Keyboardist Chuck Leavell has worn many hats since he entered the music industry over 40 years ago: The Allman Brothers Band’s soloist after Duane Allman’s death, leader of the seminal fusion project Sea Level, Rolling Stones musical director, sideman to stars like Eric Clapton, author, tree farmer and solo artist. Despite is eclectic resume, Leavell’s latest solo album is still a left turn, the blues-piano tribute Back to the Woods. A collaboration with his son-in-law, the project finds Leavell tracing the history of boogie piano and shedding some new light on his own influences.
While rehearing with John Mayer for an upcoming project, Leavell discussed his new album with Relix and Jambands.com. He also discussed his new band Watson’s Riddle, his recent Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and even The Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary rehearsals.
Let’s start by talking about your new blues-piano tribute, Back to the Woods. What inspired you to do an album of blues songs at this point in your career?
CL: First of all, it came about because of my son-in-law, whose name is Steve Bransford. He was the co-producer on the project. Steve has an interesting story, and he’s just a wonderful person. Steve is a Ph.D. graduate from Emory University in Atlanta, and his discipline is in American History with a slant on visual arts and roots music. So Steve came to me and said, “I got this idea, it may not have any value, but there’s been all these tributes in the past to blues guitar players and singers and songwriters, and people think so much when they think blues.” When you think of the blues, the guitar is the first thing most people think of. But he said, “You know, there’s not been anything done for these obscure blues piano players, and I think you’re the guy to do it.” And I thought it was an interesting project because a lot of these artists are very little known.
When you look at LeRoy Carr, Skip James and Little Brother Montgomery, they were certainly precursors to players like Otis Spann and Ray Charles, both of whom we cover on the album. That was the latest phase of blues that we get into on the project. But then, even going forward from that, players like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis were influenced by these blues piano players as well as gospel. But these artists that we covered are very important figures and it’s wonderful that we have these early recordings. So that was the impetus of the project: to bring to light these sort of mostly unknown names to people and to, of course, not to try to emulate what they did in their recordings but rather interpret it and show in the process how they influenced my playing in particular.
When it came to choosing the songs, were these mostly songs that you and Steve already knew when you started? Or did you spend time researching some lesser-known musicians together?
CL: Well, first of all, my son in law Steve had done a lot of research. He gave me about three CDs of well over 100 songs—it was probably 120 or so songs. A lot of it I was familiar with—I am familiar with LeRoy Carr in particular. Montgomery I knew some about, but had not really dived into his catalogue as such. And, so there were definitely artists that I had never heard of. The most obscure would probably be Leola Manning, for whom—I think we say it in the liner notes—that’s maybe the only recording she did. And then Jesse James would be another one I was totally unfamiliar with. That may be the only known recording that he ever did as well. Skip James is known more as a guitar player, and it’s interesting to me, I didn’t know he played piano until Steve brought it to light. So I found that interesting and I think he has a really neat technique, a real syncopated technique on the piano. It was my idea to do the Otis Spann and the Ray Charles. I mean, Ray has been my musical hero all my life just about, and I certainly wanted to celebrate him. I think it was really fun to find that early track from ’53, “Losing Hand,” something that I would imagine 95% of people who know about Ray Charles have never heard that track. And then there is Otis Spann, one of my heroes from the Chicago-style blues playing. I thought it was important to include them even though we focused 85% on the pre-war era which I think is a very interesting era to focus on. As you can tell, we leaned heavily on Leroy Carr. I think there’s five tracks of his, and we thought about that, we said “Geez, we’re doing so much of him,” but at the end we said it really doesn’t matter because the songs and the process are so good.
Let me just explain to you the process. Steve gave me the CDs, and in my other life, as you know, I’m a tree farmer and we live in the country in Georgia. So, for about three months I rode around in my pickup truck working on my place listening to this music and absorbing it. Again, a lot of it I knew about and a lot of it I didn’t, so I just listened and listened and slowly began to pull out the songs that were speaking to me, the ones that I thought I could interpret and I would enjoy playing. I want to do things that turn me on. Slowly the process began and then, I’d finally get to the piano and start learning these songs and going through and playing them and finally cutting it down to probably 25-30 songs and then from there to the 15 that we recorded. Getting back to the Leroy Carr thing, when we finished it all there were so many [of his] songs on there but I said, “It doesn’t matter because I enjoy playing each and every one of them, so let’s not worry about it. Let’s put everything that we finished and recorded on the record.”
You have a range of musicians on Back to the Woods, including Keith Richards and John Mayer. At what point did you put together the album’s core band?
CL: First of all, I wanted to stay fairly close to home in the recording process, and I didn’t want to do it all at once. I didn’t want to go in with 15 tracks and try to record it all in 2-3 days. I wanted to do it in segments because I had some other things going on in my life: the work on my tree farm, and my work with the Mother Nature Network, which is largely part of who I am. I wanted to spread this out and do it in segments that were comfortable to me time-wise. So my friend Jim Hawkins, who was an engineer in the Capricorn Records day in Macon, Georgia, and who actually built one of the early versions of the Capricorn Studios, had built a studio of his own in Athens.
Athens is only less than a two hour drive from where I live, and I thought well that’s good, it gets me out of the house, it gives me somewhere different to go, Jim’s a good friend, he has a nice facility and a nice piano. So that made sense. And then I said well, if I’m going to record in Athens, what players might be up there? The bass player is a guy that I had worked with in the past on some live gigs. A friend, Randall Bramblett, recommended him to me and, as I’m sure you can see by the liner notes, his name is Chris Enghauser. The other thing about Chris is that he’s a really good upright player, and I wanted all upright on this because that’s what was on the original recordings for the most part. So Chris was available and I was very pleased about that and we started thinking about drummers, and it was actually Steve that suggested Louis [Romanos]. Lou is somewhat of a Katrina refugee: he had been living in New Orleans for a long time and, when Katrina came, that obviously pushed him out of New Orleans, and he settled in Athens. So I had heard about him through Steve. I liked the idea that he had the New Orleans influence, so that was the core band.
Now, we also wanted Danny Barnes on the project. I’ve been a Danny Barnes fan for a long time. I’ve listened to all his records even going back to the Bad Livers stuff. I just find him to be a fascinating character. We brought him in for some of the sessions, some of the stuff we recorded as a trio, and it remained that way. We timed it so that he had some shows that were in Georgia and we grabbed him during that period of time and arranged a couple of days with Danny. Also, Randall plays on a few tracks and does so beautifully, especially the sax solo on the duet that I do with Candi Staton. A guitarist named Davis Crosby also plays on a couple of tracks.
Some of the things we recorded as a trio and then added extra parts. For example, the stuff that John Mayer and Keith Richards played on: we took the tape—or the files—up to New York to get them in Electric Lady. I’ve been working with John for about a year and a half now so I asked him if he would play on the record and he said, “Absolutely.” So we’ve got Keith and John at the same time.
So that was the process, and it was a very enjoyable process. With the whole thing stretched out, I’d say we maybe had five sessions over a six or seven month period. It was very casual, very slow and methodical, but I would say we probably spent eight, ten days in the studio working on the thing.
You mentioned Athens, which has been a musical womb for many years. I know you helped open up the Georgia Theater last summer. Can you talk a bit about your connection to Athens and the experience of re-opening its legendary theater?
CL: Well, as you know Athens is a big music town, and mentioning my good friend Randall again, he has a deep connection to Athens. Macon has a great history as we know, but sadly at this day and time it’s pretty much a ghost town. Athens still has a pretty active musical community there, and I didn’t really want to get into the Atlanta scene—it’s too sort of city vibe for me. Athens is a nice small town with a great vibe and with the university right there. So all of those factors pulled me like a magnet up to Athens. To answer your first question about the Georgia Theater, the GATH has such a great history and we did open it initially with Sea Level many years ago, and when it burned down it was a heartbreaking thing. I’m just so glad the owners were able to put it back together, and it’s certainly an honor to be asked to reopen it during that week. So yeah, I still love going to Athens and I’m sure I’ll do more work there. I really like Jim’s studio and of course he’s not the only studio there. There are a lot of great studios there and a lot of great places there. A lot of great history there.
How did you first get in contact with John Mayer?
