A Conversation with Johnsmith (continued)

PM: Oh, that's right, you're friends of Willy Porter's. [see our interview with Willy from a few years ago]

JS: Willy's got a new record coming out. The title cut we co-wrote. I got two cuts on it that we co-wrote. The title cut is called "Making the Most of the Available Light."

PM: I do love him and his music. Now, what is your connection, again, with him? You go way back with Willy Porter.

JS: Well, he's from Wisconsin. Listen to this. So for years when I was being a really blue collar musician--I still am--I just iron my collars now.

[laughter]

JS: But I used to like do the college market, for years, to pay the bills. And I was proud that I was making a living playing music, but it was freakin' grueling.

PM: Because they got you at noon and nobody is listening, and it's--

JS: All that.

PM: All that stuff.

JS: All that. But so that's where I met Willy. I was doing a college gig at his college in Eau Claire. And imagine this, imagine a young Willy Porter, and he looks like he's half his age. When he was in college he looked like he was twelve. And I would sit there and Willy would sit in the audience with a shit-eating grin from ear to ear, just sucking up the whole thing. And we became just fun buds, right?

PM: Right.

JS: I never really knew his talent.

PM: And he was probably already a monster guitar player.

JS: He was one of those closet guys, every night, man, just working it. So then one day we become friends. And I have a whole story about the Kerrville Folk Festival, which is a big tribal clan thing for me. I could do a whole program on that. So I go down the first couple of years, I do the New Folk contest, I win, I don't get a gig, because I'm not a pushy kind of guy at all. And I'm kind of waiting for Rod Kennedy at the time to just--when is the phone going to ring? And I never asked him for a gig, of course, but I found out later that's what you have to do. Anyway, I didn't know that at the time.

So I go a couple years, and I loved it. I mean, Kerrville just like cracked me open, it did, big time, it really did. And my wife, who is just unbelievably supportive, saw that, and supported that in me. So like the third year comes around, and I was like, "I guess I'm not connected there. I didn't get a gig. What else can you do? I won the contest, no gig." And Willy Porter calls up and says, "Johnny, take me down to that Kerrville thing. I heard good things about it. You've been there. Take me down. Take me down." He's like a little brother to me, we're really close. He says, "Take me down there." I was like, "Willy, no." I said, "You'd really like it, Willy, but I don't know, man, I just didn't--I didn't get anything out of it as far as a gig." It wasn't making my career go anywhere. So Willy is smart as a whip. He's like unbelievably smart. He calls my wife, whose name is JoJo. He says, "JoJo, you got to talk Johnny into this. He's got to take me down there." And she's like, "I know. He needs to go down there."

[laughter]

JS: So they kind of gang up on me, and finally I say, "Okay, Willy. Bring it on. Here's the deal. Here's what we do, here's what we're going to do." Anyway, I hadn't heard Willy play in a few years. And man, the first night we got around a campfire and he pulled out his ax--

PM: He scared the shit out of everybody.

JS: He scared the shit out of everyone! I'll never forget that year. He had just written that song with L. J. Booth, "Moonbeam"--[singing] "hello little moonbeam"--that Hedges kind of thing. And L. J. was there that year, who was another one of my very closest best friends. L. J. is doing a main stage show time slot. And he says, "I get a call one day from this kid in Wisconsin and his name is Willy. And he says, 'Hey, L. J.'"--they had met like once--he says, "'I'm writing an L. J. Booth song today.'"

PM: Fantastic.

JS: And L. J. was like, "Come on up." So he comes up and they write the song. So here's L. J. on the main stage at Kerrville, right, just doing a great set. So he tells the story. He says, "You know what the problem is after we wrote the song? I can't play it half a good as Willy. So if you don't mind, I'm inviting Willy to come up to play our song."

PM: Unbelievable.

JS: And Willy steps out, BLOWS THE PLACE AWAY! Like instant standing ovation with everybody. Anyway, so that's the kind of year that we had.

PM: Now what year was that?

JS: I would say that would be '93--'92 or '93, yeah. God, it was just great. So that's kind of Willy and my connection. I mean, we're very different writing-wise.

PM: But you're still writing today, it's twelve years later.

JS: Oh, yeah, definitely. Kind of how it works is, for Willy and I, our process together is we--because Willy, musically and lyrically we couldn't be farther apart, but it makes a good thing in that I'll kind of get to the story a little bit more, and I'll kind of like work the lyric little thing with it more.

PM: Yeah, he's a little more abstract.

JS: And I might bring a very concrete kind of music thing, a very rootsy groovy thing. I love the partial capos. I'll have it all whacked out and different things, and I'll have a little thing going. And then we'll start the song. And Willy is just bouncing off the walls with all kinds of cool shit, you know what I mean--

PM: Right.

JS: But we always are kind of writing--it just seems like for the intention of Willy. And then the next time I see Willy, man, he's taking the song to crazy places--I mean, all of a sudden it looks like Hedges is playing my little lick...it's morphed into this thing.

PM: [laughs]

JS: And then lyrically we go back and forth. We'll email a couple things, "Yeah, what about this?" Or I'll get some brainstorm, "Willy, this is the third verse!" Or we hooked up a couple years ago at the Sisters Folk Fest and just really brought one of our songs home to this new place. So anyway, that's our connection.

PM: Wow.

JS: But it's more than music, we're really close, and really share intimate kind of stuff. You need a few buds in this business, man, that it's not just writing songs and helping each other get gigs, it's really like--because what most people don't understand what we--this crazy life that we've chosen, and what a balance it is to have a family. Willy is married and has two little kids. It's a juggle. It's a serious juggle, and there are more train wreck relationship stories than there are success stories.     continue

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