When Tamara Saviano and the Guy Clark Family Foundation asked me if I’d be open to producing a modern reinterpretation of Guy Clark’s debut record on the occasion of its 50th Anniversary, I nearly cried - which seems appropriate considering Guy’s songs have probably made me cry more than anyone else’s.
This is the first full length record tracked at Good Wishes - which also seems appropriate considering we pulled the studios name from the first line of “LA Freeway.” Over the course of 7 sessions with impossibly well-stacked ensembles of musicians, Carrie and I cast these songs with some of our favorite contemporary singers and songwriters. I’m not a purist about how to make records, but for this it just felt right to put a great big band in a room, have the artist out on the floor with us, and let the songs do their work.
I’m quite proud of this record. Guy’s songs taught me what good songwriting can be. Simple, direct, potent, genuine. To me he’s the Steinbeck of songwriting. I feel incredibly lucky to have been given this assignment and so deeply appreciative of the Guy Clark Estate, all the wonderful musicians and engineers who lent their talents, and of Carrie and Rodney for introducing me to Guy and his songs.
Studio photos by: @angelina._.castillo_ , @betsy__phillips , and me.
Happy birthday to my beautiful bride! She is extraordinary, as anyone who gets to call her a friend knows. She is wickedly funny and wonderfully weird, she is an antique mall queen and the best dinner companion, she is an exemplary mom and she illuminates the lives of those she loves with light that rivals a coastal sunset.
We were honored to have this crew at Good Wishes to record “Desperados Waiting for a Train.”✨
This is the first release from the forthcoming full revisiting of Guy Clark’s debut record, Old No. 1. @andrew_combs and @rodneyjcrowell are the dynamic duo we knew we needed. rounded out with the best - @dickthegentleman@ethan.yojev@olesmitty@russpahl@joschornikow@danknobler ❤️
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From Dan Knobler:
I vividly remember the first time I listened to Old No. 1. I was on an airplane flying from New York to Nashville. I came to country and Americana music slightly later in my musical life, having spent the first decade of my double digit years being firmly obsessed with classic rock and then classic R&B and soul. By my 20s The Band was greasing the skids and I was sliding deep into classic country. I was introduced to Guy - both musically and personally - by my then-girlfriend, now-wife Carrie Crowell. I was aware of a number of Guy songs and I wisely decided it was worth going through his record chronologically. So as the plane was taxiing away from the gate, I dropped the proverbial needle on “Rita Ballou.” I haven’t been the same since. The power and detail and simplicity of those songs, the depth and nuance of the characters that inhabit them, the sense that you could sidle up to the bar at whatever beer joint Rita was hanging at that night and be welcome - it all felt so alluring and intoxicating. The songwriting was so good and pure that nothing else mattered. I don’t know exactly when I started crying, but I know I was weeping by the time Guy started singing “Let Him Roll.”
Listening to Guy Clark records taught me what good songwriting really was. Of course there are lots of different types of good songwriting, but Guy’s particular distillation is about as pure as it gets. When Tamara Saviano approached me about revisiting Old No. 1 with contemporary artists I was thrilled. Guy’s influence on my generation of songwriters and the entire “Americana” genre, for lack of a better term, is profound and I’m honored to get to put a new frame around these songs and cast this incredible crop of modern singer-songwriters in them. Long live Guy Clark songs.
@rachaelandvilray - West of Broadway. A joy and an honor to produce and engineer a 3rd LP for @rachaelpricepants and @vilray . They are the best of the best.
Our guide post for this one was “birth of the cool meets 60s broadway cast recordings.” I think we hit our mark. This batch of Vilray’s songs is inhabited by a bunch of oddballs and people with unreasonably strong feelings about things. It all feels very New York.
Recorded at the legendary @searsoundnyc with a top-notch crew. Making these records is one of the most satisfying creative endeavors I get to be a part of.
11 years of marriage to the love of my life and the most wonderful, weird, open-hearted, and beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I’m so lucky to move through life at her side. It feels in retrospect like we were still babies when we got married, but we already had 6 years together under our belt; we knew which way was up. And I think that if someone had told 19-year-old us when we started dating what our 36-year-old lives would be like we’d say “sign us up.” What a thing.
Happy Birthday to my bride, pictured here in the first slide as Anniversary Vacation Barbie. She is a renaissance woman and also the stunning model of a renaissance painting. You can come to her in any emotional state and she’ll meet you where you’re at. She’ll grieve with you, laugh with you, celebrate, craft, shop, or just sit and chat. She can take anything and make it beautiful. She is hilarious, so quick on her feet, weird and wacky and wonderful. And as if that wasn’t enough, she is herself also very beautiful. I’m so lucky to age alongside her (she more gracefully than I) and she’s taught me so much including the old instagram adage, “always end with a hot one.”
My dear mother-in-law has her own exhibit at the @countrymusichof . She is an incredible artist and writer and it’s fantastic to see her groundbreaking career honored by this particular institution. It’s been so inspiring to watch her blaze her own unique path and wonderful that she is collecting her well-earned flowers while she continues to make beautiful and meaningful work.
It’s a real trip to see Carrie’s/my Gibson Dove behind glass. It was Rosanne’s main guitar during Carrie’s childhood and then she and John gave it to Carrie as a wedding gift with instructions for me to keep it warm and pass it on to the next generation. I’ve played it on a ton of records and it’s been played by dear friends on their records too (hi, @erinraemusic , @corychisel , et al). I’m equal parts honored to have an instrument of mine at the Country Music Hall of Fame and annoyed that I can’t play it for 2 years!
I didn’t take any good pictures at the opening party, and I hope someone filmed her speech because it was fantastic, but nonetheless I am thrilled for @rosannecash and proud to be her son-in-law.
Played my first set of instrumental music in probably 10+ years. It felt great. About 80% improvised with a new band of friends and legends, The Goosehead Palace Guards. We played a Meters tune and a Bill Frisell tune; we played a couple of things I’d written; @rachaeldavismusic sat in and sang a few with us. But mostly we just listened to each other and went off wherever that took us. Made me feel like a kid jamming in my bedroom again except now everyone is a professional session musician and plays with precision and poise. We’re gonna do it again, once a month (11/16 & 12/14) at @thelategreatnash (which my legal family @hannahcrowell designed!) until the end of the year and hopefully beyond. Music is fun.
I’ve been trying to take a Polaroid of everyone who comes through the studio for a session for the past few weeks. Carrie got me an old SX-70 camera years ago, which is such a cool device but doesn’t do great in low light. I got a big flash bar and sometimes the pictures are good, sometimes not, but I like that. I like to see all these little moments of friends new and old working and making music together. I like that my studio makes people feel comfortable. That’s honestly the most important part of a studio.
I feel very lucky to get to work with so many talented people; the Nashville recording community is a special thing and I’m proud to be a card-carrying member.
We lost our dog Millie suddenly the other night. She had been our companion for 12 transformative years, through 6 houses, 4 studios, 2 children, countless roadtrips, engagement, marriage, a big slice of life.
She was an oddball, probably too smart for her own good. She wasn’t overly affectionate, but she knew when you needed it. I am confident that she understood everything I ever said to her. The kids LOVED her and she made for a sweet and unflappable play partner in her golden years. She would curl up at the foot of Willoughby’s bed while we read and cuddled; she wore a tiara with poise.
My studio is named after a nickname Carrie christened her with: Goosehead. She laid on the couch behind me while I mixed most everything I did for the past 12 years (redeeming herself after pooping next to the drums on her first session as a puppy).
She was loved and will be missed.
10 years of marriage. Sometimes I’ll say to Carrie, “you are my best friend, my soulmate, my romancière.” I was under the impression that the last word meant something like “romance partner” but I just looked it up to make sure I spelled it right and it actually means “novelist” or “fiction writer.” I’m fine with that; Carrie is the novelist of our lives. She spun tales about having a family, a beautiful home, a social circle filled with true blue friends, a work/life balance that respects both - and she made them our reality.
Being her husband of 10 years, her partner of 16, starting at 19 years old and continuing to hold it all together, it’s the greatest accomplishment of my life. Here’s to many more decades together.
