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Tin Pan Alley Cat Stephen
Fearing energizes his music with collaboration and classic song
craft. At the annual trade show/musical blowout known as Folk Alliance, there seems to be more than one Stephen Fearing working the showcases that spill over every square inch of Nashville's Renaissance Hotel. One Stephen Fearing is, like hordes of others here, a singer-songwriter: singing finely tuned, serious-minded original songs over acoustic guitar accompaniment. But then there's this other guy with the same name bashing out chords in a roots-rock trio decked out in matching monogrammed suits. In Folk Alliance's feverish atmosphere of schmoozing and self-promotion, this band, "Blackie and the Rodeo Kings" is shamelessly hacking around and having a nearly illegal amount of fun. Read more...... Fearing is accustomed nowadays to switching back and forth between these dual identities. He has been in Nashville for a week, mixing half of the next Blackie and the Rodeo Kings album with bandmates Colin Linden and Tom Wilson. After the conference, Fearing is heading off on another solo tour promoting the release of his superb CD That’s How I Walk. Coproduced by Fearing and Linden and featuring six co-written songs, That’s How I Walk crackles with ideas and collaborative energy. Fearing takes inspiration as much from Tin Pan Alley as from folk, rock, and blues, delivering songs ready for the roadhouse, coffeehouse, and piano bar. And his masterful guitar work adds a distinct British Isles flavor, from acoustic rock rhythm to elegant fingerstyle. ?This kind of stylistic diversity comes naturally to Fearing, who grew up in Canada and Ireland listening to a transatlantic mix of pop, folk, and classical music. He has been an active troubadour since the late ’80s, releasing six solo albums along the way, plus three collaborations with the Rodeo Kings. On a sunny afternoon in Nashville, he took a break from the hubbub of Folk Alliance for a coffee and conversation about his travels. When
you were growing up in Ireland, did you absorb the traditional music
very much? When did you start playing guitar? Fearing I was 14 when I first picked up the guitar. It was literally hanging on the wall in my stepfather’s house, a Spanish guitar which I still have. My father and my mother divorced when I was about six, but my father is a piano teacher and organist, choirmaster, band teacher, creative writing teacher. My mother gave up a career as a soprano but has remained very active to this day singing chorale music, that kind of thing. I found out through my mom that I had a relative way back in Ireland known as the Swan of Erin. She was this soprano who was semifamous in Ireland and would travel around to fairs and sing. In your fingerstyle guitar work, you pay close attention to voice leading and bass lines. Does that come from classical guitar? Fearing I think so. My introduction to the instrument was very much in the classical vein, with my foot up on the stool. My teacher got me a long way with the romance of the instrument and tone. She taught me a lot of pieces that were quite romantic, that were much more emotionally based than intellectually based. But my guitar style comes as much from playing piano when I was young and from the music that was percolating around the house. My parents actively listened to a very eclectic mix of music, from classical music—Bach, Beethoven, and some more challenging than that—to Peter, Paul, and Mary. I think my dad deliberately played a variety of music to us children, because he knew that once we got out into the world, we’d be fed a certain diet regularly. So he wanted to broaden our ears. One of my earliest memories is marching around under the dining room table pretending I was some kind of animal in a parade, and there was Beethoven playing. It’s interesting you should mention piano. On your new album, some songs use a roots-music vocabulary while others distinctly recall Tin Pan Alley songwriting. That’s unusual to hear in the singer-songwriter idiom. Fearing You know, singer-songwriter used to be a description of "I write the songs and I play the songs," and you can trace it back to Carole King, I guess. And then at some point it moved away from that Tin Pan Alley element and became much more about poetry and folk music. Now singer-songwriter has become a musical genre to itself, in such a way that you could listen to a piece and say, "That’s singer-songwriter." It has that connotation, and I’m starting to get bored with that. I clearly am a singer-songwriter, but us singer-songwriter types have explored a lot of the limitations, and I’m interested in being a songwriter now. When I go back in my