In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey

Bringing It All Back Home

184 FOLLOWING MY OWN PATH thereabouts. There was a good-sized ballroom upstairs and a great old wood bar downstairs. My kind of place. Robert had been playing with Roy Huskey and a hot mandolin and fiddle player named Jon Yudkin, so we decided to bring them down to Dallas and record a couple of nights. The best laid plans can sometimes go astray. Roy missed his plane, so we had to do Friday without him. It gave me a chance to get used to the sound of the room and for Robert to get good and loose. Saturday night was a big night. Robert’s audience was primed, and he was at his best. TheatmospherewasperfectforRobert.Ifoundoutfromsomeoneatthe bar that the place was indeed on Elm Street—the famous street in the song “Deep Elem Blues”: When you go down to Deep Elem, keep your money in your pants ’Cause those women in Deep Elem they don’t give a man a chance Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got them Deep Elem blues Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got them Deep Elem blues I think Robert might have got some of those ghosts dancing that night, and we got it all on tape. BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME PhillipDonnellyhadmovedbacktoIrelandandwashelpingtoorganize acoupleofconcertsforatelevisionseriescalled“TheSession,”bringing artistsfromNashvilleandAustintogetherwithIrishartists.Iwentover withDonEverly,JohnPrine,JackClement,GuyClark,andMartyStuart. WesharedthestagewithTheChieftains,MaryBlack,andagreatyoung band, Arcady, among others, and the mixture of American Roots music and Irish music showed how much we shared in common. After the gig we went back to our headquarters at Bloom’s Hotel and got the guitars out and started celebrating. During a break in the action , two friends I’d met before at Ballysadare—Donal Lunny and Phillip King—took me aside and told me about a project they were hatching about Irish music and its travels around the world; they were going to call it “Bringing It All Back Home.” It was going to be a documentary series funded by the BBC and RTE, and they asked me if I would be 185 BringingItAllBackHome willing to help put together some sessions to be shot in Nashville in a few months. I got in touch with Emmylou Harris, The Everly Brothers, Mark O’Connor and Ricky Skaggs, among others. In late April Phillip andDonalreturnedwithafullBBCfilmcrewheadedupbydirectorPeter Carr. We were going to be filming at Cowboy’s. First up were the Everly Brothers. Don had been enthusiastic when I first mentioned the project in Dublin. He subsequently talked Phil into doing it. We were going to do “Down in the Willow Garden” with the piper Liam O’Flynn, Phillip Donnelly on acoustic guitar, and Roy Huskey on upright bass. They had originally recorded it on Songs Our Daddy Taught Us. A couple of weeks beforethesessionIhadtalkedtoDonaboutwhattheyweregoingtodo, and he mentioned another song that they had sung back in high school but had never recorded called “Don’t Let Our Sweet Love Die,” an old YorkBrothersnumber.Donsangabitofitforme,andItoldhimtowork it up with Phil. They were going to be playing in Lake Tahoe just before coming back to Nashville, so I thought they’d have time to go over both songs. The first day of filming arrived. The crew took the morning to set up. Around noon Don and Phil showed up. We got them settled in with Phillip, Liam, and Roy, and Donal said he was ready for them to run down “Willow Garden.” We were all in the control room looking at the speakers. At Jack’s there was no control room window and no video monitor. The first thing we heard was Phil coughing and clearing his throat followed by, “What key do we do this in?” So much for running thingsoverinTahoe.Wesatthroughafewfalteringstarts,morecoughing and clearing of throats. I was beginning to wonder if this was going to be a bust. Here I had organized the whole week. We had this crew over from England and Ireland. I was getting nervous. Suddenly, out of the speakers came The Everly Brothers! Down in the willow garden Where me and my true love did meet It was there we went a courting My love fell off to sleep Everyone in the room looked at everyone else. There they were. Such an unmistakably pure sound. Then came the sound of the pipes, beautifully played by Liam O’Flynn. It was the essence of the whole project, 186 FOLLOWING MY OWN PATH “BringingItAllBackHome.”ThesonghadmadeitswayoverfromIreland to Kentucky where it was handed on by Ike Everly...