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Hello friends, Samm Bennett here. In 2016
I was interviewed at length by poet and professor Jeffrey Johnson, a longtime Tokyo resident very active on the local poetry and literary scene. We discussed my songwriting practice, method and philosophy in general, and zeroed in specifically on 4 different songs. Tokyo Poetry Journal is a quarterly publication showcasing the literary work of Tokyo-based poets, writers, and, on the occasion of their third volume, songwriters and musicians. Should you be interested in exploring more of what the Tokyo writing community has to offer, you can visit the Tokyo Poetry Journal website HERE. |
Tell me a bit about your writing process: which usually comes first, the lyric, or the music?
It all depends on the situation. For example, if I'm home, with an instrument, then I'm likely to go into the music room and start messing around with a pattern or beat or something, and if I find something I like, I'll usually start singing a scat melody over it. And a lotta times the scat melody that you come up with right off the bat is the best thing you could possibly do for it. Or, if not *the best*, then, good enough, anyway! And at that point, it's like, now I've got this melody, I need to put words to it. And that can be fun and challenging, particularly when you've got some sort of melodic flow, and hand-in-hand with the melodic flow you've got a rhythmic flow, a specific rhythmic phrasing. So then you need to fit words into that phrasing, which is… fun. Maybe like like solving a puzzle. So sometimes fitting words to an existing melody and especially a certain rhythmic phrasing, is the way I'll work.
I probably do that about 35 or 40 percent of the time, and the rest would be writing lyrics first…
Only lyrics?
Just lyrics, yes. And not necessarily with a tune in mind, but often with a rhythmic phrasing of the words in mind. So, if I'm just writing lyrics into my notebook, which I usually do while riding on some Tokyo train, I will, right from the get-go, start thinking about the rhythmic phrasing of the line, and the next line, and so forth. And usually some sort of unifying principle of phrasing emerges.
And when you come to putting a tune to that, what is that process? Is it the same, or is it …?
Well, no, not necessarily, because then you've got a rhythmic structure implied by the lyrics, and, you know, they're often a little bit wordy, so, sometimes there's flexibility about what to do with the melody. Apart from that, though, oftentimes in my songs there's not a strong, fixed melody that's carved in stone anyway! Cause a lot of my songs are more like the blues. You know, when you think about the blues, melody is often not really the primary focus, like it is, say, in a Cole Porter song or something. The artistic focus of so much of the blues is, rather than melody, more about delivery, phrasing, the feel, the emotional quality...
I've seen you perform many times, and I love that 1-string instrument you play.
You do so much with it, you get so much out of it.
The diddley bow!
Yes, and when you play as a soloist, with just the diddley bow as accompaniment, and then you play that same song with a band, then, it's almost like a different song that comes together. It's very bare-bones when you play solo.
Well, I do like playing solo because you can, yeah, strip things down to the basics, which is something I'm interested in. And which is something that I think doesn't exist enough in today's music world. I think that a lot of music is just too thick, too full of information. Without enough room to breathe, or hear a sliver of silence, or fill in some of the blanks yourself, as a listener.
That's interesting...
So, a lot of my favorite music is solo music that's really stripped down, really clear. The essence of it is right there, the intent is absolutely clear: there's the vocal melody, there's the lyric, there's the very minimal accompaniment. And as far as a lot of the music I love, well, a whole lot of it is like that. It might be a country blues guy like Skip James or an Appalachian mountain musician like Roscoe Holcomb, or some of the "field recordings" stuff I've listened to for years from all over Africa, where some guy has, say, a a two or three-string lute, and that's it, just that and his voice. And that's all you need! What more do you need? That's some of the most powerful stuff I know.
And so, I like to do that, I try to do that, as best I can. And I've had people come up to me, you know, after shows, and remark to me that they never hear anything like that. And they don't, they usually hear, you know, a loud band that they have to shout over to their friends, and and half the room is shouting to each other over that! But if you strip music down enough, people will actually start to shut up! (laughter) Because, you know, they're almost like, bowled over by the simplicity of it. Like: I can't believe he's doing that! He's only got one string? And he's singing this song? And that's IT? (laughter)
You DO get people to pay attention!
I'd like to think so! On a good night, anyway.
So the wall of sound that you get from most bands is too much to pay attention to, or something…
Well, you know, all music serves different purposes, and of course sometimes you WANT a full-on assault: the energy from a great rock show, or a pumping funk band, and, you know, that's great! So, I'm not putting anything down, really, and of course I like to do band stuff as well, music that's more full-on. But the solo stuff I do, I like to not give every answer: not every blank is filled in.
You do work in a variety of musical settings. Can you talk a little bit about songs that you do with a New Orleans sound, as opposed to a folk sound or other styles that you use? Can you address the lyricism that goes with one genre or another?
Well, it's an interesting question when you start thinking about what sort of lyric *goes with* what sort of genre. That's a whole big discussion right there, and I don't know how deeply we could get into it without just looking at specific songs and talking about what I decided to do with them vis-a-vis joining them with some particular musical environment. But generally speaking, I think any songwriter putting together songs for performing or recording will want to make the lyric, in whatever way, appropriate to the musical accompaniment. And as to what that actually means, case by case, I think it's too diverse to generalize.
But, like, for example, you mentioned New Orleans, and I do this New Orleans band called King Cake Baby, and as far as the original tunes I do with that band, well, they're definitely more *light*, thematically. You know, funny songs, jokey songs, that sort of thing, cause I think that's largely what that kind of good-time, party music calls for. I mean, you don't wanna go out there playing some rollicking, second-line rhythm that sounds straight outta Mardi Gras and start singing about Donald Trump, or death or something! (laughter) So, with King Cake Baby, I've brought in original tunes like "Do You Wanna Fry Some Fish With Me" and "Crocodile Stomp" and "First You Got To Love Me", and they're all fun tunes. Light, funny...
