Dig into Grayson Capps’ catalogue of five studio albums, listen to his tales of drunks, crazies, bigger-than-Goddamn-life characters, and places that are both scary and beautiful at the same time and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, man – this guy knows how to tell a story.”
Realize that Capps has lived most of this stuff – and what he’s told you about so far is only the tip of the iceberg – and you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, man – how is this guy even alive?”
For someone who’s only in his mid-40s, Capps has lived the lives of a half-dozen midnight black cats and knows how to draw from his experiences. He offers up tunes like mason jars full of blues, grit, laughter, tears, darkness, light, and characters (plenty of characters). It’s a cocktail you don’t even want to stick your finger into and swirl around because it’ll burn the skin – just bang the thing back and hang on.
As we will discover, Capps’ talent with words was in no small way inspired by his father, author Ronald Everett Capps (his novel Off Magazine Street was made into the film A Love Song For Bobby Long in 2005). But it’s still a long ways from great descriptive passages on paper to the kind of music found on Capps’ latest album, The Lost Cause Minstrels: Big Easy-flavored, butt-grinding, swamp swagger that knows when to rock, when to moan, and when to whisper. Co-produced by Capps’ partner Trina Shoemaker (the couple have a son together named Waylon) The Lost Cause Minstrels is not only a showcase for his talents, but those of his band, as well (the Minstrels themselves).
To quote our own review of the album here on Jambands.com, it’s “an amazing team effort among the man out front, his band behind him, and a veteran producer/engineer who knows how to handle them all. And to top it all off are a cluster of hellacious half-shitfaced stories and absolute truths.”
On the afternoon of our phone interview, we do a little bit of a shuffle – my initial call bounces to voice mail, but at least I know I’m calling the right number: “Hey; this is Grayson – leave a message.” I do, and it isn’t but a minute or two later that my phone rings, with an apologetic Grayson Capps on the other end.
I get Grayson to hang up, call him back, and then we’re rolling. After some preliminary discussion of our respective accents (according to Grayson, folks here in Maine talk the way we do because of the cold weather: “your mouths don’t work so well”; and Southern folk like him talk slow “because it’s hot and if we talk fast, we sweat”), we get down to the business of being Grayson Capps.
GC: Anyway, yeah – I was tied up when you called the first time. My mom was just leaving the house here and I was, you know, dealing with that.
BR: Well, yeah – your mom should always come first.
GC: Oh, yeah! (laughter) That’s right, man.
BR: Well, this all works nicely, because one of the first things I wanted to ask about was your parents and your childhood. A lot of people can’t wait to leave home and get out and experience the world – but from what I’ve read, it sounds like you had some pretty good exposure to different characters and such right there in your parents’ house.
GC: Oh, God – yeah. (laughs) It was damn near like a circus around the house growing up – especially on the weekends. My parents were both schoolteachers and they maintained a, uh, “culturally acceptable” profile during the week, but then on the weekends … (long pause, then laughs)
It was funny, too, because when I was a kid in high school, I preferred to stay home on the weekends rather than go out and party. I’d bring my friends by to my house, because that was actually more fun.
BR: You grew up in Alabama, right?
GC: Yeah.
BR: And I know of your dad as a writer, of course. Is he a musician, as well?
GC: Oh, God – just barely. (laughter) Everything I’ve done has been an extreme challenge, ’cause my dad cannot even clap to those damn rap songs – he’s got no rhythm, man. He used to play a little bit of ukulele now and then, but … anything I can do musically’s been hard work. (laughter)
BR: Well … you’re faking it pretty damn good. (laughter)
GC: But, yeah – we’d have people come around the house that could actually play instruments. The thing is, my dad’s a great social instigator who can corral a bunch of people into having a good time and steer conversation along … that’s kinda his instrument.
BR: Cool. So what came first for you: stories and writing or music? What got ahold of you first?
GC: Hmm … the stories, I guess. The concise stuff – short stories and poetry – was what I got involved with early on. Cool poetry, though; some stuff drives me crazy, but I always liked Walt Whitman’s style and the way Charles Bukowski wrote.
When it came to music, I was listening to stuff like Tom T. Hall – “Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine” – and my dad was always listening to Bob Dylan, early Tom Waits.
I liked Dylan and that led me to Woody Guthrie – and I really liked Woody Guthrie even more. That led me to people like Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Muddy Waters, and Son House … and when I got to the bottom of it all, there was Robert Johnson. I dug into his music and came out the other side with Jimmie Rodgers and Charlie Patton – you had your blues and country mixed together. And then I got into Hank Williams, who was one of the greatest songwriters of all time – like they say, three chords and the truth, man. Woody Guthrie used to say: “Mostly I play two chords, but sometimes I play three to impress the ladies.” (laughter)
That’s where I came at music – I came at it with the simplicity of the story. The older I get, I’m learning how to play my instrument better, but mostly it’s just learning how to frame the lyrics – that’s the focus of what I do.
BR: So it began with guitar for you?
GC: Yeah, well, I played the trumpet in 8th and 9th grade, but I hated the damn spit valve. (laughter) I liked the idea of the guitar better – you could just pull it out of the case and didn’t have to deal with the spit, you know? (laughter) So I got out of the band.
BR: And I’ve got to ask you – your first guitar?
GC: It was an acoustic guitar – one that my second grade teacher had played little songs for us on. She realized that I wanted to play music and she gave it to me. I don’t even know what it was; it didn’t have a name on it or anything. It was probably something you’d get at Sears.
The next guitar was one my dad got for me: an Alvarez that was decent. I ended up getting a Martin after that and since then it’s been pretty much Gibson and National as far as acoustic guitars go. I love Gibson electric guitars; I’ve got a Firebird … man, there’s guitars all over the place. (laughs)
BR: There are worse things. (laughter)
GC: Oh, yeah … (laughter)
BR: You mentioned the National – so that’s you playing slide on the album?
GC: Yeah, I play a little bit of slide. I just love the way it sounds. I mean, I’m no Warren Haynes or nothing … (laughs) Sometimes people ask me to sit in and jam at shows and I’m like, “Oh God, no – don’t do that.” (laughter) “No!” (laughter)
BR: So how old were you when you got serious about playing?
GC: Well, I had the guitar around early on … but it was probably when I was 16 or so that I’d pick it up and go at it for two or three months – and then I’d just get disgusted because it was boring and hard to figure out how to change chords. A year might go by and then I’d pick it up again. By the time I was 21, I started playing with a bunch of guys in college at Tulane University. That was my first band – The House Levelers.
BR: What did you go to college to study?
GC: Theater.
BR: Really?
GC: Yeah – I went to a play when I was in Alabama and there was this beautiful girl and I said, “Goddamn, I’d like to meet her …” (laughter) So I went and auditioned for the next play. (laughter) And I got the part. (laughter) That’s when I figured out that being a heterosexual theater major was awesome. (laughter)
BR: How long were The House Levelers together?
GC: Oh, man – we went nuts for about three years and just lived on the road. Then a good friend of mine – a really good guitar player – started the band Stavin’ Chain. That was kind of cool: we got signed to this German record label and they had a lot of money to do stuff with. Full-page ads in the Village Voice … we had sold-out shows in New York. Then all of a sudden Polygram merged with Universal and went bankrupt; and the label we were on went bankrupt; and I got a girl pregnant; and that was the end of that. (laughs)
BR: Time-wise, we’re talking …
GC: 2000 – that’s when my daughter was born. By then Stavin’ Chain was done and I was doing the solo thing.
BR: I’ve read in a bio somewhere that you opened for The Replacements at some point …
GC: Yeah, that was at Tipitina’s – that had to have been with The House Levelers in ’88 or ’89. I was working the door at Tipitina’s at the time and we used to get some decent gigs.
BR: And I’m thinking that it also mentioned you crossing paths with Keith Richards …
GC: That was with Stavin’ Chain when the Stones were on the Voodoo Lounge tour. It was actually Ronnie Wood and he was in the audience with Mick Jagger. We’re up on stage and we’d just done a cover of Freddie King’s “Hideaway”. This guy comes up and says (affects a British-by-way-of-Alabama accent), “Hey, man – would you mind doing that one again? And can I play your guitar?” And I look down and it’s like, “Jesus Christ – that’s Ronnie Wood.” (laughter) And then I see Mick Jagger out in the audience, sitting at the bar drinking water. I said, “Ohhhkay … well, we better be good.” (laughter)
BR: Another thing I’d read that I wanted to ask you about was your post-college period, living in New Orleans. Was that the real deal: the shotgun shacks with the extension cords running from one to another?
GC: Oh, man … (laughs) Yeah. (laughs) The one-legged landlord went bankrupt and we were getting notices from, like, three different banks. We figured nobody knew who owned the place, so we didn’t pay any rent for two years. I worked the door at Tipitina’s and played on the streets for money and we had an extension cord running from the one neighbor’s house that had electricity.
My momma cried when she came to see where I was living. I mean, they’d spent a lot of money on my education, right? And here I am, living in this place where the first night a body got dropped off in the street – somebody’d been shot in the head.
BR: Jeez …
GC: Yeah … that was the initiation to the neighborhood. But, you know, it was one of those fruitful times in my life as far as living goes. I mean, I wouldn’t want to do it again, because you’re on the verge of dying the whole time. We didn’t have any money; no insurance; the cars usually didn’t work. It was … It was like Tortilla Flat, you know? Or Cannery Row – it was like living in a novel.
I still go back to it in my mind. I mean, obviously now I’ve got a family and I don’t want to … the chaos isn’t appealing anymore. (laughs) But at the time, it was just perfect, man.
Every day there was something phenomenally funny – just stupid stuff. Like there was this cat named Bullitt that had no tail. And in the middle of the summer he’d sit on the pipe for the water heater that came up out of the roof – steam coming up all around him. (laughs) Meanest damn cat you ever saw. He cornered four dogs one day and mauled all four of them – they crawled on their backs and took off. (laughter)
And then there was Scruffy the dog who was mean as hell and always chained up and his little girlfriend dog named Puddin’. (laughter) And my next door neighbor had a dog named Blackie who would go over and get right at the end of Scruffy’s chain and would plug Puddin’ right in front of him. (laughter) The first day Scruffy ever got off that chain, he went to Blackie and whooped his ass. (laughter) I could go on for days and days, man – and that’s just the animals.
But there was so much of it that was romantic as hell, too. After that, I was living in a place right on the shore of the Mississippi. Having parties and playing music in the middle of the night right there on the banks of the river. More than once one of the tugboat guys would hear us and drive the boat right up on the beach to hang out with us. We were living kind of like Huckleberry Finn, you know? It was amazing.
BR: No kidding, man. So during those years with The House Levelers and Stavin’ Chain, how much of the music you were playing was your own stuff? Were you writing a lot?
GC: Oh, yeah. I’m still going back to stuff I wrote back then. Like, “John The Dagger” and “No Definitions” are both songs on the new record that I wrote then. I’ve probably got a hundred songs that I still haven’t recorded but want to at some point.
There were those times when I didn’t have a job. You wake up when you wake up: you write; you worry about food; you play; and you chase women. That was pretty much it. (laughs)
I really didn’t start doing cover songs until I got into Stavin’ Chain. That was because my buddy John knew a bunch of blues instrumentals and stuff that would keep people dancing at the shows. We’d be playing in these rural areas and if you didn’t have a record out, you needed to play something that people would know.
Now I’ve gotten to the point where people will get mad at me if I do a cover, so that’s good. (laughs)
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.
BR: When did you disband the Stumpknockers and bring the Lost Cause Minstrels together?
GC: I guess it was almost three years ago. We’d been touring with the Stumpknockers forever and those guys were fun – oh my God … we’d get on stage and play and everybody would have a blast … it was awesome. But at times, the party thing almost superceded the quality of the music and it started not being as funny any more when the economic thing happened. Then it was like, “All right, dude – we been having fun and people have embraced us, but we gotta be real – we gotta be good.” And there were a few times we just didn’t deliver; some high-profile things where the band just fell apart. And you go, “Damn …”
When we parted ways, the guitar player had arthritis real bad – his fingers looked worse than Keith Richards’, man. He was very disgruntled and in pain and needed to take a break; and at the time I was really frustrated with the way things were going, too. And when he left, that affected the chemistry with the bass player – and we needed that to be right. It was a fragile chemistry with just the four of us, When it worked, it was great … but when the guitar player left, I just said, “Okay …”
The only person I kept was the drummer, John Milham. I’d been playing some with a guy named Chris Spies – the best keyboard player in this whole area. And then there was this guitar player I knew from Mobile, Alabama named Corky Hughes. He played with Black Oak Arkansas back in the early 80’s and he’s in his 50s now. Just a phenomenal, bad-ass guitar player … and humble as hell. Then there was a bass player that I done some recording with who’d played with all these guys down in Alabama; his name was Christian Grizzard.
Basically, there was a jamband eight or ten years ago named Kung Fu Mama and what I ended up with was pretty much that whole band. I mean, those guys had played together for a long time and I pieced them back together.
BR: I hadn’t pieced that together that they had a history, but now that you tell me, I’m not surprised. The album has a vibe that comes from having played together.
GC: Yeah and that’s the cool thing about these guys; it wasn’t like I just threw some people together.
BR: So now we have your new album, The Lost Cause Minstrels. I think it needs to be noted that here we are, this many years later, and you have Trina in the studio with you, co-producing. Was it hard to work together in the studio and then shut down the board, turn the lights off, and go home to just being Grayson and Trina – mom and dad?
GC: Yeah – Goddamn, yeah. (laughs) She’s super-hyper focused when she goes to work. I mean, when she works on anybody’s record it annoys the hell out of me because she comes home not focused on me, you know? (laughter)
And when she’s working on my record, I’m asking her, “Why do you have to be so mean?” (laughs) And she tells me, “You ought to be glad – I’m giving you everything I’ve got.” And I’m like, “Gawd …” (laughter) She’ll want to take something out and I’ll be like, “Leave that mistake in there, Goddammit – that was cool. I like it to smell a little bit and have some hair on it – come on!” (laughter)
But she really is one of the best in the world when it comes to doing a record, man. She really, really is.
BR: Well, it doesn’t sound over-polished; there’s a great “live” vibe to the album.
GC: Yeah a lot of that was first-take kind of stuff. It’s like the difference between film and stage, you know? You can have a great stage performance, but put it on film and it’s not so great. The luxury of being able to edit and find the best of the best of the best and make it cohesive is Trina’s art form. She’s got the best bullshit meter of anybody I’ve ever seen; she’ll pull the most honest parts of what anyone did and put it together. It’s simple music – it’s not complicated or anything – but it means a lot to get it all together and have it feel honest.
BR: How about we take a quick walk through the album, track by track?
GC: Yeah, that sounds good, man.
BR: “Highway 42” is a great road song. It sounds like just about the time the guy has a good tan on his arm out the window of the truck, he’s starting to get things figured out.
GC: (laughs) That’s good, man. (laughs) Yeah, it’s one of those songs that just feels good to sing.
BR: There’s a chugging banjo driving the thing but I love that guitar that’s just kind of burbling along, picking the chords apart.
GC: That’s Corky. He can play a hell of a solo, but he loves rhythm more than anything. The banjo part came from a keyboard thing that Chris had started that sounded just like a banjo. It was like one was there, coming out of the speakers all by itself. We had Keith Gattis come in and lay a banjo down on top of Chris’ keyboard part.
That song – oh my God, man. That’s one of the simplest songs – the same progression over and over – but it was one of the most difficult tracks to do and get the beat right. Jerry Marotta’s playing drums on there – he’s done a bunch of stuff with Peter Gabriel – and he’s got, like four different snares going. (laughs) I said, “How the hell do you do the half beat and the full train beat at the same time?” It’s a crazy thing … but it’s one of my favorite tracks to listen to, just because it’s so freaky. (laughs)
BR: Here’s my question about the next track, “Coconut Moonshine”: how did the world get along this long without anyone using the descriptive phrase “Dancin’ like Anthony Quinn” before? That’s what I want to know …
GC: (laughs) I don’t know, man – I don’t know! (laughter)
BR: I mean, I know exactly what you’re talking about … (laughter)
GC: See, it’s sad to me that a lot of people don’t know who Anthony Quinn is …
BR: Well … to hell with ‘em. (laughter) If you inspire just one person to go and find out who Anthony Quinn is, then you’ve done a good thing.
GC: I agree with you, man. (laughter) Zorba The Greek was part of my childhood education.
BR: Is there really such a thing as coconut moonshine?
