A Conversation with Michael Rhodes (continued)

PM: I wish our readers could see the inside of your home. It's so beautiful. You know, they would know what a cosmopolitan and cultured person you are.

MR: Or a cracker from Louisiana, like I really am.

PM: Which you also are. [laughs]

MR: [laughs]

PM: What would you say, as both of those things, to readers who've never been to Nashville about living here?

MR: It's what you make of it. It's about the people. This is all about people, aside from songwriting and making music.

PM: And if that's true, and I believe that's true, it refers us back to what we were saying about what songwriting, and the camaraderie connected with it, used to be, versus what it is now.

MR: Well, I know there's just a lot more co-writers these days than there used to be. It's a lot easier to get artists to listen to songs that are co-written. It seems to me that it is rare to get a song cut anymore that is not a co-write.

PM: Now, what's the deal with that?

MR: I don't know. Unless they figure they'll just cover the board, you know, roulette style, let's just get as many songwriters as we can and... I'm not saying that it's right or wrong or anything, but I think that's one of the big differences now than twenty-five years ago, as far as songwriting goes.

PM: Personally, I've rarely enjoyed the process of co-writing a song, and I've rarely seen an example where it isn't less than the sum of its parts, that it doesn't get diluted. I mean, it's supposed to be catalytically converted, but instead, to me, it's generally diluted.

MR: Yeah, I don't know where it all got started, man. I really don't know. I think that there was an artificial template made. Obviously there have been popular songs in the past...

PM: By songwriting teams.

MR: Songwriting teams -- but typically that was music and lyrics.

PM: Yeah, right. And I do like to co-write that way. You know, give somebody a lyric, or give somebody a piece of music, that's fine.

MR: Yeah. Or there's Lennon and McCartney. And I mean, God knows, there is a good argument for co-writes. But from speaking to other people in other cities and songwriters and stuff, Nashville is an anomaly that way, in the writing appointment kind of mentality, and that all of the songs are co-writes.

Although some of the greatest songs have been co-writes. You know, Porter and Hayes, all that stuff out of Stax, and Motown...

PM: Lieber & Stoller.

MR: And Holland/Dosier/Holland, and all those. So I'm not, you know, disparaging co-writes, but at some point, when you get six co-writers on a song, I mean, what is that about?

PM: Yeah. And it's different, talking about songwriting teams, that's one thing. But instead it's just like, "Well, I'm writing with so-and-so at one o'clock, and then at five o'clock I got to finish a song with my next-door neighbor."

MR: Yeah, it's the shotgun approach. I think it's about quantity, and you can keep your pole in a number of different ponds that way.

PM: There's no question that you create more songs that way.

MR: Right.

PM: We've got to cover a little bit of gear for the technically inquiring minds. For the bulk of your sessions these days, what's the favorite setup, the bass de jour and what's setting in front of you when you're doing your session?

MR: To the left of me I've got a '63 Fender P bass, and a five-string Sadowsky, and a Hofner, and a hollow body Lakeland, and that pretty much covers it. You know, it depends. Then there's stuff that rotates in and out.

And it's going through an Avalon U-5 direct box, and a Tubetech compressor. And then I got some Gizmo pedals. But that's just for me. That's just for fun. And then I use a rumble seat, also.

PM: What's that?

MR: I designed it. It's a speaker, it's an enclosed speaker cabinet that I sit on. Euphonic Audio makes it. It's very cool.

PM: And what's the principle?

MR: Well, it vibrates. It's just an amp. I mean, it moves air. So it's hard wired, there's a mike inside of it. But I sit on it, so it feels like -- I mean, vibration is a very visceral experience, more than just wearing headphones.

PM: [laughs]

MR: But it actually sounds very good, too. But it's just a more complete thing. Oh, it's very cool.

PM: That's really funny. So you record on the rumble seat almost all the time. You're sitting down.

MR: Yeah. It's like standing in front of an amplifier, but it's quiet.

PM: Right. But with your butt against the speaker.

MR: It's an isolated box. It doesn't bleed out into the room because it's a box, so it's all contained. It's very cool.

PM: And Euphonic makes it?

MR: Yeah, yeah Euphonic Audio.

PM: All right. So I know you're not a very embarrassable person in this way, so I'll say that one of the most interesting and arresting things that I find about you, both as a person and a player, is that you're exceedingly present. How do you account for that? How did that come to pass?

MR: Isn't that the name of the game?

PM: For the people that are present, I think it is.

MR: Well, does anything else really exist?

PM: In the place of presence, I think what exists is avoidance, laziness.

MR: Oh, God, I'm one of the laziest people there is.

PM: But not when it comes to just showing up, like even for this conversation, or showing up for a dinner engagement, showing up for an exchange of any kind. I mean, I know some people find you almost disarmingly present. They go, "Oh, Michael Rhodes, I don't know, he kind of makes me nervous." And I say, "I know what you mean. It's this, right?" [I do my Michael Rhodes look.]

MR: Uh-huh. [laughs a little] Okay.

PM: [laughs] I say, "That's funny, that's what I like about him."

MR: Uh-huh.

PM: But were you always like that?

MR: I don't know. Early on, when I was a kid, I was shy. I was a late bloomer. I spent a lot of time by myself reading and practicing, kind of a nerd.

PM: But unlike a lot of musicians, and good musicians I know, you're socially astute. A lot of musicians are not really comfortable in that domain because they spent too much time practicing. When did you blossom in that way to where you're very eloquent and socially fluent?

MR: I think I turned a corner somewhere in the late '70s. Really, sometime in the '70s, something clicked, and I began to come out of myself. It's a difficult question to answer. I'm really not sure how to say that, except it's a development of, you know, how we are. It's the acorn theory. I don't know whether it's spiritual DNA or psychological DNA. Some things take longer than others.

PM: Yeah.

MR: So I can't really answer that. Except it's a very interesting world, and I get out of it what I put into it, you know, or however much that I pay attention. It's a big idea, Frank.

PM: Well, you know, it's your presence that brought it to mind, so I --

MR: Well, I'm just saying that this is all a really big idea. [laughs]

PM: Oh, that.

MR: But here's the thing: Whose big idea is it? It's our big idea. [laughs]
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