Let's turn to some of your songs now…
Not Anywhere Anymore
i put down the phone
left a bag of cookies on the corner
filled my brain with a soft white light
sent all my 8-track tapes
to my cousin down in Mississippi
took my foot off the pedal and gave up the fight
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
my daddy looked at me funny
just before he turned into smoke
and the people along the riverbank
scattered like mist
the floodwaters carried away my bass drum
my pencil and my favorite hat
the clock stopped ticking
as i unclenched my fist
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
don't come looking to find me
unless you really know your way around thin air
let the shadows of the branches in the wind
serve as your memory of me
see 'em dancing there, see 'em dancing there
so i'm sorry babe to take you by surprise
with this little change of plan
but i'm tired of being blown 'round
like a tumble weed
i'm not looking for answers, lucky numbers
or keys to the kingdom
ain't a damn thing in this world that i want or need
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
I'd say the overriding emotion here is… resignation. And there's also, and I hate to sound all, um.. *profound* with this, (laughter) but there's a "being and nothingness" here. There's the primacy of the "I'm", which keeps coming back, but the resignation is also sort of *negating* the self. And I found it compelling because of that. And then, near the end, it's addressed to a woman, with the "I'm sorry babe…" line. And so that overridingly characterizes the song as a conversation with a woman.
Yeah, good point…. I think it's a device that I use from time to time, you know, "the singer is talking to a woman", and yeah, a significant person in his life. And yet it's clear that the singer of the song is leaving her. HE'S not anywhere anymore, so how can he have anything to do with her?
I took it as bigger than a simple parting…
Yes, I think it is, it's a kind of existential parting with… one's own soul! But at the same time, toward the end, as you mention, it situates itself more on the plane of immediate human relations, as a goodbye to another person.
I've got my daddy in there too, who turns into smoke, so that's another kind of human parting. But it's interesting, now that that you mention these and I'm reading over these lines, I've just now really realized that in addition to "my daddy" there's also "my cousin" in here, so, the first two verses include family members…
Yes, and the "babe" is also sort of a family member, perhaps, a significant person…
Yes. So, now that you mention it, all three verses have some connection implied, between people. And these are relations that are perhaps deep ones...
The imagery: early in the song there's "soft white light", there's "smoke" and "mist", things that quickly dissipate… also "thin air" and "shadow", and "wind". The imagery dovetails perfectly with the thematic stuff. I really liked this song, and I think I picked the songs that I did, for us to discuss, is because they're, well, more poetic.
Thank you! I certainly want my songs to be considered poetic! But there are some aspects of writing songs that of course are different from poetry that's intended to be read from a page, or even recited. These days rhyme and metered verse happen in most all songs and in hardly any poetry. So, song form is very important. The tune we're discussing here, for example, follows a pretty standard song form of two verses, a bridge, and a final verse. And the bridge, now this is a musical device that often calls for a certain kind of literary device. Song form dictates how the story will unfold. And I guess most anybody reading this interview will probably know what a song "bridge" is, but in case you don't, it's generally that part where the chords change a bit, the melody and the mood might change, usually after the second or third verse.
So, in "Not Anywhere Anymore", you have a bridge appearing after the first two verses, which starts with the line "don't come looking to find me", and that changes the character of the song dramatically, since it's the first time in the song that the singer is actually directly addressing the listener. Up until that point he's relating stuff that's happened: "the flood waters carried away my bass drum, the clock stopped ticking, my daddy turned into smoke". But suddenly he's changing the nature of his communication, he's commanding the listener with "don't come looking to find me" or suggesting "let the shadow of the branches be your memory of me". And the fact that this lyric change happens in conjunction with the introduction of new chords and a new melody in the song is what makes this kind of literary change of direction more pointed, or, you could say, gives it a reason to happen. And the music amplifies it, calls attention to it. In ways like this we see where a song is a song, and how it follows different laws than poetry.
And the song ends with "ain't a damn thing in this world that I want or I need".
It becomes a statement of independence, as well…
Yeah, that's right. With that last line, it actually becomes not exactly sad, but… affirmative. Like, "I'm done here, I'm out!" (laughter). So, in a way that last line is probably where this person who's singing this just steps off, says "I'm washing my hands of all of this".
Now, you say "person that's singing it". You don't put yourself into… ?
Oh, I do, I do… I mean, there is stuff in here, and in many of my songs, that is, you know, autobiographical, in one way or another. And I could just as easily say "I", when we're talking about the songs in the way we're doing. But I tend to instead say "the singer" or "the narrator" or "the teller of this story", because it's not just straight up *me*. It's still a work of, well, fiction. It's a kind of storytelling.
Here's the way I think about this: the whole 'singer/songwriter' thing that really picked up steam in the 1970s, where we saw an explosion of the intensely personal, confessional, *my heart, my feelings* style of songwriting… well, it's something I kind of despise, basically. I don't like it, I think that kind of thing cuts off a whole level of the world of imagination, for the listener. So that the listener is always thinking "oh, so that's something that happened to that person" or "she's singing about that certain guy who left her" and you know, the fans probably know WHO the guy actually is! Later for all that! Too literal, too obvious. I mean, sure, if you can really take something very specific that happened to you, and focus on that, and turn it into a good song, that's fine. It does happen. But the notion that a song is always *about* some very definable something that happened to the singer, or *about* this or that, and that's the end of the story… it's kinda the death of the imagination.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, I find a lot of the confessional stuff kind of nauseating. And nailing everything to biography I think is just cheap interpretation. But the creative process can take over somewhere, and what often is a kernel of autobiography, as a starting point can move away, go somewhere else, on its own…
Absolutely, it should! Isn't that what art is about?
Indeed! So, let's look at another song…
Until You Kiss Me
i left home a long time ago with a bag full of dreams
now all i've got is a pocket full of cinders
at least i made a clean escape from the temple
lord i never want to see another money lender
but i won't have no peace of mind
until you kiss me babe
i blew across the great plains like a plastic bag
from the broken heart of town to the dock of the bay
there ain't that much to say about the wide wide world
people everywhere just sleepwalk in their own little way
and ain't no hope of waking up until you kiss me babe
ours is a strange dilemma don't you know
this life of constant wandering is but a curse
disassembled and rearranged
through a thousand time zones
with just a ticket to ride in that long black hearse
ah but we could cheat death for a little while
if you'd just kiss me babe
now all i want is a cozy little cottage
with a little garden to sit in on a sunny day
with some trees just tall enough
to block the view of the storm clouds
that'll bring the rains and the flood
that's gonna wash it all away
and you there with me before the deluge
you there to kiss me babe
there to kiss me babe
You know, I've been trying to write something like this for awile… and you have a nice light touch, mine is more 'exchanging body fluids.' (laughter) But it's about how important the physical relationship is to washing away all the shit that's in existence. Anyway, what do you have to say about this tune?
