Tag: Americana

LISTEN: Jessi McNeal, “Out of Reach”

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Artist: Jessi McNeal
Hometown: A working 5-acre farm in the rural Skagit Valley, north of Seattle, Washington
Song: “Out Of Reach”
Album: The Driveway
Release Date: August 23, 2019

In Their Words: “This song is about questioning and self-doubt. I wrote it from the perspective of an artist asking, ‘Is my work good enough?’ but it’s equally about all facets of life for me. ‘Am I making the right decision? Do I really want to commit to this thing?’ Ultimately, it’s about fear, and I’m trying to rest more in what I know to be true as opposed to getting hung up on all of the possibilities and worst-case scenarios when I’m facing a decision.” — Jessi McNeal

Photo credit: Arlene Chambers Photography

Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors Gather Friends and Family, Too

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Drew Holcomb could lead quite a neighborhood association. Along with his band, The Neighbors, he collaborated with such all-star songwriters as Natalie Hemby, Sean McConnell, Lori McKenna, and The Lone Bellow’s Zach Wiliams for the band’s newest release, Dragons. Although it wrestles with some heavier themes — particularly dealing with grief and accepting that time moves faster as you get older — the record as a whole is an exhilarating listening experience that bridges the gap between the introspection of their prior albums and the dynamic of their live show.

As a friendly neighbor would do, Holcomb invited BGS for a cup of coffee near his home in East Nashville.

BGS: You did a lot of co-writing on this record and these songs have some real depth to them. Did you find yourself going into deep conversations as you were writing the songs?

DH: Yeah. Everybody I wrote with were friends. I still don’t love co-writing, but I like it with the right people. I already had a pretty clear vision of how I wanted to get intensely personal on this record. So when I wrote with Lori, for instance, we weren’t just writing songs for whoever, we were specifically writing for me and my record. She was able to draw things out of me while still letting me have the primary vision of what I wanted.

And yeah, there were a lot of great conversations. The song “Maybe” with Natalie was just… We were talking about how you have all these dreams you want to pursue, places you want to see, experiences you want to have — and as you get older, sometimes you think… you know, this is kind of exhausting. What I really want to do is, I just want to be with people I love, in the place that I love, and enjoy that.

That was pretty neat how you brought your granddad into the song “Dragons.” Did he really appear to you in a dream?

It’s sort of a mixture of dreams. I lost my brother when I was 17. I lost my grandfather when I was 23. Those were probably the two closest people to me. And I lost a friend to an overdose at 20. But everybody I’ve ever lost who was really close to me, I had very vivid dreams of them — and wake up super sad. They’re so real. You kind of relive the grief all over again, when you wake up.

But some of my dreams of my grandfather have been really sort of playful and fun. You know, because he lived a full life. There’s less sadness around that. I had those lines in the chorus of “Dragons” before we started the song, and was just looking for a way to deliver them, and that sort of attitude about life I got from my grandfather – to take chances, you only live once.

What’s that experience like when you write about your family — like your brother, your son, or your granddad — and then you play the song for your family?

Well, like “Dragons” — a lot of my siblings have their own experiences and their own histories with my granddad. So same question: “Is this a real dream?” And “Family” was one that everybody immediately fell in love with. I come from a huge family, I mean 14 to 28 grandkids on my mother’s side. It’s like beautiful chaos when we’re together. For the most part everybody gets along. There’s a lot of children, grandchildren, a lot of chaos. So that song, I think, really represents sort of my experience with family.

I love the line, “Going on vacation / On the credit card.” My dad loved to travel. And he would always say, “You’re never going to inherit any money, but I’ve made all my deposits in the memory bank.” Part of it was because of my brother in the wheelchair. Dad knew that maybe his time was shorter than the rest of us, so he wanted to take every opportunity. We had this big conversion van and every summer he’d take off two weeks and we would just go. I saw 44 states by the time I graduated high school.

Wow. And you were based in Chattanooga at the time?

Yeah. So we went off to California. Went to the Pacific Northwest. Went to Colorado and Texas, New Mexico, all the way up… We did a New England trip. We did all up in Canada. All of it driving.

Was there a music component to this, too?

Oh sure. Yeah, we’d listen to a lot of oldies radio. Back when tapes were still a thing, you could buy $5 tapes at the truck stop, and so he would let us all pick out a tape at the start of the trip. My favorite one I ever got was this Joe Cocker record. It had this Jimmy Webb song called “The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress.” And we had our Walkmans too. We’d play our tape and then we’d kind of take off on our own thing. In some ways, those road trips are where I fell in love with music. Dad loved Dylan, so we listened to a lot of the sort of pop songwriter guys.

