On the heels of a breakout
album and worldwide tour, Sarah Shook and The Disarmers show no sign of letting
up heading into 2019. Years, the band’s first record on the Bloodshot label,
grabbed critical acclaim and drew packed club shows.
There’s a reason for it. It
goes beyond the brassy, sassy – vulnerable and badass at the same time –
lyrics. It’s country, but way too rock and roll. Who can’t love “Good As Gold?”
It’s the best of early 1980s
rockabilly, by the only woman cool enough to date Robert Gordon. It’s smoky,
sexy rocking country. And Sarah Shook is keeping on.
In advance of hitting the
road with a new slate of shows, they’re dropping a 7”
single, “The Way She Looked At You”/ “Devil May Care.”
Sarah Shook and the Disarmers
will be back on tour for a bit after Christmas,
then in earnest after the first of the year.
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Sarah Shook & the Disarmers
Release a New 7”,
Announce Early 2019 Tour Dates
*Apple Music Features the Digital Exclusive of Two New Songs
Honest to a fault and as foul-mouthed as a drunken sailor, she's a nonconforming spitfire
who's proud of not fitting in with mainstream country music. – Rolling Stone
With Sarah Shook in the mix, hard core country is alive and well, and dangerous as all get
out. – No Depression
After a banner year – including the release of their widely acclaimed second album Years
and subsequent sold-out shows from coast to coast and overseas –
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers are ending 2018 with a bang by announcing today’s
release of a 7” and a run of tour dates for early 2019.
The 7” includes two new songs, “The Way She Looked At You” b/w “Devil May Care,” that
were recorded at Manifold Recording in Pittsboro, NC during the same session that produced
Years. Apple Music is currently featuring the digital release in exclusivity (LINK)
until December 4th, when it will be released on all other digital platforms. Physical copies are
available now at Bloodshotrecords.com (LINK).
The band also announced newly confirmed U.S. tour dates in January, February, and March,
and a couple solo dates for Sarah in Mexico. Those can be found here or below in full.
Sarah Shook solo performances:
1/12 and 1/13/2019 – Trópico de Cancer – Calle Benito Juárez, Todos Santos, Mexico
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers:
1/16 – WDVX's Tennessee Shines at Jig and Reel – Knoxville, TN (tickets)
1/17 – Southgate House Revival – Newport, KY (tickets)
1/18 – Lincoln Hall / Tomorrow Never Knows Festival – Chicago, IL (tickets)
1/19 – Uptown Grill – Lasalle, IL (tickets)
1/20 – Rose Music Hall – Columbia, MO (tickets)
1/21 – Mercury Lounge – Tulsa, OK
1/22 – AAC Live – Fort Smith, AR
1/23 – Fort Worth Live – Fort Worth, TX
1/24 – Rustic Tap – Austin, TX (tickets)
1/25 – The Lonesome Rose – San Antonio, TX (tickets)
With the ironically named Dying Star, Ruston Kelly
shows promise of bigger things to come
By Kevin Broughton
Last week saw the long-awaited release of season two of Amazon’s original “Patriot,” easily the most underrated and hilarious television show on any platform the last five years. The protagonist, John Tavner (a.k.a. “Lakeman”) is an intelligence operative/assassin who deals with the job’s inevitable stressors in an unconventional way: By getting high, writing songs about his real-life exploits, then singing them at open-mic nights. This “sad man in a suit” never smiles; but no matter what awful wolves are at the door, he always answers “pretty good,” when somebody asks how things are going. And things are always impossibly awful for Tavner.
One imagines a third season of “Patriot” heavily laden with Ruston Kelly songs. His full-length album debut, Dying Star, is wonderfully, beautifully – almost impossibly – melancholy. His characters just can’t seem to get out of their own way. Whether it’s pills, booze, infidelity or commitment issues these folks touch all the bases and are therefore of necessity sympathetic to somebody. A listen/look at the “Mockingbird” video
gives a pretty good idea at how heavy an emotional investment some of these songs bring. Kelly’s plaintive, poignant voice gives an intimate authenticity to the collection of misfits who bring these stories to life. “Faceplant” is a halfway-funny song about a pill head worrying his girlfriend will key his car and leave his possessions outside when he staggers home for the last time. And that one is followed by “Blackout,” which is the dude’s favorite thing to do in the car.
Probably no one remembers a time when Ryan Adams wasn’t a pretentious douchebag. Maybe in an alternate universe, Ruston Kelly is Adams, but a version that will never wear horn-rimmed glasses and read his book of poetry to a fawning crowd at a library in Brooklyn. Kelly has the sweet, soulful voice and the songwriting chops. And if these fourteen songs – none of which you’ll want to skip – are any indication, he can be every bit as prolific. Toward the end of the record, there’s even a hopeful uptick toward redemption. Throughout, Kelly makes great use of pedal steel and an occasional dueling harmonica to punctuate his phrasing. The whole record is just really danged pleasing to the ear.
