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Introduction by Jim Liddane
A much-loved singer-songwriter renowned for her poignant lyrics and emotive vocal delivery, Beth Nielsen Chapman was born on the 14th of September 1958, in Harlingen, Texas. The fact that her her father was a major in the U.S. Air Force meant Beth moved frequently, giving her exposure to a variety of musical influences. By the age of 11, while living in Germany, she had taught herself to play guitar and had started to write her first songs.
At 17, she was performing at local clubs and bars in Montgomery, Alabama. Her talent quickly garnered attention. She released her debut album "Hearing It First" in 1980 and although it failed to sell in spite of good reviews, she moved to Nashville in the early 1980s to pursue a career in songwriting.
Her ability to pen deeply emotional and relatable lyrics quickly made her a sought-after tunesmith in Nashville. Twice nominated for a Grammy, she penned songs for numerous country music artists including Tanya Tucker
("Strong Enough To Bend"), Lorrie Morgan ("Five Minutes"), Alabama ("Here We Are"), Bette Midler ("The Color Of Roses"). Faith Hill ("This Kiss"), Mary Chapin Carpenter ("Almost Home"), Highway 101 ("All The Reasons Why"), Martina McBride ("Happy Girl"), Neil Diamond ("Deep Inside Of You"), Waylon Jennings ("Shine On Me") and Willie Nelson ("Nothing I Can Do About It Now"),
In 1990, Beth released her self-titled second album, which showcased her talent both as a singer and songwriter. The album received massive critical acclaim, and songs like "Walk My Way" and "All I Have" highlighted her emotive voice and lyrical depth. Her follow-up album, "You Hold the Key" (1993), continued to build on her success with hits like "The Moment You Were Mine" and "In The Time It Takes."
In the late 1990s, Beth faced significant personal challenges. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998, an experience that profoundly influenced her music. Her album "Sand And Water" (1997) was dedicated to her husband, Ernest Chapman, who had himself died of cancer in 1994, with the title track becoming an anthem for those facing loss and grief. Despite the challenges, Beth continued to create and tour, releasing several well-received albums including "Deeper Still" (2002), "Look" (2005) and "Back To Love" (2010).
Beyond her music, Beth is an advocate for cancer awareness and education. She frequently speaks about her own experiences with the disease, offering support and hope to others facing similar battles.
Beth Nielsen Chapman's career has been marked by her resilience, emotional depth, and exceptional songwriting skills. Her ability to translate personal pain into universally relatable music has touched countless lives, making her a beloved figure in both country and adult contemporary music.
We asked ISA Contributing Editor Larry Wayne Clark to travel to Nashville to interview Beth for the International Songwriters Association's "Songwriter Magazine".
Prologue
"I live in Nashville and I have three names, so people just assume I’m a country artist," says Beth
Nielsen Chapman on her website. "But I’ve never tried to be a country artist and I’m not played on
country radio. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to sort it all out." Many might say that Chapman - whose own
recordings reveal the influences of early heroes like Joni Mitchell, Carole King and Karla Bonoff - enjoys
the best of two worlds. Country hits, like Tanya Tucker’s "Strong Enough To Bend" and, especially,
Faith Hill’s pop-country smash "This Kiss," (ASCAP’s 1999 Song of the Year and a Grammy nominee)
have earned Chapman the opportunity, and the financial freedom, to delve into deeper, more spiritual
zones with her own recording career, oblivious to the vagaries of commercial radio. She is both true poet
and hook-slinging minstrel, successful and respected in both arenas.
A widow, single mother and, more recently, a breast cancer survivor, Chapman has certainly not been
spared a hefty share of punishing life challenges. But, ironically - or perhaps necessarily to her own
survival - she has crafted some of her most moving work in the midst of her most wrenching
circumstances. Perhaps no Chapman song has had greater impact than the gorgeous "Sand And Water,"
inspired by the 1993 death of her husband Ernest Chapman. It’s a hymn that never sermonises, a
powerful anthem to hope and healing that never speaks above a whisper, and it has changed lives -
specially Chapman’s own. (It didn’t hurt the song’s reputation that Sir Elton John adopted it during his
1997 world tour.)
Chapman was heard regularly on the ’90s Adult-Contemporary charts with singles including "The
Moment You Were Mine," "Walk My Way" and "I Keep Coming Back To You," and her single "Free"
went to # 1 on the BBC Radio 2 chart in the summer of 2004. She has toured the UK several times and
also enjoys a sizeable following in Japan. Released on various labels, Chapman’s albums include
Hearing It First (1980), Beth Nielsen Chapman (1990), You Hold The Key (1993), Sand And Water
(1997), Greatest Hits (1997), Deeper Still (2002) and in 2004, Look and Hymns.
Artists covering Chapman songs include Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Amy Grant, Bette Midler, Neil
Diamond, Michael McDonald, Anne Murray and Roberta Flack. The country music community has
embraced her with particular warmth. Hits in that genre include "Strong Enough To Bend" (Tanya
Tucker), "Happy Girl" (Martina McBride), "Nothing I Can Do About It Now" (Willie Nelson), "Down
On My Knees" (Trisha Yearwood), "Here We Are" (Alabama), "All The Reasons Why" (Highway 101),
"Five Minutes" (Lorrie Morgan) and "Almost Home" (Mary Chapin Carpenter).
Her songs have also been heard on the soundtracks of many films, including The Rookie, Calendar
Girls, and the 2000 Ashley Judd film Where the Heart Is, which featured "Shake My Soul." Her ballad
"All I Have" became familiar to millions as the recurring love theme on the popular NBC soap opera
Days of Our Lives.
Success, combined with an evolved sense of her own mortality and a fearless aesthetic hunger, have
enabled Chapman to make some bold artistic decisions. Her critically celebrated Hymns CD, released
earlier this year, is a collection of Catholic church music sung almost entirely (and quite beautifully) in
Latin, with only one Chapman original on the song list. As if that weren’t enough, Hymns is merely a
part of a larger work which will include, besides a Shaker hymn, religious songs in Hindi and Farsi and
a Buddhist chant, all delivered in the original "deeply rooted languages of the different traditions,"
which Chapman learns painstakingly with the help of tutors.
She has served on the Board of Directors of NSAI for 14 years, one of the concerned members of the
creative community willing to invest time and energy in the hope of making sure there’s an industry in
the years to come to provide people like her own son, Ernest Chapman III - a gifted 23-year-old
Berklee student who appears on Chapman’s albums as a vocalist and arranger - with a
source of income.
