By Brian D'Ambrosio
Burdens are reduced with a song; indeed, there will be music as long as there is a story to tell or a personal weight to lessen.
Hayes Carll defers to the unburdening nature of the American songwriting tradition on his fifth and latest album, "Lovers and Leavers."
"Well, I've been hard at it and I have had some big changes in my life over the last three, four years, and I don't know if I'm smarter, but I'm hopefully wiser, and I'm more together than I was in my 20s, 30s," said Carll, who's now 40.
Photo Courtesy Hayes Carll
"Perhaps the clock is ticking a little bit. I needed time to get things together, creatively and personally, and I'm glad I took it. I have had many personal and emotional songs on every record, but they have been surrounded by funny songs or rocking songs or just weird songs. But I tried to get to that place and stay there. On this record, I stayed there."
Carll earnestly grapples with his emotions throughout "Lovers and Leavers," an artistic, inward-looking reminder that we are all indelibly marked in our own ways. Yet, there is a hunkered down sense of resilience that lingers longer than the sorrows. Indeed, the darkness and fear threaded through the record's tapestry gives depth and dimension to its core optimism. Carll said that he is eager to put the new material to the test, and, that while the studio is the necessary conduit of the artistic process, the stage is his speaking truth.
"I prefer to go out year after year and perform live and that's where I feel more in my element," said Carll. "While the studio is a fun place to see the work that you can create, the road is where I started out. I still like reading a room and giving it energy, or telling a story, and connecting with people. More than anything, I feel like I've lost that a little bit - over 15, 16 years, I've been through many different inclinations as a performer, from big rock and roll and honky-tonk bands. It seemed like the bands were getting bigger and the shows louder and that I lost that connection.
"I was tired and burned out and I felt myself losing energy after walking off the stage. 'Lovers and Leavers' is me going back to find that connection."
Carll efficiently and quietly built the foundation of "Lovers and Leavers," an offering that is much more admirably rich and ambitiously humane than it first sounds. The only electric guitar on "Lovers and Leavers" is Eric Heywood's pedal steel; Carll's acoustic guitar is front and center framed by David Pilch's basses, Jay Bellerose's drums and percussion, and Tyler Chester's keyboards (no synthesizers).
"I'm touring now with an acoustic guitar and I'll be with a trio, and we can be really subtle and intimate, and it made for a good record, one with a lot more control of what's going on. I'm with a really atypical drummer, who works with some great percussive stuff, and we play something that feels really intimate and quiet. We can shift gears pretty quickly and throw in the electric and then rock out a big sound."
Carll skirts clichés as well as any modern songwriter can and his indictments of both contemporary emptiness and misguided idealism feel earned. Some of his earlier works he came off as a slacker full of eccentric oblige; fiercer and more tenderhearted, Carll's latest body of work wrestles with the more pensive, human elements of irony and self-doubt and, on the whole, it's sparser, airier, and more candidly confessional than his previous outputs.
"There are no huge solos. Lyrics. Vocals. Song. I wanted to create a spacious, intimate environment and create that world. It was a little scary to stay in that place for a whole record and not dodge around. I've been all over the map before, and as proud as I am of that earlier work, 'Lovers and Leavers' is focused in one sonic and emotional place. I didn't make it with anyone else in mind or wonder if people were going to like it or if it was going to get on the radio - it's a record I needed to make, which came out of my system. I hope people enjoy it. If not, I hope they stick around and give me another chance.
"Again, I think my songs in the past have been all over the place and I made cool records, but it was not the sonic world I was looking for. 'Lovers and Leavers' is a thematic concept and the idea from the beginning was to focus on the vocals and the lyrics, and the sole purpose was to bring life to the two and shine a light on them. It's stripped down - four guys on it - most of it is two other guys, the bass and the drums. We cut it live. So what you hear is what happened in that minute. No vocal overdubbing. Sparse, open vibe. I've learned not to be scared of space and space can be an instrument in itself; silence is as good as a wall of sound."
Carll grew up in the suburbs of Houston and he went to Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, "last in my class with a history degree," he joked. But he wanted to try to become a singer - and he held no expectations that it would ever work out. He drifted down to Crystal Beach, Texas, and lived on the beach, writing songs in the colorful confines of the shore. He eagerly sought out "little dive bars," sucking down a few beers and hanging out until the owner permitted him to set up and play a few songs in the corner. He would place a tip jar and a sign on the floor and work four to five nights a week, cranking out standard bar tunes to mostly rowdily smashed partygoers.
"The places were packed in the summer and just like ghost towns in the winter," said Carll. "The places where people would be using aliases and packing weapons. It was a great education, invaluable. I got lucky in Galveston Island and it became my second home. I made a living and joined the circuit and opened for people. There were a long list of great songwriters around there, like Ray Wylie Hubbard, and they started taking me on the road with them. I wanted more than playing covers in a shrimper dive bar."
Sometimes in life it's not important where we embark, but that we in fact embark, that we chase and follow our dreams, guitar in hand, pen in shirt pocket, story in mind, as well as hope in heart. Even if the first and second roll comes up snake eyes, we need to keep chucking the dice.
"I just knew what I wanted and I knew I would do what I needed to get there," said Carll. "Back then, if there was one guy in the bar listening, I was on cloud nine to be singing and performing, playing the songs of others. That carried me for a long time. But finding my own voice as a songwriter - that was a different journey. Blind faith, or blind certainty, helps."
He counts Bob Dylan - the man who liberated the minds of his generation in the same manner that Elvis Presley freed the hips and bodies of his - as a great influence.
"I think you would be hard-pressed to find a songwriter who didn't list Bob as an influence," said Carll. "But he opened up the power of the lyric and imagination and he has never let go. With Dylan, he got all these thoughts going inside your head, political, spiritual, social, or romantic, and he pushed all those buttons. He was a jumping off point.
"I've had the chance to sing with John Prine and Levon Helm, in his living room, and play and perform with my heroes, and my music matters in some people's lives. I'm blessed and I have a good time."
At 40, Carll has managed to navigate the waters without drowning - or, perhaps even worse, surrendering a scrap of integrity.
"Stylistically, I don't know where I fall - country, folk or rock - I'm not sure if they apply to me, and, the most basic thing, I always want to be someone who writes songs and sings them. I want to be someone who communicates their life and their experiences in a way that connects with other people. Everything else is semantics."
Brian A. D'Ambrosio lives in Helena, Montana. He is currently at work on a compilation of interviews with American singer-songwriters called "Troubadour Truths," which can be followed here. His most recent book is "Life in the Trenches," a compilation of interviews with musicians, actors, and sports stars about the darker side of celebrity, including James McMurtry, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Jimmie Walker.