“Lord I’m
not turning back.”
Cody ChesnuTT
from Everybody’s Brother
It doesn't usually happen this way. Soul geniuses that succumb to the extremes of artistic
acclaim, namely drug addiction & shagging groupies, don’t usually live to
see the seeds of their loins grow to be young men & women - whether the
Lord has their back or not.
But bedroom
slop-god turned devout family man, Cody Chesnutt may have ensured he gets to do
just that, by opting for a new way of life and lyrical expression, right on
time to deliver another classic with his new album Landing On A Hundred.
Following the graphic and explicitly honest,
36 song epic The Headphone Masterpiece
- with the lyrics from his own song Somebody’s
Parent still ringing in his ears: “Oh honey forgive me for being the dick that
I’ve been to the children and you” - Chesnutt stripped off his leather
vines, resisted his main vices (substance abuse and womanizing) and washed his
mouth out with soap and water. Moving
his family from Los Angeles to Florida, Chesnutt the artist – not including the
brilliant, disgustingly under promoted BlackSkin No Value EP and the odd internet freebie – has seldom been heard in
the decade since his groundbreaking debut. So why return now?
“The next
wave of consciousness is going to need a soundtrack and I really want to be a
part of that.” Explains Chesnutt, who’s speaking from his home, situated several
cornfields away from Florida capital Tallahassee. His welcoming & friendly
tone, suggests he might have left the trademark Vietnam Vet combat helmet on
the hat stand.
“I think soul
is the unique music that can bring balance to all the chaos that’s in the air
right now,” says Chesnutt, whose Black
Skin No Value EP, albeit on a smaller budget, had already suggested the
new, overtly soulful direction. Two of the standout songs from the Black Skin No Value EP, (the stunning, confessional
Everybody’s Brother and proto-funk of
Where Is All The Money Going?) have
been reworked for Landing On A Hundred, at
the suggestion of album producer Patrice Bart-Williams (as a hit-making artist
under the name Patrice, he’s on first name terms with the whole of Germany).
“I see Black Skin as a bridge from Headphone Masterpiece to Landing On A Hundred. As a person, I was in a different headspace,
different spirit when I made The
Headphone Masterpiece but I still wanted this record to be as accurate in
terms of how I’m living today and who I am as a forty-two year old man.”
 |
| Artist/Producer Patrice |
Chesnutt was
so determined to sprinkle Landing On A
Hundred with authentic soul magic that he led his nine piece band of
musicians, mostly plucked from the local neighbourhood church, to the hallowed
halls of Willie Mitchell’s Royal Studio’s in Memphis, where Al Green & OV
Wright once created Hi-Records classics.
“As Cody’s
producer I told him ‘you need to let me drive (to Memphis)’” explains Patrice, “’it’s
a long journey, so you need to rest up’ but he was like ‘no, no … hey Patrice,
don’t worry, I got it.’”
Once the red
light was on Chesnutt’s Les Paul no longer aped the riffs of Chuck Berry’s
ding-a-ling, instead laying down wholesome funk brothers hopscotch funk licks.
The vocals too, charming as they were naïve, concerned more with feel over
pitching the perfect note on The
Headphone Masterpiece, have been replaced by a more considered, ‘school of
gospel’ strive for perfection with Landing
On A Hundred.
“The album
starts with Till I Met Thee, which is
my Road to Damascus,” says Chesnutt “going from The Headphone Masterpiece to The Roots (who included Chesnutt’s The Seed 2.0 on their mahoosive Phrenology set) and my personal
transition as a man. How I came to the country, searching for the next phase of
what my life would be, to being a father. It’s extremely demanding to be a
parent, and I just wanted to be that — I just wanted to be there, and I knew
that there was really no alternative and it wasn’t even a second thought. It
was like, ‘Okay, this is the most important thing.’ You’re never going to
experience these days again, so you really need to try to be there as much as
you can. So I really just walked away from a lot of what was going on in the
industry, what was expected of me as an artist. So I could be there for my kid.
That part of the human experience I could never get back if I was out on the
road for two hundred dates and constantly in and out of studios all night long.”
Did the
heavy guitar sound on Headphone
Masterpiece - the slop and rock influences - conflict with the soulful
intention for Landing On A Hundred?
“There is no
Upstarts in a Blowout approach, but
there are guitar licks. Till I Met Thee
is all guitar lick, it’s a very Motown-esque riff, which I didn’t think about
until I started listening back to the song and I was like, ‘Wow, this has got
early Jackson 5 elements to it.’ The way those rhythms would cut through a song
like I Want You Back. It fits right
in the pocket. I think the Motown body of work was a huge influence on this
album; Donny Hathaway and all the soul greats are definitely spiritually
present in this record.”
“He refuses
to sing those old songs,” adds Patrice, “even though most people ask for them, he’s
taking a stand on how he wants to be perceived with his new music.”
Chesnutt
took a stand on how he wanted to be perceived with the old stuff as well. Reportedly
turning down a million dollar major label contract to ensure the integrity of
his music was intact. Even with a sure-fire winner like Looks Good In Leather (used most recently in an Axe deodorant advert)
on the sampler, the majors still wanted to get their fingers and thumbs into
the pie.
“After the
debacle that was The Crosswalk (*a band Chesnutt fronted in the late 90’s,
named after the pelican crossing from Abbey Road) and my being dropped from
Hollywood Records having put in all that time into recording the unreleased Venus Loves A Melody record , I became
bitter and jaded and didn’t want to be let down so heavily again. So yes, the
independent route was definitely more appealing, and it turned out to be a
great move, because I didn’t realize at the time the new direction music
promotion was heading in. So then when The
Headphone Masterpiece was ready my management (cousin Donray) and I felt
like we really had something special and that with the right backing we could
take it a little further. So yeah, the numbers offered did get that high (a
million dollars). But they wanted us to change the album and re-record it. We
didn’t want to change the (lo-fi) recording experience, because that would have
killed the story. I think a lot of the appeal of Headphone Masterpiece is that it was recorded in the bedroom, and
the whole headache and spontaneous approach is what really touched a lot of
people. So there was much more to it than just getting signed.”
Landing On A Hundred, released via One Little Indian in the UK, may
not have a Parental Advisory sticker but that doesn’t mean Chesnutt’s pulling
his punches. First single That’s StillMama brilliantly retrieves the percussive funky soul from the clutches of
hip hop and has Uncle Chesnutt bollocking his nephew, for disrespecting his
mother. “Once a baby/you couldn’t clean
your backside” he sings to the sheepish nitwit.
But the most
personal song for Chesnutt concerns his missus; mum to his two children.
“I’ve been married seventeen years, and Love Is More Than a Wedding Day talks
about the real love that transcends all the shallow things on the surface of a
wedding ceremony. Anyone that’s been
with their partner for a long time can attest to the day-in day-out work that
it takes to maintain a relationship. It’s just much bigger than everything that
whole ceremony is supposed to represent.
The song actually brought me to tears a couple of times on the playback
in the studio when we were listening to the initial track. Because I wrote it
on acoustic guitar, and to see it all come to fruition with the strings and the
whole nine just touched me to my core. I always play the music for my wife
who’s not in the industry so has an uncluttered opinion and she really liked
that one.”
So what did
the wife make of some of the more risqué moments on The Headphone Masterpiece? Songs such as My Women, My Guitars and Bitch
I’m Broke (which includes the lyric ‘I
got a big black dick and that’s all you’re gonna get …. bitch I’m broke’).
“Yeeehh,”
Cody laughs “she kinda looked at me with a crazy look in her eye and said ‘I
don’t know about that one.’ I told her I just wanted to capture the spontaneity
of the imagination in the psyche.”
Chesnutt
pauses.
“She was
like, ‘Okay…’ It was a little awkward.”
Despite the consequences,
the honesty in Chesnutt’s art comes first. Indeed that’s what the title means,
its hip hop for not telling porkies. “In the vernacular of hip-hop, when
somebody says ‘keeping it one hundred’ that’s another way of saying ‘keeping it
real.’ So this experience, this body of
work is an instance of me landing on something that’s truthful … landing on a
truth.”
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