By: Ian Saint
Radney Foster may not be a household name, but his songs are household staples — perhaps most frequently heard as recorded by other artists, but also as hit records of his own performances, whether as a solo artist in the ‘90s or as Foster & Lloyd (his duo with Bill Lloyd) in the ‘80s.
Foster is a fascinating case study of both facing and breaking genre barriers. His songs recorded by Keith Urban and Sara Evans were Top 40 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart, a rare feat for country singles — but ironically, despite Foster & Lloyd’s very first several singles notching high on the country charts, their success wasn’t sustained as they were deemed not country enough.
The Del Rio native is one of many beloved Texas songwriters who are incredibly introspective — like his mentors Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark, and Rodney Crowell — and is a natural fit for The Kessler listening room in Dallas, where he plays tonight amid a slate of shows across the Lone Star State this year. Buddy‘s Ian Saint spoke with Foster a week before the engagement.
IAN SAINT: Hi, Radney. I was just talking with Erin Enderlin, and she was thrilled to hear I’m interviewing you.
RADNEY FOSTER: Oh, yeah. Erin’s great. She’s such a talent. We’ve worked together several times, and just recently. My wife and I have written a screenplay based on one of the short stories from my book of short fiction, For You to See the Stars, so I have been writing or co-writing all the music to go in the film — and Erin just got through writing with me and Jay Clementi for a song that’s going to be in the film, so that’s exciting.
IAN: Oh, wow, that’s awesome! Erin amazes me with all her co-writes. I just saw her on tour with Trisha Yearwood, as Erin co-wrote on Trisha’s upcoming first album as a full-fledged songwriter.
RADNEY: I know; I’m so excited about that. You know, Trisha and I have known each other for a really long time. She was the receptionist at Mary Tyler Moore Publishing in 1986, when Bill Lloyd and I were writing songs together and got our first records cut by people like Sweethearts of the Rodeo (“Since I Found You”) and Holly Dunn (“Love Someone Like Me”). That [gave way to us recording as] Foster & Lloyd. Everything took off from there. So I’ve known Trisha for a long, long time.
IAN: [gasp] That’s crazy, because Trisha just talked on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” about being a receptionist there! You’re the first person I’ve encountered who knew Trisha from her receptionist era.
RADNEY: Oh, yeah. We were like, “Dang it, that girl who’s answering the phone can sing her ass off. You need to get her to do your demos!” [laugh]
IAN: Wow, that is uncanny. On this recent tour, Trisha brought Erin and Sunny Sweeney, who’s another great artist you’ve worked with — and a fellow native Texan!
You, Sunny, and Jay Clementi co-wrote her “Staying’s Worse Than Leaving” single, that went Top 40 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs. That song tackles a tough subject for people, but y’all did it so well. What are your thoughts looking back on it, now that it’s 15 years of life experience ago?
RADNEY: The day that we wrote it amounts to a conversation with Sunny, about how do you know when it’s actually time to give up on something? That’s how we got the title, “Staying’s Worse Than Leaving.” You know, it’s often hard to get subject matter that tough into something that would actually get played on the radio — but country music has a way of doing it, more than any other genre. We’re willing to listen to people go, “oh, my gosh, that is an awful situation.” That was one of the good parts about the song; the world is full of folks who’ve got their heart broken, and it’s okay to write about.
IAN: You and Sunny are native Texans; but she’s from Longview in East Texas, and you’re from Del Rio on the southwestern border with Mexico — so, very different parts of our gargantuan state, yet this collaboration was so beautiful. You’re playing all across Texas this year. As you collaborate with and play for Texans far and wide, what do you make of its many diversities — geologies, cultures, even time zones — and yet there’s a kind of collectivism and unity, in its music scene and beyond?
RADNEY: Yeah, I think it all starts with a culture that has been about going to hear live music for generations — not every place has that culture. People would go out on Saturday, eat a steak dinner, and then go to a honky-tonk to dance. There’s this culture of hearing live music; and I think that extended into the storytelling aspect of the generation of songwriters before me, that really led the way in reverence for people like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Rodney Crowell. There was this, “We’re gonna sit and listen to a real poet.” There’s a long culture of that throughout Texas — whether it’s a 4-H barn in Del Rio, or an ice house in Houston.
IAN: You’re right. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio and moved to Texas after college; and I was struck by this right away.
RADNEY: I love playing your hometown. I always play Beachland ballroom up there.
IAN: Oh, we love Beachland Ballroom! It’s always great to hear people from down here having their favorite spots in Cleveland, so thank you for shouting them out. [Author’s note: I found a fantastic Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper review of Radney playing there in 2016.]
Listening to your latest album, For You to See the Stars, I love the closing track: “Sycamore Creek.” The song is an ode to somebody, not the creek per se. [laugh] But it’s such a tender song, and very cinematic — I know you’re working on a film for this album. Sycamore Creek is a real tributary of the Rio Grande, near Del Rio. Was Sycamore Creek where you wrote the song, or where you had an epiphany that inspired the song?
RADNEY: No, but I had friends who had a ranch that Sycamore Creek ran through. It was spring fed and gravel-barred, and there were lots of swimming holes; so that’s realistic. It inspired the accompanying book to For You to See the Stars; that’s the first short story ever I wrote. It kind of ran away with me, and wound up novella length.
The idea for the song was thinking about you can have old lovers that you remain friends with — it’s almost the opposite of something like “Staying’s Worse Than Leaving,” like, “yeah, this did not work out, but it was never meant to” — and how you would help that person in any situation, no matter what. These people [in “Sycamore Creek”] have been friends for a long time, from high school through their 20s. Then she’s in a bad marriage and getting the hell beat out of her, and he says “Meet me at Sycamore Creek.” He shows up with a bag full of cash, and says “You gotta get the hell out of here for your own safety.” That’s a deep friendship.
The inspiration for me trying to write short fiction was because I got laryngitis so bad, I couldn’t speak for six weeks. It was terrifying. Then I had another six weeks of rehab on my vocal cords, to get back to professionally singing. That was a very frustrating time, so I decided to try to write a short story about what happens before that song. How did people go from skinny-dipping in the summer at Sycamore Creek, to that?
My wife was a journalist for many years. She was the first person to read it. She said, “Baby, this is really good. Even when you get your voice back, you need to continue to write this way.” I wrote a couple more short stories based on songs, then I thought I could write songs for other short stories. I could put 10 songs on an album, and have 10 short stories to go with them. I found a great small, southern literature publisher in North Carolina, Working Title Farm, and they helped me put the book out.
IAN: Wow, I love it. I believe “Sycamore Creek” is a staple in your live set, so we can expect to hear it at The Kessler?
RADNEY: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
IAN: Excellent. So, you grew up in Del Rio. There’s a lot of rhetoric and national discourse about that border region, and most people with strong feelings about it haven’t actually been there.
RADNEY: [laugh] Yes.
IAN: What would you like people to know about Del Rio, cutting through all that hot air from people who mostly haven’t been there — and how did it shape you to be the dynamic artist that you are today?
RADNEY: It shaped me in tremendous ways. You know, I grew up in a home where both Spanish and English was spoken. 80% of my friends had Spanish as their first language. Then, culture from Mexico — not just how we eat or how we work, but also music.
I was as influenced by mariachi from across the river as I was by country music. I had a discussion with Kris Kristofferson about it, because he’s from Brownsville down in the valley. Listen to “For the Good Times” by Kris Kristofferson — that’s a mariachi song. Listen to the melody and harmony, and the way it’s all put together. And I never would’ve written “Raining on Sunday” [the hit single recorded by Keith Urban] if I hadn’t grown-up in Del Rio, Texas — even what I talk about in the second verse, all of that is really the fruit of growing up in a cross-cultural community.
IAN: I found that learning Spanish improved my writing in English. It provoked me to learn more about how my first language is structured. Have you had a similar finding?
RADNEY: OH, yeah. One of the cool ways that I get to give back is a program started by my friend, Darden Smith, called Songwriting With: Soldiers. Some soldiers, I’ve found out that Spanish is their first language; so [I say] let’s write from that — it’s a much easier way for them to open up, and it carries a deeper meaning for them. Usually, they’re not songwriters or poets; they’re just soldiers with wounds both seen and unseen, trying to figure out how to make their transition back to civilian life. About half of the songs that I’ve written in the last few years are bilingual.
