I kind of hesitate to think that way, and since I can’t do it anyway, I just basically say let ’er roll the way it was, and I’ll just take the lessons I’ve learned and everything and kind of go with that.
On the new “Deuces” album, you cover a couple of Dylan songs—having worked with him when you were coming up in Nashville, did you feel a personal connection with his songs?
The songs that I did were not songs that I played on-- they were just songs that I felt were compatible with the people I did them with. I just thought it would be a good song for me and Darius to do. Other than [its being] some of my favorite Dylan stuff, I didn’t really think about it in that way—it was just songs that I felt would be good and would work—trying to find a compatible song to do a duet on is not always the easiest thing in the world- although it worked out to be fairly--not too stressful to try to do in this particular setting. So that’s basically what I was doing, I was trying to find stuff that was compatible for us to do.
I played bass on most of the stuff on ‘New Morning’. I played guitar on ‘Nashville Skyline’ and ‘Self Portrait.’ We just went in the studio with Dylan and he played the songs and we’d just start chiming in and doing our own particular thing. It was very loose—when I say loose, I don’t mean loose in a sense where it was not a controlled… together sort of thing—what was going on someone there, somebody was sitting there on top of it—Bob Johnston was sitting there making sure everything went right. But as far as it being uptight by any stretch of the imagination, it was certainly not that. It was very loose in that Dylan was enjoying himself and we were all enjoying ourselves.
Do you keep up with Dylan at all on a personal level?
How do you keep up with Bob Dylan, really? Once in a long while I do—I haven’t seen him in years…. I don’t know how you keep up with Bob Dylan.
I thought some of the selections of artists to duet with on the album were really interesting because they were so unique. How did you wind up working with Darius Rucker on “Like a Rolling Stone”?
It was just a suggestion—Darius was coming around some—he was working on his country album at the time—I had met him, I had stopped by back in the day and actually what happened—one night, some little town down in Georgia we were in and we had a rain storm and it was an afternoon show and it rained so much, we had to cancel the show out. I had left and I was on my way back and we were going through Savannah and my driver said ‘Hey, Hootie and the Blowfish are gonna be in Savannah tonight, you wanna stop and see ’em?’ And I said ‘Well, you know, I don’t know any of them.’ But he said, ‘Well, we’ll know somebody,’ and of course we did, we knew the promoter—I mean, you’ve been around the business as long as we have, you’ve gotta know the light man or the sound man or the promoter or somebody. And after meeting the guys it was almost like I knew them and they said ‘How about sitting in with us?’ And I said ‘Man, I don’t know any of your stuff.’ They said ‘We’ll do “Mustang Sally”’ and I said ‘I’m your man.’ And I had on a pair of shorts and a knee brace and I went out on stage like that and I had a lot of fun with them. It was an enjoyable thing to do. So, I don’t know, it just was like ‘Let’s just call Hootie—let’s just call Darius and see if he wants to do a song with us.”
How about working with three generations of Scruggs all at once on “Maggie’s Farm”? What was that experience like? Is there a big difference fiddling with bluegrass players, as opposed to rock ’n’ rollers?
Yes, no and maybe—Earl, Gary and Randy were old friends of mine—when I first came to Nashville, they kind of took me under their wing when I was very much the low man on the totem pole, I did some things with them. We had known each other for a long time and it was just kind of a natural thing to ask Earl to be a part of this thing. It was like playing with old friends, actually. There was just nothing strange about it –-just go in and ‘Hey, let’s do this.’
The thing about bluegrass is, either you get it or you don’t—I don’t know if you can acquire it or not if you don’t understand it. There are great musicians who --- bluegrass either goes over or under their heads. It’s more of a feel than a structure. Everybody drops a couple bars, picks up a couple notes at the same time, the tempos go up and down and back and forth—it’s just a feel thing between all the people that are playing it. And if you understand what’s going on, you’ve gotta feel what’s going on, and if you don’t then you’re gonna end up back down the line, you’re gonna be playing a couple bars behind everybody else. It’s the first music that I played seriously, so it was not a new thing to me—it was something that I’d done, that I knew…it’s something that, like I say, either you get it or you don’t get it, and I got it.
Did your early days playing bluegrass—was that a big influence and informer of your more rock and roll. ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia,’ is there some bluegrass going on in there?
There very well could be—I never thought about it. My thing is, I came from a time when radio stations—in the rural parts I was in there would be only one station in town and there may not even be one in your town—you may have to listen to one in the next town. So, it was a time when the radio stations had to actually answer the mandate that they’ve always been given—to serve the community—and they did and they had to do stuff that was suitable—something for everybody. It was a fortunate time for someone to learn something about music because they played some of everything—they had to. They played country in the morning and during lunchtime, and then in the afternoons, when the kids started coming home from school, they’d play whatever the pop music of the day happened to be, and it was just a great time to be alive, hearing all the different kinds of music. And of course the sound you’re always exposed to is the blues. My style and my feelings came from those days and when I do music, when I write music, I tend to step over a lot of different styles. I’m very irreverent as far as the styles that I mix up. I don’t care—I mean, it doesn’t make a difference to me. Whatever it is, it is—it ain’t no big deal. So I’m not so much concerned about genre sort of things.
I’ve know you’re a fairly spiritual man, so I was surprised that one of the songs on the album was “God Save Us All From Religion.” Can you sort of explain what you’re trying to get in doing that song?
Religion is not where it’s at—religion can be satanic—religion can be anything. Religion can be all these different things that I don’t believe in—what I’m concerned with is salvation. In other words, I live under the grace of Jesus Christ. And what we’re saying is, I mean, you can be religious all day long and you’re still not saved. You could be all kinds of religious—you could be just how the Pharisees were—they were very, very religious, yet they crucified Jesus. That’s the thing, and that’s what this comes down to is that’s what it said—God save us all from religion, from all of this legalism and you can’t do if you don’t believe exactly like I do and you’ve gotta wear your hair a certain way and you’re gonna do this and you’re gonna do that, all these sets of rules. I’m living under a new covenant that—it’s not religion, it’s salvation that counts and I very much wanted somebody to do that song with me that felt the same way about it that I did, and Marty’s a Christian. It’s important that it not be misunderstood—that’s what it’s about. It’s not a put-down song it’s a song saying ‘Hey, God save us all from this legalism that is so, in some cases, pervasive in America and other parts of the world.”
I imagine this is a pretty big year for Volunteer Jam, on reason being that its election season. You’ve been outspoken on the message of supporting the troops. Have you been sharing any other sort of message with your fans at the shows lately about the direction America’s heading?
I write songs about stuff like that sometimes, but basically what I do is I keep my comments, I do two columns a week on my Web site, I call them soap boxes and I write about whatever I want to—I might write about something frivolous, I may write about politics, I may write about national or international events—I just write about all kinds of different things. I don’t send it to anybody—the only way you can get it is if you go to my Web site or if somebody reprints it. So I don’t try to force it on anybody—it’s something if you wanna read it, you go there and read it. If you want to comment on it, there’s a place where you comment on it. But it’s a place of course going into stuff that I could not possibly go in to that much depth on a song. It’s my venting place, basically, I guess you could say.
But you don’t really go into that stuff on stage at all?
Good gosh, no—people don’t come to hear all that junk. I mean, I certainly respect people’s beliefs, but there’s a time and place for everything and certainly onstage is not, in my opinion—everybody’s entitled to their own opinion—but in my opinion, people don’t buy tickets with their hard-earned money to come in and hear you talk about personal things. I might make a joke or something like that, but basically, it’s they come here to hear music, that’s what they’re gonna get.
Back in the ’70s, you were a big Carter supporter though. Was it a different context for you then?
It was a different world—we were a mess—I mean, if you look back at the Watergate situation, it was a total, complete mess that America had gotten into—we had basically lost our respect for the office of the presidency –where were we gonna go from there? And I just felt that Jimmy Carter—I still do—is an honest, good man. As far as his politics are concerned, everbody’s entitled to their own feelings about that. But as far as the content of the man’s character and what he was and is, I still know in my heart that Mr. Carter’s a good man—and regardless of whither or why, he will always be in my book.
Next year will be the 35th anniversary of the Volunteer Jam—anything big planned for that one, or are you focused right now on the current tour with .38 Special and Shooter Jennings?
I haven’t actually thought too much about next year. I’m pretty much a one-day-at-a-time guy. I try to live one day at a time—I can’t always do it—because I find that if you start spending your time concerned about what’s gonna happen tomorrow, you won’t do a good job on today. The time and the space of where I’m at with that is the when and if if we’ll take the Volunteer Jam on the road next year or not. We don’t always do it, so we’ll see.
When you presented Gretchen Wilson her GED in May, it seems like it was almost a fatherly moment for you—I was wondering if you felt that, and if there were other artist for whom you’ve played that mentor role.
I actually haven’t—Gretchen has been a friend of mine for a long time and, in fact, she lives out in the same county where I live. She had done this—I think this was something that was very special for her. I personally feel that she probably did this as much for her little daughter, Grace, as anybody. She had called and asked if I would come and present her—just hand her—her GED. And since it was kind of in my backyard and in my home town, my home county, they asked me if I would do the commencement address, and I was honored to do it, so that’s kind of how that came about. I was very proud of Gretchen, very proud of her doing that—to go back to school after all these years and to take the time to actually go on and study hard to get a GED, I think, was a special thing for her and I thought it should’ve been special by everybody looking at her because she put a lot of effort into it. You know, it could not’ve been an easy thing.
Which came more naturally for you—in 50 years you’ve changed from being one of the Nashville outlaws to, now, you occupy this seat as one of country and Southern rock’s elder statesmen—are they both natural roles for you?
I don’t really think about myself in that way—I’m a musician, I’m an entertainer foremost. That’s what I am, and everything else that comes along, in so far as having any role as being a whatever—I don’t look at myself like that. If other people want to, it honors me. I mean, I’m very honored when I get a young guy that’ll come up and say ‘I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time and I’ve followed you for a long time and you’ve had an effect on my career.’ That makes me feel really good, because I know how looked at people when I was coming along, and it meant a great deal to me—certain people meant a great deal to me, I should say. But I don’t see myself as a mentor particularly. If I am, I am, and I’m proud to be. But I just don’t look at myself in that light.
Are there any newer artists out there that you’d like to work with especially?
I don’t keep up, basically, with what’s going on. It’s not meant as a callous sort of thing—it’s just a fact. I’m very much into what I do. I don’t really enjoy listening to radio that much—there’s just not enough things on there to keep my attention… I’m sure there are new artists out there. The problem that I have is this thing has become, as far as the media is concerned, way, way too image-oriented and there are some very talented kids out there that are not being given their due—they’re not able to be who they are and what they are and to bring us what they’re capable of doing. They’re just not turned loose to do it. I was—I mean, I’ve always operated that way. I could never have a record company hanging over my shoulder, I could never have them tell me what I could record and what I couldn’t record. I tried a couple times, don’t like it—don’t do it, in fact. When I signed with Epic Records, [they] gave me a firm six-album deal—we were gonna cut six albums for Epic Records. If you don’t do it the first one, you do it the second one, you do it the third one, but you’re gonna be a success for us, you’re gonna make us money, you’re gonna sell records, so come on over here and let’s do it. That’s not the thing that happens with young people nowadays—they’re taken under somebody’s wing usually… everybody wants to sound like somebody else: ‘Let’s sound like Brooks and Dunn, let’s do this.’ There’s already a Brooks and Dunn—a very good Brooks and Dunn—we don’t need another Brooks and Dunn, we need something new. But nobody thinks that way anymore, and radio has basically gotten to the point to where they’ve got a concept of what they want to be and what they want to be about, and that’s how it is. I feel that young artists do not get anywhere close to the chance that they deserve to be what they can be and what they oughta be.