Tag: Andrew Marlin

With Two Instrumental Albums, Andrew Marlin Offers a Scrapbook and a Picture

Posted on by Editor

It’s been two years since Mandolin Orange’s prior album, Tides of a Teardrop, which took them everywhere from the stage of Nashville’s fabled Ryman Auditorium to a placement on the Billboard 200 album chart. Since touring for that album wound down, the duo of Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz has been mostly hunkered down at home in North Carolina, tending to their young daughter Ruby while riding out the pandemic.

Marlin has also used the time to develop a growing solo-album habit, releasing instrumental collections. February saw the near-simultaneous release of Witching Hour and Fable & Fire, following up 2018’s Buried in a Cape. And while both albums feature the same cast of players from Mandolin Orange’s circle, each has a very different feel. Witching Hour is billed as “A Sonic Account Of How The Journey Within Has No Destination,” while Fable & Fire is “A Soundtrack To Quotidian Wonder.” BGS caught up with Marlin by phone on the day before his 34th birthday.

BGS: How old is your daughter now?

Marlin: Almost two-and-a-half. It’s been a lot of not sleeping, but a fun time, too. She likes to strum a little bit. There are certainly instruments we don’t let her play, but we do have a few beater guitars we let her have some fun with. She loves to sing, too, she’ll break out in song randomly all the time. “Lonesome Whistle” from that record we put out in 2016, Blindfaller, she loves to sing that song. She has such a good memory on her, it’s amazing. All kids probably do, it’s just that she’s the only one I’ve ever spent that much time with. It’s fascinating, how much she retains and can recite.

Do you spend much time practicing?

It varies. I did sit down with a metronome and my first cup of coffee this morning to work on some tunes. I came to the mandolin “late,” at 20, when I feel like my favorites started when they were 7 or 8. In terms of foundational skills, I have to go back and relearn some things. I love the instrument so much, I want to think in terms of longevity. Figure out techniques that keep me relaxed without hurting myself on it. And if I get an idea, a melody that hops into my head, I’ll follow it because the most important thing is to keep writing. I try to be aware of my body, stay in tune with what’s happening. If I feel cramps or aches, I’ll stop and try to assess what’s happening. That’s the reason to practice technique, to relax and be comfortable without overworking joints harder than you need to. I hope to prevent that, but I do play a lot and time is not on my side.

It’s not unusual for guitar players to own multiple guitars, but what about mandolin players?

I can actually kinda mark what year something was based on which mandolin I was playing. For the past 11 years, I’ve gotten a new one about every two years. I finally got a Lloyd Loar in January of 2019 and I think I found my mandolin, at least for a while. There are all these different aspects of tones you want to get, and it’s different from player to player. Different instruments make you play different things you normally might not think of. It completely rearranges my musical mind, playing different instruments. As much as I envy my heroes having iconic instruments they always use, I enjoy picking up different mandolins, the different voices you get.

They’re almost like little people. You don’t tell your friends how to act, so why would you tell an instrument how to sound? Just work within what it does best and it will teach you how to pull out different aspects of your playing. All the songs on Fable & Fire were written on a Gibson A2 1921 that I bought on a whim on reverb.com, and it turned out to be a great little tune-writer. Every time I pick it up, seems like I write a song on it. And I wrote all the songs on Fable & Fire on that little instrument in about four weeks. I didn’t record with it because when it comes down to a record, I’d rather use the Lloyd Loar. I know its voice and tone, how to work its dynamics. But that little A2 has a very cool little voice, too.

How do you differentiate these two albums?

For me the concepts set them apart. They have very different grooves, melodic ideas and modes. Witching Hour was written over two years’ time, where I basically just took a handful of tunes I thought were strong enough to put on a record. So that’s what you hear, two years’ worth of material. But Fable & Fire is very cohesive start to finish, a set of songs written to be played side by side with each other. Witching Hour is a scrapbook, Fable & Fire is a picture.

Fable & Fire, especially, has some pretty exotic song titles. What does “Leeward Shore/Crooked Road to Bracey” mean?

(Fiddler) Christian Sedelmyer’s girlfriend Alexis really likes the sound of the Gibson A2 I wrote those songs on. She kept trying to convince me to play that mandolin on this record, and I wanted to honor the fact that she’d really listened and cared. Her middle name is Lee, what could I do with that? Well, leeward shore is the shore that faces the wind, an old nautical term. I named that A2 “Gale” because it has this sound that feels like it moves a lot of air — I joke that it could blow a candle out. So I thought it was fitting to call the first part of that medley “Leeward Shore,” the shore-facing wind, because she was such a proponent of Gale.

Then “Crooked Road to Bracey,” that’s a town not far from where I grew up. Just over the North Carolina line in Virginia, and it was the only close-by town with an all-night diner. So if we were super-hungry at 4 a.m., we’d hop in the car and go to Bracey. Pretty nerdy! But you’ve gotta find inspiration somewhere. Stories like that end up being part of the bones of these tunes. But one of my favorite parts of instrumental music is that it’s all irrelevant once someone else starts to listen. That’s important now especially, because everybody needs something to latch onto. Instrumental music is so open, it allows an infinite amount of interpretation.

“Hawk Is a Mule” is another — and also the only words you say on either record. What’s that story?

We were on the West Coast for the Buried in a Cape tour. Clint (Mullican) the bass player can spot a hawk from a mile away – he sees them before they see him. He kept pointing out all these hawks as we made our way toward Canada. And being East Coasters, well, we were excited to hop on into the dispensaries out there. We, um, accumulated quite a bit and wondered what to do with it before crossing into Canada. It became a joke, training a hawk to carry it into Canada for us, “like a drug mule but a hawk.” I ended up calling that melody “Hawk Is a Mule,” and that’s how it came to be. Just a bunch of people in a van making fun jokes.

In terms of writing, are instrumentals easier to come up with since they don’t have words?

It depends on the mindset I’m in. I’ve practiced the mandolin a lot in quarantine and also listened to a lot of instrumental music, so that’s been easier to write because of what I’m into now. When I sit down to write, I try not to force it. Just do what I’m into and play what I feel, and right now instrumentals are what I’m into.

Out of these 21 songs, which are your favorites to play?

They’re all right in my wheelhouse since I wrote them, but some really translate with the band. “Oxcart Man” on Fable & Fire, I love the way that one feels. It has a lot of ins and outs that give it a lot of life, especially Nat (Smith) on the cello. He’s able to go back and forth between plucking and powerful bowing. I don’t know how he does it but he works the dynamics beautifully, especially on that tune. The tone of the cello makes it almost seem to hide itself, but if you muted that it would take a lot of the pulse out of the tune. What the guys do on that song makes it one of my favorites.

Another is “Farewell to Holly Bluff/The Watch House.” Everybody really pushes the tone on that one. I hardly play that melody at all because it was so great to be part of the rhythm. Jordan (Tice) is a great lead guitarist, but he’s the rhythm engine here and ended up doing a lot less melodic passes than rhythm. His drive is a key element of both records.

“Jenny and the Dulac,” the last song on Witching Hour, has a groove and major-minor feel that’s unlike anything I’ve ever done before instrumentally. Christian and Brittany (Haas)’s twin fiddle parts really elevated that moment to where we were looking at each other going, “This is the coolest shit ever, let’s never let this song end.” Everybody was exploring the fretboard in a way that did not seem forced, just wide open. I love everybody’s solos, they all have a lot of personality.

Besides music and the people close to you, what do you look to for inspiration as a writer?

