Keeton Coffman Interview
Doug Burke:
Keeton Coffman grew up in Bryan College Station, Texas. And after finding an old Alvarez guitar in his mother's closet his mom taught him a handful of chords and he found his passion. He was an elite gymnast who became a national champion and practiced his guitar on his travels to events and during his college years at the University of Texas in Austin. He formed a critically lauded rock band, the 71s, in Houston that was categorized as Christian rock but perhaps was mostly rock. And the band parted ways in 2012 and he began his solo career. His first album in 2016, Killer Eyes, focused on the beauty found in the grit of hard work and it received strong trade press reviews. It was then that Keeton suffered a mental setback. He had been diagnosed with bipolar II and obsessive-compulsive disorder in high school and the diseases reemerged in his life and set him back. He sought treatment and openly talks about his road to recovery and he kept writing songs. It is these personal songs from the heartland rocker that formed his new album, Hard Times. The rocking songs from this album are rooted in his childhood experiences growing up in Bryan and College Station.
Welcome to Backstory Song. I am your host, Doug Burke, and today I am thrilled to hopefully introduce you to an artist who I think is going places and I want you to listen to his sound. If you have not heard his music or are a fan of his, I hope you become one because of this episode. Because he needs more fans and deserves more fans. He writes great, great songs. And his name is Keeton Coffman. Keeton, welcome to our show.
Keeton Coffman:
Doug, thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of the show. I learned about it through Blue Water Highway and you got a great program here.
Doug Burke:
Well, thank you. Thank you. Our goal is to help people discover music that they should listen to and guide them through that journey of music discovery. So, Keeton, you started your career in another band, The 71s, which was a totally, totally different direction from your solo work. A long, long time ago maybe it seems like. And that was kind of like a punk Christian group.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. To give a full but short description, when I was 20 I met who would become my best friend and probably lifetime partner in music. He is a guitar player. He started recording my music. I became a worship leader in Houston. He helped me continue to write and record music. We started a band called The 71s and we kind of had an interesting road to finding our place because we're both people of faith but we didn't feel the need to evangelize as some people use that term or sort of inject religion into our music. We just liked playing rock and roll in clubs and drinking beer and jumping off amplifiers. So those worlds collided but we liked that a lot. I don't think we were very good. We may have had our moments but we had fun learning. The gift of The 71s to me was Ryan Cecil who also has a studio now called Golden Gnome Studios. He and I learned how to make our own records. So the sound is gone but it was a gift because we became do it ourselves kind of people.
Doug Burke:
So you've had a bunch of independent albums now. Killer Eyes and the new one is called Hard Times?
Keeton Coffman:
That's right. So solo wise I started releasing my own music in 2016. Full length, Killer Eyes, in between now and Hard Times some singles here or there which I'm sure we'll kind of talk about why there was the gap. This album is something I'm more excited about than anything I've ever made.
Doug Burke:
It was called Hard Times and in part, I've watched other interviews of yours and listened to the music. You have experienced some hard times and very specifically you've been very open in your biography about having some mental health issues. And I want to say, you say your music is inspired by Bruce Springsteen among others and Bruce in his biography, Born to Run is very open about his battle with mental health. And I don't know if you've read that biography but I would encourage you to. Because he talks about how-
Keeton Coffman:
Actually, he signed it for me. I got to meet him and he gave me the book.
Doug Burke:
Oh did he?
Keeton Coffman:
Sorry to interrupt but I couldn't help myself. Keep going. Oh yeah, page to page.
Doug Burke:
So you understand what I'm saying. That it was almost at the height of his success that he encountered a mental health battle and sought out help and encourages others to seek out help. So tell us about your mental health journey and maybe some of our listeners can take something away from it and how that relates to this new album, Hard Times.
Keeton Coffman:
Okay great. I'm willing to dive as deep as you want to go Doug so I'll just kind of give you short answers and if you want to expound, feel free. You're the pro. But mental health is an interesting condition. Whether you have some anxiety or I have bipolar II and OCD. There's a genetic element to it so you can kind of see it run through your family tree. There's also a lifestyle and a behavioral and habit element that can kind of trigger or feed it. At the same time medically I think even the greatest physicians in the world will tell you it's a very infantile stage of medicine. We don't know a lot about neuroscience. What I know is just my story. So I want to be really clear what I'm about to say, I'm not prescribing anybody, I'm not diagnosing anybody, that's very important. But when I was younger my parents just noticed that I kind of had some struggles. I got diagnosed with OCD. Lifestyle, sports, music, diet, medicine, they all came together in a really great healing way and it went away. I got 100% better. It never quite goes. It never leaves you but it became completely ... It's not a part of my day anymore. And then in college, it kind of came back with some depression and then it went away. So it was this ebb and flow in my life. The biggest episode I've ever had came about three years ago where it woke like a monster in the night. It literally just came out of nowhere and I was diagnosed as someone with bipolar II. Basically what that means is you have some real heightened seasons of energy. When I mean heightened I mean I would write 10 songs in two weeks. Like boom. Just the creativity is lightning. It feels so good. And then you would experience this crash where your energy level is so low that it's almost ... Not even almost. It is physically painful. You almost feel as though your mind has turned on itself. It's a dark place. And luckily I have a family who is so supportive and understanding of medical help. I have a pastor. I just have a great support system. When it all kind of scooped out and I really leveled out ... And you have to work at it. It's a lifestyle thing. I still come back to that for myself. You can't will it out of your life but you can help sort of put yourself in a good ... I think I'm being clear here what I'm saying right? Good habits. Good lifestyle. So I'll move on. So when that happened I looked back and I had continued to write music throughout it. And what I thought were going to be some pretty throwaway songs I sat with them and I realized, this is great material. Now, am I willing to be honest in sharing these songs? I don't know yet. Am I willing to share why these songs are? I don't know yet. And after some time I really decided yeah, that's something I want to do. And I want to make the record sound like this season I went through. I want to make it feel like what I felt. And my hope is that it'll bless somebody in a variety of ways. Whether it's just helping you drive to work or maybe it's helping you tap into something that you can't quite put words to. Yeah, that's Hard Times.
