July 2017

As he prepares to take to the stage at C2C, Marty Stuart looks back on his career touring with fellow icons Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash, and tells Ed Mitchell about his groundbreaking surf/psychedelia/country road trip record Way Out West. It’s early February when we finally hook up with Marty Stuart. The four-week countdown to his appearance at Country 2 Country has begun and it won’t be long until his new album Way Out West bursts into life. The new record – a love letter to the American West, cut with his loyal band the Fabulous Superlatives – has already set the standard for the best record we’ll cherish this year. Yet, as this interview was taking place, the album was in limbo, recorded and mixed and out of Marty’s hands but still frustratingly far from delivery for the faithful who knew it was in the post. “It’s like flirting with your favourite girl,” laughs Marty. We finish his sentence: ‘Yeah, you know you’re gonna get something good, eventually, and it’ll be worth the wait…’ We have to confess to a tingle of excitement when Marty Stuart picks up the phone. This is the man who toured with Lester Flatt and Johnny Cash and counted the likes of Merle Haggard and Porter Wagoner among his personal friends and collaborators. He’s the keeper of the flame of true country music, a scholar and archivist and formidable singer, musician and writer. He even got to marry country royalty, the singer Connie Smith. If you want to know where country music has been or where it’s going, no one is better qualified to guide you than Marty Stuart. While his new album testifies to his fascination with the West Coast, as he explains, his resolve to remain in Nashville was only tested once. “In the late 1970s when Lester Flatt died, I considered going out West to live,” Marty recalls. “I was thinking about getting a job with Bob Dylan. At that time of my life, I saw the fast paced world of Hollywood. I thought, ‘you’ll probably go out there and kill yourself. You’re a knucklehead, Marty Stuart!’” In the end, however, Nashville prevailed: “I got a job with Johnny Cash. That made an easy decision even easier.” Q. Where does your fascination with the American West come from? A. I was raised in the South of the United States, down in Mississippi. The first record I ever owned was a Johnny Cash record, it had Don’t Take Your Guns To Town on it. There was another song on there called One More Ride, it was about going out West. Then, of course, I heard the Marty Robbins Gunfighter record. I was enchanted. Those songs took me on a journey in my bedroom when I was a little kid down in the South. To this day when I travel to the American West, I’m still awed by it. Q. Do you remember the first time you made it to the West Coast? A. It was 1974. I was in Lester Flatt’s band. He played a series of concerts; and the California show was in a town called Norco. It was a bluegrass festival. I woke up and we were coming into California and all of a sudden there were palm trees, there was a blue sky, and a ‘sandiness’ that I’d never experienced before. I’d only read about it or seen it on the silver screen or on television. So, I finally got to see it in person. I fell in love with it the very first time. Q. Way Out West feels like a soundtrack to a lost road movie… A. I tried very hard to take the listener on a journey. I like themes. I like having a bullseye, a destination. It’s wonderful to know what the project is about. Therefore you can write to the subject matter. Q. The title track is a powerful piece of work. When did the inspiration strike for the song? A. I was riding in the front of my bus with a guitar in my lap and a piece of paper. These words just kinda started coming out of the sky. I thought it was comedy… like, this is crazy. I kept writing silly words. I actually wrote to sleep and when I woke up, I looked at the words again and thought, ‘well, that ain’t half bad.’ Q. You cut a couple of covers for the new record… A. The second Johnny Cash record I owned was called The Sound Of Johnny Cash, on Columbia Records. Lost On The Desert was in there. I remember going down the street to my friend’s house and The Beatles were really popular at that moment in time. They were blowing up, lighting up the planet. He said, ‘Come here man, listen to this’ and it was a Beatles track. And I said, ‘Well, listen to this!’ and I played him Lost On The Desert. I was just taken by that line in it: ‘black wings circle the sky’. Those images just captivated my mind when I was a kid. I thought Johnny Cash wrote that song but I found out it was Dallas Frazier and a guy named Buddy Mize. Dallas Frazier is one of my friends – my wife Connie Smith has recorded like 73 of his songs. I called him up one day and asked if he remembered writing the song and he said, ‘Yeah, I think I was in high school when I wrote it.’ So it was one of those songs from my childhood that fit this project. Q. You’ve got Airmail Special in there, too… A. I love that line in it about ‘carrying mail to California.’ It was an old bluegrass record that I heard Jim and Jesse and The Virginia Boys do and I just thought it was a great song. Q. Were the original songs plucked from the archives or written specifically for the record? A. A

