January 5, 2025 • 54 mins
Singer-Songwriter John McCutcheon joins me again on the #podcast to #talk about his 45th album, “Field of Stars,” + remembering Jimmy Carter and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, thanks for joining me right here, my little corner
of the world. It is now twenty twenty five. Thank
you for joining me. We start the year off great
with a great guest. He was my very first guest.
He's been on the program a few times. His name
is John McCutcheon. We talk about his new album Field
of Stars, and so much more. We have so many
(00:21):
great stories and great remembrances throughout this episode, so I
urge you to sit down and give this a good
listen or watch it on YouTube wherever you get your
lovely podcasts. This one is also available at Tales from
the Corners dot com, where you can look up TFTC
with Bob niebel n E B E L wherever you
(00:43):
get those podcasts. So I really hope you enjoy this
happy new year. Can't believe it's twenty twenty five. Have
a good one and I'll talk to you on the
other side.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of this thing.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Thanks for joining me. It's so great to see you again.
I think this might be the fourth time on my podcast,
My Corner of the World here, so it's just great
to see you back. And you are out now with
your forty fifth album.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I know it's crazy isn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, you got some great origins with this album because
you just shelled it for a bit, you know, the
pandemic had happened, and it was this little collection of
gems and put them up on the shelf and unearthed
and got together with people over zoom. Tell us about
the origins of getting this together.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, as you and your listeners know, I am a
charter member of Overachievers Anonymous, cranking out forty five albums
in a fifty two year career. I was on a
tour in Australia in February and the first half of
March of twenty twenty, and I arrived back in the
(01:58):
United States on March sixteenth, twenty twenty, to a very
different country than I had left, a very different world,
and I had planned on recording a new album, had
no name, not even a working name for it, but
a bunch of songs that I'd accumulated. And I came
back and I realized, oh, well, this isn't going to
(02:21):
happen anytime soon. And I'd already booked studio time, I
had the musicians hired, and so I said, well, we'll
just put this on the shelf and I'm sure in
a couple of months when this is over, we'll be
able to complete this. And as you well know, that
wasn't the case. And as you also know, I kind
(02:42):
of hit a creative stride during the pandemic and put
out three albums. Well wrote four albums, actually three by myself.
The first one Cavin Fever, I just you know, just
me in an instrument in the next to my trustee
(03:03):
studio band, and I figured out, along with our engineer,
how to record an album remotely that sounded like we
were all in the same room and the magician was
really the engineer in that case. And I'd also been
discovered that Zoom was a great way to do co writing.
(03:26):
I mean, who knew about zoom before the pandemic. And
one of the people I started writing with early I
was Tom Paxton. So last year when we talked, that
was the new album. And in fact, you know, spoiler alert,
we're going in the studio in March to do yet
(03:46):
a second mccutch and Packson album. But when I was
done with the Packson album, I thought, well, I need
to take this these songs down and finally put out
this album. And I looked at the collection of stuff,
and some of them passed muster, and some of them
I felt, well, this isn't as good as the kind
(04:09):
of writing I've been doing since I came back from Australia.
And there was also a bunch of songs that I
have been writing with other people. I write with about
five or six different people a week. Wow. Wow, well,
and it's all I mean. You know, you know at
(04:29):
the beginning of an hour that you're going to have
something either finished or pretty close to finished, or sometimes,
I mean the worst of times is when we have
a partial thing and I'll say to one of my
co writers, Okay, you take it and go mess with this.
I'll go mess with this and next week we'll see
(04:51):
what we come up with and and sort of do
a mashup. So there were a bunch of songs, way
more songs then I picked that I thought, oh, I
would love to get this this song out there right now.
And they included a song, the title cut, that I
(05:13):
wrote with my dear friend Karen Newcomer, and it's about
walking the community Santiago, which is something I'm going to
be doing in May, and I can't imagine there won't
be a whole bunch of Storks come from that experience.
And then I've been writing with a wonderful young writer,
Trent Wagler, who is the front man for a great
(05:36):
band called the Steel Wheels out of the Nandeau Valley.
And Zoe Moulford and I have been writing for a
long time and she is an American ex pat living
in Manchester, England, and we have at least an album mote,
but I think they are wonderful songs that we could
(05:56):
do together, so I chose one of hers. And it
also was an opperportunity to do to because we've got
this remote thing going now in recording to sing with
some of my favorite singers. Carrie joined me on the
title cut Field of Stars. And then I have known
the amazing bluegrass singer Claire Lynch from her days in
(06:21):
the Front Porch Band when she lived in Alabama, and
we would show up at all here's the match I'm digressing.
I would have a festival, Yeah, Kansas festival I go
to every year in Winfield, Kansas. Been going there for
forty years and I was backstage and this is early
(06:44):
in Alison Krause's career, and I have known Alison since
she was a teenager playing in jam sessions on the
midway there and she is all of a sudden starting
to get some traction and she and I are sitting backstage.
I'm about to go on. She has just been on,
and Claire Lynch walks in. And I had seen Claire
(07:04):
in a couple of decades, and I went over and
I hugged her neck and started talking as though Claire
and Alison knew one another. And I said, you all
have met you and they both said no, And I said, ooh,
I want to have put on my gravestone. That I
introduced Alison Krauss and Claire Lynch and they sang together
(07:28):
the rest of the weekend at the festival. It was heavenly.
So Claire Lynch is long and a friend, so she
I invited her to do a duet. And then there's
a wonderful group of young a cappella singers called Windborne.
Yes loved their stuff, and we will get together at
festivals as you do, and I'll say, hey, come up
(07:50):
and sing the song with me. And so when the
album closed, her a song that I wrote as a
table grace for my songwriting camps. I asked them to
join me, and so it was. It was a treat.
You know, I kind of indulged myself in this album
because it's been waiting so long.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, and it really shows in that result. And it's
just an amazing group. Just the the harmonies, the acapella,
it's just it's really amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, you could tell that they put their ten thousand
hours in a practice and really got it perfect. That's just,
you know, they make it look easy, but far from that.
I'm sure it's just lots and lots of practice when
you're trying to coordinate that that much vocal together well.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And it doesn't matter whether you are a writer or
an actor or an athlete. You know, all working fut
into making something really pretty difficult look easy is the
art in it. And it's the joy in it too.
I Mean, I was, I'm vacationing at the South Carolina
(08:59):
beach with bunch of my family and I was just
goofing around making up songs about our dog with my
grandkids last night, and it occurred to me, all those
hours of practice were not about making albums. It was
not about doing concerts. It's about being able to do
exactly this make up, goofy little songs with my grandkids
(09:23):
about just things we see around in the world, and
then they'll grow up thinking, well, this is just a
natural part of life and that's the best legacy I
can ever hope for.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, how beautifully sad it really is. You're always working.
This is beyond twenty four to seven. It's just everything.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well and you know, everybody a Patriots, who are you
know I went to school with, or I grew up with,
they're all retired now and they'll say when are you
going to retire? And I just think, I don't even
know what that means, because this is just something that
happens all the time. And certainly, well, my friend Tom Packson,
(10:02):
for instance, just retired from the road. He had a
couple of health issues and he's eighty seven years old.
You know he's punched his clock.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
But he's still writing and still writing as great and
better than ever. And you just think, Wow, what a
gift to be able to have a creative life your
whole life.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh yeah, yeah. And just because you're retired from the road,
I mean, the mind is still working and that's good
for the mind. It's getting constant exercise. So yeah, cheers
to Tom Paxton for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well, I mean he's just entering the same kind of
world that we had during the pandemic. You know, Yeah,
we're not you know, we're not going to airports, we're
not going to hotels, and we're not missing it. Really.
I love playing. But I'll tell you as soon as
they perfect astro projection, I will I will turn in
(10:57):
my Delta Diamond status in a heartbeat. Yeah, okay, let's
go to Seattle see in a few hours. Honey.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah. It's great for the fans, they benefit. But yeah,
the traveling and well, it's great to be able to
see some sights and say I've been all over the world.
What a slap. Huh. It's just to take that equipment
with you and they plugging in and setting up and
all of that. It's got to be really tough.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well, you know, I'm having a new lightweight hammer Dulcimer
flight case built right now. And I was talking to
my roadie the other day, who just a year younger
than I am. We've been together for thirty five thirty
six years, and I said, well, I think the new
Dulcimer case is going to be ready for for this tour.
I have a tour coming from California in a couple
(11:49):
of weeks and he's and I said, but I'll believe
it when I see it, And he said, no, you'll
believe it when I lift it.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I was thinking of the dulcimer. It's like, oh, how
do you travel with that thing?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh my god, it's it's it's in a very heavy
flight case from from Georgia. Case company, great polical business.
But I'm ready for It's funny. I was at a
festival this last summer up in New York and a
fellow hammer dulpimer player was there and he looked at
me and he said, this hammer dulcimer is twice as
(12:24):
heavy as it used to be. M it was exactly
the same one.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Gosh wow, it's just just thinking about how you have
to check things on and like what we were just
talking about Peter Riaro, who is uh we're all hoping
and praying.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
For hard Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
They lost the ADULTA Losses beloved guitar. I think it
turned up years later.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, yeah, we all have those stories. Tom Pakson, in fact,
wrote a song called thank You Republic Airlines breaking the
neck and my guitar, and I'm sure that song is
the reason Republic Airlines went under. But Peter Yarrol, Yeah,
Peter showed up at a concert I was doing in
(13:11):
New York and I saw him in the audience, and
first of all, you were so honored when a fellow
musician comes to one of your shows. And I can
usually tell if there are fellow musicians there because after
the first few songs, they'll be up pacing in the
back because they're just not used to sitting down and
(13:32):
listening to somebody else playing music. They're in a concert hall.
