Hayes Carll is not the first one to do this. Mary Chapin Carpenter, Kim Richey. Lucinda Williams and others have re-imagined and re-interpreted their own material years later. Yet, Carll may be the first to do it this way. Carll teamed up with friend and frequent collaborator, singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Darrell Scott, who produced, sang, and – aside from Carll’s acoustic guitar and harmonica, and Luke Moeller’s violin – played every instrument on the album. Duets come courtesy of Ray Wylie Hubbard and Carll’s wife, Allison Moorer. The result is a stripped-down, unadorned collection of some of Carll’s finest performances to date. After all, part of Carll’s charm is his relaxed demeanor, his looseness and edginess that makes for an almost a conscious shunning of perfectionism. Let the songs roll naturally.
You know these songs but now have a new way of hearing them and their familiarity may have you singing along. The catalyst for the album stems from a late-night picking session when Carll and Scott, co-writers of “Sake of the Song,” played it for the first time. That moment stuck with Carll and he wanted to re-channel that energy into a recording. Carll offers, “Most of my parts were recorded in the one-room studio that sits in our backyard. We call it The Doghouse. Allison was able to do her part with me live. Ray Wylie flew his parts on “Drunken Poet’s Dream,” in by x-Ray beams from Texas. Darrell worked his magic form his home, and here we are. A whole new world, a whole new way to make records, but the same idea of fingers on strings, voices on a mic, and songs from the heart.”
There are eleven songs – nine originals drawn from his half dozen records, Canadian poet/producer/and singer Scott Nolan’s “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” and a duet with Moorer on the Merle Haggard associated “That’s The Way Love Goes,” one that the couple has sung often on Moorer’s frequent streaming performances on Facebook and Insta-gram (one of such performances is playing while writing this – without that particular song by the way). The album begins in mellow fashion with “Arkansas Blues,’ the only one from his 2002 debut Flowers and Liquor, as Scott’s pedal steel swirls around Carll’s vocal. We are then treated to a bluegrass tinged reinvention of “Drunken Poet’s Dream” (2008 Trouble in Mind) that finds Carll swapping verses with the co-writer Hubbard before they engage in some salty smack talking. “That ad-libbing with Ray Wylie was crazy, because we were nowhere near each other when we did it. But you know. You fall into it with your old friends – and that song especially hits us both in such a good place,” commented Carll.
“Times Like These” is the only one drawn from 2019’s What It Is, a wry commentary on today’s endless and depressing news cycle, that he and Scott render with a bluesy feel, imbued by Moeller’s violin. Allison Moorer joins for harmony while Carll plays the harmonica and Scott delivers some keening dobro on the second of four drawn from Trouble In Mind, “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart.” “Down the Road Tonight” (2005 Little Rock) is a gospel paeon, Dylan talking blues style, to life on the road. That “Subterranean Homesick Blues” approach is, of course, also behind one of his most acclaimed songs, “KMAG YOYO” from the 2011 album of the same name, done with Scott’s swaying dobro. “Bye Bye Baby” also comes from that album, one of the quieter, aptly mournful selections here.
Indeed Scott and Carll both sing on “Sake of the Song “(2016 Lovers and Leavers) while “Beaumont” (Trouble In Mind) speaks to the simplicity of the acoustic country approach. The closing “Wild As a Turkey (Trouble In Mind) where Scott’s National steel solo stands out, is a fitting finale. So, it’s not every artist who gets a chance to do this – change the rhythms, emphasize the lyrics a different way, or conjure up some new instrumentation. Good songs, like the kind Carll writes, stand the test of time and take on some different meanings perhaps depending on when listened to.
Photo by David McClister
