Imagine it’s early 2016 and you’re Chuck Ragan. You’ve just put out your latest studio record, a unique release called The Flame In The Flood. It not only serves as the soundtrack to the 2017 video game of the same name, but it’s also your fifth solo record in less than ten years, and you got to make it with some of your buds like Jon Gaunt and Joe Ginsberg and Todd Beene in the shed/studio on your property in Northern California. You’ve also got a wife and a one-year-old at home, and your main musical squeeze, Hot Water Music, is getting busy on what will – by my math – turn into their eighth studio record, Light It Up (and pulling together what will turn into the Keep It Together compilation double album). Because of the thematic nature of The Flame In The Flood, you’ve still got some other thoughts and ideas and new music of your own that you’re woodshedding, so you keep sending ideas to your conspirators and keep stockpiling music for the next, more traditional solo record.
But life has a way of making other plans. In addition to normal family matters and balancing his fishing expedition business, the Light It Up tour gets an interesting wrinkle when your brother-in-arms, co-frontman Chris Wollard, has to step back from the touring life to help his mental health find equilibrium, so you weave a new spark plug, The Flatliners‘ Chris Cresswell, into the fold. There’s a follow-up HWM EP, Shake Up The Shadows, which is released in time for the band’s 25th anniversary, so of course there are all of those festivities. You finally book some solo time in the studio for early 2020 and a global plague breaks out. Somehow, you manage to stay at least virtually connected with the Hot Water crew and producer Brian McTernan enough to put out a new record, Feel The Void, in 2022, touring on that album when it seems right to do so. Then you FINALLY get to start recording your new solo record, only you realize you’re right at about 30 years of Hot Water Music and so there’s ANOTHER new Hot Water album, Vows, and 30th anniversary tour to pull off, so you push the new record back even more.
And that’s just a fraction of the things that could have derailed the project entirely…day jobs and family matters and shall we say “acts of god” have a funny way of throwing monkey wrenches into your good intentions. But it’s also a testament to the labor of love that is Love And Lore. Throughout the extended run-up, Ragan would send ideas to frequent collaborator Beene to fill out or rework or, sometimes, just go wild with them. The pair finally got together in the studio with Gainesville’s Ryan Williams, Hot Water’s live sound person and frequent audio recording engineer, and a cast of characters that includes George Rebelo on drums, Spencer Duncan on bass, Jon Gaunt on fiddle (obviously) and guest vocal appearances from Chris Cresswell, John Paul White and the wonderful Paige Overton. I hesitate to call the final product the crown jewel of Ragan’s solo work because I feel like that implies it’ll be his final work, and he is very much in fact still always writing new music as a means of connection and expression and therapy. But I do mean to imply that it’s great. Familiar and fun, yet some sounds we’ve never really heard from a Ragan solo record before. More rock-and-roll. More attention to the full-band sound, rather than songs grounded in just Chuck and an acoustic.
We caught up with Ragan via Zoom from a backstage green room in Germany, where Hot Water had just finished soundchecking for the Hanover stop on their 30th anniversary tour. We talked at length about the trials and tribulations of making the record, and the conscious decision to allow the music to flow in new directions. We talked a lot about the difference in songwriting for Hot Water versus writing for a solo record. We talked about the impact of turning 50 at the same time the band turned 30 and what those legacies mean. And of course there are some teases for tour plans that’ll keep him busy in 2025 and beyond. We should have talked about how cool it is that he and his HWM brothers got awarded keys to their collective hometown of Gainesville, Florida, last month, but I ran out of time. Anyway, keep reading down below. And make sure you pick up Love And Lore. You’ll be glad you did.
(*NOTE: The conversation below is edited and condensed for content and clarity*)
Dying Scene (Jay Stone): Thanks for doing this. Especially given time zones and daylight savings time and being on the road in a different country…this is awesome.
Chuck Ragan: Excellent. Well thank you for having me, man. Stoked.
Me too. It’s been a while. I think the last time you and I talked was like Hot Water Music’s 25th anniversary, and here we are at like the 30th, which obviously we’ll talk about your record, but congrats on the 30th anniversary of Hot Water and on turning 50 last week. Those are two pretty awesome milestones, man.
