Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Joe Henry

Transcript

Joe Henry · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Just a quick note here. You can listen to
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: all of the music mentioned in this episode on our playlist,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: which you can find a link to in the show
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: notes for licensing reasons, each time a song is referenced
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: in this episode, you'll hear this sound effect all right.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Enjoy the episode. Joe Henry is likely one of the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: best living singer songwriters that you've never heard of. But
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: even if you don't recognize his name, you've probably heard
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: his work. He's been at it for thirty four years,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: having released fifteen solo albums on three Grammys, and produced
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: music for the likes of Elvis Costello, made his staples
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Bonnie Rait and his sister in law Madonna. Yeah that Madonna.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: During her cowgirl phase in the early two thousands, she
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: turned Joe's song Stop into her hit Don't Tell Me.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Joe Henry's latest studio album, his fifteenth, The Gospel according
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to Water, was released in November, almost exactly a year
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: after he was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer. In
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: this interview with Bruce Headlam, Joe talks about the artist
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: who gave him strength after his diagnosis, and also about
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: working with Elvis Costello. In the late great New Orleans
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: legend Alan Tucson, just weeks after Katrina. This is broken
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmonds.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Headlam and Joe Henry from Pasadena, California. Joe
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: starts things off by playing something from his new album,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: a song called the Fact of Love. Thank you for coming,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: thank you for having me. And that was a song
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: from your new album, which we want to talk about.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: But by way of introduction, longtime singer writer, probably one
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: of the best songwriters of the last one thousand years
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: or so, So tell me about that song first, the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Fact of Love. It's called it was the last thing
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I wrote before recording the new album. When I recorded
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: this new record, I did not know I was making
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: a record. I needed to record some demos. I had
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: this rush of new songs. I'd never had a batch
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: of songs appear so quickly, to the point where I'd
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: not even made iPhone demos, you know, to keep track
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of the basic architecture. And I can't read or write music.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: So when I learned something it's no I wish I had.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I wish I had How do you write the lyrics down?
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: And then I just think that if I go back
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: to them, the music will be embedded, and mostly it is.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Once in a while something slips away, which is why
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I try to get into the habit of making a
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: really just rough phone recording of something when it's brand new.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: But these songs came in such a flurry that I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: would have a new song and think, oh, I should
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: just quickly sketch this out, and then another song would
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: begin to appear, and I think, oh, I better pay
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: attention to this one, and then I just do both
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: of them. Well, pretty soon I had ten or eleven
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: songs that had no reference at all other than lyrics
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: written on a page, and I thought, I really need
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: to document this in some way so I don't forget them,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and also so that I can stand back and evaluate
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: them in some way, which you can't just do as
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: readily when you're performing them to hear them. So I
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: went to an old friend's studio downtown and just blew
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: through everything with a few friends. Didn't even listen to
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: playbacks of much of it, just trying to get them down.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I got home with them and realized that something
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: more had happened. But also say that the songs came
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: in such a rush, Bruce that at one point I
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: just wanted them to stop, which is not a common
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: thing for a songwriter to think aspiring songwriters, Oh, they
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: just showed upday, somebody just on the front law. Sometimes
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: they grow up like dandelions overnight, you'd be amazed. But
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I really needed to get them in hand. I really
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: wanted to play through them enough to get fluid with them.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And it's a really different engagement for me to be
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: practicing finished songs than writing songs. Maybe two days before
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: these sessions that we're supposed to be demos, my wife
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: was finishing a piece of sculpture. She's a visual artist,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and I said, I was walking past and I said,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: there's a piece of unearthed stone that looked like a
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: torso and she was painting on top of it. And
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I said, what do you call that? And she said, UM,
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  Speaker 1: it's called the fact of Love. And I remember just going, fuck,
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  Speaker 1: I hear it sounds spring loaded. I know that if
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I pay attention to this for a moment, that there's
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: a song there and there, and very quickly, And once
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: I finished that one, I kind of thought, Okay, that's
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: that feels like a pretty complete bracket when I think
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: about what the earliest of these songs is, and I
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: really realized that that needed to happen, and then I
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: could step away from that part of the process. Was
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: your wife happy you took the title for I think
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: she was. I didn't change the name of it to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: my pending divorced I think she was really pleased. Um.
