PEL Presents NEM#258: Dan Montgomery: Direct Communication

Singer-songwriter Dan Montgomery

0:00you're listening to nakedly examined music a podcast about songs and songwriters my name's mark lintzenmayer my guest for episode 258 is singer-songwriter dan montgomery after leading a short-lived project called drugs before breakfast he released his first solo album in 2004 you are currently listening to always from that album man out of state he just released his eighth album dispatches from the desert an entirely solo affair produced by his friend and

0:35one of my past guests the legendary ben vaughn we'll be discussing a busted from that record then looking to beaumont from his previous record 2023's cast iron songs and torch ballads then looking back to favorite color from rosetta please a love story from 2006 we'll conclude by listening to looking for a fight also from that new album for more see dan montgomery.bandcamp.com for more about this podcast see nakedly examined music.com or get the episodes ad free at patreon.com

Early music and career path

1:09slash nakedly examined music so i'll play it a little bit of always from man from out of state your first album 2004 you had been good enough to send me your pre what like a whole decade before that this philadelphia band drugs before breakfast we want to get pretty quickly to the new thing but yeah give us a little of the story from the beginning and dispatches from the desert this is your eighth album is that right correct yes that's a lot of years for eight albums tell us a little about the journey before we hear well first of all i want to go on record by saying yes i was in a band

1:41called drugs before breakfast but that's what happens when you allow the drummer to name the band it was never my idea but it got us a lot of notoriety i will say that i was a very late starter at everything because i was playing in cover bands in south jersey when i was like 14 and i was like the youngest guy in the band i stopped for a while because a lot of bad living got in the way i had the strangest career trajectory in that i got off hard drugs because i went on on the road with a band get off drugs because you're on the road with a band that's usually yes usually the

2:15other way around i know exactly that's my whole career is the exact opposite of what a plan would be but i met a guy who you've actually interviewed my friend ben vaughn and we just met through a mutual friend in like 1985 i think it was and he was looking for a sound man and i was looking for something to do and i became his sound man and for next five or six years i was just on the road with him all the time and we actually lived in the same house together i hadn't done anything of my own musically until i retired from being his touring sound man and i was in a couple little bands in

2:50philadelphia and then this band started called drugs before breakfast which was the first time i ever fronted a band and in fact until we did the recording that i sent you i had never heard my voice on tape before because when i was 14 i tried singing in the first band i was in and it didn't go well and everyone made such fun of me i just swore i would never sing again then i became a frontman band and that became the band drunk for breakfast that we had a whole a total of two gigs and one recording session and then i had to move to michigan for a couple years and then the band reunited after

3:25that but it was never quite the same and slowly but surely i build up my solo career from there okay so yeah it's about a decade later that we get man from out of state and then it seems like you've been pretty consistent since then is this a part-time gig are you touring or usually i save these questions for later but let's just get into it yeah i would like it to be a full-time gig i am retired from my day job now my wife had a stroke a few years back so i've spent a lot of my time as a home health care person as well so i don't tour as much but it's also very hard to do that and not

4:00lose a ton of money these days so i'm trying to find alternate versions of that from what i used

Dispatches from the desert

4:05to know we'll get to some highlights in the interim but let's get right to the new thing dispatches from the desert which is entirely solo but well this is you've explained now why ben vaughn is the producer and there's the story on your press release here that these are all just you just playing your guitar by yourself right you could do this anywhere the idea originally was about 10 years ago ben did a record he has a place out in the high desert in california and he did a record there just a solo acoustic record of like solo versions of songs from his catalog that he

4:38did inside an airstream trail an abandoned airstream trailer on his property and i've been saying for years i want to do one of those too and when we finally got around to it we set up the studio in the airstream trailer one morning and about less than an hour later a huge desert storm kicked up and it was just rocking the trailer left and right and then it started filling up with sand so we had to disassemble the studio and do it in his house okay um so it wasn't quite the original project we thought and then originally it was going to be the same thing of me doing just kind of solo

5:11versions of songs from my catalog but i kind of feel like that's the kind of thing you do when you're not writing so i had a bunch of songs that were kind of some were finished some were half finished so i went out there and every day i would just go out and finish a song and then we go in and record it and yeah it was just me my guitar and my vocal no overdubs no punching in no auto tune no auto anything no not even any headphones wow well let's uh yeah say a few words about busted before we hear it

Discussion and playback of Busted

5:42in full yeah busted i was actually a song i wrote around the turn of the millennium and i was playing in a band in philly it was fairly well received song but somehow we never got a version of it i really liked and you know when you're writing a lot you tend to just you know older songs tend to fall in the back of the pile but i always associated that song when i first wrote it the first demo i did of it was out at ben's place out in the desert back in about 2000 so i always associated that song with that area so that was the first song we did for this project

6:14i rub my eyes grit my teeth and i'm gonna shake my head disbelief and i've been up all night trying to write this song and putting me in this guitar don't get along and these strings

6:49the songs that they've rusted and i'm beaten battered broken and busted there's a sign on the door that says we never close and i'm smiling myself cause i know how that goes

7:23and there's a lot in my baby's house that tells me she's home yeah but those two silhouettes tell me she's not alone and i just lost the only one i ever trusted and i'm beaten battered broken and busted yeah i'm beaten battered broken and busted

7:57i walked these streets alone all night and it don't feel no better for being right and it don't feel no worse for being wrong and it don't feel no good for knowing

8:32i brought all this on now i walk these streets disgusted and i'm beaten battered broken and busted i'm beaten battered broken and busted i'm beaten battered broken and busted

9:07tell me about that intro riff right that happens a million times because that could very easily get old tedious what you know that you're playing so many times through the song but it still feels fresh obviously it's the intro to the record was that the origin of the song or do you have lyrics in notebooks do you even recall at this point given how old it is the riff was actually when i first wrote it was a little more involved

9:38which made it kind of hard for me to sing and stay on top of it especially solo so i kind of refined it down to what it is now and luckily it works that way because it was the that was the big question was does this especially when there's nothing else adorning it is this enough or is this too much but that's when you go to with your producers opinions well it seems like through the individual lines in the verses it's not like you're just singing the thing and then playing the riff that sometimes the chords that you're playing ends in different places right it's going back to the tonic or it is not doing the transition chord that's normally at the end of the riff

