Tag: 5+5

BGS 5+5: Thomm Jutz

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Artist: Thomm Jutz
Hometown: born in Neusatz/Germany, living in Nashville, TN
Latest album: To Live in Two Worlds Vol.2
Personal nicknames: TJ

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

At this point in my life, I’d have to say that Norman Blake has influenced me the most. Not just as an instrumentalist, but also as a songwriter. When he started writing original material in the early ’70s he came out of the shoot with a distinctive songwriter’s voice. Unlike Kristofferson, Hartford, and Dylan, all of whom he had worked with, Blake’s focus was not on his inner world but on the old rural America that he’d grown up in. He applied his huge knowledge of railroad history to his writing. His songs were based on local characters that he’d grown up with or places that were meaningful to him. I like to write about historic events or characters from the past and I owe the inspiration for that to a large part to the great Norman Blake.

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

Literature has a great influence on my music. I read all the time. I try to keep something historical, a story and something philosophical or inspirational going at all times. The more I read, the more I write. Sometimes images from books come to me after years and I start writing about them. I also love to read cookbooks. In recent years I’ve really been into the novels of North Carolina writers Ron Rash and John Ehle.

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

When I was eleven years old I saw Bobby Bare on TV. He hit me square between the eyes with his singing, the way he held the guitar and his cooler than cool attitude. My soul connected with the archetype of the wandering minstrel at that moment and has not let me go since. I never felt like I wanted to do anything but a musician and songwriter. I got to work with Bare a couple of times. He was every bit as great as I wanted him to be.

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

I can’t say that I struggle too much with songwriting. I believe that if you have a good idea and put in the time and co-write with the right people, your craft should make it possible for you to at the very least come up with something decent every time. One song idea that I had and didn’t know how to approach for over a year was for a song called “Help Me to Hold On” that I co-wrote with Milan Miller and that was recorded by Balsam Range. Every morning when I walked with my dog that idea was in my head, but I couldn’t some up with an angle to approach it. I still remember where I was out here by Percy Priest Lake when all the pieces came together. We wrote it the following Saturday and it didn’t take more than an hour to get it done.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I listen to a whole lot of Norman Blake’s music when I’m cooking dinner with my wife every night. Another really good pairing is when my friend and fellow songwriter Jefferson Ross comes to visit from Atlanta. We stand around the kitchen or the grill with a beer, cook together and talk about books, music and vintage guitars.

Photo credit: Jefferson Ross

BGS 5+5: Ferris & Sylvester

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Artist: Ferris & Sylvester
Hometowns: Somerset, England & Warwickshire, England
Latest Album: I Should Be on a Train
Personal nicknames: Ducky and Didi. Proudly named by Archie’s nephew, Buzz.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

We’ve toured a lot over the past two years and have been lucky enough to see a lot of the world, from rooftops in Austin, Texas, to a hidden cove in The Faroe Islands. We’ve played to crowds of 12,000 and crowds of 12 and everything in-between. Probably one of our favourite moments on stage was playing Glastonbury last year. We played five sets across the weekend, one of which was in a weird, wonderful tent quite called The Rabbit Hole late on the Friday night. Naturally when you’re playing a big show, we had loads of technical problems and Archie’s kick drum pedal broke… Issy did a sing-along with the crowd whilst Archie got out a screwdriver to fix it. Archie then jumped off the stage, broke down the fence and went into the audience for his guitar solo. Meanwhile a man dressed as the mad hatter jumped up onto the stage and scared the hell out of Issy by pretending to chop her head off with an inflatable axe. THIS IS A TRUE STORY. Best show ever.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

We’ve really loved spending more time in our studio this year. Our studio is a small room, full of wonder with wallpaper covering the walls — no day in it is the same. One day, we’ll have the drums set up to record, the next day they’ll be replaced by a 1963 Hammond organ or a comfy red futon giving us space to write. Every corner is filled with something obscure. We love it in there. It’s where we’ve spent all of our days in the recent months and where our songs find their feet. Rituals include endless cups of tea, writing with pencils on yellow paper and recording dozens of voice notes on our phones. If we think a song is good, we’ll then spend hours crafting it and going over structure, melody and meaning. We’ll develop it in its simplest form, usually one guitar and our vocals. We’ll then work up the demo, experimenting with different instruments and sounds. This can take days. We sometimes get through five or six demos before record it properly. Other times, we stick with the first demo, knowing we captured something special and irreplaceable. It’s a lengthy process and we put everything into it.

