PAT GREEN WHAT I’M FOR

We are walking in the footsteps of our fathers Standing in the shadows of our mothers Trying to learn from those who came before us I see the roadmaps and lines upon their face.”

“Footsteps of Our Fathers” by Pat Green and Brett James

For a man whose new album begins with a powerful song called “Footsteps of Our Fathers,” Pat Green has blazed his own trail in a way that few artists today can claim. Even with all the artistic and popular success he has experienced along the way, What I’m For is the stirring sound of Pat Green arriving as a major American singer-songwriter who has managed to make his own way in country music and beyond. To borrow a memorable phrase from the man’s biggest hit to date, “Wave On Wave” of new faces have come along, but few have ever made such a vivid impression, both as a recording artist and performer as Pat Green. True to the title of this latest, greatest and decidedly lived-in album, Pat Green has accomplished all this by truly knowing what he’s for -- and what he’s against too. He’s done it by daring to follow his own strong gut instincts as an artist, And more than ever before on What I’m For , Green has done it by making music that honestly reflects his own attempt in his mid-thirties to actually grow up and walk like a man -- one very human footstep at a time. “I really do think of What I’m For as an album by husband and father” said Green. So when it came time to make What I’m For , Green set himself some grown-up goals. “I wanted to make a perfectly circular record -- one that you could just put on repeat and really live with for a while,” he explains. “But I also feel like my ultimate mission here was to beat the Wave On Wave album.” The Wave On Wave album – with its enduring and moving smash title track -- were released in 2003 and spread the word of Green’s remarkable talent far beyond the Texas borders where he had first established himself as a talent to reckon with back in the late Nineties. By then, Green’s charismatic live performances were already evoking comparison to the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Buffet, among others. “If I listen to Wave on Wave correctly, I’d say that I was very young writing those songs, but they were still good songs,” Green says. “Now I feel like I’ve finally come into my own and I want to write songs by a man, by a father, by a guy that kind of has a handle on the situation. And as far as I’m concerned, What I’m For is the best album I’ve ever done, and it does beat Wave on Wave , at least for me”. What I’m For also finds Green recording with the respected and extremely successful producer Dann Huff, after an important trilogy of albums made with Don Gehman, best known for his fine work with John Mellencamp. “The last three albums I recorded with Don Gehman, who was like a great producer and a great counselor,” Green recalls. “Sometimes I didn’t know if I was in therapy or making a record. For that time in my life, it was great, and forced me to develop and become more myself as an artist. But after three albums, I was ready to make a move. And I loved the sound of Dan’s records, especially with Keith Urban because they didn’t sound like every country record necessarily, and that Dann could also work so well with Faith Hill and Rascal Flatts too. Plus Dan’s a real guitar god, and that’s what I want now – someone who can make guitar records sound amazing. In my humble opinion, walking into the studio with Dann was the right next step. For me at least, it was a good fit. It just felt right musically.”

* * * Music -- all kinds of music -- has been a part of Green’s life from his beginning growing up in a blended family with nine children in Waco, Texas. “I grew up around so many kids – I had five sisters and four brothers. It was a real Yours, Mine and Ours situation and growing up around all those kids, there was so much going on and so many distractions and so many sources of feeding my younger self with music. People always ask you what are your influences, and I’ll give them some answer, but the truth is that my influences were everything from some really crappy Eighties music to the best of Motown to a little classical music. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give my own children something like that to grow up on – that incredible range of music. For instance, the first album by Terence Trent D’Arby made a huge impact on me. And from that point, I would listen to records so meticulously – to the point that I would know all the burps, and farts and bits so well of every performance musically and especially vocally of all the songs that I liked. Country music -- specifically some of the great Texas writers -- didn’t really connect with Green until a little later. “After my senior year in high school – the summer before my freshman year at Texas Tech, I had a female friend who was listening to Robert Earl Keen and I thought his songs were so incredible,” Green recalls. “The stories were great, and the music was so much deeper than the crap on the radio, they just painted a better picture with deeper colors. Robert’s music turned me on to Jerry Jeff Walker and that led me to go further back. Sure, I had already heard of Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, but now I explored it all. I fell in love with country music and the way it can be a great way of heartland storytelling – and so far from the plastic world it could be at the time, and sometimes still is. That’s a battle I’ll always have to fight and I don’t always win the battle, but if you’re trying to make a living at this, that’s the river you have to negotiate.” With the important early support of Nelson, Walker and Keen, among others, Green began to make a real name for himself as a live act with a growing fan base regionally. “Guys like Willie and Jerry Jeff and Robert Earl were letting me open their shows which was amazing. Of course, there were plenty of other times that I had to call the bar and beg for that opening gig or call the frat. It didn’t matter how I got the gig -- the important thing was to get the gig and get in front of someone else’s crowd until I began to build up my own. I owe them all a debt of gratitude not just for the platform, but also for their attitude and their example. They all had their impact without selling their souls. I was always willing to sell part of my soul, but I’ve always wanted to be in charge of what part was for sale.” So rather than leave home and try and squeeze into the Nashville system right away, Green was able to find an audience as he began to grow as a singer-songwriter on early self-released albums like 1995’s Dance Hall Dreamer and 1997’s George’s Bar . “I was happy in Austin, in love with my girlfriend who’s now my wife, making a living, making the music I love,” Green remembers. “So going to Nashville to try and become a `star’ did not seem very appealing, especially since it might mean actually making less money and getting frustrated and leaving the greatest place on the planet. So I just rejected it. We were selling a lot of records our own way – a Houston based company sold my records for me – and there still were record stores then.” Eventually, Green found a limit to such independence. “I kept running into a wall,” he recalls. “I’d go play to 1000 people in say Atlanta, but a block away the store would not have my records. That was finally what tipped things for me -- I thought I needed to get a national company that could get my music out in front of me. It wasn’t really the money. I just wanted the impact of people having my music in their possession, so they could study my quirks and kinks just like I did the people who inspired me early on. I wanted to become part of the roots system instead of just part of the scenery. So that’s when I signed my first big record deal. We started getting lots of distribution. Then all of a sudden we had a monster hit with “Wave On Wave” and then Nashville kind of perked up and said, “Okay, we’ll take you just the way you are.” What I’m For is the sound of Pat Green, just the way he is today, walking in footsteps of his own making, with respect for the past but his eyes very much on the future.

WHAT I’M FOR – SONG BY SONG WITH PAT GREEN

FOOTSTEPS OF OUR FATHERS : That song came from the line “As I look down at the brother of my daughter/As I kneel and kiss the sister of my son.” I had that line for a very long time – maybe two years. I loved it because it was a way for my to sing about my kids, without ever using the word “kids.” Nobody wanted to write the song with me. Eventually I was in Boston playing the Avalon Ballroom across the street Fenway Park, and I ran into my friend Brett James and he came up with the title and from there it came quickly. I love that there’s enough ambiguity in the song. I love to leaves holes in songs so people can read them their own way. “Wave on Wave” was one of those songs too. To me, this is the best song I’ve ever been a part of writing.

WHAT I’M FOR : One of two songs on the album that I didn’t write. It’s by Marc Beeson and Allen Shamlin. When my record company sends me songs -- and they literally send thousands -- my usual reaction is to throw up a little in my mouth. But both this song and “Let Me,” my producer brought to me. What stuck me about “What I’m For” was that it was all wheat, no chaff. I thought maybe the song was too perfect – I remember thinking anyone could have a hit of this song, but I really hope it’s me.

FEELING PRETTY GOOD TONIGHT : That’s one of my favorite songs on the record. I almost put this as the first song because the first song is generally a song you’re going to play for people the rest of your life. I wrote it with Bobby Pinson in a Nashville hotel room in the middle of the day on a day off with nothing to do that night and in that cocoon I started drinking to get myself in the songwriter mold – like an artists putting on an old favorite smock. This particular hotel had my favorite wine on the room service, For three hours, I went back to college and made a fool of myself but I had a great time and I hope wrote a great tune. I have a motto in my life – everything in moderation . . . including moderation.

LUCKY : I was sitting around one afternoon writing with my drummer Justin Pollard and Patrick Davis, and along came this list song. List songs can be easy to write because they’re usually just a long list and a chorus. I was blanking on the chorus but Patrick Davis really came through on that chorus. I didn’t think the song would change the world or save the whales, but I just thought it was the American Guy ditty that any average Joe could relate to. It’s my “Glory Days” – I hope. For the record, I’ve always loved Springsteen and his ability to sing the phone book live and destroy the house, but with The Rising I found my favorite album of all time.

IN THIS WORLD : What I was getting at – and this is the only song on the album I wrote by myself – is that we always seem to grow up focused on the money, on pride and the great piling and storage of money. Walt Wilkins -- one of my favorite legendary Texas writers -- has a line about watching it rain out of his favorite window, and I just kind of fell onto that one night and an alternate tuning that spoke to me.

COUNTRY STAR : I don’t know what country music will think of that song. I wrote that with Brett James, the same guy I wrote “Footsteps of Our Father” with. He’s a top Nashville cat who wrote “Jesus Take The Wheel” and a bazillion number one hits. We were sitting on my front porch in Fort Worth, Texas. We’re buddies now and it became another of those perfect, wine-fuelled evenings in fall weather when you can sit out all night for days. And Brett said, you know that song “Rock Star” by Nickelback, let’s write the country version.” And I said okay, but if we do this, we have to scoop up the names we’re dropping with a front end loader.” The song you hear is not what we finished that night. We kind of rounded the corner. Anyone who knows me at all knows just how much I am joking. Obviously, I haven’t worried too much or enough about being a country star.

LET ME : I didn’t write this song, but Marc Beeson is a genius, and the melody hook is bigger than the lyric hook. That French Police sounding chorus is sick it’s so pervasive and completely intoxicating to the listener. The fact that it’s this big love song that never says the word “love” got my attention immediately. My dad is a big critic and a wonderful guy who has described me as his son the one hit wonder. He once said, “Pat, don’t ever sing me one of those stupid songs that rhymes `love’ with `dove’ and `above.’” So I played him this song and he approved.

IN IT FOR THE MONEY : That was one of those “Duh” moments. I was with Patrick Davis, one of those guys I love to write with because we both have this quasi-cynical view of Nashville and the system. We wanted to hit on that a little bit. Like most of songs on this album, once the idea came, the song came in a matter of minutes. Once the pen hit the paper, it didn’t come off until it was written and then it was time for lunch. It’s two stories – one story about a guy meeting a hooker, and the age-old story of love or money there. Then we draw the parallel to fame being a prostitute. I’m not sure if I’m a hooker with a heart of gold – at least the heart of gold part.

CARRY ON : That song is a thousand years old. Our third album was called Carry On . Believe it or not, this is our thirteenth album. So I wrote it ten or eleven years ago, and I wrote it with my mentor in songwriting Walt Wilkins. It was my first trip to Nashville. I’d never seen the place, and we sat in his house all day trying to write a song. I wasn’t an experienced songwriter then -- and I still wouldn’t say I’m a good songwriter -- but we couldn’t get anything out. So we went to Starbucks – at that point there was one in Nashville -- and saw a really pretty girl. Once we saw the pretty girl, the song came quickly.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT : God, that song does not leave a lot open to interpretation. It’s about growing up and cleaning up your act. We all go through it in different ways, and I was going through it as I was writing that song. I guess I just hit that point of not wanting to take yourself -- and this life -- for granted anymore.

-- David Wild