GALO:  The Gospel flavor on “Side of the Road” I think helps put the listener right on the side of the road. It struck me that the distance from the cotton fields to Iraq isn’t really that far?

KG: There were originally more verses to the song, probably five or six verses. I still miss some of those. My friend Gwil Owen helped me finish the song and we’ve collaborated a lot over the years. He’s a great, among other things, a great editor. It was his opinion that we should strip it to three [verses].

The first verse is autobiographical. I remember that happening. “Took me down there, so I could understand/pulled a ball of cotton/pressed it to my hand/by the road/by the side of the road.” The whole thing about my mother putting that piece of cotton in my hand, for a southerner, that’s a heavy thing.

The second verse is true to the story: “Church in the country burned to the ground/Congregation all gathered around.” Something I saw on the road probably in 1997. It was such an odd thing to come around the bend of this highway in the middle of nowhere in Louisiana, bright sunny day, and see this man standing there in his formal robe, holding this sign, and seeing the smoldering ruins (of his church) behind him. On the sign he had “G-O-D” on one line then underneath it said “S-W-A-Y.” That really killed me and I wrote it down immediately. It shook me up.

The last verse, about the Iraq war, was definitely imaginary, in terms of not being based on real experience, but seemed appropriate. “Baghdad to Basra, supply-line mission/they were riding in silence, hoping and wishing.” I felt like the whole way we think about the phrase, side of the road has changed once that stuff (the improvised explosive devices, IED’s) started happening.

The song did, groove wise, start as a gospel sounding thing with the call and response on the chorus.

GALO: One last thing about “Side of the Road,” of course, he’s not around any longer, but could you hear Johnny Cash singing the track?

KG: Man. That’s an amazing thought; very cool. I had not thought about that. Wow.

GALO: With “Tearing it Down,” my thoughts listening to it were: wine, women, and living on the edge.

KG: One thing I was thinking about was the nature of how we think about those darker experiences; almost as if it were someone else, as if you were looking at someone else on film. It also has a personal resonance with me, my own family legacy, and seeing my own tendencies for inappropriate behavior. [Laughs]

GALO: That’s because we are men. That’s why.

KG: [Laughs] that must be it. Part of that was acknowledging that there’s a history of alcoholism in my family and wishing my family had talked to me about that more when I was a kid. The use and abuse of alcohol wasn’t thought of in the same way as it is now. In the way genetics affect your tendencies in that way and treating alcoholism as a disease instead of a moral issue — yeah, a dark song.

I love Joe’s baritone guitar on there. On the “Tearing it Down” track, that was one of the first three we did. That’s the original scratch vocal (not an overdubbed vocal) and the original guitar track.

GALO: I think that sometimes those scratch vocals are the keepers.

KG: Oh man, I know. There’s at least one other song on the record where I wish we would have kept the scratch vocal.

GALO: Now after having had a major tour through so much of the darker, hardworking, and edgy sides of life in Gloryland we have the closer “One I Love,” which even though it still refuses to gloss over life’s realities has the balls to tell us about love. So, is love still the main ingredient?

KG: Well, I guess, the song is about wanting to still believe in it; that in spite of all this crap–all this noise going on in the world–that kind of sentiment and belief in a significant other is valuable. It’s the announcing or the declaring of that love which is important.

When I first started putting the song together it was a much darker, a minor keyed, piece of music. It was my friend Gwil who suggested we change the melody to a major key sounding pop idea. This really helped open the whole thing up.

GALO: Well it is an uplifting closer.

KG: It ended up making sense to me. But, at first, I really resisted. [Laughs] I didn’t want a happy song! But it was a fun one to track. It was one we did all together in the studio, with the two drummers playing together. We tracked every song (with the two drummers) and then, in the mixing, we would tend to favor one over the other. It was part of the producer’s whole idea for how the record would sound. That there would be all these things going on around what would sometimes be a calmer vocal. I went with this because I trust him. Joe has been wonderful. He’s one of the unsung greats of this town [Nashville]. We’ve been friends many years and have worked together for a long time, so it’s a natural working relationship.

GALO: What are your instincts telling you about the success of Gloryland?

KG: Well somebody asked me that not too long ago. It’s definitely received more attention than anything I’ve done previously. I think it’s probably the best group of songs that I’ve put together for a record. My feelings about these things in general are [that] their success is very accidental, and not only are the right musical factors coming together, it’s also when you release the record; what’s going on out in the world. So I don’t feel like it’s something I can take credit for, it’s just we’ve made the record, here it is. That’s how I have to look at it. It’s a piece of work that we are trying to get out there and people seem to be responding to it very positively. All the interest feels great, and [it also] feels a little strange, actually, because I haven’t put a record out in a while.

The main problem for me right now, personally, is [thinking] ‘what do I do now? What’s the next thing going to sound like?’ We’ve already been talking about it (Joe and I); I have a feeling it will be something very sparse. [Laughs] And we’ll record it in two days.

Kevin Gordon will be playing in New York City on March 29th at 10:30 p.m. at Otto’s Shrunken Head in the East Village. For more information pertaining to Kevin’s tour and record,  please visit http://kg.kevingordon.net.

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