Marty Stuart

27:44I went outside to a pay phone, and I got Earl Scruggs' number, and I did not know Earl Scruggs. I had never met him. It was the other camp. It was the enemy camp, right? But I called, and Earl's wife, Louise, who was the manager, and a really cold act on the telephone. I said, Louise, this is Marty Stewart. I'd like to talk to her. What about? I said, it's personal. Earl came on the phone. I said, Earl, this is Marty's tour. He said, I know who you are. He said, I like your play. I listened to you. I went, thank you, sir. I said, I really need to come talk to you. So I left Bob's show and went out to see Earl and Louise, and it was like sitting in a museum because they were just sitting there viewing a painting.

28:28And I said, Lester's dying. I said, I don't know that he'll make it through the weekend. I said, I think the last thing in this world that needs to happen and it's for him to leave this earth without you guys saying bye. And I was shaking. How old were you? I was maybe 17, 18. Wow. And I was shaking. I mean, I was shaking. And I said, if you need the halls cleared, I'll go to work on it, whatever you need. I said, but if you would see fit to go see him, I think it's great. He said, I'll think about it. And I wrote down the room number. and Lester's band we had to go out and play three concerts that the promoter wouldn't let us out we went as Lester's band so when we pulled back in the parking lot Lester's manager was standing there waiting on the bus three days later and he had tears in his eyes but Earl went and saw Lester and they settled up on the way out and so that was a good story that was a good good ending to that story I'm glad I got to be a small part of that That's a great story.

29:34After that, you played with a couple of people. You played with Vassar Clemens, who's this sort of fascinating character. Can you tell me a little bit about him? I fell in love with Vassar by way of that nitty-gritty dirt band record, Circle Be Unbroken, Volume 1. He just played this bluesy style of fiddle that I had never heard before. I'm coming from Mississippi. You know, everything starts with the blues. And he put the blues and bluegrass to me, very soulful. and I met him and he was easy to hang out with but Vassar was off into this he'd been playing some with the Grateful Dead he'd been playing some with the the Circle record made him a star with all these you know younger bands and cool bands and anybody would welcome Vassar to come hang out and play with him but he had this country jazz fusion thing going and I wanted to get away from bluegrass and started spreading my wings and so but Vassar still understood bluegrass because that's where he came from so i bought an electric guitar and did not know how to play it but he gave me a job i don't know why but i worked with him for a few minutes and we crossed paths with dr merle watson on the road that summer and i asked merle watson if i could come hang out so i worked with them for a while you sold your electric guitar no i can't and still still went back under the stereo.

30:55That's where it always goes. Then Johnny Cash's gig came along. Really, Lester and Johnny Cash are the only two steady gigs I ever had, which goes back to the first two records I ever owned. How did that come about with Johnny Cash? I had one day left with Doc and Merle Watson. We were in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was a two-show day. and I went back to the hotel and I had no idea after I flew back to Nashville where I was going to head, what I was going to do. There was a guitar player, a great guy named Lonnie Mack had called me about maybe talking to him. And I was flirting with going to California to see if Bob Dylan would hire me as a band member.

31:42And all those were just blue sky deals. But I went back to the hotel after the first show in Cedar Rapids And remember when hotel phones had red lights on them, like there was a message at the front desk, and it was from my mom. And she said, Johnny Cash's guitar player, Bob Wooten, is looking for you. And I had met John a few weeks previous to that at Cowboy Jack Clement's studio. A buddy of mine had built him a guitar, and I kept up with the progress of the guitar and went with him to deliver it just to meet my old hero. And so we hit it off. John and I absolutely hit it off, that first handshake.

32:20He just kept shaking my hand. He'd go, where you been? I went, getting ready. He said, where you from? I went, Mississippi, when I thought so. And lightning kind of struck, and we were pals immediately. And back to the Doc and Merle Watson thing. So I called Bob Wooten. He says, John wants to know if you'd be interested in going to work in our band. I went, absolutely. I said, when are you thinking about me starting? And he went, how about tomorrow? He said, where are you? I went, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I said, where are you guys? He went, Des Moines, Iowa. So it was a two-hour rental car ride. And I went over there to the hotel, showed up.

33:00He said, we have a matinee show. So I go into the lobby. And Bob Wooten met me, got me settled in. He said, we leave here at 1 o 'clock or whatever the deal was. I went and sat down in the restaurant. and the maitre d' came and said, Mr. Cash is on the phone for you. I went, all right. So I got up. He said, hello, son. How are you? I went, fine. Glad to be here. He said, we're glad to have you. He said, do you have anything black to wear? I went, probably. And he said, do you know all my songs? I went, probably. Do you still do them in the same key? And he went, probably. And he says, well, good.

33:35He says, I'm probably going to take a nap, and I'll probably see you in a few minutes. Click. And that was it. And the next thing I know, I'm on stage. and he walked out and said, hello, I'm Johnny Cash. And we went.

33:48I was in. That was the whole deal. Were you playing the lead parts? No, Bob Ooten was playing the lead. And I took a mandolin, and I had my acoustic guitar and my electric guitar with me. And he asked me if I played the fiddle. I went, oh, yeah. And it was a total lie. You never played the fiddle? Barely, barely, barely. Same tuning as a mandolin. Yeah, but still, as you know, it's another world. Yeah, it's under your neck. But he played this song called Orange Blossom Special, and it's always played in the key of E, but he does it in the key of C because he played the harmonicas on it. But somehow a fiddle appeared, and I mean when I started playing it, it was awful.

34:28It was God-awful. And he looked at me like he's, I could see him thinking, I thought you said you could play a fiddle, but I wasn't going to lose the job because I couldn't play a fiddle. But the best part about it, at the end of that first tour, I get this check in the mail for the work and a letter. Dear son, thank you. Glad you're with us. You add life and vibrancy to the show, blah, blah, blah. But at the end, love, JR. And then it says, P.S., to all fiddle squeaker, just yours.

35:00Now, I heard a story once that you lost that fiddle. Jerry Lee. To Jerry Lee Lewis. Yeah. How did that happen? We were on a tour in Paris. And I decided it was Carl Perkins, John, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The tour was called The Survivors. So we go around Europe playing all these shows, and their fans are coming out. I called Jerry Lee Uncle Gerald. So I decided somewhere along the way that I was going to see if I could keep up with Uncle Gerald roaring. And I made it about two days. and we were in some hotel in France. I remember thinking the world started going round and round and I started seeing four of everything where there was only one.

35:43I thought, I have to surrender. I said, Uncle Unc, I have to go to bed. He says, well, all right. He was still going, a room full of people. And I went to my room and maybe an hour later or something, there was this knock on the door. And he comes to the door and he has no shirt on and he is covered in chocolate cake. He says, can I borrow your fiddle? I said, okay, sure. So I called the guy that looked over at the gear, and I said, would you deliver my fiddle to Jerry Lee's room? And I have not seen it since. You never asked him? No, I knew better than to ask Heath. But I tell you what I did see.

36:25Recently I was going through Jerry Lee Lewis pictures on Google, and I saw a picture of him playing my fiddle. And that's the last time I saw it. I have no idea beyond that. What happened? What kind of guy was he? Well, to me, he was Uncle Gerald and he was one of the greatest stylists and musicians and singers and interpreters of all time. But it would have been a big ride to have to manage all the ducks in his wheelhouse every day. I think he would have been, as Levon says, an adult-sized portion of putting up with things. He was just, I don't think he knew what was going to happen when he woke up in the morning.

37:14He just got up and he went about being Jerry Lee and things crossed his path. But there are people that I know that were with him for many, many, many, many years, and they loved him, respected him. And, you know, I think the Jerry Lee persona was one thing, but when you get into the realm of family was what he was to me. It was a different guy. What kind of guy was he in that context? He was spiritual, very spiritual, very soulful, humble, believe it or not. He was a mild person at heart. He truly was when it got into his family. He had a big heart. We have to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with more from Bruce Hedlum and Marty Stewart.

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40:52I can do it with my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing, see? Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. we're back with more from marty stewart i watched an interview with uh your great guitar player kenny vaughn and he talked about starting on the electric how that's different than people who start with acoustic and then cross over what was it like for you to learn the electric guitar well it's an ongoing process it's it's a completely different feel a completely different language the notes are the same but how you touch it and approach it and i think there's so many gifted guitar players out there i mean i just and i love the guitar because you can truly express when you figure out who you are and what you want to say with it it's a great way to has its own language the electric does the electric it does i mean i listen to people like pop staples who's one of my favorite guitar players pops was so basic but he used that tremolo on his his guitar and it was like moses spoke when when you heard the staple singers come on the air it was just again back to less is more pops was a very minimal guitar player but his guitar playing was so vast and profound then you hear a guy like i saw a clip the other day of eddie van halen doing sound check out here on the street in Manhattan somewhere before they played, and people hanging out the windows because it was so loud and thrilling, all those notes flying by.

42:53It must have been like 40 fighter jets flying by at the same time or something. And Kenny's another one of those. He started as an electric player, and I've watched him grow as an acoustic player, and I know that he would say the same thing about my electric playing as we, but we work at it. We work at it all the time. You practice every day? No, I doodle. Kenny practices, I doodle. Right. Yeah. Well, you doodle pretty well. Some layers are better than others. You've got Pop Staples guitar. I do. And it's in town. Tomorrow night, I'm doing a song with Wynton Marsalis, the jazz at Lincoln Center on a show that he's doing.

43:31And he asked me to do Will the Circle Be Unbroken, that old war horse anthem. But beyond the Carter family's original recording, the Staple Singer's version is my favorite song. It's my favorite version. And I brought Pop's guitar with me. Actually, it's in this very room. It's here with us today. What kind of guitar? It's a Fender Rosewood Telecaster. And it's the one, if you look at the movie The Last Waltz, the band did the song The Weight with the Staple Singers. That's the one. And he's got such a, I mean, people say, well, he only knew the E chord. He didn't need to know anything else. He made it sound.

44:08When he went.

44:24That's Pops. And is it all gospel playing? Well, it sounds like rock and roll to me. He called it gospel guitar, but it's just soulful. It's soul guitar. It's got such a beautiful sound. Absolutely. Is he just using a tremolo? What's he doing? I called him one time to come to Nashville, and he agreed to do it. He said, no, I'm going to need two things. I said, what do you need, Pops? He says, I need me a Fender amplifier with some shake on it and a stretch-out car. I went, no problem. And I called Mavis. I said, Mavis, help me. What is a Fender 65 amp with some shake on it? He said, oh, Marty, that's tremolo.

45:02I went, okay. And I said, and what is a stretch-out car? She said, oh, that's one of them limousines. Pops likes limousines. Well, got it. No problem.

45:14You didn't know a Fender amp? Well, I didn't understand what shake meant. Oh, okay. I thought I did, but I didn't want to take any chances. So I found that was Pops' word for tremolo. And it was a 65. 65 with some shake on it. Uh-huh. Wow. Okay. Did it sound good? Oh, of course it did. Pops was one of those guys who could play 40 guitars and 40 different amps, but they all sounded the same. It was in his hands. Are you that kind of player? I don't think so. I don't think so. Not to that level, no. You also got Carl Perkins' guitar, is that right? Yeah. Tell me the story about that. At the end of the Johnny Cash band member days, there was a happening in Memphis called the Class of 55 Sessions.

