An Interview with Tom Paxton

In a career spanning more than half a century, GRAMMY®-winning folk legend Tom Paxton has composed a veritable goldmine of American music. Instilled with an activist’s passion and a storyteller’s finesse, his songs—which have been covered by the likes of Bob Dylan, Judy Collins, and Willie Nelson—resonate with melodies as endearing as nursery rhymes and narratives affirming an intimate conscience.

With his latest album, Boat in the Water, Paxton, 79, continues to articulate his craft in such inimitably empathetic ways.

Can you sense how your songwriting has evolved over the years?

Well, that’s an interesting question. I’ve always likened myself to a farmer with a field, and each year he plants a crop in that field and with luck harvests it in the fall. In my case, I plant different crops but it’s in the same field and it’s the same farmer. So I don’t find that I write different songs from the ones I wrote at the age of twenty-five, but I hope that now and then I write a song that I was not capable of writing at the age of twenty-five. But they’re not that different. They’re still the same sound to them, people tell me.

The writer is the last one to be able to identify his own songs, but they tell me that a song can be recognized as being likely from me. I accept that’s true because I can certainly identify a song as probably written by Dylan or probably written by Leonard Cohen. There’s a style, there’s a sense to it. So, I don’t think I write differently—it’s the same brain, the same right hand—but perhaps there might be a depth to the songs now that there wasn’t then. I don’t know. I certainly don’t try to write differently than I wrote [back then]. I don’t know what that would sound like.

When you’re writing a song, do you have any audience in mind?

Oh, sure. Without being able to put a face to it, it’s the same group of people I’ve sung to for fifty-six years. They’re good people and we see a lot of things through the same lenses, and it’s really primarily for myself as a singer that I write the songs. But it’s also [for] the people that have been with me for years and years and years that I write. If not for them I might just keep it to myself and say, “I don’t have to write it. I already know that.” It is for the people who come to my shows that I write the songs.

Is it disillusioning if the audience doesn’t quote, unquote “get it”?

No, it does not. I feel like I’m responsible for what I do and what I release and I’m not responsible for how it’s received or poorly received. And so, I don’t worry about that. I just worry about getting it right for myself, to make sure it’s clear and musical and I hope entertaining, but at least engrossing; that people know that it’s sincere, that it’s a deliberate work of art. It’s not the work of a dilettante. It’s the work of someone who’s been doing it a long time and cares very much about doing it well.

You are revisiting some of your older songs on Boat in the Water. What was the reason behind that? What did you think you could bring to them at this stage in your life that maybe you didn’t the first time around?

Well, part of it was a conversation I had with producer, Cathy Fink, who’s an old, old friend. She said, “I’d like to hear these songs again.” She’d been listening to a bunch of my old records and she said, “You know, that song ‘Life’ is a wonderful song and I’d like to hear it again. Let’s put it on here.” I said, “Sure.” And I did the same thing with “Evry Time,” [which] is a song I think I wrote in 1962. It’s certainly one of the oldest recordable songs that I have, and I’ve sung it in a lot of soundchecks and a lot of dressing rooms. So I said, “Let’s take another shot at this one.”

Did it resonate any different with you?

Oh, I love the song. To me the song is really an evocation of my early love for the songs that Burl Ives used to sing. He used to sing lots of songs that did not have a steady beat to them, a lot of the old Appalachian songs that he used to sing. It was just kind of my homage to that kind of song and I’ve always loved it. It’s just a very simple song. It only has two verses to it, but it seems like a complete song to me.

In light of some of the songs you write that are critical of certain social or political ills, how do you manage to salvage the compassion and sense of grace and beauty that comes through in some of the other songs you write?

That’s not too difficult, actually. Each song is its own message. Each song has its own parameters. I don’t bring a political sense to a personal song. I also write songs that I hope will amuse a seven-year-old child. You bring the tools to the project that the project requires. And if you’re writing a song to amuse a seven-year-old boy, you include irreverence and a sense of fun, a sense of the ridiculous. You don’t bring a sharply tuned social mind whereas, if you’re writing a song satirizing a president who is an egregious liar, you don’t bring the same vocabulary that you use with the seven-year-old boy’s song. You bring a different vocabulary, a different sensibility. They’re all different songs and I tend to take them as the ideas come to me. The idea will come to me of something ridiculous and fun and rather innocent and I’ll go ahead and write that song and hope that it finds that seven-year-old boy or girl and amuses them. If I’m satirizing the president, I’ll use a different box of tools. Each song has its own perfection that you strive for.

So, writing a song in which you would satirize the president or critique certain social ills doesn’t compromise the compassion that is required to write the other songs?

No, I never write a song that denies the other songs I write. There’s no underlying similarity. I mean, they all come from the same fella, and I’m not going to write a song that directly contradicts any other song I’ve written. There’s got to be a consistency. Even if I’m writing a funny song for kids, I’m not going to say something in that song that I don’t believe.

Is songwriting a discipline that you return to all the time? Are you always receptive to new ideas?  

Yeah, I find the ideas come pretty regularly. There’s a kind of a receptive frame of mind that I seem to be a little more able to slip into now than maybe I used to be. I know that working with [co-songwriters] Jon Vezner and Don Henry is good for me. We just finished four dates out in the West and shortly before those dates I heard a melody from Jon. I said, “Give me a tape of that.” And I turned it into a song which we put in the shows out in California and it really went down beautifully. And while we were sitting in a dressing room in Berkeley, he was doodling around on the ukulele and he struck a chord and I said, “Whoa, what was that?” He played it again, and I sang a silly little phrase that is turning into a delightful little ukulele song. I’m always on the lookout, so to speak.

