BGS 5+5: Joshua Hyslop

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Artist: Joshua Hyslop
Hometown: Vancouver, BC
Latest Album: Westward

Personal nicknames: Do self-appointed nicknames count? I started calling myself “Uncle J Bird” long before I was an actual uncle but people didn’t really go for it. I still try it out every now and then. One of my friend’s kids genuinely thinks it’s my name. A few fans of mine once tried to build up some steam by calling themselves “Hyslopportunists” but, thankfully, no one else was on board. Oh, and my friend Brian once called me “Joshua Thighslop” after he saw a picture of me in short shorts but it never caught on.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I think it changes. I have definitely drawn heavily on the inspiration I get from Paul Simon, The Tallest Man on Earth, and Daniel Romano, to name a few. Plus I’m always finding new music that grabs hold of me and completely changes my lens for a season or so. But overall I think the artist that has had the deepest influence on me is Ray Charles. Not necessarily stylistically, although there is some of that, but more so because of the feeling his music and more specifically his voice, evoke in me. It’s been the same ever since I was a kid and I heard one of his songs for the first time. Something about his voice just feels like going home. I can’t really explain it, but every time I hear him I smile and it reminds me of how much I love to sing.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I find inspiration in all of those forms but I think the one that has had the largest influence on me is literature. I read a lot. In fact, every time I finish reading 10 books I post about them on my blog, even though no one has said the word “blog” since the early 2000s. I’m going down with the ship, I guess. It’s usually just a turn of phrase or a specific description, or maybe just the feeling the book evokes, but there have been no shortage of moments that I’ve reached down into the lyrical ether to find an idea or that last line of a song and come up with something largely inspired by a book or a line I’ve read. It’s also a great break from writing. Whenever I come up against the wall I take a few steps back and just read or go for a walk. I don’t try to force my way through anymore. I’ve never been happy with the results when I’ve forced a song. Reading helps fill up the word bank and shift your creative mind off of “the problem” for a moment — sometimes, just long enough to help you unlock that phrase you’ve been looking for. Sometimes, not. But then, at least, you were reading a good book.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I actually always wanted to be a writer and had a really hard time calling myself a musician. I don’t read music and I don’t know any theory, so I’ve always kind of felt like a bit of an impostor when it comes to being a musician. But I do remember smoking weed with a friend of mine when we were maybe 15 or 16, which was right around the time I first picked up a guitar, and we were watching the Oasis DVD, Familiar to Millions, and we were in awe. After it ended we were both absolutely certain that we were going to be rock stars. I don’t know why or where that came from, but we were determined. So we formed a band and started writing songs and performed locally as often as we could. I still feel like a bit of an impostor sometimes, but they haven’t caught on yet, and I’m lucky enough to still be doing it all these years later.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

It’s almost always tough. You get the occasional gem that takes like 20 minutes and feels as though it was already written and it’s just being delivered to you, which is an amazing feeling, but it’s also incredibly frustrating because the next time you try and write a song and it doesn’t just flow out of your pen you feel like you’ve lost your touch or that it’s all gone and now you’re finished. Most of the time it’s a bit of a struggle, like doing a pretty difficult jigsaw puzzle. It’s like, if you just focus and stick to it and don’t give up, eventually you’ll find it. But I’ve had a few that have honestly taken me years. In fact, I just finished a song last week where I had two verses and two pre-choruses finished since about 2016. They always came back to me and I could never figure out where to go. Somehow, last week, it finally landed. Now, I just have to hope that it’s actually good.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There have been many, but the first that comes to mind was when Mick Fleetwood invited me to play with him on his rooftop bar, Fleetwood’s on Front Street, in Maui. I’d never met him and I was only in town for a weekend to play a wedding for a couple who have since become some of my dearest friends. They were somehow distantly connected to him and someone showed him my music and he reached out about playing a show. He’d hired a cello player he’d been wanting to play with and said he wanted to play my songs. The three of us met a few hours before the sold-out show began and we played that night for around two hours. I think I’d maybe played with a band twice before in my life and only after we’d rehearsed extensively. But, magic happened and the three of us connected musically. It was one of those experiences that people call spiritual because it was so surreal it felt like it had to be otherworldly. I’m sure there were glitches as we played, but I don’t recall them. After the show, Mick said some incredibly kind things about me to the crowd and it was a moment I will never forget. The bar was kind enough to film the whole thing with GoPros and send me the files but I’ve never watched them. I got to live it and nothing can do that justice.

