http://www.countrystandardtime.com/d/column.asp?xid=329

CST’s Take: West Coast (albeit with deep south roots) rockin’ country, with wit, twang, and hooks applied in the perfect measure to sell the stories

Maybe it’s just me. It sure seems like it gets harder and harder to write good songs. I’ve done some mulling on the reasons, and it probably isn’t what you think.

It isn’t, for instance, that I have too much to do. I’ve had too much to do for the last 15 years. When I was 15 I had nothing to do. Hours and hours of nothing to do and the songs I wrote then were terrible. I can remember getting home from church on a Sunday, eating some dinner and rolling into my bedroom. I would often play and write until supper. 5-6 hours. Nothing to do but sit in there and hammer away. Wow…those songs were terrible.

When I first moved to LA I had nothing to do. I kept a diary for a time and reading that thing now is hilarious and quite sad. Sunday, May 9, 1992 “Ordered Pizza”. That was my entire days activity, and this was before the Internet.  I remember one Labor Day weekend where i left my backbreaking job moving boxes at 6pm on Friday night and did not speak to another live human being until Tuesday morning at 7:30am. Lots of writing going on. Not nearly as bad as the teen years, but not so great either.

It isn’t because I’m happy. Although I am now mostly happy. (As long as I don’t think about how much my cell phone company rips me off.) Most songwriters start writing in order to express feelings of sadness or anger. All that piss and vinegar makes for conflict, drama and good songs. (good art in general.) Once life sorts itself out and they make enough money to live and find someone to love them - they have nothing to write about. These often leads to a sudden and unfortunate loss of quality in the songwriting department.

There are artists that never really get it together. Life is one personal disaster after the next and this helps them avoid the problem entirely. But GEEZ what a life. That would be like agreeing to relive my 28th year over and over in order to write good songs about my personal misery. I’d rather take a bullet. No, like many of the writers I admire - John Hiatt, Lyle Lovett, to name a couple, I have gotten a handle on writing songs from a happy life. The songs aren’t happy, but I am. I just keep my ears open and my heart open and there’s enough pain and interesting stuff to fill my notebook. Of course, occasionally I do bump into some personal pain and that gets poured in as well.

It isn’t because I’ve said everything I need to say. I HAVE heard writers say this. “Well, I’ve got nothing more to say.” That strikes me as odd. Sort of like, “I have no more conversations I’d like to have.” or “I’ve met all the people I’d like to meet.” We all get burned out from time to time but I always seem to have something new that I’d like to tackle. Hell, I could write 10 songs that are attempts to do a better job of covering topics that I tried with past songs. If that makes any sense.

No…the reason it gets harder and harder to write good songs is that I seem to discover more and more rules. I see what people say about my records and my songs. It’s hard not to see it, because you’re trying to pass it along to others. I think I have a pretty thick skin in that I don’t take it personally. (After all you can’t criticize a critic for critiquing a record that you sent him to critique.) But when it is time to sit down and CREATE again…that stuff comes creeping back in. You play a riff and you think, “That’s a cool starting place.” and you hear a voice that says, “…retreading Rolling Stone licks isn’t country…” and you think, “Wait. Is that just a Rolling Stone lick? That isn’t really country, is it? That rhythm is too rock, and it takes the song too far away from what most people think of as honky tonk. Damn, maybe that isn’t good. Do we have any beer?”

You come up with a title that sounds interesting and you jot down a first line. Then you think, “That sounds mean. I sure have taken a lot of criticism for being mean. Maybe I shouldn’t write that. Is music supposed to be mean? Buck Owens wasn’t mean. Shit, do we have any beer?”

And sometimes you think…WHO CARES I’LL JUST DO WHAT I WANT. But if you do, and you finish, you still think, “You know my kind of country music can’t be like that. We could play the song…but doesn’t it just confuse the audience?” I suppose some writers are just like a machine that cranks out a clean and pure type of song. No questions. No variation. I can’t do it. I have a desire to wiggle around a little. Twist it. Turn it. And over time it’s easy to take the feedback that you’ve violated some sacred rules of songwriting for a particular genre. There are lots of rules, and as time goes on I seem to find a way to violate them all - “too slick”, “too dumb”, “too mean”, “too funny”, “too traditional”, “not traditional enough”. And of course…all the feedback could be right.

So, we’ll see how it goes. I’m hammering away now. It gets harder and harder. But I get more and more determined. I love this quote from Samuel Beckett.

“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.”

As many of you know Bliss is one of LA’s leading music journalists. She did a piece on me for the Pasadena Weekly. Click to read the entire piece.

As a local Free Paper FarWest has built a solid reputation covering the Alt Country and Americana Scene in Greater Los Angeles. Here’s their review by Scott Grusin of a show we played at the LA Farmer’s Market.

