Singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave and Dallas entrepreneur Kelcy Warren opened their Music Road Records label in 2007, releasing the Woody Guthrie tribute album Ribbon of Highway Endless Skyway the following year. The partnership led to a slew of other releases featuring original material but Warren had an itch to scratch. The cofounder's extreme fandom for one of the most prolific songwriters around sparked what would become the pair's second tribute effort: Looking Into You: A Tribute to Jackson Browne, which came out in January. Artists like Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley came running.
"We kind of leaned on Kelcy to tell us what his vision was," LaFave says, noting that he, The Eagles drummer Scott Crago, Warren and tribute-pro Tamara Saviano made up the production team. The four had all of their bases covered with two seasoned musicians in LaFave and Crago, a Grammy Award-winning producer in Saviano—whose credits include tributes for Stephen Foster, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark—and a student of Browne's music in Warren.
Warren and LaFave went through the proper channels to get permission for the album but they never actually spoke to the artist until the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Tulsa, OK, which LaFave has been playing since 1998.
"Kelcy didn't want to do it without Jackson's blessing," LaFave says.
The plan was to have 15 artists cover some of Browne's tunes but more musicians and fans got involved, resulting in a double album. Country crooner Lyle Lovett also recorded two songs. Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa teamed up for a deep cut with 1976's "Linda Paloma" from The Pretender. Bob Schneider took on one of Browne's biggest numbers, "Running on Empty," slowing it down to a gentle jog as opposed to the original's more epic run.
Although LaFave has been known to use "These Days" in his live sets, the singer let Warren choose his contribution to the album. His friend landed on 1973's "For Everyman" from Browne's second album of the same name. LaFave learned the whole song from scratch, adding a powerful string arrangement to it.
Warren had song ideas for other artists lined up but in the end he let contributors perform songs they were comfortable with and had an emotional attachment to.
"It really had its own organic, great way of becoming a heartfelt tribute, directly from these artists to Jackson," LaFave says. "It all kind of worked out for the best because tribute records are very hit or miss."
A similar thread in Saviano and LaFave's conversations with Music Times is that the whole idea behind a tribute record is ultimately love. Looking Into You is a thorough celebration of Browne in everything from the music to the cover art, which was photographed at the artist's childhood home in Los Angeles, CA. Tributes breathe new life into classic tunes and they give musical admirers a chance to sing the words of influences and contemporaries.
"What I love about doing tribute albums, and what my goal is for doing them, is to showcase the songwriter part of the artists and to show how their songs stand the test of time and can be interpreted so wonderfully by other artists," Saviano notes. The producer's work on Beautiful Dreamer: The Songs of Stephen Foster earned her a 2004 Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. Saviano was an integral part of Looking Into You because of her track record with artists and connection to the Nashville music industry.
The tribute was a different project than what Saviano was used to since she was essentially hired to help bring someone else's vision to light. She says that while having grown up with Browne's music, she didn't know all of it. She bought all of Browne's albums and lived with them for months to know him better as a songwriter.
She's had the pleasure of working with big names on albums covering bigger names, but one experience from the Browne tribute sticks out for Saviano. The producer was blown away by Henley's passion for putting together "These Days," which Browne wrote when he was 16. Considering the song has lines laced with introspection like "don't confront me with my failures / I had not forgotten them," it's a pretty decent foreshadowing of the songwriter's raw talent with lyrics.
"Don's treatment of it and the lengths that Don went to to record that song just right also blew me away," she recalls. "This is one song for one tribute album, and Don Henley put so much love and thought into that song. It was crazy wonderful."
Henley changed up the arrangement to the song a couple of times as he tried to figure out how to nail it. There was a rock arrangement planned before Henley thought that just his vocals with a cello and violin would work. That idea was scrapped after The Eagles vocalist heard an indie folk band called Blind Pilot.
It fell on Saviano to track down the Portland band, which was heading off to tour in Europe. Things looked bleak until Henley, who was in the middle of filming a Showtime documentary about the history of The Eagles, started making calls.
"Don ended up pretty much dropping his whole life and going to Portland to record with the band in their studio with their engineer because that was going to be the most convenient thing for the band," she said. "So the fact that Don Henley rearranged his life to get this song exactly the way he wanted with this band that he did not know, that's just a classic, wonderful, great creative story."
Saviano says it took from August 2012 to the end of 2013 for the album to come together. The group worked for 15 months fueled by nothing but admiration for Browne and his work. The highlight for Saviano came this past September when she met up with the songwriter at the Americana Music Awards & Honors ceremony.
Browne felt the love.
"He was just so complimentary about the work we did and flattered and just so sweet about it," Saviano says about the encounter. "It was really sweet of him to take the time to listen to the work we did and appreciate it."
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