Tag: Americana

What Is a Cowboy Ballad?

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Sam Shackleton is a good example of the successful contemporary songwriter – a Scottish traditional folk singer with some formal education in musicology. He posts excellent, moody clips online; he goes viral enough to open for bands and artists like the Mary Wallopers or Willi Carlisle; and he releases music on Bandcamp. Though he could easily slide into a minor but culturally significant record label, he released his new album Scottish Cowboy Ballads and Early American Folk Songs independently; when a writer emails him, the answers come back on a plain Hotmail account, his avatar a famous 19th century painting of Robbie Burns.

There is something telling in this amalgamation: the 200 years of cowboy songs, the move between America and Scotland, the slightly old-fashioned email address. Even Shackelton’s very contemporary distribution methods envelop other kinds of tradition, the busker as troubadour or a work song floating across oceans. For example, when he sings “The Butcher Boy,” his framing includes that Mary Wallopers’ cover from a couple of years ago, the Sinead O’Connor version before that, and the Tommy Makem version before that. And he also echoes those who sang before them. “The Butcher Boy” is not even a cowboy song, though. When he offers songs like “Chisholm Trail” or “I Ride an Auld Paint,” something shifts in how he sings them.

The cowboy song is muddled – it is the expression of poor, often Black, Hispanic, or Indigenous agricultural workers, telling explicit stories about their lives – but like a shanty, it is also a song that aids labor, in passing the time and moving the livestock along. These dual instincts of work and entertainment gathered into an oral tradition, which was translated into grand public spectacles. These spectacles were later depicted on radio, film, and television, abstracted and cleaned up. When a singer chooses to return to these songs, their versions are always paratextual – they are making choices of interpretation. When Shackleton sings the verses in “Chisholm Trail” about punching bosses or selling cowboy gear, he is foregrounding a kind of economic subtext, which might be less fun and seems more serious.

It reminds me a bit of growing up in Alberta (maybe because on “Roving Cowboy” Shackleton sings about crossing the Rockies and the “cold and distant plains”), or my relations in Calgary, that city mostly named after Scottish figures, romantic still for a set of cultures that doesn’t exist. How much easier it is to consider the romance of the West without considering the isolation of it all. Men would be sent from places like Scotland to the prairies as part of a great colonial project; the rascal sons of minor aristocracy, rampaging across the land. That roving grew into myths of grand cowboy narratives. The big rodeo turned into a banal bacchanal. When Shackleton sings in “Roving Cowboy” about leaving “his good old father” or “his friends and home there,” he refuses the grandeur and returns to the profound isolation. A kind of homecoming in place and in time that may never occur.

Talking to Shackleton via email for Good Country, I learned that an album I first thought was a small jape was really a sophisticated conversation with these traditions, lands, and desires.

I am curious about why cowboy ballads and also how you define a cowboy ballad – some of the songs seem very clearly part of that tradition, but some to be an extension of it. Is “Butcher Boy” a cowboy ballad?

Sam Shackelton: I’ve always been a fan of cowboy music since spending many hours watching old Westerns, when I’d go through and spend the weekends with my dad as a kid in a wee Scottish town called Bridge of Alan. For me, the best part about them was the music, singing, whistling, and yodeling. Even to this day I think it’s pretty hard to find anything cooler than Dean Martin singing “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” in Rio Bravo.

Much of my early musical influences were inspired by my father. I remember vividly the first time he showed me the excellent Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music documentary of the 1969 festival, which first led me down the path of learning to play and wanting to be a musician – though at the time I didn’t think I’d ever be good enough to step on a stage. In regard to the album title, I originally was going to just call the album Scottish Cowboy Ballads, but decided to throw in the “Early American Folk Songs” to allow me to add a broader range of songs to the album such as “The Butcher Boy” or “O Death.”

Could you talk a little bit about the loops of influence which exist in folk music circles. The Scottish ballads which end up in Appalachia, from the 18th century onward, but also the dual folk revivals in the 1950s and 1960s? Where do you see your place in the ebb and flow of these revivals or these conversations?

Mainly through my own research and watching many hours of old music videos and documentaries on YouTube as a teenager, I discovered the American and Scottish folk revivals of the 1950s and ‘60s and knew I’d finally found my musical home, so to speak. I strongly believe that what you put in is what you get out, as a musician, when it comes to inspiration, so I deeply immersed myself in this music for many years. Still to this day only really listen to music from this period or those who can capture a similar sound today. I was deeply inspired by Woody Guthrie and also by his close friend, Cisco Houston, especially his album, Cowboy Ballads, which was a big influence on my latest album and much of my earlier music too.

I’ve always been drawn to less commercially popular musicians, such as Walt Robertson or Alex Campbell, those with incredible talent but whose work went generally under the radar in favor of bigger, more commercialised folk artists. People often talk of Guthrie when referring to the folk revival, but even his songs were greatly aided by Cisco’s harmonies and Sonny Terry’s whooping harmonica, another huge inspiration of mine.

I also had the great privilege of studying at the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh for 5 years, where I got both my undergraduate and master’s degrees. The School of Scottish Studies was founded during the Scottish folk revival in the 1950s and was based on a vast collection of field recordings collected primarily by Calum MacLean – brother of the legendary Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean – and renowned ethnomusicologist and poet Hamish Henderson. [Henderson] made many of his early Scottish recordings with Alan Lomax during his time in Scotland in the ‘50s.

I focused primarily on Scottish/Celtic studies, Scots-American emigration and musical traditions, and ethnomusicology, with a specific focus on the work of Alan Lomax – and what I identified as the new “digital folk revival,” which is happening right now on social media. In my masters thesis, I argued that modern online digital communications technologies (such as social media platforms like YouTube) are facilitating multiple new folk revivals. Lomax prophetically identified this in his 1972 paper “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” where he identified both the risk of mass communication technologies to traditional folk cultures, but also their extraordinary ability to preserve and facilitate folk revivals by allowing everyone to share and participate in folk traditions on a vastly more even playing field. All you need now is a mobile phone and you can participate in the digital folk revival, sharing and listening to songs from every corner of the world.

In relation to your original question, it is indeed true that many of the songs that were sung during the folk revival in North America at that time (and throughout American history) also had a very close and deep connection to the mass emigration of people from Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales during the 18th and 19th centuries and beyond. This is evident in songs such as “Pretty Saro,” which is also on the album. This was a song sung commonly in England but was lost to time, only to be rediscovered being sung in the mountains of Appalachia by early song collectors. And, as such, the song became popular again across the Atlantic. This is a perfect example of how these early folk revivals facilitated this full circle of cross-cultural transfer.

How was this album affected by the large-scale American touring you have done in the last few years?

My time spent touring in the USA and Canada was certainly a big influence on this album. I traveled all over the states, starting in Nashville, where I then traveled through Kentucky and Tennessee with my good friend and director of the YouTube channel GemsOnVHS, Anthony Simpkins – his channel being another great example of the digital folk revival in action. We recorded a bunch of amazing music in the hollers and I met many amazing musicians during my time there, such as Benjamin Tod and Ashley Mae from Lost Dog Street Band.

[They] kindly invited us to spend the night at their house in rural Kentucky along with Jason O’Dea to shoot some guns (my first time doing so in the USA) and play some songs around the campfire. I remember playing Benjamin Tod an old Scottish ballad called “Tramps and Hawkers” on the banjo by the fire, to which he then responded that he was also aware of versions of the same song that had been sung in the American folk tradition. Again, highlighting this close cross-cultural connection between the Scottish and American musical folk traditions. I then toured all across the East and West Coasts of the USA and Canada with my good pals, legendary Irish folk band the Mary Wallopers, before selling out a couple shows of my own on the East Coast.

I noticed that the album’s songs are mostly very short – some under two minutes. Can you talk a little bit about that? Is that related to busking? How else does busking appear in these kinds of recordings? How does busking online relate to busking in person?

Since this is the first ever album I will be releasing on 12” vinyl LPs, I decided to try and fit as many songs on it as possible. Obviously, due to the physical limitations of the vinyl medium, I had to make sure my album was within a certain length of time, hence why some of the songs may seem shorter. Although there are a good few short songs on there, you will indeed find a few longer ones such as “Old Rosin the Bow” or “The Blackest Crow.”

I know that the Mary Wallopers sing “Butcher Boy,” and it is often a touchstone for Irish singers (the Mary Wallopers, Lankum, Lisa O’Neil, Sinead O’Connor, the Clancy Brothers), but also the Irish diaspora. In fact, in a live recording from the Clancys, Tommy Makem calls it, “Well known in America.” What is your relationship to both the song and the people listening to it? How do you make songs thought commonly to be American or Irish to be Scottish?

“The Butcher Boy” is a class wee ballad and you are right in noting that it is indeed popular amongst Irish artists such as The Clancy Brothers, their version being my favorite. However, the history of this ballad and its origins are far more complex, as this ballad is actually derived from multiple old English broadside ballads such as “Sheffield Park,” “The Brisk Young Sailor,” and “The Squire’s Daughter,” to name but a few. Many versions of this song have been collected across England, Ireland, Scotland, and North America. It is perhaps one of the best examples of a cross-cultural folk ballad I can think of.

I had actually stopped singing this song for a long time after what happened with my dad, as the later verses were far too similar to what I had experienced with my father’s suicide. But, despite how hard it was for me to sing again, I felt it absolutely needed to be included on this album. If anything comes from people hearing that song in particular, I hope that they show some love to the people in their lives who may be struggling. It’s not easy being a human on this cruel old rock hurtling through space, so we all need all the love and support we can get.

I noticed that you dedicated this album to your father – what was your relationship to him?

Yes, I dedicated this album to my father, as it’s my first major release since he tragically took his own life in the summer of 2023. We also used to sing many of these songs from the album together when I was younger. As I mentioned at the start, my father has always been a huge influence on my music and I can say for certain that I wouldn’t be a musician today if it weren’t for him. From buying me my first guitar to constantly taking me on stage to perform with him as a child.

My mother and father actually used to be in a band together before I was born called Big Shacks. My mother, Kim, was the singer and my father, Norman, was the lead guitarist. I have many fond memories of busking with my dad on the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow as a child, too. It was something that brought us very close together over the years. When he died, it really took a huge toll on me. I was actually down in England opening for Willi Carlisle when it happened and I was also in the process of getting my American O-1 visa at the time. I decided to still go ahead with the first American tour a few months later, regardless. However, afterwards I was in a really bad place mentally, so I decided to take a long break from performing until I finally felt ready to return. In that time, I recorded this album and as such I have dedicated it to his memory. I’ve now also returned to touring in the last few months and will be announcing a really big tour of my own in the very near future!

What makes a Scottish Cowboy different than other cowboys?

Scotland has a very long history of cattle droving, going back many hundreds if not thousands of years. There is indeed much to be said on the topic of Scottish cowboys and their influence on the conceptualization of the American cowboy and the Wild West. A good place to start, if you want to research this fascinating topic further, is the fantastic book by Rob Gibson called Highland Cowboys: From the Hills of Scotland to the American Wild West. In it, he details the links between the two cultures, as not only did the thousands of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands bring with them their musical culture and songs to the New World, they also brought with them their unique way of life and cattle-herding culture and practices. Not to mention the practice of cattle rustling, which although not unique to Scotland was a very common yet serious crime throughout Scottish history.

To further emphasise this connection, I included the song “Chisholm Trail,” as this song is sung about the historic cattle trail that runs from Texas to Kansas, which is named after the famous half-Scottish, half-Cherokee cowboy, Jesse Chisholm.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

BGS 5+5: Meredith Moon

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Meredith Moon
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Latest Album: From Here to the Sea (released September 12, 2025)

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

I’m a bit of a deep-dive Dylan archivist. I’m one of those people who knows every bootleg series and can never get enough of the intricacies and nuances surrounding the various versions of his works. So while I know I’m not unique in this answer, I’d have to say Bob Dylan.

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

I spend most of my time outside in an attempt to maintain my humanity, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent the majority of my most meaningful/intentional time in nature up in the lake country of Ontario, canoeing in places like Algonquin Park, The Kawartha Highlands, Northwestern Ontario, etc. I’ve gone on quite a few trips that are generally about a week or two in duration; I did one solo trip (with my dog) in Southern Algonquin Park that lasted five nights and six days. When you’re out there, you know exactly why you’re there and everything you need just comes to you. If you know you know! My belief is that when we put ourselves in vulnerable positions we can access something way back in our DNA that sort of guides us on how to survive. So I like doing that every once in a while, just to remind myself that I’m still connected to that.

What’s the most difficult creative transformation you’ve ever undertaken?

Getting sober, hands down. It took me months after quitting drinking to remember that I was still a musician and that I could still craft songs. I think part of that is the sort of “biopic culture” that follows you around as a musician. That we all have to be drunk cowboys in bars in order to have validity within the Americana scene.

However, as soon as I got sober and actually talked openly about it, it turned out that the majority of musicians I looked up to in the scene were actually sober, too, all along. It came back to me eventually, but there was definitely a period of reinvention before I could get anything out.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

I was real big on ’90s grunge as a teenager. Some may be surprised that there’s actually a pretty strong connection between that stuff and traditional American folk tunes – the structure, some of the changes, etc. When I was a kid, I would have songs by Hole next to songs by Odetta and Doc Watson on the same playlist. I just like songs that have a strong melody and focused lyrics. And if you look at the song that way, there isn’t much difference.

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

My first love was painting and probably always will be. I’ve done photography professionally as well through the years, as well as other crafts. So I suppose if the music weren’t around, I’d just switch to the visual arts.

Photo Credit: Someari Benson-Jaja

You Gotta Hear This: Lonesome River Band, The Prickly Pair, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

You’ve reached the end of the week and we’ve got roots music ready to take you into the weekend. It’s our weekly roundup of new music, new videos, and premieres.

Continuing with our mini-series this week, saxophonist Eddie Barbash returns with yet another excellent performance video of a classic instrumental bluegrass tune on sax. This time, he offers “Clinch Mountain Backstep,” listening to and learning from every instrument in a classic bluegrass five-piece in order to forge his own way through the melody on his outlier of a string band instrument. Also in bluegrass, the long-running and fundamental group Lonesome River Band have unveiled a new single today, “No Business Mountain,” drawing inspiration from near their home turf, down the road in Patrick County, Virginia. It’s a lilting, sunshiny bluegrass song perfect for a two-step.

Americana duo The Prickly Pair have brought us a song from their upcoming self-titled EP. Out next week, you can hear a sneak peek of “Piece of the Sky” today, a vibe-rich retro-sounding song inspired by the infamous story of D. B. Cooper. Plus, Western North Carolina singer-songwriter and Steep Canyon Rangers member Aaron Burdett shares a new single, “Rhyme or Reason.” First conceived and written at a songwriting workshop with Darrell Scott a few years ago, Burdett’s recording of the track comes shortly after he got to share the stage with Scott in Brevard, N.C. A full circle moment right in time for the song’s release.

Singer-songwriter Max Gomez released his latest album, Memory Mountain, in late summer, but lucky for us he’s not done with bringing new content from the project yet. Today he shares a new music video for “New Mexico,” a number that some folks call the unofficial anthem for the state. Which, Gomez is deliberate in sharing with us, is also a point of the song: To remind listeners that New Mexico is indeed a state. Rounding out our collection, Appalachian Americana artist Darrin Hacquard also brings a new music video for “Places I Went,” a song from his brand new album, Weights & Measures, which is out today. It’s a track that interrogates duality and Hacquard describes as a sort of “fucked up gospel song.” But you’ll have to listen and watch to see if you agree.

Up and down the mountains, whether in Virginia, North Carolina, or New Mexico, there’s plenty of excellent roots music for you to enjoy right here on BGS. You Gotta Hear This!

Eddie Barbash, “Clinch Mountain Backstep”

Artist: Eddie Barbash
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Clinch Mountain Backstep”
Album: Larkspur
Release Date: November 28, 2025 (The album will be released one song at a time with the last track coming out Nov. 28.)

In Their Words: “I enjoy playing fiddle music on saxophone because it feels like an adventure! I have to figure out how to make these tunes sound good on sax, because I have no example to look to. Every instrument in a string band has its own versions of the melodies that are uniquely suited to it. When I adapt a tune for saxophone, I listen to how every instrument plays it and then use the variations that work best for me. If there are any phrases that continue to elude me, I create my own variation that is unique to the saxophone. This process is especially evident with a banjo tune like ‘Clinch Mountain Backstep.'” – Eddie Barbash

(Editor’s Note: Watch the first two videos in our mini-series with Eddie Barbash here and here.)

Aaron Burdett, “Rhyme or Reason”

Artist: Aaron Burdett
Hometown: Saluda, North Carolina
Song: “Rhyme or Reason”
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Label: Organic Records

In Their Words: “The very last thing I did before the COVID pandemic hit in 2020 was to attend one of Darrell Scott’s ‘Songfood’ workshops. ‘Rhyme or Reason’ is a song I wrote over the course of a few days there with about a dozen other songwriters who were doing the same thing. I’d been thinking about the concept on the way, driving from my home in North Carolina over to Nashville, and when Darrell told us to bring a new song back to the group, this is what came up. I remember right where I was when the idea hit, which isn’t uncommon. And then it fleshed out there in that workshop in late February of 2020. As I write this now in September of 2025, I am proud to say I was on stage with Darrell recently singing with him at the Mountain Song Festival in Brevard. Funny how things turn out. And truly that’s what the song is about – appreciating the ride as we move through life and doing the best we can with what we have. Things work out.” – Aaron Burdett

Track Credits:
Aaron Burdett – Lead vocal, acoustic guitar
Kristin Scott Benson – Banjo
Carley Arrowood – Fiddle
Tristan Scroggins – Mandolin
Jon Weisberger – Upright bass
Wendy Hickman – Harmony vocal
Travis Book – Harmony vocal

Max Gomez, “New Mexico”

Artist: Max Gomez
Hometown: Taos, New Mexico
Song: “New Mexico”
Album: Memory Mountain
Release Date: October 17, 2025 (video); August 29, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “The song is a protest song. What we’re protesting against in the song are our fellow Americans who seem to be unaware at times that my home state, the great state of New Mexico, is in fact one of the 50 that make up our nation. And yes, it’s sort of a tongue-in-cheek approach, but, it’s a real problem no less.

“In the last verse of the song I mean you no disrespect if you happen to be from Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri. Or if you ever worked for the TSA. It’s a true story, it happened to me when I was younger.

“Some folks call it the ‘unofficial state anthem’ of New Mexico. Perhaps one day we’ll find some legislature and crowbar it in the history books.” – Max Gomez

Darrin Hacquard, “Places I Went”

Artist: Darrin Hacquard
Hometown: Hocking Hills, Ohio
Song: “Places I Went”
Album: Weights & Measures
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Label: Like You Mean It Records

In Their Words: “‘Places I Went’ is an anthem of duality, highs and lows. I’ve always thought of this as a fucked up gospel song, riffing on the Christian notions of salvation and eternal life (heaven; ‘the mountaintop’) and the Buddhist conviction that life is suffering and completely impermanent ( ‘the river,’ never the same twice, it all melts away).

“The song also speaks to my mental/social duality – some days I want to live it up and laugh with all of my friends and some days I want to ‘live in a Goddamn cave!’ I have flirted with suicidal and depressive ideations at times, but ultimately want to stick it out to uncover the great mysteries and to sup of that holy chalice of gas station coffee with the radio on a late-night drive. I’m proud of the ‘Jawbreaker x Eagles’ brand of slacker rock we cooked up for this track and I never get tired of hearing Don Rogers’ ferocious Tele solos! The music video is especially dear and personal to me, as it features a pile of friends and family (including my lovely mother) who have been there through my highs and lows and helped me KEEP GOING!” – Darrin Hacquard

Lonesome River Band, “No Business Mountain”

Artist: Lonesome River Band
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “No Business Mountain”
Release Date: October 17, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘No Business Mountain’ is an idea that Barry and Will Hutchens mentioned to me a few years ago. It’s a place the three of us grew up seeing in our youth in eastern Patrick County, Virginia. I guess we all kind of had the thoughts that are portrayed in this song back in the day, but were never able to explore there. Made perfect sense to put what we thought it was like there in a song. We hope you enjoy the story!” – Sammy Shelor

Track Credits:
Sammy Shelor – Banjo, harmony vocal
Jesse Smathers – Acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
Mike Hartgrove – Fiddle
Adam Miller – Mandolin, lead vocal
Kameron Keller – Upright bass
Rod Riley – Electric guitar

The Prickly Pair, “Piece of the Sky”

Artist: The Prickly Pair (Mason Summit & Irene Greene)
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Piece of the Sky”
Album: The Prickly Pair (EP)
Release Date: October 24, 2025

In Their Words: “I figured that we had things in common based on the first songs we played in [songwriting] class, the first day. We’d never met before [I’d invited him to write together]. Instantly, when Mason came into the room he had this idea. He said, ‘Do you know about D. B. Cooper?’ And I said, ‘No, I’ve never heard of that.’ But he thought it was something I would be interested in. So we looked it up and watched something about it and then we instantly came up with this thought. What would it be like to write a song from his perspective? And it worked really easily. Sometimes writing songs with people is challenging because you’re not on the same wavelength with them. But I felt instantly we had a connection and that we had a lot in common.” – Irene Greene

“The first day of songwriting class, Irene performed a song about Roswell, New Mexico and UFOs, so I thought another unsolved mystery/conspiracy theory might be a good jumping-off point for a co-write.” – Mason Summit

Photo Credit: Lonesome River Band by Sandlin Gaither; The Prickly Pair by Libby Danforth.

Sex, Drugs, and
Country Music

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Editor’s Note: Each issue of Good Country, our co-founder Ed Helms will share a handful of good country artists, albums, and songs direct from his own earphones in Ed’s Picks.

Carter Faith
Carter Faith

Rolling Stone describes young country phenom Carter Faith as “a bright light for the future of country” – but she’s definitely illuminating the genre in the present! Her debut full length album, Cherry Valley, released earlier this month, displaying in full her gritty, fun, down-to-earth, and modern brand of Good Country.

Ghost Hounds
Ghost Hounds

Something special is happening with Ghost Hounds, a Pittsburgh Americana outfit combining blues, rock and roll, alt-country, soul, and much more. Their latest album, Almost Home, features the group’s new lead singer and frontman, SAVNT; a lineup change isn’t foiling this dynamic band, it’s building their momentum. They just made their Grand Ole Opry debut this week!

Vince Gill
Vince Gill

Perhaps our first repeat Ed’s Pick, but Vince Gill is always Good Country, right? The singer-picker-Country Hall of Famer-Eagles vocalist just announced a new series of EPs celebrating his lifelong career in music. The series, titled 50 Years From Home, begins with its first EP, I Gave You Everything I Had, today. We’re so grateful for all the years, all the music, and all you’ve given all of us, Vince!

Nick Shoulders
Nick Shoulders

Singer-songwriter-artist and Gar Hole Records co-proprietor Nick Shoulders is the real deal. He’s part of a broad movement of country musicians recentering the industry, its stakeholders, and its fans so the music better reflects all of the kinds of folks who love it. If you like Good Country that sticks it to the man, seeks justice, imagines a better world, and still sounds like “Grampa Music,” look out for his upcoming album, Refugia Blues (out October 31).

MORGXN
MORGXN

From Broadway in NYC to Lower Broadway in Nashville, MORGXN has done it all, but we find the singer-songwriter-performer thriving as he “reclaims his Nashville roots,” subverts expectations of musical and cultural stereotypes of country, and unabashedly celebrates queerness – especially so on his new twangy EP, Heartland: Part II. More MORGXNs like this in country, please and thank you.

Want more Good Country? Sign up to receive our monthly email newsletter – and much more music! – direct to your inbox.

Photo Credits: Carter Faith by Bree Marie Fish; Ghost Hounds courtesy of the artist; Vince Gill by David McClister; Nick Shoulders by Shelby Merry; MORGXN by Gabriel Starner.

Mumford & Sons Continue to Matter, In Americana and Beyond

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“Well, we’ve been here before…”

When Rushmere was released in March of this year – Mumford & Sons’ first album in seven years – critics noted its homecoming feel. The songs, the sound, the oh-so-yearning lyrics; they all combined to take the listener back to the beginning.

Tracks like “Malibu” and “Caroline” do not, perhaps, hit the wild highs of “Little Lion Man.” There’s a subtler expression at play in the album, reflecting an evolution from youthful exuberance to the quiet wisdom that only comes with experience. But a decade and a half on from Sigh No More, the band have clearly doubled back from their more experimental forays – 2018’s Delta; Marcus Mumford’s solo project, (self-titled) – to celebrate what brought them together in the first place. In Rushmere they had returned to their rootsy roots, and found peace there.

This month, the band heads back out on tour to Chicago, Philadelphia, Montréal, and more. In November, they’ll return to Europe, and ultimately to the UK, where their final leg will climax at London’s 20,000-capacity O2 arena. Months on the road this year and playing to sold-out venues have proven one thing: people still can’t get enough of them.

And yet the world is a very different place to when their debut album hit the shelves in 2009. When Mumford & Sons first toured Sigh No More, Barack Obama was President of the United States. In the UK, the biggest question on people’s lips was what Kate Middleton would be wearing at her royal marriage to Prince William.

Today’s social backdrop feels meaner, more fractious, less optimistic. Widening rifts in society have made it harder for people to celebrate shared values, even cherish the same moments together. Mumford have split with one of their own band members as a direct consequence of our rapid political polarization. What is it, then, that felt so fresh back then – and that still appeals today?

Matt Menefee first encountered the Mumford sound when his progressive bluegrass band, Cadillac Sky, were at their peak. “We were heading up out of Texas to play Telluride in 2010, and we played some gigs en route,” says Menefee. “So we’d stopped at a hotel, and there was Marcus on MTV, and someone said, ‘Oh, this band’s headlining the festival.’ Our lead singer already had the record and so we listened to it all the way up there.”

For a group of musicians that favored a raucous, punk rock vibe, Mumford’s gleeful-yet-soulful energy was something new. “We were like, ‘Oh man, this is something else!’” Menefee recalls. “To hear these cohesive, in-your-face anthems… it was raging. The melodies and the lyrics were beautifully crafted as well. It was a force that blew our guys away.”

Mumford’s Telluride set became an instant classic (it’s still spoken of in awe today). “It was just a party,” remembers Jerry Douglas, whom the band had asked to join them on stage. “The guys looked so excited. I’ve been to that festival so many times and you can get jaded. But I’m watching them jump up and down and I’m going, this is what it’s supposed to feel like.” He describes that electric closing set as one of the best he’s seen in Telluride’s 51 iterations.

Douglas is one of the many Americana musicians that Mumford and bandmates Ben Lovett, and Ted Dwane sought out to learn from in their early years and have built enduring relationships with. They included Douglas in their performance at the SNL 50th anniversary show, after he had recorded lap steel for Rushmere track “Caroline” – although he laughingly points out that it didn’t make the final mix. “It changed it, it took the band away from just sounding like themselves. I kind of Jackson Browne-ed them a little bit…”

Those collaborative relationships are one of the reasons that Mumford & Sons continue to matter, not least to the musical communities they’ve done so much to elevate. After their first meeting, Menefee became a regular guest artist with the band and has been their go-to banjo player since Winston Marshall’s departure. “You watch them interact with people,” says Menefee, “and they’re so humble, so sweet, so encouraging. They really look after everybody. They’re good, good dudes.”

In August, Mumford & Sons relaunched their Railroad Revival Tour, whose 2011 iteration involved travelling the Southwest in vintage trains alongside Old Crow Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. This summer’s rolling festival picked up where that one had left off, traveling between New Orleans and Vermont. The long list of musicians joining them on board ranged from Nathaniel Rateliff and Ketch Secor to Lainey Wilson and Molly Tuttle to Trombone Shorty and Chris Thile.

Lucius’s Jess Wolfe was one of the musicians sharing the stage with Mumford, after forging a bond with Marcus at celebrated, now infamous jams arranged by Brandi Carlile in Joni Mitchell’s living room. “Sitting listening to our hero sing – that’s such a humbling experience, it’s going to bring people close quite quickly,” laughs Wolfe. She describes Mumford & Sons as “natural collaborators – they feel like brothers from the minute that you step foot in the room with them.” It’s that comforting familiarity that expresses itself in their music and forms a major part of their appeal.

Having first heard their sound while working on the Brooklyn open mic circuit, Wolfe was struck by how it reflected the songs that her peers were writing, “except that these were songs that everyone could suddenly, with ease and without thinking, just sing along to. It was like a conversation you were having with an old friend.”

Their pulsing, anthemic melodies, underlaid with a signature stomp, quickly became an in-demand and much replicated sound in the industry. Banjo and mandolin players found themselves getting far more calls for session work. For musicians like Menefee who had spent years justifying their choice of instrument and trying to persuade a sceptical mainstream of its charms, the change was remarkable. “When Mumford hit, it was like, banjo’s cool!”

“I’d go do demo sessions for songwriters on Music Row and for years the publishers would ask you for ‘like, a Mumford thing,’” Menefee continues. “And I should say that’s not all they do – their Delta record is one of my favorites, with its beautiful marriage of electro pop and effects. But I witnessed the success of the other bands that followed in Mumford’s wake. They had a huge influence.”

Douglas believes it’s no exaggeration to say they changed the sound of the musical landscape. “And people either liked it or they didn’t. But it’s a heartbeat, you know? That’s the thing about it. It gets people excited and it makes them feel good. That endorphin rush happens and everybody goes to their happy place. And we need that right now. We need to go to our happy place.”

There, perhaps, lies the key to their successful return after seven years away from the limelight. Every night they play, Menefee sees crowds “losing themselves” in the singalongs. “There’s an anger and a vulnerability that really pierces the heart,” he says. “And it’s so freaking singable.”

The band themselves have admitted to be “stoked” to be headlining festivals in the UK again and there’s little sense of ego at their appearances. Instead, they host shows that have the feel of a party at which they themselves are enthusiastic guests. “It’s just so much fun,” says Menefee. “There’s a real joy in it, a rest from all the chaos.”

Perhaps, right now, we all need a bit more Mumford in our lives.

Photo Credit: Marcus Haney

Basic Folk: David Wilcox

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Asheville, North Carolina-based songwriter David Wilcox has been through some s-h-i-t. A difficult childhood in Northeast Ohio sent him seeking answers – mostly on his bicycle – in an attempt to get away. He has spent his lifetime leaning into his problems and digging into their roots at the source: his own heart. He decided to see what lessons his heart had been trying to teach him and, at 67 years old, he’s still listening and learning. He claims to have the answer of how to heal your heart and how to do it in two minutes; he lays it out in our conversation.

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We also talk about his new album, The Way I Tell the Story. Our conversation continues his exploratory journey, through the lens of his wife’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, retelling the story of his childhood, and staying calm in an emergency and in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which devastated his community. We discuss how David was able to walk the line of acknowledging his talents without getting too caught up in the hot-and-fast success he experienced at the start of his career. He explains when it’s best to feel the depths of sorrow versus disassociating, and he talks about his lifelong love of cycling and how it continues to be a meditation and a life-saver. David is full of gems and wisdom – I think I’ll be listening back to this edition of Basic Folk many times over.

Photo Credit: Lynne Harty

25 Years of Greensky Bluegrass Connecting the Dots

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On a recent afternoon, Paul Hoffman is standing in a parking lot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lead singer/mandolinist for Greensky Bluegrass, Hoffman is pacing around the backstage lot before the gig at XL Live that evening deep in reflection about questions posed over the phone – the core of which focus on the upcoming 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking jamgrass outfit. A while back, in the depths of rural New Hampshire, I interviewed Hoffman for another project and I asked him just what the original intent was behind Greensky Bluegrass.

“To play heavy metal music on acoustic instruments,” he replied, a sly grin emerging across his face.

Now, 25 years since its inception, Greensky Bluegrass has adhered directly to Hoffman’s sentiments. These days, the group has become a marquee live act, one which uses its string instruments to transcend all genres of music, whether bluegrass or blues, rock or country, funk or soul – or even heavy metal.

Case-in-point, the ensemble’s latest album, XXV, is not only an ode to a quarter-century of passion, purpose, and performance, but also a mile marker by which Greensky Bluegrass can measure their own road to the “here and now” – this realm where the passage of time doesn’t necessarily matter, only fleeting moments onstage with the ones you love do.

XXV brings together many of those dear friends and collaborators of Greensky – Sam Bush, Billy Strings, Lindsay Lou, Nathaniel Rateliff, Aoife O’Donovan, Holly Bowling, Ivan Neville, Natalie Cressman, and Jennifer Hartswick. Each of these special guests represent chapters of the band’s continued journey to something – somewhere, anywhere – that kind and curious folks congregate in the name of fellowship, compassion, and sonic joy.

With the starting line of Greensky Bluegrass being an impromptu Halloween gig in 2000 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, other pivotal dots pop up quickly along the way. Like the inevitable camaraderie between the group and other Michigan artists like Strings and Lou, who came up in the same scene and have supported each other ever since. Or, like Sam Bush himself – Bluegrass Hall of Famer and the symbolic face of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival – being featured on the project, reminding how the Telluride stage brought Greensky Bluegrass into the national spotlight when they won its famed band contest in 2006.

For Greensky, the friendships made along the way brought endless opportunities to play alongside one another at a show, a festival, or late-night jam. Opportunities that would always be too good to pass up – don’t forget, fun is the original point, and should remain so.

XXV is also a fresh snapshot of Greensky Bluegrass. The songs are pulled from across the entire timeline of the outfit, from their early days in Kalamazoo to the mountains of Colorado. From the bright lights of Nashville to the backroads of Southern Appalachia. From the blue skies of Anytown, U.S.A., to the sandy beaches of some international destination.

After 25 years, what remains is a band of genuine souls where gratitude is only matched by hunger and curiosity for what resides just around the next corner. Greensky Bluegrass, decades later, remain ready to surprise the listener and to carry on the pure intent that emerged those many years ago.

Now that this album’s coming out, whether consciously or subconsciously, the celebration of 25 years is currently underway. What’s been kind of rolling through your mind?

Hoffman: Primarily gratitude. I’d be remiss to not be grateful that we’ve been able to [do this for 25 years]. It’s a celebration, truly. It feels so cool. We’re doing [the anniversary shows] in our hometown and playing the [Wings Event Center in Kalamazoo] for the first time, which we’ve talked about since we were a very young band. And, you know, something interesting I’ve learned is how excited people are about this retrospective project. In true Greensky fashion, it’s this unique, hybrid idea. Like, “What if we did this? What if it took this turn? What if we recorded this and revamped this?”

We didn’t just make a new record, we stopped to reflect and commemorate in a way that was meaningful to us. And it seems like it’s translating. It’s not even out yet. It’s a unique perspective on gratitude that maybe I didn’t expect. [For XXV], I don’t want to say that it was easy or something. Because we did it pretty quickly and we didn’t have to write any material and we didn’t have to make huge choices about how to present it, because there already is an arrangement and an idea. But, in some cases, we did things differently because we could and we were not beholden to some authority on how it needs to go.

[The recording process] was so casual and creative in this really innocent way – “Let’s just record this and see what happens.” And we just kept recording stuff. We didn’t even know what we were going to do next. Every moment is monumental in some way or another, but 25 years is nothing to scoff at. And this all was birthed from, “What could we do?” With making new music and new albums, there’s a pressure to create something better than we’ve ever done. Or genuine to the brand we’ve created and to ourselves, but also exploratory enough [and] a departure from the norm enough that it’s new and exciting. It feels like such a relief to do [XXV], to approach creating new material from a different perspective.

How did you decide on the guests?

I wanted to find guests that celebrate our story, that are close to us and collaborators and such, but also elevated the material in some meaningful way. And there were real pleasant surprises along the way there.

What did it mean to have Billy and Lindsay on the record, seeing as all of you emerged from the same scene in Kalamazoo and have always supported each other?

I mean, to say that it was sort of obvious and natural is probably an understatement. We joked about why we chose “Reverend,” because Billy plays it [live]. But, I also feel it’s an important song. And for me as a writer, it’s kind of a landmark in my journey as a creative. But again, even though I knew [Billy] would crush it on the guitar solo, some of the phrasing choices he makes are subtly different than mine – I love it. And, man, I can’t stress enough, what a gift [“Reverend” is]. I wrote that song almost 20 years ago. It means something different to me now, and it has throughout my life singing that song.

You’ve always been a very sonically elusive band. Was that by design or just how things evolved?

I think that we just have a spirit to not be limited. So, if we want to emulate all the things we love – and we’d love a diverse amount of things, musical things – we honor the acoustic nature of our heritage as a band, but we want so much more. We want [things] to keep us interested and engaged. We’ve allowed ourselves that creative freedom to try anything. And we think we’ve jumped the shark many times. [Laughs]

With getting older, you also start having different perspectives on what you were creating and how you want to present it.

Yeah. You know, art is timeless in some ways, because you can change your opinion about it or the way you relate to it as you mature.

When you had mentioned that you guys “jumped the shark many times,” I think that’s one of the things I appreciate about Greensky – you’re not afraid to just take a leap.

It’s one of my favorite things about musicians I admire, too, are the ones that I watch struggle to either challenge themselves, push themselves, push their boundaries, or convey a message with emotion that’s challenging, you know? If you’re willing to make a mistake, if you’re willing to truly find the line of your capacity, you have to be willing to cross it to know where it is. I’ve always said – in my later maturity – that I wonder if I’ve crossed it too many times, and in sort of a noble quest with noble intentions. [Laughs]

That’s something I love about Billy’s playing a lot. Despite being one of the greatest guitar players I’ve ever seen, I’ve watched him up there grasping for things and struggling. Struggle doesn’t always have to have a negative [connotation]. To not struggle would be complicit and boring.

The upcoming Halloween shows in Kalamazoo are the official 25th anniversary of when the stars aligned, when you, Mike [Bont], and Dave [Bruzza] played together as Greensky for the first time.

When you started asking the question, my brain went to right about now, [25 years ago]. We met [a few] weeks before Halloween. I was a college freshman and I went to this bar called the Blue Dolphin, where there was a bluegrass open mic. I saw Dave and Bont play and approached them after the thing and was like, “Hey, I just bought a mandolin,” that I’d gotten in late August before moving to college. So, I’d only had it for four or five weeks.

I didn’t know what the hell I was doing at all or what bluegrass even was. I bought the mandolin because of David Grisman, who’s so bluegrass-adjacent that I didn’t know who Bill Monroe was. I knew “Shady Grove.” [All of] which is still just a remarkable thing for me to think about. Like, what hell would my life have been had I not made that choice [to play mandolin]? What a bizarre twist of fate and then here we are 25 years later.

So, you guys met and you said, “Let’s jam”?

Yeah. A couple days later, I showed up at Bont’s house for a rehearsal. Him and Dave would just get together and pick. They were both learning bluegrass. Everything was so casual and just for fun. They would have band practices where we would get together and learn songs and stuff. And I just showed up for the next one and then didn’t go away.

What was the name of that [open mic] band?

Greensky Bluegrass. They were already playing as Greensky Bluegrass, which was named by a friend of Dave’s that played mandolin with him a little bit for fun. It was a joke in jest, “Wouldn’t it be funny to have a bluegrass band named Greensky Bluegrass?”

I don’t think I ever knew that you guys were called Greensky before the official [2000] Halloween show.

Well, I mean, what is “official” is interesting to think about. They were already [Greensky]. It wasn’t their first open mic, either. So, the first time the three of us [“officially”] played was the Halloween show. But, I think I joined them at open mics for a week or two or something [before Halloween]. And Halloween was a party. There was a poster made for fun or something. We were on the bill. Dave was in another band called Seeds & Stems. It was a house party in a house that Dave lived in. [Laughs] A pretty wild party, if I may say so.

So, it was billed as Greensky Bluegrass?

“Billed” is still kind of generous. But, yeah, we played a set in the basement and in the living room. I think the living room upstairs was just acoustic and then the jam band played downstairs in the basement, like colleges do, you know? A couple days later, we played a show at a venue in town, Club Soda in Kalamazoo, that was kind of a legendary rock club through the ‘90s and stuff. It was small, but we played there on a triple bill November 5 or something, [just] days later. And that one, I [still] have the poster. I think that was our first paid show.

Were you doing covers or did [Dave and Mike] have originals, too?

They were playing just bluegrass standards for the most part. It’s funny, that [first] night [I met] Dave, he gave me CDs – Seldom Scene, Live at The Cellar Door, a Rounder Records bluegrass compilation, and a Bill Monroe live show. And [he] was like, “Listen to these. See you on Tuesday at Bont’s house.”

In hindsight, man, to be 18 and have that kind of freedom, you know what I mean? I’ve been recently jamming on electric guitar at my house by myself for fun. And I’ve been thinking, “I wonder if I could find some dads around to start a band with for just fun.” And that experience is so foreign to me now, because I’m so immersed in this thing that’s become my life.

Looking back on it, you kind of jumped into the deep end pretty quickly.

I didn’t take a mandolin lesson until COVID. [Laughs] I was self-taught, because I already knew how to play the guitar – “knew how to,” I use that a little loosely, too. Took some [music theory] classes in high school and college and I’m sort of classically trained. But, I was able to teach myself my own instrument for a really long time. I should have sooner harnessed the strength of learning from another, because when I took a lesson during COVID from a friend, I was like, “I should’ve done this a lot sooner.” [Laughs]

You know, so much of what I was learning in those early days was how to express myself as a writer and find my voice. That stuff always superseded my need for technical prowess. I think we all kind of share that sentiment, all five of us – how to present this passion piece is more important than how to do it. We took on this every-other-week gig and stuff like that [in Kalamazoo]. And the commitment to go play shows for the same crowd every other week inspired us to grow, because we needed to. We had that jam band sensibility of satiating the fans. What can we do next week that’ll keep people excited? What can we do that’s new? How can we make this better?

When you look back, you can see where the dots connect. But, when it’s happening in real time, you don’t realize what the domino effect is, where all of a sudden you’ve found yourself in this band that you’re still in 25 years later.

Yeah. I was 18 [when we started the band]. I’ve lived with Dave and Bont for 25 years of my life. I didn’t even live with my parents that long. [Laughs] I’ve spent 200+ days of [every] year of my life with those two guys for 25 years, and the other ones for many years, as well. It’s kind of wild. It’s so cool that we created this project, [which has become] just a celebration of our relationship and that’s so much more important than what it has become. We care about each other and we genuinely have a lot of aligned goals, artistically and personally. We’re still grinding for it, and I’m grateful for what we have.

I think we’ve been very successful. I feel less “grinding” now and more, “Let’s just go and have some fun and play some shows.” Play where people want us to play and not measure our success by how many tickets we sell. And I’m starting to learn that more now. It took 25 years for me to figure out that what we have is great. We’ve got something cool, let’s just keep doing it.

And that’s got to be a nice place to get to, because you don’t get to 25 years by accident. The fact the original three members are still there is amazing, because that story is not that common in the grand scheme of things in this industry.

Even in our culture. It’s not even [common] in business partnerships, families, friendships. And the reality of that – that I’m learning with age – is that relationships change and everything shouldn’t be measured by the testament of time. I want to find value in a moment that is for the sake of “now” and not some transactional [thing]. Like, if I’m nice to you “now,” then we’ll have this friendship that serves us both and we’ll be there for each other. All that kind of stuff is great, but I want to live in the moment.

I think what’s remarkable is that we’ve stayed together, because we’ve all grown and changed in similar ways and our journeys have aligned the whole time, or for the most of the time. We’ve veered away from each other and back to each other many times. But, when one of us has wanted something different, we’ve all kind of shared that desire. In a way, we’ve been able to all be very sincere to ourselves and grow and change together.

I don’t mean to speculate what other bands are like or anything like that, but I don’t have a lot of relationships in my life that have lasted this long. And not just people, but to things like food or activities I enjoy. The only thing maybe is the way I’ve worn my hair for 30 years. [Laughs] When we grow, our tastes change for all things. But, my [creative, intrinsic] tastes for these four other men have not changed.

Continue to explore our Artist of the Month content on Greensky Bluegrass here.

Photo Credit: Dylan Langille

How “Guidelines” Made Madison Cunningham’s Ace Feel Totally Free

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It is no news that Madison Cunningham is among the top tier of artists and musicians doggedly pursuing their craft; her newest record, Ace, casually echoes this. Soberly confronting a mountain of grief at home and transmuting its impressions through her open-minded, mature songcraft, the record encourages listeners through a seamless track list whose performances take on the form of open letters to its subjects. She treats an album as the dignified platform it once was and should be and this stance feels radical in today’s streaming-focused world.

A most striking feature of Ace (released on October 10, 2025) is the presentation of her vocals in a more expansive and spacious light, putting aside her much-associated – and anticipated – guitar for the piano, a more than suitable vehicle for this new terrain. Cunningham returns to her native instrument, the keys, as a “lost sojourner,” using it to strip away all but the most critical aspects of the record’s narrative, while highlighting its grooves and timbres.

All the songs played on piano started on guitar and later migrated to it. This practice seemingly grew out of her fascination with embracing the uncomfortable, like the open tunings she is known to use in her celebrated approach to the guitar as an instrument to be challenged and played with. From a new-to-her tuning, to the piano, and then to her band, this game of telephone still allowed Cunningham to sound more like herself.

The game doesn’t stop there. At a lair in Woodstock, New York, in the fall of 2024, Madison and her band committed themselves to a few simple principles: No demos. No vocal comps. “Do the thing that feels most musically true and curious.” And, “Don’t give a shit about what people have known you for.” These rules, in many ways, allow the anthropology of the moment in time during which this record was made to speak loudest. It goes without saying that this path is impossible to tread without a rigorous knowledge of oneself, trust in the folks around you, and, most centrally, the chops to back it up. The consequence of these choices is a record with a narrative “spine” throughout, animating what Cunningham likens to a ballet in its transitions – something she has been working toward both in the studio and on the road since her triumphant, full-length debut in 2019, Who Are You Now.

The song “Wake,” a duet with Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, evokes the kaleidoscopic nexus of Alison Krauss & Robert Plant’s Raising Sand, the orchestration of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, and the cinematic flair of Gustavo Santaolalla on top. More stripped-down performances, such as “Take Two” and “My Full Name,” demonstrate Madison’s subtle confidence as both a devoted curator and a fearless innovator. Woodwinds underscore and bookmark this collection’s ethereal climate, thanks to the work of Jesse Chandler. Taken as a whole, Ace brings the listener into the same trenches Madison found herself in and onward toward truth in the face of its hardships.

BGS reached Madison Cunningham via Zoom in mid-September to discuss Ace, its making, and the guidelines and rules by which she brought these songs into the world.

I noticed that you described the record as “light” when making it, despite its sober depiction of difficult subject matter. Which aspects were light to you?

Madison Cunningham: That’s a great question. The mission for making the record was really clear and all the “guidelines” were set up well in advance, which was something I had never done before. In the past, my process has been more about figuring it out as we go. This time, my band and I were very prepared. I used the touring band that I’ve been with for the last five years, and the deep collaboration and shared language we’ve developed over that time made everything feel so fluid.

We were all “cracked open” in this special way and we laughed the whole time. That’s probably what I mean the most about the record being “light,” how joyful it felt. I didn’t feel much fear while we were making it. I just had a picture of how I wanted it to sound, and it already was sounding like that. That felt like a relief.

Did you feel like you had less to prove in a superficial sense?

I guess there’s always something to prove. I don’t mean to erase the feeling that I had, which was, of course, a certain amount of pressure or wanting it to level up in some way. But, in light of being quite devastated in my personal life, everything else felt so small compared to the mountain I felt like I was climbing at home.

And maybe that was the gift and that’s why everything felt like it. For whatever reason, everything felt like green lights. It just couldn’t have been easier. Also, I’d never had a more fluid relationship with my label; there was no argument about how this was going to happen. It just was like, “Go. Do it.”

How would you describe the guidelines you had in place for this record and how did they differ from your usual process? Also, did playing the piano more for this record affect your writing style, perhaps making it more expansive in some ways?

I started as a kid on piano first and it had a resurgence in my life in the last three years. I fell back in love with it and I enjoyed the feeling of being a lost sojourner on it, just being like, “Oh, I’m finding all these things that I now am – I found a style here that I’m injecting into my guitar playing.” I wanted to play guitar more like a pianist.

One of my guidelines was, “Just don’t give a shit about what people have known you for, what they might expect. Do the thing that feels most musically true and curious.” And that sounds a lot like permission, but it was also a guideline. Another guideline was, “Make sure that there’s emotional delivery over anything that sounds too perfect. And don’t compromise on that.”

The other set of guidelines were between me and my band: we did a lot of rehearsal beforehand, but we didn’t record anything, so there were no demos. That was a huge rule. I also said, “I don’t want to do any vocal comps. I just want to sing the songs live.” That was helpful. It was another way of being like, “Okay, focus, and be in the room for the moment that these songs are being captured.” So, yeah, there was no previous, “Ah, but shit, we gotta out-beat that one demo we made.” Because that slate was so clean, I think everything was clearer.

During the recording process, do you listen to other music for comfort or do you stay entirely within the feedback loop of your own project? I’m also curious if the recording period was a continuous block of time, which would obviously influence your ability to listen to music.

We did record it continuously, and I don’t usually listen to music while I’m making a record. Honestly, destination recordings help so much with that, because you’re just immersed in the physical and spiritual environment of the whole thing. We were up at a lair and it was fall – it was this time last year – and there’s this beautiful hike that allowed you to look over the reservoir and the golden, brown, red leaves. I felt so romantic that whole time. Even if there was something that wasn’t working, I just had such faith it was going to get there.

We also had a crazy sort of work cycle, which was [that] we would start the skeleton of the song in the morning and then we would record until 2:00 AM and finish it. Again, I think because we all had the guidelines, we were like, “We want every song to have woodwinds pretty much, unless it doesn’t call for it, so we’re going to try and flesh it all out in the same day.”

Jesse Chandler did all that. He’s a genius. We would both talk through things we were both hearing, and then he would just play it all. It was like building a puzzle in real time, and it felt so wonderful to be able to see it all and to feel moved by it. We barely did any overdubs. We did another session in LA a month later after those two weeks up at Woodstock and did a few little overdubs, but we had mainly done everything while we were there.

Ace feels like a return to the “record” as a dignified format. In the lead-up to making it, did you think about the songs as individual tracks – as it relates to streaming culture – or did you focus on creating a cohesive narrative for the entire album?

There are so many examples of records that feel like a full statement and we’ve lost that. That feels radical now. I feel like I’ve made records that have been molded to the current format and I was so disinterested in that this time. I am so over the, “Hey, let’s just do what everyone else is doing,” and, “It’s guaranteed to work.” I really mistrust people when they say that to me, and that mistrust has usually been right.

Even if I see the “format” working for someone else, I’m like, “But that’s not me. That’s not my music, so we can’t say that’s the target, that’s the answer.” I was so interested in making the record feel like a ballet and feeling like the transitions were seamless. It was the first record I felt like I made that had a spine that connected the whole thing and I still find such value in that.

To be honest, we also made efforts to make sure that the songs were not too long. They were separated from their instrumental tracks so that it could work for playlisting. We weren’t, like, fully in protest.

When working on a song like “Wake,” where did that start? How different does it look from when you’re playing it on the couch, versus sitting down with Robin [Pecknold] to record it? Could you walk me through how that song got made? I love how active the guitar parts are, the closeness of the vocal harmonies, and how relaxed everything feels in the recording.

MC: I love that. I really appreciate that it comes across that way. That was the goal and the way that it was written. I wrote it with another songwriter named Will Taylor and we were both just playing these counterparts. And that’s where the seamlessness of it kind of took place; on the recording, that’s the direction I wanted it to go in. Then I just added some different flavors.

All those guitar parts you hear were added and layered, but I didn’t do very many takes of them, so that’s how it might feel live. I didn’t get in there and try to overly correct things. I wanted it to breathe. That has to be one of my favorite songs on the record because we wrote it in a Nashville blizzard and it sounds like that. The guitar part sounds like snowflakes falling in different directions to me, and Robin’s voice is just like a warm fire.

Did you record that in Nashville, or did you just write it in Nashville?

Wrote it in Nashville, recorded it in Los Angeles a year later, and we did all of that, everything that you hear, in one day. I recorded the main guitar and sang at the same time and then Robin sang in the other room. And once we figured that out, we added all the guitars, then Daniel Rhine added upright bass, and then we did the foot stomps at the end. And that was the song.

For the guitar-centric people, is “Wake” in an open tuning, and do you mind sharing what that is?

No, I always forget it, but I’m going to pull it up on my “favorite tunings” column.

It is C-G-D-F-A-C, from low to high. It’s basically an open suspended chord and it’s so tricky. At first, you’re like, “There’s no possible way through this tuning.” And that’s the tuning I wrote all the record on. Every guitar here, it’s in that tuning.

Your music contains rhythmic feels that seem to be informed by drums or percussion, outside of the guitar. I know you’ve played percussion – does your drumming experience influence your songwriting on other instruments? Do you workshop things back and forth with your drummer, Kyle [Crane] in this way?

I feel like if I were to show you the original demos of these songs, there was already such a strong, informed rhythmic thing, more than in the past for me. And Kyle, I think he was playing into, “How do I make this feel like we thought of this at the same time? Or, “How can it feel like that?” For example, “Break the Jaw” came out of a band jam. I wrote the lyrics to it, but the feel of the song wasn’t something Kyle tried to figure out after the fact. We were figuring it out in real time and I think that’s why it came out so cool. Everybody put their stamp on it.

The whole process was us trying to figure out the skeleton of rhythm and how to make it feel like it wasn’t fighting with itself.

I’m wondering how you approach sequencing an album. When you consider the interludes, the streaming world, live performance, and recording, are there specific ideas, people, or records that have helped you learn how to think about the flow and energy of a record from start to finish?

Ooh, yeah, I’m sure. Radiohead is a big one for me. I think the sequencing of their records is so specific. Their opening track is always perfect to me and their closing track is always perfect. From the beginning of making this record, before all the songs were written, I knew which was going to be the first and which was going to be the last. And then Robbie Lackritz – who made the record with me – and I spent a lot of time delineating over sequencing.

The story of the record is important. Obviously, the tempo arc, and the keys melded together. The story has a plot, so that was a big thing. I wasn’t trying to write it like that, but from an aerial view, I was like, “Oh yeah, this is how it connects.”

In the song “Take Two,” you mention a fear of writing simple songs. Did this perceived fear influence the guidelines you set for yourself when writing the album? Also, were the initial ideas for the songs primarily written on guitar or piano?

For every song that ended up on piano, it actually started on guitar – with the exception of the instrumental pieces, which were formed from the piano.

For example, “Shore” started on guitar and so did “My Full Name,” but they felt like piano songs to me because I was doing a lot of transposing between instruments to see if the song was good. I would transfer it between instruments and say, “Yeah, it still has a message.” In doing that, I fell in love with “My Full Name” on the piano.

“Take Two” also started on guitar, and I was like, “I don’t like this song very much. I love what it’s saying, but I find it to be so boring.” It was a song that everybody on my team was attached to. When we got to Woodstock, the song came together on the piano before we were going to record it and I was like, “I love this song.” Something made me say, “Hell yeah.”

On a more technical note, I’m curious about the guitar sound for “Skeletree.” It sounds like a low-tuned nylon string guitar with a contact mic. What was it?

Killed it. That’s exactly what it is. There was this big bedroom with a tall ceiling and that’s where we stored the amp. The contact mic was also sitting in a really big room, which contributed to the fairy dust.

Very cool. Were there any other notable guitars on the record that were new to you or were just lying around the studio?

I used a hollow body for the bridge of “Break the Jaw.” I think it might have been a 330 or something. I really love that you can hear a crunchy, kind of reverb thing just break out for a second. I also used my Collings acoustic. I know I had that for a few, but mainly it was just that nylon string that I stuck with. A little bit of the Collings, and then that electric guitar once, for one section of a song, and then all piano after that.

I did play electric bass for “Golden Gate” and “Mummy” too.

Do you ever write on bass or play along with records on bass?

I do, and I wrote “Golden Gate” on bass. That line that you hear at the beginning, it started with that.

Do you have any advice for people who want to feel like they don’t have anything to prove, especially if they are working toward a platform in the process?

I feel like the thing that I’ve learned the most from is, even if you don’t fully have your sound yet, make it a mission to just make music you like the sound of. Even if you haven’t fully found yours yet, you will, by way of learning what it is that you love and what you like coming out of your own body and mouth and fingers.

I think the things that have spoken the most to people is going, “I can tell that you love what you’re doing.” And even though in my earlier years, you could definitely see a lot of comparisons, I needed those because those were the things that made me believe in music and what I was doing. And then I think those faded away and now this record is the first time I’ve ever been like, “This is what I’ve always wanted to make. This sounds like me.” It just took a minute, but I enjoyed the whole ride.

I also feel like I was never not myself. Everything that I did, I felt was a risk in some way or stretched me as an artist. … What I loved the most about making this record was that all of it felt in balance. Finally, my voice was the loudest.

That’s just because I finally, like you said, trusted myself, trusted the process. I knew enough to know that even if something isn’t working the first time, there’s always a second, third, or fourth to try. So, trust your curiosity and do whatever it takes to make sure your curiosity is above the fearful, negative self-talk.

Photo Credit: Sean Stout

BGS 5+5: Olivia Barton

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Olivia Barton
Hometown: Maitland, Florida
Latest Album: For Myself and For You (released October 10, 2025)
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Liv

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Last year I played my second ever headline show in Philly. Kind of everything was going wrong… The venue was weird, you could hear Mariachi music playing from the kitchen my whole set, the sound guy was (you guessed it) an asshole. But there were about 40 of the most passionate, present, beautiful fans there with me. And during this one song called “Fun” they started singing the lyrics so loud on the second verse and I just lost it. Sometimes I can miss beautiful moments like that, because it’s almost too much to take it in – but this was too good to miss. I started sobbing, like genuinely crying really hard, and they sang the whole verse for me. It was magical.

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

Carole King. She and James Taylor were among the handful in constant rotation in my house growing up. There’s a “chicken or the egg” situation here – do I relate to her because she shaped me, or did I gravitate towards her because I already had similar qualities within me? She’s earnest. She’s not trying to sound smart or unique. She’s saying it like it is and saying it with her chest. She’s gritty and sensitive. No fluff. Songwriting over production, always. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes fun, most of the time both. I have a lot to learn from her still.

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

I love abstract art. I’ve never considered myself to have synesthesia, but I do feel colors when I write. There’s this one abstract artist that’s done a lot for my music. Their name is Brit Chida and we’ve become friends. They make abstract art (mostly watercolor) coupled with their writing on trauma, queerness, finding joy – kinda everything. The first song on my record is called “There’s a Part of Me That Was Never Injured,” which is the title of one of Brit’s paintings. The painting and the title inspired me to write a song based off of that idea. Our deep friendship began from me asking their permission to use it.

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

Cook! My very favorite person is Julia Child. I’ve read and watched everything there is to read and watch about her. That’s more about me relating to her whole philosophy on creating than it is about me loving to cook, but I do also love to cook. I love food so much and I also associate my mom with cooking. When I was in high school she would light candles and pour a glass of wine and put on Norah Jones and sauté stuff without knowing what she was doing. So I do that now (without the wine) and if I wasn’t a musician, I think I’d go to cooking school and have dinner parties with my friends.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

Charli XCX. I mean, not totally a surprise, who doesn’t love her? But I have thought a lot about what it is about her music that I’m so drawn towards since our genres couldn’t be more different. I’ve landed on the fact that her records (particularly Brat) are direct, minimal, brave, candid, bare, and liberating. I would say those are all things I strive to do in my music too. But beyond all that, Charli teaches me how to have fun.

Photo Credit: Blaire Beamer

Ray LaMontagne After 20 Years of Trouble

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In the fall of 2004, it seemed like everybody was getting into Trouble. Even with that major label debut album, Ray LaMontagne managed to keep a low personal profile while maintaining the rigorous pace of a promising new artist. Meanwhile, the title track of Trouble got covered by that season’s winner of American Idol and ended up in an inescapable but kinda cute insurance commercial. Other cuts on the album ended up in films such as The Devil Wears Prada, Prime, and She’s the Man. In addition, Zac Brown Band recorded “Jolene” and Kelly Clarkson often performed “Shelter” in her shows (and recently revived it for Kellyoke.)

Now, LaMontagne is bringing Trouble back around for a 20th anniversary remaster and re-release (which dropped this summer) and North American and European tour dates set for 2026. He’ll be singing every song on the record to commemorate the collection two decades after its release.

“It’ll be interesting to see how my spirit reacts to learning these songs again, to going back and listening to them again in that way, to bring it to people again,” LaMontagne tells BGS. “I’m looking forward to it. And I feel like it’s important to do to mark this moment, because these are the songs that brought people to my music in the first place.

“Listening to it again now after all these years, I’m very proud of my younger self, for having the strength of will amidst all the pressures of the music business at the time, and about my writing and the way I wrote, to make the record that I did, and to leave the songs the way I wrote them and not take any advice.”

What was your day-to-day life like before Trouble was released?

Ray LaMontagne: Well, we lived off the grid. I was already married for six or seven years at that point. My two boys were five and three and we lived on a piece of land I bought in Maine. I had built a small cabin on it and we had a hand-dug well that we used for water. We had an outhouse. It was back-to-the-land living and that was just because I couldn’t stand renting. I wanted to have my own piece of ground. But it was really hand to mouth, and we were broke. And that’s putting it mildly. I mean, we were broke, broke, broke. I was working carpentry, sometimes seven days a week, because I would take anything I could get on the weekends just to get a little extra money, because I constantly was trying to improve the cabin. And I never had a car that ran.

You’d made some independent records before Trouble and I’ve read a couple of accounts of how you got your music in front of Chrysalis Music. How did that actually happen?

Someone heard me at a festival and they gave a disc to a college friend who was in the music business. Then he brought it to his boss. I went out and met with Hollywood Records first. I felt that I was in a room with a bunch of cynical people who made me feel kind of gross. I went back home and that guy called and said, “I think they’re gonna offer you a record deal.” And I said, “I don’t want to do it.” He said, “Are you crazy? What do you mean, you don’t want to do it? They’re gonna give you a record deal!” And I was like, “I didn’t like them. They made me feel gross.” So I went back to being a carpenter again, as I was, and went back to my life.

Then it was close to a year later when that guy called me again and said he had gone to a different company. Now he was with a publisher and that was Chrysalis. He said, “I played your stuff for my boss and he really likes your songs and is interested in you as a songwriter. Would you come out and meet my boss?” I talked to my wife about it and then I said, “Okay, I’ll come out.” I went out and I met his boss and played a couple songs in the office. We talked about songwriting and he said, “We want to help you as a songwriter.”

So, they were looking at you as a songwriter rather than as an artist.

And that’s how I got into the studio to make this record, because I was supposed to go in and make demos. What happened was, Ethan [Johns, who produced Trouble] and I met each other for the first time. We’re very different people and we couldn’t quite read each other. Especially at that time, I was very much a closed book, very much an observer. And he’s a type A personality, big ego, big presence, loves to talk – mostly about himself. And I don’t say that critically, I say it with humor! Anyone who knows Ethan will agree with me!

So anyway, it was this strange thing, but I began to realize as we were starting to record demos or talk about songs, that they didn’t really feel like these songs were finished. They thought they were promising. But I was getting a lot of input coming at me very quickly about, “This song doesn’t have a bridge. This song is just two verses. Is that even a song? This song just has four verses and then it ends. Is that a song?” And it was like that right down the line.

The first demo we recorded was “Hold You in My Arms.” We got to a point in the song where Ethan stopped me and said, “This song is just not finished. It needs a bridge.” He started throwing lyrics at me for this bridge and my shield started to go up. I thought, “These lyrics, first of all, aren’t right…” I was resisting and resisting, and he was getting more frustrated with me. He said, “I’m gonna go make a cup of tea. You write a bridge.” So, he went to make a cup of tea and I wrote an instrumental bridge by the time he got back. I said, “It’s just gonna go into an instrumental bridge and then back into the chorus again.” And he said, “OK. I’ve always been told you gotta do this in the moment. So how many points do you think that’s worth?”

I knew nothing about the way these things happen, but in that moment I knew what was going on and I knew why I was there. From that moment on, I was a brick wall. Nothing was changing. I was changing nothing. I’m recording the songs exactly as I had written them and then I’m going home. If you like them and you want to shop them around, great. If you don’t like them, I’m still going home. It doesn’t matter to me, but I’m not playing this game. So that’s what we did. We recorded this record, which is basically the demos the way I wrote them.

How did the recordings go from demos into becoming the Trouble album?

Six months easily passed and the publisher called me and said, “You know, the songs are just… no one wants to sing the songs. No other artists are gravitating towards the songs, but weirdly, record labels are coming forward because they like your voice and they like what they’re hearing, but they like it delivered by you. It works when you sing it, but it’s not working for any other artist.” And that led to the next step of going back and meeting record labels and talking to people about me as a performer, which was not even on my radar.

So it was a whole other challenge. It was like me against my biggest fear. I was much more interested in being a songwriter at that time. So, that’s how it happened. Slowly, and one step at a time, and one thing led to another, and led to another. But again, that’s why, when I hear these songs at this point in my life, listening to it again for the first time, it really hits me, just where that 28- or 29-year-old guy had that strength of will to know at a gut level that what I was doing had value. Just me being me had some value and I wanted to protect that. And it just makes me very proud of him.

It’s interesting to hear that no other artists wanted to record your songs, because when this record came out, a lot of people were singing these songs. What’s the personal reward for you as a songwriter when someone does take one of these songs from the album and makes it their own?

I really like that. It always makes me happy. I think any songwriter would be happy if even one song gets covered by someone else. You feel lucky if one song you wrote even makes it into people’s lives in some meaningful way. If you’re a songwriter and that happens to you once, you’re grateful. I mean, it’s just the truth of it. It’s like any other art form. It’s not easy, and it either will work or it won’t work, because music is a complex language. … It’s probably the same with painters, with dancers, with writers. You just don’t know if it’s going to connect to people, or if people are going to understand what you’re saying, or if it’s going to speak to them in a real way, speak to their spirit in some way. So I’m very grateful. I’m so glad that there are people in the world, all over the world, who understand my language.

Something that struck me about this record, then and now, is that dynamic in your voice. At what point did you become aware of that range, that you could go loud when it when you needed to?

I don’t really know. I feel like I learned to sing just by doing it. There’s some truth to this, that I really didn’t know how to sing even when I went in to make the record. But I was learning by doing it. I had gotten to a certain point where I knew when I was singing incorrectly because I would be uncomfortable or something would hurt in my throat. And I knew that that wasn’t the right way to do it. At some point, I realized you had to really breathe and sing from your gut.

In 2004, before streaming and social media, how did you find an audience?

It was just live shows. I mean, I toured a lot. A lot. And in the beginning, even being signed, I was still just like anyone. I was in a rental car, just me and my guitar, a box of harmonicas, and getting myself from one gate to the next. Those early shows, again, it’s no different than anyone. It’s two or three people and the next year you go back and there’s 20 people and the next year you go back, there’s a hundred people. When people connect to what you’re doing, they will tell their friends about it, and they’ll bring them the next time you come around. But there’s nothing anyone can do outside of yourself to make that happen. It either works – people connect to what you’re doing, to your performance, to the music, and then they’ll tell their friends – or it doesn’t work. But being signed to a record label doesn’t mean anything. It just means they’re investing and they’re gambling. And if you build a career for yourself, then they win that bet, and if you don’t, then they move on.

I’ve read that you saw Townes Van Zandt play a show in the mid ‘90s and I wondered how much of an influence did he have on your writing and your musical direction for Trouble?

I don’t think he had a real heavy influence. I wouldn’t say that, especially at that time. It was too early. I just remember being really moved by watching him play, for a few different reasons. It’s kind of tragic in some ways. He was right at the end, but I could hear the poetry in the songs. That’s what moved me the most, to hear a song and be so close to somebody, eight feet away from him, and hear “Pancho and Lefty.” That story was completely immersive and took me somewhere else. That was really the most powerful thing I took from that particular night. He transported me. That’s powerful. Music can be really powerful if you’re receptive.

To me, your song “Narrow Escape” feels like a spiritual brother to “Pancho and Lefty.”

Yeah, I’m sure it is. I mean, it’s my take on a story song of this kind. They’re very different stories, but I’m sure that’s my “Pancho and Lefty.”

There’s a reference to “Liula” in that song and I noticed that fictional town shows up again, now, as the name of your own record company. So, are you fully independent these days?

I am, yeah. I still have all my same team around me, but I’m making records on my own and releasing them on my own. That’s a natural progression, too, in the way the music business has changed. It was a very different business when I entered it and at this point, especially for me, there’s no reason to be with a publisher or a record label at all. I left my publisher a long time ago, 10 years ago probably, and the record label followed.

I did want to ask about the illustration on the cover of Trouble. It’s not a picture of you. It’s this beautiful image from Jason Holley. What was it about that image that worked for you?

I just thought it was poetic. I saw the poetry in it. You can take lots of different things from that image, but it’s also just a powerful image. And of course, I have always been reticent to have my photograph taken, or to use my photos anywhere. Which, you know, we all have these things. If you’re comfortable doing it, that’s great. If you’re not comfortable, you should feel you have the right to say no.

Other than seeing you in concert, I don’t know that I really saw your face that much back then, when Trouble was out.

I remember telling my manager, “I want to be like the Lone Ranger. I don’t need to be seen and to be known. Just leave them with the music. And that’s it.” You can imagine how that went over. It was really, really difficult, and there were a lot of frustrated people, I’m sure, at the record label and with management. It frustrated a lot of people because they felt like I missed a lot of opportunities that I could have otherwise had. I knew that at the time as well.

But I’ve always felt like I know who I am. I could say no to a magazine cover back then because I know that that’s going to be a day out of my life where I’m going to be miserable, and it’s going to make me uncomfortable. … I’ve never felt like anyone in the press or who had a camera really cares about you as a person. They’re not sensitive to you, and your well-being doesn’t matter to them. They’re just doing their job. And whatever they capture there, they choose what they want. If you have your head in your hands, if you’re doing this, if you’re looking miserable. That’s power and they’re going to use it.

So, I turned down all of that stuff. You lose that opportunity, but I felt, well, I’ll lose that opportunity, true, but you know what? I’ve got a show tomorrow night, and I’m going to sing my ass off, and people are going to feel it. And if they feel it, they’ll come back next time. That’s what’s important, to build a career that is sustainable. And to do that, you need people to fill the seats. If they don’t come out to see you live, you have no career. That’s all there is to it. So that’s the most important thing. And that was then, and it still is.

Photo Credit: Brian Stowell