Hello, and welcome to The Bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today my guest is Tamara Saviano, author of "Poets and Dreamers: My Life in Americana Music".

Thank you so much for being here.

Welcome back.

I'm happy to be here with you.

It's been a long time.

Long time Bookmark fans might remember you were my second ever guest by design because I knew you'd be wonderful and you'd help me launch the show.

So, it was fun.

I'm so glad to have you back.

And I'm really excited to talk about this book because, as the title suggests, this is a personal story as well as kind of a, history of of the genre.

Yeah.

So I always tell people it's part memoir and part oral history, because I did interview a lot of people about the rise of Americana as a genre, and it has a lot of history in it.

But I happened to be part of that history.

So, you know, there's a lot of my stories in there as well.

I really I we talked about this, I'm sure, with the last book, too, because that was the biography of Guy Clark.

But you had a close personal relationship with him, too, so, I think we can safely say you do this kind of blending of of, of nonfiction with personal history in a way that I think maybe makes it easier to read as a reader.

It just kind of draws me in because I'm just listen to somebody talk about their life.

But I'm learning something, too.

Yeah, I and I and that's very intentional, Christine, because I want it to just feel like we're having a conversation and that I'm telling stories and, I don't want it to feel too academic or too, you know, dense, I guess, is the word I'm looking for.

I always say, don't be dense.

Don't be dense when you're doing this.

Well, I can say you accomplish that.

But I do also love because because of your background in journalism and your your need for accuracy.

I love a memoir with, with like a bibliography at the back because, you did try to do some research.

You did try to nail down dates and look at newspaper articles or contemporary things to try to, you know, hone in.

Did this happen at this time?

Was I accurate in my remembering of it?

Yes, and I kept journals through all of it so I could go back and look at my journals, which were a main source material.

But then I spent an awful lot of time at the Country Music Hall of Fame archives, going through No Depression magazine and, you know, just other things that support Americana to make sure you know, that my memories in my journal were, you know, at least the right time frames.

It was a lot of fun to work on this, but yeah, I was going to say that must be kind of.

I must be a kind of fun thing to go back through your personal history and then go back through the actual history.

The history.

I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but, just dig back in to that time period.

It was.

And, you know, when I was writing the Guy Clark biography, there's two chapters in that book, that set guy in the context of Americana music.

And while I was writing those two chapters, which were the most fun for me to write on that book, I thought, oh, this is what I'm going to do next.

I need to take these two chapters and really expand it.

So I've had it in my head for a long time.

It just takes me ten years to get something done.

Well, if this is the output, I look forward to the next one in about a year.

About nine years now.

The clock already started to game when this game came out.

Yeah.

I'm going to ask you the impossible question, because maybe people who are listening or watching don't know the answer.

What is America?

You think that is an impossible question?

I quote several people in the book.

Emmylou Harris is one of my favorite, which she's like this weird music.

You know, my definition of Americana is based in roots music.

And artists that write their own songs, play their own instruments, sing.

It's not songwriters in a room writing songs for someone else.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it is.

It is very much an art form where the artist does everything and it's based in, you know, it comes from Appalachia, but it also comes, you know, from Irish roots and blues roots and, you know, it's just kind of a it's a big umbrella.

I like to say that country music is under the Americana umbrella, not the other way around, but I this is one of those terms I hope would hope for other people who are fans of this type of music.

This was a term that when I first heard it, I was like, oh yeah, that's what because I would always have a hard time describing it.

Oh well, it's like country, but it's a little more indie.

But it's a, it's kind of sometimes alternative, but there's like my brother's really into kind of indie music.

And I say I am too, but with a twang on it.

Yeah.

So this is one of those like once you, once you get it, it's like, yes, I have clicked into something that I didn't know I needed a word for, right?

And and when the American, radio charts started, the way that it started was because there were all these artists that couldn't get played on country radio.

You know, Emmylou Harris had a little run on country, but then they stopped playing her, you know, Rodney Crowell, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl King.

Speaking of the A&M connection, they couldn't get airplay on country music.

So the three guys that really made it happen, at radio started it for those people, and then it expanded from there.

And there's the, there's like, then your outlaw country could be in here.

The, the kind of Texas country could, you know it.

Yeah.

It's it's that non-mainstream.

Exactly.

It's not hitting that almost pop country sometimes radio.

Yeah.

I feel like Sirius XM has several channels that you could all call.

Oh, they do Americana.

They do they, as you mentioned, they have outlaw country, and then they have the folk channel and the Bluegrass Channel and, Chris Stapleton's channel and Willie's channel and yeah, there's a there's a lot that I think fall under the Americana umbrella and I also like the can you talk about in the book that even though this got defined as a genre in the late 90s, we can look at, of course, music from the 60s, music from before that kind of all fits in this to make a full range of of genre, right?

You know, like if you think about the Byrds and Gram Parsons and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and you know, that California Laurel Canyon stuff and, yeah, there's a lot of history to it.

It just didn't have that label back then.

And how did so how does how does a genre get created.

I mean who sits down and says we're going to call it this, we're going to make radio stations.

Yeah.

Well it doesn't usually happen that way.

But these three guys who I write about in the book, Rob Stein, Brad Paul, John Grimson, worked in radio and radio promotion, and they decided because they were lovers of this music that this music needed at home.

So the three of them got together and they talked.

The Gavin Report, which used to be a radio chart, mag, I forgot what they call it, but, you know, like a magazine that had radio charts in it.

A reporter, they talked them into starting this radio format called Americana, and then they went and found 40 plus stations around the country that agreed to play that music.

So they just made it happen.

And then five years later, the Americana music Association, which is a trade organization for people that work in this music, formed and now there was a place for artists, managers and the radio stations and the artists and festivals and record stores to kind of gather around this art.

I think as a maybe as a music fan or a music listener, we don't always think about the business of it.

Maybe we think about, yeah, I'm going to go buy a record at the record store, or I am aware of charts, but there's this whole apparatus that happens behind the scenes that gets the music in front of me that I'm not even aware of exists.

Yes, like they call it the music business for a reason.

There is a lot of business, now in Americana there.

Al Bonita, who, died several years ago, and he was John Prine's partner in the record label Oh Boy Records, and he managed John Prine.

He used to say Americana is the genre that has more, artisan sounds.

And there is some truth to that, because it's not a mainstream, really super popular, you know, most Americana artists are not making millions of dollars.

You know, they're middle class artists.

But it's grown and there is a really solid fan base, kind of a cult following, if you will.

And it's been fun also for me to watch it grow from the beginning of the radio format and the beginning of the Americana music Association to what it is now.

And I see people like Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell and Kacey Musgraves having so much success and knowing that they got their start through this little piece of the business.

I think if if there was an album, I could say that maybe people would go, oh, okay, I know what that is.

It would be related to a movie that came out in the early 2000, O brother, where Art thou?

Soundtrack kind of at the time was like, oh, that's Americana.

This is what it is.

It exploded into public consciousness.

Absolutely.

And I have a whole chapter about O brother in the book because it was, you know, early in the Americana timeline, it was the biggest thing to happen to Americana.

And nobody expected that soundtrack to just sell gazillions of copies.

And it's a great story.

And it was happening in Nashville, so I got to see it.

When I was an editor at Country Music Magazine, I got to watch the whole thing.

And, really, it's a perfect little piece of history that it kind of explains Americana.

You're right.

That was one of my favorite chapters in the I mean, I love that album.

I love that movie.

So that was really fun to read about the making of it, but also just the surprise of it.

Yes.

The kind of organic nature that it resonated with people, which is what this music is supposed to do.

It's supposed to kind of feel personal, feel kind of homegrown, so that that we as listeners can connect to some something that an artist is saying, you know, from their heart, even though some of those songs are very, very old, some of them were new, but that's, that's the beauty of this music is that it's relatable.

