|
This Old Road is songwriter, actor and activist Kris Kristofferson's brand new album. It's a lyrically personal, musically stripped down affair. It's a clear photograph of an artist who's lived many lives in his close to 70 years. Yes, more than 500 artists, ranging from Johnny Cash to Janis Joplin to Bob Dylan to Elvis Presley have recorded Kris' songs. And yes, he's made more than 100 film appearances. But Kris Kristofferson has never made an album like This Old Road before.
Q: Welcome back to your home state of Texas, Kris.
A: Thanks, Jody.
Q: How does it feel when you come back to the Lone Star State?
A: I love it. I've always been proud of being a Texan, ever since I left Brownsville, which I never wanted to do. But it feels great to be coming back here.
Q: This Old Road is a really sparse affair. I should mention the players right off the bat. Your long-time partner, Stephen Bruton on guitar and mandolin and harmonica. Jim Keltner on drums. Too bad you couldn't get a good drummer...
A: Yeah. Yeah, I've worked with him a lot.
Q: And your producer, Don Was, adding piano and bass. When you went in to record these songs, did you envision them as raw and naked as they turned out?
A: Well, it was kind of Don's idea, because -- because I'd been working that way for a couple of years on the road. I've just been playing with my guitar and harmonica and no band. And it's been working. But I don't think I would have had the courage to make a record that way. We cut it in one short session. And then he put Stephen and Jim on there and himself later on a couple of the songs.
Q: When and where were the songs on This Old Road written?
A: Well, This Old Road (the song) was written a long time ago, back -- God, back in the early ‘80s. And it's funny, we were out doing a video for it in the Mojave Desert the other day and I realized it was -- I was walking out in the desert outside of Lancaster when I wrote the song. Well, my daughter had been in a bad motorcycle accident and was waiting to come back to consciousness in a hospital there and I was going out inbetween waiting with her, going out in the desert and just running to try and keep my head straight.
And it's a song that just seems to get better the older you get. I know I played it at a benefit we did for Donny Fritz when he had to get a -- you know, my old piano player, when he had to get a new kidney. And after I did that song, he came up and he says, “You know, we've played that thing for years and I never realized what a good song it was.” So I think you just have to get older to get to appreciate it.
Q: Well, on the song, This Old Road, and all the songs on this album, there's a feeling of reflection, of looking back. You're about to turn 70. Did you feel an urgency to express yourself at this stage of the game? Is this a time of self-assessment for you?
A: Well, yeah, I think when you get to this point in the race, that that's the way you are. You're just more reflective than looking forward. Because looking forward ain't that great (laughs).
Q: You never know.
A: You never know. Yeah. But the longer you go along, the more of your companions and heroes drop away. And it's got to make you reflective. I've noticed that in Dylan's latest albums. And I was really pleased to see him doing it. It was great to see his perspective on what it feels like at this age. And that's the way all my albums have always just been what I was going through at the time.
Q: A snapshot...
A: Yeah. Like a photo album or something. And if it was when I was going down to Nicaragua or whatever, it would end up being like the "Third World Warrior". But I think it's just been the way that I sort of organize what I'm experiencing. Make sense out of what I'm going through.
Q: Kris, you live in Hawaii, which is a paradise. And so your world is okay, I'd imagine, when you're in Hawaii. So it makes me wonder how you stay so emotionally in touch with a world that's in such deep trouble these days?
A: Well, I've been probably out around the world more than I've been home, anyway (laughs). In the last year or so we've done tours over in Europe and Australia. And I think you can't help but still be conscious of what's going on in the world, if you're awake.
Q: In the song Pilgrim's Progress, you sing of your personal happiness and ultimate luck, but you also sing -- this is a great line, "I'd go crazy if I paid attention all the time. I want justice, but I'll settle for mercy." Is that how you stay sane in chaotic times?
A: I think, especially right now, which is probably the most chaotic time since I've been on the planet. It's about all you can do, settle for some mercy. And I'd like to see a little more of that spread around.
