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 Ray
Benson of Asleep at the Wheel Q&A
By Richard
Skanse
It may have been Waylon
Jennings who officially declared that Bob Willis is still the
king in Texas, but there's no getting around the fact that a Yankee
transplant from Philadelphia has had a lot to do with keeping
things that way.
Mind, you wouldn't want
to call Ray Benson a Yankee to his face, and not just because
you'd need a step ladder to do it. Between the 30-odd years of
living in Austin, and nearly as many albums of the best Western
swing music this side of Wills' original Texas Playboys, the 6'7"
frontman of Asleep of the Wheel has earned his bragging rights
as an honest-to-goodness Texan many times over. In fact, next
year he'll begin his year-long stint as the official Texas State
Musician.
As befits the holder of
such a title, Benson has been in even more of a Lone Star state
of mind that usual lately. Hot on the heels of his recent solo
debut, Beyond Time (which features a fine, fine cover of Marty
Robbins' "El Paso," featuring Flaco Jimenez, along with
other guest appearances by the likes of Jimmie Vaughan, Delbert
McClinton and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas star Dolly Parton),
Benson is back behind the wheel for two - make that three - new
Asleep at the Wheel releases packed with more songs about Texas
than the entire recorded works of Pat Green, Cory Morrow and Kevin
Fowler. First up is Asleep at the Wheel Remembers the Alamo, which
breathes new life into classics like "Remember the Alamo"
and "Davy Crockett" and even immortalizes in song the
infamous night in the early '80s when an inebriated, nightgown-wearing
Ozzy Osbourne relieved himself on the shrine of Texas liberty.
Then there's a new live album, Live at Billy Bob's Texas, and
a companion DVD of the same show, which capture the Wheel in the
act performing fan-favorites like "Big Balls in Cowtown"
and "Miles and Miles of Texas" alongside covers like
Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" and the George
Strait hit "Amarillo by Morning." "This is our
very first time doing a combination live DVD and CD, and I'm just
tickled pink because if there's one place that typifies where
you should see Asleep at the Wheel, it's Billy Bob'," says
Benson. "It's as purely Texas as you can get."
Spoken like a true native
son.
So, Hollywood makes a
big budget movie about the Alamo, and Asleep at the Wheel makes
an album about the Alamo at the same time. Coincidence?
Oh, the movie was the whole
idea. A friend of mine from L.A. said "They're not doing
a soundtrack record …" Or, if they do it will just be
the score - you'd think with an Alamo movie, some prominent Texas
artists might be used, but they didn't ever call anybody up. So
we thought, well, if they're not going to do it, we will! Because
there's such great music involved. And I knew all the songs.
They didn't call any
Texas artists for songs, but Stephen Bruton did get a small part
in the movie. Did you ever have any interest in trying out for
a bit part yourself?
They never called for that
either … and I don't need bit parts. Besides, I'm way too
tall. They'd have to edit me down at the knee. No, they didn't
want me in the movie, so … screw 'em. [Laughs]
Did the movie getting
bumped from a December release to next spring throw you off track?
Not us … the record
company, though. But that's showbiz. It would have been nice if
the movie came out closer to the album, but we're not that concerned
because we're still building a lot of stuff around the March 2nd
date - Texas Independence Day. And two weeks before that is the
anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo.
So the record should
have a healthy shelf life. Which is fitting, because you've got
some old songs on there. Can you talk about where they all came
from?
One of them came from Austin:
"Remember the Alamo," by a songwriter named Jane Bowers.
I've run into a lot of her old friends since I recorded it. It
was first recorded in 1953 by Tex Ritter, and the Kingston Trio
in the '60s. Then there's a couple from the other Alamo movie
that was made in 1961 with John Wayne: "Green Leaves of Summer"
and "The Ballad of the Alamo," which was originally
done by Marty Robbins. And of course "Ballad of Davy Crockett"
is self-explanatory. That was the most watched TV show when I
was growing up, other than Leave It to Beaver. Most everybody
had a coonskin hat. And we did "New San Antonio Rose"
and "Across the Alley from the Alamo" because they both
mention the Alamo, and "Yellow Rose of Texas" because
it's about the alleged prostitute who allegedly entertained Santa
Anna and helped win the battle of San Jacinto. "Stout and
High" is a Monte Warden song about the Alamo that I just
really like.
And the instrumentals?
"Deguello" was
the "no quarter" song that the Mexican army played at
the battle, though some people now are saying it was never actually
played there. Whatever. And Davy Crockett was a fiddler, so I
researched the fiddle tunes of that era and came up with three
that he most definitely would have known: "Eight of January,"
"Soldier's Joy" and "Billy in the Low Ground."
We put them on the album to give a feel of what Davy Crockett
may have played at the Alamo. Whether he did or not, I have no
idea.
