RUSTY GEAR IS AN Americana music songwriter and performer. He has released nine albums, Eps, of original music featuring top Nashville session players and members of the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, and guest appearances by some of the top singers in the business. His songs have received radio play around the world and charted on the Billboard Country Breakout Chart, Roots Radio in Country, Blues, and Americana, and on the Hotdisc Top 40 in Europe. Listen in and read along as we discuss how writers collaborate, and so much more.
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Marion: Rusty Gear’s album, “Stripped Gear,” reached number two on the Roots Radio Country Album Chart, and the single, “Old Friend,” number one in both Country and Americana. His 2023 EP, “Something in the Water,” charted in the top 10 in the Country and Americana album charts on Roots Radio, and the single, “The Dog Won’t Hunt,” charted on the Billboard Country Breakout Chart. His songs have been streamed over 4 million times on Spotify. Rusty and I have collaborated on lyrics now for a couple of years and have released five songs together. I wanted to bring him on to talk about living the life of a creative and the fine art of collaboration. Welcome, Rusty. How are you?
Rusty: I’m fine. Thank you, and thank you for having me on.
Marion: Well, it’s really fun to have you on, and that’s a lovely résumé of success in terms of writing music, performing, and airing that music. So let’s start with that, with the creative life. I’m the bummer person on every panel on creativity. When everyone else is going on about the mystical aspects of the work, I always talk about the discipline, sitting in the hard chair and getting the work done. So where are you on the mystical/hard chair spectrum of how we live and work the creative life?
Rusty: That’s a great question, and I sit in both chairs. I definitely believe that songwriters and maybe authors, too, are channeling something that they’re not 100% sure where it comes from in a lot of cases. But there is no replacement for songcraft. Once you have an idea or an inspiration, that inspiration doesn’t turn it into a well-structured, hooky, commercially viable song. You have to practice the craft of it too.
Marion: Yeah, practicing the craft. Absolutely. The hard work, learning it, and then getting out there and making a lot of it. So give us a sense of your early music life, church choir, singing with the family, listening to the radio under the covers after you were told to turn that damn radio off. Everyone has a music origin story. What’s yours?
Rusty: Sort of check all of the above. I came from a musical family. My mother was a beautiful singer. My grandfather was an accomplished baritone. All of my brothers and sisters and I sang in the choir as children in church, and we played in the band as young guys in junior high and in high school. My brother, John, is a very accomplished guitar player, and I sort of picked it up after him.
And he eventually let me play in his band because I was the only guy who could remember the lyrics to the songs, and they let me sing. Yeah. So all of that. And I don’t know where… Every town has its own AM radio station that played the top hits when they were kids. In New York, it was WABC with Cousin Brucie, and we listened to all of it.
Marion: Oh, Cousin Brucie at Jones Beach. That’s my young life. Absolutely. And you grow up and you switch to FM, but first, it was AM radio. Absolutely. I love that. So as I said in the opener, you’re a songwriter whose primary focus is Americana music. So can you define that for us, please?
Rusty: You probably have as many different definitions of that as you have artists. The way I think about it is, it’s music that has its roots in blues and in the Appalachian folk music that has been played in this country, sort of came over from Scotland and England, incredibly evolved from the contribution of Black Americans in the 1800s in particular. And now, it includes blues, rock and roll. I wouldn’t include contemporary country in that, but that’s about the only genre. Pop, it’s not that. It’s really, it’s blues, it’s rock, it’s roots, it’s bluegrass. All of those genres would fit in the big umbrella of Americana.
Marion: Yeah. It’s a remarkable genre, and one of my favorite aspects of it is its requirement for narrative and symbolic lyrics. And you and I had a long talk not long ago about specificity, about those details you need to draw in the listener. So here’s a specific example in the song we wrote together, and the link will be in the transcript so everyone can listen.
It’s really a piece of memoir set during the packing up and closing down of the family home, something that’s deeply personal while also being deeply universal, since most people will go through it in a lifetime. We call it “The Clearing,” written by you and me and the great Michael Mugrage. It was recorded in Nashville with producer Brad Hill, and captures that transition when what you fear most is not at all what happens.
We fear that we’re losing our childhood. And instead, we have this very different experience. So in terms of specificity, we have, for instance, a line that says, quote, “In the pantry by the door, faded pencil marks record the height and age and names of the people we became.” And every time my husband hears that, he cries. So talk to me about the intent of specific detail and how it affects the listener.
Rusty: I think that what detail does is it encourages the listener to picture in their own minds what you’re saying. And that works in speech. It works in writing prose. If you can get the listener or the reader to engage enough to actually make a picture in their mind of what you’re saying, at that point in time, you probably have them. And so, great thing about Americana music is it really is about the lyrics. The chords are all the same. They’ve all been played before. And most listeners of Americana music are engaged and interested enough to actually listen to the lyrics. And so, that’s what gives folks like you and me the most fun.
Marion: It does. It does give us the most fun. And I remember passing those lyrics back and forth and back and forth. As we heightened and added to them and made them more… It’s not just sentimental. There was pure sentiment that came through, and I found that to be fascinating. And then you heightened it further by the use of the pedal steel interlude. So talk to me about that collaboration.
So you and I collaborated on words. You write the music, that decision to underscore the language with the music. And then specifically, you get down to Nashville, and you get this pedal steel interlude. You get this music under it, that just the sound of it is extremely sentiment-producing. So talk to me about that moment. I mean, I think everybody is fascinated with how a song is built.
Rusty: So the great thing about doing these songs in Nashville is you have these incredibly talented session players, and they’re not just going through the motions. Every session I’ve had down there, the players actually are listening to the words, and they’re trying to figure out what we are trying to communicate in our song, and they get into it themselves.
And so, when we cut that song, I arranged it to have a solo in the middle of it. I assumed it would be pedal steel, because that instrument just does a great job of evoking emotions, because the notes slide. They’re really very ethereal in the way they sound. And Scotty Sanders, who’s the player, is just an incredible musician, and that literally was his first take. He knew exactly what we were going for, and Brad and I knew immediately that it just lifted the whole thing up another level.
And then after I went back, I don’t know if you noticed it, but Brad bought in Camille Rae to sing some background vocals. And he put some “ahs” both over the pedal steel and over the last verse that, again, it just lifts the song up a little bit higher, even right at the exact moment when the lyrics are conveying the emotion, those really high “ahs,” like a Beach Boys-sounding arrangement. So it’s great that they all understand what you’re trying to do with the song and bring the musical contribution to bring it to the next level.
Marion: That must be a remarkable feeling, to deliver music and lyrics to people whose appreciation is for your success for the music, for the song’s success. They’re not just decorative, as you just pointed out. They’re enhancing. They’re interpreting further. Do you have a conversation about the song? Do you just send the music? What do you give them when you show up?
Rusty: So I’ll send the producer, Brad, a demo, which I make right here in my own studio. I play all the instruments. I sing all the parts. Even if there’s a female vocal part, I’ll sing it, which is a real treat to listen to, trust me. And Brad listens to the demo, and he comes up with a chart, which is Nashville Numbers that shows the chords and the stops.
And I’ll either play the song for the musicians myself on an acoustic guitar, or they’ll listen to the demo. And then we pick the tempo, and they just play it off the chart. And a lot of times, that first time through… We never get the whole thing on the first cut, but after maybe two or three, at the most, times through, they’ve got it.
Marion: That’s just extraordinary to me. My dad was a sportswriter, and he used to say to me all the time, “If you want anyone to remember anything, either make it funny or put it to music.” And he wasn’t kidding. He was kind of kidding. But I get it, but I don’t really get it. What is it about music, do you think, that allows us to feel something so deeply, that allows us to carry it literally in our head and hearts?
Rusty: There’s definitely a mystery about that, but I can only say, from my own experience, that if somebody says something, “Under a spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands,” that’s great. But if you put that to music, to a really interesting melody, I think it makes it greater. And I would just throw in there, Marion, that… Take a good song like “The Clearing,” and put it over a well-constructed video and you actually have an incremental and different experience watching it on a video. So these are just layers of ways to add additional engagement, and that’s what it does. You engage with the words, then you engage with the music, and then you engage with images. And altogether, it could be pretty powerful.
Marion: It’s a wonderful thing to be part of, I have to say. And my audience is writers, and I get questions all the time from them and from the memoir students I work with about how to collaborate with others. Many people want to do it, and I get it. There’s community in creativity and creativity in community. In my writing career, I wrote and sold a screenplay with a writing partner. I co-wrote a book with someone published by Simon & Schuster, and now I’m collaborating with you.
So I’m a huge fan of collaboration. It’s full of discovery, learning, and, if you work hard, success. So what would you say? Where does your eye or ear go first when looking for a collaborator? What are you looking for, and what should others look for as they try to build out and make this community of creativity?
Rusty: So I think it’s two things. You’re looking for somebody who will bring something different to the table from what you bring, and you’re looking for some chemistry. And if you can find both those things… You and I have written a bunch of songs with Michael Mugrage, and Michael brings something different to that table, and you do and I do. And I think the chemistry is great, and I’m really proud of the output of that partnership.
If you did a crossword puzzle by yourself and then you did one with another person, you’d definitely go faster. They would answer things you couldn’t answer. It’s really just as simple as that. And with creativity, especially you and I working together, it’s awesome to have both a man and a woman looking at these issues from their different angles. You’re definitely going to have a different take on it than I would. And so, some of the best stuff we’ve done is the duets and the things where you’ve got the male and the female angle in the song. It’s a great way to cover it.
Marion: It is. And it, of course, reminds me of a piece we worked on, and one of the way, at least when I’m looking at lyrics, is to go to the deeply personal. And I pitched you a song in which I repurposed long ago, bad night I had in a bar, when I walked up to a stranger and just said, “Pretend you know me,” when some man had followed me into a bar and was harassing me. And happily, the stranger was kind and pretended he knew me, and everything came out okay.
So while this had probably never happened to you, you recognized. But what was it, the authenticity in that moment? And you heightened and added to the lyrics. You wrote the music. You collaborated with other musicians, and then got the wonderful Hannah Bethel to sing it. Talk about this idea of one person’s reality being something we can make relatable to others and turn into a successful piece of art.
Rusty: Well, I think with a song like “Pretend You Know Me”, we start out with a really, really good title for a song. And it could be about a bunch of different things, and it was about your story, but that title was great. And a lot of times, songs will start with a great title, but without the great idea underneath it, you had that idea, and we were able to craft that into a really nice contemporary country song. Michael Mugrage came up with an interesting and a little bit different chord sequence, which really helped the instrumentation. And Hannah has done a few songs with me, but she hasn’t sung with me for three or four years, and she just killed it. I was so happy with her vocal performance.
So you put all those pieces together, a lot of times, what comes out is good. But I could definitely relate to the fear that you might’ve felt that night, and to the lyric, which you came up with. Basically, if it was your sister or your daughter in that kind of trouble, you’d know just what to do. And as somebody who has a couple of daughters, that totally registers with me.
Marion: Yeah. That’s so interesting. I love the universal aspect of that idea, how it did resonate with you. You got it right away, and I felt the electricity of you getting it, and then you added so many layers to it that allows it to be singable. And Hannah, of course, just knocks it out of the park. She has a gorgeous voice, but also a very empathetic voice. It sounds like she’s resonating with a bit of that fear too.
So this was a pure collaboration, and I notice online that collaboration sites exist all over the internet. There are websites for creatives to locate musicians to collaborate with. Places like SoundBetter and Kompoz and Fiverr are places to locate collaborators. There’s lots of places to collaborate with people who you want as a writing partner.
My collaborations have always been the old-fashioned way, one person reaching out to another. Have you ever gone into one of these sites when you went to find musicians? Just give people some sense of how, if they don’t know who to collaborate with, where they might meet some people, and how you did that.
Rusty: I think the standard way for a young musician who’s really trying to make a career as a songwriter would be to go to a place like Nashville or Austin, and look for people in the places where musicians hang out, which are the listening rooms, and maybe visit a couple of publishing houses, because for songwriters, to really get somewhere, you need to have a publishing deal where your songs will get in front of artists who have a following and can actually make some money if they cut your songs.
So that would be the first place I would go. Myself, I wouldn’t go to an online site that creates some randomness that might entail some wasted time, honestly. One thing I will say, though, is that be open to a creative idea, wherever it comes from. One of the early songs that I put out, with Hannah singing it, was called “Wondering Why.” And I got the idea for that song and the basics of it from Lydia Miller, who is the wife of a fishing guide I use in the Catskills.
And she said, “I write some songs.” And I said, “Well, send me something.” And she sent me an iPhone audio of her singing that. And it wasn’t complete, but it was a really, really good start on that song. And we worked on it together, and Hannah sang it, and it ended up charting on the Billboard Country Breakout Chart. It was number one in Europe. We still perform it today with my band, and people love it. So I would be open to it from anywhere, but I’d be a little wary of collaborating with strangers over the internet, just because you’d never know what you’re going to bump into.
Marion: Yeah. That was my feeling too. I went through and looked at a bunch of these sites, but I don’t know how to judge them. And I worry about that with creativity and, well, how deeply personal it is, and how much support you need. If somebody doesn’t like something, I need to know why, and I need to know why it doesn’t work, so I can learn, because you learn more from your mistakes than you ever do from your successes, I think. But it seemed questionable to me to look at these sites, and I want to encourage people to find the best connections they can.
We collaborated on a song about the water crisis out west. It’s called “Something in the Water,” which takes up the role of water in America, from the very first glaciers to the weekend cowboys who may or may not regret ever buying ranches in the West. And it provides a sweeping tale of the role of water, and how it has played out in this country. And I wonder about the choices within Americana. That’s one that I can give, and I’ll give the link to it, in terms of what you’re looking for, what you’re looking for in those stories that you want to tell.
Rusty: That story has an interesting genesis. We didn’t really set out to write a song about water. But somehow, and going back to the spiritual side of this, I literally don’t know where it came from, but I came up with the lyric, “From a distant mountain glacier, whose time is drawing near, come frigid drops of water she sheds like tears.” And I thought that was a really good, soulful opening line for a song. And basically, I built the core lyrics of that song around that line.
And again, Michael is just great. It came up with this opening chord sequence that was excellent. And your idea for the bridge really created the most dramatic part of the song, and the band delivered that big time with that slide guitar lick, which I wrote. But they played so much better than I could ever play it. And I think if you judge by how much organic reach that song has had on Spotify, it’s the most popular song I’ve done for sure.
Not particularly a radio song, honestly, but in terms of people saving it, playing it over and over again, it’s done really well. And the video, that was another case of where a video just took it to another level, with sweeping views of the American West and the sweeping song behind it, came up with a really compelling video.
Marion: Yeah. The video just does a gorgeous job of getting us thinking, really thinking about the impact of water. It’s a fascinating evolution, and I want to go back to that reference you made about the spiritual side and how this lyric comes into our heads. I do believe in the spiritual side of creativity. I just get very nervous when people forget to mention the discipline that it takes to create something.
I’m now a bit rude when people say to me, “Oh, I’m going to write a book when I retire.” And I always say, “Well, what do you do now?” And they say, “Oh, I’m a brain surgeon.” And then I always say, “Well, you know, I’m going to become a brain surgeon when I retire.” And then I smile and try to get out of the conversation, because I think I’ve made my point. But I don’t know, not always.
But that spiritual side is fascinating. We have to be hospitable to it. And that’s the only little aphorism I keep on my desk, is a little, tiny index card that says, “Be hospitable.” And I’ve had it on my desk for 40 years. And being hospitable, to me, means to keep a notebook everywhere. There’s one tied to the gearshift of my car. There’s one in my purse. There’s one in the bathroom. There’s one next to the bed.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’ve scribbled something at 4:00 in the morning, and I’ll be damned. It’s interesting sometimes. So what about you? What is your hospitality to that spiritual side? And include if you literally, physically carry a notebook or you speak into your phone, but also, how kind are you? How accessible is that spiritual side to you, and what do you do to listen to it?
Rusty: I definitely keep my phone handy for inspiration, because if you don’t record it, it goes away. And a lot of times, I’ll get that inspiration when I’m out riding my bicycle or out walking in the woods. I’ll be listening to a podcast. Maybe it’s even a podcast about songwriting, and something will come into my head, and I’ll write it down. And a lot of times, that’ll turn out to be a song.
And I have a list of lyrics and song titles in my phone in the notes section now. So I encourage people to do that. I think most accomplished songwriters do that to make sure they capture those little nuggets that come into their mind at random times. Definitely would have one by your bedside, because a lot of times, you’ll either dream something or it’ll pop into your head when you’re half asleep. And I always pay special attention to those. I think they come from a unique place and almost have a default right to be worked on.
