Love Enough for the World
Brad Warren is a consummate songwriter with a composer's ear and
a poet's eye. Find out what makes him one of the most respected singer-songwriters
and guitarists in the Northwest.
SS: Who inspired or influenced you early on?
BW: My parents especially. They were both musicians. My mother played
classical piano and sang in choirs and opera choruses. My father played
jazz. I always loved the small ensemble jazz sound.
I think the first song I ever learned was "Summertime," which
my father taught me when I wasn't yet in school. I couldn't really play
an instrument yet but he had me hacking my way through crude approximations
of the chords so I could play that tune. Gershwin has always done it
for me, and "Porgy & Bess" has always been my favorite
of his shows.
The Beatles really made an impression. I remember being about nine,
listening to "Yesterday" and "Yellow Submarine"
and "Hey Jude" on one of those portable kit stereos that opens
like an old typewriter, in a tweed case. I was completely hooked. I
entered into the world of those songs, a kind of reverie.
Then there was Prokofiev’s "Peter and the Wolf." My
mother used to play that record for me. I loved the drama of the music,
the way the sound told the story, the way it embodied the narrative
that some famous actor was reading in a voice-over. You can tell I wasn't
really interested in the actor, or the voice. It was the musical storytelling.
SS: Who inspires you now?
BW: As a writer, Steve Seskin. He's the Tennessee Williams of country
songwriters.
Also, a lot of my inspiration in the last 10 or 15 years has come from
some of the wonderful songwriters around Seattle. Larry Murante for
example. There's a guy who can pack a whole southern novel into a ballad
and it doesn't even creak. I'd say Larry is one of the people who inspired
me finally to get interested in voice, too. That astonishing voice of
his.
Dave Carter was also an inspiration to me. Talk about a songwriter
with scope... he was epic. He had a completely unpretentious mastery.
He could write songs that were fierce and beautiful and terrifying,
like "When I Go," or songs that were full of mischief and
magic, and he never seemed to be trying to get away with it. He was
just delivering what he had. I’m really glad that Tracy Grammer
is keeping that flame alive, performing his music.
Annie Gallup – she, too, has huge scope. She is a gift. Her melodies
can be so perfectly formed to her intent, and her writing so full of
vivid surprises.
SS: Your songs have a harmonic and melodic richness that's often akin
to jazz. Has that come on its own, or have you studied along the way?
BW: I was lucky enough to go to a high school that offered music theory,
and luckier still to take Henry Lasker's last class there. He was a
composer and arranger from the Depression era, who late in his life
taught theory and composition at my high school in Newton, Mass. I was
a sophomore, playing in my own rock band and doing these long, noodly,
Clapton-Hendrix solos and thinking I was cool.
Henry was an old man who knew how precious what he had to offer was,
and he wasn't interested in casting pearls before swine. He wanted nothing
to do with me. I didn't even know how to read music, and I was swaggering
in like I owned the place. He drilled us on Bach chorales and sight
singing, laying down the rudiments in a way I had never imagined. It
was so exciting, and so hard!
I really was a terrible student, and he was a terribly demanding teacher.
After one semester he flunked me out, along with all the other longhaired
rockers who strayed into his course. They all left. I stayed. I said,
"Fine, you can flunk me, but I’m not going anywhere. This
is too important to me. I want what you know." That was when he
began to soften. Not much, but just enough, and I guess when you want
something that badly, it only takes a glimmer of kindness to walk over
miles of broken glass. He lasted into the spring, and got sicker and
sicker and suffered more and more pain. Then he died, shortly before
the end of the year.
I've used the principles of theory that he taught me just about every
day. If I hear music on the radio, I'm listening to the way the voice
leading works, the inversions, the choices in arrangement and the way
the melody grows out of the chords. Even now, when I spend so much time
working on lyrics and make my living at writing, it's still these elements
of harmonic theory that I hear first.
SS: Tell me a bit about the development of your unique guitar style.
BW: I guess there are only a few guitarists who have really changed
the way the instrument is played. For me, Michael Hedges was one of
them. He was one of the first guitarists I heard who really explored
the textures of the instrument, so that the guitar delivered the kind
of dynamic excitement of an orchestra, or a modern art painter.
Another big inspiration was Erin Corday, who lives in Bellingham now.
This must have been 15 years ago or more. She was just exploring everything
the instrument could do, using all the techniques I had heard in Hedges'
work and adding more. She would build these exquisite tensions and rising
chord structures, you could practically see the music in the air, rising
like some kind of exciting modern architectural adventure. I remember
seeing her play for the first time, in Fremont at the Still Life. It
set a whole new standard for the instrument, in my mind.
SS: What's your songwriting process like these days?
BW: Laborious. A lot of my songs now are eight, ten, maybe sixteen drafts
deep. It's like writing a play. I never thought I'd work so hard to
make songs. Part of this is a kind of trust in the process. As a writer,
I've learned to make rewriting my friend. That doesn't mean the results
will always be better, but they usually are. I don't settle for sloppy
writing as much as I used to.
I mean, early on, I actually thought the words were there just so you
had something to sing. I thought scat singing pretty much proved that.
I think the turning point for me, when the lyric really began to mean
a lot, was when I heard a whole concert performed by one guy on stage
with an acoustic guitar, playing a whole evening of John Martyn songs.
I was about 16 or 17, and I remember thinking, “Those are real
songs.” I thought, “I just paid good money to hear this, and
I'd pay it again. I don't think I'd pay that much to hear my band.”
So I went home, broke up the band, sold my electric guitar, and stopped
performing for a long time. I just listened and practiced and tried
to write songs I liked well enough that I would pay to hear somebody
play them. I wanted to learn how real songs are made. It took me a long
time.
SS: You mentioned playwriting, which you used to do. How has that influenced
your songwriting?
BW: I don't think I really learned what a story is until I got involved
in theater. Story is all they have, so they have it down. These are
people who walk into dark rooms, turn on the lights, and find out whether
they're really worth listening to by whether or not people stick around
to listen and watch. That's what actors do every day. If they're not
brave and vulnerable, if they don't find material that demands that
of them, theaters can't stay in business. So good theater people know
a lot about what makes a story.
I try to use the rudiments of theater writing in my songs. And I mostly
perform alone on stage these days. If people don't like it they walk
away. And if they do like it, they stick around, and when it really
works, usually they're singing the songs with me. So the audience is
my teacher.
SS: How do you balance your career as a writer and editor with your
career as a songwriter and performer?
BW: I don't know that I do balance them. Balance has never been my strong
suit. I just work a lot, and I work at things I love to do. I started
doing all this before I knew any better, and I’ve been doing it
for so long that experience plainly hasn't taught me much.
SS: The past several years have been full of changes for you, both
personally and professionally. How has that influenced your musical
life?
BW: It's been a time. Mortality and grief seem to be crowding into the
house. My father died, and then my grandmother, my mother went into
a big fight with breast cancer, three of my uncles died, and one of
my closest friends just came through surgery for cancer. When my father
died, one of his oldest friends phoned me and asked me to visit. He
said, "The tall trees are falling in the forest."
The last few years, a lot of the songs I've written are prayers and
blessings. I guess I've needed them.
SS: What's your current image of success as a songwriter and performer?
BW: I feel successful when I love a new song. I feel successful when
I can see an audience wade in with me. It's pretty simple right now.
It isn't always like that.
SS: I know your fans are eager for a follow-up to your last release,
"Company Might Come." Any plans for a new CD?
BW: This spring and summer I am reserving time for the next round of
recording. I hope to have it out in the fall.
SS: Any other plans?
BW: Breathing. I am grateful to be breathing.
But beyond that, a long time ago a 92-year-old man named Jack Miller
told me that I was going to spend my life listening to people and writing
their stories and helping them to know that their stories matter. He
was right. That's what I do now, whether it's in songs or in books.
I am lucky. It's a lot of work, and it's intense, and there are tight
deadlines. It's also a real honor to be able to do this work.