Do you ever fear giving too much of yourself away in what you write?

Oh, no. No, I don’t feel that at all. I do write personally but it’s usually not as Tom Paxton. I use the first-person singular a lot because it’s more suitable for songs, I think, to be personal like that. But it’s very seldom that it’s Tom Paxton who’s being personal. It is the narrator in the song who’s sharing, but of course it’s always the writer who is easily identifiable. But I think I just kind of shrink from making Tom Paxton the subject of Tom Paxton’s song. It seems to me to be such an egotistical thing to do. I just thought of a way of putting it: I’m a ham, but I’m not a show-off.

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In Memoriam: Merle Haggard - The Lost Interview

Merle Haggard never said he was immortal. Still, the country music icon, who died this week on his 79th birthday of complications from pneumonia, knew as well as anyone that his music would endure. He’d lived not only to see so many songs he’d written be appreciated as classics, but to perceive his influence on succeeding generations of artists who, frankly, owe him everything.

In 2010, Haggard was riding especially high with a new album, I Am What I Am, his first since beating lung cancer the year before and one of the most optimistic works of his entire career. Drawing on themes of love and trust (with moments of uncertainty along the way), the album is the unsparing testimony of a man humbled by his blessings.

Calling from his Northern California ranch that year, Haggard (73 at the time) echoed much the same sense of positivity. Still, as he proved throughout the conversation—unpublished until now—discontent had by no means eluded his thoughts altogether.



This album could have gone in a completely different direction. 

You know, I’m glad you pointed that out. I hadn’t really thought about it. I haven’t written any “poor me” songs, but you’re right. It could’ve went in that direction.

A lot of artists have had health scares and their subsequent works were kind of dark.

It’s easy to fall off to that side of things, but it really don’t do no good. As bleak as it may look, coming out of lung surgery with your life and no chemo and no radiation is quite a joy if you look at it from the right perspective, I think.

In the overall themes of the album it seems you’re not only expressing love and gratitude, but also relief—relief that you’ve found this contentment.

I think that if you believe in yourself and if you believe in love and happiness, then the assessment of my life would be that I’ve come pretty close to that mark.

In a sense, you also seem like a man still learning about love. Or is this just something you’re more willing to admit now, that you still have things to learn?

Well, I think that love is something that you give. I’m not sure that love is something that you get.

Are you still learning about how to give it?

I don’t think you have time to worry about getting it. I think you have to give it and it has to be unmerited. There’s no judgment on it. There’s no saying how much you’ll give, how little you’ll give. You’ve got to just keep giving. If you ever change your attitude about that and look around and start looking for something to come back in your direction you’ll probably leave, throw your stack and start writing blues.

I’ve heard people say they’re only so many chords and, after a couple hundred years of people making music, to find something original to say lyrically as well as musically is a challenge.

Well, there’s three main chords. From there you can go anywhere, but you’ve got to come back sometime in the future to those three chords.

It’s what you do in between that distinguishes you.

I guess so. I don’t think there’s any end to it. I don’t think that there’s a time when we’ll use it all up. I think there’s just as much available… Ah, man, there’s more available than is being used. I’ve found that the melody depends on the story, and the attitude of the story. That’s where I come with the melody, in trying to present that.



As far as your songwriting is concerned, is everything you experience fair game for you as a lyricist? Do you fear giving away too much of yourself or of those you may write about?

There are songs that I write that are too profound to release. And they’re good and they’re probably hit songs, but because of better judgment I don’t release them. I write into an area that I’d be too involved with my belief and probably shouldn’t get into that area too much. Then again my belief says I should be overflowing with that.

There’s a lot of illness with a person my age. I’m 73 years old and I could tell you some sad stories. I had a friend die yesterday at five o’clock, a buddy I’ve had here the last three or four years, Sonny Langley, passed away with stomach/liver cancer yesterday. Ex-pug, had 141 professional fights, lost one fight. He fought people like Willie Pep, some of the greatest fighters of all time. He died yesterday at five o’clock. God, it’s just everywhere I look. My best friend died last May. It’s in that period in my life and to find something happy, you really grab onto it and if it’s a subject worth writing about you’d just kind of write too many songs probably.

It’s a harrowing experience to endure.

It is. And everybody has to. And everybody has to have two sides to their life. You’ve got to have this business side and go on and if you intend to succeed you probably should portray a positive attitude.

When you’re not going through positive or uplifting times, do you owe it to yourself as a songwriter to convey that?

Probably do. Probably do. And when I die there’ll be an archive of material that will come out that will be probably more personal than this album here. It may not be as happy, but it’ll be more personal. I think that’s one element of the reason why this album’s doing well is because of the personal. It gets down into the part that most people don’t talk about.

In “Bad Actor,” for instance, you convey a lot of self-consciousness. When you're in love you’re not always cocksure and confident. 

When you’re in love it’s a fight to stay afloat. It’s something you’ve got to work on every day. People are so different and people change. Life’s a bitch and then you die, really. [Laughs]

Do you approach songwriting with the feeling of, “I have something to prove,” or perhaps, “I have something to say?”

I write from all perspectives, from all urges that you might have, but I usually eliminate things that I regard as out of the realm of usability. You know what I mean? There are some things that are too sad, some things too personal, some things overbearing, that with good sense after evaluating you just discard.

What perspectives do you bring as a songwriter at 73 that you didn’t have at, say, 43? 

