Visiting Malaco Studios

0:11[SPEAKER_00]: A drove away from Houston, still thinking about John Gomado, Lucinda's first guitarist. [SPEAKER_00]: He had made the choice to step away from the dream of being a full-time musician. [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he chose to spend time with his family, go fishing, play music less, and make a living, painting houses. [SPEAKER_00]: At the time, I was driving east away from Texas. [SPEAKER_00]: I did not think that that would be my fate. [SPEAKER_00]: I had no judgment of John's choices.

0:46[SPEAKER_00]: I understood them intellectually. [SPEAKER_00]: But I felt that I was heading in the opposite direction. [SPEAKER_00]: I was just getting started. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought that just maybe this could be the time to put myself fully out there. [SPEAKER_00]: I could break out of the straight jacket that bound me. [SPEAKER_00]: Stop self-sabotaging. [SPEAKER_00]: As John said to do, I go for it. [SPEAKER_00]: As I drove, I was not asking myself, should I do this?

1:19[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't thinking about potential unintended consequences of a choice like this. [SPEAKER_00]: At the time I was only thinking, could I do this? [SPEAKER_00]: Was I even good enough? [SPEAKER_00]: Was I making fool myself by putting my music out there more fully? [SPEAKER_00]: I was heading from Houston towards the east. [SPEAKER_00]: My destination, the studio, were loosened and made her very first record, rambling on my mind. [SPEAKER_00]: Jackson, Mississippi.

2:00[SPEAKER_00]: This was the very first place Lucinda stepped into a recording booth. [SPEAKER_00]: The first time she made her way up to stand in front of those fancy microphones. [SPEAKER_00]: The first place were tiny particles of iron oxide on real to real tape. [SPEAKER_00]: Fell into place, according to her singing, her playing. [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered what it was like for her, recording for the very first time like that. [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered if maybe she asked herself similar questions to what I was asking myself.

2:36[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps when she slid those metal fingerpicks onto her right hand, cracked her back and pulled a guitar strap over her head, she asked this inside her own mind. [SPEAKER_00]: Am I good enough to do this? [SPEAKER_00]: Will anyone even listen to this? [SPEAKER_00]: In Jackson, I was going to go to Malakow Studios. [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to ask what Lucinda was like during that tectonic experience of recording for the first time. [SPEAKER_00]: But I was also headed there to sort of test myself.

3:10[SPEAKER_00]: To find out if I go to that same place, if I stand in front of a microphone with my acoustic guitar, would I be proven to have something to offer? [SPEAKER_00]: would I come across as worthy of something? [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered about the engineer. [SPEAKER_00]: He would be the same guy who had been there with Lucinda forty years ago. [SPEAKER_00]: I wondered what he would say to his friends and colleagues after I left. [SPEAKER_00]: Woody say, wow, that wasn't so great.

3:43[SPEAKER_00]: What a waste of a day. [SPEAKER_00]: Or Woody say something like, wow, that person has a lot of good music to offer. [SPEAKER_00]: I wonder why they're doubting themselves so much. [SPEAKER_00]: you are listening to finding Lucinda from the Bluegrass situation. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Ismail. [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is an audio documentary, a multi-part series. [SPEAKER_00]: It recounts my journey to trace the origins of my musical hero Lucinda Williams.

4:29[SPEAKER_00]: In order to confront my sense of self-doubt and find a path forward with my aspirations to be a singer-songwriter, I decided to do a road trip. [SPEAKER_00]: And on that trip, my guiding light was Lucinda. [SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to episode six, Lucinda's first recording session. [SPEAKER_00]: I was driving my ninety-five-fourth truck to Mississippi. [SPEAKER_00]: I skipped around New Orleans, skirted just past opposites. [SPEAKER_00]: It was May, twenty-twenty-two.

5:13[SPEAKER_00]: The trees along the roadside were a heightened shade of green, the burstinging growth. [SPEAKER_00]: Little leaves welled up in anticipation of a summer's worth of sunshine and rain. [SPEAKER_00]: I admired the green blur through my window for a few hours, and then I pulled over to a patch of gravel along the roadside. [SPEAKER_00]: There I saw a large pond. [SPEAKER_00]: and a ditch along the side. [SPEAKER_00]: So I walked. [SPEAKER_00]: The body of water was over an acre in size.

5:49[SPEAKER_00]: This was all agricultural land. [SPEAKER_00]: Similar ponds just like it went on from miles and miles and miles all around. [SPEAKER_00]: Tiny spears of green grass broke through the surface of the water. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought maybe in these ponds they were growing rice, or perhaps deep down, munching in the mud or crawfish, waiting to be plucked up any day now, waiting for their god to determine some trajectory in this world. [SPEAKER_00]: A big red sun was sinking down on the horizon.

6:26[SPEAKER_00]: I sat down, took out my notebook. [SPEAKER_00]: I picked a little plant. [SPEAKER_00]: I began to draw the leaves. [SPEAKER_00]: The edges were irregular. [SPEAKER_00]: Bugs had nibbled them down. [SPEAKER_00]: You can hear some electricity, which is not so fun, but you can also hear bugs, wind, and cars. [SPEAKER_00]: And a buzzing fly. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you start to just notice this wallows are swallowing water, they go across and dip in.

7:10[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of interesting being here like near like turtles because you can just kind of think about loosen this songwriting about. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the kind of place she was in when she was writing a lot of her songs where she came from. [SPEAKER_00]: Did you see how human beings pick things and then we put so much importance on them? [SPEAKER_00]: Even if they may not be more important, now this plant matters a lot more to me and all the other exact same kind of species plants in this whole field.

7:44[SPEAKER_00]: Think about that one. [SPEAKER_00]: I find, you know, there's all these records of people performing and we're just looking for the Lucinda records. [SPEAKER_00]: There might have been somebody who saved a bunch of videos or saved a bunch of recordings and didn't really think [SPEAKER_00]: They were all that important, but they saved them anyways, and then we come along and say, this is the most important thing in the universe. [SPEAKER_00]: We need this, and then we find the recording that was saved without regard or knowledge, without knowledge of its importance, and then we put place importance on it.

8:17[SPEAKER_02]: And so is creation. [SPEAKER_02]: And just because I drew a silly little drawing, a single plant, all of a sudden it gets important and is memorialized for longer. [SPEAKER_02]: Just like when you record a certain artist, that's blue's artists are the other. [SPEAKER_02]: Memorialized forever and then they become important. [SPEAKER_02]: Just like Lucinda recorded her memorialized forever and she'd be team of work. [SPEAKER_02]: Repeded, repeated, replicated.

8:45[SPEAKER_02]: Now you can replicate this drawing with a photo copy machine. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm important, being important is a odd thing in this world. [SPEAKER_00]: I spent that night at a chain hotel. [SPEAKER_00]: Three stories high, dozens of rooms, gleaming, but middleing in quality. [SPEAKER_00]: It's building was probably just a handful of years old. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the kind of place where you roll in late and you feel like you could be anywhere, comma America.

9:38[SPEAKER_00]: The New Jersey turn bike, Madison, Wisconsin, the border of Florida and God knows where. [SPEAKER_00]: I carted my guitar in on a metal gurney. [SPEAKER_00]: The automatic glass door welcomed me with ice cold dry air. [SPEAKER_00]: A friendly brownhead lady behind the desk handed me a branded plastic hotel key. [SPEAKER_00]: I made my way through the quiet anonymous hallways, without encountering another person. [SPEAKER_00]: As usual, as soon as I got to my room, I grabbed the guaranteed sanitized channel changer.

10:17[SPEAKER_00]: I laid on the luxuriously white and un-rinkled sheets. [SPEAKER_00]: Then I turned on my favorite TV show, Law and Order SVU, and fell right asleep. [SPEAKER_00]: In the morning, I found dense bagels and brown paper bags to put them in. [SPEAKER_00]: A yellowish-looking orange fruit for accompaniment. [SPEAKER_00]: I dropped six tiny creamers into my watery coffee. [SPEAKER_00]: I may sound like I'm describing something drab and even depressing.

10:50[SPEAKER_00]: The conformity, the dryness of a place like this could bring somebody down. [SPEAKER_00]: But these kind of places made me comfortable. [SPEAKER_00]: They were predictable. [SPEAKER_00]: The clean white rooms, the morning hunt for a decent cup of coffee I could swallow down. [SPEAKER_00]: And I liked the kids shouting in the hotel pool midday. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this meant that I was suited for Motel Life, and maybe that meant that I could be a touring musician.

11:20[SPEAKER_00]: Of course I missed the ranch and the horses, but not enough to make my soul ache. [SPEAKER_00]: I was cuddled in the neutrality of this hotel, ready for the next adventure to begin. [SPEAKER_00]: It was almost like places like these motels, [SPEAKER_00]: that are generic. [SPEAKER_00]: They provided a blank chalkboard for me to scribble out my life's creations. [SPEAKER_00]: I had another full day of driving to get to Jackson, but that gave me another chance to discover the landscape of Lucinda's childhood.

12:22[SPEAKER_00]: Cotton fields, stretching miles and miles, broken down checks and engine parts. [SPEAKER_00]: A few hours in, I made a stop at a gas station where five chickens danced around on the pavement. [SPEAKER_00]: They darted from card to car, waiting for people to drop their tortilla chips out of the corners of their mouths, for kids to leave plastic bags with dusty remnants of cheetos on the ground. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the perfect place for some half-wild poultry.

12:54[SPEAKER_00]: In the afternoon, I veered off the highway to a small town, centerville, Mississippi, population one thousand six hundred. [SPEAKER_00]: The small Main Street had a vintage feel. [SPEAKER_00]: an old general store with plain white shelves, and a Coca-Cola machine outside. [SPEAKER_00]: I pulled up to a spot by the town park. [SPEAKER_00]: This park was about the size of a half block. [SPEAKER_00]: There were dozens of people gathered there which seemed unusual, and music was playing.

13:26[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized that this was not just an average Sunday in centerville. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the town's annual crawfish festival. [SPEAKER_00]: little boiling pots of these steamy red shrimpy morsels, corn cobs amongst the shells. [SPEAKER_00]: I walked around the edge too shy to interact with anybody. [SPEAKER_00]: A group of thirteen-year-old kids buzzed across the street and around me. [SPEAKER_00]: They were on motorbikes and four wheelers.

