Allison Moorer
SESAC Focus Magazine, 2006
Nashville has long cultivated its reputation as a writer’s town. And like all towns, this one divides into neighborhoods. Never mind its thriving jazz, rock and hip-hop scenes; the country music community alone encompasses two distinctive domains. One clusters around Music Row, where facile tunesmiths churn out material with clever wordplay, earworm riffs, and lyrics that celebrate hot women and hard-drinkin’ guys, each one with a beer in one hand and an American flag in the other. It’s a testimony to their craftsmanship that year after year they somehow wring more of this stuff from this wearying formula.
The other side is home to a less commercial breed, exemplified by Sturgill Simpson, who famously opened his guitar case and started busking outside the Bridgestone Arena in 2017, wherein the seasonal stars of country music celebrated themselves at the CMA Music Festival.
A narrow strip runs along the border between these worlds. Now and then someone crosses it while changing residences – folks like Kacey Musgraves, for instance, or Margo Price. It hosts some permanent residents too — performers and writers that both sides honor.
Allison Moorer has long lived here. Her track record as a writer compares with many on Music Row, with Trisha Yearwood covering “Softly and Tenderly,” Miranda Lambert doing “A Soft Place to Fall” and Kenny Chesney recording “I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” She has also composed more personal works, whose eloquence owes much to horrific incidents from her childhood, most especially her father murdering her and then taking his own life.
When we spoke in 2006, her album Getting Somewhere was about to drop. Because this assignment came from the performing rights organization SESAC, with whom Moorer’s songs are registered, our conversation would focus on new material. I got ready by scribbling notes while playing its ten tracks. But I also reviewed much of her earlier material, to see how Getting Somewhere fit into a broader perspective – or maybe departed from it. From there, the work involved listening to her for clues that might open an unexpected path. This, for me, is the most exhilarating part of interviewing, where improvisation takes over from research.
One last thing: Moorer recently made a career move unlike any I’ve seen from any performer or writer. In May the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum put her on salary as a staff journalist and editor. She even has her own cubicle! And why not? She knows the subject matter. And, as her lyrics and our dialog illustrate, she has a way with words.
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This seems like a positive record overall.
I do think it’s hopeful – obviously more hopeful than the ones I’ve done previously. That is not all there is to it, however. If you dig a little deeper, you’ll find plenty of dark stuff there, for anyone who wants to find it. I wrote the record over ten months last year. I was going through a lot of emotional and spiritual changes, trying to figure out why I was in the place I was in and why I had been unhappy for a while. That requires a lot of work, and a lot of that is reflected in the album. At the end of the day, we can’t really expect artists to do anything other than express themselves, because that’s what art is. So that’s what I tried to do.
It’s a very direct album. I am a direct person. When I can gather up the gumption to actually communicate with somebody, I tend to be very direct about it. I’ve been told I’m a really bad communicator except for on the stage [laughs]. But it’s a reflection of where I was. I have no idea what the next record will be like. It may turn dark. I don’t know. It just depends. I have to say, though, that this is the best record I’ve ever done. It’s the best writing I’ve ever done. And it was my first time writing a whole record by myself. That was a major step as well.
You’ve mentioned that all an artist can do is to present herself honestly through her work. How do you balance that against the obligation to reach people, so that they can hear themselves as well as you in this music?
I just try to make it something that I like musically. I always start there. Lyrically, my goal on this album was to be as conversational as possible. I’m a fan of great writing, but I think there’s all different kinds of great writing. Songs aren’t literature – they can be, but when you’re trying to get into someone’s head, you have to be as direct and simple as possible. It wasn’t that hard for me because I tend to be that way anyway. I have a college degree. I can certainly pretty stuff up and use big words and lots of adjectives and adverbs. But I don’t really see the need to do that in pop songwriting. I’m not trying to write at anybody. I’m not trying to sing at anybody. I’m just trying to tell a story or express a feeling. They’re all passing things too; we can’t forget that. Feelings are just feelings. They come and go. If all of a sudden you decide to write about your feelings, you need to decide how long it’s going to last and if it’s really worth writing about.
