A New York Minute with Musician: Allen Thompson ~ By Jon

Photography by Jon

What do Black Flag, Levon Helm, John Steinbeck, and Folk Music have in common? Allen Thompson, apparently. 

I sat down with him to discuss his new album, "Salvation in the Ground"… and everything else. You could call Thompson an Americana/Folk artist, but you have to stop there because he seems to have no interest in maintaining that label, and he doesn't let that category dictate his music.  

He writes searching, honest songs that nod toward literary influences such as Steinbeck and Joyce. And like any good '80s punk act, you can tell he's "anti-establishment." That means something a little more personal for him, though. The establishments he rejects are the everyday assumptions that tell us we need to do things a certain way. His live shows are more like audience-participation events than simple folk-art performances. We got an inside track on what kinds of unexpected things to expect from a guy who has no interest in meeting expectations:

JK: The title of the album is "Salvation in the Ground" and that's a line from the first song "Dirt to Dust".  What's the background on that song and how does it set up the album?

AT: Actually, I wrote that song with my friend, Don Gallardo. Don't know if you've been to California recently, but when you drive up the I-5 you pass through the Central Valley, which is where Bakersfield is. It's where all the Okies moved during the Depression, like in The Grapes of Wrath. Well, there's been this terrible drought there for several years. The Central Valley is a strange area because some places are fertile and some are desert, so irrigation is a must. And some of the rivers were drying up so much because of the drought, that they had to cut off some of the water to the Central Valley. Because otherwise, all the smelt and salmon were in danger, and a much larger market of businesses and livelihoods would be impacted.  

So now you can drive through the Central Valley and you'll see signs that say "Congress-created dustbowl. Blame Nancy Pelosi” or "Blame Schwarzenegger." Now it's become this political thing; for example, Sean Hannity would go down there every summer and get everyone riled up about it. I've really been intrigued by the whole thing, because there are all these people, and they moved to an area for life, and now it's gone, and almost nobody gives a damn about them or wants to do anything to fix it. People would rather spend all this time and money blaming someone for the problem, turning it into something political, and basically using these farmers for their own public relations.

Photography by Jon

It's sad, because as a society, we've come to the point where nobody wants to fix anything; it's become this revenge-based blame game. Whose fault is it, who can we sue? Like the recent shooting in Colorado, and immediately it's a gun-control issue. Twelve people died, and we're more interested in our political stances than that.  

JK: So is a critique of our society an important theme in the album?

AT: Well, yes and no. It's not a Woody Guthrie, stick-it-to-the-man kind of thing; it's more about why don't we, as a race, worry more about loving one another than about trying to fight one another. So really, "Dirt to Dust" is just a love song. And the rest of the songs on the album are love songs too. That's the theme. I have one song that says: "No one said love never-ending had any joy in its design." So I'm not saying it's not supposed to be easy, but it's what we need to be striving for.

JK: Sounds like the songs are tied together.

AT: Yeah, but I realize that nobody really listens to albums anymore, nobody sits down with the liner notes and listens for the 30-plus minutes it takes to get through it. But I still want to make an album like that. I used "Dirt to Dust" as the lead song so that the album goes through a progression of different aspects of the same theme. An album is like a short story collection. The parts stand on their own, but they say more when taken as a whole.

JK: Why choose this genre/sound?  And is "Americana" the right name for it?

AT: My relationship with "Americana" music is a funny thing. On the one hand, it came to me sort of organically; it sparks something that's been there with me a long time. When I was younger, I was doing this jam-band thing because some of the only music we had access to in my hometown was stuff that was either wildly popular on MTV and the radio or stuff that was classic, like The Allman Brothers or the Grateful Dead. But the other big influence on me was punk music. I was really into Black Flag and followed Ian MacKaye (Minor Threat). Unfortunately, the bands I was in were so bad that although we loved the Dead, we couldn't pull it off instrumentally. So of course the solution was to go for the opposite. Metal was really popular in my hometown.

Photography by Jon

Then I remember going to see the Allman tour in '99 and Lucinda Williams opened. I just remember thinking, "Oh, my God, yes…this is amazing…his is what I want to do." Of course the guys in my band at the time weren't quite as moved. But that music brought back all these memories from childhood of listening to Hank Williams and George Jones with my grandad. My parents broke up the same year Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" came out, so I had these memories of when my dad would have visitation with us, and he'd play that tape all the time. All those songs are about him and Justin (Townes Earle)'s mom breaking up, so it's a really personal thing to me.

I realized that I was going to become a folk artist and began doing that sort of thing, just not very well. When I came to Nashville, I finally realized that I couldn't fall into the Nashville trap and let it be about popularity, about creating what someone else wanted to hear so that I could earn the title "Americana." I started thinking about what I wanted to hear, what kind of music my friends want to make, wanted to play, what we wanted shows to be like. And as soon as I started having that attitude, we started selling out shows. And really that's what attracted me to the genre in the first place--it was a bunch of people who saw what the rest of Nashville was doing and thought, "No, we're going to do this instead."  

JK: In that sense, a lot of what you're doing is about the band. You've said several times that this album is a collaboration.

AT: Yes, the band that I play with are like family. We're very in-tune with each other and have a lot of love. Grayson and Clint and Joe and everybody, they're all a part of it. They're not just "the band," or the "people I make music with," we only become the whole thing when we're together and need each other to make it happen. It truly is a really beautiful thing.

Allen Thompson lives in Nashville with his wife, Colleen, and a dog named "Levon Helm." Follow him on Facebook and Twitter and be ready to get your hands on a copy of "Salvation in the Ground." And finally, to quote Thompson himself, "Take care and know that you are loved."

Photography by Jon

Twitter: @allen_thompson

Website: www.allenthompsonmusic.com

Blog: allenthompson.tumblr.com