Conversations with Jim

As a music lover, I am always fascinated by the creative process and what speaks to the people who have the ability to create music. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Huntsville musician and good friend Jim Cavender. Jim’s an accomplished musician and as you will read, can turn a phrase. Let’s call this Part One because I have some follow up questions. Listen to Jim here. --J

J--I recently watched Hail! Hail! Rock 'N" Roll, Taylor Hackford’s documentary about Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday gig in St. Louis. One of the intriguing things (there were too many to count!) was the idea that when Chuck used to tour, he would show up and hire local musicians with no practice ahead of time. Was that your experience with Bo Diddley?

Jim--Sort of. Like Chuck, when Bo shows up, he just has his guitar. The Tip Top was supposed to provide an amp for him to plug into and a band to play behind him, so they had called Mark Torstenson at The Fret Shop to take care of both obligations, and I happened to be sitting in the Fret Shop messing around on their instruments when he got the call. We all decided we wanted to be ready for him, so we got together at Mark's house, he put on some of Bo's records, and we listened to a few seconds of each tune and proceeded to imitate the way the band sounded as accurately as possible. You can do this with Bo Diddley because most of his songs are one-chord vamps, or maybe the same two or three chords over and over, without too many gear shifts. The groove is paramount. That was in '93 when Bo did his first shows at Tip Top, and he'd just had dental surgery of some sort earlier that week so he was kind of quiet and kept to himself, although he played a great show. The next year they had him back, and when he requested the same band he'd had the last time I felt like I'd scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl. This time he was feeling great and was much more talkative with us than before.

J--How does that work when you’ve never worked with someone before? Are you watching them trying to anticipate their next step? Is that easier or harder than it sounds?

Jim--I've heard that Chuck Berry can be a little harder to work with, because he'll change the key of his tunes without letting anyone know, they just have to be flexible and keep their eyes on Chuck's hands to figure out where he's headed next. Bo's like that, too, except his tunes are so much simpler than Chuck's that it's not a problem. If you've played a lot of gigs that's not real difficult, but a certain amount of experience is helpful. Now, after having hosted open-mic nights around here for several years, I feel like I could do it blindfolded. Open-mic nights work the same way, except you have about a dozen people in a row who are often doing stuff far trickier than either Chuck or Bo would approve of. And sometimes they don't quite know what they're doing and you have to guide them through it -- the blind leading the lame. When I played for Percy Sledge, he sent a set list in advance and we got to learn the arrangements ahead of time, which was nice.

J--I know you read a lot about music as well. What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

Jim--Most recently I finished jazz singer Babs Gonzalez's autobio, I Paid My Dues: Good Times, No Bread, which is basically him talking about all the survival tips he learned from pimps, whores, drug-dealers and musicians (there's a lot of overlap among those groups). A friend of mine recommended a book called Temples Of Sound, which tells the stories of a lot of the great recording studios and the folks who ran them, and I really liked it. Last year I read Peter Guralnick's Sam Cooke bio, Dream Boogie, which was great; all of Guralnick's books are worth reading. You got me started on Chuck Klosterman, and I'm just starting Fargo Rock City; he's a hoot, and he's pretty wise. I have all of Greil Marcus's books, and a couple of years ago he edited one called The Rose & The Briar, where all these different people each write a chapter devoted to their favorite folk ballad, the definition of which is purposefully nebulous. The best chapter is the one by David Thomas, aka Crocus Behemoth of the band Pere Ubu, which starts by charting the parallels between "Wreck Of The Old '97" and "Dead Man's Curve", then wanders off into a discussion about the nature of recorded sound, and reaches critical mass connecting the two ideas. Turns out David Thomas is every bit as cool a writer as he is a bandleader. Another Greil Marcus book I keep coming back to is The Dustbin Of History, which is only partly about music, but the best chapter is one that tells the story of Deborah Chessler, the young, white, jewish girl who became the manager and chief songwriter for the Orioles, the black vocal group who were probably the first doo-wop outfit in the late '40s. The theme of the book is that history isn't the product of huge, unknowable forces, but instead is made by people who step outside their assigned roles, who refuse to keep to their place, and if that chapter doesn't make a believer out of you, I don't know what will. If I had a kid I'd read that chapter as a bedtime story every night.

J--Who would you say is a very overrated musician and why?

