So I was, you know, proctoring the education of the three boys. And so I would have not much time between, like, they’d start a class, and I'd have 20 minutes to kill. And then another class, you know, Internet problems, whatever. My job was just to be sure that their life was disrupted as little as possible. And so I’d pick up the guitar and noodle around, and it that riff was one of the first riffs I fell upon when I was just walking around the cabin, playing that (sings the riff). And, like, the way we recorded it, it's plucked on the string, the way I wrote it, which I kind of played it on a YouTube channel one time, it's a strum; it's a strum pattern.  

And it was the frustration of everything that was going on during lockdown, and sort of the cabin-feverness of it all is what that song was. It was just ‘When The Devil Drives’ is just about, you know, making bad decisions for the wrong reasons at the wrong time, but also realising that that's what it is. And so, you know, you can swim upstream or just put on your seatbelt. And I kind of felt like it was that. I mean, I know it sounds, like, oversimplified, but it's a fun song and it's meant to be fun. And it's not meant to be bitching about making bad decisions or what's going on in life. It's more built to feel like, well, shit, here we are. So we might as well lean in, you know, and the, you know, ‘When The Devil Drives’ definitely has that sort of rooted in the Bible belt idea of ‘the Devil made me do it’, kind of. There are bad forces at work and you should fight them, but sometimes you lose that battle, or sometimes you don't even pick up arms against it.

And, yeah, I mean, you know? I am very fond of that song, but it's very much a song about self-reflection in a moment of, you know, not healthy times. You know, lines like ‘getting overserved, curled up in a ball, trying to crawl yourself back to redemption…seeing right through your own disguise’, you know, like, all these themes through there are about one examining one's own humanity and being honest with yourself about it.

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But then, you know, halfway through the song, the guy gives up fighting and it's like, fuck it, you know? You're hot and I'm dirty, so let's figure out something to do with those hobbies. And it's not about, you know... I don't mean in a sexual way or a non-sexual way. It's just like leaning into, we're here, so we might as well embrace it, kinda. So, you know, that's the fun of that song, sort of. There's no moral code in that song. It's just meant to be fun,

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Rain: Dirty country, basically.

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Rich: Yeah. And without judgement. And it's also, the thing about it is it's like, it's not a song that's celebrating, like (sings) “I am glad that I'm drunk”. It's not that. I mean, it's literally, it's acknowledging the protagonist is acknowledging - I'm making bad decisions. I probably have been overserved a time or two. Probably shouldn't sleep on the floor, probably shouldn't be doing a, b and c, but as of now, I don't see the escape hatch, so this is what we're doing, you know? And I think there's something kind of fun and equalising in that for me as a listener and hopefully for other listeners. And again, it's fun. It's just meant to be like a toe-tapper, you know?

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Rain: Yeah, exactly. It's maybe still my favourite. I mean, it was obviously the first thing we heard, and I hold a soft spot for it, maybe, because obviously you recorded it for us, you know, way back when. 2020? 

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Rich: A long time ago. It's one of my favourite songs, too, to be honest. And it's why this first track, it was always gonna be the first track on the album. I just felt like it had the right energy and it needed that sort of loose guitar, you know, it just needed that sort of band in the middle of the set vibe, you know what I mean? And I just like the energy of that tune for that reason. I think the band really got it, too, and understood what it was supposed to be, which, you know, I demoed it out, so it had sort of a very similar feel in the demo, but obviously they elevated so massively with their musicianship and it was exactly what I wanted it to be.

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The Readout

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Rich: ‘The Readout’ is my angriest song on the album. And Billy and I went back and forth on where to put that on the album, you know? And I think it's probably a good second song. Billy loves it as a second song.

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Rain: I think he said it was either going to be that or ‘Kerry-Anne’. Is that right?