At 73 you bring more wisdom than arrogance, and at 43 it’s the flip-flop.

That reminds me of an interview Bob Dylan gave on 60 Minutes during which he said there were things he couldn’t do anymore as a songwriter, but that there were also things he could do that he couldn’t have done when he was younger. 

That sort of says what I said about arrogance and experience. One’s on one side when you’re 43 and it flip-flops when you’re 73. I’m a little older than he is, but I think he’s more intense about his writing than I am. He’s Bob Dylan—he’s number one. He’s very serious about his writing, I can tell you that. He’s very much to himself. He doesn’t do anything except work and write. Work and write.

As songwriters you each present your aesthetic in different ways. You write in rich, almost literal narratives and Dylan uses a lot of metaphors and obscurities.

I’m not sure there’s any paragraph to describe what he does different, but I understand what you’re saying and we both know what we’re talking about. But there may not be a way to sum him up. [Laughs]

What was the original catalyst for you to write your own lyrics as opposed to being a musician who covered other people’s songs? 

I don’t think it was any intelligent thing that I developed in my life. I think it’s a gift. I know in my conscience I can remember realizing that Johnny Mercer wrote “On The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe” and I knew that Hank Williams either stole or wrote the songs that he claimed he wrote. Over the years it’s been debatable about some of them. I feel certain that Bob Dylan has written all of his songs. Then there’s other great writers. Paul Anka comes to mind, and then Hank Cochran and Fred Rose and Tommy Dorsey. Somebody said to me, “Merle, singers come and go, but writers live forever.”

Other than your memoirs, have you ever had the desire to expand into other areas of writing like prose or poetry? 

I’ve written a lot of poetry. I’ve written some really good poetry, I think. Probably come to the surface when I’m gone. I had a little old book that I stole on the road, don’t know what happened to it, but it’d be wonderful to have around now on the website.

That you wrote in?

Yeah, I remember writing something about catching a big bass. It was all about this fight between this bass fisherman at night and he had this big bass on and he fooled him with a live waterdog. He had him hooked deep in his throat, and with one minor lunge he was gone and pulled him about half out of the boat. And it goes on like that.

Then there was a thing that I was involved in writing, this really poetic—I guess poetic’s the right word—called The Four Dogs. It was where I impersonated an Irishman. I said [in thick, Irish accent], “Hi, lassies and laddies, I’m the man in the hills with four dogs, and recently in from the old country with different speech and we make customs and all. Makes me appear strange when they see me on the mountainside with me four dogs.” That thing’s nine minutes long and each dog... One dog is Love, one dog is Hell, one dog is Hope, and one dog is Faith. Faith is blind, and he doesn’t use much Hope. Finally Love goes away and Hell is the only thing that’ll stick around. That’s kind of chilling. Hell stuck around.

That’s not one of the ones you lost, is it? 

No, I have that. It was recorded less than perfect. It’s nine minutes long and it’s a classic. It’ll come out someday. They’ll have some magic way of fixing it all.

One of my favorite songs of yours is a duet you did in the ‘80s with Ray Charles, “Little Hotel Room.”

Oh yeah. It wasn’t a hit but it was an interesting recording.

Did you record that in the same studio with him?

We were together on that, as best I remember. Things run together. I’ve been in the studio a couple times with Ray and I don’t remember whether it was when we’d done that. We might have done it at two different places and still been together a couple times in the studio. I’m not sure. Seems to me like we were together we we’d done that. We’re talking about thirty years [ago].

That song as well as your early Epic hits were when I first discovered your music as young kid. On a personal note, you’ve been my father’s favorite artist since the ‘60s, and as I grew up I learned to appreciate your music through him—and it’s been so rewarding. You’re such a wonderful talent.

Well, it’s a wonderful gift, and I just try to maintain. I have this wonderful family and I have this wonderful career, and they don’t mix very well. I have a son graduating June 4th [from high school], and I’ve got this beautiful date that they want me to play, this spa down here in Santa Barbara. They want to give us all golf games and facials, all that stuff. It’s one of the greatest spas in the world. They want me and Bennie [Haggard] to come down and play for them. I said, “No, we can’t do it. It’s his graduation.” He’s got things two days in a row. He graduates on the fourth, and on the fifth we’ve got a party for him. Then the Prairie Home Companion wants me on the fifth. They don’t want me on the eighth. They want me on the fifth. Both of them are extremely prestigious jobs that people would kill to get, and I’ve had to turn both of them down.

When you have to draw a line between the two, your kid’s going to win over another gig.

You bet. I’ll never be sorry that I did that.

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Still Swingin': An Interview with John Anderson

Country music maverick John Anderson anticipated changes in the industry long before they came to pass.

The veteran singer/songwriter recently recalled, “I told people on different boards and different committees back 20 years ago, ‘You better figure out a way to split the genres and call one of them traditional country and one of them new country or whatever, or else you’re going to run into problems.’ Of course, they wouldn’t listen to someone like me.”

Why not? Since hitting the big time with “Swingin’” in 1982, Anderson has not only forged a first-rate career (with such hits as “Seminole Wind,” “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal,” and “Straight Tequila Night”), but maintained his artistic integrity while doing it. He continues to invest that same craft and conviction throughout his latest LP, Goldmine, writing or co-writing 12 of the album’s 13 songs while, with the flirtatious “Magic Mama,” recording a Merle Haggard original.

How did you get to cut a Merle Haggard song that Merle Haggard hadn’t even cut?

