If you’re looking for a Carolina storyteller with colorful base to stand on, you’ll find Mr. Jonathan Byrd. He understands where he’s been and what he’s done, and knows how it shapes his present story. He paints his life’s work with words so striking and memorable, you’ll wonder why it took him to age 29 to figure out he needed to make music.

His past: “Growing up in the church, surviving the military, and making my living in the music business, I've been baptized in some of the world's most beautiful truths and all of the world's greatest bullshit” is one great story after another – but that’s the inspiration behind his latest record, “The Law and The Lonesome”. It’s a record that includes some great stories… just not his own. In fact, Byrd likes to refer to the effort as an unofficial soundtrack for a film without a soundtrack; the Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men”. Byrd talks more about the collection, “The title track had been finished just days prior to recording and the whole album was recorded on an impulse, based on that one song…The whole process worked much the same way as my songwriting process: I get an idea, I obsess about it day and night and work on it until it's done.” The songs – meaningful and thorough – are a true compilation of tales worth spending hours at a time with.  

Check out a Jonathan Byrd performance if you get the chance – the tunes are going to move you, like it or not. And while no one knows for sure what’s next for Mr. Byrd, you can try your damndest to figure it out by getting into the XXQ’s below.

XXQs: Jonathan Byrd

PensEyeView.com (PEV): When did you first discover the love for music? Did you ever have an “Aha” moment?

Jonathan Byrd (JB): I always loved music. My mother played hymns on the piano for church services, my brother played classic rock songs on his guitar, and my father constantly listened to bluegrass and country music, on vinyl or on the radio. We lived in Germany in the late 70's, where it was impossible to catch that kind of music on the radio and daddy's record collection became even more precious. I took piano lessons from my mother, learned guitar from my brother, and listened to records constantly. They were like magic to me. My own first records were Peter and the Wolf, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Tom T. Hall's "Country Songs for Children," and "Rocky Mountain High," by John Denver. Later, I got a John Phillip Sousa collection, a double album with Swan Lake and the Nutcracker Suite, anything with enormous melodies. Tchaikovsky still slays me. My brother nearly killed me one time for playing Sousa in the morning.

Rocky Mountain High was the first song I learned all the words for, right about the same time as Amazing Grace and The Star-Spangled Banner. Obviously, I was driven by melody more than any genre or type of lyric. I remember walking through the house and nearly screaming Lola by the Kinks. My mother asked me if I knew what the song was about. I had no idea, though I could tell by her tone that she didn't much care for it.

The country lyrics really grabbed me, though. Daddy had "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" and I listened to "Dark As A Dungeon," "Tennessee Stud," and "Wreck On The Highway" a million times. Maybe because voices are mixed a touch louder on country records, or maybe because it's a lyric-driven genre, all three of those songs took me to a different world. They're little movies, brutal and dead honest. They have knuckles. "The color of the sun and his eyes were green..." -I could smell that horse. "There was whiskey and blood all together..." -Unequivocal. There's nothing clever about those words. That song scared me in the best way.

PEV: After four years in the Navy, you returned to Chapel Hill to play in rock bands in the underground music scene there. Was transitioning from a military life to that of a musician a hard one to handle?

JB: I was always a musician. I was never a military man. I had a band together in Norfolk before I was even discharged and made four-track recordings by myself in empty berthings on the ship anytime we were in port. Military towns prey on young, naive soldiers and that, at least, prepared me for dealing with rock clubs, which prey on young, naive musicians.

PEV: Tell us about your creative process… What kind of environment do you have to be in to work? Is there a certain zone you have to be in?

JB: Lonely places are the best. Beautiful places are great. Or extremely ugly places. Mediocrity makes me fidgety or puts me to sleep.

It helps to have a project that I'm working on. I used to write just to write, but not so much anymore. So many things seem more practical: feeding the chickens, doing laundry, catching up on email. I fucking hate email. It kills all. But what can you do? It's how we are doing this interview. It's how I promote my tours to thousands of fans. 40,000 people die in cars every year, but that's how I get to the gig.

