Latest / The Other 22 Hours / Rodney Crowell on letting go of recognition, 40-year songs, and talking to trees.

Transcript

Rodney Crowell on letting go of recognition, 40-year songs, and talking to trees. · The Other 22 Hours

0:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted recognition.
0:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted people to know that I'd do this stuff that I make these songs, and I wanted people like the way it sounds, the music I make when I sing.
0:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And I eventually outgrew that.
0:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember this thing that happened, it was writing in the memoir at the time.
0:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But the last period at the end of the last revived manuscript, I closed the computer and I said, OK, if all I ever get from this is the satisfaction of knowing that I completed this work, knowing that I did it, that I completed it, is all the pay that I need.
0:40
[SPEAKER_02]: We often define artists by their output, their records, books, movies, and the times they're on stage.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But the art is made in the quiet, the struggle, and the mundane, the hours that no one sees.
0:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm McKayla Ann.
0:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Erin Kaffer-Hase.
0:55
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the other 22 hours.
0:57
[SPEAKER_02]: An exploration of the creative life lived in between.
1:14
[SPEAKER_02]: this week is the fourth installment of our reissue series where we go back through our archives and pick some of our favorite conversations from the past three years.
1:23
[SPEAKER_02]: In addition to these that we're featuring here, we also have 160 other conversations all of which are inspiring in their own ways.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're on a long drive or mowing your lawn, please take a second to scroll back through our feed and find conversations with some of your favorite musicians and other artists that might inspire you.
1:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Additionally, you can head to our YouTube channel where we have grouped every past conversation into playlists that are curated based on topic.
1:49
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you like this conversation, there are many more just like it.
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And today's episode is featuring our conversation that we had very early on in this podcast life.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: from May 31st, 2023, the legendary Rodney Crowell.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Rodney Crowell is the definition of a legendary songwriter.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: He has multiple Grammys, 15-number-one singles, and everyone from Emilew Harris to Bob Seeger, William Jennings, and George Strait have recorded his songs.
2:17
[SPEAKER_00]: He is incredibly wise and generous.
2:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You can tell instantly just what a beautiful human he is, and we are so excited to
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Good morning.
2:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
2:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for being willing to talk with us and being here.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you doing today?
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm okay.
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm okay.
2:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cloudy and I had a one day thing that was, she went first and just got it like as if a deflated, blow up doll and then a headache.
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, poor baby.
2:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then yesterday afternoon, it hit me.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no.
2:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was, I mean, it's like, whoa, just gutted, energy-wise, and then I'm headache through the night, woke up this morning, fine, the same thing as her.
3:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
3:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a 16 hour whatever.
3:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm good.
3:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I found that I am the caboose on the sickness train in our house, too.
3:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to get the first, and then it gets to McKayla, and about a week after that, I get it kind of full force.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well now we get it from grandchildren.
3:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and you have so many now.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, they're bringing home a lot of germs and that's okay.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wasn't that one point I was when I was raising them all my immune system could take anything.
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
3:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, hopefully your grandkids are going to get you back there.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully.
3:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they've tried.
3:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing a job.
3:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the premise of this podcast is to talk about how you keep yourself well and you have an incredibly long career.
3:54
[SPEAKER_00]: How many years have you been in the music business?
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, 51 years arrived in Nashville.
4:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess if you count the day I arrived in Nashville, it was 50 years ago last August.
4:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my gosh.
4:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're still writing new songs, making new records, still would it be safe to say as inspired as the beginning or has that waxed and wained?
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: More inspired.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh wow.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, definitely more inspired.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The lightning and the bottle thing that happens in one's 20s, because a lot of songs came to me and my 20s that were like,
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: If I got that 20 something inspiration now, man, I would be, I could written some songs.
4:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But I managed to succeed back there in my 20s, not knowing what I was doing.
4:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the inspiration comes from work.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: As I realized when I was young man, inspiration went looking for me and found me.
4:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess the mystical part of creativity was like, oh, there's that guy down there.
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: He can do this instinctively.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's send him some inspiration.
4:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that same source finds me because
5:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It realizes how dedicated I am to the work.
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But if I'm not on the road, I'm this and my studio back here.
5:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You've been here, my colleagues.
5:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll have a morning meditation and some coffee and then I'm working.
5:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's my blessing.
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: A red once in your scene, Gospels, it said that the man I always say and or woman who has found their work needs asked for no other blessing.
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I feel about it.
5:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That's beautiful.
5:30
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you are back there working, is it always working on songs?
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it working on writing prose as well?
5:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I know you write prose and addition to all these songs that you write?
5:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
5:41
[SPEAKER_01]: The prose has been on hold for a while.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I tended to get back on to book number two.
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, a lyric book that came out last fall took up some prose writing time.
5:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But I have
5:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't been willing to do that, understandably.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Are there every days when you show up to your work and fuel challenge by it?
6:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is it something that's been a natural flow for you?
6:12
[SPEAKER_01]: There are days when I'm challenged for sure.
6:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I welcome those days.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm confident that it'll reveal itself to me what I'm searching for.
6:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It times us at four or five hours.
6:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't get stringed five words together.
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: That really worked for me.
6:28
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times I'll string 25 or 30 words together, none of which work for what I'm trying to get at.
6:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's okay.
6:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really a matter of coming back to work every day.
6:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What I do that I'm successful at fulfilling my promise to myself, which is to own the blessing that I'm creative enough to make a living writing songs.