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  Speaker 1: You know, I find a lot of songwriting begins that way.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: For me, A phrase, an image, a word that I
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: don't know how it was to describe it, except that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: it is spring loaded. And I have this sensation that,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: very much like opening a bottle of champagne, you sort
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: of get one time for the cork to really pop,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and if you're not prepared to deal with with that,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you don't. You don't engage that because it'll go flat.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Did that that opening phrase and some of the guitar work,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: did that come with the initial song or those things
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: you put on later? Or was at on a separate
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: track somewhere? How did that Does it come together? As
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: it happens differently all the time, Bruce, But in the
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: case of that song, I'd heard that title late in
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: the evening. The next morning, I was up very early
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it was still dark, and I picked up a notebook
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and I just remember kind of writing essentially those three
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: verses in chorus. Just wrote it down like I was
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: taking dictation. A lot of the records sort of appeared
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: this way, and for whatever reason, and this is not
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: common necessarily, I walked through the room. I have a
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: lot of guitars laying around, and picked one up, put
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: the capo on the fourth fret as if I knew
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that that's where it lived melodically as a key. I
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: didn't know that. I had no reason to think it
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: was in F sharp. I just put the capo there
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: for some unknown reason, and just put the guitar my
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: lapp and played that opening motif. I didn't think about it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: I just reached and it was sort of there. I'm
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: making this aw sound very mystical because it is. I'm
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: not being evasive. It's just the way that it happens.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a there's an inherent quality to music,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: as there is to living, that is inherently mysterious. And
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I do think, and I've said it in other moments,
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  Speaker 1: our job is never to dispel mystery. Our job is
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: to abide mystery and stand with it, be an alliance
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  Speaker 1: with it, because there's a big part about living that's
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: just inherently mysterious, always has been, always shall be. And
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: the sooner we make peace with the fact that there
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: is something else at play that we do not control,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I think the more we can sort of be in
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: collaboration with whatever life is asking. You know, I think
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: back to Joseph Campbell when he said, you have to
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: let go of the life you imagine so you can
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: have the one that's actually waiting for you. And there's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of surrender that I think is essential
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: to almost all productive living, but creative life in particular.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: You know, you just sort of have to surrender into process.
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  Speaker 1: And I don't mean surrender as in resignation. I mean
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  Speaker 1: surrender as in radical acceptance. Speaking of resignation radical acceptance,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: you had a tough year and a half. Do you
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: want to explain a little bit of that? Sure? A
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: year ago Thanksgiving? So you know, what is that fourteen
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: months ago something like that, I got a diagnosis of
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: stage four prostate cancer. And when I got that phone call,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: and it really was like a movie, you know, picking
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: up the phone very innocently one day, you know, I
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: felt like Bob Newhart, Hello, and there it was. You know,
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: It's like somebody opened a door onto a cyclone and
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: my family and I all stepped into it. I was
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: not prepared, even though I'd been in some i'd head
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: back pain for well over a year. I had been
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: misdiagnosed three times. And I also, you know, I'm a
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: touring musician in my late fifties, and I was in
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: a really serious car crash when I was a teen.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: So back pain is something I've just sort of learned
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: to live with. It's not intense, but it's present. It
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: has been enough often enough that it was easy for
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: me to think, I've just come off the biggest touring
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: cycle of my entire working life. And I don't know
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: any musician in their late fifties to tours who doesn't
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: have back issues. It was easy to just sort of
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: accept that it was no significant thing until it was.
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  Speaker 1: And next thing I know, there's somebody. I'm sitting in
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  Speaker 1: front of a doctor who very irresponse, irresponsibly I've I've
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  Speaker 1: learned he had very little to go on, just sort
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of blurted out to my wife and I that he
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: thought I had like three to seven months to live,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: you know, And I lived with that as a new truth,
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  Speaker 1: you know, for a full week until I met my
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: oncologist that I worked with at UCLA, who assured me
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that's not, in fact what I was forced to accept,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: you know. He said, I look at you know, I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: look at your whole life, not just this diagnosis. And
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I think of this as as chronic disease management.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: It's not a terminal diagnosis. We help a lot of
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: people like you. But I really did live through, you know,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: a week of real terror. The terror didn't end there.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: It changed shape, became a little bit more stealth, but
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I still had a you know, a pretty rough go
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and even though I responded to treatment almost immediately, I
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: mean almost immediately, I was out of pain physically, but
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: the psychic specter of that shadow is something real, and
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: it changed me, you know. I mean it's kind of
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: supposed to. What did it do to your songwriting? During
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: that time, I was writing with a new urgency. I've
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: always written a lot. I try to be writing all
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: the time. Does mean that I always finish a lot
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: of things. But at the time when I was first
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: diagnosed and my wife Melanie was encouraging me to maybe
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: seek out a support group. There's a lot of good
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: ones around. They help a lot of people. And I said, look,
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know that I won't get there eventually, but
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that's not how I process things. I don't see that
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: as my path right now. I'm going to have to
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: write my way through this, because writing is how I
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: sort of process anything of significance in my life. And
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I realized that the way that fear and sadness had
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: put a cap on my imagination, every time I could
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: get something going, whether it was a palm or a song,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that my imagination re engaged, I could see beyond what
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: felt like an immediate and restricting way of thinking, and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden, sort of psychically, the doors and
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: windows were open again, and I could see beyond, you know,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: just the immediate fear of a moment. And so I
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: just kept writing. And I know in retrospect that I
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: was writing to live, because that's that reconnected me to
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: myself in a way that my diagnosis when it first happened,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: cut me off from who I believed myself truly to be.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: Did it were your days? Though? That that fear just
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: closed all that down sure, Oh absolutely. I still have
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: days like that where I'm not fit company for anybody.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: There's less of that because I'm in remission. Now. I
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: feel better than I have felt in a couple of years. Actually,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: last year I felt like I at the beginning of
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: the year, I was in a trench, And this year
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: kind of feels like it has begun, like I've I've
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: been shot out of a cannon. You know, when you
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: were in that trench, what music did you listen to?
