Tag: Artist of the Month

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: Pete Seeger

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Beyond the significance of May 2019 being BGS Artist of the Month Pete Seeger’s 100th birthday month, this is a chance to recognize that Pete is an artist for every month. His gentle cantor, amiable smile, expertise on both banjo and guitar, rattling voice, respect for the music of the past while making it relevant for the present, political awareness, and constant fight for social justice make him a man for all seasons.

All month long, BGS will be celebrating Pete’s legacy — a legacy that lingers years after his passing. To kick things off, here’s our all-encompassing playlist of the Essential Pete Seeger to get you up to speed. And if you want to dig deeper, check out Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, which includes a 200-page book with essays, commentary, photographs, and liner notes, along with six CDs of classic and unreleased music.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

How Andrew Bird Assembled ‘My Finest Work Yet’

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Sometimes you have to be willing to make sacrifices for your art. Sometimes you spend extra hours rehearsing or extra days touring; sometimes you have to become a martyr for a larger cause. Sometimes all you have to do is wax your chest.

On the cover for his latest album, the cheekily titled My Finest Work Yet, the Chicago-raised, LA-based multi-instrumentalist and virtuoso whistler Andrew Bird lies in an old tub, his head hanging askew: the poet on his deathbed, expiring after scribbling his final testament. He recalls, “A few days before the shoot, the photographer said, ‘OK, you have to wax your chest!’ She wanted me to be as smooth as a dolphin. My first thought was, ‘Oh lord, is she just testing me? Is she just seeing how committed I am to the concept?’”

Bird’s chest hair. “We just ran out of time,” he says, no small amount of relief in his voice. Despite his hirsute torso, that image is startling, beautiful yet gruesome, and strangely fitting for an album that examines in a roundabout way the artist’s responsibility to his audience.

The cover is based on Jacques-Louis David’s 1793 painting The Death of Marat, on view at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. “I stumbled across that image in a book called Necklines, which is a funny title for a book about the French Revolution. I had already decided to go with My Finest Work Yet for the title, and I was trying to find an image that would make that title work, that would make it funny. When you don’t know the history of that painting, you just see the suffering poet on his deathbed penning his last words with his dying breath. I thought it was pretty tongue in cheek,” he says.

The more research he did on David’s painting and its subject, the more it revealed a slightly more serious, slightly less self-deprecating undercurrent running throughout these new songs. Jean-Paul Marat was a radical journalist during the French Revolution and one of the leaders of the insurgency against the Crown. He took frequent medicinal baths to soothe painful skin infections, and he wrote most of his most famous works while soaking in his tub. That’s where he was assassinated by the conservative royalist Charlotte Corday; shortly after, David painted him as a martyr, a stab wound to the chest stained his bathwater red. “We went to great lengths to re-create the painting,” says Bird. “There’s a lot of detail, but we drew the line at blood. It felt like if I had the wound and a bathtub full of blood it would go just a little too far.”

An album that might actually live up to that title, My Finest Work Yet, makes clear that we are living in revolutionary times, that we are at the precipice of some great calamity, some great upheaval. “The best have lost their conviction, while the worst keep sharpening their claws,” Bird sings on “Bloodless,” a sober, even scary examination of American factionalism. “It feels like 1936 in Catalonia.” That last line might sound cryptic, but it is a reference to another revolution – not the French uprising, but the Spanish Civil War. “There’s a lot to unpack in these songs,” Bird admits. “Maybe you don’t know what happened in Catalonia in 1936, but you’ve got Google and three minutes to figure it out. I think that makes people a little more invested, maybe not quite knowing what the references are but hopefully thinking, ‘I need to find out.’”

His lyrics have always been brainy, often bordering on merely clever, but the allusions to the French Revolution and the Spanish Civil War — not to mention to Greek mythology, J. Edgar Hoover, Japanese kaiju, and whoever Barbara, Gene, and Sue are — lend the album weight and timeliness, as though we might better understand our current political predicament simply by looking to the past. And the artist in 2019 might understand his duties by looking to past examples like Marat. “The flipside to music being devalued as a commodity these days is that it can maybe make even more of an impact than any other medium can. Everything is commodified, but music is slipping away, but it’s still this thing that is very powerful. It helps people get through hard experiences,” Bird says.

