Amythyst Kiah Ends Her Shut-Up-and-Sing Policy on ‘Wary + Strange’ (Part 1 of 2)

Amythyst Kiah took great pains to get Wary + Strange just right. After studying banjo and old-time music at East Tennessee State University in her twenties, she gained a reputation as an intense live performer, so much so that she was asked to join the roots supergroup Our Native Daughters, where she played alongside Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla. The group recorded Kiah’s bluesy anthem “Black Myself” as the opening cut on their 2019 album, Songs of Our Native Daughters.

The experience of working directly with her contemporaries — even the idea of considering them as her contemporaries — was a profound experience, one that stirred her to write songs that took bigger risks and told bigger truths about herself. She’d been struggling to make this record for several years by then, booking sessions with various producers, but never feeling satisfied with the results. She didn’t hear herself in the music.

That changed when she began working with producer Tony Berg (Aimee Mann, Phoebe Bridgers), and together they devised a way to combine all of Kiah’s influences rather than compartmentalize them. Wary + Strange is a headphones album, one that listeners will pore over intently. “It feels good to make music that helps people get through hard times,” Kiah tells the Bluegrass Situation.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Amythyst Kiah here.

BGS: Are you surprised by the response this record has gotten?

Kiah: This is my label debut. So it’s really the first time that I’ve worked with a giant team of people helping me get my music out into the world. So the whole experience has been completely new. My focus was really tol make this album where I’m excited about it and happy with it, so I felt pretty confident about it. Then I started promoting it and things started coming in, and I didn’t realize how much was going to come in because I’d never done it before. So now I have the craziest workload that I’ve had in a long time. I’m just drinking a lot of caffeine and hanging on as long as I can, because I’m getting an opportunity that a lot of artists don’t get.

And add to that the fact that you can actually play live shows again, if only for a little while. What has the audience reaction been like?

People are really excited to get back to playing or get back to just seeing live music. All of us that were doing virtual gigs for a year and a half. Any time I’ve played a virtual gig, I’ve made a point to say that we’re all in this weird situation together, so let’s make the best of it. The audience is just looking at me through a camera lens, and I’m looking at them through a camera lens, but we’re doing our best to share our energy with one another. I can’t tell you how many times over the past several shows that I’ve gone out to the merch table and people have told me, “This is the first show I’ve seen since quarantine.” They are so excited, so the energy has been more intense than I can remember.

You mentioned something a minute ago about wanting to make sure you were happy with this record. You recorded these songs several times trying to get to that point, and I wondered if you could talk about that process. What was missing from those early songs?

The first time I made the record, it was with Dirk Powell in Louisiana, and it was right before the sessions for Our Native Daughters. But I didn’t really have a strong idea of what I wanted. I was dealing with some writer’s block at the time, and I was putting pressure on myself to put out another record. So I was recording a lot of songs that I didn’t really play anymore, and it felt like I was just trying to fill out an album.

At the end of the recording process, it sounded like a record that was very safe. It sounded good but it was safe. It wasn’t showing any real musical growth from me as an artist. I felt like I was compartmentalizing a lot of my folk stuff and the stuff I played with my backing band. I had this folk side of me and this rock version of me, and it just slapped me in the face that all of those songs needed to be on the record.

What was the nature of your writer’s block? How did you get through it?

There was a period when I wasn’t really writing songs that much. A lot of it had to do with the fact that I was repressing a lot of emotions regarding my mother’s suicide. For twelve years I would do anything I could to avoid getting in touch with those feelings. I was in survival mode, and when you’re in survival mode it’s really hard to think deeply about some of your choices. I was just trying to ignore it all. By the time I got to Our Native Daughters, I’d written a handful of songs over the course of two or three years. That was my second year going into therapy, and I’d made a couple of breakthroughs in understanding how my grief was affecting other aspects of my life.

Being around Rhiannon and Leyla and Allison and writing songs with them, I started to understand something important about myself. We all had this similar background of being the token Black person in a genre that has some very obvious African influences. But that history and those identities had been removed and the music had been segregated. We were able to share stories about being confused with other people, stuff like that. Just to be able to have that conversation with other people who understood where I was coming from was wonderful. Being in that environment gave me the courage to write about the things I was talking about. I’d been afraid to put those experiences into songs because I have this shut-up-and-sing policy for a long time. So that was an important moment for me.

We’re telling stories of our ancestors who were able to survive the transatlantic ship voyage. They survived the Civil War. Reconstruction. Segregation. Civil Rights. We’re standing on the shoulders of so many people who survived, and we’re here because of their survival. Once you start to make those big spiritual connections beyond what you’ve read in a history book, suddenly there’s nothing to be afraid of. If they can survive, then I can survive writing a song about how I feel. There was a new sense of empowerment to really write about myself. So after that project, I wrote more songs. I wrote “Soapbox.” I wrote “Opaque.” I wrote “Firewater.”

Did that change how you approached recording the album?

Really I was still figuring myself out and how I wanted to be defined as a musician. It was a lot of self-exploration. I recorded the album again at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. But the third time’s the charm, as they say. I met Tony Berg, and he was able to help me encapsulate the inherent wariness and strangeness of all of these songs. We were also able to keep that essence of roots music while adding in these different textures and sounds. He actually told me once while we were recording, “I don’t think I’ve heard a record that sounds quite like this one.” He’s obviously listened to way more music than I ever have, so I knew we had something special at that point. I knew that would be the final time recording the album.

It sounds like you had to go through those first two versions of the album to get to that point.

Yes. I definitely don’t want to say that those first two didn’t sound good or weren’t worthy. And I’m appreciative of anybody who spent time in any capacity working on them with me. It took all of those moments to get where we are now. But something was always missing, and you shouldn’t be too afraid to explore that and figure out what’s missing. Unless you’re 100 percent excited about your record, it’s going to be hard to go out and play those songs.

There’s a malleable quality to your songs. I’m thinking about the two versions of “Soapbox” on the record, or the solo version of “Black Myself” and the Our Native Daughters version. You talked about learning not to compartmentalize your music, but the songs seem like they could fit so many different settings. “Black Myself” in particular sounds very different when you’ve got several people singing as opposed to just one person singing.

I think that’s a recurring theme that’s always going to be part of my creative process. I spent a good amount of time in my twenties focusing on reinterpreting songs that already existed and learning about the different ways to make it your own. Or at least give it another perspective. It made me hyperaware of, “OK, what am I saying? What if I deliver this particular line this way or what if I go to a minor chord here instead of a major chord. How does that change the meaning?” I’ve always been fascinated with that kind of thing.

That’s just as valuable as writing new songs, because that’s the way most of us learn music. We learn other people’s music, and within that we find our own voice. Reimagining certain songs — even if they’re your own songs — is a valid way to express yourself. Balancing that can be a little tricky. With the various incarnations of this album, I was rehashing a lot of songs that I’d already done. I was taking songs I’d already recorded and rerecording them in a different way. So I had to make myself write new material. I didn’t want to stop moving forward.

As for “Black Myself,” I remember thinking, “Man, I wish I could have some people singing with me on this song.” It’s not even just from a production standpoint. It was more personal. So it was good to record with Rhiannon and Allison and Leyla sticking up for me, you know? It’s different without them. For the version on my record I was doing my own background vocals, which is really enjoyable and helps me dig into a song in a different way. But I definitely missed singing with them. But I was really excited to record that song by myself, because it’s a way to continue that conversation about white supremacy and anti-racism. It was a good opportunity to bring the song forward.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Amythyst Kiah here.


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

Artist of the Month: Amythyst Kiah

Amythyst Kiah is having a moment with Wary + Strange, an album that positions her among today’s most compelling singer-songwriters. Although she is an East Tennessee native, her personal lyrics somehow feel universal — this isn’t an album about rivers and mountains, but instead touches on identity (“Black Myself”), grief (“Wild Turkey”), and unsolicited advice (“Soapbox”). Written from a place of questioning and reckoning, a gently-played song like “Firewater” would satisfy anyone who enjoys an acoustic aesthetic, as well as those who draw confidence from the music of others.

“A lot of these songs come from a moment in my 20s when I was grappling with trauma while also trying to navigate the experience of being a Black and LGBT woman in a white suburban area in a Bible Belt town,” says Kiah, who moved to Johnson City after growing up in Chattanooga. “I’ve had moments of feeling othered in certain aspects of my life, and it took me a long time to figure out who I wanted to be and how to move through this world.”

With that perspective and a guitar in hand, she’s been sharing her music on stages ranging from the Grand Ole Opry to Newport Folk Festival to Jimmy Kimmel Live, where she performed “Black Myself.”

Upon announcing the record, she noted, “‘Black Myself’ is the first song I’ve written that was confrontational. I’d always made it a point to sing songs that anybody could relate to, but this was something that had been welling up inside me for a long time, and working with three other Black women in Our Native Daughters put me in the position where I finally had the courage to put those words out. The reception of the song so far has given me hope that there are people out there who are ready to confront the shared trauma of racism, to look within ourselves and see how we might be perpetuating racist beliefs, and to do what is needed to create equality for all people.”

Next month, Kiah (pronounced “KEE-uh”) is in the running in multiple categories for the Americana Music Honors & Awards. (As a solo artist, she’ll compete for Emerging Act of the Year, while “Black Myself” is up for Song of the Year. Our Native Daughters is also up for Duo/Group of the Year.) With this incredible career momentum, she’s criss-crossing the country in the months ahead: After a gig with Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow at the Gorge in Washington, she’ll be everywhere from Maine to Mexico, with a MerleFest gig in the mix too. Enjoy new music and some crowd favorites in our BGS Essentials Playlist with Amythyst Kiah below. And don’t miss our two-part Artist of the Month interview. Read part one here. Read part two here.


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

2021 Americana Honors & Awards Nominees Announced

Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell are the leading nominees for the 20th annual Americana Honors & Awards, set for September 22, 2021 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Familiar names like Tyler Childers, Steve Earle, Sarah Jarosz, John Prine, and Sturgill Simpson are also on the ballot.

Carlile and Isbell are joined by Kathleen Edwards, Margo Price, and Billy Strings in the Artist of the Year category. On the ballot for Duo/Group of the Year, Carlile is also nominated as a member of The Highwomen, while Kiah and Russell are part of Our Native Daughters. As solo artists, Kiah and Russell are both nominated for Emerging Act of the Year as well. In addition, Kiah’s version of “Black Myself” (which was earlier recorded by Our Native Daughters) will compete for Song of the Year, bringing her total nominations to three.

Other contenders for Emerging Act are Charley Crockett, Joy Oladokun, and Waxahatchee. The Duo/Group category also includes Black Pumas, The War and Treaty, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. The Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement Awards, including the NMAAM co-presented Legacy of Americana Award, will be announced at a later date. The awards ceremony is a cornerstone of AmericanaFest, which returns for its 21st year on September 22-25.

Keb’ Mo’ and Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor unveiled the nominations during a socially-distanced ceremony at Nashville’s National Museum of African American Music. The intimate event featured acoustic performances from nominees Valerie June and Allison Russell. A full list of categories and nominees for the Americana Music Association’s 20th annual Americana Honors & Awards is below:


ALBUM OF THE YEAR:

Cuttin’ Grass – Vol. 1 (Butcher Shoppe Sessions), Sturgill Simpson, Produced by David Ferguson & Sturgill Simpson

J.T., Steve Earle & The Dukes, Produced by Steve Earle

The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers, Valerie June, Produced by Valerie June, Ben Rice & Jack Splash

Reunions, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Produced by Dave Cobb

World on the Ground, Sarah Jarosz, Produced by John Leventhal


ARTIST OF THE YEAR:

Brandi Carlile

Kathleen Edwards

Jason Isbell

Margo Price

Billy Strings


DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR:

Black Pumas

The Highwomen

Our Native Daughters

The War and Treaty

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings


EMERGING ACT OF THE YEAR:

Charley Crockett

Amythyst Kiah

Joy Oladokun

Allison Russell

Waxahatchee


INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR:

Megan Coleman

Robbie Crowell

Ray Jacildo

Philip Towns

Kristin Weber


SONG OF THE YEAR:

“Black Myself,” Amythyst Kiah, Written by Amythyst Kiah

“Call Me A Fool,” Valerie June ft. Carla Thomas, Written by Valerie June

“Dreamsicle,” Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, Written by Jason Isbell

“I Remember Everything,” John Prine, Written by Pat McLaughlin & John Prine

“Long Violent History,” Tyler Childers, Written by Tyler Childers

With Her Banjo and Best Friends, Allison Russell Delivers ‘Outside Child’ (Part 2 of 2)

Allison Russell’s first solo album offers an intimate look into her life, yet it’s far more than just her musical vision that elevates Outside Child to one of the year’s most eloquent albums. Working with Dan Knobler in Nashville, she populated the studio with musicians like Joe Pisapia, Jason Burger, Chris Merrill, Jamie Dick, and Drew Lindsay, as well as exceptional guests such as Yola, Ruth Moody, Erin Rae, and the McCrary Sisters. She describes them as her “chosen family,” accompanying her as she shares stories about other families in her life.

Enjoy the second half of our BGS Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell. (Editor’s note: Read the first half of our AOTM feature here.)

BGS: You can feel that sense of community between the musicians on this record. Can you talk a little bit about what it felt like while you were tracking?

Allison Russell: These songs were recorded in four days. Everything that you are hearing, I sang live with the band. We did it at Sound Emporium Studio A. There’s a lovely, big room with glass doors that you can open up. Everyone was in a semi-circle. It was a magical experience. We would gather in the center of the room and work out an arrangement together and then we would record the song. Most of what you are hearing is the second take. That was sort of when it magically coalesced, when everyone was communing and free flowing.

Dan [Knobler] shares my deep conviction that it is not about perfection. It is about capturing the communication in as honest and as true of a way as you can. That has been my approach ever since working with Joe Henry four or five years ago on a record called Real Midnight. So what you are hearing is a community choosing to come together to uplift these songs. I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life, even if no one ever heard the record. That experience of getting to record that way with chosen family. I can’t imagine a more healing, supportive environment than I experienced.

This is your first solo record and though you’ve made many records with groups, I’m wondering if the feeling of picking the songs and the sounds was different for you as a solo artist?

I don’t know that I really picked them. I think that the songs just poured out. So much of the sound is my community of artists. I would never dream of telling any of those artists what to play. I trust their ears and I trusted Dan Knobler’s ears, who produced the record. And I trusted my own ears too, of course, but really what we did was cast the room with people who we love and trust. What was different is that I’d never worked with Dan before and I trusted him bringing in two of his brothers, Joe Pisapia and Jason Burger to join the family of musical kindred that I’ve been part of. A lot of the artists who played on the record were artists that I’d met over my many years and different projects. …

And then since I moved to Nashville in 2017, I’ve been going to hear the McCrary Sisters and loving them. I really got to know them through Yola, because they formed a friendship at a festival in Scotland and I got to know them through her. I’m a huge admirer of them and their work and their harmonies. I reached out to them thinking I wouldn’t be able to afford them and they were so generous. They came and sang for way less than they are worth and worked within my budget. I was honored that they came. So it was really a matter of casting the room and then letting people shine the way they do.

I read your speech from the [2020] Women’s March [in Nashville]. It is really gorgeous, thought- and emotion-provoking. In it you mention that you are the hero of your own story which is wildly inspiring and important for us all to remember – that there are some things we can save ourselves from. Can you talk a bit about ways in which you save yourself?

I feel like connection with a loving community is what saves me every day. Art and music save me every day. I’ve been a book worm my entire life and I can’t emphasize enough, I don’t think I would have survived my childhood if I hadn’t had the escape of literature. Being able to go into other worlds and other imaginings and literally inside of someone else’s mind and take refuge and find inspiration and comfort and strength. Disappearing into books was the first kind of way that I learned how to try to be brave. It was reading about brave protagonists and people in situations worse than I could imagine. I got very obsessed in my tweens with reading first person accounts of survival of the Holocaust. It put into context what was happening to me, that if people could survive that, then I could survive what I was experiencing.

Being in a community with people that uplift you and see you and value you and you do the same for them, that is life-changing. I have that with my partner J.T. I have that with my sisters in Our Native Daughters. We wrote a whole record together, uplifting each other and bringing forward the perspective of Black women within the diaspora and within the historical record. Our particular demographic is so often left out of any kind of historical record in any kind of first-person way, with agency and lived experience. That has been a source of great strength and resilience.

And then to connect with my ancestors. To delve into all of the history. With all of the intergenerational trauma and abuse, there is also incredible intergenerational strength and resilience and transcendence. The ability to overcome circumstances I cannot even dream of. My many-times-great-great-grandmother Quasheba survived being enslaved. She survived being ripped away from everything she knew, her family and language and home. She survived the horrible Middle Passage. She survived multiple plantations and having her children taken. If she can survive all that, I can get through this.

Do you remember what prompted you to pick up a banjo for the first time?

I was in a band called Po Girl, that was my first baby band and the woman I started the band with, Trish Klein, played the banjo. She taught me my first few chords and I just kept playing from there. I met Rhiannon Giddens in 2006 at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and I was so excited to meet another Black woman that played banjo, because I was the only one that I knew. She told me about the Black Banjo Gathering, which I never got to attend. I’ve met so many dear friends who were a part of that, like Valerie June. All of us in Our Native Daughters play banjo and that has been a deep communion for us.

I think Rhiannon’s minstrel banjo is one of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. I’ve adapted my little Americana Goodtime banjo to sound as much like that as I can by adding gut strings and a fiber skin head. I’ve modified the bridge a bit to give it that deeper resonance. For me the banjo has allowed me to access my songwriting in a different way. I’ve noticed this over time as I’ve picked up more instruments. Different songs come through on different instruments and now for me, the banjo has become my primary songwriting instrument.

This album is coming out hopefully at the tail end of the pandemic so I’m guessing some of the songs have not been performed in front of an audience yet. Are there songs you are particularly excited about presenting on stage and on the flip side are there songs you are nervous or trepidatious about presenting to an audience?

Basically none of them. Of course I’ve done some virtual performances here and there of a couple of them. But they have not been played live. I am always nervous about everything. I’m just a very anxious person most of the time. But where that stops, usually, is on stage, when I get to be in communion with my fellow artists and with the people who have come to listen. That is very much a two-way exchange. The answer is, I’ll be nervous about all of it right up until the moment we are playing and then I will be in the happiest place I know.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our Artist of the Month interview with Allison Russell here.)


Photo credit: Marc Baptiste (top); Laura E. Partain (in story)

WATCH: Amythyst Kiah, “Black Myself”

Artist: Amythyst Kiah
Hometown: Johnson City, Tennessee
Single: “Black Myself”
Release Date: February 19, 2021
Label: Rounder Records

In Their Words: “‘Black Myself’ is the first song I’ve written that was confrontational. I’d always made it a point to sing songs that anybody could relate to, but this was something that had been welling up inside me for a long time. The reception of the song so far has given me hope that there are people out there who are ready to confront the shared trauma of racism, to look within ourselves and see how we might be perpetuating racist beliefs, and to do what is needed to create equality for all people.” — Amythyst Kiah


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

Harmonics with Beth Behrs: Episode 6, Allison Russell

Allison Russell is one half of acclaimed roots music duo Birds of Chicago, with her husband JT Nero, and a member of Americana supergroup Our Native Daughters.

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Editor’s Note: This episode contains intense and honest descriptions of trauma that may be triggering to some listeners. While there is nothing directly explicit in the content, listener discretion is advised.

Born and raised in Quebec, Allison Russell survived a traumatic childhood, teaching herself various instruments as a way to cope before eventually finding her voice within the Vancouver music scene. On this episode of Harmonics, Russell talks with host Beth Behrs about those traumas, the healing power of music and artistic community, the history of the banjo, the intersectionality of the honest conversations currently being had in our culture, and much, much more.

In addition to her career with Birds of Chicago, Russell is one quarter of Americana supergroup, the Grammy-nominated Our Native Daughters, with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Leyla McCalla, and is preparing to release her first solo album. She and JT Nero live in Nashville with their daughter.

Listen and subscribe to Harmonics through all podcast platforms and follow BGS and Beth Behrs on Instagram for series updates!


 

Meet the Full Lineup of Shout & Shine Online

The entire BGS team is pretty stoked for our fifth year of Shout & Shine performances! In 2016 we partnered with PineCone Piedmont Council of Traditional Music in Raleigh, NC to showcase diversity in bluegrass and roots music at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass business conference and festival. In doing so, a wonderful platform has been provided to artists so often overlooked, as well as those just starting their journeys in the music industry.

Things are a bit different this go ‘round, and we’ll be celebrating equity and inclusion in a more pandemic-suited way this year with Shout & Shine Online! The showcase will take place Saturday, October 3rd at 2pm ET — viewers can tune in right here on BGS, or on our Facebook page or YouTube channel, as well as via PineCone’s channels, and IBMA’s conference platform, Swapcard (free music pass registration available here).

 

In celebration, we’ve put together a preview of what you can look forward to during Shout & Shine Online.

Brandi Waller-Pace

BGS joined hands with Decolonizing the Music Room’s founder Brandi Waller-Pace to curate 2020’s lineup. “The mission of Decolonizing the Music Room is to center Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices, knowledge, and experiences within the field of music education,” says Waller-Pace. “In addition to that, it is part of DTMR’s core values that we are an openly LGBTQ+ affirming non-profit organization. I am honored to have served as curator for this year’s Shout & Shine and to have had this opportunity to partner with BGS and PineCone on work that highlights a convergence of our values.”

Here you can see Waller-Pace along with Caitlin Hearn playing an old-time standard, “Five Miles From Town.” Waller-Pace’s music is dripping with that sweet, old-timey-ness.


Rissi Palmer

The IBMA isn’t the only thing we love in Raleigh — there’s also Rissi Palmer. In 2007 she released “Country Girl,” making her the first African American woman on the country charts in over 20 years. She’s been releasing consistently powerful music since, leading all the way up to her most recent album, Revival. On top of all of this, Palmer hosts the new Apple Music Country radio show, Color Me Countrya conversation between herself and various Black and Brown women in country/Americana/roots music. We can’t wait to have her right here on BGS!


Sunny War

You may have already seen our friend Sunny War’s episode 2 of our monthly Shout & Shine series. In our interview that came out earlier this month, War speaks about her current outlook on the music scene and how it feels to be surrounded by new “activist” musicians who weren’t doing it before, as well as her incredibly unique guitar style.


Kaïa Kater

Kaïa Kater is no stranger at BGS. She has been featuring in a Cover Story, she’s written an op-ed, and she’s had some important conversations with other musicians. Needless to stay, we’re ecstatic to have this Afro-Caribbean-Canadian songwriter and Appalachian musician back for Shout & Shine Online!


Stephanie Anne Johnson

While Stephanie Anne Johnson’s music is often rooted in America’s painful past, it’s always got down home roots. Maybe that’s why they’ve got the “American Blues.” A veteran of NBC’s The Voice, Johnson is the leader of Tacoma-based band The Hidogs, whose most recent album is entitled Take This Love.


Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton

Blind Boy Paxton’s music is something of a journey back in time. But his songs and stories aren’t from dusty old books or archives — they are the soundtrack of his growing up in south-central Los Angeles, among the largest Creole and Cajun population outside of Louisiana. Our friend Paxton has been featured in our Shout & Shine column before, but Shout & Shine Online is his appearance on the showcase. We couldn’t be more excited!


Tray Wellington Band

North Carolina’s Tray Wellington is an acclaimed progressive banjo player — and he’s only 21. From his 2019 IBMA awards — one for Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year and another for Momentum Band of the Year with his former group Cane Mill Road — it’s easy to tell what a bright future he’s got in the world of bluegrass and beyond. He’ll be joining us with his whole band!


Amythyst Kiah

You may know her from Our Native Daughters, or our BGS Class of 2019  — either way, Amythyst Kiah is one of the most powerful, raw, and soulful singers and songwriters the roots music scene has today. We’re beyond thrilled that she’ll be joining us to anchor the Shout & Shine Online lineup!


Photos courtesy of the artists
Poster design by Grant Prettyman, Belhum

Shout & Shine Online Highlighting Black Roots Artists Set for Oct. 3

For five years now BGS and our partners at PineCone Piedmont Council of Traditional Music have used our voices, resources, and positivity to lift up and celebrate diversity in bluegrass and roots music through the Shout & Shine showcase. These live performances have given a platform to those artists who have been overlooked, while illuminating the paths of those starting out on uphill journeys in our music community. This year, the event’s 5th annual iteration will follow a format more suitable for a worldwide pandemic — with an all-online showcase as part of IBMA’s Virtual World of Bluegrass.

Shout & Shine Online will feature these artists from across the genre map of roots music: Rissi Palmer, host of Apple Music Country’s brand new radio show, ‘Color Me Country‘; IBMA Momentum Award winning banjoist Tray Wellington; punk-influenced fingerstyle guitarist and songwriter Sunny War; down-home blues and old-time musician Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton; The Voice alumnus and guitar picker Stephanie Anne Johnson; and returning favorites Kaia Kater and Amythyst Kiah, who make their first appearance at Shout & Shine since playing on its debut lineup in 2016.

Shout & Shine Online’s roster is curated by performing musician and Decolonizing the Music Room founder and Executive Director, Brandi Waller-Pace. Shout & Shine Online will take place at 2 pm ET Saturday, October 3. Viewers will be able to tune in right here on BGS, or on our Facebook page or YouTube channel, via PineCone’s channels, and via IBMA’s conference platform, Swapcard (registration available here).

(L to R) Marcy Marxer, Alice Gerrard, Cathy Fink, and Tatiana Hargreaves perform at 2017 Shout & Shine showcase.

While Shout & Shine has continually championed underrepresented and marginalized folks in roots music, this year’s event comes at a time of reckoning in this country’s ongoing battle against institutionalized racism. “This year, Shout & Shine’s mission is as clear and galvanized as ever,” says BGS editor and Shout & Shine producer, Justin Hiltner. “Our lineup is a direct response to this current iteration of the Black Lives Matter movement and the righteous rebellion against police brutality and systemic racial injustice in this country. The greater bluegrass community needs to be having these conversations and needs to be centering the voices and perspectives of Black folks — especially Black queer folks. We saw that as our role this year.” 

BGS joined hands with Decolonizing the Music Room’s founder Brandi Waller-Pace to curate 2020’s lineup. The mission of Decolonizing the Music Room is to center Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian voices, knowledge, and experiences within the field of music education,” says Waller-Pace. “In addition to that, it is part of DTMR’s core values that we are an openly LGBTQ+ affirming non-profit organization. I am honored to have served as curator for this year’s Shout & Shine and to have had this opportunity to partner with BGS and PineCone on work that highlights a convergence of our values.”

“In addition to Shout & Shine’s continued work centering the music and stories of underrepresented artists in the bluegrass community, we also continue to work toward making these programs as accessible and inclusive as possible. We’re providing American Sign Language interpretation for the entire Shout & Shine program, modeling what can be done and what we continue to work toward in making accessibility central to our work,” said Jamie Katz Court, Communications & Programs Manager for PineCone, the Raleigh-based roots music organization that has partnered with us on Shout & Shine since 2017. PineCone also produces the festival, IBMA Bluegrass Live! powered by PNC.

The showcase was first conceived in 2016 to celebrate diversity and inclusion at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s business conference and festival in Raleigh, North Carolina. Originally organized in response to the North Carolina General Assembly’s homophobic bathroom bill, HB2, the scope of the event immediately widened to include and celebrate not only the LGBTQ+ community, but any and all marginalized folks in roots music. Shout & Shine stages have included the most exciting emerging talent alongside bluegrass legends and stalwarts, with lineups that have boasted the Ebony Hillbillies, Alice Gerrard, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, Missy Raines, Amythyst Kiah, Kaia Kater, Che Apalache, and many, many more.

Shout & Shine is also a monthly editorial feature, which debuted with world-renowned drag queen Trixie Mattel’s first-ever interview by a roots music publication. In 2020 the column grew into a monthly livestream series that has already featured harpist and songwriter Lizzie No and fingerstyle guitarist Sunny War, part of a six-month series focused on Black artists and creators in roots music. The next episode will follow Shout & Shine Online in November. Whether on stage, in print, or online, Shout & Shine’s mission has always been celebrating the marginalized and underrepresented folks of all identities, backgrounds, faith traditions, and abilities who make and love bluegrass music.

Tune in Saturday, October 3 at 2pm ET for Shout & Shine Online!


Lede photo (L to R): Kaia Kater (by Todd Cooper); Stephanie Anne Johnson (courtesy of the artist); Amythyst Kiah (Anna Hedges).
Poster art by Grant Prettyman, Belhum

Fingerstyle Guitarist Sunny War Wants Punk’s Honesty Back in Music

Guitarist and singer/songwriter Sunny War doesn’t necessarily miss performing live, in-person shows — she’s not even sure she ever really liked playing shows that much in the “before COVID-19” times at all. But, as she connects with BGS over the phone in preparation for another pandemic-tailored event, her Shout & Shine livestream show on Wednesday, September 16 (live on BGS, Facebook, and YouTube at 7pm ET / 4pm PT) her general feelings regarding the pandemic and its far-reaching impact on the music industry are very clear: It’s all just really weird.

She, like many creators in the March-and-April maelstrom that swallowed up any/all meaningful work for an interminable period of time, became depressed, distant, and took some time to work her way back into a creative mode that feels respondent to our harsh everyday without being bogged down in it. A punk-influenced and inflected lyricist, she’s once again turning to her songwriting pen as an outlet. 

While her peers turn to that same outlet to process many of the myriad daily tragedies and injustices we’re all so attuned to in this global moment, War instead pauses. “I kinda don’t like protest songs from people who didn’t do it before,” she explains, calling to task the frantic and frenzied rush to pivot records, releases, and pressers into more “appropriate,” digestible bits for a newly awakened, activist reality — and consumer. 

(Watch Sunny War’s complete Shout & Shine performance above.)

But War’s identity, her selfhood, as evidenced through every note of her idiosyncratically finger-plucked songs and through her carefully chosen words in her lyrical poetry and our conversation, calls upon her to challenge that propriety. “[Democracy] actually is working” she explains, noting hypocrisy and/or tone deafness in our roots music communities. “It’s working, it’s always been working. It just hasn’t ever been in our favor.” 

BGS: I’m a banjo player, I came up through bluegrass, and there’s something about your right hand in your guitar playing that’s really entrancing and relatable to me. It conjures bluegrass and fingerstyle, but it is so unique to you, it’s idiosyncratic. Where did your style come from? What influenced your right hand technique, how did it develop? 

SW: I think it came from mimicking banjo, actually. My stepdad’s friend played banjo, so I was around a banjo player sometimes growing up. The first fingerpicking thing I learned was “Blackbird” by the Beatles and that was the first time I thought I sounded kinda good. When I was a kid, I thought, “Wow! This [fingerpicking] sounds way better than just strumming a chord.” I never really learned a lot of chords, I still just play a lot of chords in first position. I was just playing C and G and D open and I thought, “Well now I sound like I’m really playing something.” 

I didn’t listen to blues until I was in high school and then I was kind of imitating country, blues, and my stepdad’s friend on banjo. Later, I was trying to be like Mississippi John Hurt; and I kinda wanted to be like Chet Atkins. But I couldn’t ever figure that out. 

I see plenty of folks in the scene who idolize Derek Trucks or Joe Bonamassa or even Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings who are coming up. There are these guitar fans that just idolize and adore them. Have you seen guitar fans trying to capture what you’re doing with your playing?

Not really? I don’t know. There are some people on Facebook and Instagram who message [me] and want to talk about my guitar style, but they’re usually just into old-timey blues stuff. Then we just talk about that. Sometimes they ask who I listen to. But I think [the implication is], “You’re really close to maybe being like this person I know of.” 

I can think of a lot of shredders out there, but I do the same kind of riffs in every key that I play in. I feel like I can say I really do fingerpick well, but I know people that really do it and can play as well with their left hand as their right. I’m not quite there. [Laughs]

It’s hard to talk about music and performing right now without acknowledging the giant, COVID-19 elephant in the room. It’s interesting to me that this moment of pausing, of stopping everything, especially in the music industry, has given artists a chance to refocus or realign their priorities – have you been thinking about the future? Thinking about the present? How has the pandemic felt to you? 

The first three months I was just depressed and drinking a lot and not doing anything. Then recently, I’ve been trying to write. I’ve been jamming with my friend Milo, who plays a lot of lead guitar on two of my albums, and we’re going to make some demos together. I’ve also been thinking about going to school, trying to get into some kind of two-year program. Since music might not [come back], there might not be live music for two more years. I’m thinking about getting a job. [Laughs] 

It’s daunting to wake up every day like, “I’m going to keep doing this now, because I believe — I think — it’s going to happen in the future.” It’s a lot! 

Yeah, it’s like, “Maybe music is just not essential…” You know? [Sad chuckle] 

Then, with the whole Zoom thing and the livestream thing, I’m just not really into it. I’m not enjoying it at all, it feels weird. It’s just like, sitting in a room by yourself, trying to make a video, and then you think, “Should I look into the camera? Should there be talking in between?” You’re trying to imitate a set at a venue, but you’re just sitting by yourself. It just feels weird! I would rather just play by myself, without a camera. 

I liked playing shows [before] kind of, but I almost didn’t even like that. At least it felt like there was a reason for doing it. I was talking to my mom and we both realized we used to watch concerts before, too. Just then it was an actual concert on film. Even that would be better! If there were somehow an audience in the livestream… I guess that can’t be, but it’s just awkward [without them.] Seeing a band play off of the energy of the room is more what it’s about.

Well, for your Shout & Shine livestream performance we’ll have to ask our audience to be “loud” in the comments! Use that clapping hands emoji! [Laughs] Who would you like to see as a guest on Shout & Shine? Whose music is inspiring you right now and getting you through the day-to-day?

I like Tré Burt! Amythyst Kiah, too. 

Have you heard of Yes Ma’am? They’re from New Orleans – the singer sometimes plays solo, but also has a band. They used to busk on the street in New Orleans. It’s just really good, a great kinda folky string band. 

I like the new Run The Jewels album. I listen to Elliott Smith still, and a lot of ‘90s music. I like Black Pumas a lot.

What would you like to see from the music community, as far as a response to this moment in our culture’s history — not only the racial injustice and righteous rebellions against police brutality, but also how divided and polarized our musical community is now. It’s like half people who want music to “remain apolitical” and half folks who are like, “Music has always been political, where the fuck have you been all along?” What do you see as the urgent need of our community to reconcile all of this? I know that’s a huge question.

I think it just needs to become about honesty again. That’s something I would like to see. I’m not really that into “Americana” music, but even so I feel like [Americana] musicians are going to be faced with not being able to let these issues go unaddressed anymore. I think that’s interesting. At this point, you can’t just put out your weird corny love song that’s not even about anything that happened in your life, but is actually just something that makes sense pop-wise and hit-wise. You should have to really be honest. People don’t necessarily have to be “political,” they can just write about all the emotions they’re going through. We’re all dealing with the pandemic and with Trump and with police brutality — it’s a lot. Even if people don’t want to write a song about why we should get rid of the police, they could at least write about how scared they are. I don’t know, there’s a different, new kind of folk that could happen about just being freaked out and unsure of your future. I love shit like that. 

I kinda don’t like protest songs from people who didn’t do it before. It’s just not hitting right. I don’t want your protest music if you weren’t writing it before. Whatever issue is being highlighted, it’s always like, “Yeah, we’ve BEEN talking about that.” [Expectant pause] This has been the conversation. I’m into punk, I’ve always liked protest music. As far as folk, I do like its protest music, but I mostly like punk or really politically-charged hip-hop. It’s kind of annoying when say, a really poppy country person who’s never said anything about anything is writing a protest song. It’s just cashing in. It’s corny. It’s weird. 

And another thing, a lot of people who are going out to these Black Lives Matter protests and stuff, I still don’t feel like they would treat me any differently than they normally would. I saw people posing and taking pictures. This is a weird thing to just be a trend. 

Like Breonna Taylor now being a meme.

Yeah. It’s offensive, it’s too much. 

And how many times they show those videos [of Black people being murdered by police]. There’s a lot of murder porn going around! People are saying one thing, but showing someone die every day. I was kind of like, “You know, I don’t think they would show a video of a white person being killed, over and over again.” A lot of things happening right now are really dehumanizing and I don’t think people can see it unless they really, really think about it. Or maybe put themselves in that position. It’s murder porn.

I know what happened. I don’t want to see this over and over again. I don’t need to physically see it to be angry about it. Think of all the bad this is doing to our psyches on top of everything else, seeing people murdered every day. 

But, a lot of musicians are “activists” now, I guess. I just… don’t really know what that means. They were going to put out a song anyway. That’s what they do for a living. Obviously they can’t just put out the typical love song — that’s what people always write about, love. That would be “offensive.” Or, it wouldn’t be “appropriate.” So they all have to change and pretend to be “activists.” It’s just a reflection of what’s trending right now. 

I just want to know: Are they actually going to change in a year? I’m curious to know how long the Black Lives Matter profile pictures are going to stay up. 


Photo credit: Randi Steinberger

Indigo Girls Expand “Country Radio” With Black, Brown and Queer Musicians

Hollywood, the 2020 Netflix series from director-screenwriter Ryan Murphy, is a resplendent show dripping in Art Deco that does not wholly reimagine Los Angeles’ golden era, but rather subtly inserts a quintessential question: “What if?”

What if Hollywood hadn’t been as… ___-ist? (Sexist, racist, misogynist, ageist, etc.) If one happens to be born into a region, a folkway, a culture, an art form that doesn’t include you, or that doesn’t quite love you back, one often doesn’t realize it until it’s too late. And then what? Do we, the rural, country-loving queers, wait around for our Ryan Murphy to reimagine the world to better include us? Not quite.

For Emily Saliers and Amy Ray of Indigo Girls — and, for that matter, almost each and every queer who has ever loved roots music — that “What if?” question is existential, but it also doesn’t matter. What if country music loved LGBTQ+ folks? The lyrics of “Country Radio,” a track off the duo’s sixteenth studio album, Look Long, tell it plainly: “But as far as these songs will take me/ Is as far as I’ll go/ I’m just a gay kid in a small town/ Who loves country radio.”

While curating the following playlist of their favorites from country music airwaves and songs they wish were included there, Saliers and Ray offer a quite simple solution actionable in each present moment: Be who you are, listen to the music that brings you joy, love who you love — and be anti-racist.

Emily Saliers: [I began with the idea:] What are the songs that I listened to that I latched onto, that sort of gave me a feeling of “I can’t get into this song [because of its heteronormativity], but I love this song so much”? One of the first songs that came to mind is “Mama’s Song” by Carrie Underwood. 

I should preface this by saying, I don’t expect that there can’t be heteronormative country songs, or that queer life has to be explicitly represented in songs, it’s not that. It’s the feeling of the way a song moves me emotionally, but then it stops me a little bit short of being able to fully experience it because of the language or the obvious implications of man and woman.

I love Carrie Underwood’s voice and she’s taken more of a harder, pop direction since “Mama’s Song,” but she sings this so beautifully. She’s talking to her mother, “He is good… he treats me like a real man should,” and yet the beauty of her song [is in] her telling her mom that’s she’s going to be okay. 

Amy Ray: For me it’s a little different because I never had the experience of feeling like I wish I could put myself in a song. I think it’s because, gender-wise, I always just related to the male singers. I kinda have that gender dysphoria, you know? [Chuckles] I have these filters that sort of make it my own — probably out of necessity, from growing up loving the Allman Brothers, Pure Prairie League, and Randy Travis so much. [Sings] “Amie, whatcha gonna do?” Pure Prairie League!

It’s very odd — Emily’s perspective on this is something I can understand, and I agree that it’s this weird disconnect with country music. We have to kind of acclimate it to ourselves, in some way, using some kind of trick in our minds. But I’ve always had that internal translator…

ES: Another example is Brett Young’s “In Case You Didn’t Know.” Now this is a song that you can listen to and fit your own queer life into it — as far as I remember it doesn’t have any gender pronouns. Then I watched the video and of course he’s singing to a woman who comes into the audience and he plays to her, alone. It’s a love song to his girlfriend — or wife or partner or whatever — so I could live in that song and think back to relationships and apply it in my own life, but then I watched the video and that door shut a little bit.

AR: I love Angaleena Presley, the Pistol Annies. Presley is such a great writer. “Better Off Red” is one of my favorite songs that she’s written… Honestly, if I hear songs, if I like it, I just put myself in it. I don’t really think about it or worry about it. It’s a survival mechanism from my youth, not that it’s the right thing to do. It’s built inside me.

…I thought you couldn’t be a country singer if you were gay and left-wing and a complete dyke. That made me feel more alienated than the songs themselves, that idea of its inaccessibility. Or, if you went to a show and you were sitting there in that audience, in the early days before it all kind of busted open, you would feel scared. Or judged. Or uncomfortable.

ES: Think about what a splash that song by Little Big Town, “Girl Crush,” had. Just the implication of a lesbian relationship or feelings! That song was a big hit, but it got people talking. [Probably] the majority of the people in this world lean more heteronormative, so they’re representing themselves in these songs. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

I wouldn’t want to listen to just albums that are for and by queer people, oh my god. No way! But we have to have them as part. I think about what an influence Ferron was, how much Amy and I love Ferron. When her first album came out, it was like, “Oh my gosh this is one of the best songwriters in the country and she’s queer!” I can’t describe how important it was to have an artist like that.

Even Lil Nas X, who had the number one hit forever-ever-ever with Billy Ray Cyrus. It’s awesome to know that he’s queer! And a guy like Young Thug, a rapper out of Atlanta, who’s not gender normative by any stretch, to me. It’s interesting. It’s good to have a mish mosh! It’s not that the majority of songwriters out there can’t be represented in their own songwriting, we just have to have ours, as well.

AR: [We] should add Amythyst Kiah. Amythyst is amazing.

[Racism] is the pivotal struggle of the Americana scene and the roots scene. How do you honor Black and Brown folks who want to be in this scene — and maybe some of them don’t even want to be in this scene because even Americana is rooted in questionable legacy. How much do people of color want to be immersed in that scene when it still feels so racist? Even the best parts of it. It’s a huge question to unwrap and it has to do with such a long history of where country music came from.

We stole the banjo and put it in our hillbilly music in the mountains and called it our own. We forgot all the stuff we learned from “our slaves,” you know? It’s crazy to me, if you think about the racist roots of where a lot of this comes from. Merging this racist legacy with this incredible populist music — music for the people, like Woody Guthrie, like the Carter Family. You get those two things bumping up against each other constantly, how do you entangle that and make this a space where it doesn’t matter what color you are? Where it doesn’t matter what your religious persuasion, or your political party, or your gender, or your sexual preference, or anything.

I think the way we deal with it is by all of us thinking all the time and being mindful of [that racist history]. And including [Black artists] in our playlists and touring with them. Some people are like, “What does it mean if you’re forcing this integration? Is it just going through the motions?” No! No, no, no.

ES: I’ll [echo] the things that Amy said, practically: Tour with Black musicians or Brown musicians or musicians who have not been able to feel that they’re welcome and make everybody welcome. Like Amythyst or Chastity Brown. Those are artists of color who have been discriminated against, who feel other-than in the world of their genres.

I think, first, we all — we white people, we people “of no color,” we “colorless” people — should dig deep, identify our own racism and how far it goes, how much we use it. Break it down, talk about it, identify it in each other. Really start from the core of things and hopefully act outwardly as a result of what we’ve dug through, inwardly. Try to heal and fix, you know? We’ve got to ask artists of color what their experience is like and why it’s like that. I’ve got to assume that there must be some Black artists, who if they hear a song from a white, country, roots singer about the freedom of driving down a dark, country road, they’re not going to feel the same way about the history of Black people down dark country roads. A lot of it is context and, as Amy says, there’s so much to be unraveled. But we are at a tipping point.

AR: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, I feel like there’s a lot of crossover, to me from that and the beginnings of early rock ‘n’ roll. That’s kind of what Elvis Presley was doing and borrowing from. I think about that sometimes, that territory. I like old recordings, like field recordings almost, of all the Alan Lomax type stuff he would collect. Field songs, prison songs. I think a lot of country writers have taken from that stuff, you know? 

I remember an interview with Kathleen Hanna that really resonated with me. She said, when they ask you who your favorite artists are, most of us name all these male artists. That’s who we can think of, because that’s who’s archived the best. Straight men, bands, and writers. If you sit down and really think about who you love and make a list of the women and the queer folks — this is what she was talking about, she wasn’t talking about color at the time or race or the social construct of race — and you take that list to your interviews and rattle off those names, you’ll be more honest, because you’ll be talking about who you really listen to and not just trying to remember [anyone] off the top of your head. 

People are so out of the habit — and so in the habit — of white supremacy that we don’t even know how to do the right things, just in our instincts. We have to learn, write it down, so we remember to do it.


Photo credit: Jeremy Cowart

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.