Utrechts’s Nieuwsblad – 10^th February, 2001, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Rubaiyat and biblical Barabbas as blues songs

David Olney’s Story Songs, by Peter Bruyn

In reviews he is more often compared to literary writers than  songwriters. David Olney is resigned to hearing this. He admits he swallows books whole. But books and songs are two different things, he adds immediately. “And the fact that you read a lot of course doesn’t mean you’re a good songwriter.”

Yet his most recent album, the 2000 release ‘Omar’s Blues’ refers to literature without any apologies. A trio of songs inspired by the book ‘The Rubaiyat” written in the Middle Ages by Persian poet Omar Khayyam, is the leitmotiv in the dozen or so songs. “I saw the book in a store and when I opened it, the first verses of the poem read like an ancient blues song. The first four lines were perfectly 'singable'. And reading on, there were a lot of clues for songs in that poem.” And so the nearly thousand-year-old Persian poetry was remoulded into country-rock by an American.

David Olney. Of all the musical names at today’s Blue Highways festival his is probably the best known to many people there. Over the past 10 years he has toured our country several times and in 1994 he even recorded a live concert album here, ‘Live in Holland’. During the Seventies and Eighties he worked in the Nashville area, rather anonymously, with a rock band. Serious recognition only came in the Eighties when he presented himself as a modern troubadour; a singer/songwriter in the same mould as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, with whom obvious musical parallels can be drawn even though his recordings sometimes recall Springsteen in his Nebraska period.  Many songwriters limit themselves in their choice of subject to what happens in their own personal life and that is rather restrictive, according to Olney, who at 50+ has taken on the appearance of a librarian. Reading a lot certainly provides inspiration for songs with different subject matters. A musical storyteller. And the choice of characters he draws in his songs is quite remarkable. On his last cd, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ from 1999, in the song ‘1917’ he talks about a WW1 front-line soldier on a three-day pass and his visit to a Parisian prostitute; in ‘Dillinger’ he talks of the infamous American gangster of the same name from the Thirties, and in ‘The Colorado Kid’ about an obsessed lover, etc. etc.

Remarkable too is the song ‘Barabbas’ about the murderer of that name from the New Testament, who Pontius Pilate played out against Jesus. What motivates anyone to write a folksong about a biblical figure who, on top of everything else, also has the image of a ‘bad guy’?

“The story of Jesus Christ is obviously very special, but at the same time very difficult to write song lyrics about,” says the American. “What's more, the figure of Christ is surrounded by an atmosphere of perfection, which I don’t find very interesting. Really, the characters surrounding Christ are far more fascinating. Take that other persona from the New Testament, Lazarus, who was woken from the dead by Jesus. Maybe this man was ready to die and maybe he didn’t want to be  risen from the dead. Now that is an interesting topic for a song, in my opinion.”

Yes, many of his songs deal with people whose life seems to be decided by fate. How about Dillinger the gangster? Olney: “I sometimes have the impression he was a nasty piece of work from birth. In his case too the people around him are more interesting. Take his girlfriend for example, Ruby. She’s a real gangster babe and when you read the stories, she’s fated to be just that. I don’t really know how many choices people can make in their lives. I think it is important that people actually think they have a choice. But honestly, that is not really what fascinates me. People in given situations is what interests me.”

“Yes, I always have a certain amount of compassion for the characters in my songs. For instance, take the soldier and the prostitute from ‘1917’. I have very strong feelings for both of them. But to some extent I have those feelings for the less sympathetic characters as well. Like Dillinger the gangster: Even though the persona is a criminal, you can still recognise something of that villain within yourself. That is important to me.

For instance, if people believe a figure like Hitler can only exist in Germany, it would increase the likelihood of a new Hitler rising elsewhere.” Olney’s songs are miles removed from the present-day commercial Nashville tradition, where all songs seem to deal with ‘boy meets girl’. In his own life, love was never as obvious as those songs would like him to believe, says the American. There is a reason why, in 1992, he wrote this beautiful line in ‘Two Kinds of Love’: “The best love I’ve known, that’s the love I can’t have.”

“Well, there are three very strong experiences that everyone recognises, birth, love and death. But normally speaking you don’t remember a lot about your birth and once you’ve experienced death, you’re unable to write. So that leaves just the one, which is why I think so many songs deal with love. But I try to focus on different emotions …” 

Thanks to Joanna