Basic Folk – Lily Henley

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Fiddler and singer-songwriter Lily Henley’s latest album, Oras Dezaoradas, is a full-on celebration of her Sephardic Jewish Heritage. The lineage of Sephardic people can be traced back to the Iberian Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492. For Jewish people, there are many diasporas and lots of different ethnic heritages and practices that have been adopted and blended from many other groups along the way. Lily’s heritage is different from the Ashkenazi Jewish people, which is the most represented Jewish sect in the United States, who can be traced back to Eastern Europeans. Lily graciously gives a very brief overview of the diaspora (which is pretty amazing to take in) and the geographical and cultural differences.

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Lily grew up moving around a lot and talks about how that act of moving from place to place impacted her as a young person and how it still affects her. She found a sense of belonging and home at the fiddle camps she attended alongside other musicians her own age. At camp, she learned to play Celtic, old-time and Cape Breton style tunes. While at home, she played traditional Sephardic tunes sung in the Ladino language, also called Judeo-Spanish, which is a combination of Spanish with Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish elements spoken by less than 100,000 people. As an adult, she was inspired by living in Tel Aviv for three years and immersed in Sephardic culture. She was awarded a Fulbright research grant and is currently an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She recorded her latest album in Paris: on a label run by a Sephardic community leader while being embraced by and collaborating with the Sephardic community there. OH! Lily has another new non-Ladino album on the way: Imperfect By Design coming January 2023. It’s an Indie-Folk anthology about love, belonging, independence, and change. Look out for that and enjoy this deeply educational conversation!

Photo Credit: Ally Schmaling

The Show On The Road – Buffalo Nichols

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week on the show, we talk to a startling new talent placing a gut-punch into the folk and blues scene, the Milwaukee-raised and now Austin-based singer-songwriter Buffalo Nichols.

 

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Growing up learning on his sister’s dreadnought guitar and then traveling widely through West Africa after high school drinking up the sounds of the kora and percussion players in Senegal, Carl Nichols began finding his voice and playing style in the haunting open and minor tunings first heard from bluesmen like Skip James, who he covers in his remarkable self-titled debut collection. Buffalo Nichols, which came in 2021, is a stark departure from what Carl would call the cheery “opinionless beer commercial blues” that has come to dominate the genre. Nichols’ work is often sparse and direct – just a man with his guitar and a microphone. The stories told in standout songs like “Another Man” and “Living Hell” don’t flinch from comparing how the experience of his elders a hundred years ago in the South may not look much different from men like George Floyd dying on that Minneapolis pavement. Is there catharsis or hope in the songs? Are they a call to action? Maybe that’s up to us to decide.

Carl will admit that it can be tricky trying play his songs like the searing album opener “Lost And Lonesome” in loud bars where people may just want to have a good time and not dive into the backroad history of racial injustice and institutionalized police violence. Thankfully his writing doesn’t hide behind niceties and the recordings aren’t veiled by sonic artifice – Nichols speaks directly to the isolation and danger of being a young Black man in America, and trying to navigate the unease of bringing his stories to an often mostly white Americana-adjacent audience. Even more upbeat numbers like “Back On Top” call to mind the ominous juke-joint growl of John Lee Hooker, bringing us into dimly lit scenes where even late-night pleasure may have its next-morning consequences.

If there’s one thing we learned during this taping, it’s that Carl doesn’t want to just “write songs to make people feel good” – but he does want to tell stories that make the isolated and lost feel less so. Maybe that is the most important function of music truly steeped in the blues tradition: the ability to transform pain into progress. The messages may not be what people always want to hear, but the groundswell rising behind Carl’s stark timeless tales is indeed growing. With recent appearances on Late Night With Stephen Colbert, NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and big time dates like Lollapalooza on the books for the summer, folks will be hearing a lot more from Buffalo Nichols.

Photo Credit: Merrick Ales

LISTEN: Calling Cadence, “Took a Chance”

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Artist: Calling Cadence
Hometown: Los Angeles
Song: “Took a Chance”
Album: Calling Cadence
Release Date: May 3, 2022
Label: hi-rEs Records

In Their Words: “‘Took a Chance’ was the first song Oscar [Bugarin] and I wrote together. We wrote the majority of it the first night I came over to see if we’d work well together. We came up with the idea for the song after brainstorming our experiences being in our past and current relationships. We settled on the idea that the song should be a conversation between two people, and should highlight the insecurities each side can feel while in a relationship. We all experience times of doubt, and when love’s involved, we like to remind ourselves that being with the other person is a choice, and something you decide to take a chance at. It was also a commentary on the all-too relatable experience — to fall for someone you never originally intended to. The structure of the song was pretty easy to put together, but for me the fun part was figuring out we could harmonize so well with each other. After finishing the main chunk of it, we sat with what we had for a few days before adding the outro, which is my favorite part. I do love me some harmonies, and this song definitely fits the bill.” — Rae Cole, Calling Cadence

Photo Credit: Michelle Shiers

WATCH: The Suffers, “Yada Yada”

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Artist: The Suffers
Hometown: Houston, Texas
Song: “Yada Yada”
Album: It Starts With Love
Label: Missing Piece Group
Release Date: June 3, 2022

In Their Words: “I wrote this song for any artist in this industry feeling discouraged by the games, politics, and made-up sets of rules created within the music community by gatekeepers and the people that support them. The lyrics were written on a September night in Nashville after I had one of the most degrading and racist experiences of my career. The lyrics quickly found a home weeks later when my co-writer, Raymond Auzenne (Mannie Fresh, Lil Wayne), played me the beat that eventually became the music for the song. The Suffers played the song on stage a few times during our tour with Big Freedia in late 2019, and we knew it was ready to record when ‘The Queen Diva’ sang along with it on her Instagram stories. After the tour with Freedia, we went straight to the Echo Lab recording studio in Argyle, Texas, to record with Matt Pence (Midlake, Jason Isbell, Shakey Graves) and Jason Burt (Leon Bridges, The Texas Gentlemen). We had an absolute blast working with them and playing on all of the amazing instruments at that studio. My favorite instrument on ‘Yada Yada’ is the box of rocks you hear rumbling in the intro, but I love every part of this song, and finishing it gave me back my power.” — Kam Franklin, The Suffers

Photo Credit: Agave Bloom Photography. Makeup: Amore Monet. Styled by Michele Kruschik. Set Design: Kam Franklin. Pictured (L-R): Michael Razo, Jose “Chapy” Luna, Kevin Bernier, Kam Franklin, Nick Zamora, Juliet Terrill, Jon Durbin

Ian Noe’s Musical Inspiration Begins With the Sounds and Characters of Kentucky

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Kentucky musician Ian Noe is a writer of experience and an experienced writer. An appreciation for the people, places, and moods in his hometown of Beattyville – first introduced with striking emotional depth on Noe’s 2019 debut, Between the Country – remains a narrative cornerstone on River Fools and Mountain Saints. Yet this new collection reveals more self-assuredness around his artistic decisions.

Not limiting himself to the acoustic folk framework leaned upon for Between the Country, Noe (pronounced “NOH”) and producer Andrija Tokic broadened the scope of which instruments would best support Noe’s stories this time around. One of the most notable shifts in tonal prominence comes via the electric guitar. Heard in the latter halves of songs like “Burning Down the Prairie” and “P.O.W. Blues,” the electric guitar is more than just present. It holds a central role, giving Noe’s songwriting a sonic swagger and a heavier musical temperament. Additional coloration and emotional influence atypical of his rootsy musicality comes by way of a French horn solo and the surprising flash of reverse-phased piano heard on “One More Night.”

