A Conversation with Al Anderson (continued)

PM: Let's talk about that last record, which I thought was a landmark album in a long beautiful career. Because maybe like Buddy Miller in this way, you play so well and you've written so many great songs that it's easy for your vocals to get the least credit, when actually, just like Buddy, you're every bit as good a singer as you are a player or a writer. You're a really great singer, a fine stylist, and with a good sound.

AA: I don't know about that.

PM: Well--

AA: That's for you to say.

PM: Yeah, to my ears, anyway. And I thought that it was particularly evident on this record, and no more so on any tune than that first one, "Love Make a Fool of Me." I dig that there's a jazzier record, because you get to croon.

AA: That happened with the Q, too, all that kind of stuff.

PM: Oh, sure. What was that song, "Never Take the Place of You." I love that song. [There's a clip of it on the Listen page.]

AA: Too bad you weren't at the reunion, we did it.

PM: Did anyone videotape it?

AA: Yeah. It's all on DVD.

PM: Oh, it is.

AA: Someday...

PM: Who owns it? Who's got it?

AA: The owner of the theater, who was our manager, Eric Suher, he owns the Iron Horse in Northampton.

PM: Another thing about "Love Make a Fool of Me," I thought that song had a beautiful bridge.

AA: Yeah.

PM: Whose bridge was that? It had to be you.

AA: It's all my music. I wrote the whole thing in bed when I woke up. I was just laying there, and the guitar was there. You would think I would always have a guitar around the bed, but I don't.

PM: [laughs]

AA: Sometimes you just get in a jazz mood or something.

PM: Oh, I like to write in that mode a lot, yeah. And Jim Hoke's flute arrangement was a thing of beauty.

AA: Hoke is great.

PM: You guys go back a long way, right?

AA: Yeah.

PM: So I thought it was very neat to use his piece "Interlude" in between the two Gary Nicholson co-writes on the new record. And you got Jim's son on the cello--it's a beautiful thing.

AA: Yeah. Fifteen years old or something.

PM: Yeah, I remember meeting him at the house a time or two, and now I see him popping up on the record.

AA: Jim was like--he really understood. He understood the band.

PM: [laughs] Have you heard Hoke play the pedal steel now? [It was one of the few instruments he hadn't been playing.]

AA: If he really goes at it, he'll be good.

PM: That man can tear up an instrument, boy.

And as many monster cuts as Tia Sellers has had, I didn't recall ever hearing her sing before. Is that a rare vocal appearance on the record? [Tia co-wrote two Songs of the Year, "There's Your Trouble" by The Dixie Chicks and "I Hope You Dance" by Lee Ann Womack.]

AA: They never let her sing. I love her singing.

PM: Yeah, she sang real nice. Is that her first?

AA: She's got an album, you got to get it. Call Fame and have them send you an album.

PM: Fame--oh, oh, the publishing company.

AA: She's a great writer.

PM: Oh, man, monster writer. Is she fun to write with?

AA: Oh, yeah. I've written some of my best stuff with her. Leslie Satcher, too.

PM: Who's Miles Zuniga? I couldn't place that name.

AA: Fastball. I just talked to him today.

PM: Oh, Fastball. Wow, because he wrote a couple of good songs with you on that record.

AA: There's one on the Fastball album called Airstream, that came out on Rykodisc. You need to hear that.

PM: Okay.

AA: It's really good. That was a great band. I heard stuff in the studio they did that was incredible. It didn't even come out.

PM: Yeah, I got to get up with that. Not surprisingly, it's Gary Nicholson that gets to illuminate the spiritual side of Big Al on the record with--

AA: "Moving Into The Light." He wrote that for Patty Loveless. He knows her better than I do. He says she has periods of being down, and we needed the cut. [laughs]

PM: I know it sounds like a spiritual song, but it was about the cut.

AA: I'll do just about anything for a Patty cut. I've had four. I'm pretty blessed with that. I've had four Trisha's and three Vince's. [Trisha Yearwood and Vince Gill]

PM: Jeez, Al, just an unbelievable bunch of cuts.

AA: They have not replaced that generation yet.

PM: So what began as 23 hard years on the road ended up to be an unbelievable mailbox full of money.

AA: Yeah, it was like going to school. You learn what to do, and you also learn what not to do. It was an excellent band for both lessons.

PM: It's so rare that people get that education to pay off in the end. You're one of the crafty ones, one of the talented ones that figured it out and hung in there long enough to shoot the gap.

AA: Yeah. But when I saw that thing from '88 that I was telling you about, the R.E.M. thing that she has upstairs, it made me go, "What the fuck did I do?"

PM: [laughs]

AA: Because this is just a machine, here, and they spit out the new guys, and--

PM: Yeah.

AA: You know, I don't have to tell you.

PM: Yeah, and that's the thing. I mean, coming from not only having been an NRBQ guy for all those years, and having not only that ability, but that mentality, the constraining nature of writing for Music Row must sometimes just eat you alive.

AA: Yeah. But I always did other stuff.

PM: Meaning, you kept writing all kinds of music.

AA: Like [his previous CD] Pay Before You Pump and that, those were songs that I knew would never get cut. And then Trisha cut "Love Make a Fool of Me," but it didn't make the record. "Trip Around The Sun" got cut by Buffet and Martina.

PM: Really? That's a great song.

AA: Got to 20 on the charts. It was number one on CMT. And Vince cut "Two Survivors." Vince just cut "Right On Time."

PM: Damn!

AA: Things I thought would never get cut. Sometimes I made sure they never got cut. I wanted the right guy to come around. "Right on Time" wasn't going to go to somebody who was still drinking and partying or something.

PM: Right.

AA: Because our best songs never get cut. I'm sure that's true with a lot of writers. I know it is.

PM: What are some of your best songs that haven't gotten cut.

AA: They're on After Hours. "Change Is Going To Do Me Good." Gretchen Wilson almost thought about it--and "Right on Time," too. I've written stuff with Craig that never got cut, too, a lot of great stuff. At least 30. In fact, except for the Dirt Band, nobody even cut "Bang Bang Bang" yet.

PM: Really? That's a very cuttable song. Did Patty Loveless end up cutting that tune that you wrote with Nicholson for her?

AA: No. She cut a song I wrote for George Jones and he hated it, called "Last Of A Long Lonesome Line."

PM: He hated it. Well, you never know.

AA: You never know.  continue

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