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A Conversation with Arthur Godfrey (continued)
PM: Was it about a year ago that you moved from California, from the Santa Cruz area to Nashville?
AG: That was November of 2003. So we're coming pretty close on two years, actually.
PM: How has Nashville been for you so far? How do you like it, and what kind of a place do you think it's going to be for you?
AG: I had a postmaster's job in Maine. During my twenty years, I did eight years in Boston, seven years up in Maine. I had my own post office, and got my songs together. In 2000 I moved to the Santa Cruz area, to Watsonville, and had a post office there, right in between Santa Cruz and Monterey, and did my last four years there. And then I took the step and moved to Nashville. I remember one of the folks at the radio station KPIG, in Santa Cruz, saying, "Nashville is going to eat you alive." And this was a very sincere friend of mine who was just maybe concerned that I had some false aspirations and hopes.
But I really didn't come here thinking, "I'm going to write hit country songs." I just knew this was the next place that I had to go. I mean, because Nashville is Music City. And as you know, I've been fortunate enough to know and meet some good people. You have a studio here in town, Puremusic Studios, and I've recorded out of there. And I've done some gigging here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do a lot of co-writing yet, for any number of reasons.
PM: You can start doing that anytime. There are plenty of writers.
AG: I've just sort of been out and about a lot. But with Amen I've been able to put all these old songs to rest. It's like turning the page. I've been able to put these songs in a nice place in my mind now, and I can leave them behind, and go on to newer material. But first I‘ve got to work this record, do what's in front of me.
And I'm lucky enough now that I'm getting picked up in a moderately but solid type of way on a lot of commercial and noncommercial Triple A stations. We'll see what happens. It's great for people just to spin your record, and to be invited into the stations.
PM: With Amen, you've got a good radio promo guy in the loop, Joe Estrada, and he's getting you quite a bit of play out there.
AG: Yeah, Joe Estrada is out of L.A., Upstart Entertainment. Great guy, and well respected. The type of guy you can pick up the phone and just talk to him. And he's a worker. My friend Ericson Holt, who broke into Top 40 with Joe this year--I think he got up as far as #34 on the AMA Charts--was a past client of Joe's. I'm doing something next week out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and Asheville, North Carolina, and Johnson City, where we just got picked up. And Eric is coming along, because he worked with Joe in the past. That's the type of guy Joe is: even though he may have stopped officially working with Eric, he includes him because Eric's played all those shows with us in NYC and Nashville, and he believes in him. [Check out keyboardist Ericson Holt's CD The Blue Side. And if you're new to the Americana chart, you can find it here: americanaradio.org/ama]
PM: More than a lot of singer/songwriters I know, you really closely associate yourself with the Americana genre, or movement.
AG: Yeah, very much so. They've been very good to me. I just don't know how else to consider myself. Americana, if you look it up in the dictionary, is the history and the folklore and the geography of America. And I mean that's what my songs are about. I call it my own urban Americana. I grew up in a three-decker house behind the projects, right where Mystic River was just filmed. That was my world. And my song "It's All Part of the Story" is about child abuse. Mary in that song is Tim Robbins' role to a T. I mean, that's just how I sort of grew up.
I don't know what other genre to put me in. Hey, I'm an underdog. I'm a fireman's kid from Boston. I won my first John Lennon Contest in 2001, and bought an Americana T-shirt that year at the convention and wore it, and got in a magazine. Somehow the American Association saw that and sent me a box of T-shirts.
PM: A lot of singer/songwriters see themselves as part of a folk movement, and think of Americana as more like alt-country, for instance. But I think Americana did really suit where you were coming from, because you had a lot of elements of rock, really, in your approach, and not so country, more folk, but as you say, urban. And there was a lot of Springsteen there, and so "Americana" really seemed to suit you better than it did suit a lot of singer/songwriters or folk/acoustic people.
AG: Yeah. And I'm a member of the Folk Alliance, but yeah, I definitely have a more edgy approach to my music and my lyrics. I really associate myself with people like Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams--not that I'm on their level, but that approach. I'm out there actually promoting the Americana Association, I have been for the last five years. And it's coming into its own now--there is a legitimate chart, and quite a few reporting stations, and a business that's grown up around the scene that involves a lot of good people.
PM: I think that more and more people are becoming aware of the genre and the Americana chart, and the movement of Americana. After some years of talking about it, I think it is really becoming something.
AG: Yeah. And folks like Johnny Cash, and Lucinda or Kris Kristofferson or Alison Krauss--and I was lucky enough to get on the Americana CD last year, as one of the new emerging artists--obviously those people associate themselves with it because many have been shunned or passed over by the Country music stations. I mean, we all know what Country is all about right now, and good luck to them. We all know it's about selling records, and the next new sort of hip thing that's going to be in town. But that's out of town in about six months. People like Cash and Dolly Parton and all my idols, people that I've always looked up to, they gravitated to the Americana Association because I think they felt at home there. And that even makes it so much more attractive to me. And to be on that CD with those great artists last year, and to have a great showcase, and to play with my friends like you and Ericson Holt and Jelly Roll Johnson and Pat McInerney and Thomm Jutz, it just gets no better than that.
PM: Yeah. I'm glad we'll be back there again this year. [To see our previous coverage of the Americana conferences, visit the Archives page.] continue
