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Guy Forsyth -- Love Songs: For and Against

Music — and by extension, the people who make and listen to it — is an art form endlessly divided into categories: from blues to jazz, rap to reggae and pop to rock to punk to metal, ad nauseam. The same goes for individual songs, divided not only by genre but further by “type”: happy songs, sad songs, protest songs, patriotic songs, drinking songs, gospel songs, work songs, party songs and of course … love songs.

Some folks like their music divided this way; it helps them organize their record collection, know what artists to follow and which radio stations to listen to and even what to put on their mix tapes and CDs. But Guy Forsyth, an artist who’s had a go at most — if not yet quite all — of the aforementioned genres, likes to simplify things. “When you break it down, there’s really only three types of music,” he rations on a sunny afternoon in his adopted hometown of Austin, Texas. “There’s the stuff you like, the stuff you don’t like and the stuff you haven’t heard.”

As for songs, well, he simplifies that matter, too. For as far as Forsyth’s concerned, they’re all love songs. At least, that’s how he neatly ties up the 13 choice cuts on his latest and greatest album — handily titled Love Songs: For and Against for the category-obsessed.

“I don’t think music is about elements of style so much as it’s about the energy behind it and the intent and the care that goes into it,” he explains. “On this record, and on other records that I’ve done, there’s numerous things that you can identify as ‘styles’ of music, but hopefully the thing that holds it all together is the heart behind it. The goal is try to communicate something, and in this case, all the songs are based on love — even if it’s a way of trying to point a finger at something and trying to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on over here? Are you seeing the same thing I’m seeing?’

“This record,” he continues, “is the culmination of a lot of different journeys: as a bandleader, as a songwriter, and as a traveler and observer. As a musician, I’ve spent the last 15 years traveling around, seeing the U.S. and the world, talking to people and meeting people. So a lot of the songs on this record have a lot to do with that, and just the perspective that I’ve gotten over a certain amount of time. But as much as it’s about something outside of me, it’s also all about me and my own particular struggles, in terms of relationships and stuff like that.”

He pauses, considers this for a moment, and shrugs with a wide grin: “But I guess that stuff comes out everywhere, because that’s what we’re made of.”

The result is a collection of songs as diverse in style as they are in mood, with Forsyth’s insights on love, fear, the perils of unchecked consumerism, war, the government, spirituality, psychotropic drug abuse and the apocalypse shot through his typically eclectic prism of blues, folk, jazz, reggae, funk and rock ’n’ roll. But Forsyth’s forte is making it all sound and feel not only natural but also disarming and oddly optimistic. When he sings “I hope I am with you” on the haunting Armageddon lament “When It All Comes Down” — and chases it with the ear-to-ear, ragtime grin of the album-closing “Shake It In a Circular Motion” — he makes a solid case for himself as an invaluable, spirit-lifting companion for the end of days. At the very least, Love Songs would (will?) make fine road music when it comes time to pack your most precious possessions and run for the hills.

The record opens with “Long Long Time,” a rockin’, where-did-it-all-go-wrong talking blues rant on the sorry ass state of the American id (“We used to dream about heroes / but now it’s just how to beat the system”) and image (“I wonder how the world sees us, rich beyond compare, powerful without equal / a spoiled drunk 15 year old waving a gun in their face.”) Packing a sing-along chorus as potent as its message, the song found its way into heavy rotation on Austin’s renowned AAA station KGSR months before Love Songs: For and Against’s August 23 release. The early jump and buzz on “Long Long Time” was all but inevitable. Although Forsyth has been a staple on the Austin scene since his arrival in the “Live Music Capital of the World” from his native Kansas City way back in January 1990, subsequently finding his way on stage and into the studio with many of the city’s best musicians and winning Austin Music Awards left and right, “Long Long Time” jumps out of his impressive catalogue as the most immediate and attention-grabbing music he’s ever committed to tape. The term “career song” comes to mind, if only Forsyth were the type of artist who could ever be so neatly pigeonholed by any one style, let alone any single song. (Besides, “Long Long Time” isn’t even the record’s catchiest song — an honor split between the liquid reggae groove of “Brand New Day” and the immensely hummable “So Hard,” which would have shined just as brightly on any of Elvis Costello’s best records).