45:57A record producer named Chips Momin was trying to light a fire under Memphis. Memphis was trying to reestablish itself and freshen its image up and step out in the 80s. And so Chips put together this series of recording sessions with Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee. And, of course, I was right in the middle of that because I was in John's band, and I wanted to see that. I was in it, so I played on those sessions. And the word was out that I was looking for a pathway forward and to try to be a recording artist and to try to be a country-western singing sensation. First person that heard about it was Sam Phillips, and he came up to me and said, is that what you have on your mind?

46:47I went, yes, Unc. And he says, does Johnny know about this? I went, absolutely, he supports it. He says, okay. He gave me his blessing. And then Carl heard about it. And he says, is this what you're going to do? I went, yeah. So at the end of the sessions, he walked up and handed me his Fender Stratocaster that he had been playing. And autographed it on the back. He said, to me it was like being knighted or something. It was a rite of passage. It was like all those guys surrounded me and gave me their support. And that tipped me off. Wow. What was it like being in those sessions? Well, it was the one question that kept being asked was, wouldn't it be great if Elvis was here?

47:27I mean, journalists descended from all over on those sessions. I mean, I wish you could. The best part of the sessions in reality, Bruce, was the press conference. They held the press conference at the Peabody Hotel. And to see those four guys along with Cowboy Jack Clement and Sam Phillips walk into the Peabody Hotel and take a seat behind the conference table for a press conference. It was a mighty thing to see those guys that left town as young princes come back as these kings. I mean, it was an electric thing. But the question that kept coming up that week was, you know, wouldn't it be great if Elvis could be here?

48:09And, of course, Roy Orbison had a very eloquent answer. And, you know, well, in spirit, he still is. and John had a wonderful answer, you know, and Carl would get a tear in his eye and tell this story, leave it to Jerry Lee, and Jerry Lee said, well, he would be if he hadn't overshot the runway.

48:30But there was a renegade spirit about that week that never quite made it into the grooves of that record. It didn't have the sass that the Sun Records that you and I probably grew up listening to had, But still, Dick Clark and his team came in from California to document all that stuff. But still, just to be a flower on the wall and turn the volume down, just to watch it, was worth its weight in gold. Yeah. Where was Johnny Cash in his career at that point? We know it was kind of, you know, Rick Rubin, who's a partner in the podcast, had his moment with Johnny Cash, which is a bit later. Because of that, people have reinterpreted his later career as, well, he was struggling.

49:12or his record label was going to drop him. How was he as a performer then? What was he like? He was a master performer. That never wavered. He was a master showman. And he was a man of integrity. He left this earth looking for one more song. Those things never varied. What I was taken by on the first night in Des Moines, Iowa, the Johnny Cash that I that I adored as a kid and that became my hero was the guy that made the Folsom Prison record and the guy that defied authority and the guy that made the Bitter Tears record to bring light to the Native American plight the San Quentin record all those edgy things the concept records that he did Ballots of the True West Johnny Cash Visits the Holy Land and you never knew what he was going to do next, and it was so interesting.

50:08But the night of Des Moines, Iowa, when I signed on and went to the hotel that night, I had to have a talk with myself because I really had not seen his concert since 1970 when I was a kid. And I thought, I think I just signed on to the Lawrence Welk show. It was a really broad family atmosphere. The guy that was my hero from those records past, he was down in there somewhere, but I didn't see much evidence of him. But I still, even his spare change was better than most everybody else's stuff. And I knew that it was the best opportunity that I ever had in my life, and I knew that I was going to go ahead and go for this and take it hook, line, and sinker.

50:54But I was really surprised at how mild it had become. He was patriot cash. He could still fill up performing arts centers. He could still fill up state fairs, grandstands. But that edgy guy was gone. And I didn't see that edgy guy until we went to Europe the first time. He still did a lot of business in Europe. But in Europe, I went, okay, I see there is another wave out there somewhere for John Arcash. Because it was kids. He was still a pop star over there. And it was these rockabillies and tattooed kids and punks. along with the servicemen who were a long way from home and the audience that had grown up with him since the 50s.

51:36There was an edge to that audience, and I thought, one of these days that's going to make it back to the States. But we would go back over there, and I could see what was coming. And from day one, I went in as an advocate that we need to go back to the original sound. I went to him one day and said, you need to fire me. You don't need me. You don't need two horn players. You don't need a synthesizer player. You don't need a piano on stage. you need you and three guys on stage. He said, well, a lot of people depend on me. I said, well, there's your problem. I said, get it back to the music. And I think it hurt his feelings and took him back a little bit, but I was always honest about that, and I'd go, I don't need to play on this.

52:13But one day, long after I had left his band, I went out with his blessing and got started, had a fault start, and got my band started, and we started having hits, and things started going in the right direction for me. But he called me and said, can you come out to the house cash in the morning? I said, yeah. So I went out there, and he opened up a little six-and-a-half-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola and sat it in front of me. He said, don't talk to me for 21 and a half minutes. I went, all right. And he sang me 10 or 12 songs, just him and his guitar. And when he got through, I could tell he kind of looked at me like, what do you think?

52:48I said, what did I just hear? He said, my new album. I said, you mean just you and your guitar? He said, yeah, what do you think? I said, I think it's brilliant. It goes beyond what you've ever done. And you're the best storyteller that's ever lived. You and a guitar and a three-minute song that says the right thing, nobody can deny that and walk away from it unchanged. And then he told me about Rick Rubin and what he was up to, and I went, absolutely brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Wow. You have some story songs, and you've got some story albums. Is there something you could get from the way other than he was Johnny Cash?

