Inner dialogues: How songwriter Cass McCombs moves forward

When Cass McCombs finished recording his 10th album, he emerged with something different from what he’d originally intended. While living in Northern California, the songwriter had been inspired to write about the Old West. His previous album included a precursor, a tune titled “The Great Pixley Train Robbery.” But he found himself intuitively making instead an album titled “Heartmind” (debuting Aug. 19) as a way to handle the loss of several friends. 

“Music has a mind of its own,” says Mr. McCombs, whose Americana style encompasses folk, jazz, country, and the improvisational jamming of psychedelic rock. “It always does the opposite of what you want.”

Mr. McCombs’ new album has, however, achieved something he strives for in his songwriting: growth. Since his 2003 debut, “A,” he’s been keen to avoid repetition. Nineteen years on, and despite being hailed by The New York Times as “one of the great songwriters of his time,” he still finds songwriting a mysterious process. There’s no predictable method. Developing one’s craft requires digging through layers of hard earth – “mostly shale, and rock, and dirt,” he says – in order to mine rich seams of inspiration. He describes songwriting as a devotional act. 

“If you rest on your laurels or you trust in things that have worked in the past, then the recipe is just mediocrity,” says Mr. McCombs, who is also a published poet. “Then you’re not going to create anything new.” 

Eclectic stories

“Heartmind” spans eclectic subjects including the travels of a fictitious jazz-blues band, a discharged soldier wrestling with his conscience, and the birth of a new Earth in which “dinosaurs lumber down Market St.” Mr. McCombs says his songs are like inner dialogues. He tries not to edit too much, capturing the way one’s thoughts can be profound one minute, contradictory the next. Humor figures prominently in his songs.

On the opening track, “Music Is Blue,” Mr. McCombs describes his relationship to the muse as a marriage with ups and downs. But the playful chorus concludes, “I wouldn’t have any other way / I love her, she loves me.” 

“Cass’ lyrics have always really stood out to me. They’re just such beautiful storytelling,” says Nicole Schneit (aka Air Waves), whose imminent album “The Dance” features Mr. McCombs on a song called “Alien.” “He dives in a little deeper than other people. ... They can be really deep topics, but he’ll make it kind of catchy.” 

“Heartmind” is dedicated to the memory of three fairly young musicians, and McCombs collaborators, who died in 2019 and 2020: Chet “JR” White, Sam Jayne, and Neal Casal. 

There’s one song on the album that addresses the loss of a musician friend. But it isn’t a morose eulogy. On the sprightly “Belong To Heaven,” angelic female voices coo over a drum rhythm that snaps like a clapper board. Mr. McCombs’ warm guitar lines are a throwback to the soft rock of FM radio in the 1970s. 

The rest of “Heartmind” is infused with the spirit of Mr. McCombs’ former collaborators. As he put it in a press release, “Their memories guided me throughout and hopefully they live through the music.” The result is the most energetic and musically upbeat album of his career. 

“Something new”

Making a breakthrough presents its own challenges because you’re upping the ante for the next time, he says. 

“A lot of rock music [relies] on set rules and structural things that people have already established years and years ago,” he says. “I’m interested in working with people who want to throw that away and come up with something new.”

When Mr. McCombs enters a recording studio, he comes prepared with songs built on strong foundations. If they’re sturdy, they can support the experimental ideas of producers, engineers, and guest musicians such as Wynonna Judd, multi-instrumentalist
Shahzad Ismaily, and drummer Danielle Haim from the sister trio Haim. 

For instance, the “Heartmind” title track features an instrumental coda in which the prevailing winds of a saxophone and Irish uilleann pipes converge. That’s not a combination you hear every day.

“There wasn’t a lot of conversation or deliberations about the arrangements,” says Mr. McCombs. There was, however, plenty of talk about striving for musical progression. 

“The idea was to make something that sounded like something we’d never heard before,” he explains. “Like a new territory. Some undiscovered country. Futuristic in a way.”