They might have formed a decade ago within the city limits of Nashville, Tennessee, but The Cadillac Three often feel like the antidote to the glossiest excesses of modern country.
Gritty, hooky and infused with the hickory smoke of southern rock, the power-trio line-up of Jaren Johnston (vocals/guitar), Kelby Ray (bass) and Neil Mason (drums) has triumphed on stages from Download to the Grand Ole Opry, with a sound perhaps best described by the title of their 2020 fourth record Country Fuzz.
While this year’s The Years Go Fast brings together some of their heaviest material to date with the “pain, hurt and craziness” of the covid era, a chat with mouthpiece-in-chief Johnston is a delight, with the singer spinning war stories with an easy wit that makes it clear why the galacticos of rock have given him support slots, friendship and anecdote gold.
It’s strange to discover, then, that the one man who didn’t fall for Johnston’s charm offensive was the late Motörhead legend himself.
Lemmy
Johnston: We’d had a photo shoot all day in LA, and when we got done we got some friends together and went to the Rainbow Room. So we’re drinkin’ and everything, when suddenly I spot Lemmy in the corner, playing this little poker videogame or whatever. I didn’t realise that he was always there, but I remember knowing exactly who it was; he had the black leather jacket on, y’know, with the badges and studs.
So I kinda walked up to get my drink, and Lemmy looks over and says: “Well you’re in a fucking band, ain’t you?” I said: “Yes.” But I could tell that he didn’t give a shit who I was or what band. I could kinda tell he didn’t want to be messed with that day.
Steven Tyler
Johnston: We met at the Country Music Hall Of Fame and hit it off immediately. So the next day, I go over to his house to write. There’s all these tiny dogs running around, and the whole place smells like the strongest Colombian coffee you’ve ever smelled in your life, because at the time Steven was very sober and that was his thing. So he walks in – wearing, like, a male dress – and the first thing he did was sit down at the piano and play Dream On in its entirety. And that’s a five-minute song, y’know?
I spent six hours there, and we wrote a song together (We’re All Somebody From Somewhere). When it came out, I’m driving home from the studio and he calls me and says: “Come by the house.” He gives me this bag and says: “Don’t open it until you get home to Evyn” – that’s my wife. He kisses me on the lips and says bye.
So I leave, I go to my house, and I’m waiting on Evyn to get home. She goes: “What’s that?” I tell her: “Steven gave it to us. He said not to open it until I get home.” And she’s like: “But what is it?” And I’m like: “I dunno. I’m worried it might be a snake.” You never know with those kind of dudes. Is it a brick of cocaine? I don’t know!
So I open it up and it’s ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, all stacked and taped together. I think he realised I wasn’t gonna make a ton of money off producing the song. That’s some rock-star shit right there. I called my dad and asked him what to do with the money, and he said: “Either put it in a plastic bag, dig a hole in the back yard and bury it, or tape it to your sink.” So to this day it’s still taped to the sink!
Ray: Steven gave me a lesson one night too. We were sitting there talking, and he told me: “Never change your hair, because the press will always show photos of you before and after you cut it.” Then he said the weirdest thing: “Moisturise. Put lotion on your face. Because you don’t look this good at seventy if you don’t moisturise.’
Jack White
Johnston: We had a little softball league here in Nashville. We’d run around with the Followills from Kings Of Leon, and Jack White and Brendan Benson from The Raconteurs would come play.
Mason: It was, like, a Sunday softball league. We’d all be out till godknows when on Saturday night, then there’d be this eleven a.m. baseball field call, and we’d all roll out there, still half-drunk from the night before, and go sweat it out playing softball. Jack was a good player. He’d go up there and crank the ball into the outfield. He’d always show up dressed in black, top to bottom.
Johnston: A lot of people say they know Jack, but I’m not sure if anybody really knows him. He’s kinda like an enigma, even to us who grew up in Nashville. I’ve met him several times, but if we saw each other it’d just be like [standoffish]: “Hey man.”
Billy Gibbons
Johnston: One of our first tours was with ZZ Top. And Billy is a very interesting cat. You go backstage, and he’s got a blender with carrots and all that shit and he’s making juices all day long. He’s got a little sleeping bag in the corner of his dressing room where he takes a nap. It’s peculiar. He’d watch our sound-check and say: “You need to get rid of the monitors so the girls can see your boots.” Little bits of advice like that.
He’s always buying gifts for everybody on the tour. Random shit, man. I remember walking by his dressing room once and he says: “Hey Jaren, I got this for you today at a flea market,” and he pulls out this little made-in-China pocket knife and it says on it: ‘From the Rev to Jaren’.
Another time, we go in there and he says: “Check this out, man,” and he pulls out this cocaine vial. It’s obviously not full of cocaine. He goes: “Hey, I got this today. It’s full of ghost pepper chilli powder. You sprinkle this on some chocolate ice cream and things get real weird.” So I took it home, and my wife and I did that – and I’m pretty sure we made love for hours.
Paris Hilton
Johnston: One of the first times we ever went to LA, we were hanging out with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton at an A&R guy’s house. But then Paris lost her cell phone, and she was thinking that somebody had stolen it – and then they start calling us all the worst names that you could call a dude. Like, hurting our feelings, y’know? We were like: “Man, nobody cares about your damn phone!”
I’m pretty sure I just left after that, because there were a lot of things going on at that party that I don’t think I needed to be a part of. Because, y’know, I’m a nice, church-going Southern Baptist believer, you know what I mean? You gotta keep it on the straight and narrow, son!
Chrissie Hynde
Johnston: Every time we’re in London we try to hang out with Chrissie. One time, we’d just got in and were staying somewhere near Hyde Park. That place was rough, man. It smelled like a college dorm, if your grandmother lived there. Chrissie called us and said: “You guys want to go to dinner?” So we go meet her at this bar. It’s like, her and Mick Jones from The Clash, a bunch of cool cats.
So we had dinner. She doesn’t drink, but we partook and we had a good time. When we get done, we’re trying to figure out how to get home, and Chrissie says: “Hop in my car, I’ll drive you guys back to the hotel.” So we go to her car, and it’s this little Mini Cooper with a British flag on top. And she’s from Akron, Ohio, y’know? It’s so bizarre. So she gets in and starts driving us home – but like an IndyCar driver, driving stick-shift with her left hand, which most Americans cannot do.
Mason: It was surreal, too, because on the way back it was almost like we were getting the London tourist tour from Chrissie Hynde. She was like: “That’s Noel Gallagher’s apartment.” Y’know, all these rock landmarks.
Johnston: We finally get back to the hotel, she drops us off – “Love you guys” – and we get out and I go: “Was that not the hottest shit you’ve ever seen in your life?” Y’know, a girl from America speeding us through downtown London, in a Mini Cooper with a British flag on top, driving stick-shift with her left hand?
Lucinda Williams
Johnston: We did a cool thing for TV with Dr John and Lucinda Williams in Nashville one night. I mean, what an unsuspecting group of people to come together and play a show, y’know? But we got to really understand why people say certain things about Lucinda, because it is no joke, man, she is very serious. She was worried the TV people were keeping Dr John up too late – because we didn’t start playing until after midnight – and she let everybody know about it, man. She was like [furious]: “This man is seventy-seven years old!”
Meat Loaf
Johnston: Neil and I had written a song for Meat Loaf called If It Rains, and I was going upstairs at Sony in Nashville when he hopped in the elevator. So I say: “Hey, man, I’m Jaren.” And he goes: “Ah, you’re the little shit who wrote that song – I love it!” We gave him a couple of other ones too. He almost cut an early version of our song Runnin’ Red Lights. He was a very cool guy. I just kept thinking about Fight Club.
Mason: When I met him, he introduced himself as ‘Meat’. I just thought that was so weird. Like, shouldn’t it be ‘Mister Loaf’?
Kings Of Leon
Johnston: We’re good friends with the Kings guys. This story happened before they released Sex On Fire. It was one of those nights before we played the softball games. We’re in a bar at about two a.m., and they start kicking us out, and we’re drunk, and we didn’t think we should be kicked out, either because of who we were or how drunk we were.
Then one of the bouncers put his hand on one of our girls and all hell broke loose. Somebody hit Jared [Followill, KOL bassist] and I hit them. And then Caleb [Followill, KOL frontman] got hit. So we’re fighting these huge dudes out on the street, and we all had these tight jeans and Beatle boots on.
Next morning, it’s in the damn paper: ‘Tight Jean Tussle!’ We’re lucky we didn’t go to jail. I thought we’d gotten away with it. Then my dad called: “Hey, what did you get up to last night?” And I’m like: “Oh, nothing. I just went out, had some drinks, got back home pretty early.” And he’s like: “Uh-huh. So you didn’t go down to the bar and get into a big fight with the Kings Of Leon, did you?” And I go: “Oh shit!” He says: “It’s in the damn paper, son!”
So that was not our best moment. But looking back on it, it was pretty funny. I think that’s all our stories. That’s about 25 years of bullshit right there!
The Years Go Fast is out now via Big Machine. The Cadillac Three play the UK and Ireland in May 2024. Full dates and tickets.