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Rich: Yeah. Either that or Kerry-Anne. And we didn't do ‘Kerry-Anne’ because we felt like ‘Kerry-Anne’ was just a touch too shtick-y to go as the second song. And I don't know if I agree with that now or not. Billy loves the decision. I'll live by the decision. I'm too anal. I could constantly be adjusting everything, but at the time, he's like, you get them with ‘When The Devil Drives’, and as they're dusting themselves off, kick him to the side of the neck with ‘Readout’. like, don't go into, you know, ‘Rich Speight, humorous, dada, dada’, you know, stay in the we're not fucking around vibe, that was his thought, and it was a good one. ‘Readout’ I wrote when I was super annoyed. That's when I got stuck in Vancouver.

I just finished directing my first episode of ‘Kung Fu’. I'd had to do 14 days in quarantine in advance of directing that, which I knew. And when they kicked me back in…yeah, I was so mad and tried to…I was so mad. I spent days trying to figure out if I could drive myself across the border, if Al Cal could sneak me across the border in the trunk of a car. And I broke. I walked to the airport from my hotel. I left my hotel and walked to YVR, which is not nearby. But I didn't want a paper trail. I was trying to get out of the country, and my wife talked me into not doing it. When I got to the airport, I went and got the Covid test to allow myself to fly. I did all this stuff on my own, and I'm like,” I'm getting out of here”. And she said, ‘If you do that, and they will scan your passport and you'll never be allowed back in, and all of your work is there’. She's like, ‘I want you home, too. But I think that's not the right move. I think we're just gonna have to eat this as part of our Covid journey’. I'm like, right. So, I was so mad, and the story was - I got a call from the Covid Officer on the show said, hey, we had a day playing script supervisor, meaning it wasn't our regular person. Somebody just came in for the day to cover for somebody else, and that person got Covid, and she said ‘She contact traced you’, meaning she named names of people she was around.

 

And I was like, ‘Okay, well, I wasn't around her. So, you know, I don't think that makes sense’. And we got into a bit of an argument because it became a he said, she said thing, right? You're saying she said she was near me. I say, she wasn't. And she goes, well, we have to go with, you know, the person reporting it. And we had all been given these little, I can't think of the term now, little monitors on our lanyard that would, you know, track our coming and going on to set and offset and our relative distance to people wearing monitors. So I just said, well, why are you asking her? Just get her monitor and check the readout. See what it is, see what it says. And she's like, ‘We didn't give her one’. ‘Like, what do you mean you didn't give her one?’. And she’s like ‘We don't give those to day players’. I'm like, ‘That's who you *should* give it to. We're all there all the time. We're all with each other, all the time. So we're podding, basically. She's the outsider. She should *absolutely* have one.’

Whatever. It was a moot point. It's not how it played out. I had to do 14 days in lockdown, and I was just pissed off. And so that was just a song about being mad and stuck. And the readout is a reference to, you know, the computer holding your fate, so to speak. You know, that machine telling you what you can and can't do. And it was completely written about, like, torch the halls and tear down walls. It's all about my hotel room (laughing). It’s just all about being stuck in that place, but also realising there's no real enemy in this scenario. Like, the whole idea of, like, ‘Yeah, great, I'm gonna burn the place to the ground and then come out swinging.’
At whom? Like, this is Covid. And the woman who's making me stay here is doing the best she knows how to do. None of us know what this is. There are no rules. It's really not her fault. And I just have a lot of, you know, 28 days by myself in a hotel room was a lot.
Aside from directing a show where I had to wear a mask all day and not know anybody, it was just a lot. And so it was not what I wanted to hear. I did not want to hear ‘Go back to your room and stay there for 14 days’.

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And that little lick (sings the guitar lick), is a little lick I've been playing for 20 years. It's like a warm up thing I just always played. And so when I was playing that, I was like, oh, that's this song. And those words are almost – If ‘Kerry-Anne’ has 24 versions, ‘Readout’ has one. 

