Episode 1562 - Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:Nick's what's happening?
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:Oh, crats emboldened to what the fuck?
Marc:Oh, crats.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:If you're new here, just hang out, sit down, listen.
Marc:You'll get the hang of it.
Marc:If you're not new here, what is going on with you?
Marc:What is happening?
Marc:How is your life?
Marc:Are you all right?
Marc:Are you cooking right now?
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:Are you working on that thing for the thing?
Marc:Are you on the treadmill?
Marc:Are you walking?
Marc:Is it a nice walk?
Marc:Are you having a nice walk?
Marc:Oh, look at the little doggie.
Marc:Look at the little doggie.
Marc:Oh, what's happening?
Marc:I'm home.
Marc:I've been home for a nice extended bunch of days.
Marc:Today, Jimmy Dale Gilmore is on.
Marc:Now, Jimmy Dale Gilmore has been around a long time.
Marc:He's a singer-songwriter.
Marc:He's a founding member of the group The Flatlanders.
Marc:He's also an actor who a lot of people know as Smokey from The Big Lebowski.
Marc:He's got a new album out called Texicali that's a collaboration with my old pal Dave Alvin from The Blasters.
Marc:dave's the best and look i remember when kind of uh when jimmy kind of surfaced in a big way with this sort of americana music thing that was happening i guess it was a late 80s early 90s maybe maybe a little later but i hadn't really heard about him in a while and he came up as an opportunity to talk to and i'm like hell yeah what's that guy been doing what's that old wise man jimmy dale gilmore up to so that's who's on the show today and we had a nice uh
Marc:A nice conversation.
Marc:It kind of went a lot of places.
Marc:He's got one of those brains, man.
Marc:Old style, just post hippie brain.
Marc:Goes a lot of places.
Marc:So get ready for that.
Marc:And music, of course.
Marc:So anyways, before I left...
Marc:The last time I was here, there was a major rat event in my crawl space in the basement.
Marc:A major rat event.
Marc:I didn't know how major to just get everyone up to speed.
Marc:There was more rat shit than I'd ever seen in one place in my life.
Marc:This wasn't just sort of like, oh, look, there's a pellet or two.
Marc:There's a couple of the droppings.
Marc:We've got a problem.
Marc:Thousands of rat shits.
Marc:thousands and i spun out i realized it hours before i left the last time and i got the the uh the shop back and i was like freaking out and i'm like how many are there and then i found a dead one i didn't poison it i don't know how it died but that's what got me into the basement in the first place was the smell and i you know i managed to get rid of that that's jarring that's a jarring experience i you know it's something that you really have to um
Marc:And I mean this in a multi-gender way.
Marc:You really got to man up or grown up up or whatever you up up to get that rat out of there in the garbage.
Marc:I usually use a shovel, but then I had to put gloves on and use my hand and feel that tail and drop it into the bag.
Marc:And oh, God damn it.
Marc:But anyway, that's what happened the last time.
Marc:So now you're all up to speed on the story.
Marc:So I said...
Marc:I said a couple of those like slapped those traps.
Marc:It's just like kind of I think they're the most humane way you can go.
Marc:Can't do sticky traps.
Marc:Can't poison because that goes into the ecosystem.
Marc:There's just those traps where you put some peanut butter and they step on the thing and boom, breaks their neck.
Marc:I put a couple of those out, not happy about it, but I spent the last couple of weeks just anticipating and preparing for two trapped rats, two dead rats with their heads stuck in that fucking trap.
Marc:And then me having to, to deal with that, to walk in.
Marc:I thought like I was preparing, like maybe this would be a good Tik TOK video in what world me walking down the stairs to open the basement to see if there's rats there, but I get home, no rats.
Marc:No rats.
Marc:That was a relief.
Marc:You know, your brain, you know your brain.
Marc:Do you, though?
Marc:I think that part of the worrying brain is really just about the thing you were worrying about not happening.
Marc:It's a buzz, man.
Marc:Like, and I, I, I hate to think that my entire neural pathway system is built around that moment of relief.
Marc:But you know, when you're just sitting there like, Oh fuck.
Marc:And you're preparing and you're ready.
Marc:And especially when it's like a, you know, a gross and horrible thing, like dead rats, man, I opened that door and there are no dead rats.
Marc:And I was like, wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:This was worth it.
Marc:All that panic of having to fucking pick up dead rats didn't happen.
Marc:What a load off.
Marc:And none of it was good.
Marc:Why can't I just put it aside and just been like, yeah, I'm going to do this and not think about it, but that's not the kind of brain I have.
Marc:So no dead rats.
Marc:And then I efficiently cleaned everything.
Marc:Me and Ernie, the, uh,
Marc:the handyman wizard.
Marc:There was one gap that they were probably getting in through.
Marc:And then I kind of looked all around in the dirt down there because this crawl space, not really a basement.
Marc:Just like, I just think that rats have probably been using my basement, my crawl space as a toilet for generations.
Marc:So I got all that cleaned up.
Marc:It was one of those excuses to really go through and clean everything out down there.
Marc:And it's all nice and clean.
Marc:And I want to not thank, but just give a shout out.
Marc:To whoever, the one guy who, after I talked about this on the last show, vacuuming up ratchet, took it upon himself to email me and tell me how, you know, I shouldn't vacuum it because I'm making the ratchet aerosol and the ratchet's full of hantavirus.
Marc:So now like when I got back, I'm like, fuck, I got to go dig into my mask stash from the COVID days.
Marc:I had some pretty hardcore masks that I never used during COVID because they were only one way, but they were the real deal with the little valve on the front.
Marc:Got suited up, put a hat on, put gloves on because that was the other layer of the last couple of weeks.
Marc:The layer of like, what does hantavirus feel like?
Marc:You know, my stomach's not great.
Marc:Do I have hantavirus?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:And I did mask up to do the other vacuuming.
Marc:But so just a shout out, not a word of thanks.
Marc:There was probably not Hantavirus in that ratchet, but I appreciate my audience as being sort of, you know, obsessed with the dark minutia of possibilities.
Marc:Thank you for that.
Marc:You know what?
Marc:No, thank you.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't think I have Hantavirus.
Marc:Folks, I'm going to be in Tucson, Arizona at the Rialto Theater on Friday, September 20th.
Marc:Then I'm in Phoenix at the Orpheum Theater on Saturday, September 21st.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com slash tour for tickets and to see all the latest updates to my calendar because I had to reschedule a lot for next year because I got a movie to do that now all of a sudden I'm very nervous about.
Marc:Yes, I'm starting to freak out about this movie I have to do because I'm the lead in the movie, and now I'm like, oh, can I do this?
Marc:Am I going to be able to do it?
Marc:Again, set the worrying dial at full.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Always layers and layers of worry and panic.
Marc:So look, folks, I...
Marc:It's been nice, man.
Marc:I've been back long enough to completely regroup with the cats.
Marc:They're all doing fine.
Marc:Sammy has become interesting.
Marc:He's no longer just stupid.
Marc:Charlie is still an asshole, but he's mellowing out a little bit.
Marc:Buster, of course, the great wizard of my cats.
Marc:Buster is a sweetheart and a very smart fella.
Marc:He's the one that talks.
Marc:You got to have a cat that talks, right?
Marc:Talking cats are the best.
Marc:But they're all doing fine.
Marc:And I kind of locked in.
Marc:I hadn't been doing enough comedy.
Marc:So I got home and I booked two spots a night for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Marc:Went to the comedy store.
Marc:You know, that's that's part of my heart, man.
Marc:The comedy store is part of my heart.
Marc:But I'll tell you, man, and I'll tell you, I'll tell you, I'll say it again.
Marc:This whole sort of new cultural landscape we're living in where Kamala Harris, you know, is in the game in a big way.
Marc:And it's just so motivating and exciting.
Marc:And again, even if she doesn't win.
Marc:Look, it's kind of brought everyone, the sort of decent people of the world who believe in tolerance as being the primary lubricant of democracy.
Marc:It's kind of reinvigorated us and brought us together, at least culturally, in a very real way.
Marc:And I'll tell you, man, just because of that—
Marc:just because of what that reality, the reality of her has lit up in certain people, myself included.
Marc:It's just such a relief because all of a sudden, culturally, you see the other side of what's happening in this political landscape as being tired and hackneyed and just cruel and sad.
Marc:So narrow minded.
Marc:And it's just such a relief when the shitty people have a shitty week or two and you got to take some satisfaction in that.
Marc:And maybe I've said that before, but I'm starting to kind of find a groove with it a bit on stage in terms of this new reality we live in.
Marc:It's just the fact that
Marc:that there's now a candidate that can talk and connect and communicate ideas and what's important in terms of salvaging, at least culturally, a democratic idea just about being tolerant and kind to everybody in terms of whatever their lifestyle is.
Marc:And hopefully maybe it's even in my mind kind of made, you know, the comedy different in terms of how tribalized comedy has become and how now you can really see with a kind of new rejuvenated sense of what tolerance and live and let live and just let people live the lives they decide to live for themselves or
Marc:with a certain amount of safety and freedom.
Marc:It's just interesting to see that the comedy that has been built around pushing back on that, how just fucking hackneyed and tired and uninteresting and cowardly it all looks.
Marc:Look, this all might be going on in my mind.
Marc:It may not have any real bearing on the real world, but we're probably going to talk about this more on the bonus material this week, me and Brendan, because I think that's sort of where we're going with it.
Marc:All right, Jimmy Dale Gilmore.
Marc:Look.
Marc:This guy's a veteran singer-songwriter with definitely yarns to spin.
Marc:His new album with Dave Alvin is called Texicali.
Marc:It's out now.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get your music.
Marc:You can find their tour dates at JimmyGilmore.com.
Marc:This is me talking to Jimmy Dale Gilmore.
Guest:So you guys drove out here from where?
Guest:Austin?
Guest:Well, we started out in Austin.
Guest:We live outside of Austin in Spicewood.
Guest:You live in Spicewood?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Opie's!
Guest:Not actually in Spicewood, but... Opie's!
Guest:But our address is Spicewood.
Guest:Opie's Barbecue.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Although, we're vegetarian.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:Except I'm a cheater vegetarian.
Guest:What do you cheat with?
Guest:Barbecue!
Marc:I go to Opie's all the time.
Marc:Yeah, I love Opie's.
Guest:I used to.
Marc:I've been a vegan for about a year and a half, but I'd go out there.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I used to, every time I'd go to Austin, I'd drive out to Opie's, and she takes care of me out there.
Marc:She's real nice.
Guest:That means you go right past... We live...
Guest:Off of Pernalas Canyon Trail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just before you get to the river.
Guest:How long have you been out there?
Guest:30 years.
Guest:30 years?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doesn't Willie live out there, too?
Guest:Yeah, he lives over... You know, you're going out 71.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His is off to the right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the same place, basically.
Guest:We're off to the left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the other side.
Guest:Are you guys pals?
Guest:We're long-time friends, but we never have really...
Guest:Hung out a lot together, you know, kind of due to circumstance.
Guest:Isn't that weird about show business?
Marc:It is.
Marc:It's very strange.
Marc:You know, where you have these relationships with guys for decades.
Marc:And every time you see them, you're like, hey, you know, but like in terms of day to day or going down the street, it just doesn't happen.
Marc:Because everybody's touring.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And plus, we moved out there, like I said, 30 years ago.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:I'm going to do something.
Guest:What?
Guest:This hearing aid is coming off and on.
Guest:I'm going to take it off entirely and rely on this guy.
Guest:And see if it works.
Marc:Because I could probably turn up the volume in the headphones.
Marc:I probably could.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Let's see.
Marc:Just a touch.
Marc:Let me see if I can figure that out.
Marc:How's that?
Marc:Is that different?
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:That's better.
Marc:Okay, good.
Guest:Yeah, that'll make sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I once interviewed a guy who had... I had interviewed a guy named Studs Terkel years ago.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he was very old.
Marc:And it was not here.
Marc:It was back in New York.
Marc:And he had two hearing aids on.
Marc:And he took them both off and he set them down.
Marc:And he put the earphones on.
Marc:And we turned it up so loud you could hear it bleeding into the studio.
Marc:And he goes, perfect.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, mine aren't quite that far gone.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:But they're enough that I want them all the time.
Marc:Well, do you think it's from the music?
Marc:Probably not.
Marc:You're not blasting.
Guest:No, although I've always been surrounded by people who... Blasting?
Guest:Dave Alvin is... He's a blaster.
Guest:He's literally a blaster.
Guest:Literally, yeah.
Guest:But the original audiologist, when I first had... He said, from my history, it probably...
Guest:He said music isn't so bad because it kind of hits all the frequencies.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:But it was probably like a factory job I had when I was like 19 or 20.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:That was a repetitive noise.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Very loud.
Guest:And, you know, like I ran a drill press.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:In Lubbock.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was 19, I think, 19 or 20.
Guest:What was the factory making?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh gin equipment gin oh for you know cotton gins yeah wild so it was machinery it was it was it was metal yeah metal machinery uh you know drilling holes yeah and like yeah stamping out stuff and the whole place was loud it's very loud yeah and that's where you come from
Guest:Lubbock?
Guest:I was born in Amarillo.
Guest:Amarillo, Texas.
Guest:But I grew up mainly in Lubbock.
Marc:Yeah, I don't have a sense of those places.
Marc:Like, I grew up in New Mexico, and I know Dallas, I know Houston.
Marc:Yeah, I've been to El Paso, I know Austin.
Marc:But I don't know, and I know Hobbes, kind of.
Marc:Hobbes, New Mexico.
Marc:Hobbes is sort of related to Lubbock.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah, and it's a...
Guest:It's so much similar territory.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Similar landscape and everything.
Marc:And when you were growing up, what was the music?
Marc:Because I've talked to—who have I talked to?
Marc:I talked to Alejandro recently.
Guest:We heard that.
Guest:We listened to that one because we picked out—we didn't know what—you had such a long list.
Guest:I know, I know, yeah.
Guest:And so we kind of accidentally—we did the Alejandro one.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We did the John Oliver one.
Guest:Oh, yeah, it was—
Guest:A work of art.
Guest:That was just a masterpiece.
Guest:You both were so right on.
Guest:We can get some good laughs going.
Guest:Hey, I want to make a disclaimer, by the way.
Guest:It's not a disclaimer.
Guest:It's kind of a caveat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll tell you a story that happened one time many years ago.
Guest:When I got over my stage fright, kind of early on, I...
Guest:There was a, I did a gig, I was like, at the time I was on Electro Records and they were really, I was going to be a star, you know.
Guest:Yeah, really doing the thing.
