Back in Black

Back in 1989, singer/songwriter Jeff Black packed his bags, loaded up the car, and headed out of Kansas City en route to the famed music city, Nashville, Tennessee. Since then, he’s released 1998’s critically acclaimed Birmingham Road and continued to tour, with the path across the country occasionally bringing him back to his hometown for a brief reunion with his friends and family.

“You know the old quote ‘You can’t go home again’?” Black asks. “Well, that’s sort of true except for the fact that when I do come home, there’s a real sense of fellowship with some of the people that I used to drink beer with. And a trip to the Golden Ox is always good.”

Black was a 10-year-old Show-Me-State resident when he decided to become a songwriter. His working-class family fueled his ambition with stories about playing at barn dances and his grandmother’s piano duties at church, and as a teen he prolifically penned songs. Some of his friends went off to college while Black stayed behind washing cars, working in warehouses and a few other jobs, and always writing in his free time. Eventually, Black began performing, often at the houses of those aforementioned drinking buddies.

“I’d just bring my guitar around and play at people’s houses,” Black recalls, “and I used to play all over the place.” He did have a regular job at a club, although he didn’t make his money on stage. “I used to work the door down at Blayney’s, and Monday night was a jam. We had a bunch of dirty old blues bands from the Midwest come through there, but I can’t necessarily say I’m a blues-song kind of writer.”

Although not fluent in shuffles or call-and-response numbers, Black absorbed some useful information from these Monday night jam sessions. “You know how some of those old blues songs, two or three lines say a lot?” Black asks. “I think maybe part of that, and I think maybe some of the longing and yearning in old blues songs, but also the celebration — but musically, note for note, I think it’s just the spirit of the old jazz and blues that’s influenced me. I’ve always been a songwriter that hates to be put in one category.”

Black’s eclectic songs ultimately reside somewhere between confessional country and rootsy rock and roll, with plenty of other influences adding flavor. For example, songs such as “Birmingham Road” contain a touch of jazz, which is hardly surprising given his birthplace. Kansas City works its way into Black’s lyrical content as well. “Songs like ‘Street’ remind me of when I used to live downtown in Kansas City,” Black says. “Before the whole restructuring of downtown, there used to be a problem with the homeless people kind of taking over some of those old mansions, the old apartment buildings down there. In wintertime, it would get really cold, start snowing, and people would be freezing, so they’d go inside and rip off the wallpaper and start fires to stay warm. They burned a couple of those buildings down.”

Both of those tracks are from Black’s well-received previous record, but during the past few years he’s been hard at work on the currently untitled follow-up, which he says might be available to the public by next spring. “I really write a lot faster than the machine works,” Black says. “I’ve got a backlog of a lot of songs, so I’m going through a lot of them right now and I’m kind of revisiting my entire catalog. I’ve got a lot of songs and I’m really trying to bring it to a place where I can say exactly what I want to say.”

To find that figurative place, he has to be in a certain kind of physical place — free of distraction and conflicting noise. “I kind of have to be in a place where it’s quiet, because there’s music in the air everywhere you go,” Black says. “I think you can hear what you’re supposed to be writing, what you’re supposed to be creating, whether you’re a songwriter or a painter or a carpenter. I think all those visions, all those ideas come to you if you just take the time to let them in, because we’re totally inundated all the time with so much from television and radio and digital networks and everything else. I think that if you’re able to sit quietly and listen to what’s going on in the universe and around the world, the music and the lyrics will come to you.”

During his time in such serene settings, Black’s inspiration has taken him beyond musical pursuits, with the accomplished storyteller lending his talents to the printed page. “I’ve always had an idea for a couple of books in my head,” he says, declining to divulge any of the ideas he’s had thus far. “Beginning next year, after I accomplish a few things that I’ve been trying to get out of the way here, I’m going to get to work on it.”

In the meantime, though, there is that ever-necessary obligation to tour and take his music to the people. Life on the road, between the clutter of clubs and the noisy traffic-filled transit, offers few opportunities for Black to enjoy the silence that serves as his muse, but it does have its benefits, especially when the route winds through Kansas City. “It’s a town that I really cut my teeth in, and it’s a grand thing,” he says. “It’s absolutely wonderful.”