaker 3: what do I do? He said, do it again. So
Speaker 3: we on court and my family met with him the
Speaker 3: next weekend and they worked out all the arrangements and
Speaker 3: I went to work.
Speaker 1: I man, what kind of guy was he?
Speaker 3: Lester was like a country preacher. Perhaps he was cool
Speaker 3: as Miles Davis laid back again. One of the master
Speaker 3: architects of the whole culture, one of the pioneers of
Speaker 3: it all. He's been there, seeing it, done it all.
Speaker 3: And I don't think my mom and dad would let
Speaker 3: me go on the road with a metal band, But
Speaker 3: with him, it was a different set of circumstances. And
Speaker 3: he and his wife welcomed me into their home because
Speaker 3: my folks still lived in Mississippi and continued to do
Speaker 3: so for a couple of years, and they made me
Speaker 3: feel welcome when I was looked after and taken care of.
Speaker 3: And you know, business was business. Moneyment went back home
Speaker 3: to my mom. I got to keep a little bit
Speaker 3: every week to buy records and eat with But that was,
Speaker 3: you know, it was it was a structured deal. He
Speaker 3: taught me the business of the music business.
Speaker 1: What did you learn about the business?
Speaker 3: He and Eal Scrugs when they were partners. And you
Speaker 3: have to remember this is at a time when the
Speaker 3: country music industry was played in schoolhouses and fairgrounds and
Speaker 3: you know, grange halls and civic auditoriums. There was none
Speaker 3: of the stuff that's happening now. There was nothing corporate
Speaker 3: about the country music world. It was an industry by
Speaker 3: all means, and it was a well organized industry, but
Speaker 3: it was a mom and pop industry. But Lester was
Speaker 3: one of those guys that taught me, if I owe
Speaker 3: you a nickel, you know, you pay me. But if
Speaker 3: he owes me and nickel, he's going to come across
Speaker 3: town to give it to. He gave me a great
Speaker 3: piece of advice on the day hired me. He said,
Speaker 3: it's not about coming to this town or anybody's town
Speaker 3: and being the most popular person and taking all the
Speaker 3: money and all the awards and being forgotten in two years.
Speaker 3: He said, what you really want to work on is
Speaker 3: being welcome every January the first and being a part
Speaker 3: of the whole story. I went, yes, sir, and I
Speaker 3: knew what he was talking about. But whether it was
Speaker 3: money or that kind of advice, or just how to
Speaker 3: run a show, how to make records, whatever, Lester was
Speaker 3: at the forefront of a lot of things, and he
Speaker 3: was just one of it. It was I would think
Speaker 3: it would be a little luck hanging out with Louis Armstrong.
Speaker 3: He could tell you about anything you needed to know
Speaker 3: from a hard earned perspective.
Speaker 1: Yea, did he ever talk about his days with Earl
Speaker 1: Scrugs all the time?
Speaker 3: All the time they had a bitter breakup in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, unless there was one of those guys. When
Speaker 3: he told a story, it was word for word. If
Speaker 3: he told it forty times, I go, here comes the comma,
Speaker 3: here comes the next word. He verbate him, so you
Speaker 3: could hang your hat on it. And I knew that
Speaker 3: he and Earl just creative differences. It had run its course.
Speaker 3: They had been partners since the forties. They started together
Speaker 3: in bill Monrose Bend, and they emerged from there and
Speaker 3: became flatten Strokes, arguably the most successful bluegrass do in history.
Speaker 3: And said all the standards that we still follow. But
Speaker 3: the times ran their course. But I knew that they
Speaker 3: were basically the same guy in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: I knew that they had helped invent each other's persona.
Speaker 3: I knew that they had helped write the rules to
Speaker 3: show business. So I knew there was a lot in common.
Speaker 3: And Lester got sick when he was sixty three sixty.
Speaker 3: He died when he was sixty four, and Bob Dylan
Speaker 3: came through town. I went to see him, and he said,
Speaker 3: did Lester and I will ever talk anymore? I went, They're
Speaker 3: always going to get around to it, but that never
Speaker 3: quite happens. And Bob said, that's sad. Haven't costellover that way?
Speaker 3: The little fact guy was going to go see the
Speaker 3: other guy. That never happened. And this feeling came in
Speaker 3: and Lester was in the hospital, and this feeling came
Speaker 3: up in my stomach when Bob said that, and I said,
Speaker 3: I gotta go, and I went outside to a payphone
Speaker 3: and I got Earl Scruggs number. And I did not
Speaker 3: know Earl Scruggs. I had never met him. It was
Speaker 3: the other camp. It was the enemy camp, right, But
Speaker 3: I called in Earl's wife, Louise, who was the manager,
Speaker 3: and a really cold act on the telephone. I said, Louise,
Speaker 3: this is Marty Stewart. I'd like to talk to her.
Speaker 3: What about? I said, it's personal. Earl came on the
Speaker 3: fine I said, Earl, this is Marty's to it. He said,
Speaker 3: I know who you are. He said, I like your play.
Speaker 3: I listened to you. I went, thank you, sir. I said,
Speaker 3: I really need to come talk to you. So I
Speaker 3: left Bob's show and went to see Earl Louise and
Speaker 3: it was like sitting in a museum because they were
Speaker 3: just sitting there viewing a painting. And I said, Luster's dying.
Speaker 3: I said, I don't know that he'll make it through
Speaker 3: the weekend. I said, I think the last thing in
Speaker 3: this world that needs to happen is for him to
Speaker 3: leave this earth without you guys see him by. And
Speaker 3: I was shaking, like I mean, I was told you
Speaker 3: I was maybe seventeen eighteen, and I was shaking. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was shaking. And I said, if you need the
Speaker 3: halls cleared, I'll go to work on it. Whatever you need.
Speaker 3: I said, but if you would see fit to go
Speaker 3: see him, I think it's great. He said, I'll think
Speaker 3: about it. And I wrote down the room number and
Speaker 3: the Lester's band. We had to go out and play
Speaker 3: three concerts that the promoter wouldn't let us out at.
Speaker 3: We went as Lester's band. So when we pulled back
Speaker 3: in the parking lot, Lester's manager was standing there waiting
Speaker 3: on the bus three days later, and he had tears
Speaker 3: in his asses with Earlwin and saw Lester and they
Speaker 3: settled up on the way out. And so that was
Speaker 3: a good story. That was a good, good, good ending
Speaker 3: to that story. I'm glad I got to be a
Speaker 3: small part of that.
Speaker 1: That's a great story. After that, you played, You played
Speaker 1: with a couple of people. He played with Vaster Clemens,
Speaker 1: who's this sort of fascinating character. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about him.
Speaker 3: I fell in love with Vasser by way of that
Speaker 3: nitty gritty dirt band record, Circle Be Unbroken, Volume one.
Speaker 3: He just played this bluesy style fiddle that I had
Speaker 3: never heard before. And coming from Mississippi, you know, everything
Speaker 3: starts with the blues, and he put the blues and
Speaker 3: blue grass to me, very soulful. And I met him
Speaker 3: and he was easy to hang out with. But Vassar
Speaker 3: was off into this. He had been playing some with
Speaker 3: the grateful dead. He'd been playing some with the Circle
Speaker 3: Record made him a star with all these you know,
Speaker 3: younger bands and cool bands, and anybody would welcome Vassar
Speaker 3: to come hang out and play with him. But he
Speaker 3: had this country jazz fusion thing going. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to get away from bluegrass and started spreading my wings
Speaker 3: and so, but vasser still understood bluegrass because that's where
Speaker 3: he came from. So I bought an electric guitar and
Speaker 3: did not know how to play it, but he gave
Speaker 3: me a job. I don't know why, but I worked
Speaker 3: with him for a few minutes, and we crossed paths
Speaker 3: with doctor Merle Watson on the road that summer, and
Speaker 3: I asked Merle Watson if I could come hang out.
Speaker 3: So I worked with them for a while.
Speaker 1: You sold your electric guitar.
Speaker 3: No, I can't put him, and still still went back
Speaker 3: under the back, under the stereo, that's where it always goes.
Speaker 3: Then Johnny Cash's gig came along, So those really Lester
Speaker 3: and Johnny Cash. With only two steady gigs I ever had,
Speaker 3: which goes back to the first two records ever owned.
Speaker 1: And how did that come about? With Johnny Cash?
Speaker 3: I had one day left with Doc and Merroll Watson.
Speaker 3: We were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was a two
Speaker 3: show day and I went back to the and I
Speaker 3: had no idea after I flew back to Nashville where
Speaker 3: I was going to head, what I was going to do.