10:12you're just going straight to the riff yeah any thoughts about i mean was this just because you played it for so many years or was this literally like a really old one that was revived i'm going to be honest i don't really know enough musically to know about the tonic and this and that i'm just kind of play and hopefully it sounds good well it's either that there's your transition chord or sometimes you just don't do that you know you're just staying on and then you you know move on

10:44yeah part of that's probably more about just doing it solo like that than a thought out strategy to be honest because it's not like you're going to throw three other guys off if you do it differently when you're playing it solo sure obviously you didn't use a click track but it seems like it's pretty consistent throughout is it supposed to be because you know when you're by yourself it seems like you can have these little stops as you do you have your battered you pause let the note ring or something but you're not like okay now we're doing the slow verse or something like that

11:14oh no no it's just how it how it came out and there was no click track or anything involved i'm not against using click tracks but just not the way that project worked well so the fact that this is an older song i guess that this makes sense to me that it jives with so much of your catalog i guess because you went through that drug period presumably we're sort of in touch with a with a whole culture of other people doing this kind of thing oh yeah right so you have a lot of you know this crack house is a crack home wait you have all these songs that are sort of using these you know uh which

11:46could sound like country tropes but usually country is not so you know you don't you wouldn't have female pheno barbie doll like that is you're you're adding something from personal experience from a humor you know an ironic distance to those years yeah it was a little unclear you know because you start off it seems like a really nice self-loathing song right i'm i'm old which you're writing this when you were not old right this is not a recent song you can feel pretty worn out at any age especially if you've been through a lot sure the one

12:20thing i will say like because reference to certain things in drugs and drug life have come up a lot in my songs and there's no point in hiding that when i stop doing all that stuff and i've been not doing it for close to 35 years now or something that or when you're doing all that stuff and then you stop people tend to talk about how they wasted so much time and i understand that but for me because i can write these songs it's kind of like oh that was all just a research project uh-huh yes i have to like sum up angst that i felt over some

12:53woman when i was 19 but you have like a much richer variety of young person experiences to draw from that and two divorces you know okay well yeah i mean that's you you have adult stuff that you can throw in oh yeah yeah oh i've been a match my whole life it's there's plenty to pick from you establish you know i feel so broken down and busted but then you throw in in the second verse there's a cheating wife which you don't it seems like you don't really need the cheating wife like the guy could just feel bad about himself anyway any thought about

13:23that sort of over determining why why he is sad well yeah but i mean you could have multiple crises going on at once sure and and related as you say you know i brought all this on yeah yeah it was a cheating girlfriend not a cheating wife but at that time but sure sure to what extent is this is this like personal versus cool country tropes the second verse where he sees the two silhouettes and all that was based on a real experience ah okay the first verse last verse is

13:54sort of like the mood surrounding me either before and after that that moment happens i guess and also that realization that yeah yeah somebody's kind of messing you up but what did you do to cause that to happen do you recall sort of how this one might have changed with ben's feedback he's really good as an editor where it's like you know you've already said this you don't need to say this again a thing i did not realize i did a lot in my writing was he's like you know you use a lot of joiners i'm like what do you mean because you sing a line and then there's a break

14:27musically and then you go and blah blah blah he goes you don't have to do that he was like very much like as an editorial person as much as a producer because there wasn't that much musically to produce i guess well it's funny because this there's a lot of it in this song still and don't feel better uh feel no better for being right and it don't feel no better for being wrong and it don't feel no good for no one i brought this all on yeah i think being an older song he let that go but that was the example of us to you know to me to like keep an eye on that that did not result in a change in this particular case

14:59but not in that song but but it made me aware of that stuff for the other songs that were coming up i mean i i like it in this i like the i the feel that is sort of a long run-on sentence you know it's like you're listing your grievances a long run-off moment in his life right then uh-huh uh let me play around 217 and it don't feel no good for knowing i brought all this song just that pause there i feel good knowing yeah again is that the kind of thing that might change

15:33from performance to performance yes especially when there isn't a drummer to click behind you and you're doing these one song a day how many takes does that mean i don't think there's anything we did more than three takes of and most of it was just two was it usually clear what's the pattern like okay the first one because i actually i just recorded an album like this myself recently where where i was playing live with two other guys and i don't think recorded maybe a couple of them we did more than that or we came back a different day and did it but for the most part it's like okay the first one is sort of there's there's an obvious mistake in it somewhere the second one is

16:06fine the third one just in case it's better but usually it's the second one that ends up making the cut yeah usually and that's that's been almost my entire recording career okay okay almost everything on my records are the second take even if we did six takes it's almost always the second one with the third take or if you go farther well let me uh you know experiment a little let me let me make the pause longer let me cheese it up a little bit just you know take some sort of risk yeah that or just feeling like i didn't know if i put it across emotionally or anything like that you know enough but

16:37generally speaking almost everything is the second take because it's usually like oh that's cool do another one and usually almost always was the second take i think there's only one there's a song called my own business i think there's three takes we did on that one what was the thing from your press release that you and ben you know direct communication is that like i said i would work on a song in the morning and i would bring it in and i'd play it for ben and he'd already heard like earlier versions of some of these songs and then we would just kind of go over the lyrics and or the music and just like

17:10i said he was very good at editing things like you know like you don't there's not going to be a solo there so let's not worry about that like i said it just became about direct communication everything anything else is superfluous if it's getting in the way of the storyline getting across that it's just not necessary let me page just the very end i'm beating bad broken and busted so we're going to do a little broken and busted we're going to do a little bit of change

17:43yeah but it's never going to you know enter a different realm like this is just very much a moment a slice of life it can't have a bridge that goes anywhere substantially yeah and a lot of my songwriting especially the stuff on that record because it's because it's a solo thing it's very almost like short story like songs that it's very much a lot of them are a moment in time that's typical of a lot of my songwriting now well let's get a slightly different one out there uh beaumont

Discussion and playback of Beaumont

18:11from your last album before this cast iron songs and torch ballads yes 2023 a whole band oh yeah a different kind of storytelling uh yeah can you say a few words about it before we hear yeah bomar i really liked it came out really great story wise it's pretty much exactly what it's saying like every i think everybody has a friend or two they know that calls them up when they're in trouble and they either need a ride or money or both or something even more extreme and it was just one of those moments

18:44a friend of mine called me and she needed money she had to get out of town fast i felt it was probably best not to even ask why and you hope you know if you end up in that some similar position that that friend would help do the same thing for you now i will say that the friend when she called me and explained her situation she was actually going to san antonio but that sounds like too much of a happy dance hall tale sure i changed it to beaumont where george jones is from so you can't get sadder than that so

19:18so so so so so so so so so so

19:50so so so so so so so so so

20:22She told me, I gotta get to Beaumont tonight, can you help me, friend?