Doug Burke:
Well, let's talk about one of the songs that you've written, Wounded Heart. Because this is an emotional song and I imagine this experience for you was an emotional journey. I mean songwriting is by definition almost a defacto an emotional journey. Tell us about where the inspiration for Wounded Heart came from.
Keeton Coffman:
Wounded Heart's kind of interesting because if you heard it and you didn't know what I just told you you'd just think it's a guy who loves John Mellencamp and wants to go out and dance on a Friday night. And it is. I think that's good too. I think that's kind of how life works. You're always holding struggle in one hand and you're holding hope in the other. And we all have different words for whatever those things are. Maybe it's just stress and happiness. But you're always holding that. And in the middle, that tension, well that's what good music comes out of. Wounded Heart, that's what I'm hoping people feel. I like to write in characters. Maybe a line or two will come out of my mind that morning autobiographically. I write at a typewriter. I just start typing stuff. But from that line I kind of go, that seems like something that this kind of person would say. I enjoy sort of using my imagination to just create this person as if I'm writing a movie or a play. Wounded Heart's about a girl who does what I did when I was younger which is ... There's no Spotify, there's no Apple Music. And if you want to hear a song that's going to save your soul, you got to stay up late and kind of huddle around the radio dial. That's what I did in College Station where I grew up. And I'd turn on 104.7 or 103.9 FM. I would just wait and kind of be like, "Oh man, I really hope they play Don Henley. Oh my god. I hope they play Bruce Hornsby or is Bonnie Raitt going to come on?" Which is kind of crazy because this is like the late '90s but that's still the music that I liked. So that's who she is. The protagonist singing is a guy that loves her. He can't quite understand why she is hanging on to a different guy who's never treated her the way she deserves. And that's the whole song.
Doug Burke:
And we've all seen that story. That's what I like about your songwriting. It is very cinematic but it's cinematic in a personalized way about the human condition and relationships. And I feel like the guy doesn't get the girl and that's why his heart's probably permanently wounded or broken in parts.
Keeton Coffman:
Oh, he has the wounded heart. Oh, that's really interesting.
Doug Burke:
They both have the wounded heart I think.
Keeton Coffman:
That is awesome. I didn't intend for that to happen and now I'm going to say it did. That's even better. Cool.
Doug Burke:
That's the way I interpreted it. I was like man, they both have wounded hearts.
Keeton Coffman:
Oh, Doug.
Doug Burke:
The guy longs for her but I don't feel like he's ever going to get her.
Keeton Coffman:
Interesting. Okay.
Doug Burke:
Maybe he will. The song doesn't end to let you know. Maybe there's another song for you to write.
Keeton Coffman:
Once the song is written they belong to the audience. They're not mine anymore. If that's how you see it, I love it. Great.
Doug Burke:
Well, this does bring up a lot of questions that I regularly ask. One is how do you know when a song is done? And maybe we can table that for a second. But I do feel like this COVID has made me interview artists like yourself who I really, really want to see perform these songs live. Because I do believe there's a profound difference between the recorded version and what happens in front of an audience and how the songs evolve and the interaction with the audience and I bet you do a great show.
Keeton Coffman:
Can I talk about that for a second?
Doug Burke:
Absolutely.
Keeton Coffman:
Everyone misses live music for a reason. Some miss it financially. I miss live music because when I was at my darkest with the symptoms of bipolar II, there's a club in town, they kind of would just let me come up and open for whatever act. Like I didn't have to sell the tickets that night. I could just kind of pop in almost as if it was like a comedy club. The owner and I are best friends. I text him, "Matt, can I get on tonight?" He'd be like, "Yeah, Blue Water Highway's in town. They'll let you in." Boom. I'd open the set.
Doug Burke:
Keeton, what's the name of the club?
Keeton Coffman:
The club's called Main Street Crossing.
Doug Burke:
Main Street Crossing. And what town is it in?
Keeton Coffman:
It's in Tomball. Which if you don't know where Tomball is, it's north of Houston. Just a hair north of Houston. And it is one of the best listening rooms in Texas. It is incredible.
Doug Burke:
Okay. I got to check this club out. I am a club fanatic.
Keeton Coffman:
Oh yeah. Got to go to Main Street Crossing. Look up that club, come to Tomball and Doug, come in July. I'll be back man. You can come to the show. Anyway, I get up on stage and something about the fact that when I play, maybe it's a yoga kind of ... I connect with my breath a lot and I just ... All I can really think about is now. Capital N-O-W. And all of the symptoms of all that I would think or feel would just disappear for about 35 minutes. I love live music and I think that in writing some of these tunes I would almost kind of put myself up on stage while I'm writing them and it would be a bit of a mental escape. So we like to lose a little control on stage. It's fun.
Doug Burke:
On Wounded Heart, you do this on some of your songs and I really like it. At the end you kind of collapse the whole song down to a real low level and it's just the guitar at first and then the snare drum and then it winds back up with B3 organ which is throughout your album, just killer by the way. I don't know if that was you or someone else.
