Tag: Steve Earle

Standing on the Table: Musing on Townes Van Zandt

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“Townes Van Zandt’s the best songwriter in the world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” — Steve Earle

Agreed, Mr. Earle.

By now, Steve Earle’s devotion to and admiration for Townes Van Zandt are fairly well-known bits of music history. Earle used to carry Van Zandt’s guitars around for him. What isn’t so known is Van Zandt’s response to the notion that he was a superior songwriter to Dylan, or that such a comical gesture such as standing on Dylan’s furniture could be accomplished: “I’ve met Bob Dylan’s bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table, he’s sadly mistaken,” was Townes’s pragmatic reply.

An indispensable book for any Van Zandtian is To Live’s To Fly, a remarkable, lyrical effort by John Kruth with the subtitle “The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt.” It’s a book in which Kruth’s abilities rise to that of a very good fiction writer, as if [add your favorite Southern novelist] had turned musicologist and journalist writing the tumultuous times of the mythical and legendary Van Zandt. Some of the stories about Townes certainly seem part legend, part myth. Like the time Townes was attending university in Boulder, Colorado, and deliberately fell from a high balcony and plummeted, Icarus-like, to the earth in order to see how it felt. Or the time Townes was (finally) to go on tour with Lightnin’ Hopkins — one of the former’s heroes — but got drunk and flew out of a manic-paced pickup truck and broke his arm, making the tour insurmountable.

Kruth’s book is filled with interviews, stories, and anecdotes that all weave together to make something gorgeous, and his prose sometimes makes one want to give up and write at the same time, to make little efforts in crafting better thoughts and sentences. Good luck.

What little I know about Van Zandt — from his hard living, habits and addictions, and mental disorders — I have learned from Kruth’s masterpiece. What I actually discovered about Van Zandt on my own, which may be the experience of so many other souls, comes from daily attention to his songs which, in the end, are mysteries in themselves. Van Zandt’s tunes call one back and back again.

Take “Waitin’ Around to Die,” the first song he wrote, crafted in a tiny closet shortly after his marriage to his first wife, Fran. It was made just around their honeymoonish salad days, and the song speaks to the darkness that resides in so many of us, though we mask it in a variety of frivolous or sincere or even actively destructive ways. Needless to say, the song frightened Van Zandt’s wife.

At the time of filming, several musicians and friends of the unparalleled troubadour expected him to be living in a reasonable house and better situation. Instead, the scene is one of squalor and drunkenness, yet Townes performs perfectly, in spite of copious amounts of whiskey and generous allotments of poverty. We follow the singer into a tale of wife-beating, robbery, and addiction, difficult subjects to broach with one’s new bride who simply didn’t see those sorts of bleak — albeit beautifully and well-made — sentiments coming from hubby.

“And I am in retirement from love …” — William H. Gass

“’Fare Thee Well, Miss Carousel’ relates a tale of bitter disappointment in intricate wordplay and metaphor, with a twist of spite that sounds inspired by Dylan. In a mosaic of images and seemingly disconnected events, Townes lays the guilt of another failed love affair at the feet of a fickle woman.” (Kruth, pg. 110)

Kevin Eggers signed Townes in 1968, and recorded and released the bulk of the musician’s work. To this day, controversy and legal battles still rage around the rights to Van Zandt’s music. It is as if the songwriter — who pushed himself through addictions and hardships to craft some of the greatest songs ever written, who was known for his hatred of money, who was concerned with the next gig, the next inspiration, the next vision and tune — isn’t free even after his release from this world. We second Guy Clark’s response to queries about Van Zandt’s royalties and estate: “That’s none of my damn business,” said the normally loquacious and articulate Clark in an interview with The Austin Chronicle in an interview. Agreed, Mr. Clark.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Leo Tolstoy wrote in one of those impossibly thick Russian novels that draw the reader in and, in the end, make him or her wish the book had been even longer. The same wish might apply to Townes’s discography. From recorded live shows to studio albums, one cannot get one’s hands on enough of his music. It’s the feeling — at least when writing an article or piece about the singer/songwriter — that one’s own efforts are false, useless. Each word and eventual sentence is swallowed whole by Van Zandt’s songs, lyrics, life.

When researching his life — from legal battles over music to his nearly cursed inability to have a long-lasting relationship with a woman to falling from that balcony — anything added now rings hollow and pointless. Townes is and was as good or better than Dylan.

I imagine Townes landing after that fall he deliberately took. I imagine him smiling and brushing himself off, and finally standing on some table of his own, singing through a golden room. I imagine him happy, finally, and letting his music also stand on its own. Townes was a body and mind tuned into something inaccessible to most. Call it a god, a form, a preternatural gift that few understand or know of. Call it the songwriter’s knack for falling and, like the mythical Phoenix, rising out of the ashes, rising from the ground, and letting the voice bell and resound against all odds.

Townes had that, whatever that is.

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

A Call to Help: Giving Back to Phil Kaufman, Road Mangler Deluxe

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“All I know is, I was going down the road at about 80 on my bike, and then the next thing I knew, I was going down the road at about 80 without my bike.”

So says Phil Kaufman, the fabled music road manager to the stars that Mick Jagger called an “executive nanny” when Kaufman was road manager for the Rolling Stones. It’s been a little over seven weeks since the motorcycle accident that broke his back and ankle, cracked his ribs, and skinned his leg so badly on a stretch of interstate asphalt north of Nashville that an entire tattoo was rubbed off. When you stop to consider the seriousness of the wreck and what could have happened, it’s astonishing that he’s even alive.

If you don’t recognize Kaufman by name, you almost certainly do by reputation. Because of the people he has worked with — including everyone from the aforementioned Stones to Frank Zappa, Emmylou Harris, Etta James and Joe Cocker — he has become an almost mythical figure in rock and pop music folklore, and deservedly so. How many people do you know who would actually steal their friend’s body, take it into the California desert, and set it afire? Phil Kaufman would. He did just that in 1973 when he hijacked the body of singer/songwriter Gram Parsons and drove it out to Joshua Tree National Park to fulfill the obligation of a pact he had made with his friend — that whoever died first would set the other’s spirit free. That, alone, is of the great tales of rock music.

A veteran of the Korean War, Kaufman is 80 years old and living in Nashville. Though he's semi-retired, the motorcycle crash has rendered him currently unable to work. Already a cancer survivor for 20 years, it might seem like Life has been a bit harsh for him, but despite having a broken body and facing financial obligations that might overwhelm many people, Kaufman knows that he is a rich man in ways that don’t involve dollar signs. He is warm, welcoming, unassuming, funny, and perhaps above all, grateful. Friends rushed to his aid from the beginning and have stayed by his side, working in shifts to make sure his every need has been met.

However, the job descriptions of “Road Mangler” and “Executive Nanny” don’t exactly come with 401k plans, so a campaign has been set up at GoFundMe.com for anyone wishing to contribute. The response has been thick and fast; since the drive was established on August 19, over $20,000 has been raised. Tributes from unknown donors exhort, “Make yourself better, Mangler!” and “Phil is the only road manager (mangler) I have ever gone to a show to see. Thanks for the decades of great concerts!!!” while high-profile friends like Steve Wozniak (of Apple fame) and Steve Earle tease, “The great ones like you should go on their own terms,” and “I hope no important tattoos were defaced.”

Phil Kaufman with Emmylou Harris in the 1970s

While $20,000 is a lot of money, a $40,000 hospital bill has already arrived in the mail, so there is more to be done. Other medical expenses will follow, including doctors and equipment, plus the everyday expenses we all share — lights, phone, water, food.

For his part, Kaufman is overwhelmed by the generosity streaming in.

“It’s been really heartwarming, you know, pouring out from all these people … most of whom I don’t even know,” he says, almost puzzled. “I’m very touched. I can feel that people seem to want to give back. And [the Recording Academy’s outreach program] MusiCares has helped, too. I mean, no matter where I turn, there’s a helping hand. For the last five weeks, somebody has stayed with me every night, in shifts. I’m still getting calls — ‘You need butter? You need eggs? Can I bring you something? Does the dog need walking?’ It’s just very, very … it’s a … it’s a…"

He trails off, at a loss for words.

One important thing Kaufman has learned is that, after 60 years of riding, it’s time for him to hang up his motorcycle helmet. As he has with the accident in general, he has adopted a “glass half-full” attitude about having taken his last ride.

“I’m 80 years old,” he reasons. “I can ride a bike; I know how to ride a bike. But my body cannot take another one of these [wrecks]. No matter whose fault it is. So, I am wisely — for the first time in my life — giving up motorcycling. But I had a 60-year run. I rode bikes for 60 years! And I’ve got scar tissue I like to show off occasionally.” Kaufman laughs mischievously, as though he’s gotten away with something.

Though it’ll be about a month before he’ll be able to walk, drive, or generally get around on his own, Kaufman is already looking forward to putting the entire episode behind him. He is planning a visit to his family in Hawaii in the Fall, and will pick up the odd road gig from time to time (“I don’t think I want to do a major tour,” he says, “but if the phone rings, I’m there.”). Mainly, though, he’s enjoying time with his friends in Nashville, telling stories, hearing music, and “finally taking time to stop and smell the roses,” as he says. He shares his life with a beautiful white rescue dog named Gladys, who he says seems especially loathe to leave him since he’s returned from the hospital.

Johnny Knoxville as Phil Kaufman in Grand Theft Parsons

He will also supplement his income on his personal website. There, fans can find for sale Kaufman’s book, an autobiography detailing his life working with the greatest names in music called Road Mangler Deluxe; Grand Theft Parsons, the 2003 movie with Johnny Knoxville and Christina Applegate that chronicled the Parsons incident; CDs of The Concert for Manglerdesh, a benefit show starring Harris, Earle, Sam Bush, Vince Gill, John Prine, Guy Clark, and many more that came together in 1996 to help defray Kaufman’s cancer expenses; and Legend of the Road Mangler, an oral history of stories and folktales that, according to its cover, “is a must-listen for music fans who love to know what goes on behind the scenes, on the bus, after the show, and out in the desert.” (Legend of the Road Mangler is also available to rent as a download.)

Whether fans and friends decide to support him through his website, the GoFundMe campaign, or just by sending good vibes, Kaufman wants people to know that it means a lot to him. “Just keep the love pouring in. That’s it,” he says in thanks. “People are saying to me, ‘I don’t know you, but I appreciate what you’ve done for other people.’ That was my job, you know? I was ‘executive nanny.’ Fortunately, [when people help] it’s a good investment. Both of my parents lived to be 92, so I’ve got at least a dozen years to go.”

With everything Phil Kaufman has lived through up till now, nobody doubts it for a moment.

Top photo: Phil Kaufman, “Road Mangler,” drives a car with Gram Parsons, Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg, c. 1972.