The Tavis Smiley Show, PBS , June 20 '06
Transcript: Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint
Tavis Smiley: Good evening. From Los Angeles, I'm Tavis Smiley.
Tonight, a conversation with two music legends from two very different backgrounds, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint. The British-born former punk rocker and the New Orleans R&B icon have teamed up for a project inspired by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. This summer, they're out on their tour together in support of their critically-acclaimed CD, “The River in Reverse.”
We’re glad you’ve joined us. Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, coming up right now.
Tavis: I am honored to welcome Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint to this program. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers have teamed up on one of this year’s most unique and acclaimed CDs, "The River in Reverse.” They’ve just kicked off a summer tour which included a stop, thankfully, here in L.A. over the weekend at the Playboy Jazz Festival, where I got to see them.
Upcoming dates include two nights at the Beacon Theater in New York on July tenth and eleventh, followed by beautiful Chastain Park down in Atlanta on July seventeenth. And then, the House of Blues in New Orleans. July eighteenth. Here now, though, some of the recording session for "The River in Reverse.”
Tavis: Allen Toussaint, Elvis Costello, nice to have you both here.
Elvis Costello: Wonderful to be here.
Allen Toussaint: A pleasure.
Tavis: Great show at the Bowl. How’d it feel on stage?
Costello: It’s a big old place. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Costello: I was getting electric shocks on my microphone, which is, if you ever had anything like that happen to you, it’s like if you try to count from one to 10 and somebody keeps saying 13 (laughs) in the middle of it. So, if my voice didn't sound too shaky, I guess I was doing okay.
Tavis: It sounded amazing. That was your first time playing the Bowl?
Toussaint: Yes, and it’s a place that you wanna get to Carnegie Hall and the Bowl. Yes, it’s like that, yes.
Tavis: There was a young man who we had on this program last week, Allen, named Christian Scott. A great young trumpeter you know, 22 year old kid out of New Orleans. What is it about the water or something ya’ll are eating or drinking down there, ya’ll are turning out trumpet players like nobody’s business out of that city.
Toussaint: It’s mostly seafood gumbo.
Tavis: Is that what it is?
Toussaint: Oh yes.
Tavis: (Laughs) So, are you saying to me if I start eating seafood gumbo regularly, I'll learn to be a good trumpet player?
Toussaint: Well, I think you're in a good place already.
Tavis: Yeah, well, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Take me back, before I get to this CD, let me start with you, the most important stuff. First of all, I'm glad that you are still here.
Toussaint: Thank you.
Tavis: Glad that you are well.
Toussaint: Thank you.
Tavis: And I mean that in more ways than one. Take me back to where you were when the storm came, and what your life has been like since then.
Toussaint: Well, the day before it hit, I checked into the Crown Hotel on Canal and Bourbon, because I know hurricanes quite well. I knew them. So I had boarded up my windows with my numbered boards, number one go on dining, number two go on the living room. And I thought a day later I'd come back after it hit, and take the boards down, and be business as usual.
However, as we all know, the series of events that took place, not the hurricane itself, but other things that took place, made that impossible. But I was staying in the hotel on Canal and Bourbon when it happened, and the next morning, it seemed okay. But as things progressed, no. So days later, I made it to New York, and that’s where I've been. But I'll be back in my residence before the year is out.
Tavis: So you're anxious to get back.
Toussaint: Oh yes, definitely.
Tavis: Yeah.
Toussaint: I must be in New Orleans.
Tavis: When you say, I like that. When you say you must be, why is that must so forceful?
Toussaint: Well, consider me a plant that’s been uprooted out of the soil that nourishes me all of my life. So that I feel uprooted, I get homesick on the way out of New Orleans, come back home, so. (Laughs) So, this is, especially at a time like now, when it’s been wounded so badly. I feel I need to be there for more than just my own self.
Tavis: Mm hmm. That question that everybody keeps debating, Allen, whether or not the city will ever again have, recapture, the soul that made its essence what it was, do you think that can and will, in fact, come back?
Toussaint: Souls go well with baptisms. So I'd rather say rather than New Orleans was drownded, it had a little baptism. The soul of New Orleans is still there. It didn't get wounded, even. People are misplaced, but the soul of the musicians who were there, when I see them around the country, those who are not back but on the way back? They are high spirited, and the guys who are there are second lining probably today.
