From a dirty Alabama road

“I want to make a record.” It’s a primary ambition of virtually all musicians, as instinctive as breathing, whether or not they can articulate the reasons behind their desires.

However, it’s one thing to create a recording — to capture the performance of a collection of musical ideas. It’s yet another thing entirely — far more precious and elusive — to make a recording that documents one’s life experiences, to craft an honest, emotional record, literally, of one’s time on the planet. It’s more challenging still to make such a record that will also sound great blasting out of a car’s stereo speakers, or washing across a back yard on a hot, breezy summer night.

It’s on this highest level that singer/songwriter/guitarist Donna Hopkins presents us with Free to Go, her independent debut CD. The recording introduces us to a girl who grew up poor in rural Alabama, who found a haven in music from her early teens, who knew even then that music was her life’s calling. On Free to Go, Hopkins, 39, speaks of what she knows. Several of her songs, including “Dirty Alabama Road,” are set amid the moonshine stills and front porch swings of her youth. Cut with bandmates Cindy Adler (bass) and Kevin Thomas (keyboards), and a host of musical allies, it’s a record that belies the “blues” label sometimes applied to Hopkins as thoroughly as her broad, potent voice belies her slender 5-foot-6-inch frame.

Creative Loafing: Have you been waiting all your life to make this record?

Donna Hopkins: Yeah. A lot of people offered to do things and have me cut other songs, but this is all me. Yep.

This record sounds like the musical equivalent of a family album or a home movie. It’s a commercial record, but it’s got that genuine feeling to it.

Thank you! I had my hands tightly on the production. I was basically overseeing all of it to make sure that happened. I executive-produced it, and co-produced it with Bryan Cole. We shared a lot of musical ideas. We’re very connected on that level. I didn’t call in any hired guns for guitar. I played all the guitars. I was kind of proud of that — all the acoustic, slide and electric guitars — and wrote all the songs, with the exception of “I’ll Fly Away” and “Long Gone Lonesome Blues.”

You’ve been described as a blues artist. But when I listen to this, I hear early-’70s rock ‘n’ roll and folk and bluegrass and country and more. What were you trying to accomplish with this record?

Of course, I wanted to be able to sell it, but I wanted it to be honest and real and a reflection of the inside of me. I didn’t really go, “OK, I’m going to make a blues album, I’m going to make a rock ‘n’ roll album.” I just put [together] all of my original songs that I felt great about, and they just seemed to kind of flow together, even though they’re not in the same genre. It seemed to work somehow, but I didn’t really put it together thinking, “I’m going to get a [record] deal.” I put it together just for my soul.

Your grandfather, “Tip” Barbee, plays on this record, and your mother played music, too, right?

She played organ and guitar and sang in rock ‘n’ roll bands, wore go-go boots, mini-skirts.

So when you were growing up, music was all around you?

Yeah, definitely. Sundays at my grandfather’s house was dinner and playing music until the wee hours of the morning, every weekend.

What made you decide to include your grandfather on the CD and to have your daughter [India, age 7] singing on one of the cuts?

That’s just a big part of my life. I attribute a lot to my grandfather for inspiration. When we were kids, all the adults would feed the kids first, and then the adults would sit down to eat. After we would eat, I would go sneak my grandfather’s guitar out from under the bed. I got in trouble the first couple of times until he saw that I was really interested in playing, and then he started teaching me a few chords here and there. So that’s where it came from. I loved to get his guitar out. Every time I pick up my Martin, my guitar, the smell of it reminds me of his guitar. There’s that whole vibe of him that is present when I play. He inspired me. As far as my daughter, oh God, she loves to sing. It’s totally in her blood, and I wanted her included somehow. She did some of the artwork inside the CD. She’ll get up at the Dogwood [Festival] in front of 10,000 people and just let it go. I just want to encourage her musical side.

You grew up in rural Alabama. Are you a country girl at heart?

Totally. I was raised on farms. My grandparents were actually tenant farmers, picked cotton, and I was raised in my early life in cotton fields. My grandmother dragging me on a pick sack. Actually, we thought it was fun picking cotton, when I was 4. From 4 to 7, we picked cotton and we thought it was fun. We had no idea, till we look back on it now, that they were making us work! It was just incredibly fun. So I grew up, y’know, dirt roads and farmhouses and well water and the whole nine yards.

What do you hope will happen with this record?

I’m not concerned so much with a major-label deal, but I would love to find a label that would really get behind me, somebody that believes in the record, and get some really good honest distribution. And I wouldn’t mind having a song on the radio [laughs]. That would be grand, but I want to play till the day I die.

How long did it take to record the CD, from the time you and co-producer Bryan Cole started talking about it?

We’ve been talking about it for probably eight years. When Bryan got sick and almost left us [Cole suffered a heart attack in March 2001], we were in the thick of talking about it, and really getting close. When Bryan was literally about to die, I dreamed that he had called me and said that we were going to finish up. So I actually called [Bryan’s wife] Lisa, and I said, “Lisa, I dreamed that Bryan called me, so I just know he’s going to be OK.” I have a lot of intuitive dreams, and sure enough he was OK, and he had the same kind of vision that he was talking to me. At that point, I was inspired to do it, and I finished writing all of the songs. We started [recording this past] November, actually physically working on it, and we finished in February, so the whole process went really quick. We recorded all the tracks and everything in a week.

It had been germinating for a while.

Yeah, there was a lot of energy that had built up to make this happen.



You’ve told me that when you 14 or so, living in Alabama, you used to sneak out of the house to go play music in bars. How serious were you about it? Were you good enough that people were thinking, “Hey, this is a talented person,” or was it a novelty that you were such a young person?

It seemed to be like a novelty. [But] I knew it was what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I knew early I was going to be playing music.

At what age do you think you knew that for sure?

Gosh, 14. I just knew. It was what I loved. When I was 16, I was coming back from a gig I hadn’t told my parents about, trying to make it back to school the next morning, and I fell asleep at the wheel and totaled the car. That’s when my dad said, “OK, music or school, you’re going to have to make up your mind and I hope you’re going to choose school.” I had senior year to go and, of course, I chose music.

You talked about your mom and your grandfather being musicians, but where did your own passion for music come from?

Times were kind of hard. Like I said, my grandparents were tenant farmers, and I grew up very — I don’t know how to say it — poor, really. I had great parents, don’t get me wrong, but they had their moments. And I think that music became my survival from problems at home. When I would get into disputes with my father, I would go for my guitar. When something moved me, I grabbed my guitar. It became a way of survival for me, emotionally.

I know that “Free to Go” is one of the songs on the CD, but why did you choose it to also be the CD’s title?

Ah, well, that song is about a lot of different people; not about just one person. There are some things, personally, that have happened to me. I feel like I’ve been reborn, and that song just represents that I’m free to move on. I’m free to go, free to go on and live my life. I look at life as a total growing experience, so there’s nothing really bad to me, because we learn from the bad stuff. I’ve faced a lot of adversity, with a wreck that almost left me without my arm — and almost killed my mom — and from a relationship with a man who basically left me for dead. Those words are true in there. I have overcome a lot in my life, and I feel like I’m growing. And I’m basically free to go on with my life, and on a really good path. And that’s it.

bryan.powell@creativeloafing.com