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: A lot of Lewis Armstrong, a lot of Charlie Parker,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of Robert Johnson. Those were, Um, I've always
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: been really important musicians for me, But for for I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: started to say, for whatever reason is if I don't know? Um, well,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: what's the reason that? Because those artists in particular, I
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: feel that their humanity is so rawly and viscerally available.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I hear music that was recorded last month
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: and it already sounds like, you know, an artifact, like
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: one of those mosquitoes they bring out of the Pyramids,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: trapped an amber. You know, I can see it, but
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: it's not alive. For me and time I've listened to
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Robert Johnson and I've been listening to him since I
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: was fifteen. He sounds like a living person jumping out
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: of a speaker. Charlie Parker does that to me too.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: I can't. It's not background. To me. It is like
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: somebody walking into a room, and I am endlessly affirmed
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: by the spirit of that music. Not to mention the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: fact that, certainly, in the case of Bird, he was
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: in other respects not the most functional adult in the room.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: You know, he was a disturbed and troubled man. Yet
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: not in spite of but I think because of he
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: puts so much raw beauty into the world, and it
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: makes me think a lot about the African American experience
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: in particular, where I look back at some of my
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: greatest greatest heroes, you know, Lewis Armstrong, Duke Ellington in particular,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: and think about the brutality that experienced and yet their
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: response to it was incredible beauty. We'll be right back
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: after this break. We're back with more of Bruce's conversation
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: with Joe Henry. You know, you describe yourself primarily as
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: a sort of a storyteller, and you you reject the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: kind of confessional model of songwriting. I think you've literally said,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and I have the quote here the greatest misconception of
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: American popular music that if you're being honest, you're being entertaining,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: and you tend to tell stories even in your own work,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: even the first and second person, but they're they're obviously
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: about characters. Yeah, did that change a little with this album?
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Are there are there elements of this album you feel
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: came directly out of your recent experience? Well, there's always
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: elements I can recognize after the fact. I don't often
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: and don't to be aware of that when I'm writing. Sure,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, there are things that now look back and
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: going to go, well, that's that's really obvious to me,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: why in that moment that's what would appear. But look
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: for starters, Bruce. I think that that all artistry, regardless
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: of the medium, is storytelling, from the most abstract painting
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: to film to you know, I think it's all storytelling.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: It's not all linear narrative, and yet they all seem
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to provoke or want to provoke some sense of narrative
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: that we reach for. And I think musically is especially
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: potent because it, you know, it's not nailed to the floor,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: you know ingmar Bergmann said, that all art aspires to
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: work the way that music works, you know, because it's
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it's there's no defense against it. It appears like weather,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and it changes the day. And I think, certainly the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: songs that have been most important to me my whole
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: listening life, our songs that are specific enough to engage
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: me and make me think of that something real is transpiring.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: But they're not so overt as to nail everything to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: the floor. There's not just one way to enter and
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: accept this story. I know that as a writer, I'm
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: fairly impressionistic. I do think I come out of a
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: very particular folk tradition. And when I say folk, I'm
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: saying that very broadly. And you know, I mean what
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: he got through as a folk singer. So is Joe Strummer,
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: you know. So was Bob Marley, you know, so is
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Lewis Armstrong. You know. But it's funny that in only
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: just a few years ago I had a brand new
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: record out. I'm trying to think which one it was.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was Reverie. Anyway, I had performed the whole
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: of it the night before in Los Angeles, and my
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: son was in town from Brooklyn. He plays with me frequently,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: and I was sitting out on the front yard under
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a big pine tree the next morning with my wife, Melanie,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: and my son lev On and my wife. You know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: we've been together. We've been married almost thirty three years.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: We've been together longer than that. And I met her
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: when I was sixteen and she was fifteen. She said,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: it finally dawned on me. I don't know why it
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: took me so long that you were a Southern writer.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: You know. I mean, I'm from North Carolina. Originally, I
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: didn't really come of age there, but it is part
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of my DNA. Both my parents are natives in North Carolina.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And she said, all the you know, your door, wealthy
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Flannery O'Connor all makes sense to me now in a
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: way that it didn't before. I don't know what it
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: was about that batch of songs, that performance that allowed
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: her to hear me as coming out of a tradition
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: of Southern writers. Were your parents Southerners? They are still are,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: They're still with us, and they still they moved back
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: to North Carolina, you know, we moved around a lot
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: when I was young. My father was an executive engineer
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: for Chevrolet, and not true anymore. But back in the day,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: if you were a lifer in that racket, you know,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: all roads led to Detroit. So we moved to Detroit
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: area just as I was beginning high school the summer
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: before my tenth grade year, so that would have been
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: summer of seventy five, and my wife, Melanie, her family
