A Conversation with THE Dwight Twilley – HuffPost 4.23.12

Mike Ragogna: It’s Dwight Twilley!

Dwight Twilley: Hello, Mike!

MR: How are you doing today? Not too shabby?

DT: Well, not shabby.

MR: (laughs) Well, let’s dive into your new album Soundtrack. Can you fill us in about the album?

DT: Well, it was a situation where I just had released an album called Green Blimp, which we were very proud of, and by the way, is being reissued. It’s coming out again with bigger distribution. And right around the time that we released that, we were approached by some people that said they wanted to make a documentary film about my life. So, we signed off on the stuff and that I would be available to do interviews, and they’d get to have access to my video archive and photographs and stuff like that. But you know, as the thing was coming together, we saw their proposal and we noticed that they were going to hire somebody to write music that sounded like Dwight Twilley. We thought that was kind of funny. You know, I always kind of wanted to do a soundtrack for film, and so we signed on to write the music for this thing, and just immediately jumped in to recording this album called Soundtrack, which is really different for me as a project because it’s a completely autobiographical album. In less than a year’s time from Green Blimp, we releasedSoundtrack. We were kind of worried that we weren’t going to be able to live up to the quality that we had achieved with Green Blimp, but we’re very, very proud of Soundtrack.

MR: I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a story like this, you know?

DT: (laughs) I know! That’s usually the way it happens in my world.

MR: How did you approach it creatively?

DT: Well, what I did was walk around as a songwriter, and I was thinking about it in terms of it being autobiographical, and I would just think of certain points in my life that I thought were really important things that really affected me or became this story or whatever. So I would kind of jump from one subject to another, and most of the time, it worked out. There were a few cases where I started to do something and it turned out to be another thing. But in general, it was just a lot of the stories that a lot of people know about and some that people don’t know about. For instance, I guess one of the best examples is the song called “Bus Ticket,” which represents what I think was a really critical, really important, point in my life when my partner and I, at that time, were little kids–Phil Seymour and I. We were getting kind of good. We had our little acoustic guitars and our little pretty voices and we were writing these little pretty songs, and we thought, “Man we should go some place and play our songs for somebody, like at a record company.” And so we had a set of songs, and we thought, “We can’t afford to drive all the way to LA.” We couldn’t drive all the way to New York, but we’d heard that in Memphis, there were record companies, you know, places where people record, so we got in my little ’58 Chevy station wagon and took our little cassette, and we drove to Memphis, Tennessee.

We literally just drove down the streets looking for something that looked like a record company, and sure enough, we were driving along and we saw a place, and we were convinced that it looked like some kind of record company that probably had a recording studio in it. We just walked in the door and somebody was ready to listen to our cassette, and we played it for some guy named Phillips. He liked our tape, and we had no idea of the significance and the meaning of the fact that that was Sun Records. He took us in and kind of guided us down to a town that we knew nothing about called Tupelo, Mississippi, and had us work with an original Sun Artist named Ray Harris, who gave us an education on rock ‘n’ roll. And so at that time as little kids, we thought The Beatles invented rock ‘n’ roll, and Elvis was just a guy in movies. So unlike a lot of the acts that were kind of in that same place at that time, we sort of got the education of the roots of rock ‘n’ roll, so that was a very important part in my life and the history of our band. I think it really set us aside from everyone else because we got something pounded into us that was important.

MR: Nice. And looking back at that adventure, it’s got to be one of the more precious moments.

DT: Oh, totally! And we had such a great time.

MR: Phil Seymour passed away a while back. Can we talk about Phil for a moment and your relationship with him?

DT: Totally. You know, in the story that I was just relating to you, we were little kids who grew up together and had our musical dreams and went on adventures and went through a lifetime in the few years that we worked together. We were so close, and you can hear it in the music that we made and the harmonies that we sang together, and we were very, very close until the time that he passed.

MR: Yeah, and of course, I’m sorry for your loss. Also, let’s talk about that little song called “I’m on Fire.” Can you tell us the story behind it?

DT: Well, we had just been signed by Shelter Records, and we had really only worked in Tupelo, Mississippi, with an 8-track recorder, and we worked at our own little studio that we put together–it was just a 4-track. So when we got signed by Shelter Records in Hollywood, they sent us back to Tulsa because they had offices here since it was part owned by Leon Russell and Denny Cordell, and they sent us into what they called The Church Studio that is still here today, by the way. They explicitly said that they didn’t want us to try to make a record. They wanted us to just become familiar with actually recording in a real 16-track studio. So I was good to go with that, and they actually made a big point of that, you know–“Don’t try to make a record. Just get comfortable working in the studio.” And the first night, we went in–I think it was the day before or after Thanksgiving–and it was Phil Seymour that took me aside in one of the vacant rooms in the studio and said, “Dwight, let’s cut a hit tonight!” (laughs) Phil was like that. And the first night, we recorded “I’m on Fire.” It was the very first recording we made for a record company.

MR: Wow. And then of course you have great albums. As The Dwight Twilley band you have Sincerely, Twilley Don’t Mind, and we should talk about The Great Lost Twilley Album, a collection of all sorts of things that you put together.

