Donna Jean Godchaux McKay

Jonathan (0:16)

Hey everybody, thank you for checking out the Brokedown Podcast. My name is Jonathan, I am your host, and this is episode number 90 I've got a great episode for you today. If you read the title, you already know, my guest is none other than the wonderful Donna Jean Godchaux McKay. I don't want to waste a lot of time here, so I'll remind you briefly that the Brokedown Podcast is one of the founding community podcasts of Osiris Media. Osiris is all about connecting fans like yourself with podcasts about the things that you love. It's such a great time to be a Deadhead who listens to podcasts. Last time, I told you about No Simple Road, but have I told you about Comes to Time? This is a fairly new show hosted by my friend Mike Fennoya, who's been on this show before, and Oteel Berbridge, whom you ought to know as the bass player from ARU, the Allman Brothers Band and Dead and Company. So check that out and so much more at osirispod.com.

So how does my little show get Donna as a guest?

Well, she has a new-ish song to share with us. I'll let her tell the whole story, but be sure to stick around after the interview and I'll spin the new track. And then I'll be back to tell you about a mix of tunes that will follow. Don't forget that you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at BrokeDownPod. And please consider leaving a review of the show on Apple Podcast if that is your platform of choice.

I was incredibly nervous going into this with no real reason. I've talked to a lot of people, but I mean, here's, it's a Grateful Dead. It's an actual Grateful Dead member. I've talked to Tom Constanton on the show before.

That was amazing. And I was nervous for that too. But this is Donna. I mean, TC is amazing and this is not to take away from him, but Donna is just linked into all of those core years of 1970s Grateful Dead that know and love and have listened to and dissected and I play here on the show all the time. And it's kind of a big deal. I think we had a nice conversation. I think that, well, she was wonderful and she put me at ease. And I think that you will enjoy it. We get into a couple of things outside of the new song. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Donna Jean Godchaux McKay.

Thank you so much for taking a minute to talk with me. I'm excited to talk about the song as well. With your permission, I'd like to touch on a few other things spanning your career.

Well, I will start with the song because I gotta say I was expecting to like it. I like your work. I know Jeff Mattson, and I was taken aback really by how on point the song is, the sound. I know you originally recorded this some time ago, but if you just said, well, I wrote this last spring, I think that everybody would believe you. Could you talk to me and share with my listeners the idea of revisiting this song?

Well, first of all, that's a compliment, that it sounds like it was just written. But yes, it was written in around 2007, and both Jeff Mattson and I had been writing songs together, and we met at Gathering of the Vibes, and I believe it was in Connecticut at that time, in Bridgeport.

Anyway, so one thing led to another, and I sang with them a few times, and then the Zen Tricksters kind of morphed into Donna Jean and the Tricksters, and so we did this album. I can call it an album because it was back in those days.

But anyway, the song was recorded well and we liked it, but it fell short of what Jeff and I had envisioned when we wrote the song as the intensity that we wanted to hear. And that didn't quite happen both in the vocals and in the rhythm section.

And so over these years, Jeff and I have talked about doing something about that, and we decided to go ahead and do it because the song is even more relevant today than it was.

I wrote the lyrics, so lyrically speaking, more relevant today than it even was back in 2007 And so the combination of those two things is Jeff and I had been thinking about doing that anyway. And then the day and age that we're living in right now and how volatile everything is in this pandemic and the state of the world and climate and everything that you can name pretty much is just on edge. And so my husband David McKay and I thought, let's go ahead and do this now. And so what happened was the studio owner down here that has really the premier recording studio in Muscle Shoals these days. It's called the Nut House, and Jimmy Nut is the owner. Anyway, we went down to that studio and took the hard drive, of course, and my husband David replaced the bass, Jimmy Nut replaced the drums, and then there are these three girls who are the background vocalists on most of the songs that are recorded here in Muscle Shoals. And I got them to replace the vocals on the chorus to make it just deeper and stronger and more dynamic and almost gospel sounding. And it came across. I'd say it does. We were very, very happy with it. You should be. It's really outstanding, and I'll play it for the listeners in a bit. But it's funny you mentioned the singers in the studio, because that was kind of where I wanted to go next is I wanted to ask you. I know you grew up in Alabama, but how did you end up behind or in front of a microphone in Muscle Shoals in the 60s?