Talking To...Kimmie Rhodes
HM: Shapes who you are?
KR: Yeah Waylon Jennings, Buddy Holly, Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, Jimmie Dale Gilmore; there's a long list of people who are from Lubbock and we tend to fall just a little bit under the radar of what is commercially acceptable, most of the time. It creates a perspective. I think people in Lubbock are honest, I think you learn to look for the truth in things, but there's definitely an edge, even to a child in Lubbock, you know, you live with it every day. That thing. This is the Lubbock of my childhood, it could be totally different now, I haven't been there for years. You create yourself every day no matter who you are. Really everyone in the world is an artist on that level because you create who you are every day. If you got those kinds of things coming at you that has to find its way into who you are. It was rock and roll. You made your own fun and what was in those days in Lubbock was to mow lawns until you had enough to buy a guitar and an amp, get in a garage and try to make up songs that sounded like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. Even The Beatles did that you know. Even over here in Liverpool they figured out how to get their grandma or someone to buy them an amp and a guitar and got in a garage and tried to write a song like Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison or someone. This exciting thing had happened in music and everyone wanted to be a part of it. It was a hobby, it was what we cared about. Also American cars were very cool back then, so cars mattered and music, luike all younger generations have things they're into.
HM: It's almost coming back around isn't it with ipods - young people are almost rediscovering music. Albeit that our chart music isn't very good!
KR: You know, I believe that anything new that is created, has the potential to be either good or bad. Then you know, I might think something is crap but someone else might think it's great. It's all relative to whose ears it's fallen on and what it is.
HM: Don't you think your own life experience influences what music you like, too and what you relate to?
KR: Oh, absolutely. There's the musical influence as far as just the sound of it but then there's the lyrical content that has everything to do with what you have to say and what you have to say. For me, lyrics are like are map; I can have a feeling and I don't know what it's about and I can sit down in front of a blank piece of paper, start a melody on a guitar or piano that sounds like I feel - then you're already better off as you have a way out of yourself. Then if you can stay with that. Your mind can start to find its way to say what it is you're feeling.
HM: Does the melody always come first, then?
KR: Well, sometimes they can go down at the same time. You can write a song for a lot of different reasons, but we're down into this deeper part - this conversation's made its way to the nut. I wrote a song called Windblown where I just picked up my guitar in the middle of the night with a feeling that had been with me for a long time. I wasn';t even meaning to write a song, I wasn't trying to write a song, my intent was to go to sleep but I started playing this melody and it felt good; it felt like I felt. Then these words started falling out - I didn't know where they were coming from or what they meant but I wasn't fighting it. Sometimes a song tells me what I think. I wrote a song called I'm Gonna Fly, like that. Sometimes a lot of ideas I get for songs I just scratch out on a piece of paper, the little crystal moments where I know what something means and if I write that phrase down the feeling is sometimes kind of encoded within that phrase and sometimes there's music encoded with it too. It's kinda like what you're doing now, like a shorthand where I can go 'Yeah I got it trapped now.' And I can put it away if I don't have time to write. Sometimes I don't know any more than that or sometimes I'll know it's a part of another idea. Sometimes I know there isn't enough to finish it, so I'll just put it away until I do.
HM: What's the longest it's taken you to finish a song?
KR: Well, you know, being as that I have a lot of unfinished songs that's a hard question to answer because so many years have gone by with ideas I haven't finished and don't know if I ever will. I do have a song called I Just Drove By...
HM: That's one of my favourites.
KR: (smiles) I re wrote that song for seven years. Even when I would finish it I would know it wasn't done. Then when I got the real inspiration I got a real feeling about what it was about and that's a good song. It happens when it happens. My mind is always ready for it, but it's hard to make it happen. You can sit down with somebody with an idea and write but that's a different kind of writing than the kind I'm talking about. I could sit right here and write you a song and I might get lucky and it might be a good song but it might not. Who knows. It's the mystery of songwriting. I could sit down with another person and write a good song because what happens is you get good at it, you get good at crafting a good song. If two good writers sit down together they know how to cu to the chase and then you've got two heads or three heads working on ideas.
HM: Do you have any favourite people to write with?
KR: Yeah I do and that changes over the years. I tend to just click with some people. I've written some really good songs with Gary Nicholson. I like to write with Gary Nicholson a lot because I like hanging out with him. Al Anderson, I tend to be able to really click with him. You mentioned Beth Nielsen Chapman, I have written some songs with Beth which I love, but Beth would tell you the same thing, the two of us writing together is not that easy because we're both real lyrical and we distract each other. I went to lunch with Gary Nicholson the other day and we wrote two songs over lunch. Sometimes you just start talking in song and someone says 'We need to write that down because now whether we like it or not, we're writing a song.'
HM: Speaking of collaborating, I have to ask, how did the CD with Willie come about - Seven Spanish Angels is the first country song I can recall.