Jim--I'm probably better off leaving that unanswered, but what the hell. Generally, I think that ever since rock 'n' roll became "rock", which means ever since British art-school snobs and American folkie snobs started outnumbering the greasers that were the music's original constituents, things have gotten dicey. To baby-boomers, "Clapton is God", even though he wasn't doing anything at least a dozen black guitarists on this side of the pond were doing earlier and better. British blues players, of which Clapton is the best known, always judged themselves by the accuracy of their imitation of "real" blues, which means that even at their best they're only second-best, at least if you use their criteria. Which is not to say Clapton hasn't had his moments, some great ones even, but his records seldom warrant the hyperbole. And then there's the Grateful Dead, who wrote good songs, chose terrific covers and had an exemplary list of influences, but to me they never actually sounded good. It reminds me of Mark Twain’s remark about Wagner's music being better than it sounds. My Deadhead friends always assure me that the Dead's hearts were in the right place, they had an understanding of American musical history as wide as it was deep, etc., but all that means is they're tunas with good taste. Of course, those same people also tell me that the music sounds better when you're high, but I figure I'm not missing that much. And even though I myself am a songwriter, I think the tendency to value performing songwriters over those who interpret other people's songs is just more bullshit. It seems to me that what a great singer brings to a song is at least as important as the craft of songwriting. I'm a real curmudgeon, huh?

J--As someone who is not a musician but has a passion for music, I am always trying to figure out why a song moves me. I know sometimes I like things that are super basic, but it’s just a gut feeling. Do you have those or sometimes do you dismiss liking a song because you know how easy it is to play?

Jim--If anything, it's the opposite -- the easier a song is to play, the better it's chances of making a mark. Gut feelings should always be trusted. This gets back to where we started with Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. You don't get much simpler than that, but it's pretty hard to improve on what they did. Bear in mind "simple" and "basic" are relative concepts. Chuck's guitar playing and his chords and melodies are "basic" in the sense that they're bedrock, indestructible riffs that are easy for anyone to learn, but his wordplay, his hidden meanings, his attitude and the fantastically rubbery feel his studio bands achieved on those recordings are not within just anyone's reach. Anything but "simple". And his guitar playing isn't just great because a zillion kids have learned how to imitate it; it's great because it still sounds so cool everybody wants to imitate it. One of my favorite songwriters is Marshall Crenshaw, who writes "simple" pop-rock tunes but manages to include clever key changes, melodies that go in unusual directions, and words that hang together and flash a sense of humor. Doing all that and making it come out "simple" is precisely what makes him great.

In trying to decide why we like music, we get into tricky terrain. There's a lot of reasons we respond to a record we hear: the song itself might be well-written, the singer may put emphasis on one particular word that twists the meaning of the lyrics, the music may reach for something the words can't convey, the guitar solo might launch the whole performance into outer space, or the way it was recorded might make the drums sound like someone's smashing your skull in with a pair of bowling pins. Or it could be what you are bringing to the moment when you hear it: you might be in a really good mood, or a really bad one, the weather that day might correspond to the ambiance of the recording, the quality of light in your room might emphasize the mood of the tune, the new-car smell you're noticing kicked in when the tune started on the radio, or whatever. Some of this is what David Thomas touched on in that chapter of The Rose & The Briar that I just mentioned. Part of what's so great about all this is that it's always a two-way street. The fan, the listener, the audience, is as much a part of the "performance" as the musician.

J--In terms of guitar, who plays really difficult stuff that you appreciate?

Jim--That's hard to answer just because "difficult" isn't the yardstick I use. I mean, any good example of guitar work has difficult elements to it, and I do love jazz, which is complex on some levels, but it should always be in the service of making the performance memorable. Take Eddie Van Halen -- part of what makes him great is that dizzying, daredevil, rollercoaster-like effect his solos have, like in "Jump" which is incredibly difficult. I can't do it. But one of Van Halen's best records is "Dance The Night Away", which is just rhythm guitar, no solo at all. And both are equally memorable. To answer the question, Eddie, Jeff Beck, the late Clarence White, who played in the country-rock edition of the Byrds, among others. Prince ain't shabby at all.

J--Who plays super easy stuff but with such flair, it can’t be ignored?