Guest:So I was playing this gig in Chicago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And with a band, you know, really good band, really, really great thing happening.
Guest:Full country outfit?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's not country.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:Because my music has always been such a blend.
Guest:Yeah, it's interesting.
Guest:It's rock and folk and blues tied up with country.
Guest:Well, now you've got Alvin and his folk blues.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:With Dave, it's like... Swing blues, baby.
Guest:But a writer for the Chicago Tribune, I think it was Greg Cott.
Guest:It's a long time ago.
Guest:It's a long time ago, like I'm talking about.
Guest:But...
Guest:So he wrote a review of the show, and it really scared me because it turned out to be a great review.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the first sentence was, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, a man who never met a digression he didn't like.
Guest:And first of all,
Guest:I wasn't aware of that until I read it in the paper, and I realized it was true.
Guest:And then I... What was he basing that on?
Guest:Because I talk, and I go from one thing to another, and I zoom off into... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:On stage, and in real life, too.
And I...
Guest:So I started using that in my show.
Guest:I started... Talking that story?
Guest:Yeah, I'll tell that story at the beginning because it gives me license.
Marc:Yeah, as a digression.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:You'll tell the digression story.
Guest:It's all the rest of the... Then every time I digress, it's part of the show.
Guest:But then later on, the Rolling Stone had a little blurb about me.
Guest:And he said...
Guest:He said, I think it was David Fricke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, Jimmy Dale Gilmore's train of thought makes all the stops.
Guest:I told him later the next time I saw him, I said, no, it doesn't make any of them.
Guest:That's the problem.
Marc:Yeah, he just pulls over occasionally.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So was that for the – where were you getting that?
Marc:That was for Spinning Around the Sun?
Marc:Probably, yeah.
Guest:Because that's when I first heard of you.
Guest:That's the one.
Guest:That's probably my main – that's the record that sold the most.
Marc:Well, I just remember like it all of a sudden – it was like this interesting timing thing because I imagine that was around the time that –
Marc:Americana and new country or alt country was really kind of beginning to build in the bigger sphere, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, so what you had, like, you know, Steve Earle and you had it was that whole new generation of these country performers or they were quote unquote country.
Marc:And then they kind of built that Americana.
Marc:label.
Marc:Right?
Marc:And then that one came out and I remember listening to it a lot and I just re-listened to it again yesterday because it was everywhere for a minute.
Marc:It was like this guy is doing something different.
Marc:It's metaphysical.
Marc:There's different elements of all different kinds of music in it.
Guest:But you'd been going for 20 years already.
Guest:Yeah, it was strange.
Guest:I was actually in my 40s when I got my first record deal as a solo, not the Flatlanders.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which had been long before.
Marc:Yeah, and that's interesting to me because there is sort of a moment with guys, Texans,
Marc:You know, in terms of this type of music and lifestyle where almost all of them, they get the record deal.
Marc:And then, you know, shortly after, they're like, I don't give a fuck.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:Well, you know, it's kind of funny.
Guest:It's like because...
Guest:To my perception of it, you know, the sort of – that circle of people that you – that kind of – because we're not all from the same place, but we're all mostly Texans, but not exclusively.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And we kind of had that in common.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a way of – the way I –
Guest:is that the musicians that gravitated, especially to Austin, because Austin had the audience for it and the infrastructure for... Austin was a music town before it became noted as a music town.
Guest:It wasn't the kind of thing where it...
Guest:kind of cultivated... Right.
Guest:It was like it was really there.
Guest:You had a little more freedom there.
Guest:And it was... The people that kind of glommed onto that, you know, they kind of tended more towards the, like, obsession with their art than with success.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then there were some of us that were sort of a hybrid of that, you know, that... And then, you know, it ended up...
Guest:You know, Guy and Towns and Rodney ended up in Nashville.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because they had more of that drive than some of the rest of us had.
Marc:Well, the drive, I guess, at that point would have been, you know, how do I get involved with mainstream country?
Marc:As a songwriter?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Mostly at first.
Marc:And how do I make a go of it in terms of finding some record success?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's kind of like it's a deliberate decision on all of those guys' part.
Guest:Well, it's interesting.
Guest:This is where I need to go to really actually make a living as a songwriter.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you write the hell out of songs.
Marc:And that was never your drive.
Marc:You just kept them to what you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I had – you know, there were other fluke things that entered into my life.
Guest:Movies.
Guest:Both positive and negative things, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for one thing, I already had been very deeply involved in –
Guest:spiritual i mean that i hate that word kind of sure the word spiritual it's become meaningless like yeah but buzzword yeah really really for me it's it was uh philosophy you know i i was i was already way into philosophy from a young like what year when did that start well i said uh i
Guest:I was a reader.
Guest:Yeah, when you were a kid.
Guest:When I was a kid, yeah.
Guest:So I was steeped in a lot.
Guest:And I eventually really gravitated.
Guest:There were a few.
Guest:Aldous Huxley.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:When you did the record Braver New World.
Guest:Yeah, that's where that came from.
Guest:And Somerset Maugham was a big.
Guest:I recently saw that show.
Guest:That wonderful documentary on Steve Martin.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And one place in it, he mentioned that The Razor's Edge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That that book was a big influence on him.
Guest:It was for me, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what about it?
Guest:Well, it was recommended to me by a friend who is one of the smartest people I've known.
Guest:He's been dead years now, but he's my age and just a brilliant... Even in high school, he was already the most well-read person I've ever met.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what year did you graduate high school?
Guest:63.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And he... Max Cheshire was my friend's name.
Guest:And he, at one point, he had said...
Guest:He said, I read this book.
Guest:I'd already read Of Human Bondage.
Guest:I read a lot of those British authors.
Guest:Plus, I was a science fiction fanatic.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So, yeah.
Marc:So, it must have been you and like two other guys.
Guest:It's sort of like that, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, there was a little bitty clique of us that were into the same thing.
Guest:My first wife, Jo Carol Pierce, who is brilliant.
Guest:She died a couple years ago.
Guest:Well, she was a musician, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:She's on a couple records, no?
Guest:She put out some records.
Guest:She got the record of the year in Austin, one year and everything.
Guest:She never got the note that she deserved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's beginning to – people started noticing her after she's gone.
Guest:But we were readers and we all – and we were just –
Guest:We're in Lubbock.
Guest:We were the first little crew that, you know, what later came to be called hippies.
Guest:I hate that word, too.
Guest:That's a despicable word to me because it... Puts you in a box.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It put people in a box whose whole defining characteristic was they weren't in a box.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:All over the country.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:So the little gang of us in Lubbock that were...
Guest:We all managed to find each other.
Guest:And that group grew.
Guest:Was Terry Allen there?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Terry was a big part of it.
Guest:Well, Terry was a little bit older than me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Terry's been one of my best friends, you know, for...
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:60 years now.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Interesting guy.
Guest:I actually, you know, Terry had forgotten this, but I actually introduced Terry and Guy Clark to each other.
Guest:Really?
Guest:At the Kerrville Folk Festival one year.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that Terry, you know, represents a sort of artistic integrity that must have inspired a lot of you guys.
Guest:Well, Terry was very important to me.
Guest:He was a couple of years older than me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same high school.
Guest:His last record was great.
Guest:It's wonderful.
Guest:He also, he, our new record, my new record with Dave Alvin, has a co-write by Dave and Terry.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:And Joe Harvey, Terry's wife.
Guest:And he also wrote a song about, who wrote the song about Blind Owl?
