A Conversation with Pat Buchanan (continued)

PB: So I think I might have been on the road somewhere, and talked to Ed Seay. I would talk to Ed Seay about once a year. And he'd go, "Yeah, you're going to end up moving to Nashville." And he called me up--I think he had some knee surgery, and he had a couple days off, and he called me up, and I talked to him. And he said, "You need to come up here now."

PM: Right. So you first came to Nashville in '92, '93.

PB: It's all a bit blurry.

PM: Oh, I hear that.

PB: Yeah. I mean, I was sleeping on a friend's couch. But Ed had me come up and sit in and just check out a session. And it was Pam Tillis's second record.

PM: Wow.

PB: And she was so totally cool. And everybody was like totally cool. I met John Jorgenson. And actually he and I were just there having this guitar clinic conversation when we looked up and everybody had gone to dinner.

PM: [laughs]

PB: But I mean, everybody knew who I was.

PM: Really?

PB: Yean, because Ed--Ed is probably my biggest guru of life, man. In 1980, in Homeward Angel, he came up to me. We were playing in bar in Panama City, Florida. He said, "You're a great guitar player, if you ever get to Atlanta, call me." And I did, but it took a long time to get past Eileen Burns and her secretary at Bang Records--

PM: [laughs]

PB: --because she was a bit of the typical like Jewish businesswoman married to the late, great Burt Burns--

PM: [laughs] Right.

PB: --a great writer, right? And it was kind of like not really happening at that point. But once I got to Ed, he was true to his word, and got me to play on Paul Davis' and Sammy Johns' record.

PM: Wow.

PB: This is 1983 probably, maybe 1984, and early on. So Ed, my guru of life again, said, "Come up here now and check this out," and so I did. And it was pretty wild and pretty cool. Everybody knew who I was. Ed has a great what I call the E. F. Hutton factor.

[laughter]

PB: And I was very, very fortunate, man, because people still pay attention to everything you do.

PM: Right.

PB: So everything I was lucky enough to have done, people knew about, a bit.

PM: Uh-huh.

PB: And so I think somewhere around '93--also, Tim Smith, who now plays with Sheryl Crow, is a good friend of mine.

PM: What does he play with her?

PB: He plays bass and guitar. He was playing with Jellyfish at the time.

PM: Oh, what a great band.

PB: And I was a huge fan. I mean, that was probably one of the biggest eye-openers for me in the '90s.

PM: Jellyfish, yeah.

PB: Yeah. When I kind of started figuring out that all these great '60s and '70s records, and influences, and bands were really good, and that was kind of coming back in, creeping into rock music.

PM: Right.

PB: I had a chance to possibly jump on a plane and go out to San Francisco and possibly audition for the Spilled Milk Tour, their second record--and I had a family, and our son was a couple years old by then--or move to Nashville, pay some rent and buy some diapers.

PM: Right.

PB: And so I was doing my own thing, and trying to see if I could get it off the ground then, like a solo thing. And it was just kind of not happening, and that was a turning point. And so I decided to move to Nashville.

PM: Right.

PB: Slept on somebody's floor and just played endless demos, showcases. I would play anywhere. The first probably month I got here, all I did was eat--

[laughter]

PB: --because people were always going to meat & threes and eating, and what-have-you. And I was just like, "I'll meet you there."

PM: "I ate my way into Nashville."

PB: So on the session front, I was very fortunate to be able to do that, to be able to play my guitar for a living. I mean, by then, I didn't really even know how to read a chart correctly.

PM: But back then there were demos a'plenty to play on for the good guys.

PB: Yeah. And there still are. I mean, there were records a'plenty kind of going--

PM: Right.

PB: But you always kind of work your way up through the demo sweat shop.

PM: Yeah, even a guy as good as you, in this town, there's still a pecking order.

PB: Yeah, there's a pecking order. And people have told me that even guys like Barry Beckett started playing demos, or whatever. And I was more than happy to do it.

PM: Right.

PB: And I always knew--like I remember seeing Austin City Limits, and seeing Foster & Lloyd on there and going, "Oh, there's something happening there." And I would watch CMT. I saw a Tom Kimmel video. I saw Kenny Greenberg.

PM: Unbelievable! Kimmel and Greenberg!

PB: Oh, yeah. And okay, I can do that. And Kenny was a great inspiration to me, because he's a rock dog--

PM: Yeah.

PB: --which is great. And he ain't changing, and he was playing a rock solo on this Tom Kimmel video. I went, "Cool."     

PM: Amazing.

PB: And then I saw like American Music Shop, or something, and there were great musicians on there. I was going, "Okay, all right. There's something going on." And I mean, oh, mid-'80s I got Rodney Crowell records. And I got Steve Earle. Steve Earle, again, was like a huge turning point, the Guitar Town record.

PM: Sure.

PB: I went like, "Oh, something is going on."

PM: Yeah, that was a call to arms.

PB: Yeah. And so I was interested in what was going on up here. A good friend of mine, Brendan O'Brien would come up here. And he knew Keith Christopher. He'd be up here doing rock gigs.

PM: What an incredible rocker, Keith Christopher.

PB: Oh, yeah. So I knew there was a rock scene going on up here. And I even got in a rock band before I even moved here. And so that's kind of a funny story. But also, I saw Bill Lloyd, so I just walked up to him at the Bluebird one Monday night where I would go and hang out, and said, "Hey, Bill. How are you doing?" We have a mutual friend, this guy Pat Terry, who's a great writer, and still lives in Atlanta. And he was just like--we were instant friends, like I'd known him all my life.

PM: He's still a good buddy, no doubt. [Like I said in the setup, he and Bill played In the Round at the Bluebird Cafe, in between this interview and the writing of the setup.]

PB: Knowing him, meeting Ross Rice and then Brad Jones, led eventually to what was the start of the best writing collaboration and the most fruitful and potent writing collaboration I've ever been part of, with Bill DeMain.

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