They're supposed to be working. And I saw Peter and
I said, I remember the day I discovered folk music. Yeah,
mother made me sit down. I was eleven years old.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in nineteen sixty three, and
she made me sit down with her, this former social
(13:54):
worker turned mother and watched the March on Washington and
it was well, it was an eye opening and a
mind opening and a heart opening experience for everyone. But
as a little eleven year old kid, you know, here
was the biggest gathering in US history up to that point,
(14:18):
and there were was preaching like I never heard in
Sunday at my church. And then there was all this music,
everything from Mahalia Jackson to Marian Anderson. And then there
was folk music and I had never heard of folk music.
And there was Bob Dylan and jump By Gas and
Odetta and then out came Peter Palm and Mary Yeah.
(14:40):
I remember I was just riffing at this show because
I knew Peter was in the audience, and I said,
and then these two guys in goateees came out, and
I've always thought goateees looked sinister, but there was this
nice Nordic looking girl. She could have been from Wisconsin,
so I figured she was okay. And they sang the
(15:02):
Segur and Lee Hey song If I had a hammer,
and I don't remember as much they're singing of it
as I remember the the cameras panning the audience and
everybody was singing yeah. And it was clear to me
(15:22):
from this whole event that that this was not about
self aggrandizeman. This was about being involved in something that
was bigger than yourself, and it was about participation. And
it was so different from the music I was hearing
on the radio, whether it be you know, Chuck Berry,
or the Beatles or Elvis. It was it was all
(15:45):
about them, yeah, and this was all about us, and
I just remember thinking I want to be a part
of that. And I I looked at in the audience
who came up and joined me for a few songs
after this, I said, and you've ruined my life. Thank
(16:07):
you so much for ruining my life. And you know,
everybody laughed. But yeah, Peter, Peter talk about keeping a
creative life and keeping a life that has some meaning
beyond yourself. Peter's done that better than most.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So oh yeah, yeah. He was just so accessible and
I I kind of linked that with President Carter, who
was just very accessible to the people and just didn't
put himself above everybody else. He was. He knew how
to converse and he was interested in what anybody had
to say to them. I interviewed Peter years ago for
an article before he was going on stage at Chastain
(16:44):
and Chestain Parks Amphitheater, and he's just you know, it
was amazing. He was just you know, blends into the
room very well, just like Jimmy Carter did, just like
didn't expect everybody like stand up and stand it attention,
just you know, one of the common people. He never
lost sight of that.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well. And Jimmy was the first president and certainly the
first presidential candidate that had lots of music as a
part of his campaign. I mean it was it was
nineteen seventy six, you know, and all of a sudden,
here's the Alman Brothers exact, and so many other musicians
(17:26):
who are playing at his rallies, and you just think, well,
this is completely different, and this is totally fun. And
imagine four years of something like this, and there was
that sense of approachability. And he's a peanut farmer from
planes for heaven's sake, ye, and such a different governor
(17:51):
for Georgia in his time than we had seen prior
to that. Oh yeah, and you just thought, this is
a tide turning, uh kind of person. And and of course,
when you look at other presidents, many of whom are
just charging a whole lot of money to do speeches,
(18:12):
you got Jimmy and Rosalind out there building houses and
monitoring elections and promoting human rights. And I mean it's
a model for how to be a consequential and open
hearted post presidential persona. I mean, holy, holy literation Batman
(18:34):
post presidential persona yikes.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Oh absolutely, and back Bob. What an inspiration. And no,
you don't have to be the president. You don't have
to do that. You could be regular citizen whatever and
get out there and make change.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah right, yeah, he made that and he taught Sunday school,
you know. Yeah, he just he showed it up. Yeah,
he wasn't behind a wall. He was just I mean
the fact that he that people just called it Jimmy.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Uh you know that you just have to say that
name in Georgia and everybody knows who you're talking about.
It wasn't mister president as you hear others, It's Jimmy,
you know.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, incredibly man. Yeah, yeah, we should all hope to
be one hundred. Gosh, what if.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You're gonna if you're gonna, if you're gonna live to
be a hundred, let's hope you're able to fill your
life with with dignity and generosity and and the kind
of living out of faith that you don't see enough
these days.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Mmmm. Very very very very true. So you flash forward
here a forty fifth album. You have a song called
the Hammer, which is inspired by Georgia as well, and
what a story there is behind that.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And you know I wrote it to day Henry Aaron died. Yeah,
And you know, when I moved to Georgia going on
twenty years ago, now I'd grown up in Wisconsin and
I grew up with I mean, Henry Aaron was a
part of my consciousness from the time I had consciousness.
(20:26):
He was a big He started with the Milwaukee Braves.
We actually started with the Indianapolis Clowns, and then he
went to the Eau Claire Braves and then from there
in nineteen fifty four, and the Braves had only come
to Milwaukee in nineteen fifty three, and this was a
time and his autobiography is called I Had a Hammer,
(20:49):
So you know, he basically picked the title of the
song for me. And this was a time when they
hadn't figured out that they were going to have a
major league team, so they you could bring your own
beer into the stadiums, and the Twins weren't in Minnesota yet,
so the Braves were the team from Minnesota and the
Dakota's and it was right in the Railyards. County Stadium
(21:10):
was right in the Railyards and people would take the
train the freight train from the Drakotas and come and
take their cases of beer in. And Henry said it
was the happiest year of his major league career. He
was a rookie. He was in the place that treated
him well, and they said they were so happy to
(21:31):
have the team that they would they would cheer if
someone made a good effort, even if they didn't catch
the ball. You know. So when I moved to Atlanta,
the three things that I really loved when I first
came was, after thirty five years of connecting flights, direct
flights everywhere, I was never going to be standing in
(21:53):
the in the Baggers playing area hoping that my instruments
made that type connection. The Symphony. I'd never lived in
the town with a professor symphony, and I loved and
continue to love and support the ASO. And then I'd
never lived in a town with a major league team
(22:15):
of any level. The closest when I was when I
lived in Charlottesville, I would go see the Richmond Braves,
the Triple A team at that time, our Atlanta Braves.
And I remember the first time I ever went into
Symphony Hall, there was a world debut because Robert Spano
(22:35):
was great about bringing young up and coming composers in
and doing world debuts of a baseball symphony in three movements,
one movement dedicated to Jackie Robinson, one Henry Aaron, and
one for Dave Parker. And all your baseball fans are.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Going, huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I figured it as well, well, guy must be from Pittsburgh,
and it turns out he was. He was a big
day Parker fan. And so at the end of the performance,
the composer came out and everybody clapped, and then he
motioned to the audience and a spotlight shown two rows
(23:17):
in front of me, and there was Henry Aaron. I
was fifty four years old at the time, and I
burst into tears. I had, you know, here was someone
who meant more to me than I understood. And I
was and you know, Henry was like Jimmy, Yeah, just
(23:37):
be there. He was like, he was doing things, he
was appearing at different events. So I saw him many
times since then, which only increased my appreciation and my
admiration for the fellow. So when when he died, I
was just it's my particular kind of catharsis, It's what
(23:59):
I do. And I wrote the song and I had
to get all baseball geeky in the last in the
last verse, imagining, you know, God figuring out the lineup
for the team, which undoubtedly had to be called the
Angels and put all these different Hall of famers at
(24:22):
different positions, and Henry starting in to write on his
first day there. You know he's a rookie.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly beautiful song. He You mentioned about
the hate mail, hate mail for a baseball player to
me that when I first heard of that, I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me. People are just off
the charts.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Well this and this was nineteen seventy four, it's a
long time from nineteen forty seven. Yeah, Well, Jackie Robinson
broke the color barrier, but you saw how how that
was still the case, and people want a white man
to be the the Well, I remember that, you know.
The first year that I was that I had Brave
(25:12):
season tickets. I invited fourteen of my friends on my
birthday to come to a Braves game and they were
playing the Giants, and I said, okay, when Barry Bonds
comes up to bat, I will give you a free
ticket to this game if you will join me. Standing
up and turning your back because we know who, we
(25:32):
know who the real home run champion is.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
So yeah, I mean basically, you know, there's so few
are from the Atlanta metro area because it's a newer
kind of town. Yeah, it's just who you came from Wisconsin,
came from Ohio, and there's just it's a real mixture.
And now as we're moving forward so many years later,
how diverse the Atlanta metro has become.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, it's one thing I love about it.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, I mean I think it really excelled after the Olympics.
But we know all those legends who got the Olympics
here and it just exploded after that, right right, incredible,
very inspirational. You got a lot of other historical ideas
woven into the new album and you have a track
about German Jewish refugees. How did that all come up?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, the story of the MS Saint Louis is known
to most of my Jewish friends and is almost completely
unknown to everyone else. The MS Saint Louis was a
German ship out of out of Hamburg that in nineteen
thirty nine sought to bring nine hundred Jewish refugees, women, men, children,
(26:43):
entire families from Germany at the beginning of World War Two,
when it was apparent that these people were destined for
the Final Solution, as they so coldly called it, and
it sailed across the Atlantic, and its first stop was Cuba,
and they were turned away. From Cuba, they went to Canada.