It's it's touching something in us.

Yeah.

And oh brother was able to touch on all of that from old to too contemporary, all wrapped up with George Clooney fake singing.

I do want to.

I do want to maybe zoom out of the the music part of it because this, as we said, this is part memoir two.

How did you come to to be at that place in Nashville?

How did you get into the music business originally?

Well, I started in radio in my hometown of Milwaukee, and I worked in mainstream country at a mainstream country station.

But this was in 1990, in the early 1990s and was before deregulation, you know, in 1996, radio was deregulated under the Telecommunications Act.

And that opened up the door for huge corporations to buy radio.

And so it's a very different landscape now.

But then radio was really local.

It had to be it was illegal not to be.

So, you know, when you work in a very it's kind of like PBS, you know, it's very about the what's going on locally.

So I had such a great education working in radio, and then I moved to Nashville and, as I was making that transition from radio to Nashville, this is just when Americana was starting, because I moved to Nashville in 95, which was the first year of the Americana chart.

So as a journalist, I, you know, met all of these people that love the same kind of music I did.

And, you know, just sort of it happened, you know, it's a it's a tight community.

And, you know, when you're, when you're in the middle of something, you're just doing it, right.

You're just working.

You're just doing your thing.

It's looking back on it.

You know, 30 years later when I was writing this book, like, I can't believe we did that.

I can't believe we did that either.

You know, it's it is really something to look back on your personal history and see how things that we as a community did, affected so many music fans.

It's it's really gratifying.

Was that a difficult transition to go from Wisconsin to Nashville?

Because those are I'm culturally, I'm sure, very different places.

Yes.

It was it was a big transition.

It was difficult.

I think in many ways it still is because I'm still a midwest girl at heart.

And I'm constantly startled by the way things are done in the South.

But I found a community of people that I absolutely love and, really dear long term friendships now.

And Nashville has been very good to me, so I can't complain about it too much.

It's I, I really like when it's, not a fish out of water story.

Exactly.

But, Southerners and Texans may be a separate category because we're we are, but we don't we don't realize the things we're doing are common until somebody comes in and says, that's not that's not a universal thing.

This.

Right.

This is not how the world is.

So I think it's good for us to have some transplants to to kind of point to this.

Yeah.

Well, and, and, and in Wisconsin, we're doing things different from other people too.

And I think that's what makes it so beautiful is that these places have their own culture.

Like, I fell in love with Texas culture the first time I came here.

And as you know, I've remained in love with it.

You know, there's really something special about Texas.

You know, it is so different from Wisconsin, but in all these ways that are just magical to me.

And I bet there's some similarities because I do love going somewhere else and and seeing all the ways that we're different.

But then there's, there's some there's some love of where we're from.

There's some that love of roots that we love.

We share that, that there's always commonalities that.

Oh, absolutely.

And, I've been taking my Texas friends to Wisconsin in the summer for tours and, you know, because they always kind of tease me about how much I love Wisconsin.

And then they see it and they get to experience it with me, and then they get it, you know, and I think, I think Wisconsinites and Texans have a lot in common.

I really do.

I do want to mention because, well, I don't talk too much about God because we have a whole book about that.

But but I do want to mention, because they are a big part of, of your life in, in, in, in the business was your relationship with Guy and your relationship with Kris Kristofferson.

How did you get how did you meet up with them and get involved with their lives and careers?

Yeah, it's really strange to look back now and realize that I had those two men in my life for so long.

I met Guy first.

I met him in 1998, because I was a music journalist.

But then Leroy Parnell, another Texan, took me to guy's house.

On April 1st, 2000, 26 years ago this month, and I interviewed Guy, and I would not smoke pot with him and I would not drink with him.

And most people caved and I did it.

And I think, you know, later I found out that guy was really impressed that he couldn't bully me into doing any of that.

And we just became friends.

And then he needed a publicist for a project, and I started working with him.

And then, you know, just one thing led to another.

And then al Bonita, who I mentioned before, who is John Prine's business partner.

He introduced me to Kristofferson.

He was putting out a record on Kris on Old Boy Records, and he called me and asked me to do PR for it.

And that's how Kris and I met, and we just hit it off immediately.

And I, ended up, you know, being in Chris's life for the, the last 20 years of his life, I worked with him.

So, a little bit of my skills and experience, a little bit of being in the right place at the right time.

The willingness, you know, to jump in with these guys.

Yeah.

I'm really grateful that I. There's that there's a real you can kind of sense the, the kinship that you had the love that you had for each other, because you don't work with somebody that long if you're if there's not something more than just do this for me, I'll do this for you.

Oh, right.

Well, you know, and when you're when you're in this music business journey and you're traveling and tour busses down the road late at night, or you're hanging out backstage waiting for the gig, or, you know, you just end up bonding over just all the time together and, and the conversations that you have.

And I, I never intended on becoming, you know, friends with Chris or Guy, but it just how can you not you know, and yeah, it was very special time in my life.

It went by so quickly.

I don't know how 20 years could have gone by that fast.

But again, very grateful that I had that time with both of them.

I would encourage people to read the guidebook if you didn't after the last interview, because all of that is in there.

But I want to I want to do don't talk about something that came after that book that we didn't get to talk about.

Was the movie the documentary that you made?

How did how did this is what I love about your story is that there's so many kind of just things.

You just go, I'll try that.

Let's do that.

How about this?

And making a movie was one of them.

Yeah.

And it was a little bit under duress.

I was just finishing the book and as you know, Christine, I, I was missed many deadlines.

It was very hard for me to finish that book.

I barely got it done.

And Texas A&M press was so kind of wait for me.

And in that last stretch, documentary filmmaker contacted Guy and wanted to do a documentary about him, and, and Guy was telling me this, and I'm like, oh, that's great.

And Guy was like, I'm not starting over with anyone else.

I've just spent the last eight years with you on this book telling you everything, and, you know, and and I was like, oh, well, I, I'm not a filmmaker.

And he goes, I'm not asking you to do a film.

I'm just telling you I'm not starting over.

And so then I felt like, oh, I better do a film.

And luckily my husband, is a video guy and understands all the technology.

So, yeah, we made a film.

Took a six years, but we made a film and got since he's basic to voice the character of Suzanne.

Yeah, it's it's it's narrated in Susanna's voice by Susie Space.

I get Susanna's point of view, and it's a and it's a film about guy Susanna and Townes Van Zandt.

Really?

And, unfortunately, it was supposed to debut at the 2020 South by Southwest, and then the pandemic hit.

So we ended up debuting at that 2021 virtual film festival.

You know, it all worked out.

The film is out there in the world.

I'm so happy that we did it, but I was not planning on doing a film and we did well.

It's something to be proud of because it's a it's a wonderful it's a wonderful film, but it's I can't imagine the, the feeling that must it's, it's amazing that that you, you made a movie.

You just you're.

This is what I wanted to I wanted to say if there's a theme or a lesson that I took from this book and I hope other people do, is that you just say yes to things and you do try or you make your own opportunity if no one's giving you one.

And I think that's a wonderful thing to do.

I think everyone should do it.

I think women especially should just say yes, try it.

Who knows what?

You could write several books and make a movie.

I mean, you never know what's going to come of them.

And believe me, if I can do it, anyone can do it.

Seriously, I am not that special or smart or anything, you know.

But I do think I'm glad you mentioned the women thing.

I do think that sometimes women wait for someone to give them permission to do something, and I would say, just do what you want.

You know, being creative is not easy when you have to work full time job and you're raising kids and you, you know, you have to do all that.

I didn't start until I was finished with that part of my life.

So I started very late.

My daughter was already grown.

Because it does, you know, it takes time.

And I think women always feel like we have to do everything.

So, you know, if you're raising young kids, wait till they grow up or write early in the morning or do whatever you have to do.

But, you know, I give permission for every woman everywhere to do whatever they want.

Well that's wonderful, I like that I'm going to who knows what I'm going to do now?

There is also another another.

If it was the theme to me of the book is stuck out at the very end of of it.

And it was, it was after an event that they were kind of just summing up the night you said friendship and music, music and friendship.

This is my life and, maybe it's not going to be music for everybody.

I hope it would be friendship, but I think that there's a good lesson to find that thing for you.

Find your music in friendship.

Find the thing you live for that you're passionate about, and make that your life.

Yeah.

And really, this book is a book about friendship.

You know, as I was writing it, I just kept coming back to that, you know, and, and I think we can all find that in whatever we love.

You know, if you play golf, you're out on the golf course with your friends, or, you know, if you play music or, you know, other sports or whatever you do, I think really digging deep into, those experiences with other people that love it as much as you do it is, it's the most gratifying part of the journey, you know?

My music friends, will be with me forever, you know, in my memory and and in who, you know, as they're still alive in our in my day to day life because we've just built such a bond and everybody has that available to themselves if they kind of follow what they love.

And it doesn't have to be your job, it can be, you know, your hobby or your weekend thing or, you know, I think it's a I really think friendship is so important.

I don't think it gets enough, talk, you know, about that, how important friendship is, I, I agree, I think if we take any lessons from 2020 in that time is that our community, our friends, our people, it's the most important thing.

That's what that's what gets us through anything else.

Absolutely.

So and if you can tie that to a to an activity, to a love, to a shared passion, I think that just all the more will, yeah, intertwine you so that you have this strong, rich community to lean on and to help, to be there for someone to lean on.

Yeah.

And I think rich is the perfect world word for that, because that's how it feels.

You know, I may not have money, but I am rich with friends and people that love me and that I love and that's the way I want to be.

That's the way I want to end this life, you know, with that kind of wealth.

Absolutely, absolutely.

We're running low on time here.

So in our final, I want to say maybe three minutes.

Maybe we just answer the question.

But what do you hope people take away from the book?

I think we sort of did answer the question.

I think, you know, friendship, but also, to not be afraid to try things, which we, we've already talked about and to really dig in to your music collection and go listen to some of this music.

I talk about a lot of artists and a lot of music in the book, and I did a Spotify playlist that you can find called Poets and Dreamers if you're into that.

But I think, you know, if you love music, dig into this music.

I think you'll like it.

It's I mean, we do, and we have great taste.

We have great trust of, what's next to you?

Are you working on the next book?

What's coming at?

What's coming?

So yes, I'm going home to Wisconsin and I'm, there was a book that came out in 1969 called This Is Wisconsin by a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

And he went to all 72 counties in Wisconsin and told stories of the people there.

So I'm going to follow in his footsteps this summer and fall and go to all 72 counties and find the stories and do a this is Wisconsin contemporary, but I'm also going to make it a YouTube series because it's 2026.

And why not?

So I'm going to shoot it.

Shoot the stories, write the stories.

And, I'll do all the work this summer and fall so you won't see anything till next year.

You you'll never.

But we can.

Takes me a while.

Yes.

Well, if this is what comes of it, you take your time because I'll read anything you write, that's for sure.

Thank you.

Texas A&M probably is not going to want my Wisconsin work, but our friends at a at a Wisconsin University press, I hope they were interested.

I hope they will support university.

There's no rivalries and you know, no, I love I love university presses.

And University of Wisconsin will be my first call.

Yes.

Lovely.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

Any time I can spend with you, Christine.

I love doing it.

Thank you.

The book, as you can't tell, I can't recommend it enough is called Poets and Dreamers: My Life in Americana Music.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I will see you again soon.