Well, actually, he ended up writing it for me. I could tell you the story, or the basics of the story. He called me one day and said, “I’m writing this song and the more I write it the more it sounds like you.” He kind of chuckled, and I said, “Well, man, just finish it and I’ll do it, no questions asked.” I mean, what do you say when Merle Haggard says he’s writing a song and thinking about you? I was very flattered, to say the least. Indeed, I saw him about six months later, and I said, “Did you finish that song?” He looked at me, smiled, and pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket. It was that song, “Magic Mama,” the lyrics. He called for a guitar and played it for me. That was one of the highlights of my life, just having Merle play me that song that he’d written with me in mind. 

You wrote or co-wrote all the other songs on Goldmine, and a lot of these songs are story songs with characters and narratives.

I like those kind of things. 

As a songwriter, how do you find your way into those kind of songs?

Part of that is just writing country music, and doing it for a long, long time. To me, that was… Those songs used to be a big, big part of country music.... Things have changed, is what I’m trying to say. Actually that kind of writing — that kind of song — is virtually on the way out, I’m sad to say, because I still like it. That’s why Goldmine sounds the way it does, because I still like that kind of music. And, you know, we still have several fans that still really like it. So, indeed, when they tell me, “Well, those 17-year-old kids don’t like that. They said it sounds old.” Well, I really ain’t playing it for those 17-year-old kids. I’m playing it for the people that want to hear it, because I like it. I’m not doing it because somebody else might like it. I’m doing it because I really enjoy it, and we still have enough fans to sustain us while we do it. Right there is the answer to all the questions in the music business: Can you go out and draw a big enough crowd doing your songs to pay the bills? And yeah, after 40 years, I can say that we already did. 

Of course there are also younger generations, too, that appreciate your music.

We do have that, and again, I’m very flattered. When the young people do come out and enjoy the shows and enjoy the records, that’s always a wonderful feeling. There again, for the folks that don’t care for it or don’t like that kind of music, with a very simple apology, we don’t play anything else. 



That says something about your integrity, that you’ve remained so consistent.

Oh yeah, we have to be true to what we do because, like I say, it’s been true to me. We do pretty good out there on the road each and every year playing these old songs as well as the new ones. But there again, it’s that type of country music that’s causing us to grow in popularity instead of decline because folks know they can actually come and hear real country music when they come and hear myself with the band or even me by myself.

Considering the climate of country music today, do you still see a place where you and your music can fit in?

Well, it seems only on the classic country stations as far as radio, but as far as social media and YouTube, oh yeah, there’s many, many places where we still fit in. And like I say, we have a wonderful young crowd also. I sure don’t think anything against any of our young fans for listening to other young folks. Music changes, and it should. 

But over time you’ve found a way to combine rock and traditional country into your own voice.

Yeah, and it is what it is. It was a heartfelt thing, and we weren’t joking. It was serious. Our music was then and has been since then — pretty much my whole life — writing those songs and performing them. So, what was meant to be was meant to be. We were coming up with “Swingin’” during the same kind of time that, for instance, the Eagles were doing “Lyin’ Eyes” and such. There was a lot of people wanting to be country-rock musicians at the time. And me, I was just country, but some of our rocking stuff sounded a little bit on the edge for them. But looking back, what would you call “Swingin’” now? It sure wasn’t too rock for country. 

It’s not too rock for country now either.

Not at all. And it wasn’t back then or it wouldn’t have sold three million copies… or four, whatever. 



Speaking of the Eagles — and in light of Glenn Frey's passing earlier this year — you recorded a version of “Heartache Tonight” back in 1994.

Yes, indeed.

How did that take shape?

Of course the Eagles, a very influential American music group, and of course Glenn Frey was a big, big part of that as far as the writing and vocals. On their earlier hits he did most of the singing, and I believe he’s credited as a songwriter on just about everything. In this particular case, though, on the Common Thread project — of course I always loved the Eagles — but when I got the news that this was happening, that they wanted me to be on the project and they sent me a list of songs, “Heartache Tonight” was on that list. Conway Twitty had had a Number One record, I believe, on “Heartache Tonight” in the country field. Back when they had a rock hit, he had the country hit. And when I got the news about the Common Thread record, it was at a time when Conway had just passed away a few days prior. So when I saw “Heartache Tonight” I thought, I’m going to do that in honor of Conway and the Eagles. Because it already was the song that that whole album was talking about, the Common Thread. Actually, if Conway Twitty could have a Number One record on it, and the Eagles could have a Number One record on it, surely it was a common thread. 

I think it shows that good music is just good music.

I think so too, and that’s like the song “Swingin’.” I’ve heard “Swingin’” now really rocked up and over, I believe, five or six different languages. So, music is music. You know what I’m saying? It’s all depending on each one’s different take of it. 

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An Interview with Bobby Caldwell

Ever since “What You Won’t Do For Love” first catapulted him to stardom in 1978, Bobby Caldwell has cultivated a singular brand of sophisticated soul, culminating in more than a dozen studio albums that have as well embraced aspects of pop, jazz, and big band standards along the way.

On the recently released LP, Cool Uncle, he’s collaborated with GRAMMY®-winning producer Jack Splash (Kendrick Lamar, Jennifer Hudson), summoning moments that are at once urban and sumptuously urbane. Featuring cameos from the likes of CeeLo Green, Mayer Hawthorne, and Jessie Mare, the album is primed to broaden Caldwell’s audience while at the same time satisfying his music’s most ardent connoisseurs.