53:31How did he tell that story? How did he pull people in so well? In his case, I think it was they trusted the messenger. We all trusted the messenger. Hank Williams had that. Merle Haggard had that. Bruce Springsteen has it. When Bob Dylan wants to, he's one of the greatest that ever was at it. That's part of the fan artist dance is finding somebody you trust with your heart. And at the end of the whole episodic thing that we worked on with Ken Burns for the Country Music Series for PBS, Ken and I agreed that beyond everything else we talked about, it's the stories. It's the stories that matter the most.

54:19and John just happened to have that gift his voice was like thunder coming from the middle of the earth and his three chord treatment of most of those songs was like anybody could look at him and relate to what he was saying even if you didn't like his singing or appreciate what he was up to he was one of those he had a presence about him that you had to at least consider and if you did it usually made a difference in your heart Wow When you said he was in Europe and the audiences were different And they were responsive in a different way Did it change his performance at all? Yeah He went back and did older songs that I longed to hear him sing As a Johnny Cash fan Like, oh, looky here He's doing The Legend of John Henry's Hammer He's doing I Was There When It Happened So I guess, I don't know He's doing Greystone Chapel He's doing Delia He's doing Sing It Pretty Sue He's doing all those kind of songs that he would never do in the States for some reason.

55:22And he'd get around to all those old Sun records. I'm like, yeah, come on. Amazing. When did you know you wanted to go out and be a solo artist? One of my best friends in the world was Fluke Holland. Fluke was a drummer in the Johnny Cash band. Fluke's great distinction was that he started out playing with Carl Perkins. He didn't own a set of drums. He borrowed a set of drums. and they used him to drive to Memphis to Carl Perkins Bethes because he had a car. By the way, that's the secret to all drummers. Absolutely. They have the car. But check this out. So Fluke's first recording session and the first song he ever played on in his life was Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins.

56:03And, you know, the Tennessee Three, Luther Perkins, Marshall Grant, and Fluke Holland, they were my Stones. They were my Beatles. And Fluke, when I joined Cash's band, And, I mean, it took me two seconds to go, Fluke, you're my best friend, and I want to know everything there is to know about you and hang out with you. You're cool. But Fluke was one of those that had been in that show for... 20-something years at that time. He joined in 1961, so this would have been 1980, whatever that is. And he would sit in the coffee shop and talk about music and careers and things. And Fluke would always say, if you want to be me, you can stay here for the rest of your life, and one day you won't have a job.

56:46But at some point, you need to go out there and see what it's all about. And I knew he was right. And he encouraged me. and the Johnny Cash show was a spawning ground and a launching pad for other stars, people that went on to become stars. And I knew that it wasn't a foreign concept and so John was behind it. He knew that look in my eye and there came a point where it was the hardest thing in the world to go, I gotta go try this. But I did it with his blessing. The way it kind of worked out is that show hadn't had a hit in a lot of years. And I took a song called The High Women to Sessions that John and Willie were going to do a record, and it wasn't quite clicking.

57:33And we had just come from Switzerland where John, Willie, Waylon, and Christopherson had done a show together. And they wound up in the hotel room after the filming passing the guitar around, and it was magic. So we got back to the States. Johnny Wooley was going to make a record, and it wasn't really magic. And I went to my cousin who worked at Glen Campbell's publishing company, and I was aware of a song called The Highwayman that Jimmy Webb had written, but I did not know the song. I just liked the title. And he played it for me. On a break from the sessions, I went, Four verses, no harmony required.

58:10This could work. I took it back to the studio, and I played it for John and Chip's moment. And John said, Play it again. And I said, no harmony needed. And John, on the second page, says, Oh, that verse about starship. Of course, it's the fourth verse. That's when Marlon Brando comes up out of the river, right? Master Chauvin. Yeah. And next thing I know, there's a hit in the house. Well, Columbia Records took notice, and John was very adamant about pointing me out to the Columbia Record people. This is the kid that brought that song. And I just happened to have a tape to start putting on people's desks at that time.

58:52You know, those were your Columbia records. Your big record started with MCA. And it seemed as though you came out and Dwight Yoakam and some other people, but your sound sounded like you've been thinking about this your whole life. Was that the sound you were looking for? Is that what you were trying to find? or were you still looking around trying to find? I was kind of feeling my way through the dark a little bit at the very first of the MCA sessions. There had been a misfire at Columbia. I did a record, and the second record I put out, I turned it in and I said, this is too country. I went, what?

59:31And it threw me for a curve. And when you're young and trying to find your way, a lick like that can shake your confidence. And it shook my vision for a second. but the mca stuff hillbilly rock was a song that i didn't think was a hit but it went on to be a hit and it gave me a reason to get a bust and abandon some cowboy clothes it i used that first year to just keep exploring and i there was a song that paul kidrony and i wrote called tempted and i felt like tempted we finally found something that was a sonic identity and something that i could i was proud of and could build on and that that was to me the downbeat of the journey was tempted, the second record.

1:00:12That's really where you felt. It's got a Buddy Holly vibe. Well, let me tell you this. They didn't think it was a hit, they being the promotion department at MCA. And we played a concert in Lubbock, Texas. And I had the song in my pocket. And the speakers will tell you yay or nay a lot of times, right? So I went to a radio station in Lubbock and did a pre-show interview. And on the way out of the room, the DJ was cool. I said, would you do me a favor? I said, my record, I have a song in my pocket that I think is a hit that is a little bit, I can feel Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison and me and all of us in there.

1:00:58I said, would you play it so I could listen to it on the way back to the hotel? He said, sure, no problem. and the DJ played the song and I turned it up really loud and the vehicle I was in and it sounded like a hit and I knew it was a hit. And at the end of it, the DJ said, I think that song would make Buddy Holly proud and I thought I'm going to go fight for this song and I'm glad I did. Wow. What was it like working for MCA or any record company then? You must have, you know, you grew up with these guys like Johnny Cash who seemed like such rebels who seemed to be doing what they wanted or at least had somebody like Sam Phillips, who is as hard-headed and as rebellious as they are.

1:01:40Are you sitting in a boardroom and you've got somebody from marketing saying, we don't think it's a hit? I think there's always been that at record levels. But MCA in the early 90s in Nashville was run by Bruce Hinton and Tony Brown. and Bruce was a guy that had, as a young executive, had worked under a fellow named Goddard Lieberson here in New York City. And Goddard, in my mind, is still the coolest record guy that ever lived because he would sign Flatt and Scruggs, but he had also worked with Dave Brubeck and then he'd do a Broadway show and he just was a world-class musical citizen and cool.

1:02:22I think he was jazz cool in his heart. But Godderson understood. And so Bruce Hinton brought a lot of that with him. And Tony Brown, the A &R guy, had trained with the Oak Ridge Boys in gospel quartets. Then he got a job with Emmylou Harris. Then he played with Elvis. And then he stepped out and became a record guy. So you have these two extra cool guys running this label in Nashville. And for a moment in time, MCA Records was the spot on planet Earth to be. They were so cool. The doors were open. Creativity was pouring in. They had mainstream stars like George Strait and Reba McIntyre. Up and coming side, they had Lyle Lovett and Vince Gill and me and Patty Loveless and Steve Earle, those kind of acts.

1:03:10And it was just a perfect, cool scenario. And it lasted for a long time. And then, you know, as the country music world started becoming more corporate and more great, great, you know, entities started buying up record labels, I think Seagram's bought that into things. And so everything changed. But for a moment in time, we had it right. Mm-hmm. Country music always seems to be going through these ebbs and flows where it gets very corporate and then suddenly, and you were considered a very traditional player. A lot of those people were, I love it wasn't, but people sort of bring the older qualities of country music back.

1:03:55Well, it's funny to me because I started out, going back to those first Columbia records, they were loud, they were rock and roll, My job was to throw boxes of dynamite into audiences and to shake things up. And the further I got into it, I thought, no, let me turn around here and rethink this. Because a lot of people started responding. But when it started clicking, Dwight Yoakam, Steve Earle, and myself, we were kind of at the forefront of taking it to a different place. and there was a thread of tradition in there, but there was still a fresh edge on it, I thought. But everything runs its course.

1:04:38When you look at country music now, what kind of state is country radio in now? Well, I don't hardly listen. I don't listen to country radio much. I listen to satellite radio, and I work inside a good band, and we're a pretty good radio to listen to ourselves. But I think the thing that is amazing to me, that is absolutely amazing to me is that people that you didn't know two years ago, three years ago, can fill up stadiums two nights in a row now with contemporary country music. And my hat's off to them. That is awesome. We need that end of things. That's big, big, big, big business by anybody's standards.

1:05:20But the heart and soul factor is what, you know, starting about 1999 with the pilgrim. I went, you know what? I've got 150 bucks in two different banks. I'm married to the girl I love. I got a Cadillac that's old with some gas money in my pocket, the world's best Telecaster, some cowboy clothes and a cool set of cowboy boots. How about I live like I believe now? And so I have friends in every denomination of country music, but the foundational qualities of country music, the timeless place, that's where I finally put my flag in the dirt and went, until further notice, you can find me here. Was that a hard decision?

1:05:58No. The other stuff had run its course. I remember being, we played Foxwoods, big old crowd at the end of the 90s. We couldn't have been riding any higher commercially. And I whirled around to do a guitar solo, and I looked at the music I was playing. I heard it, and I saw the effect it was having, and I thought, I'm so sick of this. this became a gag that worked you know the worst kind oh the worst guy and and i thought i need to find my way back to who i am to my heart soul and that that led me to a record called the pilgrim which ultimately cost me my record deal but it also put me on the path that i've been on ever since it was just the richest years of my life i want to go through all those things you had one by one, but I'm going to start with a guitar.

1:06:52Is this the famous Clarence White B-Bender? Yeah. So tell me about that guitar. I read in something this morning that 40 years ago today, Johnny Cash hosted Saturday Night Live, and Elton John was the musical guest, and John dressed up in some flamboyant outfit and introduced Elton John. They switched costumes. They switched costumes. Yeah. That was 40 years ago today. Well, what that means to me is 40 years ago today was the first time that I played Clarence White's guitar publicly. It was on Saturday Night Live on that show. I looked like a jumping bean back there. But I bought that guitar from his wife Susie, and I couldn't believe I had it in my hands.

1:07:37I still can't believe I have it in my hands. But yeah, that's the guitar. Is that the guitar you play every night? Mm-hmm. And so, as I understand it right, the guitar has a mechanism that bends the B string, is that right? Clarence and Gene Parsons, the drummer, they were in The Birds together. Clarence was an adventurous thinker musically, and so was Gene. And Clarence was trying to play all these steel guitar licks, you know.

1:08:09And he said, why can't we come up with a device that if you pull down on the strap, it just raises it like a steel guitar pedal. So instead of doing it with your fingers, you pull down on the strap and it goes.

1:08:25That. Now, does it allow you to do, if you don't have to bend it then, can you do other things? Can you make other sounds with it? Yeah. It just allows you more flexibility then. You can do the bends and you can do other things around it. It becomes a whole different vocabulary. Yeah, I can't even imagine. If you listen to songs like Bad Day at Whiskey on Dr. Byrd's and Mr. Hyde record, they were experimenting with psychedelia. And Clarence had like a fuzz pedal. And all these things he was doing, I promise you if Jimi Hendrix heard it, he would go, wow, I can't do that. But it was the pedal on that guitar that allowed him to do that.

1:09:04And so it was attached to the strap. He'd pull the guitar down, and it would be a full tone. Yeah. Amazing. Because most people, when they want the steel sound, they do what you do. They just bend. Yeah. How long did it take you to learn how to play that? Oh, I'm still learning. Just when I think of really getting something going on that guitar, somebody will present me with a live show from the Byrds, Or something Clarence played, I went, back to the woodshed. It would be as if you gave a classical piano, she said, the piano's the same except we just reversed all the keys in one octave. Yeah.

1:09:41But other than that, it's the same. Yeah. It would just mess with you, I would think. It's a different thing. Yeah. Now, does Kenny ever play it? Kenny actually got a, it's called a bender, a b-bender. Right. Kenny actually got a b-bender put on his guitar, and he's getting pretty good at it. Yeah? Yeah. But you've got the original. You've got the, I think the prototype, wasn't it? That's the first one. Well, you've got some guitars. Oh, it's an amazing guitar. We have to pause quickly for a break, and then we'll be back with more from Marty Stewart and Bruce Hedlum. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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1:13:03It's just like doing my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. See? Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. we're back with the rest of bruce hedlum's conversation with marty stewart so tell me about the pilgrim then you had you had it with stardom you'd had it with that you'd run that race in nashville back in the early 70s probably the sweetest spot creatively that i've ever known in nashville was the early 1970s and the only comparison i i think i could throw out is it was must have been like Paris in the 20s.

1:14:08The old world of country music was kind of fading away, and the outlaw movement was taking place, Willie and Waylon and all those great writers that came around. There was a street called Elliston Place in Nashville, and you were either kind of the old Opry crowd or a part of this New World Order that was kind of setting the woods on fire. But due to my age and the way I looked and what I thought about, as soon as I'd get through with the Grand Ole Opry, I'd change clothes and head to Elliston Place and hang out with the outlaws. And so I saw into a different level of stardom there. I saw into a different level of creativity that wasn't offered even as precious as that Ole Opry scene and those people were to me.

1:15:02So I just started dialing my way through that, thinking I'm going to be a star someday, and pretty much decided I'd do whatever it took to get there. And I remember taking a piece of my soul, literally, and putting it under a rock, going, you know, I'll come back to this someday, who you really are. But just go out there by way of craft, ingenuity, and just perseverance and get it done, get the job done. become a star making machine. And so from the early 70s forward till about that day in Foxwoods we talked about, that's the way I lived. And then one day I thought, I am so sick of this. I have enough money now that I can think the way I want to.

1:15:48I can breathe. And a friend of mine told me, about somewhere along the way during those days, he said, you know, you're getting to the age now, you should never sign up for anything you don't believe in anymore. You got to probably stand by what you believe in. And in my heart of hearts, and I was fried. It was time to call time out and go to the woods. But I remember in my heart going back to that rock that I put myself under and went, let me reconnect with that guy. And the result of that was the pilgrim. It was a return to heart and soul. And storytelling. And storytelling. and all of the classic themes, all of the timeless aspects of the music that I love.

1:16:32And it put me in the land of shadows. I was under the shadows of some mighty figures. Who were those figures that inspired you? On the Pilgrim, when I would write a song, I had an invisible committee in my mind. I thought if I had Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard and Jimmy Rogers, Lester Flatt, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Hank Williams at the table, and I would sing this song to them without wincing, I know I have a song here. So they became my cloud of witnesses that I've kind of, again, carried around in my mind when I was making the Pilgrim, writing songs. Were you all conscious of the group that Steve Earle had come out of, of Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt?

1:17:24Was that part of your thinking, or it was older than that? A little different side of the street. Yeah. There were the Texas boys. And I'm a Mississippi boy, so I mean, I loved them, admired them, played music with them, throw John Prine in that pile too. They wrote a little bit different kind of song than I was looking for at that time. But we were all after them. Rodney Crowell, put him in there. Sure. But I was aware of them, and it respected the fire out of their work. But it was a different kind of song I was writing. Mm-hmm. And then it's almost as though you cast that album. You had different characters.

1:18:02Pam Tillis is on that record. You talked about Emmylou. George Jones sings on that record, doesn't he? Yeah. Had you known him before? I saw The Pilgrim was basically my love letter to country music. I wanted to create a story that was told with the soundtrack of country music's past, present, and future, starting with the mountain sounds of Ralph Stanley. And that's as deep as you can go. to George Jones, Honky Tonk Sounds, Emmy Lou, to wind up in contemporary country music land with songs like Dragon, Around These Chains of Love, with all these vignettes of people. I just saw it as an opera and with people coming and going, vignettes.

1:18:47And it was a complicated process, but once I finally got it kind of sliced and diced, the biggest problem I had with that project was the ending. I couldn't come up with an ending. And I was in Austin one day, and I bought a piece of stained glass that I carried home on the bus with me and just stuck it in my basement. And one day I was in the basement when I was really trying to figure out this ending, and I saw words at the bottom of the glass, and I brushed it off, and it was a poem by Tennyson. Then move the trees, the copses nod. wings flutter voices hover near oh just and faithful knight of god right on the prize is near so pass i hostile hall and grains by bridge by ford by park by pale all armed i ride whate 'er betide until i find the holy grail and i thought how about at the end that you say said the lonesome pilgrim far from home and i thought i need to call 822-5615 and see if john r cash will answer me because he needs to be the voice to end this record.

1:19:57And that's how I found the ending to The Pilgrim on the bottom of a stained glass. Wow. Tennyson, cowboy poet. Mm-hmm. Your next, it wasn't your next big project, but another big project, which I loved, is Ghost Train. And tell me how that came about. When the superlatives and I formed, we set ourselves some standards. First and foremost, I shut the rehearsal down 15 minutes, honestly, into the first rehearsal. And I knew that this was a band unlike anything I'd ever... I started my first band when I was nine. But I knew this band was unlike anything else I had ever done. And I thought, okay, we're musical missionaries or mercenaries, however you want to depend on it.

1:20:45This is bigger than chasing three-minute songs that are disposable up and down music row. let's take our case to the people. Let's figure out who we are out in the woods and then bring it back to town with us. And everybody jumped on board and said, if we believe in it, we'll pay to get there. If we don't, you can't afford us. We'll never play it. So with those lofty standards in mind, we didn't have very many people to book us. But we set forth. And I noticed the first record was one more attempt at country radio. It was called Country Music on Columbia. Then I got an imprint deal, and we started doing records like Soul's Chapel, which was a tip of the hat to the vanishing sounds of Delta gospel music, staple singer style, Badlands, Ballads of the Lakota.

1:21:39We did a live record from the Ryman. But somewhere along the way, I remember saying, I feel like we're honored guests everywhere we go, but we still don't have our thing. We still don't have our mission statement. And one day, three words, traditional country music, the vanishing of the culture came forth. I thought, man, we have 15 minutes left before Kitty Wells and Ray Price and Merle Haggard and all of their contemporaries are gone, so let's do something about it. I always admired the Stones when the Stones got really popular, they shined the light back on Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. Merle Haggard did that early in his career when he got white hot.

1:22:27He shined the light back on Bob Wills and Jimmy Rogers. With that in mind, I just said, let's make a thing out of traditional country music. And I found us a deal on a TV network called RFD-TV, and we did 156 episodes of a TV show that celebrated that culture. and what was left of it. Since the show's been off the air, 43 people and counting have gone. But Ghost Train was one of the records that was in the dead center of that mission. It was taking lost and forgotten, overlooked sounds from Nashville's Studio B great days and writing new songs around them and cutting a couple older songs. but it was about bringing Studio B back to life where all those hits had been cut.

1:23:17Those sounds that had been disregarded due to the changing of times, which I knew were timeless, that became Studio B. That became Ghost Train, the Studio B Sessions. And you got to sing with your wife? Connie. Yeah. Connie has made 55 records and her first hit came in 1964, RCA Record. It was a song called Once a Day. Huge hit. Got her started. But we were standing in the middle of Studio B making this record. And again, it's such a music box. And I thought, I would love to hear Connie's voice in this studio one more time. And I wrote a song with her. And we did it as a duet and included it on that record.

1:24:04And then later, we did a whole record on her in that studio a couple years later. that went on to do great things for her. But it was about putting real country music back, royalty back in that studio, and it worked. Had she performed in that studio before? Has she ever recorded there? Oh, that's where the first probably 20 records of her career were done. She loved that room. That was her home studio, but she hadn't been there in a lot of years because the studio had closed, and it now operates as a classroom. But after hours we went in, after the tours were done, and after students were taught, we made it back into a studio.

1:24:46So, yeah, she loved going back there. And one of your songs you co-wrote with Johnny Cash is on that record, right? Is Hangman? Is it Hangman? Yeah. That's the last song he was a part of. Is that right? Yeah. I'd been to Folsom. We played Folsom, California, the city. and I asked if I could go out to the prison and see where they made the record. And the governor of California got me a pass. And they took me out there and I wanted to see the cafeteria. I knew that's where the record was made. And behind the back wall of the cafeteria, they showed me, it was now, it served as the common band hall for all the bands that play at Folsom Prison.

1:25:30And the day I was there, It just happened to be the Folsom Country Band, and they let me set in with them, and we played Mama Tried and Folsom Prison. Oh, is that right? Yeah. But right off to that was the hanging gallows where they executed people. And that really got me. All the way back to Nashville, I was thinking about that room, and I thought, okay, what if you were the hangman? What do you do? You go home and tell your wife you did a great job today? That must be an awful job, an awful job. And I started this song and it says, oh, let's see.

1:26:31That's my stock and trade. Hang men, hang men, sending bad men to their graves. And that's all I had. And so John, we were next door neighbors. And I went by to see him before I went on the road. And I was telling him about my experience. And I just quoted those words. I said, that's as far as I can get. And from his wheelchair, he spoke up. He said, who killed who? I ask myself time and time again. God have mercy on the soul of a hangman. I went, well, that took care of that. And then we wrote a second verse in about five minutes. I always loved, he could name people really good. I said, I went, there's a woman down the street.

1:27:19I pointed at him, he went, name Rosalie McFall. I went, Rosalie McFall? She don't ask me any questions when I come to call. Her arms are soft and warm Her words true and kind I forget the last lines She holds me in her arms It all fades out of sight, something like that But we sit there and wrote that song And he looked so beautiful that day He was in his wheelchair, but he had on this black shirt And the afternoon light was kissing the back of his shirt He looked like an old president I had my camera. I said, J.R., let me take your picture. And I knew he didn't want me to. He said, all right.

1:28:05So first two frames, he was just kind of slumped. I said, where's Johnny Cash? And he sat up straight, and he looked like an old president. And I took the picture. On the way out of the room, I sang him a song, or I played him a song that I just recorded of his called The Walls of a Prison. And I sat at his feet, held his ankles. He says, I've never heard you sing that way before. I said, I never felt that way before. He said, excellent, my son.

1:28:34So I stood up and I said, I have to go to Washington. I said, play an East Coast show or two. I said, anything you want? He said, no. And he looked around the room. He says, anything in this room you want? I said, just your love. He said, you got it. And I said, I'll see you when I get home. I said, you got plenty of rope? He said, I've got plenty of rope. I said, how's your spirit? He said, good. And four days later, he was gone. Wow. But we left. We signed off on good terms. Yeah, that's very good. I'd love to talk about Way Out West and all your other records, but let's talk a little more about Altitude.

1:29:16I haven't even asked you how you write. Are you the kind of guy, do you always have a guitar nearby? Are you writing every day? Are you? I go months and don't write sometimes. I've also been guilty of getting out of the shower and taking a can of shaving cream and squirting it all over the mirror and writing with my finger because I knew it was a good line. I never know. You write, so you never know when it's going to strike. Coming out of the whole traditional country music mission and doing all that I thought that I looked and went mission accomplished, I knew we needed to turn the wheel, so I called my buddy Mike Campbell after writing a record called Way Out West.

1:29:59I went, I want to make a cosmic country music record. It's time to go to the desert and let it fly. And so we did, and Way Out West's record did a lot of cool things for our band. I felt the needle turn, the wheel turn. And when it was time to start making music for our new record beyond Way Out West, these songs just kept coming that felt like they were kindred to an extension of Way Out West and, again, just inspired by all those things we'd been doing on the road. And just song after song started coming. And I write my best. I tend to love to write most on the road. I love writing on the bus, going down the road, looking out at America to the left and the right.

1:30:46I said earlier, a great sounding record. It starts with your Lost Bird Space Train instrumentals. There's two or three of them on the record. They sound great. Well, that goes back to scoring films. And Pilgrim taught me a lot about that, too, about pacing. Sometimes when there's two slow songs back to back and they don't quite flow, an instrumental helps. And me and my band, we all grew up listening to instrumentals. And there used to be a lot of instrumental records made in Nashville. so we can pick so we write instrumentals so it's nice to me in the journey in the listening experience if an instrumental can carry you forward so that's what that's about Sitting Alone You May Not Have Grown Up With The Beatles that sounds like a George Harrison song to me that's got a great, great guitar piece and Space has a did you actually use a sitar on Space?

1:31:46well there's an electric sitar Yeah, but you use like an East Indian. Country and Eastern music, what do you think? I like it. Well, because you use the East Indian scale too, so it's got that flat sixth. Some of the shows we were doing with Steve Miller. Steve has a beautiful song that he does called Wild Mountain Honey that features a sitar. I have to tell you, I think I have one of those in my warehouse somewhere, and I found it, probably hadn't seen it two times in 20 years. And I pulled it out and started goofing around, and the next thing out, here comes space. Do you often switch instruments to try and get a new way of writing?

1:32:27Do you ever write in the mandolin, for example? And they all... I'm looking at two guitars in this room right now. Both guitars have personalities, and I think if you're trying to write a song, they would encourage you into a certain kind of lyric or melody. So there's stuff down in here. The last song I do want to ask you about is The Angels Come Home, which is an album full of feedback and great sonic effects, and suddenly you're playing the acoustic with a little bit of accompaniment at the end. Can you tell me about that song? I was at an awards show, and you know how those shows tend to go.

1:33:05Everybody tries to outdo everybody. They will, you know, if it's not pyrotechnics, it's a choir. It's just, you know, it's all about the three minutes your artist gets and as an act you get. And I was at one of those, and I was just beat to death about it. It had nothing to do with music usually, you know. And in the midst of all this, this singer-songwriter came out with a guitar wearing a flannel shirt and sang a song. And you could hear a pin drop in the room, and everybody's heart just melted. And it reminded me that the truth inside of a song simply presented, unadorned from the heart, has more power than everything else put together.

1:33:57and the angels came down as one of those songs that I felt like, you know, this whole record was about, you know, swirling around in the spirit world or, you know, cosmic this, cosmic that. And the spirit world probably is the most cosmic of all places. And the angels, if you believe in them, which I do, you know, I know there's times in my life that I felt like I've had a hand in being rescued from dark moments. and Dark Ways of Life. And that song's probably the most autobiographical thing on the record. And I thought, well, back to the guy in the flannel shirt at the end of all the hoopla, come out and tell the truth, see what happens.

1:34:40Was there a particular time in your life that song was about? Or just about that? Oh, good Lord. You know, I was a rock and roll knucklehead lifestyle from about 1973 when Lester Flatt started playing hippie shows until I finally crashed and burned two or three times. I went, okay, it's time to grow up. Deal with this. Get sober and do something about it. And that became a way of life for me about 20 years ago, and I've enjoyed every second of it since then. When I heard the song, it almost sounded like it was a song about death, though, that the angels were coming down for you. Well, when that time comes, we all have that in common.

1:35:22That will happen to each and every one of us. you know it's just fine with me if a if a herd of angels come take me by the hand and lead me on if you have to go if you have to go but i'm married to an angel so there you go all right well it's already it's happening every day then yeah you bet thank you so much bruce thank you just a just a great treat and another great record thank you kindly yeah thanks for all you're doing you're keeping the real stuff alive i hope so i hope so and thank you Thanks to Marty Stewart for sharing all those great stories and memories from his illustrious career.

1:36:00You can hear all of our favorite Marty Stewart songs on a playlist at BrokenRecordPodcast.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash BrokenRecordPodcast where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose and Eric Sandler. Our show is engineered by Echo Mountain. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries If you love this show and others from Pushkin Consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription That offers bonus content and ad-free listening For$4.99 a month Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions And if you like this show Please remember to share, rate, and view us on your podcast app Our theme music is by Kenny Beats I'm Justin Richmond This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve.

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1:37:33Subject to credit approval, terms apply. Why are TSA rules so confusing? You got a hoodie, you'll take it off! I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And we're best friends and journalists with a new podcast called No Such Thing. where we get to the bottom of questions like that. Why are you screaming at me? I can't expect what to do. Now, if the rule was the same, go off on me. I deserve it. You know, lock him up. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. No such thing. This is an iHeart Podcast.