So, New Orleans, as it has always turned out great musicians, there’s a new kid today picking up a trumpet for the first time. It’s happening. And I've been in and out, so I'm not just wishful thinking. The spirit of New Orleans is alive and well.
Tavis: Yeah. Elvis, you have done - I was just looking at your discography before we came on the air here. You’ve done collaborations. I think I knew this, but I had to remind myself. You’ve collaborated with so many people in so many different music genres. What made you wanna do this particular collaboration? This kind?
Costello: Well, I think everything you do in music is a collaboration. Obviously, if you collaborate with another songwriter, it’s more notable. Or if you work in a completely new area of music, it’s gonna draw attention to the freshness of that, and the difference to where you might have started out. But in terms of working with Allen, Allen and I actually worked together for the first time in 1983.
I went to see Saint Studios with an unusual assignment, which was to record a Yoko Ono song for a record that she was making of other people interpreting her material. I returned in 1988 with T-Bone Burnett to record some tracks for my album “Spike.” And Allen played on a song, “Deep, Dark, Truthful Mirror” and just completely owned it. So I had to have the experience of traveling to the city.
New Orleans was the third city that I played in when I first came to America in ’77. I played San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans. That was my itinerary. (Laughs) And so it is a place anybody that loves music would aspire to go to. And of all the cities that I went to on that I went to on that first trip, it was the most like itself, if that makes any sense at all.
The dream of the place was quite like the reality, which I can’t say was true of every place that I encountered. Obviously, you grow up with the legends of the movies and the records, and that which you understand through growing up in England, and sounds filtering through to us, and wondering who is it making these great-sounding records? Who’s behind them?
Well of course, in the case of a lot of the New Orleans R&B records, it was Allen Toussaint. (Laughs) So of course why wouldn’t I want to work with Allen? But the circumstances in which we found ourselves working together in September were, of course, unique and very grave. And you were actually at the event at which Allen and I first appeared together on stage. I received an invitation from Winton Marsalis to take part in the Rose Hall benefit that appeared on PBS.
Tavis: On PBS, at Lincoln Center, yeah.
Costello: At Lincoln Center. And I said to Winton that I knew by then that Allen had made it to New York City. Our mutual friend, Joe Henry, who produced "The River in Reverse” had been working with Allen in the summer, and he let me know that Allen was safe and well and in New York. And I, like everybody else, it was watching the footage on television, or news footage, from the safety of British Columbia.
And I had to play a show about a week after Katrina. And I knew you have to sing something. You have to sing something, because it’s in everybody’s minds. And I had no song of my own to sing that made any sense. So I sang Allen’s song “Freedom for the Stallion.” So when Winton’s invitation came in to be one of the artists on that benefit, the Higher Ground benefit, I said well maybe somebody can find Allen and ask if he would play with me.
And it became a chain of events, and of course lots of people, lots of musicians had the same idea. You should send out good hopes and spirit, and some practical result of money raised. And obviously, it’s gonna be a tiny drop in the bucket next to that which is needed to fix things.
But the spirit of that particular show at Rose Hall was so intense, and to follow McCoy Tyner onto the stage, and to sing a song that Allen wrote 30 years ago that speaks right now to what was happening at that moment that people’s dignity is compromised by the incompetence, the tardiness of the response, you couldn’t help but try to find words to describe it.
Tavis: None of us backstage that night, watching the two of you on stage, could have imagined that this kind of project, though, this collaboration would come out of that. When did you decide, though, that beyond the stage that night at Lincoln Center, that there was something here that could have been and should have been done?
Costello: Can I tell you something? That show ended with such an exuberant explosion of music. The music carried on off the stage, side stage, there was a 40 minute spontaneous session of parade songs. And then there was a club scene that went on till 4:00 AM.
Tavis: At Dizzy’s, exactly.
Costello: Yeah, at Dizzy’s. You were there.
Tavis: Yeah, I was there. Yeah, sure. (Laughs)
Costello: At 4:00 AM, I think Robin Williams was on the stage singing “Red Beans and Condoleezza Rice,” and making songs up.
