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BluesWax Sittin’ In With

Tab Benoit

Part One

Music as Good Medicine

By Don Wilcock

 

Both Tab Benoit and Anders Osborne have been to hell and back, Tab with environmental disasters that quite literally washed away his home, and Anders with a substance abuse struggle. On Tab’s new album, released April 19, they found the Medicine of collaboration to be a cure for writer’s block. Medicine is Benoit’s seventh solo CD for Telarc, but Osborne co-wrote seven of the songs, plays most of the rhythm guitar parts, and co-produced the LP. The two disappeared into the swamps of Louisiana and hammered it out. 

It had been almost a decade since I last interviewed Tab Benoit, and I found a more mature individual who now makes sure his recordings sound like his live sound, something that didn’t always happen with his earlier LPs for Justice Records, a label that pushed him in a direction that was geared for crossover rock appeal.

Recorded at Dockside Studios in Cajun country on the banks of Vermilion Bayou, Medicine also features Aaron Neville’s son Ivan on keys, Brady Blade (Emmylou Harris, Steve Earl, Dave Matthews) on drums, Chubby Carrier’s bass player Corey Duplechin and Beau Soleil’s Michael Doucet on fiddle and singer on three tracks.

David Z who has engineered and produced for Buddy Guy and Gov’t Mule engineered cuts that were captured live and mostly in one take.

The new album is the fitting calling card for a blues artist who in the last few years has earned Blues Music Awards as B.B. King Entertainer of The Year and Best Contemporary Male Performer, and a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album for Brother to the Blues. Last year he received the Governor’s Award as Conservationist of the Year by the Louisiana Wildlife Federation and is co-founder and president of Voice of The Wetlands, an organization dedicated to saving the receding wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi.

Don Wilcock: Your team-ups on albums always seem to yield results where 1 + 1 = 4.

TB: Right.

BW: It’s almost as if you’re Jagger and Richards whenever you get together with somebody, and I wondered why you think that works so well for you.

TB: Well, I think it has something to do with the people, too, you know? I mean getting along with the people you’re getting together with and having similar ideas ’cause I’ve done a lot – the majority of what I’ve done has been solo kind of thing, but when I do get together with somebody it’s usually a good timing sort of thing where we’re on the same page at the same time, and it just flows easily. 

I think that’s the main thing, making sure it comes natural and easily. It’s not something that’s forced and pre-thought up like I feel like those things get kinda corny and lost. This stuff is forever, and you’re doing it, and once it’s recorded it’s done forever, and it represents you forever, so it needs to be natural and honest and real.

BW: I was particularly thinking of the work you’d done with Jimmy Thackery on Whiskey Store and so obviously with Anders Osborne now on Medicine. I was gonna do an interview with Anders a couple of months ago, and Alligator said, “Oh, he’s a very hard interview. He’s a very hard guy to break through to,” and I wondered what happened in the chemistry between you two that broke through whatever that reserve is that he has.

TB: Well, I don’t know. I can’t speak for him. I think a lot of us know he’s gone through a lot in the last few years, and he’s trying to get himself together and straighten the thing out and continue to play through it. A lot of people are going through life changes and rehab and things like that. They disappear out there. So that’s a very honorable thing, and I think with this particular [CD] it’s just a way for both of us to get back to work, I guess. You know?

I mean I lost my place to write, hadn’t really been doing any writing, and he hadn’t been really out there doing much producing and co-writing and things like that, either. So, it was a good time for both of us to kind of go backwards a second and get back into what we were trying to accomplish which is making music that works and that lasts and says something, you know?

BW: Then, my reference to Jagger and Richards particularly applies in that the two of you found something in the other that you both were having trouble grasping on your own.

TB: Yeah, and encouragement from your peers is a good thing, and especially it’s a timing thing where both of us feel the same things at the same time, but obviously from different bags. My experience and his experience are not the same physically, but emotionally they are, you know?

BW: Yeah, how would you put that in words? How are you emotionally from the same place? I sense that, too, but I have no idea how to write about that. I need some help on that.

TB: Everybody needs help on that. That’s why we got together ’cause we needed help. [Laugh] You know, when things set you back for a second you don’t have really control over and you kind of lose control of something you’ve been controlling that you been thinking you’re in control, it’s – I can kinda give you an example. When a storm gets here, and everybody loses everything, you pool together your resources, and you pull together as a team, and you have a better chance of survival, and I think it’s happened to us literally and emotionally. We kinda just got down to the bottom of the bucket. 

Hey, if everybody helps to carry the bucket, the load is lighter, and I mean from my side that’s how that happened. I lost my place to write. I’ve been working on coastal issues here, and you just keep getting slammed over and over, and you don’t see a way out.

BW: That’s the definition of clinical depression.

TB: Yeah, but you know I think the pressure happens when you stop working on it, when you just give up and you say, “Well that’s the way its gonna be, and I can’t control it, and it’s over, and it’s done. Then, you go to a doctor, and he gives you pills to numb your brain.

BW: That sure doesn’t help you write, does it?

TB: No [chuckle], but I don’t think you have a chance to stay depressed if you stay active.

BW: Yes.

TB: That’s the whole thing. Get in there. Get active. Personally, I was tired. I’m still tired. You get hit down enough, it just wears ya down. It’s good to have somebody else encouraging you to get back up and pick up and continue moving and continue going forward, and that’s one thing we help each other to do.

BW: Considering where you’re both coming from, “Medicine” must have been a very dangerous song to write.

TB: Well, sort of, I guess, but I mean I think that’s part of it. You confront the changes head on, understand what it is, realize what it is and then you know what’s hittin’ you. If you turn your back to what’s hittin’ ya, it’s still gonna continue to hit ya, but it’s gonna be hittin’ ya in the back of the head, and you got no chances to stop it, you can’t see it coming.

“I lost my place to write.”

BW: Would you agree with the statement that adversity brings out the best in writing? I know Dylan always felt that way.

TB: Yeah, I think so to some degree. It kinda depends on what kind of writing you’re trying to do also. I mean, when you’re depressed it’s kinda hard to write happy songs, but I think what it does a lot of times it makes you think of things from a different angle, something you may not have looked at otherwise. I don’t recommend you go out and get yourself in trouble to try and come up with good material, but when it doesn’t happen, I think it’s a positive thing to recognize that this is a chance for growth, and as an artist I think that’s always what you should try and do is try to find ways to continue to grow.

BW: How did the title cut of the new album come about? What was the genesis of the idea, and who did what to whom to develop it?

TB: [Chuckle] Well, a lot of times songs come out of things you least expect. Really, it was just a joke at first because, well, we were writing on a houseboat. We’re fifteen miles form the nearest boat launch, so you have to get your stuff, load it in the boat, and we go down and spend a couple of nights away from the mainland, and Anders forgot his medicine. [Chuckle] 

So this is 9:30 at night when he realizes that, so we gotta take a boat ride at night to get it, and this is stuff he needs. So it was a joke. It was like, “bring me my medicine.” At the same time, hold on. We can do something with this. We just started to sit down and plan it, you know? We laughed a lot, too, in writing all these songs, and that was a really good thing because it brought back the fun in writing for both of us.

BW: How did he shake you loose of your exhaustion and inability to write? What was it about the chemistry there that was so good ’cause I’ve been listening to you from the very beginning and this is really good stuff. You pushed the envelope this time.

TB: Yeah, you know I think a lot of times it would be he would come up with something I didn’t want to do. [Chuckle]

BW: Like what?

TB: Like anything. He would throw an idea, and this was not sitting down drooling over a pad ad pencil. This was two guys hanging out. We got guitars in our hands. We talk and we joke and we laugh and cookin’, drinkin’ coffee, whatever, just kinda hangin’ out and we happened to have a guitar there and something would come out. I might start an idea, and then he would do something, and I’d go, “No, but you know, I see where you’re going, but here’s a better way for me to do it,” something like that. That could get you to search for the ideas inside of you to seeing something that somebody else does probably doesn’t fit, but I understand where you’re thinking of going with that.

BW: Well, I really like the allusions in “Mudboat Melissa.”

TB: Yeah.

BW: How did that one come about?

TB: Well, that was – ya know, we were sittin’ around the camp on the second day, and we always come up with things in the swamp. So we got in my boat and just went and parked it in the cypress trees in the swamp and just kind of throw things out, ya know? Well, I could hear a mudboat in the distance, so there you go. There’s a mudboat right there, and I just started pitching this bad-assed kid driving a mudboat through the swamp, [Giggle] one that’s like beautiful, and you’d love to be with her, but you’re also kind of scared of her living in the swamp on her own, and she’ll probably take you out. Everything when she passes by just kinda sort of get that attention, but hold on. Here she comes, but we were actually sitting in the cypress with the mass hanging around like that.

BW: I also like the reference to “Sunrise.” You talk about depression. You can’t take that away from you. When that sun rises every morning it’s always kind of brings a warmth. I know sometimes when I have to get u before the sun rises, I’m always so glad when it finally comes over the horizon.

TB: Yeah, it always seems like you take a break for a second to watch it come up, you know?

BW: Yes.

TB: It’s just one of the things that makes you stop for a second and reflect a little. [The day we wrote that song] the power went out right before the sun came up. I got up and went walked outside, and the sun was just coming up and had to be a time when I’m on my own, and I think Anders came up with the title, something like that, but –

BW: That’s what I like about Martha’s Vineyard. You can see the sun rise and set [on the ocean] without traveling too far.

TB: Same thing here when you’re on the water. You can see the whole sky, and that’s what I used to write, but I lost my camps in hurricanes. I had one camp I lost in Lilly which was two years before Katrina, and I got another one fixed up, and then I lost hat one in Rita which was right after Katrina, and I just got back to – I got a floatin’ one so a tidal can’t destroy it and its basically a camp boat, and I parked it in the same spot. I kept my leases out there, so I just put it out there in June, and at the end of the summer, I think it was October or November or something, we went out there and utilized it, but it was just good to get back out there to my spot where I felt I could be free of the influences of the modern world for a second. That always helps me.

BW: When we used to talk in the ’90s, you were concerned about the direction producers were trying to push you in in terms of rock versus your more fundamental Cajun and Louisiana influences, and since we hadn’t talked in a while I wondered how it feels to be free. 

On this album in particular you’re in a great studio which I’m sure had an influence, the Dockside Studio ambiance, and you’re with an engineer who has done some pretty heavy stuff. Anders is playing B.B. King’s “Lucille,” and you guys by your own admission were doing things in one take and playing live in the studio. How freeing has your experience been since you left Justice Records and maybe you could resurrect some of that for me.

TB: Well, that’s part of it. For this recording particular, I mean, I’ve worked with David Z sometime. When I first met him, he mentioned he wanted to produce a record for me, and I was like, “Look. I got rid of producers, and I don’t really care for ’em.” He was, “Yeah, me, too.” Even though he is one, he’s like as anti-producer producer, and he’ll tell you. He’s more of an engineer. 

Let him be the guy you trust on the other side of the glass, and make sure whatever you’re getting gets down there. So we all have fun together. I think that’s the whole thing. It was like they gave us a studio with all this equipment and good players, and they just let us go. We get to do whatever we want with it, all right! That’s makes it fun. I mixed the record myself at my home studios which, you know, that’s another thing, too, is I’m free to take my time and put it down there to make sure it’s ready to go before it goes. 

When you’re in the studio and you have to pay for that, I mean one little thing in the mix that might hurt you is gonna hurt you for life, and it’s not that I’m really anal or particular about things when It comes to mixing. I’m more or less about things when it comes to mixing. I’m more or less about not letting anybody mess with it after it’s recorded and try to keep it as natural sounding and just as we put it down I don’t want it charged after we’ve recorded it. So I don’t want it charged after we’ve recorded it. So I didn’t use any effect. 

The only ting I would use on mix down is maybe a little bit of reverb on something that you’d barely even notice just to keep it open, but there’s no special tricks or anything, and it’s just here we go. This is what we sound like, and that’s with us playing, and that’s all it should be. Remember, our favorite records, a lot of those early records were recorded with one microphone in mono, and even technology for brass, I mean blues players still went in there with the minimal amount of equipment and just played and they played live.

BW: It must be difficult to produce yourself.

TB: Yeah, and it took me a long time to figure out how to do that because I gotta get past the fact that it irks me to listen to it. So I wanted to step outside and listen to it as if it’s not me basically and just listen to it as a whole, and that took a little getting used to and a little practice, but I still think as time goes on it gets easier, and I get better at it.

BW: I think so. Your recorded sound sounds more like your live sound did when I heard you fifteen years ago.

TB: Right, and that’s the idea. To make it sound as [live] as possible ’cause that’s what I really am. I’m a live artist so my recording should be a snapshot of me at that time. It’s not like I’m gonna go out and make a record and then go and have to reproduce the record live. That’s the opposite of what I’m doing. I play live, and then the record should be a reproduction of my live performances, you know?

To be continued…

Don Wilcock is editor-in-chief of BluesWax. You may reach him by responding below.