Songs inspired by a life less ordinary

Folk & Jazz critic

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Steve Forbert's latest album, Over With You, is presented as a song cycle based on the emotions involved in personal relationships and with its heartfelt pleas for reconciliation and honest declarations of love, it certainly has a unified quality.

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Rob Adams

A break-up album wasn't the Mississippi-born singer-songwriter's original intention, however.

"When I played the material I had to Chris Goldsmith, who produced the album, there were 15 new songs and another 15 that had remained unrecorded from previous years," says Forbert down the line from another stop on his road much travelled.

"Chris liked all the new songs but decided to eliminate the ones about the economic collapse, another one I'd written about my daughter being 15 and one about a big snowstorm that stretched from Chicago to the coast. We were left with songs mainly about the frustrations that arise during romantic relationships and decided to focus on that. They're songs about things most people will have felt and in a way you could say it's an album that's taken a lifetime to make because you don't just pull these songs out of thin air – you have to live them."Forbert, who returns to Scotland this week for gigs in Kinross and at the annual Glasgow Americana festival, has lived a life that seems tailor-made for a songwriter. Born in Meridian, Mississippi's sixth largest city, he grew up with an urge to rock'n'roll and an appreciation of the literature of the South, although he wouldn't claim to be driven towards the poetic songwriting quality he developed through his readings of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.At the age of 21, having played in bands around town and begun writing songs with a friend, he lost his job as a truck driver when the company closed and decided to try his luck in New York. Taking a room at the YMCA and working by day as a messenger, he busked on the streets of Greenwich Village at night. After playing at the legendary CBGB, supporting John Cale and Talking Heads in the days before it become synonymous with punk, he landed a deal with Nemperor, a division of Columbia Records.His first album, Alive on Arrival, was greeted with what for the time, the late 1970s, was a fairly stock reception for an album by a young man with literate songs and an acoustic guitar. Like Loudon Wainwright, John Prine and Bruce Springsteen, Forbert was hailed as the new Bob Dylan."It was a cliché, and a bit lazy," he says. "But it was helpful in that people kinda knew what to expect from me. I wasn't Talking Heads or Eurythmics or a new romantic, all of which were popular then. What it really said was, 'Here's another cat with songs that lean heavily towards the lyrics'. and if people liked that kind of thing, they'd listen. It didn't do me any harm."With Romeos' Tune, a track from his second album, Jackrabbit Slim, Forbert went on briefly to pop radio success. Further hits never materialised, not for want of trying, he says, and after four albums his record company eventually lost interest. A projected fifth album was shelved and he didn't record for six years. His relationships with record companies have continued to have their ups and downs since then but for Forbert, whose songs have been covered by country music favourites including Rosanne Cash and Marty Stuart, the parts of his trade that really matter are writing and getting out on the road to play to people."I've never been an organised writer," he says with the same boyish, southern rasp that delivers the songs on Over With You. "I'm still likely to wake up at one in the morning and jot down an idea or come up with something when I'm driving and have to rummage for something to write on. But I enjoy the process of writing. The travelling I still enjoy up to a point. There is a certain romance on the road but a lot of things have become generic, towns tend to look the same and there's not so much charm and individuality these days, and, of course, airport security has become a nuisance for everyone but especially if you're a regular flier."He'll put up with these frustrations for the 90 minutes to two hours he has with his audience."I'm doing what I wanted to do back in Meridian and when I played on the streets in New York," he says. "And I love the contact that playing live gives you. I'm a pretty spontaneous performer. I couldn't be an actor in a Broadway play and do the same thing exactly the same twice a day. In fact, I couldn't even stick with a set list when I was working with a band. I just read the room and go where the mood of the night takes us."Steve Forbert plays The Green Hotel, Kinross, on Thursday and St Andrew's in the Square, Glasgow, on Friday. Glasgow Americana runs from today to Sunday. Visit www.glasgowamericana.com.

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Songs inspired by a life less ordinary

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