Our meeting takes place in a Nashville Starbucks café on a Monday morning. Chapman surprises me
by producing her own minidisc recorder to capture our conversation, explaining that she’s gathering
material for a book on songwriting (she already is much sought after for songwriting workshops and
seminars). You don’t nearly begin to encompass a creative being as determined, accomplished and
inspired as Beth Nielsen Chapman in one sitting, but some of our 90-minute conversation follows,
beginning with the flippant observation that we have three names apiece.
I love what you said on your website: "I’ve got three names, I live in Nashville, everyone
thinks I’m a country hick".
Oh no, no - I never said that!
You didn’t say that, but....
I said everybody thinks I’m Mary Chapin Carpenter [laughs].
You said something to the effect that people think you’re probably more country than you are.
Well, what’s interesting is, you know, Mary Chapin Carpenter and I kinda joke about this ’cause I don’t
think of her as just country. I mean, she’s certainly written some songs that fit in that genre but we both laugh
about people getting us mixed up, you know, ’cause of the three names. There are a couple of other
three-name [artists] that do get into more of the traditional country.
You’ve written with Mary Chapin, haven’t you?
Yeah. Annie Roboff and I and Chapin wrote a song for her last Greatest Hits record, a song called "Almost
Home." It’s really a blast writing with her. She’s one of those people that doesn’t really need to co-write but
when you do co-write with somebody like that, it’s so much fun.
That’s very true of both of you, though; you’re totally independent writers. I know you play piano
and guitar. She plays guitar - does she play piano? I know she has some piano ballads.
I’m sure she does. She mostly writes on guitar. Annie plays on piano quite a bit.
And Chapin’s sort of similar to me, I think, in the way that she approaches writing. At least from my
experience with her, there’s this kind of subliminal thing that comes through when she gets into the flow of
it, based on following the sound of a melody and just throwing some nonsense words into it, and then
suddenly one of the words sounds like it makes sense . . . and then the next thing you know, you’re brilliant!
[laughs]
And when you’re doing that with somebody else you have to be very uninhibited. You have to be
totally unafraid to sound "dumb" or childish.
That’s right. And that’s one of those things that actually can really stilt the co-writing experience, if
somebody’s trying to be too . . . too correct.
Self-editing as they’re going along.
Yeah. But it’s hard not to when you’re . . . like, I’ve had the opportunity to write with some of the people
that I’ve been most influenced by as a songwriter, one being Harlan Howard. And the first four or five times
we wrote together I was so impressed with the fact that I was writing with him that I didn’t have my usual
filter of, you know, "let’s go for this or that." I was not really showing all the way up; I was too deferring to
his wonderfulness, which is true, but it didn’t do him any good. I mean he needed me to get down in the
trenches and let’s write a song and let’s argue and let’s not be afraid to say, "That sucked, Harlan!" [laughs]
And you were writing with him at a point when he really could use your input, because he’d been at
it for an awful long time and staying fresh for guys like him requires, I think, putting your head
together with someone new.
He understood rejuvenating his . . . but I would never say in a million years that he needed to write with me
or anybody else, except that I do think it does create a whole other level of enjoyment. And we both learned
stuff from each other.
This new record that’s coming out called Look, there’s a song on there called "Time Won’t Tell" that
Harlan and I wrote. And, you know, some of the expressions that he used that were from the ’50s and ’60s .
. . he’d say, like, "Let’s put gal in there" and I’m like, "Can’t say gal now, Harlan." Once I got comfortable enough to kinda argue with him, then what we could offer each other went to another level. And I thought that song "Time Won’t Tell" was one of the finest songs I’ve ever had a part in writing.
What was his gift? What do you think made Harlan so special?
Wow, that’s a whole entire book.
It wasn’t musical sophistication.
Harlan had an incredible gift for capturing little bits of humanity and floating them into a song. He did it
from human beings up, you know. When you really got down into writing he really served the song. He
would kid around about writing a hit or not writing a hit - you would think he was fixated on that but
he really wasn’t. He was really about just writing a great song.
He used to say - I’ve quoted him all the time - he used to say "A great song don’t care who sings
it." And it’s true. I mean the greatest songs, like "I Fall To Pieces"you could just hand that right over
to Sheryl Crow or Lee Ann Womack or anybody who’s twenty years old and say, "If you can cry,
make that song work." And the songs don’t go out of style, the great songs really don’t.
As has been proven. One of my favourite cuts on "I Fall To Pieces" is that Trisha Yearwood/Aaron
Neville one on that Country-R&B album a few years back.
Oh yeah.
That was splendid. And they did totally revisit it; it had a different vibe and yet it was absolutely
true to the original melody and sentiment.
Yeah. When I’m teaching songwriting I’m always trying to get my students to realise the flexibility so they
don’t have to be so "Is it country, is it not country? Is it pop, is it not pop?" That’s more about the
instrumentation. It is certainly about the structure and some of the chord decisions but, beyond that, you take
a song like "Stardust" and you can give it to Willie Nelson, you can also give it to Ella Fitzgerald, you know.
And that’s not a simple country ditty, that’s a complex, really incredibly written melody. You can give "The
Star-Spangled Banner" to Jeannie Pruett and you can also give it to, you know, Josh Groban, and - you
know what? - it’s still "The Star-Spangled Banner."
To me, that’s the kind of song I’ve always been most attracted to. The ones that can change outfits and still
be themselves.
Are you a big fan of those old Gershwin/Irving Berlin standards?
Yeah. Do you have a copy of "Look"? It’s a new record coming out on Compass Records. It came out
last March in the UK on Sanctuary. I do licensing deals in different territories - that's a whole other
article too!
But it’s got the Harlan Howard song on it; it’s also got a song that I wrote with Andy Bey, who’s an
amazing jazz artist based out of New York. It was an incredible honour to work with him. And it’s really in
that kind of vein, you know, the really beautiful old airtight chestnut songs that are very hard to find
nowadays. I’ve always tried to write a few of those.
So [referring to Starbucks adult contemporary background music] how often do you come into a
place like this and hear one of your own songs?
Oh you know what, it’s fascinating - it’s usually when I’m in a grocery store and I look like I just
woke up and I hope nobody’ll recognise me. And somebody in the checkout line will be ahead of
me singing along and I’ll just be, you know, noticing this sort of bizarre occurrence.
