Banjo master Tony Trischka is a bluegrass and roots music renaissance man whose career goes back nearly 60 years, to his early days with his first group, the Down City Ramblers. He’s been making recordings for almost as long, appearing on-record for the first time on Country Cooking’s 1971 debut for the fabled Rounder Records label.
Given the width and breadth of Trischka’s career and sprawling discography, summarizing the man’s recorded legacy is not just a tall order, but a mountainous one. Nevertheless, we’ve made the attempt. Here are a dozen recordings that give a sense of Trischka’s many artistic sides as collaborator, innovator, teacher, keeper of the flame, and all-around musical good spirit.
“Kentucky Bullfight” – Country Cooking (1974)
Trischka was one of two banjo players in this collegiate ensemble. The other was future Hot Rize member Pete Wernick, who spent some time talking up his bandmate to Rounder Records co-founder Ken Irwin. “I was writing a bunch of tunes, and Pete told Ken, ‘Tony should do a solo album,’” Trischka remembered. “Ken said, ‘Sure, go ahead.’”
Irwin cites “Kentucky Bullfight” as the Country Cooking song that convinced him Trischka would be worth signing as a solo act, too.
“China Grove” – Tony Trischka (1974)
Trischka hails from the Northern environs of Syracuse, New York, and it was fairly common for Yankee banjo players of his era to indulge some unusual tangents. “My first album was, comparatively speaking, a little on the bizarre side,” Trischka himself admits. That’s certainly the case for this instrumental from his 1974 solo debut, Bluegrass Light. “China Grove” has East Asian accents throughout and even a saxophone solo from his Country Cooking bandmate, Andy Statman.
“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” – Tony Trischka (1976)
It seems like a rite of passage that everybody has to put their own stamp on the venerable Flatt & Scruggs bluegrass classic, “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” That goes for Trischka on his 1976 album, Heartlands, but few other artists would have the imaginative audacity to kick it off with a drum solo (plus more saxophone).
“Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down” – Tony Trischka (1978)
Another piece of classic repertoire from the wayback machine, “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down” is the song that made bluegrass forerunner Charlie Poole a star in 1925. Trischka cut it on 1978’s Banjoland in an ambitious all-star arrangement alongside fellow banjo players Bill Keith and Béla Fleck. Also present are resonator guitarist Jerry Douglas, mandolinist Buck White, and guitarist Tony Rice, who adds a definitive vocal.
“They’ll Never Keep Us Down” – Hazel Dickens (1981)
Formerly half of the pioneering female duo Hazel & Alice (with Alice Gerrard), the late great Hazel Dickens was one of Trischka’s best longtime collaborators. His elegant banjo and her emotionally raw voice were a great match on many songs, among them this classic from Dickens’ 1981 album, Hard Hitting Songs For Hard Hit People.
“Bill Cheatham” – Béla Fleck, Bill Keith, and Tony Trischka (1981)
In which three of the foremost roots music banjo virtuosos of the 20th century mesh with tasteful seamlessness while deftly keeping out of each other’s way. From 1981’s Fiddle Tunes for Banjo, this was one of the album’s three tunes that featured Trischka, Fleck, and Keith all playing together.
“Country Death Song” – Violent Femmes (1984)
From Milwaukee, this folk-punk trio puts a gothic spin on folk music. To that end, they often enlist unexpected collaborators to do cameo appearances, adding just-right punctuation. Here is one of the Femmes’ early examples, featuring Trischka’s banjo on their 1984 second album, Hallowed Ground. Nearly two decades later, the Femmes would return the favor by appearing on “Down in the Cider House,” a track on Trischka’s World Turning album.
“New York Chimes” – Tony Trischka (1985)
Trischka has always had a way with clever puns, “New York Chimes” among them. From 1985’s Béla Fleck-produced Hill Country album, “New York Chimes” is also a fine example of Trischka’s higher-gear fast playing. And the band is, of course, spectacular – Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Sam Bush.
“Old Joe Clark” – Tony Trischka (1992)
As a dedicated keeper of the flame and teacher/mentor, Trischka has always been up for putting the music into unusual places. One of the most unusual was a 1992 episode of the children’s cartoon, “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?,” on which Trischka wandered on camera playing the 19th-century fiddle tune “Old Joe Clark” during a game-show segment.
“World Turning” – Tony Trischka (1993)
Among Trischka’s many virtues as a player, one of the best is that he knows how to back up great singers. And here is a classic example from Trischka’s wildly eclectic 1993 album, World Turning. The title track is a cover of the 1975 Fleetwood Mac song, sung by Dudley Connell and Alison Krauss with Trischka adding just-right banjo flair.
“Shifting Sands of Time” – The Wayfaring Strangers (2001)
Another of Trischka’s far-flung, multi-hyphenate genre experiments is his 2001 album, Shifting Sands of Time, with a wide-ranging guest list that goes from bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley to ’90s pop star Tracy Bonham. The title track is at least as worldly as anything his longtime mate Béla Fleck ever put out.
“Brown’s Ferry Blues” – Tony Trischka (2024)
We close with another of Trischka’s all-star collaborations, the opening track from this year’s Earl Scruggs tribute album Earl Jam. “Brown’s Ferry Blues” kicks off with very choice guitar and vocals from modern-day superstar Billy Strings, and Trischka, Fleck, Bush, and fiddler Michael Cleveland are all right there with him.
Over the nearly two-and-a-half decades since their debut, the Avett Brothers have constructed their own creative universe.
They’ve released 11 studio albums, earned a Grammy award (plus three more noms), and bounded around stages for countless tour dates and festivals the world over. May It Last, a documentary film about the influential North Carolina group, offered a glimpse at the band’s dynamic through big and small screens.
Scott has also been a working visual artist since before The Avett Brothers as a band even entered the public consciousness, earning a BFA in studio art from East Carolina University in 2000 and depicting Southern family life through paintings and sculptures that would go on to make moving exhibitions—all while he also created stunning album cover imagery (for his own band as well as the great Brandi Carlile) or provided the visuals for such epic music videos as “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise.”
Musical theater, too, has been touched by the Avetts: Their musical, Swept Away, will make its mark on Broadway this fall. But the band’s eleventh album, The Avett Brothers, feels less like a charge into new creative territory and more like a reflection on the other things that have sustained them over the years.
“There’s certainly an unsettling feeling in that shadowy twenties and thirties where you get trapped into thinking that you are what you make,” Scott told Holler Country last year. “I’m settling into a season of life where I’m welcoming the reality that I am because I am, not I am because I do.”
That realization gets top billing on The Avett Brothers. Classic ballad “2020 Regret” sounds so quintessentially Avetts that it could have easily appeared just about anywhere in their catalog, if not for the veiled references to the year. It, too, embraces the idea that a life without regrets is less about what you do than it is about the people you do it alongside.
“Life cannot be written,” read the lyrics on album standout “Never Apart.” “It can only be lived.” The song muses on a long-term relationship; it’s presumably a romantic one, but would it be so crazy to listen to it through the lens of the band and its legacy?
Most bands don’t wait twenty-plus years into their trajectory to release a self-titled album — in large part because a lot of them simply don’t last that long. It’s a banner accomplishment to forge a musical path that sustains itself in any capacity for multiple decades; it’s entirely another to push forward with nearly the exact same cast of characters you started with, still collaborating and creating with the same heart and satisfaction as before.