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: lived there and we went to the same high school.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I met her there. I was friends with two of
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: her older sisters before I met her. But I feel
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: like I came of age, you know, among the Great Lakes.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But I do know that in my core, I am
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: a Southerner, even though I spent a lot of my
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: early life trying to distance myself from that legacy, because
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: what I thought about the South as a young person
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: was not something I was proud of. Your parents were
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: also devout where they they are. My parents are Southern Methodists.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Oh was out right, So I was, you know, I
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: went to church as a young person, just like I
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: went to school, which means if I wasn't sick, that's
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: where I went until I was, you know, fifteen, and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: my older brother David was seventeen. We were very close
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: and at that point of our lives, we were staying
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: up you know, terribly late of a Saturday night listening
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to music and such. And it was one Sunday. My
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: mother came and tried to rouse this out, and we
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: were not sprightly, and she said, well, I'm not going
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: to force you to go, and I said you're not.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: She said, you're fifteen. You have to make your own
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: decisions about this, and then I didn't. I didn't return.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I want you to play another song, but first I
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: do have a bone to pick with you at which
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: is I think maybe the first song I ever heard
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: of yours was the Ohio Plane Crash. And I mean
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: that song I just thought was incredible. It captured experience
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: so beautifully because when I was a kid, I saw
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: a plane crash on an air show on Lake Ontario.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: And then I found out years later you made the
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: whole thing up I did. Isn't it better that I
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: did it? Maybe? Well you either either that or I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: now can only remember that experience yea through your song.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: But your song is about a kid, right because they're
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: la dangling. You know what that song was about? For me?
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: If I throw my mind back, there was the idea
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and it's in some ways it's it hinges on a
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: concept that I learned from again I'm talking about I'll
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: talk a lot about short story writers. They've been as
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: impactful to me as songwriters. Um, it's something I learned
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: from both Raymond Carver and Alice Monroe. And I just
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: talk endlessly about Alice Monroe. I love her. But this
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: concept of telling a dramatic story and decidedly undramatic language,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: and the idea of the Ohio Airshow plane crash was
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: that with this tragedy as a backdrop, there is an
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: estranged couple sort of you know, living within each other's proximity,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: not necessarily comfortably in in a shared moment. And so
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I thought the idea of staging this kind of bland
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: disconnect between two lovers while as a backdrop this plane crashes.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You know, the plane crash is not the story. The
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: couple's estrangement is the story. The character speaking has is
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a strange from his lover, and he's at this gathering,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: this you know, holiday, this air show and sees his
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: ex in the in the crowd, and he's and he's
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: sort of reflecting on you know, not you know, that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: odd magnetic poll or maybe the opposite side of a magnet.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: That is that you still feel that that there's energy happening,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: but it's repelling. It's repellent. It's not you know, connecting.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: Could you play another song for us? And then, well,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I can. I played you the last song that I
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: wrote for the new record. I'm going to play you
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the earliest of them, all right. My wife and I
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: were last fall for two months on the west coast
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: of Ireland. I was invited to do a writing residency
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: at a small art college. I was starting to have
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: real pain episodes then. I don't mean to lean too
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: heavily into that. It just was a It was a
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: specter of what was happening, even though I didn't I
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: didn't know what weight to give it. But I only
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: bring it up now because I hear this song now
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: completely sharing the same language of the songs that followed
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: after I knew what was going on, and I just
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: think I feel like, in some way, you know, my
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: body knew the songs, knew something before I consciously knew something.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? You should have gone to
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the doctor and said, listen to this. Yeah, yeah, this
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: is called mule. Based on our conversation. I don't want
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: you to overinterpret your own work. But I would like
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: to know where the line silence deepest sound came from. Well,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in this little village where we were on the west
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: coast of Ireland called bally Vaughan, it just became really
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: evident to me two things while I was there. The
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: silence that I heard there was unlike how I thought
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to characterize silence. You know, it is not just the
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: void of sound. Silence itself has a character. And I
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: was really aware that the silence I was hearing was
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: not fragile. It couldn't be just defeated by a random sound,
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: a random sound, a cow, a truck, a train. You know,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: nothing ended the silence. It just punctuated it. It let
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: me know something about its character, its depth. But I
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: realized that there was a silence there that was part
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of the landscape, part of the culture. It also makes
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: me think of your own recording style. You've produced a
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: lot of records. You can't you record very quickly. You
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: tend to do it with people sitting in a room
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: playing this the sound bleeds. Why do you like that sound?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Because it's human? You know, if people were sitting in
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: this room playing music together, there's a you know, the
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: sort of a vendette diagram where things overlap, and if
