Interview with:  Dameon Allensworth of Briar Branch Road

Let’s start off with the basics. Tell us who you are, where you are from, old friends, favorite drinks, entertainer, who inspires you to greatness, family, hometown, song, book, we will find you in your spare time doing… what?

Right now, the band is basically centered in the Oklahoma City Area.  I’m from Rattan, OK, and  grew up with lead guitar player Aaron Wall.   The bass player, Kye Rabon is from Hugo, OK, (Interestingly, Kye’s father is Mike Rabon of The Five Americans, a nationally known band from the 60s).   Fiddle player Will Oldfield is from Burbank, OK, and drummer Andy Finnefrock is from Tulsa. 

As for favorite drinks, for the most part the band enjoys beer and shots of whiskey or Jager.  No tequila for any of us.  I particularly like Scotch (Balvenie; Glenmorangie), but just about any whiskey will do (Jack Daniels and W.L Wellers is good).  I don’t care to mix it with anything sweet; on the rocks or with soda water will do fine.  Most of the rest of the guys don’t focus too much on liquor, and seem to enjoy drinking beer the most.  Everyone but Aaron likes a nice glass of iced tea.

Our whole band really likes the Drive-By Truckers.  They have a fantastic rock sound, but any songwriter fan would appreciate their lyrics.  Even though I have a different style of writing, I continue to find influence in the writing of Townes Van Zandt.  I will always be a huge Waylon Jennings fan. 

I like far too many songs to pick a favorite, but my favorite movie hands down is Lonesome Dove.  A lot of people like to argue that it’s a mini-series, but that’s splitting hairs.  I have the DVD, and it has actors and a script.  It’s a movie.  It was aired as a mini-series. 

As for books, I really like to read non-fiction.  I was sociology major, and books on that subject as well as philosophy, history, or politics are my favorites.  I would suggest reading “Guns, Germs and Steel,”  “Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches,” and “The Wisdom of Insecurity” (which in a subtle way, inspired the song “Insecurity”).    

We don’t really seem to have too much spare time.   

How did you get started? When? Why?

I have always loved music and picked up guitar in about my second year of college.  I had Aaron show me a few chords so that I could play Merle Haggard’s  “Sing Me Back Home.” As soon as I learned those first few chords, I started writing my own material.  About 4 years ago, some friends of mine encouraged me to play in a club at Ada.  In fact, they just booked the show and told me when I was supposed to be there.  I was a little hesitant, but I played it and haven’t looked back. I asked my old friend Aaron to sit in on a few of those early acoustic shows.  He was living with Andy Finnefrock at the time who had some drums set up in the house.  At some point, about a year later, we realized that we could put together my songs and start playing a few venues.  We had several bass players before running in to Kye one night after opening for Jason Boland.   A short while later, I met Will Oldfield in law school and learned that he played fiddle.  Eventually, he started playing with us full-time.  In less than a year, we had our first album out.  We’ve been a band now for around 3 years.  More recently, we’ve added Rick Fogarty (formerly of the Burtschi Brother’s) on steel guitar. 

What are some of the toughest challenges you’ve faced to this point?

The toughest thing is getting our name out there.  We’ve done a good job, but we continue to work on that.  It takes time.  Without having a respected reputation, it can be very difficult to book new venues and have other people in the industry (or fans for that matter) take you seriously.  It’s part of paying your dues.

It can also be very hard to keep a band together and focused on the same goals at the same time.  I see a lot of talented people who can’t keep it together long enough to go anywhere.  We’ve been fortunate with that.  Being in a band is a great deal of work, and the payoff for some isn’t fast enough or fulfilling enough.  We’re definitely a group of guys who love music enough to sacrifice our time, energy, and egos for the sake of performing.  

Songwriting, do you write most of the songs, or do you write with others? If so, who? What inspires you to write? What was your first original song preformed by you? What qualities/abilities do you feel make a good songwriter? Is there a magic combination of things that make a song “good” versus just “taking up air”?

