Tag: Buddy Miller

In Death as in Life: Remembering the Soul of Gregg Allman

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In 2012, two years after receiving a liver transplant, Gregg Allman was diagnosed with a reoccurrence of liver cancer and given a prognosis of 12 to 18 months to live. The pioneering rock legend kept the news private and moved forward doing what he did best: playing music. Choosing not to undergo treatment, he beat the odds and continued his musical journey for another five years, passing away on May 27, 2017. His parting gift — to himself, his family, his friends, and his fans — is Southern Blood, his poignant farewell album that was released posthumously last month. Produced by the legendary Don Was, Southern Blood features a selection of nine cover songs and one original tune, “My Only True Friend,” co-written with Gregg Allman Band guitarist and music director, Scott Sharrard.

“I was one of a very, very small inner circle of people who knew that he had received the terminal diagnosis with the idea that he may live longer, he may die tomorrow, and I had to make every decision as his music director, as kind of his lieutenant, and as his songwriting collaborator, based on his imminent demise, and that was extremely difficult,” Sharrard says. “We became much closer through that period. I think some of that had to do with our mutual deep, deep love for music, and it also had to do with him, I think, realizing that those of us in his inner circle who were helping to collaborate were kind of ferrying him across to the other side as best we could.”

Don Was and Allman’s longtime friend and manager, Michael Lehman, helped him choose the covers from a list of artists he admired and songs he loved, like Lowell George’s “Willin’,” Tim Buckley’s “Once I Was,” and Jackson Browne’s “Song for Adam,” which always reminded him of his brother, Duane. In a cosmic full-circle move, Allman recorded Southern Blood over a two-week period in March of 2016 at the historic FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he and his brother Duane recorded their first demo tracks as part of their early band, the Hour Glass, and where Duane later famously became the session guitarist for Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, and others.

“I would go with [Gregg] to most of his milestone health appointments at the Mayo Clinic where he had his transplant and where his oncology team was, and every time we’d get there, we’d be amazed because his health was maintained for the most part,” Lehman recalls. “But as the team of doctors always said, one day the lid is gonna come off the kettle. And as we were getting into ’16, and he was starting to have more days than not where he wasn’t always feeling great, he knew. Even though we had never heard that yet from the doctors, I truly believe he knew inside of him that that day was coming sooner than later and so he was going to make the best of it with this record.”

Allman’s health began deteriorating rapidly after those sessions, and he was never able to get back into the studio to record his vocal harmonies, as was his custom. With Allman’s blessing, Lehman enlisted Buddy Miller to fill out the harmonies and Jackson Browne, who he had played with when they were both teenagers, contributed to his “Song for Adam.” Allman signed off on his preferred version of “Song for Adam” with Browne’s additions, and was able to take a final listen to some of the other songs.

“The day before he passed, I had received three final tracks and, that night, Gregg and I listened for about an hour to the tracks and I said, ‘They’re perfect, Gregg. There’s nothing to do, nothing to worry about,’” Lehman recalls. “And we talked about exactly what he wanted to be done with this record. He confirmed that I could share his journey with his health and talked about how to go out there and make this record everything that it should be. And I’ve followed his plan to the tee, right now … I think he just wanted to feel really close to home on this record, and all these songs sort of allowed him to retrace his life’s journey.”

On Gregg’s Final Years

Sharrard: It was very difficult to juggle Gregg’s desire to perform live, his need financially to perform live, because the music business sure ain’t what it used to be. I mean, you can’t just sit home and collect mailbox money anymore; you’ve gotta go tour. That’s why you see these guys touring all the way to the end. They love it, but it’s not just because of that. And then, his health battles. When you’re ill like this, it’s a game of whack-a-mole. They’d give him one drug, and it’d cause some other thing, and then this thing would make him get pneumonia and that thing would make him get COPD, and this thing would do that and then he’s out for various things that had nothing to do with the cancer, that were complications of trying to manage it and trying to manage a new liver … He was not in a writing period. He was not in that frame. I’ve always called him the Frank Sinatra of rock ‘n’ roll. He had grown into this elder statesman master interpreter of song — someone like Nina Simone or Billie Holiday or Muddy Waters. He became a voice, like that voice that could sing the phonebook, as they say. And I think he was inhabiting that.

On Recording at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals

Lehman: As people know — and it’s well-documented — really probably not a day in his life wouldn’t pass where Gregg either wouldn’t think of Duane or talk about him. So he was always ever-present and [FAME] is the place that Duane recorded with Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin and other greats. It was also where Gregg and Duane recorded some demo tracks for one of their early bands, the Hour Glass. And lastly, we had reconnected with Rick and Rodney Hall, father and son, from FAME Studios of Muscle Shoals three or four years ago when the Muscle Shoals film documentary came out. And Gregg was so happy to reconnect and contribute to the doc, that he actually went out and helped promote it and I think, in doing so and reconnecting with Rick after so many years, it just brought back a flood of memories. And Gregg loved the sound that would come from an old studio and a studio like that has so much history and so many artists were there. They had all the analog equipment and boards, and so Gregg said, “You get the best of both worlds because you record in analog, you can mix digitally,” and this was just a place that meant so much to him, so he was thrilled to get back there … I would say about close to half the days he was not feeling great, but his work ethic was such that he would spend four or five hours a day in the studio and then, the other 19 or 20 hours, he’d be back in the hotel room eating, sleeping, resting, and just preparing for the next day. So he did not waste any energy and conserved his energy so that he would deliver the performance that he needed to on the tracks that we went into the studio to record.

Sharrard: Since that demo session with the Hour Glass, Gregg had never been back there. I think it was his first professional recording session, actually. So his first session and his last session were in that studio. That’s pretty amazing, right? I’m sure he thought that through … When we got there, we were all really knocked out by the vibe. Don Was had never even been in the building in his life, and Gregg hadn’t been there since he was a teenager, so the two of them were like kids in a candy store, too, which was also inspiring for us. You think these guys are totally jaded, right? Not at all. They were as freaked out as we were about working in there. So that added to the vibe and the anticipation that you need to get it right.

