Drew Ryder Smith: The Long Road to The Deep End | The TSN Interview
The songwriter and artist talks Muscle Shoals, Sam Phillips, Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, Abbey Road, Paul McCartney—and finally making a record of his own.
Drew Ryder Smith has been around music for a long time, even if you’re only hearing his name now.
He grew up between Middle Tennessee and Muscle Shoals, got into radio while he was still a kid, worked for Sam Phillips, became a professional songwriter in Nashville, and eventually had one of his songs recorded by Merle Haggard. Along the way, he spent years writing and producing for other people, learning the strange little machinery of how songs move through the music business and, every so often, into history.
His new album, The Deep End, brings the focus back to Smith himself.
It’s a record about family, memory, old habits, disappearing places, and the things we inherit whether we ask for them or not. It’s also the sound of a songwriter who has spent years helping other people say what they mean finally deciding to do a little more of that for himself.
Smith stopped by The Sharp Notes in Paramus, New Jersey, and we talked about where he comes from, the records that shaped him, Sam Phillips, Merle Haggard, Steve Earle, the peculiar business of writing songs for other people, physical media, and a trip to Abbey Road that, shall we say, produced more than a few stories.
One of them involves a Beatle.
We’ll leave it there.
The following conversation has been edited lightly for clarity and length.
Evan Toth: Thanks for coming to visit with us today, Drew. We really appreciate it.
Drew Ryder Smith: Thank you for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
ezt: You’ve spent a lot of time behind the scenes as a songwriter. For people who are just discovering who Drew Ryder Smith is right now, tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what kind of kid you were before music became a serious pursuit. Bring us back in the Wayback Machine a little bit.
drs: Oh, I think I was probably a terrible kid. I stayed in my room a lot. I was an only child.
ezt: Me too, by the way.
drs: Once I really got into guitar, it’s great to be a musician when you’re an only child. You
probably found the same thing.
ezt: It’s your buddy. It’s your pal.
drs: It’s your thing. And you don’t have any siblings coming in there trying to tear your stuff up. So I would come home from school and go straight to my room. My parents were really great about letting me do my thing.
I’ve told this story a lot, but if I was on the phone with my friends and it was bedtime, they’d come in and say, “All right, it’s time for bed.” Or if I was watching TV, “All right, it’s time for bed.” But if I was playing guitar, they’d come in and tell me goodnight and say, “Well, don’t stay up too late.” They were great encouragers of what I was doing musically.
ezt: That was kind of a hack. You figured out how to hack bedtime. You could stay up a little later if you were doing something constructive.
drs: I did. My kid still hasn’t figured it out yet. But I had a great childhood. I was very blessed. My pursuit of music led me into radio when I was just a teenager. I just wanted to be around music in any shape, form, or fashion.
ezt: Geographically, I think a lot about geography with music. We’re here in New Jersey, and of course we have such a strong New Jersey music background here, as do Nashville and Muscle Shoals, two places that you moved between while you were growing up. How did living in those two environments shape the way that you heard music and thought about songwriting?
drs: I think the biggest thing I might have gotten from it was that it was attainable. It wasn’t this faraway land. For me growing up in southern Middle Tennessee, when I thought about New York or L.A., those places seemed impossible. They seemed like they were on a whole other planet.
But Muscle Shoals was 45 minutes down the road, and Nashville was, at most, an hour and a half down the road. There were people living very close by that had ties to Nashville and Muscle Shoals, that played in bands and were on records.
I remember I met Don Von Tress when my dad took me to this radio station where he used to do a little bit of work. I was maybe eight or seven. Don Von Tress is the guy that wrote “Achy Breaky Heart.”
Love it or hate it, he wrote “Achy Breaky Heart.” That was the biggest hit for probably two years. That’s all you heard on the radio, Billy Ray Cyrus and “Achy Breaky Heart.” And the guy that wrote that, Don Von Tress, lived in the same county as we did. Being so close geographically to those places, I said, “Man, this might really be a thing. This might be possible.” It was right down the road. It was a real thing.
ezt: And you probably drove past that recording studio 400 times. What’s the Muscle Shoals studio there?
drs: There’s FAME, and then there’s Muscle Shoals Sound.
ezt: That’s the one on the Cher album.
drs: Yeah. So many records. They did everything down there. Dusty Springfield, the Rolling Stones. “Wild Horses” was cut there in Muscle Shoals. Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin. It’s crazy, the amount of people that recorded in Muscle Shoals.
ezt: And for you, it was just down the street.
drs: For me, it was right down the street. We were neighbors. Muscle Shoals was the hit recording capital of the world for a number of years. To grow up almost directly in between Muscle Shoals and Nashville was a really wild thing because I was certainly getting influenced by both.
I remember when we first got CMT. We had just gotten cable, and I would watch these country music videos all the time. TNN had a program after school, Live from the Wildhorse Saloon. They would have performances and do line-dance lessons and things like that.
I remember even as a child thinking, “Man, I’m so close to these things. They are right here. Surely I can get into this.”
ezt: And you did. You mentioned radio. You were working in radio at 14 years old. What were you doing at the station, what did being around radio teach you about songs and records, and how did you get that gig?
drs: First of all, I had no business having that gig. I called the radio station at 14 years old, and at 14, I talked then like I do now. This very nice lady answered the phone and we talked briefly. I said, “I just wanted to see if I could fill out an application.”
She said, “We’d love you to come by. How about Thursday at 10 a.m.?”
Of course, I was in school. I was in like eighth grade. I said, “Well, 10 a.m., I can’t make that work, but anytime after three would be great.”
My mom picked me up from school and took me over there. I introduced myself to the lady at the front desk and her eyes got big. She said, “You’re Drew?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”
They were very kind. They gave me a tour of the radio station and I met the general manager. He ended up having me do an air check on a cassette. He took me in the production room and handed me the local news from that day. He said, “You’re going to talk into this microphone. When you’re ready, hit record. When you’re done, hit stop and come find me.”
A couple of weeks later, I was reading the weather there.
ezt: Well, you’ve got the voice for it.
drs: Yeah, I’ve got the face for it too, man. That eventually transitioned to me working in Muscle Shoals when I was 17. I worked for Sam Phillips in Muscle Shoals.
ezt: I didn’t know that. Tell me about that. What are you talking about? You worked for Sam Phillips?
drs: Yeah, it was great, man. Sam always wanted to be a DJ. That was his thing. That’s what he always wanted to be, in radio.
ezt: For our audience, by the way, this is the man who discovered Elvis Presley.
drs: That’s right. Johnny Cash. Sam goes on to establish Sun Records and finds Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins and those guys, and he puts them on the map. By the time all of that had exploded, Sam was financially doing pretty well.
So he went back to his hometown in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and built a little cluster of radio stations there. It started off as one adult contemporary station, and eventually he started adding more stations around it.
I got to work for Sam for probably about a year before he passed away. He was still very active until really the last few months of his life. He still got around. He liked to come see the radio station. He liked to do appearances when he could. It was really wild working for a guy like that.
ezt: I remember him being on TV and in interviews all the time when I was a kid, too. He loved talking about those old times and those successes.
drs: Yeah, very much. He was a wildcat. I think he was probably always thinking about his next big thing and whatever it was that was going to contribute to his legacy. But it was an absolute blessing getting to work for him. The father of rock and roll, really.
ezt: To bring the conversation into the present, who are some of the artists that you still return to for inspiration? Not necessarily to imitate them, but to remind yourself of what great songwriting is like. Those things that you listened to as a young only child—what do you still go back to today?
drs: I still listen to a lot of songs that were written by the late, great Don Schlitz, who we just lost earlier this year. Don wrote “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, and he wrote “When You Say Nothing at All.” He had massive hits.
He was somebody that I really looked up to as a kid. I remember when I started figuring out that all these names on the credits of these albums actually meant something. I know that’s a silly thought now, but at the tender age of eight—
ezt: Interestingly, that’s an experience that a lot of people don’t have now with their music. We’re here in a record store, so that’s what we do here. But many consumers of music now are just listening. There’s information on Spotify or wherever that you can get, but it’s not the same thing.
drs: No, it’s not. You really have to dig for it, as opposed to just pulling out a sleeve that’s right there. There are no pictures on Spotify that you can thumb through as you’re looking at credits.
I remember Schlitz being all over everything that was coming out of Nashville, so I really studied him. I still listen to a lot of his stuff. And I still listen to a ton of Steve Earle. He was another one that really shaped me as a songwriter and as an artist as well.