CL: Well, it’s funny; the first connection was something I was really unaware of. He lived in Atlanta for a while and worked with Clay Cook. They had a duo and they were writing and recording songs together out of Atlanta. And John reminded me of this and I totally forgot about it, but Clay had gotten in touch with me. John and Clay wrote a song and they had a conversation about getting a piano on the track. My name came up, and they said, “Oh, I don’t think he’d ever do it.” But, anyway, Clay got in touch with me and it was one of those sessions where I did it without physically being there. They sent me a tape, and I overdubbed on it and sent it back to them. So I never saw them, and I didn’t even know it was John. So that was the first connection.
The second connection came on the tour with The Stones (2005). John and his blues trio opened up a few shows for us on the last tour. We met casually backstage. I loved what he was doing with the trio. The guy is so talented, and capable of going in so many different directions. He’s so versatile, and we had pleasantries backstage. I complimented him and told him I was a fan, and he reminded me about the thing that I played on and I thought, “Wow, this is something else.” So anyway, tour ends, time goes by, and John reached out to me out of the blue. It was actually through management. My rep called me and said, “Listen, I just got a call from Mayer’s people and they’re interested in you playing on some stuff.” So it started out as a one week experiment in New York.
John blocked out time at Electric Lady Studios and had written new songs and I think the idea was to get together. He wanted to use his bass player Sean Hurley, who’s been with him for the last four years or so. In the first round of sessions we had Jim Keltner, so it was the four of us: Jim, Sean, John and myself. Things went really well, so we all went back home and about a month later I got a call saying they wanted to continue this. However, Sean had actually suggested Aaron Sterling on drums who is somebody that Sean works with in Los Angeles doing sessions and whatnot. They wanted to try someone who might bring some fresh blood to the table, so the next round included Aaron and that just went great. And that remained the core band throughout the rest of the recordings. I think we were in New York maybe four different times—anywhere from a week to two weeks maybe even three weeks at a time for the recordings. And then we did rerecord one tune out in LA during the mixing process when John wanted to rework a tune. I just can’t say enough great things about John. I love working with him, I love his talent, and I was very sad as we all were that he had to pull the plug on the tour due to his throat problem. He has a great attitude, he knows he’s going to have to go through this surgery again and it’s gonna take even longer this time. He went through the process last year, thought he had beat it and as we were rehearsing for the tour he was struggling and saw his doctor and the doctor said, “I can tell you that it’s back.” So, he’s going to have to go through this whole procedure again, and it’s going to take a long time. His feeling was, “I don’t want to go immediately back in there, I’d like to have some time and try some new things and when my mind is ready for it I’ll go do the surgery.” So I think his surgery is now scheduled to come up in the next month or so. I am in Montana working with John Mayer right now. We’ve been recording out here with him for the last ten days or so. Things are going great—I think today is our last day and I head back home tomorrow.
You are featured on the Watson’s Riddle album which came out this year. In addition to you, the group features guitarist Steve Watson and the Marshall Tucker Band’s Paul Riddle. When did you get involved in that project?
CL: Paul Riddle is an old friend, he was in Marshall Tucker of course, and there was quite a bit of interaction in the Capricorn days between Marshall Tucker and the Allman Brothers Band. They opened for us quite a lot. When The Brothers disbanded in ‘76 and I formed Sea Level, we opened for the Marshall Tucker Band. I played on a couple of Marshall Tucker records—I was friends with all those guys. So, obviously Tucker goes through the personnel changes, and Paul decides he wants to pull off the road and teach, which is what he’s been doing for the last 25 years or so. We stay in touch. I get a call from him once a year or so, and we’ll talk family and music and whatnot.
So anyway, he began these informal jams with Steve Watson and a couple of players in South Carolina in the Spartanburg area. And they had a guy who was playing some keyboards but Paul thought of me and he called me up and said, “Listen, we’ve been doing this thing, it’s starting to take shape, I’ve got three or four songs that I’d like you to play on. How can we do this?” And I said well why don’t you bring the files down to Macon and we’ll do it at Paul Hornsby’s place.
Hornsby used to produce Marshall Tucker, as you know. And he’s got one of the only studios in Macon, Georgia these days. Paul remains a friend, and he was actually a mentor for me back in Alabama. We had a band together in Tuscaloosa. Anyway, we go down to Paul’s place and we played the three songs and it turns out great and Paul takes it back and plays it for Steve and the rest of the guys and everyone’s happy. He calls me up and says, “Why don’t we do another three?” Long story short, I wound up on the whole thing and he calls me up and says, “Listen, you’re on the whole record and we’d like to use your name on it if it’s okay with you,” and I said, “Yeah, I’d love to have my name associated with you guys.” They’ve been after me to try to get me to do some live gigs with them but mercy me I’ve got a lot going on with my own project and with John, and who knows what The Stones are going to come up with, so I’ve been unable to accommodate playing any live shows with them. I enjoy the record though and think it’s a great record for that genre of music.
You recently received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy with the Allman Brothers Band. What does that award mean to you?
CL: First of all, I was very, very grateful that all the guys thought that I should be included because it has been a long time [since I have been in that band]. I don’t mind saying that my era with the band produced some of the best and largest selling records—_Brothers and Sisters_ remains the largest selling record the band ever had. It was such a different thing to have a piano player come in after Duane’s death—and to have that be successful and work, I think, was one of the reasons why the guys wanted to include me. It was such a unique era for the band. So I was very, very grateful and honored that they would include me.
I look back at those days as an absolute golden era of music making. There was so much going on in Capricorn Records in the city of Macon, even before I joined The Brothers I was playing with Alex Calver, I was in recording sessions with Bonnie Bramlett and Bobby Whitlock. I mentioned the Tucker guys. There was just so much activity and it was a wonderful time to be a musician living in Macon, GA. Then finally getting that position with The Brothers in 1972 and recording not only Brothers and Sisters, but at the same time doing Gregg Allman’s first record Laid Back, and then shortly after that doing Dickey Betts’ first record Highway Call and then continuing to tour with The Brothers and doing the Win, Lose, or Draw record and the live record that we did. So, it was a fabulous time for me. I was barely twenty years old when I joined The Brothers and it was just such a big step for me, a great opportunity, and I always look back on that time as a golden era for me.
Of course, you also play with The Rolling Stones. I heard you guys got together in New Jersey to rehearse earlier this year and are planning to do some shows in the coming months. How did those rehearsals go?
CL: It was so great. It’s been five years. I’ve seen the guys—I saw all the guys at the Exile on Main Street movie premiere in New York. I was there working with John and they had put this documentary together to celebrate the re-release of Exile, and so it was great to see everybody at the time. We stay in touch, not on a regular basis, but we do stay in touch. It has literally been five years since we were last in a room together with our instruments making music.
I was anxious to do it, and I was so glad to get the call. I was so pleased to know that they were at least thinking about doing something. It was a great exercise, you know? [Touring Stones bassist] Darryl Jones was only there for two days because he had an obligation to some Oz Noy dates in Europe, but he did come in for the first two days and sounded great. [Producer] Don Was stepped in to substitute on bass for the remaining three days that we had. It was wonderful that it was just the core band—it was a nice setting. The room was big enough to be comfortable but not so big to feel alienated from each other. All the tunes came back. They’re in our DNA at this point. I didn’t exactly keep an accurate count, but we must’ve played 50-60 different songs. It was working, man. That’s all I can tell you. It was great. As I understand it, I’m sure you saw the press, where they went to the Marquee Club in London and announced the book they’re putting out to celebrate 50 years. As I understand it, there are meetings going on as we speak and that there might be announcements forthcoming. I actually saw somebody on television this morning talking about entertainment in general, and they got around to The Rolling Stones and he said that there was supposedly an announcement to be made this week, so we’ll see about that.
You mentioned the Mother Nature Network. Could you give us a little information on that?
CL: I’ve been a tree farmer for over 30 years—35 years now. My wife and I live on our tree farm in central Georgia, and I’ve been doing this a long time. I’m deeply committed to environmental concerns, and I love that life. I’ve gone to Washington D.C. and testified on the last two farm bills concerning forestry issues and forest policy. I engage strongly in the state of Georgia with the legislature there on forest policy and the various governors that have been in place over the years. I sit on a couple of boards that have a pretty big influence in forestry matters. However, it goes beyond forestry for me into general environmental concerns; I think we all realize the reality of global climate change, I think we’ve seen it. A report came out recently that the last 12 months have been the hottest on record for this country. These are real concerns for me, and I think everybody. Getting to the Mother Nature Network, my friend Joel Babbit, who has had a stellar career in PR and advertising representing very large companies. He’s built two of his own companies up through the years and sold them to larger companies in the process. Joel and I have been social friends for a while and he called me up one day and said, “I wish you’d come to my office, I want to sell you something.” So I go to his office and he says, “Ya know, I’ve got these really heavy clients like Coca Cola and Dell Computers and big name companies that are making changes in the way they’re running their factories; they really want to be more eco friendly. And they want to get these messages out about what they’re doing on the internet.” He said, “Listen I don’t have any problem knowing where to put something in print or on radio or even on television, but the internet is such a big deal these days and everybody goes to it to get information. I’ve been doing some research and I’ve been going to these environmental sites, and I’d like your opinion on it.” And I said, “Joel, I know most of those sites out there and I don’t think there’s anything that’s iconic. There’s a lot of Mom and Pop sites, well intentioned, but fairly shallow.”
There are a lot of organizational sites like Sierra Club and River Keepers, but they’re focused on one part of the environment, and they’re looking for membership and donations. There are governmental sites—they’re very accurate but terribly written and terribly presented. It’s basically an Excel sheet when you go to get some information. And he said, “How do you feel about building one?” and I said “Are you serious?” He said, “Chuck, if you go in with me on this, I will resign my position and I believe I can get the backing.” So I said I’d do it if he were up for it. And in 72 hours, Joel had a commitment of up to 10 million dollars to build this thing, which just blew my mind. Obviously, we had to take a little time to phase out his position—it took him 4-6 months—and within that time period we began to hire some people and got some offices together and talking about what we want the site to look like. Here are a few parameters of what we wanted the site to look like: number one is that it covers all aspects of the environment, it’s not just about water issues or air issues or whatever it might be.
We wanted to cover everything and our model from the beginning was WebMD. When you have a problem with your back or your ankle, you go to Google and get on WebMD. When people get on Google and search for recycling or hybrid cars, we want to be the number one thing that comes up there. And another thing, we wanted it to be non-political. We did not want to have a political slant, this is just about the environment period. The environment doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, does it? It’s something that we all should be concerned with. So that was another issue. The third thing was that we knew it had to be presented in an engaging way. And so, we did not want these pop up ads and banners and flashing things. One minute it’s Coke, the next it’s Pepsi, and whatever. We didn’t want these distracting things. We wanted people to be able to go navigate this thing and we want it to be well designed and look really good.
Along those lines, we came up with a really unique model. We don’t sell advertising the way everybody else does. We sell one category to one sponsor for a year. In other words, when you go to technology and communications, AT&T has the same space there. If you go to freight, the sole advertiser there is CSX. And of course everybody gets space on the home page at the bottom. In our eyes, it’s not so much advertising as it is communications. We give each sponsor five video boxes, and we produce videos for them if they want, and it gives them direct communications to the visitors. The first box might be their CEO talking about the different green initiatives that the company has. The second one might be what they’ve actually done in their factories to save energy. The third might be employee appreciation celebrating an employee that has done good work for the environment, and so on. It’s a very unique presentation in that regard, there’s no other site like us. Of course, we had no idea what the chances were gonna be of it working. We are for profit, so obviously we want to make the investors their money back in the long run. Do well while doing good.
So that has been the case and it’s been about three years now since we launched in January of ‘09. We’ve vacillated between third and fourth of the most viewed environmental sites in the world—which is very strong—getting over 5.5 million visits per month; that is phenomenal at this juncture. We have tons of content, and we do 85-90% of our own content. We have our own bloggers, we find our own stories. You take the BP Oil Spill, of course we aggregated some of the information out there on that and certain other events that may have taken place, but we do 85-90% of our own content which I think is great. Our staff consists of really dedicated eco-journalists; they are people who care about these issues. They are young people that understand the technology and know what the attitude of young folks out there is. That’s the story.