We always warm up before a show, singing in harmony and getting in tune with each other. Lemon and ginger tea is a must. We then do a huddle with our band and sing “Cold Beer Conversation” by George Strait really out of tune. We don’t know why.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Ooh. Our two favourite things. For Archie (Sylvester), the dream pairing would be Django Reinhardt with Steak Frites sitting by the river in Samois-Sur-Seine (where Django used to live)… For Issy (Ferris), a plate of fried chicken and Little Feat. In Dixie Land.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

We try to be as honest as we can in our writing. We don’t so much “hide” behind characters, though we sometimes work from a place of reality and then play with it and make it something different, until only shadows of ourselves are recognisable in it. For instance, our song “I Should Be on a Train” isn’t really about us, but we definitely put our own frustrations as a couple into it. Getting caught up in the same toxic cycles with each other over and over again, mainly caused by stress or pressure that we put on one another. The song takes you through an imaginary scenario of a relationship ending, but concludes that it is just a thought and not a reality. We’ve never done a proper storm out on each other, never boarded a train… maybe a few slamming doors. But we worked with what we had, and took it somewhere else. We also play around with perspectives a lot. We can shift from “I” and “we” to “her,” “him” or “they” in a song, giving it layers and opinions. Again, we wouldn’t say we’re hiding, merely playing around within the story. It can be hard to expose your inner self in your songwriting, sometimes it can feel too revealing. But we always try and opt for truth.

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

Every writing experience is different and each song faces its own challenges. Probably the song which has existed in the most forms and been rewritten time and time again is “Sickness,” a song we released last year. It’s our favourite ever recording and we consider it to be one of our strongest songs. But it took over a year to get right. It first existed as a poem, then we recorded a very early demo which didn’t sit right. It didn’t have a structure and sounded so far away from the rest of our stuff at the time. We parked it and returned to it months later. We got a lot closer with next few demos, but it took a lot of time to develop it. When we took it into the studio, we were confident we’d got it right. But we had a change of heart in the session and decided it needed an extra verse and a new middle 8. We hid in Manze’s Eel and Pie House over the road from The Pool Studios in Bermondsey and wrote new lyrics, filling in the gaps. Ironically after such a lengthy writing process, we recorded it quickly on the last day of the session. Everything came together. Archie’s slide solo was recorded in one take, the vocals were recorded late into the night and were done in a few takes. It felt effortless, after all that struggle. We’re very proud of it.

Photo credit: Felix Bartlett

BGS 5+5: Elizabeth Cook

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Artist: Elizabeth Cook
Hometown: Wildwood, Florida
Latest album: Aftermath
Personal nicknames: Shug

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Forgetting that I’m on stage and then coming to and being like, “Oh my god, I’m on stage!” That, and one night in Phoenix, this group of young girls stood at the front of the stage and sang along to every one of my songs.

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

I didn’t really know that I wanted to be. I was a kid singer — so, I came to it from a funny angle. I fought it for years and tried to do other things, but never found a really gratifying way to fit into the world. I got asked to open for Todd Snider once in Wilmington, North Carolina, at this outdoor amphitheater. He threw a one-man acoustic folk show party riot throwdown. I’d never seen anything like it and really haven’t since. But I thought if this is on the table — I will try it.

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

All of it. I’m always collecting details that ping me in some way… and it can be something that I see, read, taste, touch or hear.

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

I wrote a song about my mama’s funeral. And of course it’s not something you want to write about, because it’s not something you want to even happen in the first place. But it did. And I was really dreading this event, and the responsibility I felt in the throes of my grieving. I was resenting the whole process. But then, it turned out to be a really beautiful day and it was helpful and healing. And I owed it to the world, almost a right to the wrong for my attitude towards it in the beginning. The song is called “Mama’s Funeral” and it’s on Welder.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I have a “hard hat” bag! I can get really fussy and anxious right before I go on and dig neurotically for things I think I need. So I made this little bag… it has all the comforts from Advil to throat sprays and drops, a neck and hand massager, extra guitar picks, my lucky rock and some dice.