Keeton Coffman:
It was someone else on all but one of them, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Okay. So we can talk about that. But I am a fanatic for the B3. And the way you use it on this album, it just nails. It's so awesome use of the instrument. And there are layers of mellotron and like piano and I lost track in some songs. Not so much Wounded Heart. We're going to talk about where you get into the layering. Tell me about the finish. Like the finish where you collapse it down like that on Wounded Heart.
Keeton Coffman:
I don't know man. Okay, so I have my own studio. I play keys on everything. I like programming glockenspiels, mellotrons, B3s, pianos, Rhode's pianos. So when I start ... It's kind of like a painting. Instead of a song where it's like okay, it needs to go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, done. Or let's put a solo in it and you're playing it with a bunch of guys. I think I did that for so many years with the rock band. Everybody kind of needs their moment. But now I go, "You know hey, what if we end the movie with him looking back at her and she doesn't look back?" Boom. Credits. It's almost like I'm getting to edit a move. And I like doing different things because you know there's always another song coming around. So it's become a bit of an experiment to me just to go, I don't want to make it bad. I don't want to make it weird. But with Wounded Heart, yeah, perfect example. It had a verse and a chorus and a verse and a chorus and it has this weird long solo. And then that's kind of it. And you get to hear me say a few words. Well, it's getting a little harder, harder for you. Harder for you. It's over.
Keeton Coffman:
And I don't know. I don't have a tactical explanation for this other than the fact that when they're done I'm like, yeah, that's kind of weird and cool. I like that. We're done.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. It's just an instinctual thing when it ends and you're like okay. Because a lot of artists struggle with the beginning and the endings of songs.
Keeton Coffman:
Their life's too short.
Doug Burke:
You got the whole body of the song and then the beginning.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. His life's too short. You just make and you throw it out there. Who gives a shit.
Doug Burke:
You don't have that problem?
Keeton Coffman:
No, I don't care. Life's too short. I mean maybe I have a problem but I don't care to acknowledge that problem. But what I meant to say is my guitar player is also my producer. He is a sensational guitar player. Let me just say that. Mike Campbell from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers level. Like if you know Jay Joyce is. He played guitar on a lot of the Wallflowers record. Like this guy is incredible and he hates playing guitar solos. So he's an enigma. And so when I wrote Wounded Heart I literally was like, I'm going to make this section in the song and it can have nothing but guitars. It can have nothing but a guitar solo. No drums. And he got it and he was like, "Oh man, I'm going to have to play this whole thing." I was like, "Yeah dude." And it's only two chords. So there's not a lot of other work with so in a way what you're hearing is one best friend kind of sticking it to his other best friend going, yeah, you're going to throw in a guitar solo now huh? There you go. And he did. It's killer man. It's good.
Doug Burke:
Good for you. I like it when friends push each other to new levels. It's a good thing. That's how great art gets made. So let's talk about the art of being a magician. This song which you've already released. I think is the first single.
Keeton Coffman:
It was the second. It came out last Friday. Wounded Heart was first.
Doug Burke:
This song is one of the darker things if not the darkest thing I've heard from you. I find it really haunting. I find it stylistically different, stylistically challenging which I love. Because I love being challenged as a listener. I found this song to be really challenging to listen to but in a way that draws you in.
Keeton Coffman:
That's fantastic. I'm honored you say that. Thank you.
Doug Burke:
So what's the inspiration around this?
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. I got to be honest. This is the song that I ... There are two songs on the record that I was like I don't know if I'm going to let these out because I'm going to get a question or two about it and these are under the sleeves, these are close to the chest. Magician ... Again I said I like to write in characters but in some form, every art starts autobiographically, I feel. I just felt as though something that's not talked about, especially among men, is the fact that we possess the great ability to deceive the ones we love and to do it for our pleasure. I know that it even feels a little close to comfort to say that out loud. And in doing so we even deceive ourselves that we're doing it. We like to judge from afar those who manipulate or deceive. Don't know that we're doing things in the shadows, yet at the same time, it's kind of part of the DNA to some degree. I'm not saying that all are guilty or it's an inflammatory part of everyone's life. It's just something that honesty with the ones we love, trust is something that it's just not going to come naturally and it's not going to come easy all the time. Magician is a song about a guy. That's the conversation that is said underneath what he is really saying. So you kind of get two layers to the song. You get what he's saying and the emotions behind what he's saying aren't noticed in the singing. It's actually noticed in the music. That was at least the intent is that you can feel the gravity of what he's saying rising in the instrumentation while what he says stays conversational. And in that lies the scariness for me of how we can do that to the ones that we care about. That's a little heavy, I know. But-
Doug Burke:
It is a heavy song. It's not your lightest song by any means. I kind of had the sense that this guy was a pickup artist and he gets that feeling of power by the conquest of the opposite sex. And I think magicians fool the audience but know the trick is so simple that they have this feeling of like, "Ah, I conned you."
Keeton Coffman:
It's a craft.
Doug Burke:
This was so easy for me to do. You don't realize how easy it was for me to fool you with my slight of hand or the trick behind the trick. I really felt like this was some sort of pickup artist. I really felt sad for him. His love is not real.
Keeton Coffman:
No, it's not.
Doug Burke:
His love is as empty as possible, yet he's so proud of himself to be a magician and to do this.
