ND: When you did the previous Creekdippers records at home, has it generally been that you did them a little bit at a time?
MO: No, because I still had to get the people out here. There’s Razz [Mike Russell, who lives in Minneapolis], or, we had a drummer on the last one, and Greg Leisz played on the last one — it has to be right in that period of time. And once I get going on something, I like to see it through. I like to mix it and everything — just boom, you know. That’s kind of how I’ve done things out here, too. Once I start doing something, I do that, and see it through. And I kind of write songs in blocks, so I have all these songs that I’ve written over a period of time. But I’ve been doing it exactly the same, all the albums we’ve done out here. I like to do it real fast, get it done, and put it out.
ND: The Creekdippers records seem to be part of a similar realm musically, as opposed to trying to do something real different each time:
MO: Yeah. I think it’s just been that we’re developing our own sound, and when we play live, we play that way. There’s not any great musical departures. [Laughs] Other than I think we’re refining something, whatever it is.
II. IT WAS A GOOD WAY TO SAY GOODBYE
ND: This seems like a pretty personal record; not that the others weren’t, but maybe more so this time:
MO: Maybe the subject matters are more personal. But I’ve always kind of written that way. Some of it’s real personal, but I just try to forget about it. If I dwell on it, I just dwelled on it during that couple hours where I wrote on the song. You know, I dwelled on it, I wrote it out, and the I just kind of went, “OK, that’s done.” I enjoy playing them live, though. You get into that feeling when you play them live.
ND: The lyrics are printed in the booklet, over pictures in the background. Is this the first time you’ve included the lyrics on a Creekdippers CD?
MO: Yeah, people in Europe really wanted that to happen. And then the people at Dualtone wanted that to happen. So, I thought I’d kind of make it like Hallmark cards. Because I didn’t really ever sit around reading people’s lyrics on records myself, as far as, like, just being on a blank page. For the most part, I pick them up listening to the music. But people said that they couldn’t understand me [laughs]. So I made them like a Hallmark postcard.
ND: You mentioned “Alta’s Song” earlier. Can you tell me a little bit about the person it was written for?
MO: Yeah — I even mentioned her in that back-page thing I wrote about the people who come here to go find where Gram died up there [ND #22, Screen Door]. She was in that article, she’s mentioned as the Queen of Joshua Tree. Because she had this incredible second-hand store, where everyone kind of gathered; it was a local meeting place.
She died when we were on tour, and we came back, and we went to her funeral. And that song is just word-for-word, basically, what happened at the funeral that day. There was a mermaid that got brought up there; she had this huge mermaid, and people followed it up. It was a good way to say goodbye. I was writing the songs for the album right then, at the same time. And I got up the next morning and just wrote it out.
ND: The second song on the record, “Still We Have A Friend In You”, feels a lot like a gospel song. Is that sort of what you had in mind?
MO: Well, I think, as far as the present touring band now, we have Dave Wolfenberger on drums, and he sings, he has a very beautiful voice. And Josh Grange, on electric guitar, sings great too. The record kind of opens up with those background vocals that we’d been doing live. We’d extend the songs, and get it going. And that one, after we recorded it, we started playing live a lot, and we get into that gospel ending kind of thing. And I’ve always had a philosophy of Christianity, that’s important to me. And I’ve tried to put that in my music over the years. And musically, I like to listen to gospel music. So I guess that’s where that’s coming from.
ND: When you were in the midst of writing that song, did it occur to you it was going to come out like that, or did you have that in mind initially?
MO: I don’t think that I set out writing a gospel song, but it kind of came out that way. I [Laughs]
