Musician Hayes Carll leans into the lockdown
Hayes Carll went into the pandemic with a fairly new album in “What It Is.” Or at least it was new enough that Carll was in Seattle for a show promoting it when the rest of the tour was canceled.
So he and his wife, singer and songwriter Allison Moorer, “hunkered down like the rest of the world to see what would happen.”
In their case, Carll and Moorer’s hunkering down was rather productive. The Texas native did some livestreams, and Moorer wrote a devastating memoir. Carll also revisited some of his older songs, doing new versions on last year’s “Alone Together Sessions.” And earlier this year, he released “You Get It All,” a new collection of songs he recorded, with Moorer producing.
“To hear from people during that time, online or with postcards, it made us feel like we weren’t alone,” he said. “It was humbling how much support we got from folks. And it reminded me doing this for 20 years wasn’t for naught. People were there for me when I needed them.”
Carll made time recently to talk about the new album.
Q. I wanted to ask about “Help Me Remember.” It’s a heartbreaking presentation of dementia. And I was intrigued, there were so many vivid sensory details amid all the forgetting: the smell of perfume, the sight of leaves in autumn and an unfinished crossword puzzle.
A: So the point of reference for that song was my grandfather. He had just started showing signs of dementia before he passed. So he didn’t have long to struggle with it. But I remember being with him when I was 14 or 15 in Waco. And he was driving and got lost. That was really the start of that song.
Q. Some of these songs — “Different Boats,” “Nice Things” — have this restlessness. It’s not a political agitation to my ears, but more a weariness with the state of the world.
A: Yeah, well I always reference a Todd Snider quote. He says, “I don’t write songs to change minds. I write them to ease my own mind.” I always
identified with that, but I don’t think it necessarily related to what I’d done creatively in the past. These days, I’m trying to figure that out more for myself. And I think you hear that coming out some. I’m probably like everybody else who feels tired of the toxicity and the lack of respect and civility. I understand people have strong opinions. But I wonder how we get to where we can hear each other out and live in the same reality. So they’re not finger-pointing songs. It’s more that I’m trying to find ways to articulate my own fears and concerns and struggles.
Q. Your wife was the subject of the song “None’ya,” in which she declares some queries are “None’ya business.” Did that phrase get used since she produced this album?
A: (Laughs.) No, not really. But the reason I asked Allison to work with me is not because I needed to spend more time with her or because I just like her. (Laughs.) But I respect her as an artist. And she has a real ability
to help me articulate my creative vision, which is not something I’m great at. I know what I want to do, but I have a hard time putting words to it. I can be pretty caveman about it. She has this innate ability to remember all these records and moments on records, instrumentation and production. And I find that really useful in a studio setting. She can pull that out. Instead of me saying, “Loud guitars,” like a caveman, she talks about a particular sound she remembers on a particular album, and then the engineer and musicians in the studio have a more practical reference they can use.
Q, I think of how many years over the course of a half-century that I’ve heard the phrase “in the meantime.” Somehow I’d never heard anybody flip it like you do with “In the Mean Time.” Did you worry somebody else had done that?
A: I thought for sure somebody would’ve used that. I was really excited about it, too. I had that chorus, the title. I thought,
“Somebody could do a hell of a job with this.” I just wasn’t expecting it to be me. I really wasn’t writing it for myself. I thought if it was something somebody wanted to cover, great. If not, at a certain point, I’d do it. But then I just decided, why wait?
Q. “In the Mean Time” also has a quietly devastating line: “Help us outrun the damage we’ve done.” It’s such a naked plea.
A: I have friends . . . like Jack Ingram writes about his marriage. He’s been doing that since I’ve known him, since before I knew him. And I admired that: him working through his stuff through his songs. Then taking them out and playing them. It seemed cathartic and therapeutic. But I also did not identify with it at all. But in the past few years, it’s become interesting to me thinking about that with the crafting of a song. Putting the work in to try to figure some stuff out. How I feel about this or that. Writing about things people struggle with that I can relate to.
And I don’t feel I need to muddy the waters on that. There’s no need to be mysterious about it. The point of those sorts of songs is to say something. So I’ve tried leaning into that.
Q. “She’ll Come Back” reminded me of Willie Nelson’s “I Never Cared for You,” with that sort of declarative statement in the title that turns out to be deceptive.
A: Yeah, thank you. That’s a great reference to something I kind of, or probably unconsciously, leaned on. Part of this record, I call it a country record, or a country singer-songwriter record. And part of it, for me, was writing songs like that and using devices like that. I’m not reinventing the wheel on that song or “In the Mean Time.” But there’s that double entendre. Those devices used in country music for generations, they’re some of my favorite things. So a lot of this record was me embracing those things.