A Conversation with Darrell Scott – HuffPost 6.4.10
Mike Ragogna: I was very surprised when your new album A Crooked Road showed up as a double disc since most artists shy away from releasing projects with this much content. Then again, you’re a very busy songwriter with covers by The Dixie Chicks, Keb’ Mo’, Travis Tritt, Kathy Mattea, Guy Clark, Alan Jackson…you’ve pretty much established yourself as a Nashville writer.
Darrell Scott: In some ways, it looks that way, yes. It’s probably true in terms of getting songs cut and having people do some of my songs. I’m very fortunate with that.
MR: Being so prolific, were you playing catch-up with this record because you had such a large catalog?
DS: Yeah, it kind of was. It was one of the ironies for me. I have more songs than I have records out, and even though I have seven or eight records, I definitely have a backlog. But that’s not why I made it a double record. What is more important to me is the theme of any particular record that I am working on, and kind of treating it as a whole. So, all of these songs felt like they wanted to be treated as this one record. I see them as one overall piece.
MR: When you were recording A Crooked Road, you kept the production minimal for many tracks, adding just enough instrumentation overall to basically interpret the songs.
DS: The plan was to face each song and see what it needed because I do play a lot of instruments. I played all the instruments and sang everything, all the harmonies. What can happen in that case is you can put something on just because you can, you can throw on an instrument because you can play it. In some cases on this record, I didn’t play those instruments, so I learned enough while I was making the overdub to throw down a part. I wanted to treat each song as its own, so some songs did not need more stuff on them, other songs sound like it’s a full band. It really was a song-by-song case.
MR: And the sequence helps keep the balance pretty even.
DS: I do know that there was a ramp to the record. It starts out more quiet and even folky, then gets louder and busier. I can’t say that was my strategy, it was something that I noticed after it was put together.
MR: Lets talk about the songs. Who is “Suzanne”?
DS: A woman I was in a relationship with. Pretty much the whole album is on different relationships I’ve been in, so the record kind of goes along chronologically. She shows up around the middle, and she was a very significant relationship. I’m one of those who believes that relationships strike very deep into us, and they can become one of our greatest learning tools, whether or not they turn out all sunshine and rainbows.
MR: The best title has to be “Snow Queen And Drama Llama.” Was it written about another one of your relationships?
DS: Another relationship. That one had the quality of “this is going to last the rest of our lives, she’s the woman of my dreams.” It turned out it was somewhere more than a one night stand, but something less than forever. Those names were sort of things that I made up, kind of characterizations of the people involved.
MR: My favorite is “The Open Door.” This song, especially with that piano part, reminds me of classic Jackson Browne.
DS: That song came out almost as a premonition. I don’t know of another way to say it. Some songs come out of an experience, so the piece becomes kind of a chronicling of what just happened. This song felt like it was a “pre” of what happened, so that’s why I call it a premonition. I wrote it two days before I went on a trip out west that changed the relationship I was in. It basically turned it around, changed it completely, and the relationship couldn’t get past it. And yet it was all there in that premonition two days before the trip even started.
I appreciate the Jackson Browne connection because some of his most moving work was very early on with his first three or four records. He had the quality of opening himself up, and it seems like he’s telling us exactly how he feels. It’s poetic, Jackson’s taste, it’s beautiful. It’s him ripping himself open. That’s what I think of when you say Jackson Browne. I can see and would hope that a song like “The Open Door” has some of that quality where you almost feel like you’re listening to something pretty heavy to the person.
MR: The power of introspection.
DS: I have a theory on that. If artists open up, those parts and those kinds of things in their songs or their work…what I feel happens is that it resonates with the person reading it or hearing the song or whatever. And it’s a connection, it resonates to the same kind of place deep inside them rather than it being like we are reading someone’s diary. It’s more like we are experiencing something as the artist has opened up to us to resonate with and for us to consider the same kind of stuff that’s going on for us.
MR: What was your reaction to being covered by The Dixie Chicks?
DS: Oh, it was fantastic. It was more than a dream come true. I would never expect that the girls would become a fan of my songs, but anytime I had a record come out, they had a copy of it. I was one of the artists I think they wanted to follow to see what this guy was up to. There were other artists as well, but I was glad to be in that number of folks whose records that they wanted to hear.
MR: I wanted to ask you about having had success as a Nashville songwriter.
DS: This is an interesting thing, and I know this is hard to pinpoint because when you say “Nashville songwriter,” I think what’s meant is how does your music grow on commercial radio somewhere.
MR: Not necessarily. I’m talking about people that get covers because it’s a music community, not just because they’ve written pop-country submissions.
DS: Right. Townes Van Zandt made Nashville his home as did John Hartford and Willie Nelson…Kris Kristofferson, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, John Prine. A lot of people, when they think of Nashville or talk about Nashville, they think about Garth Brooks and top ten songs or something when in fact, the community has that, but it also has these amazing artists.
MR: Any advice to up-and-coming artists and songwriters?
DS: My take would be, hey, be more of who you are absolutely through and through. And stay there long enough for them to figure out who you are, and you’ll be judged and accepted upon that. Sometimes, it feels like they don’t really come to who they are musically or creatively, and then I don’t think they are serving themselves or the world at large or the community of music. I would say, basically, be yourself no matter what. Stay long enough to develop that, and put that out. So, just kind of stick with it, and then eventually some people will hopefully know about it.
Transcription by Erika Richards