BR: Absolutely – that’s a good problem to have. (laughter) So now we’re up to 2000 …

GC: To makes end meet, I was working at landscaping for this guy who was really great about me taking off to play music and then coming back; it was a cool relationship. But, yeah, that’s what was happening. I had a daughter and was living with her mother – who was 12 years younger than me and didn’t want to work (laughs) – and I was busting my ass doing landscaping and playing music on the weekends. Eventually, my relationship with the woman fell apart – she was just too young, man … and I guess I was … I don’t know … whatever happens with that kind of stuff.

So that relationship ended about 2003 and that’s when I said, “Fuck it – I love music and I need to do this or I’m just going to die.” I worked on a recording – the Songbones record, which came out a lot later, but I recorded it back in 2002-2003. I just did that on my own.

BR: When they started filming the movie based on your dad’s book in 2004, that was a definite turning point for you, wasn’t it?

GC: Oh, yeah. The movie thing had been threatening to happen for a long time – like, back in 2000. Every year the director, Shainee Gabel, would say, “We want you to do the music for this” – and then it would just fall apart.

But in 2004, she said “We’re filming.” I said, “Well, who’s playing Bobby Long?” When she told me John Travolta, I was like, “Jesus! Well, all right …”

About that same time was when I started dating Trina, who was a professional recording engineer. She let it be known right off the bat that she was never going to record me. “People have dated me just so I’d record them and you are a prime candidate for that,” she said. (laughs)

Then about six months later I went to Trina and said, “Look, I got a problem. I know you don’t want to record me, but would you record me playing guitar while John Travolta’s singing?” (laughter)

She was like, “Fuck you … oh, hell … yeah, I’ll do it.” (laughter) And that was cool – it opened the door. Once the movie was filmed, we went into the studio and did the If You Knew My Mind record, which was self-released. Kevin Calabro discovered it at the Louisiana Music Factory in New Orleans, played it for the guys at Hyena, and they loved it. They released it and put a lot of energy behind me. Then we had the hurricane.

Somebody put it pretty good: “Whoever you were sleeping with on August 29, 2005 you’re married to now.” (laughter) And that was me and the band I had at the time.

I was switching musicians a lot back then. When I was landscaping, I’d play on Friday nights, but it was always changing – one Friday I might have two violins, a bass player, and drums; the next week I might have me with five amps and two drummers just going at it hard. The original thought was to have a different lineup every time under the catch-all of “The Stumpknockers”. Everybody who ever played with us was a Stumpknocker.

I was reading a Woody Guthrie book at the time called The Seeds Of Man – it was kind of an underground book that he’d written – and we used all the names out of that. “Skinny Mandy” was the violin player; “Four-footed Nighthowler” was another violin player; “Jeezum Crow” was the bass player … it was just fun, man.

When the hurricane hit, I was feeling responsible for the core of those musicians and we hit the road as hard we could from 2005 to 2009. That’s when I had to make the jump to being a full-time musician.

BR: And you moved to Tennessee after Katrina?

GC: Yeah, in December of 2005.

BR: And at that point, you and Trina had a son together …

GC: That’s right – Waylon. He was born in 2004.

BR: Don’t you think this world would be a better place if more people named their sons Waylon?

GC: (laughs) Well, yeah – I do. (laughter)

BR: Cool. And do the two of you have any other children together?

GC: No, Just Waylon. Trina’s older than me – she’s 46 – and she had a hard enough labor with Waylon. And plus – damn, man: I’m already gonna be, like, 90 when Waylon gets out of high school … I can’t deal with another kid. (laughter)

BR: So how would you compare his experience so far with what you knew growing up and what you were exposed to through your folks?

GC: He’s getting it a lot quicker. (laughter) My mom was 19 when she had me, so by the time I was six years old … they were cool and stuff, but I’d had a lot more experiences by the time I was in my 40s than they’d had in their mid-20s. That’s what Waylon’s getting. Plus, he gets corrupted enough around my dad, man. (laughter)

BR: Oh, that’s the best. It’s just starting with our granddaughter Lydia, who’s 3 now. Last time they came to visit, I gave her a harmonica and told her to practice it in the car all the way home. (laughter)

GC: Yeah, that’s it, man. (laughs) “All the way home” – cool.

BR: So did Tennessee ever feel like home, or was it just a good place to be at the time?

GC: That’s right – a place to be. I mean, after the horror of New Orleans, it felt good just to get away. We had 11 acres with a creek in the back yard and a mountain with a cave.

It was a very middle-of-the-road place where the people were decent and you felt safe. And it was a time where Nashville was really embracing me and Trina a lot because of the hurricane; people were very giving and wanted to help you – for a time, it felt like the right place to be.

But after being there for awhile, I realized that I was too old to make the kind of friends like I’d had; my major fan base was on the Gulf Coast, so I was having to drive a lot for gigs; and we’d bit off a little more mortgage than we could handle after the economic crisis happened.

It was cool for awhile, but then Trina’s career kind of curved because the major labels were freaking out. You had all these artists with $50,000 to $100,000 recording budgets who were now coming in with $15,000 budgets to do a record and that’s no money.

BR: So you moved back to Alabama.

GC: Yeah, and it feels great to be back. Trina’s career has started to right itself; she’s been real busy this year – the past two years, really. I can take Waylon to see my dad and my mom; I’ve got friends with kids who live around here; we’ve got 100 acres of land with fishing … it’s just right, man. This is what I know; this is where I want to be – with the stuff I know about so I can show him. Up in Tennessee, I didn’t know anything.

BR: Time-wise, how did the recording of the new album line up with the move?

GC: We knew we were going back and we busted our ass to get the bulk of it done before we moved. We had a studio set up in our barn in Tennessee and most of the tracking was done there. Once we got to Alabama, we set up a mix room to finish it. But yeah – we kind of scheduled our leaving the barn to coincide with the record, because we couldn’t leave until we finished it. That was the last thing we did in Tennessee.

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