With the Cool Uncle album, what did you guys initially hope to achieve? What was the goal?

Initially the goal was to write for other artists, but it quickly kind of morphed from that into something entirely different. It was Jack who came up with the idea about, “Why don’t we make us the entity and give it a name and use it as a vehicle not only for us but for other artists to participate, not only on the current album but future albums?”

Did you have an idea for how you wanted this album to sound? I’ve read something in which you said you didn’t want it to sound like what you were already known for.

You’re absolutely right about that, and maybe 50 percent of the success was me getting out of my own way and letting Jack do what he does best. Once you establish the roles of the players, you’re probably better off if you understand what each person is going to be doing. Because when you get too many chefs in the kitchen, it’s usually a disaster.

You’ve always struck me as an artist who enjoys stepping out of your comfort zone a little bit to see what that yields.

That’s a real good point, man. I kind of knew that going in, that I was going to be out of my so-called comfort zone. When it comes to something like that you’ve just got to embrace it. And, like I said, letting Jack do what he does best and him letting me what I do best is really why it all came together, I think.

Considering the eclecticism of your career insofar as the styles and genres you write and record in, is there a place where you are not so much complacent, but most comfortable?

Geez, that’s a tough question. I’ve never thought about it in terms like that.

Do you know what you do best?

Yes, I do. Look, yeah I do know what I do best and I know what I can’t do best. I’ve never lived the Black experience. So, I leave that to people who have, who know about it, who’ve lived it. I’m just a fan of some of the greatest Black artists of all time, and I’m sure we’d agree on who those are. I [am], basically, a white guy from the South doing what he does that’s been influenced by all of those things. I don’t think anybody in this world is original. We’ve all stolen from somebody. We’re like the sum total of our influences. But I don’t know anybody that tries to do what I do, but I’ve been guilty of trying to do what other people do.

You quickly come to realize … what you do best and try to stand out of your own way, because sometimes you get so close to these projects you can’t see the forest through the trees. This is when it’s nice to have a team because often times Jack would lure me out of some kind of thing that I was on that was leading nowhere and vice versa. We’re constantly checking each other, and that’s a good thing. The way it all comes together at the end of the day is just incredible.

White artists who’ve recorded and performed traditionally Black music have often had to prove themselves to a Black audience — maybe in ways they would not have had to prove themselves to a mainstream white audience — but once they did so they were not only accepted but were shown incredible loyalty. I wonder if that has been your experience as well.

It’s absolutely been my experience, and still is. A lot of people misunderstand what were the Black radio listeners, who they really were. They grew up and got married, had kids, and those kids are basically inner-city and they listen to their folks’ record collection and they get turned on to this old stuff, too. I look out at my audience and I see three generations of people, which is … about how long I’ve been going, a little over 35 years.

Going back a little further, for someone who was a teenager and came of age in the era of the Beatles and the Stones and Motown, where did your appreciation come from for Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett and Nat “King” Cole?

That came from my folks. They were in the theatre, and had a television show in the early ’50s out of Pittsburgh. I was always surrounded by Ella Fitzgerald music, Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Nat “King” Cole, the big band stuff. That was a great environment for me to grow up in, [along with] an appreciation for songs and those singers of the day. It wasn’t by choice. It was just something I was inundated with. I lived in Sinatra headquarters. That was all I heard, twenty-four/seven save for the music I hid away with in my room.

Man, I was exposed to so much stuff. You just named a few things, but growing up in Miami I was exposed to reggae and ska, Calypso music. We had a couple of serious R&B stations, and I believe they’re still there, if I’m not mistaken. WEDR was one of them, [and] WMBM in Miami Beach. They played just the stone-cold Philly/Motown/Muscle Shoals, all that shit. We had back then, basically, the Hot 100 that is still around today, but, see, in that Hot 100 there was all kinds of stuff. I mean, you’d see Sinatra songs, you’d see Beatles songs, you’d see Four Tops, you’d see Temptations. It was all over the map.

All modesty aside, you must have at some point recognized that you had the goods and the talent to sing the music you most enjoyed. Was there some moment or epiphany or experience that convinced you that you could not only appreciate all that great music but sing it too?

Just to get there you’ve got to believe in yourself, but a lot of times along the way that belief gets shaken sometimes to the core where you just think, I’m not going to make it. It’s just not happening for me. There’s always that struggle. It was like rolling the dice, and I didn’t actually know until after the first album did what it did.

Really? You didn’t know you had something with that first album when you finished it, before you released it?

No, I didn’t know who I was, where I was headed with the music. I just kind of let it take its own direction. So, when I say “until after the first album did what it did,” in a lot of respects it’s the record-buying public, the fans, who determine — now, I’m talking about first-time artists — who you are, and you get anointed with this “blue-eyed soul brother” [label]. It took years for everybody to finally realize that I wasn’t Black. That was the least of my problems. [Laughs] But it was really them; they determined who I was. That was great, to have that validation: “This is a bad boy.” To have that, you’re pretty much on a course as long as you don’t fuck it up, and that happens too.

Despite what you looked like when you walked out on stage, though, people recognized that there was something special about those songs on that first album that could perhaps evolve into something even more special on subsequent albums.

I’d like to think it did, yeah. Then again, the first album was so, so huge, not just in the States, but globally. It was massive. A lot of artists — and this in some respects is definitely true for me — they get this brand of “one-hit artist,” and I just kept on releasing the best albums I could. Oddly enough, it was only with other artists that I achieved the same sales numbers.

