Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Rosanne Cash

Transcript

Rosanne Cash · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Just a quick note here. You can listen to all
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: which you can find a link to in the show
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: notes for licensing reasons. Each time a song is referenced
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect. All right,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: enjoyed the episode?
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Do you recognize who that is? That's one of the
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: most distinctive voices in modern music, Roseanne Cash Country Music Royalty.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: She's been making extraordinary music for forty years and that's
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: the beginning of the title track to her latest album,
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: She Remembers Everything you know. I recently looked back at
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: some country music charts. Thirty years ago, the average age
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: of the artist in the top ten was thirty five.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Today is twenty. Country music is losing interest in its elders,
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: which is a shame, because it's elders are better than ever.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: I'm Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to broken Record This week.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: My colleague Bruce Headlam sits down with Rose end Cash
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: and her husband and musical partner John Leventhal at the
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: Bridge Studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to play some amazing music
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: and tell a few stories.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: The name of the album is she remembers everything, which
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it's an ambiguous, difficult song. The phrase on its own
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: seems to have taken a lot a lot of meaning.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Right now, how did you intend that to be received?
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: I intended it as both a threat and a common
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: And I wrote the lyrics to this song in Sam Phillips,
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: who is just a beautiful woman in a beautiful song writer.
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: She wrote the music. It was the first time we
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: ever wrote a song together, and I was when I
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: wrote the lyrics. I was thinking about trauma, early trauma
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: and a woman's memory and how many things we lock up,
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: and that it there's some comfort in thinking that it
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: was a woman's memory is like a library. You may
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: not know right off the bat every book that's on
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: the shelf, but you could go in there and pull
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: it out. And there's also some rage in that song.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: In a way, it's prescient because this was before the
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: Me Too movement, before the Kavanaugh hearings, you know, when
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: every woman I know felt completely crushed and discounted, and
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: you know, we were told that we couldn't even trust
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: our own memories. And the song actually took on greater
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: residence for me after that.
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: It's striking how it did, and we both really I
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: remember the day we both realized it, like we just
• 3:02
  Speaker 5: looked at each other and go, you have just entered
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: the zeitgeist at the exact right moment.
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: But it was personal and it's not like all those
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: things didn't exist before for millions.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Of women, you know, was that the kind of trauma
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you were talking about? Assault?
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: Let's say I have my own stories, and I don't
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: feel the specifics are as important as the fact that
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: the story is believed and valued, just like every other
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: woman I know who has these stories. And the trauma,
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: I think childhood trauma, any trauma, it rearranges you in
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: a way that you start acting in the world differently.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: And I started thinking, how long does it take to
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: get out of that? How long does it take to
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: become yourself? You know, in your sixth decade, are you
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: still working on this? You're still crawling out from it?
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Are you still walking through the world like a thief
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: trying to steal a little moment of joy or you know,
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: some attention for yourself?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Do you have an answer for that? No, because I'd
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: love to hear it.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: I don't have the answer oh that, And in fact,
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: I like that songs don't provide answers, they just provoke questions.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Did the feeling you're talking about did that precede the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Kavanaugh hearings?
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, definitely.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the expression of that politically. Did
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: that go back to the election? Oh my god.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: I didn't stop crying for ten days after the election.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: And I have four daughters and a son, and my
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: daughters were devastated. And one of them said to me,
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: she called up crying the night of the election, and
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: she said, I feel like I don't matter, and that
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: pierced my heart. Whenever I think of that sentence, I
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: just it breaks my heart. And at the same or
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: at the same time, our son was writing his college
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: filling out his essay for college, and one of the
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: questions was what would you change in this world if
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: you could change one thing, and he wrote sexism. That
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: just came out of the blue. We didn't expect that,
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: he said, because I have a mom and four sisters
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: and I see how it hurts them. Well, those are
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: the people we hope rule the world. You know, young
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: men who were that sensitive.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Or young women or young women. Of course, right growing up,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: there were albums and I know, you like these artists
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: who looked at albums that way, like Joni Mitchell or
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Linda Ronstad, but they've thought very much in terms of albums.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Do you think still in terms of albums even in
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: this age?
