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.
I feel like I should take a different approach to writing about the next two records in my catalogue. I’m going to need to drop down into the emotions of what going back to that time will bring up for me, and it is no scholar’s or musicologist’s path that I will be able to take, rather the one of the memoirist. I think I’m looking for something. I think I’m looking for how to make it make sense. And when I’m faced with that, I usually mine the emotional terrain.
I’m not sure I’m as proud of my work on Miss Fortune and The Duel as I would like to be. I’m not sure I feel like the work is really mine. And that is highly disappointing for me as an artist. But maybe my definitions of what an artist does and does not allow are changing. Though I do not for a second think inspired work can come from an uninspired mind, I think we move through different periods of our lives and don’t necessarily know at the time we’re doing it what our best or less than great work is. And there’s this: On one hand, you have nothing if you don’t stand by the work that you do. On the other, sometimes you do work because what you do is do work — the sort of work and the level of satisfaction that comes with doing it can be secondary because the important thing is the motion of doing something.
So, maybe what I’ll do first is just write about the experience of making Miss Fortune as a whole instead of taking it song by song. I think it will be less dry that way, because I don’t feel as connected to it as I do to my first two records. And that tells me I need to dig into the emotions surrounding why that is. What caused me to take myself out of my own music but think I could still be convincing? Don’t get me wrong — I wrote a substantial portion of that album, but I lost all control of what was happening in the studio. I lost myself in there too. So there’s something.
I think I’ll write all along and send y’all updates when I have them. We’ll see how it goes.
Onward,
AM
PS - If y’all know anyone in Kansas City, send them out to the show Saturday night. Ticket sales are awful!
I don't know anyone in Kansas City. But I did buy three tickets.
You are brave and courageous, vulnerable and honest. I love your work.