A Deeper Dive Into The Highwomen

When country supergroup The Highwomen’s self-titled debut album dropped last September my wife and I picked it up and enjoyed it. We have followed Brandi Carlile’s career and have seen her multiple times at Austin City Limits Festival. We’re big fans of Amanda Shires and have seen her several times, both as a solo act and as part of husband Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit band. We love Maren Morris’s My Church but at the time didn’t know much more about her, and we weren’t familiar with Natalie Hemby.

Left to right: Natalie Hemby, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile, Amanda Shires

However, I never took the time to catch all the lyrics, understand who had written and sang lead on which songs, and figure out some things about the album that puzzled me.

So in the last month, with the help of Marissa R. Moss’s Rolling Stone article I went back through the album and ended up even more impressed by the work. Here are my thoughts on a few of the songs.

Let’s start with the opening track, Highwomen, their take on the Jimmy Webb song, Highwayman, most famously recorded in 1985 by The Highwaymen consisting of Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. The four immortal characters in the song are a bandit (the bastards hung me in the Spring of ’25, but I am still alive!), a doomed sailor, a builder of Boulder Dam who slips and is buried in the concrete, and starship pilot on a never-ending trip across the universe, sung by Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings and Cash, respectively. 

Carlile and Shires, with Jimmy Webb’s blessing, rewrote the lyrics including adding a closing chorus and changing the refrain from “I will still remain” to “we will still remain”. The four characters became an immigrant mother from Honduras who perishes while safely delivering her children to America, a healer seen as a witch (“the bastards hung me at the Salem gallows hill”), a murdered freedom rider in 1961, and a preacher whose “teaching was unrighteous for a girl”.

What puzzled me was that the freedom rider stanza was sung in the first person by someone who sounded Black, and I couldn’t figure out which verse Morris had sung. It turns out that Yola, the British pop/country singer, had joined them for the recording session to do that verse. (Sheryl Crow is also on the track singing backup). Carlile is the immigrant, Shires the healer and Hemby is the preacher. In the closing chorus the women have fashioned an incredible statement of fortitude and persistence:

We are The Highwomen

Singing stories still untold

We carry the sons you can only hold

We are the daughters of the silent generations

You sent our hearts to die alone in foreign nations

It may return to us as tiny drops of rain

But we will still remain

It’s amazing what you can find on YouTube! Here’s a live recording for Sirius XM in which Morris does the freedom rider part, but in the third person. That’s Jason Isbell on guitar.  

Here’s one at Newport with Yola and Sheryl Crow.

And here’s one with Mavis Staples doing the Yola part!

The Rolling Stone article calls Crowded Table the band’s “mission statement” and I totally agree. Written by Hemby with Carlile and Lori McKenna, it’s a song about inclusion, support and love:

Yeah I want a house with a crowded table

And a place by the fire for everyone

Let us take on the world while we're young and able

And bring us back together when the day is done

In a Variety interview Carlile describes how Hemby, an accomplished but not well-known outside of Nashville songwriter, joined the band. The then-trio invited her to come down and sing Crowded Table with them and they liked how she sounded with the band so much they asked her to join!

Here’s them singing it recently on Jimmy Fallon.

My Name Can’t Be Mama is a funny and powerful song by Carlile, Shires and Morris in which they, successively, explain why their “name can’t be Mama today.” 

For Carlile it’s because the “ceiling still is spinning from a night that went too late”:

I used to sleep this off and let the shame just melt away

But not for tiny feet in hallways calling out my name

It's not that I don't love you, I wouldn't touch the hands of time

It's not that I don't long to feel your tiny hand in mine

I'm not a perfect woman, Lord, I don't wish it all away

My name can't be Mama today

For Shires it’s because the road beckons:

Know it wouldn't be easier to just quit the road and stay home

I'd lose myself inside the halls, unsatisfied and alone

Sometimes all I want is to run back to you at night

To rock you to sleep, to keep the blues out of your eyes

I'm not the kind of woman that would throw it all away

But my name can't be Mama today

And for Morris, she’s just not ready (that has recently changed!):

I drive my mother crazy out here traveling the world

Free-wheeling in the city, I'm a solitary girl

I'm living in the moment, knowing there might come a day

But my name can't be Mama today, uh-uh

It's not that I don't want to, I just don't want to today

I'm not a fan of mornings and I love my chardonnay

No, I'm not saying never, I won't wish it all away

But my name can't be Mama today

Another surprise came in If She Ever Leaves Me. It’s Carlile singing to a cowboy in a bar,

I see you watch her from across the room

Dancing her home in your mind

Well, it takes more than whiskey to make that flower bloom

By the third drink you'll find out she's mine

 

I've loved her in secret

I've loved her out loud

The sky hasn't always been blue

It might last forever

Or it might not work out

If she ever leaves me, it won't be for you

This is a tremendous new country song (and isn’t it great to hear Brandi’s voice singing country again!). The surprise here is that she didn’t write it. Isbell and Shires did (with Chris Thompkins), based on Isbell’s idea!

