True to the Roots (6 page)

"Connecting" is inherently about honesty, although that trait may complicate the means by which it takes place. Write the songs, then go out on the road and find the people who appreciate them. The collection of songs, all written by Cleaves, on
Wishbones
is achingly honest. Coming up with a worthy successor to
Broke Down
wasn't easy. The prospect tortured him.

"That's what I felt when I wrote this batch of songs for the new record," he says. "I've been worrying about how to write a new record.
Broke Down
was the record I'd been trying to make for ten years. As soon as I finished it, I knew the next one would be really tough. I'd kind of achieved this goal I'd been working on for a really long time. I just felt like the songs came together, and the record came together, and I had no idea what to do next. I knew I couldn't do anything better. It took a couple years of me worrying about it before I started writing again. I had to take the time to write and realize, after writing a bunch of crappy songs, that I had to start writing songs for my own needs and my own enjoyment.

"I wrote a song about one of the chapters in
Seabiscuit
, which is such a beautiful book, so, you know, I wrote a song about jockeys. I wrote a song about illegal aliens. A friend of mine has quite a story to tell. They're totally uncommercial songs. I put little things away. I can't think commercially when I write. I can only think about what amuses me and what I find interesting."

The most significant development in the whole interview is Cleaves's definition of Americana, the musical genre that is maddeningly difficult to encompass, what with the membership of everyone from John Prine to Steve Earle to the Jayhawks.

"There are four or five different categories of Americana," he says. "There are people like me: singer songwriters with a folk country background. There are guys like Jack [Ingram], who are basically rock acts with a more storytelling, country style of songwriting. There is also the alternative, outside-the-norm, the Bloodshot Records, with kind of a rock background. All those Chicago guys, Robbie Fulks, and people like that."

Cleaves pauses for a moment, perhaps considering whether to deliver the clincher.

Then, finally, he says, "The only thing that I can come up with, the only common thing between all these Americana artists, is that we don't sell a lot of records."

How's that for being brutally honest? But, wait, there's more. The vision isn't quite as pessimistic as it seems.

"I call it noncommercial country," he says. "It's kind of selfdefeating, but I just think . . . well, the Dixie Chicks, if they weren't so popular, they'd be Americana. They're not because they're too big to be Americana.

"I never even thought I was material for [commercial success]. I never thought I was talented enough, or original enough, to be a big star. I have this trade, you know, and it's enough to make a decent living and pay off my debts. It was really hard, the first ten years or so. I maxed out my credit cards, and it was hard on my wife and family. When Broke Down came out and had some air play, I was able to slowly start paying off my debts. With my next record I'll be debt free.

"That's all I ever wanted."

Not the Way They Do Things "Up North"

Key West, Florida I November 2003 & 2004

Havana is closer to Key West than Miami. A fair amount of Canada is closer to my home in South Carolina. The cultural difference is even greater.

Where else in the United States does one encounter a rooster walking around, looking right at home, on a downtown sidewalk? Or a Chinese man explaining to a T-shirt salesman that the term
flirt
is not appropriate to the romantic process in his native land?

Ethnic diversity is the norm, and it's an oversimplification to equate the context with the presence of Hispanics or the proximity to the Caribbean isles. For some reason there is a lot of French spoken in Key West. The waitress at a seafood restaurant explains, when I query her about her dialect, that she is from Poland, and one of the highlights of my two day visit is watching an Irish fiddler, one Bobby O'Donovan, sit in with singer guitarist David Goodman at the Hog's Breath Saloon.

I want to take a four-hour boat trip to the Dry Tortugas, the site of an old American fort from the 1800s, but a few complications—we journalists never really get rid of them—intervene. So, for two nights and most of two afternoons, I wander around from watering hole to watering hole, listening to live music. The Dry Tortugas will have to wait.

What mainly happens down here is "bumping into."

For instance, I bump into Chris Clifton, a brilliant guitarist whose wife, Sherry, (a) owns Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina, and (b) is the sister of Teresa Earnhardt, the widow of nascar icon Dale Earnhardt.

I bump into a very loud, tattooed, bald, and gregarious fellow from a seacoast town in the south of England. The bloke is positively entranced with Florida's appeal, he and his mates having partied their way from one end of it to the other.

I bump into a relatively older woman taking her Pekingese for a walk and wearing a "Women do Have All the Answers" T-shirt. A woman I'm guessing is her daughter tags along. Based on a few minutes' observation, I can attest to the fact that the older woman positively rules the younger one.

I also bump into the most incredible parade of powerboats, arriving in town for the annual races off shore. The sleek watercraft have more in common with the space shuttle than the standard conception of a powerboat. During the parade one boat, dubbed
American Dream
, features two cute young girls, perhaps ten years old, singing "The Star Spangled Banner" over and over as they wave little flags. Behind them, more mature beauties toss beaded necklaces into the crowd.

I bump into an older man, painted silver, who is standing on the sidewalk impersonating a statue, holding a toy pistol from which he occasionally squirts water at passersby. Attached to his cowboy garb is a sign that reads, "Your coins are my livelihood."

I work for a newspaper. Perhaps I should get one of those signs.

The best music isn't always on the radio. It isn't always in a huge open air pavilion or indoor coliseum. Sometimes it's in a seedy little bar on a backstreet, and sometimes the performer makes his living not from royalties and fees but from the contents of a tip jar.

Marc-Alan Barnette has written songs for artists like Shelby Lynne and John Berry. He conducts "song and performance evaluations" in Nashville to help other aspiring songwriters. He and his wife, Jane, who is a nurse in a small Alabama town, periodically travel here to play the 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. shift at the Hog's Breath Saloon for the week.

David Goodman typically plays the Hog's Breath on Mondays and Tuesdays then heads back up the road to his home in Jupiter, Florida. "I've been around now for about thirty years singing songs and selling beer," he says.

Rob Sweet is a small, slender man in his twenties from Lexington, South Carolina, who traded in a formal education for an informal one. There were times when he gave blood every few days just to help pay the bills. He wrote a song about it, aptly titled "Bleedin' the Blues." Sweet's learned a lot about life, sitting on a stool at Captain Tony's, mixing in the songs of John Prine, David Allan Coe, and Johnny Cash with a few of his own and selling a few CDs to the friendly, sympathetic patrons who drift in and out.

Sweet is young enough still to be taken with the vagabond's life. He seems oblivious to any ambitions of widespread commercial success. He just does his thing, man. Keeping his head barely above water seems to be all he wants right now. Chatting with the beer drinking tourists between songs, he has a disarming honesty. He recounts a story about how he was once inspired by the experience of attending a Grateful Dead concert on acid. Stockbrokers and housewives nod sympathetically, and for a moment it is the young guitarist, looking older than his years, who seems to be living the good life.

At the Hog's Breath, Goodman plays a blues version of the bluegrass classic "Rollin' in My Sweet Baby's Arms." An hour or so later Barnette performs a blues version of "Rocky Top." Barnette's own songs reflect the Nashville struggle. They are built around hooks. The clever turn of a phrase comes first, then the song is built around it. I don't consider that the best way to write a song, but it is the way that is most commercially accepted.

Goodman talks about life's commitments and recalls his youth, when he set off in a sailboat with a band of friends, wearing little more than the clothes on his back, only to find out his mates had quite an extended trip in mind. It was the first week of June, and they told him they planned on coming home at the end of August. He actually returned home on September 17. And, yes, a song came from that rite of passage, one called "Isle of Trinidad."

Sometimes, Goodman says, kiddingly, "I think maybe I could come back down to Key West and get a shopping cart [to live in]," and it seems right that to this free spirit that idea would be tempting.

Key West is obviously alluring because the musical scene there is unique and irresistible. Perhaps that's because it has evolved all by its lonesome down at the end of a string of islands. Perhaps it is unique precisely because it is remote.

A lot of it isn't my cup of tea. The tourist culture brings with it hundreds of respectable types who don't particularly care to empathize with acid trips. More than once I saunter into a bar only to be launched out the door by a tidal wave of Neil Diamond. Then there's the one joint where the guy onstage delights in screaming profane putdowns at the audience. I guess that's why the audience is there, but I've had a few beers and am feeling weary. I don't even have a chance to order another lager when the guitar strapped Don Rickles starts heckling me.

I turn around, blurt something akin to "Hand me a microphone, asshole, and I'll give you a run for your money," turn again, toward the door, and walk out.

Life's too short. I know I'll never get that kind of treatment from Rob Sweet or David Goodman.

The quality of the bands at the raucous Sloppy Joe's is impressive, but it's all straight out of classic rock stations. Also, there's something just a tad depressing about watching all the forty somethings flicking their lighters at the umpteenth Doobie Brothers cover. Of course, they'd probably make the same observation about me. To each his own . . . we're all growing older.

It's pretty hard to spend much time here without at least once hearing someone say, "We don't care how you do it up north." That wouldn't play too well if not for masses of the orthodox willing to renounce the company line for a few irresistible days and nights.

A year later, in November 2004, I return, and practically nothing has changed. I bump into Rob Sweet again at Captain Tony's. He remembers who I am, and we compare positive reviews on the new Steve Earle album,
The Revolution Starts Now
. Rob promptly picks up his guitar—he's supposed to be taking a break—and performs parts of a couple of Earle's new songs.

David Goodman still plays in the off hours at the Hog's Breath, and one night I catch him setting up Chris Clifton's equipment and adjusting the sound. He seems authoritative and quite the perfectionist in this role.

The chrome man is still around, only this time he's down at Mallory Square, where there is a constant hubbub from tourists getting onto and off of cruise ships. Or maybe it's a different chrome man. This one isn't dressed up as a cowboy, but he still performs robotlike movements for the people who happen by and occasionally drop tips in his jar. Musicians even more ragtag than the ones playing for tips in bars stand out in the open here, playing mystical sounding songs that seem to wed East with West. Hemispheres, that is. Or maybe it's North with South.

The last evening I'm there, I finally get up the nerve to pull out my guitar. I park the rental car nearby, take the case out of the trunk, and walk over to a bench in Mallory Square and proceed to start playing simple country songs. I could use a couple beers to remove the inhibitions, but after a few minutes of unease I find my voice and start to relax.

Over the next hour, despite the fact that I don't solicit anything, people walk over and drop bills into my open guitar case, which actually hadn't been placed on the concrete bench as a tip jar. At one point, while strumming away between verses, I even smile at a woman dropping money into my guitar case and say, "Now, ma'am, I've got cash money, and I'm working steady." But the small bills continue to trickle in anyway. That's just the way it works out, and I feel kind of sheepish knowing that I may be taking a few bucks away from buskers who are homeless. As it turns out, there are no other musicians around as the day passes into night. I make seventeen dollars, and they become my favorite seventeen dollars of the year. The experience is gratifying, particularly when a man and his wife roll their toddler by in a little carriage, and the little girl stares at me in wonderment. She is positively transfixed with the silly man making music. A few minutes later she comes by again, and this time her parents let her stop and listen to a song. I ask the child's name, and her parents tell me it's Missy.

So, I sing a song to Missy, who smiles back. Her father leaves me five dollars.

Forever Young