Chords for Jesse Winchester Interview

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Bb] _ Jesse Scott from MusicFog here at the Mansion on O, [Gb] which is one of my very favorite places
to come to because I always [C] see things that are amazing and [Bb] wonderful and that includes
the people that come here.
Jesse Winchester is with us.
Thank you.
It's so good to see you.
You too.
What do you think of the place?
_ I'm not sure it's got into my rational mind yet.
It's kind of an impression.
It's an amazing place.
Cindy tried to describe it to somebody on the phone and she said she just wasn't able
to do it.
So that's kind of how [Bbm] I feel about it.
[Bb] I don't know.
It's an amazing place.
Jesse Winchester is [C] performing here tonight and you have a new album coming out [Bbm] called
Love Filling Station.
Where did the name come from?
It's a [Bb] line from one of the songs on the record.
_ _ _ The song is called Wear Me Out.
_ _ _ _ _ It's been a long time coming in between albums.
It has.
I'm just one of the slowest people in the world I think.
_ I can't explain that either. _
_ [Bbm] Without my wife pushing me, I don't know when I'll ever get out of bed in the morning.
But anyway, there it is.
It's a wonderful [Bb] album and I love how there's so much R&B Memphis in it.
There's just you hear the river.
As far as in my ear anyway.
Well thank you.
That's a nice thing to say.
It is.
Just a fact with you that where you marry these really earthy and wonderful _ observations
with music also that has cadence and soul.
_ _ That's kind of a profile that you've always done I think.
Thank you, Josie.
_ How do you write?
How does the inspiration take hold?
I just sit down and start playing.
Or sometimes _ wherever I am I just sing to myself and every now and [Eb] then an idea comes.
I [Bb] have no idea where _ inspiration comes from.
_ _ And I can't control it, which is kind of scary.
But once I do get an idea, then from that point I can _ work at it.
I can [Cm] show up every day at nine to [Bbm] five and flesh it out and make sure [Bb] everything rhymes correctly
[Gb] and scans properly so the _ words always fit [Bb] the same melody and so forth.
I'm kind of a _ _ _ classical _ American songwriter that way in that I obey the rules pretty much.
The standard rules like Harlan Howard said, the great classical songwriter said,
three chords are the truth.
_ I'm sort of that school.
I think that you do an amazing job of the craft of it.
But I'm really interested to hear you say that you do nine to five.
Is that really the truth?
No, that's an exaggeration.
Ha ha ha! _ _
You know, I show up.
The muse doesn't always show up, but I show up.
Well, it just kind of is interesting to me because I lived in Nashville for a while
and people make appointments there to go write together
and I wonder if they invite the muse to those appointments.
Evidently they do because they sure write some [Bbm] beautiful songs in Nashville
[Gb] and they do it sometimes as a committee, [Bbm] often as a committee, as a group.
I've never been able to do that.
I think I'm too full of myself, too egotistical to be able to share.
[Bb] I just don't know what to do.
And I've tried to write, I wrote a few songs with Don, the great Don Schmitz,
[Bbm] and even with Don, who's a dear friend of mine,
I'm just not able to do the collaboration thing.
_ Collaboration is its own animal, you [Bb] know.
It is.
You have to be [Bbm] generous.
I don't think I _ want to share.
I hope that's not it, but that's [Gb] the worst interpretation.
No, I don't really look at it that way.
I just think that you're being spoken to,
that there's [Bb] something that comes through you,
you [Bbm] are a conduit for, you are a vessel,
and it comes to you and you're very definitive about what it is. _
That's a possibility.
Another possibility, I think this is pretty close to it,
is that I have to feel comfortable making a lot of mistakes.
I mean, most of my writing day is spent making mistakes.
And if there's somebody else sitting there listening to me make mistakes,
I get shy about that.
I don't like that.
I like to be in a room where nobody can hear me mess up,
and I just sit there and mess up all day long.
Well, you know, practice makes perfect.
I guess.
Talk about growing up [Bb] in Memphis.
_ _ _ I don't have a lot to compare [Gb] it to.
I don't know.
_ The first 12 [Bb] years of my life,
we lived on a succession of small farms in Mississippi.
Daddy had a heart attack when I was 12,
and we moved back to Memphis where [Bbm] his family and my mother's family were from.
_ [Bm] _ [Bbm] And it was a great town to grow up in, musically especially.
We had [Bb] _
some of the best disc jockeys in radio stations ever.
We had Dewey Phillips, and Rufus Thomas was a disc jockey,
and B.B. King was [E] a disc jockey [Gb] in Memphis,
and Nate D.
Williams was a great gospel DJ. _
_ I [Bb] learned from all these people.
Of course Elvis and all that rockabilly stuff [Em] started happening [Bb] when I was a _ _ _ little tiny.
_ [Bbm] It's a fabulous city.
I was just there in [Bb] February,
and I'm heart sick at how much destruction and decay there is,
but you still [Bbm] feel the elements that came together to make that town so special.
You do.
Memphis is going through some hard times like you say, Jess.
I don't know what it seems like.
All I [Bb] can say is I believe it's a spiritual problem,
and I don't know _ how to fix [Gb] that other than a spiritual remedy.
[Bb] Well, I think that it was, if you will, almost a canary in the coal mine.
There are many, many other cities that are experiencing that now, that urban blight,
and there's got to be a way to make our cities work,
to make them habitable, to make them support the people that live there,
that there's a [F] dance that goes on, and that's essential.
I love the concept of city.
I think that _ as a place to share ideas
and have [B] the fabric of your life woven together,
that you can work there, you can play there, you can [Bbm] live there,
you can raise your family there, and that it's seamless. _ _
[Bb] It is.
That's well [Bbm] put.
_ _ [C] Sometimes I get really kind of [Bbm] _ _ sad about the whole [Bb] situation in Memphis,
and I wonder if our ancestors didn't poison the well.
I sure hope not.
I don't think they did.
[Gb] I hope not.
I just see it everywhere.
We travel around the country, and there's so [Bb] many places that are hurting,
and we need to figure out a better way to make it for all of us.
It's a brotherhood thing, really.