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, and the time and you know focus that
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: we've been on sequencing an album because it is an
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: album to us. You know, it's like, what is track three?
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: How are we going to start it? How are we
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: going to end it? And even if there's not a
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: theme there, there is a melodic or a narrative arc
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: to it that makes sense. I'm actually not very good
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: at sequencing. John is much better. And Tucker Martin, who
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: is the other producer on this album, half the album
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: was produced by him, half by John. He he's also
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: good at sequencing. So I kind of left that to
• 6:37
  Speaker 4: the gentleman. But you're right, Joni Mitchell, that Blue was
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: a really really important record to me up to that point.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: I mean I was young, but up to that point
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: I kind of just thought men were songwriters. I didn't
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: realize that a woman could be a songwriter and that
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: her inner life was legit raw material to create songs,
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: music art and put it out in a public forum.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: That was That was a startling and revelatory moment for me.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Then we'll get to the other songs in a minute.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: But are all the songs confessional in that way? Are
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: they all parts of you?
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: I don't like that word confessional because it makes it
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: seem like a diary. And there is an an art
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: and a craft of songwriting and poetic license and a
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: rhyme scheme and a melody and a backbeat and all
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: of those things to have to work together to make
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: a song work at the same time. Yeah, there's nothing
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: outside of myself on this album. Not nothing.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: It's also and I regret using the word. It's a
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: word that's used with women's music.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, you don't hear about men's confessional albums.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: That's because we nothing to say.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: That's so not true.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Well with that one, don't we try another song? What's next?
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: Try being the operative word. We'll see how which one
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: are we doing?
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: Let's do Uh, let's do Jerusalem. But I need just
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: hold hold the binary code in there for a second.
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: I got to retune more broken record.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: After this, we're back with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. Uh.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: You talked when you were a young writer I'm not
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: quite sure what you were doing about sitting down and
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: taking apart songs by your heroes Guy Clark, Town Van
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Zand and I'm assuming Joni Mitchell and others. Is that
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: something you still do even all after all this time.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I guess what I'm asking is is songwriting like learning
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the alphabet or riding a bike. Once you know it,
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you know it? Or is it like playing a guitar
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: you got to do your scales.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: Oh god, No, once you know it, you don't know it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: I mean, part of the beauty of songwriting is there's
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: mystery involved. You know, the same with any other really
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: creative act. You start out not knowing what's going to happen,
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: and then it starts to unfold, and then you can
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: see the end of it, and then you edit, and
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: then you just keep polishing, and you know, it's different
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: every time. As far as examining other songs, absolutely, when
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: I was really young and first starting out, I would
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: write the lyrics down a Bob Dylan's song, Joni Mitchell's song,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: Guy Clark song and try to figure out why it
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: worked and deconstruct the rhyme scheme. Where did they rhyme
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: this one? And how did that work? And where did
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: the bridge come? And does the chorus work? You know,
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: and really try to dismantle it. I don't do that
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: so much anymore because I think some of that knowledge
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: is just intuitively gone in after forty years of writing songs.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: But I do pay attention and listen to how other
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: writers create things and how they construct their songs, and
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: you know, like a song that has a really subtle
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: rhyme scheme and yet works and how did that happen?
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: And chord changes, you know, all of it. It still
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: is endlessly fascinating and wonderful and mysterious to me.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: If you hit a roadblock in your own writing, is
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that something you'll go back and listen to other things?
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Just for sure? I mean even I listen to other
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: music and get inspired to you know, sometimes my competitive
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: spirit gets inspired, like I really want to write something
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: that good. I want to beat that Oh yeah, definitely yeah,
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: And then yeah, it kind of makes you mad. And
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: then other times it's just like, oh, I'm so moved.
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: I want to find that thing in me.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: And then beat that person. That person is songwriting something
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: you do for both of you every day? Is it?
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: Is it you know what I the way I look
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: at it. I don't sit down and write every day,
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: but I am a songwriter every day. So I'm collating
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: information and keeping notes every day and seeing something form
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: just outside my peripheral vision every day.
• 11:39
  Speaker 5: I try to be aware of it every day. Yeah,
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a little weird, Like I am compelled
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: to write music in a way. I can't turn it off,
• 11:50
  Speaker 5: you know, which is great. So a few times where
• 11:52
  Speaker 5: I wish I could turn it off, I can't turn
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: off that thing in my head that wants to create
• 11:57
  Speaker 5: or come up with something that I that I feel
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: is potentially interesting. It doesn't always turn out to be interesting.
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: But like you saw me here today, before we even started,
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: like I played something on the guitar that struck me
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: as unusual and the first thing I thought of, like, oh,
• 12:12
  Speaker 5: I could write a song around that.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: I keep old lyrics, you know. I have files and
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: files of old lyrics, and sometimes if I get stuck,
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: I go back to something I wrote ten years ago,
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: five years ago.
• 12:25
  Speaker 5: Sometimes she'll show me or I'll find a bit of
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: lyric that she hadn't really thought about as being either
• 12:33
  Speaker 5: worthwhile or a song, and I'll just look at it
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: and go, oh my god, let me, can I please
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: strit music to this? It's a there's I think the
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: song we're.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: About to do is yeah, this song everyone but me.
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: I had written these lyrics that I didn't think were lyrics.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: I just thought it was something I was writing for
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: myself because it was kind of an anguished piece, and
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: I thought, I'm not gonna turn this into a song.
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: And then John and I were in the studio one
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: day and we were writing. I think we were working
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: on crossing to Jerusalem and he said what else you got,
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: and just impulsively.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And you said, well, I know who's crossing the Jerusalem first.
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: Well, that possibility always exists in the marriage.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: Oh. I pulled these this raw thing out and I said,
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: I just don't really think these are lyrics, and he goes,
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: oh yeah, let me write music to this. And I
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: swear I think it was the first time we both
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: cried in the studio.
• 13:37
  Speaker 5: Oh geez, here we go.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: No really, okay, Well, take me back, how did that happen?
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: He wrote the music to those raw kind of lyrics,
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: and we both had tears running down our face. It
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: was very moving. It was a great experience.
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: But I didn't. What's interesting is that, I mean, I
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: really loved Roseanne's lyrics and I was I felt good
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: about the melody I wrote. Because I get older, I
• 14:04
  Speaker 5: feel like I've accomplished something if I've written something really
• 14:06
  Speaker 5: simple but has a kind of elegance to it that's
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: not beholden to any particular style of music. But I didn't.
• 14:14
  Speaker 5: I experienced Rosane's lyrics I think differently than she did.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: So the song was saying something different to me than
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: I think what she quote unquote intended when she wrote it,
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: which to me is my favorite kind of song and writing.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: Where Roseanne may have had some narrative or some idea
• 14:32
  Speaker 5: or thought about where she was going with this lyric,
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: but to me it represented something so much more universal
• 14:38
  Speaker 5: than what I think she was writing about, about a
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: general idea of loss and I don't want to get.
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: Online again, but again trauma coming out of Yeah.
• 14:48
  Speaker 5: See, I didn't hear it as trauma. I heard it
• 14:51
  Speaker 5: more as this kind of universal sense that at some
• 14:54
  Speaker 5: point you're going to lose something that you love.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Well, it's unavoidable, hopefully it is universal, and.
• 14:59
  Speaker 5: How you navigate and how you express it and what
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: you feel about it and what you do with it
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: is universal, and particularly as you get older, it's like, you.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: Know, mortality looms in some places on this album.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Well with that, let's hear it.
