Used with permission of CMA Closeup News Service
By j.poet
Pat Green is sitting in his tour bus with his band, ready to drive to the next gig on his never ending tour, and while he still plays good-time music for his fans, he's also looking for ways to deepen his music and his songwriting.
"I think songwriters keep going back to places they're comfortable with and don't typically push the envelope," Green said. "If the backing musicians are creative they can work through that. A good musician is a bit of a magician, there's a lot of slight of hand and distraction you can use so the listener doesn't notice [that you're repeating yourself]. But there are other places you can go that aren't so obvious. The trick is to come up with a strong melody and say something meaningful to people without preaching. The art is finding the right combination of rhythm and melody and lyric, finding that odd word that doesn't quite rhyme, but still fits, the word that pushes the wagon to the edge of the cliff without tipping it over."
Green's current tour partner, Kenny Chesney, is a big fan of Green's songwriting skills. "Pat is a people's writer," Chesney said. "He's a man who puts lives and loves and hurts and laughs to music. He knows how to grapple with the truth and have fun doing it."
The tunes on Green's latest Republic/Universal Records album, Lucky Ones, illustrate this approach to "serious fun." The lighthearted rockers are still there, but they're balanced by songs including "My Little Heaven," a melancholy love song that sounds like Green is channeling Jackson Browne, co-written with pop craftsman Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20, and "Sweet Revenge," probably the darkest tune Green's ever cut, is an acoustic Country blues tune that simmers with acidic humor.
"That was my attempt at writing an old-fashioned cowboy song," Green explained. "The good guy kills the bad guy, with a casual 'la de da - you're dead' feel. You watch the old movies with the six guns blazing and you don't realize that what's happening is murder. Someone's dead, but in the movies they don't deal with the real feelings; that's where the humor of the song comes from."
Don Gehman (John Mellencamp, Tracy Chapman) who produced Green's 2003 Gold album, Wave on Wave, featuring the Top 5 title track, worked closely with Green on Lucky Ones and praised his studio skills.
"Pat has an amazing ability to include people in the process," Gehman said. "His heart is as big as any room he walks into; which makes him a special writer, entertainer and human being. It's a joy being part of his process."
Gehman brought a more pronounced pop and R&B feel to the album, a slight shift for Green. "The [pop and R&B stuff] is there all right," Green said, "but not by conscious design. Don's a master arranger and knows how to pull a song together and push it in the right direction. I like going into the studio without a song completely finished; when you're working with the band, and the song, and the studio you'll have these really cool spontaneous moments when the song writes itself. You don't fight a song; however it comes out is how it comes out. I can't see The Beatles or The [Rolling] Stones sitting down and saying, 'we need a pop hit or an R&B song this time.' If a song works, it works. If it doesn't, go write another one."
Green followed that last bit of advice - if it doesn't work, do something else - for his entire career. Writing songs; playing gigs; cutting Live at Billy Bob's Texas for the fledgling Smith Music Group in 1999 (the label's second best seller with only Merle Haggard selling more), starting his own label, Greenhorse Records, on almost no money; building up a buzz playing one nighters all across Texas; getting his big break when Willie Nelson asked him to play at his Fourth of July Picnic in 1997; and signing with a major New York based non-Country label that released Three Days in 2001.