Jim--Almost every good player. The way you phrased the question is close to my definition of good musicianship. A few years ago we went to Birmingham and saw Link Wray. This is the guy who put out "Rumble" in 1958, single-handedly inventing heavy metal. He did mostly power chords and simple melodies on the low strings, like Duane Eddy through an overdriven Marshall stack after a fifth of whiskey. He probably played "Rumble" three times that night, and nobody complained. There's a jazz guy named Bill Frisell who can certainly do the difficult stuff, but sounds terrific when he's just playing the melody to "Shenandoah" or that Sam Cooke tune "A Change Is Gonna Come". My friend Rick Taylor has a saying that I quote at least twice weekly: "You can throw a guitar down the stairs and it'll play the blues", which is close to the truth. The guitar is such a popular instrument because the blues is the first thing most of us find on it, and in a few weeks you can sound quite decent at it. The best players usually have a touch of the blues that they never leave behind; it's the musical version of the way some politicians and celebrities have "the common touch". They speak the same language as their audience.

J--What was the first record you purchased?

Jim--Hah! The first 45 was "Yummy Yummy" by Ohio Express, purchased at a yard sale for a quarter two years after it had come out. To this day I have a love of late '60s bubblegum rock. In Trio El Camino we do a killer version of the Lemon Pipers' "My Green Tambourine" and some Monkees stuff. My first album was Elvis Sings Burning Love And Hits From His Movies, Volume 2, which should tell you plenty about my musical leanings. I was in the sixth grade, my allowance finally would cover at least a two-year-old budget LP, and I thought "Burning Love" was one of the coolest records ever made, still do. My best friend Bart was over at the house one weekend, and we were listening to records in my sister's room, 'cause she had a decent stereo. And when Elvis launched into "Guadalajara" from Fun In Acapulco, the last song on the album, I thought Bart was gonna rupture something he was laughing so hard. I gamely pretended to "get it" and laughed too, but it would be several years before I figured out what Bart thought was funny. To me, as with any fan, Elvis's voice was sufficient reason to spend money. The distance in quality between "Burning Love" and "Guadalajara" hadn't occurred to me, and wouldn't for some time; in my view, Elvis's batting average for transcendence was so high he could afford to make us laugh now and then. The next album I would get was Edgar Winter Group's They Only Come Out At Night, given to me for my twelfth birthday by a friend. He chose well. That's the one with "Frankenstein", "Free Ride" and "Hangin' Around". I still love it, although the cover creeps me out to this day.

J--You’ve seen a lot of live shows, and you and I have talked about this in the past. Have you ever had the experience of going to a live show for a band where you loved their recordings but it didn’t translate to the live experience?

Jim--Mainly I've just seen a few uninspired shows, but what I loved about the recordings should certainly have translated to a live show if the inspiration level had been a bit higher. Most of those touring bands in the late '70s like Atlanta Rhythm Section and Foreigner were super-competent and had great songs, but you knew going in that it wasn't gonna be a religious experience. I guess that's part of what punk meant to change, but I've seen some punk bands fall into the same rut, too. Steely Dan played Nashville not long ago, and if those anal-retentive studio-dwellers can put on a great show, which they did, no one else has any excuses. I've watched big-name jazz performers reading their own tunes off music stands, never once looking up and noticing there's an audience in the room. And then there's Boyz II Men at Big Spring Jam last year, singing along to prerecorded backing tracks, turning themselves into a polished karaoke act. They had three of the biggest hit singles of the last twenty years; I'm pretty sure they could afford a rhythm section.

J--Have you had the opposite experience?

Jim--Oddly enough, some of those touring bands in the '70s would do the unexpected and blow you away, usually the opening act trying hard to upstage the headliner. I remember the Sanford-Townsend Band and LeRoux being two of those. Part of the problem with punk venues is that the technical bar is set so low, not so much in terms of the band's abilities, but mainly with things like the mix in the p.a., and whenever a band rises above that it's cause for celebration, like when I saw the local duo Cranberry Man at Tip Top, and they made virtues of howling feedback, muffled drums, barely discernible vocals and all the things that usually make me head for the door. And then there're shows by acts everyone thinks of as washed up, like when Terri and I saw the Commodores in Texas after Lionel Richie had left them for dead. They were amazing, putting their heart and soul into every note and making their last hit, "Nightshift", sound like you were hearing two radios playing simultaneously with Jackie Wilson and Marvin Gaye calling from the afterlife on one station and the Commodores themselves singing their praises on the other. That Steely Dan show I mentioned was a lot of fun, even though they were thirty years past their commercial prime.