Were you playing guitar by this point too?

Started to. Got my first guitar when I was 12. Really started to learn how to play at 14. By high school, I was proficient enough to play through most of the songs I liked.

Did you just teach yourself?

I had a friend who was really one of those “play everything” guys — Jonathan. He played piano, guitar, drums. He lived down the street. He kind of taught me. I took lessons but the lessons never really caught, because it was more like theory and stuff. I was like, “No, I just want to play some Bob Seger.”

When did you get interested in vinyl records?

My wife’s wedding present to me was a record player. And then my first job was in music, as a sort of studio runner for a guy named Paul Ebersold, a producer. He and Ellie kind of conspired. She went and got me the record player. He went and bought me a bunch of classics — Born to Run, Blood on the Tracks, Van Morrison, all the stuff he knew I loved. Then on our honeymoon, we went out to San Francisco and went to Amoeba Records there in Haight-Ashbury. We spent like $500 on vinyl, shipped it all home, and that was sort of the start for us.

You launched the Magnolia Record Club now and you curate the Moon River Music Festival. That’s all interesting to me because it’s about music discovery. Why is that important to you, to help people discover music?

I think in some ways it’s like a pay-it-back, or paying forward. That’s how people found me, was by someone, some curator, taking a chance and putting me in front of listeners. I had never had a radio hit. Never really had a big national tour. Done some tours with friends, but I never had the machine, but I still made it because a lot of festival buyers and legacy acts and younger bands have shared their stages with me, and shared their audiences with me.

On the press side too — we’ve never blown up in the press, but we’ve had lots of people give us a lot of healthy attention. We played Bonnaroo in 2013 and I still have people all the time come up to me and say, “I first heard you at Bonnaroo.” That happens at all the different festivals we play. And so, I wanted to create that same sort of opportunity, but also I wanted to do it as a fan. I wanted to put these bills together.

We talked about this a little bit, about how you found your audience. But it seems to me that part of that is that you showed up for everything. You really took it seriously from the start. Where do you get that work ethic from?

I think part of it is that my dad always instilled this “work hard at all costs” in me. It was like, I’m going to get beat on talent — and that was definitely true when I was younger. I may get beat on opportunity, and with who you know. Nobody’s going to out-work me.

My first vehicle that I toured in was a 1998 Volvo station wagon. I bought it in 2003 with 64,000 miles on it. And in 2008, five years later, it died at 380,000 miles. I put 320,000 miles on it in five years, driving anywhere anybody would book me. I played 200 to 250 shows a year: coffee shops, living rooms, cover songs at bars, college campuses. Whether I was getting paid fifty bucks or a thousand bucks during that era, it was like, the only way to do this is to show up as often as possible.

Photo credit: Ashtin Paige

Sean McConnell: Just One Song That Came the Quickest

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Editor’s Note: Sean McConnell will take part in the Bluegrass Situation Takeover at The Long Road festival, to be held September 6-8 in Stanford Hall, Leicestershire, England.

“The quickest song I’ve ever written is the title track off of my newest record, Secondhand Smoke. For me, my favorite songs, and the ones I feel are my best, happen very quickly. They tend to be the ones that come out of nowhere, like they are already finished and are just trying to birth themselves into this world.

“‘Secondhand Smoke’ came to me while I was driving. I had just had an intense reunion with my father who I hadn’t seen in many years. I was thinking about our time together that day as well as our time together when I was a kid. The lyrics just started coming and coming and coming. I heard the chords that belonged underneath them and everything.

“By the time the idea entered my brain and I had arrived at my hotel, pulled out my guitar, and recorded a voice memo of it I think maybe 45 minutes had passed. Structure-wise and lyrically speaking, that voice memo sounds pretty much exactly like what you hear on the record. I’m grateful for it. It’s a song I know I’ll play for the rest of my life.” — Sean McConnell

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

This Could Be a Golden Year for Lillie Mae

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Brown’s Diner is the kind of hole-in-the-wall that your eyes have to adjust to, after stepping in from a sunny afternoon in Nashville. However, Lillie Mae shines like a beacon in the dim light of the dark booth as she gabs with the staff she’s clearly known for years.

A twenty-year Nashville veteran, her very first business meeting as the youngest member of her former family band, Jypsi, was in this very restaurant. A true road warrior, Lillie Mae and family traversed the country playing bluegrass festivals and churches. On the heels of a censored childhood steeped in traditional music, she graduated to the honky-tonks of Lower Broadway and on to her own burgeoning career as a solo artist now signed to Third Man Records.

Settling in at the beloved burger-and-fries mainstay after three weeks on the road with The Raconteurs, Lillie Mae detailed the process of making her brand new record, Other Girls, with producer Dave Cobb, as well as songwriting inspiration, a crummy golden year, and what works feels like when it doesn’t feel like work.

BGS: Your lyrics leave a lot to the imagination. They weave a story and put you in a setting but they aren’t inculcating anything for the listener. But tell us more about “A Golden Year.”

That one and the last one are my favorites on the album for sure. Basically, my birthday is June 26 so my golden year was a year ago. We were in The Refuge in Appleton, Wisconsin, and we’d played a couple of gigs up there and we were leaving this monastery. It is an amazing place where musicians and artists of all kinds can go and live for free. Food and everything is taken care of. They get government grants and they have a studio. It is an amazing place right on the water.

We were rolling out and I went to do one more look around and my brother was still wrapping up so I was just walking through the hallways. They have a chapel where they do shows and I heard a choir singing “Ahhhs” and I just heard the whole song and I had a guitar in my hands. I rummaged through rooms to find a pen. I sat down on the guitar case and wrote it. It came from somewhere else. It is a perfect example that we are just a vessel. I had been looking forward to my golden year my whole life and then it turned out pretty lousy for me. I was super depressed and down and writing that song was probably the best part of it.

Do you sit down to write or do you mostly write when you are inspired?

You know, mostly when it starts to come through. But if I sit down and pluck on the guitar or something for a minute, I will easily find myself trying to come up with something. I don’t sit down and try to write nearly as often as I should.

Did you have to do any of that for this record as you were putting the songs together?

Nah. There were a couple of things that were not completely finished, like the last song on the record. I was tweaking words until recording. Some stuff was almost there. And every once in a while, if a second verse is not coming, I’ll just repeat the verse, though that’s kind of cheating.

With your ingestion of art being censored in your religious upbringing, there is some open sexuality on this record. Bluegrass, folk, and country have all been known to suppress that. Have you ever come up against censorship from co-creators or folks in the business realm?

Totally. I think a lot of it you can do it to yourself. You can put yourself in a little conservative box easily. But these days, I’ve just lost my care about what people think. It just doesn’t matter. I have a couple of songs that I haven’t been open about what they are about — on the last album, that were written about abortion. Songs that were really heavy to me and I never talked about that. It wasn’t a secret but “Why do we need to talk about this?” because it can mean whatever it means to anyone. But that is coming from a very conservative place of trying to please all ears.

Having these old mindsets of being in old Nashville, I definitely have been more conservative than I truly am. For me to not mute or hide lyrics or not be open about things, it has been a step for me. There is a song on the album called “Crisp & Cold” that was inspired by a friend of mine who is transgender. There is a line in the song that says, “Don’t be scared/Be more.” When you literally have to worry that some people might take your life because of that. It is crazy. There are times when you don’t want to offend anyone but those days are over.

But growing up in bluegrass, we did the circuit. We were always on our way to another festival. My sisters were older than me and were beautiful young women who were experiencing growing out of the whole religious thing. We did Beatles covers back then when I was a little kid and bluegrass snubbed us. To love something so much and to be ousted from it because you’ve developed some fashion sense or something. It sucks to be such a supporter of something and to not have them have your back. But it has changed a lot.

Did you and your siblings grow up listening to any specific artists?

It was super limited, what we were allowed to listen to and we grew up playing full time. We played churches and bluegrass festivals. We had a lot of live influence. As far as what we were allowed to listen to, it was not very much. We’d be allowed to listen to some Del McCoury songs but not all of them because of the content. A lot of Marty Robbins and Hank Williams, but always excluding some stuff because my folks were super strict.

Did you find yourself seeking ways to listen to those excluded songs?

Not me. I’m the youngest in the family and I never did. I’m really bad about that still. I don’t go out and pick out music. If I go to a record store, I have a panic attack. Every single time I end up on the floor in a corner just sitting cross-legged waiting for everyone to check out. I have full-on attacks. Maybe I’ll be better now. It has been a minute since I’ve been in one. I never got joy out of going to buy a record.

I was the youngest and growing up, I never had a choice. I didn’t get to pick where we went or what we listened to or anything. I just listen to what other people are listening to. I really rely on my boyfriend or my brother playing cool music. Unless I hear someone at a gig or a festival, then I’ll pick up their music. Like Natalie Prass. My brother met her at a show a couple of years back and he brought her CD home. And I was like, “Oh my God.” Her music changed me.

Jack White gave me a record player but I didn’t have speakers and I’m technically challenged so I could never figure out how to hook it up. The vehicle I have doesn’t have music. I have very little music on my phone and rarely listen to it. I do think I have Natalie Prass’ record on there. [Laughs]

What was it like working with Dave Cobb on this album?

He was wonderful to work with. He’s a really nice person. The first conversation we had, we talked about some bluegrass bands. I think it was something different for him. I was very nervous as first to go in because I was out of my comfort zone but it was really easy. We went in and recorded a song, took a lunch, and came back and recorded another song. It was a pretty easy process.

How was it out of your comfort zone?

Well, Dave uses his drummer Chris Powell on most of his stuff so for me going in because I’m such a picky asshole, I was nervous about playing with someone I hadn’t played with. I was just nervous it wasn’t going to be my vibe. But it was. It was wonderful. It’s an amazing studio [RCA Studio A] with great sounds and a great crew.

So it was pretty easy once it started?

Totally. After song number one. The first song had two different time signatures the way it was written but it got straightened out to just one. At first, I was like, “What is going to happen here?” It ended up a great thing, but I was a little stubborn at first.

Did that create friction?

No. Not at all. I kept it to myself. I went to the bathroom, cried it out, and came back ready to give it a try.

That’s awesome you trust your producer.

Well, I’d be foolish. Who am I, you know? Here’s a shot to work with some amazing people. If I threw a wrench in it, there are too many people on board. There are too many people invested in me. I owe too many people too many things. There’s a time and a place. Maybe next album. [Laughs]

I’ll get OCD and have little brain freak-outs. One can come across as stubborn, and all I’ve ever tried to do is be opposite of that. I’ve tried hard to be positive and give my all no matter what the project is, but those little OCD things, they can hinder you for sure.

Have you ever made concessions that you regretted making because the art didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to?

If I’ve thought like that, I’ve tried to change my outlook and be like, this is the way it was supposed to be. It (the process of making the album) wasn’t what I had anticipated. I anticipated buckling down. I anticipated really working hard, and then when I wasn’t working hard and it was just coming really easily and naturally, I felt like I wasn’t doing a lot. When you are used to hustling and it comes easy, it feels like something must be wrong.

How do you feel about the release of the new album? What is the period like right before it comes out?

The last couple of weeks [touring with The Raconteurs] were super exciting. It was fun to be out playing the tunes. I wasn’t ready to be done. I enjoyed it a little too much.

I’m pretty level. Just from so many years of getting my hopes up, not even just about music. I used to get so excited about something but I crashed and burned too many times. I don’t allow myself to get excited about much of anything. People will get the wrong impression that I’m not enjoying myself or that I’m not grateful. I’m so thrilled but my expectations are pretty low. I’m excited about it coming out, but if I got dropped tomorrow I think I’d be prepared. Which is not good! [Laughs]

My boyfriend took the pictures for the album campaign. And my sister Scarlett and our friend Amy helped with the photo shoot. It was just us, so it feels super close to home, and I feel really proud of it.

Photo credit: Misael Arriaga

LISTEN: Robby Hecht, “The Ones I Love”

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Artist: Robby Hecht
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “The Ones I Love”
Album: Me and the Fool I’ve Been, Set 2
Release Date: August 16, 2019
Label: Old Man Henry Records

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘The Ones I Love’ after learning that a friend, someone who lived an extraordinarily motivated and passionate life, was terminally ill. Its purpose was to say what I didn’t know how to express in any other way. It’s about time, family, mortality and immortality — for the times when you realize you’re falling forward and the only sane thing you can do is let yourself land in the arms, hearts and minds of the people you love.” — Robby Hecht

Photo credit: Jeff Fasano

The String – Charley Crockett

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Charley Crockett has a story that’s difficult to imagine playing out in the 21st century – he’s hoboed around the country, lost loved ones, scuffled with the law, played on the streets for a decade.


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And recently he endured open-heart surgery. At 35, he’s lived several of our lifetimes. And the thing is, he’s poured it all into his remarkable country blues, and he’s finally getting the renown he deserves. It’s what roots music is all about. Get ready for his September 20th release of The Valley with this conversation, which took place backstage, hours before his Grand Ole Opry debut in the WSM Room. Also in the hour, Nashville’s Lillie Mae is back on the program to discuss making her second album for Third Man Records at Studio A with super-producer Dave Cobb. It’s part of a longer conversation that will be posted soon by our friends at WMOT.org.

Jessica Mitchell: Just One Song That Closed a Chapter

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Editor’s Note: Jessica Mitchell will take part in the Bluegrass Situation Takeover at The Long Road festival, to be held September 6-8 in Stanford Hall, Leicestershire, England.

I was on my first writing trip to Los Angeles to try and write the last couple of songs for my first record. It was an array of different songs written over the course of five years so it was all over the place emotionally and storywise, but I liked that about it.

I got into a session on one of my last few days with an amazing writer named Matthew Puckett. He did everything from Broadway to film and TV writing and was definitely a new and exciting kind of writing partner for me. We talked about a lot of things, but mostly talked about a very tough and difficult relationship that had just ended, and that I had made a decision to stop putting myself in situations that weren’t healthy or that didn’t benefit my overall well-being as a woman.

“Rain for the River” was born, and very quickly. It flowed out of us. A beautiful piano backdrop with some of my favorite lyrics I’ve ever written with anyone.

We recorded a demo in the moment that turned out so raw and had this crack in my voice trying not to cry the entire time.

I remember listening back to it and thinking, This is it, this is the last song on the record. Not only just for the record, it felt complete and true for that chapter of my life.

I’ll never forget that.

LISTEN: Ward Hayden & the Outliers, “Hackensack”

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Artist: Ward Hayden & the Outliers
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Hackensack”
Album: Can’t Judge a Book
Release Date: August 24, 2019

In Their Words: “‘Hackensack’ almost didn’t make it on the album, but it’s ended up being one of my favorite recordings. In the early 2000s Fountains of Wayne had a huge hit with ‘Stacy’s Mom.’ I wasn’t wild about ‘Stacy’s Mom’ but I always loved when that CD got put on because the song right after it, ‘Hackensack,’ was such an aching love song with such a catchy and pretty chorus. All while telling the story of a guy who never left his hometown, who’s waiting around for the girl of his dreams to come back home. Meanwhile she’s out pursuing her dreams and might not ever know he exists.

“‘Hackensack’ has a lot of those elements that have always drawn me to good country music, and Fountains of Wayne wrote it in a pop-rock format. Our drummer Josh Kiggans really pushed for this song to get recorded with our own approach and I’m thankful he did. We made some changes to the arrangement and put in elements like Cody’s weeping pedal steel part, the low brooding baritone guitar lines, and Paul put down a more driving bass line.

“I once even had one of Boston’s best-known songwriters come up after we played it and say, ‘That song’s gonna make you famous,’ but they walked away before I had the chance to say it was actually someone else’s song we were covering. We did our best to do it justice and draw out the emotion and honesty of the lyrics, and we hope it connects with a lot of other people the way it connected with us.” — Ward Hayden

Photo credit: Niclas Bågerheim

LISTEN: Anna Vogelzang, “Icarus”

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Artist: Anna Vogelzang
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “Icarus”
Album: Beacon
Release Date: August 9, 2019; Beacon releases October 4, 2019
Label: Paper Anchor Music

In Their Words: “‘Icarus’ came from a place of reveling in self-acceptance. We can spend so much of our lives looking outward — at something we want that we can’t have, at someone who seems to be doing better than we are, or even at a hypothetical future when things will be better, or maybe just different. The first line of the song hit me all at once — and seemed like the perfect way to practice presence. This song felt like it was showing up as a celebration of acceptance, an anthem about being ok with where you’re at.

We are saturated in a deep culture of wanting what others have — but if you stop to assess, is that something that you want for yourself? Did you even really want it in the first place? I feel like more than half of the time I didn’t. I’d just convinced myself that I did. I feel like the day I wrote this, the universe was telling me, “This is where you’re at. This is it, right now — why not celebrate it?” — Anna Vogelzang

Photo credit: Carla Coffing

The Show On The Road – Dylan LeBlanc

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week Z. speaks with Dylan LeBlanc, the lithe Louisiana-born roots ‘n’ roller who has one of those once-in-a-generation, ghostly-lilting voices that doesn’t seem of this time or place.


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His newest record Renegade, produced by Dave Cobb, makes it clear LeBlanc has grown up a lot in the last few years. It’s a big, snarling, cinematic, banger of a record; part spaghetti-western dust storm, and part hook-filled, ’60s AM radio sunshine.

This is our last episode of the summer season, so have a listen with a cold drink under the sun, and let Dylan’s voice transport you. Where? It’s up to you.