Keeton Coffman:
I heard Springsteen once talk about his song Born in the USA, how misunderstood it is. And he said it's actually not misunderstood. Or he was asked why do people love singing the song so much. And he said, "Well, because it is both ... The essence of patriotism is that you love your country and you are critical of your country and those happen at the same time in a real person." And you think about that, oh my gosh, that's so true. And now maybe more than I've ever known in my lifetime. I love songs like that because it may not be a very singular anthem. There may be an element of examination. Magician is rooted in my love for songs like that is what I'm saying. It's that when I'm up there singing it, I'm not trying to call forth that thing in all of us, but I kind of have to put myself on the altar a little bit for the sake of art.
Doug Burke:
But you finish this song with over a full minute of what I have introduced as your layers of organs and pianos and mellotrons and B3s. So tell me, it's like this shimmering sort of groaning melody. There is melody underneath it all. So what drove that?
Keeton Coffman:
We're going to nerd out Dough. I know this is a good place for nerds because you said so.
Doug Burke:
Thank you. Thank you. I feel honored by the accolade.
Keeton Coffman:
I only like to go where the nerds are because I am one. Okay. In videos you see me play guitar but I am actually a piano player at my core. And I discovered some different software that allowed me to ... It's almost like movie score kind of stuff. I play B3 but I know a guy who is literally world-class and his name is Josh Moore. He's here in Houston. He's played on world-class records. He's a phenomenal producer. He's produced records for me before. But he's a Suzuki level musician. He's a savant. He's incredible. So I'll play the organ for the demos and then I send it to Josh and he can make the thing speak. Sometimes we actually take two B3 parts and we grind them together and then you've got all kinds ... If you know anything about the B3, it's designed to work like a choir where you're playing one note but it'll play the note and then you can move a drawbar, it'll play the note below that one. And you can move another drawbar, it'll play the harmony above it and then an octave above it and then an octave above that. It's like having a choir. So you can do that. The mellotron is an interesting instrument because it's most famous for being on Strawberry Fields. When it does that, we're going down ... That's the mellotron. And it was created because they needed cheap strings. We need a string section but we can't afford 18 people so we're going to create this one keyboard. Then they created glockenspiels. Those things are just toy pianos. Well, long story short, all those instruments are sort of gone. You don't really have the chance to go to a studio unless you're well funded, and be surrounded by all these actual instruments. So I have a software where I learn how to just use them and manipulate them. And honestly, I can do it for 12 hours without taking a break. So we walked away from Magician and I was like, this is a perfect song that we can really paint a picture here and we can then let the song speak to the audience and the audience can take what they want from it and we'll just leave it at that. The way art, for me, should be indulged. You get to look at that painting and you have a conversation with it and you walk away.
Doug Burke:
I know you don't want to, per se, put the words in the audience's ear on that ending, but what emotion are you trying to capture and convey and draw out and make the audience feel when you're playing that?
Keeton Coffman:
I don't know. This is the one song that I feel more than anything I feel very conduit-like. There's a lot of flow happening where it comes through me but it's not from me. I know that gets a little spiritual. But there are certain songs that I sit down and it's very intentional.
Doug Burke:
That's a cool feeling.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. It's why I do it. I've got to be honest.
Doug Burke:
That's a cool, cool feeling. It must be.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. I'm channeling a character and it almost feels like being an actor. So I've never really sat down and said this is not a sermon, this is not a speech. I'm not trying to tell Doug something. I'm literally acting. I don't know where this character even came from. I just sort of ... It's in me or it's coming through me. And the work, the what is in how truthful can we get it to feel. But the intention, there is literally none. And I've had very few songs like that. Where I just go, I don't intend anything other than to capture it and represent it correctly. Hold on. Let me say one thing though. There's a chain in the song. If you listen to the percussion ... The third member of my little production trio is my drummer Craig. He said, "Hey, I've got this ..." I think it was a bicycle chain or something. I'd never seen one. He was like, "We're going to track this chain."
Doug Burke:
He plays the chain.
Keeton Coffman:
And what he would do-
Doug Burke:
He's a professional chain player.
Keeton Coffman:
It's almost like he would throw his keys up in the air.
Doug Burke:
He's a Foley artist. Like a movie Foley artist. Those are the people who make the sounds that are in the movie but they're not actually what happened in the movie.
Keeton Coffman:
I'm telling you, it was so cool.
Doug Burke:
He's the chain.
Keeton Coffman:
He's the chain gang guy.
Doug Burke:
He's working on the chain gang.
Keeton Coffman:
And so we were in the control room, he's doing the thing, and I'll never forget Cecil just goes, "Oh, that's so damn cool." So the song should have been played with a guy on acoustic, one guy on electric, a drummer, and a bass player. Instead, there are probably like eight keyboards. There is so much junk on that song and it all kind of collides in a fun way. So I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for letting me geek out a bit.
Doug Burke:
Eight keyboards, one mellotron, and one chain on the song Magician. I think you're going to like it.
Doug Burke:
Let's talk about Let Her Go. Let Her Go. Does this start with strings or are those synthesized strings that you put on some of the beginnings of your songs?
Keeton Coffman:
Those are real strings. Yeah. It's one guy. And I forget his name now because, again, Let Her Go was made like five years ago. But he lived in North Carolina. He was a friend of my producer and he just said, "He plays a lot for the Oh Hellos. He does a lot of great string work. Just send him the track and tell him kind of what you want." And I said, "Well, this guy wakes up in the desert." That's it. That's what I told him. I said this guy wakes up in the desert.
Doug Burke:
That was your direction?
Keeton Coffman:
And I said, "I don't want to tell you anything else."
Doug Burke:
Cool. Well, it does sound like that. I'm glad you told me that because now I'll listen to the song and it has a whole different meaning. It's he's waking up in the desert. Okay. Lost in the fire alone. I feel every heartbeat. 30 miles like I'm under a stone. 30 miles on the concrete. Felt like I was driving on the road, being in a band or something.