On the Album’s Only Original Song, “My Only True Friend”

Sharrard: Of all the stories I have about the making of Southern Blood, that song is my personal journey with Gregg. The story of the creation of that song has no shortage of drama, I’ll warn you. But it’s a 100 percent true story, like some of the best ones. I was really lucky to go through this experience with him. I was at his house — this was probably around 2015 is when that song started being written. When we were off the road, I would go for a few days, and we would do these writing sessions. We had already knocked out one song, which was a funky blues tune, and we were real happy about it. We had a good vibe going, and he had had some other ideas we were bouncing back and forth, and we were just having a good time one night. We went to bed real late, as usual, and he had been telling me a lot of road stories. We’d go out to the boat slip and come back — he had this beautiful property in Savannah — and it was just one of those really one-on-one hangs, when he was really lucid and telling a lot of detailed stories, and we always talked a lot about Duane. I was staying in his mother’s room at the house and, as I was going to bed, I was looking at all these pictures of them as kids in military uniforms together and stuff in military school, and I was just digging the whole family vibe. And I drifted off to sleep and then I shot up in bed at dawn with the sun coming up over the swamp. And as I shot out of bed, you know how it’s like you have those dreams where you remember it like it’s a movie you saw and you can’t tell if it’s a movie or a dream? Well, what I immediately remembered — and even weirder, I can still see it in my mind what it looked like, the beginning of it — it was Duane actually speaking to Gregg. And right away, it’s the first two lines of the verse and the hook to the song is what he said to Gregg in the dream. So I run downstairs and I grab an acoustic guitar off the couch, I go out on the porch, and I’m looking at the sun coming up over the boat slip and I start playing that intro that you hear on the record … I had an intro and I had a verse and I didn’t have anything else except for this line, “You and I both know the road’s my only true friend.” And, by the way, I never told Gregg that story because I was worried it would spook him out. I didn’t want him to judge the song or anything about it based on that because I know how much he respected his brother … I had been pacing all morning waiting for him to wake up because I knew how special this song was. When he woke up, I sat there and played what I had for him and he said, “This is it, man. We gotta do this. This is gonna be the tune.”

Fast forward to later that year, I go to the hotel near the Beacon Theatre when he was doing his second-to-last run with the Allman Brothers to do more writing. And when I get to his hotel room, we’re still working on this song, “My Only True Friend,” but it’s going back and forth with all these different pre-chorus and chorus ideas and bridge ideas. So I get to his room and the vibe is really messed up, and he sits me down and he tells me about his terminal diagnosis right there. And I said, “Look, obviously we don’t have to work today, we can just hang. I can leave. Whatever you need,” and he’s like, “No, we need to work.” So we started working and we’re getting into stuff and, right in the beginning of that writing section, he reached over and he crossed out the pre-chorus we had — and I still have this sheet of paper, by the way — he crossed out the pre-chorus we had and he wrote in “I hope you’re haunted by the music of my soul when I’m gone,” and that was the first time that line came in.

The first time he had ever sang the third verse was that day when we cut the song. So that song was almost not recorded. It was right down to the wire. I gotta be honest with you: I had been writing the song for almost three years with him at that point — or two years or whatever it had been — and I was at my wit’s end with getting it right. But I see why it was so important to him now, and it all makes sense now. That’s why, sometimes, you just have to follow the zeitgeist. Creativity is never a straight line. You’ve just gotta trust the process.

On the Cover of Jackson Browne’s “Song for Adam”

Sharrard: It’s about the untimely death of a friend and Gregg and Chank always relate it to their experience with Duane Allman as their brother and friend who they lost so tragically and so early. I can’t tell you how important Chank was. He was like the spirit animal of everything Gregg Allman. He personally really wanted Gregg to record this song and Gregg was fighting him. I think Gregg was very emotional about doing that song because he related it to his brother. So basically, when we got in the studio, I’m gonna tell you that this record, everything is first or second takes. We were having a ball every day, knocking out two songs a day. Fun times. We got to “Song for Adam,” they had sent the horns home and they’d sent Mark Quiñones home, so we had lost a lot of the yucks from the session. It’s like we went into the studio that day to do “Song for Adam” and we’ve got one song left to do, “Song for Adam” — the horns are gone, Mark’s gone. So the vibe in the studio was kind of like a little of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. And I remember when we were cutting it, on the floor, we had the rhythm section — Steve Potts, Ron Johnson, Pete Levin, and me — four-piece band. Gregg was standing singing. I played all the guitars on that track. So Gregg’s standing up singing with Chank sitting next to him on a stool and Chank was like almost holding his hand through it … We played that fucking song for like seven hours … Now you listen to it and it sounds absolutely gorgeous and, of course, Gregg emotionally was never able to sing the last two lines, and I thought it was quite brilliant that Don Was decided to just let the verse end with that last line about singing his song. I mean, it’s a pretty incredible and dramatic exit to an album.

Photo credit: Danny Clinch

MIXTAPE: Kelly Jones and Teddy Thompson’s Favorite Duets

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Hey everybody! Teddy and I had ball writing and recording our album of duets, Little Windows. While preparing for the sessions, we couldn’t help but reflect on our favorite duets from our contemporaries and heroes/heroines of the past. Here is a list of tracks that stand out to both of us as examples of how irresistible the male-female collaboration can be. Enjoy!

xo Kelly and Teddy

KELLY’S PICKS

Meryl Haggard & Bonnie Owens — “Just Between the Two of Us”
I love how so many classic country songs will take a cliché or a well-worn phrase and turn it on its ear. This song does that so well. It also addresses a very real phase while falling out of love — the dreaded malaise of indifference. What an appropriate theme for both a man and woman to sing together.

Buckingham Nicks — “Frozen Love”
This is the one and only song co-written by both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on their self-titled duo album from 1973. The entire album is GREAT. It’s filled to the brim with sweet melodic nuggets in both the vocals and the guitars, but this song, in particular, showcases both to great effect.

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell — “Keep on Lovin’ Me Honey”
This song from 1968 is an example of some of the finest singing, arranging, and playing in the history of American music. Marvin and Tammi trade lines, harmonize, and sing in unison alongside the accompaniment of expert musicians performing excellent arrangements. My heart skips a beat every time the bridge comes around and Marvin exclaims, “Oh Tammi!” … It’s the little things, I guess.

The Mastersons — “If I Wanted To”
Even if these guys weren’t my friends, I’d still dig their music. This song is so infectious, it always fills me with pure joy as I drive down the highway, windows down, speakers blaring … It’s a great song to add to your “Wow, I’m falling in love with someone” playlist.

John Travolta & Olivia Newton John — “You’re the One That I Want”
"Oo, Oo, Oo, honey!" Watching the movie Grease was the first time I heard and saw the power of the boy-girl duet. John was so cute in his blue jeans and black leather, and Olivia could not be stopped in those spandex. After June 1978, every good girl would try to go bad singing along to this one — me included.

