SS: Who inspired or influenced you early on?
BW: My parents especially. They were both musicians.
My mother played classical piano and sang in choirs and
opera choruses. My father played jazz. I always loved the
small ensemble jazz sound.
I think the first song I ever learned was "Summertime,"
which my father taught me when I wasn't yet in school. I
couldn't really play an instrument yet but he had me hacking
my way through crude approximations of the chords so I could
play that tune. Gershwin has always done it for me, and
"Porgy & Bess" has always been my favorite
of his shows.
The Beatles really made an impression. I remember being
about nine, listening to "Yesterday" and "Yellow
Submarine" and "Hey Jude" on one of those
portable kit stereos that opens like an old typewriter,
in a tweed case. I was completely hooked. I entered into
the world of those songs, a kind of reverie.
Then there was Prokofiev’s "Peter and the Wolf."
My mother used to play that record for me. I loved the drama
of the music, the way the sound told the story, the way
it embodied the narrative that some famous actor was reading
in a voice-over. You can tell I wasn't really interested
in the actor, or the voice. It was the musical storytelling.
SS: Who inspires you now?
BW: As a writer, Steve Seskin. He's the Tennessee
Williams of country songwriters.
Also, a lot of my inspiration in the last 10 or 15 years
has come from some of the wonderful songwriters around Seattle.
Larry Murante for example. There's a guy who can pack a
whole southern novel into a ballad and it doesn't even creak.
I'd say Larry is one of the people who inspired me finally
to get interested in voice, too. That astonishing voice
of his.
Dave Carter was also an inspiration to me. Talk about a
songwriter with scope... he was epic. He had a completely
unpretentious mastery. He could write songs that were fierce
and beautiful and terrifying, like "When I Go,"
or songs that were full of mischief and magic, and he never
seemed to be trying to get away with it. He was just delivering
what he had. I’m really glad that Tracy Grammer is
keeping that flame alive, performing his music.
Annie Gallup – she, too, has huge scope. She is a
gift. Her melodies can be so perfectly formed to her intent,
and her writing so full of vivid surprises.
SS: Your songs have a harmonic and melodic richness
that's often akin to jazz. Has that come on its own, or
have you studied along the way?
BW: I was lucky enough to go to a high school that
offered music theory, and luckier still to take Henry Lasker's
last class there. He was a composer and arranger from the
Depression era, who late in his life taught theory and composition
at my high school in Newton, Mass. I was a sophomore, playing
in my own rock band and doing these long, noodly, Clapton-Hendrix
solos and thinking I was cool.
Henry was an old man who knew how precious what he had
to offer was, and he wasn't interested in casting pearls
before swine. He wanted nothing to do with me. I didn't
even know how to read music, and I was swaggering in like
I owned the place. He drilled us on Bach chorales and sight
singing, laying down the rudiments in a way I had never
imagined. It was so exciting, and so hard!
I really was a terrible student, and he was a terribly
demanding teacher. After one semester he flunked me out,
along with all the other longhaired rockers who strayed
into his course. They all left. I stayed. I said, "Fine,
you can flunk me, but I’m not going anywhere. This
is too important to me. I want what you know." That
was when he began to soften. Not much, but just enough,
and I guess when you want something that badly, it only
takes a glimmer of kindness to walk over miles of broken
glass. He lasted into the spring, and got sicker and sicker
and suffered more and more pain. Then he died, shortly before
the end of the year.
I've used the principles of theory that he taught me just
about every day. If I hear music on the radio, I'm listening
to the way the voice leading works, the inversions, the
choices in arrangement and the way the melody grows out
of the chords. Even now, when I spend so much time working
on lyrics and make my living at writing, it's still these
elements of harmonic theory that I hear first.
SS: Tell me a bit about the development of your
unique guitar style.
BW: I guess there are only a few guitarists who
have really changed the way the instrument is played. For
me, Michael Hedges was one of them. He was one of the first
guitarists I heard who really explored the textures of the
instrument, so that the guitar delivered the kind of dynamic
excitement of an orchestra, or a modern art painter.