Well, let's see, from a formal point of view, this song has a lyric hook which is a single line at the end of every verse. Like the first one we talked about had "I'm not anywhere anymore", here it's "until you kiss me, babe". And each verse leads up to that idea, you know… 'when you gonna kiss me'? (laughter) Ain't nothing gonna work, ain't nothing gonna be good, ain't nothing gonna be right… until you kiss me. And of course this is a common device, Bob Dylan has used it throughout his career, lotsa songs are written like this. Each verse returns to a single idea, stated and restated. This one, though, unlike "I'm Not Anywhere Anymore" has no bridge, so it's just the four verses in a row. No break, no change of mood, no moving into a different direction. Stays right on point!
The last word of the first line and the last word of the second line move from dream, that is, an insubstantial but very important element of our spiritual being, to "cinders", which is a movement to something concrete. From that big, broad, creative image to ashes, to cinders.
That's right, within the first two lines you go from exalted hope to the dashing of your dreams. It's, you know, *reality*. Which is… bleak. My worldview, basically! (laughter)
And there are these crumbly things in the bottom of your pocket, it's a brilliant little condensation...
Yeah, right from the get-go it's a wide arc between the first two lines. It says "left home a long time ago with a bag full of dreams". Obviously it's youthful hope. Then there's "now", with nothing but cinders, so it's implied that a lot of time has passed. The typical idealism of youth is ultimately dashed on the rocks of reality…
The next couple of lines are Biblical, the reference to the temple and the money changers.
Well, that was one of the Bible stories that always resonated most with me as a kid.
Throwing the money changers out...
Yeah, when Jesus went and kicked some banker ass! (laughter) The usurers, the money lenders, using the holiest of places to do it… it's a great story, and it resonates so perfectly now, with so-called Christians who are getting fat off of any number of amoral business practices and still calling themselves *Christians*. So for me that story has been about fraudulent people masquerading as something they're not, and getting their comeuppance for it. So that line "at least I made a clean escape from the temple, I never wanna see another money lender", that's about getting away from, getting out of that hypocritical, lying sort of Christianity which I instinctively despised, as early as childhood, even before I was fully cognizant of what it was really about, in a political sense. So the singer is free of that, he's left that behind. He's out of the temple, but… he still needs that kiss!
In the next verse, I noticed you've got "dock of the bay" referenced, and I noticed here and there you've got a fragment of some song, an allusion, and I love that.
Well, I do it all the time! I do that a lot. It's songs have been the biggest influence on me, and the biggest inspiration for my own songwriting, so I like to reference them when it feels appropriate. But I had the phrase "broken heart of town", which is my own, and going from that sad place I wanted to invoke going to another sad place. And "dock of the bay", well, that's a sad place from a sad song. So it worked in perfectly. And so the total mood there is one of a kind of hopelessness, of futility, that can only be turned around by that all-important kiss at the end of the verse.
And that second verse ends with a reference to sleepwalking, which you're using here as people going through life unconsciously, but the kiss is going to wake you up and BAM, bring you to the light, to some realization. But sleepwalking can also be seen as a kind of surrealist fountain of creativity, the dream world informing the waking world, that kind of thing...
Yes, but I'm definitely using "sleepwalking" here as a state of *non-consciousness*. It has a more negative connotation: it's not where we really want to be. "Everybody just sleepwalks in their own little way", and the inference is that, yeah, so am I. I'm sleepwalking, and it's not where I want to be. I need your kiss to wake me up.
Similarly, "wandering" in the next verse: wandering can be a very creative act, but here it's described as a curse. I know you're very aware that both of these, "sleepwalking" and "wandering" can be seen as creative acts and potentially… being lost.
Right. Well, a lot of my songs refer to being *home*, somehow, and wandering is sort of the opposite of home, if you know what I mean. On a simplistic, dualistic level there's *wandering* and there's *home*. And you want to be home.
Yes, and not disembodied, as you say in the next line…
Right: "disassembled and rearranged", and ultimately we're just gonna die: "with a ticket to ride in that long black hearse" … "but we could cheat death for a little while". That is, before death, let's get *home* together. Let's get some fulfillment.
Yeah, and there's a lot of space/time expressions throughout this song, and it starts with space and time, "long ago"…
Uh-huh, and the time and space are very fluid all through this: "I blew across the Great Plains"…
A thousand time zones…
Wandering… it's all about being not exactly where you need to be, but it's clear at the end of each verse where you neeed to be: attached to someone's lips! (laughter)
And that's home, that's the spiritual home where you can land and rest. Then the last stanza comes back to Biblical stuff, with the deluge. In the third stanza death is a kind of individual thing, but in the last it's a collective death…
Right, everybody's going down! Including you and the person you want to kiss! We're both going down in the flood! It's gonna wash it all away. So the first three verses, we see, are all about a kind of wandering, a kind of impermanence, and then you talk about what you want, what you envision, in that last verse: "all I want is a cozy little cottage", this idyllic scene, right? A *home*, with trees and a garden, that we can sit in, before the inevitable flood takes it all away from us…
Yes, it's the fleeting moment where you cheat space and time and evade death...
Yes, cheat death. That kinda wraps it up, like, this is my vision for happiness, but at the same time a very realistic or you could say fatalistic vision: even though I know it's not permanent, it's the best we can do, to try to carve that out for ourselves, that little moment of fulfillment. And I like that term "cheat death". It seems like you don't hear it much anymore, it's an old term. Death is always there, lurking, waiting, and the odds are against you, so you actually have to cheat it to keep from going under.
And this is a relatively old song for me, I wrote it back around 1996 or so.
When did you write "I'm Not Anywhere Anymore"?
Well, let's see, let me look at the date on this YouTube clip, because I'm pretty sure I posted it there shortly after writing it… OK, it was written in 2011, so it's about 5 years old, or thereabouts…
Are you going to play the video now for me?
No, no, I was just checking the date.
I should mention to you that I've just looked at them on the page, intentionally. I haven't listened to them yet. I'm going to listen to them, I'm very curious to listen to them now…
Well, I'm delighted that they can just work on the page. I'm reminded of an interview I read years ago with John Lennon, where they went through almost all of his Beatles-era songs and asked him to say something about each one. He was very dismissive of a lot of his own stuff, but one thing I found really interesting was that he said his favorites of his own songs were the ones that work on the page. Songs that stand on their own as poetry, apart from their musical setting.
Let's move on to the third of our songs...
No Such Place As Home
how to get from gone to here
well i don't know how
i'm on a highway south of somewhere
i'm jusy a memory to you now
and the sound of the wheels on the road
like a condemned man's moan
and there's no such place as home
the wind blows forward
but it ain't blowing back
stretching to infinity
an endless railroad track
the rails are made of promises
the cross ties are my daddy's bones
and there's no such place as home
old lovers and vandals
they've ransacked my soul
i hear the gravedigger whistling
as he digs the hole
the funeral goers, shoulder to shoulder
each one of them so alone
and there's no such place as home
tomorrow and the next day
and all the days after that
just pennies that land in the gutter
they miss the blind man's hat
tarnished little dreams that roll away
as hope sinks like a stone
and there's no such place as home
Well, this is another fairly… bleak one! (laughter) I probably should've directed you to one or two of my light, funny, knock-around kinda tunes!
Well, I like those too, but, this is the existential condition! In this one, space and time, place and time, are again addressed…
Right, and *home*. Oh, and wouldn't you know, this one, too, follows that form, that lyric anchor at the end of each verse. I guess I do that more than I even knew! This is one of those songs whose very first line was in fact the first line I wrote: "how to get from gone to here…" that line just popped into my head one day. And of course, my next thought was "well, fuck if I know!" (laughter) Well, that's how my mind works, I'll usually gravitate to the sad, the negative. I mean, maybe I should've gone like: "how to get from gone to here? Turn left at Albuquerqe!" (laughter).
This song as well has another one of those 'somebody-else's-song' references in it, which you might not have caught if you're not so familiar with Captain Beefheart. But he's got a song called The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back, and I kinda nabbed that a bit and put in the line "the wind blows forward but it ain't blowing back".
I like your line "old lovers and vandals, they've ransacked my soul", there's another material and spiritual combination, with the idea of ransacking the soul. There's a lot of movement from sort of intangible to physical tangibles: from wind to railroad track, promises to bones… they're really good formulations. And it's the same with ransacking the soul.
Thank you! And then we get to the last verse, which is EXTREMELY bleak. Really hopless.
I love these middle lines in that verse: "pennies that land in the gutter, they miss the blind man's hat". Even the charity of others fails…
Yeah, and "hope sinks like a stone"… this is probably the saddest song I ever wrote. But you write stuff like this sometimes… doesn't mean you feel like that all the time, or even most of the time. But there is a certain reality there: complete and utter hoplessness DOES exist! (laughter) It's a reality.
The last song we're looking at, I've heard you do this one live, let's talk about:
Dancing on an Explosion
i packed my suitcase
i caught a train
couldn't exactly say
i was feeling no pain
i was at my wit's end
turned upside down
wide awake in the sleeping car
Alabama bound
i was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
was a town i passed
in north Kentucky
used to be some jobs there
now they're not so lucky
fellow on the street
he's outta work
thinking 'bout his girl
the moon and stars up above
in a crazy swirl
he was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
but you gotta be light
light on your feet
ain't no telling what kind of dancing partner you'll meet
you might do the shimmy
you might do the twirl
or dance right off the edge of the world
off the edge of the world
was a woman in the dining car
she was feeling good
like anybody with a head fulla champagne
often would
didn't now she'd already lost her man
plus a false eyelash
whatever fire she got burning now
would only soon be ash
she was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
but you gotta be light ...
when we arrive at the station
will we find a friend
what is this thing called love
are we near the end
is Cupid's arrow misaimed?
can he even fly?
will love elude us
until the day we die?
are we just dancing on an explosion?
dancing on an explosion
Now this one is very happy, spinning, light imagery… feeling no pain …
(lengthy silence….)
Am I right?
No! You're wrong! (laughter) It's the opposite! You have to look more carefully: "I packed my suitcase, I caught a train, couldn't exactly say I was feeling no pain…" You see? You couldn't SAY I'm feeling no pain. "Feeling no pain", that's GOOD. But the narrator can't say that! So, he's feeling pain! You missed the point! (laughter)
But it's got BOTH going, though, because "dancing on an explosion" sounds… elevated.
Well, perhaps… I mean, it's true that you're not being consumed by the explosion, you're not being blown apart by the explosion, but, you're dancing on it, and the whole point there is how precarious that is. Dancing on an explosion is a precarious thing to do, a dangerous thing to do.
Ah, I gotcha. And in the second stanza, there's the negativity of no jobs, no luck in Kentucky, but you come back to dancing, and the moon and stars…
Well, that line goes "the moon and stars up above in a crazy swirl", but that describes a situation out of control. I mean, you look up and see a crazy swirl, everything is in a state of flux. It's not like some pleasant lying on your back and looking up at the moon in calm night sky… it's all unpredictable, volatile, wild.
Now, this is another song that has a bridge…
And this bridge sounds positive, although you're still on the edge…
Yes, the bridge is a piece of advice: if you're doing this dance, "you better be light on your feet, no telling what kind of dancing partner you'll meet, you might do the shimmy, you might do the twirl". Well, the shimmy and the twirl, that's good stuff, right? Could be fun. BUT… you might just dance "right off the edge of the world". So, things could go either way. So just stay light on your feet while you're doing this dance, and maybe you'll be OK. So, that's the bridge, and then we're back to the story, which, you realize all takes place on a train. Every verse refers to a different story on this train. The train is how I tied all these little tales together: we're all on the train, and we're all dancing on this explosion! I'm doing it, the guy whose Kentucky town we passed through is doing it, the woman in the dining car, she's doing it.
I'm proud of this tune, I think it's one of my favorites. I guess that's why I do it so often in live situations. I like how it uses this metaphor of the train to tie it together, but it's not obvious that it's a, quote, train song. I've got a pile of tunes that are obvious train songs (laughter). This one happens on a train, but the train is a metaphor for the world, life: we're all on this journey, on this train. And we're all trying to negotiate the explosive terrain of love. We're dancing on the explosion.
