Big Al Anderson

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From ctnow.com -------------------- Rockin' Once Again --------------------

Big Al Anderson's New Album, 'Pawn Shop Guitars,' Goes Back To His Roots, Which He'll Showcase In Northampton With His New Band, The Balls

By ERIC R. DANTON Courant Rock Critic

December 31, 2006

Attention, doubters: Just because Big Al Anderson has spent the past 16 years writing country songs in Nashville doesn't mean he's forgotten how to rock.

Anderson's new album is a raucous, rollicking collection of rock 'n' roll tunes with an old-school attitude. "Pawn Shop Guitars," available online, swaggers through boogie-woogie piano riffs, scorching guitar licks and Big Al's energetic vocals on songs that already sound classic.

"No one's expecting it - they think I've gone soft or something," Anderson says with good humor by phone from Santa Fe, N.M.; he splits his time between there and Nashville. "Plus, it's got a lot of stuff NRBQ fans would love."

That's the band Anderson left in 1993 after 22 years of putting his indelible stamp as a singer, guitarist and songwriter on many of the cult-favorite group's best tunes. (NRBQ carried on without him for another decade, but recently has been inactive.)

The new album and a pair of New Year's Eve concerts tonight in Northampton, Mass., cap a busy year for Anderson, 59, a Windsor native.

March saw him play a showcase at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, to plug the major-label re-release of "After Hours," Anderson's self-issued 2005 album of balladry, smoky jazz and Western swing. He played a surprise show over the summer at Sully's Pub in Hartford, where he was accompanied by West Hartford producer and guitarist Jim Chapdelaine (who mastered and sequenced the tracks on "Pawn Shop Guitars").

Anderson also co-wrote 14 songs on Vince Gill's new four-disc, 43-track album "These Days," and played guitar on tour with the country star this fall. Gill, Anderson and an all-star band performed 27 shows in 35 days, and appeared on Don Imus' radio program and three high-profile TV shows, including "Late Night With Jay Leno."

Anderson doesn't tour much anymore, but was willing to make an exception for his friend Gill.

"I probably would have gone if I had no songs on it," Anderson says.

"That guy is an amazing guitar player, great writer, great singer and he's a great guy. He's made some amazing records in his life. That guy really matters, where a lot of country music is so disposable."

Anderson has had a fair bit of success writing country songs: He landed a top-5 country hit with Carlene Carter on "Every Little Thing" in 1993, and Gill, George Jones, Leann Rimes, Patty Loveless, Kenny Chesney and Jimmy Buffett and Tim McGraw all have recorded his tunes.

But the hard-to-find nature of good country music is part of the reason Anderson wanted to make a rock album. Also, he says, it just seemed time.

"After `After Hours' I was really ready to rock, and I just really haven't had time to make records or think about it, so I just took the time to do it, finally," he says.

Anderson chose 14 songs from what he says is a catalog of 1,500 he has written.

"The lion's share of it is country, which I'm not," he says. "I can write it, but I don't have that vocal timbre to do it. But there's a couple hundred real rockers."

Some of the tunes have been hanging around for a while. Anderson says he wrote the blistering rocker "Have It Your Way" in Suffield in 1999, with Jeffrey Steele. And although Anderson generally doesn't write autobiographical tunes, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting he attended in Windsor Locks in the mid-'90s inspired the wry chorus on the bluesy "Poor Me."

"An old black guy said, `You know how it goes: Poor me, poor me, pour me another,'" says Anderson, who has been sober for more than 15 years.

He and his band, newly dubbed the Balls, recorded the songs in a flash - about a half-hour per tune for the basic tracks, Anderson says, plus a little time for vocal overdubs and guitar parts.

He speaks with reverence bordering on awe about his backing musicians, and no wonder: Keyboardist Reese Wynans played with Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, bassist Glenn Worf plays with Mark Knopfler and drummer Chad Cromwell has held down rhythm for Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt and Knopfler.

"Chad and Glenn are one of the baddest-ass rhythm sections," Anderson says. "I'd put them up against the Stones in a heartbeat."

The band fleshes out a Chuck Berry-style sound on "Drinkin' on the Weekend," lays back in a deep pocket on the escapist fantasy "Airstream" and lets the tension build on the roiling "Bigger Wheel."

Anderson co-wrote all the songs, which he says has been his habit for years.

"I never write by myself anymore," he says. "I should, though. I've been threatening to. It's so much easier and faster when you're writing with somebody else. If I get stuck, I tend to just go away if I can't think of anything."

Collaborating on songs has other advantages, too: Anderson barely contains his excitement when he announces during the interview that he's been writing with Phil Everly, half of the influential early rock duo the Everly Brothers.

"What a dream come true," Anderson says. "Talk about meeting a hero."

BIG AL ANDERSON & the Balls perform Dec. 31 at 7 and 10 at the Iron Horse Music Hall, 20 Center St., Northampton, Mass. Tickets are $75 and $50. Information: 800-843-8425.

Contact Eric R. Danton at edanton@courant.com. Copyright 2006, Hartford Courant

Visit Eric R. Danton's Daily Blog: http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/

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Sample Big Al's Tunes: Drinkin' on the Weekend Poor Me Bigger Wheel

Music

Songwriter Al Anderson Returns to his Roots as a Performer

by Ashley Kahn

A former guitarist with the rock group NRBQ, Al Anderson has been a Nashville songwriter since 1991.

photo Glen Rose

Morning Edition, March 21, 2006 · Music journalist Ashley Kahn talks with guitarist and songwriter Al Anderson about his new album, After Hours. Anderson has been in the music business for four decades. He has written a string of country hits for Nashville's biggest stars. Despite his success as a songwriter, Anderson says the urge to perform again has proved too strong to resist.

◄ Click the red button to play the NPR interview

Al Anderson finally strikes it after all these years
By Jon Johnson
I f there a lesson is to be learned from the career of Big Al Anderson, it's that good things can come to those who wait. In Big Al's case, however, it was necessary to wait...and wait...and wait...and wait...

At 49, Al Anderson is at the top of his game. Though still best known by many as the guitarist of the near-legendary, always-on-the-road N.R.B.Q. from 1971 until 1994, Al has proven wrong F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous assertion "There are no second acts in American lives."

Throughout the nineties - even before his departure from N.R.B.Q. - Al Anderson has made a name for himself as one of the most dependable and talented songwriters in country music today, penning hits and album tracks for the likes of Carlene Carter, The Mavericks, Hal Ketchum, Shenandoah, Jerry Lee Lewis and many, many others.

All this from a man who, by his own admission, only wrote about 40 songs in his years with N.R.B.Q.

As if fame and success as a top Nashville hired pen wasn't enough, Anderson has just released his third - and best - solo album, "Pay Before You Pump."

"This is the first good one," says Anderson. "There were no hurdles on this record. That's what I like about it."

Though many were expecting an album reflecting Anderson's more recent success in the country industry, "Pay Before You Pump" will sound instantly familiar to Anderson's longtime fans; chock-full of Anderson's distinctive guitar work, sharp wit, and a baker's dozen new songs, most of which rock as much as anything Anderson had ever previously recorded.

"I think that everybody kind of figured that I'd put overalls on and say goodbye to everything. I was ready when I did it."

The second act in Al Anderson's life began earlier in this decade when Anderson and the other members of N.R.B.Q. were asked to sing on a Carlene Carter recording session in Los Angeles.

"She came to this job and asked us to come over and sing on this song, 'I Love You Because I Want To.' And the next night she came to see us down in Long Beach, and I got to talking to her, and asked her if she wanted to write, because I was thinking about getting a [publishing] deal in Nashville. And a couple of weeks later I went out and wrote 'Every Little Thing' and 'Something Already Gone' with her. It was top five all over the world! That was like a big wake-up call."

It was during this period in the early '90's when Anderson - who had been known as a heavy drinker for several years - stopped drinking, started taking better care of himself, lost some weight and found himself in a better frame of mind than he had been in years.

He also made the decision to leave N.R.B.Q. to pursue his songwriting career - the band's first line-up change since 1974, when drummer Tom Ardolino had joined the group.

The New England-based N.R.B.Q. had been critical favorites for a quarter-century, -a band that single-handedly defined the word "eclectic."

N.R.B.Q. never played the same set twice and were known for being just as likely to perform obscure numbers by jazz composers like Sun Ra and Duke Ellington as they were likely to play "Sink the Bismarck" or "Get Rhythm," not to mention their own Beatlesque numbers (mostly written by keyboardist Terry Adams and bassist Joey Spampinato, whose younger brother Johnny has ably replaced Anderson in the group).

The critical adoration that the group enjoyed never translated into anything resembling commercial success, however.

"From the outside looking in it was [successful], but not if you look at the numbers," says Anderson, referring to the band's consistent popularity as a live act, which the group was never able to carry over into radio airplay or large record sales. "It was more of a jazz attitude than not making it on purpose."

When it came time for Anderson to record a new solo album, he recorded songs written in collaboration with the likes of John Hiatt, Craig Wiseman, Sharon Rice, Bill Lloyd. Most songs that he had been saving for himself, though "Without Your Love" had been recorded by Aaron Tippin previously and "Lonely Too Long" had been written originally for Bonnie Raitt.

"I've got one now that I know is perfect for Wynonna - and of course she'll never do it. Every time I think it's perfect for somebody it never gets done because [the songs] have to go through too many people. A lot of times the artist never even hears it. As you build yourself up in Nashville you can finally get to the point where you can go over to Wynonna's house."

There was a brief period of time a few years ago when Anderson served in both N.R.B.Q. and Carlene Carter's touring group, though he appears considerably more hesitant to tour at this point.

"I'm very reluctant to go on the road. They don't make a bunk long enough," says Anderson, referring to his height and size. "These country guys [who] leave after the show to get to the next town? Hate that!" Anderson is considering going on the road for a few weeks, however, to promote his new album. "They're trying to work up a little something for a couple of weeks."

For aspiring songwriters, Anderson offers this advice: "Go out and eat dirt with the rest of us," he says with a laugh. "Don't send tapes. You've got to start out with an open mike at the Bluebird or something. I didn't have to do that. That was one cool thing."

"I'm just glad that country got so big because Nashville is the place to be. And it's become so big that it lets cool things happen at the same time. You get to write great songs. They don't always get cut, and they don't always get cut the way you'd like. But it makes it so there's an outlet for your stuff."

"Even if it's bad country, there's so much of it that the good stuff (also) gets out."

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