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For Veteran Singer/Songwriter, Recording Career Begins Late

By Pete Brooks
Special to the Spectrum

Wayne Scott’s "This Weary Way" is the best new Hank Williams record I’ve heard since Williams died on New Years Eve, 1952.

Equally as remarkable is the fact that Scott’s marvelous collection of mostly original compositions is his first album ever – at age 71.

Although his family had always been “slightly musical,” according to Scott, he “had a disease of it. I was born to want to play and sing.”

Following that muse led him from the back woods of Cranes Nest, Ky., out to the West Coast, with stop-offs in the Midwest on the way.

Despite having been writing songs since he was a teenager, it wasn’t until he was in his 40s that Scott began playing music in public, then another 20 years before he started performing his own compositions.

During his first two decades playing bars and clubs, “I gave the crowds what they wanted to hear and what I was paid to play — hits the audiences knew and could dance to,” he explained.

The whole time, though, he continued to write songs of his own on the side.

His fortunes finally changed one Christmas when he made a gift of a bound volume of 100 of his compositions to his son Darrell, himself the author of hits for country mainstays like Garth Brooks, Brad Paisley and Patty Loveless.

With his family’s encouragement, Scott was finally persuaded to go into the studio with his son to lay down the twelve tracks that would constitute the bulk of This Weary Way, the album.

“It was a dream making this album with my son,” said Scott. “It couldn’t have been a better experience working with him and all those great [Nashville pickers].”

Under the influences
Now, sometimes to tell a musician they sound like another musician is a backhanded compliment at best. But to tell a songwriter his work stands up next to the very best in his field is hardly damning with faint praise. Somebody once compared my writing (favorably) with a certain widely-respected writer’s — I still get giddy thinking about it. It’s like remembering a well-received flirt. It’s this kind of praise I am directing at Wayne Scott’s songwriting.

Among the couple of tunes that don’t sound like they sprang directly from the Hank Williams songbook is the last track, a spirited raveup of Johnny Cash’s immortal “Folsom Prison Blues,” recorded live with his son Darrell’s band.

The father-to-be in me responded to the elegant melody and straightforward, heartfelt lyric of “Sunday With My Son,” a song with more John Prine in it than Williams Sr.

The similarities to Williams’ work are only structural however — the songs sound like they could have been written by Williams, but the crisp, dry delivery is all Wayne Scott. You can almost hear the tumbleweeds drifting forlornly by in his dusty, unwavering baritone.

Scott also cites Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash as influences, but lacks the former’s whiskey-smooth vocal delivery and the latter’s weary gravitas. Wayne Scott sounds like a gentleman. As if Pa Cartwright had picked up a guitar and started singing a sad song…

The result is that rarest of rarities, an honest-to-God country record, with honest-to-God country music. Opry music.

This Weary Way
Scott drew from a deep well of talent for this album. In addition to Darrell’s band, he enlisted the help of legendary Texas singer/songwriter Guy Clark on an original composition, “It’s The Whiskey That Eases The Pain,” to open the album on a relatively upbeat note. That’s right — on a true country/western record, a song so titled is very likely to be the emotional high point. Wayne Scott is old enough to remember what makes country music country music, and it’s not “Man, I Feel Like A Woman.”

Although I enjoyed the CD the first time I put it on, it was the title track, “This Weary Way,” that sent me scrambling for the credits. I would have sworn it was a Hank Williams tune, in composition and delivery. Scott has a gift for songwriting that cuts away anything unnecessary and just leaves the important parts.

The gospel tunes, too, are simply perfection. No grand flourishes, no lurid bravado or layers of studio polish, just plaintive words, a melancholy melody and tasteful traditional instrumentation. Kudos must be paid to his producer, again, his son Darrell, for getting the sound so right.

The album has made a Scott fan of me. I want to hear more. It took 70 years of convincing to get Scott into the recording studio; hopefully response to this collection will compel a speedy return.

If there is any justice in this world, Scott’s songs will come to be embraced by future generations of country & western fans like “Stairway to Heaven” is by rock fans, and “This Land Is Your Land” is by hippies and left-wingers everywhere.

“This Weary Way,” on Full Light Records, is available online and at discerning record stores everywhere. Pete Brooks is Spectrum’s Web site designer and resident country music aficionado.