There just ain't any justice…

In a perfect world, David Olney would be as revered in popular culture as Johnny Cash. Unfortunately, the author of "Deeper Well," "Jerusalem Tomorrow," "If My Eyes Were Blind" and dozens of other classic songs remains largely unknown except for a devoted following of fellow songwriters and country and folk afficianados. Criminal? Absolutely, because Olney casts a long shadow in the roster of country music's greatest storytellers, easily morphing from balls-out rocker to Dixieland boulevardier to bluesman with a hellhound on his trail -- all within the course of a single album.

Inspired by early rock 'n rollers like Buddy Holly and the unchained emotional power of Ray Charles, Olney originally cut his teeth as a folksinger, and later, through the '70s, as the leader of barroom rockers the X-Rays. By 1991, with four critically-acclaimed albums under his belt (Contender, Eye of The Storm, Deeper Well, Roses) Olney had established a reputation as a songwriter of unusual depth and a decidedly left-of-center lyric view (case in point: "Titanic," a tale of the doomed ocean liner -- told from the perspective of the iceberg). He came back swinging in 1995 and 1997 with High, Wide, and Lonesome and Real Lies, two albums that showed his eclectic musical taste and penetrating lyric touch undiminished. Through a Glass Darkly, which followed in 1999, was probably Olney's most accomplished album since his debut, featuring such instant classics as "1917," "Dillinger," and "Avery County." He followed up with the stunning Omar's Blues in 2000, a song-cycle based loosely on the structure of The Rubiyat of Omar Khyam; as with all of his albums, Omar is by turns exhilarating, grim, knowing, and compassionate -- the work of an artist at the peak of his form.

Olney spoke with MUSICBLITZ in November from his home Nashville, in between European tour dates for Omar's Blues. Though he's forthcoming in expressing his ideas and opinions, he's equally modest when discussing his own accomplishments and influence, preferring to let the music do the talking…

Did songwriting come naturally for you, once you got rolling with it?
When I first started writing songs, I didn't want anybody to know that I'd written them. I was already kinda playing in bars in Chapel Hill, NC. I would play folk songs, and if I wrote a song, I would stick it in the middle of the set -- if nobody knew I wrote it, then I figured it was a good song. I did that for several years, which was a good thing to do, it was like serving an apprenticeship. And then I started writing more personal things -- some of 'em were okay, but they were pretty generic -- but then I wrote a song in 1975 called "If My Eyes Were Blind" that was just so much better than anything I'd ever written. It had all of the elements that I really liked -- that was the Eureka! moment.

Do you feel that your style has evolved tremendously since then?
I don't know about tremendously, but it evolves constantly. Part of the way I write is to try not to repeat myself. You can't be new every time out, you want to establish certain things you do, but that mostly has to do with lyrics, I think. The thing I try to avoid is being a dabbler -- I want the music to be a kind of logical step from what I've done previously.

As a lyricist, you seem to have a real affinity for the past...
Well, you get older, you've got more past to look back on (laughs). But I don't have any kind of yearning for the past; for me, it's just trying to find a different viewpoint to look at the present. The present is in flux, whereas you can look at something in the past and it's kind of like a statue -- you can walk all around it and see it from different angles. There are writers who write about the present and do it really well, but I'm not one of them.

There's also not much of a confessional element in your songs. Do you find that standard "singer-songwriter" perspective embarrassing?
Yeah, in my songs it'll say "I," but it won't be me. That kind of [confessional] writing doesn't come naturally to me, and also … I'm not that interesting. The things that interest me a whole lot -- my kids, my family, building a fence in my backyard -- aren't particularly interesting to anyone else. If I just wrote about myself, it'd be dull.

Who is your biggest inspiration as a songwriter?
Townes Van Zandt. I opened for him in Athens Georgia back in the '70s -- I'd written some songs, but I hadn't really sort of found my voice yet. And song after song, he just had a completely unique outlook -- artistic without being effete. His outlook on things was just mind-boggling to me. Oh, songs can do this? All kinds of possibilities opened for me.

I read an interview where you said that no one ever acknowledges that Townes, for all his darkness, was a ball to hang out with. Is there one particularly wild time you had together that sticks out in your mind?
The times that I had with Townes weren't doing anything wild. The second time I met him, we went down to Texas to play, and he was just completely crazy. And I could see that there were a lot of people around him that were part of his traveling comedy team -- I admired his writing so much, and I wanted to get to know him better, but I thought, if I do this, I'm just gonna be a kind of satellite going around, so I backed off until a few years later. There was one time when we were going to hear somebody play, and it just came up -- I told him that his music had really changed my life. I mean, all the stuff you say as a fan that sounds awful, but is really heartfelt. And I was so glad to have the opportunity to tell him that. He was really gracious about it, he said he liked what I was doing. The words weren't really what was happening -- it was this direct feeling. It was really nice.

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