The music world needs Jeff Finlin.
Surprising, considering that he’s 45 and seven albums into a career
that has never set corporate cash tills ringing. Although
Bruce Springsteen plays his records at his gigs, and Cameron Crowe put
Sugar Blue in his movie Elizabethtown, Finlin remains
“undiscovered”. His gravel voice conjures up words that
shine like diamonds. He’s a storyteller whose sparse songs are a
musical accompaniment to Raymond Carver’s short stories or Sam
Shepard’s plays. The beats - Kerouac, Ginsberg, William Burroughs - are
essential influences. “They made everybody look at words in a
different light”, he says. “I approach songs as little novellas.”
Angels
in Disguise is his first major-label release. It is populated
with faces and images that exist on the fringes of the American dream -
a one-legged Vietnam vet turned bank robber (Postcard from Topeka),
Geronimo running a native casino (Forever Evergreen) and, in the bleak
Long Lonesome Death of the Traveling Man, tattoos carved in “strawberry
curls against my black-leather grin”.
Descended
from Irish railroad workers, Jeff grew up in Columbus, Ohio - a
restless, difficult kid. “I ask my wife, ‘Why are you so content
all the time?’ She says: ‘I was happy with the way things
were. You just always wanted to change everything.’ I
had this level of discontent and drive inside of me to see and do and
experience. I had an intense desire to live life at its fullest,
and that’s still what motivates me.”
After he
finished high school, he hitchhiked west, trying to emulate his heroes.
His adventures included a stint working in a circus and a night
out drinking with Hunter S Thompson. “My job was to feed
elephants, take the money for the freak show and keep the clowns in
tequila. If I didn’t give them any, they were very angry
clowns", he laughs. “I had a thing for the contortionist, but
she wasn’t having it, so I headed down the road. I wound up in a
bar and Hunter Thompson was there. As the night got later, he
just came up to me and slapped me. We spent a day just drinking
together, went to his house and blew up odd things with little sticks
of dynamite. I remember about 45%, which is pretty good going
for a bump in the night with one of my heroes.”
Returning
home, he formed a band with schoolfriend Gwil Owen. He’d grown
up on the Beatles and the Jackson 5, listening to Steely Dan, Led
Zeppelin and the Stones on the radio and playing drums from the age of
11. “For me, the pinnacle of music was 1970-71.
Those times in history are really rare. If Dylan or the
Stones talked about Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Woody Guthrie, I was
like, ‘Wow, I gotta check that out.’”
For the
next few years, Finlin and Owen pursued their dreams of rock stardom,
moving from Boston to LA before settling in Nashville. “I could
afford to live there,” he says. “Nobody on a musician’s
salary can afford to buy a house in southern California. I did
whatever I could to get by. Paint houses, work in bars.”
Eventually, the Thieves signed to Capitol and released one album, aptly
titled Seduced by Money. An almost-hit later and the band were
dropped. By now, Finlin was tired of playing drums, and suddenly
the songs started pouring out.
“I’d met
my wife, Karen, at that time, and I really had to break down a lot of
walls to make the relationship work. With that, the songs just
started coming. For a drummer to pick up and start writing songs
in Nashville... a lot of people snickered under their breath.
But I got a publishing deal and a record deal. I really never
looked back from that.”
Since
1991, Finlin has released a series of increasingly confident albums on
a variety of independent labels. He’s prolific, once writing a
song a day for six months, but admits he can’t judge his best work.
“I pissed a
Nashville songwriter off because he asked me how I came up with what he
thought was a great song, but I didn’t write it, I wrote it down.
I sit down, I get myself centred, I open myself up and it just
comes in. It’s my gift, and that’s why I continue to do it, even
when it’s not financially successful. I’m a successful musician
because I have a wife with a good day job.”
Three years
ago, Finlin, Karen and their son, Aidan, left Nashville for Fort
Collins, Colorado. He knew too many talented musicians who
were now slaves of the Nashville system. “I spent a lot of
time trying to find fame and happiness, and my happiness didn’t come
from success. My life was on the back burner because I put
my music first. Life - riding motorcycles and horses, skiing and
chasing grizzly bears - must come first.” His latest songs
reflect that: “The record has an underlying theme of finding the
good. Life’s never what we think it is. Most of the
great things in my life have come to me from bad experiences.
There’s something to be learnt from the dark side.”
Angels in Disguise is released tomorrow
Robin Eggar
London Sunday Times, 27 August
2006