Tavis: Exactly. (Laughs) He was indeed.
Costello: And then I remembered about quarter to 4:00 in the morning, Allen had very sensibly gone home.
Tavis: Right.
Costello: Because he had a show at Joe’s Pub, and he was playing these solo shows at Joe’s Pub, solo recitals, really. An intimate venue in New York City. And I remembered that I had said I was gonna go to the midday show. So I got myself a few hours’ sleep, went to Allen’s show, and to be honest, the seed of the idea came to me watching that show.
And Allen Toussaint’s “Songbook” record is something that should exist now, and I didn't know whether I should produce it, whether I should sing on it. And once we discussed it, of course it opened up to the idea of adding to it with brand new songs. And that’s how we ended up with this.
Tavis: So, you guys are on stage together, Allen, in New York, and yet, if I have my facts straight, you decided to record most of, or certainly all of this in New Orleans, when you could have done it in New York. Why go back to New Orleans to record this in the city?
Toussaint: Well, let Elvis tell you a bit about that story, because that was his brainchild, that if at all possible, it should be done in New Orleans. But at the time we began recording it, New Orleans wasn’t open. It was under martial law. And we didn't know whether there was a studio available at the time. But Elvis thought it was fitting that all of it, or as much could be done in New Orleans would be done in New Orleans. But when we began, we didn't know whether we could. So we started out in Hollywood.
Costello: The minute we heard that…
Tavis: And you snuck back into New Orleans.
Costello: The minute that we heard that (unintelligible) was open, and there was a hotel that was accepting other than the insurance assessors and FEMA people as guests, or displaced people, there were people that were just displaced at the hotels, they were struggling to get any kind of businesses open. And when we arrived in the last day of November, it was very chastening to walk out onto Canal Street at 10:30 in the morning, a scene that you're used to seeing bustle and seeing six cars and half a dozen people.
And you walk into the Quarter from where we were staying, and the local businesses are open, but very notably, I have to say, and this is a critical thing to say, but it’s true, the chain stores of the big corporations all shuttered. Now, my first thought is surely, these people should be, they can afford to run at a loss, should be open, providing jobs for local people.
If such people are here to work. And it’s a whole set of thoughts set in train, but we got to work with what we were doing, which was there to make this record. We’d written five songs to augment my selections from Allen’s “Songbook,” and I didn't choose the very best-known songs in Allen’s “Songbook” for the good reason that I didn't believe we could get out of the shadow of the indelible versions by Lee Dorsey and Emma Thomas, and such singers.
I wanted to choose songs less well known so I had a good chance of being the person who might introduce them to quite a lot of people in the audience. Younger people, and people who simply had never come across these songs before, through no fault of their own.
Tavis: Yeah. Tell me about the title track on this song, "The River in Reverse,” one of your songs. But I love the story of how you, like, wrote it and performed it, like, well, I'll let you tell the story, the same day.
Costello: Well, as I said, we began our performing collaboration at Rose Hall with the Higher Ground benefit on the Wednesday another much larger scale benefit took place at Madison Square Garden. And along with Lenny Kravitz, Paul Simon, Emma Thomas, and the Dixie Cups, I was a guest of Allen’s band, and sang “On Your Way Down,” which is the first track on "The River in Reverse.”
Come the following Saturday, so seven days after we began, we were both scheduled to appear at the Parting of the Waters show, which was something “The New Yorker” magazine put together. And we weren’t performing together. Allen played in the first half; I played in the second half of the show. And I got up that day and realized I had nothing to sing. I was back to where I had been a month before. I had no song of my own that spoke to the way I was feeling. And I wrote "The River in Reverse” in 10 minutes.
Tavis: And performed it that night.
Costello: And just, yeah, I put it on a piece of paper, put it on a music stand. (Laughs) I wasn’t gonna take any chances of not remembering it right. So, and when I played it to Allen, we started to talk about opening the “Songbook” idea up to having something of the moment. We had to know how to begin, as songwriters, but I played him "The River in Reverse,” and his response was very positive.
And when you listen to the recording, you hear a second voice. But it’s the second voice that comes through Allen’s horn writing. He has many voices. The voice of the songwriter, the voice of the pianist, the vocalist, the sometimes reluctant vocalist. But especially and most crucially in many of these arrangements, that which comes through the horn writing. And the second line of commentary that runs through the recording of "The River in Reverse” is personally my favorite musical element on the entire disc.
Tavis: Allen, what do you make of this stuff that Elvis talked you into putting on the CD, given all the stuff you’ve written over the years?
Toussaint: It’s wonderful. And…
Tavis: You like the collection of stuff?
Toussaint: Oh, very much so. But it was so surprising, the stuff that he dug up. He didn't just dig six feet, he went 25 feet.
Tavis: Had you forgotten about some of this stuff?
Toussaint: Oh, yes. Not some of this, but believe me, Elvis knows a whole lot more than was there. And he would call tunes by guy who I thought no one knew them but their mother.
Costello: (unintelligible)
Toussaint: Yes, please.
Costello: (unintelligible)
Toussaint: Yes, yeah.
Costello: “Don’t Pity Me.”
Toussaint: Yeah, things. But Elvis has such a heart for the music, and he’s not only a scholar, but he’s a student of world music. And he knows as much about my repertoire as I do, and sometimes, I'd say, a bit more. So it was flattering, for one thing. But the tunes that he chose was not the ones that, quote, unquote, limelight songs. He chose things that were not on the B side but the C side or the D side. So, I was honored by that.
Tavis: What kind of – I know the kind of stuff you were looking for, Elvis. What kind of flavor, though, were you trying to create here? You didn't ant the limelight songs, I got that.
Costello: I figured there was, like, a three-act play to be made here. That there was an opportunity to introduce Allen’s compositional voice to people that didn't know it so well, and that’s why we opened with “On Your Way Down” and “Nearer To You,” and “Tears, Tears, And More Tears,” three contrasting songs that show a lot of the great strengths of Allen’s arranging and compositional style.
Even though I am singing them. And then there’s a run of songs which inevitably include both new and older songs. Songs like “Freedom for the Stallion” and “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further” that Allen wrote over 30 years ago, but speak exactly in the moment. There’s no finer moment to hear a song like “Who’s Gonna Help Brother Get Further” than having seen what we’d just witnessed.
I wrote “The River in Reverse,” which, I heat up quickly. Allen will say, what happened to the Liberty Bell I heard so much about? Did it really ding-dong? It must have dinged wrong, it didn't ding long. And I've seen people in the audience laugh, but also then go oh, get the implication of that line. I'll say something maybe in a more accusatory way, so count your blessings when you ask permission to govern with money and superstition.
They tell you it’s all for your own protection, till you fear your own reflection. 'Cause I do believe that we’re in danger of surrendering a lot of liberty to a climate of fear. And it’s something that needs to be looked at in a number of different ways. But over four or five songs, between us, we can offer lots of different points of view. There isn't one way. We’re not running for office.
We don’t have to simplify things down to a few convenient slogans to avoid getting led away in handcuffs. Which is the fate that some politicians deserve. We sort of can speak as humans with fallible thoughts, with anger, with hope, with lamentation. And there are so many songs to be sung, and many that Allen’s already written, I just felt that if we could put them all in one place, people would work out for themselves what they feel. The people are smart.
Tavis: Talk to me both, I'll start with you, Allen, about the point that Elvis is making now. I wanna just take it to another level, if I might, about the importance of lyrical content. And I raise that only because it seems to me that one of the levels on which the two of you collaborate well is not just on the level of the music itself, but that both of you have a special place in here for lyrical content. When and how did that develop for you?
Toussaint: Well, it just came with the reflections of my own life. I assume that most people are reflections of what they’ve lived through and how they see the world, how they view the world. So I must admit that I haven’t taken a particular position to say, I'm going to write like this, or I have this to say in life. As I live, these things come. I must say, some things come that are a little censored.
I don’t even put those around. But I don’t have a particular thing that I wanna say a big picture in life that it goes like this. It’s just reflections of how I am, who I am, what I am, what I believe. And I do think that since I've been given such a gift horse to ride, being music, all of my stuff has something behind it that says, grateful. I'm very grateful to God for giving me such a vehicle.
Tavis: For you, Elvis, lyrics?
