Page 7...Dale Russell Interview Continued...
DALE: It depends on where I am. Sometimes I’ll write it down, sometimes I’ll record it, sometimes I just memorize it ‘til I get to the instrument and then work on it.
Steiss: When you compose, you’re doing the music and the words, right?
DALE: For me, usually they come together, and I tailor the music and the lyrics. Now, in Nashville for instance, quite often it’s lyrics first - when I do a co-write with somebody it’s like - lyrics first and they’ll say we’ll come up with the music later. But for me I find that for the most part, I like to get in a groove or on a certain mood - train of thought, and to me the lyrics and the music sort of work together - they seem to flow together. I can write both ways - but I prefer to write both together.
Steiss: Do you have to rhyme your lyrics?
DALE: I tend to work more with a form and rhyme, mainly because, again, my literature teacher taught me to rhyme - taught me poetry. Now, I don’t have to do it to write, I mean I don’t consider it non-writing if it doesn’t rhyme because obviously there’s a lot of people making a lot of money doing that. The Nashville approach is to some degree more formulated, especially right now, the pop-country thing - and you’ve got to keep between certain parameters and guidelines, and I’m learning to write that style more and more; there’s a lot of knowledge to be gained writing in that style that you can take to other styles.
Steiss: What kind of parameters do you mean?
DALE: Well, little things like - I went to a seminar Ralph Murphy gave, and they give you about a dozen rules, and one of them is: Nobody is over 30. Nobody that sings a song wants to be over 30, so you don’t say “I remember when I was a teenager.” To impart that kind of wisdom and knowledge in a song you might say “My grandpa told me when I was young...” this, and you impart the knowledge that way. But nobody - like Kenny Rogers doesn’t want to stand on stage, for example, and admit his age; none of the performers do. In fact probably a lot of the audience doesn’t, so that’s why - because the audience identifies with the singer and the song. So that’s one rule of thumb. Another rule of thumb is that you try to develop your story very quickly and in general terms so that - the more specific it is, the more you’re actually cutting a certain number of people out of your story. The more general it is, the more people can relate to it. They fill in the specifics in their own mind, things to do with their own life.
Steiss: I also wanted to ask you about anything you’re writing now outside of the band, especially your Christmas song.
DALE: Oh, yeah. Well the Christmas song has been cut by some independent country guy. It’s called “Another White Trash Christmas.” I’m still putting out demos of it to various people. I’m hoping that somebody like Roseanne or The Simpsons or somebody will pick up on it. It’s definitely a tongue-in-cheek song about Christmas. It’s funny; it works. People laugh at it, which is what I like. It’s a little bit dark; the thing I like about it is the music is sweet and the lyrics are very acerbic. They’re in opposition to the music. What I find when I perform it for people is that they almost feel guilty for laughing sometimes - which is a trick I learned off a friend of mine, a songwriter named Don Freed. Don and I chummed around through my teen years, in the folk writing days. He’s a great writer. Outside of the band, other than that, I’m writing a lot of positive message stuff, which is kind of in direct opposition to the Christmas song, in a way. I try to incorporate that in just about everything I write because I think that’s what we need in this world. Including the Guess Who material, anything I’m involved in writing, I try to slide that in, because I believe in it.
The End