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I was just mad and I was like, everything I said, ‘Your call, the final choice is yours, you've made it’. You know, the whole thing was just me ranting on paper at this moment. That was it. That was the song. And the bridge, I didn't have. There was no bridge. So Zach Ross has co-writing credit on that song because when I played that and I demoed it out, we were listening to the song, and Zach goes, the song wants a bridge. He's like, it needs a bridge. And I go ‘Okay, what's the bridge?’ And he looked at the guitar and he went ‘It's this note and this note, this note and this note.’ Like, he just.. he knew where it should go and how to get back easily.
It took 30 seconds. He sat down like, ‘This is what your bridge is’. And I made up the words in the recording. And what came out of my mouth was “Trace me, chase me and find me where I'm hiding”. I'm like, ’Well, that's that. That's perfect.’ And then I had to figure out the second part. But, that song, just because it was driven by such frustration, it didn't require a lot of, like, tweaking to be clever. It was just venting, you know?

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Rain: I can't believe that's what it's about. It makes sense. Like, now I know, I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, obviously.’ But I never went there when I was listening to it at all.

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Rich: What do you think it was about?

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Rain: I didn't have a clue. I just thought it was not necessarily about anything. I figured because of what I imagined the references to be, it seemed appropriate to have that kind of the electronic sound and that nod to a computer. I didn't really think about it being autobiographical at all, if I'm honest. We were talking last week with Zack and Billy about how it’s kinda new wave. To me, it sounds very IRS era R.E.M.

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Rich: I think Billy brought that sort of almost surf Rickenbacker-y guitar idea to it. He's like, he's like, it reminds me of the Fastball song. And he's like, it needs that sort of sound. I'm like, ‘Oh, yeah, man.’ You know, that's sort of the musical producer bringing that song because the way I recorded it, the way I demoed it, it was just all (sings guitar lick), you know, it was no, there was no hook. There was no run that you go, hook of that song, aside from that, which is the sort of the hook that I wrote the song around, but Billy's sort of other guitar flavour that kind of comes in there is so cool and so unique and sounds nothing like ‘When the Devil Drives’. So it's a very different sound, those back to back songs.

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Rain: Billy referenced Tarantino when we spoke; that Dick Dale sound.

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Rich: Yeah, the surf guitar. I mean, same kind of idea he definitely had. That's why I was thinking ‘Fastball’. Because ‘Fastball’ has that guy who plays a sort of surf guitar sound. And it's funny because it's so not a surf or California song. It's like the cold Vancouver, you know, stuck in a hotel song. But that works really well with it. And even the idea of that sort of computer “Your call” like, all that stuff, was by design, because it was the ‘Big Brothers watching you’ element of writing the song that I wanted to put in the song in sort of tone styles. So it's like a robot saying, ‘You're fucked’, you know? And then getting Emma in there was great because she helps. Like, her voice really adds a level of chaos to it that I think it needed. And originally, the original song didn't have all the “Tell me”. That's all stuff that Billy had her put in. And then I thought that was a cool add to have her throughout the song.

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Rain: Does she write her own vocal lines? 

Rich: In terms of the harmonies? Yeah, we knew what the root note is, but then she built on top of that, with all these harmonies. And really, where I think it was invaluable was she came in and did that super, super, super high on the bridge that was just like, whoa. That really adds to the sort of chaos, anger vibe of the whole thing. Or, you know, maybe it's not anger, but it’s chaos. Its frenetic. It just has a sort of, like, that screaming energy, that’s really cool. She loves that bridge. I mean, it's her own voice, but she called when she heard the final version. She's like, man, that bridge gave me chills. Like, that's cool. And it just. It is cool. It was a great ad by Zach Ross. It was a great ad because it just takes that song into a different level of, like, energy.

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Your Whiskey On My Lips

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Rain: Is it your favourite, Beth?

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Beth: It's up there. I've got, like, a rotation going on. I think it depends on mood. At the moment it’s ‘Kerry-Anne’, ‘Low Bar’ and this. They just go round in a loop. 

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Rich: Those are good loops. I like ‘em.

