One of the universal truths about the writers at Twangville is that we always look forward to the next Kevin Gordon album. And no visit to Nashville is really complete without hearing him play. So we hit the daily double this year at AmericanaFest because we had multiple opportunities to see him live, and his new record, The In Between, had just come out the previous week. There’s a little backstory, though. Shortly after starting to record the new project, Kevin was diagnosed with throat cancer. Everything went on hold. Fortunately he recovered and finished the album.
For those who know Kevin’s catalog, there’s a welcome familiarity to the album. His guitar still sounds like a cornered bobcat–snarling, growling, and nothing left to lose. The stories are worthy of adding to the Gordon canon, from an autobiographical tale of a lopsided relationship (Tammy Cecile) to a social commentary on inbred attitudes that have changed little in seventy-five years (Keeping My Brother Down). Perhaps the most poignant song on the record was written during the cancer diagnosis process. Catch a Ride details a dream with a sense of urgency, the desire to achieve greater success as a musician while understanding it’s all dependent on regaining his health.
I had a chance to pose a few questions to Kevin recently and here is that interview, edited a bit for clarity.
Twangville: First of all, congratulations on being cancer free! To my ears, your voice sounds the same as before. Did you have to work at that, or did it naturally come back the same?
Kevin Gordon: I didn’t really do any conscious work on my voice when recovering, though when starting to sing again I really had to remember to stay hydrated and breathe correctly. The stamina took a while to come back. One thing radiation can do is fry your saliva glands–and that definitely happened in my case. Some of them never come back. So: water. All the time. Water. The singing voice is pretty close to what it was; when I talk it’s tonally rougher, and maybe quieter than it was.
TV: You took a road less travelled to becoming a musician [a degree in poetry], with your educational background in the words more than the music. Why is that maybe an overlooked path for young people wanting to get into the music business?
KG: I wish I’d gotten more formal musical training early on, though stumbling through the dark you can find interesting things too. I was drawn to music very early on; poetry came later. As an undergrad, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just followed the good things as they happened. I had great writing teachers my last three years of college–Jack Heflin and Dev Hathaway. If I hadn’t gone to grad school in poetry, I probably would’ve moved to Austin or Nashville then. But in grad school at Iowa, the poets were the “juvenile delinquents” of the program–getting into trouble that we were usually smart enough to get away with, or out of. The fiction writers were the careerists, and that was simply because of the marketability of fiction, as opposed to that of poetry. During the week I’d be in class in the afternoons; on the weekends, I’d climb in the van with Bo Ramsey and the rest of the band and go play gigs, mainly around eastern Iowa–in a very good way, I was getting twice the education. Two worlds colliding, but you could wear the same jacket in both.
TV: Has your songwriting process changed over the years? If so, how?
KG: I’m less interested in co-writing, though it was never really something I felt I was good at. I try to stay open to different things. If I do collaborate now, I prefer working remotely–a friend sending me a track they’re working on, wanting me to write lyrics, or sending me words and wanting music to go with them. I’ve been adamant about poems and song lyrics being two different things. I see song lyrics differently–because they’re only part of the form, what would otherwise be considered terrible poetry can be exactly the right song lyric–our good musical friends melody, harmony, and groove help things along considerably. Can song lyrics be poetic? Of course. I enjoyed writing “Cajun w/a K”(from Long Gone Time) because it seemed to ask for that kind of language.
TV: Living in East Nashville, there is no shortage of world class musicians to work with. How do you go about choosing who plays on your records and in live events?
KG: I’ve been kinda predictable over the years–if something works, why fix it, especially if the sound continues to evolve and each record is different from what came before it? Joe McMahan (producer) knows me better than anyone; I have trusted him implicitly to know where I’m coming from, and to have good ideas about how to move the thing forward. With the live band, things tend to go in cycles–drummer X will be available for several months, then gets a road gig and is gone–though bass player Ron Eoff has played in the band most of the time since 1994. It definitely forces you to be stronger as the leader/frontman–you become the central identity, instead of it being about a band. Inevitably schedule conflicts come up, and that’s a time when I’m very grateful to be among this large community of good players.
TV: You have a knack for couching commentary about social injustice in stories of (mostly) autobiographical vignettes. Do news stories of the injustice trigger the memories of life events, or does the memory pop up and start the process?
KG: I think in most cases it’s the story, the memory–looking at details with an adult lens. And for me as a listener I much prefer the story and details showing me the way, instead of somebody telling me how I should feel. In the case of “Keeping My Brother Down,” that was definitely triggered by the news of Michael Brown’s death (and so many others). I went back to the story of Emmett Till’s murder, and used details from it to make something that’s relentless, and relentlessly terrifying. I avoided recording that song for years, because it felt too dark, with no redemption, etc. But that’s why I decided that it needed to be put out there. Problem is, most of the people who need to be moved and changed by that song won’t hear it, or won’t hear it deeply enough for that to happen.
