A Q & A With Truth And Salvage Co.

photo by Henry Diltz

Los Angeles based all-Americana country rockers Truth & Salvage Co. made a pit stop in New York City’s Lower East Side, nearing the tail-end of their current U.S. tour. I shared a few beers with Tim Jones and Scott Kinnebrew, two of the band’s four songwriters, and discussed how it all came together for this eclectic sextet. With members hailing from North Carolina, Atlanta, Mississippi and Ohio, the band found each other out west in the hills of Hollywood by a simple twist of fate, and a shared vision of roots-inspired rock. Produced by Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson, their self-titled debut was already a buzzed-about item before it’s May 25 release, thanks to their extensive touring and a fast expanding word-of-mouth fan base.

You just released your album in May after a tour with the Avett Brothers. Did that tour help with promotion for the album?

Scott: It definitely helped gain awareness, no doubt about it. We were friends with the Avett Brothers and they invited us to come out on the road. Coincidentally enough, it happened to be right before our album came out, which couldn’t have been better timing. I think it was a happy accident.

And what was your following like before?

Tim: We’ve basically been touring nonstop—for our first real tour we went to Iraq and that was like our crash course right there. And then we did some dates with Jackie Green and then four months with the Black Crowes last year. I have been consistently surprised and my expectations have been exceeded with every venue we’ve played.

It’s really refreshing music— not the typical angry hipster rock, which was fine for awhile, but now I think everyone is starting to get tired of it.

Tim: Yeah I hear what you’re saying. I what we sprung out of was this genuine kind of enjoyment of being around each other. This whole band grew out of a very non-serious—

Scott: (chiming in) Non competitive!

Tim: Non competitive—no goals whatsoever. I that’s where the exuberance in the music comes from, it’s really just pure fun. I mean there’s some serious subject matter on the record too and some really heartfelt songs but most of it at the end is quite hopeful.

Scott: Yeah and it’s hard because being on the road is time consuming and requires a lot of effort. I don’t always meet my personal expectations for fun every night (laughs) but that is really the essence of having a good time and enjoying what you are doing.

Well I think here in New York you might just exceed those expectations…

Tim: Especially if you have friends or family and you can look out in the audience and see those faces. Even like last night in Philly, there was one guy in the audience that knew every lyric to every single song from our record. His face beaming and having such a good time. When you get to experience that night after night, that’s pretty good.

How did you hook up with the Black Crowes and Chris Robinson? Were you big fans before, or did it just coincidentally work out for you like it did with the Avett Brothers?

Scott: Well we share managers with the Black Crowes. Chris Robinson came out to see us play and really dug what we were doing, which was pretty flattering. Then we find out that Chris wanted to produce our record and then sign us to his label. Then the final icing on the cake was a big deal, he wanted to take us on the road.

Tim: We spent almost every day for nearly half a year with those guys. I grew up a huge Black Crowes fan and I had their first record.

Would you say that their music influenced a lot of your songwriting?

Tim: For me, absolutely. I learned to write songs by playing in a cover band in high school and we used to play Black Crowes songs, because essentially they came from covering a lot of Stones and Otis Redding and other music that I eventually got into through their music. I think they’ve been a huge influence on me. Also, Walker’s from Atlanta so he couldn’t really get away from the Black Crowes factor there.

Who else would you say influences you guys? There’s so many of you that there’s got to be a huge catalogue of music between you.

Scott: Yeah a whole bunch of stuff. For me, I kind of missed the whole Black Crowes train— I was like out in Ecuador when they broke. Of course, we are all musical sponges, I mean, everything under the sun has influenced our writing I’d say.

Tim: We share so many iPod’s and there’s hardly anything anybody plays that I don’t like.

Scott: We’ve all been playing music for so long, we’ve been at it for awhile now. We’re not trying to emulate shit right now, we’re just playing music and we’re just happy to be doing what were doing.

So would you say your sound is an eclectic mix then of all your different tastes combined?