Buddy & Julie Miller — “Keep Your Distance”
Americana at its finest. Buddy and Julie are the king and queen of this kind of Texas country-rock, as far as I’m concerned. Their voices are a match made in music heaven; Buddy’s guitar playing is some of the best you’ll hear; and this song (coincidentally written by Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson) is fantastic songwriting — clever, coherent, and emotionally accessible.

TEDDY’S PICKS

Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty — "After the Fire Is Gone"
A great contrast in styles here that works a charm. Loretta is so keening and righteous, and Conway is the most laid-back dude in the world. I like to imagine him sitting on the edge of a stool singing this, possibly eating a ham sandwich between lines. Why is no one named Conway anymore? Such a great name.

Allison Krauss and Robert Plant — "Gone Gone Gone"
A modern take on an Everly’s classic. It’s a vocal pairing that shouldn’t work, really, isn’t it? Somehow they glue together gloriously, though. I think a great deal of the credit for this track goes to producer T Bone Burnett. Whatever he did in the studio to get these sounds, especially the vocal sounds, justifies his place as one of the great modern-day producers.

Richard and Linda Thompson — "A Heart Needs a Home"
Mum and dad killing it on a song that breaks the hearts of all who hear it. It is a tremendous song, and they are at their peak here as a duo. It’s something of an anomaly for them, too, as it’s a positive sentiment. Shock horror!

George Jones and Tammy Wynette — "Someone I Used to Know"
One of my all-time favorite songs and one that Kelly and I sang together early on in our relationship. A top-notch, classic country song. Reminds me a bit of "She Thinks I Still Care." I love that conceit, "Oh her/him? I barely remember them. They mean nothing to me." Ha!

Linda Rondstadt and Aaron Neville — "Don’t Know Much"
You’ll have to excuse the guitar solo — it was the '80s. Linda is a monster of a singer. It’s a great loss that she can no longer do it due to a Parkinson's diagnosis. But she left us with hundreds of great records. This is another case of two very different voices combining to make something extraordinary. Linda is such a strong singer and very straight whereas Aaron Neville is the king of the soft and melismatic. Heavenly stuff.

Roy Orbison and k.d. lang — "Crying"
This was the first version of "Crying" I ever heard. It was quite a hit when it came out in the late '80s. It was on Top of The Pops in the UK! Roy was the greatest. Top five singers of all time for me, and there aren’t many that can hang with him, but k.d. holds her own and then some.

Photo credit: Sean James

How to Have It Both Ways: Darrell Scott in Conversation with Elizabeth Cook

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If you’d happened into the bars where a young Elizabeth Cook and Darrell Scott and various members of their families played hardcore honky-tonk music for working people some decades ago — she in small-town Florida, he wherever his dad had most recently decided they should try to make a go of it — you would have witnessed their immersive education in earthy expression. All these years later, the bodies of work they’ve each built up as singer/songwriters command the respect of a different sort of crowd — theater- and festival-goers attracted to literary sensibilities and more elevated notions of artistry. Scott and Cook, though, have found ways to work the full range of their musical experiences into what they do, including their latest albums, her Exodus of Venus and his Couchville Sessions. They got on the phone with us to compare notes.

I’ve done several of these three-way interviews, and usually the two interviewees haven’t met and I’ll have to make the introductions, but I figured that wouldn’t be necessary in this case.

Darrell Scott: That’s true.

Elizabeth Cook: We go back to the Raffi days. Was it a Raffi track we did? It was some children’s project.

DS: Yeah, I think it was Raffi.

EC: And then you played on the Hey Y’all album [her debut on Warner Bros. Nashville].

DS: Yeah, I think it was one of your first records in town or something, back in the day.

EC: Yeah, 2002.

So this was a country tribute to Raffi?

EC: Yes! It’s been a thousand years. Let me think of what the song was. Did we do “This Little Light of Mine”?

DS: Yeah, that was it. You’ve got a good memory.

The last time I saw you, we were doing a round with Guy Clark, Buddy Miller, and me and you over at the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Darrell Scott

Darrell, I’ve heard the album that you produced for your dad, Wayne Scott, some years back, who really bore a strong sonic resemblance to Hank Williams, and Elizabeth, I’ve heard songs that your mom wrote for you when you were singing as a little girl, that old chestnut “Does My Daddy Love the Bottle?” being one of them. You both spent your formative years in down-home music but eventually found your ways into serious-minded singer/songwriter scenes. How do those seemingly disparate musical worlds and aesthetic values add up in what you do?

EC: Hmm, Darrell?

DS: Well, for me, I kinda feel I’m a giant sponge. I certainly grew up on country music to the full tilt. That’s all that was gonna be on the radio if you’re in the cab of the truck with my dad or my mom. My mom leaned toward, let’s say, Tammy Wynette and Marty Robbins, where my dad was more Hank and Johnny. They met at Merle Haggard, it seemed like. But that was where I started. And then church music gets in there, and it’s Southern Baptist stuff. And my family’s from Kentucky, so it’s got some of that. And then I’ve had the singer/songwriter periods of Joni Mitchell and Jackson Browne and Leonard Cohen and all that stuff, so all that gets thrown in. And I had a jazz-fusion period. And then I went to school and got an English degree.

To me, it’s all game in order to write a song that might want to go more bluesy or more honky-tonk or more confessional. Because I’ve loved so much stuff, it all shows up when it’s time to write something that’s leaning one way or another.

EC: I think that, like Darrell, coming up and hearing the hardcore honky-tonk music, that certainly established the ground base of what would be the rudiments of how I created — the chords that I knew and how they went together. So there’s that part. I didn’t re-emerge into the church scene until I was about 12 years old and we had stopped singing around the bars and stuff as much, and my dad was going through the initial phases of recovery from alcoholism. The Church of God songs were almost rockabilly. It felt like rock ‘n’ roll compared to the honky-tonk music. It was very lively — drums and organs and a lot of rolling around and tambourines. And then I think it took just growing up to realize that I was surrounded by this rich cast of characters and they were all storytellers verbally. None of ‘em wrote songs, but daddy did like to tell stories, and he was a character. And 10 half-siblings and all the people that came in and out of our lives.

After college and being torn over whether to pursue an English lit path or the mathematical business path — and choosing the mathematical business path in a rebellion period — that was almost like a sabbatical from music for me. And I was really trying to establish a different kind of life. But once I got out of that and came to Nashville is when I started learning that there was a Lucinda Williams and getting into deeper catalog Rodney Crowell and Nanci Griffith and Guy Clark, and finding out who Townes Van Zandt was, and hearing Steve Earle. And it was like, “Oh, there’s a sense of poetry that can be applied to this.” So there were the remnants of the musical style and then the sort of observation period, trying to learn and develop the poetry skill set and the storytelling skill set and marry all those things. And that’s still where I feel like I am now, on that path.

Elizabeth Cook

I wonder if either of you have ever found yourself challenging the way people define sophisticated and unsophisticated songwriting, since you’ve been intimately acquainted with this whole range of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” sensibilities and don’t view it as simplistically as some other folks might.

DS: Well, to me, that distinction comes down to the song. If there’s a song that’s tapped on my shoulder that wants to be absolutely simple, wants to speak from a character who has an eighth grade education, I figure my job is to facilitate, so to speak, or just let that song come to life the best I can with what started in the first place, as opposed to me sitting there saying, “Hey, I can’t write this song with that language. I’m gonna have to shift it over somewhere else.” That’s not my job. My job is to follow through with the initial inspiration and, if that inspiration wants to be coming from a farmer or an auto mechanic or a steel mill worker or something like that — and those are folks and characters I know, absolutely — then I’m gonna follow through with that. And the next song might be more poetic or more worldly or something, then my job on that one is to be that way. So I feel the songs sorta tell us what to do, as far as whether it’s sophisticated or a little more jazzy or a little more dark or a little more gospel or a little more anything.

EC: I think so, too. Music can do so many different things, you know? There’s music to boogie to, music to party to. There’s music that’s engaging on a more sophisticated level, and that’s where, to me, the more intricate lyric and storytelling and the more original way that you can say something [come in], even if it’s from a character that maybe you’ve heard speak before. For me, I guess I’m just saying it totally depends.

I’ve really enjoyed lately getting more into trying to find different jumping off points. If I’m wanting to write a song like this song “Evacuation” that’s on the new record about a lady in New Orleans … I decided to just immerse myself in learning about voodoo culture, and in [learning] that terminology and ideas, the story gets a little bit richer. So the process of digging deeper is what’s been exciting to me and a way to try and grow my writing.

As I listened to Exodus of Venus and Couchville Sessions and revisited some of your previous albums, I was thinking about the introspective approach that I’ve heard from other contemporary singer/songwriters, who tend to be up in their heads and disengaged from their bodies. That’s not at all what I get from your work. You can each get really expansive with the stories you tell or the experiences and settings you describe, but always also acknowledge physicality. Is that something that either of you are conscious of?

DS: You go ahead, Elizabeth.

EC: No, you go. We’ve got a little groove going.

DS: I’m conscious, and it’s not really while I’m doing it, but afterward. I look at my work and see that it’s sort of what you described there. Another way of putting it, for me, is linear — I feel like a lot of my writing is linear. I wish I weren’t so literal, to tell you the truth. I see that quality show up a lot in my writing.

You were describing some other type of singer/songwriter — folks who seem more disconnected. I’d love to be more disconnected sometimes. I just don’t get to get there. Not ‘cause I don’t want to. When a song like that does come along, I’m like, “Hallelujah. I got one, at least.” You know? There’s a slight different between a groove and a rut. I appreciate that linear quality in my writing, when the song’s appropriate, but I’d sure like to bust out and find the songs that allow me to not feel like I’m repeating a version of myself. I’d hate to think that I’m repeating myself, but I do see that linear quality in my writing and I’d like to bust it up. If you guys have any ideas how I could do that, let me know.

[All Laugh]

EC: Immerse yourself in voodoo culture.

No, I certainly don’t know. I’ve gone through phases of ideas and theories about it where I’m like, “Well, that’s kind of a cop-out just to write about the moon and the river, because you can totally bullshit your way through that.” I want to write rich stories and make them rhyme. I think that feels more challenging; it feels more interesting. If you can learn to do that well, I almost think it’s more rare than any other. So I follow that path and try to master that and, in doing that, sometimes I feel like, “Well, this is trite, and I wish I had something original to say about the moon and the river.” I think I’m also, like Darrell, trying to figure out how to crack that nut, how to maybe be sometimes a little more metaphorical or whatever you want to call it, and still be original and interesting and sophisticated and all those things that I feel like we’re challenged to do.

Darrell, it’s really interesting to hear you describe your sense of how your writing unfolds as “linear.” I don’t think I would’ve chosen that word. What I’m trying to get at is that your songs often operate on multiple different layers — you make the listener aware of what’s right in front of them, what can be seen with the eye, but also all these subtexts, stuff that’s felt and not said. For example, when I listen to “Waiting For the Clothes to Get Clean,” I see the people in the laundromat, their physicality, but I also feel the complex emotions they’re mired in. What does it take to work all of that in there?

DS: Well, that one came in a number of ways. One was just trying to describe that couple in that song. They obviously have major problems, you know? The whole thing is about a conflict. And they’ve just gone to the laundromat, so it’s an hour-and-a-half, but the shit they throw on each other just in something as simple as washing your clothes, it tells everything about how they don’t have it together. They just live in different worlds, but they’re in the same car, the same laundromat, and share the same bed. So that one, to me, was kind of a character study. Sometimes I’ve been embarrassingly too much like the male in that song, which I despise that part of me. But men … sometimes it takes them a long time to get out of whatever they’ve seen their parents do or whatever their male bravado crap is.

When I say linear, I mean, for example, that songs goes from the beginning of the laundromat experience to them driving back. Literally, it goes from unloading the clothes to now they’re driving back home after the hour-and-a-half or so at the laundromat. So that’s what I mean by linear: This happens, then that happens, then he said that, then she said that.

EC: Sort of like chronologically in time.

DS: That’s right. Yeah.

What goes on in that song, it points to all the psychological stuff between the two characters. So I hear what you’re saying. To me, the linear in that song is that it’s a real crisp timeline.

Elizabeth, you mentioned that you’ve been trying to find different starting points for your songwriting. You’ve always painted really evocative, detailed pictures in your lyrics, but I do pick up on some new elements in this batch of songs. In songs like “Exodus of Venus” and “Slow Pain,” it’s like you’ve pared down your lyric writing to this intense sensory stuff with dark blues shadings. That’s my description of it, but I wonder how you’ve experienced it and what got you there.