20:38If I can get to Beaumont, you set things right and I'll never have to ask again.

20:52She never said what she was going for, could be a man, probably to score her. Now stop asking long ago, some things you just don't need to know.

21:31Like some dumb caper about hanging that paper, and you can make her see what's at stake for her. I gotta get to Beaumont tonight, can you help me, friend? If I can get to Beaumont, I can set things right and I'll never have to ask again.

22:14And I was wondering if she made it this time, was she finally free? And the phone rang and a voice came down the line, said would you accept the charges please? She moved into a train.

23:12She was a sailor, with a drunken sailor, but she couldn't keep things ship-shape.

23:24I gotta get to Beaumont tonight. Can you help me, friend? Can you help me, friend? Can you help me, friend? If I can get to Beaumont, you set things right and I'll never have to ask again. I've got to get to Beaumont tonight

23:57If I can get to Beaumont I think I need I've got to get to Beaumont If I can get to Beaumont

24:42I've got to get to Beaumont You've got a full band here. Was this a full band put together for the recording, by the producer, with these people you were playing live with? Oh, that's my band here in Memphis. We've done three or four records that way. And the other guitar player is my co-producer, a guy named Robert Mache,

25:14who used to be in that band, the Continental Drifters, if you're familiar with them. And he was also in the Steve Wynn Man when he first went solo from the Dream Syndicate. And Robert was one of my favorite guitar... I was a huge Steve Wynn fan. Robert was one of my favorite guitar players I ever saw. And his wife's originally from here in Memphis, and they were living in New Orleans. They washed up in Memphis after Katrina. And I just introduced myself, and we started playing together. And it's just been just a magical combination ever since. But yeah, that record is my full Memphis road band.

25:45Although on that song, and I'm still not sure how it happened to this day, somehow I ended up being the lead guitar player on that song. I don't know how that happens. Well, the main riff sounds recognizably like the riff from the first song in terms of... Except you're playing with a thick distortion, which is way harder to put across something with that much movement in it, such that some of the time when you go into it, it seems like, wait, is this a guitar solo? No, it's just the riff. But there's a lot of movement. So you're doing acoustic technique on your electric.

26:17I thought all along that I was laying this thing down, and that Robert would be playing some blazing lead thing over it or something. And he's just like, no, you got it. And I was like, what? Okay, so he's just doing the little acoustic strumming then, or is that also you? Yeah, he's like, nah, and he did the string patch stuff on the keys. But yeah, I'm doing most of the acoustic guitar. Most of the guitars are not me. He's mostly doing the key stuff on that and some percussion stuff. Myself, him, our bass player, Tom Arn, and Robert's wife, Candice Mache,

26:49who also sings with us, they're all doing those huge background vocals on it, too. Would you play live with this lineup, or would it be just you and Robert? I mean, my favorite way is to do it with the full band. I've done a solo. I've done a duo. I did it at a gig out. I did a couple gigs out in California when that record came out that I couldn't afford to take a band out there because it wasn't full tour kind of thing, and had a pickup band in California for the couple gigs I did. We did it that version there. It always seems to go over really well. And it's funny, I never thought about it until you just mentioned it,

27:21but yeah, you can kind of hear a through line between Busted and that song in my guitar playing. It's just like you said, one's through a fuzz box and one is not. I thought I heard, maybe I was hallucinating it, that when you're doing the progression in the intro, the third chord is different than when you're actually singing over it. Yes, it is. Okay, all right, all right. The third chord in the intro and the chorus is an E minor, but in the verses it's a C. Okay, so was that just easier to sing over, or do you recall why that happened?

27:52I just thought it would be more interesting to not do the same thing the whole time. Sure. And again, a lot of these songs, like I said, when they started out, it's just me by myself, so you don't really know if it works with just me and a vocal and an acoustic guitar or me and a vocal and a piano, then it will work with other musicians as long as they're good musicians and they're listening. So it kind of starts in the same place in that way as Say Busted did. Are you a Neil Young fan? Big Neil Young fan. I will say I haven't kept up with him over the last 15 years or so,

28:22but a big Neil Young fan. And that was actually my downfall when I tried to sing when in my first band I was in, I mentioned earlier, when I tried to sing a Neil Young song, but my voice just does not work with a Neil Young song. Were you at least just doing it an octave lower? When I do a Neil Young song, I just don't try to sing it in his range. Well, no, because I was 14. My voice hadn't even really changed. Ah, okay. So you could do that. And yeah, that's a good way. I could hit it, but I couldn't sell it, but I could hit it, I guess, is what it came down to. Neil Young can sing with a little tiny falsetto

28:53and he's cool, but a 14-year-old, maybe not so much.

28:58So you really give this one room to breathe, right? This could have been a three and a half minute song at least, but the reason I brought up Neil Young is because it seems like if he were doing it, then this is exactly the kind of fuzz guitar tone that he might use, right, even back in the 70s. But then it would, you know, dissolve into some sort of solo, whereas I guess you're saying that Robert was kind of filling that role a little bit with the analog string synth to fill in that space. Because in fact, the first time that came in, I'm like, wait, is that a distorted, sustained guitar?

29:30Like, it sounds like he kind of sort of put it through a guitar pedal or something. Oh, I'm sure he probably did, yeah. Okay. Yeah, because that song's like six minutes long, I think, or even longer. And it was funny when we were done recording it, I said to Robert, I said, you know, well, maybe you could chop some down. And he came back to me there, he goes, it all belongs there. I'm not going to touch it. And I am not afraid of a long song myself. And it says something about the quality of the chorus, which is so immediate, right? It's just one line, really. I mean, with that you're responding to then.

30:01Yeah, any thought about the vocal arrangement on that, that you're going to, we're going to extend it out by like, well, let's let them do it by themselves. Or was that a mixing thing? Like, take your voice out just to see what they sound like. Basically, yeah, that's kind of how it happened. It was like, my voice was there throughout the whole thing. And then we took it out and saw like, oh, that actually brings out more in a way. And they just really went to town with the vocal blend on it. But it sounds like they don't really like lift them up in the mix to sort of compensate and take over the lead.

30:31It's just they're doing. No, that's a decision that we made. You know, it was going to be this, it's not going to do what you expect it to do, I guess. And then you got to fade on this. And it seems like the band kicks into high gear just as it's fading. Yes. Like the drums start playing double time. It got a little wild after that, yes. Oh, so was there an embarrassing part that was sort of after? Oh, no, no, no, no. It just had gone on long enough at that point is all. Mm-hmm.

31:02Do you remember what the actual end was? Did you just stop at some point? Like, we're going to fade this. Or was there a big, you know, trash can ending or something like that? There was a big ending, but I think we always knew it was probably going to be a fade. It was one of those kind of songs. But I guess, right, if you're playing it live, like that's not. It's funny, me and Ben have butted heads on this over the years. Like, when a song's really cooking, I like a fade in a way. Like, are you familiar with Marquee Moon by television? Sure, of course. When they reissued that on CD, you know, when the title song, when it gets to the end and

31:34it starts over again and it fades, as the riff starts up again, the vocal starts. When they reissued it on the CD, you find out they only sing one more line and then it just all ends. Whereas for 25 years, I assumed that that song went on for another 10 minutes in the studio. And I was really bummed to hear it end. Let me play a little of the bridge here. This is three minutes in.

32:06So just that you got these like little bell sounds, but again, they're pretty subtle. Like, what is the proper volume to listen to this at?

32:14I would say loud, but that's just... Really loud. Okay. So the bells are not actually quiet. You don't have the rest of it loud enough if you can't hear the bells well enough.

32:23There's a lot of 90s stuff, I feel, specifically, where you should just crank it until, you know, smashing pumpkins or whatnot, or sugar, right? Crank it so the vocal sounds like it's supposed to, like a normal, somebody's in the room with you singing, and then everything else will be mind-bogglingly louder than that. And that's the way it's supposed to be. The CD wars did not help that anywhere. Everything just went into the red and all. You can have a very rocking, loud, abrasive song and still have some dynamics to them.

32:54I guess Neil Young has never followed that 90s mixing rule, right? You always hear a lot of him, even if he's singing a little tiny high voice, even with his, you know, big sludgy guitar. So it's really just a matter of use something else to set the volume, the drums. Yeah, I mean, the only time Neil Young really went with anything trend-wise was in the 80s, and some of that didn't go as well as it could have. Sure. We haven't really talked about the lyrics of this one, right? The first song was A Slice of Life. You mentioned this as still sort of being a one-time occurrence in your real life, but

33:27it's sort of written out like, well, she sort of just, she does this. Like, I don't even ask her anymore, as if this has happened. For the person this was involving, to find out too much is to become complicit.

33:44So, you know, you accept these people in your life because they accepted you when you weren't necessarily doing well, maybe, and you do what you can to help them along. But sometimes, like I said, it's best just not to know. You have a plausible deniability. Again, there's kind of an over-determination of her motivations, which is, you know, this is like real life, but as if this is somebody that's trying to escape, and maybe this is why I keep thinking of this as something that might happen again and again, you know, when you're in a crappy, abusive relationship, and into a trailer with a drunken sailor.

34:20That's a funny little rhyme. First, it was like, it was too easy, but then I added the line, but she couldn't keep things ship-shape, and I thought, oh, we can use this. Okay.

34:33Wanting to escape from something like that seems enough of motivation, but then, well, no, actually, it's probably that she's just as messed up as he is, and probably he's going to score. So this, you know, sounds, again, like your experience in adjacent to the drug world. Yes. If you've been one of those people, you can't really be too judgmental about other people. Well, you can be, or you cannot be. It's one or the other, but, you know, it's kind of a there-go, you know, for the grace of God, go I kind of thing. Well, we didn't talk about it in the first song.

35:04There's a sign on the door that says we never close. I smile to myself because I know how that goes, which, I mean, I don't have the requisite experience to say that I know how that goes. Is that, like, because places like that are where alcoholics go just to be able to drink 24 hours. When I was living that life, my big thing was meth, so I never closed. Okay. I would be awake for at least three days to a week at a time. Sure. So I just remember one time seeing a sign that said we never close, I went, yeah, I know

35:35how that feels. This song does not seem to have and all over the place. You do have, well, because once he flipped out, she started, and after he shipped out, it's moderate, but there's still some ands in there. I'm a work in progress, man. And you can't make her, it just makes things hang together, like some dumb caper hanging bad paper. I guess I don't know what the hanging bad paper. In criminal terms, a paper hanger is somebody who passes bad checks. Okay. All right. I was picturing actual counterfeiting or something, which seems too enterprising, but a bad check.

36:08Basically the same thing. Yes. And you can't make her see what's at stake for her, which if, if it was just like she was escaping a bad relationship, well, like, yeah, that's what's at stake is getting out of the bad relationship. There's no, there's no, that would be the positive thing that the, the, the bad thing is not going to Beaumont. It's not staying in Beaumont. Could be a man, could be to score. It's like, are you, what are you going there for? You know, something positive or just something else. Right. So then we get the bridge that, you know, that I already played. And I was wondering if she made it this time, was she finally free, right?

36:40Okay. So this is sort of a recurring situation, but no, no, she's now calling you collect. Yeah. It is hard to help somebody that is continually in distress. I do know that from personal experience. Yes. Yes. I've been that person too. So I have to look at it from two angles sometimes. And is the repeated chorus at the end, is that sort of, at least well expresses the kind of repetitive nature of the situation, but was that intentional or it just, this is a nice sort of danceable chorus. Let's just keep it going.

