Todd Snider And Will Kimbrough – “If the melody is right, you can open your heart”

ND: Has the way you guys look at each other changed over the past ten years?

WK: It has changed. Todd, I used to have to rely on you to make a living. We did it enough of the year that there wasn’t enough time left for me to go make more money. So you were it. There’s natural shit that goes with that.

TS: When our band broke up, you realized, “I can always play no matter what.” You hooked up with everybody.

WK: Right. I like now that it’s not something I’m hanging on to because I have to. It’s because I want to, and I’m glad when I get called and there’s something to do. It’s a different relationship when it’s all you do. Now that it’s not that, it’s we do what we do together and it’s great.

Frankly, before you I’d never made a living before. I’d lived in band communal houses. It wasn’t feeding the kids. Now what I do is feed my kids, because they need to be fed. Really I’m taking it for granted because it’s so normal to hear Todd’s new songs and listen to him decide how he wants them to try to be when they get recorded, and getting to be part of that process in between.

IV. I CAN SLEEP ON PEOPLE’S COUCHES FOR AS LONG AS I WANT TO.

ND: OK, somewhere in Texas tonight there’s a mediocre singer-songwriter selling “Nashville Sucks” coozies at his merch table. Meanwhile, we can walk around this neighborhood, pop by the house where Loretta Lynn recorded Van Lear Rose, see Kieran Kane out in his yard, see Tommy Womack or Kevin Gordon at the Family Wash…

TS: You talking about our gang? Is it possible that our gang’s cool as shit? We should get some shirts.

WK: In Nashville, there have always been a ton of great musicians — whether the stuff they worked on was a good song or a great song and whether it got released, and then whether you heard it.

TS: Bobby Bare Jr. said the best guitar picker in Nashville will deliver your pizza or sell you weed.

WK: Kristofferson cleaned ashtrays. Right here in Nashville. I think the difference today, and the reason some of these people end up delivering pizza after years of making music, is that there isn’t a mid-level of music that the big labels can comprehend anymore. There isn’t a Little Feat that’s on Warner Bros. Little Feat was a club band.

ND: Fifteen years ago, would you have been able to surmise where you’d be in 2006?

WK: Fifteen years ago was 1991. No, this isn’t what I thought it would be. Fifteen years ago, the playing live part was with the goal that someone else would think it was as exciting as I thought it was. I like what I’m doing now. It’s just not what I thought it would be, which is maybe like one of those rock photos from Creem magazine.

TS: It’s probably not like I thought it would be. But I still like it. I still like that moment where you think some kid decided that his dad’s idea for him to be a dentist isn’t really the best idea. If one part of your show can make that kid go, “Cathy’s got an idea about not doing what my parents want me to do, and maybe Cathy’s right.” If you could be part of that, that would be good. I had a night at a Jerry Jeff Walker concert where I thought, “I don’t have to be in construction. I can sleep on people’s couches for as long as I want to. Fuck it.” I would like to be part of that for somebody.

WK: That’s the first thing you get if you’re in a band that draws some crowds. You can stay at the party as long as you want, and you can crash there.

TS: For me, the guitar came second. The need for the couch came first. So when the guitar came, I was like “Whoo hoo, this makes the couch easy.” You know, I know Jerry Jeff Walker, and he’s completely indifferent to the idea that I saw him and thought that the idea that I was surfing sofas was romantic and not dumb. He’s indifferent to that. That was a gig.

ND: You’re not indifferent to that, though, are you?

TS: I think it would be really cool if everybody left your show feeling better. Feeling pushed toward life like you were pushed by that show that pushed you. But how often does that happen, and do you get to know it happened? That night after Jerry Jeff Walker very clearly said to me from the stage that I didn’t have to listen to my dad, he went home and ate some chips and watched the Yankees.

WK: For me, that show was Bruce Springsteen.

TS: And, come to think of it, because it was Bruce Springsteen, he probably went backstage that night and went, “Man, I think I changed a lot of lives here in Birmingham tonight. Yeah, Will Kimbrough was born to-nite!”

ND: Is it harder to write songs now, having written so many? Is it harder to come up with melodies that don’t sound like your other melodies, or to come up with words that say something new?

TS: It’s harder to write songs that I like. If I had to look back on my whole life as a songwriter, I would say that — probably for the girls — I thought this idea of opening your heart and showing it to people was a good thing to say you were doing. The older I get and the more I sit in the little dressing rooms with everyone’s name signed on the walls, the more I realize that’s for sure the deal. Whatever you got, you open your heart. That’s what I like to do.