A Conversation with John Kruth (continued)

PM: The whole cast of characters seems given to wild excess.

JK: Absolutely. And that's the other thing that I just love about some of the reviews, where they'll take a shot at my chronology, or they'll take a shot that there wasn't enough research, or something like that. I'm talking to people who were alcoholics and cocaine addicts and heroin addicts, and just plain crazy pot smoking hippies from the '60s.

PM: Right.

JK: And it's like if somebody came and started asking me about like some of the tours I did with the Violent Femmes or the Meat Puppets. "What, are you kidding? I mean, it was a blur, man. It was just nothing but a blur." Even some of my own tours have been nothing but a blur.

PM: Absolutely.

JK: But I just love talking with people who go off on it. Go out and talk to these people and see if you can construct a sentence. Are there holes in Swiss cheese? Yes, there are. But that book came in almost 100 pages longer than it is--about 70 to 75 pages, maybe, longer than it is. And that partially has to do with the fact that the publisher is thinking, well, you want to keep the price down, and you want to keep it not much over 300 pages, because most people won't dedicate that kind of time. I mean, you'll have to talk to Clay Eals and his 800-page book about Steve Goodman.

PM: Wow.

JK: Do you know about that?

PM: No.

JK: [laughs] Yeah, there's an 800-page book on Steve Goodman coming out, with something like 350 or 400 photographs of Steve in the book.

PM: Who wants to look at 350 pictures of Steve Goodman? Sure, I like his music, but come on.

JK: Right. It's incredible. But I've got to hand it to his publisher for going the distance. I hear that it costs five dollars just to mail the book.

[laughter]

JK: So you can never capture--maybe Clay did with his book--but for the most part, you can't capture somebody's whole life in a book.

PM: Right.

JK: You can try. But I just sort of felt like, well, here, nobody was doing this. Let's get something out on Townes. And I focused on the stuff that I felt was important in getting out there.

PM: The music.

JK: The music, number one; I focused absolutely on the music, and what went behind making those songs.

PM: It's a music-centric biography.

JK: Absolutely. And there are people who are going to be upset that I didn't speak to this person, or I didn't talk to that person. But usually I draw the line after about 100 or 125 interviews.

PM: Yeah. Call me old-fashioned.

[laughter]

PM: I'll ask just a few more Townes questions, if you don't mind.

JK: Sure.

PM: You interviewed so many fascinating people in your search for Townes. Do any of the interviews stand out to you as particularly surprising or particularly touching in some way?

JK: Well, my favorite guy that I didn't expect--I mean, I had no idea who this was, but Townes called him his guru--was a guy named Darryl Harris.

PM: Right.

JK: Darryl--he's a guy that's living below the radar, living in one of those little cottages that they have in Austin. He's not a musician. I mean, years ago he used to play flamenco guitar, but he was a flamenco guitarist and a dishwasher at the same time. And I said to him, "Well, doesn't that destroy your calluses?"

PM: Yeah, right.

JK: But he was such a soulful cat. And he was just a real joy to hang out with, because some of the people you figure you kind of got an idea of when you're walking in the door, "Okay, this was Townes' guitarist," and you've heard him on records, or you've heard about him from other people. With Darryl I didn't really know much about him. But he was very close to Townes when Townes was a college student and dropped out of college and first started playing his early gigs. And he was just a joy. So that was one guy for sure.

PM: So did Darryl remain a friend of his throughout his life?

JK: I think so, yeah. The thing about Townes is that unless the drama got too much, a lot of people seemed to remain his friends, even through the crazy ride. But I want to say also that Griff Luneberg from the Cactus Cafe, that was an extremely touching and intense moment there where we sat in the bar after it was closed. And that's a great club, first of all.

PM: It's an incredible club.

JK: Right. And we just sat there with the lights down in the club. At that point I sort of felt like I was in a movie Citizen Kane, you know, in the very beginning when the guy is interviewing the woman. It was just so intense. I mean, there were a number of times where I felt like maybe I should find a different line of work, just because people would put you through whatever their trip was, and sometimes it wasn't all that pleasant. But at the same point, going down that road with Griff--a lot of people say, "Why don't you make movies? John, your books are like movies. Why don't you film these people while you're interviewing?" But you would never get an interview. Like some of the interviews that I got with Jeanene, when I was talking to Jeanene and we're over at the old cabin Bayou Self and she's showing me the cabin, showing me the room and the bed where he died. And we're talking outside and she's just talking to the sky, she's just talking to Townes. You wouldn't get that in a movie. No one is going to give that to you. And even if they tried to give it to you, they're going to be very self-conscious about it--"how does my hair look"--while they're crying. You know?

PM: Yeah.

JK: You're not going to get that in a film. So I mean, when we went over to Bayou Self, when Jeanene took me over to the cabin where Townes lived and died, and like I said, showed me the room, and we just--she gave me an old pair of salt shakers that he had picked up on the road. It was incredible.

And Rodney Crowell was a good guy. I really enjoyed my time with Rodney Crowell. He was one of the more sane guys in the bunch.

PM: Right, yeah, he's a very sane character.

JK: Yeah, I had a great time with Rodney. And he told me some really wild stories, and he didn't put me through the ringer.

PM: Right.

JK: I mean, I still like Guy, even though he put me through the--I didn't take that stuff personally. Any guy coming from New York and asking questions about--he would have gladly put anybody through that trip. I kind of admired him for it in a way, because he was giving me what the Buddhists call a transmission. He was putting me right there, right smack in the middle of their insanity and their craziness, and I got the flavor and I got the feel, and I got the initiation.

PM: Right.

JK: That's what it was. And it took me all these interviews, Frank, for me to just figure out what it was.

PM: That's what it was. It was a sandal in the face. You got slapped across the face with a sandal by the Zen master, yeah.

JK: Right. What's the big deal? That's part of the education.

[laughter]

JK: So Steve Earle--there's a woman in there named Lysi Moore. And Lysi was Richard Dobson's old lady back in that day. And she said the way that they treated Steve Earle gave him the incentive for becoming this great songwriter.

PM: Right. Had to be the kid to become the Man.

JK: Guy was up front. He just said, "I'm going to slit your throat and drink your blood like wine." That was an old Townes line he was putting on me. Look, Townes held Skinny Dennis down on the ground with a broken bottle up against his throat.

PM: Yeah, it's just the way these cats rolled.

JK: Exactly. They played hard. They played hardball. So that was just part of the experience. There was one more that just slipped away that I wanted to tell you about. But those were some real key moments for me in doing the interviews, for sure. And it's unfortunate that a lot of people hate Jeanene, and they don't even know what she's really like. They hate her because she tried to straighten out his business. She comes on strong. She's like Sandy Duncan with an AK-47, man.

PM: Right.

JK: She's a little pixie with an AK-47. And she happened to like the way that I wrote, and the way that I talked about Townes. And she understood what my mission was, I think pretty well, from the beginning. And Kevin Eggers...I had already worked for Kevin Eggers before I met Jeanene. So I mean, it's a crazy, crazy mixed up scene. And hey, maybe it's one of the reasons why Townes was drinking so much, I don't know.    continue

print (pdf)     listen to clips      puremusic home