The following article appears in the June - August '98 issue of FolkNotes.

The Common Threads Interview: Richard Shindell

The folk and acoustic music radio show, Common Threads, airs on WAER-FM (88.3), Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. Since its debut in July 1997, Common Threads has hosted a varied mix of national and regional artists who appeared on the show to talk about their music and their careers, with most guests performing live in the studio as well. Here are excerpts from the Common Threads interview with nationally known artist Richard Shindell, conducted by the show's host, Larry Hoyt.

Q: When did you start to think about doing this professionally, being a professional singer/songwriter?

A: About a month ago. . . . I've been doing it for about seven years, but it never really occured to me that this would be a viable career path until very recently. It just sort of fell in my lap. It's sort of an illstration of that old cliche that life is what happens to you when you're making other plans. I was making other plans, and meanwhile I was doing this and writing songs, and little by little the other plans ceased to have any significance at all, and this sort of took over. It sounds kind of stupid to say, because for all appearances, I've been doing this professionally for quite a while now. But in my head, as far as making a conscious decision to do it, it didn't really happen until a few months ago. I've always had in the back of my head that I would just stop this and do something sane. But I think I'm here for the long haul.

Q: What was the cause of this epiphany, realizing that this was your true calling?

A: Things just get to a point where you think maybe you're doing well enough that it doesn't make any sense to do anything else. Poverty can always make a person think they should be doing something else.

Q: Did your recent tour with Joan Baez have anything to do with this decision?

A: No, not really. That was fun, but that's kind of a one shot deal, not the kind of thing you could count on for a long time. It was because she recorded three songs that I wrote on her new record. Things have gotten to a point where things are good and not quite as uncertain as they used to be.

Q: How did Joan Baez get to hear about you?

A: Through Dar Williams and her manager, Charlie Hunter, who is also my manager. Joan was looking for songs for her new record by people that most folks had never heard of, bless her heart. She and her manager, Mark Spector, turned to Charlie and Dar to turn them on to a bunch of stuff they hadn't heard before. She initially wanted to do one song, called "Fishing," and they asked for more, so I had to write another one. I wrote "Reunion Hill" with her in mind, and then at the end of the recording process for my new CD, her manager came in and heard "Money For Floods," and liked it and gave it to her. It was an amazing thing (to have Joan record my songs)-one song was great, two songs was unbelievable, three songs was, like, surreal. It made me very, very happy.

Q: Here in the studio and on tour, you perform solo with just your acoustic guitar. On your CDs, have you ever performed solo, or is there always other instrumentation?

A: I like to have other musicians around me, and I would have them around me when I play live if it weren't so complicated. Making records for me is an exercise in what I really like to hear. Playing solo is fun too, but when I write the songs I hear arrangements.

Q: When you write songs, do you think of what you're writing as being folk songs?

A: No, I don't really think about the word "folk" or "pop" or anything, I just do what I do. For some reason when I go to a record store, it's in the folk department, but sometimes it's not, it's in the rock department or pop. For me, (my music) is a mixture of everything I ever grew up listening to, including a lot of folk music, rock'n'roll, roots music of various kinds, art rock, and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and all kinds of weird stuff. For me, that category doesn't really apply. I suppose when I'm standing on stage playing with my acoustic guitar, I'm closer to folk than anything else, but to me folk songs are just like any other songs. There are just good songs and bad songs. Some pop songs are great and some folk songs stink.

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