history, I listened to a lot of Gershwin, Cole Porter, and some of those classic things, and music I would have found corny and almost repugnant maybe 15 years ago is now starting to interest me. I think of Nick Lowe, the trilogy of albums that he just finished, as an English guy who has mined the Tin Pan Alley side of American roots music in a really successful way. Would "When My Baby Calls My Name," from the new album, be an example of a song tapping into that tradition? Fearing Yeah. I’ve labored over songs literally for years, tweaking and tweaking and worrying about a progression or a turn of phrase, but that song came so fast and easy. I remember thinking, "Man, this is really a different song for me, but this is an old, old song. This is me sticking my boot firmly into a genre that has existed for a long time, but you don’t hear that often anymore unless it’s on golden oldies." It’s like Frank Sinatra time, and I love that. When I listen to In the Wee Small Hours, early Sinatra stuff when he was working with Nelson Riddle’s orchestra, it just blows me away. The fact that they made those records with an orchestra and a vocalist in one take—the lyricists, everybody was working so fast and so economically and clean. There was no fat to be wasted. "Showbiz" brings to mind a different style—you’ve called it your Roy Orbison song. You use that particular chord—is it an augmented chord?—that evokes ’50s rock ballads so clearly. Fearing I don’t really know what it is. It’s a chord I like and I’ve used it before, but I don’t know what it is. There’s something going on there. I mean we could tie it in with the Celtic thing, because Celtic music is known for a mournfulness that permeates the music. I’ve heard Van Morrison say that blues music really comes from Ireland—a bit of a stretch in my mind, but what he’s tapping into is that there is sadness that runs real deep through both of those genres. The most interesting sorts of commercial music are the ones that find an emotion and put it out there. It might not be that subtly done; it might be kind of crude. But when a commercial writer finds an emotion and is able to articulate it in such a way that it’s really clear, then everybody gets it and everybody wants to hear it. In the singer-songwriter genre, sometimes the intellect takes over a little too much and everybody gets a little too clever. I’m trying to find music that is simple but not simplistic. There’s a skill, but it’s in the background—it’s not the first thing you hear. The first thing you hear is the emotion. That’s what really interests me. Another side of your writing is a song like "Black Silk Gown," where you generate a great percussive rock groove. What can you tell me about how you play in that style? Fearing That style of playing is John Martyn through and through. Imagine me sitting in Ireland at the age of 16, in the days before remote controls, so you’d turn on the television manually and be really close to the screen—you’d go click click with those big dials. I was playing guitar a little bit: "Homeward Bound" and Jim Croce tunes and maybe "Danny Boy" or "The Wild Colonial Boy" or "Heroin" by Lou Reed. And then suddenly this guy comes on the television--one guy, one acoustic guitar, and he had an Echoplex and was getting this delay sound. A couple thousand people were standing up screaming, and he was rocking this room with an acoustic guitar. I found out later it was John Martyn live from Leeds. Up until then I had thought, acoustic guitar, words like mellow, melody—it was all about notes and strumming and crushed velvet, you know? It wasn’t about that kind of beat. And he was doing this backbeat with his hand that was so exciting to me. I suddenly went, "That means you can do the band thing on your own. You can suggest a band, you can make a groove that is very rhythmic and propulsive and insistent, and it’s not like everybody has to fill in the blanks. You are actually filling it in yourself." From then on I tried to figure out how to do that. I’m almost at a point now where I would like to undo that. Then in Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, you have the actual rocking band. Fearing It’s really fun. I love performing solo; I love having that intimacy with an audience and having a whole night to go on a little journey with them. But with Blackie, it’s a chance to step onto a different escalator and go to a different floor immediately, and I love the change. Maybe for fans of mine who come out and want to hear "Beguiling Eyes," it’s a bit of a head shaker at first. You know, I grew up listening to the Clash and Abba and a lot of pop music from British radio. That’s as much a part of what I do as Woody Guthrie or the Clancy