RR: What have you learned from playing with musicians like those two cats who are so experienced with such an improvisational spirit in their playing?
LD: Yeah, it’s beautiful because they don’t want to have setlists, and they prefer not to play tunes. They really want to go out there and be creative and do some group improvisation. It’s a great learning experience for me—to push me out of my safe area, and go out there and wing it. George Porter, James Singleton, and Johnny Vidacovich are world-class musicians. It’s so much fun. It’s really the only time I get nervous. Well, I used to when I first started playing with Johnny years ago. I’d go down, and think, “Oh
my God, what are we going to do?” (laughter) But Johnny and George are both such a breeze to play with that they make it fun.
RR: Contrast that improvisational playing in New Orleans with your three years playing as a member of the Black Crowes. They definitely play tunes, but the Crowes are able to get really loose, too.
LD: Yeah. Yeah. The key is that, no matter what, for me, and I’ve recently heard Trey [Anastasio] say the same thing and I was glad to see that, but the key is to just concentrate on the other musicians, and let your subconscious handle what you’re doing. If I just immerse myself in what the other people are doing, then I can be a little more reactionary with the interplay as opposed to being caught or lost in my own trip—playing bullshit guitar. Listening and responding and interacting, the music carries itself and it bounces back and forth. Of course, I learned it with my brother, and I was able to carry that into the Black Crowes. Steve Gorman, the drummer, man, just blew his mind, right? We’d get into these things and get into these telepathic rhythmic pulses, and that’s what it is all about. Johnny is the master of that. He’s beautiful at that. That comes close to what the Allman Brothers call “hittin’ the note.” That’s what it’s all about.
RR: You also had some rather notable guests play on Keys to the Kingdom. The last time we spoke around three years ago, you were on a blues tour featuring Mavis Staples. She also appears on the track “The Meeting.”
LD: It’s a real gospel-y song, and I tried to make it sound like a combination of early Staple Singers and early Rev. Robert Wilkins with the tambourine. We used to play that song for years as a rock song, kind of like a funk rock song. But then I rearranged it to make it sound like a country/blues/gospel group. Mavis was the obvious choice. We’re dear friends and I love her to death. She was so sweet. I had a day off from the Crowes, I flew in to Chicago, and she nailed it on the first take. To me, she is just a beautiful example of how to live your life, too. She’s so humble, she’s experienced so much, and she represents so much of American history. Through her father [Pops Staples], she goes back to Charlie Patton, Howlin’ Wolf, the Delta Blues, the Chicago scene, gospel music, Mahalia Jackson, and, also, the Civil Rights movement. She is truly a national treasure.
RR: Absolutely. And from another band of yours, South Memphis String Band, you had Alvin Youngblood Hart playing harmonica and vocals on “Ol’ Cannonball.” He’s a bit younger than Mavis, of course, but equally influential.
LD: Hey, man, don’t be fooled. He ain’t that much younger. (laughter) I’m just kidding. I’m always fucking with the South Memphis guys about their age. They are years older than I am—Jimbo [Mathus], as well. [“Ol’ Cannonball”] is another
one where I woke up one morning, went to the piano and wrote that music, and then the lyrics came pretty easily. I wanted it to be a String Band-type song, so I invited Alvin to come down to play and sing. He’s a Soul Brother #1. He played on our first record in ’99 [ Shake Hands With Shorty ], and he’s one of my best friends.
RR: Speaking of piano…two of my favorite passages on the album contain haunting piano played by Spooner Oldham on the outros for “Hear the Hills” and the album closer, “Jellyrollin’ All Over Heaven.”
LD: Spooner Oldham was my father’s favorite piano player, so he was the logical choice to play on the record because Dad couldn’t do it. I drove to Muscle Shoals and had a wonderful day with Spooner—again, another series of first and second takes; he’s just a beautiful musician. I knew what I wanted to do. I had it in my mind—to me, it was like the ghostly piano from heaven or whatever. Or, a lonesome church house out in the woods. That’s what I was imagining. What I did was I isolated Spooner’s track from “Jellyrollin’.” It’s so strong that it just sounded like a whole other song. Those parts come from “Jellyrollin’,” and then we just recorded some bugs one night outside the studio.
RR: Great idea. It’s funny that you mentioned the “lonesome church” imagery because “Hear the Hills” follows “How I Wish My Train Would Come” on the album, and when I heard that piano sound at the tail end of “Hear the Hills,” it sounded like your train did come, but you’re still sitting at the station, and all you hear is this faraway piano coming from some church in the woods. Beautiful.
LD: That’s cool, man. (laughs) You took it further than I ever did. That’s wonderful. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. The outro to “Hear the Hills”—I’ve done instrumental sections before where I had an idea of what it would be like, but I knew exactly what that was going to sound like from the jump. I was really happy with the way it came out. There are not a lot of extended instrumentals…in the past, we’ve recorded a lot of group improvisation and put that on a lot of records, but it really wasn’t what this record was about. I wanted to do an instrumental illustration of that song, and it was cool because it just came out exactly like I heard it in my head.
RR: Let’s talk about the Dylan track from Blonde on Blonde, “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” you covered on Keys to the Kingdom. That idea came from your father, right?
LD: Yes. The real story is that he couldn’t talk. He was on a respirator, and I was spending the night with him. In that summer of ’09, there was a great Dylan article in Mojo magazine. I took the magazine up and read the article to him, and some passages, I read a few times. We could still communicate even though he couldn’t talk. Dylan had some great ideas about the South and southern music in there, and it was a great escape for us that night. That’s what we always did; we talked about music and art and concepts. We were best friends. That’s what we did. What happened was that hours later—I had passed out and woke up—he wanted his pen and paper. It took a while for him to communicate it, but while sleeping that arrangement came into his head like a Junior Kimbrough/Fred McDowell version of that song. He wrote it down “one chord song,” and I said, “O.K.!” It was right up my alley. And then he wrote “Memphis Blues.” And I said, “You mean “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues?” And he nodded yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, “Oh, man, you got it. We’ll do it.” It felt like throughout the whole record he was definitely with us. He will always be. He is with us when we play; he’s with us when we’re in the studio. I think this record is really our finest collaboration.
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