Steve Ripley
(Q)- What was a young Steve Ripley like whenever he was growing up in rural Oklahoma?
Steve Ripley (SR)- I got my first Fender guitar at age 12 and I thought Leo Fender made it for me. And that’s what I still choose to believe. Even though Leo had already sold the company to CBS in 62,it does make any difference.
(Q)- Are there the same sentiments carrying over into The Tractors music today?
(SR)- Yes. I want the people who buy our records to know that there’s real people behind the music. When we write music we want to address personally the people who we are talking to. When we music we’re recording in Tulsa, in Church Studios. It’s this big old church that was built in 1915. We have a toll free telephone number on our record and that telephone rings right there in the Church Studios. Now,a lot of time I might pick up the telephone and I’ll be talking to folks who come from the rural areas of America. And they’re telling me that they’ve discovered this record.
(Q)- There are not many mainstream New American Music artists incorporating traditional country as well as old-time, boogie-woogie music into their hit singles.
(Q)-The Tractors do this so well. Why?
(SR)-When Dwight Yoakum first came along,before he ever had a record deal,I thought he was trying to do a Sha Na Na of country music. It turns out Dwight is a real guy and I enjoy his music more and more with every listen. What country music is about to me is, growing up on a farm and at one point in your life you don’t see anymore farms because they’ve all gone out of business. So at times I have a difficulty with country music because the very thing which made country music great, the family farm, isn’t around. But I know that country music will be around a lot longer because there always will be somebody growing up broke,and trying to make music. They’ll just be trying to do whatever they are trying to do with the music. And one day that effort will surface in the musical landscape of America somewhere.
Some weird set of chances, cosmic or God Blessed moment, that guy will get through the music business machine. The secretaries and the A&R; folks and it’ll strike a chord with some record company guy. Just like we did with Arista Records Nashville and Tim DuBois. Someone will stick that guy,who’s come up from nothing, and people will clamor for it.
(Q)- Is there a period of time in your life whenever you really feel the era and music defined you influences?
(SR)- When The Beatles came out was a great moment. There was great music going on when The Beatles came out. It’s the truth. there also was a lot of schlock and I hate schlock, but The Beatles came out and really they were just doing cover tunes at first. But they were still recording American music with a new twist to it. I’ve been to George Harrison’s house in Engalnd and all he wanted to talk about was Carl Perkins. The Beatles influences weren’t any different then the guys in The Tractors. The Beatles were just a generation apart that’s all. George told me that when The Beatles were hanging around the Liverpool docks waiting for the records to come off of the ships from America, I was living on a farm in Oklahoma listening to the exact same records. At the exact same moment The Beatles were listening to American music in Liverpool and trying to learn how to work the songs into their own style, I was stuck on a farm in the middle of no where Oklahoma doing the very same thing.
On the farm we didn’t have the technology to bring anything to us. So when something came to us on the farm or the boats docked at Liverpool, it was such a life-changing moment that you became religiously converted by that moment. Now if there’s anything missing from today’s world of the Super Information Highway,or whatever it is,is one thing. It’s become harder to have a life-changing experience. Because everything is so readily available. But, back to that guy coming out of no where. Some how, some way, he’ll come along and randomly or by fate will get through the machine again. ten years from now or maybe five years from now.
To some degree that’s what the Tractors have done. We’ve got through the whole sameness that permeates this music. We’re something that breaks up the deal the rest of the music industry is handing out to the public. People listen to The Tractors and wake up and say, ’Man, what is that? I like that! Because everything else on my radio is sounds so much the same because they’ve reached perfection. So when an artist reaches perfection in the recording studio,they pretty much all reach the same thing musically at the same time. Then along comes The Tractors on the radio and the people all snap too.
(Q)- What’s it like for you to see your video on CMT right next to all those hot looking women and hunk -of -the- month men?
(SR)- It’s astonishing for me. It’s kind of like a “Twilight Zone” experience. I have to say the motives for the Tractors are simple and pure. I’ve always wanted to do this kind of music. Even ever since I was a little kid. It just took a long time for somebody to go for it. That’s why I’m astonished The Tractors are doing so well. It took so long. I do believe you get out of something what you put into it. We’ve all put a lot of effort and pain into this deal. To answer your initial question, Our music doesn’t seem so weird to me and the video doesn’t seem so weird to me because I’ve gone through the process of doing it. So it is different whenever I see our video up against the hunk-of-the-month. That starts to point to me about why my experience watching our video on CMT becomes like the “Twilight Zone”.
(Q)- However,in many ways, popular culture has always belonged to the younger generation.
(SR)-At one time I was a young guy and at some point you’re in your Forties and everybody in this band is in their Forties. My point is that in a valid way,within any genre,pop culture belongs to young people. I think it does. And in this specific business,a lot of product is bought by young people. So when I say “Twilight Zone” it isn’t a negative statement at all. It’s just that when it’s yourself and people tell you your work is going against the grain,and you never intended to do that. That’s what puts a twist on your brain. We had no motives to make some kind of new, weird music, we just tried to record the music that we loved all of our lives. So when we recorded our album,we just recorded the music that we’ve always really loved. So when people tell us that what we’re doing is art. it plays on your brain a little bit,because you never intended it to be that way.
(Q)- The lyrics on the album speak for a people,the common man and woman,and tell their tale of a changing world around them.
(SR)- That is it. As a plan when I recorded the songs that’s all I can figure out. When I’m singing and write these songs,I try to do it like this. You sing and play like you walk and talk. That’s the deal. Now you carry that forward and that’s all of those people who are Tractors fans. If you talk to any guy on the street right now in America, for an hour or two,he’s going to tell you about the love of his life or the broken heart. One of the two. Two sides to the same coin. He’s going to tell you about his entertainment preferences,where he plays pool or goes dancing.
At some point he’s going to talk about the politicians and the people who are trying to run his life combined with his job and who’s trying to run his life at work. Combined with how hard it is to pay his bills and where’s the money going to come from. I hope if you get a whole albums worth of songs out of me then it should come from and cover all that stuff. So I just try to get a batch of material that reflects what a guy in New York City or Glencoe,Oklahoma where I’m from,is thinking and talking about.
(Q)- It’s the voice of every man.
(SR)- That’s great. Of course I’d never be so bold as to say that. That’s what Hank Sr. was doing. He was in touch with the regular folks as well. It puts this band in the company that we desired to be in but would never be so pretentious as to claim.