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: you're sitting here, you read it very naturally that, you know,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the harmonic overtones of an instrument bleed into those of another.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: But when people in so called modern recording world, you know,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: this idea of isolating everything, and then when you're mixing
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: trying to use reverbs and delays and such to recreate
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: an atmosphere that was very naturally and more compellingly actually
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: in the room if you knew how to take that picture.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I just find that endlessly and chanting. I don't know why.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I know that on the records that I've made and
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of older records that I love. You know,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of what the drums sound like is how
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: they're hitting the piano mic across the room, and that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: describes space. You know, you hear people playing a room together,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: you hear the size of the room. You know, the
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: difference between them playing in a like a gymnasium sized
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: studio and in a living room. You know, when sound
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: finds limits of walls and ceiling, you know, you it's
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: describing space. I'd like to be able to picture where
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: people are. Place matters and I can vividly imagine where
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: this is taking place. You know, those records where some
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: of the energy is understood because of the limitation of
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the room, how instruments are colliding. I think about a
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: record called Money Jungle that Duke Ellington made in the
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: early seventies with Max Roach and Charles Mingus, and it's
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: an intense record. You know, these upstarts of Mingus and
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Max Roach, you know playing, you know with this grand gentleman.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: He was the wildest of them. Duke was the most
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: adventurous of all of them. But you can really hear
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: their sound hit each other and hit the walls. You
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: can feel natural compression of the space. And I like
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: being able to picture them on top of each other
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: up close, which they had to have been for that
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: sound to be created. Before we started, I mentioned to
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: you that one of my favorite pieces that you produced
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: was Ann Peebles covering Bob Dylan's Tonight I'll be staying
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: here with you from a great, great record you made.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Thank you. You're great players, and your Billy Preston and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Alan Toussant and all kinds of people. You said, she
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: she wasn't she didn't hear that song, How did you
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: how did you make that song hers? Or how did
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: how did you help her make that song? Hers? I well,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: as I recall, I sent it to her and she
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: was a bit unmoved. Not that she didn't like the song,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: she just didn't necessarily hear it in the context of
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the project as I had pitched it. And I just said,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I think you're maybe stumbling on the production or Bob's voice,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: like you think, oh, that's a country song, but you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: country music, soul music structurally shares so many of the
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: same so much of the same vocabulary, And all I
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: had to do really was to ask and to think
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: of it as a soul song. I said, just try
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: singing through it, you know, at the piano or something.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Just try singing through the song and maybe not worry about,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the reference recording. And then I think she
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: heard it immediately because she sent me a demo of
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: just heard a piano player playing through it and it
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: was completely gorgeous. Right. I want to just mention two
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: producers you've worked with, not even as producers, just just
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: to know what you learn from him. The first is
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Alan to Song. What was it like working with him?
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Did he give you You were producing him at that point. Yeah,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: he produced so many Yeah, great great songs. What was
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: that like? Oh man, how do I talk about that?
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Alan changed my life? You know, and when he passed,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: my wife saying, well, you'll never have another friendship like
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: that one, because he was a you know, he was
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: what my southern people referred to as a touched individual.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You know, he was always an only part way of
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: this world. He was always partly of another. He was
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: a bit of a supernatural character. And I just seemed
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to when I met him. I just seemed to understand
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that we were maybe a very unlikely duo in some ways.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: But we worked together on many projects over ten years.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: You know, we traveled together. I took him to Germany
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: to a festival I was creating, had him play, you know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: with Michelle and Dago Cello at that festival. And you know,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: when I was producing Aaron Neville, Alan was the piano player.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: We went to a lot together. Even though truth be told,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: that I'm not I don't offer this up with any
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: disrespect to Alan's son and daughter, who would you know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: were his managers, But they and Alan's business partner didn't
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: think that what I was asking Alan to do when
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I was producing the Bright Mississippi and American tunes. You
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: know that those were not good ideas. They really thought
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: he should walk the other way. And I don't know why,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: even with his own choir, they're singing in his ear
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: saying at I don't know why you're doing this. This
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: is not what you should be doing right now. And
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: then he would say, yeah, but I'm gonna go with
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: him anyway. I don't really understand that. We seem to
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: have an unspoken understanding of each other. And I thought
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he was a miraculous man and many any ways. And
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: one of the things that inspired me about him was
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: as deep as he'd been in it. You know, he
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: was already in the rock and roll Hall of Fame
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: by the time I met him. Not that that means
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: anything in particular other than he was a made man.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You know, he was already on the mountain that he
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was so willing to be outside of his comfort zone.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And he was significantly outside of his comfort zone. He