KR: I love that song. The CD was his idea. Willie and I have known each other for a long time and worked together on a lot of things. It was right around Christmas time and he was home - we just live down the road from each other - and he said 'Why don't we get together.' We were going to experiment with some MP3 files back before it was really happening.
HM: Pioneers!
KR: We were pioneering. We were experimenting really. Willie is truly a pioneer. So I said 'Sure.' and as we knew a lot of the same songs, Willie and me, and our friend David Zettner on bass, and my son Gabe Rhodes all got in a room together and my husband recorded it, Joe Gracey, and we just sat there like the friends that we are. You know Willie just loves to play music and people just love to play music with him. So it was something to do that day and we're in the music business so we decided that we'd set up a website to sell the Mp3s - any excuse to play music and have a good time, really. We didn't make a list of songs, we'd just say 'How about this one?' or 'How about that one?' Then I said 'Hey Willie, I love your song Valentine, why don't we do that?' I love Rodney Crowell's song Til I Can Gain Control Again, so we did that and we had some fun like we've always done together, doing the ones we knew we knew together, then we did the ones that we knew each other knew. Willie had written an amazing song called It Always Will Be and that was at the heart of it and it just happened. It comes very naturally for us to sit down and record together. It's like if you were an ice skater and you got with someone who was another ice skater, you'd say 'How about we go ice skating tomorrow?' it's what we do and what we like to do.
HM: Why not?
KR: yeah we get to hang. (laughs) You can bet if it quit being fun, neither of us would do it anymore. The thing about that record that I love is that if anything, it's underproduced. What I hear when I play that CD, is me and my friend Willie, sitting down and playing songs. It's like if we were doing a live radio programme. We like to sing and we like to record, we didn't have to go find a big recording studio and a bunch of money and a label. In a way it's like you're back in the garage with the amps and the guitars. When you play music in a garage with your friends, you;re doing it for the love of music. When you get Willie and me and some guitars and we sit down, we're doing it for the love of doing it so you don't think about a record deal, if it's gonna sell, you're just making music and getting a recording of a moment in time.
HM: The love of music I guess it what it should be about, but I guess it's easy to get lost in the politics?
KR: Well, it's pretty easy for me not to get lost in the politics but it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. I just started my own label. In the early days before digital recordings, you really needed to find a record deal because it cost a lot of money to go out and do a recording and hire a band. I just hadn't had enough time to build a world around me yet that could accommodate me on my terms. It took me some time but eventually I did build a world around me that would accommodate me on my own terms. Now I have a recording studio at my house and my husband is an engineer and record producer and my son, Gabe is a multi instrumentalist.
HM: A very good looking one, too!
KR: Aw, thankyou (laughs) Over a while you start to collect things. My house is my garage, you know. I can write songs, a family full of people who play music, a recording studio, my own label, my own computers, my own art department, so I don't have to have the frustration of trying to find a label - it's like casting for a movie; you really want a part, but they just don't need someone who looks like you. It's not your fault and it's not their fault but it's hard when you have to keep trying to open doors, unless you want to design yourself to look like what they want each time. Some people are really good at that and I admire people like that but it's never been that way for me. I get an inkling of what it is artistically and my focus is more on finding my way to that than on what I need to do to get a record deal. It was never just about being a big ol' singing star for me.
HM: Well, I think that's good, as then you're being honest, you're being true to yourself and not trying to be something you're not. That comes through in the music.
KR: Yeah. I mean, ideally, in a perfect world, you could be like Tom Petty, you could be honest and true and good at what you do and it would just happen to have that appeal to it. Then it's timing and a lot of talent. Then there's the machinery and people behind them making it happen, and it depends what level you want. See I never really wanted to ride across America in a big ol' bus; I wanted to make my art and make my records, and make a living, have my fans and communicate to people. Get it out there enough that people could hear it and have people who cared what I have to say (so I'm not talking to the wall) I have had the most amazing life that in some ways I've maybe been a little bit bratty because if it's not fun I just don't want anything to do with it, and if it's not making me feel good and happy I just don't care about it. I've actually turned down the opportunity to be in big commercial bands. I remember one time I said @You know what, thank you so much and I'm so honoured, but just because it's a super highway doesn't mean it's gonna get me where I'm goin.' You have to look at it, you don't wanna blow an opportunity but you don't wanna blow your life out by making a wrong choice, either. I've had a lot of opportunities to make a lot of different decisions and I've pretty much taken one day at a time, made whatever choices were in front of me and ended up with a version of what to me was success. There are some really miserable people who are wildly successful, but I get to play music with my family, I get to travel, there's music around my house all the time. We have the studio there and I can have my friends come over and record in it so I get to hear them nmake music. I've gotten to do things you can't do if you're obligated to the whole machinery of success.