Chapter Eighteen

Recording Til The Wheels Fall Off. Gaining traction but getting weary, heading for some bumpy road...

Tracks in this episode:

• The Deal from Til The Wheels Fall Off
• Rode Hard from The Sugar Tree

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Chapter eighteen It was time to come up with another album. I wasn't signed to a label anymore, but I'd written a lot of songs since moving to Nashville, and I knew I wanted to release them somehow. I'd connected with Jim Olsen, whose Western Massachusetts based label Signature Sounds was a good fit for a touring singer songwriter, but had to come up with an album they considered worth releasing before we could work out a licensing deal. A useful thing about being signed to a publishing deal was the publisher would pay for a certain number of demo recordings per year, all recoupable, of course, that is, they footed the bill up front and added it to your tab to be paid off possibly never. If nothing ever gets licensed for film or TV, played enough times on the radio or covered by another artist. I'd made demos of a few possible contenders for the new album and for the rest decided to work with engineers who owned their own studios. I'm making it sound way more organized and thought out than it was. Like with anything, writing, painting, cooking, you just have to start somewhere. Cheryl Crow had a big hit the summer of 2003 with her single Soak Up the Sun, Catchy as Hell with a Surface Sheen and Irresistible Chorus. I felt pissed off listening to Cheryl's song and couldn't avoid it because they were playing it everywhere. Her hit plagued me with questions like Cheryl Crow, why can't I be you? I thought if only I were A, better looking, B, harder working, and C could sing and play better, I could be where she was. It hurts facing the truth, but can also be good motivation. So I wrote Why Do I as a response, the lyrics asking myself all the questions it hurt to face in real life. Why had I broken up with Paul? He'd been an excellent boyfriend. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Paul, and that was probably why he had to go. I wasn't sure I deserved a good guy. And why did I make life harder for myself than it had to be? Maybe I could blame Catholicism for turning me into my own worst enemy. But it wasn't possible to go back and start over without the stain of original sin and agony of the confession booth, reinforcing the idea that I was basically bad if I wrote truthfully, and when it comes to songs or anything really, there is no other way. Perhaps I could move beyond those feelings of worthlessness that didn't serve me or anybody. I recorded Why Do I in New York City, with the New York musicians who'd often backed me for Northeast shows, Steve Goulding on drums, Joe McGuinty on keyboards, John Greyboff on guitar. We worked in bassist Brad Albeda's studio down near where the World Trade Center once stood. Richard Barone, whose band The Bongos, had been a staple of Hoboken and Lower Manhattan pop music in the eighties and into the nineties, produced the recording, his pop sensibility giving the track a polish that countered the darkness of the lyrics. I was happy with it, but decided I didn't want to continue down this route, with a producer overseeing and helping shape the aesthetic. I just needed to gather a group of songs together myself. I hadn't been ready for that approach before, but this time I was. In Nashville, there were recording studios in basements and garages all over the town. I don't think it's fair to characterize them as home studios. These aren't the domains of hobbyists, but important tools of the musicians' working lives that just happen to be attached to the places they live. Steve Allens was a walk out with hot tub on the patio, looking out from a hill high above Granny White Pike. Steve's wife Linda had survived a brain tumor. Nothing fazed her. She had stared down death and was minted. She would bravely stand up front at even sparsely attended shows in Nashville, reminding everyone on stage that what we were doing up there mattered. Recording at Steve's was fun and easy going, and I liked knowing Linda was right upstairs. Bill Lloyd's basement was a den of pop records and musical ephemera. It adjoined the garage, a garage where you could park your car and keep the lawnmower, just like when I was growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. When I'd first visited Bill, back when I still lived in New York City, I'd been stunned. Music could buy you a house with a yard and a driveway, space and peace. It had given me hope and something to aspire to in my future as a musician, that kind of autonomy. George Bradfield's basement was cozy and atmospheric. George lived on the outskirts of Nashville in a town called Madison. The house was a cool mid-century ranch, and the linoleum basement floor featured musical notes and motifs, a G clef, quarter notes. Back in the late fifties through mid-sixties, the house belonged to pop country superstar Jim Reeves. Local lore had it, the distinctive floor was visible in blue movies of the era, that when Jim was on the road crooning worldwide hits like He'll have to go, his house was an occasional erotic film factory. A big reason country music appealed to me in the first place, that it was music made by people who seem like regular folks, except they were blessed with real talent and drive, was evident working at George's studio. He'd recorded dozens of great Nashville artists David Olney, Webb Wilder, Jason Ringenberg, but was humble and self-effacing. Because he owned the studio, engineering, mixing, doing everything himself, including making coffee, the working atmosphere was relaxed, affordable, but always focused and professional. We managed to arrange, record, and make several songs over the course of a week or two. Till the wheels fall off, Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again? Believe in You Break Up Boots All the Way to Heaven and Don't Ever Change. Even though Paul and I had broken up, he came in to play drums on the tracks I recorded at George's. I'm glad Paul could play on one of my albums. I'd learned so much from him. He was a hell of a musician and knew not to take any of it too seriously, which may have irritated me as a girlfriend, but served things well in a studio situation. The title song, Till the Wheels Fall Off, was inspired by Bob Dylan's Brownsville girl, not musically or even lyrically, but that image of Ruby in the backyard with her red hair tied back, asking a couple how far they were willing to take this thing. My song felt like a statement of intent, that there was no turning back from the life I'd chosen. I'd made it this far, hadn't I? In Scotland I recorded a couple of tracks with David Scott and East Kilbride. Davy, best known for his band the Pearlfishers, and sometime membership in BMX Bandits, had an affinity for sixty style pop music, and I played some solo gigs with him around his wee corner of the country. His studio was in a state funded arts center outside Glasgow. With Davy and drummer Jim Gash, I knocked out three tracks over two days, including The Deal, a song co-written with Bill Demain that took its title and refrain, It's Optional, from what else, a Seinfeld episode.