Marc:Dave wrote that.
Marc:That's Dave, yeah.
Marc:That guy, he deserves his due.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Blind Al Wilson is one of these unsung heroes of blues.
Marc:All right, so you're in this crew, and...
Marc:Basically, you're saying that, you know, by the late 60s, everything's breaking apart and people are finding these new avenues to express themselves and be interested in things.
Marc:And where does that spirituality take you?
Marc:Where do you go?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I digressed, didn't I?
Guest:No.
Guest:That's just a conversation.
Guest:First of all, this little group of friends, well, several things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's...
Guest:We were outcasts in Lubbock.
Guest:In Lubbock, yeah.
Guest:Freaks.
Guest:Yeah, we were freaks.
Guest:And we ended up...
Guest:There were several crews.
Guest:Janet and I were talking about, my wife Janet, we were on this drive to L.A.
Guest:from Texas.
Guest:And one of the things that came up was that I started reminiscing about this thing about I was kind of a part of four or five little groups.
Guest:groups of people.
Guest:Because I was the musician.
Guest:I was the musician that was like kind of the pet.
Guest:So you had a musician, a writer, like a different type of... Well, all these people were musicians and writers and stuff.
Guest:But I was kind of... There was disparate groups that came...
Guest:to know each other or kind of blend into one great big group.
Guest:And it, we, some migrate and we spread it.
Guest:We migrated to a lot to out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And out to Joe, Carolyn, I came and spent time in LA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when, when our, when our daughter was a,
Guest:New boy, you know, but like a year old.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:65, 60.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So you saw L.A.
Guest:in its glory.
Guest:Oh, it was wonderful.
Guest:And I spent a lot of time at the Ashgrove.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was a major influence on me.
Guest:The Ashgrove had the real live people that I had.
Guest:It was like a folk club, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Ed Pearl was the owner.
Guest:And the people that I had...
Guest:I was steeped in country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Real country.
Guest:From a kid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What were your folks doing?
Guest:My dad was a, well, he ended up being a, he got his master's degree in bacteriology at Texas Tech, but he ended up being the superintendent of the creamery at the college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like a state-of-the-art
Guest:dairy industry thing.
Guest:He wasn't a teacher, but he was on the faculty.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And my mom just worked for, usually for doctors as like a receptionist, office worker.
Marc:So not really a cowboy background.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Well, I...
Guest:My first six years was actually in Tulia, Texas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And which is way, you know, it's in between Lubbock and Amarillo.
Guest:My dad was in India when I was born.
Guest:What?
Guest:In the war.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:And he was in what was called the Army Air Corps.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The Army Air Corps.
Marc:Which conflict was that?
Marc:World War II.
Marc:Oh, in India, huh?
Marc:With the British?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:The Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a firefighter in the Army Air Corps stationed in India.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which he was...
Guest:He didn't like it.
Guest:He was this country boy from out in the sticks in Texas.
Guest:He had... That must have been mind-blowing.
Guest:He didn't... It was like... And he... I was like over a year old when he first saw me.
Guest:Came back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he...
Guest:And I've lived with his parents.
Guest:My mom lived with his parents and his younger brothers.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They were cowboys.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So that's where you get to Hank Williams all day long?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Plus, my dad was a guitar player.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And he was... There's even this...
Guest:This is funny because I've done several interviews lately because of the record coming out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this story has come up several times, but I've always loved telling it anyway.
Guest:One time, recently somebody showed me an old newspaper clipping from the Tulia Herald.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was the newspaper there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It said, a little bitty ad, you know, a little square ad said, coming this Saturday night at the VFW Hall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Live music.
Guest:The Swingaroos featuring Brian Gilmore and his electric guitar.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He was one of the first.
Guest:First guys with the electric guitar.
Guest:What, do you have a Telecaster?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he, my dad, so my dad.
Guest:So that's coming out of like the Bob Wills tradition type?
Guest:More out of Ernest Tubb.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And plus...
Guest:Jimmy Rogers was my dad.
Guest:Well, that's my name.
Guest:It's from Jimmy Rogers.
Guest:I'm J-I-M-M-I-E.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not James.
Guest:It's Jimmy.
Guest:Jimmy Dale Gilmore is my actual... For Jimmy Rogers.
Guest:My birth certificate.
Guest:The singing break man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was my dad's childhood influence.
Guest:I didn't really... So Hank comes after that.
Guest:Hank is like a spinoff of Jimmy Rogers.
Guest:And then later on, also, Lefty Frizzell was.
Guest:And Lefty Frizzell even...
Guest:recorded a tribute to Jimmy Rogers.
Guest:Right, okay.
Guest:Great.
Guest:If you don't have it, it's great.
Guest:Well, it's funny on that record.
Guest:Merle Haggard.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Oh, yeah, he did, yeah.
Guest:I mean, Merle Haggard was a direct physical vocal descendant of Lefty Frizzell.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He sang identically to Lefty Frizzell.
Guest:Did you know Merle?
Yeah.
Guest:I met him.
Guest:I didn't really know him.
Marc:Because like your version of I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like you can hear Hank in your inflection a little bit.
Guest:It must be in there.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:Hank Williams was my first, you know, intensive.
Guest:I was a little boy, you know, a little four or five year old boy, you know.
Marc:Well, it's interesting about the language of Hank.
Marc:That it was so the poetry was so simple, but the concepts were so big.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It's still astonishing to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Look back at his stuff.
Marc:And then it seems like as you grew intellectually and maybe spiritually, you were able to sort of fill some of that.
Marc:That space that Hank left with a different type of poetry that included your understanding of where you were going spiritually.
Guest:I think that's a very definite part of the trajectory for me.
Guest:And it wasn't like I...
Guest:decided to, I'm going to put this, I'm going to use this form.
Guest:But you're expressing yourself relative to what you're evolving into.
Guest:And because I was a reader, it was all this other stuff too.
Guest:And it's the 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I said, we came out to L.A.
Guest:and our marriage fell apart.
Guest:We married when we were children.
Guest:We had a baby when we were children.
Yeah.
Guest:I have grown grandchildren now.
Guest:I'm a way better grandfather than I was a father.
Guest:Yeah, I hear that a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm a pretty good father now.
Guest:But I wasn't when I was young.
Marc:Well, I think that what happens, especially if you have kids young, you know, you still got to build your own life.
Marc:So it's hard not to be selfish.
Guest:And, well, for me, it's hard not to be selfish.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Always.
Guest:You know, I became a little bit curious in those interviews with you.
Guest:There's some elements of your way of thought that made me wonder.
Guest:Because, you know, I have...
Guest:For quite a long time now, I've been a very intensively practicing Buddhist with a Tibetan Lama teacher.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, with a, you know, like real kind of student.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:No one's an expert.
Guest:And I... There's something... You made a comment.
Guest:This is a digression.
Guest:Yeah, sorry.
Guest:This is a digression.
Guest:Well, it's actually getting back to where we started with spirituality.
Guest:It's related to it.
Guest:You said...
Guest:I think it was – I believe it was in the John Oliver interview where you said that you didn't think people were innately good.
Guest:You thought they were sad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's Buddhist.
Guest:That's straight out.
Guest:And it made me wonder if you were saying that –
Guest:You know, sort of obliquely referring to that?
Guest:You sort of mean it.
Guest:No, I mean, I think— That's the core thing in Buddhism is the suffering.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I said another thing.
Marc:Because, like, for me, I didn't grow up with Jesus.
Marc:I grew up, you know, kind of like—
Marc:uh, culturally Jewish.
Marc:So I was never, and I, I was going to talk about this with another guy later.
Marc:Like I, I never knew how it was never put in me.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:The use, the, the use of God, like here's your God.
Marc:This is how you use it.
Marc:And this is who he is or she is or it is.
Marc:And these are the rules.
Marc:I never got that.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you kind of got to figure shit out for yourself to,
Marc:to find peace of mind, but I never was in search of something, you know, to identify me, but I'm just doing, I guess it would be spiritual math, you know, because... Yeah, I love that.
Marc:So...
Marc:So, you know, like I said something on stage recently about how a lot of people talk about the authentic self.
Marc:And, you know, because the self that you build to engage in the world is self-serving.
Marc:It's a needy self and it needs definition.
Marc:But like if I was my authentic self, I said, I would do nothing.
Marc:It's like, what are you doing?
Marc:I'm my authentic self.
Marc:There's nothing to do.
Marc:And that's sort of a Buddhist idea too.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Well, you know, through the ins and outs of all this stuff for me, one thing was I also, I think I owe my life probably now to AA for one thing.
Guest:Yeah, me too, buddy.
Guest:25 years.
Guest:Then I've got off and on.
Guest:I started in 82.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:82.
Guest:I've relapsed several times since then.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Was booze your thing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was... Well, now, this is a whole subject, you know.
Guest:Well, that's a... But it's a similar subject.
Guest:It's part of it.
Guest:It's part of it.
Guest:Because I learned... In AA, one of the first things I heard was when somebody said that they were...
Guest:an egomaniac with an inferiority complex well yeah like all of them yeah and i you know when i heard that i went
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That explains it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That really explains it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It explained me to me.
Guest:And then, but then as things unfolded, because I already was real steeped in a bunch of philosophy and stuff.
Guest:Like which one?
Guest:Well, early on, I studied philosophy in college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never did get a degree, but I studied with a man who had studied under Bertrand Russell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I just, I studied.
Guest:linguistic analysis and symbolic logic.
Marc:It's like math, dude.
Guest:It was a man named Dr. Waters.
Guest:Symbolic logic, I couldn't do it.
Guest:That wasn't the part of it that I really stuck with.
Guest:I kind of liked it.
Guest:I got a grounding in it.
Guest:And that set me up to understand computers a lot.
Guest:I was an early adopter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because of that.
Guest:A fluke, yeah.
Guest:But the linguistic analysis part of it stayed with me.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then eventually—I was about to say the connection there with AA was because I already had, in a sense—
Guest:too tangled of an intellectual mind to do AA appropriately.
Marc:Yeah, because your disease was intelligent.
Guest:It was.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And then eventually, with AA being a part of it, I became... Well, all of it threads to each other.
Guest:Interdependence is the Buddhist term.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The idea of powerlessness...
Marc:And, you know, which is the key to it, you know, outside of talking to other alcoholics or other people.
Marc:But the idea of powerlessness is age old.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It's part of the it's the ancient wisdom.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's very Buddhist.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:It is.
Guest:And and.
Guest:Later on when I kind of studied some more about Bill Wilson and all the stuff that – and I found out that – you know, Bill himself said – I can't quote this directly, but he said something to the effect of – he said, we only know a little about this.
Guest:He said, there's some people in the East that know a lot more.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Well –
Guest:So you went to the source.
Guest:Well, yeah, and I already had an interest in that because philosophy means love of wisdom.
Guest:That's what the term—academic philosophy has lost it, I think.
Guest:Yeah, I can't read it.
Guest:It's just sophistry.
Guest:It's just—
Guest:It's insulated in its language.
Guest:Yeah, and it's become like a profession in academia.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:But the love of wisdom and the way of the term, that's an ancient part of every spiritual or evolution of self.
Marc:Well, it seems to me that what you –
Marc:That not unlike drugs or not unlike, you know, whatever this quest you are on, that, you know, if it's not a search for God, it's a search for some sort of enlightenment.
Marc:You know, whether that's, you know, conscious or not.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That there has to be some point to this, you know, other than getting fucked up or just accepting what is, which usually isn't great.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So somewhere along the line, you know, you decide that the poetry, which I imagine is what the linguistics kind of opened up for you, right?
Marc:Yeah, it added to it, a dimension to it.
Marc:Yes, that you realize that, well, you know, if country or if music is my thing and this is how I'm going to seek my personal salvation or enlightenment, that I'm going to run it through these words.
Right.
Guest:And it was – I wish that I had been that deliberate about it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:You never are until you look back.
Guest:It fell together, but so accidentally.
Marc:The different pieces that – So you – like when you were put together the Flatlanders with Joe and Butch.
Marc:Butch Hancock, yeah.
Marc:So you were just living it, living the life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Joe and I actually had been— Ely, right?
Guest:Yeah, Joe Ely.
Guest:And Butch Hancock.
Guest:Butch and I were friends since the seventh grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was the type of thing where we were friends at school, but we lived in different neighborhoods.
Guest:And at that age—
Guest:You didn't hang out with people that lived far away, but we knew each other at school.
Guest:When we got older, and then by the time we had cars and stuff like that, Butch and I both discovered that we had become musicians without the other one knowing about it.
Guest:So you started just playing guitar, or you had a little band?
Guest:Because of my dad.
Guest:No, no, I didn't do bands until...
Guest:Flatlanders.
Guest:And there's a great story I'll have to tell you about that.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:By the way, part of the backdrop of this conversation is that last night, you know, time changed and everything.
Guest:I had a real hard time sleeping.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's not real unusual, but I spent a lot of time.
Guest:I had about 500 imaginary conversations with you last night.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I can't wait.
Guest:Well, this might be one of them.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Tomorrow, this will be one of them.
Guest:But it occurred to me, I started thinking, okay, suddenly it seems like I get this place to...
Guest:To talk, you know, what do I want to talk about?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, like, what is it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, where are we going to go?
Guest:What's important?
Guest:Yeah, you can't.
Guest:Yeah, and so I imagined everything.
Guest:But part of the thing was that it's, well, that interdependence thing is such a bedrock of my way of thinking now because of what I've learned from myself.
Guest:from Mahayana Buddhism.
Guest:It was a thing I read early on when I started finding out that the Buddhists, I had studied Vedanta and sort of Hindu and had a guru.
Guest:You had asked me earlier what happened.
Guest:I went away from the music business for... What year is that?
Guest:In the 70s.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I lived in Denver in a spiritual community for most of the 70s.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and dedicated.
Guest:Put down your guitar.
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:I still played some music for fun with some other people.
Guest:There were some great musicians involved in that world.
Marc:Well, yeah, some of it floats in, like the record you did with T-Bone.
Marc:You can hear some little Indian leanings, you know?
Guest:That was a kind of a...
Guest:Well, there are many things, many funny spinoffs.
Guest:I actually had, by this weird other fluke, I had become friends with Allen Ginsberg.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he came in, and there's another story that goes with this.
Guest:But now I left the other story.
Guest:Yeah, no, but like, so what, you knew Allen and Peter?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no, no, I met him.
Guest:I didn't know him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And in fact, Allen and I, we spent, you know, maybe,
Guest:a couple of hours together about four or five times.
Guest:It wasn't like we were close friends or anything.
Guest:But we had connected.
Guest:And over, basically, Buddhism.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He came into that later in life, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was early into my discovering that Buddhism was what I now see as my path, as my...
Marc:And that was in 1970s, late 70s.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:This, that event, the Vedanta part, the Hinduist part was the 70s.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:When I discovered Buddhism and started discovering that it was different, it had a different, there's a different twist on the philosophy, on the understanding.
Guest:First of all, I discovered that it was real connected to this
Guest:linguistic analysis stuff that I had studied early on that Nagarjuna was very similar to Wickenstein.
Guest:One of the things that I ran across was one little sentence that said all phenomena
Guest:Without exception, which I love because they stuck that little thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All phenomena, without exception, have arisen from causes and conditions, which are themselves phenomena that have arisen from causes and conditions from beginningless time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that sentence was like, I went...
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:This is weird.
Guest:This is science.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like a domino effect in your brain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And it has remained.
Guest:You can't let that keep going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then as I started discovering this, you know, this idea of interdependence, et cetera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For me, it was what started putting things together in such a way that—and also this discovery.
Guest:Okay, if I'm this egomaniac that also has an inferiority complex, what's that made out?
Guest:What do you do about that war?
Guest:And the Buddha said—
Guest:It's because the self is not a fixed entity.
Guest:The self is not real.
Guest:The self is not instantaneously, because now I've been studying it for 20 years.
Guest:I've been specifically studying that line of thought for many years.
Guest:But all along the way, when I first came across those ideas, it was like,
Guest:Whoa.
Guest:So the Buddha said, there is suffering.
Guest:There's a cause of suffering.
Guest:Since there's a cause of suffering, that cause can be removed.
Guest:So there is an end of suffering.
Guest:And I've discovered a way...
Guest:that produces the end of that suffering.
Guest:So those are called the Four Noble Truths.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Okay, and the fourth one has eight parts, though, because of the path.
Guest:So is one of those ways music?
Guest:No, it's all these ways go together.
Guest:Although music, because from another angle, because I also oddly got off into Sufism because...
Guest:of another... Well, they're all parallel.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But... Yeah.
Guest:I ended up teaching a class once a year at the Omega Institute in upstate New York.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:And by the way, this is funny.
Guest:This is another... Yeah.
Guest:Odd thing here.
Guest:That came about as a result of an interview with Terry Gross.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:On Fresh Air.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:When... Probably when spinning around the sun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was... Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:And then I was invited to Omega, and I've been since, no, 94, I think, was 94.
Guest:Might have been 96.
Guest:Okay, yeah.
Guest:That was... Braver New World.
Guest:That I started this class.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One week...
Guest:And then a week, we later on tacked on a thing called Advent.
Guest:It was just songwriting with Jimmy Dale Gilmore, in which I do not teach it.
Guest:I curate a situation where the class teaches it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Songwriting.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:To each other.
Guest:Do you have a sense of... It's turned out to be the most wonderful, my favorite thing that has happened in my music career.
Guest:Was that class?
Guest:It's that class, yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because it forced me to sort of articulate all the musical stuff... Your process.
Guest:...that was going on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And year after year, and it's an ever...
Guest:growing ever evolving thing you know sure and also a community has grown out of that you know some people do the class repeatedly year after year but but what's the structure of it you just how does it work I by collaboration yeah like I put generally like three people together yeah
Guest:We try to fix it so that there are people that haven't done it together before.
Guest:And from the start of the week, because it ends up being like communications theory.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is what I learned from the class.
Guest:You ask what's important to me.
Guest:I finally realized that there was a punchline to what I was conveying.
Guest:And it's this.
Guest:First of all, that music is...
Guest:Communication.
Guest:It's a form of communication.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Communication is community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Community is based on love.
Guest:That's what...
Guest:That music is a language, a form of communication that can go to places that words can't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That really nothing else can.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And not even psychedelics, you know.
Guest:Psychedelics can do things.
Guest:But then it goes away.
Guest:Yeah, and it's not... Music stays.
Guest:Yeah, music is... It's something that... You know, that old thing about music being the universal language and all that.
Guest:You know, cliches that are cliches because they're true.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And one...
Guest:One night in my class, the Omega Institute was actually originally instituted by Sufi students, students of Pirvilayat Khan.
Guest:And Pirvilayat Khan's father was Hazrat Anayat Khan.
Guest:And he wrote lots and lots and lots about music and spirituality.
Guest:And at one point, there's a quote in one of his books.
Guest:I don't know if I can say it word for word.
Guest:But he said, in the future, and this is like over 100 years ago that he wrote this.
Guest:This is like in the 1910s or something.
Guest:He said, in the future, music and the philosophy of music will be the religion of the world.
Guest:And at some point, I went...
Guest:We're in the future.
Guest:You know, I started noticing.
Guest:Oddly enough, one night after that was pointed out to me, and one of the students in the class told me this quote.
Guest:I had read Hazard and Icon, but I didn't remember that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:Later on that week, I was on tour after the class.
Guest:It was like somewhere in Woodstock, I think, or someplace.
Guest:And there was a TV show and an old footage of one of Willie Nelson's.
Guest:Fourth of July picnic was on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From the 70s?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was old footage, but I was looking at it and all of a sudden I went, wow, look at that.
Guest:This vast throng of people all together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All together.
Guest:pulsating with this, and then I started thinking, Elvis, The Beatles, you know, that this, it was actually, it just seemed to me like, now I don't, music is,
Guest:can also be used for nefarious purposes.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Anything can.
Guest:Every church has music.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So does every army.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, different types of music, marching music.
Guest:Music, but it's because music has this power.
Guest:To get people to cooperate with each other or commune with each other.
Marc:Communion with each other outside of who they are as individuals.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So in that moment, did that bring a different purpose to your music?
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:It was that I realized that I had intuitively understood that without...
Guest:articulating it.
Guest:Like I said, the class, what the class has been valuable about was making me see on a conscious level things that were... I think I knew...
Guest:I think I was going to be a musician no matter what, even though I became interested in all kinds of other subjects.
Guest:But you were always a musician, right?
Guest:Yeah, I don't think I ever really... I decided that I think...
Guest:I think I decided that there maybe was some conflict between spirituality and music.
Guest:That's why I went away during that.
Guest:But wasn't that also had to do with your lifestyle?
Guest:Oh, there was many things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my life was falling apart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I was drunk, because I was selfish.
Guest:You know, the total self-centeredness.
Guest:Yeah, you needed a life raft.
Guest:Was...
Guest:was was killing you know it was and and like and you couldn't stop it and not having any control or not having any uh uh so so several factors added together yeah yeah you know several yeah things yeah collided now and so i have a question for you yeah how did it happen with you
Marc:Well, you know, there is that moment where you know you're going to die and you know you might not want to.
Marc:You might, but you might not.
Marc:But if you're living a certain life that's going to kill you, that seems like something you might want to remove.
Marc:You know, and that there's got to be more than the cycle of self-centered behavior that is causing all this problem.
Marc:And if you can't figure out how to stop it on your own, you know, you need help.
Marc:And you don't know how that help is going to come.
Marc:For me, it happened to come in a very beautiful woman who saw that I was in trouble and she got me, you know, into the secret society.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, but over time, you know, you learn how to to to sort of understand, you know, the nature, the three pronged nature of that particular illness and that that you can see that there is a a a structure there that that can begin to alleviate that.
Marc:So for me, I just felt like if I continued what I was doing with cocaine and booze, that I was going to die an asshole who was committed to something stupid.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, my life wasn't huge, but it was big enough to to sort of to see that.
