Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: This is the Nathan's and Roncast, the podcast about the songcraft and musicianship behind the songs we love. And today we have a real treat for you. We interviewed folk music legend Livingston Taylor, someone whose music has been in my collection for a very long time.
[00:00:24] Speaker C: Livingston and I connected off mic over his collaborations with my very famous aunt Linda throughout the years. He holds a deep respect for her and I'm so thankful. In part one of our conversation with Livingston Taylor, we talk about the importance of dressing for the occasion. We talk about how he worked with the BBC Concert Orchestra for his new album, including how he works with his arranger, Bill Elliot for orchestral treatments.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: He talks about how he does not write simple albums or songs and how inspired he gets by songs from the Great American Songbook. And he takes out his guitar to show us what he means. Here's the start of our conversation with Livingston Taylor.
[00:01:06] Speaker D: We're here with Livingston Taylor today. What an honor.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Aaron. A delight to be with you.
[00:01:13] Speaker D: Thank you. And with us is my good friend Michael Ronstadt.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: It's just such an honor to have you with us.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Well, the feeling is mutual. Thank you, gentlemen.
[00:01:19] Speaker D: Yeah, I've seen you a number of times in concert. I bought your stage performance book and I was just saying a moment ago that I was trying to avoid using the word fastidious, but there it is, performers. In fact, I remember seeing you at the Philadelphia Folk Festival backstage, and we had a very nice conversation. But I did catch your eyes looking at my yellow T shirt as if to say, without actually saying it, you need to be wearing something better.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Jim Belushi was questioning my wearing a collared shirt and a bow tie at one point.
And I found myself saying to Jim, jim, you can always dress down.
[00:02:02] Speaker D: When you go to the grocery store. Do you wear the bow tie? I mean, people are going to see you the moment you walk out of your home.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Well, I don't have it here and I don't have it at a grocery store. One of the things I often do is I will put on a bow tie and just tuck it into my shirt and leave my collar open. So if I ever had to tie it up and get formal, you could do it in just in a heartbeat.
[00:02:25] Speaker D: The man is ready.
[00:02:26] Speaker C: Always prepared, always.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: As I'm fond of saying, it is sad to be ready and not be called.
And it is tragic to be called and not be ready.
[00:02:44] Speaker C: Well, that's wonderful.
[00:02:45] Speaker D: Well, you know, the first time I ever encountered your name, I was living in Vermont and I was doing some Freelancing for the Seven Days Weekly newspaper. And they handed me your album Bicycle. I don't think it was even to review it. I think it was just, here, have this. And I must have worn out the grooves in that thing. That was such a delicious album. And the song Boatman just, just knocked me over.
That's how I got to know you, by reputation. And then once I moved out East, I got to see you play a number of shows. So I was really delighted to see that you recently recorded with the BBC. What's the name? The BBC Orchestra.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the BBC Concert Orchestra is the name they like to go by. And it's a 58 piece symphony. And I recorded in June of 2023. I went to London and we made a record together and it was a whole lot of fun.
[00:03:43] Speaker D: I bet on the album you talk about you kind of casually say, this is a life dream for me. Tell me about that dream.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Well, again, there are different experiences that you, you get to have as a musician. Some of them can't come TR of them. If you get to a place where you can afford to do it, they do come true. And I found myself in a position where I could afford to go to England, hire the BBC Concert Orchestra and just record 11 songs that my arranger and I had put together over the years.
I have one dear friend who said, how are you going to make the money back on this? I said to him, well, I'm not going to. It was either do this or buy a stupid Tesla. You know, I, I don't need a new car. I really need to record with the BBC Concert Orchestra and immerse myself in that type of musical bouillabez boy. It was fun.
[00:04:46] Speaker C: It looked like you were having fun on the videos that I watched from the album on your website. The orchestra sounds brilliant. I love the arranging.
We learn more about you're a ranger. Is it a long term musical relationship that you've had with them?