When you think of it, isn’t that the whole magic of being a writer?
Well, that’s the wonderful magic of feeling like your music has gotten out there.
Do the songwriter and artist cohabit comfortably in you? Would you be a writer if you weren’t an
artist?
Absolutely.
Would you be an artist if you weren’t a writer?
Yeah, I could. Because I feel like I’ve developed into a better singer than I thought I would at first.
You’re a great singer!
I don’t know. It’s hard for me to say I’m a great singer but I feel like I’ve become a very good singer.
You remind me of Jennifer Warnes, who’s one of my favourites.
Well, I’m very influenced by her.
You know, I’ve just done an album of old Latin hymns that’s doing quite well. I mean, I wrote one song on
there. But as a singer I had no problem just doing those songs. It didn’t have to be all songs that I wrote.
I wish I could clone myself because there are so many songs I’d love to perform and sing and cover, but I
always have this backlog of songs I’ve written.
Do you sometimes write and have absolutely no inclination to sing the song yourself?
Oh yeah. I would say more than half of the songs I write I don’t really claim as an artist, meaning I like the
song but it’s not something that resonates with me as an artist. I don’t want to make that be my statement as
an artist.
But you’re still married to the craft of making that the best song you can.
Oh yeah!
Some people don’t do that, some artists. "If I’m not hearing it for me, let’s move on."
Well, I was very influenced by people like Carole King, you know, people who didn’t have to ever even
make records, that were making a plentiful living focusing on tremendous compositions as songwriters. Paul
Williams, whose songwriting eclipses his profile as an artist. Jimmy Webb. People like that. I think of them
all as artists but their songwriting has been so tremendous that it’s got a whole life of its own.
And the thing is too, I don’t really think of someone as an artist or not as an artist based on any level of
success, I just base it on when I hear them perform.
I know some amazing artists who’ve never had a record deal, probably won’t get a record deal. And they’re
still artists!
You know, one of the things I feel like I do as a teacher is I feel like I’m a steward of the independence of
creative spirit, which I think is the first casualty most always in the music business. You’re this creative
person, you’re developing, you’re growing, you love music, you’re listening to music, you’re influenced, you
start writing songs, you’re singing, you go out, you perform . . . and then all of a sudden you’re on this brink
of, "Oh my God, I might wanna actually do this," you know.
And then you have to address how do you do this? Then you start taking your little babies and slamming
them up against this brick wall called The Music Business. Trying to help young people do that in a way that doesn’t destroy the creative spirit that they came in with
is very challenging.
The other thing is that as you achieve any measure of success, or look like you’re about to, other
people are drawn to you and other influences come into play. And very often creative people,
particularly when they’re young, are very vulnerable to that kind of thing.
Yes, absolutely. I didn’t really figure out how to write until I was about in my mid-30s. I wrote some good
songs before that but I didn’t really have a real sense within me of waiting and giving that song a little more
time, going back to it and rewriting it, giving it four or five more months and then going back and looking
at it again and then recording it. And that’s not to say every song takes that long to write. Some songs I write really fast. They still take two
years to get cut!
You’re lucky if it’s just two years.
The first real hit I had was a song I wrote with Don Schlitz called "Strong Enough To Bend." We wrote that
song and thought it was great, you know. I thought, "Well, that’ll be cut in no time." Well, it took about two
years. Everybody heard it and passed on it. The Judds passed on it, and Reba passed on it. And then Tanya
heard it and she might have even held onto it for a while, and then she went, "Ah, I like that song, I’m gonna
cut it."
And then it was nominated for Song of the Year, and here I’d been living in Nashville for about three or
four years trying to get arrested, you know, trying to get some attention, and then this big hit comes along and
all of a sudden my phone’s ringing. Thank God Don Schlitz was wonderful to work with. He’d already had
a lot of hits so I was sort of like this new kid that came along and a lot of people would say, "Can you write
me a ‘Strong Enough To Bend’? I like that, do that again." And I went into this total writing crisis of, "Whoa,
I’ve done this thing and all of a sudden I’ve been defined by this thing, but that’s only one of the things I do."
I think that’s one of the doors you have to walk through as a writer, that when you first get successful you
sorta have to go through this warp, and then you have to recover your balance from the attention and the
definition that gets placed on you. And to me navigating in and out of those phases is one of the great things
that you have to learn to have longevity. I mean what I forgot was that I’d written "Strong Enough To Bend"
and then two years went by, and then it was a hit and then I had writer’s block for a little while because I
thought, "Oh no, how am I gonna write that again?" But, fact is, I’d written plenty of songs after that song.
Tell me about getting into the co-writing process. I mean, you with somebody like Don Schlitz who’s
a fabulous writer who can write totally independently, and yourself who can write independently,
can sing your own stuff - how does that mesh? Especially at first, when you were kind of
getting into the co-writing thing, which is so much a part of the Nashville process.
It really is a part of the Nashville process and it’s a wonderful thing, and it’s also something I think you
have to be careful about, especially if you can write a song all by yourself. I think it’s really important to
carve out a little bit of time and space to continue producing songs by yourself. And it’s a little painful
because you’re used to somebody . . . you know, the difference between going to the gym with a trainer and
going to the gym all by yourself and doing as many lifts, you know.
It’s so boring!
But with a co-writer you’ve got somebody to go, "Come on, you can do it!" and doing it with you, so it
draws you in. For me, it was a great break because I had been hanging around town, knocking around. I
was signed to MTM, which was a publishing company Mary Tyler Moore owned. There was a batch
of us young kids that just fell off the turnip truck, which was Bill Lloyd, Judy Rodman, Holly Dunn,
The Girls Next Door - which was my first cut.
And, you know, [when] I moved to town, I’d already done an album with Barry Beckett that came out in
1980 on Capitol Records. That was wonderfully helpful to me when I decided to move to Nashville because
Barry had moved here and he helped me to connect with people, and so I felt very welcomed, really, for
somebody coming into town for the first time. And then I signed as a writer with MTM and, for whatever
reason, they just didn’t sign me as an artist and I was completely perplexed, you know, like, "Well why? I
can sing" - but instead they’d just take the songs and give ’em to The Girls Next Door, and I didn’t
understand that system at the time.
Looking back on it, everything that’s happened has had a reason and it was really a very deep growing
period for me as a songwriter, when I didn’t immediately get signed as an artist and I realised that "I have to
really write my way out of this. I have to write so good that it competes with anything these singers are gonna
write because I may not be asked to be an artist again."
And I went through this sort of period of loss of confidence when I first moved to town.
And then I would go to the Bluebird and the in-the-round thing was just starting - Fred Knobloch and
Don Schlitz - they were just starting the in-the-round thing. And I used to go and sit over their
shoulders and chat with them after the gig and, you know, just eventually kinda got friendly with
Don and gave him a tape or something, and he heard the songwriting and he said, "Okay, I’ll write a
song with you."
Give me a little bit of your background. I know you were an "Air Force brat," in your own words.
Tell me a little bit about growing up and how you ended up here.
Well, you know, I grew up all over - lived in Germany and lived in California and New England. And
I was exposed to incredible radio - of course we all had incredible radio in the sixties - but on top of
the basic incredible radio I also had different cultural experiences of going into different areas. In
Germany I was exposed to a lot of German radio stations and a very different take on pop music. So it all just
sort of filtered in. And as the singer-songwriters in the ’70s started coming in I really was very influenced by
Joni Mitchell and Carole King and James Taylor and Paul Simon, and songs and songwriters. And then
extremely influenced by Motown and all those elements that work together.
Were your parents musical or your siblings?
No. My mother and father are both musically talented but nobody did it professionally. My mother’s
brother is a professional musician. He’s always been in big bands in the Jersey area and played Atlantic City.
Great singer. I used to go see Uncle Richard when I was a teenager and just go like, "Wow! He’s on this big
stage." He’s still doing it too. He loves what he does and he’s continuing to get up every morning and be a
singer and go out in the world. So that was an influence to me in terms of, "This is do-able, you can actually do this. "
What did your parents think? Did you display an interest in doing this at a fairly young age?
I was very fortunate in terms of my creativity. All my brothers and sisters are artistic in some way. My
sister’s a clothing designer and a very talented painter and sculptor. My brother is a professional artist in
New York and makes this amazing jewellery that’s just incredible, and the sisters that aren’t actively doing
it for a living also have a great deal of creative skill and comfortable-ness in their creativity. And that is, I
think, because both of my parents pretty much were very, very positive about - and valued time
spent making stuff up.
What was your father’s area of expertise in the Air Force?
He was chief of procurement, I remember him doing that. And he did mathematical kinds of things, and
when he retired he was a high school math teacher for quite a block of years. When I was going
into the ninth grade - it was like 1969 - we had just studied all about current events, about Martin
Luther King and all this stuff, [when] we got our orders to move from Munich, Germany to Montgomery,
Alabama. That was a huge shift for me, you know, where up until then I had lived on Air Force bases. An Air
Force base is like a bubble: everybody has the same floor plan, everybody has the same curtains, either blue
or red. The children of colour, whatever colour they are, all have the same accent, which is no accent ’cause
everybody’s born in the bubble, raised in the bubble. So the cultural differences are less pronounced in terms
of the way people talk and dress and think, and racism is really something that I couldn’t even grasp
’cause all the kids I knew I could relate to just fine. There just wasn’t the situation in the bubble of
having these deep rifts between people - at least I didn’t experience it, I’m sure it existed.
So going into the ninth grade, moving for the first time into a regular neighbourhood that was not
on base, was a big shift and then, you know, just coming into Montgomery, Alabama, in 1969 when
there was and still is a tremendous amount of tension between races and lots of woundedness still hadn’t
healed. And so, in terms of my songwriting, I had just started playing guitar right before moving there.
Had you played piano first?
I played piano from the fifth and six grades. My parents had a rented piano and I just plunked around, I
didn’t think I was really going to be any kind of songwriter or anything. But I always wrote songs right from
the very beginning. I wrote more songs than I learned of other people’s.
Interesting.
I just found a notebook like three days ago I hadn’t seen since I was about 12, and it had all these
songs about it was during the Vietnam War and I had all these war songs: "Will you tell me when
the war is gonna end?"and I’m thinking, "Gosh, I was really deep in it, you know." I should have been
outside playing kickball or something! And I realised I was a pretty intense little kid. I had songs that were
more mature than what I had been through. I kind of extended my imagination into things I hadn’t done yet.
I wrote a song about a woman whose husband goes off to war, and I’m the woman and, you know, my mom
is reading lyrics going, "When did this happen?" But always with a lot of positive reinforcement. I’d
show my mom a picture - I could just draw a black line on a piece of paper and go, "See, I painted
this for you," and she’d be like, "Oh that’s so beautiful!"
I think kids need that. They need unconditional positive regard from somebody so they can go back to that
and go, "Well, my mom likes it. Even if everybody else hates it my mom likes it." [laughs] And you do also
need a balancing opinion. You can’t just have somebody love everything you do and then grow, so I would
have different people I would go to for different things.
Yeah, there’s nothing more deluded than a person who has maybe a smidgen of talent, but they’ve
been encouraged from the word go and feel they can do no wrong.
No, that’s not fair either. When I do song critiques I always start with something that’s good about the
song. And I really don’t heartily encourage people who I think don’t really look like they [should] be doing
this for a living, you know. But I do encourage people to write and to use songwriting as a form of healing,
as a very healthy way to get through things. It’s like journalling , you know.
You’re an excellent representative of that theme.
Absolutely. I’ve actually written my way out of the most difficult things in my life, you know.
But just continue, before we get off track, about how you got here.
Okay. Well, how I got to Nashville was I got married in 1979 and moved to Mobile.
Your husband was a philosopher?
He had a degree in philosophy and he was running a treatment facility for adolescents, and he’d been doing
it for about 12 years when I met him. And it was quite successful. He took pretty tough kids that nobody else
really wanted.
You were in your 20s?
I was in my early 20s. He was about 13 years older.
I love what you say [on her website]: you sort of woke up one day and realised, "Oh I didn’t go to
university."
I forgot to go to college. Yeah, I was like, "Oh…!" Well, I did that age-old thing, you know, I got a
publishing deal too early with somebody that really wasn’t the right choice and then I had to try and extract
myself out of that. Then that contract got sold to Screen Gems.
Was this still in Montgomery?
No, this was in Birmingham, which is about an hour and a half north of Montgomery. I’d met this person
who had a studio and I would go up there and deliver my songs like babies to him, for nothing.
So you were very active in pursuing a career before you moved here?
Oh yeah. By the time I got through high school I knew I was gonna be writing songs. I didn’t have a clue
as to how I would make a living doing it, but I was a singer and a songwriter and I was making money
singing at weddings and I was singing at church. Anywhere there was a barbecue and somebody had a
microphone - I mean I just was in it, you know. Actually I met my husband when I was singing in a
little bar in Mobile. He came in and I was singing a Bonnie Raitt song. And, you know, he loved
Bonnie Raitt. It’s funny because Bonnie and I are really good friends now and it’s just so amazing.
Have you had Bonnie Raitt cuts?
I have. Bonnie and Annie and I co-wrote a song that was on her Fundamental record, called [ponders].
I’m horrible with names. See, I don’t remember the names of my songs. I can sing it to you!
Well, when they start numbering well into the hundreds that can happen.
No, even if I just wrote it I have trouble.
It’s because you’re in the moment!
Yeah, I am. So in the moment I don’t know where anything else is. Oh, I’ve gotta stop trying to remember
it ’cause it’ll derail the rest of my brain. [note: the song is "Meet Me Half Way"].
But anyway, I moved to Mobile. I went from having lived all over the place - I guess the longest I’d
ever lived anywhere was Montgomery from ninth grade through the end of high school. My parents
still live there, my family’s based out of there.
Your parents are both still alive?
Yeah, they’re still alive and still married. And both from New Jersey but they’re stuck in Montgomery now
’cause all the grandchildren are happening down there. All my sisters married Southern men and started
having children.
So anyway, the amazing thing about moving to Mobile was we moved into this house that my husband’s
grandfather had built. So there was this family house with a lot of history. When I had a son and we’d walk
around the block all these little old ladies down the street would say, "Well, that’s Ernest Junior Junior’s
boy!" and I’d run home and be amazed that these people down the street knew who his grandfather was. And
[my husband] goes, "Listen, we’ve been here a long time."
And so that really had an impact on me as a songwriter. I remember writing a group of songs that were
deeply about family. There’s a song called "Child Again," which I really wrote about my grandmother and
her later years. And a song called "Years." These songs got started when I still lived in Mobile. That was
between 1980 and ’84. They didn’t really get finished until like 1990, and then I did the first record on
Warner Brothers.
The way we ended up coming to Nashville was that I had stopped writing songs . . . Well, trying to put it in
a nutshell, I got married and then shortly after that I had an opportunity to make a record with Barry Beckett
producing in Muscle Shoals. So I went there and did a record, [then] went back to Mobile, didn’t even have
a manager, didn’t know what you do next. I had no idea what the process was about, except that I had a
wonderful experience making this record, playing with all the great guys at Muscle Shoals Sound. The record
comes out right about the same time "Disco Duck" hit, so this sensitive singer-songwriter, kinda Carole
King-ish album which was called "Hearing It First" came out and, you know, promptly did nothing.
And I was so devastated, thinking, "Well, I’m on a major label, I’m on Capitol Records, I had a
major producer, I had he greatest musicians on the world so it’s obviously my failure." Because all
those other things were in place.
And I wish I’d known someone in the business who could’ve said, "Well, you didn’t have a manager, you
didn’t have a PR person, you didn’t have a plan, nobody knows you put out this record!" I had a few little
perfunctory reviews in Billboard magazine, very positive.
A record deal is a baby step at best.
Yeah. I had no idea. So I took it all very personally. I completely decided, "I obviously have no business
doing this." Because the record cost over a hundred thousand to make - I didn’t understand that it was
my money that was being used. I didn’t understand anything!
So I went through this major crisis and didn’t write a song for two years for the first time in my life. Had a
baby, became really good at baking bread. I was having a wonderful time being a mother, so that was a
lovely distraction. And then, you know, I started making Play-Doh sculptures ’cause all this creative energy
didn’t have anywhere to go ’cause I wasn’t writing songs, and I’d be sitting there at three o’clock in the
morning trying to fix the nose on one of these little Play-Doh heads, you know. And I remember this one
night [chuckling] when my husband came in the kitchen and he put his hands on my shoulders, and he said,
"Honey, it’s time for you to start writing songs again."
And I burst into tears. It was like somebody connecting me to my root again. And he said, "I’ll help you.
It’ll take you about six months; you’ll write every day." We carved out time every day for me to write. The
first six months of songs were horrible but he was a great sounding board’ cause he’d been a writer and
he’d written poetry - not being a songwriter but just being a coach, you know. And then I started
writing some good songs.
Then I saw "Coal Miner’s Daughter". When I saw that movie . . . about the same time I saw "Coal Miner’s
Daughter" I got into Emmylou Harris’s first record, which brought me into a whole world of country music.
I’d never listened to country music. I didn’t know about all those great songwriters. I mean, I knew about
Patsy Cline but I didn’t follow that trail to who wrote this? and who wrote that? So I became very interested
in the art form of that kind of songwriting, which is really not an easy thing to do. The simpler the more
difficult, really.
And so connected to the Tin Pan Alley tradition of writing songs for people to sing, all kinds of
people to sing.
Exactly. And where you serve the song - you don’t serve the artist, you serve the song. My theory
is that all the songs are already written perfectly and they exist on shelves somewhere, and your
capacity to download them into the hole in the top of your head is equivalent to your sense of belief in that,
whether or not you ate your Wheaties, whether or not you read great works of writing and you feed that part
of yourself that needs nutrition. You can’t get nutrition from People magazine; you have to feed it with
deeply, well-written stuff. And there’s also variety in that. You don’t have to read something boring and dry
if you don’t get it just ’cause it’s well written, you know. Find something that you love.
Ever notice when you learn a new word bring a new word into your vocabulary or a new
name, the name of a writer or something - and the moment you’ve learned that, you hear it
everywhere.
Exactly.
Which seems to say it’s always been going around, you just haven’t been paying attention.
And songs and ideas come of their time. It’s not just you. It’s not just me in my little pea-brain and
my experience - there's a whole thing going on collectively. There’s a collective consciousness.
Many, many times there’s been a song written on one end of Music Row and the same title is being
written on the other end, and nobody knew anybody else was doing it.
In fact when I had this opportunity - because of "Strong Enough To Bend" I had an opportunity to
write a song for Willie Nelson, and I was so honoured to be called up by Fred Foster, who said, "Willie really liked that
song and he’s not writing right now and he’s doing a record with me, and we want you to write him a song."
And I’m like, "When do you need it by?" I was so excited. Then I hung up the phone and I went, "Oh shit!
Now I’ve gotta write a song for Willie!" [laughs]
But I had listened to him so much and was such a huge fan. And then I immediately got this title called
"There’s Nothing I Can Do About It Now," and for me to get the title first is really scary ’cause usually I
write from the sound of the melody, and then I kinda hear the sound of the vowels and I kinda hear the sound
of the consonants and then I think, "Oh, that’s what that’s called." Then I engage my brain, layers later. So
to come up with the title first and have to work backwards was really intimidating. But I thought it was a
great title. "There’s Nothing I Can Do About It Now" sort of encapsulated Willie’s way of just rolling with
the punches, and the way he goes through life, and you know, "Hey, sorry, I’m gonna move forward ."
And everywhere I went, every conversation, people would say, "Well, there’s nothing I can do about it
now," and I’d be hoping nobody would go, "Hey! That’s a great idea for a song," you know. I was so sure
somebody was gonna write that song out from under me. But thankfully they didn’t and I ended up writing it,
and it ended up being a hit for Willie. It was amazing.
But anyway . . . so after seeing "Coal Miner’s Daughter" and starting to listen to Emmylou Harris, my
writing took a focus: "I wanna learn to write these great three-chord country songs." And I didn’t so
much think of it in terms of, "This is what is what I wanna sing" or "I wanna be a country artist" - I
didn’t think I deserved the right to be an artist after that first record.
Wow, that really cut deep then.
It cut deep for a long time. And so moving to Nashville was a result of many months of writing, and then
my husband was trying to encourage me to send tapes: "Now that you’ve got these really cool songs" -
you know, with two or three songs that had really come together - "you’ve gotta send tapes." And I
kept putting it off ’cause I didn’t wanna be rejected. So we were both pretty heavy smokers at the
time and we had quit smoking a number of times and we were really doing good, and it was like the fourth
time we’d quit smoking. And one afternoon he came home and he said, "If you don’t have a postmarked
proof that you sent that tape to this address and this address and this address by Friday, I’m gonna start
smoking!"
What a threat!
And I knew if he started smoking again I was gonna start smoking again. [laughs] So the pressure was on,
and I sent a tape to Mac MacAnally, who’d been an old friend and played guitar on my album. I sent a tape
to Barry Beckett. I sent a tape to Roger Sovine at BMI, who I’d met through someone. And I sent a
tape to Joan Baez.
Joan Baez! How’d she get in there?
I don’t know, I got her address from someone. I didn’t hear back from Joan, but I did hear back from
everybody else and it was a shock to me. Mac called me and he said, "Hey, there’s some pretty good stuff on
here. There’s this new group called The Judds; they’re not signed yet but this song ‘Five Minutes’ that you
wrote really sounds like a hit to me [for them]." And I was just so glad he called me back and he remembered
who I was . . . see, I had such a low opinion of myself as an artist and a writer at that time. And then Roger
Sovine got back to me and he thought I should come to Nashville and start co-writing. He didn’t think I was
"there" as a writer at that time. But just having the feedback was great.
We made a trip to Nashville. I went and met with [former ASCAP representative] Tom Long, who was an
old friend of mine from Mobile. I sat in his office, I played this little three-song tape that I’d been going
around town playing for different people. I met with Cliff . . . can’t think of his last name . . . he had a new
publishing company. He wanted to give me $5,000 right on the spot for that song "Five Minutes."
He wanted to buy it from you?
Well, he wanted it would still be my song but he wanted to just own the publishing flat out. And
boy, I could really use that money, and I was like, ‘You know what, I think I may need to hold on to
that song ’cause I need to move to Nashville. I need to get a publishing deal, I need to get a salary, I need to
really get some help, you know."
Bob Beckham became interested. I mean I was talking to some really reputable, wonderful publishers. And
then I met with people at MTM. They were able to offer me more financially, which gave my family
more of a sense of security, so I went with MTM although I really would have loved to have worked
with Bob Beckham ’cause he was a great song man. And one of the other catalysts for moving to
town' cause after we sent the tape and started getting positive feedback I still wasn’t really ready to
move and then one night I was singing at the Riverview Plaza Hotel, which was where I sang for
two years instead of going to college! - and the Beach Boys were playing in town. And one of the
Beach Boys was sitting right in front of me all night. I didn’t even know it was him. It was Bruce
Johnston who plays keyboards for them. The rest of the Beach Boys were going up and down the
elevator across the lobby and I kept looking over there going, "Wow, that’s the Beach Boys, that’s
cool!" Little did I know that one of them was sitting right in front of me, and at the end of my set.
Didn’t he write "I Write The Songs"?
He did! And he came over to me and he goes, ‘You know, I wrote "I Write The Songs."’ And I’m like,
"Oh, really." I totally thought he was just, you know, blowing smoke. And he said, "Yes. First of all, your
speakers are totally out of phase." And I’m like, "Who is this guy? Who does he think he is?" And he goes,
"I’m with the Beach Boys, I play keyboard." And all of a sudden I looked at him and I went, "Oh my God,
yes. This is really the guy."
And he said, "Okay. The last set, you played two songs that were hits, okay? I don’t even remember which
ones. Doesn’t matter. So I’m gonna tell you one thing: you will not get anywhere here. So you need to either
move to L.A. or New York or Nashville, as soon as possible, and just go for it. Goodnight."
And I was like [stunned expression]. So I go home, it’s like two o’clock in the morning, and I literally wake
my husband up and go, "We’re moving to Nashville!" ’Cause it was the closest.
It sounds like everything you were doing was bringing you into contact with good people, though.
Oh yeah. I was very guided and very fortunate. And moving to town, the whole thing unfolded. But I still
was extremely . . . I know why I didn’t get signed as an artist right away, because I didn’t think I deserved
to be an artist. It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you don’t think you’re deserving of that spot on
the stage - if you don’t step all the way into your shoes as an artist - you will never be all that you
can be given whatever talent that you have. There’s a lot of people with talent, and then there are
people with even more talent who don’t make it because they have that fear. So one of the things that I talk
about a great deal when I teach is how to deal with the fear.
