On my podcast, That’s How I Remember It, I often ask my guests their memory of the first step towards making their new record, book, film, etc. I like this question because it feels open ended. Did the record start when the first song was recorded? Or when the first song was written? Or even earlier? Did you even know when you started making the record, or did something get revealed to you?
The song “Shamrock”, which is a part of the digital version of Always Been, is the oldest of this bunch, but I don’t think it’s the beginning of the record. This album, I believe, has its genesis way back in November 2021, when I was driving from Arizona to Brooklyn. I’d bought a car out there, and was driving it back home with my friend David. (I’ve since sold the car.) We made it to Santa Rosa, NM the first night, somewhere around Oklahoma City the next. We got lunch that day in Amarillo TX and drove around a bit. I hadn’t been there before, despite having already recorded “The Amarillo Kid”. The third night on the road we arranged to stay in Memphis, and to visit with my THS bandmate Steve Selvidge.
It was a pretty great night, we ate dinner at Cozy Corner BBQ and then had some drinks and listened to music in Steve’s back house/studio. At the end of the evening, he handed me a guitar. He said I could have it. It was a nylon string Giannini, with a fairly small body. I don’t know why he gave it to me, I don’t think I had been playing it that evening. I’d never had a classical guitar before. I thanked him, and put it in the back of the car and drove it back to Brooklyn.
When I got home and played the guitar, I found that it was a great aid for songwriting. The nature of the classical guitar forced me into thinking big picture, and made me less hung up on guitar parts. I would write to a few spare chords, leaving space for music to come in the future. Songs were pouring out of me, coming very easily. Sometimes I’d write more than one in a day.
I started to see the characters in the songs pretty vividly. More vividly than I ever had before. I did a good deal of writing about each of them. I knew even more about each person than could be entirely expressed in the songs. It was a level of character development I hadn’t done previously.
I’m not much for home recording, I’ve never gotten the bug. So when it came time to put demos together, I simply sat at my desk and sang the songs into my phone. They are simple voice memos. When I started to talk to Adam Granduciel about making the record with me, I gave him a folder of these voice memos.
Listening to this demo of “People of Substance”, I can see that I already had a pretty good idea where it was headed. Of course, the musicians came in and brought it all to life. In my memory, it came together pretty quickly. Sterling Laws came in to play drums on Adam’s recommendation and gave it it’s swagger. Dave Hartley’s bass playing gives it a melodic propulsion. Adam’s guitar solo, undeniably him, took the song to a new stratosphere. Kathleen Edwards visited the studio during the sessions and we got her to sing on it, and then liked her voice so much we asked her to sing on a number of other songs too.
But the thing that put it in motion was this guitar. I’ve now put a pickup in it and brought it to a number of foreign countries, as I’m convinced it has some magic in it. So thank you to Steve Selvidge and to Giannini guitars for kicking it all off and helping me make Always Been.
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