Thank you, bud!
When you line the math up, I don’t know why I never really considered it, before. But I said, “wow, like 30 years of Hot Water and turning 50 means that that like you guys were 19, 20 when Hot Water Music started.” And it’s really bizarre to think about it in those terms that like, yeah, as sort of monumental as it has become…you guys were kids!
I think if I remember right, George is the oldest. And then me. And then Wollard and then Jason. So if I remember right, we were all like 18, 19. Jason was 18. Yeah, I believe so. 18, 19 and 20. Sure enough.
And obviously that makes sense. But it’s bananas to think about 30 years down the road … If you’re 19-year-old Chuck Ragan, right, could he ever foresee a day where Hot Water Music is still alive 30 years from now? And frankly, that you’re still alive 30 years down the road?
No, no way. I mean, in those days,o ur mentality was so different, you know? We didn’t even come close to looking past the age of 22, much, you know, 30 years older. (*both laugh*) And yeah, you know, as far as the band goes, we were always…I’ve talked about this before…we were always a very much short-term-goal oriented band being kids. We just didn’t have the thought process to think that far ahead. So everything was definitely, you know, the short-term goals of let’s write three songs, you know. And then we would just put our heads down and work to achieve it. Then it was make a demo tape and figure out what we’re going to call ourselves. And then it was play a show. Then it was play the Hardback, you know. And then it just kept going like, oh, let’s try and do a tour. We never thought that we would end up playing thousands of shows and countless tours and or even coming overseas.
Right. Just to think 30 years ago, like 30 years down the road, you’d be having a Zoom conversation from Germany with someone like me. The amount of things that had to change in that time.
Sure enough. Yeah. You know, a lot of sacrifices. And over the years and which, you know, I think anyone has to make in any line of work, especially if it’s an independent type of work or you’re some type of artist, musician, a contractor, any type of tradesman, you know? If you’re out there hunting and looking for your own security and you definitely have many, many moments and months of that feast or famine, where you’re wondering how the hell you’re going to keep the lights on, how you’re going to feed yourself. And then especially when family comes into play, you know, you tend to sometimes have to make a lot of sacrifices to continue whatever that is, whatever that you’re grinding for, you know?
And you keep making (those sacrifices). And so that’ll transition us nicely into talking about this little guy (*holds up Love And Lore vinyl like he’s a late-night talk show host*). What a great record. Love and Lore, it’s the new record. It’s on Rise Records, right? Yeah, I have that right. What a great record and what a labor of love it seems like it must have been, because the last time you and I talked about a Chuck Ragan record was 10 years ago, which is bizarre. Was there a time where you didn’t think it either would or should happen, to have the next Chuck Regan record come out?
I mean, I kind of…I never have any idea when the next thing is going to happen. You know, I feel like I’ve kind of… I stopped chasing stuff a long time ago in the sense that I feel like I don’t I don’t have (to do this). I’m not doing this because I have to do it. I’m doing it because I love it. And at the end of the day, first and foremost, it’s something I need to do. It’s a part of my therapy, a part of my own healing process and reflection and understanding. And I mean, you’re you’re holding one of my journals, right?
Yeah, right.
That’s what it is to me. I would like to think we’ll always be proud of what we’re doing. And we do enjoy making records and having projects and playing with amazing people. But to me, the closure aspect of creating something from ideas and emotions and, you know, scribbling stuff down on papers and matchbooks and random thoughts and ideas and whatnot and coming up with parts and collaborating with friends. And then when you transition into a studio and start to materialize these ideas and lay them down, record them onto something in a way where you’re chiseling that stuff into stone. And you get to a point where you’re like, “that’s all I got. That’s as good as I can make it. That feels right to me. I am now leaving it alone.” And from there, it’s taken and physically stamped, pressed into wax that you are holding there. And when I get that at home and I pull that out and put it on my record player and pour a glass of bourbon and sit back and play it more often than not, in all honesty, it’s like, often the first and last time I ever play that record.
I’m sure, yeah.
And it’s very much like kind of picking up an old journal, you know, and reading through it, closing that book and sticking it on the shelf and moving on to the next.
Yeah, and the amount of time that it takes for vinyl to be pressed nowadays must play into that too. Obviously, you recorded this album, what, essentially a year and a half ago at this point? Or at least started to? Is that right?
(*laughs*) I mean, the timeline on this record is kind of insane. (*both laugh*) The idea of even making this thing began in 2016, you know, and there were already a handful of songs in the works before that, or at least like bits and bobs.
Is that around Flame in the Flood time? Like, was it sort of an extension of that or not an extension of that, but same sort of writing?
Yeah, some of the demos. And I mean, that’s how my writing has always gone is, you know, there may be a song on a record we put out today that began 15, 20 years ago, you know? I just have tons of archives and old demos and parts and, you know, a little crummy recording where I’m just singing gibberish and maybe a couple lines that I wrote down and it’s one part or maybe a verse and a chorus and that’s it. And, you know, there’s stuff like that laying around and it’s become a lot easier over the years with these with phones and whatnot to just grab it and lay down an idea and you archive all this stuff. And then I’ll sit down when I make the time to actually write and work on songs and look at stuff. And if I don’t have something on my mind right then and there that just kind of drives me to grab a guitar and sit down and just get something off my chest – which happens often too – but sometimes if I get stumped, I’ll scroll through all these archives. I’m like, “what’s that thing? What’s that thing?” And every once in a while, something will jump out at me that either charges me up, makes me feel something or seems perfectly relevant to focus on in that moment, where I sit back and go, “oh, wow. OK.” And then kind of sit back, decipher it, figure out where I’m at with it. And sometimes it rolls smooth and sometimes I’m beating my head against the wall, you know?
How do you narrow it down? I mean, if you’ve got that many ideas going over the years, if you’ve got parts of 10, 20, 50 different songs going, how do you narrow it down? And it’s like, OK, let’s actually put our like focus on making a record and then figure out which 10 or 12 of these go together. That’s got to be daunting.
Yeah. Usually for me, like my rule of thumb for that has it’s been this way for quite a few years. However many songs are going on or are on that record, I want to go into the studio or at least in a project mindset with twice as many. Like I want to I want double the you know, if there’s 12 songs where I want to go in with 24, 25 ideas, right? Often it’s a hell of a lot easier when you when you’re working with people you respect and that you you move with, you get along with, musically like-minded folks. You know, sometimes those projects move faster like that and kind of determining what it is. But to me, I always looked at, you know, creating songs moreso in a way of discovering them rather than me creating them or me writing them, if that makes sense. It may sound weird.
Yeah, sure.
I feel like they’re all there. They’re already all there. All these topics that we’ve all sang about, that everybody sings about, every writer writes about or filmmaker…like it’s all the same stories, all the same topics. So all these stories are there. They’ve been there. You know, we have our own perspective of what that is. But essentially the bare bones of, you know, the story of love and conflict or war…it’s all the same. I’m not creating any notes, right? Any chords, right? They’ve been created, all the beats and the rhythms, like everything’s there. And so to me, I feel like it’s my process is more so doing my best to open my mind as much as possible to see the path, you know, to see where it’s meant to be, see where it’s supposed to be. It’s already there, I just have to connect the dots.
How fleshed out are all these ideas when you go into the studio? I mean, I think Todd Beene is all over this record and obviously everybody loves Todd Beene and you’ve worked with him forever. But yeah, is he sort of all over this record? And I feel like it’s in a different way than he has been before.
Yeah, yeah.
How fleshed out was that idea going into the studio? Did you write together before or do you just kind of let him go be Todd Beene?
And yeah, for Todd, Todd’s brilliant. And I would love to have him even moreso a part of everything that I do in the writing processes and everything. I just think he’s wonderful and he’s brilliant. A lot of these songs, like I said, I mean, many of them were worked out pretty good, some of them or at least a quarter of them, you know, in the very, very beginning and would slowly kind of add another to the batch. I was sending Todd demos, you know, back in…Yeah, back in twenty-sixteen, twenty-seven, that early. You know, and it wasn’t until twenty eighteen because we signed that I signed this contract in twenty-sixteen with Rise.
Oh, jeez.
Yeah! At the time I was working directly with Craig Ericson and (Sean) Heydorn over there, some great folks at Rise, but mostly just communicated with Craig. And I told him Hot Water was fairly busy at that time. And man, I have no idea when I’m going to even finish songs, much less make this record. And he was real mellow and like he’s like, “oh, man, anytime you want, could be a year, five years, I don’t care. Do it when it feels good.” And so that immediately took the pressure off. Maybe made me a little lazy about it.
Maybe took too much pressure off. (*both laugh*)
Yeah, right. Right. And, you know, at the same time, I had a baby, I had a two-year-old, you know? And so home life was way different when it came to actually working on songs and music. And it was, you know, and sleeping and everything changed when kids came in the picture. It wasn’t until 2018 that I got in touch with Todd and was like, “hey, man, I really want you involved in this record.” Because Ryan Williams, myself and Todd Beene did the Flame in the Flood out in my shed on my property, in the shed studio. And it was just such a great experience. I just wanted to do that again, you know. And so we started sending him demos and he would lay stuff down. He would work on stuff. We’d talk about structure. He’s very much, you know, involved early on. Some of them were pretty fleshed out where at least there was here’s the verse in the chorus and another verse and a bridge and whatnot. And, you know, but Todd is completely brilliant and I trust him so much when it comes to, you know, arranging. I love his taste in music. I love his ideas. And this one, I just I kind of wanted him to go nuts. And I think he did, too. He took the session to his place. And, you know, once he gets in his wild of electric guitars and pedal steels and everything in his home studio, there’s no telling what’s going to come out of there, you know.
But it’s great that you give him the freedom to do that. You could go in saying, “I just want to pedal steel for this third” or whatever. But you trust in him to be able to say, look, do what you’re going to do because it’s going to be awesome…
A hundred percent. I mean, I definitely have my opinions and I like, you know..
It’s still your name on it.
Yeah, like “I need this one stripped down,” you know? “Let’s just kitchen sink it, you know, have some fun.”
Yeah. Yeah.
So but yeah, it was a hell of a process, man. We got serious in 2018 for a minute and started, you know, had some demo sessions in Florida, actually got into the studio, started laying stuff down. And then the plan was to really hone it through in 2019 and get into the studio early 2020. And we were scheduled to be in the studio in April of ‘20.
And what’s going on that month? (*both laugh*)
Yeah. World shutdown. Monkeywrench in the gears. I just had to do whatever I could do to provide for the family. And then, you know, fast forward again, we were in you know, twenty twenty-two and finally got another session on the books and that had to move for some reason. It just seemed like this record for the longest time was…just if anything could go wrong, it was just going wrong. Or not even going wrong, just just kind of putting the brakes on us. Ryan Williams, him and his wife had a beautiful baby while we were actually in the studio.
Oh, wow!
Yeah. He one day literally was like, oh, oh, oh, I guys, I got to go! (*both laugh*) And we were like “you go, we’ll lock up, man!”
Yeah, right. That’s wild!
That was the end of the session! Luckily, I had finished all of my vocals and guitar. I’d finished all of my stuff. Todd Beene then had to take the session up to his place and while he was there, a tree fell on his house. So that put brakes on him there.
Of course it did, yeah.
You know, relationship madness, like just you name it, it just kind of kept coming. And then when we were finally ready, it got way too close to this whole Hot Water Music 30 year campaign. So then it was us who decided, all right, now that we’re done. Let’s just sit on it! (*both laugh*)
Right. Right. Sure. It’s been this long.
Put it out later.
Yeah, I feel like as you know, life exists on social media. So I feel like in watching through social media, I remember you and Todd and a few other people posting stuff from the studio, probably late 22, early 23, something like that. And as a fan of yours, like solo parallel to your work in Hot Water, I thought “oh good! It’s been seven years since the last Chuck record, this is awesome!” And then another whole Hot Water album came out. Obviously, Vows came out this year, so I’m like, what the fuck? Like, where’s the Chuck record? (*both laugh*) Do you think the album would have come out differently…would it sound differently or be themed differently if none of that stuff happened and if you had actually recorded it in, let’s say, 2019?
