Tag: Americana

The Show On The Road – Freddy & Francine

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, host Z Lupetin’s conversation is with Freddy & Francine (aka Lee Ferris and Bianca Caruso), a deeply soulful duo who have been lifting up audiences around the world with their gather-round-one-mic harmonies and been-through-hell-and-back love songs.

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Z. talks about Lee singing on Broadway and snaking through the gauntlet of substance abuse and Bianca finding her voice after too many years of dead-end jobs and giving herself the permission to let her voice lead her as an artist.

MIXTAPE: Jade Jackson’s Songs for Loneliness

Posted on by Editor

Loneliness is something I’ve experienced [for] as long as I can remember. Before I fully comprehended its meaning, I became familiar with it in my earliest childhood memories. Finding comfort in what we’re used to, I naturally gravitated toward music that evoked that feeling and when I started writing and creating art, it was my biggest inspiration. – Jade Jackson

Bruce Springsteen – “The River”

Similar stories have been told by artists over the years. But Springsteen’s take on loneliness is untouchable. The harmonica crying in the intro sets the tone for this genius tale of faded love.

Sheryl Crow – “The Difficult Kind”

This song blends loneliness and strength. Owning up, recognizing you’re the reason for your loneliness is tough to face. The pain in her voice along with the electric fiddle combine to tug at your heart as the lyrics capture an honest look inside.

Mojave 3 – “Yer Feet”

This song reminds me of hopelessness, heartache, and the dull pain that foreshadows lost love.

John Fullbright – “High Road”

I remember bursting into tears the first time I heard the climax of this song. The story unfolds beautifully and illustrates true love ending too soon.

Hank Williams – “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”

Hank Williams spun in our record player more than any other artist growing up. It’s a song I loved when I was young, because of its imagery, and as I grew older I related to it in a whole new way.

Violent Femmes – “Good Feeling”

“Vague sketch of a fantasy
Laughing at the sunrise
Like he’s been up all night
Ooh slippin’ and slidin’
What a good time but now
Have to find a bed
That can take this weight”

Enough said.

Townes Van Zandt – “Waiting Around to Die”

Townes Van Zandt is one of my all-time favorite songwriters, and in my opinion, the king of sad songs. Behind the vocals the guitar picking, drums, and harmonica in this song sound like a drunken heartache. The Be Good Tanyas have a rendition of this song that I find equally despondent.

Johnny Cash – “Hurt”

Trent Reznor’s song “Hurt” covered by Cash takes my breath away. Loneliness often leads to a numbness begging to be broken by self-inflicted pain. This song is a raw tribute to wanting to disappear.

Patsy Cline – “Walkin’ After Midnight”

This is the perfect lonesome song, with its desperation and hopelessness accompanied by pedal steel.

Mazzy Star – “Fade Into You”

I love how poetic these lyrics are. They evoke a yearning for emotional connection; walking through depression wishing to be loved by someone.

Jade Jackson – “Bridges”

I wrote this song during one of my loneliest times of my life.

Jade Jackson – “Loneliness”

This song was inspired by realizing you don’t have to be alone to feel lonely.

Photo credit: Matt Bizer
Editor’s Note: Jade Jackson released her new album, Wilderness, on June 28.

Artist of the Month: Buddy & Julie Miller

Posted on by Editor

Buddy & Julie Miller have assembled one of Nashville’s most satisfying songwriting catalogs — and although their songs have been covered by a multitude of artists, there is something undeniably ethereal about hearing them sing together. As our Artist of the Month in July, Buddy and Julie continue to prove they’ve still got it. Don’t miss “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” and “Secret” from their latest album, Breakdown on 20th Avenue South, in the playlist below. And check back later this month for much more content, including our in-depth BGS interview.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

UK’s Black Deer Festival 2019 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With Band of Horses headlining, and Billy Bragg getting all protest-y on us, the second of year of the Black Deer Festival more than lived up to the promise of the first. From its gloriously eclectic line-up – including brilliant sets from Fantastic Negrito, Kris Kristofferson, Yola, The Sheepdogs and Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton – to its special partnership with Nicolas Winding Refn, screening restored vintage Americana films handpicked by the director of Drive, this was an event ready to flex its creative muscles. It even introduced a new Livefire stage, dedicated to cooking demos and BBQ contests.

Walking around Eridge Park you couldn’t get over spacious feeling, with the beautiful green hills of Kent rolling away in every direction. Despite increasing capacity to 10,000, Black Deer still feels like one of the most pleasant and laid-back festivals on the UK circuit. This should be no surprise given that its creators, Gill Tee and Deborah Shilling, worked on the late lamented Hop Farm Festival, which always put music first and commercial considerations second. Here’s hoping Black Deer will be around a long time — and in the meantime, revisit the fest in photographs.

 

Lede photo: Ania Shrimpton

ANNOUNCING: BGS Takeover at the Long Road Fest

Posted on by Editor

BGS is thrilled to announce this year’s lineup for the Bluegrass Situation Takeover at the Long Road Festival, to be held September 6-8 in Stanford Hall, Leicestershire, England.

Performers will include Rose Cousins, Matt the Electrician, Jessica Mitchell, and Beth Rowley. In addition, the festival will feature a Nashville-style “In the Round” set at the BGS Songwriters Parlour.

The three-day festival will also offer performances from Rhiannon Giddens, Asleep at the Wheel, Suzy Bogguss, Sam Outlaw, John Paul White, Charley Crockett, and many others.

Get more information and purchase tickets here.

Courtney Hartman Steps Into a Solo Career With ‘Ready Reckoner’

Posted on by Editor

Courtney Hartman told only a few people about her plans. She bought a transatlantic plane ticket, packed a small bag of clothes, and flew to Spain to hike the Camino de Santiago. It’s a 500-mile hike along old pilgrimage routes in rural Spain, an arduous journey that often prompts a spiritual journey. During that 40-day trek she would step off the trail, pull out her specially-made, travel-ready guitar, and sing a few bars into her phone. Eventually those voice memos — those notes to herself, journal entries chronicling her trip — coalesced into songs that ended up on her solo debut, Ready Reckoner.

It is not, however, an album about walking or wanderlust. Rather, it’s about motion: the physical movement that propels oneself along a path, but also the spiritual motion it takes to gain a deeper understand of your place in the world — in particular, your place in the world as an artist. Drawing from the music she made as a member of Della Mae, Ready Reckoner forays into new territory: folk and pop, of course, but also jazz, avant garde composition, drones, even musique concrète. It’s often dark but just as often hopeful, as Hartman traces the both subtle and sublime changes that she is still going through.

BGS: What took you to Spain?

Hartman: I think anybody that I met on the trail had a similar story. There was something that started popping up on their radar[s] over and over until they couldn’t ignore it anymore. That’s what happened with me. I had friends who had gone over there and I was listening to several albums that were influenced by that region of Spain.

Also, two of my writing heroes are Anne Lamott and Mary Oliver. While I was teaching writing at different summer camps, I would talk about how they talk about writing and walking. In the books they’ve written, they talk about how good it is to go out and walk. That would be my assignment to students: Go take a walk in the woods and do some writing.

At one point I realized that I was giving this assignment, but I’d never done it myself. I wanted to know if that was something I could do, if that was a way of creating that would resonate with me. And then a cheap flight to Spain popped up and I bought. I had 24 hours to cancel and I didn’t. So I went!

How did you prepare musically and creatively for such a trip?

I called Dana Bourgeois, who has built a number of guitars for me. I said, Dana, I’m doing this thing and I haven’t told anybody. What do you think would be the sturdiest, most lightweight, best-sounding guitar I could take? And he said, well, what if we build you something? So they did. They weighed out every single component of the guitar and then I had somebody build a guitar sling for me. And then I walked and I wrote. I took me forty days. There’s something about the repetition and the movement, let alone being out in the open.

What did you learn from that experience?

I learned so much, but one of the things that kept occurring to me is that you’re carrying the weight of your belongings with you every day. It didn’t matter if I wrote anything or played anything that day. I still had to carry the weight. There was a point when someone helped me go through my bag and decide what was necessary.

You think you’ve really narrowed it down, and then you’re like, okay, I guess I’ll get rid of this extra layer of clothes. But every night I would think, no I need this or I need that. I need this because I’m afraid of what might happen without it. So I learned that our needs and fears are linked. But I didn’t need that extra layer of clothes, even though I thought I did. When that snow came — that’s what I was afraid of — I made it through.

Did that change your perspective on music?

I want to say that I need to be writing songs or I need to be making music, that they’re my life source. But I don’t need to write or play. Those are extra gifts. I would survive without them. I don’t want to. Don’t ask me to. But I think letting go allowed me to hold them a little more loosely or with a bit more gentleness, instead of clinging to them or gripping them too tightly.

Often, writing meant stepping away from the trail. It meant taking my guitar down or taking my pen out or singing voice memos. I have hours and hours of endless mumbling. You step away from the people you’re walking with, and you might not see them again for a few days or even a week. Or maybe never again. It’s very much like life that way.

That experience seems to inform this album in ways that are very explicit. Even just the sound of footfalls on “Too Much.”

About half the album came directly from songs I wrote on the trail. But it’s not a walking record. It’s just a shot of where I’ve been the last year. I worked on it while I was staying in a little wagon in Oregon for a couple of days, just trying to finish putting together takes and sequences. I would walk and listen. But the album pretty evenly spread out between songs I wrote before, during and after walking. The first track I wrote was “January First,” and I wrote all the other songs later that year. I don’t know that it always works that way.

Tell me about the album title. Why did those words resonate with you?

I was obsessed with the word reckon. I was reckoning with myself and my work, reckoning with the relationship to the music I was making, reckoning with whether I should even be doing it at all. That word felt like it had a lot of motion, so I looked it up and found that a ready reckoner was at one point the name of a hard-copy calculator. A merchant might have a ready reckoner, which is essentially a book of tables. I found one from 1905 for sale and ordered it on Amazon, as you do. I keep it in my guitar case. It’s this tiny, beautiful book with all these weird calculations for things. I felt like these songs were trying to calculate something, trying to get to a formula or an equation.

There was some trepidation on your part about recording this record and taking on the role of co-producer. How did you reckon with that?

Shahzad Ismaily, my co-producer, could have easily taken the wheel and produced this record himself, and I think I would have felt good about that. But he believed very strongly that that was not his role. He wanted mostly to be engineering. He was pushing me to make the decisions that needed to be made and to listen more deeply. Just by stepping away he became a guiding hand. I didn’t want to be producing this record but I’m grateful that he was able to ease me into that place.

And I realized that I really love it. It’s such a different space. I’ve produced one other record for a band since then, and I want to do more. There aren’t a lot of women in that role. The studio can be a very intimidating place for women who are trying to explore and learn and admit what often feel like deficiencies, but if I’m able to do that in the future, I hope I can make that space feel comfortable and gracious and open.

I remember I was so afraid to record this album, so when I went into the studio the first day, I was reading through some of my walking journals. I opened the first page, and I was writing about feeling terrified. It was the same feeling I had about going into the studio, but it’s exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. We learn the exact thing in so many ways over and over. Or we don’t learn it at all. Maybe that’s the thing. Maybe I didn’t learn anything.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Grand Ole Opry at Bonnaroo 2019 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The Grand Ole Opry returned to Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival this year to headline the festival’s opening night. The Opry carried on the festival’s long-standing tradition of representing country, bluegrass, and roots music with performances by Old Crow Medicine Show and fellow Opry members Ricky Skaggs and Riders In The Sky, plus special guests Steve Earle and the Dukes, Morgan Evans, Ashley Monroe, Wendy Moten, Molly Tuttle, and even the Opry Square Dancers and Opry announcer Bill Cody came along for the ride.

BGS handed off the That Tent torch to the Opry in 2018, after five years of the BGS SuperJam. You can revisit our years of BGS x Bonnaroo goodness here: 2017; 2016; 2014.

All photos: Chris Hollo

Nicolas Winding Refn Brings Rare Country Music Films to UK’s Black Deer Festival

Posted on by Editor

Since he made a name for himself with the 2011 neo-noir film Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn has become synonymous with sleek, glossy visuals and pristine synthetic pop. That makes him an unlikely figure to participate in this month’s Black Deer Festival, the new boutique, UK weekender celebrating Americana and country music.

But the 48-year-old Denmark native has demonstrated his interest in US culture throughout his career, starting with an obsession with cult exploitation and horror movies that spawned a coffee-table book of posters (The Act of Seeing, 2015). Then there’s the archive of some 200 movies that he’s restored under the banner of his byNWR project – three of which are to get a rare public screening at Black Deer. They include a 1965 concert film featuring George Jones and Loretta Lynn, as well as a musical country and western comedy he describes as “like a Carry On movie, shot in the South.”

Based in Copenhagen, Refn is a frequent visitor to the States, where he once lived as a child. It explains the light transatlantic twang to his near-perfect English. But the fascination with American culture began before that, he suggests. “I think it started back when I was eight years old,” Refn recalls, “and my mom was in New York, basically assessing if this was a place we were gonna move to. So, she had been away for a couple of weeks, and she sent me a package with a 45 of Willie Nelson’s ‘On the Road Again.’ Ever since then, I’ve always had an infatuation with that kind of country and western, and the more that I started learning about it, the more I started getting into it.”

