A Conversation with Jimmy Webb – HuffPost 9.6.13

Mike Ragogna: Jimmy, we spoke recently about Harry, let’s talk about your new album,Still Within The Sound Of My Voice. It’s a followup to Just Across The River, which was the 2010 album, right?

Jimmy Webb: Well, it was actually released a couple of years back and the record company came back to me because it saw considerable success, largely because of some of the guest players like Lucinda Williams and Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, Willie Nelson, Glenn Campbell, who came in and sang, “By The Time I Get To Phoenix” with me.

MR: I still remember your album Ten Easy Pieces that revisits your classics.

JW: Ten Easy Pieces goes back ten years to Toronto, it was my first really minimalist album that was kind of tilted towards “Americana,” even though I hate that word because I don’t know what it means. I hear people telling me I’m not Americana.

MR: Well it was probably because of the stripped down approach. What an essential it was, many people I know own it and it’s one of their favorites.

JW: I tell you, it was one of those milestones in my life. It became an extremely successful, if you will, “underground” success and really created a spotlight for me, which was something I’d been trying to do for many, many, many years. I really owe that to my friend Freddie Mollin.

MR: Back to Still Within The Sound Of My Voice, your latest with Carly Simon, Lyle Lovett, Art Garfunkel, and all these other guests. It’s another Fred Mollin production for you. How did you decide on this particular tracklist?

JW: Well it’s basically the continuation of Just Across The River, which was put out a couple of years ago, also with an all-star cast as it were. I didn’t really start out to do that but it happened. So we ended up with Willie Nelson, Jackson Browne, Lucinda Williams, Michael McDonald, Billy Joel… I hate to start listing people because they’re all friends, but Mark Knopfler who did “Highwayman” with me, it’s kind of an eclectic list and yet it all comes together in this Nashville millieu, this format of really top players like Jerry Douglas on dobro who has his own career. So the record company had come back to me because it made the Top Twenty-Five of the Adult Contemporary charts. They came back to me and said, “Well what about a sequel?” We started looking around for more hits and more songs that were translatable into a Nashville surrouding, if you will. So we pulled a couple of things like, “Honey Come Back,” which Glen [Campbell] had a Top Ten country hit with, and we did it with Kris Kristofferson who was perfect, “Still WIthin The Sound Of My Voice,” which I did with Rumer and she was perfect, . To make a long story short, the second album came out better than the first, not worse. It’s fourteen sterling performances. In fact, we just found out yesterday that the single is “Sleepin’ In The Daytime” by Lyle Lovett and Jimmy Webb. So that’s a first for me and I’m excited about it. The Lyle Lovett record came out gorgeous. Again, these songs blossom in this Nashville greenhouse. I don’t want to brag about it, but they’re so listenable that you just don’t get anybody coming back and saying, “I didn’t get my money’s worth” or “This doesn’t sound good enough.”

MR: I used to believe that Judy Collins had the definitive version, but I may have to rethink this after hearing Joe Cocker’s take on it.

JW: Joe comes in and he’s the kindest, sweetest man who’s done so much for others. In the last few years of his life he’s really devoted a lot of energy to big causes and to his fellow man and is still a working man on the road. Joe’s voice is like a battle flag. It’s like a union jack that has a cannonball shot through it. It’s raspy, it’s got that same old roughness that people love, but there’s really that tenderness there on “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.” It’s an absolutely heartbreaking performance. Some people would say, “Well, who wants to listen to that?” and I would say, “Well don’t listen to it.” If you want to give your girlfriend something that’s going to get you back into the house? It’s Joe Cocker’s version of “The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.” Well that is one of them. Joe came in and he sang it two or three times and said, “Do you think that’s good enough?” I listened to it and looked at Fred and Fred said we had it. Joe and I spent a lot of time talking about old times and talking about the road, talking about how hard it is to tour when you’re pushing seventy. It’s a totally different game. Every session is like that. It’s intimate.

MR: Do you have any stories to share about this album? The Carly story is good.

JW: I called Carly and I had this song, “Easy For You To Say,” which was a hit, it was a strong AC record for Linda Ronstadt. Linda came out of retirement to do a duet with me on the last album, we did “All I Know.” Linda is really not singing anymore, so even though it was her song, I thought, “Boy, would this make a great argument between me and Carly.” It almost turned into an argument, but not quite. I initially realized that she would be more comfortable if I wasn’t there. She likes to work on things on her own. She has Jim Parr and her cadre of loyal studio people and musicians, and she has Ben. So she has people that she can rely on. I said, “Look, maybe it would be better if I just sent it up to you and you work on it and do as many tracks as you want. Then send it back to us and we’ll see what we can do with it.” Well, she took it into the studio and she probably gave us about a dozen performances and every one of them was outstanding; just really, really hard to pick. We had devised a beautiful duet structure. The song was originally just a solo statement but it became a dialog between a man and a woman. Roughly the same thing happened when Lucinda and I did “Galveston.” It became a two-person show. It became a dialog, it became a scene if you will. We were just astounded by the wailing that Carly had done and the way she had just devoted what seemed like a year of her life to this thing. In reality, it was only three or four days, but there was so much love and so much work on that thing. In my view, it’s one of the top five on the album. It’s very, very close to the best track on the album and it’s classic Carly Simon. I was always envious of those James Taylor duets she did–“Mockingbird” and those things–and here we are with Carly Simon doing a great duet, which is a call and response answer thing. It’s just great. It’s actually the type of thing that’s blood stirring. It gets you going.

