Celebrating the rich history of women in old-time music, past, present, and future, has been an obsession of mine for over 50 years. I’ve listened to archival recordings, sat in the living room with Ola Belle Reed, Jean Ritchie, and Alice Gerrard, toured with Patsy Montana, taught Maybelle Carter’s unique guitar style, and interviewed Lily May Ledford at the Renfro Valley Barn Dance.
I was a proud member of the team that created The Birthplace of Country Music’s exhibit, “I’ve Endured: Women In Old Time Music.” And I’m thrilled that Baltimore’s Creative Alliance is hosting both the exhibit and the Say Sister! Festival celebrating women in roots music in January 2025. This playlist includes music from the past and the “I’ve Endured” exhibit, present artists from the Say Sister! Festival lineup – and the future is coming! – Cathy Fink, musician and co-curator
“I’ve Endured” – Ola Belle Reed
Ola Belle (1916-2002) was born Ola Wave Campbell in Grassy Creek, North Carolina. She was a fine traditional banjo picker and guitarist and grew up with a rich repertoire of family music. She also became a prolific songwriter, realizing that she had her own things to say and her own way to say them within the structure of old-time music. This song has been covered hundreds of times by contemporary artists. Ola Belle received a Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 1998 and was awarded a prestigious National Heritage Fellowship Award in 1986.
A native of Tennessee, Amythyst Kiah performs both original and traditional songs on banjo and guitar. She dug deep into old-time music as a student at East Tennessee State University’s roots music program. In “Polly Ann’s Hammer,” the legendary John Henry takes a back seat and his wife gets the lead role. Like the “I’ve Endured” exhibit, this effort brings light to someone who has not received the attention she may have deserved.
“When John was sick/ Polly drove steel/ Like a man, Lord, like a man … This is the hammer that killed your daddy/ Throw it down and we’ll be free…”
“Things Are Coming My Way” – Marcy Marxer
Marcy adapted this song from the singing of Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Marcy met the Georgia Sea Island Singers during various folk festivals and always delighted in this song. She’s been celebrating the rich history of women in country music in our duo for over 40 years. Marcy’s a multi-instrumentalist on guitar, cello banjo, mandolin, ukulele, percussion and more. This song showcases her fingerpicking guitar style.
“West Virginia Coal Disaster” – Sarah Kate Morgan
Sarah Kate Morgan steps follow right after Jean Ritchie with traditional and original songs and dulcimer playing. She’s an innovative Appalachian dulcimer player with a gorgeous voice and a love for Appalachian music and heritage. Here she sings Jean’s potent song about the 1968 Saxsewell No. 8 Mine disaster. Hang in there for the awesome instrumental at the end! Sarah Kate teaches at the Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky.
“Red Rocking Chair” – The Coon Creek Girls, Lily May Ledford
Lily May Ledford (1917-1985) from Powell, Kentucky played clawhammer banjo and fiddle and was the leader of the first all-girl string band on the radio, The Coon Creek Girls. Here her solo banjo playing is featured.
“Cotton Patch Rag” – Kimber Ludiker
Kimber plays fiddle and mandolin and sings with bluegrass group Della Mae. She’s a sixth-generation fiddler from Spokane, Washington. Here’s her winning performance of “Cotton Patch Rag” from the 2006 Grand Master Fiddle Championship.
“What The Lord Done Give You” – Cathy Fink
I was the first woman to win the West Virginia State Banjo contest (1980) – and went on to win it several times, total. In 2018 I also won the Clifftop Appalachian Music Festival Banjo Contest. This original song is played on a gut string fretless banjo, making a new tune sound old.
“I Will Not Go Down” – Amythyst Kiah featuring Billy Strings
From Amythyst’s most recent album, Still + Bright, comes this awesome collaboration with Billy Strings. It’s a powerful song and arrangement. I can tell you that if Ola Belle Reed were able to hear this song, she’d give it a big thumbs up! Speaking truth to power is part and parcel of women’s work in roots music.
“Muddy Creek” – Sarah Kate Morgan
Sarah Kate Morgan has redefined what can be done on an Appalachian dulcimer. Her trills, embellishments and awesome tone here are joined by fiddle, banjo and feet. This one will make you happy!
“Now Is the Cool of the Day” – Jean Ritchie
Jean’s clear soprano voice couldn’t be more beautiful than on this original song that draws on her traditional roots, while conjuring God’s calling to humans to take care of the earth. First released in 1977 and still timeless.
“No-See-Um Stomp” – Della Mae
Kimber tears up this original fiddle tune with an all-star band featuring Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, Avril Smith, and Della Mae.
“Chilly Winds” – Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer
Cello banjo (Marcy) and five-string banjo (Cathy) make up the instrumental duo behind the vocal duet in this classic old-time song.
“The Little Devils” – Jean Ritchie
Jean’s solo voice reminds us what it must have been like to gather round the fire after dinner and hear her mother sing to the family before the age of television.
“Banjo Pickin’ Girl” – The Coon Creek Girls, Lily May Ledford
This song has become the unofficial theme song of many a banjo pickin’ girl and string band. Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls sang this on the WLS Barn Dance (Chicago), Renfro Valley Barn Dance (KY) and Lily May continued singing it solo for the rest of her career.
Say Sister! Festival takes place in Baltimore, Maryland at the Creative Alliance on January 10 & 11, 2025. Tickets – in person and “watch from home” – are available here. The “I’ve Endured: Women of Old Time Music” exhibit opens at Creative Alliance on January 3 at 6pm.
Photo Credit: Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer by Irene Young; Amythyst Kiah by Photography by Kevin & King; Sarah Kate Morgan by Jared Hamilton. Poster Credit: Gina Dilg
When you wake up in a world where hatred and fascism have been resoundingly endorsed by so many of your neighbors and fellow citizens, how do you proceed? That question becomes even more daunting at its second or third or umpteenth asking.
Yes, music will play a vital role over the next handful of years, as we continue the fight for justice, self-determination, and agency for all people, in the U.S. and around the world. But music, the arts, and creativity won’t be enough to save us. They won’t be an end-all, be-all solution to the political and cultural hurdles we will have to clear in the near future.
This is a moment that calls for so much more. Solidarity, first and foremost – the idea that, at the beginning or end of the day, all we have is each other – and community, organizing, and advocating for each other will be essential. Mutual aid will be more necessary than ever. Putting our own privilege on the line in order to protect and ensure safety for those more marginalized than ourselves is the task immediately at hand. Showing up – yes, for our country, but more importantly, for our friends and neighbors – is the very next step. Literally and figuratively.
Still, the soundtrack we will all write, that we will all curate, that we will all partake in while opposing the craven and hateful policies being proffered by our would-be dictator will be a powerful tool. Music – especially roots music, country and bluegrass, blues and old-time, folk with a lowercase and capital F, and more – are traditions steeped in populism, in worker’s rights, in justice, in standing up for the downtrodden and beleaguered. There are no better genres for this exact moment. There are no betters artists, musicians, and songs than those in and made by our very community.
BGS and Good Country include in our mission a commitment to intentionally crafting a roots music space, a bluegrass- and country-centered universe, where everyone is welcome, regardless of identity, background, nationality, ethnicity, disability, class, or belief system. We are determined to continue that work, to be a place where – hopefully – anyone and everyone can feel seen, heard, safe, and valid in their love for and appreciation of all things roots music.
As we summon courage for the work ahead and lean on our community, here are eight songs perfect for this exact moment in history, to hold up as we remind ourselves our goals are the same at the end of this week as they were at the beginning: liberty, agency, and self-determination for all. – TheBGS & Good Country Team
“Mercy Now” – Mary Gauthier
A modern Americana classic, singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier shared “Mercy Now” on social media very early on Wednesday morning, after the news broke that Trump had won another term. It spread quickly on social media with many a repost and reshare. The message here, of mercy applied broadly, universally, and without qualification, is more than timely. It’s evergreen.
“Crisis” – Aoife O’Donovan
Connecting our current struggle to those of past generations is exactly how we continue to put one foot in front of the other, despite setbacks and losses and despair. Aoife O’Donovan’s latest record, All My Friends, is a perfect intergenerational connecting of the dots, centering women, girls, and femmes, and shines a light on the non-linear track that leads to victory. We know we will continue to return to this music over and over in the future, as a balm and a catalyst for progress.
And, as our friends at Basic Folk reminded us yesterday, Aoife’s and Dawn Landes’ episode of the podcast – which focuses on their similar albums centering women, feminism, and women’s issues – is an incredibly timely re-listen. Find that episode here.
“Sun to Sun” – Alice Gerrard
Looking to our roots music elders in this moment is exactly what we all need! Alice Gerrard’s most recent album, Sun to Sun, and certainly its title track, indicate a kind of perseverance and long view that we all could take on as we face the uncertain future.
With a loping, almost marching rhythm, there’s a grounded, realistic, and convicting approach here on “Sun to Sun.” While we all talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, the problems we face continue unabated and unchallenged. What will we do besides talk?
While we talk another fool goes and buys a gun…
“Listen” – Kyshona
Speaking of talking… why don’t we take a turn at listening? The challenge has been set by Kyshona, a powerful and restorative singer-songwriter and activist who channels her ancestors, connects generations, and builds community with every note and every word sung. Originally released in 2020, “Listen” is just as encouraging now as it was then, and just as indelible in its striving for a better, more compassionate world. Media, social media, and the internet all incentivize us to speak, to center ourselves, to prefer “me” and “I” over “us” and “we.” Let’s maybe listen more, instead. Especially right now.
“Beautiful” – Sam Gleaves
Appalachian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Sam Gleaves – who was raised in southwest Virginia but now lives in eastern Kentucky – released one of the most quietly and emphatically radical queer country and old-time albums of this year, Honest. “Beautiful” is the collection’s stunner, a track about how there’s endless beauty, mystique, and life lessons to be drawn from the ways we’re all different from each other. Through the lyrics, you see the world from the eyes of a young Gleaves, singing about sights and sounds unfamiliar and foreign to a boy from the mountains, loved and cherished by his family and shown that love without question.
Seeing beauty in our differences? What a way to live…
“The Numbers” – Mipso
THE ECONOMY! THE ECONOMY! THE ECONOMY!
What about those of us for whom this economy has never worked well or fully functioned? What about the millions who can’t make ends meet right now, under blue or red presidents? From their 2023 album, Book of Fools, Mipso turn over this very question, examining how and why “The Numbers” could be soaring – hiring numbers, the stock market, crypto values, Tesla market cap – while so many are still struggling day to day.
“Put No Walls Around Your Garden” – New Dangerfield
From Black string band supergroup New Dangerfield – which features Jake Blount, Kaia Kater, Tray Wellington, and Nelson Williams – “Put No Walls Around Your Garden” is an Americana-tinged old-time number, written by Kater, with a collectivist stance and a solidarity through line. There may be instincts in the near future to revert to an “every man for himself” sort of survival strategy, but the only way we’ll get through is together. Rather than hoarding, walling ourselves off, retreating, or recoiling, now is the time to throw open our garden gates and welcome each other in. Share our abundance, work through our scarcity and lack, and care for each other’s needs – big or small.
“Trees” – Laurie Lewis
Consider the trees. Consider the birds, the rivers, the oceans, the saguaro, the pikas, the whooping cranes. Did their realities change between Tuesday and Wednesday? Is the world any less or more likely to burn, to flood, to be blown away by hurricanes and tornadoes now than on Monday? Sadly, no. The march towards climate apartheid continues entirely unfettered, regardless of who holds the White House.
Laurie Lewis, a bluegrass forebear who has carried the mantle of climate justice for her entire life, embodies trees in the title track of her latest album. She and her band show how the fight for justice – climate justice, racial justice, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights – is a fight not measured by human lifespans and human time, but against earth’s clock. The trees will continue to watch, waiting, for us to either figure it all out or to fail at our mission.
We must not fail. The work continues and we’ll be working – and singing – alongside you all, the entire way.
There is no disputing that Tom Paxton is a living music legend. In the early 1960s, he was a major player in the vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene, along with the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul & Mary. The writer of such classic tunes as “Last Thing On My Mind,” “Bottle Of Wine,” “I Can’t Help To Wonder (Where I’m Bound),” and “Ramblin’ Boy,” Paxton has earned Lifetime Achievement Awards from the GRAMMYs, ASCAP, and the BBC. The beloved songwriter has had his tunes covered by a wide spectrum of acts, ranging from Harry Belafonte and Neil Diamond to the Pogues and Norah Jones. While several fellow singer-songwriters (notably Carolyn Hester and Anne Hills) have devoted entire albums to Paxton music, it took a group of admiring bluegrass musicians to deliver the first multi-artist tribute album of his songs.
Bluegrass Sings Paxton, which came out August 30 on Mountain Home Music Company, offers an impressive lineup of contributors that cuts across several generations of bluegrass musicians. Performers include celebrated acts, such as Alice Gerrard, Claire Lynch, Laurie Lewis, and Tim O’Brien along with younger stars, like Sister Sadie, Della Mae, Steep Canyon Rangers’ singer/guitarist Aaron Burdett, Unspoken Tradition’s Sav Sankaran, and current IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year Greg Blake.
Paxton, speaking to BGS from his home in Virginia, said that he had a mostly hands-off role in the making of Bluegrass Sings Paxton. “I just sat on the sidelines in amazement”; however, he confided, “I was just blown away” after listening to the entire album for the first time. The 86-year-old singer-songwriter was also being a little modest about his own contributions. This collection contains two new Paxton tunes, and he sings on a pair of tracks as well.
The genesis for Bluegrass Sings Paxton started with a conversation that GRAMMY-winning musician/producer Cathy Fink had some years ago with Paxton, who she has worked with since the early 1980s and has known even longer. “I know Tom’s catalog really well and have often thought there was great material there for bluegrass,” she shared with BGS. “I could hear this album before we even began.” The idea further evolved a while later when Fink brought up the idea to award-winning songwriter, producer, and Mountain Home executive Jon Weisberger at IBMA a few years back, and he immediately came aboard.
Several of Paxton’s tunes have been very popular in bluegrass circles over the years. A half century ago, Kentucky Mountain Boys covered “Ramblin Boy” while the Dillards and the Kentucky Colonels were among those who have recorded “The Last Thing On My Mind.” More recently, “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” was a hit for Ashby Frank and “Leavin’ London” is a live staple of Billy Strings’ concerts. However, both Fink and Weisberger thought the project was a terrific way to get Paxton’s deep songbook better known in the bluegrass world. As Weisberger explained, “I had no doubt that there were more [songs] – both already written and yet to be written – that would work well within bluegrass, and that bringing them to light would encourage artists looking for songs to look to his catalog.”
Several acts came into the project with specific songs that they wanted to do. Blake, who fatefully was sitting at the same table with Weisberger and Fink at IBMA, quickly put dibs on “Leaving London.” Danny Paisley, who remembered his dad, ’80s bluegrass star Bob Paisley, taking him to the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a child and seeing Paxton play there, requested “Ramblin’ Boy,” because it was a song his father had performed. “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” was already part of Della Mae’s live repertoire, so doing that tune was a natural fit for them.
When it came to what songs other acts took on, Fink gave the performers a lot of free rein to delve into Paxton’s vast treasury of tunes, a decision that worked out wonderfully. “Each artist made the song their own and it really worked,” she confided. Claire Lynch chose “I Give You The Morning” and Alice Gerrard selected “The Things I Notice Now” from Paxton’s 1969 The Things I Notice Now album. Chris Jones picked “The Last Hobo” from 1986’s And Loving You. Paxton’s 2002 album, Lookin’ for The Moon, was the source for both Aaron Burdett’s selection of and Sav Sankaran’s rendition of the title track. Laurie Lewis, meanwhile, found “Central Square” from 2015’s Redemption Road. In case you haven’t done the math, these songs alone cover nearly 50 years of Paxton’s recordings.
Paxton, too, was thrilled with the selections, proclaiming “I liked every one of the songs that they chose.” While he expected tunes like “Can’t Help But Wonder,” “Ramblin’ Boy,” and “The Last Thing On My Mind” would be part of the set, Paxton said he “was just tickled to death” over the inclusion of such lesser known numbers as “Central Square,” “The Same River Twice,” and “The Last Hobo.”
Chris Jones revealed to BGS that he picked “The Last Hobo” because the tune “felt like a classic Tom Paxton third-person story song, sort of in the spirit of ‘Ramblin’ Boy,’ in a way. It has a kind of tenderness that is so often present in Tom’s songs.”
Jones was also a member of the de facto “house band” that played on the majority of Bluegrass Sings Paxton’s tracks. A secret weapon behind the album, this team of bluegrass all-stars includes IBMA award-winners banjo player Kristin Scott Benson (the Grascals), fiddler Deanie Richardson (Sister Sadie), and Jones on guitar, along with mandolinist Darren Nicholson (formerly of Balsam Range), bassist Nelson Williams (Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, New Dangerfield) and harmony singers Travis Book (The Infamous Stringdusters) and Wendy Hickman.
Jones felt that everyone “clicked well together” and gave the music “a natural sound, which helped give the impression that these were bluegrass songs to begin with, even if they weren’t.” He also credited producers Weisberger and Fink for “coming up with arrangements that really fostered that feeling, too.”
Bluegrass Sings Paxton opens with one of the tunes that Paxton sings on. He was able to join Della Mae on “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” as the band was recording in Maryland, not too far away from Paxton’s home base in Virginia.
“We did it live in the studio. No overdubs or anything,” he revealed. “I had a ball doing that track with them.” Paxton also sang with long-time collaborators Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer – the three did a double album, All New, together in 2022 – on the up-tempo love tune, “All I Want,” which is also one of the two of new Paxton tunes on the project. The other new number, “You Took Me In” is a co-write with Tim O’Brien and his wife Jan Fabricius. One of the first tunes he wrote with the couple, Paxton said that “it had to be chosen. It’s such a good song.” He described it as “gospel without being gospel,” adding, “I took the literal gospel out of it and kept everything else.”
Fink & Marxer and O’Brien & Fabricius are among the handful of musicians that the still highly-active octogenarian collaborates with via Zoom each week. Folk luminary John McCutcheon, Colorado troubadour Jackson Emmer, and the rising Pittsburgh band Buffalo Rose are also among his regular online songwriting coterie. Paxton says he sometimes writes three to five songs a week. “Lots of folks would retire to the golf course at this point in their lives,” Fink marveled, “but Tom is driven by writing the next song.”
Over the years, Paxton has penned hundreds and hundreds of songs, and more than 60 albums bear his name, beginning with 1962’s I’m the Man That Built the Bridges that was recorded live at New York City’s fabled Gaslight Club. Even from the start, Paxton filled his records predominately with originals, which wasn’t typical at that time. Dylan’s 1962 debut, for example, contained only two originals. Dave Van Ronk, in fact, famously proclaimed in his memoir that it was Paxton who kicked off the folk scene’s “New Song Movement,” not Dylan as often credited.
The best-known songs from his debut, somewhat curiously, are three tunes that might best be described as children’s music: “My Dog Is Bigger Than Your Dog,” “Marvelous Toys,” and “Going To The Zoo.” Writing and performing kids songs was not an isolated occurrence for Paxton, who went on to release several children’s albums, including the GRAMMY-nominated Your Shoes, My Shoes, and to write books for kids. Paxton very much sees himself as continuing the legacy of his heroes, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers – artists who performed all types of songs, from story songs and ballads to children’s tunes and political songs.
“Everything I do is really rooted in traditional music,” Paxton elaborated during his phone interview. “I’m always going back to that well of traditional folk music, Appalachian music, cowboy music. It’s a wonderful tradition – great, great songs, and I just keep trying to write songs that feel the way they felt.”
Paxton cites one specific musician – the late, great Doc Watson – to explains his “best route” to bluegrass music. He saw Watson when Ralph Rinzler first brought him to play in New York City and came away so impressed. “I was very fond of him and adored his music. I think he liked me, too. Doc recorded many of my songs over the years.” He also remembered sharing a bill with Watson once in Tampa and being brought out on stage to perform “Bottle Of Wine.” Paxton was rather intimidated over Watson’s and his guitarist Jack Lawrence’s virtuosity. “Why do I feel like I’m wearing painter’s gloves,” he recalled saying while admitting “it was a lot of fun.”
Weisberger describes Paxton’s place in American music as a unique one. “He was an integral part of the transition from wholly traditional folk music to the more modern conception of the field, with its inclusion of performing songwriters, but where a lot of his contemporaries moved on in one way or another, he went deep rather than broad… I think that’s what makes so many of his songs sound so natural and organic and almost effortless. That is an artistry that is really easy to overlook or under-appreciate, so I’m happy to have put together a collection that will, I hope, bring more attention and appreciation to that still ongoing legacy.”
When asked how his songwriting has changed over the years, Paxton replied that he hopes it’s deeper and more developed, adding rather humbly that “I’m still the same writer I was when I wrote ‘Last Thing On My Mind.’ It’s like a farmer who puts in the same crop every year. It’s the same farmer.”
Photo courtesy of Fleming Artists. Album cover courtesy of Crossroads Label Group.
My new album, The Liberated Woman’s Songbook, reimagines folk songs about women’s activism from a songbook published in 1971 at the height of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Songbooks were the playlists of the past. Before people could burn CDs or make mixtapes, if they wanted to share songs they would make books or zines. When I was researching for this project, I consulted a lot of songbooks and zines from the late ’60s and early ’70s and found so many delightful things! Here are a few of my favorite finds (most pre-dating 1971, when the book was published). – Dawn Landes
“Hard is the Fortune of All Womankind (1830)” – Dawn Landes
This traditional ballad was often sung at protests during the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late ’60s and early ’70s. It was recorded by Peggy Seeger in 1954 and Joan Baez in 1961 under an alternate title, “The Wagoner’s Lad.” The lyrics date back to its first printing by English song collector Cecil Sharp.
“Single Girl, Married Girl” – The Carter Family
I first heard this Appalachian song when I worked at a bookstore in NYC and would constantly listen to a Carter Family CD on repeat. Apparently Sara Carter didn’t like the song and didn’t want to record it in 1927, but I’m so glad she did!
“I’m Gonna Be an Engineer” – Peggy Seeger
This masterpiece was written in the ’70s by the great Peggy Seeger, an incredible musician, writer, and keeper of the folk tradition (also, the sister of Pete Seeger). She’s been an advocate for women’s rights throughout her long career and has recorded many folk songs on women’s issues.
“Lady, What Do You Do All Day?” – Peggy Seeger
Seeger’s epic retort to Ewan MacColl’s question at the top of the song is worthy of its own film. MacColl and Seeger were musical and life partners for 30 years and made so many amazing recordings together. Check out her memoir, The First Time Ever, for some wild stories about the two.
“It’s My Way” – Buffy Sainte-Marie
This was the title track to Buffy Sainte-Marie’s debut album in 1964. That whole album is mind-blowing, but this song stands out to me. It’s so self-assured and strong. She’s still performing it in her 80s and even released a rock version in 2015.
“You Don’t Own Me” – Lesley Gore
Lesley Gore was 17 years old when she recorded this in 1963! One of the song’s two writers, John Madera, said its sensibility was shaped by his upbringing and participation in the civil rights movement.
“Oughta Be A Woman” – Sweet Honey In the Rock
Bernice Johnson Reagan said, “June Jordan wrote the words to ‘Oughta Be a Woman’ after I talked about my mother.” I really love the narrators voice in the writing and the uplifting voices of Sweet Honey In the Rock singing this.
“Silver Dagger” – Joan Baez
This song casts such a spell and Joan Baez is one of my all time favorite singers.
“Which Side Are You On (1931)” – Dawn Landes
Here’s a labor song mashup that combines Florence Reece’s lyrics from “Which Side Are You On” with Aunt Molly Jackson’s “I Am a Union Woman.” I’m singing the part of Florence Reece and Kanene Pipkin (of The Lone Bellow) is singing the Aunt Molly lyrics. Both women wrote protest songs during the “Bloody” Harlan County, Kentucky miners strike.
“Custom Made Woman Blues” – Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard
I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time with Alice Gerrard and she told me that the first time she and Hazel Dickens performed this song at a women’s festival the audience clapped so loud they had to play it again! Immediately! Legends.
“I Am Woman” – Helen Reddy
The production on this song really places me exactly in the year 1971, when The Liberated Woman’s Songbook was published and Helen Reddy’s song was about to become a huge part of the soundtrack to the Women’s Liberation Movement. There’s a great documentary about her life and this song on Netflix.
March is Women’s History Month, and BGS, Good Country, and Real Roots Radio have partnered to highlight a variety of our favorite women in country, bluegrass, and roots music with our Women’s History Spotlight.
Each weekday in March at 11AM Eastern (8AM Pacific) on Real Roots Radio, host Daniel Mullins will be celebrating a powerful woman in roots music during the Women’s History Spotlight segment of The Daniel Mullins Midday Music Spectacular. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets.
Then, we will have a Friday recap here on BGS featuring the artists highlighted throughout the previous week. No list is comprehensive, but we hope to feature some familiar favorites as well as some trailblazers whose music and impact might not be as familiar to you.
This week’s edition of our Women’s History Spotlight features musicians and artists like IBMA Award winner Dale Ann Bradley, the legendary Dolly Parton, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, early country hitmaker Kitty Wells, and Kentuckian-West Virginian Molly O’Day. Tune in next week for the final installment of our Women’s History Spotlight!
Dolly Parton
You knew it was coming. You can’t tell the story of country music (or American pop culture) without Dolly Parton. Growing up in Sevier County, Tennessee, she is not just the Queen of the Smoky Mountains, but quite possible the Queen of the Universe (if there was such a ridiculous title). Her rags-to-riches story will continue to be told and re-told for generations. Aside from her beautiful voice and philanthropic work (the millions of books that she gives to children through Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is her proudest achievement), there are numerous other aspects about Dolly Parton that are remarkable.
Her business acumen is frequently praised, but it still bears repeating. Aside from her numerous endeavors (including Dollywood), it’s often worth remembering that she fought to regain control of her own career and decision-making from Porter Wagoner after her star began shining brighter than his scope of influence. (Remember, it was the ending of this business relationship that was the impetus behind Dolly writing one of her most famous songs, “I Will Always Love You.”) Call it a business decision or just genius, but Dolly’s ability to juggle embracing her role as an undeniable sex symbol and avoiding being labeled as “unwholesome” by conservative crowds has to be one of the most difficult tightrope walks in American entertainment.
Vanity Fair’s 1991 article “Good Golly, Miss Dolly“ did a deep dive into the dichotomy of Dolly’s role as a sort of clean sex symbol: “Dolly, in her openness, demystifies sex. ‘One of the things that makes the image work is that people understand that I look one way, but am another, that there’s a very real person underneath this artificial look,’ she theorizes. ‘It’s not like I am a joke. People can laugh at me, but they don’t make fun.’ … Indeed, Dolly Parton has become the billboard for sex without being the product itself.”
It is the way that she ensures that the “very real person” that is Dolly Rebecca Parton doesn’t get lost in the glitz, glamor, and boob jokes that is part of the reason why she is so endearing and universally beloved by folks from all walks of life; in a world where polarization is en vogue, Dolly is one of the few topics on which everyone agrees! She epitomizes the best of us.
Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard
Members of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard were an unlikely pair who blasted down doors for women in bluegrass. Hazel hailed from the mountains of West Virginia, while Alice was from across the country in Seattle, Washington. Alice attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she was exposed to folk and bluegrass music. While a student there, she helped coordinate bringing The Osborne Brothers to the Antioch campus, making history as the first major bluegrass concert held on a college campus! After college, she wound up in the D.C. area, becoming active in their flourishing bluegrass scene, where she became friends and musical partners with Hazel Dickens – who had moved to the region with her family to find factory work years earlier.
Hazel & Alice became some of the first female bluegrass bandleaders and recorded some classic albums for Smithsonian Folkways and Rounder Records before embarking on successful solo careers by the mid-’70s. With Hazel’s mountain sound and Alice’s more folk-oriented sensibilities, their music appealed to both traditional bluegrass fans and those who were being introduced to the genre via the Folk Revival. Their original material which highlighted a woman’s perspective were critical in bringing a voice to women in the bluegrass canon. Decades later, their music and legacy is still rippling across American roots music, with artists as diverse as Rhiannon Giddens and Dudley Connell still celebrating their influence and impact.
Molly O’Day
Born Lois LaVerne Williamson, country pioneer Molly O’Day was born in Pike County, Kentucky. She would become a popular radio star in West Virginia by the early 1940s, eventually leading Molly O’Day & The Cumberland Mountain Folks. Her band crossed paths with Hank Williams on the radio circuit and Molly even sang quite a few of his songs on radio and later in the recording studio. Molly learned “Tramp On The Street” from Hank Williams and it would land her a recording contract with Columbia Records. (Fun Fact: Her band at the time of her first Columbia recording session featured a young Mac Wiseman on bass!)
In an era when the term “hillbilly music” was still commonly used, Molly’s music, retroactively, could have country and bluegrass labels applied to it. Her powerful voice felt just as at home on an ancient balled like “Poor Ellen Smith” as it did on soul-stirring gospel songs like “Matthew 24.” By the early 1950s, Molly and her husband grew weary of life in the limelight and essentially retired from the music business, both dedicating their life to ministry. She would record a few gospel albums for some small record labels in the ensuing years, but her final album was released in 1960. She would pass away in the late 1980s, but she left a mark on country music and earned the respect of her peers at a time when the list of female country pioneers was relatively short.
Dale Ann Bradley
Revered as one of the most heartfelt bluegrass singers of her generation, this Kentucky songbird’s career started in earnest as a member of the Renfro Valley cast in her home state of Kentucky. The Renfro Valley Barn Dance was an extremely popular barn-dance style radio program in the 1930s and it spurred the creation of Renfro Valley as a country music entertainment destination in Kentucky. This helped kickstart the careers of folks like Steve Gulley, Jeff Parker, Dale Ann Bradley, and more by the 1990s.
While at Renfro Valley, Bradley would eventually join The New Coon Creek Girls, one of bluegrass’s only “all-girl” bands at the time, and aptly named after The Coon Creek Girls, a pioneering female string band of the 1930s who also started on The Renfro Valley Barn Dance.
Dale Ann’s soulful voice, largely influence by the Primitive Baptist tradition which she grew up around, quickly gripped the bluegrass world, leading to a successful solo career for the last three decades. In addition to recording songs that hearken to those familiar with mountain people and mountain ways, the appeal of Dale Ann’s voice has led her to adapt songs from outside of the genre to her style of bluegrass, tackling tunes from Tom Petty, Bobbie Gentry, The Grateful Dead, Jim Croce, and everyone in-between! Her diverse material has led me (and many others) to the conclusion that no matter the material, if Dale Ann is singing it, I already know I’m going to like it!
Kitty Wells
Hailed as the original Queen of Country Music, Kitty Wells hit a massive reset button on the role of women in country music after the massive success of her breakthrough hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Written by J.D. Miller, it was penned as the antithesis of Hank Thompson’s hit, “The Wild Side of Life.” After writing the song, the search began for a woman to sing it. Kitty Wells had pursued a country career, to little avail, and had essentially consented that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for her, when she was contacted to record the song. “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” would become the first Number One hit by solo female in country music history, and its status as one of the most iconic country songs of all time only grows.
This explosion of success led to many other hit records by Kitty Wells, and opened the doors for those who would follow in her wake like Jean Shepard, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and more! You can’t celebrate Women’s History Month without honoring the gal who famously sang the line, “It’s a shame that all the blame is on us women!” (Still kind of bummed that Margot Robbie didn’t sing that line in Barbie. Seems like a missed opportunity to me!)
As an added bonus, here’s another cool version from 1993, where Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette recruited Kitty Wells to join them on a new version of this country classic on their collaborative album, appropriately entitled Honky Tonk Angels.
While we could easily be mistaken for “a pair of demure young ladies playing in a mid-19th century parlor” as thoughtfully observed by Bluegrass Today some years ago, we are in fact drawn to folk music not for its wholesomeness, but for its realness and its capacity to have you at the edge, staring down the rocky cliffs of life into the depths of your humanity. The songs that endure and have been carried into the future often tend to have a lot of darkness balanced with beauty (reverence and irreverence), because that’s what resonates with folks. It’s what we’re made of. And anyone who dares to sing complex truths and carry stories around in their heads can be a folk rebel.
On our new album, Listen to the World Spin, we stopped worrying about how traditional we sound or “should” sound and just made the music we wanted to make. These songs tend to have themes of the contrast between connection, solitude, our personal struggles, and how we relate to the greater world around us. We ask a lot of questions on this album, the answers to which could be complicated, but ultimately are simple because there is no answer. Sometimes the best thing one can do in life is just listen.
This playlist of songs features friends, heroes, and legends; inspiratoria from our pasts and present. As we refuse to put ourselves into a musical box, so too do the artists on this playlist. Best enjoyed on a long walk or drive, preferably alone or with someone who gives you company without robbing you of your sense of solitude. Much love, – W & E, Paper Wings
“Same Old Man” – Karen Dalton
I love this combination of rough old-time banjo and electric guitar. What a voice. – EM
“Nine Hundred Miles” – Barbara Dane
I remember hearing this track for the first time on Democracy Now and it hit me as being so so cool… a feeling I only really get from punk music and raw, gritty folk. If you haven’t heard of Barbara Dane, you must look her up. She was a very involved activist during the civil rights movement and also wrote some very sharp political songs. – WF
“Sunlight” – Rushad Eggleston
I am a huge fan of the cello goblin’s love song era. – EM
“I don’t love nobody” – Elizabeth Cotten
Nobody plays guitar this good. Elizabeth Cotten is a legend, not much else to say. – WF
“I’ll Wash Your Love From My Heart” – Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard
Hazel & Alice are such heroes of ours! Independent, fierce, deeply committed humanists and musicians who have shone light on the path of living a life that is true to those values. – EM
“What Will We Do?” – Foghorn Stringband
Reeb Willms and Nadine Landry are true modern badasses. This track features them singing a capella on this foghorn record, and somehow it’s just as energetic and captivating as when the whole band is playing. They are incredible instrumentalists, but they don’t even need their instruments to make really good music. – WF
“No Reason” – Sunny War
I first heard Sunny play this song live in Nashville and the guitar part instantly stuck in my head. It’s so satisfying, my brain craves it. – EM
“Bad Repetation” – Woody Guthrie
From the spelling of the title, to the pronunciation of “window,” to the fact that the timing changes on every refrain and I still haven’t worked it out, Woody is the epitome of bad-boy-American-folk-singer-fun-rebel-friend. – WF
“Say Darlin’ Say” – Laura Veirs
It was bold to do this song this way with electric guitar. The hook at the end gets stuck in my head from time to time. There are so many poorly reimagined/re-harmonized trad songs, and to me, this one works because it is sparse, it is catchy, and it isn’t perfect. – WF
“Lopin’ Along Through the Cosmos” – Judee Sill
Our friend John Mailander turned me onto Judee Sill in 2019 and I listened to nothing but her for months, absolutely obsessed. The words to this song mean so much to me, “However we are is ok.” Nobody writes a melody like Judee. – EM
“Cumberland Gap” – Spencer & Rains
I remember hearing Howard and Tricia practicing this version of “Cumberland Gap” at Clifftop as they were camped next to me and being totally obsessed. I don’t know where they dug up this version, but it’s so fun and a good reminder that even when you think you know the coolest version of a song, there is probably a cooler one still out there. Also, this whole album is fun and you can even hear Emily play bowed bass on it, watch out. – WF
“Chewing Gum” – The Carter Family
I dare you to jump rope with your best friend to this song and try not to laugh when you sing the words, “I wouldn’t have a doctor, I’ll tell you the reason why/ He rides all over the country and makes the people die.” – WF
“Left Hand Lane” – Paper Wings
We wrote this song on a night drive home to Berkeley, talking about doing our taxes and being afraid of accidentally doing them wrong. We had borrowed a car from our friend Vynce. I somehow managed to live in the San Francisco Bay Area for 7 years and never had a Fastrak beeper (the toll taking company for bridges, express lanes, IYKYK) but we got to live that Fastrak life on this particular trip and it made it into the song. Thanks Vynce!! – EM
“Pretty Bird” – Laurie Lewis & Linda Ronstadt
I listened to Laurie’s albums growing up and long before I even played music. I am lucky now to call her a dear friend. I love her writing and her taste in covers. To some this might be a song about a little bird but it takes next to no imagination to hear it cautioning a young woman “he would only clip your wings.” – EM
To complete our Dawg in December Artist of the Month series, we asked several musicians who have worked with and made music with the inimitable David Grisman what it’s like to really know him.
