Hello, My Name is Brent Loveday
Man I remember the first time I got high. It started out as a ray of sunshine, a little slice of joy in another wise miserable time of my life. I actually laughed and enjoyed myself as if life wasn’t a miserable pit of misery. All of my life worries were lifted and for once it felt like I didn’t care what the world thought of me. It was the first time in years all of the fucked up shit going on at home seemed to disappear and it was the first time in years I didn’t feel angry. I’ve always been full of fire but at this time in life I was ready to explode like a fucking time bomb.
It didn’t take long for this new found joy to simmer and start adding to the misery of my life. Highs were never as good as the first one. I became more extreme in my search for “peace” or maybe it was my search to disappear from this hell I found myself in. I started to explore with new drugs and started mixing different drugs along with alcohol in attempts to find the perfect high. Anyone who’s gone through this knows what I’m talking about and knows how dark of a place it becomes. The hopeless state of mind of having your mind and actions controlled by addiction. I’d tell myself this will be the last time only to wake up searching for my next high. Jails, prisons and many institutions became part of life. At times thoughts of suicide seemed to be the only way out. I think my fear of not being able to execute a suicide attempt properly is what actually kept me from trying.
It’s a dark fucking place being stuck in that vicious cycle. You can be amongst a thousand people and feel like no one sees you. Anyone who’s walked the streets of addiction knows the depths of misery it bestows upon its pray. The little details in ones story may vary. Ones drug of choice, ones consequence brought onto oneself, ones loss of will or whatever other miserable fucking thing that fell onto us as a result of our addiction may vary. But whatever little differences are in our stories we can all relate to the misery of living this lifestyle. For me it became clear that there were three options of how this would end for me. Death, prison or sobriety with sobriety seeming the least likely option. I had several attempts at sobriety that led to several failed attempts of sobriety. But since I wasn’t in prison (at the time) and I wasn’t dead yet, sobriety was still on the table.
I’ll be real here, something outside myself opened a door for me. I knew, for this split second, that if I did not walk through this door that I’d never get another chance at this again. Whatever I was doing to this point was fucked and wasn’t working. In some ways I had nothing to loose because whatever was on the other side of that door couldn’t possibly be any worse than the life I was living at that moment. The next couple years were a little cloudy. Some call it the pink cloud of recovery. Everything feels so good and we’re so “blessed” to be here today. After a while you come back to earth and ground your feet. This is the time you feel as if you’ve gotten your life back. This is the time you can continue on your path to explore your purpose of life on this planet. This is when the skies open and a ray of light shines through and you know today is good, not just because people are telling you things are good but because you actually feel good. It’s the memory of this very moment in sobriety that came to me when I first heard Brent Loveday & the Dirty Dollars “Hymns for the Hardened Heart”.
It’s an album full of murder, ghost love stories, chasing god, running from god and even at times finding god. “Hymns for the Hardened Heart” is a lyrical masterpiece. These lyrics put you right into the songs, as if you’re the one getting in the baby blue Cadillac Deville with the sexy redhead. Listen to Johnny Black if you want to know what it feels like to kill someone over a 1/4 sack. You’ll wake up the next morning wondering if that really happened. There are plenty of reminders in this album of our eternal connection to our loved ones, the dirty deeds we’ve done and our search for god.
A black candle, a burnt spoon that hasn’t been used for a while but still has some residue on it. Maybe a love letter, a eulogy written after loosing a parent, or both of your parents, memories of the church’s pews in the old baptist church you grew up in, hopes of recovery, relapse and then more recovery and most importantly Love. These are a few of the thoughts and emotions that come to me as I listen to the guitar on this album. The guitar is real, vulnerable and played through the soul with the amazing skills of a technician. I don’t have words to better describe the guitar playing. The only way you’re going to understand how amazing the sounds of the guitar singing on this album is to listen to it yourself. Close your eyes, get comfortable, turn it up really loud and become part of the songs.
The album artwork for “Hymns for the Hardened Heart” replicates a hymns song book you’d find in the pews of a church. The t-shirt for the album says “FOLLOW ME TO” and then there is a picture of a church and continues to say “BRENT LOVEDAY AND THE DIRTY DOLLARS”. I was wearing this shirt when I met up with Brent, his lovely wife Camille and his amazingly charismatic and on the day incredibly well behaved youngest son Brixton. It was perfect when Brent started the interview talking about the design of the shirt because that was the first thing that was on my mind.
Brent starts explaining “Yeah about your t-shirt design there and I believe it’s actually on the CD itself. I grew up in Knoxville Tennessee and I was raised in a baptist church from the time I was real little to the time I was 10 or 11 years old. In the early eighties that was our big buttons that they gave away at the big revivals. I was like I got to do it, I have to rip that off.”
I ask “So you grew up in a baptist church?”
“Absolutely, that’s why we really went hard with the design of the CD, kind of like a hymnal.”
“What’s it like growing up baptist in the south?”
“Growing up in the south was awesome. I have no complaints, it exposes you to so many different kinds of American music that you probably wouldn’t get elsewhere. Especially with the country, bluegrass and gospel. It’s really authentic because that’s where it came from.”
