Radney Foster – I love a lot of different stuff, and I’m just going to do that
III. I BETTER GO DOWN TO THE BASEMENT AND WRITE THAT, RIGHT NOW!
ND: In your own records, there’s been a clear movement over the last ten years from an emphasis on twangy country to a more pop sound.
RF: My last two studio records didn’t contain anything like a Bakersfield honky-tonker, a “Just Call Me Lonesome”. In the last five years of my life, I’ve felt free just to say, “You know what, I love a lot of different stuff, and I’m just going to do that, and just hope and pray that an audience accepts it.” There probably has been more of an emphasis on pop, from trying to dig more vocally — maybe to some of the more rootsy soul stuff that I always loved as a kid, Muscle Shoals stuff.
ND: There’s a spottable trend of country singers regaining contact with the Memphis R&B relation to Nashville again.
RF: Oh sure. I made a “lost” unreleased record between Labor Of Love and See What You Want To See which, if people had heard, would bridge the gap in a big way. And I made most of that record with Mac McAnally, in Muscle Shoals.
Old-school R&B and country songwriting have a lot more to do with each other than they do with pop and rock songwriting. I can listen to some of the neo-soul coming out of Philadelphia right now and say, “That’s a great song, written in the standard tradition,” and a lot of guys in Nashville are writing from that perspective. It’s the last town left that operates like the Brill Building — which has its good points, and also a whole lot of drawbacks. Those were my complaints in the new song “Everyday Angel”; it’s also just me thinking about heroes in my own life — real people.
ND: It’s anti-bombast, anti-fake, convenient “angel”; it’s about what real people do, quietly, heroically, every day — which used to be called “country music.”
RF: That was my point!
ND: So how do you find the difference between country and pop now — between what VH1 and CMT want — in sentiments, sounds, references?
RF: Well, a lot of this just has to do with marketability. Was Charlie Rich a rhythm & blues artist, a rock ‘n’ roll artist, or a country artist? He was really all three. So maybe I’m I shooting myself in the foot there again, crossing those lines, but I’m having a lot of fun and making a living doing it.
ND: OK, then; so it’s 2002. What is a country record?
RF: Well, the only place you hear them is on Americana stations. Well, an Alan Jackson still makes country records. The country song on my album is “Disappointing You”. No apologies; no ifs, ands, or buts. Did I put a honky-tonk band behind it? No; I thought it was more powerful if I left it really sparse. But, then, “Again” is me trying to figure out how to be Van Morrison.
IV. LIFE IS FULL OF UPS AND DOWNS
ND: This new CD has a “somewhat” sunnier disposition than See What You Want To See.
RF: (Laughing) Though have no fear, there are downer songs on this too! Well, having a child halfway around the world and two new ones since then, I’ve seen that life is full of ups and downs, and writing about both sides is not a bad thing to do.
ND: Songs like “Sure Feels Right” and “Again” are clearly “starting over in a better place” sorts of songs.
RF: Definitely. “Sure Feels Right” came from one of those nutcase, Murphy’s Law, everything that could go wrong went wrong kind of days. My kids were cranky, and we all went to sleep, figuring tomorrow would be a better day, exhausted. I woke up at about 3 in the morning and walked to both of my boys rooms, as I’m wont to do, and watched them sleeping, to see that they’re OK. You take the Hot Wheels car out of one of their hands and put the cover over them. I kind of shook my head and said, “This is the craziest way to live in the whole wide world, and the nuttiest family there could be, but it sure feels right. I better go down to the basement and write that, right now!”