Johnny Paycheck Tribute CD

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Official Tribute CD Press Release

ROBBIE FULKS TO PRODUCE
TOUCH MY HEART: A TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY PAYCHECK

Country legends, rockers, bluegrass stars, and alt-country darlings will converge in Nashville in May and June to record Touch My Heart, a benefit tribute CD honoring the late, great country music icon Johnny Paycheck.

Touch My Heart is the latest project of Robbie Fulks, country singer, songwriter, and producer. Fulks has assembled an inspired and unexpected roster of artists to join him in paying homage to the singing and songwriting genius of Paycheck.

Buck Owens is set to deliver a no-doubt rousing rendition of Take This Job and Shove It. Johnny Bush will sing Apartment #9. Jean Shepard, Jim Lauderdale, and Gail Davies will also contribute. Country legend namesakes (and rising stars in their own right) Hank Williams III and Bobby Bare, Jr. will sing I’m the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised and Motel Time Again, respectively ; Rockers Dave Alvin, Marshall Crenshaw, and Al Anderson will retool classic Paycheck songs. Also lending their considerable talents will be Neko Case, Mike Ireland, Larry Cordle, Dallas Wayne, and Robbie Fulks himself. The legendary Mavis Staples has generously consented to sing the title song, Touch My Heart, a classic from the Little Darlin’ years.

The singers will be backed by an A-list house band (who Fulks said not only went for the project, but jumped on screaming with glee.) Lloyd Green, who contributed the exquisite pedal steel guitar to Johnny Paycheck’s Little Darlin’ recordings in the 1960s will lend his mastery to this cd as well. Green will be joined by Twangbanger Redd Volkaert on lead guitar, Dennis Crouch on bass, and Hank Singer on fiddle. Joe Terry (Springfield, MO’s Skeletons and Morells) will handle the keyboards and Gerald Dowd will man the drums.

David Cantwell, contributing editor to No Depression Magazine and longtime Paycheck devotee, will pen the cd’s liner notes.

Badger Herald Article

The Badger Herald (www.badgerherald.com) recently interviewed alt.country performer Robbie Fulks about this that and the other. But of most interest to PayCheck fans was the following queston...

(BH=Badger Herald - RF=Robbie Fulks)

BH: You've just completed producing a Johnny Paycheck tribute album. What was that like?

RF: That was unbelievable, and it's one of the best pieces of music I've ever worked on. It came about in the weirdest way -- a fan of Johnny's who had some extra money hired me to do it, with basically a limitless budget. I got to hire all the players I wanted to, and probably three-quarters of the singers. To have George Jones, Buck Owens, Hank III, Mavis Staples and everybody else was just great. It's coming out next spring.

Well I can't wait for it and good on the mysterious fan for putting up the money to help keep Johnnys memory alive.

I'm chasing up more info from Robbie himself and as soon as I get anything I'll pass it on.

Press Release from Sugar Hill Records.

Sugar Hill Records To Release "Touch My Heart: A Tribute To Johnny Paycheck"
August 10, 2004
Nashville, Tenn., May 11, 2004 - Sugar Hill Records announces the release of
Touch My Heart: A Tribute To Johnny Paycheck on August 10, 2004. Produced by noted singer/songwriter Robbie Fulks, the artists and songs illuminate
Paycheck's layered career -- including the hits that made him a star in the
70s, but also material from the Little Darlin' label that originally exposed
his darkest honky-tonk roots in the 60s.

The artist line-up reflects not only the younger set - some being the
literal and figurative offspring of the outlaw movement - but also some of
the legends themselves.

Liner-note author David Cantwell observes that during the Little Darlin'
era, Paycheck and collaborator Aubrey Mayhew, "set to creating an
emotionally crippled, sometimes deranged body of work that, even within a
genre known for extremes of mental anguish, can startle with its
comic-yet-creepy intensity."

Indeed, purveyors of Paycheck's work regard the Little Darlin' years as the
time which he began acquiring his cult following, and made the grade as a
songwriter. Producer Robbie Fulks says, "For a time, to me he was just the
guy who sang 'Take This Job and Shove It,'...But I was blown away when I
heard the Little Darlin' stuff" (rollingstone.com).

"I would love this record just as well if I had just picked it out of the
store on a whim," says producer Fulks. "My sincerest hope is that these
brilliant performances are widely heard, and the circle of people who are
attuned to Paycheck's savage brilliance expands as a result."

CMT.com May 12

Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck, featuring artists such as George Jones, Buck Owens and Bobby Bare, will be released Aug. 10 on Sugar Hill Records. The compilation includes covers of Paycheck's lesser-known Little Darlin' label output from the 1960s, as well as several 1970s hits. Robbie Fulks produced the project which also features Neko Case, Radney Foster, pedal steel player Lloyd Green, Mavis Staples, Marshall Crenshaw, Al Anderson, Dave Alvin, Mike Ireland, Hank Williams III and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.

From NashvilleCityPaper.com

Add the late Johnny Paycheck to the growing list of performers that are the subject of tribute albums. However Touch My Heart: A Tribute To Johnny Paycheck (Sugar Hill), which is being released Aug. 10, promises to be much more than the usual various artists homage session. Robbie Fulks is producing the disc, and the material not only will feature the expected hits such as “She’s All I Got” and “Take This Job And Shove It,” but lesser known songs from Paycheck’s years on the Little Darlin’ label. Performers appearing include George Jones, Buck Owens, Bobby Bare and Mavis Staples, as well as the great pedal steel guitarist Lloyd Green.

Complete article
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=12&screen=news&news_id=33125

From CMT.com 07/29/04

NASHVILLE SKYLINE: Johnny Paycheck Gets His Tribute
The Glories of His Misery Are Explored

By: Chet Flippo

One of the most touching scenes I have ever witnessed was the playing of Johnny Paycheck's own version of his "Old Violin" at his Nashville funeral.

Sitting there in the chapel at Woodlawn Funeral Home as the strains of perhaps his greatest song sounded a final somber note to his sad life, I could only marvel at his legacy as the crowd wept and rejoiced over his life. The little gathering included several Hells Angels, some Music Row executives, George and Nancy Jones, Trace Adkins, Little Jimmy Dickens, longhaired young alt.country guys, some fading gray-ponytailed would-be Waylons and many ordinary folk whose lives Paycheck touched -- most dressed all in black. He was one of the greatest talents country music ever produced and at the same time one of its most dead-end-road lives.

This was a man, after all, who once wrote and recorded a song about his own funeral, titled "The Late and Great Me." He foretold this very event in song: All my friends are dressed in black and they're standing reverently/Let's have a few moments silence for the late and great me.

Now comes a fitting musical tribute that is sung by artists just as disparate as the crowd at Paycheck's funeral. To begin with, Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Paycheck (to be released Aug. 10 on Sugar Hill Records) was produced by Paycheck soulmate Robbie Fulks, whose musical tribute to Nashville was the song "F*** This Town."

There's a good representation of Paycheck's songs and interests and obsessions here. "I went back to my wife/Straightened out my life, Dallas Wayne sings in "I Did the Right Thing." George Jones renders a faithful reading of the worried song about the insecurity of love, "She's All I Got." Gail Davies and Fulks duet on "Shakin' the Blues." Dave Alvin ably interprets a rockabilly "11 Months and 29 Days." Jim Lauderdale renders "I Want You to Know." Bobby Bare Jr. does a stark version of the bleak and dismal "Motel Time Again."

Mavis Staples delivers a majestic (and almost six-minute) version of "Touch My Heart," Paycheck's tortured lament about the failure of love in his life: Touch my heart, feel the hurt, the pain and misery/And tell me again what love has done to me.

Hank Williams III sounds eerily at times like his equally doomed grandfather in his sepulchral delivery of "I'm the Only Hell My Mama Ever Raised."

The great Johnny Bush does an eloquent, understated version of "Apartment #9," the song Paycheck wrote that Tammy Wynette immortalized: Loneliness surrounds me/Without your arms around me/And the sun will never shine/In apartment #9.

Billy Yates does a cheerful interpretation of one of Paycheck's few upbeat songs with "The Lovin' Machine." And Mike Ireland does the same for another rare happy song, "A Man That's Satisfied."

Ironically, for the great songwriter Paycheck, his signature song was written by fellow prison inmate David Allen Coe. "Take this Job and Shove It" is sung here raucously by the unlikely quartet of Bobby Bare, Radney Foster, Buck Owens and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy.

Larry Cordle and harmony vocalists Billy Yates and Jim Lauderdale give a tenderly intense reading of "Old Violin," and they take me back to that scene in Woodlawn Funeral Home as they sing: Tonight I feel like an old violin/Soon to be put away and never played again.

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