Q: Kris, in the last decade plus, I think, you've released -- there's been live albums, albums have been reissued, collections have been in the stores. Were you anxious the whole time to put out an album of new songs?
A: You know I never really thought about it. I guess, when I started making records back in '70, for ever year I would put one out. It was kind of like I said, an album of what I'd gone through, what I was going through. But the demand for my stuff wasn't overwhelming. I hadn't really been marketable since the more active I got back in the ‘80s. And certainly hadn't been on the radio since Why Me?. But I've always liked working with Don (Was). And he wanted to do it. And I'm glad we did.
Q: Pilgrim's Progress from This Old Road -- is it a sequel to The Pilgrim, Chapter 33, one of your classic songs?
A: Well, I think I was thinking of that. I was farther down the road.
Q: Does it amaze you, as you say in Pilgrim's Progress, that you got lucky that you got everything you wanted, that you got happy?
A: Yeah. Yeah. I think God takes care of fools and songwriters (laughs). He certainly was looking after me, because I wasn't.
Q: I'm glad he was. Well, we are in Texas. And this week you're being inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame while you're here. I was wondering if and how growing up in Brownsville, Texas, set the stage for your creativity, your activism?
A: I think musically, I was probably influenced more by country music and Mexican music, than anything else. It was the first 11 years of my life was down in Brownsville. And I never thought I'd leave. And I wish I never did.
Q: Come on...
A: No, I'm glad I did now, because I wouldn't change anything in my life now, the way it's turned out. But I think being aware of racial discrimination, you know...there weren't any Blacks in Brownsville, but there were an awful lot of Mexicans. And seeing how they were treated... I've always felt sort of half-Mexican myself, because I was kind of raised by a Mexican woman, who I'm still in touch with down there. And they tell me I spoke Spanish before I spoke English. So -- I think -- I guess that influenced it. I'm not really certain. But there was always a lot of heart down there that I appreciated.
Q: Most folks know that you made your first musical mark out of Nashville. The Texas songwriters, like, say, Townes Van Zandt, or Guy Clark, were they more of an inspiration or were they peers?
A: Well, they were both. But I didn't hang out with them, didn't know them. I knew them, really, through Mickey Newbury, who did know them personally. And I know Mickey always said Townes was the best songwriter there was. And since that included me and Mickey, I figured he must know what he was talking about.
And Guy Clark, on this latest album, something he said to me once when we were going on the stage in London, gave me the tag line from (the song) “The Final Attraction”. ‘Cause he said, “Go break a heart.” And I stuck it on that song.
Q: That's something to say to somebody right when they're going on stage, "Go break a heart".
A: “Go break a heart.” Well, it sounds like Guy Clark, doesn't it?
Q: Yeah. Some of the Texas musicians then were dubbed outlaws. That's something you avoided being, tagged like that. But on the song Wild American you mention several folks who are activists. They've been branded outlaws: Native American poet John Trudell, Texas-born songwriters, Steve Earle, Willie Nelson. What about them makes you feel a kinship?
A: Well I got the idea for that song when I was sitting on horseback with a bunch of Indians doing a film. And we were waiting around all day, and (it) got long. And I got to thinking that I had more in common with these guys than a lot of the people -- the other people, the civilized people. And I got the notion that maybe they are wild Americans and civilized Americans, two different ones. And one of them loves freedom and the other ones don't necessarily love it. Anyway, it evolved into that song.
Q: Playing unaccompanied - you said you were doing that of late on stage. Is that how you started as well?
