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with someone whose music and presence has touched me deeply : Charlie Peacock.
Herein lies the text of the interview. Humor me : say you've read the notes in
this meeting on his previous stuff. If you haven't, please do. Better yet,
hear the music; best of all, catch him live.
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RHL : At the time of *The Secret of Time*, you had just moved to Nashville. I
remember wondering how you would fit into Music City life. Well, you're still
there. What has Nashville been like for you?
CP : How do I describe Nashville ... I've been, for the last eight or nine years,
so involved in my work that I don't think it would matter where I was. I say
that as a statement of fact, and almost as an admission of guilt. It's a fact
that I've been fairly involved in making music, quite steadily for the last nine
years, and I wish I had taken a few minutes to slow down here and there as well.
That's very much what my life is about now -- the process of slowing down. In
many ways, my coming to Nashville has helped me realize some of my musical goals,
as well as realizing there's more to life than music. When I came out here from
California, I was able to start working again. Remember that after the Island
record [[*Charlie Peacock*, 1986]] came out, and the sporadic club touring after
that, I was really on hold for over two years, till I moved to Nashville. The
only solid work I had done in that time was to [produce] a Margaret Becker
record, *Immigrant's Daughter*. [[ Note : he had also produced tracks for albums
by the Swoon and the Choir, and written one song for the TV show "Fame". ]] And
the rest of the time I was always waiting on some record company to make a
decision on my songs or my artistry. So it was a great relief to come out to
Nashville to do what I believe I was created to do, which is to be a musical
artist.
RHL : The focus of the new album *Love Life* is the relationships of love, the
age-old (indeed, Scriptural) bonds between man and woman, as well as between
human and God. One can feel the presence of your wife Andi all over this album.
Why is that, and what has she had to do with your music over the years?
CP : When you've been together since you were 14 years old, there's not much you
can put over on that person. She's been the person, usually silent in my life,
who's kept me accountable to be honest and to be somewhat of a good artist. In
that way, she's been very influential and very supportive. On *Love Life*, she's
probably most directly involved in inspiring the subject matter. This is the
album she likes most musically, as well. She's not going to tell you she likes
every song I've recorded, I can guarantee you that. But she will tell you that
she likes these [new ones].
RHL : What led you to do an album on the relationships of love ?
CP : As I looked around me -- and I didn't have to look further than aspects of
my own life -- as I looked at the lives of people I came in contact with on the
road, I could see that in many ways a lot of us were living a rather superficial
Christian walk. We couldn't really admit that we couldn't love God, any more
than we could love the people we claim to love. It's one thing to say all the
right Christian words, to say 'Praise the Lord', to have a worshipful experience,
and to feel like you're on top of the world as a Christian because all your ducks
are lined up for a while. It's a different thing to really love the people
around you who you claim to love. I think that when you do that, it's one of the
greatest demonstrations that God's love lives in you. More so than mouthing off
all the right words.
RHL : What most gets in the way of loving ?
CP : Pride and selfishness. There's other things too. For instance, you could
be someone who has incredible longings and passions; let's say, you have a great
longing for a deep and true friendship, and you're so consumed with that longing,
that instead of drawing people to you, you repel them. So we seem to be a
people who have these legitimate needs and longings, but continue to express them
in illegitimate ways.
RHL : The father in you comes out on this album, too. How can children pick up
on a positive way of loving, what with all the other stuff being spread around
and with the parent's own difficulties in loving?
CP : Being a parent can be overwhelming, in that so much of our pain and mental
baggage we pass on to our children. But there are some very good things that we
can pass on to our children, that we can consciously take control of. One of
them is that, to the degree that I demonstrate love to my wife, in word and in
deed, my son will have a reasonably accurate view of what it is to love a woman.
In the same way, my daughter will have some idea of what it is to be loved.
So, we model for our children, and they're watching, watching very closely.
It's more than just not treating my passion for Andi as if it were something to
hide from them. It's something that's right before God. And they'll have that
for themselves someday.
RHL : That is expressed so well in the song "Kiss Me Like A Woman". In that
song, you speak of some fool on the radio, talking trash about love. What way of
trashing love irks you the most ?
CP : We're in a time where we've culturally moved past the kind of decadence of
the punk culture time of the Sex Pistols and the rampant cocaine abuse of the
early '80s. We're moving into the twelve step culture, the recovery culture.
Debasing oneself by drugs is a very uncool thing to do now. So you'll have
artists in the culture who will be very anti-drug, but then, they still need
something of shock value in order to sell product. So you get things like, say,
Perry Farrell just recently at the end of the tour he did, and singing the last
song of the night in the nude. It's the only way he can stretch, and it's not
so much about musically or artistically, all that's a part of his statement in
the same way that Madonna's movie is or Prince's new video. So, kids don't get
the opportunity to choose between having an attitude about sexuality that might
be pure and lovely and right and good, they don't get that chance before they can
embrace it with their mind they're getting assaulted emotionally, physically, and
in their senses, by all these other sources. You'd like for your child to be
able to grow up and find a man or woman to fall in love with, and you'd like for
them to make love with that man or woman without all these images from the
culture imprinted on their minds. It's fairly idealistic, but I think we need to
do what we can.
RHL : On 'Another Woman In Tears', you write : "You never think to water the
garden/ Don't you know, flowers won't grow that way?" Do you find yourself
forgetting that sometimes, and what snaps you out of it?
CP : O gosh, yes. It's easier to bring a woman flowers than to bring her your
time and attention. I'm not preaching, I'm singing to myself. What brings me
out of it is the reality that life can't go on that way. That I'm not numb
enough to just go into cruise control. I'm still alive enough as a person to
realize that the change has got to come.
RHL : You mentioned the Twelve Steps before. [[ Peacock is an alcoholic, who
quit in '82/3.]] One of the core things about Peacock music from the start has
been the quest for honesty. That is also a strong concern of Twelve-Steppers,
especially those on two of the computer meetings on the ECUNET computer bulletin
board. Just for them : what is keeping you honest ?
CP : Circumstances usually keep me honest, where my tendency would be to be
deceptive. Addicts generally develop a keen creativity in the area of deception,
especially in deceiving themselves. Even to the extent where everyone else
around them knows what's going on, they can still deceive themselves. When
circumstances rear their ugly head, it shows me that the choices I've made or the
things I've said have now put me in this position. Then, there's nowhere to
hide anymore. The only thing left for me is workoholism, which is the main
thing I'm still working on in terms of addiction. I haven't left me anywhere
else to hide, I've got to come clean.
RHL : I'm not familiar with your co-producer Rick Will. What's he done ?
CP : Along with Craig Hansen [who co-produced Jimmy Å's album], Rick Will's one
of the best engineers in Nashville, in sonic ability and creativity. He's done
everything from mixing Johnny Cash records to co-producing Foster and Lloyd. In
the last year, he mixed for Ziggy Marley and some tracks of Out Of the Grey; he
just finished [mixing] the new Judson Spence album that will be out after the
first of the year. He's one of those guys that's on the rise.
RHL : The name of Vicki Hampton is cropping up a lot on your stuff lately, and
most memorably on Jimmy Å's track "Contemplate the Emptiness". Are you doing
any upcoming projects with her ?
CP : I use her on just about everything I do. As far as a solo thing, I'm not
sure that's something she wants to do. I will highlight her when I can, because
I think she has an extraordinary voice.
RHL : The Peacock trio folks will soon all have current solo albums : Jimmy A's
*Entertaining Angels*, your *Love Life*, and Vince Ebo's upcoming album on
Warner. Can you give us a glimpse into what Vince is working on ?
CP : Next week, I'll start work on Vince. I'll be producing two of the songs,
"These Are the Questions" and "Long Time Coming". Tommy Sims and Trace
Scarborough will be producing tracks too. We should be done by Christmas, with
a first-quarter release date.
RHL : Your liner notes, on *Love Life* and on the CDs of *West Coast Diaries*,
mention a place called the Art House. What is it, what does it do, and what's
your involvement with it ?
CP : The Art House is something I started this past summer. It's a weekly bible
study held at a place my wife and I bought, in an old turn-of-the-century church,
a white-clapboard-type church in Nashville. We don't live there; it's just for
that purpose. On the weekends, we have seminars and meetings, for instance,
this weekend I'll be doing a foundational seminar on what it means to be a
Christian and an artist. For such a seminar, we use nothing new, the standard
books, like [Hans] Rookmaaker, the Schaeffers, Lewis, [Calvin] Seerveld. This
summer, we did a thing for a camp for abused children. We had some of our people
go over and write songs with the kids. Some of us recorded them -- Out Of the
Gray, Phil Keaggy, Jimmy Å, myself -- and we're giving them back to the kids, a
cassette for each kid. Debbie Taylor [[Steve Taylor's wife]] helped design the
cassette cover.
RHL : Jimmy Å's album had several choice pop tracks on it : 'Touch of Love', 'If
I Give In', and of course the Trio song 'Thin But Strong Cord'. Your album has
several of them too, such as 'What's It Like In Your World'. Is Sparrow making
any attempt to get such tracks onto mainstream radio ?
CP : I know that Sparrow has had several conversations with different labels, but
frankly, I don't think that will come together. It's the kind of thing that's
always a possibility with me, and people check it out, but I don't think what I'm
doing will [[get them to sign on]]. Most of the response I get from the
mainstream record companies the past four years is , yea, Charlie Peacock's a
good songwriter, but ... you know how it is. I'm more interested in exploring
more freedom than is offered in the pop marketplace.
RHL : There was some confusion as to how Sparrow was going to handle the stuff
you produce, whether it would be on its own label or as regular Sparrow releases.
Can you clarify that ?
CP : Originally, we talked about doing an Art House label, when we first started
to work on the idea of the Art House. As we went on, we started to realize that
we needed to keep that separate as a non-profit thing in order to really benefit
the people that we came in contact with. So we set up a separate company,
Charlie Peacock Productions, which has so far done Out Of the Gray and Jimmy A as
well as me. I had originally thought about doing a [[ separate
Sparrow-distributed ]] label, but that's just premature, it really is. My life
is so busy as it is, I'll be lucky to do a couple productions of my own a year,
and it would be a disservice to artists to take them on as a label. So I think
right now that the relationship is just about the best it could be. If I really
feel that I want to do a record with someone, I've got a place to bring it. But
I don't have to.
[[ Upcoming : new music for himself; the two Ebo tracks; perhaps an album
involving more of the Sparrow artists, some tracks for a Keith Green tribute; new
Jimmy A album next winter, a new Margaret Becker album. ]]