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Q: 107.1 KGSR. Good afternoon, this is Jody. And I am here with Mr. Jackson Browne. Good afternoon, sir.
A: Hi, Jody. how are you doing?
Q: I'm doing good, but I'm wondering how you're doing the day after your birthday.
A: Oh, I'm fine. I'm fine. I spent my birthday doing what I love to do, playing with my band.
Q: Taping Austin City Limits last night. But what about afterwards?
A: Afterwards, I got to watch what we had done. Basically, my band went home. Wherever they went. They went out to hear some music in some clubs and I stayed to continue to work on the thing. It's a good program. They give you a chance to sort of shape what the program's going to be, because you play about 90 minutes or more and then they cut it down. So they give you a role in that. It's a good format.
Q: But it's your birthday and you already did a show, and then...
A: Well, we did it the day before. We had my birthday party the day before at Mezzaluna.
Q: Oh, yeah. Good restaurant.
A: Yeah, fine restaurant.
Q: Okay. I was starting to -- you know, all work and no play...
A: No, no, that's not us.
Q: Okay. Good. And you say, "us". The new album, "The Naked Ride Home" and really the two before it, these are band projects.
A: Yeah.
Q: Tell me about -- you don't have to name everyone individually, but you know, we think of Jackson Browne as a singer/songwriter, but really you lead a band these days.
A: Yeah, whatever I do -- I mean, I tried it before where there's -- a lot of my albums have been more or less band records. My "Late for the Sky" was, but I mean, no one looks at it that way. So it doesn't really matter what you call it. I've always worked to get the best of what people are playing on the record, and it's not -- I don't come in with the idea of what I want somebody to do. I just -- I'm an opportunist and I sort of take advantage of what really happens to make a record of that. And this is a band that's been together for the last three records I've made. From "I'm Alive" and through "Looking East", and this album. And so it's sort of progressed as a -- the chemistry of the band and the relationship we have.
This time, it took me long enough to get these songs together that I really had a chance to make the most of their -- what they do spontaneously as a band, what people love to do when they're just having fun, to make the songs out of that.
Q: And you say it took you a long time to get these songs together. It's been about, what, six years since "Looking East"?
A: Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, you spend a year or so touring and then a year trying to get off the road and get your life back. So it really took -- maybe I worked on this record about four years.
Q: That's a pretty good chunk of time to work on a record. But now that it's done --
A: Well, it's -- it wasn't spent the whole time in the studio. What I did is, I counted from about four years ago because I did the sessions - the initial sessions for this record then. And I spent a lot of time continuing to write the songs after I've tracked them, some of them. And some of them -- one of the songs is written -- I mean, it was an idea I had four years ago, but just written in the week before we finished the record. It just -- it was a rush to sort of finish it and get it on the record. And that was the last song on the record.
Q: Oh, My Stunning Mystery Companion.
A: My Stunning Mystery Companion, yeah.
Q: My Stunning Mystery Companion. It just has that mysterious vibe to it. The band gets co-composition credits in a lot of this.
A: Yeah.
Q: That's unusual, also, for someone (who's) -- again, a quote unquote "singer/songwriter".
A: I did that somewhat on the last record, too. I just think it's giving credit where credit is due. I mean, if you could, you know, give them credit and pay them for that, I mean, it's sort of implies that you want it to go on happening and you want to try to make that happen again. I mean, this is a band that really breathed a lot of life into these ideas. I could show you some differences. I mean, just things that happen musically and compositionally that made the song just open up and become the song it was. Otherwise, it would be very different. You can finish a song and get it all the way done and go in the studio and make a record of it in about three hours. And a lot of people work that way. I started working with Don Was on a couple of songs once and realized, with some amazement that the song that -- the song that I had been working on getting ready -- a bunch of songs that had taken me two or three years to get ready, he wanted to like take one or take two, you know. And it really wasn't enough time to really teach the song to the band. We sort of went around about it. I finally was able to squeeze like eight takes out of it. He said, "That's it, we're not playing it anymore." But that's his method. His method is to get a really fresh take. To hire great players who are really fast studies and to get it really quick. But that's kind of like impressionism as opposed to, you know, something that takes a little longer to -- I do studies, I do different versions and play the songs acoustically and maybe play them with the band in various different circumstances and to see what's in them. Otherwise, it would be kind of like factory work or something.
Q: And also, like you say, they grow. So what happens if you put it down in this take one or two and then you take it on the road and you realize --
A: That always happens. You take it on the road and it's completely -- it grows by another 50 percent, at least, the first time you play it for a month in front of people. Things happen.
Q: We're talking with Jackson Browne, he was in Austin last night on his birthday to play Austin City Limits. And a new album out called "The Naked Ride Home". And I was telling you how much I like that title track. And I was going to ask you to play it, but I figured it was one of those ones you needed a piano for. But do ya?
A: No, no, it's a guitar song. I can play that one.
Q: Let's go there, first.
SONG: The Naked Ride Home
Q: Thanks, Jackson. I feel like just giving you a blanket "thank you" for every time I've heard one of your songs and it's made me happy and for everyone else who would like to say that to you. So just one big thank you.
A: Thanks. Thanks for letting me come here and sing on the radio.
Q: The Naked Ride Home, the first few times -- I mean, you have to listen to that song many times before you begin to make heads or tails of it. And I never want to make total heads or tails of it because I want it to be just a little bit impressionistic --
A: Well, I notice that people have various different impressions of what's going on in the song. Right from the beginning, people sort of jump to their own conclusions or their own assumptions of what's going to happen in the song, which is exactly what the guy is doing in the song. He's sort of got an idea of where he wants to go and so it's good that people get hooked up to their own version of that, because that's what songs do. I never want to tell people exactly what was going on in my version of it.
Q: And it is a song that you have to listen to a bunch of times to hear and to assimilate.
"The Naked Ride Home" is Jackson Browne's new album and the song he just played for us live on KGSR. So I was saying you were in town last night doing Austin City Limits. But then I remembered you were here earlier this year with the Green Party. There was a rally. And you played acoustic, as you are now. And then before we were talking about the band situation, so there's at least the two musical faces of Jackson Browne. There's the band and there's the acoustic --
A: Yeah, you can go play acoustically with a lot less expense and trouble. But the band is pretty likely to jump in onto those kind of things too. As a matter of fact, for a while, we were going to try to join that Jim Hightower review and go wherever we were needed. And he had that sort of, I guess it was a rolling thunder democracy tour, which is pretty much the same idea and the same intent of some of the Nader super rallies.
Q: But do you find that your audience -- there's obviously people that like all your work, that are you fans, but there's like the acoustic faction and the rock faction?
A: There is. There are different factions. There are those two factions. And sometimes I have to try to talk with people who like my acoustic shows into coming to see the band. I mean, I remember finding myself at dinner with somebody, a gallerist, and she was saying -- she was sort of grilling me to find out if the show that she was planning to come to was going to be -- it was billed an acoustic show. The band wanted to come play and so we wound up doing it half and half. But I did have to sort of talk to this woman into coming because some people -- well, I think in the past it's fair to say that sometimes my band arrangements have sort of served a different purpose than the acoustic arrangements. And some people really prefer the acoustic stuff because the songwriting is less obscured by arrangement. But that was one of the things I wanted to do with this record. I wanted to try to, once and for, try to fold the two things together. And that's probably what took the longest to make happen on this. I just wasn't going -- I mean, you can get a band to play great, but it hasn't always served my songs the best to have -- you know, you can have this great moment in the studio and later you find that there's some part of that that's really fine, but there's a whole other part of the song that can be heard more by the heart or it somehow affects people more emotionally, the more stark -- the starker it is.
A good example of that is like Patty Griffin made this great first album. And right around -- actually, what I heard first was this band record. It was like this record -- I forget, what's his name? Who's that guy from New Orleans, uh...
Q: Lanois or...
A: The other guy.
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Listen to a clip from the interview
