FolkBlog

Woodsmeister’s note – The following article is by FolkBlog Australian contributor Sue Barrett and published here by her permission.

By Sue Barrett

“Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress…When Laura was here I had the records arranged alphabetically; before that I had them filed in chronological order…Tonight, though, I fancy something different, so I try to remember the order I bought them in…”
(Nick Hornby – High Fidelity, 1995)

At breakfast, a few days ago, Ronnie Gilbert was singing ‘Mothers, Daughters, Wives’; June Taber performed ‘He Fades Away’; and Totally Gourdgeous sang ‘Strangers and Foreigners’ – on tape, that is, not in person.

Ronnie, June and Totally Gourdgeous present something of a problem for music collectors, however, given their mixture of solo and non-solo recordings.

If one looks to Rob (the record shop owning anti-hero of High Fidelity) for a solution, then one probably isn’t going to find it. Although Rob’s alphabetical phase was probably the most practical, alphabetical order doesn’t cope well with all circumstances – including Ronnie’s albums with The Weavers and Holly Near; June’s albums with Martin Simpson and Maddy Prior; and the solo albums of the various members of Totally Gourdgeous.

There could be a case for keeping all Christmas recordings together, rarities together and signed copies together. One might want to shelve Hunter Davis’ Torn with the Cris Williamson recordings (because of their duet performance of ‘Arm and a Leg’), to put Shelby Lynne’s Just a Little Lovin’ with the Dusty Springfield albums and to slip the Young Blood II compilation album (with its Kings of the World track, featuring Jen Anderson) amongst Weddings Parties Anything’s output. And coping with Gretchen Phillips, given her many collaborations and handmade covers, is definitely for another day!

Then there’s the issue of what to do when a performer does something that is totally different to their previous recordings – like a singer-songwriter releasing an album of covers.

Actually, singer-songwriters releasing a covers album is an issue in its own right, one about which singer-songwriters Kate Campbell, Richard Shindell and Cyndi Boste have first-hand experience…

KATE CAMPBELL (www.katecampbell.com)

Kate Campbell is an American singer-songwriter, whose compositions focus on “people and everyday living”. She was born in New Orleans (Louisiana), spent some time in Sledge (Mississippi), but has lived most of her life in Nashville, Tennessee. Kate’s CD, Twang on a Wire (2003), focuses on songs written by other people and released by female performers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Dolly Parton (‘Down from Dover’), Donna Fargo (‘Funny Face’) and Emmylou Harris (‘Boulder to Birmingham’). The album takes its name from the song ‘Twang on a Wire’, which Kate wrote with Mark Narmore.

When and how did you begin writing songs?
I wrote my first song when I was six or seven – so I’ve been writing since I was a very little girl. I wrote it on the ukulele. My father is a minister and I hung out with teenagers (who were playing guitar, doing Dylan, singing Peter Paul and Mary). I thought that everybody played guitar and wrote songs and sang – so I did! My parents gave me the ukulele, then I started taking piano when I was about seven. I played clarinet in the band – starting in the fourth grade or whenever you could. I really began to write by the fifth or sixth grade – like 12 years old.

Of your own songs that you’ve recorded, which are the oldest?

Well, you know, there are recordings which no one will ever hear that we have from before my first album that was officially released! But some of the older tunes that I’ve recorded since I’ve been making records are ‘Trains Don’t Run From Nashville’, ‘Jerusalem Inn’ and ‘Would You Be a Parson’.

When and how did you begin performing your own songs?

I think the very first time I ever sang was when my hands were bigger and I’d started moving from the ukulele to the regular guitar. Me and a friend sang ‘Silent Night’ in the third grade. Another of the very first songs I sang was a Dolly Parton song – ‘Daddy was an Old Time Preacher Man’ – and my sister and I sang that at church for an event they were having for my father. I mostly sang at church – it was a good place because people were encouraging – even if you were bad they wouldn’t tell you.

How do you go about learning/performing someone else’s song?

It’s harder. It’s harder, for me.  When I was first learning – when I was playing the piano and picking up the guitar here in Nashville (I’ve mostly lived my life in Nashville – my father’s family has lived in Nashville for 200 years), the Sunday paper [The Tennessean] had this colored insert called the ‘Sunday Showcase’ and it used to have the TV listings and the chords and lyrics of a song. I would get the song out of the paper and sit down at the piano or guitar and try to play it. I would have heard the song on the radio, ’cause it was mostly pop songs (although every now and then there would be a country song). Most often it wasn’t in a key that I could sing it in, so I figured out how to transpose.

I like to sing songs from the radio, but from early on I would mostly sing what I wrote. Early in my career – I was through college and back in Nashville trying to get a publishing deal – I got hired a couple of nights to do cover tunes in a bar. I hated it and I’m sure I was awful. I had to use notes because I’m just not a cover tune person.

With my tunes, even those from the very first record, I’m asked to do them frequently enough for them to come back easily. There are probably only three or four of my tunes that I couldn’t do and that’s only usually tunes that I never, for whatever reason, did very much in the first place in concert.

I hardly ever do any of the Twang on a Wire songs in concert because I can’t remember the words. There are so many songs in my head now that I have make myself learn the words (the words more than anything) to perform somebody else’s song.

Why did you decide to record an album of songs mainly written by other people? And how did you come to select the songs on Twang on a Wire?

