Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Of plane crashes, Americana and ‘history as shellac’

Leon Redbone pulled off the road at 11 p.m. and called "from a Godforsaken place" -- a Lee's Inn, it turned out -- "somewhere near Merrillville, Indiana," 13 hours and 770 miles after setting off from "someplace back there."

Redbone would have called it a night, but for the accommodations.

"I have to find a decent place to stay," he was saying. "It's Monday night; the hotel business must be doing very well. I can't find a decent room on the ground floor."

So, off into the night he would go, every mile bringing him closer to Vegas, his search for quality lodging interrupted only by this 20-minute respite inside an oak phone booth in a hotel lobby in the Midwest.

It's probably just as well that he stopped, Redbone says, "because I've frightened about 20 or 30 people on the road so far. The longer I drive the more aggressive I get."

Redbone usually drives from gig to gig, no matter how far the jump, because of an incident back in '79.

"I used to fly many years ago, then I was in a plane crash. That dulled my appetite for flying," he says, adding wryly: "I didn't die, no."

But others did, and from that point he would travel by automobile whenever he could. He'll board a plane when he has to; last week one took him from Salt Lake City to his home in New Hope, Pa., a geographic incongruity for this man with a Southern twang and a bluesy sensibility. "Then I got back in the car and began heading out in more or less the same direction."

Speaking of Salt Lake City ...

"I was in Salt Lake City the other day for a week, and it felt like a year."

As Redbone talks in riddles and circles, with calculated injections of intentional vagueness, getting a straight answer out of him is difficult. As such, it's best just to let Leon go and enjoy his quirkiness. To just drop the subject when you ask the location of his Southern origins and he says, "Around 36 degrees."

After his last album, "Whistling in the Wind," from 1994 -- "Has it been that long? Good gracious me" -- Redbone had discussed forming a small band along the lines of Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks, who performed on the record.

But it never came to fruition.

"I've abandoned the idea," Redbone says. "Because it's a waste of money, like everything else in this world. So I refused to join the crowd. You have to pay the musicians; somebody told me that. I thought they were free."

Told that his music evokes an imagery of the plantation and mint juleps in the shade, Redbone becomes unusually reflective.

"I think that's all it really is, isn't it? It's painting something, it's you creating a mood. You can create a mood anywhere you want, with colors, noise, yelling and screaming. I myself prefer serenity, calm, peace and quiet, and I find that to be mostly in songs that are somewhat melancholy, reflective and peaceful sounding, but not depressing."

He does have an affinity for depressing songs, however. Listens to them all the time.

"It's one of my favorite pastimes. After all, music is a way of overcoming, even though it sometimes brings on great melancholy. Afterwards it's a therapeutic application, at least that's the way I look at it.

"Some or most people don't see it that way. They see it as something you buy, like hamburger, and they feel like buying the hamburger or turning the radio on. In my case, it's therapy."

Pay attention, now. This is where Redbone segues into his lost love, "a beautiful blonde. She drove me to drink. I've always been indebted to her."

Where is she now?

"I don't know. She doesn't call, she doesn't say hello, she doesn't write."

Redbone agrees with the observation that his music is simple Americana, gleaned from the late 19th and early 20th century.

"It's exactly what it is. It's rather surprising that people would have a slanted view toward it, assuming somebody does. It's almost the same thing as ... what would be a good comparison here ... of well ... let me see ... there was Judas and there was Jesus Christ, and, well, it's exactly that. It's a slice of Americana.

"It's the history of the country, such as it is, in quite a well-documented fashion in the form of shellac."

He says it began as a business.

"A lot of the people started writing songs because there was a demand for tunes to be performed, in minstrel shows, for instance. That was a big deal back in those days, right through the turn of the century and onward almost to the '20s.

"A lot of those people were from the north, out of Tin Pan Alley. They just churned them out. They wanted them to sound like this and that, and that's mostly why there's a lot of Southern flavor in a lot of this material. There had to be. It was for and inspired by minstrel shows, and, of course, the minstrel shows were based around Southern plantation extravaganzas."

Redbone plays Tin Pan Alley tunes and writes his own songs, which are as retro sounding as the old standards.

"That's because I'm 5,000 years old. I know this stuff straight."

Aside from his distinctive baritone drawl, unconventional instrumentation is the most distinguishing characteristic of Redbone's music. (Sunglasses, a bushy mustache and a hat are the most distinguishing characteristics of Redbone himself.) He incorporates violins, mandolins, steel guitars, Hawaiian guitars, clarinets, trumpets, banjos and dobros, each applied in minimalist strokes.

"It's just basically what they call novelty-type orchestration," he says. "In those days, anything under a concert band or orchestra was considered a novelty band."

In his concerts he normally performs with two other musicians, usually a pianist and clarinetist.

Redbone entered the national spotlight with a performance on "Saturday Night Live" in 1976, and achieved greater notoriety with a series of Budweiser commercials that aired in 1982 and ran for three years.

"They've moved onto frogs now -- frogs and alligators," Redbone says of Anheiser Busch, adding: "They don't call, they don't write, they don't send me letters."

It's enough to give the guy the blues, and Redbone says that's the direction his next project is leaning toward.

"I think it's what I'm best suited for."

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: Clark County Government Amphitheater, 500 S. Central Parkway. Located just north of Charleston Boulevard and west of Main Street, with access off Bonneville Avenue or Grand Central Parkway.

TICKETS: $8 in advance, $10 at the gate. Available at all Ticketmaster outlets (474-4000), the Clark County Parks and Recreation office in Sunset Park or the fifth floor office at the Clark County Government Center. Call 455-8200.

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