title of the album. I was ready to go into the studio! You know, usually you have 20 songs, and
you pick ten. Well, at that point we had ten and I knew we needed one more to kind of lighten things up. I had done an ill-fated album back in 2005 that was mostly synthe- sizers—I think I was trying to make a pop record—I'll never do that again! (Laughs) Anyway, "Call the Lamas" was on that album. I always knew I'd re-record it in a more organic set- ting. "Lamas" was the jewel of that crown and I just thought it deserved an- other hear- ing. I'd written it when my brother was dying. People don't know that. It was like a gift. It was, like, Marshall, I know you're in a lot of pain so I'm gonna give you this little childlike song. You know, over the years I've learned you can be happy and sad at the same time. It was the only song I pulled from my past. The rest were written fresh. And, of course, I always like to do one or two covers. I've done that ever since Jaded Virgin. That one had the Johnny Cash ["I Walk the Line"] and Bob Seger ["Turn the Page"] covers.
Well you dug deep pulling out some Hoagy Carmichael.
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There's a story. The very first LP I ever bought was at the Spartanburg Day School back in 1963 or so. They were having a fair or something, and I had a bunch of quarters I'd saved from my allowance. LP's were about $2.50 back then. So the first LP I ever bought was Stay with Maurice Williams and the Zo- diacs. You know Maurice is from right over there in Lancaster, SC. Anyway, the first cut on that album was his big hit "Stay" (singing) "Stay, just a little bit longer." Just a great song. I think it went Top-10 pop. But the second track was "Near- ness of You" by Hoagy Carmichael. I found out later Ned Washington wrote the
lyrics and Carmichael the music, but on the Zodiacs album they only credited Carmichael, so for years I thought he wrote it by himself. Anyway, I've loved that song ever since. So while writing the songs for Blaze, I decided to learn how to play it. It took me about three weeks. There was one chord at the end I couldn't figure out. So I called Will Kim- brough and went over to his house. I thought it would be some augmented or diminished chord. Some complicated jazz chord. Turns out, it was "A." (Laughs)
Is the album doing well so far?
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