The Columbia
Gypsy Interview
BILL MORRISSEY
Cactus Café, Austin, Texas
April 1997
I've just driven 1500 miles and gotten up at 5:30 for a radio interview so I'm ready to talk about anything. I bet you are. From the Red Sox to the Lunar Landing. I'd started to listen to you when you were singing about New Hampshire, you don't seem to sing about New Hampshire anymore. I think that'll change. I was pegged by some people with a...because I did that I was pegged as a regional writer which is a condescending kind of term, so I kinda stopped doing that. It's kind of funny, if you write about New York City or Teas, you're being universal but if you write about New Hampshire, you're regional. I don't understand how that works, but it seems to work that way. But I think with the last two records not having centered on New Hampshire life, I can go back to it and people know I can do something different. I've proved that I can do something else. It wasn't so much a conscious choice, although I was aware of it. You write about what concerns you, so the first two albums were very much about the textile town, the mill towns in northern New Hampshire, and during the third album I was going through a divorce, so you write about what concerns you and there's probably more songs about relationships... Now which one was your third one? Standing Eight. So you write about what interests you and I didn't particularly write about mill towns. At that point it was more internal than external. Sounds like a good "Inside" sort of thing. Yeh, it's sort of funny too, because your perspective changes over the years. I've been doing this for 27 years and I've found my characters are older now too. They've been around the block once or twice. I couldnt write the songs I wrote on the first couple records again. I think they're fine songs but I don't have a 23 year old's perspective. So are they more complex? Um...yeh, I think the THEMES are more complex. I don't think its...the writing is technically fancier or complex that way. But what people have to deal with day to day as they get older, when you realize dreams aren't going to be achieved and where do you find the middle ground. What deals you cut, too. Right. ...to get there. I can relate to that. Did you start writing...did you have training to write? No. No, I always wrote. Before I played guitar, when I was in grammar school I would make up lyrics to whatever pop songs were on the radio. I can't remember not doing that. And then after the Beatles hit, my folks moved to the Boston area, and everybody in my neighborhood had a guitar. So I figured if I got a guitar I could actually make up the melodies and write whole songs, and that's what I've been doing ever since. I never wanted to be a guitar wizard or tried to be, I just wanted to write songs. I know you do play guitar pretty well. It's simple, it's understated. It's what's the best guitar arrangement for the song. I know...sometimes you echo the melody with the treble strings if you're finger picking. I got that from John Hurt, Mississippi John Hurt, who would keep a steady bass going and then with his treble strings would come in and hit some harmony notes or the melody line behind what he was singing. Now you're...I think on the earlier ones you use simple guitar arrangement and the later ones get... Yeh, the first album was completely solo and the second one and the second one had a little back-up and I think it's been a pretty natural progression. The last one had horns on 5 tracks. We did that in New Orleans. I've been WANTING to work with horns for years I just hadn't written anything where they'd be appropriate.and then when I was writing songs for You'll Never Get To Heaven, my last album, I said, "Yeh, horns." cause I was thinking of texture too. It's usually about 2 years between records for me and I try and incorporate things I learned in those 2 years, the new songs and new arrangements and recording techniques. So on this album, musically I'm using some passing chords which I'd never used before, instead of going from D to G, I hit a D and then some odd transitional chord...I have no idea what it is...and the go to the G. It makes the back-up a little more fluid. And that lent itself to the horns too. Hmm...I'll have to go back and listen. It's like a song like "Ashes Grain and Sand" for example you can hear that. What's that one about? Oh, I can't really talk about what songs are about. "The Hills Of Tuscany" I remember that one, the ones with the horns stick out! The bright arrangements, "Waiting For the Rain." Yeh, I was concerned with texture throughout the whole album. There were different instruments on each song. It might be Michael Tullis playing piano like he does on "Waiting For the Rain" or his guitar work on winter laundry, or horns on this thing, or harmonica on "Different Currency." Just getting a different texture and different feel on each song yet keeping a core rhythm section to anchor the whole album so it doesn't seem really disjointed, just different colors thoughout the whole album. After the music I guess it's the words that hit me and you're not talkin' about the words very much. The thing is that even with all that back-up I can do all those songs solo and probably will do a bunch of them tonight. That's the real acid test of a song is can you do it solo. It's just that recording is a different medium than performing. So you should use the technology and whatever you can to do the album but just make sure you can do the songs solo and they standup. You get interested too in different tones. I had Johnny Cunningham come in from Silly Wizard and Relativity and Nightnoise on a bunch of records, from Standing Eight on up to this last one. What do you see in what he's doing? Johnny is just a genius. He can play anything. But he brings especially the ballads, he brings a sort of Celtic melancholy to the tune without making it syrupy or weepy. He just has this inate sadness in the song that works hand in hand with the lyrics in a very understated and dry way. He's not a ...I think the undertatement is one of his best qualities when he's playing an air or something. You'll be really melodramatic if you're a bad fiddler. But the work's all done there in the melody and he just kind of does the melody, and understated. I like understated things, like understated or simple or sparse literature or writing, things with no fat on it. So you wrote a book... Uh huh. That doesnt have any arrangements in it to talk about. No, but I think the people who've heard the songs won't be surprised by the voice in the book. I think it's the same voice I use in my songs. And again in my songs I try to take off all the fat in a lyric. If the line isn't absolutely essential no matter how clever it may be, if it doesn't move the song right along to its point then you cut it out. Hemingway, sort of... I like Hemingway's sparse sentences. He ran later on, he ran into danger of becoming a parody of himself. He was allright period. He looked down the track period. But Raymond Carver writes very sparse sentences and it just seems very clean. You know it's...you're not insulting the reader or listener by writing that way, you're assuming that they have the intellegence to get what's going on. You don't have to lead them by the hand and tell them exactly what color this was and you know... I have another question, it seems like a lot of your songs, at least the earlier ones are about sleezy motel rooms. How did you get into doing that stuff? I stayed there! You stayed there. Yeh, you know you go on the road and when you're starting, there's...you're not making any money and there's just...you're staying at the cheapest places in the worst parts of town. I think that's one of the things that most musicians go through. That was just what my life was like at the time. Ugh. Its wonderful that it's different now. I'm glad I went through it I just don't want to go through it again because I really appreciate the way things are going now. Things are going real well then? Yeh. Things are going very well. We don't hear much about it in Bryan. I'm fine. It's taken a long time.
The Columbia
Gypsy