![Skip’s note: This is part one of a two-part “drinks with” interview with Tom T. Hall and his wife & songwriting partner Miss Dixie. For anyone who doesn’t know Tom T. Hall, I urge you to drop what you are doing, and go listen to the song “Homecoming.” If you’re looking for impressive numbers, Tom T. Hall has had 33 top 20 hits in Nashville and had his songs sung by (his friends) Johnny Cash, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Bobby Bare et al. Most recently his song “Itty Bitty” was a number 1 for Alan Jackson.
Miss Dixie, born Iris Lawrence, is from Warwickshire, England. She lived with Mother Maybelle Carter in the 1960’s and wrote a song called “Truck-Driving Son of a Gun” in 1965 which was a hit for a singer named Dave Dudley. At a BMI awards dinner following the success of that song, she met Tom T. Hall. The Hall’s put an album out recently, “Tom T. Hall Sings Miss Dixie & Tom T.” on their own Blue Circle record label.
This past December, we sat down at Fox Hollow, their home in Franklin, TN and talked about songwriting, filmmaking, and other things they do in their “retirement.”
At the end of this portion of the interview, they talk about how rare public performances are for them these days. At the time of this publication however, they are actually performing live at Lipscomb University (tonight 7pm) in Nashville at an event called “Music from the Mountain: An Evening Honoring Mother Maybelle Carter.”
You all have an amazing collection of crafted songs that have all been written (relatively) recently. This after you both had a long career as individual writers. Did you start co-writing together soon after you got married?
Hall: No, I just kept writing by myself. I don’t know what that was all about. Ms. Dixie was big into the humane society and showing her dogs. I was on the road picking and signing and she was showing her dogs. Then when she got out of the dog show business and went into the humane society business and I came off the road, we just said, “You know, let’s just write songs together.”
Dixie: He said “If you’ll get all of these people out of my house, we will write some songs.”
Hall: We were having these huge fundraisers for the humane society.
How long ago was that?
Hall: Ten or twelve years ago.
The record you put out last year together…
Dixie: That’s a good one, isn’t it?
Oh it is. On a couple of those songs, you all get pretty gritty. “Hero in Harlan” is one of the best war songs I’ve heard in years. Considering how over-the-top most politically charged songs can be, it’s wonderfully gruff and understated.
Hall: It’s a strange song and I knew it wouldn’t be widely listened to, because you’ll listen to it once and then you don’t want to hear it anymore.
It’s one where you all seem to show just how much subtle emotional ground and how much story can be covered in less than three minutes. By degrees, it gets more painful until the very end.
Dixie: You don’t want to think about war. People don’t. And all political views are different, but it’s not about this war in particular. It’s just about wars in general. Everyone takes on the guilty stand.
I think that’s what’s remarkable about it. It reads like an A.E. Housman’s war poem. With the repeated line in the chorus “He’s not the first, he won’t be the last,” You don’t get the sense that the story is about any conflict specifically. It’s specifically about an individual person – which it always is in a way, I suppose. It’s timeless. There is also that bone-chilling peripheral acceptance of the whole thing, Like the kind that you get in [the Tom T. Hall Song] “Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken.” Not that it needed any prompting, but was there something specific in you all’s life that sparked you to write “Hero in Harlan” now?
Hall: Well I lost a brother in the war and had another one all shot up. I had three brothers in the Korean War. One of them got killed and my other brother brought him home when I was a very young man – and I was struggling with that at the time. I think [the practice was] that if two brothers were in a theater and one got killed, the other one would bring his body home. It was a nice thing. You don’t want to lose them both. Kind of a Saving Private Ryan thing, if I remember that correctly. Ms. Dixie came up with the idea first because she loves Harlan Kentucky. [To: Mrs. Dixie]What happened when we went there?
Dixie: We went there for Michelle (Nixon)’s release for the song we wrote that goes, “Harlan, is the heart of Kentucky”. And it became the national anthem in Harlan – at last they had a song that made them proud. And it was not a downer about ‘losing everything when daddy died in the mine,’ or ‘the children are starving.’ It was about the pride of Kentucky. Michelle Nixon recorded it. We went up there for the premiere. Little itty bitty theater filled with coal miners and farmers alike. It was amazing.
Hall: We were surprised. We got there and you’d think that Prince Charles and Di showed up. A sweet hotel and anything we wanted. We owned the whole town for a few days.
Dixie: We met a gentlemen who used to be a miner but swore he wasn’t going down in the mines anymore. He was our driver around the town. He asked where we wanted to go. I said the mine. He said “Well there’s a tourist mine…” No, I said. No, the real mine. I wanted to go down and feel it. When Tom T. is talking about songs, most of the time he’ll say “it’s the feel.” I wanted to go down and get the “feel” of the mine.
Hall: It was scary. We had oxygen suits and beepers and GPS. This fellow was driving this little cart, we were three miles into the mountain. The guy said, “any of you ever been in the dark”.
We said, “sure.”
He said, “no you haven’t, wait a minute”- and he turned out the lights. (pauses)
If you had any hair it would stand up on your head and you’d say, “boy it’s really dark in here.” Total absence of any light. But we got out and made it ok.
Dixie: But the fellow that took us down into the mine stayed a friend, and told a story that the sad thing about Harlan was the young people moving away and not coming back. They move to the big cities and get an education and go to college and then they find other pursuits. His daughter had just called him and told him, “Daddy, I don’t believe I’m coming back to Harlan.” And that led into another song, which is one of the best songs either one of us has ever written.
Hall: It’s called “I Don’t Think I’m Going Back to Harlan” and this girl sings it and does a great job on it.
Your songs seem to come out of a deep awareness of literature, or tradition in literature. Do either of you do much reading alongside your writing?
Hall: I was an English major and Ms. Dixie was a journalist too. When I first got to Nashville, somebody said Tom T Hall and Kris Kristofferson at the time were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands. Kris and I came into town and created this illusion of literacy, somehow. I’d came straight out of college and Kris came from -
Dixie: Kris landed his helicopter in John’s (Cash) yard to pitch him songs.
Did it work?
Hall: Yeah, “Sunday Morning coming Down”.
Well if I’d written that one I might borrow a helicopter too.
Hall: (laughs) yeah.
Dixie: Kris was a pilot.
Hall: He was a helicopter pilot. He hung out at the National Guard.
Dixie: and a janitor…
Hall: I wouldn’t have let him drive my tractor. I knew him better than those guys at the National Guard. We love Kris though.
Having both been writers before you met each other, have you had to change any writing habits working together? Has your writing (together) changed over the years?