13:56[SPEAKER_00]: Some were paired up on the pleather seats on a single vehicle, wild and happy kids. [SPEAKER_00]: I felt right at home. [SPEAKER_00]: I thought of Lucinda. [SPEAKER_00]: If she had been there observing a day like this and a town like this, I wondered what lyrics she would use to describe the scenes she saw. [SPEAKER_00]: A couple more hours on the road and I rolled into Jackson. [SPEAKER_00]: It was quiet. [SPEAKER_00]: I got to stay in a historic hotel.

14:28[SPEAKER_00]: My favorite. [SPEAKER_00]: I found one place to get a late night meal. [SPEAKER_00]: A steak in a potato delivered right to my door. [SPEAKER_00]: I fell asleep as the TV was blabbering on. [SPEAKER_00]: Ready to meet the next morning. [SPEAKER_00]: Satisfied, in a way only a day driving like that could make me feel satisfied. [SPEAKER_00]: In the morning, I took a turn around town before going to the studio. [SPEAKER_00]: The city was lovely, vintage architecture, old signs for laundromats that hadn't been modified since the sixties.

15:06[SPEAKER_00]: New housing developments with a Scandinavian feel, tall white metal sighting. [SPEAKER_00]: I had never been to Jackson. [SPEAKER_00]: However, its lore was ever present in my knowledge of country music. [SPEAKER_00]: After all, one of the most iconic country songs was about this place. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to Jackson, gonna mess around. [SPEAKER_00]: Johnny Cash and June Carter sang it. [SPEAKER_00]: So did Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood.

15:36[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, a big genre in this city and region had been the blues. [SPEAKER_00]: But Jackson also had a distinguished role in a more recently developed genre, R&B, and soul. [SPEAKER_00]: And many of the significant recordings to emerge in these genres came from Jackson, and specifically Malico Studios. [SPEAKER_00]: The place where I was going to be interviewing this guy Wolf Stevenson. [SPEAKER_00]: Wolf had worked on many of the iconic R&B and soul recordings, and he was the engineer for Lucinda's first record.

16:18[SPEAKER_00]: We sat down together in the break room at Malaco. [SPEAKER_00]: Each of us took one booth. [SPEAKER_00]: They were that kind that's a replication for old diner seats. [SPEAKER_00]: On the kitchen counter, in an instant pot, he was cooking red beans and rice. [SPEAKER_00]: Little slices of hot, duggy sausage bubbled around as we spoke. [SPEAKER_00]: Here we are. [SPEAKER_00]: These boobs new, a new additioner. [SPEAKER_03]: No, they're new point, we rebuilt the studio.

16:52[SPEAKER_00]: Got it, okay. [SPEAKER_03]: We had, we had muscle cell sounds studio. [SPEAKER_00]: Malakus studios got it start in nineteen sixty seven largely in part to this guy I was sitting down with old Stevenson and also in part to another guy Tommy couch wolf and Tommy had been fraternity brothers in college they had both booked bands while they were there and eventually they ended up putting out records they developed Malakus studios as a place other people could come and record [SPEAKER_00]: Tommy and Wolf collaborated with huge record labels.

17:31[SPEAKER_00]: Capital, Mercury, Stacks. [SPEAKER_00]: Mostly Malico was known for southern soul, blues, R&B and gospel music. [SPEAKER_00]: A couple years after opening, Wolf and Tommy had a huge break. [SPEAKER_00]: A hit song. [SPEAKER_00]: But interestingly, Wolf told me that this song barely squeaked out into the world. [SPEAKER_00]: the journey to find an audience was circuitous. [SPEAKER_00]: There was this guy, King Floyd. [SPEAKER_00]: He had started out as a street performer in New Orleans.

18:07[SPEAKER_00]: He then joined the army, and then went up to New York City and over to the West Coast. [SPEAKER_00]: And in the nineteen seventy King Floyd went to Malacost Studios to record vocals for a new record. [SPEAKER_00]: There was a producer who had a production deal with Malico at the time, and he was the one producing the track. [SPEAKER_00]: Wordel Quazerg, after they were done, Wolf and Tommy thought that this recording was fantastic. [SPEAKER_00]: So you, in the audience, you might know this song.

18:41[SPEAKER_00]: I certainly listened to it a lot while I was growing up. [SPEAKER_00]: It is called Groove Me. [SPEAKER_00]: Here's a little line. [SPEAKER_00]: Hey there, sugar, don't plan, let me tell you something. [SPEAKER_00]: Wolf and Tommy were so excited about the prospects of the album that King Floyd had made with this producer. [SPEAKER_00]: So much so that Tommy traveled all the way to New York City to play it for record companies. [SPEAKER_00]: He brought it to stacks.

19:10[SPEAKER_00]: He brought it to Atlantic. [SPEAKER_00]: He brought it to eat more record companies. [SPEAKER_00]: And they all said, no. [SPEAKER_00]: But Wolf and Tommy didn't give up. [SPEAKER_00]: They decided, fine, we'll just press it down here ourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: Put it out on our own label. [SPEAKER_00]: And they hand-delivered this record to a DJ nearby to get some airplay. [SPEAKER_00]: It was Friday when they brought the album to the DJ, and he was just about done for the day.

19:41[SPEAKER_00]: But he said, all bring it home and give it a whirl. [SPEAKER_00]: And it just so happened that this DJ's niece was having a sleepover that weekend with some friends and family at his house. [SPEAKER_00]: When the DJ put the record on, starting with the B-side, all the little girls perked up. [SPEAKER_00]: They loved the song, Groove Me. [SPEAKER_00]: They danced. [SPEAKER_00]: And they played it over and over and over again. [SPEAKER_00]: When Monday came the DJ went back to Wolf and Tommy and said, you have a smash hit here.

20:14[SPEAKER_00]: The DJ played it on the radio, and it grew to become a huge crossover hit song. [SPEAKER_00]: Anyways, that's how Malico first made its name, as a label and a studio. [SPEAKER_00]: They followed up this success with another hit from the same producer, Wardel Kuzberg. [SPEAKER_00]: This time it was sung by Jean Knight. [SPEAKER_00]: The song was Mr. Big Stuff. [SPEAKER_00]: Malaco attracted big clients for recording, like Paul Simon.

20:46[SPEAKER_00]: But when Lucinda went to record at Malaco Studios in the late seventies, it wasn't really because of this history of soul hits. [SPEAKER_00]: After all, that wasn't really what she was chasing. [SPEAKER_00]: It was because she had a family connection. [SPEAKER_00]: Lucinda's father Miller had a friend who was a patron of the arts, Tom Royals. [SPEAKER_00]: He was a civil rights attorney. [SPEAKER_00]: He lived in Jackson and had supposedly gotten a guy off a drug charge who worked at Malico Studios.

21:30[SPEAKER_00]: So this guy owed Tom Royals a favor. [SPEAKER_00]: And Tom used that favor to bring Lucinda in for a day of recording. [SPEAKER_00]: Tom Rolls had pretty much no experience in the music industry, but he became the quote-unquote producer of Lucinda's first album. [SPEAKER_00]: Years later, people would occasionally come up to Tom and say, are you the guy that produced Lucinda Williams first album and ask for his signature? [SPEAKER_00]: before Tom Royals passed away in two thousand nineteen.

22:07[SPEAKER_00]: The newspaper The Jackson Claring Ledger interviewed him about Lucina Williams. [SPEAKER_00]: They asked about his experience making Ramlin on my mind with her. [SPEAKER_00]: And he spoke about what it was like that day. [SPEAKER_00]: And he also talked about how he used to go see Lucinda play around when she was getting started. [SPEAKER_00]: And he had something interesting to say about Lucinda's vision for her success as an artist at the time.

22:34[SPEAKER_00]: He said, quote, all of those growing hours she spent playing the holiday in with cigarette smoke filling her lungs, working day in and day out, and it never occurred to her that she wasn't going to make it. [SPEAKER_00]: Tom Royals had passed away, but I did have this chance to speak with the other person who was there in [SPEAKER_00]: And I decided that that day at Malico, in addition to interviewing Wolf, I would do something else.

23:22[SPEAKER_00]: I would record a song myself. [SPEAKER_00]: It would be just like Lucinda from back in the day. [SPEAKER_00]: I had to see if I was up to the task. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd prepared some songs that Lucinda recorded back then in Seventy-eight. [SPEAKER_00]: Satisfied mind, the great speckled bird. [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't totally sure if these songs were suited to me, but I thought I'd give them a shot. [SPEAKER_00]: There had been forty years between Lucinda Session and mine.

23:52[SPEAKER_00]: Comparison was arising within my psyche, whether I wanted to admit it or not. [SPEAKER_03]: And then boom, took off after that. [SPEAKER_00]: So tell me about that day that she came to record here. [SPEAKER_03]: It was fun. [SPEAKER_03]: It really was a fun session. [SPEAKER_03]: It was just as laid back as you could expect. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, no stop, that's punchy and no, not that. [SPEAKER_03]: Just go through a song, kick it off in the middle if she didn't like it.

24:21[SPEAKER_03]: Stop, oh, let's go do it, start over and do the whole thing. [SPEAKER_03]: I was very pleased that she got a deal. [SPEAKER_03]: And it was totally different than the kind of music we were doing at its time. [SPEAKER_03]: We wouldn't have been able to do as much with it as she had done here. [SPEAKER_01]: So what do you remember about her that afternoon when you were recording? [SPEAKER_01]: What was she like back then? [SPEAKER_03]: She was as down to earth as she could possibly be.

24:49[SPEAKER_03]: No put on airs or anything just as friendly just like, hey, how you doing? [SPEAKER_03]: And we're having a big time. [SPEAKER_03]: Of course it helped that she and Tom were [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know each other quite well. [SPEAKER_03]: And we just all fell in and had a great time in the studio. [SPEAKER_03]: It was not really a very structured session. [SPEAKER_03]: I've got these songs and I'll get through one okay, watch next. [SPEAKER_03]: But it was fun work working with it, really well.

25:20[SPEAKER_01]: And was she really confident in her music back then where she kind of, you know, was her first recording session, so she's probably figuring it out. [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe the technique, but as far as what she wanted to do, if she got something a little off, she was confident that, okay, we need to stop and do this again. [SPEAKER_03]: She was comfortable. [SPEAKER_03]: She wouldn't have spooked at all, and so she was really laid back, and John was great as a company guy.

25:44[SPEAKER_01]: She knew what she wanted. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: And she'd asked her, okay, does that sound right as the balance, of course, would throw in my two cents there? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm just curious to about like the particular selection of songs that she had. [SPEAKER_01]: What was it about, you know, certain artists like Memphis, many of Robert Johnson? [SPEAKER_01]: What was about the songwriting in the music emotionally?

26:09[SPEAKER_03]: Well, it sounds that I had heard before many times, but she put her, her own little signature on it. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's probably one of the reasons that she hears those songs because they are pretty powerful teams. [SPEAKER_03]: You've got to be brave to come up with those songs and present that. [SPEAKER_03]: So you've got to know that you can deliberate well and put your own little twist on it. [SPEAKER_03]: But they were very well known songs and that in itself will hold somebody's attention for a few seconds and then they listen in some hours.

26:43[SPEAKER_03]: She's singing pretty good, so she's playing all right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, listen a little bit more. [SPEAKER_01]: So you're saying she was pretty bold to do these songs that were popular. [SPEAKER_01]: There were already so many people that had covered them too. [SPEAKER_01]: Sure. [SPEAKER_03]: That's your voice. [SPEAKER_03]: And for her to get a deal with the label using those songs is somewhat unique. [SPEAKER_03]: It was back then anyway.

27:10[SPEAKER_01]: So she, you're saying she wasn't confident in her own songwriting. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure if that was what it was and I didn't know. [SPEAKER_03]: What person, her original teens were like at the time? [SPEAKER_03]: Because I've seen her around time a couple of times, but not a whole lot. [SPEAKER_03]: She may have had some great songs back in her little notebook, but I did not know what else she was going to do. [SPEAKER_03]: But if I had to guess, I would say that she wanted to use this as to get the door open and then start introducing some of her own material.

27:50[SPEAKER_01]: She probably wanted also just to get a chance to really learn from these songs, too. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, sure. [SPEAKER_03]: Because again, if you present covers songs, she'd better grit your teeth and do it right. [SPEAKER_03]: It was always going to be compared with the song as the original dance. [SPEAKER_03]: And obviously she did a good job of that because she got their attention right away. [SPEAKER_01]: So she had a sound and her voice and her playing in her style.

28:15[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, she did. [SPEAKER_03]: And to me, it sounded just like she sounded as she was sitting and talking to you. [SPEAKER_03]: She was very loose and comfortable in her presentation. [SPEAKER_03]: And her playing was really good. [SPEAKER_03]: So she carried it out, carried it right to the house. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I liked that in an artist when you can hear their speaking voice and their singing voice are connected. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, absolutely.

28:42[SPEAKER_03]: It sounded like she's singing all the time. [SPEAKER_01]: She was authentic. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, day to day life she was just as foot loose and very natural. [SPEAKER_01]: So her playing and her singing was just an extension of her cell. [SPEAKER_03]: I would say that for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you think that's true of a lot of artists or do you find some artists? [SPEAKER_01]: It's like they're performing and musical self as a different persona.

29:08[SPEAKER_03]: They're really good ones. [SPEAKER_03]: You can see it in their off-stage persona as well as home stage. [SPEAKER_03]: That's what I think. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, there's some artists that if you look enough, I have been looking to meet a lot of them. [SPEAKER_03]: And after listening to their tunes, I said, wow, that he sounds like the guy I've seen on stage, or guy I've listened to, or the girl I've listened to on the radio, or I've listened to their records.

29:37[SPEAKER_01]: And so you said you saw a loser to play in a couple of venues before she ever came here to record. [SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember anything about that? [SPEAKER_03]: Very little. [SPEAKER_03]: There's several places that are no longer in existence, and that was back in the early mid to late seventies. [SPEAKER_03]: There was so much going on back then. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember where it was. [SPEAKER_03]: There were two or three places that could have been, but they're long gone.

30:08[SPEAKER_01]: And do you remember what your impression was of her when you saw her play? [SPEAKER_03]: It was a good impression. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I was, wherever the club was, I remember her playing. [SPEAKER_03]: And I said, wow, she's pretty good. [SPEAKER_03]: But it was something different than what we were doing. [SPEAKER_03]: So I listened to it and thought it was great. [SPEAKER_03]: But as far as her doing something that we could take and develop, I knew it was not our, [SPEAKER_03]: the rest are my bag of stuff that we did.

30:37[SPEAKER_03]: Because we were really concentrating on soul and blues and soul gospel. [SPEAKER_01]: So she, you felt like she had a trajectory, but it was just going to be somewhere else in sort of a different genre. [SPEAKER_03]: And when she got on folk ways, I said, well, this is a good avenue for her, the way she came across in the studio. [SPEAKER_03]: Now she's gone a little different since then. [SPEAKER_00]: So what do you remember about John Comodo from that recording?

31:08[SPEAKER_03]: To be truthly not a lot except that he was an excellent player. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he was here to do the backup on her, but I mean, he was Johnny on the spot as far as just tried this way or let's try that. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, he was exceptionally good. [SPEAKER_01]: It was interesting because we talked to him in Houston and we did an interview and it was interesting to talk to him and kind of compare him to Lucinda because Lucinda and him recorded this together and she went on to keep getting more and more successful as an artist and he moved to a small town in Texas and kept playing music but he never kind of went beyond that.

31:47[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's happened to a lot of folks that have come through here and a lot of them that I thought were fantastic. [SPEAKER_03]: There's one guy that we started out early with that fantastic rider and acoustic guitar player and singer and a great rider of songs that we just make you stop and listen. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think had he showed up ten years later than that. [SPEAKER_03]: We might have been able to do something with him.

32:12[SPEAKER_00]: So part of an artist being able to kind of maybe get to the point they want in their career, get to a higher point somewhat about timing. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: timing in a little bit of luck and it's just amazing. [SPEAKER_03]: The right person happens to come by and hear it. [SPEAKER_00]: So it sounds kind of like, even, I'm sure a lot of people came to you guys wanting your help with getting their music out there, but even that, you guys didn't even have complete power.

32:40[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody was kind of relying on someone else. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, always that. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Jared Wexler, Atlantic Records, the first stuff we carried to Tam First Big hits we had, they turned them all down. [SPEAKER_03]: What did we do? [SPEAKER_03]: We came back down here, scratched our heads, and said, well, let's just put one out ourselves. [SPEAKER_03]: And at the end, even back then, we had to do something ourselves to get it started.

33:05[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I totally get that with trying to get the help of somebody who might be kind of a level up for me when they say no and you just kind of have to do it yourself as you believe in it. [SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of people just go back home after that. [SPEAKER_03]: You know, they just say, well, they don't like it. [SPEAKER_03]: It must not be any good. [SPEAKER_03]: But we kept listening and kept listening and I said, well, let's give it a shot.

33:29[SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting. [SPEAKER_00]: So some people put their heart and soul into their music and then somebody tells them it's not good enough and listen to that and then they just give up. [SPEAKER_03]: They do. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's really sad. [SPEAKER_03]: I've heard some folks that over the years that I really thought was exceptional and they wound up playing in local venues for years and years and years and they were going for it.

34:22[SPEAKER_01]: It's the maybe it's the sting of the rejection they just can't handle doing it again. [SPEAKER_03]: That could be it and are just not having enough gums into [SPEAKER_03]: or drive to keep going for sometimes it might take a minute of years. [SPEAKER_03]: They just didn't have the drive to do that. [SPEAKER_03]: Or they come back and say, well, okay, I'll do something else. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_03]: Not really worried about it.

34:44[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe that's what made Lucena different. [SPEAKER_01]: She was kind of doggy about her music. [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think she had an idea that, okay, I may have to work at this for [SPEAKER_03]: several years, but I'm going to give it a shot. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm sure she was getting good reception at the venue she played. [SPEAKER_03]: And where she came up with the idea of taking all cover teams and doing that, that's pretty brave, but it worked.

35:17[SPEAKER_03]: And then because it was her version of those songs, the songs were very well known, and at least somebody would listen to them for a few seconds. [SPEAKER_03]: because of the song. [SPEAKER_03]: And then after they listen a few seconds, they hear, well, okay, she's singing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's pretty good. [SPEAKER_03]: She's playing pretty good. [SPEAKER_03]: So, and capture them for a few more seconds. [SPEAKER_03]: She got it. [SPEAKER_01]: All right.

35:39[SPEAKER_01]: So do you think if this folkways hadn't put out this record, do you think she would have given us? [SPEAKER_03]: No, I don't think so. [SPEAKER_03]: I think she's exhibited enough drive when she was here doing the session that they passed. [SPEAKER_03]: She would have done another one and kept going. [SPEAKER_01]: So she had that, it's not that she was necessarily, you know, there's lots of talented people out there who have amazing music, but the fact that she just kept going for it and didn't give up and didn't listen to other people telling her she wasn't good enough.

36:16[SPEAKER_03]: That for sure. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if anybody ever told her she wasn't good enough, but they just wouldn't get too excited about it, maybe. [SPEAKER_03]: But she had read that little something in her voice that was a little twang up in there somewhere that stuck out. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know when I was, I've been talking to some other people about her and they said that she stood out for sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: her peers when she was playing in the seventies.

36:41[SPEAKER_03]: Yep, she did. [SPEAKER_03]: And then from delivering those songs to writing her own and delivering those powerful songs and her delivery, that's the minute the day you're right there. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you can go so far on somebody else's teens, but eventually you've got to put some of your own stuff on self and there. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's interesting too because she had this powerful voice and played really well and she was confident.

37:09[SPEAKER_01]: But also her first big success was passionate kiss is being played by somebody else. [SPEAKER_03]: You know how big success to boom. [SPEAKER_03]: I heard that and I said, oh my goodness. [SPEAKER_03]: I said, hold now baby. [SPEAKER_03]: That hurt her play the song, but man, that was a pretty much the way she did it too. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's pretty true to the way she was thinking that song to go. [SPEAKER_03]: That didn't change much.

37:40[SPEAKER_01]: So I know that too, I know she struggled a little bit after she started writing her own songs and releasing her own material. [SPEAKER_01]: She was turned down by a lot of record labels because she wasn't country and she wasn't rock. [SPEAKER_00]: What did you hear that in her music too? [SPEAKER_00]: sort of that it was in between genres. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it was its own fastball coming through there. [SPEAKER_03]: They just missed it.

38:03[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe they were trying to limit it to one or the other. [SPEAKER_03]: But I'm sure a lot of folks passed up because she was a little bit too left before they were headed. [SPEAKER_01]: And she could have just decided in that time to just, okay, I'll be more rock or okay, I'll be more country, but she didn't. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think she ever would have done that. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, she came across as so original in the stuff she did.

38:28[SPEAKER_03]: And even these songs, with her singing, I mean, she was putting her whole heart in it when she was doing that. [SPEAKER_03]: And I obviously had thought ways, heard that. [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know if they knew she could, was capable of writing some more original material, but she later did. [SPEAKER_03]: But she did well for a number of years before she really hit it big with her writing, even. [SPEAKER_01]: It seems like she took her a long time to get really successful.

38:58[SPEAKER_03]: And have a lot with people that are hard to put in this little category of that little category. [SPEAKER_03]: The fans love her, but what kind of music is it? [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'm not sure. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, do you think that artists like that that don't necessarily play to kind of the expectations are more impactful? [SPEAKER_01]: than somebody who might just kind of be doing what people kind of have already heard. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you got to come up with something to jump to that next level.

39:27[SPEAKER_03]: And her writing along with her performances submitted it for her. [SPEAKER_03]: The writing is a big part of it. [SPEAKER_03]: Eventually, you got to concentrate some on that. [SPEAKER_00]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Or have a great writer that you're working with, one of the two. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I definitely spent a little bit [SPEAKER_00]: Partly through the interview, Wolf pulled something out to share with me. [SPEAKER_00]: Some old items from his archives, two things.

39:58[SPEAKER_00]: First, a vinyl copy of Ramblin on my mind, an original. [SPEAKER_00]: The cover showed an old photo of wooden and tin shacks. [SPEAKER_00]: Behind them was an eroded hillside. [SPEAKER_00]: The photograph was of the outskirts of Tupelo, Mississippi. [SPEAKER_00]: The photograph by Walker Evans, who was known for documenting the effects of the Great Depression. [SPEAKER_00]: It's somber for a cover, but evocative of the people and cultures that produced the music that Lucinda was playing.

40:35[SPEAKER_00]: Then Wolf showed me something very, very special. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a crisp piece of white paper. [SPEAKER_00]: blue ink with clear handwriting. [SPEAKER_00]: It was seemingly untouched for forty years. [SPEAKER_00]: It was a letter, Lucinda had written to Wolfe back after Ramlin on my mind had just come out. [SPEAKER_01]: This is so cool. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so Lucinda wrote this to you after Ramlin came out and she says, Dear Wolfe.

41:09[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, it took me so damn long, getting this to you. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you least got to see [SPEAKER_00]: Tom's copy. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm in someplace I can't pronounce, presently, performing and trying to get a new demo together with a band. [SPEAKER_00]: She was working on another record. [SPEAKER_00]: I have several good new originals. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Great. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: I spent eight months in New York City and that was a trip.

41:35[SPEAKER_00]: I met Golf Dylan and he heard my stuff and liked it. [SPEAKER_00]: I gave him a copy of the album, but I really need to send him a demo of my own songs. [SPEAKER_00]: Also, NEM four records in New York has expressed an interest in me, and I also spoke with and played for John Hammond. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope to be in Jackson in the near future if I can get some gigs lined up. [SPEAKER_00]: I have a VW camper van and a PA system now, so I'm prepared.

42:05[SPEAKER_00]: Hope things are going fine for you. [SPEAKER_00]: Take care, Lucinda. [SPEAKER_03]: That's great. [SPEAKER_03]: The VW camper van fits right in there. [SPEAKER_00]: I love that she's so she was traveling around with her camper van with a PA system just trying to play in front of people. [SPEAKER_03]: But she was thinking about those original songs all the time. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, this shows one of the early points in time where she was going from Ramblin with the covers to starting to think about her own songs.

42:31[SPEAKER_00]: And she gave him a ball deal and who was her favorite artist. [SPEAKER_03]: I can say that she would have been. [SPEAKER_00]: And that must have been a lot of confidence she had to give it to him. [SPEAKER_03]: Sure. [SPEAKER_00]: That's a good deal. [SPEAKER_03]: He would recognize it. [SPEAKER_03]: It's something about her just like yourself. [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, you've been doing this a while and you've got goals that you want to do and people pay attention.

42:56[SPEAKER_03]: If they don't pay attention, you're not being serious about it. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's something I've struggled with a little bit is this unintentional not being super confident is kind of I realized kind of something I had an issue with because [SPEAKER_00]: I was asking people about a year ago, you know, how do I come across? [SPEAKER_00]: And I try really hard to come across as not ego-tistical and I want it to be about the music.

43:23[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want, I want somebody to hear the music and that to be the reason they care. [SPEAKER_00]: I want them, I don't want them to care because I talk a big game. [SPEAKER_00]: But on the other hand, being confident [SPEAKER_00]: in the music also makes people perk up and give a list. [SPEAKER_03]: And they get an impression of you is somebody that's really dedicated to the music that you do. [SPEAKER_03]: And I believe that comes across when you're performing and saying it.

43:54[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I believe it. [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I hadn't realized, but when I was talking to people about kind of how they perceived what I was doing, they told me like, oh, they didn't know what I wanted. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to be professional musician. [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be someone who makes records and gets to play in front of people. [SPEAKER_00]: And I hadn't realized that me being a little more withdrawn and not, and trying not to be egotistical.

44:16[SPEAKER_00]: People thought that meant, man, I didn't care. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_00]: And I wasn't at all. [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm kind of working on that side of things because I do care a lot. [SPEAKER_00]: It's what I want to do with my life. [SPEAKER_01]: And I still keep it about the music, but it's just interesting to hear you talk about her and read this letter and hear about how confident she was and what she was doing. [SPEAKER_03]: She was, and you come across as being confident about your own.

44:47[SPEAKER_03]: You can get there. [SPEAKER_03]: All right, they're going on cover these Louise and her red beans and stir them just a bit. [SPEAKER_00]: We got out of the booth seats and each got a plate of Louise and her red beans and rice. [SPEAKER_00]: We mixed it together on the paper plates with our plastic forks. [SPEAKER_00]: It tasted great. [SPEAKER_00]: As I sat, I thought about what Wolf had said about that day of recording with Lucinda.

45:21[SPEAKER_00]: I realized that at least outwardly, Lucinda was really confident. [SPEAKER_00]: She was certain this was what she wanted to do. [SPEAKER_00]: This was a step she wanted to take to move forward. [SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, it was impressive hearing that the first time Lucinda ever went into a studio, she didn't get tripped up at all. [SPEAKER_00]: She had to make a whole record in basically one day. [SPEAKER_00]: But probably all those years playing at places like Anderson Fair and on the street New Orleans had really made her capable of doing this.

45:57[SPEAKER_00]: But even though she seemed certain on the outside, perhaps there were doubts. [SPEAKER_00]: Thoughts that she didn't want to share with other people. [SPEAKER_00]: She might have wanted to appear cool and calm. [SPEAKER_00]: She might have wanted to make it seem like it came easy to her. [SPEAKER_00]: But ultimately that's all speculation on my part. [SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps she was certain and confident. [SPEAKER_00]: What is also so fascinating about the story of Lucinda at Malaco is that the way that it all went was not inevitable.

46:31[SPEAKER_00]: There were so many off-ramps Lucinda could have taken. [SPEAKER_00]: She could have never tried to get a record deal, never reached out to Moash. [SPEAKER_00]: She could have bailed and never actually went to do the recording. [SPEAKER_00]: She could have said, man, these songs stink and never shared them with folkways. [SPEAKER_00]: Many other artists have let small roadblocks stop them, but not Lucinda. [SPEAKER_00]: She was dogged about what she wanted to do, and by God it worked.

47:14[SPEAKER_00]: After eating red beans and rice, I was getting ready to step into the recording booth. [SPEAKER_00]: I would act as a sort of shadow, replicating the steps Lucinda took in the late seventies. [SPEAKER_00]: But first, Wolf wanted to show me something. [SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to take me into the tape vault. [SPEAKER_00]: It was the only surviving building after the tornado that tore through Jackson a few years earlier. [SPEAKER_00]: and Wolf said something completely amazed and surprised me.

47:46[SPEAKER_00]: He said he had found something. [SPEAKER_00]: Something that he had no memory of even having been there. [SPEAKER_00]: A set of real-terial tapes from the late seventies that did not correspond to Lisen's first album. [SPEAKER_00]: Something that most likely, no one had heard since they were made. [SPEAKER_03]: Look here, who do we see? [SPEAKER_00]: Ooh, got me senda. [SPEAKER_03]: There we go. [SPEAKER_00]: So this is from the original in the nineteen seventy eight recordings.

48:19[SPEAKER_00]: Yep. [SPEAKER_00]: There's stuff in there that's not on the. [SPEAKER_03]: There is. [SPEAKER_03]: And guess what? [SPEAKER_03]: Two or three of my visuals. [SPEAKER_01]: Wow, really? [SPEAKER_01]: Yep. [SPEAKER_01]: Some unheard. [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I'll give them a listen. [SPEAKER_01]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to episode seven of Finding Lucinda. [SPEAKER_00]: Our next episode is number eight. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll be uncovering all tapes from the archives.

48:58[SPEAKER_00]: One thing I wanted to share with you that is exciting. [SPEAKER_00]: We're doing a funny Lucinda tour. [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be doing live music playing Lucinda William songs as well as a screening of the documentary film that's based on the same story as this podcast. [SPEAKER_00]: so far we've announced a date in Chico, California. [SPEAKER_00]: We'll be adding dates and San Francisco and across the whole country. [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to attend, it'll be the fall of twenty twenty five.

49:31[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all those dates at finding Lucinda.com. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening and see you round the bend.