toM FlanNery talks to bOB MarTi N

 

 

 

The town of Lowell Mass. seems to run like a river through your CD. What is it about Lowell that keeps you mining for material there?

BM- I was born and grew up in Lowell. It was what I knew. Although the city has changed, I still see it through the eyes of a romantic who remembers the friends, the senseless conversations, arm-in arm drunks in the alley way staggering toward the street light and the open screened doors of cafes and bars along Moody Street that smelled of piss and stale cigars. I see the ghosts at every intersection, friends long past, triggered recollections of anger and joy, skinned-knuckle fist fights and long-dead loves that resurface with old songs and faded street signs. That’s what I see in it. That’s what I write about because it’s all I know.

Tell us about your show with Townes Van Zant?

BM- Townes and I were playing a gig at the Iron Horse in North Hampton, Massachusetts sometime in the early eighties. Guy Clark and Bill Morrissey were also performing and it was billed as a songwriter concert or something like that. Townes and I sat downstairs in the "green room" and made conversation about songwriting and inspiration. I played a couple of tunes while sitting on an old red, stuffed couch that had worn arm rests that spilled out dirty, white stuffing. Townes nodded his head approvingly and said something about the rhythm of the words. He said he remembered my first album on RCA with a cover photo of me sitting on a giant pig and we laughed about how that all came about and some of the studio musicians out of Nashville who played on the album. Aside from the flash of a faint smile, his face reflected an unspoken sadness or maybe some kind of resignation to the madness that swirled around us. He was quiet for a while and then we talked briefly about mutual friends and other places played. I got up, went up stairs and played my set.

There was a long gap between records for you. What had you been doing musically between ‘River’ and your last record?

BM- Before the first album and the second, I was writing songs thatI thought no one would ever hear. I had moved my family to WestVirginia to a farm I had bought after the RCA deal. I was going out on the road for weeks at a time playing honkytonks and lodge halls with my friend Tex McGuire, an old time mountain musician who had spent 52 years on the road playing one-nighters. I was completing a documentaryfilm of his life. I was writing and re-writing a lot of music. Ifinished a second album on June Appal Records in Whitesburg, Kentucky entitled "Last Chance Rider" and after a while returned to Lowell withmy family to perform in the New England area. Between the second and third album I had come to a point in my life when I no longer wanted to travel and deal with some of the club owners and venue managers,masterful skimmers who could keep a straight face and produce a short count at the end-of-night-tally. I was booking myself and sometimes resorting to threats and a shake down to get enough cash to get to the next gig. Sleeping in the back seat got old. But there were some really good people as well like Bob and Rea Ann Donlon who ran Club Passim in Cambridge and who would occasionally book me and other struggling performers like Chris Smither who was working as a carpenter. I also worked as a carpenter and schoolteacher and for a while as a truck driver to feed my family and put some money away for the next album.

It seems like everybody who ever picks up an acoustic guitar gets compared to Dylan at some point. And you, with songs like ‘American Street Dream’, with its wild imagery and cadence, certainly haven’t been able to escape the comparison. How does it make you feel?

BM- I don’t really react to the comparison one way or the other. People tend to compare, categorize, and pigeonhole in order to get some kind of handle on their version of reality.

Tell us about some of your musical influences.

BM- When I was growing up in Lowell many of my friends were black and we lived next door to a black family. We had a singing group called the Preludes. It was a quartet (two black guys and two white guys). We bought two-button, blue blazers at Norman’s on Middlesex Street and thought we were really something. We played at all the record hops and would lip sync to Clyde McFatter, Billy Ward and The Dominoes. We were listening to a lot of early, obscure, black rhythm and blues, The Romancers, The House Cats, The Cufflinks, The Charts singing their one-time hit, "Desiree". Summer nights we would go down to the river to one of the old abandoned mills and sing in the dark, empty expanse of the second floor weaving room, waiting for the returning echo in four-part harmony. Those were my early influences. I remember driving my father’s old painting truck home after dropping off friends at three o’clock in the morning, listening to Nina Simone singing "I Love You, Porgy", fading in and out from some radio station out of Chicago. I pulled over by the side of the road and held my breath to catch the last of the lyrics fading away in the night.

What strikes me listening to ‘River’ is how the songs flow together. I hate the term concept album, because it sounds so pretentious, but in a way this record is almost like leafing through your diary. ‘Sweet River Days’, ‘The Old Worthen’, ‘The River Turns the Wheel’….all of these explore universal themes, yet at the same time seem intensely personal as well. Am I off the mark?

BM- It’s been said before that the best writing always comes from experience. I know that sounds trite, but many things that are trite are also true. Sometimes I like to sit in one of the barrooms in my old neighborhood in Lowell, the kind where all the light fixtures on the wall and all the walls themselves are coated with a thick patina of brown nicotine and where the flies circle slowly around a bare light bulb. Some old man is hanging on a rickety, wooden bar stole ranting against the injustice of this time and place. I begin to take notes on half remembered instances and fragments of conversation. It’s what I know. This is how I work.

I can’t remember an independent record garnering the sparkling reviews that ‘River’ is receiving. Has all of this attention taken you somewhat by surprise? Have major labels taken notice?

BM- The attention is great because it allows me to continue writing and recording. I am grateful for the positive response and enjoy it when people tell me about what the music means to them and how it fits into their lives. I get mail from people telling me very personal things about the music. I really love that. I truly feel honored when someone asks for an autograph. That’s always a kick for me. I’ve been approached by a major label with a deal that works for them, but I’ve tried all that before and I like the idea of independent. That seems to work best for me.

As I fellow songwriter, I can say that listening to ‘River’ has taught me so much about songwriting. I have to confess that I nicked some of your ideas for my own release ‘Song About a Train’. And at times I felt that talking to you about the craft of songwriting has helped me get over some rough spots. How does it make you feel when people like me look to you for guidance in regards to our own writing? Is that a burden (maybe burden is not the right word…lets say responsibility) that you accept, or does it make you a bit uneasy?

BM- If I can influence anyone in a positive way, I am grateful. But recognize also that I struggle with this thing. It is wrestling with the angels. Songs well written exact a price on the writer. They take their toll. They take something from you in the fight. They can make you weep and wonder where they came from. They can briefly open a window on the pain of another time you thought was safely forgotten. Some are so personal that they take time and distance before you can perform them well. Every writer has a demon, win or lose.

How do you approach following up a record that has generated so much praise? Do you feel any added pressure to match or surpass the quality of ‘River’?

BM- I just keep writing. I can’t take time to think about what the reaction will be to the next album. I was writing some of my best music when I was working as a truck driver and as a carpenter, when I was broke and thought no one would hear these songs.