Brothers, so it’s great to be able to exercise that muscle as well. I would feel awkward if I were on my own jumping around and laughing hysterically, but with these two guys . . . I don’t have to talk as much—sometimes I don’t talk at all the whole night because Tom [Wilson] talks a lot. I don’t have to sing all night; sometimes I can just be a guitar player. I like it a lot. And the suits are fun, too. Would you talk a little about Willie P. Bennett and the songs that Blackie started with? Fearing We got together when I first moved to Ontario from British Columbia. I phoned up Colin Linden because I had this idea in the back of my head: to record a tribute album to Willie P. Bennett. Willie P. Bennett is a contemporary of Bruce Cockburn and Stan Rogers and those guys; he’s very unknown even in Canada, and yet his work is known to a certain degree. Willie is in Fred Eaglesmith’s band and has been for years. But he is a great songwriter in his own right and probably has influenced Fred as much as anyone. We felt that his music was underappreciated. It was at a time—seven or eight years ago—when the tribute album was at its height. We didn’t want to do a tribute record that was like all the others, where you get 12 artists together to do 12 songs. We wanted to be a cover band that did Willie P. Bennett. Colin felt that we needed one more voice to adequately cover the material, which gives you a sense of the breadth of Willie’s stuff, and Tom came in. What started as a one-off deal—make an album of Willie’s music and that’s it, no touring plans, nothing—just grew and grew and grew. The chemistry between the three of us was very strong. ?We named the band after one of Willie’s songs—"Blackie and the Rodeo King"—and the sound we make comes from congregating around his music, which is hard to pigeonhole. It is quintessentially Ontario music, in the same way that you can identify singer-songwriter stuff from Texas. It’s very Canadian, because it’s not country only and it’s not folk only but it taps into all these things. What was the process like coproducing your new solo album with Colin? Fearing Interesting, because Colin works so fast. We’ve made six records together now, and he still does stuff in the studio where I have no idea what he’s doing. I’ve been in the studio a lot and I’ve produced a record for somebody else, but I watch him and I just can’t keep up. It’s frustrating, because I could go in there and be the artist—put my music down and let them mix it and do everything—but I like getting involved. I want to know how this compressor works and why they’re using this particular chain for the signal. And with Colin, he goes so fast that you are throwing a spanner in the works if you get in his face too much. So when this record came around, I said, "We’ve made several records together where you produced and I’ve been the artist. Let’s coproduce this one." We both felt that in order to move our relationship on, that was the next thing we had to do. What happened because of it is that there are different textures on this record. You said you hear a more roots element and a more Tin Pan Alley element, where it’s slightly more melodically complicated, harmonically complicated. I think if I’d made the record with just Colin producing, the roots element would have been stronger. Colin is a fantastic deep, deep roots musician in his playing and his writing and his production style. It’s always about analog, needles buried, a lot of compression; it’s fuzzy and it’s very warm. The most important thing is getting spirit on the track and perhaps the least important thing is perfection. So we met halfway, and we couldn’t have made this record unless we had done it that way. We both walked away feeling really excited with what we had done. The album ends on a traditional note, with "The Parting Glass." What’s the story behind that arrangement? Fearing There’s a whole part of my life that exists around little tiny coffeehouses. In Canada, there’s a British/Irish element to the coffeehouse scene that is more prevalent than in America. There’s a part of me that feels really akin to that, and there’s a part of me that wrestles with that and wants to get away from that. I put that song on specifically to say to those people who come to my shows and wear thick, woolly sweaters—and I love them dearly—the last word on this record is very much for you. ?The arrangement for the song is interesting. When I was living in Ireland, I was listening to a lot of Bob Dylan. I remember hearing "Restless Farewell" and being really confused, because it sounded awfully similar to "The Parting Glass." Dylan, Van Morrison, all those guys were taking songs literally from the tradition. They might write some different lyrics, they might change the slant a bit, and then they’d say, "Words and music by Bob Dylan." I didn’t really understand that, but what I’ve done is take "Restless Farewell," which is a version of "The Parting Glass," and put the traditional words back on it. The album features a lot more co-writing than you’ve done before. How has your experience been sitting in a room with somebody trying to write a song? Fearing It’s a little terrifying. It’s interesting hanging out with Colin here in Nashville, Music City, because he talks about co-writing with people where at 11:00 you’ve got an appointment that goes until lunch, then you go out for lunch, and then you come back and do another one. It’s very regimented and formal, and I don’t feel like I can do that. But with every co-writing experience I’ve had, bar none, we came up with a song, and I’ve recorded pretty much all of them. I don’t know if that means my filter is too big or that I’ve just been very lucky. "Me and Mr. Blue" doesn’t sound like the kind of song two people would write together. The mood is so intimate. Fearing The guy I wrote that with, Ian Thornley, is from Hamilton, Ontario. He was in a band from Boston for years called Big Wreck—classic, Led Zeppelin–like, big big rock band. Ian is one of those supremely talented guys who, when it comes time to demo the songs, does the drums and the bass and sings and plays guitar. And his electric guitar tone is to die for. He’s a monster. And he’s a handsome devil, he’s young, he’s like a rock star. He mentioned to me a couple times that he really likes what I do; it seemed to be so far away from what he does, and yet he said there’s some common ground, so we should get together. ?I went by his house, had my little notebook with me and a couple of ideas which I presented to him. And he said, "Well, I’ve got this guitar piece that I don’t really know what to do with." First of all he had to show me the G-minor tuning [D G D G Bb D], which I wasn’t familiar with. He had just gone through the wringer with his label—it was the classic snafu where, "I don’t hear a hit," he demoed 150 songs, all that kind of stupid shit. He presented to me this line: "I fell asleep on a rooftop, and I woke up halfway down." And I thought, "Well, what is that line about?" because you have to get inside the person’s head if you’re going to write the song together. I was thinking of Ian and all he’d been through. I started projecting all this stuff, and the Mr. Blue character comes from Reservoir Dogs. The Harvey Keitel character was Mr. Blue, and it also ties into Tin Pan Alley—"Mr. Blue" is such a classic. By the time I left we had a verse and a chorus written. I kind of knew where the song was going to go, and I went home and wrote the rest of it. I had a built-in snobbery about co-writing, which was, that’s what you do when you’re running out of steam and just before you make a kids’ record--that kind of mentality. I’ve found it to be completely the opposite—for me, it’s like working with Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. The true nature of collaboration is where you create something you could never have made on your own. It is the other person’s energy and your energy coming together, and at some point in the writing process you get so caught up in the excitement of creating something with a stranger that all the boundaries drop and everybody starts giggling and making cups of tea and papers are all over the desk. I love that. I go home from those sessions and feel like I am 20 foot tall, and I end up writing more material on my own. So it’s been nothing but a good thing for me. What
They Play ?Michael Hedges was also an inspiration for Fearing’s larger-than-life amplified tone. His Manzer is outfitted with a Takamine pickup and an Audio-Technica ATM35 internal condenser mic. He blends the two sources with a Mackie 1202 mixer and uses a Quadraverb and other boxes to create varied colors and rhythmic delay effects for different songs. His current amplification setup is described on his website down to the last wire, but he is always tinkering and has set his sights on revamping the EQ section. Fearing’s biggest gear quest these days is assembling a great electric guitar rig, so he can switch-hit convincingly and hold his own alongside the classic roots-and-blues tones of his Blackie and the Rodeo Kings bandmate Colin Linden. Recent additions to Fearing’s collection include a ’71 Gibson SG, a Morley fuzz/wah pedal, and a ’67 Fender blackface Deluxe Reverb amp that has helped him understand why electric players get so excited about vintage amplifiers.
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People
like to talk to Stephen. 