And I put a song out last year called “He Loves Me” that Elle Rose sang, did a great job. And it was purely from a dream I had. I woke up at 5:00 in the morning, and I came up to my studio, and I wrote the song and came out in about 10 minutes. And I’m not saying it’s the greatest song in the world. It’s not, but it’s not bad. So always pay special attention to the things that go bump in the night.
Marion: I love that, and I love the vulnerability of that. I guess it’s vulnerability. And I think it’s so important for creatives to talk to each other about these sorts of things, to mine your dreams. Literally mind them and mine them so that that information that it provides, that spark. I’ve awakened to some of the damnedest phrases. I woke to one recently that just said, “Don’t flip her the car keys.”
And what it meant, I think, or what I wrote about after I read it and said, “Wow, when did I write that?” it had to do with that scared self we have. Don’t let her drive the car. She’s not the one that should be… Don’t hand the car keys over to the one of you who’s reluctant or cynical, or don’t flip the car keys to that other person that lives inside you that’s negative or says no. Hand the car keys back to the commanding one, who’s creative, and saying, “No, I can do this.”
And I just remember staring at it for a moment and thinking, “Interesting. I don’t remember writing it, but I like it, and I know exactly what it means.” So there we go. And we flip the car keys to each other when we collaborate, I think in a very interesting way. You called me recently and pitched me, and we collaborated on a song about an early 20th-century murder.
This murder just simply will not die. It has continued interest, which is just fascinating in itself. So let’s just talk about that for a minute. You got an aha moment. Did that pop into your head? It’s a historic thing. Other pieces of art have been created around it. But talk to me a bit about when something historic pops into your head and you think, “I want to look at that.” What was the genesis of that?
Rusty: So several years ago, I wrote a song called “Bad Outlaw.” And I sat down and I decided I wanted to write something historical about a train robber. That’s sort of a romantic thing from the American West primarily, and I just thought that’s what I wanted to do. And I did a tiny bit of research, and I found out about this guy, Bill Miner, who was like the most incompetent robber. He got caught. He stole stuff, and there was nothing in there. I mean, he was just a complete failure.
And so, the tag of the song, “When it came to being an outlaw, Bill Miner was no good.” And that song landed really well. We did a bluegrass version of it that has done well on Spotify, and people like it. And so, I thought, “Let’s try maybe another.” And I was familiar with the case of Grace Brown from reading the book, and I honestly can’t remember exactly when I decided, “Hey, let’s try to do this.”
But I went online, did a very small amount of research, and I found out that somebody had written an Americana, Appalachian-style folk song about it. So I went and listened to it, and it was just so different from the way I thought we could do it. I didn’t feel like we were stepping on anybody’s toes or that we were somehow doing something that had already been done, because ours is really very, very different.
And I came up with the idea of having both Chester and Grace, in effect, testify in the song to give their side of the story, and the choruses advance the narration. And we’re literally going to cut that song in Nashville on Monday and Tuesday, and Elle Rose is going to come sing the Grace Brown part. And I’m really looking forward to it. It’s long song for… To be commercially viable on the radio, song has to be like three minutes long, and I’ve always had tremendous respect for authors, because you get people to invest five or 10 hours of their time. We’re only asking for three minutes of songwriters.
But this one will be more like the old Bob Dylan story of Hurricane Carter. There’s precedent for it, and I think it’s a good story. I think you and I did a nice job on the lyrics. The people I’ve played it for and showed it to, the lines that we thought would land are definitely landing. So I’m really enthusiastic about cutting that.
Marion: Well, I’m really looking forward to hearing it when it’s published. We’ll put a link in the transcript, and I can’t thank you enough for coming along and talking with me today. It’s a joy to work with you, and it’s a joy to talk with you about creativity, and I’m very excited about all the music that you’re making and performing these days. Thank you, Rusty. I so appreciate this.
Rusty: Thank you, Marion. It’s been my pleasure, believe me.
Marion: The writer and performer is Rusty Gear. Find more on him at rusty gear dot com, where you can find the schedule of his live performances. Listen and download his work wherever you get your music. Here’s the link on Spotify. Follow him on Instagram. I’m Marion Roach Smith, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overit studios dot com. Our producer is Jaquelin Mignot. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey.
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