TV: I think it’s probably the curse of any songwriter who composes a song about a particular person in their life, even if it’s a composition of several people, to have many people think it’s them. Will several Tammy Cecile’s come out of the woodwork? How do you respond when someone asks if it’s them?
KG: Well, there is only one Tammy Cecile! That’s another song where the details came from memory. I wanted to write something about her and that relationship–to come at it with empathy. Which I didn’t have much of at the time. But saying “I wanted to” isn’t right–there’s that edge you ride when trying to write something new–if the right line appears, it’ll suggest a melody. Maybe that’s just how it works for me. Most of the time if I’m writing about someone in particular, I’ll tell them after it’s done. Sometimes I do cloak the person’s identity–the song’s gotta work, whether grounded in memory/experience or imagination. And it’s always a blend of those things. It’s a tricky thing, the life vs. art question. Many years ago I wrote a song about a high school girlfriend’s father, who I had heard was suffering from Alzheimer’s. I made the mistake of telling her about it, and mentioning that his name was in the song (it was the title). Never mind that the man’s name was very common–she insisted that I not use his name in the song. It never really became an issue, because the song (so far) hasn’t been recorded for release. When you come from a smaller town, it’s harder for people to see the larger context–I have no doubt there are thousands of men out there with the same name. But to her, her father was the only one that mattered. I get that; I didn’t back then. I guess I’m more sympathetic now–people who don’t write songs don’t know what it means for people who do–that whatever happens, it’s usually an attempt at empathy, at connection or re-connection. Unless you’re writing your own version of Positively 4th Street, or Nazi Punks Fuck Off, that is.
TV: A friend of mine noted that coming out of the pandemic, anyone who was still pursuing music as a living had the passion. Two years without work, and only the committed were still in it. What have been your observations about being a musician post-pandemic?
KG: It’s still a weird zone for me. Next weekend I’m playing my first shows in three Iowa cities since before the pandemic. Towns I used to play 3, 4 times a year. My return was complicated by cancer treatment, too, so it feels like I lost another year in there. I don’t think we realize how much a mind-fuck that whole lockdown period was for everyone. It feels like time broke, and became something both more intransigent and fluid.
TV: I assume, at some level, you’re always writing and polishing new songs. What triggers you to make a new album?
KG: I haven’t been writing much in a while; finishing and preparing The In Between for release has taken up most of my time. It just goes that way for me. Cyclical. But now that the album is out, I’m looking forward to writing again. With some records, the songs suggest an album . . . others, like “Long Gone Time,” are driven by a production idea. For that one I had a lot of songs, and it was Joe’s idea to cut half of them with acoustic instruments, half electric. Both halves recorded in the same room. On vinyl it’s a double-LP–the first disc is the acoustic stuff, the other the electric. The bare reality though, for me, is that when it’s time to make a record, I bring in everything I’ve got that’s viable, and then pare it down. For the new record, I brought in a fragment of a song (“Coming Up”) I’d had for more than a decade–I had the melody, I had the chords, I had the refrain. Just not the verse and bridge lyrics. Finished them while recording the final vocal–not something I enjoy or recommend!
TV: Given the depth of detail in your songs, have you considered turning any of them into plays or books? Jimmy Buffet had some success at that. Kinky Friedman also comes to mind.
KG: I’ve wanted to write a book for several years. I’ve also had people approach me about writing a screenplay based on “Colfax,” or other songs. My lyrics are so visually oriented that I guess that makes sense.
TV: I’m going to ask a question that Mayer asked you several years ago in his Why It Matters column, to see if your answer is different after a decade. What one thing do you know now that you wished you knew when you started your career in music?
KG: Hmmm . . . I don’t remember that answer, so this definitely will be telling. I wish I’d been more serious about it–though drinking and carousing don’t slow you down much when you’re 24, those kinds of distractions take sacred time away from the music. And the more you discover in the music, the more there is to discover. Cliche, I know, but it’s true. But you gotta live, right? Get outta the house! Meaning: you have to have those experiences–you can’t sit around writing songs all the damn time. Who’d wanna do that? And what would you write about? It’s about balance. The present suggests things from the past–just about every time I go for a run, I have these intense sense memories–smells, or colors, from childhood. But I don’t ever get the whole thing. What triggers them, I don’t know.
TV: Last question(s): Beatles or Stones? Dolly or Willie?
KG: Ha. Still Stones for me, though seeing the recent documentary on Disney really humanized the Beatles for me–and I got curious about their records again. Dolly or Willie? Can’t we have both? We need them both!
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.