Photo by John Patrick Gatta
Railroad Earth’s Todd Sheaffer was in good spirits for this conversation which took place shortly after his reunion dates with From Good Homes. From there rejoining RRE band mates for a series of shows that have extended into February. He has a reason for such a positive outlook as Railroad Earth’s self-titled album has proven to be the group’s most well-received release. The nine songs display continued artistic growth, and even spice up the proceedings with electric guitar, yet maintain the sextet’s core sound.
Overall, it was a relaxed conversation that dealt with “Railroad Earth,” his solo dates, songwriting, performing with two bands and much more.
JPG: It used to be a big deal if a musician did something outside of his main group, say a side project. It was viewed as ominous trouble within the band. But you do that with From Good Homes. Tim [Carbone] does outside stuff. John [Skehan] does outside stuff. Is it just a matter that you guys are old enough and mature enough that it’s okay?
TS: In a way it’s good for the band to have other outlets for other musical expressions. I know, for me personally, doing my solo shows, which I do, I’ll be doing a solo run in February in Colorado and John’s going to join me. It’s just another way of expression. I play a bunch of different material and I also play just by myself, solo stuff. That’s a whole different side of my art, whole different side of my music that I’m able to do, and it’s a more intimate connection with Railroad Earth fans to come to those shows. They see another side to some of the songs. They get a whole different insight into those songs.
So, I think it and with From My Good Homes…I mean, that’s been a real celebration. I grew up with those guys, went to high School with them. My very first chords ever played on a guitar with those guys. I think it would be more unnatural if I didn’t get together with them, some of my oldest and dearest friends.
And I think these things are all good. They all feed the soul and they allow a person…allowing these things to happen just allows you to grow as a musician. I know that John, for example, did a show with his friend Todd Collins where he explored music of an Italian violinist. That was great for him. It’s a musical growth and it’s learning, and people bring that to the band and the band grows. I think it’s good. I don’t think it’s ominous. I think it’s a good thing.
JPG: Speaking of those solo dates back in December 2009, were you playing any of the songs that were included on the Railroad Earth album? Did those solo dates help you in some way with that album?
TS: No, not really. This album, I had a lot of the material in the can already. Some of the songs, the first song, “Long Walk Home,” for example, had been a staple of my solo shows for years. Actually, tends to be a second set opener (laughs). I wasn’t experimenting with the material. Sometimes I do, but this particular album, not really. I had all the songs together on that one.
JPG: Both “Long Walk Home,” and “Black Elk Speaks” were written with From Good Homes members. What was it about those two songs that you decided, ‘Let’s bring it in and record it with Railroad Earth’?
TS: “Long Walk Home” was a song that had gone unrecorded, and we really didn’t even play it a whole lot with From Good Homes. It’s kind of a lost gem, maybe, something to bring back.
The Railroad Earth album also was all about shaping an album, making a body of work that holds together and has a flow and has a vibe and mood to it and works together. So, those songs just seemed to work with the other material. “Black Elk,” we were experimenting with electric guitar with this album and that was a good vehicle to do that with. Lyrically, I look at that song as kind of a bookend to “Jupiter.” They’re kind of the two bookends to the album. You counterbalance “The Jupiter and the 119,” thematically, on the album, too. That’s why it ended up there. It just seemed to work with the album.
JPG: Speaking of the flow. When I heard “On the Banks,” it seemed like if the album was a movie that would be like the end credits. Then, “Potter’s Field” followed, and going back to musical terms, it was almost like an encore. Since you brought up flow and the vibe, what was your intention in regards to those songs?
TS: It’s just the pacing of the songs and some lyrical content. But that can be a big question there. Really, it’s just the pacing. After two years, the exploration musically, the musical moment went exploring and took it out on “Spring-Heeled Jack.” It just felt like you had that tension and release, and then you have the intimate, you’re ready for that “On the Banks.” I’m not sure how to describe that moment. It just seemed to flow right into it and that’s why it ended up there.
JPG: You mentioned lyrics. What was your frame of mind here? What were your intentions?
TS: Writing an album for me, I don’t set out with an intention. It’s normally more of a process of discovery. I just would play my guitar or banjo, some of these songs I wrote on the banjo. Whatever I happened to be writing on, I just play and sing and a melody would come to me and then pursue that melody to the places that it logically wanted to go, where it naturally wanted to go and then a lyric will want to come around with it. I’ll just explore the lyrical ideas that seem to be coming forth.
I don’t say, ‘I’m going to write about losing love or write about trains.’ It doesn’t happen for me that way. I guess there are some writers who write that way. That’s not really how I do it. It’s more of a process of discovering things that are coming through me and then…For example, “The Jupiter and the 119” is an interesting one because I didn’t set out to write the story about the completion of the transcontinental railroad. I just started singing, and I realized that that’s what I was singing about. I was familiar with that story and I like to read stories about American history. Somewhere along the line, I came across that story and I knew it and when I just started writing that song and singing, “Tell me if you’d heard the story of the…” something about the flow of the words. I started singing “Jupiter.” I realized, ‘Okay, here’s what I’m singing about.’ For me it’s a matter of then I figured out I’m writing about the transcontinental railroad. Why? Why would that be worth writing about at this particular moment? The thing that came to me during Barack Obama’s campaign around the country running for President. So, I tried to make it somehow relevant. There’s this spirit before this momentous event, a momentous national occasion. Also, the idea of the country coming together on this momentous occasion, there’s a spirit of optimism and hopeful looking forward. So, I thought about that optimistic American spirit in that song. There’s a lot of thoughts that go into when I’m writing a song. But then it became a matter of a song is a song. It’s not anything but that. The confines of the arrangement and things dictate. But it’s kind of a story-based album.
JPG: That was one of the things that I was thinking about that was real interesting. The songs seemed to be looking back to an earlier era with I don’t quite want to say with melancholy, but, obviously, things didn’t pan out well for the Native Americans. The Transcontinental Railroad, as you say, was a momentous occasion. If you want to compare it to the Obama campaign it’s still working itself out as history. (slight laugh)
TS: (laughs) A couple years ago, how excited everyone was. I guess that’s the way it goes.
JPG: Absolutely. The other thing in regards to what you said about the song taking shape, it’s an interesting choice that you sing “the Jupiter and the one one nine” rather than the one nineteen.
TS: That’s just really the way it trips off the tongue, you know. The way it flows lyrically, singing it. It’s just about singing it.
JPG: In the press release it describes you as a “sing writer.” Was that a publicist who came up with that or is that a good description of you?
TS: (laughs) I think that came from a review. Somebody wrote that. It made sense because I’ve never written a song by just sitting down and writing out the lyrics and then taking it from there. I just sing it. Honestly, I think most songwriters are like that. Most singers are…I’ve heard Mick Jagger, for example, describe it as vowel movement. It’s the way the words flow out of your mouth that makes the sense and sensibilities out of the song more than anything else. Finding some meaning in it is kind of an afterthought. Hopefully, the two come together. In the good songs they do.
JPG: There was this documentary on U2 on the “Unforgettable Fire” album, and it showed Bono at the microphone scatting over the instrumental track of what became “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
TS: And I’ve heard from Achtung Baby the song “Whose Going to Ride Your Wild Horses” I’ve actually heard demos of the versions of the song, “Whose Going to Ride Your White Horses” It was white horses. It’s about the sound of the word. That’s what comes to a singer and a songwriter. I’m sure he said it, and then he tried to make some sense out of it — wild horses and he went with that and finished the song that way. That’s the process I use and I’m pretty certain that’s not that unusual.
JPG: I guess the unusual part is your fellow New Jersey native, Bruce Springsteen, because he seems to be the type that writes scores and scores of lyrics and fills up notebooks and eventually brings it together.
TS: Yeah. I think he might be one. I think Dylan writes that way sometimes. He’s got a lot of ideas and he wants to get into a song that he can write ‘em out.
JPG: Which may be why Springsteen does it. That influence. Musically, this ends up connecting Railroad Earth and From Good Homes again. As I was getting ready for this interview I realized that I wrote about From Good Homes years ago when you released your RCA debut. I did a preview. I think you opened for Dave Mathews Band at Blossom Music Center, does that sound about right?
TS: We toured a lot with Dave and the boys. We knew them as far back as they did some opening spots for us. So, we go way back with them.
JPG: So, I was listening to that album, and based on the sound and the instrumentation, both From Good Homes and Railroad Earth have a line of similarity. What intrigues you with that mix of instruments coming together? What is it that you like so much rather than doing something vastly different from one band to the other?
TS: Yeah, there’s a similarity but it’s still different. For me it was and I didn’t really notice at the time. It was a natural progression. It was kind of a growth of my music. And Railroad Earth ended up being a good fit. At first what happened, I went to the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival. Ran into John Skehan and this was when From Good Homes was breaking up. I guess, that’s the proper way to say it. One of the last songs we did in From Good Homes, was a Hazel Dickens song that I latched on to. “Sing For Me” I think is the proper name it’s a bluegrass song [“Won’t You Come and Sing For Me”]. I just got interested in playing bluegrass, just digging a little deeper into the roots of American music and the kind of music that I’ve always played. Interesting, but I’ve never dug that deep into it before. That’s what I got interested in after From Good Homes.
There were some great local musicians who I knew through the local music community and we just started having some get-togethers, playing some bluegrass music. I fell into it naturally. It became a very natural place for my songwriting to end up. It’s a wide range of places I can go with it. It suits a lot of my material. I’ve adapted a lot of my old material so it fits with the band, where this conversation started, you know. I still do those other things.
