Rick Shea

Honky Tonk, Sawdust and Sawbones

                                        by Bliss    

    Spend any time exploring Southern California's roots-music circles and one name you'll encounter repeatedly is that of Rick Shea. He's quietly and consistently sidestepped the cheesier bands making the rounds in favor of playing with substantive artists such as Chris Gaffney, Rosie Flores, Katy Moffatt, and current boss Dave Alvin, and is acknowledged as one of the genuine good guys on the scene. A frequent solo performer at Ronnie Mack's Barndance before it withdrew from weekly circulation, Shea can regularly be seen entertaining the margarita-chugging cowboy crowd at Burbank's Viva Fresh with a country-rock lineup or harmonizing with hard-country belter Patty Booker in the tight confines of Culver City's Cinema Bar, often with fiddler Brantley Kearns providing eloquent accompaniment.
     Shea's been playing clubs and honky-tonks like this ever since he got his start covering Merle, Buck, Hank and Lefty on the gritty truckstop circuit around San Bernardino 20 years ago. It may seem like there's little justice for such musicians who find their reward in playing the music they love, especially since other denizens of the SoCal scene (Flores, Lucinda Williams, Jim Lauderdale, Buddy Miller, Gary Allan) have moved on to Nashville and starrier renown. But Shea's apparently happy with his life and career. And his years of quiet good work are slowly paying off. His recently released disc Sawbones is garnering fine notices, and he's increasingly commended in national reviews for his guitar and steel playing in Alvin's Guilty Men band. Still, despite the high regard of peers and critical acclaim for all three of his solo albums, Shea continues to be best known for supporting other well-respected artists -- thanks partly to the very humility that makes his solo work so beautiful.

     Shea's appeal to fellow musicians may not be immediately evident to casual onlookers. His demeanor is warm but unassuming, his voice sincere not booming, his physical presence calm and reassuring rather than flashy; he observes rather than confronts. But it's those ego-less qualities that make him such a valued songwriter, harmony partner and sideman.

"The idea of him being a support player -- that's with a capital 'S,'" says Katy Moffatt, who first asked Shea to back her at an outdoor concert on the recommendation of longtime friend Greg Leisz. She says the experience of playing with Shea at shows and on her 1999 album Loose Diamond strengthened her own musicianship: "Because he's such an intelligent player, but he's so instinctually right on, too...It's a rare combination. And of course he's so versatile; he plays so many instruments so well."

     Shea's sensitive multi-instrumental contributions to Loose Diamond came about thanks to his ongoing work with Alvin (who produced the album), who also recruited Shea to play on Christy McWilson's recent Alvin-produced disc The Lucky One. Not long after, the two men headed into the studio to record Public Domain with the rest of the Guilty Men. Alvin then laid down lead guitar tracks on two of the edgier songs on Sawbones, "Lonesome Cannonball" and the bluesy "Piedmont Ridge."

     Recorded in 15 days, Sawbones is a strong, rootsy blend of folk, country, twanging honky-tonk, and good songwriting, seasoned with Celtic and blues flourishes. It's at once moodier and tougher than Shea's first two albums (1995's The Buffalo Show and last year's Shaky Ground ), and demonstrates Shea's keenly perceptive gifts as a musician and songwriter. He co-wrote the somewhat spooky "Still Water" with Jann Browne, and collaborated with keyboardist Wyman Reese (of Gaffney's Cold Hard Facts) on "Emperor of the North," a free-spirited ode to railroad hobo "Guitar Whitey" Symmonds. The ballad "Magdalena" was a co-write with J. Moyeda -- Shea's mother-in-law, with whom he also collaborated on some songs for The Buffalo Show. It's indicative of the way family life helps keep him grounded amidst the vagaries of his unpredictable profession.

"On 'Magdalena,' I had the song pretty much written and I wanted to have the Spanish part," Shea explains, "so I think I just called her on the phone and talked to her and said what I needed and kind of played the song and the melody and I think she just gave me the words right back. That one was real easy."

     When Shea decided to goose Sawbones with something fun, he pulled together "bits and pieces" he'd had laying around to create the title tune. ("I have tapes and tapes layin' around of just guitar little noodling things that I kind of save and listen to and work from from time to time.") The song's loose-limbed feel is not unlike Alvin's treatment of "Walk Right In" on Public Domain. Shea acknowledges connections between the two genre-jumping albums.

"Absolutely," he says. "Just in the approach, recording some of them. I was kind of warmed up from working on Dave's album, and had even worked on an album or two before that -- we worked on Christy McWilson's album. So just some things about acoustic guitar and some of the things that we'd been doin' on Dave's album. We used like a high-strung acoustic guitar a lot on some of the stuff and I brought that along and used that. Just general stuff, though; nothing real specific."

     Sawbones as a whole has more edge than Shea's previous records, but interestingly, Shea says that wasn't a result of Alvin's influence; almost half of the songs were recorded before he began "working regular" with the former Blaster.

"There were about six songs that were complete," he says, "and most of the songs were written. I wrote one new one and finished up about two songs right about the time we were starting the album."

     One of those new songs is "Walking to Jerusalem," whose waltzing cadences and serene message were inspired by the death of Alvin's father.

"He was going through it and I was talking to him a lot, almost every day," Shea recalls, "and his dad had sort of a small accident and then being in the hospital just kind of complicated things. He just kind of went through the process and I was just kind of thinking about it at the time, a lot...

"I don't know, if it [the record] has a harder edge, [it's because] I intended it to have more electric guitar. When we did the album with Gary [Mandell], The Buffalo Show, we stuck to a lot of acoustic instruments and tried to make it as much of a folk album as we could. We weren't as concerned about that with this album, although we used a lot of acoustic instruments."

     One of those instruments is Don Heffington's bodhran; the former Lone Justice drummer's "Irish skin drum" gives Shea's ballad "Deep Within the Well" (featuring Moffatt's piercing harmonies) a lovely Celtic flavor that's unexpected. Then again, Shea's music really is as much folk as country, despite his stone-country reputation.

"I think there's a lot of different influences [in my music] because I listen to a lot of different stuff," he says. "The country music that developed and came from California, I've always been a huge fan of that, and it's a big part of the background of where I've learned all of this, just from playing in places and playing the honky-tonks and bars. It's a big part of my background, but it's never been just the primary thing...I just kind of tend to follow the songs. They seem to want to be a certain thing, and I just kind of try to stay on track with that, I guess."

     That devotion to the song is at the heart of his appeal to fellow musicians. It doesn't hurt that his natural understanding of musical idioms is matched by his willingness to tweak genre conventions.

"There's so many things about Rick as a musician and a person, I almost don't know where to start," says Moffatt. "He's so present, for one thing. There's nothing spaced out about this man. He's very, very in the moment. He has a very immediate kind of ability to go straight to the most appropriate place, musically, for whatever particular song or particular performance that a song requires."

"He's not afraid to try anything," says Patty Booker, who's been doing shows with Shea for years and had him play on her album I Don't Need All That. "He doesn't get too upset if someone makes a mistake or something. He likes to have fun doing it...It's always really fun [singing with him]. I feel like Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette and George Jones, or Helen Cornelius and Jim Ed Brown. Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner. When Rick and I get together to do duets, it's like sometimes there's a line I don't remember, he does, and the line that he doesn't remember, I do."

     Booker and Shea have been talking about recording an album of country duets, but so far, Shea says ruefully, "We've hardly even had time even to spend together workin' on anything. I think we both want to. Maybe we'll get lucky and start to find time and start to make it happen."

    For now, it'll have to take a back seat to their individual solo projects and busy family commitments (Shea and wife Sue have two teenage sons).

"He's not afraid to turn down a gig because he's got an anniversary coming up, or something like that with his wife," Booker says. "I admire that in him. He's a very well-rounded fellow. When Rick's not writing songs or up onstage singin', he's out campin' with his kids and his wife or [something]. I hope he keeps writing songs -- I love his songwriting."

     Shea says he first started to get an idea of what makes a song work back when he was playing the truckstops. Now, he determines a song's worth by the "emotional connection" it forges with listeners, and whether it makes them "look at something in a different way."

     Something else he seems to have taken away from those years along the truckstop route is an appreciation of his blessings -- namely, that he's made a life doing what he loves. Many players bitch and moan about playing club gigs for 50 bucks a night after they've toured the country with famous names, but Shea insists those nights playing for 30 drunks in some local dive are as meaningful as gigs performing for 300 in a concert hall.

"They all can be quite satisfying and fun and worthwhile in their own way," he says. "The shows with Dave are great. We get to play some great places. But going out and playing songs for a few hours with the guys that I play with around here, I mean, you get to put in more time, it's a little looser, if there's a good crowd and a little bit of audience response -- nah, it's every bit as satisfying. And most guys I think would probably tell you that, too."