Refn’s taste in Americana and country should be apparent from the films he’s selected for Black Deer. The first is Forty Acre Feud (1965), featuring comedy turns and musical performances from a host of stars from Minnie Pearl and Skeeter Davis to Ray Price. “It’s one of those strange country and western films that was specifically made for the Southern market,” says Refn. “It’s from an archive of a director called Ron Ormond. We happen to own his entire library in the collection. He made these very peculiar Southern-oriented drive-in movies. They very rarely even made it to the north in America. They’re very, very much part of a specific kind of illusion of America.”

Refn is as fascinated by the director’s backstory as the film itself. “The interesting thing about Ron Ormond is that he and his wife June ran a mom-and-pop exploitation business down South, and they would fly around in a private plane to collect revenues from the various drive-ins. Then they had a near-fatal crash that made them very religious, and they turned their bag of tricks to the whole religious crowd in the South, and started making films like If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, which was produced by a guy called Estus Pirkle, who was a real hardline pastor. It’s quite an infamous religious propaganda movie about Communism spreading through the US.”

Perhaps the more conventional of the three titles is Ray Dennis Steckler’s Wild Guitar (1962), in which a young rock ’n’ roller gets into the music business and falls foul of a manipulative manager. “That’s a really interesting flick,” says Refn. “It’s a great kind of document of Los Angeles in the early ‘60s. It was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, a famous cinematographer that went on to win multiple awards for his work with much bigger directors, like Steven Spielberg. But as a film it’s actually quite a groovy coming-of-age, kind of cautionary tale about rock ‘n’ roll. It has some great rock songs in it. In fact it has everything in it: dames, music, good photography, gangsters, guns, fights, love, and mayhem.”

Rounding off Refn’s three choices is Cottonpickin’ Chickenpickers (1967), one of only two films directed by the lesser-known Larry E. Jackson. “It’s an amazing, low-grade It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World kind of thing — with fantastic country and western music in it. And they play the whole songs until the end. It’s quite surreal in a way. It’s a bit like a Jacques Tati movie, I guess. It’s more like a comedy really. It’s just a really, really fringe comedy of a certain era that’s gone. It’s very innocent and kind of quirky in a way. But the music is just absolutely outstanding, and the way that the musical numbers are introduced is just fantastic.”

Each of these films, with their ragged edges and primal, analogue sounds, will come as a surprise to those who only know Refn from his recent English-language work and see him as a pioneer of the digital era. “I always say you have to love and embrace all kinds of music,” he observes. “For me, a lot of it is about, ‘Is it sincere? Is there something within it?’ I think if you always approach music like that, then in a way there’ll be something in all genres that touches you.”

Photo credit: Kia Hartelius (portrait); Scott Garfield (with car)

Josh Ritter: The Weird, Dark Rhythm of ‘Fever Breaks’ (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

When it came time to record his new album, Josh Ritter hired not only Jason Isbell to produce it, but Isbell’s band to play on the sessions. Because they had built a sturdy friendship while touring together, the resulting album, Fever Breaks, offers a familiarity that should appeal to fans of both artists. Longtime listeners may recognize that Ritter is more political than on his past albums – and that’s not a coincidence.

Leading up to a TV taping inside a cave in Tennessee, Ritter invited the Bluegrass Situation into his dressing room for a visit. (Read the first part of our interview.)

BGS: I caught a reference to “a fever broke” in the song “Losing Battles,” which I assume led to the album title. Why did Fever Breaks seem to fit as a title for this project?

Ritter: I love coming up with titles for the record. That’s one of my favorite things, because it’s a chance to look at the record you made from 30,000 feet and say, ‘What is it that sums this record up?’ With this one, it came to me in a dream. I just woke up with it, and I thought, ‘Fever breaks…’ I don’t know exactly what it means, but I thought with this project, so much of the writing was guided by instinct, and I felt like it was important for that dreaminess to come in.

It really feels, in a certain way, like a comforting thing – even though I feel like the record is not comforting. It’s a reminder that fever will break, and that’s as close as I can come, because the period that we’re living in feels so overheated and so full of chaos, that it has to be a sickness.

What’s your response if someone hears this and says, “Oh, Josh made a political album.”

I would say I would be thrilled! I think it’s important, right now. I don’t know how you could make music, or anything, that doesn’t have this time wrapped up in it. Like some kind of weird, dark rhythm. It’s just everywhere in the whole tapestry of things, and how do you speak about anything in our lives without referencing this period of time?

One of the great things about making records over a period of time is that they feel like little vials of perfume from that moment, you know? You open it up and you remember. I remember where I was when I was making The Animal Years, and for me, this record will always be wrapped up with this strange, dark moment, and I have to express that on the record. And if it comes across as political, that’s great. I hope that it doesn’t come across as anything else.

So much of someone’s success in the music business comes down to who you surround yourself with. Why was it important for you to bring Jason and Amanda [Shires] to this project?

I think for a long time, I lived on an artistic island that was self-imposed. Just from being busy all the time and touring all the time, I started to realize that my circle of friends – while very tight and incredibly close-knit – was very small. And around this time, I went on the road with Jason and Amanda and the 400 Unit, and I got a chance to see that there are other families on the road, and there are other people touring with their families.

I felt a sense of connection through shared choices, artistically and just how he was choosing to life his life. There was a kinship that I felt was artistic and personal. So when I identified that I wanted to work with somebody, like a peer, he jumped into my head. I sent him a note and I was really so surprised and happy when he was into it, and when we could schedule the time to do it, which was an impressive feat.

How long was the email you sent?

Just a few sentences. And my initial idea was that he would produce, but that I would bring people to play. So I was really excited and nervous when he suggested the 400 Unit because they’re amazing players and I didn’t know what it would be like to not play with my band. So I had frank conversations with everybody in my band. I was overwhelmed that they were so supportive of me going to do this crazy thing.

I think it’s just so cool that you can play music with people for so much of your life, and work so hard on things, and then they understand that I’m going to go off and try this thing and take this chance. Because I feel so close to them, it’s really important for me. So once I talked to the band, I embraced the whole philosophy of going in and realizing that I wasn’t going to know anybody very well.

You’ve worked with some legendary figures like Joan Baez and Bob Weir. They’re in their 70s, still creating music. Do you see a similar trajectory for yourself?

I hope so! The main goal is that your mind doesn’t get smaller as you work, and that your neurons are always branching out. … I learned so much from working with Bob and Joan. What brought me into this world of working with Jason was that I had to learn how to collaborate, and listen to how my portion could fit and work with somebody else’s artistic vision. It was super cool to work with them and learn that.

You have to trust yourself in that situation, too.

Yeah, and trust that what you’re bringing is worthwhile, and trust that what they’re bringing also has its own [value], and these things are going to intermesh in ways that you can’t expect. That’s just amazing! You get so few opportunities for those unexpected, great musical moments that you just cherish.

When I was looking back on your discography, I realized that this is the 20th anniversary of your first record. What do you remember about making that decision to go into music full-time?

Well, my parents are both scientists, so I grew up around an academic structure in my family. I saw how it worked when you went to college, and then went to graduate school. So I approached making a career in that way. I said I’m going to need everybody to trust me for four years, and we’ll see if it can happen. I remember I quit my last temp job in 2004 and I realized I had no Plan B of course. I wasn’t particularly good at anything. What I loved was songs and it was all I could spend my time thinking about. I remember the first time getting money out of an ATM to buy gas and go on my first gig – and what an exciting moment that was. I didn’t realize it at the time the same way I do now. It was so exciting!

You’ve built an international audience since that time. Was it always a goal for you to be a world traveler?

I think so, yeah. I think I got into it for the traveling. A lot of people get into it for the traveling. I have found that music takes you to the most incredible places, but also it takes you to some places that are incredibly mundane as well, you know? They can’t all be caves in Tennessee, but that’s fantastic for that reason.

Photo of Josh Ritter: David McClister
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

LISTEN: Zoe & Cloyd, “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Zoe & Cloyd
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down”
Album: I Am Your Neighbor
Release Date: June 14, 2019 (single); Fall 2019 (album)
Label: Organic Records

In Their Words: “‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’ is a traditional African American spiritual that we learned from a solo field recording of Frank Proffitt from 1965. Proffitt claimed to have learned the song from a black banjo player named Dave Thompson, also from the Sugar Grove area of northwestern North Carolina. It is a simple yet powerful musical statement, and Natalya’s stark, solo vocal mirrors the sound of many old-time source recordings that we love. The lyrics are haunting and hypnotic and our version features flat-picked guitar and bowed upright bass coupled with the more ‘old-time’ elements of cross-tuned fiddle and clawhammer banjo. There is a timelessness to this song that contributes to its survival. Every generation has its Satan. — John Cloyd Miller

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither