Tom Canning produced 1993’s What It Is and 1995’s Right On Time (both for Dos Records). Keyboard arranger and classical composer Stephen Barber took the reins for 1998’s Nothing But The Truth (his first for New West). Guitarist Mark Goldenberg did the honors on Spirit World, with Bruton taking his first co-credit.
“You can’t produce yourself,” Bruton asserts. “It’s like a doctor operating on himself; you can’t be on both sides of the glass at once. You end up letting yourself off the hook when you shouldn’t. The producer has to be able to say, ‘No, you’re not finished, in fact, you haven’t even started to finish.’ At which point, I have to shut my ego up and go out there and really deliver. I’ve gotta have someone who’ll tell me the truth; I’m a big boy, I can take it. And I’ve always had producers whose standards are at least as high as mine.”
Bruton applies a similar common-sense attitude to his singing, which is sturdy, expressive, and honest to the bone.
“I’ve worked with some great singers — everybody from Delbert to Bonnie to Barbra Streisand. But there are great singers, and then there are singers that affect you. Kristofferson or Billy Joe Shaver or Dylan — they ain’t exactly the greatest singers in the world, ya know? But the people know it when you’re tellin’ the truth.
“A lot of times, the audience isn’t given credit for being sophisticated enough to pick up on that stuff. I think the audiences are the ones who have been betrayed more than anything in the last twenty years by the music industry.”
Because Spirit World was made at Goldenberg’s Shabby Road Studios (in the Los Angeles suburb of Valley Village), Bruton was able to take a little more time than on his previous discs. “It was not so much late-nights, never-ending days,” he explains, “but where you get to live with something for awhile and say, ‘Well, that’s not working, let’s try this.’ We had an element of time that we haven’t had before, and that paid off.
“We didn’t exactly go into it with a larger range in mind, but Spirit World has got a lot of scope to it. It’s very easy to become confined in this business, but I refuse to do that. I’ve worked a long time to get good at playing a lot of different things, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna play fifteen shuffles and call that a great record. We really were shooting for the fence on this one — this is the long ball.”
Indeed, Spirit World is clearly Bruton’s most adventurous solo work yet. Its eleven exquisitely crafted songs — all written or co-written by Bruton — include moving, jazz-tinged ballads (“Yo Yo”, “Just A Dream” “Hate To Love”); seductive R&B hip-shakers (“Teach Me How To Stay” and the title track); sophisticated funk (“Longshot, Longshadow”); a stomping, pedal-to-the-metal hair-raiser (“Acre Of Snakes”); menacing swamp-rock (“Make That Call”); a stinging, swinging blues (“Liar Out Of You”); and a stirring anthem (“Book Of Dreams”). The album concludes with “The Best Is Yet To Come”, a sweet, hopeful benediction penned by the singer on his 50th birthday.
The tunes weigh in at five-minutes-plus on average, allowing Bruton to deliver some of the most riveting and moving guitar solos of his career. “My record company wanted me to play more guitar than I did on the last album,” he confesses. “There were, like, three solos on that whole record. I’d finally gotten to the point where I couldn’t — I just hate the ‘obligatory guitar solo.’ But they wanted more guitar, so I had to really get into making stuff mean something.”
Stephen Bruton set sail two days after this interview on Delbert McClinton’s annual “Sandy Beach Excursion” — a/k/a “Delbert’s Blues Cruise,” a musical romp in the Caribbean (yeah, he even works on his vacations!) that also included Marcia Ball, Anson Funderburgh, Becca and Bonnie Bramlett, Al Anderson and The Derailers.
Upon returning, extensive touring in support of Spirit World is planned, with Bruton joined by drummer Brannen Temple and bassist Yoggie Musgrove. He plans a “live” disc by The Resentments by mid-summer, and a double re-issue of his two Dos rockers later in the year.
In between all of that, he’ll be fielding those calls…