Hall: Well, we write this way: I’m a fast writer. I write real fast. And she’ll come up with an idea for a song like “Hero in Harlan”, and we’ll sketch it out and get it places where I think it ought to go. But she was a newspaper editor so she’ll take the song and stay up all night and fix it. So I’ll get up and it rhymes and it meters. I have to watch her and make sure it gets to the end though. I accuse her of writing these old bluegrass songs where a lot of people get killed. If I go to bed with a guy walking quietly down a path, when I wake up the next morning, he’ll be hanging in a tree. But we kinda write that way. Of course, we also write some by ourselves.
Dixie: Usually we have to figure who’s name goes on there first. Who’s first writer and who’s second? People tend to put Tom T. and Dixie because he’s the star. Yet it could be a song that I’ve done most of the work on and likewise – you know sometimes I just feel like I’m along for the ride — when he won’t let me get a word in. What we’ve ended up doing is if it’s my idea, I’m first writer because chances are I’ll do most of the decision making and take it where I want it to go and if Tom T. comes up with it, he gets it even if he doesn’t do any work…just kidding. Whoever makes the coffee gets to be the star. But it’s certainly a lot of fun when you do have somebody on a song with you. It becomes a team thing. It’s good to bounce ideas. You aren’t left indecisive with “Is that line as good as I think it is?” He’ll say [deepens voice]“Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff”. That’s most of what he says, “Good stuff.” [to Tom T.} Right?
Hall: Yeah
Dixie: That’s the highest compliment you can get. “Good stuff.” We don’t beat each other up over it. We have a good time doing it. Now that we aren’t doing it commercially, we can do it honestly and say what we think. That’s the best part.
I’m fascinated by the movie you made recently “Who Shot Lester Monroe?” I don’t know too many people who decide to take up filmmaking in retirement – at least the way it seems like you two did. What was the genesis of that project?
Hall: Well, I was looking for something to keep me off the streets. I’m a big movie fan; love movies. My favorite movie is probably “Tombstone”. You know where the guy slaps the horse, and then — whoever is in the movie — slaps the guy, and says “How does that feel?” So that’s probably my favorite scene in a movie. I just like the idea of it. And those little incidents get in songs, too. So you pay attention to those sorts of things, or I do—we do.
Miss Dixie: Well it’s creative too, you can have a scene doing whatever you wish it to do. Just like in a song when you make up a song—it’s subject to your direction.
Hall: By the way that movie is a big success, we’ve sold almost a hundred dvd’s.
(Laughs) That’s incredible.
Hall: And we’ve got almost a thousand dollars invested in it, too. No, I started at Barnes & Noble. I go there sometimes and look around ‘till I find some weird books. And I found a book on movie making, so I read that. Then I read a couple other books. Then I ordered this huge DVD set—35 DVD’s in this set on how to make movies, and I watched them all and took notes. This was in the winter time, you know. I learned how to direct, and write, and lighting and everything. Now, when I finished all my reading that winter, the next spring I knew what type of equipment I wanted, now I was up to that stage— I knew one thing from another. So I ordered two hi-definition cameras out of Los Angeles, I ordered a set of lights, lighting. I got Canon cameras, and – then this big learning curve — now I get the big (camera) manuals. So six months later I know how to get a picture on it, and found out how to work the cameras—of course they’re all computerized, very involved and there’s a lot going on.
Miss Dixie: Well you still have to turn them on, though.
Hall: Yeah —we learned how to do that. And I’m working with Buddy Carter, a buddy of mine, who is of President Jimmy Carter’s family. He is Jimmy Carter’s nephew and he lives here now. Buddy used to come and visit with us, and then one time he came to visit, met a girl at the ice cream shop — which sounds like something out of a song — and they got married, and then he got a job here. So we worked together on this movie and tried to figure out a plot. The movie’s called “Who Shot Lester Monroe.” So, naturally, we had him killed on the property, so we wouldn’t have to travel out to location. And we had two points of interest: we had where the murder took place, and we had Nashville— where the music business goes on. And this fellow who got killed was in the bluegrass music business.
I’ve got a little place down at the barn, a room where I just hang out in, make movies, do a little woodworking and painting and all that sort of stuff in. So we turned that place into a movie studio. I also built a movie set to have an office for the detective to live in, and I’m the detective. So now we’ve got three locations, and we can move around Nashville, to the different bluegrass locations, Station In and IBMA.
So once we had a plot, we started shooting improv. What amazed me about making this movie is how great people are. You tell them the plot, and say, “here is where the scene ends.” You say “It must have been the butler,” or something—“that’s the end of the scene.” So you kind of stand there and if they get going too far you say [whispers] “hey… it must of been the butler… okay, cut.”
We had to wait until the cast of characters came around to the studio, so we would sit around and wait and say “Oh, a certain band is coming in next Wednesday”—“Oh, good!” Then we would write them up a scene, and when the band got here we would say “Hey, you’re going to be in our movie.” And so we would put them in the movie, write them in the plot, and they would all do improv. It was amazing how good they were; I was fascinated, like, “wow these people are great actors.” Of course if you give them lines they can’t remember them, so you would have to do it just one time. When they can remember their lines, well some of them, then they start acting and they can’t act. It wasn’t always good, but usually the first time we’d do it people would just be naturally talking and it was amazing. So whatever we got we’d have to use. Eventually we got up to an hour and twenty minutes or something. And most of this stuff was in focus, you know. Then we did all our editing—oh, then we went to editing, and mixing sound. Wow, what a learning curve, in that Vegas editing program.
You did all that yourself?
Hall: Yeah, Buddy Carter and I did it. It was amazing.
Dixie: But you know I kinda gave him a rough time because after they’d gone way overtime editing, I’d come up and say, “Oh but you can’t leave so and so out”.
Hall: So we’re finished with the movie, and Ms. Dixie says “Oh you forgot to put so-and-so in. You need to put them in the movie.” One guy got here so late that after the movie was over, we cut him a scene. He drives up to the barn and comes up to the murder scene and staples a big sign on the barn. And when he walks away, the sign says “This Movie is over” That’s all we had for him to do.
It’s funny on two counts. It’s funny because some people have some weird talents. One fellow was watching a guy who could wiggle his ears and juggle at the same time, and he said “It’s not remarkable that he does it well — it’s remarkable he does it at all.” This movie is funny on that count. It’s funny too because the people in the movie (are funny), it looks like a movie you’d probably make yourself.
I suppose a lot of television looks that way today.
Hall: I’ve seen worse movies. I’ve paid money to see worse movies. I was telling Buddy [Carter] while we were finishing it, “You know I’ve had a little epiphany here, do you remember we used to see those movies advertised that said “TEN YEARS IN THE MAKING?” He said “yeah” I said “There were two guys making those movies.”
