BUCKY BUXTER INTERVIEW

BY PAOLO VITES

(special thanks to Christine Marcum)

PUBLISHED ON JAM MAGAZINE, ITALY, SEPTEMBER 2001 ( www.jamonline.it )

Bucky Baxter is a fantastic musician. To me, he have changed the face of Bob Dylan’s live music in the 90s, givin’ to it an incredible variety of styles and much, much fun. Actually, he’s in tour with Ryan Adams, former leader of Whiskyetown, and what Bill Flanagan have call ‘the next big thing’ in rock’n’roll music. But Bucky also have a fantastic solo album (Most Likely, No Problem; you can find it at his website, www.buckybaxter.com) out these days. It’s worth check it out.

Thank you. Yeah, you know it’s just an instrumental record. We made it quite a while ago.

Yes.

Oh you know. I just didn’t have time to deal with it.

You know if you release a record like that, it’s only gonna sell 10 or 20,000 copies anyway on a major record label. You don’t see a penny from it. So you pretty much have to release albums like that on your own record label and really to do that you have to have a website and an organization to design the album cover and promote it. I felt like it was kind of a timeless record that could be released at any time.

So I just waited and it sat in my chest of drawers in my closet for a few years and then I put it out.

Well I don’t have a very long attention span, ya know, so that’s why there’s so many different kinds of songs on that record. I get bored if I do the same thing for too long.

As much as I like a bunch of other kind of music. I’m not a fanatic about raggae music, but I like it. But I like a lot of different kinds of music. I don’t really get locked in on one thing for too long.

You know, somebody just said "You know we need to put a nice jazz song on this record." And somebody suggested All Blues and I didn’t know it. So I went and bought the CD and sat on the picnic bench and listened to it about ten times in a row and then we cut it. And thatí’s about it. It wasní’t something that I’d been studying more than a couple hours.

Yeah. I just learned it real quick. You know those musicians on that album are fantastic, so ití’ very easy to play.

Yeah, Henry Gross is one of my most closest and dearest friends and he was a big help on that record. Mostly moral support, but he played on it too. He’s great. Have you heard any of his new record?

Oh, it’s fantastic. You should go to his website.

Yeah coz, he’s great and he’s still writing great songs and putting out great records. They still get played on the radio very much. You should buy his last two records. The one he just put out last year is fantastic.

Oh, they’re just old songs. We actually made up a story first. That was the whole concept. It was a concept record. We made up a story and the I would write a song to the story, but that’s all on the website

Right. Yes, I had played in Virginia and the east coast a lot but then I got married and we were having a baby so I moved to Nashville coz there was more work here. But I soon grew tired of the country music coz it’s so bad. I like old country music a lot. I adore it, but the new country is just boring to play.

That I started really working hard at meeting the songwriters and getting into more country rock and rock’n’roll situations.

But Nashville, I’ve lived here twenty years and it’s been a very good town for me.

Just pedal steel, right.

Well, I could list a few I like. Buddy Charlton was my teacher in Virginia and he lived in Nashville for a long time and is recognized as one of the best players there ever were and he played for Ernest Tubb for a long time.

Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadours. Great Player, great guy. He’s still living and teaching up in Virginia and I like Lloyd Green.

Yeah, he played on a lot of country hits Tammy Wynette, everybody, he’s fantastic.

I used to (The New Riders Of The Purple Sage) when I was a kid.

Oh, sometimes. Yeah, he plays good but he’s not one of my real big influences. I liked Bobby Black quite a bit, from Commander Cody. He is fantastic. He was a big influence on me. Sneaky Pete too

I’m just thinking of some other guys. I like Jimmy Day. He played for a lot of people, Willie Nelson in the old days. And I like Jerry Bryd. He’s an American, but he’s lived in Hawaii for a long time and he plays just the lap steel. He doesn’t play pedal steel. He’s fantastic. Great touch. He’s one of the most famous steel players there ever was.

I’ve always tried not to play like other guys and play in different spaces and play less. I always felt like, really in the music business, recording records is a thing that you really get paid for what you don’t play coz it seems to me that most steel players play too much.

Yeah and they interfere with the actual lyric in the song just coz they’re trying to play too much pedal steel. They’re trying to show off.

Well, because I’ve gotten the opportunity to play in a lot of bands that normally wouldn’t have a pedal steel in rock and roll circumstances. I’ve always just tried to be more of just a musician than a pedal steel player so I don’t really draw off conventional pedal steel guitar licks and I just play what I think the song needs.

