Tag: Artist of the Month

The Secret Sisters’ Laura Rogers: From Separation to ‘Saturn Return’ (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Laura Rogers and Lydia Slagle are best known for doing things together. As sisters, they’ve celebrated birthdays, graduations, and many more of life’s big milestones together. As the Secret Sisters, they’ve made a name for themselves singing together, with intuitive harmonies that lend a honeyed sheen to folk tunes, country anthems, and the occasional murder ballad, too. But for their latest album, Saturn Return, the duo tried things a little differently.

At the suggestion of Brandi Carlile (who co-produced Saturn Return with twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth), Laura and Lydia recorded their vocals separately for the first time, integrating lengthy solo segments in addition to their trademark harmonies. The resulting record reveals two women at the top of their crafts, reveling in their independence while cherishing the inimitable depth of their voices together.

In tribute to their recording individually for the first time, BGS spoke to each sister separately, too. In part one of our Artist of the Month interviews, Laura talks about the influence of her hometown, self-inflicted career pressure, and how Carlile introduced the sisters to new sides of themselves — both individually and as a group.

BGS: You sang separately from your sister on this album for the first time. What did that feel like at first, and how did your feelings about it evolve?

Laura Rogers: I was very uncomfortable about it at first. I play off of Lydia, and I choose my notes based on what Lydia chooses. We read each other so closely when we sing together. Singing without her felt like driving a car for the first time without your parent in there. But when Lydia sang by herself, even though I know she was uncomfortable, I sat there listening to her and thinking, She is so good. She’s so good. I remember thinking about how glad I was that her voice was finally going to get a chance to be heard without mine, because her voice has so much beauty to it.

I thought, It’s time for people to hear what Lydia sounds like without me distracting them. But I was super scared to sing by my self, just because I … Well, I just don’t feel like I sing as well without Lydia. I’m more critical of myself, and I don’t have her to kind of pick up the slack that I need. [Laughs] So in the moment, I remember thinking, I don’t know if this is the right thing. How are we going to pull it off live? But then of course, after the record was done, we would listen back to it, and Brandi’s theory about it was so… right. And so beautiful.

How so?

While we were recording, Lydia and I really were in really separate places for the first time in our lives. I was pregnant and Lydia was trying to get pregnant. We felt this chasm, the two of us. We felt like we were in different places. Brandi could see that, in her bird’s-eye view of our circle. She knew that she needed to capture that moment.

Lo and behold, a few months later, we found out that Lydia was pregnant too, and we were back on another path together. We had been separate for only a moment. So I’m really thankful. I feel like Brandi is a really good photographer who caught the perfect moment with the perfect light and the perfect ambiance — this really special moment that will never come again.

You’ve recorded murder ballads and darker songs, and “Cabin” on this record — which you’ve said grew out of coverage on the Kavanaugh hearings — touches on a crime that was never brought to justice. What are the challenges and nuances you have to consider when broaching topics like those?

That’s a good question. “Cabin” can really be about a pretty broad range of crime. But we were specifically writing about sexual crime: abuse, harassment, and mistreatment of people by those in places of power. We had a message that we wanted to convey, but it felt like we had to tiptoe around some things to try to avoid any sort of heavy political slant.

Lydia and I are not political songwriters. We just aren’t, and don’t want to be. But there are certain elements of that that do come up in our writing that we feel like we have to kind of carefully craft in order to express ourselves, but not isolate. That’s also true with murder ballads. It is a sensitive subject matter, and our protection — up until we wrote “Cabin” — was the fact that those songs that we had written were mostly fiction.

When [our songs] talk about getting your heart broken, or going through bankruptcy, or being done wrong by someone who is supposed to be your friend, those are actually based in truth. We would never specifically mention anyone by name, but if they hear the song, they’ll know that we’re talking to them. If you feel like we’re singing to you, we are.

That’s the way that we view our music — as therapy. The murder ballads have always been about us challenging ourselves to write songs about things that we didn’t experience. On the flip side of that coin, there are a lot of songs that we went through firsthand and had to process through writing.

You sing about the push-pull of success in “Nowhere Baby.” What does that song mean to you, and how do you fight back against the low moments?

I hope that people can find their own story in a song like that. For us, “Nowhere Baby” is about constantly feeling like we’re arm wrestling the music industry; feeling the need to say yes to everything that comes along, because you’re afraid that if you say no you’re going to set yourself back or miss an opportunity; feeling like you need to prove yourself. As artists, creative souls, and women, sometimes we put that on ourselves. We make these ridiculous schedules that we think we have to stick to. “If we don’t go do this show, what’s gonna happen? Are we gonna miss something that could be really important, could get us to the next level?”

We are so hard on ourselves about our careers. We love music, and we love that we’ve gotten to make a lifestyle of playing our songs on the road, but it’s a hard life. You sacrifice more than people on the outside ever realize. You miss the birthday celebrations and the holiday events. Through experience in the ten years that we’ve been on the road, we’ve learned that it’s OK if you need to just be a person for a minute. It’s OK if you want to just sit at home for a few weeks. Nobody’s gonna forget about you, you’re not going to lose your edge.

You’re from just outside of Florence, Alabama, and started singing harmonies with your sister at church. Did your hometown have any impact on the artist you are today?

Oh yes, 100 percent. We grew up pretty close to Muscle Shoals, which is obviously a legendary place for music. But we weren’t exposed to the music of Muscle Shoals as much as you might think. We listened to more folk music, bluegrass, gospel, and country. And where we are geographically had influence on us as musicians — I mean, it’s this weird little place that’s so perfectly located. It’s close to Nashville, so you get the country music influence. It’s close to Memphis, so you get a little bit of the blues. It’s close to the mountains, so you get some Appalachian music. You get gospel music, because we’re in the middle of the Bible Belt. It’s this perfect spot where these little genres of roots music all began.

I think living in a rural place, and growing up where there isn’t a lot to do other than hang out with your family or do sports or play music, is why we are the way that we are, and why we’ve become the musicians that we’ve become. We are so spiritually tied to our hometown. When I leave, I become a different person, and it’s almost like I have to go back to regroup and establish myself again. I come home and I’m like, oh, that’s who I am. [Laughs] I may get to go to all these great places, but when I come back, I’ve still got to scoop up chicken poop off my porch.