Grant Langston and The Supermodels: Stand Up Man
Live at the Ranch Party at E.B.’s Beer and Wine Bar, Farmers Market
By Scott Grusin

This Stand Up Man stands out - guess ya can’t sing like this sittin’ down. Grant’s full, generous voice and direct delivery lend a kindly moral authority to his songs’ celebrations of turpitude and degeneracy; the bawdy material presented with such guileless down-to-earth humor and taste as to pass muster with the Market’s family dinner audience. Rambunctious, wild, and dirty enough while convincing everyone it’s just good clean fun; mighty sly but with nary a wink.

These guys pay attention to their sound…Grant slings a fat sweet Gretsch (hooray for single-cutaways) that provides the link-size bed of jangle I’d expect from a couple acoustic guitars. Guitar geeks: check out the “Stand Up Man CD cover for a full-frontal of this gorgeous axe.

Lead Player Larry Marciano’s guitar pick spends a lot of time clenched between his teeth, freeing his nekkid fingers for pullin’, snappin’, and poppin’ the bejeezus outta them poor beleaguered string and yankin’ every last microgram o oscillation outta his hot overdriven Tele; puttin’ a contemporary crunch on that classic biting, punchy, duck-pluckin’ attack that instantly transports me into the back of a pickup truck on a ‘merican dirt road, nursin’ a cold open container, lovin’ life. Then there’s the searing southern-friend bottleneck-work and occasional steel-pedal simulation; straddling blues and country like a Texan on an Appaloosa, each foot firmly planted in its stirrup. Chops for days.

Kudos to Josh Fleeger for a most solid, propulsive foundation and for the deepest, richest, sweetest, warmest bass tone ever i heared outta an electric. Dammit, i was too caught up with PA pack-up to look and inquire regarding his amp and beautiful hollow-body Gibson, steal his secret-formula amp settings, etc. Flatwounds forever?

Drummer Tony Horkins keeps the train-beats chugging, swings the honky-tonks hard and lanky limbed, rocks the straight-ahead chargers, and lends subtly insistent motion to the quieter numbers. A tight and tasty rhythm section, band, performance…

While the CD’s occasional acoustic instruments and production polish soften it slightly compared to the harder edge of their live show, the album still rocks; somehwere between alt and classic, with enough catchy hooks to keep my itchy trigger finger from flippin’ a (dare I say it) radio dial except to crank it up.

You can come down either way you want: set ‘n’ catch your breath or keep you feet fleet (and enlist yer hips) through “Call Your Bluff (Swamp Version)”. This bonus-track’s shuffle groove keeps it from sounding like a redundant ‘remix’. Maybe they couldn’t decide on a favorite version; I can’t either - glad to have them both.
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It would be easy to dismiss Grant Langston as a trad-country parodist if he didn’t write such unfailingly infectious tunes and weren’t such a skilled singer (though his nasal vocals might wake up the kids). His tongue is about to bust through his cheek on much of Stand Up Guy, his fourth album, with a half-joking smirk somewhere in Robbie Fulks territory, but there’s enough round choruses and Telecaster snap on the record to get under your skin or to at least keep poker night humming along. READ MORE

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Fame

Up to this point, the press and critics have been dancing all around nouns and adjectives regarding Grant Langston’s music, but I say it’s progressive country, and I say the hell with the rest of my maundering critical peers ’cause that’s the musical county line where Merle first turns back to head to Austin, and the Eagles then travel to SoCal, leaving Langston to tool down the highway with his rockin’, rollickin’, bootscootin’, salt-of-the-earth tavern troubadoring right behind Dwight and Stevie Earle. READ MORE

A new batch of reviews have recently rolled in -

“Grant Langston is an enigma. He has the sardonic wit of David Sedaris and the musical sensibilities of a combination of Ryan Adams and Waylon Jennings. Surprisingly, it works. Indeed, this Alabama native turned Los Angeles musician has created his own unique blend of rock and irreverant country. Sure, there are hundreds of rockabilly music acts across the United States, but Grant Langston and his band, The Supermodels, are different from all of them.” Read More

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“In an era of alt-country bands with artistic pretensions it’s refreshing to come across an unabashed throwback like Langston. The Alabama native was rejected by Nashville for being too old school — always a good sign. He has found a warmer welcome in California, and has also earned a following in Europe. This spirited new album, his sixth, deserves to spread the word.” Read More

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Amber Waves of Twang

“When I first looked at the CD and saw a song called “Shiner Bock and Vicodin” I thought it had possibilities. Then I listened to the song, which featured a naked guy in a wedding, and knew that Stand Up Man couldn’t miss.” Read More

Taproot Radio is a Chapel Hill, NC based podcast dedicated to Roots Music, Alt Country, Americana and the like. Calvin Powers is the creator of the show, and we had a nice half hour interview, which he has worked into his program.

Calvin is quite well known in Americana circles as the consummate tastemaker. He reviews lots of lesser known artists and is a great resource for digging up new bands. I’m honored to be featured on his show.

You can listen to the show on this page.