Photo credit: Electropogram

BGS 5+5: Liz Longley

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Artist: Liz Longley
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest album: Funeral For My Past

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

I grew up in and around music. I was young when I started dreaming of being a singer, but I truly had no idea what it entailed. Despite being shy and introverted, I would sing solos in the middle school choir. At fourteen, I started writing my own music. When I first played an original song, I got a standing ovation from my high school body. That’s a powerful moment for a kid. I knew then that music was what I wanted to do with my life.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

When it’s about me, I sing it from my perspective. It’s harder for me to connect to it when I’m hiding in character. But, I usually have one or two songs per record written from another person’s perspective. Getting outside of my own story and my own perspective can be very liberating. On my latest record, “Long Distance” was not written about my life specifically. Using lyrics to basically design a set in which to tell a story is a great exercise in creativity.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Joni Mitchell is always my answer to that question. I was listening to Blue non-stop as I started writing my own music. Listening to Blue taught me that if you have a great song, you don’t need to dress it up much. A great song, a beautiful voice and a guitar still get me every time.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

After ten straight years of touring, I have been lucky to experience so many wonderful things on stage. As far as favorite shows go, I’d probably choose one of the last shows I played pre-COVID. It was February and I was headlining The Bluebird Cafe here in Nashville, Tennessee. The show was an intimate celebration, packed with people I love who flew in from all around the country. That night kicked off a whole weekend spent with twenty Kickstarter donors who made Funeral For My Past possible. It was the kind of togetherness that I really miss these days.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

A good little vocal warm-up always calms me down and helps me prepare for shows/singing in the studio. The one I do now involves blowing into a straw that is in a cup of water. It’s not annoying at all for anyone who has to hear it. 😉

Photo credit: Kate Rentz

BGS 5+5: Elliott BROOD

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Artist: Elliott BROOD
Hometown: Windsor, Ontario
Latest album: Keeper

Answers provided by Casey Laforet

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

I’m not sure there was ever really a moment for me, to be honest. I started playing guitar in high school (because of Nirvana like so many other kids of that time) I always liked playing, but I never really considered a career at it as a viable option. I’m still not sure that it is! For the first few years of the band as a duo, it was all just for fun and we both worked full time jobs. Things started taking off for us and we had to leave full time work to tour. I think I knew it was going to be a career on our first tour of Europe. That made it all seem very pro.

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

Some songs seem to just fall out of you and others are definitely harder to pull out of the air or wherever the ideas come from. The song “Northern Air” was a tough one as it involves the death of a friend. The song (chords, melody, etc.) was already written as a breakup song called “Goodbye” about an ex-girlfriend with different lyrics, but at some point it mutated into “Northern Air” which is the story of an annual camping trip taken to visit the memorial spot of a very dear friend. Twenty years ago we brought a mailbox (which was involved in the car accident that killed him) up into the forest in northern Ontario. Over the last 20 years we’ve gone up there to visit him. It took a while to get everything right with that song because of the personal subject matter. I agonized over it probably more than any other song thus far anyways…

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

It kind of depends on the show. One thing I don’t do is eat within 2-3 hours of a show. I play better when I’m hungry. I usually take a post-soundcheck walk for about an hour to check out whatever town we’re in. A lot of times I’ll go find some random bar and grab a drink and hang with some locals for an hour. Those can be fun and informative times. I actually bought a folding bike I’d like to use someday if touring ever comes back.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

That’s a pretty good question. I can guarantee it would be a Mexican restaurant, that’s for sure. It goes Mexican, Vietnamese, Italian in my book. As for the musician, my number one would be Levon Helm. He’s probably my biggest musical hero. I’ve read and watched everything there is to read and watch about the man and he just seems fascinating to me both as a musician and just as a person. I had the opportunity to see “The Ramble” at his farm in Woodstock the year before he died. Garth Hudson was the special guest that night. That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Tequila and tacos with Levon would be my pick.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I think I do that a lot. I think we always try to be as universal as possible. We like to leave it up to the listener. I definitely draw from my own life and experiences but it’s never direct. A lot of times a song may seem biographical but is actually put together from a lot of unrelated experiences. We’re more of a storytelling band. I’ve always loved that kind of songwriting like from The Band or Dylan or Neil, just being able to become different characters and be their voice. That’s always the goal in our book even if the songs are personal ones.

