Jerry Jeff Walker reflects on Steve Goodman and himself: ‘Most of us, if we’ve lasted, I think we’re characters, and we bring that to our songs’ This interview of Jerry Jeff Walker, who died Oct. 23, 2020, was conducted by phone by Clay Eals on June 30, 2003, for the book “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music” (2007, ECW Press, in updated fourth printinG). [There’s a story about your giving Steve a three-quarter guitar, same as the one that’s on the cover of a Bonnie Gentry LP.] I think I did give him a little Martin. I think it was in New York. I used to carry this little guitar. I’d give them to everybody. I gave Arlo (Guthrie) one, I gave Emmylou Harris one. Like Marty Robbins played, those little three-quarter jobs? They were neat little guitars. I called them car guitars. A lot of times, I’d give it to them, but they couldn’t buy a case for it. They’d have to carry it around on a string. I always figured guitars that were out got played more. [Describe Steve Goodman.] Technically, he was a lot better than a lot of us singer/songwriter types were. Arlo and Prine and I were strummers, and Steve was a fingerpicker. He presented his songs well. Most of us, whatever our personalities, if we’ve lasted, like Buffett and Prine and myself, I think we’re characters, and we bring that to our songs, and Steve had a good sense of humor, like most songwriters do. A friend of mine said, “We’re the ones with the personalities,” not the stars that can’t say anything but go out and have to be hand-fed their songs. In the songwriting community, we’re all characters, and we carve out our little niches, and he showed his humor, he showed his intellect — a smart guy, as opposed to somebody who sang — and presented it, put the whole package together when he played and sang, from his arrangements to what he chose. We don’t have the singer/songwriter coming out of folk music with that kind of knowledge of history and how the song is constructed. Like “City of New Orleans,” a history of trains and America and that sort of thing, that you weave a little something together that gives you more 1 than just the surface song. It became folk music, and we learned the craft first, and we learned from the variety of music. I don’t know what attracts people to the depth of music. I always thought when we discovered folk music, we discovered a whole lot of stuff. (Bob) Dylan said we could never dream it up, that life is so wild with murders and earthquakes, the things that the folk music was about, that we said that was real stuff, so we had to dig in to try to top it. When I did “Mr. Bojangles,” I was writing a folk- story philosophy song. “City of New Orleans” was that type of song. Through a story, you go around, and you get a little sense of a bigger thing going on outside of life. It’s like hearing some tales of your great-great-grandfather coming from someplace and starting with nothing and doing this or doing that. And you think, “Wow, boy, we think things are weird.” Went through the Depression or the Dust Bowl things and hear stories of human struggle and survival. That’s what folk music was. I’m kind of getting off to the side. The one thing that ties this is, he did “The Dutchman.” I’d always liked the song, but sometimes it takes me a long time to decide if I’m going to do it, and I wound up doing it later. Everybody said, “Oh, you did a Steve Goodman song.” “Well, it’s really a Michael Smith.” I’ve never met him. I had a song called “My Old Man” about a fiddler player traveling around, passing through some towns, and the Clancy Brothers did it on one of their albums, and I went to buy their album to hear how they did it, and I wound up hearing them do “The Dutchman,” with a little concertina. I just kept it in my mind. I learned it from there. Later, when I was looking for a song to fill up an album, a lot of times that’s what I’ll do, I’ll just have them around, and then if I’m looking for something, I’ll take a pass at a song, and the band will say, “Let’s do that,” and that’s how it got into my rotation. Then I went to do a Caribbean album in Belize, when I was down by the water. The other night, I was down with some people fishing, and we went to a seaside restaurant for dinner. I took my guitar along. I said, “We’re right by the water. I should do ‘The Dutchman.’” [How does it go over when you do it?] I usually place it in some sort of setting. Listening rooms are a lot more fun. If I’m with 2 more elderly couples or people seem to be in the audience, that’s when I do it, where it makes sense to me. I always say it’s about growing old together, covering each other. One of them goes, and how much they lean on each other. [Did you know early on that Steve Goodman was sick?] I didn’t know early on, but when he was playing after his chemo and his hair was falling out (in 1983-1984), I thought it was something he was going to go through and then play some more. I thought, “Why wouldn’t he wait?” By then I’d had to do some of the same thing. I had neck surgery and fusion, and I had dates on the book, and I had to go play, and I had to go early, and I played with a neck brace on. I’d say, “I don’t want you to take pictures,” and they’d run up, and I would take my hat off and block ’em. “I don’t want to be photographed this way. I’m doing what I have to do, but I really didn’t want to go do it,” but they were things that people had planned for for a year, so I got out there, and I said, “I didn’t think I’d be doing this at this point.” I don’t know. Maybe he just felt, “I want to play music as long as I can play it.” It’s a mixture of doing it, but you want to be doing what you do. When I would play, I would actually play better than I thought I felt when I played. When I got through, I said, “I don’t know how I just did all that.” [You get energized by being on stage.] Well, jumping up and down and moving my vertebras wasn’t good for it, but it brings joy to your system, and I said, “There’s therapeutic joys in music,” so in that sense, down the road, I was thinking about it. The Texas Playboys are the oldest group in Texas playing. They were Bob Wills, then they were Texas Playboys, and all of them have played and played and played. Now, most everybody in the band has been in the band playing when they passed away, right after the show. They were still actively involved in the band when they died. It’s like four of them that are gone. So you think, “Well, they’re doing something that they do all the way.” A football player friend of mine, I was telling him one day, I was sore from traveling. He said, “Well, but y’know what, you’re still suiting up. Most of us are sittin’ on the bench.” So we have the opportunity to do something that we do for as long as we can do it. In that sense, it makes people wonder why we do it. Why does Paul 3 McCartney still tour when he’s got more money than he needs? I think he says, “Music is part of my life. When I’m playing, I’m doing what I’m better at than anything.” [Did Steve’s leukemia change the way you viewed him?] Only in the sense that I thought he was playing out there with his disease exposed, and you wonder. But I think that he would only do it as long as he thought he was doing it well. If you walk off and feel good and the crowd had a good time, you go, “Hey, I did my job, and I contributed,” and it makes you feel good to make people feel good. His humor was part of his life. Well, you have to keep looking at whatever cards you’re dealt and how you present them. [Why do you think Steve Goodman was not a household name?] I can remember people saying Bob Dylan would never amount to anything. He’s too wordy and too smart. But he’s probably more known for the songs that are the simpler versions. He’s more known for “Blowin’ in the Wind” than he is for “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.” Steve’s probably more known for “You Don’t Have to Call Me Darlin’ Darlin’,” which was a throwaway.