Radney Foster – I love a lot of different stuff, and I’m just going to do that
ND: Your new song “Just Sit Still” suggests that country music, for you, comes from that quieter, “catch a breath” place.
RF: Yeah, and that one’s a country song — about having a son who’s 11 now, just old enough to roll his eyes at his dad, and my thinking about being 16, and cruising down Avenue F in Del Rio, Texas, in my buddy’s Camaro, and roaring by some older guys on the courthouse square and flipping them a bird — because you figure you’ve just invented rock ‘n’ roll, that you’re the only one who’s experienced that exuberance.
ND: You’ve been veering away from the “every song has a hook” mode, but some of the new ones on Another Way To Go have them. “Everyday Angel” is going to be a single.
RF: Yeah; they’re taking that one to country radio.
ND: And the opener, “A Real Fine Place To Start”, certainly takes off with what would be called a “hook” even by rockers.
RF: That’s one big hooky pop song, man, with a guitar hook. Who doesn’t love the Byrds and the Beatles or any of that! What’s not to like? Or Marshall Crenshaw, who came from the alternative world, and wrote great poppy songs. Earlier, he would have been a superstar.
V. ARTISTS…SHOULD AND WILL TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR OWN CAREERS
ND: You’ve been unusually articulate about what you see as the importance of independence for musicians.
RF: The hard and hopeful thing for me, which I can’t emphasize enough, is that artists from the alternative perspective should and will take control of their own careers. If you’re not willing to look at the business acumen side of this, you’re going to suffer for it. The day of waiting for someone to discover you and promote you and help you find an audience is gone.
The model right now is to take people who have already developed enough of a following that they can say, “On my own, I went out and sold 15,000 records, and I made it inexpensively.” So make that record in your basement. Dwight Yoakam did, and sold 30,000 copies out of the back of a truck and in local record stores up and down the West Coast. Then suddenly A&R has nothing to do with it; a major-label accountant says, “Go sign them!”
People who really hone their craft, and work real hard at it, and get very good at it. make a living — without big labels. Buddy Miller has never been on a major label, but he’s doing more than all right for himself. I think he’s got as great a country voice as Gene Watson, and if he’d been around 20 years ago, he would have been signed to a major label and been a country star. But Nashville, for better or worse, made that brilliant business decision instead — to market adult music to teenagers when the population was aging!
ND: With all of the things you’ve done in music, which has been most important to you?
RF: The moments when somebody stops me in the airport, and says, “I was 30 miles from home and ‘Nobody Wins’ came on the radio and I turned around and went back to my wife — and now we’ve been together for another ten years.” Or when a young kid says, “Del Rio, Texas 1959 was the reason I started playing what I play” — which I hear from kids down in Texas a lot.