“Is that where you started singing?”
“You know man it’s funny…I came from not a musical family but there was always music on. No one played an instrument or was a musician but there was alway something on. Usually Elvis, classic rock, old country like Johnny Cash or Hank Williams and of course bluegrass. My family lived near Sevierville Tennessee where Dolly Parton is from. Most of my relatives on my Dad’s side lived up in the country, so we would go up there on Sundays after church and there were always bluegrass players at my Grandfathers house, that was my first exposure.”
“When did you start singing?”
“So I really decided I wanted to be a singer when I was 6 or 7 years old. I’d be in my bedroom, I had a little record player, this is embarrassing, I mean I did sing along to Elvis and stuff like that but it was really Johnny Mathis and Johnny Horton. The singer I always wanted to be was Johnny Horton. I’ll never forget, my Dad had, must’ve been a 67 Oldsmobile that was painted gold. We called it the “Gold Olds” and for whatever reason he had an 8-track player in it and Johnny Horton’s greatest hits is all we would listen to. If it wasn’t Paul Harvey it was Johnny Horton.”
And here’s the rest of the story…at this point we start talking about “Hymns for the Hardened Heart…I ask Brent how much his recovery is reflected in this album?” Brent explains how these songs were started in 2012 while he was still using. He goes and explains
“When I got sober in 2016 we bought a bunch of studio equipment and we were like we have to pay for this some how. So we were like lets to a kickstarter for the record and then we’ll finally get it finished. So we have these songs that were originally intended way back then when I was still on drugs, you know still pretty messed up and then to come back and finish from a sober perspective was really cool and I think that’s what makes it unique to go from When I was really messed up to now and you can kinda see the progress.”
“How’s your recovery going now?”
“Back on track, one day at a time…um, you know I had a slip. I had 3 1/2 years clean and I can’t even tell you what caused my slip but luckily it was a quick one, you know but it was a hard one, I’m lucky I lived through it because it’s hard drugs…that’s my demon.”
“What’s the difference in your music between the days you were using and now?”
“Tell you what man, obviously it’s better, it’s more productive. When I’m using there are long times when I’m gone and there’s just no time for writing. It’s the times you’re clean when you do your writing. Maybe you look back and assess the fucked up things you’ve seen while you’ve been getting high and been around that lifestyle and you can write about that. In a sense that’s good because it’s authentic. People tell me when they listen to it, especially drug songs from Reno that they get it. But it’s certainly not inspirational to be fucked up.”
“Do you find it hard to find things to write about when you’re sober?”
“You know, um, it’s funny you ask that…because when I got sober I did do a lot of writing. Reno Divorce released a couple EP’s and then we finally finished this. But these days, I don’t want to say I have writers block or the well is dry it’s just nothing really has inspired me lately but I know when the inspiration comes I’ll be ready for it.”
There’s definitely no lack inspiration on “Hymns for the Hardened Heart”. From the lyrics to the guitar to the supporting cast Brent is proud of this and he should be. Brent thinks this could be the best thing he’s done as a piece of work. He’s also really excited and has high praise for everyone who played on this EP.
“Your guitar work is amazing on this album.”
Brent responds with a big smile on his face “I can’t believe it’s me man. I had a lot of good people playing on this. I had the best the of the best, like Jeremy Lawton of Big Head Todd and the Monsters on the keyboards, Andy Bercaw of The Samples is playing bass and Mark William Raynes on the drums.”
“Who’s playing the lead guitar on this album?”
“I’m playing all the guitar on this except the pedal steel. It’s kinda funny on Come Down from the Come Down the rockabilly EP we did, which is rockabillyish it’s not rockabilly by any means, I got some hot shots around town that I wanted to play on it because there are some really good guitar players in this town and I just didn’t think I was capable of doing it. I sent it out to some dudes and they sent me some tracks and I just wasn’t feeling it. So same thing where I’m in Black in Bluhm Studios for a week and there’s no guitar tracks. So I just have to go down in my basement and learn to play guitar.”
“How do you push yourself to be a better guitarist?”
“Pressure, pressure man…people start giving you money on Kickstarter demanding something. Okay, it’s time to go to work.” laughs “I put my heart and soul in this one.”
There’s one song I want to ask Brent about…”Light a Candle”…I particularly love the emotions of the guitar in this song. The sexy and mysterious sounds coming from the guitar pull you into the song. The intrigue sets in as you start to explore what’s about to happen and why this candle is being lit.
“Tell me about Light a Candle”
“I do that one all the time actually, that’s always been a staple in my set. As a songwriter you have specific directions you can go. You can have a drug song, you can have a cheating song, you can have a love song or you can have a murder song. Especially in this kind of rootsy music murder ballads are pretty popular. So that was my murder ballad. It’s about a guy, you know how you light a candle because you’re thinking about them? Well in this case he’s lighting the candle for someone because they’re not going to be here anymore.”
I have one last question for Brent, it’s a little of subject but a question I always ask established musicians in the scene…“Tell me one local band I should be paying attention to…”
“Screwtape”