A hundred percent. There’s no telling what it would have been, you know? I think I think there because, you know, a lot of my songs, the majority of our music, my stuff, Hot Water music, you know…even though they stem from dark places at times like there’s always got to be some hope. There’s got to be a glimmer of hope. There’s got to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Like that’s a crucial element in making music for me because I’m doing it to heal.
Right.
That’s the reason. And I’m doing it for myself and my friends and my community, right? And like so it being a healing process, you know, some of these songs, like tend to come from, you know, places that aren’t all that pleasant at times. it can be a dark place. And, you know, there was I mean, there was some uncertainty. There was some darkness kind of between that, you know, from the time you’re talking about, if we were to do it in 2019 to, you know, 2023, a lot a lot of darkness around. Whether we like it or not, if you’re creating anything, you know, or expressing anything, you know, whatever is happening around you within your life, within your community, your neighborhood, your society, in the world, like it’s going to come out if you’re, you know, just reflecting and just trying, you know, doing your best to stay genuine to yourself and the work that you’re doing, it’s going to leech out, you know. Yeah, for sure. I think who knows what it would have been, you know, I don’t know.
You’ve talked before, obviously, your songwriting is very personal and you’ve certainly shared stories like with the Wayfarers. I’m a proud early member of the Wayfarers Club. And so you’ve obviously talked about personal stories that go into the Hot Water songs like “Remedy,” for example. And so your Hot Water writing has always been personal, but it feels like your solo work is like differently personal, if that makes sense. It might all still come from darkness, but it seems a little more like actually focused on the light and focused on sort of the family aspect of things more specifically than Hot Water. Hot Water might be like a little more general, the concepts. And it seems like…is that a conscious thing that like if it’s a Chuck Regan record, it might be a little more like explicitly personal? Or do you even think about it on those two terms?
That’s a really good question, you know. To me, usually it’s kind of one in the same writing often at the time that I’m writing. The last thing I’m thinking about is this is one of my songs and this is a Hot Water song.
Interesting.
Until I play it, because the majority of the writing that I’m doing, I’m playing on a Martin, you know, unless it’s time to work on Hot Water stuff. And, you know, I’m communicating with the gents and we’re just like, yeah, we need to plug a guitar in, And I am like writing for Hot Water music, you know, playing like I would just beat the hell out of the thing, you know. But usually a lot of like a lot of our songs that ended up like “Much Love” or “Habitual” or, you know, a lot of these songs, these were old demos on an acoustic guitar sitting on the porch from, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago, somewhere. And, you know, back then I had I had no idea, you know, that this is going to end up on a Hot Water music record in 2024.
Yeah, right.
So, yeah, I don’t know. That’s a great question. I think that when it comes down to really honing the stuff, music definitely kind of evolves as I’m working on these demos and there’s definitely moments where I’m like, yeah, that that definitely would fit in the Hot Water catalog more so than than my stuff.
Is that more true musically or lyrically? Or both?
Probably musically. Yeah, I would say.
So, for the lyrics, I mean, obviously you might have a line or part of a verse or a chorus or whatever that stand-alone that you build off of. But do the lyrics sort of come last in a case like that? But you don’t write lyrics differently for Chuck Reagan versus for Hot Water, I guess?
That happens a couple of different ways. Sometimes I’ll just go on a tangent, you know, and write like I’m writing poetry, more or less. You know, and sometimes it’s a mess. It’s run-on sentences and it’s like just dumping, getting stuff off of my chest. And who knows, you know, I can’t say I would say, you know, for the most part, lyrics get honed at the end. You know, often demoing this stuff, we’ll sing just straight gibberish. Like I was saying about discovering the songs, like, I think the story is already there. You know, the note, everything’s already there. And there’s an energy and an emotion and a feeling that gets us started in the first place. And it’ll come out in a melody. It’ll come out either in a guitar melody, a vocal melody or both kind of combined. And to me, it’s important to, like, tap into that energy right then and there, whether I have words for it or not. Some of the time I don’t! I mean, I’ll hit record sometimes and, you know, make sure nobody is around (*both laugh*) and just start howling at the moon, you know?