DT: (laughs) We recorded so much that there ended up being all this left over material. And that record is not available. It’s very sought after. People want that record badly, but it’s interesting that you bring that up because while we’re so fortunate to have recognition for the new album Soundtrack and the previous album, Green Blimp, the Dwight Twilley Band material is resurfacing. In fact, for the very first time, Sincerely has been made available on iTunes and from the album, Twilley Don’t Mind, there is a song in two motion pictures that are coming out in 2012. Actually, one is out. It’s called Apart, and it’s in theaters and you can see it on demand, and it has the song “Looking for the Magic” in it from Twilley Don’t Mind. Oddly enough, later this year, there will be another motion picture called You’re Nextwith the same song. So actually, two motion pictures in 2012 will feature the song “Looking for the Magic” from Twilley Don’t Mind by The Dwight Twilley Band, which is kind of interesting.

MR: Congratulations. Let’s get to “Girls,” your big eighties hit.

DT: Yes, “Girls.” And even more recently, a couple weeks ago, finally the album it’s from,Jungle, is now available on iTunes. And this hasn’t been available on CD or in any form since it was on vinyl. (laughs)

MR: That is so cool. That video for “Girls” is one of the most memorable videos of the era, “Coach Twilley”! (laughs)

DT: We had a lot of fun making that video, and a lot of people don’t know that there was an “R” version of that, and that the people remember it was cheerleaders and the football team and obviously the coach, but anyway there were Playboy Bunnies. The “R” version was a great promotional tool at the time. For the radio guys that were out working the record, they would be like “Do you think you could add this Dwight Twilley song ‘Girls’ to your play list this week,” and they would be like, “I don’t know…airplay is tight this week, so I don’t know if we can do it.” And we’d be like, “Look I can give you a copy of the video. Would you like that? Does that interest you?” “We’ve seen a lot of videos.” But then the radio promoter could say, “Well, yeah, but how would you like your own copy of the “R” rated version?” That opened up the door to getting the record added to some stations, so it was a great promotional tool and a lot of fun to make if you can use your imagination.

MR: Getting back to Soundtrack, let’s get into a couple more stories here. Is there a song that, more than others, like “Soundtrack,” sums up what the project is all about?

DT: That’s the thing that I’m proud about Soundtrack. It’s not an album that’s like one song or a couple of songs that stand out. It’s really a piece of work. It’s something you almost need to listen to from top to bottom. I have trouble when I go on radio stations and people say, “Well, which song do you want to play?” It’s really hard to choose. As far as the title song, I’ve always been interested in writing a soundtrack or something that would work with film, and then the little songwriter voice inside of me said, “Here I am writing a soundtrack. Well, who’s ever written a song (titled) ‘Soundtrack’?” So that seemed like an interesting challenge to me, and I’m very proud of it. It’s one of my favorite cuts on the record, and it’s because as a producer, I tried to create a recording that sounded like film that would sound like it was changing from scene to scene as a motion picture does instead of just a recording.

MR: Dwight, do you have a great Shelter Records story?

DT: A great Shelter Records story? Well, for one thing, my partner Phil Seymour and I grew up here in Tulsa, and Leon Russell decided to live in Tulsa, and it was like having this big rock star guy live in town. Everybody that lived in Tulsa that was a musician or had something to do with music wanted to get in with Shelter Records. They were bound and determined. If you would walk down the street on a Saturday night, you would walk into one bar and people would be singing like this and you’d walk into the next bar and people would be singing like that and all the bands sounded like Leon and the whole town was turned into Leon Town. While we appreciate his talent and liked his music, it was so not us or what we were interested in doing. So we drove all the way to Los Angeles, California, when we thought we were ready to look for a recording contract. We felt like we were ready for one then, and push come to shove, we end up getting signed by Shelter Records in Los Angeles, so we drove all the way across the country to get away from Shelter Records and end up getting signed by Shelter Records in Los Angeles. Later, when we actually met Leon Russell, it turned out that he was such a kind, gracious, and generous person. It was very good.

MR: Nice. All right, what advice do you have for new artists?

DT: (laughs) I don’t know. I feel really bad for new artists these days. I feel so fortunate that I was able to get started at a time when the music business was more artistic and creative and less of the big corporate monster it is today. And so I guess I would just say if you want to do music, it’s generally that you really don’t have a choice. So if you have to do it, then you better just really love what you’re doing and understand the importance of what it means to you, and let it slide off your shoulder, what the reality of the business is today. It’s gloomy, huh? For the people that want to make it last longer than five minutes, it’s a little harder.

MR: Very true. All right, well Dwight, if you had another favorite song from the albumSoundtrack, what would it be?

DT: A nice autobiographical song would be “My Life,” and you can also go to my websitehttp://www.dwighttwilley.com and see a video that we made for the song “My Life.” It’s not necessarily representative of the whole album, but it’s representative of the idea of it being an autobiographical piece of work.

MR: It’s a summation?

DT: Yeah, in a way. And the video too. I think a lot of people will enjoy the video.

MR: Well Dwight Twilley, thank you very much!

DT: Thank you, Mike.

Transcribed by Kyle Pongan