I write all of our songs.  I really don’t write with others.  I need my own time and thoughts to be creative for the most part.  On the last album, I did have one co-write with Kyle Sweet, but it wasn’t a typical co-write situation.  I had emailed him the lyrics to the song, and having never heard the actual melody, he wrote back with another verse.  I really liked his ideas, but it didn’t fit the meter.  I reworked some of the lyrics (and some I kept verbatim) and turned it into a bridge.  The result was “Trucker’s Lament” which is on our new album.  I really like the lyrics to that song.  

The first original song that I performed as called “Ode to the Women.”  It was this painfully silly song that everyone would always request at parties and laugh about.  I think a lot of songwriters write funny songs starting out because it’s sort of a safe way to introduce your work.  If you play your friends a serious song, there’s this fear of rejection.  Playing a funny song is safe because every one is laughing and not really critiquing lyrics or melody. 

I have my own criteria for a good song, but this portion of the question is subjective.  Thank god not everyone writes songs that sound the same.  If you like, it’s good.  However, for me, the lyrics make it or break it as far as my ability to enjoy a song.  It still needs a good melody, but melody alone won’t cut it.   Good lyrics by themselves are just poems, and good melodies by themselves are simply music.  It takes both to make a good song for me.  I really admire songwriters who are good at both.  I think James McMurtry is one of the best at putting the two together.  Bruce Springsteen is good at this. There are numerous others that I could cite. 

Again, it’s a personal preference, but my favorite songwriters really have the ability to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and capture how they feel.  Steve Earle can write about killing another man for no apparent reason, fighting in Iraq, or joining the Taliban and really gives the listener some insight into that character’s state of mind.  It’s doesn’t necessarily provide justification or approval of the character’s behavior.  It provides some understanding.  Chris Knight is good at this too. 

In playing cover songs, do you find there is a magic mix for the fans, or the venues?

I’m always looking for that mix.  I try to gauge how the crowd is feeling on each particular night, and make mental notes of what songs go over well at certain places or at certain times.  Obviously, your popularity and the amount of material you have that people are familiar with largely dictates how you use covers. 

How should cover songs be used by a new band starting out?

Cover songs should definitely be used by new bands to get the crowds attention.  It’s very hard for a crowd to get into original songs, no matter how well-written, if they’re not familiar with them.  In general, people like familiarity.  Further, playing covers gives the crowd an idea of where your musical tastes lie.  A band can use a cover to give the crowd something they already know, let that song show what kind of music inspires you, and most importantly, show the crowd how your band would play that song.  Maybe you’re a purist about that artist and you play it note for note the way they do (or did).  That’s okay too.  It says something about your band and your style, and really those are the lings that you’re wanting people to learn about.   Hopefully, they enjoy what they’ve heard and tell their friends about you.

Now, I like to play really obscure covers, but you can’t overdo this starting out because it might as well be an original as far as familiarity goes (I probably push the envelope at times with this).  However, it’s great to see people in the bar singing along to songs like Fred Eaglesmith’s “Rodeo Boy.”   Over time people come to like your shows based on your sets.  The once obscure covers become familiar and people want to hear them.

How would you define the music you create?

Untainted.

Do you play both acoustic and full band gigs? Which do you prefer, and why?

I see artists approach this question all the time by saying that they’re two different animals and that they enjoy some aspects of both of them.  That’s a good answer. Honestly, I usually enjoy the full band shows more.  I like taking an instrumental break and listening to my guys do their thing.  I like the energy and the crowd.  However, I really like acoustic shows if the atmosphere and crowd are right.  It can be a really intimate thing.  The problem for me is that when I play an acoustic guitar I like to play gently and sing ballads and songs about heartache and pain.  Many crowds don’t want to hear heavy songwriting.  It can be depressing.   

Would you take a couple of songs and tell us how, why, when, etc you wrote them? How about some you co wrote… just a couple, do you mind sharing with us the songs and how, why, when, etc... that they were co wrote and who with… what else was going on at the time?

I wrote “Jefferson Parish” obviously around the time of Hurricane Katrina.  I watched the media coverage on television, and I saw donations sites spring up all over town.  I saw people being as generous as I may ever witness with their time, money, blood, and tears, literally.  I see and hear some of the same people complain about Medicaid, welfare, and other generous social programs as part of their rote recitation of political dogma (e.g. people on welfare are lazy, or it’s not my job to take care of other folks).  I wondered where had their newly-found, not to mention short-lived, generosity come from.  I finally decided that the hurricane didn’t allow them to blame the victims.  More importantly, it was more real to them than other social problems because it was on the television constantly.  We have to see to believe.  Its impact would have been more significant if everyone in America could have witnessed the destruction in person.  I haven’t witnessed any of the destruction, but I was moved by the idea of the generous human spirit and how ideology and television help to shape it.  The religious references in the song fit better than other symbolism that I could have created to represent the notion of hypocrisy and the beauty of true generosity.

“Summer Lullaby” was written last summer while reflecting on my summers growing up. I lived on a small ranch literally in the edge of the woods in southeast Oklahoma.  Neighbors are few and far between.  We lived in a log house that was built from trees that we cut off our place (my parents still live there).  My Dad had put together an old sawmill powered by a .283 Chevy engine.  He would cut three of the sides of the trees flat and my brother and I peeled the rounded side that was left with a straightened out garden hoe.  We didn’t have central heat and air, so at night, you slept with the windows open and sometimes turned on the box fan to circulate the cool night air.  It was always coolest and freshest right after a rain (which seemed to always threaten as soon as the hay was on the ground.).  When the box fan wasn’t on, the sounds from outside were loud but peaceful.  Nature’s sounds just seem to work together in an orchestrated way.  The fireflies would float across the large field of Bermuda visible from my window, and I would watch them until I drifted away into slumber.  I miss that. 

How hard was putting your first album together? What was the biggest challenge? What do you see as the challenges of today? What studio do you use? Who does the mastering? What do you feel is adequate charge for recording a CD, for the new bands starting up…? Are videos necessary? Could an artist sell tunes on internet and never record a CD? Is the internet handling of music the new way to get music out? How do you feel about the trading of tunes that goes on behind closed doors? 

The first album was relatively easy to put together because none of us knew what we are doing as far as production went.  We recorded at Awesome Works recording and had Steve Palousek produce it.  We basically just went in and played and let him decide how everything should sound.  I had a lot of input, but I didn’t even know how to communicate what I wanted at times.  He’s very talented and made the process really smooth and easy.

The second album was much harder because I spent a great deal more time focusing on sounds and production (fortunately, I had Travis Linville producing with me who was fantastic). There are also greater expectations from the fans for this album.  There is usually not a lot of expectations from a debut album. We had gained a respectable following after the first album, and we had something to live up to.  There will never be another album like the first album.  We were in a different place and so were our fans.  Fans of the first album will always use that as their yardstick when assessing the second album.  I hope they don’t feel that we let them down. 

This album was recorded at Bell Labs in Norman, Grassland Studios in Norman, and a great deal of tracking was done at the new Dirtybird Studio opened by Travis Linville and Mike McClure. 

For the first album we used Jerry Tubb from Austin for the mastering.  He has an excellent reputation and it is well deserved.  This time we used a guy named Garret Haines with Treelady Studios, and his work is impressive as well. 

It’s hard to put my finger on a number for new bands starting up.  I’d say that ideally they would have around $10,000 give or take. 

We’ve never shot any videos.  Maybe we should?  I don’t see how they’re necessary.