Released back in November following the midterm elections, “Bloodless” was the first song on which he found just the right vocabulary to sing about issues that he and so many other artists are pondering. It was also the moment when a sound gelled alongside his lyrical strategy — a sound that incorporates bits of folk, pop, gospel, even jazz. Bird was fascinated with what he calls the “jukebox singles of the early ‘60s,” when jazz vocals were popular, when the piano was a prominent pop instrument, when bands worked out songs and recorded them live together.

“The piano contains so many references, a couple centuries’ worth,” he says. “Our ear gets taken in certain directions, but something was happening during that period in terms of not overly complicated jazz and gospel. I knew I wanted to make a piano-driven record with Tyler Chester, and I knew I wanted to make a jazzier record with a good room sound. And ‘Bloodless’ was the first time we got it right.”

Bird and his small jazzy combo recorded live in the studio, which wasn’t easy. It involved rehearsing heavily and using only a handful of microphones. He says, “There is so much work before you record the first note, so it’s risky. But if you spend the time, you end up with something that I think is weightier and has more value, even if it goes against the last 34 years of production trends.”

There is a lot of bleed between the instruments, which creates an intimacy even when you’re listening over your computer speakers. However, it means you have almost no opportunity to make changes after you’ve recorded a song. “If you want to change the vocal sound, you have to change the drum sound. If you want to change the drum sound, you have to change the bass sound. Everything is connected,” he explains.

It became a house of cards. Remove one and the whole thing tumbles. That meant Bird had to surrender his usual self-criticism to focus on other things besides listening to his own voice. “When you record, you have to have something to fixate on and fetishize — something that has some ceremony to it. Maybe it’s a certain microphone that gives you a certain sound, or a tape machine. It helps you remember who you are,” he says. “I tend to forget who I am when I’m recording. I know exactly who I am when I step onstage, but you have to trick yourself into being yourself in the studio. I liken it to hearing your voice on an answering machine, and you’re like, ‘That doesn’t sound like me.’ Same thing happens when you’re recording: You hear yourself back and you don’t recognize yourself.”

During the sessions for My Finest Work Yet, Bird focused on the piano and more generally on the live-in-studio approach to keep himself centered. Rather than make him more prominent, however, it only makes him one musician among many: the singer and creative force, certainly, but only one member of a lively band. That connectivity — that sense of musicians joining together in a common artistic goal — is “philosophically important,” says Bird, as are the pop references he’s making with that approach. “The music I’m referencing was deep in the Civil Rights era, the beginning of all this activism and turmoil. I wasn’t thinking about that when we were in the studio, but I think it makes sense,” he says.

In other words, those connections weren’t planned, which means My Finest Work Yet lacks the self-seriousness of a concept album or the self-righteousness of a political album. Instead, Bird wrote and arranged and recorded intuitively, as though posing a question to himself that would be answered on this album. “I’ve always had a tendency to say, ‘Here’s some stuff I’ve been thinking about,’ but I’ve always trusted that the listener has the curiosity and intelligence to think about what I’m bringing up.”

Photo credit: Amanda Demme
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: Andrew Bird

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Our April Artist of the Month is Andrew Bird, and the fascinating thing about him — besides the fact that he’s both indie music star and violin / whistle prodigy close to the level of Chris Thile — is if you really dig into his 20+ year career (his first album was released in 1992!) he often incorporates and records Irish / Scottish fiddle reels, traditional country (“Richmond Woman” “If I Needed You”), and string arrangements that would be just as fitting on a Punch Brothers record as they would be among his adventurous electronic looping, poppy hooks, and deeply layered tracks (and whistling, so much whistling.)

Later this month, we’ll have an exclusive interview with Bird, who stopped short of nothing — well, almost nothing — in order to recreate a classic painting for the cover of his newest album, My Finest Work Yet. Amid the historical references, he’s approaching modern political topics, too: extremism on both sides, self-sacrifice for the public good, and the way in which we engage with our enemies

He explains, “The trick of writing a message song in 2019 is finding a way not to turn off a jaded populace. That’s the real challenge. After the election in 2016, people were saying we have this sacred duty as artists, but it’s not quite that simple. If you’re too on the nose, you lose people. I had to figure out what the vocabulary was going to be for these songs, how history might play into them. If you start naming places and people ad current events, you lose people.”

For now, get primed for the month ahead with a collection of some of his best work in our new Essential Andrew Bird playlist on Spotify:

Photo illustration: Zachary Johnson

Susan Tedeschi on Evolving, Encouragement, and Electric Guitar (Part 2 of 2)

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Susan Tedeschi may stand in the center of the Tedeschi Trucks Band but she is quick to give ample credit to her fellow bandmates for setting the right tone on the bus and on the road. With a new album, Signs, she certainly shines as a vocalist and an instrumentalist — and that confidence comes through in conversation, too. Engaged with the world around her, she’s quick to talk about the need to evolve, the encouragement she gives and receives in the music, and the common thread that runs through all 12 members of the Grammy-winning ensemble.

Editor’s Note: Read the first part of our Artist of the Month interview with Derek Trucks. Both interviews were conducted before the death of band keyboardist Kofi Burbridge in February.

BGS: Listening to this record, it was like a reminder of why the word “band” is an important part of this project. On that first track, everybody has a moment – all the vocalists and the musicians. Why did “Signs, Hard Times” seem like the right song to lead this album?

Tedeschi: Basically for exactly what you just said. It’s letting everybody hear a little bit about who the band is. Also, there’s a lot going on right now. And also, there are a lot of obvious signs, whether it’s political or environmental, or just living. So it seemed to fit.

Do you all get into heavy conversations on the bus? There are some topical songs on this record. Does that carry over on the road?

Oh yeah, a lot. This is such an interesting time for me. I was born in 1970 so I’ve seen a lot of different presidents come and go, and a lot of different mindsets and people who think a certain way. And I just can’t believe that this is going on now, in 2019, almost 2020. I feel like, “Come on, people, we can do better than this. We can evolve.” I just feel like we need to evolve as a species. I feel like we’re not keeping up with technology, we’re not keeping up with science and facts. It’s people and their egos that are in power, that are running things and not using common sense. It just doesn’t make sense.

This album has some heavy songs, but there are also messages of encouragement. I’m thinking of songs like “Still Your Mind.” Even as you’re presenting that message to your audience, does it resonate with you as well? Kind of telling yourself to hang in there?

Yeah, that’s a song that Derek wrote. He’s a very Zen character in real life, so it makes sense that he would write that. He’s very good at steering the ship and being a great captain to all of us, and keeping us eyes-forward and moving ahead, and being positive and learning to breathe and take your time. The lyrics of that are really encouraging and positive.

And it started instrumentally. I think Kofi was playing some of the piano stuff at soundcheck and then Derek started playing some of that stuff and it formed organically. Derek started to write words to it and would bring pieces to me and ask, ‘What do you think of this?’ I would say, ‘Oh, that’s great!’ or ‘Maybe move these words around….’ But I tried not to do much because I wanted him to have that tune.

We try to do that a lot with each other. Derek, Mike Mattison and I write most of the songs, but Mike wrote a lot for this record. I mean, he is our scholar so we put him to work. He’s got ideas for days, and it’s amazing because it shows the range of his writing. He’s got a song like “Hard Case,” which is really light and fun, and then you have a song like “Strengthen What Remains,” which is really melancholy and sad, but at the same time, real hopeful. He also write “They Don’t Shine,” which sounds like a pop hit. He has a lot of a different angles in his writing.

I read that you started playing electric guitar in your 20s. Were you playing acoustic before that?

Yeah, I played acoustic growing up, starting at 14 or 15. My dad gave me one of his old Martins when I was about 15 for Christmas one year and I cried because I was so excited. I wrote a bunch of songs on that, and that’s when I first started songwriting. I didn’t play electric guitar until I was about 22 or 23. I had graduated college at 20, so I was out of college for a couple of years before I ever picked up a guitar, other than acoustic. I was playing acoustic at shows but it was more folky and songwriter-y kind of stuff.

Then I fell in love with blues. I had some friends who used to play at Johnny D’s in Somerville, Massachusetts, every Sunday for the blues jam. They needed singers so they asked me to come down, and then I realized, “Well, shoot, this would be a great place to try out playing the guitar.” There weren’t a lot of people there and it was pretty chill, so that’s what I did. I would go down and sing a few tunes, then I’d start playing rhythm. I never really soloed for the first couple of years on electric. I just wanted to learn to learn how to play rhythm and play along with stuff so I could try to accompany myself while singing.

I played along with a lot of Freddie King and Johnny Guitar Watson and Otis Rush and Magic Sam – and I fell in love with blues. I wore out Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog record and Koko Taylor and all sorts of stuff. I fell in love with it and I realized, “This is what I want to do. I want to be Freddie King and Johnny Guitar Watson!” It’s funny because I did a tour with Etta James and she asked me, “Who are your influences? Who do you want to be?” I said, “I want to be Johnny Guitar Watson.” And she said, “Ah! That’s who I want to be!” [Laughs]

For guitarists who look up to you, can you give advice on how to play tastefully?

Yeah! Well, for one, don’t play real loud unless you know what you’re doing. A lot of people plow through as loud as they can. It’s like, “What are you doing? That’s not music. You’ve got to blend with the people you’re playing with.” Another thing is to actually play along with records. I did that a lot and it was very beneficial. I can’t get over how much you can learn by playing along with records and listening, so that’s some pretty good advice.

Another thing is, try not to just play riffs. If you’re trying to solo, don’t be like, ‘Oh, I love this riff and I’m going to fit it in here.’ Work on stuff and practice stuff, and then have it be in your arsenal. But think about singing a melody, like you’re trying to tell a story, if you’re going to solo. I mean, I’m still learning how to do all this stuff. I am by no means a badass guitar player. I always have so much to learn, and it’s amazing being able to be in a band with Derek because he’s one of the best.

I just feel like there’s so much to learn on guitar. You can never learn it all. Don’t think you know it all because you don’t. And listen to people like Ralph Towner. They’ll blow your mind, like, “What the heck? That’s one guy playing all those parts?” So, I enjoy it but I know my limits and my strengths on guitar. But I feel like I can sing anything. I’ve been able to sing a lot of different styles of music. I feel very blessed that way. So I’m just learning to get proficient on guitar like I am vocally.

I like the fact that this band has black musicians and white musicians, older musicians and younger musicians, men and women – it looks like the world we live in, you know?

It is, absolutely.

You have 12 people working together every night. Is there a common thread that runs through all of you?

Yeah. We love each other. [Laughs] Everybody’s a good person and communicates well and cares about each other and has respect for each other. Musically we come from a bunch of different backgrounds but we all love blues and gospel and soul music. Some people love jazz, some people love country or bluegrass. There are a lot of different places that people are pulling from. Everybody’s educating everybody all the time in different areas, which is really cool.

And we just like hanging out. We like to go eat together, do laundry together. We’re on the road like a married couple – and we’re actually a married couple and they put up with us, so that’s pretty rad. It’s a really special band, and you know, there is something to that – where people come and see our band and see the variety up there and how we live together and travel the world together. People see us coming!

Photo credit: Shervin Laivez
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

Derek Trucks on Analog, Allman Brothers Band, and Aging Well (1 of 2)

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With Tedeschi Trucks Band, you get a partnership. That impressive ability to divide and conquer serves them well on stage, with Susan Tedeschi nailing the vocals and tearing up the guitar, along with Derek Trucks calmly proving his own guitar proficiency. That’s not to mention the other 10 musicians that make this one of the most potent groups on the road right now, as evidenced by their newest album, Signs. (Incidentally, the conversation took place shortly before the death of longtime keyboard player Kofi Burbridge, who passed in February.)

To begin our Artist of the Month interviews, Derek took the phone first — yet frequently praised Susan throughout the conversation, especially her ability to captivate a crowd. Before passing the phone over, he also dug into his preference for analog recording, his history with the Allman Brothers Band, and the reason why age doesn’t really matter.

BGS: I know you recorded this album on two-inch analog tape and you have that Neve console. Why is it important for you to use that vintage gear?

Trucks: I think every time you record, you’re searching for that sound you hear in your head, and what you hear live on the floor. I feel like the more analog we go, the closer we’re getting to that. This is definitely the warmest recording we’ve done to date. You know, I think the beauty of having a studio is that you’re always working toward that and you don’t have to reset and start from scratch every single time.

And there’s something about recording to tape that focuses everybody a little bit differently. You don’t have unlimited tracks, you don’t have unlimited space, and it becomes a little more performance-based. Everything seems to mean a little bit more. Every reel of tape is important! You don’t have a hard drive to fill up, so it’s a different feel all the way around. And it slows things down in a good way. I think it really does put everybody’s head in a different spot.

What does that room look like?

We designed it visually thinking about Levon Helm’s band up in Woodstock. It’s a few hundred feet from our house in the swamp down here in Florida. It’s barn-shaped and the main recording room is a pretty good-sized room. When we rehearse with the 12-piece band, everyone’s set up in the main room. But it’s a bunch of vintage gear and old Fender amps. There’s a few drum kits in there and a B3 set up at all times. You know, it’s ready for action!

Speaking of those drum kits, I noticed at your show that you tour with two drummers. What’s the benefit of that?

There’s something special about that sound, man. It’s a powerful thing when you get those guys playing. The pulse gets really, really thick. When the whole band is firing, it feels like a freight train behind you. I think after years of being on stage with my uncle [Butch Trucks] and Jaimoe [the Allman Brothers’ drummer] and the Allman Brothers, when it really works and it’s really good, there is nothing quite like it. So when we put this band together, I was certainly thinking about those guys and that sound.

The chemistry really has to work when you have two drummers. It can be a freight train or it can be a train wreck! [Laughs] It can be really bad. I’ve been in situations where there have been two drummers and it’s a “less is more” situation sometimes. But Tyler [Greenwell] and JJ [Johnson] have a special chemistry. They really listen hard to each other and complement each other well, and they have a sound that is completely unique to the two of them. It’s a big part of what makes the band unique, I think.

At risk of being too heavy, what’s that experience like when you don’t have Gregg on stage, or knowing that you aren’t going to play with Butch anymore? Was that hard for you to process?

I don’t know if I ever thought of it that way so much. I played with them for so many years and I was always doing my solo groups and other things at the same time, so there were always a few different streams. I knew it wouldn’t be forever, so that part wasn’t a shock, but more recently we started playing a few of those tunes from time to time, and it definitely hits me now. Especially when we’re playing the Beacon Theater or some of these rooms I’ve played with [the Allman Brothers Band] so many times. You certainly miss them, and you miss that sound and that spirit. When we’re making records, there are certain times when for some reason I’ll be thinking about them. They were family, they were friends, and they were musical heroes, too. Those are big losses and I think it takes a while to unpack that stuff.

I’ve heard you and Susan both talk about being “a lifer.” How would you describe what that means?

I was thinking about Del McCoury this morning when I knew I’d be doing this article. It’s the people that you just know are going to be playing and touring and making people feel good as long as they’re on the planet. The Allmans, B.B. King, Willie Nelson –there are thousands of musicians who play in small clubs that are that way. You just know once you start doing it. I knew when I started in my pre-teens. Once I got serious about it, I always got that feeling like, ‘This is what I’m going to be doing. Whether it’s successful or not, I don’t think it’s going to matter.’ [Laughs]

And the beauty of what we do is that we can do it forever. I think about professional athletes sometimes and how they give everything to their sport — and by the time they’re 30, they’re washed up. We’re incredibly fortunate. We can play into our 90s. There are guys out there doing it.

What is it about Del McCoury that you admire?

He’s one of those personalities, man. You just see him and you immediately love him before you meet him. Then you meet him and you love him more. [Laughs] And there’s something to a guy who keeps his family with him. It helps that his family members are incredibly talented too. It says a lot about somebody when music and family intersect like that, and it becomes a way of life. There’s something that really speaks to me about that.

And his sound — I don’t think there’s anyone alive who’s doing it better. Every time I hear those guys, it just makes you feel good. It gives you a little hope. It is authentic and really, really good on every level, and that dude has it in a headlock. We love him. He’s fearless, man. He’ll jump up with anyone. He’s sat in with our band. He’s not a guy that won’t go outside of his genre. Del will step on in.

That’s an interesting point because I don’t think your band can be categorized as one certain thing — you fit in a lot of places, too. That must be a great feeling to not be locked into a certain style.

Yeah, I’ve always appreciated that about this band, and my solo band as well. We were always kind of half-accepted and half-shunned by every genre. They’d put us on a blues festival and we’d hear ‘You all aren’t blues enough.’ Or in the early days, the jam band festivals, but we weren’t jam band enough. Or jazz… they let us in all of them a little bit, but no one would fully accept us, which I appreciate because that’s where my tastes have always been. I think it’s what I naturally come from, so I never minded it.

In the early days, it was a little more difficult because when you get accepted by a certain scene, it makes it a little easier to tour, and there are certainly benefits to that. But I like being able to bounce around, and in the course of a month, play a festival for four or five different genres of music. It makes you a better player because everywhere you go, you hear things that you wouldn’t have heard or known. You see incredibly talented musicians that maybe you weren’t aware of. That makes you double down on what you’re doing when you see somebody new.

I remember the first time seeing Jerry Douglas and thinking, “All right…” [Laughs] “Well, there’s that!” I think it’s important to listen wide.

