Tag: Americana

Jerry Douglas on Boone Creek and Their Long-Awaited Reissue

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: This essay by Jerry Douglas tells a bit of the story of Boone Creek, a bluegrass and Americana group formed in the late ’70s that released one eponymous album. That LP has been long out of print, but in June was reissued by Craft Recordings. To mark the occasion, Douglas shares memories of the making of the album, which on its reissued edition features four never-before-heard tracks that you can also listen to below.) 

Once upon a time there was a band called Boone Creek. The name was taken from a beautiful white limestone-bottomed stream running past a house in the country just outside Lexington, Kentucky. The setting was also used as the location for what became the cover photo for Rounder 0044, JD Crowe & The New South.

The year was 1976 and my forever friend, Ricky Skaggs, and I had a dream for our own band. Our partners were Wes Golding for guitar and vocals and Terry Baucom for fiddle and vocals. A good start. We had no bass player, but soon recruited Freddy Wooten – who had never played bass, but played a mean Les Paul at the hot country bar downtown. He was soon cooking along with the boys, and our friends at Rounder Records offered a recording contract. We needed a banjo player and Terry remembered playing a little banjo when he was a kid. The “Bauc” style of playing this instrument would become an iconic mark on bluegrass music. Who would have thought of that?

We traveled together down to Nashville to the famous studio that housed Starday Records. We jumped right into recording so many songs, many penned by our guitarist Wes Golding and few old standards. Freddy made it through and even added some pedal steel to a couple tracks.

After finishing the Rounder Record, we felt as though we were just hitting our stride. We kept recording and Rounder kept paying to see what we had in us. A newly-formed record company also showed some interest. They were RSO Records and they sent A&R man Spencer Davis to Lexington to see us play, expecting to hear what we had recorded in our newly-minted ’70s soft rock band, Boone Creek. We failed miserably. We had a high-level meeting in the Pizza Hut next door.

We were playing as our bluegrass selves at a Food Town grocery store opening on a flatbed truck. Folks in the parking lot blew their car horns to show their approval. There was an old man named Jimmy Jones doing the emcee work. I kept telling him our band was called Boone Creek and he would wave his hand at me. He introduced us as The Rocky Road Boys for two days.

If only Davis could have heard us in all our soft-rock glory with horns, piano, and drums. Oh well, that’s bluegrass life. We were also offered a huge publishing deal by the Weinstein Bros. of NYC. That scared us back to Lexington and the recording stopped.

When it came time to collect the tapes, it was found that the engineer had absconded with them. We didn’t see them for another 35 years. Some of the tracks had another member, Vince Gill crooning some for-sure-in-our-minds hits. Unfortunately, these tracks did not survive.

Relentless sleuth and Rounder Records founder Ken Irwin located our tapes, but they were in terrible shape sitting on a shelf in a garage in Connecticut. After baking, de-molding, being prayed over by the local priest, and whatever else had to be done to bring them back to playable condition, we can credit the team at Craft Recordings, mixing engineer Steve Reynolds, and mastering engineer Paul Blakemore with a good bit of restoration and mixing these back to health.

We hope you again enjoy Boone Creek’s freshman effort, along with a glimpse back into the ’70s, where the personalities and young dreams of a band gone on safari were never to be completed. This effort formed who we are individually today, though unfortunately we lost Terry in December of 2023.

We thank everyone involved for their tenacity and forward thinking in bringing this remastered lost treasure back into the light. – Jerry Douglas

Image courtesy of Craft Recordings.

Andrew Sa Knows His Debut Album Is Yours, Too

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Andrew Sa’s musical career can be traced by a series of loops. The California-born, Chicago-based singer-songwriter first fell in love with music as a small child, listening to classic rock and country stations with his father, a retired touring musician. A few years later, he’d transition from listener to performer at his mother’s karaoke bar, where he’d charm crowds with Patsy Cline covers.

His broadening musical interests would lead him away from country in his teenage years, something he also attributes to feeling out of place as a queer person in an outwardly conservative, queer-unfriendly genre. The musical community he encountered in Chicago, where he landed after a stint studying theater in college, challenged the notion that there was no place for Sa in country. Immersing himself in that community led Sa to meet another musician who would be pivotal in his life: singer-songwriter Patrick Haggerty, who performed as Lavender Country until his death in 2022.

Sa tells Good Country that it was Haggerty, in particular, who offered him a sense of permission to make country that encompassed both his queerness and his love of the genre. And that permission emboldened and inspired Sa, who released his debut full-length album, American Rough, via Bloodshot Records on June 26.

American Rough takes the hallmarks of great country – intimate storytelling, colorful characters, a reverence for the emotive possibilities of the voice – and makes it Sa’s own, thanks, in part, to producer H.C. McEntire, who imbued Sa’s songs with a timeless quality utilizing unfussy arrangements with subtly countrypolitan flourishes.

Below, Good Country catches up with Sa to chat about signing to Bloodshot, losing Patrick Haggerty, and finally releasing a long-awaited debut album.

You made a big announcement in March, sharing that you’d signed a record deal with Bloodshot Records. How did that come about, and what does it mean to you to be on the roster of such a storied label?

Andrew Sa: I had heard records from Bloodshot Records, like the Justin Townes Earle records and Neko Case records and the Sarah Shook & the Disarmers records, but I didn’t know about Bloodshot as a label until I met a good friend named Kelly Hogan. Kelly has been on Bloodshot and she’s a part of a couple of other Chicago bands, but she’s a dear friend. She’s currently backup singing for Mavis Staples on tour, but she’s like a Chicago/Atlanta legend locally. She sang backup for Neko for many years and sang on a bunch of her records.

When I met Kelly – gosh, maybe 2018, 2019 – she was the one who had started talking up Bloodshot Records to me. But it wasn’t until we began shopping the record for a little while that Bloodshot approached us. Bloodshot, over the last decade, they have been going through it, and so they have what we would call the “new” Bloodshot. They’re owned by an umbrella company called Exceleration that also owns Kill Rock Stars, Yep Roc, and a bunch of other independent labels.

We were chatting with the folks at New West, and that didn’t go where we wanted it to go, but one of the guys from New West – he was very supportive of the record – he said, “I’m going to send this over to my buddy Howard at Bloodshot.” So, it’s funny how it went around to come back to Bloodshot, because Bloodshot is in Chicago. And then it was just kismet, honestly. Once we started talking with Howard, it just seemed right on the money. Alt-country – let’s do it, you know?

It sounds like American Rough was many years in the making, and that some of these songs are older than others. Was there a moment when you realized you might have a record on your hands, or when everything clicked into place?

Other than two songs – one of the singles, “Under You,” which was written for me by my friend Liam Cazar and then the song “Gorgeous Things” – other than those two songs, all of the other songs were written for the record. I’ve been dreaming of having a debut record for a decade now, and maybe more, but when I was a beginning songwriter back in 2011/2012 I would write song after song and, between the two of us, none of them were very good. But I would compile the list and I would say, “This is going to be the record, and I’m going to title it this.”

So, to answer your question, I probably got all of that out of my system before this actual record happened. Most of the songs, as I said, were written during the window of time that we were working on the record, ever since I started chatting with our lead producer and one of my co-writers, H.C. McEntire of Durham, North Carolina. That would have been about 2020 and the record was finished in 2024. Then, we finally hooked up with Bloodshot in 2025. The characters across this album are within the last five, six years of my life, so yes, it is something that spanned quite a long period of time, but the record itself took a long time to make. We really took our time making it, so the songs themselves, while they are new to everyone else, they aren’t necessarily for me.

Yeah, I’m not sure the average music fan realizes how much time artists often spend sitting on their music and waiting on a release date. Given what you just described, what are you feeling in advance of finally getting to drop a proper debut project?

I feel like this is very surreal. For lack of a better expression, at the risk of sounding cliché, it’s certainly my dreams coming true. I’ve been so excited to get these songs in the ears of people, and especially these recordings. I had such a deep, fulfilling experience making all of this with my co-producers and all of the players on the record, and I’m just so excited to share it.

My excitement grows with every single that I’m releasing, because people – at least the people that are in my sphere – are really enjoying it. It’s also unnerving. I do find myself anxious at times, just because you do all of the work and then you put it out there, and then it’s not necessarily mine anymore. It’s everyone else’s, and it’s up to them to love on it or not. I didn’t think that it would take me so long to have a debut record, but I really think that I did it the right way, for me. I’m kind of a late bloomer of sorts and taking my time has always really served me. I hope that that is reflected in the work for other people when they hear it.

To me, there is definitely a positive side to being a late bloomer. You’ve accumulated life experience and wisdom, and I would assume you would also have a stronger, fuller sense of who you are and what you want to make. Does that resonate with you?

Yeah, I grew up as a music lover, and in high school I started doing theater as a way to express myself. I went to college for theater and, while I still was interested in music, all of the skills that I developed as an actor didn’t set me up as the person who writes the story; it set me up as someone who could interpret a story. The reason I bring this up is because it took a lot of time and a lot of work – and, I would say, even failed attempts – to develop my voice as a songwriter and to really figure out what it is that I want to say and how I want to say it.

