A Conversation with Johnsmith (continued)

JS: Another cool thing was at the end of the first track--it's called "Back to the Mystery," it's a real primal kind of a tune. And our recording is live. So at the end of it me and Darrel and Kenny are kind of getting a little carried away, and I kind of break into this white man "hiya, hiya"--

[laughter]

JS: --just for fun.

PM: Yeah, right.

JS: But of course, Darrel is all over it, and he's like doing a harmony to it.

[laughter]

JS: And it's a little scary, though. So then I get the idea--a very dear old friend from Wisconsin is Bill Miller, Native American. It was Christmas, so I called Bill up. I said, "Bill, I cut this song"--

PM: "I need a little color in here."

JS: Well, I said, "Would you bring your flute over? Would it be possible to do that?" And he says, "Yeah, man. I'm here. No gigs. I need to get out of the house, I'll be over." So he comes over. We're sitting there [laughs] and I'm playing our track, and it's a nice track, I mean, it's really groovy, it's got a cool thing happening. And Bill is like, "Yeah, man." He's got his flute out there. It's kind of this tonic weird thing, trying to find some notes that are going to work. There's only going to be a few that are going to really work. And it's just going into tag, it's just at the end after the song was going into this final kind of thing. And Bill is sitting there and he's just into it, and he's trying this note and that, he's got this double stereo Indian flute thing. And we get to the end part where Darrel and I are like being like banshees. And Bill kind of stops playing, and he kind of looks at me --

[laughter]

JS: --he looks at me--fun, though--looks at me, says, "Want me to sing a little bit on there?" And I said, "Yeah, man." And he goes, "And maybe it wouldn't sound so white."

[laughter]

JS: So then he jumps up and he goes--

PM: "Can I native that up for ya?"

[laughter]

JS: So he goes in there, and he does, [singing] "ahiya heeyahay, ay ya ya hee hi"--

PM: Holy Jeez.

JS: Then he says, "Give me another track." [singing] "Ayahyahay yaya." Then he says, "Give me another track." And, [singing] "Ay yi yi." And he just does this tribal thing.

PM: He's amazing.

JS: And so the thing with me and Darrel and Suzi Ragsdale, it fades out, us, and then Bill's thing comes in, and that's--

PM: Right. Turn down the white man, turn up the red man.

[laughter]

JS: We kind of reverse the thing. So just little graceful things like that happened on the record.

PM: Wow. No keys?

JS: No keys, nothing electric.

PM: Oh, nothing electric.

JS: Nothing electric. Upright bass, only. Nothing electric.

PM: No Telecasters, no electric bass.

JS: No. Concertina, penny whistle, John Mock on a couple.

PM: So what is the record to be called?

JS: It's out. It's called Break Me Open. The title cut is a song that I wrote in Crockett, Texas, east Texas, the home of Lightnin' Hopkins. And you'll hear the song. But I was there. And I grew up--well, first of all, Lightnin' Hopkins was from this area, Crockett, was a sharecropper's son, and kind of learned his chops in front of this place where I was playing. It was a renovated old juke joint. And there's a little statue of him in town. I got to the gig early, and I'm walking around, and I see this statue of a guy playing guitar, and I go, "Who's that?" Lightnin' Hopkins. And I'm just like, ooh, sacred ground. And I read this little stuff there. And nobody is around. I go to my van and I get my guitar, and I just sit there, man, right next to that statue there, and I write this song. It starts out--

PM: In front of the statue of Lightnin' Hopkins! Yo.

JS: Yeah, man. And the song starts out, [singing] "Lightning Hopkins tapped his foot on this here street until he felt good; yeah, he tapped it hard; he tapped it long; tapped it until his heart broke open and he found his song."

PM: Wow.

JS: Yeah, and Darrel plays a Weissenborn on it, sings with me on it, very, very cool. So that's the title track of this album. But it's one of those songs that's a good example of how the spiritual aspect--I don't know, spiritual is not quite the right word.

PM: Now, that's not a dirty word where I come from.

JS: No, I know. But to some people, it's not a broad term to them. I like songs that were psychologically sound. Those are big words, too. But I hate songs that I've heard in pop and Nashville markets like, "Oh, if you leave me I'm going to slit my throat."

PM: Oh, you mean you want to hear a functional song.

JS: "Break Me Open" is a very good example of what is a healthy song for me, because the gist of the song really is--the bridge and the chorus is like, "Break me open, bust this dam; let these waters flood the bottomland, free my song to fall like rain upon the ocean; Lord, hear my prayer, break me open." And then it's really about let me bring up the darkness. Let me bring up the demons, whatever you want to call it. Man, don't let me keep it under a rock anymore, and in denial of it. But to the average person listening, they might just see this as a cool blues groovy song, and not get that. But that's what it is.

PM: And some theophobes might see it as a Christian song. And that's what a song is, it's different things to everybody.

JS: But anyway, that's kind of what I meant. Like Buddy Mondlock and I wrote a great song a few years ago called "Appalachian Rain," about a guy who got his walking papers from a sweetheart, and he goes off to walk on the trail. But the healthy part of the song is in the end, he says, "But this walk is for me to find my peace in this Appalachian Rain." He's sad about it, but he's like, "It would be nice if you were at the end of the trail, but if you're not, I'm going to be okay." You know what I mean? His process.

So that's an important thing to me. And I'm not out to save anybody. I'm not out to change anybody's mind. But I do write about something that interests me, the process, people's work interests me.

PM: Yeah.    continue

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