Ep.004 - Shooter Jennings | "An Extra Chapter With Him"

Shooter Jennings — Grammy-winning producer, outlaw country torchbearer, and son of Waylon — sits down with Brandon Keith Osborn to go deep on Black Ribbons, the dystopian rock opera narrated by Stephen King (including how "keep bugging me" became a collaboration). Then: the thousand unlabeled sessions of his father's lost recordings, what it's like to mix Waylon's voice alone in an old studio, and the found-tape albums Songbird and Diamonds. Plus Robert Randolph, a Robbie Robertson studio complaint, Brandi Carlile, and why podcasts prove the album isn't dead. Recorded in Los Angeles for In the Static — conversations with artists, makers, and the signals hiding in the noise.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:29

Welcome to In the Static. This is episode four. I'm Brandon Keith Osborne, your host, where we talk to artists and creators and makers of all things. And today we have a special guest. His name is Shooter Jennings. Hey man, yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Yeah, thanks for coming by. Um, so what this show's about is talking to people. Like I came up with the name in the static because it's like, you know, an old TV where there's static and there's no picture coming through. Oh, yeah, man.

Speaker 1:01

I'm old enough to have like been trying to see through the cable, you know, and the wall when I was a kid. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 1:08

Yeah, so I'm just curious about getting into you know those ideas and um, you know, see what makes you tick.

Speaker 1:16

Yeah, killer, man.

Speaker 1 1:18

All right. Yeah, so we know of each other. Um, I worked with your wife for a few years. That's right. Yeah, she loves you. So we that's nice. Uh and you know, we've been in the same rooms, but I've never really had a chance to like sit down and talk to you. So I really appreciate you coming by today.

Speaker 1:36

Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. I was excited to do it, you know, because it's like uh it seems like you have a really interesting roster already. I mean, uh I'm excited that I'm like or in the early batch, but the killer priest one was really neat, you know. So it seems like you've kind of got a neat niche that doesn't really have any boundaries to it.

Speaker 1 1:54

Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Well, you know, we can call it outlaw podcast. That's all right. Gonzo, outlaw, gorilla, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Um, so and because we never really got a chance to talk, you know, but I sort of felt like I knew you third person. But when I was researching you for this show, I was like, God damn, like you've got a lot of stuff. And something that caught my eye, and this this might be something you haven't talked about in a while, but um, I immediately latched on to Black Ribbons, your oh, your fourth album.

Speaker 2:31

Yeah, man. I I mean I love I'm so proud of that record because you know it was it was a record where like I had I had signed a Nashville uh to a boutique label at Universal, it was called Universal South, that was run by two great people, Tony Brown and Tim Du Bois. And they signed me and we did two great records together, and then they were let go or left. I don't remember the reasoning, but it changed hands. And at that point, like it was it was I don't mean to go too far down the rabbit hole of just how I got to Black Ribbons, but but there was a feeling of frustration because we did our first two records, which were Put the Obat and Country and Electric Rodeo. We did those before Put the Obat and Country came out, so we were kind of on this fantasy ride musically where we were just like we're gonna make this record that was kind of blending country and like what we liked about rock and psychedelic and stuff all together. And then we before anybody had a public perception of what we were doing, we had the opportunity to go ahead and record our second record. So we were like taking it further with that second record. So we kind of made these two records at once in 2005, and they came out in 2005, 2006, or I guess maybe a little before 2004, whenever we cut them, but they came out in 2005 and 2006. So by the time that we got to go in and do my third record, The Wolf, the label had changed and a lot of things had changed, and then there was a public perception, and there was there was which is a weird thing to talk about like that, but it kind of, you know, with me and the Whalen factor, it was always kind of uh unclear. Like the motives of the audience were sometimes unclear to me. So I never knew like what I was, you know, kind of who who I was singing to in certain ways, which is something that is uh, you know, it is something that's a blessing on one hand, because you got people who are willing to give you a shot who wouldn't have before because of the family thing, but it's a curse on the other hand, because you can never really like totally trust if people really are into what you're doing or if they're into what your dad's doing, right? So I kind of had this like that was kind of a mind fuck of its own that had taken over between album two and three on the road. So when when I hit album three, like when we dropped two, they kind of pushed back about a lot of it. Like they were like, dude didn't want to play any but like they'd given us a little love on the radio with the Fourth of July song on the first record. Uh, but the second one, they got mad at us about our first submission for a single and were kind of insulted. They basically were like, Not only are we not gonna play it, but we're not gonna even consider you for play, you know? And so it's like okay, because it was kind of a funny song called Aviators, and we we thought we were being really clever and funny, and and we thought they were more open to us, I think, than they really were. Um, but but anyway, where this is all going is that my experience with that album three was really rough. Like going into it, I felt like I had maybe taken it too far and I wanted to like kind of bring it back to more of a country thing, which was was was pure for the most part on all sides. I just it was just kind of a I was just on unsteady ground in my career at the time and uh and and confidence in my confidence at the time. So I kind of played ball a little bit, if you would, by by making something that wasn't too outlandish and wild as the third record. And uh and I love that record. I I it wasn't that it was, you know, it wasn't honest or something or real. I just I I I didn't want to push I didn't want to push myself into oblivion further because I felt like I had done that with our second one. And while I was really proud of it, I didn't want to like just stick up middle fingers and make it, you know, that which is what Black Ribbons was. Like, so so I I like kind of played ball with these new people and had a horrific time and and eventually was given the choice to like stay but but spend less money recording. You know, the the guy told me he's you know rehearse your songs on stage at your shows instead of in the studio, like kind of making some blanket statement about how we were making records, which was which was silly and felt wrong or whatever. So I was like, I I'd rather be out, right? So I like kind of left the major label. And at that point in time in 2008, uh when that happened, it was very the the landscape of independent record labels was was very different than it like is now. There weren't weren't a lot of them, and they usually had to have somebody with some serious money behind them to even like compete, you know. And it wasn't like you could just start a label and put stuff out because you had to pay for manufacturing, you had to pay for marketing. There wasn't a digital outw outlet really. Yeah. And um so so like after I kind of played ball with that record and kind of got burned on a bunch of different angles of it, um I got frustrated and I was free to do whatever I wanted. And I decided to make this record, and I I had had this idea, you know. I mean, I don't want to go, I I I literally don't want to sit on your show and just talk for like an hour and not and not have any go back and forth. So I apologize. But but that's how I got there.

Speaker 1 8:00

Yeah, steer you a little bit is because uh my take from it was, and by the way, when I started listening to the record, uh I listened to it front to back. And I really great, great, which is the way it's meant to be. Yeah, exactly. That's where I'm trying to head with this because and and I realized I don't think that I've done that maybe since like Mars Volta. Oh, I love that band, man. Yeah, like D. Louse and the Cometarian. Like, I I listened to that in one sitting, and I found myself just like rolling through black ribbons, like, oh my god, I'm gonna listen to every track of this with my earbuds in, walking down the street, you know. That's so cool, man. Thank you. The reason I bring that up, and maybe because I'm biased because I'm a filmmaker and a writer, um, and there's you know, it's a narrative rock opera with Stephen King on it, by the way. So like I heard his voice, and I like I listened to Stephen King narrate his own book about writing.

Speaker 8:56

Oh, I love that on writing. Yeah, I love that book, man. I've never listened to his own, you know, I've listened to another one that he narrated, but I never I never listened to that audio.

Speaker 1 9:05

So when I heard his voice on your record, I'm like, oh, I'm in. Like I'm I'm sold, you know. Like I was along for the ride, and and um, and then you know, when the the riff for um Oh, the first song wake up when it kicks in, or no, the don't feed the animals. And oh yeah. Have you ever seen uh Almost Famous? Oh yeah, of course where William, his sister tells him, like, listen to Tommy with a candle burning. Yeah. And it's it just starts with like the record spent. Like I had that moment. I was like, this this is what I miss. Like I I've been so caught up with everything, and you kind of took me back to that place of like just appreciating an album in its entirety and like really ingesting the story. And and the story is phenomenal, by the way. I mean well, thanks, man.

Speaker 9:53

I I really appreciate that. I it was it was a weird thing, you know, going into it. Uh I had this, I had like a lot of different ideas, and I can kind of tell you how how it was it was born was I was on this cross-country trip when my daughter was like one year old, and I was driving, kind of migrating uh back to California after an extended trip, and I had rented well, I well, we had a like a rental um vehicle, and I went and like all it had was CD player. So like all I really had was I'm like a huge Art Bell fan growing up. I listened to Coast Coast AM since I was a teenager. So all I had was this. It was probably 2000 and it was I tell you right when it was actually. It was 2008 because it was it was when Bush was on the way out. Everybody, you know, the internet is such a crazy place. If you say anything, I was on Mark Marin and I said it was a cr it was a scary time, and it because it was the transition between Bush and Obama, and everybody thought I was saying because of Obama, it was a scary time because it was the the cla housing collapse happened and Bush bailed town. And so there was just nobody knew what was gonna happen. It seemed like the the whole market was gonna collapse. And that's all they talked about from the time that the election happened to the time of the inauguration. So this is the period in 08, probably December or something, you know, like when when Bush has gone on vacation and and Obama's coming in and they've announced that this housing market is collapsing. And so I remember I was during the all I had was a uh a CD of like my dad's uh old Wayland. I had that album, and I had at a at a gas station picked up a blue oyster cult CD, uh Greatest Hits kind of collection. And I I loved that band. Really, really went deep on them after this trip. But uh so I was kind of listening to that and my dad's thing and local radio and like Coast to Coast AM, which it would hit 10 o'clock Central Time, or I'm sorry, Pacific time. I would like find wherever it was, wherever we were in the, you know, chasing yes, and during one of those was the first time I'd ever heard of the the the name David Ike ever in my life was that he was on uh Coast to Coast AM for four four hours on one of these nights, and he was like introducing this whole reptilian concept he's got and talking about his books, and and he had told this like crazy story about how they'd hypnotized someone to like like they hypnot they that they hypnotized someone and then they put someone in front of them and then they hit it like a stopwatch behind the guy's back and they hypnotized the guy not to see the person and he was able to read the watch, right? So it was this whole thing that I just like about about you know there being like light frequencies that we used to be able to see through, but had been modified and you can't, and that's where these creatures hide and they control the government, and it was just such a mind-blowing like four hours of radio that it like sent off this idea into my mind of of like, hey, like what if all of this is true? Like, what if it is all true? Everything you read, basically. It because at that time it was pretty niche, and like there was like Alex Jones who who I I have to thank always because he had me on early. Nobody would promote that record when I put it out, and he actually had me on, but but regardless, but he I always kind of you know viewed him in that time. He was he was so like uh Satanists, and it's this, and it's it was always so over the top. And a guy in the David Icke thing was like, what is this dude? And it kind of sent me down all these roads of like reading Manley P. Hall and reading like I found these a couple websites that are long gone that were really fascinating. I mean, they make like it it if you were to go back in time and view what I was reading, it would read like the roadmap to what is happening now on like a massive scale on the internet, right? When you go on X or whatever and you're just like, I mean, it's aliens, it's fucking reptiles, it's it's like politics, it's everything. But at the time, there was just these little corners of the internet, and then there was like Art Bell. And you know, like I said, I kind of stayed away from Alex Jones because his is so sensationalist, especially at the time, it just wasn't what I didn't want it to feel like that. You know, it needed to feel more like talk radio like Art Bell did, you know. And so in the initial creation of it, I actually reached out to Art Bell and he said yes to do it. But then I was like, people are gonna, they won't be able to separate.

Speaker 1 14:33

Right. They'll pick a side thing.

Speaker 14:34

They'll or or yeah, I mean, not even the pick aside thing. They just wouldn't be able to separate it from the real person who is at Art Bell. You know, this had to be a fictional kind of person. So anyway, that's that's kind of like how I got to the idea, you know, and then actually the the the idea of the radio show guide didn't really hit me from that. It it what I was doing, there was watching a show that was on like the History Channel. God, I wish I could remember the name of the show. It was great. And I had this old guy that was narrating it that had this voice that was so great. And I'm like, wouldn't it be cool if a record had a narrator, like a truly had a narrator that pushed a story along, and then you kind of could do this thing, and then it did, you know, then like the radio show host hit me, and then the movie Talk Radio came to mind. And then I was just trying to come up with something, and and the Stephen King thing kind of happened by happenstance in a really weird way. So again, I could talk forever, so please cut me off. Well, how did you get Stephen King? Well, that's okay. Here's the crazy thing about Stephen King is that in he wrote a book called Lyce's Story. Well, he had a column in the back of EW for forever for Entertainment Weekly, and it was always like whatever he wanted to write about in the back of that book magazine. And he was a big fan of like country rock music. So he was like he would make lists of his favorite stuff, and he he listed off his favorite like independent. He at the time he had XM radio, and there was a country uh station called Cross Country that was on there that kind of merged into what is Outlaw Country on Sirius. But cross country was more red dirt kind of scene than it was like the uh kind of you know, the rest of the world, if you will. They they they would lean into the red dirt scene a lot. So he listened to that a lot, and he in a book in a column wrote up like his favorite top 10 like new kind of outlaw off-the-map country kind of stuff, and he listed Fourth of July as one of them, which I was really flattered. I mean, because I'm as a kid, like a huge Stephen King fan. You know, I read the The Gunslinger, uh, the first book of the Dark Dark Tower. I didn't do the Dark Tower until I was in my 30s, but I did the first book when I was in elementary school, and I and I was very i in uh it just really ended Stephen King, you know. So that was kind of a trip. And then somebody told me he had written my name into a book. It was Lycey's story, uh, which took place in Nashville, and there was like a scene where he like mentions me in another band, and I was like, this is so surreal. So so knowing that he's like a fan, he wrote the thing. I I I entertainment weekly, uh, I think it was doing my my the wolf record. Entertainment weekly asked me to do something. I was in an interview or something, or we were doing something for it, you know, and uh we asked them to do what however it all works, but I I just said, Will you send a note to Stephen King? Um, you know, and I just said I'm doing this record, and you would be like a a late-night talk radio host, DJ kind of, you know, at fur. So I sent this email to send to him through them, and they sent it to him, and that afternoon he wrote me back. He said, I'm too busy, but if you keep bugging me, you never know what will happen. So I so I basically what I did is I kept bugging him.

Speaker 1 18:00

So was Willow the Wisp all his his thing, or did you already have that kind of concept?

Speaker 18:05

Actually, well, at first he he thought I was talking about like a Wolfman Jack type character, because I I'm not I wasn't good at communicating it. So I wrote a script for him, like just to give him an idea of the vibe of the whole thing. And and he kind of wrote back and he's like, Oh, that's that's really sad. That you know, that sounds really sad. It's different, different than I expected it to be. Like it's not as it is defiant, but it's there's a sadness to the whole thing. And I go, Yeah, because it's the last broadcast in in the way, you know, instead of like writing an album that has like a story from song to song that tells a story, I like I just felt like this idea that there's this band that's like uh defiant and through the through the years they've changed their sound a bunch. And it kind of gave it a free, free reign to kind of like do whatever we wanted for the songs, and it'd be kind of him like saying, Well, this is the band that they always said we couldn't play, so I'm getting fired, I'm gonna get fired in style and play this band, you know. And so that kind of gave us free right to like not have to weave a story and just kind of have different points. And I even like made up fictional albums for that band over the history, like a discography. So he was kind of picking from with like fake set lists and stuff. So he was like kind of picking from their career. And so, you know, it was like one of those things where uh it really turned into something so much better, of course, than I sent him, because he's an incredible writer. He he I sent him the script, he wrote me and he and we had a we never have met, we've never talked on the phone ever. It was all emails. And one day it just showed up on my doorstep, done. And and he and so I just and he gave me two endings. He gave me the ending that I wrote, which was not the one where he gets shot, and he he came up with that. And so he I mean he came up with a lot of stuff in there. But the name Will of the Wisps, the name of the band, I I came up with those, but he he uh he came up with a lot in there, and the ending was his idea. I my ending was just like he had to go and he signed off, and you know, something positive at the end, you know, and he was like, How about he gets fucking blasted? It's like okay, that's a great idea.

Speaker 1 20:21

Well, and only Stephen King can like push you over that line. Right, right. Yeah, totally, totally. Well, that's that's thanks for letting me nerd out on that. I think why I lashed on to it too, is because you just mentioned you know, you had like fake set lists and and like songs and styles that these different bands would play. Like you built a world, and like when you can build a world and bring somebody into that world is is something that I'm really like it's so cool. That's what I get fired up about.

Speaker 20:50

Yeah, me too, man. It's like when people do that kind of work, I'm reading this book right now. You're a filmmaker, so you like you you're into that world. That's that's a world that I wish I was into. Like, like in another life, I'm I'm getting old enough where I'm coming to terms with like I'll may never direct a movie, but like in because I just have other things that I'm working on, other things I want to do. But like that was always kind of a dream. And my daughter for uh Father's Day bought me this amazing book on Stanley Kubrick and The Shining. It's like 900 pages long. It has like a companion book with photographs, and it's it's like written by that guy who directed Toy Story 3 and another guy, and they they spent 10 years writing the most comprehensive account of his filmmaking. And it's like the world building that went into his process. I'm only about 350 pages into it, but it is so captivating. And the and just kind of his mindset and all of that, and like his choices to like leave out things. Like he he talks about how you know Stephen King, like uh he really like he spent a lot of time on Jack's psyche in the book, on like his father, his relationship with his father. And like that was actually the the the hinge, the moment of of Madness in the book, it really is him hearing his father through the radio and destroying the radio. But in the in the in the the film, he took all of that away because you didn't really need it. Like he realized, you know, you didn't need it to to you didn't have to understand why Jack broke his kid's arm and is an alcoholic. You in the book you did because you needed to like get to know Jack, but on screen with Jack Nicholson, you know, the the world building had took a different thing. So I'm so into that with all these things. And with and with that album, I really wanted there to be all these details. Like we we renamed the United States, the American Union, because it felt like they were going to try and do the European Union over here. Well, with a reverse of well, what would have been in the reverse of that here and turn it into like a UN nation state more than a sovereign country and stuff. So there was a lot of like just stuff that was going on on the internet and was going on in the world and people's analysis of it and it kind of went into this, you know. And there was a guy I found, man, he had a website called War of Illusions. And I've tried to find it in retrospect. His name was Stefan Phobes, and I've only found like a piece or two of him out there. But he but back then he was a big influence on that record because he was just talking like some crazy shit that if you look back, it's like again, way ahead of his time. But at the time it seemed so insane. Like just stuff about Diana and and and the the England and the and the royal line there, and like all just all this kind of like like esoteric, like witch pseudo-witchcraft demonology stuff that was just so out there, you know, that it was like, wow, this is like like so much you just stuff that at the time you didn't hear regularly.

Speaker 1 23:49

I gotta get I gotta get you and Priest together. You guys could really chop it up.

Speaker 23:53

That'd be fun, man. I'm a big fan of the Wu-Tang clan, you know. Um in high school for me, those those records were huge. But uh but yeah, so anyway, like I mean, you know, it was kind of this just kind of amalgamation of all of that wildness that was going on in the conspiracy theory world at the time, and then just kind of slap those into songs that were kind of narrated by this thing, and and it came together, man. And and like that record has given more back to me than anything. Like, like uh so many great relationships came from people liking that record and and us working together and stuff, you know. So it was it was uh at the time it felt like I wanted to make like audio theater. Like I love radio theater, and if anything, podcasts prove that albums aren't dead because like people listen to like hour-long things. That's the thing. You're going to work, or an album's 45 minutes, a movie. You gotta go out with your friends. It's two hours, three hours. You gotta, you're gonna be gone for maybe five hours. You know, there might be dinner, but like an album or a podcast or something, there's there seems to be this sweet spot with 30, 45 an hour where people listen to and from work and and and people will take in an experience like that and like it, you know. They don't they don't want three-minute experiences, they want something that they can do in a sitting.

Speaker 1 25:08

That's kind of the through line that I was trying to to make with that album is because like these days everybody's competing for your attention, you know. Yeah, and and so to like we make things that we love because we want people to like experience the it for its entirety, yeah. And it's like, oh, I can only make a 15-second reel because people aren't gonna flip past it, you know. And so I think that's really cool. And and why I chose that to sort of speak about first was to because it it helped me understand like who you are as a creator and and and a maker, and getting your listeners to commit to like sitting down and experience something, which I find very cool, you know. Alright, thanks, man. So that just kind of helped me get to know you as an artist and a maker. And now I kind of want to go into stuff about your dad. Yeah. I just saw you were on CBS and and you just released uh Diamonds, which is the which the first single from the Diamonds record that's coming out in November the second.

Speaker 26:12

And these are the Whalen records.

Speaker 1 26:13

These are found recordings that you've that's right accumulated over the years. Like I I've probably listened to more interviews than than you remember. Um and I just I find it so moving when I watch the CBS thing because you can just see like your pride and and like your joy for yeah, it makes me happy, man.

Speaker 26:35

And I'm you know, it's like it it it is such a cool, it was such a cool thing because I, you know, I my expectations were so low going in there. I just thought for sure, like I knew one song, really. And so I I was just had they were low. I just said, let's just see what's in here. Like they would they were all drafts or something, yeah, or that it would just be kind of everything I'd always heard, just in maybe some different versions of stuff. Like I thought initially there was a there was this JJ Kill cover, I'd like to love you, baby. I the it was on the Songbird record. I had heard that when I was like 17 years old and remembered it. And so I knew that there was at least that song. And when I was working on this Kountosh record I did, that's like a Giorgio Moro tribute. That was the first time I actually looked in the files and I opened up Don't You Think This Outlaw bit, and I saw that what was in there of my dad's, and I saw there was multiple takes. So I thought, oh well, it my original idea without having ever looking looked at any of it was that I would make something that felt like an in-the-studio engineer's tape kind of recording, where it'd be like, you know, some tracks, maybe some alternate takes of songs people love, but the talking in between, the kind of feeling like you're in on a session, really kind of making an experience in a way that would be, you know, but I didn't expect to to find so much really great finished stuff with back him doing his own background vocals and and all this. Um I didn't expect that. And so, but I'm going in and like within the first couple hours, I'd I found Songbird and this Leon Russell cover, She Smiles Like a River that's on diamonds, and some incredible stuff, like right out of the gate. And I was just like, gosh, what are like statistically, what are the odds that these are the only two, you know. So then me and so it was Nate Hazley, who's a who's an assistant engineer that used to be a staffer at Sunset Sound, and who I worked with years ago when he was, he taught me how to run my studio and uh in there and really helped me a lot. So when it came to July, it was literally two years ago, we went into the studio, we uh just split up. We had I had brought my home Pro Tools rig from home, and we had the one we have in there, and we kind of split up the data and just went through it just to figure out the titles of the songs that we had or what they were. And then because nothing's labeled, right? Nothing had any labels to it. There was like a folder we found that was deep in the drive where someone had kind of separated stuff and labeled it, but not very accurately and not well. And it was done in a way that was strange and it and it didn't allow for us to keep track of it very well. So we kind of had to just start from scratch, make our own notes, and then maybe if we just got too stumped, we would go check their data, you know, and and anything like diamonds that wasn't in their data. And and so, you know, it was it was like this like it started like a Da Vinci code or something, like a hunt for like stuff, you know. And every day I'd come home to my wife and be like, I found uh, I found this or I found that. It's like you're never gonna believe it was so it was like a a constant dopamine hit, adrenaline rush, like every single day going to the studio. And then after we went through it, it was like so disorganized that we had to like reorganize it. And then we had to go through it again kind of and just kind of double check our work, make sure we didn't miss anything. And I still think we probably missed something. You know, there's probably 10 songs in there I haven't heard yet, you know. And we've been through it multiple times. But I mean, it's literally like a thousand sessions, it's like so many, so many sessions. And it's some some of them are like what he would do is when he would go in, he would record periodically, they would come off the road, he'd go in the studio, he'd record stuff, they go back on the road, and they would like stockpile all this. So then when he went in and he had like a series of songs maybe that he had written, he would kind of anchor them, say like, I've always been crazy, like that record, which is during this period. He would go and kind of record those songs, I've always been crazy, don't you think this outlaw bit, the songs he'd recorded or the sorry, that he had written, and then he would go back and pull from the stuff he'd been doing for the last six months in the studio and kind of put them together, you know. So some of these sessions would be like when he was done, he would only give the record label the ones that were gonna be on the album. So they didn't have any choice and they didn't really have any control over the other stuff. So some sessions would just be like the whole album laid out on two, you know, two reels of tape, um, which was what they would give to the label or whatever. But there were just a lot of sessions that were like kind of mysteries, you know. And it w it was really, really fun. And and now after the fact, I mean it's like kind of terrifying all of it, but it's like the mixing part of it like was so fun. I love getting to do that. I've got to go back in now and work on this third one and or kind of start work on it. Like that one, I think it's gonna take a little longer than than the other two, but it it I'm gonna go in on that soon. And I always look forward to that because when I could do that, it's like I spend the whole day there. I'm alone in this old studio on this old board, listening to this old stuff, you know.

Speaker 1 32:01

It's like you're you're working with him.

Speaker 32:03

Yeah, it totally is, totally is, you know, and in in a way, like it's really cool to like, you know, career-wise, like he had a cool exit, but I feel like he this is a cool way to like solidify his story and retell his story. Like Charlie and I, Charlie Crockett and I were talking this morning because his his album, Clovis, is coming out on the 4th of July or just came out depending on where this airs. But uh it was an album that we cut and he put out that got yanked off the internet earlier in the year, and it's called Clovis. And it's in this town, it was recorded in this town, Clovis, New Mexico, in a studio that Buddy Holly recorded all of his stuff in. Norman Petties uh is the guy on the studio, so it's called Norman Petties Studio, essentially, um, or Norva Jack recorders. Um anyway, my dad recorded there when he was like a kid when when Buddy was producing him, he was a teenager, and so there's like a picture of him on the wall with the Stratocaster, which is very unusual for him. And and so this town, you know, like now Charlie has made this record called Clovis, and this this basically the studio's been there unused for like since 1969, and has like basically rock and roll got invented in it. And so they let us in, we did this record, and now he's going back. Yeah, it's like a time. It was un oh man, dude, it was like being on a movie set. Like it be it was like being on a Kubrick movie set. It was so perfectly detailed to the time everything there was preserved, like the little lounge, like even the the microwave was from like 1972 and had this like big plastic thing that like pulled. I've never seen anything like this. Yeah, it was it was it's insane. And we were there for like only for six days, but it felt like it was the universe, you know. And um, but now he's going back and like playing a show there and doing all this stuff around Clovis and and bringing all attention, all this attention to the to history of that place, you know. And I'm like, man, it's I never thought about it, but it's so important. It's like the old days when they would like wander from like England and they'd come to Ireland and they'd sing tales of this guy who got beheaded like just two months ago. You know, it's almost like that, you know, telling the telling the tales of like the Titans and the or yeah, and like spreading it around through art, you know, it's like really cool.

Speaker 1 34:25

So telling stories, which is what we're all here to do.

Speaker 34:28

Exactly. So that's like kind of what the Whalen thing is. It's like telling telling his continued story, but it's also kind of like recentering history on uh his history into who he actually was versus like the echo that happens after they die. And it's like it's not just the Walmart t-shirt guy. It's like, you know, Johnny Cash is much more than even just the hurt guy. Like, like if you go through a lot of people got into Johnny Cash during the Rick Rubin years without ever hearing anything he recorded in the 80s, you know what I mean? And there's some like great stuff in there, but he got dropped in the 80s because it wasn't popular, you know, Cash did. And so it's like, you know, you there's there's kind of that story that gets twisted when people are gone and the and the image kind of becomes like photocopy of a photocopy and the outlaw thing, and all that kind of takes over, you know, and there was so much more about him that was so much more about music and and all that. So this is kind of an awesome excuse to like remind people who he actually was and what he actually was doing. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 35:29

So you know, I mentioned it must feel like you're you know, you're working with him because you can press play and you're immediately in the room because you're hearing him talk and you're hearing him like hang out with his buddies and stuff.

Speaker 35:41

And oh, there's some funny outtakes too, man. Like at some point, uh, I didn't want to throw them on the record, but there's some just not not really even so much like like fucking up, like just cutting up in between or whatever, like or you know, when something went wrong. It's just it's just really fun, you know, to hear. It's like they're always like really happy, like nobody's getting angry. Like that was the thing you hear about some some outtake stuff. You like I've heard that one where it's like who's it? He's like yelling. Oh, I can't remember who it is. I don't want to say the wrong guy, but he's like, the guy's is it Paul Anka or something? He's like screaming at like the band after the show or in the studio, like you know, it just everybody's like cutting up, having a good time.

Speaker 1 36:24

Yeah, or they don't get along and they're not doing it for the love of making music. And that's right. There's there's some bands out there who like hate each other, but they just show up at the studio and go to work and then which is wild, which is crazy to the concept.

Speaker 36:37

Like you can't get over it. You really can't get over it. Like Paul Simon and fucking that dude still hate each other. Like you really can't get over it. Like you're beloved in American history, but you're like, he just his his crude plates were too big. They weren't bigger than mine back then. I'm still mad at him.

Speaker 1 36:54

You know, but with all the the pride and the and the you know, the legs. I mean, we can call you an archivist now. You're probably a historian.