You’re not gonna get rid of it but you have to relate to it differently. So I have all these tricks and tools and
stuff for how to realise your fear is along for the ride, and just don’t let it behind the wheel. The fear actually
has to ride in the trunk [laughs].
I have this whole scenario, it’s called Taking A Ride With The Family. When you set off on the journey of
writing a song it’s like getting in a car, and you don’t know where you’re going. And you might have some
distinguishing things, like you might decide you’re gonna drive an SUV or you might decide you’re gonna
drive a Maserati that day, and that might have to do with whether or not you’re thinking, "Maybe this’ll be a
pop song, maybe this’ll be a country song." But your creative spirit and your muse gets behind the wheel,
and the critic - which is a very important part of the process of finishing a songs - its in the front
seat with duct tape over its mouth. And then you have The Whiner, and the whiner is the part of
you that goes [whiny voice], "I don’t know, I just can’t do this," you know, about halfway through the
morning when you’re trying to write and you just go, "Aw yeah, this isn’t going anywhere, I’m gonna go play
golf or, you know, watch TV." That part of you is also along for the ride.
So, you know, be a parent. Let the muse be the parent and you give the crybaby a lollipop and you make
sure that you’ve locked the childproof windows, and just let it whine and wait it out. All these things I didn’t
know when I first moved to town. I was overwhelmed with the amount of talent that was here. I was like,
"Oh, what was I thinking?" I lost my voice for about four or five months. It was just stress and fear. I’d be
sitting there at the Slice of Life, which was this restaurant that was popular a few years back, and the waitress
would come over to take your food order, and she’d wander off writing things down and she’d be singing
something and have the most amazing voice. That was like the third day I was here and I remember looking
at my husband and going, "Did you hear that? I mean, she’s a waitress - did you hear her voice? And he
was like, "You’ve got to stop comparing yourself."
All the psychology he could use on me didn’t go very far. I just had to dig my heels in and get through my
own brick walls that I’d put up for myself. I worked with a voice teacher here named Gerald Arthur, who
really helped me a lot, remembering how to sing with my speaking voice, which is the most effortless way
you can sing. My whole experience with Gerald was, he was like, "Don’t sing! You have a really good
speaking voice; don’t sing." I was like [perplexed], "But I’m here to learn to sing!" He goes, "No, you’re not.
You’re here to communicate. You’re gonna communicate with your voice in the most profound way; just get
out of the way of it."
And that analogy fit for everything I was going through. Fit for my songwriting - you know, I had to
just get out of my own way, and that is always . . . if you’re stuck, it’s usually you in the way.
Let’s talk about these healing songs again. Obviously "Sand And Water" is an amazing song and
one that many people immediately connect to you, and I know that came out of possibly the most
stressful time in your life. Now some people are totally paralysed going through emotional trauma.
they become totally non-creative or just have to shut down until later on but that didn’t seem to
happen with you.
Well no, I had periods of time when I shut down. When my second record was just getting ready to come
out on Warner Brothers . . . we had just finished mixing, I was slated to go - this was like early 1993 - I was
slated to go on tour with Dan Fogelberg and have a summer release and a big campaign, you know. At this
point I’d had a little bit of success as a songwriter and Ernest, who’d been working various jobs in the mental
health industry around here, finally was able to quit his job and concentrate fully on some creative things he
wanted to do, some writing and publishing - doing my publishing, which was great - and sort of being Mr.
Mom. And right about the time that he was able to quit his job, within a few months, he was diagnosed with
a very rare form of lymphoma and given about six weeks to live. And so our whole world fell upside down.
During the year before we even knew he was sick there was this group of songs that I started writing. They
were really strong, like "Seven Shades Of Blue" on the Sand And Water album. There’s about four or five of
them on the Sand And Water album. And one of the things we liked to do was get a little shot of Grand
Marnier and go into the music and I would play him things I was like halfway through writing, things I was
working on. I would play him these little bits of these songs and he just thought they were like, "This is
gonna be the best stuff you’ve ever written." And he said, "What are you writing it about?" and I’d be like,
"I don’t know." And the first verse of "Seven Shades Of Blue," he said, "That sounds like when we first met"
and I said, "Yeah! I know."
But then the chorus says, "We hold it all for a little while, don’t we/Kiss the dice, taste the rain like little
knives upon our tongue/We can do no wrong when the lights go on and the music plays/And we take the
stage like we own the place/As if time were cheap and the night forever young." And this whole thing about
time slipping away and how precious life is and how we think we’re just gonna live forever and then . . . you
know, we hold it all for a little while, meaning we have the sense of immortality for a while and then
eventually we realise we don’t get to live forever. And he just thought that was the most powerful thing I’d
ever written. This is like a year before he was diagnosed. And there were other songs like that.
And what I’ve noticed over the years is the tendency to write ahead of some things, you know. When I
don’t really know where it’s coming from I’ve learned to not try to figure out where it’s coming from; just let
it seep up. And when I wrote "Sand And Water," it was about a month after his death. He lived about
eighteen months and that was an extremely intense, powerful, devastating but also really profoundly magical
time. Life became magical when the idea of death was actually not a rumour anymore. It lights everything
differently, and to this day it still does. You know, all the thing we went through and, when he finally passed,
the place that he was at and the way that he let go, and just the amazing qualities of that.
How old was your son?
He was 12 going on 13. That’s when your father archetypically is supposed to take you out in the woods
and teach you how to hunt. And there he was, gone.
So I wrote the song "Sand And Water" about a month he passed. He and Rodney Crowell had become
really good friends and I think he told Rodney to be sure and keep checking in on me and don’t let me not
write for too long. And after he died I just could not imagine how anybody would want to hear me get up and
sing any more, because I didn’t know how I would ever sing without just crying. So I sort of shut down and
kind of got very still. I mean I was sort of on automatic pilot for about a year. I didn’t really cry. I just was
like trying to be there for my son and just trying to get through that year.
So when Rodney calls me up one day and he says, "I wanna come by, and maybe we’ll write a song or
something," I’m like, "Oh great, I’m so rusty!" So I pull out my guitar, and I hadn’t even picked up the guitar
but when Rodney Crowell’s coming over you better tune the sucker, you know. So this whole thing . . . I just
happened to be near a tape recorder and I turned it on, and the whole song almost came out perfectly written.
And I remember thinking it didn’t make any sense. There’s a line in there about "sand and water and a
million years gone by," you know that line that’s kind of a brain twister. I had no idea what that meant when
I wrote it. You know that whole thing - I didn’t write it, I just wrote it down? I felt extremely guided and I
felt surrounded by assistance in writing that song.
I’ve had that feeling and I’ve become more comfortable with it when it’s happened subsequently. That was
the first time I really could feel it and acknowledge it, you know. And Rodney comes over and I played him
the song and I said, "I wanna play you this just ’cause I’m not sure it makes any sense; it’s probably too personal and too
sad and I probably won’t ever take it out of the house." And I played the song and he said, "Not only are you
gonna take that out of the house, you’ll never finish hearing how many people that song will help. It’ll never
be over." And I just thought, "Really? I don’t know." And he goes, "Trust me."
And almost a year later I was ready to record and Rodney, my good friend, was helping me figure out who
to get to produce the record. And he was setting me up meetings with people and, you know, helping me find
the right producer, and all of a sudden I just picked up the phone one day and I went, "Rodney, this is so
stupid - you need to produce this record with me." It was so obvious. So we went in the studio and it was an
incredible experience. The first few days of recording that record I spent absolutely sobbing in the studio.
Got nothing on tape. I’m like, "Oh great, you know, now I’m gonna fall apart, now that I’ve got studio time
and a producer and a band, these great musicians." I was like, "You know what, I think we need to just come
back in a month." And Rodney, to his credit, he goes, "No. No, you have to sit right in this studio at whatever
it is per day and cry and wade through this. And when you get on the other side of this wall of tears you’re
gonna have some of the most amazing performances you’ve ever experienced." And I was like, "I don’t think
so," you know.
But four days later I finally was just so exhausted from crying every day, and I came in there and that song,
"Seven Shades Of Blue" was the first one I got on tape. I said, "You know, I’m gonna try something
different. I’m just gonna close my eyes and picture myself going through my house picking up laundry, and
get my head out of my situation and let my heart sing what this song has to say. In other words, just let the
song be what it is without me in the middle of it. And so I put myself at the microphone . . . closed my eyes,
started strumming it and got a nice big pink laundry basket and went through my house room by room
picking up clothes, while my body sang the song. And that’s the performance that’s on that record.
I’d been doing it for three days trying to get through it - I knew it really well, so I was not consciously
aware of what I was doing when I was singing. I didn’t know if I was singing in tune. I mean, I completely
evaporated away from the part of me that was singing the song, and that to me is the same thing that happens
in writing when you get your ego out of the way, get your brain out of the way, get your "I wonder if Faith
Hill will cut this song" thing out of the way and you allow this thing to happen. It’s so natural and effortless,
and doesn’t need you.
There is something universal that runs through you.
Absolutely, it’s called divine intervention. And I don’t care what your religious background is, I don’t care
what you believe or don’t believe - if you have a belly button and you’re breathing, you have a hole in the top
of your head and in it will pour divine intervention. I think all of us who create art - which is all of us; some of us do it for a living and some of us don’t - every
manifestation of artistic expression is sort of like the groundwork of healing.
At the other extreme you have songs like "This Kiss," which couldn’t be lighter and fluffier and yet
is a terrific song. It certainly did its job; people responded to it.
Oh yeah.
And that was a tri-write, so that came out of a whole different creative process.
That came from me and Annie [Roboff] and Robin [Lerner]. And the interesting thing about that song is
there were three people healing on a beach. I was a widow. Annie was very much focusing on her career, you
know - not in any kind of crisis but certainly in a place where she wasn’t in a relationship, she was just nose
to the grindstone. And Robin was going through a divorce. So we had a widow, a career woman and a
divorcee - none of whom had been kissed in a really long time! And then we had this great melody and this thing just went beep! But if you read into the lines of that song
- even though it’s lightly put, you know . . . "Cinderella said to Snow White/All I wanted was a white knight"
. . . "It’s the way you love me" - it’s very much about just that moment of falling in love with someone and
finding the right kiss and stuff. It’s certainly not a deep song and yet paints a deep picture of that ascension
into love.
No, it’s very romantic, very well-crafted and it works. But it’s just so totally at the other end of the
spectrum from what we’ve just been talking about.
Well, you know, so’s Latin! [laughs] See, I’ve always just been fascinated by great songwriting no matter
what style it comes from.
What do you look at that’s going on today among young artists coming up that lights your fire? John
Mayer?
I think that the song is alive and well in artists like John Mayer. I think we go through periods of time
where songs get obscured a little bit by the sounds of records or the production. There was a thing in the ’80s
where there weren’t as many great songs but there were these big records and stuff like that, but I don’t think
the song ever completely loses its pulse in the fabric of our society. And if nobody’s writing new songs then
they’re digging out the old ones and redoing them. And, to me, to write a song that goes beyond my
generation would be the greatest thing in terms of my ego being satisfied. I think that would be incredible.
You’ve done that already.
Well, I hope so. I don’t know. We don’t know till after I die, do we? [laughs]
And the other thing too is that it happened again. Four years ago, you know, I went through breast cancer
and the entire album that I had just finished literally the last day of mixing, I was diagnosed - the whole
album, if you listen to it, you would swear that I wrote it after going through breast cancer, ’cause there’s a
tremendous amount in the spirit of those songs about pushing past fear and getting through difficult stuff and
staying positive.
It’s just amazing how it worked out ’cause my treatments were such that I lost my hair all through the fall
when all the leaves came off the trees, and then in the spring, when leaves were coming back on the trees, my
hair started growing back in. So I’m sitting there on my couch - I thought I was gonna be touring my new
record and instead I’m sitting there going through breast cancer and going, "What’s this about?" And the
song that gave me the most comfort, which I’d written two years before, was "Every December Sky," which
is about trusting that you’re gonna come out of the darkness back into light. It says, "Every December Sky
must lose its faith in leaves/And dream of the spring inside the trees/How heavy the empty heart, how light
the heart that’s full/Sometimes I have to trust what I can’t know."
It’s like I could have written the song to sing me to get me through the fear of "God, I can’t believe I’m
going through this, it’s never gonna end" and, you know, the fear of death and all the things that are in the
winter. And inside the trees, the spring is just waiting.
Copyright Songwriter Magazine, International Songwriters & Larry Wayne Clark: All Rights Reserved
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