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah, his name is Bill Elliot and he came in when I was, oh, 21 or so and he was playing piano. There was a fellow named Walter Robinson playing bass. And so it was Bill and Walter and I and we just traveled around the country playing as a trio. Bill and I worked together in that capacity for about two years, something like that. And then Bill went off to do other projects. He's a big band arranger. He had a orchestra for a long time in California called the Bill Elliot Swing Orchestra and that was a big band and he's a wonderful arranger. Eventually he came Back to teach film scoring and arranging at the Berklee College of Music. Our paths had never been that far. We would speak with one another on a regular basis. And so he had done arrangements for me when I would occasionally do pops concerts. And we just took all of those charts, plus added a few more and went and recorded them up.
[00:06:03] Speaker C: Wonderful. And are you. You're still faculty at Berkeley?
[00:06:06] Speaker A: No, I retired from Berkeley. I'm part time faculty now at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami in Florida.
[00:06:18] Speaker C: So you're not seeing your colleague in the hallways every day at this point, but you still work together often and this is a beautiful collaboration here.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: No, Bill's retired as well, and however, we do go out and do pops concerts and we travel together to do that.
[00:06:34] Speaker C: That's wonderful.
[00:06:35] Speaker D: So I went back and listened to Bicycle Again for the first time in a while and it really struck me, especially after listening to the new album, just how orchestrated it was. I'm not misremembering this, right, that there's some pretty intricate arrangements, maybe not a full orchestra, but.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I don't make simple albums. I. I don't write simple songs. I mean, there are lots of chord changes, there's a lot of directions, there are key changes and chord changes. And I'm a complicated songwriter. Complicated songs interest me. What was the phrase I heard the other day? Pete Seeger said no song should have over three chords in it. And I, you know, I just. When I'm listening to Gershwin, Someone to Watch Over Me, or Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart write a book. Or Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein playing oh, what a Beautiful Morning. I mean, these are beautifully crafted songs and they're not simple to write, they're not simple to learn, and they're not simple to play.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: Agreed, agreed.
I mean, I agree with you fully and. But they're wonderful when you do play them. Aaron actually was telling me that when he's seen you perform, you play a lot of standards.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
[00:07:48] Speaker C: So I can see the love for the standards come through in your set list, in essence. And I think that's one of the best influences for songwriting, in my opinion, because as one who goes down the jazz rabbit hole on I play jazz cello and do jazz guitar, and I'm a more than three chord songwriter. Complicated songwriter. I fully agree. And some of those influences, sometimes the song has to be simple, but a lot of times there's some nuance that the complication can really guide it into the perfect place and have a good.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Setting so you would have a song by Jerome Kern, Dorothy Fields.
[00:08:35] Speaker E: Nothing's impossible like about.
But when my chin is on the ground.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: I pick myself, I dust myself off.
[00:08:46] Speaker E: Start all over again.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Let me know when I've taken up my three chord allotment.
Listen to where Jerry Kern goes now when he writes.
[00:09:03] Speaker E: Don't lose your confidence. If you slept, be thankful for a blessed trip.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Just pick yourself up and dust yourself off.
[00:09:14] Speaker E: Start all over again.
Work like a soul inspired.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: Till the battle of the day is done.
You may be sick and tired, but.
[00:09:30] Speaker E: In the end you won.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Do you remember the women and the.
[00:09:37] Speaker E: Men who would have to all to rise again? They pitch themselves up and they dust themselves off.
And they start all over again.
And they start all over again.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: By the way, nothing simple about that writing, but how.
So you learn to play that song, and then what that I. I will play you quickly what that song informed for me. So I had that one.
And then that turned into this song of mine.
You can do it till the dream comes true.
[00:10:40] Speaker E: You can do it till the sky goes blue.
I know it's dark, but in your.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Heart there's a light that will see through.
[00:10:53] Speaker E: Here's a melody to help you call.
Even when you're at the itty bitty end of your row.
Jump up, join in again.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Shoulders hops, take out your chin.
[00:11:09] Speaker E: Elbow grease and so.
Oh, never lose.