Marc:But, you know, and I was always a comic.
Marc:And, you know, the magic of comedy is limited in a way that music isn't.
Marc:And, you know, I play music, but, you know, I never had the confidence to to sort of pursue it.
Marc:But what's interesting to me is that, you know, all this stuff is going on with you spiritually and intellectually, but the constant that seems to remain is the music.
Guest:Yeah, I want to add something here.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:A personal, you know, I'm so full of opinions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And one of my opinions is that you shouldn't have any opinions.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that creates friction, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I personally believe that humor, that comedy is the highest and most difficult art form.
Guest:I think it's above music.
Right.
Marc:But I can understand that in terms of being immediately able to bring relief and change the way people think.
Marc:I think comedy is powerful.
Marc:But I've always thought that music, even like how you're talking about music, that it exists in a timeless zone.
Marc:Some old jokes survive, but most of them don't.
Marc:So it's relative to a moment or a moment of time, whereas you have some music that will just sort of continue to sort of move through time and space, you know, without it being hinged to it.
Guest:I agree with that, but I don't think that's the most important thing about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it's the immediacy of it.
Guest:That's an important factor that it can have some life.
Guest:In the moment.
Guest:But it's what it does now.
Marc:I think, okay, I understand that and I agree with that.
Marc:But for me to be able to listen to the Flatlanders...
Marc:from 1972 on some live tapes that you unearthed somewhere, and then to sort of listen to Spinning Around the Sun again, and then to listen to you and Dave, Alvin, on your last two records, that those things always sort of exist.
Marc:And because of the nature of the music, you tap right into them, and they become immediate, no matter when you listen to it.
Marc:Whereas if I listen to an old Steve Martin album,
Marc:I'm going to be like, well, I know this joke, or I know this thing.
Marc:I remember when he did this.
Marc:So it hinges itself.
Marc:Comedy is an equation where music is something more...
Marc:kind of untethered and lyrical that just moves through time.
Marc:Whereas, you know, comedy, it's like, well, that's a good joke.
Marc:Whereas a song, you can have, you can experience emotions.
Marc:You can experience, you know, the narrative of the song if it has one.
Marc:And you can experience that, you know, in different ways throughout your entire life with one song.
Marc:One song will grow with you.
Marc:You know, and anytime you go back to it, you're like, I didn't hear that part of that song.
Marc:Or that turn, you know, I didn't understand that back when I first listened to it.
Marc:Or it means something different to me now.
Marc:Whereas a joke, it's like, that was a good joke.
Guest:I think you are making a very good point.
Guest:I think... Music grows with you.
Guest:But you still got Mark Twain.
Marc:Sure, if you... It's still... Yeah, but still, but that's a way like you sort of like, you know...
Marc:Like if you know Mark Twain and there's something happening in the world we live in now and you can say, well, Mark Twain used to say.
Marc:And then you can get a little bit of a funny, you know, kind of like, holy shit.
Marc:It was, you know, he knew that then or, you know, that applies now or whatever.
Marc:Whereas music's magic is sort of like, you know, oh, you got to listen to that song again.
Marc:And then it's up to the listener.
Marc:You know, the joke is intellectual exercise.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:And actually these aren't – there's not really a dichotomy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's actually a –
Guest:It's like this is making me think about an aspect of this I haven't thought about before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's laughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you experience real laughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think this is the greatest.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Maybe the greatest human.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, because it expresses so much.
Guest:It doesn't happen very often.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:But when something is truly, when it really hits that spot, I think that's just transcendent.
Guest:I think it's a human trait.
Guest:Sure, it's great.
Marc:It's great, but the depth of emotion and reaction to music is a little different.
Marc:Yeah, you're right.
Marc:Because laughter, I mean, a fart can be funny.
Yeah.
Marc:But the depth of that, I don't know what that is.
Marc:There's a lot of different reasons to laugh.
Marc:But I think that music's ability to carry you through whatever's going on in your life or to provide relief or insight or even experience a deeper emotional possibility of what's happening with you now, even from like an old song,
Marc:Even if they're like ghosts, you listen to even the way you covered I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.
Marc:If you listen to Hank's version of that, the darkness and the sort of tightrope he's on
Marc:to sort of elevate that type of existential loneliness and make it, you know, understood to everybody in that deep way.
Marc:And then, you know, you covered it for a reason because you wanted to interpret it through your own lens of the same type of thing.
Marc:And that thing just grows and grows.
Marc:I don't think a fart joke is going to do that.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Well, you know, I think we might be on to something here.
Guest:I think there might be a, you know, this amalgamation of it.
Guest:It's not an either or.
Guest:It's not an either or.
Guest:But even though I think a few minutes ago I was thinking it was.
Guest:And it's not.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:Boy, I hope... What?
Guest:I hope we have a transcript.
Guest:I like this.
Marc:I want to go back over this.
Marc:Well, I'm a guy who plays guitar my whole life, you know, and I made a decision at some point out of fear or insecurity not to pursue that.
Marc:But I play, and I played with Dave when he was on the show, and I understand what music does for me, but I used to do a joke about it.
Marc:I used to say, like, because I never pursued music
Marc:as a dream or as a life, you know, I have guitars and I can enjoy them.
Marc:They're not, you know, sort of, you know, broken dream vessels.
Ha ha!
Marc:They don't represent some failure to me.
Marc:They represent a means for me to have a meditative experience on my own.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I used to say, by the way, I don't know if you were familiar with Jesse Taylor.
Guest:He was the guitar player in the Ely band.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He actually had been my earlier band.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:There was a point when he was really grilling me one time about my getting so involved with meditation and the philosophy, you know, and finally at one point I said to him, music used to be the way for me to get into music
Guest:This sort of... Meditative state?
Guest:Yeah, this preferable state.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This preferable... Right.
Guest:And I said, after being a little bit kind of steeped in the actual practice of meditation and of kind of understanding that from another way, it came to be that music became...
Guest:Not the vehicle to get to it, but the vehicle to express it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It turned it around.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:Kind of backwards for me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, you know, once you sort of gave yourself over to a spiritual practice or a meditative practice and a spiritual philosophy or whatever you want to call it, that...
Marc:there was a separation between what meditation is and means, as opposed to just you using music, not unlike one would use alcohol or anything else, just to get out of yourself.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Then the music becomes informed by you being grounded in a true practice, and then it kind of, you incorporate it.
Marc:Yes, and it... And it becomes a more expressive tool.
Guest:It's like, I don't know if I ever would have...
Guest:This is hard to say.
Guest:You know, lots of times when you start talking about things, you start then sticking meanings onto them that weren't there.
Guest:Well, yeah, you have to look at it.
Marc:But the meaning, though, you can at least assess what you think you were trying to do.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:And examining, you know, there's this wonderful...
Guest:by David White, and he has a thing about the conversational nature of reality.
Guest:I thought about this last night because we'd been listening to you and understand.
Guest:Boy, he's a master of conversation.
Guest:And the conversation, after reading this poem by David White, this essay, I guess you'd say.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Conversation is, okay, converse.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that con is with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Verse is word.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:In real conversation, both parties are like open to the other.
Guest:Yeah, creating something new.
Guest:Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then the idea of the conversational nature of reality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:it's like, it's just so beautiful.
Guest:This is just a beautiful way of thinking of that word.
Guest:It should define humanity.
Guest:It should.