EC: You always get that cliché question, “Which comes first, the music or the lyrics?” Those were examples of ones that were initially music-driven out of the gate and the lyrics followed. When I’m writing to an emotion that’s already established in a sound, it’ a little more freeing. There’s a little bit less responsibility on the lyric, if that makes sense. I didn’t have that before, and a lot of that is because of writing with the producer for the record, Dexter Green, who’s a great guitarist and way into tones and pedals and all this stuff. So it’s been a different jumping off point instead of some sort of dense narrative coming out of my journal.

As you’ve been performing this material live, how have you seen people respond to hearing different stuff from you?

EC: I tell you what, I’m really encouraged and relieved, so far. And it’s still early, but we’re pretty much running the board. It’s been very positive. I was worried that it would be, “Well, this isn’t as country. This isn’t as sunshine-y.” But everybody’s been enjoying the exploration of the darker side and what I hope is an evolution to the writing. So far, so good. Only a couple people said, “You’re keeping it country, aren’t ya?” And I’m like, “Well, not really.” I love country music. I love it. But I don’t care if something I’m writing is country or not when I’m writing it. I just don’t care.

I feel like that’s probably a perspective on writing that you could identify with, Darrell.

DS: Yeah, very much. When it’s time to write, it all gets set aside. If we’re doing it right, all the attention goes to this song, this inspiration sitting in front of us. Fantastic, if it’s country. Fantastic, if it doesn’t rhyme. Again, I’m really trying to do what the song is telling me to do. And that may sound a little, you know, like it’s not exactly me writing it; I’m certainly there, but I’m paying attention to the song. Wherever the song is going, I hope to bring whatever I got to the table to help it to come to life. My country music background can sit at the side, if it doesn’t need any of those skills. I don’t feel like I have to interject anything.

Something else I appreciate about each of your music is that you have ways of drawing together the sensual and the spiritual. You have songs that explore the power of physical connection, that don’t beat around the bush about sexual tension. Darrell, your song “Come into This Room” comes to mind. Elizabeth, I heard that kind of power in “Straightjacket Love” or, on the more playful side, in “Yes to Booty.” You each also have a way of grounding bits of spirituality in the body. Through that blurring of lines, are you sort of letting us in on the way you experience the world?

DS: Well, for me, it’s part of that quality of telling the truth in the songs. If we’re sensual beings and if we’re sensual-minded as we walk around the planet — and I am — that has to enter in. So does the spiritual, because that’s how I walk around the world, too. So I try not to be ashamed of that. Depending on our background, you can be taught to hide that, and it’s scary, and you’re sure as hell not supposed to write a song about it. But, to me, that’s just part of the deal of breaking away from the stuff that didn’t work from childhood. Country music worked; I’ll take that. And maybe the Southern Baptist stuff didn’t work so well, or didn’t stick. So I can leave that one behind, but take away the general community of my church background or the general idea of the great gospel songs or the energy of people all feeling it together. To me, I walk around with the sensuality and the spiritual, and it would be no wonder how it would show up in songs. They’re part of what I carry around.

EC: I sort of think it’s inherent, for me, in music period. It’s like music taps into all those things, and that’s why I relate to it. It taps into sensuality. It taps into spirituality. That’s why it’s almost like an awakening when you connect with it. So I think it’s inherent in making music that those things would be present, if you’re truly succeeding in being connected to it. Those things would hopefully, naturally show up. I think that’s probably why.

That’s my best guess.

That’s a good guess.

Illustration by Abby McMillen. Elizabeth Cook photo by Jim McGuire. Darrell Scott photo courtesy of the artist.

ANNOUNCING: BGS Superjam at Bonnaroo 2016

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We've already told you about the BGS Stage at Bonnaroo 2016 happening on Sunday, June 12 and featuring John Moreland, Sara Watkins, the Wood Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and the Sam Bush Band. But we're also hosting our fourth epic roots Superjam to close out the last day of the Festival.

Every year, the Bluegrass Situation brings together the best of bluegrass, Americana, and country for a rollicking rollout of eclectic guests, unexpected covers, and traditional favorites.

The 2016 BGS SuperJam will be hosted by our very own Ed Helms with the Watkins Family Hour House Band (including Sara and Sean Watkins) as well as Lee Ann Womack, the Wood Brothers, Sam Bush Band, Buddy Miller, the Secret Sisters, Amanda Shires, Steep Canyon Rangers, and more.

As always, there's bound to be a surprise … or several. See you there!

Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival takes place June 9-12 in Manchester, Tennessee. Click here to see the full lineup.

The Producers: Buddy Miller

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Even if you weren’t already aware that Cayamo Sessions at Sea was recorded on a cruise ship, even if the title didn’t spell out the circumstances of the album’s creation, you could probably guess as much. Featuring several generations of roots artists covering old country songs, the record sounds sunny and breezy, light but not lightweight. Buddy Miller and Lee Ann Womack make “After the Fire Is Gone” sound more about the make-up than the break-up, and Elizabeth Cook emphasizes the buying rather than the crying on “If Teardrops Were Pennies.” Even Kris Kristofferson’s new take on “Sunday Morning Coming Down” sounds like nothing so serious as having to disembark at the end of a week at sea.

It’s to Miller’s considerable credit that none of that is a bad thing. A producer and central performer, he keeps things light, as though you’re flipping through vacation photos, but that strategy showcases the amiable dynamic between performers and singers more than the ocean-bound environs. It sounds like it would have been a blast to make, even if they held the sessions in an outhouse or a bank vault.

For nearly a decade, Miller has been a prominent figure on the Cayamo Cruise, which sails from Miami to St. Maarten and Tortola and features a who’s who of roots and country artists. In that time, he’s only missed one boat, and that’s only because he was recovering from a heart attack. It struck him onstage but, professional that he is, he finished the song.

Over the last 40 years, Miller has emerged as one of the most imaginative musicians in Nashville, both on the stage and in the studio. A former Deadhead turned sideman turned producer, he has helmed albums for a mind-boggling range of artists: Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harris, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the Devil Makes Three, the McCrary Sisters, Dr. Ralph Stanley, and Robert Plant. When Patty Griffin wanted to make a gospel record, he had her sing at the pulpit of the Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville, with the band on the floor playing up to her.

“Every record has a story to tell,” he says. “Every record is a whole different world. I don’t come into anything with a preconceived nothing. I might hear things before we go in, but I won’t impose that on an artist. I just hire the players I love and see what’s going to happen.”

Why did you want to make an album on the Cayamo Cruise?

I grew up loving music, in general. I loved blues. I loved rock. I loved folk. I was a Deadhead at the age of 14. When their first record came out, I bought it pretty much for the cover. And then I started going to every show I could make it to, until around ’72 when Porter Waggoner, Tammy Wynette, and Ralph Stanley won that war. I stayed in that country music camp and gradually drifted away from the Dead. But I remember, from that very first show, there was a sense of one big family coming to those Dead shows. Now, it’s legendary and they make movies about it, but even at those first shows, you’d see the same people. They were immediate friends — an extended family. Everybody loved each other and everybody was there for the same reason.

I guess that’s a long way of saying that there’s a similar feeling on the boat, although it’s a different … I hate to use the word “demographic.” Is that what the politicians are using these days? It’s a different set of people, but all with the same heart. They’re all there for the music. It’s not a party boat. It’s a lot of people — 2,000 or 2,500 people — and I just want to hang out with them all. They’re all great. And I thought it would be interesting for them to have the veil pulled back on the process of recording. That’s why I did it. I don’t think people have any idea how records are made. I don’t even know how magical records are made. How does that magic happen? So we’re showing them the nuts and bolts — what musicians do, how they play together in a room, pick a track, fix it up, do all that stuff. I thought that would be of interest to these people that I love. That, and I worked on this television show called Nashville. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it …

Definitely.

I worked on the pilot for Callie [Khouri, who created the show], and then, when the first season got picked up, I worked with T Bone Burnett producing [the music for] it. Most of the things we produced together, I would say. I continued with it, but I think it drove him crazy. I have a higher tolerance for bullshit, I guess. But now I love it and I love the people — especially these two little girls, the Stella Sisters. John Prine was going to be on the cruise, and what I wanted to hear was those two little girls, the Stella Sisters, singing, “Daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County?” And then John would come in singing the verses to “Paradise.” It seemed like a good thing to document. It’ll make the sweetest record. Unfortunately, John got sick and couldn’t make it.

But that was where the idea came from. What I do is, I try to engineer collaborations. That’s just how I think: Let’s pair this with that. I think in collaborative terms. I don’t know if it’s because I’m lazy and don’t want to do all the work by myself. But I think it’s because I just want to hear certain things. Shawn Colvin asked me to do a record of hers a while back, and I thought, "You know what? Brian Blade and Bill Frisell. I would love to hear her voice framed by those two musicians." That’s what I’m talking about. It’s all about coming up with your dream teams.

Tell me about setting up a studio on the boat.

I asked one of the engineers I work with, Gordon Hammond, if he wanted to go on this cruise. We bought a bunch of microphones, a lot of gear, and set up in what was a bowling alley on the ship. We managed to turn it into this vibey … I hate that word, “vibey.” It’s very homey and warm, with all our gear set up and the band set up in a circle. There are about 100 chairs, because we couldn’t fit more than that in there and I didn’t want the sound of more than 100 people breathing on the same time to work its way onto the record.

What are some of the challenges that come with recording on a boat?

I guess I don’t look at it that way. There are certainly challenges, like when somebody turned on the wrong light switch. Boats just have a lot of switches on them. We couldn’t always tell what they were for, so somebody turned on the disco ball accidentally and it started blasting some dance song. That was actually a fun moment. And an easy problem to fix. You just don’t want to stop if there’s a flow going. It’s as much about the lighting in the room, the air in the room, how it feels. All of that affects the music. Outside of that, there aren’t really any challenges that are any different from recording on land.

The one and only cruise ship I’ve been on felt very institutional to me. Aside from the scenery and the sun, it didn’t feel like it would be especially conducive to making music.

That could be anywhere. That could be any recording studio. It’s all about … I don’t want to use the word “staging.” I’ve been working on television too long. But it’s about the feel of the room, how close people are together. I like people to be right on each other. You can bring in nice-looking rugs, even on a cruise ship. You can drape things on the wall, turn the lights down. You can make any room feel nice. That’s what we did in that bowling alley, which actually felt pretty nice to begin with. And it felt great when we had it set up and started recording. I think everyone enjoyed themselves — the artists and the audience. They loved to see that recording process, even though this isn’t really the process. The vocals went down with the track, and the track went down fairly complete. Maybe a couple of tracks have two or three overdubs and a few vocal fixes, so it’s not really like making a record. It’s a little more honest than that, but it still gives people a view into that world.

So there’s an instructive or an educational element to this project.

Exactly. I thought, if people love music enough to get on the boat, then they might love to see that process and see how artists say, "You try singing that part. Let’s flip on the chorus, and you take the harmony while I take lead. Let’s leave that line out. Hold the drum till the chorus. Don’t have the bass come in until the fourth bar." All of that stuff is worked out long before the audience gets involved, so they don’t know what goes into it. This is a very, very simplified version, but it’s still something I think they find fascinating.

There’s a nice range of artists on this album. You have younger artists like Kacey Musgraves alongside older singers like Kris Kristofferson. Was that something you were thinking about, that generational exchange?

Yeah. It’s a funny thing: My name is on the record, so I have to be involved somehow, playing or singing or just having a presence on it. My part is very minimal, but I had to be there. If it was just me doing whatever I wanted to do, I probably wouldn’t even be on half of those tracks. I would have put Kacey singing with Kris or someone else, not me. But it’s my record company and my name goes on the album, so I have to do something. I think it’s a good record. I like it. Maybe because I don’t hear myself is why I like it so much. That’s what makes my records so hard to listen to.

Nashville is like no other place in the world for songwriting. People come here from all over the world — songwriters, young singers, all these young women. In addition to the cruise and the television series, I do a radio show on Sirius XM. Usually it’s weekly, or just whenever I can get it done. I have a guest come over every week, and lately I’ve had some of these younger writers that I run into. I find it amazing that they’ve been doing this since the age of 13 or 14. That’s when I knew I was going to be making music for the rest of my life, but some of these kids have already started writing songs. A lot of them have their parents’ support, too. That was something that wasn’t really around, when I was a kid. My parents wanted me to do anything but music, maybe because there was this whole other subculture that was tied to the music. I think there’s less money in it now than there was when I got started. I think. I don’t really know much about that end of it, but it does seem like the music business has dried up. You might know more about that than I do.

I hear conflicting reports. Some people say it’s still possible and there’s great music being made, and others are very pessimistic. I guess it all depends on who I’m talking to.

