Buddy Shute stays busy. His bands include Buddy Shute and the Motivators as well as the Procrastinators, and you might also catch him solo or as a duo. His latest album, Heading Back to Memphis, represents a full circle experience. He grew up in Memphis and began playing music there. In January, he and the Procrastinators went back to that city as representatives from the Fort Smith Riverfront Blues Society for the annual International Blues Challenge. Last week, Buddy Shute came to the Anthony and Susan Hoye News Studio to give us a tour of the new record and to play one of the songs for us in the studio.
The album, available today, features 14 songs. There are 11 originals, one traditional and two covers, and a couple of co-writes with Brenda Baskin, a member of the Motivators.
Buddy Shute: She's very helpful with writing songs. I get started on a song and just hand it to her and she'll finish it. And she helped finish "I Told You So."
Kyle Kellams: Tell me about "I Told You So."
Shute: I go about writing songs where I usually start out with a chord pattern and an arrangement — a basic arrangement — and a melody kind of falls into place. And then while I'm fooling around with it, usually a phrase or a term will drop in place. And that was "I Told You So."
[Buddy Shute performs "I Told You So"]
Kellams: If I had really thought about what song I want to hear Buddy Shute's voice on, I think "Way Down in the Hole" may have been the very song. You seem fit for this, and this song seems fit for you.
[Buddy Shute performs "Way Down in the Hole"]
Shute: I'm always looking for songs to play and songs to cover. I heard the Blind Boys of Alabama do this song and I thought, boy, that's an amazing song. I said, I'm going to cover that song on my next album because nobody's ever heard it, and they'll be very impressed. And then I come to find out it was written by Tom Waits and it was the actual theme song for "The Wire."
Kellams: The Wire. Yeah. They would use a different version every year, right?
Shute: Yeah. I'd never seen that. So I was unfamiliar with that, but it's a fairly well-known song. But I still — it's really a fantastic song. I've always been a Tom Waits fan from way, way back.
Kellams: What you do is get great musicians into the studio. This lineup — you've got your partner in crime, Mark McGee on harmonica, and you mentioned some of the others. You got Darren Novotny on drums. You got a fiddler that we've heard of.
Shute: That's Keith Grimwood from Trout Fishing in America. We're actually — to get away for a sidebar — I've been playing at a brewery in Eureka Springs every now and then. And a couple of years ago, Keith and I did a little concert there with our friend Randy Bulla. And they keep asking us back. So we're going to be there again this May — me, Keith and Randy.
Kellams: Oh, fun. Well, for someone who's also in a band called the Procrastinators, you may not have a name for a while. I also love "Rosalie." I love the sound and the production on that song. It sounds really cool.
Shute: Well, I thank you. That's a fairly old tune. When I got in the studio — Chris Moore at East Hall Recording, he was having to relocate and he was shutting down the studio. So I was kind of in a hurry to get a lot of tunes together for the album. And this was one of the tunes I had written many years ago, and it was the opportunity to record it. I've got my friend Keith Hubbard doing the accordion part on there. That kind of adds quite a bit to it.
[Buddy Shute performs "Rosalie"]
Kellams: What about "Recycling Blues"?
Shute: Back in the '90s, I was living in Madison County. At that time I was broke — well, I'm still broke — but there wasn't a lot of places to work. And I got a job working at the recycling center, which had just opened. Madison County — I love Madison County very much, just because people will let you do whatever you want as long as you don't mess with them. The EPA had closed the landfill down. There was no place to put the trash. And the back-to-the-landers, the hippies, started a co-op recycling thing that was very hit or miss. And my friend Larry Carrigan got together, put a lot of effort into it — he got a grant to pay for building the building and got somebody to donate the property, and he opened up the solid waste transfer station recycling center there. And I got a job working there when it first opened. There was no actual routine. We had to take care of the trash and recycling, but every day a calamity would come up and we'd have to deal with that. I look back on it and it's the best job I ever had. And this song, "Recycling Blues," I wrote about working there at that time.
Kellams: Can we hear "Recycling Blues"?
Shute: Here it comes.
[Buddy Shute performs "Recycling Blues"]
Kellams: Oh, thank you so much. That's fun. A true story. So did you write that while you were still working there, or is that a memory?
Shute: I wrote that when we were working there. A fundraiser came up and we were just playing, had some music going, and I put that together for that.
Kellams: What do Larry and Gladys think?
Shute: They are very supportive.
Kellams: Well, congratulations. Your voice keeps sounding better.
Shute: Well, I think — yeah. Who knows?
Kellams: I don't know if you're rich or famous, but I'm sure glad you're still doing music, Buddy.
Shute: Well, I greatly appreciate the invitation to Ozarks at Large. We're very fortunate to have you and the show here in this area, and I greatly appreciate it.
Buddy Shute's new album Heading Back to Memphis is released today. You can find out more about the record, about Buddy's dates and more at buddyshute.com. One of his bands, the Procrastinators, will be in Eureka Springs for the Eureka Springs Blues Party, performing on the final day of that event, Sunday, May 31, at the Bandshell in Basin Spring Park.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
