|
|
News
Latest
Features Sonny Days Sunday, July 13, 2008 Guitarist Sonny Landreth’s Latest Album Features Some High Profile Guests. By Brian Wise
One of the highlights of this year’s trip to New Orleans for Jazz Fest was an unscheduled visit to Margaritaville on Decatur Street, to see club owner Jimmy Buffett in a ‘secret’ warm-up gig (he was at the Fairgrounds two days later).
Buffett’s bonhommie has certainly built him a huge and devoted audience of ‘Parrotheads’ and his clubs, novels, gigs and recordings have made him a very,very wealthy man. For someone who gets little commercial radio airplay and whose greatest hits were well into decades past Buffett has fashioned a remarkable cottage industry.
Along the way he has also found time to champion of Louisiana slide guitarist Sonny Landreth, who provided the highlight of the evening by guesting on guitar, including on his own song ‘USS Zydecoldsmobile’ (which Buffett actually recorded on his 2002 album Far Side Of The World).
As you might expect at Jazz Fest time, Sonny popped up seemingly everywhere – with his own band at The Rock ‘n’ Bowl and at The House Of Blues and other gigs, or as a special guest at other shows.
Yet despite his almost ubiquitous presence on the Louisiana music scene, surprisingly Landreth is yet to tour Australia. Even a career that began more than two decades ago - you can even get a re-released version of his 1981 album Blues Attack, recorded at JD Miller’s studio in Crowley, Louisiana - and has included work with Clifton Chenier’s band and as John Hiatt’s backing band The Goners, has not been enough to put Landreth on the radar here, despite a long-held desire to tour Australia. Landreth’s extensive CV also includes names such as Leslie West, Junior Wells, Mark Knopfler, Dolly Parton, Beausoleil, John Mayall and Marshall Crenshaw.
For too long Landreth has been a ‘musician’s musician’ but his new album From The Reach is set to change that and maybe even create more demand fro him to visit some of our more prominent roots music festivals. The album features not only Jimmy Buffett but also Eric Clapton, Mark Knopler, Dr John, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson and Vince Gill. There is also a guest spot from singer Nadirah Shakoor who we saw singing in Buffett’s band. It is an impressive guest list.
Landreth spent a year writing the songs and then another year putting the album together – something that required him to complete the basic tracks with engineer Tony Daigle who then sent the mixes to the various guests to contribute their parts. The exceptions were the songs with Vince Gill and Dr john, recorded in Nashville and New Orleans respectively. (The final stereo mixes feature Landreth in the left channel and the other players in the right).
If ever Sonny Landreth had a shot at expanding his audience this is certainly his best shot. From June to October he and his band (bassist Dave Ranson, drummer Michael Burch and keyboardist Steve Conn) will be undertaking a 40-date plus US tour before heading to Europe. The tour includes the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Calgary Folk Festival, as well as a number of other minor festivals.
“He’s always trying to help out,” says Landreth when I mention that Jimmy Buffett is certainly trying to raise the guitarist’s profile. “He actually called me a while back, trying to think of a way to help us, especially with a new album out. So we did one show, me and my band, where we came out a did a couple of songs mid-way threw his show. He introduced us to everyone and we played keeping their attention - because they are there for Jimmy Buffet and to drink beer and tequila - so anything other than that is kind of a stretch. But it seemed to go pretty good and we’re going to do a few more of those shows.”
“He is the master at having fun,” continues Landreth, “and he’ll tell you he is great at inventing his own myth. But within all of that he has written all these great songs, he’s got a way of centering himself around other great people and pulling people together. Its fun to be part of that.”
“The crowd is ……..not unlike the Deadhead crowd but completely different in how they follow him around. He’s created his own market, in fact. It almost doesn’t matter if he has an album out or not or is getting any radio play. He’s just got his own world, I have to admire that.”
Buffett appears with Dr John on the song ‘Howlin’ Moon’, which Landreth says he originally wrote with the Doctor in mind.
“That was one of the two songs I had already written before this project,” he explains, “and I always heard Doctor John on it – and the nature of the lyrics made quiet a departure from the rest of the album. Having Jimmy on board was perfect. I told him about the song and he said he was really into to doing it and I thought pairing him up with Doctor John would be a really cool thing vocally and also for the vibe.”
“It was hard to do because of everyone’s schedules,” explains Landreth, “the beauty of the Pro Tools Format is that you can be anywhere. You had to be able to capture that moment emotionally to have it be able to work and that was our job, myself and the band. I sent the files out to and pretty much everyone. Eric and Mark were coming off long tours and they wanted to be home with their family and also they use their studios and their engineers. So it worked out really well.
The concept of getting some of his well-known friends to help him out had been on Landreth’s mind for some years and when I ask him what the final impetus for the project was he responds that ‘it just felt like that right time.’
“Eric Clapton is one of my original guitar heroes when I was a kid,” he volunteers and adds that his only concern was the approach he would take to the concept and the fact that he didn’t want it to sound clichéd.
“That’s where I got the idea to write the songs individually for each artist,” he explains, “to put a different twist on it. That excited me as a songwriter and was a real challenge. I had the advantage of being really familiar with all their work and used that again to get it right with the vibe in the studio. I think a combination of all of that made it a lot easier for them to be able to jump in.”
“I just asked them all,” he laughs, when I ask him how he managed to get all these heavyweights on his album. “Nothing to loose. The other thing that was really inspirational was how enthusiastic everyone was and really wanted to do it. I had heard from other people who had done guest like projects with stars, how they would say ‘yeah’ but then management would get involved and then the labels and red tape and it would take forever. But really it went off with out a hitch. Everyone jumped in, got on board and I got the tracks back and it was incredible. I actually had no problems at all.”
“I’m still pretty speechless over that!” he laughs when I mention the fact that getting players such as Clapton on the album is also really a tribute to the respect they have for him.
“I worked doing both the Crossroads festivals for Eric Clapton and that was a really good opportunity to talk to him and ask him. Vince Gill was there that day as well and I could hit them all up and get some of them on the one spot! I just really had a lot of fun and really pushed me and help me stretch out a lot more. It was a bit of a kick in the pants for me as well.”
“I felt the need to come up with the material worthy of these great players,” says Landreth about the songwriting process for the album, which took place over the course of a year, on and off tour.
“I was up writing ‘Way Past Home’ for Robben Ford - that is one of the last ones I finished,” he says. “But I have to tell you embarrassingly enough, there were still lyrics I was changing right up before going into mastering.”
“I imagined being right next to them playing with them,” he continues. “The thing that helped me there is that I had worked with some of them or worked on their sessions with them so I could kind of tap into that, as it were. That way they could hear what I was doing and play off that. In some cases when it came back I would change some of what I did to work better with them.
“I think as long as you keep it honest and the things that you are changing are for the better to improve the song itself well that’s the deal. But it really was all about the songs - also in that way as much for me as a tribute to them if anything else.”
“With Mark, he was asking me about the song [‘Blue Tarp Blues’] and I said, ‘What would happen if ‘Sultans of Swing’ meets ‘King of Zydeco’ - something like that. Definitely the song influenced me to capture the mood for topic - the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He has always had a connection with New Orleans and is a huge music fan. It was just a natural fit.
“With Eric [Clapton] in particular, and ‘Storm Of Worry,’ there was a song back in the Bluesbreakers day on the Bluesbreakers album with John Mayall called it ‘Double Crossin’ Time.’ I was amazed because I didn’t say anything about it to him and one of my favourite moments was when he did a counter melody during my solo like he did during the verses of on ‘Double Crossin’ Time’ sounds kind of like a cello, you get an amazing sounds and he was doing something like that on this take, and I just live for that it a was a real magical moment.”
“I first met him in Colorado in 1975,” he says of Robben Ford, giving a clue to just how long Landreth has been playing music. “I jammed with him one night in this club in Colorado. At the time he was working with Tom Scott and the LA Express, coming off of that and collaborating with Larry Carlton and he did Miles Of Aisles with Joni Mitchell and I saw him with George Harrison in Denver on the George Harrison Tour. He’s one of my favourite players of all time and we started doing shows together in the ‘90s and got to be friends. I definitely wanted to included him because his one of my all time favourites.”
Country superstar Vince Gill is probably the most unusual guest on From The Reach, though he fits in perfectly.
“People don’t realise what a great musician he is,” says Landreth. “Mark [Knopfkler] and I were talking about this a couple of years ago. Mark said, ‘The guy can just play anything he picks up, anything!’ He’s a really extraordinary player. People are familiar with his voice but they don’t realise what a great picker he is. He plays several instruments. I want to do an instrumental album and there was a real fast, hot instrumental that I wanted to get to do with Vince but we just ran out of time: so I’m looking forward to getting back to that next time around.”
From The Reach is available through Shock Records.
|