Marc:It should.
Guest:But now we've got phones that we can talk to.
Guest:And we've also got, it's almost like modern times.
Guest:I think it's sort of like Babylon.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Or Sodom.
Guest:Both.
Guest:It's like all of them, all at once.
Guest:The fragmentation of language.
Marc:Babylon's interesting.
Marc:I think about that at the Tower of Babel a lot, where the languages become unto themselves a separating influence of people communicating.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And everything breaks apart.
Guest:It becomes the opposite of communication.
Guest:Language is definitely a double-edged sword.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:But music, too, like with all these guys that you've played with over the years, that's an ongoing conversation.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:Music is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Really.
Marc:So it's really it makes sense that it's where you live in that way in terms of expression.
Marc:You know, I imagine, you know, your evolution and musician from working with these guys with Joe Ely and the Flatlanders and kind of moving through different, you know, iterations of how you approach it and then coming on, you know, spinning around the sun and into Braver New World.
Marc:That, you know, you kind of realize, you know, sort of, it seems like who you are, you know, musically at that moment, you know, and you're working with these great people.
Marc:And then here, as you get older, you lock in with old Dave.
Guest:And it seems like you guys are just sort of like, let's just get at it.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:That's a very strange dynamic.
Guest:Dave and I have been friends for a way long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we didn't.
Guest:It's almost as if we thought.
Guest:I guess I speak for him, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But almost as if we thought we couldn't really play music together because we're just too different.
Guest:Doing something different, right.
Guest:It's just too... And then when we did the little tour, a year-long tour of just the two of us, we almost immediately discovered...
Guest:that we had this oh the ash grove i mentioned the ash grove earlier yeah that we dave had been hanging out at the ash grove at the same time that i was yeah and who was on stage at that time well lots of people lightning hopkins was who i became friends with because of the ash grove and sun house and i never saw lightning in texas it's the weirdest thing i got to know him in la yeah did you see the winter brothers in texas
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I saw Johnny Winters when he opened for – I think it was – it was not Palo St.
Guest:John.
Guest:It was the Conqueroo, I think, at the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was when he got –
Guest:written up in the Rolling Stone that's like kicked off.
Guest:He was just opening the show.
Marc:His blue solo career.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or was he with a band then?
Guest:No, no, he was solo.
Guest:Yeah, with the dobro?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going at it?
Guest:And he was a knockout.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But the connection with all that blue...
Guest:With Lighten and the Ash Grove.
Guest:That stuff happened here.
Guest:I knew it from records before, but actually.
Guest:So you had a source point with Dave.
Guest:Well, it turned out that we had all kinds of repertoire in common with each other already.
Guest:We didn't have to.
Marc:And see, that's what I'm telling you about the difference between a joke and a song is that you guys can land on like, why don't we cover that song?
Marc:Because that song meant something to us, so let's own it, you know, and let's do our business with it.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:That's an interesting thing.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:Because you guys did some Dylan songs.
Guest:It kind of gives you a container that you can keep it, that you can kind of hold the water in.
Marc:Yeah, but also invest yourself in it and make it your own to a certain degree.
Marc:Yeah, because you always can't.
Marc:In fact, you can't ever really duplicate it.
Marc:I just think it's interesting with you and Dave because those records, when you do some of your records, you're kind of pulling on a lot of different things.
Marc:You're integrating a fourth and a fifth chord.
Marc:And Dave is kind of a three-chord guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And so you got to kind of bring it back to that and own what you do.
Marc:And then you write these songs.
Marc:Like that song about the last stripper.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's Terry and Dave.
Marc:That's Terry?
Marc:That's the one Terry did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With Dave?
Marc:Because that song is such an interesting interpretation of a sort of classic country trope that I don't think you could be as honest about at another time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you know, based on, you know, a note, you know, or a phone number.
Marc:And it kind of pulls together a whole life in their absence.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's a type of a country kind of a trope that, you know, it's completely redone in that song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I've had this ongoing joke about that song.
Guest:We started performing it right after we learned it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Last year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:And it was funny because people would laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I started, I came up with this, an introduction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where I'd say, I've known Terry for a very long time.
Guest:I mean, he's been a big part of my life for a very long time.
Guest:And I said, I think that this is the first song of Terry that wasn't sarcastic.
Yeah.
Guest:And then I told Terry that when we saw him do a gig at the Paramount in Austin a few months ago.
Guest:And I told Terry that, and Terry said, Jimmy, everything I've ever done is sarcastic.
Marc:But, like, I love the new record.
Marc:I love the old records.
Marc:It was great talking to you.
Marc:I think we did all right.
Guest:I feel like I've discovered a new little treasure trove.
Guest:We like to listen to lots of podcasts.
Guest:And I'm looking forward to hearing all these conversations you've had, especially with people that I know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:1,600 of them or so.
Guest:And I did not know.
Guest:I don't know how I missed it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess I can be pretty oblivious.
Marc:Dude, there's a lot going on, man.
Marc:You know, I don't know anything that's going on out there.
Marc:And the fact of the matter is, because of the nature of technology, you're never too late for the party and everything is still discoverable.
Guest:Too much of everything.
Marc:I just learned that you played a song with Mudhoney today.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And I love Mud Honey.
Marc:It's so funny because it's totally a Jimmy song until that guitar comes in.
Marc:And you're like, oh, there's Mud Honey.
Marc:Good talking to you, man.
Marc:Yeah, you too.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Again, the album Texicali is out now and he's touring with Dave Alvin this summer.
Marc:Go to JimmyGilmore.com to find out more and stick around for a minute for something else about Dave Alvin.
Marc:So, speaking of Dave Alvin, you can listen to my 2012 interview with Dave if you have a WTF Plus subscription.
Marc:It's episode 321, and I played with Dave at the end of the episode on the song Help You Dream.
Marc:You want to play a song, will you?
Marc:Sure, if you'll sing it.
Marc:I don't know how to sing.
Marc:What are you talking about?
Marc:I heard you sing one of my songs in San Francisco.
Marc:i did but you know i'd have to look up the i'd have to look up the words oh we could sing it together yeah all right what key did you do it in i think i did it in like an open like an e or something oh now i'm nervous i don't know how to sing what's the worst that can happen i up your song you do you sing along did you learn it off the record
Marc:I, like, what I did was, like, I just loved the song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I, you know, I just, you know, kind of, you know, made it my own.
Marc:I didn't try to, you know, because I, you know, I learned the chords and, you know, I just, I did what I could.
Marc:But I can't.
Marc:I'll release in the room.
Marc:I can't do it.
Marc:You do it that fast?
Marc:No, you do your song.
Marc:I don't know how to do it.
Marc:I did it once.
Marc:Kind of on the blasters, you kind of did it.
Guest:Beautiful.
Guest:Well, is this seat taken?
Guest:Would you mind some company?
Guest:You've been alone all evening Would you like to talk with me?
Guest:Now do I come here often?
Guest:Well, you might say that I do And is someone home waiting?
Guest:Honey, I was just gonna ask you Cause you're the prettiest woman
Guest:I think I've ever seen tonight.
Guest:If you let me, I'd like to help you.
Marc:Again, that's episode 321.
Marc:It's available for WTF subscribers to sign up, go to the link in the episode description or go to WTF pod.com and click on WTF plus.
Marc:And a little reminder before we go here, this podcast is hosted by a cast.
Marc:Here's some guitar I just did.
Yeah.
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.