“It’s trust. It’s a trust that’s built in,” explained Seth to NPR last month when asked about the secret to the band’s longevity. “My trust in that Scott has my best interests in mind is something that it would never occur to me to question.” He may be referring specifically to the lifelong brotherly bond he shares with the other Avett in the group, but certainly the larger band has formed a different kind of family.
Bob Crawford, who has been playing upright bass (among other instruments) with the band since 2001, took a year off to support his daughter’s battle with cancer and Avett fans followed and supported the journey at every turn. Cellist Joe Kwon, too, has an immovable fixture in the band since 2007; crowds go wild for him at every show. “We’ve been lucky and blessed to transform with each other,” added Scott, “to change with each other and watch this happening to us.”
“Cheap Coffee,” one of the album’s underrated masterpieces, makes great fodder for the idea of a group that constantly evolves and grows together. Producer Rick Rubin, who has been with the band since their major label debut, I and Love and You, apparently cut all the lights out and had them record the song entirely in the dark. The story holds up well for a song that engages so many senses: the distant smell of coffee, the feel of an outgrown apartment, the sound of a kid imagining the very highest number they possibly can. “Didn’t know how, didn’t know how good it was,” the group sings, lyrically balancing major milestones with the types of tiny details in a memory that feel insignificant at the time, but become the stuff of nostalgia decades on.
“We’ve always had this quasi-fatalist attitude, like oh, this might be the last time we ever do it,” joked Seth in an interview between their tenth and eleventh albums. “Now we’re really like, okay, we’re probably only gonna do this one more time.” In the interview, this line reads as a joke, but fans have speculated the same thing many times, too, cobbling together similar statements from the documentary film and various other interviews to try and guess how many more albums they might get.
Regardless of the band’s plans for the future, this eleventh album embraces plenty that fans love about the past. “For the Love of a Girl” is the jump-around number you can’t wait to hear live. And “Country Kid” offers an ambling glimpse at a rural North Carolina upbringing, with a heavy twang and plenty of backwoods imagery to match.
Taken altogether, The Avett Brothers feels like a worthy prize for the five-year wait between releases. “We’re not in the same hurry we used to be,” Scott explains. “Our home lives are super busy. We’re teaching kids things.”
In a way, maybe the greater message of The Avett Brothers is that the work will always be there — the opportunity to create, to explore, to have some kind of output. So maybe it’s really not so surprising that the band would wait to release an eponymous album so many years into their career, or that they might take five years since their last full-length to release it, or that they might not make promises about the future. As their influence has grown, so have the demands for their time and the expectations around what they make — not just how much of it there should be, but what it should sound like and how it should reflect the world around them.
What a beautiful thing to ignore those voices, to be enlightened by the past without being imprisoned by it; to turn off all the lights and sing in the dark.
(Editor’s Note: Read more about our selection of the Avett Brothers as Artist of the Month, explore their discography, and check out our Essentials Playlist here.)
(Editor’s Note: On May 17, The Avett Brothers released a new, self-titled album. BGS is proud to bring them back as our Artist of the Month for June 2024.
Below, enjoy a musical exploration of their illustrious career and prolific catalog. Plus, you’ll also find our Essential Avett Brothers Playlist for even more discography digging. And, you can revisit our feature from June 2016, when they were first selected to be our AOTM eight years ago.)
Depending on how you reckon it, you could say The Avett Brothers’ career goes back about two-dozen years – or Scott and Seth Avett’s entire lives. Even if you know nothing at all about them, all it takes is a few seconds of hearing them singing together to realize that they really are brothers.
Elder brother Scott’s voice is usually earthy and down below to Seth’s angelic up above. They meet in the middle to harmonize on songs about a series of quests – for love, redemption, family, pretty girls from far-away places, or just to be seen. Small wonder that one of their latest undertakings is Swept Away, a musical inspired by the mythology of their musical world.
To celebrate our Artist of the Month, here are a dozen songs about The Avett Brothers’ remarkable journey.
“Pretty Girl From Matthews” (2002)
Pretty girls are, of course, a perennial songwriting topic for the Avetts – most of them identified simply as “Pretty Girl From.” It’s taken them far and wide, from Michigan to Chile, Annapolis, San Diego, Cedar Lane, Raleigh, Feltre, Locust and even “at the Airport.” But here is the earliest example in all the Avetts’ early, detuned glory, from a town southeast of Charlotte. Originally titled “Song For Robin,” “Pretty Girl From Matthews” was the opening track on 2002’s Country Was.
“Talk on Indolence” (2006)
Folksy Americana trappings aside, Seth and Scott started out playing in bands that did a lot more screaming and thrashing than crooning and strumming. And even as their music has grown more polished and stately over time, their raw streak still comes out regularly. This breathlessly paced head-banging rant, which kicked off 2006’s Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions at an amphetamine pace, is one they still play at most shows.
“Distraction #74” (2006)
Another Four Thieves Gone recurrent, “Distraction #74” evokes British seafaring vibes seemingly tailor-made for raucous pub sing-alongs. And it has a perfect Avett Brothers lyrical theme: Torn between two lovers, the protagonist mostly wonders which of them he’s going to miss the most. The only certainty is that he’ll blow it with both of them.
“Die Die Die” (2007)
In which the Avetts don’t just make a simple pop move, but pull off what might be the least-likely Beatles rip ever. “Die Die Die” opened 2007’s Emotionalism, their first album to crack the Billboard 200 and a showcase for new cellist Joe Kwon. Among the Fab Four echoes here are Beatle-esque vocal harmonies and a guitar solo that’s pure George Harrison. Onstage, they’ll sometimes make it even more overt by closing with flourishes from “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
“Paranoia in Bb Major” (2007)
Nothing fancy, just a little banjo and glockenspiel number from Emotionalism that perfectly captures the Avetts’ manic whisper-to-a-scream mood swings. Then it closes with one of their quirkiest recorded moments, wordless falsetto chanting that is somehow adorable.
“Murder in the City” (2008)
From 2008’s The Second Gleam, “Murder in the City” came out right when this cult act was about to go mainstream. It feels like one last look back before stepping into the spotlight, a series of epigrams about love, jealousy, family and forgiveness.
“Murder in the City” remains one of the Avetts’ regular live set-pieces, with lyrics that have evolved to reflect the brothers’ evolution from children to parents themselves. It’s a cinch they’ll still be playing and updating it someday when they’re grandparents, too.
“Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” (2009)
Fittingly, “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” was the song the Avetts played during their star turn with Mumford & Sons behind Bob Dylan at the 2011 Grammy Awards. “Decide what to be and go be it” might be their most durable manifesto, which is a big reason it remains their most-performed song live. According to Avett Brothers super-fan Tim Mossberger’s database, it’s closing in on 1,000 live performances. And it still kills. All it takes is hearing Kwon’s cello riff to bring on chills.
“Laundry Room” (2009)
Like “Head Full of Doubt,” “Laundry Room” is drawn from the Avetts’ 2009 big-league debut, the Rick Rubin-produced I and Love and You – their first gold record. It’s a beautifully poignant portrait of stolen-moment love that may or may not be doomed.
“Tonight I’ll burn the lyrics/ ’Cause every chorus was your name,” Scott sighs, contemplating a “head-full of songs” he dreamed up overnight. The double-time hoedown outro plays like a bittersweet wake. “Laundry Room” ranks second on Mossberger’s live-performance database.
