Tim Elkaïm/Courtesy of Canada Goose
I grew up on a family farm that my family no longer farmed because making a living that way was too hard. So thank you for Farm Aid, and congratulations on 40 years. But is it frustrating that the mission of Farm Aid—to support small family farmers, to help them make it—only seems to get more difficult and urgent?
I got frustrated maybe 30 years ago, but I have gotten used to dealing with the people who don’t really care about the small family farmer. I look at it a little differently now. I know that there are people who could care less about the small family farmer, but there are also people who are small family farmers. They need all the help they can get, and for 40 years, we’ve been trying to. help. And it’s like I’m helping my own, because I grew up on a farm.
What was your least favorite thing to do on the farm?
You pick cotton, pull corn, bale hay—you do all those things, and they’re not fun. You do it in the hot summertime, and there’s no fun in it at all, except that you know you’re doing something that helps. And you get paid a couple of dollars.
You’ve been key to American acceptance of weed, I think, by convincing people it needn’t be so scary, that it’s not evil. But there’s a good chunk of the country where it’s still not legal. Where does that resistance come from?
I don’t know. I’m old enough not to be surprised by anything these days. I’ve seen both sides of it. I’ve seen the political bullshit, and I jump out of the way and stay straight with music. That’s really all I’m interested in. I had to lay off smoking a while because of my lungs. I had abused them so much in the past with cigarettes, etcetera, that I was giving them a rest. I know there are a lot of other people out there experiencing the same thing.
We’re both writers and both guitar players, so I can give him an idea for a song. He can take it and write it and record it and send it back to me in that way. He’s a great writer himself. Bob Dylan and I were talking a while back about writing a song together. He had an idea of “I can’t read your mind.” We started with, “I can’t read your mind. The letters are too small.” I handed that over to Buddy, and he took it and turned it into a good song. That’s pretty rare with Bob.
I thought Micah did a great job producing the whole album. I was really proud. But “Last Leaf” is an incredible song. Tom Waits wrote a good one there. Every word in there I can relate to.
Speaking of making those records with Buddy and Micah, you stay so busy in the studio—four records in the last two years alone. What do you like about recording so much: the camaraderie with the players, finding your way inside new songs, being surprised by your own voice?
It’s all of those things, plus singing is one of the best exercises you can do. Your lungs are your biggest muscle, and the more you use them, the healthier you can get. [Note: The lungs technically aren’t muscles, but you get his point.] I’m surprised that I can still carry a tune. I’m 92 years old, and there ain’t a lot of us out there that are still doing anything, you know?
“Thanks” is what I’m continually saying to myself and to whoever the subconscious is out there, because I really do thank everyone for the way things are. So many good things have happened to me over the years. I’ve been very lucky, and I’ve been able to do some things that maybe somebody else didn’t get a chance to do. I’ve got a lot of lucky friends like me out there, too. We did everything wrong for a while, and then we figured it out. Now we’re doing better, so, yeah, life is good.
Life and music are good, but we both know the music industry can be bad. So many of your kids went into music. Did you ever discourage them, because of those pitfalls?
Oh, no. I encouraged them to be aware of it, and I had music instruments all over the house when they were growing up—a piano, guitar, drums, whatever. They could play it if they wanted to or not. I gave them an opportunity to do what they wanted to do.
Oh, all our lives. One of the first things I remember is sitting on the piano stool with her and listening to what she was playing, and I couldn’t have been over four or five years old. She did stuff like “In the Mood” and “Down Yonder” and all those piano greats. She could play anything. She knew all the great gospel songs. She was amazing. She lived a life where she had a lot of heartaches and losses. A lot of people may not have made it through. She was tough, and she made it through until she was ninety-something. She worked hard.
Did you hear those tough times in her playing?
Every note. Every note.
And do you think of your voice the same way—a conduit for what you’ve experienced in 92 years?
Oh yeah, heck yeah. If I don’t feel that way about it, I don’t sing the song.
Your Martin guitar, Trigger, is one of music’s most recognizable instruments, not only the way it looks but the way it sounds, too. If you think about all its scratches and signatures and cracks, which is the most meaningful to you?
Well, I think it was the first one. Leon Russell asked me to sign his guitar, and I said, “OK, if you’ll sign mine.” That was the way it all started. I think we were in San Antonio, doing a show together. People enjoyed doing it, and I enjoyed letting them do it. It’s fun, you know?
How quickly did you realize it would be with you for such a long time and that its sound was so special?
The funny part of that is that I bought that guitar sight unseen. I talked to someone in Nashville, and they said, “Well, we’ve got this Martin 20.” I said, “I don’t know what that is, but how much is it?” They said it was $150, and I had just paid $150 for a roping horse, so I thought, “Hell, that can’t be a bad deal.” As soon as I saw it and played it, one note, I knew this was different. Django Reinhardt is my favorite all-time guitar player. This has a sound that’s obviously not the same as his, but I can relate to a lot of his music with the sound that I get on Trigger. I don’t remember the first note I played, but I was probably tuning, so it was probably the bottom E string.