Tag: Basic Folk

Basic Folk – Dietrich Strause

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Dietrich Strause, raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was classically trained on trumpet growing up, but the allure of songwriting and performing his own music pulled him into the Americana world. He found his way to the Boston area and into its super collaborative and supportive community.

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On his new album, You And I Must Be Out Of My Mind, Dietrich found himself more in control of the creative process thanks to spending years cultivating his skills at Great North Sound in Parsonsfield, Maine. Under the mentorship of producer Sam Kassirer, he became empowered in his craft by offering up his services as a session player, engineer and studio handyman. The record took several years to record, but due to his experiences with Sam, he was able to see the way that bands made decisions in the studio and how a record takes shape, which all culminated on his latest record.

Dietrich’s known in the Boston area for sitting in on sessions and live shows with people like Rose Cousins, Kris Delmhorst, and Session Americana. He’s built a home and a community there. Now, Dietrich is in the process of moving his base to London, which sounds challenging to do at any time, never mind during a global pandemic. He talks about how it’s been a strange move and how the pandemic has impacted his relationship with touring. Full disclosure: Dietrich is a close pal of mine and one of my favorite hangs. When I spend time with Dietrich, I feel like a little kid: anything is possible and the day is ours. His music gives me that feeling, too. Hope you enjoy getting to know Dietrich and his perfect songs.

Photo Credit: Sam Kassirer

Basic Folk – Edie Carey

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Edie Carey’s last solo full length album was in 2010 (holy smokes!) so we are more than ready to dig into her new record, The Veil, encompassing themes like motherhood, infertility, love, being a lady while raising a girl and all the things that make you cry in your cereal.

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Edie first appeared on Basic Folk in episode 18 and if you haven’t, you should listen. Not only does she talk about her history, but she very openly details her experience with infertility, including winning her son in a raffle (TLDR: her husband won a free IVF treatment at an infertility conference, which then turned into their son Luca). In this conversation, Edie and I go track by track on her new album, which is a JOY because #1 I love Edie’s songs and #2 I love Edie. A winning combo.

These days, Edie is residing in Colorado Springs, working with area musicians, touring occasionally (when COVID is not raging) and raising her two young kids. Something that’s extraordinary about Edie is that she is not afraid of saying things out loud that most people are. She experienced burn-out after her first baby was born, longed for her pre-baby life, and felt guilty about it. The good news is that she turns emotions like this into fully formed songs where people can see themselves through her experience, and then be okay with talking about hard things. Enjoy this conversation – Edie is so fun and inspiring!

Photo Credit: Steve Willis

Basic Folk – Cristina Vane

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Blues musician Cristina Vane has lived many lives. She grew up in Europe listening to an eclectic mix of emo, pop, and rock. She came to the U.S. to study comparative literature at Princeton before moving to Los Angeles to pursue her songwriting career. Determined to get her music out there on her own terms, Cristina embarked on a life-changing solo tour that took her across the United States. She slept in her tent, took in the majesty of the National Parks, and learned more about American culture than most Americans learn in a lifetime.

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Vane’s new album, Make Myself Me Again, is a sonic homecoming that showcases her remarkable talents as a guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist. Ever a student of the blues, Cristina pays homage to her forebears while telling her own stories with vulnerability. Some of the highlights of our conversation include central New Jersey deli memories, tour stories, Cristina’s approach to finding the perfect guitar tone, and a roundabout journey to identity.

Photo Credit: Stuart Levine

Basic Folk – Grant-Lee Phillips

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Former Grant Lee Buffalo frontman Grant-Lee Phillips’ latest solo album All That You Can Dream is quite dreamy. During the pandemic, Grant’s been contemplating many things and figuring out how to spend his time away from the road. One interest he’s been cultivating is painting. He’s been sharing his paintings on social media and even used a painting of his beloved silver headphones, which you can also find on the liner notes for Grant Lee Buffalo’s Mighty Joe Moon.

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He worked on this album from his home in Nashville where he produced, engineered, mixed, and recorded himself. And in addition to a few other musicians, he’s joined by the crack team of bassist Jennifer Condos and drummer Jay Bellerose. It’s always a treat to hear this dynamic duo! He said working on the album at home “pushed me to take the wheel as an engineer, mixer and producer. Consequently, so many nuances remain in the final mix, all the weird stuff that sometimes gets lost in the polishing stages of production.” I’m all about that on a GLP recording. It sounds rich and raw at the same time, which feels very good in the chest. All That You Can Dream is filled with his signature songwriting: “using rich historical references to illuminate modern truths.” Grant says “I’m always juxtaposing the events that we’re all going through with similar events in history.”