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: was very uncomfortable coming into those pair of records. He
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: had allowed me, he had invited me to create a
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: concept for him and I in the case of Bright Mississippi.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I picked all the music, I populated the room. I
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: gave him these songs to learn as an assignment, you know,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: And I'm still I still marvel at the fact that
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: he was willing to go there. You mentioned the little
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: piano break he plays behind Anne in It's not I'd
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: be staying here with you, And that was something I
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: learned from him right away. It was the first thing
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: I asked of him on that first day. We had
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: cut the tune, and then I had this idea that
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I wanted him to play a piano break after the
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: bridge and okay. He sits at the piano and he
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: plays through, and I go on the talk back nervously
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and say, would you like to hear that back? And
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: he said, I know what happened? What did you think
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of it? And I said, well, I guess you know
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: what I think I need to hear it back. He said, okay,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: I'll wait, and I listened back and I said, I
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: like it a good bit. Okay, then, but that thing
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: of not really owning what I needed, and you know,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: under the guise of oh, you probably want to hear
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: that back, and then I'll base my response on how
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I think you feel about what you just did, and
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: he was he wouldn't have it. He was sort of
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: respectfully insisting that I occupied that chair, and he did
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: a few things like that, like the day Mavis was
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: there and that was a beautiful reunion between the two
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of them, and he didn't have to do this at all.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: But at one point, maybe Us speaks to him across
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: the control room and she was having such a great time.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: She said, Alan, this is so great being here with you.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And when I make my next record, I'm gonna come
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: straight down to New Orleans to you. He said, oh, maybe,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: as that's fine, but when you do, bring him with you,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: because he's the reason we're here. He's the reason this
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: is happening. And I thought that was just the most
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: generous thing. It was just overwhelming. Yeah, yeah, it just
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: seems like and he had to be impeccibly dressed when
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: he said he was always always. When we were making
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the The River and Reverse, you know, we jentaled most
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: of the work in Los Angeles. But Alan's feeling was,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: if this record is gonna have my name on it,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: this is on maybe like ten weeks after Katrina happened,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: he said, that's the album he did, yeah, Elvis Costella, Yes,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and Alan said, if this is any way that any
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: of this project could be done in New Orleans, I
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: want it to be. You know, I don't want to
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: just talk about I hope music comes back. I want
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: to be part of bringing it back. And at that
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: point we weren't even Elvis through it to me and said,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: that's up to you. You're the producer, you know. And
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: I said, look, I don't even know if that there's
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: drinking water there. I mean there's a war zone. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: I called at the time my younger brother, his brother
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: in law at the time, was a doctor in New Orleans.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So I got in touch with him and said, what's
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the scene down there? I mean, as their food, as
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: their safe water. I don't you know the idea that
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: we would come down there. I don't want to feel
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: like a photo op, which you couldn't have because it
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: was Alan's home. He had every reason and every right
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to go want to work there, but I wanted to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: be respectful of the moment at the same time, and
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: this doctor that I called said, you know, look, if
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: there's any way that you can come and work here,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: you should. People need to see something other than devastation
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: happening here. So in the very end, we moved the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: entire camp, you know, for a couple of days down
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: down to New Orleans, and that was just remarkable to
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: be there with him. And I remember, I bring this
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: up because you mentioned the way he was dressed. That
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: when I was packing to go down in New Orleans
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: late one night after a session, we're leaving the next morning,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: and I was packing the suit and my wife said,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I don't think you know where you're going, you know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: and you think you're gonna be wearing a suit. And
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: I said, look, if you think Alan's going to step
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: it down because of what we're walking into, I think
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: you're crazy. And sure enough, when we got down there,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: he was even more regal, you know. He walked down
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: there like a you know, like a like a prince
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: from Africa. Yeah, I was. I was once on a
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: plane with them, and I I never used to dress
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: up for planes because I thought, now, you just want
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: to be comfortable. I mean, I wasn't one of those
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: guys that were like track suit yeah. Yeah, but but
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I was with a plane with him and he was
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: he was in line ahead of me, standing Ramrod straight
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: in this beautiful suit, and I said, yeah, I've got
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: to dial it up. Yeah. Look at him, he looks
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: comfortab I don't look comfortable. Yeah. I remember once we
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: were in a session somewhere and somebody I don't know
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: who would have said it like Alan, you want to
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: take your jacket off, be more comfortable, and He's just
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: wheeled around and said, what in the world makes you
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: think I'm not comfortable? He was so rarely that pointed,
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: but it was always wonderful moments when he would just
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: be take you to task, like him saying to me,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: I know what happened. What did you think about what happened?
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: Do you want to do another song? Sure, I will
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: play this song called Orson Wells. We'll be right back
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: with more from Joe Henry after the break, We're back
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Joe Henry. But
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: first let's finish the song Orson Wells. Why is it
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: called Orson Wells. I don't know, other than just that
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: he was the messenger. He was the delivery system of
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: this song. You know, I remember distinctly my wife and
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: I were flying for the for like thirty six hours
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: up to San Francisco to see a really dear friend
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: in a play. And we got on the plane at Burbank,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: you know that flights about fifty minutes long. And I
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: just do what I frequently do. I just opened a
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: notebook and I just sort of watched my handwrite Orson
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Wells at the top of the page, and I don't know.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I knew I wasn't running a song about
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Orson Wells. But for whatever reason, he was an evocative specter,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and I knew that if I just if I listened,
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: he was going to tell me what this song was
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: that that was there to be written. Are there really
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: great songs? Like is there a great Beatles song that
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: has no effect on you? And you just think, yeah,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: whatever reason, doesn't a lot of them? Actually? Well, look,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: I like the Beatles, is fine, I really do. I
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: like John in particular. I like Georgia. But I the
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Beatles didn't do to me in real time what they
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: did to most of my peers. You know who did
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: that for you? Bob? And I mean that's probably a
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: pretty obvious in a way because his records are so
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: especially his records are the middle sixties, but not only
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: desire to which I think is incredibly underrated. There's a
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: rawness to it. You can't miss, you can't miss the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: immediacy of it. You know. I hear the Beatles, and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: they're beautiful records. I mean, I'm not saying they're not
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: beautiful records, but you know, I hear them, I hear
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the work, and I'm not as seduced by that as
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I am when I know that I'm witnessing, you know,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: like you're driving late at night and there's all of
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: a sudden you you've ever had this experience. I had
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: it once, driving late at night on a freeway somewhere
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: in West Virginia and they're out in the middle of
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: a field as a house completely on fire. You know, No,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: Joni Mitchell wrote a good song of it. Yes, Um,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: it's just the witnessing something that's is immediate and it's urgent.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: What's happening? You know. I listened to just like Tom
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: Thumb's Blues or listened to you know, sooner or later
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: one of us must know or something like. I can't
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: miss that. This was like people just fucking hanging on,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Like I mean, it's a runaway train in a way,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm endlessly engaged by that kind of real time
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: urgency in a way that I'm not so much when
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I hear careful construction, you know, like when I was,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: you know, really young. I mean Bob happened to me
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: when I was about eleven, and other music I was
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: hearing at the same time that, like the you know Beatles,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: as an example, I was not, you know, held in
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: thrall in the same way to to the labor. I
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: heard of that being constructed as I was in witnessing
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: a house burning off in a field on the side
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: of a road. You know what I mean. Does that
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: make sense? I'm not trying. You're often compared with Robbie
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: robertson m I didn't know that. Who is I think
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: that very seriously and I appreciate it. You know. I'm
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: a man who named his son Levin. So I would
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: have traded and and people think this is a little
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: bit of sacrilege, you know, I would have traded the
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: entirety of the Beatles catalog to have made music from
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Big Pink, you know. But that's music that is both
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: feel spontaneous, but also it's highly polished. Sure, and I
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: don't mind if it's constructed. I just don't want to be.
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: I just don't want to know that it is. I
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: don't I don't want to be telegraphed the meticulousness of
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the of the hand at work. I don't want to.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: I don't want to see the hand at work. I
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: want the mystery to take over and take me over. Look,
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: I'm a Sinatra freak, and those are meticulous records. You know.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: He did like thirty three takes in a row. I've
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: got you under my skin. He knew that that was
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: a something to be seized. And nonetheless, when I hear it,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I hear a moment, I hear like you know, the
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: house burning, I hear it happening. Sure I know now
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: as an more educated person, how that went down. Like
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I said, I just you can still hear it. I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: want to. You know, it's all theater, Bruce. You know
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: it's all phony. You know in that regard, you know
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the idea of even people who have this idea of purity.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: It's like, I record live in a room because I hey,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: it's an incredibly financially responsible way to work frequently, and
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: it's the most direct line if you want the sound
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: if you are playing in a room together then you
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: get people in a room together and they play that's
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: what you care about. You know. Now you're in the
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: middle of this incredible career. You've done all this brilliant music,
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: you've you've recordered, all these brilliant people. You're still described
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: as you know, the critics darling and all that stuff.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: But you've had You've had the experience with your sister
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: in law, who's Madonna. We haven't mentioned that, but she
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: took one of your songs and made a big points
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: for being this far into an interview without bringing by
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the lay. Well, I bring it up because I actually
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: loved that album Hers and I thought before I knew
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: it was yours, I thought it was. I think there
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: are a lot of good songs on that album, by
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: the way. But yeah, you know, critics, Grill Marcus could
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: be very hard on people for not seizing the biggest
