Interview with Mike Phelan of Marley's Ghost

It's been 24 years since Marley's Ghost started making music together. Since then, they've toyed with pretty much every version of American roots music - often within the same song. This time around, they teamed up with producer Cowboy Jack Clement to make a solid old school style country album called Ghost Town (buy it from Amazon).

When I called up multi-instrumentalist Mike Phelan to get his thoughts on the new album and his experience working with Cowboy Jack, he had been listening to some old Bob Wills records, so we started there...

Are you a big Bob Wills fan?
The whole band are Bob Wills fans. We do a variety of music [styles]. One of them we used to do more than we do now is Western Swing. Danny and I used to play a fair amount of twin fiddle stuff in our shows. Now we do a different thing where we play fiddle, dobro, and accordion for that segment because that’s a combination that you never hear. And it’s really fun.

Tell me about where you got started with Ghost Town...
We were playing at Douglas Corner in Nashville and a pal of ours, Walter Forbes, brought his friend Cowboy Jack out to see us. At the time Cowboy wasn’t going out to see too many people, so we thought it was great that he came out. He was kind of nice but a little non-committal. We got back home and got a letter from him that said, "If y'all would consider doing it at my place, I’d like to produce a record for you." We’d heard about Cowboy, of course, but I googled him anyway, as you probably have, and found out he recorded Jerry Lee Lewis “Whole Lotta Shakin” and worked with Johnny Cash for 20 records or so, Charley Pride same thing, produced four tracks on U2’s Rattle and Hum…he's just been all over the place. Waylon, Marty Stuart, everybody really. We weren’t going to say no when he invited us to participate.

We wound up doing a lot of work at Cowboy’s place in Nashville. It was really, really fun. We went down there to figure out what we were going to do, what the material was going to be on the record. We didn’t really know if he wanted to make a country record, if he knew the variety [of styles] we do and how he was going to incorporate all of that. I have to say it was pretty seamless. We played a bunch of tunes, he recorded some stuff, he made some suggestions, some of them worked and some of them didn’t. But, we wound up with a pretty good record. Because he’s Cowboy Jack and we recorded in Nashville, it’s leans more in the country music direction. Country music is something we’ve always really loved, much like the Bob Wills stuff…and the blues, and the old time, and the a capella vocals. We wound up with a pretty good representation of who we are and benefitted from who Cowboy is.

I was going to say, people are always trying to categorize your music but this record struck me as a straight-up country record…
I think that’s true. There’s no easy way to define us. I think we are about roots music. Our inclination when we hear anything is to wonder where that guy got that from, even if it’s an original song. You gotta wonder where he got the notion to do this or where she came up with that. If you get an opportunity to sit down and talk to the person, you usually can figure out that they like Robert Johnson, or Bob Wills, or Hank Williams. Very seldom do these things come out of nowhere – they come out of the roots of American music. All that great melodic stuff, and the rhythmic stuff, came from jazz and rock and roll and old timey string bands, which was the first rock and roll – that’s what people got crazy and danced to in America. It’s still pretty cool stuff today. We really are a roots music band, but some of the places we take the roots is different from what some other people do. At the heart, that’s what we love and what we wind up doing.

Do you think there’s any such thing anymore as music that doesn’t come from roots music? That’s what’s happening in the mainstream, even…
I think there are some people who think music started with the songwriters in 1980 and 1990. Some of the pop guys are kind of ground zero. Some people think it started with the Beatles. Some people think it started with Kool and the Gang. I think there are plenty of musicians who aren’t aware of Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf or some of these guys who, once you hear their records, you hear their influence everyewhere. I don’t think everyone’s been exposed to it, as widespread as it is. I think there are people who come to it later on. Not that there’s anything wrong wth that. Just that... my personal taste is that, the closer you get to the originator, the more you can develop your own style and not wind up imitating someone.

Where did it start for you?
When I was five, my dad said this is the lead - that’s your part. This is the tenor – that’s your sister Ilene’s part. This is the baritone - that’s where your sister Pat sings. You’re not responsible for singing those other parts, but you’re responsible for knowing them so you don’t step on them. Then he taught us about 40 or 50 songs that were popular when he was a young guy – barbershop and that kind of stuff. He thought singing would increase our self-confidence. He never intended any of us to take up music [as a career]. He wanted us all to be engineers and lawyers. My two sisters are engineers, but I’m not.

And now you’ve been making records for a long time. What’s changed the most?
I think the command of subtlety has hapepend over those years. Adding Jerry Fletcher…we’ve known him for a long time. Danny and Jerry knew each other in high school. When he joined the band, we got a drummer who played keyboards at the same time – which is something you really have to see to believe. He sings great… I think a lot of things we were doing came together in a new way and got more powerful. That’s the most profound change – the groove is deeper now. It’s more fun to play the shows. The range of material hasn’t changed that much. The songs change, but the possibilities have expanded because Jerry plays drums, he plays keys and accordion. He plays a really good mandolin. There’s lots of other stuff he can do, too. I think the biggest change has been that we know each other so well now. When we sing together it’s easy for us to arrange a four or five part a capella tune because we’ve been at it for 24 years.

It’s hard to believe any bands starting out now will still be together in 24 years…
[laughs] Well, we never imagined we would last that long. I think we were all going to do it til it wasn’t fun anymore and it’s still really fun. Cowboy Jack has this thing that he likes to interject. He says, “We’re in the fun business. If we’re not having fun, we’re not doing our jobs right.” As glib as that might sound, I think it’s actually true. It is supposed to be fun. We have a lot of fun doing it. We try to have fun and let the audience in on it. That’s the key to performing.

I want to read you something that was written in No Depression when it was a magazine, about your record Spooked. The reviewer said, “The lads of Marley’s Ghost seem determined to give the impression, amid the giddily eccentric eclecticism that all is well in their twisted brains”….
[laughs] Yeah that would be true. I think all is well. If you can’t have a fantastic time doing this stuff, then you’re in the wrong business. It doesn’t make any sense if you’re sitting around thinking you can maximize your income by being a musician. I think we do it for the reason that a lot of people do it, which is that it’s a blast. When the groove is happening and the band sounds great, it’s completely worth it to get out of the bus and haul our junk in and out of places, the booking, the hotels…that doesn’t matter more than what’s happening onstage.

Marley's Ghost are on tour now, no doubt playing much of the tunes from Ghost Town. Check out their website for a full list of dates.