Music Features - August 16th, 2013
In 2011, celebrated songwriter Tim Easton was living in the Mojave Desert, in Joshua Tree, Calif. As fans of long-gone, pioneering country rocker Gram Parsons (he frequented the place and died in a motel room there) know, Joshua Tree is a place of stark loveliness, with much in the way of cactus, peculiar flora and complex rock formations.
“Aside from the isolated beauty, there is also a Marine base where they test bombs and rehearse for war,” Easton says. “The thought of explaining bombs and war to my daughter made me sick to my stomach. It was time to move where there are families, rivers, green grass, shade trees and people rehearsing to play the Ryman.”
That would be East Nashville. Riverside Village. Easton, his wife and daughter got here on Christmas Eve of 2011.
Easton had been to town before, to play and to record. But this was full immersion, with time to explore Music City’s various scenes, and to engage. In East Nashville, he found coffee shops filled with world-class songwriters, instrumentalists, prose writers, artists and chefs. On Music Row, he found the music industry’s business nerve center. And on Lower Broadway, he found a new album ... his own.
“Something clicked one night when I saw J.D. Simo playing guitar and Joe Fick playing bass with the Don Kelley Band at Robert’s Western World. I started writing country- blues tunes with those musicians backing me up Tennessee Three (Johnny Cash’s band) style, in my mind.”
Soon, what was in mind was on record. Easton recorded new album “Not Cool” at warp speed — between Jan. 29 and Feb. 2 of this year — with Simo, Fick, Joe Pisapia, co- producers Brad Jones and Robin Eaton, and other Nashville aces.
The album is full of pulsing, Chuck (Berry) ’n’ duck roots rock, with an attention to linguistic flow and specificity that would likely please Mr. Berry. He’s got a character study about a warped fellow from Ohio, and “Gallatin Pike Blues,” a rumination on East Nashville’s sketchy and clogged artery: “From the Cumberland, I can see the stone/ Where they laid John Hartford down/ And his songs still play so gentle on all our minds.”
“John Hartford represents the warmth of the old school and also the fulfillment of the great melting pot of all good American music,” Easton says. “ ‘Gallatin Pike Blues’ is me getting regional and realizing that Nashville is my home forever. ... It’s a crooked, dirty old Pike that I avoid as much as possible, but you have to cross it sometimes if you want good chicken.”
Well traveled
Easton is from Akron, Ohio, a product of Akron Firestone High School — the same school where Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders and Joseph Arthur of Devo went. The cover of “Not Cool” includes Easton’s prom picture, with Easton sporting a tuxedo and a black eye, courtesy of a Firestone bully.
“High school wasn’t exactly easy for me, but I managed,” he says. “I was already a fairly seasoned traveler. A bit of an outcast.”
He’s been traveling since then, as well, laying his head down in Paris, London, Dublin, Los Angeles, Joshua Tree and hundreds of other locales. But Akron was a springboard for him and many others. No, it’s nothing in the water. The things in the water there aren’t all that appealing.
“I think part of Akron’s deal is that it is right on the edge of the rust belt, and that it had a very curious inferiority complex with its older brother, Cleveland, who remains the most made-fun-of town in the universe. When your older brother is the butt of that many jokes, it kind of frees you up to be whatever you want to be. Plus, it was simply a great place to grow up in America.”
After Akron, Easton forged a distinctive yet well-rooted sound, one that draws from folk and country traditions but doesn’t attempt to pretend that the past 40 years of rock ’n’ roll — those years that include the rise of Devo, The Pretenders and The Black Keys — never happened.
“Not Cool” is the eighth solo album to feature what NPR’s Meredith Ochs called Easton’s “Pleasingly scuffed voice and evocative, rooftop poetry.” The album is available in various formats, including long-playing records, 100 of which come with hand-painted jackets, available through www.timeaston.com and benefiting animal charity East C.A.N. (www.eastcan.org).
In an open letter to aspiring songwriters, Easton advised young bucks to make goals, and to wake each morning and do something toward achieving those goals. Asked about his own aspirations, he says, “My goal is to be satisfied with my work, something I haven’t always achieved, but today I’m proud to say I nailed it.”