Right, right!
You know, the Wayfarer folks have probably heard, you know, some of this and this isn’t stuff that I would normally play for anyone, you know? It took quite a few conversations between us before we kind of let some of that out in the Wayfarers club, because, you know, it’s just so exposing, you know? And just knowing or not knowing, I guess, how crazy it may sound.
Yeah, yeah! (*both laugh*)
I mean, I listen back to it sometimes I’m like, oh, my God, I’m out of my mind. I’m just tunnel vision, in some kind of vortex. But it’s important to tap into those energies when they come to us, at least for me. I think a lot of songwriters do things differently, but for me, as a way to just get stuff off my chest, that’s how I’ll do it. And every once in a while – and I’d have to think longer on why it possibly works this way – but every now and then I’ll just be dumping and a phrase will come out or a word will come out, and many, many times – more often than not, it dictats the path or the meaning of the song. I think it’s something subliminal that I need to get off of my chest but I don’t know how to do it. IT’s like, you know what you need to say, you know what you have to get out, but you haven’t been able to articulate it. Like your wheels are turning faster than your mouth can speak.
In regards to your solo music – since you never really know when you’re playing it live what format it’ll take: it could be you, it could be you and Todd, or there was a time when it was you and Jon (Gaunt) and Joe (Ginsberg) and maybe (David) Hidalgo. Obviously you know when you write a Hot Water song, if you ever play ti live, that’s pretty much what it’s going to sound like and all those same guys will be there playing their parts. But when you’re writing a song like “Wild In Our Ways,” which is an awesome full band song and could be such a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers track, but are you conscious when you’re writing it that “this is going to sound different when I’m playing it live”?
Um…I don’t worry about that stuff now as much as I did at one time. I have at moments had that mentality, because the majority of the time I’m going to be playing by myself or with Jon or with Todd, so I’ve definitely had those moments. When we were doing Covering Ground, Joe and Jon and I, we were mostly just playing as a three-piece. It made sense to add Chris Thorne on there and Todd on there in little bits, but the bones of the record I needed to be – all the drums on the record were very stripped down and sparse, and that was intentional. But at some point, I started to realize that I may never play a show for these songs. So it became “why not let the song tell us what it needs?” If we’re feeling it and if the vibe is right and we want to throw drums or keys or you name it on there, let’s just have fun and make the best recording that we possibly can. That’s the vibe. That’s the mentality. And then hopefully it’s a song that can still stand up on its own when you strip all of that stuff away if you need to.
And I’m sure that if most of that material starts with just you and a Martin writing, it’ll end up translating pretty well as just you and a Martin playing if it needs to.
Yes, absolutely!
I know you’ve got European solo dates coming up next year, is there a plan to do things here in the States next year too?
Yeah, absolutely Jay. We’re going to be announcing a ton of stuff. We have US dates, some Canada dates. We’ll be getting out and about.
You and Todd, or you and Todd and others, or is that an “all will be revealed” situation?
It’s going to vary from tour to tour. So much of it has to do with logistics and budget and a lot of different factors. We’re going to have fun whichever way we do it.
Have you brought Mr. Grady Joseph out on tour with you at all? I know he’s obviously seen you play, but have you brought him out on the road and let him experience other parts of the country like that and watch how you work and travel now?
Yeah, he’s been to a few places and he’s had fun. If we’re ever playing, that dude is on stage singing and dancing and he’s bringing it. Recently Hot Water played San Francisco followed by Sacramento, and my family came out, and he road on the tour bus from San Francisco to Sacramento and slept in a bunk. And maybe it was just because I was a lot more sensitive because I had my kiddo with me, but I was like “man, we are loud!” (*both laugh*) After a show when everybody is back on the bus and before everybody goes to bed, man, that volume goes up! (*both laugh*) He was trying to sleep and he was like “it’s too loud!!” so I had to put ear muffs on him so he could get some sleep. But we had a ball. He loves it. When he’s there, he’s a band member and we love having him. He has the heart for it.
