Southern Comforts

BOBBY GILLESPIE on the classic sounds that shaped Give Out But Don’t Give Up.

Willie Nelson Phases And Stages

(Atlantic, 1974) “Roger Hawkins and David Hood had played on so many records we loved, including Phases And Stages. That’s part of the reason we wanted to work with them – the gentleness and understatement of their playing. We wanted an album with that kind of feel.”

Boz Scaggs Boz Scaggs (Atlantic, 1969)

“It’s probably a bit overlooked, but the Boz Scaggs album done in Muscle Shoals is great. It says it was produced by the Rolling Stone guy [Jann Wenner] but it was really done by Marlin Greene, who worked on the classic Percy Sledge stuff – and the rhythm section is Roger and David.”

Donnie Fritts Prone To Lean (Atlantic, 1974)

“Such a sad, mournful record – there’s a real emotional heaviness there. When we were hanging in Muscle Shoals and wrote Sad And Blue, Donnie Fritts was around. He told me, (imitating Fritts) ‘Hey man, that’s a good song.’ I was like, Whoa – he wrote Rainbow Road for Arthur Alexander, he wrote We Had It All. And he likes my song? I’ll take that.”

Rod Stewart Atlantic Crossing

(Warner Bros., 1975) “One of the reasons we wanted Tom Dowd was his work with Rod Stewart, particularly the arrangements on the ballads – there was such a smooth, beautiful, sophisticated touch to those records. Dowd knew how to get that.”

Aretha Franklin Spirit In The Dark

(Atlantic, 1970) “What I really wanted our album to sound like was The Thrill Is Gone – the Aretha version with [Jim Dickinson’s] Dixie Flyers backing her. That was the template in my mind – but I would never tell the rest of the band that. I would think that somehow, telepathically, they should just know. And you know what? They did know!”