I'm always thinking about the blessings of the curses and the curses of the blessings. I have to mine them, separate them, sort them, and sometimes put them back together for their contrasts. I have to take a step back in order to do that, so I conciously fast from email for a few days, leave the radio off while I'm driving, and stay out of the car for a few days when I'm home.

You know what? Forget all that. The zone is where the pen meets the paper. Inspiration is everywhere and God has made sure of that. Writer's block is a luxurious dalliance. In order to write, you have to write. Everybody writes shit. That's what editing is for. I have my preferences, but in the end it's my responsibility to write something and put it out.

PEV: What can fans expect from a live Jonathan Byrd performance?

JB: I'll be funny. I'll play some hot guitar. I'll get you to sing along. I'll make you cry. I'll make you laugh again and then we'll take a break. That's the general idea.

If you're a serious lyric listener, I'm pretty intense. I challenge major paradigms. Growing up in the church, surviving the military, and making my living in the music business, I've been baptized in some of the world's most beautiful truths and all of the world's greatest bullshit. Love transcends both of those and provides the ground wire for the positive and negative in our world. I try to pull all of those things together in a set and create enormous emotional contrasts. If you like gentle songs of healing, I'm probably not your guy. If you're the person who feels strangely compelled to inch right up to the cliff's edge and look over, you're gonna love me.

There are fantastic songwriters who can barely play guitar. I'm not one of them. A Jonathan Byrd concert is going to be a musical experience. I'm going to give it everything I've got. Every night is different and the tone of each individual room is a factor in what I'm doing on stage. I've seen Vance Gilbert step out from behind the mics and sing to two thousand people at a folk festival. I was at the back of the crowd and could barely hear him, but it was so riveting that I couldn't breathe. He used that space to its maximum effectiveness by pitting himself against its biggest handicap. It was an unforgettable lesson in performance. Every note creates a physical wave and my goal is to put some kind of focus and intention behind every one, no matter how fast or slow they're coming. It's the least I can do for people who've hired a babysitter, driven an hour, and paid $20 for a ticket.

PEV: Tell us about your first live performance. How have you changed since that first show to where you are now?

JB: My first gig was singing Amazing Grace for the congregation of my father's church when I was about 7 years old. Maybe 8. I don't think I got that spot based on my merits as a singer.

The church is an incredibly supportive environment. If you're not very good, they put you in the choir and you learn from the veterans. Most choirs are full of mediocre singers and they still come on like a thunderstorm. It's hair-raising. They work together as a team and most of them believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing. That's powerful stuff. They pray before they go out- they're singing for God.

There's no clear memory of my first secular performance. It never really changed for me. I got so much support from the beginning that, in hindsight, I was trained to believe that the audience is going to love me. If not, at least I'm not in control. Fear is generated in the head of the performer and doesn't actually have much to do with a)a performer's abilities or b)an audience's expectations. The majority of audiences are appreciative of someone's best efforts and the balls it takes to get up there.

After all these years, I do get nervous sometimes. I've learned that I can't take an audience for granted, even on those nights when I'm extremely confident. People are there with heartaches and unrealized dreams, thoughts they haven't given themselves the time to think and feelings they don't know how to express. It's my job to break all of that stuff loose. It's what I give my community as an artist. That's what creates that nervousness these days, the fear that I'm going to forget what I'm there for, that my ego is going to get away with me, that I'm going to pay more attention to some unobtainable perfection than I will to what the audience needs.

PEV: What can fans expect from your recent work, “The Law and The Lonesome”?

JB: "The Law and The Lonesome" was recorded in a basement in Toronto with Chris Bartos, who I had met about a week before. We had two microphones. The title track had been finished just days prior to recording and the whole album was recorded on an impulse, based on that one song. One of the songs was actually written after we started the recording process, with the same co-writer as the title track, Corin Raymond. It's the first output of an incredible relationship that we've had as writers. The tracking was done in about four days. It's the first album I've mixed myself, in my own studio.