Personal songs are different in nature from American songbook repertoire. How do you compare them?
They’re totally different. If you’re talking about a standard, for instance “Fly Me to the Moon,” you’re not dealing with something that includes the personal details of whoever wrote the song, so anybody can sing it. If you take a song like the first track on the second disc of Wilco’s Being There – I think the name of that song is “Sunken Treasure” – you can’t do that in a bar. It’s not going to apply. It’s too personal. It’s too detailed to, probably, Jeff Tweedy’s life. There’s a big difference in the liberties taken by writers who come from what I call the new model. The old model is Gershwin, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, Steve [Earle, Moorer’s husband at the time] – people who tell stories that apply to a lot of people’s lives. The new model tends to put in certain details: “My cat is named Henry. Today I went to 7-Eleven.” That’s not to say that anybody can’t relate to them, but if you’re talking about songs that will stand the test of time and be here in fifty years, I’d go with the old model.
Steve Earle, you’re saying, is an old-model guy, but he’s written some things that are based on current headlines.
Yes, but he doesn’t write from a place of self-indulgence. These songs are very personal to him, but he knows how to put them in language that allows people in. His songs are like looking through a window. Some new-model songs are like looking through a pinhole.
It’s a more journalistic approach. Have you always written from a personal standpoint?
When I started writing songs, I was very generic because I grew up listening to the great songwriters in country music, like Harlan Howard – people who were writing songs for people to cut to get onto the radio. They couldn’t write “Marie.” They couldn’t get that poignant and personal. And, as an aside, just so you know, I don’t think Randy Newman is new model. These were great songs. There was a lot of artistic merit to these songs. And they might have come out of a personal feeling. But they did not exist as a vehicle for the person who wrote them. That’s a big difference. Today, you have the singer/songwriter. That used to not be the case: You had the songwriters and the singers. The singer/songwriter is sort of a new thing, so you can be much more self-indulgent. If you listen to a record by Conor Oberst – you know, Bright Eyes – and a singer came in and said, “I want to cut a Conor Oberst song,” it would be like, “I can’t really sing this song because it’s too personal.” Those songs exist as vehicles for Bright Eyes. They don’t necessarily stand by themselves as songs.
Flying Solo
Your growth and maturity as a songwriter was almost ideal in that you started with the works of craftsmen and adapted that into writing from a personal point of view. More specifically about this album, did you decide from the start that you wanted to work this time without collaborators?
I decided that I wanted to write without collaborators. After I did The Duel [in 2004] I felt I wanted to do the bulk of the writing for my next album on my own, just because I was hitting a place where I felt that I wanted to express myself by myself. I didn’t know how it was going to play out. I didn’t know I was going to get a divorce [from first husband Doyle Lee “Butch” Prinn, in 2005]. But it’s funny how those things happened and went hand in hand. That shined a light on what was really going on. Now, I stand totally behind the work I did with Butch. We did some really good work together – some possibly great work. But I’m doing this now.
Maybe it’s a transitional thing to let go of the idea of collaboration, for a moment or maybe longer, to see what you can do on your own.
Yeah. Even if I had fallen flat on my face with this record, and everyone said “this is terrible, she should never write by herself,” it was important for me to do.
You wrote in all kinds of places, including in a bus outside of a gig, for this album. Apparently this record had a very spontaneous approach.
“If you’re an artist, your art comes first. And that’s absolutely okay.”
I had to do it when I could do it. There were some stretches of getting up and writing every day but not many. That was new too. I had never written on the road before. I just had to grab it and do it when I could. That took a lot of discipline. Some people can’t do it because they have to have their environment the way they want it. I’ve been guilty of that as well, where I can’t sit down and write because all my ducks aren’t in a row. It’s become clear to me, in the past eighteen months, that if you’re an artist, your art comes first. And that’s absolutely okay. It’s a little different for women because we are caretakers. Why are there so many more men musicians and songwriters than women? It’s because somebody has to take care of those people. I hate to say it, but it’s true. I’ve been guilty of letting my partner’s art come before mine. “Oh, you’re writing? Let me fix dinner.” I still fall into that pattern, but if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that it’s okay for my art to come before anything else, because I am an artist and I insist on living that way.
