Here in the Smoke-Filled Room, we make it our business to keep a keen eye on politics and current events. But with the presidential election, legislative politics, and everything else going on in the world (pirates!), we haven’t quite had the time to delve into our current economic troubles. But who better to talk declining economic fortunes than Texas troubadour Slaid Cleaves? Cleaves is an Austin-based rock and folk guitar-slinger in the tradition of Woody Guthrie—though he’s a bit more subtle in his delivery of the truth. From his early days playing Texas honkytonks to the release of his new album, Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away, Cleaves has painted extraordinarily vivid portraits of ordinary men and women just trying to stay sane and make ends meet. We caught up with the gravelly-voiced Cleaves to talk about Stephen King’s taste in music, Woody Guthrie and the Death Star, and the fragmentation of American culture.

Crawdaddy!: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. So, you mentioned you just finished pumping gas. Are you out on the road touring?

Slaid Cleaves: Yeah, the record comes out tomorrow (April 21st). I thought it’d be out earlier this year, so I booked all these tour dates and now I’m out here and the record’s not out yet. But I’m out here playing shows and telling people about it.

Crawdaddy!: Tell us a bit about the new album and how it came to be.

Cleaves: Well, after my last record, I took some time off from writing. The last record I did was a covers record, Unsung, which was a record that was designed to just give me a breather and gather ideas and also get some great people out there. And in early ’07, I started setting aside blocks of time to write. You know, I would go off for three or four days at a time to someone’s lake house to write a record and get away from it all. I did that pretty consistently, and then I came back and did most of the record with Gurf Morlix.

Crawdaddy!: I noticed that Stephen King wrote the album’s liner notes. Has he always been a fan?

Cleaves: Yeah, he actually heard some songs from the Wishbones record and became a fan and showed up at a festival I played in Maine where he lives. He came up to the CD booth and expressed his fandom to me, and it was very exciting. He said if I ever needed liner notes, I should just give him a call. So I called him and asked him to do the notes for this one and they appeared in the mail. He’s a fast writer.

Crawdaddy!: And a good writer. Anyway, let’s dive into some political talk. You’ve participated in Woody Guthrie tributes and your writing follows in that Guthrie tradition. What lessons are there to draw from Guthrie’s sentiments, particularly relating to social justice and economic issues, in these troubled times?

Cleaves: I think Woody used to say something—I think he didn’t invent it—but he used to say his job was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I always liked that. Growing up listening to him and Bruce Springsteen, those were big influences. I definitely fall on the left side of spectrum. That said, I think it is very, very dangerous to write political songs. The pitfall is that you end up being a cheerleader for one side. It becomes this sports mentality where you stay with one team, right or wrong. I try not to be a cheerleader for either side. I’m just trying to express the mood of the country.

Crawdaddy!: So would you say that it’s your job to be a commenter and observer more than a participant?

Cleaves: Yeah, I see the job of songwriter to measure where the soul of a country is and where the community is and describe it and recreate it in the songs.

Crawdaddy!: So, even as a songwriter in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and a host of other political writers, you don’t feel a need to get involved?

Cleaves: I think what works for me is trying to describe what’s going on without picking sides. I wrote a song called “Beautiful Thing” that’s on my new album. I wrote it a few months after the 2004 elections. It’s supposed to be a song about cynicism, or disgust at cynicism in politics today and how sad that is. But I have people in the audience who write me with strong objections for the ideas in there. I had some very strong and passionate email exchanges with some who are cheerleaders for the right, and I was just laying it out like I saw it. There are people who think that musicians shouldn’t be allowed to weigh in.

Crawdaddy!: Do record sales have anything to do with it? The whole idea of alienating your audience with your political views?

Cleaves: Well, it’s hard enough to sell records without alienating folks, yeah. But it’s never really an issue for me because my audience tends to be more free-thinking—those are the kind of communities I minister to [laughs]. I played a show and Laura Ingraham, a right-winger, invited me on her radio show. She was very, very gracious. It was obvious that’s not usually my audience.

Crawdaddy!: Did you talk about politics with her?

Cleaves:No, she asked me, off-air, which side I was on. She said it very politely and I just pointed to my Woody t-shirt and she nodded that she totally understood. I figured I had to wear the Woody t-shirt since I was in the middle of the Heritage Foundation. It was like Luke Skywalker in the middle of the Death Star.

Crawdaddy!: Do you think we have enough musicians around voicing political sentiments? Or is that a tradition that’s gone by the wayside?

Cleaves: There’s something about the way American culture has fragmented into so many voices and agendas that you’ll never see the kind of cohesive cultural movement like we had with the Weavers, Seeger, the folk explosion of the ’60s. I just don’t see that happening with so many different fragments of American culture with different agendas.

Crawdaddy!: I had been feeling the same way, but I thought it was interesting that we seem to have had a moment or two of unity recently with all the financial troubles. I felt it very much here in New York right after the story broke about those AIG bonuses. It’s almost like we haven’t felt that kind of unification of feeling since, I think, after September 11th here in New York. It was really remarkable.

Cleaves: Yeah, I felt that, too. It seems to have dissipated. They were able to put out that fire pretty quick.

Crawdaddy!: How is the economy affecting you personally as a working musician operating on, I’m assuming, slim margins?

Cleaves: Well, it’s something we think about. I like the fact that gas is only two dollars a gallon. I had a gig in Charlottesville and the place went under. And there was another place I was booked to do two shows and they wanted to cancel one so we had to do some extra promotion since ticket sales were slow. But my last few shows have been sold out or nearly sold out. I was told a long time ago when I started out that the bar business is pretty recession-proof. Even if you don’t have the rent, you might be able to still scrape up 20 bucks to buy a beer and hear some music. Plus, people need encouragement most in these times. In a way, hard times are when you need music the most.

Watch: “Broke Down” [at youtube.com]

Tags:Slaid Cleaves, Stephen King, Austin Texas

Read past installments of the Smoke-Filled Room:

Family Ties: The David Berman, M.I.A., Tupac Connection

Questions and Answers with Janet Bean

Of Wonder Bread and X-Boxes: Can Tropicália Happen Again?