A Conversation with Amy LaVere (continued)

AL: Well, yeah, I just got to know Jimbo through Paul, and his wife Olga, who's also a great blues singer. When we got started on my record, I was searching for some more material. I was writing, but I needed more songs. And it was Paul that asked Jimbo about if he had any songs that he thought would be appropriate for me. And Jimbo actually wrote those two songs for me.

PM: He wrote them for you. The title song, and the other one, "Nightingale"?

AL: "Nightingale," uh-huh.

PM: Because those are two of the best songs on that record.

AL: Well, he really is amazing. I love his aesthetic about just about everything.

PM: And where does Olga come from?

AL: She's actually from Austria.

PM: [laughs] And so you met Jimbo through Paul, because Paul was playing bass with him. And how did you meet Dickinson?

AL: Also through Paul. Paul actually produced my record. And he called him in on a session. Although, I had definitely gone up and gushed at Jim Dickinson a few times when I'd see him play, every now and then when he would do a gig here in Memphis.

PM: Does he often gig in town?

AL: No, a couple of times a year. So when he played on my record was really the first I really got to talk to him. And then he called me about playing some gigs with him.

PM: [laughs] That's amazing. [One of the great records that Jim sang, played piano and bass on, and co-produced, was Ry Cooder's classic Boomer's Story.]

AL: I know. It was really great. And now I just absolutely love him. I think we have a mutual admiration society going on, him and I.

PM: So how did the record deal and the record, This World is Not My Home, come about?

AL: Well, I was playing a gig. Steve Earle was the headliner. It was just a party called For Art's Sake, a benefit for the City Arts Council downtown. Steve Earle was on the big stage outside, and I was playing in this big warehouse where the inside stuff was. And Ward Archer was at that gig. He approached me and asked me basically if I had anything going on, and I told him I didn't. He gave me a card and asked me to call him. And we went to lunch. I knew he had a record label. And there was another record label that had already approached me called Memphis Records, Young Avenue Sound. A guy named Willie Pevear had talked to me about doing a record, and I was really excited about that. I was really excited about that possible label, but after walking to Ward, I just got such a good feeling from him.

I liked Willie Pevear a whole lot, too. But there was something about Ward that I just thought was so charming. And he's just a really down-to-earth nice guy. It's funny, you kind of have to make up the details for him, he's an odd man to figure out. So in a way I feel like I almost made my own record deal. [laughs] I just went with it.

At first I was going to have Scott Bomar produce the record. Scott just did all the music for the movie Hustle & Flow, and this upcoming movie, Black Snake Moan, he did the score for it.

PM: I see.

AL: And actually, briefly, he was playing guitar with me, for a minute. Before Jason came along, Paul and Scott were playing with me.

PM: I'll go get Hustle & Flow--oh, that's not in video yet. It's still in theaters, isn't it?

AL: Actually, I don't know if it's theaters anymore. But it should be coming out on video soon.

PM: Yeah, it's in between, right.

AL: I have a hard time looking at it objectively, because I know so many people that were in it, or involved in it.

PM: Why? Was it made in Memphis?

AL: Yeah, it was made in Memphis. And there's a main character in there that's based on a guy that I know.

[laughter]

AL: So it's funny. And I went there with the guy, the guy Shelby--there's a guy in the movie named Shelby. And it was--I don't know...

PM: And you went to the movie with him. [laughs]

AL: Yeah. So I laughed through the whole thing.

PM: That's crazy.

AL: I couldn't stop laughing. So anyway, yeah, Scott Bomar was going to produce the record. And we went down there just to preliminarily start recording some stuff--we did Koko Taylor's "Mixed Up," and just some tunes that I had in my set. We did "Swingin' Doors," just playing some tunes that I pretty much play all the time. And Paul Buchignani, knowing me longer, a lot longer, musically, was--Scott was really trying to add this sophistication to it that I maybe never had, you know, really kind of changing my bass lines on the spot, and doing a lot of producing, just down there while we were trying to work it out. And Paul was seeing immediately that it was going to maybe lose some of its charm.

PM: Right. That maybe it wasn't going in the right direction.

AL: Yeah, because he didn't really know whether or not it was going to represent me truthfully.

PM: Right.

AL: So there was a part of me that was like, "Okay, this isn't going to work," because Paul Buchignani, in his own right, is a natural producer. He hears music really well. And I'm thinking, "Okay, I just don't think I want this battle taking place."

PM: Yeah.

AL: And they had a lot of history, they've known each other forever. So I could see that it was going to be this fight. And I just kind of let it fall away. And I sort of just didn't do anything with it for a few months. I didn't call anybody.

PM: And with Bomar you'd only done around four sides or so?

AL: Yeah, we recorded about four songs. And it was all in a couple of days.

PM: And then you just let it sit.

AL: Just sort of feeling it out, it wasn't necessarily anything that was going to be on the record. It was just supposed to be to see how it was going to start sounding and working.

PM: Right.

AL: And I did a lot of complaining about it when I'd come home. Paul and I are still friends at this point--Paul Taylor.

PM: Right.

AL: And I just came home really frustrated. And Paul, living with me also, knew me musically--he casually mentioned that he should be producing my record.

PM: [laughs]

AL: And for some reason I just agreed with him. And it was the first record he ever produced. But Paul is a child prodigy. And he's constantly recording around the house with him playing everything. I mean, he just lives and breathes music like nobody I've ever met in my life. I've always had a way of being attracted to men who have what I wish I had, you know?

PM: Yeah.

AL: So it was just really comfortable. And he put his heart and soul into it. He really did. It was meant to be. And Scott and I are still pals. Everyone sort of understood what was going to happen. I'll never know, though, what Scott might have done, because I have a whole lot of respect for aesthetic. I really do.

PM: Yeah.

AL: And I wouldn't shy from letting him produce another record for me in the future.

PM: Now, Paul, knowing you and your show, and your actual personality and everything the way that he does, how did it come about that as good a record as World is, that it didn't get around to showing the more rocking side of what you do?

AL: Well, that really truly is a shortcoming of the record, in my opinion. And it's my fault, because we did record a slew of rockers. It's just that when I would hear them, I know what it feels like to play them in a live setting. Do you know what I mean? On the other hand, another side of me gets more deeply profiled. It's always something, you know.

PM: Yeah.

AL: I know that transference of energy, I know what that feels like. And I could not hear it coming through on the rockers. It was just really bothering me. And if I couldn't put it on and feel it, then I didn't think anyone else would. But when I heard the sad ones or heard the moody melancholy ones, I could feel them, because those the songs I hadn't been able to do live in the past--

PM: And yet they were translating better to record.

AL: Yeah, they were translating to record, so it was just kind of natural to let the record flow in that direction.   continue

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