I think that the internet is an invaluable tool.  I specifically feel there’s a lot of positive work that can be accomplished through Myspace.  However, I still believe that people want a hard copy of something to put in their hand, look at, and listen to.  I realize they could always burn songs off the internet onto CD, put the package is part of the experience.  More importantly, you need that tool on hand to be able to pass out to people.  You can tell them about a place to download your music, but having it there ready for them to enjoy with minimal effort seems to make more sense.

I am all for the trading, sharing, pirating, etc. of our music.  Getting it to people is the most important thing.  I’ve found that many of our fans that first heard of us through a burned copy will by a copy from the band out of a desire to support something they like.  This issue is so heavily discussed that they realize they are cutting you out of the loop. Often they’ll buy more than one copy and share it.  Even if they don’t, they come out and pay their five bucks to get in a show, they request our song from the radio station, or they tell somebody else about our music.  Either way, we get something back.

Who would you cite as your biggest musical influence? Who has influenced your life more than anyone else would? Do you have a mentor in the business? Who is the one you most wish to emulate in the business since of this profession?

As far as mentors go, Jason Boland and the Stragglers really helped us a great deal starting out with advice and friendship.  Unfortunately, we don’t get to see them much anymore.  They’ve really gotten bigger and now we stay booked most weekends and aren’t able to go catch a show. 

I really admire the business sense and hard work of Cross Canadian Ragweed.

How important is creative freedom to you, both as a writer as an artist?

It’s definitely important to me, but I think we take it for granted since we really don’t have anyone looking over our shoulder. 

What do you feel your greatest reward has been as an artist thus far?

Being able to play our original material.  Knowing that I have an outlet for the songs I write is invaluable to me.   When I write a song at home I know that it’s going somewhere if I want it to. I know that a whole lot of people are going to get to hear it, analyze it, and hopefully, enjoy it. 

What advice do you have for aspiring musicians?

We’re  still aspiring ourselves.  However, I think practice is key.  You have to do it all the time starting out.  When we first started we’d learn a song and play it together once and think we could take it to the stage.   You have to make that song second nature and you have to be honest in your assessments with where you’re at talent-wise and more importantly, band-wise.  You can have all kinds of individual talent, but you have to perform as a unit.   

 What were some of the toughest challenges that you faced when you first started out?

Convincing people we were a legitimate band.  Everybody knows somebody who has this little band and, oh yeah, they’re really good and you should book them.  It takes time to convince your peers  that you stand out from all of those bands.  Respect has to be earned, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

How do you feel that the music market in Texas or Kansas or Arkansas differs from Oklahoma; or Nashville?

I haven’t played in all of those markets enough to have a relevant opinion.

Do you/have you ever found it trying at times to try and balance both your personal life, and career? Wish to share a thing or two?

It has been a nightmare.  You really have to make a lot of sacrifices to play music. For some people it’s worth it, for others it isn’t.  You have to decide whether it’s for you.  We’ve all sacrificed our time, money, and relationships in some capacity to be able to do this.  Sometimes we made sacrifices that we didn’t know we were making.  I don’t want to get into specifics, but it’s trying for any band. 

A lot of artists/bands starting out say…”Nashville, or East/West Coast Music sucks”….  What is the difference between Nashville and Oklahoma music? Or is it the level of maturity, and understanding that sort of hits when one realizes “it is about money, because I need to pay bills??”. Your opinion please???

I don’t pass judgment on the people who shape their music to make money.  We live in the type of society where success equals profit.  However, the odds are that I won’t like their music.  It seems to like passion and honesty.  I can, however, appreciate and understand the business side of things.  I have been to Nashville and have seen a small part of the business side of things.  I think that’s really the difference between Oklahoma and Nashville music.  Here, we’re really not that influenced by the business side of things in the beginning.  If you want to make an album here, you figure out how to finance it, how you want to produce it, and you go make it.  You try to get it some radio play and you tour to support it.  There’s not a great deal of advice or pressure when you’re starting out. There’s just not that many music business entities to have a controlling influence on artists that stay in Oklahoma.