Speaker 37:04

I guess I got my slice of it now. I got my lane. I can like really I can tell you how they recorded those records. That was really kind of the coolest thing is like seeing how they were laid out across the it was usually 24-track tape. Sometimes there were ones that were 16-track, which were really cool to quote Nate um Hazley, who worked on it. He was like, man, because they were limited, they they made it, they almost were more full sounding because they were trying to make each track count more, you know. But but even across 24 tracks, like it was uh it was really neat, man. It was like there was always like two acoustics going, which I never like most times it'd be a 12 string and an acoustic, even on like a lot of those Whalen ones where he's playing and you like kind of know it for the electric sound, it would have like a 12 string and an acoustic or two acoustics. There'd be sometimes two electrics going on. There was definitely more guitars on the records than I thought there were, which is cool.

Speaker 1 38:00

Don't get me started on like analog, you know, because yeah, nowadays you can just take endless takes and and you know exactly generate something out of the way.

Speaker 38:10

And you could cut in in like milliseconds or like peel back, like you could not do any of that.

Speaker 1 38:14

So you had to and so I can I can relate to that as a photographer because like when you shoot film, it's like that that frame is precious. Yeah, you you don't want to waste that frame, you know, and so that's what they're doing with the 16 tracks.

Speaker 38:28

It's like each track is precious, like you get kind of you don't get one shot at it, but it it's like and if you and if you want to use more than it, you've got to start like combining tracks, you know, which becomes can is cool, but you lose control over the volume of the individual instruments there. So it's like yeah, a lot of that was really cool to look at. The drum sounds in particular were really cool too. So it was it was just neat to kind of see. And then like we could we started to be able to identify like what studio what was recorded in based on how the tracks were laid out. Like if it was in one studio, you knew it was that studio if the bass was on track one, because on the and the rest of them, the kick drum was on track one, but this one studio always whoever engineered that put the bass on it.

Speaker 1 39:12

That was like their their signature kind of.

Speaker 39:14

Yeah, so it was like a lot of kind of things like that that were that were kind of like problem solving and mystery detecting or whatnot, you know?

Speaker 1 39:21

Yeah. And I mean, yeah, a lot of hearing you talk about all this stuff, it's the it's the craft and how exciting it is and everything. But I, you know, as I lost my father in 2018. I'm sorry to hear that, man. Yeah, and he's 65, you know, and and before his time to go.

Speaker 39:40

For me, yeah.

Speaker 1 39:40

Yeah, so like I I kind of I was a little weary about bringing this up, but like what it must be like to hit play and all of a sudden like hear him. Because like I have memories, but you know, in my dad, my dad was a probation officer. So if I found if I found a bunch of tapes of his sessions, like that would be something else.

Speaker 39:59

That would be something else. Yeah, you could do like remixes. But do you ever find yourself just like I mean, you Yeah, I felt that way even without this, like because like I you know, he's been gone since 2002. Like I hear him all the time. I hear him on the radio or I hear him where I'm sometimes where I'm gone or whatever, like like his voice is around all the time. So like I that part I've never taken for granted. Um, it's very cool. But yeah, like hearing the new things, but also just kind of hearing the body of work as a whole and digesting it and going, wow, like this is a dude and a band who loved each other and just were having so much fun and had discovered a sound that worked for almost any cover, any song they wanted to do, and they were just constantly recording. So if anything, it like just kind of like reassured this vision that I already had of him, you know, which was how hard he worked and how much music really meant to him. And I feel like he had he had a a sensibility of a of a diligence, a due diligence to like to do the best he could at it. I think he fought so hard for it that he like felt like now that he had his opportunity, he couldn't like rest on his laurels. So he worked all the time, you know. So in in that sense, it's great. But um, but yeah, I mean, man, it is having him been gone a long time. It's nice to have like this extra chapter with him that's that's been able been um, you know, kind of I that I kind of had privately and then now I'm sharing with people, you know, and that was cool.

Speaker 1 41:30

Do you feel like you know him even more now?

Speaker 41:32

Like yeah, I mean I I think again it's like kind of reassurance more than it is like I'm learning more. Like I mean, I'm learning there there's some things like there's some songs he took he he recorded um that I haven't put on either collection that are were pretty shocking, like in terms of like the genre that he was reaching into here and there, like it really did matter. Like if he liked it, he he would take a swing at it, and he would usually kill it vocally. Like there was nothing in there that felt like um like a bad vocal take. In fact, I'll tell you the song that the only song where I had to really kind of do a little trickery because I didn't feel like I had the vocal take I really wanted, but I loved the song and I wanted it to come out was uh um I'm gonna lay back with my woman, which is on the Songbird one. And and all I had to do was kind of I had to do a little trickery of of combining two vocal takes to make it work. I mean, I was doing comps, which is like properly combining multiple vocal takes. Because sometimes I a lot of these songs have three or four vocals on them. And and on the original documentation back then, they didn't have comping like we do now on a computer where you can like go technically syllable by syllable if you want, you know, across takes. Back then they had to record a whole take on one track and then use another track, again, making a choice to use the second track to to have a second vocal. And then they would have like in the on the physical, and I had some scans of all this that we were able to get, but like on the physical thing, they would be like Wayland's vocal take up to here and then switch to take two. Whereas I I went in and I did it like I do it when I produce, like, you know, American Aquarium or whatever. I went in and and did my kind of comping with his vocal. So I was able to get a little more intricate, but with this one, I had to get real intricate on this because I just didn't feel like I had a second verse like he really nailed, but everything else was was so good, you know. So so uh in in that case, there was only one song that was like that. The rest of them, like all his vocals were so good. He always had three or four vocals in there, like I could take my time, like I usually had three or four steel takes I could kind of choose from and and do, but I I tried to treat it like I was was I was working with somebody who just like, you know, an artist that I'm working with in terms of the approach and not like trying I didn't want to mimic the sound of the old records. I didn't want it to have too much reverb on its vocals or whatever. I wanted to kind of have the low end and the kind of dryness of like modern records.

Speaker 1 43:57

That's cool. You can kind of compartment. Analyze and be like, put your producer hat on for those kinds of things.

Speaker 44:03

Yeah, kind of. But in that sense, like I thought about it, but I was like, man, when you're hearing his voice for the first time in a long time, and if I were to like go for a dated sound so it would match exactly like the old records, then I don't know. I don't know. I made the choice to go with something that was more in your face because you can hear his voice better. I made his voice loud, that's a little maybe it's a little louder than it was on those old records. And because we're just listening on different stuff now too. And I kind of put it right here in your face and and kind of made sure that like I beefed up the EQ of the kick drums so that across the board, like it it kind of hits like modern records do, like they usually have a sub recording. You know, I kind of beefed. Throw some 808s in there. I mean, it not far from it. I basically took that frequency and and boosted it with some very old equipment and and and it worked very well, you know. Cool.

Speaker 1 44:56

Well that that's a good because I wanted to move into your producing now. Um Right on, man. And I I noticed uh you want a Grammy working with Robert Randolph. Yeah. I have a story about Robert Randolph real quick. Oh, I love it. Uh love. When I first moved to LA from Seattle, what year was that? 2008. Oh, cool. Yeah, I was here in I came in 2000, so you weren't too far too. I got an invited to this event where they were they were honoring um Robert M. Knight, who's a rock and roll photographer. And I was there because I myself shot a lot of rock and roll um photography, and they had and he did a bunch of stuff for Guitar Center. So there were performances like Slash and Joe Perry were gonna perform. Wow. And then Robert Randolph. And I'd never heard of Robert Randolph. And you know, I in 2008 I wasn't like Googling who it was, and and I was kind of there for whatever. And he comes out on stage and starts playing his steel, and everybody else just evaporated. I was like, who the fuck is this guy? And like it just like these other chumps I don't care about. Like he was just so amazing. And um, you know, so I guess, Mike, do you still get that kind of like awe? Like, oh my god, that guy's doing oh yeah, like he's insane, man.

Speaker 46:18

I mean, we you know, the way we made that record was really different from anything else that I've ever made, which is we came in well the first time he DMs me basically, and is like, hey, I think we should work together. And then he sent me some I sent him my calendar, basically, and he picked a weekend and he said, Okay, let's let's do these three days. And then like a couple days go by, and I'm like, Do you want me to like put a band together? Or like, are you bringing guys or like what do you want to do? And he's like, Yeah, that's the idea. Like, his only response was, yeah, that's the idea. Uh and I go, Okay, so so I just threw together a bunch of my closest friends that I use for records a lot, and and he just came in by himself with his steel and sat down and we just recorded just jams with no blueprint. I think in the very beginning I played piano, and then I quickly realized like I needed to get out of the mix because we had guitar, bass, drums, and robber, and it was working. And we were at Village Recorders. I it's so this is a very funny story because this is the first time I've met him, and and we're over there. Probably the I think the first song we did is a song on there called uh it's called Hold on. I'm so stupid sometimes. No, it's um I'm also getting old, so everyone needs to wait. I'm looking this up because I don't want to get the title wrong. It was called uh When Will the Love Rain Down is what it's called. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1 48:04

No, no, I was gonna say this is the on-air fact check.

Speaker 48:07

So yeah, the on-air fact check. Yes, yeah, I know it's good, it happens all the time. I I messed something up yesterday in the Swamp Dog interview. I know I'm gonna be getting shit for. But um, so when will the love rain down? Which so when we did all this stuff, they started as like these 25-minute long jams, like that I took home. We did three sessions like that. But this first time we're doing this first session, and we're having to set up our amp, our base amp in the lounge, because they didn't have enough isolation in the studio to accommodate what we were doing. And we're jamming, but these jams are the same jam, it's the same riff over and over for fucking 25 minutes. And so, which is fine for us, but the people in the lobby that are where their desk is is right in front of the studio, and that bass amp is right behind them. And Ted, the bass player, was playing the same fucking thing over and over and over for like half an hour, and it's like loud in the lounge, and and T Bone Burnett and um Robbie Robertson were upstairs recording the soundtrack to um the the movie, uh the last movie Scorsese did before Robbie died. It was the Killers of the Flower Moon. They were doing the soundtrack to that, and and our bass was leaking into their session from where this was. So uh they sent a complaint down, you know, that we had to like turn it down or whatever. And I had never met I had never met Robbie Robertson in my life. Well, that's not true. I did meet him for about five minutes at the Mint in about 2001, one time. I had dated a girl who was a manager at the Mint. And uh she introduced me to Rob Robbie Robertson very quickly. But I, you know, I just always heard stories and I was like, yeah, I always heard that guy's an asshole. I think I said cocksuckers is what he said. And and Robert, about two minutes later, he says, Well, that cocksucker's coming downstairs to say hi to us right now. And I go, Oh my God. And of course, he comes in, he's like the nicest guy ever. He was like like a total hero. Uh and he and he was really encouraging to Robert, you know. And what was weird, what's weird about Robert, dude, is he's got he had Robbie Robertson on uh text. He was he's texting with Clapton the whole time or fucking working. Like he knows like the gods of of blues guitar and like guitar, you know. It's it was it was wild. And he and he just he all of a sudden he just transcends it all. So we were doing these jams, they're like 25 minutes long, and after it was all over, I took all those and like made four-minute long songs out of them by editing them afterwards, and then they wrote songs to it. So it was like really uh it took like three years, it took nine, essentially nine days in the studio to capture it all, but it was spread out over a year. He started bringing his band after that first session, who were great, and so it was so much fun. It was such an unusual process, it felt like real art when you know when we were doing it. Didn't feel like writing songs just to have songs on the radio or something, you know.

Speaker 1 51:11

Right.

Speaker 51:12

It was cool.

Speaker 1 51:14

Yeah, and um he worked with Brandy Carlisle and two records with her, and then two Tandy records we did together, too. You know, I love her. Brandy, like I I've never met her, I don't know her, but I she's someone like I feel like I know, you know, because she's from Washington State, and so am I, we're around the same age. And she told a story about how she recorded her first album at London Bridge Records. Right. And uh at the time, um, good friends of mine were also cutting a record there.

Speaker 51:43

Is that the place like Pearl Jam and all those guys?

Speaker 1 51:47

Yes, yeah. So she's telling this story, and it like I was like, oh man, like I know exactly what she's talking about. So that's kind of one of those things where it's like, of course, I've never met her, but I feel like I know her and and I love her music and I love her style. She's awesome.

Speaker 52:00

I mean, she's one of a kind. She's like a you know, uh a human blowtorch, like artistically.

Speaker 1 52:05

Yeah, she's like a like a Robert Randolph where you just watch and you're just like, my God, like just touched by talent.

Speaker 52:12

Yeah, I mean, uh from all sides with her. I mean, when it comes her voice is is an anomaly on its own, but like her her sensibilities, her sensibilities as a producer is kind of someone who who can, you know, it's like uh like I guess the best artists sometimes are the most opinionated uh in terms of like their vision. Like some artists are are are kind of go with the flow, but there's certain people that are very good at being a uh a critic of the current state of things and and be able to see a solution to it, you know. And I think in a way, creatively, she's very good at that. And I think she's also uh, you know, such a good songwriter and such a good uh between her and the twins who who are in her band, Tim and Phil Hansaroth, who are incredible songwriters, incredible musicians and people, they all as a collective kind of write all this really amazing shit. But she by herself is such a good visionary for like songwriting, like with the Tanya stuff, when she felt like Tanya needed a certain type of song we'd been talking about or something, she would like be able to write something really quickly that was like really great and kind of said what we needed to be said, you know. And I think uh uh yeah, she's she's kind of her her her kind of strength knows no bounds. So I kind of you know I'm curious to see where where where the next step goes with her. But um yeah, I'd love I love the love the four records we've gotten to work on together for sure. Actually, five, because we're we've just finished one that that we're doing on this group, The Sister Strings, which is me and Misty's two of our best friends, their sisters from well, they live in Nashville now, but they're from the Milwaukee area, and they they um were classical. They play with Brandy all the time. Like one plays cello, one plays viola, but they have a a solo record that we did with Brandy um really last year. We're kind of finishing up now, but that that was an incredible record to work on. And another one where Brandy like had a song she brought to the table that really brought something really special to it, you know.

Speaker 1 54:12

Very cool. Well, I mean, you keep leading me into my next question. Good. Very naturally. Good. My next thing was gonna be like, what are you what are you excited about now that you're working on? What's what's in the future for shooter? Do you have anything that's been on the shelf for a while that you want to bring to light? You know?

Speaker 54:29

Oh man, well, I know I got a bunch of Whalen stuff. Uh no, uh I you know, I I feel I've I'm really happy. I've been working a lot. Like, so I have a lot of records that are coming out. There's a group called Twin Temple that are like really good friends. I mean, really, me and Misty's best friends in town who are like a I mean, they're they're uh it's kind of hard to describe. I mean, their their tagline is satanic doo-wop band, but it it's like they're it's so much more than that. They're they're such great musicians, such good friends of ours, friends of ours, and we got to do a record that is going to be coming out um sometime later this year, uh, that is really cool. We got to like really go and make a 1960s Los Angeles like bloated budget type of record with strings and like very Phil Spector, the wrecking crew kind of thing, which is like my favorite. Yeah, like I love that era. It's like I think my favorite recorded sound is like what they were doing here in the in the in the late 60s and the merl mid sixties and early 70s, and and um and so like I as the longer I've been in there, like certain projects allow me to lean towards that, like Charlie does and and Charlie Clovis. And I mean, as we've gone on with the four records that I've done with Charlie, like they have kind of gone further and further, further in that direction because he is also a big fan of the wrecking crew of any O'Morricone, who at the time was doing soundtracks, and the wrecking crew was playing on some of this, and there was there there was just such a cool scene and a bunch of sounds going on. It was also heavily influenced by Lee Hazelwood and and all that. So I loved that sound, and lately I've been able to lean into it several times on several records. So definitely Twin Temples record. I'm excited about. Um, you know, I mean, there's a bunch of stuff I've done I can't talk about, but there's a there's a Ben Benjamin Todd's record that's coming out later this year, uh, is really cool. And we did it about six months ago, but it's uh it's really neat. There's a girl named Jess Williamson and Alicia Blue and Elizabeth Cook, who's an old friend of mine, will all have records coming out that we did, and and like I so I I'm proud of all the work I've done. I'm I'm feel real grateful for the work that I've had keep coming, you know. I'm working with Turnpike Troubadours on our third record together. It's like there's so many, so many great things that uh have come to me over time, and I've gotten to do multiple records with people, and and that really is is the biggest blessing because you can you can work with an artist and develop together and develop kind of a sound, you know. So so that that's exciting. Yeah, and just kind of like once your trust is there, it's like you, it's just exploration, you know what I mean? And that's that's exciting to me. So very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 57:19

Well, I I think that wraps up our time. I really appreciate you coming by and talking about it.

Speaker 57:23

Man, thanks for having me. This has been a lot of fun. I appreciate you asking me about black ribbons and and all that stuff. That's fun to talk about.

Speaker 1 57:30

You said it was a dream of yours to direct films, so yeah, hang out with me and I'll get you going on that.

Speaker 57:35

So yeah, it's like I feel like I feel like I'm getting to the age where the ship might have sailed for me to be the kind of level that I would have. Ships never sail.

Speaker 1 57:44

In art, ships never sail.

Speaker 57:45

But I want to write a book too. It's like, but I don't want to write a like a book about me. I want to write a fiction book. You know, I'm like kind of that guy. So like I have all these like bucket list creative dreams that someday will get checked when the pressure goes down.

Speaker 1 58:02

Well, thank you, listener, for listening to In the Static. Um, you can find me on YouTube, just YouTube in the Static, also wherever you get your podcasts, and uh please do the like and the share thing on your stories, whatever helps spread the word, because uh, you know, great art needs to be shared and experienced. That's right. Man, I had a great time you're great at this.

Speaker 58:25

That's in the static. If this conversation meant something to you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Subscribe wherever you listen. New episodes whenever the signal comes through.