Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: I'm Aaron Nathans.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: I'm Michael Ronstaff and today we speak.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: With one of my favorite songwriters in the world, Buddy Monlak, about what it's like to co write, that is, to collaborate with other songwriters. And we'll talk about the delicate art of writing a song about trauma. Buddy has co written with Guy Clark, Janissian, Art Garfunkel, and some fellow named Garth Brooks. His music has been covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary, as well as Nancy Griffith and David Wilcox. I love Buddys gentle voice and lyrical eye for detail. I was first captured by Buddys songwriting on the inspiring tune about Wanderlust the Kid, which I first heard as covered by the supergroup of Cry Cry Cry, made up of Darwilliams, Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Schindell more than two decades ago.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: I first met Buddy when we opened for him at the late great Barrington Coffeehouse in Barrington, New Jersey. His kindness and gentle demeanor permeates his entire being. His empathy and great storytelling draws me in live and while listening to his latest full album, Filament, and the latest single that we're featuring in the podcast today is called Girlstown.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: So in the first of this two part episode, we'll focus on that new song which he co wrote with Chelsea Ewing. Buddy paired with Chelsea to write about her life experience of being jailed shortly after her 13th birthday. We'll also speak with Buddy about his work co writing with veterans, including a powerful song he wrote with a veteran of the war in Afghanistan who had been forced to confront a girl wearing a bomb vest.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: In part two of our conversation, we'll talk about how he recenters himself after writing about difficult subjects as well as what it was like to write with some of those more prominent artists.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: This is the Nathans and Ron cast, a podcast about the songcraft and musicianship behind the songs we love. Michael Ronstadt is a conservatory trained cellist who moves seamlessly across genres and instruments.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: And Aaron is an award winning songwriter who leads a critique group and a songwriters in the round series in Philadelphia. Together we perform as the acoustic duo Aaron Nathans and Michael G. Ronstadt.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: But enough about us. Here's part one of our conversation with Buddy Monlak.
So we're here with Buddy Monlach, one of my favorite artists in the world. I seem to remember for my 40th birthday what I asked for was your album the memory wall, and I wore the grooves out of that cd.
[00:02:37] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:02:38] Speaker A: We're going to talk about your song Girlstown, and it's a new song and it's quite a bit different than a lot of the stuff that I remember of yours from years past, which are dreamier and maybe personal, and songs that kind of wash over you. Your voice tends to be very soothing, and I listen to your songs for kind of catharsis, and this one tells a story of trauma, and, I mean, how did you get started down that road?
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Well, it's interesting. Yeah. I mean, it's very much a narrative, and it's all about dealing with trauma.
A couple of years ago, right before the pandemic, I got a call from a guy, Mac Bailey, who has an organization called Music Therapy of the Rockies.
And Mac asked me if I'd like to participate in a retreat that puts songwriters and veterans together, particularly veterans who are suffering from PTSD. And it's really meant to be therapy in a certain way, although I'm, of course, not a therapist myself, but Mac certainly is. And there were other music therapists there, so I did that first weekend, and, boy, it just was such a powerful experience for me. I've probably done, I don't know, seven or eight of them since then. And, yeah, it just kind of blows my mind, you know, the. How that works and the whole idea of taking this chaotic jumble of feelings and events and memories and then somehow changing the narrative and creating a narrative that turns this traumatic thing somehow into art, you know? And it just seems to have a very powerful, positive effect for the vet.
And I just felt so honored that I have been get to be there, you know, and that they've trusted me enough to share those. Those stories and feelings.
So, yeah, it just feels like a really special thing whenever I get to do one.
So my wife, Polly, you know, has kind of been marveling at the whole process, and she has a friend, a really good friend of hers named Chelsea Ewingenhouse, who had undergone her own traumatic experience when she was just a kid and was only now kind of dealing with it and the aftereffects of it from her life. So she suggested that Chelsea and I get together, even though Chelsea's not a vet. And when we met, the story just flowed out of her, and she had already written a little bit of verse to go along with it to kind of get us started, and then we just took it from there. So we actually had finish the song in one afternoon.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Which is. That's fast for me.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Fast for anybody.