It's my favorite Jonathan Byrd album. The whole process worked much the same way as my songwriting process: I get an idea, I obsess about it day and night and work on it until it's done. I've never been able to focus on a whole record in that way, because I always have to go out and make some more money to finish the record. Because Bartos is a brilliant innovator and arranger who can play any instrument, and because I was able to mix it myself, "The Law and The Lonesome" cost about $2000 from concept to final master.

When Corin Raymond and I finished writing "The Law and The Lonesome-" the song, I mean- the idea for a record based on the mood of that song came on quickly. Corin had turned me onto Cormac McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men" and we had both just finished reading it. The movie was opening in Toronto the night that I went down to Chris's basement to record the first two songs, "The Law and The Lonesome" and "Prairie Girl." Corin went and saw the movie while I recorded.

Chris Bartos must be psychic or maybe I transferred my intentions into the performance of those songs, because the landscape he created was perfect. I couldn't believe my ears, what he was doing. It was as if he was recreating this record that we'd both heard before. When I got back to Corin's apartment that night and played the rough mixes for him, he said, "That sounds like the soundtrack for the movie that I saw tonight- a movie that had no soundtrack." That refined my intention for the album right then, to create the rest of the soundtrack for "No Country For Old Men." We went out and saw the movie again and the vision was complete. The movie lacked the emotional contrast of the book and I wanted to bring some of that redemption back into play through the soundtrack, so I included the love songs "Fifth Wheel" and "Prairie Girl." "Soldier's Lullaby" and "Galveston" speak to the peace you find at the end of a journey, or even in the midst of a great storm. "May The River Run Dry" was written after we started recording; that song and "Coyote" help to frame the record as a western. "Diana Jones" has an old-school lawman, like Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. "Clean" is all about drugs and money. "Houston Window Blues" was the fast song needed for chase scenes.

PEV: How is this album different from other albums out today?

JB: As a songwriter record, I feel like it attains something nearly impossible. My voice and guitar are front and center and everyone says it "sounds like me," meaning my live performance. Despite that, the production is unforgettable. Chris's playing and arranging on "The Law and The Lonesome" rank among the most stunning production work I've heard on any record. Somehow, the nakedness of my performances and Chris's remarkable musical landscapes live side by side.

It's different from many contemporary songwriter records in another way: None of the songs are about me or anyone that I know. None of the songs express my viewpoint.

PEV: You said on your site, "Everything I do is a departure from what I've done." How did you prepare for this album versus your other work?

JB: I didn't prepare and I think that's the difference this time. It wouldn't work every time, but this one snuck up on me in the best way.

PEV: What’s one thing we’d be surprised to hear about you?

JB: I don't presume to know what would surprise anyone. I'll tell you something that surprised me.

I walked through a Wal-Mart yesterday, because my friends had stopped to buy some things and I wanted to check out the garden center. I think it's interesting to see what the trends are with growers and what makes it where. Wal-Mart had echinacea purpurea on sale for $4.50 in gallons. I found that interesting and even heartening, but that's not what surprised me.

What surprised me was this: on my way across the front of the store, I passed a family portrait studio, a smallish room where a mom might shuffle her cow-licked boys in to get a picture to send to grandma in Arizona. Very generic, blue collar photo album stock, fluffy white clouds. 30 prints for $7.99, an 8x10, two 5x7s, five 3 and a half by 5s, a bunch of wallet-size, and some "keepsakes," like locket-sized. I was very compelled to have my picture taken. It's been on my mind all day. Is it just an impulse purchase? Is it genetic? Like, "You might be a redneck if...?"

PEV: Was there a certain point in your life when you knew that music was going to be a career for you and you were determined to make it happen?

JB: Yes, I was 29 years old. I read a book called The Artist's Way. I met a recording engineer and guitarist named Jerry Brown and bartered to record my first album, Wildflowers. I was writing real songs for the first time in my life. I was learning how to flatpick. I quit my job, moved back into my mom's house, and began spending eight hours a day on the phone getting gigs. Within three months I was gigging full-time.

PEV: What one word best describes you?

JB: Stubborn.

PEV: Traveling is now a large part of your life. How is life on the road for you? Best and worst parts? Any fun stories?

JB: Too many fun stories. Way too many. Please read my blog. It's probably most complete, accessible and readable at www.myspace.com/jonathanbyrd. You can start with my bio which, I've been told, is a hoot.

Life on the road has been great. I'm figuring out ways to be home more now, so I can still treasure that time on the road and not resent it. I want to have a child. I want to feed my chickens and make really good omelets. I want to grow some echinacea purpurea. I want to be a part of my community here, the one that I haven't seen much of in ten years. Most of my current community is a thousand miles away from me and that is starting to feel weird.

Recently, I've been touring with other artists and even in groups. Danny Schmidt, Doug and Telisha Williams, and I just did two weeks together around the southeast in an RV. That was great fun. The solo artist thing is great for being delightfully lonely and creative, but there's no one to measure your soul against. The greatest inspiration comes from fellow artists.

PEV: How have all your friends and family reacted to your musical career? What’s it like when you get to play at your hometown?

JB: My hometown is not my biggest audience, which is fine. I don't play around here much and, when I do, I've got a small, incredible fan base that gives me lots of love. It's nice to be home and not feel obligated to go out and play. It's nice to see friends in the audience when I do. The southeast, which is a fantastic music scene in general, is not a hotbed of songwriter venues. A lot of great people are working to change that. It'll take time and, in the end, is up to the audiences.

My family members are mostly big fans, although they have a problem with some songs, like "Jesus Was a Bootlegger."

PEV: What can we find you doing in your spare time, aside from performing?

JB: Gardening. Cooking. Friends. I went to the beach this weekend with my sweetheart and some friends. They had a family reunion and some wedding planning to do. We helped them sample the caterers and then went swimming in the rain, in the womb of the jade Atlantic.

PEV: Is there one artist or group that would be your dream collaboration? Why?

JB: I want Tom Waits to play drums on one of my records. Because it would be incredible. There's a word that my sweetheart invented, "twank." Twank is when it's kind of fucked up, in just the right way. Jimbo Mathus has twank for breakfast. Modern recording techniques are designed to destroy all traces of twank, but Beck manages to use them to supercharge his twank. Tom Waits is the ruler of all he surveys in the Kingdom of Twank. I imagine his drumming would be an outpouring of twank the likes of which the world has never seen.

PEV:  Is there an up and coming band or artist you think we should all be looking out for now?

JB: Anais Mitchell. Anais Mitchell. Anais Mitchell.

PEV: If playing/writing music was not your career, what would you most likely be doing?

JB: Writing novels.

PEV: What is the story behind the name of the album, “The Law And The Lonesome”?

JB: Corin Raymond played a house concert and released his first CD in his hometown of Cochenour, Ontario. Cochenour is a gold-mining town, as far north as you can drive along the western border of Ontario. The mayor of Cochenour was also the local music reviewer, and wrote in his review of Corin's CD that the character in the song "Three Thousand Miles" was "running from the wrath of the law and the lonesome." Corin lifted that line and turned it into "with the wrath of the law and the lonesome above you, and all those who love you behind..."

Two years later, he still had just that line, which he quoted to me in a car on the 400, headed north to Sudbury. That's where that song began to grow. Anyone who has driven that road would know the Canadian Shield, a mass of billions-of-years-old granite that comes to the surface around you. It's a stark landscape, beautiful in a brutal way, and it inspired the story. It took us two years to write "The Law and the Lonesome" and, when we were done with it, neither one of us knew whether it was finished or not. After playing it a couple of times, we changed one word, from "you took the long way home" to "you took the wrong way home." It was almost immediately obvious that "The Law and The Lonesome" would be a great name and a great title track for an album that I had already written most of the songs for.

PEV: So, what is next for Jonathan Byrd?

JB: "If I knew what I was going to paint before I painted it, why would I paint it?" –Picasso. Thank you for this great interview. The questions were outstanding and fun to answer.