Tag: BGS 5+5

BGS 5+5: Field Medic

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Artist: Field Medic
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Latest album: fade into the dawn

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

One of the first big shows I ever played was at the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles. One of my friends was joking with me the night before, saying that I should ask everyone to put their phone lights on and sway them back and forth at the show. Apparently he had told our other band friends to try this, but no one wanted to because it’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. Since I was the opener and didn’t really have anything to lose… and I suppose also because I’m kind of a ridiculous person, I asked the crowd to do it during my song “Do a Little Dope” and the whole room lit up. The show was sold out so there was a lot of lights and it felt so cool and surreal, especially being one of my first experiences playing to a room that big. There’s a video taken from side stage of that moment and you can hear my friend screaming while laughing, “It’s a good bit!!! It’s a good bit!!”

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Reading informs a lot of my music. I love to read novels and poetry. I find that reading every day brings me general peace of mind while also filling my head with words and metaphors and symbols which tend to come out subconsciously later on when I’m writing a song.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

When I had no room & was crashing between my girlfriend’s place in San Francisco and my friend’s house in LA in between tours, songwriting became quite difficult because I was never alone.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

In the studio I like to track a song exactly three times without listening in between takes. Sometimes I’ll move the microphone around for each take as well. After I track, I like to step away and maybe smoke a cigarette or go for a walk and just get on with my life. Then hours later I’ll listen back and choose which take to use. it’s usually the first or the second.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Conscious, not precious.

Photo credit: Stephen Beebout

BGS 5+5: Taylor Alexander

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Artist: Taylor Alexander
Album: Good Old Fashioned Pain
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

This may be a little left field, but when I discovered Chris Carrabba’s music with Dashboard Confessional as an early teen it totally changed the way I looked at music. It hadn’t occurred to me up to that point what one guy and a guitar could do. It blew my mind to see a guy with an acoustic guitar impact people so greatly with his lyrics like that. His music led me directly to the greats like Bob Dylan, Guy Clark, and Townes Van Zandt, so his influence can’t be denied.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Reading has always informed my writing. I don’t necessarily write a song based on a book or a character that I’m reading at the time, but I often find that just the act of reading gets my writing muscles warmed up and ready to work.

Martial arts has “art” right there in the name, so I would be remiss not to mention the impact Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has had on my writing and my life. Jiu Jitsu requires a similar intentional, focused effort that writing does, and forces you to learn patience and perseverance to push through when you feel like you can’t. I try to apply that same grit to my writing practice, forcing myself to push through a block and keep working on a song until I think it’s done, and not settling for less.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

When I was in 2nd grade I performed a really simple guitar arrangement of “Ode To Joy” for a school talent show. I was really nervous because I’d never played in front of people before, but I’ll never forget how invigorated I felt after walking off stage. I definitely caught the bug at that moment.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Guy Clark had the best references to food in his songs, from “Homegrown Tomatoes” to “Texas Cookin’,” so I immediately think of him. Some authentic Texas BBQ, a couple cold beers and Guy Clark playing would be about as good as it gets.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I realized recently that I do this quite a bit. I’ve been joking on stage about how this album is really just me talking to myself for over half an hour, and I’m not sure that I realized that while writing the songs. I don’t really write about fictional characters — when it comes down to it, I write songs to speak to myself as much as I write to speak to an audience.

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

BGS 5+5: The Rayo Brothers

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Artist: The Rayo Brothers
Hometown: Lafayette, Louisiana
Latest album: Victim & Villain
Personal nicknames: Daniel – “The Squirrel”; Jesse – “Banjovi”; Lance – “Mandolin” (he’s the drummer); Jordan – “Sad Samurai”

