Tom Russell Gets Lyrical About Chance Encounters

The dossier on Tom Russell includes a long and highly unusual assortment of credentials, accomplishments and chance encounters, some of them a little sneaky.

It also includes the even longer list of the even more unusual songs Russell has written and sung.

For the past 20 years, Russell has been an unheralded but respected member of the eclectic folk-rock-country movement that is responsible for a large share of America’s most rewarding pop music.

If a songwriter can be judged by the company he keeps, Russell, who is in his mid-40s, can point to an A-list of songwriting partners that includes Ian Tyson (for whom Russell will open tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre), Dave Alvin, Peter Case, Katy Moffatt and Nanci Griffith. Griffith, Suzy Bogguss, Johnny Cash, Joe Ely and Orange County’s Chris Gaffney are among those who have recorded Russell’s work. (In a swap of sorts, Gaffney’s latest album, “Loser’s Paradise,” includes a version of Russell’s “The Eyes of Roberto Duran,” while Russell’s new one, “The Rose of San Joaquin,” offers a cover of Gaffney’s “The Gardens.”)

Speaking by phone last week from a recording studio near his home in snowbound Brooklyn, Russell noted that his series of close encounters with songwriting greats began early in life.

As a Los Angeles teenager, Russell said, he and a friend sneaked into a Beatles concert at the Hollywood Bowl by jumping on the hood of the Fabs’ limousine and posing as part of their security detail.

“We opened the door for Lennon and watched the show from the side of the stage,” Russell recalled. “I was the real gate-crashing type back then.”

As if the Beatles episode wasn’t enough to give Russell a barroom and cocktail-party conversation opener with a lifetime warranty, he also has a yarn about sneaking onto the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in 1972, where he joined a rendition of “Amazing Grace” during a gospel-oriented show. To make the story even more unlikely, Russell’s gospel-singing partner was Kinky Friedman, country music’s self-proclaimed “Texas Jewboy.”

At the time, Russell was just getting started as “an apprentice honky-tonk singer.” He had studied criminology and sociology at UC Santa Barbara, spent several years teaching in Nigeria (where, he said, he jammed on guitar with King Sunny Ade and other top Nigerian musicians), and wound up in Vancouver, playing dives and backing up strippers as part of his apprenticeship.

In 1974, Russell moved to Austin, Texas, drawn by the progressive-country scene that was being created by such figures as Townes Van Zandt, Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. He formed a band with piano player Patricia Hardin, made several recordings, found little success and wound up in New York City in 1981, with hopes of landing a recording deal as a singer-songwriter or a publishing contract as a novelist.

Neither came through, and as his marriage crumbled (he had two small daughters, now grown), Russell foundered for a time. He went to Puerto Rico for a while to work as “an urban cowboy singer in a carnival, backed up by a Canadian disco band.”

Upon returning to New York, he began driving a cab, which led to perhaps his strangest and most significant encounter with a famous songwriter.

Outside a theater in Queens, Russell picked up a fare he recognized as Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead lyricist, who had just finished a gig.

“His name was on the marquee, and when he walked out he had a guitar case and a drink in his hand and a long cigarette holder,” Russell recalled.

The cabby announced himself as a fellow songsmith and began singing a song he’d written: “Gallo del Cielo,” a dramatic and desperate tale about cockfighting whose vivid detail, momentum-filled narrative and emotionally biting concluding twist are all Russell trademarks.

Russell said that he kept driving and that Hunter kept asking him to sing the song again and again, until the meter read something like $150.

“He made me go back and make a tape of ‘Gallo del Cielo,’ ” Russell said. “[Hunter] came back to town a week later to play a big show at the Bitter End [a Greenwich Village club] and said ‘Come on down.’ I was drinking his whiskey [while Hunter performed], and he started talking about this song, “Gallo del Cielo,” to a group of Deadheads.

“He said, ‘Hell, I’ll let the guy who wrote it sing it,’ and he handed me the guitar and disappeared.” Russell’s mini-concert was well-received, and Hunter had him open another New York City concert soon after.

“I was pulled back into the music business by Robert Hunter,” said Russell, who hasn’t driven a cab or had any contact with Hunter since.

*

Russell began gigging around New York City with guitarist Andrew Hardin, who remains his regular performing partner. An agent heard them and invited them to play a series of shows in Norway. Russell said he developed a following, and a series of three Norwegian recordings ensued (they were subsequently released in the United States on Philo/Rounder Records).

So far, only two of Russell’s songs have reached a large North American audience. “Outbound Plane,” written with Nanci Griffith, was a major country hit for Suzy Bogguss. “Navajo Rug,” a fetching song written with Ian Tyson, was a hit for Tyson in Canada and became the title track of a successful album by Jerry Jeff Walker.

In another project, Russell teamed with Dave Alvin to organize last year’s acclaimed compilation, “Tulare Dust: A Songwriters’ Tribute to Merle Haggard.”

Russell cites Haggard, along with Bob Dylan, Ian & Sylvia, and traditional cowboy songs, as key inspirations. He credits his mother, who would read poems and stories to him when he was a boy, with forging his fascination with tale-spinning.

But often Russell will probe seldom-traveled territory in strange, striking narratives that play out like condensed films. He will sometimes adapt tales he has read.

Often, a fragment of his own experience will lead to a song: “The Sky Above, the Mud Below,” from his new album, is a dark, glowering mood piece that tells an ironic tale about cruel justice in the Old West.

Russell said it was suggested by a museum exhibit: “I was traveling through Alberta and saw these colorfully woven bridles. It said, ‘Braided by Mexican horse thieves, Montana State Pen, 1910.’ That’s all it said, so the rest I just made up.”

“Everybody’s always looking for a new story, a new way to talk about love,” Russell said. “That’s an extremely difficult thing to do.” Still, he is confident that good ideas will continue to flow.

“I’m traveling so much and reading so much that I have a lot of source material, just from living day to day.”

* Tom Russell and Ian Tyson play tonight at the Galaxy Concert Theatre, 3503 S. Harbor Blvd., Santa Ana. 8 p.m. $15. (714) 957-0600. Russell’s books and recordings can be ordered by calling (800) DARK-ANGEL.