Keeton Coffman:
I write a lot of songs about people chasing the ones they love or us chasing people we love because I think that love is very ... At least the stories that are told most of the time, love is reactionary. It must ebb as it flows for it to exist. But that's not how love works. That's not how we're created as people. We're brought forth into this world from love that we didn't initiate or ask for. My personal faith sort of looks at the universe and God as someone or something that did it simply because of love. And I like to personify that in characters to say though you don't currently love me or though you don't currently know that this thing in your life has taken you from me, I love you still. Okay. Now here's where it gets complex. It starts like that. And this character is saying lost in the fire alone. And I feel every heartbeat. I'm crushed under the weight of this thing and yet, I cannot let you go. I'm not ready to let her go and she's kind of out there in the night. I can't remember where I was but there was a storm and I was watching it in the sky and I just thought so much about how that represented the illusiveness of the ones we love. There's thunder and there's lightning and it comes in and out and it disappears and it's almost like you could chase that into the night but you'll never catch it. That's what started the song. Now, the song is really two songs. There's the A section where you hear the singer. Again, another one of those weird things, Doug, I guess that maybe I shouldn't do but I like is writing songs, is you have a first chorus, first chorus. And then what you think is the bridge is actually the second song and the strings start playing and this sort of echo of lyrics just keeps going on and on and on looping saying, chasing the ... I can't bring it up in my head now. Do you have the lyric in front of you?
Doug Burke:
Yeah. You go into a falsetto there. You go into a falsetto. You change the key. Right?
Keeton Coffman:
Well, it stays in the same key but it shifts to what's called the minor. So it's the same key but it just kind of does the tail.
Doug Burke:
Oh, to the G minor?
Keeton Coffman:
That's one way of looking at it. Yeah, it's in B and it goes to G minor. We call that the relative minor. Again, we're getting nerdy here. So it seemingly stays the same in the melody. All the melody is using all the same seven notes. But when we flip it to a minor key, the canvas, it's literally like taking something on a white canvas and you put it on a black canvas.
Doug Burke:
Sure. The yin yang of a black and white yin yang and you're seeing the other part of it.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. I've never thought about it like that.
Doug Burke:
You can only look at one color at a time in the yin yang. You can either see the white or the black but the human eye is not capable of looking at them both at the same time.
Keeton Coffman:
You know what interesting Doug? That is so cool and I realized, I think without knowing it, I love songs that do that. Where you have a character who's looking so-
Doug Burke:
And this song does it. It flips into the other part of the octave but it sounds like a key change and it's not. And you go falsetto so you actually change the character of your voice into this falsetto. And you do the singing technique of bringing it down, which I love. Bruce, when he would do that, he would yell band. He would go, "Band." And they would immediately know to bring it down. Right?
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
And you've heard it. You know what I'm talking about right?
Keeton Coffman:
Oh yeah.
Doug Burke:
You've heard him do that. "Band." And they come down-
Keeton Coffman:
All right man, out.
Doug Burke:
The boss is talking. Right?
Keeton Coffman:
Yep.
Doug Burke:
But they don't stop. They just bring it down and then they bring it back up again and you do that.
Keeton Coffman:
Wow, you know your stuff. That's great.
Doug Burke:
Well, I love this song. I love your music.
Keeton Coffman:
Well, on the note of the yin yang, that is really cool because what the song is trying to say is to this guy, what looks like honorable affection, what looks like devotion in the first half of the song is actually obsession in the second half.
Doug Burke:
Fine line between the two. Fine line between devotion and obsession. Right? For anybody who's in love. And I thought it was a reference to Robert Frost. Let her go.
Keeton Coffman:
Well, no, it's not a reference to that, but I read a lot of poetry and sometimes I just darn right steal stuff so maybe I need to go back and make sure I haven't on that one. Chasing the lightning, waiting for the sky to spark. What is the next line there? I can't believe I can't remember my own lyric. Been a while on that one.
Doug Burke:
Chasing the lightning, looking for the sky to spark, knowing the thunder's waiting in the dark. Knowing the thunder's waiting in the dark.
Keeton Coffman:
Knowing the thunder's waiting for me in the dark. Yeah. I think that's sort of back to your yin and yang. The lightning represents the hope. I can see her. There she is. But what comes after the lightning? Darkness and thunder. And for me that represents fear, void. So that's sort of where it is. We got heavy. I want people to know I'm actually a pretty bright dude. I'm a good hang. I like to have fun. It's not just heavy stuff. And talking with you about these I go ...
Doug Burke:
Well, you picked all your heavy songs to talk about. And frankly, that's why I wanted to talk about Ellie and some ... I was like, why did he pick all these heavy songs? Because the next one is Killer Eyes.
Keeton Coffman:
That one has a lot of romanticism to it. I think we're journeying to a sunnier place hopefully here. Yeah, we're okay. I was worried for a second, but we're okay.
Doug Burke:
Okay, good. There's never a pure sunshine to your songs. I mean, Killer Eyes, they're these beautiful eyes but they're deadly. They're full of weaponry and threat and killer instinct. They're not these harmless eyes.
Keeton Coffman:
No. And those are autobiographical eyes. Those are my wife's eyes. She has killer eyes. They put an end to me for sure, in a good way.
Doug Burke:
She slays you.