Another big inspiration was Erin Corday, who lives in Bellingham
now. This must have been 15 years ago or more. She was just
exploring everything the instrument could do, using all
the techniques I had heard in Hedges' work and adding more.
She would build these exquisite tensions and rising chord
structures, you could practically see the music in the air,
rising like some kind of exciting modern architectural adventure.
I remember seeing her play for the first time, in Fremont
at the Still Life. It set a whole new standard for the instrument,
in my mind.
photo: Kym TuvimSS: What's your songwriting process like these
days?
BW: Laborious. A lot of my songs now are eight,
ten, maybe sixteen drafts deep. It's like writing a play.
I never thought I'd work so hard to make songs. Part of
this is a kind of trust in the process. As a writer, I've
learned to make rewriting my friend. That doesn't mean the
results will always be better, but they usually are. I don't
settle for sloppy writing as much as I used to.
I mean, early on, I actually thought the words were there
just so you had something to sing. I thought scat singing
pretty much proved that. I think the turning point for me,
when the lyric really began to mean a lot, was when I heard
a whole concert performed by one guy on stage with an acoustic
guitar, playing a whole evening of John Martyn songs. I
was about 16 or 17, and I remember thinking, “Those
are real songs.” I thought, “I just paid good
money to hear this, and I'd pay it again. I don't think
I'd pay that much to hear my band.” So I went home,
broke up the band, sold my electric guitar, and stopped
performing for a long time. I just listened and practiced
and tried to write songs I liked well enough that I would
pay to hear somebody play them. I wanted to learn how real
songs are made. It took me a long time.
SS: You mentioned playwriting, which you used to
do. How has that influenced your songwriting?
BW: I don't think I really learned what a story
is until I got involved in theater. Story is all they have,
so they have it down. These are people who walk into dark
rooms, turn on the lights, and find out whether they're
really worth listening to by whether or not people stick
around to listen and watch. That's what actors do every
day. If they're not brave and vulnerable, if they don't
find material that demands that of them, theaters can't
stay in business. So good theater people know a lot about
what makes a story.
I try to use the rudiments of theater writing in my songs.
And I mostly perform alone on stage these days. If people
don't like it they walk away. And if they do like it, they
stick around, and when it really works, usually they're
singing the songs with me. So the audience is my teacher.
SS: How do you balance your career as a writer
and editor with your career as a songwriter and performer?
BW: I don't know that I do balance them. Balance
has never been my strong suit. I just work a lot, and I
work at things I love to do. I started doing all this before
I knew any better, and I’ve been doing it for so long
that experience plainly hasn't taught me much.
SS: The past several years have been full of changes
for you, both personally and professionally. How has that
influenced your musical life?
BW: It's been a time. Mortality and grief seem
to be crowding into the house. My father died, and then
my grandmother, my mother went into a big fight with breast
cancer, three of my uncles died, and one of my closest friends
just came through surgery for cancer. When my father died,
one of his oldest friends phoned me and asked me to visit.
He said, "The tall trees are falling in the forest."
The last few years, a lot of the songs I've written are
prayers and blessings. I guess I've needed them.
SS: What's your current image of success as a songwriter
and performer?
BW: I feel successful when I love a new song. I
feel successful when I can see an audience wade in with
me. It's pretty simple right now. It isn't always like that.
SS: I know your fans are eager for a follow-up
to your last release, "Company Might Come." Any
plans for a new CD?
BW: This spring and summer I am reserving time
for the next round of recording. I hope to have it out in
the fall.
SS: Any other plans?
BW: Breathing. I am grateful to be breathing.
But beyond that, a long time ago a 92-year-old man named
Jack Miller told me that I was going to spend my life listening
to people and writing their stories and helping them to
know that their stories matter. He was right. That's what
I do now, whether it's in songs or in books. I am lucky.
It's a lot of work, and it's intense, and there are tight
deadlines. It's also a real honor to be able to do this
work.
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More About Brad:
Brad's song, "Romeo"
www.bradwarren.net
buy
Brad's
CDs online
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