“He was exceedingly cool and easy,” long-time Bill Monroe bassist Mark Hembree remembers about Willie Nelson’s presence at a 1983 recording session where Nelson sang and played with Monroe. “I never had a say in Bill’s mixes, but they had Willie’s guitar way up and as we listened to playback he mentioned it, then turned and asked what I thought,” Hembree wrote in a recent exchange of messages. “I agreed, a little surprised he would ask me.”
People who hear about Willie Nelson’s latest album, Bluegrass, before hearing the music might ask, “Wait, what? What does Willie Nelson have to do with bluegrass music?”
Upon listening, at least two answers come to mind: 1) Much more than you might think. 2) Don’t worry so much.
With tunes by Nelson, one of the best American songwriters, played by notable pickers, the record contains strong music that should sound welcome to fans of Nelson, of bluegrass, and of the field with the loose label, “Americana.”
It’s a given that in more than 60 years of major-label recording, Nelson, 90, has been better known for presenting his own songs, enduring tunes such as “Crazy,” “Hello Walls,” and “On the Road Again,” the last of which is heard here in a new version. But he’s also made his name with notable covers – like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Seven Spanish Angels,” “Blue Skies,” and others – in a welter of styles, including blues, pop standards, and even reggae. Nelson’s core music enfolds ‘40s and ‘50s country, traditional fiddle tunes, four-square gospel, ragtime, some swing flavorings, and definitely a heap of blues. The mix also includes more contemporary pop. Subtract some of that last bit of material, throw in some lonesome mountain banjo and ballads, and you’ll find, in different proportions, foundational bluegrass as designed by chief architects like Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.
Legacy Records, the Sony division putting out Nelson’s Bluegrass disc, says the style “was given a name by Kentucky songwriter/performer/recording artist Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, whose post-war recordings profoundly influenced Willie’s songwriting sensibilities and the direction of American country music in general.” They go on to say, “Willie chose songs combining the kind of strong melodies, memorable storylines and tight ensemble-interplay found in traditional bluegrass interpretations of the roots (from European melodies to African rhythms) of American folk songs.”
And it’s pretty much on target. But what else speaks to Nelson’s involvement with bluegrass?
Let’s return to the early ‘70s, when he famously abandoned a Nashville scene where he had achieved songwriting fame and a recording career. But Music Row had flagged in creativity and opportunity, he and others thought. And yes, at the end of 1969, his house had burned down. By 1972, Nelson’s persona was changing as his new approach revisited his Texas roots. The year saw new-breed stars like Kris Kristofferson showing up at the first Dripping Springs Reunion, a Texas country music festival. The show, which was to morph int0 a string of outdoor throwdowns known as Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic, presented a bluegrass contingent led by Monroe, with foundational figures Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt leading their post-breakup bands, as well as additional notables including Jimmy Martin.
Jo Walker, executive director of the Country Music Association, told the Austin-American Statesman that the trade group was delighted to hear about the Dripping Springs Reunion. “So many of the rock festivals and similar events have reflected so unfavorably on the music industry that we are particularly happy that your reunion will be a Country Music show.” But with Nelson embracing a new, youth-driven fan base and a long-haired, bandana-ed look, what did country music even mean?
There was a growing correlation, it seemed, between the increased popularity of bluegrass and the emergent outlaw (read: long hair, free-thinking, whiskey-drinking, dope smoking, etc.) movement in country music, led by Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Its bluegrass surge was sparked in part by the Earl Scruggs Revue’s broad acceptance in non-traditional venues like college campuses and hot sales for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Back in Nashville, in 1973, wider acceptance of bluegrass also meant that Monroe, his former Blue Grass Boy Flatt, the brilliant wildman Jimmy Martin, and the great brother team of Jim & Jesse McReynolds would join Nelson amid the crowd of stars at CMA’s second annual Fan Fair celebration.
In 1974, both Scruggs and Monroe, as well as Grand Ole Opry stars Ernest Tubb, Jeanne Pruitt, and Roy Acuff appeared on stage singing with another wildman, country-blues rocker Leon Russell. That’s documented in a photograph of this period, likely from a Willie’s Picnic. Quite a lineup.
A version of the picture found on the web says the shot is from A Poem is a Naked Person, a documentary on Russell by esteemed filmmaker Les Blank shot between 1972 and 1974, but not released until 2015. Nelson appears in the movie to sing “Good Hearted Woman” – also on this new album – playing guitar bass runs that would work fine in bluegrass. He also backs up fiddler Mary Egan, of the Austin “progressive-country” band Greezy Wheels, on an energetic version of the bluegrass-country perennial “Orange Blossom Special.”
In 1974, Nelson went to work in the soul-music capital of Muscle Shoal, Alabama, to record a milestone disc on his road to making records his own way. The album, Phases and Stages, which won over both fans and critics, contains prominent five-string played Scruggs-style on the hit “Bloody Mary Morning,” which also returns on Bluegrass.
The 1983 Bill Monroe session referenced above came after a last minute February 22 phone call from Nelson to let Monroe know he was available to appear on the in-progress Bill Monroe and Friends album for MCA Records. That’s according to a passage in the indispensable book, The Music of Bill Monroe, by bluegrass scholars Neil Rosenberg and Charles Wolfe.
“[Engineer, Vic) Gabany recalls that on February, 22, 1983, Monroe called the studio and asked if it was free that afternoon,” Rosenberg and Wolfe write. “Willie Nelson was in town, and he wanted to rush in and cut the duet with him. Fortunately, it was. Moreover, the Blue Grass Boys were all available, and Haynes was able to round up studio musicians Charlie Collins and Buddy Spicher.”
Monroe’s original tune with Nelson, “The Sunset Trail,” shows the impact of another style, cowboy music, that both men favored. Nelson reaches into his upper range to sing below Monroe, who’s going way up there, as was his wont. “It’s a thrill of my life to be here with you,” Monroe says as he and Nelson exchange praise in the track’s introduction.
In 1990, Monroe accepted Nelson’s invitation to perform at the April 7 Farm Aid IV concert in Indianapolis. “We’re glad to be here with Willie Nelson!” he said to kick off a set marked by powerful singing, crisp mandolin picking, and a little crowd-pleasing buck dancing. The show placed Monroe, 79, in a lineup that included stars such as Elton John and Lou Reid. The Indianapolis Star estimated the crowd at 45,000.
During Monroe’s last years — he died in 1996 — he often spoke to Nelson on the phone, according to a person who didn’t want to be identified, but often spent time at Monroe’s home on the farm outside Nashville during that period. “He valued their friendship immensely,” the person said.
Bluegrass‘s 12 songs contain several Nelson compositions that became standards of his repertoire, along with less familiar tunes that also fit in the recording approach overseen by Music Row’s Buddy Cannon. A songwriter and producer, Cannon is known for delivering big songs, like “Set ‘Em Up Joe” for Vern Gosdin, and chart hits for more recent mainstream acts such as Kenny Chesney, John Michael Montgomery, and Reba McEntire. A frequent Nelson collaborator, Cannon assembled a list of Nashville co-conspirators: Union Station members Barry Bales, on bass, and Ron Block, on banjo; former Union Station member and current rising star Dan Tyminski on mandolin; fiddler Aubrey Haynie; Dobro man Rob Ickes; Seth Taylor also on mandolin; as well as harmonica player Mickey Raphael, who’s worked for decades in Nelson’s band.
The music mostly doesn’t come off as hard-core bluegrass in the mode of, say, the Stanley Brothers. But it leans on the elements that Nelson has in common with the style — lonesome melodies, classic country, swing and blues.
The mournful “You Left Me a Long, Long Time Ago,” from 1964, reflects the straight-country songwriting to which Nelson and others brought a terse, modern beauty in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. It was a time when bluegrass enjoyed a closer co-existence with mainstream country, as opposed to straining against the tight format borders that limit today’s music business. Among the many artists who crossed back and forth freely were guitarist-songwriter, Carl Butler, fiddler Tommy Jackson, and Cajun star Doug Kershaw. They all worked with Monroe.
A new version of “Sad Songs and Waltzes” mourns in tones not too different from Monroe favorites ranging from “Kentucky Waltz” to “Sitting Alone in the Moonlight.” The song also recalls the 3/4 time Lone Star tunes that Nelson might have heard at the Texas Fiddlers Contest and Reunion.
That show got going in 1934 in Athens, Texas, just one year before Nelson arrived on the scene in Abbott, less than 90 miles away.
The fiddle contests that influenced so much of Texas music beginning in the 19th century, had parallels in the 18th century Southeast, where contests featured both the fiddle and the banjo, with its African roots. This music went around, and it still comes around.
The sock-rhythm backing of “Ain’t No Love Around” recalls early Blue Grass Boys recordings such as “Heavy Traffic Ahead,” recorded September 16, 1946, and featuring Earl Scruggs’ first recorded banjo solo. Elsewhere, the laidback favorite, “On the Road Again,” gets a more intense reading from Nelson, with some vocal and instrumental improvisation to spice it up. The mystical “Still is Still Moving to Me” leaves plenty of room for pickers to range far and wide on banjo, mandolin, fiddle and Dobro.
“You give the appearance of one widely traveled,” Nelson sings in “Yesterday’s Wine.” He’s singing from a faraway spot in time, in myth, in history. It’s a stance that’s earned a place on bluegrass playlists for more recent songwriters such as Guy Clark, David Olney, and Gillian Welch.
“Bloody Mary Morning,” from Phases and Stages gets the most recent of several revivals from Nelson, who led a jam-grassy version in the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose and later sang it in a duet with Wynonna Judd. The song’s forthright tale of fighting the blues by having a highball on a plane seems somehow classier than the constant tales of beer and pickups that populate country radio.
In the end it seems clear that for decades, both Willie Nelson and bluegrass music have served, in different ways, as a conscience of country music. Just as the Solemn Old Judge, WSM radio announcer George D. Hay, commanded, they “Keep her close to the ground, boys,” although their paths have diverged, at times.
In any case, this new collection brings Nelson together with bluegrass pickers for music that might even work to serve that same worthy purpose.
Earlier this year legendary musician, songwriter and recording artist Willie Nelson announced his 151st studio album would be a return to bluegrass, this time reimagining 12 of his own originals with a string band lineup. Available September 15 and simply titled Bluegrass, the Buddy Cannon-produced project reinforces the career-long relationship Nelson has had with bluegrass and bluegrass pickers, calling on old friends and collaborators like Barry Bales, Ron Block and Dan Tyminski, as well as band members and vocalists Aubrey Haynie, Rob Ickes, Josh Martin, Mickey Raphael, Seth Taylor, Bobby Terry, Wyatt Beard and Melonie Cannon.
Nelson is a revered song interpreter and cross-genre adventurer, covering and recording songs from all across the American roots music landscape, from the Great American Songbook to blues and soul, from jazz to Texas swing. No corner of Americana in any/all of its forms has been left untouched by this prolific music maker. But his relationship to bluegrass – similar to his peers like Dolly Parton or Lee Ann Womack, or his acolytes and emulators like Sturgill Simpson and Kacey Musgraves – speaks to the primordial relationship between country and bluegrass, more than just musical touristing or a genre-based gimmick. Nelson doesn’t put on “bluegrass” as a costume, he brings it forward from the earliest days of country music as a genre, before sub-genres like bluegrass had stratified and coalesced as identities somewhat separate from country as a whole. It’s part of what makes Bluegrass a compelling collection, tracks like “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” the album’s lead single, don’t feel like songs wearing bluegrass drag, but rather feel like country gone back to its roots.
Across a career that has touched so many other musicians, singers, and creators – from Waylon Jennings to Ray Charles to Snoop Dogg – it follows that Nelson has counted many bluegrass greats among his album guests, track features, and show bills. He’s toured extensively with Alison Krauss & Union Station over the past two decades; it’s no surprise to find a handful of Union Station alumni on Bluegrass. He’s recorded with Rhonda Vincent, Billy Strings and all the McCoury boys, Del, Rob and Ronnie – the latter two have toured with Willie, too. Country Music, a 2010 release from Nelson produced by Americana superstar T Bone Burnett, was also a bluegrass-centered album, pulling from the deep and broad repertoire of early country, old-time and bluegrass – when the three genres could be represented by a Venn diagram of one circle.
There are so many facets of Nelson’s music making that feel patently bluegrass: his love of borderless, boundless cover songs; his ability as a picker standing equal with his songwriting and one-of-a-kind vocal interpretations; his endless output of personal, meaningful music; his mutual admiration of his compatriots, adorers and mentees. The list could go on ad infinitum. It makes perfect sense that this year he’ll join the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
It’s rare that a multi-hyphenate musician and songwriter such as Willie Nelson can shift so effortlessly between contexts, gathering and maintaining a diverse following that understands great music can – and should – transcend not only genre, but all of the trappings of the music industry. It’s part of why Bluegrass feels grounded, honest and resonant. Willie Nelson isn’t playing pretend, he’s just being himself – and that might be the most bluegrass thing about him.
Watch for our Artist of the Month feature, an in-depth exploration of Willie Nelson’s relationship with bluegrass across his life and career coming later this month, and enjoy our Essential Willie Nelson Playlist, featuring many of his bluegrass forays among his popular recordings and our BGS favorites.
If one were to chart North Carolina string band Mipso’s career over the past decade on a line graph, you’d see a steadily rising, ever-growing musical output and an ever-burgeoning audience for their brand of grounded-yet-dreamy folk pop. This journey through roots music has paralleled their peers – bands and artists like Watchhouse, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, and Della Mae – but they’ve outlasted more than a few similar ensembles that have fallen to the wayside over those years. Strikingly, even while enjoying near constant growth since they coalesced in 2012, the band has eschewed higher echelons of the Americana star-scape, choosing instead to scale their business and their art intentionally and deliberately.
Theirs is a sound and musical aesthetic ready for the “big time” – they’ve garnered hundreds of millions of streams – but Mipso (made up of Wood Robinson, Libby Rodenbough, Jacob Sharp, and Joseph Terrell) seem very happy with where they’ve landed since their consecutive popular and critically-acclaimed releases Coming Down the Mountain (2017), Edges Run (2018), and 2020’s Mipso. Each album saw the group gain traction, gain fans, and gain notoriety. Still, they aren’t defined by their ambitions; and their ambitions don’t seem to ever be conflated with conquering anything. Instead, this is a band building something.
Mipso’s sixth studio album, Book of Fools (due out August 25), certainly speaks to this phenomenon. The group feels perfectly at home with one another; they’re a chosen-family band – together, they’ve been through their college days, their road-dogging era, their “I think this might not just be a pipe dream…” successes, landing with a crystalline point of view that’s expansive, complicated, and rich, but doesn’t feel like it has anything to prove. There’s no desperation here – to claw back pre-COVID reality, to tour arenas, to brand and merchandise their way to an empire. As songwriter, guitarist, and singer Joseph Terrell puts it in a press release, “Book of Fools feels more relaxed, more confident, more us – like we’re wearing our favorite clothes and telling our favorite story and it feels exciting again.”
“The Numbers,” the second single from Book of Fools, winks to this measured, black-and-white view of their own jobs and careers – versus “real jobs,” let’s say – and the economic access that’s never been a hallmark of either roots music or the generation to which Mipso’s members belong. By prioritizing building art and community over bottom line, Mipso demonstrate a class consciousness that places themselves and their music in alignment with workers, laborers, and the every-person, making the message behind “The Numbers” palpably genuine.
“I looked around at this cruel place where we live,” Libby Rodenbough explained via press release, describing the U.S. and the stock market, “And I felt forlorn that the NASDAQ offers anybody any kind of comfort. How do I know things are bad? Because I feel it, and I see it.”
Who are “The Numbers” supposed to comfort? And what exactly are they supposed to indicate? Mipso utilize their post-modern string band trappings – in a similar fashion to Nickel Creek or Crooked Still – to explore these ideas in ways that the forebears of bluegrass and old-time did as well, in their own time and within the social and political issues of their own days.
Genre-wise, Mipso may have traveled a great distance from their bluegrassy early days as a string band quartet dripping with North Carolinian roots music traditions, but again their journey, in this regard especially, does not feel overtly aspirational. These are not sounds and production values adopted in order to sell out bigger rooms or fill bigger stages. The music of Book of Fools (and really any LP in their catalog since Dark Holler Pop) is as intentional as the messages within it, so one can feel and enjoy the old-timey touches that underpin these fully-realized sonic landscapes.
Mipso hasn’t lost touch. They haven’t lost sight of how real the stakes are outside of their own experiences – and within them. While they may not be building a business model reliant on “sheds” and arenas and radio hits and dynamic ticket pricing to be “successful,” you can feel the gratitude they have for their own daily lives and careers, even while they apply critical lenses through which to talk about the social and political issues they and their community face.
It’s exciting, encouraging, and energizing, to appreciate an album that isn’t merely a rung on a career ladder, but is meant to be its own constituent journey – both for Mipso and their listeners. Book of Fools speaks to a trajectory that is neither predictable nor totally quantifiable and isn’t merely about consumption or facilitating an ever-deepening appetite for consumption. That this could be said about almost any release by this prolific foursome speaks to exactly why we’re so pleased to name Mipso our August Artist of the Month.
Watch for our Artist of the Month feature to come later in August and for now, enjoy our Essential Mipso Playlist.
It’s halfway through 2023, and Molly Tuttle is having an incredible year. The Grammy-winning artist released her new record — made with her band, Golden Highway — on July 21 via Nonesuch Records. Only days before, Tuttle and Golden Highway were nominated in seven categories at the 34th Annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards.
In the middle of her ongoing tour, we caught up with Tuttle and the members of Golden Highway to celebrate her selection as July’s Artist of the Month and to go behind the scenes of making City of Gold. Luckily, it’s easy to make music with friends, and the entire group goes way back. Tuttle says Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo), have been a part of her musical life for years.
“I’ve known everyone in the band since I was in my late teens, early twenties,” Tuttle explains via video call.
Tuttle and Keith-Hynes attended classes and bluegrass jams together at Berklee College of Music. She met Kyle Tuttle (no relation) at around the age of 17 at an IBMA jam, and met Means while she was in Boston with the all-women string band Della Mae. Tuttle says she and Leslie met as kids, when they would both play the same bluegrass festivals.
“When Molly told me what she was planning, and asked me to join the band and told me who else was going to be in it, I was thinking, ‘I’m already friends with all these people. This is gonna be really cool!’” Means said during our group interview.
When it came time to record City of Gold, the group worked with modern roots music icon Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show on much of the writing. Tuttle says there’s a definite Old Crow influence on the tracklist, which makes sense given “Down Home Dispensary” is a tune on the record originally written for the group best known for hits like “Wagon Wheel.” Tuttle said she initially worried the song was “too Old Crow” for Golden Highway, but is glad it ended up on the record. She and Secor got “into a good groove,” as she puts it, and churned out the tunes for City of Gold in about six months, often while driving in the car or passing around instruments during jam sessions. At least one track, though, was extremely collaborative. Tuttle, Means, Secor and Melody Walker (formerly of Front Country) all had a hand in finishing the tune.
Jerry Douglas, the iconic resonator guitar player who’s worked with almost every name in the bluegrass industry, produced the album. Tuttle said that whereas she had only a few studio days booked for her previous album, Crooked Tree, the group had nearly two weeks of studio time to work with Douglas this time around. When asked what it was like working with the legend, every member of Golden Highway said they’d had a great experience.
“Working with someone who’s a hero, there’s a lot of baggage that comes along with that,” Kyle Tuttle said. “But he’s the kindest dude. He supported us in a really cool way. It wasn’t hard or intimidating or anything like that. I thought it was easy and fun. Every now and then he’d play on a track with us.”
Whether it was encouraging Golden Highway to take breaks or telling funny jokes, the group agreed that Douglas made sure everyone was comfortable and having a good time. Keith-Hynes said Douglas told the band that NASCAR drivers walk slowly to their cars to slow down their nervous systems, encouraging the musicians to do the same on walks between takes.
“Jerry has been a huge musical hero to all of us,” Leslie said. “Getting to spend all that time in the studio was the thrill of a lifetime. We all knew we were in really good hands with him musically going in, but what I didn’t realize was how good of a hang Jerry is. He [was] filling up any moment of dead air with a great story to break the ice.”
On tour, the band’s camaraderie is just as apparent as it is in the studio, or as it was in the group’s music video for “Next Rodeo.” After Tuttle catches her no-good, fictitious cowboy boyfriend cheating, the band collectively decides to kidnap him and give him what for — although, of course, all in good fun. They say they haven’t (yet) had to kidnap anybody on tour, but that doesn’t mean the on-the-road lifestyle isn’t taxing. Kyle Tuttle said he missed a connecting flight the night before the album release show and was up all night driving to make it in time.
“I was checking into the hotel and the sun was already up,” Kyle Tuttle said. “[There was] orange sky and some palm trees. I thought, ‘Damn it’s pretty. I sure wish I was in bed right now.’”
While it’s a good time to be in Golden Highway, it’s also just a great time to be in bluegrass, the group says. All agreed that bluegrass is having a moment, and were happy to report multiple sold-out festivals with lineups that include country, folk, bluegrass, blues, and other roots artists. Means said it’s incredible to see bluegrass acts opening for bigger country artists, because it means the genre is a real selling point.
“I wonder if it’s a backlash to how crazy everything is with technology,” Keith-Hynes thinks aloud. “People want something real. Nothing is more real than people playing acoustic music on acoustic instruments.”
Tuttle said the internet has also really leveled the playing field, making more music accessible to all kinds of fans. Golden Highway has had its own viral moments on TikTok, the short-form video social media app. Earlier this year Tuttle posted a 2022 Halloween clip that has now hit nearly one million views; inspired by a track on the new album, “Alice in the Bluegrass,” the band members are each dressed as a character from Alice in Wonderland, with Tuttle starring as the Queen of Hearts.
“It took people by surprise to see this bluegrass band playing Jefferson Airplane in full Alice in Wonderland dress,” Tuttle said.
As for what’s ahead, the group says they hope to see everyone out on the road. Means shared that the band will announce more dates soon, and that they’ll be touring both coasts after the annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards in September. Tuttle and Golden Highway are currently nominated for Entertainer of the Year, Instrumental Group of the Year, Song of the Year and Album of the Year. Tuttle is also nominated for Collaborative Recording of the Year, Female Vocalist of the Year, and Guitar Player of the Year. Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is nominated for Fiddle Player of the Year.
City of Gold can be streamed online wherever you listen to music. Check out more of our Artist of the Month coverage of Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway here and here.
Over the course of her lifelong career in bluegrass, Americana and roots music, we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and connecting with Grammy Award winner Molly Tuttle on quite a few occasions. When we selected Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway, as our Artist of the Month, we wanted to open a space to discuss her career and music in a fresh light – and we could think of no better context for such a conversation than Basic Folk.
We asked Basic Folk podcast hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No – who featured Tuttle on the show once prior, in 2022 – to sit back down with the International Folk Award and Americana Award winner to discuss her brand new album, City of Gold, and to dig deeper into the creative output of this buzzworthy guitar player, songwriter, and business woman.
Watch for the full podcast episode to drop later this month, but for now enjoy these excerpts from Cindy and Lizzie’s conversation with Molly Tuttle.
Cindy Howes: Molly Tuttle, welcome to Basic Folk again. It’s so great to have you back on the podcast.
Molly Tuttle: Thank you so much for having me back. It’s great to be here with you guys.
CH: Before we start our interview, I want to set the tone for our conversation. Molly Tuttle is being highlighted as Bluegrass Situations’ Artist of the Month, which is so awesome. The tone of our interview today is LYLAS. Do you know what LYLAS is?
Lizzie No:It’s spelled L-Y-L-A-S.
MT: LYLAS. Okay. I don’t know that.
LN: What it means is: “Love you like a sister.”
CH: Oh yeah. So we are total LYLAS. This is like a fun trip to the mall. This is like a really fun cruise around the harbor with your gal pals.
MT: Oh my gosh, that’s so fun. Well, it’s perfect because I’m actually in a hotel outside of Missoula. And there’s a strip mall nearby. So shopping has been on my mind today. Great.
CH: We’ll all get mani pedis together.
LN: Yes. French tip.
CH: So, when approaching the writing on City of Gold, you asked yourself, “How do I tell my story through bluegrass?” Which I can relate to, as somebody who’s sort of tried to distance themselves from folk music for a really long time. And now I am fully leaning into it. So, I take [it as] you asking that question of yourself, like “How can I fit my Molly Tuttle-ness into a world that can be rigid, patriarchal, and maybe different from what you stand for.” So how true is that? And how have these songs helped you take control of the bluegrass narrative and tradition?
MT: I think that’s something I’ve always kind of struggled with. I remember when I first started writing songs, I just thought, “I don’t know how to write a bluegrass song.” I can write a song, but they never ended up sounding like bluegrass to me and I just didn’t feel like my story fit into the bluegrass narrative of the songs that I grew up singing.
I always loved songwriters like Hazel Dickens, who wrote bluegrass songs from a woman’s perspective, wrote songs about the struggles that she had as a woman in the music industry and as a working woman, and songs about workers’ rights and things she believed in. I grew up with two really strong role models, Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick, out in the Bay Area. I remember early on I would go out to [Kathy Kallick’s] house and she would make me tea and listen to my songs. She always told me that when she was first getting started writing bluegrass songs, she kind of felt the same way as me. Like, maybe her story didn’t belong in the genre. But she met Bill Monroe, and he encouraged her, “Don’t try to write a song that sounds like a song I would have written, write a song from your own perspective.”
So she wrote a song called “Broken Tie” about her parents getting a divorce. She said every time she was at a festival with Bill Monroe, he specifically requested that song. That was an inspiring story to me. But when I started writing songs for Crooked Tree, it was suddenly like a floodgate opened. I think I just found my people to write with, found my groove, and ended up with a collection of songs that kind of told my story, [told] about things I believed in, and [told] my family history and personal experiences. And then other songs that were just, you know, from a woman’s perspective, or from a perspective that I resonate with.
For [City of Gold], it was fun to kind of continue that and also expand it to be songs that I felt like were inspired by my band members, or inspired by experiences we’d had on the road. This felt more like a collective vision in a way.
LN: Okay, let’s talk about Crooked Tree. The title track from your last record was partly inspired by your experience living with alopecia. You’ve said that as a kid you would wear hats and then wigs, and then you learned to talk about your wig. Eventually, you started to get more comfortable going without. Now that you’re touring with Golden Highway a ton, you sometimes take your wig off when you play that song, which is such a powerful moment of joy, courage, and vulnerability. As a performer, I can relate to those moments where you bring a little bit extra of yourself and you share a part of yourself that you might normally keep private. How do you get to that right mood? How do you gauge if the crowd is like the right crowd to share about your alopecia experience?
MT: It’s also based on how I’m feeling. I took off my wig a few times last year. But I didn’t do it as much as maybe I wanted to, or maybe I should have, just because I wasn’t always sure what to say. I’ve had so many experiences of trying to explain alopecia to people and they still think I’m sick or still feel bad for me. And it’s so hard sometimes to put it in words that aren’t going to bring the mood down at the show, you know, I want people to be having a good time. I want it to be this fun, inspiring moment, not a moment where people can go, “I feel so bad for you.”
Recently, I performed and told my whole story [for] a keynote speech at this alopecia conference out in Denver, Colorado. I think that was such an important step for me. Just getting to share my story and reflect on the pain of growing up having this really visible difference, but also like, the joy and why it’s so important to me to share that with others and share the message that it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to be a “Crooked Tree.” This last weekend, we played in Michigan, and I did take off my wig and I felt like I finally nailed what I said and the perfect mood. Everyone was cheering and it was just a moment of celebration. I think I’m gonna just continue doing that more and more, but I find that it’s so helpful for me to check in with the alopecia community and feel that support from other people who know exactly how I feel. That makes me feel confident to share my message with the world and maybe sometimes be like, “I don’t care how it’s received, maybe I’m not sure how it’s gonna be received, but I’m going to do it anyway.” That just comes with time. And I guess I’ve had to grow kind of a thick skin. It used to be a lot harder for me.
CH: The new album, City of Gold, the songs were mostly written by you and your partner Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. What is the writing process like with you and Ketch? Like, how do you bring out the best in each other’s writing?
MT: We’re both quite different writers. He’s very fast paced. He throws out ideas and lines. [While I’ll] think it over. I’m kind of more internal. I think about the lines. We balance each other out in a way where I might think a lot about what exactly we are saying, and then he’s good. If I get stuck on something, [he can] kind of keep it moving. But our writing process is always different. It’s nice, because we’re together a lot. So we can write in a lot of different circumstances. Some of the songs we wrote in the car, like on a road trip, just throwing lines back and forth. Maybe he’d be driving, I’d be writing the lines on my phone. Maybe we’re talking about something at home or listening to music and sitting down with instruments, kind of more the conventional way of writing. I find it so hard to fit writing into my life, especially when I’m on tour and I’m on the go so much. [It’s so nice that] we got into a groove with it, where we were just doing it all the time, and it felt more naturally intertwined into my day-to-day life.
LN: The bluegrass community was a huge source of inspiration for you. Of this record, you said, “One of the things I love most about this music is how so much of the audience plays music as well.” And that you hope that people will sing along and maybe play those songs with their friends, almost like we’re all a part of one great big family. Now, how do you walk the line of making a sophisticated, bitchin’ bluegrass record, while keeping it simple enough for others who might not be musical geniuses to play along?
MT: The beauty of bluegrass music is that most of the songs have like three or four chords. You can play them really simple, you can just strum along and play as slow as you want. Beginner bluegrass musicians might go to a jam of people at the same level as them and play these songs in a lot simpler of a way. Then, as you get better and better you can play it faster, you can play more complicated solos, you can really play with the dynamics. There are infinite ways to make the songs more and more complex and sophisticated as you progress in your musical abilities.
On City of Gold, I did kind of stray away from that “three chords and the truth” format a little more than I did on my last record. It was fun, because we were working on these arrangements as a band, which was a lot different process than I’ve ever done before in the studio. I’ve always gone in with my songs and gathered musicians that I don’t normally play with on the road – studio musicians. I have a lot of my bluegrass heroes on the record, and you’re kind of learning the songs and playing them by a chart, but for this album, we really took the time to develop more complicated arrangements and add in new sections that stray away from the key. These songs are a little less accessible to the standard bluegrass jam. But I think there’s still a few that people could learn to play at any level.
• • •
CH: Okay, now we’re going to talk specifically about some of the songs on the new album, City of Gold, starting with the first song, “El Dorado.” Right now I am rewatching Deadwood, so I am super into this song. As a kid, you took a field trip to Coloma, the site of California’s first gold strike and it was the first time you heard about the legendary El Dorado, the City of Gold. In the song you sing, “El Dorado, city of gold, city of fools.” You said, “Just like gold fever, music has always captivated me.” So who are the characters in the song – like gold rush Kate from the Golden State – and how do you connect with these fools?
MT: I wrote the song with Ketch and I don’t know [exactly] how it came about… [But I told him,] when I was a kid, every school would send the kids off to gold country. You’d go to different places. The person who taught my class how to pan for gold, for some reason I have like a very vivid memory of him. He had this gold nugget on a chain around his neck and he showed us how to pan for gold. He was like, “You might find a flake of gold, but if you find an actual nugget of gold, we’re not gonna let you keep that, you have to give it back to us.” [Laughs] I remember being like, I really want to find like a nugget of gold and just squirrel it away and not tell this guy about it. So that kind of stuck with me.
CH: Literally every kid in your class thought that!
MT: Yeah! Like, we’re gonna strike it rich at this goldmine!
We were kind of doing some research on Coloma and found that it’s in El Dorado County. That seemed like a good place to start with a song just inspired by that character, but also thinking about all these characters who came together and we’re all trying to strike it rich. I feel like that is such a theme in our society. You know, we have these like little, mini gold rushes – everyone being like, “This is the next big thing. We’re all going to make so much money off of this.” But for me, I didn’t get into music thinking this is gonna make me rich, but it is something I’ve chased after for many years now.
CH: What do you think is the current gold rush? Is it dispensaries? Vape stores?
MT: The thing that just popped into my head, it’s a couple years old, maybe like a year past its prime, is crypto currency. I think I don’t know where that stands. But I think we’re a little bit past that.
• • •
LN: The second track on this album is “Where Did All the Wild Things Go?” Which is a song about gentrification’s corrosive effect on the character of once-vibrant neighborhoods nationwide – which I can very much relate to living in Brooklyn. I’d love to hear about your neighborhood where you live now. Is there a specific tradition or neighborhood institution or restaurant or store that is so special about your neighborhood? That you’re passionate about preserving? And how are you and your neighbors trying to keep your neighborhood weird and wild?
MT: Well, my neighborhood is East Nashville, and before I got there, it was totally different. It’s just in constant flux. It really changed so much when we had the tornado hit [in 2020] that took out tons of the local businesses that never returned. A lot of people moved out. The pandemic just kind of sped all of that up. Coming out of lockdown I was like, “Whoa, this is so different. Like, where do I even live anymore?”
I don’t really know how to answer how I’m trying to preserve it. I feel like I’m living in a different city every time I come back from tour, basically. Nashville’s always changing, just constantly growing, so many businesses are moving here. I do feel like there’s this constant sense of everyone missing the old Nashville. I don’t think that I was even around for the like “old Nashville” as many people who grew up in the city know it. So maybe I’m part of the problem in a way, really. I moved there just eight years ago…
• • •
CH: The next thing we want to talk about is “San Joaquin,” a new, old-style railroad song. There’s such a romance surrounding trains in song. You’ve always loved singing about trains. There is that long tradition of trains and folk songs. What do you think it is about trains that have captured artists’ hearts since they’ve been around?
MT: I think as artists, especially as musicians, we kind of have this roving spirit, where we want to see the world, we want to travel. I feel like a lot of musicians, myself included, we romanticize trains as this early way of getting across the country. And still, you’ll see musicians from time to time doing a train tour. Of course you have buskers who might hop on a train across the country and play all over the place. Now, I’ve never done that, but I think it’s just this thing that’s romanticized, especially by musicians. I’ve always loved singing [train songs]. There’s so many bluegrass train songs, but I didn’t know a specifically California bluegrass train song, so I felt like it was time to write one.
CH: What’s your favorite train song?
MT: That’s such a good question. The first one that popped into my head was Larry Sparks’ song, “I’d Like To Be A Train.” He doesn’t just want to ride a train. He wants to be a train.
• • •
CH: The song “Next Rodeo” you say, “…Reflects the miles I’ve put in with my band, Golden Highway, which has clocked in well over 100 shows.” That’s in the press release, so it’s probably 200+ shows at this point, and we’ll give a shout out to Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. Let me know if I’m mispronouncing anyone’s name–
MT: We have so many nicknames for Bronwyn in the band. We saw a YouTube comment on one of our videos where I introduce her and someone said, “What’s the fiddle player’s name? I couldn’t catch that.” Someone wrote “Ron Winky Pies.” We often call her Ron Winky Pies.
CH: Yes, that sounds right. Well, she is a hell of a fiddler. Also Dominick Leslie on the mandolin, Shelby Means on bass, and Kyle Tuttle, who is playing banjo. Can you talk about the ease and connection you feel with Golden Highway? What’s the feeling that you get when you’re on stage – and, when did it start gelling for everyone?
MT: After I made Crooked Tree, first I started thinking about who I wanted to take the songs on the road with. On the record I had the band name Golden Highway, but I didn’t actually have a band yet, so it’s kind of funny. I did it in reverse a little bit.
Dominick played on the whole record. I called him and I was like, “Hey, do you want to play with me next year?” And he said yes. So I had one band member. I was just trying to fill in the rest of the band thinking like, “Who’s gonna bring the most personality to this project? Who’s gonna bring a unique voice?” The whole record was all about being who you are, [about] individuality. I wanted to choose people who I felt like their personalities really shine through – and their music and their playing and their stage presence.
I got my dream band. We’ve all been friends in one way or another for like the past decade, so it was a cool experience. I’ve never had that before where I have this band in my head, I imagine the people playing together, and then it happens and it’s better than I could have imagined. It felt really cool. In the past I’ve had wonderful bandmates, but it’s never been this kind of brainchild where I’m trying to concoct my dream bluegrass band that will have this unique personality to it.
We all got together and everyone already knew each other and already played together in different configurations just through the bluegrass scene over the years. It all kind of started gelling really quickly. Our first couple shows we’re just kind of like, “Wow, this is something special!”
• • •
CH: We do want to ask a question about Jerry Douglas, who co-produced the record with you and is the master of the Dobro. How has your relationship with him as a producer shaped how you think about your own recordings?
MT: On this record, especially on “Stranger Things,” I just felt like I needed to hear him play on it. We had this funny thing we’d say in the studio, “Make us AKUS” – make us Alison Krauss and Union Station – cause they’re like our heroes. [Laughs]
When we got to that song we’re like, “We need that iconic Jerry Douglas dobro part.” It’s such a spooky song and he just knows how to accompany a song [like that] so well and that’s part of why I felt like he was the dream producer. He understands the musicianship side of things. He’s such a master of his instrument, but then he also has this deep connection to songs and vocalists and just knows exactly what to play behind the vocal.
That’s something I really kind of leaned on him for, just getting the best performance out of everyone, instrumentally. He has just the greatest ear. He hears a pitchy note here or like a wrong note there and really pushes everyone to do their best performance, but then he also has this side of him that’s extremely tasteful and he knows how to get behind a song and not overpower it.
LN: I want to talk about “Down Home Dispensary,” which is such a fun song. I’m fascinated by the way you’ve framed this issue, which is very hot in the news… legalizing marijuana. The way it’s framed in “Down Home Dispensary” is like a very fun political pitch about how Southern culture can evolve and is evolving. Why did you feel it was really important to frame this as a “Down Home Dispensary?” And do you notice an evolution in the way that Southerners and your audiences, more broadly, are relating to marijuana use?
MT: I think like the South is still the holdout. It’s not legal in most places in the South, but I feel like it’s become almost a bipartisan issue, where people are getting behind it. We play it and we’ve been playing it live and people are cheering no matter who they are. They’re like cheering for the “Down Home Dispensary,” because it’s this thing that’s become normalized in our society, but it still is technically not legal. That was one that Ketch and I originally wrote to be an Old Crow [Medicine Show] song and then they didn’t cut it. It’s so much fun!
CH: It’s sort of like a book end to “Big Backyard.” The world can be your down home dispensary, your backyard. You can make home and freedom anywhere.
MT: I thought it was like a funny angle to to go about it. You’re talking to a politician and just being like, you should really do this, because you’re gonna make a lot of money like this is in your best interest.
LN: How has living and working in Tennessee changed how you see your responsibilities as a feminist artist?