 

BGS 5+5: Native Harrow

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Artist: Native Harrow (Devin Tuel and Stephen Harms)
Hometown: Just outside of Philadelphia
Latest album: Closeness
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): A good band name we didn’t use is “Tuel & Harms.” As for personal nicknames, well, those are secret and too embarrassing to share.

Answers provided by Devin Tuel

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Though I could list about 50 artists, I feel the most honest answer is Neil Young. I used to listen to Live at Massey Hall while I rode the M1 bus up and down First Avenue from my college to the Lower East Side. Listening not just to the brilliant songs and guitar playing, but also to the way he held attention, to the way he tuned, to his grumbling, and his storytelling. I was transfixed by that record.

I grew up listening to Neil. My Dad is a huge fan. He took me to see him perform when I was young and I remember being on the edge of my seat the entire show, mouth agape. I felt so electric after seeing that. And thru the many years of my own career I have looked to him for inspiration, for guts when I can’t find mine, and for a “What would Neil do?” approach to difficult situations. He seems to have a reverence for nature that I share and I have always felt he could appreciate an open field just as I do.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

This past year and much of 2019 we have been in the UK more than the States supporting our release of Happier Now with Loose. We have played in so many beautiful spaces and met many wonderful people. These are some of our favorite memories of touring to date. And in January we played a sold-out show at Paper Dress Vintage in London during the Americana UK Fest, and as I was singing the opening notes of our first song, “Can’t Go On Like This,” I realized there were people in the audience singing along with me. If any musician ever says they don’t care about that, they’re lying. It’s the most special, heartwarming, exciting thing ever. Someone loves your song enough that they want to sing with you. That’s the best.

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

I grew up dancing — I was a ballerina with a Pennsylvania-based ballet company for about 13 years. So since a very young age I have been exposed to theatre life and the world of the performing arts. I still find seeing ballet so moving I often end up in tears. The classical music I grew up dancing to feels deeply rooted in my muscles and bones. It is so evocative of human emotion and passion and can take your spirit on such a journey. I think that is something we are always trying to achieve with our albums. We want to take you on a journey where the listener is transported away for a while and when the last notes ring out, you are slightly changed by what you’ve just experienced.

Certainly poetry has long been an art form that I have drawn inspiration from. I am deeply connected to nature and thus very moved by the poetry of the natural world — Whitman, Wordsworth, Frost, Keats, etc.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Stephen and I take two walks daily that wind up and down the rolling hills near our home, past fields of sweet grass and hay, dense forest, and old farm houses. Whether the sun is shining or grey clouds and rain accompany us, it’s so necessary to turn off and just be in nature. I am always making a reference to the weather, the season, or birds on several songs on each album we’ve made. The song “Turn Turn” on Closeness begins with “Turn, turn, watch the weeks go by, moving slowly ‘cross the field ‘til the grass is greener….”

I have written poetry for over a decade and almost all of it is nature-based! There is endless inspiration and it is ever-changing, full of life and full of mystery.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Hardly ever! I am honest when it is about me. Which for better or for worse has kept our songs raw and truthful. The best material I have to draw from is that which is stirring in my own heart and before my own eyes. So I try to tell it honestly and rarely rely on fiction to save my face.

Photo credit: Parri Thomas

BGS 5+5: Blitzen Trapper

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Artist: Blitzen Trapper
Hometown: Portland, Oregon
Latest album: Holy Smokes Future Jokes
Release Date: September 25, 2020

Answers provided by Eric Earley

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Michael Stipe was my favorite songwriter as a kid, his lyrics were so strange and uncanny. I’m thinking of Reckoning and Murmur, some of the most anachronistic lyrical content ever. There were no lyric sheets or online lookups back then so I was always trying to figure out what he was saying. His songs always had the feeling of a riddle or a magical text, the imagery was dreamlike and over the years I’ve tried to emulate that in certain ways. Tom Waits was a large influence later in my twenties, his bizarre comical lyrical storytelling and character voices were inspiring, I’m thinking of Rain Dogs in particular.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There isn’t any favorite, lots of weird amazing ones for sure, playing “Heard It Thru the Grapevine” with Stephen Malkmus trading weird, collapsing solos with Stephen as he made up the words because we were too lazy to learn the lyrics. I think we were in Cleveland, but I could be wrong. Playing Big Star’s “Feel” with Jody Stephens on drums and Mike Mills on backing vocals in Austin, Texas, that was surreal.

