Hayes Carll Talks New Album ‘You Get It All’, Working with Allison Moorer, Tackling Politics and Social Issues Through Songs and More (INTERVIEW)

Hayes Carll has come a long way from his days entertaining frat boys and sorority girls at beer joints around Texas. For the better part of two decades, he has been carefully refining his skills as a singer-songwriter to emerge as one of the greats of this generation. With each album, Carll has increasingly demonstrated that unique ability as a songwriter to translate complex issues and relationships into songs that are thoughtful, endearing, occasionally funny, and above all, relatable for us common folk. One might want to call him a country or Americana artist, but at this point in his career, Carll has transcended musical labels and landed in the esteemed category of “songwriter.” This style puts him alongside his own musical heroes like Guy Clark, John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Willie Nelson, and Carll pens songs that are both timeless yet speak to our current moment in time.

On his seventh studio album You Get It All, releasing on Dualtone Records later this month, Carll returns with a collection of songs that are some of his sharpest, most creative tunes to date. Co-produced by his wife, fellow singer-songwriter Allison Moorer, and Kenny Greenberg, the album finds Carll dishing out songs that touch on heavy issues like climate change, injustice, aging and dementia, alongside the little moments couples encounter in marriage. The ability to contrast these topics over the course of an album in a way that carries a literary sensibility and also sounds good is exactly what makes Carll so damn talented as a songwriter. Musically, You Get It All wavers from country-blues and honky tonk, to light-hearted folk and dark Americana while always saving room for a little bit of rock and roll. Ultimately, it is an album that is sure to find its way onto many a best-of-the-year list.

Recently, Hayes Carll took some time to talk about the new album, working with his wife, commenting on social issues and politics through his lyrics and more.

The album opens with “Nice Things,” which is clearly commenting on the state of humanity. Do you find yourself incorporating more of these social and political issues into your music?

I guess I do. Certain things have always been on my mind, but I didn’t know how to write about them and I didn’t feel like I had the skillset to approach them in the way I wanted. There [are] some songs where I intentionally wrote about politics or social issues, but as a writer I’m really interested in finding what works for me and what doesn’t. I spend a lot more time trying to figure that out through writing than I used to. When I was younger it was more about life on the road or experiences that I thought I was going to have but hadn’t yet had. [Now] I’m smack dab in the middle of life, and writing about relationships or how we get along with each other or the state of the planet, those are interesting things to me and they feel worthy of exploration as a writer. I find myself drawn to that more than I used to be.

Is part of that a natural evolution as a writer and aging, or is it that all of that stuff is so right in front of us now that it’s hard not to touch on certain issues?

I think it’s both. There’s a part of me that has a difficulty not addressing certain things that are happening in the world [through music]. I also go back to this Todd Snider quote that I love: “I don’t write these songs to change anybody’s mind, I write them to ease my own.” I always identified with that but I also wasn’t living it as a writer. I just loved that he said it. I find myself identifying with it more these days because I am starting to write through some of this stuff. I may have a secret hope that something I say will matter to somebody, but at the end of the day I am trying to articulate my own vision and make sense of my own thoughts on what is a really confusing world. So I do that personally and sometimes I do it through the work. I also think it is an evolution of just life, whether it’s just trying to stay open and connected in this very divisive world or if my marriage gets in the ditch, or what life is going to look like in twenty years –  I want to see my mistakes and regrets, and figure out what’s worked and what hasn’t and maybe improve in some ways so I’m not stuck on the same shit ten years from now never having done the work to figure it out. When I was younger it was a different thing. I had friends who wrote about their relationships, causes they were interested in, and I admired what they did but I did not feel a calling to that. I think with my life where it is now, it’s incredibly interesting to me and it’s much more interesting than just making up some shit that rhymes.

“Different Boats” also seems to be a comment on our current state of the world, touching on things like class divide and climate change. These are lofty topics and it seems like you have to be a talented writer to translate it. How do you keep on top of the issues in the world and at what moment do you feel like you can translate them into a song?

I go in and out with how engaged I am and the news of the world and how I get it. I feel very defeated sometimes, as I think a lot of people can, by all of the toxicity. It’s not like I think, here’s something I care about and I’m going to study up on it so I can write a song about it. “Different Boats” to me was more about finding that common thread – we are all on this planet and some of us got dealt a rough hand and some of us started off a little better. Whatever it is, we’re all on our own trip and we all have our own struggles, so maybe appreciating and respecting that is a good starting point. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it’s hard to get to “here’s how I feel about this particular issue” if we can’t even respect each other’s existence. So I’m just pretty simply trying to start at the basics [laughs] with that song. It’s all hot air if you don’t have a basic starting point of respect.

You talked about your growth as a songwriter and people you’ve looked up to. You reference some of your songwriting influences during this album, many of whom have passed. Were you feeling more aware of those artists during a time when there was so much death?  

I certainly was during the pandemic when we lost John Prine, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Billy Joe Shaver – a lot of my heroes and people who were the best songwriters to have ever do it in my opinion. There was definitely a thing where it felt like a lot of the people that inspired me to do what I do were passing and I certainly thought about their work and legacies a lot. But I don’t know if it came out in the songs so much; I have a feeling that will reflect itself on later work in a way. A lot of these songs I started pre-pandemic and during the pandemic I played a lot of cover songs – I was doing live streams – and I recognized after the thirtieth week that people were probably tired of hearing my songs. So I started going back to cover songs, which is how I started out playing, doing four hours a night of cover songs in bars. I had gotten away from that over twenty years of being a singer-songwriter and I revisited that and it opened up this world again and lit that fire of this is why I got into it in the first place – the Prines, the Kenny Rogers, [Bob] Dylan, Lyle Lovett, Kris Kristofferson, Ray Wylie Hubbard and on and on.  

Doing all of these covers, were you revisiting any specific albums or artists more as you went into the recording and did they affect the sound in some way?

I think that it’s definitely something that affected the sound because I was listening to singers, and I think that is the area where it probably affected it the most. One thing that I discovered about myself is that in a live setting with a lot of the songs that I write – maybe it’s through insecurity of my own abilities – but I’ve always loved this rapid fire way of putting lyrics out there with a real intensity. I appreciate that, but I think I also lean on it at times because I haven’t been confident enough to just let a lyric sit, let there by room to breathe. I’m always scared that I have to keep something exciting happening to keep the pace up. On this record, I think it’s the best I’ve ever sung. I listen to it and think, what is it, what am I doing differently? What I’m recognizing is that there’s space and room to breathe, and the songs can still have energy but I’m not pushing myself to get it out so I can get the next line in. I have a line, I think it’s a good line, and I let it be what it is. It seems like there is a relaxed nature and a confidence to it that I maybe haven’t had on some previous records. I think a lot of that comes from hearing these guys, going back and listening to Kenny Rogers’ early stuff, which was a very early influence on me, or listening to Prine or Billy Joe Shaver and recognizing that you don’t have to overwhelm people with stuff. You can have a great line and let it just be and do its work for you.

Speaking of the overall sound, The album was co-produced by your wife Allison Moorer. Can you talk about how that dynamic played out in the creative process and what she brings to your music that might not otherwise be present?

[Laughs] I think with anyone having that outside perspective, they can tell you some things you’re maybe not seeing. In my case I think that often is, “hey you need to slow down, or give this some space, you don’t have to fill it up with busyness.” I think she provides that, but she also has this uncanny ability to remember records and sounds. Her brain can hold all these references and that’s a really key element for communicating when you’re making records. I have ADD and terrible recall and that sucks in life and it makes communicating in the studio challenging for me. I’ve always gone in sort of insecure, like I’m going to lose control of the thing or not really knowing how to articulate my vision, so that’s something I love about working with her. She is really adept at helping me do that and stay engaged and put language to what I’m feeling. I’m pretty caveman about it, like “more drums!” And she’ll be like, “do you mean like in this Rolling Stones track at this point or more like this?” She can relay it and everyone knows what [I] want to do. It’s also just fun working with my wife. I love spending time with her, but to be able to do it in a creative capacity, there’s a connection that comes from that and it’s one of my favorite things.

It seems like on this album and your last one, you like to write songs that focus on little issues that you encounter as a couple. What’s the most interesting reaction you’ve gotten from Allison on one of your songs?

I think she has a great respect for the work. She can have a negative reaction if she thinks I’m wasting time or not applying myself to what I’m doing, but I can write something very personal about marriage or about her and she is very good at separating it and looking at it as work. So she doesn’t come to me and say, “I wish you wouldn’t put that in there.” She’s an artist, she’s been married to artists, and she knows how it goes. It’s all fair game to do what we do and create. I think she looks at it as, is it good work or not, and not what kind of light does it put [her] in or anything like that.

What was the recording process like for this album? Were there any challenges or things you did differently?

Kenny Greenberg the co-producer and an incredible musician had worked with Allison for many years and they have a real short hand. The three of us just got together, went through the songs, and made a plan for how we wanted to present them. We cut most of the record in two days and then we went to Kenny’s house – he has a studio – and did work there including retracking things and a lot of the singing. I guess the only thing that would be unique about it was that after the studio time – which was shorter than any time I’ve ever spent in the studio – we had the luxury of having more time on the backend because we were at his house and we could be patient and experiment, which was a lot of fun. I’m so indecisive and I like to explore things to find out what works and doesn’t, so having that ability was a real luxury for me.

It seems like you have always been a fan of co-writing songs, whether for yourself or others. What part of this approach appeals to you creatively as a songwriter?

I didn’t cowrite until I did, and when I did, I only did it a little bit until I did it a lot. There’s different reasons for that. When I started off, I didn’t know anybody that wrote songs so there was nobody to write with. Then I started meeting people who wrote songs but we all wrote our own songs so we didn’t collaborate. And then slowly, I got to write with Guy Clark and Ray Wylie Hubbard, and I got to write with some of these people who are masters in my opinion. That was school for me – there was no songwriting school – but the only way I knew how to study songwriting was to listen to records or to pick the brain and work with people who were songwriters. I liked that, it was awkward and challenging sometimes, but it pushed me and I started doing it more and more. At the end of the day, I just think it’s fun. I get to connect with some of the best artists in the world, I get to learn from them, create with them, get inspired by them, and things come alive in a way they never would have if I did that work on my own. That doesn’t mean collaborative is always better – it’s not always better – but when it works it’s magical and it pushes me beyond a lot of self-imposed creative confines that I put up for myself consciously or unconsciously. When I get in a room with somebody else, they remind me that it doesn’t have to be there, and there is another way to go about this. Sort of like looking at the songs of others. I said [I’ve been playing] a lot of covers during this time – it reminds me it doesn’t have to be this length, this style, this narrative. It can take things to a really different creative place.

Just like James McMurtry and Jason Isbell, you’ve drawn some heat from the “shut up and sing” crowd for speaking out on certain issues. Is this a rite of passage for every country-Americana artist now?

A rite of passage? I don’t know. It’s just the price you have to pay if you’re going to express an opinion. What I’m recognizing is that we don’t all have to express our opinions. That’s the choice we make, but if you are going to express it, there’s going to be a lot of people who don’t want to hear it and they’re going to let you know. That’s up to each artist to decide if that’s something they want to do or not. It’s something I still struggle with. There are times when I feel very passionate about expressing what I see as injustice or having an opinion, and then there are times when I don’t want to hear my own voice or deal with the people that are going to come after me, and I feel like all I’m doing is adding fuel to an already pretty toxic situation. That’s the struggle for me – am I actually doing good or harm when I throw out my opinion? I think it can provide solace for people who feel similarly and need to feel like they’re not alone. I also think it can make a lot of people come after you because they disagree with you and that adds a lot of noise to the arena. Sometimes I’m not sure what’s the best way to approach that.

You still tour through plenty of small towns across America. Do you ever see any of that online vitriol manifest in the crowd at your shows now or does it all kind of stay online?

They’re not generally coming and ready to start a fight. I think my fanbase is maybe an even split, but I think I have a fairly conservative audience in a lot of ways and the times I have spoken out about certain issues, a lot of them have decided that they weren’t going to support me anymore. That is what it is. There’s a lot of keyboard warriors out there, but I haven’t had anyone personally try to start anything or disrupt a show because of anything I’ve said. I’ve tried to be very respectful in what I say when I put my opinions out there, so I think if people disagree with it that’s totally their prerogative and I get that, but if somebody responded in a violent or confrontational way to what I said, that would be a reflection on their sanity more than on any issue that I brought up. Everybody makes their own choices, but people that can’t have an adult conversation, that’s their particular issue.

Photo credit: DavidMcClister