Artist:Leon Creek Hometown: Los Angeles, California Song: “High Hopes” Release Date: June 28, 2023
In Their Words: “The origins of Leon Creek as a band stems from our love of story songs in the country tradition. ‘High Hopes’ incorporates this approach, creating a song that is our ode to perseverance. We got the band together in the studio and cut this to capture the energy of our live show blending newly-mined honky-tonk influences with our singer Chris Pierce’s powerful soul vocals.” – Leon Creek (Chris Pierce, Matthew Stevens, and Erik Janson)
Artist:The Chuck Wagon Gang Hometown: The current members are pretty scattered, but The Chuck Wagon Gang originated in Fort Worth, Texas Song: “I Will Not Cry Today” Album:Come Go With Me Release Date: June 30, 2023 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “Our main focus for this Chuck Wagon Gang recording was to find new songs. We had received several from writer Tami Pockstellar, who had written ‘Two Gardens’ from our previous project. Tami’s lyrics and melodies capture the freshness we were searching for, and ‘I Will Not Cry Today’ is a perfect example. It was challenging but fun to add this exciting bluegrass-styled song. I really believe these lyrics will be uplifting to listeners because they encourage us to keep pressing on, no matter the situation we find ourselves in.” – Shaye Smith, The Chuck Wagon Gang
“’I Will Not Cry Today’ was a great opportunity to feature The Chuck Wagon Gang as a trio and bring in some bluegrass-styled accompaniment, which the group wanted to feature on this album. The bluegrass world has always had a kinship with the music of the original Chuck Wagon Gang and it was special to be able to blend the two worlds together on this new song for the Gang.” – Jeremy Stephens, producer
Artist:Christian Parker Hometown: Canton, New York Song: “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” Album: Sweethearts Release Date: August 18, 2023
In Their Words: “I first heard this song by Bob Dylan on an acoustic guitar. But I was hooked when I listened to the opening pedal steel guitar from The Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo album. This song has been in my repertoire for decades, and it felt like I was recording an old friend! Tracer James’ interpretation of Lloyd Green’s pedal steel guitar perfectly opens the Sweethearts tribute. Earl Poole Ball played piano on the original album; hearing him on this tribute is a testament to his influence on the 1968 classic album! ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’ is the opening track on the Sweethearts album, and it sounds like a train leaving the station and moving on down the tracks.” – Christian Parker
Caitlin Canty is in the middle — in the middle of moving houses (behind her when we connected on Zoom this spring is a Jenga tower of bankers boxes) and in the middle of prepping an album release, which we’re in the middle of talking about when she isn’t in the middle of pushing a pair of overeager dogs from her lap (“These dogs!”), all of which is taking place in the middle of her toddler’s nap.
The moving, the music, and the motherhood are taking place in the middle of her life (Canty turned forty-one in January) and the middle of her career: Quiet Flame, her latest record, is her fourth.
Oceans of ink have been spilled on beginnings and endings, on best new artists, and lifetime achievements. We rarely think about the middle, write about it, or sing about it. But Caitlin Canty does.
Quiet Flame is a dispatch from — and a celebration of — the middle; it is a testament to the in-between, to the precious spaces between day and night, birth and death, here and home. It is also a rallying cry, a call not to run from middle moments, but to revel in them. “Breakneck boy goes speeding by / In a hell-bent race to some finish line,” Canty sings on the album’s opening track, “Blue Sky Moon.” “I ain’t going with him… Gonna take my time in the middle of the road.”
This is a new message for Canty, one that asks the listener not to “get up before the road pulls you under,” as Canty sang on 2015’s Reckless Skyline, but to accept the road as it is, accept that it may pull us under, and enjoy the ride. “If the pandemic and [2020 Nashville] tornado taught me anything,” Canty says, “It’s all the things I thought I could control are out of my control. The natural world is beautiful. It’s also terrifying,” she exclaims with a half laugh, “it can just crush you in a second.” (That tornado missed her house by thirty feet.)
This new vision, however, hasn’t diminished Canty’s optimism. With a heightened sense of all that is lost and lose-able, Canty offers not less hope, but more. “Let it roll, let it ride / Let your sweet heart open wide,” she sings on “Pull the Moon.”