In our conversation, we talk about Grant’s early life in Stockton, CA. He grew up knowing his family included Native Americans on both parents’ sides. He made an album in 2012, Walking in the Green Corn, which explored his indigenous heritage. He gets into how David Bowie opened up his world, why he started playing guitar and what he likes about playing a 12-string versus a 6-string guitar. He talks about how acting has been a constant in his life; from being a professional magician at age 10 to appearing regularly as The Town Troubadour on Gilmore Girls. Hope you enjoy this interview with one of my favorite people!

Photo Credit: Denise Siegel-Phillips

Basic Folk – S.G. Goodman

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

S.G. Goodman’s Kentucky upbringing is front and center in a lot of her songwriting. She is an artist concerned not just with her roots, but also with what it means to stay and invest in community even when it is hard. We started our conversation digging into the DIY music scene that inspired S.G.’s Jim James-produced debut album, Old Time Feeling.

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Goodman’s new record, Teeth Marks, portrays the scars of love and grief. It is a complex, rock-inflected album rooted in relationship. Whether telling a story of romantic love, playfully establishing a connection between the artist and audience, or interrogating a community’s attitude toward the “other,” these songs made me think long and hard about what we are really doing when we talk to each other.

S.G. was also down to talk religion and politics, addressing which issues she wishes more artists would discuss in their works. She is a serious person, a singular artist, and a fascinating person to talk with.

Photo Credit: BK Portraits

Basic Folk – Richard Thompson

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Richard Thompson’s memoir, Beeswing: Losing My Way and Finding My Voice 1967 – 1975 (now out in paperback) is a page-turner of a read about a legend at the dawn of British folk rock. Thompson details his early days with Fairport Convention, one of the most influential folk bands of all time. He writes how they strived to be different and sought out then-unknown songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen while adapting a modern sound for traditional British folk songs, some that were over 500 years old. He recounts tragedy when the band suffered a huge loss: the 1969 car accident that killed their drummer, Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson’s girlfriend of just two weeks, Jeannie Franklyn. He writes about their first experiences in America: rolling around Los Angeles with the likes of John Bonham and Janis Joplin and their triumphant debut at The Philadelphia Folk Festival.

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RT was game to get into anything I threw at him: talk about experiencing such excruciating grief at a young age, what British fortitude means to him, did he ever really get to know his parents, being outwardly calm and inwardly chaotic. There’s a chapter in the book where he details some session work he did in between the time he left Fairport Convention in 1971 and his solo work and work with his then-wife, Linda Thompson. I had a blast looking up all these albums on YouTube, especially Lal and Mike Waterson’s Bright Phoebus from 1972. Very fun music and fun that RT is playing on it! I highly recommend his memoir and hold out my hopes that there may be a part two in his future. I think there is much left to write: his days after the very public breakup with Linda, establishing himself as a solo act and then coming back to work with his extended family in the group Thompson in 2014 on the album Family. Richard’s got a busy summer ahead of him with a couple of cruises and the tenth anniversary of his writing camp, Frets and Refrains. I’m grateful he was able to make some time for us on Basic Folk!

Photo Credit: David Kaptein

Basic Folk – John Doe

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

John Doe’s career has gone from poetry to punk to country to acting to punk to folk and back again several times. Frontman for the extremely influential LA punk band X, John was there at the dawn of West Coast punk and has written about it (twice) in his books Under the Big Black Sun and More Fun in the New World. He actually sourced out most of the books’ chapters and had his friends and other people who were there give accounts, which makes them both pretty well rounded.

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John grew up mostly in Baltimore, under the influence of John Waters and Divine. He worked odd jobs and ran a poetry group there. He’d moved to Los Angeles in the mid 70’s and met his future X bandmates Exene, Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. John’s been in countless films and TV shows since 1987. He kind of stumbled into acting by getting an agent after he was in the indie film Border Radio. You may have seen him in films like Road House or Boogie Nights or series like Carnivale. He’s lived in Austin, Texas since 2017 and loves to tell people it’s terrible, so that no one else moves there.

John Doe’s latest album Fables in a Foreign Land takes place in the 1890’s and surrounds a young man who’s found himself alone in a cruel hard world. The album’s sound was developed through weekly jam sessions in his bassist’s backyard. This time around, John’s played up his interest in folk and roots music, all the while keeping that punk sensibility. He says, “These songs take place alone, wandering, searching and hungry accompanied by horses not machines.” And speaking of horses, John’s got a couple and it seems they’ve kept him grounded especially during the pandemic, so yeah, I ask the guy about his horses. That and we also talk about controlling the ego, listening to intuition, taking care of your physical health and his cameo in The Bodyguard (yes the Whitney Houston movie). Thanks Joe Doe!

Photo Credit: Todd V. Wolfson

Basic Folk – Steve Forbert

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Steve Forbert is not a dramatic person. His stories are fairly straightforward even though he’s lived a pretty incredible life, which began in Meridian, MS as a young musician.

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In the hometown of Jimmie Rodgers, Steve found a great guitar teacher in Virginia Shine Harvey, who claimed she was a relation to the famous singing brakeman. Ms. Harvey taught Steve music through performance and connected him to other young musicians in the area, who then went on to form a couple of bands. He left his town for New York City in his early 20’s where he pounded the pavement as a singer-songwriter for a couple years before catching a break. During his climb upwards, Forbert found acceptance in New York’s punk scene, especially at the historic CBGB’s where club owner Hilly Kristal gave him a chance and introduced him to his manager. From there, Steve went on to start making records. His second album, Jackrabbit Slim, gave him his hit song, “Romeo’s Tune,” which he credits giving him his career and “a ticket into the show.” He’s releasing his latest, Moving Through America, with more character studies and focuses on life’s oddities.

It’s not easy to get Steve to talk about himself and his reflections, but he’s up for giving it a shot. He wrote a memoir in 2018, Big City Cat: My Life in Folk-Rock, which sounds like it was a challenge for him to revisit and write about his past – not because it seems like it was filled with mistakes and scandal, but because it was sooo much about himself. He seems grateful for the opportunity to still have a career and does not take it for granted. He also makes some very hip and hot music references in our conversation: like bringing up rappers Megan Thee Stallion and Jack Harlow. Color me impressed, Steve Forbert is watching the Billboard Hot 100.

Photo Credit: Marcus Maddox

Basic Folk – Lily Henley

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Fiddler and singer-songwriter Lily Henley’s latest album, Oras Dezaoradas, is a full-on celebration of her Sephardic Jewish Heritage. The lineage of Sephardic people can be traced back to the Iberian Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492. For Jewish people, there are many diasporas and lots of different ethnic heritages and practices that have been adopted and blended from many other groups along the way. Lily’s heritage is different from the Ashkenazi Jewish people, which is the most represented Jewish sect in the United States, who can be traced back to Eastern Europeans. Lily graciously gives a very brief overview of the diaspora (which is pretty amazing to take in) and the geographical and cultural differences.

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Lily grew up moving around a lot and talks about how that act of moving from place to place impacted her as a young person and how it still affects her. She found a sense of belonging and home at the fiddle camps she attended alongside other musicians her own age. At camp, she learned to play Celtic, old-time and Cape Breton style tunes. While at home, she played traditional Sephardic tunes sung in the Ladino language, also called Judeo-Spanish, which is a combination of Spanish with Hebrew, Arabic, and Turkish elements spoken by less than 100,000 people. As an adult, she was inspired by living in Tel Aviv for three years and immersed in Sephardic culture. She was awarded a Fulbright research grant and is currently an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. She recorded her latest album in Paris: on a label run by a Sephardic community leader while being embraced by and collaborating with the Sephardic community there. OH! Lily has another new non-Ladino album on the way: Imperfect By Design coming January 2023. It’s an Indie-Folk anthology about love, belonging, independence, and change. Look out for that and enjoy this deeply educational conversation!

Photo Credit: Ally Schmaling

Basic Folk – Grace Givertz

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Grace Givertz, born and raised in South Florida, began writing and performing at age eleven when she got a guitar and learned to play off of YouTube videos. Grace is a survivor in many ways: She manages and confronts several chronic illnesses, she survived having her Berklee scholarship rescinded due to a systematic error and lived through being struck by a city bus in 2015.

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The accident left her unable to play her instruments for several months. During that idle time, she reflected on how being a musician defines who she is. Her writing changed and became more open and honest about chronic illnesses. In her most recent single, “Papa,” she writes about the traumatic murder of her grandfather and how he lives on in Grace.

I first came across Grace working at Club Passim in the Boston area, where she currently lives. Grace’s visual appearance, sense of humor and sparkling personality are undeniable. In addition to music, she’s super crafty and her reputation for cute outfits, cute earrings (which she sells on Etsy) and her cute apartment (which I’ve seen a lot of thanks to Zoom concerts and social media) proceeds her. She surrounds herself with her adorable pets that pop up frequently on her social media. One time, my mom (unprovoked – she doesn’t know Grace!) sent me a video of Grace’s bearded dragon, Baby Pancake, being cuddled by her peachy cat Persimmon. Yes, I know most of her pets’ names and have a Grace Givertz t-shirt with a sweet Baby Pancake design on it. I am a fan all around.

Photo Credit: Omari Spears