GC: Oh, yeah, man. There’s a place where we play in Ocean Springs called The Shed and Mr. Jim’s always there. He has this connection with a guy in Mississippi who makes coconut moonshine and it’s so good, especially in the summertime. And if Mr. Jim sees a good-looking woman in the place, he’ll go home and get his three-piece suit and come back all decked out. (laughter) Pour that moonshine and be dancing in the sand all night long. It just fascinated me, you know? He’s probably around 80, maybe, but healthy as hell – he dances all the time.
But everything I say in there is true – he started coming there about the time the bar opened and he’s been there ever since. And yeah – he’s very much the Anthony Quinn/Zorba the Greek type. So precious.
BR: You mentioned that “John The Dagger” was one of your older songs. Is that your guitar riff in the beginning?
GC: I was doing this thing on the guitar and Corky was noodling on his own version and we just melded them together. Initially, I was starting the song with the riff that’s in the middle – a real Mississippi Fred McDowell kind of thing – and the riff that starts it now was in the solo section. But we discovered how good it sounded at the beginning, playing that against the straight beat.
BR: There’s something cool about the rhythm on that song, too. My quick note I scribbled down when I first listened was that it sounded like “a lineup of skeletons clapping their bony hands.”
GC: Oh, yeah – John has these weird shells or rhinoceros toenails or some shit that he drops on the snare. That’s what’s making that sound.
BR: It’s a great, creepy sound.
GC: Cool, isn’t it? (laughter) There’s another part in “John The Dagger” – another weird sound like (makes a noise like rushing wind) – that’s John just shaking those same shells.
BR: “Jane’s Alley Blues” is a cover – that’s an old, old tune. Did you come across that recently, or have you been playing it for awhile?
GC: Oh, man – I’ve been playing that for a long, long time. I’ve really been waiting to do it on a record. It’s a cool one to do live … it kind of cleanses your palette a little bit from other songs. I just love the lyrics – Richard “Rabbit” Brown wrote it. He was one of the first street musicians that was ever recorded.
I’ve seen it listed as “James Alley Blues”, but I’ve read enough history to know it was “Jane’s Alley”, so I call it “Jane’s Alley Blues”. That’s kind of like calling Booker White “Bukka” – his name was Booker, but folks down here couldn’t pronounce the “r” … like you up there in Maine. (laughter)
BR: Yeah, well – it’s a gift. (laughter) I love that one, big, piano note that starts off “Chief Seattle”. I’m imagining an acoustic piano with an old ribbon mic about as big as my head stuffed down into it. What a great sound.
GC: Oh, yeah … Trina shoved a pair of mics into it, actually – one on either end.
BR: Well, hats off to Trina. I backed it up and replayed it the first time through just to hear that again.
GC: That’s the kind of stuff that happens when you’re recording. We did it the first thing of the day; I’d just woke up and hadn’t even had my coffee: “Here we go.” We added Corky to it later, and his solo is one of my favorite guitar solos ever.
BR: “Yes You Are” is a musician’s song, but that feeling of having someone behind you no matter what is something anyone can get into. It’s a great love song.
GC: I’m glad you like it, man. I wrote that in North Carolina. (laughs) It was just like in the song: “A $35 hotel room, $75 for gas, I made a hundred dollars last night – Goddamn! How can I keep doing this? I’m an idiot!” (laughter)
BR: And that’s a newer song?
GC: Yeah.
BR: Ah, cool – I like knowing that you wrote that since you’ve been together with Trina.
GC: Oh, yeah, man – that’s Trina’s song, all right.
BR: “Annie’s Lover” – is that the first Taj Mahal song you’ve done on a album?
GC: Yeah. I think I’ve only done one other cover on any albums before this one and that was actually an old country song that I didn’t know was a cover. (laughs) Yeah, I love Taj Mahal. I’d been singing that one to my kids and Trina just loved it. She said, “Just entertain me and do that song so we can record it.” So we just threw it down and it felt good.
BR: “Old Slac (Joe Cain)” is next – and the Lost Cause Minstrels are mentioned in the song. What’s the story there – and which came first: the band name or the lyric?
GC: After the Civil War, Mardi Gras celebrating wasn’t allowed in Alabama for years – even though New Orleans was celebrating. It was Joe Cain that finally brought Mardi Gras back to Mobile – and his musician friends were called the Lost Cause Minstrels.
