STANDING WHERE HANK STOOD

STANDING WHERE HANK STOOD

IMG_7307

Every now and then I find myself in a situation that makes me realize how incredible my luck is. I’m reminded how music has taken me places I never dreamed I would go, and that the surreal quality that it brings to my life is way beyond what I could have ever imagined.

Like today: This morning I did a radio interview from the Green Room at the Grand Old Opry on WSM-AM. Radney Foster had told me to make sure to check out the main stage, especially the wood circle where the microphone stands. This circle came from the original stage at the Ryman Theater, where the Opry originated. Johnny Cash and June Carter, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill and countless other heroes have stood on those boards and played their songs.

I walked out on the stage and stepped inside. I heard the wood creak under my feet, felt the rhythm ghosts from a thousand songs come straight up through my boots. All those voices, the ones who had called out some of the best music ever written, were begging me to join them. I got the guitar out, grabbed a stool from behind the piano, and just sat there playing and singing for about 30 minutes, soaking it all in, listening to the echoes.

To stand in the place where Hank stood is a big damned deal.

The theater was empty, but this morning I felt like was singing with the angels.

Repeating Yourself

Repeating Yourself

IMG_7129

It’s 1995 or ‘96, and someone, I’m still not sure who, has shelled out $750 for a voice lesson with Warren Barigian. He’s from California, the guy who got Meat Loaf singing again, has worked with countless rock and opera stars. Bonnie Raitt. Jackson Browne. This better be good. That’s a lot of money.

We’re in a hotel suite in Austin. He comes in, walks around me a couple of times, pokes me in my chest with his finger, lightly. I let out a yelp. He’s definitely hit some sort of a nerve. He tells me I’m holding a lot of old stress in my body. Thanks.

He sits down, says, “Pick a line from any song and sing it ten different ways.”
No problem. I choose the opening lines from an old standard.

“Skylark, have you anything to say to me…”

I get three passes in before he stops me.
“You’re repeating yourself. I said different. Try it again.”

I start in once more, after a couple of attempts, it’s the same thing, “You’re repeating yourself. Try harder.”

Three more times we do this dance before he stops me.

“Look, you’re still repeating yourself. Stop worrying about the notes and just sing.
Every time you repeat yourself you’re cutting off your creativity.”

Then he turns around and walks out of the room. The lesson was over.

No matter what you’re doing, act like there’s no tomorrow, as if this is the first time, and the last time.

When you sing, sing that moment.
The details will take care of themselves.

My voice is less than perfect. It is what it is. But the way I sing, and how I bring myself to it, will never be quite the same.

That is a well-spent $750.

© 2015 Darden Smith

 

ON DRAWING

ON DRAWING

IMG_5925

I like to draw pictures.
But, being left-handed, stuck in these damn right-handed desks at school,
I have a hard time making drawings that aren’t all lopsided and weird.
The other kids, being kids, tease me about the bizarre scrawls on my paper.
So at the bitter age of ten, I’ve figured out how to make the teasing stop:
I quit drawing.

I make up a story.
And the story is, “I can’t draw.”

In 1989, in L.A., in the studio recording what will become Trouble No More,
Scratching on a newspaper with a pencil and I accidentally draw a tree.
Suddenly I’m nine, sitting in the back of the class,
Lost in the land of crayon and construction paper.
The world opens up to me again.

Now I fill notebooks with weird little black and white pictures
And there’s not a straight line to be found there, and it doesn’t matter.
I don’t make the images to show people.
I don’t need a gallery wall for proof they’re valid.
Just the doing of it is all that counts now.

But sometimes I still think about all those years I spent believing that story
I tell myself when I’m ten. It’s a story of no, and it’s wrong.
Because I listened, I missed out on a lot of joy,
A lot time dragging ink across a page.

Don’t listen to the teasers.
They probably don’t like art anyway.

Music And Food

Music And Food

IMG_5163

MUSIC AND FOOD

Many musicians are great cooks.
Writers make beautiful paintings.
Photographers play music.

Past all the particulars and the moving parts,
It’s really about seeking the connection between raw, disparate ideas,
And the audacity to try to make something
Knowing you might fail. But you do it anyway.

It’s like there’s a wheel moving beyond other wheels.
Get on one and you can reach many others.
That’s where the beauty is.

The fearless desire to dream
And the capacity to create
Knows no specific medium.

© 2015 Darden Smith

John Prine

John Prine

IMG_5943

When I was seventeen years old, standing alone in the Texas Opry House in Houston, TX, drinking a beer off my brother’s ID (long story), listening to John Prine, I never dreamed that some 35 years later I would be standing in the St. Louis airport talking with him while we waited for our luggage.

I learned “Souvenirs” when I was fourteen, and still play it occasionally around the house on a Saturday morning.

As a teenager, I spent hours dissecting John’s songs, trying to figure out how you make a chorus like “Sam Stone” work, or a love song like “Angel From Montgomery” fall together. Where does that magic come from?

One time, in the late 80’s or early 90’s, on a night off in London, John found out where I was staying and for some reason called me up. We went to dinner or something (neither of us could remember exactly what we did, which is rather telling…). I’ve done shows with him over the years, joined in a scary song swap in his hotel room at some Canadian folk festival with James McMurtry, Sarah McLaughlin and a couple of other people (again, the details are sketchy…there’s a pattern here). Every now and again, I run into him in an airport. I always have to remind him of my name, which I find endearing and don’t take personal. If I was John Prine, I’d probably forget a few names as well. There must be so many. Always, without fail, he is gracious, a gentleman, and funny.

It’s a policy of mine to make sure, when possible, to tell the people who were my guides in songwriting what they did for me. Two days ago, standing there watching the bags go around the carousel, it was a pleasure to do just that.

Thanks again, John.

The Dream Curtain of Song

The Dream Curtain of Song

IMG_5727

It’s a weekday morning, I’m 16, maybe 17 years old, listening to the radio, getting dressed for school. The radio is on, of course. Music is the constant of my world. KLOL, FM 101, the only station worth tuning into in Houston, TX in the late 70’s. Dylan’s ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’ comes on. I stop, mesmerized. Just the bass line is enough to pull me in. I sit there, dazed, on the edge of my bed, one shoe on, one shoe off, staring at the stereo. I listen, trying to figure the song out. I can’t. What’s he singing about? The song comes at me as if from another world, someplace hidden. And wherever it’s coming from, I want to go there.

I’d been writing songs since I was 10. Guy Clark, John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker records, those were my guides. Willie Nelson. Pretty straight ahead. Deep, good, the classic story telling line of thought. Folk songs. Country songs. I wasn’t into Townes yet. And here comes Dylan, knocking the legs out from under all that I knew, telling the story backwards, if at all. Starting at the end, then jumping to the beginning, the details filled in as if they’re an afterthought. I listened hard, thinking, how did he do that? How do I get what he has?

That moment was an invitation into the mystery. The song itself called out, “Follow me.” And from that day on I did, down into the swirl of words and melody, behind the dream curtain of song.