That self-assertiveness, proclaiming your creative independence, is evident in some of these new songs.
It was hard-won, a hard lesson to learn. I let go of a lot of time. I let a lot of time go by without asserting myself artistically. And I’m sorry I did. I’ve got no regrets, but I have to look at that because it’s something that I need to learn.
This record seems to be inspired by Sixties pop music. A lot of it has catchy, solid songs and classic traditions. Were you drawing from different influences for this sound that you had on earlier records?
Musically, I’m a sponge. It’s ridiculous to talk about my influences because I hear something one or two times and it’s there, in my brain. That’s one reason why I get called to sing backgrounds on stuff: I’m really fast because my mind works in a way that allows me to remember tunes really quickly. But you’re right on when you use that Sixties pop reference. I didn’t realize it at first. I had half the record written and I went, “All these songs are really short! I like that! I think I’ll stick with that.” And I ended up with a thirty-minute record, and I dig the shit out of that because records have gotten too long. Just because people have seen that you can put seventy-four minutes of music on a CD, that doesn’t mean you’ve got to use all seventy-four. You don’t have to use all eighty-eight keys on the piano, even though they’re there. But I’ve been exposed to a lot of that kind of music. My mother was a pop music fan. She graduated high school in 1962, so I used to listen to her stack of 45s: the Beatles, the Everly Brothers. It probably all comes out in a convoluted way, but that’s good because it ends up being me.
It also comes out in little musical snippets that nod in one way or another. After the U2 guitar intro, I began thinking that the rhythm feel was like “Good Day Sunshine” from the Beatles, and then in the first line you’ve got the word “sunshine.”
I didn’t think about “Good Day Sunshine”; that didn’t hit me as a reference. I hear the U2 thing in the beginning, but it’s there for a second and then it turns into something totally different, which I dig. I definitely hear a Beatles influence. You can’t escape that. That’s what we aspire to. Oh, it sounds like the Beatles? I’m so sorry [laughs]! I’ll have to work on that. I had a real thing about this too. I could probably dig up something that anything sounds like. There are only thirteen notes in the scale, so you’re going to hit on someone else’s note at some point.
There are elements of Neil Young here too, in the musical vibe of “Hallelujah,” which suggests “Helpless.” “New Year’s Day” even sounds a bit like “Southern Man.”
I would definitely count Neil as an influence. I’ve spent a lot of hours listening to his records. If I were going to emulate another artist, he would definitely be on the list. He conducts himself with grace, and at the same time he’s not afraid to put himself out there. He’s still vital today. He still takes risks. He’s still not afraid to piss people off. He’s a musical genius, if you will, and I don’t use that term lightly. He has the gift of being able to get right into your heart, within five or six words or notes. That’s an amazing gift.
Back to the Apple
You moved to New York while you were working on this project.
We were about two-thirds of the way through it. We rented an apartment there in May of 2005. We didn’t actually move in until July because we were in Spain. So I did write some of the record in that apartment. Incidentally, the apartment is on the street that Bob Dylan is walking down on the cover of The Freewheeling Bob Dylan, with Suze Rotolo.
What will this move to New York do for you as an artist?
The great thing about New York is that it quite possibly may keep you on your toes. Everybody who moves to New York as a young person moves there to make it. There’s that energy. You see them on the street. They’re carrying their guitars. And you’re like, “You know what? That’s who’s here to kick my ass.” That inspires me. There’s an energy about the city. And culturally, there’s no better place. It’s great to be here. Picasso said that inspiration likes to find you working, or something like that. You can sit around and wait all day for inspiration, but if you’re lazy it’s probably not going to come to you. You have to stay and practice. That’s one thing that’s great about New York: It reminds me to not get lazy.
Your description of people coming to town and seeking success with guitars in hand could be applied as well to Nashville.
For Nashville, it’s music. For New York City, it’s visual artists, filmmakers, actors, singers, theater people, playwrights … It’s so varied. That’s great because you can draw from those different things. You can see the best theater in the world in New York. It may be something that spurs you on.
Maybe, as you’re surrounded by these vivid people and places, your writing might become more narrative, more oriented toward characters and stories.
We’ll see. There is one story song on the record: “How She Does It.” But that’s pretty biographical. I didn’t know, when I started it, that the character was my mother, but I figured it out pretty quickly. I don’t really excel at making stuff up. It’s not that I lack imagination, it’s because there’s so much good material in the world, why would you start making shit up [laughs]?
That is a powerful song, as is “New Year’s Day.” It’s surely no accident that they’re sequenced as they are.
That’s right.
It’s a sobering, moving account, and it’s wonderful that you write about it somewhat abstractly. The darkness and shadows are implied rather than shoved to the front of the lyric.
I’m proud of that song. At the end of the day, it’s about my sister [singer/songwriter Shelby Lynne] and me. It exists to explain our relationship in that a lot of times in our lives we’ve been the only thing the other one had to hold onto. We’ve spent a lot of years clinging to and leaning on each other.
And it’s no accident that “Where You Are” follows “How She Does It,” because that pursues the same relationship in a different light.
Exactly.
“I wanted to write a song about my mother that allows her to get away. I didn’t want her to die again.”
“How She Does It” fits into that tradition of surprise endings, with something as simple as the turn of a car wheel.
That’s how life goes. You never know: Do I turn right? Do I turn left? Do I not turn at all? But my main reason for writing this song is that I wanted to write a song about my mother that allows her to get away. I didn’t want her to die again. I felt like, when I wrote it, “Whew! Now I don’t have to write about her dying anymore.” I’ve exorcized that need to keep writing about her death. And I let her go. She’s been gone almost twenty years – it’ll be twenty years next week. But I was ready to do it. And it was huge emotionally.
This is a significant song, then, in your catalog.
Absolutely, and it’s fun to play. It started musically because I wanted to write something in an open B tuning, which I’d never done.
How do your worlds in Nashville and New York differ?
I’m pretty good at creating the environment I want to create in my own home, regardless of where I am. The difference is that I can walk down the street and see a same-sex couple holding hands. I like that. That should happen anywhere in the world; unfortunately, it doesn’t. And Nashville doesn’t exactly embrace its gay community. In New York there are so many types of people and cultures and ethnicities. But you can go two weeks in Nashville and never even see a person who’s not white, unless you’ve got domestic help. It’s just pitiful. I don’t want to live in that isolated way anymore. I see so many people living in fear. I prefer to be out there. That’s the main difference.
Have you and Steve been writing together, even though you characterize yourself as new-school and him as old-school in your approaches?
I don’t really consider myself new-school; I’m pretty old-school. We co-wrote one song on this album, “Fair Weather,” simply because he heard me working on it through the wall. He came running into the room and said, “What is that?” This was early on, probably the third or fourth song I wrote for the record. He said, “You’ve got to finish that because we need it!” And I went “oh, shit” and clammed up. I ended up not being able to finish it because he really freaked me out about it. Our relationship was really new, and I was a little intimidated about playing my songs for him because, shit, he’s Steve Earle! But once I started doing that and he was kind to me, I got over it really quickly. He wrote half of the second verse on that song because I just couldn’t get it going. I was stuck because he freaked me out, so he owed it to me [laughs].
You’ve come beyond the point of putting your art second to anyone else’s, so presumably he makes dinner sometimes when you’re writing.
We order takeout; that’s another great thing about New York.
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Softly and Tenderly was written in 1880. Check Alan Jackson's version, simple and beautiful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softly_and_Tenderly#:~:text=%22Softly%20and%20Tenderly%22%20is%20the%20most
Thank you for sharing so many great interviews Robert