Read our interview with Lydia Slagle here.

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Artist of the Month: The Secret Sisters

Posted on by Editor

The secret is out, as the Secret Sisters have finally issued their newest album, Saturn Return. Time is a through line of the project, heard in songs like “Late Bloomer,” as well as the album title, which is an astrological reference to Saturn returning to the same location in the sky as it was when you were born. Motherhood also informs the music, as sisters Lydia and Laura Rogers were new mothers at the time, but also grieving the recent loss of their grandmothers.

Produced by Brandi Carlile and Phil and Tim Hanseroth (aka “The Twins”), Saturn Return positions the sisters as solo vocalists to some degree, as both Lydia and Laura recorded separately for the first time. And in contrast to their other albums, they wrote all of the material here themselves. A sweet celebration of the women who came before them can be found in the opening track, “Silver,” while the final track, “Healer in the Sky” is poignant, vivid, and simply beautiful.

Look for a two-part interview with the Secret Sisters — our BGS Artist of the Month for March — in the weeks ahead. (Read part one here. Read part two here.) In the meantime, enjoy our Essentials playlist, comprising choice covers (including one of Carlile’s songs), rare and interesting collaborations, and new music you’ll want to hear from Saturn Return.

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

On Tour, Nathaniel Rateliff Wants to Create an Experience (Part 2 of 2)

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Nathaniel Rateliff’s And It’s Still Alright marks his first full-length solo release in seven years and grapples not just with the loss of a romantic relationship, but with the unexpected passing of his friend and collaborator Richard Swift, with whom he had planned to record it.

In this portion of our conversation, we discuss Rateliff’s songwriting on And It’s Still Alright — which ventures further into vulnerable, introspective territory than did his previous work with his band the Night Sweats — as well as his time in the studio and how he plans to bring these songs to life on his solo tour, which runs through the summer.

Read the first part of our BGS interview with Nathaniel Rateliff.

BGS: Given the way “And It’s Still Alright” came out, you mentioned earlier that “All or Nothing” began with a chord progression. Do you have a songwriting process you typically follow, or does the creation look different each time?

Rateliff: It’s really song-to-song. It always seems to change for me. “All or Nothing,” with that song in particular I really wasn’t trying to write a song. This progression had come up and I played it at a bunch of different tempos. It reminded me of the Eddy Arnold song, “Anytime.” It has this Western-swing progression to it, and I really liked it. Then I started playing these jazzier chords I had learned that I wouldn’t play with the Night Sweats and it turned into a song eventually.

I had a handful of different words to it. As I remember, at one point the chorus was like, “I got heavy shoulders but I’m not blue.” It didn’t really make sense. [Laughs] That turned into, “I got all this and nothing, too.” So it really does vary. That song was a chord progression that a vocal melody kind of came out of. And sometimes I’ll start with a vocal melody or a phrase and write music around all of that.

“And It’s Still Alright,” the original idea was me sitting in a hotel playing guitar by myself. Richard and I went and saw Tom Petty together. The way [Petty’s] song structure was, you start with a massive chorus and it goes into a verse that’s an even bigger chorus and it’s hook after hook after hook. One of my buddies was listening to “And It’s Still Alright” and he’s like, “Yeah, it’s kind of like it’s only bridges. There’s no chorus.” But there’s something interesting about it, since it doesn’t have a traditional hook.

You mentioned the time you all spent in the studio together. It sounds like you had a great group of players and collaborators who were able to join you. What do you look for in a collaborator, and what is it about a musical partnership with someone that feels right to you?

Even in the beginning, when the first Night Sweats records started, I had grown weary of being the traveling singer/songwriter troubadour kind of guy. I was really over playing acoustic guitar for a little bit. So I was making these demos in my attic, then I shared them with Richard and we decided to make a record. I brought Patrick Meese out with me, because I knew we could both play multiple instruments and that we’re pretty good at not getting our feelings hurt when advising each other about portions of the songs.

Sometimes you have something you think is a great idea and it just doesn’t work; being able to work with somebody who isn’t overly sensitive about that stuff is really helpful. You don’t want to have this unspoken tension or this idea that someone is musically picking on you when they don’t like your ideas… The biggest thing is being able to be in the studio with somebody where there is this element of seriousness in approaching it as work and respecting it as a craft, but there’s another side of it where you have to lighten up and have a good time.

Yeah, if you aren’t having fun, what’s the point of doing it at all?

Exactly. I hear stories of people who are like, “Oh, they got that on the 70th-something-odd take,” and it’s like, “Fuck that!” If we’re not getting it in the first two or three, we’re probably screwing something up.

With the Night Sweats, of course, you were releasing music via Stax, but this is your first solo release you’ve been able to do with the label. Given the label’s history, what does it mean to you to be able to work with them, and what has spending the last several years of your career with them opened up for you creatively?

With the Night Sweats stuff it was like, well, the sound I’m really trying to come up with is influenced by Sam & Dave. My original idea for the Night Sweats was, I wanted to have the feel of when the band would play R&B songs like “Don’t Do It.” Their sort of gritty, funky, but slightly Southern feel and approach to the songs — swamp rock, I guess. But then also have these harmonies, like the Sam & Dave harmonies, with these big, powerful voices. Then I wanted everyone in the band to be working for the song. I wanted it to be a sweaty revival.

Originally I was signed to Rounder and got dropped when Concord kind of took over. Then I eventually got signed by the parent company, Concord, and when I found out they worked with Stax, I was like, “Is there any way we can put this out with Stax?” We shared the record with them and that started our journey together. To me, Stax is such an important part of the community in Memphis and part of the thing I love about music is how it’s a community-builder. We really need that nowadays. We need to be more in touch with the people around us and be more understanding and more caring overall. Also, just that roster; it’s all the greats. It hits me when I look at it. It’s pretty amazing.

It sounds like the tour will really showcase several different sides of you as a musician and as a performer. What are you most looking forward to about getting on the road and getting to play these new songs live?

We’re really trying to create an experience. The other thing, too, since it’s mostly the Night Sweats guys in this band, it’s fun to be able to show people, in pulling these songs off live, that we’re really creating and playing whatever type of music that appeals to us at any given time. Hopefully that will make us look like we’re not just a one-trick pony.

The Hurt Behind Nathaniel Rateliff’s ‘And It’s Still Alright’ (Part 1 of 2)

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Nathaniel Rateliff’s And It’s Still Alright retains much of the soul and swagger of his work with his band the Night Sweats, but its subtler arrangements and sparser atmosphere offer more room for Rateliff to showcase his introspective side as both a songwriter and vocalist. Songs like the title track, which chronicles the aftermath of unexpected loss, and the poignant “Time Stands,” hark back to his salad days as a solo singer-songwriter while also marking his immense artistic growth over the past decade.

As his first full-length solo album in seven years, And It’s Still Alright comes on the heels of two acclaimed albums from Rateliff and the Night Sweats, both of which released via STAX Records and found the Missouri-born artist digging deeper into rock-influenced soul and R&B music.

Rateliff originally planned to make the new album alongside friend, frequent collaborator, and beloved producer Richard Swift, who died unexpectedly in July 2018 at the age of 41. Swift’s passing is a heavy presence across the LP in myriad ways, including Rateliff’s decision to record the bulk of And It’s Still Alright at Swift’s National Freedom studio in College Grove, Oregon.

Below, read part one of our conversation with Rateliff, held in the weeks leading up to And It’s Still Alright‘s release.

BGS: You’ll release And It’s Still Alright in just a couple of weeks. What are you feeling as you anticipate having this new music out in the world?

Rateliff: I’m excited. I’m excited to share it. This is kind of the first time that me and the band have done real rehearsals. [Laughs] I feel like with the Night Sweats we’d be like, “Oh, we know these songs,” and just kind of rock through them. These songs have such a different intention than that, and there’s so much more subtlety in performing them live together. It’s been an interesting yet fun challenge to figure that all out together.

Having been a few years since you last put together a project that wasn’t with the Night Sweats, what was behind your decision to move forward with another solo album this time around?

When we were making the last Night Sweats record, I had a lot of these songs that I was working on. I was sharing them with Richard. We had intended to make this record together before he passed away. So I guess I followed through on my commitment to him in making this record. We tried to do it the way we thought he would do it.

What did those early song ideas, as well as those early conversations with Richard about what you envisioned for the album, sound like? Was there a moment or a song that made the project feel like it had clicked for you?

I remember playing “All Or Nothing” — I had the chord progression for it, and some of the words; it wasn’t really done yet — and I was kind of sharing it with Richard and he was like, “Man, I love this. You can’t be too Nilsson, man.” And so I would say, “OK. We’ll see how Nilsson we can get.” That was one of the things I wanted the record, or at least some of the songs, to have, that feel and similar approach to Harry Nilsson’s. Then a lot of the songs had a lot to do with Richard passing away, and some of our similar struggles that we shared in our personal lives and in our friendship together. So it seemed fitting to follow through and make a record.

Would you be open to sharing a bit about what you were feeling after he did pass, and when you made the decision that you were going to follow through with the album? How did doing the work feel in the wake of his passing?

It’s devastating, still. I still think about Richard and miss him most days, you know? He had this amazing ability to make the people around him feel very loved. As far as a creative partner, he was my favorite person to really work with. I really hadn’t intended on working with anybody else. So a really big part of the process of making this record was to go back to his studio. It has such a sound and feel to it there, so it kind of made me feel like he was with us in some way…

The band and I had all worked a lot with Richard and kind of new some of his tricks, which he was super open and willing to show us when he was still around. We really tried to approach it like, “What would Richard do?” song-by-song. Then there’s always that point in the process when you listen to the songs and say, “OK, what is there too much of here?” and kind of strip it back. Then we added a bunch of things to it. [Laughs]

The title track is so powerful and is one of several songs I’ve found myself returning to often since first sitting down to listen through the album. What was the experience of writing that song like for you? Did it bring about any healing for you?

I had a bunch of songs that I was writing with Richard in mind. When we were in Cottage Grove making this record in March, I’d had that song and was sitting at the kitchen table having coffee in the morning and just kind of instantly wrote it all out. At first, when you’re listening to it, the words came out so naturally that you don’t really take the time to question or examine what you’re trying to express personally. There was a moment in the recording process when I was like, “Oh fuck, I can’t believe I’m writing about this.” It’s heartbreaking at first but there is an element of healing to it. Sometimes to relinquish things you just have to say them out loud.

Read Part two of our interview with Nathaniel Rateliff.

Photo credit: Rett Rogers

Artist of the Month: Nathaniel Rateliff

Posted on by Editor

One of the most powerful artists in roots music, Nathaniel Rateliff has a solo album coming out in just a couple weeks, and as a preview, he’s released a music video for the title track. The evocative video mirrors a song with a lot of weight and meaning behind it, a trademark of Rateliff’s style. A simple song — voice accompanied by galloping guitar and a swirl of ambient textures — “And It’s Still Alright” has a beckoning quality that is matched with a grainy film aesthetic, shot in black and white with a splash of washed-out color.

In 2019, Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats scored a platinum single with “S.O.B.” and a gold record for their self-titled album. Now the pieces are in place for the next installment of Rateliff’s music as And It’s Still Alright is slated for a Valentine’s Day release. Tour dates are filling in, including a stop at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, as well as multiple shows in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, and Minneapolis. His European tour kicks off in April.

To hold over the anticipation for the new record and our upcoming Artist of the Month coverage, enjoy our BGS Essentials playlist.

Photo credit: Rett Rogers

Celebrate Black History Month with These 15 Artists

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

American roots music wouldn’t exist if not for the voices, stories, and musical traditions of Black Americans. Full stop. Celebrating the Black forebears of Americana, bluegrass, country, and string band music, pointing out their importance and their essential contributions to these genres we all know and love today needs to happen year-round, not just February. 

The BGS editorial team believes strongly in this idea, and though readers will be able to find several Black History Month features and articles in the coming weeks, we encourage you all to also take a dive back into our archives for stories that highlight Black creators and artists from all points across the last year. 

Mavis Staples on Live From Here

Ceaselessly relevant, Mavis Staples recently gave a keynote presentation at Folk Alliance International in New Orleans where she once again gleefully assured the audience she wouldn’t be done singing ‘til she didn’t have anything else to say. And she has plenty left to say! Watch Mavis Staples on Live From Here with Chris Thile. 

Yola’s Year of Debuts

Yola’s debut album, Walk Through Fire, landed on our BGS Class of 2019 lists for Top Albums and Top Songs — and nearly every other year-end list across the industry, too. Naturally she popped up a few times in our pages: In our in-depth interview, when she made her Opry debut, and when she dropped an blazing Elton John cover.

Liz Vice on The Show On The Road

Liz Vice is a Portland born, Brooklyn-based gospel/folk firebrand who is bringing her own vision of social justice and the powerful, playful bounce of soul back to modern religious music. She is following a rich tradition that goes back generations to powerful advocates like Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sam Cooke, the Staples Singers, the Ward Sisters, Aretha Franklin, and especially Mahalia Jackson, who was the soundtrack to the civil rights movement. Listen to the Liz Vice episode of The Show On The Road.

Brittany Howard, Artist of the Month and More

Our November 2019 Artist of the Month stunned in a stripped down duet with Alicia Keys at the Grammy Awards last weekend, her well-earned musical stardom solidified by her debut solo album, Jaime. Our Artist of the Month interview anchored our coverage of Howard’s new music, but her Tiny Desk Concert really captured readers’ attention!

Steep Canyon Rangers with Boyz II Men

Yes, you read that correctly. A combination none of us knew we needed that now we can never go without. The Asheville Symphony backs up the two groups collaboration on “Be Still Moses,” a moment transcending different musical worlds and genre designations. You can watch that performance here.

Rhiannon Giddens: Booked, Busy, and Blessed

How much can an artist really accomplish in a year? A quick scroll through the BGS halls shows a Grammy-nominated album, being named Artist of the Month, scoring a ballet, playing the Tiny Desk, debuting a supergroup, and oh so much more. We are more than happy trying to keep up with Rhiannon Giddens’ prolificacy.

Ashleigh Shanti on The Shift List

The Shift List is a podcast about chefs, their kitchens, their food, and the music that powers all of it. On an episode from September we interviewed Chef Ashleigh Shanti of Benne on Eagle, an Appalachian soul food restaurant in Asheville, North Carolina. Her Shift List includes Kendrick Lamar, Nina Simone, and more.

Grammy Winners, Ranky Tanky! 

 

We spoke to Ranky Tanky about their album Good Time in August, less than six months before it would win the Grammy for Best Regional Roots Album. If you aren’t familiar with Gullah music, our interview will help you out.

Americana’s Sweethearts, The War and Treaty

Rapidly-rising folk/soul duo of  husband and wife Michael and Tanya Trotter, The War and Treaty have had a year chocked full of smashing successes. Of course the best way to catch up with them was on the road, so Z. Lupetin set up the mics for an episode of The Show On The Road.

Tui’s Old-time Tunes

Jake Blount, one half of old-time duo Tui with fiddler Libby Weitnauer, is a scholar of Black, Indigenous, and otherwise forgotten, erased, or marginalized American fiddlers in old-time and string band music. His work specifically spotlights the source musicians whenever possible, undoing generations of revisionist history in roots music. Tui’s recording of “Cookhouse Joe” was featured in Tunesday Tuesday.

A Sitch Session with Birds of Chicago

A song with a message well-timed for almost any era, “Try a Little Harder” seems especially perfect for this very moment. Birds of Chicago do an excellent job bringing that message to the world. A suitably stunning Sitch Session.

Dom Flemons Talks Black Cowboys

If you haven’t heard Dom Flemons talk about his album, Black Cowboys, and the narratives and traditions that inspired it, this episode of The Show On The Road is essential. The music is captivating on its own, a perfect demonstration of Flemons’ uncanny ability to capture timelessness and raw authenticity, but with his scholarly takes and his depth of knowledge the songs take on even more meaning and power. It’s worth a deep dive — check out our print interview, too.

Gangstagrass Set the Standard

When you read Gangstagrass’s Mixtape of standard setters the parallels that emerge between foundational bluegrass and hip-hop are certainly surprising, but they also make perfect sense. It speaks to the longevity of this boundary-pushing, genre-defying group — that has been setting their own standard as they go.

Jontavious Willis Goes Back to the Country

“Take Me to the Country” is Willis’ paean to his homeland: “No matter where I go in the world, I can’t wait to go back to the country,” He told BGS in April of last year. “For me, that special place is a rural southern town in Georgia where I grew up. It’s such a quiet and calm place, and somewhere I crave when I’m far from it.” You can hear that truth woven into the music.

Octogenarian Bluesman, Bobby Rush

At 85 years old, Bobby Rush has been playing his brand of lovably raunchy, acoustically crunchy, and soulfully rowdy blues for over six decades. After winning his first Grammy at the humble age of 83, he has no plans of slowing down. We caught up with Rush on The Show On The Road.

Photo of Yola: Daniel Jackson 

Bonny Light Horseman Turn to British Folk Songs for Supergroup Debut

Posted on by Editor

Bonny Light Horseman, a new American supergroup interpreting old British folk tunes, is one of the few good things to come from Twitter. After spending nearly fifteen years shepherding her ambitious musical Hadestown all the way to Broadway, Anaïs Mitchell was catching up on some of music she’d missed out on, and she took to the social media platform to shout out the Fruit Bats, the long-running indie-pop band led by Eric D. Johnson. It just so happened that he had recently discovered Mitchell’s music and was a new fan.

“It’s an embarrassing way to meet someone,” Johnson says, “but that’s how it happened. She tagged me and said she loved my band. There are so many bad vibes on [Twitter], but I do like the fact that you can write a very short fan letter and you know they’ll get it.”

Mitchell was already working with producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman (Craig Finn, Josh Ritter) on a new project for the Eaux Claires Festival, and Johnson admits he steamrolled his way into the gig. At the 37d03d Festival in Berlin, the trio spent a few hours each day creating and recording new arrangements of old folk tunes like “Blackwaterside” and “Lowlands” with a small army of friends and collaborators joining in — including members of the National, Hiss Golden Messenger, the Staves, and Bon Iver. The result is a lush and lovely collection of songs that may be centuries old, but sound very much of their moment.