(27:06):
Canada turned them away, and then they came to the
United States as the last and final stop, and they
were turned away, and so they went back to Germany.
And I often look to history when I'm trying to
give some perspective to contemporary issues, and so that by
(27:30):
the time people hear the story of returning away of
this group of people in peril for their lives, if you,
you know, dare to say, well, look around, yeah, there's
a situation not completely dissimilar is going on right now.
(27:53):
And one of the things that I have been really
trying to do for decades now is address the kind
of music that first attracted me. I mean, you know,
here was an eleven year old kid hearing folk music
that was connected to the civil rights movement. This was
(28:14):
the grand social movement of the day. How do you
deal with social and political issues and give it new insight?
You know I don't because basically, why should anybody care
what I think. I'm just a guy with a banjo
(28:36):
and a guitar. But give us a new idea, and
how often does that happen? So it's one of the
it's one of the trickiest things and one of the
most satisfying things when I think that maybe I've come
close to doing that. And am I says, was one
way of saying, do we learn things from history or
(28:59):
are redoomed to repeat it again and again? And of
course we live in a time where everybody thinks everything
is happening for the very first time, and there has
never been income inequality before, and there has never been
you know, racism before, and there's never been immigration issues before,
whereas almost every one of us who comes from another
(29:21):
ancestors came from another part of the world, dealt with
that in our own way in the course of our
family history. So anyway, the Emma Saint Louis, Yeah, it's
a story working on. The other one, of course, that
has an Atlanta connection is the one Peter Norman.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yes, yes, that's a number story.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I was a kid who discovered quite by accident at
age fourteen, my freshman year of high school that I
was a pretty decent middle and long distance runner. So
I was on the cross country team, which is like
the bottom rung of high school athletic coolness. I mean,
the mom even doesn't come to cross countries. But I was.
(30:07):
But by the time the track, you know, I was
two years into understanding. I knew the metrics. I knew
what a good time was, I knew what a good
distance was, I knew what a good height was. And
along come the Olympics, So I'm invested in this in
nineteen sixty eight. And in sixty eight it was you know,
(30:27):
Bob Beeman breaking that long jump record by two feet.
I mean, that's just like unbelievable. And then of course
there was Tommy Smith and John Carlos on the on
the you know, the awards stand following the two hundred
meter finals, and in October of twenty eighteen, because the
(30:49):
Olympic the Summer Olympic Games were actually in October of
nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
That, yeah, good time, I have it a little cooler.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And on the front page of the AJAC is this photograph,
probably the most iconic sports photograph of our lifetime, of
Tommy Smith and John Carlos with their fist range and
it was the fiftieth anniversary of that event. And in
(31:19):
the story it said, oh, you know Tommy Smith lives
in Stone Mountain, where I live. And I thought, oh, well,
that's the connection. And embarrassingly, for the first time, I noticed,
wait a minute, there's a third guy here. Yeah, and
I've never noticed it before. And I wonder who this
(31:41):
person is. And you know, it sounds like a John
mccutchins song, and who better to write it? So I
did a bunch of research and I thought it was
this Australian guy who supported Smith and Carlos. In fact,
in the photograph they are barefoot and they have a
fist raised the black glove on it. And in the
(32:03):
awards in the locker room before the awards ceremony, Carlos
and Smith talked to talk to Norman and say this
is what we're going to do, and he said, well,
I support you, but raising the fist is kind of
a black thing. How about if I just put your
Olympians for Human Rights badge on my jacket and I
will stand there and support you, and in the press afterwards,
(32:25):
I will support you and Carlos's damn, I forgot my gloves,
and it was Peter Norman who said, well, one of
you put to share the pair of gloves. So if
you notice on the in the photograph, one is raising
a right hand and one is raising a left hand.
And they maintained a relationship for the rest of their lives.
(32:49):
Carlos and Smith were paul bearers at Peter Norman's funeral
and delivered eulogies. And even though he had the fastest
qualifying time of the seventy two Olympics, Peter Norman was
not allowed to be on the Australian team, and the
(33:09):
US team flew Norman and his wife as guests to
Munich and fettered them as heroes. Bob. They ranted to
Bob Moses and Peter Norman said, oh, mister Moses, I'm
a huge fan of yours, and Moses said, no, we
are all fans of yours. So I figured the guy
(33:32):
deserved a song.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Oh beautiful. Yeah, I love the line in the battle
between right and wrong. There is no second place. It's
just the yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Every time you get every once in a while, you
just get a gift.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's just like yeah, you feel it. Oh,
it doesn't really right itself, but you know you obviously
have composed that, but it's just yeah, it's well.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Actually, one of the things I learned during the during
the pandemic, and that one was written before the pandemic.
That was one of the original pieces intended in twenty twenty.
But one of the things I really learned to do
and which really prompted the kind of you know, tsunami
(34:16):
of songs that have happened since I returned from Australia
in twenty twenty, was that notion of really being able
to surrender. You know, I do meditation every day, and
that's there's a practice in which it doesn't work at
all unless you surrender. You know, faith is like that,
(34:38):
and songwriting is not unlike that either. I mean there
are many times when Paxon and I will have finished
a sign and we'll look back at it and and
one of us will say, you know, we're we're not
this good. You know, we had to you know, we
had to let go. But yeah, you got to do
(35:02):
the work, and you got to prep the ground and
plant the seeds, right, But the growing happens whether you're
there or not.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So true. It's so true. I also speaking about religion
and things like that, takun Olam has a very special maning.
Healed the world as people might out there might not know.
That's just it. It's a it's a really wonderful track
mentioning Rabbi hash Hole and oh yeah, a concept that
you know many of us have grown up with.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It's a I first learned about takun Olam when I
did an appearance with Michael Lerner many days ago, who
had the magazine to Kuhnat. I was when I did
the Pete Seeger album. I did a you know, a
fun kickstarter thing in one of the premiums. Was writing
(35:59):
a song and a Jewish couple was celebrating their fiftieth
anniversary and they were saying, well, taquin Alam is very
important to us and to our children, to our parents,
to our entire community. And I said, well, I've heard
the term, but talk to me about it. So I've
(36:19):
been carrying it around for a while, and especially in
these times when there is this shocking and alarming rise
in anti Semitism, I thought it was really critical for
a non Jew to talk to talk about this and
(36:43):
honor it. I hope I honored it and just bring
it out there so that people you know who, as
I did, said, well, tell me more about this, because
in three minutes you can't explain something as ancient and
as important as to Kutaman. But thank you. I'm I'm
(37:06):
glad it means something to you.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
What a connection. Peter and I had talked about that
years ago. And I remember Rabbi Learner quite well. I
think he passed now terribly long ago out of San Francisco.
I believe it's where he was.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, and Rabbi Heschel, you know, he was that that
wild haired, white bearded guy often marching next to Martin
Luther King. And it's from him that I have found
that I've got that beautiful term praying with my feet
mm hm, which I used in a number of songs
(37:42):
just because I think it's so it's worth repeating it
totally is. Yeah, I prayed in synagogue today here in
the street. You know, you bring it, you bring it
out and wear it and walk around with it. That's
that's when faith comes alive. I mean it's again Jimmy Carter, Yeah,
(38:07):
he wasn't doing it for the photographers.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Exactly, very down to Earth, very real and keeping it real.
Your title track is beautiful as well. You have a
wonderful duet on that. How did you come to No, Carrie,
it's just uh.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
You, I had. You know, the folk music world is
a small world, and especially your survivor as we both are,
we've somehow managed to deal with, you know, the wackiness
that is demanded if you're going to live your life
being everybody else's free time. So we have known of
(38:49):
one another, We've run into one another on the road,
We've done several shows together, and and I really love
her attention to writing songs out of a spiritual foundation,
which nobody else that I write that I write with does.
A few people performers who are able to talk about
(39:09):
issues of faith and spirituality without making it feel creepy
or that you're somehow going to be proselytized to. So
she and I started writing. She was the second person
I started writing with, and the second album that I
did during the pandemic was called bucket List, and we
(39:31):
swapped out albums that we had been working on, and
in the next writing sessions, she said, you know, it
start made me start thinking about my bucket list. And
one of the things on my bucket list is walking
the Camino de Santiago, which, for your listeners, is a
thousand year old five hundred miles. Well, there are actually
many caminos, but the main one, the ancient one, is
(39:52):
the Way of called the French Way, starts in the
Pyrenees of southwestern France, and all of the caminos end
up in Santiago de Compostella, which is in the northwest
part of Spain. And everybody you know, from Popes to
Kings to Saint Francis, have walked this. And I said,
(40:19):
me too. My wife has been talking about doing the
Camino for as long as I've known her, so we
started reading about it and watching movies. Martin Sheen had
a movie, has a movie called The Way about him
about his character walks the Camino, and the terminus point,
(40:41):
of course, is Santiago Compostella, where purportedly the bones of
the Apostle James are interred, and Santiago, of course means
Saint James and Compostella translates to field of stars. And
Carrie said, well, I can't wait for you to take
(41:02):
your comino so we can write about it. I said,
kerry or songwriter. We'll make up crap all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, you don't have to be accurate.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
And so we decided to write about four very different
people walking the Camuino for four very different reasons. And
I said, and Carrie Compostella, field of Stars. Come on,
we got to write a called Field of Stars. It's
just too beautiful to leave out there all on his own,
and it's really one of my favorite songs on the
(41:31):
On the recording, I invited Carrie to sing the second
verse because it's obviously had to be sung by a woman,
but and our voices work really well together and it
was fun to do it. And it's a Field of
Stars is just one of those songs that it's hard
(41:55):
to explain, but it's just really I love singing it.