6:50
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really comforting to hear because I feel like what can come.
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: with time is not getting scared when maybe it's not flowing as easily and trusting that it does come back and trusting in the process of when you keep showing up, it will return.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw you last a couple weeks ago and you mentioned you are going to do a vision quest and in my experience you seem to have a spiritual component to you and your
7:24
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe some inner spiritual work that you do to help reconnect?
7:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, writing for me is spiritual.
7:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a spiritual quest.
7:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I actively seek to develop my understanding of my inner spiritual life, none of which I would project on anybody else as the right way to do it.
7:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But early on in my early 20s, I was introduced to a few things that sent me down the pathway to try to seek that source.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess you'd call me a monotheist.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a creator of all of this that's in my realm of understanding myself in the world, and I seek to make conscious contact with that source.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: sometimes successfully, sometimes on the lullite, and I'm completely blocked on how to access my understanding of what that is.
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's an ongoing process.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: The same way as writing songs are tied together, performing is a different thing.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: As I say, as you guys know, it's that we don't get paid to play music, we get paid to travel.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So far, I'm okay with that.
8:35
[SPEAKER_01]: This physical
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: it in.
8:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't like that traveling as much as it used to.
8:42
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to go back to something that we were talking about just a few moments ago about the days when there's nothing there and being okay with it.
8:51
[SPEAKER_01]: There's another thing that happened with age for me that makes
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: the work that I do down more satisfying for me.
9:00
[SPEAKER_01]: As a younger man, the things that I created, I wanted to bring me, of course, money.
9:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think even more than money, I never thought about money very much.
9:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It just seemed to come.
9:13
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted recognition.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted people to know that I do this stuff.
9:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I make these songs, and I wanted people like the way it sounds, the music I make when I sing.
9:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I eventually outgrew that.
9:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It was in my forties before I really outgrew that.
9:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember this thing that happened, it was writing the memoir, Chandrabury Sidewalks, and when I put the last period at the end of the last revived manuscript,
9:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I close the computer and I said, OK, if all I ever get from this is the satisfaction of knowing that I completed this work, if nobody reads it, knowing that I did it that I completed it, I completed the journey, is all the pain that I need.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And the beauty of staying alive and doing it for a long time is I'm happy when I get feedback or when I get recognition, I'm human being,
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: knowing that I did it, that I completed what I started and to me, that's enough.
10:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the rest of it seems to take care of itself.
10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes money comes, sometimes it doesn't.
10:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the most part, nobody in my family has gone hungry and we all have roots over our head and it's been mainly because I've just been right in these songs.
10:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that point of view.
10:28
[SPEAKER_02]: That's something that I'm slowly starting to learn for myself is to shift
10:36
[SPEAKER_02]: success for myself from the reception and things that are outside of my control into measuring how close I am to my creative vision and how much I'm able to create, how much I'm able to finish and all that and keep it within my circle of control and I feel much more grounded and centered and inspired when I stay in that realm versus looking exclusively outwardly for the reception and judging my success on that.
11:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Just understand, time can be a great healer on that front, practice, practice living as what we do.
11:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.
11:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm curious too, because our generation, we, we were into our music for a few years when kind of social media and streaming was a thing before I started recording records.
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: So also the way that reception is received, you've seen so many changes.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So now you put out music and you can see kind of instantaneously online, people might listen to it right away and comment.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: and you can get that feedback so quickly.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Versus went before when you'd put out a record and people would maybe get to hear it on the radio and then wait to get to go by the record and there was so much more time in between.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It was so different because there were so many more steps to get to the songs and the records that you wanted.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a different relationship.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: to music in general and I wonder, has that changed it all the way that you feel about putting music out because of the different way that it's changed how it's received?
12:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, things changed, obviously, and technology was analog when I came, tape machines were rolling.
12:20
[SPEAKER_01]: People were using razor blades to edit, recording engineers were brave souls.
12:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They would take a razor blade to a 24 track visa tape and edit it.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a slower process.
12:32
[SPEAKER_01]: and the satisfaction of whether something would sell or not or how it was received was delayed.
12:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So you had a little time to come to grips in your own way with what you had done.
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, I'd made records in the late 70s.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Generally speaking, by six months after I've made a new album, I pretty much understand whether or not I succeeded in doing what I wanted to do.
12:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Takes a little time and then basically I won't listen to anything that again for a long time and then something will happen and I'll listen to an album and I go, ah.
13:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's better than I thought, but the fact that back in the day you had a little time to come to grips with what you had done so that if it wasn't very well received, well, you already knew that was going to happen.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it was well received and you agreed, there was a sense of success and completion.
13:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, I will say, I'm no different than you are.
13:30
[SPEAKER_01]: When you were a kid, either of you, we heard that music.
13:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We were, I think of those cartoon cats who smell cat nip and they're floating off the ground and they're following the scent of the cat nip.
13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we were following the music in the air.
13:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We left the ground floating.
13:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's always been that way.
13:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And it continues to be that way.
13:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And putting vinyl records on in a room,
13:53
[SPEAKER_01]: it was an analog ritual and the music sounded different coming from those speakers on the floor and your hippie crash pad back in the 70s and back when 4k on up in my hearing was a lot more user friendly.
14:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't need that top end, it was there.
14:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think I have a more intimate relationship with music as a listener now.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The earbuds and listening music on my phone, there's hiking around where I live.
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got an hour hike through the hills and around.
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always listen to music, always.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes podcasts, but I listen to music.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a very intimate experience
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The catnip that used to be floating across the room is now inside my head.
14:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I still like vinyl music at dinner time in the room, maybe cooking dinner.
14:50
[SPEAKER_01]: But listening to Kindle Lamar with my headphones as I'm walking, I'm way up inside
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: how did this man get here?
14:59
[SPEAKER_01]: How does he sustain this creativity?
15:01
[SPEAKER_01]: He's blessed and does the intimate connection and going back and listening to the beach boys or take your pick?
15:09
[SPEAKER_01]: There's something about it this more intimate to me now.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think because I just said it really that the catnip used to float through the room.
15:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Now it floats in my brain for those earbuds.
15:22
[SPEAKER_01]: and I like it.
15:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not entirely disappointed that technology and digital technology has brought music that close.
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I'd long for the days of when we ran tape and recorded because of the process was slower.
15:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We had to wait for rewind.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: You were overdue of it.
15:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Back in the day, you waited that 47 seconds of rewinding.
15:45
[SPEAKER_01]: You spent thinking about what you're doing instead of
15:51
[SPEAKER_01]: To the beginning, if you're overdubbing?
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if I've ever really thought about it.
15:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Just the patience.
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: It's inevitably having time to sit and think and resender yourself like I'm in this place.
16:00
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what I'm doing where overdubs can be rapid fire.
16:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they can.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess there's an upside to that too.
16:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the extra hour of contemplation you get at the end of a day's worth of rewinding is probably a real positive step toward what you're trying to do creatively.
16:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I really do think
16:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It does come down to the milliseconds that add up to an hour of the way we can be pulled out of things today.
16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you're in a recording session and people have your phones and you take a break or if you're not the one recording that moment and you look at your phone versus if you didn't have that option you're just sitting all these kind of
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: moments in this fast-paced life and a lot more distractions.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I often find myself wondering what idea could I have thought of if I hadn't been pulled out and checked my text messages or scrolled Instagram really fast or I wonder what my performance would have been like if my brain had been more centered in the moment and not looking at what notification I had on my phone type of thing
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: which is the evolution of our technology and civilization but it's a lot to think about in today's time of making the choices to be more conscious with our creativity and therefore conscious with our choices of how we live and operate which is something I feel like I'm not very good at which is one of my motivators in this podcast is hearing how other people
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: consciously live, maybe outside of what would be natural or a habit because of the things they've learned that lead to a more fruitful creative content lifestyle.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, just a few minutes ago, we spoke and I said, I told you, I'm about to go on the seven-day vision quest.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd gotten to a place where I was kind of jumbled inside.
17:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I was a little confused about keeping appointments and writing things down.
18:00
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just jumbled and I missed a few cues, just things that I agreed to do and showed up someplace a week early, things like that, just out of step with myself and with time as we don't understand it.
18:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me to unplug everything, especially the phone, and to spin my days out of doors, walking, looking at the trees, talking to the trees, listening to the birds, breathing deeply, taking another walk, standing away from the phone.
18:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It reset my center to where the mixing up in my
18:41
[SPEAKER_01]: clear it up.
18:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And I knew I needed to do it.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a tool for me that actually has proven to me now as I get older.
18:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to do it more often because certain things happen with these physical body, the synapses in the brain and these little things that you realize that these things aren't working as well as they used to.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly, my experience is carrying me along, but this physical existence, it needs help.
19:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And if we don't help it, it'll crap out on you pretty quickly, as age catches up.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have to be really conscious.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: If I want to get on stage and really deliver, I have to be conscious in the other parts of the day to feed myself physically spiritually mentally to make sure that I have an energy.
19:30
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something that you've step more into as you've gotten older.
19:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this something that you also did as a younger person?
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I did it as a younger person.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: My intention was seven days of fasting.
19:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to fast seven days in a breeze, really, and it's really restorative.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got it from the Ascene Gospels in which there's one sentence in the Ascene Gospels.
19:51
[SPEAKER_01]: It's for everyday prayer and fasting.
19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You heal the year of your life.
19:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So back in my 50s, I was four or five years ahead.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: in terms of healing years of my life.
20:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And then as time, it's not as easy.
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had to bail on two and a half days was all I could get into the fast.
20:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But I realized that's okay.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: There were the other five and a half days of sunshine and air was just as restorative for me.
20:19
[SPEAKER_01]: The fasting is really clears out the whole organism.
20:23
[SPEAKER_01]: resets the whole thing and at times back when my 40s and 50s when I was doing that I like I could not contain the amount of energy that I had after I did that.
20:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is a total fast just drinking water or are you drinking water limits?
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And cayenne pepper.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah.
20:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: We were 20 years old and we were in college in New York City.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We were doing it and we met and talked about it.
20:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's funny.
20:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I learned about it living in Asheville, North Carolina and have friends that were doing it there.
20:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So I had done it.
20:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And this was the second or third time I was in the middle of doing it.
20:58
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had noticed Michaela and I think she noticed me.
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had both, we were both on the, you know, and it was fast.
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You became fast friends.
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Fair fast.
21:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to also note the vision quests that you called it and recent train when I saw you you said I'm going to go somewhere.
21:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after a couple weeks later when I talked to you, I asked you where you went and you physically stayed in your backyard and you have a lot of nature in your property.
21:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was just interesting to note that when you said I'm going to go somewhere, you weren't like,
21:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Traveling hours away to some retreat to do this vision quest out in the desert or whatever you You stayed where you were in your home, but I went somewhere.
21:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, is true and traveling through stillness, you know, meditation really getting into a deep, meditative state and then connecting with that higher form of myself that could be called God or could be what I don't know what you would call it.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: But it would take me out of all of the stagnant thought that had built up in my heart in my mind and that was causing me to be grumpy.
22:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it was like, ah, Claudia's so patient with me and she looks at me and rolls her eyes when I get grumpy and I think she's learned about me that if she'd just rolls her eyes and minds her own business I'll get the message and go straight in myself out and to straighten myself out sometimes I have to go somewhere even if it's in the backyard.
22:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I know you're getting ready to go on tour.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like you get rumbled up for antique energy when you're leading up to promoting a record and about to go on tour and you're going to be out in the world a lot?
22:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there a different energy that comes that you have to care for when preparing for that work versus the work of writing and being in your home studio and creating?
23:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we're assembled a new band for this one.
23:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the folks that I've been working with last few years are still in.
23:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But we've reorganized the particular musical combination that we're going to be putting on the stage.
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't like to do my songs based on if you just listen to the records.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm much prefer to get an understanding of what we are as a collective musical entity, the drummer, the bass player, the all of us.
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Who are we now?
23:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And how do we approach these songs of mine as who we are now, rather than what was happening when it was recorded?
23:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So that takes some work in the beginning.
23:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Could easily just get some really good musicians so here, listen to the record, we'll go play it like this.
23:50
[SPEAKER_01]: The satisfying thing for me is finding out how we all work together, who's personality, who's style,
23:57
[SPEAKER_01]: whose sensibilities brings certain things to the music to find that combination.
24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And to get out, you know, early in four or five shows in and have it click in and where ah, now we're doing this unconsciously.
24:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all who we are doing this.
24:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
24:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a very satisfying process for me and always learn something from it.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I get a lot of confidence when everybody has blossomed into who they are in relation to the music, not who they are in relation to me.
24:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That helps me grow.
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And I look forward to that and then once out on the road, I'm pretty healthy and happy out there.
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't go read Ray the refrigerator at night and eat some kind of sugar that makes me sleep crappy.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: He was generally speaking that I have an orange or an apple or a banana and the hotel room and that's about that.
24:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So therefore, I kind of get healthier out on the road in a way.
24:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still hard traveling now, getting a body around it, but I do pretty well.
25:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm looking forward to this tour.
25:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It should be fun.
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We got a really interesting group of musicians and a dare say that we'll get pretty good.
25:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I can imagine that that really emphasizing everybody's uniqueness that they bring to the music makes playing some of your older songs pretty fun.
25:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Seeing new light brought to them and new energy.
25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it does.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, oh, I didn't know this song could do that.
25:24
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just by new personalities interpreting something that perhaps not how I would interpret it.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Their interpretation can inform my own reinterpretation of something that I've made that have written.
25:37
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very satisfying thing to have happened.
25:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, to be honest, I tell jet hues or people I've worked
25:48
[SPEAKER_01]: go out there at the edge of the stage and play that guitar.
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: If you get all the attention in the house, it doesn't make me look bad.
25:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes me look good.
25:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Go do it.
25:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Go do it.
26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So anytime the musicians I'm working with become
26:05
[SPEAKER_01]: focus because of their unique talent and who they are.
26:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I feel good about it.
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And it makes me take confidence from it from like, yeah, this audience is loving this.
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't have to be all about me.
26:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
26:18
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it's better when it's not all about me.
26:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a reoccurring theme that comes up in a lot of these conversations of people learning I'm better I'm healthier I'm more centered when it's not all about me and I'm in service of others and honoring others in life and on stage.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think as an audience member, I remember, I played a couple of shows with Marty Stewart, and I watched his show just transfixed because one, he's incredible, but also every single person in his band is incredible, and he showcases each of them.
26:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's each of them.
26:58
[SPEAKER_00]: shine and it never made me think, oh I'm more into the drummer now than Marty Stewart.
27:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It just made me love Marty Stewart more and want to go see more shows.
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a really interesting note because I think sometimes maybe a more immature mindset can think, oh no I have to somehow keep the focus to me.
27:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because who will I be if I lose the focus?
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: To be part of something and to be in service of that something, when everybody is there and doing it, it just makes it better.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, just a quick pause from this conversation.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: The other 22 hours is an independent production built entirely on the idea that these quiet, honest conversations matter.
27:43
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27:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you can think of one person who would appreciate this show, please pass it along.
27:49
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27:54
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a small action that we say massive difference for us.
27:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being here.
27:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get back to our conversation.
28:02
[SPEAKER_02]: You just said, who would I be if I lose the focus, which brings a question for me.
28:07
[SPEAKER_02]: When you first came to Nashville, did you move here as an artist or did you move here?
28:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Because all the songs that were written here and you wanted to be a writer, we all know that your career has blossomed into being both.
28:20
[SPEAKER_02]: So just wondering what your initial intent was in coming here and maybe how you navigated what has become your career.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We're here for that.
28:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Donovan Coward and I, who travels with me and mixes sound.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We were a folk duo in East Texas at college.
28:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We met a guy and took us to Crowley, Louisiana and we recorded an album of our woefully inadequate songs at the O.J.D.
28:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Miller studio in Crowley, Louisiana.
28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: We went back to Houston and working in the steakhouse playing Simon and Garfunkel songs.
28:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Meanwhile, the producer went off to Nashville, I'm going to ask, and call me if you must later and said, round up, don't even get up here at Nashville, he said, I signed you to a tenure recording contract with Columbia Records.
29:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're going on the road for a year with Kenny Rogers in the first edition.
29:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Get up here.
29:17
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
29:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what?
29:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I didn't have the wherewithal to say what at the time, I spent my last few dollars on a new guitar because I wasn't going to need it since I've just been signed to Columbia Records and
29:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Kenny Rogers, first edition tour.
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So off we go, Donovan, I get in the car and drive all night and arrive in Nashville in the wee hours and look around the, there, there wasn't a welcoming party at 3 a.m. And so we slept somewhere in the car and showed up at Columbia Records the next day and said, well, we're here, Rodney and Donovan, we're here and they go, who?
30:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Who?
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of his receptionists call somebody comes down and said, yeah, well, yeah, we're running down.
30:05
[SPEAKER_01]: We're here to sign our contract and we hadn't yet occurred to us, where is the producer?
30:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then somebody else comes down a little higher up and comes down and said, look, we never heard of you.
30:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't know who you are.
30:17
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no record deal here for you.
30:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay.
30:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, there must be some mistake here because we got the phone call.
30:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm sorry.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so we walk out on the sidewalk and there was a songwriter involved with this producer who I don't remember how we got in touch, but he got in his car and Houston and drove to Nashville and found us somehow because we were sleeping out on the lake on the top of picnic tables.
30:42
[SPEAKER_01]: and driving in and trying to figure out what our career was supposed to be.
30:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, there wasn't a tour to go out on, but the songwriter came and said, look, hey, you know, the producers sold your tapes and you're publishing to this publishing house over on the corner over there, sure for our music owned by the Wilburne Brothers.
31:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, and by the way, the tapes and the contracts were on top of a filing cabinet there.
31:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how he knew that.
31:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So we went at lunchtime and checked it out and said, oh, okay.
31:13
[SPEAKER_01]: The next day we went back, Donovan went in and charmed the receptionist.
31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I found the office and there was our tapes and publishing contracts on top of filing cabinet.
31:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just put it under my arm and walked out the door with it.
31:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're right in there and my storage and my home studio right now.
31:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
31:33
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how I got into the music business.
31:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, you can't make that up.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my God, see you guys then, just stayed.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I just stayed, I just said, well, okay, Donovan's, he went to Arizona for a while.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't hook back up until I moved to Los Angeles to work with Amy Lou, but I stayed and I, and pretty soon after that, I met Guy Clark and skinny Dennis and...
31:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Richard Dobson and that whole crew and suddenly I was surrounded by songwriters and I know it.
32:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I really want to stay here and figure out how these guys do this stuff.
32:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
32:08
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of nuance to that story that was a cool.
32:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
32:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still taking all of that in.
32:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So after meeting Guy and Skinny Dennis and all of that, they turned you on to the idea of just being a songwriter or in the sense of like having other people cut your songs.
32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: One about that, never has been about that for me.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was a lot of people have recorded my songs and I'm grateful for it, but it was never about that.
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Through Guy, I met Towns, Benzand, and Mickey, New Barrier, and Mickey, New Barrier was thinking about Guy and Towns that they had more of baritone voices, Billy Joe Shaver, Chris Gustavus, and there's poets with that baritone,
32:52
[SPEAKER_01]: sounding voice, the gravitas, and I was at a little little loss for how to be poetic with a natural Irish sounding tenor, until Mickey Newberry came and guy put me on to make a new berry, and Mickey had a beautiful tenor voice, but he was right in San Francisco, Mabel Joy, and she even woke me up to Sega by, and I was like, ow!
33:16
[SPEAKER_01]: you can write that poetic style and have a tenor voice.
33:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Nubary was the one that really helped me find my own voice and the language that I would eventually stumble onto, adopt, or cultivate, and it was never about writing songs for any other purpose other than to write the song, the best that you could at any given moment,
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt always felt lucky that that's what I stumbled onto, and probably I wouldn't have come to Nashville if I hadn't been hijacked by a lion producer.
33:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So I worked perfectly, it just landed me exactly where I needed to be doing what I'm doing today.
34:03
[SPEAKER_02]: that goal of writing the song, the best that it can be.
34:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Sounds like that's still the goal for you.
34:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the goal of division across the world.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, there is no other goal.
34:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I always say, I have these songwriting cast where people come and, and I say, look, I can't teach it to write songs, but I can share my knowledge with you, and I can try to encourage you.
34:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say, what I've learned is that if I'm patient enough, the song will eventually tell me what it wants to be.
34:29
[SPEAKER_01]: If I don't try to force my will on the song, make up something I think it ought to be, it'll happen.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And with that mindset, I've spent 30 years writing songs.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: But see, I started shame on the moon in 1979.
34:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still not finished with it, so that's 40 some years.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I may have finished it a couple of years ago, but I'm not sure yet.
34:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so in it when out there and lived its own life and was a big hit for Bob Seager.
34:55
[SPEAKER_01]: But that last verse was not a good, well-written last verse.
35:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I talked to Bob about it.
35:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, man, that's it.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I recorded it as said, but that last verse is just not right, and he said, oh, I like that last verse.
35:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And someone who will remain nameless recorded it and found me one day, and he said, well, I recorded your song, and he said, I wish I could have been there with you to help you on that last verse.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think he meant to dress me down a little bit, but I grabbed him at a hugged him and I said, oh man, thank you.
35:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Finally, somebody agrees with me.
35:36
[SPEAKER_01]: He was taking a back.
35:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He was true.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: That last verse was shite.
35:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So you feel like you're still working on that verse?
35:44
[SPEAKER_01]: think I might have it.
35:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure.
35:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's incredible.
35:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So is this common practice for you to continue tinkering, I guess, for lack of a better word, massaging and adjusting, even if there's always been recorded and put out, you're still aiming to get closer to the core of what that's all you know.
36:00
[SPEAKER_01]: On some of them, I'm still discovering the error of my early way on it and
36:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm always happy when that happens.
36:08
[SPEAKER_01]: It gives me new life.
36:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Suzanne Clarke told me the story of the music in Spain, where most of those Picasso's are, that a lady was there from Oklahoma, and it's a little guy down there dabbing paints on the Gornica.
36:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Picasso was super magic painting, and he was running for the Watchman, you know,
36:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Quick, there's somebody that's creating the Gurnica and the guy could, oh, madam, that's Picasso.
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: He works here.
36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that's a true story, but it is, it is, it pretty much supports my theory about these songs will eventually tell me what they want to be.
36:50
[SPEAKER_02]: When you are circling back on songs that are 40 years old, are you able to tap into that initial creative space that you are in while you're writing it?
37:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I would imagine that you're inevitably bringing a new point of view, new life experiences.
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you able to stay focused on just that third verse and chase what was still there or is it coming four years later and be like this whole structure here needs to change in a case of shame on the moon I worked on that last verse for years and years and years and years even after it already been out in the world and did its job and then one day I said God I keep trying to write this last verse dang and so I just rewrote the all the verses top to bottom.
37:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole new version, saving that course, the best thing about it was that chorus anyway.
37:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I did that, and now I recorded that on this record I made called Acusic Classic, it was just Acusic versions of some of my more well-known songs.
37:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did that version of it, and when I heard that, I went, nah, it's still the last verse.
37:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't improved anything when they're early verses.
37:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So I took the best of the three new verses and created the last verse and I didn't sing the song live because Bob said you're saying it so good I mean he's saying it so well that it didn't matter if the last verse wasn't any good You hear was that voice in that passion that that man was bringing
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't perform the song life for 35 years or so because I said, that belongs to Bob Seeger.
38:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But a couple of years ago, I started doing it again with a new third verse.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel confident when I do it.
38:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm still in the shadow of Bob Seeger's brilliant performance of it.
38:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes I feel self-conscious that I'm not able to deliver what he did.
38:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But I can deliver my own version of what it is.
38:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess that's enough.
38:44
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you know what it's done?
38:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Are there songs you have that you know, our Donner is kind of everything always malleable?
38:53
[SPEAKER_01]: There are more that are done than are undone, not yet done.
38:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Guy Clark was still valuable in my formative years as a son, writer, and he was so generous.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I go see him with a new song, and he said, okay, put the guitar down.
39:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell me the word, look me square right in the eye and tell me the worst of your song.
39:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I would, and when I would, guy had those intense eyes.
39:18
[SPEAKER_01]: When there was a bad verse or a bad couple at a bad rhyme, soft rhyme, something wrong, something that didn't belong.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't naturallyvert my eyes.
39:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That instilled something I went, oh, and what he was teaching was that, if you can't look me in the eye and tell me the words that you're gonna sing, then they're not what you're looking for.
39:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So that sort of became part of my process.
39:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I've more or less no when I wannavert my own eyes from myself.
39:47
[SPEAKER_01]: This I'm whistling past the graveyard here, this is not right.
39:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So that helps.
39:52
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a seed planted a long time ago that I still feed off of.
39:56
[SPEAKER_00]: from listening to you talk and I also follow your Facebook page and you share a lot of little three paragraph stories of your life on your Facebook page and you always seem so comfortable, sharing, not just your accomplishments or things that you feel good about but also the things that
40:18
[SPEAKER_00]: not as good or seemingly a failure, you're very vulnerable.
40:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I am always very drawn to people who show the hard stuff.
40:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I read your Wikipedia page and it's like just so many accolades and high points and incredible successes, but I want to know all the in-between and I feel like you are very even just publicly very generous.
40:39
[SPEAKER_00]: with sharing.
40:41
[SPEAKER_00]: No, this was hard for me, or I struggled with this, or that wasn't good enough.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And I read a post that you wrote.
40:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looking through your stuff last this last weekend.
40:50
[SPEAKER_00]: You shared how you were in a low, you called it a low eb of your creative life.
40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And you made some records that you called pretty forgettable.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a story of you recorded a record and you took it to a friend of yours who I'm forgetting his name, who's a sound engineer.
41:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Richard Dodd.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you played in the record and he said, that was a really nice record Rodney, but go home and put that on a shelf and go make a real record.
41:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Those were his words, yeah.
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And that could be crushing for a lot of people, but you went home and did that.
41:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And then am I correct that the record that you made was Diamond's in dirt?
41:26
[SPEAKER_01]: No, the record I made was the Houston kid.
41:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
41:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I think is superior record to Diamond's dirt was a big hit.
41:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The Houston kid was an artistic step forward for me.
41:38
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, when Richard told me that, you know, and he's been apologetic for all these years for that, but he was right.
41:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And on the drive home, I mean, I'd left mad.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the way home, I realized he's right.
41:51
[SPEAKER_01]: I was trying to make a record
41:53
[SPEAKER_01]: for what I thought people wanted.
41:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Diamonds and dirt.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a big hit record try to make that again.
41:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Diamonds and dirt was, I wasn't trying to make a hit record when I made that record.
42:03
[SPEAKER_01]: I was just recording songs and trying to sing and tune.
42:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Not much more to it than that.
42:09
[SPEAKER_01]: But I realized he's right.
42:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So I did, I put it on the shelf and it dissolved.
42:16
[SPEAKER_01]: But I went on May the Houston kid, which started a really creative run for me that I think of mostly maintained since then there's 20 years or so.
42:24
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a turning point because Richard was honest.
42:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was right.
42:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And I tell him, I said, yeah, it was a blessing, man.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Let it go.
42:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, oh, no, he's sorry, man.
42:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I spent a lot of my own money on that record.
42:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Later on, I made another one that I put on the shelf that didn't necessarily need to be put on the shelf.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I rediscovered it during COVID, found it on the shelf and listened to it and I went, wow, this is good.
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was gonna put it out until I got an opportunity to go record with Jeff Tweetie up in Chicago and that's the record that's coming out.
43:00
[SPEAKER_01]: For obvious reasons, but I'm not always right.
43:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you feel like the moments in your career where you've had really high reception, awards, accolades, success, has that ever affected your relationship to your creativity, like that expectation of trying to do it again, or make something that will be received in the same way?
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, especially the records that I thought were forgettable were post-diamers in dirt when the record company gave me a lot of money.
43:33
[SPEAKER_01]: The exchange was, here's a lot of money, and I go make records like you did on Diamonds in dirt, which I wasn't able to do.
43:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Wasn't anybody's fault?
43:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a great producer to work with, but I was putting the cart before the horse, which is trying to create something that's already happened.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, rather than what's happening now,
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I learned a lot from that, and I had my 15 minutes of fame, and I didn't handle it well.
43:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It felt to me like my sensibilities, my personality.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, I would not be able to work in a formulaic way, which is I'm going to do this, because I'm really successful at it.
44:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to keep doing that.
44:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think maybe part of the reason that I'm so as you say generous about my failures is because I fail probably more than I succeed in day-to-day work.
44:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I think, you know, it's probably 65-35 and I'm quite comfortable with my failures as long as I don't put them out there.
44:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they're out there, you know, I was like, okay, I didn't like my voice until I was 50 years old.
44:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I just simply did not like it.
44:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm certain friends and people live, why are you like your voice?
44:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I like your voice.
44:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Amy Lou, she always says, I love your voice.
44:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I love your voice when you were 25.
44:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, yeah, okay, but I'd heard a Reeth of Franklin.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
44:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard Ray Charles, well, come on, you know, it's like the bar is like, I got a shoot for it.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, even if I just have this hillbilly, tender voices, like I got a shoot for Ray Charles because it's there.
45:13
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like Mount Everest.
45:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And why do you climb it?
45:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's there.
45:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, well, you know, I'm just satisfied with the sound of my voice because I like how Ray Charles sounds.
45:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Damn.
45:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't handle that.
45:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:26
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you come to terms with that?
45:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Pete Coleman, I call him the lab coat Limey.
45:31
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a British engineer that did face right hand and Houston kid and the outsider with me.
45:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Got me on the studio and he turned off the reverb.
45:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I said, hey man, he's turned a reverb off and he said, yeah, once you learn to sing without reverb, you're going to love it.
45:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was right.
45:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like I discovered the sound of my voice when Pete removed the reverb from it.
45:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was seeing to a dry, if I had headphones on, it was dry and a can.
45:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I discovered my voice.
46:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Very simple thing like that.
46:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Because with a reverb in there, I put in that expansion in the sound.
46:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I would listen more to the sound of all of that rather than just communicating.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: with the use of my voice.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are a stumble on to, oh, I like the sound of this voice.
46:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I reach yours, but it's mine and it's pretty good.
46:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's when you mentioned people like Ray Charles and Aritha, that's what strikes me about all those legendary voices, is how unique they are and how much it is just fully them in that voice, Frank Sinatra, or
46:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't ever leave, yeah, don't ever leave.
46:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Check Baker, all of that.
46:39
[SPEAKER_02]: They're fully there as a person behind everyone.
46:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fully on it.
46:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, they can feel that.
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Make Jagger.
46:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Bob Dylan.
46:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the challenge then is knowing that you're capable of that, too.
46:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to sound like a wreath of Franklin.
46:54
[SPEAKER_00]: The journey of once you fully embrace your voice because it's yours and your way to communicate.
47:05
[SPEAKER_00]: to someone's voice, not because it's technically a better singing voice, but because of that kind of intangible undefineable essence that it's a person sharing their voice, there's so many voices that I love that are technically not great singers, but you can feel that it's them.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that in my case, I discovered my voice was starting to sound lived in, and that had some gravitas that I had been missing until I was like, oh, yeah, that sounds starting to sound lived in, it's good.
47:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
47:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I've wanted to ask you because I noticed kind of a trend of talking to people in creatives who have children who have raised families.
47:50
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times we have talked to a lot of men about it, but it kind of trends that women get asked about it, but not a lot of men get asked about what it's like to raise a family and also have a very consuming creative career.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You have
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you speak to that a little bit about what that's like to have other beings who you are responsible for while also living this life that takes you away a lot is very consuming of your energy to create?
48:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my oldest daughter Hannah, her mother and I split when Hannah last think was 16 months old and I got custody of Hannah.
48:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was making my first record on one or
48:37
[SPEAKER_01]: hadn't I were living in wooden hills at two of us, you know, we were night owls, I hadn't switched over to being a sane human being just because I had a new baby.
48:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would load up her little portable crib and take it to the studio and we just lived together and we lived on raising brands and you know, she makes a joke that I would wash the dishes with the same sponge that I wiped her butt with when I had time, thanks for the effort.
49:02
[SPEAKER_01]: That's her joke on it.
49:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably true, but the thing about it is every mistake that you can make from driving down on the Hollywood freeway with my
49:12
[SPEAKER_01]: two-year-old child standing up beside me with no seatbell on.
49:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And having to slam on the brakes and throw in her into the floor board and her not miraculously getting hurt, everything that you could do wrong as a parent, I did it.
49:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And that little girl has grown up to be a spectacular woman.
49:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Smart, creative, funny, successful.
49:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mess it up.
49:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of my other three daughters who we are raised together with her mother,
49:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't mess them up either and I was selfish and self-absorbed and stormed a lot of time and late getting them to school when I was driving them as constantly five minutes late getting to the school.
49:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't mess them up.
49:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think if you talk to them, they say, you know, dad tried, but he didn't mess me up.
50:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
50:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And they would be doing that sarcastically making a joke, but there's something about it, and this is the most true thing I can say, which is My crowning achievement in the world is being the father of those four women and the grandfather of their children.
50:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my greatest accomplishment.
50:23
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a patriarchy.
50:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And all four of my daughters went out into the world, England, and San Francisco, and they all went away, New York, and they all came back, and they lived close by, and that's the blessing that continues on.
50:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I call them She Wolves, because they're smart and they're tenacious, and they'll call me on my crap in a minute.
50:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's right there with Claudia, my wife, Claudia, is like, these five women in my life are the ones
50:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're the ones that inspire me to try, to be the best man I can be and to fail sometimes and succeed sometimes.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, the fact that they're in my life is my single, most crowning achievement.
51:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think that's such a testament, the fact that you have such close relationships with all of your daughters still, and any other's lives, and the way that you spoke about your journey as a father is, again, very generous with your failures and your owning, who you are as a person, which I think is wonderful.
51:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, maybe that's something that comes with age and again like the a lot of the motivation We're in our mid-30s and we have a almost two-year-old daughter and a lot of our friends are in the same similar age bracket And we've come to a place of like, okay, we know we're not gonna change course This is the career path that we're in and we've lived it long enough to see that the way that we approached it in our 20s
52:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Do everything you can just to have a music career and so I think we're constantly talking and curious about how do we sustain a creative career?
52:20
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that look like?
52:21
[SPEAKER_00]: What is our idea of success?
52:23
[SPEAKER_00]: How it's changed from what are kind of narrow view when we first started out?
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, how do we be whole continually evolving humans?
52:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really like the word of saying a good person because I think we're all good and bad, but being a whole human and really owning that with confidence.
52:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think creative work feeds that and vice versa.
52:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's interesting to talk to someone like you who is so open and honest about how it all has inner woven throughout your long career in life.
52:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I was thinking, well, I was listening to you.
52:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I was paying attention to what you were saying, but also my own thoughts were bubbling up.
53:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I can't wait till she gets through, so I can say that.
53:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't that, I was listening to you, but it occurred to me that in answer to what you're talking about, I think what I could share is that despite my flaws, my selfishness and my outright failures, I think that if you ask my daughters, I think that they would say the one thing that I did succeed in consistently is they know how much I love them.
53:35
[SPEAKER_01]: If your child knows how much you love them, truly, how much you love them, they'll forgive how stupid you are.
53:41
[SPEAKER_01]: From time to time.
53:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I found that to be the case because God knows I've been at blockhead so many times, but love conquers all.
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
53:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's a beautiful note to end on.
53:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
53:54
[SPEAKER_02]: We really appreciate you taking time this morning to chat with us and share your experience and your insights.
54:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
54:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It isn't interesting how technology can
54:04
[SPEAKER_01]: create the opportunity to just have a conversation.
54:07
[SPEAKER_01]: We can sit outside having this conversation.
54:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, but then we would have had a drive 34 minutes, right?
54:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we get to just be in our homes, but.
54:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
54:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Good luck with this and my pleasure.
54:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for reaching out to me and asking me to take part.
54:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, Rodney.
54:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope your tour is great.
54:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope you stay healthy and feel good.
54:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, thank you.
54:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Same to you.
54:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We know your time is valuable and we're grateful you chose to spend this hour with us.
54:38
[SPEAKER_00]: If this conversation resonated with you, know that it is just one of many.
54:41
[SPEAKER_00]: We have an archive of over 140 conversations.
54:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're looking for a way to go to next, you can find curated playlists by topic on our YouTube channel or simply scroll back in the speed to find our conversations with Rogan Cash, New York Times bestselling author Maggie Smith, Lucius, J.D.
54:57
[SPEAKER_00]: McCurson, and many others.
54:59
[SPEAKER_02]: This shows produced by me, Mary Shaffer-based, with helped from a Kayla Anne.
55:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the music you hear is written, performed and produced by me as well.
55:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Our show is edited and mixed by Leland Holden at Pod Punch and we are proud numbers of a Bluegrass situation podcast network.
55:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for being here.
55:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you next time.