On The Record

"Send Down An Angel"

This series, “On the Record,” will be a weekly Substack exclusive in which I’ll go through my recorded catalog song by song starting with my first album, Alabama Song, which was released on MCA Records in 1998. Photos will be attached if available and tolerable.

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This song might be the closest thing I had to a hit in those early days. Not in the U.S. really, save for the popularity of the video, but there was a brief period when the song appeared on BBC 2’s medium rotation list. As a result, I began the promotional activities for The Hardest Part in the UK and Universal released the album a little early there if I recall correctly.

I’ll never forget the song starting to come through me. We were still living at Glen Manor, the apartment building that was on the corner of Wedgewood and 18th Avenue and very near to Music Row, but we’d moved into a two-bedroom unit. It was sometime in 1998 and I was sitting in the middle of the floor in the spare room we used as an office/writing room when the melody and some of the first lyrics started to flow.

I’m starting to think I do my best musical work sitting on the floor… Most of Wish For You was created that way…

Anyway. After the initial rush of creativity that created the center of the song had ended, I showed it to Butch and he tweaked it as always until it was clever and writerly (particularly on that “it’s nearly 3am and still no sight of him, when it comes to love I’m in the dark” thing. I really appreciate that sort of craft when it is combined with heart). And we knew it was really good — it had a good hook and a good melody that I could sink my teeth into.

• I should note here that before we went in to officially record this record, the core band and I (Kenny, Chad Cromwell, Michael Rhodes) rehearsed the entire record in sequence in Kenny’s basement. That was a key element in figuring out the cycle of the song cycle that is The Hardest Part. Kenny told me the other day that he found a recording of that day. Maybe we’ll dig it up for an anniversary or something… or maybe not. I’m not that big on Bsides and outtakes. So we’ll see.

When The Hardest Part was ready to go and the label heard it, they decided it was really good too and released it as the first single. We enlisted my dear friend Trey Fanjoy (and when I say dear I mean really dear — she is the friend in Nashville I’ve had the longest, over 25 years) to create the delight that is the video for it and I found myself in lovely Palmdale, California wearing hip huggers with a 6 inch rise, a push-up bra encrusted with rhinestones, a sheer Dolce & Gabbana blouse, and a belt that would’ve made Elvis proud. Trey had envisioned the angel as the grievous angel himself, Gram Parsons, and he was embodied by Johnny Kaplan, who wore a replica of the famous pills and weed suit made by Manuel that’s on the cover of this record.

Marty Stuart let us borrow jackets from his archive to dress the rest of the band. He drove me in his Cadillac to his storage space to pick them out. While we were there I held the train case that Patsy Cline was traveling with when she went down in the plane. Y’all wouldn’t believe what an amazing curator and historian Marty is.

It was a fashion-centered video, down to the film stock (we were still shooting on film in 2000) Trey used, which was a reversal (meaning what was captured was a positive rather than a negative image) stock that allowed her to get the blackest blacks and most saturated hues — that’s why the video looks as rich as it does. It started a trend and was one of the most-watched videos on CMT that year.

I love the song a whole lot. I think it’s some of the best work I did in those days. I like that sort of odd chord that gives it some momentum right in the middle of the chorus where every songwriter knows it’s do or die, and the band sounds fantastic. Kris Wilkinson did the string arrangement which is stunning and somehow makes the modulation on the last chorus sound less aggravating that it would be without them. There’s a soft toughness to the whole track, and I guess that would be the best way to describe me as a person most days, so as a communicator, I must call this endeavor that is/was “Send Down An Angel” a complete success.

The song did nothing at radio, as you know, but I did get to sing it on David Letterman, which was a very coveted spot for anyone making music in those days. And maybe instead of listing who the players were on the track, since you know those are the same as the rest of the album, I’ll list my band from that tour because they were as great an outfit as the ones we wore in the video.

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Guitars, background vocals: Will Kimbrough

Bass, background vocals: Rick Plant

Drums, background vocals: Rick Schell

Keyboards, Mandolin: Mike Webb

Pedal Steel: Mike Daly

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Thanks for reading, y’all. And thanks for your patience while I get back in the groove of things. More to come next week the “No Next Time.”

Onward.

AM

And finally, here’s a link to tomorrow night’s Parnassus Books Livestream event: