Walking Her Own Line
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SharePM: I recently interviewed an editor from the New Yorker who said that putting together a collection of stories was very much like putting together an album. What do you think about this?
RC: Yeah, I would agree. I even think putting together my memoir was like putting together an album. I wrote a lot of these as separate pieces. It was only after the fact that I began connecting them. It’s like putting together a puzzle. Like the entire part about Oslo Prison; I wrote that separately without it ending in the hardware scene where I’m shopping with my father, so I had to add that to make it cohesive. But I had no idea, much like an album, that it would end up where it did: in a hardware store.
PM: Much like fictive characters, really. We put them on stage together, and sometimes we know where they’re going, but other times (most of the time) we learn as we go.
RC: Right. You see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes they take these left turns and it’s like you didn’t see it coming. It’s really amazing, even when it’s really you, your memories. The book is more thematically related (like an album) than it is a linear timeline of my life. It’s not chronological.
PM: I wanted to talk a bit about The List, your latest album (inspired by the 100 list of essential songs Johnny gave to Rosanne as she began pursuing music)…
RC: Look at your shirt!
PM: (Laughing) Yeah, Betsey Johnson, I love her.
RC: Her partner is one of my best friends!
PM: Great. Please have her send me clothes anytime!
But back to The List. You don’t self-identify as a country artist, in fact, you’ve said you enjoy breaking the distinctions of genre, thus I wondered why make this album?
RC: It felt like the right time.
PM: How did you take from that list of 100 songs and cull the 12 that ended up on the album?
RC: The first decision was easy, which songs suited my voice, and which songs do I feel most comfortable singing. Then we took a scholarly approach to it, that’s to say if the record is going to be a microcosm of the actual list, than we have to have the Carter family, we have to have Hank Williams, Jimmy Rogers. Those performers needed to be put down.
PM: And still the album feels very modern. It’s you.
RC: It had to be. I couldn’t just ape the originals; I had to make them my own.
PM: I read that your father was upset that he’d raised you in Southern California instead of Tennesse…
RC: Yes, but he was the one who told me to go to New York when I was still trying to decide if I wanted to pursue music. He had an apartment on Central Park South. People are so misinformed about him; he loved New York.
PM: Speaking of misinformed, I was hoping you might weigh in on the 2005 film Walk the Line. Did it do justice to your family? Your mother is depicted as an almost villain-like character.
RC: It was painful. My mother had just died when it came out, and it was such a cartoon. It was such a one-dimensional narrative. And they do a disservice to my father by depicting his drug addiction and redemption from that, rather than the transcendent artist he was.
PM: So it upset you?
RC: No, I’m not upset. I liked the movie Ray, but his kids probably don’t.
PM: One last question: What are you working on now? What might your fans expect from you next? Another book? The sequel to your memoir? More from the “List”?
RC: Right now I’m touring a lot because of the book, because of The List, but my next project is a trio record with Billy Bragg and Joe Henry.
PM: Oh, I love Billy Bragg!
RC: Right?! Me too. Well we’re writing the songs now; Joe’s going to produce it and we’re recording the songs in March.
PM: So no more writing?
RC: Songs, yes, but not prose at the moment.
PM: But there’s more to come?
RC: Well I’m 55 and it’s a 250 page book. I have a lot more to say.
