But how did you come upon songwriting? Was it an extension of your love of books? You were an English major at A&M.
I could always write rhyming poetry, from the time I was about five years old, or the time I could first write. I did, and I liked it, and it was fun. And when I started playing guitar, which was when I was eighteen, it just made sense. I played these songs, I played these chords, and I thought, well, I can write these poems, so it all came together. It made sense for me to write songs.
Were you reading lyrical ballads?
I was just making up little things. I wasn’t very lofty in my goal.
You weren’t trying to copy Wordsworth?
No, not at all. But my English background really helped me a lot.
You graduated in 1978, which was a really interesting time in Texas music. What did you think was your potential as a young songwriter in College Station?
Being hip has never been a problem for me because I didn’t even know what it was. I never even had a clue [laughs].
Do you feel that Corey Morrow and Pat Green are living off your style and sound without giving credit where credit is due?
You know, whatever they’re doing is cool. I’m totally cool with what they are doing. I am frustrated with some of the articles that I read, particularly about Pat, in that he gives me some credit. He doesn’t even get close to what all he was involved in as far as how many dozens of shows he came to, how many times he was standing backstage in my dressing room when I stepped off a stage dripping wet with sweat and the first thing I dealt with was some guy I didn’t even really know talking to me about songs and stuff, and how I was doing all the numbers that were published about him five years before. I opened up so many markets for those guys. I used to call people, say, around 1995, and I’d call my friends in Nashville and say, man, you guys ought to see all the people coming to these shows, it’s unbelievable, and they were like, yeah, yeah.
I would tell the journalists, we’re talking about six thousand people at Billy Bobs. There were people standing out in the streets at the Austin Music Hall, or we did three shows in a row at Rockefellers in Houston, then wanted to do six because every show was sold out. We did two shows a night and never stopped, man. I’d push that number thing, because the way I looked at it was, if someone didn’t care for my music they heard on the radio, maybe they’d like the performance, because a lot of times people would come to me, in fact fans still to this day say, your records are okay, but I can imagine your performance, and I am a total fan now, and I love it, because they came to a live show. So, we were just killing them at live shows, had a great band. Still pretty much have the same band.
Do your ticket sales outstrip your number of CD sales?
I don’t know, because I’ve never put those numbers together, but I’m sure they do. You know, I have nine records and they’ve sold somewhere, well, the aggregate is somewhere around a million records, and I imagine I have played to around five million people over the last ten years or something like that. I’ve played to a lot of people. I used to say that same thing about numbers and nobody gave a shit. Like when I read about Pat Green, it’s all about the numbers, how many people. You know, five thousand frat boys can’t be wrong—well, hey, they can! But I am not going to be the first to say it. The fact—it’s not just about numbers, it’s about music. My focus was on the music, and also there were venues that didn’t play anybody but national touring acts, and I turned national, but I was considered a regional act, and I opened those doors. I went and found the people that ran those places and said, I can do this. I opened up those doors and those guys didn’t have to do that. They walked in right behind me and said, I’m like Robert Earl Keen, and they were like, okay, fine, and they’d take a chance, and a lot of the same people would show up.
But they talk about their numbers.
Right, they talk about their numbers, so the answer is, yeah, I don’t think I get enough credit. I should at least get credit. I should at least get acknowledgment, but you know, it’s weird. I am in a weird space. I can’t even describe the space I am in, because we kill them at shows. We still sell out most of our shows. We sell tons of records, lots and lots of people record my songs, but as far as the industry, I’m barely a blip on the radar, and as far as even the stuff that goes on in Texas, I have become this legendary mystery status, and I don’t even know what that is.
You first toured with Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, who both certainly had carved themselves a similar space. They are known, respected, but lacked a huge audience.
Right, but there is a big audience. Guy and Townes had that “I’m in awe of you.” These other guys have the “numbers.” I don’t have the awe, and nobody listens to my rap about the numbers. Really, lately, this is my whole new philosophy: I don’t care about anything but writing songs I want to write. If anybody likes them, fine. If they don’t like them, too bad. I’m just going to keep pushing that creative button until I run out.
But you’ve said, “I don’t want to die up onstage,” and, “It’s like when someone gets put in prison and becomes a Muslim or has a heart attack and turns his life around. I want to say that I had the balls to make my own choice rather than have to wait for that heart attack.” How far would you push yourself to maintain that artistic integrity?
Are you saying I am going to be so left field artistically?
You might be butting up against a wall, or give yourself a stroke after being on the circuit another ten years trying to . . .
I just want to make the best songs I can make within a certain . . . well, I’m not going to create some new format or something. I just want to make really great songs.
But you’re saying it takes balls to do that, to write something that has integrity and is not fluff?
Right, I think so, to keep going and to keep pushing it. Not repeat yourself.
In a recent song, you evoke the memory of Langston Hughes, Caesar Chavez, and Woody Guthrie, who are probably not the cultural heroes of audience members like President Bush’s daughters, yet in songs like “Mariano” you do evoke similar sentiments through the storyline about an immigrant laborer.
That particular song is about the loss of cultural heroes. In this climate today, where’s a cultural hero? Somebody sticks their neck out and says something dissenting towards anything going on right now, they get their head chopped off. I mean, it’s ugly. It’s necessary in a democracy to have cultural heroes. You know, Seinfeld doesn’t do it. The Osbournes don’t do it. Right. Howard Stern does not do that. You need somebody who can stand up and say there’s an alternative way to think about this and take the hits. I don’t think there is; that’s all that I am saying. Those ghosts are around, and they will reappear somewhere. Right now, they are just sleeping.
But it seems, in terms of your audience, you might be shooting yourself in the foot, just like the song “Gravitational Forces” might seem a bit whacked out for them. I think that many of them might be uncomfortable with those cultural heroes.
Probably. At the time that I wrote that particular song, I was just thinking about that, and I forget what books I was reading at the time. I’m sure they had something to do with that. I just wanted to put that out there. The great thing about songs is you don’t have to explain things to people, you can just build enough of a picture to provoke some thought. That’s what’s going on there. I wanted to provoke some thought. As far as do I think it worked or do I think I was doing anything for my career, absolutely not. It was just what I was doing. I am not a visionary, so when I did stuff like the records that really sold well or got a lot of attention, I wasn’t doing anything that I didn’t do with Gravitational Forces. I was just writing songs and putting them on a record and hoping that people liked them.
So it was just a coincidence that they did well.
It was just a coincidence.
You don’t approach it any differently than your first album in 1993?
I don’t think so, except I am
just trying to get better at writing songs.
What would be better?
Clearer. More clear, more clean lines, more shimmering images, things that just like, “Sonofabitch, that just kills me.”
So when you hear a classic Marty Robbins song like “El Paso,” and then you look at one of your songs, do you feel your songs pale in comparison?
Uh, I don’t feel that I have ever written anything as heart-pounding as “El Paso,” but I think that I have written stuff just as strong. I mean, I have not written that kind of song, and I don’t think I could write something that well, but I’ve written some good songs. You know, I can write the songs. And I can write you any kind of song. I’m just hoping that it’s my good judgment finally that takes me to the right place, so people understand it, and I am not wasting people’s time. But also, I don’t have to put everything on somebody’s plate for them to like a song, because people like songs for all kinds of reasons.
John Doe: Not an Everyman
Unpublished, September 2013.
X was the kind of band that critics often dream of during bouts of boredom. Writing fiercely literate songs with barbed insight about feral youth lurking in the shadowplay of decrepit Hollywood, the band’s cutthroat melodies and rockabilly-clogged music contrasted the gnarly noise of their contemporaries. They peppered songs with lust, love, confusion, and loss, revisited exuberantly like brushstrokes on each record, which tilted toward Americana music by the mid-1980s. By then, telltale songs like “The Have Nots” smashed punk’s empty ennui by marrying country bar-stool poetic license with barely submerged punk nerve endings. Agile, purposeful, and trawling bits of the style of Bukowski at the time, John Doe looked like an everyman but somehow ricocheted with unfettered cool, too, like a 1950s film noir actor. As X teetered on the edge of extinction for years and Doe’s film and television career kicked into gear, he started making compelling solo records that eschewed simple formulas as well. Instead of thinly stretched style wandering or cutting and pasting bits of X, he pursued a sober flashlight effect: stoic, somber songs like “Kissing So Hard” shone a fresh light on the entanglements of aging, marriage, and sense of place. Working with the likes of Aimee Mann, Jill Sobule, and ever-present cohort Exene Cervenka, with whom he has reignited X for the last decade, Doe has maintained a unique style that speaks volumes about resilience and vision. Indeed, he is top-notch and singular—not an anonymous John Doe at all.
You once said, “An angry old man is a drag.” How do you avoid being that man?
Everyone has their own technique, I guess. I personally work towards some small amount of satisfaction and being grateful for what I get to do, and that can be in any line of work. There is some quote, “You should like who you are at forty because you will be twice that at sixty.” I don’t know who said that, but how do you do that? You accentuate the positive. It’s hard work; well, it’s not hard work. It’s good work. I’m not a Jerry Lee Lewis. I’m not a genius. I’m not a one of a kind. I’m more of a journeyman. On the other hand, I don’t have to suffer what geniuses do. I don’t have to suffer like Billie Holiday or some of those people. I want to live a long, full life. I mean Ramblin’ Jack is a good example. After a while, people say, it’s not good enough. It may not be good enough, but it doesn’t mean you have to take it out on yourself. It’s like a talk therapy type of thing, I suppose. I think it started in 1998, when we did the first X anthology. I started listening to all these tapes, like live tapes, because we didn’t just want to have a “Best Of.” We wanted it to be more like unreleased tracks. I thought, fuck, this band is good, so no wonder people were saying, “You should listen to this band.” Because we were good, and are good. At that point, you can kind of take stock of everything. And I see some friends and acquaintances that are still grumbling about something they didn’t get, but so what? Are you going to take it out on everyone else or take it out on yourself? That’s fucking bullshit because if you’re unhappy you’re probably not fun to hang out with. How many times have you hung out with someone that says, “Oh, I feel so old.” Well, maybe you are. You can be old at forty.
Your dad played classical piano; your mother sang opera. Throughout your career, do you ever have flashbacks—being introduced to music—or does it impact the way you write at all?
I remember him playing around the house when we were at home and listening to classical music, which I will do on occasion, driving or something like that. I think I also started listening to classical music through Charles Bukowski. He’d always write to it, but he’s not so much of an influence anymore. Getting introduced to music was through folk music, actually. They gave me my own records: folk music like Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and “Cisco” Houston. One guy that my aunt actually knew was Sam Hinton, who was a biology teacher in San Diego, kind of a musicologist. It was all stories and had the roots of music. These were the building blocks.
Did it provide a kind of political consciousness too?
Probably not. The songs that were on those records were less political. I don’t know if “Bourgeois Town” was on the kid’s record. And I also listened to a lot of show tunes, which I definitely don’t feel the influence of, or maybe I do. Maybe it influenced the melodic stuff because I love melody, and I think that set X apart.
Your mom taught you to sing from the diaphragm?
Yes. That was just learned from watching my mom sing. She didn’t do it in performances. I took a couple of vocal lessons.
Three things seemed to attract you to the West: the weather, a “go West, young man” kind of ethos, and a love for writers like Nathaniel West; meanwhile, New York City seemed closed down? What made L.A. seem so open?
At the time, at the end of 1976, there wasn’t really a scene. There was a scene sort of starting, like the Pop, the Motels, and the Dogs. They were all in L.A. and doing some shows, but there wasn’t a scene like there was in New York. It just seemed there was something magic about the light and the space, and you could start seeing it in Texas as it starts opening up in the plains and things like that. It was easy to live, too, and obviously it was hard to live in New York City. Exene’s sister lived there, and we heard from her, and we went out and visited her when we played. My brother still lived there. Baltimore was a wasteland. Anyone that wanted to do anything got out of there.
But you loved filmmakers like John Waters, from Baltimore.
But that was still scratching out a living. I didn’t have any illusions I was going to L.A. and becoming a different person. I hoped we would be as big as Patti Smith or the Velvet Underground. I knew John Waters then and hung at the same bars, and we’d talk. But he was very specific, and you couldn’t do that in music, or maybe you could have, but it didn’t seem like, well, I wasn’t brought up with that. He was born and raised like that. You say the weather, but that’s a big deal. Sun is a big deal. Like I said, the light is sort of Mediterranean, not that I have been to the Mediterranean more than a little bit. You can say, yeah, this is sort of similar, there is a pink color to it, and you see mountains. Soon after going to L.A., I met Exene too and realized there is some sort of scene and it’s just beginning to take hold. It was about being fearless and “Who gives a shit. You can’t tell me what to do. I’m not doing this for the money. I’m doing this to change the world. I am doing this to try to make art. I am doing this to, at some point, make a living.”
You saw the Heartbreakers and Television in New York City. You knew what this new music was, and you had some songs written before you went out West. Were they in the style of punk, or was that something you honed once you got to L.A.?
I think it got honed when I got out there. I wouldn’t say I copied stuff, but I sort of took the feelings and rhythms. Everybody started influencing everybody else. Definitely, I was influenced by the Ramones, Fear, and Nick Lowe a little bit, maybe Elvis Costello. I give Billy and Exene a large amount of credit for making X’s sound original because of Billy’s rockabilly style. He was the first person, except for mayb
e Robert Quine, who did those kinds of guitar parts. He knew how to play guitar really well, he knew how to play that style of guitar, and he was the first person to put rockabilly into punk rock. And Exene’s style of singing, and the two of us together, set us apart. Nobody else had two lead vocals, and even now a lot of people you can point to hear that. I borrowed a lot from the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, and a little from Iggy and the Stooges, but I didn’t know them. That Modern Lovers record was really influential to a lot of people. That seemed to be on everybody’s turntable.
What were the Venice Poetry Workshops, where you met Exene, like?
There were a few different people that taught. Jack Grapes was one and Jim Krusoe was another. I think Kate Braverman taught a bit, and Bill Mohr. They would just lead it. There would be a dozen people there, maybe less, and everyone would read, and people would critique it. Sometimes it was nice, and sometimes it was not nice. I had been in poetry workshops prior to it as well. I had studied poetry at Antioch in Baltimore, which was a totally hilarious college experience. All the classes were at night. The “campus” was the second floor of an insurance building, and the students were mostly domestic help, or as they were called back then, cleaning ladies, that were studying black history. You could get a college grant by signing your name, by filling out a one-page document. Here you go, college grad. I guess Antioch College was famous for having a zillion satellite campuses, but there were two writing teachers. And you could take courses at the Maryland Art Institute. They had some sort of sharing system.
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