CHAPTER:24

COUNTRY WINE

Country wine, life is sweet

I got my feet under the table

And all that country food to eat

I’ve never really had a master plan all my life. I’ve followed little signs that point me in the direction of a road less traveled. In April 2010 an Icelandic volcanic eruption spewed an ash cloud creating the highest level of disruption to air traffic since the Second World War. Naturally, given the random nature of my life, I was stuck in London when I should have been on a plane back to Los Angeles. On the other hand I’d been given a rare time-out from the hectic pace of life at the time, and the first thing I did was to go walking in Soho, one of my favorite parts of London. I headed for Denmark Street, which is full of guitar shops and for years has been a meeting place for musicians and song pluggers. In 1963, Paul and John were browsing along this street when the Stones got out of a taxi. The two Beatles congratulated them on getting a record deal, but Mick told them they didn’t have a song yet. Paul said, “We’ve got one,” and gave them “I Wanna Be Your Man,” which was their first hit record.

So here’s the first weird thing: I ended up buying a vintage guitar previously owned by another Dave: Red River Dave, a country-and-western performer from the fifties. He was famously eccentric, another common bond, and once wrote fifty-two songs in twelve hours while handcuffed to a piano.

I eventually got out of London by getting on a flight to Nashville, for a twenty-four-hour stopover just with a carry-on and my Red River Dave guitar. I had an idea in my head for a television series called Malibu Country, so I had a meeting arranged with country legend Martina McBride. The meeting turned into dinner with Martina and her husband, John, during which we got on very well and proceeded to get blind drunk. We staggered back to Blackbird Studios, one of the city’s most iconic and productive recording establishments. John proceeded to play music in all of the rooms till four in the morning and I was amazed and enamored with them and their whole setup. It was the start of a love affair with the place, the music and the people.

In the past five years, I have produced eight full albums in Blackbird Studios, as well as a TV documentary of my adventures there. I made a trilogy of my own albums, The Blackbird Diaries, The Ringmaster General and Lucky Numbers.

I made Joss Stone’s LP1 album there, Stevie Nicks’s 24 Karat Gold, amazing female guitarist Orianthi’s album Heaven in This Hell, and the first solo album by Martin Longstaff, aka the Lake Poets, a boy from my hometown, Sunderland. I recorded some of my daughter Kaya’s album at Blackbird Studios, and recently produced some tracks for my son Django’s first solo album. I recorded all of these albums at lightning speed in three – or five-day sessions, except Stevie Nicks’s, which took two five-day sessions.

John McBride has engineered all eight albums, and I must say he is the greatest engineer I have ever recorded with. John is the biggest music fan and sound enthusiast I’ve ever encountered; his collection of vinyl albums, vintage instruments and equipment is mind-boggling. Put it like this: John has thirty thousand Beatles albums—but they only ever released thirteen original albums!

Whenever I’m in Nashville, Martina is always in and out, listening to what we’re doing, or making tasty food and sharing a martini at the end of the session. All three of Martina and John’s daughters come running in and out of the sessions too, and I hired their eldest, Delaney, to run my Nashville office.

I asked John McBride to handpick not only the best players he has ever recorded, but players who would also work together as a band, and he certainly did. I must say these guys are insanely good together: Tom Bukovac on guitar, Dan Dugmore on slide, Chad Cromwell on drums, Mike Rojas on keys and Michael Rhodes on bass. Each one is a legend in his own right, but when we play together, it’s like a dream come true.

When I made my first album in Nashville, I decided on the spur of the moment to book a gig at the Belcourt Theatre and play the whole album live. I think we rehearsed for about three hours and then played almost a two-hour set. There was a big buzz about my recording sessions, so a lot of Nashville artists including Lady Antebellum, Big and Rich, Jessie Baylin, and Karen Elson turned up to see what was happening. None of the artists had seen these guys play live as a band before, and with John McBride mixing out front, it sounded just like the record. The crowd loved us. We had a big party afterward, and in one night, I got accepted and initiated into Nashville’s inner sanctum, and that’s somewhere I’ll always be working from now on. Well, it’s not exactly work—it’s brain sailing!

One of the reasons I love Nashville is the way the musicians are integrated with the community. It’s different from LA, where a lot of the younger stars are so often inaccessible, living in gated estates, escorted by personal bodyguards, and spending evenings in clubs closeted with hangers-on in the VIP. area. I don’t think I’ve seen a VIP area in Nashville, although I often see superstars in the Pancake Pantry with their buddies and families. On my first Nashville album, The Blackbird Diaries, all sorts of people would hang out in the studio and just watch, or join in, from famous Nashville songwriters to musicians recording in other studios. It was like “a happening” again. I ended up doing duets with Martina McBride, Stevie Nicks and the Secret Sisters, as well as writing and recording fifteen songs, all in five days straight.

The second record, only ten months later, called The Ringmaster General, featured my same band of musicians, and on this album, I had duets with Jessie Baylin, Alison Krauss and Joss Stone. Orianthi came to visit and played amazing guitar on one of my song “Girl in a Catsuit,” which we then shot as a music video with Orianthi wearing a leather catsuit, just like Emma Peel from the TV series The Avengers, which I loved when I was a kid. Judith Hill came and sang too, along with country writing star Hillary Lindsey on “The Gypsy Girl and Me.”

I’m always looking for a new inspiration and welcoming new collaborators to work with. I’ll never stop seeking the creative charge that comes from a new sound, the right verse, a beautiful melody. In the past few years, I’ve found that inspiration and more in Nashville. And that is why I regard the place and its players with enormous affection and gratitude. When contemplating the album Lucky Numbers, Paul Allen said to me, “What would you like for your sixtieth birthday?” He offered me five things to choose from, and my favorite of the five was, and always is, going out on his beautiful yacht, The Octopus.

I decided to fly my Nashville band out to join in on the celebration. These guys were used to just going to a studio every day in Nashville, and suddenly they were on a magical mystery tour ensconced in a private jet headed to the South Pacific.

Anoushka and I were married on Mooréa Beach, in the south of France. Now that we were in the real Mooréa in French Polynesia, I wanted to re-create the wedding ceremony. Anoushka was the only person who didn’t know what I was planning. Both Kaya and Indya knew. Martina McBride knew. All of the boat crew knew, as did all the musicians from Nashville. All of the arrangements were kept secret including the fact that Indya had packed Anoushka’s original wedding dress.

We set it all up for eleven in the morning on the end of the boat. We made a beautiful little wedding altar with all flowers, all very South Pacific. I kept walking around, singing all those songs that my dad kept playing, back at the beginning of this book and my life, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical South Pacific. There I was in the real South Pacific, renewing my vows to the love of my life, surrounded by musicians and friends, with our daughters, Kaya and Indya.

I said that when I first saw Anoushka, she reminded me of Greta Garbo—what’s extraordinary is our family home was once the house that Garbo resided in. My favorite times in this house are when the whole family is together, the girls and Sam and Django, for a meal, a chat, laughter and good wine. And sooner or later Sam will get out his guitar, Django or Kaya will start singing and Indya will dance the night away. . . .