Latest / Takin’ A Walk Nashville / Exploring Nashville's Music Scene: Geoffrey Himes on Willie Nelson, Country Music and Storytelling in Songwriting

Transcript

Exploring Nashville's Music Scene: Geoffrey Himes on Willie Nelson, Country Music and Storytelling in Songwriting · Takin’ A Walk Nashville

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: M Taking a Walk Nashville.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Hi, this is Sarah Harrelson, and you are listening to
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: Taking a Walk Nashville today. On Taking a Walk Nashville,
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: I have with me Jeffrey Hymes. He's an American music
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: critic who has written for publications including, but not limited to,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Past, the Nashville Scene, and
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: has even written liner notes for albums. He has won
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: the Dems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Authors and Publishers four times, and he's here today to
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: talk about his latest book, Willie Nelson All the Albums.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your hosts, singer
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: songwriter Sarah Harrelson.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey, thank you so much for being on Taking a
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Walk Nashville today, and you are joining us from Maryland today. Correct, correct, well,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: thank you for being here. Can you just tell our
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: listeners on Taking a Walk Nashville what initially sparked your
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: love for music and initiated a career in music journalism.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: Sure so, I'm old enough that the first record I
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: ever bought with my own money is I Want to
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Hold Your Hand by the Beatles sixty three I've been
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: in love with music ever since, and I loved talking
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: to people about it and found if I could write
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: about it in print, then I would talk to a
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: lot of people about it. So, and you know, I've
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: always you know, I started with the Beatles, but I
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: curiousity led me in all different directions. People ask me
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: what kind of music I cover. I always tell them
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: everything from Dolly Parton to Ornette Coleman.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: So I love it. Did you ever play music growing up?
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: I played piano, still not very well, but I do
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: write songs. Japan was a way of doing that. Well.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: I can definitely tell your music and book lover, based
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: on all of the CDs and books behind you. But
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: besides writing for publications, you have written and published many books.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: And your latest book, Willie Nelson All the Albums. It
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: analyzes all of Willie Nelson's massive catalog and in this
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: book you give each of his albums a grade. So
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: what inspired you to write a book about Willie Nelson's career.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Well, I've written a lot about him over my years
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: as a journalist. I've interviewed him several times into a
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: lot of his shows, and you know, when by publisher
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: asked me if I'd be interested in writing this book
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: about Willie Nelson. I said, well, yes, because I've already
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: written so much about him that I'm not starting from scratch.
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: He's one of my favorite artists. He's so fascinating the
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: blend of music that he uses, and there's been a
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: lot of books about his life. Willie has written at
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: at least three autobiographies. Joan nick Toski wrote a really
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: good biography of him. But what I wanted to do
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: was something different. I wanted to tell the story of
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: his life through his recordings because I always felt like,
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: you know, why are we interested in artists. It's not,
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: you know, because they got divorced or had a drinking problem.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: You know, lots of people have got divorced and have
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: a drinking problem, but only a few people make really
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: amazing music at the level of a Willie Nelson, and
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: so I wanted to focus on that, on the music
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: he made. And as I said in the introduction, the
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: stories about Willie are always, you know, becoming more and
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: more elaborate as people tell them and retell them. But
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: the music that's on those records it's the same today
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: as it was in Night he's sixty two when he
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: made his first album. So let's go look at these records,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: these recordings and listen to them and figure out what
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: that tells us about him as an artist and as
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: a purse.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And he has so much catalog to sort through. So
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: did it take you a long time to go really
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: in depth with all of his albums and grade them
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: and write about your take on his catalog.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I went back and listened to all of them.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: When I took on this assignment, I looked at what
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: I had on my shelves. It turned out I already
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: owned one hundred and twenty of them out of one
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty two that I wrote about. So I
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: was well along the way. And you listen to him again,
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: you realize that some of the assumptions perhaps were not corrected.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: You know, your first suppressions are not always correct, you know.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: And you see some of the records are a lots
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: better than you thought they were. Other records not as
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: good as if you thought they were. That's the sort
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: of perspective. Hopefully, I'm bringing it to the book.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: And people can purchase this book anywhere they get their
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: books online. And it was released last month we talked
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: about how you are based in Maryland, but as a
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: music journalist, did you travel frequently and did you spend
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: a lot of time in Nashville as a music journalist.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: I have. I never lived in Nashville, but I have
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: visited many times. I wrote for the Nashville Scene for
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: several years. I sort of ran their country music critics
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: poll that was very successful, run for twenty years. My
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: previous book to the Willie Nelson book, was published by
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: the Country Music Hall of Fame, and it's called In
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: Law Country How Emmy, Lou Harris, Roseanne Cash and their
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: circle fashioned a new kind of country music. And it's
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: about all the people Roseanne, Emmy, Lou, Rodney Crowll, Guy Clark,
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: Ricky Skaggs who all worked together. They wrote songs for
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: each other, they played on each other's albums, saying on
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: each other's albums, married each other, divorced each other, and
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: it's a very height unit that always fascinated me. Similar
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: to the Outlaws which came just before them, but different
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: because they were sort of instead of writing about you know,
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: loners on the road again, they were writing about marriage
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: and the sort of new kind of marriage that comes
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: with the baby boomer generation, where men and women are
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: more equal relationship to each other and all the sort
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: of the pluses and minuses that the challenges that presents,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: and the rewards it offers.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you describe this as an unnamed movement that
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: helped shape modern country music. Would you describe this as,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: you know, it's a little bit different from outlaw country,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: but we're writing about more storytelling, so it was a
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: little bit of a shift into Americano music.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Would you say, yeah, I think that the subject matter
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: is different because they're writing not about the independent loaner,
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: but more about the people trying to make a marriage
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: work and try to keep the family together. And you know,
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: obviously people in both camps admired each other quite a bit.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: Billy recorded a lot of these songs that are in
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Law Country, and they recorded Billy's songs, so that there
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: was a you know, there was definitely a relationship. But
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: I always thought this this movement needed a name to
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: be recognized it for what it was, and that's why
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I sort of invented that name of in law Country.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I love the name of it. Can people
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: find this book in the Country Music Hall of fame, like.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: In the shop, in the gift shop on Amazon or
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: anywhere else that you buy books online.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Very cool. As you mentioned, you spent a lot of
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: time writing for the Nashville scene, even though maybe you
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: weren't living here. Did you still see how Nashville evolved
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: through the years writing for the Nashville scene and how
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: it has grown?
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Of course, of course, you know when I first came
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: to Nashville in the late seventies, Broadway was skid row,
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: you know, all over down there were sort of like,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: you know, the Winos and the the you know, stragglers.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: And to watch how that has transformed itself into like
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Disneyland today, there's been quite a thing to watch. And
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: I also think that to watch how Willie and Emmy
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Lou and all the people around them sort of transformed
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: country music industry, expanding the possibility what you can do
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: in country music and sort of changing the rules. And
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: even though they didn't last forever, I think their influence
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: is still being felt today and people like Chris Stapleton
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: or Jason Isbel or Marco Price or Lean walmacleys people
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: are in the same spirit. So that it's not the
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: most popular music and country today or in Nashville, but
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: it's definitely a major part of it.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. And besides writing publications and books, you are involved
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: in other media platforms and outlets, such as your latest podcast,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Hard Rain and Pink Cadillacs, which is co hosted with
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: TV and film director Mark Finkelperl. Is some stock the
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: best place to listen to this podcast series or where
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: can they find your podcast?
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where we decided to use as our base.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: It's both the podcast and also a blog that I
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: do music reviews and essays every once a week give
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: an issue. So there's been a way for me to
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: keep my hand in contemporary music as I'm writing these
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: books about.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Musical history, and I'm sure it's beyond country, probably covers
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: all genres on your podcast.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's fair. We just you know, we just had
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: a podcast with Daryl Scott, who's in Nashville resident and
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: important figure, and James McMurtry from Texas and Kevin Gordon,
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: who's from Nashville. So since a lot of songwriters live
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: in Nashville, and since you know, one of my main
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: interest is in songwriting, whether it's Willie or Rodney Crowler,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: whoever is that's what we're emphasizing in my podcast.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Do you have a favorite Willie Nelson album?
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah? So, you know, at the end of the book book,
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: I list all one hundred and fifty two albums that
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I discussed in the book and ranked them from number
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: one to number one hundred and fifty two, and the
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: top one was Phases and Stages, which he made an
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: Atlantic and seventy three. I think, you know, I love
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: that album. I think one of the those underrated albums
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: he did was Tougher than Leather, which was the nineteen
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: eighty two Raptors heart Attack. I think Yesterday's Wine, which
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: is one of his final RCAA albums. It's really good spirit.
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of good ones, they're not all good.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: To figure out which is which, you have to buy
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: the book.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: So yeah, absolutely, yeah, everyone can buy the new Willie
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Nelson a book online. Can you talk a little bit
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: about the music footprint you have left in Baltimore and
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the nonprofit you have started called The Roots Cafe.
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The Roots Cafe is a live music series that
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: I started back in nineteen ninety one that does sort
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: of Americana acts. Recently, it was sort of a dance
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: kind of concert series and then more singer songwriters. Now,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just a way to support that end
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: of the creative scene here at town.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Very cool. And although you're based in Maryland, you know
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: you've spent quite a bit of time in Nashville. And
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I always like to ask my guest this question. Do
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: you have a favorite place you have taken a walk
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: in Nashville or maybe even a favorite memory from Nashville.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I like Radner Lake, I like Richland
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: Creek over White Bridge Road. Yeah, And like there was
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: a time when I was seeing a lot of guy
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Clark and there's a his basement room where he did
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: his songwriting and his guitar making is now in the
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Country Music Hall of Fame, and I could tell you
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: it's just the same as it was when I was
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: down there talking to the guy.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: So very cool. Well, thank you so much, Jeffrey for
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: being on taking a walk Nashville Today. Listeners can purchase
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: your latest book, Willie Nelson, all the albums wherever they
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: get their books, along with your past published books like
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: in Law Country. You can get that one right in
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: the Country Music Hall of Fame. And we look forward
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: to your next project, and thank you for taking a
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: virtual walk with me here in Nashville today, Jeffrey.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with singer
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: songwriter Sarah Harrelson, and check out our other podcasts, Music,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Save Me, Comedy Save Me, and Taking a Walk. Available
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: your podcasts.