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Ann Savoy describes Cajun music.
 

Tavis: I am pleased to welcome a pair of music greats to this program tonight. First up, 10-time Grammy winner, Linda Ronstadt. The influential singer-songwriter has sold more than 30 million albums in her career. You keep that up, you might make something of yourself one day, Linda. (Laughs)

Tavis: From her latest project, she's teamed up with an acclaimed Cajun musician, Ann Savoy. A new CD called 'Adieu False Heart,' they have done together. The disc hits stores July twenty-fifth. Linda and Ann, an honor to have you both here.

Linda Ronstadt: Thank you, it's my pleasure.

Tavis: I'll take either of you at any time, (laughs) but together, this is quite a treat.

Ronstadt: Welcome.

Tavis: Was it a treat doing it together?

Ronstadt: Well, we had a ridiculously silly amount of fun, I have to say. This project started out of a friendship that had gone on for a good 15 years, and because we're both musicians, eventually we got out guitars and began to sing in harmonies. And Ann does a lot of things professionally; she'd had a record (unintelligible) she was producing of Cajun songs.

And I sang on some of that with her. This record, however, is not a Cajun record. It's an album of a lot of traditional songs. We include a few Cajun selections, but it's not entirely Cajun.

Tavis: The title, I wanna talk about the CD in just a second, but first of all the title. 'Adieu False Heart' came from?

Ann Savoy: It's the title song of the record, and it sounded sort of old fashioned, rootsy, like Appalachian sounding, and we wanted to say by the title that this is music that's coming from a deep, old place. Like it's an old-timey project, you might say.

Tavis: How would you describe Cajun music? If someone, a creature from another planet showed up here and said Ann, what is this Cajun music?

Savoy: I'd say it's French-speaking Americans that really showed their hearts by their music. It's all sung in French, but the language isn't a barrier. You just get a sense of the feeling and what the song's about by the emotion that's in the voice. It's very, very rhythmic music. It's driving, rhythmic music.

Tavis: Yeah. I was about to ask, of two musicians, obviously, two performers, what you think it is about a song that allows it to resonate with an audience that doesn't understand what they're hearing? I mean opera; one has the same challenge, oftentimes.

Ronstadt: I think it's genetic. I think that there have just been so many generations of - well first of all, music has a deep biological resonance. Because some people...

Tavis: What do you mean by that?

Ronstadt: People with right brain damage, for instance, can dance, but they can't walk. Or people can sing, but they can't talk. People that stutter don't stutter when they sing. So it runs on an alternate neurological pathway. And it's tremendously important. It's not just ear candy or something to have, a little something pleasant to be going on in the background. People do hard work to it. They dance to it, all courtship rituals are set to music.

If you think of how much music there is behind every single minute of packaged entertainment, you'd never see a movie without a music soundtrack. You won't try to shop without it. I think it's ear pollution. I think it's horrible. I think music should be much more of an elective experience. But it's so richly biologically resonant down through the generations.

And I think there are certain, the Greeks were really on to this idea that there were these certain kinds of chords and intervals in music that evoke certain emotions or sensations. One of these days, they're gonna get people on one of those machines where they can see which part of your brain lights up (laughs) and try Dorian mode and Lydian mode. I'm waiting for the guy to do the research.

Tavis: This is like a...

Ronstadt: We gotta give them a grant.

Tavis: It's like a master class now with Linda Ronstadt, talking about the deep, deep essence of music.

Ronstadt: I will run on, I'm afraid.

Tavis: But you said something a moment ago, though, that gets my attention, Linda. It's strange, certainly unusual or different, I don't want to say bizarre, but certainly unusual, for a performer to suggest that too much music is ear pollution.

Ronstadt: It's just an assault on your senses.

Tavis: Are my ears too polluted? Did I hear you say that correctly?

Ronstadt: Well, stuff gets recorded, and everything you hear is recorded like a little tape recorder. And it's awful, you have to carry this burden of this just utterly nonsensical dreck around, or stuff that just frankly you're not interested in. There's music for when you're 12, there's music when you're 15. Hopefully the songs we've tried to choose are music with a sort of a cumulative emotional impact that you can sing.

I'm gonna be 60 this month, in July, and I like to sing about things that maybe happened to me when I was younger, or maybe happened to me when I was a middle-aged woman. Maybe things about my children; things about this guy done me wrong. Well, hey, I got even with him. (Laughs) But in the meantime, I did a lot of other things that women do, like raise children and live my life. So, these songs, sometimes you get stuck in a bubble of just romantic love.

And then you have to find a grown-up song to sing. And I think these songs are a little bit more, they move along through your life with you. The test of a truly classic song is if it can address all ages as you move along. And traditional music has a deep resonance, I think, that all of us human beings have used this for so long that these certain kinds of intervals and sounds are evocative of certain things.

Tavis: I like that definition

Ronstadt: So it's got a universal quality.

Tavis: I like that definition of a classic song. I'm gonna use that somewhere down the road. That's a very good definition, I like that.

Ronstadt: Thank you.

Tavis: Very good.

Ronstadt: I do this for a living, see?

Tavis: (Laughs) Like she doesn't know.

Ronstadt: I do music for a living.

Tavis: She ought to know what a classic song is.

Ronstadt: Well, how would I know?

Tavis: You ought to know it. At 30 million records, (laughs) you ought to know what a classic song, I shouldn't be impressed with that. You should know this.

Ronstadt: All of the songs on my records are not classic songs. (Laughs) That's why I'm trying to do this, so I can get out from under them.

Tavis: Speaking of this, Ann, Linda mentions that there are some Cajun songs on here, although it's not a Cajun CD. Talk about the eclectic mix of what's on the CD.

Savoy: Well, it's really eclectic. I think that's the perfect word for it. We have Parisian songs; we have Appalachian songs, British pop songs. 'Walk Away, Renee,' which was a great pop classic in what, the eighties?

Tavis: That was covered, yeah.

Savoy: Yeah. So, there are a couple of semi-Cajun songs, but it's not a Cajun record. But there are a lot of Louisiana musicians on it. Like after Katrina, we're trying to include as many musicians from Louisiana, just to support the people. They've had a hard blow down there, and...

Ronstadt: Plus they're the best musicians you can hire. I would never compromise on a record.

Savoy: It's brilliant.

Ronstadt: It was nice that it was that way, but they put something in the water, or there's something in the gene pool down there, the musicians are so good. Behind every tree and every blade of grass. You can't believe it. And what happens is that Louisiana's one of the places that still has a sense of regionalism. You have truly a sense of place when you're down in the heart of Cajun country, and I think that that infected this record. You have a sense of place, even though it's not strictly. Ann sang in French her whole life, see, she's (unintelligible) Cajun dance songs.

Savoy: I was excited to get to sing something in English for once. (Laughs) Because it's the first time I've done a record in English. I'm thrilled.

Ronstadt: Now I wanna sing grown-up music.

Tavis: We speak of Louisiana, of course, because Cajun country, to Linda's point, really has its roots in southern Louisiana?

Savoy: Southwest.

Tavis: Southwest.

Savoy: Yeah, southwest, very good. Yeah, it does, and so this music is really, I would call this all over, a world record. We have British music, and French from France, and.

Tavis: But whatever you call it, Ann, if you call it world music, it's fine. Or world record, to your point. Never mind what you call it. It takes, it seems to me, a certain bit of, trying to find the right word here, courage to put a record out that isn't necessarily what's at the top of the charts today. And you guys are all over the map on a record, to your point, of what's here. Why do something that has to be a bit risky, I would think?

Ronstadt: Maybe it's just unbelievably self-indulgent.

Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)

Savoy: It's either that or...

Tavis: This is what I wanted to do, so this is what I'm gonna do.

Savoy: I think that it's...

Ronstadt: We made no other concession. We really didn't.

Savoy: It's either that, or the thought that we think there are a lot of other people out there that feel like we do. That there are people out there that wanna hear this music, this music that really gets down to your heart, and it's music that isn't surface music. It's really music with depth, and a beauty in it. And we think there are other people out there longing for that in this world. And I think that was a large part of our drive to do it, besides our self-indulgence, and a love of these songs.