Yep. Mandolin... and Fiddle. I’m working on the fiddle very hard right now. I love the fiddle. And I’m learning a lot of the old Scottish fiddle tunes.

I’ve got a little cabin up in Nova Scotia, Canada, where there’s a whole area up there was developed by Scots.. Scottsmen and thereí’s a lot of fantastic fiddlers up there, where my cabin is and I go watch them, copy them.

Then I play guitar, regular guitar, electric and acoustic guitar and bass. I’m very excited I just bought a 1919 Hamburg Steinway piano.

Yes, my friend, Johnny O’Brien who’s recognized as the master Steinway rebuilder in the United States is rebuilding it for me. It’s a fine piano. You know we’ve built this whole studio complex here. That’s what I’ve been doing since I left Bob Dylan.

I’ve built a beautiful, beautiful place out in the country outside Nashville. It’s a place for people to go make albums. It’s got a 1600 square foot recording studio with sixteen foot ceilings and it’s all landscaped and it sits in what we call a hollow... it’s a space between two mountains. It’s very, very private. Also then there are two cabins... really four cabins.

Yeah, more writing than producing. I want to basically do, you know I bought a pedal steel kind of on a whim when I was about 20 or 21 and this guy called me about 4 or 5 or 6 days and said "I need a pedal steel player in my band". And I said "I’d love to play but I don’t know how." And he said "thatí’ ok, just play."

So I went down there in some little club and played and then all of a sudden I found myself on stage with Bob Dylan, twenty years later. Once I bought the pedal steel it was just like the beginning of a whirlwind ride, you know?

I just played and played and played and played and I never got to do the other things I was interested in. I really just wanted to be a forest ranger, ya know? And a fisherman. And the music thing just kinda happened. I had a great run and enjoyed it but I’m much happier now staying home coz I traveled constantly from 1976 or so til recently and you know when you’re traveling that much you miss out on a lot of nice things like having a dog, cat, and a garden and a home fixed up the way you want. So, I’ve got my cabin up in Canada now and I have my place here in Tennessee and we’re gonna go build another complex just like this one in Colorado in the mountains where actually I’m going out there August 15 to finalize the deal on some highcountry land, 10,000 feet. It’s got a beautiful view. You can see 60-70 miles. In a little town called Creed, Colorado. I’m taking a whole team of guys out there and we’re going to build a bunch of cabins and a studio over the next two years.

Yeah, well Creed is fantastic; a beautiful, beautiful old silver mining town and it’s fantastic. It’s right on the edge of the San Juan mountain range and there is some of the best fishing in the United States. Trout fishing, fly fishing, you know and there is elk and moose and deer and every kind of mountain animal you can think of just right there.

Steve Earle? I haven’t talked with him in quite a while. We were best friends for a long time and I, you know, played on his records and traveled with him, but you know we kind of went our separate ways. There were some problems, you know, with drugs and he eventually had to go away for awhile... to jail, you know. But I’m a big fan of Steve’s music. We met at a party at Ray Kennedy’s house about twelve years ago. And became friends and then when he made that first Guitar Town, I was invited to be on that record and then we traveled and made records and had a hell of a lot of fun for years, probably five years.

Yeah, that was definitely, I thought, the best sound he’s ever had. Yes, it was a lot of fun.

Yeah, well they’re just two completely different situations. They’re not comparable. Steve is a totally different kind of man than Bob Dylan is and they’re both great, really creative, but just completely different. Rather than talk about the similarities it would be much easier to talk about wasn’t similar. Except that they were both great songwriters. I’ve been really lucky to play with really fantastic songwriters.

Actually I was playing with Steve Earle and we were opening for Bob Dylan and Bob wanted to start playing pedal steel himself. So I went out and found him one and gave him some lessons and then I ended up sitting in with his band with G. E. Smith and Bob a few times and then a year or two later he called me and asked me to go on the road with him. I ended up staying seven years... seven or eight years. Almost 800 shows.

Yes. Yeah, yeah I knew how much he worked and that was fine with me coz you know Iíd never really made any money in the music business, to speak of and you know I raised two kids. When I went to work with Bob, the pay went up substantially and it was very good and it improved my life style.

No, it was totally up to him. I didn’t think it would last more than a month or two, to be honest with you and it ended up lasting seven years. There’s only one guy, I think, that’s played more gigs with him than me and that’s TonyÖTony Garnier.

I appreciate that. That’s what I try to do, you know. That’s my job... to... I really like to get into a band and round out the sound and make it... do it. Basically you do what you set out to do.

No, no. And we didn’t rehearse any of the songs we were playing on the show. I learned most of the songs from Tony Garnier at sound check

Yeah, yeah considering how many songs we played over the years. They have it listed over the Internet but God knows how many different songs I played with him... hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. But it was great. It’s good, you know, I like a challenge. That’s one of the reasons I was ready to go is that it ceased being a challenge to me. And I had other things... other challenges I wanted to tackle. So after seven years, even playing with Bob Dylan gets a little boring.

You know that’s a long time. You can only play All Along the Watchtower and Blowin in the Windîso many times.

Yeah, right. I don’t know. If he’s comfortable with it. I have no idea why Bob Dylan does what he does. You have to ask him.

That’s a different interview.

Oh, there were... it was just scattered over the seven or eight years. There was no particular time to me that it was really better. It’s just there were individual nights that you know, I don’t remember individually.

There were good nights and bad nights. I think that the best band that he had was when it was me and David Kemper and Tony Garnier and Larry. I enjoyed playing with Ron Wood a lot. Lot of people sat in, those were fun nights... Jerry Garcia, Ron Wood, Bruce Springsteen. I got to sing with Bruce Springsteen, that was pretty exciting.

There were a lot of fantastic moments, you know, over those years. They were a great experience for me.

Well, it’s his band; he can do whatever he wants... it’s his audience and his band. If Bob Dylan wants to take the guitar solo, then there’s nothing you can do about it. And sometimes his solos are pretty damn good, not always, but sometimes they were quite good. He had an interesting approach... singing and playing... very brave.

No, I didn’t have that much fun making that record.

No. The first thing, when we got to Miami, Daniel Lanois came to me and said, "Look, I’m just going to be honest with you. The last thing I want on this record is pedal steel guitar." Then, it’s not listed, but I ended up being on almost every track.

One of the engineers called me and said, "Well, Daniel keeps trying to take you off the track, but then they don’t work and they have to put you back on.’ So I thought that was pretty funny. But, yeah, he didn’t want any pedal steel on it and Bob and Jeff Kramer pushed for keeping me on the session so, you know, it all worked out but it was very uncomfortable coz I always felt like I was fighting to get on the songs.

But whatever. That’s life. Politics, you know.

No, not really. I don’t think. They didn’t change it that much. They mixed it. But it’s pretty much live. Jim wasn’t there the whole time. But I love Jim Dickinson and he’s a fantastic musician.

And I was really lucky to get play with him. But I was there for the whole recording process, from day one and it was pretty real.

I do remember a special moment, when Lanois asked to Dylan one more song to fill the album. And Bob sat at the piano and in a fifteen minutes he wrote To Make You Feel My Love.Thats the genius of the man.

No that’s not true. That’s all I want to say about that, but it’s not true.

Yes. I’m sure it’s been that way for some musicians, but it was their fault, not his.

No, no, I was very glad to leave. I’d had enough. Nothing personal. It wasn’t him; it was just being on the road all the time. And you know, and just to set the record straight, I just told the manager that I felt like I’d reached my peak and I didn’t think I was gonna progress much more. Then they let me go, which is what I wanted to happen.

But it was kinda a mutual parting of ways, no hard feelings. I was finished. But it was hard to walk away from the big paycheck, but I did and I’m glad I did

I don’t know. I have no idea

I have no idea. I just wasn’t included in those kinds of discussions.

Well you know, I think that’s natural with somebody that’s as complicated as Bob Dylan is. They want to see a lot of shows. It didn’t bother me. The fans that followed us around when we weren’t playing bugged me a lot. You know, you’d go to your hotel and there would be those same people sitting down in the lobby staring at you. You know it was our private life at that moment and I thought that was very strange that they would even want to come watch me eat breakfast.

You know, what for? Go do something fun. Leave us alone. So, but I think that was good. That’s how you make your living is people coming to see your shows and if they come to see lots of shows then all the better.

I think it’s great. I think it’s a lot of fun. I wish I’d done some of that when I was younger but I was too busy being in the band to go follow any band. So that’s the way that goes.