It’s less about looking for things and more about being open to it when you feel it. Either you turn those receptors on, or off. I’ve been writing since I was 14 and it’s been a major part for so long that I’ve almost always got the receptors on. Lately, especially, some of the instrumental titles come from snippets of children’s books I read to Ruby. And the other day, we were at the park and heard some people singing “Happy Birthday” to a little kid named Leo. That got me to thinking: “It’s Pisces season, a Pisces named Leo, that could be a fun thing.”

The muse is important to just keep on so that when something presents itself, I can snatch it and hold onto it forever. Not to get too heavy about it, but it does come at a cost. I’ll be talking to people about a memory of theirs from a tour five or six years ago, and realize that if you keep those receptors on so much you might not be quite as present as you want to be. It’s a balance, especially with Ruby. I’ve learned to turn that off when I need to so I can be very present with her. I’ve seen just how fast time with her flashes by. I don’t know where the last two and a half years have gone.

Photo Credit: Lindsey Rome

The Show on the Road – Mipso

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we feature one of the leading roots-pop bands working today: Mipso. An affable and endlessly-creative quartet formed in Chapel Hill, NC, they are made up of fiddle player Libby Rodenbough, mandolinist Jacob Sharp, guitarist Joseph Terrell, and bassist Wood Robinson.


LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • MP3

Despite the anxious mood of their swing-state home base, it’s quite an exciting time for Mipso. Host Z. Lupetin was able to catch up with Libby and Jacob (via Zoom of course) to discuss their lushly orchestrated, self-titled record which just dropped last week; and if you walk down 8th Avenue in Nashville this week, you might catch a billboard with their sheepish grins large in the sky.

How did they get here? It’s hard to find a group where every member can effortlessly sing lead and write genre-bending songs that fit seamlessly on six acclaimed albums — and counting — in under ten years. Earlier standout records like the breakout Dark Holler Pop, produced by fellow North Carolinian Andrew Marlin of Mandolin Orange, and Edges Run, which features a veritable online hit in the broken-voiced, emotional “People Change,” show how Mipso appeals not only to folk fest-loving moms and dads, but also their edgier kids, who appreciate their subversive turns of phrase and playful gender-ambiguous, neon-tinted wardrobe.

As Z. found out during his conversation with Libby and Jacob, the band nearly broke up after a series of grueling 150-shows-a-year runs, a scary car wreck, and the pressure of putting out Edges Run for their rapidly growing fanbase. The forced slower pace of this last year and a half has been a gift in several ways — allowing the group to catch their breath and hole up to write more collaboratively than ever. The shimmering sonic backdrop that gifted producer and musician Sandro Perri was able to bring to the Mipso sessions at Echo Mountain studio in Asheville really makes the songs feel like they could exist in any era.

You wouldn’t be alone if you heard the connection between the honey-hooked newest record with the timeless, mellow-with-a-hint-of-menace hits of the 1970s (looking at you James Taylor and Carly Simon). Songs like “Never Knew You Were Gone” show off Terrell’s gift for gently asking the deepest questions, like where he might go when he transitions to the other side in a “silvery fire,” or the sardonically nostalgic “Let A Little Light In,” which wonders if the soft-focused images we have of the peaceful, boomtime 1990s (when Mipso was growing up) could use some real scrutiny. Rodenbough’s silky fiddle work stars throughout –and her courageous, vulnerable lead vocal on “Your Body” may be the most memorable moment on the new work.

Stick around to the end of the episode to hear mandolinist Jacob Sharp introduce his favorite contribution, “Just Want To Be Loved.”

Photo credit: D.L. Anderson

LISTEN: Caitlin Canty, “Where Is the Heart of My Country”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Caitlin Canty
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Single: “Where Is the Heart of My Country”
Release Date: September 30, 2020
Label: Tone Tree Music

In Their Words: “‘Where is the Heart of My Country’ first sparked for me as I flew home from California and spent most of the flight gazing out the window. At 30,000 feet, the rivers and roads looked like the flowing veins and arteries of our country. The patchwork of quilted farmland and tight-knit cities drove home how connected we truly are as Americans, despite the fractured state of our nation.

“At the time, I’d been trading off between scrolling angrily through the news and reading Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, which likely helped direct my rage and sadness into this song. I was aching over our country’s growing division, disheartened by the people stoking the flames and inspired by strong voices raised in protest. I was thinking about the many chapters of America’s past and wondering where our story goes from here.

“To record this song in the early months of the pandemic, Noam Pikelny and I set up a makeshift studio at home with borrowed gear. I was eight months pregnant when I tracked my part; standing up, guitar slung to the side, the baby monitor as a talk-back mic. I am so grateful for the beautiful contributions from the band of Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Noam Pikelny, and Andrew Marlin. The microphones are now torn down and the room where I sang ‘Where is the Heart of My Country’ is a nursery. I hope by the time my son is old enough to understand the refrain, its sentiment will seem like a relic of the distant past.” — Caitlin Canty

Photo credit: Laura Partain

Christian Sedelmyer, “Brain Scan”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

If you have happened to spend any amount of time inside an MRI machine (as this writer has), you’ll know it’s not a particularly comfortable experience. Claustrophobia is almost guaranteed, as your body is ushered into a tiny, cramped tube where patients are instructed to lay impossibly still for as long as the gigantic magnet and coils rotate, whine, and grind around your body. If you’re lucky, and your particular imaging orders don’t require otherwise, some MRI machines are equipped with music through magnet-safe earbuds (“What Pandora station would you like to listen to today?”) or, in one rare case for this writer, Netflix was projected through a series of relayed mirrors to allow Parks & Recreation to appear within the machine.

MRI machines are loud, and the noise is not particularly pleasant. Bumping and squealing and repetitive clunks and bangs become like a sound bath, as your brain attempts to make sense of the cavalcade of random noises. Some patients pick out sounds and gibberish syllables from the noise (I often hear “DAD! DAD! DAD! DAD! DAAAAD!”), while others simply let the cacophony wash over them hypnotically. Others cannot help but be swept away by the adrenaline-boosting, horror film-esque atonal soundtrack.

On his brand new solo album, Ravine Palace, Grammy-nominated fiddler Christian Sedelmyer (Jerry Douglas Band, 10 String Symphony) proffers a gorgeous alternative to that soundtrack. “Brain Scan” is a tune that certainly calls to mind the prerequisite din of an MRI machine, but with slippery bowed chromaticisms and Sedelmyer’s signature musical wit — plus a healthy dose of joy, something often suspiciously absent from radiology departments. Andrew Marlin (Mandolin Orange) on mandolin, Eli West (Cahalen Morrison & Eli West) on guitar and clawhammer banjo, and Clint Mullican (also Mandolin Orange) on bass follow along with rapt attention, combining the detail-affixed listening of chamber music with the sly lilt and energy of old-time.

Even while the foursome toys with the dissonant themes of the melody throughout the tune the aesthetics here will always be more palatable, enjoyable, and irresistible than a gigantic piece of magnetic medical equipment — no one is surprised, here — but “Brain Scan” still captures the anxieties, uncertainties, and inevitabilities of such a procedure uncannily. In a package any listener would be happy to encounter, whether through scan-safe earphones or not.

LISTEN: Andy Thorn, “Thornado”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Andy Thorn
Hometown: Boulder, Colorado
Song: “Thornado”
Album: Frontiers Like These
Release: June 21, 2019
Label: Thornpipe Music

In Their Words: “This tune came from exploring the key of A on banjo with no capo. Playing in A with no capo opens up a lot of different melodic possibilities on banjo and when I found the main riff I started basing a song around it. The tune really comes to life with the tasteful back and forth of Bobby Britt’s fiddle and Andrew Marlin’s mandolin. I love Jon Stickley’s creative use of open strings and harmonics on the jam. And Miles Andrews holds the whole thing together on his gut string bass. At just over six minutes it’s longer than your typical banjo tune, but if you give the whole track a chance it will take you on quite a ride. Enjoy ‘Thornado’!” — Andy Thorn

Photo credit: John Ryan Lockman (Show Love Media)

George Jackson, “Dorrigo”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

As a fiddler in Nashville, a town whose guitarist population is only rivaled by the sheer quantity of fiddles and bows, it takes a singular voice to stand out. Or, in George Jackson’s case, perhaps it takes a singular accent. The New Zealand native recently transplanted to Music City and has been carving a niche for himself in bluegrass, old-time, and their offshoots ever since. He currently tours with acclaimed bassist Missy Raines’ latest lineup, a minimalist-while-mighty acoustic trio, and he’s also been spotted collaborating with folks like Front Country and Rachel Baiman.

On his brand new album, Time and Place, Jackson steps into the role of frontman and bandleader, demonstrating that his voice — musically and otherwise — is so much more than just a charming, Oceanian accent. His fiddling is an intentional, pragmatic, and judicious combination of styles that range from Vassar Clements’ harebrained wit to Clifftop, West Virginia’s down-homiest old-time sawers. “Dorrigo,” a tune whose title tributes Australia, another former home to Jackson, perfectly demonstrates this old-meets-new, Northern Hemisphere meets Southern Hemisphere originality. The turns of phrase and melodic hooks register as familiar and timeless, before being unwound in surprising trajectories. Mandolin Orange’s Andrew Marlin, Charm City Junction’s Brad Kolodner, Mark Kilianski of Hoot and Holler, and Jackson’s longtime friend and collaborator Andrew Small fill out the band, demonstrating laser focus on old-time simplicity and bluegrass precision.

Perhaps thanks to his international roots, or his egalitarian approach to fiddle styles, Jackson’s “Dorrigo,” and by extension, Time and Place, simply do not bother trifling with authenticity signalling or genre designation. They simply elevate his singular voice.

Mandolin Orange: How Bluegrass Brought Them Closer (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Because they have developed a fan base that stretches across genres and generations, it isn’t so easy to, ahem, segment Mandolin Orange into one specific category. But throughout a decade of performing together, bluegrass has been a major part of the music created by the duo’s Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz. In the second part of our BGS cover story, they discuss their biggest bluegrass influences.

Editor’s Note: Read Part One of the BGS Cover Story with Mandolin Orange.

BGS: There’s a real country feel on “Lonely All the Time.” Are you classic country fans?

Andrew: Yeah. It’s not something I dig into, and really break apart, like I do with old-time and bluegrass music, but I think Emily and I both grew up listening to classic country. My dad is a country music fan, and that was a song that inadvertently got written from his perspective, living alone these days. I wanted to do a classic country duet sound for that, and Emily had the idea to do harmony all the way through it, like a George Jones and Melba Montgomery tune.

Emily: I think our road to classic country has been more roundabout. We listen to a lot of bluegrass, and when you listen to a lot of the older country, it’s a lot more acoustic and smaller-sounding, sonically. A lot of it is not very different than standard bluegrass tunes. It feels like that’s a natural path for us to go down with this band.

Andrew: Yeah. I like Hank Williams and early Johnny Cash, where it’s just a small ensemble playing the music.

Who are some of the bluegrass musicians you return to, just for enjoyment?

Emily: Andrew spends a ton of time listening to Bill Monroe, from a place of really digging into mandolin, and I guess for enjoyment too. But for listening pleasure, I would say a lot of the brother duets – the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers…

Andrew: Yeah, the Stanley Brothers for the songs, too. They were lonely, man. They were lonely dudes! I think the Stanley Brothers had a natural, bluesy feel, and their songs were so heavy and beautiful. Definitely, for songwriting, the Stanley Brothers would be a big influences, especially on our tune, “Suspended in Heaven,” on the new record. But also the Sam Bush and Tony Rice era. I listen to a lot of Sam Bush and Tony Rice, and just keep getting farther and farther into the Sam Bush catalog. I love his energy and what he brings to whatever ensemble he’s playing. It’s cool that he has a documentary out about him now. He’s getting the respect that he is due.

You may never emerge if you dive too deeply in Sam’s catalog. That stuff is so great, and sounds so good at festivals. He’s like the king of festivals.

Yeah, I think that’s because he’s able to maintain what he wants to do musically, but he’s still energetically appealing to mass audiences. That’s a hard to thing to do at a festival and I feel like he does it well.

That festival crowd can be tough. How many festivals have you all played over the last 10 years?

Andrew: We’ve played a bunch of ‘em. And playing quiet music. That can be an intimidating thing sometimes.

How did you overcome that?

Andrew: We shut our eyes and just hope they don’t mind hearing some quiet music. (laughs)

Emily: I think it was actually realizing that there is a place for that at festivals, even though it doesn’t seem like it. We’d get on stage and feel outgunned at the outset, but the more that we talked to people and realized that they appreciated having that in their festival experience, to offset all the crazy jamming going on. Everybody needs to balance out a bit. Once we realized that, we were able to own it a little more and recognize that that could be our role.

Andrew: It’s more like the hangover weed crowd than the late night drunk crowd, I would say.

I want to go back to “Suspended in Heaven.” It does have that Stanley Brothers sound, but it also has that church music sound, in a way. Are you influenced by music of the church?

Emily: Probably more in that we listen to and enjoy the old gospel tunes that are part of the bluegrass repertoire. We both grew up with church music but it wasn’t necessarily this kind of church music.

Andrew: My mom’s mom was the piano player for the church I went to, growing up, and then my mom took over her responsibilities, then my sister took over for a little while. So it’s like three generations of piano players at this church in Afton (North Carolina) that we went to, growing up. I was around a lot of old hymns and old gospel music, and you can’t really separate my mom from gospel music. I think in wanting to pay homage to her, and to her life, it made sense to write a standard old gospel tune. I guess the lyrics are not traditionally leaning but the sound definitely is.

Tell me how you became interested in bluegrass music.

Emily: For me, it was in the very beginning when I was taking Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. Our teachers didn’t give lessons in the summer but they did fiddle camps. I always played by ear but that was my first experience of being encouraged to learn to play by ear and not being forced to read sheet music. So I learned “Old Joe Clark” and “Bile ‘Em Cabbages Down” – all the first fiddle tunes you learn. And gradually I phased completely out of doing anything classical.

I was able to take more fiddle lessons and play in a local bluegrass band around the time I started high school. And learned a ton from the guys I was playing with, about how to sing tenor and what role the fiddle is supposed to play. It’s cool that traditional bluegrass has pretty hard-and-fast rules about what the given instruments are supposed to do, and I’m really glad that I learned that. We don’t play that way ourselves, on our own tunes necessarily, but it’s really fun to jump in and make a bluegrass song sound just like bluegrass-–if you know the rules.

Andrew, how about you?

Andrew: I’d only just started getting into bluegrass when Emily and I met each other, actually. I grew up with country and switched to rock ‘n’ roll, and then from there I fell into a metal zone. I was in a metal duo, actually, before I moved to Chapel Hill. I don’t think there are any recordings of that out there – hopefully not. I credit the Skaggs & Rice record a lot as being that switch for me that flipped me to bluegrass. When I heard that, I was like, ‘Who is this guitar player?” And the way they are singing together, it’s really quality. Especially Ricky Skaggs’ mandolin playing on that record.

So from there, I found out about Norman Blake and David Grisman and John Hartford and of course Sam Bush. I just fell in love with it, and especially the mandolin. So I think when Emily and I first met, I’d only been playing the mandolin for a year or so.

Emily: Andrew didn’t know very many bluegrass tunes. I was more of the source, at that point.