A mythological figure in American roots music, the Dawg remains remarkably accessible and embedded in the scene, despite his unofficial role as a sort of guru-meets-mentor-meets-hermit. He’s been a teacher and encourager of multiple new generations of pickers and mandolinists, from Grammy-nominated Ronnie McCoury to young, impressive upstarts like Teo Quale – who, with his brother Miles and band, Crying Uncle, performed for Dawg’s Bluegrass Hall of Fame induction at IBMA’s annual awards show in September. Others, like fellow Hall of Famer Alice Gerrard, began their friendships with Grisman long ago, before his skyrocketing notoriety and impact.
We asked these three pickers and friends of Dawg – Gerrard, McCoury, and Quale – to reflect on their relationships with the man, who despite being placed high upon a pedestal by many in bluegrass, new acoustic, and old-time music, remains a grounded and down-to-earth mandolin player with an extraordinary legacy.
Alice Gerrard
Alice Gerrard: “I remember sort of my first impression of David – I think it also was Hazel’s too, because he was this very young looking kid from New York, but he played this great mandolin. It was kind of, “What’s going on here?” you know, but the thing that really stands out in my mind is when we were riding to New York [once]. I don’t remember, it might have been my van, but it was a van, and we were going there to record the second Folkways album.
“I think that’s the one that had, ‘The One I Love is Gone.’ We were on our way to record that album in New York and Peter Siegel – who is a friend of David’s and I think Peter was the one who suggested that David play mandolin on the album, because we didn’t really know David at that point. But we did trust Peter. So, David is in the band with us and and we were practicing that song as we were driving up to New York from D.C.
“Hazel was singing the tenor, and I was singing the lead, and there was a problem. Because, you know, often those Bill Monroe harmonies are kind of a mix of major against minor and stuff like that. Hazel was having a hard time getting it, but I’m not. (I’d have to go back and really think about whether she had it right and Peter and David had it wrong.) But it ended up with David lying on the floor of the van between the front and back seats. I don’t know why he was doing that, but he was lying on the floor and singing it with Hazel, trying to get her to find this particular note.
“It was just hilarious! I mean, it was like, I don’t know, two or three hours worth of David’s face, singing ‘The One I Love Is Gone,’ and him fairly well convinced that she did not have the right note. I don’t remember. I mean, I don’t remember the specifics of that, but it was hilariously funny, and of course, what she ended up with was great, but I’m not sure whether he was trying to get her to hit a minor note or what.
“He was just this little kid, you know? From New York. And played this great mandolin. It was beautiful what he did on that song.
“I had to think about how we first met him and how we first decided to record. So I called Peter Siegel on the phone and he told me that he was the one– I mean, David was a friend of his in New York. [Peter] came down to D.C. with David. They were going to go to this bluegrass show, but that got rained out, so they didn’t go. They canceled the show. They [both] heard about this party. I remember where it was. It was at my cousin’s house, who at that time was living sort of on the edge of Georgetown.
“And so, according to Peter, they just came to the house and Hazel and I were sort of sitting somewhere singing together. It was Peter’s idea to use David. And I’m so happy that we did because yeah, he’s amazing.”
Ronnie McCoury
Ronnie McCoury: “When I started playing music, I started playing the mandolin with my dad. I was 14 ‘81– like ‘82 or ‘80, somewhere around there, either before I started playing or right after. My dad got this package in the mail and David had gotten a hold of him and said, ‘I found these tapes of a show we did in Troy, New York in 1966.’ And it was my dad, David, Uncle Jerry [McCoury], and Winnie Winston. [Dawg] said, they sounded pretty good and he’d like to put them out. So he did. It’s called Early Dawg on Sugar Hill. It was half this live stuff and the other half was studio. Along with that package he sent a couple albums of his stuff.
“I mean, that’s just how he is, you know? He just sent this along. He didn’t even really know that I was playing music at the time. I had no idea he was a California guy. I found these albums [he had sent], I had never heard anything like that played on a mandolin, because I was just [getting started]. You know, I’m a child of bluegrass. I was born into it. My dad started a band in ‘66. I was born in ‘67. [It’s] always been a part of me.
“This new music I was hearing, I couldn’t even grasp it. I didn’t know what it was, but I went to bed at night all through my teens putting his albums on and it would play one side and I’d be usually asleep by that time. I did that basically every night to David’s records.
“When I was probably 18 or so, David called my dad and said, ‘Hey, I want to do some bluegrass and I want to do this thing called the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience and we’ll do some shows.’ Basically, it was my dad’s band [backing him up]. We did that quite a bit, for a year or two – just on and off.
“I got to know David and every time we go west, we always were basically playing Northern California and either Grass Valley, California – for the festival – or touring out there playing with my dad. It was just starting for my dad a lot more in the West. He’d been going there for years, but sporadically, and we’d always wind up going to the Dawg’s house. I had been playing a Kentucky mandolin, and he told me, ‘Hey, I got a mandolin at my house for you.’ And I never thought anything about it, and I surely wouldn’t ask about it.
“My dad went out, while we were still in Pennsylvania, and he recorded with David for what is called Home is Where the Heart Is. Dad did a show at the Great American [Music Hall], I think, with Dawg, and he came home with this Gilchrist mandolin. The neck was coming out of it at the time and I had a guy repair it – Warren Blair, who was playing the fiddle.
“He laid that mandolin on me, I believe I was probably 19 or 20, and it’s the same one I play today. I’m 56. I got a Loar 10 years ago and played it a little while, but David and Sam Bush and all my peers said, ‘Hey man, stay on that Gilchrist.’ So I stuck with it. I owe him such a debt. He gave me something that is such a part of me, it defines me, I guess. I’ll tell you, it’s his giving heart. He has a huge heart.”
“My dad met David in 1963. He was playing with Bill Monroe and Ralph Rinzler was his manager at the time– Bill’s first manager. He played in New York somewhere and they stayed at David’s house. David’s father passed when he was 10 and his mother, I can’t remember if his mother was even there, but my dad would have been 24. [Dawg] would have been six years younger than my dad. He was a teenager, you know. I don’t know if Monroe did, but my dad wound up staying with David, because Ralph put him there. He and my dad go back to when he was a teenager. There’s such a long friendship there.
“One time, we were at Grass Valley and Dawg said, ‘Have you heard of this kid?’ He comes riding up on a little bicycle with his mandolin on his back and I said, ‘Well, I’ve heard the name Nickel Creek, but I didn’t really know much.’ He says, ‘Chris Thile’s his name.’ He comes riding up, you know, and he jumps off his bike and he wants to play for David.
“We’re standing around picking and [Chris] sings, ‘Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ – super high, you know – and he’s playing. David said, ‘Hey, man, do you know this tune?’ And he starts playing ‘Big Mon.’ Or ‘Monroe’s Hornpipe,’ I think it was. [Thile] didn’t know it, so David’s playing it and he starts showing him it. And [Chris is] just like a sponge. He starts just running it real slow, then he’s like, ‘Oh, that’s neat!’ And he hops on his bike and he’s off. Like an hour or so later, he comes riding up, jumps off his bike, and he’s got it down. It was pretty neat to see David show him.
“The first time I ever heard or met Jake Jolliff was with David. The first time I ever met Julian Lage was with David. Both of those guys, probably at the time, were 10 and 11, something like that.”
Teo Quale
L to R: Teo Quale, David Grisman, and Mile Quale. (Photo courtesy of the Quales and Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band).
Teo Quale: “I first met Dawg as a young kid at a Manning Music event when I was about 6 or 7 – so about 10 years ago. Actually, the first time I was around David was when I was still a baby, but I don’t really remember that!
“Anyway, he jammed a bit with us and Tracy played bass. He and Chad [Manning] played later on. At the time, I was playing fiddle and I really wanted to start learning the mandolin, but my fingers weren’t strong enough yet. So, my mother got me a ukulele and replaced the strings with ones tuned in fifths. Then about a year later, I finally started on the mandolin.
“David has been an inspiration to me ever since meeting him. Over the years, I’ve also had the opportunity to take some lessons with him and he’s always been really generous with his time and his knowledge, but always in that relaxed Dawg way. His music has influenced the way I approach every aspect of my playing, from improvisation to composition.
“Most of my other heroes were also greatly influenced by David – Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Ric [Robertson] and [Dominick Leslie]. I’m thankful that I get to call him a friend and that I’m also around so many musicians who were touched by him. I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like, but we keep in touch.
“He was born on the same day and year as my grandfather, both two really special people in my life. I play one of his old mandolins now (made in 2006, the same year I was born!), and I am thankful each time I pick it up, knowing that a part of Dawg will always be in this instrument.”
Year-end lists can be so problematic – pitting distinct sounds and music against each other, peddling absolutes, attempting objectivity in a demonstrably subjective field. Each year, as we consider the music that impacted us over the course of twelve months, we try to challenge ourselves and each other, as BGS contributors, to think outside the year-end round up “box.”
For the BGS Class of 2023, our intention is to highlight music, songs, albums, and performances that have stuck with us, or that we know will continue to stick with us into the future. We wanted to deliberately look beyond the music and creators that merely have the resources, networks, and access to reach us; we wanted to utilize genre as a checkpoint or touchstone, but never as a blanket criterion; we wanted to broaden what forms of media or formats are included; and overall, we wanted to attempt a holistic look at what a year of listening, learning, watching, and hearing can look like to this particular group of people.
You’ll find ravishing and large indie folk, earnest and literary – and raucous and silly – bluegrass, legendary legacy artists and brand new lineups, soundtracks and live shows, and more. Ultimately, whatever the year, we always want our retrospective lists to be a starting point, a springboard, for our readers, followers, and for roots music fans. This is not the end-all, be-all “Best of 2023” list. Instead, it’s a reminder of the music that scored a year absolutely filled to bursting with excellent, exemplary, ecstatic roots songs, albums, and shows.
boygenius in Pittsburgh, June 2023
When I saw boygenius this summer, I was milktoast about the whole thing going into it. As soon as I arrived, I realized I was surrounded by young people – and not just any young people: All the beautiful freaks were out for Lucy, Julien, and Phoebe. The energy was palpable and something that I have not experienced in over 20 years. Everyone knew every word. They were FaceTiming friends who cried and sang along remotely with these heroes on stage. It was inspiring!
boygenius feels like an important band. I so wish they had been around when I was an outcast teenager feeling such confusing, wild emotions. Music has a way of helping the world make sense. boygenius radiates communion and it felt like an honor to be a part of their world. – Cindy Howes
Caitlin Canty, Quiet Flame
My favorite bluegrass album of the year is often an album that, through no fault of its own, ends up receiving little to no bluegrass radio airplay or IBMA Awards recognition, and as I listened to Caitlin Canty’s Quiet Flame over and over this year, I couldn’t help but expect it would end up criminally underrated by the general bluegrass community. It’s made by bluegrass pickers – Canty assembled Chris Eldridge (who also was the project’s producer), her husband Noam Pikelny, Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Sarah Jarosz, and Andrew Marlin for her band – and as a result Quiet Flame, more often than not, is just an unencumbered string band album that’s as much bluegrass as it is Americana and singer-songwriter folk. But while Mighty Poplar, with a similar lineup of folks, takes off in bluegrass circles, it raises an eyebrow that this impeccable, heartfelt, and complicated set of songs hasn’t seen the same trajectory. Not that that was Canty’s goal – it’s obvious her priorities in music making are grounded and community-minded, part of why this album is such a stunner. “Odds of Getting Even,” co-written with another BGS favorite, Maya de Vitry, is one of the year’s best songs, bar none. – Justin Hiltner
A Homeplace Pilgrimage to Earl Scruggs Music Festival, August 2023
L: Nina Simone’s homeplace in Tryon, NC. R: Earl Scruggs’ homeplace in Boiling Springs, NC. Both photos by Justin Hiltner.
BGS once again co-presented the Earl Scruggs Revue tribute set hosted by Tony Trischka at Earl Scruggs Music Festival, held just outside of Shelby, North Carolina at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in August. On my drive to the festival grounds, I made stops in Tryon proper, to visit Nina Simone’s childhood home, and also in Shelby, to visit the Earl Scruggs Center and to drive by both of the Scruggs homeplaces just outside of Boiling Springs, North Carolina. It was stunning to visit both homes on the same day, to realize the interconnectedness of so much of American popular music. Simone grew up with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from her front porch nestled in one of their hollers, yet we place Scruggs as an Appalachian musician and not Simone?
The festival and Scruggs Center, for their parts, did an excellent job of demonstrating how broad, varied, and intricate American roots music is, even while focusing closely on bluegrass, string band, and Americana music. Listeners of our podcast, Carolina Calling, will know how much BGS loves North Carolina music history – the show features episodes on both Scruggs and Simone. Seeing that history in person, while heading to a first-class, banjo-heavy festival was a favorite musical moment of this year, for sure. – Justin Hiltner
East Nash Grass, Last Chance to Win
East Nash Grass seems to be all the buzz on the bluegrass circuit these days and those who have ventured to Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge on any Monday night since 2017 can certainly understand why. The band’s long-standing residency at the Madison, Tennessee dive bar has taken them from a weekly pick-up band to performing at the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, and at bluegrass festivals across the U.S. Their sophomore album, Last Chance to Win, captures the band at their very best (albeit, without their lovable stage antics). Following a 2023 IBMA nomination for Best New Artist, it won’t be a surprise if we see this record, and these musicians, sweeping awards in 2024 and beyond. – Thomas Cassell
Alejandro Escovedo at Cat’s Cradle Backroom, Carrboro, NC, November 2023
There are countless good reasons why you should make a point of seeing the Texas punk/soul godfather if he’s ever playing anywhere near you. But what might be the best reason of all is it’s a lead-pipe cinch that everyone in your town worth hanging out with will be there, too – onstage as well as in the crowd. Escovedo was among a dozen stars drawn to the North Carolina Triangle for an all-star “Nuggets” tribute show overseen by Lenny Kaye in November. So, he came a night early and played a solo show, too, ably supported by local luminaries Lynn Blakey and Pinetops/The Right Profile guitarist Jeffrey Dean Foster. The love in the room was palpable on deeply moving originals like “Sister Lost Soul” and “Wave Goodbye.” And when Kaye and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck came on for a closing Velvet Underground cameo of “Pale Blue Eyes” and “Sweet Jane,” the circle was complete. – David Menconi
Ben Garnett, “Open Your Books” (featuring Brittany Haas and Paul Kowert)
Before I’d listened to the complete #BGSClassof2023 Spotify playlist and realized this track was one of our first additions, the app kept recommending “Open Your Books” to me – and it’s not hard to see why. From guitarist and composer Ben Garnett’s debut album, Imitation Fields, the track features bassist Paul Kowert and fiddler Brittnay Haas and is an example of what bluegrass music can be, and what traditionally bluegrass instruments can do.
The tune opens slowly, with guitar and mandola – provided by Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s own Dominick Leslie. Fiddle swells, orchestral arrangements, and dreamy acoustic production make for a piece that feels distinctly intellectual. It’s chambergrass, but it’s also highly listen-able. While there’s a strong melodic thread throughout, the surrounding instruments and their players are allowed to wander off up the guitar neck, throwing in trill-y banjo licks, and detouring outside traditional fills and solo styles. The record was produced by Chris Eldridge and also features Matthew Davis on banjo and additional guitar from Billy Contreras. I’d recommend this tune to low-fi lovers, roots music fans, and anyone looking for a chilled out moment. It’s perfect for an introspective drive or a rainy winter day spent drinking hot tea at the window. – Lonnie Lee Hood
Alice Gerrard, Sun to Sun
Never, over the course of her lifelong career in music, has Alice Gerrard stopped, having reached her musical destination. She has challenged herself, time and time again, not simply for reinvention’s sake, but because she is a consummate old-time and bluegrass musician, someone so solidly bitten by the string band bug that making music requires that constant movement, that aspirational looking into the future, girded by songs of the past. But Sun to Sun, her latest – and perhaps final – album, features songs decidedly of the present. A synthesizer of traditional art forms, Gerrard takes textures and colors we relate to “authenticity” and leverages them to serve the messages in these tracks. Aging, mortality, justice, apartheid, gun violence, community are all woven into this collection. Alice is their nexus point, around which the entire project revolves and reflects the cosmic light she continues to shine on all of us – and on roots music subjects too often hidden in the shadows. – Justin Hiltner
A Good Year for Soundtracks – Asteroid City, The Holdovers, and More
Between the Writers Guild and Screen Actors’ strikes, 2023 was a weird year for the entertainment industry. But for those releases that did make it to the screen, it was a great year for movie soundtracks, especially for roots music fans.
First up, Wes Anderson’s western sci-fi Asteroid City. In addition to the usual cadre of Anderson’s cast, the film was peppered with classic country and bluegrass recordings from the likes of Tex Ritter, Slim Whitman, Bill Monroe, and Johnny Duncan & the Blue Grass Boys (you read that right). That’s to say nothing of the incredibly catchy original ear worm, “Dear Alien (Who Art In Heaven)” which felt as classic as those twentieth century tunes of the frontier written decades ago.
Capping off the year was Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, a beautiful ode to a particular style of 1970s filmmaking that stars Paul Giamatti. Set in snowy western Massachusetts over a lonely winter break in 1970, the soundtrack plays like an old, soft blanket – familiar and warming. Newer tracks from Damian Jurado and Khruangbin weave seamlessly alongside ‘70s AM gold and Mark Orton’s pensive, folksy score. But the real standout of this soundtrack is a rediscovery of British folk artist Labi Siffre. His music has been shamefully overlooked in U.S. folk canon. Hopefully this movie can help start to rectify that.
Finally, it would be criminal if I didn’t mention the key placement of Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” in the biggest hit of the year, Barbie. Here’s to another generation of young women finding themselves in Amy and Emily’s music. Thanks, Greta Gerwig. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Kristen Grainger & True North, “Extraordinary Grace”
Take the anvil from my chest…
I am gasping for breath at this opening line. In her extraordinary, intimate voice, Kristen Grainger is pleading, letting us know she has lost hope. And we are right there with her. Whether we believed salvation came from the church or the Voting Rights Act, we believe no more. We are a fractured world, and it seems there is no bringing us together. Kristen’s melodies pull you in as much as her words, and I sometimes wake with this haunting song emerging from my dreams. Her bandmates’ graceful harmonies and instrumental accompaniment support the stunning words.
I once believed in extraordinary grace I put my faith in saints and saviors In the mirror, I can’t bear to see my heroine Killing time until time returns the favor.
Still, there is cause for hope: the promise of more music from True North. – Claire Levine
Angélique Kidjo at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, April 2023
“We can’t hear! We can’t hear!” Not what a performer wants to hear an audience chanting – though Angélique Kidjo didn’t hear it for a couple of songs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April. She was giving it all, singing and dancing with vigor and verve, as she does. But the Benin-born star’s voice and all but the drums and percussion from her band were not reaching the crowd, that had already waited out a 45-minute rain delay. Finally, the stage crew got the message, but it still took some time to get things working. When they did, Kidjo betrayed no frustration – just pure, joyful release as she packed a full set’s worth of spirit into the handful of songs she could squeeze in the remaining time slot, including a few highlights from her re-infusion of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light album. Closing with her idol/mentor Mariam Makeba’s signature “Pata Pata,” she was radiant, as was everyone who stuck around to see and hear her. – Steve Hochman
The Lemon Twigs, Everything Harmony
This album is, without reservation or exaggeration, one of the most beautiful records I have heard in my entire life. Building on inspiration from ‘60s/’70s pop-rock (think the Byrds,Todd Rundgren, the Beach Boys, the Flamin’ Groovies), the Lemon Twigs achieve a layered delicacy of nostalgia and innovation. Their creative impulses are so detailed, articulate, and inspired that the entire album feels unfathomable; how could music reach such timelessness that it tickles at the preterhuman? Brothers Michael and Brian D’addario share the songwriting credits for pieces that feel distinctly matured from much of their earlier work. They’ve pared down the theatrics, tightened the sprawling lyrics, and created from a place that strikes a quintessential balance of self and influence. Their result is something oceanic – music that calls upon its ancestry in a way that is pervasive, striking, and sublimates the query of eternity. – Oriana Mack
Ronnie Milsap’s Final Nashville Concert, October 2023
Ronnie Milsap’s final Nashville concert will resonate with me for many years to come, both because of the multiple memorable performances and because it represented the best of country music from the standpoint of diversity and inclusion. Various performers from across the musical spectrum covered Milsap hits, with songs from every arena – honky-tonk and straight country tearjerkers, reworked doo-wop, R&B, and pop classics, love songs, and slice of life retrospectives. The roster of artists who displayed their love and affection for Milsap’s music crossed racial, gender, and sexual orientation lines, and it was also great to see the legend himself conclude the proceedings. While the Nashville audience and community will miss Milsap’s performances, this last outing provided plenty of wonderful moments and lots of great music that will never be forgotten. – Ron Wynn
New Dangerfield’s Debut at IBMA Bluegrass Live!, September 2023
For years a growing number of Black musicians have entered the trad scene and reclaimed Black traditions key to its development and evolution. Their work has run the gamut from preservation to experimentation. Audiences at this year’s IBMA Bluegrass Live! were introduced to a new Black string band that does it all: New Dangerfield. Made up of powerhouses Tray Wellington, Kaïa Kater, Jake Blount, and Nelson Williams, New Dangerfield has, in their own words, “risen to carry the torch.” In their premiere performance the band delivered an eclectic set of early jazz, early blues — and even a cover of R&B musician H.E.R’s “Hard Place,” led by Kater’s deliciously lush vocals. Each member, proficient instrumentalists in their own right, also showed off their technical chops and drew whoops from the crowd. Their set was something historic, and I’m excited to see what comes next from New Dangerfield. – Brandi Waller-Pace
Railbird Festival, June 2023
Set in the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, under a deep-red Strawberry Moon, the 2023 Railbird Festival was an under-the-radar masterstroke, highlighting the confluence of roots music and the mainstream. Held June 3 and 4 on the spacious lawn of The Infield at Red Mile, a sold-out crowd of 40,000+ enjoyed a non-stop lineup of performers from across the “Americana” pantheon, expertly curated and spread out over three stages. With 32 acts in total, country, rock, folk, bluegrass and more were all represented, as headliners Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan topped a bill including Charley Crockett, Whiskey Myers, Morgan Wade, Nickel Creek, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – even Weezer and Sheryl Crow. Combine all that with a well-thought out fan experience and an off-the-beaten path vibe, and the weekend was an ideal kickoff to festival season. – Chris Parton
Sam Shackleton at the Horseshoe Tavern, October 2023
Country fandom has always been ideological, but in the last few years the genre’s politics have felt plainer – clear villains and clear heroes, but also messy interior politics. Through this time, I’ve mostly been listening to folk music far away from the fighting at home, from musicians like Sam Shackleton, a genius singer and banjo player from Scotland. He was supporting the Mary Wallopers, the radical Irish party band, in Toronto in October. Shackleton was great, working the audience, singing his songs, and classic folk tracks. The crowd was restless, the beer he was offered on stage seemed pro forma, but he tried. There was a version of “All You Fascists (Are Bound To Lose)” that gave me hope for a few minutes. We step out for a smoke, and Shackelton is on the patio, nursing a lager. I tell him I loved the show and that I wanted vinyl. He hugs me and thanks me. Walking back in, the room is filled with Irish expats who are singing along to the Wallopers in ways that feel a little hostile. I leave early, going for Chinese food. These couple of hours were country/folk in 2023 for me – inclusive, exclusive, hand shakes, hugs, and isolation – plus enough physical/emotional distance from the world that I didn’t ask exactly how the fascists would lose. – Steacy Easton
Sleeping in the Woods Festival, May 2023
At a time when money in the music industry is at an all time low, and expenses are at an all time high, I have immense gratitude for anyone starting new community projects to showcase and uplift musicians and songwriters. I was lucky enough to get to be a part of Nicholas Jamerson’s Sleeping in the Woods Festival in Cumberland, Kentucky in May of 2023, and this event makes my best-of list. The festival bills itself as songwriter specific and showcases many lesser known Kentucky songwriters and bands. The strategy is to create a listening environment and bring together a Southern audience hungry for more straight-shooting roots music and hard hitting lyrics after becoming fans of Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, and of course, Jamerson himself. After a successful first year, the festival is poised to grow exponentially and become a beloved annual event for all of those involved. – Rachel Baiman
Billy Strings at Bourbon and Beyond, September 2023
After five years of programming the BGS stage at Bourbon & Beyond, the Louisville-based festival has become something of a homecoming for our whole team. But nothing was more special than this year, when we got to see Billy Strings headline the main stage in front of over 50,000 people. It seems like just yesterday (in reality it was more like 2018) that Billy played our own stage inside the Bourbon Tent, a memory made all the sweeter by his surprise appearance this year on our stage during Michael Cleveland’s set. Hopefully it’s one of many happy returns to B&B for Billy, his fans, and BGS for years to come. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Sunny War, Anarchist Gospel
Nobody sounds like Sunny War. As her profile has risen over the past decade, Sunny has held onto her punk rock politics and direct lyricism, grounding her artistry in the blues. Listening to one of her songs is like looking at a diorama of a nearby planet, similar to our own, but with none of human society’s bullshit. 2023’s Anarchist Gospel features Americana heavyweights David Rawlings, Jim James, Allison Russell, and Chris Pierce, but always sounds exactly like Sunny. Her hypnotic guitar work and precise songcraft shine. Her vocals walk a fine line between eerie and inviting. And at the end of a year when riot grrl aesthetics have gone mainstream, Sunny War is a rare reminder of what the real thing sounds like. – Lizzie No
Photo Credit: Angélique Kidjo by Fabrice Mabillot; Billy Strings by Christopher Morley; boygenius byMatt Grubb.
(Editor’s Note: Fiddler, songwriter, and creator Libby Rodenbough writes this personal essay on her friendship with and admiration for BGS Artist of the Month, Alice Gerrard, accompanied by her original photos taken for Gerrard’s new album, Sun to Sun.)
I remember first hearing Ola Belle Reed’s “Undone in Sorrow” when I was 19 or 20. I felt like a portal had been opened unto a world that had existed around me my whole life, unseen and unheard. I grew up in North Carolina going to visit my mom’s family in Madison County, along the Blue Ridge, where any of the graveyards on the mountain sides with their little mounds of clay outside my backseat window might have been the one from Ola Belle’s song.
That portal didn’t open for me in the mountains of North Carolina, though – it was in Chicago, at the Old Town School of Folk Music, an institution that had come out of the ‘50s folk revival. I was big on Pete Seeger and John Prine at that time in my life, and had found out my dad had a cousin with a spare room in Chicago, so I went on a little pilgrimage during a recess from college.
It was there that I learned my first old time fiddle tunes, belting the refrain “down in North Carolina” from “Waterbound” at the school’s open jam while the Chicago winter dumped three feet of snow outside. It was there I first learned the rudiments – very rude in my case – of clawhammer banjo. It was also there that I first heard a left hook of a song called “A Few Old Memories” by Hazel Dickens, which appeared on her 1973 duo record with Alice Gerrard, Hazel & Alice.
I went home from Chicago with new eyes and ears. Places I’d known forever became newly populated with epic figures, recast in the light of 200-year-old narratives. My first semester back in school, I was in an introductory folklore course taught by Mike Taylor (of Hiss Golden Messenger) and he started talking about his friend Alice Gerrard, who lived a town over in Durham. I was fairly well tangled up in time and place at that point – even the deceased people I’d been learning about were brand new to me – so I had to blink a few times to digest that she was the same person singing harmony on “A Few Old Memories.”
Today, 10-ish years later, I sit with Alice in preparation for writing this piece and she tells me about driving Ola Belle Reed in her Dodge van on tours through the South in the late ‘60s. She’s my oldest friend (nearly 90), and all competition lags behind her years pretty pathetically. She also makes a lot of the people I talk to seem boring. We’re in the same business: We sing songs and play shows and make records. She’s been doing it a lot longer, and I think she knows about five times as many songs.
Hanging out with Alice helps me understand why she wanted to be friends with people like Elizabeth Cotten and Luther Davis, who were elderly when she met them. She heard the way they played and sang and had to talk to them about their lives. “They knew exactly who they were,” she says. For a young person who had moved across the country from Oregon to Washington, D.C., without maintaining much contact with home, dropped out of college, and had four children, that self-knowledge was aspirational. Though their rootedness in their communities was part of what drew her to them, she didn’t think of them as avatars of bygone primitive ways of life, or as characters in a play – they were people. Elizabeth Cotten was somewhat guarded, but over years traveling and playing together, she told Alice about indignities she had suffered as a domestic worker and as a Black female folk performer, and about subtle acts of defiance she had worked into both vocations. Luther Davis talked about how lonely it was to get old and run out of witnesses to your own life.
Alice is likewise unafraid of being a person. She’ll tell you straightforwardly that she was unprepared to be a mother, that it was essentially impossible to pursue a music career – which was something she knew she wanted for herself – and still give adequate time to her kids. We commiserate about music industry bullshit and engage in light shit-talking about the idea of showmanship.
She’s usually wearing one of her collection of t-shirts that pertain to her dog Polly’s agility training facility (“Fast and Furryous”). This past March, when I took these photos of her to use for promotion of her new album, Sun to Sun, we went through her closet together and dug out some gems, including a bedazzled commemorative t-shirt from Obama’s inauguration.
I have no training in photography – I shoot film because I enjoy the feeling of not really knowing how it works. We went to Duke Gardens in Durham, where we both live, on a week when the cherry trees had popcorned into glory. Alice looks radiant in the halo of those glowing blooms. But I also love the photos where she’s at home, standing in front of the brick retaining wall around her front yard, before she realized she still had her Apple Watch on. The sky was so blue that day, her white hair incandescent. She looks like she knows something you don’t, but in a warm way, like she knows you’ll get it eventually.
Alice is unafraid to treat a song like it can handle a little handling. She knows that songs are alive and she’s interested in being a part of their lives, not their memorialization. She smiles talking about how, in an old John Cohen film, the Madison County ballad singer Dillard Chandler starts a song in a key around here (she holds her hand at her waistline) and ends it here (she raises her hand up level with her temple). She’s delighted by the particularity of the human touch. She prefers singing voices with a bit of weirdness over purely pretty ones. Talking about Carter Stanley’s high whine, she says, “Whatever was eating on him from the inside, it was showing up in the way he sang. Nina Simone, the same way.” She tells me what a struggle it is to teach that kind of feeling to people accustomed to singing prettily. “If you’re trying to get somebody out of the soft, breathy voice, you say, ‘Look, your kid is running out into the street and you have to call your kid back.’ You don’t say,” — she coos — “‘Heyyyyy Brian, get back here.’ You say, ‘BRIAN! GET BACK HERE!’”
Whenever I’ve played music with her, Alice seems to lean into what people at the Old Town School liked – actually, loved – to call “the folk process;” she lets arrangements evolve as the spirit of the universe sees fit. I’m lucky she’s not a stickler for tradition, even traditions she could write encyclopedias about, because my fiddling style is distinctly unmoored. I was a half-rate Suzuki classical violin student growing up and then at the Old Town School I learned how to accompany folk singers on songs with three or fewer chords. I came home and started going to the old-time jam at Nightlight Bar & Club in Chapel Hill, where the jam leaders were American Studies PhD candidates who also grew up learning fiddle tunes from their hometown octogenarians. Some of my friends started a band called Mipso that was flirtatious with bluegrass and asked me to join, but I told them up front I didn’t know any licks. (They didn’t seem bothered by that.) I’ve since learned a few licks, and I would rather play an old time tune any day of the week than do almost anything else, but I never could sit still long enough to do what Alice calls “holding the line” — keeping and caring for the tradition.
I’m indebted to, and grateful in my heart for, people who do that work. I may roll my eyes at gatekeeping, but it’s more than wide-eyed would-be fiddle players at the gate; it’s the whole monster of monolithic, capitalist cultural imperialism, chomping down on everything small or strange. Songs can, and do, disappear, like cultures and forests, and not just by inertia but by clear-cutting. A lot of days I feel self-conscious about whatever it is I’m doing instead of holding that line. When I listen to Alice tell stories about the many singers and players she’s known over the years, though, I remind myself that they each have a distinct relationship with tradition – and with what it means to be an artist.
For a long time there’s been a divide, rhetorical and sometimes actual, between “the folk” and “the folkies,” which maybe means country people versus city people, or maybe people who grew up in a given musical tradition versus those who came to it later. Alice and I both fall into the latter category, though she’s had considerably sharper focus since her initiation. I’d rather replay a 10-second clip of a Mark O’Connor fiddle solo at one-quarter speed forty-seven times in a row than try to examine that dichotomy in any more detail at this moment, but I did spend a lot of my undergraduate days thinking about authenticity and who’s entitled to do what with old songs. Alice has often found herself among people who look at it from an academic angle – her ex-husband, Mike Seeger, came from a folklorist family – but her view remains that the compulsion to define and categorize is basically academia trying to justify itself. I don’t take that as bitter or glib, I just think she hasn’t found it necessary, in her personal relationship with the music she loves, to try to determine who gets to claim it. Or maybe, for Alice, the claim is in the singing. Talking about what makes a voice “authentic” (a word that sends a chill down my spine), she paraphrases Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart from 1967 in his definition of pornography: “I know it when I see it.”
As we clink the ice around our $7 decaf specialty iced lattes, Alice tells me about a song she’d just heard, a haunting falsetto voice with nylon string guitar, in the opening scene of Pedro Almodóvar’s new short film, Strange Way of Life. After some Google sleuthing, she identified it as a recording by the Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso (in fact, the movie is named for it – “Estranha Forma de Vida.”) She’s head over heels for this song, itching to go home and dig into Veloso’s catalog. If they ever meet, I know she will have great questions for him, the type of questions that make a person believe songs must do real work in this world.
I ask her if she thinks of her music as having “a purpose.” “Not really,” she says. But she goes on, “I want people to hear what I hear in this music.”
In my view, that’s an altruistic goal, because it’s clear that whatever it is Alice hears in the music, it gives her life its very marrow. I admire the decades she has devoted to learning and documenting traditional music, but what I aspire to most is the way she still loves a song — viscerally, instinctively, with gusto. That’s what makes a line worth holding.
“There was something about the music, the quality of the voices,” she says, recalling first hearing Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. “There’s so much beauty in it, it’s like, God, yeah.”
I had that “yeah” moment when I heard “Undone in Sorrow” and “A Few Old Memories” – and now, Sun to Sun. I hope to be saying “yeah” like that about songs for the rest of my life.
Bluegrass hero and former weird kid Alice Gerrard strongly believes that traditional music is connected to everyday life. She has said: “When you listen to traditional music you have such a sense of this connectedness of this person’s life. It comes out of the earth.” She was first exposed to folk music while attending Antioch College. Jeremy Foster (her boyfriend at the time, who would become her first husband) introduced her to The Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music. Upon listening, she became hooked and more drawn to lonesome and rough folk songs versus pristine vocalists. That mentality of keeping her performance untarnished and imperfect has followed her ever since.
After she and Jeremy moved to Washington D.C., she became acquainted with Hazel Dickens. She considered Hazel a mentor figure and studied her musicality. The two would record four albums together as the seminal duo Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard. The two did not speak for many years after they split in the late ’70s. The breakup was messy and hard for both, particularly Hazel. Years later, they reconciled and would perform and were close until Hazel’s death in 2011. Nowadays, Alice, who lives in Durham, North Carolina, has begun digitizing her huge photo archive for a book as well as performing with younger generations of traditional musicians. People like Tatiana Hargreaves, Reed Stutz and Phil Cook are regulars on her stage. They also contribute to her new album, Sun to Sun. Alice digs in talking about her unorthodox parenting style (which is no secret), imperfectionism, appreciating memory and the fantastic new record.
Photo Credit: Libby Rodenbough
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