It's to tell such an interesting story for different stories
that are absolutely connected by the end, and I'm just
thrilled to get out. I thought about thought about holding
it for the album that's inevitably going to be coming
(42:16):
out of my own camino, starting dis Bay, but I
just wanted to get it out there. It was it
was a selfish pleasure.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, but that's the title track, that's your your theme
and I really enjoyed that cover. How did you come
up with that for the album? It's very, very beautiful photography.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
There's a there's a woman named Maureen Bryer who has
done all my album artwork for many years, and I
love working with her. I love what she comes up with.
And I told her the idea that I had and
sent her some stuff i'd found on the internet, this
(43:02):
sort of thing, and she came up with that image
among a dozen others, and it was I always immediately
drawn to that, and I said, that's that's absolutely it,
and she said, oh, I hoped you'd picked that one.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Good. Good. Yeah, they're very eye catching. Of course the
album covers as well. I just like bucket List and
all these others. It's just it really does it. It's
an eye catcher, for sure. So you're taking it out
on the road, I am ready.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I am. I Every January for over forty years now,
I have done a tour out in California and it's
really fun. It's really easy. It's almost Pavlovian. Now. You
know people out in California, so, oh it's January, mccauch,
it must be coming, and I'm visiting a lot of
(43:51):
these places for the you know, thirtieth or fortieth time,
and it's really a wonderful commune unity that has built
up around these and I'm really eager to take this
out there. I should say that I originally was going
to do this tour with Paxton, and it was booked
and advertised as one with Tom. And then Tom had
(44:14):
a couple of on his last couple of little weekend
trips he took, he was hospitalized at the end of
each one. He's recovered, but at eighty seven, he said,
he finally decided to listen to his doctor, his daughters,
and his body and say I think I'm done. Yeah. Yeah,
(44:37):
So I regret that because I love Tom, we love
being together. I love performing with him, and I love
the songs we get to perform together. But we can't
do everything that we hope for in this life. So
I got to go out there on my own again.
I've done it.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah, and you go all from San Diego to Sanfra
Cisco is at the whole season.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm not doing Southern California this time. I used to
do oh geez, years ago. I would be out for
almost a month and I would do the northwest, Northern California,
which has a countless places you can play, and Southern
California as well, And these days I'm just doing Northern
California and I'll be out there for ten days, playing
(45:23):
almost every day. And I do that because I'm old
and cranky, and I like being home and I hate
being away.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, and no place like home. And Atie's Attic, I
always promote them and just the well and.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
I'll be there doing my annual Eddi's Attic CD release
party in the first weekend of January, and then up
to the Kratic Center up in cherry Log, which is
my wife and I have a cabin up in cherry Log.
And the Crank Center was founded by my old friend,
(45:59):
Reverend Dcratic, who taught at Candler for many years. He
is probably the most revered Homalist in the Protestant world,
and he started the can the Cradit Spender. So I
go up there and do a little celebration of that
and him in his life. Every year. That's my That's
(46:20):
kind of my hometime weekend, my hometown in the Atlanta
area and my hometown up in.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
North Struggle, and a good time to do it. When
the weather finally cools off, hopefully not too cold. We're
supposed to be remember Wisconsin. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's
always in your blood anyway. I mean I kind of
have that from being in Ohio, but I've been here
many decades.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, driving in the snow
is like it's in my dna.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
But I know I'm surrounded by people who have no idea.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, it was always that. I was like, no, I
don't want to go anywhere. I don't trust anybody else
out there. They're all going to just slide into me.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
It's like, you know, and snow m again and proved that.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was telling the story how
I basically stayed at Wark because I heard about what
happened here in nineteen eighty two. I was like, the
same thing's going to happen, and sure enough, I was right.
And I'm so glad I didn't go out there. I
just stayed at work.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Oh well, I had taken my wife to the to
the airport and she was on she had to go
to a speaking at a conference, and she was on
the last flight out before the airport closed down and
the skycats out there know me really well. And so
I'm sitting around chatting with these guys because for a change,
(47:36):
I'm not going anywhere. I'm putting my wife on a
plane and we're and there's nobody coming. So one of
them says, well, I guess I better go home because
I have to drive home in the midst of all
these idiots. And I thought, yeah, oh right, I'm not
worried about getting home myself. I'm worried about being on
the road with a whole bunch of people who don't
know how to drive in the snow. So I made
(47:58):
it home, though I drove all back roads, a little
side streets. But yeah, going to California in January is
you know, I've never had a gig snowed out good. Yeah,
but I look forward to it. You know, I'm performing.
The pandemic cured me of having to run the same
kind of program I did when I was twenty five,
(48:21):
so I'm performing about half as much as I do
as I used to, which makes it special. I'm you know,
I've got so many friends out on the road now
that I'm going to a lot of places I've gone
for many years, so it's it's it's nice to get
out there and you know, get limber again and share
a bunch of new songs with people.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yeah, there's a real joy in that as well, I'm sure.
But you know, it's okay to slow down, but you're
still doing it. I mean, Bruce Springsteen even cut some
minutes out of his five hour long shows or whatever
sounds like to somebody. Yeah, you do have to definitely
be some common sense there as well. So the new album,
it's available on CD. Do you have vinyl as well?
Speaker 2 (49:06):
And I do not have vinyl unfortunately, but it's it's
available for a digital download and all the usual places.
But what's interesting about from my website, which is folkmusic
dot com, believe it or not, is that, you know,
I hate MP three's.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, compression, it's just.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
MP three's is one of the reasons that vinyl is
so popular again today because you know, our kids grew
up with MP threes and then all of a sudden
they pull out a vinyl and they go and they're
hearing full spectrum audio and analogue and they go, oh,
so this is what music is opposed to soundline. So
(49:50):
I've always thought, you know, the convenience of MP three's
is that they're smaller, they're compressed, oh yeah, like crazy,
and they take up less space on your listening device.
But why why go to the bother of going to
one of the best studios in the world, working with
one of the best engineers in the world, and then
(50:13):
squashing down the sounds so it sounds crappy. So I
offer downloads of MP three's if you want, or wave files,
which is the full spectrum model, so that you can
actually listen to it as we intended.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, that's the closest thing because you could take it
with you. That's the great thing. You could take it
with you. It's convenient obviously, Vinyl not so. But vinyl
is beautiful with all the artwork and everything.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Oh yeah, the art work, you know, it's the one
and again for people who well I was talking with
someone just last night, the whole concept.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Of the album, Yeah, I know, that's that.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
That was an art that was so different, different world.
I mean remember the days when you know, we would
have sessions of sequencing, yes, because you want to have
the last song on the first side be something that
made you want to turn the album over and listen
to the second side, because you actually had to exert
(51:18):
some energy, imagine, but also the way that you could
tuck little gems in an album, stuff you knew was
never going to get any airplay, but that you loved
and you wanted to share with people. And everybody out
there of an age has a song that they really
loved that they discovered very deep in some track on
(51:41):
an album that was never going to be on the radio.
It was never going to be covered, but it's your
favorite song from the album. And my grandkids, you know,
their mother said, well, we're going to sit down and
listen to the entire album and the gun what were
on a playlist? We have to listen to the same
person sing all these songs. Oh it's Bob, be sure,
we'll do that. But yeah, the whole notion that this
(52:06):
is this is a collection of songs and hopefully tells
a story that's grated in the sum of its parts.
And it's always the way of it approached albums, And
you know, sometimes it's been successful and sometimes not as much.
But you know, if I struck out seven times out
of ten in the major leagues, I'd be a shoe
(52:28):
in for the Hall of fame, so you have you
have to have some kind of perspective that not everybody's
going to get what you're trying to do is say,
but somewhere there's going to be somebody who says, oh, yeah,
I see, I see, I see the story that's going
on here.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Beautiful. Very well said. Well, thanks for dropping by. As always,
I think.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
That's always great to talk to you. I look forward
to to doing it in person again sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Well yeah, yeah, well we did a video package on
you right, which is now on my YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Oh, I have to go back and looking. Yeah, my
young I looked back then.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
I'm losing track when we did that.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
It was from the Pete album Yeah, been like twenty
eighteen or early nineteen something. Thanks for all you do, Bob,
and thanks for making time to include this old folks
singer in your in your travels.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, you had started this with me on this journey.
I started this over four years ago now, and uh,
I enjoy it. I enjoyed It's it's a lot of
fun and I love hearing about how the uh the
sauce has made the secret to the sauce. So it's
it's always a lot of fun and I hope to
see you at ADDIE's take Care. Happy New Year, Bye
bye bye. That was a lot of fun. And John
(53:55):
goes back now a couple of years with me so
but he's been around in four five albums is quite
an accomplishment. Thanks for joining me. I hope to have
a lot more out here in twenty twenty five. Have
a great, happy, healthy New Year and many years to
come as well. I'm hoping and praying that for myself
as well. If the folks out there know what I mean,
(54:17):
a little bit of a inside information there. AnyWho, hope
you have a greade twenty twenty five. Thank you,
Hey, thanks for joining me right here, my little corner
of the world. It is now twenty twenty five. Thank
you for joining me. We start the year off great
with a great guest. He was my very first guest.
He's been on the program a few times. His name
is John McCutcheon. We talk about his new album Field
of Stars, and so much more. We have so many
(00:21):
great stories and great remembrances throughout this episode, so I
urge you to sit down and give this a good
listen or watch it on YouTube wherever you get your
lovely podcasts. This one is also available at Tales from
the Corners dot com, where you can look up TFTC
with Bob niebel n E B E L wherever you
(00:43):
get those podcasts. So I really hope you enjoy this
happy new year. Can't believe it's twenty twenty five. Have
a good one and I'll talk to you on the
other side.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Of this thing.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Thanks for joining me. It's so great to see you again.
I think this might be the fourth time on my podcast,
My Corner of the World here, so it's just great
to see you back. And you are out now with
your forty fifth album.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I know it's crazy isn't it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah, you got some great origins with this album because
you just shelled it for a bit, you know, the
pandemic had happened, and it was this little collection of
gems and put them up on the shelf and unearthed
and got together with people over zoom. Tell us about
the origins of getting this together.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Well, as you and your listeners know, I am a
charter member of Overachievers Anonymous, cranking out forty five albums
in a fifty two year career. I was on a
tour in Australia in February and the first half of
March of twenty twenty, and I arrived back in the
(01:58):
United States on March sixteenth, twenty twenty, to a very
different country than I had left, a very different world,
and I had planned on recording a new album, had
no name, not even a working name for it, but
a bunch of songs that I'd accumulated. And I came
back and I realized, oh, well, this isn't going to
(02:21):
happen anytime soon. And I'd already booked studio time, I
had the musicians hired, and so I said, well, we'll
just put this on the shelf and I'm sure in
a couple of months when this is over, we'll be
able to complete this. And as you well know, that
wasn't the case. And as you also know, I kind
(02:42):
of hit a creative stride during the pandemic and put
out three albums. Well wrote four albums, actually three by myself.
The first one Cavin Fever, I just you know, just
me in an instrument in the next to my trustee
(03:03):
studio band, and I figured out, along with our engineer,
how to record an album remotely that sounded like we
were all in the same room and the magician was
really the engineer in that case. And I'd also been
discovered that Zoom was a great way to do co writing.
(03:26):
I mean, who knew about zoom before the pandemic. And
one of the people I started writing with early I
was Tom Paxton. So last year when we talked, that
was the new album. And in fact, you know, spoiler alert,
we're going in the studio in March to do yet
(03:46):
a second mccutch and Packson album. But when I was
done with the Packson album, I thought, well, I need
to take this these songs down and finally put out
this album. And I looked at the collection of stuff,
and some of them passed muster, and some of them
I felt, well, this isn't as good as the kind
(04:09):
of writing I've been doing since I came back from Australia.
And there was also a bunch of songs that I
have been writing with other people. I write with about
five or six different people a week. Wow. Wow, well,
and it's all I mean. You know, you know at
(04:29):
the beginning of an hour that you're going to have
something either finished or pretty close to finished, or sometimes,
I mean the worst of times is when we have
a partial thing and I'll say to one of my
co writers, Okay, you take it and go mess with this.
I'll go mess with this and next week we'll see
(04:51):
what we come up with and and sort of do
a mashup. So there were a bunch of songs, way
more songs then I picked that I thought, oh, I
would love to get this this song out there right now.
And they included a song, the title cut, that I
(05:13):
wrote with my dear friend Karen Newcomer, and it's about
walking the community Santiago, which is something I'm going to
be doing in May, and I can't imagine there won't
be a whole bunch of Storks come from that experience.
And then I've been writing with a wonderful young writer,
Trent Wagler, who is the front man for a great
(05:36):
band called the Steel Wheels out of the Nandeau Valley.
And Zoe Moulford and I have been writing for a
long time and she is an American ex pat living
in Manchester, England, and we have at least an album mote,
but I think they are wonderful songs that we could
(05:56):
do together, so I chose one of hers. And it
also was an opperportunity to do to because we've got
this remote thing going now in recording to sing with
some of my favorite singers. Carrie joined me on the
title cut Field of Stars. And then I have known
the amazing bluegrass singer Claire Lynch from her days in
(06:21):
the Front Porch Band when she lived in Alabama, and
we would show up at all here's the match I'm digressing.
I would have a festival, Yeah, Kansas festival I go
to every year in Winfield, Kansas. Been going there for
forty years and I was backstage and this is early
(06:44):
in Alison Krause's career, and I have known Alison since
she was a teenager playing in jam sessions on the
midway there and she is all of a sudden starting
to get some traction and she and I are sitting backstage.
I'm about to go on. She has just been on,
and Claire Lynch walks in. And I had seen Claire
(07:04):
in a couple of decades, and I went over and
I hugged her neck and started talking as though Claire
and Alison knew one another. And I said, you all
have met you and they both said no, And I said, ooh,
I want to have put on my gravestone. That I
introduced Alison Krauss and Claire Lynch and they sang together
(07:28):
the rest of the weekend at the festival. It was heavenly.
So Claire Lynch is long and a friend, so she
I invited her to do a duet. And then there's
a wonderful group of young a cappella singers called Windborne.
Yes loved their stuff, and we will get together at
festivals as you do, and I'll say, hey, come up
(07:50):
and sing the song with me. And so when the
album closed, her a song that I wrote as a
table grace for my songwriting camps. I asked them to
join me, and so it was. It was a treat.
You know, I kind of indulged myself in this album
because it's been waiting so long.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, and it really shows in that result. And it's
just an amazing group. Just the the harmonies, the acapella,
it's just it's really amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yeah, you could tell that they put their ten thousand
hours in a practice and really got it perfect. That's just,
you know, they make it look easy, but far from that.
I'm sure it's just lots and lots of practice when
you're trying to coordinate that that much vocal together well.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
And it doesn't matter whether you are a writer or
an actor or an athlete. You know, all working fut
into making something really pretty difficult look easy is the
art in it. And it's the joy in it too.
I Mean, I was, I'm vacationing at the South Carolina
(08:59):
beach with bunch of my family and I was just
goofing around making up songs about our dog with my
grandkids last night, and it occurred to me, all those
hours of practice were not about making albums. It was
not about doing concerts. It's about being able to do
exactly this make up, goofy little songs with my grandkids
(09:23):
about just things we see around in the world, and
then they'll grow up thinking, well, this is just a
natural part of life and that's the best legacy I
can ever hope for.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah, how beautifully sad it really is. You're always working.
This is beyond twenty four to seven. It's just everything.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well and you know, everybody a Patriots, who are you
know I went to school with, or I grew up with,
they're all retired now and they'll say when are you
going to retire? And I just think, I don't even
know what that means, because this is just something that
happens all the time. And certainly, well, my friend Tom Packson,
(10:02):
for instance, just retired from the road. He had a
couple of health issues and he's eighty seven years old.
You know he's punched his clock.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
But he's still writing and still writing as great and
better than ever. And you just think, Wow, what a
gift to be able to have a creative life your
whole life.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Oh yeah, yeah. And just because you're retired from the road,
I mean, the mind is still working and that's good
for the mind. It's getting constant exercise. So yeah, cheers
to Tom Paxton for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well, I mean he's just entering the same kind of
world that we had during the pandemic. You know, Yeah,
we're not you know, we're not going to airports, we're
not going to hotels, and we're not missing it. Really.
I love playing. But I'll tell you as soon as
they perfect astro projection, I will I will turn in
(10:57):
my Delta Diamond status in a heartbeat. Yeah, okay, let's
go to Seattle see in a few hours. Honey.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Yeah. It's great for the fans, they benefit. But yeah,
the traveling and well, it's great to be able to
see some sights and say I've been all over the world.
What a slap. Huh. It's just to take that equipment
with you and they plugging in and setting up and
all of that. It's got to be really tough.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well, you know, I'm having a new lightweight hammer Dulcimer
flight case built right now. And I was talking to
my roadie the other day, who just a year younger
than I am. We've been together for thirty five thirty
six years, and I said, well, I think the new
Dulcimer case is going to be ready for for this tour.
I have a tour coming from California in a couple
(11:49):
of weeks and he's and I said, but I'll believe
it when I see it, And he said, no, you'll
believe it when I lift it.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
I was thinking of the dulcimer. It's like, oh, how
do you travel with that thing?
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh my god, it's it's it's in a very heavy
flight case from from Georgia. Case company, great polical business.
But I'm ready for It's funny. I was at a
festival this last summer up in New York and a
fellow hammer dulpimer player was there and he looked at
me and he said, this hammer dulcimer is twice as
(12:24):
heavy as it used to be. M it was exactly
the same one.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Gosh wow, it's just just thinking about how you have
to check things on and like what we were just
talking about Peter Riaro, who is uh we're all hoping
and praying.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
For hard Yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
They lost the ADULTA Losses beloved guitar. I think it
turned up years later.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Well, yeah, we all have those stories. Tom Pakson, in fact,
wrote a song called thank You Republic Airlines breaking the
neck and my guitar, and I'm sure that song is
the reason Republic Airlines went under. But Peter Yarrol, Yeah,
Peter showed up at a concert I was doing in
(13:11):
New York and I saw him in the audience, and
first of all, you were so honored when a fellow
musician comes to one of your shows. And I can
usually tell if there are fellow musicians there because after
the first few songs, they'll be up pacing in the
back because they're just not used to sitting down and
(13:32):
listening to somebody else playing music. They're in a concert hall.