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

Most of my favorite songs have literary origins, whether it’s a particular Cormac McCarthy novel like Blood Meridian (“Black River Killer”) or a general religious text like the Bardo Thodol (the new record is based largely on this book). Biblical imagery has made its way into countless songs I’ve written as a result of childhood influences and pervasive cultural resonances. I’ve also started writing a lot of songs from reading specific poets, using their wordplay to inspire different turns of phrase. Seamus Heaney, Mary Oliver, to name a couple, I’ve also used Finnegan’s Wake and Gravity’s Rainbow to generate wordplay and imagery.

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

I’ve been playing music since I was a child, so being a musician was never really a choice. I didn’t think of it as a career for a long time. I went to college for physics and math, studied painting, learned classical fingerstyle, became a sous chef. Finally in my late twenties I decided to drop everything and play music, mostly because all the songs I was writing were keeping me up at night, but I didn’t have any vision for the business part of it. Spent seven years playing unattended shows in Portland. Got a record deal off a random song on Myspace and suddenly was touring and making money.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Experimentation is the only way to realize the vision of reality you want to hear, so never grow static in style or voice, always move forward, never sit still sonically. Don’t write angry, only from a place of emptiness without sentimentality, nostalgia without regret. Don’t try to please anyone, only follow your instincts.

Photo credit: Jason Quigley

BGS 5+5: Wood & Wire

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Artist: Wood & Wire
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest album: No Matter Where It Goes From Here

Answers by Tony Kamel and Billy Bright

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Water, for sure. I mean there’s so many metaphors available there. When writing I tend to lean towards the rivers, but it’s all the same water. We are all just part of the water cycle. — BB

Growing up on the Gulf Coast, the ocean has always been a consistent theme in my writing. I essentially learned to swim in the Gulf of Mexico. A lot of unique characters down there that are easy to tell stories about and put them into song. “John” on the new record is about a friend of mine that split time in Galveston as an artist and Alaska as a salmon fisherman. — TK

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

Stand-up comedians and the way they work material out on stage. Maybe they don’t inform the music itself, but certainly the idea of putting your art out there, trying things out, adjusting to the audience, making yourself vulnerable, and developing swagger and confidence (especially) when things are going south. Being comfortable being uncomfortable is quite the asset and the best stand-up comedians have that mastered. Recently I’ve listened to all of Tig Notaro’s recorded material. She’s absolutely brilliant. There’s a video of her on Conan where she just pushes around a stool because it makes a funny noise… sounds ridiculous. It is. You should watch it. — TK

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Music and food do pair well. Like if you’re eating a meal and there’s music in the background, or a band, that can be dreamy. Musicians and meals, not as dreamy. Too frequently, they’ll disappear when the bill comes, or are checking their Instagram page the whole meal. All that aside, Trevor has been talking about Sonoran Dogs in Tucson and we have never been able to check that box. So I’d have to say Sonoran Dogs with Trevor Smith. — BB

Definitely Sonoran Dogs in Tucson with Trevor Smith… or maybe Machaca at Lucy’s Cafe in Kings X in El Paso, Texas, with Billy Bright. Oh wait…..I’ve checked that box and it was every bit as dreamy as I could have imagined. (see “My Hometown” on the new record for El Paso references). — TK

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

I knew from about 10 years old I wanted to create. I didn’t know I wanted to make it the way I (tried to) make a living until I was working a sales job and it came down to doing one or the other full-time. At this point, no matter what I do for living, it’ll have to be on my own terms. Like my bandmates, I’ve never been good at doing what I’m told — and that certainly isn’t getting better with age. — TK

My first band ‘practice’ ca. 1987. But those moments happen all the time. I still want to be a musician someday. I fell down the acoustic music hole for good when I saw The Bad Livers live in 1992. First time I ever saw a banjo played in real life, or ever, like that. — BB

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “I”?

I’m not an intentional songwriter, they just come out sometimes and sometimes end up being recorded. I can’t think of a single song I’ve written where I doesn’t mean I. I should try that though. So should you…. — BB

Agreed. I’m not super intentional either. Kinda speaks to the relationship I have with songwriting. I don’t always enjoy it — it’s not always fun. For me personally, if I’m not feeling creative, or I’m not inspired, I don’t even try. It comes in waves. When the wave comes, I really buckle down, let it flow however it comes out, and ride it to the bitter end. And by I, I mean you. — TK

Photo credit: Alison Narro

BGS 5+5: Grant-Lee Phillips

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Artist: Grant-Lee Phillips
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest album: Lightning, Show Us Your Stuff
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Pistol, Ranchero

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Neil Young I suppose. His music hit me at just the right time. I had been playing guitar for two years when I first heard “Down by the River” and “Cortez the Killer.” I was 16. My ears were wide open. Young’s songs spoke to me like no other. He was also the first singer I saw in concert. All alone, with a rack of acoustic guitars, an upright piano on one side of the stage, a grand on the other, a pump organ. I was mesmerized.

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

My family loved music. Hee Haw was a big one. We never missed a show. My grandma loved Elvis and Johnny Cash. The excitement I felt when Roy Clark played “Orange Blossom Special” or “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” on the electric guitar, I wanted to feel that all the time. The TV show Austin City Limits introduced me to Lightning Hopkins, John Prine and Tom Waits. I recall those moments like yesterday.

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

The hardest prolonged period of song wrestling was back in the ‘90s after Grant Lee Buffalo had put out a few albums. The pressure was on to deliver. The question was, deliver what to whom? I did my best to put all that noise out of my head. You can go from dancing on a ledge like Buster Keaton one minute to vertigo the next. Thankfully I had come across the film director Andrei Tarkovsky’s defiant book Sculpting in Light and that became a temporary manifesto.

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

I paint a great deal these days. Landscapes and still life. It slows me down and demands another degree of focus. Composition involves strategic thinking but there’s a wild side to painting. I like that balance. It gives me insight to making music.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Tennessee is one of the greenest states in the country. I’m never so in tune with my own spirit as when I surrounded by elms and oaks. During this pandemic our family has made a point to take a drive every day. We drive through the country, roll down the windows and breathe some fresh air. One of my other rituals involves drawing. Every day I set aside 20-30 minutes to sketch. I have notebooks full of trees, landscapes in the works. Trees, clouds — that’s my sanctuary. Some of these images find their way into my lyrics, which is just another way of painting a picture.

Photo credit: Denise Siegel-Phillips

BGS 5+5: Zephaniah OHora

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Artist: Zephaniah OHora
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Latest album: Listening to the Music
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Zeph

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

I must have been 5 or 6 years old the first time I saw a Zildjian cymbal. A drummer named Ed Nicholas who played in the house band on Sundays at the church I grew up in preferred that brand. I was drawn to it because it had a big Z on it. I thought he was just the coolest. He always wore a pressed shirt tucked in and a nice pair of slacks. He had that hip easygoing, cool jazz drummer presence about him, and that’s when I decided that music was it.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

One of the more recent memories on stage is when I performed at Neal Casal’s ‘There’s a Reward’ Memorial show at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. It’s a stage that so many incredible bands and artists have performed on. Legendary shows that have gone down in history. And it’s a beautiful old theatre. So thinking about all those people who’d been on that stage and singing a tune to honor my friend Neal in front of a packed house was really something else.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song? I’ve had a few tough times.

Some songs just can’t be written down fast enough. And other songs you labor over for weeks or months. In most recent memory is the song “All American Singer” off my new record. It was to me one of the most important songs I’ve written. There’s a couple ways to interpret that tune and it was important to me that it said what I felt needed to be said. Unlike a righteous Twitter post that you often see these days, it’s a recorded song. There’s no way to delete it or alter your ideas. It’s permanent. So it was important to make sure my thoughts were coherent within the song.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I haven’t been spending a lot of time in nature. Sadly. I live in New York City so nature is scarce. However I am around an incredible amount of architectural history and beauty. There’s so much to see here, and so much you could walk right past and never pay any mind to. And then one day you finally stop to admire something you’ve passed by many times and realize there are so many stories within that building or space. I think that’s also simultaneously an analogy for life. I’m always trying to tap into some collective shared experience in my writing. I think architecture is a reflection or expression of human experiences and history so it directly shapes my work.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

The mission I’m on is to create those moments in music live or recorded when you get chills or feel as though the narrator in the song is singing about your own life experience. It’s a lofty goal and one that’s pursued by many. That’s part of my greater goal of connecting with people and understanding my own unique experience in this life. And music is a great vehicle for that.

Photo credit: Jammi York