And I was able to bring The Jordanaires in, Gordon Stoker, the surviving original Jordanaire came in with his Jordanaires and recorded “Elvis And Me,” which is one of mine about Elvis Presley. Then unfortunately about three or four months later, he passed and they decided to decommission the Jordanaires. There will never be any Jordanaires touring the country. There will be a fake Jordanaires. They’ve decided to actually drop the name to show proper respect to the guys and their career. We ended up with the last Jordanaires performance on our record. This kind of stuff happens all the time when we’re making these records. There are all kinds of little surprises when you’re working your way through these records. “Oh my God, I can’t believe that…is that the Jordanaires?” It is. I did a new song on both albums. On this album, I did a new song called “Rider From Nowhere” with America. America is still incredibly active, one of the most successful groups in the world. They play somewhere in some country every night, and that sound is so readily recognizable. Something that I hasten to admit is that all of these people are my friends. This is a work of love. This is about people devoting heart and soul to a record, it’s not about just going out there and nailing the two by fours together and trying to get something that will fly. These two records together make a kind of cross-section of some of the last of the sixties and seventies artists who are still living and still performing. It’s absolutely historical in nature and it’s good.

MR: Jimmy, what advice do you have for the new artist or songwriter?

JW: Get out of the business as fast as you can. [laughs] There’s really only one answer to that question, and that is that only you can create your own road. There is no highway to stardom. There’s only a back road or a trail over the mountain. You have to find that for yourself. You can learn, you can keep an open mind and listen to others and emulate the ones that you think are the best, but ultimately, you have to develop a voice and a style of songwriting that’s all your own. Bruce Springsteen has done that, James Taylor has done that, Bob Dylan’s done that. You think of anyone whose career has ascended to epic proportions, and they’ve done that.

MR: In my opinion you certainly have, but in your own opinion, do you feel you have?

JW: Yes, I do. I made a conscientious decision to step out of the mainstream and to work on my own vocals and my own records knowing that they probably weren’t going to be big sellers a lot of the time, and yet I have been happy. I’ve spent my whole life doing what I want to do and I’ve gotten better at it. In my own way, I think I’ve earned a little respect.

MR: Would you be uncomfortable if I said I think you’re one of the great songwriting icons?

JW: Probably. Probably a little.

MR: How about if I think it’s the truth?

JW: If you say so…okay.

MR: [laughs] Jimmy, you’ve left a major mark on music and you’ve left a major mark on a lot of people’s lives. You’ve got to feel good about that.

JW: Well, I feel like it could’ve turned out a lot worse. I’m very, very happy in serving ASCAP, with the Songwriter’s Hall of Fame, to try to create a future for songwriters. I’m very concerned about IP (intellectual property), I’m very concerned about Pandora and the streaming issue, and that the amount of money that’s being paid for songwriters’ works is ridiculously low. It’s laughable, it’s insulting for a young girl to get six-thousand streams on Pandora and get a check for two cents, a young girl who’s trying to start a career. We are going to pay the price for this as a nation one of these days because one of these days, somebody’s going to look around and say, “Where’s James Taylor? Where’s Joni Mitchell? Where’s Lyle Lovett?” There won’t be any. There won’t be any because nobody is going to work for two cents. And to cut a check for two cents and send somebody a check for two cents is the highest cynicism. That tells you who you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with someone who is laughing at you and thinks nothing of what you do. Nothing. You don’t want to get me started in that direction, I don’t think.

MR: [laughs] Actually, I do. Do you see a corner being turned on that at some point?

JW: Well yeah, I do. I personally do. I think that the world will come to its senses and I think that everybody has to give a little, including the record companies and the artists. One of the great problems we have is the fourteen to one disparity between what the artists and the record company receives and what the writers and publishers receive. Is the record company really investing that much money these days? I don’t see big tour support. I don’t see big billboards, except for maybe a couple of artists on top. I think it’s a smokescreen. They’re getting fifty nine percent and we’re getting four percent, and we’re writing the songs? How do you make the record without the songs? How do you have a tour without the record? To me it’s like, “Listen, do I really have to explain this to you guys? Are you really just stupid?”

MR: The amazing thing over the years, to me, has been that I don’t understand how anyone would sign a contract where it’s okay to say that whatever work we as songwriters did is only worth like seven percent, mechanical royalties, whatever

JW: It’s been decided by the Justice Department in a roundabout way in rate court. It hasn’t realy been decided by fair market value. I think that anyone would look at it in a very perfunctory way, flip it over and look at the other side and say, “That’s not fair! That’s not fair! These people are creating the raw materials.”

MR: Jimmy, I always appreciate your candor, honesty and enthusiasm. Let’s do it again someday, thanks.

JW: Okay, thanks a lot man!

Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne