Nearly twenty years after leaving home, striking out to make a living in the bluegrass and country scenes first in Texas and now in Nashville, singer-songwriter Brennen Leigh is still longing for the prairie. Born in North Dakota and raised in rural Minnesota, Leighās brand new album, Prairie Love Letter, lives up to its name in all but the stereotypical, assumptive ways implied by its title.Ā
Produced by Robbie Fulks,Ā Prairie Love Letter idealizes Leighās harsh, forbidding homeland — as paeans to the prairie are wont to do — but not without the nuance a nomadic, troubadour lifestyle affords, and Leighās perspective as a woman in 2020. It’s all underscored by the ever-growing distance between her and the grassy plains for which she pines, marked by months and years, continually ticking by.
Being that the sum of Fulksā and Leighās musical comfort zones lands squarely upon the intersection of old country, bluegrass, Americana, and what weāll call āalt-roots,ā the album cheerfully denies genre ascriptions while reinforcing the Great Plains statesā propensity for birthing country music forged in the furnaces of hard living, firmly-held values (though not necessarily strictly conservative), and a desperate need for the distraction and diversion music brings.Ā
BGS reached Brennen Leigh by phone at her home in Nashville and began our conversation with the albumās seemingly pugnacious, yet perfectly apt lead track.
Thereās something particularly resonant about the albumās opener, āDonāt You Know Iām From Here,ā because youāre talking about rural life and how these authenticity signifiers are so important to rural life and identity, but theyāre also really important to roots music. Thereās a really interesting symmetry to āDonāt You Know Iām From Hereā where it seems youāre simultaneously asking that question of the region youāre from — Minnesota, North Dakota, the plains — but also asking that question as a woman in roots music and country. What do you think?
I honestly never thought about it in that specific way, but when you put it that way, that is how I feel. Obviously, the going home, the rural element — what did you call them? Signifiers. Thatās huge. Weāre all in a sort of ācountrier than thouā battle all the time. I try to just write whatās true to me as much as I can, and be affected by that as little as possible. When you talk about country music, itās something I do feel secure in. I donāt need to show or tell anyone — nor have I ever been accused of lacking that authenticity. However, Iāve struggled just as much as the next independent artist. Sometimes it leaves one feeling, āWell, why has this other person been pushed to the top of the pile?ā They say not to compare, but you know. Why is this other person edified, when theyāre not country, so to speak? [Laughs] Itās hard not to compare yourself to others and get into that mindset.
Also what you said about women — we women, itās like thereās only room for one at a time. We all have to fight each other. Thatās not how I really feel, but your lizard-brain would make you feel like you have to fight with other women for that one slot they give us. This year, one of the silver linings of this pandemic has been that itās given me some time to appreciate a lot of my peers in ways that I couldnāt before. Or that I didnāt take the time to before. My fellow performers, that are kind of my same age or similar level of fan base, exploring their catalogs has made me feel more like Iām part of that bigger Americana community.Ā
Thatās exactly what it is. I donāt need to go home and have everyone at home validate me for being from there. Itās something that comes from inside. I know where Iām from. I know Iām a Minnesotan and I was born in North Dakota. And yet, I get questions cause my accent has changed and Iāve lived in the south now for I think eighteen years. Itās funny, when I moved to Texas I had a little bit of this fear that my music wasnāt going to be āsouthernā enough. [Laughs] That people were going to think I was inauthentic. But it hasnāt come into question and up north, that was one of my fears, that people would go, āWho is this person from Nashville singing about our part of the country?ā That hasnāt happened either, because theyāre starved for people to sing about it, because there arenāt a lot of people singing about it.Ā
The album is really flexible with which genre aesthetics it aligns with, it feels like the exact kind of country that comes out of the Upper Midwest. That hardscrabble, bootstraps mentality that we all are used to being attributed to the south, thatās how the plains survives, too. The albumās themes feel really similar to the way that southern country music speaks about life and work and pleasures, but itās still different. To me, the way thatās most tangible is in how the record playfully denies any genre label. How did the bluegrassy, Americana meets old country quality come together and how is it tied to Minnesota and North Dakotaās music?
For one, we didnāt really plan it in a specific way. Robbie Fulks produced it — Robbie and I talked about how to treat each song. We both are believers in stories. The literature of stories. How do I present this little three- or four-minute story in a way that the listener is going to hear and feel whatās going on? We treated it case by case.Ā
As for the genreā¦ āambiguityā that you mention, I think it just comes from my influences. I come from old country and bluegrass. The part of the country where I grew up, itās popular music, but not in the same sense that it is here or in Texas. Itās not as much a part of the culture. It depends on the family. In my family, bluegrass and old country is what we did. We played on the porch and we sang and we went to bluegrass festivals and we went to country music concerts when we could find them. Thatās kind of always been in my roots and it came naturally. Iād be curious to see how people would classify it, because we werenāt like, āBy golly weāre going to make a country album!ā We just did what we knew how to do.Ā
I think we more or less talked about instruments and how they were appropriate to each song. That one is a very vivid memory in my imagination of being a kid and going with my grandmother to pick juneberries on a specific occasion. Here we were, on a gravel road, with buckets over our arms, and we were gonna pick juneberries. Maybe that song was written with thought of the Carter Family, that pre-bluegrass kind of feel. We thought we needed to put a little banjo and stuff on it. The story kinda had a little bit of a bluegrass thing; Grandma, picking berries, it lent itself to that. Iām comfortable with being fluid between the more classic country thing and the more modern thing and the bluegrass thing. Iām not thinking about how itās going to be taken, Iām not even worried about it too much. But I am interested to know [what listeners think].Ā
Thereās a striking theatrical quality to these songs and their characters and their stories. Do you feel that as well in this set of songs? Do you see them as something of a soundtrack or a musical in their own way?
Thatās an astute observation, because some of what influenced me growing up was old westerns and musicals, like Oklahoma! That western landscape, where you could just see for miles, always had a symphony and horns. Musicals are kind of in my background. Iāve even thought about writing a musical sometime about something. Originally I was thinking, āOh maybe I can make these songs fit into a musical!ā But I made a record instead. [Laughs]
It was something I kind of wanted to do for a number of years. I always thought there was something musical and something magical about that area. I used to eat up those episodes of Prairie Home Companion that had the āNews from Lake Wobegonā stories. Those were my favorite part. I remember when I was painting my apartment in Nashville when I first moved here, I binge-listened to a bunch of those stories from Lake Wobegon. Then I read My Ćntonia for the first time. It knocked me over. Something about Willa Catherās writing about the prairie.
To kind of return to the ideas we began with, this record feels like, almost more than anything else, that itās examining ideas of what it means to be an insider versus an outsider and how the line between each of those positions is often much more blurry than we think.Ā
Iām coming around to that now. I think in my first few years gone I felt hurt when I would come home. When someone would say, āWell you donāt sound like youāre from Minnesota.ā That hurt my feelings, because I wanted to have that stamp of belonging. Now Iām older and I realize that everything that has made me who I am to this point is valid. Living in Texas for fifteen years? Iām proudly part Texan now. I can claim part-Texan. I have some of the same feelings about certain places in Texas [as places in the Upper Midwest.]Ā
That feeling of belonging, thatās what everybody wants. I mentioned My Ćntonia, it takes place in Nebraska on the prairie. The reason I tie that book to the album and give it so much credit for inspiring me is because they do have a lot of the same themes. These characters are homesick, they just want to belong somewhere. Thereās a part earlier on in the book when the main character feels blotted out. Itās his first time on the prairie and he looks out and he canāt see any mountains and he feels blotted out. What a beautiful and devastating way of putting it… The funny thing is I never really felt like I fit in that well when I lived there.Ā
As someone who idealizes this place and loves it and returns to it not only literally, but also with these songs and this album, what is it like to be from there, away for eighteen years, and writing about now?
When youāve lived away, you realize thereās some beauty in it. Like my mom says, āBrennen, you just donāt remember how cold it was.ā It was so cold in the winter. Sheās right, I have forgotten! Putting on your long johns and two pairs of socks and snow boots every single day and freeze in a car on the way to school. I have forgotten those things and it has changed a little bit. North Dakota is very conservative, Minnesota is a swing state last I checked, but even the cultural geography of Minnesota has changed since I moved.
There are a lot more immigrants and things have changed politically. Obviously, Minneapolis — I donāt touch on Minneapolis very much [on the record] — but thereās been the unrest there. Thatās pretty far from where Iām from. Where Iām from, I guess itās kind of mixed in terms of politics. There are just a few things, like the pipeline issue, I couldnāt leave that alone. It made me so mad! [Laughs] Mostly because I knew they had chosen that area because it was worthless to them. That area is not worthless. Itās godās country. I know a song canāt do very much, but I felt angry enough to write it.
All photos: Kaitlyn Raitz