A Conversation with Lori McKenna (continued)

PM: So you met my good friend Thomm Jutz the other night. [He was playing as a duo with Mary Gauthier.]

LM: I did. Well, first I got to say hi to him, and then I got to listen to him play--

PM: Ahh!

LM: --for forty-five minutes, and then I got to chat with him for a minute. And man, he's pretty amazing. I mean, I came to see Mary because I think Mary is--I was just saying this to her the other day, and I think she thinks I'm crazy--but I watch Mary perform, I stand there on the side of the stage, and I feel like somebody would've who was watching like Hank Williams back in the day.

PM: Oh, wow. [Check out our Mary Gauthier interview.]

LM: I was just standing there watching this songwriter that I know is going to be a legend someday.

PM: She's an icon in progress.

LM: She really, really is. I met Mary probably six years ago when I first started doing open mikes. She'd be the open mike feature, you know what I mean? And so I've been able to see this person, this star just rising.

And so I got to watch Thomm and Mary the other night. And I thought he was so great. One thing that's great about the two of them is that a lot of time a sideman, especially when they're that good, can sort of distract from a song or distract the audience a bit--they're sort of watching him play, maybe not paying attention to the words anymore. Mary is a poet, it's all about the words. But I thought he blended just perfectly with her. You were watching the whole thing, and you weren't sort of taking one spot or another.

PM: Oh, yeah. Even in conversation, he can make his personality vanish, if he so chooses.

LM: I thought they had a perfect mix. And I thought, wow, this guy--that's what it's all about. Because Mary is still Mary--and I know it's Mary, too, because I've seen her quiet down 100 people standing there with drinks in their hands and not the least bit interested in who's on stage. I've seen Mary silence those people. I know that she can do that. But I thought they played beautifully together. I was really happy to watch it.

PM: I hear it's a great duo show. Tom is also a great songwriter. We write a lot of songs together, and yeah, he's quite a character.

LM: And he's a great singer, too, because he sang with her a bit.

PM: Oh, see, he's so modest he hasn't even said that he sings with her.

LM: She ended the other night with "Wheel Inside a Wheel."

PM: Great song.

LM: And that song just sort of kills me anyway. And then he sings that line with her, "roll on, brother."

PM: Right.

LM: A lot of times people clap for a soloist, and that's pretty much the only time you hear an audience clap in the middle of a song. But they applauded when they got to the chorus of that song.

PM: Really...

LM: I've never seen that. I've seen a guitar solo get applause, but never a chorus. [laughs]

PM: Wow. Yeah, Tom is so modest, I'm glad to hear this from you, because otherwise I'd never know any of this.

LM: Yeah. And I know Mary is having a great time playing with him, and she just thinks he's great. And it sounds to me like he thinks she's great, too, and he really knows that this is somebody that people need to pay attention to. And I'm so happy that her record [Mercy Now] is getting all of these amazing reviews.

PM: Well, yeah. Mary's getting fantastic press, well deserved. [see our review] But you, yourself, get unbelievable press, as well. I was hard pressed to find a review that was less than five out of five stars.

LM: [laughs] Yeah, I've been really lucky. Because reviews are tough sometimes--like everyone says, you can get ten good ones, and you're going to remember the one that wasn't exactly positive.

PM: [laughs]

LM: And that's human nature.

PM: Sure.

LM: So I try to stay a little bit away from it, but I'm still interested. Then I think, well, I have so much more to distract me from just worrying about myself. And I think that's always been an important part of how I write and everything else. I have all these other things that are at the top of my list. I have these kids, and I'm home a lot more than most of my friends who are singer/songwriters and do this for a living. I try not to worry about the press so much. And sometimes I miss things. But it's hard not to pay attention.

The thing that's been great for me to see in the reviews is that people get that this record--I mean, I wrote the songs and I sang them, but it really had so much to do with Lorne and Kevin and these players who came in. Lorne never tried to rearrange anything. He just took the songs exactly the way I wrote them and made them into the way they sound on the record. And that's pretty unusual, I think, to have 13 songs where there weren't any changes made. They just came and played the way they did--

PM: Yeah, well, he also knew that the songs were right, God bless him.

LM: Yeah, I guess so.

PM: How did Buddy end up on that session? Is he Lorne's friend or your friend?

LM: Well, it's funny, because I'm a fan of Buddy Miller because of Mark Erelli.

PM: I met him at a coffee shop in Nashville one morning, very nice guy.

LM: Really? Well, he gave me a Buddy Miller tape a long time ago, years ago, and I didn't know who he was at all. Lorne produced all of Mark's records--Lorne and Mark are also very good friends. And somewhere along the way they had opened for Buddy Miller. Then I had the pleasure of opening for Buddy and Julie Miller a couple of years ago at the Iron Horse in Northampton. And it was the day they found out they were nominated for a Grammy, and it was an amazing show, it was the best show I'd seen in two years.

PM: They're incredible.

LM: So incredible. And they were really nice to me. And because Mark and Lorne had met them--I think Lorne had Buddy's email or something--he asked me, "If you could have anybody sing on this record, who would you want to have sing?" And I said, "Mark Erelli, Buddy Miller, Chris Trapper."

PM: And he got them all. [laughs]

LM: Mark was easy, because he's a friend. And he said, "I think I might have Buddy Miller's phone number or email or something." And Buddy Miller got right back to him and said, "I remember her. I'd love to do it." It was just so nice. I haven't talked to him about it at all, but we were all floored by what he did. And of course, he didn't think it was that good. [laughs]

PM: He never does.

LM: He said, "You don't have to use it. If you don't like it, I understand."

PM: [laughs]

LM: I mean, come on.

PM: That's really funny. [check out our interview with Buddy, also in this issue]

LM: And then Chris Trapper was in town. I think he lives in Boston or around here. So somebody tracked him down. And it was just perfect. continue

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