Songwriter Darrell Scott finds 'quieter' life outside Nashville

Directions to Darrell Scott’s house on the Cumberland Plateau include the mildly alarming phrase “There is a big cliff to be careful of.” There’s no cell service, and you’re far more likely to encounter a lost cow on the winding gravel road than another car. After 24 years in Music City, the master singer-songwriter needed this change of scenery. “Nashville’s just getting busier, busier, busier, and I’m trying to get slower, slower, slower,” Scott, 56, says. “Quieter, quieter, quieter.”

Four years ago, Scott and his wife, Angela, bought this 561-acre plot more than 100 miles away from Nashville. He took 18 months off the road to make improvements to his new home, installing solar panels, building chicken coops and planting vegetable and herb gardens.

While putting this homestead together, Scott used his down time to revisit recordings he made more than a decade earlier, in his living room off Couchville Pike, with musicians Danny Thompson, Kenny Malone and Dan Dugmore. “These guys are maybe in their 60s and 70s and they kick a-- as if they were 16.” Scott takes a sip of his espresso. “You’re bringing together maybe 50 years of high-level playing and recording with the excitement of someone who can’t wait to get on their instruments, like we usually associate with young folks in garage bands.”

Scott soon moved on to other projects, cutting albums with fellow acoustic virtuoso Tim O’Brien, touring and recording with Robert Plant’s Band of Joy, and releasing half a dozen solo records. But he never forgot his home recordings, burned to a CD labeled “The Couchville Sessions.” Then he met piano great Bill Payne, a founding member of the band Little Feat who’s worked with artists such as Bob Seger and James Taylor. Immediately, Scott knew that Payne fit in with the Couchville musicians.

“I thought, ‘Bill, I’m going to have you overdub on that record from yesteryear, then finish it up,’ " Scott remembered. After Payne laid down his parts, Scott added a recitation from his friend Guy Clark, triple fiddles and background vocals. He edited the entire project at his homestead, using a laptop set atop his wood stove, which doubles as a desk.

“The Couchville Sessions” will be released Friday. It’s the album Scott envisioned in 2001 when he began recording those songs in his living room. Original compositions “Waiting for the Clothes to Get Clean” and “It’s Time to Go Away,” both portraits of disintegrating relationships, fit neatly alongside covers of songs written by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt. Though the majority of it was recorded 15 years ago, “Couchville” doesn’t feel stale or dated.

“Songs don’t have shelf lives, unless they suck,” Scott says. That philosophy has served him well. Artists such as Travis Tritt, the Dixie Chicks, Patty Loveless, Tim McGraw and Brad Paisley have recorded his songs over the years, but he’s never chased radio success, never tried to change his style to fit a fickle business. "Don't sit in a room trying to guess what George Strait wants to record next week," Scott says. "Write something that means something to you ... write what you feel, write what's honest and let the chips fall," Scott explains. "Any time I've tried to do other than that, I'm quickly reminded that the songs aren't all that great."

Music, and Music City, has been a part of Scott's life for as long as he can remember. His father, a steel mill worker in Gary, Ind., occasionally took the family to Nashville on vacation. Scott grew up watching Roger Miller, Minnie Pearl and Bob Luman perform on the "Grand Ole Opry" at the Ryman Auditorium. At age 6, he got his first musical instrument, a bass, from a pawn shop near Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.

“Having watched Nashville very closely, (I knew) Nashville had the potential to help some folks become a rising star … but on another level, it could kind of bleach out what was unique about them. I didn’t want to be one of those.”

Though he'd been writing songs since his early teens, he waited to move to Nashville until he was in his early 30s, until he felt he had firmly established his own voice. "I didn't want to show up in this town until I had written songs that sounded like only I could write them.

"The people I knew when I came to town were really strong figures: Sam Bush, Guy Clark, Bill Miller and Verlon Thompson. You're not going to talk those guys out of who they are ... so I wasn't going to be talked out of whatever I did. That was important to me."

During Scott's tenure in Nashville, he established himself as one of the finest writers and most in-demand musicians in town, having appeared on recordings by Clark, Trisha Yearwood, John Cowan, Zac Brown Band and countless others. Songs he's written, like "You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive" and "Heartbreak Town," will endure long after contemporary trends have faded.

Now, he's aiming to build something equally long-lasting on his homestead. In late April the gardens were flourishing, and chickens pecked the ground under the watchful eyes of a Great Pyrenees puppy. Scott just bought his first two goats at auction, and he and his wife are stringing fence for a hog pen.

He occasionally heads back into Nashville for a co-writing session or a performance, but the longer he stays away, he says, the harder it is to transition back to the “it city.”

"I'm not saying it's going to be forever, but being here certainly feels good now and and have to wonder why I'd trade this for what I used to do."