(Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Reissue series! For the next several weeks, Basic Folk is digging back into the archives and reposting some of our favorite episodes alongside new introductions commenting on what it’s like to listen back. Enjoy!)
Listening back, I feel like this 2018 interview with Anaïs Mitchell holds up. Originally published on January 10, 2019, Hadestown was about to debut on Broadway, the pandemic was still over a year away, and we were young and full of autumn. Our Basic Folk interview includes a really interesting discussion about feminism (with just one squeamish reference to fourth-wave being about “non-binary” from yours truly. Eeek!). Anaïs talks about her childhood on a sheep farm in Vermont. She unpacks her love for and loyalty in her collaborations and the mystical way she found her visual artist (Peter Nevins) for Hadestown.
We also talk about Hadestown receiving some “viral” attention in 2016, thanks to a Tr*mp campaign promise to build a wall on the southern border. People latched onto her 2006-penned song, “Why We Build the Wall,” which is one of the pinnacle tracks from the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Anaïs opens up about how she met her husband, Noah Hahn, and her early musical beginnings in Boston at Club Passim.
This episode was recorded just as Hadestown was set to open at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in March 2019. This was also a year before her band, Bonny Light Horseman, would release their debut album. I’m proud of our conversation, which includes some chiming in from Anaïs’ guitarist Austin Nevins, who was on tour with her at the time of the recording. We three are old friends and we were trying to record the interview and hang out at the same time. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if we succeeded!
Kris Delmhorst is not a good sleeper. The Western Massachusetts songwriter is usually awake from 2 or 3 a.m. to about 4 or 5 a.m. Sometimes it feels nice and floaty, but other times she is wide awake worrying about anything her brain can get a hold of. This is similar to a feeling with which she ended her tenth record, Ghosts in the Garden, with the song “Something to Show.” Thankfully, she set us straight and explained that, indeed, the track is a hopeful prayer that she will have something to show for all the questioning, trying, pushing through, and general work that she and fellow humans are doing. Too bad it can’t happen in the daylight hours. In our conversation for Basic Folk, we talk about this and the other themes and songs on the new album, like the unbearable emotional density of summer ending, ambient restlessness during destruction, carrying unresolved loves, and, of course, death.
Kris experienced a great loss in 2021 with the death of her dear friend and collaborator Billy Conway. Her husband, Jeffrey Foucault, memorialized Billy in his 2024 album, The Universal Fire, which he called “a working wake” for their friend. He appeared on Basic Folk and spoke at length about Billy and what he meant to the Boston music community. I encourage you to listen to that conversation and Jeff’s record. Kris had known Billy for many decades; he produced a couple of her early albums and had been a huge presence in her life. The title track, “Ghosts in the Garden,” addresses Billy’s death, which sounds like it was a beautiful one, something that not very many people experience. He was surrounded by a houseful of friends and family celebrating and keeping him company up until the moment he passed.
There are many types of ghosts on the album: lost loves and past mistakes, roads not taken, and our possible futures, too. It was recorded in rural Maine at Great Northern Sound, which is inside an 1800s farmhouse that must keep its own ghosts. Kris, a great lover of collaboration, brings in many guest vocalists like Rose Cousins, Anaïs Mitchell, Ana Egge, Taylor Ashton, Rachel Baiman, Anna Tivel, and her husband, Jeffrey. I was surprised to learn that she had not actually planned for any guest vocalists. She made the decision, recorded some reference mixes in Maine, and listened on the drive home. She was startled to discover that she heard each guest vocalist on the track with her in the car, which prompted her to write some emails and get them all on the record. The songs want what the songs want, so you better give it to them or else… more ghosts?
Releasing a new album is stressful enough for most artists, but releasing an album, a documentary, and a book almost simultaneously – while singing and dancing in a Broadway musical? That sounds crazy even to Ani DiFranco, who released her 23rd album, Unprecedented Sh!t, in May, while performing as Persephone in Hadestown, reprising the role she sang on the same-titled Anais Mitchell album that became the folk opera. (The album was released in 2010 on DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records label; the show opened on Broadway in 2019 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.) DiFranco wrapped her nearly five-month acting debut on June 30, just after performing at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of director Dana Flora’s documentary, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, filmed as DiFranco recorded her 2021 album, Revolutionary Love.
On August 27, DiFranco will release her second children’s book, the timely and inspiring lyrical narrative, Show Up and Vote, illustrated by Rachelle Baker. (Her first, The Knowing, was released in 2023.) For most of these endeavors, including Unprecedented Sh!t – only her second album produced by someone else (BJ Burton) – DiFranco did something she’s not used to: giving up control.
Who decides to be in a play, release an album and a book and have a documentary premiere at the same time?
Ani DiFranco: No one would decide that. That’s fate just laughing at me, just fucking with me. But it’s exciting. It’s exhausting. And my hamstrings may or may not hold me up through it all. [Laughs] But I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
Obviously, you’ve spent time in front of audiences. What’s different about doing it in a musical?
I’ve realized that performance has, at least for me, two big components. One is improvisational; it’s of the moment. It’s interactive. The other is putting on the show. I’ve always leaned into the interaction and improvisation. This is very much leaning in the other direction. Doing the same shit every night, eight times a week, for months, is a whole other approach. … What I think I love most about this super unique experience, besides the work itself – Hadestown is such an epic work, and I couldn’t think more highly of it – I’ve never done something where it’s such a group effort. I really have been amazed by [the] collective experience. Like we all became one organism, sort of this collective energy field.
Do you think you would get involved in another production like this?
I’m pretty open to anything. I’m most enamored by the new and terrifying, so I have no idea.
I would think a documentary is exciting, too.
Yeah. Yes …
You don’t sound so sure.
I’m just going with exciting as the adjective. [Laughs] For me, it’s very disconcerting.
In what way?
I actually haven’t seen it and I’m not sure if I will. It’s a lot, to show yourself.
That’s got to be a challenge. But you have led what I consider to be a singular life and have had a really impactful career. It seems like it would make sense to put that onscreen.
It’s not a career-defining, expansive retrospective. Of course, there’s some historical context. But it’s just a walk in the shoes of a woman who’s trying to be an artist in the world, and also a mother and have a relationship and be accountable to everyone that wants her to be at any given moment.
Let’s talk about the voting book. I’m so charmed by the concept, because it’s such an important one to teach. What inspired you to do that?
Exactly what you said. I feel like young people being inspired to vote in this country, in this moment, is the difference between having a democracy tomorrow and not. So when I was invited to make a book for children, I thought, “Hey, maybe I’ll try to talk to some future voters.” It’s from a kid’s point of view about going to vote with her mom. The book is a tool with which parents can engage their kids about voting.
I’m somebody who takes my kids with me to vote so that they see it modeled, so that they understand it as a part of being grown and a member of a society. But even more than a teaching tool, I hope that it will inspire kids, that it will get them excited about this thing that they get to do when they’re grown up, because they’re part of a democracy. It’s a really important, empowering, profound thing that connects them to everybody else, and is a way that we take care of each other, a way that we express our love for each other, and all of these really cool things. I guess I most hope that it lights a fire in a kid.
That brings me to the album. I noticed that “The Thing at Hand” and “The Knowing” seem to share similar concepts, but the latter one apparently was describing the ideas to a child. Is there a connection?
They are very related, but “The Knowing,” I wrote specifically to a child. When I was faced with making my first children’s book, I was having a hard time, and the only way I made it through was to pick up my guitar and make a song that was also a book. And “The Thing at Hand,” those themes of identity and ego, and the vast realms that exist beneath that or beyond it, are themes that run through the record.
I totally caught that, and I loved the lyric, “I defy being defined”; that sums up a lot of your career – and your life. How hard has it been to maintain that stance in a society and music industry that seem to be all about definitions, and judging based on them?
It’s been really hard, every step of the way. People want to define and describe you in very finite terms, and they’re often very reductive. Holding onto a sense of myself as this ever-changing field of infinite possibility, so to speak, is a hard thing to do. There are pressures from every direction to be something very concrete, that thing that this person or that person or the other wants you to be or insists that you are. It’s been a real dance of negotiating that all the way along.
What do you do when it gets really frustrating?
I’ve had to just develop this – I mean, I’m as thin-skinned as the next guy, when it comes right down to it. I am as lost in seeking affirmation from the world around me instead of from inside myself as the next guy, so it’s a constant challenge to go beyond all of that and to keep yourself at a distance, no matter what the world is saying about you. I’ve learned that you can’t rely on the world to tell you that you’re worthy and you’re good and you’re great and you’re wonderful, which sometimes it does, because then when it turns around and says you’re unworthy, you’re terrible, you’re horrible, you’re a sham, your whole premise of yourself comes crumbling down. So it’s still a challenge that I am trying to rise to, to self-love. The older I get, the more I believe that the ways that we harm each other all come home to our lack of self-love. So it’s not some kind of trite endeavor; it’s not self-centered or indulgent. It is extremely important to peace on earth that we learn to find our inherent worthiness within ourselves in order that we not turn our self-hatred on each other.
