A CONVERSATION WITH KELLY JOE PHELPS (continued)
PM: You know, what you wrote in your bio about your approach to lyric writing, I found it really inspiring. I'd like to include some of that in this.
KJP: Oh, sure, yeah.
PM: I dug what you said about sometimes writing up to forty or more pages of prose or loose verse before some lyric or ideas started popping up.
KJP: Yeah.
PM: And I looked at some pages on the table that I'd written this week, about a friend coming to visit, and I had that very experience. It's like, "Oh, yeah, now I see, here's the ideas right here, they're on this page and this page." So thanks for that. That was valuable.
KJP: Oh, fantastic.
PM: I love that line from the bio, "I no more want to play, sing, or write the way I did five years ago than I want to live the life I had then."
KJP: Yeah, right.
PM: I interview a lot of singer songwriters, and I don't hear anybody saying that.
KJP: [laughs] Hell with 'em, then.
[laughter]
PM: A lot of the veterans that I talk to, be they friends in town or touring artists, tell us that you're one of the people that they can hold up and say, "Well, he's the real deal, his records are good."
KJP: [laughs] Oh, that's very nice to hear, man. I do appreciate that.
PM: You say you don't write on the road.
KJP: That's true.
PM: Do you read or listen to music on the road?
KJP: I don't listen to music much. I do read.
PM: What are you reading these days?
KJP: I read everything. Let's see, I had this book--you've probably seen the movie--you remember that old creepy movie called The Bad Seed?
PM: Sure.
KJP: Yeah, well, I just finished reading the book that that movie came from, by a guy named William March.
PM: And was it was even creepier, or...?
KJP: Yeah, man, and with a whole different ending, of course. That was great. I finally just finished reading Travels with Charlie, Steinbeck's thing, but I thought he was kind of a jerk. [laughs]
PM: Steinbeck or Charlie?
KJP: [laughs] Steinbeck, although I like his books usually. Then I just picked up--the one I've got with me now is called The Ugly American, which was also written in the late fifties.
PM: Interesting time frame that you're working from there.
KJP: Yeah, no kidding. But it was one of those--I went to the bookstore the day before I left. I went through all my bookcases and didn't see anything that looked like I wanted to deal with it. And that one kind of popped out of the shelf, so I took it.
PM: Very distinctly American kind of stuff.
KJP: Yeah, I suppose I read more of that. I mean, like a year ago, I was plowing through Nelson Algren and Raymond Carver.
PM: Oh, right. continue
