I was driving to Nashville for a recording session. The last time I'd come through, Charlie had me track some drums for an old Arkansas songwriter named Billy Don Burns. That was several months ago. Billy Don was a sight for sure. He had the air of someone who had spent a fair amount of time smoking other peoples’ cigarettes in prison. He was small and lean, but he had the leathery skin, the saloon mustache, and the dark glasses of a man with more secrets than I cared to ask about. While writing down charts for his songs, we struck up a sort of payment contract. It went, “It won’t be much, and it won’t be soon.” As a budding professional drummer, though, I couldn’t afford to turn him down. “Running Drugs out of Mexico” was one of the better songs from a demo tape he gave me. Other songs included “Full Blown Addict,” “The Dark Side of the Spoon,” and "Patsy."
Charlie lived in his recording studio, eating only Ramen noodles and candy bars. The low ceilings always warped his tall, lanky frame when he stood. He slept once a week, bathed in the faucet, and got mixed up with some pretty shady folks. He had been known (pistol in hand) to chase a friend down 17th avenue who’d tried to steal one of his priceless guitars. Between Billy Don (whom I have still never seen without sunglasses), Swayne (a keyboard player with six or seven personalities), and Charlie, I felt a little uneasy. So, it made me wonder what kind of guy we were going to be recording with this time. I mean, I didn’t want to be paid eventually.
I called Charlie around eight-thirty or nine in the evening. He was glad to hear from me, because people have a tendency to be unreliable in this business. Since his voice already sounded like coffee and cigarettes, I figured it would be a long night. Charlie’s studio is located in the basement of a magazine business called American Songwriter, so all of the boisterous drum tracking has to be done after hours anyway.
When I walked in, the place looked the same as always, with the flashy lights of the mixing console and the huge tape spools slowly spinning on the far side of the room. The amount of equipment in the studio limits the walking space to a one-lane path over enough snaky cables to make Indiana Jones nervous. Charlie introduced me to Jackson, who with his wife came down from New York to record some folk music.
As we chatted about the project, I could tell Jackson was different. He was tall and skinny like Charlie, but he looked only about twenty-five, had dyed black hair, and wore big earrings and tight jeans. His microphone collection was marvelous, and he had brought two vintage Gibson guitars. I started to get excited about recording, because he looked more legitimate than most of the other artists who recorded there. So, after we tested the mics and charted a couple of songs, I sat down at the drum kit and put on my headphones.
“One, Two, Three, Four,” I chanted. Off we went, chugging down an old time train track, but just as we were coming around the bend, Jackson slammed on the brakes. “Stop, stop. Ok, this time try it with a little more of a Johnny Cash feel.” We did three or four more takes before I was called into the mixing room. "Here, listen to the sound I'm looking for," Jackson said, holding a set of headphones. It was an Old Crow Medicine Show tune with no drums whatsoever. Upon mentioning this, I suggested that drums just weren’t right for that song, and that a mandolin or banjo would provide sufficient rhythm. After wearily tracking a few more songs, we called it a night.
When I woke up the next day, I started gathering my things to leave. I was tearing down the drum kit when I noticed Billy Don snoring on the couch under a Nashville Scene. He'd been there the whole time, still wearing his sunglasses. I tried not to bang any cymbals together, but he woke up anyway. With a half-drunk slack in his jaw, he asked me how the session went last night. I just shrugged my shoulders. Then he said to me, “I tell you son, I been in this business for thirty-seven years and I ain’t got sh*t.” Then he coughed a couple of times and passed back out.