Cocktail and a Song is a devastatingly beautiful song written by Shires in dealing with her father’s passing:

Daddy passed me his bottle of tequila

Said, "Time's running out

We're gonna have to pretend it's a margarita

It's the order of things, it's the way it goes

Don't you look at me, girl, like I'm already gone"

 

The day is close, it won't be long

Couple of cocktails and a song

And don't you let me see you cry

Don't you go grieving

Not before I'm gone

My Only Child is Hemby’s love song to her daughter, dealing with her inability to have more children, written with Shires and Miranda Lambert, and accompanied by Shires’ haunting fiddle:

I know you wish

You had a brother who had blue eyes just like you

I know you wish

You had a sister you could tell your secrets to

Maybe we'll miss

Having four sets of china on the table

But I guarantee you this

You mean more to me than branches to a maple 

 

Pink painted walls 

Your face in my locket

Your daddy and me

Your tiny back pocket

Mama's first love

Last of my kind

You'll always be my only child

Wheels of Laredo is a powerful song about love in a time when people are separated by artificial barriers, sung by Carlile, who wrote it along with her musical partners, Tim and Phil Hanseroth, who also play throughout the album:

On a winter night in Webb County, Texas

On the North Bank of the mighty Rio Grande

I was watching the jungle fires a-burnin'

Across the border of a not-so-distant land

And the echoes of the church bells that were swingin'

Could be heard from Guadalupe Market Square

There was a girl down there in the south side of the river

She had feathers tied into her long black hair 

 

Said if I was a White-Crowned Sparrow

I would float upon the southern skies of blue

But I'm stuck inside the wheels of Laredo

Wishing I was rolling back to you

I’m looking forward to when the band can tour again but in the meantime Morris and Shires have both released very compelling songs of songs of social justice, which I have covered in another blog post, Southern Artists Speak Up.

Stories From My Hitchhiking Trip Through the South When I Was 17

In the spring of 1972, as a longhaired 17-year old, I left my home in Ossining, New York, to hitchhike south. Spending some of the time with my traveling companion, Ray Gildea of Columbus, Mississippi, I traveled throughout the South, hitting Mississippi, New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis and Macon, Georgia. For me it was an incredible experience, to see the places where the great music of the South –rock ‘n’ roll, country, R&B – came from, to experience a region just a few years into integration, and to meet a lot of good folks. In a second trip a few months later, I went back to Mississippi and New Orleans, and added Muscle Shoals, Alabama and then spent a week backpacking in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. I came away from these trips with increased self-confidence, a much better understanding of our country, and a lifetime’s worth of stories. These are the stories from those trips.

Southern Artists Speak Up

 

Three popular Texan and Appalachian country/Americana artists have recently put out passionate songs addressing current issues of racism, police violence and reproductive choice.

Texan Maren Morris, who recently had a #1 hit on the country charts in The Bones, has just released Better Than We Found It:

Over and under and above the law

My neighbor's in danger, who does he call?

When thе wolf's at the door all covered in bluе

Shouldn't we try somethin' new?

We're over a barrel, and at the end of one too

 

When time turns this moment to dust

I just hope that I'm proud of the woman I was

When lines of tomorrow are drawn

Can I live with the side that I chose to be on?

Will we sit on our hands, do nothin' about it?

Or will we leave this world better than we found it?

 

In the accompanying video are are clips of real people – Dreamers, Black Lives Matter protestors, families of police violence victims seeking justice. After the song is a beautiful scene with her newborn son. “Negativity, fear and bitterness haven’t yet touched you. You are kind and curious. I want to rekindle that in me”.

 

 

Another Texan, Amanda Shires (Morris’s Highwomen bandmate), has released The Problem, a duet with her husband, singer/songwriter Jason Isbell. Isbell and Shires have been very active this fall supporting Democratic fundraisers for the presidential race as well as many senatorial races. The Problem, a beautiful ballad, is a dialog between a man and a woman concerning the decision to have an abortion:

Jason: What do you wanna do?

Amanda:

I'm scared to even say the truth

This has been the hardest year

Jason: Is it even legal here?