“Live and Die” (2012)
From 2012’s The Carpenter, the Avetts’ first to crack Billboard’s Top 10, “Live and Die” is just about the poppiest they’ve ever sounded – even with banjo as lead instrument. In contrast to the Avetts’ usual outlook, it is surprisingly optimistic, which made it the perfect upbeat closing-credits accompaniment for director Jud Apatow’s romantic comedy, This Is 40.
“Satan Pulls the Strings” (2014)
The studio version of “Satan Pulls the Strings” appeared on 2016’s True Sadness, but this one was around for years before that. In fact, its best incarnation is as entrance music for the live show. Among my favorite in-concert memories of the Avetts was watching the entire seven-piece band enter the stage one by one and start in on this song on New Year’s Eve 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina. That performance appears on 2015’s Live Vol. Four.
“No Hard Feelings” (2016)
In recent years, “No Hard Feelings” has been the Avetts’ customary show-closer, ending each night on a prayerful, elegiac note. As depicted in the 2017 biopic May It Last: A Portrait of the Avett Brothers (overseen by Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio), recording it for 2016’s True Sadness LP was an overwhelmingly emotional experience. It triggered a meltdown by Scott immediately afterward, a sequence that proved to be the film’s most memorable moment.
“Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels)” (2022)
On-record as well as onstage, the Avetts have always had splendid taste in covers, dipping into the songbooks of Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Bob Wills and many others. There’s also “Operator (That’s Not the Way It Feels),” a 1972 Top-40 classic by the late great folk-rocker Jim Croce. Seth started doing a stripped-down acoustic version of “Operator” with bassist Bob Crawford back in 2012, and it’s one they still dust off regularly 12 years later.
Read more about the Avett Brothers’ eleventh and self-titled album here.
A deep reflection born from a time of the extreme silence and noise of the pandemic, Kaïa Kater’s new album, Strange Medicine (out today, May 17), digs into the feelings society tells us not to feel, imagines healing and revenge from abuses, and reckons with themes of racism and sexism of the past and today. While the undercurrents are heavy, the arrangements are gentle and flowing, juxtaposing our expectations of what we think it means to process the darkness in life with the truth that many emotions can exist simultaneously.
Written from home in Montreal, Strange Medicine takes us on a cathartic journey imagining characters interwoven with parts of Kater and parts of the world she observes. Drawing on inspiration from artists like Steve Reich, Brian Blade, and Johnny Greenwood and partnering with Montreal-based producer Joe Grass (The Barr Brothers and Elisapie), she took a different musical path than in the past.
Leaning into her primary instrument, banjo, Grass and Kater built the framework for each of the tracks slowly, starting with bedroom tracks and expanding to include arrangers like Franky Rousseau (Andrew Bird, Chris Thile) and Dominic Mekky (Caroline Shaw, Sara Bareilles) and musicians Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon), Robbie Kuster (Patrick Watson), and Phil Melanson (Andy Shauf, Sam Gendel). Kater spoke to BGS via Zoom.
Hi! How are you?
Kaia Kater: I’m okay! A couple of days ago I dropped my phone directly onto my laptop screen and it cracked. I had to go to Apple. So I am without a laptop, but thankfully have my 10-year-old iPad, bless her!
Apple is coming in clutch. Also, Apple product destroying Apple product is kind of funny.
Yeah, it’s an Apple-on-Apple hate crime. It’s terrible. I feel so weird about it. But I have AppleCare, which is good.
With the couple of sentences that you just said it’s no wonder the Department of Justice is looking into Apple as a monopoly. Vertical integration. Well, how are things going other than Apple problems?
The record is out in a week, so I’m excited. Thank you for doing this piece. I never take any press for granted, especially after the pandemic, when things were so terrible and hard.
What a weird time. Is that when you started writing this record?
Yeah, pretty much. I wrote my first song in April of 2020. We finished the record in 2023. So I would say like 2020 to 2022, was the writing window.
This album is a pandemic baby!
It is. Yeah, I’m proud of my little pandemic baby. Born out of a lot of feelings of stasis and confusion, but also just so fun to record. I think that there’s a lot of grief in the lyrics. But you can still vibe to sad songs, especially when they feel groovy. So that was the intent.
So when did you start recording it?
Let’s see, we went in to record in October of 2022 but the official recording days were preceded by a ton of demo days. So throughout 2021 and into 2022, I would go to my co-producer Joe’s studio in Montreal. We would just track stuff and either bring people in or ship the songs out to people and pay them a demo fee and have them kind of like splash around and see what their interpretation of the song was. That was kind of like how we selected personnel. I think we had a pretty strong idea of what we wanted to do by the time we got into the studio, which is so different from other projects I’ve been part of and other records I’ve done.
How was it different?
I guess, with the pandemic, I had the blessing of time, which I never had before really. With Nine Pin, I recorded on my winter break from college in my senior year, and then Grenades was done from start to finish in two weeks. And so with Strange Medicine, it was about two years. There are advantages and drawbacks to that. It is very easy to start second guessing some choices that you’d made in the previous calendar year, but I think it was to me such a novelty to be able to write and then listen back, and send the arrangement to someone and have them send their work back. It was so much more thoughtful because we had the time to do that.
That makes total sense. So you started writing it during the pandemic. What was your writing process like? Did you have ideas that you came into the lockdown with, or were you processing things in real time?
Well, originally I was like, “I’m never gonna play banjo again.” I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was trying, to a certain extent, to escape my roots, transform, or do this phoenix thing. Where people are like, “Whoa! She was a banjo player and now she’s an electronic pop musician.” That was maybe a facet of my mid-20s to late 20s, having that crackling feeling that all the different paths your life can take feel like they’re narrowing. And so you’re kind of like fighting against that and going, “No, I still can transform again, musically.”
Really what led me to write more songs on the banjo, especially for Strange Medicine, was that it was really comforting to me. I think I went back to it after wanting to spread my wings. Once I was alone in a room I was like, “What do I want to do right now? I just wanna play banjo.” And for a long time that’s all I did. I didn’t really write. The songs trickled in bit by bit. But you know I definitely gave up that idea of trying to metamorphosize in the way that I thought I was going to. I think I did it in a different way.
Can you talk a little bit about what it meant to be in Montreal writing this record and just in general? What influence did the town have on this particular record? And how does the music community there influence you?
Well, it’s very experimental there. And there’s a kind of freedom and risk-taking. People are not afraid to have things fail or to have things not quite work. Even now, I’m sort of deconstructing the idea that I grew up with, this idea of what a songwriter is, which is that you work really hard at your craft, you play the song down. And the way that you improve every night is how you perfect and tighten the song as much as possible. I’ve been getting into this idea of improvisation.
I don’t know if it’s because the rent is cheaper there, so you don’t have to hustle as much. I just felt so much more space to play around.
While we’re on the subject of Montreal, you collaborated with Allison Russell on “In Montreal” about your shared hometown. I was curious since Aoife O’Donovan is from Massachusetts and you’re talking about witches on “The Witch” – was that a purposeful choice?
No, but that occurred to me about a week ago. I was making dinner, and I was like, “Wait. Aoife’s from Massachusetts!” It must have been in some way subconscious. I kind of see people as the roots that they’ve grown from. And definitely, when thinking about the features I wanted, I wanted it to make sense with who that person is. For example, with Taj Mahal, he’s who I learned about the black roots of the banjo from first. He was doing that in the ‘60s, and he has a lot of Calypso and Caribbean influences and heritage. Bringing him into a song about a Caribbean revolutionary felt like, “Well, of course.” I even wrote him a little letter explaining the song, because he’s 80. He doesn’t need to be on anybody’s record. And so I was like, “Let me tell you what the song is about, and maybe you’ll want to sing on it.”
