Gretchen Peters is a prolific songwriter, having penned hits including Martina McBride’s ‘Independence Day’ and more. Now, she will release her new record ‘The Night You Wrote That Song: The Songs of Mickey Newbury‘ this Friday. Here, we interview Gretchen and chat about the record, choosing the songs for the record and more.
Hello! How are you?
I’m just fine thank you.
How are you handling quarantine? I can imagine it feels like a very weird time to release a record.
I can’t complain, my husband and I are in North West Florida and we have a new puppy. We have a little place out here, so when we knew that this was all happening, we decided that this would be an easier place to raise a puppy. In comparison to a lot of people, I can not and should not complain.
Obviously, it is a strange time to release a record. Going back to the first instance of the project, I know that it had some origins in your visiting the iconic Cinderella Studios.
Well I had it in my mind to do this record for years, I knew I wanted to do it at some point but there were other records that I wanted to write, and make and put out first. It didn’t feel like the time was right. About three years ago, my husband Barry and I found out that Cinderella Studios was still open and operating. It’s the longest operating studio in Nashville now – that was sort of the thing that instigated it. We just thought, why don’t we go over there and try out two or three songs and see how we feel. It was completely an experiment at the beginning, then we came out with three tracks that we absolutely loved. We loved the sound of it, we loved the people. It’s kind of off the beaten path, it’s not on Music Row. Everything about it felt like a little cocoon. We just kept on with that philosophy of recording two or three songs when we’re ready and put them away. We did that every few months. Sometimes we’d go six or eight months without doing anything, because we were touring a lot. After a couple of years, we had a record. It was just the loveliest, most low pressure way to do a record. Rather than going in and having a few days to record, it was the complete opposite of that, it was really a wonderful way to do it.
Obviously, these are the songs of Mickey Newbury. What has his music meant to you over the years and why did you choose to record the songs you did from his catalogue – his catalogue is obviously so vast?
Oh he does. I had a pretty deep knowledge of his catalogue since I was a teenager. First, I discovered him honestly the way that a lot of my fans discovered me – I read his name on the back of someone else’s album. On a bunch of records I loved, there would be this name Mickey Newbury after two or three songs. I finally thought, well who is this? By that route, I discovered his own albums and him as an artist. There was something about him that I deeply identified with, I think I intuited from his record that he was just his own person and he wasn’t going to make the kinds of records that were necessarily mainstream or commercial but he just had this very clear idea of who he was artistically. I so related to that. Besides which, I loved his songs and his singing, his ability to write human pain. It was unchallenged, he was so good at it, just to have this empathy in his songwriting. I became a lifelong fan. Then, when it came time to choose the songs, I really had to sit down and think, ‘ok, well Mickey himself was such a great singer, made such great records, I can’t go about this as if I’ve got to recreate his sound. I have to choose these songs, on the basis of ‘do I feel like I can write this story?’ It’s not even so much, can I do something different, it’s just can I sing this song and tell this story and make it feel home in my voice. So, some of the songs that were the answer to the record were famous ones, but some were ones that very few people will know. It ran the whole gamut.
Did you feel an awesome sense of responsibility when you were recreating those songs?
Huge! I felt a deep sense of responsibility to his family and I am so proud and glad to have the support of his wife Susie and his kids. I played the album for them and they loved it. I actually played a gig in Portland, Oregon where Susie Newbury lives, and she came to hear us with one of her daughters. It was really important to me, because I thought the world of him. I didn’t know him but as a songwriter, and what I got to know of him later as a person. I really wanted to get it right.
As you are a songwriter, did it feel slightly strange going in to record a project where you hadn’t written the songs?
Well it’s funny, because it is and it isn’t. In one way, of course it is because these aren’t my songs, there’s that whole element of ‘what am I trying to say with this album?’ and the approach towards writing it. Honestly, I feel like when I’m singing a song, I am inhabiting the characters of the song and feeling like I understand them. What I got from singing these Newbury songs, was – as much as I had known them over the years – when I was putting them together, I learned so much more about who the characters were. I guess the analogy would be, you go to see a movie and you’re really taken with the main character in the movie, but the actor who plays the main character in the movie has gone a hundred levels deeper to understand that character, it’s sort of the same thing. In a real way, that’s no different for me than singing my own songs. I learn to sing my own songs gradually. I write them, but it doesn’t mean I automatically know how to live them. In that sense, it was not really that different.
Had you always known that you wanted to put out your own music, even though you did start as a songwriter? I feel like you’ve recently hit this gorgeous niche in your music with your recent albums.
It’s funny you say that because, one of the reasons why I felt like it was time to do this Mickey Newbury record, was because the last three albums I put out, I had come to a resting place. What I mean is, if someone asked me ‘what do you do?’ I could give them those three albums and could feel completely satisfied in that. I felt like I had found my home artistically, and so I don’t think I could make this record of Newbury songs until I had got to that place. I always felt like I had more to say. In a way, the two things were really related for me. The time was right, and all of a sudden the studio appeared and it felt like the universe was saying ‘ok, it’s time.’
Talking about the characters in your songs, do you feel like you have always led with those characters when writing songs?
Yeah, I really approach songs in a lot of ways as if they were movies. I find a lot of parallels, for example how an actor inhabits a role to how I feel when I’m trying to write a song. It’s basically the same process, it’s listening hard and long enough to the characters until you feel like you know who they are and they start talking to you. That’s when you know you’ve got a character and you can write the thing authentically and well. In that sense, I feel like they’re almost little movies, coupled with the visual element that most of my songs have. I think most of my songs are very visual images. But yes, character-driven songs is what I tend to do. There’s a whole other wing of songwriting that isn’t character-driven, if you look at pop music which is made up of hooks and things that make you want to dance. For me, it’s always going to be about the stories.
You had such success in the 90s with Faith Hill and Martina McBride, but recently you’ve had more success in the Americana lane. Was that a conscious decision or more organically?
I think that I stayed more the same than country music did (laughs). I mean not that I didn’t evolve as an artist and writer, I definitely did, but honestly I think that the kind of music and storytelling, which used to be what people like Trisha Yearwood wanted. Mainstream country music became less interested in that, those story songs aren’t gone but you find them more in Americana songs. Honestly, I think that the only change thing I did was just to mature as a writer and get better at it. I think what’s really changed is the genre. Americana is where you find the great songs that Patty Loveless would record today.
Well I’m so excited for this record to be out. I think people need these kind of songs right now.
I agree. That was part of the discussion, we had a long and hard discussion about, do we release this or do we hold onto it? What I felt more strongly than anything was ‘god, if there’s anything people need right now, it’s music.’
Final Few
What’s your favourite song you’ve ever written?
It’s going to be different every day, but I think I’d have to say ‘Five Minutes.’ I love that character.
If there was a biopic about your life, what would be the opening track?
Oh! That’s hard. This is a weird answer, there’s an old Irish folk song called ‘I Know Where I’m Going’
What record, book and thing would you bring to a desert island?
The record would be Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, the book would be ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston and it would have to be my guitar.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… everything.
Country music is… part of everything.
Gretchen Peters is… part of all of it.