Keeton Coffman:
Definitely. I think where I kind of meet as a writer is musically I fell in love with pop music hard. Like I fell hard for pop music. I'm talking radio. Where some would go, "Oh my gosh, that's so superficial. I can't believe your favorite song by The Police is Every Breath She Takes. How can you like that one?" I'm like, "I know. I love them all but ..." It's an argument between me and my producer that he's like, "How can your favorite songs from legendary bands be their hits?" That's always everyone's least favorite who loves the true band. Musically, I love pop construction. And that was my mom. My mom listened to a lot of pop. But my dad read me a lot of poetry. Whether it was Walt Whitman or Alfred Lord Noyes or he loved Robert Frost. Still loves Robert Frost. Those poems like to do that thing I think we're talking about where there's a yes and then there's a but. Yes she's beautiful, but she draws me in with so much heaviness, I don't know if that's okay or not yet. So that's the essence of Killer Eyes. The sunset is beautiful but I can't look away. I don't know if that's a good thing or not yet though.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Mama always told me not to look into the sites of the sun. That's where the fun is. So you open this song with the classic line in some respects. I was wondering if it does come inspired by Al Green and The Talking Heads. Take me to the river, throw me in the water. But it's a different melody completely and it's a different lyric. I ain't afraid to drown.
Keeton Coffman:
That's exactly what I'm trying to do. You're really good at this. There's a Springsteen allusion to The River because I love that song by Springsteen. That's a totally different kind of song. But "the river" represents in pop music so frequently the place of escape. Whether it's with Al Green, whether it's Springsteen's river. Now that river's a dark river. They go to escape there, but then they realize it's dried up. We've done something here that's now going to affect what we do when we leave and we can't come back. That song is heavy. Then you have a song like Way Down Yonder On The Chattahoochee by Alan Jackson. But he's still got that thing that goes-
Doug Burke:
We had Jim McBride who wrote that song on this show to talk about that song.
Keeton Coffman:
No way. Well, I wish we had met before because I would have said let him know that song kind of changed me as a writer in a huge way. I love how ... Long story short, it's a character in those songs. That river in all those ones we mentioned-
Doug Burke:
Yeah, the river is a character.
Keeton Coffman:
It's a character. So in Killer Eyes, it's a character and I'm saying the river basically represents what we're about to get into. This is love. This is infatuation. And I don't know if it's going to be controllable or I don't know if I'm not going to be able to swim and keep my head above water. Either way you're taking me there.
Doug Burke:
When I started this show, I thought that songwriters who wrote love songs inspired by their muse that might have been their girlfriend, their partner, or their wife or their husband or their spouse, that when they played those songs for the first time for their loved one and, "Honey, I wrote this song for you. Listen to it.", like it would be life-changing. And what I have found is that's not been the case. What happened when you played this for your wife the first time?
Keeton Coffman:
I never did. She will not allow me to play songs for her. She will hear them when they release. I don't know. I think it's a little maybe ... I don't want to say intense. Yeah, she just tells me, she's like, "I can't hear ..." And she never says I don't want to hear it. She just goes, "Oh, it's a little too much tonight. I don't know if I'm ready to hear it." Because she's a very wonderfully emotional person and a beautifully emotional person. So I think it draws all those emotions up. So then I'll make the demo. "Hey babe, will you listen to the demo?" "Oh, I don't know." And then finally it'll get to like, it's on the record now. I'm like, "You want to hear the mix?" And then finally the song will just come out and she'll go, "Is this about me?" And I'll say, "Yeah. I wrote it like a year and a half ago but we never got around to listening to it."
Doug Burke:
So has she heard this? Does she know Killer Eyes is about her or is she going to find out on my podcast?
Keeton Coffman:
Oh yeah. Yeah, she heard it and it played a real huge role I think ... 2016. Let's see, we were just about to have our third. So she drove around and just listened to that record on repeat for a long time and she spoils me with ... She tells me great and loves to listen to it just because she says it's great. Yeah, she does love it.
Doug Burke:
When you get in a disagreement or she wants you to do something, does she ever say, "Don't make me use my killer eyes."?
Keeton Coffman:
No. No, she doesn't.
Doug Burke:
Does she ever pull that one on you?
Keeton Coffman:
No, she wouldn't. She doesn't do that.
Doug Burke:
No, she doesn't. Okay.
Keeton Coffman:
We also never disagree.
Doug Burke:
Not yet. Now she knows how to do that.
Keeton Coffman:
We never disagree. There are no fights or anything.
Doug Burke:
Oh, that's good.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. That would never happen of course.
Doug Burke:
So can you share with our listeners how to never disagree with your partner in life?
Keeton Coffman:
I'm being completely facetious. We of course disagree. We've been married 17 years and three kids.
Doug Burke:
Well, I put you on the spot because I knew you were lying. Speaking of making it look easy, let's Make It Look Easy. Talk about this song that you wrote.
Keeton Coffman:
Make It Look Easy I guess in a way is a song about transformation. The way that you move from infatuation to moving in with somebody or marrying somebody or joining your lives is I think what I'm trying to say. You join your lives together. And that comes with a price. And when you do that, all of a sudden all the things that you got to enjoy on your own time and not enjoy when you didn't want to, you don't have a choice and they begin to affect you. I think maturity and wisdom came to me years into marriage when I realized these things that are bothering me ... I should say the things that are bothering my wife about me. And I'm talking maybe some problematic stuff. It seems painful but this is a good thing. She's changing me. Maybe I wasn't the best version of myself when I said yes or I said I do or I said will you marry me. Now, that doesn't hold true only for marriage but that was the context I decided to set these two characters. And the first lines, you kiss me in the morning with your coffee breath, I'm trying to describe an instance where you, is that a good or a bad thing? I don't know. Like that, "Oh, god. Somebody's got coffee breath. It's terrible." But at the same time, once that happens for a long enough time, I might be on the road or something or I'm traveling and I don't have that experience. Not that my wife has coffee breath, but you miss it. Why is that? Why do I miss the things that used to bother me? So the song was kind of a bit of a Rorschach or an experiment or a question going ... I think this says an interesting to tell about who we are, where these things that I would have never wanted to marry someone if you listed out they do these things and yet, it's because you do these things that I love you so much now. It's a funny thing.