They're supposed to be working. And I saw Peter and
I said, I remember the day I discovered folk music. Yeah,
mother made me sit down. I was eleven years old.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in nineteen sixty three, and
she made me sit down with her, this former social
(13:54):
worker turned mother and watched the March on Washington and
it was well, it was an eye opening and a
mind opening and a heart opening experience for everyone. But
as a little eleven year old kid, you know, here
was the biggest gathering in US history up to that point,
(14:18):
and there were was preaching like I never heard in
Sunday at my church. And then there was all this music,
everything from Mahalia Jackson to Marian Anderson. And then there
was folk music and I had never heard of folk music.
And there was Bob Dylan and jump By Gas and
Odetta and then out came Peter Palm and Mary Yeah.
(14:40):
I remember I was just riffing at this show because
I knew Peter was in the audience, and I said,
and then these two guys in goateees came out, and
I've always thought goateees looked sinister, but there was this
nice Nordic looking girl. She could have been from Wisconsin,
so I figured she was okay. And they sang the
(15:02):
Segur and Lee Hey song If I had a hammer,
and I don't remember as much they're singing of it
as I remember the the cameras panning the audience and
everybody was singing yeah. And it was clear to me
(15:22):
from this whole event that that this was not about
self aggrandizeman. This was about being involved in something that
was bigger than yourself, and it was about participation. And
it was so different from the music I was hearing
on the radio, whether it be you know, Chuck Berry,
or the Beatles or Elvis. It was it was all
(15:45):
about them, yeah, and this was all about us, and
I just remember thinking I want to be a part
of that. And I I looked at in the audience
who came up and joined me for a few songs
after this, I said, and you've ruined my life. Thank
(16:07):
you so much for ruining my life. And you know,
everybody laughed. But yeah, Peter, Peter talk about keeping a
creative life and keeping a life that has some meaning
beyond yourself. Peter's done that better than most.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So oh yeah, yeah. He was just so accessible and
I I kind of linked that with President Carter, who
was just very accessible to the people and just didn't
put himself above everybody else. He was. He knew how
to converse and he was interested in what anybody had
to say to them. I interviewed Peter years ago for
an article before he was going on stage at Chastain
(16:44):
and Chestain Parks Amphitheater, and he's just you know, it
was amazing. He was just you know, blends into the
room very well, just like Jimmy Carter did, just like
didn't expect everybody like stand up and stand it attention,
just you know, one of the common people. He never
lost sight of that.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well. And Jimmy was the first president and certainly the
first presidential candidate that had lots of music as a
part of his campaign. I mean it was it was
nineteen seventy six, you know, and all of a sudden,
here's the Alman Brothers exact, and so many other musicians
(17:26):
who are playing at his rallies, and you just think, well,
this is completely different, and this is totally fun. And
imagine four years of something like this, and there was
that sense of approachability. And he's a peanut farmer from
planes for heaven's sake, ye, and such a different governor
(17:51):
for Georgia in his time than we had seen prior
to that. Oh yeah, and you just thought, this is
a tide turning, uh kind of person. And and of course,
when you look at other presidents, many of whom are
just charging a whole lot of money to do speeches,
(18:12):
you got Jimmy and Rosalind out there building houses and
monitoring elections and promoting human rights. And I mean it's
a model for how to be a consequential and open
hearted post presidential persona. I mean, holy, holy literation Batman
(18:34):
post presidential persona yikes.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Oh absolutely, and back Bob. What an inspiration. And no,
you don't have to be the president. You don't have
to do that. You could be regular citizen whatever and
get out there and make change.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Yeah right, yeah, he made that and he taught Sunday school,
you know. Yeah, he just he showed it up. Yeah,
he wasn't behind a wall. He was just I mean
the fact that he that people just called it Jimmy.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Uh you know that you just have to say that
name in Georgia and everybody knows who you're talking about.
It wasn't mister president as you hear others, It's Jimmy,
you know.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Yeah, incredibly man. Yeah, yeah, we should all hope to
be one hundred. Gosh, what if.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
You're gonna if you're gonna, if you're gonna live to
be a hundred, let's hope you're able to fill your
life with with dignity and generosity and and the kind
of living out of faith that you don't see enough
these days.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Mmmm. Very very very very true. So you flash forward
here a forty fifth album. You have a song called
the Hammer, which is inspired by Georgia as well, and
what a story there is behind that.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
And you know I wrote it to day Henry Aaron died. Yeah,
And you know, when I moved to Georgia going on
twenty years ago, now I'd grown up in Wisconsin and
I grew up with I mean, Henry Aaron was a
part of my consciousness from the time I had consciousness.
(20:26):
He was a big He started with the Milwaukee Braves.
We actually started with the Indianapolis Clowns, and then he
went to the Eau Claire Braves and then from there
in nineteen fifty four, and the Braves had only come
to Milwaukee in nineteen fifty three, and this was a
time and his autobiography is called I Had a Hammer,
(20:49):
So you know, he basically picked the title of the
song for me. And this was a time when they
hadn't figured out that they were going to have a
major league team, so they you could bring your own
beer into the stadiums, and the Twins weren't in Minnesota yet,
so the Braves were the team from Minnesota and the
Dakota's and it was right in the Railyards. County Stadium
(21:10):
was right in the Railyards and people would take the
train the freight train from the Drakotas and come and
take their cases of beer in. And Henry said it
was the happiest year of his major league career. He
was a rookie. He was in the place that treated
him well, and they said they were so happy to
(21:31):
have the team that they would they would cheer if
someone made a good effort, even if they didn't catch
the ball. You know. So when I moved to Atlanta,
the three things that I really loved when I first
came was, after thirty five years of connecting flights, direct
flights everywhere, I was never going to be standing in
(21:53):
the in the Baggers playing area hoping that my instruments
made that type connection. The Symphony. I'd never lived in
the town with a professor symphony, and I loved and
continue to love and support the ASO. And then I'd
never lived in a town with a major league team
(22:15):
of any level. The closest when I was when I
lived in Charlottesville, I would go see the Richmond Braves,
the Triple A team at that time, our Atlanta Braves.
And I remember the first time I ever went into
Symphony Hall, there was a world debut because Robert Spano
(22:35):
was great about bringing young up and coming composers in
and doing world debuts of a baseball symphony in three movements,
one movement dedicated to Jackie Robinson, one Henry Aaron, and
one for Dave Parker. And all your baseball fans are.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Going, huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I figured it as well, well, guy must be from Pittsburgh,
and it turns out he was. He was a big
day Parker fan. And so at the end of the performance,
the composer came out and everybody clapped, and then he
motioned to the audience and a spotlight shown two rows
(23:17):
in front of me, and there was Henry Aaron. I
was fifty four years old at the time, and I
burst into tears. I had, you know, here was someone
who meant more to me than I understood. And I
was and you know, Henry was like Jimmy, Yeah, just
(23:37):
be there. He was like, he was doing things, he
was appearing at different events. So I saw him many
times since then, which only increased my appreciation and my
admiration for the fellow. So when when he died, I
was just it's my particular kind of catharsis, It's what
(23:59):
I do. And I wrote the song and I had
to get all baseball geeky in the last in the
last verse, imagining, you know, God figuring out the lineup
for the team, which undoubtedly had to be called the
Angels and put all these different Hall of famers at
(24:22):
different positions, and Henry starting in to write on his
first day there. You know he's a rookie.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly beautiful song. He You mentioned about
the hate mail, hate mail for a baseball player to
me that when I first heard of that, I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me. People are just off
the charts.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Well this and this was nineteen seventy four, it's a
long time from nineteen forty seven. Yeah, Well, Jackie Robinson
broke the color barrier, but you saw how how that
was still the case, and people want a white man
to be the the Well, I remember that, you know.
The first year that I was that I had Brave
(25:12):
season tickets. I invited fourteen of my friends on my
birthday to come to a Braves game and they were
playing the Giants, and I said, okay, when Barry Bonds
comes up to bat, I will give you a free
ticket to this game if you will join me. Standing
up and turning your back because we know who, we
(25:32):
know who the real home run champion is.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
So yeah, I mean basically, you know, there's so few
are from the Atlanta metro area because it's a newer
kind of town. Yeah, it's just who you came from Wisconsin,
came from Ohio, and there's just it's a real mixture.
And now as we're moving forward so many years later,
how diverse the Atlanta metro has become.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, it's one thing I love about it.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Yeah, I mean I think it really excelled after the Olympics.
But we know all those legends who got the Olympics
here and it just exploded after that, right right, incredible,
very inspirational. You got a lot of other historical ideas
woven into the new album and you have a track
about German Jewish refugees. How did that all come up?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, the story of the MS Saint Louis is known
to most of my Jewish friends and is almost completely
unknown to everyone else. The MS Saint Louis was a
German ship out of out of Hamburg that in nineteen
thirty nine sought to bring nine hundred Jewish refugees, women, men, children,
(26:43):
entire families from Germany at the beginning of World War Two,
when it was apparent that these people were destined for
the Final Solution, as they so coldly called it, and
it sailed across the Atlantic, and its first stop was Cuba,
and they were turned away. From Cuba, they went to Canada.
(27:06):
Canada turned them away, and then they came to the
United States as the last and final stop, and they
were turned away, and so they went back to Germany.
And I often look to history when I'm trying to
give some perspective to contemporary issues, and so that by
(27:30):
the time people hear the story of returning away of
this group of people in peril for their lives, if you,
you know, dare to say, well, look around, yeah, there's
a situation not completely dissimilar is going on right now.
(27:53):
And one of the things that I have been really
trying to do for decades now is address the kind
of music that first attracted me. I mean, you know,
here was an eleven year old kid hearing folk music
that was connected to the civil rights movement. This was
(28:14):
the grand social movement of the day. How do you
deal with social and political issues and give it new insight?
You know I don't because basically, why should anybody care
what I think. I'm just a guy with a banjo
(28:36):
and a guitar. But give us a new idea, and
how often does that happen? So it's one of the
it's one of the trickiest things and one of the
most satisfying things when I think that maybe I've come
close to doing that. And am I says, was one
way of saying, do we learn things from history or
(28:59):
are redoomed to repeat it again and again? And of
course we live in a time where everybody thinks everything
is happening for the very first time, and there has
never been income inequality before, and there has never been
you know, racism before, and there's never been immigration issues before,
whereas almost every one of us who comes from another
(29:21):
ancestors came from another part of the world, dealt with
that in our own way in the course of our
family history. So anyway, the Emma Saint Louis, Yeah, it's
a story working on. The other one, of course, that
has an Atlanta connection is the one Peter Norman.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yes, yes, that's a number story.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
I was a kid who discovered quite by accident at
age fourteen, my freshman year of high school that I
was a pretty decent middle and long distance runner. So
I was on the cross country team, which is like
the bottom rung of high school athletic coolness. I mean,
the mom even doesn't come to cross countries. But I was.
(30:07):
But by the time the track, you know, I was
two years into understanding. I knew the metrics. I knew
what a good time was, I knew what a good
distance was, I knew what a good height was. And
along come the Olympics, So I'm invested in this in
nineteen sixty eight. And in sixty eight it was you know,
(30:27):
Bob Beeman breaking that long jump record by two feet.
I mean, that's just like unbelievable. And then of course
there was Tommy Smith and John Carlos on the on
the you know, the awards stand following the two hundred
meter finals, and in October of twenty eighteen, because the
(30:49):
Olympic the Summer Olympic Games were actually in October of
nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
That, yeah, good time, I have it a little cooler.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
And on the front page of the AJAC is this photograph,
probably the most iconic sports photograph of our lifetime, of
Tommy Smith and John Carlos with their fist range and
it was the fiftieth anniversary of that event. And in
(31:19):
the story it said, oh, you know Tommy Smith lives
in Stone Mountain, where I live. And I thought, oh, well,
that's the connection. And embarrassingly, for the first time, I noticed,
wait a minute, there's a third guy here. Yeah, and
I've never noticed it before. And I wonder who this
(31:41):
person is. And you know, it sounds like a John
mccutchins song, and who better to write it? So I
did a bunch of research and I thought it was
this Australian guy who supported Smith and Carlos. In fact,
in the photograph they are barefoot and they have a
fist raised the black glove on it. And in the
(32:03):
awards in the locker room before the awards ceremony, Carlos
and Smith talked to talk to Norman and say this
is what we're going to do, and he said, well,
I support you, but raising the fist is kind of
a black thing. How about if I just put your
Olympians for Human Rights badge on my jacket and I
will stand there and support you, and in the press afterwards,
(32:25):
I will support you and Carlos's damn, I forgot my gloves,
and it was Peter Norman who said, well, one of
you put to share the pair of gloves. So if
you notice on the in the photograph, one is raising
a right hand and one is raising a left hand.
And they maintained a relationship for the rest of their lives.
(32:49):
Carlos and Smith were paul bearers at Peter Norman's funeral
and delivered eulogies. And even though he had the fastest
qualifying time of the seventy two Olympics, Peter Norman was
not allowed to be on the Australian team, and the
(33:09):
US team flew Norman and his wife as guests to
Munich and fettered them as heroes. Bob. They ranted to
Bob Moses and Peter Norman said, oh, mister Moses, I'm
a huge fan of yours, and Moses said, no, we
are all fans of yours. So I figured the guy
(33:32):
deserved a song.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Oh beautiful. Yeah, I love the line in the battle
between right and wrong. There is no second place. It's
just the yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Every time you get every once in a while, you
just get a gift.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's just like yeah, you feel it. Oh,
it doesn't really right itself, but you know you obviously
have composed that, but it's just yeah, it's well.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Actually, one of the things I learned during the during
the pandemic, and that one was written before the pandemic.
That was one of the original pieces intended in twenty twenty.
But one of the things I really learned to do
and which really prompted the kind of you know, tsunami
(34:16):
of songs that have happened since I returned from Australia
in twenty twenty, was that notion of really being able
to surrender. You know, I do meditation every day, and
that's there's a practice in which it doesn't work at
all unless you surrender. You know, faith is like that,
(34:38):
and songwriting is not unlike that either. I mean there
are many times when Paxon and I will have finished
a sign and we'll look back at it and and
one of us will say, you know, we're we're not
this good. You know, we had to you know, we
had to let go. But yeah, you got to do
(35:02):
the work, and you got to prep the ground and
plant the seeds, right, But the growing happens whether you're
there or not.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
So true. It's so true. I also speaking about religion
and things like that, takun Olam has a very special maning.
Healed the world as people might out there might not know.
That's just it. It's a it's a really wonderful track
mentioning Rabbi hash Hole and oh yeah, a concept that
you know many of us have grown up with.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It's a I first learned about takun Olam when I
did an appearance with Michael Lerner many days ago, who
had the magazine to Kuhnat. I was when I did
the Pete Seeger album. I did a you know, a
fun kickstarter thing in one of the premiums. Was writing
(35:59):
a song and a Jewish couple was celebrating their fiftieth
anniversary and they were saying, well, taquin Alam is very
important to us and to our children, to our parents,
to our entire community. And I said, well, I've heard
the term, but talk to me about it. So I've
(36:19):
been carrying it around for a while, and especially in
these times when there is this shocking and alarming rise
in anti Semitism, I thought it was really critical for
a non Jew to talk to talk about this and
(36:43):
honor it. I hope I honored it and just bring
it out there so that people you know who, as
I did, said, well, tell me more about this, because
in three minutes you can't explain something as ancient and
as important as to Kutaman. But thank you. I'm I'm
(37:06):
glad it means something to you.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
What a connection. Peter and I had talked about that
years ago. And I remember Rabbi Learner quite well. I
think he passed now terribly long ago out of San Francisco.
I believe it's where he was.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, and Rabbi Heschel, you know, he was that that
wild haired, white bearded guy often marching next to Martin
Luther King. And it's from him that I have found
that I've got that beautiful term praying with my feet
mm hm, which I used in a number of songs
(37:42):
just because I think it's so it's worth repeating it
totally is. Yeah, I prayed in synagogue today here in
the street. You know, you bring it, you bring it
out and wear it and walk around with it. That's
that's when faith comes alive. I mean it's again Jimmy Carter, Yeah,
(38:07):
he wasn't doing it for the photographers.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Exactly, very down to Earth, very real and keeping it real.
Your title track is beautiful as well. You have a
wonderful duet on that. How did you come to No, Carrie,
it's just uh.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
You, I had. You know, the folk music world is
a small world, and especially your survivor as we both are,
we've somehow managed to deal with, you know, the wackiness
that is demanded if you're going to live your life
being everybody else's free time. So we have known of
(38:49):
one another, We've run into one another on the road,
We've done several shows together, and and I really love
her attention to writing songs out of a spiritual foundation,
which nobody else that I write that I write with does.
A few people performers who are able to talk about
(39:09):
issues of faith and spirituality without making it feel creepy
or that you're somehow going to be proselytized to. So
she and I started writing. She was the second person
I started writing with, and the second album that I
did during the pandemic was called bucket List, and we
(39:31):
swapped out albums that we had been working on, and
in the next writing sessions, she said, you know, it
start made me start thinking about my bucket list. And
one of the things on my bucket list is walking
the Camino de Santiago, which, for your listeners, is a
thousand year old five hundred miles. Well, there are actually
many caminos, but the main one, the ancient one, is
(39:52):
the Way of called the French Way, starts in the
Pyrenees of southwestern France, and all of the caminos end
up in Santiago de Compostella, which is in the northwest
part of Spain. And everybody you know, from Popes to
Kings to Saint Francis, have walked this. And I said,
(40:19):
me too. My wife has been talking about doing the
Camino for as long as I've known her, so we
started reading about it and watching movies. Martin Sheen had
a movie, has a movie called The Way about him
about his character walks the Camino, and the terminus point,
(40:41):
of course, is Santiago Compostella, where purportedly the bones of
the Apostle James are interred, and Santiago, of course means
Saint James and Compostella translates to field of stars. And
Carrie said, well, I can't wait for you to take
(41:02):
your comino so we can write about it. I said,
kerry or songwriter. We'll make up crap all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, you don't have to be accurate.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
And so we decided to write about four very different
people walking the Camuino for four very different reasons. And
I said, and Carrie Compostella, field of Stars. Come on,
we got to write a called Field of Stars. It's
just too beautiful to leave out there all on his own,
and it's really one of my favorite songs on the
(41:31):
On the recording, I invited Carrie to sing the second
verse because it's obviously had to be sung by a woman,
but and our voices work really well together and it
was fun to do it. And it's a Field of
Stars is just one of those songs that it's hard
(41:55):
to explain, but it's just really I love singing it.
It's to tell such an interesting story for different stories
that are absolutely connected by the end, and I'm just
thrilled to get out. I thought about thought about holding
it for the album that's inevitably going to be coming
(42:16):
out of my own camino, starting dis Bay, but I
just wanted to get it out there. It was it
was a selfish pleasure.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, but that's the title track, that's your your theme
and I really enjoyed that cover. How did you come
up with that for the album? It's very, very beautiful photography.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
There's a there's a woman named Maureen Bryer who has
done all my album artwork for many years, and I
love working with her. I love what she comes up with.
And I told her the idea that I had and
sent her some stuff i'd found on the internet, this
(43:02):
sort of thing, and she came up with that image
among a dozen others, and it was I always immediately
drawn to that, and I said, that's that's absolutely it,
and she said, oh, I hoped you'd picked that one.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Good. Good. Yeah, they're very eye catching. Of course the
album covers as well. I just like bucket List and
all these others. It's just it really does it. It's
an eye catcher, for sure. So you're taking it out
on the road, I am ready.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I am. I Every January for over forty years now,
I have done a tour out in California and it's
really fun. It's really easy. It's almost Pavlovian. Now. You
know people out in California, so, oh it's January, mccauch,
it must be coming, and I'm visiting a lot of
(43:51):
these places for the you know, thirtieth or fortieth time,
and it's really a wonderful commune unity that has built
up around these and I'm really eager to take this
out there. I should say that I originally was going
to do this tour with Paxton, and it was booked
and advertised as one with Tom. And then Tom had
(44:14):
a couple of on his last couple of little weekend
trips he took, he was hospitalized at the end of
each one. He's recovered, but at eighty seven, he said,
he finally decided to listen to his doctor, his daughters,
and his body and say I think I'm done. Yeah. Yeah,
(44:37):
So I regret that because I love Tom, we love
being together. I love performing with him, and I love
the songs we get to perform together. But we can't
do everything that we hope for in this life. So
I got to go out there on my own again.
I've done it.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Yeah, and you go all from San Diego to Sanfra
Cisco is at the whole season.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm not doing Southern California this time. I used to
do oh geez, years ago. I would be out for
almost a month and I would do the northwest, Northern California,
which has a countless places you can play, and Southern
California as well, And these days I'm just doing Northern
California and I'll be out there for ten days, playing
(45:23):
almost every day. And I do that because I'm old
and cranky, and I like being home and I hate
being away.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, and no place like home. And Atie's Attic, I
always promote them and just the well and.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
I'll be there doing my annual Eddi's Attic CD release
party in the first weekend of January, and then up
to the Kratic Center up in cherry Log, which is
my wife and I have a cabin up in cherry Log.
And the Crank Center was founded by my old friend,
(45:59):
Reverend Dcratic, who taught at Candler for many years. He
is probably the most revered Homalist in the Protestant world,
and he started the can the Cradit Spender. So I
go up there and do a little celebration of that
and him in his life. Every year. That's my That's
(46:20):
kind of my hometime weekend, my hometown in the Atlanta
area and my hometown up in.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
North Struggle, and a good time to do it. When
the weather finally cools off, hopefully not too cold. We're
supposed to be remember Wisconsin. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's
always in your blood anyway. I mean I kind of
have that from being in Ohio, but I've been here
many decades.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, driving in the snow
is like it's in my dna.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
But I know I'm surrounded by people who have no idea.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Yeah, it was always that. I was like, no, I
don't want to go anywhere. I don't trust anybody else
out there. They're all going to just slide into me.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
It's like, you know, and snow m again and proved that.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I was telling the story how
I basically stayed at Wark because I heard about what
happened here in nineteen eighty two. I was like, the
same thing's going to happen, and sure enough, I was right.
And I'm so glad I didn't go out there. I
just stayed at work.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
Oh well, I had taken my wife to the to
the airport and she was on she had to go
to a speaking at a conference, and she was on
the last flight out before the airport closed down and
the skycats out there know me really well. And so
I'm sitting around chatting with these guys because for a change,
(47:36):
I'm not going anywhere. I'm putting my wife on a
plane and we're and there's nobody coming. So one of
them says, well, I guess I better go home because
I have to drive home in the midst of all
these idiots. And I thought, yeah, oh right, I'm not
worried about getting home myself. I'm worried about being on
the road with a whole bunch of people who don't
know how to drive in the snow. So I made
(47:58):
it home, though I drove all back roads, a little
side streets. But yeah, going to California in January is
you know, I've never had a gig snowed out good. Yeah,
but I look forward to it. You know, I'm performing.
The pandemic cured me of having to run the same
kind of program I did when I was twenty five,
(48:21):
so I'm performing about half as much as I do
as I used to, which makes it special. I'm you know,
I've got so many friends out on the road now
that I'm going to a lot of places I've gone
for many years, so it's it's it's nice to get
out there and you know, get limber again and share
a bunch of new songs with people.
Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yeah, there's a real joy in that as well, I'm sure.
But you know, it's okay to slow down, but you're
still doing it. I mean, Bruce Springsteen even cut some
minutes out of his five hour long shows or whatever
sounds like to somebody. Yeah, you do have to definitely
be some common sense there as well. So the new album,
it's available on CD. Do you have vinyl as well?
Speaker 2 (49:06):
And I do not have vinyl unfortunately, but it's it's
available for a digital download and all the usual places.
But what's interesting about from my website, which is folkmusic
dot com, believe it or not, is that, you know,
I hate MP three's.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, compression, it's just.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
MP three's is one of the reasons that vinyl is
so popular again today because you know, our kids grew
up with MP threes and then all of a sudden
they pull out a vinyl and they go and they're
hearing full spectrum audio and analogue and they go, oh,
so this is what music is opposed to soundline. So
(49:50):
I've always thought, you know, the convenience of MP three's
is that they're smaller, they're compressed, oh yeah, like crazy,
and they take up less space on your listening device.
But why why go to the bother of going to
one of the best studios in the world, working with
one of the best engineers in the world, and then
(50:13):
squashing down the sounds so it sounds crappy. So I
offer downloads of MP three's if you want, or wave files,
which is the full spectrum model, so that you can
actually listen to it as we intended.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
Yeah, that's the closest thing because you could take it
with you. That's the great thing. You could take it
with you. It's convenient obviously, Vinyl not so. But vinyl
is beautiful with all the artwork and everything.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Oh yeah, the art work, you know, it's the one
and again for people who well I was talking with
someone just last night, the whole concept.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Of the album, Yeah, I know, that's that.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
That was an art that was so different, different world.
I mean remember the days when you know, we would
have sessions of sequencing, yes, because you want to have
the last song on the first side be something that
made you want to turn the album over and listen
to the second side, because you actually had to exert
(51:18):
some energy, imagine, but also the way that you could
tuck little gems in an album, stuff you knew was
never going to get any airplay, but that you loved
and you wanted to share with people. And everybody out
there of an age has a song that they really
loved that they discovered very deep in some track on
(51:41):
an album that was never going to be on the radio.
It was never going to be covered, but it's your
favorite song from the album. And my grandkids, you know,
their mother said, well, we're going to sit down and
listen to the entire album and the gun what were
on a playlist? We have to listen to the same
person sing all these songs. Oh it's Bob, be sure,
we'll do that. But yeah, the whole notion that this
(52:06):
is this is a collection of songs and hopefully tells
a story that's grated in the sum of its parts.
And it's always the way of it approached albums, And
you know, sometimes it's been successful and sometimes not as much.
But you know, if I struck out seven times out
of ten in the major leagues, I'd be a shoe
(52:28):
in for the Hall of fame, so you have you
have to have some kind of perspective that not everybody's
going to get what you're trying to do is say,
but somewhere there's going to be somebody who says, oh, yeah,
I see, I see, I see the story that's going
on here.
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Beautiful. Very well said. Well, thanks for dropping by. As always,
I think.
Speaker 2 (52:53):
That's always great to talk to you. I look forward
to to doing it in person again sometimes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Well yeah, yeah, well we did a video package on
you right, which is now on my YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
Oh, I have to go back and looking. Yeah, my
young I looked back then.
Speaker 1 (53:15):
I'm losing track when we did that.
Speaker 2 (53:17):
It was from the Pete album Yeah, been like twenty
eighteen or early nineteen something. Thanks for all you do, Bob,
and thanks for making time to include this old folks
singer in your in your travels.
Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah, you had started this with me on this journey.
I started this over four years ago now, and uh,
I enjoy it. I enjoyed It's it's a lot of
fun and I love hearing about how the uh the
sauce has made the secret to the sauce. So it's
it's always a lot of fun and I hope to
see you at ADDIE's take Care. Happy New Year, Bye
bye bye. That was a lot of fun. And John
(53:55):
goes back now a couple of years with me so
but he's been around in four five albums is quite
an accomplishment. Thanks for joining me. I hope to have
a lot more out here in twenty twenty five. Have
a great, happy, healthy New Year and many years to
come as well. I'm hoping and praying that for myself
as well. If the folks out there know what I mean,
(54:17):
a little bit of a inside information there. AnyWho, hope
you have a greade twenty twenty five. Thank you,
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