Talking to No-One

Lionel’s Song Doris & The Whisky…

Jason August: Your songs sound lived-in. Not imagined. Was life hard growing up?

Lionel Shepard: Depends what you mean by hard.

Some people mean hunger. Some mean violence. Some mean silence.

Mine was mostly absence. Men coming and going. Women holding houses together with tired hands. Music was the only thing in the room that stayed longer than a season.

Jason August: You spent years drifting port cities and clubs. Why never settle down?

Lionel Shepard: Some people are born with roots.

Some are born with wheels.

I kept mistaking movement for freedom. Took me forty years to realize motion and peace ain’t the same thing.

Jason August:

People always ask about “Doris.” Was she real?

Lionel Shepard: [chuckles softly]

That’s the dangerous thing about songs.

You tell the truth sideways and suddenly everybody sees themselves in it.

Yeah… Doris was real. Met her in New Orleans when I was a sailor. Little jazz place off Burgundy Street. She sang low and slow like she already knew how the story ended.

Jason August: Why didn’t you stay with her?

Lionel Shepard: Because youth is arrogant.

At twenty-three I thought love would wait politely while I went out collecting stories. Thought there’d always be another train, another woman, another harbor light. What I didn’t understand is some people arrive once.

That’s it.

Once.

Jason August: The line “whiskey takes the place of Doris” feels devastating. Did alcohol really replace her?

Lionel Shepard: No. That’s the tragedy.

Nothing replaces anybody. That’s grown man knowledge. Whiskey just dulls the outline enough so you can sleep beside the ghost without shaking.

Jason August: Your music feels lonely, but not bitter.

Lionel Shepard: Bitterness is just wounded ego that stayed too long.

Most people who hurt you are just trying to survive themselves. Doris wasn’t wrong wanting a porch light and a steady life. I wasn’t wrong wanting the ocean’s sound.

Sometimes two good people destroy each other simply because their roads point different directions.

Jason August: Do you regret it?

Lionel Shepard Every night around 1:30 in the morning. Then around 2:00 I remember if I’d stayed… maybe there’d be no songs. That’s the ugly bargain nobody talks about.

Some art is made from the deepest of wounds.