Hey Y’all,
I’ve been asked many times before, “What were you thinking of when you wrote that song?” Well I’m glad to inform everyone that I’m starting a series of blogs here to explain the meaning of my songs and how they came to be. I’ll also on occasion write about some of the songs that aren’t on albums yet but some you’ve most likely heard if you’ve attended my shows. Don’t know how long this will take or how consistent I’ll be but I’ll try to make it timelier than my “Beirut Blog”. I know some of you are still waiting for the conclusion of that one. It’ll come...
Anyhoo, let’s begin.
We’ll just start off with Texas Sugar songs.
C-Butt Rock – Being from ..Austin.. and while “musically maturing” in ..Austin.., you couldn’t get away from the T-Birds and their influence on the ....Austin.... music scene. The T-Birds was the first show I got into by being placed on the guest list. A useless fact but a really big thing when your just 17 and you’re hanging out with one of the top guitarists in ....Austin.... at the time; David Murray. This was when Antone’s was located on ..Guadalupe St... near ..33rd St... It was the opening weekend for the new location, the former locale being on ..Anderson Lane.. up in “way north” ....Austin.... in an old supermarket building. I saw Ray Charles there and it was rumored that Ray Charles charged so much for doing the show that up till Clifford Antone’s death, he would site that very show as his apex of a“Lost my ass!” show in the history of Antone’s. I’m sure the anecdote is being faithfully carried on by Susan Antone to this day.
Ok, where was I...oh yeah; so the T-Birds are everywhere, as is Stevie too, but that’s another muse, and there was this shirt that they sold during their “Butt-Rockin” tour so it was just a “butt rockin” groove that’s in the key of C. ( I guess just writing that last sentence would’ve sufficed, here’s to verbosity)
..Shiloh.. – While we were doing our 3 busy years of musical barnstorming around the nation, Ken Burns made his documentary debut to the nation with his ‘piece de resistance’ – the Civil War. Totally compelling and enthralling. It was this show that made me want to read about history again. Taking notice of some of the highlighted epic battles, we would, by creative routing, venture near some of these bloody engagements. Shiloh, located in ..Tennessee.., was our favorite, (....Gettysburg.... was never near our beaten paths), and we toured Shiloh Battlefield several times. The impressions it left with us were of sadness and awe. Sadness for the lives and blood spilt there and awe for the incredible fortitude of the human spirit to endure such horrible conditions - The chaos that was war back in those days. Our playing interpretation for this minor blues was to invoke darkness and melancholy and to have a dynamic swell to emulate the ferocity of the clashing forces. True I took some from Stevie but it was apropos due to Stevie’s untimely death a few years before. It was all summed up with this song and I’m still very proud of the way it turned out. When we recorded this song, it was not on the list of songs to be recorded for the album, it was not requested to be “run through” just to see how it sounds, it was spontaneous and unscripted. I started playing it and John joined in then Brannen came in. When the producer heard us playing he turned on the mics and let tape roll, and the rest is history. (Texas Sugar was recorded totally on 2 inch tape and when it was all done we had used over 50 rolls.) When the song was done, we put our instruments down and went into the console room and found Dennis, (Dennis Herring, our producer, also produced ‘Romp’) was laying supine on the couch and exclaimed, “You’re going to have to kill me to keep that off the record!”