There’s always great music. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder for it. I think with downloads and iTunes and everything, it’s more about singles than it is about albums. That’s the part I miss. You would make a record. The Grateful Dead made Anthem of the Sun in 1968, and you wouldn’t think about chopping it up into 10 little songs. Ralph Stanley made Something Old Something New back in the early ‘70s and, even though I’m sure there was no intention of it being a themed record, it just flowed together so well that you had to listen to it in that sequence. You wouldn’t want to download just one song. Or Porter Wagoner. He was doing concept records before the Beatles. So I’m glad vinyl’s making a comeback.

I think that’s something that’s overlooked in country music, especially. There are so many incredible singles, but there are a lot of amazing albums, too. Making a good record is a very different process than making a great song.

I don’t know a whole lot of big country artists. Well, I know some, I guess, and I think they still look at it as as making a record. And gosh, when I was growing up — and I’m old! — it was about the single. That’s what got played on the radio, in mono. It was all about the mono mix. So, maybe, in a way it’s not so different; but I would make a point to buy the albums and listen to side one all the way through, then side two. There might be a stinker in the middle of side two, but that was all part of the package.

When you start working with an artist, is that what you’re thinking about as a producer? Are you looking at these projects as albums rather than songs?

Completely. It’s funny you ask that, because I’ve never thought about it. I think that’s because I don’t produce anything that is going to end up where people are going to care about singles. In my mind, the audience is buying an album, so we’re making an album. I just finished a record with Steve Earle and Shawn Colvin — a duets record. They’ve made some incredible records, and all they cared about with this one was the vinyl. Steve, in particular, was very concerned with sequencing for vinyl. We cut a lot of songs together, but we just put enough songs on there that would fit and sound great on vinyl. I’m happy to be thinking along those lines.

That’s one thing I actually went to school for as a kid, was to learn to use a Scully lathe. For most of my life, that was a great skill to have. Then it became pretty useless. I don’t actually have a lathe. I have enough useless stuff in my house that weighs 500 pounds. But I like being around all that old equipment with all of its old smells.

I do think the weight of that equipment — the tactile quality of it, the smell, and look of it — does add to the way you experience music.

I’ve got so many old, heavy microphones. I guess the heaviest one I have is an RCA 44-BX, that big … I don’t know what you call that shape. Not the big egg, but the one with the angles on it. You see Frank Sinatra singing into it all the time. It weighs a ton. It’ll take down any mic stand. It’s a warm mic, a beautiful-sounding mic, so it’s difficult to record with. But I’ll put that up or my old Neumann U47 because they take the singer someplace. You look into that thing; you get up close to it and you can smell it. You look into that thing and you start singing and you think about who has sung into it for decades. That’s part of creating the world that you record in, and it affects the music. There are great new microphones, of course. I keep buying new ones that sound really good, but when it comes to the singer trying to tell a story, you have to give them a mic that’s really been down the road.

Photo credit: CJ Hicks

Americana Music Association award noms 2012

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Yesterday, right here in downtown Los Angeles at the Grammy Museum, the Americana Music Association announced it’s picks for the best artists and albums of the year.

The Sitch was fortunate enough to take it all in from the front row, and boy was it a sight to behold.  Americana legends Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Shelby Lynne, and Lucinda Willliams all took to the stage for several songs prior to [actor, musician, and recent LA Bluegrass Situation performer] John C Reilly‘s turn at the podium for the nominations.

The full nomination list is below:

ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Here We Rest – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive – Steve Earle
The Harrow & The Harvest – Gillian Welch
This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark – Various Artists
 
ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Gillian Welch
Hayes Carll
Jason Isbell
Justin Townes Earle
 
EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Alabama Shakes
Dawes
Deep Dark Woods
Robert Ellis
 
SONG OF THE YEAR
“Alabama Pines” – Written by Jason Isbell and performed by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
‘Come Around’ – Written and performed by Sarah Jarosz
“I Love” – Written by Tom T. Hall and performed by Patty Griffin
“Waiting on the Sky to Fall” – Written and performed by Steve Earle
 
INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR
Buddy Miller
Chris Thile
Darrell Scott
Dave Rawlings
 
DUO / GROUP OF THE YEAR
Carolina Chocolate Drops
Civil Wars
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Punch Brothers

Reilly summed it up best…

‘They call this the Americana Awards but really it should be the All the Great Artists Out Right Now Awards.’

-John C Reilly

We here at the Sitch are just thrilled to see so many enormously talented artists and friends on that list, and cannot wait to be at the Awards on September 12 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville!  A big congrats to all the honorees.

Be sure to check out all the nominated artists, and for more info on the Americana Music Association, visit http://americanamusic.org/

AMERICANA MUSIC AWARD NOMINATIONS 2013

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BY Z.N. LUPETIN

Though the ceremony was brief, there was a festive and electric atmosphere in the Clive Davis Theater in LA Live yesterday. AXS TV was filming the proceedings and as usual Jim Lauderdale was the grinning ringleader, joining his long time partner in crime Buddy Miller and their house band in a galloping version of the late George Jones’ “The Race Is On” to open the show. Honoring Mr. Jones was a fitting way to start, as it seems much of the AMA’s main mission is to honor and bring respect to roots, acoustic and folk artists and traditions, not merely hype them.

T-Bone Burnett was in the house in a stylishly funereal black suit and called Americana music our nation’s “greatest cultural export”, with men like Louis Armstrong being our greatest ambassadors imaginable. He was particularly impressed with the newest crop of young musicians making a name for themselves while subtly sampling specific traditions of the last century. He then introduced the skinny-tied, close-harmony experts The Milk Carton Kids who, if you haven’t seen them, really do live up the hype they’ve been accruing on a near constant touring schedule of theaters and festivals. While some may criticize the whispery, choir-boy similarities to early Simon and Garfunkel (think “Wednesday Morning: 3AM”), really they seem to be exemplifying precisely the something-old-and-something-new dynamic that T-Bone was referencing. One can’t help but lean forward in your seat when they play. Plus they are quite funny chaps – noting that since T-Bone Burnett had introduced them on live TV, they must suddenly be famous.

Of course, being famous and overexposed in a main stream sense is not something The AMA community seems all that interested in. Authenticity, skill and artistry rule the roost. As the Milk Carton Kids wrapped up with a deliciously deconstructed version of “Swing Low”, they noted the most important thing about Americana fans is that they cut the bullshit and actually listen. Jed Hilly, executive director of the AMAs followed the lads at the podium, noting that the awards were about showcasing the community as a whole.

Lauderdale and Miller thundered through “Lost The Job Of Loving You” and the Flatt & Scruggs favorite “The Train To Carry My Gal From Town” before introducing the day’s surprise guest – Lisa Marie Presley. She seemed tiny next to the lanky Lauderdale and T-bone as the men backed her on a sad, low-drawled ballad, but her voice was in prime form: soulful, weary, deep. Americana? It’s the shit the masses ignored, Presley remarked, with just a hint of edge in her voice…as if to say: what is their problem anyway?

Next up, Elizabeth Cook brought a bit of her twang and sunshiny humor into the room – plugging her new gospel album while also wondering if someone like her should be doing religious music at all – “I might burst into flames at any moment” she cracked, sending out one of her tunes to Buddha, Allah…whoever! Actually she brings up a good point. If Americana involves the whole spectrum of American song-craft, one must add gospel as perhaps the deepest root of the tree – and the genre maybe most available for evolution and transformation.

After 45 minutes of stories and songs, Presley and Cook got together behind the podium to read the nominations. Among the recurring stand-outs this year were old favorites Emmylou Harris, Richard Thompson and Buddy and Jim but none seemed to get more love than Charleston, SC-based duo Shovels and Rope, who AMA members voted for early and often: tapping them in the Emerging Artist category as well as Song Of The Year, Duo or Group of The Year and Album of The Year for their release “O’ Be Joyful” (Dualtone). It was almost surprising but welcome to see a rare mainstream hit single, “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers also be included. See? There is money in it!

Emerging artists like fellow Oklahomans John Fullbright and JD McPherson, the aforementioned Milk Carton Kids and Shovels and Rope show that the future of the Americana and roots community is in good hands.

For a full list of nominees and more information about the Americana Music Association, visit http://americanamusic.org

CONVERSATIONS WITH… Buddy Miller

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“I don’t work on things that don’t mean something to me,” Buddy Miller says, and you know he means it. After all, you can’t fake that kind of dedication. You can hear it in the music and see it on the stage, in the way he bends a note or how he attacks a mic. Here’s a guy for whom music is the main thing – not the image or the lifestyle, but the songs. To know what I’m talking about, you wouldn’t have to look much further than Miller’s own music collection. Indeed, in Americana circles, it’s somewhat legendary.  Talk to anyone who’s worked with him and they’re bound to bring up his exhaustive library.

He claims it started when he was a kid, glued to the radio, back when they played the Beatles followed by Skeeter Davis, followed by whatever else was there. “They played the Grateful Dead on the radio from time to time!” he tells me, like the very notion still blows his mind.

Once you get Buddy talking, though, you realize there’s a lot about music which blows his mind. For example, the Strange Creek Singers once performed an assembly at his junior high school. “It was basically Hazel & Alice with Mike Seeger,” he says, “which was, you know, sick.” You can hear that 12-year-old boy still impressed by what a person can do with two hands, a voice, and a noisemaker. “[It was] a school assembly – not a big school – and Hazel sang ‘Black Lung’, and they did things I hadn’t heard of before…”

Long story short, from that point on, Miller became a feverish collector of music, and a rather influential performer of it. These days, for whatever reason, his iTunes collection is “down to about 126,000 songs.” A mere 126,000. By the way, that’s about as many songs as there are people in Charleston, S.C.

“I had a bottle of wine and a screwdriver one night in the back of the tour bus,” he tells me. “I took out the CD drive [from my laptop] and put in a terabyte drive… I go on groove hunts, I call it – looking for old songs.”

It’s the old songs which are his specialty, not because he’s aiming to be hip or ironic, no. The closer to the roots of the music he can get, the better will be whatever he’s working on. Lately, that includes music for the TV show Nashville, and beginning to think about maybe, possibly – sometime in the next year or two – considering a new solo album.

“My wife is a real writer,” he says of the remarkably gifted Julie Miller. “It just flows out of her, when it does happen. Me? Once in a while I might have something but I don’t usually just sit around and play. I’d love to. I’m sure I will soon. I’m sure after this year’s over nobody will be calling me anymore. But at this point, it’s been nonstop project to project, no time to breathe … I was actually thinking this morning, gosh I should make a record sometime.”

It may have been five years since he dropped what could be considered a solo album, but that hardly means Miller’s work hasn’t been swirling around the world. From Robert Plant’s Band of Joy to any of the assortment of albums he produced last year, to his work on Richard Thompson’s new disc Electric, his mark on the evolution of Americana music is pervasive.

As a songwriter, Miller hangs in the sweet space between classic country and soul. His solo albums – and the three he’s made with his wife – are exactly Americana. No frills, no spectacle, just great songwriting performed by freakishly talented players. As a producer, he’s worked with everyone from jugbands to contemporary songwriters and beyond, preferring a “less is more” approach to the lush sound so dominant in the pop music frequently passing for Americana. Listen to something Buddy produced and you get the sense he trusts music more than anything else in the world. He’d just as soon move out of the way and let the song do its thing. It’s no wonder, then, that he spends his spare time hunting grooves.

In fact, he pulled from his groove hunts when the time came to make a collaborative disc with his old friend Jim Lauderdale (Buddy & Jim, out Dec. 2012 on New West Records). In addition to the tune his wife Julie wrote, and those Buddy and Jim wrote themselves, they populated the disc with some well-considered cover tunes. Originally, he wanted it to be an album full of Johnny & Jack covers, but that didn’t quite work out.

“[There used to be] albums called something like Buddy & Jim Sing Johnny &  Jack,” he says, “which is what I wanted this to be called. You’d get it home and there’d be one to three Johnny and Jack songs on there, and the rest was whatever they wanted. I thought, let’s just do one Johnny & Jack song and call [the album] Buddy & Jim Sing Johnny & Jack. I thought it was a good name for a record. Plus, I’m a Johnny & Jack nut.”

And with that, he’s back to being a fan –in a way which gives you the sense Buddy Miller makes music because of his reverence for it. If he ever got into the rock and roll business to meet girls or look cool, he’s long since crossed a line to where the songs are the thing. “I just like to play music,” he says at last. “I’m happy to be making music and making what, I feel, is really good music.”

 

Kim Ruehl writes about folk and Americana music for No Depression, About.com Folk Music, Folk Alley, and NPR.  She lives in Asheville, North Carolina.