Brenn Hill Interview
Doug Burke:
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke, and today we're here with Brenn Hill. Brenn Hill is an authentic cowboy who writes western songs from his firsthand ranching experiences. He tried the national songwriting scene, but he missed the wide-open spaces of the rural west, so he returned to Utah. He writes songs about real characters and experiences at the current ranch life, which still operates in a traditional cowboy way, in spite of the modernization of the rest of the world. Brenn marries his genuine songwriting with the modern musicianship of world-class Nashville performers who deliver a contemporary vision on the modern cowboy life.
I'm here with Brenn Hill and Brenn, we're going to talk about a handful of your songs. Let's start with Call You Cowboy.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. I love to talk about that song. It's the song that launched me into my career, I think. As a young songwriter, it was a song that I got to where I wanted to go as a writer. Back then I'm not sure that I had all the tools and the know-how to get there, so I just think it was about as organic an effort as I can probably muster in those days, but wanted to be a cowboy and I was a much better singer songwriter than a cowboy. I'd gone to cowboy poetry gatherings all around the country and my parents encouraged me. I had English teachers that encouraged me and still I just sort of wanted to be a better horseman and roper than a rider, but my buddy invited me up to play cowboy. He was working for a guy by the name of Frank Bowman and his name was Jason Van Tassell, He was kind of a... I guess a local cowboy legend masterpiece. He was a high school rodeo star and had a lot of girls in love with him. He's just an all-around good guy.
Taught me a lot about cattle and about horses and taught me that I'm not a cowboy. I had a great time. I had a great time working for Frank and for Jason. Jason came to me at the end of that season, he said, "I've got a job offer at one of the Simplot Ranches. I'm really considering it, but," he said, "my parents..." His mom's a successful businesswoman and his dad, very successful. He says, "They want me to go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer or something and do this on the side." He says, "I just want to cowboy." He also had a girlfriend at the time who wanted to get married and I always tell people, the moral of the story is never go to a songwriter and ask them what you should do with your life because I wrote that song, I started it literally watching a rainstorm go by, I was under a run in shed holding a horse. Kind of had the first verse and chorus written and I drove down Weaver Canyon here. Back home, I was a college student in those days, and I think I wrote the rest on a little notepad or something and literally it just fell out. I got the guitar in my hands and it just all meshed together. Over the years, like I say, it's some level of commercial success. About as successful I think as a cowboy song can be, but it's been rated in a couple of top 50 listings of cowboy songs and alongside of like Big Iron on My Hip and Tumbling Tumbleweeds and things like that, so I never had that intention, but I cease to be amazed at the life that a song can take and where it goes. I just forwarded you a picture, Doug, of Jason and I a couple of weeks ago and Jason's been all over the country. He has a master's degree.
Doug Burke:
In cowboying?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. Yep, he got that from the King Ranch. Graduated from Utah State University, cowboyed all over the country. He was a VP on a ranch in Eastern Oregon, went down and got his masters, went to the Parker Ranch in Hawaii. Now he's up in Sundance or Eastern Wyoming somewhere, but-
Doug Burke:
On pretty prominent ranches.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah, just doing what he loves and very good at it. He's got a beautiful family and that picture was just he and I a couple of weeks ago.
Doug Burke:
What's this song about?
Brenn Hill:
No, the song's about growing up and finding your way in the world. As a guy who wanted to be a cowboy, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, and I wrote this song for my friend who did know what he wanted to do. It was a different path and in it I think I wove all these messages and the story behind the story there is take the risk, follow your dreams, make yourself useful to the world and become good at what you love and make a contribution and make people's lives better. Jason has done all those things and I hope in turn maybe I've done a little of that with the music, but yeah, I look back at that and I think that song's about growing up.
Doug Burke:
You were thinking about cowboying, being a cowboy and what is it that you were not good at whereas you had this other natural talent for writing songs and singing them and playing guitar, the other things you do?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Performing, entertaining, you had that and what were you not good at? Cowboying.
Brenn Hill:
Natural horsemanship is not one of my gifts. It's just not in me. I have to learn it and even then, I'm slow at it. Whereas, guys that I look up to and respect and have cowboyed alongside of, just seem to be natural horsemen. Guys that rope pretty well, probably a little more athletic than I am, and the call is to others to do that and I love it. I still do it. I still get out with my friends and try to cowboy in certainly fall and spring, do that kind of work with them and take part in it, but I've learned the art of staying out of the way, too, over the years. Not making a nuisance of myself, but the natural gift for me was to be able to look into the heart and soul of a cowboy and articulate what it is that they feel from their perspective and I think, Doug, there's a little bit of cowboy in everybody. I think everybody wants to understand what it is about the west that makes it such a mystical indomitable, iconic place where cowboys and other iconic creatures live, wildlife, and we just seem to have something very special and mystical here in the west. You and I live here. We know that. People don't get the opportunity to live here, want to connect with it. I've always tried to bridge that gap between the people who live it and love it and the people who don't get to live it, but still love it.
Doug Burke:
On Call You Cowboy, how'd you do it in the recording studio? You have steel guitar in that or-
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. That's me playing acoustic. I came up with that little goofy riff, it's a G chord with a run down it. Runs down to a D. I figured that out sitting on the couch probably while all those lyrics are swirling around in my head. It's simple. I've played that for some people who say, "That's all that is," once I show it to them. In the studio was me playing acoustic guitar and Ryan Tilly playing Dobro and a little bit of upright base and a little background vocal. There's just not much to it. This story is sort of what it is. We tried to keep it real and capture the essence of what that song is in the studio and just keep it sparse.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember the first time you played that in public?
Brenn Hill:
I don't remember the first time I played it in public, but I do remember the first time I played it for Jason Van Tassell. Yeah, it was in the basement of my parent's house and he kind of looked up with tears in his eyes and said, "Man, you get it." As a songwriter and an artist, I don't know if you can put a price tag on that, when you can hit someone right in the guts and you know that they know you get it.
Doug Burke:
So much of songwriting is fueled from adolescents and wanting to do something different than your parents wanted you to do.
Brenn Hill:
My dad's an accountant, tax accountant. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
How did he react when you told him I was going to be a singer songwriter?
Brenn Hill:
They've been very supportive, and it's been very good to have an accountant, but, yeah, I think they would have... Accountants are all about stability. The arts are not a stable livelihood. It's just constant madness and, after 25 years of being in it, you figure out a way to level things out and take some of that advice that you got from the accountant to do that, but-
Doug Burke:
This is you telling your really good friend, Jason, you should be a cowboy.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
This is what you love, and I know your parents want you to be something different, but you follow your heart. Right?
Brenn Hill:
Yep.
Doug Burke:
You knew his parents.
Brenn Hill:
Great people. Yeah, love his parents.
Doug Burke:
How did they react to the whole thing, you giving Jason advice that was against their wishes as a teenager?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah, his dad has got such a personality. He showed up at a... he came to a concert one time and he says, "The only question I've got is why am I the bad guy here?" I didn't mean for him to be the bad guy. He's such a great guy, but I think his parents have been supportive of him and I think, after all these years, they've seen that he's been very successful in what he's wanted to do and his family has been able to take part in his work. His kids can go out and ride with him and his wife is a better hand than he is.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Brenn Hill:
She's really, really talented.
Doug Burke:
Call You Cowboy, what else do we want to say on this one?
Brenn Hill:
I feel I have to thank somebody for this song because it's just been so defining for me as an artist. I guess God gave me this song, but I thank Jason Van Tassell, I thank all the guys like him that do what they do just because they hear the call in their heart to do it. It's guys like that that keep me doing what I do, so yeah, I feel like I... even though I penned this song for those guys, I feel like I have to thank them for the inspiration.