At least on paper it may seem like an unlikely folk alliance, considering Mitchell is the only artist among them popularly identified with that genre. Kaufman is more associated with artful indie rock, while Johnson is well known for crafting supremely catchy pop hooks.

“I have a fairly strong folk background,” says Johnson. “I used to teach banjo at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, but somewhere along the way I veered off on a poppier path. But Anaïs has a bona fide folk background beyond her career as a singer/songwriter. She knows all the old stuff and grew up with those records in her house. So she’s been a teacher to Josh and me in a lot of ways.”

This kind of collaboration fits with the 37d03d ethos. Founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner, the organization encourages and supports creative cooperation between artists in different genres and often on different continents. Already the duo have released an album together under the name Big Red Machine, and the recent posthumous Leonard Cohen album features 37d03d artists putting new music to his unrecorded lyrics. (It should be noted that the organization was originally known as PEOPLE, but changed its name to 37d03d in early 2019. It’s still pronounced PEOPLE, though. To see why, just turn your computer upside down.)

“They’re interested in artists expanding and exploring and collaborating,” says Mitchell. “After a while you get a kind of artistic identity, like a calcification of who you are as an artist and what you do. But there are people who are yearning to be free from the trappings of who people think they are. So PEOPLE offers an opportunity to be kind of childlike, to get back to that beginner’s mindset.”

For Mitchell it’s been a nice break, a way to settle gently back into her old life as a singer/songwriter after devoting so much time to Hadestown. Just before they embarked on a long tour supporting their debut, two-thirds of Bonny Light Horseman — Johnson and Mitchell — convened to talk about the durability of folk music, the joys of collaboration, and people who need 37d03d.

BGS: How did 37d03d inform this project?

Anaïs Mitchell: I feel like we were forged in the fires of PEOPLE. They’re interested in people expanding and exploring and collaborating and trying new things, so it was really perfect that we got to be a part of it before we really had any idea who we were or what we were doing.

Eric D. Johnson: I don’t know where this project would be without it. I don’t know if there’s anything modern that can be compared to it. I try to imagine how they pull it off from a financial or logistical standpoint, but they’re doing truly the Lord’s work, which is essentially creating a really easy platform for a bunch of people to get together and do something creative. I don’t know if it’s the most modern construct ever and they’re light years ahead of time, or if they’re completely out of their minds and operating on some sort of beatnik principle that’s completely untenable today. It’s probably both and/or neither. It’s an out-of-time thing in a very beautiful way.

AM: I’d been working with Josh on some of this material. I’ve been an admirer of his for a few years now — his playing and his producing on other people’s records. The thing was kind of a gleam in the eye, you know, when Justin [Vernon from Bon Iver] and Aaron [Dessner from the National] reached out to see if we wanted to do this project. Why don’t you play that at Eaux Claires festival? That was cool of them, because we didn’t even have a band name yet. We were just exploring. Just messing around.

EDJ: Then I steamrolled my way in, and it ended up becoming this band. That’s how it got started, and that parlayed its way into the big Berlin project, where they did this big, unique artist-in-residency festival type thing at the Funkhaus. It was like summer camp. That’s the only way to describe it.

Photo credit: D. James Goodwin

I think of PEOPLE as promoting that kind of collaboration, where you can play on somebody’s record or in somebody’s band without having it be a major statement.

AM: Totally. There was a moment in the middle of the recording where Josh said, “Man, we could really use a drum on this track.” Out in the hall, we heard a cymbal fall to the floor and make a big crash. Josh opened the door and it was Andrew Barr from the Barr Brothers. He was on his way to another session, but he had three minutes so he came in played the one drum that we needed on that tracks. It’s stuff like that. Or there’s a song that has a couple of the Staves on it and Lisa Hannigan. They just happened to be free. There was a lot of serendipity with that stuff.

When we were in Berlin, we didn’t know that we were making a record or that any of that stuff was going to have any value to anyone else outside of us. But then we got back to the States and we listened back and we were like, Wow, this gig is really good! It felt like half of an album. So the question became, how can we finish it? How can we make the other half of the record feel like it’s of a piece with that stuff, even though the setting is going to be different? So we made the rest of the record at Woodstock at this beautiful studio called Dreamland, which is just a big, old, weird church.

EDJ: We recorded in Woodstock for two days. It was more of a traditional recording setup. I remember we did “The Roving” there and “Deep in Love,” which are two of the singles and I think two of the strongest tracks. We did them at 1 in the morning. They’re both completely eleventh-hour songs.

At what point did the idea to cover old folk songs come into play?

AM: Traditional folk music is kind of a passion of both of ours, especially like British Isles stuff. We started to mess around with some things, and the very first song that Josh and I ever worked on together was “Lowlands.” Which is interesting because I hadn’t heard any versions of that song. I guess I had maybe seen some texts, and I learned that there are two strains. One is this British Isles strain, and the other is from the American South. They’re basically ghost stories, in which a dead lover appears to a woman or in some versions a man. They’re also stevedore songs, songs about working up on the shore, loading crates onto ships.

So the song that we put together contains elements of both of those things as well as some stuff that we made up. It felt like a cool puzzle to put together. A lot of them I would say have had less research. We said very early on that we didn’t want it to feel like a research project. We really wanted to be more heart-led and wide open.

EDJ: I would say we were adamant that we didn’t want to do a research project. We just want to enjoy it. But it is incredible when you do a little research on these songs — and this is not news — you don’t have to be an advanced musicologist to know just how interwoven American music and the music of the British Isles are. That music came to western Appalachians and eventually gave us country music and rock ‘n’ roll.

The through lines are so short still. It’s really not that old. When it split off, our grandparents were alive. Those songs are so ancient and so thoroughly modern at the same time in the themes they’re singing about. If you listen to the lyrics of “The Roving,” which are hundreds of years old, it sounds like the plot to a teen summer movie from the ‘80s. It’s just people loving and longing and grieving and having sex and everything else we’ve been doing and singing about for as long as anything.

It doesn’t sound like an album concerned with preservation or historical accuracy. You’re taking a lot of liberties with them without trying to explicitly update them to our current moment.

AM: A lot of the songs have new music but the text is traditional to one degree or another. The text of “The Roving” is based on songs like “Courting Is a Pleasure” and “Handsome Molly,” but the music isn’t connected to any of those songs. But it still feels like a heartfelt way that the voice wants to sing. This is a total aside, but it’s just such a pleasure to sing with Eric. He’s so unfettered in his singing. It makes me want to sing that way, too. I had to sing my heart out in order to get on the same level as him.

EDJ: This is folk music. It doesn’t need to be finely hewn. It can just be a lump of clay that you emotionally hack at until you get something out of it. There might be some deep, deep purists who think we’re very impure in how we approach these songs. But these songs are meant to change over the years. They’re from the oral tradition, from pre-recorded times, so we don’t even know what the original version of “Deep in Love” sounds like. We just know what we came up with. That song was sort of a sketch that I had written for the last Fruit Bats album, but I couldn’t get anywhere with it. I had a melody written, just a do-do-do verse that I sang in the studio, and Josh opened up a book of traditional Welsh folk lyrics. He said, “Sing these lyrics over that melody.” They slotted perfectly, and that’s how you hear it.

Is this a one-off project, or do you think Bonny Light Horseman will continue?

EDJ: I think we’re gonna pick it up again, but we have no clue what we’re gonna do next. We could just be this band that keeps reinterpreting British folk music forever, but maybe not. Making this first one was very natural and easy in a lot of ways, and we’ve enjoyed playing shows together, but I don’t think the way forward has been pointed out to us just yet.

Photo credit: Nolan Knight

Anaïs Mitchell Follows Broadway’s ‘Hadestown’ with Bonny Light Horseman

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In June 2019, Anaïs Mitchell picked up her first Tony Award when Hadestown beat out bigger productions like Beetlejuice and Tootsie to snag Best Musical. It was an unlikely win for the eccentric and ambitious production — and the culmination of fifteen years of hard work bringing it to Broadway.

“I had no idea how long I was going to work on it,” she tells BGS. “I really didn’t. I just knew what the next step always was and just kept taking them.”

A folk musician born in Vermont and based in Brooklyn, Mitchell first staged Hadestown as a regional production around New England, and it resembled something like a traveling medicine show, as she and her friends toured it the way they might tour an album. In 2010, she released it as something like an Americana concept album, casting colleagues and collaborators in key roles: Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon plays the role of Orpheus, while Ani DiFranco is Persephone.

The story is old, even if the production is new. Mitchell borrowed characters from Greek mythology, combining the stories of Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the underworld and Persephone warring with Hades. But she filtered them through John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair, imagining the underworld as an industrial hellscape, like a sooty factory or a mine, with Hades abusing both the natural world and his workers.

In 2015, she began working with a stage director named Rachel Chavkin, who brought the award-winning Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 to Broadway. Together with a team of producers, musicians, actors, set designers, choreographers, and many others, they began to rework Hadestown for a bigger stage, streamlining the story and rearranging the music for maximum impact. In some cases they rewrote entire characters or scratched entire songs, searching for the best possible way to tell this complicated story.

When it debuted at the Walter Kerr Theater in March 2019, Hadestown barely resembled the production Mitchell staged around Vermont. It was bigger, flashier, more accessible, but also truer to the big ideas that inspired her in the first place. At its heart is an America defined by conflicts between industry and environmental conservation, between commerce and art, between various forms of love and labor. Yet, in its most innovative stroke, the production retained its roots in folk music and its populist ideas. The original cast recording just earned a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.

“It’s a little crazy to be on the other side of it,” Mitchell says. “I’m still trying to bend my head around what that means. Like, what kind of songs do I write now?” For the moment she’s focusing on her new band, Bonny Light Horsemen, which is something like a supergroup trio with Fruit Bats mastermind Eric D. Johnson and multi-instrumentalist/producer Joseph Kaufman. Featuring members of Bon Iver, the National, and Hiss Golden Messenger, their self-titled debut album resituates centuries-old folk songs in new settings. “Bonny Light Horsemen has been this really assuring kind of space to be creative in and make music and not feel like it’s my new statement,” she says. “Because it’s not.”

As she was packing to launch a lengthy tour with Johnson and Kaufman, Mitchell spoke with BGS about Greek and American mythologies, creative uncertainties, and songs that straddle the line between personal and universal.

BGS: You lived with Hadestown for more than a decade, during which time it morphed into a brand-new creature. What kept it compelling for you?

Mitchell: I would say that like the simplest answer to that question is that it never felt done. The studio record that we made in 2010 felt done for a studio record. It felt like a complete statement. But the show began as a stage performance piece and I always wanted to see it that way again. As soon as I started the next phase of development with Rachel Chavkin it was one chapter after another: We’re going for off-Broadway. Then we’re going for regional. Then we’re going for Broadway. And it always was like, “It can be better, it can be better…”

And the people kept the wind in the sails of the project. At a certain point it became so much bigger than me. Maybe it always was bigger, because there’s the orchestrators and the singers and all the people in the different cities. It became something like a whole community of people just chipping away at the same piece of stone. It was very exciting to be in the room with those actors and with Rachel and seeing the choreography and the sets coming into focus. It was like a hive. I couldn’t have turned my back on it.

Do you feel differently now that it’s up and running in its current form?

Now that it’s up and running, I don’t even go. It’s happening every night and I get a little report by email here in Brooklyn. It really has a life of its own. It’s become its own animal. And I think I did max out what I could give it in that period. So it feels great to just be making folk music with Bonny Light Horseman right now. It definitely feels like the right place to be.

Why did you want to pursue this story as a stage production? What made it something different than an album or even a book?

From the earliest moment of starting to work on the piece, I was excited by the idea of telling a dramatic, long-form story with larger-than-life characters. I love songs so much, but I remember noticing that even at my favorite concerts by my favorite songwriters I would start to get bored with all these tiny climaxes in the songs. There was a disconnect from one song to the next.

I will watch a terrible movie all the way to the end because there’s that question: How is this going to end? What’s going to happen next? That is so powerful and it will carry you through. I wanted that for this piece. I wanted all the songs to lean on each other, so that you had to watch the whole thing and get through to the end.

That took you well outside what most folk musicians and singer/songwriters are doing. What did you learn during that process?

There was so much learning in terms of writing a song that felt like it was structurally perfect for the album, like “Wedding Song.” It’s just three verses and a little interlude. I would play that at my songwriter shows and think, yeah, it’s so tight. But it fell flat as a dramatic scene. I had to find a way to explode the form without breaking what works about it.

I also learned about putting space into a song. You might put space into a song so that a musician can improvise or express themselves. The same is true for drama: There was to be space for the actor to create the character. As a write, I tend to want to fill that space with words. I think both of these mediums are really similar in the sense that you’re building something for someone else to inhabit. You’re building a house that someone else can live in.

If you can write a song that’s good enough that other people are going to sing it and cover it and let it live in the world, you’re creating something that is similar to a play, which can be revived just by other people’s involvement in it. It’s bigger than you. And hopefully it’ll outlive you.

That’s interesting, because right now it seems like most people prize the singer/songwriter model, where the song is heard as an extension of the person and means less when it’s covered by someone else. The idea of somebody telling their truth seems to have more validity right now than a song that can change and accommodate new interpretations and maybe means something different when different people sing it.

I think we’re approaching an idea that feels really important to me. I haven’t talked about it enough to have language about it, but I do think things need to be true emotionally for the person who’s writing them. I would say all of the songs in Hadestown came from a place of personal truth even though they maybe took on the clothing of the character or the needs of the scenario. There has to be some emotional truth. That’s a sacred thing. But there’s something intersecting that idea. What is universally true or part of some collective unconscious stuff can be exciting.

You could go about trying to write something like a hit or a standard as a kind of exercise, and it might not feel true to you. To be honest, I think a lot of Nashville co-writing scenarios end up this way, where you get something that feels structurally tight but is missing some kernel of personal truth. But you can go too far in the other direction where it’s like the person is totally self-expressing. How does that mean anything to me or to someone else?

It’s that middle ground you’re looking for, where you can sing from your own heart and experience, but you’re also singing from the heart of the world, from the world’s experience. Folk music is really interesting for that, right? Because it’s like water from a deep well. Those songs tap into a universal experience, and those archetypes and images are going to live forever. So if I can find a way to write that taps into that but also feels true to me, then that’s the zone I want to live in.

Do you feel like you reached that with this iteration of Hadestown? Is this the final form it will take, or will you keep developing the story?

There was a moment when I thought I was going to revise it for the tour that we’re doing in the fall. But we just put out this cast recording, which is beautiful and has all the material in it. I think people might want to go to the regional version and be able to experience the show that they’ve listened to on that recording. I do fantasize about a film version, but that’s maybe years down the line. For the time being I think it’s best for me to take a step away, but I could see getting really excited to roll up my sleeves again for what would essentially be another phase.

I’ve actually been working on a book, which has been very therapeutic. It’s coming out sometime this year and it’s basically the history of the project, the evolution of the lyrics. It’s called Working on a Song. I was able to go back and look at a lot of these songs and see where they came from and how they evolved. I often would say I felt like I was banging my head against the wall: The idea was wrong, the thing was wrong. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, and then suddenly it’s right. At the time it didn’t feel like those wrong choices I had made meant anything. But when I look back on the process, I can see more clearly the way certain lines came up or certain songs or ideas came about. They didn’t come up quite right, so they went back into the soil. They nourished the ground that then the right thing could grow out of.

So much of the time you feel like everything is futile. Like, I can’t believe I just sat here for however many hours and made only one rhyme that might not even be good. That happens to me all the time. So the metaphor that I came up with has to do with gardening. You have to rake around, and the raking is sort of aerating the soil. You’re preparing the ground for the right thing to come up. And when they do come up, they’re beautiful, like flowers. And then they go back into the soil and eventually nourish the next thing.

That definitely seems to fit with the story Hadestown is telling, about an artist who literally goes into the soil to rescue his beloved and finish this unfinished song. From a creative perspective, how much did you identify with or relate to the character of Orpheus?

Totally. It’s interesting that that character took so long to come into focus. Ever since our off-Broadway version of the show, Orpheus confused a lot of audiences. People weren’t falling in love with him. They found him and Eurydice to be less fully drawn and therefore less compelling than the older couple Hades and Persephone. I always thought of Orpheus as this really crazy optimist. He’s got this faith in the world and in his own music, but then he ends up besieged by doubt at the end, which is supposed to be crushing. But he has a lot of lines that if they were delivered wrong — even just by a tiny fraction of a percentage wrong — they felt swagger-y and cocky, which is not what I intended for him.

I always thought of him as this sensitive soul, and that kind of machismo was not in keeping with that idea. His first line was, “Come home with me.” And people were like, who is this guy? Why’s he trying to pick up this chick? Why should we love him? People weren’t identifying with him, and they didn’t care if he won or lost. Obviously, if you don’t love him and want him to succeed, then the story falls flat. You’ve got to love Orpheus.

After we debuted in London, there was a crisis moment when we had this awful nagging feeling that something was not quite in focus. People don’t love this hero. It came up in a lot of reviews. So we went into triage mode, me and the director and the producers. How can we fix this? So we decided that for Broadway, we would really lean into his naiveté. He’s a boy who’s lost in his own world. He undeniably has a gift to give the world but he’s not very good at living in the world the way it is. He’s socially inept. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Suddenly that made him appear much younger and much more innocent. It’s not like he’s so brave to stand up to Hades. It’s more that he just doesn’t know any better. He’s an innocent who finds himself in the belly of the beast, and he doesn’t know any better than to call out what he sees as true. What we fall in love with is his purity of heart. That’s what comes through in his singing. That was a really fascinating journey with that character for me. That song that Orpheus could never finish was also the song that I felt I could never finish.

(Read our second installment of our Artist of the Month coverage on Anaïs Mitchell tomorrow.)

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Artist of the Month: Anaïs Mitchell

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The world has finally caught up with Anaïs Mitchell. With sold-out runs in London and New York, near-constant critical acclaim, and a sweep of eight Tony Awards, the Vermont native was quite literally center stage last summer accepting the award for Best Original Musical for her creation Hadestown.

But Anaïs Mitchell has been center stage for a very long time — it’s the size and location of the venue and audience that has changed. With five solo records under her belt, a growing collection of collaborative projects ranging from a record of obscure English ballads (Child Ballads with Jefferson Hamer) to a new supergroup Bonny Light Horseman (with Eric D Johnson of Fruit Bats and guitarist Josh Kaufman), and the decade-long evolution of her now-famous folk opera Hadestown, Mitchell is profound not only in her turnout, but in the indisputable quality and beauty of everything she touches.

That’s why we’re excited to present her as BGS‘ first Artist of the Month for 2020. Throughout the month, we’ll be digging deeper into her career with an exclusive interview feature by Stephen Deusner. After all she’s accomplished in the last decade alone, we can’t wait to see what’s next for her in the one to come. For now, enjoy our Essentials playlist and prepare yourself for the Month of Anaïs Mitchell.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Dailey & Vincent’s Darrin Vincent Finds Satisfaction by Playing Every Day

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After a dozen years of success, Dailey & Vincent are currently in a period of transition. Building on the popularity of The Dailey & Vincent TV Show on RFD-TV, their next album will be the first straight-up country record they’ve ever done – following up last year’s holiday album, The Sounds of Christmas, which provides the playlist for The Joys of Christmas Tour happening now through December 15.

In the second portion of our interview with BGS Artist of the Month, Dailey & Vincent, we catch up with Darrin Vincent.

(Editor’s Note: Read our BGS interview with Jamie Dailey.)

BGS: How does the musical division of labor work with you two?

Vincent: We collaborate together on pretty much everything, looking for songs and arranging and producing. But this country album, I don’t think we’ll do that the same because we’ll have an outside producer [Kyle Lehning] for the first time. It will be different to be just artists this time, throwing ideas over to him. It’s exciting and also scary to let go of complete control, and it will be interesting to see how this goes, to let someone else drive the bus.

We prayed on it, that we’d be led to the right person who has the same vision, and it seems like he does. You have to have faith and move on it. If it does not do well, OK, we’ll go back to what we did before. For now, it’s kind of fun to not have quite so much to deal with because we’ve got plenty on our plate with the TV show.

How close are you and Jamie offstage?

We live too far apart to really hang out, but I love him like a brother. Yes, we’re business partners, but if either of us is hurt or needs prayer, we’re there. Both of us know that if either of us needs anything, night or day, just call. We’re very close, but we also have to have space away from each other just like any other family. He’s a good man and I love what he stands for, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye 100 percent of the time.

Before Dailey & Vincent, you played in Ricky Skaggs’ band. What did you learn from him about running your own band?

Quite a lot about what to do, and also what not to do. But a lot more about good things to do, like rehearse in a nice facility, go first class, don’t cut corners. It drove home the importance of creating records that will last. When you’re recording, do it right the first time and not because you want to be friendly with someone or promised something to this or that person.

We’ve all been there before, cutting corners because you don’t have the money or getting some friend to play on something even though they might not be as good as Stuart Duncan and you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. But you have to do what you feel the song needs and don’t back off, whatever other people think. Keep the integrity of music to the highest possible standard because once you put it on a CD, it’s forever and never goes away. Get whoever best fits the song.

Do you ever miss just being a hired hand?

Oh yeah. I’d show up, do my part and go home. Today, we’ve got 20-some people who rely on everything we do. It’s as simple as eating healthy, because these people all rely on our incomes to pay the bills, their mortgages, support their families. It’s a lot of responsibility and it takes a toll.

Whenever we have to fire a musician or a bus driver, it really bothers me. I’m emotional anyway, but I’ll cry about it when it happens, worry about people. It crushes my soul and we both take it to heart. Being an owner, there’s always a family tree behind it all where a ton of people are relying on your health and business to make sure we’ve all got jobs. There’s so much to it. Playing onstage is the fun part.

What do you think of the state of bluegrass nowadays?

It seems that bands like the Infamous Stringdusters and Old Crow Medicine Show are more popular and lucrative than the genre and structure of the basic bluegrass festival. A lot of the older folks are dying off, unfortunately, along with the festivals with the camping and the jamming and all the things that go with it.

I think the five-piece bluegrass band will survive, but the bluegrass scene seems to be getting smaller and smaller. As a promoter of our festivals and cruises, I see acts with very high standards that do a great job performing bluegrass. I also see acts with bigger egos than they need to have, which is just bad, gives a black eye to the whole bluegrass scene. I’m just talking for me, what I see.

Is it hard to find time to practice, play and write music?

Unfortunately the business side keeps me really busy. But at home, I do have the guitar out all the time. It’s by the bed and I take it into the mobile office where I do business stuff. I have to play every day just to keep the motor skills going. I love to hear different things out of the guitar. I get depressed, get happy, and music soothes my soul. So does prayer, of course. I enjoy playing. Not just trying to get better for the show but it’s something that satisfies me and what I need that time of my day.

What are some artists you like that might surprise people?

I love Michael Bublé, Harry Connick, Chicago. I think Metallica is amazing. Now I’ve never heard them sing a gospel song and they’ll have some things to deal with at the end times of their lives. But they’ve got great harmonies, triple guitars and the musicianship is incredible. Iron Maiden is another, even though they have “666” painted on their 747 and I don’t like their lyrics. But they’re very talented people.

There’s even this group from Russia that’s as devil-worshiping as you can get, but they have a unique sound. I can’t even say their name, but the art value and production of their show is amazing. I’m not trying to give the devil any credit, but I like lots of music for the art value.

It’s a common bond through musicians, taking the stage and communicating with people. I love to watch different artists no matter the genre, how they’re communicating whether they’re kids or older. Mike Snider has just incredible communication with the audience. I sit and cry watching him, it’s so funny, but so simple. The knack and ability to do that is amazing and not everybody can. Jamie’s great at it, too. A lot of bands have no charisma whatsoever. They play great and sing OK, but there’s no charisma for the audience and it just dies. There’s an art to that.

Which of your many awards are you most proud of?

By far, becoming a member of the Grand Ole Opry. I’ve been blessed to win five Grammys, which were enormous milestones in my life. They were the biggest thing I’d done, until the Opry. It’s very nice out at Opryland, which is cool with a lot of history. But the ultimate is going back to the Ryman and memories of Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, standing in the same place Elvis Presley stood. Just the history of all the people who walked through there and paved the road to where country is today, that’s overwhelming and humbling.

Illustration: Zachary Johnson
Photo: Josh Daubin