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Patty Loveless
"A Song Is Like A Friend"

Mike Greenblatt: On your new Classics collection, one song is just better than the next.
PL: Thank you. It's quite a collection from over the years.

MG: Simply stunning. New song 'Can't Get Enough' is so cool. You've really stepped outside of your self on this one. Between the production, the arrangement and the irresistible 'chucka chucka' rhythmic thing in the middle...what is that?
PL: (laughs) Actually, it was in the demo! We did it differently, though. Accentuated it even more. I does grab ya. Another thing that grabbed me about this song was its sense of freedom in the lyrics. It makes me feel free and frivolous, so I think this is a good kick-off song for '99.

MG: Great for know-nothing radio with it's awful playlists.
PL: Sometimes I think they are just a little too afraid to take chances.

MG: Well they gotta sell soap!
PL: (laughs) You said that Mike, not me! But you're calling it pretty good, there. Steve Earle always had that problem. He's a perfect example of so many great artists who can't get the airplay he deserves. We could talk about this all day long.

MG: Another new one, the irresistible, the sexy 'I Just Wanna Be Loved By You'. Wow, this one smokes!
PL: Kostas wrote this one with my wonderful husband/producer Emory Gordy Jr. My husband knows I'm an easy pitch, but sometimes I'm not that easy with him. He'll play songs for me that he's written and I'll just go 'Aww honey, I don't think it's quite me' and I treat him just like everybody else. I honestly do, and I can truthfully say that because he would be the first to tell you the same thing. He does not try to force anything upon me. I think he always wants to know what I think. So, I really give him good advice on who I think he could possibly pitch the song to if it's not for me. I think I'm pretty good at that. This song, it's fun, what I call an uptempo love song. They're the hardest kind to find and sometimes the hardest kind to write, and that's why I fell in love with it. And I wanna tell ya, Mike, 'Can't Get Enough' and 'I Just Wanna Be Loved By You' (are choices I made) by looking at the charts and listenin' to other people's music. I try very hard not to let the charts influence me, but sometimes I have to get away just to buy a bunch of albums and listen to what people are doin'. Like Shania, I just locked myself up and listened to it. But then I try to find what works for me...how can I bring my music up to date, up with the times, yet still stay true to the tradition. That's what I focus on when I look for material.

MG: Can't Get Enough' and 'I Just Wanna Be Loved By You' are not exactly what I would associate with Patty Loveless
PL: I try to mix it up. Emory knows my roots. He knows that as a child I was very much influenced by real hardcore country music. I grew up with it. I didn't start out doin' bluegrass music as some people have mistakenly thought, but I was influenced by Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs and the Stanley Brothers.

MG: You and Ralph Stanley recently took 'Pretty Polly' to the top of the bluegrass charts.
PL: Yes and I'm very proud of that. Emory has such a love for Ralph Stanley, and it's just so ironic if my father was living today, who loved Flatt & Scruggs, he and my husband would just hit it off! But anyway, Emory knew my background when he first came in to produce me. He knew I loved the great singers like Sonny James, The Wilburn Brothers, Faron Young, oh so many more. They were country's greatest voices, and believe it or not, as a young girl of eight, nine, ten, I listened to all of 'em, plus stuff like Dionne Warwick, Dusty Springfield and Sandy Posey. There's a name that's been forgotten! Even me, I had forgotten. I was like 'Golly, I need to back up here.' The thing that is so great about music, and that's where Classics comes in, you can back up and remember when.
This album represents the music I've made for Epic Records since 1992. Now it's time to spend more time with the next album. We're getting ready to go in and pick material. We're taking our time just to be able to focus. That's where I'm at right now, so it's kinda hard to address anything else around me when I've got his mostly on my mind. So Classics gives me an opportunity to be able to share all those years of singles and songs, with three new ones, with the people who've been supporting the music for so many years. I find even in country radio today, they're backin' up and they're playin' some of the old with the new. I find myself almost in competition with myself! They'll play an old Patty Loveless tune and maybe not 'Can't Get Enough'!

MG: The third and final new one is the tantalizing duet with Vince Gill, My Kind Of Woman/My Kind Of Man, which Vince wrote in his best Ray Charles mode, as in the mindset of his awesome new CD The Key. I was in the audience when you did it live with him on A & E's Live By Request TV show and it was literally jaw dropping. I practically swooned.
PL: Why thank you! Vince and I both have a great respect for those duet partners of the past like Porter and Dolly, Conway and Loretta and George & Tammy. On this song we brought forth those influences. I'd love to do more with Vince!

MG: Well, we’ve been waiting for the Vince & Patty duet album for seven years!
PL: (laughs) You may have to wait just a little bit longer! But y'know, when I listen to those other three duos I mentioned, I realize how great they all were together.

MG Just like how great you and Vince are when your voices intertwine. I loved how he called you out after the show was over to sing with him just one more song 'Go Rest High'. Your harmonies were worth waiting for. What took you so long to come back out on stage?
PL: (laughs) I was in the lady's room and they shouted to me that Vince was calling me onstage and I thought 'What is he doing? The show is over!' And I had to put my dress back on!

MG: How come when it comes to new women artists in '99, from Kelly Willis to Heather Myles and the Dixie Chicks to Danni Leigh and Mandy Barnett to Allison Moorer to Sonya Isaacs and more I just can't think of at the moment, they're all so wonderful, and all the new guys stink! Why is that?
PL: (laughs hysterically) All the new guys stink? You really think so? (keeps laughing)

MG: The only new males I like are Chris Knight and Charlie Robison, I can't even think of any more. They're all terrible.
PL: (still laughing) It's just a new generation evolving. Like Vince and I come from one generation, we're of the same age group, but he started out long before I did, and the hard part for me is that I'm still such a big Vince Gill fan. That's tough when I'm always looking for somebody better. It's just tough. Y'know what I mean? It's just hard to beat him. That's probably what you are going through. I must admit though, to not haven't had the opportunity to really sit down and listen to the new male vocalists as much as I have the girls.

MG: That's because only the girls are good! I'm telling you! It's just the way it's fallen; I don't know why it is
PL: Well that's good, because many years ago, country music was a man's world. And I think a lot of the women have paid their dues and it's startin' to pay off. Also, sometimes labels make mistakes tending to sign clones of stars. Garth comes along and labels all try to find another Garth. That's not fair to new artists. An artist needs to find their niche, their original self. It took me probably a couple of years to figure out what was goin' on here, but when I started lookin' for the songs and stayin' truer to my heart, there's where I started finding the songs I wanted to.

MG: It took you two albums and you were right there. I don't know if artists today are going to be able to do that with label bottom lines and all.
PL: Oooh you have been listenin' haven't you? Well, I'm sure that a lot of these artists today, though, will be lookin' back on some of the work they have done because the music always survives. We age, but the music, it always comes back around. It's just like I'm sayin' that I'm backin' up and listening to some stuff that I missed out on, and I want to make records that somebody 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, will look back and go 'Y'know, that really was a good record' and they get something from it that influences them like I was influenced by so many others in the past.

MG: Two of your Classics-'How Can I Help You Say Goodbye' and 'You Don't Even Know Who I Am' are like one-act plays.
PL: That's what I go for. I want lyrics to be visual. I want people to see themselves in those situations or that somehow within the music they can find some source of release. I think it's truly wonderful that we're able to release our emotions through music. Music has always been a really terrific therapy for me and that's the reason I try to find songs that can be good therapy for others.
A song is like a friend.


Source: Modern Screen
Issue Date: July 1999
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