All this being said, for Noe, the foundation for a song doesn’t start with an instrument, or even a memorable personal story. Instead, his songwriting fire often ignites with a hook and a particular set of chords. While the stories shared on River Fools and Mountain Saints present an intriguing peek into the human condition, what gives this album its most unexpected and fascinating layer of substance is Noe’s approach to composition and production. It’s one thing to verbally recount a directly lived or socially common experience. It’s another matter entirely to determine the path a melody takes – or how that melody ought to be transformed in size, space, dynamics, or sonic shape – based on the pursuit of reflecting one’s own perceptions of an experience.

The very sounds and sonic character of River Fools and Mountain Saints were chosen in such a way that they too can serve as a window into how Noe sees the world, giving the album a whole new autobiographical quality.

BGS: What kind of awareness did you have of bluegrass when you were young and getting into music? What do you remember about the impression that style made on you at the time?

Noe: I got my bluegrass fix from my grandma. I took a lot of road trips with her and it was Ralph Stanley. It was Bill Monroe. It was mainly those two. But she was a huge Ralph Stanley fan. I’d say it definitely made up a good 40 percent of what I was hearing when I was first coming up. I mean, the first thing that made me want to really play was Chuck Berry, specifically “Johnny B. Goode” – it’s the first song I ever learned how to play. Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light” was number two, and with “The Wildwood Flower” I learned how to pick.

I was on that for a long, long time, until I got into John Prine. You want to talk about a song that has definitely been captured by the bluegrass world, it’s definitely his song “Paradise,” which has an amazing bluegrass feel to it. So I’d say after I figured out that I wasn’t going to be able to play like Chuck Berry, which was my first big letdown around the age of 6 or 7 – my fingers just wasn’t big enough to play that those famous leads, those famous licks … that’s when I started getting into Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, which was the first album I ever bought and I ever owned. I just started getting really into people who could write their own songs and move me in that way.

Much of River Fools and Mountain Saints conveys its stories through character narratives. How did you create and subsequently shape the characters in these songs?

With each song, I was really trying to make it so when you took any one of these songs off this album and set it aside, that it could stand on its own. I definitely use “river” and “mountain” a lot on this whole thing, obviously. But I did want to make it to where they stood alone. Some of the songs just came, and some of them I had to work on for a second. But the very first thing that I had was the album title itself, before I even had a song like “River Fool” or “Mountain Saint.” That was a blessing because if I can get a good title, then I can see something in it, you know? I can see a vision in it, to where I’m able to put it together.

And I like character songs anyways. I found it pretty fun to work on. It was fun to work on a song like “Ballad of a Retired Man.” And as much as I wanted to make the characters of each song stand alone, I did the same thing with the music. “P.O.W. Blues” is a lot different from “River Fool” or “Ballad of a Retired Man.” So, I didn’t concern myself too much with, “Well, is this going to be too rockin’ to go with ‘River Fool’?” I just wanted to make sure that each song stood alone.

That’s quite the fine line to walk. On one hand, any track can thrive on its own, but they fit together so seamlessly that you have this cohesive flow, both narratively and musically.

Yeah, and you might have just a short little melody – not even a bridge, not a chorus, nothing – and you remember that. It’s not always easy. I mean, this album originally wasn’t even gonna be called River Fools and Mountain Saints. I had a whole completely different album recorded and shelved – it just wasn’t doing it for me. It wasn’t any of these songs; it was a whole bunch of different stuff. But this title just came to me and I was like, “That’s good enough to stick on the front of the cover. So, I think I can do something.” And that’s the little formula that I’ve made up. Even if nobody else gets it, and even if it’s not a real thing, it helps me finish the [music].

How did you and/or Andrija Tokic discern some of the production decisions to reflect your vision of life in Kentucky?

It’s whatever I thought those characters or those places sounded like. … A song like “River Fool” is gonna sound like that because that’s what somebody sitting around a river sounds like to me. If I had to guess what that sounded like, that’s what it would be. The real openness of a song like “Ballad of a Retired Man” leaves you enough space to when you produce it like that, that you can really feel something about it, and the lyrics connect with that type of production because you want it to have air to breathe. And especially in a song like that where the lyrics suit that mood.

The music is just however I think it’s supposed to sound and that’s just how I’m going to do it. Like, even though the little drone-ness of a song like “Appalachia Haze” – that’s, to me, what a rainy day in Kentucky sounds like. That’s the way I hear it. So that’s why I produced it that way.

On “’The Road May Flood,” I was trying to capture a sound like when you see old cars, like maybe mid ‘70s, at a grocery store. Pictures of those older days – especially in Eastern Kentucky or any place like that. That’s what I thought something like that would sound like. I just take the picture of whatever the song is, and I have to look at the picture, and I think, “What does that sound like?” I try to get as close to that as I can. Luckily, I enjoy sound effects. I didn’t get to use as many on this album as I did on Between the Country but sound effects are important. Like in the beginning of “Strip Job Blues,” you hear that truck going. I always knew that song was going to be closer to a bluegrass style – the same with “River Fool.” I stick the character in my head and I have to figure out what he, or she, or they sound like.

What would you say makes the spirit of Kentucky unique from other rural, community-driven places in the U.S.?

I’m not so sure if it is as unique as what you might think as far as lived experience, you know? I can only speak for me growing up there, and loving growing up in Eastern Kentucky, and just honestly always having a life full of music and loving where you grow up and come from, and the people you live around. It’s not that hard to write about when it’s like that. But I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be that different from any other rural place.

As you were talking about being transported to somewhere you’ve never been, I felt the exact same way the first time I heard Neil Young sing “Helpless.” “There’s a town in North Ontario …” I’ve never been to North Ontario. Still haven’t. But it sounded like someplace that I was familiar with and he made you feel like you do. So, it was important for me to get a feeling like that, specifically out of the song “River Fool,” which I’m pretty sure is my favorite song on this album.

But you know, struggles are struggles. They really are, no matter where you’re at. I just try to put the happiness and the bad times in the literal geography of where I’m from, which is the mountains. That’s kind of how I think about it. Let’s take these day-to-day lives, and the stuff that you know, and let’s stick it around all this geography and let’s weave all this stuff together because it goes hand in hand as far as I’m concerned.

Photo Credit: David McClister

WATCH: Mama’s Broke, “Narrow Line”

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Artist: Mama’s Broke
Hometown: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Song: “Narrow Line”
Album: Narrow Line
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Label: Free Dirt Records

In Their Words: “This song is all about boundaries. From the boundaries we impose on ourselves, to the ones that are forced upon us. The ‘Narrow Line’ is, in a sense, the line we walk in order to keep from falling over the edge and losing sanity through such chaotic and fearful times. The verses touch on violence against immigrants, wealth disparity, rape culture throughout history, climate destruction and trauma. The animator for the video is Arash Akhgari. It was during the Covid lockdowns in Montreal that we reached out to him. In a time where strict social distancing was enforced, animation for a music video seemed like the perfect choice. It was amazing getting to work with Arash. We communicated back and forth about the visuals we already had in mind, and to see it come to light was truly special. You can find more of his animation here.” — Lisa Maria and Amy Lou Keeler, Mama’s Broke

Photo Credit: Blanca Esther Chavez

LISTEN: Andrew Leahey & The Homestead, “Until There’s Nothing But Air”

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Artist: Andrew Leahey & The Homestead
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Until There’s Nothing But Air”
Album: American Static Vol 2
Release Date: May 6, 2022
Label: Mule Kick Records

In Their Words: “I’ve reached that point in my adulthood where far too many of my friends are getting divorced. ‘Until There’s Nothing But Air’ was inspired by several breakups that I witnessed from afar. It’s about rocky relationships that burn hot and eventually burn out, leaving behind nothing but smoke and sad memories of a better time. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m in love with the recording, which is odd, since the song is rooted in heartbreak. Those overdubbed acoustic guitars in the final chorus really hit me in the chest — they’re tucked so neatly into the mix that they’re felt as much as heard — and I’m a sucker for the way everything drifts into the ether at the end, as though the song itself is evaporating.” — Andrew Leahey

