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Article published Jul 27, 2007 Olney shakes it up on 'One Tough Town'
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
From the outset of his new album, “One Tough Town,” you can hear the change in David Olney’s style.
It’s a subtle thing — not some abrupt shift in genres or instrumentation. The groundwork from his previous body of work is still intact — hardscrabble voice, harmonica, guitar — but there’s something bigger built atop it.
It’s lean and muscular, a thing of beauty in its stark angles and lines. It’s a little dark and menacing, full of attitude where before there was gentility. As songs go, it’s a collection of give-’em-hell tunes from a man who spent a lot of years before now staring into its gaping maw and simply describing it.
It’s the sound of a man rejuvenated with what he does for a living.
“Every year when it was time to go in and record, I always enjoyed it, and for the most part I’m proud of the things I’ve done,” Olney told The Daily Times this week. “This time around, I just couldn’t get motivated to do it. The problem was that I just didn’t have a vision of what things were going to sound like, so I had to just jettison what I’d done before and the ways of thinking that I had.
“I had gotten a little comfortable recording with people that I knew, and I thought maybe I needed to shake it up a bit. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s almost like, when it comes to music and song, you can get lost in the middle of it — kind of a forest-for-the-trees kind of deal. And every once in a while, you have to break out.”
For those knowledgeable with the singer-songwriter scene on the fringes of Nashville’s mainstream, David Olney is a familiar name. He ranks up there with John Prine, John Hiatt, Buddy Miller and a well-seasoned crop of other veterans who may have written songs that have been played on country music radio but have yet to chart a hit for themselves. They’re mavericks who do things their own way, and Olney is one of those guys who’s been doing it his own way for a long time.
He first came to Music City in 1973, a native of Rhode Island who had spent time at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He had played with singer-songwriter Bland Simpson, and when it came time to further his music career, he seemed to be faced with three choices, Olney recalled.
“The choices back then were New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, and Nashville was the closest for me,” he said. “I’m glad it worked out that way. Nashville takes a pretty conservative view of songwriting — it’s very form-oriented — and that was real good for me. If I had went someplace else, I would have over-written songs lyrically.
“For a few years, I thought I was going to be a big star. Of course, there’s a lot of ego involved in youth, but it seems incredible I could have thought that back then. Once I got away from that, I developed as a songwriter a whole lot. It’s worked out well for me, and I’m glad I moved here. It’s easy to look at Nashville and say, ‘That’s such crap they’re putting out,’ but that’s only the most visible part of what’s going on here. It’s really an incredible place to be as a musician.”
For a while, Olney did flirt with big-time success. In 1975, he fronted the rock band the X-Rays, performing on the Nashville club scene. By 1978, they had attracted enough attention to warrant a spot on “Austin City Limits,” opening for Elvis Costello and the Attractions, and a deal with Rounder Records produced one album, “Contender,” released in 1981. Olney went on to sign with Rounder/Philo as a solo artist, releasing six critically acclaimed records by 1999.
Along the way, his songwriting began to turn heads. Over the years, his work has been covered by such artists as Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Del McCoury, Lonnie Brooks and more. The late singer-songwriter and legendary Texan Townes Van Zandt once described Olney this way: “Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are, I say Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan and Dave Olney. Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard — and that’s true. I mean that from my heart.”
Olney maintained a visible presence on smaller labels since leaving Rounder in 1999, and after releasing “Migration” in 2005, he found himself trying to figure out what to do next. At the time, he had started playing with Nashville guitarist Sergio Webb. Shortly thereafter, he started co-writing songs with John Hadley. What followed was the catalyst for “One Tough Town,” released last month.
“The original motivation for going in this direction was the same motivation you have for doing anything — because you like it, or because it moves you in some way,” he said. “But when you do it for a while, you fall into patterns, and you forget what it was that originally drew you to that kind of work in the first place. Over the years, I had just gotten used to the sound of my voice and one guitar, so to hear it with other textures when I started playing with Sergio really kind of invigorated me.
“When I started writing with John, that opened up a lot of creative things for me as well. And when we started recording ‘One Tough Town,’ the newness of it all just sort of puts an edge on you, and I felt like I had to assert myself vocally. Plus, I think when you’ve got a tuba going in the studio, you have to assert yourself a bit more.”
That assertiveness adds a touch of menace, a bit of swagger, to the songs that make up “One Tough Town.” The album can also be viewed as a commentary on Olney’s place in life — the title track is an allegory in which a seasoned performer informs a young colleague that of all the stops on the universal circuit, he can count on the planet Earth to be the toughest gig. As his online biography states, “it’s the kind of song that can only be written from first-hand experience and years on the road.”
And if he’s learned anything from the recording of “One Tough Town,” it’s this — an old dog can learn new tricks. And sometimes, those tricks revitalize his outlook on life and the tasks he undertakes to make it worthwhile.
“Now, I hear music and I think, ‘How can I get that noise into what I do? How can I somehow incorporate that?’” he said. “It has sort of stoked my creative fire, if you will. We’ve gone in and just recorded some new stuff, because there was something in the sound on ‘One Tough Town’ that I think I can mine for a good while longer.
“Of course, the pendulum always swings, and right now I’ve gotten away from sort of doing ballads and stuff like ‘Women Across the River.’ But I’ll have to come back to them at some point, just to see what’s going on in that part of my brain.”