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: possible stage. You know, he said that about Randy Newman.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: You know, you've got to go out and prove it.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: The proving ground is sixty thousand people in the stadium
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: who all sang along. Well, you've had that experience. What's
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: that like, Well, it's freakish because I haven't had that
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: experience much. You know, well, I'm saying you had it
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: with that song. I did. And I was at a
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: an arena once in Orange County when she was doing
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: that tour, which was running from nine to eleven. Um.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: I only bring that up because it just the air
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: was electrified, you know, the country was in a very
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: particular state of mind, and people gathered together and I
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: had you know, I had pitched to her kind of
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: something that she's doing now she's doing the theater tour.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: You know, I had said, look, why don't you just
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: like park the whole cirque to soul a thing? Like
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: she needs career advice from me? What your career look
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: like mine looks? You know, you walked the streets effortlessly
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: as if she wanted to. Um. But anyway, I had
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: pitched this idea to her to like, you know, you
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: don't need Cirque to sola happening on stage. You don't
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: need all that. You know, you went a new concept.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Think about what Marvin Gay would be doing if he's
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: alive right now. Put together the most funky, badass like
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: five piece band and co present yourself as a musician.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: What about that as an idea? You know, and she said, well,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know how that would play an arenas. That said,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: well that's the I have my idea. Get out of
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: the arenas. You know, go check into the nicest hotel
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: in every city and do ten nights somewhere you know
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: it gets comfortable, and then explore it all. To say
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: that that night, the first time that I've ever seen
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: her performance were the mask you know, the grid of
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: the night, which was incredibly intricate with stay, you know, elaborate,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: you know, choreography whatever. But at a moment when she
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: did that song Don't tell me, she came out with
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: she had an acoustic guitar, she sat on a stool,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: she had another guitar player on an acoustic guitar, and
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: she had a beatbox. And we were in the like
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: the second row. And you know, before that she'd just
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: been in character, you know, Madonna, in corporate logo Madonna,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: you know even that's her real name. You know, there's
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: a d M. Yeah, and you know it's all out here.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: But when she sat down to do that song, she
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: looks straight at me and she said, this is for you,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and did it like too, because guitars and a beat
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: and at one point, the music all stops and twenty
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: thousand people are all singing it. And that was a
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: really unique moment, not only because it's really affirming just
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: as a songwriter who operates decidedly out of the mainstream
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: to have a moment like that, but it also reminded
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: me that, you know, I've been told my whole career
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: that my songs are obtuse, that they're too difficult, that
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: they're not coverable. There you know, and I realized that
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: it wasn't really about that as much as it was
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: about the delivery system, because that's got some really cryptic,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: you know lines in it too, But there were twenty
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: thousand people singing them, you know, wrapped in a different package.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: It went down really differently. You know, I'm not saying
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: you're going to be your sister in law, But is
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: it a feeling that, yeah, that's that's where the music
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: belongs now? No, No, I don't feel that way. Might
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: it belongs in for some people? It's not not been
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: my path, you know. Um, you know who Bob Neworth is, well,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: he was he was Bob Dylan's like a sidekick and
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: the Don't Look Back film, and he's a songwriter and
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: a painter and a beautiful man. And when we met
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: many years ago, he pulled me aside one night, like
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: a Dutch uncle and said, you know what your problem is.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I said no, but I think you're about to tell me.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: And he said, you you haven't created a persona, said
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: everybody that you admire, whether it's Bob, or it's Tom
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Waits or I don't forget who else he listed, you know,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: they've gotta they've gotta they've created a public persona that's
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: really persuasive and and you need to do that or
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: you're not gonna get over. And I realized that I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: couldn't and I wouldn't. That's just not where I come from.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I think I made a decision really early on, whether
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I was conscious of it or not, is that to like, Look,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not trying to create a mean Tom created this
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: beautifully persuasive character that walks out ahead of his songs,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: and before he sings a word, you already have a
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: sense of their language in their context because he has
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: this character that you recognize and it's consistent. But I
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: realized that that what I was going to try to
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: do is write songs that were seductive enough that I
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: could just disappear into them. You know, I know want
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: the songs to be fodder for my character. I wanted
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: to feed myself like a bunk of wood, into the
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: fire of the songs and go up in sparks. You know.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I wasn't trying to create a character that I had
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to like, Oh geez, what happens if I go out
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: to get a paper and I'm not dressed like like
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: my character? You know, if you become you know, that's
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: a disaster. Okay, well listen. Thank you so much, Bruce,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. It was really it was a pleasure,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate you doing the you know, doing the homework.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Joe Henry for playing songs off the new album,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: The Gospel according to Water and for talking to Bruce
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: about the inspiration behind his work. If you're sure, to
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: check out his new album plus a playlist of our
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: favorite Joe Henry songs plus a playlist of his own
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: at broken record podcast dot com. Broken Record is produced
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: with help from Jason Gambrel, Neil LaBelle Lea Rose, Matt Laboza,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.