I listen to all kinds of stuff. I told you I was listening to the Left Banke on the way here. For a hillbilly from Tennessee, that’s an interesting thing to listen to. I got into the Left Banke because those guys in Boston were highly influenced by them. I’d read that once and thought, “I need to check out the Left Banke,” because I always loved Boston’s melodies and “More Than a Feeling” and all those great songs that they had.
ezt: The Left Banke were great. I’m a big fan of that baroque-pop kind of thing. Through the Left Banke, I really got into the Zombies. The Turtles had a little bit of that baroque feel, too.
drs: They did, certainly. The Zombies interview you did was great too, so anyone that’s listening, I encourage you to go check that out.
ezt: Thank you very much.
Steve Earle is an interesting person. When I think of Steve Earle, around the age that you were, he was sort of a modern country outlaw. I know you have a story with him and you know him, but talk to me about getting into his music and also getting to know him as a person.
drs: My parents—I think the Copperhead Road album came out when I was three or four—and my parents were big Steve Earle fans. Probably even from the record before that, which was Guitar Town, which was a great record. There was something about his storytelling, even when I was so young. He made me interested in other things.
A lot of people call Copperhead Road a political album, and I don’t think he would classify it as that at all. But it had a lot of songs of a political nature, from Vietnam to the Blitz. It was things like that where I was going, “What does that mean? I want to know.”
He really made me want to explore outside of music, outside of songwriting. To me, what a great thing you can do as a songwriter is make people want to explore things outside of what they’re listening to.
That wasn’t a conscious thought I had at the time because I was a kid, but I knew there was something about his songwriting and the way that he delivered it. He would sing these songs about going to war, like “Johnny Come Lately,” and I really believed that he was there. I believed that he was this kid who had come back from war all beaten and battered.
It was songs like his that really made me fall in love with songwriting.
Getting to know him in the past few years has really been special. He’s on my new single that just came out—shameless self-plug.
ezt: That’s what you’re here to do.
drs: The song is called “Textile Town.” We recorded it mostly in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then brought it up to New York City, over to the Hit Factory. Steve came over and put his vocals on it. That was really special for me. It was kind of affirmation that I’m on the right path.
ezt: “Textile Town” deals with the disappearing kind of American community. Do you see yourself as part of that tradition of writers who document places and people that might otherwise vanish from the cultural record?
drs: I hope so. I hope I am, and I hope to continue to be.
I think it’s really important to tell those stories in different ways and from different perspectives. Hearing about it in school, for me, wasn’t enough. It was historical events. It was people like Springsteen and Steve Earle. The way they said it and the way they made me visualize it made me interested in historical events. It didn’t come from a book or from a teacher.
I think it’s important. If you can create visuals that are interesting enough to make people care, that’s most important.
ezt: There’s something interesting and unique about talking about history through music.
Back to your songwriting and creating a character: speaking through words that someone else would say, not necessarily yourself—maybe someone completely opposite from who you are. Is that an experience you’ve had and thought about?
drs: Yeah, for sure. I think it works both ways because there are songs that I write that I would only want me to record.
But as a professional writer of so many years—I was a published writer in Nashville for a long time, for some great publishers—it was my job to do my best to tell the truth, and also try to tell that truth in a way that other people wouldn’t be afraid to say it.
That’s an interesting angle because it adds a filter to what you’re doing. I think making great art, you have to let go of all filters. But to be a songwriter who’s trying to make a living writing songs for other people, you have to include that filter, at least part of the time.
It served me well. But it is there, and it is something you have to think about when writing.
You go, “Well, I would say it like this, but this artist or that artist may not say that because it doesn’t apply to them, or because it feels a little too honest, or they won’t play that on the radio because it might ruffle this, so we’ve got to change that line.”
Those things are okay. Compromise is compromise.
ezt: Writing for other people was a big part of your life. What was the point where you realized, “I’m becoming a songwriter for other artists,” rather than using some of that material for your own albums?
drs: Honestly, the whole time.
The first deal that I signed, I signed as an artist-writer. I was working for this publishing company as a songwriter, but also with the intention of making a record and getting a record deal. That deal dissolved early, unfortunately.
What happened while it was dissolving was that I started getting cuts on other artists, and I thought, “Okay, well, this is working.”
As you know, being in the music business, if something starts working, even if it’s not exactly the plan, you tend to latch on to it because it keeps you in the game.
I was happy to stay in the game, and I don’t regret any of that. I don’t regret waiting all this time to put out a full-length debut album. I think it’s coming out exactly when it should.
I’ve got a great family. I’ve got a kid in my life now. Things are really settled in a very different place, so this is a really good moment and a good place and space for me to put this record out. But it was on my mind the whole time. Once you start getting cuts, it gets real easy to start making excuses.
What that eventually led into was I started producing and engineering for other people and other bands and artists. I spent a lot of time in the studio working with other artists.
Between writing and producing other people, I was doing everybody else’s music but my own. It’s easy to make that an excuse and go, “Well, I’m busy making music for all these other people.”
ezt: And you can tell us the truth: were there times when you had a song that maybe you didn’t want to give to someone else? Were you like, “I’m going to keep this in the me pile. I’m going to keep this in my special personal pile”?
drs: No. Hell no. I needed the money.
ezt: Get it out there.
drs: I didn’t care.
It’s different now. But early in the game, I was happy for anybody to record anything of mine. I was doing all I could to give that stuff away, and so were my publishers. Now it’s different.
Having been with several publishers, there are a lot of old songs in catalogs that I don’t own. At some point, I would really like to get some of those songs back because a lot of those things continue to be pitched year after year.
Some of the biggest country music hits that we hear were written 20 years before they were a hit. They would pitch these songs for years because the publisher really believed in that song and really thought it was a hit song.
Whether it was A&R or the wrong artist or the wrong label or the wrong timing, whatever you want to chalk it up to, it would go years without being a hit. I think a lot of people don’t realize that. So many songs that you hear today weren’t written on Tuesday and recorded on Wednesday and hit radio on Thursday. Especially with artists that are not writing all of their own material, some of those songs have been around a while.
ezt: Sometimes in the copyright notes you see that these songs have been written by 17 people too. What’s up with that?
drs: What is up with that?
It started getting real weird pretty early into my writing career. They started bringing in what they called these track guys. These guys would come in, and a lot of them were kids from L.A. that weren’t cutting it in pop, but they could program on a MacBook pretty quickly. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
These publishing companies and record labels were bringing them into writing rooms with guys that were writing real, very real songs. These guys would sit down while you were writing, with their MacBook and maybe a little MIDI keyboard and headphones and an interface, and they would start building the track as you were writing it.
Then these guys were getting part of the song.
ezt: But isn’t that more arranging than writing?
drs: It is, yeah. Very much.
There’s enough room for everybody. But I always hated those days. It was weird. It was like waking up in the morning and some guy is sitting in your bedroom. It felt like that.
Who the hell is this guy?
ezt: Because writing is such an intimate process, too. When you have some person you don’t know working on a computer program next to you, it makes it a little antiseptic.
drs: Yeah.
To speak directly to these 17 guys writing one song, it’s been that way in the pop world for a long time, and it’s always kind of been normal there. But it has not been normal in these other genres like alternative and country. Even when I see it, I go, “What? How did this happen that day?”
I’ve had rooms merge before where you go into a publishing house in the morning to write with this guy and this guy, and then come to find out the other guy who writes at this publishing company, his writing appointment canceled, so you invite him in.
The thing about that is that magic happens that way. It just does.
It’s one of those things where you never want to say no because you have no idea what’s going to happen. You really don’t want to screw up whatever it is that the muse has planned for you that day.
But when you start intentionally getting together with eight different people, I’m out on that. That’s too many ideas at once. My brain can’t handle it.
ezt: With all this writing that you did, Merle Haggard recorded one of your songs. For a songwriter with your background and your influences, what does it feel like to hear someone of that stature inhabit something that you wrote?
drs: It’s indescribable, really.
I think part of why Merle Haggard has been so highly respected for so long is because, for one, he’s an incredible singer. He’s also a really great guitar player and a phenomenal songwriter.
He didn’t cut a lot of outside songs because he didn’t need to. Merle Haggard wrote great, great songs.
When I got the call that he was recording my song, I thought, “Why?” This is one of the greatest songwriters that’s ever walked. Why is he recording—what am I? Thank God, but why?
It really is indescribable.
He was so sweet about it. I met Merle a few different times, but we got together in Georgia not long after he recorded my song. He had me come out and open a show for him. I’d opened a couple for him before that, and that was kind of how we got to know each other.
After he recorded the song, he said, “Why don’t you come over? I’m playing over in Georgia. Why don’t you open the show, and let’s hang out. We’ll sit on the bus and talk.”
So I went out there. One of the things that he asked me, which blew my mind—we’re sitting on the bus and we’re talking, and he completely changes the train of thought.
He said, “Do you think it was too fast?”
I said, “What?”
He said, “That song of yours we cut. You think it was too fast?”
I said, “Man, you’re Merle Haggard. You do whatever you want to do with it.”
But no, I didn’t think it was too fast at all.
His producer, Buddy Cannon, had called me after they had cut the tracks and Merle was getting ready to cut the vocal. Buddy said, “Can you come over to my studio and cut the vocal? Merle wants you to record it just the way you did it on the demo. He wants you to sing it exactly like you did on the demo because he loves the demo, and he wants to have you in his headphones as a reference because he wants to match how you sang it and how you delivered it.”
Merle could have sung it any way that he wanted to. He could have recorded it any way he wanted to.
Instead, he chose to honor the song and honor the reasons that he loved the song and the reasons that he chose to record the song himself. He was a special guy.
When you know that part of it, what else do you say about it other than one of the greatest that’s ever been recorded one of my songs?
ezt: And here we are in northern New Jersey, in Paramus, and those records sell here. When we get them in pre-owned, they go.
drs: Yeah. It’s because they’re great records. They’re timeless. They really are.
ezt: Talk to me a little bit about “Bloodline.” It digs pretty deeply into family, temperament, inheritance, and the things that we carry from one generation to another. Did writing that song change the way that you understood your own family history?
drs: No, but I think it probably changed the way that I carried and transferred those things into my music.
There was something about writing that song. It really started falling out, the first couple of verses especially. I had a buddy of mine come in and help me write the chorus, but the verses were really falling out.
There were things in there that I would normally be hesitant to say and talk about. But it was all coming out so fast that I thought, “I better not mess this up. Whatever I write down is what it is and what it’s supposed to be.”
My family loves it.
It talks about my father’s temper when I was young and my mom, who loves bigger than anybody that I’ve ever known. Even if it’s to her detriment sometimes, I get a piece of that from her. I get some of my temper from my father.
My great-great-grandfather was a real rambler. I mean, a real rambler. He traveled around the country for work, and he really traveled, you know what I mean?
I wrote it the best way that I know how, which was to tell the truth about it and not be ashamed of it. My family absolutely loves it.
Prior to that song, anything that I would have written about my family would have really been measured because I would have been afraid of what they would think of it.
Writing that, my family hearing it, my family loving it—after that, I just write whatever it is, man. If this is how it happened, then this is how I’m going to write it.
You’re recording a moment in time. Whether it be good or bad, the reason you’re writing it is because that moment probably changed you, or at least colored you in a different way than you might have been otherwise.
It’s just life moments, man. So it did change me as a writer.
ezt: I write songs too, and there are songs I’ve written that, if I play them now, can suck me right back into what I was thinking when I wrote them, even if it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. You memorialize these little moments, or even a passing thought. It’s almost like catching onto a dream. Instead of the dream fading away by breakfast, you can hang on to it as long as you play it, as long as you listen to it.
drs: That’s right. Then it’ll just never go away. That thing lives forever.
ezt: There’s a wonderful tension on this record between intimacy and scale. You wanted something kind of rough-edged and live, yet you also ended up going to Abbey Road for orchestra and choir. How did you keep the record from becoming too polished or losing its humanity? How did you ride that line between the two worlds?
drs: My producer and I have worked together for years. Strangely, we’ve worked together on other people’s projects. We’ve never worked together on a record that he and I were making for us.
But knowing each other all of these years and seeing how each of us works on other
people’s projects, there was a lot of trust there.
Glenn is a bit of a purist like myself. We don’t get super precious about things, but we believe in real people playing real instruments.
We also believe that not everything needs to be quantized right down to the millisecond, where everything locks in perfectly, because that’s not human.
A human might have played that part, but when you really start shifting those things around to try to create “perfection,” then the machine has kind of done it.
There were never any discussions like, “Man, this is getting too slick,” or, “This is getting too polished.”
The things that we did at Abbey Road were especially fun because there’s nothing—you can’t edit that.
Glenn had arranged this huge array of microphones so that we could essentially capture it in Atmos. A lot of things are recorded and then put into Atmos. This was kind of recorded in Atmos.
You’ve got all these different players playing these beautiful stringed instruments. There is
no editing that.
We had room mics and direct mics and floor mics and ceiling mics and microphones behind them, microphones beside them. I’ve never seen so many microphones in my life. We wanted to catch everything, and you can’t edit that. That was a really beautiful thing about it because what we had is what we had. There was no way to dehumanize it without really screwing it up.
There are some things like that that keep you honest.
I knew Glenn was not going to do anything on his end that was going to make it non-human or take any of the imperfections out. He’s a really beautiful producer and a wonderful person and a great friend.
He had all of my trust. I think we did a really great job of keeping each other honest.
ezt: Even though you’re a country guy, we’ve talked about all the different genres of music you like—the Left Banke, the Zombies. Of course, having been at Abbey Road, you’ve got to have a Beatles story. Tell us some kind of Beatles story from Abbey Road.
drs: So we’re in London, cutting strings. The orchestral players are down in Studio Two. The control room is up on the main level, at street level, and then they dug this huge hole out of the ground to create Studio Two. The tracking room, the live room, is massive from floor to ceiling.
ezt: Is that the Beatles room?
drs: That’s the Beatles room. That’s it.
We’re in Studio Two, and I was listening to these orchestral players out in the live room.
They’re tuning up. I’m standing at the console, listening to them, and everyone else is behind me. There were several people in the room.
I noticed that the room got really, really quiet. It was kind of a subconscious thought: “Well, everybody stopped talking.”
My partner says, “Drew.”
I turn around and Paul McCartney is standing there.
ezt: He just pops in.
drs: He just pops in.
The coolest thing about it was that the control-room door was a solid wood door, with the exception of this probably 16-inch-by-four-inch window.
I didn’t see this, of course, but everybody else said that they looked over and he’s outside the control-room door, looking through the glass and motioning, “Can I come in?”
Paul McCartney asked if he could come in.
Who’s going to say no?
“We’re busy right now, but come back later. Check back in with us.”
ezt: Studio’s not cheap.
drs: Yeah.
They motioned for him to come in. He had been standing there for a few seconds before anybody alerted me to this.
The thing is, when Paul McCartney walks into a room, it literally sucks all the air out of the room, but in the best way.
I spin around and Paul McCartney is standing there. I ran over to him and we shook hands. He asked me about the record and where I’m from and all of those things.
We talked a little bit, and he put his blessings on the record.
He turned around to walk out. He got about halfway out the door, spins back around and looks at me and says, “You know this is my room, don’t you?”
I said, “Oh, yes. Yes, sir. We’re very much aware that this is your room.”
But he was a sweetheart. He was a really special guy.
ezt: I thought you were going to say he said something like, “Bring up the viola just a bit. It’s a little low in the mix.”
drs: And if he would have, we would have done that.
If he would have suggested a kazoo, we would have added that.
ezt: You’ve said that writing for yourself comes down to whether you’re brave enough to say it. At this stage in your life, what are you willing to say in a song that you might have avoided 10 or 20 years ago? Where’s that bravery in your life today?
drs: I am much more willing to write about my iniquities and about my insecurities, things that I’ve done that I’m not proud of.
I’ve kind of let go of the shame.
I haven’t always been an upright citizen.
ezt: And who has?
drs: Well, I was a pretty bad one.
I’m not afraid to write about those things now. I think that alone has made me probably a much better writer because I wouldn’t have said those things 10 or 12 years ago.
I wouldn’t have wanted people to know that. I’m supposed to be this cool songwriter that’s got everything together.
But to write about those things now, I have found that I am emotionally closer to those songs than I am the others—the songs that I’m writing because I love the melody or whatever.
It’s those songs that I’m the closest to.
ezt: People like those redemptive truths, especially in American culture. For all the critique that there is about our country, one of the things that’s true is we love a good comeback story. We love, “I did this and I did that, and now I’m here.”
That’s what makes these recordings compelling. That’s what makes good books compelling. That’s an important part of your catalog and your legacy.
drs: I agree.
I’m glad that we weren’t afraid to record those things. Once I learned how to write those things and be proud of them, then suddenly it was like, “Maybe these songs haven’t come to me yet because I wasn’t ready to record them yet.”
That’s why I think this record is coming out at the right time.
ezt: And what if Paul McCartney poked around the corner and said, “Drew, you sure you
want to talk about that?”
drs: Well, I would at least consider what he said, for sure.
But to get his blessing on the record—I feel like we’re okay. If nobody else likes the record,
Paul blessed it, so I’m okay with it.
ezt: How can people find the album?
I just saw the CD, by the way. It’s a beautiful-looking CD. You have this matte-textured cover. Tell me a little bit about the production of the actual physical product.
drs: Well, I just like matte.
ezt: Okay.
drs: I spent a lot of time on that. We’ve got vinyl that just went on presale. The album comes
out October 28. It’s a full-length, 13-song album, and there are lots of little hidden gems between songs and in songs.
This weird thing happened once we started making this record. Once I heard how good sonically it was going to be, suddenly that became the standard for everything else.
The music video that we put out with Steve Earle—that was the standard. If we’re going to do a video, the video has to look as great as the record sounds. If we’re going to do a photo shoot, those photos have to be as great as the record sounds.
ezt: But that gets expensive.
drs: It gets really expensive. That’s tough because you want it to be the best that it can be.
We were talking about vinyl stuff today. We’ve been pricing vinyl, and this other quote had come in kind of late. I was telling my partner about it, and she said, “Well, yeah, that’s a better deal. But really, what’s it look like?”
She’s right. At this point, we can’t afford not to make it as great as we can.
The CD is fun. Even if you don’t have a CD player, the CD is still fun. It’s got a booklet on the inside. Vinyl is going to be the same way. It’ll have a nice booklet and lots of pictures, and the credits are all in there.
It was just fun to make. We spent a lot of time putting that together. I wanted it to look aesthetically pleasing and aesthetically interesting more than anything, so that if you see that, you go, “Well, I’d kind of like to listen to that.”
ezt: Are you a vinyl person at this time in your life?
drs: My parents have this massive antique trunk.
When I was a kid, we had a record player that had the cassette built in and the speakers—the whole deal. In that trunk, it was full of my parents’ vinyl that they had collected for years.
I used to go through that vinyl as a kid. You couldn’t lift that trunk. It was so full of vinyl.
So I am precious about it. Yes, very much.
ezt: Where’s that trunk now? You still have that trunk?
drs: My mother has that trunk.
I’ve been through enough breakups to learn that she should keep up with the good things, so I can get them later on.
She’s still got that trunk.
We still have a ton of cassettes. I really love cassettes. We’re going to do some of those as well, just because I love cassette, man. They’re very near and dear to me and my childhood. I really saw the very end, the last gasp for air from cassette before everybody changed over to CD.
ezt: This podcast will publish after your next stop in Boston, so how can we tell people about your upcoming shows in a way that’s not immediately old news?
drs: Social media is really the place to go for that. Instagram and Facebook. Everything is @DrewRyderSmith, or DrewRyderSmith.com.
We keep our shows posted on there. I try to keep up with that, and that’s the easiest way.
We’ve got a big string of shows that we’re doing all along the East Coast, and then we’re going to get out into the Midwest next year as well. I’m really looking forward to it. I’m happy to get back out.
ezt: Drew Ryder Smith, thank you very much for bringing those beautiful boots to our store here in Paramus, and thank you so much for your time and your insight.
We wish you all the best of luck with the new release and a happy, healthy time on the road, man.
drs: Thank you so much. I’m really, really grateful to have gotten to come visit with you. And I love your place.
Please, if you’re in the Jersey area, come check out what they’re doing at The Sharp Notes because they have a really wonderful storefront and their staff is wonderful. Miss Melanie will take good care of you.
Come check them out. They’ve got some really great stuff. She has a stack of things for me that I’m going to buy when I get out of here.
ezt: All right, well, I’m going to give you that $20 as soon as I put the mic away for saying that.