“I let go of a lot of things I thought were my fault, or my responsibility, things I thought I could do everything about, or take care of, or succeed at,” she explains. “And what I found was an ability to be happy in devastating moments in time. Even when it gets dark and troubled, to find a way not to ignore that — to address it — but to stay buoyant.”
It is this clear-sighted courage — what amounts to Canty’s profound musical and lyrical authenticity — that not only sets Canty apart, but draws so many of the acoustic world’s greatest artists into her corner. “Caitlin just has such a magnificent view of the world,” Grammy Award-winning guitarist and Quiet Flame producer Chris Eldridge says. “It’s so strong and true and clear and honest. You just believe it.”
Among those drawn to Canty’s vision — to her clarity, honesty, believability — are some of the greatest artists in contemporary music, making the Quiet Flame band a bona-fide acoustic supergroup: on banjo, mandolin, and harmony vocals you have singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz (another Grammy winner); on bass, Paul Kowert of Punch Brothers and Hawktail (yet another Grammy winner); and on fiddle, Brittany Haas (also of Hawktail and the newest member of Punch Brothers), who is widely considered the greatest fiddler of her generation.
“Every artist has a vision,” Kowert says, “But I specifically would say I believe Caitlin. I believe her about what she’s seeing in the songs.”
“There’s such conviction,” Haas adds. “It’s so clearly from the heart.”
For Jarosz, Canty’s super-distinction is the totality of her authenticity and an unusual ability for Canty to “sound like herself” in every domain of her artistry. “Her ability to be herself within her songs has always been very obvious to me, before I even knew her,” Jarosz says. “My favorite singers sound like themselves when they’re talking — their singing voice is a genuine extension of them, their personality. Tim O’Brien has that, Gillian Welch has that, Caitlin has that. It’s almost like Caitlin’s voice is so true —it’s like it’s not an option for her to be anyone but herself. And the songs are also that way.”
The songs of Quiet Flame mark not only a musical achievement, but an achievement of spirit. “It takes a very self-assured, fully realized human being to be able to make a record that’s this exposed,” Jarosz continues. “The record takes its time. It takes a very mature musician — and person — to have the courage to let these songs unfold the way they do.”
It is no small feat that Canty manages to make this deliberately slow journey, this taking our time in the middle of the road, so arresting. Such is a testament, of course, to the music as music; to Canty’s voice (“Caitlin, in her way, is as good a singer as exists,” Eldridge says); to her effortless melodic sensibility; to what Haas calls the unusual “variety and diversity of what [her] songs are like, what they allow and make room for texturally.” It is also a testament to the production vision of Eldridge, who Canty calls the perfect “co-pilot,” and to his attention to the “big picture.”
Each member of Canty’s bandoffers a tour de force on their instruments. In Canty’s words, Kowert is a “Multi-instrumentalist on his instrument… essential, the strongest foundation… my favorite bass player I’ve ever played with”; Haas is a “Flamethrower! Her fiddle is an electric guitar! It’s grit and mournfulness — not sad, defiant; not sorrowful, defiant”; Jarosz is “Just insanely good — insanely good singer, insanely beautiful instrumentalist — the most solid partner; she held it down!”
In turn, the band is quick to praise the rare musical freedom Canty affords them. “She makes so much space for other musicians in her music,” Haas says. “She’s really good at being like, ‘I hired you to be you,’ instead of, ‘I want you to do this very specific thing that involves only playing these four notes.’”
The result? The band gets to see their true selves in the work — even their best selves. “‘Odds of Getting Even’ is one of my favorite performances I’ve ever played,” Kowert remarks. “My playing on that song is really exemplary of something that I am uniquely able to do, which is bowing the bass that way, driving the rhythm with the bow.” Multi-instrumentalist Noam Pikelny (still another Grammy winner), who is featured on “I Don’t Think of You,” says much the same: “[It’s] easily one of my favorite examples of my playing captured on record.”
Most of all, however, the success of Quiet Flame’s slow burn is owed to the trust Canty engenders in her audience. It is a trust natural to Canty, but made all the more affecting by her decision, for the first time in her career, to make an entirely acoustic record. “Intimacy is just kind of baked into the nature of acoustic music,” Eldridge explains. “You just intuitively understand that what you’re hearing is what can happen in somebody’s living room. So when you commit to doing a string band record, you’re committing to a certain kind of intimacy. It casts the artist, and the songs, in a different light—in a light that asks the listener to lean in a little bit more, asks the listener to be a part of a moment.”
It is with the listener leaning in close, grounded in the moment with Quiet Flame, that Canty offers a vision both audacious and convincing, that she shares the unmistakable and unshakeable sense that all will be well; that even in the face of so many black holes, we too will be okay; that we, like Canty, will arrive “by the highway home” – a lyric after Robert Frost.
“They all told me love could feel this way,” she sings. “I never thought I would see the day.”
It is the peculiar gift of Caitlin Canty that when she says love can feel “this way” – or even that “nothing’s gone, only changed” – one can’t help but think she’s right.
The other day I was going through my closet doing some spring cleaning, when I found a box with a bunch of old things that just took me back. One thing in particular was my old CD binder that I used to keep in the first car I ever owned, my parents old Ford Windstar. When I started looking through the binder, it brought me right back to the first time I moved away from home. At 19, I decided to leave the city and start working on a vegetable farm as a labourer. I was really into gardening and growing food at the time. Being out there was a time of many firsts, first time moving from home, first love, first time out partying (I’d always been a homebody).
This find made me think of turning them into a digital playlist, “Songs That Take Me Back.” Something that I could take with me, wherever I may go. Here’s a playlist of songs that somehow take me back to a moment in my life, and I’d like to share them with you. – Jeremie Albino
“Trouble” – Ray LaMontagne
This was the first CD in that CD binder that really brought me back. I could just smell the lilacs in the spring time driving out in the country with my old Windstar with the windows down, blasting this record.
“Sylvie” – Harry Belafonte (At Carnegie Hall)
This song brings me right back to an early Sunday morning when I was a kid. I’d be sleeping in and my dad would throw this on his five disc CD player, blaring records while he’d clean the house. This is probably one of my all time favourite records.
“Dust My Blues” – Elmore James
When I hear this tune, it reminds me of the first open mic I ever participated in. I was probably 15 or 16, I had been so in love with this song and had to learn it. I didn’t do too bad, the audience seemed to enjoy a 15 year old trying to play the slide guitar.
“Only Son” – Shakey Graves
This song takes me back to the summer of 2015 — I was so in love with a fellow farmer who worked at a farm not too far from mine. She was so cool, she had the coolest taste in music. One of the first times I had found someone who liked so much of the same music as I did. The song specifically reminds me of that first date, where we had pizza on a dock and listened to Shakey Graves.
“Harriet” – Hey Rosetta
This song reminds me of the first tour I ever went on. I was in a folk trio with my best friends called En Riet. We went on an epic first tour, drove eastern Canada all the way to Newfoundland, one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. We would listen to Hey Rosetta driving through some of the most scenic drives I’d experienced in my life, the music felt so fitting and right.
“Hey Boogie” – John Lee Hooker
The first CD I ever purchased was a compilation record called Blues Legend. It was all John Lee Hooker. I got it from the Future Shop (fellow Canadians, do you remember this store? So good.) when I was 7 or 8. I have no idea why I bought it or why I was drawn to it, I think my parents probably told me I liked blues and brought me to the blues section. I ended up picking it cause I thought the cover looked cool! Turns out it was a good pick and listening to it now, it brings me back to being a kid.
“Shipwreck” – Jeremie Albino
This is the first song I ever wrote. I wrote this one 10 years ago; it’s always nice to look back to see how things started for me. At the time I was having such a hard time writing music, and on weekends I would meet up with some friends and have a kitchen jam session. We’d go in a circle, sharing songs. My friends would always share a new song they’d been working on, and I would just play covers, since I still hadn’t written a full song. After coming home from one of these sessions, I told myself, “That’s it! I’m writing a song.” So I thought about how much of a hard time I was having writing and the line “I’m a wreck” came to me cause that’s what I was feeling when I was writing. Eventually one thing led to another, and I started thinking about what other things are wrecks and long story short, “Shipwreck” was born.
“Stumblin’” – Jackson & the Janks
“Stumblin’” was a song that was a must-listen when I was on tour with Cat Clyde. I remember the Mashed Potato records compilations had just come out and I started listening to these songs non-stop. With “Stumblin’” in particular, I just couldn’t get over how good it was! I had sent over the album to Cat so she could listen to how good it was, too! So by the time we hit the road together, we probably listened to that song a million times combined, no word of a lie.
“Boxcar” – Shovels & Rope
I remember the first time I heard this song was one of the first times I went to a bar and partied with friends. A local band was covering the song. When I finally got my hands on the record I fell in love with their music, the songwriting and vocals. I had a huge crush on Cary Ann’s voice. After that Shovels & Rope turned out to be one of my favourite bands. Ten years later, we actually ended up hitting the road together for a tour and it was one of my “I made it” moments. I feel very blessed to call them my friends, it’s funny to see how things come full circle sometimes.
(Editor’s Note: Watch a brand new music video for the title track of Lauren Calve’s upcoming album, “Shift,” below.)
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I was a visual artist before I was a musician, so visual art has always played a role in my music-making. Interestingly, though, my songs usually inform my art. After I finish writing and recording a collection of songs, I usually go through a kind-of sensory transition from auditory to visual. For instance, after I finished my forthcoming album Shift, I painted a self-portrait incorporating the imagery from Shift for my album cover in the style of surrealist painter Rene Magritte. For me, creating art to accompany my releases enriches the experience of making music.
Which artist has influenced you the most… and how?
Patty Griffin is probably my biggest influence. Her songs have always captured my heart and imagination. And I love how she constantly evolves her sound and songwriting while maintaining her authenticity. In my opinion, she is one of the best living singer-songwriters.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
Walking the Anacostia River paths behind my house is my favorite and most accessible way to be in nature. These walks have elicited everything from song ideas and lyrics to notes for mixes. There’s something about walking in nature that clears my head and allows my creativity to flow more freely.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
If I had to write a mission statement for my career, especially in light of my recent personal shift, it would be “Songs for Seekers on their quest to know and be known.”
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memory from being on stage was when I performed with the Mountain Stage band for the first episode of Mountain Stage’s 40th Anniversary year in January. Prior to the show my guitarist, Jonathan Sloane, had been in touch with the band leader; I was pretty much in the dark regarding the instrumentation for my set. It was the day of the show during soundcheck that I learned that the entire 7-piece house band would accompany me — including Kathy Mattea on background vocals! Never in my wildest dreams did I think that such an illustrious group — many of whom had been at Mountain Stage since its inception 40 years earlier — would be my backing band. Unsurprisingly, that set was the best my songs have ever sounded!
With her warm, agile voice and potent lyricism, Julie Williams is taking the country music world by storm. On June 2 she released her self-titled EP containing 6 original, remarkable tracks. Through her narrative lyrics and captivating melodies, Williams’ songs discuss a wide palate of her lived experience — as a Black woman living in the South, as a navigator of harmful sexual encounters, as someone who has loved, and as someone who has lost. Her record will take listeners on an evocative journey through her emotional landscapes, with peaks and troughs and everything in between.
Currently based in Nashville, Williams’ robust and radiant presence is enlivening the Music City landscape and beyond. Earlier this year, she was selected as one of CMT’s Next Women of Country, where she joins other major talent alumni of the Next Women of Country such as Margo Price, Kacey Musgraves, Lainey Wilson, Brittney Spencer, Lauren Alaina, Madeline Edwards, Maren Morris, Morgan Wade, and many more.
Williams is also a seasoned member of the Black Opry Revue, a collective based in Nashville that features Black artists in country, Americana, blues, and folk music. Her current solo tour is in full-swing as she enchants summertime audiences across the country.
BGS: Can you tell me a little bit about your personal history with music? Do you come from a line of musicians? Or did you find this path on your own?
JW: Neither of my parents play music or sing. There was always this joke in my family that I would listen to what my parents did and do the opposite. … There’s definitely a history of musicians in my extended family, but it wasn’t necessarily something where I grew up with everybody playing an instrument around me.
My parents always joked that I told them, “I can sing.” Ever since I was little, it was my way to relieve stress when on an airplane or a car ride or something. I was singing songs, making up songs, singing Barney songs. And I think for them, it wasn’t until they went to an elementary school play of mine, and saw me compared to some of the other kids, that they realized I actually could sing a little bit better. When I was in middle school I started singing national anthems and then I would sing at beach bars and restaurants and weddings. That was kind of my early start into professional singing. Then, when I got to college, I started songwriting and turned into the artist that I am now, but I’ve always been making some sort of noise.
You knew from the very start! On your EP, you share a lot of really beautiful narrative songs, and I’m wondering about your creative process. When does it become clear to you which of your stories needs to become a song?
I do write a lot of narrative songs. That’s what I love. I always write lyrics first. Usually, it’s just a dump, like a poem, that comes out. Sometimes [it’s] not even a really good and properly formatted poem, but then I kind of piece that together and turn it into a song, or I bring it to somebody that I really trust to help me bring the story to life, and together we turn it into the song.
I started with my creative process after I took a songwriting class when I first moved to Nashville with this amazing professor at Vanderbilt, Deanna Walker. She made the point that good lyrics should be able to stand on their own. The best songs can make you feel something from just reading. It really stuck with me.
That question of knowing which stories ultimately make it into song — I ask myself that same question all the time. Because sometimes I think, “Oh, I’m gonna write a song about that.” Then I sit and I try to conjure up something and nothing comes, or nothing that I feel is worth putting out into the world. But I don’t like to push things in my songwriting. Sometimes, if I just have a word, or I just have a phrase, or maybe a few lines about a story, I will leave it and wait. Because, six months later, something else has happened. I begin to process whatever that moment was a little bit differently, and all of a sudden, it just begins to flow.
I really like to write songs that make somebody really feel something or see themselves in a certain way or something that has a kind of unique twist, even if it’s a love song or a breakup song. Sometimes I have to wait until I can find that perspective in an everyday moment before it turns into a song.
You do that so beautifully! I’d like to ask more about those collaborators you mentioned—can you tell me a bit about your work with the Black Opry and how you became involved?
I was in Pigeon Forge, actually, to play a show at the Listening Room there with a friend of mine named Bonner. I think there were only like five people there, so we were kind of down in the dumps a bit. But I posted, “We’re here in Pigeon Forge,” and Holly G of the Black Opry, who I’d never met in person, messaged me on Instagram. She said they were having a Black Opry show at Dollywood, and we should come by after our show. We went and caught the last song of the show. [Afterward] everyone was hanging at the hotel and I got to meet Holly G, Tanner D, Aaron Vance, Roberta Lea, Crys Matthews, Virginia Prater, who is my booking agent now — a lot of the people that became part of my family. We all hung out in this hotel room, passing around a guitar, singing songs.
I just immediately felt so comfortable and at home. These people felt like my cousins! I told Holly, “Look, I would love to be involved with Black Opry. I’m single, I have no responsibility right now, just put me on the road! I will play any show, any place, any time.” She put me on a few Black Opry runs; before those runs were happening I was thinking that I was done in Nashville. I wasn’t feeling like my career was moving forward. I really felt kind of lost, creatively. I hadn’t yet found those creative collaborators. And when I did that first Black Opry run, everything just clicked and I knew I needed to be a part of it because it just felt like magic.
Wow, it sounds like your whole world expanded. Is there any advice you would give to aspiring Black artists looking to break into the country music scene?
I think my advice would be that it’s hard to do this alone. It can feel like you’re on an island. But it’s so much easier to do this work when you have other people around you that really support and uplift you. Reach out to the Black Opry, or the NSAI chapter near you. Set aside some of that energy that you’re putting towards your own individual projects into building community — even if that’s an online community at first. That’s how I met a lot of people during COVID time and after the murder of George Floyd, that’s when so many Black artists were coming out.
It just makes it so much easier to be in spaces where there are people around you who just get it, and who really believe in you and care for you and support you. Why build a car that only one person can get into and make it just a few miles down the road? Why don’t we instead all build a bus together that has space for everyone and we can all get there together? It’s just so much more fulfilling and honestly so much more fun.
What a beautiful metaphor, thank you for sharing that. Speaking of communal support and inspiration, you’re being featured as “One to Watch,” but do you have any ones you’re watching? Who is inspiring you these days?
I have this Spotify playlist called “Big Blue House and Her Sisters” of songs that feel like musical sisters of “Big Blue House.” There are a lot of artists on there that really inspire me. I would also say Denitia, a Black Opry artist who was named CMT Equal Access Artist — an incredible singer, songwriter, producer — just a powerhouse. We met at a Black Opry show in September and have become best friends. Also, you can’t be following what’s happening in Black music and queer music right now and not know the force that is Autumn Nicholas. Their performance at Love Rising had everyone in that room, thousands of people including myself, in tears. Lastly, Raye Zaragoza is an amazing Asian, Indigenous, and Latinx artist. I had the honor of meeting her on the Cayamo Cruise. She has been such an inspiration to me as a songwriter in the ways that she incorporates all of her identity into everything she makes, and her songs have such resonance and power that really make you feel. There’s no way you can listen to her songs and not feel moved and inspired by them, which is everything I’m trying to do in my songwriting, and I think she does it flawlessly.
Artist:JD Graham Hometown: Yukon, Oklahoma Song: “West Virginia” Album:A Pound Of Rust Release Date: June 23, 2023
In Their Words: “Growing up in rural Oklahoma, I was surrounded by all things oil field. I used to watch my friends roughneckin’ the rigs before they were old enough to buy smokes. By the the time they were 18, they were chasin’ money and workin’ 80 hours a week or more. The relationships they had with friends and lovers took a back seat. Years later the regret set in and they started to look back at what they missed. The character in this song wants another chance at the love he left behind and wonders if she has moved on.” – JD Graham
Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin Song: “The Fool” (Live from Cash Cabin) Album:Siren Songs Release Date: April 21, 2023 Label: Grand Phony (US) / Rootsy (EU)
In Their Words: “Joseph Cash filmed and photographed us throughout the sessions for Siren Songs, which was recorded at the historic Cash Cabin. From Merle to Snoop Dogg to Dolly Parton, this sacred space has had many visitors and I hoped to tap into some of that DNA they left behind. ‘The Fool’ is the first song I wrote in an open D tuning. I stumbled upon it while toying with an Irish folk song during lockdown, finding that it offered a whole new canvas to write songs from. It produced a full and vibrant sound in my lap that guided me through writing this record. As I figured out the new shapes up and down the neck of the guitar, I wrote lyrics for ‘The Fool’ from the perspective of a sage, old romantic who’s giving advice to a younger version of himself.” – Trapper Schoepp
Artist:Rachel Maxann Hometown: Memphis, Tennessee Latest Album: Black Fae Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Fickle Hellcat, I ended up making it my last album name instead.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
I absolutely adore my producer and although this isn’t necessarily a ritual, we tend to fall into a pattern when recording. We sit and talk about our lives for a while and generally catch up as friends while I sit in his massage chair. Sometimes I’ll have a glass of wine while he drinks his favorite new cocktail concoction. Then we’ll dim the lights in his studio and we’ll proceed to record whatever we want to work on that day. I’m excited for the next round of songs that we do! I don’t think it would be the same result if we didn’t have such a good friendship.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
Putting my own name on my music first and foremost. I’ve had a fairly long career with many different formats, some of those being bands. In the past, I would be insistent in creating a new band every time I got new players. An old friend gave me the advice of putting my name out there first, because while different players come and go I’ll always have myself and my songs. It really changed the way I presented myself.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
Wood and the water have a profound effect on my mental health. The album cover of Black Fae is actually at my favorite park in Memphis that is close to my house. On good weather days, I’ll take a run or walk with my dog and just enjoy the shady greenery. Though I love water in all its forms, I feel most relaxed at the beach, and if the ocean is not available I spend time by the lake. “Remember the Stars”was written on a month-long solo trip with my dog in Mexico. Every day I would pack my guitar, a book, and my notebook and sit by the beach and just be.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I would love to pair my music with comfort foods. The lyrics have a lot of difficult topics and emotions, I would want the listener to be in a warm, safe space in case they are triggered by any of the songs. I have a history as a therapist, and whenever I had a client face an especially difficult feeling I would encourage them to have their loved ones nearby as well as their favorite comfort items. It can ease someone in and out of the process. If it were for myself, I would pick up a vegan oxtail meal from my favorite local Memphis chef, Camri McNary AKA The Vegan Goddess.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
I wouldn’t describe it as hiding behind it, but rather morphing my experience into a way that is more relatable to the listener. In some cases in the process of writing the song, it becomes more of a message to others rather than about myself, because often what I’m writing about is universal experiences even though they’re deeply personal. With “Last Cut”I first wrote it when I was in a dark place and having suicidal ideations. Shortly after having completed the original version, I lost a friend to an overdose which shifted my focus from my own grief to those of my friends and his family. When I sang it later, it naturally evolved into a story of my sadness into a message of awareness as well as encouragement to those that may be having similar feelings.
Photo Credit: Lucia Lombardo
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
