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31st January 2007  Nick started the show playing one of Hal’s songs ‘Long Way Down’, then after about half an hour into the show, Hal came on the telephone to talk to Nick Nick – Is Nashville still home for you then Hal? Hal – It is, it is, I’ve been here this time around about 6 years Nick – From upstate New York originally, have they accepted you there (in Nashville) yet? Hal - Oh very much so, yeah, I’m a Yankee by birth, a Texan by choice, so I kind of snuck back in the back door. I lived in Texas for about 20 years and I think the barometer for me would be the Grand Ole Opry. Acceptance at the Opry, and I’m getting ready to celebrate my 12th anniversary as a member of the Grand Ole Opry so yeah, I’ve been welcomed with open arms. Nick – Fantastic. Mind you, whatever music you’re into these days, whatever music you’re involved in, Nashville’s a great town for a writer isn’t it. Hal – Yeah, it is, this town, really it starts with a song and people respect that here. Nick – Relatively few people make it from Nashville over here, make the trip across the Atlantic, what’s been the impetus behind you visiting us so often? Hal – Well my first time I recorded a song called Past the Point of Rescue that was written by Mick Hanly who lives in Kilkenny, Ireland, and so I went over really on a personal level the first time and developed a friendship with Mick and realised that it was just a great place for me to be and play music and to be inspired as a songwriter so I started making the effort to come over. I think that’s what I try to convey to other American artists, you’ve got to be willing to make the trip and it’s really become a major part of my musical life. Nick – We love seeing you over here, we really do. Hal – Thank You. Nick – So the album One More Midnight, what was your thinking as you approached recording that record? Hal – Well it really didn’t require much thought on my part, I guess the bottom line was just really looking for songs that inspired me, things that I wanted to sing on stage, that’s sort of how it came to be. Nick – Tell me about the title track One More Midnight. Hal – I wrote this song with Craig Wiseman, he just gets up and goes, I really like it, and again the thing that I look for are songs that I can really just love to play live, that one really jumps out, it sits in the set beautifully, it’s a little different than anything else in the set or in the show so it’s a welcome new friend to me. Nick plays’ One More Midnight’. Nick – Do you prefer to co write? Hal – I actually take it any way I can get it, you know. I started something yesterday about a Buffalo Soldier, which were African American cavalry that they sent down into the Arizona/New Mexico desert to chase the Apache Indian, and that’s a piece I’ll probably finish by myself because I have an understanding of that history, and that’s something I’ll probably complete by myself. I just write a lot, I love the process of writing songs, sometimes it’s soul by committee, sometimes I just try to do it myself. Nick – Poor Lila’s Ghost, you actually stipulate on the sleeve notes that they are your lyrics and Steve Sheehan’s music, how did the song come about? Hal – Well I had actually been bedridden for a period of time. I was diagnosed with MS about 10 years ago, and every once in a while it sneaks up on me, so I was just kind of laying around at home and I started that piece, and I got about 4 verses in and I thought well, I’d better write a bridge, now a little chorus and get out of this, and the character had more to say so he just kept on a going, and it turned into 26 verses and the occasional bridge, and I just kind of put it in a drawer and would revisit it. I didn’t change a word, it just kind of came out in that form, and then Steven and I were doing a show, Steven was accompanying me at the Nashville Ballet, I performed 7 of my songs on stage and we accompanied them, and I thought you know, I’m gonna bring this down to Steven and just what I said to him basically was I want you to take this poem and score it like a short movie, and he did so, I love what he did musically. Nick plays Poor Lila’s Ghost (not all of it though!) Nick – That’s a fabulous song. Poor Lila’s Ghost sung by Hal Ketchum – and the thought of accompanying a ballet is not the sort of thing that immediately springs to mind when you think about music generally from Nashville - how on earth did that come about? Hal – My friend Paul Vasterling who is the choreographer and director of the Nashville ballet just happens to be a fan, and he started accumulating songs and approached me and said look, I’ve got 7 of your songs and I’d like to put them to dance, and I said feel free man, go for it. We worked mighty hard. The biggest challenge for me was that when I play a song on the stage, typically it’s different every night, it’s sometimes a guitar solo, if Kenny Grimes is really kicking, we let him go you know, so sometimes they’re 3 minutes long, sometimes they’re six minutes long, and with the ballet, they had to be very concise, people were counting and dancing to specific movements so I had to kind of really get in a mind set where I could perform these pieces identically if you will. Discipline is not a word that I use very often, think about very often, so it was good for me. Nick – Very good. So we’re going to play one more track but thinking about your song writing and how prolific you are, you say you write all the time, I remember John D Laudermilk telling me that you can’t call yourself a songwriter until you’ve written your first hundred songs. How many do you think you’ve written? Hal – I’m up about 700 right now. Nick – And what’s your hit rate, I don’t mean in terms of how many actually chart, but how many of these do you discard? Hal – I would suggest that of the 700, roughly 50 of them are worth performing in public without any real embarrassment. These old times, John D and Harlan Howard and all these guys, showed me along the way that you must be present to win, you gotta just keep going, it’s the only way you get there. Nick – Thank you Plays Just This Side of Heaven. |