Well, folk music is so broad, and it's a lot more broad than people think. I get the question a lot: Do kids in your town get what you're doing? Do they appreciate it? I think possibly the reason why a few of them don't is because of this constant label of folk music. They hear folk music, and they think lame old people playing acoustic guitars and singing "This Land is Your Land." That's the only view of folk music they have. I think even going to Folk Alliance proves that the term folk music is so broad.
I know I'm not supposed to be into labels, but I'm probably a singer-songwriter first and foremost. I don't turn down the folksinger label, because we're all folksingers. Jonathan Bird said, as long as you get up there with your Birkenstocks and you play your tuba and tell a story now and then, you're a folksinger. As long as you're not shaking your ass in a sequin skirt. Folk music to me is just very organic, music people can play along to. It's music that's passed around, music that can just happen out of anything. I can just pick up a guitar, walk down the road, and play all day. There are some people that can't make their music unless they have their computer with them.
I'm a folksinger in the sense that I'm loosely following a tradition. Steve Earle always says, "My position was created in 1961 by a man named Bob Dylan." Bob Dylan wasn't the first, he got it from Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie got it from God knows where else. I’m definitely following a tradition, but putting my own [thing] into it. It's very easy to be a folksinger. It doesn't mean you're going to be really good or that you'll get hired, but [you can play].
Do you pay attention to politics at all? Does that kind of songwriting interest you?
Definitely. I wouldn't call my music political, although I have a couple political songs. I used to write more political songs when I was a little younger. Now, whenever I write something I see as political, it just comes out as a love song. I have a song on Typical American Tragedy that's called "Ain't Much of a Soldier." I wrote it as a reaction to this [feeling of] rah rah America, this is our country. We’re all b***s, but...in America it becomes hard to accept doubt and fear and the emotional side of things.
What would you do if you were asked to fight for freedom? Well, I know tons of people who would be scared as shit. So that song came out of that, but it ended up being a love letter to this girl back in Kansas named Anna Lee. That sounds like a story-song, but it also came out of this feeling I have in myself. I know I don't have the strength to go over there and fight. I don't. Pete Seeger says, in his song "Bring 'Em Home," he says I'm not really a pacifist. If someone came to fight us on our soil, I'd be the first to come and protect our country. But, we are making some mistakes, so I try to write about that.
Let’s switch to your latest album, Bad Nights/Better Days. How did that come about? How did you get hooked up with Abbie Gardner?
That's my duo album with Abbie Gardner who is a lovely singer-songwriter. Her main gig is this Americana trio named Red Molly. They do a whole lot of stuff—some originals, some covers, some traditional songs. She's been playing with them for about four years. I met her a few years ago through a mutual friend, Fred Gillen, Jr., who produced my last three records and is sort of my mentor in all this...I was following [Red Molly] around a lot.
I came across Abbie who plays the Dobro and some guitar. I'd never even seen anybody play Dobro live before, so that was kind of cool. She puts a lot of heart into her playing and singing, so I was definitely drawn to that. Not until Falcon Ridge in 2007 did we really play as a duo. After Falcon Ridge we started playing a couple of scattered gigs together. We did some of her songs, some of my songs that I was teaching her, some cover songs by Gillian Welch and Ryan Adams. We toured together in December...we decided we really liked the way our voices could blend. I'd never found anybody that fits my songs as well as her. So we decided to make a record.
We didn’t really have any songs. I had just put out a CD of my own. I had a few songs that were on a demo I'd recently done, but we booked the studio time in February and, coming up to that, we wrote probably about 15 songs for it. We ended up with 13 on the record. We made it in three days in the middle of February when I was having a winter break. It was actually three days leading up to the Folk Alliance conference. I made this record on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and flew out for Memphis on Wednesday. That was pretty risky to do that because, down in Memphis, we're all selling ourselves and we have to be in tip-top shape. But when you're staying up until 6 a.m. every night, you’re asking for it anyway. It was definitely a really rewarding experience.
There are a lot of people who will go into the studio with a guitar and a click track and they'll play and do vocals [separately]. I just can't do that. I just go in there live with a guitar and sing. But this is a pretty heavy record. I talked to a friend of mine recently who, for a week, he was driving back home, and all he had was our CD. He said, "I knew what I was asking for, but I put myself through it anyway." He had just come out of a bad situation with his ex-girlfriend and he said whenever Abbie sang it was like listening to his ex-girlfriend. [laughs] It’s definitely not a feel-good [record]. I'm definitely proud of it as a full body of work.