You mean in writing for the likes of Boz Scaggs [“Heart of Mine”] and Chicago [“What Kind of Man”]?

Yeah. That’s why, actually, I started writing for other artists because my sales… When you go from selling five million albums to, like, selling 150,000, you’ve got a problem. And so I left Miami and I went to L.A. and I started making the rounds with other songwriters. Fortunately, for me, I had already earned a lot of their respect, having that massive song that was still fresh in everybody else’s mind and still is today. So, I got into these circles and it was just a great bunch of people all with great track records as writers. I got very fortunate with about four to five years of doing that, and then I picked up my mantle again and started making more Bobby Caldwell records.

After having that massive success with that first album, and with people associating you with one type of music, was it difficult to then later on venture into recording the standards albums [1996’s Blue Condition and 1999’s Come Rain or Come Shine]? Did you think you might alienate your audience?

No, because my desire to do it was so strong, and I knew that at some point in my life I had to do this. It was something that was really comfortable — to point out one of your previous questions, a comfort zone — and I felt I could do it as good if not better than the handful of other people that were doing it. At that point in time it was Natalie Cole, Harry Connick, Jr., Brian Setzer; they were doing this stuff. I did it on two albums, and it was great. I got a whole new audience and managed miraculously to keep my [existing] audience who came along for this ride and loved every minute of it.

Is it hard to shift gears when you’re on tour, doing the different shows?

No. It’s really fun. It’s great. When I’m out doing the orchestra, the big band, it’s a great departure to get away from the R&B even if it’s for a second. Once you’ve come to know the power of a 16-piece big band or an 18-piece big band, it’s stunning. There are actually people onstage moving air instead of synthesizers and all that stuff. It’s a whole different vibe.

And you’re not stumbling over speed bumps trying to transition between the two.

No, and I will tell you something that I’m adamant about, and that is that if I’m appearing somewhere with the orchestra, wherever it’s advertised whether it’s in print or on radio, I make sure that people know it’s the orchestra. When I first started doing this, there were a couple of shows where people would come out thinking they were going to be hearing the orchestra and vice versa — people thought they were going to be hearing R&B. So once I got over that hurdle, albeit small, the same fans show up, man. I’m telling you, it took some doing, but they come in droves whether it’s R&B or the orchestra. I’ve been really fortunate that way. Obviously I do more R&B shows than the orchestra, and doing the orchestra, it’s not cheap. Gone are the days when Benny Goodman used to get on a bus with all his players and go from state to state without taking showers and stuff. [Laughs] Those days don’t even exist anymore.

I remember Barry White would tour with his core band and then — to fill out the Love Unlimited Orchestra — he’d use local players.

Well, I do that with the orchestra. In other words, I’ll take my key players, like the drums, the bass, and keyboards, and I’ll hire what people call the A-players in any given city. As long as they can read music, the charts are there for them to read.

Do you rehearse with these musicians in each city, then?

Yes, and that’s also a cost. Also you’re dealing with different unions — they all have different rules in every city — and they can be tough.

There’s more to what you do than what you do onstage.

Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Does songwriting come relatively easy for you? A lot of songwriters I’ve spoken to love the finality and the accomplishment of having written a song, but hate sitting in a room and actually grinding it out. Do you enjoy the process?

I’ve got to be totally honest with you, man. In my early career, it was just so passionate, just something I would always look forward to doing. But at some point, you have kids, you get married or whatever it is you do — I did all of that — and everything starts to change. Priorities start to change. Now, it’s become grinding them out. I’m kind of on a treadmill that I can’t get off of. I’ve got twin daughters, they’re 23. I’ve got a stepdaughter, she’s 24. I’m fucking surrounded by women. Everything changes, that’s all I can tell you. Do I like it when something great has happened or I’ve done something great? Sure. But, I tell you what else, doing a project and finishing, completing the work, I let it go. You have to let it go.

In what sense?

When I say I let it go, if it does well and it’s a success I’m pleasantly surprised. If not, I’m not in total despair.

So, you’re not anguished over whether it’s number 10 on the charts or number 14.

No. No, I gave that up a long time ago. Look, I’ve got to tell you, man, you’re old enough to know that 20 years ago a normal platinum, really smash album — we’re talking about Universal, MCA, Columbia, any of those major labels, Warners — they were celebrating, like, 20 million sold. Now, they’re dancing in the streets over a million. This is how screwed up everything’s gotten, not just their numbers, but this intellectual property issue with the downloads. This is serious shit and it’s never going to change now.

It’s not going to go in the other direction, that’s for sure.

No, it’s not. Although, for myself and so many other artists, we blame the labels because they had the chance to fend this off with coding the product, but they thought Napster was going to go away. It did go away; it just moved into international waters and all of a sudden all of these other things started popping up like a cancer.

Do you ever gain new insight when you hear someone cover one of your songs?

No, not necessarily. I kind of anticipate how they’re going to do it because I wrote the song for them.

You wrote “Heart of Mine” specifically for Boz Scaggs?

I did initially write the song for Boz. It didn’t end up that way. It kind of went around and around. It was going to be on the Chicago album, then it wasn’t. Then Boz did a demo of it that I thought was fucking great. I don’t know whatever happened to that. Then he lost interest. Then he did the song again, and had a number one adult record with it. It went through a lot of changes. But when he did it, it sounded like Boz to me. There’ve been some surprises, like Go West doing “What You Won’t Do For Love,” that surprised me. I wasn’t expecting that at all.

When you wrote “What You Won’t Do For Love,” you couldn’t have anticipated the amount of people who would cover it.

No, I didn’t think it was going to be a hit record. I had my eye set on something else on the album. I was wet behind the ears. I didn’t know shit, but what was about to happen was just insane. And what kept happening, all the covers of that song, I never would’ve predicted that.

Is that something you appreciate, the covers and the samples?

Oh yeah. I get asked if I get tired of performing the song or hearing the song, but every time I perform it the audience makes it feel like the first time. So I’m appreciative of that and that it even happened to begin with. When that album was done and it slowly made its way up the charts, my dear friend Natalie Cole had a number one record with her debut album. She was number one on the Hot 100 and I was, like, number nine trying to get up into the top five. She called me one day and was embarking on her first tour. At this point I was looking for something to happen, regarding full-scale performing where I could get all over the country. This was perfect for me, the audience. It was a mix. Obviously, there were more Blacks than whites. It was a good mix, let’s say 6,000 Blacks [and] 2,000 whites, something like that. So, most of the people are coming out to see “soul brother” Bobby Caldwell. The first show was in Cleveland. When I came out on that stage to open for Natalie, you could hear a pin drop. It hadn’t even occurred to me, “What’s going to happen when they see I’m white?”

Did you know before the tour that people perceived you as Black?

Oh absolutely. Everything was pointing in that direction. Most of the radio personalities didn’t know. Some of them did.

That goes back to what I said earlier, though, that once you prove yourself they’ll accept you.

Yeah, and I think you said earlier, Black audiences are loyal to the core. They’re not going to, like, unfriend you.

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Learning Curves and Musical Curiosities: An Interview with Rhiannon Giddens

Now is the time for Rhiannon Giddens.

Having followed her muse beyond the homegrown string-band tableau she’d cultivated for the last decade as a founding member of the GRAMMY® award-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, she has of late expanded her musical palette to reveal an even richer promise. 

Released back in February to become one of 2015’s most celebrated works, Tomorrow is My Turn finds Giddens mostly interpreting songs popularized by such female musical forbears as Patsy Cline, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Geeshie Wiley, and Dolly Parton. Produced by T-Bone Burnett, the album reveals an already gifted artist coming into her own while at the same time standing on the shoulders of giants.

“My only hope,” Giddens told Write on Music earlier this year, “is that I honor the work that they’ve done and hopefully carry it forward. That’s all we can ever hope as artists is to honor the past and to keep it moving.”

A similar scenario unfolded when Giddens was last year recruited by Burnett for the LP Lost On The River (The New Basement Tapes) — along with Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), and Elvis Costello — to compose music for a batch of newly discovered Bob Dylan lyrics dating back to The Basement Tapes. Her lead-vocal performance of “Spanish Mary,” in particular, is among the set’s most exhilarating moments.

Tomorrow is My Turn represents a new beginning for you yet you’re using this opportunity to shine a light on, particularly, female singers whose careers have preceded your own. How did that direction take shape? Was that something you wanted to pursue or did it come from Mr. Burnett?

It definitely came from me. It was just sort of this idea that I’d had brewing a little bit that I wasn’t going to put it to the Chocolate Drops to record because it’s a slightly different thing. So I was kind of holding onto it until T-Bone came asking about doing a record. That’s when I kind of went, “Well, what about this idea?” He thought it was a great idea and he loved most of the song choices that I’d made. He tweaked a couple of them. But, yeah, it came from me. I’m real pleased we were able to do it.

The album’s not strictly pop or soul or R&B or folk, yet it’s all of those in some way.

That’s how I think, you know? The Chocolate Drops are a totally different kind of thing within a certain limitation, and this was kind of similar. I did make decisions about how far I was going to go as far as the songs I was pulling from. It’s kind of like a “feel” thing. I wanted to stick to stuff that was more rootsy and connected to the stuff that I already sort of do, for this record. I had a feel about how far I wanted to go. And there were some choices that were made in terms of the songs we left off the album that reflect that too. Like, “Well, this doesn’t quite fit. We’ve got a little narrative or a little cohesion going here and this doesn’t really fit so I’ll have to leave it off.” Throughout the whole process there was a pruning that was kind of going on.

The Sister Rosetta Tharpe song [“Up Above My Head”] is really funky.

Yeah, she’s amazing. Throughout this process she’s one of the ones that comes to the forefront of people that I want to try to highlight and to say, “This is not just some obscure… It’s not like Geeshie Wiley, some obscure blues woman that you should know who it is. This is a pillar of American music.” I mean, she is unbelievably important in terms of her influence and to what became rock ‘n’ roll guitar is unimpeachable. It’s like, you cannot deny her influence and yet people don’t know who she is. That’s a problem for me because it continues to reflect the narrative of American music where the black artist is the innovator and then gets forgotten about. 

Tharpe was innovative in rock ‘n’ roll in general, but particularly as a guitarist.

Well, that’s the thing. It’s her style of guitar playing, that’s it right there. That’s what makes her so special, is that she checks so many boxes that you wouldn’t expect. 

Yet she doesn’t get mentioned with Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard…

It should be in the same breath. It should be “Chuck Berry and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.” You know what I mean? She should be right up there, and the fact that she’s not is a problem. 

Was there any anxiety in making the album — considering it’s a debut album for your solo career — that you were presenting too many dimensions, too many aspects of a first impression?

Well, we definitely wanted to make sure that the final record had a cohesion to it. We didn’t want it to be too far-ranging, definitely. That took a while. And we did prune it; we left off five songs because we had quite a few recorded. It was important to make it shorter and more cohesive than longer and more complicated. We definitely felt that.... I think what we ended up with is just enough, just enough variety all within a certain aspect of Americana but not going too far. 