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I almost thought this could be the second track. And then Billy was like, ‘No, let's not go slow yet. Let's do two upbeat ones.’

‘Whiskey On My Lips’ may be my favourite song in the album. For a flurry of reasons. I'm proud of it from a writing standpoint, in terms of the story. I set out to write a song for Emma to do with me. And I fell into this story. I was inspired by the miniseries ‘Godless’, which is a Western, and I don't want to give away anything about that miniseries if you haven’t seen it. It’s Scott Frank, who made ‘Queen’s Gambit’. It's the mini-series he made before that, or limited series, whatever you want to call it, and it's great. And there ends up being a theme in the show is that there's no men in the town, no real able-bodied men in this one town in the West, and I was inspired by that idea.

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And then the story, became about a woman saving her man, and not by, you know, being pretty and luring the hangman away from his post, but by just shooting people in the face, just by being a badass.

And I just liked that idea. The reverse of the classic story of, you know, I whisper your name in the wind, and the man going, and I hear you is the reverse that it's like I'm doomed, and I'm hoping that, you know, that I'm doomed and come here before my final moments.

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And I just loved processing that story, finding it, and then getting Emma in to sing it, and just having her sing it and looking at Billy and Zack and going, holy shit, we have a song. You know, the story is there. It's not unlike taking a scene to set and you go, ‘Well, I know how I'm gonna shoot it, and I know what I have expectation wise of the actors.’

But on those occasions where the actor achieves something that so supersedes anything you saw coming, you were like ‘Oh, we got a scene now. We got ourselves a scene.’ And that's how I felt about that song when she was singing it. I think Emma has maybe more raw talent than anybody I know in any field, what she can do with her voice so casually is jarring to me, and it just seems…I know it takes great work and effort on her part, but I think there's also, as I say, a lot of God given skills in that woman that you just can't learn, you can't study, you can't Google. She's got it. When it comes to getting behind that microphone and her singing it, she did two passes. That was it. She had two - boom, boom, and that was it.

And most of everything is the first take. There's only a couple of minor things we had her tweak, and it's just baffling.

I mean, I must have listened to it a hundred times just that night, and it would have just been no fiddle in there, no slide, no details. Would have been Coop on bass, on drums. Zach and Billy playing a little guitar, mainly Zach playing that and Billy playing some acoustic, and her singing with me, and it was just…I'm like, if we actually release this now, I'm fine. Like, it was just mesmerising.

So I just love how that song turned out. I love that Emma loves it. It mattered to me a lot that she like it because I look up to her a ton and admire her skillset so much and want her on my team, so I wanted her to be….I knew she would do the song because she’s cool. But I wanted her to like the song, too, and she does, and she's happy with the final product and that matters a ton to me because I think the song is just really, really flipping cool, man. And very specific to our voices together.

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Rain: Honestly… the first time I heard it was when you did it on the PB& Jr tour, where people were recording, you know, with their phones, and they were sticking stuff on YouTube. And my first thought when I heard i, was, I don't know this. Who is this by?  And my assumption was this is, you know, ‘The Handsome Family’. Or some other kind of cool Americana cover.

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Rich: Thank you.

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Rain: It's phenomenal. Obviously, I’ve said I love ‘When The Devil Drives’, and that track is always going to be a special one personally, but, in terms of songwriting, I think this is the pillar of the album. No doubt.

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Rich: Thank you. I appreciate that very much. I've had two other folks ask me who wrote that one, which is the highest compliment I can get, you know what I mean?
Everybody thinks like you.

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Rain: I feel like it’s a backhanded compliment.

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Rich: No, it's not at all. I don't think that at all. If you go into a situation and you people know you did stuff and you turn it in and they know it and still it's good enough for them to go, “But you didn't do *that*, right?  That was somebody else”, that's a compliment.

And a nod to Emma’s talent - I had so many people text me and be like, ‘I love that song. Who the fuck is that woman? What solar system do you get her from?’