[00:05:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And so, yeah, this is. This is. This song is about Chelsea's experience as a kid getting arrested and how that colored how people saw her and eventually led to her having to leave the town where she was and go to this place called Girlstown.
And it was just kind of, you know, like reform school or something for troubled kids. So this is. This song is really her coming to terms with that experience, how other people saw her and how that colored, how she saw herself for decades afterwards. You know, Chelsea was a good kid before that and after that, too. You know, she. A friend of hers asked her to. The police were coming to the school and going to do some kind of search, and her friend just said, hey, would you hide this in your locker? They won't bother you. And Chelsea said, okay. She never knew what it was, but they searched every locker, and it turned out to be drugs of some sort. She never even knew what kind of drugs they were. They just, after they arrested her, they said it came back as a narcotic. It was such a small amount that anywhere else, it would have been a misdemeanor. But because it was in a school, it automatically became a felony in Texas anyway.
And that just, you know, threw her right into the whole juvenile justice system and eventually to Girlstown.
[00:07:00] Speaker D: Do you know if eventually. I don't know if the term would be being expunged from the record or, you know, was there any sense of justice or. I acknowledgement of misunderstanding at some point?
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Never.
She had just turned 13, so she's really just a kid when this whole thing happened. And, yeah, like I said, those events, really suddenly her name was on everybody's lips in this little town in Texas as a bad kid. And that's how everybody saw her. And she started to almost kind of see herself that way.
[00:07:39] Speaker D: Well, I mean, it's really powerful what you've done, and it's, you know, just listening to it a number of times, trying to take in the story and the bits that are in the song, which is quite a lot of verses. You know, it gives just enough so that you understand what's going on, but you still don't know the whole story. But it's okay. You had a chord in there because it's pretty much a one chord song. Well, not a one chord song, but it's got the chords move slowly, and I think you sharp four in there at some point in the. In between sections.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. In the bridge, there's sort of an instrumental bridge that happens.
And that. We did not work that out the first day in that afternoon, but later on, when I was working the song up, I thought, it needs something a little different here.
And I was just fooling around with, you know, trying, you know, I was in capo two and playing d chords up the neck, and I thought, what if I throw in, you know, like a 9th or something here? Like something that's just out of the cord, out of the key that I was in to throw, you know, some weirdness in there and some kind of atonal feeling to it, and that I thought, I'm gonna go with that because it. It reflects to me. It reflected just that things are not right here.
[00:09:08] Speaker D: It was definitely uneasy feeling, and it got its point, you know, showed the power of just how musical note choice can just keep you. It's not gonna. It's not gonna make you feel too comfortable yet. It's beautiful work. I mean.
[00:09:25] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:09:25] Speaker D: That caught my ear. And Aaron could tell you that I'm music first, listener, and then I listen to lyrics second. And it's not bad because I write lyrics, and Aaron and I write lyrics together, and we separately, we tell stories with our music. But it's very. I love it when the music either reflects or contradicts what's going on in the lyrics. And if it seems very intentional or accidentally intentional, and it just happens to line up, it's a beautiful thing because you want.
You just want everything leading that direction. It's good architecture of a song, but it doesn't feel forced in this situation. And a lot of times, those wrong notes or op notes can be used in a little too exuberantly. And in this case, it was just the right touch.
And when you move from minor to major at one point, I think that's another one that makes you feel almost at ease, but it's not quite right.
[00:10:29] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a change happening there. Well, you mentioned cats at the Coliseum, and that's a big. That minor to major thing is a big part of that, or major to minor.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: That's true. Now that I think about it. See, I mean, Michael and I, our brains work completely differently. When I hear that song, I hear cats and travel, and when Michael hears it, he probably would hear something completely different.
[00:10:55] Speaker C: Hears harmony in intervals, and I don't know if it was a 9th or a 13th or some odd number that I threw in there. I was just moving my fingers around on the fretboard. It's like, okay, that sounds disturbing there. I'm going to use that.
[00:11:11] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker C: And then just walked it down kind of in half steps, I think.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Buddy, how do you build trust with somebody, especially, you know, veterans that you've just met, or. I mean, I know that you had this connection with Chelsea, but I mean, you're walking into somebody's life asking them to open up, you know, their darkest places to you. How do you begin to get them to trust you?
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, for one, they all know why they're there, you know, and they've all volunteered to do this thing. But for me, you know, I'm just really trying to be all ears and to be empathetic and, you know, I don't try and force the conversation, especially at the beginning. You know, I just might ask them about themselves and about their childhood, how they grew up and where it was, and kind of sneak up on the. On the whole thing, whatever they're comfortable with. As we get going, I might, if I start to see a direction for a song taking shape, I might then start to ask some more specific questions. But I think by then, they're kind of into the whole thing, and they've been. They've already shared some of the details, and I'm trying to get the timeline correct and stuff like that. Yeah, it's interesting. Like, one of the vets had something so really terrible happen to him that was forced upon him, basically. And at the end of our talking session together for a couple hours, he telling me all these things that happened to him. At the end of that, I said, I'm inclined not to really write about that event directly. That just seems so. It's just kind of horrific what happened. And after I. After we both left, I got this text from him, and he said, no, actually, that's really what I want you to write about. So I just dove in, and he had written just kind of a narrative piece about that whole event.
And, I mean, basically, he was on guard duty at a base in Afghanistan, and the Taliban had sort of grabbed this little girl, you know, seven or eight, and strapped a bomb vest on her and told her to walk to the base, you know, walk up to the gate of the base.
And he kept trying to get her to stop and at a certain. And she couldn't. She wouldn't, and she couldn't because the. The guys who did that to her, I suppose there was some threat of retribution to her family or something if she didn't go through with it. Just a kid, you know, and they did this to her, and they did this to my friend who, you know, eventually there was nothing left but to shoot her because otherwise she would be bringing that bomb to the base and blowing up, blowing it up and to face that kind of decision.
I mean, it's just horrific that human beings would do that. And they knew exactly what they were doing, not only to her, but to him, too.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Boy, I'm sorry.
[00:14:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:14:33] Speaker A: It hurts to even hear about that.
[00:14:35] Speaker C: I know, I know. You can see why I thought, you know, maybe I shouldn't write that into the song. But he wrote me back. He goes, I really want to tell that story. And to me, that honors her some way, too.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Was it hard for you to go ahead and write that?
[00:14:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I was crying all the way through the writing process.
[00:14:55] Speaker A: I mean, I get the sense that you feel deeply, your songs reflect that you feel deeply. And I also get the sense that that's not an act, that.
[00:15:05] Speaker C: No, yeah, I mean, that's. That empathy that's really necessary part of the job when I'm working with them. And I think my best songs are when I can really try and imagine myself as completely as possible in a certain situation, and if it's another person's story, to really try and walk in their shoes as best I can. And, of course, you use your own experience, like actors do, I suppose. But it's his story, you know, I'm like, if that happened to me, how would I feel, you know, that kind of stuff? And put as much of that into it as I can, along with the actual narrative of the events, in such a way that you can. I mean, you've got three and a half minutes, basically, or four at the outside, and. And so it's a little tricky to make sure you're hitting all the salient points of the story in a way that anyone hearing it fresh will know what happened and how it affected, you know, the person. So it's a. It's a puzzle sometimes, but, you know, that's my job.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: And did you ever release that song?
[00:16:17] Speaker C: Mac made a compilation album of a bunch of different songs, so I went into the studio and recorded it, and it came out on a compilation record that Mac used for fundraising. So if you contributed a certain amount, you got a copy of this cd.
[00:16:34] Speaker D: Now, you mentioned that you tried not to necessarily use the content of the story as much because it was so horrific. What did you do? Like, what kind of tools do you use to tell the essence of something, but make it so it's a little easier to take in without losing the efficacy of the lesson to be learned?
[00:17:01] Speaker C: Well, ultimately, I really did put the details of the event into that song. And I should say my co writer was Wade Bates on that. He was the vet that I was working with that day. So the narrative really does explain exactly the situation he was put in. And what he had to do. But, you know, you find a way to make it clear without making it gruesome. I suppose I'll just tell you the verse where it gets to that point. So it says she's walking to me tears are on her face her coat is missing a vest strapped in its place I call out to her and say she must turn back the cruel men 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 is sound and heat don't try and tell me it's God's will in the end God made the earth and stars but war is made by men.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: God.
That's very. That's poignant.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: So, I mean, you see, I really had to. To put the hard part in there, right.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: I mean, it's difficult. It's difficult. You know, I. I killed Alan Turing in a song and I feel personally responsible.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: I understand. I understand.
[00:18:35] Speaker A: Has anybody ever died in one of your songs before?
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Oh, there's bodies left and right.
Yeah, there's definitely. Yeah. I haven't shied away from that.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: How different does this feel? I mean, were all the other ones hypothetical and imaginary or.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: Well, in a way. Some were based on, you know, real events, but I didn't know the person who died. You know, in that case, for instance, I wrote a song. It's on my new album, my latest album, which is called Filament. The song is called Jackson Petty.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Right. Historical song.
[00:19:12] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's a true story about my great great grandfather. He was Solomon Jackson Petty. And my grandmother had told me that story some time ago about him. And, you know, basically he'd been just a kid during the Civil war, the American Civil War, and in Missouri on a farm. And his father made him hide in the cornfield whenever there were soldiers in the vicinity, partly to protect him from being a. Basically conscripted, even though he was only twelve years old. You know, at that point in the war, late in the war, they were taking, you know, anybody taller than a rifle, I think was fair game.
And of course, they would also take provisions from the farms that they raided, cows and horses and stuff like that. But he was really just traumatized by that, having to do that over and over again. And it's something that he never dealt with and he carried it through into adulthood. And when World War one came along, he had sons of his own at that point and it all came rushing back on him and he couldn't face it and ended up taking his own life.
Yeah.
So that's the narrative in that song, the story I had to tell.
But I never met him, of course. He died in 1915.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Wow.
I'll listen to that song with new ears.
It's a wonderful album.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Oh, thank you.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: I was taking another listen to it today. And the song week. Did that also come from your work with the veterans?
[00:20:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah, that was. Jeez, a song I wrote the very first weekend that I participated in one of the retreats.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: That's a very powerful song.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Thanks. Yeah, I was writing with a fella named Nick Tibbs, and he was just, you know, telling me his story, and I'm just taking notes. And one of the things he said was talking about being on patrol and how you had to put your game face on, you know? And he said to me, well, you do not want to look weak when you're out there, because those are the guys that get hurt.
And I wrote that down, and I'm like, wow, there's my way into the song.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: But it's just talking about PTSD, right?
[00:21:43] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: Can you take us through the progression of the song? I mean, how do you get to the. He comes home and starts to feel weak, right? Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: Well, he comes home kind of traumatized. I mean, here's a nice guy who grew up on a farm in Texas, also, and he's forced into this situation, or it's his job. You know, he's one of those guys that was in a squad that went on raiding.
They would raid somebody's house in the middle of the night in the town, you know, and of course they're bursting in, and there's women and children there, and, you know, they don't really know for sure if the person that has been identified in some way is really a bad guy or a good guy, but they come in, you know, gangbusters, just in case he's a bad guy. I mean, someone must have said he was. And to be standing over a nine year old kid with a rifle in your hand, intimidating him and his mom, that has to have an effect on a human being, any human being who has some kind of a heart, you know, this was not how he wanted to see himself. And he got injured at some point. And when he came back from Iraq, he was in Iraq. And when he came back, you know, he went to the VA. They started giving him opiates to deal with the pain from his injury, his back injury, and sure enough, he gets addicted to that. They cut off the pills, and so he finds a heroin connection, and then gets arrested. Of course, he and his girlfriend actually both got arrested and sent to jail. And fortunately for him, there was a program that where if you took a plea deal, you could go into this program that was like a rehab thing instead of to prison. And so that's what he ended up doing. And so he was at least spared a long prison sentence.
And eventually that, you know, that's how he came to us at the retreat to music therapy of the rockies, kind of helping him deal with all the things that had happened to him.
[00:24:13] Speaker D: You know, there's a lyric in there, you know, he's kicking down. Yeah, I think you mentioned him, like, kicking down the doors.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:20] Speaker D: You know, and you just mentioned that, you know, you don't know if the person's guilty or not, but, you know, there's a whole family there. And I used to toot with and travel with a marine who said that his second tour in Iraq, you know, they did the invasion in 2001, and they had to go back. And he remembers they kicked down the doors and went into one family's house, and this gentleman looked like his dad.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:24:44] Speaker D: And he said that was the moment. It changed what he felt about the whole situation. And I think that whole looking story and everything, he probably kept it up, but that was for his fellow marines and trying to, you know, make sure you finish the job. But that job was going into innocent people's houses and searching. And he's a songwriter. He's an amazing songwriter.
[00:25:11] Speaker C: Oh, wow.
[00:25:11] Speaker D: A lot of truths. And his name is Josh Heisel.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Cool.
[00:25:14] Speaker D: And I used to have a duo called lost in Holland.
[00:25:16] Speaker C: Yeah, I'll look him up.
[00:25:17] Speaker D: Yeah, I remember he told me that story, and I was like, I mean, that had to be, you know, nine year old kid, someone that looks like your dad. You know, the whole, we're all humans, you know, it's exactly. We're crazy humans trying to do these things. And it's.
[00:25:32] Speaker C: Yeah, in a really insane situation, a war is kind of insanity on a grand scale.
[00:25:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: And, you know, of course, it's traumatic for the family. You know, their house, their door being burst down in the middle of the night, and men with guns stop, you know, yelling at them and taking their, you know, the husband away or something like that. That's trauma for them, but it's also trauma for the people who have to do that.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: Here's Girlstown by Buddy Mondlach and Chelsea Ewing. In its entirety.
[00:26:21] Speaker E: You have the right to remain silent. No one could blame you if you did. Every word will be held against you even though you're just a mixed up kid every word you don't say will be held against you, too just sign this paper and read it out loud and we'll decide what's true.
The judge, he clears his docket. The prosecutor gets another win. The gavel hits the table. One day you're out, the next you're in.
That's how you get to be a villain at 13 not quite who you thought you were but now that's how you're seen and the long arm of all will be there to hold you down just turn that smile over just turn everything over empty out your pockets welcome to Girlstown would you love me if you knew me? I guess we'll never know cause if you start to get too close I'll have to let you go every word I don't say I hold against myself I carry her around with be that young girl in a cell and the long arm up law is the only arm that holds me now just turn that smile over just turn everything over empty out your pockets welcome to girls town.
So here I am at 37 looking in the mirror trying to blink these tears away so I can see myself clear those scars around my ankles from the shackles barely show and I'm thinking if I can own it I can finally let it go so the long arm of the law will no longer hold me down just turn that smile over then turn that frame over just turn everything over goodbye to girls town I'm emptying out my pockets goodbye to girlstown.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Part two of our conversation with buddy Munlock will be in your feed soon.
