Charlie Sexton Interview Part I: How To Session With Bob Dylan

By: Arlene R. Weiss

In October 2002, I was honored to interview Texas singer, songwriter, guitar virtuoso extraordinaire, the incomparable Charlie Sexton. Sexton was, at the time, taking a few hours break from his extensive and very esteemed gig as Bob Dylan’s tour guitarist, which after some three very high profile, prestigious years’ tenure from 1999 to 2002, was coming to an end, due to Charlie’s stellar and in demand forays as a producer. Also getting in the way was writing and crafting his fourth solo album, 2005’s Cruel And Gentle Things.

Charlie discussed with me at length what amounted to a monumental career and autobiographical chronicle of his music, artistry, creative work, and guitars galore, along with a generous account, (peppered with Charlie’s own numerous, personal, affectionate, and humorous anecdotes), of the many glittering artists that he has collaborated with throughout his life, including Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lucinda Williams, Tom Waits, Charlie Musselwhite, The Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood and Keith Richards, W.C. Clark, and of course, Sexton’s legendary super group, The Arc Angels.

Currently, Charlie is now pulling double duty, back since 2009 with Bob Dylan as Dylan’s touring guitarist, while still producing other artists, performing his many, “reunion” shows with The Arc Angels, writing, singing, and of course, playing guitar. Here’s a look back with Charlie Sexton at his luminous and storied career.

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Arlene R. Weiss: You’ve currently been splitting your time doing double duty, touring with Bob Dylan as his guitarist, and performing and recording your guitar work and producing a number of artists on countless creative projects; including Double Trouble, Edie Brickell, Lucinda Williams, and Doyle Bramhall II. Where does this wellspring flow of continuous and diverse creativity come from?

Charlie Sexton: I’m lucky because I get to work with people that I think are really talented; the writing side, performing, what have you. And the song gives you everything you need to know. A good song should tell you everything. On Lucinda Williams’ Essence, I started out as a guitar player on that project. I’m using Lucinda as an example. I played guitar on a few tracks on her last record, Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Then she called me about her new record, Essence, and so I began that project as one of the guitar players. The demos were amazing. The songs were great. So we did the basic tracks, then they had some things changed and hit some walls that they couldn’t get past in completing the record. So I came back in to do some more guitar work and they said, “We’re having problems finishing up the record. Maybe you’ll become the producer.” So I went in and in a matter of a couple of days, I became the producer to finish up the project.

Lucinda Williams - Essence

Arlene: Aren’t you currently working on Edie Brickell’s new album?

Charlie Sexton: She’s amazing. That came about because of a mutual friend of mine and Edie’s, who had expressed to me at one point that Edie had all these amazing songs and was looking for the right home as far as a label. So initially it started out as me saying, “Maybe you should call and talk to this person because they’re one of the good people in the industry.” I had a friend who looked at a label that I thought might be good. So that started.

Then, little by little, our mutual friend that works with her thought, “Maybe you should work with her”. So she’s given me all this material and it’s amazing. It’s like this gold mine of material that she’s been writing over the past five years or so. The album actually hasn’t even begun yet. It’s just about to. She sent some demos down. There’s one song in particular that I’m really fond of. It’s a demo of her playing guitar and singing. So I said, “Let’s do a treatment to it”, and I put a band around it, which is all me on various instruments. I sent it to her and she loved it. So we did some more work in New York on about seven songs. It was one of these lucky things where whatever I was hearing, seemed to support the song and give her something that she was hoping for.

Arlene: How do you find the time, energy, and inspirational spark for so many ongoing artistic projects?

Charlie Sexton: There’s a certain level of writing and quality of material out there, so they’re few and far between to a certain extent. I take them as they come. And I really need to love and believe in what it is, as far as both production and guitar work.

Arlene: What are your goals, as well as the creative challenges, and what you think you personally bring to the table both for yourself as an artist and for the individual artists that you work with in your two different creative roles, as both a guitarist and as a producer?

