The Core: Railroad Earth
Photo by Pete Mecozzi
The veteran roots-jam outfit rally after the passing of a founding member with a new lineup and LP, All for the Song.
KEEPING THE BOAT AFLOAT
Tim Carbone: We started talking about a new record midway through 2018, but it wasn’t really possible to concentrate on it. Our bandmate, Andy Goessling, was sick with cancer. We tried to figure out a way to keep working and keep the boat afloat while he dealt with his situation, but he lost his battle that October. Then, we settled on Anders Osborne as our producer, and we went back into the studio this past February.
Todd Sheaffer: I started writing All for the Song in June of 2018. We spend so much time on the road that, when we are in the studio, we usually like to stay close to home. But, this time, we wanted to hole up and concentrate on making a record. Of course, we ran into some stumbling blocks— the biggest one being Andy’s health. We kept getting mixed reports and the outcome was the worst possible scenario. When it became clear that he was really sick and undergoing more treatments, we tried to find a studio situation nearby where we could actually get Andy in. But, unfortunately, his health quickly started to deteriorate, beginning right when I was putting all these songs together.
So we went back to the original plan, which was to go down to New Orleans. The idea to do a destination album grew in its meaning because it became about the five of us bonding together after losing Andy. It was a way for us to get together and share in that grieving and that loss—moving on and continuing on without him. Andy was deep in our hearts and minds when we made this record. He was a big part of what we were feeling and experiencing.
THANKSGIVING CONVERSATIONS
TS: It was hard to get the whole band together this time, so some of the writing was done in a different way; people got together with me individually, rather than as the whole band. Andy came over to my house one night and shared some of the ideas he had been working on—some of them didn’t make the album, but it was all still part of the process. Then, Anders came to my house for a little artist-producer bonding and I used him as a sounding board. I kept working and, with the whip cracking before we went into the studio, I finished the songs up around Christmas when I should have been enjoying family time.
TC: I normally manage our recording sessions, but I’m not sure you could pay me enough money to produce one of our records. I mean that in a very kind way. It frees everybody up to use strictly the creative brain, and decisions generally come easier because you have somebody that’s leading that charge. A band is like a family and someone is always going to think one way and someone else is always going to think another way. Being in the studio can be like being at Thanksgiving with your family, where opinions don’t always converge. You need someone who can be an outside brain and provide an extra set of ears.
Anders is a vibe guy; he flies by the seat of his intuition. He’s definitely not a “my way or the highway” guy, unlike me. When I produce records, I usually say, “You don’t want to do that? I thought you wanted a hit record but apparently I was mistaken.” [Laughs.] He’s super laid-back and chill, but when the time comes and a decision has to be made, he can also go, “This is what we’re doing.” And he created a comfortable spiritual space. Some of the conversations that he and I had during the session revolved around how he brings his mind space into the recording studio. He’s also completely fucking hilarious. At any given moment, everyone may erupt into gutwrenching belly laughs because he’s a frickin’ nutjob.
OLD-SCHOOL APPROACHES
TC: The vast majority of our material is written by Todd. Our sonic stamp is based on his songwriting. He could just go to bar and say, “Buy me a drink and I’ll go write a song.” And, like Hank Williams, he could come up with something like “Mansion on a Hill.” He presents us with the songs shortly before we actually record. It’s an old-school approach—write a record, make a record and tour to support that record. With the exception of before we made our first album, the only time we really played our new material before we recorded it was for The Last of the Outlaws, where we played the entire record in one set.
However, we’re totally aware that people want to hear something new and that they don’t want to hear the same set. Whereas I am completely different; even if I really love and really want to see a band, I’m not going to follow them around.
I was not a Deadhead, although I’ve always appreciated their music and I’ve played with some of those guys. I would go see more than one show and I would be like, “I want to hear that song again.” But that’s not the way this scene rolls, so we make most of our shows available for sale days after we play them. Our sound engineer—God bless him—gets up the morning after the show and mixes the whole thing in the front of the bus as we’re traveling to the next gig. We made it through that period of time when we didn’t have any new material by learning some fairly obscure covers. And, more importantly, our mandolin player John [Skehan] is really good at coming up with unusual musical segues between songs. We were definitely aware that we needed new material. But, it’s not one of those things where you can just crack the whip and say, “Go ahead and write some songs.”
TS: I’m the principal writer for both Railroad Earth and From Good Homes [who have regrouped for select shows in recent years]. Looking at myself as the voice for both, as a writer, I try to embody the spirit of the project and the spirit of where each band is at on that particular record. These are different people going through different things. With From Good Homes, it was our first record in 20 years, so some themes were expressive of that. Captain Nowhere, which was our most recent Railroad Earth EP, was politically charged—given these times—so I figured I would give that a rest on this Railroad Earth album.
So the political content I had came out on the From Good Homes stuff—I felt it was important, after all these years, to make an album that’s timely and that put us in the here-and-now. And, of course, I wanted to continue to be expressive of where we were in the history of the band. I didn’t want to just record old songs, whereas All for the Song involved what we were going through the with Andy.
DIFFERENT STAGES OF DEATH
TC: I brought a few songs to the table this time: One is called “Driftin’” and I wrote that with Jeff Otto from Boris Garcia. I demoed it in my studio and brought Andy in to play two different ukuleles, an acoustic guitar and a high-strung guitar. When the song starts, all of the acoustic instruments that you’re hearing are Andy. We sliced and diced his demo up so we could place everybody’s solos in. This was totally Andy’s idea so everyone had him in mind as they were playing. It goes right into another song I wrote called “The Bardo,” which is essentially the passage between one world and another—different stages of death and moving from the world you’re in to the next.
TS: During some of the conversations I had with Anders when he came to visit, we bonded over the experience of touring and traveling for so many years. We’ve experienced some pretty heart-wrenching tales from the road, in terms of our friends, during the past couple of years. It’s tough. That’s what I was involving myself in while writing the Railroad Earth record—trying to be the voice for where we were.
TROUBLED SOULS
TC: I first heard about Neal Casal one or two lifetimes ago, when he was in this heavy Southern-rock band, Blackfoot. But, I got to know him much better because the first record he did after he got dropped from Warner Records was on a local indie label called Buy or Die. We were kind of swimming in the same creative pool for a couple of years and Railroad Earth recorded one of his songs. He recorded a lot of his subsequent demos in Andy’s living room on a four-track.
With Jeff Austin, it wasn’t really a shock. He was a troubled individual— super talented, but troubled. I was not expecting the same kind of thing from Neal. I would see him a few times a year and we would mostly geek out about guitar pedals and guitars. I wasn’t deep with him where I understood what was going on with him on a day-to-day basis. I know a lot of people that were close to him were worried about him for a while, but I was shocked when he took his own life.
NEXT STEPS
TC: After Andy’s death, we knew we had to keep some of the same sonics in place. We tried a few different people and settled on Mike Robinson. For one thing, he’s an amazing guitarist who also plays pedal steel and banjo. The banjo is a pretty important sound in Railroad Earth, although we’re not really a traditional bluegrass band.
TS: One of the things we didn’t want to do, initially, was replace Andy because that’s an impossible task. So that’s where the keyboards came in. We’ve been gravitating toward Matt Slocum, and he’s been incredible. It’s a testament to the fact that, if you put one foot in front of the other, you find yourself walking again. These things happen, but you need to keep going and keep working.
This article originally appeared in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more subscribe below.