It’s remarkable to me how poised you are when you play guitar. You make it look easy while some guitarists put their whole body into it. Is that the way you’ve always played, just stand and deliver?

Yeah, and at different times, especially early on when I was a kid playing, I would get people almost every night coming up and asking, “Why aren’t you smiling? Aren’t you having fun?” [Laughs] It’s like, “I’m taking this shit serious, people!” I’ve never had a stage presence that’s going to bring people to the show. I’ve had to do it another way. I don’t know… some of it is just your personality, mainly.

But I remember seeing pictures of Duane Allman as a kid and I always imagined him standing there, getting it done. And I remember seeing footage of John Coltrane when I was in my early teens, just black-and-white footage around the Kind of Blue sessions. He was stepping up and taking a solo, and the look on his face — it just felt really important. It hit me, like, “That’s what I’m after.”

Editor’s Note: Read our Artist of the Month interview with Susan Tedeschi.

Photo credit: Shervin Laivez
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: Tedeschi Trucks Band

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Our March AOTM is Tedeschi Trucks Band: the powerhouse ensemble that just delivered their newest album, Signs. During a tour stop in Nashville, the blues-inspired band zeroed in on the vibe in the room without concern for over-the-top stage effects or eye-catching set design. As Derek Trucks explains it, “I think our MO is always that – it’s always the music and the musicality. That comes first and everything else is in service of that.”

Next week, BGS will post back-to-back interviews on the band – as Susan Tedeschi and Derek Truck both share their perspectives on the new music, as well as the foundations that have brought them here. Although they both pay attention to politics, they had a different idea in mind with Signs. As Tedeschi explains:

“I feel like I have a lot of responsibility being in front but I don’t feel like it’s my position to be political. I feel like it’s more my place to make people feel good. So I try to help people with the stress of everyday life and all of these problems. And I try to make music that is hopeful, and try to make people feel. And if I am angry about something, or something’s going on that I think is really unjust, then I can throw it in there, in a song, or I might make a comment, like ‘Hey, help out your neighbors.’”

For now, get primed for the month ahead with a collection of some of their best work in our new Essential Tedeschi Trucks Band playlist on Spotify.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson

From Banjo to Opera, Rhiannon Giddens Brings History to the Stage

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An interview with Rhiannon Giddens these days feels like a game show lightning round. Since winning the Steve Martin Banjo Prize in 2016 and a stunning $625,000 MacArthur Fellowship in 2017, the songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist has widened her scope and let a range of fine and folk arts projects flood into her idea-driven world. When we caught up with her in Nashville, for example, she was in rehearsals for Lucy Negro Redux, a multi-layered original ballet about Shakespeare, his purported black mistress and issues of identity and otherness. Working with poetry by Caroline Randall Williams, she composed the music with one of her latest collaborators, jazz pianist and world percussionist Francesco Turrisi. They’ve made a duo album set for release this year.

Here, Giddens speaks about her broader artistic scope and her attention on how women of color negotiate the past and present.

How different is your creative life now versus five years ago?

Oh my god. It’s like: “Who was that person?” I don’t even know. I am so grateful for that time. I was transitioning from the Carolina Chocolate Drops to my solo career. But it’s definitely become more of a creative life. I still am very much an interpreter. I’m very interested in giving old songs new life and putting them through a lens of today and I think there are a lot of things that are left on the shelf that need to be aired. But I definitely have found over the years that I’m finding more and more of my creative life to be in writing and collaborating. I’m very rarely going to sit in a room and write stuff. It’s like I write things and then I want to work with somebody and develop them or have a reason to do it.

So my collaborative opportunities have really grown since I left the band because it’s a lot easier to do things as your own person. There are all these things you have to think about when you’re in a band that I don’t have to think about any more. And it’s really allowed me to focus on the woman side of things, which is hard to do when you’re in a band full of boys, you know? Now I feel I can focus a bit more on what I’m finding is very important and front and center for me, which are women’s issues and women of color, in particular. Dealing with the history of what we’ve had to go through in this country and in other places, and what does that mean? And creating platforms for other women of color to have their voices heard, in my limited capacity.

You have background in opera, which may be the most collaborative of all the fine arts, with all its component parts. And you’ve started doing Aria Code, an opera podcast. What’s that about?

I was approached by Metropolitan Opera to be guest on this podcast and it just turned into becoming the host. And that’s been really fun. The wonderful producer Marrin Lazyan, she’s put it all together and I’m there to provide context and if there’s stuff that jibes particularly well with what I know like Otello, the Verdi opera, I can bring in my expertise on blackface and things like that. It’s been great.

And I’m going to be in my first production next year as a mature artist. I’m doing Porgy & Bess with the Greensboro Opera. It’s to open up the new arts center in Greensboro. So it’s kind of part of my involvement in my hometown. And also an opportunity to sing Bess, which I’ve never been able to do. So opera’s come back into my world in kind of unexpected ways. I’m writing an opera. I sing with orchestras on a regular basis. So it’s been really wonderful to see that come back into my life because it is something that I love so much and that I have spent a lot of my years doing. So we’ll see where it goes. I don’t know!

You produced the album Songs of Our Native Daughters, which brings you together with Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, and Leyla McCalla. What motivated this and how do you put these women into context?

It was an amazing opportunity. I was already working on this idea of early American musical history and speaking to it through the music of the banjo and the music of minstrelsy for Smithsonian Folkways. So it took this little turn and became a record with these really strong women of color. With my co-producer Dirk Powell, we were talking about who we wanted to be on this project, and that’s where we ended up. I was like, “Oh, this is where it needs to go.” From then on it took this slightly different path down to really talking about the woman of color’s experience in America and having a platform to respond to that in an artistic way.

And to each of the women who came in, I said, look, bring your banjo. And let’s talk about what it means to be a woman of color here and what it means to have ancestors who’ve gone through what they’ve gone through. It was an amazing experience to watch them feel like they had this space to write about these things that maybe they’ve touched on, but to have days to focus on these themes and these ideas. It was a beautiful collaborative thing. I’ve worked with each of them in various ways so I just knew it was going to work. And it worked better than I could have ever really dreamed. It went places I’d never have considered. That’s why you pick people and then you let the project do what it does instead of going, “It’s not exactly what I envisioned.” Well, usually because it’s better! So leave it alone and let it do what it’s going to do.

In this respect, do you see yourself as a mentor, or as a leader in this widening and overdue effort to infuse folk and roots music with more voices?

I’m always looking for ways to facilitate. People in these positions, like the folks putting on the Cambridge Folk Festival or at Smithsonian Folkways, they’re looking to me, and I’m like, “Hey these people, because they’re awesome.” And if that’s how I can use whatever little power I have in the world, that’s what I want to use it for. I’ve got my own career and it’s very important to me, but that’s also very important to me–creating the community of people that are doing this.

Because that was the strength of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. We were a band and we had each other. In a time where, even less than now, people were like, “Black people on banjos? What?”, we had each other and I know what that community can mean as an artist. It really gives you strength. And that was my idea with Our Native Daughters and with anything I’m (doing). Amythyst has opened for me. Leyla was part of the Chocolate Drops. JT and Ally (Birds of Chicago) — I’ve definitely championed them. I think that’s what we need to do for each other. If I’m in a position where somebody who has power asks me, I’m going to spread that around. Because I think that’s what you’re supposed to do.

They tell writers that it’s better to show than to tell. And it strikes me that roots music is moving from a phase of ‘telling’ about inclusion to a phase of showing. Is that fair to say?

I think so. I’m definitely moving that way in my own life. There was a lot of talking with the Chocolate Drops because you had to educate people. But there was also a lot of just doing. We found the balance; we’re going to contextualize this, but then we’re just going to play it. Because the facts are the facts and we’re not in a position to shame you about not knowing this. We didn’t know this. But I definitely found that over time, I’m tired. I just want to play and sing.

And the next record of mine is not a project. It’s not a mission. It’s coming out in May (I think) and Francesco and I did that together. It’s really all the worlds that I’ve been talking about and being in all together. I just want somebody to put it on and listen to it, and they don’t know anything about me, and they come away – I want them to love the record but I also want them to feel this aspect of nobody owns any sounds. Nobody owns any experiences in humanity. We’re taking all the sounds you heard in the ballet and the notion that humans have been moving since the beginning, and we’ve been affecting each other since the beginning.

So a religious trance drum from Iran works perfectly well with an Appalachian a cappella ballad. Because they’re representing universal human truths. It would be really nice for people to just experience that through sound and through the experience of the songs. And of course we’ll talk about it. But I’m kind of moving toward showing and inhabiting all the work that’s come up until now and living in that and taking that to where it needs to go.

Craig Havighurst covers music for WMOT Roots Radio. Hear the interview.

Rhiannon Giddens, “Following the North Star”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Rhiannon Giddens is not only our Artist of the Month, she’s roots music’s renaissance woman. She’s an outspoken activist, a MacArthur Genius grant winner, a veritable music historian, and opera-oriented podcast host who has scored and staged a ballet, acted on a major television series, given her fair share of keynote addresses, and has helmed more than one supergroup. Somehow that list only begins to scratch the surface of Giddens’ contributions to our roots music communities. Who knows what other incredible ideas will come from her mind, her pen, and her banjo in the months and years to come.

Here’s the thing. In the flurry of credits Giddens’ bio will inevitably spit at you it’s easy to forget what might be the most important line item in her IMDb or Wikipedia profiles: she’s a damn fine picker. “Following the North Star,” an amuse-bouche of an instrumental from her 2017 release, Freedom Highway, is an excellent reminder of that fact. The bouncing, clawhammer banjo is stark against just percussion and bones, a percussive folk instrument played by hand, similar to playing the spoons. It’s a shockingly simple, but never simplistic production. Each note drips with Giddens’ understated virtuosity. Her understanding of the music’s past, present, and future is translated effortlessly by buttery fretless banjo, which retains every ounce of its haunting, melancholy potential in defiance of the tune’s forward-leaning tempo.

‘Tis sweet to be reminded that, no matter where her creative compass may take her, she’ll always have the chops — she’ll always be a killer banjo player. And, from this banjo player’s perspective, that’s what’s most important anyway!!

Rhiannon Giddens Prepares for ‘Lucy Negro Redux’ Ballet Premiere

Posted on by Editor

Rhiannon Giddens will reach a new milestone in her ever-diversifying career as the Nashville Ballet hosts a world premiere of Lucy Negro Redux on Friday, February 8. According to press materials, the production explores the mysterious love life of William Shakespeare through the perspective of the “Dark Lady” for whom many of his famed sonnets were written.

Giddens collaborated with jazz musician Francesco Turrisi on the score. The narrative is based on a book by Caroline Randall Williams, a Nashville-based poet who also contributes spoken word during the performance. Paul Vasterling serves as Artistic Director.

In the video below, Giddens explains, “I said yes to the ballet because it’s a really interesting story and it fits very neatly with my mission of highlighting interesting and overlooked possible connections in history, and this is a very, very intriguing one.”

She adds, “I just hope audiences will take away that you can do things in a lot of different ways. And there are so many different ways to collaborate and there are so many different ways to make a statement. I think this ballet, this collaboration, has a really great opportunity to do that – to show audiences that ballet can be this, as well as Swan Lake and some of the other things that you see. In my world, that banjos and folk music can be partnered with really a high-art dance form and it works. So, it’s like, hopefully we bring the two sides together to see each other and go, ‘Hey, you’re not that different from me actually.'”

Photo of Francesco Turrisi and Rhiannon Giddens by Karen Cox

Artist of the Month: Rhiannon Giddens

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Our February AOTM is Rhiannon Giddens: singer, multi-instrumentalist, actor, writer, song collector, activist, and composer.  Giddens has been developing her multi-hyphenated legacy of cross-cultural creativity for over twenty years, from being a founding member of the Grammy-winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, to multiple solo albums, to her roles on Broadway and TV’s Nashville, to high-profile collaborations like The New Basement Tapes, and as a creator of new boundary-breaking artistic projects around the world.

Throughout the month, we’ll be bringing you several stories about Rhiannon’s resounding legacy as one of the strongest voices in American roots music today, including a preview of her new collaborative album Song of Our Native Daughters with Leyla McCalla, Amythyst Kiah, and Allison Russell; an in-depth interview about her latest project with the Nashville Ballet and writer Caroline Randall Williams, Lucy Negro Redux; and a recap of her powerful keynote address from the recent Americana Music Association – UK.

“Nobody owns an instrument; no culture gets to put the lockdown on anything.”
-Rhiannon Giddens at AMA-UK, January 2019

For now, get primed for the month ahead with a collection of some of her best work in our new Essential Rhiannon Giddens playlist on Spotify.

 

For our regular readers, you’ll notice a slightly different structure to our AOTM feature.  Starting this month, we’ll be kicking things off with an introduction to the artist and a preview of the month of coverage ahead.