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: Okay, this is called everyone but Me.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot that's a loaded song. There's
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: a lot in it. It does talk about parents. Yeah,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: And one thing I wanted to ask you about is
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: people think, of course you were raised in Tennessee, that
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: you were raised in the South. They're surprised to find
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: you weren't. They might be surprised to find out you
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: were raised Catholic.
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, my mother was Catholic, and you know, I was
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: born in Memphis. We moved to southern California when I
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: was three, and I was raised in southern California and
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: my mom was a devout Catholic. In fact, my dad
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: had to sign papers when they got married saying that
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: the children would be raised Catholic. And I went to
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: Cormat School for twelve years and grew up in California
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: listening to rock and roll.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: But like all good Catholics, you left the church, left
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the church. But your mother was now she from.
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: She was from San Antonio.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: San Antonio, but Southern Catholicism is a kind of a
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: whole different thing, isn't it.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Well, she her family was Italian, her father, I mean,
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: her father was only a second generation Italian or first generation.
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: They were Southern Italians, so yeah, it was Italian.
• 16:46
  Speaker 4: So I mean my mom had a uncle who was
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: a priest. It was pretty serious, right, Oh no.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: It'S very serious. Yeah, it's almost like being a Catholic
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: in England, which is yeah, yeah, this kind of your
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: real mind.
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. I left the church at sixteen, broke
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: my mother's heart, but just you know, she thought I
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: was going to hell. I just found you had to
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: be determined, yet to be determined TBD. I found it
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: immensely cruel and cynical that my mother, who was such
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: a devout Catholic, was for all intents and purposes, excommunicated
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: when she divorced my dad and not allowed to receive
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: communion anymore. And she still showed up and sat in
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: the front row every mass, you know, and worked in
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: the church and everything. And I just thought, how could
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: they turn away somebody who was so devoted. I don't
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: want to be part of that.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Well, there is there is a kind of sense in
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: a lot of your work. I would argue that you've
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: got that Catholic, particularly that kind of Catholic sense in
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of your songs, of this kind of fight
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: between the world we believe in and then there's the
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: world we live in, and you tend to look at it.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I would say, probably in terms of relationships. But it's
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: a very it's something you find particularly in a lot
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: it's Southern Catholic. That is your Flannery O'Connor is a
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: great example of that.
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: That is so interesting. I never thought about it that way,
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: and I think that's true. And I think on this
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: record it's less about that happening in relationships and more
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: about it happening inside myself. And you know, there's still
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: a good Catholic girl inside of me who wants people
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: to like her and wants to do the right thing
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: and believes in good and evil and morality.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It's a it just seems to be a theme that
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: kind of runs through and particularly your views on marriage
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and relationships. You know, some of these I think two
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: of the songs are are dedicated to your husband, but
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: they're not simple, easy songs.
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: No, Well, he's serving with an.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: Easy going guy he seems to be.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, right, well, yeah, when to see, marriage is complicated,
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: it requires work, it's not it's not something you're given.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: You have to work for it. And you know, we've.
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: Had work, work, work, We've had ups.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: And downs like any couple. And you know, there's some
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: days I've wanted to get as far away from him
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: as possible. But mostly, I mean, we really like being together.
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: We've were together more than any couple we know, and
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: we're really good friends. And we work together, raise a
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: child together, live together, travel together. And it's not modern.
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think a lot of modern relationships the
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: people spend a lot of time apart. We don't, and
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: we like it that way.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, both your parents ended up having relationships like that,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: didn't they.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, where they were very close to the and with
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: the other personal time. That's true, they did.
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Oh your dad in June had ways of yeah.
• 20:22
  Speaker 6: Well, yeah, you're now at an age when when your
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: father was a performer, when he was around your age,
• 20:31
  Speaker 6: he was going through a lot of struggles commercially.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: I think at one point he was he dropped by
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: his label that was then your.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: Label or yeah, that was just a dark time.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Keep telling me how that happened.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: He was on Columbia, and really Colombia, that record label
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: was built on the backs of him and Bob Dylan.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: You know, it was that that record label owed him
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: so much. So he called me at home one day
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: and he said, what's.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Your royalty rate?
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: Because I was on Columbia at the same time, And
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: I told him, and he kind of rumphed. And then
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: shortly thereafter the label dropped him, and I was furious,
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: and I hated them for doing that, and I felt
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: so bad for my dad, and I felt embarrassed about
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: myself that I was still on the label. It seemed
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: somehow disrespectful, even though I didn't have anything to do
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: with it. You know, looking back at it, I thought,
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: I think I should I should have left the label,
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: should have just gotten off at that moment. But I didn't.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: And then Dad went to Mercury, and you know, then
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: he had a real fallow period before he met Rick.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: And Rick came in like a spirit brother, and my
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: whole family I think owes him a huge debt for
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: what he did for Dad. I mean, he it was
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: such a redemptive act.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: We should mention. You're talking about Rick Ruber It was
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: one of the partners in this podcast and produced I
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: think all your father's last five.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: Out the American recordings, yeah.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Which are of course sort of landmarks.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I always thought of Dad like Matisse, you know,
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: like Matis, starting with representational art and going into Impressionistic
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: and then this burst of creativity at the end of
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: his life. You know, when he did the Jazz Dancers.
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: It's like he kept reinventing himself. And I think he
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: that Fallo period on Mercury when he did all that
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: kind of really some really shallow and pedestrian recordings. Then
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: he just burst open when Rick came on.
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: This, well, Rick gave him permission to be the artist
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: he really was, and not sort of a musical artist
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: plugged into some sort of song slash hit making Nashville machinery,
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: which at that point was just a very bad fit
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: for your father.
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: I mean he needed someone to say, Johnny Cash.
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you doing. You're Johnny Cash, let go
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: of all of this. Let's just sit you down with
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: the guitar, just you and the guitar, and let's get
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: back to the basics.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you then, now, at this point
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: in your career. First of all, when you looked ahead
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: twenty years ago, where did you think your career was
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: going to be.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: I'm not good at that. I've never been good at
• 23:38
  Speaker 4: five year plans or mapping out my future or anything
• 23:42
  Speaker 4: like that. I'm really more of a what's next, what's
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: the next step, what's the next step? Person? The overarching
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: looking forward vision I've had for myself is just to
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: be a better writer. I just wanted to be a
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: better songwriter and I want to be a better singer.
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: I don't think either of us have ever thought about
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: our career. Yeah, we just don't think like that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've had to learn to think about some
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: of that, you know, as the business has changed, you know,
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: trying to adapt to that. But mostly I just want
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: to write songs and be a better singer and be
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: a better song and do good work, and do good
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: work the work for the work sake. Absolutely, And the
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: fact that I'm not burnt out at my age when
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: I know so many people who are, I just feel
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: so lucky and i feel like I'm still learning and
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: getting better and what more could you want?
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: Well, you actually are getting better. And I'm not just
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: saying that because you're standing for feet from me. The
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: people I know who've heard the record has said, Wow,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: she's actually getting better. And that's that's difficult for any artist.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: It's difficult for songwriters. Not many songwriters keep getting better?
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Is there Leonard Cohen did?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen did? Yeah? Is there is there a magic
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: a musical fountain of Well, I shouldn't even call it
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a fountain of youths because that's not what it is.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: You know what of age?
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: You know what? There's for me? To avoid getting bitter
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: is huge because you know, bad things happen to you suffering.
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: We all suffer, we all have losses, we all have
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: missed opportunities. And I know people who've allowed themselves to
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: become bitter, and it really shuts you down. It shuts
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: down your access points to art and creativity in my mind,
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: from what I understand. And the other thing is to
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: stay curious. I'm really still very curious. I feel like
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: a beginner and maybe that's just part of my DNA.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: My dad was always like that. He was always curious
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: about what the nineteen year olds were doing.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: He used to have them on a show. I remember, Yeah,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: well I think.
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: I did to get that from him, I got a good,
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: strong work ethic and the ability to be curious for
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: your whole life.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's go back and do some of that history,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: because you're gonna do a couple of covers.
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this song was on the list my album, on
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: the list and on the original list my dad gave me,
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: and it's you know, it's just at the center of
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: American roots music in my mind. Okay, this is Long Black.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Fail more with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. After this,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: we're back with Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal. That's Long
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Black Fail. Of course, many versions. Your father's Lefty Frizelle
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the band did a wonderful version.
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: I think wonderful.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Danko, you've been the singer on that.
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: Just unbelievable.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: There are some songs that when you flip the sexes,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: when a woman sings a song that's traditionally the narrator
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: is a man, it can work. You can't flip this one.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: No, you can't flip it, And therein lies the beauty,
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: you know. I love that old folk tradition of women
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: singing about other women, women being narrators in a song
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: and not changing the gender. You know, the Carter family
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: did that quite a lot, and they're Gene Richie. There
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: are plenty of other old folk songs where women didn't
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: switch the gender.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: And is there a certain quality you think when a
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: woman sings a what's a man's part?
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah? I mean I think it.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: It provides a different kind of angle or prism to
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: look at it through. I mean, I guess that people
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: will hear it as a narrator rather than me talking
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: about you know, it's almost like I come to I'm
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Rod Sterling or something and come to the front of
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: the screen and present this story.
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: I like the gender switch on that song a lot.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: It adds to the song in some ways to me.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was co written by a woman.
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah, John Wilkins, Yeah, just an unbelievably great song. I
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: mean I call this song the Humbler. It's like, Okay,
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: your songwriter, show me you can do something like this,
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: and we should go on to farewell.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Angelina. Can you tell me a little why you chose
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: that song?
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I just love that song. I love
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: the tradition he borrowed from to write this song. I
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: love how obtuse the lyrics are.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: Talk about mystery.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, talk about mysteries, right.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: And melodies and incredible.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: and then it's like all of this weird stuff going
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: on in the verses, and then every time it comes
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: back to farewell and Angelina. I mean, Angelina is such
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: a beautiful name. Saying farewell, you know, in some very
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: old world sense of saying goodbye, it just works perfectly.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: And I don't know many writers who can get away
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: with lyrics this obtuse.
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: He borrowed it from a Scottish song called Farewell Tarwathi,
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: which was a Sailors song, but he just took it
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: as Bob did in the previous first four or five years,
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: and just recurploded it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Yea.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: It is one of those songs when I was listening
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: to you. It is full of these very sort of
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: two difficult metaphors, I suppose, but some of them seem
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: to be It's also a song that there are times
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: they seem very real. The fiends nailed bombs.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, time bombs to the hands of the you know.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: what's happening with the sky. It just it seems to
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: be a song that the kind of more outlandish images
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: almost become concrete. Yeah, as time goes on.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree. And also it's very dream like, like
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: you could, you know, the fifty two gypsies filing past
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: the guards or something. It's like a film, you know,
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: an abstract realism kind of film. You know. I did
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: skip one verse, by the way. I hope Bob doesn't
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: hear this. I know that I skipped the verse about
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: the pirates.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Have you written a song? Have you had this song
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: in your mind when you've written another song, or have
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: you ever tried to create the kind of effect he
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: creates here?
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: Well, my use of when I'm writing melodies, my use
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: of minor chords just tends to this exactly. In fact,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: I would say overuse of that particular.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: Never heard a minor you don't love?
• 31:08
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he was never an a minor to f that
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: she does.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: I mean, I argue about it.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: John cautions me again, said, and I do love it
• 31:19
  Speaker 4: so much, And he said, yes, all of humanity loves it,
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: you know, but just back off a bit.
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: That's that's a podcast, Yeah, all on harmony and chord changes. Yeah,
• 31:29
  Speaker 5: and sort of the diminution thereof last thirty.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: Okay, well, not to get too serious about it, but
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: this folk tradition of this use of minor chords is
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: very compelling to me and I write me talk, Yeah.
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: I love Bob's early chord changes and melodies and how
• 31:49
  Speaker 5: he appropriated Scottish hymns and you know folk balance and
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: just would have a twist on them both harmonically and melodically.
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: I just thought was just exceptional.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Is that a particular gift to be able to hear
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a melody? Because you know, I hear a lot of
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: those old songs. I can't hear what other people are hearing.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I can't hear what's modern and what would translate to
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: something else? Do you know what I mean?
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: Much?
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: Sure?
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: You know some people can take an old melody and
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: say if you turn it around.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: And do this, and I'm like, oh oh.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: To me, the trappings of the song, the original kind
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of arrangement, everything about overwhelms my sense of what I
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: could pull out.
• 32:28
  Speaker 6: Of the song.
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: Well, that does take a particular gift to reappropriate something
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: that's old, and I mean the Carter family did it too,
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: you know, ap Carter find those old songs that were
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: kind of part of an oral tradition that came from
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Scotland and Ireland and reinterpret them into Appellation Ballad.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I do want to ask you. You joked earlier about
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: writing for True Detective that they wanted something dark and
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: depressing that was right down your alley, But you do
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: on this album, having listened to it a couple of times.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: It is about age, It's frequently about dying and seemingly
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: impenetrable spaces between people. But there is a kind of
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: spirit of optimism.
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: I'm an optimist. I always have been as dark as
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: I can go. I'm still an optimist walking into a nightmare.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: I'm still an optimist. I just don't go to despair.
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: Your heart's too big.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: Oh that's very sweet.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: This is going to sound like an odd question. Does
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: it make it easier to write about the tough things
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: in relationships and the tough things about growing older when
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: you're ultimately optimistic?
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess so. I mean I have a thick
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: skin and an open heart, and I try myself to
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: go to some dark places and come back. And one
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: reason I trust myself to come back is because of
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: John Leventhal, because he's been a tremendous grounding force in
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: my life. I think I probably would not have come
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: back had I not met him. And because of our children.
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: You know, it's too selfish to stay in that place.
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: When you have kids, you have to come back.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: You mentioned some political things have made you cry for
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: extended periods, But do you believe ultimately, I guess in
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the personal relationships and political ones, you believe the long
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: arc of history Ben Steward's Justice.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: I have to say I felt incredibly discouraged in the
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: last two years, and I do have optimism. I just
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: don't know if it's going to happen in my lifetime,
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: which makes me really sad.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it is a long arc, the long arc.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: So tell me now about feel me thing worth fighting for.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: I wrote the lyrics and t Bone Burnett and Lyra
• 35:11
  Speaker 4: Lynn wrote the music. T Bone and I have been
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: friends for thirty years and he was music supervisor on
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: True Detective and he just called and said, would you
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: write some lyrics for True Detective for this new season
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: coming up? And I said, yeah, like what kind of songs?
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: And he said, well, you know, songs that are about
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: destruction and really dark and maybe a woman who has
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: a lover who turns into a bird, and you know,
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: he kept going on and on. I went, Okay, that's
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: my wheelhouse. Sure yeah, And I sent him these lyrics
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: and they wrote the music. But even these, there are
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: two songs on the album I wrote for True Detective,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: and even those were not like commissioned pieces. They were
• 35:53
  Speaker 4: not about characters. They were still me.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: Broken Record is produced by Justin Richmond and Jason Gambrel,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: with help from Miia Lobel, Jaquita Pascal, Jacob Smith, Julia Barton,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and of course Malcolm Gladwell and Rick Rubin.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to Amon Drum and John Leeman of Bridge
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Studios in Brooklyn. To hear the songs featured in today's episode,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: check out Broken Record podcast dot com. This show is
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: brought to you by Pushkin Industries. I'm Bruce Headlock.