Chatham County Line – Ripe for the pickin’
Still, it took band and producer some time to adjust to each other in the studio. In contrast to Stamey’s hands-on approach, Paulson tends to stay out of the way and let the moment happen. So the first day in the studio was difficult, yielding nothing the band was happy with (a problem in that they only had four days to record). But they nailed “Rock Pile” early in the second day, and the rest of the album quickly followed.
“Chris and Brian are both great, but they’re almost opposite in the way they work,” Wilson says. “Chris is, ‘OK, you stand here, you here, you there, here we go.’ Brian was hung over the first day and just kind of let us do our thing, and it did take us a while to get rolling. But we did, finally. He wasn’t giving us any advice about extra choruses or anything, he was more like just letting things happen. Capturing a mood versus not making mistakes.
“We want our records to be like little parties that we capture, a good time with no stress. I love the idea of getting it when it’s still fresh. Like The Band, making their second record. They’d work up a song one day, then record it first thing the next day. Then they’d move on to the next, spend the rest of the day working it up, record it the day after that.
“I think all the best records capture a mood rather than any sort of perfection,” he concludes. “You know, none of us are virtuosos. You could replace all of us with Nashville cats. But this is us. Just us. Justice.”
One thing you won’t find on Speed Of The Whippoorwill is a cover of anyone else’s song, either rock or bluegrass. Chatham County Line doesn’t do any covers onstage either, although they used to. But they swore off covers once and for all after they started playing the Faces’ “Ooh La La” — right before it turned up in a bunch of television commercials. While Wilson allows that it would be fun to throw in the occasional bluegrass version of a rock song, he has his reasons for thinking that’s a trap to avoid.
“We don’t do rock covers because Hayseed Dixie has ruined my life,” Wilson says. “You know, Pickin’ On James Taylor, Pickin’ On Eagles, Pickin’ On everything — it just cheapens the genre if you can slap a banjo and some corny harmonies onto something and call it bluegrass.
“There are some cool songs I’d love to cover, but I’m afraid it would just turn into a parody. We used to do that Motown song, ‘Pain In My Heart’, and these drunk guys would get in my face: ‘Man, that was beautiful! You need to do a whole album of just Motown songs, dude!’ Uh, no.”
This no-covers philosophy even extends into areas where covers are most expected. Chatham County Line was commissioned to record a Christmas song for a project being issued this fall under the auspices of Southern Comfort. But instead of knocking off “White Christmas” or some other chestnut, Wilson wrote an original called “Oh Santa”.
“Yeah, we’ll save all the covers for the live album,” says Teer. “For the last year and a half, we made the decision to do just originals, even leaving out traditional bluegrass covers. Just to separate ourselves. People call out requests for ‘Rocky Top’…”
“Yeah,” Wilson interjects, “the ‘Free Bird’ of bluegrass.”
“…and we just have to tell them, ‘Sorry, we don’t do anything but our own songs now,” Teer continues. “Even with traditional songs, you see bands that wind up having to do those whether they want to or not. So you get stuck. We’re doing originals thinking that, in the long run, it will convey more.”
Wilson does allow that “it would be great to do a Pickin’ On album with a modicum of style. Do Neil Young or somebody like that. But that doesn’t seem to be the way they’re done. Besides, you go see some real star act like U2, and they’re playing their own shit. Not that I’m saying we’re U2 or anything. But we’re us, this is what we do, and it’s not silly versions of oldies or new songs.
“Bottom line, we don’t want to play a show where people are laughing at you on every song. Man, that must get old.”
ND contributing editor David Menconi would like to certify that no bluegrass was harmed in the writing and reporting of this story.