Doug Burke:
Where do you put this in your set list when you play?
Brenn Hill:
This is a show closer most of the time these days and it's crazy that all these years later you start playing this song and people will clap in the introduction or mouth the words. People will come up and they'll say that song is about my son or my nephew or my dad or whatever. It's just amazing that people can hear a piece of music and relate it to their lives.
Doug Burke:
Your songs have a sense of place that's in the mountains, on the range, in the west.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
This one is Call You Cowboy. Were you driving down Weaver Canyon and saying I'm not going to be a cowboy and like, I'd call my friend a cowboy, I'll call you the cowboy or were you trying to say call me a cowboy?
Brenn Hill:
No, I'll tell you what-
Doug Burke:
No, you were realizing you weren't a cowboy.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
You knew it as you're driving down Weaver Canyon?
Brenn Hill:
I think as a 19-year-old, 20-year-old kid, I probably had hopes that I'd still be able to become one, but in the context of that song, Jason Van Tassell's father wanted him to become a businessman and here he was just ready to throw what little belongings he had in his truck and trailer and drive across the country. I think at one point something came up about his dad had called him a drifter and I call him a cowboy.
Doug Burke:
Mm-hmm, so it's about Jason.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Nothing to do with your own story.
Brenn Hill:
I don't think so.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, that's fine.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. I'm a guy who looks at some of these tunes and, after all these years, I do see myself in these songs, but I think these songs are at their best and I'm at my best as a writer and a creative artist when in my mind, I'm giving this message to somebody who needs it at the time. I've got a few songs that just kind of fell out, fell on the paper. How You Heal is one of them. How You Heal is a song that came about fairly organically as well. Another ranch family from Randolph and Laketown and that whole Randolph Valley is the Utah ranching capital and up there these guys are great hands, great cowboys. Eight brothers of one family now ranch, the Westin family. One of my cowboy heroes called me up and he said, he's a guy that never has a bad day, he says, "We've had a bad day." He said, "My cousin, my uncle's youngest son now was thrown from a truck and was killed in an accident and would you come up here to sing at the funeral?" There I went, there's the whole Westin family in the little Randolph Chapel. I sang at the funeral service and it was just so hard to see them in that kind of tragedy and the wake of the tragedy, because they are just such an iconic family. These guys ride bucking horses for fun, and I get on a horse and I think, "Man, I hope he doesn't crow hop." If his head drops at all, I'm sort of tense, but these guys do it for fun and these are generations that have lived that way and they put so much... so much beef into the marketplace. They're just such great people. They invited me the next spring to come to the branding and literally, it was the guys that have always been there, and Terrell Westin would have been there. I imagine in my heart that he was there in spirit. In a way, I guess, I was sort of trying to fill the empty boots and unable to do so from a standpoint of I'm not Terrell, I'm not Terrell Westin. You know?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
Brenn Hill:
I'm not a Westin but riding out with those guys to go gather a pasture of calves and bring them back and brand them is a day I'll never forget. It was a perfect day of branding and-
Doug Burke:
What's a perfect day of branding?
Brenn Hill:
The weather was just incredible, there was snow on the peaks, it was probably in the 60s, not much dust. I probably caught half the time and the Westin's catch all the time.
Doug Burke:
Mm-hmm. A hundred percent.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. They're a hundred percent and there was no big wrecks or anything. I mean, it was just in the comradery. It was good lunch. They had me play a few tunes and it was just one of those magical days and I think for them it was a hard time. It was them coming back to tradition after losing a family member in tragedy. There was smiles and laughter that day, but there was also something missing there. There was hopefully some healing there in watching them turn their product out on green spring grass wearing their brand was something I'll never forget. That's another song. I literally left the corrals that day and had that song halfway written before I got home and just feel like it fell in my lap.
Doug Burke:
How You Heal-
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
... is a sympathy card to the Westin family?
Brenn Hill:
I think so, but I think more than a sympathy card, I think they will heal. It's both you will move forward, you will carry on this family brand. There will always be pain in your heart. I've lost people in tragedy and I know that those are wounds that don't ever really completely heal. You learn to live with them, so to speak. We're in the middle of a process of them doing that, and I think that song came as encouragement for them through that difficult time, so yeah, probably it was a bit of a sympathy card, but-
Doug Burke:
But more than that.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah, a little bit more. Yeah, maybe words of hope that there is a spring for every season.
Doug Burke:
You mentioned the lord in that, so-
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
... there's a religious spirituality to the song.
Brenn Hill:
Absolutely. These are deeply spiritual people, they're connected to the land, and connected to their livestock. Yeah, I think what was apparent to me that day is the presence of angels riding around us. It was palpable as much as the dust in the air. You know? You could just feel that Terrell was there.
Doug Burke:
Talk to me about the production process. You wrote the song in one sitting.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. Really, those songs come probably in a matter of 30 minutes to an hour. You know?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
Brenn Hill:
You flush them out and you range them. There's maybe some little riff or something on the guitar that leads you into the next level. It's almost like you feel these gates open and you just kind of pass through them as an artist. There's a pathway for this stuff to go down and sometimes it just comes together, very easily meshes together very nicely. That's one of those songs. In the studio, recorded in Nashville, great multi-instrumentalist, legendary guy by the name of Jonathan Yudkin really kind of co-produced that record. Another guy by the name of JT Corenflos, guitar player, guys I recorded with and work with in the studio and they understand my vision and try to take a really pure approach to it and leave the essence of the song there, not overstep their bounds I think as an instrumentalist and JT Corenflos came up with that little riff on the gut string guitar and Yudkin had that haunting thing he was doing on the violin. I swear, I think that was maybe a one or two take song.
Doug Burke:
Wow.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. It just came together so easily. How You Heal was the first record that I really felt confident as a musician, as an instrumentalist to sit there and play with these guys, have a click track going, wired up the way we are in front of a mike with my guitar in my hand and playing and singing. These are live takes and it took me however many records to get to the point where I felt like I could comfortably and confidently do that. I'll always think of How You Heal as the record that allowed me to step forward and comfortably sit with these world class players and not feel like a total klutz.
Doug Burke:
You remember what studio it was in Nashville?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah, it was at County Q. There's so many studios like that down there, but this is a great little studio. They kind of a powerhouse, crank out a lot of great stuff there and it's a small, small place that you can almost have eye contact with everybody, and it was a great place to do a live record.
Doug Burke:
You're a western songwriter.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Nashville is country.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I'm still trying to figure out the differences, other than the audience.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. I always say that country music is about a woman and cowboy music's about a horse. That's not entirely true, but it's different. You've got to live this stuff really and experience it to write about it from a first-hand perspective and there was certainly a time I think when I felt pressure to become a country singer. Obviously, there was some pull from that industry to do so and it was not a good fit for me.
Doug Burke:
Why is that?
Brenn Hill:
I sat down in some of those co-writing sessions with those guys and we'd get the musical pick list and they tell you you've got to write a two and a half minute, two-step for whoever needs it or a four minute love ballad or whatever, and you exchange your ideas and maybe you know this guy you're writing with, maybe you don't. Maybe there's three of you, four of you, and you try to write something, write a hit. That's what they all want is a hit. In those days, the hit's worth a quarter of a million bucks, split however many ways, between publishing and songwriters. A lot of those guys were career writers and I learned the craft of songwriting from them, I think. How to arrange, how to intro, how to support ideas, how to bring a song to an apex, to a climax. Certainly, there's some craftsmanship there and there's some songsmiths in Nashville. I just couldn't write about things that I hadn't experienced or didn't touch me. Everything, I think, as far as country music goes in those days was all about the south, Dixieland will rise again. I love the south, half of my family's from there, but I'm a westerner. I remember artists like Marty Robbins and even in those days, in the 90s, George Strait and Garth Brooks were singing rodeo songs still. I felt like if anything, there would be a space in that genre for somebody from the Rocky Mountain West, but I was in this to be a creator and to be a first-hand creator from real experience. There's so many great things that Nashville lends to the creation of music and the music industry. I still think it's the recording epicenter of the world where technology and artists... when I say artists, I mean multi-instrumentalists, engineers, producers, come together like nowhere else on the earth. The system for recording that they refined I think through the 80s and 90s did wonders for recorded music across the board. All genres. When I was making a record there in 2004, at Ocean Way, and Megadeth was recording in the A studio. I was in the B studio. Megadeth was in the A studio. There were times we have to wait for a... like, if we were taking a mandolin track or something and we'd have to wait until they quit their electric guitar solo, their drum solo, whatever.
Doug Burke:
They were loud?
Brenn Hill:
They were loud.
Doug Burke:
They were so loud, even in a soundproof studio?
Brenn Hill:
They were loud and they did a lot of stuff outside in the hall that thankfully didn't carry in either, but-
Doug Burke:
That's a different crowd.
Brenn Hill:
That's a different crowd, but they went to Nashville to make a record because that was such a great old studio, an old church that converted into a studio down there on Music Row. There're just so many things from Nashville that I think we have to give credit where credit is due to that industry, but the music that I write and the way of life that I cherish is out here in the Rocky Mountain West and I've got to live it to write about it.
Doug Burke:
Ode to Selway.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
This is a different kind of song for you.
Brenn Hill:
I think so. Ode to Selway came about in the midst of a music career, but I think it was a song that took a lot of years for me to write and it took a lot of trips to Northern Idaho for me to write. I went to the Payette National Forest when I was 12 years old with my dad on a big pack trip. Man, it was such a great time. There was guys on that trip that will never be there again. It was the first time I ever heard Ian Tyson. He had a cassette copy, you and I have talked about this a minute ago, but a cassette copy. It said, "Cowboyography," handwritten that somebody had made from a tape that they... a cassette tape that they bought at an Ian Tyson concert in Wendover. There was a battery powered Sony Walkman with a four-inch speaker on it. Was that four inches? Maybe three. We sat there and listened to Ian Tyson around the fire and it set me on the course of my life. These songs were just... they were what I wanted to say. As an artist, it was western imagery and the song like the Ballad of Claude Dallas, I knew that that stuff was going on. I'd heard that story. I knew some of these places he was singing about and I just felt like I'd finally found a mentor that could give me a model for what I wanted to do. Part of Ode to Selway is where I started and why I started doing what I do. Later in life, I got up into South Fork and to Clearwater and Clearwater National Forest and we went into the headwaters to Selway and up Fog Mountain. Looked over into the Bitterroot. I've been in the Bitterroot Valley looking on the other side, seeing those old Selway crags and the tops of the Bitterroot Mountains and looked at that vast... never been into the Selway Bitterroot, but I've certainly looked into there and heard elk bugle and wolves howl. It's a mystic place. My son went through cancer in 2008. He was two and a half years old. He had brain and spinal cancer and it was such a crazy time for us. We were glued to the hospital for about 14 months and then we're glued to our house for a few years. I felt kind of bad if I left to go play gigs, but I had to play gigs to earn money. I just hated to be away from home and then, all of a sudden, things were better, and my son's health was better, and it was okay for me to leave for a while. I went back up to Northern Idaho and back in the woods and hit the Elk City wagon road and got lost in the Selway wilderness. Man, it was so therapeutic. I felt so... I felt, like I say, guilty for leaving, but I needed some reprieve also from what we had been going through and man, I found it. I found it in there and in a place that I had been going all my life. It was almost like I fell back in love with it all over again. In fact, I just was up in that country last week, but still love that Northern Idaho country and I think Ode is a musical tribute to... it's a musical tribute to the Selway Bitterroot Forest and hopefully, will get folks to realize what a gem that is up there and for years to come, a place like that, that we can preserve and enjoy for many generations.
Doug Burke:
Most people haven't been there. What's it like? Describe what Selway.
Brenn Hill:
It's the deepest, darkest forest in North America kind of feel. On the north sides of the hills, it holds the moisture in, it's colder there. On the south sides of the hills, it's kind of that dry forest and you can get all of that by hiking a mile. You can almost be in two different ecosystems. On the left side of the hill that faces north, you're talking about black bears and white-tailed deer, on the right side you're talking about mule deer and elk. It's just such a mystical place. Those rivers are so deep, from the top when you're looking down into the South Fork of the Clearwater you can see... this is a... what is it? A mile, mile and a half down there. You can see the rocks in the river it's that clear. One of the lines of that song, "When you see those crystal waters, you will never be the same." The realization that there is something that pure and untouched left in this modern world is part of what inspired that song. It's a mystical place.
Doug Burke:
Tell me about the production process and then, well, actually finish telling about the writing process. It took longer. I like to ask songwriters how do you know when a song is done?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. For me, knowing when a song is over has always been fairly easy simply because I try to arrange these things as I write them and arrange them in a way that presents them, I think fairly commercially. Some people sort of wince when I say that word commercial, but we are trying to sell this stuff, after all. There's a way to arrange this stuff, so that you can present an idea to a listener, support it, bring it to an apex with an ultimate sort of payout to them and then, let them go. Music is an intangible piece of art. It's there for a while and you're lost in it, and then, all of a sudden, it's over. Look for ways to not give that listener too much because I want them to come back. I want them to continually want to come back and I don't want to overfeed them. Ode to Selway is a song that, like I say, took me a long time to write simply because I think that part of the world and the experiences I've had there, I needed a little bit of time in my life, a little maturity, a little heartache to help me realize how special that experience is up there, how special that place is, how unique it is. In a way, that song took me many years to write. When it came to actually fleshing it out and putting it on paper, probably didn't take all that long. I went kind of a one, four running baseline there, which is actually a G sus to a C sus chord. It's not sophisticated by any means. Mostly there would be a one, five alternating baseline and this was a one, four, so it made it feel very suspended, gave it some grit, and especially when we got in the studio and JT Corenflos fired up his electric and Jonathan Yudkin pulled out a banjo, we listened to it and it was great. There was that heavy driving kick drum and snare and gave the song the edge that I wanted it to have. I felt like when it was coming out that this is kind of a rocking tune and I want to say something boldly here about a place that I love and about that country. That country is not for the faint of heart by any means. We were sitting around listening to it and Yudkin stands up and he's like, "I've got just the thing," and he goes in and pulls out of it his Native American flute. I thought, oh my gosh, come on. My heart melted. I still, I think my wife and I, who was there when the song... that was the first record she ever got to witness in the studio going down and I think we still get chills when we hear the intro to Ode to Selway. It was something that I hope all the listeners would get. Certainly, as a songwriter, I felt like I'd successfully reinvented myself a little bit, which is very reassuring, I guess.
Doug Burke:
I think it's important because we get older and can't write the same song over and over again. Right?
Brenn Hill:
Right. Absolutely.
Doug Burke:
Have you ever been to Selway in the wintertime?
Brenn Hill:
Never been dead of winter. I've been when it's snowed, late November. Actually, December this year I hope to be up there in the dead of winter.
Doug Burke:
I was at Grand Teton on Labor Day at the top of the Jackson Hole and it started snowing and lightning and it was September third and I was like, I'm not ready for this.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Burke:
I've never seen both snow and lightning and the same time because they don't usually occur together.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Lightning's with the rain and it was right at that crossover point and we ran as a group tree to tree to get back to the tram from the top of Jackson Hole down, but I mean, the weather at those northern climes can change in a second and be dangerous at times.
Brenn Hill:
Oh, yeah.
