I Cut Myself Loose and I Try to Get Out of the Way • A conversation with Dan Penn

I Cut Myself Loose and I Try to Get Out of the Way • A conversation with Dan Penn

http://archives.nodepression.com/2000/11/i-cut-myself-loose-and-i-try-to-get-out-of-the-way/

Seldom is heard, in conversation with Dan Penn, a discouraging word. Until you try to hang a label on him: Is he a songwriter, a producer or a performer?

“I don’t like to be put in boxes. People think they’ve got your number,” Penn says in a honey-dipped drawl that’s almost as mellifluous as his singing voice. “In my mind, I am really just a studio cat, and I love that.”

Still, it’s difficult not to try to categorize Penn, if for no other reason than to get a handle on the breadth of his achievement. As a writer, he is responsible for some of the greatest soul songs ever, including “Sweet Inspiration”, “I’m Your Puppet”, “You Left The Water Running”, “Do Right Woman” and “The Dark End Of The Street” — the latter two cut in definitive versions by Aretha Franklin and James Carr, respectively, and covered by the Flying Burrito Brothers. His first hit came while he was still in his teens, when “Is A Bluebird Blue” charted for Conway Twitty.

As a producer, he cut his teeth at the legendary Fame Studios near Muscle Shoals before moving on to Chips Moman’s American Studios in Memphis, where he helmed The Box Tops’ immortal hit “The Letter”. More recently, he helped produce Irma Thomas’ new Rounder album, My Heart’s In Memphis: The Songs Of Dan Penn.

He’s less well-known as a performer of his own songs, and that’s a shame. People who have heard his songwriting demos from the ’60s swear they eclipse most of the covers, and on the rare occasions he has played live, usually with songwriting pal Spooner Oldham, the results are a soul tutorial. He has made great albums of his own, too: Nobody’s Fool (Bell, 1973), Do Right Man (Sire, 1994), and Moments From This Theatre with Oldham (Proper, 1999).

His latest is Blue Nite Lounge, a collection of demos he recorded in a tiny cabin during fishing trips to St. Francisville, Louisiana, released through his website (www.danpenn.com). These days, he lives in Nashville with Linda, his wife of 35 years. Penn, 58, is still passionate about making music and has built a home studio, appropriately dubbed Better Songs And Gardens.

I. I AM NOT INTERESTED IN WHAT IS BEING SAID, BUT HOW IT IS BEING SAID

ND: On Blue Nite Lounge, there’s a song called “A Memphis Melody” that evokes that time in the 1960s when the great studios were in high gear; Stax, American and Hi. You were there. What was it like?

DP: It was just perfect. You rolled into Memphis and there was great camaraderie. Each studio had their own set of people. Memphis is kind of one of those places where they get jealous if you went and visited the other place, but everybody done it. I had a ‘37 Packard. We would get into that car and ride around at night and say, let’s go to Hi, let’s go see Willie [Mitchell]. He’d say, ‘What you all doing?’ We’d say ‘We’re going to the Rendez-Vous. Wanna go?’ ‘Naw, we gotta work.’ Or we’d stop by Stax.

It was kind of part of our writing ritual. Many nights, it was just, go to another studio and see what the rest of the world is doing. It was a delightful place, Memphis was in those days. There was really no animosity in the air. After Dr. King got killed down there, it has never been the same. I’ll put [the music of that time] ahead of most things I hear right now. Who knows why it was that way?

ND: People usually refer to the music you make as soul music. Does that term mean anything to you anymore?

DP: That’s a deep subject there. I know what they mean when they say soul music. They mean ’60s black soul. When I was young and in my prime, that is what was happening, and I loved it as much as anybody. And of course, we had all these great artists to work with. It drove my songs. But I don’t set around and wallow in that. I don’t care about any of those terms. I am a country person, but I have never cared too much for country music. I have got nothing against it. But there’s just a lot of vanilla that gets in the way. But black music, I have always been a fan of.
ND: You know as much as anyone what it takes to make a great song. So, what’s the secret?

DP: The older I get, the more I realize I know nothing about what I do. I used to think I had the ingredients, but it is hard to put a finger on what makes a great song. All the preconceived ideas I had about songwriting seem to have kind of melted away through the years. When I write, I cut myself loose and I try to get out of the way. I’m still writing, but all I do now is I just show up. I feel like if I show up and I apply myself, which means enjoy the music, that seems to do it for me.

What has always been important to me is how the lyric hit the melody; how they went together. I am not interested in what is being said, but how it is being said. I kind of take it back to Elvis. Sometimes I couldn’t hear a word he was saying, but I liked the way it made me feel. I like people to hear what I am saying, but if it just makes you feel good, that’s to me the main thing. It is not how great the lyric is, or how strong the melody is, but the marriage of them, and a good groove.

II. WHAT WE ABSORB EVENTUALLY ALL COMES BACK OUT

ND: How did you and Chips Moman come to write “Dark End Of The Street”?