37:11Originally it was just a, this is a great chorus. Let's keep it going. When examining it afterwards, it was like conceptually, yes, that is part of it. You know, it's something that just keeps going, you know, because that's how life is. Let's get the third song out there.

Discussion and playback of Rosetta Please

37:25Favorite color from Rosetta Please, A Love Story, 2006. So an early album, straightforward on par with the first song, but with a different band setup here, more country with steel guitar and violin. Yeah. Do you want to say a little about it before we hear it? Sure. Yeah. That was from my second album called Rosetta Please, A Love Story, which was my first attempt at a concept album. That song itself has a very interesting kind of funny birth in that it's the only song I've ever written on stage in mid-performance.

37:56Okay. The first year I was living here in Memphis, I moved here just 24 years ago, just about a week, two weeks ago. I was playing every Tuesday night at a bar called Murphy's and nobody knew who I was. Nobody was coming to see me because nobody knew who I was, but my name would be in the paper every week. So it gave the impression I was doing something. But so most of that year when I played there, it was mostly I was playing to myself, the bartender, and a crack whore who was always there. Out of really nobody paying attention, I had to come up with this picking pattern, and I

38:29was just playing solo that night, and I just kind of free-associated the song, I'd say 90% of it as we hear it now. The bartender and a crack whore really liked it, and the crack whore just kept asking for it over and over again. She'd come back every week, ask for it. So I was like, there's something to this song, you know? Then one day she wasn't there. One Tuesday she wasn't there anymore, and I really missed that crack whore. But it reminded me of a story that happened to me in real life back in New Jersey in the early 80s with somebody I met in a bar.

39:02I walked in this bar I used to go into all the time, and it was a pretty sleazy bar, and this guy I'd never met before asked me, he said, he goes, looks at me, he goes, if you listen to my story, I'll buy you drinks. I thought, sure, how bad could it be? And it turned out he was sitting in a bar waiting for his girlfriend to come back and pay for his bar tab while she was out working the streets to pay his bar tab. And I assumed it was just crazy drunk talk. And right around 1 a.m. when the lights came on for last call, this woman appeared in the

39:34doorway with a guy, left a guy in the doorway, walked over to where we were sitting, laid a bunch of money down on the table or on the bar, and then just walked out with the guy. And the guy sitting next to me just kind of muttered under his breath, Rosetta, please. And it just, I'd forgotten all about that for years, and then it just, I wrote the whole record kind of around that. Well, let's play it.

40:04Baby, baby, where you gone tonight?

40:13Baby, baby, where you gone tonight? Baby, baby, when you're coming home?

40:40Baby, baby, are you coming home? Baby, baby, you know I'll be here all alone.

40:56Do you know my favorite colors blue?

41:06Did you know my favorite colors blue? It's been that way since I met you Baby, baby, are you gone downtown?

41:34Baby, baby, are you gone downtown?

41:42I can see by that dress just where you're bound Baby's gone to meet a sugar man Baby's gone to meet a sugar man She'll get that money any way she can

42:15Did you know my favorite color's blue? Did you know my favorite color's blue?

42:37It's been that way since I met you So many people can see the blue button I am not aware of the color's blue button I am not aware of any color's blue button It's been that way for me I am not aware of the color's blue button

43:08Baby, come home, all set and high Baby, come home, all set and high

43:30And I know better than to ask her why Did you know my favorite, the color's blue Did you know my favorite, the color's blue

43:56It's been that way since I met you It's been that way since I met you I guess, you know, if you're playing that slow, then that leaves you open to make up lyrics. Well, and also it's like, you know, it's got a folk blues kind of structure. So you're repeating the first line three times and just got something rhyming on

44:32On the on the last one, which is when nobody's paying attention on stage, it's pretty easy to do That was my the first band I had in Memphis that was on that record. So it's a very different feel than the band is on Beaumont say So I will admit that the first time you were pitched to me by Howard, I think after the 2023 album I'm sure I listened to a little bit and It just okay. This is a sort of more in the country rock area. I have had a number of people like that And it wasn't until this time when he's like, you know, you gotta you gotta really you gotta try this guy that I really appreciated how

45:04Good you are at using tropes like this right where or Blues, right? Oh, baby, you make me blue. You got literally have baby baby, but yet it can still feel Really direct and honest right this communication thing that you're talking about and part of it is clearly because you're working off of a Personal experience or you're just you're tweaking the cliches a little bit. So they're not actually cliches anymore Although I don't know. What do you think of baby's gone to meet her sugar man? It seems it doesn't seem like you would write that

45:36Now that line I probably wouldn't but I wish I had okay. All right And here's why for whatever reason that song is always seem to connect with people Uh-huh and that is a line that a lot of people mention it. They really like well, and she get that money anyway She can't you know, so it's not it's not she gets she get you know that you're using what? How much first-hand blues have you spent time listening to like was that a part of your formative influences? I mean, yeah, I mean like I grew up right outside of in new jersey right outside of philadelphia

46:09So when I was 14, I would go see Johnny winner say but the opening act was muddy waters or james cotton You know people. I didn't know what I got to learn about so that's always been part of my language I've never wanted to be one of those blues guys in a fedora say sure Yeah, but just having the real right that most of my blues stuff is through rolling stones Silly blues song in in terms of what I was listening to as a as a teenager Well, sure, you know not actual firsthand black people singing

46:41Like I didn't spend five dollars to go see muddy waters I just happened to see him open and it was like wow, this is the real deal, you know I mean, that was a good thing about where I grew up to radio was very open to You know a lot of things in philadelphia concert bills were very varied. It was really great that in that sense Any thought about your vocal delivery on this right because it's you know, you've got some kind of legato Some come home. There's some real singing on this even though. This is very early in your career

47:13Well, I I guess 2006 you'd been doing it for 13 Plus years. It's not that early. That's only my second Album which I did everybody else. I was brand new and not many people heard my first record. So For most people, that's the first time they heard me. It took me a long time to Be able to be satisfied with my listening to myself sing back, but I don't think that's an unusual experience for a lot of people Now that song I will say on that recording it's in it's in the key of f and now I do it in d