Then, along with that, I was developing my vocal instrument and understanding what is the true voice that I want to share, as opposed to all the voices that I’ve played throughout my past. A lot of the education that I got in acting and the experience of acting really helps me as a performer. I know that to be true. It’s just taken a long time to develop my voice – both singing and as a songwriter – and my unique voice that wasn’t me playing a character.

A moment ago you mentioned the singles you released ahead of the record, and one of those is “Lavender Cowboy,” a tribute to the late, great Patrick Haggerty. Talk about someone who knew their own voice! I know that Patrick was a mentor to you and it sounds like he was an important figure in your life. I would love to hear about the writing of that song and also what comes to mind when you consider his legacy, both as an artist but also as someone who was important to you personally.

Are you familiar with his music? Did you ever get a chance to see him perform?

I did, and I actually got to interview him once, years ago. It’s one of the true highlights of the work I’ve been able to do over the years. It really meant a lot to me.

Then you know just how kind and present he was. Patrick has a vast, loud legacy of his activism, which was always so inspiring to me. However, Patrick and I seemed to connect over tenderness, for lack of a better word. Humbly, I’ll say one of the things I consider to be one of my superpowers is my ability to be tender, to convey tenderness, to encourage tenderness, especially at a time like now in the world. That was something that we certainly aligned on.

I didn’t have many supportive male figures in my life growing up, especially when it comes to my queerness and uniqueness in that way – and thus my voice, my perspective. Patrick would often say, “I am your stepping stone to lift you up.” He was always affirming me. I didn’t realize just how much I craved that and needed that from, especially, someone like him, of his age and his experience in life. We don’t have a lot of our gay elders because of a lot of things, but specifically the AIDS epidemic. I often felt very lucky that we still had Patrick for as long as we did, considering he was such a slut back in the day. [Laughs] Country music was hugely important to me until I was a teenager and then it was no longer necessarily cool to me, and I went in search of other things and found a lot of inspiration in many other genres and artists. But when I met Patrick – I was asked to open for him – witnessing him and his stage show gave me permission to return to country music.

“Lavender Cowboy” was the last song written for the record. I knew I wanted to write a song to remember Patrick. I imagine that the reason that I like writing elegies is because of my affinity in my teen years for Rufus Wainwright, because he does that so well. I’ve written a few now. I wrote a song called “Dark Phoenix” about my first boyfriend, my high school sweetheart, who’s no longer with us. I wrote a song, even, about the fictional character Jack Twist from Brokeback Mountain.

In any case, the idea is to keep these characters, these people, alive after they’re dead or gone. Every time I sing “Lavender Cowboy,” I’m able to talk about Patrick. He is alive and with us in the room, if only for that three-and-a-half minutes. I knew I wanted to write a song to keep his memory alive. I also knew that I wanted to write something that wasn’t just sad. I wanted to write something that people could hear and feel pride. I wanted them to feel lifted, and I think that H.C. and I accomplished that.

Just to be nerdy, I write a lot in 3/4 or 6/8, so I really wanted to write an up-tempo song in 4/4. I went to his celebration of life, which was out in Bremerton, Washington, and I brought my tenor guitar out there, because I was gonna have some downtime in my hotel. I wrote the first verse out there and then I wrote the pre-choruses back in Chicago at the Old Town School of Folk Music, then [H.C.] and I wrote the chorus together, right before the day before we were going to record it.

You shared how Patrick was able to show you that there is a place for you in country music, and I know you’ve had a lot of involvement with the Cosmic Country Showcase and the country scene in Chicago. How does that community factor into where you are now, on the cusp of releasing your record?

I am forever grateful to the Chicago music community, both the fans of Chicago local music but also very much so the players in the community. I don’t know what the cultures are like in other cities, but Chicago is such a supportive place. Even though we are always going to be competing for certain opportunities, we’re not competitive with each other.

I do need to mention that I got my start in Chicago by making my start, and it’s something that I would encourage more people to do if they can find the opportunities to do so. My friend Dylan Matracia – he lives in New York now and goes by Matracia – we met working in a restaurant in Boystown, Chicago, and we both wanted to break into the music community. We were both young songwriters, baby songwriters, so we decided to start our own queer music acoustic night in Boystown at a bar where we knew the owner. That ran for two-and-a-half-years, and it was called Second Date with Dylan and Andrew. The reason I bring that up is because it really gave me the confidence to go out and try to get other opportunities, and it also gave me a platform that people could come and witness me at my earliest stages. It’s really hard to imagine how you get your first step into anything … especially as a queer folk artist.

When I started doing the Cosmic Country Showcase, that was the same year that I first opened for Patrick, and my return to country music was the year that Cosmic Country started. I remember asking Sully Davis – who’s one of the organizers of that event and currently my manager – he was the one who was booking the Hideout at the time, who booked me to open for Patrick Haggerty. I’m actually forever grateful to Sully for so many things. I said, “Hey, I know you’re doing the Cosmic Country Showcase. I’d love to sing like a Reba song or a Wynonna song or something.” Within a couple of years, now I’m the host, or one of the hosts. I was really searching for a queer audience for so long, and it wasn’t until the Cosmic Country Showcase that I realized that my audience was broader than that. I’m so grateful to that community who comes out to Cosmic Country for giving me that, showing me that.

Speaking of engaging the live music community, you have a string of shows planned for this summer, like the release day show at Union Pool in Brooklyn and then a late June show at the Hideout in Chicago, which you just mentioned. What do you most look forward to as you anticipate these performances?

It’s likely obvious that, since I’m sharing these songs, I’m very proud of them, so that’s one of the reasons I’m really excited to play them. I think that they concisely capture who I am, and hopefully they are open enough for folks to see themselves in them and make them their own as well. That’s what I love to do with music. I’m very excited to play places that I’ve never played before, because the few short tours that I’ve been on, just the sheer experience of meeting new people in new places – and seeing that what I do works there, too – is one of the most fulfilling, life-affirming feelings.

I’m very excited to play New York, specifically, because I’ve always had a love for New York, but also a fear of New York. And I dreamed of having a physical record to sell for so long. I’m very excited about having it in my hands, to give to someone else, of course.

Photo Credit: Alexa Viscius

BGS 5+5: Sweet Undertow

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Sweet Undertow
Hometown: Alphabet City, New York, New York
Latest Album: Days Without Names (releasing July 17, 2026)
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Fast Eddy; Slow and Steady Eddy

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

I read a lot – like a lot a lot. Language is such a strange thing: these agreed-upon movements of our mouths and these little scribbled symbols allow us to build civilizations. New York and Paris are built out of words way more than they are brick and steel.

And make no mistake, speech and the written word are the same thing as singing. When you order coffee or curse the guy who cut you off – you are singing. There’s melody and rhythm and all that in speech. So listening to some author build castles inside your head. It’s the same thing as song. Listen to Marx here: “You have nothing to lose but your chains.” Put it on a loop in your head, you’ll start to groove to the rhythm. The 4-on-the-floor beat marches like a dialectic. Or take Christ, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s music – you can imagine Kurt or Aretha or anyone else singing that line.

In fiction especially, narrative and voice and imagery and sound – it’s all there. You get to dig around inside of these lunatic genius minds all from the comfort of your own home for like 10 bucks a throw. And they don’t even really charge more for longer books – you can’t say no to that kind of bargain these days.

Read these and tell me I’m wrong:

One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Wind Up Bird Chronicle
2666
Infinite Jest
Blood Meridien
Never Let Me Go

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

It;s tricky. The word “artist” suffers a great deal of abuse from global culture writ large and the music industry in particular – from Subway’s sandwich artists to most of the “artists” you hear on the radio. But for artists, you’re born an artist and it’s a matter of how quickly you can find your medium. It’s long been said that the most dangerous thing in the world is an artist without a medium, and for me it’s hard to say when I found mine. I sang in a punk band in high school, then stole a guitar at 19 and taught myself to play from Muddy Waters records. And I’d play gigs from time to time, but it just never occurred to me to be a musician.

This is the important thing – it never occurred to me to want to be anything. I didn’t think about things in those terms. The best way I can describe my thinking at the time is this: Every year was so totally different than the year before that even the thought of making a long-term plan sounded laughable. Hubris in the face of the capricious gods of time. But I never even really had the thought. Being anything just didn’t occur to me.

So I didn’t have money or stuff or a home, but I traveled the world. Lived in half a dozen countries. There was love, adventure, terror, sickness, laughter, lonesomeness. Damn near got eaten by alligators and, later, a leopard. I worked as a firefighter, a garbageman, a teacher, a student, an organizer, a newspaper reporter, a salesman, and a security guard. Mainly a rambler, Odysseus-ing around, but not trying to get anywhere exactly.

But I guess if there was a moment when I realized I was a musician it was in Singapore. I was playing tunes at this bar in Geylang and this pilot named Spinks came up to me after, grabbed my shoulders, and said, “Brother, you’re a musician.” And like a punch to the chest I realized he was right.

Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?

Genre is 99% marketing speak – so it isn’t dead in as much as it has essentially nothing to do with music at all.

That said, Sweet Undertow makes country disco, outerspace Americana, hardcore folk, and babymakin’ rock ‘n’ roll.

