Yeah, isn’t it a good one, man, it’s re- ally good.Well, let’s talk about your new album, Oh My Goodness. You mentioned before the song “Oldest Baby in the World.” I was so glad you had that one on there. You even had John Prine on there playing with you, right? Yeah, and John played guitar. He said, “You’re the first person to ever ask me to play on a record.”
Funky Donnie Fritts backstage with Billy Bob Thornton after the Boxmasters concert at Merri-
mack Hall in Huntsville, AL., 2007. (Michael Buffalo Smith Photo)
said, “I’ll do it then.” So it worked out per- fectly. We could go up there and film him while he was in Nashville with his band (The Boxmasters). Anyway, he’s one of my favorite people and I’m glad you mentioned him. You’re mentioning some of my favorite peo- ple in the world, you know. (Laughs)
Yeah. And I think they all feel the same, you know. We were just talking about you, me and Billy, he was here in Spar- tanburg. I went to about six of the shows on his tour including Huntsville, where I saw you, that was earlier in the year but in Spartanburg, we sat around and talked for a long time. We were talking about you be- hind your back. (Donnie laughs) How great you are. I told him that I’m get- ting back out, you know, now that I’m getting past this health crisis, I’m get- ting back out and playing music again and one of the songs that I’m learning to play is “Build Your Own Prison” that y’all co-wrote. Ohhhh great! Great! I love that song!
Really?! (Laughing) We asked him to play guitar on it. We already had the track, the way we cut this thing, I just… most of ‘em I would just put the track down with just me singing but with a Wurl- itzer piano and we built around that. Well, we got him to play guitar. And by the way, the end of it, that’s Jason’s (Isbell) beautiful young wife Amanda.
Amanda, yeah, yeah. She’s such a great violin player. She’s great. Really talented. Gorgeous fe- male.
Yeah, big time. Well, both those kids together have got a lot of talent, don’t they? I mean, they really do. Jason and Amanda both have a lot of talent. And he’s incredible.
Yeah, he is. And you know I’m just getting into his older stuff. I didn’t really know a lot of his songs. But man, that kid is a songwriter!
He really is. Tell me about who pro- duced this album for you because it’s kind of interesting that the guys that produced it are even very cool. Yeah, well what happened is John Paul White produced it along with a kid, Ben Tanner, who is with Alabama Shakes. They co-pro-
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