Interview with Singer/Songwriter Claire Lynch

INTRODUCTION

If you were to engage a typical bluegrass or Americana music fan in a chat about Compass recording artist Claire Lynch, your discussion would likely turn quickly to Claire’s singing. This would be fitting because Claire has one of the best voices in either genre. She was the International Bluegrass Music Association Female Vocalist of the Year in 2013, 2010, and 1997, and the top-tier vocalists with whom she has recorded are legion. A partial list of these artists includes Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Pam Tillis, Alison Brown, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea, and Ralph Stanley. She has also guested on recordings by Donna the Buffalo, Sara Watkins, The Infamous Stringdusters, the Gibson Brothers, Jonathan Edwards, and Jesse Winchester. Claire’s impressive resume is the result of a voice that is stylistically unique, crystalline in tone, and inerrant in pitch.

But Claire is also a seasoned songwriter, and that is the focus of my interview with her. Claire honed her writing skills over decades, both individually and in collaboration with other artists. She spent seven years as a Music Row staff writer where she picked up some of the tools that she talked about with me. Her songs have been recorded by The Seldom Scene, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea, Cherryholmes, The Whites, and others. Claire has also collaborated with a number of songwriters, including Jennifer Kimball, Pamela Brown Hayes, Don Dunn, Craig Fuller, Louisa Branscomb, and Irene Kelly. Amazingly, after over four decades as a professional songwriter, Claire is still jazzed by writing music and looking for new ways to create it. Claire sums up the mystery and appeal of the creative process quite simply: “It’s magic.”

Claire was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, but it was in the Deep South state of Alabama where she picked up the influences that would begin to shape her career. Her family moved to Huntsville when she was 12 years old, and Claire soon became immersed in the bluegrass scene with a group that eventually became The Front Porch String Band. Although her work with this unit appears early on in her recording career, it is high-quality material–beautifully wrought with impeccable vocals and musicianship.
The recordings that Claire would later produce with her own band more than adhered to this high standard. The Claire Lynch Band, which has previously included veterans Jim Hurst (guitar and vocals) Missy Raines (acoustic bass), and Jason Thomas (fiddle and mandolin), has always been composed of ace bluegrass players over the years. Claire’s current group, which includes Bryan McDowell, Jarrod Walker, and stalwart bass player Mark Schatz, continues this tradition. Claire herself is a strong rhythm player who unfailingly straps on her guitar in every performance that I have ever attended.

Themes of loss, separation, and longing for love are recurrent in Claire’s songs. Melodically and harmonically, one senses both a respect for traditional material as well as a desire to expand its scope. Claire’s lyrics do not shy away from difficult and disturbing subjects like death, as shown in her song “Death Angel.” A persistent motif for Claire is the road, and it is here that she can speak with considerable authority. Claire well understands the life of a traveling musician, and her explorations about weariness, monotony, and romantic dreams of reuniting with lovers ring with authenticity. As a subject, this life presents contradictions because while it creates the possibility of travel, experience, and gainful employment, it all too frequently alienates the narrator from basic human needs such as friendship, love, and a stable home. There are times where the road appears in Claire’s songs as a kindred spirit and co-traveller, as in the song “Highway,” which Claire co-wrote with Irene Kelly. Yet it shows itself as fairly indifferent to the struggles of the narrator in “Hills of Alabam.’”

I interviewed Claire on the heels of her North by South album, which was produced by Compass Records co-owner and virtuoso banjo player Alison Brown. This project showcases contemporary Canadian songwriters with the support of A-list players like Stuart Duncan, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas and David Grier. Claire adds her sparkling vocals along two of her own compositions, “Milo” and “Need Someone.” I discuss both of these songs with her in this interview.

When I finally caught up with Claire in her home in Nashville, I encountered a songwriter who is still very excited about her craft and is committed to exploring ways to learn and grow as an artist. Claire spoke with me about a diversity of topics that range from the difficulties of using abstraction and simplicity, the necessity of eliminating distractions in songs, the often surprising benefits of a playful approach to writing, and the challenges of collaboration. I found her observations to be intriguing, and I hope that you will too.

If you want the perspective of a veteran singer-songwriter whose material has spanned the genres of country, bluegrass, and Americana, then read on.

LISTENING TO THE MUSIC

I urge readers to give a listen to each of the songs that are mentioned in this piece. One of the central objectives of interviewing Claire and other songwriters is to bring attention to their work, and connecting with the artists cited herein will give context and meaning to my dialogue with Claire. It will also encourage readers to explore new material.
For purposes of this interview, I chose two of Claire’s songs, “Need Someone” and “Milo.” Both are accessible on Spotify. The same is true for the Mac MacAnally tune “Socrates.” “Rains on Me,” the Willie P. Bennett song that Claire mentions, was covered by Doug Cox and can be found and downloaded here. https://www.willieplegacy.com/audio-collection

INTERVIEW

What got you into songwriting?

I always had a desire and talent to write poetry as a kid. I used to make rhymes. I remember doing cards for members of my family on their birthday. I would write them a poem on a card–they still have some of these. My older sister had a guitar about the time I was 12, and when she laid it on the bed I’d sneak into her room and play it. By the time I was in high school, I had met another friend who felt the same way I did about guitars and songwriting. After school, we would go play in her garage. We would get out her tape recorder and make songs. That was our idea of fun.
Afterward, I learned cover songs, but I never thought that I wouldn’t write. Writing my songs was just part of the process of being a musician. After I started getting recording deals, I always went for the song, whether it was mine or not. I’ve always loved songs–good ones. I feel that I am a singer-songwriter with an acoustic band around me.

Name a song by another writer that you admire and tell me why it works for you.

Mac McAnally, a song called Socrates. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with Mac McAnally’s songs, you can find out more about him here. http://www.macmcanally.com) It kind of talks about when Mac was young and in a band in northwest Alabama. He had gigs that used to take him out over the state line into Tennessee. There was this old man running one of the gas stations where his group would go to gas up, and everybody called him Socrates. He was sort of a crazy guy, but he would always ask these young men questions about where they were going in their life. One of the lines is “[t]he answer to your questions is more questions such as these.” It’s real and it has something to say. And there are lines in it that don’t rhyme. Instead of worrying about form, he just gets the story across. I don’t know if he grappled with that or not.
I’ve also been listening to (Canadian songwriter) Willie P. Bennett. I think I’m into Willie for the same reason people got into Dylan. He’ll throw images and ideas at you, but he’s not didactic. He doesn’t give you a pure explanation for what he’s writing.

Do you like it when songwriters use abstraction in their songs?

I do like abstraction. I like it when it’s done well and it still moves my heart, which is what Willie seems to do. He’s dead now, but I think he had a lot of conflict, and he had the propensity for getting these things on paper and not worrying about the form necessarily. There is something about throwing out ideas and images and letting the listener figure out what’s going on. Apart from one album, it’s hard to find recordings of Willie’s songs, but Blackie and the Rodeo Kings covered one of his tunes called “Rains on Me.” They are a fun band, a Canadian band.

Would you agree that it’s hard to combine abstraction and simplicity given that there is a premium on simplicity in the genres you’ve written for?

I would agree, and I teach this when I teach songwriting, you know, the importance of paring things down. There is just so much coming at a person when they are listening to a song, especially in a live performance. Someone is sitting in the audience, looking at the performer, making judgments about what kind of performer they are. Then, the music and lyrics are coming at you. If the audience doesn’t zone into the song, you might lose them.

Does this make lyric writing a bit different than poetry? In other words, when you are reading a poem, there is time to stop and reflect about what the words are saying.

Exactly. When people are new to songwriting, they don’t know that it is the songwriter who has to unpack the lyrics so that the listener can understand them more easily.

NASHVILLE STAFF WRITER

You spent a few years on Music Row in Nashville as a staff songwriter. What did that experience teach you about the craft of songwriting?

A lot. It taught me not to be judgmental when I’m in a room with another writer working on a song. Writing with people who were more experienced than me taught me positivity. Co-writing was something that I was encouraged to do, and I wrote some wonderful songs with other people, yet the ones that are the most important to me are the ones I wrote by myself.
I also learned about the business of songwriting and the discipline it requires. There were people like Bob McDill, who had an office down the hall from me, and he came in to work five days a week. He didn’t go out and perform. It was like an office job for him, and he was a very productive country music songwriter, very successful. (Bob McDill’s hits include Don Williams’ “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” Waylon Jennings’ “Amanda,” and Dan Seals’ “Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold)).” Bob and others set a very good example.

At the same time, I learned not to take the process so seriously. When you are downloading ideas from wherever that place is that they come from, it seems to happen more easily if there is a sense of playfulness, having fun. John Cleese (comedian, screenwriter, producer, and co-founder of Monty Python) talks about this in the context of comedy, but it also applies in the collaboration process. You can get stuck in the quagmire if you work at it too hard. Sometimes it’s best to walk away for a minute and think of something else.

You also learn about making demos. When you are working for a publisher, you have the advantage of them paying for the musicians and the studio to get songs recorded.

Did working on Music Row teach you about the mechanics of writing songs? For example, when a song needs an eight-bar middle section?

That would fall more into the area of arrangement, and yes, it taught me a lot about arrangement. Also, when there is too much of a song. It’s not “MacArthur Park” every time. Nashville isn’t looking for “MacArthur Park.”
Another thing I learned is that you don’t have to have a perfect rhyme. It’s all a matter of your own perspective.

And what works and doesn’t work?

Yes. I think it’s awful to hear a song where a writer has forced a rhyme. In the Mac MacAnally song that I mentioned earlier, there are lines that don’t rhyme, yet I still found it charming.

COLLABORATION WITH OTHER SONGWRITERS

You have done a fair amount of collaboration in your songwriting career. Did this process come to you naturally, or was it something you grew into?

I had to grow into it. If you are a singer with a record deal in Nashville, you are sometimes put in a room with a seasoned songwriter. The songwriter is looking to benefit from a hit, and the artist wants to learn about songwriting. This is a common practice in Nashville, and it has been for a long time. A supervisor that oversees staff writers might suggest that you team up with an experienced writer. But you learn that as a co-writer, you don’t click with everybody. One of the most important things to do first is to get to know someone, maybe have coffee with them, and not feel pressured to write a song immediately.

As a young woman writing in Nashville, I found that I could approach older, more experienced female songwriters and pretty quickly talk to them on a “heart” level, sort of like what girlfriends sometimes do. This might be a little easier for women to do than it is for men. But there were some men who were all about business, yet it was easy to write with them. I wrote “I Don’t Have to Dream” with Randy Archer. I came into the session with the title and hearing a sort of Everly Brothers feel, and he just start throwing out lines, all of them good.

One of the things that you learn is that just because you are put into a room with a great writer doesn’t mean that you are going to write a great song. It could be because of your lack of experience or the other person not tuning into your trip. It could be nobody’s fault. So I’m always looking for someone that I click with.

In preparing for this interview, I noticed that you clicked with Irene Kelly and Louisa Branscomb.

I did, and that hasn’t been true with all of the women I’ve tried to work with.

Would you agree that there is something mysterious about the songwriting process—where it comes from, why it works with some people and not others?

It’s magic. I read about creativity, and I get pretty much the same message from a lot of different people, and that is that it is in everybody in one form or another. We have to quiet down and hear it.

When you collaborated with other writers, did you find that you tended to focus on melody or lyrics?

I don’t love putting lyrics to music that is already written. It seems to take me about six times as long as it normally would. As soon as I get a lyric going with another writer, we start playing something, pick up an instrument and put a melody on whatever line is there. I’ve written melodies and have not been able to get a workable lyric. I think I’ve finally found a lyric for a melody that I’ve had for six to seven years.

EXPANDING AS A SONGWRITER AND ARTIST

Do you listen to and try to incorporate different styles of music into your songs, i.e., styles other than bluegrass and Americana?

Yes, and in order to do that, I have had to grow as a player. I’ve been on the road full-time for ten years, so this been a challenge. But I’ve begun to slow down this year. I’m going back to piano, which I studied as a child. I think that this will broaden my ability to write melodically. I’m also pursuing some blues fingerpicking on a metal-bodied guitar and learning a little ukulele. I have several electric guitars that I’ve been messing with, as well as a couple of archtops on which I can learn jazz chords.

I’ve been listening to Elvis Costello, whom I think is a fabulous writer. And there’s Ron Sexsmith, who is Canadian. I covered one of his songs called “Cold-Hearted Wind” on North by South. He is so prolific.

At the same time, I’m reading a lot about songwriting. You have to read a lot to be a good writer.
I listen to new music through my daughter, and I wonder what does her generation need to hear from my generation, which has failed them in so many ways, and yet knows things that they don’t know?

HELPING OTHER SONGWRITERS

In situations where you are asked to critically evaluate a song, say for example in a songwriting workshop, what is your approach?

(I might say that) “I feel what you are trying to say here, which is a good thing. However, in this line right here, I don’t understand what you are saying. Could you clarify this for me?” It’s so important to make new songwriters feel accepted because there are no rules in songwriting. If you are writing Victorian-style poetry, there are rules. With songwriting, as soon as you make up a rule it will be broken. Which is what can be wrong with Music Row writing–it’s traditionally had a reputation for being formulaic, two verses and a chorus, then a ride, a bridge, and then another chorus. This can be the standard, and it works a lot. But it doesn’t always work if you force it.

It’s important to accept them (inexperienced writers) where they are at, and to make them feel like you want them to succeed. You’re not going to rap their fingers with a ruler and say, “Don’t do that!” All that will do is discourage them. In teaching, you also have to see how the individual thinks, instead of wanting them to see the way that you think. It’s good to ask questions like, “What is your process?” “Where was your inspiration for that?” “Did you see something?” “What was going on in your life at the time?” When writers feel that you are really interested in them, that you are sincere in wanting them to succeed, then you have a better chance to gain their trust. You can offer criticism in a kind way, and they are more likely to be accepting of it.

HONING HER CRAFT

How has the songwriting process changed for you over the years?

I don’t have time anymore! When I was under the gun and told that I had to produce ten entire songs or twenty co-writes a year in order to make my advance, I tended to get things done. Now, I may have to produce a one-hundred word blurb about the band, or Photoshop something to get it out on the internet, or work on my Facebook page. All of this can sometimes take priority over my writing.

But as far as the process itself, I think I’m easier on myself because of what I’m learning. I’m actually taking time to study songwriting instead of doing it. Currently, I’ve got a song that I keep coming back to. Actually, it’s a co-write with Irene Kelley, and we worked on it and eventually hit a wall. But the inspiration for the song meant something to me, so I worked on it on my own and presented what I’d done to her. So we talked and she made some suggestions. She was kind, but she was frank with me. Now, I’m approaching it from her point of view, and it’s starting to take shape. This is one of the good things about co-writing. I had two songs in there instead of one. A lot of the adults in my workshops will have two or three songs in one song. It can be a hard pill to swallow.

Here’s another thing I’ve learned from the discussions of John Cleese. John talks about the open mode and the closed mode, and writers need both of them. You need the open mode to create and to come up with beautiful ideas. But your closed mode is when you turn off the playfulness and begin to play and tweak an idea. You can’t write a song without both. If you write songs purely in an open mode, you can have songs full of what in Nashville are referred to as “holes.” A hole is something jarring, something that draws your attention away from the song. It is an area where the song is weak, or where, for example, the lyrics need to be re-worked or ironed out. It could be where the meaning of a word or reference is unclear, or a jarring chord that doesn’t quite fit.

You can see a hole when you are working on your own song. Sometimes, however, you give yourself an excuse and say “oh, it’s o.k.” It’s not o.k. If your mind tells you something is wrong in your song, listen to that. You can discover the holes in your own song so that someone else doesn’t have discover them.

What is something about the craft of songwriting that you wish you had understood better when you got started?

When I got started, I wish I had known that light-heartedness and a kind of fluffy attitude can produce some great ideas, especially in a collaborative setting. About ten years after I started writing on my own, I was thrown into co-writing. I did learn to go to people when I got stuck, even when I was on my own. In “Hills of Alabam,” I got stuck on the second verse. I had a songwriter friend in Montgomery, Alabama, and called him up and said, “Mark, I’m stuck.” He thought about it, and threw a second verse at me, and “bingo!”

At what point during the process of writing a song do you begin to think about arrangement?

Pretty soon into it. Once I’ve got a verse and a chorus halfway constructed, I think you’ve gotta arrange it because you need to know how much more of the song you need to write. Does it need a bridge? Just because another person’s song has a bridge or a chorus doesn’t mean your song needs one. “Dear Sister” (co-written with Louisa Branscomb) just has three verses.

Taking into consideration all the instruments a songwriter might use in writing a song, how would you finish this sentence? Every songwriter should play a little . . . .?

Guitar or piano. Or ukulele if you can’t play the guitar. It’s easier to make music on a ukulele, and you can make some really nice music with it. There’s been a uke craze for about the last ten years.

Several of the songs that you have written and collaborated on such as “Hills of Alabam,’” and “I’m Gonna Love You” cover the trials of being on the road, i.e., the loneliness, weariness. Why do you suppose this has been such a durable theme for you to write about?

Because it’s been my life experience.

Do you see a contradiction in the travelling life of a musician in that touring permits a musician to earn a living and get their music out to people, but it also alienates them from friends, family, and in some cases, love?

There is something sort of addictive about the road. You’re not tied down, and so there is this element of freedom. But it is easy to feel lonesome because you are detached. I remember when I was pregnant with my first child. I was on the road, but I wanted to go home. After I stayed home for about six months, I found that I missed the road. The road becomes home and also part of your being. It’s a home that I’ve had to adapt to.

But we think of home as being a fixed thing, which is the opposite of something transient like life on the road.

And that is why we (Claire and her band members) have our things that are our security. This goes here, and I never put my ear buds anywhere but there. Different habits and routines that give me my security.
Some people are able to write on the road, but for me, not so much. I need to be home in a quiet place to write.

A LOOK AT TWO OF CLAIRE’S SONGS

Did your song “Need Someone?” grow out of the title?

Yes. “Do you need someone, need someone to love? I need someone to love me.” It was kind of a call to the universe that I was ready to be loved and needed to find somebody else who was ready to be loved. I must have been putting out some kind of energy because almost as soon I wrote and recorded “Need Someone” several guys started to flirt with me, guys who had not even heard the song. But it was just that my attitude had changed. Something had happened in my heart. I had had enough of my lonely freedom.

It’s a very naked admission of needing love. To me, that’s one of the reasons why the song works. The narrator tells us that they have made a decision to be open to love and to being loved.

One of the reasons I laid so much on the line is that I had been listening to John Mayer. He gets so personal. It’s almost embarrassing. It’s not quite to that point, but he’s just so honest. He was pushing buttons on everybody’s heart. That’s the way everyone thinks except that he’s willing to admit it publicly. I think that’s why I had the courage to write that song.

What was the inspiration for “Milo”?

(Laughs.) Well, that would be my husband, Ian. He’s Canadian. Canadians are not right-wing fundamentalists. They are quite the contrary. He’s a left-winger. I was so astonishingly in love with him anyway. I was raised in a Christian evangelical home. I read a lot, but it was always the Bible. Mark Schatz came into my band eight or nine years ago, and he’s sort of a left-wing thinker from Massachusetts. He recognized my political views as something that I had been taught, but he also knew me as a person. He could tell that what I had been taught didn’t actually mesh with the person that he knew. He told me that what worked for him was finding what his own opinion was, what he actually thought. And then I met my Canadian husband, Ian. We in America think that Canadians are like us, just more Americans who live north of the border. I got a huge education from Ian. He tends to tell it like it is.

So “Milo” was a contrast of my southern-country way of thinking versus Ian’s urban views and how, in spite of that, we couldn’t help being in love. It’s something that really clicks between us. I also tried to tie in the environmental movement because I’m interested in that, in water preservation. People who have heard “Milo” tend to see where I come from regarding issues like this based on their ideas about my politics. Those who view me conservatively think one thing, and those who see me as a more liberal think another.

I think you leave some room for interpretation in the song in the line, “[a]nd that’s a dangerous bill of goods for a girl in my position.”

There are a lot of artists who advocate just staying out of politics. I’m in a position where I have to step lightly. And if there is ever any possibility of changing people’s minds, a gap has to be bridged, someone to say “yes, I get you, I know where you are coming from.”

Before I let you go, could you tell us about any new projects that you are working on?

I do (have several new projects), but I can’t talk much about any of them! They are a surprise. But I’m trying to diversify. I have three different projects that I’m trying to do along with ramping up my songwriting. I don’t love being on the road full-time as much as I used to. Physically, it’s just not as much fun, and I have this husband whom I love.

Thank you, Claire.

Thank you.