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Daniel: We were playing at a dirty dive bar with a bluegrass band from Texas. It was one of those gigs where you have more people on stage than in the bar. After the show the bar closed and we went into a vacant lot next door and jammed with the other band until 3 a.m. Bluegrass music was a big influence on us growing up and it’s so much fun to play. We really bonded with that band, and that night always remains in our memory as one of our favorites. One of the best things about playing in a band is finding kindred spirits from around the world to share music with. Even when the audience doesn’t turn out and the pay sucks, there’s always the music itself. That’s the reason we’re doing this.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Jesse: Daniel and I both write lyrics for the band and literature is a big influence on both of us. Before I realized I was writing songs, I was just writing poems not meant for music. I often don’t have a melody in mind when writing lyrics, so I try to make them sound good on their own even without music. A lot of the poetry that inspires me is from the late 19th and early 20th century – Robert Frost, Rudyard Kipling, and William Ernest Henley. And as cliché as it is, we’re both into Shakespeare, so that has probably informed some of our writing too.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Jordan: We used to do shirtless chest bumps backstage after shows. I don’t remember how that got started, but we did it for a long time. But once we started having a female violinist playing shows with us, that ritual died out.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Daniel: This might be an odd answer, but it’s a path. Whether it’s a narrow road through fields and woods, or even a hiking trail. It’s where the human element meets the natural element. The road is like time – our perpetual motion through life. It moves us forward, brings us from one place to another. It’s a guide to move you through vast landscapes of possibility.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Jesse: We almost always write in the first person. Usually we’re writing a song by taking some thought or emotion that we have had and building a story around that. But even if it’s not from personal experience, you still have to be able to think like your character when writing a song. So that naturally leads to speaking in the first person, even if the character is not really me.

Photo credit: LeeAnn Stephan

BGS 5+5: Orville Peck

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Artist: Orville Peck
Hometown: Unknown
Latest Album: Pony

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I think country music to me is about storytelling. I really tried to stay true to that on this album by making each song stand as its own story, while keeping the subject matter really personal. So anytime I’m singing one of these songs on stage and I look out in the audience and catch someone who’s singing along to the words or crying — that’s an incredible moment for me. Not just because they are reacting to my story, but because in that exact moment they are also sharing their same story with me. That exchange…there’s nothing like that in the world.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I grew up loving books, films and theatre. I think the iconography of old cowboy novels and Westerns clearly had a lasting effect but I also loved anything that focused on outcasts. Films by David Lynch, Gus Van Sant, John Waters. I always loved the villains or the sidekicks way more than the heroes.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I just always knew I wanted to be a performer since I was really little. I was a lonely kid with a huge imagination so I was always making something or singing or playing my dad’s guitar. Later I would train as a ballet dancer, work as a professional actor, go on tour playing drums and guitar in punk bands — no matter what I was doing I never considered anything other than performing.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

It’s funny because I’m actually not a very technical musician. Every instrument I play, I taught myself and I tend to approach all art, even music, from a visual place. So oftentimes I can visualize what a song looks like, how it feels, how I want other people to feel listening to it, but it can maybe take me awhile to translate that into sound. “Hope to Die” took so many tweaks to sound like what I saw in my head, I think I probably drove the engineer crazy.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

My live band usually goes out to warm up before me so I’m often the last one left to go on stage. It sounds kinda corny but I really try to take that time to focus on what the songs mean to me and to not feel too conscious about the performance. I think all the years of being a stage performer made me feel like I had to stifle anxiety or nerves underneath a performance and kind of put on a “show face” but I actually try to keep things a bit more connected now. I’m a lot more accepting that if I’m nervous or anxious — that’s just part of the show that night.

Photo credit: Carlos Santolalla

BGS 5+5: Palmer T. Lee

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Artist: Palmer T. Lee
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Latest album: Winebringer

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The moment I first realized I wanted to be a musician was catalyzed by an experience I had when I very young. I don’t remember why I was there but I do remember the height of the ceiling, the shape of the windows, the colors of the building, and the smooth painted bricks of the gymnasium. So I know I was at the junior high school of the small town I grew up in and that it must have been the junior high band set up on the floor just in front the stage, and the folding chairs wrapped around them. I was standing in the back and could see the horn section. I have a distinct memory of the ineffable feeling that surged through me the moment the band started playing. The movement of the players, the loudness, the vibrations pulsing through my entire body. Though I was so young I somehow knew I was old enough to where I wasn’t supposed to cry in public, but I wanted to.

Years later, I was maybe in junior high myself at this point, my brother had a garage band. It was just two of them, guitar and drums, and my brother invited me to come watch them play a couple songs. I sat on van bench a few feet away, they began to play Led Zeppelin songs. Immediately, the loudness, the movement, the vibrations, the urge to weep and the stoicism that held back all but one or two tears, that ineffable feeling, something like if you were able to feel beauty with your fingers. Shortly after I began “borrowing” CDs from my dad and my brother and when no one was home I would crank the stereo do my best Robert Plant impressions. That’s when I learned how incredible singing feels and that it’s what I needed to figure out how to do.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Which artist has influenced me the most is a little tricky because there have been a number of periods with varying influence. But lately, the past two or so years, without hesitation would be Jason Isbell. He’s like a Steinbeck of songwriting, the way he can paint a picture with words, so vivid and visceral. And his delivery is genuine and powerful; he can give the simplest line a potent and palpable quality.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