47:43So just over the years things between aging and just changing things up And fine like we're working on a new full band record right now with with my memphis band And for the first time in my life. I'm actually kind of happy with my singing The recording is higher than you do it now that you do. Yes down to d. Okay. Yeah Johnny cash is a pretty good model in terms of like there's a little bit of crooning on it But it's also very talk sung in a certain way such that you can't really be out of tune if you're johnny cash

48:14Yes, right? How much are you actually aiming at a note? Yeah, but some of this, you know It seems a little more riskier, you know on the crooning side of the of the cash any favorite vocalists that you Or or is it just like this is what can I get to come out of my face? For years I get done doing a vocal and like if robert Shay was my producer. He'd say oh, that's good. That's the that's the take and listen back and I'd say I don't know because what's the problem is it? I thought I would sound more like waylon jennings Sure

48:44But like because like to me that's an ideal voice. It's masculine, but it's sensitive When we did this dispatches from the desert record That's actually the first johnny cash american recordings thing was an obvious example of what we were trying to go for Where's just solo guitar and vocal and that is a record that is definitely about direct communication So this band this is not a band like the steel player and the violin player on from rosetta please Right. Are these the producers friends are these people that you know? No, no, that was um, that was the band. I had at the time. Oh, okay. We had a

49:17A drummer named jason hatcher. The steel is a lap steel player named mike veezy And the bass player who was actually the first member of the band who was only 16 at the time Was a young woman named maggie veezy who was Kind of just learning to play bass and the only one interested in playing with me at that time So she started playing when I did those tuesday night gigs and then her father very wisely went Why is my 16 year old daughter playing with some guy? I've never heard of in a really dicey bar until three in the morning every tuesday So he started showing up. So and he was a really good player

49:50But kind of like too flashy for me and he mentioned one day He said he's I really want to play you guys, right? He was like Very like, you know, knew every blues lick, you know kind of guy And one day he mentioned I just bought a lap steel, but I don't know how to play it I was like bring that next week and so he was kind of had to like he was behind his learning curve So it kept him from getting out over top of things And then when he got really good at that, I convinced him to get a baritone guitar Because same thing you have to be thinking instead of just playing sure and then when he got good at that I got him to get a mandolin

50:21And then he was allowed to play as les paul finally because he understood He understood the uh the concept by that. Yeah. Well, I mean there's something to be said about Like I was noticing out with this bass how just minimalist and how well it matches So it sounds like you just have an extra string in this song. That's exactly how it was Maggie was not trained at all and just the sweetest kid and really wanted to be Play with me. So we figured out a way to make it work in beaumont the bass is pretty Minimalist through a lot of it, but then I think it's the bridge where the bass kind of freaks out a little bit

50:54Yeah, what's your sort of uh, how much are you ordering around your musicians? Generally Especially the band I have now. They're all really good players. They're all really good listeners So generally I let everybody have pretty much free reign unless I hear something. I really don't like right Tell us too much right because you're so tasteful Right violin is the one thing like you can't have a beginner violin player No god, no capra van beethoven being a notable exception. That was my first interview for this podcast was one of the

51:26I had talked to jonathan the violin player from you know, and he was another guy who was like He was a guitarist, but they wanted a violin in the band So like, okay, well, I do also play violin But it sort of sounds especially on the early stuff like the really classic stuff like you know your middle school Player, you know No, we had a very good violin player for the recording. That's for sure. Yes So there's something charming either way But the fact that you're combining that and you can't tell on the steel that he's a new player. He just sounds tasteful Oh, no, no, he's had great on that day

51:56It was the funniest recording session because we did it at this A guy who's now is very well known as a producer here in memphis got him scott bomar. He did the hustle and flow soundtrack And uh, that song come blue movie just came out, but we did this at his house So you didn't have a studio yet and literally all the lap steel parts mike was playing the lap steel in the kitchen through my fender my 60s fender champ amp, which was put into the oven for reverb Okay, it was just placed in the oven for some kind of ambient sound and it sounds great. That sounds like ben vaughn level of uh

52:31trickery Well, you know, I I live with a man who made it recorded a whole album in his car. Yes, that's exactly what I had It seemed very very modest by comparison. We got harmonies on this one But it's more one person who's just it has a very emmy lou harris sort of vibe Yes, that was a woman named kim richardson. He was no longer in memphis, but she was a really great singer I just knew her from around the scene in memphis and That record most of the harmonies are just me and a female singer because it's kind of a conversation between a man and a woman that right

53:04Sure, so it didn't really call for any big vast harmonies or anything like that Although it's interesting conversation that right Unlike the other song you didn't like trade off right either. She's with you or you're by yourself Yeah, but there's never just you know her So How is it a conversation? Well, you know, maybe maybe it's a dialogue I guess Well, I do I do like that like the effect of like, okay, she's gonna come in just for one line Is she gonna come in for two lines that it's never that? Okay, now we've reached the part where she's just gonna be there Or maybe we have to add a third because it has to keep growing in some way like, you know, it's very restrained

53:39Yeah, some of its decoration and some of its advancing the storyline Let me play from the instrumental verse

53:59Just that okay, finally the drums have opened up They're kind of rolling and what what is is there a particular country? One two three snare one two like is there a name for that? I wouldn't be I would be laughing now I've certainly heard it, you know, but as opposed to one snare one snare what you know, that kind of thing

54:31Oh, i'm sure in nashville. There's a there's a turn for sure But that yeah, but that he's kind of filling the rest of the space by roll, you know, it shows him He's that, you know, actually a really good Drummer and this is the first place in the song where both the steel and the violin get to be there at the same time Yes, that every other place it was like is wait Is this a violin verse or okay? Now this is the steel chorus or you know going back and forth Well, the other thing you got to figure in too is that like I said, this is only my second album and i'm producing it and I don't Really know a lot. Yeah, so some of it may not be as intentional as you think

55:03Right, there is some growth in this it is not like the first song where we're gonna you know You're just by yourself and it's just gonna Be in the moment and it's not like the second song where okay Well, you had the intro that you play you're by yourself, but then the whole band comes in And okay, we got the vocals coming in for the chorus and we have the bells and things on the bridge and we have so there's there's definitely growth throughout But you know with something that is this straightforward As where you're going tonight and this slow like it's like each verse has to be a new little adventure So like this is the one where the violin is really going to sing on it

55:36And then that's going to be gone next time that that kind of thing. Yeah, because the violin was added later So that wasn't in the band's session So it may have just been where we could fit it in around what the steel did. That's interesting I it seemed more coordinated than that. No, no, it wasn't hopefully as i've gone on with recording We've gotten more planned out and more sure about what what i'm doing, you know So the violin is filling the holes that the steel did not see fit to Yes As opposed to like just insisting on playing throughout the whole thing. Yeah, and it or or saying, you know

56:06I'll do this lick you do that right you do that spot It was just we did this thing and then we added the violin afterwards I don't think there's any keys on that song say with that record. We had the keys Later, we didn't have a keyboard player at the time or anything, but I don't think there's any on that song if I recall Let me play the very end

56:36Yeah, it's always funny when an overdub becomes like the thing that stands out right it is

56:43You thought you had an ending but wait, here's a way better ending Yeah It's beautiful when that happens. I mean one of the great things about recording is the happy accidents So as far as the uh, right my favorite color is blue. I mean, that sounds like you're a masochist Did you since I since I met you? I mean since I met you you make me blue all the time But you're my favorite, you know, we're I still love you. Yeah, any well again This is a story about a guy who's just out of jail He's trying to keep his stuff together and his girlfriend is paying for everything by being a prostitute. So

57:17It's a conflicted life Yeah, because it doesn't sound at the beginning. It sounds more like the first song when you're coming home I'll just be all alone like Why are you out there cheating on me, babe kind of? uh But now you're adding this whole much more depraved subtext here. Well, yeah the whole the last verse is like baby come home So sad and high and I know better than to ask her why and that's kind of the crux of the whole story right there You know, but you don't want to hear about it. Okay, but he's not her

57:50Pimp in the story or something. He's no, he's not that together I'm just going with the flow here. That's the yeah The flow right down the drain. Okay, exactly. Yes But they're going down together. That's the important thing given how sort of messed up these people are This could be way more angsty or something like that. Oh, yeah, but it's going to be a nice little lullaby pretty much I mean, I tend to write about some very dark things, but it's not my Goal is not to bum people out, you know

58:22Yeah, it's dark, but it could be darker Or you know, this kind of reminded me of 13 by big star Oh, wow Oh, wow. Just in terms of it having a very straightforward slow Presentation that sort of repeats a thing, you know, obviously this is more steeped in the blues genre, but But anything big star does is like has this underlying Angst and often even just vocally it's You know singing in a sort of extreme way. Oh, yeah Especially if you get to that third big star record. Yes. Yes, exactly

58:56That makes it sound like the person is actively on heroin while While the recording I wonder why that would be I mean, yeah, I guess that's We we didn't we didn't get to hear what you would have recorded in what 1987 or whatever when you were in I would ever showed I wouldn't be able to showed up to the studio. I'm sure I'm sure i would have got sidetracked somewhere are there super angsty recordings somewhere and oh No, you said you hadn't even sung on No, no, I was afraid to commit anything. Yeah. All right. Now my past is my own past any uh cassette tapes of your uh

59:29high school cover band that Not that I am somebody somewhere once had a tape of rehearsal we did, but I never Nobody could ever find it again years later. I was asking around about it But we were a cover band, so you know, it was like although I have to say like I get in this argument people a lot because People are very dismissive about people being in cover bands And I think especially early on in your if you're going to be a songwriter Spend two years in a cover band because you're going to have to learn songs you wouldn't

1:00:00Choose to learn and that will give you an insight into certain things as later on when you are writing your own songs going You know that bridge for that beatles song something like that might work here, you know Almost like you used to say yeah, you do two years of service for your country You should do two years of service in a cover band for your songwriting well And yeah specifically like as a guitarist like if you learn blackbird, you know, oh, that's a thing I can do I can slide up and down the neck And now i'll write songs like that if you're not forced to you'll probably never learn it All my songwriting started out of since I was a teenager was I was trying to learn a song

1:00:34Like if i'm trying to learn say whatever song i'm like, it's not right But it's not bad and I would just write a song from there It's just my incompetence was my inspiration. I did not have a lot of cover band experiment I did you know a gig in high school where we had to work up a bunch of stuff for for the gym jam The equivalent of that was I was in a church choir as a as a young person So I learned how to harmonize and like, you know Having to do all these weird christmas songs and religious songs and I wouldn't know how to do harmonies

1:01:04I got kicked out of catholic school very young. So I didn't get to I didn't get to I was in glee club, but they never really taught us harmony. So there you go glee club that that works Well, it's been a pleasure. Let's uh, we're just going to introduce the last thing Which is we want to get people back looking at uh, dispatches from the desert again about half the album is out now, right? Yeah, so this will come out in august. I guess so probably eight songs by then. Okay, and there's 12 songs all together is one song every month on the last Friday Of each month on band camp and you had picked looking for a fight is that one out yet?

1:01:37That might be next months or the month after probably all right Well, i'm gonna say it's a world premiere looking for a fight a much more bouncy Story song still with a lot of nice uh self-loathing in it

1:01:50Sort of sounds like a closing tune for the album. It's not for the album, but it's at least for this uh, interview Yeah, do you want to say a few words about it before we say goodbye? Yeah, looking for a fight was mostly came from a dream and I very rarely remember dreams and this might be a good example of why You ever one of these dreams where you're running and you can't get to something on time Or something like that. It's kind of like that. I fight with myself and i'm going to lose

1:02:15And then there's a couple lines in there. I don't have to win, but I just have to fight That was based around my brother when he was in college. We would go out to bars and he would get really drunk and he's My brother's very athletic when he's shorter than me and he would find the biggest guy in the bar Every had a couple shots and just start poking them literally and just just like to fight And he's not that way anymore. I have to say he's a great guy to be around now

Discussion and playback of Looking for a Fight

1:02:41Yeah, so this is a much more recent composition, right? Is this from the past? Yeah, this was written during that desert stay. Yes. Okay So I had I had that clearly in mind Maybe we would have talked about it in more detail at the beginning and put the other one At the end of busted sounds like it should be a solo song like it sounds Like it is made for that project this one again. It's the restraint It sort of is begging for some violin or something like that. Oh, yeah, you could go to town on that one as far as you know Fleshing it out and maybe someday i'll redo it in a produced version, but you know again