Doug Burke:
I have to say that this, in my mind, is a male perspective song because there's one line in here that just kills me because it's so true in my own life. Lately, you have been throwing away my favorite shirts. My wife wants to go through my lousy wardrobe all the time and if I go on a business trip, I come and my shirts are gone.
Keeton Coffman:
Aw, Doug.
Doug Burke:
And I would say something like let's let the laundry try to fold itself. My wife would never think that. By the way, she might say, "The laundry doesn't fold itself." "It doesn't? What? How else did it get folded in all my drawers? I thought it did that automatically. Oh no, you do it. Oh, I see how this works." But I don't mean to be sexist on this show but I do feel like this is sort of things that guys think about that women do sometimes in sexist roles and guys take for granted and that you at least put it in a song to tell your wife that you're not taking her for granted and hopefully she's grateful and will give you some killer eyes tonight.
Keeton Coffman:
Yeah. Well, I want to say ... This song is not rooted in ... I mean, I don't even know if my wife's ever cooked. Actually, I think the only line that's autobiographical is she cooks very spicy food. And it took me about five years before I could eat and eat with comfort. And now I can't not-
Doug Burke:
It took you five years to tell her you don't like spicy food as much as she likes cooking it?
Keeton Coffman:
I mean, if she's cooking, I'm not going to say, "Hey, don't cook." Long story short, I have acclimated and I can't not eat spicy food now. I have to have it. Everything else is pretty fictitious. I wanted a song that romanticized ... And I don't think you're being sexist. I think for the most part, not every time, men relate to women in a certain way and this guy is relating to this woman saying, "You changed everything about me I never wanted someone to change about me and you make it look easy and I love you for it. I can't believe it."
Doug Burke:
My wife and I moved from California to Utah, from the beach to the mountains. And it was two weeks before our move and she said to me, "You realize we have to sell all of our furniture and get new furniture?" And I was like, "We're moving. Don't we just get a van and put the furniture in the van?" And she said, "No. We have beach furniture and we need mountain furniture." And I said, "There's a difference?"
Keeton Coffman:
Of course Doug.
Doug Burke:
Because I'm a guy. I didn't know that there's such a thing as beach furniture and mountain furniture. Who would know? So we had to do that. And I called my dad up and he said, "Your spouse is going to change the furniture on you if you stay married long enough, three or four or five times in your life and you just have to accept it."
Keeton Coffman:
Sure.
Doug Burke:
And you can't explain it. And I think it's true with your clothing too if you're a guy. And my wife wants to change all my clothing. You see how badly dressed I am.
Keeton Coffman:
You look great.
Doug Burke:
On my own show. I need a clothing sponsor for my show, please.
Keeton Coffman:
Doug, she's a lucky woman. She's a lucky woman.
Doug Burke:
Oh, I'm a lucky guy to have her. I got to say. She's very good to me.
Doug Burke:
Here's one of my favorite songs. They're like children right? To say which song is your favorite. But this one I got the sneak peek on. It's called Hurricane.
Keeton Coffman:
Oh, I'm glad you like it.
Doug Burke:
I love, love, love this song. I hope you release it as a single. I think it's got real radio potential to it and I hope radio picks it up for you. Because this is a really well-written storytelling song by a great songwriter just start to finish. Tell me about it. Tell me what's behind this.
Keeton Coffman:
Okay. Yeah. There's a lot to tell. Again, I like love stories that are a little too messy for comfort. It's a very sexual song. These are two underage people who are running around and mom and dad don't know about it. And she's a hurricane and that's it. I'm not trying to say in the song, go break the rules. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is if you try to put love in a box of rules, it will defy you. It will. It has to do seemingly reckless things. Not reckless. Seemingly reckless things in my individual eyes because it's powerful. So that's who this girl is. And it starts ... She's a lifeguard. She's there to help people but not really. She's selling cigarettes at the swimming pool to these rich girls. And I have no idea how that came to me but I was just like, okay, there we go. And then ocean blue eyes straight off the coast of Maine. There's that admiration again. Smile will steal your heart, curves like a work of art. There's a reason he loves her. Gliding down the boulevard. Here she comes. My little hurricane. He gets pulled into it. The second verse is actually based, again, on stealing a little from some poetry. A guy named Alfred Lord Noyes wrote a poem called The Highwayman. It's a different story but in the poem the highwayman comes riding for his love and she's braiding a love-knot into her dark red hair. And I loved that braid scenario and so that's kind of what she's doing and he picks her up and she hops out the window and off they go into the night to discover love. Her dad finds them with a shotgun and they kind of escape by the skin of their teeth. Hearts get caught in a hurricane is the chorus. Even hearts get caught in a hurricane. And of course, she breaks his heart. She moves on to another scenario of what she's moving toward. But I don't think he regrets it and that's sort of what he expresses in the last verse is that her name, it still sings like my favorite song.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. I don't think he ever forgot about this sort of high school love. You never forget about your high school loves, right? And it feels like this high school love sort of thing. And over the years they actually become this real positive memory even though at the time your heart might have been broken or you might have broken another heart.
