How to Write Songs Like Shel Silverstein: Interview with Bobby Bare Jr.

By Julie Simmons | Music Journalist

Just before five-year-old Bobby Bare Jr. duetted with his country-crooning father, Bobby Bare Sr., he looked at his protégé and introduced him as "the next superstar." Bare Sr. added, "Twenty years from now, [my son] is gonna be so ashamed of what he has done on [Bobby Bare Sings Lullabys, Legends and Lies] that he's probably gonna sue me."

Now an adult, Bare Jr. is grateful to have recorded "Daddy What If," with his old man. Not only did the song receive a Grammy nomination -- making Bare Jr. the youngest person to be nominated at the time -- he remains proud because the song was written by his beloved godfather, Shel Silverstein.

For years, Bare Jr. has paid homage to his deceased godfather by writing compassionate songs about strangers. The younger Bare and I talked about his uniquely personal songwriting process at The Hideout in Chicago in the spring of 2003.

Yeah, that was a long time ago, but the songwriting tips are timeless.

Like a true Southerner, Bare positioned two pedestal bar tables that were stashed in the alley behind the venue. We sat facing each other and hoped the weight of our bodies would fix the buckling concrete below us. His shirt was untucked, his legs were gently swinging, his boyish face was poised with sincerity, and his head was gently cocked to one side.

Bobby Bare Jr. in the alley behind The Hideout in Chicago (Photo taken by Brian Tucker)

The interview started with him politely thanking me for reaching out and supporting his music.

For context, it was the early 00s and a lot of new, indie artists were on new, indie labels waiting for new, indie writers to approach them from new, indie music magazines.

As I volleyed gratitude, I caught his brow slant for a moment as he seemed to analyze me. I had read that Bare studied psychology at the University of Tennessee, so I asked him about assessing strangers. He admitted that "seeing through people" and empathizing with their pain inspires his songwriting.

"It's something entertaining," he said with a mischievous grin, "and I work on it with just about everyone I meet."

Transforming real people into lyrical characters

Analyzing strangers and turning those insights into lyrics is a skill Bare seemed to adopt from Silverstein. In the song, "Painting Her Fingernails" from Young Criminal's Starvation League (2002), Bare painstakingly describes a woman preparing for a date she'll never go on:

She's painting her fingernails

waiting for something to happen.

Listening to love songs,

watching the clock on the wall.

She could fix a cheese sandwich

but someone might ask her to dinner.

So she's painting her fingernails

waiting for someone to call.

Bare's voice creaked like floorboards as he confessed, "If I waddn't a songwriter, none of these great musicians would hang out with me. I'm not a great musician." Despite my efforts to compliment him on his guitar playing and melody composition, we focused on his lyricism.

"Flat Chested Girl from Maynardville" (also from Young Criminal's Starvation League) is one of Bare's best examples of empathic songwriting. In the song, the protagonist is a girl writing in her journal...

about being a ghost

who walks with thieves,

because they cannot take

what they cannot see.

While standing on

her bed she screams

words that fall

onto her sheets.

"No one pays attention to me!

So no one knows nothing

about me!"

Yet, Bare saw her.

He reflected, "That is me going to school in Knoxville, and just north of there - that's hillbilly area. That's Hatfields and McCoys, totally. And that's where I first started playing in a band. And at the Quik-E-Mart, there's this goth girl - and just the romantic vision of this goth girl in the middle of the Hatfields and McCoys, dealing with - you know, being that person and just being an outcast."

He admitted that, like that girl, he often felt (feels) socially stigmatized. And because of that, he's often alone, writing in solitude and confronting a blank sheet of paper.

Layering poetry over poetry

"It's horrible facing the blankness," he revealed. "But honestly, I have enough Shel poems memorized so I can just play chords and recite one of his poems overtop whatever I'm doing. And in that perfect rhyme scheme, I can just rewrite the poem. It's my own melody, but I'm borrowing a scheme that's older than Shel and me and you and this building. I'm using an ancient, ancient rhyme scheme that I happen to know because of Shel."

Bare quickly recited an excerpt from Silverstein's poem, "Sick" (from the compilation of poems, Where the Sidewalk Ends):

I cannot go to school today

Said little Peggy Ann McKay

I have the measles and the mumps

A gash, a rash and purple bumps

Then he proceeded to recite an excerpt from his song, "Nothin' Better to Do" from Boo-Tay (1998):

I woke up early today

And thought of seven different ways

To like myself less than you do

For any reason false or true

While Bare mostly maintains the iambic tetrameter, he modifies it ever so slightly by starting with a trimeter.

I remember the interview ran long as the sun sank behind the brick walls around us. Bare missed his soundcheck but didn't seem worried. As the second opening band played, the singer / songwriter / guitarist quietly tucked himself in the back of the bar. Between sips of Jack and Coke, his eyes peered from beneath the rim of his cowboy hat as he scanned the audience for his next lyrical character.

And I was watching him.

***

This interview was originally published in Static Multimedia, April 2003

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