DP: Southern songwriters seemed to always want to write the best cheating song ever, since Hank Williams’ “Your Cheatin’ Heart”. That song made a big impression on the minds of Southerners. It got ingrained in me, and I think Chips Moman was the same way. A lot of time with songwriting, it is what you absorb. You don’t personally have to go through it, but if you see it, understand it and absorb it, I think that really what we absorb eventually all comes back out.

We were in a poker game here in Nashville during a DJ convention. We had played a long, long time. I said let’s take a break, so me and him went into a motel, an adjoining room, and there was a guitar. I had this little idea, and I guess we wrote that song in 25 or 30 minutes. It was a week or two before we put it down, and it just so happened that James Carr was the cat who was up for a cut. Back then when we had so many great black singers who would sing our stuff, it seemed like the right one always popped up when the song got wrote.

ND: Was it the same kind of thing with “Do Right Woman”?

DP: Me and my wife were having dinner at Chips’ house, with him and his wife, and then he and I retired to a little office off the kitchen. He had this Super 400 Gibson, and we just began. We just wrote that song in maybe a couple of hours. We didn’t write it for anybody, just for us.

And then later on the Aretha Franklin session materialized at Fame, and Chips was called to be the guitar player. Right before we went down there, we put “Do Right Woman” down, just me and him on guitar, to play for Jerry [Atlantic Record exec Jerry Wexler], for Aretha. We had it about two-thirds done, but we didn’t have a bridge. I had to go write the bridge in the cloak closet while they were cutting the track [at Fame]. Wexler would say, ‘Have you got the bridge?’ He added a line, then Aretha stuck her head in and added a line. I said, ‘Cool! We got it.’ Then I had to go out and sing it in her key. I had to be the track singer while they were cutting it.

ND: I heard this was a strategy you guys would use. You are such a strong singer, you’d get sent out to sing the song for whoever’s session it was, just to rile them up.

DP: I was the wake-up guy. We only did it if we felt the singers were sleeping a bit, if they were a bit on the lazy side. Singers don’t care about what the next singer is going to do. That is an impersonal bunch, including myself. I don’t care what that guy is doing, but if he woke me up, I would show them what I can do. And usually that would get it. But they wouldn’t cop my licks.



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.

IV: I DON’T MIND BEING A SINGER-SONGWRITER, BUT PUT THE EMPHASIS ON SONGWRITER

ND: You’ve had so many great singers cover your work, but I’ve got to ask you about a couple that got away. Is it true that shortly before he died, Elvis Presley wanted to cover one of your songs?

DP: The tune that he was going to cut was “Nobody’s Fool”, which was written with Bobby Emmons. I had put out the single, and it was kind of a baby hit in Memphis. Elvis heard it, and he liked it . [Presley's] friends would come in to me and say, ‘Elvis is gonna cut that song. He sang it again last night around the swimming pool. He loves it!’ And they were going to record it, but he got drunk or passed out or whatever or got sick or something. They never did cut it.

ND: “Nobody’s Fool” would have been a great song for Elvis.

DP: Oh man! Elvis would have killed it!

ND: The other is, weren’t you asked to write a song for Bette Midler’s movie, The Rose?

DP: The movie company had Spooner and I in L.A., paying our expenses, keeping us in the hotel and feeding us and all. And we were trying to come up with these songs for this movie that we have never seen. Bette Midler was dropping by, and she was kind of a friend of ours. Nobody would tell us much about the movie. We were left on our own to dream up songs. So “Zero Willpower” came up in that particular time. We made a tape and gave it to them, and they didn’t care for it. We said we’ll keep that one and cut it on our own. I produced it on Irma Thomas back around ‘79 in Muscle Shoals. She sung it on the new record in Memphis, too. [Penn cut his own version on Do Right Man.]

ND: You started off as a performer, but then decided to work behind-the-scenes. Your records have been infrequent, and you don’t perform live often.

DP: In 1965, I just kind of slammed the door to playing live. I didn’t play live really for 25 years. I never did want that, particularly, after I got into the studio and got into writing seriously and cutting records, and I still don’t. I don’t mind being a singer-songwriter, but put the emphasis on songwriter. I don’t mind putting out records, I like to do that, but it’s whether I am going to show up to play or not that’s debatable. What that does is take up your time. When you are out there on the road, you are not getting many songs cut and not many songs written.

I love to play, and I love the feedback. After not playing for 25 years, I immediately saw the benefit to songwriting from playing out. There is something you get back from the audience that, if you stay away from it long enough, you will be starved for it. Looking back, if I had been playing, I would have been doing better as a writer. It helps. You don’t have to be a performing songwriter to write good, but I get something back that the next song might benefit from.

I really never did want to be an artist. In the very beginning I did. Now, it is not part of the plan. I guess I am a little bit…I have got a life. I would like to keep it.