SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR SONGWRITERS
1. What makes you write?
JL: What doesn't? To be honest, I write my best stuff when I'm miserable. I tend to throw myself into my work when things aren't going well. Friends who have known me a long time know that when the going gets tough, I disappear. Then I re-emerge with a double fistful of songs. When things are going good, I'm on the dance floor and it's hard to write out there with all those people bumping into you and stuff.
2. Who is the greatest unknown influence on your music?
JL: I grew up in a music-playing, music-loving family so this is a tough call. My Uncle Ray is a great singer and guitarist; he's one of those people who doesn't write songs, but he has a way of taking a song and making it is own. He has all his guitars down in the basement bedroom, and he plays mostly for his own enjoyment. And boy, would he get on my case if I didn't play well when we sat down to play together. On the other hand, my guitar teacher was a very glamourous, gorgeous lady who taught me Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, and Linda Ronstadt covers when I was like, seven. She wound up marrying my Uncle. When she died of breast cancer, he gave me this great sheepskin coat that was hers; I treasure that thing.
3. What is your most closeted, secret, guilty and humiliating musical pleasure?
JL: My sisters still give me hell about a 4th grade obsession with Milli Vanilli. But you know, "Blame it on the rain" would make a great shout tune.
4. What established artist made you want to write songs, and why?
JL: Loretta Lynn. I love her take-no-prisoners lyrics. Man that lady is tough as nails. Moving from the country to living in cities, I was always kind of ashamed of the skills I acquired in my backwoods subculture. Loretta Lynn showed us all that a lady could whale on that guitar and write a lyric that'd just cut you in half, then go home and can some sausage or whip up a lemon meringue pie. Anyway, when she talks she sounds just like my grandma, and I always loved how Ms. Lynn would was writing songs forty years ago that were so macho they make Toby Keith and all them rhinestone cowboys quake like sissies. I used to play along with her records when I was a kid, and I'd hear her songs and think, "I can do that. I will do that".
5. Advice for just-starting songwriters on establishing yourself as a woman in the industry?
JL: Patsy Cline said the way for a woman to suceed in country music is to keep your head up and your skirt down. Do that, and talk yourself up. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, honey-- humility gets you nowhere. Be nice to everybody. It wins you loyal friends, while it leads your enemeies to think you're a little stupid, then they underestimate you. Next time they look up, they're eatin' your dust, and beggin' for an extra spoonful.
Oh, and I been onstage since I was four and I feel like I'm still just starting out every time my boots hit the boards. So I'd much rather take advice than give it...
6. Why country?
JL: It is an extricable part of me. I can't be anything else. My family's been making this music for 200 years. This music is the soundtrack of this country; Appalachia is the backbone of this nation. And those are my people, and this is what we sound like.
7. Favorite expression?
JL: That man's so shifty he could lay flat on his back and look both ways down a well.