The rocker turned country crooner tells Teri Saccone how he’s straddled the divide. With a rich baritone smooth like ‘Tupelo honey,’ singer-songwriter Darius Rucker has tapped into the mainstream twice: initially via 90s platinum pop rockers Hootie & The Blowfish and then in country in 2008, with debut single Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It off his hit album Learn To Live. CMAs followed as have more Grammys, industry accolades and touring. Although the music press hailed it as a major move, on closer inspection the crossover was fairly organic as South Carolinian Darius was raised on Hee-Haw, has listened to country since childhood and Hootie & The Blowfish extolled flavoursome rootsy folk rock. Since his country foray, Rucker’s career has flourished again. He’s collaborated with Brad Paisley, Alison Krauss, Lady Antebellum’s Charles Kelley, Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill among other country elite. And his four albums and ensuing tours have been both commercially and critically embraced. During his 2012 induction into the Grand Ole Opry, Gill described him as someone “everyone adores”. With all the adulation and adoration, CM’s expectations were high when we spoke to Darius on the eve of the C2C 2017 tour. Fortunately, the man with the golden pipes does not disappoint. He is both gracious and humble. Cognisant of his good fortunes, he offers: “I’m so lucky. I wasn’t expecting any of it,” with no mention of the absurdly hard graft involved. As Rucker is about to grace our stages, he is palpably enthused. “I’m more excited about this than I can say. Touring the UK is fantastic, because the fans there are so rabid and they really do love country music. There is a grassroots loyalty with country that does not exist in pop or rock. It’s a different beast.” Rucker grew up venerating soul, rock and the kaleidoscopic musical menu of USA’s once-diverse AM radio. But one of the first country stars he was enamoured with was Kenny Rogers. “Kenny’s music is so real, his songs are great stories, so vivid and cinematic and he drew me in as a young kid. I loved growing up in the 70s because you could hear Kenny, Cheap Trick, Al Green, The Beatles and Buck Owens all on the same channel.” When he appeared on Radney Foster’s 1999 album See What You Want To See it was a watershed moment for him. “I knew then I really wanted to go in that direction. I told the guys in the band (Hootie) that I was gonna make a country album even back then.” When Hootie went on hiatus in 2008 the timing couldn’t have been sweeter and Rucker began forging a country path. “I got lucky going to Nashville and I didn’t think it was necessarily going to work, and neither did my representation. We were not presuming it was gonna explode for me. But luckily we made such a great first record (Learn To Live). We then literally drove around the country,” he adds, “and we did a national country-radio tour to support it. Some people thought I was nuts, but I wanted to prove myself to Nashville. On that radio tour, I had programmers tell me they were unsure if their audience would accept me. But I knew that I had to start with country that way. Having country music accept me made me so happy I do what I do. Okay, it’s not curing cancer, but it made me feel like I am on the right track.” This modest assessment comes despite the fact that H&TB sold in excess of 26 million copies of Cracked Rear View, making it among the most successful US-made albums in history. Yet Rucker is not one who tends to sing his own praises. Given that Nashville can be quite unforgiving to crossover artists, why does he think he was accepted as authentically country? “I think the main reason is because people knew this was not about money or being a superstar. I would have done this in the basement of my house with my friends if that was as far as we got. I was making this music for me.” One of the recurring themes in Rucker’s lyrics is also a country staple: family. The poignant It Won’t Be Like This For Long bears this out. “The personal songs are best for me as a writer. I could try fictional songwriting, but it wouldn’t be honest. I write about what I live both now plus from my past experiences, so the real-life topics are my trademark.” He says his songwriting is unpredictable and ideas often transpire without plotting or provocation. “Melodies and lyrics come to me in a variety of ways. But they often appear simultaneously. One thing he won’t ever do, however, is write a song and then simply ‘countrify’ it in the studio. “I won’t take a pop song, stick fiddles or a banjo on it and call it ‘country’,” he explains emphatically. Since we already know what he is, I probe him about who he is. He takes a few seconds to ponder the question before replying: “Who I really am is a father. That is my number-one purpose. To have contented, healthy children is a privilege for anyone. And I never forget it.” The answer is poignant, because his mother raised him and his siblings pretty much singlehandedly, with their dad absent and only visible to them on Sundays right before church services. “For a time, we lived with cousins and aunts and we were a very close family and we still are now.” Perhaps his familial ties keep him living in his hometown of Charleston, when he could choose to reside anywhere. “Home is truly here, in every way imaginable,” he explains. Not only do his roots in the historic city run deep, he also is a hands-on philanthropist, having set up two charities. His golfing charity (he’s an avid player and a close pal of Tiger Woods) raises funds for

The irrepressible singer reflects on turning a corner, getting away from it all and climbing a tree, writes Johnny Sharp. “Ha ha ha heeeee!” Is Tift Merritt drunk? Or possibly a little high? In all likelihood, the singer-songwriter is neither of those things, since it’s only 4pm in New York as she answers Country Music’s phone call. But she does sound positively giddy with excitement as she talks about her first solo record for over four years, Stitch Of The World. Peals of shrieking laughter punctuate our chat as she discusses her 15-year recording career, the recent changes in her life and the break from solo performing that helped her regroup, refresh and make arguably her strongest album to date. After complimenting our name, we ask about her own, original moniker. “It’s a family name,” she replies. “They started naming all the other family members Tift, and I’m actually the only female Tift. I’m not sure that’s what they were thinking when I was born – ha ha!” Collaborative Approach Names, like genres, are something you may be able to disown, but it’s hard to shake them off entirely. And while Merritt’s new album draws on blues, folk and singer-songwriter influences, it’s shot through with an unmistakably country feel, whether in the streaks of pedal steel, the Southern twang in her voice or the emotionally upfront lyrical approach. And the woman herself is only too happy to be seen as part of that musical lineage. “I’m proud to be part of the country tradition. I’ve always loved all kinds of roots music, and I love traditional storytelling in song. I don’t like being compared to country pop, though – I identify with the traditional country music people like Kitty Wells and Emmylou Harris – they’re among my heroes along with Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Billie Holliday. But I think genres are usually fingers of the same hand, so you take any of those influences away from me and it’d be like removing a finger. It’s all part of me.” This is a woman who is nothing if not versatile, however, and after she finished touring 2012’s Traveling Alone, her next project was a collaboration with classical pianist Simone Dinnerstein, a collection of small-hours piano and guitar pieces they called Night. It’s a delicately beautiful,intoxicating listen that’s well worth checking out for any Merritt fans. She followed that up by touring with off-kilter singer-songwriter Andrew Bird, a long-term collaborator and friend, as part of his band Hands Of Glory. Was it fun to share the burden with other musicians for once? “Absolutely – I really enjoyed that deeper collaboration,” she says. “I really love being in bands playing with other people in a supporting role, and it also reinforced some of the things I do myself – every time you’re having these experiences with other people, it’s going into your own personal well of things to draw from.” Leaping Off The Map As it turned out, she had plenty of personal food for thought anyway. By the end of 2014 she was about to turn 40, and a year previously she had split with husband and band drummer Zeke Hutchins. She took a few months out to write songs in a cabin in California and a friend’s ranch in Marfa, West Texas. “It was a leap off whatever map I’d written for myself,” she says, “and I think there’s some trial and error in all that. But I had to step away. With all the projects and tour dates, I was turning 40 and my life had taken unexpected turns, and I needed to sort through it without any other distractions.” Retreating to rural solitude to summon the creative muse has become a popular approach for songwriters, and you wonder if the ‘cabin’ of which musicians speak is basically a big fat studio that just happens to be out in the sticks. In Merritt’s case, though, it was part buswoman’s holiday, part artist’s retreat. “I was in Big Sur, a beautiful part of California,” she says. “It was my 40th birthday present to myself! It was definitely a retreat, getting out of the grind of regular life. For me, part of writing is looking at things in a different way, and sometimes the physical experience of doing that can prompt the mental approach to doing that. “California is so beautiful, but there’s also an aspect where I have a writing routine, which I just don’t get while I’m on the road. I was going hiking every afternoon, and that’s how the lyrics for Heartache Is An Uphill Climb came about – because I had had my ass kicked by a real mountain in California! Ha ha!” Walking The Line Merritt’s routine revolved around writing in the mornings and then hiking in the afternoons, or for however long it took to get to the end of the road. “I always find walking is a great way to think,” she says. “Sitting at a desk there’s this self-imposed pressure to do something important, whereas being physical is a great way to free your mind. I’d be singing things into my phone because ideas would be coming to me as I walked. I did a similar thing when I lived in Paris for a while a few years ago, and then I tried it again a few years later after they had installed all the city bikes, and it was such a different experience because the pace of the city bike was so much faster. You can only go so fast when you’re walking and you really can take in your surroundings and really notice. So I think walking and hiking really worked for me – and these were long hikes – I would come home at the end and go to sleep!” Another song that came from that California trip was the title track of the new album, Stitch Of The World. “As it weaves through your heart, try not to