JPG: And it goes back to the idea of whether they feel that there’s a connection between that and songwriting, that if they approach it sober it won’t happen.
TS: I think there’s been some of that for me. But now I feel like I’ve got so many songs and I’m still excited to play those songs, which I feel makes me lucky. Rather than write new songs I would like to, musically, explore my old ones for awhile. I’ve been really getting into my guitar playing. I’d really like to play. I’d like to be a better player five years from now than I am now. And I don’t care if I’m any better as a t-shirt salesman.
JPG: On “Don’t Tempt Me” you sing with Loretta Lynn.
TS: We wrote that song together, too.
JPG: What was that experience like? How did you two even come together?
TS: One of her twin daughters is married to, I would say my best friend, a guy named Mark Marchetti. He’s a poet and a writer that I’ve known for 10 years before they were married. Anyway, when he married her, I’m pretty sure that’s when my music crept into their home. Then, last year she started getting ready to work on a record and she made a list of people she wanted to write songs with. Mark called and said, ‘She put you down.’ I said, ‘You’re kiddin’ me!’ So then she called. She has a house downtown and then she has what I call the City outside of town. She has a town outside of town. The first time I went down to the house she has on the [Music] Row, and I think we made up “Don’t Tempt Me.” Had a good time. She’s got a great sense of humor. She’s very pretty, too. So, made that up and then we talked about that song on the phone for awhile. She came and cut it, and then I went back out to her house and we made up another one called “She’s Got Everything It Takes To Take Everything We’ve Got” and her and Elvis Costello sing that. And that’s coming out pretty soon on her album. I’m very excited about that.
JPG: Now, how did you nab “Don’t Tempt Me” for your album rather than it going to hers?
TS: I felt like even as we were working on it, once we started it we knew it was kind of like a rock ‘n’ roll song and we liked it. The first song we started, we sat down to make up a song for her but a verse and a chorus into it we knew we were making one up for me. I remember I had called her and said, ‘Is it okay if I cut this?’ And she said, ‘Sure.’
Both times I didn’t do much. It was more like I got a free lesson and I held the notepad and she showed me a bunch of shit I didn’t know.
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