If I had a mission statement for my career it would be to continue to grow musically and find new ways to express myself emotionally and creatively, to always pursue evocative expression, to create a space where people can simply feel something. It’s a simple idea but I know I am not alone in finding tremendous value in it and it’s important to me that other people know they are not alone in finding value in that cathartic experience.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Literature informs my music greatly and regularly. I really enjoy emerging myself in the world and voice of a novelist or a poet to the point where I start thinking and processing things in that voice. It’s a really interesting and fun place to write songs from. It’s a place where I most often surprise myself.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I don’t, very often, hide behind a character in my songs, they tend to be very naked and personal reflections. Though characters do happen and it happens that a song will take on different meanings and contexts over time and I will use different mental imagery while performing them in order to get behind it and into it. When that happens the people and the “me” in the songs may begin to shift or switch around and that can vary as quickly as night to night or even mid-song.

Photo credit: Jessie McCall

BGS 5+5: Songs From The Road Band

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Artist: Songs From The Road Band
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Latest Album: Road to Nowhere

Answers by Charles R. Humphreys III

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Oddly enough the first moment that I knew I wanted to be a musician was when I was watching Low Country Boil Bluegrass Band from South Carolina perform at The Cave, which was a dive bar in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1995. The band was actually more of a jam band that covered Grateful Dead and New Riders of The Purple Sage songs from the best I could tell. At the time I was not a performing musician but was definitely a diehard music lover. When I felt how much joy this tiny band was bringing me in an empty bar I decided that was what I wanted to be able to do for other people. At that moment I decided to devote my life to learning to play music and write songs.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

The toughest time I ever had writing a song that I actually like occurred while writing the title track to Songs From The Road Band’s third studio album Traveling Show. The goal was to write an anthem for a traveling acoustic musician. This co-write with Jonathan Byrd was a struggle until he suggested we look within and write about true life experiences. Then after several months of editing, the material was whittled into a song that made us proud.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Songs From The Road Band’s pre-show rituals are not incredibly unique, but they do exist! We typically meet in private 5 or 10 minutes before the set to go over song order and transitions. A major goal for the group is to create a musical show that flows. Unlike most bands in our genre, we strive not to talk or emcee at all. We then all join our fists in the middle and yell out something inspiring usually related to Team America World Police. “Do it for your country, Gary!”

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Mountains and hiking trails are the elements of nature that I spend the most time with. Being an ultrarunner means I’m often running mountain trails in distances that extend beyond the marathon length of 26.2 miles. The Bartram Trail which stretches from North Carolina to Georgia is the longest trail I’ve ever traversed continuously without stopping for sleep. The trail traces naturalist William Bartram’s traverse through Appalachia and the Southeast. He encountered Native Americans and many species of animals and plants that had never before been documented prior to 1773. His journey took four years and led him to publish his journal, Bartram Travels. I was able to cover approximately 120 some miles of his trek in 42 hours. Images from these mountains and trails often appear in songwriting like in Song From The Road Band’s recording of “Silk and Lace” on the Traveling Show album.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

My dream pairing of a meal and a musician would be a good ole oyster roast with the The Grateful Dead. Ideally it would be the line up from 1977 or 1989 doing an acoustic set as I think that would pair well with the oyster roast vibe. Hopefully the shucking tables would have crackers, butter, horseradish, and hot sauce. I love the “sters” slightly steamed or raw, but the best part of the experience would be sharing the meal with friends new and old. I guess the current touring line up of The Dead including John Mayer would still be a decent experience.

Photo credit: Ken Voltz

BGS 5+5: Fate McAfee

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Name: Fate McAfee
Hometown: Murray, Kentucky
Latest Album: Diesel Palomino
Rejected band name: Little Bill & the Late Fees

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan. He created the potential of the singer-songwriter to be a popular recording artist without compromising the quality of the work. I grew up listening to him, and I’ve found his colorful discography speaks to many different phases of life. He stayed true to himself, despite the backlash he faced while exploring new territory.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My favorite memory thus far was performing with my backing band (Leonard the Band) and my duet partner (Melanie A. Davis) all together at a recent show in Paducah, Kentucky. The energy created amongst six people on the same page musically is a special thing, and I feel there is a lot of potential there.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