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Meeting your friends, checking up, looking at where's this go? Start again.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

When I met up with John Greyboff in London on my way back to Nashville, I told him I'd gotten an album together somehow, but I didn't know how I could keep up this pace of traveling and parenting. I'm just so tired, John, I said. I'd never admitted that to anyone before. But I planned out the artwork, the car theme of Till the Wheels Fall Off and Nod, to my endless driving and touring, and by April 2003 I was heading back to the UK and Ireland to tour for the new album. Things were complicated by the fact that Hazel's dad Will had a European tour with Steve Earl Plan for the same time period. With both Will and me living in Nashville, there were times it was fairly straightforward working things out as divorced musician parents. Will often toured for many weeks with Steve, and I made whatever arrangements I could to ensure Hazel had some supervision when I needed to be away for a night or a weekend. There were a handful of friends we relied on, most of whom had kids. Sometimes Hazel arranged sleepovers at her school friends' houses, but that might involve her having to attend some kind of church service if it coincided with a weekend or a Wednesday night, this being Nashville. I'm sorry, Hazel. She told me one family brought her along to an opening day screening of the Passion of the Christ, the film gory, bloody, graphic. The audience mostly Jesus loving parents and their kids gathered to show support for their number one guy. Look, mommy, it's Jesus. Hazel heard a small voice cry out with delight. Then a gasp. What are they doing to him? I tried to fit my gigs around Will's touring schedule, but this was the rare time we both had overseas touring plans, so I okayed it with Hazel's school for her to be away for two weeks. Hazel and I flew from Atlanta to Heathrow, then took a train to Bristol. I remember exhaustion after the overnight flight and the taste of ribena, a fruit flavored children's drink with questionable nutritional value. Our foreheads against the train windows as we journeyed westward, the green hills a whole other color from the Tennessee and Georgia dark piny green, clouds the color of Regency stone houses, sheep the fluffy white of clouds. We crashed a few hours in a Bristol hotel, then gathered up Hazel's suitcase and knapsack and walked to Colston Hall, where Steve Earl and his band were sound checking. We ate dinner backstage with Will and the other Dukes, Eric Ambell, who I'd known back in Brooklyn, and Kelly Looney, Steve's long running bass player. I stayed to watch the show, enjoying the reverent but fervent atmosphere so particular to a British Roots music audience. Steve was a great artist. His songs always pushed the boundaries while remaining simple, straightforward, and uniquely him. Afterwards I accompanied Hazel out to the tour bus where she'd be living for ten days. The band was channel tunnel bound, heading for gigs in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. I waved goodbye to my daughter as she bravely climbed aboard a busload of touring musicians like she was walking onto a pirate ship. Only she knew them and they were all decent guys and one was her dad. I went back to the hotel by myself and caught a train the next morning. I wondered what my touring life would look like to my daughter, in contrast to her dad's. Nottingham, Leicester, Newcastle, Hull, London. At the end of the dates, I arrived in Ireland, where I planned to pick Hazel up at Dublin Airport. Her dad had dropped her at the airport in Paris. No international mobile phones yet. There were internet cafes where you got changed and logged into a computer, surrounded by other travelers. An email from Will arrived letting me know Hazel was on her flight. There wasn't a lot that could happen to her in the sky between Paris and Dublin, right? But that feeling of having no control over my daughter's fate, that she was out there in the world and not in my charge anymore, had me pacing and desperately peering over strangers' shoulders as the passengers from her flight came through immigration and customs. Please don't let her have been abducted to some country I've never heard of. And then she was walking towards me, looking taller and more capable than I remembered. We dropped her bags off at the promoter's flat and wandered around Dublin and ate oxtail soup in a pub where she told me about all the gigs and venues in Europe, and I wondered how my fourteen-year-old daughter had gotten so much more worldly in just a few days. Back in Nashville, one hot Saturday evening in June, I drove us out to Am South Amphitheater to see Steve Earl and the band open for Jackson Brown. The Luminum minivan I'd bought to replace my Aerostar broke down on the way home. I called AAA, and when the tow truck arrived and we climbed up into the cab, Hazel said, Huh, this is the second time I've been in a tow truck today. Dad broke down bringing me over to your house this morning. The driver turned and said, I thought y'all looked familiar. It wasn't all broken down vans and cobbled together child care arrangements in Nashville. I had good nights there, nights I'll hold on to forever. Playing Bob Dylan's Hurricane at a Bluebird Freedom Sings event, remembering all seventeen verses with no lyric sheet. The night, supporting Nashville's First Amendment Center, was made up of performers playing songs that had been banned at one time. Pre-camera phone, I wish I'd busted out my Olympus 35 trip to document Dobie Gray tearing the place up with drift away, never censored, but a powerful anthem to the importance of what most of us in the room were driven to pursue rhythm, rhyme, and harmony. I remember hanging on every word as Randy Newman leaned against a lectern at Vanderbilt University, talking to a small crowd about songwriting. Lucinda Williams and Pat Denizio of the Smithereens trading songs in the round at Tin Pan South. I just wish I could write a rocking hit like you, Lucinda drawled after Pat played Blood and Roses. In New York, a lot of sweat and hard work went towards survival, parking, subway, dodging crime and crazies. There was inspiration there, sure. Life's rich pageant any time you stepped out of the front door, whether you wanted it or not. The easier lifestyle in Nashville put the focus on what I'd come there to do writing and recording and going out of town to play gigs. Passing a guitar around Greg and Claire Trooper's dining table, or a clothing swap at Rosie Flores's house down the street, walking the hills around Belmont with Joel and White early in the morning. This sense of community I hadn't expected. I sat there in awe of the talent around me, but it pushed me to raise the level of my own writing. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to compete. I'd knock out a birthday song for Brad Jones, Who Built the Pyramids, or play a funny song like I hate every bone in her body, or hush the room with Don't Ever Change, and feel like I was holding my own. There were Neil Young tribute nights and Frequent Beatles ones. Good chances to learn from the best. I saw Laura Cantrell open for Elvis Costello at the Ryman, and she played my song Don't Break the Heart right there on the stage where Hank Williams once drove the crowd so wild they brought him back for six encores. It felt like a supreme songwriter honor, almost as good as being up there myself. I kept performing Reckless Eric's whole wide world in my solo set. The pulsing rhythm of the verse and mix of hope and defiance when the chorus kicked in, always connected. I wondered what Eric was up to. Last time in the UK, someone had mentioned he might come see me play, but he never showed up. I learned Welk weren't going to pick up the option for one more year on my publishing deal, and it stung, but wasn't a complete shock. They hadn't pitched my songs to anyone, but I'd gotten a few cuts anyhow. Joylyn White titled her latest album On Her Own after one of our co-writes, and Janelle Mosser, another of the best singers in town, covered Wait Till I Get You Home, Till the Wheels Fall Off was well received, raved about even. The local music press seemed proud to have me as one of their own, just like Paul had promised or cautioned against. The town had a hold on me. It wasn't perfect, but nowhere is. I was gaining momentum. Sometimes I wonder what I might have made of myself in Nashville if I hadn't met Charles.