"Indeed! I can testify that I have lived and breathed this album for quite a few years trying to get it made and get it out," says a somewhat relieved and very excited Carla Olson about the June 17 release of "Americana Railroad," a collection of songs, simply put; about trains.
Olson, whose music career is as well travelled as the very tracks she has romanticized about since her days growing up in Texas, has been a train buff since her youth and has carried her enthusiasm for the rails along with her to this very day which has led to the creation of this new compilation album.
"Yeah, I was brought up in Austin, TX where the trains came through the center of town which was my neighborhood when I was a little child and also when I was a teenager," she began. "We really only had freight trains that came through Austin until, I don't know, maybe late '60s or early '70s. Then there was a passenger train that was called the Texas Eagle that came through but it only came through a couple of times a week; other than that, it was freight trains. When I was little, my brother and I had a Lionel Train set and would run it around the living room and put tracks together and make the little bridges and the cars and all that stuff. We lived in in Austin, near kind of the center of, town we had a fairly large house that was on a little parcel of land. We had chickens; my mother was born and raised on a ranch so, you know, she wanted to have her chickens," she said with a laugh as she described the semi-rural setting and its proximity to the rails. "So, we had our chickens until the town made us get rid of them but the trains, I could hear them at our house but also as we grew older and we would be walking home from school there'd be the train tracks between school and home and generally when we would leave school around 3 p.m. there would be one that would come through about 3:15 p.m. and where the tracks were, we had to cross over them to get from school to our house and if you were lucky, the conductor would wave to you or blow the horn. We were lucky that we had that in central Austin; it's kind of one of those things that you have a childhood memory of, putting pennies on the track so the train could mash them up. The power and speed of the trains; you'd wonder about where they were going and where were they coming from and then as you grew older you began more to wonder about getting out and going away from where you are from; not necessarily for a good or bad reason but just for the adventure of it. The trains would always blow the whistle because there were no guard gates. We didn't have that; we didn't have any gates that went down over the street so we just had to be careful because all we had were just the signals."
Olson took that mental wanderlust and moved out to Los Angeles circa 1978 where she formed the Textones with Kathy Valentine, Markus Cuff and David Provost where they quickly became fixtures in the L.A. New Wave and Punk scene but to hear Carla tell it; they really weren't that, "Punk."
"You know, I or we kind of got looped into that genre because I was from Austin in a time where there weren't any punk bands. The first band that I was playing in with Kathy Valentine; we had a band called The Violators, which seems like a punk band but we were not a punk band. We were doing Rolling Stones covers and rock covers; I mean, we worked in some punk songs but we just did a couple and I mean like one or two but it was mostly rock and roll. We had two guitars, bass, drums and you know we were loud, real loud but she and I came out to L.A. and started a band called the Textones and we ended up playing together for a couple of years after we left Texas and then she got an audition with the Go-Go's; their bass player got sick and the rest is history. So. I'm real proud of her; she's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and she's a diligent person, she's a very good mother and she's a fantastic musician and I'm proud to have been part of that moment. Yeah, we actually also played the Chestnut Cabaret in Philly and then we played at Irving Plaza in the city and once we played at Rockefeller Center for a charity event for African famine relief. We played there with Joan Jett and Darlene Love, Paul Shaffer and we had all kinds of crazy fun. We had a great time though, some really good times up that way and hope to get up there again."
Olson speaks no less than five languages and utilizes her communication skills working with other musicians as a player, performer and producer but how did all of those roles "Translate" into the concept that would become "Americana Railroad?"
"Well, we have two songs by Gene Clark of The Byrds and a song by Stephen McCarthy from the Long Ryders and one of the Gene Clark songs is a song that he wrote with Bernie Leadon from the Eagles; it was on the first Eagles album and it's called "Train Leaves Here This Morning" and then another song that he wrote called "I Remember The Railroad," which was not commercially released by Gene and it's a beautiful song and I always wanted to perform it and before Gene passed away in the early '90s we had talked about doing some kind of railroad project that would incorporate several of his railroad songs; he was a big railroad enthusiast. Then when Stephen McCarthy was in the Long Ryders, he had written a song called "Here Comes That Train Again" which we always loved hearing those guys play and it was on their first album in the '80s. My plan was to do a whole album of songs that related in some way, either metaphorically or not, about railroads or trains; so, that's how it came about. I guess somewhere around in the early 1990s or around then but we just didn't get it done. I mean, we were trying to get someone to help us finance it and back then there were not a lot of labels that wanted to do compilation albums; they were not wanting to do singer-songwriter, they wanted to do hard rock bands, They didn't really come to the table on this one like we had hoped and so we just finally self-financed it and got it together and tried to find someone that wanted to put it out. We were successful in finding BMG, which is a label based in Germany, based in Berlin and they have offices in America and they're also a publisher so, they were into it; what can I say? It's been great and we're glad that somebody saw the idea as a viable."
Olson has worked with or in conjunction multiple industry heavyweights over the years; names like Mick Taylor, Percy Sledge, Ry Cooder, Don Henley, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan only scratch the surface of the list. So; how were the artists chosen for "Americana Railroad?"
"I think my husband and I found that those three or four songs; they were the start of it and we had the three; well, the two Gene Clark songs and the one Stephen McCarthy song and then we kind of cobbled together our favorite songs. Songs like "Mystery Train;" we're friends with Rocky Burnette who is Johnny Burnette's son from The Rock and Roll Trio and of course he used to perform that one when he was in his youth and there were other songs on the list; a particular one that comes to mind is the standard or one you could call a standard by Jimmie Rodgers called "Waiting On A Train" and that one was pitched to us by BMG, by the label. We also were talking to a couple of people like the guys from, do you remember the band I don't know you might remember them; they were called Rank and File? They were the Kinman brothers from California, Tony and Chip Kinman and they had this kind of pop band but they had a little western flair to it so they called them "Cow-Punk" and they had a song called "The Conductor Wore Black" and it was a metaphor for all of the bad things you did in life; you certainly ain't going to heaven so you know that one is like a standard in a way. I mean, listen to it and tell me what you think and then I've been working a lot with some local artists like Robert Rex Waller; a member of the band called the Icy Hots who are along the lines of a Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks. They are kind of country, bluegrassy, folksy, funny guys and he recorded the song "Midnight Rail," the Steve Young song and that's one that should be a standard if it's not already; it's such a great song about working on the railroad and not really having any roots. You know, where they were just going all of the time and it's kind of one of those songs that we always felt was a real winner for this project. Kai Clark, Gene Clark's son, recorded "Train Leaves Here This Morning" for this project and Kai was, I don't know, maybe 10, 11 or 12 years-old when his dad had recorded that as a duet; some people called it the first unplugged Americana album and Kai turned out to be most incredible singer and songwriter, guitar player and so he's on this. There's other people like Peter Case; if you know Peter's work at all you know he's kind of a troubadour, a traveling troubadour and it's just him alone with his guitar and a suitcase and he goes around the world and plays all sorts of songs. The song "This Train" is the one that Sister Rosetta Tharpe arranged. "Whiskey Train" is also a metaphor song and I recorded that song with Brian Ray who is Paul McCartney's guitar player; he's the one on the right-hand side of the stage, he's the blonde guy. We recorded that Procol Harum song which is about alcoholism, "I gotta get off this whiskey train" and Brian produced that with me singing it; I knew the song but I had never sung it I'd certainly never played it and sang it until that day that we got together and he said, "Oh yeah, we gotta do "Whiskey Train" and there's a video of that coming out somewhere around the first of June. You can catch that hopefully on one of the platforms like YouTube and stuff like that."
"I'm really hoping that the message gets out there to people through a couple of the songs from this album about the demise of rail travel," she continued. "That's the thing that we kind of have to remind people about; that trains are a part of the American fabric. This is what got America up and moving; you know? We were in a one-horse town situation and trains and the railroad got people moving across the country. So, it's real; if you are on a plane; how much you really see of America? You don't see a lot but if you're on a train, you're looking out the window and you're seeing much more. Well, without getting too sad, you'd see what was the Dust Bowl and areas in the Midwest and you'd see those things and it's more of a vibe. People would see so much more of this country if they were able to travel by train. My husband's grandmother; his mother just turned 99 in January and she's doing fantastically but her mother was from Chicago and they used to take the Pullman from Chicago to Florida down to Boca Raton and stay down there during the winter months. That was their mode of travel and she would tell us all about it and it was fascinating how they were able to do so. I don't know how they could stand the length of time but I guess they did and that's just what it was but then again, I come from a family where my mother rode a horse to school (laughs) and it was a mile-and-a-half ride of course so..."
So, with the release just days ago; are there any plans to do a promotional tour or series of shows?
"We were toying with possibly setting up a whistle stop type of thing with stops at places like Penn Station; maybe do something like that but because of Covid it was really kind of put on hold because of the lack of ability to go anywhere. So, I'm not really sure what we're going to do but there's some things we are watching that seem like there's some light at the end of the tunnel and maybe we'll get up that way and do at least a few shows. Some people do live up there that are on this album but a lot of people are living in California and a few other places along the way. t We could try to do some kind of a whistle stop thing; I don't know if you're familiar with Dave Alvin's past but he used to have this band called The Guilty Women and it was just a kind of a combination of of women musicians and him or men and him and he wrote this song called "Southwest Chief" which was written about one of his whistle stop tours and he would go all the way from Chicago and back and take handful of musicians with him and they would get on and off at the train stations and play a couple songs for people while it was boarding; we might do something like that. It's a neat concept; either that or we might also just try to see if we can't put something together; maybe something like the city wineries or someplace where you know they have a US small enough they have a small room and a large so that possibly do something really intimate listening rooms. A lot of them are gone now; when I was with my buddy Todd we did a bunch of listening rooms up in the Northeast. We played in Ardmore, PA at a nice little listening room and that's not there anymore unfortunately and a couple of places in Bethlehem and over in Easton, PA. We would love to do shows up that way and hopefully we'll get back out on the road. My buddy Todd Wolfe played slide on "Midnight Rail" so you know there might be a few of us that might want to get out and stretch our legs and do the road thing again; I certainly would."
"Americana Railroad" is fresh out of the roundhouse, so; does Olson have any plans formulated beyond that?
"I’m going in the studio to listen to a couple of mixes, I’m doing an album with Stephen McCarthy; we're doing a duets album and it's some rock stuff and it's some country stuff and you know it's really fun; I'm busy; what can I say? I also have a new single out, a version of The Who's "I Can See For Miles" for a project called Women Sing The Who and it's going towards; I don't know if you're familiar with The Who's charity Teen Cancer America but they are trying to outfit American hospitals with cancer wards for teenagers so that they don't go wacky. I mean hospitals have old people sections, maternity sections and infant sections but they don't have anything for teenagers. So, that's the charity; they're on the road right now actually. I don't if they're coming up your way but yeah they've been doing some shows and they're doing it for the benefit of this Teen Cancer America."
To discover more about Carla Olson and/or "Americana Railroad." please visit https://carlaolson.com/home.html.
That's it for this week! Please continue to support live and original music and until next week....ROCK ON!
