Tag: bruce robison

Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis: In Service of the Song

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Although their individual careers have been moving in different directions over the last few years, Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis have circled back closer to each other and put together a group of songs — a mix of originals, carefully selected covers, and choice vintage nuggets — for their newest project, Beautiful Lie. “We were just ready to make another album,” Willis says. “Enough time and space had passed and it felt fresh, and we had all these ideas that we wanted to work on.”

On Beautiful Lie, Willis’ crystalline vocals wind around Robison’s grizzled voice and float along a river of pedal steel, piano, and guitar, creating a pure beauty that the couple is so adept at calling forth when they work together. While it’s never easy to find time to record, the two have fun and feel the joy of their union when they can come back together for a project, even though they both love their solo work, too.

Last year Willis released her first solo album in more than a decade, Back Being Blue, and she’s just come off the road from a mini-tour with Dale Watson. In 2017, Robison released Bruce Robison & the Back Porch Band, which he recorded in his own studio, The Bunker, in Lockhart, Texas, near the couple’s home base in Austin. He’s also been producing artists for his Next Waltz record label, including future singles from William Clark Green, Carrie Rodriguez, Flatland Cavalry, Shakey Graves, Wood & Wire, and Willis Alan Ramsey. “We have this core group of musicians there now,” he says, “and it’s a place where people can come to record this kind of music that you can hear on this album. We’re still growing and developing a lot.”

“For this album, we just got the machinery up and roaring,” Willis says. “It’s funny because we make music together and then go out and play solo. When we’re playing together, we miss playing solo; when we play solo, we miss playing together. We miss making music together.”

Robison and Willis have been married since 1996, but this is only their fourth album of duets, including a holiday collection. Robison observes, “It’s always been great that we had our own careers. I’ve always seen the stuff we did together as magical stuff.”

For the new album, they collected songs along the way and they “would just sit down and start singing them,” says Willis. They know when to sing, when to pull back, when to add that special verse, and when to put a song aside for another album.

“I love his instincts for me,” Willis says. “I have a hard time communicating my musicality. We’re able to enhance and understand each other. It’s sort of a natural undertaking. I’ve always really understood his music and wanted to add something to it.”

Willis isn’t credited as a songwriter on any of the album’s ten tracks but her interpretative stamp can be heard throughout Beautiful Lie. As Robison says, “Kelly and I have creative differences in a way that is helpful. Take a song you like and stick with it and give it to her. Sometimes she loves the melody, or she gets into it and changes it all up.”

Willis points out that those creative differences can sometimes be challenging, but the choices they make are ultimately in service of the song: “When we do music together, it’s different from doing a solo album. I might bring in a song I really want to do, but if it’s not working—no matter how much I try to make it work—we’ll put it aside.”

The couple’s dynamic vocals define the project, with each singer taking lead on songs that fit their own vocal approach perfectly. “We messed around with each song to see who would sing the lead,” Willis says. “Ninety-five percent of the time it sounds better for the female to sing lead. Sometimes Bruce will say, though, that for a certain song he thinks it works better with a male lead.”

The material on Beautiful Lie ranges from the aching title track (an Amazing Rhythm Aces cut) to the rollicking Robison original “Brand New Me.” Adam Wright contributed three songs including the skittering “Can’t Tell Nobody Nothin’,” written with his wife Shannon Wright. Meanwhile, Robison and Willis deliver a stunning cover of “Lost My Best” from Uncle Walt’s Band, as well as the skate-across-the-sawdust-floor Del Reeves classic “One Dime at a Time.”

Perhaps the best getting-over-a-breakup song in either artist’s sizable repertoire, the wry “Nobody’s Perfect,” also by Adam Wright, celebrates the freedom that comes with discovering just how much better it is to be with nobody than with somebody who’s always leaving. The loneliness settles in the hollow of absence at first, but not for long. With brilliant use of a mundane phrase, which cuts several ways in the song, “Nobody’s Perfect” turns the meaning of its titular phrase on its head.

A native Texan, Robison even found a muse in the Astrodome, which he’s been going to since he was 4 years old, when the Houston landmark was still new and shiny: “It was this arena where I saw demolition derbies and circuses.” Following a recent visit, he recalls the tiles dropping from the ceiling and how the once-golden palace of his memories has fallen apart – an observation that inspired a wistful song simply called “Astrodome.”