Doug Burke:
It's like you said, it's not for the faint of heart.
Brenn Hill:
That country can eat you alive. You can slip and fall on the Selway river breaks and fall forever. I played Ode to Selway at a funeral for a hunting guy that rolled down into the river and never came out, that lost his life in the Selway River. That country is not for the faint of heart. It's claimed many lives and certainly the way to go in there is with a whole lot of respect for where you're headed, but that tribute is all about all of the things that that country is, the beautiful and the harsh. Ode to Selway is a reminder that we have neighbors and friends in north of us there in Idaho that need our tourism dollars. Idaho is such an amazing place. I mean, it's one of my favorite places on the planet. I've always hoped that people would hear that song and want to go see that country. Go see it if you haven't.
Doug Burke:
I'm going to.
This may or may not apply to you, it doesn't apply to every songwriter, but is there any on-the-shelf song that you've written sort of Nashville style that you've always thought this would be perfect for this voice to sing, besides yourself?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. I wrote a song with Kostas, who's a-
Doug Burke:
Hall of famer.
Brenn Hill:
... hall of famer. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Recent hall of famer.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
I was at that.
Brenn Hill:
Were you?
Doug Burke:
Yeah.
Brenn Hill:
There you go. We got together one time; we wrote a song called Pictures in the Fire. I've always thought that a sultry female voice would do it justice and maybe make a hit out of it. It's been recorded one time by a fine artist from Pinedale by the name of Jared Rogerson. He's a friend of mine. Yeah. I've always wanted to hear a girl sing that song.
Doug Burke:
What's the sultry female voice?
Brenn Hill:
I'm trying to think here. Norah Jones.
Doug Burke:
Norah Jones, oh, yes, a Norah Jones song.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Doug Burke:
What's it called again?
Brenn Hill:
Pictures in the Fire.
Doug Burke:
Pictures in the Fire, you and Kostas wrote this song and it's a perfect Norah Jones song.
Brenn Hill:
I don't know if it's a perfect... I think it's be a stretch for her, but-
Doug Burke:
She likes to stretch.
Brenn Hill:
... I think she can brand it. Yeah. Just that slow kind of sultry jazzy thing I think would be very cool.
Doug Burke:
I met Kostas in Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony where he was inducted with Dwight Yoakam and Larry Gatlin. He'd just been inducted and he was walking to the restroom and I waited until he got out of the restroom and I introduced myself and handed him my card to see if he would want to have his Back Story songs recorded. He's a crazy cat.
Brenn Hill:
Oh, man. Let me tell you. He lives in a building in Belgrade, Montana and bought one of these old, historic buildings down on Main Street. I don't know if I should say that, but you wouldn't find him anyway, but he just loves guitars. Loves Gibson guitars and I don't know what he was working on, but he said, "You ought to come back." I drove all the way up there to write with him. I had another gig in Spearfish, South Dakota, so I'm going to spend a day writing with Kostas, I get there... I leave here at dark 30 and get there at 10:00 or whatever. He tells me to come back. I'm thinking, man. Then I go back. He says, "We've got to eat something." I go to this bar and have a hamburger and we're not really talking. We're just sort of chewing. Finally, we go back, we go out on this back patio that he has there, and he starts cleaning his grill. I said, "So should we write a song maybe today?" He says, "Tell me your ideas," kind of gruff. That's where I go, you know, I'm thinking okay, so I bring out the old idea book and I start throwing ideas at him. Most of these are hooks, lyrical hooks and I'd say something. He'd say, "Oh, no, no. That's not any good. No, no." Finally, I said, "Pictures in the fire." He stops and he turns around and looks at me over his shoulder, he says, "That could be something," and he keeps cleaning his grill. I'm thinking, okay, let's fire it up. It must have been another hour, the sun's about to go down. He walks over, we sit in a couple of chairs and we write this song, Pictures in the Fire in about 20 minutes. Yeah, I've never recorded it. I did have a friend that recorded it, but we never wrote together again, but a few years ago I called him. I hadn't talked to him and he said, "Oh, man." He was really kind and cordial and really nice-
Doug Burke:
He's a gentleman.
Brenn Hill:
... and wanted to know how I was doing and thanked me for remembering to call him. When Jared wanted to record that, I had to get a release from him, so he was really, really nice. Asked me about how Ian Tyson was doing, and I know he has a ton of respect for Tyson. He's a monster talent, but a very eccentric guy.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Very eccentric.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No, it was an interesting acceptance speech at the-
Brenn Hill:
I can imagine. I can imagine.
Doug Burke:
I don't know how a character like that gets attracted to Nashville, but he's not the only character in Nashville.
Brenn Hill:
Oh, man.
Doug Burke:
It's like a magnet for characters-
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
... and awesome storytellers.
Brenn Hill:
Awesome storytellers.
Doug Burke:
And awesome songwriters and awesome musicians. Maybe that whole skill set is full of characters I guess, but he's one of them.
Brenn Hill:
Very much so. Very much so one of them, but yeah, so many of those writers have stories behind them and just came from all walks of life and a lot of them are very eccentric and some of them aren't very eccentric at all, but I think of guys like Will Rambo who were just phenomenal live performers, phenomenal writers and guys that could get up with a guitar and just mesmerize you. I wrote a song with Bruce Bouton. He's the head of a musician's union for many years. We wrote One Hand in the Riggin and that's the song I have that's probably been recorded the most. Chris LeDoux was going to record it and he ended up passing away, so Western Underground put it on their Unbridled CD, which was the first record they came out with after Chris LeDoux passed away. Yeah, Bruce Bouton and I, we sat down and that's another song we wrote in about 20 minutes. There's some talented people I've been the beneficiary of meeting many of them and learning the craft of songwriting from the likes of Kostas.
Doug Burke:
Well, let's do this Kostas song if we may just to have another song we talk about if that's okay?
Brenn Hill:
I've never recorded it, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Tell me, what's it about.
Brenn Hill:
It's basically a guy that is burning pictures of him and his lost love. "This old house has a chill in every room, and it won't warm up no matter what I do. Couldn't be much colder if I lived on the moon. My heart turns gray as ash with every picture that I burn. There's pictures in the fire, fading embers of a love gone wrong, pictures in a fire burn away, but they're not gone." Yeah, it's just a guy trying to burn his memories, but realizes that he can't.
Doug Burke:
Is that divorce story or a widow's story? Which one?
Brenn Hill:
I've never been divorced when I-
Doug Burke:
Well, it doesn't have to be personal.
Brenn Hill:
When I wrote that song with Kostas, he-
Doug Burke:
It's a co-write. Maybe he even brought that to the song.
Brenn Hill:
He had just been through a divorce.
Doug Burke:
Okay, so-
Brenn Hill:
I've never thought of that before, Doug, but you may be onto something there.
Doug Burke:
That was a divorce story because of Pictures in the Fire, like why do you burn pictures of a loved one?
Brenn Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. Must have been.
Doug Burke:
A widow maybe who can't get over it.
Brenn Hill:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Seeing their deceased spouse.
Brenn Hill:
It's a really cool kind of a back beat, sort of a Neil Young feeling kind of a back hard second beat song and I should record it. I've never felt like I've been the artist that would fit it well. I'd love to hear a girl sing.
Doug Burke:
We're going to get Norah to do it.
Brenn Hill:
I hope so.
Doug Burke:
We're going to put this out there and she is going to record your song for you, yours and Kostas' song.
Brenn Hill:
I would play it for her over the phone, so she could hear the... that'd be the best demo I could give her.
Doug Burke:
Okay. Well, there will be no demo on the website, but if you want to send us a demo, we'll put it on.
Brenn Hill:
Okay.
Doug Burke:
Well, thank you so much. This has been great. Brenn Hill.
