On The Record

"No Next Time"

Feb 17, 2022

”No Next Time” is hands down one of the best recordings in my catalogue. It is truly an emotional journey on its own, and as a part of The Hardest Part, it is the crescendo and simultaneous release at what we hope as listeners is the end of an arduous relationship.

When we finished recording it, I felt accomplished in a way that I hadn’t previously. A wonderful and complicated feeling comes with realizing a vision — there is satisfaction in having chased it and wrangled at least part of it, and also wonder at what it became that wasn’t in the original phantasm — every artist knows that it is rare to bring something to fruition exactly how it is dreamt, there are too many variables and we human beings tend to change our minds as we go. Of course, that’s part of the beauty of being a creative spirit — when we realize that we’re capable of so much more than we can even initially conjure most of the time, and how we open up even more once we get into the actual process if we can trust ourselves and it.

I recall first working on this before Alabama Song came out. Butch had the original idea and I don’t even remember at what point in the writing I came in, but it was a true joint effort. Nor do I remember how we decided where it would fall in the song cycle, but once we knew, it was always in the plan to have that huge outro and that orchestra. Kris Wilkinson was again on board for the string arrangement. Wildflowers by Tom Petty had been a huge influence on Butch and me as songwriters, as it was for anyone who was doing anything remotely rootsy in the 1990s, and “It’s Good to Be King” had stirred us all. If you go back and listen to the last notes of “No Next Time” you can hear the nod and wink to that masterpiece as the orchestra signs off. A cinematic moment.

And Lonesome Bob.

There was a group of folks that gravitated toward each other in the mid-1990s alternative country scene of Nashville and Bob was part of it. He lived in a house in Green Hills (the new public library now stands on the lot where the house was) with Tim Carroll, who was part of the lower Broadway scene along with Greg Garing and BR549, and Mark Horn, who was soon to become the drummer in The Derailers. That house saw quite a few parties filled with a wild and talented group of us who played with, supported, and loved each other a whole lot. Bob and I loved to sing together and did so often, so it was only natural that he sang the duet part on “No Next Time.” Bob wasn’t a country star or anywhere close to it, but he was a very good songwriter and singer and because I am stubborn and often shot myself in the foot in those days, I insisted he be on the record instead of recruiting someone who was more famous and could’ve gotten the song more attention. I don’t regret the decision at all. But I can see clearly how any executive at my record label was surely scratching their head. Boy, I was a handful. Not because I was badly behaved, but because I insisted on the vision that Butch and I had dreamt up. It wasn’t exactly commercial and no one knew what to do with me. That I’d gotten to make a second record at all is a testament to the faith that Tony Brown had in me.

How I feel about The Hardest Part this many years down the line is that it is a singular thing. I’m so glad I made it. It cemented things for me in an artistic way in that I learned so much about how you make something that is always pointing back to its center but that isn’t self-referential. The through line. I was working with one before I even knew what to call it.

Art has often provided a psychic vision of my life in both large and small ways.