“One of the questions that people ask me a lot is, ‘Oh, you’re a musician? What kind of music do you play?’” says Forsyth. “And there was a time when I had a really easy answer for that: ‘I play blues.’ Or with the Asylum Street Spankers, it was ‘We play acoustic music.’ Or I’d say, ‘I’m a songwriter.’ But all those labels really don’t communicate anything specific at all, so they’re really not useful. I wish I knew what to call it, but it’s not a simple question, because there’s all these elements of blues and jazz and reggae and funk and folk in it. I guess all of it sounds like American music — but it’s American music simply because this is where I am and this is what I listen to.”

Forsyth started listening — obsessively — in his early childhood, first courtesy of his parents’ hand-me-down records and the regular blues shows to be found on the Kansas City radio dial (not to mention The Blues Brothers movie) and later by venturing out on his own. “Hearing Robert Johnson for the first time when I was 17 changed my life,” he enthuses. “Here I was at a public library, with racks of records all around me and the big ’70s headphones on, going, ‘What is this sound?’ Before that, when I was a kid, I’d be with my parents and we’d pass a strange guy playing guitar on the street corner, and I’d stop and go, ‘What’s going on here?’ My parents would say, ‘Come on, Guy, we gotta go,’ and I’d be, ‘No! I want to see!’ Then when I was old enough, I’d sneak downtown and into music clubs, because the energy was so different than anything else when I was growing up — it was so powerful and magical to me. So when I moved to Austin and started playing in clubs, I didn’t want to be a rock star or even a songwriter or a performing artist: I just wanted to be there for that late night, voodoo-drum-sex ritual that was live music.”

Once settled in Austin, Forsyth’s passion and affinity for the Delta blues and other music from the 1920s and ’30s netted him both a label deal with the blues label Antone’s Records and a loyal local and national following for both his solo work and his spirited collaborations with a like-minded gang of pre-War music nuts who banded together as the Asylum Street Spankers. Forsyth quickly earned a rep as one of the city’s best acoustic blues guitarists, harpists and saw players (admittedly, not as competitive a field as the first two, but still impressive). But while all of that Guy is still very much on Love Songs: For And Against, this Guy proves every bit as handy making music with a 21st century flair.

“Once you start playing with loops and such, it’s obviously a very different palette,” says Forsyth. “When I first started out, I went through these real blues-purist tendencies, because I wanted to understand how to make music from the ground up with the simplest possible pieces. But I also grew up with the same pop music and American culture as everyone else, so all of those sounds are in my head, too. And because a lot of these songs are about where we find ourselves now, I wanted to use the whole spectrum.”

Forsyth recorded Love Songs with Austin producer Mark Addison and a host of notable locals (pitching in both instrumentally and with the occasional co-write) including Papa Mali, Darden Smith, Carolyn Wonderland, Rob Gjersoe, Michael Ramos, Nina Singh and more. The album is Forsyth’s second release (following 2002’s spare, acoustic Voices Inside) on his own Small and Nimble Records label. After a run with Antone’s that produced 1994’s Needlegun, 1999’s Can You Live Without and 2000’s Steak, Forsyth set out on own self-described “Righteous Babe period.” It’s as bold a journey as he’s ever undertaken, but he’s hardly a babe in the woods of the music industry. “I spend a lot of my time as a ‘record mogul’ trying to figure out ways to have other people do it all for me,” he laughs, “but I know a lot more about the business now from having my fingers in all the different parts. I feel like a lot of the ways that I’ve been resisting taking responsibility for myself and from my own business out of fear of failure, I’ve let go of that just to be able to try to do the things that I really want to do, which is to just make music and get it out there.”

Which, of course, brings Forsyth’s journey full circle, all the way back to the wonder he felt as a kid hearing Robert Johnson and street-corner guitar players and knowing that that was his calling in life. “Humans are music making animals,” he says. “We’ve always been doing it. In all the books and stories and religions from around the world, people talk about music. And I just want to be a part of that, because that’s humans at their best.”

Love Songs: For and Against --- Song By Song

“Long Long Time”
Mark Addison had an idea for the chorus, and I wrote the talking-blues part almost automatically; it was a lot of stuff that I’d already been thinking about so it was all really easy. For years I’ve been trying to work toward some sort of white hat, Jedi Knight sort of positive direction in life — the idea being, why be part of the problem if you have a choice? But I’ve found it to be a really troubling experience to grow up thinking you were one of the good guys, and now not really being so sure.

“Beautiful Mistake”
I fall in love a lot — like every day. You just never know when it’s going to happen, and it’s right around the corner all the time. You can be in a crowd of people, deep in your own self trying to do whatever it is that you have to do that day, but sometimes something just comes and taps you on the shoulder, and you’re connected once again to some sort of energetic grid that’s beneath everything but there all the time. It’s a mystery, and there’s no understanding it, there is no controlling it, and that’s why it’s powerful.

“Brand New Day”
I wrote that with Papa Mali, just fooling around with some grooves and ideas. It’s written from the perspective of a child in the womb to the mother — with “mom” meaning a lot of different things on different levels, be it the cosmic mother or my mom or your mom or … anybody.

“Mama’s Favorite”
I joke that this is the type of song you write after watching too much CNN. I was in Europe when I wrote it, right before the war in Iraq started, and being in Europe at that time really affected the song a lot. From a distance, war can look like a useful tool, but on the inside, it’s always chaotic and it’s always destructive, and once it’s out of the bag, it’s out of control and it never goes well. There’s a reason why it’s supposed to be the last resort.

“On My Own”
That’s about the fear of being open to someone else, the fear of surrendering to a relationship or losing yourself in a relationship. The hardest times in my own life have not been because of economics or war or disease or stuff like that; they’ve been because of romance. And obviously, that’s not the worst of all possible things, but it’s amazing how hard it can be to let yourself go with people that you love and that love you.

“Heart Shaped Hole”
About that fear thing again — love and fear. The music behind that came from listening to a lot of Doc Boggs, that sort of Appalachian, mythic Americana backdrop. It’s kind of a gospel song, but more in a spiritual sense than a religious sense. The lesson is that we spend all this energy trying to find answers outside ourselves to try to change the world around us so it suits us better, but that doesn’t answer any of the big questions that come from the inside.

“Rise Up”
I’d just like to see some things change. I’d like to see people step up and see what they can do, what responsibility they can take for the things around them. At it’s best, music can inspire people to be more than they think they can be. It’s pretty pretentious to think that you’ve got a shot at doing that, but you’ll never know until you try! I’d rather be invested and trying than sitting on the sidelines and complaining about it.

“He Took Advantage of You”
I wrote that with Darden Smith. It’s like a love song to the country, personifying America as the Goddess. It’s just so sad, like, “Ah, it could be so much better, if you just had some self respect! You don’t need to do that to yourself — don’t let him do that to you!”

“Patients Blues”
That’s about the drug problem … not my drug problem, but the drugging of our children. There’s more money spent on psychotropic drugs for children in the United States than in the whole rest of the world. What is wrong with our culture that we’re having to drug our children to keep them focused? That is fucked up! But I think that the song works on a lot of different levels, too. There’s so many different ways that we drug ourselves, whether it’s with legal or illegal pharmaceuticals or television or sex or money or being a workaholic. They’re all things that we do to stay in denial about ourselves, trying to get someone else to save us.

“105”
I have this fear that the way that our culture is going, every tiny little piece of our planet will soon be sold someone, and all the green spaces that we need as animals for spiritual well-being will be portioned off. Someday a child will be born after every piece of the earth belongs to someone else. And where are they going to go? They’re going to spend their whole life being renters. That’s hell if anything is.

“So Hard”
That’s about trying to communicate, trying to find some way to reach out to the people you care about, and just wanting so bad to connect sometimes and having it go so terribly off target. Maybe all you want is just be witness to someone and have someone witness you, but the world is moving so fast and chaotic that it’s difficult to do that.

“When It All Comes Down”
It’s a gospel song for people who are left behind by the Rapture. It’s about people who have their eyes open and who are looking at the things around them and really trying to figure out what’s valuable to them. When you know the bombs are on the way … when everything else is irrelevant and there’s no tomorrow, what are the things that really matter?

“Shake It In a Circular Motion”
All the philosophies and religions and spiritual practices of the world seem to bring everything back to the theme of that song: All the world’s a circle. We’re all made of the same stuff, we all die and nothing dies. And no matter how bad things get, eventually it all changes. I wanted to end on a positive note, and music like that seems to me to be the most unimportant, joyful stuff in the whole world. It just makes me happy.