This probably won’t be the best album Ruston Kelly ever makes. But there aren’t many released in 2018 by anyone that are its equal.
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Dying Star is available anywhere you buy or stream fine music.
“Under-appreciated” is a tricky label, especially when applied within the context of a discussion about art. If one were to say the Bottle Rockets are an under-appreciated band, the claim would imply the existence of some sort of rock ‘n’ roll meritocracy, and no such thing exists (as evidenced by the popularity of Greta Van Fleet). To label a band as under-appreciated also carries with it the implication that said band is somehow less critically and/or commercially successful than is deserved, and there’s no objective way to measure that; there is no metric for what any given band “deserves” to sell or draw.
We cannot say, then, that the Bottle Rockets are an under-appreciated band. We can, however, acknowledge that over the course of their 25+ year career, the Bottle Rockets have come to be taken for granted -- a band without which the genre of Americana may not exist, though front man and chief songwriter Brian Henneman would insist (rightfully) the genre has always existed. Henneman was the primary guitarist on Wilco’s AM, an album often cited as essential within the Americana (née Alt.Country, née Country Rock, etc.) canon. Shortly after the release of AM, Henneman and Co. made their own contributions to the canon with the Eric Ambel-produced album The Brooklyn Side and its follow-up, 24 Hours a Day.
Every few years, the Bottle Rockets crank out another reminder that they’re one of the most dependably great Americanalt.countryrock outfits of the last three decades and often, Ambel has been on board as producer and auxiliary Rocket. Their new album, Bit Logic, is just such a reminder — by turns acerbic, swaggering, and tender.
It’s a Bottle Rockets record, after all. Maybe Bit Logic is the record that will find the Bottle Rockets on the podium for next year’s Americana Awards, accepting a trophy they would very richly deserve, if there were such a thing as merit in art. If the AMAs don’t take note, Bottle Rockets fans can take solace in the quality of the work, and in the knowledge that the next album will likely be just as good as Bit Logic; just as good as The Brooklyn Side or 24 Hours a Day. It will be a Bottle Rockets record, after all.
We cornered the laconic Henneman for a few questions about the new record.
How long did you work on this batch of a dozen songs?
Not that long really. They were all written pretty fast, and pretty last minute. It was our most immediate album. We didn't even rehearse them. They were born in the studio, everybody just going off of acoustic demos I made. Just me and a guitar.
I notice Roscoe Ambel, who produced this record, will actually be opening for y'all on some of your upcoming tour dates. How far back does your collaborative history go with him?
We met Eric right after our first album came out in 1993. He first started working with us in 1994. We've worked together off and on ever since. He's good for us. He's "The George Martin Of The Bottle Rockets."
The Bottle Rockets are regularly mentioned in the same breath with the other pioneers -- for lack of a better word -- of alt country, having come of age in the mid 1990s. You yourself were part of the Uncle Tupelo crew, and I think you might have played on an early Wilco album. Do you ever reflect on being part of the foundation of a musical scene? What if anything does it mean to you personally?
I was the guitarist on Wilco’s A.M. I don't think about this at all, 'cause I'm old enough to know this was not the birth of this kind of scene. It's existed for years. It just gets unearthed with every new batch of writers. Right before this wave we're associated with, there were bands like Rank & File, The Long Ryders, Jason & The Scorchers, etc. You can take it back to CCR if you wanna. Hell, Elvis mighta started it. It's all the same deal: Country/Blues with electric guitars adding up to rock and roll. They didn't really give it its own category name 'til our wave though. But it's been around a long time.
You once described The Bottle Rockets as "reporters from the heartland," and there's a blue-collar, everyman ethos is a trademark of your music. You're kind of a contrarian -- some might say ornery. Then you drop a poignant, tender ballad like "Silver Ring." Tell me about that song's inspiration.
Our drummer Mark wrote that one. We liked it, so we did it. It's a sentiment I can get behind...
Y'all recorded a live album in Germany several years ago. I've asked other artists about this phenomenon: A lot of roots-type acts from the U.S. find really strong support in Europe. Why do you think that is?
I don't know why, but they have more interest and respect for American roots music. That fact is pretty much what brought us the Stones, and Clapton and whatnot. They seem to have more interest in our musical roots than we have in theirs. Maybe even more than we have in our own. Don't know why. They're just cool like that.
The title cut of the album has an old-man-shaking-fist quality to it; how annoyed are you, really, with modern technology? Show your work.
The album is really more about coming to terms with it, than shaking a fist at it. But if you are old enough, a distaste for it will come through. I'm old enough. I vividly remember when people were smart enough to know how idiotic and dangerous it would be to read and type while driving a car.
Finally, I have to ask about a song from the first BR album I ever bought, "Waitin' on a Train." So gut-wrenching, and it literally has a train wreck quality to it -- I can't not listen all the way through. Where did that song come from?
Bob Parr, the bass player in my old band Chicken Truck wrote that one. You'd have to ask him. Another one we liked, so we did it.
Life ain’t fair, especially when it comes to music. There certainly seems to be no cosmic justice. Duane Allman? Taken from us in a motorcycle wreck at the tender age of 24. Hendrix? Found dead in a bathtub – granted, likely by his own hand – at 27. Yet Michael Jackson used little boys as nighttime playthings, bought their parents’ silence and was allowed to draw breath till the age of 50.
And this week brings yet another reminder. No-talent hacks like Luke Bryan, Kane Brown and…I forget his name, but that dude who held forth in Rolling Stone about the need for stricter gun laws? Who is he? Who cares; he’s a douchebag like everybody else in mainstream country, and millions of morons listen to him and all the rest of them, perpetuating the slow death march of a once-great genre. Those losers and their fans collectively wallow in all that brainless tripe, but we can’t have Charlie Robison anymore?
Charlie’s not dead, but he’s through recording and touring, thanks to “complications from surgery.” Still around, and one hopes still writing. But it sure feels like a funeral.
It’s as unfair as a rich woman wearing “ten years worth of work on her hand.”
Here’s Charlie at Antone’s, doing “Loving County.” I miss him already.
If there’s a band that deserves to finally break through to the next level, it’s Lucero. They’re the humble road dogs who never quit, and continually deliver the goods. And with Among The Ghosts debuting at #2 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart and the band celebrating 20 years of existence, we wanted to take a minute and gush with pride and love for the best dudes from Memphis. It's about damn time for a Grammy nod for these boys.
Considering a few of us (Trailer, Chad, & Robert) have seen the band live more than they can count on two hands, we wanted to put together dream set lists. Just for funsies, because you know, NERD ALERT.
The only rules are: 15 songs and an encore (although Lucero routinely plays 20+ songs per show).
Robert Dean’s dream Lucero set:
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Smoke
Everything Has Changed
Anjalee
I Can Get us Out of Here
Among The Ghosts
Baby Don’t You Want Me
Nights Like These
Drink Till We’re Gone
Sweet Little Thing
Hey Darlin’ Do You Gamble
Texas & Tennessee
On My Way Downtown
For The Lonely Ones
Raisin’ Hell
Hate & Jealousy
Encore:
Tears Don’t Matter Much
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Jeremy
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Can’t You Hear Them Howl
For the Lonely Ones
The Man I Was
To My Dearest Wife
Darby’s Song
Went Looking For Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles
Among the Ghosts
Woke Up In New Orleans
Hey Darlin’ Do You Gamble?
They Called Her Killer
All Sewn Up
Texas & Tennessee
Nights Like These
Goodbye Again
All These Love Songs
Encore:
The Closer You Get (Alabama cover)
Tears Don’t Matter Much
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Trailer
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The Mountain
Among the Ghosts
All These Love Songs
Chain Link Fence
Tonight Ain't Gonna Be Good
My Best Girl
Texas & Tennessee
Sweet Little Thing
That Much Further West
Nights Like These
What Else Would You Have Me Be?
Raising Hell
Noon As Dark As Midnight
It Gets the Worst at Night
Kiss the Bottle
Encore:
Smoke
Sixteen
Tears Don't Matter Much
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Kevin
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Downtown (Intro)
On My Way Downtown
Like Lightning
Last Night in Town
The War
She's Just That Kind of Girl
I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight
Sweet Little Thing
Darby's Song
Johnny Davis
The Devil and Maggie Chascarillo
Smoke
Can't Feel a Thing
What Are You Willing to Lose?
Sounds of the City
Encore:
The Mountain
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Chad
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For the Lonely Ones
Last Night in Town
Little Silver Heart
To My Dearest Wife
Among the Ghosts
Raising Hell
That Much Further West
Sweet Little Thing
Bottom of the Sea
Sixes & Sevens
All Sewn Up
Texas & Tennessee
Nights Like These
Chain Link Fence
Tears Don't Matter Much
Encore:
San Francisco
Drink Till We're Gone
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Matthew
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Can't You Hear Them Howl
I don't think there would be a better damn way to begin a Lucero show than this opening riff.
Cover Me
Little Silver Heart
Nights Like These
Watch It Burn
What Else Would You Have Me Be?
I feel confident a show that began with these first 6 songs would absolutely create a frenzied-as-hell crowd. And, I am all for it. Let's burn this whole thing down!
Sweet Little Thing
Last Night In Town
This song was played at the first Lucero show (I think) I went to with my Dad and brother back in my home state of TN and it meant a lot at the time to me since I was leaving to come back up to D.C. I wish it was played every single show I attended.
