Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Hey, Aaron, how are you doing?
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Good, Michael, how are you doing?
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Great.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Where are we?
[00:00:16] Speaker A: I think we're standing backstage at the Philadelphia Folk Festival.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: And you can hear almost a carnival like atmosphere early in the morning. And it's really special. And we wanted to at least share some sounds with you.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: This is the center of the universe. The center of the musical universe, anyway.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: At least for today. But it's been a few weeks and we're about to dive into part two of our interview with Buddy Monlauk.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Great buddy Monlock.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: And he talks about Nashville and being a songwriter who hadn't done many co rights, and then being thrown into that, because that's what Nashville does. Among many other things, he's written with.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Some fantastic people, some people you might recognize, some people you'll definitely recognize. And he talks about the magic of co writing. And I think you're going to love the second half of our interview with Buddy Monlach.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: So, without any further delay, here's part two of our interview with Buddy Munlock.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: I'd be meeting with a vet in the afternoon and then stay up late when I got home, working on getting a song going, or possibly even finishing it. But, you know, I might have to just stop for a minute and walk around a little bit and, you know, maybe shed a tear if it's like that. I mean, like I said, riding the tower with Wade, I definitely shed some tears.
Part of getting back to myself is learning the song, and the repetition of it can take some of this, the sting out of it for me. But in my life in general, you know, I love to walk in the woods. Most mornings, Polly and I go for a walk in the forested park near us. I just feel that gives me such energy and connection to the wider universe and whatever's out there, you know, that's a big thing for me.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: I do that, too.
[00:02:10] Speaker D: Yeah. Aaron, I'm on the phone with you and I say I'm taking my walk. And so usually you're getting the car, head into your spot.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I'm either on a walk or in the car.
[00:02:22] Speaker C: Always moving.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Yeah, buddy, what draws you to painful subjects like this? I mean, it must be, you know, there are easier ways to spend your time. Is it cathartic for you? Do you get some satisfaction out of helping people make sense of their trauma?
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. You know, there was one vet that I worked with, and I later on did a recording of it, of the song and sent it to him. And when I. He just came to the next retreat not to write another song, but just to be there for the performance, you know, on the. You know, you meet maybe on a Saturday, on Sunday evening. Everybody performs their songs. The writers do anyway. Sometimes the vets participate and sometimes they don't. But he just came back and he told me he listened to that song every day. And just to know that I had some kind of part in something that feels so helpful to another person, that's really rewarding, really, is.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: How is writing a song with someone like Chelsea or a vet different than you've written a few songs with Guy Clarke? Yeah, the late, great guy Clark. And the one you put on, which is the one that you put on the.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: On the new record, it's called the Dark.
[00:03:43] Speaker B: The dark. Oh, my God, I can't believe that. I mean, obviously the guy, he died a few years ago, so the song has to be a bit of a. How old is that song?
[00:03:53] Speaker C: We wrote that, gosh, 23 years ago, I think might have been 2000 or 2001 or 99. I can't remember exactly. But right around there is this the.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: First time that that song has. Has seen publication?
[00:04:07] Speaker C: No. Guy actually recorded it on one of his albums, which. It was the title song. Actually, one of his albums is called the Dark. So. Yeah, that was one of the high points of my whole life is another song we wrote called mud.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: I know that song very well.
[00:04:23] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that's the first song on that album, and the Dark is the last song on that album. So I had, you know, bookend co rights with Guy on one of his albums.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:04:34] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Well, it's a long way of asking you, how is it different co writing with someone like Guy Clark or Janisse Ian than it is to co write with a vet or a survivor of trauma like Chelsea?
[00:04:46] Speaker C: Well, often when I'm working with, like, with the vets, for instance, most of them are not necessarily musicians even, or have ever written a song. So it's really in my hands, that part of it. And, of course, I'm back bouncing things off them. Did I get this right? Does this feel like you? And they'll throw other things in there, like with Nick Tibbs, you know, I felt like what I brought in the next morning wasn't quite the whole story, and it needed one more verse to kind of wrap it all up, and we kind of worked on that together. But, you know, if I'm writing with Guy Clark, I'm writing with one of the best songwriters who ever walked the earth. So I'm. I'm definitely, you know, I'm trying to be a good co writer and contribute my part. And, you know, I deliberately kind of stayed up the night before and just wrote some ideas down and some imagery and stuff like that, which became the beginning of our song. You know, I wanted to bring an idea to him, but then I'm just, you know, I'm writing down everything he says and, you know, like I said, I'm working with one of the best songwriters who ever lived.
It's a lot more of a back and forth in terms of the actual song. Same with Janice. Ian. Like, one of the songs we wrote was Amsterdam, and I had a bunch of imagery. Like, that's kind of my thing is imagery and sensory stuff, and Janice is great at that, too, but she also like, all right, we need a chorus now. And she really brought that chorus into the song, you know, like, where did this happen? This has to happen, so let's place it in a real place. And we kicked around a couple city names, and then one or the other of us at Amsterdam, I think she said Amsterdam. I'm like, yes, I'd been there once, and I'm like, this could definitely be Amsterdam. And it became the title of the song.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Great tone.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So it's much more creative collaboration going on with another songwriter than maybe with a vet who's never written a song before, and their job is to kind of tell me the story and then let me run with it and then correct me when I'm wrong.
[00:06:47] Speaker D: Well, I'm just thinking about the collaborations I've had. Like, Aaron, when you and I write, sometimes it's a back and forth. Lyrically, we go back and forth, and, you know, I take the choruses and the bridge and you take the verses. Sometimes you've got a full lyric, you're like, hey, Michael, put some music to this, or vice versa. And I'm just singing my friend Simon, who goes by Charlie Renardine. His thing with me is he's like, less words.
He just. He's always like, we need less words. It's too much to say, but I love it because it forces me to just tell the story a little more precisely, possibly, and concisely. But sometimes I fight to have some of the words because I want to say those things, you know?
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's. It's great to have somebody who's forcing you to make every single word count.
[00:07:35] Speaker D: Yes, absolutely.
[00:07:36] Speaker C: There's no filler in there, you know, at that point.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Who else does that for you?
[00:07:41] Speaker C: Well, guy was. You know, his standards were so high that definitely writing with guy was like, that I write with Amy spies.
Fair bit.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: She's wonderful.
[00:07:50] Speaker C: Yeah, she's wonderful with that. My friend Richard Berman, who lives in Massachusetts, he. Yeah. Is such an agile mind. We go back and forth for weeks sometimes writing a song, if we're on Zoom, especially, you know, it's like, well, I'll come up with something I think is pretty good. He's like, no, I think we can beat that, you know?
Oh, Boyden, how about this? And we always get there. But, yeah, it's rigorous in a good way. Yeah.
[00:08:16] Speaker D: Do you have a moment when you realized, oh, I like co writing? Was it like, for me, co writing was just this magical thing? Wow. Okay. Some of my best work can come with the power of multiple people working at it. I don't want 15 people in the room, but it sounds like you do one on one with a lot of folks.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: Pretty much. Pretty much one on one. And it's great to have a co writer who you can trust to not let things slip by, you know, and also who has their own talents and take on the world, who's bringing a viewpoint to the song that you just don't have or that you hadn't thought of looking at it that way. So that's one of the wonders of co writing, is you got two creative beings, and there's a place where they fizz, you know, in a wonderful way, you know, as they. Their energies overlap, and that fizz is, you know, in the best sense, it's the song that you end up with. Yeah, that's great. When it happens, you know, it's wonderful. Like, if I'm writing with somebody who says, say they play the piano. I don't play piano. I just play guitar, maybe a little banjo once in a while. But so to have somebody playing piano for the song, that brings a whole new musical element into it and rhythmical element, and that's something I wouldn't have been able to do by myself. When I got to Nashville, I had done very little co writing. The only co writing I'd done at that point was just my dad every once in a while, would hand me a sheet of typing paper and say, hey, can you put music to this? He loved music and songs and always brought great records into the house when I was growing up.
[00:09:54] Speaker B: Where did you grow up?
[00:09:55] Speaker C: Near Chicago, in a little town called Park Forest on the south side. And so, you know, my job there was really just to take what was already on the page and do the musical part because he didn't sing or play an instrument or anything. And then see if you liked it. So when I got to Nashville, though, I quickly realized that 95% of the songs written in Nashville are co rights. You know, probably in the early days, I wrote a lot more on my own and some co rights because, you know, geez, when Janice Ian hits you up at, you know, introduces herself at the break and says, hey, you want to write a song sometime? It's like, yes, I do. I don't know. I don't know if I'm good at that yet, but, yes.
[00:10:38] Speaker B: How old were you when that happened, and where were you in your career?
[00:10:43] Speaker C: That was one of my first gigs at the Bluebird. I had moved to Nashville not too long before that, so it was in the first year or two of me being here. I moved here in January of 88. It was probably around 1989 or 90, something like that.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: Wow, that must have been quite a feeling.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Oh, I was totally Starstruck.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: She was a star by then.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I had been Remita listening to at 17. We had that album. When it came out, dad brought that album home, you know, and I think maybe he ordered it through Columbia record Club or something like that.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: It's a brilliant album.
[00:11:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, it's great. And, you know, then here's the real flesh and blood person saying, hey, you want to try and do something together? Wow. Yes. You know, that's. That's one of the amazing things that can happen here in Nashville, you know, times like that. I'm like, yes, I definitely made the right decision coming down here.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:37] Speaker C: Right around the year 2000, Billy Mann, who I'd written some songs with, came to me with this idea. He had been approached by Art Garfunkel to do an album. Billy had this idea, like, I think there's a songwriter inside of Art Garfunkel, because, you know, all that Simon and Garfunkel stuff. Paul Simon wrote all those songs, basically, right? And art, you know, his creativity was coming out in the harmony parts that he was creating in the studio. But Billy Mann thought, no, there's a songwriter in there, too. And he thought art and I would be good collaborative partners, along with Maya Sharp, who is just one of the most talented humans that I've ever run across. She's a wonderful, wonderful songwriter and performer. What a voice, you know, and she plays everything.
So it ended up as a trio project. So almost all the songs that we wrote for that project, in fact, all of them were three way co writes, either with Billy and art and me or Billy and Art and Maya or me and Maya and art. Art was always one of the people involved in the co rights. And he had written this book of poems that we were drawing from heavily. Often we'd use a poem as a sort of a jumping off place. You know, the poems weren't in any. Weren't in song form. So they needed to be, you know, massaged in that way, rhythmically and meter wise and all that stuff, and filled out, you know, the whole song had to be written rather than, you know, 16 line poem or something, but wonderful creative ideas in there. And we would steal lines from the poems while we were writing the songs. And to have Art Garfunkel's voice in the room with you, you know, singing melody lines, that. That is an amazing experience.
[00:13:15] Speaker D: Wow.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: So, like the. After the first week when art came down to Nashville and we'd been writing together, we went in the studio to demo the songs. And I just. I'll never forget that first time in the studio. He and I were standing on the opposite sides of an 87, I think it was, and singing unison together. Here I was standing opposite of Mike looking in Art Garfunkel's eyes, and the two of us are singing the same song in unison together into the microphone. It's just amazing experience.
So one of the ways we completed that album is we kind of fleshed out the rest of the record with songs that either I had written or Maya had written a. And there's one or two that came from outside writers. But one of the songs that we recorded, and I think it was the one that kind of got art interested in even trying this idea, was a song that I'd written years before called the Kid, which is.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Yeah, one of my favorite songs ever. I've covered that.
[00:14:12] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, it's kind of become my signature song. And it's. It's been covered by a few people along the way. And that song, you know, it's funny, when I first wrote it, I thought, well, that's. That's okay. I had no idea it was going to be the song that people would come to know me by for many folks. And for that one, I. You know, I had been carrying a torch for this girl, of course, since I was about twelve or 13, you know, and we had become really good friends and even talked about how much we cared about each other and we loved each other. We said those words, but she always had a boyfriend, so the timing was never right. And I'm like, now 24 or something, and I get this letter from her. She's at a mime and clowning school in Paris, and she writes me that she and her long time boyfriend have just split up. It's big news. And so here she is in Paris. She's suddenly single. Like, if ever my moment was here, it's now. I've got to go to Paris and see how this thing might play out. So off I went. My buddy Mike Lindauer, who plays bass with me, we've been friends since we were ten. He, you know, as soon as he heard I was going, he's like, well, let's not just go for two weeks. Let's. Let's go for, you know, let's get Eurail passes. And suddenly it was both of us and a nine week trip. But we got to Paris, and my friend Karen Washington, so happy to see me and so happy to introduce me to her new boyfriend.
[00:15:35] Speaker D: No, no.
[00:15:38] Speaker C: Yeah. Like, oh, my God, really?
And we had a wonderful visit, you know, and really meaningful. But I just. When I left, I realized, all right, I have to let this go, this idea. That's not our path to be lovers in that way. And I had written part of the kid, the first verse and b section, but I was stuck on it. I didn't know what to do with it. And as soon as I just was trying to make up stories about this fictional kid who ran away with the circus, and when I got back from that trip, I sat down and played that song, the part of it that I had, and suddenly, like, oh, that's not some fictional kid. That is me. Totally me. And now I'm watering the elephants. Yeah. And so the rest of the song just poured out in a day or two. I even ended up with extra verses that I couldn't use.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So that I was really writing it as therapy for myself. But it turned out that there was a lot of people that could relate to that experience and the idea of being, you know, the kid who's the dreamer and off on this, in this fantasy of the imagination in all different ways through your life. And then it comes down to, like, well, yeah, I guess I was dreaming of this for us, too. And if I'd really been paying attention, I would have known a long time ago that it wasn't supposed to happen this way. So then to have all these years later to be in the studio with our Garfunkel and Maya Sharp and the producer Billy Mann, and getting to record that song, Washington, really amazing experience.
[00:17:16] Speaker D: But you had to go to Paris because you had to meet Art Garfunkel at some point. So there you go.
It was worth every bit of those nine weeks.
[00:17:26] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Oh, man, that. I'll never forget that trip. We had so many adventures, nine countries in nine weeks, and a little heartbreak in Paris. But it was all for the good.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: Do you remember what any of the verses were that you cut from that song?
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Well, there was a verse about, you know, the first verse is, I'm the kid who ran away at the circus. The next one is, I'm the kid who always looked out the windows in school. There was a verse, another verse I'd written called that went, I'm the kid who fell asleep in the movies, snoring right through the final scene. That's okay, because I was right there with bogey side by side in the pouring rain. It kind of goes on from there. There's a melodrama, but just another angle on, you know, the dreamer, you know. And I played it like that for a long time. And when I got to Nashville, that was the song that got the guy who was to be my manager, Bob Doyle, interested in me. Guy had given him a tape. Guy Clark had given him a tape of me singing that song. And after I'd been there a little while, he kind of tentatively said, you know, the song, you know how much I love this song, but it is a little bit long. Do you think you could cut a verse out? And of course I bristled and like, wow, you're just talking about, you know, commercial considerations, and this is art, man. It's as long as it needs to be, and blah, blah, blah.
But I really respected him. So I got home that night and thought, well, at least I'll try it. See. See if it works. If I leave one of these verses out. And that was the verse, you know, that was the third verse. And I realized I'd already told everybody all they needed to know about this character. By the time I get to the falling asleep in the movies, first it's time to go on to the heartbreak verse. You know how that all affected me when it came to this person and love. I didn't really. There was nothing wrong with it, but I didn't really need it. Like you were talking about earlier. People have attention spans, especially listening to music. So reluctantly at first, I took it out, but I'm really glad I did. The song's still, you know, about five minutes or something, but it actually is a better song. I did do a recording of it for fast folk musical magazine before I had cut the verse out. So you can find that song fast folk. All that stuff went to the Library of Congress. So Smithsonian has released that song, me singing it at, you know, 25 or six or something, when I recorded it for fast folk. And it does have the movie verse in it, too.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Oh, boy. We'll have to look for that at the Princeton record Exchange.
[00:19:58] Speaker C: Yeah, or you can listen online, too, for sure. And also, when I recorded my first album, right before I went to Nashville, I had already cut the verse by then, but my dad wrote for film documentaries mostly, but he had also written a screenplay, and so, of course, the movie verse was his favorite one. So when I printed up my first record came out on cassette, that was the era.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Was this fire of change?
[00:20:23] Speaker C: No, it was the kid I recorded. The kid on the line was the name of the album on cassette, and I somehow got the type small enough to include the lyrics in this fold out insert in the cassette case, and I included the verse, even though I didn't record the verse in the. In the lyrics in the cassette case, it's included for that.
[00:20:44] Speaker D: That's a gem. That's. You know, there's someone like, did you know, like, I've never heard this verse, but it's in there.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: I don't know why I can't figure it out.
[00:20:56] Speaker D: Listening today.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Did you ever digitize that cassette?
[00:21:01] Speaker C: I did. I had cds of it circulating around for a while. When I went to get it reproduced again, they had lost the. The album art, and I had it on, like, a sidequest file that nobody could play anymore.
So it's not available. It was available, you know, on. On CD for a while. I'm out of those. I need to just release it, you know, digitally as a. You know, files.
And I probably will at some point this year.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I'd buy it.
[00:21:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: Thanks.
[00:21:29] Speaker D: We'll both buy it. So you have two customers.
[00:21:32] Speaker C: There you go.
[00:21:33] Speaker D: I still buy iTunes.
[00:21:35] Speaker C: I do, too. I do, too. I like it. You know, everyone's listening to Spotify and Apple music and stuff, but I still buy digital albums and even cds from people that I admire.
[00:21:47] Speaker D: Well, and for everyone listening, while we've been talking, we talked about so many songs in filament. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna buy it. So I actually bought it on itunes during our conversation.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: Oh, good, man.
[00:21:59] Speaker D: Thank you very much.
It also works to encourage people to open your itunes or something and just make that purchase because it helps us out as musicians.
It's not the easiest world to reimburse yourself for the expenses of the recording.
[00:22:20] Speaker C: I mean, at our level, the albums we make and singles, if we put those out, too, it's all being recorded at a loss. You know, that work is not paying for itself. So, yeah, anything you can throw our way that way, but we can't help ourselves.
We gotta, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so much fun to see what. What can be done in the studio and all that stuff, you know? Thankfully, there is Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sources that help defray the cost. But inevitably, you know, what you spend on it is way more than. Than what you might be able to take in from the beautiful people who contribute to your project on Kickstarter, which I did for you guys.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: And thank you.
It blew me away that one of my favorite songwriters had made a contribution to our album.
[00:23:14] Speaker C: I love you guys.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: We love you back.
Goodness, what an honor it's been. You know, however you felt about Guy Clark, I feel about you.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: Oh, geez. Well, thanks.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: You are a master, and it's such an honor to have you on this podcast.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: And to call you a friend.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: Yeah, well, that's an honor for me too. And to be able to talk about this thing I love so much with you guys. I want one more thing I wanted to mention. You know, I talked about that song week that I wrote with Nick Tibbs.
About six months after, six or eight months after we had written the song, he sent me an email with pictures of his new baby. He and his girlfriend had both been through the program and had a child together, and it was just such a beautiful moment to see Nick holding that baby in his arms. Like, what a change.
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Well, life goes on, right?
[00:24:20] Speaker C: Mm hmm.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Now please enjoy listening to the tower, written by Wade Bates and Buddy Mondlach.
[00:24:34] Speaker E: Don't drown my tears I earned them don't try me in them either just let me find my own way through the only thing that I could do in a quiet tone I see her, just a little girl on her way to school how could she imagine the world could be so cruel?
I'm watching from my guard tower a rifle in my hands a farm boy from West Texas a soldier in a strange land they pour out of a car these men who then surround her I know not what they say but the words have surely bound her do they threaten her family her brother in the field mother by the river do they offer her a deal?
Don't try my tears I earned them don't drown me and them either just let me find my own way through the only thing that I could do in the quiet time I see her, she's walking to me tears are on her face her coat is missing, a vest strapped in its place I call.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: Out to her and say she must.
[00:26:33] Speaker E: Turn back the cool man won't let her the sun is turning black I try to warn her my first shot at her feet the second finds her then all sound and eat don't try and tell me me it's God's will in the end God made near than the stars but war is made by men don't dry my tears, I earned them don't drown me in them either just let me find my own way through the only thing that I could do in the quiet nights I see.
[00:27:36] Speaker D: Her.
[00:27:39] Speaker E: Someday I know I'll meet her.
[00:27:52] Speaker A: Thank you so much for listening to part two of our wonderful interview with buddy Mondaloch. If you want to find out about me or Aaron Nathans, please go to www.nathansandronstadt.com. we have information about the podcast and our upcoming music performances. We hope to see you at a show in the future, and we hope to know that you're listening to us on our podcast. So please have a wonderful week and we are thankful that you are here with us.
[00:28:17] Speaker C: Us.