That’s so cool. And how did the collaboration on “The Witch” come about?
Aoife has always been really supportive of me as a person and as an artist, going back to 2017. She’s kept me in mind for a lot of things and she’s suggested me for opportunities. She’s also really community-oriented. She’s very cognizant of supporting women musicians and young musicians. I’m a mega fan of hers.
I had written “The Witch” and I thought she would sound great on it. Fast forward to the end of the process, when all we had left to do was harmony vocals and I was really nervous to ask her because I think I was scared to get a no. But I’ve been practicing. You have to ask, because if you don’t ask you don’t receive anything. I texted her, and she immediately responded yes without even hearing the song. Then she laid down all these like really intricate harmony parts. She’s a genius.
Your voices are beautiful together. It works really well. And the Massachusetts thing — it’s perfect. While we’re on the subject of that song, what connects you to the stories of these women who were accused of witchcraft or adultery and were punished for it?
To me, it is the juxtaposition of having this perceived power in the minds of men as being capable of influence, capable of seduction and luring, and superseding a man’s high intelligence and thoughts of himself and overtaking will power. But then, when women were accused of being witches, their already limited power just absolutely disintegrated and they were executed by mobs. I was thinking a lot about these kind of polar ideas of women having so much power over men, but then we’re struggling to be taken seriously in a workplace or struggling to feel like we are on equal footing.
I think sexism and racism today are much more insidious – as are homophobia and transphobia. It’s so palpable. Being able to give voice to someone in history who may meet a different fate; maybe they try to kill her, and she’s like,”Ha! I survived. And now, aren’t you scared of me?”
The influence came from a lot of different places; the witches from Macbeth, and the Roald Dahl witches. They are all in our popular consciousness to a certain extent, and I think we have a fascination with them.
Absolutely. Let’s talk about the song “Floodlights.” It reminded me of Joni Mitchell for two reasons. One is the sonic palette and the orchestration reminded me of her. Second, I saw a video of her recently and she was talking about how a good song should make a listener think of themselves rather than of her. That’s obviously an objective idea, but this song, though focused on a romantic relationship, reminded me of some of my own, but also friendships and working relationships and how the dynamic of one person’s power over another can be so incredibly detrimental. But there is hope and life on the other side of that. It is a special way you tell the story in a cafe where the protagonist is feeling herself rise over a past love for the first time. I was wondering if you find that you have clarity around power dynamics yourself as you grow older as the protagonist does?
I’ve recently turned 30. And to me, that seems to be the absolute blessing of your 30s, that you have this kind of clarity and understanding of who you are and what you are willing and not willing to tolerate. That song itself is about an age-gap relationship that I was in. We had an 11-year age difference. I was super young. I was 18 or 19 when we got together, and this whole conception that I had was, “I’m mature and I’m actually better than the other women my age, because I have someone who is super mature and who thinks that I’m interesting. I’m also better than the women his age. There’s something special about me,” like I felt chosen.
That was such a powerful feeling at that time when so much of my self-esteem was dependent on what other people thought of me. Slowly, through the course of this relationship, I realized that he chose me, but not for the reasons that I thought I had been chosen.
I mean he was a walking red flag and I just did not trust my intuition to understand that. This wasn’t a good scenario, and now, on the other side of it, at 30, I couldn’t imagine dating a 20-year-old. There’s an inherent power dynamic there. I wrote the beginning of the song two years before I finished it, because in the beginning, I couldn’t think of an ending. I couldn’t have seen him at a bar (which really happened) and just been scared and left. I wanted to give the protagonist a better ending than that.
It sounds like you did a lot of processing on this record through your writing, like maybe you released some frozen anger. I think most women can relate to that in general, because we are so often encouraged or told to suppress that emotion. I was wondering how your relationship with anger and revenge evolved and shifted through the creation of this album?
I think therapy seems to be a theme in a lot of artists’ albums these days. I didn’t realize how much anger I carried until I went to therapy. I had always grown up thinking that any kind of anger is debasing yourself. You’re losing power and you’re not being your highest, most evolved self.
Every time I got angry, I felt like I’d failed to access my more evolved emotions. It was through therapy that I learned that anger is, in many ways, necessary. We are refusing to be treated a certain way.
I think adventuring through these ideas of revenge where it’s like, “Well, what if I don’t choose forgiveness? What about that? Why do I have to be the peaceable one? Why do I have to be the one to absorb all of your violence, and then somehow process it out so that we’re good?” I have to say, it was really fun to write these lyrics and not shy away from some more violent imagery, especially in “The Witch.”
I heard someone say something like, “Anything that’s human is mentionable. And anything that’s mentionable is manageable.” I think singing it out is so nice because it’s mentionable. It’s manageable.
Speaking of, this is a great segue. How does it feel to perform these songs live?
It feels really good. It feels vulnerable too, having lived with them so long during the pandemic. It’s interesting to start sharing them with people. I have this ritual where the day before a single comes out, I listen to the song on a walk. And I’m like, “Okay, this is the last time this is gonna be only mine.” I think that ritual has really helped me. It’s a really personal album in a lot of ways for me.
I’m looking forward to trying it out in many different configurations, continuing the idea of play that we started out with this record, and seeing the different ways it can evolve and change.
The first time I saw Willi Carlisle was in Buffalo, New York, in the tiny basement of an old protestant church that Ani DiFranco bought. There couldn’t have been more than thirty or so people there – a queer couple or two holding hands, a mom and a dad plus their kid, a cluster of 20-year-olds too hip for their own good. I see twenty or so shows a year – neighborhood guitar pulls, little club gigs, shows in big theaters, and every so often an arena. Willi was world class, one of the best I’ve seen. He told stories in between the songs, tracing an anti-Vietnam song well into the 17th century, or talking about Mexican ballads and the power of the concertina, or about how a hometown story is both archetypal and plain, universal and contained to a very specific time and place.
As the Buffalo concert suggested, Carlisle is at his best when limning complex networks of historical figures, news, what is called “traditional music,” contemporary poetics, and the natural world. He is a lyric poet, in the most classical sense.
This fact could be seen especially in a track from his new album Critterland, “Two-Headed Lamb.” It’s an adaptation of a Laura Gilpin poem, which Carlisle translates and extends. I’ve always thought that the poem was a bit too glib, a bit too self-assured of its own moral ending.
Carlisle talks about the whole cycle of growth, how it is not a singular freak birth in a generic field, but how the freakish quality of a two-headed calf and the weirdness of that birth functions within a cycle: The farmer who finds it, persimmons growing out of season, a coyote picking at the corpse of a ewe, even “robins singing in an old growth tree.” As a creator, the song becomes an act of interpretation – a poem becomes a song, a song not quite a cover, a critique of a poem that might not work, but the working of the poem depends on an audience.
When asked about the poem, Carlisle responds:
As I explored Gilpin’s poem with friends and strangers, it’s been no surprise that “Two-Headed Calf” seems well-known in both rural and trans communities and their significant cross-section. And why not? It’s a poem about a creature too beautiful for this world, [whose] magisterial dimorphism and tragic death conjures real-world magic. Someone born feeling as if they have no gender, two genders, the wrong gender, might feel this magic themselves. So would someone who’s pulled an ailing calf from the womb of their beloved milk cow with a rope or their bare hands.
That’s a generous reading, a reading done in community – one that expands what an audience could mean, one that is as cyclical and as wide as open as could be. It’s generous to Gilpin, as well.
This whole act of semi-translation also explains the concept of Critterland, which Carlisle describes in our wide ranging conversation as a place where “…we have to dismantle the house, make something different. I think what we inherit (our bodies, songs, tools, houses) makes us the living proof of the suffering of our forebears. We’ve got their noses, their colonial holdings, their drinking problems.”
In a culture, we take and hold onto what is useful for us and the results of that taking we try to build more carefully.
In the list of animals that Willi names in the title track – “Yeah, the sparrow on the wing taught mе to find you/ And the opossum knows his own mind more than I do” – there is hope in being able to craft houses and buildings like the scuttling of everyday creatures. If the possum and the sparrow can (and may I add, the racoon, the crow, the squirrel, every city or country creature) then we can, too. Which is why the best of Carlisle’s songs are ones which mention small spaces – a mother singing “In the Sweet By and By” in the kitchen, or the devastating song “The Arrangements,” with its complex, sometimes compassionate, sometimes ruthless processing of a father who drank too much and loved too little, or in “The Great Depression,” a verse that limns Carlisle’s ancestors:
From the needle-prickin’ mothers who were never taught to read To the barefoot hungry soldiers that enlisted at 16 Oh in my dumb debasement, I still find great relief That on the lam and on the dole they counted themselves free…
Those are local examples, small, and there is some argument within them. Like some great folk singers, Carlisle’s sense of local spaces, his skill at deep readings of landscape, is a primary example of his excellence. I think of him as an Arkansas singer, but he has to earn a living – part of that possum life. Carlisle travels constantly, touring half the year or more to make enough money to be somewhere he feels home.
He explains it thusly: “One of the hard facts about touring so hard is that I haven’t really lived in Arkansas for more than a few months a year in six or seven years now. Hell, currently I’m living in southwest Missouri, just over the border. I don’t feel excluded from my life back home, usually, when I’m on tour. “
It’s another network, a cycle of creation, and intimacy. In a song called “Higher Lonesome,” is there something monastic there? Setting up lonely feelings to a higher power? Is he quoting the 1950s Texas technicolor film? Is it a song about drinking?
It’s all of those things and none of those things. He mentions his community and where they are in the world:
…By the time the ride is over, I’m sure I’ll ask to ride again See the snowfall in Wyoming, strung out on Johno’s coke Keep a mailbox in Nebraska, so I know the Lord knows She can write a letter once a year and say that we’re still close I can put my cents on Benjamin hear the songs he wrote…
The privacy of this song marks the depth and complexity of another, the last work on the record “The Money Grows On Trees.” It’s a 10-minute recitation, a story told in intense, Appalachian Gothic detail, about corruption and a young drug dealer gone wrong.
If any texts could be considered lonely, even in the midst of Carlisle’s careful noting of connections, these are. For example, when in another song, he sings to a “Jaybird” – another of those scuttering creatures, that eats off what is left. He says to the jaybird, that “he’s doing just fine, his head is a wreck and his chest is on fire.” This line, with neither denial nor irony, is a kind of Beckettian notice about continuing on despite the ongoing, struggling moments.
The whole album speaks of a (dis)regulation of feelings, slipping into the natural ebbs and flows of the titular Critterland so the work can continue. In the album, and in his live shows, a cobbling together happens as a kind of hope, but a hard-won kind.
Or, to give Carlisle the last word:
I don’t believe in despair – it would make me hate things, and I cannot bear to do that. So, alas, that means the only other option is the hard one: hope. Here in the first world we have unimaginable resources and power, so much more than we need. We could, realistically, reduce climate change, enshrine human dignity, end global poverty, and celebrate untold freedoms in our lifetimes. Why wouldn’t we? I’m naive, surely. Maybe I’m an idiot, and maybe I’m just obsessed with getting “what’s mine.” Music is a business, after all.
The work is the thing – to pay the mortgage, to tell stories that need to be told, to adapt stories that have been forgotten, to cry or laugh, to mourn, to change people’s minds politically, to seduce or to be seduced.
Carlisle’s practice, in an aching two-step, does this with tradition. There’s a reason why he’s a square dance caller, and there’s a reason why, for him, the dance goes on.
Perspective. A universal concept, but also something which bears the potential to be entirely different from one person to the next. How one person views a setting, an experience – or even something as simple and innocent as a Polaroid picture – can set the tone for how they come to hold onto and look back on an entire memory.
The 11 songs on Polaroid Lovers, the seventh album from multi-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz, not only presents the bulk of its musical subjects from a variety of vantage points, but the very making of this record is a story built on a shift in perspective for Jarosz herself.
“World on the Ground was my first traversing into really working on songwriting as more of a storyteller and not necessarily always writing from my own perspective or writing my own story. Or, maybe a better way to say it would be, from a confessional kind of point of view,” says Jarosz. “I think that really carried over into [Polaroid Lovers] and was very much assisted by the people that I was co-writing with,” she adds. “And so I think by co-writing all the songs and by not being in a solitary mindset, I was able to more easily slip into trying to write the songs from a more universal perspective.”
Jarosz is nowhere near a newcomer to the concept of collaboration, both in live performance and in songwriting for studio records. Just ask mandolinist and songwriter Chris Thile, former host of the iconic live performance/radio show Live From Here, or Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan, Jarosz’s creative cohorts in the Grammy-winning roots supergroup I’m With Her. The New York-to-Nashville transplant carved out her place in the musical landscape with an indubitable gift for solo songwriting. This gift propelled Jarosz forward for a host of years, a slew of awards, and an ever-growing body of recorded work. However, staying a self-contained songwriter wasn’t without constraint – a state of affairs Jarosz admits was largely self-imposed through much of her early career, for the sake of her own artistic voice.
“I was very closed off to co-writing especially for my first couple records,” she says. “I had managers and label people always trying to set me up on co-writes and I did a couple, but I just don’t think I knew my voice well enough and I hadn’t had long enough writing on my own, performing on my own, and figuring out my sound. I think I was just worried that my voice would get lost in those [writer] rooms.”
Jarosz’s deliberate decision to not only include co-writing, but make it a dominant pillar of Polaroid Lovers seems entirely understandable as a way to push her own creative boundaries. She isn’t shy about sharing the burst of confidence that also arose within her while writing songs for the album. “I really don’t think I could have made this record even five years ago,” she says. “There were so many moments in the studio that I mean, if I’m being honest, kind of – I hate to use the word scared – but challenged me.”
If it feels strange to envision a creative powerhouse of Jarosz’s caliber struggling to embrace new musical ideas, there are plenty of specific sonic snapshots in the songs of Polaroid Lovers that Jarosz can look at through the lens of her past self and know just how differently things could have gone.
“For instance, the beginning of ‘Jealous Moon’ – when the guitar and the drums come in like right at the top – I was like, ‘Whoa, this is on a new playing field for me and a stretch from what I’ve done before,’ but I loved it,” she says. “At the end of the day, my barometer [is about] if the music is moving me, if I believe in it, and if I can proudly sing every lyric with a stamp of approval. And so I think something like that [style of introduction] – I might have just shut it down. Like, it would have scared me a little too much maybe five or 10 years ago and I would have said, ‘No, that’s not me. So we’re not going to do that.’”
Though “Jealous Moon” starts the music of Polaroid Lovers with an adventurous hook, Jarosz actually made the shift to disregard fear and connect with her inner co-writer in her mind from the very first day she met producer Daniel Tashian, while the two co-wrote “Take the High Road” – an upbeat song about staying true to oneself and not shying back from what feels right. “The thing that’s so refreshing and cool about Daniel [Tashian] is that he’s just so open and so endlessly curious about all things music and I think [he] would just be creating all the time if it were up to him,” Jarosz admits.
A seasoned songwriter and collaborator known for his work on Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour, Tashian brought Jarosz out of her comfort zone, often literally, in providing many changes of scenery for their writing sessions. “I met [Daniel] in March of 2022, which was when I started writing for this record, and… he just kind of welcomed me in to his family,” Jarosz says. “I wound up going on these kinds of writing retreats… and that was cool to just, get out of Nashville, shift our perspective, be in a different place, and just be really open to to the muse and to what would come.”
Other times Tashian’s sharing of simple but impactful thoughts and his own decisive opinions helped to nurtured a spirit of open possibility regarding what Jarosz would be able to write, but also ideally what she would find joy in playing for herself, as well.
“Daniel said something when we were in the studio that really resonated [with me]: ‘Why would you just want to make the same record over and over again?’ I love that, because I think you try to find your voice and hone your voice over the course of a career but the fun is in exploration – at least for me. I mean, maybe some people find comfort and repetition and that’s fine but I really love exploring and ultimately seeking what serves the song. I mean, that’s what it comes down to at the end of the day.”
Running parallel to this expanding circle of people, ideas, song forms, and stories that Jarosz was inspired to put into Polaroid Lovers are her personal tools of the trade – particularly her octave mandolin. An instrument Jarosz has grown to appreciate over the years alongside her artistry and proficiency with the mandolin, guitar, and banjo, the octave mandolin is another meaningful element of creative expanse, change, and consistency that’s become integral to who Jarosz is as a musician and what she wants to sound like.
“[Polaroid Lovers] feels more like me than ever before. Even though there might technically be some differences, I feel that it’s very strongly my voice and my sound. I think a huge part of that is my octave mandolin being a prominent texture,” she says. “I’ve gotten to this place where the octave mandolin feels like my sound in a way and I really sort of gravitated towards that instrument over the course of the years.”
A derivation of the mandolin, the octave mandolin is a fitting instrument to feature on an album that reflects new and familiar points of view. “Whenever I play octave [mandolin], I feel like, ‘This is me.’”
Beyond its presence being a defining musical attribute, for this album especially Jarosz says the octave mandolin was also a tool of creative focus amidst everything new and sometimes daunting. “Having [the octave mandolin] sort of be the through-line on this album helped me in those moments where I felt challenged by a sonic thing that felt new,” she says. “The octave mandolin would kind of make me feel like I was grounded.”
Though grounded, one need not mistake Jarosz’s sense of musical stability with any kind of fixation on genre. While there’s almost no escaping others’ archetyping of Jarosz’s work, Polaroid Lovers is neither a show of rebellion against her musical foundations, nor a calculated attempt to partition an exact ratio of familiar stylization with ideas new to her writing process.
“I personally don’t like to think of myself in terms of genre and I never really have,” she says. “It can be frustrating for me when people say, ‘Oh, you’re this, you’re that’ and I feel like, ‘Well, no…’ I think about [music] in terms of if I like it or not.” She adds, “I’ve just always felt that way and I’ve always listened to so many different types of music. It just feels too narrow, too limiting, to have to fit too squarely into a box.”
Despite the fact that the general public can launch a barrage of staunch opinions about the style of Jarosz’s work or what they may perceive is “right” about it, Jarosz says there’s a whole other dimension to Polaroid Lovers yet to be unveiled that won’t come into view until she’s out on the road, playing live, and connecting directly with everyone who’s listening. “The difference between performing a song in the studio versus performing it live in front of an audience is that I think songs sort of start to take their own journey.”
She adds, “I know my story, or I know my part of it. But sometimes, if you can be vague enough, you can almost keep it secret a little bit, where it’s like my story and my feeling about it is my own and then other people get to find their story in it as well. I think something that will be fun in singing these songs over the next however many years is discovering new perspectives with [audiences]. The perspective will really come singing [the songs] over the course of the next year on tour. I’m very excited about getting to do that.”
Ironically, all the talk of a growing compendium of artistic styles, of new collaborators, of new musical techniques, and of new ways to tell new stories truly hammers home the notion that Jarosz’s musical world is an ever transforming space – rather than one made up of experiential snapshots, as Polaroid Lovers is aptly described. Still, Jarosz came up a solo writer and one of the biggest curiosities around potential changes ushered in by this record would be how she views the dynamic of writing music alone versus writing her music with others. Not surprisingly, Jarosz doesn’t see an inner conflict on the horizon. It’s all “the more the merrier.”
“If anything, this [album] just expanded my community, which is a wonderful thing,” Jarosz says. “Especially now living here in Nashville, I think it’s made me feel more a part of this great community. Whereas when I was 18, I think I felt like there was something to lose in writing with people – that being, losing my voice or like kind of losing my way a little bit. Now I don’t feel like that and I think that there’s nothing to lose by sitting down and trying to be creative with with someone else. I think I will always do that from here on out, but it definitely will be simultaneous to me also writing by myself. That’s something that I don’t ever want to lose and that I want to keep doing for as long as I can.”
In December, our current Artist of the Month, Sarah Jarosz, appeared on CBS Saturday Morning with her band to perform three tracks from her upcoming album, Polaroid Lovers (out January 26). Watch all three performances right here, on BGS.
The octave mandolin in her arms is the most “traditional” touch of each of these songs. The full band sound, which is ripe with influences from Jarosz’ new home base of Nashville, Tennessee, shines under the stage lights – vibey electric guitars mingling with energetic keys and the low-end, buzzy hum of her mando.
From “Jealous Moon” to her subtle, love-laden paean to New York, “Columbus & 89th,” to the slow burning and erotic “When the Lights Go Out,” Jarosz demonstrates an ease at this point in her career, a sly smile that says she knows exactly what she’s doing, even when she’s out on a limb. It’s a confidence born of living her entire adult life in the spotlight – after all, she won her first Grammy Award when she was merely eighteen.
As NYC did on past albums, Nashville certainly oozes from the songs on Polaroid Lovers, but never in pedestrian or predictable ways, as evidenced by these gorgeous performances from CBS’ Saturday Sessions. Jarosz uses Music Row sounds, textures, and professionals – Daniel Tashian produced the album and quite a few in-demand Music Row songwriters have co-write credits on the project – not as molds in which she fits her music, but each as springboards launching her into new sonic territory, which still hearkens back to songs and tracks we now view as classic Jarosz.
The songs of Sarah Jarosz have always been snapshots. Each, whether literally or obliquely, is a tableau – a window into a moment in time, an attempt to capture but never contain the intangible present. Whether demonstrable story songs or abstract, poetic text paintings, Jarosz’s catalog of material shows a ubiquitous skill – a writerly athleticism – for ushering her listeners into the scenes she inhabits or constructs. From her earliest release to her newest, Polaroid Lovers (out January 26 on Rounder Records), Jarosz’s point of view has been confident, relatable, and inviting.
Simultaneously, the expansive body of work she’s produced since her 2009 Sugar Hill debut, Song Up in Her Head, tells a tale as much of uncertainty as of skill and finesse and, within that uncertainty, a commitment to relishing the journey – rather than rushing toward an arbitrary destination.
A teenager when she first gained national notoriety, Jarosz was often compared to her mentor-peer-friend Chris Thile and her contemporary, Sierra Hull. While child bluegrass, Americana, and string band stars – proverbial and oft-mythologized prodigies – have a much more gentle route to adulthood than say, their Hollywood counterparts, it’s still a time hallmarked by experimentation, growing pains, exploration, and a prerequisite amount of floundering. Musically, Jarosz may have “floundered” a bit less than say, Hull or Thile or any kid whose teen years may have had a recorded, audio history. Nevertheless, you can trace a through line of angst, introspection, and finding oneself underlying the precocious self confidence of her early albums.
By the time Jarosz reached 2013’s Build Me Up From Bones, which gained her her first Best Folk Album Grammy nomination, that uncertainty was no longer an undertone, but a focal point in her music. On both Bones and the follow up full-length, Undercurrent, which then won the Grammy for Best Folk Album, Jarosz picks up and runs with those musical expectations, whether overt or projected. She plays with the dichotomy between the public nature of her growing up a heart-on-her-sleeve songwriter and bluegrass picker and the individual, private nature of seeking and finding her own agency within those paradigms. She purposefully built broad and appealing, commercial songs that are both assured in their sincerity and unconcerned with virtuosity or authenticity for their own sakes. She knows exactly what she’s doing, even – if not especially – when she does not.
Needless to say, the following projects World On The Ground and Blue Heron Suite feel like they are both indelible home bases built on the steady foundation of the albums that led to them. Each are distillations of Jarosz’s musical commitment to bringing her audience inside the turmoil and delight, growth and doubt, beauty and bittersweetness of life and song. Jarosz had arrived at her destination, hadn’t she? In her beloved New York City, a Grammy winning artist, picker, and songwriter who knows who she is and why she does what she does.
Ah, but remember, it’s the journey Sarah Jarosz is after and not the destination. Polaroid Lovers is a lens into the new growing pains, the new uncertainty, the new uprooting and, eventually, re-rooting Jarosz finds herself in the middle of now. She recently moved to Nashville, building a life with her new husband, bassist Jeff Picker. Polaroid Lovers, like its predecessors, brings the listener into how living in Nashville has reshaped Jarosz’s songwriting and creative and recording processes.
It may not sound like a Music Row album – it sounds, as all of her work does, exactly like Sarah Jarosz. Whatever that sounds like! – but it’s a collection that has the Row tangled among its roots and certainly in the water. Polaroid Lovers was recorded at Sound Emporium and produced by Daniel Tashian, plus it has many a credited co-writer, a bit of a departure for the songwriter who, besides in her work with Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins in I’m With Her, rarely co-writes material for her own albums, preferring to pen most lyrics and tunes herself. Music Row and Americana hit writers like Ruston Kelly, Natalie Hemby, Jon Randall, Gordie Sampson, Tashian, and others each lent their own fingerprints and touches to this set of song snapshots.
Does Polaroid Lovers sound new? Does it sound like Nashville? Yes, it certainly does, but it doesn’t sound instant or ready-made either, and it always sounds like quintessential Jarosz. This is evidenced nowhere on the record as strongly as one of its lead singles, “Columbus & 89th.” Among more than a few masterworks in Jarosz’s catalog that center on her beloved, transplanted (former) hometown, New York City, “Columbus & 89th” is perhaps the best example of the form. Wistful and hopeful, with a tinge of bittersweetness from the wisdom that comes with age, it paints such a specific picture – of a literal street corner – but, as in all of her snapshots, this polaroid is not confining or finite, it’s resplendent and limitless. Following the photography metaphor one step further, it’s not difficult to see how the perspective Jarosz has gained by moving away from the city might have enabled her to render such a picture perfect homage to New York.
This is a vibrant, animated collection of Polaroid Lovers. This is Sarah Jarosz at her best– for now.
Watch for our Artist of the Month interview feature with Jarosz to come later this month, plus we’ll do a catalog deep dive and showcase plenty more content pulled from the BGS archives. For now, enjoy our Essential Sarah Jarosz Playlist:
Been around the world, seen some of everything, but what I like about it the most is the joy that I bring…
– Robert Finley, “Livin’ Out A Suitcase”
Whether it’s at home or abroad, Robert Finley’s youthful exuberance has a knack for not only lighting up rooms, but people’s faces as well. On his latest batch of songs, the former sharecropper and carpenter – who got his start in music during a stint in the Army – continues that trend with 11 stories pulled from his Louisiana upbringing that include everything from the poignant “No One Wants To Be Lonely” to the cheeky and overly embellished “Alligator Bait.”
Pulling from rock, soul, blues and a whole lot of gospel, Black Bayou is easily Finley’s most personal and sonically developed record to date. His third project with Dan Auerbach and Easy Eye Sound, the record is one that came about organically, feeding on the artist’s energetic live performances with lyrics and arrangements put together on the spot in the studio with no pre-fabricated blueprint.
“When we did this album there was no pencil or paper in the room,” Finley tells BGS of the process. “The band was free to jam what they felt and I had the freedom to say what I felt. Nothing was written beforehand, it all came to life in the moment.”
Born in Winnsboro and now based in Bernice, a North Louisiana hamlet only thirty miles from the Arkansas border, Finley has excelled at living in the moment despite the fast moving world around him. That essence is what accelerates his storytelling throughout Black Bayou, particularly on songs like the aforementioned “Livin’ Out A Suitcase” and “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely,” the latter of which has the artist crooning about the elderly sitting at nursing homes around the country with no family wanting or able to keep in touch or care for them. It’s a topic that Finley doesn’t just sing about from the studio, though. He visits nursing homes in his community on a regular basis to serenade its residents.
“So many people have been forgotten,” says Finley. “Their kids drop them off and go on with their lives. I go down occasionally and perform at the old folks home in Bernice. Just take my guitar and play for 30 minutes or so, try to get them to dance, try to bring some joy to them.”
Whether in those homes or the local clubs, Finley is determined to use his platform to give back to the community that made him. In addition to never turning down a conversation or photo op, he also aims to lift up the next generation of musicians, offering support and guidance to those cutting their teeth and in need of a role model as they pursue their own musical dreams.
“I always go back whenever I’m not on tour, simply because that’s where I got my start,” says Finley. “It also gives me a chance to encourage the young artists there to pursue their dreams, because I can share how I started busking over there on the corner eight years ago and now I’m touring the world. Had I not made that first step, then nobody would even know what I was capable of doing.”
As listeners have come to expect from Finley, Black Bayou is full of lust, love, spirituality, and humor as well. Tunes like “Sneakin’ Around,” “Miss Kitty,” and “Can’t Blame Me For Trying” showcase Finley’s flamboyant and flirtatious side, which goes hand in hand with his center-stage shimmying and shaking at live shows. On the flip side, cuts like the swampy album closer, “Alligator Bait,” unravels as a spoken word recollection of a formative day on the bayou with his grandfather with a gnarly and always evolving backbeat oozing with attitude.
Together these stories make a patchwork quilt of sounds, emotions, and stories that only Finley could piece together. Calling into his North Louisiana home, we spoke with Finley — our November Artist of the Month — in detail about Black Bayou, making music with his family, the similarities between performing and preaching, and more.
What has busking taught you about performing and holding an audience’s attention?
I’ve learned that you don’t need to put all of your eggs in one basket. I’m always trying to shake it up and introduce new things to the crowd at my shows, because no matter how good a movie is, if you watch it two or three times you’re going to know exactly what happens next. It doesn’t mean it’s not a great movie, it just means you’re not going to watch something that you already know the result of. I don’t want to rehearse and be programmed to do the same thing over and over, I need to have the freedom of the spirit of the moment.
Your daughter Christy Johnson and granddaughter LaQuindrelyn McMahon both joined you on this record. What’s it mean to you to share your love for music with them?
It’s great being able to have three generations of Finleys singing together. I’ve always admired Pop Staples and The Staple Singers for him and his daughters. I have two other daughters as well, but they both work in the medical field and can’t just uproot and follow me around the world. My oldest is a licensed beautician, but put it on hold to help me pursue my career due to my sight being bad. She saw that I was determined to do it either way, so she sacrificed hers to make sure I wasn’t alone. Because of that I want to share the spotlight with her every chance I get.
She first came on during the audition process for America’s Got Talent, which was her introduction to the world. The label loved her so much that they were willing to use her on the albums. Soon we needed a second background singer, so I let Dan [Auerbach] know about my granddaughter. He and the label were immediately supportive and have been willing to [incorporate] as much of my family as possible into my career. This is mostly just me trying to open a gateway for them, because they have the potential to be bigger and better successes than me. Or at least it won’t take them 69 years to get discovered.
You’re often referred to as a bluesman, but Black Bayou could also just as easily be described as a gospel album. What are your thoughts on the dynamic between the two genres and how you’re able to tie them together on the record?
The only difference between the gospel and the blues is really the choice of words you use. The same music that you hear in the club is being played in the church and the same music that we grew up on in the church is being played in the clubs. The only difference is that if you want blues you sing “oh baby” and if you want gospel you sing “oh lord.” Other than that, a lot of the rhythms and dances are the same.
What’re your thoughts on continuing to make this type of music in the modern age?
I don’t even look at it as gospel or blues anymore. I look at it as just saying the truth. Regardless of what you’re going through, there’s someone else who’s somewhere who’s been through the same thing. The fact that they made it through gives hope that you can do it, too.
As artists, we’re blessed with fans that will pay to come see you and even take your advice home with them. The same people who go to church will not remember a thing the preacher talked about, but if they like your song they’ll remember it word for word. If you’re really trying to reach people, you’ve got a better chance to reach a lot more folks by singing than you would preaching. Nobody wants to listen to an hour and a half or two hour sermon, but they will stay around a concert for an encore. That’s why it’s so important when you have the world’s attention to tell them something positive with it.
It almost sounds like you view yourself performing on stage like a minister preaching from the pulpit?
That’s it. I can get a bigger crowd than the average preacher even though church is always free, but even then people will flock to the clubs. I’ve also sang “Amazing Grace” in nightclubs and had people put down their glasses, sing-a-long, and go to church with me. You just don’t know what people will do. Everyone’s going through something. If you stop the church people from going to the club then the club will shut down, because most of the people frequenting there are church folks from the other side of town. The problem is that while there they’re not getting the truth. They’re getting the water, but not the wine.
There’s not a better song on the album that ties these influences together than the aptly named “Gospel Blues.” Are you hypothesizing what you’ll do in heaven on it?
I’m trying to tell people not to be so judgmental. That’s why I sing, “I do drink a little whiskey, and I’ll take a little shot of wine” – because it’s better to be real with people than to try and fool them. Whether I have some whiskey [or not] isn’t going to have anything to do with whether or not I go to heaven or hell.
Another song I’ve been captivated by is “Alligator Bait.” Is that a true story?
That song was actually designed more or less as a joke. I never met my grandfather on either side, but I did hear stories when I was sitting around with my dad and his brothers about things like that. It seemed like I had a cruel, cruel grandfather, but that wasn’t the message I was trying to convey. I was trying to prove that any song where you think you’re right needs to be like you just read a novel. It needs to tell a story. It’s more about being a convincing writer than deceiving.
On the cover of Black Bayou is the pond that I used to swim in and got baptized in. For a while it’s just been deserted, but we went back there, because it conjured up a lot of those childhood memories. Even just standing there taking photos my mind flashed back to the things we used to do there like swimming on one end and fishing on the other. Us jumping in the water would scare the fish over to the other side where they could get caught easier, which in many ways is similar to how the alligator is lured in the song.
What has music taught you about yourself?
It’s helped me to find and be myself. I used to try imitating everyone from James Brown to Ray Charles, but soon I realized that the only person I could be the best version of was myself. Nobody can beat you being you. If you just be yourself then you’re automatically different from everybody else anyway. Being real with myself and my music has opened so many doors for me, because of that.
Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound has an impressive catalog and roster of albums and artists. While it’s easy to trace how each intersects or diverges from Auerbach’s own musical and artistic approaches, only a handful of artists who’ve had releases with the label truly supersede the star power of their Grammy Award-winning producer, co-writer, and collaborator. Yola utilized Auerbach and Easy Eye as her gravitational assist to slingshot herself up into roots music’s – and now, Hollywood’s – stratosphere; Nat Myers‘ brand of down-to-earth, hardscrabble blues feels equally right at home and as a superlative outlier among his labelmates; and, perhaps chief among the top of Easy Eye’s “class” of music-makers is another bluesman, Robert Finley. His brand new release, Black Bayou, is his third with the label – and it finds him continuing to stake out his musical territory, confident in the well-deserved notoriety he’s now gained at this late point in his career. (Finley, as of this writing, is 69 years young.)
Black Bayou is blues unencumbered by the perennial rhetoric and discourse that engulfs this genre and tradition. What role do the blues have to play in a post-modern society? Can acoustic, old-fashioned, and/or vernacular blues music be modern, forward-looking, and responsive? Is blues dying, or is our fear of its decline or demise yet another facet of this form? Can the blues be something more than “time capsule” music? Black Bayou, with Finley’s trademark joy and wizened smile, encourages its listeners to also laugh in the face of these often pseudo-academic, fedora-wearing musical intellectuals. This is music for the present; this is music that’s visceral, propulsive, and – well, fun.
You can tell that Finley and his cohort had fun making it, too. Auerbach appears on Black Bayou, as does drummer Patrick Carney, his partner from their preeminent rock duo, the Black Keys. Eric Deaton (bass), Kenny Brown (guitar), Jeffrey Clemens (also on drums), and vocalists Christy Johnson and LaQuindrelyn McMahon – Finley’s daughter and granddaughter, respectively – round out the project’s ensemble. It’s a cohesive group, serving Finley’s musical mission perfectly and, when appropriate, getting the hell out of his way. It’s part of why Finley does rise above the Easy Eye Sound prestige and pomp, cutting through crisply, with a direct and honest point of view.
This music isn’t just grounded in the present, it’s also rooted in Finley’s home turf of Northern Louisiana, perhaps explaining why he can both be totally unconcerned with “authenticity” while also being a fountain of raw, direct sincerity. Here is a musician and singer who makes music for all of the right reasons, continuing to do it because it’s what he does. His expertise is kind and open, inviting even the casual or uninitiated listeners to engage with his music on the same level as the bespectacled blues autodidact.
Roberty Finley and Black Bayou are disarming, prescient reminders that whatever forms roots and vernacular musics take, they will always have unmeasurable value when viewed as paragons of the present rather than relics of the past. We are all lucky to inhabit a present that includes Robert Finley.
Watch for an exclusive BGS Artist of the Month interview with Finley later in November and, for now, enjoy our Essential Robert Finley playlist below.
Photo Credit: Jim Herrington
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