A: No, I never had the nerve to do that. My first gig was with, I think, Billy Swan and Dennis Lindy backed me up at the Troubadour. I just didn't have the nerve to go out there by myself with a guitar. I had done that one night -- at a restaurant in Nashville. I filled in for a friend who wanted to go cut a session. And I got fired (laughs) after about an hour. The boss come up and said, “How long have you been playing?” And I said, "I think about an hour." He said, "No, I mean, in your life." And I asked him how much he paid the guy that usually played there. And I said that's how much he was going to pay me. So I won't take it from him and you don't pay anybody and we're square. But I was afraid to ever play that way again, until, I guess a couple of years ago. I did a show in Nashville by myself in a small theater at Belcourt there. And it worked. And so when they asked me to play, I was over in Scotland doing a movie. And I got an offer to do some gigs in Dublin. And I didn't have time to mobilize the troops and whatever, so I did it that way. And found out that it was in front of thousands of people -- 2,000 people at the Point there and sold out three nights. And it worked. So I kept doing it.
 |
|
Q: Your early days have been pretty well-documented. But for our listeners who maybe don't know all the stories, I thought we'd just kind of touch on them briefly. It's also hard to get a chronology of them, because (there was) so much stuff going on. And it all led you to Nashville, where you got started. But you moved to California, was that after high school?
A: No, before high school. I was 11 years old when I left Texas. And I lived in California through high school and college. And after that, well, I did a couple years of more college over in England, at Oxford, and then was in the Army for almost five years, and had a three-year tour in Germany, right before I went to Nashville.
Q: Did you cut your first songs when you were in England?
A: I cut some songs for Top Rank Records, that never were released. And Tony Hatch produced it. It was his first session he ever produced. The guy that did Downtown and I Know a Place and all those. And I had answered an ad in a newspaper that said, “Just dial fame.” And it was this guy named Paul Lincoln, who was an Australian ex-wrestler who had a club where Tommy Steele and all those guys had gotten started. A club called The Two Eyes over in the Soho area there. And I went in there. I didn't know anything. They changed my name to Kris Carson. And said that Sinatra is only three syllables, you've got too much in Kristofferson. It will never sell that way.
But fortunately for me, a guy that read about it, there was an article in Time magazine. And the guy I had cut a record for -- back in L.A., some little guy who worked in a record store. You know, we cut it in the back, threatened to sue them if he didn't get paid, because they said I was under contact to him or something. So they didn't figure I was worth enough to get sued over. And I didn't have to be Kris Carson for the rest of my life.
Q: I bet you those singles are worth a lot of money right now, actually.
A: Nah, they aren't worth it, I promise you.
Q: As a Rhodes Scholar with a master's degree, when you're coming back to the States, what were your plans? What were you thinking about doing?
A: I was still in the Army. And my next assignment would have been to teach English Lit at West Point. I had volunteered for Vietnam and had it turned down, because of the West Point assignment which had priority at the time. And it saved my life when I went to Nashville right -- I went over and got briefed at the Academy and then I went down and visited a relative of my platoon leader, who was a cousin of Mary John Wilkin, who was a songwriter and publisher there. She wrote the Long Black Veil. And I went down and spent a couple of weeks there and she showed me around to all those music guys around Music Row. And they hung out all night long with Mel Tillis and Merle Kilgore and all these great -- you know, Johnny Darrell, Tom T. Hall. And I just -- I fell in love with it. They were making music all night long, for days at a time. And at the end of the two weeks, I decided I'd get out of the Army, because my time was up a couple of years before that. And I did. I told Mary John I was going to come back and write for her. That scared her to death. She thought she'd ruined my life. My wife and my relatives and everybody thought I'd lost my mind. And I guess it looked that way for a while.
Q: Looking back on it, what seems crazy to me is more you enlisting in the Army and wanting to go to Vietnam.
A: Well, I come from a military background. My grandfathers and my father was in the Army Air Corps and the Air Force. And at the time, the military was a fact of life. You'd be drafted if you weren't in ROTC, which I was in college. And it was just always assumed in my family that I would go serve my time. I never planned to make it a career. But I remember when I got the West Point assignment that my mentors in the Army thought that was a perfect career move. You know, they said they really take care of their own up there at the Academy. But I could never have been a career person in the Army.
| 
Kristofferson on songwriting 