Tim: It’s a good mix. We have so many similarities and differences but at the same time we all have a very common thread. Everybody loves a good chorus and a great bridge and we all live for songwriting. Whether you find it in a modern pop country song or in an indie rock song.

And do all of you write lyrics?

Tim and Scott: YES!

Tim: All four of us. There’s six in the band but four of us are songwriters. The other two write, but we just haven’t done their material yet.

And all four of you share the songwriting equally, and you bounce ideas off each other?

Tim: Absolutely. On this record, Smitty has two songs, I have three songs and Scotty and Walker each have songs.

Do you ever co-write for just one song?

Tim: We do. Yeah like Pure Mountain Angel. Walker had a verse and a chorus, it was great. Then Scotty had a totally different song and it just fit in.

Scott: I had a bridge and it worked.

So there’s obvious chemistry, it doesn’t seem like you would ever really argue about your ideas?

Tim: I think we’ve learned to trust each other and know that nobody has any other goal other than to write the ultimate best song. So once you open yourself up to trust somebody else and trust their opinion, then you don’t get your feelings hurt because you know they’re really on your side.

So when you are trying to write the “ultimate best song” are you trying to write singles?

Tim: I don’t think so. I like big songs with a huge chorus but I’m never like, “Oh this has gotta be a hit song!”

Scott: I don’t really think so, I’ve always been a kind of B-sider kind of guy myself.

I consider myself a B-side kinda gal.

Scott: I’m also a B-side kinda gal myself.

(laughter)

Scott: But you can’t deny a good hit. As for being a songwriter, you can’t deny writing hits in your career, but I’m curious as to what makes a hit.

Did you think “Call Back” was going to be a hit?

Tim: We were pretty confident about “Call Back,” but I thought songs I had written my whole life could be a hit. Odds are though that pop taste makers are shoving theses hits down people’s throats, and they’ve got millions of dollars behind a hook and a writer and a producer— the whole nine yards. Then they’ve manufactured what should be a hit and they fail.

And you mentioned earlier that there’s also some heavy stuff on the record. I found that “Hail Hail” was full of self-discovery themes like being “rulers of your own destiny” and having a “super clear mind”— but I also found that a lot of the songs were love ballads. Is there a particular theme for the album that you were going for?

Tim: Scotty wrote “Hail Hail” and as a writer, I think that he is more of the muscle of the band and has deeper thoughts about things that are a bit more esoteric and things that describe our life goals or plight.

(To Scott) So, you’re the thinker then?

Scott: Well I mean we’re all thinkers.

Tim: He just spends a lot more time in his head than we do.

Scott: And yeah, we wrote some songs about girls too.

Tim: Love is an important thing though in life.

Scott: I think it’s all just in telling tales of love though.

Tim: Yeah, telling real stories. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t have a bad or good story about love. You gotta have a mixture of it all.

Scott: I think there’s a whole “rulers of our own destiny” theme to the album. “Welcome to L.A.” is really a very internal song— Smitty is talking about his move to L.A.

Tim: That was his tale of growing up in a small town in Ohio and then the shock of being in Los Angeles, but still being like, “If I work hard enough in anything, I can be anything, I know that I can achieve whatever it is that I want.” Perseverance, you know. It’s whatever you believe that your destiny holds for you. Anybody can achieve whatever they want. People are very often beaten down by all the reason’s that we shouldn’t.

Would you say that you guys are a country band? You’ve been pegged as a country band, but I feel like you’re lyrics are more rock and roll.

Tim: It’s a straight up mixture between rhythm and blues and country western, and of course those two styles are made up of six other different styles of music. That’s why I think we are a straight up rock and roll band. We also have a lot of country western influence and I would be very happy if the same people who love Rascal Flats, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney, loved us.

If you truly love rock and roll you have to appreciate good country and vice versa.

S: Well the Grateful Dead, are they rock and roll or are they country? Walker sings about hobos and highways and tractor trailers, so there’s some country, I think we are a country rock band.

It would be nice to see a sort of country rock revival….

Scott: There’s really a big blossoming scene going on in LA right now.

Tim: Yep, it’s getting really good.