Andrew: She was showing me a bunch of fiddle tunes to learn on the mandolin, which really helped me figure the instrument out. I’m still figuring it out. So I’d say meeting Emily was a big part of my schooling in bluegrass, in a lot of ways.

After ten years of knowing each other, do you have a good intuition about what the other person is thinking?

Emily: I would say yeah, especially musically. I think all those years, too, of playing just the two of us, it becomes like a second language, and you don’t even necessarily realize it’s happening.

Was there a time when you did realize it was happening? Where you thought, “Wow, this is actually pretty good.”

Andrew: It depends on what we thought the other one was saying. (both laugh)

Emily: I remember reading an interview with Gillian Welch a long time ago, when she was talking about playing with a duo, about how it’s so much harder than playing with a full band, but also how it’s so much easier. And a lot of the things that she said about it made me realize how we were communicating, in a way that I didn’t necessarily realize before.

Andrew: I definitely love the spontaneity of playing in a duo, playing with just one other person. It’s really hard to make that split-second decision to vamp on a chord if you forget a lyric, or to extend a solo section, when there are four other people on stage with you. But when it’s just the two of us, we can kind of look at each other and give an eyebrow raise, and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I forgot the lyrics, so….”

Emily: It’s not even visual sometimes, but if somebody misses something, you automatically compensate for it in some way, and it’s not even conscious. I guess that’s probably possible in larger ensembles but it probably takes ten times as long to get there.

Photo credit: Kendall Bailey

Mandolin Orange: Moving Forward by Looking Back (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

It’s been a decade since Mandolin Orange founders Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz became acquainted, and over those 10 years, they have forged a quiet musical style that nonetheless can make a statement. For their newest album, Tides of a Teardrop, the song cycle examines the emotions stemming from the death of Marlin’s mother when he was 18. Yet it’s not an overly heavy record, as it finds ways to honor family memories as well as the determination to move forward.

Leading up to an international tour to support the album, Marlin and Frantz chatted with the Bluegrass Situation for a two-part cover story.

BGS: Tell me about “Golden Embers.” What was on your mind when you wrote that song?

Andrew: I had a lot on my mind. I guess the whole record, and especially that song, is about the passing of my mom. I mean, there are a few strays throughout the record, but for the most part it’s about me trying to get some of those thoughts out, and get some of those thoughts out on the surface and dig them up a bit – and hopefully leave them there, you know? Instead of internalizing it and having it come out in different ways.

I feel like “Golden Embers” especially was one of those songs I was writing to my dad because in my family we don’t have a direct line of communication. There’s a lot of … hard to say, Emily could probably speak to it because she witnesses it from an outside perspective. But there’s a lot of implied meaning. Nobody ever says anything directly, or how they actually feel, so I wanted to get some of the things I was feelings towards my dad…

Emily: So you implied it in the song. (both laugh)

This song seems like a way you can celebrate her life too.

Emily: Yeah, I think that song is about wanting to get past the mourning and the anger or it, and to remember who she was, instead of it having to be overshadowed by her life ending.

Emily, did you have a chance to know her?

Emily: I didn’t, no, but I do hear a lot about her. She sounds like she was a very special lady.

I need to ask you about “The Wolves.” Who is playing electric guitar on there?

Emily: It’s Josh Oliver. He’s played with us for a long time and he’s done most of the electric guitar and most of the keyboards on our past few albums. He really shines on that one, for sure.

I’ve been following your career for a while, and it seems that you have more of a band sound now.

Emily: Yeah, we still do duo stuff here and there, as it feels right to us, but we have been focusing more on playing live with the band, after we made Blindfaller with the band and toured that way for a long time. That was the really cool part about going in to record Tides of a Teardrop is that we had over a year of touring as a band behind us, so we were so much more jelled as a unit that way than we have been ever before.

During the course of that year, did you play any of these new songs?

Emily: I think we played “Into the Sun” a few times live, but we mainly got together and worked out the tunes before we got into the studio.

Speaking of “Into the Sun,” people may be curious when they hear you singing it. Did you write that song?

Emily: No, Andrew writes all the songs. And then we toss them around and decide when there’s one that I should sing. I do prefer to sing harmony. (laughs) But that particular song is one that Andrew wrote thinking about my granddad, who passed away a couple of years ago. So it felt fitting for me to sing lead on that.

Andrew: He was quite a character, man. He loved to travel and that was one thing we could always talk to him about. All these places we were going to, most of them he had been to. And he knew a lot of the backroads, because if you think of the way he used to travel, he didn’t have Google Maps. He was all about maps and he was really good about remembering road names and highway names and certain landmarks. Whereas now, I couldn’t tell you half of the highways we ever travel – but I can get you there with Google Maps.

It seems like there is a message of moving onward in the song, but there is a part where you sing about getting back out there — the lyric I’m thinking of is “I’ve mended my broken wing.” How did that lyric help this story unfold?

Andrew: I can tell you what that song is about, and I’m going to, but I like to write in metaphors and leave stuff open. You might get something completely different from that tune and I like that about songwriting. Some of the songs that are getting written are super-specific and you can tell exactly what folks are talking about – they don’t hold up for me. I like there to be a level of interpretation there for the listener.

But, from where I was coming at it, Emily’s grandpa always wanted to be a pilot. And he was unfortunately not able to do so because of a medical condition. So, for me, it started with me thinking about it from his perspective, looking at the sky and thinking, “Man, I want to be there. I want that to be my highway.” But he wasn’t able to, so he found a different way to travel, to get his wings, so to speak.

Andrew, I have read about your “stream of consciousness” songwriting. Can you tell me what that looks like? What is that process like for you?

Andrew: It’s messy but it’s fun. It’s almost throwing the initial idea at the wall and seeing what sticks, and seeing what fits with the melody and the timing that I’d like to go for, when I’m just working with progression and the melody. And usually from there, something will just click. It will grab me and I’m able to chase it, so to speak. Like, it kind of grabs me and then it takes off as an idea. And I allow myself to follow it through the little passageways in my brain. And after the initial song gets written, there’s a lot of editing that goes on in my head, on and on, like in the shower or driving down the road.

Emily: It’s sort of going through and cleaning up the lines, it seems like. Andrew will come to me once it’s written, like out of nowhere, and be re-thinking lines and re-working words just to make it as strong and as concise as it can be.

You did a good job on this record of capturing a sense of spaciousness. How much pre-production did you do before going into the studio?

Emily: We did more than we did in the past, but I think by most people’s standards, not a ton. We like to record live and we’ve always really struggled to do any demo work. It just doesn’t work for us. We either end up making a record by accident, or just banging our heads against the wall. There’s no in-between it seems like. For this album we did hole up in the mountains for a few days and work on the tunes together with the five-piece that we recorded with.

Andrew: And speaking of the spacy nature of the record, playing with Joe Westerlund on drums and Clint Mullican on stand-up bass, and Josh Oliver on electric guitar – those guys are a study in patience. Being on stage with them, and especially being in the studio with them, nobody’s trying to outplay the other one, or let the world know that they’re able to shred.

Emily: Even though they all can.

Andrew: We joke a lot in our band that Clint, Josh and Joe are back there coming up with great musical ideas and then choosing not to play them. (laughs) But yeah, it’s not a lack of knowledge. It’s more about knowing what the songs needs and being fine with that. I think that shines on the record, personally.

Emily: And that’s been important to us, still identifying as a duo, and wanting to maintain some of our favorite parts of playing as a duo – which is having a lot of space in the music. And trying to navigate, how do we expand this sound and play with five people, but not lose all of that space? I think that was something that came more naturally when we recorded Tides of a Teardrop because we had spent the last year playing with this group and learning how to play together.

(Editor’s Note: Read Part 2 of the BGS Cover Story with Mandolin Orange.)

Photo credit: Kendall Bailey