A lot of my songs are driven by imagery, so I enjoy reading content influenced by that. I also have some specific literary references in my songs, so I’m certainly inspired by the concepts in the poetry and novels that I read, as well. I enjoy writing that offers just enough for the reader to infer the rest. I think about it like triangulation; if you can give someone two specific ideas, they can deduce what the third (the main sentiment) might be.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I had a long, reserved introduction to performing live. I spent quite a few years writing and practicing before I ventured into public with my songs. But the moment I learned that I wouldn’t have the chance to try out for a college baseball team as I’d planned, I felt my wheels turning in another direction. It was disappointing at first, but I grew excited by the freedom. I began to use more of my time writing songs and practicing guitar, and within two years I began playing shows.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I believe it’s all of our responsibility to help out people who are less fortunate. My father, whose influence is all over Diesel Palomino (lyrically and in the artwork), dedicated his life to this sentiment. He was a photo-journalist who documented human rights abuses by crumbling regimes in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and much of his writing was centered around the concept of privilege vs. responsibility. I believe that humility is humanity.

BGS 5+5: Scott Mulvahill

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Artist: Scott Mulvahill
Hometown: Friendswood, Texas (near Houston)
Latest album: Himalayas
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): I played one show as “Scott Hill” towards the end of college. I was self-conscious about my rather different last name, but after that I just decided to embrace it. If Jake Gyllenhaal can do it…

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

A few years ago, I played a show in Nashville where I gathered a bunch of friends to cover all of Paul Simon’s Graceland album, which is one of my desert island records. It was as fun as it sounds!! But we had a moment of true magic when the power went out in the building. Everyone in the room gathered in and gave us light from their cell phones, and we sang the song “Homeless” acoustically — just my upright and about 10 singers, no PA [system]. It was so powerful, and a moment of chaos was turned into something beautiful. We actually captured it all on video and it’s on YouTube. After we finished the song, the power miraculously came back on and we finished the show. That was such a great moment that I recorded that arrangement of that song and included it on my album.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I just finished a new one that I re-wrote about five times. Eventually I had verses in a decent form, and I ended up writing the chorus with my brilliant friend Ben Shive. At that point it was good, but still not quite there, so I took it into a co-write with the great Beth Nielsen Chapman, and we edited it line by line and she made it so much stronger. So that was a long process, but worth it because I think the end result is pretty special. I’m excited to record it.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I don’t believe in pre-show rituals, besides a very simple warm-up of singing or playing just about anything. I’ll sing a few notes, noodle on bass, mostly just relax. If I had some elaborate ritual that I depended on, I think that would be a mental crutch more than a help. I’ll hear singers talk about certain warm-up routines, or how dairy will throw you off, how you must drink honey, and stuff like that. I want to get my technique and experience to a level where I’m not worried about things like milk ruining my show. Was it really the milk?

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

To always get down to the truth, to find the edge of my abilities, and try to spend as much time there as possible. A song can’t be too vulnerable or too personal in my opinion. The more personal and vulnerable, the more distinct and powerful it’s likely to be. People are looking to artists to be brave in their music, to speak truths from their own angle, and that’s my goal.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

At times I’ve done this without knowing it; I’ve written songs that feel powerful, and only half-way through writing it do I realize that it’s about me and my real-life events. I almost never purposefully write characters, and I wish I could… it’s a different approach that I just don’t know how to do convincingly yet. So my songs to date are almost all autobiographical. And that doesn’t prevent them from being relatable for people. For almost every song I sing, I have a person in mind that I conjure while I sing the song, and that helps me re-enter the emotional space of when the song was written. For songs that are about real events, I want them to feel as real as possible for the audience.

Photo credit: David Dobson

BGS 5+5: Danny Schmidt

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Artist: Danny Schmidt
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest album: Standard Deviation
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): “The Widowmaker,” for the exploits of my youth. Just kidding.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There are two moments that really stand out to me. My wife Carrie Elkin and I got to perform at the Ryman Auditorium for a show with Emmylou Harris a few years ago. That represented so many dream moments of mine colliding in one evening that it was utterly surreal and disorienting. The other evening that especially stands out to me was a show when Carrie and I were on tour with the podcast “Welcome To Night Vale,” and Carrie had just announced she was pregnant, and immediately began to crowdsource the name of our daughter live in front of 2000 lunatic Night Vale fans. It was a beautiful silly moment of shared celebration.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?

