John Oates (photo: Art Burrows)
Maybe it sounds like the setup for a joke: “OK, John Oates comes to Nashville to make an Americana album...”
That’d be John Oates of Hall & Oates, the multi-platinum soul-pop duo that contributed 1970s and ’80s radio hits including “Sara Smile,” “She’s Gone,” “Private Eyes,” “Rich Girl” and “Maneater.” That’d be John Oates, former owner of one of pop music’s great mustaches, the John Oates who was ridiculed in a Saturday Night Live sketch in which actor Chris Kattan sported the ’stache and took credit for the “clapping part” on “Private Eyes”: “It was my idea. To clap. I didn’t really sing, or play guitar that well. So . . . I’m Oates.”
Kattan’s bit was funny, though its premise — that John Oates doesn’t do much — was faulty. While Oates’ new Mississippi Mile album won’t likely approach Hall & Oates-level sales figures, it should serve well to disavow any listeners’ preconceptions of Oates as anything other than a musician of taste and talent.
“John is a really, really good guitar player, and as a singer he’s got ridiculous range,” says Sam Bush, the Grammy-winning mandolin player who has played on Oates’ two most recent albums, including the Nashville-made Mississippi. “The guy can sing tenor to a dog whistle if he wants. And he’s incredibly well-versed in folk and country blues.”
Those folk and blues influences came through clearly on early Hall & Oates releases such as Abandoned Luncheonette, but they fell away later in the duo’s career, particularly in the abundantly synthesized 1980s. But American roots music remained at the core of Oates’ musical self.
“Sometimes, people don’t realize that I played guitar for 12 years, doing folk and blues things, before I even met Daryl Hall,” Oates says, sitting at Sunset Grill, a couple of miles from the Nashville apartment where he and wife Aimee reside part-time. (They also have a farm in Aspen, Colo.) “So that’s always been there for me, and Mississippi Mile is kind of a musical history of my influences, of what I was hearing and doing prior to Hall & Oates.”
All-star roster
The album includes re-imaginings of Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” and Percy Mayfield’s “Please Send Me Someone to Love,” as well as a handful of Oates originals, including “Deep River,” inspired by last year’s Nashville flooding, and “You Make My Dreams Come True,” a Hall & Oates staple delivered here as a lively acoustic shuffle with Jerry Douglas’ Dobro answering Oates’ smoky vocal lines. Oates asked Bush for advice on finding an effective co-producer, and Bush sent him to the Bluebird Café to witness Mike Henderson and his band play a Monday night blues set. Oates quickly realized Henderson, who plays searing slide guitar at the Bluebird and is also a mandolin-playing member of Grammy-nominated bluegrass band The SteelDrivers, was the ideal co-producer.
“He didn’t need a producer to tell him how to do a song or anything like that,” Henderson says. “I was just the guy to call the musicians and then to announce when something was done and it was time to take a break. We went really fast, and John knew exactly what to do.”
The album credits read like the roster for a Music City all-star team, with Henderson, Bush, Douglas, piano man Kevin McKendree, guitar great Pete Huttlinger, vocalist Bekka Bramlett (“One of my favorite singers,” Oates says), bassist Dennis Crouch, drummer John Gardner and other heavies involved. To the players and singers, Oates seemed less like a pop star than a kindred spirit, as his acoustic and electric guitar work was an essential undergirding for the recordings.
“That shouldn’t be surprising, that he’s really good,” Bush says. “He played a lot of lead lines on a lot of Hall & Oates tunes, like that lick at the front of ‘Sara Smile.’ ”
Oates’ immersion in Nashville music only has increased his desire to improve as a player and writer. With millions of albums sold in his rear-view (and occasional Hall & Oates shows still on his calendar), he’s finding inspiration in the city’s street-level virtuosos.
“I walk into the Station Inn and hear players who blow my mind,” he says. “And the songwriters in this town are incredible. When I first started coming to town, I realized I had to work harder.”
“John’s a go-getter, he wakes up fresh every day and likes to work, to write and to play music,” Bush says. “He’s also a really nice guy who can have fun with his own songs.”
Case in point: Oates’ performance with the Sam Bush Band at a recent Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
“I asked him, ‘Would you be up for doing a bluegrass/reggae version of ‘Maneater’?” Bush says.
Which sounded like the setup for a joke. But it wound up as a crowd-pleasing revelation.