The Greencards – Roots across oceans
“We were in Annapolis, Maryland, and it was one of those days where we had had a show the night before in Charlotte on a Sunday night,” Young recalls. “And no one came out — there were like eight people there. I woke up the next morning feeling really deflated.
“We were all in one hotel room in Annapolis, and we were making some business phone calls before we went down to the gig, and a call came in on my phone. It was our booking agent, and he said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ And I said, ‘look, I’m having a really bad day and if it’s bad news I can’t take it. Can it wait, please, can it wait?’
“And he said, ‘No, I want you to sit down…you’re gonna like this.’ And I said, ‘all right, I’m sittin’ down.’ And he said, ‘You’re going on the road with Bob and Willie…’
“And I said, ‘Who the hell is Bob and Willie?’
“We didn’t even know that they were touring together. And when he said, ‘You’re going on the road with Bob and Willie,’ I thought, what are these, a couple of deejays?
“And he said, ‘Carol! Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson!’ And I said, ‘Oh my God!’ I said, you’re kidding me, aren’t you? And he said, ‘No, it’s yours if you want it.’ And the funny thing is, when he said that, I said, ‘What are you kidding?’ And then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I’m answering for the guys here.’ I said, ‘Can I call you back?’ I was in tears by then, anyway.”
There’s a corollary to the story that McLoughlin relates onstage in Austin: “We called our families, and my dad was over the moon about the news — ‘The big time! That’s great!’ — but a week later, I was talkin’ to him and he said, ‘Your mom’s not showing the proper appreciation…I said, you do know who Willie Nelson is, don’t you? And she thought a second and said — ‘Does he play the fiddle’?”
Amusing as that anecdote was, McLoughlin notes that the real prospect is a bit daunting. “Those people, they’re not just musicians, they’re icons,” he observes. “So it’s very surreal to think you’re going to be soundchecking and lugging gear and doing everyday things around these people.”
For the record, here are the band’s favorite Willie ‘n’ Dylan picks: Carol, “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain” and “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”; Eamon, “Across The Borderline” and “Senor (Tales of Yanqui Power)”; Kym, “Whiskey River” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”.
For his part, the band’s agent, Keith Case of Keith Case & Associates (who also represents Alison Krauss & Union Station, Ralph Stanley and Guy Clark, among others), is either very circumspect or pathologically self-effacing. Reached by telephone, he said only, “They’re a wonderful band, and we’re very lucky.”
Warner gives credit not only to Case but to Gary Paczosa, the engineer on Weather And Water (which the Greencards produced themselves). “I can’t speak highly enough of him,” said Warner. “I think the sound quality of our record had a great deal to do with why we were eventually chosen for the tour. He’s done Alison Krauss and Nickel Creek and Dolly Parton. He’s as good as there is in acoustic music. I don’t think anyone makes better-sounding records than Gary, and I think that that’s maybe the reason our record stood out.”
Indeed, long after the Bob and Willie tour is over, the Greencards will continue to be measured by the yardstick that is Weather And Water. That prospect should prove to be a pleasure, as the new album has a burnished quality of sonic luminosity. There are plenty of hot licks, to be sure, especially on the frantic hare-and-hounds chase that is “Marty’s Kitchen” and the aptly-titled “Bordered On A Breakdown” (“An emotional trainwreck/Running out of track”). But there is also a quality of stillness that permeates some of the album’s best songs, including the leadoff track, “The Ghost of Who We Were”, “Time” and “Long Way Down”.
The album’s jewel, however, is a meltingly lovely version of “What You Are”, a previously-unreleased song by Patty Griffin and Craig Ross that previously existed only as a demo for Griffin’s shelved Silver Bells album.
The band became aware of the song during an endless post-midnight drive across the Utah desert. Soundman Roy Taylor, who works with Griffin, also moonlights with the Greencards when time permits, and he was playing the group some musical odds and ends he had stored on his laptop.
“It was two in the morning,” recalled Warner. “We weren’t able to sleep. and we heard the track and went, ‘What the hell is that?! Has she cut it? Can we do it? We wanna do it!”
Despite a bit of initial trepidation — “The first time I sang it in the studio,” Young remembers, “I think I freaked myself out a bit, because I thought, ‘This is Patty’s song!'” — Young delivered a showcase vocal, which is swaddled in dreamily beautiful instrumental accompaniment.
Unlike a number of their young contemporaries, the Greencards eschew the jamgrass grooves of the Leftover Salmons of the world, in favor of a cleaner, leaner, Celtic-inflected sound. While not being dismissive of their freewheeling peers, McLoughlin is nonetheless curt on the subject.
“There’s a lot of jam bands and I have a lot of respect for them; they can slay a festival audience,” he acknowledges. “I just think we come from a different background….We just don’t do it very well, either. It doesn’t appeal. I think we just naturally have a tighter musical form.”
That form arises, by necessity, of consensus. “If there’s a consensus, we usually go with that,” McLoughlin said. “But if somebody brought up something that someone genuinely didn’t like, we probably wouldn’t do it. The veto has certainly been used in the past.”
“That’s the good thing about being a three-piece band,” Young chimes in. “No tie votes!”
John T. Davis is a contributing editor for No Depression magazine, and an Austin-based freelance writer.