Artists Pay Tribute To Legendary Songwriter David Olney

On the album Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney (out October 18 via New West Records), executive producer Gwil Owen assembles a cast of artists — many of whom are legendary songwriters in their own right — who lovingly pay tribute to the literate-noir, dry-humored sound paintings Olney created with his songwriting.

The 17-track double album includes performances by, among others, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Janis Ian, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, The McCrary Sisters, Dave Alvin, Mary Gauthier, Afton Wolfe, Buddy Miller, Jim Lauderdale, The Steeldrivers, and Willis Alan Ramsey.

Lucinda William’s moody swamp rendition of “Deeper Well” leads things off, which sets the tone for the rest of the album. The song was also put to good use on the Grammy-winning album Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris, who at the time described Olney as a teller of “marvelous stories, with characters who cling to the hope of enduring love, all the while crossing the deep divide into that long, dark night of the soul.”

Long-time Olney evangelist Steve Earle delivers the goods on “Sister Angelina,” a song he’s played “literally hundreds of times.” Earle, who also penned the liner notes (along with Olney’s daughter, Lillian), goes on to say, “I’ll continue to play it whenever I need to be reminded of where I come from as an artist and why the bar for my contemporaries and myself is so high. Because David Olney was the best of us.”

The song from which the album’s title is derived, “Steal My Thunder,” is performed by Dave Alvin with the Rick Holmstrom Trio.

In the liner notes to Olney’s 1986 album Eye of the Storm, Alvin writes, “His outlook is, I don’t want to say world-weary, but world-wise. He’s a masterful storyteller with a real ability to make the characters in his first-person songs sound believable. It sucks you in. And it’s always the right word. He’s a very exact wordsmith.”

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Buddy Miller provides a devastating take on “Jerusalem Tomorrow,” a meditative and terrifying song about a shyster false messiah happening upon the real thing.

“I was really scared of doing that song,” says Miller. “David was so great at telling the story. He is just revered by all writers and, at the same time, unappreciated by the bulk of the music world.”

One standout is Afton Wolfe’s tour-de-force rendering of “Titanic,” which he describes as “A perfect example of David Olney’s brilliance. It’s a song from the perspective of an iceberg with as much intensity, feeling, and connection as any other song you’ll hear.”

The previously unreleased recording of Townes Van Zandt performing Olney’s “Illegal Cargo” at the Cat’s Cradle in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 11, 1977, is from an MP3 Olney happened upon 20 years ago.

Owen knew the recording because Olney had once played it for him. “He had tears in eyes as we were listening to it, because Townes was his hero,” remembers Owen.

Returning to its source, the album also includes an unreleased recording of Olney reciting his “Sonnet #40.”

Listen to original recordings by David Olney of selections featured on the album
Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney

“I want to make him famous”

The preamble to the album’s origin story was written after a show at Bluebird Café a few years prior to Olney’s death. “A woman came up to Dave and told him how much she had enjoyed the show, paying him a lot of nice compliments,” relates Owen.

“After she left, Dave exclaimed, ‘That was Regina McCrary from the McCrary Sisters! We should pitch some songs to them.’ I wondered out loud, ‘What songs of ours would the McCrary Sisters cut?’ Dave said, ‘Voices on the Water!’

“I remembered it after Dave died, and it was one of the things that made me think that I was the person who should do the tribute album,” says Owen. “I got hold of the McCrary Sisters, and we recorded ‘Voices on the Water.’ When they were done singing and listening to the playback, I told them that little story. Everyone teared up a bit at the perfect full-circle sad beauty of it all.”

In a bittersweet yet poetic final act, David Olney left this mortal coil on a cold night at the 30A Songwriters Festival while sitting onstage in the middle of playing a song.

Owen got the news from Olney’s wife Gine about 10 that night. Without hesitation, he got in his car and drove straight through the night from Nashville to Seaside, Florida.

“I had a lot of time to think while I was driving to Florida,” says Owen. “David and I had talked about how he would never get his due while he was alive, that it was going to be after he was dead that everyone would say how great he was, and there’d be a tribute album.”

Thus began a four-year-plus quest of reaching out to artists, dealing with managers, and coproducing sessions — often with Grammy-winning producer Ray Kennedy.

Through it all, Owen never lost sight of his goal. “I want to make him famous,” he says. It’s a nod to his earlier conversation with his friend and collaborator.

Few people have been as close to Olney’s fire as Owen. Maybe you can’t steal David Olney’s fire, but if your aim is true, you can borrow it for a little while.

Can’t Steal My Fire: The Songs of David Olney
New West Records
Release date: Oct. 18, 2024

available on vinyl and CD at newwestrecords.com
and fine local record stores like Grimey’s