MT: I’m confronted with things in Tennessee that I never imagined would happen. Where I live, abortion is not legal in Tennessee at all, it was one of the first states to basically ban it for any reason.
That was really like a dark moment in our history as a country to just be going backwards completely. It’s something that I’ve feared since I was a teenage girl, like, what if this got taken away? And what if I couldn’t make decisions for my body? I can’t [access this healthcare] in the state where I live, I could maybe travel somewhere else if needed, but who knows if [someone else] could. They could make it more and more impossible to have access to this. It just breaks my heart for all the people who now don’t have that choice and don’t have the privilege of being able to go somewhere where they can get this health service.
[When writing “Goodbye Mary”] I was thinking about a story my mom told me growing up of my grandmother, whose name was Mary. She had a friend who was in an abusive relationship and she wanted to leave this relationship, but she ended up getting pregnant. So my grandmother and her friend, she would push her friend down the stairs, they would try anything to get rid of the baby. It’s a really, really dark story. But it’s somewhere that we’re going again, as a nation. When we were writing it, we were talking about my grandmother. That’s not something that happened to my grandmother personally, but it’s something that her generation had to deal with.
LN: I think it’s so important to link abortion access to women’s experiences of intimate partner violence. A lot of people who claim to be pro-life don’t want to admit that access to abortion is also access to freedom and the ability to leave an abusive situation. It’s just one more way of actually having freedom in your own body. That’s a really powerful story. It’s just so important, I think, for musicians to be talking about this issue, especially those of us that live in Nashville or are working in country and folk and bluegrass.
MT: It’s really scary to talk about, I was so scared to put that song on my record. Jerry was the one who was like, “We have to.” It was his favorite song. He was like, “If we’re gonna record one song, it needs to be this one.” And I was like, “I’m scared.”
This issue is one I care about so deeply. And it’s one of the most important social issues to me. But it’s also like, you get kind of the most backlash for it.
LN: Have you played this live yet?
MT: We haven’t, no. We’ve worked it up. And once the record is out, I think we will start playing it. But we haven’t tried it live yet.
LN: You got this.
MT: Yeah, totally. Thank you.
LN: Thank you. Thank you for this telling this story. I think that the bluegrass community needs to hear it and the world needs to hear it. I think it’s really important.
• • •
(Editor’s Note: This conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for flow and grammar. Cindy Howes’ and Lizzie No’s full Basic Folk conversation featuring Molly Tuttle will be available next week on BGS – or wherever you get podcasts.)
Folks in the bluegrass world have been watching Molly Tuttle’s star rise since long before her Grammy-winning 2022 album, Crooked Tree, has added even more momentum to the award-winning flatpicker’s career. Though we first crossed paths much earlier, we spoke to Tuttle initially in 2017 for an edition of Deep Sh!t that put her and guitarist James Elkington on the phone together. Even then, Elkington went out of his way to laud Tuttle’s playing, placing it on the same level as his own. (Tuttle, in a turn of mutual admiration, praised Elkington’s picking above hers, of course.)
This is a consistent phenomenon in musicians, songwriters, producers, and instrumentalists who encounter Tuttle’s work: They are all astounded by it; They all feel and hear genius within it. Tuttle is sometimes – no, often – your favorite musician’s favorite musician. Certainly your favorite musician’s favorite flatpicker.
At numerouspoints over the years since that first interview, the BGS team has latched onto songs and recordings by Tuttle. We’ve had the privilege of inviting her to join BGS lineups and stages and we’ve published more than a handfulofinterviews, as well, watching and documenting a career and creative output that continue to enjoy rapid-yet-meaningful growth. From our earliest premiere of “Good Enough” all the way to anchoring a BGS Cover Story, as Tuttle has advanced through the music industry, we’ve watched and written about those changes and the distance she’s traveled.
It’s fitting, then, as Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway, ready a second album on the heels of the wildly successful Crooked Tree, that they should at last be named BGS Artist of the Month. We know listeners and fans, whether brand new or veteran, will understand and appreciate how much pleasure and joy we have gained over the years from Tuttle’s songs, her creative vision, her passion, and perhaps above all, her fiery picking. It makes naming Tuttle our Artist of the Month that much more gratifying, highlighting the real reason we make BGS in the first place: our community.
After having a star-studded roster on Crooked Tree helmed by producer (and guest artist) Jerry Douglas, Tuttle has focused her vision slightly for City of Gold, which releases July 21 on Nonesuch Records. Douglas returns as co-producer. The new album, like the former, drips with the imagery, mythos, and mystique of California, drawing on West Coast influences like the Grateful Dead, Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, and folk revival, troubadour singer-songwriters. But, instead of a rotating cast of characters and besides a stout handful of featured artists, this record centers Tuttle and her full-time road band, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo).
This lineup and the material of the Golden Highway era all seemingly mock the rare critics and naysayers of Tuttle’s music, who, especially in the earliest days of her career, could sometimes be heard describing her songs and singing as toothless or lacking energy or grit. At their sold out theater and club headline shows or in front of thousands at music festivals, Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s performances are jaw-dropping, electric (literally and figuratively), and enormous – fully realized. It’s jamgrass without valorizing toxic masculinity; it’s “MASH,” but with taste; it’s a shredfest, but it’s also emotive and vulnerable and theatrical.
That Tuttle’s found her stride while “returning” to bluegrass – whether intentionally, subconsciously, or merely as a framing and narrative device – is striking and impressive. There are many songs, stages, and Artist of the Month features yet to be conquered down the Golden Highway.
Watch for a special Artist of the Month episode of Basic Folk later in July featuring Tuttle as well as an interview with her band, Golden Highway. For now, enjoy our Essential Molly Tuttle Playlist.
(Editor’s Note: This conversation between Black Opry co-director Holly G and BGS executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs was moderated by journalist Jewly Hight and marks the culmination of our Artist of the Month coverage of Black Opry. Find more on Black Opry here.)
“I just wrote this down, because I need to look at this every single day,” Amy Reitnouer Jacobs informs Holly G while scribbling on a sticky note: “Your name’s on there. You get full credit.”
Holly G, the creator of the Black Opry, has just dropped a gem of practical, principled wisdom that she’s developed through dealing with event organizers, entertainment companies, and institutions who expect her to lend them her presence, while withholding her critiques of the racial biases baked into how they operate. Her hard-line posture? “My participation is not an endorsement.”
Even in a matter as small as pinning that sentence to her wall, an act we observe on the Zoom screen, longtime BGS leader Reitnouer Jacobs knows well the importance of receiving proper credit, and compensation, as a persevering music industry dreamer and doer who’s also a woman.
These two founders of influential, community-shaping music platforms have crossed paths on plenty of occasions, but they’d never before stopped to compare notes. Their work addresses the insularity of music scenes in different ways, Holly G’s taking aim at country music’s exclusion of Black performers and Reitnouer Jacobs’ at bluegrass’ fierce protectiveness of perceived threats to its purity. Still, the similarities between what they’ve experienced, how they’ve responded and who they’ve paid attention to pile up rapidly in our Zoom conversation.
By the time we’re through, Reitnouer Jacobs signing off from her Los Angeles home office and Holly G abandoning her laptop to check on guests she’s invited to a Black Opry mixer at a rented house in Nashville, they’re feeling a significant overlap in their labor and making plans to actually, some day, do something together.
Jewly Hight: You both had careers completely outside of music and then your own fandom drove you to start blogs and put your stakes in the ground in the digital space. I was thinking back to the crossroads moment that you each must’ve reached where you were starting to get a response and see other ways that you could decide to get involved in those musical spaces. What really mattered to making the decision to expand each of your missions?
Holly G: I don’t feel like it was a decision for me. I’ve never consented to any of this. [Laughs]
I feel like it really, really shifted right after you interviewed me for the first time, and that article went up on NPR. That’s when everybody was like, “Oh, this is serious.” And because what we were actually doing was so vague, because I didn’t have a plan, people were just asking me to do everything; I had never said what I could or couldn’t do. By the time people started asking me for heavier lifts, I had already met these artists and I was so invested in the artists and seeing how hard they worked. I was like, “I’m never gonna say ‘No’ to anything. What could be good for them? What could push them forward?” A lot of it just went over my head, ‘cuz I was just saying “Yes.” And then I was like, “Oh shit, how did we get here?”
Amy Reitnouer Jacobs: That actually really resonates, when you said once you started meeting the artists that suddenly you saw where the needs were. That was a huge shift for me. I mean, I got into this as a fan, but I really didn’t think about writing about this community, this genre until I started to become friends with the artists that were involved and get to know them and become kind of part of their circles.
I think there was definitely a moment of, “Oh wait, you’re not being served? We’ll work on that. We’ll start covering that. Wait, you also are not being represented over here? Let’s cover this, too.” I’ve had to learn how to say “No” over the years, but my immediate instinct is always to say “yes” and then figure it out.
HG: My rule is if it’s not gonna negatively affect my mental health, then I say, “Yes.” That’s where I draw my line at. As an outsider, when you come in, you see the gaps, but then you also see how easy it would be to fix them. Sometimes people don’t know or they’ve just never been asked to do the right thing. But if you can have somebody [involved] that’s not an artist, they’re like, “There’s no ulterior motive.” Nobody thinks that I’m asking for Black people to get on stage so that I can go sing, ‘cuz we all know I can’t.
JH: It changed everything when you each were put in close proximity to artists who were working toward things, and had ambitions and scenes that they were part of or wanted to be a part of. What did it actually look like to turn your desire to help into strategies?
ARJ: When you’re actually given real responsibility that you have to show up for and deliver, suddenly it all becomes a lot more real. I had to go through a perspective shift.
I would say producing the IBMA Awards was a really big thing, because it was suddenly very, very real. It wasn’t just me being like, “What the fuck, IBMA? Come on, get your shit together.” It was like, “Now they’ve handed me something that I can make a change in, and I have to do it and I have to do it right. And I have to do it to not only to an industry standard, but to the personal standards with which I wanna move forward and I wanna see this industry move forward.” So that and doing a [BGS] stage at Bonnaroo, doing a lot of the curatorial stages, like what Black Opry does as well. I think when you suddenly are putting this out in a packaged way for everyone to see, it kind of makes it all a little bit more real.
HG: It’s really cool to hear your perspective, because as you know, there’s not a lot of people who have journeys that are like ours.
When you say going from yelling about it to being in the room and they’re asking you what to do about it is a very weird feeling. Especially because I wasn’t criticizing [the country music industry] with any intent for anybody to ask me any questions. It’s like going into somebody’s house and you’re like, “I hate this wall color.” And they’re like, “Okay, well paint it.” And I’m like, “Well, I’m just giving you my opinion.” You know what I mean?
JH: There’s a big difference between critiquing from a distance and being handed a thing and asked to work on changing it. That raises the stakes.
HG: I was speaking before I knew what I know now, but as a fan, you’re not thinking about how the industry works. You’re just seeing the flaws and you’re like, “Well, this doesn’t make any sense.” But you’re not ever thinking with the expectation that you’re gonna have to be the one to fix it.
When we started booking shows that we were actually getting paid for, as soon as money started coming in, I was like, “Whoa, that always feels like a big responsibility to me.” Because it wasn’t a career aspiration of mine, not in any real substantial way. Once money started coming in, I’m like, “Number one, this needs to be distributed fairly.”
It took me a long time to take money from shows. My agent would yell at me all the time. She’s like, “Why aren’t you paying yourself?” And I’m like, “Well, because I wanna make sure the artists get paid.” And she’s like, “This is a business. You’re doing work. You have to pay yourself.” Finally, after exhausting myself and realizing that the exhaustion was because of the work that I was putting into it, I’m like, “Okay, I’ll pay myself.”
ARJ: Holly, that really struck a chord with me, what you said about the money. When those stakes came in, it was like, “Oh, this isn’t just a blog anymore.” There is something on the line and there’s someone investing in me and in this idea, too, and they’re investing with the trust that I’m gonna do the good work.
It took me over five years not to start necessarily paying myself, but to start prioritizing myself and considering myself part of that package, rather than just putting everything I had into it, at the sacrifice of personal life and sometimes physical and mental health and financial choices.
HG: I wouldn’t have made it that long. But you know why, though? I got to that point so much quicker, only because a lot of the things that people were asking me to do were so emotionally draining, like to constantly go through racial trauma and explain myself. That shit is so exhausting. I very quickly was like, “What am I getting out of this?” I do not mind taking money from that at all.
I still don’t think that I’ve seen the changes I would like to see overall – in any facet of the industry. But what I have seen is individual artists’ lives completely changed. They can tour in a different way because of the way that we tour. Our tour minimum is $400 per show. So they can go out and play a show with us for $400, and that means that they can go to that area and play a couple other bars where they might not really get paid anything, but they’ve gotten something to get up there to help them get a little bit of a leg up.
JH: You were talking about learning how things work in the industry. I imagine that part of that involved coming to understand the established pipelines that exist in country music, in bluegrass, and in roots music, how they work, who they work for, and who they don’t work for. Realizing that they are not built in a way that is meant to serve everyone. You didn’t just accept that those established models are the only options. What kind of relationship do you each have to the industry? And where do you place your trust?
HG: I don’t trust anybody. My mission is to serve the artists. My personal feeling is that we need to build systems outside of what exists and so that we can build it in a better way. Because you’re not gonna go into an institution that’s been around for a hundred years and fix things that have been wrong for a hundred years. It’s not gonna happen, especially not gonna happen quickly.
However, it is not my right or privilege to tell an artist that they shouldn’t participate in the industry. So that being said, I have to work in parallel. Yes, I’m building things, but I also have to interact with the industry in a way that I can advocate for the artists that wanna participate in that.
And so when I do interact with the industry, it’s basically like, “What can I get out of you?” Because I know this is how they look at me. And so my first thing is, “What do you have that I can get that will serve me, that will serve my artists, that will serve my mission and my brand?” If what I can get from you feels like it’ll be worth whatever it is that you want to take from me, then I do it. But if I can’t get something back, that’s gonna make that exploitation worth it–because that’s what the whole industry is, exploitation–then I just move on.
ARJ: It took me a while to realize that, when I was talking about not prioritizing myself and not paying or taking care of myself, that in doing so I was actually falling into the trap that so many of these institutions had established of not paying women the same amount, not paying us what we’re worth.
I know that there are industry standards of not paying Black women what they’re worth, even less. I thought for a while that just by being part of this panel or whatever, I’m doing the right thing, ‘cuz I’m there and I’m representing something new and different and fresh and modern.
But by accepting an honorarium that I would find out later was less than some of the male names also appearing at a conference, I was falling into the same trap. It still enrages me, still gets me mad and so I feel like now I can be in, but not of a lot of these institutions. I’m happy to work with them if they’re gonna pay up and have us there for a reason, but I’m not going to serve them. I am not going to help, assist or fix what is institutionally wrong.
That’s partially why I’m really proud that BGS has continued to be independently run and owned this whole time, because we don’t answer to anybody, and nor do I plan to.
HG: I’ve pissed quite a few people off, ‘cuz I’ll work with them, but then after it’s over, they do something else. Then I criticize them and they’re like, “But wait, you came and did a panel for us.” And I’m like, “My participation is not an endorsement.” My presence does not mean you are off the hook for everything that you have done or going to do in the future. And so it has been interesting to watch them fall apart as I continue to criticize them and to see which ones come back after that. And that’s how I can tell whether or not they actually wanna do the work. If I criticize you and you come back for more, that tells me how you wanna do the work. That’s been a really good filtering tool for me.
JH: Even with the healthy skepticism that you’re each describing, you’ve managed to execute really massive events and partnerships. How do you make those decisions about what powerful people or institutions are worth partnering with?
HG: There’s no science to it, I feel like, because the other thing is there’s good people at bad places and that’s across the board. If I can find the good people at the bad place, then I’ll work with those people. And that’s just kind of how I do it.
I’ve gotten to the point now where I tell them that part up front: “This does not absolve you from anything that you do. I’m still gonna speak up.” One of the things that I’m afraid of happening is for people to look at what I’m doing and be like, “Okay, well she got in the room now, so I guess everything’s fine. She’s not speaking out anymore.” I don’t want it to look like I’ve closed the door behind me. If you can’t handle that, then we don’t have any business together. And as long as you find those good people, they’re gonna understand that and they’re gonna push forward anyway.
And sometimes because of that, I’ve had people tell me, “Please continue to criticize us, because that’s the only way I can get my bosses to do [anything] is when you won’t shut the fuck up on Twitter.”
ARJ: For the most part, I find that there are really good people on the ground, doing the work and for me, a lot of it just comes down to – I don’t know – intuition. It’s not necessarily a financial thing. It’s not necessarily a visibility thing. I think that’s kind of my unofficial business strategy, which is probably not something that they teach you to do when you have an MBA. But I never planned to get into this job to begin with, so I just go on intuition and I work with people I love. I return to things that I love and places that take care of our artists and take care of our community and take care of us. Those are the people that I will continue to invest in and go back to.
JH: Bluegrass, Americana, roots, and country are so often spoken of as though they are strongholds of authenticity insulated from commerce, to an extent. But we know that all of these spaces are inherently commercial if anyone’s trying to make a living off of them. So as people who are very invested in building community where it doesn’t exist in the ways that it needs to, how do you hold those two things next to each other?
HG: I do not. I think that also the whole conversation about authenticity is bullshit. It’s a way to move the goalpost, so that they can keep the people they want in and keep the people they want out out: “That’s not real country. That’s not real Americana.” It doesn’t fucking matter, because what makes it real is usually who makes it. If they look at somebody and they recognize that person as somebody that they want in that space, they’ll accept anything. It doesn’t matter what it sounds like if it comes from the right person. It’s a tool that they use so that if somebody comes along that they don’t feel like fits in because of their gender, their sexuality, their color, whatever it is, they can then say, “Oh, well then it’s not real X, Y, Z,” and they can get away with it.
JH: I also want to get at how you’re acknowledging that this is commercial, but also insisting that building community matters. How do you do both at the same time?
HG: Very easily. ‘Cuz you do things where you bring people together behind the scenes when you know everybody’s in town. That’s what we do. We get a house and we make sure everybody has somewhere to come together. But when you ask me to show up at the thing, I’m gonna ask you for a check. You’re gonna pay me to have official participation, but behind the scenes, we do things that build community. I feel like that’s all relative, right? So I’m not gonna go to a festival that’s just starting up and be like, “We need $20,000.” But if you’re paying everybody, make sure you pay us what’s fair in relation to what you have. So it’s just figuring that part out, but also always making sure you’re asking for it. I’ve learned to ask upfront, “What’s your budget?” Because that way I know where the conversation is gonna go.
JH: That’s sort of like reverse gatekeeping, in a sense. When you put together events or decide to gather artists to participate under the name of Black Opry, some of those things are for the public, outward-facing performances. Then there are things you do, like rent this house and invite who you want to be here, where you’re creating a safe, private space.
HG: The way that I curate the shows is more community driven. I try to pair up artists, especially if they’re traveling for a tour, that I feel like their personalities either mesh or there’s something in their story that I know would [connect] with each other or like things like that. It doesn’t matter if two artists’ music would sound great on the same bill, if those people don’t connect. I mean, I can put people together that sound completely different. I’ve had Jake Blount and Kentucky Gentlemen on a show together before, and they all were so excited to be with each other. The best part of our shows is usually the green room. That’s kind of a private, intimate space.
ARJ: You keep saying a lot of parallel things to what we do. I didn’t realize how parallel some of our experiences have been, and it just makes me love you more, Holly.
So much of what we’ve done over the years, it will never be public facing and the public will never even know about, because it’s not why we do it. And I think it’s what makes artists continue to come back to BGS events or wanna be covered on the site. Artists that, 10 years ago, I would’ve never thought I’d ever get the time of day from will say “Yes” to things because we put them first and we have given them a safe and fun and communal space to be together.
When I started BGLA originally, and then BGS, I wanted it to be this place for modern fans, for younger fans, for all fans that I didn’t think were being served or represented. I think for a while I was really susceptible to this yarn that they were spinning of, “There’s just not enough women in bluegrass. There’s just no Black people in bluegrass.” And I’m like, “Wait, I don’t know if that’s right.” And then the more you dig and the more you get involved, you’re like, “These communities have been here the whole time.” This is not only about creating community, this is about connecting community. This is about bringing communities together, representing them, and, and connecting the dots, whether it’s a digital community or artists in a green room or in a house to hang out for a jam.
HG: It’s so funny, like how the parallels keep coming up. Cause people have asked me a lot recently in interviews, “How do you feel about this revolution in country music?” And I’m like, “It’s not a revolution. It’s recognition.” This has been here the whole fucking time.
JH: There are deeply entrenched perceptions about what the country fan base looks like that are based on the continual and artificial segregation of the industry. And there are equally entrenched perceptions of what a bluegrass fan base looks like, based on the fervent reverence for the models laid down by the first generations of musicians. How have you developed ways of speaking to audiences within audiences, those that have gone unseen and overlooked?
HG: I’m telling you, I thought I was the only one when I started Black Opry. It was more like a search and explore mission than it was like an intentional, “I’m gonna find these people.” Because as a Black person that loves country music, I promise you, anytime you tell somebody that, you get looked at like you just fell out of a UFO.
I was equally surprised when I found artists. I didn’t think there were more than five artists. I was like, “We got Mickey, Jimmie, Kane and Darius.”
There was so much passionate relief when people started seeing you and feeling seen. It still surprises me. And I’ll be honest: We still haven’t gotten to where we need to be as far as the fan base with country music. There are a lot more queer fans simply because there are a lot more white, queer people that like country music. So we’ve built up a really, really big white, queer fan base.
A big priority for me this year is how do we connect with Black fans? Because the Black publications and the places that Black people go to for music typically don’t interact with country music.
But I will say, every show that we’ve had that I’ve been to, there’s at least one Black person that comes up to me and goes, “I thought I hated country music, but I saw the word Black in front of it, so I came just to see what it was. ‘Cuz it sounded weird. And I loved all of this. If I knew country music was like this, I would’ve known I liked it.” We’re trying really hard to figure out how we get to those people in a more broad way and get more of them. We need our audiences to look like what we want our stages to look like.
A lot of the places I’ve been to, regardless of how kind the organizers have been, it doesn’t always feel safe. And so there’s no part of me that wants to advocate for Black people to come into some of these spaces, because I can’t guarantee they’re gonna feel good. At Newport [Folk Festival], we felt good, even with being all white people. It’s just the type of people that they attract; they’re good people. And so we’ve really, really been interested in seeing how we can figure that piece of it out, where we get more Black people to these spaces. But, I can’t consciously advocate for too much of that yet, because I need to see the institutions doing the work to make it safe.
JH: So it’s still very much an open question of how you find, reach, and speak to Black country fans.
ARJ: Something that we asked ourselves very early on was not how do we reach other Bluegrass fans or where do we look for other Bluegrass fans, but where are we not looking? Who are we not reaching? What’s gonna be unexpected in that crossover Venn diagram of fandom?
Because like you were saying, you felt like you were the only one. I felt like I was in a minority of young, urban dwelling, West Coast, female fans that didn’t grow up in the South, you know? I started the whole thing from a need to connect with other people. I mean, it really stemmed out of loneliness. But I realized that my online demographics wouldn’t have made me a targeted fan if I were launching BGS. Like, any advertising or any kind of targeting we would’ve been doing, I myself wouldn’t have been found.
I think we just realized within our first three, four years, we have to turn ourselves outwards and reject everything that we’ve been told of who fans are and who communities are. And we have to be looking elsewhere, and we’re continuing to do that. It’s a question that we’re constantly asking ourselves, and I think it’s something that you’re never done searching for because there’s always someone else who feels like they have been excluded or that they are alone in this, whether they’re a fan or a player, or they don’t know what they are yet.
I remember one of the first meetings that I had with some IBMA folks. They were like, “You keep putting up all this like modern stuff and this isn’t real bluegrass.” And I’m like, “You’re gonna tell me if a kid walks in to McCabe’s guitar shop in Santa Monica and wants to buy a Deering banjo and pick up a banjo for the first time ever because he watched a Mumford and Sons video, that you’re gonna tell him ‘No’? That you’re gonna say ‘No’ because that’s not bluegrass?” Fine, we don’t have to put a label on it. Why don’t you open up that door and introduce ’em to Earl Scruggs. Let’s take them down that rabbit hole and connect the dots once again for that person. How about we take their hand and help guide them through this expanse of everything?
JH: Since you mentioned a first-generation bluegrass icon, something that’s baked into country, bluegrass and roots music is venerating elders and creating canons. And that’s just as much about excluding people as it is about who belongs in the canon.
You each make elders very present in what you do. Holly, you recently advocated for the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit that includes the Black Opry to also include its predecessors, Frankie Staton and the Black Country Music Association. Amy, you make decisions about meaningful coverage of multiple generations of performers all the time, and BGS just published an appreciation of an underappreciated first-generation picker, Gloria Belle. How do you think about ways of doing that better than you’ve seen it done?
HG: I don’t wanna make it seem like I strong-armed [the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum]. I would not have had a problem strong-arming them, but they were gonna do it anyway. So they said, “We’ve already sent a letter to [Frankie]. Calm down.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.”
I don’t really think of it so much in that light that you’re describing as I do that we don’t have a record of Black country music history. For me, it’s about building that record. There’s so many people – like Wendy Moten. Wendy’s been singing with Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and Vince Gill for years and years and years. She’s part of Black country music history to me, and we have no record of that. Nobody’s ever talked about it. It’s about finding those people from the other generations that have been doing this long before it was something I ever thought about, and making sure they’re included in this narrative so that whoever comes up after us doesn’t have to work so hard to find these things out.
There’s no reason I shouldn’t have known the things that I’m finding out now until I had to literally dig for them — and I get access to a lot of it, ‘cuz people see what I’m doing and will bring stuff to me. But it’s not out there and ready for the public.
ARJ: Building that history is such an important part. And because we have a platform, because we have this online record that we are building, that’s part of our responsibility, is to help maintain that.
Gloria Belle, like we heard about her passing and then we waited and there were no obits. And we were like, “Who’s, who’s gonna cover this? Oh wait, it’s us. We have to be the ones to cover it.” I should know that 10 years on. But I still get reminded time and time again, we still have to do the work.
I am not one to venerate folks who maybe don’t deserve it. But I do think it’s the same idea of you’ve gotta know the rules in order to break them. You have to know the history in order to figure out where you’re going and how to break out of that and how to change it.
JH: You both are continually adapting how you present and position what you’re doing. Do you feel like you have come up against the limitations of genre? And have you looked for ways to free your efforts up from those limitations?
HG: Yeah, that one’s been tough. I know what kind of music I personally like, and I like music that would be described as Country music by literally anybody who heard it. It’s usually not a gray area, the things that I like personally, and that’s what brought me to where I am.
But also, all of the artists that I talk to across the board say that genre is a harmful concept to their careers. And so it’s deconstructing that concept, but also realizing too that the advocacy, everybody needs all of this stuff. It’s not just people in this space. So it’s like, “Where do I fit into that?” Regardless of how I feel about anything, there’s enough people in [all parts of] the industry telling Black people “No.” And so if a Black artist comes to me and wants to work with us, I really don’t give a shit what they sound like. The answer is gonna be “Yes.” I’m never gonna turn anybody away. Right now where I’ve kind of settled is anybody can come and play with us with any style, but the advocacy work that I do is going to focus on country music spaces and institutions, just because that’s where my passion is and that’s where I see the greatest need for it. I do acknowledge that there’s problems across the board. If you look at the work that the Black Music Action Coalition does, they’re doing it across all genres.
I’m sure you get this too, Amy, where it’s like you want to work on the things that you care about and you like, but also once you have this level of responsibility, that really doesn’t matter anymore. It’s out the window. It should never be about what personal taste is. It should be about what’s best for the group at large.
ARJ: It was very confusing, I think, for folks to initially come to the site and realize that it wasn’t just Bluegrass. And our whole point was like, “This is pulling from the traditions of the genre that is called Bluegrass.” But that has taken on different incarnations and iterations over the years since it was established. I guess you could say, by the IBMA standards of 1945, you know, Bill Monroe. For a while it was about bucking people’s expectations when they would get to the site of what they thought they were gonna get versus what they were given on the website.
Then we made a very conscious shift to be called BGS. We still use the Bluegrass Situation. A lot of people still know us as that, but we have really made a conscious effort to switch over to BGS, in the long tradition of things like CBGB, or NME Magazine. After a while, it just becomes those letters. So that’s always been my hope, that it becomes more of an umbrella organization and that it’s not limited. I still lean on genre when I feel like it’s advantageous. Because at the end of the day, I’m not going to stop it from existing. It exists. It’s how certain people can identify what they want to listen to or how we search for a playlist, even. It’s just how things are organized, whether we like it or not.
So when I can be disruptive within those structures, I will utilize it. I know that I can make certain calls, or I can show up to certain conferences and I can make an impact within this community and I can have some kind of small change within this community. And that is what drives me, and that is when I’m willing to use genre, if it means that I can insert myself and continue to be a part of that and enact change.
HG: A lot of artists tell me that they feel like genre is weaponized against them. I feel like we have an opportunity to take that and then weaponize it back against the industry itself. Because it’s literally just a marketing tool, so you just have to figure out how to play the game so that it helps the artist more than it hurts him.
With her warm, agile voice and potent lyricism, Julie Williams is taking the country music world by storm. On June 2 she released her self-titled EP containing 6 original, remarkable tracks. Through her narrative lyrics and captivating melodies, Williams’ songs discuss a wide palate of her lived experience — as a Black woman living in the South, as a navigator of harmful sexual encounters, as someone who has loved, and as someone who has lost. Her record will take listeners on an evocative journey through her emotional landscapes, with peaks and troughs and everything in between.
Currently based in Nashville, Williams’ robust and radiant presence is enlivening the Music City landscape and beyond. Earlier this year, she was selected as one of CMT’s Next Women of Country, where she joins other major talent alumni of the Next Women of Country such as Margo Price, Kacey Musgraves, Lainey Wilson, Brittney Spencer, Lauren Alaina, Madeline Edwards, Maren Morris, Morgan Wade, and many more.
Williams is also a seasoned member of the Black Opry Revue, a collective based in Nashville that features Black artists in country, Americana, blues, and folk music. Her current solo tour is in full-swing as she enchants summertime audiences across the country.
BGS: Can you tell me a little bit about your personal history with music? Do you come from a line of musicians? Or did you find this path on your own?
JW: Neither of my parents play music or sing. There was always this joke in my family that I would listen to what my parents did and do the opposite. … There’s definitely a history of musicians in my extended family, but it wasn’t necessarily something where I grew up with everybody playing an instrument around me.
My parents always joked that I told them, “I can sing.” Ever since I was little, it was my way to relieve stress when on an airplane or a car ride or something. I was singing songs, making up songs, singing Barney songs. And I think for them, it wasn’t until they went to an elementary school play of mine, and saw me compared to some of the other kids, that they realized I actually could sing a little bit better. When I was in middle school I started singing national anthems and then I would sing at beach bars and restaurants and weddings. That was kind of my early start into professional singing. Then, when I got to college, I started songwriting and turned into the artist that I am now, but I’ve always been making some sort of noise.
You knew from the very start! On your EP, you share a lot of really beautiful narrative songs, and I’m wondering about your creative process. When does it become clear to you which of your stories needs to become a song?
I do write a lot of narrative songs. That’s what I love. I always write lyrics first. Usually, it’s just a dump, like a poem, that comes out. Sometimes [it’s] not even a really good and properly formatted poem, but then I kind of piece that together and turn it into a song, or I bring it to somebody that I really trust to help me bring the story to life, and together we turn it into the song.
I started with my creative process after I took a songwriting class when I first moved to Nashville with this amazing professor at Vanderbilt, Deanna Walker. She made the point that good lyrics should be able to stand on their own. The best songs can make you feel something from just reading. It really stuck with me.
That question of knowing which stories ultimately make it into song — I ask myself that same question all the time. Because sometimes I think, “Oh, I’m gonna write a song about that.” Then I sit and I try to conjure up something and nothing comes, or nothing that I feel is worth putting out into the world. But I don’t like to push things in my songwriting. Sometimes, if I just have a word, or I just have a phrase, or maybe a few lines about a story, I will leave it and wait. Because, six months later, something else has happened. I begin to process whatever that moment was a little bit differently, and all of a sudden, it just begins to flow.
I really like to write songs that make somebody really feel something or see themselves in a certain way or something that has a kind of unique twist, even if it’s a love song or a breakup song. Sometimes I have to wait until I can find that perspective in an everyday moment before it turns into a song.
You do that so beautifully! I’d like to ask more about those collaborators you mentioned—can you tell me a bit about your work with the Black Opry and how you became involved?
I was in Pigeon Forge, actually, to play a show at the Listening Room there with a friend of mine named Bonner. I think there were only like five people there, so we were kind of down in the dumps a bit. But I posted, “We’re here in Pigeon Forge,” and Holly G of the Black Opry, who I’d never met in person, messaged me on Instagram. She said they were having a Black Opry show at Dollywood, and we should come by after our show. We went and caught the last song of the show. [Afterward] everyone was hanging at the hotel and I got to meet Holly G, Tanner D, Aaron Vance, Roberta Lea, Crys Matthews, Virginia Prater, who is my booking agent now — a lot of the people that became part of my family. We all hung out in this hotel room, passing around a guitar, singing songs.
I just immediately felt so comfortable and at home. These people felt like my cousins! I told Holly, “Look, I would love to be involved with Black Opry. I’m single, I have no responsibility right now, just put me on the road! I will play any show, any place, any time.” She put me on a few Black Opry runs; before those runs were happening I was thinking that I was done in Nashville. I wasn’t feeling like my career was moving forward. I really felt kind of lost, creatively. I hadn’t yet found those creative collaborators. And when I did that first Black Opry run, everything just clicked and I knew I needed to be a part of it because it just felt like magic.
Wow, it sounds like your whole world expanded. Is there any advice you would give to aspiring Black artists looking to break into the country music scene?
I think my advice would be that it’s hard to do this alone. It can feel like you’re on an island. But it’s so much easier to do this work when you have other people around you that really support and uplift you. Reach out to the Black Opry, or the NSAI chapter near you. Set aside some of that energy that you’re putting towards your own individual projects into building community — even if that’s an online community at first. That’s how I met a lot of people during COVID time and after the murder of George Floyd, that’s when so many Black artists were coming out.
It just makes it so much easier to be in spaces where there are people around you who just get it, and who really believe in you and care for you and support you. Why build a car that only one person can get into and make it just a few miles down the road? Why don’t we instead all build a bus together that has space for everyone and we can all get there together? It’s just so much more fulfilling and honestly so much more fun.
What a beautiful metaphor, thank you for sharing that. Speaking of communal support and inspiration, you’re being featured as “One to Watch,” but do you have any ones you’re watching? Who is inspiring you these days?
I have this Spotify playlist called “Big Blue House and Her Sisters” of songs that feel like musical sisters of “Big Blue House.” There are a lot of artists on there that really inspire me. I would also say Denitia, a Black Opry artist who was named CMT Equal Access Artist — an incredible singer, songwriter, producer — just a powerhouse. We met at a Black Opry show in September and have become best friends. Also, you can’t be following what’s happening in Black music and queer music right now and not know the force that is Autumn Nicholas. Their performance at Love Rising had everyone in that room, thousands of people including myself, in tears. Lastly, Raye Zaragoza is an amazing Asian, Indigenous, and Latinx artist. I had the honor of meeting her on the Cayamo Cruise. She has been such an inspiration to me as a songwriter in the ways that she incorporates all of her identity into everything she makes, and her songs have such resonance and power that really make you feel. There’s no way you can listen to her songs and not feel moved and inspired by them, which is everything I’m trying to do in my songwriting, and I think she does it flawlessly.
Rissi Palmer and Miko Marks have been laying the foundation for country musicians and fans who are Black for almost 20 years. Back in the early 2000s, both experienced the trials and tribulations of being Black women in country. Despite their successes and large growing fanbase, they were separately discouraged by the ceilings and roadblocks they encountered from the white-dominated industry. Even though they each nearly quit music, they discovered a deep and meaningful ally and friend in each other. Now, they are back in the spotlight in a different era that has seen a rise of Black musicians – and The Black Opry in Nashville. Recently, Rissi and Miko have been touring together and we got them both on the show to talk about their parallel experiences, their friendship, and what they’ve been up to recently. It was a sincere honor and a blast to speak with these inspiring women.
This month The Bluegrass Situation is highlighting The Black Opry as Artist of the Month. Basic Folk, a part of The Bluegrass Situation Podcast Network, is proud to present this episode in collaboration with our BGS motherhost.
Throughout Rodney Crowell’s best work, there’s a rhythm — one could say a heartbeat — in the way he sings and writes about love and mistakes. You can feel the pulse inside of his poetry, an undeniable energy that marks this Texas native as one of the most intriguing and important country and Americana songwriters of his generation. He can be sentimental but rarely sappy, always ready to reassess a situation through a song without making you feel like you’ve heard it before. His albums reveal themselves further over time, rather than chasing a trend.
Longtime fans of Crowell’s work are likely to keep his new album, The Chicago Sessions, in rotation alongside classics like Diamonds & Dirt or The Houston Kid. (Even the album’s cover image is a throwback to his 1978 debut.) Compelling new songs like “Making Lovers Out of Friends” are delivered in a voice that’s weathered but not weak, yet he also offers salutes the late great Townes Van Zandt with a poignant rendition of “No Place to Fall,” composed decades ago by Van Zandt from the perspective of a sad wanderer who’s looking for someone to count on.
For The Chicago Sessions, Crowell counted on producer Jeff Tweedy and recording engineer Tom Schick to frame the collection in a manner that feels eloquent as well as immediate. Crowell and Tweedy also team up to sing the album’s lead single, “Everything at Once,” and the mutual admiration is evident.
Upon its release, Crowell noted, “It occurred to me that Jeff and I are both songwriters, and we ought to write something together for this album. We could have harmonized on it and gone down an Everly Brothers route, but ultimately we decided to just sing in unison and throw it out there like an all-skate. I love that we didn’t get too precious about it.”
Tweedy added, “The way that Rodney writes is deeply connected to a classic era of country songwriters that I’ve always loved. In my estimation, it’s as close as I can get to working with Townes Van Zandt or Felice and Boudleaux Bryant — people who crafted songs with a very specific sensibility. And I like being near that.”
Same here. For that reason and many more, we’re proud to reveal Rodney Crowell as our BGS Artist of the Month. In a few weeks, we’ll share our exclusive interview about his new work, plus we’re diving into our archives for our favorite tracks and videos from his admirable career – like his 2017 Sitch Session performance of “East Houston Blues.” Meanwhile, enjoy our BGS Essentials playlist for Rodney Crowell.
Photo Credit: Claudia Church
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