Today we welcome a contribution from Josh Crutchmer, whose day gig is for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. You might recall that a year ago, he wrote a piece for Music Fog about the last Cross Canadian Ragweed show. For this entry, Josh has interviewed the songwriters on the new Cody Canada & The Departed album, This Is Indian Land. Josh puts comments from the songwriter next to Cody Canada’s comments about each song.
An editor's note, Cody & Seth's version of one of the songs from the album, is included on our first ever compilation album of our own unique recordings, Who's First? Music Fog Sessions Vol. 1. Here is the video of that, filmed back in January at MusicFest in Steamboat Springs.
-Jessie Scott
This is Indian Land: A Songwriter’s Journey
The people behind the music weigh in on Cody Canada and The Departed’s first album
By Josh Crutchmer
Cody Canada and The Departed have been together as a band since December 2010. The five-piece features four members from Oklahoma, and one from Texas, and their first album is a tribute to a cross section of the state’s music. This is Indian Land centers around the Red Dirt scene which sprung up around Stillwater, Okla., in the 1970s and has been a constant since.
The 16 songs (15 on the CD, a bonus track on iTunes) branch out from Red Dirt like spokes on a wheel, touching on the Tulsa Sound, country, rock and folk. It often reflects “The Farm,” a patch of land near Stillwater where Red Dirt artists used to live, write and play music around campfires and oak trees.
What follows is a journey through the album’s songwriting. Half is from the perspective of Cody Canada, Departed guitar player and vocalist and former front man for Cross Canadian Ragweed. He’s joined in the band by Jeremy Plato (bass and vocals), Seth James (guitar and vocals), Steve Littleton (keys) and David Bowen (drums). Of the five, only James — who is from Texas — does not hail, musically, from the state.
The rest comes from the songwriters, artists, family members or Oklahoma music experts the album was written to honor.
The Ballad of Rosalie (Written by Randy Pease)
Q: “This is The Departed’s first single. Why this one, and how did that conversation go?”
CANADA: “This was the first song I heard around that campfire at The Farm. It was the first one we practiced as a band, the first one we recorded, and the first one we played live. There was no doubt that it was going to be the first single.”
Randy Pease is a songwriter and former Oklahoma resident who teaches English at Southern Indiana University.
PEASE: “We never had a conversation. His wife Shannon brokered everything via Facebook. She asked permission to use the song and asked for the name of my publishing company. I said ‘sure.’
“When I learned later that it was going to be the single, and when I saw them do it on Ray Benson's Texas Music Scene — Shannon sent me the video, again via Facebook — I was elated, even vindicated a little. When you get airplay and recognition, that's gratifying, you know? I hope, for all of us, that it's a blockbuster.
“I think I wrote back something like, ‘Yeah. Go for it and let's all get rich,’ and she said ‘That's the plan.’”
• • •
Face On Mars (Written by Randy Crouch)
Randy Crouch is an Oklahoma-based fiddle player and songwriter.
Q: “Crouch has written half a dozen songs Red Dirt fans know by heart, so how did this one end up on the album?”
CANADA: “I picked this song because it was the most obscure Crouch song I could find. What I have of his are bootlegs of him that friends had burned, and this was always the song I went to, and it really felt this was the one I needed to do.”
• • •
True Love Never Dies (Kevin Welch, Gary Scruggs)
Kickin’ Back in Amsterdam (Kevin Welch)
Kevin Welch is an Americana singer and songwriter originally from Midwest City, Oklahoma.
Q: “A lot of Red Dirt fans probably associate Welch with the often-covered Train To Birmingham. But he's been around several musical blocks. When it came time to pick Kevin's songs for this project, why did you pick those two, out of all the options?”
CANADA: “True Love Never Dies was the first Welch song I heard when I was a kid. Before local stations would sign off they would show videos from CMT late at night, so I’d pop in a VHS tape. Well that song was always on my tapes and it stuck with me forever.
“Fast-forward 15 years after I met him, we’re friends. He’s moved here to Wimberley (Texas, close to Canada’s home in New Braunfels) and we stay in touch. I called him and told him we were going to put "True Love" on this project and asked what he thought should go with it. He emailed me 12 songs to go through. And even though I’d heard them before, I listened to them like I was preparing for a job. Well there’s a line in Amsterdam that says, ‘The place around the corner got a bad-ass band,’ and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I said, ‘That’s us, and that’s what we’re doing.’”
• • •
Home Sweet Oklahoma (Leon Russell)
If You're Ever In Oklahoma (J.J. Cale)
Q: “Songs by two artists who shaped the ‘Tulsa Sound’ in the 50s and 60s. They played together in The Starfighters. What has been the lasting impact of the Tulsa Sound on the music coming out of Oklahoma now, be it rock, Red Dirt, country or otherwise?”
CANADA: “I think of those guys because of my dad. My dad turned me on to Merle Haggard, and if he thought it was cool, it was. Well, I get to the farm and this is what my buddies were jamming this stuff. Cale and Russell influenced my buddies the way my dad digging Merle influenced me. So it stuck around.
“There’s a distinct feel to the Tulsa Sound -- the keyboards and the bass lines -- that you hear all over the state today. So putting out an Oklahoma record and NOT including those two guys, I thought it would have fallen short.”
• • •
Long Way To Nowhere (Written by Mike Shannon)
Note: Bass player Jeremy Plato performs this song on the album and in live shows.
Q: “Songs about drifters on wanton ways are a dime a dozen, why does this one have staying power?”
CANADA: “As an artist you have to be careful writing songs like this, because if you’re not burned out, you’re still super homesick, you never see your kids, you get grumpy, you still do all that, but to everyone else you can sound whiny. But this song stays with me because it was my point of view. A lot of people leave home because they’ve never done what they want. I’ve always been a fan of those kinds of tunes.
“I moved to Stillwater and I was 17 or 18, just left Yukon. I had to get out, go somewhere else, and this was the first song I heard in Stillwater that captured that. Like a lot of the songs here, if it was the first time I heard something, I wanted it to be a part of this.
“We actually laid down roughs of this for (Cross Canadian Ragweed’s 2007 album) Mission California. Then and now, Plato makes this song. He drives it home for me.”
When artists still mostly lived in Stillwater, the primary music store and studio in the city was Mike Shannon’s Daddy O’s Music. “Why does this song have staying power?”
SHANNON: “Hell if I know.”
(A valid point about the nature of songwriting, but after consideration …)
“I could add that it's written from an honest perspective with a heartfelt lyric but I don't know that that's any different from any other writer's don't-know-what-you-have-until-it's-gone-you-can't-ever-go-home-again song. I'm just lucky and grateful that Cody and Plato like the tune and render a mighty fine version.”
• • •
A Little Rain Will Do (Greg Jacobs)
Q: “For Oklahomans, the lyrics aren't as much telling a story as they are documenting a part of the past. How do you relate that to people from elsewhere?”
CANADA: “What I always tell everyone is that is Oklahoma history, and nobody could write this song better unless they lived it. When it comes to Oklahoma and Red Dirt, this is THE song that does it..”
Greg Jacobs is a singer-songwriter from Checotah.
JACOBS: “A Little Rain Will Do has always been on of my favorites I've written. T think that's because the song came from stories told to me about the 1930's by my grandfathers and my father. The song speaks to the independence, strength, and determination of folks back then.”
• • •
Hold on Christian (Scott Evans)
Q: “This has been a powerful song for two decades. It was on the Red Dirt Sampler album in 1998. Why has it lasted?”
CANADA: ”Like most songs here, I’ve held on to this a while because I’ve just always wanted to do it. It’s such a good song.
“The first time I heard it I thought it was about the manger or Jesus. Several years later I asked Scott about it and he said, “No, it’s about a kid sitting on a dirty floor in a diaper and his parents paying for food with change.’
Scott Evans is a Tulsa-based musician. Canada routinely lists the 1990s Red Dirt band Medicine Show, which included Evans, as a major influence on his music.
EVANS: “It was the shortest writing of any song I've written, maybe that's a clue. On our way back to Stillwater after a gig we gassed up at a convenience store. As I waited at the register behind a young guy counting out his change with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth he repeated over and over, ‘Hold on Christian, hold on,’ to a toddler boy in nothing but a diaper making small whimpering sounds and acting like he really wanted to be picked up from the floor. It was summer and we had just had some rain and the floor was wet in puddles and this brightly lit and unfamiliar place full of strangers had him a little spooked in the middle of the night. This scene was was so pitiful that I thought about it all the way home. The next day I woke up in the afternoon and literally picked up a pen and wrote all of this out without lifting the pen. Maybe staying power has something to do with inspiration. I wasn't trying to write a song, I was processing an emotional experience and it ended up rhyming so I set it to music. Most of my songs are crafted but that one was art.”
• • •
Years In The Making (Mark Ambler, Bob Childers, Benny Craig, Scott Evans, Tom Skinner)
Water Your Own Yard (Charkie Christian, Greg Jacobs, Tom Skinner)
Skyline Radio (Tom Skinner)
CANADA: “I really had three influences, musically, before Stillwater, that changed my life. The first was a George Strait concert as a kid, where I realized you could make real good music for a living. And then Steve Earle made me realize you don’t have to do it by going with the flow. And the Stone Temple Pilots drove it home that, ‘OK, we can do all of these things and do it without changing and without being a fraid to be yourself.’
“Tom Skinner tied it all together. That guy is as much of a rock star as Red Dirt has, and I remember the first time I was at The Farm and he asked me to play a song for him. It’s still the most nervous I’ve been, and I get nervous before every show we do.”
(Specifically about Water Your Own Yard)
“This song was honest. It’s the same approach on an old subject: ‘I screwed up, OK?’ and it was the way Oklahoma music conveyed it. It was the first song to stick with me once I got to Stillwater.”
(Specifically about Skyline Radio)
“Like A Little Rain Will Do, Skyline Radio is a song that needs to be heard to understand what Oklahoma music means to those of us who are a part of it. Everything this country speaks about now, even politically, something Skinner captured in this song when he wrote it 16 years ago.”
Tom Skinner is considered a founding father of Red Dirt Music. He is still based out of Oklahoma and plays regularly in Tulsa.
SKINNER: (About Skyline Radio) “I'm really not smart enough to have intentionally written something that would hold up for this long. To the degree that it does resonate is blind luck. And I did re-write part of the 3rd verse, leaving out the line ‘Nancy is consulting astrological signs,’ referring to a newspaper story I read about Nancy Reagan's daily advice to Ronnie.”
(About Water Your Own Yard) “I had kind of worried that song was a little trite. But I think that Cody just delivers it with such passion that he makes it work. ”
• • •
Any Other Way (Steve Littleton, Brad James)
Q: “This is the only song one of the band members wrote (Littleton co-wrote it with James while both were Medicine Show members). How did that change-up happen?”
CANADA: “Well the cool thing about Steve is, he’s been around Red Dirt longer than any of us in the band has. Five years before I was there, he was living it. So we were practicing as a band one day and talking about songs, I started humming this one. I said to Plato, ‘Hey what’s that old Medicine Show song that sounds like this? …’ and Littleton chimed in, ‘Any Other Way?’
“I said, ‘Yeah, you know it?’ and he said, ‘Know it? Hell, I WROTE it.’ so there was no way this wasn’t going on the album.
“Steve makes this band. Without him, it would all still be kickass, but there’s so much we do that you can’t do without keys. And it’s been a while since Steve just sat back, closed his eyes and jammed on stage, and he’s doing it now.”
LITTLETON: “I had been working on this song for a while with Medicine Show, trying to polish up a song built around that ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way’ line and the keys, and Brad helped finish it up but the gist of that song is mine. And the story or jokes about it making this album are just as Cody said. He asked if I knew it and I said, ‘Hell, I wrote it,’ and we all knew that was going on the album.”
• • •
Starin' Down the Sun (Bob Childers, John Cooper, Brad Piccolo)
Q: “This is a Red Dirt Rangers song. The only Rangers tune on the album. Why did it make that cut?”
CANADA: “We could do a whole record of just Rangers stuff. Starin’ has been on my mind and I wanted to give it a shot here.
“The lyric, ‘I went out west to take my rest and leave it all behind me,’ always makes me think about when we got run out of Texas trying to record (Ragweed’s) Garage, and we said, ‘OK, we can go record in Georgia or California,’ and we flipped a coin and California won. California made that a cool experience. We didn’t know anyone, we just made music and took it all in. Whenever me and (my wife) Shannon need to get away after that, we head back there. That’s always on my mind when I hear the song.”
John Cooper is an Oklahoma artist and founding member of the Red Dirt Rangers
COOPER: First, it's a song that was written by Bob Childers, Brad Piccolo, and myself. Piccolo is my long time band mate and songwriting partner, as well as one of my dearest friends. And Bob, well, there's no one more respected as songwriter in our scene than Childers. He was my mentor and songwriting collaborator, but mostly my great friend. We all felt like we hit a pretty good lick after we wrote this one. Second, this song was the title cut on our 6th record. It was written very quickly on a hot summer day, and I love the imagery and the "way out west" feel.
• • •
Stand Up (Mel McDaniel)
(This song appears as the album’s bonus track on iTunes.)
Q: “McDaniel died in March 2011 after The Departed had mostly wrapped this album up. It’s also the only song that features Seth James on vocals, along with Plato and yourself. Why go back and add it like you did?”
CANADA: “My dad loved Mel McDaniel. We were on the road the night he died and we talked on the phone and you could tell it was rough news to take. We stayed up on the bus and jammed McDaniel songs until the sun came up. We decided to kind of just take this song and jam it on stage and see what happens. Well, Steve and Seth took it and made it feel funky and cool, and made it feel like ours.”
Seth James — guitar player and vocalist for The Departed — is a Texas native and lifelong musician who released the solo album That Kind of Man in 2009.
SETH JAMES: “I think we were in Wichita before a show and we got asked to cut a bonus track for iTunes, and it was right after Mel McDaniel died and we were playing this song all the time, so we just up and cut it, kind of on the spot.”
(About the album and band in general.) “I’d always thought Red Dirt was a catch phrase, that people were using it to associate themselves with Ragweed or someone, and I never thought much of it. Then Cody came up to me and said he wanted to do this album, and he started playing me some music from these Oklahoma songwriters, and it clicked for me. ‘Oh, that’s what Red Dirt is.’ There was a little bit of learning for me, because I didn’t grow up with it, but I’m glad I did. It helped me understand where Cody’s coming from musically, and now when I see some of those songwriters I get chills and star struck the same way I do meeting my influences.”
• • •
Make Yourself Home (Bob Childers, Scott Evans, Brad James)
Q: “People identify this song with both Bob Childers and Scott Evans. It’s a song with powerful imagery all the way through. When you hear it, what do YOU think of?”
CANADA: “When I talk about The Farm, I think about those magical nights when we played around the campfire until the sun came up. The first time I heard Make Yourself Home was one of those nights. I remember saying to (Jason) Boland, ‘That song is what THIS is.’ So the first thought in my mind is The Farm.”
SCOTT EVANS: “The story on the song starts at an apartment I shared with Brad in Stillwater in the early nineties. Medicine Show was well under way and we had all gotten to know Childers and were very influenced by his style. He paid us a social call one afternoon with no plans of writing anything and the hook came up at the door when Brad opened it and greeted Bob. It's another example of everyday language sparking a creative process. Brad said, ‘Come on in, make yourself home’. Bob replied, ‘Don't be alone.’ From there we set down like a committee and by consensus conceived of the story and set the language to paint that picture that the three of us had imagined collectively. My inspiration was the concept that humans are intended to be in relationships and that isolation is more damaging to the human psyche than the pain and conflict of failed relationships.”
Bob Childers died in 2008 at age 61. His son Zach lives in Austin.
ZACH CHILDERS: “When I hear this song, the first thing I think of is my dad at the kitchen table at my grandparents' house in Ponca City in the summertime, late morning, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist based in Minneapolis with 13 years of experience covering Red Dirt Music. He can be reached on twitter @jcrutchmer.