Speaker 3: There was a guitar player, great guy named Lonnie Mack
Speaker 3: could call me about maybe talking to Rush, and I
Speaker 3: said yeah. And I was flirting with going to California
Speaker 3: to see if Bob Dilan would hire me as a
Speaker 3: band member. And all those were just blue sky ideals.
Speaker 3: But I went back to the hotel after the first
Speaker 3: show in Cedar Rapid, and remember when hotel phones had
Speaker 3: red lights on them, like. There was a message at
Speaker 3: the front desk and it was from my mom and
Speaker 3: she said, Johnny Cash is guitar player Bob Wooton is
Speaker 3: looking for you. And I had met John a few
Speaker 3: weeks to that at Cowboy Jack Clement's studio. A buddy
Speaker 3: of mine had built him a guitar, and I kept
Speaker 3: up with the progress of the guitar and went with
Speaker 3: him to deliver it, just to meet my old hero,
Speaker 3: and so we hit it off. John and I absolutely
Speaker 3: hit it off that first first handshake, he just kept
Speaker 3: shaking my hand and go, where are you being? I went,
Speaker 3: getting ready? He said where are you from? I went
Speaker 3: Mississippi when I thought so, and lightning kind of struck
Speaker 3: and it just we were pals immediately, and back to
Speaker 3: the doctor roll Watson thing. So by called Bob woot
Speaker 3: and he says, John wants to know if you'd be
Speaker 3: interested in going to work in our band. I went absolutely.
Speaker 3: I said, what are you thinking about me? Starting? He went,
Speaker 3: how about tomorrow? He said where are you? I went
Speaker 3: Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I said where are you guys? He
Speaker 3: went Des Moines, Iowa. So it was a two hour
Speaker 3: rental car ride and I went over there to the hotel,
Speaker 3: showed up. He said we have a matinee show. So
Speaker 3: I'm going to the lobby and Bob Wuoten met me,
Speaker 3: got me settled in. He said we leave here at
Speaker 3: one o'clock or whatever the deal was. I went and
Speaker 3: sat down in the restaurant and the major d came
Speaker 3: and said, mister Cash is on the phone for you.
Speaker 3: I went, all right, so I got it. He said, hello, son,
Speaker 3: how are you fine? Glad to be here? He said,
Speaker 3: We're glad to have you. He said, do you have
Speaker 3: anything black to where? I went probably, And he said
Speaker 3: do you know all my songs? I went probably? Do
Speaker 3: you do still do them in the same key? And
Speaker 3: he went probably? And he says, well lot good. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm probably going to take a nap and I'll probably
Speaker 3: see it a few minutes. Click, and that was it.
Speaker 3: And the next thing I know, I'm on stage and
Speaker 3: he walked out and said hello, I'm Johnny Cash and
Speaker 3: we went I was in. That was the whole deal.
Speaker 1: Were you playing the lead parts?
Speaker 3: No, Bob Wuten was playing the lead and I took
Speaker 3: a mandolin and I had my acoustic guitar and my
Speaker 3: electric guitar with me, and he asked me if I
Speaker 3: played the fiddle. I went, oh, yeah, that was a
Speaker 3: total lie. But I wasn't played the fiddle barely barely barely.
Speaker 1: Same tuning as amandolin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but still it's as you know, it's another world. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But he played this song called Arne Blossom Special and
Speaker 3: it's always played the key of E, but he does
Speaker 3: it in the key of C because he played the
Speaker 3: harmonicas on it. But somehow a fiddle appeared, and I
Speaker 3: mean when I started playing it. It was awful. It
Speaker 3: was god awful. And he looked at me like he's
Speaker 3: I could see it thinking, I thought, you said you
Speaker 3: could play a fiddle. But I wasn't going to lose
Speaker 3: the job because I couldn't play a fiddle. But the
Speaker 3: best part about it, at the end of that first tour,
Speaker 3: I get this check in the mail for you know,
Speaker 3: the work, and a letter their son, thank you, glad
Speaker 3: you're with us. You know you add life and vibrancy
Speaker 3: to the show. Blah blah blah. But at the end,
Speaker 3: love j R. And then it says PS two, all fiddles, squeaker,
Speaker 3: just yours.
Speaker 1: Now I heard his story once that you lost the
Speaker 1: fiddle Jerry Lee to Jerry Lee Lewis. Yeah, how did
Speaker 1: that happen?
Speaker 3: We were on tour in Paris and I decided it
Speaker 3: was Carl Perkins, John and Jerry Lee Lewis. The tour
Speaker 3: was called the Survivors. So we go around Europe and
Speaker 3: all you know, playing all these shows, and their fans
Speaker 3: are coming out and I just I called Jerry Lee
Speaker 3: uncle Gerald. So I decided somewhere along the way that
Speaker 3: I was going to see if I could keep up
Speaker 3: with Uncle Gerald roaring and I made it about two
Speaker 3: days and we were in some hotel in France, and
Speaker 3: I remember thinking the world started going round and round,
Speaker 3: and I started seeing four of everything where there was
Speaker 3: only one. I thought, I have to surrender Uncle, Uncle,
Speaker 3: I have to go to bed. He says, well, all right,
Speaker 3: he was still going room full of people, and I
Speaker 3: went to my room, and maybe an hour later or something,
Speaker 3: there was a knock on the door and he comes
Speaker 3: to the door and he has no shirt on and
Speaker 3: he has covered in chocolate cake. He says, can I
Speaker 3: borrow your fiddle? Sure? So I called, you know the
Speaker 3: guy who looked over the gear, and I said, would
Speaker 3: you deliver my fiddle to Jerry Lee's room? And I
Speaker 3: have not seen it since.
Speaker 1: You never asked him.
Speaker 3: No, I knew better than to ask. But I tell
Speaker 3: you what I did see recently. I was going through
Speaker 3: Jerry Lee Lewis pictures on Google and I saw a
Speaker 3: picture of him playing my fiddle. And that's the last
Speaker 3: time I saw it. I have no idea beyond that.
Speaker 3: So what happened.
Speaker 1: What kind of guy was he?
Speaker 3: Well, to me, he was Uncle Gerald, and he was
Speaker 3: one of the greatest stylists and musicians and singers and
Speaker 3: interpreters of all time. But it would have been a
Speaker 3: big ride to, you know, have to manage all the
Speaker 3: ducks in his wheelhouse every day. I think he would
Speaker 3: have been an Levon says, an adult sized portion of
Speaker 3: putting up with things. He was just I think it
Speaker 3: would he I don't think he knew what was going
Speaker 3: to happen when he woke up in the morning. It
Speaker 3: just got up and he went about being Jerry Lee
Speaker 3: and things crossed his path. But there are people that
Speaker 3: I know that were with him for many, many, many
Speaker 3: many years and they loved him, respected him, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think that Jerry Lee persona was one thing, but
Speaker 3: when you get into the realm of family was what
Speaker 3: he was. To me, it was a different guy.
Speaker 1: What kind of guy was he in that context?
Speaker 3: I think he was. He was spiritual, very spiritual, very soulful, humble.
Speaker 3: Believe it or not, he was. He was a mild
Speaker 3: person at heart, He truly was. When it got into
Speaker 3: his family, he had a big heart.
Speaker 2: We have to take a quick break and then we
Speaker 2: back with more from Bruce had Them and Marty Stewart.
Speaker 2: We're back with more from Marty Stewart.
Speaker 1: I watched an interview with your great guitar player Kenny Vaughan,
Speaker 1: and he talked about starting on the electric, how that's
Speaker 1: different than people who start with acoustic and then crossover.
Speaker 1: What was it like for you to learn the electric guitar.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an ongoing process. It's a completely different feel,
Speaker 3: a completely different language. The notes are the same, but
Speaker 3: how you touch it and approach it. And I think
Speaker 3: there's so many gifted guitar players out there.
Speaker 2: I mean I.
Speaker 3: And I love the guitar because you can truly express
Speaker 3: when you figure out who you are and what you
Speaker 3: want to say was It's a great way to as
Speaker 3: its own language. The electric does the electric it does.
Speaker 3: I mean, I listened to people like Pop Staples, who's
Speaker 3: one of my favorite guitar players. Pops was so basic,
Speaker 3: but he used that tremolo and his guitar and it
Speaker 3: was like Moses spoke. When you heard the Staples singers
Speaker 3: come on the air, it was just again back to
Speaker 3: less is more. Pops was a very minimal guitar player,
Speaker 3: but his guitar playing was so vast and profound. Then
Speaker 3: he's ear guy, like I saw a clip the other
Speaker 3: day of Eddie Van Halen doing sound check out here
Speaker 3: on the street in Manhattan, somewhere before they played, and
Speaker 3: people hanging out the windows because it was so loud
Speaker 3: and thrilling, all those notes flying by. It must have
Speaker 3: been like forty fighter jets flying by. It's the same
Speaker 3: time or something. And Kenny's another one of those. He
Speaker 3: just he started as an electric player, and I've watched
Speaker 3: him grow as an acoustic player, and I know that
Speaker 3: he would say the same thing about my electric playing
Speaker 3: as we But we work at it. We work at
Speaker 3: it all the time.
Speaker 1: You practice every day.
Speaker 3: No, I doodle, Kenny practices.
Speaker 1: I doodle, right, Yeah, well you dodle pretty well.
Speaker 3: Your guitar player is a better than others.
Speaker 1: You've got Pop Staples guitar.
Speaker 3: I do. And it's in town tomorrow night. I'm doing
Speaker 3: a song with Wynton Marcell Jazz and Lincolnsider on a
Speaker 3: show that he's doing. And he asked me to do
Speaker 3: will the Circle Being Broken? That old war Horse anthem.
Speaker 3: But beyond the Carter Family's original recording, the Staple Singer's
Speaker 3: version is my favorite song. It is my favorite version.
Speaker 3: And I brought Pop's guitar with me. It's actually it's
Speaker 3: in this very room. It's here with us today. What
Speaker 3: kind of it was Defender Rosewood telecaster. And it's the one.
Speaker 3: If you look at the at the movie the Last Waltz,
Speaker 3: the band did the song to Wait with the staple singers,
Speaker 3: that's the one.
Speaker 1: And he's got such a I mean, you know, people say, well,
Speaker 1: he only knew the e chord.
Speaker 3: He didn't need to know anything. It sounds when he went,
Speaker 3: that's Pops.
Speaker 1: And is it all gospel playing or is it?
Speaker 3: Well, it sounds like rock and roll to me, but
Speaker 3: it's it's he called it gospel guitar, but it's it's
Speaker 3: just soulful. It's a soul guitar.
Speaker 1: It's got such a beautiful sound. It's just using the tremolo.
Speaker 1: What's he doing?
Speaker 3: I called him one time to come to Nashville, and
Speaker 3: he says, and he agreed to do it. He says,
Speaker 3: now I'm on need two things. I said, well you
Speaker 3: need Pops. He says, I need me a a Fender
Speaker 3: amplifier with some shake on it and a stretch out car.
Speaker 3: I went, no problem, and I called Mayvis. I said,
Speaker 3: Mayvas helped me. What is a Fender sixty five amp
Speaker 3: with some shake on He said, Oh, Marty, that's trimmelo.
Speaker 3: I went okay, I said, man, what is a stretch
Speaker 3: out car? Shit? Oh, that's one of them limousines. Pops
Speaker 3: like limousines. We got it, no problem.
Speaker 1: You didn't know a Fender amp.
Speaker 3: Well, I didn't understand what shake mean. Oh. I thought
Speaker 3: that I did, but I didn't want to take any chances.
Speaker 3: So I found that was Pop's word for tremolo, and
Speaker 3: it was a sixty five sixty five with some shake
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, did it sound good?
Speaker 3: Oh? Of course it did. Pops was one of those
Speaker 3: guys that could play forty guitars and forty different amps,
Speaker 3: but they all sounded the same. It was in his hands.
Speaker 1: Are you that kind of player?
Speaker 3: I don't think so. I don't think so, not to
Speaker 3: that level.
Speaker 1: No, you also got Carl Parkins guitar. Is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Tell me the story about that hunt.
Speaker 3: At the end of the Johnny Cash Band member days,
Speaker 3: there was a happening in Memphis called the Class of
Speaker 3: fifty five Sessions. Record producer named Chips Moman was trying
Speaker 3: to light a fire under Memphis. Memphis was trying to
Speaker 3: re establish itself and freshen its image up and step
Speaker 3: out in the eighties, and so Chips put together this
Speaker 3: series of recording sessions with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison,
Speaker 3: and Jerry Lee, And of course I was right in
Speaker 3: the middle of that because I was in John's band
Speaker 3: and I wanted to see that I was in it.
Speaker 3: Played on those sessions, and the word was out that
Speaker 3: I was looking for a pathway forward and to try
Speaker 3: to be a recording artist and to try to be
Speaker 3: a country western singing sensation. First person that heard about
Speaker 3: it was Sam Phillips, and he came to me said
Speaker 3: are you Is that what you have on your mind?
Speaker 3: I went yes, unc and he says, does Johnny know
Speaker 3: about this? I one, absolutely, he supports it. He says, okay.
Speaker 3: He gave me his blessing, and then Karl heard about it,
Speaker 3: and he says, this is what you're going to do.
Speaker 3: I went yeah. So at the end of the sessions,
Speaker 3: he walked up and handed me his Fender stratocaster that
Speaker 3: he had been playing and autographed it on the back.
Speaker 3: He said to me, it was like being knighted or something.
Speaker 3: It was a rite of passage. It was like all
Speaker 3: those guys surrounded me and gave me their support, and
Speaker 3: that tipped me off.
Speaker 1: Wow, what was it like being in those sessions?
Speaker 3: Well, it was the one question that kept being asked
Speaker 3: was wouldn't it be great if Elvis was here? I mean,
Speaker 3: the journalists descended from all over on those sessions. I mean,
Speaker 3: I wish you could. The best part of the sessions,
Speaker 3: in reality, Bruce, was the press conference. They held the
Speaker 3: press conference at the Peabody Hotel. And to see those
Speaker 3: four guys, along with cowboys Jack Clement and Sam Phillips,
Speaker 3: walking to the Peabody Hotel and take a seat behind
Speaker 3: the conference table for a press conference, it was a
Speaker 3: mighty thing to see those guys that left town as
Speaker 3: young princes come back as these kings. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was an electric thing. But the question that kept coming
Speaker 3: up that week was you know, wouldn't told be great
Speaker 3: if Elvis could be here? And of course Roy Orbison
Speaker 3: had a very eloquent answer, and you know, well in
Speaker 3: spirit he still is. And John had a wonderful answer,
Speaker 3: you know, and Carl would get a tear in his
Speaker 3: eye and tell this to leave it to Jerry Lee
Speaker 3: and Jerry said, well, he would be. He had an
Speaker 3: overshot runway. But there was a renegade spirit about that
Speaker 3: wig that never quite made it into the grus of
Speaker 3: that record. It didn't have the sass that the Sun
Speaker 3: records that do you and I probably grew up listening
Speaker 3: to had. But still Dick Clark and his team came
Speaker 3: in from California to document all that stuff, but still
Speaker 3: just to be a fly on the wall and turn
Speaker 3: the volume down just to watch it was worth it,
Speaker 3: worth its weight in gold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where was Johnny Cash in his career at that point?
Speaker 1: We know is kind of you know, Rick Rubin, who's
Speaker 1: a partner in the podcast, had his moment with Johnny Cash,
Speaker 1: which is a bit later. Because of that, people have
Speaker 1: reinterpreted his later career as well. He was struggling or
Speaker 1: his record label is going to drop him. How was
Speaker 1: he as a performer then? What was he like?
Speaker 3: He was a master performer that never wavered. He was
Speaker 3: a master showman, and he was a man of integrity.
Speaker 3: He left this earth looking for one more song. Those
Speaker 3: things never varied. What I was taken by on the
Speaker 3: first night in Des Moines, Iowa. The Johnny Cash that
Speaker 3: I adored as a kid, and it became my hero.
Speaker 3: Was the guy that made the Fulsome Prison record, and
Speaker 3: the guy that defied authority, and the guy that made
Speaker 3: the Bitter Tears record to bring light to the Native
Speaker 3: American plight, the San Quentin record, all those edgy things,
Speaker 3: the concept records that he did, Ballance of the True West,
Speaker 3: Johnny Cash visits to Holy Land. You never knew what
Speaker 3: he was going to do next, and it was so interesting.
Speaker 3: But the night of des Moines, Iowa, when I signed
Speaker 3: on and went to the hotel that night, I had
Speaker 3: to have a talk with myself because I really had
Speaker 3: not seen his concerts since nineteen seventy when I was
Speaker 3: a kid, and I thought, I think I just signed
Speaker 3: on to the Lawrence Walk Show. It was a really
Speaker 3: broad family atmosphere. The guy that was my hero from
Speaker 3: those records passed. He was down in there somewhere, but
Speaker 3: I didn't see much evidence of him. But I still
Speaker 3: even his spare change was better than most everybody else's stuff,
Speaker 3: and I knew that it was the best opportunity that
Speaker 3: I ever had in my life, and I knew that
Speaker 3: I was going to go ahead and go for this
Speaker 3: and take it hook line and sinker. But I was
Speaker 3: really surprised at how mild it had become. He was
Speaker 3: Patriot cash. He could still fill up performing arts centers,
Speaker 3: he could still fill up state fairs grandstands, but that
Speaker 3: edgy guy was gone. And I didn't see that edgy
Speaker 3: guy until we went to Europe the first time. He
Speaker 3: still did a lot of business in Europe. But in
Speaker 3: Europe I went, Okay, I see there is another there's
Speaker 3: another wave out there somewhere for John Rcash because it
Speaker 3: was kids. He was still a pop star over there,
Speaker 3: and it was these rockabillies and tattoos, kids and punks,
Speaker 3: along with the servicemen who were a long way from home,
Speaker 3: and the audience that had grown up with him since
Speaker 3: the fifties. There was an edge to that audience, and
Speaker 3: I thought, one of these days that's going to make
Speaker 3: it back to the States. But we would go back
Speaker 3: over there and I could see what was coming, and
Speaker 3: from day one I went in as an advocate. We
Speaker 3: need to go back to the original sound. I went
Speaker 3: to him one day said you need to fire me.
Speaker 3: You don't need me. You don't need two horn players,
Speaker 3: you don't need a synthesizer. Player. You don't need a
Speaker 3: piano on stage. You need you and three guys on stage.
Speaker 3: He said, a lot of people depend on me. I said, well,
Speaker 3: there's your problem. I said, get it back to the music.
Speaker 3: And I think it hurt his feelings and took him
Speaker 3: back a little bit. But I was always honest about that,
Speaker 3: and I don't need to play on this. But one day,
Speaker 3: long after I had left his band, I went out
Speaker 3: with his blessing and got started, had a false start,
Speaker 3: and got my band started and we started having hits
Speaker 3: and things started going in the right direction for me.
Speaker 3: But he called me and said, can you come out
Speaker 3: to the House of Cash in the morning. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: So I went out there and he opened up a
Speaker 3: little six and a half ounce bottle of Coca Cola,
Speaker 3: said it in front of me. He said, don't talk
Speaker 3: to me for twenty one and a half minutes. I
Speaker 3: went all right, and he sang me ten or twelve songs,
Speaker 3: just him and his guitar, And when he got through,
Speaker 3: I could tell he was kind of looked at me, like,
Speaker 3: what do you think? I said, what did I just hear?
Speaker 3: He said, my new album? I said, you mean just
Speaker 3: you and your guitar. He said, yeah, what do you think?
Speaker 3: I said, I think it's brilliant. It goes beyond what
Speaker 3: you've ever done. And you're the best storyteller that's ever lived.
Speaker 3: You and a guitar and a three minute song that
Speaker 3: says the right thing. Nobody can deny that and walk
Speaker 3: away from it unchanged. And then he told me about
Speaker 3: Rick Rubin and what he was up to, and I went,
Speaker 3: absolutely brilliant, Absolutely brilliant.
Speaker 1: You have some story songs, and you've had some story albums.
Speaker 1: Is there something you could get from the way other
Speaker 1: than he was Johnny Cash? How did he tell that story?
Speaker 1: How did he pull people in so well?
Speaker 3: In his case? I think it was they trusted the messenger.
Speaker 3: We all trusted the messenger. Hank Williams had that, Merle
Speaker 3: Haggard had that. There's Bruce Springsteen has it. When Bob
Speaker 3: Dylan wants to, He's one of the greatest that ever
Speaker 3: was at it. That's part of the fan artist dance
Speaker 3: is finding somebody you trust with your heart. And at
Speaker 3: the end of the whole episodic thing that we worked
Speaker 3: on with Ken Burns for the Country Music series for PBS,
Speaker 3: Ken and I agreed that beyond everything else we talked about,
Speaker 3: it's the stories. It's the stories that matter the most,
Speaker 3: and John just happened to have that gift. His voice
Speaker 3: was like, you know, thunder coming from the middle of
Speaker 3: the Earth, and his three chord treatment of most of
Speaker 3: those songs was like anybody could look at him and
Speaker 3: relate to what he was saying, even if you didn't
Speaker 3: like his singing or appreciate what he was up to.
Speaker 3: He was one of those He had a presence about
Speaker 3: him that you had to at least consider it, and
Speaker 3: if you did, it usually made a difference in your heart.
Speaker 1: Wow, when you said he was in Europe and the
Speaker 1: audiences were different and they were responsive in a different way,
Speaker 1: did it change his performance at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah. He went back and did older songs that I
Speaker 3: longed to hear him sing as a Johnny Cash fan, like, oh,
Speaker 3: look here he's doing the legend of John Henry's Hammer.
Speaker 3: He's doing I was there when it happened, so I
Speaker 3: guess I don't know. He's doing gray Stone Chapel, he's
Speaker 3: doing Delia, He's doing you know, sing it pretty soon.
Speaker 3: He's doing all those kind of songs that he would
Speaker 3: never do in the States for some reason. But and
Speaker 3: they'd get around all those old Sun records like, yeah, come.
Speaker 1: On, amazing, When did you know you wanted to go
Speaker 1: out and be a solo artist.
Speaker 3: One of my best friends in the world was Fluke.
Speaker 3: Colin Fluke was drummer, the Johnny Cashman. Fluke's great distinction
Speaker 3: was that he started out playing with Carl Perkins. He
Speaker 3: didn't own a set of drums. He borret a set
Speaker 3: of drums and they used him to drive to Memphis
Speaker 3: to Carl Perkins best because he had a car.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's the secret to all drummers.
Speaker 3: Absolutely have the car. But check this out. So Fluke's
Speaker 3: first recording session and the first song he ever played
Speaker 3: in his life was Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Purkas.
Speaker 3: And you know the Tennessee Three, Luther Perkins, Marshall Grant
Speaker 3: and Fluke Holland they were my stones, they were my
Speaker 3: beatles and Fluke. When I joined Cash's band, I mean
Speaker 3: it took me two seconds to go, Fluke, You're my
Speaker 3: best friend, and I want to know everything there is
Speaker 3: to know about you and hang out with you. You're cool.
Speaker 3: But Fluke was one of those that had been in
Speaker 3: that show for twenty something years at that time. He
Speaker 3: joined in nineteen sixty one, so this would be nineteen eighty,
Speaker 3: whatever that is. And he would would sit in the
Speaker 3: coffee shop and talk about, you know, music and careers
Speaker 3: and things, and Fluke would always say, if you want
Speaker 3: to be me, you can stay here for the rest
Speaker 3: of your life and one day you won't have a job,
Speaker 3: but at some point you need to go out there
Speaker 3: and see what it's all about. And I knew he
Speaker 3: was right, and he encouraged me. And the Johnny Cash
Speaker 3: Show was a spawning ground and a launching pad for
Speaker 3: other stars, people that went on to become stars. And
Speaker 3: I knew that it wasn't a foreign concept, and so
Speaker 3: John was behind it. He knew that look in my eye.
Speaker 3: And there came a point where it was the hardest
Speaker 3: thing in the world to go, I gotta go try this,
Speaker 3: but I did it with his blessing. The way it
Speaker 3: kind of worked out is that show hadn't had a
Speaker 3: hit in a lot of years, and I took a
Speaker 3: song called the Highwaymen to sessions that John and Willie
Speaker 3: were going to do a record, and it wasn't quite clicking,
Speaker 3: and We had just come from Switzerland where John, Willie
Speaker 3: Whalen and Christofferson had done a show together and they
Speaker 3: wound up in hotel room after the filming passing the
Speaker 3: guitar round and it was magic. So we got back
Speaker 3: to the States. Johnny Willy was going to make a
Speaker 3: record and it wasn't really magic. And I went to
Speaker 3: my cousin who worked at Glenn Campbell's publishing company, and
Speaker 3: I was aware of a song called the Highwayman that
Speaker 3: Jimmy Webb had written, but I did not know the song.
Speaker 3: I just liked the title, and he played it for
Speaker 3: me on a break from the sessions. I went four verses,
Speaker 3: no harmony required, This could work. I took it back
Speaker 3: to the studio and I played it for John and
Speaker 3: Chip's moment and John said play it again. I said,
Speaker 3: no harmony needed, and John on the second plase says
Speaker 3: owned up verse about Starship. Of course, the fourth verse,
Speaker 3: that's when Marlon Brando comes up out of the river
Speaker 3: right right, Master chauven Yah, And next thing I know,
Speaker 3: there's a hit in the house. Well, Columbia Records took notice,
Speaker 3: and John was very adamant about pointing me out to
Speaker 3: the Columbia record Peoples, This is the kid that brought
Speaker 3: that song, and I just happened to have a tape
Speaker 3: to start putting on people's desk at that time.
Speaker 1: So you know, when you're those are your Columbia records.
Speaker 1: Your big records started with MCA. And it seemed as
Speaker 1: though you came out and Dwight Yoakum and some other people.
Speaker 1: But your sound sounded like you've been thinking about this
Speaker 1: your whole life. Was that the sound you were looking for?
Speaker 1: Is that what you were trying to find or were
Speaker 1: you still looking around trying to.
Speaker 3: Find I was kind of feeling my way through the
Speaker 3: dark a little bit. At the very first of the
Speaker 3: MCA sessions, there had been a misfire at Columbia. I
Speaker 3: did a record. In the second record I put out,
Speaker 3: I turned it in and said this is too country.
Speaker 3: I went what? And it threw me for a curve.
Speaker 3: And you know, when you're young and trying to find
Speaker 3: your way, a lick like that can shake your confidence,
Speaker 3: and it shook my vision for a second. But the
Speaker 3: MCA stuff Hillbilly Rock was a song that I didn't
Speaker 3: think was a hit, but it went on to be
Speaker 3: a hit and It gave me a reason to get
Speaker 3: a bust in a band and some cowboy clothes. I
Speaker 3: used that first year to just keep exploring. And there
Speaker 3: was a song that Paul kit on it and I
Speaker 3: wrote called Tempted, and I felt like Tempted we finally
Speaker 3: found something that was a sonic identity and something that
Speaker 3: I could I was proud of and could build on.
Speaker 3: And that was to me, the downbeat of the journey
Speaker 3: was Tempted.
Speaker 1: The second record, that's really where you felt. It's got
Speaker 1: a Buddy Howlly Ville.
Speaker 3: Well, let me tell you this. They didn't think it
Speaker 3: was a hit, they being the promotion department at MCA,
Speaker 3: And we played a concert in Lubbock, Texas, and I
Speaker 3: had the song in my pocket and the speakers will
Speaker 3: tell you, yeah, your name a lot of times, right.
Speaker 3: So I went to a radio station in Lubbock and
Speaker 3: did a pre show interview and on the way out
Speaker 3: of the room, the DJ was cool. I said, would
Speaker 3: you do me a favor? I said, my record, I
Speaker 3: have a song in my pocket that I think is
Speaker 3: a hit, that is a little bit I can I
Speaker 3: can feel Buddy or Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison and
Speaker 3: me and all of us in there. I said, would
Speaker 3: you play it so I could listen to it on
Speaker 3: the way back to the hotel. He said, sure, no problem,
Speaker 3: and the DJ played the song and I turned it
Speaker 3: up really loud in the vehicle I was in, and
Speaker 3: it sounded like a hit, and I knew it was
Speaker 3: a hit. And at the end of it, the DJ said,
Speaker 3: I think that song would make Buddy Holly proud, and
Speaker 3: I thought, I'm going to go fight for this song,
Speaker 3: and I'm glad I did.
Speaker 1: Wow, what was it like working for the for MCA
Speaker 1: or any record company? Then you must have you know,
Speaker 1: you grew up with these guys like Johnny Cash who
Speaker 1: seemed like such rebels, who seemed to be doing what
Speaker 1: they wanted, or at least had somebody like Sam Phillips
Speaker 1: who was as hardheaded and as rebellious as they are.
Speaker 1: Are you sitting in a boardroom and you've got somebody
Speaker 1: from marketing saying we don't think it's a hit.
Speaker 3: I think there's always been that at record levels. But
Speaker 3: MCA in the early nineties in Nashville was run by
Speaker 3: Bruce Hinton and Tony Brown, and Bruce was a guy
Speaker 3: that had had as a young executive, had worked under
Speaker 3: a fellow named Goddard Lieberson here in New York City.
Speaker 3: And Gotterson, in my mind, is still the coolest record
Speaker 3: guy that ever lived because he he would sign Flatt
Speaker 3: and Scrugs. But he had also worked with Dave brew
Speaker 3: Becken and didn hed do a Broadway show, and he
Speaker 3: just was a world class musical citizen and cool. I
Speaker 3: think he was jazz cool in his heart. But Gotterson understood,
Speaker 3: and so Bruce Hinton brought a lot of that with him.
Speaker 3: And Tony Brown, the A and R guy had trained
Speaker 3: with the Oakrage Boys and gospel quartets. Then he got
Speaker 3: a job with Emmy Lou Harris, then he played with Elvis,
Speaker 3: and then he stepped out and became a record guy.
Speaker 3: So you have these two extra cool guys running this
Speaker 3: label in Nashville, and for a moment in time, MCA
Speaker 3: Records was the spot on planet Earth to be. They
Speaker 3: were so cool, the doors were opened, creativity was pouring in.
Speaker 3: They had mainstream stars like George Strait and Reeba McIntyre
Speaker 3: up and coming side. They had Lyle Lovett and Vince
Speaker 3: Gill and me and Patty Loveless and Steve Earle. Those
Speaker 3: kind of acts and it was just a perfect cool
Speaker 3: scenario and it lasted for a long time. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, as as the country music the world started
Speaker 3: becoming more corporate and more great great you know, entity
Speaker 3: started by I end Up record label. I think Seagrim's
Speaker 3: bought that into things, and so everything changed. But for
Speaker 3: a moment of time, we had it right.
Speaker 1: Country music always seems to be going through these ebbs
Speaker 1: and flows where it gets very corporate and then suddenly
Speaker 1: and it's it's you were considered a very traditional player.
Speaker 1: A lot of those people were love it wasn't but
Speaker 1: people sort of bring the older qualities of country music back.
Speaker 3: Well, It's funny to me because I started out going
Speaker 3: back to those first Light Columbia records. They were loud,
Speaker 3: and they were rock and roll, and were my job
Speaker 3: was to throw boxes of dynamite into audiences and to
Speaker 3: shake things up. And the further I got into it,
Speaker 3: I thought, no, let me turn around and rethink this,
Speaker 3: because a lot of people started responding. But when it
Speaker 3: started clicking, Dwight Yoakum, Steve Rold and myself we were
Speaker 3: kind of at the forefront of taking it to a
Speaker 3: different plays add but there was a threat of tradition
Speaker 3: in there, but there was still a fresh edge on it,
Speaker 3: I thought. But everything runs its course.
Speaker 1: When you look at country music, now, what kind of
Speaker 1: state is country radio in now?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't hardly listen. I don't listen to country
Speaker 3: radio much. I listened to satellite radio, and I'm work
Speaker 3: inside a good band and we're pretty good radio to
Speaker 3: listen to ourselves. But I think, I think the thing
Speaker 3: that is amazing to me, that is absolutely amazing to me,
Speaker 3: is that people that you didn't know two years ago,
Speaker 3: three years ago can fill up stadiums two nights in
Speaker 3: a row now with contemporary country music. And my hat's
Speaker 3: off to that is awesome. We need that end of things.
Speaker 3: That's big, big, big, big business by anybody's standards. But
Speaker 3: the heart and soul factor is what you know. Starting
Speaker 3: about nineteen ninety nine with the Pilgrim moment, you know what,
Speaker 3: I had one hundred and fifty bucks in two different banks.
Speaker 3: I'm married to the girl I love. I got a
Speaker 3: Cadillac that's old, with some gas money in my pocket,
Speaker 3: the world's best telecaster, some cowboy clothes, and a cool
Speaker 3: set of cowboy boots. How about I live like I
Speaker 3: believe now, and so I have friends in every denomination
Speaker 3: of country music, but the foundational qualities of country music,
Speaker 3: the timeless place. That's where I finally put my flag
Speaker 3: in the dirt went until further notice, you can find
Speaker 3: me here.
Speaker 1: H Was that a hard decision?
Speaker 3: No, the other stuff had run its course. I remember
Speaker 3: being it. We played Foxwood's Big Old Crowd in at
Speaker 3: the end of the nineties. Couldn't have been we couldn't
Speaker 3: have been riding any higher commercially, and I whirled around
Speaker 3: to do a guitar solo and I looked at the
Speaker 3: music I was playing. I heard it, and I saw
Speaker 3: the effect it was having, and I thought, I'm so
Speaker 3: sick of this. This became a gag that worked. You
Speaker 3: know the worst guind know the worst guy, and I thought,
Speaker 3: I need to find my way back to who I am,
Speaker 3: to my heart soul, and that led me to a
Speaker 3: record called The Pilgrim, which ultimately cost me my record deal,
Speaker 3: but it also put me on the path that I've
Speaker 3: been on ever since. It was the richest years of
Speaker 3: my life.
Speaker 1: I want to go through all those things you had
Speaker 1: one by one, but I'm going to start with the guitar.
Speaker 1: Is this the famous Clarence White b bender? Yeah, So
Speaker 1: tell me about that guitar.
Speaker 3: I read in something this morning that forty years ago today,
Speaker 3: Johnny Cash hosted Saturday Night Live and Elton John was
Speaker 3: the musical guest, and John dressed up in some flamboyant
Speaker 3: outfit and introduced Elton John.
Speaker 1: They switched costume.
Speaker 3: They switched costume. That was forty years ago today. Well,
Speaker 3: what that means to me is forty years ago today
Speaker 3: was the first time that I played Clarence White's guitar publicly.
Speaker 3: It was on Saturday Night Live. On that show. It
Speaker 3: looked like I jumping bean back there. But I bought
Speaker 3: that guitar from his wife, Susie, and I couldn't believe
Speaker 3: I had it in my hands. I still can't believe
Speaker 3: I have it in my hands. But yeah, but that's
Speaker 3: the guitar.
Speaker 1: Is that the guitar you play every night? And so
Speaker 1: as I understand it right, the guitar has a mechanism
Speaker 1: that bends the bat string, Is that right?
Speaker 3: Clarence and Jeene Parsons, the drummer, they were in The
Speaker 3: Birds together. Clarence was an adventurous thinker musically, and so
Speaker 3: is Gene. And Clarence was trying to play all these
Speaker 3: still guitar licks, you know, and he said, why can't
Speaker 3: we come up with a device that I feel like
Speaker 3: you pulled down on the strap. It just raises it
Speaker 3: like a still guitar pedal, So instead of doing it
Speaker 3: with your fingers, you pulled down on the strap. And
Speaker 3: he goes.
Speaker 1: That, Now does it allow you to do if you
Speaker 1: don't have to bend it, then can you do other things?
Speaker 1: Can you make other sounds with it? It just allows
Speaker 1: you more flexibility, then yeah, it bends and you can
Speaker 1: do other things around a.
Speaker 3: Whole different vocabulary. If you listen to songs like Bad
Speaker 3: Day at Whiskey on Doctor Bird's and Mister Hyde record,
Speaker 3: they were experimenting with, you know, psychedelia, and Clarence like
Speaker 3: had like a fuzz pedal and all these things he
Speaker 3: was doing. I promise you, if Jimmy Hendricks heard, he
Speaker 3: would go, wow, I can't do that. But it was
Speaker 3: the pedal on that guitar that allowed him to do that.
Speaker 1: And so we'd pull it. It was attached to the strap.
Speaker 1: He just pulled the guitar down and he would get
Speaker 1: it would be a full tone. Yeah, amazing, because most
Speaker 1: people when they want that to steal sound, they do
Speaker 1: what you do. They just bend.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to learn how to
Speaker 1: play that?
Speaker 3: Oh? I'm still learning. I just want to. Just when
Speaker 3: i think I'm really getting something going on that guitar,
Speaker 3: somebody would present me with a a live show from
Speaker 3: the birds or something clarience plot. I went back to
Speaker 3: the Woodshit.
Speaker 1: It would be as if if you gave a classical penis,
Speaker 1: she said. The piano is the same, except we just
Speaker 1: reversed all the keys in one octave. But other than that,
Speaker 1: it's the same. It would it would just mess with you.
Speaker 1: I would think it's a different thing. Yeah. Notice, can
Speaker 1: you ever play it?
Speaker 3: Kenny actually got it's called a bender, a B bender, right,
Speaker 3: Kenny actually got a B bender put on his guitar,
Speaker 3: and he's getting pretty good at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but you've got the original, You've got the
Speaker 1: I think the prototype wasn't it be first one? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you've got some guitars.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's an amazing guitar.
Speaker 2: We have to pause quickly for a break, and then
Speaker 2: we'll be back with more from Marty Stewart and Bruce Headler.
Speaker 2: We're back with the rest of Bruce Headlm's conversation with
Speaker 2: Marty Stewart.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the Pilgrim. Then you had you
Speaker 1: had it with stardom, You'd had it with that, You'd
Speaker 1: run that race in Nashville.
Speaker 3: Back in the early seventies. Probably the sweetest spot creatively
Speaker 3: that I've ever known in Nashville was the early nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: And the only comparison I think I could throw out
Speaker 3: is it must have been like Paris. In the twenties,
Speaker 3: the old world of country music was kind of fading away,
Speaker 3: and the outlaw movement was taking place. Willie and Whalen
Speaker 3: and all those great writers that came around. There was
Speaker 3: a street called Elliston Place in Nashville, and you were
Speaker 3: either kind of of the old opry crowd or a
Speaker 3: part of this new world order that was kind of
Speaker 3: set in the woods on fire. But due to my
Speaker 3: age and the way I looked in what I thought
Speaker 3: about as soon as I get through with the ground
Speaker 3: old opry, you know, I changed clothes and head to
Speaker 3: Elliston Place and hang out with the outlaws, and so
Speaker 3: I saw into a different level of stone them there.
Speaker 3: I saw into a different level of creativity that wasn't
Speaker 3: offered even as precious as that old Oprey scene and
Speaker 3: those people were to me. So I just started dialing
Speaker 3: my way through that, thinking I'm gonna be a star someday,
Speaker 3: and pretty much decided I'd do whatever it took to
Speaker 3: get there. And I remember taking a piece of my
Speaker 3: soul literally and putting it under a rock, going, you know,
Speaker 3: I'll come back to this someday who you really are.
Speaker 3: But just go out there by way of craft, ingenuity
Speaker 3: and just perseverance and get it done, get the job done,
Speaker 3: become a starmaking machine. And so from the early seventies
Speaker 3: forward till about that day in Foxwood's we talked about
Speaker 3: that's the way I lived. And then one day I thought,
Speaker 3: I am so sick of this. I have enough money
Speaker 3: now that I can think the way I want to,
Speaker 3: I can breathe. And a friend of mine told me
Speaker 3: that about somewhere along the way during those days, you said,
Speaker 3: you know, you're getting to the age now you should
Speaker 3: never sign up for anything you don't believe in anymore.
Speaker 3: You got to probably stand by what you believe in.
Speaker 3: And in my heart of hearts and I was I
Speaker 3: was fried. It was time to call time out and
Speaker 3: go to the woods. But I remember in my heart
Speaker 3: going back to that rock that put myself under and
Speaker 3: let me reconnect with that guy. And the result of
Speaker 3: that was The Pilgrim. It was a return to you
Speaker 3: heart and soul and storytelling and storytelling and all of
Speaker 3: the classic themes, all of the timeless aspects of the
Speaker 3: music that I love. And it put me into the
Speaker 3: land of shadows. I was under the shadows of some
Speaker 3: mighty figures.
Speaker 1: Who were those figures?
Speaker 3: Thanks on the Pilgrim. When I would write a song,
Speaker 3: I had an invisible committee in my mind. I thought,
Speaker 3: if I had Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and Jimmy Rogers,
Speaker 3: Flat Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Hank Williams at the
Speaker 3: table and I would sing this song to them without Winston,
Speaker 3: I know I have a song there. So they became
Speaker 3: my cloud of witnesses that I've kind of again carried
Speaker 3: around in my mind when I was making The Pilgrim
Speaker 3: writing songs.
Speaker 1: Were you all conscious of the group that Steve Earle
Speaker 1: had come out of, of Guy Clark and Townsvan's Aunt.
Speaker 1: Was that part of your thinking or it was older.
Speaker 3: Than that, a little different side of the street. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were the Texas Boys, and I'm a Mississippi boy,
Speaker 3: so that I mean. I loved him, admired him, played
Speaker 3: music with him. Throw John Prian in that pile too.
Speaker 3: They wrote a little bit different kind of song than
Speaker 3: I was looking for at that time, but you know,
Speaker 3: we were all after the Rodney Crowell put him in there,
Speaker 3: but I was aware of him, and it back to
Speaker 3: the fire out of their work. But it was a
Speaker 3: different kind of song I was writing.
Speaker 1: And then it's almost as though you cast that album
Speaker 1: you had different characters. Pam Tillis is on that record.
Speaker 1: You talked about Emi lud George Jones sings on that record,
Speaker 1: doesn't he?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What was that? Had you known him before?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Huh?
Speaker 3: I saw The Pilgrim was basically my love letter to
Speaker 3: country music. I wanted to create a story that was
Speaker 3: told with the soundtrack of country music's past, present, and future,
Speaker 3: starting with the Mountain Sounds of Ralph Stanley, and that's
Speaker 3: as deep as you can go to George Jones, Honky
Speaker 3: talnk Sounds, Emmy Lou to wind up in contemporary country
Speaker 3: music land with songs like Dragon around these chains of love,
Speaker 3: with all these vignettes of people. I just saw it
Speaker 3: as an opera and with people coming and going vignettes.
Speaker 3: And it was a complicated process, but once I finally
Speaker 3: got it kind of sliced and diced. The biggest problem
Speaker 3: I had with that project was the ending. I couldn't
Speaker 3: come up with an ending. And I was in Austin
Speaker 3: one day and I bought a piece of stained glass
Speaker 3: that I carried home on the bus with me and
Speaker 3: just stuck it in my basement. And one day I
Speaker 3: was in the basement when I was really trying to
Speaker 3: figure out this ending, and I saw words at the
Speaker 3: bottom of the glass, and I brushed it off and
Speaker 3: it was a poem by Tennyson. Then move the trees,
Speaker 3: the copses, nod, wings, fluttered, voices, hover near old justin
Speaker 3: faithful night of God. Right on the prize is near.
Speaker 3: So pass I hostile, hauling grains by bridge, by forward,
Speaker 3: by park, by pail, all armed. I ride whatever betide
Speaker 3: until I find the holy Grail. And I thought, how
Speaker 3: about it at the end that you say, said the
Speaker 3: lonesome pilgrim far from home, And I thought, I need
Speaker 3: to call it eight two two five six one and
Speaker 3: see if John our Cash will answer me, because he
Speaker 3: needs to be the voice end this record. And that's
Speaker 3: how I found the ending to the Pilgrim in the
Speaker 3: bottom of a stained glass.
Speaker 1: Wow, Tennis and cowboy poet. Mm hm, your next wasn't
Speaker 1: your next big project, but another big project which I
Speaker 1: loved is ghost Train. And tell me how that came about.
Speaker 3: Well, in the Superlatis and I formed, we set ourselves
Speaker 3: some standards. First and foremost, I shut. I shut the
Speaker 3: rehearsal down fifteen minutes honestly into the to the first
Speaker 3: to the first rehearsal, and I knew that this was
Speaker 3: a band unlike anything I'd ever I started my first
Speaker 3: band when I was nine, but I knew this band
Speaker 3: was unlike anything else I had ever done. And I thought, okay, well,
Speaker 3: we're musical missionaries or mercenaries however you wanted to pin it.
Speaker 3: This is bigger than chasing three minute songs that are
Speaker 3: disposable up and down music row. Let's take our the people,
Speaker 3: let's figure out who we are out in the woods
Speaker 3: and then bring it back to town with us. And everybody
Speaker 3: jumped on board us that if we believe in it,
Speaker 3: We'll pay to get there. If we don't you can
Speaker 3: afford us, we'll never play it. So with those lofty
Speaker 3: standards in mind, we didn't have very many people in
Speaker 3: the book, but we set forth and I noticed like
Speaker 3: the first record was one more attempt at country radio.
Speaker 3: It was called Country Music on Columbia. Then I got
Speaker 3: an imprint deal and we started doing records like Soul's Chapel,
Speaker 3: which was a tip of the hat to the vanishing
Speaker 3: sounds of Delta gospel music, Staple singer style, Badlands Ballads
Speaker 3: of the Lakota. We did a live record from the Ryman.
Speaker 3: But somewhere along the way, I remember saying, I feel
Speaker 3: like we're honored guests everywhere we go, but we still
Speaker 3: don't have our thing. We still don't have our mission statement.
Speaker 3: And one day, three words traditional country music, the vanishing
Speaker 3: of the culture came forth. I thought, Man, we have
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes left before Kitty Wells and Ray Price and
Speaker 3: Merle Haggard and all their contemporaries are gone, so let's
Speaker 3: do something about it. I always admired the Stones. When
Speaker 3: the Stones got really popular, they shined the light back
Speaker 3: on muddy Waters and Howland Wolf. Merle Haggard did that
Speaker 3: early in his career when he got White Hot, he
Speaker 3: shined the light back on Bob Wills and Jimmy Rogers.
Speaker 3: With that in mind, and I just said, let's make
Speaker 3: a thing out of traditional country music. And I found
Speaker 3: us a deal on a TV network called RFDTV, and
Speaker 3: we did one hundred and fifty six episodes of a
Speaker 3: TV show that celebrated that culture and what was left
Speaker 3: of it. Since the show's been off the air, forty
Speaker 3: three people encounting have gone. But Ghost Train was one
Speaker 3: of the records that was in the dead center of
Speaker 3: that mission. It was taken lost and forgotten, overlooked sounds
Speaker 3: from Nashville's Studio B great days and writing new songs
Speaker 3: around them, and you know, cutting a couple older songs.
Speaker 3: But it was about bringing Studio B back to life
Speaker 3: where all those hits had been cut, those sounds that
Speaker 3: had been disregarded due to the changing of times, which
Speaker 3: I knew were timeless. That became Studio B. That became
Speaker 3: Ghost Train in the Studio.
Speaker 1: B sessions, and you got to sing with your wife, Connie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Connie has made fifty five records and her first
Speaker 3: hit came in nineteen sixty four RCA record. It's a
Speaker 3: song called Once a Day. Huge hit got her started.
Speaker 3: But we were standing in the middle of Studio B
Speaker 3: making this record, and again, it's such a music box,
Speaker 3: and I thought I would love to hear Connie's voice
Speaker 3: in this studio one more time. And I wrote a
Speaker 3: song with her, and we did it as a duet
Speaker 3: and included it on that record, and then later we
Speaker 3: did a whole record on her in that studio, you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of years later. That went on to do
Speaker 3: great things for her, But it was it was about
Speaker 3: putting the real country music back in royalty, back in
Speaker 3: that studio, and it worked.
Speaker 1: Had she performed in that studio before, Has she ever
Speaker 1: recorded there?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's where she That's where the first you know,
Speaker 3: probably twenty records of her career was done. She loved
Speaker 3: that room. That was her home studio, but she hadn't
Speaker 3: been there in a lot of years because the studio
Speaker 3: had closed and it now operates as a classroom. But
Speaker 3: after hours we went in, after the tours were done
Speaker 3: and after the students were taught, we made it back
Speaker 3: into a studio and so, yeah, she she loved going.
Speaker 1: Back there and you one of your songs you co
Speaker 1: wrote with Johnny Cash is on that record, right and.
Speaker 3: Hanging Yeah, that's the last song here was a part
Speaker 3: of is that right? Yeah? I had been to Fulsom.
Speaker 3: We played Fulsom, California, the city, and I asked if
Speaker 3: I could go out to the prison and see where
Speaker 3: they made the record, and the governor of California got
Speaker 3: me a pass and they took me out there, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to see the cafeteria. I knew that's where
Speaker 3: the record was, and behind the back wall of the
Speaker 3: cafeteria they showed me it was. Now it served as
Speaker 3: the common band hall for all the bands that play
Speaker 3: at Fulsham Prisons, and the day I was there, it
Speaker 3: just happened to be the Fulsome country band and they
Speaker 3: let me set in with them and we played Mama
Speaker 3: Tride and Fallsome Prison. Yeah. But right off to that
Speaker 3: was the hanging gallows where they executed people, and that
Speaker 3: really got me all the way back to Nashville. I
Speaker 3: was thinking about that room and I thought, Okay, what
Speaker 3: if if you were the hangman, what do you do?
Speaker 3: You go home? Tell you why? If you did a
Speaker 3: great job today, that must be an awful job, an
Speaker 3: awful job. And I started this song and it says,
Speaker 3: obviously killed another man today. It's hard to believe I
Speaker 3: lost count at thirty. I've grown two numbed agrees. The
Speaker 3: bottle helps me cope when I laid down at night,
Speaker 3: and when the dope rolls through my veins. It all
Speaker 3: feeds out of same hangmen, hangman. That's my stock in trade, hangmen,
Speaker 3: hangmen sending bad men to their grieves. And that's all
Speaker 3: I had. And so John, we were next door neighbors,
Speaker 3: and I went by to see him before I went
Speaker 3: on the road, and I was telling him about my experience,
Speaker 3: and I just quoted those words. That's as far as
Speaker 3: I can get. And from his wheelchair he spoke up.
Speaker 3: He said, who killed who? I asked myself time and
Speaker 3: time again, God have mercy on the soul of a hangman.
Speaker 3: I went, well, that took care of that. You know.
Speaker 1: We wrote somebody recording.
Speaker 3: This a second verse in about five minutes. I always
Speaker 3: had always left. He could name people really good. I said.
Speaker 3: I went, there's a woman down the street. I pointed him.
Speaker 3: He went, named Rosalie McFall. I went Rosalie McFall. She
Speaker 3: don't ask me any questions. When I come to call
Speaker 3: her arms was soft and warm, her words true and kind.
Speaker 3: I forget the last lines that if she holds me
Speaker 3: in her arms, that all fades out of sight, something
Speaker 3: like that. But we sit there and wrote that song.
Speaker 3: And he looked so beautiful that day. He was in
Speaker 3: his wheelchair, but he had on his black shirt and
Speaker 3: the afternoon light was kissing in the back of his shirt.