(Laughs)
When’s the last time you heard a song on the more recent country charts where you thought – if it was possible — “Boy I bet those people get out of bed and listen to Harlan Howard every morning?”
Hall: I like a lot of Alan Jackson’s stuff and a lot of Harley Allen. Anything he writes I will listen to. I think he’s a street writer, as I call them. I’m off the streets now, literally and financially. I used to walk those streets peddling songs.
Dixie: We don’t have to peddle anymore.
Hall: I like Brad Paisley.
Hall: Yeah, we stay out of Nashville all together. But I never want to leave the impression that I’m one of these old farts that’s saying “They’re not doing it right, now.” I entertained my generation and this generation can amuse itself anyway it wants. As long as they don’t scare the horses. You know what I mean?
Dixie: Or slap them (laughs).
Hall: I’m not opposed to anything anybody’s doing. We don’t send our songs to Nashville. We don’t fool around with it. I am amused though when I see a song or some songs I hear and it took five people to write it or six people to publish it. And I think “Boy, for that song, that’s a lot of work, in my estimation” though I’m not buying a lot of CDs. People send me CDs.
Dixie: I think the most exciting thing to hit Nashville was last Saturday night at the Grand Ol’ Opry when Dale Jett, who is the grandson of A.P. Carter, came to town and encored after the show.. Marty Stewart brought him in, and Dale Jett and his group — his friend and his wife call themselves “Hello Stranger” – they did some Carter family songs. And we’ve got him coming here, to our studio, too. You’ve got to come over and meet. There’s the essence of the whole doggone business.
Hall: He does his grandaddy’s music just – [nods his head]. He’s a construction worker but he’s always kept his guitar and done the old thing. We have a house actually near the old Carter family museum. It’s called the Fold. They have a little theater and a museum and A.P.’s old home place where he used to live. I went up there one summer and helped them bring this old cabin out of the holler, and set it up on the side of the road and we restored the whole thing, me and the Historical Society. So we hang out up there a lot. Johnny Cash had a house up there. John and June said to us years ago “Get you a little house up here so we can go up there, get out of traffic, sit on the front porch and tell lies.” And we did.
Dixie: In fact, we were up visiting with John Carter this past Thanksgiving. It’s like going back 30 years when you go back to Poor Valley. We’re going to be doing a record on Dale [Jett] this year and there will be some Carter family songs on it and one of ours he’s picked out. And he writes too. But to hear him on the encore, … the crowd went out of it’s mind. They did the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, the ‘Midnight Jamboree’ and tore them up there. So it was like the circle closed. It was all together and a very spiritual moment if you’d happened to be up. I hope to get a tape of it. Our house is at Mason Springs were the little school house was. Our house was where Aunt Silvie, who was A.P.’s sister, lived. Sylvie used to play with Maybelle when Sara first eloped to California. Sylvie would sit in. It’s quite an historical little house. I lived with Mother Maybelle for a number of years back then. We’d write songs together and play canasta and “Don’t Get Mad”. I’d do everything with her but bowl. I could not bowl. And she taught Tom T. to play “Wildwood Flower” right.
Hall: Yeah, I was out there one day and I had a guitar and I thought “You know this is a grand opportunity.” You know Mother Maybelle was the first lead guitar player in country music. People originally had used them as a strumming instrument. No one had ever played a melody on a guitar before. I don’t know how it never dawned on them with all those strings. So [the Carter Family] went over to Bristol in 1926 to make this record and she takes off picking the melody. And these records got around, and people said “My goodness! What are they doing there?” And of course, it became the national anthem of country music. Anyways, Ms. Dixie had me out drinking coffee with Mother Maybelle, and I said “I’ve heard this played several different ways but since you’re here, I want to learn to play Wildwood Flower exactly how you do.” Of course she used a thumb pick. But she showed me how to play it.
Dixie: She also taught Earl [Scruggs] to play “You Are My Flower”. I worked for Louise and we started the publishing company for them when I was living with Maybelle at that time in the middle 60’s.
Earl Scruggs is in my family tree, far, far away. I’ve never met him and he doesn’t know me from Adam. But my grandparents showed me one time years ago. They are from Boiling Springs. Of course everybody near Boiling Springs claims to be related to the Scruggs family, I imagine.
Dixie: He’s a great man.
I’ve always heard that. We saw him at Merlfefest a few years back. Is a festival like Merlefest something you two would consider playing or are you completely retired from live performances?
Dixie: Tom T. won’t get out there and work. (laughs) Once in a while if someone like J.D. Crow is on, or Jimmy Martin was on… There was no way he could escape Jimmy; he’d get pulled up on stage. But he doesn’t take bookings. Very, very seldom.
Hall: I don’t do paid gigs at all.
Dixie: Just if he happens to be there and the mood strikes him right — be it at the Station Inn or somewhere and somebody says, “Get up here Tom T.” But it doesn’t happen very often.
Part 2 of Drinks With Tom T. Hall and Miss Dixie to be published soon](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky8d0re2cG1qb6awso1_r1_500.jpg)
Skip’s note: This is part one of a two-part “drinks with” interview with Tom T. Hall and his wife & songwriting partner Miss Dixie. For anyone who doesn’t know Tom T. Hall, I urge you to drop what you are doing, and go listen to the song “Homecoming.” If you’re looking for impressive numbers, Tom T. Hall has had 33 top 20 hits in Nashville and had his songs sung by (his friends) Johnny Cash, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Bobby Bare et al. Most recently his song “Itty Bitty” was a number 1 for Alan Jackson.
Miss Dixie, born Iris Lawrence, is from Warwickshire, England. She lived with Mother Maybelle Carter in the 1960’s and wrote a song called “Truck-Driving Son of a Gun” in 1965 which was a hit for a singer named Dave Dudley. At a BMI awards dinner following the success of that song, she met Tom T. Hall. The Hall’s put an album out recently, “Tom T. Hall Sings Miss Dixie & Tom T.” on their own Blue Circle record label.
This past December, we sat down at Fox Hollow, their home in Franklin, TN and talked about songwriting, filmmaking, and other things they do in their “retirement.”
At the end of this portion of the interview, they talk about how rare public performances are for them these days. At the time of this publication however, they are actually performing live at Lipscomb University (tonight 7pm) in Nashville at an event called “Music from the Mountain: An Evening Honoring Mother Maybelle Carter.”
You all have an amazing collection of crafted songs that have all been written (relatively) recently. This after you both had a long career as individual writers. Did you start co-writing together soon after you got married?