In Nashville, everyone is cognizant of the business side of things in some capacity.  They know they need something that has a successful track record.  They need their music and themselves to be a “good investment” for somebody else in order to get started.    It seems to permeate everything to the point that people are influenced by the business side without perhaps being aware of it.  That being said, I know some good songwriters in Nashville, and there’ s good music there too.  It’s just generally not on CMT.   

Living in Oklahoma, is there something special about Oklahoma and being from it that has helped or hurt your career? Is Oklahoma music and its perspective different, if so, how?

I think being from Oklahoma has largely shaped my approach to music and songwriting.  This state has such a rich and interesting history of outlaws and Indians, and my roots include both.  There are great stories here to draw upon as a songwriter.  There are great characters here to draw upon as well. 

Also, it seems that almost every rural Oklahoma kid has a Led Zeppelin CD, a Waylon, Willie or Merle CD, an AC/DC CD, and something maybe a little more contemporary in their truck. We grew up listening to our parent’s classic country, but we loved the rebelliousness and the sounds of rock music.  I think this has largely shaped the sound of my generation of artists.

Who are some of the best instrumentalist, and vocalist, you have ever performed with, and why? In these areas, who would you like to perform with and have not to date?

Playing music has allowed me to share the stage with some fantastic performers.  It was a pleasure to have one of the best instrumentalists (Travis Linville) and the one of the best vocalist around (Stoney Larue) perform on our new album.  I’d love to do something with Jason Isbell instrumentally, and Emmylou Harris vocally.

What makes your music stand out? What is your "edge"?

I hope the choice of lyrics and the mix of sounds.  I don’t think we really sound like anyone else in the scene. 

Who are some folks who helped you get started that you would like to recognize... say thanks too, etc? family, friends, venues, etc?

Definitely my parents, H.F. and Janie Allensworth.  Also, John Cox, KYKC in Ada, Mark and Tammy Prentice, Kyle Sweet, and Tim O’Brien from the Red Dirt Café as well as his former staff members who continue to support us now that they’ve moved on to work at the Wormy Dog in Bricktown (Dusty, Cody, Matt).  Most importantly, we have to thank the fans.  Without them laying down their hard earned money, we wouldn’t get to do this.

What were some of the places you played around Oklahoma starting out?

Legends in Ada, The Red Dirt Café, Wormy Dog Stillwater.

Are you self managed, or is there someone helping with that? Do you do your own booking?

We’re self-managed, but Tammy Prentice handles our booking now.

How do you perceive a band to be? Is it family, business, friends, etc??? How does one work through problems that come up?

The band really is a family. Like any family you get on each other’s nerves and you argue.  At the end of the day, we’ve been through so much together that it’s hard to view it any other way.

Where have you all played? What was your best show to date?

We’ve played numerous places many of which are listed on our website.  Our best show, as far as sound goes, was probably at the Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas.  Great room.

Has the make up of the content of your music changed much over the years? If so, how?
 

I didn’t play electric guitar starting out.  Our entire first album had acoustic rhythm.  I now play electric guitar almost exclusively and that’s shaped our sound some.  I still write all of our songs on my acoustic guitar.

As far as  content, I still largely write tales of the everyman.   

 Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years? 10 years?

 Hopefully, still recording music and performing live.

 What do you think has contributed the most to your success and longevity over the past years?

I like to think people relate to us individually, and more importantly, that they relate to our songs.  Also, our passion for playing has kept us together when other bands might have given up. 

This is your call, anything you would like to add, this is your chance. Anything you wish to say to the hometown fans, the newer fans, the golden oldie fans… to the venues.. etc.

I want to thank you for taking the time to put this interview together and for supporting local music.  I want to thank each and every one of our fans, because they make playing music possible.   I want to thank everyone who took the time to read this interview to try to learn a little more about us.  I hope to see you all at a show very soon.

www.briarbranchroad.com and www.myspace.com/briarbranchroad

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