“Jack Ingram and I wrote the song,” he says. “I had fun looking back into my past and remembering going to the Astrodome. The song’s a tribute to a lost past.” The jaunty, dancehall tune belies the sadness of the song, even as the lyrics celebrate the bittersweet nature of life: “I’m gonna go on down and sit in the Astrodome/Just me and you and all of them blue and faded memories/Yeah I’m gonna go on down and sit in the Astrodome/And wonder whatever ever became of me.”

Capturing the overwhelming power of love, “Coming Down” opens with guitars floating over a subdued steel and blossoms into a straight-ahead country love ballad. Robison carries the song with an honest, plaintive vocal that’s elevated on the chorus by Willis’ harmonies. “I don’t write love songs,” Robison says. “If you went and listened to the other 200 songs in my catalog, you wouldn’t find a love song. I was [at] the songwriters’ festival in Key West a few years ago, and I wrote this song out real quick. I can’t fake the feelings in this song.”

As Willis points out, “I love his songwriting and his songs. I think the mark of a great songwriter is the ability to turn a phrase, and he is great at it.”

Photo Credit: HAAM

The Simplicity of a Song: A Conversation with Kelly Willis

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Kelly Willis almost gave it up 20 years ago. After being dropped by not one but two major labels, the Lone Star singer/songwriter wondered if there was room for her in country music. “It was a huge struggle,” she says today. “I just didn’t know if there was a place for me. I wasn’t going to stop making music, but I didn’t know if I was going to be able to keep making records.”

Fortunately, Willis broke through on 1999’s What I Deserve, an album of dusty, sturdy country tunes that introduced her sharply broken-hearted voice to a wide audience and allowed her to settle into the industry on her own terms. Her story is proof that artists can still thrive professionally well outside the mainstream, and her longevity is almost as impressive as the music she makes, both as a solo artist and as a duets partner with her husband, Bruce Robison.

Back Being Blue is Willis’s first album in more than a decade, and even its title announces a return to what she does best: singing low and lonely country tunes that signal a deep understanding of country music without sounding beholden to any one particular trend or tradition. The title track is a languid third-wheel lament with a breezy country-funk rhythm section. “I’m a Lover Not a Fighter” is an energetic Texas swing cover of the Skeeter Davis hit. “Modern World” sets an elastic pop groove loose in a middle-of-nowhere roadhouse. “Freewheeling” is a spare countrypolitan weeper that she describes as the most personal song on the record.

Produced by Robison and recorded in his rural Texas studio (“I was driving out there one morning and almost hit a huge hog in the middle of the road!”), Back Being Blue sounds like a survey of the influences that have informed each one of her albums, from swing to twang to punk. Uniting these diverse sounds is a voice that conveys dignified heartache as its default setting.

This is your first solo record in 12 years. What inspired you to make a return?

I was having a lot of fun making records with Bruce, and that was taking up all my time and energy. I tried to force myself to get into the studio a few times over the years, but it really felt forced. Honestly, I think what happened was that I wrote that song, “Back Being Blue,” and when I finished it, I felt like there was a shift in my world: “Oh, okay, now I know what I’ doing.” The ball just got rolling. I had something I wanted to say. I had motivation. All it took was a little light bulb going off.

What about that song opened things up for you?

There was a simplicity about it. I’d been trying to write some really impressive songs — deep, meaningful, complicated songs — and none of them were coming together. Then this one came along, and it sounded so simple. It reminded me of the songs I was listening to when I was first getting into music — something from the ‘50s or ‘60s, like Buddy Holly or someone. It just had this vibe that got me excited to write more in that vein. It did open things up, because it gave me some ideas for the choices you make, when you’re writing a song. I could do that. “Okay, let’s simplify.” Or, “Let’s do an old-time country sound.” When you have some direction, it helps you make those decisions.

One of the things I was trying to do was get more universal and less specific about the details of my experience. They’re based in my experience, of course, but I wanted to broaden it and take out the little details. A song like “Freewheeling” is more personal. But they’re all personal, right? It’s all about heartbreak and love, and you draw on your own memory of that, when you’re writing and singing. And that’s what I love about country music. I love being able to sit at a bar with a beer and listen to the jukebox and hear a song that speaks to you. It makes you feel so much better to hear somebody express your own feelings. You feel like you’re not alone.

Did you know at the time that you were writing for a solo album? Or did you think these songs might end up on a duets album?