And then, of course, there's
the soon to be famous song David Sanger [AATW drummer] and I wrote
about Ozzy Osbourne's trip to the Alamo, called "Don't Go
There." We were doing the album and said, "We've got
to do a song about Ozzy." So David went home and thought
up the title and most of the words, and I finished it.
You do a pretty good
Ozzy impression on that song, bleeps and all.
Yeah, that was fun. We sent
a copy of the song to Sharon Osbourne, but nobody has called back.
Goofy motherfuckers. [Laughs]
The album is called Asleep
at the Wheel Remembers the Alamo. Clearly you do. But do you remember
your very fist visit to Texas?
Oh yeah. 1958. My family
was driving Route 66 and we came through Amarillo.
First impression?
Cowboy hats and Mexican
sombreros. Everywhere. That was my childhood impression of Texas.
Of course before that my first impression of Texas was from the
television and movies, but when I got here, we all got either
cowboy hats or sombreros. I got a sombrero and my brother got
a cowboy hat. Of course after that I had to get a cowboy hat,
too. We were all about cowboys growing up in the '50s, and we
were all into cowboy music, through Gene Autry and the Sons of
the Pioneers. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I first heard
Western swing.
Not too long after that,
you formed the band and headed West - not for Texas, but for California.
San Francisco, right?
It was Berkley, actually,
but the whole Bay Area had a real strong country scene from all
the Texans and Oakies who had moved there during the Dust Bowl.
Bob Wills had lived out there - he left Texas for California because
that's where the audience was, and he didn't come back until the
'50s. So California's where we really blossomed as a Western swing
band, because the people remembered Bob Willis. And the young
people dug it because we were so different. It wasn't cheesy country
music, it was cool music.
So who finally talked
you into moving to Austin?
Doug Sahm and Willie Nelson.
It was a one-two punch. Doug said - in that real fast way he talked
- "Man you gotta go down there there's a whole scene down
there you gotta check it out!" I asked Willie, "Do you
think we could make it down there?" And he said, "Hell,
if you can play 'Fraulein' and 'Cotton Eyed Joe,' you can work
all week.'" And then Eddie Wilson, who used to run the Armadillo
World Headquarters, he said we could be the Armadillo houseband.
[Laughs] We never were, but we played there a lot. So we got to
Austin and opened up for Commander Cody at the Armadillo, and
there was no doubt in my mind. We had a "band meeting"
- there was no vote or anything - and I said, "Come on guys,
we're moving here." And we did; we rented a house in '73,
played some shows and got to know some people, then went back
to California to pack up and moved back here for good in '74.
Do you ever get tired
of playing Western swing?
You mean do I ever want
to do other stuff? Sure. Every day. We started out as a roots
band, and Western swing was just one of the kinds of roots music
that we did. But the demand for Western swing is what really moved
us in that direction. Of course we love to play it, but we are
really a Western swing band by instrumentation - fiddle, steel
guitar - and by look, with the cowboy threads and boots and stuff.
Within that context, you can play any music. That's what Bob Wills
did. He had a style, but the music was whatever the people wanted;
he would play Glenn Miller stuff, Bessie Smith stuff, Jimmie Rodgers
stuff, whatever they wanted. But the instrumentation defined the
sound. And that's what Asleep at the Wheel is: we took Bob's model,
and then made it our own.
But earlier this year
you put out your first solo album, Beyond Time. Surely that came
from wanting to do stuff you just couldn't get away with in Asleep
at the Wheel.
Yeah. Anytime I would do
something too outside of the box with Asleep at the Wheel - no
matter how big that box was - it was a failure. For me it was
always fulfilling, of course, but a failure commercially and to
our fans.
Can you give an example?
We did an album in 1981
called Framed. Ironically, the guy at the record label said, "Look,
I'll give you X amount of dollars to make a record that's anything
but country or Western swing music." And it was more money
than we'd ever been given to make a record before. We went, "Ok!"
Because they'd reached a plateau and figured everyone wanted to
cross over - Urban Cowboy hadn't hit yet. So I thought it was
a great chance, and I wrote a lot of stuff, just different shit.
Bonnie Raitt and I did a duet, but Bonnie wasn't famous yet so
nobody cared. We did "Midnight in Memphis," a tune that
Bette Midler later covered, a real R&B tune with horns. It
was a fantastic record, really. But people went, "That's
not Asleep at the Wheel!" I remember we were playing in Waco,
and this old lady walked up and said, "You don't sound a
bit like Bob Wills!" [Laughs]
So it was like, ok, whatever.
It took another couple of years of stumbling around to realize
that, not just little old ladies in Waco, but people all over
wanted to hear us do Western swing because nobody else did it,
and we did it well. So I kind of pulled back from that kind of
experimentation with Asleep at the Wheel. But when I got offered
this opportunity to do a solo album I went, ok, here we go, I
can do anything I want. It just gives me the freedom to define
myself.
