Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
‘THE OUTSIDER’ SETTLES IN AT SONGBIRDS TONIGHT
Darrell Scott calls himself an “outsider” in media interviews. But with songs cut by Tim McGraw, Suzy Bogguss, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley, Dixie Chicks and Travis Tritt, it looks like he’s running with the in crowd.
“It feels like I have moments of being ‘ in- crowdish,’ but 95 percent of my life or artist work is really on my own. It’s a safe place to be,” Scott explains of the “outsider” reference in a phone interview.
“If you are on the inside, you might only create insider work. I like to think I have the capability to create a broader selection of work.”
Scott will bring a mix of both to Songbirds Guitar Museum when he plays there tonight, April 19, at 7 o’clock. It will be just him and his guitar for an intimate, interactive set.
That freedom to write songs expressing himself by his own rules, spills over into his shows as well.
“I never have a set list. I get to a place and see how I feel, what the people are in the mood for, how sensitive the PA system is. Events that happened that day might affect a song choice or two. It feels like an honest way to go.”
Living life as an open book without any pretense or artifice is part of the reason he lives on a farm with “a bunch of acreage, solar panels and growing organic vegetables.”
“I’m trying to live sustainably. The real use of the word sustainable means you are completely sustainable. I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m working toward it. I drive a super wagon that takes fuel that I didn’t grow. I still have to catch airplanes to get to things, where full sustainability would be when I didn’t have to leave the farm.”
At the end of 2017, Scott released “Live at the Station Inn,” recording in the Nashville venue that is the epicenter of bluegrass since Bill Monroe played there. A photograph motivated his decision to make the live record there.
“Station Inn — cinder block, not very impressive bar — represents the old Nashville. The photographs my son took for the cover shows the new Nashville with its high-rises literally surrounding the Station Inn. I almost feel the modern world is surrounding, hovering over, the old roots world,” he compares.
Scott is a four- time Gram- my nominee, has produced, co- written and performed on three songs from Zac Brown’s “Heavy is the Head,” in addition to touring with Robert Plant. He describes Plant as a “gentleman, a scholar of roots music and he doesn’t want to do the same show every night.”
“He never wanted us doing those songs to sound like Led Zeppelin, or attempt to do that. He wanted to do the songs, but he never wanted to treat it as a Zeppelin sound.”
Even people not familiar with Scott will recognize his song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” — aka the song traditionally used in season finales of “Justified.” Ironically, he’s never heard it on the show.
“‘Harlan’ is my family’s story of coal mining in Kentucky. I wrote it because I was trying to process, through song, my family history in Kentucky, coal mining specifically, and how it permeated our family’s history. I didn’t think it was a song people would want to jump on. It evidently had a universal appeal more than my family’s story. One of these days I’ll have to watch an episode.”
Even people not familiar with Darrell Scott will recognize his song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” — aka the song traditionally used in season finales of “Justified.” Ironically, he’s never heard it on the show.