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.
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.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article