I’m kind of on the fence about the name; I’ve always liked it more for philosophical reasons but I’ve come to realize that the “lost cause” was the Confederate soldiers. It has nothing to do with that for me, though; I just love the name.
I knew I wanted to name the band the Lost Cause Minstrels even though I didn’t finish the lyrics to the song until about a year after the band got together. I incorporated “Here come the Lost Cause Minstrels …” and all that stuff.
Mobile doesn’t have a Mardi Gras song – they’ve always had to borrow songs from New Orleans. But this year when we brought that song out, people in Mobile were going nuts – every parade was playing it. It was really cool.
BR: Oh, man – you want to be proud of that.
GC: Yeah! That song will live forever in Mobile – that’s their Mardi Gras song now. I think it makes more sense to people when they know the story. And that’s why the band’s called the Lost Cause Minstrels. (laughs)
BR: The arrangement of that song is quite involved; did you originally just have it chorded out on guitar?
GC: The structure of the thing was a bitch, man. In a way, it was so simple, but … I had two choruses, for some reason and it was driving Trina up the wall. I was saying, “I gotta do this thing (sings): ‘Ol’ Slac, Ol’ Slac, Ol’ Slac is back …’” and then there was the other part (sings): “What’s his name? Joe Cain!” And she was like, “You’re driving me crazy!” and we had this huge argument. (laughs) Then I went off and sulked for about an hour and scribbled out a different arrangement and that’s the one that stuck. (laughs) All because Trina was yelling at me. (laughter)
The other factor was having Ken Fradley’s trumpet on there. We knew we wanted horns on it, but we didn’t know exactly what we were doing. Ken was somebody we’d played with before down in Key West and he wanted to be a part of it. Ken’s a freak of his own, man – he played trumpet on U2’s War album.
I think I went on a high school field trip in 1984 to go see Cats up in New York. We figured out later that Ken would’ve been the trumpet player that night. (laughter) Just a freak.
Anyway, we got him to do a bunch of parts and then between him, Trina, and me, we kind of arranged it on the spot.
BR: And so what we hear for horns are …
GC: That’s Ken doubling himself, plus Chris Spies’ son Christopher playing some baritone sax.
BR: The lyrics of “Paris, France” speak of a hurricane, but I’m guessing there were a whole lot of things going on at the time.
GC: Yeah, man. I was still devastated by breaking up with my daughter’s mother and … all this blame and stuff … Jesus Christ – I don’t know. It’s a tiny little song, but it always feels good. I love haiku poems and stuff; open-ended things where you can get a lot out of it if you need to.
BR: Sweet song, man. It really is. That little bit of sonic weirdness at the beginning of “No Definitions” reminded me of tuning in an old shortwave radio and you can hear the station coming in … coming in … and then you nail it right on, you know?
GC: (laughs) I’d just gotten this delay pedal and when you pressed it, it made this really weird sound. (laughs) And during the live shows, we’d been having this kind of sound freak-out before that song. What you hear is the result of me trying to convey that sound to Trina and her mostly getting what I was talking about – it works. (laughs)
BR: “No Definitions” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll” are different songs, for sure, but there’s a theme there of … I don’t know … honesty. Honest and raw. They feel like they belong side by side.
GC: Yeah, it was weird doing the sequencing. Sometimes you say, “How are we gonna put this all together?” But those two just fit – I really liked that.
BR: It always tickles me to hear someone talk about the sequencing meaning something to them. Like the old days when a song was picked because it was the one to close out side one of an album or to begin side two …
GC: Me and Trina both grew up loving vinyl and that’s part of the reason I didn’t put more songs on it. Sometimes you end up with an album that has, like, 16 songs on it and you say, “Goddamn – I wish we hadn’t done that. I don’t like all of those songs.” But you go back to something like Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells A Story and that damn album’s only 35 minutes long …
BR: And there’s no fat. Every song counts.
GC: Yeah. One of my favorite records is Leon Russell’s Carney – it’s 40 minutes long with 10 songs, maybe? Nine songs? I mean, just because you got the room doesn’t mean you have to use it, man.
BR: That’s right. (laughter) Well, hey – I’ve kept you on the phone long enough, Grayson. Thank you for taking the time to talk. I knew we’d have some fun, because you couldn’t make music like this and not be fun to talk to. I appreciate it.
GC: Well, thank you, man. Hell, this was easy. (laughter)