My friend Kip Shepherd once told me that at any given moment the greatest band in the world is some group playing a wedding gig, meaning that greatness is usually where you least expect to find it. I know that bands I've played in have had some Greatest-Band-In-The-World gigs, sometimes when only a few people were there but we were on. I'm not bragging, it's just that whenever you have a group of musicians listening to each other, the potential for magic is there. I'm not much on religious mumbo-jumbo or the supernatural, but music's about as close as we come to that sort of thing; people should pay attention to the band even in the most mundane settings -- you never know what might happen.

J--Probably hard to do but can you name one of your favourite live performances and why?

Jim--The very first Big Spring Jam in '93 had two of the best shows I've seen. Al Green was still in his gospel phase, but was dipping his toes into secular water that night, much to the chagrin of his band and backup singers, who didn't know the tunes. If you listen to "I'm Still In Love With You" or "Call Me (Come Back Home)", you know that those aren't songs you can just wing it through, but they had to try, 'cause Reverend Al was feeling good and wouldn't be denied. That same weekend, my good friends in the Frigidaires took the small stage where mostly children's acts had been performing, and proceeded to play the wildest set of rockabilly I've ever witnessed. It wasn't a tribute or a schtick; it was the real thing. No one who was there will ever forget it. I also saw the late country singer Gary Stewart in Texas back in 1990, and he and his band were doing what the Rolling Stones wish they could do. I love the Stones, but they couldn't touch Gary Stewart that night. He and the band played with that almost careless looseness that the Stones are famous for, but took it places they've never dared. When Elvis Costello played Ryman Auditorium back in '03, I was blown away at how great a singer that guy is, which he doesn't get much credit for. Bobby "Blue" Bland played here recently and sounded amazing, at age 78. Most recently I saw Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, and it was so cool to see both of them stepping outside their comfort zones to do something different. They had Buddy Miller playing guitar for them; he ripped me a new one, so you can add his name to that list of cool players. Returning to my point about paying attention even in mundane circumstances, Terri and I once walked into a club in Albuquerque and saw a terrific little swing jazz trio led by an upright bass player who sang, played a hi-hat with one foot and shook two maracas with his right hand, all at the same time. We were two of maybe six people watching, but those three guys played their hearts out. We loved it.

J--What are you up to now?

Jim--Still doing a lot of solo gigs and working regularly with two bands, Trio El Camino and the Rolling Jazz Revue. Trio El Camino is an organ combo that plays anything that an organ would sound at home on. That includes a bunch of originals that I'm in the process of recording right now, mostly in that no-man's-land between rockabilly, soul and jazz, if that makes any sense. The Rolling Jazz Revue put out a CD, Halloween On Union Avenue, in January, and we just recorded a followup to be released sometime in the near future. We do mostly original jazz, though we have been known to throw in some jazz versions of tunes by Led Zeppelin, Tears For Fears and Nirvana, among others. I'm working up a set of tunes with my friend Amy McCarley, who's a terrific songwriter, where we'll alternate playing each other's songs together, although we haven't set a date for the show yet; it'll probably be here at the Flying Monkey Arts Center. I also just produced a CD's worth of jazz arrangements of Christmas tunes with the Keith Taylor Trio, who I play bass with from time to time. We'll put that out at the end of the year, most likely. I put up a MySpace page recently, thus officially entering the twenty-first century. I posted some demos of my tunes, so anyone out there wondering who I am can log on and find out.

J--What are you listening to?

Jim--"At Seventeen" by Janis Ian. No, I'm kidding. To paraphrase my friend Clark Richardson, riding in my car listening to my iPod would induce spit takes. The segues can often be real cool, but here and there you'll get one so jarring you have to pull over to the side of the road. I listen to damn near everything. If civilization were wiped out tomorrow, I'm reasonably certain we could reconstruct the high points of the last century using my iTunes library, the high points according to me, at least. Lately the new Gnarls Barkley The Odd Couple is in heavy rotation, a couple of recent releases by Bill Frisell, who I mentioned before, that Robert Plant/Alison Krauss Raising Sand CD, the new Shins, "Mercy" and most of the Rockferry CD by Duffy, the r&b singer Estelle singing "American Boy", a Dave Clark 5 hits comp that I downloaded recently, a collection of Elvis's home recordings, a Gerry Goffin/Carole King comp of various acts that they wrote for back in the '60s; it's worth buying just to hear Betty Everett sing "I Can't Hear You" -- play it loud, you won't be disappointed.