Photo credit: Christy Bush, assisted by Jason Walker

Shawn Mullins: Lighting You Up

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

Shawn Mullins released his 11th studio album “Light You Up” October 12 and all I can say is WOW. Perhaps it was his exploration into co-songwriting and collaboration or perhaps it was the birth of his son, whatever motivated him he hit it out of the ballpark on this album, in particular, the first single, Light You Up. Mullins co-wrote Light You Up with his friend Chuck Cannon and while the song recalls the lyrical strength of Lullaby, the melody is even catchier and the lyrics are even more applicable to what’s going on in our relationships today. I was thrilled to talk to Mullins, not only because of his soft, gravelly Southern drawl but also because he’s such a prolific musician and puts his all into everything he does, including interviews.

High Plains Reader: Who were your influences?

Shawn Mullins: I grew up listening to, my dad had a bunch of Kris Kristofferson records and Isaac Hayes. Really good soul and R & B, a lot of deep voiced singers. Later on in high school I got into Prince and U2 and that kind of stuff. I always liked singer/songwriters you know, like I love James Taylor, always a huge James Taylor fan. And a lot of the females, too, Joni Mitchell, Carole King. So, it was all over the place. I liked good songs and I think I always saw myself as a writer and being as I’ve got the vocabulary to try and do that, I try to do it.

My first musical influence was really my grandfather. He was a professional upright bass player and he played a lot of different types of music, a lot of big band, jazz and Dixie land, all kinds of stuff. I would go see him when I was a baby and a toddler so I was around live music early on even though it wasn’t the kind of music I would end up writing. It was really energizing and really cool for a little kid to be around, you know?

HPR: Were you always into the lyrical side of things?

SM: Yeah, but naturally I’m more of a melodist. I think the gift, if I had a natural gift at songwriting, melodies come easily for me. And I was talking to this guy a couple weeks ago in an interview and I felt pompous saying what I was about to say, but I was trying to explain to him that look, I have to work really hard at the lyrics and do many revisions sometimes before they’re the way I want them to be. Melodies kind of fall in my lap. And he said “Well, it’s kind of like that for most songs, for most of us” because he wrote songs, too. But I was trying to get across is that I feel like my sense of melody might be better than most. You know, I’ve written a couple of melodies that have been heard around the world a bunch of times. I was trying to get that across without sounding like an egomaniac because I certainly don’t come at it from a place of confidence, at all. It’s more like I want to speak the truth about what the easy part is and then the lyrics, yeah, I have a hard time with the lyrics and I tend to work a lot harder on them.

HPR: I find that amazing, because your lyrics are very strong, very powerful, and I think they’re easy to understand. Maybe you do have a lot going on and of course, I’ve talked to bands where lyrically they mean one thing and people interpret another, but again, I think of you as such a powerful lyricist, you know?

SM: Oh, that’s really sweet. I appreciate that, I really do and sometimes, every now and again, one of those will fall in your lap, you know? But a lot of times you have to work it out until it says what you want it to say. The melody to Light You Up for instance, and the words, actually, to the chorus, I woke up one morning with all that just kind of playing in my head. I went and threw it down so I had it on recorder and I just assumed that I’d lifted it off a late night commercial or something without knowing it. Hopefully, that’s not what happened. But, I started singing it to some friends and they were like “Nah, I’ve never heard that, that’s really cool.’ That’s kind of being to the point of what I meant that sometimes things feel like I don’t really have to work for it but then the other stuff, you have to dig down a little further, you know?

HPR: Had you always written your own material up until “Light You Up”? Did you co-write before that? I’m not sure how that all came about.

SM: It really started in 2001. I had co-written a few songs before that but in 2001 I did this project that became the Thorns. It was myself and Matthew Sweet and Pete Droge, a three part harmony kind of singer/songwriter kind of thing. We started writing together and Glen Phillips was doing a lot of writing in that session and another guy named Marshall Altman. There were a few people involved in co-writing and I loved the community of it. Sometimes with a song, the writing part is painful for me, like it’s just hard. It’s not painful like emotionally, although sometimes it is, but it’s more like I just drive myself crazy trying to come up with the right thing.

I find it a lot of fun to do it with someone else who is quite good at one of the things that I’m not good at and I might be good at what they’re not good at and you put it together and you’ve got maybe a better song that what you could have written on your own. So, I’m a believer in that and I’ve never had a problem with co-writing and I never felt like I had to write my own songs all by myself,

Then about four years ago I had written this song with Zac Brown, “Toes”, which ended up becoming a big hit, so I thought wow, maybe I should write with more natural writers, that’s kind of fun.

HPR: A lot of your lyrics seem like they’re about failings. Not how you failed but how bad things can happen in the music industry or certain places or towns or lifestyles. Is that true?

SM: I guess it is. You know, gosh, I never thought of it that way but for some reason, I think that’s why the melodies of my songs seem to have a bit of a lilt to them. Sometimes, they bear a little more melodic than a sad song would be. Yeah, I think you’re probably right. Those are the interesting things to me, not just the failings but kind of how people recover from it, too. My last couple of records have had a lot of that on there. I would imagine some of it’s reflective of what I’ve gone through, as an artist and a songwriter, trying to figure out my place in all of it. I think there’s hope there that’s not always in the individual song. And like I said, shit man, some of my favorite songs are hopeless. I mean, Townes Van Zandt stuff, I love it, it’s some of the best stuff ever written but good God! And I’ve struggled with depression my whole life and I write a lot when I’m depressed so some of what’s happening is getting that stuff out one way or another. Yeah, I think you’re right. I think it’s about some suffering, some failings and what happens next. I might not even say what happens next but that might be fore the listener to figure out or even make it happen, you know?

HPR: Even like with “Lullaby”, which was obviously your first big hit, it’s like you laid out there what happened but you don’t resolve it, you don’t say what happens at the end. Did they get together? It was really interesting and that’s how many of your songs go.

SM: Thanks, I appreciate that. I’m not sure if I do that on purpose or I might just know when to stop. While I’m writing I might go “Okay, if I go to the chorus here that leaves them with just enough.” And you know, John Prine is really good at that. John will tell a story but he won’t necessarily spell it all out and these are the people that I’ve studied a lot. I’ve studied the masters and I want to know how to pull off what they’re pulling off on records as well as live. But yeah, I think you’re probably right and I appreciate that.

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If You Go

What: Cayamo Cruise, to Tortola, St. Croix and the Bahamas
Where: Departs from Miami
When: Feb 13-20, 2011
Info: http://www.cayamo.com