Tears Don't Matter Much
Hate & Jealousy
I haven't seen this song or Sing Me No Hymns live before and I have to believe that these would absolutely be scorchers live.
Sing Me No Hymns
That Much Further West
To My Dearest Wife
On My Way Downtown
Sound Of The City
Encore:
The War->Raising Hell
I know I'm cheating here, but I think this would be a killer way to do an encore. You can't have a Lucero show without The War and Raising Hell is a life affirming way to end my night of Lucero's perfect set list.
Jason Eady is a country artist with a bluegrass soul. He cut
his teeth with his stepfather in central Mississippi, going to picking parties
and bluegrass jams, but his six solo albums to date have all been in a traditional
country vein. But on the heels of his critically acclaimed self-titled 2017
record, Eady has gone fully unplugged and put his own unique, rocking stamp on
the bluegrass ethos. With help from an A-list duo from the genre, he’s made his
best album to date, I Travel On, released
today on Old Guitar Records.
It’s a good-time record made by a man at peace with himself
and the world. We chatted about being positive while staying authentic,
clearing out a Croatian bar in Paris, and jumping out of a perfectly good
airplane. And other stuff.
I Travel On is a distinct departure – in several ways -- from your
self-titled 2017 album. That one made our top 10, but it was pretty understated
and a little somber in places. Musically and thematically this record may be
its polar opposite. What were your mindset and/or goals with regard to the
musical approach this time?
Well, this record and the last one seem pretty different,
but I think of the last record as a bridge to this one. Before the self-titled
album, I’d been very electric, with lots of steel guitar – country music.
Sonically, they were bigger productions – not huge, though – than the last
album. On the last one we kind of pulled it back; it was more of an acoustic
album. I Travel On is fully acoustic.
So I think there’s a sonic thread running through to it.And I had been wanting to move that
direction.
About three years ago we played a show in Bozeman, Montana.
And this room is fantastic; it’s one of those places everyone plays when they
go to Montana. But it is small. I
don’t know the actual capacity, but I would guess 30-40 people, and it’s wider
than it is deep, so there are only about four rows of chairs. And we started
bringing in all our gear, but the thought of cramming all those amps in just
seemed weird to me. So we grabbed all our acoustic guitars, stripped down the
drum kit and played the whole set that way. And it just sounded great. So I
went into the last album with that idea, and toured that way as well.
The first thing I
noticed on the opening cut, “I Lost My Mind in Carolina,” was that you brought
in a stud on acoustic guitar. Got a ringer on Dobro, too. Who are these guys,
and what was the recording process like?
Rob Ickes (dobro) and Trey Hensley (guitar) are the two
guys. And my favorite thing about this record is that it’s real and organic.
Our developed the sound by touring around and playing that way, where everybody
did their own natural thing. And we came up with a sound that’s sort of
bluegrass on the top end and a real groove on the bottom. While we were driving
around the country we listened to these guys – they’re a duo,
and they are absolute studs in the bluegrass world; their very first album
got nominated for a Grammy in the bluegrass category. They’re just phenomenal.
So as it came time to make this record, I wanted it to be
our live band, but I didn’t want there to be overdubs. I wanted the record to
sound like we’re all sitting in a room. Our lead player can do all those
things, but I didn’t want overdubs. So since we had been listening to them, and
I just called Trey and said, “Would you guys want to do this?” He said yes. It
came from a very real place; we didn’t just say, “Who are some studio badasses
we can call?” We tracked 100 percent live from top to bottom, no overdubs. Our
band would work them up the night before, but we had never played them with Rob
and Trey before we recorded. Everything you hear on this record is what you
would have heard if you had been standing in the room while we recorded.
Wow.
Yeah, I know!
There’s a real
blues/bluegrass feel to the whole thing.
I would never in the world set out and try to make a pure bluegrass record, because I have
way too much respect for the genre. To be in that world, you really have to
live it your whole life. You can’t dabble
in bluegrass. But yeah, it was a conscious thing we were going for; we’re
calling it “groove grass.” We wanted to hint at bluegrass, and people will
definitely hear that aspect of it, but with pure bluegrass you don’t have drums
or a bass guitar. “Groove grass” sums it up, really.
I want to get into
several specific songs in a minute, but something stands out on the album as a
whole and I’d like to get your take on it. Brent Cobb told me a couple of years
ago that it’s possible to write country or roots songs with authenticity and depth
without their all being sad and depressing. I think that’s rare, but it
certainly holds true for this album of yours – and to a large degree the last
one. What do you think of that premise?You seem to be a pretty happy guy.
I am. And I love Brent, by the way, I think he’s one of the
best artists around today. Just incredible. But he’s right. And there’s that
temptation when you’re writing songs that you want to be authentic or real;
they can turn out depressing. But I wanted this album to feel good. There are
some points on the record where if you want to listen to words and dig into
meanings – and I worked hard on the words – there’s some depth to latch onto if
you want to listen to it that way. But I also wanted this to be a record that
you could just put on and play and enjoy.I get that there’s a need for feel-good music, where you don’t have to
just think all the time. There are plenty of examples of people – like John
Prine and Paul Simon – who write great songs, but I don’t know what they mean
half the time. They just feel really good. Just put it on. Move your feet. Move
your head.
But Brent’s right; you have to pull yourself out of that
box, because it seems like there are two extremes in country music right now.
It’s either said and depressing, or it’s so fluffy, about drinking beer on the
river on the weekend.
Speaking of being a “Happy
Man,” there’s a song with that very title. Were you making a statement for the
record with that one?
I definitely was. I just wanted to get that out there. God
forbid if anything happened to me, anyone could listen to that song and know
that I’m a happy person and have lived a good life, and these are the reasons
why. Because when you boil it down, there’s really only a few things that make
you happy: There’s friends, there’s family, there’s doing what you love and the
experiences you have. Here, there are two verses with three things each that
make me happy. And at the end of it, I couldn’t think of anything else. The
simplicity of it was very intentional.
And the origin of it – I don’t want to drag this out but
this is a funny story – was overseas last year. We went to Paris, France to
play a festival and wound up in a Croatian bar right across from the Notre Dame
Cathedral. We could hear music playing inside that was lively, so we went in.
This was like a Tuesday night but there was a party going on, so we wandered
in. The bartender asks Courtney and me what we were doing there and we told him
we were musicians. He asks my name, and dials me up on Spotify, and just
started playing my music randomly, however that works. And it was just like three of my most
depressing songs, one after another.
Ha!
Yeah, man. Cleared out the bar. Everyone went outside to
smoke all at once. Killed the whole vibe of the room. I started getting depressed! And I thought, “Good gosh, if I heard
this for the first time I’d think this fellow is depressed, too. This guy’s got
problems.” So I wanted to get it out there, that it’s not the case. I’ve
written plenty of sad songs, but that’s just something I like to do sometimes.
And ironically, “Happy Man” is one of the slowest songs on the record.
About the only thing
that comes close to a downer on this album is “She Had to Run,” about a woman
getting out of a dangerous domestic situation. Is there a story behind that
song?
Yeah, I won’t go into the details of it because it’s a very
personal song, but one I needed to write. And I knew when I got ready to make
this album that this song would be the outlier, but it was too important to me.
I had to get that one on there. I just hope that maybe there’s one person who
hears it and thinks about getting out of a situation like that.
I won’t pry into
specifics, but let me ask: Does the person who inspired it know about the song?
She does. We haven’t talked about it a lot because it’s
still too close, too fresh. She got out, but it was frighteningly close. It was
so close that the next person who was with that guy didn’t get out.
“Always a Woman” is
intriguing. Tonally, it’s dark and in a minor key – by the way, is there
another chord, or just C minor?
That’s it, the whole way through.
Lyrically, it’s kind
of an ironic Valentine. “There’s only one thing between the devil and a good
man” is really clever, because it can mean two very different things.
Yeah, exactly.
Unpack that song for
me.
That’s the first song I wrote for this album, and the only
one where I had a title set beforehand. Courtney and I were hanging out with a
friend who was having a bad time and she asked what was the matter. He kind of
shrugged it off and she said, “Is it a woman?” He said, “It’s always a woman.”
I wrote that down, and I sat down with my guitar and just started droning on
that C minor chord. And it’s a very specific fingerpicking pattern that never
stops for four minutes; if you watch me play it my fingers [on the neck] never
move.
And like we were just talking about, I didn’t want to write
another sad song. So I had the first verse and thought, “This song has to turn.
‘Always a woman’ doesn’t have to mean good or bad.” So musically we used some
dynamics to change things up, and I tried to change that phrase from a positive
to a negative as well. And I think the whole theme of the record is finding the
positive in things and moving forward. And that’s why we called the album “I
Travel On.” It’s about moving forward. A lot of the songs are about physically
traveling; this one does it in a mental space.
And the
feedback/distortion thing is a nice backbone. Nothing electric there?
No! That’s the dobro player raking across the strings, and
the fiddle player doing it in some spots, muting his strings. Everybody thinks
there are electric instruments on that song and there aren’t. We had a
videographer come in and shoot while we were recording that song; you’ll see it
when it comes out.
And I guess you had
to include at least a couple waltzes to preserve domestic bliss. I take it
that’s your bride singing harmony on “Below The Waterline?”
Ha. Yeah, if you hear harmonies on this album there
Courtney’s. I’ve always wanted to write a bluegrass power waltz. I love those,
because they make the harmonies just scream. Courtney and I wrote that one
together.
