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RADNEY FOSTER - THIS WORLD WE LIVE IN

“I guess it’s true that time really does slip away/You only lose the chances you don’t take.” -- Never Gonna Fly

On this third CD for Dualtone, Texas singer/songwriter Radney Foster continues to take chances. Introspective yet freewheeling, This World We Live In combines Foster’s gift for literate songwriting with the rough and tumble sound of a man who’s done battle with the complexities of life.

The set reunites him with producer Darrell Brown and engineer Niko Bolas, the team behind Foster’s critically acclaimed See What You Want To See. “Darrell and Niko are two of the most creative individuals I know,” says Foster. “And we’re like brothers, so we hold nothing back. The trust and freedom that brings to a project is immeasurable.”

After listening to the group of songs Foster had written for the record, they decided to do things a little differently. Instead of hiring the same Nashville studio musicians, they called in some friends: Waddy Wachtel and Charley Drayton (members of Keith Richard’s side project, the X-pensive Winos) along with Wallflowers’ keyboardist Rami Jaffe and legendary bassist Bob Glaub (Jackson Browne, C.S&Y, Warren Zevon). “Those guys come by the roots-rock feel pretty honest,” laughs Foster. “I knew they were great musicians, and I figured if I knew the songs well enough upfront, they could just fall in. I wanted to keep it simple. By going to Los Angeles to record, time and money were naturally limited—but it was a good limitation. Sometimes I think we do too much just because we can. Instead, we went in and cut the tracks in two days.”

The arrangements were banged out in the studio, and that live, old-school feeling comes across in the tracks. “We didn’t go in with any pre-conceived notions about how each song would sound,” says Foster. ‘We just did what best serves each song.”

“It is a very rootsy record, but the title cut is Darrell and me trying our very best to write something like Jimmy Webb or Burt Bacharach would have written in 1968,” Foster continues. “Because I love that stuff! The nice thing about doing a record from an independent perspective is that I get to have songs like ‘This World We Live In’ next to stripped down country-R&B things like ‘New Zip Code’ and roots-rock-meets-Buck Owens things like ‘Big Idea.’”

It’s not hard to pick out Foster’s influences; everything from the aforementioned Owens and Webb, to the vintage pop of the Beatles and the truth and grit of Texas troubadours Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt. Yet while you can hear those ghosts in the grooves, the collection is all Radney Foster.

This World We Live In is just the latest addition to Foster’s catalog. Though he’s been writing songs since he was seven-years-old––“Little did my mother know that it would haunt her son for the rest of his natural life,” he jokes—he first gained attention in the late 80’s as one half of Foster and Lloyd. The duo released three groundbreaking albums, yielding hits “Crazy Over You,” “Sure Thing,” “What Do You Want From Me This Time?” and “Fair Shake,” and showing a generation of youngsters that Country music could be hip without losing sight of the roots. You may have heard the famous quip about the Velvet Underground: Not a lot of people bought their records, but everyone that did started a band. The same could be said of Foster and Lloyd; many artists in Nashville claim it was the first F&L record that convinced them to move to town.

As influential as his work with Foster and Lloyd was, as a solo artist Foster has gone on to create a body of work with the same kind of impact, proving that you can have mainstream success without selling your soul. His hits––“Nobody Wins,” “Just Call Me Lonesome,” “Easier Said Than Done”––along with crowd favorites like “I’m In,” “Texas In 1880” and “Folding Money,” marry pop smarts and roots credibility with a profound insight into the human condition.

This World We Live In carries on that tradition. While his catchy melodies have made his songs radio favorites, it’s the theme found in songs like “Kindness of Strangers”—finding redemption in the unlikeliest of places—that make his songs resonate with listeners. It’s also the reason that commercial Country acts like Keith Urban, Kenny Chesney, Brooks and Dunn and Sara Evans have sought out and recorded his songs.

“Radney Foster’s songs carry enough guts, depth and soul to deliver a knock out punch to any serious listener,” says fellow Texan and co-writer Pat Green. Indeed, Foster has become sort of an older brother to the artists on the Texas music scene. He’s also written with Cory Morrow and Roger Creager for their projects and is currently producing the Randy Rogers Band, a group known for their blend of roadhouse-rock fervor and smart songwriting. Their first collaboration, RollerCoaster, led to a deal with Mercury Records, and their debut for the label is set for release this summer. His co-write with Jack Ingram on this set, “Never Gonna Fly,” is a classic piece of Lone Star songwriting, simple and true, as if it were an outtake from Guy Clark’s Old Number One.

This World We Live In's first single, “Prove Me Right,” was co-written with Stephanie Delray, another Texan and frequent collaborator of Foster’s. The song is an example of what Foster does best—for all it’s honky tonk swagger and dusty imagery, the song is about hope, pure and simple; that love is there if you can look deep enough and believe it.

And then there’s the set’s opener, “Drunk On Love.” On top of a slippery Stones-ish groove, Radney sings “Baby, take my car keys, put ‘em in your pocket, Lord knows I got no business with ‘em.” What starts as a sloshy drinking song is really a sly ode to giving in to the goofiness of love.

“The best records I’ve done are about big transitions, things that have happened in my life that made me dig around in my soul,” says Foster. This CD reflects that, and in a lot of ways, “Half of My Mistakes” is its central song––‘You can lean too hard on regrets/ But I don’t recommend it/ ‘Cause half the good things in life came from half of my mistakes.’

That’s the beauty of This World We Live In . It pinpoints those messy parts of human emotion, but in the end it’s about letting go—with the faith that the tide is going to hold you up and carry you along.

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Quotes

With old-fashioned pop hooks and country perspective, Foster sings songs of fatherly advice, foolish mistakes and long-shot gambles that pay off in ways big and, sometimes more important, small.
- Brian Mansfield, USA Today

Foster remains a top-notch tunesmith and stunning lyricist. "Drunk on Love" swaggeringly echoes early, electric-era Bob Dylan, while numerous others show what a pronounced effect he has had on contemporary country.
- Gordon Ely, Billboard

Recorded with a backing band that included members of Keith Richards' X-pensive Winos, Foster's new release is an alternately gritty and tender showcase of the singer-songwriter's talent.
- Chrissie Dickinson, Chicago Tribune

As the centerpiece and thematic heart of Radney Foster's mix of rock and reflection, "Half of My Mistakes" sounds like an instant classic, a celebration of how the missteps can lead you placesyou wouldn't have gone otherwise and make you who you are.
- Don McLeese, amazon.com

This World We Live In showcases an artist in his prime.
- Patrick Nichols, ThisIsTexasMusic.com

"New Zip Code," swings like California pop—it's absolutely first-rate songwriting, and stands along with "Big Idea" and "Drunk on Love" as the record's most enjoyable music.
- Edd Hurt, Nashville Scene

Radney Foster is a master songwriter, plain and simple.
- Jennifer Webb, about.com

Reviews

All reviews are downloadable PDF documents unless otherwise noted.

Album Credits

This World We Live In
Cut By Cut

Drunk on Love (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

I had gotten together with my friend and co-producer, Darrell Brown, to write, and we were sitting at his Wurlitzer electric piano. It was one of those bright, sunny days where you don’t feel so much like working, and we were talking about the goofiness of being in love and the lines that people are silly enough to say in a bar. He started in on that sloshy groove, and we went from there. The funny thing is that Darrell beat that dang Wurlitzer so hard he knocked the ‘C’ note completely out of tune. And yes, I have done a cowboy ballerina—on the top of the Corona bar in Acuna, Mexico (which is right across from my hometown, Del Rio, Texas). My band has pictures, but they’ve been sworn to secrecy!

Sweet and Wild (Radney Foster/Jay Clementi)

I wrote this with a friend of mine who is a very talented songwriter, and a great melody writer. We were talking about how you can be so crazy passionate in the dangerous, first part of a relationship–– making love in public places, that kind of thing. That’s what started the whole idea. Sarah Buxton, who sings backup on the song, just did the sweetest harmony. She’s just signed with Lyric Street Records, and I think she’s going to be a huge star.

The Kindness of Strangers (Radney Foster)

More than anything, this song was inspired by the writings of John Steinbeck and other writers who have the smarts to figure out that we help each other even in the most dire of circumstances. No matter how low you are, there’s always somebody who God might use as a friend to you.

Big Idea (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

This is just fun––Darrell and I thinking about Elvis and Buck Owens and Nuclear fission. We said, who really comes up with a new idea? It doesn’t come along every day, things like Mp3’s and Harry Potter. We didn’t think anybody had every applied that to a love song, so we came up with ‘I’ve got a big idea, let’s fall in love right here.’ My favorite line is the one about Mike Nesmith’s mom inventing White Out. We were thinking, ‘how in the hell are we going to work that in?’ It took us a while, and it was a real exercise in wordsmithing, but we got it done.

Half of my Mistakes (Radney Foster/Bobby Houck)

Bobby Houck is a friend of mine who is in a really cool band out of South Carolina, The Blue Dogs. The song was born out of him telling me a quote his dad used to tell him. It’s from Disraeli, the great British politician, who said ‘half of my mistakes were from being impetuous, and the half were from being reticent.’ I was so haunted by the idea that I went into my basement studio when I got home; within 20 minutes I’d written half the song. Bobby and I got together and the rest just fell into place.

New Zip Code (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown/Dennis Matoksky)

I wrote this with Darrell and Dennis Matkosky (who’s written everything from ‘Maniac’ to huge hits for LeAnn Rimes). Dennis is from Philadelphia, and he has that sense of classic Philly songwriting. We were complaining about Nashville at the time and someone said, ‘I need a new zip code,’ and that’s where it started. We included a line in the second verse—‘Maybe south side Philly or a West Texas border town’—‘cause that’s where we’re coming from.

I Won’t Lie to You (Radney Foster/Darrell Brown)

Darrell and I were thinking about country music as the complete antithesis of country-pop today. Thinking about it in terms of when Jimmy Webb was writing for Glen Campbell or when Burt Bacharach or Roy Orbison were writing songs with this sort of vocal range and melting emotion. When Jonathan Yudkin did his string parts, we said, “Think about the records Willie Mitchell produced, the Memphis strings on those old Al Green records.” That was the sound we were going for.

Prove Me Right (Radney Foster/Stephanie Delray)

Stephanie Delray is one of my favorite co-writers; she wrote several songs with me on See What You Want To See. She has a way of speaking in images, and I think that comes through here. We were thinking about our Texas roots--the things you love and the things you believe.

Fools That Dream (Radney Foster/Jay Clementi)

Jay and I have one thing in common: we both lost a brother. It was in completely different circumstances, but we were thinking about our parents. We both have kids now, and I don’t know how you get through something like that. The son my parents lost was their first child, and I don’t know how they went on to have more—to have such faith that you could risk doing it again. The only way you get through it is that you’re foolish enough to dream that you can make love work—that you can love past death.

Never Gonna Fly (Radney Foster/Jack Ingram)

Jack Ingram and I got together to write, and we were talking about the difference between what you write when you’re in your 20s, before you had children, and what you write when in your 30, when you do. When we were writing, I was remembering trying to convince my own parents that I was going to move to Nashville and be a songwriter. You know the story, ‘that idea ain’t never gonna fly.’ Luckily for me and Jack, it has. So this song is kind of about the music business in general, but also it’s an encouragement to our own children, to stretch their wings and fly.