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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. |