Hall: No, I just kept writing by myself. I don’t know what that was all about. Ms. Dixie was big into the humane society and showing her dogs. I was on the road picking and signing and she was showing her dogs. Then when she got out of the dog show business and went into the humane society business and I came off the road, we just said, “You know, let’s just write songs together.”
Dixie: He said “If you’ll get all of these people out of my house, we will write some songs.”
Hall: We were having these huge fundraisers for the humane society.
How long ago was that?
Hall: Ten or twelve years ago.
The record you put out last year together…
Dixie: That’s a good one, isn’t it?
Oh it is. On a couple of those songs, you all get pretty gritty. “Hero in Harlan” is one of the best war songs I’ve heard in years. Considering how over-the-top most politically charged songs can be, it’s wonderfully gruff and understated.
Hall: It’s a strange song and I knew it wouldn’t be widely listened to, because you’ll listen to it once and then you don’t want to hear it anymore.
It’s one where you all seem to show just how much subtle emotional ground and how much story can be covered in less than three minutes. By degrees, it gets more painful until the very end.
Dixie: You don’t want to think about war. People don’t. And all political views are different, but it’s not about this war in particular. It’s just about wars in general. Everyone takes on the guilty stand.
I think that’s what’s remarkable about it. It reads like an A.E. Housman’s war poem. With the repeated line in the chorus “He’s not the first, he won’t be the last,” You don’t get the sense that the story is about any conflict specifically. It’s specifically about an individual person – which it always is in a way, I suppose. It’s timeless. There is also that bone-chilling peripheral acceptance of the whole thing, Like the kind that you get in [the Tom T. Hall Song] “Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken.” Not that it needed any prompting, but was there something specific in you all’s life that sparked you to write “Hero in Harlan” now?
Hall: Well I lost a brother in the war and had another one all shot up. I had three brothers in the Korean War. One of them got killed and my other brother brought him home when I was a very young man – and I was struggling with that at the time. I think [the practice was] that if two brothers were in a theater and one got killed, the other one would bring his body home. It was a nice thing. You don’t want to lose them both. Kind of a Saving Private Ryan thing, if I remember that correctly. Ms. Dixie came up with the idea first because she loves Harlan Kentucky. [To: Mrs. Dixie]What happened when we went there?
Dixie: We went there for Michelle (Nixon)’s release for the song we wrote that goes, “Harlan, is the heart of Kentucky”. And it became the national anthem in Harlan – at last they had a song that made them proud. And it was not a downer about ‘losing everything when daddy died in the mine,’ or ‘the children are starving.’ It was about the pride of Kentucky. Michelle Nixon recorded it. We went up there for the premiere. Little itty bitty theater filled with coal miners and farmers alike. It was amazing.
Hall: We were surprised. We got there and you’d think that Prince Charles and Di showed up. A sweet hotel and anything we wanted. We owned the whole town for a few days.
Dixie: We met a gentlemen who used to be a miner but swore he wasn’t going down in the mines anymore. He was our driver around the town. He asked where we wanted to go. I said the mine. He said “Well there’s a tourist mine…” No, I said. No, the real mine. I wanted to go down and feel it. When Tom T. is talking about songs, most of the time he’ll say “it’s the feel.” I wanted to go down and get the “feel” of the mine.
Hall: It was scary. We had oxygen suits and beepers and GPS. This fellow was driving this little cart, we were three miles into the mountain. The guy said, “any of you ever been in the dark”.
We said, “sure.”
He said, “no you haven’t, wait a minute”- and he turned out the lights. (pauses)
If you had any hair it would stand up on your head and you’d say, “boy it’s really dark in here.” Total absence of any light. But we got out and made it ok.
Dixie: But the fellow that took us down into the mine stayed a friend, and told a story that the sad thing about Harlan was the young people moving away and not coming back. They move to the big cities and get an education and go to college and then they find other pursuits. His daughter had just called him and told him, “Daddy, I don’t believe I’m coming back to Harlan.” And that led into another song, which is one of the best songs either one of us has ever written.
Hall: It’s called “I Don’t Think I’m Going Back to Harlan” and this girl sings it and does a great job on it.
Your songs seem to come out of a deep awareness of literature, or tradition in literature. Do either of you do much reading alongside your writing?
Hall: I was an English major and Ms. Dixie was a journalist too. When I first got to Nashville, somebody said Tom T Hall and Kris Kristofferson at the time were the only two people who could describe Dolly Parton without using their hands. Kris and I came into town and created this illusion of literacy, somehow. I’d came straight out of college and Kris came from -
Dixie: Kris landed his helicopter in John’s (Cash) yard to pitch him songs.
Did it work?
Hall: Yeah, “Sunday Morning coming Down”.
Well if I’d written that one I might borrow a helicopter too.
Hall: (laughs) yeah.
Dixie: Kris was a pilot.
Hall: He was a helicopter pilot. He hung out at the National Guard.
Dixie: and a janitor…
Hall: I wouldn’t have let him drive my tractor. I knew him better than those guys at the National Guard. We love Kris though.
Having both been writers before you met each other, have you had to change any writing habits working together? Has your writing (together) changed over the years?
Hall: Well, we write this way: I’m a fast writer. I write real fast. And she’ll come up with an idea for a song like “Hero in Harlan”, and we’ll sketch it out and get it places where I think it ought to go. But she was a newspaper editor so she’ll take the song and stay up all night and fix it. So I’ll get up and it rhymes and it meters. I have to watch her and make sure it gets to the end though. I accuse her of writing these old bluegrass songs where a lot of people get killed. If I go to bed with a guy walking quietly down a path, when I wake up the next morning, he’ll be hanging in a tree. But we kinda write that way. Of course, we also write some by ourselves.
Dixie: Usually we have to figure who’s name goes on there first. Who’s first writer and who’s second? People tend to put Tom T. and Dixie because he’s the star. Yet it could be a song that I’ve done most of the work on and likewise – you know sometimes I just feel like I’m along for the ride — when he won’t let me get a word in. What we’ve ended up doing is if it’s my idea, I’m first writer because chances are I’ll do most of the decision making and take it where I want it to go and if Tom T. comes up with it, he gets it even if he doesn’t do any work…just kidding. Whoever makes the coffee gets to be the star. But it’s certainly a lot of fun when you do have somebody on a song with you. It becomes a team thing. It’s good to bounce ideas. You aren’t left indecisive with “Is that line as good as I think it is?” He’ll say [deepens voice]“Yeah, good stuff. Good stuff”. That’s most of what he says, “Good stuff.” [to Tom T.} Right?
Hall: Yeah
Dixie: That’s the highest compliment you can get. “Good stuff.” We don’t beat each other up over it. We have a good time doing it. Now that we aren’t doing it commercially, we can do it honestly and say what we think. That’s the best part.
I’m fascinated by the movie you made recently “Who Shot Lester Monroe?” I don’t know too many people who decide to take up filmmaking in retirement – at least the way it seems like you two did. What was the genesis of that project?
Hall: Well, I was looking for something to keep me off the streets. I’m a big movie fan; love movies. My favorite movie is probably “Tombstone”. You know where the guy slaps the horse, and then — whoever is in the movie — slaps the guy, and says “How does that feel?” So that’s probably my favorite scene in a movie. I just like the idea of it. And those little incidents get in songs, too. So you pay attention to those sorts of things, or I do—we do.
Miss Dixie: Well it’s creative too, you can have a scene doing whatever you wish it to do. Just like in a song when you make up a song—it’s subject to your direction.
Hall: By the way that movie is a big success, we’ve sold almost a hundred dvd’s.
(Laughs) That’s incredible.
Hall: And we’ve got almost a thousand dollars invested in it, too. No, I started at Barnes & Noble. I go there sometimes and look around ‘till I find some weird books. And I found a book on movie making, so I read that. Then I read a couple other books. Then I ordered this huge DVD set—35 DVD’s in this set on how to make movies, and I watched them all and took notes. This was in the winter time, you know. I learned how to direct, and write, and lighting and everything. Now, when I finished all my reading that winter, the next spring I knew what type of equipment I wanted, now I was up to that stage— I knew one thing from another. So I ordered two hi-definition cameras out of Los Angeles, I ordered a set of lights, lighting. I got Canon cameras, and – then this big learning curve — now I get the big (camera) manuals. So six months later I know how to get a picture on it, and found out how to work the cameras—of course they’re all computerized, very involved and there’s a lot going on.
Miss Dixie: Well you still have to turn them on, though.
Hall: Yeah —we learned how to do that. And I’m working with Buddy Carter, a buddy of mine, who is of President Jimmy Carter’s family. He is Jimmy Carter’s nephew and he lives here now. Buddy used to come and visit with us, and then one time he came to visit, met a girl at the ice cream shop — which sounds like something out of a song — and they got married, and then he got a job here. So we worked together on this movie and tried to figure out a plot. The movie’s called “Who Shot Lester Monroe.” So, naturally, we had him killed on the property, so we wouldn’t have to travel out to location. And we had two points of interest: we had where the murder took place, and we had Nashville— where the music business goes on. And this fellow who got killed was in the bluegrass music business.
I’ve got a little place down at the barn, a room where I just hang out in, make movies, do a little woodworking and painting and all that sort of stuff in. So we turned that place into a movie studio. I also built a movie set to have an office for the detective to live in, and I’m the detective. So now we’ve got three locations, and we can move around Nashville, to the different bluegrass locations, Station In and IBMA.
So once we had a plot, we started shooting improv. What amazed me about making this movie is how great people are. You tell them the plot, and say, “here is where the scene ends.” You say “It must have been the butler,” or something—“that’s the end of the scene.” So you kind of stand there and if they get going too far you say [whispers] “hey… it must of been the butler… okay, cut.”
We had to wait until the cast of characters came around to the studio, so we would sit around and wait and say “Oh, a certain band is coming in next Wednesday”—“Oh, good!” Then we would write them up a scene, and when the band got here we would say “Hey, you’re going to be in our movie.” And so we would put them in the movie, write them in the plot, and they would all do improv. It was amazing how good they were; I was fascinated, like, “wow these people are great actors.” Of course if you give them lines they can’t remember them, so you would have to do it just one time. When they can remember their lines, well some of them, then they start acting and they can’t act. It wasn’t always good, but usually the first time we’d do it people would just be naturally talking and it was amazing. So whatever we got we’d have to use. Eventually we got up to an hour and twenty minutes or something. And most of this stuff was in focus, you know. Then we did all our editing—oh, then we went to editing, and mixing sound. Wow, what a learning curve, in that Vegas editing program.
You did all that yourself?
Hall: Yeah, Buddy Carter and I did it. It was amazing.
Dixie: But you know I kinda gave him a rough time because after they’d gone way overtime editing, I’d come up and say, “Oh but you can’t leave so and so out”.
Hall: So we’re finished with the movie, and Ms. Dixie says “Oh you forgot to put so-and-so in. You need to put them in the movie.” One guy got here so late that after the movie was over, we cut him a scene. He drives up to the barn and comes up to the murder scene and staples a big sign on the barn. And when he walks away, the sign says “This Movie is over” That’s all we had for him to do.
It’s funny on two counts. It’s funny because some people have some weird talents. One fellow was watching a guy who could wiggle his ears and juggle at the same time, and he said “It’s not remarkable that he does it well — it’s remarkable he does it at all.” This movie is funny on that count. It’s funny too because the people in the movie (are funny), it looks like a movie you’d probably make yourself.
I suppose a lot of television looks that way today.
Hall: I’ve seen worse movies. I’ve paid money to see worse movies. I was telling Buddy [Carter] while we were finishing it, “You know I’ve had a little epiphany here, do you remember we used to see those movies advertised that said “TEN YEARS IN THE MAKING?” He said “yeah” I said “There were two guys making those movies.”
(Laughs)
When’s the last time you heard a song on the more recent country charts where you thought – if it was possible — “Boy I bet those people get out of bed and listen to Harlan Howard every morning?”
Hall: I like a lot of Alan Jackson’s stuff and a lot of Harley Allen. Anything he writes I will listen to. I think he’s a street writer, as I call them. I’m off the streets now, literally and financially. I used to walk those streets peddling songs.
Dixie: We don’t have to peddle anymore.
Hall: I like Brad Paisley.
Hall: Yeah, we stay out of Nashville all together. But I never want to leave the impression that I’m one of these old farts that’s saying “They’re not doing it right, now.” I entertained my generation and this generation can amuse itself anyway it wants. As long as they don’t scare the horses. You know what I mean?
Dixie: Or slap them (laughs).
Hall: I’m not opposed to anything anybody’s doing. We don’t send our songs to Nashville. We don’t fool around with it. I am amused though when I see a song or some songs I hear and it took five people to write it or six people to publish it. And I think “Boy, for that song, that’s a lot of work, in my estimation” though I’m not buying a lot of CDs. People send me CDs.
Dixie: I think the most exciting thing to hit Nashville was last Saturday night at the Grand Ol’ Opry when Dale Jett, who is the grandson of A.P. Carter, came to town and encored after the show.. Marty Stewart brought him in, and Dale Jett and his group — his friend and his wife call themselves “Hello Stranger” – they did some Carter family songs. And we’ve got him coming here, to our studio, too. You’ve got to come over and meet. There’s the essence of the whole doggone business.
Hall: He does his grandaddy’s music just – [nods his head]. He’s a construction worker but he’s always kept his guitar and done the old thing. We have a house actually near the old Carter family museum. It’s called the Fold. They have a little theater and a museum and A.P.’s old home place where he used to live. I went up there one summer and helped them bring this old cabin out of the holler, and set it up on the side of the road and we restored the whole thing, me and the Historical Society. So we hang out up there a lot. Johnny Cash had a house up there. John and June said to us years ago “Get you a little house up here so we can go up there, get out of traffic, sit on the front porch and tell lies.” And we did.
Dixie: In fact, we were up visiting with John Carter this past Thanksgiving. It’s like going back 30 years when you go back to Poor Valley. We’re going to be doing a record on Dale [Jett] this year and there will be some Carter family songs on it and one of ours he’s picked out. And he writes too. But to hear him on the encore, … the crowd went out of it’s mind. They did the Ernest Tubb Record Shop, the ‘Midnight Jamboree’ and tore them up there. So it was like the circle closed. It was all together and a very spiritual moment if you’d happened to be up. I hope to get a tape of it. Our house is at Mason Springs were the little school house was. Our house was where Aunt Silvie, who was A.P.’s sister, lived. Sylvie used to play with Maybelle when Sara first eloped to California. Sylvie would sit in. It’s quite an historical little house. I lived with Mother Maybelle for a number of years back then. We’d write songs together and play canasta and “Don’t Get Mad”. I’d do everything with her but bowl. I could not bowl. And she taught Tom T. to play “Wildwood Flower” right.
Hall: Yeah, I was out there one day and I had a guitar and I thought “You know this is a grand opportunity.” You know Mother Maybelle was the first lead guitar player in country music. People originally had used them as a strumming instrument. No one had ever played a melody on a guitar before. I don’t know how it never dawned on them with all those strings. So [the Carter Family] went over to Bristol in 1926 to make this record and she takes off picking the melody. And these records got around, and people said “My goodness! What are they doing there?” And of course, it became the national anthem of country music. Anyways, Ms. Dixie had me out drinking coffee with Mother Maybelle, and I said “I’ve heard this played several different ways but since you’re here, I want to learn to play Wildwood Flower exactly how you do.” Of course she used a thumb pick. But she showed me how to play it.
Dixie: She also taught Earl [Scruggs] to play “You Are My Flower”. I worked for Louise and we started the publishing company for them when I was living with Maybelle at that time in the middle 60’s.
Earl Scruggs is in my family tree, far, far away. I’ve never met him and he doesn’t know me from Adam. But my grandparents showed me one time years ago. They are from Boiling Springs. Of course everybody near Boiling Springs claims to be related to the Scruggs family, I imagine.
Dixie: He’s a great man.
I’ve always heard that. We saw him at Merlfefest a few years back. Is a festival like Merlefest something you two would consider playing or are you completely retired from live performances?
Dixie: Tom T. won’t get out there and work. (laughs) Once in a while if someone like J.D. Crow is on, or Jimmy Martin was on… There was no way he could escape Jimmy; he’d get pulled up on stage. But he doesn’t take bookings. Very, very seldom.
Hall: I don’t do paid gigs at all.
Dixie: Just if he happens to be there and the mood strikes him right — be it at the Station Inn or somewhere and somebody says, “Get up here Tom T.” But it doesn’t happen very often.
Part 2 of Drinks With Tom T. Hall and Miss Dixie to be published soon
![Skip Matheny – former bartender in a retirement community and currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle — caught up with Elvis Perkins this fall, when the singer recorded several songs with his band (Elvis Perkins in Dearland) at Lake Fever Productions here in Nashville. Check out video and photos from the session below.
Listen to interview part 1
Listen to interview part 2
What is your favorite drink?
My favorite drink? Hmm. Right now I am drinking some black coffee, which was served up right over there (points to the studio counter) in this amazing camping mug. I am a recent addition to the world of coffee drinkers. I have always said, “No I don’t drink coffee.”
Wow. How recent?
A few months.
There’s this Web site called site espressomap…
See I haven’t crossed over into Espresso yet. Is it that once coffee stops working on your system you need to cross over?
Oh no, no. It is just all part of the family of fun drinks. I just found that site from another tour manager for when you are traveling.
When you are writing songs, do you craft songs for an album or do you just write whatever comes out?
I don’t really know how to write songs. There was a time when I knew even less than I know now. I guess that’s how it goes. You start to learn more as you do something. But I have only really had to think about how to do it recently when we made this record together, and we needed some songs to fill it out that would be appropriate with the other ones. So I had to finish some things that were lying around, and force a few into existence from nothing, which was, a new task. I guess it’s the same for everybody who writes their songs before they make their first record and they are just sort of writing in this blissful, peaceful vacuum where there is nothing expected of you and nobody knows what you sound like.
All you can do is surprise somebody?
Yeah. Or not even think about it. I don’t even recall being all that focused or conscious of the fact that anybody might want to hear these songs or that they would be something that would exist in the exterior world, you know? Or be something beyond my own interior.
When you were trying to finish these songs for this record did you find yourself using jumping-off points like a photograph, or a scene from a film? Or did you think that much about it?
Yeah, like I said, I don’t know how to do it. And I think there is a lot of waiting involved. It always occurs to me that, I should be reading more and maybe watch more inspiring movies and that would make everything a lot easier because there is a lot of borrowing involved in any making of art. So if you are just sitting with no input then your chances of having output become smaller and smaller. I have had people ask and I have heard other people ask other people, “What are you listening to when you made this record?” And I am like, “It never occurred to me that you might listen to other music while you are making a record or other music as you are making music.” But it has started to make sense to me that you might, in fact, listen to one thing as you are writing an album or writing a song. Like Ragas or Celtic tunes. I don’t know, what do you do?
What do I do? I sort of sit around and wait for lightening to strike for the most part.
[Skip’s phone dings]
I think it’s striking right now. [Laughter] A song just came in.
It’s a title.
What’s it say? How’s it sound?
Oh—we’ll have to wait.
It’s not ready yet?
[Laughs] Right.
It needs to be mastered doesn’t it?
Yeah. But it was a good title so I’ll share it afterwards and in our secret (non-interview) time we can work on it.
When you were trying to write for this record, or when you imagine yourself writing in the future, is that usually sitting at a piano? Guitar? Accordion?
I wish I could play the accordion. All those rows of slanted buttons really mystify me. I’ve begun to crack the code a little bit by seeing other how people do it. I would love to be able to do that. That sounds like it might be helpful. Because you’ve got every chord from every flavor or every flavor of every key—or you can play a diminished chord if you know how those mysterious lines work. But I think catching a song off guard or catching your self off guard can be helpful, I think. Sitting down with a guitar and thinking “OK, I gotta produce something,” I don’t think that is really going to produce anything. I think strange or unfamiliar guitars are helpful. Because if you are always playing the same guitar, for me at least, it’s like, “Oh, this sound again or this song again. I’ve heard this before and I don’t want to make these sounds anymore.”
It is a lesson in subtlety, I think, to pick up somebody else’s guitar. I’ve heard people say, “Whoa, this guitar has so many songs in it!” My first thought is, “Really? Pass it this over this way…”
Yeah, I’d like to spend a few months with it…
And maybe that’s true, but even if you are sitting playing a newer guitar (the different tones are) so subtle, and still so transformative for your brain at that point.
It’s true. Are you familiar with the singing Nun from the 1960s?
Yeah.
She sings that song about her guitar and she wrote all those songs, on her (guitar) Adele? I just discovered that recently, and I find her relationship to her guitar to be really touching and beautiful. And it seems like she never needed another lover when it came to her instrument. Just Adele.
That was delicately said. [Laughs] Do you have any favorite authors or books — that do or don’t have anything to do with your writing?
I think everything has to do with everything really. When you least expect it something surfaces from the subconscious that either that you had tried to repress or didn’t think you had to repress. I think if you like something it is bound to be transformed in your own psyche or whatever and come out in what you do. Maybe it goes into a song or maybe it goes into the way you…
Make a sandwich?
Yeah, or make your coffee. I am re-reading Confederacy of Dunces right now, which is a happy accident.
That’s a great book.
I have a friend, Belinda, who lives in Birmingham [Alabama], and we were just going through there recently and a few months ago she had written me asking, “What should I read?” and I recommended it. And she picked it up and read it. And when we went through Birmingham, she gave it back to me. And I thought this was perfect because I forgot to bring anything on the road. I am about half way through it right now. It is sparkling as ever.
I haven’t read that in two or three years but I should probably go back and pick it up again. My valve is acting up right now so…
Mine is pretty open, I feel pretty good right now…
I know your dad was a famous fan of Elvis—this is a strictly songwriting question—did you as a result of that get into Leiber and Stoller or any of those crafty Tin Pan alley songwriters?
I probably couldn’t name a single Leiber and Stoller tune. Could you? You probably could. You said that like you could.
They are interesting guys…
What are some of their (songs)…
Jailhouse Rock, other famous stuff, big hits.
Right, right, right. I should know this probably.
No that’s fine. It’s wonderful. I’m just always interested to hear if somebody comes from a background of, “What I did before I started to write a song is learn 50,000 songs and now I’m going to try and make this particular statement coming from this background.”
Right, and they can do it because they’ve done it before. I would probably write better kinds of songs if I had that kind of exercise. There is still time for it
Was there some time when you were a kid and you heard a lyric or a song and the format of a three-minute song clicked into place and you thought to yourself, “I might have an inclination to do this myself one day?”
I think I am only having those realizations recently. I think a song or two off the most recent record were more informed by that sort of thought than on the first record I made. But I don’t remember a time when I was a child when I was aware of the potency of the form or a pop song? Is that what we are talking about?
Yeah, you are right on it.
Phew. I probably have those but I am not a good categorizer of my own thoughts.
Lastly I am going to name a couple of songwriters and if you can -
Say yea or nay? [Laughs] “Hmm no thank you.”
Yeah – yea or nay – or whatever the first song or thing that comes to mind is.
So you are going to tell me a name and you are going to free associate?
Absolutely
Joni Mitchell?
Blue
Cole Porter?
Red
Ray Davies?
Black
Burt Bacharach?
Piano Teeth [Laughter]
Thanks very much Elvis.
Good to meet you. We will write a song someday.
Oh yeah — with ponytails.
With Ponytails. Maybe that’s the title.
Elvis Perkins “Stay Zombie Stay” from Lake Fever Sessions on Vimeo.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky8a4rRyVv1qb6awso1_500.jpg)
![Skip Matheny –former bartender in a retirement community and currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle — caught up with Jason Isbell, frontman for the band the 400 Unit, before they played at The House Cafe in Dekalb, Illinois.
Jason Isbell was a songwriting member of the Drive–By Truckers from 2001-2007. After his amicable parting from the band, he released two solo records: Sirens of the Ditch (2007) and Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit (2009). His most recent record received four stars from SPIN and Rolling Stone declared it “Not to be missed…” If you’ve never read the lyrics for the songs off either of these records, do yourself a favor.
What is your favorite drink?
Jack Daniel’s on the rocks or Jack and Coke. Basically just Jack Daniel’s—most of the time.
When you’re writing songs, do you think about crafting pop songs or crafting stories? Are they the same thing sometimes?
For every one, it’s different, it depends. Usually, what guides me is the first motivation I get to write the song—I usually sit down with a line, or something from a verse or a chorus—first—before I pick up an instrument. Normally, when I am just sitting around playing guitar, I don’t think of new material so much as when I am doing something else, such as, walking or driving or eating dinner or something. Most of the time, when I play guitar, I focus on playing guitar, not on lyrics or melodies or anything like that. So, something will come up initially, and I will either save it in my cell phone or call somebody and leave a message on the machine, or if I have my laptop, I’ll record it. Then whatever that sounds like to me is where I tend to go from. If it sounds more like a story song, I’ll try to focus on that and get as many details as I can. If it sounds more melodic or more like an arranged pop song, I will work from there. It depends on what it wants to be, I guess.
Sounds like you keep your attention somewhere near that original seed or idea?
Yeah. You have to be pretty committed to that—to make it into an entire project or an entire song. For me, it’s important to try to stay true to that—whatever you came up with first—I don’t know exactly why. It just feels more honest to me. Rather than trying to work at it and plot out the direction, just see where it goes.
When you are trying to write a song, will you pick up a guitar, or sit down at a piano or go for a walk?
If I am actually trying to write a song, and I feel I need to do that right now, I will sit down with a guitar or at a piano. That is not how it usually happens for me though. I can’t remember who said, “Inspiration likes to find you busy.” [Songwriting typically] happens a lot when I’m working on something else. For me—I would rather write less and make it better, than write more and have songs that I’m not really proud of. I know a lot of songwriters who say, “You know, that one’s OK, but listen to this one….” Being an artist and a songwriter together means I am going to have to live with those songs for a long time, so I would really rather them come to me as organically as possible.
That runs nicely opposite to the Music Row/Brill Building practice of writing two or three songs a day with maybe two or three strangers.
I know a lot of people that can do that, and I’ve tried it too, but it doesn’t really work for me. I don’t think I’m really that good at writing with somebody else either. There are a few people I can do that with. But especially lyrically—when it comes down to that—I almost have to have veto power. Especially if I’m going to be singing it, [Laughs] I’m going to have to have power over what is coming out of my mouth.
Was there a moment when you were younger where you heard a pop song and the format of that really clicked for you?
Oh yeah. I don’t know what artist in particular but a lot of that probably came from ‘80s radio for me: Prince, Crowded House, Until Tuesday and a lot of those bands they were playing on the radio then—Colin Hay from Men at Work. That kind of stuff really appealed to me when I was really young and first started to write. I loved how those songs all fit together.
How old were you when you started writing?
I was probably 12 or 13. I had been playing guitar for years before that, but I started writing around then.
Outside of people sitting around telling stories after a meal, do you have a history of writers or proper storytellers in your family?
No, not really. I have a history of musicians and people who raised me on traditional music—but not really who wrote or composed anything themselves. I don’t think they really had a lot of time for that. For the most part, everybody in the family were all physical laborers. That is about all of the time they had was spent working and trying to sleep. I think from the “playing music” aspect though, I probably have much more of a history. In my family when you were four or five years old, you would get a mandolin, because your hands weren’t big enough for a guitar. When you were eight or nine, if you hadn’t torn up the mandolin by then, you’d get a guitar and you learned to progress from there. So the playing was definitely a bit of a “legacy situation.” But as far as the writing goes, I don’t think—I mean hell, a lot of people in my family couldn’t technically write until they were in their 30s or so. Until the last couple of generations they wouldn’t have had any way to put it down.
If your hand was forced and you had to cover a Burt Bacharach song, what would you play?
[Laughs] Didn’t he write “What the World Needs Now is Love?” I think that would work. It’s a great song.
Do you have any habits or routines when you are trying to write lyrics? From what you’ve already said, it sounds more like you kind of work when the muse rolls around, but does anything typically get you to start writing? Hearing a particular poet? A scene from a movie?
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes that will come from reading. I read a whole lot, a whole lot. So that will usually jog me into writing something. More than anything else, I will say that. Just from reading a lot of books.
What books are you reading at the moment?
For the last couple of years I have been on a big Rushdie kick. Right now, I am reading Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. It’s a really good Vietnam-era fiction. For the last few of years, I have been trying to catch up on the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners that I hadn’t read before. Going through and trying to find what won in 91, 92, etc. I figure that’s a good place to go.
Anything really blow your mind or surprise you?
Man I loved the The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. I have so much free time, so much waiting time, I spend a lot of it reading, or listening to NPR. I think I’m getting old. [Laughs] I know the whole weekly schedule on NPR.
When you are writing, do you have anyone in mind, like an artist or a mentor that has an influence on what you write?
Nobody, really. What is it they say? “The intelligent stranger?” Is that what the phrase is for your audience, in your mind? I don’t know if there are people that directly influence, often. Sometimes the obvious—Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney and John Lennon. They are in there sometimes, but I try not to think in those terms.
Did you have any moment in your childhood where you heard music and thought, “I am a different person than my parents?”
That’s a good question. My parents were so young comparatively. My dad is only 50 now and my mom is in her mid-40s. So, we really shared a lot of the same music growing up. Mom was always into John Prine, John Hiatt and a lot of country artists that weren’t really Top 40 country artists. Dad listened to arena rock, a lot of Merle Haggard and stuff like that. When the hip-hop genre came along, that was the first thing that we didn’t share. When I started getting into Public Enemy and Outkast and others—that was something that didn’t translate between us. But my parents are from the demographic that probably listened to The Clash more than any other band. All those people are about 50 now.
You are from near Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Do you feel like you work better when you are in an isolated environment?
Yes, definitely, I do. I work better on a deadline, too. When I am at home and about to start making a record is when I’m most productive. I definitely work better alone and under pressure.
I read your lyrics as being a part of a literary tradition in Southern American writing. I can’t really say that about a ton of other current songwriters. Do you catch yourself reading any particular authors if you are looking for inspiration?
Again, I love Salman Rushdie. He’s so good at setting those scenes that are a little bit ridiculous, but not so much that you can’t feel like you are in that moment. McCarthy is great. His personality comes out in his books, which is a weakness I think, because he just seems like a grumpy old bastard. [Laughs] Jonathan Franzen is really good. I love Charles Simic, Mark Strand and poets like that.
When you read somebody like Cormac McCarthy, and then subsequently are writing lyrics, do you feel like you are drawn to more grotesque or violent subjects or details?
I think so. I know a lot of the material I’ve written and recorded has been in that vein. I mean we used to do a body count on every record with the Truckers. “How many did we kill on this one?” 28? 29? [Laughs] If you’ve got more than two dead people per song, you might be going overboard.
Lastly, I’ve got a few pictures of some songwriters, and if you don’t mind just say whatever song or thing pops into your mind when you see these artists — even if the song or thing doesn’t have anything to do with the writer:
[Photo of Noel Gallagher]
I never liked Oasis until I saw them live. I saw them in Baltimore once, and they were really, really good. I’m not that big a fan of the songwriting, lyrically. I think the melodies are really cool. I think “Don’t Look Back in Anger” is a beautiful melody. But you know his lyrics are about as good as his brother’s guitar playing. It’ll work if nobody is really paying attention.
[Photo of Bruce Springsteen]
Bruce Springsteen—I just think of the Nebraska album usually, but I even like the long hippied-out songs he was writing before Born to Run. I really loved The Ghost of Tom Joad record. I thought that was just as good as anything else he’s made. Start to finish I thought that was incredible. [Bruce] modernized the Steinbeck thing on that record too. He didn’t necessarily just talk about that character or about that book the Grapes of Wrath, he put it in terms of methamphetamine use and he put it in terms of factory work, rather than dust bowl work, he put it in modern Youngstown, Ohio, rather than Oklahoma. It was really interesting how he made that up-to-date but you still fee like you are in a dust bowl situation.
[Photo of Townes Van Zandt]
I love “Pancho and Lefty,” I know that’s what everybody says. There are tons of good Townes Van Zandt songs, but “Pancho and Lefty” is probably as good a country and western song as I can think of. I love the fact that they never necessarily interacted, the two characters. They may have never even known each other. I love that, because there’s something mysterious about it, about the cause and effect in that song. Not to mention the melody and the way the chord progression goes.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ky89t0j47S1qb6awso1_500.jpg)