1:03:12It was just the direct communication thing It was just like that was song where I originally had a solo and stuff in it and ben was like There's nothing wrong with it, but it's just delaying the story. Yes, I Actually, even thought about this with the the album that has been in mixing hell for uh months and months for me now that Like I had these songs. I could just play them, but maybe I should release them as a solo album first You know, just guitar and then do a fully arranged overproduced version And uh, you know that that just ended up being too much trouble. So I did something in between

1:03:43Which is still not done, but yeah, there's something definitely appealing about no, we're going to be purists We're gonna it's just gonna be solo and that's just what the project is And also coming after the last couple records i've done which were much bigger Full band records and i'm for the first time my records i've started playing electric guitar again about five six years ago I was always just a guy playing acoustic guitar when I Because that's when I came to town. That's all I was It was just nice to shake things up the last record was much more of a full

1:04:14More rocking record. So it was just let's shake it up and do something completely different The record i'm working on now is sounds completely different than dispatches from the desert And I I don't think my records are big radical changes from each other But I think there's a definite growth through the whole thing. Yes, that's a good final question Yeah, tell us a little more about the thing that you're working on right now What what its stage is at the full band tracks are done. There's like 14 songs So we're at that stage of are we going to edit it down or we're going to make a double record? But I I don't even know if anybody buys records let alone double records. So

1:04:47That's a problem down the line. So we're at the point now where the songs are done the basic recordings of it Just adding some percussion and background vocals and stuff now. We have a great keyword player we use On sessions a guy named rick steff here in memphis who plays in that band lucero if you're familiar with them Hmm. He's just an amazing player usually just comes in because he's always on the road He just comes in and adds some stuff when we're done But this time we got to do for a third of the album recorded with him as a band member

1:05:17And that really opened things up in a completely in a very different way, too So this is a very different record right now. I think the working title is pictures from the gone world, which is a Name of a lawrence ferling getty book. I really like a poetry book I tend to not end up keeping the working titles, but this will be a very very different record And like I said for the first time i'm actually really Satisfied with my vocals even and it's funny interesting about a year ago. I started learning to do some home recording I'd always avoided that and so for this record basically the stuff that wasn't recorded live

1:05:52I did all my vocals here at home and it was Much more relaxing for me because you don't like have somebody through the glass wincing when you hit that wrong note That you already know is wrong So we've hit on a really really nice balance with this new record. So hopefully that'll be out sometime in 2027 Well looking forward to hearing that uh sounds like it was good for you to go through this trial by trailer to You know, really purify what you do before sort of opening it back up to Collaboration in the full band trial by sand

1:06:24All right, here it is looking for a fight. Thanks, stan. Thank you mark

1:06:29I went looking for a fight

1:06:40When I looked into the mirror that night Didn't like the man I saw

1:06:48And that man he didn't like me at all He said I'm giving you a warning

1:06:56You're making it quite clear

1:07:00By tomorrow morning

1:07:04One of us should not be here

1:07:08So I went looking for a bed Where I could rest my weary head

1:07:17Found a pillow made of stone

1:07:21Lied there soaking all alone I know it weren't a drinkin'

1:07:29I left out long ago

1:07:33It's more the way I'm thinkin' It's got me feeling meanin' low

1:07:42So I tossed and turned all night

1:07:46Afraid to face the morning night Didn't know just who I'd see

1:07:54Who'd be looking back at me I'll square off with any man

1:08:03If I think I'm right

1:08:07I don't gotta win

1:08:12I just gotta fight

1:08:15So I walked on down the hall

1:08:20See my doppelganger there on the wall Held my breath and burst right in

1:08:28Ready to face my evil twin

1:08:32And it couldn't be more clearer

1:08:37And it couldn't be less fair

1:08:41As I looked in the mirror

1:08:45There was nobody there

1:08:49I went looking for a fight

1:08:53I looked into the mirror that night Love that tune. Thanks so much to Dan. Again, he is continuing to release the new songs on his Bandcamp page. That's danmontgomery.bandcamp.com And if you're looking around for him on the streaming services, there are multiple musicians named Dan Montgomery. You know, you can just look up cast iron songs and torch ballads or Rosetta Please, some of the album names of things we covered here.

1:09:27Since I mentioned my ongoing album toward the end of this interview, I'll just give you the update, which is I haven't really done anything on it for months. So I will be starting to teach a new class this fall and have even less time. So I pissed away most of the summer that I should have been working on the mixes. It'll come out sometime, hopefully before the end of the year. If you are interested in hearing more of my tunes, that's marklint.bandcamp.com But I'm sure you're more interested in this podcast, whose home is nakedlyexaminedmusic.com

1:09:58or get your ad-free experience at patreon.com slash nakedlyexaminedmusic. Making a small donation there will let me know that you want this podcast to continue. My main podcast, The Partially Examined Life, does very well with its level of support, but maybe because people are already giving money through that, it's a little harder for me to get funds for these other podcasts, especially since I don't have a lot of time to create bonus content. However, for each of these episodes, I do exhaustive notes,

1:10:28laying out the lyrics and the structure of the songs, and I put those on my Patreon page. Again, that's patreon.com slash nakedlyexaminedmusic. I think looking at those while you listen will make your experience more enjoyable. But what do I know? However you are subscribed to this, you will want to hear my next episode with Glenn Morrow, an old hand from the Hoboken punk scene, who became the founder and president of Bar None Records and has new albums as a much older person. And then a few days from now,

1:11:00I will be recording an episode with Jackie Hunt, who is the singer in Single Gun Theory and has a nice solo album out that sounds a lot like Kate Bush or Tori Amos. So come back for that. Hope you're doing well. There's still some summer left for you and me to do musical activities in, take advantage of it. And if you were interested in that philosophy class I mentioned, maybe you could take it from me. Go to partiallyexaminedlife.com slash class. Enrollment is happening right now.

1:11:32In any case, keep on musicing. Until next time, this is Mark Linton-Meyer signing off. I'm always looking for a home.