Charlie Sexton: When I’m working with other people, it’s a lot easier. Doing your own thing….obviously there’s going to be a little less objectivity when I’m writing my own songs, working on my own records, because it’s so personal, it’s so close. On the production side for other artists, I basically do anything or nothing depending on what the song is calling for. One of the main things I try to achieve when I’m doing that kind of work, is I just serve the song. If there’s something that I want to get on the record, or I think can be a cool thing to have on the record, but that doesn’t apply to the circumstance, then I don’t even force that aesthetic or that agenda. Because there’s some producers out there that make great records…but if the artist isn’t strong enough, they create their own sound, rather than the artist’s.

Arlene: What and when was the impetus for you actually wanting to become a producer, and what was the first record and artist that you actually produced?

Charlie Sexton: The funny thing about it is I was doing it for so long and I wasn’t thinking about it. I got my first guitar when I was four years old, or even younger. I used to drag it around like a wagon!

Arlene: Security blanket! What kind was it?

Charlie Sexton: Yeah, probably! My first guitar was this little gut string from Tijuana. My parents went down on my first trip to California, actually when I was two I think, and they brought back this little Mariachi guitar for me from Tijuana. I always had guitars, but I was young and my fingers didn’t work.

By the time I was about nine, there’s a few records I had that had been passed down from my mother, and I was trying to teach myself how to play guitar to these records. The records were The Dave Clark Five and The Spencer Davis Group. Before this, I had grown up on Dylan because my father loved Dylan. So Blonde On Blonde was my nursery rhyme record, or Highway 61 Revisited.

The record that I listened to the most in my little collection was Magical Mystery Tour, but it kind of scarred me for life! [Laughing] I was trying to learn guitar to that. And it’s not like The Beatles’ earlier records where you can pick up an acoustic and get the song across, because it’s all orchestra, backwards stuff, etc. It’s not like there’s one guitar part, so this is what the song is, follow and play this. It’s all overdubs, tape edits. But it’s also orchestral. George Martin’s heavily involved in that orchestral side of it. It put that orchestral sensibility in pop music into my head, without really knowing it. Then, when I was twelve or thirteen, I produced my first music. I took these friends of mine that I played with sometimes, into the studio and started doing all this stuff. Experimenting on recording, using different effects on the drums, trial and error.

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

Arlene: Did you get involved with arranging and orchestrating, as well as the whole nine yards?

Charlie Sexton: Yeah! Somebody would have me writing these songs. I’d be working on material and how it sounded and say, “How about this part or this groove?,” or “This would sound good with this groove,” doing it, not really thinking about it. Over the years, I was writing and doing demos. All along the way, I was working on other projects, working on my own records, and working behind the curtain, on production. I had meetings with producers like Glen Ballard for some project that potentially was going to happen, and I’d play guitar on these songs. But I’d also write what I wanted to hear for these songs and Glen would go, “God, the vibe you’ve got on these tracks!” It’s the sort of thing where so many artists are looking for “What is my sound?” and you’re thinking just what that sound is and how to achieve it. Then about two or three years ago, and all through this time, I had this realization that when I was nine years old in my room trying to play my guitar, listening to Magical Mystery Tour… I didn’t want to be in The Beatles…

Arlene: You wanted to be George Martin!

Charlie Sexton: Yeah! …I didn’t want to be onstage with The Beatles. I wanted to be crafting the record in the recording studio.

Arlene: The director of the whole thing!

Charlie Sexton: Yes! And that’s when I started producing more.

Arlene: So who was the first major artist that you actually produced that you can remember and the first record?

Charlie Sexton: It’s probably pretty recently.

Arlene: Double Trouble on “Been A Long Time”?

Charlie Sexton: That would probably be the first. I’ve also done a lot of little things here and there.

Arlene: First and foremost, you have garnered acclaim as a guitar virtuoso. But you are also a virtuoso on many instruments, stringed and non stringed, from Dobro to acoustic papoose to mandolin, as well as drums and the piano. How did you become proficient on such a wealth of instruments, but why did you settle on the guitar as your main instrument of choice?

Charlie Sexton: I’m not sure really. My favorite instrument is actually the piano, but I never had a piano growing up. I never took any lessons. Plus the guitar is a lot easier to drag around! [Laughs]

Arlene: I’m just having this mental picture of you trying to drag a Steinway! [Laughs]

Charlie Sexton: Exactly! Which I would if I could! I’m no genius on any of those instruments, including guitar. I play a little violin.

Arlene: Are you self taught? Do you play by ear?

Charlie Sexton: Yes. I’m not a great piano player by any means, but I know aesthetically what I want and what I don’t want. It’s the same thing with guitar. I use it as much as a texture instrument, as a full on instrument. What I mean by that, is I don’t want to hear this massive chord. I play a lot of triads on piano. And playing the drums too…. All that came from frustration when I made my first record. When I went into the recording studio that first time, I didn’t like the way it sounded. I thought, maybe I’m just no good. And at one point I realized, well maybe I’m not as bad as I think. Maybe it’s that the wrong things are being attached with this music. That’s where getting involved with engineering came in.

When I grew up was when I started playing guitar. I love guitar. But I love piano too. I wish I was like this amazing….And piano is an orchestral instrument too. Everything you need is there. You have your sub lows. You’ve got your top. There are things that you can do on piano that you can’t do on guitar, and obviously there are things you can do on guitar, that you can’t do on piano, like bent notes.

Arlene: You were endowed with a learning environment and teachers straight from legend. At only ten years old, you began performing with W.C. Clark. You spent your childhood and youth playing at the various renowned clubs in Austin. And you played with Stevie Ray and Jimmie Vaughan, Albert Collins, and Joe Ely’s band. Can you regale some of your fond memories and experiences growing up learning from such prodigious mentors, and also in a city and environment known internationally to be so nurturing to music talent, and particularly great guitar players?

Charlie Sexton: I was very fortunate, because when I was growing up, or even afterwards, people would say that the best blues record is Led Zeppelin I. And I would just laugh at that, because that was in my musical opinion, by no means the best blues record. [Laughs] My thing was I was the biggest fan of John Paul Jones, being that he was an arranger, so he brought that orchestral element. It always goes back to that orchestral thing for me.

So it’s funny, growing up learning from Jimmie, and Stevie, and W.C. And W.C., he’s more about a big band. He always had a horn player, a piano player, and he had a little more of that perspective on what a band should be and what music should be. It wasn’t strictly a guitar driven thing. The irony is that I grew up getting to hear Albert Collins or opening up for him. But yet, I was the age that I was, so instead of listening to what all the kids my age were listening to, like say, AC/DC, I was listening to the blues, rockabilly, country, Elvis, and Little Richard. I didn’t listen to much modern music up until the early 1980’s. For instance, when U2 came around or their first video got played. I saw that and thought, “There’s something going on with these guys. This is really cool!” But everything was attached with the production too. I didn’t even know it at the time. Some of my favorite records of that early era, were all produced by Steve Lillywhite, who did all the early U2 records. He also produced Sparkle In The Rain for Simple Minds.

Simple Minds - Sparkle in the Rain

Arlene: Oh yes! Simple Minds with Jim Kerr! I love that band!

Charlie Sexton: Yeah! They had this drummer….

Arlene: Remember “Alive And Kicking”?

Charlie Sexton: Yes!

Arlene: “Up On The Catwalk”, especially the live version?

Charlie Sexton: That’s the one! Drums are actually my first instrument and I just love drums. I probably love drums as much as I love piano. [Laughing]

Arlene: Simple Minds’ drummer on “Alive And Kicking”? He’s just amazing.

Charlie Sexton: That’s Mel Gaynor!

Arlene: Yes, that’s when they had Robin Clark also doing vocals, and she did the solo on the song that was so wonderful!

Charlie Sexton: Robin used another great guitar player, Carlos Alomar, who played with Bowie for years and years. That’s his wife.

Arlene: I love that song! I adore that band.

Charlie Sexton: I used Robin on a record at one point.

Arlene: You used Robin?!

Charlie Sexton: She came and sang background on one song that I did in New York one time. She’s a great singer.

Arlene: What was the very first band you were in, Charlie?

Charlie Sexton: The first band I actually joined was called The Groovemasters. It was this little blues band that would play little dives, little juke joints. The guy that was the head of the band was this guy named Randy Banks, who was actually a cool little West Texas blues songwriter. Now when I was a kid, no one would show me anything on the guitar. I just had to watch and try to figure it out on my own. But Randy came one night. We were at some studio rehearsal place. It was really late. He comes in. I’m in there playing the guitar. And he goes, [Laughing] “You know what feedback is?” And I go, “No.” And he grabs the guitar really violently from me, he turns the amp on, he hits a note, and he holds the guitar right in front of the amp and it was going waaaahhhh!!! And he goes, “That’s feedback”, gives the guitar back to me and left.

Anyway, Randy had this band. I was twelve years old and I had just left home at that time and moved to Austin. They hired me in the band because…He said “Do you play like B.B. King?” I went “Oh, a little bit.” So I could do B.B.’s songs and could do the solos, so I did it. And Randy said, “Ok, you can come play with us then.” Because he couldn’t get the B.B. thing going.

Arlene: How did you come to the attention of, and then thus begin session work as a guitarist with Ron Wood, Keith Richards, and Bob Dylan?

Charlie Sexton: Like I said, I left home when I was twelve and the reason that I left was because I knew what I was going to do. I knew I was going to make records and be a musician. And life just started for me, playing in the clubs. So I got a couple breaks. Once one person let me go up onstage and play, then another musician would too, and it sort of snowballed. I had my band and was doing a bunch of gigs.

Then by the time I was sixteen, I got signed to MCA. The first thing I did for MCA, after my signing, was Ron Wood was working on the music for a film with Chris Penn called “The Wild Life.” So they sent me to New York to do this track with Woody! Ron Wood! So we go do this track and Woody and I hit it off immediately. I think he was blown away because we knew all the same records, the blues stuff. That’s what it was, all the old blues stuff, because I was pretty well versed in it, but yet there was a massive age difference between us. So I think he was really tickled by it.

While we were cutting the songs for that film, Keith showed up. We weren’t sure whether he’d actually come or not. But he showed up. So we did that track that night, hung out. Woody said he was working on a solo record, so he goes, [Charlie kiddingly improvising a British accent], “Why don’t you stick around and help me work on my record?” I said, “Ok. Well actually I’m getting kicked out of the hotel!” He said, “Why don’t you go stay at the house?”

So I stayed for an extra week with him in New York. Then one night, we go to the studio, and Woody goes, “Hey Bob’s gonna come by later.” And I didn’t know. He didn’t say Bob who. He just said Bob. So I go, “Ok, cool, whatever.” Plus, even back then, I was all business. I was like, “Come on. Let’s get to the track. What are we going to do next? How do you want this song? What’s the beat?” I was real serious. [Laughing] I was never much a kid. I was pretty serious all along. So anyway, we’re working and all of a sudden, this guy….someone’s coming up and I go to see who it is, and it’s Bob [Dylan]! And Woody goes, “Hey Bob, this is the guy I was telling you about, Charlie.” And then Bob looks at me and he goes, “Hey….I’ve heard about you.” He’s kind of looking me over.

Arlene: That must have made you feel really honored that he had heard of you.

Charlie Sexton: Well it kind of confused me. There was already a lot of that going on, because for instance, Nick Lowe would come to Austin and he’d go, “Hey, Charlie. Yeah, I’ve heard about you.” It was sort of like a Tall Tale from Texas you know. It was like, [Charlie narrating in a deep bass southern Texas accent], “Way down South in Austin…There’s this young boy that gets up and plays the blues.” [Laughs]

Arlene: But it’s still a sense of validation from such incredible peers.

Charlie Sexton: Oh, yes. I was very honored to meet Bob. We ended up playing that night and recorded a bunch of who knows what it was, or where it went. The way I remember it, and my intention at the time was, “Ok, it’s great to meet you. Let’s record.”

© Copyright June 27, 2011 By Arlene R. Weiss-All Rights Reserved
© Copyright October 19, 2002 By Arlene R. Weiss-All Rights Reserved