American Pictures album Available now

What inspired the album? 

Average people, struggling to make their dreams come through and determined not to become  victims. The title track has had a long life. I originally wrote it back in the late 1980s and played  it for Clive Davis who said it was “exceptional writing.” Many years later I revisited it and felt I  could do much better with the character development by being more specific and less cliché.  Only the second verse remains pretty much as it was originally written. 

There were a variety of other inspirations for the album. Two of the songs—“Closer to  Lewiston” and “Bulletproof”— are based on incredible short stories my high school debate  coach wrote about the lives of working people in Maine in the middle of the twentieth century.  Very Flannery-O’Connor-esque. “Keith Smerage” is based on a story a neighbor told me about  a gay kid from our town who was expelled from Harvard in 1921 as part of a secret court to rid  the campus of homosexuals. He took his life as a result and is buried in the cemetery a mile  from where I work every day. One of the songs is based on a dream I had about John F.  Kennedy. One is based on my experience speaking all over the world about philanthropy. There  are other character-driven songs that just came out of my imagination.

Who produced it? What was the recording experience like? Were there any notable collaborations?

Rob Allen produced it. There’s much more in the album liner notes. Malcolm Burn did the  original recordings. They were great, but the songs sounded bigger than the characters, and  bigger than me. I wanted to whittle them down and bring them closer, make them more  intimate. Rob Allen and I have been friends for thirty-five years. He toured with Melissa  Etheridge and then started a company building amazing hand-made guitars. He listened to the  work I did with Malcolm and knew instantly how to bring it closer. So we worked remotely for  over a year refining, adding and taking away instruments, experimenting until we felt we loved  each of the productions. Each of us were taking care of our elderly fathers while making the  album. Soozie Tyrell, who plays fiddle for Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street band played on a  bunch of the songs. She introduced me to an engineer friend, Jon Gordon, who did the final  mastering and some mixing, which was fortuitous because Rob was moving to Italy, with his 95  year-old dad! My daughter event contributed by composing the drum pat of, “Charity Town.” 

What has this album taught you? What do you want people to take away from the album?

The album taught me to take my time making a record. Don’t rush it. Get it right. The world will  still be here when you release it. 

I’d like people to take from the album a sense that we are all in this together—we all have  struggles, we all have dreams. I’d like them to relate to the characters. I’d like them to enjoy the  album as a whole piece of work — you know, take it for a long drive with the volume turned  way up. Sit down with a great pair of headphones and a cup of tea or a glass of wine and enjoy  the songs, the characters, and the love all of the musicians put into making the record.

Was there a theme you were trying to capture? A story you were trying to tell?

America. Its hopes and its dreams. Its brokenness. And a question: what are we going to do  about it? And in many ways I think America is a metaphor for the whole community of earth.