Interview With Outlaw Songwriter Roger Alan Wade

Roger Alan Wade is a veteran country songwriter, having penned Hank Williams JR.’s hit “Country State of Mind,” as well as songs for George Jones, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash. He is mostly famous, however, for being the cousin of Jackass founder and star Johnny Knoxville. The Knoxville association has allowed Wade to come out of the songwriter shadows in the last few years and start a performing career. His two albums, Stoned Traveler and All Likkered Up are cult favorites with irreverent songs that only represent a portion of the depth of Wade’s songwriting.

I saw Wade perform at the musINK Festival in Dallas on April 10th, and afterwards we headed over to a famous burger joint to chat about a number of things, including him recording a new album–his first after being sober for two years. He also talked about plans to write songs with Jamey Johnson. The burger joint was called “Twisted Root,” and the way they let you know your order is ready is by giving you a card with a celebrity’s name on it. The person right after us drew “Johnny Knoxville.”

KYLE CORONEOS: Whenever you see the name Roger Alan Wade, the name Johnny Knoxville is before it. He’s been able to give your music a lot of exposure because of his celebrity, but you’re an accomplished songwriter. You don’t need to pretense anything about who you are by somebody else’s name.

ROGER ALAN WADE: We both understand the gravity of that situation. It saved me from sitting around Nashville in beige cubicles writing songs and waiting for someone to come record them. It’s turned me on to a whole new audience. We’re out here, playing songs you write that you really dig and you’re not worried about the radio friendly.

He just called me the other day. Remember that fat guy that got kicked off the airplane? Kevin Smith? Well Knox called and said, “Hey you gotta write a song about that.” So I wrote “You’re Too Fat to Fly.” Well they’ve been down in Orlando filming for the new Jackass movie. So he calls and says “We need you to finish two more verses because we’ve got a skit we want to use it in.” Nowhere else in the world could you get “You’re Too Fat To Fly” in a movie.

And Knox is such a fan, of music and Outlaw music. And he’s got great instincts, incredible musical instincts. One of my favorite things about him, his greatest gift is his honesty, man. It’s brutal. He doesn’t ease up on me, and I love that. I went through a really dark period, you know. Just drugs and alcohol. And I got clean–I’ve been clean and sober for over two years now–and it’s been the best thing ever in my life and no one was prouder of me than Knox. And now it’s just so exciting. As soon as he gets a break from Jackass we’re gonna cut the new album. Thank God for nepotism.

KC: So at one point were you in Nashville sitting in those songwriter cubicles?

RAW: I was doing basically the same thing I am now, writing on the run, because that’s the only place real. That’s where country music has gotten to; they’re not saying whats in their heart or what they think or feel, they’re saying what they think you want to hear. To me, that’s the difference between great music and stuff that doesn’t raise the hair on your back. I’ve had some other people record my songs. I don’t have anything against Nashville, I just don’t fit in. At all. I tried to, you know. Killed myself trying to.

You know, I think with this internet thing where you don’t have to depend on a record label just opened up so many ways to do things. You can put a record out now and reach just as many people as if you were signed to Sony. I remember when it wasn’t like that, so hopefully these cats realize how fortunate they are. One of the things I’m most grateful for is having put in those 25 years of really hard, hard times. I mean I don’t know how I survived now, but I survived it. And now that can come out in the music.

One of the new cats I really enjoy is Jamey Johnson. Well, they’re setting up a writing forum for me and Jamey right now. You know I really haven’t written with anybody for a little while, so I’m looking forward to that. And he seems to really get it, you know. Seems like he’s got some living behind him.

KC: Do you have a title for the new album?

RAW: Yeah, I finally got the title song written after a long long time. At the Alamo, any time the Mexican Army would surround it, they would have this song they’d play called “DeGuello,” which meant “leave or die.” That was kind of my life so I wrote this song called “The DeGuello Hotel,” and that’s gonna be the title of the album. I’m really proud of it because it was one of the first things I did clean and sober. And it let me know I could write clean and sober. I’ve about got the whole album put together, it’s really going to be special. I want it to be like Red Headed Stranger, Honky Tonk Heroes, Blonde on Blonde or Grievous Angel by GP [Gram Parsons]. I really want to make something like that, that I can sleep with, look myself in the mirror and know I did my best.

KC: Are their going to be any funny songs on the album?

RAW: I really got into writing those stupid songs because I was too screwed up to write real songs. I just wanted to sing and practice, so I’d sit around and try to think of something funny. And I tried to do it without cussing. There’s not any cuss words there. It sounds like there are. I kind of ripped off Seinfeld, but like he’s says cussing is taking the easy way out. The way I did it, nothing really happens. Basically it’s just this loser ratting out another loser, and at the end of it, you really don’t have anything. But it’s all so true. Like stuff you would hear in line at the Wal-Mart.

Am I being too artsy if I don’t include something funny? Maybe if it fits into the context. I don’t think “Butt Ugly Slut” will be on there. It has to be another kind of funny.

KC: You say you’ve been sober for two years. You see so many country artists singing about getting drunk or being drunk but there’s a curious amount of them that are people who are sober.

RAW: It bores me to tears now. I mean to write a drinking song now it just doesn’t interest me.

KC: But where did this come from?

RAW: When you’re doing it, it seems romantic. We’re kinda sold this idea that that’s how we create art. All our heroes did that. Hemingway and Kerouac, that it enhanced their art. It’s basically what would have they accomplished without all this crap in the way, if they had worked clean? It’s total opposite of what we’re sold. They didn’t create the art because of it, they created it in spite of it. I’m no preacher, or hellbent on cleaning everyone up. I just know I accomplished more in the previous two years being clean and sober than I did in the previous 25. And I didn’t have any deep set emotional problems, I just enjoyed it. I really don’t want to come across as preachy about it. The best way I can say it is that it just bores me now.

KC: You seem like a happy man, and I never would have guessed that. Having never met Roger Alan Wade, you have sarcastic songs about this and that. You could be a shy quiet guy, or a guy that’s mad at the world.

RAW: I’m happier now than I’ve ever been in my life. But I’m basically the same as I’ve always been, I’m just not drunk or wired. I was a functioning drunk, and I could have continued on and got by with it because you use it as a crutch. You use your music as an excuse to get by with it. “I’m a musician, I’m a writer so I can do this.” I was just so so fortunate, because I could have gone on as a functioning drunk, and never experienced the joy I have now in my life, and never got artistically to the point where I am now. Before the possibilities were limited, and now they’re limitless, and that is so exciting. Now I got no excuses.