First Person
A Tribute to Me
Usually you have to be dead before famous musicians pay homage and record your songs. Did you really think I would wait?
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After Willie, we selected artists who, like him, walk their own roads. These were all people who, if someone in the record business said it couldn’t be done, would spend the rest of their lives proving them wrong. Fortunately, they turned out to be the kind of stars a hopeful little Jewboy could make a wish upon. The only pain, disappointment, and humiliation I felt was when I was turned down flat by one particular person. After all I’ve been through, I’m not reticent about mentioning that performer by name. The artist who rejected me was k.d. lang. I’d sent her my song “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed.” I still can’t understand it.
As far as the actual recordings went, the artists chose their own song, studio, city, and planet. (We put the songs on the CD in the exact chronological order in which they were recorded; we didn’t need the bungling hand of a record company mortal to play God.) Several of the songs were cut in Austin, but that didn’t pose a problem, as I stayed the hell away. It’s always a good idea for a songwriter to steer clear of the studio when someone is recording his song. On a tribute record, particularly, the honoree should be either dead or working in Branson—anywhere but lurking around the studio. I’m proud to say that I wasn’t present for any of the fifteen guest artist performances on Pearls in the Snow. Instead, I retired into a rather petulant snit, only emerging two years later, when everything was completed. I left the recording duties in the much more capable hands of Kacey, who served as supervising producer and turned out to be a pretty fair engineer as well. Of course, with a name like Kacey Jones, I was not all that surprised.
Money was an issue, of course. You’ve got to have money to make your own tribute album. If you’re dead, you probably don’t have any and the project moves along without you (or dies with you). If you’re alive, the musicians and studio personnel, despite their obvious affection for you, like to get paid. Cognizant of this, I went to see my friend Johnny Marks in San Antonio. Johnny coughed up some bucks and officially became our executive producer. The bucks lasted until Dwight Yoakam did 49 overdubs on “Rapid City, South Dakota.” Now we had a problem. With Willie, Dwight, Delbert McClinton, Lee Roy Parnell, Asleep at the Wheel, and the Geezinslaw Brothers already recorded, we had everybody in the can but Prince Albert, yet we still had only half a tribute album. “Half a hero’s better than no hero at all,” I said to Kacey one afternoon. “Get out of the studio,” she said, “and get more money.”
With my artistic feelers hurt now that the artist in me had been overtaken by the loan shark, I proceeded to fat-arm my friend John McCall in Austin. John ponied up more bucks and officially became, along with Johnny, co-executive producer of Pearls in the Snow. As time went by, I repeatedly assured both former friends that the album would definitely be a financial pleasure. At about the two-year point, I changed my tune slightly. “Money may buy you a fine dog,” I advised them, “but only love can make it wag its tail.” This bit of folksy wisdom failed to comfort or amuse either man.
Nevertheless, McCall’s money carried us through Guy Clark, Marty Stuart, Tompall Glaser, Chuck E. Weiss and the G–d Damn Liars, Billy Swan, Lyle Lovett, a rather triumphant if somewhat tedious reunion of the original Texas Jewboys, and Tom Waits. I don’t know what studio Tom recorded his cut in, but you can hear roosters crowing in the background. This notwithstanding, his version of “Highway Cafe” remains one of my favorites. As Captain Midnight wrote in his liner notes, “If this music doesn’t reach down and touch you, remember . . . it’s only a . . . record.”
The final responsibility I had before the CD was released was to obtain participation agreements from all the artists. It was a formality, but it had to be done, and as CEO of Kinkajou Records, it fell to me. (A kinkajou, by the way, is a cuddly little Central American mammal with a prehensile tail.) So it was, with contract in hand, that I accosted Willie Nelson on his golf course one fine afternoon late last summer. I’d drawn up the one-page contract myself, and if not entirely legally binding, it was at least a fairly humorous document. It concluded with the following statement: “Trust me. As a Jewish record company president, I will not f— you.” Without hesitation, Willie graciously signed his name on the appropriate line. Underneath his signature, the greatest living country music star in the world today wrote, “Please f— me.”
But when all is said and done, every tribute album is really a tribute to all that has gone before. Just prior to Pearls in the Snow being released, I was playing a tape of it for Willie on his bus on the way to Gruene Hall, where he was doing a benefit for flood victims. Both of us were now straying rather dangerously off the reservation. We were listening to Lee Roy’s poignant version of one of my earliest songs, “Nashville Casualty and Life.”
“That sounds great,” said Willie. “Sounds a lot like Merle.”
“The influence wasn’t Merle Haggard,” I said. “Lee Roy told me that for two weeks before he went in the studio, he was listening to Lefty Frizzell.”
“So was Merle,” said Willie.
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