Keeton Coffman:
I think the whole thing I'm trying to talk about is we always talk about right and wrong. You shouldn't do this, you should do this, all that stuff. The point is you can't help but do things you shouldn't do when you're young. Or when you're old. You can't help it. Go try to be in love perfectly. Write me that book, please. So when people hear these songs that I write and they're like, "Are you writing a song about high school kids hooking up by ..." Did you live your life perfectly? No. Of course not. That's what's so cool about life is that when you look back, somehow God wove that whole broken little scenario into beauty for you or for the person you love or something and that's Hurricane. So yeah man, I'm glad you dug the tune.
Doug Burke:
Oh, I love the song. I hope it goes to the top of the charts for you.
Doug Burke:
Keeton Coffman, this has been terrific to have you on the show. I ask one standard question. You don't have to answer it if you don't think it's appropriate. But out of all the songs you've ever written, if you could have any voice record any song that you've ever written, what voice and what song would you pick?
Keeton Coffman:
Oh wow. That is awesome. Okay. Well, I got to splinter my answer into two short ones. Simply because I love Springsteen so much, I would love for him to cover ... I mean, he can kind of take his pick, honestly. So that's one answer. We'll leave it at that. If Bruce ever heard one and was like, "Hey man ..." I did get to meet him, I alluded at that when I went to this book signing. He signed the book, he gave it to me, and he's like, "Hey little brother." He called me little brother. But he was like, "Hey little brother, can you use Wounded Heart?" I'd be like, "Yeah boss. Sounds good." But the second. I'm a huge Norah Jones fan. Massive Norah Jones fan. I think she has a unique voice, capital V, voice. I think she has a unique voice, lowercase. I just love her music. I love the production. And she has a record that she did with Jacquire King. Then she has one she did with Danger Mouse. It's her third and fourth records that she did. And if she did Magician, I'd buy that on vinyl in a heartbeat.
Doug Burke:
That would be very cool. Speaking of your vinyl, your album Hard Times is coming out. Let's make sure we give that a plug. Now, this has artwork from J. Genevieve. Tell me about that artwork and what people can get by buying your merchandise.
Keeton Coffman:
I discovered J. Genevieve, an artist who lives in central Texas. And it would be a disservice to call her a photographer because although she does approach art through the camera, she takes her photos and just makes incredibly powerful pieces. You can look her up on Instagram. It would be _j.genevieve. Or you can just go to my stuff, you'll see the artwork, and click on her handle somewhere. But I just found her on an Instagram stumble upon. And I found her artwork and I reached out and I said, "You have to do the artwork for my songs and I would like to commission an individual piece for each song. And I want you to go listen to the songs. I'm not going to tell you what to do. And I want you to make an individual piece for every song." So here's the catch. Not only did she do that, but the album cover is all 10 of them somehow artistically molded together. And if you look close enough on the vinyl or the CD, it's a little harder to see on the screen, you can see oh, there's the one for the Magician, oh, there's the one for Wounded Heart. Because it was my desire in these songs, I want to tell these stories visually. So yeah, if you go look at Magician, it's a haunting picture. And she specializes in black and white and that's sort of where I was resonating. Wounded Heart is beautiful. She's talented. Of course, you'll see the artwork in the merchandise. I'd love for people to go visit my website and pre-order the vinyl or pre-order the CD. It comes out June 18th.
Doug Burke:
Anything else you want to give a plug for here? How about your school?
Keeton Coffman:
Oh yeah. Well, I guess two small plugs. One would be I hit the road again in July. So July 10 will be my first show back. We're excited. It'll be a full capacity show at Main Street Crossing. People who are in Texas, I'll be visiting Austin and Dallas and San Antonio. So if you like the music, stay in touch on Instagram. That's my best one. Email lists are fine. Facebook, I'm kind of on there but mostly Instagram. Second, though is I have a school in northwest Houston called Rehearsal Room. What Rehearsal Room does is it starts students at basic lessons but we get them recording in about a month or two. Even at a very young, basic level. And they enter lessons, then we match them in a four to five-person band that gets mentored. Then they start recording and they record every single week. And they put out a single every four months and perform a show. So it's this sort of ... People have heard of schools kind of like School of Rock, that kind of thing. It's not really an activity-based center. This is a real mentorship program. And we have a blast. We've got about 100 kids. And you can go look up the Rehearsal Room on Spotify. You'll hear these kids covering The Cure, covering Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and putting their own spin on it. And I should also say half of the songs on there are theirs. They are writing songs at 13. Recording them. Getting them mixed, getting them mastered. If I had had what these kids had, I'd be a billionaire by now.
Doug Burke:
Great stuff.
Keeton Coffman:
Probably not. So that's Rehearsal Room. Thanks for asking.
Doug Burke:
Hey, Keeton Coffman, this has been truly a pleasure. I got to thank you for coming on Backstory Song. I got to thank our sound engineer, DJ Wyatt Schmidt. You can listen to his recordings out there on Twitch and other media. MC Owens and Lauren, our social media directors. I have to thank my new special favorite guest, Travis Kelly, for listening to our show. Travis, you know we love you and thank you for being a Patreon and a fan. We love having you on our show as well as Fiona. Thank you for liking us on Instagram all the time. We love our followers on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We're out there posting away. We've got some big news coming up. Keeton, we are starting a TV show.
Keeton Coffman:
Oh, congratulations.
Doug Burke:
And you're going to be on it.
Keeton Coffman:
Well, awesome.
Doug Burke:
That's for another episode. That's my tease for the day. Thank you for listening to Backstory Song.