Oh.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: So that song continues like that, but. But again you learn a song like a. Start all over again. Dorothy Fields, Jerome KERN. From the mid-30s. I think it was in a Fred Astaire movie. Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers movie. I'm forgetting the name of the film. But again, for your listeners who are struggling to write lyrics or to write songs, learn great songs and then go ahead and borrow liberally. You won't. You won't get caught. They did the same thing.
[00:12:04] Speaker D: What were some of those chords that you were playing? Do you know the names of them?
[00:12:07] Speaker A: Well, I mean, ultimately, I know the names of them and you sort of.
So you can do. So if I.
I can figure out what deviation of D flat that chord is.
Obviously that's a diminished chord.
[00:12:42] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: But again, what is more beautiful than just the, you know, the one.
The octave and the octave again. So can we make them fold together, by the way, it's one thing to write them, it's quite another to learn how to play them. It takes me a long time to write a song, and it takes me a much longer time to learn how to play it.
[00:13:09] Speaker D: How important is it that a songwriter Learn those kinds of chords. I mean, is that something that you cover when you teach that complexity?
[00:13:18] Speaker A: No. What is important is that you write stuff that makes people feel better about themselves, at which point they give you the universally agreed upon exchange of service and value, and that's called money. And when they give you money, then you can continue to do what you're doing for a living. So do you need to know any of this? No. What do you need to do? To be a valued member of a tribal infrastructure is to be of service to that tribe. Sometimes you do it with music, other times you do it by fixing air conditioning systems. Other times by being a doctor or a nurse. But being of service is essential.
And so if you want to do that as a musician, then I suggest you have lots of tools in a toolbox. You know, maybe you will never need them, but you are liable to.
[00:14:20] Speaker C: Well, I. Sometimes certain chord shapes. For example, I love an augmented chord shape, you know, and adding the nine or, you know, trying to have that basic shape. And I love it because it just. Once you have it, all of a sudden you're writing something and you're like, that's it. I have my melody note there. You know, like, I. I wrote something recently that had. You know, I just. I had a basic B7, but the melody was the sharp 5 of it. So that F sharp was brought up to the G and it really made the song stand out when it could have been less effective otherwise. And not that being creative with that makes the song work, but it's part of the tool kit that gets it going.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: Yes. If you're carving wood, how many chisels do you need?
Just one. Sure, you can do a lot of work with one chisel, but it is nice, as your skill set grows to have the nuance of the subtlety of augmented 5 and then drifting that down. My wife is a professional chef, and to watch her find flavors, to suggest something, to put a flavor into a sauce that takes you from one direction to another. These creative inclinations are very pleasant.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: And I love food. Food and music. And you're a lucky gentleman to have such great food.
[00:15:41] Speaker A: Oh, yes, I am. That's right.
[00:15:43] Speaker C: It's nice to know where your influences come from. And they come from great songs. And I've made note. And for any of our listeners, start all over again. And then that inspired Never Lose Hope from your album Last Alaska Moon. I just want any listeners to know they can go listen to it back to back and smile.
[00:16:01] Speaker A: So, yeah, there's something that's Also for your listeners in terms of songwriting. To me, there have been two great shifts in popular music. The first shift came around 1960, because pre1960, if you did a recording session, everybody in 1957 was in the studio at the same time time. If Frank Sinatra was recording at capitol, you had 75 people in that studio, the downbeat coming at 11 o' clock. And trust me, everybody in that environment knew what they were doing and could do it well on request.
Multi track recording allowed a infrastructure that had been fired in the crucible of that discipline.
Now you were wide open. You could record a basic track, you could have an artist who couldn't sing their way out of Wet Paper Bag, but they had other traits that were desirable. You could work with them, you could have singer songwriters, you could bring in a group where the drummer couldn't play their way outside and you could simply work with that drummer for day, week, month, year to get what you needed. So it allowed a combination of music and marketability that had never existed before. And it blew the record industry wide open. And again, a record industry that was all filled with people who had been fired in the discipline of 50, 70 member recording sessions.
And so that gave us a musical ground from the 60s through the early 80s. And I don't have to tell you two how fertile that ground was.
The night they drove Old Dixie down the Steely Dan peg, you know, the list just goes on forever. Stevie Wonder, I mean all of Motown, it's just, it's an incredible assemblage that multi track recording made possible.
You go through the 60s, 70s with that. And then to me, something very interesting happened. In the 80s, early 80s, video became a component of marketing music and it meant less importance on the storyline of the song itself because the song no longer had to carry the song and the video worked together to make a marketable item. And so this is why we sit around sort of incredulous when we hear our current music and we say, this is no better than what my Aunt Linda was doing in 1976, for God's sake. And no it isn't. But that's because Linda had no video to market what she was doing. Occasionally a visit to Midnight Special, but that's as far as it went. Other than that all of it was in the content of that vocal and lyric.
[00:19:37] Speaker C: You know, I would almost say that some of the video that you do see from Space Oddity or something, you know, like it's, it's experimental, like it's very, it's kind of out there and. And people were just doing wild things. And it makes me think of Perez, who experimented with tape, electroacoustic stuff, you know, splicing tape and putting it together from different places. And it has that playground. And then once it becomes accessible to enough people, then. Okay, then it becomes a tool of promo and requirement. And of course, you've got the song video Killed the Radio Star, which explains all that in some way too, from the era, which in kind of a funny way. But yeah, it's. I mean, it's. It's definitely a different landscape these days. And I'm always thankful that there's still a folk tradition that's rich and happening, even if it's not always visible. You dig a little deeper, you find this folk tradition, you know, you have to search through a bunch of people because everyone can record anything, but when you find it, it's special and. And it's still there and people are still trying to make a difference.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: And yes, one of the things that happens. And listen to this very clearly, guys, because this is not insignificant.
One of the things that happens when I pick up this guitar and I write and I sing.
[00:20:53] Speaker E: Twinkle twinkle little star How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high Like a diamond in the sky Twinkle little star How I wonder what you are.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: You are hearing me at different locations because of something called flowing electrons.
Make no mistake, I can make that sound.
And I need nothing other than me and this guitar, the exact same combination. And if I wanted, I could have simply sung a Twinkle, twinkle little star How I wonder what you are. It is the reason why the folk music is that it requires no flowing electrons. Flowing electrons are hard to get and they are hard to deal with. We take them for granted, but make no mistake, they have been with us only since Alessandria Volta built the first battery in 1799. And so the essence of folk music is that you can do it without the use of flowing electricity. And by the way, for your physics listeners, I'm aware that electrons don't flow, and I. Yeah, it was poetic license. Get off my back.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: Thank you for listening to the Nathan's and Roncast. Stay tuned for part two. But until then, please enjoy Livingston Taylor's song Kitty Hawk, performed live with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Out now on all platforms.
[00:23:21] Speaker E: Spread your wings.
We're about to be free.
Lady Hawk december nineteen three.
What a time for humankind. What an era to the end.
Electric light to push back Night Einstein in Berlin Edison Dan Woofies Ford's Rolling Wheels Rockefeller's energy, Morgan's ruthless deals Put into this mix two earnest, quiet men who with their sister Kathryn the adventure dead it began with the hubris that was the time they looked and they saw the triad that became flight Pitch, Roll, yaw and they can fly they can soar into the air look into Fort Ethel Find the future there Spread your wings we're about to be Free Kitty Hawk December 19Free the Morning comes the wind is right the plane is on the rail Daniel's camera sees the moment pass for 12 short seconds they fly across the sand and the end of an ancient dream's reality At.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: A hundred years have come and gone Imagine.
[00:25:47] Speaker E: What'S in store as we tug on God's great beard and tap upon his.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Door to the truth that lives in.
[00:25:58] Speaker E: Space we have set our sights standing on the shoulders of Orbal and Wilbur Ride and we can fight we can soar into the air look into forever Find the future there Spread your wings We're a vouch to be Free Kitty Hawk 12-19- Kitty Hawk 12-19:3 SAM.