Do you have enough stuff
for another solo album yet?
Oh yeah. But I'm not in
any hurry. But I've got tons of material, but I'll wait a few
years, because I've got so many Asleep at the Wheel projects I
want to do. I never run out of ideas - that's the good news.
What's next for AATW?
After the Alamo album and the Live at Billy Bob's CD and DVD?
Don't know. I know that
down the road - and I mean down the road, maybe another two years,
I want to do another Bob Wills tribute project. Because I haven't
finished, and I don't think anybody can do it as comprehensively
as I can. The reason I wait is I don't want people to think it's
strictly a commercial thing. I hate the sequel mentality, because
to me it's a life's work. I've somehow been entrusted with the
legacy of Bob Wills, for whatever reason, and I'm proud to have
it. And I want to do it justice. Part of that is to make sure
it continues on from generation to generation, and that has been
probably the most important thing we've been able to accomplish
with those tribute albums. The guys we worked with in '93 are
now in their 40s, but they were the young guns then. The guys
we worked with in '99, same thing. But to have been able to do
that and leave that legacy is really cool. I feel honored to be
the guy that's been given this mantle. I feel a lot of responsibility,
but I love doing it.
Either through Asleep
at the Wheel or by listening to the original recordings, it's
easy to fall in love with Western swing music without fully appreciating
what it was exactly that made Bob Wills himself special. How would
you define his genius?
First and foremost, charisma.
The guy was unbelievably charismatic. In a time when singers and
bandleaders just stood on the stage and didn't really move, he
strutted around like a peacock and hollered like a Mexican grito.
That's one thing. The second thing is, his music was improvisational,
jazz-blues-based, funky, raw, unpolished and totally dynamic and
unpredictable. And he was the greatest bandleader, which is something
I've always strived to do, to lead a band. He gave all his musicians
and singers the room to be featured by giving them solos and mentioning
their names every time they played. Johnny Gimble told me the
first time he went out with the band, it was one guy's turn to
play a chorus and he played the melody. After the show, Bob turned
to him and said, "Son, when I point to you, I want you to
play every thing you know. And if you want to play the melody,
well, that's all right too!" [Laughs] And that's an amazing
thing, as opposed to "don't play anything that upstages the
star," which is what most people will tell you. I always
make it very clear to my guys, "If you can outshine me, go
for it. Because we're here to entertain the people, and you need
to be the best that you are at every moment, and I'm going to
holler your name and feature you every night." And that keeps
me on my toes too, because you're only as good as the people around
you. That's my mantra: if I have good people around me, working
with me, then I'm gong to do great.
You've been a Texan for
30 years now - more than half your life. Do you still ever feel
like a Yankee in a strange land?
Not anymore. But it took
about 20 years! I've always been very sensitive to the fact that
I'm an immigrant. I have a friend I went to college with who was
from Texas. I saw her again about seven years later, around 1977
after the band had already gotten kind of successful. She told
me, "You know, it really pissed me off when I heard about
your band, because I knew who you were. You were from Philadelphia,
and all of a sudden, you're supposed to be this big Texan? But
then I started listening close and I went, 'Gosh, not only is
he the only one doing this, but he's doing it better than anyone
else could do it.' I finally realized, you were made to do this."
So, that felt good, and
it felt good when Willie Nelson or Coach Darryl Royal or the old
Texas Playboys would compliment us and say how much they appreciated
what we were doing. I would still get asked questions like, "How
can someone from Philadelphia play Western swing music?"
To which I'd say, "That's like saying, how come Van Cliburn
plays classical music?" Give me a break. It's what's in your
heart and head. Van Cliburn grew up in Fort Worth, but does that
mean he has to play Western swing? No. His talent was to play
classical music. Me, I grew up around classical music and some
of the greatest classical musicians in the world, but my heart
and ears were always somewhere else. I've always considered Texas
to be a state of mind. Some people grow up here and leave because
they don't like it, but I liked it and came here from someplace
else and became a Texan.
That's worked out pretty
good for you.
It worked out great. In
fact, I was named the Texas State Musician for 2004. The lady
on the committee told me, "You know Ray, when we evaluate
people for this, one of the criteria is that they be a native
Texan. It's not required, but it's one of the criteria we put
a lot of weight on. But even though you're not a native, and that
took away a lot of points, we still voted for you because of your
achievements." It's being the poet laureate.
That's huge. Do you get
a special parking space? Any special powers?
No, no parking space. In
fact somebody asked me what it really means, and I said I think
it means I have to sing "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You"
and "The Yellow Rose of Texas" every week somewhere.
[Laughs] And I think I'm going to do the Christmas tree lighting
at the Capitol this year though. Seriously though, it's just the
greatest honor … and very cool.
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