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

People’s sense of surprise is their own business, so far be it from me to try and influence that, but here’s some fun facts:

When I get the blues (surprise surprise, I get the blues!) I put on the Rebirth Brass Band, Dr. John, the Meters, Curtis Mayfield, and Parliament. And while it doesn’t cure the blues, per se, it is definitely harder to be sad when you’re dancing.

And for the lightning round:

1) Marvin Gaye is maybe the greatest musical genius of the 20th century.
2) Django Reinhardt is the greatest guitarist player who ever lived.
3) Ella Fitzgerald is some kind of goddess who briefly took mortal form.
4) Standards by Tortoise – chef’s kiss.
5) My favorite band for a goodly while was Los Crudos.

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

If I couldn’t play music I’d jump off a goddamn bridge – it’s the only thing I like.

Photo Credit: Jessica Lee

It’s Time for Devon Gilfillian’s Country-Tinged Soul

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Devon Gilfillian is one of the most accomplished rock and soul artists in Nashville who many roots music listeners still may not know about. A self-described melting pot of music, the Philadelphia native is deeply inspired by the too-often-unheralded impact of Black music in Nashville and its influences on country and rock ‘n’ roll. Gilfillian’s hero, Jimi Hendrix, expanded the genres – and Hendrix’s connections to Nashville aren’t lost on him.

The amiable, passionate Gilfillian released Time Will Tell, his third major-label album, on June 26. Largely recorded at historic RCA Studio A in Nashville, the new album is inspired in part by the eclectic soundtracks of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, the oft-sampled David Axelrod music of the 1960s, the Shaft soundtrack by Isaac Hayes, and Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street.”

On “Hold On (Hourglass),” the project’s first single, Gilfillian sings over a galloping beat, spaghetti western guitar, and a choir about the passage of time and the uncertainty ahead. “I like that kind of swaying, or that western sound that is coming from a kind of cinematic place,” Gilfillian said from his home in Nashville. “I wanted to mix that country-western sound into that cinematic kind of world.”

In that post-genre spirit, Gilfillian co-produced his new album with longtime drummer Jonathan Smalt. The duo had major-league assists from Neil H Pogue (Tyler, The Creator and OutKast, among others) who contributed to the mix, along with sound engineers Michael Harris and Reid Leslie.

“Time” is a gorgeous opener with a rich palette of piano and strings. “Time, all we have is time, to heal it,” Gilfillian softly sings. “Cry, I don’t wanna cry, but I gotta cry, to feel it.” He then goes full Hendrix on “Black Dog Rabbit Hole,” his hardest rocking song to date, with lots of fuzz guitar and considerable sonic depth and instrumentation. “Let’s Stop Fucking Around” is old-school soul with harmony background vocals, and the funk-pop of “IRL” makes you want to dance as Gilfillian proclaims that he wants something real.

Gilfillian’s major label debut, Black Hole Rainbow, landed in 2020 after the pandemic took hold. Thoughtful, upbeat, catchy rock and neo-soul with Gilfillian’s emphatic delivery, the album was produced by Shawn Everett, a GRAMMY winner who’d worked with Alabama Shakes on Sound and Color and with Kacey Musgraves on Golden Hour, among other projects. Then, Gilfillian released his own impressive version of Marvin Gaye’s classic album What’s Going On during the pandemic shutdown to “lift up the Black voices in Nashville” with guests like Jason Eskridge, Ruby Amanfu, Joy Oladokun, Kyshona, and Jasmine Cephas Jones from Hamilton.

On his 2023 follow-up album, Love You Anyway, Gilfillian leaned a tad more toward traditional R&B and hip-hop, delivering the single “All I Really Wanna Do” in a falsetto voice a la 1970s Curtis Mayfield. Another highlight was “Let the Water Flow,” a gospel-style ballad about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and the attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Gilfillian’s new album is more personal than political, and BGS spoke with him about it recently.

This album has a bigger sound than your others. Did working at Studio A have anything to do with that? What was it like working in that room?

Devon Gilfillian: It’s magic. It’s truly magic. I was literally there just today for another interview. Just getting to go there and be in that room [was cool] because it was a year ago this week that we were there making the album. We laid down all the rhythm, the drums, bass, guitar, keys, and some of the time I sang at RCA in the studio. Most of the vocals were [done] in post-production, but I wanted to really bake-in the chemistry of that room and the band onto tape. That’s the main reason why I wanted to go to RCA.

Your music is always a bit eclectic, but the new album’s ode to the American west, most notably on the first single, “Hold On (Hourglass),” seems to go further than before.

Truly. My friend and amigo Mr. Ran Jackson, who I wrote the song with and who helped produce it, we were rapping about that and he nailed it. I came in and he had this track, he had the guitar, the chord progressions like ding-dinga-ding-dinga-ding, and I was just like, “Oh shit, let’s go. Let’s take this world [we created] and use that.” And I just poured out what was happening in my emotional world, which was my relationship that was not working out. That’s how that song started.

Your style really is almost genre-less.

Jimi Hendrix is my like North Star, right? And Jimi, he’s all the fuck over the place. He was playing with Little Richard, playing with the Isley Brothers. You know, he was learning by listening to Elmore James and listening to the blues. Then he goes over to the U.K. and he’s playing with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding [in the Jimi Hendrix Experience], and they’re like these folky, psychedelic, rock cats. They’re mixing in folk and psychedelic rock and then the blues and R&B, you know like fucking Isley Brothers, and all these things coming together.

When I listen to Jimi, I hear all of it. I’m not scared to take little bits and pieces of what I love and combine it with other parts and other pieces of other genres and, you know, see if it makes something tasty.

Hendrix spent time in Nashville, as you know, and in Atlanta as a backing musician at the Royal Peacock Lounge, from where he hit the road with musicians like Little Richard on bus tours of shows in the South. It’s so interesting to see how he was influenced by playing in the South.

He was stationed in Clarksville, [Tennessee, in the Army] right, for a little bit? I remember when I was in high school, I was obsessed with Jimi. It was like, “How did he do it? I want to know everything.” But I didn’t really know how connected he was to Nashville ‘til I went to the Jefferson Street [Sound] Museum. He was coming here and really learning from these cats, learning from people playing the blues and country and all this stuff… in like this fucking popping-ass, thriving Black, R&B, blues scene.

You’ve been in Nashville now for about 11 years. Is this sound just part of your soaking up the music in your adopted hometown?

The reason I fell in love with country music was because of a specific album that was made at RCA Studio A, and that was Sturgill Simpson’s Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Back in 2016, I had a residency at [Nashville venue] the Family Wash, and I was in love with this record of Sturgill’s that everybody loves. I was like, “Oh shit. Little Joe came in.” [Simpson’s guitarist, Laur Joamets.] He’s one of the best guitar players I’ve ever heard. He was like, “Hey, you’re pretty good. I like your band. I want to play with you.” So that was amazing. Little Joe started sitting in with us and played with us for so many gigs. That was how the buzz started building. It was so full circle that, you know, the inspiration [came from him].

I fell in love with Waylon [Jennings] because of Sturgill.

You had a lot of guest singers and friends from Nashville singing on What’s Going On. What approach did you take for the new album?

A lot of the crew that was on the What’s Going On album were the band on this album. Both my keyboard players, Josh Blaylock and Ryan Connors, and then also Nate Felty and Jon Smalt, of course, on drums. It’s all my people, you know. These are all my favorite musicians to make music with. We also pulled in Jordan Lehning, who’s an incredible string arranger, and he brought in Lockeland Strings and had them play on this album. That’s really the thing that injected so much beauty into this album. The strings are just so gorgeous.

Michael Harris, who engineered, he was our main tape operator [at Studio A]. He’s one of my favorites in this town or in the world. He’s a fucking genius, and he worked on Black Hole Rainbow. He was flying in from L.A. and I had him crash at my place while we made this album. I really did get to do it with all of my favorite people.

When we spoke in 2021, you were getting into activism. You donated the proceeds from your What’s Going On album to voting rights and other political groups. Where are you as an activist now? How much of it do you leave to your music?

I still use my voice to spread as much knowledge as I can about the shit that’s going on. For this album, I definitely wanted the music to just be a reflection of my life over the past two years, and of course, politics are always going to be part of that. These songs are just diary entries that I’ve picked from the past couple years. I just looked at the common thread between all these songs, and I was trying to make this relationship work. And it did end, but that’s OK, because there’s still love there and I’m grateful for that love.

Also, my dad had a heart attack [during the making of the album]. I had the realization that my parents are mortals. They can go at any minute, and you know, what are you going to do if that happens? You better fucking hold on to this life that you’ve been given, and to the people that are around you that you love, and you know, just be grateful for them and be as present as you can.

I understand this album is more personal, but have you had to adjust your messages at times to some extent, based on your live audiences? I know you’ve opened for mainstream country acts.

I’ve got to be conscious of where I’m at and the audience that I’m in front of. You know, I try to keep it as real as possible. Whatever’s on my heart, that kind of just comes out. But no, I definitely don’t feel like I can just speak freely anywhere, especially if it’s like in a “red” place, opening for an act that for sure has a pretty conservative fan base.

“Time” is a real stunner on the new album. Tell me about the arrangement, mainly with piano and strings, and how that song felt from the beginning.

It’s definitely about the end of my relationship. I wrote that song with Tabitha Meeks, an incredible piano player [and] singer-songwriter herself. She came over and we wrote one song, and then she started playing, basically “Time,” like the chord progression, and I sang, “Time, oh time,” and she’s like, “Wow, that’s so beautiful.” We didn’t have time to finish it, ironically, that day, but we were like we have to finish this song. A month later, we came back together… It was while my girlfriend at the time was living with me. She left the house and I was like, “Alright, let’s get this recorded.”

It must be a gift when it just comes to you like that.

I’m so grateful for how that one came. It really did just fall out, and it doesn’t happen that way all the time, right? I would say most of the time it does not. 100 to 99 percent of the time it does not happen that way.

“Glad to Be Here” seems to be about being present and was written after your father’s illness. You sing that it has “been such a long, long time since I’ve felt ease, letting my worries fall like leaves/ And I’m so glad, glad to be here.” Do that song and “Shines in You” come from a similar place?

“Glad to Be Here,” yeah, exactly. “Shines in You” is really about my ex-wife, and how that was the love part of it, you know. She is a beautiful person and there was a lot of love there and still is. There was a lot of love, but we couldn’t pour into each other the right way.

That and “Let’s Stop Fucking Around,” you know, they’re the ones that are like, I love you, I love you. Let’s do this, let’s make this happen. But then “Time” and especially “You Can Hate Me Now,” those are at the end of the relationship and the realization that it’s not going to work.

“Keep on Movin’” has some tight drums and horns. It’s still guitar-driven, but I hear the Neville Brothers, New Orleans, and Philadelphia soul in there.

There’s some Fela Kuti in there, you know, very Afrobeat, and my buddy [and co-writer] Ray Mason, my God. I tell you, he funked them horn lines up! He played in this band, Antibalas. I think they’re based kind of all over, but mostly New York. An incredible Afrobeat band. Antibalas was the band for the FELA! Broadway show. They did the whole Broadway thing.

We set up like a whole drum circle. Eric Slick was playing drums. He plays with [Philadelphia band] Dr. Dog and he’s a great artist. Our buddy Nate Felty, he was playing percussion and Jon Smalt was playing on a drum kit, as well. So, we have like two drum kits and percussion and other people playing some auxiliary stuff, all out in the big room [of Studio A]. We wanted it to feel like, you know, just like a party.

You work with some great talent. Who else was instrumental in helping you make this album?

Ran Jackson was absolutely such a huge force in this album, and he helped me produce “Hold On (Hourglass),” “Moonflower,” “Let’s Stop Fucking Around.” And Jon Smalt, I couldn’t have done this without him and his taste and drum sounds – and he’s a great producer himself. As far as arrangements of songs and knowing dynamics and all that stuff, he’s so good at that.

Michael Harris, who engineered, he’s incredible. We couldn’t have gotten the tape sounds that we got without him. Reid Leslie was our assistant engineer, but truly he was like the main cat in pre-production, during production at RCA, and post-production. We did post-production at Reid’s place. Those are, I feel like, the dream team. And then Neil Pogue, he mixed it, and I just love that man. That was cool to get to know him. Oh man, what a legend.

This album has some sad moments, but ultimately, it’s hopeful. With everything going on in your life and the world at large, what gives you hope?

I’m just a hopeless optimist, you know. I try to bring the good vibes. I’m always paying attention to everybody that’s in the room and making sure that everybody’s comfortable. But you know, hope just always ends up in there. If it is a sad song, I don’t want [the listener] to be left completely crushed. That’s just me. I really am grateful for that [optimism], because there are days that I get freakin’ depressed and smoke all the weed and just numb it all out and whatever. For the most part, I can wake up and smack myself in the face and go, “Wow, this life I have is fucking beautiful. I need to soak this shit in right now.”

Does the artistic community that you’re part of in Nashville help keep you going?

I feel like I stumbled upon like, a Laurel Canyon. The communities here in Nashville, my brain couldn’t have conceived how cool, how dope this city is in that way. How being a musician, you can have a normal life here in Nashville and have a beautiful community – and it’s just so convenient, too. It’s not L.A., New York, these big music cities. It’s hard to hang out with each other in those cities, because you’re an hour, you’re 45 minutes away, even though you’re three miles away.

Even with all the traffic [here], it’s not that hard. If you know what’s up, you can zigzag around. So, it’s the most convenient music city in this country. I think it’s the best music city in this country. You can put your team together, the business is here, and most people here, they leave their ego at the door. Because they know that everybody’s talented. It’s just about what you do that I don’t do.

Photo Credit: Travys Owen

The Other 22 Hours: Lukas Nelson

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It is easy to look at a lifetime spent traveling on a tour bus in a famous family and assume someone’s creative path was completely clear. We sit down with GRAMMY-winning singer-songwriter and guitar player Lukas Nelson (A Star Is Born, Promise of the Real, Neil Young) for an incredibly honest conversation about moving past the shadow of his father Willie Nelson’s towering legacy, and detangling his identity from the cliched drug-induced creative culture.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • AMAZON • MP3

On this episode of the Other 22 Hours, we explore the distinct clarity that arrives with sobriety, the physiological realities of keeping your body moving on the road, and how treating musical discipline like Olympic training allowed Lukas to fully claim his own voice. It’s a masterclass in boundary setting, honoring the natural muse, and discovering that a long-term commitment to your health and your relationships is the ultimate engine for creative longevity.

In This Episode:

– Lukas Nelson
– Promise of the Real
– Willie Nelson
– Merle Haggard
– Lady Gaga
– Neil Young
– Paramount Theater
– The Red Clay Strays
– Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia
– Willie’s Remedy
– All Things Must Pass

Go Deeper: 

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Matthew Berinato

Tift Merritt and Lawrence Rothman In Conversation

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In the nine years since Tift Merritt released Stitch of the World, she settled back into her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, where she is raising her daughter, Jean. Along the way, she stepped away from touring and began serving as a Practitioner-in-Residence at Duke University in Durham and renovating The Gables, an 18-room travelers’ retreat in Raleigh, set to open in July.

Merritt’s new album Sugar (released June 26 via One Riot Records), her first album of all new material in nearly a decade, was born out of the quiet moments of creativity off the road. Community, motherhood, and the wisdom that comes with age are prevalent throughout the stellar record, which was produced by singer-songwriter Lawrence Rothman, a longtime fan of Merritt’s singular lyricism.

“Before I made this record I was looking at the world and thinking, ‘I don’t know what to do except try to put some love out there.’ And for me, singing is the most honest, immediate way to offer love,” Merritt said in a press statement.

Merritt shares her joy through songs like “Finest Feelings,” about the possibility of new love, “Sugar,” an ode to the simple pleasure of using your voice to sing, and “Everyday Singing,” which features a women’s choir largely made up of educators and scientists who’d lost their funding due to cuts to federal research grants.

Merritt and Rothman met with BGS via Zoom to discuss creating Sugar, their immediate bond, finding sweetness in starting over, and the beauty of the second half of a brilliant career.

How did you first meet?

Tift Merritt: I first met Lawrence in France

Lawrence Rothman: The most exotic of locations.

TM: I was like, “Who’s this really nice, really well-dressed person?” I don’t generally do a lot of co-writing. I mean, writing is a really way down sort of personal thing for me usually. But this was in France and I was immediately put into a session with Lawrence and they were so fun, dancing and singing… I just figured that I would be the older person at this thing that nobody had ever listened to. I was like, “Lawrence is really nice and likes me.” They were so enthusiastic and so full of love. I was like, “I think that’s what I need if I’m going to come back out of my little hiding place.”

LR: We had a wonderful time our first time creating together, because we were parked in this beautiful hotel in the middle of the South of France. And we were all sort of disconnected from life and we were able to freely create. And Tift did a performance at the end of the stay there. We were there for five days and she did a performance with herself and a guitar and a looping pedal. There was a song that she played and I was just blown away by it. I asked her afterwards, because I didn’t recognize it, and it was a newer song.

That song – I believe it was “Pilgrim” – that you played on the looper pedal? That song just haunted me. It was in my head for weeks. I was hoping that I could get in the studio with her and record just that looping pedal song, at least, if not a whole album. Then she invited me to do a whole record and obviously that was a complete honor.

I’m a person who loves lyrics first, really. I’m kind of the opposite of your average Beatles fan. Melody is cute and fine and everything, but lyrics are, for me, what separates an amateur from an icon. Tift’s lyrics throughout her entire career have always blown me away. She’s, for me, a poet – a poet and a singer – but you never know what the next thing is going to sound like. When Tift started showing me this record in its very infant form – voice memos and things like that – and sent me the lyric sheet, I was blown away by how much her writing has progressed, too. I don’t even think about her past music now. For me, it’s almost like it’s a new era. It’s almost like part two of her career.

This person that she is today and the lyrics that she’s writing today and the story she’s telling today, I can’t wait to hear three albums of that. Maybe it’s the age that I’m at, maybe it’s just the life that I’ve lived now, but it just resonates to me in a way that I don’t find in a lot of singer-songwriters today. The stories that she’s telling. I don’t see it from the perspective of an older person. I see it in a lot of younger people and they tell it in a way that, I guess, is relatable if you’re 22 and going through something like that. But I want to hear what’s the heartbreak in midlife and what does that feel like? And what does it feel like to be alone without a lover and be over 40? And what does it feel like to raise a child over 40 as an only mother?

TM: I appreciate that so much. I just want to add, I think one of the things that’s really special to me about Lawrence and what we’ve captured is that I feel like Lawrence really understands that vulnerability is very rock and roll and sexy. Whereas in a lot of people’s hands, writing as vulnerably as possible or as honestly as possible or in an unguarded way, women end up being framed as fragile flowers and that they really understand that the vulnerability is very rock and roll.

Did you discover any similarities in how you both create?

TM: There was one thing I wanted to coda the last conversation with, which is that Lawrence has really made me feel like I was at the beginning. I did not feel like I was at the beginning, and [that’s] where you should be as an artist, [where] you feel like you’re just getting started. You just got to the good stuff, and I feel that way again. So thank you for that, Lawrence.

Similarities in terms of working, I just find that Lawrence is a very soulful, kind, warm person, and that we could talk about writing, first of all. Then in the studio, we really work the same way, which is fast. You can’t talk about what being in a band is like until you’re in a band. I think we’re both very free in the way that we love music and we just want to get in there to that place, so that was such a joy for me. Sometimes people make things much slower and piecemealing… and I just want to put it all out there right now with my voice. We had this amazing crew of musicians that were right there with us. I mean, I don’t think there was more than one song we did more than four takes of.

LR: I would say 80 percent of it, the take that you’re hearing is the take that Tift sang with the band. Either she’s at the guitar or at the piano singing, the band’s cutting it, and that’s the performance. The live energy of a snapshot of a performance at a specific time in somebody’s life are the records that I love. It’s hard for people to do those. You have to be in a mature, artistic state of mind to be able to be that vulnerable and also be that brave with going like, “You know what? We’re not going to patch it up. It’s just like this is the soul of what it is.”

I feel like over time when you listen back to records like that, you end up enjoying them a lot more. And with Tift’s record, I was so happy that we were both aligned with that. It was like, we’re going to go in there and we’re going to track this thing live. We’re really going to capture a moment in time that’s honest, that has all the imperfections and the realness of age, of soul, and heart and love and heartbreak–

TM: And process.

LR: And process.

TM: Why are we practicing? We’re practicing for these moments. It was very charged for me to be back in the studio and surprised by… I mean, I just felt so safe and so encouraged. I mean, Lawrence, the warmth was really a huge piece for me. I felt so safe and I felt like I could just throw myself in. A couple of times I thought my heart was just going to bust out of my chest singing like that. That’s what you want to be feeling.

LR: Tift and I – what’s great is when you meet a new friend and you have so much in common. We love Terrence Malick. We love the visual of what Terrence did visually. We love the same types of poetry, and the Stones, and Dusty Springfield. So it’s great because sometimes you’re working with somebody and you might have the same musical taste, but you don’t have the same visual taste. So there were a lot of things that we had in common. We even liked the same hotels and landscapes. We got to visit – whose grave did we go to behind the studio? George Jones. His grave was about 10 steps from the studio door. We had to go check that out.

TM: That was good juju. Lawrence.

I’m just loving your jacket. We’ve got to go shopping. I want to go shopping with you.

LR: We’re definitely going to do that.

Tift, I know you’ve spoken about this album being an offering of love and being a way of putting love and joy out into the world. How has creating this album helped you find joy in difficult times?

TM: I think at a certain point, I’d really made peace with being off the road, because my creativity was finding lots of other things to do, but– just looking at the world, the impulse to have a creative response is something that I feel almost with a sense of responsibility. As we all have, I’ve tried many different things in response to now, and I just kind of got to a point where I was like, “The only thing I can do is put love in the world and live my values and put as much love in the world as I know as possible.” Singing is the most direct way I know to do that. So, in one sense, it was very much a reason why to come back to the studio. I like that “why” for making art and for singing.

I think it’s very important to write about the messiness of being a human, the inefficiency of being a human. To inhabit that and live into that as much as possible right now seems also a political thing. I think writing personally is also a political thing. Living your life to your values and to the fullest and feeling as much as possible is a political thing too. So as much as I think this record is a creative response to the world we live in now, part of that creative response is intensely personal and intensely joyful and how thrilled I am to be here and to be alive in my good life, right? That’s an act of resistance in and of itself. Hopefully singing love into the world is too.

LR: One of my favorite songs on the record, “Mad Mad World,” I think sums up a lot of what Tift just said. A lot of the songs on the record address the anxieties, the heartbreaks, the loneliness of the culture of 2026: a lot of lonely people, a lot of isolation, a lot of disconnection. It’s hard to stay positive and stay alive in this era. Nothing that any of our grandparents saw in their lifetime – I mean, they went through World Wars and things like that, but we might as well be going through a World War right now. I mean, the amount of disconnection and non-loving vibes that are in the world is at a height. To have a record like Tift’s where it’s like, “Okay, I’m not alone. There’s other people that feel this.” I’m always connected to records as my way of dealing with sadness or loneliness or problems that I’m going through. My shrink is a good album. I get more out of that than actually going to a shrink.

I love the song “Everyday Singing.” I’d love to hear from each of you about creating that one.

TM: I’ll give you a little bit of the backstory about that song. That song is based on some letters that a woman named Rosetta Rietz – who was a Bohemian, downtown New Yorker, second wave feminist – wrote to her friend Dachine Rainer, who was an anarchist poet who had left New York City and upstate New York when her marriage fell apart and moved to London. I do an archival project with Duke University in a collective where we are looking at [Rosetta’s] papers from lots of different directions. She basically dedicated a good portion of her life to tracking down the erased foremothers of jazz and blues. And in this moment of second wave feminism in the ’70s, she’s looking at everything going like, “Why is that a male domain?” And she looks at jazz and she gets really angry that it’s a male domain and she goes, “I’m going to go find the women.”

And she did, and she joined these sort of circles of record collectors, which were all white jazz critics, and she was like, “Do you have anything by women?” and they didn’t want it, because they thought that the first period of recorded music from 1920 to 1927 – which Rosetta called the women’s reign – because 87 percent of the records that were released were by Black women. I know this because she counted them. They thought that was vaudeville. They thought it wasn’t “Integrity Blues”… They thought “Oh, these multitasking women, that’s not real blues, and we want the Robert Johnsons.” They weren’t making the jump from 33 and a third to LP – that’s a whole other story that I didn’t mean to ramble on about.

But in her letters back and forth with Dachine Rainer over a period of 20 years, she’s talking about being a single mom, she’s talking about being broke, she’s talking about making her own way. They’re talking about their ex-husbands, who are all depressed because they’re anti-nuke. They’re in the anti-nuke movement. They’re talking about Reagan and fascism and fascism moving around the world, because it’s happening in America. Then they’re like, “You’re divorced, you’re a phoenix and you’re going to rise from the ashes.”

I was like “Oh my God, this is like me and my friends.” It was so comforting. A lot of the verses are really taken from these conversations, inspired by the conversations that they were having. Then, of course, the idea of everyday singing, which is what my daughter and I do every day. The singing that comes from our houses and from living lives and showing up with love every day, that kind of singing is definitely a kind of resistance, and nobody can take it away. I just believe 100 percent that it’s the most important thing we can do.

LR: Wow, that was amazing. I knew some of that, but it’s nice to hear it again. For me, “Everyday Singing,” as far as my experience with it in the studio, was one of the [most] exciting songs I’ve ever tracked in my life. Because I love a challenge and I love when I’m thrown into the fire and I got to just be a grown up and make it work.

That day, our great drummer who we were using had a personal thing and could not come to the studio. So at the last minute, we were scrambling to find a drummer the morning of, and everybody was booked. We found an amazing person, but he was new to the group. We had already gotten into a roll and the way he played was very different than the previous drummer, and the way he played was very different than any drummer I’ve ever recorded. So it was a bit of an adjustment to my brain as far as like, “Hey, we have to deliver this song right now.”

The higher angels that put us in this situation to figure it out and to make some great art, and we did. It’s some of my favorite drumming on the whole record, actually. The sound of the drum set is actually a lot different, too. From the sound to the playing of it, it is just … I love it. It’s one of my favorite songs on the record too, and favorite production. Tift added the group vocals from remote from where she lives and we flew that into the final mix. Everything about it was not what I’m used to. I loved the challenge of how we did it. Sonically, it sounds like one of my favorite pieces on the whole record.

TM: I had this idea that it needed women’s voices on it. I said to some folks I work with, “Do you think that we could get educators and women who have lost their science funding and women who need to get together to do this?” and my friend said, “Oh yeah.” I mean, everybody who I asked came. There’s a friend of mine named Peter Askim, who is a conductor who lives across the street, and he came and he conducted it and we recorded it in The Gables. All of the women beforehand were really nervous and they were like, “We don’t know how to sing.” I was like, “No, no. You know how to sing.” We just had this amazing party. There was so much love in the room and everybody was laughing and dancing around and it was a wonderful night. I get a little teary every time I hear it.

Tift, one thing that struck me about this album is how you weave artifacts and history into your songs. I would love to hear from you about how your work in archives has inspired this album.

TM: My process really underwent a change when I started working more with material culture and archives. I mean, you don’t plan these things, it’s not transactional. I didn’t know that it was going to hang around with me, but I started collecting objects from site-specific places and really and truly listening to them like, “If you had a song, what would it be?”

There’s this real world context that material culture has. It has provenance, it has ingredients, and usually those things are really rich in language, and this context that they have brings a landscape of its own. Then the juxtaposition of that with more of what I call lyrical presences, but the more spiritual reality of the thing. That tension is a really interesting place to enter a song. It’s also just a really rich way to get out of yourself. I think there’s a real value of writing from a deeply personal perspective, but we are also deeply personally involved with the world as a collective and as a larger place. Spending time with objects is a really fun, rich way to get out of your own naval gaze.

Lawrence, does that resonate with you in how you write songs?

LR: Gosh, I’m such a researcher with things and really obsessed with people like Mark Twain and William Burroughs. I’ll go to people’s childhood homes and immerse myself in tactile things about the great writers that I love or the great songwriters or singers. So I can relate to that a lot, maybe more so than I would care to admit.

TM: Well, you and I have a … researcher bent in us that we share.

Do you have a favorite song or lyric on the album?

LR: Mine’s easy. Mine’s just the entire lyric, every line in “Finest Feelings.” I get very obsessed with certain things and that song is like my 2026 obsession. I forget that it’s even Tift and I. It’s just a song that I listen to – I’m going to cover it at my concerts. I mean, to me, it’s like when I heard Jeff Buckley for the first time. So every lyric in that song for me.

TM: Well, that’s so kind.

I have a hard time choosing, because I am really proud of the writing here and I think I’m proud of it as a writer, but I’m proud of it personally too. I uncovered some new spaces in me in writing this. I feel like just the song “Sugar” itself is earning my own respect from myself in a way… or holding my own space or power in a way that I probably could not have as a younger woman.

Do you have a favorite memory from recording the record?

TM: I think “Look What Love Just Did” was my favorite, because I tend to say, “Okay, let’s do the hard one.” We had saved [that song] for the end and it surprised me that it became this swagger. I was having so much fun. I didn’t see it coming. We were just dancing and throwing it out there and just feeling so free. So that was such joy.

LR: I think maybe my number one favorite moment was when Tift had her father come in [to the studio] and he’s got a big personality – the type of personality that I love. The first day [he was] telling stories and laughing, but there was a point on – maybe it was day two – we were playing back mixes and he was standing there and it almost looked like he was about to cry, but not in a dramatic way. I could just tell he was getting a little bit choked up. He was hearing his daughter’s music. I think he was a little overwhelmed, maybe he didn’t expect what he heard.

It was a really honest, amazing moment for me, because I come from a family where my parents are very involved with the music. They want to know what’s going on. They want to listen to it. They want to be in the studio like how Tift’s father was, but I never let them in the studio. After that moment, I was like, “You know what? Maybe I should allow them to come sometime,” because there was just sheer joy that you could tell was going through this man. It was just a beautiful moment. It was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever had in the studio, really.

TM: My dad taught me to play guitar and he has lots of opinions, as dads do. I remember thinking, a couple of days in, “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I better call my dad, because I don’t go in the studio that often and he needs to see this.” It’s really special.

Is there anything I didn’t ask that either of you’d want to add?

TM: When do we get to go back in the studio?

LR: Yeah, that’s what I can’t wait for. Like I said, a lot of great artists get part one of their career and part two, and Tift now has part two – like Leonard Cohen, like Nick Cave, like Lucinda Williams. I mean, the list goes on and on. Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave and Lucinda’s records that they made after they were 50 are my favorite ones. Leonard didn’t have his first hit, “Hallelujah,” ‘til he was 50 years old.

I love second-act careers because all that life that was lived, now you can hear it through a whole set of new songs and records. I just need people that I can relate to. I don’t know if it’s my age that I’m at – I love all sorts of music, but I just need to be able to have a group of records that I can listen to that are new, that I feel like I can find myself in. I feel like there’s a lot of other people that will feel the same way I’m feeling. So we need the Tifts of the world to keep putting out music.

I can’t wait to get [back] in the studio.

TM: I know. I’m trying to open a hotel right now. So I’m like, “Oh shit, I’m really going to have to write myself. I’m going to really have to write after this one.” When am I going to see you, Lawrence?

LR: God, I don’t know. I hope soon. … We gotta go shopping and have fun.

TM: I know! I need a suit. I need your help.

LR: C’mon. Let’s do it.

Photo Credit: Tift Merritt by Ebru Yildiz; Lawrence Rothman by Mary Rozzi.

You Gotta Hear This: Ricky Skaggs, Cameron Knowler, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Our weekly roundup of new roots music is here, get into it! You Gotta Hear This…

To begin, Georgia-raised singer-songwriter Sam Burchfield releases “One More Setting Sun” today. You might find this track at the intersection of indie rock and Americana twang, replete with fuzzy guitars and a certainly summery vibe. Burchfield rightly describes “One More Setting Sun” to BGS as a “summer bop.” Staying in Georgia, you’ll also find yourself bopping to the latest from Americana/country duo Surrender Hill. Infused with a touch of Southern rock and including delicious B3 organ, “Not Alone” reflects on the ups and downs of life and how, despite ourselves, those ups and downs can often lead us directly to the right people we need in our lives. The hope in the track oozes out in its tempo and forward-leaning energy.

From bluegrass, country and string band legend, Ricky Skaggs unveils his first new music in over 10 years. “Say A Prayer” isn’t a straight-up-and-down bluegrass number; instead it pulls equally from country and rock, bluegrass and gospel. It’s built on the intense conviction and spirituality for which Skaggs is known, driving his band to the soaring climax of the song’s final chorus and impressing upon his listeners the message of hope and faith in the track. You’ll get another dose of tasty organ with that one! Another set of bluegrass legends, Lonesome River Band, keep us in a seasonal frame of mind with “Summertime,” a new song that’s nostalgic in the way it text paints images of Southern summers. Get a sampling of the twanging electric guitar picking along with one of the most beloved bluegrass lineups in the genre.

LRB’s labelmates, Unspoken Tradition, have released a brand new album today, Heartwood. To celebrate the occasion, we’re offering a sampling of “All the Gold in California,” a bluegrassified cover of the Gatlin Brothers classic that’s properly barn-burning and energetic. The entire LP is great – we’ve premiered more a few numbers from the collection over the weeks and months leading up to release day – and this up-tempo cover song is an excellent addition to the new album. Elsewhere in our roundup, guitarist, archivist, and multimedia artist Cameron Knowler is giving us a sneak peek and early listen of his next single, “El Centro (Cassette Demo),” which releases next week. “I am consistently surprised by how ‘final’ demos sound on these machines,” Knowler tells BGS via email. “Oftentimes, I get so emotionally attached to a preliminary performance that I’ll scrap the idea of taking a given song to the studio.” You’ll get attached to the cozy, artful, and lovely demo, too.

For a Celtic flair, fiddler Maura Shawn Scanlin has brought us a new track, “The Good Ship,” from her upcoming album Rule of Three. Set for release in late July, the project includes Scanlin alongside fabled guitarist/instrumentalist John Doyle and engineer/instrumentalist Duncan Wickel. “The Good Ship” is a set of tunes – a medley – featuring a Scanlin original, “The Good Ship,” followed by familiar Irish favorites “The Dusty Miller” and “Cucanandy.” Get ready to dance to this one, too – that’s what a “hop jig” is made for, isn’t it?

Bluegrass, country, folk, Celtic – there’s something for everyone below. You Gotta Hear This!

Sam Burchfield, “One More Setting Sun”

Artist: Sam Burchfield
Hometown: Blue Ridge Mountains, Georgia
Song: “One More Setting Sun”
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Label: Cloverdale Records

In Their Words: “We’re just little eternal beings trapped in bodies trying to love each other and navigate the cosmos. The world is beautiful, we are in it, and we are part of the beauty. I wanna love you forever – that’s what this song is. What else can I say? It’s a summer bop.” – Sam Burchfield

Cameron Knowler, “El Centro (Cassette Demo)”

Artist: Cameron Knowler
Hometown: Yuma, Arizona
Song: “El Centro (Cassette Demo)”
Release Date: July 3, 2026
Label: Castle Dome Records

In Their Words: “This is the newest track from my ongoing cassette demos series. These songs are either made on my Marantz single track field recorder or on one of my Tascam 4-track machines. ‘El Centro’ is one of those that was made on my 4-track, making use of electric guitar, electro-acoustic, and found objects for percussion. I am consistently surprised by how ‘final’ demos sound on these machines; oftentimes, I get so emotionally attached to a preliminary performance that I’ll scrap the idea of taking a given song to the studio. This is an example of that process in effect.” – Cameron Knowler

Video Credit: Cameron Knowler

Lonesome River Band, “Summertime”

Artist: Lonesome River Band
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “Summertime”
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Summertime’ was sent to us by our good friend Sherrill Blackman, who has pitched us so many great songs from different writers. It reminded me of my summers as a child and all the things I did growing up during my school vacations in my hometown and spending summers with my grandparents. We hope it brings back memories for our fans!” – Sammy Shelor

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

Maura Shawn Scanlin, “The Good Ship”

Artist: Maura Shawn Scanlin
Hometown: Boone, North Carolina
Song: “The Good Ship”
Album: Rule of Three
Release Date: June 25, 2026 (single); July 22, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “‘The Good Ship’ is the second single out ahead of my new album Rule of Three, recorded during a rainy week last August in my West Asheville basement with John Doyle and Duncan Wickel. Duncan set up a DIY recording studio with baffles and quilts and all sorts of mics, and we sat down and played some music, tracking all together. It was fun to capture a pretty raw sound, blemishes and all – it was my intent to try to preserve the live feeling of playing music together in the same room. We hadn’t played as a trio all together prior to the session, so there was a spontaneous nature to the recordings that added some palpable energy to the music. ‘The Good Ship’ is a set of three tunes in the Irish style, one of my tunes called ‘The Good Ship’ followed by two traditional Irish tunes called ‘The Dusty Miller’ and ‘Cucanandy.’ I think of them as Hop Jigs, tunes that sit somewhere in the gray area between slip jigs and waltzes.” – Maura Shawn Scanlin

Track Credits:
Maura Shawn Scanlin – Fiddle
John Doyle – Bouzouki
Duncan Wickel – Cello

Ricky Skaggs, “Say A Prayer”

Artist: Ricky Skaggs
Hometown: Cordell, Kentucky
Song: “Say A Prayer”
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Label: Skaggs Family Records (distributed by Virgin Music Group)

In Their Own Words: “I’m incredibly excited to share my new single, ‘Say A Prayer.’ The song addresses a world carrying a lot of grief right now, serving as a universal call for everyone to stop and lean into faith. It’s got a chorus that resonates with faith, country, and rock audiences alike.” – Ricky Skaggs

Surrender Hill, “Not Alone”

Artist: Surrender Hill
Hometown: Ellijay, Georgia
Song: “Not Alone”
Release Date: July 10, 2026 (single); August 7, 2026 (album)
Label: Blue Betty Records

In Their Words: “This song sort of wrote itself; before I knew what it was about, it was done. It’s a reflection of my life and how through all the ups and downs I have somehow managed to hold onto faith that life would lead me to the right place and the right people. And, I think I found my people.” – Afton Seekins Salmon

“I had a pretty clear vision of the sound for this song. Having Dennis Parker in the studio was key. The mandolin and balance of his acoustic and mine was something I had floating around in my head. Matthew Von Doran did a fantastic job with the main solo. When he played that for me, I felt the immediate lift in the song and loved it. I had a hard time finding the right sound and feel for the electric guitar on the front end of the song, then I found a chorus sound that Nirvana used and that hit me right. That also felt appropriate as our son, Wren, has been listening to Nirvana nonstop for months. He even wants us to order him some Teen Spirit deodorant. Overall, the positive nature of this song is what made it a clear choice for the album and a single.” – Robin Dean Salmon

Track Credits:
Afton Seekins Salmon – Lead vocals, songwriter
Robin Dean Salmon – Bass, electric guitar, background vocals
Matt Crouse – Drums
Dennis Parker – Acoustic guitar, mandolin
Eric Fritsch – B3 organ
Matthew Von Doran – Lead guitar

Unspoken Tradition, “All the Gold in California”

Artist: Unspoken Tradition
Hometown: Western North Carolina
Song: “All The Gold In California”
Album: Heartwood
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “For me this is an interesting song because prior to recording this, I was not familiar with the original version. We all have our knowledge gaps – even within the things we’re passionate about – and Larry Gatlin fell in that gap for me.

“Jeff Collins, who produced the Heartwood album, suggested this song to the band as we were gathering material. We were looking for something up-tempo with a drive to it. The original version isn’t that, so this song was a great candidate for reimagining and putting our creative spin on it. It was a fun track to record. I’m so glad Jeff put this one in our minds, it turned out great.

“Even though it sounds like a fast-paced, trad-leaning song, ‘All the Gold in California’ bears a serious message worth heeding. To me, this song warns of being misled by money and fame. That world is heavily guarded, they don’t let just anybody in the club, so the idea of showing up and immediately making it big isn’t likely. So it’s best to stick to your identity, values, traditions, and work ethic to get where you want to be.” – Audie McGinnis

Track Credits:
Audie McGinnis – Acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Sav Sankaran – Upright bass, harmony vocal
Tim Gardner – Fiddle, harmony vocal
Ty Gilpin – Mandolin
Zane McGinnis – Banjo

Photo Credit: Ricky Skaggs courtesy of Skaggs Family Records; Cameron Knowler by Steven Perlin.

Basic Folk: Alela Diane

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Back in the mid 2000s Alela Diane‘s The Pirate’s Gospel album was ringing my bell and, apparently, it was ringing a lot of other people’s bells, too – especially Europeans. Her debut album, it went gold in France and she’s been able to maintain a pretty decent audience and career across the Atlantic ever since. Meanwhile, at home in the States – she’s based in Portland, Oregon – after 2013, she remained relatively unknown and undiscovered. That was just fine with her. She worked on her music, occasionally flew over to Europe to tour, played local gigs, and raised her two daughters with her husband in their 1892 Victorian mansion. While they were renovating their crazy old house, they also got their daughters a landline and a CD player each, along with their gifting them their old CD collections. Everything was pretty chill and great. Then her friend and mentor Michael Hurley, “the godfather of freak folk,” died last year at the age of 83.

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After playing a tribute show to Michael, she started connecting more with her Portland music community. She would go to shows, invite people like Anna Tivel over, and started collaborating with others in town. This all led to her new album, Who’s Keeping Time? This time around, she is going full bore on a huge tour, traveling roughly 40% of the time from May through December of this year. It feels like a huge return for the singer-songwriter who is feeling so inspired by creating, collaborating, and being in community again.

Photo Credit: Lead image by Caleb Gaskins. Alternate images by Camille Bruya, and Kelsey Gallagher.

Ringo Starr and T Bone Burnett in Conversation

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On a sunny day in late April, I stood outside an ad hoc interview room at the Sunset Marquis in West Hollywood waiting for my turn to speak to Ringo Starr.

Sporadic laughter boomed through the door as the hazy afternoon light danced on the doorknob hanger. Instead of the usual “Do Not Disturb,” this one simply said, “Peace.” The verbiage, apropos for Ringo, served as one part levity and one part beta-blocker as I prepared to speak to a Beatle.

When the door opened, I was surprised and delighted to come face to face with Phil Rosenthal (of Somebody Feed Phil). The unabashed smile on his face foreshadowed the similar joy I would feel taking the same steps through that door just 25 short minutes later.

And yet another revelation unfolded as I walked in the room to find both Mr. Starr and T Bone Burnett, producer of Ringo’s newest album, Long Long Road. The ensuing discussion covered their relationships with genre, synesthesia, and inevitably bobbed and weaved across the rich musical history of these two icons.

Do I get both of you today?

Ringo Starr: Yes!

Excellent!

T Bone Burnett: Only if you want.

RS: Hi. I’m Ringo.

Ha! Yes. The man of the hour. How are you?

RS: Good. Excellent.

Thank you so much for having me.

RS: Oh, it’s our pleasure.

TB: Her dad is a great songwriter, a great guitar player from Muscle Shoals.

RS: We were just talking to someone else about that today.

Really? You were talking about Muscle Shoals today?

RS: Well, we didn’t actually mention it, but we were talking about the music that, for me, started with Johnny Ray and people like that. I was a teenager, and then it went up to country music, and then I got into blues music, and then I got into pop of the day music.

I love country music. And he’s the country boy [as he points to T Bone Burnett].

That’s a fantastic segue to my first question. So as we mentioned, I grew up in Muscle Shoals, and I had this record player that was a little battery-operated blue Volkswagen bus. Do you remember these?

TB: Yeah, I do!

It would ride around the record, and it had a little speaker in it, and I would lay on the ground, and I’d listen to Abbey Road. But it was also around the same time that the video for “Act Naturally,” the duet with Buck Owens, came out. So, for me, you were very genre-fluid from a very early age. I’m curious about a couple of things genre-wise, and T Bone, please jump in on this too.

TB: Okay, I’ll jump in, and I’ll say that the Beatles probably invented what became known as “country rock.” You know, with “I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party.”

RS: And what were the two that were Carl Perkins?

TB: “Honey Don’t” and “Matchbox.”

RS: “Honey Don’t” was the best line I ever heard.

TB: Yeah, it is a killer title.

RS: “Matchbox” was a blues song, really.

TB: Well, “Matchbox” was an old Blind Lemon Jefferson song.

RS: Yes. The interesting thing is I did those in the ’60s, and we just found a Carl Perkins tune that we’d never heard, and we’ve done it on this record. “I Don’t See Me in Your Eyes Anymore.”

I love it.

RS: It is so beautiful and he was just a cool guy. You know, I was a teenager when I first heard him, and it was like, “Oh yeah!”

T Bone: Yeah, he was cool. He, [Carl], had heard “Matchbox” or his dad had heard it by Blind Lemon Jefferson, but they could only remember a few words of it, so he rewrote it as a rockabilly song.

So you knew of country music when you were growing up, you were aware of it.

RS: I did. I was aware of country music. I loved it because it was emotional, and I was a teenager. That’s what we are at that age.

[Ringo singing:] “ Well the wife is dead and I’m leaving home. I got no money for the jukebox.”

Perfect for teenagers.

When I say the words “country music” to you now, what do you think of? Who or what or how do you think of it?

RS: I still think a lot about the people from yesterday, who I came in with. You’ve got to say Willie. I mean, he’s magical and still out there. Thank you, Willie. And who used to open for Willie?

TB: Waylon?

RS: Waylon! He was great. I have to think back.

TB: Well Hank Williams…

RS: Well, no, Hank was where we came in. And Hank Snow. No one mentions him. He was Canadian. Patsy Cline. There’s too many really.

I was talking to someone the other week and they asked, “What is your all-time favorite record?” I couldn’t answer. There is too much that I love. “Who’s your favorite artist?” I start with Ray Charles. And Stevie, and down that line. But I can’t answer it. We were on TV, and I stopped it. I said, “I just can’t answer.” There are too many in my life to say, “That’s the one.”

Plead the 5th.

Do you ever feel constrained by genre? Or inspired by it? What is your relationship with the idea of it?

RS: I’m a pop-rock music drummer. I’ll play whatever you’re gonna give me. If you want it heavy, I’ll hit the cymbals. Heavy metal has some great acts going down. We would jam sometimes and be that.

TB: Oh, well, I mean, the Beatles invented heavy metal, really.

RS: Yeah. It’s just playing the same shit, but heavier.

TB: “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey” or “Helter Skelter.”

RS: “Helter Skelter” was a jam. We had no song, nothing, we were just jamming, and then Paul came in with, “Hey! Helter Skelter.” Like “Say It’s Your Birthday,” there was someone in the newspaper who we knew, and it was their birthday, and we were jamming. Paul stepped up again, and we got another song. We were like that. You could jump in, any one of us could jump in. I’ve got odd lines we aren’t gonna talk about on certain tracks.

[A publicist chimes in to say:] “T Bone you have five more minutes before you have to leave and then you’ll go and he’ll stay in.”

RS: And then I’ll go and then you’ll stay in. [Laughter]

Well, let’s go back to the Volkswagen.

RS: Let’s get back to it.

Because I have a little bit of synesthesia, I think.

TB: I have that, too.

RS: What have you got?

TB: I see colors when I hear music.

RS: Oh, great!

So, “Octopus’s Garden” was very purple for me. “Act Naturally” is very orangey gold. I’m curious if you’ve ever experienced anything like that. And if it’s not colors, if there are certain textures that you’re looking for in a song, when you’re casting songs for an album? And T Bone, this question’s for you too, since you have it.

RS: T Bone will give me a lot of songs, and I listen to them and I picked my six at the beginning. There were only three I didn’t use. That’s how we started this. In the end, we were talking in my little studio and I said to him, “How many songs have you got?” And he had nine. It gave me the courage to ask him if he would produce the record. All the songs were not on my mind; we were just hanging out like two guys. But it turned into a fellowship.

TB: Well, I can tell you that the Beatles stuff that first came out was very dark blue, all of it. “Don’t Bother Me” especially was the most dark blue of them. It was interesting that the album cover that first came out over here [in the U.S.] was dark blue. So it all sort of coalesced, I think.

That was one of those blessed moments that happen occasionally on earth, you know? Where everybody heard the same thing at the same time.

Absolutely.

RS: I never saw colors. I mean, I did see colors some days… You know what I mean?

[All laugh]

RS: When I listened, it’s how I felt. A sad song, a happy song, a rock song– some of it will move you, and some of it moved me.

TB: Well, I’d better go. But thank you, great to see you again.

Yeah, you too. Nice to see you again.

[As T Bone got up to leave, his wife entered the room and chatter ensued, but he added before walking out the door:]

TB: By the way, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was very dark blue.

Well, you know, what’s funny is, I had a synesthesia question for Ringo about you, because I didn’t know you were going to be here. But I was going to say that your musical color and texture is exactly like what you are wearing, to me.

TB: Oh, is that right? That’s wild. Thank you! Nice to see you all.

RS: God Bless, peace and love!

Tell me about what it is like for you working in Nashville? Tell me what it feels like working with those players.

RS: I did have experience in the early ’70s when Pete Drake invited me to come, because we were working on a George Harrison record. You know, we keep talking about the steps we take, the moves we make. And I was there with George, and I’m playing for him and he’d called Pete – I didn’t know Pete. Pete had landed at Heathrow, and the car George was sending broke down, so we sent my car. And then he arrived. “Hey, hoss, I see you like country music.”

“Yeah, yeah, I do. How do you know?”

He said, “All those cassettes in your car.”

And then a few days later, he’s saying, “You should come to Nashville.” And I thought, “I’m not going to Nashville. I’m doing stuff here. I don’t have a month or six weeks to go to Nashville.” He said, “A month? Six weeks? Nashville Skyline took two days.” And I said, “I’m coming.” And I went, and we did the same thing.

On the first day, five songs were picked in the morning. Between us, we listened to them all. Five songs were recorded, and five songs were finished. And the next day, we picked five songs. Anyway, it went on the same way, and it was finished. And it took two days, so that was great.

Well, Ringo, you have one of the finest reputations in the music business.

RS: As a drummer or else?

EM: As a drummer, as a human.

RS: Or as a tall person?

The tallest around.

Just for being so kind to people and emanating peace and love, obviously. And you’ve been such a beacon of that for so many decades. Especially in the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about that, after finding out that I was going to talk to you. I was curious, I’m sure it’s mostly innate, but do you ever feel like it’s a responsibility – in terms of how you are in the public, in terms of what songs you’re picking? I’m particularly thinking of “Choose Love.”

RS: I just do my best, you know, to pick the songs that give you some movement, and you say, “Oh, I’d like to sing that.” That’s what I’m with these two country songs with T Bone. I mean, I don’t really do it in a political way, that it says this or that. It’s usually peace and love. If I write it, it’s always peace and love – I don’t know what the question was.

Just wondering if it ever feels like a responsibility to you.

RS: You know, I’ve had many a good year, but some years I’ve made really bummer mistakes. It’s like that’s when your brain wins. I mean, even on this record, I’ve got the lines about “let the stuff come in, but let it go.” And I’ve been pretty good at that for a long time. Not that it’s every second of my life. Sometimes it gets in. And it stays in your thoughts. Then you’re in hell. I’m blessed that that doesn’t happen half as much anymore. I can just dump the thought that comes in and deal with whatever it is.

I was going to ask you about that line in particular, because I think it does this beautiful job of talking about a meditative quality of finding peace without being preachy or telling people “how to” and I really love that.

RS: I meditated this morning. I meditate every morning, this time since ‘92. You know, we went to the Maharishi in India with the boys. And I was worried, you know, “Am I doing it properly?” I was talking to him [Maharishi] and he says, “Ringo, even if you fall asleep, you must have been tired.”

And it taught me a great lesson. I was into like, madness and stuff, you know, “It must be this. It must be me. What’s the problem?” And now I get quite calm.

That’s wonderful. Yeah. It comes across on this album. You’re talking about your own experience and that’s–

RS: What else can I talk about? I can’t talk about yours, you know? But thank you.

Tell me about the band that played on this record.

RS: T Bone’s whole band is great. The rest of Nashville is so great. They all came out to help me. To be there. It is in my heart.

Last January, when I was there and back three times. And every time when I’ve played at the Ryman… I’ve been playing there for the last 15 years with the All Stars, but when I go on that stage, I feel all the guys and all the gals who stood on that stage.

And then what happens? The Grand Ole Opry invited me to do three songs. And I go on that stage that has the Ryman circle that the singers stand on. It is magical. For me, coming from England, it was really magical to get on that stage. And the people are great. It is built for music coming out and hitting everybody, because it was a gospel church. I’m still moved. I get on the stage, and I have to go through a minute of, “Wow, wow!”

Photo Credit: Dan Winters

The Other 22 Hours: Judy Collins

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“We write to find out who we are.” For over six decades, Judy Collins has been a pillar of American music: from a GRAMMY award for “Both Sides Now,” two platinum records, and an Oscar nomination to writing more than eight books and landing her first No. 1 album at 80 years old.

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But behind the staggering accolades is an artist who still treats her craft as a sacred, daily blue-collar job. In this episode of The Other 22 Hours, we explore the quiet discipline of her daily routines, the sanctuary of her 48 years of sobriety, and what she calls the “secret channels of songs.” Judy shares her philosophy on processing grief through poetry, the necessity of maintaining community in a solitary profession, and turning off the noise to protect the soul.

In This Episode:

Judy Collins
Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Antonia Brico
Mark Ruffalo
Spotlight
Hemangioma
“The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” – Bob Dylan
Ep 100 – Rosanne Cash
Ep 16 – Rodney Crowell
Telluride Bluegrass Festival
Jo Stafford
Barbara Allen
Al Kooper
Al Grossman

Go Deeper: 

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Patrick Donovan