INTERVIEW WITH MARC FORD
(17 September 2002. Interviewer: John Alcorn)

JA: We're looking forward to your visit on the East
Coast. It's only a
couple of weeks away. I don't know how familiar you
are with the workshops
and concerts that we've done at Trinity College. Some
of the musicians you
know and admire have been here. We started with Derek
Trucks, then we had
Gov't Mule "unplugged" in March 2000, Soulive, and
John Scofield - and
Dickey Betts was here just a couple of weeks ago.

MF: Oh great.

JA: A bunch of good guitar slingers in there, like
you!

MF: Sure, that's great.

JA: One thing that happens is some discussion of the
process behind the
music, during our first, late-afternoon set. And one
thing we're keen to
hear you talk about is songwriting. You have a new CD,
"It's about Time",
with a bunch of tunes that you've penned. You also
come out of the jamband
scene where there's a lot of improvisation. So can you
tell me a bit about
the songwriting end, and how that fits with
improvisation and jamband?

MF: Well, songwriting's tough, just from the fact that
you really don't
know which way it's coming from. I mean, it really
sneaks in at you, any
time of the day or night.You've heard people say that
they've heard things
in dreams. Except for the occasional jam that just
comes all flowing at you
at once, like it's already been written and you're
just being given the
song, you know, which always end up being the best
songs -- it's just a
matter of kinda waiting for it. You keep playing the
guitar, and you'll
get a piece of music here and there, and you save it,
and maybe you might
be able to find another piece later on to stick
together with it. Or the
same thing with lyrics. You might hear someone say one
sentence and it
sparks an idea for you. Or you watch an event go down,
or just a thought
in your head, and write it down. Sometime you can get
a page written, and
sometimes it's just a line or two. I've got scraps of
paper all over the
place. Sometimes I'll put two together, or find one
that I'd forgotten
about, or just finish whatever thought whenever it
seems to make sense.

JA: Do the lyrics tend to come after the music or
vice-versa. Or is there
no pattern -- and it's just a matter of being
receptive and patient?

MF: [Laughter] Well, it started to be more musical at
first. You know, I
was a guitar player first, really. I would have the
guitar in my hand more
than I would be thinking about writing lyrics. Now
it's really either/or -
it seems to be kinda equal. I'll just write down a
thought, or find a
guitar part. There's really no rhyme or reason to it.

JA: How much comes from introspection, thinking about
your own experience
and life, and how much is imagination and observation?
When Warren Haynes
was here, he indicated that a lot of what he writes
about he hasn't himself
done, but he has seen it around him.

MF: Right. Yeah, that's true. Pretty much all
experiences are pretty
universal. So, if I see something that's going on, I
can write about it,
but that tends to be a very sort of, I don't know,
voyeuristic point of
view. I always try to make it, well, I always try to
identify with the
situation myself, so that it's going to put feelings
into lyrics, which
really tends to be what I always get from music. I
identify it with my own
personal situation. Therefore when I see something
going on, I'll identify
it with myself, and the only way I can really speak
about how that
situation might feel is to be able to identify it
maybe with something I've
done or something similar to, and I try to make it
somewhat personal. You
can't really -- I mean, you can sort of imagine what
it might be like, but,
if it's really gonna hit home to anybody, you've
really got to own it.

JA: I guess we can say for sure that at least one of
the cuts on your new
CD, has to be personal - "Elijah".

MF: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's my first son. He
was born 13 years
ago. After he was born, I left the hospital and went
home and, just before
I fell asleep I scribbled some words down on an
envelope that was lying
around and I was playing guitar. When I woke up, I
remembered the whole
thing, all the way through. That's another one of
those things that just
sort of came to me. I wrote it in like three minutes,
music and lyrics. So,
it just came really easy, like I was given the song.

JA: It's poignant that your wife sings harmony on
vocals on that song.

MF: Yeah, it's about as sappy as it gets really
[laughter].

JA: I didn't find it sappy at all! I found "Elijah"
moving - a delicate and
moving ballad.It's my wife's favorite song on the CD,
and she doesn't know
about the circumstances. So, it speaks to people.

MF: Right. I said "sappy" kiddingly. It really is as
close to -- I mean,
it's about the most touching thing I can think of, a
father and a mother
singing a duet to their child.

JA: Another topic that comes up at these workshops is
the relation between
tradition and innovation, or influences and where you
want to go. On the
new CD, Neil Young, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd
breathe through your music
- a subtle but unmistakeable weaving of those echoes
and influences. On the
other hand, you spent several years in The Black
Crowes, and the CD seems
like a departure from The Black Crowes sound.

MF: Yes.

JA: So, anyway, there's a sort of remark/question
about tradition and
innovation, your background influences and where your
music's going.

MF: You know, there's not much innovation left, if
you're stickin' to the
pop form of music, whether it be country-western or
rock-n-roll or r&b or
any of those things. It all pretty much stems from the
blues, from the
African beats and the western European three chords
and melodies. Beyond
that, you don't ever get given a book on how to write
things, so you learn
from the people who've done it in the past. Really, I
only know how to
write a song because I've listened to other songs
being written. I'm not
trying to rewrite any book or anything. I'm just
trying to find a method to
write down some feelings or some thoughts, and to be
able to make some
melodies that are nice together. And there's really
not too many chords to
choose from, unless you're gonna get into some music
that not a lot of
people can really listen to, you know what I mean?

JA: Yeah, I'm with you!

MF: So, I like things simple, because if it's on a
simple palette, then you
can get a message straight across, rather than have it
be hidden inside of
all these fancy chords and sounds and things. A
tradition is a great thing,
it stands the test of time, it's amazing stuff, that's
why it's still
around.

JA: One of your hallmarks is live performance. Do you
foresee yourself
reworking your own songs, the way Bob Dylan does with
his, and the way you
did with the Crowes. Every time the Crowes played
"Hard to Handle", it was
an adventure.

MF: Right. Absolutely. The recorded version of a song
really is probably
just that one time you played it. You won't ever play
it the same again.
It's a sketchbook of the chords for the songs.
Depending on the night, and
depending on how things are going, or how you feel,
that song will change.
I try to really pick musicians for my band who are
capable enough on their
instruments to where they could take a left turn at
any time and just sort
of jump off a cliff and go, you know. To me, that's
where the true music
lies for the musician and for a lot of listeners who
can follow.

JA: I mentioned that Dickey Betts was here, so I want
to use that as a
springboard to ask about technique and gear. I was
remarking to a teenager,
who is a good slide player and a Dickey Betts fan,
that Dickey and you are
two of my favorite guitar players, but that in some
sense the psychology of
the playing is so different. It seems like Dickey is
sometimes trying to
subjugate his guitar -- saying "I'm gonna make you
express what I have to
say".

MF: [Laughter]

JA: In fact, the teenager remarked: "I feel you on
that. It's his bitch."!

MF: [Laughter]

JA: With you, the relationship with the guitar is so
natural, it's like
breathing, it's like you were born to do that and it's
just part of you.

MF: Yeah, when things are really going right, I
honestly don't really need
to think about it. It just sort of comes out. Maybe
that's just a gift I
was blessed with, in a way. I've sat around with
Dickey many times, and
sometimes when he's just sittin' around playing in a
room, his technique is
really sort of choppy and really un-soothing to listen
to, you know, almost
a sort of a clumsiness to it, kind of like a muscleman
approach to the
guitar. Yeah, you're right, he muscles the guitar into
doing S. I think
that I just maybe have a little more finesse about it.

JA: They're both beautiful things - they're so
different, that's all.

MF: Sure. You could take the difference between, say,
the finesse of Mick
Taylor and then the sort of absolute lack of finesse
of Neil Young, and I
love 'em both.

JA: Yeah. Neil Young can play a great solo on one
note, just hammering.

MF: Yeah. Yeah. He's just really doing a pretty good
hack job with that
guitar some of the time. The thing is, as long as
you're getting an emotion
across, it really doesn't matter how you're doing it.

JA: Now, on the gear side, you had a gold-top Les
Paul. Boy, that was a
beautiful thing to see you handling that, when I saw
you in May. What will
you playing now?

MF: I just got that from a friend's guitar shop. It
was one of the Historic
Reissues. Actually, in the same shop they had one of
the 1958 Historic
Reissues with the Burstbuckers. [A Gibson Les Paul
with special humbucker
pickups.] It was the guitar that I really wanted, but
I settled for the
gold-top. When I came back [from the tour], I decided
that if I'm gonna
spend this much money on a guitar, I'm gonna go the
extra and get the one
that I really want, so I've got a '58 Custom Shop
Historic Reissue [Gibson
Les Paul].

[S]

JA: You know, there's the whole taper scene out there.
Nick Graham, in
Nashville, seems to have all your CDs, and the Black
Crowes stuff, and he
spreads the good music. It seems [from the taper
setlists] that you're
doing a parallel series of concerts. One is material
from your new CD,
"It's about Time", and the other is based on sets of
covers, sometimes with
Chris Robinson or Craig Ross sitting in. Are these
really two different
things, or are you going to end up mixing the two
together? I love to hear
your covers, too. Your version of "Dark End of the
Street" was really deep.

MF: Yeah, that was a lot of fun, with Chris. Well, the
either/or thing
kinda comes from the fact that all of those shows come
from one place, so
it's pretty much the same audience there all the time.
So, I'll do these
runs at the Malibu Inn, 'cause Sam there, who booked
it, Sam Kouri [sp?]
has been great enough to sort of let me do my thing
there and have fun and
really break in this new band and get on my feet again
as far as singing.
For a while we were playing the stuff off the record
just to get people
familiar with it and interested in buying the record.
Then, on the other
hand, I just tend to get bored playin' it, and I've
always loved to play
covers, so we'll mix that up. I have tons more songs
to do, but the one
downside of this taping is that, if I play too many
new songs that I've
written, by the time I get around to recording them
for a record, because
of the industry and how long everything takes, they're
not really new to a
lot of the fans, because they've been listening to
them on bootlegs for so
long. I try to keep all of my new songs just out of
the picture. So I have
to go to covers to find new, refreshing, fun things to
do.

JA: How did you put The Sinners together? It seems
like Berry Oakley jr. is
always there with you, whether it's Blue Floyd or S

MF: Yeah, Berry and just have a real good sort of
simpatico thing. He's a
great, great guy. He's always there to help me out and
his voice really
works well with mine. Over the last few years I just
started lookin' around
to see who was around to play. Chris Joyner I'd known
from years ago at the
Coconut, and his band, "The Freewheelers", which was
fantastic. He and I
have always known each other and we always try to play
with each other as
much as possible. He's the only keyboard player on our
record. I just
really think he's outstanding. He has yet to tap the
well of amazing things
he can do on that piano. I keep trying to convince him
to play like he used
to. He used to take a real leading spot in his old
band. Since then,
playing back-up to so many people, he's sort of lost
his aggressiveness and
I'm trying to trying to get him back in there, you
know: "Gimme a fight
now, c'mon!" [Laughter] And the way we play together,
we can go 100 percent
at the same time and never bash into each other. It's
really amazing how we
play together, you know, it's never a fight, it's
always complementary to
each other. Gooch is a guy that I found out here in
Orange County playing
with a friend of mine who I helped out once. I sat in
for a show, and
you're always searching for a good drummer, if not for
yourself, then for
somebody else, 'cause they're tough to find. I just
knew right away that he
had a lot of great natural talent, so I've sort of
kept him around until I
was ready. These Malibu Inn shows, the main reason why
I started to do them
was just to teach these guys how to play, because you
can take any great
players on paper, but that doesn't necessarily mean
they're gonna play well
together. So we've been learning how to play together.

JA: You said that you guys never fight. I just
remember being struck, in
your May tour, how on the one hand you guys just rock,
on the other hand it
just happens, it's so natural, there's no tension.
That's an interesting
combination - to be really drivin', but it's like
water flowing, too. Very
cool.

MF: Yeah. I'm pretty lucky that way. We haven't really
spent a great deal
of time together in a confined space over months and
months. [Laughter] I'm
sure that the fighting and bickering will come! That's
inevitable with the
whole band.

JA: I understand that the New England tour is also
showcasing for labels?

MF: I haven't ever used a lot of publicity for things
that I've been able
to do, because I didn't want the record to seem like
it's been really
released yet. Once you use up your press, you're kinda
done. I've always
wanted to get the record out on a label. With the
climate of the record
industry these days, it's just so terrible that no
one's really really S.
You know, they've all gotten the music, they love it,
they say that it's
wonderful but we just don't want to touch it right
now. I think it's
getting closer, rock-n-roll music seems to be making
its way back again,
it's being more easily accepted. So a lot of labels
are showing interest.
When I finally do get it out in the stores properly,
then I can use all the
marketing tools and everything that I haven't used
yet. I've heard a lot of
rumors of people saying, "Well, I just don't think
Marc wanted to have
publicity about this record." [Laughter] Well, that's
stupid. I just didn't
want to do it with only my internet being the only
place to get it. So far
it's just been a gift for the fans, you know.

JA: If anyone can bring rock-n-roll back, it's you --
you rock AND you know
how to write songs.

MF: Thank you.

JA: I know you have to run. It's been a pleasure and
an honor. We'll
returns to these topics with you at the workshop and
concert at Trinity
College on October 2.. Thank you.

MF: I look forward to it. Bye.