IAN: Wow, I’d be fascinated to hear that. Do you plan on assembling another record in the near future?
RADNEY: I am; but I’ve been concentrating on this movie. There’s a short story in the book called “Isabel,” and it’s the jumping-off point for a screenplay that my wife and I have written together. We are rapidly approaching having the development done, then [we’d be] ready to finance and make this film. So I’ve really been concentrating on writing for that, so the first new record that might come out would hopefully be the soundtrack.
IAN: That’s a very exciting new frontier. Best of luck with that. I’m glad you brought up film, because I interviewed Pat Benatar yesterday. We reminisced about her being foundational to MTV, and the novel format of music videos. She loved it; but when I interviewed Ann Wilson of Heart or Andy Summers of The Police, they weren’t as effusive about it. [laugh]
I looked back on your Foster & Lloyd music videos from the ‘80s, and they’re so fun. But, of course, you’re a very serious artist as well. What feelings do you have, looking back on those early music videos? I know “Texas in 1880” is still in your solo live set.
RADNEY: Those were fun. Bill Lloyd and I were both young guys, who found some commonalities of stuff that we really loved as we started writing songs together [as employees of Mary Tyler Moore’s publishing company]. We knew that music videos were how young peoples were starting to see and learn about new music.
It’s interesting. We were putting out “Texas in 1880” as a single, and RCA Records was like “We’re done making videos for you guys.” So we thought, “Well, let’s just go make it ourselves.” We found this young filmmaker named Steve Boyle, who rented a bunch of cameras and we hired a skeleton crew. I think we had two 6-packs of beer and a couple pizzas at the end of the night for the guys. [laugh] We ended up making that video, and then RCA was like “Oh, we want that!” So we responded, “Well, you’ve gotta pay for it!” [laugh]
That was really fun to make. Also, it put us on the map of “Hey, let’s take a little more control over what our images look like, who we’re gonna deal with, how we want to be seen, and have some fun with this.”
IAN: Gosh, I didn’t know you had to make the video on your own. I could tell that you guys were having so much fun with making it.
I’m curious about how Foster & Lloyd’s relationship with the record company turned. You two had several hit singles right out the gate — from the very first single, “Crazy Over You.” But the last few singles did not quite match those commercial heights, then Foster & Lloyd split. I had a feeling that the record company’s support may have been cratering, and your story of the “Texas in 1880” music video alludes to that. What is your perspective of how that went? And how was it starting over as a solo artist? I’d imagine that would’ve been quite daunting.
RADNEY: You know, if I’d had any knowledge of how few solo artists had any kind of a career at all after a band, I might’ve thought very differently about things. [laugh]
Bill [Lloyd] and I had an odd success story. “Crazy Over You” was the first time that a duo had a debut single go #1. It didn’t go #1 on Billboard, and Billboard is now the only chart [still existing], so they’ll tell you it went #4; but it went #1 on Radio & Records. [Editor’s note: Radio & Records was acquired by Billboard in 2006, and it doesn’t appear that their chart history is readily accessible online.]
Bill had [previous] success on college radio, because he had a rock band on an indie label out of Boston. I’d sent demos to [Nashville-based] Vanderbilt University’s college radio station, and that made some regional things happen for me at college radio. Foster & Lloyd comes out, and we’re getting college radio play. I think we were the first band to have a record go Top 10 on college radio and Top 10 country at the same time. That helped us sell a lot of records, and gain a bunch of younger audiences — but there was a lot of jealousy about that from country radio itself. The style [emerging to dominate country radio] was more neo-traditional than what we were doing.
By the early ‘90s, we weren’t still having country radio success, but we were still having college rock radio success — so there was talk of us transferring from RCA Nashville to RCA New York, and trying to make a rock record. I was like, “I can’t go. I’m like Buck Owens; I couldn’t go pop with a mouthful of firecrackers, man. They’re gonna hear this voice and know that I’m a country singer.” [laugh] So it seemed like it was time for us to just end this pleasantly, and stay friends, [rather than] go chase something that I’m terribly uncomfortable with.
Then I ended up in a situation where RCA Records was owned by BMG, and my publishing was owned by BMG as well, and I couldn’t get one side of the corporation talking to the other side of the corporation. No one would make a decision about me, so I was in limbo for a year. I wrote almost all of the songs on Del Rio, TX 1959 during that period. I got a chance to play a showcase at the Bluebird Café. Tim Dubois, who was the head of Arista Records Nashville at the time, brought the radio guy and the marketing guy to see me play. He walked back to the Bluebird’s kitchen, shook my hand, and said “You’re gonna get a lot of offers, and I want to be the first in line.” I said, “Man, I don’t want to make records for anybody else.”
IAN: That’s incredible. But I’m dying over how someone at RCA Records was essentially saying, “We’ve got to fly this guy from Del Rio, Texas out to New York City because he isn’t country enough.”
RADNEY: [laugh] You can’t make that stuff up! I mean, we had great success in New York — we sold out The Bottom Line [club in Greenwich Village]. But it just felt like I would be a fish out of water if I’d gone out to pursue that.
Bill [Lloyd] was disappointed [by our breakup] in a lot of ways, but he moved on to do some cool things as well. He worked as an A&R guy for a little while, and then was in a band called The Sky Kings. [Editor’s note: The Sky Kings was a 1991-1997 supergroup comprising of Bill Lloyd, New Grass Revival lead singer and bassist John Cowan, Doobie Brothers founding member Patrick Simmons, and Poco frontman Rusty Young.] Bill still makes very cool independent records, and has one of the cooler bands in Nashville called The Long Players — all these sessions cats, and people like Bruce Springsteen’s bassist Garry Tallent whenever he’s in town. They take a classic rock record — usually one that’s had an influence on Nashville — and they have a guest lead singer for each on the album. You’re likely to see Marshall Crenshaw get up and sing a song, followed by Vince Gill.
IAN: Your crossover successes with country and college rock radio got me thinking. Keith Urban covered “Raining on Sunday.” Keith did a surprise show at Club Dada in Deep Ellum last year, by the way, and played that song…
RADNEY: Oh, awesome!
IAN: That was an album cut for you, on 1999’s See What You Want to See. But when Keith released that as a single in 2003, not only was it a big Hot Country Songs hit (#3), but it went Top 40 on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart.
Similarly, “A Real Fine Place to Start” — off your 2002 Another Way to Go album — was covered by Sara Evans, whom I interviewed a couple years ago, in 2005. That went #1 on Hot Country Songs, but also attained Top 40 on the pop chart. And mind you, this was back when country had less pop crossover success.
I don’t know where you stand on pop music, but what’s it like to see that happen with your songs? I’d imagine that when you wrote them, you hadn’t anticipated that they’d become Top 40 pop bangers.
RADNEY: Sure. You know, to me, it always just means that you wrote a good song. And I have had success because of people in the pop world who you would never expect would record one of my songs. There’s a blue-eyed soul singer from Louisiana named Mark Broussard; he and I have written several things that did well for him. One of those songs [“Come in From the Cold”] got re-recorded by George Benson, and I was just thrilled. So I always feel good when somebody takes something that I’ve done, does it a little differently, and it becomes something that will work in a different swimming pool.
IAN: Thank you so much for speaking with Buddy. We’re really looking forward to you playing The Kessler, a venue we adore, which you’ve played a few times. What do you love about The Kessler, and what makes you excited about coming back?
RADNEY: You know what? It’s always one of the greatest audiences, and the sound is really great. You can play there with a full band, and you can play there with just you and your guitar. You can hear a pin drop when you’re singing, and then the audience explodes when they really love something.
In this situation, I’m going to be in a bluegrass trio. It’s really fun and different. I’ve got a great fiddle player, Alice Hasen; and Drew Womack, a fine guitar player and one of the greatest tenors walking the planet — man, he’s the best harmony singer I know, full stop. I’m gonna twist his arm, and make him do one of his hits that he’s written.
Radney Foster plays The Kessler on Friday, May 30. For a full list of Radney’s tour dates and ticket links, visit his official website: www.radneyfoster.com.