Back to the concepts you address in these songs. “New Bible” sounds almost like a manifesto; there’s so much to unpack there. In other songs, you just allude to an idea; for instance, in “Baby Roe,” you say, “I think we might be wrong about all of that,” which raises the question, wrong about what?
That’s another song that is interrelated on the theme of ego and identity; it’s … stepping back from this debate about abortion and reproductive freedom and going, this is ridiculous. Like, projecting your ego onto a potential human; it’s like, I am a being of light. I am consciousness and that’s what you are. And this is one of many, many lives and manifestations of this unified field of consciousness that unites us all, that we are coming from and returning to infinitely, that we are all one within. This idea that consciousness need be born right now, into this exact body, in order to be manifesting, is really silly. The whole premise of forced reproduction is based in this very stunted understanding of what we are and what life is and what death is. I think a lot of the traps that we fall into that are entrapping us more and more, sociopolitically, environmentally – it’s all ego-based delusion.
In many of these songs, you sing so sweetly, and yet there’s these undertones, like in “More or Less Free.” I was surprised to read that was about somebody in prison; I thought of it as possibly directed to oppressors.
“More or Less Free” is intentionally open-ended, but yes, it’s written from within prison walls, as a free person inside a prison, visiting and having very human moments and connections with people who live in cages all the time. But it’s a tricky business to talk about songs and what is this about and what is that about? I hate doing that, because songs are supposed to reach you the way they reach you and you’re supposed to hear what you hear, or not. And that’s not for me to say, really. They’re about what you decide they are.
But you know what I’m saying. Technically, that’s where it comes from, but it is very much about being born into a society, that dichotomy of – we are all born free, as my friend Utah Phillips would say, and then you wait for somebody to come along and try to take away that freedom. He always said the degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free. So yeah, we are all born free, and yet, we’re not. That’s all that it’s about.
What was different about doing an album with somebody else calling the shots?
Everything of this particular record and process was unique. The remote thing, for one, which is just how it worked out. He and I would have loved to have spent endless hours in a room together vibing off each other, but we did it interacting through many levels of machines. In retrospect, that’s maybe exactly apropos for a record where I was really trying to bring the machines in. BJ, of course, is the one with the machines and the facility to be intuitive and creative with them, but we sort of worked vicariously with each other.
Because I was not in the room with him, I couldn’t say, “Ooh, a little to the left. Oh, a little louder.” It was like, I record the songs, he fucks with them royally, and what comes back is – I mean, we had a little back and forth, but really, it was overwhelmingly a process of giving over. Just saying yes to his artistry, like he was saying yes to mine. I was not prepared to do [that] at 20 or 30 or 40, and with album one or six or 10. But this is album 23. I’m 53 years old, and I’m more than ready to say yes and really delegate.
People have gone back and redone previous albums. Maybe 10 years from now, you might decide that you want to redo it.
Well, I’ve been in this music game and song-making game for 30-plus years, and one thing that I’ve learned from experience is that songs have long lives. And, that even when I was in charge and doing everything “the way I thought it should be done,” which was most of those other records, I don’t necessarily “get it right,” or the album version is not the definitive version of any song of mine, necessarily. In fact, I have no memory of making any of them. And sometimes when I hear them, I’m like, “Whoa, what?” because the song as it’s lived onstage and in the world is not necessarily that moment. When I had misgivings about BJ’s tendency to turn my guitar into some other sound, or eliminate it altogether, or sort of deconstruct what I sent him or something, I would think, “Whoa, is this cool?” And then I was thinking, “Well, who cares? That’s just how it sounds on this little piece of vinyl.” The song, it’s like a snapshot of a human; the human has many faces.
I love the line in “Unprecedented Sh!t,” “the bigger the heart, the more it bleeds.” But it also sounds like there’s an attempt to ignore that [i.e., “I got a lot of heart/ But I can’t afford to let it bleed”]. Sometimes, for example, with animal rescue, I have to stop myself from reading another story about this poor …
Oh, yeah. Dude. That’s all I’m talking about there, is how much we have to numb ourselves to survive being surrounded by pain and suffering and feeling helpless, if not being helpless, to stop it.
It’s a shame that we have to numb ourselves, but on the other hand, do you ever feel like that character in The Green Mile, where it’s just all going into you, and it’s too much to hold sometimes?
Yes, very much. I think anybody whose heart is not dead inside their chest is trying to deal with that.
That’s what I got from “New Bible,” too. There are some really pessimistic statements in there, but there’s also some real optimistic ones, a sense of, yeah, you can let this stuff overwhelm you, or you can look for ways to do something. That, to me, is a really good thing to put out there.
Yeah. Which brings us back around to the children’s book. The tools of nonviolent revolution are right there in our pocket, actually. What do you know? What do you know?
(Editor’s Note: To mark the occasion of Bonny Light Horseman’s brand new double LP, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free – which were released in June – we invite our readers to be as flies on the wall during a special exclusive interview, an entertaining and joyful conversation between the members of this folk supergroup, Eric D. Johnson, Josh Kaufman, and Anaïs Mitchell.
Read about the band’s memories of their first gigs played for money, about popular bands they don’t really “get,” and so much more below. Plus, dig into their deep and broad discography – together and separately – with our in-depth exploration of their catalog of recordings here.)
Eric D. Johnson: We totally love each other a lot and we spend a lot of time together and we talk about everything, and I know everything about you guys, pretty much. I got some deep shit on you guys!
But, one question that I didn’t know the answer to, because I have a really funny answer for it is, what was the first show that you ever played where you got paid money? Do you remember?
Anaïs Mitchell: Oh wow!
EDJ: Can you guys remember that?
Josh Kaufman: I can remember. I don’t know if it was the very first, but it was certainly early. I played a yogurt shop in Port Jeff. I definitely played a lot of Grateful Dead songs. I think I played “Peggy-O” and like “Friend of the Devil.” I may have tried an ambitious solo acoustic version of “St. Stephen.”
EDJ: Tell me more though, was it a band? Was it you solo? And did you go just under the name Josh Kaufman?
JK: Just me. I don’t know if I was even booked. I don’t know. I may have just shown up.
EDJ: And what was the yogurt shop?
JK: I can’t remember the name of it either. I feel like I have a couple of friends that definitely would remember and definitely were there. That was the ‘90s, that was the era of the yogurt shop. It was basically a cafe, but let’s face it, it was a yogurt shop. I don’t know what I got paid, but I did get paid. I was probably 16; at a yogurt shop playing Grateful Dead songs for money.
AM: I want to see you then, Josh!
EDJ: I totally want to see him! I want to find the bootleg of that show. How did you get hooked up with the yogurt gig?
JK: Well, I was kind of in bed with big yogurt–
EDJ: You’re a big deal going way back–
JK: Going way back now! Well, how did I know about [it]? I think my friend Kevin Jones worked there. I think this is what happened. My friend Kevin Jones worked there, who you guys will meet when we play in California, because he just moved to the Bay Area. He’s going to come to our show. I think they were looking to up their game [at the yogurt shop]. And he was like, “Let’s see what happens. Let’s bring in a professional.” It must have been such a hot mess.
EDJ: I bet you were good from the jump. That’s my guess.
JK: That’s generous.
EDJ: Anaïs, what about you?
AM: I think the first time I made money for music was [when I was] 18 years old and I took a gap year. I was going to go to school, but I took a gap year and then I moved to Boston. You guys know this. I know you know this about me.
JK: You were a waitress.
AM: I was a waitress. Right. At this diner and then later as a waitress at this Cajun/Mexican place, which really sucked. It was in Central Square and I remember I had that job, because I quit it when I realized that I could make money playing in the subway. I could make equal money to what I made as a waitress. Basically, I would go down – I want to say that I played an Ovation Guitar. I’m sorry. [Laughs]
EDJ: Classic! Love this. I’m just gonna say: Ovation Guitar; yogurt shop. Just as visuals.
AM: Totally. [Laughs] I love this. They go together.
JK: You can actually eat yogurt out of an Ovation Guitar.
EDJ: They are designed for eating yogurt out of – in the ‘90s!
AM: I had a little portable [amp], my first amp. I just started playing electric on tour with you guys, but that’s not my first amp. My first amp was a little Crate amp. Do you know what those are? It was bright yellow. And it was cool. For plugging in your Ovation Guitar when you played in the subway, they were amazing.
So I did that. And the cool thing was I was really just getting going. I had written maybe a handful of songs – that I’ve repressed [since]. Like they were really not good, but if you’re playing in the subway, the audience turns over every 10 minutes. I played the same songs. I would just play them again and again. It was mostly my new songs that I had written. And I think I played a couple of folk songs that I learned from the Rise Up Singing folk music bible.
EDJ: But were people like throwing in money? What was your haul? Not because I care that much about money, but I’m just asking, is this your first profesh gig? Do you have your case? Do you have a little hat box?
AM: You got your case open and you put a couple dollars in there. You put like a five [dollar bill] to show people that. You don’t put coins, because then that’s what people put. I actually can’t remember, with inflation, like, what was that? I want to say I would go down there for an hour or two and make fifty to a hundred bucks.
JK: Oh, that’s really good. That sounds really good to me.
AM: That’s why I quit my waitressing job! I was like, this sucks. I’m just gonna do this.
EDJ: You’re 18, what is that, the year 2000?
AM: Or something… it was ‘99. Yes.
EDJ: Okay, sick. With inflation, I think that’s good. I think you did really well
AM: I might be misremembering, might be adjusting for inflation [wrong] in my memory.
JK: I think I got paid, by the yogurt shop, like $46 or something like that, which when I think about it now it’s almost like the tooth fairy or something. I think somebody just felt bad for me. They’re like, “This is 36, 46 bucks, just take it, go.” You know that, “Here’s some gas money.”
EDJ: I like that it was $46.
JK: I don’t think it was $50. I think I’d remember it if it was $50. That would have seemed like a lot of money to me. I will say, the guitar I was playing, Eric, and Anaïs, would have been the same guitar that I still play – the Guild that we made our records with and that Eric played on our recent tour.
AM: I spent some time with that guy.
Eric, I want to hear your story.
EDJ: I got you gonna beat financially by a couple bucks. When I was like 17, my friend Steve and I decided I was going to join Steve’s band just as a singer, but I was too scared to just sing and stand there. I did not know how to play guitar. So, I got a crash course in guitar from Steve. Steve came to one of our shows last summer, I think, or two summers ago when we opened up for [Bruce] Hornsby.
Steve gave me a crash course in guitar, but I didn’t really know how to apply guitar chords to cover songs, you know? I was like, “I guess I’m going to have to write.” I immediately became a songwriter, because I was too dumb to learn how to play a Pink Floyd song or something like that.
All of a sudden we became this folk duo that played a mix of covers and originals, as I was learning chords. I learned how to play some covers. I think “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead was the first – speaking of Grateful Dead, Josh. We played at this cafe in our little downtown of our funny little suburb called Caffe Trieste. It was actually really cool. It was very ‘90s. When I remember it, it smelled like clove cigarettes in there and herbal tea. It was literally a coffee house, like from the old times where you smoke cigarettes and drink coffee at night and watch music. I’m not saying it was like Greenwich Village or something like that, but it was cool.
We would play there, but for no money. That was kind of like open mics and stuff like that. We played “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin and we played “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. I think we played “Wish You Were Here.” And then we played sort of a smattering of my originals, which were terrible.
But, I was at home [one day] and this is in 1993. My mom was like, “You have a phone call.” And it was some lady and she says, “My daughter, Katie, she’s turning fourteen and she’s a huge fan of your music. And will you play her birthday party?” And I was like, “What?” We don’t have a band or like fans or anything like that. But apparently this girl had seen us at a school assembly – where all we played was the Cheers theme – and she’s turning fourteen. I was like, “What type of money do you usually get for things like this?” But I sort of fumbled and before I could finish and name a price, she was like, “Would $150 be good?”
That was like an unfathomable amount of money. But she also wanted us to play two sets and play for like literally two hours in their living room. We had about 20 minutes worth of material.We went to the house. Her dad owned an automobile dealership, so the house was nice. It was a room full of thirteen and fourteen year old, she was a freshman and we were seniors. I just remember that. So maybe she was turning fifteen.
When we walked in, it was like Beatlemania. They like, screamed and stuff. There were parents, friends, and stuff who were there and they were kind of these wealthy people. My house was very unsophisticated and it felt like we had sort of stepped into this sophisticated realm of our like dumb little suburb. These were the elites! We played our show, only we had not learned more songs in order to play. So we did the Anaïs thing, but without the audience turnover. We just played things over again. And they asked us to play “Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles. Then there was a set break and we had no more songs. We went out to Steve’s Jeep and got super high and then came back in and just played literally the same set again and doubled up on “Rocky Raccoon.” We played it four times in one night.
Anaïs Mitchell: What were you wearing? Did you dress up?
EDJ: I’m sure I was wearing something weird. I had a very schizophrenic style at the time. It was the ‘90s! I would wear plaid ‘60s golf pants, but I had this shirt that was a bread truck delivery shirt that had the name “Byron” on it like a name tag. My hair looked like Jason Priestley from 90210. I hadn’t honed my style yet, but I’m sure I just tried to dress up cool.
It was quite a first taste.
AM: That’s amazing. You might be the only band to play “Rocky Raccoon” four times in a show.
JK: The Beatles never played it one time in a show, I don’t think. So you beat the Beatles.
EDJ: Someone asked me this question recently – and you don’t have to answer with a modern band, because it could be more controversial – but what’s a band that’s iconic, that people love, that you’re like, “Not that…”
JK: Oh, Annie has a list of these they’re called like, unimpeachable bands that she doesn’t want to listen to. That she wants to impeach.
AM: I want to know her list!
JK: For instance, I think the Stones are on there. She’s like, “I mean, sure, the Stones are great or whatever, but I don’t want to listen to them.”
EDJ: For the Situation readers, by the way, this is Annie, Josh’s wife [we’re talking about]. Annie Nero.
JK: Yeah! But, for my own… let me think about that for a second.
AM: I have one, maybe. Maybe it’s going to be the same.
EDJ: Mine’s a little bit The Smiths – I actually think that the band sounds great. It’s sort of like The Doors, for me, where I’m not as into the front person [as I am the band], and I have to believe in the front person.
My other one is that I love Bob Dylan, but he’s like my 18th favorite songwriter. It’s still really high up there in the pantheon of songwriters, but probably a very low ranking as far as Dylan goes. I know Dylan’s a big one for you, Josh, but for me I have seventeen others I put above him. That’s an arbitrary number, but yeah.
AM: I was gonna say Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I’d be interested in hearing Annie’s whole list, ’cause I do wanna say, I feel like it’s a gendered thing. I’m not even gonna be eloquent about it, but I do think we have deified certain male artisan bands.
Where it’s like, “Aren’t you into this?” And I’m like, “Actually no.” But I sort of feel like they’re unimpeachable. Like I’m supposed to be like, “Oh yeah, CSNY!!” But my feelings are complex about CSNY, because I love Neil Young and I love Graham Nash. I think it’s really David Crosby – rest in peace – that like, for somehow I’m [hung up on]. I read about how he produced the first Joni Mitchell record and, for me, Joni’s like the top of the totem. Reading about their dynamic, back in the day [is troubling.]
Everyone loved Crosby. She had to kind of be like, “Oh my God, it’s Cros!” You know, but she was Joni Mitchell! I couldn’t really feel that stuff. Yeah, that’s gonna be my band. It’s frustrating.
Sorry, we canceled. [Laughs]
EDJ: No, I think CSNY is a reasonable one!
JK: I was gonna say The Who, honestly. The Who are awesome and everything and certainly there’s ‘60s garage [rock] stuff that’s fun and everything.
EDJ: I think it’s okay to throw fire at those guys. Dylan can take it and be pissed. They can fucking take it!
JK: I guess I feel like that’s lazy of me.
I think Anaïs’ comment about this sort of Mount Rushmore of at the time, early 20s baby boomer white men [was well made]. When they were very young with guitars, for some reason, we’ve decided that those guys are the best.
EDJ: It’s like the Rolling Stone magazine “top 40 cool guys” list. It’s like a mural at a guitar center in suburban Atlanta that you stopped at on tour.
But also Anaïs, sidebar, in my seventeen songwriters above Dylan, Joni Mitchell is my number one, so…
JK: She’s at the top of my list for sure, but I think in the top zone. I don’t know if they’re like tiered necessarily, because since it is art and stuff, it does sort of depend on the opening that I have for it on any given day to enter my heart.
AM: I got a couple more. You guys, this is going to be wild. Well, maybe not. I mean, you guys know me pretty well, because it’s some of these things, the music is undeniable and has shaped other music, but it’s not for me, you know? I would put the Beatles in that category.
JK: I was waiting for you to say that!
AM: I would put both [CSNY and the Beatles] in there. And I sort of appreciate it when I hear it. Like when I hear it coming out of someone’s car or on the radio or whatever, but I will never put that music on myself.
EDJ: I feel like with Beatles, if it didn’t catch you at a certain moment it’s a tough, massive thing to dig into. I didn’t get into Joni until I was 30, and it was like one of the pivotal musical moments of my life.
That’s not to say, “I think you have to be 38 to get into Joni,” but I think for whatever reason, she’s so deep and cool and crazy that I think it took me having a little life behind me to sort of understand what it was about. Someone who had seen clouds from both sides now, like at that point, it hit me like super hard.
I think Beatles, talk about iconography and stuff like that! It’s like, I totally get it. But I can’t. I love the Beatles. It exists in my musical and our band’s musical DNA. I’m never not thinking about like a McCartney melody.
AM: I had some grand thought while you were just saying that, about when you encounter music and when it speaks to you. Because yes, if you’re fourteen, if you’re fifteen discovering Ani DiFranco as I was. She became like my whole raison d’etre, but then for someone discovering her later, at a different time in their life or whatever, it’s different. You had to be a certain age to get the Joni.
And, I wanted to talk about the Grateful Dead because, like the Beatles, I might’ve put them in [this category] if we had spoken a different time, but now I know and love you guys. I sort of became like a late-blooming deadhead, because of your love for the dead. I really got into it and really into the lyrics. I genuinely, really appreciate that music now, in a way that I didn’t like, ten years ago. Part of that is because I love you guys.
I kind of love how your love for people then transfers to your love for the things that they love. And that then becomes a thing that you love.
JK: I totally feel that. I’m not going to name any names here, because I feel like it could be misconstrued, but I do feel like I remember early on going out and opening up for bands with friends and at the beginning of it having already made up my mind about this music or something. But then, getting to know these people intimately over the course of a month and having these accelerated friendships as a result of being around each other every day and sort of falling for what they’re doing a little bit. Or maybe, at least being way more open to it than I ever would have been just hearing it on the radio or hearing it in a friend’s car.
So much music [from] growing up I associate with people that I love, for sure. Getting into Bob Dylan ‘cause I love my dad. At a young age like, “This guy’s obsessed with this guy!” And I guess I’m kind of obsessed with this guy who’s into this guy.
A funny one for me is They Might Be Giants. I love the songwriting of They Might Be Giants and I love that band so much, but I wouldn’t expect one of you guys to get into it now if you weren’t into it when you were fourteen. You know what I mean?
EDJ: I love the point you made Josh, about touring with bands or something, especially in the indie rock days, where you’re really like up in each other’s grills. You bond in a kind of a different way. …
You guys, we have four minutes left. What are your top three favorite foods, Josh.
JK: My top three favorite foods, um… Today I would say, I like Szechuan Chinese food. I like Greek food. And I like Italian food. You know, all the classic Northern Italian things and all the Roman pasta stuff. I mean, who am I kidding, right?
I’m going genres, not dishes, because for me, it’s definitely more about a palette than it is about a specific [dish]. You know, grilled fish and lemon and tomatoes and cucumbers. If I want something in that zone, then I want Greek food. If I want spicy, zingy Szechuan peppercorn, it doesn’t really matter what it is, it could be like shrimp or tofu or chicken, or it could just be string beans. I just get in the mood and go in that direction.
EDJ: Anaïs, what do you got?
AM: I just got so hungry when you described the fish with the lemon and then the tomatoes, Josh. Now that’s what I want. All right. The first thing I’m going to say is Josh’s food. I want not what you just said, but food that Josh Kaufman cooks. I would like the fluffy eggs that you make sometimes. And also one time you whipped up a chicken soup. Do you remember that? You just whipped it up so fast and it was the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.
JK: Oh, I love that. That’s so sweet. I love cooking for you guys.
AM: I also love and I recently had– do you remember the place Wang’s in Park Slope? It’s kind of like fried chicken, Southern stuff, but then also is it Korean?
JK: Korean fried chicken? I think, right?
AM: I had something like that with Ramona, my older daughter recently, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is very delicious.”
Eric, you tell us yours.
EDJ: Oysters, shrimp cocktail, nachos… uh, buffalo wings. And that’s it. Love you guys.
AM: Love you.
EDJ: Love you. Hopefully it’s all turned out awesome and we have so many cool things to talk about. I’ll see yous on Thursday night!
Bonny Light Horseman is an indie/folk supergroup that formed in 2018 at the Eaux Claires Music & Arts festival in Wisconsin. Composed of Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown), Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, Josh Ritter, The National), and Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), together the band has released two full-length albums. On June 7, their new double album Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free expanded their studio album catalog by 100%.
Their first self-titled release, from 2020, features the band’s takes on traditional folk songs; the second, 2022’s Rolling Golden Holy, is a fully original body of work. Their music is tranquil, gorgeous, and breath-taking and their powerful blend of voices is just as striking. The trio bring a new light to the beauty of folk music, and truly makes each song their own.
To celebrate the new project, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free, we’ve handpicked a few favorite tracks from their past releases – together and separately – to highlight their musicianship, collaboration, and exactly why nearly everyone calls them a supergroup.
The title track off their first album and namesake of their band, it’s a heart-breaking ballad about a love lost to war that was found in the Roud Folk Index (#1185). The group’s arrangement features a low-tuned guitar and subtle textures of harmonica and saxophone which carry Anaïs’ and Eric’s transporting vocals.
“Deep in Love” – Bonny Light Horseman, Bonny Light Horseman
The second song off the band’s debut album is simply illuminating – it feels like a gust of wind on a warm day. Listening to Eric sing, you can hear vocal influences from Joni Mitchell in his jumps and leaps. It has a very freeing feel to it and breathes beautifully.
“The Roving” – Bonny Light Horseman, Bonny Light Horseman
The third track on Bonny Light Horseman also demands inclusion. It’s a song about the singer’s heartache over “Annie,” a woman who once said she would marry them, but over time fell out of love with the singer. The melody is subtle and sweeps the listener into a setting of tranquility. In the arrangement, the band switches between a single, double, and quadruple chorus which is a very sweet and simple way to convey the story to the listener.
“Jane Jane” was first recorded in 1939 by Lila May Stevens. This arrangement combines Stevens’ lyric with the African American spiritual and gospel classic, “Children, Go Where I Send Thee.” Bonny Light’s rendition is simply breathtaking; Johnson and Mitchell switch voices between the major and minor sections of the song, creating a raw and haunting sound.
The penultimate song off Bonny Light Horseman is a traditional Appalachian spiritual originally documented by Alan Lomax. This song holds the essence of a church choir belting for their audience and it’s one of the more simple songs on the album, in terms of arrangement. Having only three voices and a piano allows listeners to hear their trading voices on each verse and then the bright light of togetherness on the choruses.
“Gone by Fall” – Bonny Light Horseman, Rolling Golden Holy (2022)
“Gone by Fall” sits directly in the middle of Bonny Light Horseman’s second album, Rolling Golden Holy. Depicting a summer romance, it’s reminiscent of a 1960s folk song you might have heard on the radio during the folk revival. Yet, in listening to it, a veil is seemingly lifted and you can hear it’s an entirely fresh take on such a classic sound. Their voices, which blend so beautifully together, and the crystal clear guitar lines throughout add in the sweetness of a summertime love.
“Someone to Weep for Me” – Bonny Light Horseman, Rolling Golden Holy
Next up is “Someone to Weep for Me,” a song depicting a person going through life craving someone to care for them, but never finding that person. The driving force of the track is the mandolin’s beautiful rolling pattern, a genius touch that’s present throughout the song and adds a sense of stability and a unique texture. Another stroke of genius comes at about 1:40 in, when the electric guitar comes in wailing, bringing the song into a “jam” with Anaïs singing a little line over it. This is such an unexpected vibe change and at the same time it fits so incredibly well.
Off the band’s two-track EP release Green/Green comes “Greenland Fishery,” a reimagined traditional sailor song. Bonny Light’s version certainly allows you to float away. The clawhammer banjo throughout is lovely and it’s such a treat as a showcase instrument – it isn’t emphasized often throughout the band’s catalog. It’s also very sweet to hear the second part of the chorus as it echoes the chorus of “Bonny Light Horseman” in such a gorgeous, reminiscent way.
“Willie’s Lady (Child 6)” – Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, Child Ballads (2013)
Delving into some of the band members’ other projects, we come to Child Ballads, an album of duets from Mitchell and collaborator Jefferson Hamer. The project reimagines seven songs from a 19th century folk song collection “The Child Ballads” collected by Francis James Child. “Willie’s Lady (Child 6)” tells the story of King Willie, who marries a woman his mother despises and, in turn, his mother curses the wife. The guitars on the track have such a strong, driving force, excitedly pushing the song while one holds down the rhythm and the other crosspicks during the instrumental sections. Anaïs and Jefferson use their guitars in a way that perfectly compliments the vocal work in the song; it’s sung entirely in duet, the two voices deepening the texture of the music.
“Cazadera” – Fruit Bats, Gold Past Life (2019)
Fruit Bats is Eric D. Johnson’s indie-rock band that he’s fronted since 1997. Off their seventh album, Gold Past Life, “Cazadera” is one of the grooviest songs around. About a person searching for meaning in life and finding it in love, it’s the kind of track that would help paint your surroundings on a joyful walk. It has a great sense of hope and beauty to it and the chill verses coupled with sharp choruses bring energy and excitement.
“Loser’s L-A-M-E-N-T” – Rocketship Park, Off and Away (2008)
Going all the way back to 2008 for a selection from Josh Kaufman’s band, Rocketship Park, a pop-folky project with the intention to play Josh’s original material. The song “Loser’s L-A-M-E-N-T” is off the group’s first album, Off and Away, and immediately displays a very mellow vibe. Jazzy little piano licks come together with electric guitar and pedal steel, creating a western-folk sound. You can truly hear how each instrument is talking to the others and how they all fit together in telling the story.
“When I Was Younger” – Bonny Light Horseman, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free (2024)
From the group’s just-released double album comes “When I Was Younger,” which has a sound unlike most of their other music. Combining styles from artists like the Grateful Dead and Billy Joel, the intro riff sounds like it pulls some from the former, yet, once the verse starts, it sounds immediately like the latter – a kind of “Vienna” feeling.
It goes right back into the psychedelic riff before switching voices from Anaïs to Eric, again back to the Billy Joel vibe. The guitar and vocal solo following this verse are so rock and roll, gritty and not at all sparkly like the verses prior. “When I Was Younger” does an incredible job blending musical styles. It’s an absolutely astonishing piece of music, using such few words yet conveying such a strong and vivid story.
Utter the phrase “Broadway musical” and most folks are likely to assume you’re referring to the jazz-hands-inspiring works of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein; the emotionally manipulative drama of Andrew Lloyd Weber; or the inventive playfulness of Steven Sondheim. But folk and roots music have a long legacy on the great white way — and a bit of a folk boom has been happening in those storied theaters lately.
Granted, Broadway producers have long presented shows that pull in the music of roots-informed artists. Folk-pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik delivered a stunning musical score for the groundbreaking Spring Awakening, cementing the careers of Broadway stars Lea Michelle and Jonathan Groff back in 2006. Let’s not forget brief runs of musicals that pulled from the catalogs of Dolly Parton (2009’s stage adaptation of 9 to 5) and Bob Dylan (Girl from the North Country, which debuted in 2020).
Of the shows currently occupying midtown theaters, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown has run the longest, having just passed its five-year mark. With eight Tony Awards from its 2019 debut, the musical pairs the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with that of Hades and Persephone. Though its original cast has scattered to other projects, beloved folksinger Ani DiFranco spent a bit of her winter and spring this year offering a stunning run as Persephone.
Ani DiFranco and Anaïs Mitchell outside the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City. Photo by Matthew Murphy.
Fans may know DiFranco trained for many years as a dancer, even as she was building her singer-songwriter street cred. She proves to be a triple threat in the role, embodying the storied arbiter of summertime with a deeply rooted, empathic swagger. And though her June 30 departure feels like the end of an era for the musical, her latest album Unprecedented Sh!t (released May 17 on Righteous Babe Records) charts some new sonic territory via her political POVs.
Further, it’s hard to mourn DiFranco moving on when it was recently announced that British country favorite Yola will replace her in the role of Persephone, beginning July 2.
Hadestown was briefly joined last year by fellow roots musical Shucked, which came and went too soon. Awash in silly corn puns and Tampa-centric storyline, its earworm score was penned by Nashville mainstays — and Grammy darlings — Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.
Last month, Illinoise opened at the St. James Theater on 44th St. Pulling tracks from Sufjan Stevens’s sprawling, ambitious 2006 album of the same name, the show reorders the songs to depict a group of friends sharing stories around a campfire. There is no dialogue. Instead, a 12-piece band and a trio of vocalists in magical butterfly wings perform the music in the background.
Upstage, Illinoise tells its stories through exquisite choreography that runs the gambit from lyrical contemporary to hip-hop, some sweet Broadway jazz, and even one number (“Jacksonville”) with a lightning-fast tapper in pinstripes. Dancers touch on love and loss, fear and transcendence.
“Zombies” becomes a scene about the immigrant experience, as dancer Jeanette Delgado (“Jo”) tries to outrun the ghosts of America’s founders, whose complex legacies still haunt the present day. “The Man of Metropolis” becomes a comical superhero-themed character romp. And former Billy Elliot star Ben Cook (“Carl”) delivers a heartbreaking and inspired series in Act II to track an emotionally complex love triangle.
By show’s end, there is a pervasive sense of the opportunity art grants us to transcend our selves and build a better world together. It’s no wonder the show was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. If it wins, it will be the first time a dance musical has won the prestigious award.
The Outsiders, meanwhile, is running now just one block away, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. It sets to music the novel by S.E. Hinton, which was immortalized in a 1980s film by Francis Ford Coppola. Produced in part by Angelina Jolie, with a book by New York theater fixture Adam Rapp (Wolf in the River, The Sound Outside) and music by Americana mainstays Jamestown Revival, this musical version unfortunately doesn’t measure up to the other two roots musicals in the neighborhood.
Granted, perhaps it doesn’t have to. The Broadway League and American Theater Wing don’t seem to be anything less than impressed, having nominated the musical for a whopping 12 Tonys this year. It may not translate seamlessly to the Broadway stage, but The Outsiders is a story that has been beloved by numerous generations. It was a treat to witness members of Generation Alpha giddy with excitement to take in the narrative arc of Ponyboy and the other Curtis brothers — a story that feels to this writer as though it’s rooted in Gen X sensibilities, despite being set in the 1960s.
Choreography by Rick and Jeff Kuperman was athletic and stunning — plenty of leaps and jumps and long, denim-clad legs spinning in the air like human helicopters. The Kuperman brothers’ martial arts background comes through even beyond the inventive dance-fight scenes. There is water on the stage, somehow, and it splashes up from time to time, for some reason. It doesn’t matter why. The effect is properly dramatic.
Brent Comer, who plays “Darryl,” steals the show with his powerful Zac Brown-reminiscent twang. He has some of the most compelling solos, embodying the exhaustion of a stay-at-home-mom as he folds clothes and laments his lot in life, “somewhere between brother and father” since their parents died. Jason Schmidt as “Sodapop” matched his rootsy musicality with the second-act heart grabber, “Throw in the Towel.”
But it is Joshua Boone’s “Dallas” who is perhaps the show’s greatest revelation, with his Bill Withers-esque vocals on solos like “Little Brother.” Brody Grant as Ponyboy seemed a bit lacking during the matinee performance this writer recently caught, but it could have been an off moment. Eight shows a week requires almost superhuman amounts of energy reserve.
Or perhaps it was a side effect of Grant being in his 20s while his character is supposed to be 14. Indeed, despite the electricity of The Outsiders’ score and choreography, the script doesn’t feel as authentic as its emotional realities demand. Hinton’s book offered readers a revolutionary view of teen struggles, written by a teenager. Perhaps the Broadway show should have brought in some teenagers to consult.
Regardless, both Grant and Boone were nominated for Tonys (as was Sky Lakota-Lynch, who delivers a haunting performance as Johnny). For folks just interested in what Jamestown Revival did for the show’s score, an Original Broadway Cast Recording is available now.
All told, there is no indication Broadway is going to break its love affair with roots music anytime soon. The Avett Brothers are set to make their Broadway debut with shipwreck-themed musical Swept Away this fall. The show has previewed in California and Washington, D.C., and has received critical praise already. Swept Away’s score is drawn from the Avetts’ 2004 album, Mignonette, plus four other songs from their canon — a treat for the band’s incredibly loyal fanbase and Broadway subscribers alike.
Further on the horizon is an adaptation of the classic labor movement-inspired film Norma Rae, with music by Rosanne Cash. In an email, her manager indicated a possible 2025 opening. One can only hope. And, just last week, Dolly Parton announced an upcoming original musical, Hello, I’m Dolly, set to arrive on Broadway in 2026.
The 77th Tony Awards will be held on Sunday, June 16, 2024 and will air on CBS. Find out how to watch here.
As humans, we have a history of turning to story for comfort, direction, and preservation – a way to keep the present alive in the future. Story can be found in books, poetry, song, and our minds and mouths.
This playlist starts with our song, “Once Upon a Time,” which was born of our turning to story in the deep uncertainty of early 2020, and is the opening track of our recently released, eponymous album. In this Mixtape, we feature songs that incorporate or allude to books, authors, poetry, or story, written by artists that inspire us to write our truest stories. – Ordinary Elephant
“Once Upon a Time” – Ordinary Elephant
When the world shut down in March of 2020, we found ourselves one show into a two-week Australian tour. After scrambling to get home, the quiet hit and the processing of a new world began from our Louisiana porch, deeply feeling the human instinct to turn to a sense of story when faced with intense uncertainty.
“Always a Little Less Time” – Justin Farren
“So I guess that’s always been the story of you and I.” Justin paints pictures with the specifics that draw you in and let you see yourself in his songs, then cuts straight to the truth. The impermanence and the importance of our time here. This song guts us, in the best way, every time.
“Nothing at All” – Clay Parker & Jodi James
“I’ve got books stacked on the bedside table, that are gonna make me well and able, but the light in my room is still burned out,” Jodi sings, as one of our favorite duos spins an ethereal tune of rejection and resolve.
“Walking Each Other Home” – Mary Gauthier
One of our favorite songs of Mary’s. Achingly beautiful, it details the uncertainty of a relationship ending, but also speaks to the broader idea of the unknown. “I don’t know how this story’s supposed to go,” she sings in the chorus, as it’s hard to know when we’re living it. But there is clarity and acceptance that “we’re all just walking each other home,” helping each other find our own stories.
“Under My Fingers” – Wes Collins
Wes is one of those writers who takes you places you didn’t know you needed to go. Both with his words and with his music. This song follows a writer’s thoughts, even alluding to the scarcity mindset that can sometimes take hold of creatives. The fear that it won’t last and the solution of surrendering to the pen.
“Paperback Writer” – The Beatles
The Beatles were Pete’s first musical love, showing up in his life around sixth grade and giving a wealth of melodies and harmonies to soak in. He studied guitar through their songs, which span so many genres, it was easy to get lost in their catalog for years.
“Windmills” – Mutual Admiration Society
The story of Don Quixote twisted into a song by one of Pete’s favorite songwriters, Glen Phillips. This song first appeared on Toad the Wet Sprocket’s 1994 album, Dulcinea. This version is from an incredibly underrated collaboration between Glen and Nickel Creek. Both of these artists changed Pete’s musical world, Glen being one of the first songwriters that he really dug into and in this collaboration, Nickel Creek introducing him to the world of acoustic music.
“Hemingway’s Whiskey” – Guy Clark
Guy Clark’s use of simple language to tell deep truths is unparalleled in the modern songbook. Here he salutes his admiration for another legendary writer, toasting with a drink, and reveling in the difficult work it takes to be a writer of that stature. Guy’s songs are revelations.
“I Ain’t Playing Pretty Polly Anymore” – Dirk Powell
We have the choice to perpetuate stories or let them die off. Some traditions continue to enrich our lives, but it’s important to realize when we’ve moved past them and when it’s time to draw the line between cautionary tale and normalizing certain types of violence. As someone steeped in tradition, Dirk makes an important statement about what songs are able validate, and that we can choose not to continue singing certain ones.
“The Other Morning Over Coffee” – Peter Mulvey
In remembering a conversation with a friend, Peter recalls talking about having lived lives “so full of poetry and adventure that if we died right then and there it would have been fine.” It’s a goal we can hope that some part of us is always aiming for. As the song unfolds, it becomes a perfect reminder that we’re all moving through the same world, the same bigger story, despite the difference in our details.
“Velvet Curtain” – Anna Tivel
Anna’s songs are movies, thick with imagery and emotion. She’s one of those writers who you’re thankful is walking this earth at the same time as you. This song shows us that sometimes there are words that need to be heard, and sometimes you’re unknowingly the one singing them.
“Billy Burroughs” – Jeffrey Martin
Jeffrey’s work tends to knock your socks off, right out of the gate. His rich voice and insightful command of language immediately demands your full attention. His background of teaching literature melds with his own writing here.
“Tailor” – Anaïs Mitchell
“When he said that my face he’d soon forget, I became a poet.” One of our favorite songwriters, Anaïs has a way of weaving a story that hits you in the softest spots. Here she spins a gorgeous warning of how easy it is to let others define our story, and that we can learn to tell our own if we remember to listen to ourselves.
“The Prophet” – Ordinary Elephant
Crystal came across a copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, gifted to her by a dear friend 20-something years ago. The bones of this song were hiding between the dog-eared pages, a discovery of self-love through returning to reminders of a love gone.
“Everything Is Free” – Gillian Welch
“We’re gonna do it anyway.” In lyric, and in delivery, Gillian shows us the power of song and story to persevere. Her voice and style are singular, and are always a welcome reminder to find comfort in the unique and truest version of ourselves.
Bearing witness to friends and collaborators Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins in conversation is reminiscent of listening to their frequent musical partnerships, like their trio I’m With Her (with Sarah Jarosz). In moments, they blend perfectly, finishing each other’s sentences. They dance around each other, giving space for thoughtful responses and further questions.
In an artful, deeply reverent, and candid conversation, they delved into the intricacies of creating O’Donovan’s new release, All My Friends. The project originated from a commission by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019 and blossomed into what O’Donovan refers to as a “song burst,” inspired by the life and work of American Suffragette, Carrie Chapman Catt, and the centennial of the 19th Amendment.
The project propelled O’Donovan into unfamiliar territory as a songwriter and what emerged is a beautiful elegy to the women of the past who fought for the right to vote. It’s an homage to women of today – and future generations.
BGS spoke via Zoom with Artist of the Month O’Donovan from her home in Orlando and with Watkins joining from her home in Los Angeles.
Aoife O’Donovan: Hey! How are you?
Sara Watkins: I’m good. How are you doing?
AO: I’m so good. I love that I’m having an official conversation with one of my best friends. It’s sort of weird.
SW: When they called me to ask if I would be interested in interviewing you, it was an hour after I had just sent you that raving text about how much I adore the album and the music. I’m so blown away by it.
AO: Oh, my gosh! You’re so sweet! I love you!
SW: I’m not sweet, and you know that.
AO: You are. You’re a nice person. You just sometimes don’t hug strangers. That’s like your only quirk.
SW: I’ve been listening to the record since you sent it to me. But this week, I’ve been getting to really dive in and have the fun of trying to get inside your head a little bit. From that opening line, from the opening gesture at the beginning of the album, it’s just this gorgeous way of encompassing the whole record so beautifully. But it’s also so open. It’s not a thesis statement, but it powerfully contains the whole album. And I just wonder, where did that particular thing come from? And when did you know that that was going to be the way to start?
AO: It’s funny, that opening phrase, just the idea of “All my friends, all my friends,” that idea came to me many years ago, like maybe in 2018. I just had the melody and the chords and I kind of sat with it. It never was anything except for that. When I started working on the idea of this record, when Orlando (Philharmonic Orchestra) asked me to write 5 songs to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, I didn’t even go back to that tiny phrase immediately. I started elsewhere.
I started to write this other music, and then I remember sitting at the piano, actually at Full Sail, in the studio that I worked at here and I remember those words, “All my friends,” that was all that it was. I started thinking about what that meant, as even just a very simple, very kind of trite, almost overused lyric. There are tons of songs called “All My Friends.” There are movies called All My Friends. There’s a book that I just read called All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. It’s not a very original 3-word statement. But there was something about those words together with those chords, that all of a sudden felt like they belonged in this project. This is about the women who were before and the women who are yet to be born. It felt like this big circle all of a sudden of humanity and womanhood.
SW: It’s powerful on its own and then also with the context of the movement. I don’t often think of movements like that with friends. We think about it for younger generations. Let’s change policies to help younger generations, or to help the American people, but to put the word “friends” on it just makes it so heartbreaking. I just get sisterhood through this whole record in the most powerful way.
In “Daughters,” I have these 2 different visions of what’s happening in that song. With the way the band and the orchestration wrap around your guitar playing – the band does such a great job. You’ve played with Griffin Goldsmith, and with Alan Hampton a ton. The trio entity is so complete and so complementary to the songs and then to add to it, the way that you have the orchestration coming into play and the choir in such supportive ways. I had two images. One was this vision of a battlefield. Like when we were in grade school, where we talked about Gettysburg, or these legendary Revolutionary War battle sites and you see that field where the people are, and then you see these flanks coming in from the sides. That’s how that song feels to me.
AO: That’s like exactly what I was imagining when I wrote it. I’m not joking; that exact image of just being on a battlefield. And then, like the other voices coming in, or like the other people coming in to sort of fill the ranks. That’s exactly what I was envisioning. That’s so funny.
SW: It’s incredible.
AO: I’m so glad that that came across.
SW: It does. And it’s a credit to the arrangement, where you have the choir come in and there’s this rumbling support, or this foundational support from the orchestration before. When that chorus comes in, it just feels like you’re surrounded by kinship or by the sisterhood of support. And then the next verse opens up, and you’re alone again, or like fairly alone and you have to carry this battle by yourself, for yourself. It’s an individual fight. But then, going back to that “all my friends” lyric, it just feels like all of those entities are your friends coming to support you in your time of need.
AO: Exactly. That’s it exactly it. I feel like for me, when I made this record, and even now getting ready to put it out, it’s so specific and it’s so deeply personal. And it’s so not a record of like, “Check out this jam!” It’s just not that kind of record at all. And it’s not meant to be. I’m so glad that you listened to it in this way. This is what my hope for this record is, that people will be able to have the time to sort of process what it is. And these images and that exact thing of going into a battlefield. But then, there are moments when everything is stripped back, and you are sort of alone. But you’re also singing for your friends and for your community and for your mothers and your grandmothers and their mothers and their grandmothers. But also for the daughters of the daughters of the daughters. It just feels like this circle keeps on going.
In that song, specifically having the girl’s chorus, and on the whole record it was such an important thing for me to have the voices of young women, and not necessarily harmony vocals by my peers. I just felt there was something about the innocence of this young voice. The experience of getting to do it live with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and in Massachusetts, and even getting to do it in Glasgow with the girls’ chorus, it’s really powerful. It’s hard not to cry, even as a performer. It’s something about seeing young girls up on a stage, ready to give something. It just feels deeply emotional.
SW: And they are giving to you and you are getting to experience that support literally. Being on stage can feel very alienating and very vulnerable. It is a little bit of a fight sometimes within yourself if nothing else.
I feel like this is just such a powerful statement: grappling with change and growth. And obviously, that’s something that needs to be continually grappled with. It’s not like, “Oh, the change happens, and now we’re done. Check it off the list.” It’s a continual engagement, and it’s hard.
With “America Come,” when you get to that point in the album, it feels like the industrial revolution to me.
AO: Yes. I love that.
SW: Especially because you’re singing the words, “manpower, womanpower.” I feel like the machine is running.
AO: Right. I feel like that song with the, “dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun,” it becomes very steady. It is like the machine is running. That’s one of the songs on the record that really is so much about Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffragist who I was inspired to write about and write from the perspective of. That song is really heavily lifted from an actual speech that she gave. Some of those phrases are verbatim from her speeches.
That idea of this question, “What is this democracy for which the world is battling?” I feel like that’s a question that we can still ask ourselves. What are we doing here? What does this mean? What is America? I feel like that’s just such a deep question, and to be asking that in 1919 or 1918, or whenever that speech was from, and then to still feel it in 2022 – when I was writing this, it felt so relevant I feel like it’s almost eerie. We can’t give up the fight. We can’t stop. You don’t just check something off the list. As you said, it just kind of keeps going.
SW: And in that way, the album encompasses all the humanity, the micro versions of this, where for instance, in the institution of marriage, or a long-term relationship, or friendships, family, or whatever, it is about checking in every so often: “Wait! Life is running away with us. What do we want? What do we want in choosing this city, this school, this town, this job, this house?”
And that happens on individual levels. Like in my own life, I think, “Have I gotten away from this thing that I cared about five years ago? Have I checked in about this?” I feel like with the content of this album, I found myself thinking about the country, and I found myself thinking about me. Especially, with the more introspective song “The Right Time.” That’s the one where she talks to herself a little bit?
AO: Yeah, exactly. She’s like, “Don’t give them anything to laugh about.”
SW: Like a pep talk.
AO: Yeah, exactly that. It is a pep talk. That’s kind of my idea, about what she or anybody in her position would be going through as a woman with so much to offer, such a big brain, and so much potential. But, what do you have to climb over when you’re living in a time where you’re not valued and the only jobs available are to be a teacher in a one-room school house, or to leave the town that you grew up in? And people are going to look at you. People are gonna make fun of you if you’re a smart woman. People still make fun of smart women. It’s so weird.
Sara, we’ve talked about this a lot, being women in music, about how I feel like I’ve been so lucky and so respected throughout my career as a musician. You know I’ve always felt very valued and have very rarely been made to feel “less than” due to my gender. I feel so lucky that I’ve been in a community of musicians who have really supported me. But I know that that’s not the case for many musicians, and across other fields it is absolutely not the case.
SW: Yeah. I feel I have had a similar experience with that support. I can only imagine that in that era, when community really was the people around you – not people somewhere on the internet, in a town across the country that you can kind of connect with. She could physically rally the people in her region by convincing newspapers to publish things.
AO: By like getting up on stage and giving speeches or by writing a letter to the President and getting responses. Obviously, she’s not the only one. There were many women who were powerful and were doing amazing things. They just had to try so much harder, and that is what’s interesting. I think having a daughter in this time of life, in the 2020s, you want to give them the tools to always feel that they have the confidence and awareness to think of themselves as equal and powerful.
SW: Tell me about the research you did for this. So, the idea was presented to you and commissioned by The Orlando Philharmonic. Is that right?
AO: By the Orlando Phil, yep! So the OPO asked me in 2019. They said, “It’s the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment.” A lot of orchestras in the U.S. were asking female composers to write music for concerts they were doing. They were trying to diversify their programming. And when OPO asked me to do a piece, I was sort of like, “Why me?” That’s something I’ve never done before, writing an orchestral piece to be performed as a commission. It just felt like, that’s not how I operate. You know what I mean, I’m a songwriter. But I said, “Yes, that would be a good challenge.”
I didn’t think about it for a while, and then COVID happened, and everything kind of got crazy. I was like, “I’m never gonna write another song again, maybe this is it, maybe I’m done making music.” And then when I got down here to Florida, I started to regain some sense of artistic confidence and inspiration. I started to write a little bit of Age of Apathy that fall and then started to work on this 20- to 25-minute piece of music. So I went into the studio and really started to write it. But without text. I didn’t really even know what the text was going to be about yet. I wrote all the music first, because I had to get it to the orchestrator, Tanner Porter, who orchestrated all the charts for me. That was gonna take a lot of time.
That was November and the concert was supposed to be in May. I needed to get her the music. So I was working, working, working, and didn’t have any text. I wrote all the vocal parts and all the music sketched out to what I wanted it to be. We talked a ton about, “Hey, I want this to open with brass, and I want strings to come in here, and I want this line to be played on cello, and these are the brass lines that I want.” I would make these demos where I would play all that stuff for her, and then she orchestrated it. She also put together all the interludes that sort of stitch the songs together, which are so cool.
It was really fun to have this blank slate without any lyric goal or hesitancy to hold me back. I had simultaneously been doing research, reading, and figuring out what I wanted it to be. “All My Friends” is really just an imagining of the moment when these movements met up in Tennessee to get these votes ratified. And they did march. And they did plead their case and were ultimately successful. But those images are from my own head, like a reimagining of vague historical events.
SW: Let me just jump in really fast just to say that I love how much space you gave for yourself in imagining that imagery. I feel like my own temptation would be to report and do the research and make it rhyme. I feel like you’re the perfect artist for this kind of commission, because of the way that your melodies can float above or without the constraints of rigid time that a lot of us songwriters are tempted to do. The way you carry a line – I don’t think you always realize how extraordinarily unique it is. I think that because of the way that you do music like that, it lends itself to an orchestral project where we’re not dealing with 8-bar phrases and the occasional extra 2 bars and things.
I feel like you are the perfect singer-songwriter to receive this kind of commission. I am so happy that you indulged in that vision of the world, of the people descending into Tennessee, and what the fog was like and what the air was like. Because that is what the feeling was like and that’s the story. It’s not just, “on this date this happened.” I’m glad that you put yourself in the story, because that gave so much room for the arc and the heart of the thing and makes me wanna listen. If I had done this, it would sound like an eighth-grade book report.
AO: No, come on, give yourself more credit, Sara! I don’t have any idea what Carrie Chapman Catt was like personally, because I didn’t know her, but I felt like I could give her dialogue. You can make her personality be whatever it is that you want her to be.
I just read this amazing book called Wolf Hall. I was so fascinated by how the writer, [Hilary Mantel], makes Thomas Cromwell, this character, from the 1500s, feel like this modern, empathetic, shrewd, conniving, and complicated character. That also could have felt like an eighth-grade book report about Thomas Cromwell, but the author injected life into him. That’s the cool thing when you are an artist and when you are a writer, that’s what we do for people who were real or people who we’re making up. You’re taking these embellishments, and you’re telling a story with them.
With the song “Crisis,” [Carrie Chapman Catt] gave a speech called “Crisis” in 1916, and I read that speech and thought, “Oh, my God! This!” Yes, she’s using archaic language, and nobody speaks like this, but how can I imagine her as almost like a bluegrass singer getting up there and saying, “Alright, gather around girls. I’m gonna tell you about what’s going on and what we’re gonna do about it.”
Once I realized I could make it my own because this is my piece, it sort of like set me free into this new creative territory.
SW: And the way that you’re talking about “Crisis,” just the word itself makes you think of ominous minor chords and tension. And with those beautiful horns and flutes, it is just this wonderful, hopeful dawn of a movement. The dawn of a new time is here while you’re singing about the crisis. I love the optimism that’s contained in that and how you acknowledge that everything is all together.
AO: Exactly. One of my favorite things about “Crisis” is I really wanted there to be mandolin on it. It just has that folky feel to it. I had connected with Sierra Hull, who obviously, I’ve known for years and years, but we hadn’t really played that much music together, and I remember being on Cayamo in 2022, and really jamming with her for the first time. And then, you know, fast forward to eight months later I was like, “Oh, I think Sierra would totally kill this song.” I love her playing on it. It just has the right amount of weight to it.
SW: On “War Measure,” I’ve never heard you sing like you do on that chorus. The way you pull down those notes!
AO: It’s hard. It’s actually really hard for me to sing like that. It hurts my voice. But that’s actually my favorite one to do live, because there’s something about singing those lines, “If they pass this amendment to our constitution, we are gonna be talking about revolution.” That’s funny, because I had written that song without the lyrics. And then when I put the lyrics in, I was like, “Oh, this is actually, really rad.” It made it fun.
SW: I bet that was really fun. It makes sense that you wrote the lyrics after a lot of the music, because you get so much in there. It feels like you have room to expand the lines in ways that you might not if you’re writing it down on paper, right? And you get to really chew on certain lines for longer. I feel like there are some lines that get the time that they want to have rather than the time that might have been allotted to them.
AO: Exactly. It was odd, but I’m really glad that it worked out like that.
SW: I love “Over the Finish Line.”
AO: With Anaïs [Mitchell], who is a genius.
SW: And such a wonderful voice to have on here, both in terms of tonality – because you sound amazing together – but also because her songwriting voice has been a voice of movement, a voice of awareness. I love that choice.
AO: The idea kind of came after the fact. I recorded the song and I wanted there to be another voice. I didn’t want it to be me singing harmony with myself. I wanted something starkly different, tonally, from my voice. I’ve known Anaïs for almost 20 years. We’ve been in this same scene and the same world, but we’ve never really done anything together. It worked out so well. I love what she did and how she moves around through the melody and the unison part at the end of the song. I felt connected to her.
SW: I love how it is not the kind of harmony part where you are trying to blend them together. It is very much two individuals choosing to sing together. There are places where your phrasing is different and you’re shortening different lines. It is a perfect example of what you have throughout this record with the children’s choir and the orchestration. To have this lovely duet moment is another version of the sisterhood of letting everyone be themselves rather than needing to have it all looking so pretty and clean and tidy. It is like, “We are existing together, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
Ever since I started making music, it’s been in this sort of folk-infused soundtrack sort of style. When I was little, I would imagine that I was in a film constantly. I would hear music in my head supporting the emotions I may be feeling. It sort of helped me express my feelings to myself and figure out what sort of character I want to be in this life. My brother is famous for his excellent mixtapes and he introduced me to most of my favorite contemporary artists, many of whom make music in this way; fusing together modern attitudes and techniques with personal impressions of roots music.
There’s something about traditional sounds that really resonate with me. I grew up in a rural place and spent my childhood playing the fiddle. Folk music has always been connected to nature and the sounds that go along with it. Nature is where I do my best self-reflection. The hypnotic rhythm of an acoustic guitar line repeated. The rich, molasses drones of the violin.
On my debut album Black Cloud, I intentionally challenged myself to produce in a more edgy, alt-rock style. However, I could not escape many of the musical sensibilities I grew up with. You can hear undertones of trad music in my guitar playing, in the song forms, vocal inflections, and choice of vocabulary. This playlist starts off with the first track on my new record and ends with a song from my folk duo with Emily Mann, Paper Wings. Both are songs I wrote and feel very close to my heart. The songs in between have all been inspirations to me over the years and demonstrate of the cinematic quality realized when folk techniques are fused into modern creations and vice-versa. Hope you enjoy. – Wila Frank
“Tonight” – Wila Frank
I wrote Tonight over a rolling guitar line inspired by traditional banjo techniques. While the rest of the production is quite contemporary, you can hear elements of folk influence in my singing. Especially in the line “It’s a long and lonesome road” — a reference to lyrics you would hear in a bluegrass song.
“Fire Snakes” – Laura Veirs
This has been a favorite song of mine forever. I love the beautiful and unusual contradiction of the acoustic guitar line with the artificial beat. To me, it makes the song feel more emotionally vital and critical. The strings at the end are a luscious bonus.
“Desert Island Disk” – Radiohead
This song reminds me of the trance-like quality of a lot of traditional Malian guitar playing such as Ali Farke Toure who I’m also obsessed with. The simplicity of the production on this song is essential and perfectly supports the beautiful message of the lyrics.
“Walkin’ Boss” – Sam Amidon
This is the only trad American folk song on the playlist. Sam Amidon has a really neat way of taking old Appalachian songs and bringing them into a new contemporary light. The rhythm of the banjo and drums together make you wanna groove and bring out the power of the lyrics.
“Psyche” – Massive Attack
I included this one because the repeating artificial guitar line reminds me of the banjo and is a cool example of the magic achieved when electronic artists sample natural sounds. This particular song was an essential inspiration for me in coming up with the guitar line on my song “Tonight.” When it comes to cinematic music and transporting the listener to a new world, you can’t get any better than Massive Attack.
“Imitosis” – Andrew Bird
I was obsessed with Andrew Bird when I was a kid for his witty lyrical style, use of the violin as a support instrument for his songs, and the unapologetic quirkiness of his music. On this album, he fuses all kinds of music and makes something completely unique.
“Ecstasy” – Crooked Still
I grew up going to a lot of music camps and owe much of my musical development to various members of Crooked Still. Aoife was one of the first singers I learned from and I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time around this music. I love this album in particular and how this song fuses Appalachian fiddle tones with classical string parts.
“The Weekend” – Dave Rawlings Machine
This song features pop chords, but has Dave Rawlings signature guitar style all over it. It’s a fun Americana-style story of a song. I like how the violin parts sound almost like they’re imitating synthetic strings. A cool example of folk music imitating pop music.
“Dog Walkers of the New Age” – Breathe Owl Breathe
One of my favorite albums ever. Completely unique and vibey. The lyrics are quirky and witty, and somehow get at an essential emotion of feeling less alone.
“Grizzly Man” – Rockettothesky
The shimmering acoustic guitar in this track brings this beautiful and spooky song to life. This is the only song I really know from this band, but the haunting, witchy vocal style in this song has stuck with me through the years and has an essence of woodsy appeal.
“Dyin Day” – Anaïs Mitchell
Anaïs Mitchell does a really nice job of innovating within the structure of a song itself. There are elements of traditional call and response in this song, religious references and images of nature, but somehow it still feels relevant and potent.
“Carrie & Lowell” – Sufjan Stevens
This was an incredibly influential album for a lot of people I think. Stevens’ swirling guitar style paired with the vocal effects and simplistic percussive elements make it feel like a pop song without any overly artificial elements. There’s even banjo on this song, but used almost like you would use an arpeggiated synth.
“Middle Distance Runner” – Sea Wolf
To me, this is a perfect pop song with a folk song structure. I love the natural guitar tones and the use of real sounds as percussion.
“The History of a Cheating Heart” – Damon Albarn
One of my favorite artists, producers, and songwriters of all time. Damon Albarn released this solo record in 2014 upon which he plays this song paired down with acoustic guitar. There’s very minimal production featuring dry and stark strings along with a chorus of harmonies on the bridge. It’s rare to hear such a minimal song recorded at such a high level and the result is beautiful.
“Clementine” – Paper Wings
I wrote Clementine on a writing retreat we went on in Big Sur. Emily and I spent the week sitting in the sun amongst the trees and flowers overlooking the ocean. This is really a simple pop love song, but we paired it down and sang it in harmony over fiddle drones. Arranged this way, it became stark and vulnerable and the essence of the song revealed itself. The imagery of nature became more vivid, and the emotions came across as more sincere.
Four of the most accomplished women in roots music were announced as winners at the International Folk Music Awards in Kansas City, Missouri, on Wednesday, February 1. The ceremony served as an opening night celebration for Folk Alliance International, the annual conference that runs through Sunday, February 5.
Janis Ian, a longtime folk favorite, earned Artist of the Year honors, while Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s Crooked Tree was named Album of the Year. There was a tie in the Song of the Year category, with Aoife O’Donovan’s “B61” and Anaïs Mitchell’s “Bright Star” sharing the award.
In addition, the Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Awards were presented to honor the cultural impact of legendary folk music figures: one Living, one Legacy, and one Business/Academic. As previously reported, this year’s honorees are Janis Ian; the late folk and blues singer Josh White; and Oh Boy Records, the independent record label co-founded by John Prine in 1981.
For more about Folk Alliance, check out our BGS preview about the 2023 event.
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