JPG: You mentioned lyrics. What was your frame of mind here? What were your intentions?
TS: Writing an album for me, I don’t set out with an intention. It’s normally more of a process of discovery. I just would play my guitar or banjo, some of these songs I wrote on the banjo. Whatever I happened to be writing on, I just play and sing and a melody would come to me and then pursue that melody to the places that it logically wanted to go, where it naturally wanted to go and then a lyric will want to come around with it. I’ll just explore the lyrical ideas that seem to be coming forth.
I don’t say, ‘I’m going to write about losing love or write about trains.’ It doesn’t happen for me that way. I guess there are some writers who write that way. That’s not really how I do it. It’s more of a process of discovering things that are coming through me and then…For example, “The Jupiter and the 119” is an interesting one because I didn’t set out to write the story about the completion of the transcontinental railroad. I just started singing, and I realized that that’s what I was singing about. I was familiar with that story and I like to read stories about American history. Somewhere along the line, I came across that story and I knew it and when I just started writing that song and singing, “Tell me if you’d heard the story of the…” something about the flow of the words. I started singing “Jupiter.” I realized, ‘Okay, here’s what I’m singing about.’ For me it’s a matter of then I figured out I’m writing about the transcontinental railroad. Why? Why would that be worth writing about at this particular moment? The thing that came to me during Barack Obama’s campaign around the country running for President. So, I tried to make it somehow relevant. There’s this spirit before this momentous event, a momentous national occasion. Also, the idea of the country coming together on this momentous occasion, there’s a spirit of optimism and hopeful looking forward. So, I thought about that optimistic American spirit in that song. There’s a lot of thoughts that go into when I’m writing a song. But then it became a matter of a song is a song. It’s not anything but that. The confines of the arrangement and things dictate. But it’s kind of a story-based album.
JPG: That was one of the things that I was thinking about that was real interesting. The songs seemed to be looking back to an earlier era with I don’t quite want to say with melancholy, but, obviously, things didn’t pan out well for the Native Americans. The Transcontinental Railroad, as you say, was a momentous occasion. If you want to compare it to the Obama campaign it’s still working itself out as history. (slight laugh)
TS: (laughs) A couple years ago, how excited everyone was. I guess that’s the way it goes.
JPG: Absolutely. The other thing in regards to what you said about the song taking shape, it’s an interesting choice that you sing “the Jupiter and the one one nine” rather than the one nineteen.
TS: That’s just really the way it trips off the tongue, you know. The way it flows lyrically, singing it. It’s just about singing it.
JPG: In the press release it describes you as a “sing writer.” Was that a publicist who came up with that or is that a good description of you?
TS: (laughs) I think that came from a review. Somebody wrote that. It made sense because I’ve never written a song by just sitting down and writing out the lyrics and then taking it from there. I just sing it. Honestly, I think most songwriters are like that. Most singers are…I’ve heard Mick Jagger, for example, describe it as vowel movement. It’s the way the words flow out of your mouth that makes the sense and sensibilities out of the song more than anything else. Finding some meaning in it is kind of an afterthought. Hopefully, the two come together. In the good songs they do.
JPG: There was this documentary on U2 on the “Unforgettable Fire” album, and it showed Bono at the microphone scatting over the instrumental track of what became “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
TS: And I’ve heard from Achtung Baby the song “Whose Going to Ride Your Wild Horses” I’ve actually heard demos of the versions of the song, “Whose Going to Ride Your White Horses” It was white horses. It’s about the sound of the word. That’s what comes to a singer and a songwriter. I’m sure he said it, and then he tried to make some sense out of it — wild horses and he went with that and finished the song that way. That’s the process I use and I’m pretty certain that’s not that unusual.
JPG: I guess the unusual part is your fellow New Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen, because he seems to be the type that writes scores and scores of lyrics and fills up notebooks and eventually brings it together.
TS: Yeah. I think he might be one. I think Dylan writes that way sometimes. He’s got a lot of ideas and he wants to get into a song that he can write ‘em out.
JPG: Which may be why Springsteen does it. That influence. Musically, this ends up connecting Railroad Earth and From Good Homes again. As I was getting ready for this interview I realized that I wrote about From Good Homes years ago when you released your RCA debut. I did a preview. I think you opened for Dave Mathews Band at Blossom Music Center, does that sound about right?
TS: We toured a lot with Dave and the boys. We knew them as far back as they did some opening spots for us. So, we go way back with them.
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