Amanda:

I'm trying not to think of names

And will you look at me the same?

Do you need the reasons why?

Is a chrysalis a butterfly?

Jason:

And all I could think to say

Was, "Everything's going to be okay

It's going to be alright

I'm on your side"

I'm on your side

Shires recently explained that she had written the song a while ago but was reluctant to put it out for fear of controversy. After the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the apparent direction of Republicans to deny abortion rights, she felt compelled to release it. All proceeds go to the Yellowhammer Fund, a reproductive justice organization serving Alabama and the Deep South.

 

Perhaps the most in-your-face song and video is the new one from Tyler Childers, Long Violent History. Childers, from Hickman Hollow outside of Paintsville in eastern Kentucky, received a Grammy Best Country Solo Performance nomination last year for All Your’n. A few weeks ago he dropped a new album of fiddle instrumentals, concluding with the song Long Violent History:

Now, what would you get if you heard my opinion

Conjecturin' on matters that I ain't never dreamed

In all my born days as a white boy from Hickman

Based on the way that the world's been to me?

 

It's called me belligerent, it's took me for ignorant

But it ain't never once made me scared just to be

Could you imagine just constantly worryin'

Kickin' and fightin', beggin' to breathe?

 

How many boys could they haul off this mountain

Shoot full of holes, cuffed and layin' in the streets

'Til we come into town in a stark ravin' anger

Looking for answers and armed to the teeth?

Just in case anyone misinterpreted his support for Black Lives Matter he recorded a 6 minute "Message from Tyler” video in which he goes through imagined examples of police violence aimed at white rural people and ponders how people like him would respond:

I venture to say if we were met with this type of daily attack on our own people we would take action in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia [a 1921 battle in which 10,000 armed coal miners fought lawmen and strikebreakers in an attempt to unionize the coal mines]. And If we wouldn't stand for it, why would we expect another group of Americans to stand for it? Why would we stand silent while it happened, or worse, get in the way of it being rectified?

The net proceeds from this record will support underserved communities in the Appalachian region through the newly created Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund.

It is so gratifying to hear these powerful white voices, from a region and in a musical tradition deemed by many to be hopelessly reactionary, speak up for what they believe in and actively support their local communities.

A Shout Out to Honeysuckle Rose

After seeing Willie Nelson at his 4th of July Picnic this year I put his 1980 movie, Honeysuckle Rose, on our Netflix list. It arrived a few weeks ago so I've watched it a few times, during which, coincidentally, Leslie and I attended a public memorial service for its screenwriter, Austin legend Bill Wittliff, who also wrote the screenplay for Lonesome Dove.

I hadn't seen the movie since I saw it in 1980 when I was in grad school in San Diego. It brought back much about my love for Willie and my mental state at the time (trying to figure out a way to get to Texas). More on that later.

Honeysuckle Rose is the story of singer Buck Bonham, played by Willie, and his band, played by Willie's band The Family, as they tour around Texas and the south in their tour bus. Buck has a beautiful cowgirl for a wife, Viv, played by Dyan Cannon, and a son. His longtime guitar player, Garland, played by Slim Pickens, is retiring to spend more time with his family and Val wishes Buck would do the same or at least spend more time at home. Into the picture comes Lily, Garland's daughter, also a guitar player, who is home from college and teaching guitar to Buck and Viv's son.She's played by Amy Irving, with captivating eyes and a passable Texas accent.

While trying to find a temporary replacement for Garland, Viv suggests Lily, who jumps at the chance and joins the band. From there all hell breaks loose. Buck of course falls for Lily (who wouldn't?) and they make a mess of things until Buck's eventual reconciliation with Viv. Lily is the one left with a broken heart but at least has the guts to come home and apologize to Viv.

All of this happens with the soundtrack of late-70s Willie and Family front and center. The live performances from the tour are used to advance the plot and then expertly cut into scenes of life on the bus, etc. All of those great Willie songs are here: Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground, On the Road Again, Uncloudy Day as well as covers of Kris Kristofferson's Loving You Was Easier Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again, Rodney Crowell's 'Til I Gain Control Again, Leon Russell's A Song For You, and of course Johnny Bush's Whiskey River.

Willie does a fine job acting, especially in the scenes with Dyan Cannon (presumably relying on his personal history - he's on his 4th marriage). Conversely, Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving do a fine job singing and Amy Irving learned at least enough guitar to make it look good.

Emmylou Harris joins Buck on one of the tour stops to sing 'Til I Gain Control Again and So You Think You're a Cowboy. At one point Lily is so awestruck watching her she forgets to play her guitar and has to be prodded by the drummer. Aside from the great duet it's a poignant reminder of how Emmylou started out as Gram Parsons' protege. (Emmylou won't talk about the personal side of her relationship with Gram but anybody who has seen video of that tour will tell you it doesn't look that different from Buck and Lily).

I first watched the film recently before the Wittliff memorial and didn't realize he wrote the screenplay. Upon viewing it afterward I noticed how tight the dialog was and how well the scenes work together. As a non-filmmaker, I'm thinking, how hard could it be? Just get the basic plot, and Willie and his band and the other actors, and throw it together. It practically writes itself! But of course I'm not a filmmaker or screenwriter but Bill Wittliff was, as the quality of the script shows.

In several of the scenes Willie's sister and piano player, Bobbie, looks suspiciously at Buck and Lily as their relationship evolved. I couldn't help but thinking how many times she gave him the same look in real life!

One scene is shot at the Soap Creek Saloon, which I visited with my brothers in 1976, and was located about a half mile from here in Austin, behind the middle school our kids went to. A great nod to a now long-gone Austin landmark!

One of my favorite parts is a long depiction of a Bonham Family Reunion, a large all-day Texas party with music, dancing, barbecue, horses, kids skinny dipping, games, and some hanky panky going on with some of the band members and some of the other band members's girlfriends. The music and dancing goes all day, with other Texas legends Kenneth Threadgill and Johnny Gimble playing.

Which brings me back to me. I started buying Willie Nelson records in college in New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 70s, and devoured Chet Flippo's Rolling Stone articles about the burgeoning Progressive Country scene in Austin, after Willie gave up on Nashville, grew his hair long, and moved back to Texas. I finally visited here in 1976 and my experiences at the Soap Creek and other places only cemented my desire to move here. 

In grad school my roommates and I played a ton of Jerry Jeff and Willie and caught several Willie shows. Once on a hike through the Sierras my buddy George and I laid out a whole movie based on Willie's epic Red Headed Stranger. (Bill Wittliff's was probably better than ours but that movie seems to have disappeared).

Seeing Honeysuckle Rose in 1980 confirmed everything I felt about Willie and Texas but it was several years before I could figure out how to get here. First I had to have a job upon graduating in 1982 and that job turned out to be at IBM's Watson Lab, next to my hometown of Ossining, New York. I finally had my chance in 1988 when IBM was looking for volunteers for temporary assignments in Austin. Based on the fact it was only two years, Leslie reluctantly agreed to move (our kids were only 6 months and 2 years at the time). I kept my mouth shut and, within a year, Leslie was asking me if we had to move back. That was 31 years ago and we're still here, and still loving Austin and Texas and Willie Nelson!

Postscript

It turns out Willie and Amy weren't acting! According to Wikipedia:

Irving dated American film director Steven Spielberg from 1976 to 1980. She then had a brief relationship with Willie Nelson, her co-star in the film Honeysuckle Rose. The breakup with Spielberg cost her the role of Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he had offered to her at the time,but they reunited and were married from 1985 to 1989. She received an estimated $100 million divorce settlement after a judge controversially vacated a prenuptial agreement that had been written on a napkin.

Lucinda Williams's Musical Map of the South

Lucinda Williams writes often about her life growing up in the South. I thought it would be interesting to plot these points on a map to visualize her Southern references throughout her career. I actually started this back in the late 90s and I'm not a web designer so it's a little crude but you get the point. The songs are in chronological order and you can click on them to hear a snippet. Enjoy!

My Oregano Story

The other day my daughter Dara posted a link on my Facebook page to Jimmy Kimmel's interview with Snoop Dogg and Matthew McConaughey, promoting their new movie, the Beach Bum. She especially instructed me to watch the whole thing. So, aside from my love for Austin's own MM, the "Minister of Culture" for the Texas Longhorns basketball team (really), I knew there was something she wanted me to see. It turns out there is an oregano reference at the end of the video. So here's my oregano story.

Somewhere around freshman or sophomore year a bunch of us Yalies went up to Harvard. My buddy "Piss Toes" Pete Weber and I were hanging out in the dorm room of my high school bro Mark Robbins. We had just polished off a pizza so sitting on the coffee table was a jar of oregano I had swiped from the pizza place along with a pipe that we had been indulging from earlier.

A roommate of Mark's came in and joined us. He motioned to the empty pipe and said, "What have you guys been up to?". I don't know why I did this, but I pointed to the oregano jar and said, "that's good stuff man, you should try some". At first he looks at me like I'm kidding but I'm keeping a straight face. He says, "that's oregano, you dumb fucking Yalie" (actually he didn't say the last part but you could tell he was thinking that). So I said, "no, man, we just bought it from a kid out on the street, $5, what a great deal for all that weed!". So again he looks at me like I really can't be that stupid, picks up the oregano, smells it, and pronounces once again, "it's oregano".

Meanwhile Pete has picked up on what I'm doing and he's been doing a slow burn. Just as I'm about to crack up, Pete bursts out, "I'll fucking kill that kid that sold us that shit". And he is livid. I'm like, "what, that's not weed?" and join Pete in yelling about getting ripped off.

Meanwhile the Harvard guy is buying this whole act. It just confirmed what he thought about us Yalies!

Digging the music from A Star Is Born

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this, but I'm really into A Star is Born, the movie and especially the music.

My wife Leslie and I saw the movie in the theater last November. I enjoyed the movie pretty much. I thought Bradley Cooper was great, Dave Chappelle knocked me out, and I liked the music. But then I didn't gave it too much thought until my son Gary gave me the soundtrack for Hanukah.

So I'll admit I didn't know much about Lady Gaga going into this. I knew she had a great voice but the only song of hers that caught my interest was her song with Big Man on sax, The Edge of Glory.

On the hand other I am a big fan of Lukas Nelson. We've seen him at ACL and Willie's Picnics. He plays all the guitar on the album, he and his band Promise of the Real backed up Bradley Cooper in the movie and he co-wrote many of the songs. I read that Bradley Cooper spent two years learning guitar to play the role and he does sing but it's Lukas we hear on the record. In this little video, Bradley, Lukas and Gaga talk about how the sound came together.

The first song that grabbed my attention was Maybe It's Time, which is Bradley Cooper singing and Lukas Nelson playing guitar. In the movie Jack (Bradley Cooper) plays it at the end of the night at the drag club, with just the club owner, the bartender, one drag queen, and Ally (Lady Gaga) watching. It's an instant American classic:

Maybe it's time to let the old ways die
Maybe it's time to let the old ways die
It takes a lot to change a man
Hell, it takes a lot to try
Maybe it's time to let the old ways die

Jason Isbell wrote that song. He's a fantastic singer/songwriter from Alabama, used to be in the Drive-By Truckers. It could have been a Ryan Bingham song too. BTW we saw both of them at Willie's Picnics as well.

Lady Gaga and Lukas Nelson wrote Music to My Eyes. According to Songfacts Lukas had 
some help from his dad's product in writing this beautiful song:

You're music to my eyes
I had to listen just to find you
I'd like for you to let me sing along
Give you a rhythm you feel

Always Remember Us This Way is a great soul song by Lady Gaga. I'm looking forward to hearing it covered by some classic country singers!

And then there's Shallow, also co-written by Lady Gaga. Initially I thought of that song mainly for Lady Gaga's soaring vocals but, after listening to it a bunch of times, checking out the words, and, recently, watching the film again, I've come to be even more impressed. The lyrics, in the context of the plot, or standalone, are haunting.The lines

I'm falling
In all the good times I find myself
Longin' for change
And in the bad times I fear myself

really get to me.

And how that song comes together in the movie (and yes, I realize it's a movie) is amazing. From Ally coming up with the lyrics in the parking lot, with Jack putting together an arrangement and teaching it the band overnight, to Ally walking on stage never having sung in front of a large crowd, and nailing the song, is just an incredible piece of film. 

Another piece of music I want to note is the Allman Brothers' Whipping Post blaring in the bar they go to after leaving the drag club. Perfect! You can hear it starting up at the end of the  Maybe It's Time clip.

I've come to appreciate Lady Gaga more, both as an actress as well as a singer/songwriter. Of course I love her stuff with Cooper on the record. But even as she is pushed away from that Americana/Rock groove into being a pop star I see Ally fighting to retain her musical spirit, and Jack's influence. So I really like those songs too, all co-written by Lady Gaga.

But let's give a big shout out to Bradley Cooper. He's a great actor, singer, plays guitar well enough to fool ya, co-wrote a few of the songs and directed this thing! What I would give to have one of those talents! He is so meticulous he spent a week planning his Shallow duet at the Oscars with Lady Gaga, designing the staging, the lighting, the camera angles, how they would sing together. I'm not going to get into the debate about which movie should have won Best Picture but Bradley Cooper should get some kind of MVP for acting, directing and co-writing a great movie!