Diamond in the Rough (17 page)

Joni, 1991

I was fretting over a lyric one day for a song called “Kill the Messenger”—“Sometimes someone drifts by / And our nets get entwined in the …” The what? Joni looked at me as though I were heinously dense and shrugged her shoulders. “The sea,” she said matter-of-factly. Well, of course. She called me Shawnykins and probably remembers none of this, but I always will. I laughed and ate and talked with Joni Mitchell. Even now I can hardly believe it, but then again I am a classic dork when it comes to meeting famous people. For example, I heard my name being called once while standing outside a Santa Monica hotel. I turned around to answer and found myself looking at Sean Penn. Here is the brilliant thing I said to him: “Oh! You’re a Shawn, too!”

If
Steady On
was about getting sober, going to therapy, and the end of my relationship with John Leventhal,
Fat City
was about feeling good. I think it was an easier record to make, probably because there was no drama between Larry Klein and me. It was a friendly, warm relationship, and so it was more fun, too.

The song I’d started on the uptown bus to therapy, “Polaroids,” opened the album. The rhythm of that song lent itself to a lot of conversation, a lot of words, a lot of visuals. I didn’t have an ending, and one night I dreamed of two people in love. They were walking on a plank across a huge gully or a crevasse—and she turned around and held up a card that said “Valentine” while he was taking Polaroids of her. That was it; I knew how to end the song.

Romantically I was inspired by a couple of different men this time around. Remember the nerdy boy who rejected me by feeding the cats and driving me to arson? He was at the core of “Tennessee” and “Monopoly,” proving that it doesn’t take much to get yourself written into one of my songs.

Musically “Tennessee” was a sort of departure for me. John had written the music, and it was more rock and roll than anything I’d tried to write before. Richard Thompson graced us with a screaming guitar solo, and Béla Fleck played a nasty banjo part—you don’t see the words “nasty” and “banjo” together very often, but Béla does things with a banjo that are rather unusual, to say the least.

I wrote “Round of Blues” for my new love (not the perv), an Englishman, Simon Tassano. Simon was lithe and light, with golden skin and hair, the bluest eyes, the loveliest mouth, a beautiful man. I bought him a silver sun on a beaded silver chain because he was Sunny Simon, always cheerful. In the early days, I started to fall in love with him upon hearing him sing Joni Mitchell songs, badly. Simon is a thoroughly charming, easygoing master of the soundboard and peerless caretaker for Richard Thompson, with whom I toured America and Europe in 1991. I was still promoting
Steady On,
and Richard was promoting his album,
Rumor and Sigh.
I would open the show each night, then play rhythm guitar and sing backup in Richard’s band during his set. To this day this tour stands out as one of my favorites ever. I worked my ass off, had the time of my life playing with and learning from Richard, who is simply brilliant, and fell in love with Simon. Who was engaged. But not to me.

Richard Thompson tour, Newport, RI, 1991

(Photograph courtesy of Simon Tassano)

Every tour should come with a warning about falling in love while on the road. (And if you tour Europe, the warning should be in large red capital letters.) It isn’t real life. It’s fairly simple out there, romantically so, breezing in and out from one city to the next, one’s only actual responsibility being to show up and play each night, which is a pleasure. Of course you’re working, but it is really about pleasure: the pleasure of playing, the pleasure of camaraderie, the pleasure of food and sleep and entertainment—and love affairs. We resisted each other for as long as we could, until I told him I’d be willing to have a relationship with him for the duration of the tour, no questions asked, no expectations. I’m not normally capable of such compartmentalization, but he was so dear and it made me so happy to be near him. I didn’t see him as a philanderer, just a guy stuck in a moment that he couldn’t get out of. Somewhere along the way, I think it was in western Canada, he told me he was falling for me. I was wearing a black dress with a golden sun on the front, lent to me by my friend Elly Brown. Now we had a problem. Ultimately, Simon made the decision to break off his engagement in order to pursue a relationship with me, and I was glad, although in hindsight, with a few more heartbreaks under my belt, I truly regret the pain I brought into his fiancée’s life. But we were in love; it was a runaway train. Backstage at a gig in Cornwall, England, I wrote the first lines to “Round of Blues.” It’s Simon’s song.

Simon and me, Sydney, Australia, 1992

(Photograph courtesy of Tom Godano)

During the making of
Fat City,
I went with Simon to visit his son in Australia. I remember camping with Simon and Tom, looking at the stars and finding Orion. It was a romantic notion to me that we could all see that same constellation, no matter where we were, even with thousands and thousands of miles separating us. When I got back to L.A., I took a lush piece of music that Larry had given me and began “Orion in the Sky.”

Because of Simon there are some other affirmative love songs on
Fat City,
like “Climb on a Back That’s Strong” and “Object of My Affection,” both of them infused with hope and promise, not exactly my forte on
Steady On.

Recording with Larry meant using an entirely different group of musicians than those on
Steady On.
We had David Lindley, whose solo on “Polaroids” still makes me cry. I especially wanted to use the Subdudes, a rootsy outfit from New Orleans who reminded me of the Band. They played on “Object of My Affection” and “Tenderness on the Block,” a cover of a tune by Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne—which was also up-tempo and hopeful! (What was in the Kool-Aid??) I’d written a song with Elly Brown called “Set the Prairie on Fire,” and Larry brought in Booker T. Jones to play a sultry organ part, while I asked Chris Whitley, a labelmate and one of my favorite artists, to add some slide guitar. That song also featured Jim Keltner on drums, and I was beyond excited to work with him. We recorded six takes of “Prairie,” and Jim never played the same part twice, which is an aspect of his genius. The difficulty was in choosing which drum take was the coolest.

The best surprise when it came to players was certainly Steuart Smith. Steuart plays the guitar with crazy precision and a true, true heart. I’d seen him at the Bottom Line in New York accompanying Rosanne Cash, and I remember telling him afterward that I couldn’t stop smiling when he played. There was this whole incestuous minidrama going on where Rosanne was now dating, and working with, John Leventhal, I was working with Steuart, and Larry had just finished producing an album by Rodney Crowell, Rosanne’s ex-husband, using Steuart and John on guitar. Yikes. But I felt so lucky to have found Steuart, who in addition to being an amazing guitar player is one of the smartest, funniest, most passionate, sincere, and hardworking people I’ve ever met. Nowadays Steuey is an Eagle, and I’m still mad at Don Henley for stealing him, but who can blame him? Steuart rocks.

Larry Klein turned what seemed like a horribly daunting prospect—making music without John Leventhal—into a joy. When we finished up
Fat City,
it was time to go on tour again. I got the late, great T-Bone Wolk to play bass, Jeff Young on keyboards, Kenny Blevins on drums, and Steuart on guitar. I was still with a bunch of boys, but this time I had a bus! My first-ever bus tour. I can still remember pulling in to a town, getting off the bus in my uniform of a pair of men’s striped pajamas, and going into a radio station for an early-morning drive-time interview.

Simon defected from Richard long enough to run the tour and do the sound. I fared considerably better during this outing than on my previous one, what with having a boyfriend, a bus, a band,
and
Prozac. I’d learned what I could and couldn’t do vocally, although we did a cover of “Look Out Cleveland” that I’m pretty sure didn’t do the song justice. We opened the show with “Dead of the Night” and did this little medley of “Tracks of My Tears” into “Cry Like an Angel.” I had a blast.

There was just one problem in my life now: Simon lived in London, I lived in New York. We both figured that all we really needed was a nearby airport, and beyond that we were wide open. So we did the only reasonable thing two people in love can do—we moved to L.A.

14

You Always Knew It

The Masters of Rhythm and Taste, Italy, 1993

(Photograph © by Guido Harari)

This is my window to the world.

Simon and I settled in Los Angeles, and I had an idea for my next record. I figured for all the cover tunes I’d learned and played all those years, I ought to record some of them, and besides, I just hadn’t written much since
Fat City.
I decided to ask Steuart Smith to produce. The record was called, aptly enough,
Cover Girl—
title courtesy of Simon.

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” which opens the record, was one of the first songs I learned that represented a departure from all the singer-songwriter material I’d been covering since I was fifteen. I played it in the Bleecker Street days in the mid- to late 1980s. I learned Tom Waits’s “Heart of Saturday Night” up in the attic in Berkeley, 1979. Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” is another from that time period. I’d gotten deep, deep into “Blood on the Tracks,” and I swore I’d wrestle a melody out of that song. The Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” is a cover I’m really proud of. After listening closely to the lyrics, I discovered the sweetest love song inside their perky, bouncy arrangement.

There were two fairly obscure songwriters that I was keen to record—Willis Alan Ramsey and Judee Sill. The covers of these two songs—“Satin Sheets” and “There’s a Rugged Road,” respectively—are truer to the original artists’ versions simply because they
are
obscure, and I wanted to represent the originals. Willis Alan Ramsey put out one record in his life. I learned about it when I moved to Austin, in 1976. Everybody in Austin knew about Willis. It’s one of the best records I’ve ever heard—a desert-island disc. I even got to see Willis play a couple of times in Austin in the seventies—and that era is gone. He’s missed.

Judee Sill was my own discovery. I was still in high school and scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. We had a college radio station, WTAO; we played that in the ice-cream store. A song came on called “There’s a Rugged Road.” I just stopped what I was doing. The singer was a woman, an acoustic guitar, and then these otherworldly, heavenly harmonies come in on the chorus. I was able to track it down to Judee’s album
Heart Food.
She made two records, and I love every song on both.

Steve Earle says the fact that I recorded his song “Someday” made a difference to him at that time in his life. I never will feel like I came close to touching his version, but I was obsessed with that song, and if it meant something to Steve, then I can go on living.