And in the last verse, we don't arrive at the station, but the verse asks "when we arrive at the station, will we find a friend? Is Cupid's arrow misaimed? It's full of questions, that last verse is all questions. Even when we arrive, will we still just be dancing on this crazy explosion? Probably! (laughter)
So it reinforces the precariousness of it...
Right. It's a precarious life!
It all depends on the situation. For example, if I'm home, with an instrument, then I'm likely to go into the music room and start messing around with a pattern or beat or something, and if I find something I like, I'll usually start singing a scat melody over it. And a lotta times the scat melody that you come up with right off the bat is the best thing you could possibly do for it. Or, if not *the best*, then, good enough, anyway! And at that point, it's like, now I've got this melody, I need to put words to it. And that can be fun and challenging, particularly when you've got some sort of melodic flow, and hand-in-hand with the melodic flow you've got a rhythmic flow, a specific rhythmic phrasing. So then you need to fit words into that phrasing, which is… fun. Maybe like like solving a puzzle. So sometimes fitting words to an existing melody and especially a certain rhythmic phrasing, is the way I'll work.
I probably do that about 35 or 40 percent of the time, and the rest would be writing lyrics first…
Only lyrics?
Just lyrics, yes. And not necessarily with a tune in mind, but often with a rhythmic phrasing of the words in mind. So, if I'm just writing lyrics into my notebook, which I usually do while riding on some Tokyo train, I will, right from the get-go, start thinking about the rhythmic phrasing of the line, and the next line, and so forth. And usually some sort of unifying principle of phrasing emerges.
And when you come to putting a tune to that, what is that process? Is it the same, or is it …?
Well, no, not necessarily, because then you've got a rhythmic structure implied by the lyrics, and, you know, they're often a little bit wordy, so, sometimes there's flexibility about what to do with the melody. Apart from that, though, oftentimes in my songs there's not a strong, fixed melody that's carved in stone anyway! Cause a lot of my songs are more like the blues. You know, when you think about the blues, melody is often not really the primary focus, like it is, say, in a Cole Porter song or something. The artistic focus of so much of the blues is, rather than melody, more about delivery, phrasing, the feel, the emotional quality...
I've seen you perform many times, and I love that 1-string instrument you play.
You do so much with it, you get so much out of it.
The diddley bow!
Yes, and when you play as a soloist, with just the diddley bow as accompaniment, and then you play that same song with a band, then, it's almost like a different song that comes together. It's very bare-bones when you play solo.
Well, I do like playing solo because you can, yeah, strip things down to the basics, which is something I'm interested in. And which is something that I think doesn't exist enough in today's music world. I think that a lot of music is just too thick, too full of information. Without enough room to breathe, or hear a sliver of silence, or fill in some of the blanks yourself, as a listener.
That's interesting...
So, a lot of my favorite music is solo music that's really stripped down, really clear. The essence of it is right there, the intent is absolutely clear: there's the vocal melody, there's the lyric, there's the very minimal accompaniment. And as far as a lot of the music I love, well, a whole lot of it is like that. It might be a country blues guy like Skip James or an Appalachian mountain musician like Roscoe Holcomb, or some of the "field recordings" stuff I've listened to for years from all over Africa, where some guy has, say, a a two or three-string lute, and that's it, just that and his voice. And that's all you need! What more do you need? That's some of the most powerful stuff I know.
And so, I like to do that, I try to do that, as best I can. And I've had people come up to me, you know, after shows, and remark to me that they never hear anything like that. And they don't, they usually hear, you know, a loud band that they have to shout over to their friends, and and half the room is shouting to each other over that! But if you strip music down enough, people will actually start to shut up! (laughter) Because, you know, they're almost like, bowled over by the simplicity of it. Like: I can't believe he's doing that! He's only got one string? And he's singing this song? And that's IT? (laughter)
You DO get people to pay attention!
I'd like to think so! On a good night, anyway.
So the wall of sound that you get from most bands is too much to pay attention to, or something…
Well, you know, all music serves different purposes, and of course sometimes you WANT a full-on assault: the energy from a great rock show, or a pumping funk band, and, you know, that's great! So, I'm not putting anything down, really, and of course I like to do band stuff as well, music that's more full-on. But the solo stuff I do, I like to not give every answer: not every blank is filled in.
You do work in a variety of musical settings. Can you talk a little bit about songs that you do with a New Orleans sound, as opposed to a folk sound or other styles that you use? Can you address the lyricism that goes with one genre or another?
Well, it's an interesting question when you start thinking about what sort of lyric *goes with* what sort of genre. That's a whole big discussion right there, and I don't know how deeply we could get into it without just looking at specific songs and talking about what I decided to do with them vis-a-vis joining them with some particular musical environment. But generally speaking, I think any songwriter putting together songs for performing or recording will want to make the lyric, in whatever way, appropriate to the musical accompaniment. And as to what that actually means, case by case, I think it's too diverse to generalize.
But, like, for example, you mentioned New Orleans, and I do this New Orleans band called King Cake Baby, and as far as the original tunes I do with that band, well, they're definitely more *light*, thematically. You know, funny songs, jokey songs, that sort of thing, cause I think that's largely what that kind of good-time, party music calls for. I mean, you don't wanna go out there playing some rollicking, second-line rhythm that sounds straight outta Mardi Gras and start singing about Donald Trump, or death or something! (laughter) So, with King Cake Baby, I've brought in original tunes like "Do You Wanna Fry Some Fish With Me" and "Crocodile Stomp" and "First You Got To Love Me", and they're all fun tunes. Light, funny...
Let's turn to some of your songs now…
Not Anywhere Anymore
i put down the phone
left a bag of cookies on the corner
filled my brain with a soft white light
sent all my 8-track tapes
to my cousin down in Mississippi
took my foot off the pedal and gave up the fight
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
my daddy looked at me funny
just before he turned into smoke
and the people along the riverbank
scattered like mist
the floodwaters carried away my bass drum
my pencil and my favorite hat
the clock stopped ticking
as i unclenched my fist
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
don't come looking to find me
unless you really know your way around thin air
let the shadows of the branches in the wind
serve as your memory of me
see 'em dancing there, see 'em dancing there
so i'm sorry babe to take you by surprise
with this little change of plan
but i'm tired of being blown 'round
like a tumble weed
i'm not looking for answers, lucky numbers
or keys to the kingdom
ain't a damn thing in this world that i want or need
i'm not anywhere anymore
i'm not anywhere anymore
I'd say the overriding emotion here is… resignation. And there's also, and I hate to sound all, um.. *profound* with this, (laughter) but there's a "being and nothingness" here. There's the primacy of the "I'm", which keeps coming back, but the resignation is also sort of *negating* the self. And I found it compelling because of that. And then, near the end, it's addressed to a woman, with the "I'm sorry babe…" line. And so that overridingly characterizes the song as a conversation with a woman.
