All Photos: Alan Mercer
Taken at The Live Oak Club in Fort Worth, Texas
Slaid Cleaves spins stories with a novelist’s eye and a poet’s heart. Twenty years into his career, the celebrated songwriter’s ‘Still Fighting the War’ spotlights an artist in peak form. Cleaves’ seamless new collection delivers vivid snapshots as wildly cinematic as they are carefully chiseled. Dress William Faulkner with faded jeans and a worn six-string for a good idea.
Accordingly, Cleaves’ earthy narratives stand oak strong. “Men go off to war for a hundred reasons/But they all come home with the same demons,” he sings on the album’s title track. “Some you can keep at bay for a while/Some will pin you to the floor/You’ve been home for a couple of years now, buddy/But you’re still fighting the war.” Few writers frame bruised souls as clearly. Fewer still deliver a punch with such striking immediacy.
Cleaves delivers equal measures of hope and resignation throughout this 2013 release as life lessons slide subtly through side doors. “Normally when I start writing a new batch, a theme starts to emerge after three or four songs,” says Cleaves, who built an unlikely success story from scratch after moving to Austin, Texas, from Maine two decades ago. “This time around I thought, I’m just gonna write where the muse takes me and each song will be its own thing. So I ended up with a CD that has a bit more variety on it compared to my previous releases. Half the songs are about struggle and perseverance and half are all over the place, some tongue-in-cheek stuff, a gospel song, a Texas pride song.”
‘Still Fighting the War’ follows the razor-sharp songwriter’s undeniable hat trick – Broke Down (2000), Wishbones (2004) and Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away (2009) – that established him as a singular storyteller. His golden key: effortlessly shading dark with light.
“You get a lot of the man behind the lyrics,” Terri Hendrix says. “What you see with Slaid is what you get: He doesn’t have the eyes of a cynic. He has optimism about him through a realistic gaze and writes with a wise voice.” The Kerrville Folk Festival recognized those intangible qualities long ago when Cleaves won its hallowed New Folk award in 1992. He’s doubled down ever since with literate story songs exponentially more mature and meaningful.
Consider one other new high water mark. “But they figured it out/And shipped the elbow grease/Down to Mexico/And off to the Chinese,” Cleaves sings on the haunting meditation “Rust Belt Fields.” “And I learned a little something 'bout how things are/No one remembers your name just for working hard.”
Slaid Cleaves lives with his wife of over 20 years, Karen Cleaves, in the Hill Country outside Austin, Texas. While Karen books the shows, the flights, the hotels, and the rental cars, designs, orders and sells the CDs and T-shirts, pays the band, updates the web site, answers fan questions, does the taxes and makes dinner, Slaid writes his little songs (and fixes things around the house). They travel around the world together while Slaid plays for fans far and wide and gets all the glory. If it wasn’t for Karen, Slaid would be carrying all he owned in a shoe box, scrounging around for a happy hour gig.
The good news is another album is in the can and ready to be released very soon. I met with Slaid and took these photos before his performance at the Live Oak Club in Fort Worth.
AM: Slaid, you write music like no other. You paint pictures with your words and melodies.
SC: I do work very hard on the songs and to share credit, I do have some very talented, trusted co-writers who help me.
AM: So where does this desire to tell these stories come from?
SC: I think it’s the music I was exposed to as a child. My parents were big music fans and record buying people in the Fifties and Sixties. I grew up in the late Sixties listening to all these records like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly and the Beatles.
AM: You did know all the good music!
SC: I knew the tragedy of Kaw-Liga, the poor old wooden Indian, when I was three years old and the joyous melodies of the Beatles Abbey Road when I was in grade school. I got to listen to and love a lot of great music as a young person. When I started to pursue music as a teenager I had a lot to draw on.
AM: Did you start performing on stage as a teenager?
SC: I had my first band when I was sixteen with a childhood friend up in Maine. This was a garage band and I was playing keyboards at the time. I had taken piano lessons all through grade school.
AM: What music did you play?
SC: Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones and Bob Seeger.
AM: When did you start writing?
SC: I made a few lame attempts to write in high school and in early college I switched to the guitar. I was gravitating towards being a singer/songwriter instead of lugging around a big piano. (Laughter) I wanted to emulate the songwriters I was deeply into when I was twenty years old.
AM: Who were you listening to and loving then?
SC: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Buddy Holly and all those greats. I guess I wrote my first batch of songs in 1986 when I was twenty-two.
AM: I love your first album, ‘For The Brave And Free’ that you make available on your web site. I can hear a stronger Country music influence.
SC: If you remember in the early Nineties there was a lot of great music coming out of Nashville. Artists like Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and John Hiatt. Those people were bursting out of Nashville. They were writing great songs. I remember watching a lot of CMT in that period so I could learn how to structure songs in that simple Country way.
AM: I am under the impression that your songs take a long time to be written. Do you ever write a song in five minutes?
SC: I think I wrote a five-minute song once…about thirty years ago. (Laughter) When you’re young, you go on your instincts, but as you get older you set your standards a little higher. I do think of songwriting as a bit of craftsmanship. I write little bits and pieces of songs at a time. Once I get a little bit of progress I usually set it aside so I don’t end up obsessing about it. I get into another project whether it’s writing another song or fixing a car. It’s just a little puzzle to solve.
AM: I can tell you are a master craftsman. I can hear it in the songs.
SC: Well I’m glad you can hear that.
AM: And I think your most recent album, ‘Still Fighting The War’ is your best album of all.
SC: Thanks, I certainly do strive to make that happen and it gets a little frustrating sometimes because my most popular record is still ‘Broke Down’ and I wrote that eighteen years ago. I’m very thankful the record was so popular and touched so many people but I’m hoping the new record can beat that.
AM: Is there a new album in the works?
SC: Yes, we just finished mixing it two days ago. I’m in the process of trying to navigate the ever swirling, changing tides of the music industry to figure out which way to release it with all the different options I have.
AM: Good luck with that! Do you thrive on live performances?
SC: Well literally yes, that’s how I make most of my living and pay my mortgage. I get a little from sales and royalties, but live shows are the bulk of my income.
AM: Are you still into performing live with all the traveling involved?
SC: I must admit a little of the romance has worn off. In the old days, I was content to travel with two guys and share a hotel room and sleep with one of them in the bed and rotate who sleeps on the floor with no air conditioning.
AM: That does sound rough.
SC: I did that for a few years. Things have gotten much cushier since then. We only take the better gigs now. We only want to play in the best venues for the best audiences. Usually it works out for a lovely evening when I connect with people who love and appreciate my music. Yeah, it’s really beautiful.
To learn more about Slaid Cleaves visit his web site /http://slaidcleaves.com/