It was always going to be a solo album. It was time for that. Bruce and I always knew that we were not closing any doors, when we decided to play together; we were just opening more doors. So we were fully aware that we would go back to making solo records again. It just felt like the right time. He made one a year ago, and then I finally got it together to make mine. I wanted to have a record with a purpose and a point. I got lucky with that. I like a deadline, and maybe the deadline helped.

Did you give yourself a deadline, or was one imposed on you?

Bruce and I have to take turns with this stuff, due to our family schedule. It was really the most opportune time for me to make it happen, and it made sense to have it out before the summer, because that’s the best time for me to tour. If you back up from there, you know you have to get it done by this point, which helps me get started writing and recording and seeing what I’ve missed and what I still need to do.

I really thought I wouldn’t make this record with Bruce. I thought we would benefit from having a breaking in all the problem-solving that we have to do together, either raising a family or being in a band together. It seemed like a good chance to do something different and to miss each other. But he was so encouraging about the songs I was writing, and he really got what I envisioned. He would suggest that I work on that song some more or maybe do something with the tempo on this song. I shared with him this playlist of songs that were inspiring me, and he was like, “Oh, there’s a specific reverb on all of these.” He was a great partner, and it made sense to do this together. The conversation was easy. It felt like a no-brainer.

Did you look into other options for producing or recording?

I definitely thought about it. I had a list of names to consider, but I didn’t want to have a big-name producer just to have a big-name producer. And I know myself: I know I’ll lose confidence in what I want to do. If I’m around someone who has a style of their own, I’ll just say, “Your style is great, so let’s just do that,” rather than sticking with whatever weird, quirky thing I wanted to do. Since I hadn’t made a record in a long time, I wanted to stay true to my little artistic expression. Half the fun, for me, was figuring that out and trying to create a unique sound. I thought about a lot of different things, but this felt like the right way to go.

You mentioned a playlist. Who all was on there?

I had some Nick Lowe and some Marshall Crenshaw, the Louvin Brothers, and Skeeter Davis. I think we managed to represent all of my inspirations on there, and it’s stuff that has contributed to the music I’ve made over the years. I was thinking about when I first moved to Austin and started making music, when I was in a rockabilly band and people were really starting to experiment with blending country and punk. First it was called cowpunk, and then I don’t know all the different names it had. I just knew I wanted to look at some of my favorite music that really made me want to make music myself.

What did you learn revisiting some of that music? Did you hear it differently so many years later?

I probably listen to that stuff frequently enough that it didn’t feel like something I was going back to. But when you’re listening to figure it out, you think of it in a different context. It was fun to hear what people were doing with reverb, especially some of those country artists in the ‘60s. That reverb is so cool. We tried to do some of that, but it didn’t work in this modern context. It was fun to revisit Skeeter Davis and think back on my first foray into being in a band.

I was a huge rockabilly fan, so Wanda Jackson and those artists were heroes to me. I felt like I could hear the evolution of my own singing. When I first started singing, I would just copy those people, but I would lose my voice trying to belt like them. It can be embarrassing, but that’s an important part of the process and, eventually, you do find your own voice.

You signed with a major label and released three albums in the early 1990s. Did that disappointing experience affect your relationship to that material? Do you hear those songs differently now?

Some of them I do. I’ve had my favorites that I’ve clung to over the years. Although, at this point, I’ve done so many records that I can’t do more than one song from some of those older ones. And there are only a handful of people in the crowd who go all the way back to the first albums. A lot of people first heard of me when I did What I Deserve, so they might not be familiar with my three MCA records. I always like to do “I Don’t Want to Love You” and “River of Love” from [1990’s] Well Traveled Love. And I do “Hidden Things” from [1991’s] Bang Bang. I try to stay familiar with those records so that, if somebody calls out a song from one of them, we can play it. It’s a little tricky, but I’m proud of that material.

When I made those records, I remember distinctly thinking I was always in the opposite of whatever the prevailing trend was. When I wanted to do Fender guitars, everybody else was doing fiddles. When I brought fiddles back in, they were doing Fender guitars. It seemed like I was out of step with whatever was happening at the moment. But I was at least staying true to my vision.

The first time I heard you was on your cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Rex’s Blues,” off the Red Hot & Country compilation. How did you that come about?

That was a really cool turning point for me. I had been dropped from my MCA deal, and I was trying to start over. I thought I needed to be at a label that would look at me like I have no history whatsoever and just let me create whatever it is I wanted to create without them trying to decide who I am. I was signed to A&M and released an EP, even though I never released a full-length album.

At the time, the Red Hot & Blue people asked Jay Farrar to do a song for that album. At first, they wanted it to be all duets, and they asked him who he wanted to sing with. He picked me. It was a wonderful experience to make music with him and be part of that project, and it really opened people’s ears to me. It made people look at me differently, I think: “Oh, if Jay Farrar wants to sing with her, then maybe there’s more there than we thought.”

After having so much trouble with labels, did you ever think about quitting?

When I got the chance to make What I Deserve [in 1999], I really thought that it was going to be the last record I would get to make. I was only 19 or 20, when I got signed to my Nashville deal, and I had made these three records that were not what they wanted. It was a huge struggle, in that regard. I just didn’t know if there was a place for me after that. I wasn’t going to stop making music, but I didn’t know if I was going to be able to keep making records. Luckily, What I Deserve ended up being the most well-received record I’ve made, and it gave me a fresh start.

And now it seems like you’ve carved out this very particular niche for yourself in the country music community.

I hope so. Don’t quit. Don’t stop. Just keep going. A lot of my favorite musicians just keep going, and what they’re contributing is really worthwhile and valuable. I’m grateful that they’re still doing it. I think I was lucky that I made my entrance when I did, because I got this national exposure with MCA and a kind of platform that other artists these days aren’t given. These days, labels aren’t investing in young artists. They’re not grooming them or giving them time to grow. I was lucky to get to do that.

And I live in Texas, where there’s a great music community throughout the state. You can play and play, and people always come out. I think it has something to do with the dancehall culture, which was such a community experience. Everybody went out to dancehalls and took their families, and that became part of the culture here. Whatever the reason, I feel lucky to be here.

Photo credit: George Brainard

MIXTAPE: Bruce Robison’s Top Texas Songwriters

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Who better than to make a Mixtape of Texas songwriters than a great Texas songwriter? No one. That’s why we asked Bruce Robison to compile a collection of his favorite Lone Star State representatives. And we think he did a mighty fine job of it.

Cindy Walker — “Bubbles in My Beer” (Bob Wills version)

But also “Cherokee Maiden,” “You Don’t Know Me,” and many more. From Mexia, Texas. She helped set the tone for Texas songwriters from Texas later. Incredible depth and honesty, yet simple and beautiful at the same time

Lefty Frizzell — “I Love You a Thousand Ways”

Lefty’s influence as a songwriter and singer is hard to understand. The folks listening to his incredible string of hits went out and created what we think of as country music today.

Buddy Holly — “True Love Ways”

What Buddy Holly did in two years coming from nowhere is an accomplishment rivaled only by the band who named themselves after his band.

Roy Orbison — “Crying”

From Wink, Texas. I can’t imagine what rock ‘n’ roll would be without Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison.

Willie Nelson — “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way”

For good or bad, the great Texas songwriters were not easily contained in any genre. Nothing much I can add to what’s been said about Will.

Kris Kristofferson — “Loving Her Was Easier”

I love the Glaser Brothers’ version of this, too. See above.

Billy Joe Shaver — “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal” (John Anderson version)

Scary, sacred, sublime. Old buddy of mine who managed Billy Joe for 10 minutes said he had storage units full of poetry in Waco somewhere. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

Guy Clark — “Instant Coffee Blues”

From Monahans, Texas. Took all that came before and changed the rules.

Townes Van Zandt — “Tecumseh Valley”

Fort Worth’s tortured genius.

Rodney Crowell — “Adam’s Song”

Rodney is in the pantheon and right here walking among us. Like Bob, he might not play all your old favorites, but then again, he might.

Hayes Carll — “It’s a Shame”

With humor and attitude and a weird-ass voice, Hayes is a great songwriter by any measure and the original type of artist we are really proud of down here.

Damon Bramblett — “Sweet Sundown” (Kelly Willis version)

Kelly and I and Charlie and others have cut Damon’s incredibly original songs. Johnny Cash meets Bob Dylan.

Robert Earl Keen — “Village Inn”

After Guy and Townes, Robert started another era of Texas country music songwriting.

John Fullbright — “Me Wanting You”

I know he’s an Oklahoma guy … I don’t care. He’s a great songwriter and 90 percent of his gigs and fans are probably in Texas. Go see him and request “Hoyt Axton.”

Courtney Patton — “It’s a Shame”

This will be a hit someday.

Songwriter Bruce Robison Reimagines the Music Industry with the Next Waltz

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It's no secret that the music industry has suffered something of an identity crisis over the last decade and change, with news just this week that album sales have hit an all-time low while streaming has never been hotter. The current climate is especially hard on new artists, who are forced to seek alternative sources of revenue to supplement the depressingly low figures they earn on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.

The frustration of navigating the industry has led some artists to venture away from the traditional model. Songwriter Bruce Robison — known for writing number one songs for George Strait ("Wrapped"), the Dixie Chicks ("Travelin' Soldier"), and Tim McGraw ("Angry All the Time") — is the latest artist to do just that with his new project, The Next Waltz. 

The Next Waltz, which derives its name from the famed Band concert The Last Waltz, is a video web-series and multi-platform music delivery service that brings music fans into the writing and recording process with some of their favorite country artists. Each installment of the series sees an artist — like the recently featured Jerry Jeff Walker — recording, performing, and discussing a new song, all from Robison's rural studio outside of Austin, Texas.

"I knew I wanted to start moving toward a singles approach," Robison says of the concept. "I knew that it had to have video content along with it, and also I thought we needed a new way of funding the music. So all of those things felt like they had to come together, and I’ve been working on that for a few years. There’s a lot of different moving parts that we’ve been putting together — from the right producers to tell the stories to how we were going to release the music to what the content was going to look and feel like."

Robison's desire to find an alternative means for creating and distributing music was fueled by years spent toiling away as a staff songwriter in Nashville. "I think I mourned the old music business about 10 years," he says. "I really did. I was very, very dissatisfied with my job as a staff songwriter at the time. I knew that that wasn’t what I wanted to do with the next part of my life at all. So this other thing started taking shape and it just continued to evolve. I think, in a broader sense, that even when I started writing music and writing songs and calling myself a songwriter, at the base of it, I was really hopeful to try and make great music," he says. "I’m just obsessive about music. When I was still spending a lot of time in Nashville and writing songs as a staff songwriter, I didn’t feel like that was what I was doing. This, I believe, is my very best opportunity to try and make some great music."

As someone who intimately knows the difficulties of funding a musical project, Robison found an alternative to the traditional record label model: brand sponsorship via Austin's own Real Ale Brewing Company. "They defray it," he says of the brewery. "I think this is going to be the new model. That was part of it, too. My wife [songwriter Kelly Willis] and I made a couple of records and, even when they’re pretty successful these days, they’re not successful by old standards. They’re such money-losing propositions. It was really just a way to say, ‘How do we do this and make it fun?’ And come up with an outcome that will be exciting, where we have a chance for something to really get out there and get legs."

With funding taken care of, Robison is free to focus on what really matters to him: creating great music and giving it the spotlight it deserves. In the short time since launching The Next Waltz, Robison and his team have developed a process that is as enjoyable as it is productive.

"I reach out to somebody and get an idea of when we’re going to go in and record the song, and then we start a process — like back to the ‘50s or ‘60s, where you’re looking for a single that’s really gonna catch somebody’s ear, that’s a great song, that might show a different side of an artist," he explains. "It’s really letting the music show the way, which, honestly, I think was happening back in the decades of that music that we still all listen to all the time. Then, after we pick the song, they come in and we just spend a day shooting the stuff and recording the song. It’s so freaking fun because we aren’t trying to get four songs in a day, so we set up in the morning and kick the song around and really arrange it and get a good vibe on it and take a break for lunch and then we come back and record it. Then we go to mixing it and editing the video and putting together all of the content that we’ll release over the three-week period of time. It’s very dignified and it’s a lot of fun."

While Robison may be having the time of his life, writing and recording with some of his favorite artists, he's also hoping to change the lives of other musicians and, eventually, the music industry itself.

"The secret plan is to replace how people release music, and to have a viable way of releasing singles that are very ambitious, both in how accessible they are and the quality of the music," he says. "It’s no less than being the new way that people can release music and find new fans all over the world, and be putting out the part of their story that’s going to tell people more about them."

Watch Jerry Jeff Walker and Bruce Robison discuss Walker's tune "Mr. Bojangles":

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