I’m truly a product of the American south and its music. I was born in New Orleans, lived in the Delta and I’ve spent most of my life in Nashville. I’ve done half of my records in Muscle Shoals [Alabama] and written for Fame Publishing. My mother’s from Kentucky and my grandfather in Kentucky loved bluegrass music – even though the least amount of influence that people will hear in my music is bluegrass. I like to tell people that I have a lot of blue but no grass in my music! There are three main strains that people hear in my music – Mississippi acoustic blues underneath, gospel music and the Nashville country sound.

The tunes on Twang on a Wire are tunes that I remember inspired me as a girl and that I think are great songs, great performances, great songwriters. Twang on a Wire is my tribute record to those women, those songs and those songwriters (some of whom were men). The songs come from a critical time in my life – it was when I was really beginning to sing and play the guitar. I was listening to the radio. I was in Nashville. And the women’s movement was also beginning to grow.

With some of these songs, it’s amazing that they were on the radio, on AM country radio, in Nashville – songs like ‘Honey on His Hands’ and ‘Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man’, songs by Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette.

Then there was ‘Funny Face’, which was not necessarily a strong woman’s song, except that it was HUGE hit.

I could have put any number of Dolly Parton songs on – but I think ‘Down from Dover’ is an incredible song. I think it’s so pure, how Dolly Parton writes. I haven’t met Dolly, but my mother sat next to her on an airplane once!

Kris Kristofferson wrote ‘Help me Make it through the Night’, but what changed the song is that a woman sang it – it was a number one for Sammi Smith in the country music market in the early ’70s.

Those songs definitely influenced my life. I don’t necessarily agree with all the thing in the songs – but they definitely formed my musical heritage. And I wanted everybody else to enjoy them as well.

Did you write the song ‘Twang on a Wire’ particularly for the album?

I wrote the song close to doing the album – I wrote it with my friend Mark Narmore. I have no idea where the title came from – sometimes you feel like titles fall from the sky – and I just felt that I had it one day. I spent a year or so thinking about it, then Mark and I were talking about it and we ended up writing the song – truly about me playing the guitar. It’s kinda my story. The song came first, then I realised that it was a way to do my country women tribute record.

Did you listen/re-listen to other people singing the songs before recording them?

I listened to the versions that I remembered – I didn’t listen to any other people recording them. Then me and the guys got together and played them. We had a great time! There’s a different feel on some of them, but with some of them I felt the original feel was so lovely (like Rose Garden). I wasn’t trying to do a reinterpretation by any means, although there are a couple of songs that we did kinda re-invent (like ‘Would You Lay With Me in a Field of Stone’).

In recording Twang on a Wire, did part of you fear that it might result in people no longer wanting to hear you perform your own songs?

No – it didn’t enter my mind at all! I guess by the time I did Twang on a Wire, I felt that people would truly see this as a tribute record. And I think that’s how people have seen it. Lots of times people want me to sing ‘Boulder to Birmingham’ in concert – so I’ll do an encore of ‘Boulder to Birmingham’. Every now and then, people want me to do ‘Harper Valley PTA’, but it’s much better with a band. I just loved those performances and those women and those songs. And I hope that other people like it and remember those songs and remember country music and the impact that music can have on us all.

What’s been happening in your world in recent times?

I came out with a new CD last October, called Save the Day. And people seem to be enjoying that. From a recording stand point, it sounds super. John Prine is one of my favorites and he is absolutely spectacular on it. And, of course, Nanci Griffith came and sang along. Mac McAnally, who appears on a lot of my CDs, shows up on this one. I’m proud of it; I think it sounds well; and I hope I continue to grow as a songwriter.

What are some of your future plans?

This summer, I’m have some song writing camps – I’ve been doing 2 or 3 every year for about 5 or 6 years. Then I’m going back to the UK in October 2009. And it looks like in 2010 that I may do a little trip to Ireland, where I’m the host and we see the sites and listen to music every night in a pub.

We’re thinking about, maybe, doing a live album. I think there are very few great live albums – I can only name a couple, like the Allman Brothers Band and the Steve Miller Band. I just can’t envisage someone wanting to hear me sing and play guitar live over and over again – but we’re contemplating it. It’s something that I have to talk to Will Kimbrough [producer, songwriter, guitarist] about. So that may be next.

I’ve never done a holiday record (and I really don’t want to), but I kinda want to do a peace record. One of the songs that I’d want to record is Will’s song, ‘God Forgive our Warring Ways’.

In his novel High Fidelity, English writer Nick Hornby covers such vitally important things as organising music collections and making compilation tapes. Can you tell us about your music collection and how it is organised?

I’ve read Nick Hornby’s book and I have the accompanying CD!

I’m a very eclectic listener.

I love classical music and I have my classical music together. I really like requiems.

I like jazz – usually jazz blues, blue dark jazz (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk). So I have that together.

And then I’ll kinda do stuff in alphabetical order.

I love southern rock.

I also like electronic out-there stuff – like Air.

I love the great songwriters – I’m a huge Tom Waits fan and I have all of Springsteen’s. And people like Guy Clark are great – but they’re not heard on the radio that much.

I’m on a Rolling Stones binge right now – I’ve been listening to Beggars Banquet over and over again. To me, the interesting thing about Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones was their ability to write their own music, but to also do tremendous blues covers and country music songs.

If I was to make a CD to listen to, then it would be The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Miles Davis, Elvis Presley (he did some really weird recordings and those are the ones I like the most), Bonnie “Prince” Billy (he’s really dark – and I like him a lot), Ray LaMontagne.

No one would ever probably know the songs I write by what I listen to!

Editor’s note – after the jump- Richard Shindell and Cyndi Boste
Continue reading Making Them My Own — Songwriters Singing Songs by Other Songwriters