MUSIC
GOING (REALLY) SOLO
Multi-Instrumentalist John McCutcheon Creates 41st Album without Distraction
BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH
F
OR CABIN FEVER: SONGS FROM the Quarantine, singer-songwritermulti-instrumentalist John McCutcheon made the most of a selfimposed three-week seclusion. While sheltered at his rustic cottage in the North Georgia mountains, the prolific songsmith penned a plethora of tunes. The inspirations for his 41st album in a 45-year-career run the gamut from “Front Line,” a touching salute to emergency workers, a tip of the hat to fellow songwriter John Prine, current events (“Sheltered in Place”) and the gentle humor of “My Dog Talking Blues.” The formerly globe-trotting musician is currently limited to live streaming his clever theme concerts via Facebook Live as he readies yet another album of original tunes. While taking a break from reading Dumas Malone’s monumental Thomas Jefferson biography, McCutcheon spoke to INsite by phone from his home in DeKalb’s Smoke Rise community. You are one of the most prolific songwriters I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Last year when we talked, you were releasing your fortieth album. Your prolific output is inspiring. This is my job. I write songs and record albums and I used to play live shows. It’s all part of it. Maybe the roots of it can be found in the wisdom of my brother. I sent him a link to my new album and he said, ‘God, you’re just like our mom, popping out a new one every year!’ Because I am the oldest of nine and my mother had her first eight in nine years. So I guess the lesson took - but I do take it seriously. In a world of tracks and playlists, you continue to embrace the album format. I always have. Even though it seems kind of passé now you can still do the whole Sgt. Pepper’s thing and make it bigger than the sum of its parts. I love the fact that you can do a theme. You can do an all-baseball album if you want. Or an all Pete Seeger album, as you released just last year. Right, you can do anything within the album format. I love being the in the studio and I love my engineer and co-producer Bob Dawson. He’s one of my best friends but somehow he makes me sound good. As a songwriter are you continually saving moments and phrases or does it all tend to come as a structured thought at this point? I don’t write songs to keep a journal. I’m a utilitarian songwriter. I’m definitely not an art-for-art’s-sake kinda guy. It’s for the listener. Until I can get it out there to be heard, I feel that the song just isn’t done. As I frequently tell my songwriting students, you can have all these conversations with yourself. You may resolve all kinds of little peas under the mattress but the listener hasn’t been a party to any of it. You can take monumental leaps that might satisfy you but that might just confuse the listener. You really do discover a lot about the songs once they’re done. I’ve had songs of mine that I wrote for one specific reason and PG 10 • September 2020 • insiteatlanta.com
then somebody will send me a note saying, ‘I used this for my daughter’s wedding.’ I go, ‘Oh! I guess that works. But I never thought of it that way.’
own sort of subconscious sabotage would make me say, ‘Ok, I’m not gonna write today.’
Did you just freeform it or did you stick to That’s a sign of great art - the a schedule? consumer can form their own personal You know, with some of the early stuff I interpretation of it. found I was in a pattern. I’d use language I I don’t know if it’s great was hearing in the news or from art but there are doorways I DON’T KNOW friends of mine who were also through which people can in place. But then all IF IT’S GREAT sheltered enter their own rooms. That’s kinds of things came up that ART BUT THERE had nothing to do with the all you can hope for. ARE DOORWAYS quarantine or world events or For Cabin Fever was your current. I started to THROUGH WHICH anything writing process the same be influenced by poetry I’d read PEOPLE CAN as usual? The events or conversations that sparked surrounding it were certainly ENTER THEIR OWN an idea or just - good heavens, different. you think of things ROOMS. THAT’S sometimes Right, I’d been in Australia all by yourself. Image that! ALL YOU CAN for three and a half weeks. The HOPE FOR. whole virus thing just started No outside influences? That’s crazy! Seriously though, I’ve to occur to everybody while read that you were determined to produce I was there. But I’ve been many times and at least one song a day. Was that an I have lots of friends there. I was at this festival - which I’ve been to ten times now early prerequisite or did it just naturally - so there were plenty of old friends I’d happen? see. There were embraces and kisses and That’s how it turned out. The times when I’ve done these ass-in-chair-everyday you know, after a show, someone would challenges, I’ve predicated the notion that I sling their arm around me, ‘Hey let’s take wasn’t going to have a goal. I was just going a selfie.’ So there I was in a tent, playing for 3,000 people at a festival. God knows to write. But at this stage in my songwriting - if I wasn’t exposed I might have been life, I can hit a pretty clear idea of what the arc of the story will be. Most importantly, inoculated! Then I got on two different I know how to finish stuff. Granted, I went airplanes for twenty-four hours for the back and looked at it but in general stuff ride home. I came home to my wife and happened pretty fast. It was like: this is my 89-year-old mother-in-law. I thought, ‘Well the only responsible thing to do here the songwriting gym, you can get stronger is to go off by myself and make sure I’m not as you go along. Things that might seem difficult at first, got easier as time went on. going to kill all my loved ones.’ Some songs just flopped out without much editing. Then toward the end of my stay, it Fortunately you have a cabin, so you can isolate yourself in style. turned into a couple of songs a day. Yeah we have a little cabin just north We both know that some creative of Ellijay, near Cherry Log. So my dog people, left to their own devices, may not and I went up there and we stayed for accomplish anything. three weeks. It was the first time in my Oh yeah! When I get comments from my professional life that I had no distractions songwriting friends saying, ‘God, you’re to interfere with my job. I didn’t have anything that - either by fiat or by my prolific,’ I think some of it is spawned of
guilt. It’s like, ‘You asshole, you’re spoiling it for the rest of us.’ There’s a great book by Steven Pressfield, called The War Of Art. It’s a really quick one. You can read it in about an hour. It’s just about how we sabotage our work by creating all these reasons not to settle down to do it. Even though once we do it, it is – at once – the most painful and the most satisfying thing you can possibly do. Exactly. It’s fun once you’ve finished it. Especially if the eventual outcome is something really public, like a recording. When you began the cabin project, did you originally envision it to become your next album? No! Before this, I had thirty songs already in the hopper, planned for an album. Those would probably end up as fifteen at most. I was ready to go. I had the studio time booked, musicians all set up but when I got home from Australia, I pretty quickly saw that it wasn’t gonna happen anytime soon. I thought maybe I could do it this summer. Nobody knew in March that people were going to do essentially nothing to contain the pandemic. So yeah, I have a whole ‘nother album ready to go. Then I found that I had twenty or thirty new songs. Most solo albums are a team effort, but this is truly a solo project. I was the only person there. When I sent the files to my producer, I realized how much I missed the whole process of making a record and being in a room with my friends. That was part of my original trepidation about this album, that it was so naked. No overdubs. No harmonies. I didn’t add bass parts. It’s all about being isolated so I wanted to make it sound that way. This is a guy, by himself, playing songs he’s just written. Hopefully they’re a decent way for people to pass the time. If I’m lucky, it might even say something if they’ll listen to what I’m saying. Cabin Fever is available directly from the artist at folkmusic.com.