Costello: Well, I feel that I had, was given a huge opportunity here in working with Allen, because he an absolute embodiment of a hugely rich tradition of music. The starting point of our songwriting collaboration was actually Allen’s minor key adaptation of Professor Longhair’s “Tipitina,” a song that’s normally associated with exuberance and celebration.
And the version that Allen had made in the minor key and the slower tempo just painted pictures in my head, which echoed some of the images handed to me by friends who had to return to the city to see the state of their homes and the desolation, the absence of birds. And I felt that there was a way in which this piece of music could carry us from that opening, very bleak scene to an idea of hope and renewal that the title suggests as the song ends up being called “Ascension Day.”
It’s not the feast of the ascension. And the process that we've been through in working together, and continue on now into the live performance, because not only do we have other songs of Allen’s that we didn't record, but are wonderful to play live. I gave Allen the list of nine songs of mine that he might consider arranging for the tour, and he arranged all of them.
Now, some of them are well-known, popular titles that I would regularly play in concert. But others were songs that were more unusual. The most unusual of which is a song called “Bedlam,” a song I wrote recently about, it is a contemporary telling of the nativity story in the scene of a refugee scene. It’s a complicated song lyrically, and it’s a lot of images come out of it. And it suggests that the three wise men were bearing gifts of frankincense, gold, and Rumsfeld. It’s that kind of scene.
Tavis: (Laughs)The myrrh has been replaced.
Costello: Yeah, the myrrh has been replaced in this particular telling of the tale. (Laughs) Now, Allen’s musical response to those lyrical ideas was so startling to me that it’s just a joy every time we get to that point in the show, that when you think you know everything about this gentleman’s writing and everything he’s contributed, there’ll be another surprise, and an openness to it. So for me, the lyrics are sometimes the, they give definitive meaning to the music, and other times, they are the cue to another musical idea.
Tavis: So Allen, I'm sitting here, I'm feeling for you, and I know now what a bad man you really are. 'Cause I'm thinking if Elvis Costello, this legend in his own time, comes to me and says here, Tavis, these are nine of my tracks that you can rearrange, I'm like, where do you start trying to touch something that Elvis Costello has done? And not be afraid of offending the guy?
Toussaint: Right. Well, I have to rely on what someone else told me a long time ago. If they’ve come to you, he came to you because it’s you. So, be you. And that’s what I did. Elvis knows me pretty well, as far as reputation. But he’s dug down into the music to know, I think, where my heart is in many cases. So if he would trust his music with me, well, then I could just trust who I was to hear that music and do what I saw fit, as if it was my own.
Tavis: Elvis, any kind of collaboration that you can think of that you have not done that’s, like, in the back of your head?
Costello: I haven’t been considering it as, like, hoping that that will open up for me. Everything has just happened. It might sound really odd, but I don’t really have ambition in the sense that some place I set ahead of me as I must be there, otherwise I'll be thwarted? Everything that’s happened…
Tavis: But you're always pushing yourself, though.
Costello: Everything has happened because of a curiosity and a love of music. And I've been fortunate that a lot of the people that I've most admired I've encountered, and on occasion, the opportunity to work with them has presented itself. And one thing has really led to another. That’s the best way (laughs) I can explain it. It doesn’t sound very logical, I know.
Tavis: All right, so we’re still waiting on the Costello-Krall project.
Costello: Well, (laughs) there are many ways one can collaborate.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) That’s why you gotta love Elvis Costello. That was very, very nicely said about Ms. Krall. Give her our regards, by the way.
Costello: I will, absolutely. She sends them back to you.
Tavis: Tell her we said hello. The new project from Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, you gotta get it, add it to your collection. "The River in Reverse.” I mentioned at the top of the show they're gonna be on tour throughout the summer. Do yourself a favor. I saw them here in L.A. at the Playboy Jazz Festival. You do want to catch these guys. Trust me.
You wanna see them in person. Again, "The River in Reverse,” from Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint. Catch them on the road this summer. An honor to have you both here. Nice to see you.
Costello: Thank you.
Toussaint: Thank you.
Tavis: It’s my pleasure. That’s our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from L.A., thanks for watching. And as always, keep the faith.