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Because it just is jarring how good it is. And my voice is my voice, and you've listened to it for two songs, you know, in this album, and now here comes this. And then Emma comes in and I, you know, as I would listen to it, and when she goes in with the ‘Oh, Wesley’, it's like getting hit by a truck, because you think it's this guy talking a song and you expect the next verse to be that.

And then bam! This high voice that sounds like it's from the, you know, 1840s, comes breaking through. Just gorgeous and very well recorded and arranged by Billy and Zack, and, you know, the soulful fiddle on the top. It just all sounds great.

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Rain: It's very, very cool. It reminds me of, the duets Lee Hazelwood would do.

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Rich: You know, many discussions were had back when I was making ‘Old Henry’ and I would go and have a distant beer with Emma, and we recorded that Christmas song and all that stuff, and we talked about how much we loved that album and we were even like, oh, we should do.. what's the name of the wine one? I can't remember what it's called. ‘Strawberry Wine?’

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Rain: ‘Summer Wine’. 

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Rich: And I said, maybe we'll do that for the next album. Like, there were all these conversations, and then I decided, no, I'm gonna write one instead. But their voice combination. Although he's got a more elegant voice than mine. It's not dissimilar.

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Rain: One of my all-time favourite songs is ‘Some Velvet Morning’.

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Rich: The whole album is great.

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Rain: It’s like two songs with different time signatures spliced together, and it shouldn’t work. But it’s incredible. 

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Rich: I know. it's a weird one, but it works. You're right.

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16 Tons

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Rich: ’16 Tons’ is definitely a nod to a classic, obviously, but also a nod to the band ‘The Cactus Brothers’. Our arrangement is inspired by their arrangement. ‘Cactus Brothers’ was the second incarnation of the band that was originally ‘Walk The West’, which was sort of a Cow Punk band in the early to mid-eighties. And then they reinvented themselves as a more country version called ‘The Cactus Brothers’. And their version of ‘16 Tons’, I thought was inspired. And so it was inspired on that.
It was just a mud stomping version of already dope song. You know, the Tennessee Ernie Ford version is what I grew up with and then ‘The Cactus Brothers’ version. And I just thought it'd be fun to do that as a bar song. And we recorded it for the first album, and we came back to put it on the second album.

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Billy pulled out some of the pedal steel that we had in the first one. It's in there, but he pulled out a lot of elements of it in this version. And I re-recorded the vocals the last day of the mix. So these are not the vocals from the original recording. I re-recorded them in Zack's basement or in Zack's garage, right before we turned the song in, because Billy is like, ‘Man, something about this is not.. It just feels five years ago, it doesn't sound like you now. It doesn't have looseness.’ And so we just set up a mic and redid it and I'm so glad we did. It sounds dramatically better. And I didn't necessarily have a problem with the old version, but when we did the new version, I was like, oh, yeah, I get it, this is way better. So whatever Billy heard or was not hearing was right and we were able to make something cool out of it.

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Rain: I asked Zack about the recording setup and what mic you used here, because I just dug the vocal sound on that one.

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Rich: Yeah, he gave it that old 1940s sound. It just helps the whole vibe of that tune. And I just really dig it. You know, it's simple but elegantly done. You know, we didn't veer too much away from this what the song is, it's strong enough on its own and like I said, had a solid nod to ‘The Cactus Brothers’ and then just made it fun.

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Rain: It’s a song that I always loved. As you know, my Dad loved Tennessee Ernie Ford, so it’s always been one we all kind of sang on car journeys and that kind of stuff.

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Rich: Yeah, well, it's a great song, and every incarnation of it is great. It's one of those songs is kind of hard to mess up. So you just don't want to try too hard and screw it up in the process. You just want to tip your hat to it and, you know.

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​Rich: Oh, one other thing. I was going to say, ‘Your Whiskey On My Lips’. That is interesting that maybe Zack and Billy talked about. But the other thing about that song is that's not the arrangement we were going to do.