Tag: Appalachian music

One to Watch: Viv & Riley Are Much More Than Just Old-Time or Americana

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Comprised of singer-songwriters and instrumentalists Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno, Viv & Riley are an up-and-coming musical duo that defy definition. Their new album, Imaginary People, is a masterful blend that weaves together their shared reverence for traditional Appalachian music alongside indie-folk, pop-leaning adornments. The result is an emotionally potent 10-track album that covers a vibrant range of personal and universal truths — from the bittersweet nostalgia of visiting a beloved childhood hideaway decades later, to the poignant curiosities that accompany reckoning with climate grief.

Based out of the dynamic music scene in Durham, North Carolina, this duo is currently on tour across North America. With their insightful explorations of the past and creative probings of the future, Viv & Riley uncover rich and complicated explorations of what it means to be alive in this precise moment.

So how did the two of you first start making music together?

Vivian Leva: Well, we first started making music together when we first met in 2016, the summer after we both graduated high school. I grew up in Lexington, Virginia, and Riley grew up in Seattle, Washington, and we just happened to meet at a camp in Port Townsend, Washington. It’s one of those camps that has weeks back to back — there was a vocal week that I was teaching with my mom, and then Riley came to teach fiddle the following week. We happened to overlap by a few days, and Riley was there with his band The Onlies. The first night we met, we played music together all night! After that, I joined the band, and we also started playing together as a duo and writing songs.

Riley Calcagno: The origin of our sort of band, our duo, came later that year, in the fall. We had been communicating and texting some music back and forth, and then Viv invited me down to Asheville to play a gig with her and her dad. I was a fan of her dad, James Leva, for his fiddle and singing, so we did that gig. But we thought it’d be also fun to try out some duo material while we were down in the same place, even though we had never played songs just the two of us. We emailed a venue in Asheville called Isis Music Hall, which was a prominent venue there at the time. Somehow they slotted us in, on a Wednesday night, into this big hall that they had — 200-person capacity, maybe bigger. We had never played music together going into that, but we put together some material and we enlisted some friends to play with us. It was a bold move! Talk about faking it until you make it. Only about 15 people came out to the show, and I’m sure it sounded terrible. But it was fun!

That sounds amazing. So how would you describe your musical chemistry? What is it like playing together?

VL: ​​Well, I think our initial musical chemistry initially came from our shared background in old time music and traditional music. That first night that we met, we played a lot of fiddle tunes, old music, and traditional songs. So it kind of began from a place of excitement about being exactly the same age, having never before met, and somehow both being raised around this same music that we have a shared respect and love for. So that was the initial spark of actually finding another young person who’s into the same niche genre and community. But since then it’s totally stretched into other realms. We are both so open to other kinds of music, and we have very similar tastes and aesthetics. It’s very easy to create music together because we come to it from a similar place.

RC: One of our dynamics in making music together has also been sharing our individual strengths with the other person. When we first started playing together, I couldn’t really sing harmony or find a harmony part. Vivian was very patient with me and helped me learn, and I still feel like I’m getting better all the time. That’s exciting!

VL: I just play guitar, and Riley plays every other instrument. He’s a great fiddler, guitar player, banjo player, mandolin player— instrumentally he brings so much to the table. And I feel I bring a lot of singing and songwriting-focused material to the table. We stretch each other, fill in the gaps for each other, and learn from each other.

What a beautiful thing! So what do you each feel like the biggest difference in your respective musicianships is?

RC: Viv is a very natural musician. She grew up traveling around with her parents as they toured, sitting in on harmonica at her dad’s gigs when she was only three or four. I also was born and raised around music, but it was a bit more formalized, whereas Viv’s music just comes very naturally and it’s not forced in any way. She does what she does super well and consistently and steadily, and I’m a bit more erratic. I take chances and get obsessed with things and take big leaps that sometimes fall flat. Every time she steps on stage, Viv can knock out a great performance, and I feel more streaky.

VL: But he tries lots of different things! And like he mentioned, Riley has a more formal background in music. He took lessons, he learned how to read music, he knows music theory, he did classical violin. So I think a big difference is that he technically knows what’s going on, whereas I don’t have the language or skills that he has. I’m definitely more intuition based than technically based.

You really balance each other out! So your new album, Imaginary People, just came out on September 15, and I’m wondering how your songwriting, as it appears on this album, has shifted since you first began as a duo.

RC: Well, in the past, before we started writing music for this record, we were living in different places so it was a lot of collaboration from afar. A lot of the songs on our last record came from texting voice memos back and forth. And you know, it’s not utterly different to work on them in person, but some of these new songs came out playing them together in the moment.

VL: Another big difference is Riley has started writing way more. So I think there’s more of an equal voicing on this record than in the past. There’s more of his perspective in it. And I think now that we’re living in the same place it’s also allowed us to write about a more diverse range of things. We’ve written a lot of intense emotional, romantic songs in the past, but in this recent past couple of years, we’re more interested in other things, like our shared experiences about other parts of life.

RC: And it’s also partly stylistic. Our last record was pretty much a country record. During that time, I was listening to a lot of classic country music, and this time we were listening to a wider range of things. Having a broader array of influences definitely helped us push the narrative forward.

What are you each proudest of on the album?

VL: I think what I am most proud of isn’t a specific track or anything — mostly it’s this feeling that I unlocked something. I think I let go of some fears in the process of making this record. I felt more free to just say yes to trying new things and became less concerned with things like what genre it was going to be considered, or if the people who liked our last record would like this record… and so on. I stopped worrying about categories like, “This doesn’t sound traditional enough,” or “This isn’t country enough,” or “That’s too rocker or indie.” Instead, I was able to adopt the mentality of “Hmm, that sounds interesting, let’s try and just do what feels fun!” I think I’m most proud that I was able to do that. It felt amazing to take things a little lighter and to roll with ideas that felt a little outside of the mold.

RC: When you start making music, being young musicians, you get immediately labeled. It’s not something that I think either of us necessarily anticipated, but when that first record got classified, people said it was Appalachian and classic country. And then the next one was classic country and Americana. Like “Hits-the-Spot Americana,” whatever that means. And I think there’s an urge for musicians, when you get labeled as something, to keep reproducing it. There’s this toothlessness to the modern Americana music label— it’s the creation of music that is literally meant to sound like other music under a category. I don’t have a problem with genre or specifications, I think it’s oftentimes useful, but it’s [useful] when you’re trying to reproduce sounds so that you can cater to an audience, it’s like you’re trying to sell something in a market that’s already been created. I think that can be the “dampification” of art. And while I think there’s been so many amazing things created within the Americana industry, I also think it often leads to less creativity and less interesting music.

Coming out of our last record, we had some buzz in the Americana world, and it would have been easy for us to make another “Hits-the-Spot Americana” record. But I don’t think that we did that, and I feel proud of that. Like Viv was saying, we didn’t just do what we were supposed to do. You know, there’s synthesizers, but there’s also a fiddle track, and personally, I think it all works together. So maybe if you’re an Americana devotee, you’re not going to love this album, but that’s okay with me. I think there’s a power in making an album that the machine doesn’t really know what to do with. The machine can make up albums and spit them out, but I feel proud that this one isn’t something that can just be spit out because of how we combine traditional and non-traditional music. For example, there were super organic moments where we all stood around one mic and sang together, coupled with other moments where we had things locked in, produced, and added synths because a particular song called for it. Making those two things coexist in the same ecosystem was definitely a challenge, but listening to the record, I think it all makes sense together.

It’s an album full of teeth! Now, before we wrap up, I have to ask: you’re our One to Watch, but who are you watching right now? Any creatives, musical artists, or otherwise that are inspiring you right now?

RC: One is our neighbor in Durham, North Carolina, Alice Gerrard. She’s almost 90, and she’s putting out a record on this indie label from the area called Sleepy Cat. She’s collaborating with a bunch of young people and their art for the record, like making these amazing videos. It’s a really cool thing! People around here are really conscious and thoughtful about aesthetics and sound and ethos. Everything is done with integrity, so it’s a cool scene around here in that way. Alice makes amazing music, I’m really excited for her upcoming record — I think we’ll all be glued to it once it comes out. Another one is our friend who we wrote two songs with on our previous record, “Love and Chains” and “Time Is Everything”— often people’s favorite songs of ours. I just had the honor of producing his upcoming record under his band’s name, Preacher & Daisy. I love the music, so I definitely want to give them a bump! The fun thing is that all this music is sourced locally from the Durham, North Carolina area, where we’re based.

VL: Some folks I’m enjoying listening to right now, not that they’re not already being watched, are: KC Jones, Canary Room, Dori Freeman, Alexa Rose.

Photo Credit: Libby Rodenbough

WATCH: Old Crow Medicine Show, “Used to Be a Mountain”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Old Crow Medicine Show
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Used to Be a Mountain”
Album: Paint This Town
Release Date: April 22, 2022
Label: ATO Records

In Their Words: “I’ve been playing Appalachian music in Appalachia since I was a kid. West Virginia, Kentucky, Southwest Virginia, and East Tennessee are the places I love to play most. When you saw a fiddle in these settings it always feels like a homecoming. But time has dealt a hard hand to the region that gave birth to country music, and ‘Used to Be a Mountain’ is a song that wrestles with the issues facing Appalachia today. I think that the intrepid spirit of the mountaineers of the coal fields of the Southern Highlands and Appalachia are some of the hardest and most important fore-bearers of the American dream. I think that when you take away the natural beauty and destroy the ecology of places, you don’t have a whole lot left to rebuild with. I know there’s a lot of folks that are hurting right now in the communities of the coal fields. This song is there to both reflect that hurt and to ask the question, can we do something better for these folks? Can we do something better for these mountains, these hills, the flora and fauna, for anybody who wants to breathe clean air and drink clean water in Appalachia?” — Ketch Secor, Old Crow Medicine Show

Editor’s Note: Along with the video, the band has partnered with Cumberland River Compact, a non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing water resources through education and cooperation. The partnership serves to bring awareness to the effects of climate change, connecting fans with ways to get involved in the local climate movement through local action.

Photo Credit: Kit Wood (L-R: Morgan Jahnig, Mason Via, Ketch Secor, Jerry Pentecost, Cory Younts, Mike Harris)

The Local Honeys: Rooted in Appalachian Folk, Communicating to the World

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

In normal times, you might find Kentucky-hearted duet the Local Honeys touring the UK or out on the road with folks like Colter Wall and Tyler Childers. But, like so many, the past year has been a paused their movement, allowing space and time to experience life in a way that most busy artists rarely get to.

Many caught wind of the group after a viral New York Times article in late 2020 about our nation’s cultural depression. But like other defendants of Appalachian people and culture, Montana Hobbs and Linda Jean Stokley, who make up the pair, have been outspoken via their music for a long time. Their new double-sided single continues a demand of accountability from big industry. “It’s a modern anthem of the American working class,” said Stokley.

BGS caught up with the Local Honeys to talk about these two songs — “Dying To Make a Living” and “Octavia Triangle” — as well as the message in their music.

BGS: In the before times, you’ve led pretty busy schedules, including multiple international tours. What have you been up to since the pandemic began?

Montana Hobbs: Well, I can tell you what we’ve be into. We’ve been in our jammies a lot! But you know, we’ve experienced probably a similar story to anybody else that has been in the gig industry. We’ll all remember it as a point in our lives and a point in our careers that was kind of sedentary, if you will. I think our story is not much different, we’ve had more time at home to focus on things that we don’t get to do on the road – like exercise, cook at home, read. At the new year we both decided that we weren’t gonna think so much about what this past year has been, but think more about what this new year is going to be for us.

Linda Jean Stokley: In 2019 we went on about five separate concert tours. So the beginning of 2020 was our last tour, we were all over the UK as well as greater Europe, on our own headlining tour but also supporting Tyler Childers. That was a huge tour, and it really took a lot out of us, so it was kind of welcoming to have a little bit of a break after that. But over this past year, we have done a few cool things. We went on the Tyler tour, we got signed to La Honda Records — that’s a pretty big deal for us. We love everything that they do, and have been constantly inspired by them. Our management and being with a label have proven so helpful, even during this time, to have someone like our manager that is so good about keeping our spirits up. Another thing that we’ve done this past year is put out a Western AF video, and that was a highlight. We didn’t get to do much, but what we did was really welcomed.

In a time of so much uncertainty, what inspired this new release?

LJS: We recorded those in October of 2019, and we’d been working on trying to change up our sound a bit, to make our sound bigger but not non-traditional, kind of neo-traditional. So we were thinking in 2020, how are we gonna release these songs? Then in October 2020, our friend Jimmy McCowan, who’s on one of those tracks, suddenly passed away from a heart attack. So, we talked to La Honda and asked if we could finally get these out. That’s kind of what spawned the release of this A-side/B-side single.

These songs show two perspectives on life in the coal mines: working like hell to provide for your family, while enduring personal struggles both medical and mental. What are you trying to tell the rest of the world about these Appalachian issues?

LJS: In July of 2019, there was a blockade in Harlan County, [Kentucky], and over a thousand miners in central Appalachia were out of work, because of the Blackjewel mining company. They went bankrupt, and they didn’t tell anybody. They didn’t tell any of their workers until the day of. In the middle of the day, they said, “this is your last day.” That is completely illegal. It was strange that it had to happen in Harlan County, which is so synonymous with all these bloody labor wars. To have something like this happen with one of the largest coal companies in the nation just shows that they can get away with all kinds of unlawful behavior. These people, their checks bounced. Of course that’s going towards their mortgage or rent, but it’s also going towards their medical costs, because there are so many disabled miners. We started thinking about this song more and more. We sang it a little bit, but didn’t have a need to sing it necessarily because we didn’t have anything to say. When we were on tour a lot, we would tell the story of what was going on, and put song and emotion into what’s happening, to get people to listen.

MH: To add on that, the song became more relevant to us in this time frame. It was a song that we were familiar with, via the band Foddershock, but also Rick & the Po’ Folk, Rich Kirby and his traditional band, and Pierceton Hobbs [who released his own version in 2020]. Basically, we felt like when you’re given the stage to speak on things like this, you might as well take advantage of the time and the attention that you’ve been given. Make that time worth it, and get a message that you feel is important across. When we would go over to England, which is also a very post-coal society that we didn’t know much about, we had firsthand connections where they told us stories of tragedy, how their grandfathers were miners, and so on. It made the whole history of traditional music come full circle for us, to where we had the opportunity to sing a song, but we also had the opportunity to tell a story of where we’re from and what’s happening where we are. Which is what traditional music was in its first iteration. 

I know that you both, along with other musicians, visited the miner’s blockade. What was that like?

MH: We went and visited the miner’s blockade in August. We just went down there and hung out with these people, they had their entire families on the train tracks. They had little encampments set up. People like Brett Ratliff, Rich Kirby, Tanya Turner at the time worked for Appalshop, went down there with us. Son, it was so hot. It was very much like third world conditions in what’s supposed to be the greatest country.

The week before, we were at Cowan Creek Mountain Music School in Whitesburg, Kentucky. Jim McCowan has been a member of the faculty there probably as long as the school has been around. This guy in my class asked, “Have you heard the song that Jimmy’s mother wrote?” We were both very close to Jim, he was a very bright light. So I sat on a picnic table with him and said, “I heard that you do a song your mother wrote.” And I’m one of those people that’s a real sneaky recorder with my phone, and I have about a 10 or 15 minute clip of him playing this song called the “Octavia Triangle.” He had such a beautiful delivery of the song.

We were thinking of something that would pair well with “Dying To Make a Living,” which is economic hardship, being pushed under the rug. Even though this work is essential, they’re being treated less than they’re worth. So then I thought that “Octavia Triangle” completely highlighted what it is to actually live, and work, and die, and love, in the coalfields. This was a true story that happened in Pike County, Kentucky. Who’s to blame other than these harmful practices which we still practice today?

As a fellow musician from Central Appalachia, I feel like Foddershock (who wrote “Dying”) rarely get the attention or recognition they deserve. Do you have a favorite album, or a starter pack for those who have never heard the band?

LJS: I absolutely love Foddershock, I’m always trying to find their CDs. I’m waiting on WV [Hill] to send me some recordings. Obviously, I think “Dying to Make a Living” is one of the best places to start. I would also say “Eat Possum & Prosper” is one of my favorite tracks of theirs. And I really love “When Coal Was King.” There’s one that’s called “Live in a Trailer.” “Cahoots,” as well. 

Do you have any new goals or ideas to try for when things turn around and we can all get back on the road?

MH: Hmm… we are ready and willin’! Open for suggestions, open for bookings… But like I said before, this is a time that we will all remember as a pause in our lives and a pause in history, even though it’s been a hell of a lot of history put into one year. We’ve been granted this time to kind of work on things, we’ve been writing a lot. It’s always been something we’ve done and tried to practice, but now it seems like it’s at the forefront of our minds. We want to be seen as not just traditional musicians, not just old-time musicians, but we wanna be known as songwriters as well. Carrying on that storytelling, and showing how I feel about what’s going in the time and place I’m from. That’s one of the biggest connectors in music in general, it’s saying you’re not alone. Like when we went to Wales, even our song “Cigarette Trees,” which is about strip mining, people would come up to us and say, “They do that here too, and we don’t like it either.”

LJS: We’re finding so many relatable things to talk about when we tour in the UK specifically. Touring has really given us a way and a platform to connect with all these people around the world that are dealing with similar situations. Every time we go anywhere, we talk to people about the whole idea of ‘saving Appalachia,’ and trying to tell people that no, we have to pay attention to the causes of poverty and suppression that are happening within our state and within the entire southeast region. We don’t need saving, and we don’t need developing — we need somebody to actually understand what is going on in our area. We’re looking forward to reconnecting with people.

Photo credit: Zachary Martin

The String – Dirk Powell plus Maeve Gilchrist

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Dirk Powell has build a Grammy-winning career by standing out in all aspects of folk and roots music.


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He’s an outstanding fiddler and banjo player, a singer and songwriter, a curator and producer. And he’s made marks in three related realms of music – Appalachian, Cajun and Celtic. Now the Louisiana-based Powell has turned back as he periodically does to recording his own music, and he’s released When I Wait For You, a rangy album of songs that dip into new territory. Also, as we say farewell to our latest theme music, I meet the artist behind it, Scottish harpist Maeve Gilchrist.

With Honesty and Humor, JP Harris Relives a Rough Time

Posted on by Editor

On the day he released his latest album, Some Dogs Bark at Nothing, Harris took to Instagram with a meaningful post about what it’s really like to put your life out there as a songwriter. He accompanied it with a rendering of Mickey Mouse flipping the bird, a comic reflection of his own feelings about “worry, hard times, notions of ‘success,’ bad reviews and musical criticisms,” among other things.

But in a reference to the actual songs, Harris wasn’t so cavalier. He added, “They are yours now. To love, to hate, to relate to, to be repulsed by, whatever you feel they do not belong solely to me any longer. And that is very scary, as I now must relive these tales I’ve kept hidden these four years, night after night, in hopes that my own recitation helps me heal, learn, and maybe even help someone else.”

That transparency doesn’t shield heavy topics, such as his past drug use, even when those misadventures are wrapped up in a free-wheeling tune like “JP’s Florida Blues #1.” With its ‘70s swagger, the track sounds like something Jerry Reed would have cut if he were prone to singing songs about “seeking inspiration through my nose.”

“I feel like it can be really hard for people who’ve never either dealt with addiction or been close to someone — kind of truly understood someone — who’s dealt with addiction, to get why making light of a bad situation can be so funny or helpful,” he says. “And for me it’s really cathartic to look back. For years, I didn’t want to talk about it. There was a little bit of… more than a little… just ashamed of a stretch in my life when I was living really bad and real close to going hard off the rails. And now I can look back on it, and I pulled myself out of it, and I can laugh about it.”

Although he cuts an intimidating figure – tall and muscular with a long, thick beard and innumerable tattoos – Harris is remarkably easy to talk to, even when he’s wary about saying too much. “I try not to overshare about my personal life in any regard to people I don’t know well in person, or on the internet, or any other way. But no matter what you do, you gotta go out and relive all of those moments,” he believes. “You can suddenly feel the tears well up, and you’re like, ‘Okay, this isn’t gonna go that well. I need to think about baby bunnies,’ or just try and do what I can to disconnect emotionally from this story I’m telling.”

However, he will reveal that the raucous song “Hard Road” came to him literally in a fever dream. While he was in New York for a couple of gigs, an ugly illness nearly knocked him out of commission. “I was having to chug half a bottle of DayQuil to get through the gigs every night, and then spent the whole day sweating and feeling horrible in this wee little Airbnb apartment shithole in Brooklyn. And in the middle of the night, I sat bolt upright and had the melody of that song, and even a big chunk of the words. I pulled this little lamp over and turned it on, found a piece of paper, and started writing the words down.”

He adds, “That whole song is not only, again, a sort of hilarious recounting of some ill-behaved adults that I’ve known in my years, but it’s also my own incredibly subtle way to nod at a bunch of old country and blues songs. The buried references in that whole song are probably going to fly over 99 percent of the fans’ heads. Anyone who’s incredibly well-versed on the music of the 1940s and earlier is probably going to pick up on a lot of it. But there’s a nod to an old prison work song in one verse; there’s a nod to a Leadbelly song in another one. There’s a whole bunch of little winks and nods in there.”

Asked how his interest in old-time music originated, Harris explains that he lived in a remote cabin in Vermont for 11 or 12 years, with no electricity and no road access for six months of the year. For his water supply, he dug his own spring. And to get by, he was fixing up old barns, logging in the woods, and working as a farmhand. Being able to play music without electricity was essential – and although he’d played in punk bands as a teenager, he found himself in his 20s gravitating toward traditional Appalachian old-time music.

“Old-time music is much more about the fiddle tunes and the syncopation and the sound and the melody,” Harris believes. “And a lot of those old fiddle tunes don’t have any words, and if they do, it’s like one refrain that the fiddler will randomly yell out in the middle of the tune, but there’s no real words to it. They’re just tunes, it’s for dancing.”

A three-month winter tour playing with a string band proved to be a turning point. Harris says, “I got home from that tour, and I realized that [old-time music] was sacred to me in this way that I had almost ruined by trying to make a living out of it. By trying to make it more palatable to people, trying to take it into bars, and get people to pay attention. And I had started listening more and more to country music from the late ‘50s up through the ‘60s, and I realized that it was next to impossible to go see a real, old-school country band out on the road anymore. … In terms of young folks playing fairly traditional music and out on the road touring, like road-dogging it, there are very few people doing it. And it was next to impossible for me to go see a show, and it was like, ‘Well, fuck it, I’m gonna start a country band.’”

That decision prompted him to focus for the first time on writing his own songs. Considering his unconventional upbringing, he had plenty of stories to inspire him. Harris spent his earliest years in Montgomery, Alabama, before his family moved to California when he was nearly 7 years old. He remembers, “My dad worked in heavy construction, so we ended up out in the high desert for a couple of years. We moved to Las Vegas for about five or six years after that, and then that’s where I eventually split from. So I grew up in this weird mix of two worlds–a super-Southern family, but then lived in this burnt-out, high desert tiny town in California for a few years. … And then dumped into this run-down part of Las Vegas that had been a suburb in the ‘60s and now was just a run-down neighborhood on the edge of the suburbs.”

Harris declines to go into specifics about why he skipped town. (“I’ll just say it was time for me to get going, and I felt like I had some other things to go do in the world besides live out the rest of my teenage years normally.”) Roughly from the ages of 14 through 19, he hopped trains – a pastime he describes in detail on the album’s closing track, “Jimmy’s Dead and Gone.”

Harris, who moved to Nashville in 2011, says he wrote it after being fed up with other bands creating what he calls “nearly fictionalized backstories.” He admits, “I finally was like, ‘You know what? I’ve done my best to try not to brag about all this weird shit I’ve done in my past, but I need to set some records straight with a song.’ It’s a little bit of a wink and a little bit of a rib jab at everybody writing train songs.”

Not every track on Some Dogs Bark at Nothing – which was produced by Old Crow Medicine Show’s Morgan Jahnig – is quite so confrontational. The title track is a rueful number about the inevitability of messing things up, while “When I Quit Drinking” and “I Only Drink Alone” show that Harris’ memorable Instagram handle is indeed accurate: @ilovehonkytonk.

“I’m not a very prolific songwriter,” Harris confesses. “People sit down and make time to do it in these very specific windows and formatted ways, which is really admirable, but I’m for shit trying to do it that way. They pop into my brain, I write them. Sometimes I don’t write a song for six months and it’s terrifying. I think I lost my mojo and then all of a sudden in a month I write three songs that are killer. And I realized that like everything else in life, my songwriting creativity comes and goes in waves, and art’s just not predictable, and I know that I’ll be able to keep writing records indefinitely. I’ve quit being so afraid of it.”

Photo credit: Giles Clement