Ten years ago when Railroad Earth started, it was just a very natural place for me to go as a musician and a songwriter. The instrumentation is where this question started. Really, the song dictates it. With this group of guys and even with From Good Homes, in the beginning I had a vision and an idea in my head on how I wanted my music to sound, my songs to be presented. I used to be forceful with telling people, in some instances, what to play. ‘Here’s how I want it to sound. This is what I’m going for.’ I think my sound has established through these two bands, and I think people know now (slight laugh). I don’t even have to say much, and I really don’t. Both bands that I play with and people I play with in other contexts, they’re great players. I let people pick the instruments they feel like they can be the most expressive on or they’re hearing on their own what they might bring to the song, largely switching instruments for someone like Andy [Goessling] in Railroad Earth. The song dictates. On “119” the banjo just seemed like the right thing for him to pick up. Basically, we started as a bluegrass string band and we’ve kept that though the band is exploring different things. We’re bringing more rock elements to the mix these days but we still are essentially a string band — Tim on the fiddle and John on the mandolin or bouzouki and then there’s Andy who basically picks up whatever fits the song.
JPG: That’s always a nice thing for you and for Andy. Not meaning to bring Springsteen up again but I recall footage of him in the studio with the E Street Band, and it showed him going up to each musician telling them exactly what he wanted, whether it was the feeling or the melody, and then at the end he goes up to Clarence Clemons and just looked at him and says to come in when you wants to come in and play whatever he wants to play and then walked away. That’s what it sounds like with Andy.
TS: Oh yeah, it always is. There’s always…he has a deeper understanding of what he can do on a particular instrument than I do. It’s absolutely worth starting with whatever he might want to try out.
JPG: I imagine for you, as a songwriter, it may be more relaxing as well because it’s like, ‘Here’s my song and I know that you guys are going to treat it correctly and I’m not going to be stressed out with every little thing and maybe you’ll do something that I’m not thinking about or I didn’t think about…’
TS: The part of it is where this discussion started today, I do the songs in many different ways. I play “The Hunting Song” with From Good Homes and it’s completely different than when I play it with Railroad Earth. That’s completely different when I play it solo. Different, and the song still works. It can work a million different ways. If it’s a strong enough song it will hold up in any of those contexts.
If we’re making a Railroad Earth album, the band has a sound. It has a very distinctive feeling to it because of what the band brings to it. If I’m bringing it into that world, I’m bringing it there and saying, ‘Here it is. Let’s make it a Railroad Earth song now.’ It could go a bunch of different ways. The song can be recorded with any kind of instrumentation but if it’s going to be a Railroad Earth record than I offer it up and there you go.
JPG: Speaking of bringing things in, Andrew Altman came in earlier in the year as Railroad Earth’s third bassist. I noted here, one more and you may be going into Spinal Tap territory, although in your case they’re all alive.
TS: None of them has spontaneously combusted. (laughs)
JPG: For a group that has such a tight knit sound and is on the road a lot, how is the transition of bringing someone into that? Is it so much hanging out and seeing if personalities mesh and discovering that you just may be able to be with this person on a tour bus…?
TS: Well, you never know that until you do it, and luckily Andrew has been a great fit. Musically, we had auditions. It was kind of humbling in a way, the amount of people who came out of the woodwork that were interested in auditioning. It was a great response we got and we were kind of surprised by it. So, we were fortunate that some great players came out. We had a solid week of auditions at our friend Don Sternecker’s Mix-o-Lydian studio. We just set up and ran the auditions. It was not an easy decision, but we’re very, very happy with Andrew. I think it’s been a great addition to the band. I think everybody feels that.
JPG: That’s another interesting thing about the new album. You recorded Amen Corner at your home but you were back in a recording studio for this one. Why the change of locale? I would think that other than paying the electricity bill, it would be real advantageous to do it at your home.
TS: Producer, Angelo Montrone. Amen Corner was self-produced basically. So, this time we went with Angelo. After getting together with the label (One Haven) and deciding the way that we wanted to approach the record, we picked a producer and we did it in his studio, the studio he’s real comfortable with, where he liked to work, where he knows how to get the sounds that he’s looking for. So that’s why we did it there.
JPG: I really like the Forecast page on the Railroad Earth website. Who comes up with the content that goes on there?
TS: There’s a woman named Christiana Conser. She’s from California who has become a good friend. Real sweetheart and she does that. I’m glad you’re enjoying that and if you don’t mind, let her know because sometimes she wonders, ‘Is anybody even reading this?’
On Amen Corner we had this song, “The Forecast,” that led to…I had this idea to expand on that, maybe try in some small way to lend some sort of help to the environmental cause. Christiana is wonderful. She does a great job with it. We were lucky to have met her, and she offered to do it.
JPG: I see you’re doing solo dates in February. In terms of Railroad Earth what are your plans for 2011?
TS: I hope to make another record in some form or other. As always, it’s finding the time. I would always like to have a little more time in the studio, making new recordings and I hope to do that. We might do a little more with the Homes this coming year. We most likely will try and return to the Wellmont Theatre. The December shows have turned into an annual event. It’s been really fantastic. I think we’ll probably be doing that again. Certainly not in stone yet, but I would guess that would happen again.