Yeah, good point…. I think it's a device that I use from time to time, you know, "the singer is talking to a woman", and yeah, a significant person in his life. And yet it's clear that the singer of the song is leaving her. HE'S not anywhere anymore, so how can he have anything to do with her?
I took it as bigger than a simple parting…
Yes, I think it is, it's a kind of existential parting with… one's own soul! But at the same time, toward the end, as you mention, it situates itself more on the plane of immediate human relations, as a goodbye to another person.
I've got my daddy in there too, who turns into smoke, so that's another kind of human parting. But it's interesting, now that that you mention these and I'm reading over these lines, I've just now really realized that in addition to "my daddy" there's also "my cousin" in here, so, the first two verses include family members…
Yes, and the "babe" is also sort of a family member, perhaps, a significant person…
Yes. So, now that you mention it, all three verses have some connection implied, between people. And these are relations that are perhaps deep ones...
The imagery: early in the song there's "soft white light", there's "smoke" and "mist", things that quickly dissipate… also "thin air" and "shadow", and "wind". The imagery dovetails perfectly with the thematic stuff. I really liked this song, and I think I picked the songs that I did, for us to discuss, is because they're, well, more poetic.
Thank you! I certainly want my songs to be considered poetic! But there are some aspects of writing songs that of course are different from poetry that's intended to be read from a page, or even recited. These days rhyme and metered verse happen in most all songs and in hardly any poetry. So, song form is very important. The tune we're discussing here, for example, follows a pretty standard song form of two verses, a bridge, and a final verse. And the bridge, now this is a musical device that often calls for a certain kind of literary device. Song form dictates how the story will unfold. And I guess most anybody reading this interview will probably know what a song "bridge" is, but in case you don't, it's generally that part where the chords change a bit, the melody and the mood might change, usually after the second or third verse.
So, in "Not Anywhere Anymore", you have a bridge appearing after the first two verses, which starts with the line "don't come looking to find me", and that changes the character of the song dramatically, since it's the first time in the song that the singer is actually directly addressing the listener. Up until that point he's relating stuff that's happened: "the flood waters carried away my bass drum, the clock stopped ticking, my daddy turned into smoke". But suddenly he's changing the nature of his communication, he's commanding the listener with "don't come looking to find me" or suggesting "let the shadow of the branches be your memory of me". And the fact that this lyric change happens in conjunction with the introduction of new chords and a new melody in the song is what makes this kind of literary change of direction more pointed, or, you could say, gives it a reason to happen. And the music amplifies it, calls attention to it. In ways like this we see where a song is a song, and how it follows different laws than poetry.
And the song ends with "ain't a damn thing in this world that I want or I need".
It becomes a statement of independence, as well…
Yeah, that's right. With that last line, it actually becomes not exactly sad, but… affirmative. Like, "I'm done here, I'm out!" (laughter). So, in a way that last line is probably where this person who's singing this just steps off, says "I'm washing my hands of all of this".
Now, you say "person that's singing it". You don't put yourself into… ?
Oh, I do, I do… I mean, there is stuff in here, and in many of my songs, that is, you know, autobiographical, in one way or another. And I could just as easily say "I", when we're talking about the songs in the way we're doing. But I tend to instead say "the singer" or "the narrator" or "the teller of this story", because it's not just straight up *me*. It's still a work of, well, fiction. It's a kind of storytelling.
Here's the way I think about this: the whole 'singer/songwriter' thing that really picked up steam in the 1970s, where we saw an explosion of the intensely personal, confessional, *my heart, my feelings* style of songwriting… well, it's something I kind of despise, basically. I don't like it, I think that kind of thing cuts off a whole level of the world of imagination, for the listener. So that the listener is always thinking "oh, so that's something that happened to that person" or "she's singing about that certain guy who left her" and you know, the fans probably know WHO the guy actually is! Later for all that! Too literal, too obvious. I mean, sure, if you can really take something very specific that happened to you, and focus on that, and turn it into a good song, that's fine. It does happen. But the notion that a song is always *about* some very definable something that happened to the singer, or *about* this or that, and that's the end of the story… it's kinda the death of the imagination.
Yeah, I totally agree with you, I find a lot of the confessional stuff kind of nauseating. And nailing everything to biography I think is just cheap interpretation. But the creative process can take over somewhere, and what often is a kernel of autobiography, as a starting point can move away, go somewhere else, on its own…
Absolutely, it should! Isn't that what art is about?
Indeed! So, let's look at another song…
Until You Kiss Me
i left home a long time ago with a bag full of dreams
now all i've got is a pocket full of cinders
at least i made a clean escape from the temple
lord i never want to see another money lender
but i won't have no peace of mind
until you kiss me babe
i blew across the great plains like a plastic bag
from the broken heart of town to the dock of the bay
there ain't that much to say about the wide wide world
people everywhere just sleepwalk in their own little way
and ain't no hope of waking up until you kiss me babe
ours is a strange dilemma don't you know
this life of constant wandering is but a curse
disassembled and rearranged
through a thousand time zones
with just a ticket to ride in that long black hearse
ah but we could cheat death for a little while
if you'd just kiss me babe
now all i want is a cozy little cottage
with a little garden to sit in on a sunny day
with some trees just tall enough
to block the view of the storm clouds
that'll bring the rains and the flood
that's gonna wash it all away
and you there with me before the deluge
you there to kiss me babe
there to kiss me babe
You know, I've been trying to write something like this for awile… and you have a nice light touch, mine is more 'exchanging body fluids.' (laughter) But it's about how important the physical relationship is to washing away all the shit that's in existence. Anyway, what do you have to say about this tune?
Well, let's see, from a formal point of view, this song has a lyric hook which is a single line at the end of every verse. Like the first one we talked about had "I'm not anywhere anymore", here it's "until you kiss me, babe". And each verse leads up to that idea, you know… 'when you gonna kiss me'? (laughter) Ain't nothing gonna work, ain't nothing gonna be good, ain't nothing gonna be right… until you kiss me. And of course this is a common device, Bob Dylan has used it throughout his career, lotsa songs are written like this. Each verse returns to a single idea, stated and restated. This one, though, unlike "I'm Not Anywhere Anymore" has no bridge, so it's just the four verses in a row. No break, no change of mood, no moving into a different direction. Stays right on point!
The last word of the first line and the last word of the second line move from dream, that is, an insubstantial but very important element of our spiritual being, to "cinders", which is a movement to something concrete. From that big, broad, creative image to ashes, to cinders.
That's right, within the first two lines you go from exalted hope to the dashing of your dreams. It's, you know, *reality*. Which is… bleak. My worldview, basically! (laughter)
And there are these crumbly things in the bottom of your pocket, it's a brilliant little condensation...
Yeah, right from the get-go it's a wide arc between the first two lines. It says "left home a long time ago with a bag full of dreams". Obviously it's youthful hope. Then there's "now", with nothing but cinders, so it's implied that a lot of time has passed. The typical idealism of youth is ultimately dashed on the rocks of reality…
The next couple of lines are Biblical, the reference to the temple and the money changers.
Well, that was one of the Bible stories that always resonated most with me as a kid.
Throwing the money changers out...
Yeah, when Jesus went and kicked some banker ass! (laughter) The usurers, the money lenders, using the holiest of places to do it… it's a great story, and it resonates so perfectly now, with so-called Christians who are getting fat off of any number of amoral business practices and still calling themselves *Christians*. So for me that story has been about fraudulent people masquerading as something they're not, and getting their comeuppance for it. So that line "at least I made a clean escape from the temple, I never wanna see another money lender", that's about getting away from, getting out of that hypocritical, lying sort of Christianity which I instinctively despised, as early as childhood, even before I was fully cognizant of what it was really about, in a political sense. So the singer is free of that, he's left that behind. He's out of the temple, but… he still needs that kiss!
In the next verse, I noticed you've got "dock of the bay" referenced, and I noticed here and there you've got a fragment of some song, an allusion, and I love that.
Well, I do it all the time! I do that a lot. It's songs have been the biggest influence on me, and the biggest inspiration for my own songwriting, so I like to reference them when it feels appropriate. But I had the phrase "broken heart of town", which is my own, and going from that sad place I wanted to invoke going to another sad place. And "dock of the bay", well, that's a sad place from a sad song. So it worked in perfectly. And so the total mood there is one of a kind of hopelessness, of futility, that can only be turned around by that all-important kiss at the end of the verse.
And that second verse ends with a reference to sleepwalking, which you're using here as people going through life unconsciously, but the kiss is going to wake you up and BAM, bring you to the light, to some realization. But sleepwalking can also be seen as a kind of surrealist fountain of creativity, the dream world informing the waking world, that kind of thing...
Yes, but I'm definitely using "sleepwalking" here as a state of *non-consciousness*. It has a more negative connotation: it's not where we really want to be. "Everybody just sleepwalks in their own little way", and the inference is that, yeah, so am I. I'm sleepwalking, and it's not where I want to be. I need your kiss to wake me up.
Similarly, "wandering" in the next verse: wandering can be a very creative act, but here it's described as a curse. I know you're very aware that both of these, "sleepwalking" and "wandering" can be seen as creative acts and potentially… being lost.
Right. Well, a lot of my songs refer to being *home*, somehow, and wandering is sort of the opposite of home, if you know what I mean. On a simplistic, dualistic level there's *wandering* and there's *home*. And you want to be home.
Yes, and not disembodied, as you say in the next line…
Right: "disassembled and rearranged", and ultimately we're just gonna die: "with a ticket to ride in that long black hearse" … "but we could cheat death for a little while". That is, before death, let's get *home* together. Let's get some fulfillment.
Yeah, and there's a lot of space/time expressions throughout this song, and it starts with space and time, "long ago"…
Uh-huh, and the time and space are very fluid all through this: "I blew across the Great Plains"…
A thousand time zones…
Wandering… it's all about being not exactly where you need to be, but it's clear at the end of each verse where you neeed to be: attached to someone's lips! (laughter)
And that's home, that's the spiritual home where you can land and rest. Then the last stanza comes back to Biblical stuff, with the deluge. In the third stanza death is a kind of individual thing, but in the last it's a collective death…
Right, everybody's going down! Including you and the person you want to kiss! We're both going down in the flood! It's gonna wash it all away. So the first three verses, we see, are all about a kind of wandering, a kind of impermanence, and then you talk about what you want, what you envision, in that last verse: "all I want is a cozy little cottage", this idyllic scene, right? A *home*, with trees and a garden, that we can sit in, before the inevitable flood takes it all away from us…
Yes, it's the fleeting moment where you cheat space and time and evade death...
Yes, cheat death. That kinda wraps it up, like, this is my vision for happiness, but at the same time a very realistic or you could say fatalistic vision: even though I know it's not permanent, it's the best we can do, to try to carve that out for ourselves, that little moment of fulfillment. And I like that term "cheat death". It seems like you don't hear it much anymore, it's an old term. Death is always there, lurking, waiting, and the odds are against you, so you actually have to cheat it to keep from going under.
And this is a relatively old song for me, I wrote it back around 1996 or so.
When did you write "I'm Not Anywhere Anymore"?
Well, let's see, let me look at the date on this YouTube clip, because I'm pretty sure I posted it there shortly after writing it… OK, it was written in 2011, so it's about 5 years old, or thereabouts…
Are you going to play the video now for me?
No, no, I was just checking the date.
I should mention to you that I've just looked at them on the page, intentionally. I haven't listened to them yet. I'm going to listen to them, I'm very curious to listen to them now…
Well, I'm delighted that they can just work on the page. I'm reminded of an interview I read years ago with John Lennon, where they went through almost all of his Beatles-era songs and asked him to say something about each one. He was very dismissive of a lot of his own stuff, but one thing I found really interesting was that he said his favorites of his own songs were the ones that work on the page. Songs that stand on their own as poetry, apart from their musical setting.
Let's move on to the third of our songs...
