Singer songwriter, painter, essayist - Tom Russell has recorded thirty five highly acclaimed records, & published five books: 120 Songs of Tom Russell; Tough Company - Letters with Charles Bukowski; Blue Horse Red Desert: the Art of Tom Russell; Bloodsport a crime novel published by Aschehoug, Norway; and - And Then I Wrote: The Songwriter Speaks, with Sylvia Tyson. Tom Russell songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Doug Sahm, Nanci Griffith, K.D. Lang, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Ian Tyson, Iris Dement, Joe Ely, and a hundred others. Tom Russell graduated from The University of California with a Master's Degree in Criminology. He was recently awarded the 2015 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music journalism In 2015 Russell released a 52 track "folk opera" on the West, The Rose of Roscrae, was deemed: maybe the most important Americana record of all time by UK Folk, the top Folk album of 2105 by Mojo Magazine, and hailed in top ten lists in two dozen publications including The Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on the David Letterman TV show five times. His latest release (May 2016) is The Tom Russell Anthology 2 (Gunpowder Sunsets) - 19 Tracks. Recent Quotes on Tom Russell: Tom Russell is Johnny Cash, Jim Harrison and Charles Bukowski rolled into one. I feel a great affinity with Tom Russell's songs, for he is writing out of the wounded heart of America. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Poet) Tom Russell is an original, a brilliant songwriter with a restless curiosity and an almost violent imagination. “Blood and Candle Smoke” is vintage Russell, and the Graham Greene connection is a ‘beaut. Annie Proulx (The Shipping News, Brokeback Mountain) Tom Russell is the last great American voice. Ken Bruen (The Dramatist, The Cross) How great is Tom Russell? Isn't he the best? I'd like to quit my job and travel with him...if the money can be worked out... David Letterman, Late Night with David Letterman AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way? Tom: Forty years on the road? Well, I'm working on a music memoir now so it will all be in there. I have learned, via my wife, to live more healthy…you can't survive the road if you don't eat good, sleep good, try for the decent gigs. Bad hotels, mean bad beds, means bad backs. I combine yoga with eventual wine drinking. The highs were maybe singing with Johnny Cash…the lows range into the thousands. I started out on Skid Row in Vancouver backing up snake acts and sword swallowers, so you can imagine the color. AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them? Tom: "El Paso," by Marty Robbins floored me. It worked the same with Bernie Taupin, who told me (he writes lyrics for Elton John) that "El Paso" lured him into becoming a songwriter. All of Dylan's 1963-66 period floored me. Same with Ian and Sylvia Tyson. When I was a kid we had a ton of great records and my brother, the cowboy, had early country and cowboy music. My Uncle George was a famous classical pianist, so there was music aplenty. AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Tom: I may have written some as a kid, but the first awful song I recorded was when I was in a band called The Mule Train on Skid Row, Vancouver. It was called "I'm Strung Out Like the Tightest Wire on a Frozen Barbed-Wire Fence." Top that. It was so bad it was good. AHC: Who are some of your musical inspirations? Are there certain albums or songs you couldn't live without? Or books for that matter, as you are one of the most literary songwriters around, what are the books that you keep returning to? Tom: Ian Tyson was my biggest mentor and we later wrote a lot of songs together. Sylvia Tyson as well. Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Leonard Cohen, Warren Zevon, Steve Young…so many. Books? Several Graham Greene novels that I read over and over when I lived in Nigeria in 1969. "The Heart of the Matter," my favorite. I also love Charles Portis' "Gringoes," and "The Dog of the South." He also wrote "True Grit," which is a classic as much as Hucklberry Finn. Leonard Gardner's "Fat City" is a classic. Only thing he wrote. Great film too. AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak? Tom: It's all mystery, and when you try to put a tag on it or figure it out you're bullshitting…because, like Picasso said, you leave your mind and body outside the studio door when you go inside and work. The great songs are mystical and have to do with that ancient idea of The Muse. That's why Nashville has gone to hell in the last thirty years…it's trite and concocted processed meat. Walmart territory. I prefer grass fed, organic beef. AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? As a listener of music I have this impression, I wonder, as the artist, the creator, do you have this feeling about the transformative power of song? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener? Tom: Well said. Music hits everyone on a deep level - if it's good. Whether it's classical, jazz, or a simple folk song. It's healing because we do not age - we go outside of time when we hear or sing a good song or symphony. Time stops. There is now the notion that we are losing our sense of "myth," our stories, our symbols and metaphors…all this stuff that resides in great songs. It's all psycho-babble now. Rhetoric. George Orwell said the English Language was deteriorating in 1946. So, look how far we've come. People go on the internet to find love, and then text their lovers. We've dumbed down the creative lingo. AHC: In a world that is moving faster and faster, for better or worse, I think that really good, tried and true music helps orient us to our times, slows us down and brings us back to ourselves, I think your music is such a great example of this, folk and Americana music in general is. When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell? Tom: Not much, though I must say I have a new song based on an uneducated white guy who's trying to relate to the current political scene in the USA. He's not a fascist or a redneck, he's just some guy working in a hardware store and drinking with his Mexican buddy…and they're trying to figure it out. I've worked lots of shit jobs with people like this and have sympathy for them…they don't connect to political rhetoric. It's over their heads and a savage game/ Some of my other news songs sound like folks songs written 100 years ago…I hope. AHC: What are your favorite on-tour, on-the-road memories? Tom: Singing with Johnny Cash, in Switzerland. Getting to sing "The Weight" with Levon Helm before he passed on. But just plain surviving and being able to play for a fanatic audience…like 400 people in a rock club in London, or on the David Letterman show. Our audience is still building and that's keeping me going. AHC: Do you have any words of advice for young musicians and singer-songwriters out there who are trying to find their voice and their way in this world? Tom: Avoid song workshops. And alliances. Pray. Go back to your roots and try and figure out where you came from. And your great grandparents. Study the Scots-Irish tradition in song. Learn 20 old vintage folk songs. Sing some Hank Williams…do as many open mics as you can. Don't listen to too much advice. A writer, according to Hemingway in his 1954 Nobel speech, "faces eternity, or the lack of it, everyday." He or she works alone…trying to go further than you've been before. It's a long journey - falling upward all the time. AHC: Do you have any new projects in motion you'd like to tell people about? Tom: I have a book of essays coming out: "Ceremonies of the Horsemen," themes centered in the West. Non fiction. From Johnny Cash to tequila. I'm working on a music memoir for a London agent, also working on songs for a new record next year. And painting a lot. My art can be seen at: www.tomrussellart.com Books and records: www.fronterarecords.com Concerts etc: www.tomrussell.com I've also been doing what I call a "virtual radio show" on our Facebook - called "Nova Beat Express." I post a few songs everyday, by myself or others, and tell some stories about them… it's approaching 20,000 listeners: https://www.facebook.com/russelltom/
1 Comment
10/2/2016 04:36:25 am
Good way to start my day with a cup of coffee and some small petals of pearls of some what might call wise wisdom and should be taken to heart.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
April 2024
Categories |