>>PREVIEW
TOM RUSSELL
Sunday, February 12 (Second show added at 7:00 p.m.)
Ironwood Stage and Grill
Tom Russell grew up in Los Angeles, where the Venice canals haunt his songs with moody metaphors, and ended up holding ground just outside El Paso. His forthcoming album, Love and Fear, is a musical documentary on the carnage of love, just as last year’s Hotwalker was a musical documentary on the carnage of outsider souls.
On the road for many moons, bringing forth one honest album a year, and unafraid to rattle a cage or two, it’s amazing Russell has time for a girlfriend. Yet the exploration of the heart, reflected on 2001’s Borderland, continues on Love and Fear. Fast Forward caught up with Russell in Elko, Nevada.
FFWD: You’ve called Love and Fear a "dangerous bus ride forward into the
ragged outback of love. Bus stops include age, drink, insanity, damnation, redemption and resurrection." Which of these causes the most fear? And why the danger? Isn’t this what living is about, especially for souls who refuse to lick up the shit corporate America attempts to rub into their faces?
Russell: I think anytime you put your heart on the line in this politically correct spiritually dead culture you risk being torn apart by finger pointers and do-gooders and psychotic love-worn partners with damage to inflict. Everyone is carrying a lot of poisonous baggage and they want to unload it. So the task is to walk the love tightrope and try to tell a few truths in your art. The truth as you experience it. People tend to lead their lives as they think the group wants them to.... The Church, their political affiliations, their family.... we are afraid of dying, but the bigger fear is the fear of living. And that involves risk. Liberals are licking as much shit as conservatives.... and all of us are dying for a passionate encounter.
FFWD: You’ve stated the album comes out of three years of heartbreak and
desolation. I smell the dust of 50 years of train rides, taxicabs and sorrow on the boots of these songs. Why narrow it down to three?
Russell: Because I didn't know enough to articulate what I felt. I wasn't free enough. The same with painting. It’s taken me about 50 years to get back to what I could do as a child.
The splash of wild paint strokes across a white surface…. We are crippled by our upbringing.
In the last three years I have really tuned in to what women are saying and the implications of love. Trying to break through the bullshit sound barrier of the modern love song. Trying to strike my own ground. Trying not to lie.
FFWD: You’ve been involved in many different angles of art – songwriting, painting and writing books. Last year’s Hotwalker was a new creation of form, almost a soundtrack to a documentary in the listener’s mind, a musical book. People like Lawrence Ferlinghettie and Robbie Fulks raved. What surprised you about people’s reactions?
Russell: Most people raved. Some people, including a few famous friends, hated it. They felt threatened by it. They thought it should be edited. Destroyed. Things have not gotten any hipper since Lenny Bruce died. I just sat back and watched the midget do his routines. It's easy to take the piss out of a dead culture. Almost too easy. But Hotwalker achieved that. But the record has brought me new friends like Ferlinghettie and many other writers who got it as the satirical rave-up it was. Tongue-in-cheek opera by someone who has been through the plague.
FFWD: "In this culture, I’d hate to be an insider," (quoted to Craig McDonald, March 2005). You travel in the dusk, skirted by shadows of other outsiders, so that only people who are able to unhook from the machine are likely to seek you out. Is it ever lonely out there? Do any of the other outsiders ever make you feel the nervous urge to watch your back?
Russell: I could disappear into Juarez, Mexico, at any moment and turn up years later with cigarette butts in my beard reciting fragments of T.S. Eliot. Naw, it feels good to be on the outside. What the hell is happening on the inside, anyway? Have you listened to any country music lately? Are there any fiction writers since the Second World War? So people create this horseshit like "alt-country" and "Americana" to hype faux "edge" music. You've got to run your hand across the table and push off all this flim-flam. It comes down to one honest song that gives you the chills and I ain't heard many lately. I would suggest everyone watch the (Martin) Scorsese documentary on (Bob) Dylan a few times and check out what Dylan did 40 years ago. Then go back to Des Moines or Athabasca or El Paso and ponder what it is we really have to say.
FFWD: Did you make it to Spain last summer to work at bullfighting? Was the practice helpful in any way for dealing with the horns of love?
Russell: Yes, I went. I ended up getting thrown in the air about eight feet and splintering my elbow and realizing I was bullshitting myself. I'm a guitar player. The form and techniques of the toreo art still interest me, but it's too hard to explain. I might add a little to the film I'm working on. The art of toreo has taught me a lot about how to carry myself and pace myself onstage. Nothing keeps you off the horns of love, but I would suggest the bull metaphor does not translate well to our audience. It sounds too swaggering and macho. The metaphor doesn't fit the age we live in.
FFWD: "The fight for your soul goes on and on" you sing in your new song, "The Pugilist at 59." Who’s winning?
Russell: Check in with me next year. At least I've discovered that the fight involves passion and the taking the consequences and learning not to take all the defeats too personal. My new girlfriend is a Swiss psychologist. This looks like an interesting love match. She is well-armed in the conceptual terrains of love. If I disappear from the scene, please check all Swiss mental institutions and come get me.... I thank you for your time. |
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