No Such Place As Home
how to get from gone to here
well i don't know how
i'm on a highway south of somewhere
i'm jusy a memory to you now
and the sound of the wheels on the road
like a condemned man's moan
and there's no such place as home
the wind blows forward
but it ain't blowing back
stretching to infinity
an endless railroad track
the rails are made of promises
the cross ties are my daddy's bones
and there's no such place as home
old lovers and vandals
they've ransacked my soul
i hear the gravedigger whistling
as he digs the hole
the funeral goers, shoulder to shoulder
each one of them so alone
and there's no such place as home
tomorrow and the next day
and all the days after that
just pennies that land in the gutter
they miss the blind man's hat
tarnished little dreams that roll away
as hope sinks like a stone
and there's no such place as home
Well, this is another fairly… bleak one! (laughter) I probably should've directed you to one or two of my light, funny, knock-around kinda tunes!
Well, I like those too, but, this is the existential condition! In this one, space and time, place and time, are again addressed…
Right, and *home*. Oh, and wouldn't you know, this one, too, follows that form, that lyric anchor at the end of each verse. I guess I do that more than I even knew! This is one of those songs whose very first line was in fact the first line I wrote: "how to get from gone to here…" that line just popped into my head one day. And of course, my next thought was "well, fuck if I know!" (laughter) Well, that's how my mind works, I'll usually gravitate to the sad, the negative. I mean, maybe I should've gone like: "how to get from gone to here? Turn left at Albuquerqe!" (laughter).
This song as well has another one of those 'somebody-else's-song' references in it, which you might not have caught if you're not so familiar with Captain Beefheart. But he's got a song called The Dust Blows Forward and the Dust Blows Back, and I kinda nabbed that a bit and put in the line "the wind blows forward but it ain't blowing back".
I like your line "old lovers and vandals, they've ransacked my soul", there's another material and spiritual combination, with the idea of ransacking the soul. There's a lot of movement from sort of intangible to physical tangibles: from wind to railroad track, promises to bones… they're really good formulations. And it's the same with ransacking the soul.
Thank you! And then we get to the last verse, which is EXTREMELY bleak. Really hopless.
I love these middle lines in that verse: "pennies that land in the gutter, they miss the blind man's hat". Even the charity of others fails…
Yeah, and "hope sinks like a stone"… this is probably the saddest song I ever wrote. But you write stuff like this sometimes… doesn't mean you feel like that all the time, or even most of the time. But there is a certain reality there: complete and utter hoplessness DOES exist! (laughter) It's a reality.
The last song we're looking at, I've heard you do this one live, let's talk about:
Dancing on an Explosion
i packed my suitcase
i caught a train
couldn't exactly say
i was feeling no pain
i was at my wit's end
turned upside down
wide awake in the sleeping car
Alabama bound
i was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
was a town i passed
in north Kentucky
used to be some jobs there
now they're not so lucky
fellow on the street
he's outta work
thinking 'bout his girl
the moon and stars up above
in a crazy swirl
he was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
but you gotta be light
light on your feet
ain't no telling what kind of dancing partner you'll meet
you might do the shimmy
you might do the twirl
or dance right off the edge of the world
off the edge of the world
was a woman in the dining car
she was feeling good
like anybody with a head fulla champagne
often would
didn't now she'd already lost her man
plus a false eyelash
whatever fire she got burning now
would only soon be ash
she was dancing on an explosion
dancing on an explosion
but you gotta be light ...
when we arrive at the station
will we find a friend
what is this thing called love
are we near the end
is Cupid's arrow misaimed?
can he even fly?
will love elude us
until the day we die?
are we just dancing on an explosion?
dancing on an explosion
Now this one is very happy, spinning, light imagery… feeling no pain …
(lengthy silence….)
Am I right?
No! You're wrong! (laughter) It's the opposite! You have to look more carefully: "I packed my suitcase, I caught a train, couldn't exactly say I was feeling no pain…" You see? You couldn't SAY I'm feeling no pain. "Feeling no pain", that's GOOD. But the narrator can't say that! So, he's feeling pain! You missed the point! (laughter)
But it's got BOTH going, though, because "dancing on an explosion" sounds… elevated.
Well, perhaps… I mean, it's true that you're not being consumed by the explosion, you're not being blown apart by the explosion, but, you're dancing on it, and the whole point there is how precarious that is. Dancing on an explosion is a precarious thing to do, a dangerous thing to do.
Ah, I gotcha. And in the second stanza, there's the negativity of no jobs, no luck in Kentucky, but you come back to dancing, and the moon and stars…
Well, that line goes "the moon and stars up above in a crazy swirl", but that describes a situation out of control. I mean, you look up and see a crazy swirl, everything is in a state of flux. It's not like some pleasant lying on your back and looking up at the moon in calm night sky… it's all unpredictable, volatile, wild.
Now, this is another song that has a bridge…
And this bridge sounds positive, although you're still on the edge…
Yes, the bridge is a piece of advice: if you're doing this dance, "you better be light on your feet, no telling what kind of dancing partner you'll meet, you might do the shimmy, you might do the twirl". Well, the shimmy and the twirl, that's good stuff, right? Could be fun. BUT… you might just dance "right off the edge of the world". So, things could go either way. So just stay light on your feet while you're doing this dance, and maybe you'll be OK. So, that's the bridge, and then we're back to the story, which, you realize all takes place on a train. Every verse refers to a different story on this train. The train is how I tied all these little tales together: we're all on the train, and we're all dancing on this explosion! I'm doing it, the guy whose Kentucky town we passed through is doing it, the woman in the dining car, she's doing it.
I'm proud of this tune, I think it's one of my favorites. I guess that's why I do it so often in live situations. I like how it uses this metaphor of the train to tie it together, but it's not obvious that it's a, quote, train song. I've got a pile of tunes that are obvious train songs (laughter). This one happens on a train, but the train is a metaphor for the world, life: we're all on this journey, on this train. And we're all trying to negotiate the explosive terrain of love. We're dancing on the explosion.
And in the last verse, we don't arrive at the station, but the verse asks "when we arrive at the station, will we find a friend? Is Cupid's arrow misaimed? It's full of questions, that last verse is all questions. Even when we arrive, will we still just be dancing on this crazy explosion? Probably! (laughter)
So it reinforces the precariousness of it...
Right. It's a precarious life!