Transitioning to your solo album, A Good Road to Follow. You released it in three different parts. What sort of benefits did you discover within the current music model that allowed you to do that?

Well, the original idea for this project fit perfectly with the modern music model, which was to release a series of digital singles with no album. In that regard it was very modern, and very of the moment. But, it didn’t work. I don’t know what the reasons were, I think the reasons were that the kind of audience that pays attention to me would rather hear an album so even though I tried it and I released five or six digital singles that got a lot of buzz, there was really no sales and it just wasn’t connecting for some reason. The fallback position, which I didn’t really even consider until fans on social media said “Where’s the album?” I said, “Well there isn’t one but there could be,” so the album was made after the fact.

I dug myself a bit of a hole because I had all this music that was so different and unique. And it didn’t seem to work together as an album because it wasn’t conceived that way. Like I said I kind of came at it backwards, and then I said, “OK, let’s see if I can sort through this music and create something that has flow and some sort of consistency.” So, I had 28 songs and there’s no way that was going to work, so I edited myself down to 15 and I left a few really great songs on the table. And then that was how the concept of the three discs, the three EP’s came out. I wanted something that was manageable and something that was musically coherent so I found five songs that seemed to work, and then another five that seemed to work, and that’s it.

You know as a business model, it’s really stupid. The package is too expensive to make. As we all know people don’t buy CD’s, so you talk about a vanity project and this is the ultimate vanity project.

Each EP sort of has its own little sound, and you also surrounded yourself with a bunch of different musicians. As the songwriter what did you notice about being in a room with, at various points, completely different people with various backgrounds and styles?

Well there’s always a lot of similarities in the songwriting, composition process and I think the similarity is that a lot of traditional songwriters people like Vince Gill and Jim Lauderdale, they approach writing very much like I do. The more modern writers like Hot Chelle Rae and Ryan Tedder, they produce, they approach the writing process. Their process is intrinsically linked to the production. The production and the writing are really one in the same and that’s the difference, which is cool by me but that’s what I wanted. I wanted to step into the world of the modern pop writer and I wanted to see how modern pop records were created.

I wanted to, and what’s interesting is those guys wanted me to bring the old school sound. And in a way as the project went on I kind of had to become a musical traffic cop. I was the only one who actually knew the kind of music I had in my back pocket that had been created by all of these various collaborators. I didn’t sit down with Ryan Tedder and Vince Gill and play them 20 songs and go, “Alright here’s the 20 I’ve got now let’s write something different.’”It wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t play them anything. I just wanted to see what was going to happen. As we got into the writing of each song, I was aware of it.
In the back of my mind as the songs began to evolve, I skewed it in a certain way because I knew it had to. I have this, I have that and they didn’t know that but I did. It was kind of a weird thing. I was being the referee, I was being the songwriting referee. But not being overt and obvious about it, not telling them that, but I was aware of it. Does that make any sense?

You let them do your own thing with your blueprint in the back of your mind.

But within certain parameters, and you know what the parameters were? The bottom line was—can I sing this song? Can I pull this off vocally? Is this a song that I can make my own, and really make it believable and real? If I couldn’t pull it off vocally, then I moved on or steered it in another direction because in the end I had to sing this stuff. I’m not an extremely versatile vocalist. I do a certain thing pretty well but I’m not the kind of person that can just take any song and sing it.

For instance, when Jim Lauderdale and I have been writing—we write all the time. He’s an amazing singer and he has a very unique style. We’d be writing and Jim would start singing and he’d have these really cool melodies and this phrasing that’s very unique to him. And we’d finish the song and I’d try to sing it and it would sound phony. It would just sound weird. I’d go “Jim man this is an awesome song that we wrote but I can’t sing this.” And Jim’s cool he would say, “well why don’t you live with it a little bit and maybe you’ll figure out a way.” And that’s what I would do. I would actually take the songs away and I would marinate on it and live with it, and then I would kind of recraft the vocals so that I could be comfortable and pull it off.

So a lot of the songs like “Six Men,” started out like a country, almost like a folk song. I turned it into like a some sort of Philadelphia meets chain-gang. But I had to do it because I loved the song so much so I recrafted the song for the record. It’s like I had my songwriters hat on and then I take that off and I put my producers hat on and then I figure out how to make the song that we wrote work for the record.

It sounds like you went out of your way to make yourself uncomfortable to get the results you were looking for.

I definitely had to keep my eye on the ball. It’s just when you work with so many different unique people they all bring their unique personalities and style to the day and to the moment. It’s really like I said it’s a songwriters hat, a producers hat and a vocalist hat, a singers hat, and you wear different caps because it’s a self produced, co-produced project and that’s what producers really do. Except the difference was I was there from the beginning. A lot of the times a band or an artist would come to a producer and say, “Here’s our twelve songs,” and the producer then has an objective point of view. He hears the songs cold, he says “How do I surround this band with the right musical environment and framework to make these songs come alive?” He’s totally in the producers role. Whereas I had to do all of it. But obviously with the help of a lot of really great people.

Right, just sort of looking at it from a bigger perspective, what motivates you now do you think as a songwriter, a musician, I mean you’ve been making music for the better part of your life. I mean you sound so excited about this what keeps you going now. Is it the challenge, is it the drive to sort of make new things, what is it?

You know what it is, it’s just the fact that I have been lucky enough through hard work, and good fortune and many other things, to be in this position of total artistic freedom. Not many creative people get to that point. They dream of it but they very seldom get there. I feel like it’s a personal responsibility to not squander that and really respect it. It is hugely important to take that hard earned freedom and do the best I can with it. And that’s where I’m coming from. People would dream to be in my position so I don’t take that lightly. I take it very seriously. That’s why I want to do the best work that I can and I want to do the best work for the people who I’m surrounded with who I’m bringing along on this crazy ride. So, that’s just how I am as a person—I can’t help it.

Over the last couple of years you’ve also collaborated with some bands that we cover, one of those being Umphrey’s McGee.

Oh, I love those guys.

How’d you get hooked up with them?

A lot of it had to do with doing the Jam Cruise a couple years back. My wife and I went, we were invited and I just had my guitar and I figured I’d just jump in with both feet, if I can play it I’m gonna play. That’s how I met moe. Our guitar tech for me also works for moe., and then I met the Umphrey’s guys and they asked me to jam. Plus, when I was spending a lot of time in Colorado there’s this great club called Belly Up, that a lot of bands when they come through town play. And living in a small town I’d always get a call from the guy who owns the club, and he’d say, “Hey, so-and-so’s playing in town you want to come sit in? They’d love for you to come and jam,” and I’d say, “Yeah.”

Once I started doing it it was really good for me because every band and every musician approaches their music differently. Different sets of chords, different arrangements ideas, different sounds, different dynamics between the band members, so by sitting in and being almost like a fly on the wall in real time it pushes you. It forces you to think outside your box. A lot of guitar players, me included, when I pick up a guitar I’m going to go back to those comfortable chord changes and those riffs that I’ve done over the years. When you play with another band you can’t necessarily rely on the old tricks, it pushes your boundaries, so by pushing my boundaries, it’s an insight as to where they’re coming from as musicians and as people. I hear how they craft a song and where they put their chord changes, how they arrange their melodies, and how they impose the melodies over a chord structure. That stuff to me is insightful because then I bring it to my work because I’ve learned something.

I love it every time I get up there it’s like walking a tightrope. You don’t know where they’re going, you don’t know their music. Half the time you’re flying by the seat of your pants.

Umphrey’s did some Hall & Oates stuff but you also did some of their material as well.

(laughs) That was not easy.

Their arrangements are complex, for sure.

I had to do some serious woodshedding, and then I came onstage and of course they decided to do different songs. But that’s typical of the jamband and that’s what I love about jambands—they just go for it, and they’ve got this incredible repertoire of hundreds of songs, and they love to change them up every night which is a really cool thing to do. And I come from a much more structured place, so for me it really takes me out of the comfort zone.

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