John McCutcheon

GOING ( REALLY ) SOLO

Multi-Instrumentalist John McCutcheon Creates 41 st Album without Distraction

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

FOR 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

then somebody will send me a note saying, own sort of subconscious sabotage - ‘I used this for my daughter’s wedding.’ would make me say, ‘Ok, I’m not gonna I go, ‘Oh! I guess that works. But I never write today.’ thought of it that way.’ Yeah we have a little cabin just north 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 through which people can enter their own rooms. That’s all you can hope for. I DON’T KNOW IF IT’S GREAT ART BUT THERE friends of mine who were also sheltered in place. But then all kinds of things came up that had nothing to do with the ARE DOORWAYS quarantine or world events or For Cabin Fever was your writing process the same as usual? The events THROUGH WHICH PEOPLE CAN anything current. I started to be influenced by poetry I’d read or conversations that sparked surrounding it were certainly ENTER THEIR OWN an idea or just - good heavens, different. Right, I’d been in Australia for three and a half weeks. The ROOMS. THAT’S ALL YOU CAN sometimes you think of things all by yourself. Image that! whole virus thing just started HOPE FOR. No outside influences? That’s to occur to everybody while crazy! Seriously though, I’ve I was there. But I’ve been many times and read that you were determined to produce I have lots of friends there. I was at this at least one song a day. Was that an 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 you know, after a show, someone would I’ve done these ass-in-chair-everyday sling their arm around me, ‘Hey let’s take challenges, I’ve predicated the notion that I a selfie.’ So there I was in a tent, playing wasn’t going to have a goal. I was just going 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 inoculated! Then I got on two different arc of the story will be. Most importantly, airplanes for twenty-four hours for the I know how to finish stuff. Granted, I went ride home. I came home to my wife and back and looked at it but in general stuff my 89-year-old mother-in-law. I thought, happened pretty fast. It was like: this is ‘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 going to kill all my loved ones.’ difficult at first, got easier as time went on. Fortunately you have a cabin, so you can editing. Then toward the end of my stay, it isolate yourself in style. turned into a couple of songs a day. Some songs just flopped out without much of Ellijay, near Cherry Log. So my dog We both know that some creative and I went up there and we stayed for people, left to their own devices, may not three weeks. It was the first time in my accomplish anything. professional life that I had no distractions Oh yeah! When I get comments from my to interfere with my job. I didn’t have songwriting friends saying, ‘God, you’re 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.