Speaker 3: He looked like an old president. I had my camera, said, Jarl,
Speaker 3: let me take your picture, and I knew he didn't
Speaker 3: want me to. He said, all right. So first two
Speaker 3: frames he was just kind of slumped. I said, I said,
Speaker 3: where's Johnny Cash? And he sat up straight and he
Speaker 3: looked like an old president. And I took the picture.
Speaker 3: On the way out of the room, I sang him
Speaker 3: a song, or I played him a song that I
Speaker 3: just recorded of his, called the Walls of a Prison.
Speaker 3: And I sat at his feet, held his ankles. He says,
Speaker 3: I've never heard you sing that way before. I said,
Speaker 3: I never felt that way before. He said, excellent, my son.
Speaker 3: So I stood up and I said I have to
Speaker 3: go to Washington. I said, playing East Coast show or two.
Speaker 3: I said, anything you want. He said no, and he
Speaker 3: looked around the room. He says, anything in this room
Speaker 3: you want? I said, just you love. He said you
Speaker 3: got it, and I said, I'll see you when I
Speaker 3: get home. I said, you got plenty of rope. He said,
Speaker 3: I got plenty of rope. How's your spirit? He's good?
Speaker 3: And four days later he was gone, wow, but we
Speaker 3: signed off on good terms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's very good. I'd love to talk about Way
Speaker 1: Out West and all your other records, but let's talk
Speaker 1: a little more about altitude. I haven't even asked you
Speaker 1: how you write? Are you the kind of guy? Do
Speaker 1: you always have a guitar nearby? Are you writing every day?
Speaker 3: Are you I go months and don't write sometimes. You know,
Speaker 3: I've also been guilty of getting out of the shower
Speaker 3: and taking a can of shaving cream and squirting it
Speaker 3: all over the mirror and writing with my finger because
Speaker 3: I knew it was a good line. I never know,
Speaker 3: you know, you write, so you never know when it's
Speaker 3: going to strike. Coming out of the whole traditional country
Speaker 3: music mission and doing all that, I thought that throughout
Speaker 3: that I looked at him and miss accomplished. I knew
Speaker 3: we needed to turn the wheels. So I called my
Speaker 3: buddy Mike Campbell. After writing a record a Way Out West,
Speaker 3: I went on to ma a cosmic country music record.
Speaker 3: It's time to go to the desert and let it fly.
Speaker 3: And so we did, and Way Out West Record did
Speaker 3: a lot of cool things for our band. I felt
Speaker 3: the needle turn, the wheel turn, And when it was
Speaker 3: time to start making music for a new record beyond
Speaker 3: Way Out West, these songs just kept coming that felt
Speaker 3: like they were kindred to an extension of Way Out West,
Speaker 3: and again just inspired by all those things we've been
Speaker 3: doing on the road and this song after songs started coming,
Speaker 3: and I write my best. I tend to love the
Speaker 3: right most on the road. I love writing on the
Speaker 3: bus going down the road looking out of America to
Speaker 3: the left and the right.
Speaker 1: I said earlier, A great sounding record. You know, it
Speaker 1: starts with your lost Bird's face instrumentals. There's two or
Speaker 1: three of them on the record. They sound great.
Speaker 3: Well. That goes back to scoring films, and the Pilgrim
Speaker 3: taught me a lot about that too, about pacing. Sometimes
Speaker 3: when there's two slow songs back to back and they
Speaker 3: don't quite flow. An instrumental helps, and I was me
Speaker 3: and my band, we all group listening to instrumentals, and
Speaker 3: there used to be a lot of instrumental records made
Speaker 3: in Nashville, so we can pick. So we write instrumentals.
Speaker 3: So it's nice to me in the journey, in the
Speaker 3: listening experience, if an instrumental can carry you forward. So
Speaker 3: that's what that's.
Speaker 1: About, sitting alone. You may not have grown up with
Speaker 1: the Beatles. That sounds like a George Harrison song to me.
Speaker 1: That's got a great, great guitar piece, and space has
Speaker 1: a like a did you actually use a sitar on SPEs?
Speaker 3: Well, there's an electric gitar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you use like an East Indian.
Speaker 3: Country in Eastern music. What do you think I'll be it?
Speaker 1: Well, because you use the country the East Indian scale too,
Speaker 1: so it's got that flat sixth.
Speaker 3: Some of the shows we were doing with Steve Miller,
Speaker 3: Steve had a beautiful song that he does called Wild
Speaker 3: Mountain Honey that features a gitar. I have to tell you,
Speaker 3: I went, I think I have one of those in
Speaker 3: my warehouse somewhere, and I found it probably hadn't seen it.
Speaker 3: Two times in twenty years, and I pulled it out
Speaker 3: and started goofing around and the next thing I hear
Speaker 3: comes space.
Speaker 1: Do you often switch instruments to try and get a
Speaker 1: new way of writing? Do you ever write in the mandolin?
Speaker 1: For example?
Speaker 3: And they all, I'm looking at two guitars in this
Speaker 3: room right now. Both guitars have personalities, and I think
Speaker 3: if you're trying to write a song, they would encourage
Speaker 3: you into a certain kind of lyric or melody. So
Speaker 3: there's stuff done in here.
Speaker 1: The last thing I do want to ask you about
Speaker 1: is The Angels Come Home, which is it's an album
Speaker 1: full of feedback and great sonic effects and suddenly you're
Speaker 1: playing the acoustic with a little bit of accompaniment at
Speaker 1: the end. Can you tell me about that song?
Speaker 3: I was at an awards show, and you know how
Speaker 3: those shows tend to go. Everybody tries to outdo everybody.
Speaker 3: They will, you know, if it's not pyrotechnics, it's a choir,
Speaker 3: it's just you know, it's just everybody. It's all about
Speaker 3: the three minutes your artist gets in your act, your eyes,
Speaker 3: an act you get. And I was at one of
Speaker 3: those and I was just beat to death about it.
Speaker 3: Had nothing to do with music uslely, you know. And
Speaker 3: in the midst of all this, this singer songwriter came
Speaker 3: out with a guitar, wearing a flannel shirt and sang
Speaker 3: a song and you could hear a pin drop in
Speaker 3: the room, and everybody's heart just melted. And it reminded
Speaker 3: me that the truth inside of a song, simply presented
Speaker 3: unadorned from the heart, has more power than everything else
Speaker 3: put together. And the Angels came down as one of
Speaker 3: those songs that I felt like, you know, this whole
Speaker 3: this whole record was about, you know, swirling around in
Speaker 3: the spirit world or you know, cosmic this, cosmic that,
Speaker 3: and the spirit world probably is the most cosmic of
Speaker 3: all places. And the angels if you believe in them,
Speaker 3: which I do. You know, I know there's times in
Speaker 3: my life that they I felt like I've had a
Speaker 3: hand and being rescued from dark moments and dark ways
Speaker 3: of life. And that song is probably the most autobiographical
Speaker 3: thing on the record. I thought, well, back to the
Speaker 3: guy in the flannel shirt at the end of all
Speaker 3: the hooplah, come out and tell the truth, see what happens.
Speaker 1: Was there a particular time in your life that song
Speaker 1: was about or just about that.
Speaker 3: Oh good lord. You know. I was a rock and
Speaker 3: roll knucklehead lifestyle from about nineteen seventy three when Lester
Speaker 3: Flatt started playing hippie shows. So I finally crashed and
Speaker 3: burned two or three times. I went, Okay, it's time
Speaker 3: to grow up, deal with this, get sober, and do
Speaker 3: something about it. And that became a way of life
Speaker 3: for me about twenty years ago, and I've enjoyed every
Speaker 3: second of it since.
Speaker 1: When I heard the song, it almost sounded like it
Speaker 1: was a song about death though, that the angels were
Speaker 1: coming down for you.
Speaker 3: Well, when that time comes and we all have that
Speaker 3: in common, that will happen to each and every one
Speaker 3: of us. You know, It's just fine with me if
Speaker 3: a herd of angels coming, take.
Speaker 1: Me by the hand and leave me on if you
Speaker 1: have to go.
Speaker 3: If you have to go. But I'm married to an angel,
Speaker 3: so there you go.
Speaker 1: All right, Well it's already it's happening every day.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, you bet.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Just a great treat and another great record.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah, thanks for all you're doing. You're keeping
Speaker 3: the real stuff alive.
Speaker 1: I hope, so, I hope, so and thank you.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Marty Stewart for sharing all those great stories
Speaker 2: and memories from his illustrious career. We can hear all
Speaker 2: of our favorite Marty Stewart songs on a playlist at
Speaker 2: broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 2: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
Speaker 2: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 2: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 2: with help from Lea Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show
Speaker 2: is engineered by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production
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Speaker 2: I'm Justin Richman.