I’ve always been a lover of photography, both as an appreciator of other’s photography, and of taking my own shots. I love the static nature of the form, the sense of capturing something fleeting. And I love how that static nature forces your eye to choose images that have some sort symbolic quality and associative properties to try and tell a little story in one still impression. It’s a lot like songwriting in that particular way.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I had only been writing for a couple years when 9/11 hit, so it was a craft I was still learning and not very confident in. But like everyone else at that moment in time, my mind was hard at work trying to process all the emotions and geopolitical realities of the situation. So it wasn’t like I set out to write a 9/11 response song, it’s just that I write about the things that are on my mind, and that’s what was on my mind. But it was such a complex stew of emotions that it was extremely hard to distill it down to what felt like a fair and nuanced encapsulation. In the month it took me to write that song (called “Already Done”) to my satisfaction, I wrote about four or five other songs, cause they all felt so easy by comparison, that they just popped right out.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Be inspired by everyone and don’t listen to anyone. Cause, y’know … it’s beautiful to be inspired and influenced by the work of other folks in your community. At the same time, you have to have an unflinching internal compass as an artist or you’ll lose your way.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

That’s a great question! I think the answer is very often. I question the word “hide” though. Sometimes it is hiding. But sometimes it’s choosing a voice that can best deliver the message, and sometimes that’s not the first-person. And sometimes you’re just writing a fictional account in the third person and realize somewhere along the way that the character is starting to feel suspiciously familiar. I think it’s true that, at the very least, we put a lot of ourselves into everything we create, whether it ends up in a highly coded form, or whether it’s completely straight forward.

I picked songs that in one way or another changed the course of my personal life:

Bob Dylan – “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding”

I discovered Dylan’s music when I was a very disaffected 15-year-old. I thought the world was insane and everyone in it was blind. I still think the world is insane, but Dylan taught me that not everyone was blind, at least, and he helped me start getting my head around the madness of it all in a manageable way. I connected very strongly with his worldview (especially with the stuff he was writing from 1964-1966), and it had a powerful affect on my sense of isolation. From across the world, and across two decades, there was a friend who would commiserate with me. It taught me a lot about the power of song.

Carrie Elkin – “Berlin”

This was the first song I ever heard Carrie Elkin sing, on the night we met. We would go on to become husband and wife, and so “Berlin” was sort of her siren song.

Anaïs Mitchell – “Why We Build the Wall”

I heard Anaïs sing this song around a campfire my first night at the Kerrville Folk Festival in 2006. Anaïs was one of about 20 young songwriters huddled together all night around the fire that evening, almost all of them new to me, and almost all of them would go on to become my closest friends and conspirators in this world of music. If the world could’ve heard the songs shared that night among compatriots, I feel like it might’ve fixed a lot of broken spirits.

Mississippi John Hurt – “I Shall Not Be Moved”

This album inspired me to get an acoustic guitar for the first time, and convinced me that if I practiced for 60-something years, I could get good enough at fingerpicking that I wouldn’t need a band.

Ayub Ogada – “Obiero”

My daughter was born to this album by Ayub Ogada. My wife asked me to pick some music for the birth, something that was calming, soothing, and ethereal. Ayub Ogada might actually be an angel. And Maizy was safely delivered.

Photo credit: Chris Carson

BGS 5+5: Sean McConnell

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Artist: Sean McConnell
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest album: Secondhand Smoke

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I would have to say David Wilcox. When I was beginning to write songs as a kid, David was a massive influence on me as a songwriter, guitar player, and vocalist. Nobody writes a hook like David Wilcox. He’s the king. Songs like “Language of the Heart” and “Show the Way” are still to this day on my desert island list.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

One of them would have to be playing two back-to-back sold out shows at the historic Gruene Hall last year in New Braunfels, Texas. Taking the stage both nights with a thousand people singing my songs back to me was completely intoxicating. The energy was [unlike anything] I’ve never experienced before.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Literature is a big one for me. I’ve always been a big reader. I don’t read books to intentionally look for song ideas. It’s more that what I’m reading expands my worldview, opinions, spirituality, and such. That then directly affects what I’m writing songs about. That is most definitely the case with my latest record, Secondhand Smoke.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The moment I played a chord on a guitar I just knew it. That sounds like a bullshit line out of a movie, but I can’t deny that it’s true. I first learned to play on my mothers 70s Yamaha. I had a chord book and figured out the basics. From the moment I felt those chords start ringing under my fingers I was hooked. Later on I would sneak up to my parents bedroom and take my fathers Taylor 515 Jumbo from underneath the bed and that only confirmed my addiction.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

What a great question. I think Glen Hansard pairs well with a strong IPA and a basket of fish and chips.

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins