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To Make a Long Story Short ...
By Andy Langer
APRIL 5, 1999:
Wow!" says a dazed Stephen Bruton, looking at a printout of what is essentially
his online résumé -- a page from the All-Music Guide database (http://www.allmusic.com),
which sorts information from over 230,000 albums. "The sum of my parts somehow
looks larger than I do. I think that's a good thing." According to Bruton's
entry, the 50-year-old Ft. Worth native is credited with production, session, or
solo work on nearly 80 different recordings spanning the length of his 30-year career
as a professional musician. With Bruton, whose most used conversational phrase appears
to be, "To make a long story short," it's a given that each and every gig
has an anecdote, adventure, and lesson learned attached. Whatever the actual sum
of those "parts" may equal now, however, the All-Music page definitely
amounts to the perfect Stephen Bruton primer -- everything you'd want to know about
Bruton but didn't have time to ask.
For starters, consider the list of heavy-hitters filed under Bruton's "Worked
With" and "Appears On" All-Music headers: Kris Kristofferson,
Rita Coolidge, Delbert McClinton, Bonnie Raitt, Booker T. Jones, Don Was, T-Bone
Burnett, B.W. Stevenson, Carly Simon, Lowell George, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Under
"Songs Appear On," Bruton's list of songwriting credits, there's Marcia
Ball, Alejandro Escovedo, Patty Loveless, and the Highwaymen, (Kristofferson, Willie
Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash). Flip to the entry for Turner Stephen Bruton
and you'll find one more: "Getting Over You," Willie Nelson's duet with
Bonnie Raitt from the local country icon's critically acclaimed 1993 release, Across
the Borderline.
Had Bruton been properly credited for his work on Bob Dylan's Pat Garret &
Billy the Kid soundtrack 20 years earlier, he'd certainly be the only Austinite
on All-Music able to lay claim to session work with both Dylan and Barbra
Streisand. And because the All-Music Guide is dedicated to recorded output
only, it doesn't even include Bruton's most significant accomplishments: more than
a decade's worth of touring with Kristofferson, and dozens of shorter stints with
many of the aforementioned artists, including Dylan. What does Bruton himself make
of the All-Music list?
"I guess I probably took a lot of the stuff I worked on for granted"
he says. "You're there, you don't attach any importance to it, you just do it.
In retrospect, you think, 'Wow! Those are some pretty hefty gigs for a kid that age.'
And while some of that came from being in the right spot, I don't think opportunity
always comes to you. You have to seek it out. That's when things start happening.
What did Mark Twain say? 'The harder I work, the luckier I get.' That's been the
truth."
Nothing but the Truth, Bruton's third solo album, is the journeyman musician's
latest testament to hard work and good fortune, and that which makes in-depth discussion
of Bruton's résumé seem relevant now. It's been said that while rock &
roll may be a young man's game, becoming a musician is a lifetime's work. And indeed,
at the half-century mark, Bruton has made an album that reflects that lifetime of
experience, balancing maturity, grace, and experimentation effortlessly. While it's
also an album that reaches well beyond the scope and performance standards of the
typical singer-songwriter or bar band recordings, more than anything else, Nothing
but the Truth is a statement of confidence. It's the sound of a veteran sideman
firmly planting himself at center stage.
"The distance from stage right to the center may only be a few feet, but
traveling those five feet can take a long time. Some people take all their lives
just considering them," Bruton says of the transition he began only six years
ago with the release of his Antone's Records debut, What It Is. "But
once I took the walk, and the more steps I took, the less scared and the more comfortable
I've become. And finally, with this record, I've started to become confident enough
in my songwriting to write lyrics that don't rhyme, poems with music set to them,
and music that is generally more adventurous and trusting than I had been. I think
there's a sensibility that comes from age -- a time when you know what you can and
can't do."
Perhaps the ultimate sign of Bruton's confidence is that Nothing but the Truth
approaches the singer-songwriter genre with something not even the guitarist's All-Music
entries suggest: a jazz mentality. The album's two bassists, Yoggie Mussgrove and
Chris Maresh, and two drummers, Brannen Temple and Tom Fillman, are more than rhythm
sections -- they're conversationalists.
"I don't want to tell my band what to play," states Bruton. "I
want them to bring what they play to me. When we're playing, you don't just hear
guys keeping time. You hear them talking back to me. And then, it's not about me.
It's about what happened between all of us at a certain point. That dialogue is jazz."
For those privy to the details of Stephen Bruton's childhood, this newfound jazz
approach probably isn't much of a surprise at all. His father, Sumter Bruton Jr.,
a renowned jazz drummer, opened a record store that specialized in jazz, blues, and
country in 1957, a little more than a decade after the Brutons moved to Ft. Worth
from New Jersey. Record Town, still owned and operated today by Bruton's mother and
brother, anchors one end of Ft. Worth's South University Drive, which was once the
crossroads for hardcore country, blues, and jazz in Texas. In fact, Milton Brown
and Bob Wills started swinging just miles away, and even before T-Bone Walker lit
up the blues scene, the city's cemeteries and back alleys had long been the host
of forbidden jam sessions pairing black and white jazz musicians.
"It was an interesting place to grow up," says Bruton. "The north
side of Ft. Worth was still hell's half-acre, only a lot bigger."
Almost immediately, Record Town became the Ft. Worth jazz and blues scene's de
facto hangout; what could be better than a mom 'n' pop record store owned by a jazz
musician? Accordingly, Bruton and his brother, Sumter III., literally grew up at
their father's jazz gigs and in the store. And not only were the two siblings exposed
to the store's inventory and the customers' lively conversation, they also got to
take home samples, since label reps would regularly bestow upon the brothers piles
of cut-outs and promotional copies from artists of the day like Chuck Berry, Otis
Rush, Dion, Howlin' Wolf, the Modern Jazz Quartet, and the Kingston Trio. As with
every kid exposed to music, one early record stood out: Chuck Berry's "Mad Lad."
For fun and attention, Bruton used to tell his elementary school friends that he
played guitar and had gone to Chicago for a session.
"They'd come over and I'd put it on, playing broom to it," says Bruton.
"It was before I even knew what a guitar was, but that song just drove me nuts
-- the fact that Chuck Berry could do on guitar what I'd heard Pete Johnson and Albert
Ammons do on piano."
Not long afterward, Bruton glimpsed his first guitar when some local kids playing
a talent show stopped by the record store. They played a Kingston Trio song and Bruton
was hooked. Bruton's father bought him a Gibson that Christmas, but ultimately passed
on something more important -- the idea that if Stephen was interested in the burgeoning
folk scene, he owed it to himself to check out the Library of Congress recordings
and see where it came from. Before long, Bruton was special-ordering records from
his parent's store and checking out Son House, Robert Johnson, and Doc Boggs albums
from the local libraries.
"For a few years, I lived in the Twenties and Thirties, studying those Lomax
field recordings," recalls Bruton. "Every teenager wants to like something
different than their father or brother and there sure wasn't anybody in Ft. Worth
listening to as much of the Lomax work as me."
Although Bruton started off playing folk and "old-timey string music,"
he also played local teen clubs as a guest of childhood friend T-Bone Burnett, mostly
just reeling off Chuck Berry solos. Meanwhile, Sumter Bruton III got used to sneaking
his younger brother into adult clubs and straight under the pool table to watch local
heroes like Cornell Dupree, Billy Sanders, and Delbert McClinton, a Ft. Worth bluesman
only a few years older than Stephen who'd already played with Jimmy Reed, Howlin'
Wolf and other legends Bruton knew only from their records.
"The beauty of being in the clubs and the record store was that I'd been
exposed to so much music and so many stories that I could see how all these different
styles held hands. I could see the matrix; take the race records, put the beat on
top of it with a white guy singing, and you've got Bob Wills -- and eventually, rock
& roll."
While Bruton picked up the banjo and played mostly in bluegrass bands throughout
his college years at TCU, he and Burnett also taught guitar and worked in Burnett's
four-track studio. In 1965, still in high school, Bruton sold everything he owned
and headed east for the Newport Folk Festival, where he witnessed Dylan go electric
and got the opportunity to carry guitars for Mississippi John Hurt and Son House.
Five years later, Bruton graduated TCU, got news of his Vietnam draft deferment,
and headed off to Woodstock, New York.
"I realized this obsession with music had become more and more important,"
Bruton explains. "And I knew my only chance to join the circus was then, not
later."
Although Bruton arrived in Woodstock with a guitar, $100, and the somewhat unrealistic
hopes that he'd simply run into Van Morrison and be asked to join his band, as luck
would have it, the guitarist actually did run into the legendary singer on his first
day there; at the bank, where Morrison was closing his account in order to move to
San Francisco. After six months of building barns and watching horses for rock stars
like Rick Danko, jamming nightly with a batch of similarly young soon-to-be-session-stars,
Bruton drove to New York City to see Kris Kristofferson at the Village Vanguard.
A year earlier, a then-unknown Kristofferson had hung out in Ft. Worth with Bruton,
and while the latter musician missed the former's show, he ran into Kristofferson
and Carly Simon on the street and went on to spend a drunken evening with them, trading
songs and playing guitar.
"That night, Kris asked me if I was interested in playing guitar," recalls
Bruton. "I told him, 'That's all I'm interested in.'"
Three months later, Billy Swan left Kristofferson's touring band and Bruton got
the call. This was the circus train he had been waiting on.
Although Kristofferson had earned acclaim for writing Johnny Cash's "Sunday
Morning Coming Down," Janis Joplin's "Me & Bobby McGee," and Sammi
Smith's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," Bruton's first year with the
band was anything but glamorous; he, Kristofferson, bassist Terry Paul, and drummer
Donnie Fritts spent most of 1972 traveling the country in a station wagon. In between
the hand-to-mouth touring, Bruton cut three albums with Kristofferson (Border
Lord, Jesus Was a Capricorn, and Full Moon), plus the Billy
the Kid sessions with Dylan in Mexico. As exciting as the chance to tour and
record may have been, Bruton left Kristofferson's band in 1973 in order to tour with
hometown hero Delbert McClinton. After completing McClinton's second Atlantic album,
Subject to Change, and another year of no-frills touring, the band imploded
and left Bruton back in the record store "counting White Chevys passing by."
Not idle for long, Bruton picked up work with Bob Neuwirth, Gene Clark, Lowell
George, and Geoff Muldaur, while also playing on Maria Muldaur's successful Midnight
at the Oasis tour. It was all solid work behind successful artists, but none
of it was as good as the work Bruton was missing with Kristofferson -- a string of
movie roles and duets with Rita Coolidge that made Kristofferson a household name
while Bruton was still back in Texas. As luck would have it, in 1976 Kristofferson
called Bruton back to the fold just in time for the filming of A Star Is Born,
a role for which Kristofferson needed his own onscreen band. Bruton figured his employer
needed some old friends around to keep him humble.
"The first night back, Kris and I were getting rather drunk at this rehearsal,"
remembers Bruton. "We were going over these songs that Paul Williams had for
the movie, trying to turn this middle-of-the-road material into rock & roll.
At one point, Streisand shows up and me and Kris are cussing each other. I'm stopping
songs going, 'No man, not that, do this here.' We took a break and she says to Kris,
'I can't believe your sidemen are talking back to you.' Kris went 'Talking back?
Hell, these are the only guys that would tell me the truth.'"
To make a long story short, as Bruton would say, he stayed nearly a decade in
Kristofferson's band, toured with Christine McVie during a break, and wound up moving
to Austin after working on the Willie Nelson 1982 film, The Songwriter. By
the mid-Eighties, he started thinking about leaving Kristofferson's band -- to do
what, he wasn't sure.
"At some point, you find yourself in a situation where the tail starts wagging
the dog," he says. "Here you're with a band you love, but musically it's
not challenging anymore and you've got a house in Los Angeles. You have to keep playing
to keep the house and you think you're free, but you're not. It's the tradeoff. Also,
it's growing up. You live in that bubble as a successful band too long and you can
get into arrested development. That's part of the come-on, you never have to answer
to anyone because you're never there long enough to take responsibility for what
you did last night. I just knew I needed to do something different."
For Bruton, doing something different was an attempt to avoid being tagged a one-trick
pony: the eternal sideman. After touring with Dylan and Bonnie Raitt, offers too
good to turn down, he was asked to produce Jimmie Dale Gilmore's next album, After
a While. The stakes were high: It was Bruton's first real production job, and
Gilmore's debut for Elektra. Although the budget was modest, Bruton says he approached
pre-production and the sessions like it was a Rolling Stones album; he knew full
well a successful album could solidify his entrance into the production world. Gilmore's
album wound up a critically acclaimed breakthrough, but Bruton's next production
project came accidentally. As the much-told story goes, Alejandro Escovedo suspected
Bruton (in running shorts and Ray-Bans) was either a narc or a drug dealer when he
rang him up as a customer at Waterloo Records. After the diversity of Bruton's purchases
impressed Escovedo, however, the former True Believer asked the guitarist to produce
his first solo album, 1992's Gravity. Thirteen Years, the second Escovedo/Bruton
pairing, came two years later. Between the Escovdeo projects, Antone's Records asked
Bruton to record his first solo record. To this day, Bruton claims he never considered
a solo career until he was asked.
"I never wanted it. I always hid in bands. I always held in reverence that
Kristofferson was this unbelievable writer. I did Billy Joe Shaver's first album,
another great writer. I did a Carly Simon album. I've stood onstage with Streisand,
and when that woman sings the hair on your neck goes up. I was so surrounded by greatness
that I never took for granted what I was privy to. I always felt like I had sneaked
under the circus tent's flap."
Bruton may not have realized it, but with his record-store education, road work
with world-class acts, and the hundreds of hours logged on both sides of the studio
glass, a solo career was hardly a risk, especially with the modest expectations of
a small indie like Antone's. And Bruton had the songs -- songs folks like McClinton,
Raitt, and Kristofferson were encouraging him to shop harder. At least on paper,
the only thing Bruton lacked was the kind of voice that can carry a whole album.
At first, Bruton didn't disagree.
"I eventually came to believe that singing is not about being a virtuosic
singer, but about telling the truth. And telling the truth can be much more important
than chops. I know that when Kristofferson sings 'Sunday Morning Coming Down,' buddy,
that's it. When Bonnie Raitt sings 'I Can't Make You Love Me' Or 'Nick of Time,'
that's it. It's the bottom line. It's Son House singing 'Death Letter Blues.' The
truth only has to be whispered -- lies have to be screamed forever to be heard."
By and large, Bruton's two Antone's releases, 1993's What It Is and 1995's
Right on Time, wound up better than okay. Neither sold well, but Bruton's
voice, songs, and band grew noticeably more confident each time out. Then again,
there was little in Bruton's catalog to suggest an album as funky and organic as
Nothing but the Truth. Bruton credits his band and producer Stephen Barber
for the looser sound, but it's clear only the guitarist could have initiated the
shift. Over the course of three albums, the eternal sideman had become comfortable
enough as a frontman to turn and cultivate a band without sidemen. If that sounds
a bit too pat, consider this: Bruton's trademark as a sideman was his flexibility.
In fact, Kristofferson used to tell him, "Stephen, you never play the same thing
once." That Bruton wants players that will go toe-to-toe with him, not
stand by his side, is perhaps equally a product of his jazz upbringing and his age;
at 50, who wants to be playing the same songs, the same way, night after night?
Bruton's need for flexibility may also be why he isn't willing to close the door
on his own sideman career. Week in and week out, Bruton can be glimpsed in the sideman's
role at the Saxon Pub: Sundays with the Resentments (an all-star collective with
labelmate Jon Dee Graham) and Mondays with Lonelyland, Scabs frontman Bob Schneider's
semi-acoustic singer-songwriter project. Upcoming tours in support of Nothing
but the Truth will likely limit Bruton's role in both projects, as well as curtail
his production work (he's produced albums for the Loose Diamonds, Sue Foley, Storyville,
and Hal Ketchum in recent years), but Bruton insists he's at a point in his career
where he can balance production work, his sideman gigs, and what looks like a burgeoning
solo career. Better yet, he says he's found the point where all three aspects intersect
-- where being a producer makes him a better recording artist and being a sideman
makes him a better frontman. The bottom line, says Bruton, is that playing live has
never been more fun.
"I still can't get over the fact that I make a living making music. I know
I've worked really hard at it, but to get to be a professional at something that
is your passion is everything. My dad played music six nights a week and had a record
store. That was his passion and it became mine. I've never gotten over it. Even when
it went south and I went back to Ft. Worth to play sleazy bars, I still enjoyed myself.
I've never taken any of this for granted. It is a gift to be treated reverently,
but it's also fun. That's the deal."
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