I was gonna ask if
she got a co-write on that one.
She got two. We wrote that one, and “Now or Never,” the
second track on the album.
This is kinda random
but the key of C minor on “Always a Woman” made me wonder: Do you have a
favorite key, or one that you end up doing the bulk of your songs in?
I write most of my songs in D and I don’t know why. And I
had originally written that song in D minor, but when we got into the studio to
record we got to that point in the chorus where you go up, and I couldn’t quite
hit it. And when we lowered it, it kind of came alive, got darker.
Staying with random:
You recently went skydiving with your mom and daughter. What possessed y’all,
and would you do it again?
That was all my mom’s idea. She had originally wanted to do
that thing in Vegas where you bungee-jump off of a tower on one of the tall
buildings. And later we were together at Christmas and she said something about
skydiving, and my daughter wanted to do it with her. So I bought it for my
daughter, but every time they tried to go the weather was bad, then my daughter
went off to college. She was home a few weeks ago and the weather was perfect.
And on the drive over I thought, “When am I ever gonna get to do this again?
All three generations are here. This is once in a lifetime.”
Tell me about the
moment before you went out the door of the airplane.
It’s the most terrifying and exhilarating thing. On the way
up it’s in your head what’s gonna happen, but it’s just indescribable, the way
you feel standing in that door. If you’re not afraid looking out, you’re not
human. There’s nothing about it that’s natural or normal. You have to try and
get it out of your head, and trust the person who’s strapped to your back.
That was the worst moment, because we did a high jump. We were at 14,000 feet. I
loved it. But there’s really no way in the world to use words to describe what
it feels like.
Would you do it
again?
You know, when I first did it I said there was no way – I
was glad I did it but wouldn’t do it again. But there are times I find myself
thinking about it. I don’t think I’d go out of my way to, but if somebody said,
“You wanna go do this,” I think I probably would.
Y’all are doing
something kinda neat, a sightseeing, musical bus tour of Switzerland with 40
fans. I’m familiar with musical cruises; is this something y’all came up with,
or have others done it?
Courtney and I have gone to Switzerland five years in a row,
I think. We have a promoter over there and we love it there. And you can drive
from one corner of the country to the other in five hours. But we did something
like this last year, with Reckless Kelly and toured Ireland. We were their
guests And Courtney and I decided we had to do this in Switzerland. So it’s
seven nights and five shows, and we’re personally putting it together, where
we’re gonna stay and eat and the venues we’ll play. The response has been
great. We’re really excited about it.
Almost two years ago, Kasey Anderson opened
up in depth here about his spiraling descent from artist-on-the-cusp to
grifting, locked-up addict. He was then not quite a year post-prison. And while
there was still a hint of an artist’s confidence about him, it was tempered by
the gun-shyness you’d expect of a guy fresh from the halfway house and with a
long list of pissed-off victims, many of them former friends.
Little did he know that within a couple of months he’d begin
the long, cathartic and ad hoc
process of recording a comeback album. In fact, he really had no clue what
would come of the sessions, done virtually pro
bono by a collection of generous friends and musical colleagues from the
Portland indie scene.
Anderson’s voice on the telephone is stronger today. He
sounds healthier, no doubt buoyed by the album-making process that was critical
to his ongoing restoration as a man. The humility is still there, no doubt, but
the knowledge that he’s made a really solid rock ‘n’ roll record has put a
spring in his step. From A White Hotel,
released today on emerging label Julian
Records, is poignant, introspective and sprinkled with
Anderson’s trademark irony, starting with the title, a reference to his drab
lodgings for more than two years. Oh, and his name isn’t on it.
We caught up with Anderson with just a few days to go before
his nuptials, and talked redemption, recovery, the virtues of not being
preachy, and the inevitable Steve Earle comparisons. And the whole, stupid
“outlaw country” thing.
I’m curious about the
way your band is billed. I was partial to the name “Kasey Anderson and The
Honkies.” “Hawks and Doves” is the
name of an underrated Neil Young album & song; why the switch? Were you
worried about the local Portland anarchist community torching your pad to
protest your white privilege? Sorry, I know it’s low-hanging fruit…
Ha! No. First, I decided to do it under a band name because
of the way the record came together. I had written all the lyrics and had the
structure of the songs, but the instrumentation came together in such a
collaborative way that it felt disingenuous just to put my name on it. And The
Honkies, I didn’t want to go back to that because all those guys were such
strong personalities in their own right, and I just kinda wanted to leave it
there with those guys because I have such fond memories of that band.
And I love that Neil Young record. The phrase “hawks and doves”
is a political and military term. It seemed pretty appropriate for what’s going
on now. Plus, it just sounds cool.
The first time I
heard that song was on Scott Miller & The Commonwealth’s live album…
Yeah, yeah! From The V Roys!
And since it’s not
“Kasey and the Hawks and Doves,” just the band name, any concern that nobody
will know it’s you?
I don’t think it’s a horrible thing for me to make a clean
break with the work that I did and the life that I led as a solo artist. It
wasn’t a calculated move to do that; maybe it’s an added benefit? And I think
that the way it’s being marketed through the press, it’s pretty clear that it’s
a band I’m involved in.
This is a collection
of a dozen pretty dang good songs. How long have they been percolating? Did
some of these words get put to paper while you were locked up?
Yeah, about half of them were written while I was locked up,
during my second year in prison. “Every Once in a While,” for instance, is
about my first cellmate. That’s his story much more than mine. The other five
or six songs happened around after the election, in late 2016. It took us a
long time to make the record because of the way we went about it.
Tell me about this
band, and how you got the record made; I imagine raising funds to get an album
done might have been challenging for someone in your position.
The band is
Jordan Richter (guitars,) Ben Landsverk (bass, keys, viola, background vocals)
and Jesse Moffat (drums, percussion). Other folks who played are Eric “Roscoe” Ambel, Kurt Bloch, Ralph Carney, Kay Hanley and Dave
Jorgensen.
Jordan engineered it and owns a
recording studio in town. And I think right after you and talked last time,
some folks reached out and asked if I’d like to contribute a track for a
benefit record they were involved in. I told Jordan, “Hey, I’d really like to
do this, but I don’t have money to pay for studio time or to pay session
players.” And he said, “Are you sure
you want to do a benefit record?” (Laughs)
…I wasn’t gonna say anything. It was a real thing, though, right?
(Laughs) Yeah, it was a real thing. It
was to help this woman named Jennifer Holmes – who has since passed away – with
her cancer treatments. So once I proved to him that it was a real thing, he
said he’d get some people together. We covered this song called “Wise Blood” by
the band Tender Mercies. At the
end of the session Jordan said, “Man, if you ever want to just come in the
studio and roll tape, everybody gets your situation and knows that you don’t
have a bunch of money to throw into making a record. There are people willing
to play your songs for fun and just see where it goes.”
And that’s what we did. Jordan would
text a group of us that said, “I have this day where the studio’s not in use,
and you don’t have to pay me for the time.” So it took us more than a year,
because we’d do a day here and there, and everybody would go back to their
lives. So that’s how the record got made, and it was really generous of him to
do that.
And then I sent [the album] to several
of my friends and said, “I really don’t know what to do with this; I can’t put
it out.” I have a friend named Nathan Earle here in Portland who’s in a band
called The Get Ahead, and he told me about this new label, Julian Records.
“They seem to be looking for bands,” he said. “Why don’t you send it to them?”
I had planned to just try and put it out digitally, but the Julian Records
folks were into it, and took it from there.
That’s certainly fortuitous.
It’s very fortuitous, and the only way
it was going to come out physically. I mean it’s not really cost-prohibitive to
get an album out digitally. But this was very generous. Everybody seemed to
think the songs were cool, and were like, “Don’t worry about it right now,
let’s just see what happens.”
When last we spoke,
we touched on your being medicated for bipolar disorder, and how that can
sometimes stifle creativity in artists of all stripes. There’s a line in
“Lithium Blues” that says, “You took the words right out of my mouth.” Is there
a balance you find yourself having to strike between mental health and
creativity?
Yeah, for sure. “Lithium Blues” might have been the first
thing I wrote in prison that I was really happy with. I had to go back and
figure out, okay, there’s an element of
magic to creativity, but there’s a much bigger element of math to it. And I know how to make a
song so that the pieces fit together. If I can trust myself enough to do that,
the rest will come along in time. That’s kind of what that song is about.We talked about this a little bit
before, but I had almost resigned myself that [playing music professionally]
was behind me, that maybe I could do some shows for fun from time to time. But
over the course of making this record it became clear to me that I still know
how to make a song work. Whether this is a thing I get to do on a larger scale
remains to be seen, but I was able to prove to myself that I can still put a
good song together, even when I’m not
up for five straight days.
An article in Glide mentioned that you’re training to be an
addiction counselor.Is there some
sense of duty there? Have you become more zealous about “the program” and
living clean? Maybe a little of both?
It’s a little of both. I have certainly become more zealous
about making sure that people who deal with mental health and/or addiction
issues – especially younger people – have someone they can talk to without
feeling judged or dictated to.
The name of your
band, as you mentioned, has political overtones, and there are some references
to current events on the album. But you didn’t lose your mind and start bashing
people over the head with your opinions, like so many artists have done since 2016.
Why do so many folks make everything about politics?
When I wrote these songs, one of the things I tried really
hard to do was invite people into a conversation rather than dictate to them
how they should feel about any given thing.
Thank you.
I really feel that’s a far
more effective way to engage an audience, if you want to have that
conversation. I have never responded to anybody – even when I agree
wholeheartedly with what they have to say – addressing whatever they imagine
their audience to be, by dictating what their thoughts or beliefs should be.
That just doesn’t work for me, and when I wrote these songs I tried really hard
to stay away from that. I wanted to ground it in narrative and open-ended
conversation.
Yeah. It’s there, but it’s not preachy, and it’s
open to interpretation. And believe you me it’s refreshing. Because I didn’t
vote for the sumbitch, but I’ve had about a bellyful of being preached to by
guys whose music I otherwise love.
Switching gears,
redemption is certainly a theme running through From a White Hotel. How cathartic was this whole process, and where
are you on the whole making-amends thing that started when you got out of the
joint?
Well, in terms of the process being restorative, the making
of the record – playing music with other people, being able to work on songs –
was really, really healthy.And it
was good to do it in a way that I didn’t have to feel like my life depended on
whether people liked these songs. Obviously I wouldn’t have put the record out
if I didn’t want people to hear the songs, but it’s not going to ruin my life
if there’s a deafening thud when it’s released. I’m still gonna be married to
this wonderful woman, I’m still gonna be helping people who struggle with
mental health and addiction issues. At the end of the day, the act of making a
record was rewarding in and of itself.
The amends thing? Well…the second you say you’re humble,
you’re not.
Ha! I guess that’s
true.
(Laughs) Yeah. I’ll just say I’m really proud of the work
that I’ve done. I think I’m living out amends to people to whom I can’t make
direct amends. I’ve worked really hard at doing a good job of that.
By the time this
article runs you’ll have been married for about a week. Was Caitlin a part of
your life before you went away? How big a part of your road back to normalcy
has she been?
She was a part of my life. She wasn’t my girlfriend at that
time, but she was part of a close group of friends. My girlfriend at the time
was named Tracey, and she called Caitlin that night and said, “You’re not gonna
believe this, but he’s gone. He’s going to prison, so can you come get his
stuff out of my apartment?” So Caitlin went and got all of my stuff and took it
to Goodwill in East Los Angeles. A lot of us had drastic changes in our lives
around that time but we all stayed in touch for the most part. And Cait and I
stayed in touch while I was locked up, and she’s been so supportive. She was
never judgmental. It’s been one of the most positive things in my life – if not
the most positive – to have that
person with me every step of the way.
On the title cut you
say, “I ain’t no kind of outlaw, and I never claimed to be.” The wit and irony
are strong in you, Kasey Anderson.
(Laughs) Well, you know, that’s true. I never tried to
market any of the records we ever made as any sort of “outlaw country” thing…
Oh, wait! Gosh, see,
there’s so much irony I missed the irony.
I was thinking in the literal sense, in that you’ve done time and technically are an outlaw.
(Laughs) I technically am an outlaw, and that’s kind of the
point I wanted to make. It’s not all those artists’ fault that they’re being
marketed and trumpeted that way. But a lot of times I’ll read an article about
some “outlaw country” artist and think, “Man, I’ve actually been an outlaw and it sucks!”
You know, smoking weed doesn’t make someone an outlaw. My
mom’s 65 and she’ll smoke weed and watch Netflix. That doesn’t make someone a
badass. Figure out what you mean by “outlaw.”
Speaking of outlaws:
Everybody’s favorite badass, Steve Earle, gets a nod on “Clothes Off My Back,”
right down to the title of his 1996 post-prison album.I can understand why you could maybe
not resist a tip of the ol’ driver’s cap; it’s just too perfect. But aren’t you
afraid he might get a big head over it?
Um…no, I’m not. Because I think Steve knows how good he is.
He’s far enough along in his career that he knows he’s revered by people who
write songs.
Very diplomatic, by
the way.
(Laughs) But the point of that song…Steve’s been sober for a
long time now, and he’s done a really good job of living his life according to
that. And so it’s an acknowledgement that I’m not anywhere near where this guy
is as a songwriter, and certainly not in my recovery. But I’m certainly a lot
better than I was five years ago.
Yeah. I was really
hoping you’d rise to the bait there.
(Laughs) I can’t.
I know.
Also, just to clarify one comment: my
issue with “Outlaw Country” isn’t with any of the artists, it’s with the folks
who use it as an easy/“cool” way to market and categorize artists. I don’t know
too many artists who are actively seeking that label. I know Sturgill and Aaron
Lee Tasjan for sure have poked fun at it in the past. That kind of marketing
and categorization, to me, draw attention away from how great artists like Sturgill
and Margo Price and Elizabeth Cook and those folks are individually, and makes
it into this one homogenous category. It’s counterproductive. Their work is
great, so let it stand on its own.
Newlywed Kasey Anderson is on tour. Check dates here.
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From a White Hotel is available everywhere today, including Kasey's site.
