Artist Spotlight - Owen Temple

Owen Temple’s Closer, Says Love opens with gratitude (“Ain’t We Lucky?”) and closes with grace (“Up North”). Eight tracks between tie together seamless snapshots captured by a seasoned songwriter in absolutely peak form (“Old Homeplaces”).

Temple assembled a crack studio outfit for the occasion. “We recorded at the Finishing School in Austin with Gordy Quist producing,” Temple says, “and a band I love: Matt Tedder, Trevor Nealon, Z Lynch and Clint Simmons with Caroline Hale and Kelley Mickwee singing harmony.”

Alt. Country Specialty Chart: Describe how the new album took shape.

Owen Temple: We never said, “Let's make a country record,” or any one kind of record. I trusted the musicians and didn't want to shut down any interesting idea they hit on, so it wandered into blues, soul, piano ballads and rock 'n' roll. Then I put it out the long way.

By releasing singles.

Yes. Eight of the ten songs came out as singles – about one a month starting last December – without saying they were headed toward an album. If I release ten new songs at once, I might only have time to tell the story behind one or two of them. This way every song got its moment online and onstage. I held back two, “One and One is Three” and “Dangerous Game,” for the album.

Explain the album title.

I heard the line in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Alphaville, which borrowed it from a poem by Paul Éluard: “Fear says 'away,' but 'closer,' says love.” It found its way into “One and One is Three,” the song I wrote with Tina Wilkins, and then it became the title.

Describe how that plays into the album’s common lyrical theme.

I think all of these songs ask the same question: do you want to choose fear or love? What you decide changes what happens next. Right now a lot of forces are trying to split us into camps. This record is about how we're better together.

Tell the story behind writing the opening track ‘Ain't We Lucky?’

I wrote it over a week when my wife and I had tickets to see Lyle Lovett and then, a few days later, Willie Nelson. Willie's show meant a short road trip. We took road trips all the time when we were dating, but they've been rare with a house full of school-aged kids. So it seemed obvious to look at each other and ask the question in the title. When I asked her, “Ain't we lucky?” I realized just waking up in the morning is very, very fortunate. And whoa, there’s coffee too. We recorded it as a blues shuffle, ‘cause they make you feel good.

Explain how these songs represent your evolution as a songwriter.

There's a saying that the world doesn't need any more love songs. But I've come to think the creative act is always about love, because you're interested, you're in love with an idea. So a lot of these songs are love songs in one sense or another: waking up and having your coffee, being with somebody you don't have to pretend with, two people making something bigger than the two of them.

I'm also writing with friends more than I ever have. Seven of the ten are co-writes, and on “Dangerous Game” Caroline Hale and I tried David Lynch's way of working: write down the images first and find out later what they mean to each other. It turned into a noir detective story. I try to write every day, even 15 minutes, just to find out what I'm thinking.

Describe Gordy Quist's role in that evolution as producer.

Gordy's been a buddy for a long time. He's the one who first introduced me to another favorite producer of mine, Gabe Rhodes, years ago. Gordy and I wrote a book about songwriting together, Songfarmer, and we've written a lot of songs together. When he took over George Reiff's studio, I knew he had been learning a lot about engineering and production, drinking from the firehose, and he asked if I wanted to hear what a record sounded like there, and that turned into Rings on a Tree.

On Closer, Says Love, he and the band kept pushing songs somewhere new. “X-Ray Eyes” was their idea to give a little soul feel, and Caroline's vocal took it to an unaccustomed place. The operating principle was: if somebody in the band had an idea, we didn't scrutinize it. We followed the flow, having fun and kept the parts we loved playing together. We tried to serve the song as our only rule.

Tell the story behind writing ‘Up North.’

I like to go to the edges of the maps I know. Growing up in Texas, I'm in awe of the scale and power of some northern places. Seeing my frosty breath on a summer night, or miles of glacier, or an endless forest knocks me out of my usual balance in a good way. A friend from Alaska explained it's dangerous up there and you have to stay alert. Walking around outside, you're part of the food chain.

People stick together in extreme places because survival depends on it. That alertness is clarifying and the song is a love song to that feeling. The northernmost I've been is Skagway, Alaska, but the song has moments in it from Alaska, Scotland, northern Germany, Maine, Montana, Wisconsin, British Columbia. For a Texas guy used to running the AC in winter, the clear cold brings important things into focus.

Describe co-writing with Gordy.

The metaphor Gordy and I use in our book Songfarmer is seeds. You go through the day just looking for little things that make you laugh, or smile or cry, a three- or four-word seed, and you write it down. Later you come back and water it. You don't tell yourself you're going to write a song or an album. You just give your brain that low-key command to look for seeds and you find more of them. On “Up North,” the melody we wrote together was inspired by Joe Ely’s far-reaching vocals on some of his epic songs. Gordy has high standards and he encourages us to rewrite until every line of lyric or melody is doing something interesting and moving. 

Explain how ‘Turquoise Blue’ came about.

Before I ever wrote a song, Hemingway's stories made me want to write something. I spent time out on the big blue in the Florida Keys one summer, then visited his house in Key West and read Islands in the Stream. His hero says, “I love the sea and would not be anywhere else. She has beauty and great mystery.” I wrote the first verse in Key West. A month later I was fishing in the Mississippi River delta with my oldest son, and more lines came while I looked out at the horizon.

When I got back to Austin, Walt Wilkins helped me put it all together and we wrote a third verse. Later, when the Artemis crew posted pictures of Earth on the way back from the far side of the moon, I realized Walt and I had written a love song to the whole planet and its life-giving blue.

Describe co-writing with Walt.

There's a concrete picnic table at Bull Creek Park in Austin, under 200- to 300-year-old live oaks, and Walt and I have met there many, many times, usually on Tuesdays. It's the most beautiful office I've ever worked in. During the Covid lockdown I wasn't writing much on my own, but when Walt would call and say, “Let's go to a park and write a song,” I'd always go. Five songs on Rings on a Tree came from that table.

On “Turquoise Blue” I brought him a first verse from Key West and some lines from the Mississippi delta, and he helped me see how they belonged together. Then we wrote the third verse. Co-writing is one of my spiritual practices. One-on-one, most people are really beautiful. Every time I think I’m the only one with some weird idea, I mention it and the other person says, “I had that too.” It's like improv: “yes, and.” If you don't throw up roadblocks, you're going to get something. I always get something meaningful and deep and honest working with Walt.

Describe why you started painting your album covers.

When I started putting out music in the late '90s, everything was albums. You’d release twelve or fourteen songs at once and hope people found their way through them. Now it's come back around to singles, and I love it, because each song gets room to breathe. So this year every single got its own watercolor that I painted. Online you always need an image, and rather than post some AI image, I'd rather paint something. The painting becomes part of the song for me, another way into the mood of it, another way to spend time inside what the song is about before I let it go.

Were any covers for these singles particularly difficult?

“Up North” was the hardest. After the northern lights came south, I saw so many photos that I had to try to get that feeling into a watercolor and that painting was as close as I got to seeing them. The album cover is different on purpose: all year the singles were the painted world and the album is a photograph of the person who painted them. The paintings are collected in my new book, Watch It Shine.

Explain why you choose watercolors.

When my kids were in elementary school, at the start of summer vacation I'd take them on a pilgrimage into the art supply wonderland of Jerry's Artarama. We'd come out an hour later with colored pencils, markers, watercolors, pens and sketchbooks. Those supplies turned out to be keys that unlocked doors: my kids would draw something and show me what was on their mind and then I'd do the same. When fall came around, I kept up that rhythm.

My grandfather, Latané Temple, was an artist and living with his work made painting an approachable challenge and a family tradition I was happy to continue. What pulls me in is light and water: the reflections, the ocean of the sky, and then a puddle or a lake or a river that gives me a second chance to see the sky through its lens. And if you're ever tempted to buy a piece of real estate, try drawing it first. You can love a lot of places and carry them with you without carrying mortgages.

Sounds like a pretty good way to live life…

I think the goal of a good life is to have more and more places where you feel at home, and every painting and every lyric gets me a little closer. With a little attention, you can realize you're already home.

I think the goal of a good life is to have more and more places where you feel at home, and every painting and every lyric gets me a little closer. With a little attention, you can realize you're already home.

-Brian T. Atkinson