ND: Your demos from the ’60s have become legendary. Have you ever considered digging them out and releasing them?
DP: I had been to Europe and a lot of people were asking that question, and I thought, well, I’m going to have a look at that. I called and got DATs [digital audio tapes] on them, and they were all just pretty crappy. There wasn’t anything there that I particularly wanted out. If I ever run into the two-inch analog tapes, there might be a wing and a prayer there. But coming off these DATs, I thought it was kind of ridiculous, myself. The singing just wasn’t that good. It is a better mystery than it is to be heard. When you actually hear them, it’s like, ‘I don’t hear that he did so good.’
III. IF WE DIDN’T WRITE, WE’D GO BOWLING
ND: You’ve most often written in collaboration. Is the social aspect of writing songs important?
DP: If you spend a lot of time writing, like I do, friends are nice things to have. Usually, the people I write with turn out to be friends, and it is a friendly place, songwriting. Although it is hard work and you have to fight for a line.
Sometimes I will stop and have to preach for 30 minutes about why we have to have this line. That’s okay, I don’t mind dishing it out in a co-writing situation. It hardly ever comes to that, but sometimes it does. I would like to be one of these writers who gets up at 8:30 in the morning and writes, but I have never been one to get up at 8:30. I started co-writing way back with Donnie Fritts and then Spooner. I have just enjoyed it. If we didn’t write, we’d go bowling.
ND: Speaking of the social aspect of songwriting, your new record, Blue Nite Lounge, was recorded on fishing trips. After all the different creative situations you’ve been in, writing and recording over the years, how important is the circumstance?
DP: There was no plan with Blue Nite Lounge, really. I was going fishing, I didn’t know I was starting a record. It was something that just kind of started down there in Louisiana, and it kind of had a life of its own. I decided then that I liked the vibe I was getting, so I called the guys and said we need to plan another trip, because I think we are into a record. I think it was as much Louisiana as us. There’s something in the air. Happiness, maybe.
Anytime you can relax, you hit a little higher gear, I think. Up there in Louisiana, without a phone, without a TV, just kind of aloof to the world, it does kind of give you an edge. I kind of feel that thoughts travel in the air, or feelings or good will or even bad will. I think writers have their antenna up and they pick up on what is around. And down in St. Francisville, it is a very nice place. It seemed like there is a lot of happiness around.
Blue Nite Lounge is the first one of a demo series. I do think there is some validity to this. I think people want to hear something other than what we have always given them, which is the studio, and all of that. I think there is a lot to be said to go out to a place that is not a studio, whether it is a creek bank or a cave or whatever. At least that is what is kind of fresh to me now, and fresh is always good, to me.
ND: So you would choose the freshness of that demo sound over a studio situation?
DP: You can chase yourself around [in a studio] for three weeks or maybe three months, trying to figure out how you said that [on a demo]. What was you thinking? The feelings have already left. There are no more oyster po’boys; you are in Nashville, and it is meat-and-three, and you are in another place, and it is not fair to try and go back. You beat yourself up, and I guarantee you in the end, everything could have been better-sounding [on a studio version], but the vocals would not have been close.