Photo Credit: Alice Hsieh

Bruce Molsky Brings a Masterful Touch to Fingerstyle Guitar on New Album

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When a music-loving boy from the Bronx was 11 years old, he asked for and received a guitar — his first instrument. He would grow up to become a world-renowned old-time musician, known and respected for his fiddle and banjo prowess and prolific recording career. In February 2022, that career would be punctuated by his first-ever all-guitar album, bringing fingerstyle guitar, a skill oft overshadowed, to the forefront.

Everywhere You Go is far from the first time Bruce Molsky’s musical activities have exhibited influences beyond string bands. From a young age, he has held a deep appreciation for all types of music. Growing up in New York City, itself an intersection of a plethora of musical genres, Molsky was exposed to everything from Motown to Bob Dylan to Bill Monroe, and he absorbed it all through radio, LPs, and live performances.

“I didn’t have any real filters because I didn’t have any expectations for myself. I wasn’t all about playing an instrument yet, I was just kind of about being around the music. I still try to maintain that attitude to keep an open mind,” he says.

Given this curiosity and sponge-like relationship to his sonic surroundings, it makes sense that despite growing up in an urban environment, Bruce ended up playing old-time mountain music.

“I came upon old-time music when I was in my late teens, but I didn’t even think about playing it professionally until I was in my mid-30s. I didn’t grow up with those cultural roots. Roots and folk music were really strong in the northern cities when I was growing up in the ‘60s … the way that I’ve learned about a lot of musicians was reading the back of album jackets, hearing that this person played with that person, or this person learned from that person. All of a sudden you discover whole communities of people that have similar repertoires, and you start to identify communities of people who played a similar repertoire and had similar kinds of expression and ornamentation. Trying to piece all that stuff together is like trying to get to the end of the internet. You’re not going to get there. There’s always something new to discover. That’s the beautiful part. I’ve been doing this music for a long, long time and I still feel like I don’t know anything yet and that’s fine.”

Although his professional reputation is largely dominated by a focus on old-time mountain music, Molsky has avoided musical tunnel vision. He allows his appreciation for multiple genres, styles, and cultural influences to inform his musicianship.

“Over a period of time you develop your own voice, and if you play a specific style of music, you always run the risk of doing that to the exclusion of other things. We do that when we’re first learning to play, or when we’re first embracing a style. At one point, I realized that there was all this other stuff I liked. It wasn’t any big amount of effort to just kind of let it seep in.”

Nowhere are the results of this approach more apparent than Everywhere You Go, released on Tiki Parlour Recordings. This 11-track, all-fingerstyle-guitar album is a masterclass in the way Molsky has been able to weave together a rich variety of sources and influences from all over the globe in order to create something wholly unique. This empowered sense of creative agency he feels with the guitar has given birth to an impeccable result.

“It’s the instrument, of the three instruments that I play, that I’ve never constrained myself style-wise with, and it’s the one I’ve always not been afraid to try anything on … How do you get that thing into the piece that makes it cool, that makes somebody go ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a Swedish melody’? That’s been an evolution for me.”

In addition to its stylistic freedom, the introspective nature of this project sets it apart. Reading the liner notes, one learns that each track is tied to specific memories for this master multi-instrumentalist, yet this was never a conscious intention.

“I didn’t set out for this to be a memoir,” he says. “Honestly, I sat down and made a list of stuff that I liked to play the most and then started thinking about how to put it together. You try to put yourself in the position of the listener. There should be a balanced, well-executed, complete representation of something.”

Truly this is a musically varied project. It is Molsky’s own particular musical voice that ties it all together, and he’s had plenty of time to think about how to pull that off. Everywhere You Go is a long time coming – around 25 years, in fact. Like many musicians, Molsky used the pandemic as an opportunity to pursue a long-considered potential project.

“You know, it’s been swimming around in my head for all this time. Of course, the pandemic shut us at home for a while, and it just seemed like a good project.”

Although this project was born out of isolation, it was also in many ways born out of the deep sense of togetherness and connectivity that characterizes Molsky’s musical life, both as a band member and as a solo musician. In fact, that sense of connection was one of the original catalysts for the project.

“The track that I really, really wanted to include on a CD at some point was ‘Fios Chun A’ Bhàird [‘A Message to the Bard’],’ which is the one that Mary Ann Kennedy sings in Gaelic. That’s the only thing that wasn’t recorded recently. That was recorded ten years ago and I’ve been saving it up for the right presentation all these years. That was kind of the musical tail wagging the dog. That made me realize that I really wanted to do a project that made a piece of music like that make sense in context.”

Kennedy is not the only friend to join Bruce on this record. Darol Anger, internationally known fiddler and “musical brother” to Bruce, is featured on three tracks. Luckily, the ideal recording situation to enable this project to flourish fell into place.

“Just about an hour from home [Beacon, New York] up in the Catskills, the engineer Eli Crews has a piece of property near the Ashokan Reservoir. I’ve never worked with him before, but he came to me through other people that had, and he was easy to work with,” Molsky says. “If you can imagine, not just being in quarantine, being a solo performer locked up in a small space with one other person for a week, the chemistry better be right. It was with Eli. He was just a pleasure to work with.”

When it came to releasing the album, reaching out to David Bragger of Tiki Parlour Recordings was a no-brainer. Molsky and Bragger had collaborated before and developed a great working relationship. Much like Molsky, Tiki Parlour has become known for its focus on old-time music but has expanded professionally in different ways. Partnering on this project was a perfect fit, especially given that this release was going to be very different from anything either of them had done before.

Molsky also brought in fellow musician, longtime friend, and graphic designer Meghan Merker to work on the CD package design, another creative choice that was tied together with music and memory. “[This project] is such a representation of a long period of time. I’ve known Meghan since I was in my early 20s and she knows my trip. I really feel like she nailed the whole thing.”

Memory is inextricably tied to time and space. The things we experience, the places in which we experience them, and the people we experience them with never leave us, especially in a musical context. Whether collaborating with like-minded artists or engaged in solo work, Molsky stays focused on the relentless pursuit of dynamism and excellence while maintaining the utmost respect for his sources and influences. His approach to the creative pursuit of connection is one of curiosity and learning, and this shines through in Everywhere You Go.

“Music is just notes in the air, and people grab it, and they use it as their expression. That’s all I want to do,” he says. “At this point, I got nothing to prove other than trying to leave the world a little better than I found it.”

Photo Credit: Michael O’Neal

LISTEN: Clint Roberts, “Jeremiah”

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Artist: Clint Roberts
Hometown: Brevard, North Carolina
Song: “Jeremiah”
Album: Holler Choir
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Label: Carry On Music

In Their Words: “‘Jeremiah’ approaches sentiments that I’ve held for many years, but I haven’t known quite how to approach them in a song until recently. Growing up in a rural mountain town, few people stuck out. Those who did, did so courageously, often because they had no other choice. Hearing others use slurs was commonplace, unfortunately. The nails that stuck out got hammered down. Though I’ve never been subject to any discrimination, I have friends who have been many times. ‘Jeremiah’ is a memory of my feelings about it. It is a critique of the Bible Belt, but also American culture at large. I’m proud of where I’m from, but we have some things to work on. I try to stay optimistic.

“This song is a commentary on growing up in the South and witnessing discrimination against young gay [LGBTQ+] individuals. I myself do not have a gay brother, but have dear friends who identify as so. As a heterosexual male, I can’t and won’t pretend to know what many people go through that are discriminated against. I can only speak to the pain I feel watching it happen in front of me. ‘Jeremiah’ was my way of expressing solidarity through the lens of my Appalachian upbringing.” — Clint Roberts

Photo Credit: Kendall Bailey Photography