Along the same lines, was there ever a discussion about how to make some of these songs, particularly the lesser known and most dated ones, relevant or contemporary?

That’s one thing we never talked about. I think if you just attempt to not copy the original, the first material, you’ll be fine with the rest of it. We’re all modern people with modern equipment. You know what I mean? That’s what matters. That’s the way I’ve always approached it. I’m always surprised when people talk about how modern this stuff is because for me it’s the interpretation of the song that makes sense. That’s what happened. That’s what came out. There was no, “Let’s make sure this sounds up to date.” If you follow your muse and you’re all kind of listening to what your muse says, that should happen because we’re all modern people with modern influences. So, it’s just trying to get out of the way, really.

Having worked so intimately with the songs on Tomorrow is My Turn and also with the ones from The New Basement Tapes — even though there was no music to those when you first received them — what did you take from those experiences that may have informed or encouraged your own songwriting?

All the songs that I study kind of go into this songwriting pot that I have going on in my brain because I get into the words. Part of what I love about them is how they’re written and so that whatever attracted me to that is something that I naturally gravitate toward anyway. The master class that was The New Basement Tapes was incredibly helpful for me as a songwriter, as a budding songwriter. I feel like I’ve been given lots and lots of tools over the last couple years to really work on my songwriting craft. I’ve been able to work with other people. 

I’m definitely in a big learning phase and creating phase with songwriting.… I don’t want to just sit here and try to write fourteen songs for the next record. I’m not really interested in that. What I want to do is explore what songwriting means to me, what it is that is going to be my contribution to the music world at large other than interpretation. Because I know I’m always going to be an interpreter. That is something I do well and is something that is important not to lose sight of, but I also feel like I do have a voice to be heard. I want to make sure that there’s something really important being said. I’m not really interested in throwing songs out there for the sake of me writing songs.  

As an apprentice of songwriting, to be put in a room with Elvis Costello, in particular, must’ve been pretty cool and intimidating at the same time.

What was great about that experience was that I didn’t know any of those guys. I didn’t know Elvis’ work, to be honest. I knew a couple of things, maybe. I just know of him. I didn’t know Jim’s work. I didn’t know Taylor’s work. I knew a bit of Marcus’ work [with Mumford & Sons]. So, really, I just kind of approached those guys as guys, and Elvis was kind of the elder statesman and a teacher. I didn’t have that stuff in the way. I had plenty of other stuff to deal with, don’t get me wrong. [Laughs] But I didn’t have that fear — “Oh, my God, that guy wrote ‘X,’ ‘Y,’ ‘Z.’” — It’s like, “Oh, this guy knows a lot about songwriting. I’m about to hear him and listen to what he has to say.” And so that actually made it great for me because I just took who they were and just learned… I learned stuff from all those guys. 

You exhibit such a passion for music and music history, from how it informs your work and makes it so eclectic. Where does that comes from?

I’ve always been a curious person. I’m a reader. I’ve always been a reader. I’ve always liked history. Then I went to school for classical music. When you’re an opera singer, when you’re studying opera — and maybe not everybody does this; maybe it just goes back to my own personality — I studied. If I was doing an opera set in eighteenth-century France, I checked books out on eighteenth-century France and I studied it and I checked out why this character would act the way that she does. You want to learn about the composers, who’s writing the music. 

Then I got into Celtic music, and you’re approaching Scottish and Irish music as an outsider. I feel like it’s a responsibility to understand as much as you can ... so you’re not doing the song out of context. So I just got used to researching, I suppose. I like it and I like the power [that] I felt like it gave me over the song. Particularly when you’re doing Celtic music, people will come up to you because you’re a person of color and they can be very insensitive. They go, “Why are you singing this music?” It’s like, “I’m sorry, do you walk up to the random white guy playing blues on the corner and say, ‘Why are you singing this music?’” Hell no.... When you know more about the song than the person who’s coming up to you and asking you, it gives you power. You can go, “Yeah, let me tell you about this song. This is why I’m singing this song.” I think all of that is really important. 

You need to find that common ground between yourself and the song and its history and context.

When you’re singing a song, you should have that common ground. You have to have common ground with it. I’ve been asked by white artists or students — because I do teach in workshops — and they go, “How do I approach this work song or this spiritual? Can I sing this?” And I say, “Of course you can sing it. Should you sing it like an eighty-five-year-old woman from Alabama? No. You shouldn’t try to sing it like that. I can’t sing it like that because I’m not an eighty-five-year-old woman from Alabama. You have to find the core within the song that speaks to your core. Otherwise, why are you doing it? Obviously there’s something that’s making you want to do the song.... You know when you’re singing something that maybe you shouldn’t be singing.... Maybe it’s the wrong time. I know for me, “Last Kind Word Blues,” I just about got in there. I wouldn’t have wanted to sing that song even a year earlier, but I just feel like I have enough whatever it is to sing that song now at thirty-seven, thirty-six when I recorded it. You know. Everybody has this sort of thing inside them that’s going, “Put this away for another time.” And I’ve done that before. 

But doesn’t it take a while to trust that instinct?

Well, yeah, it’s something that you develop. You always develop it as an artist and as a person, really, as you get older. That’s not to say that you can’t make mistakes. I’ve made mistakes. “That wasn’t quite right.” It is a process, but the more you engage with it the quicker you can trust it. 

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