Ronstadt: The songs, for instance I'm an older mother, so there's one song that talks about I don't wanna die before my children grow up. I wanna see how they grow and what they become. And there's another song written by a wonderful songwriter, a British songwriter, Richard Thompson, Ann and I both admire tremendously, about what it's like to raise a daughter in this culture that is so frightening.

And when you see her coming under the shadow of harm, even if it doesn't happen, you're so worried, and you want to protect them. And you want to find just the word to say to make them understand how to make themselves safe.

Tavis: So there is a target audience, then, for a project like this.

Savoy: People who care.

Ronstadt: (Laughs) Anyone who's ever raised children...

Savoy: That's our target. There are people out there.

Ronstadt: ...will relate to this record.

Tavis: Separate and apart, Linda, from this record, you are on tour as we speak?

Ronstadt: I am. (Laughs)

Tavis: Tell me about this tour that started in January, and doesn't end until what, October or something?

Ronstadt: Well, this tour started in January, in which I do sing standards that I recorded with Nelson Riddle, plus the kind of pop hits that I had.

Tavis: I love those. That Nelson Riddle stuff is amazing.

Ronstadt: Thank you. I really enjoyed working with him.

Tavis: Yeah.

Ronstadt: And then also, like, in a few days, I have to rehearse with a Mexican band, and go sing in Albuquerque. I'm gonna sing with a mariachi show there. And then I'm singing with Ann with a totally different band. (Laughs)

Tavis: So on a nine or 10 month tour, you're doing a variety of stuff, so one might hear you sing anything, anywhere.

Ronstadt: In any language. (Laughs) I think I'm having a musical nervous breakdown.

Savoy: A little bit of everything.

Ronstadt: I will never do this to myself again. (Laughs) Never.

Tavis: To your point, though...

Savoy: Oh, come on. (Laughs)

Ronstadt: I just wanna sing with her.

Tavis: To your point, how do you stay focused on that, though? When you're on a tour, and the music sheet is changing every n the playlist is changing?

Ronstadt: My whole brain just explodes. It just hurts, and my muscles don't know what to do. And the language crafts the voice. The language determines the sound of the voice. And a lot of that, I have to n I'll go back to singing Mexican music, even though I grew up singing it, I'll go wait a minute, how did I do that? I have to remember how I did it. You have to put each thing in brick by brick.

And with Ann, I sing very quietly. It's the softest; I made my living singing high and loud. I've learned how to knock down walls. But with her, it's my softest, most whispery voice. So my voice just kind of has a nervous breakdown once in a while.

Savoy: It's more about like a buzz between two voices. It's people speaking. It's telling something, and you hear that little buzz that happens when two voices blend, rather than belting.

Tavis: Yeah. Before I let you go, let me come back to you, Ann, and ask how things are going in Louisiana. You still live in.

Savoy: I live in southwest Louisiana, three hours west of the worst disaster we had. But we did not take - it wasn't that easy out where we were. South of us, Cameron, Lake Charles, all of that got washed away totally. There's no more Holly Beach. It's gone. The things we used to know, the beach we would go to and all are gone. It's absolutely washed off the face of the Earth. It's unbelievable, the suffering people have gone through.

Tavis: You're committed to staying there, though, I assume.

Savoy: Absolutely.

Tavis: You're still there, so why?

Savoy: I love Louisiana. I think a lot of the things Linda described earlier, it's something about it. It's something in the water. It's something about the, it's a romantic place for me. I love the way the growth, the greenness, the French language, the people, the food, everything. I love the place.

Tavis: Well, whatever they're eating or drinking down there, it's working (laughs) on a variety of fronts. I don't know if it's just this show or me, but we've had a lot of guests out of New Orleans and Louisiana, music guests, over the last weeks and couple months. So you all are still doing it. The new CD, 'Adieu False Heart,' by Linda Ronstadt and Ann Savoy. Go pick it up. I'm sure you will enjoy it. Linda, an honor to meet you.

Ronstadt: My pleasure.

Tavis: And Ann, an honor to meet you. Glad to have you.

Savoy: So nice to meet you; thanks for having us.

Tavis: I enjoyed it.