My “Redneck, Squeezebox, Mexican” amigo Sunny Sauceda joins us on Only Vans this week to talk about content creation. He’s a three-time GRAMMY Award winner who’s making the switch from Tejano to Texas Country. He has some great insight on content creation, mentality, and blurring genre lines to share!
Dangermuffin’s Dan Lotti writes songs and sings them in a way that makes me feel like everything is going to be just fine. Originally from Folly Beach, South Carolina, much of the band now makes their home in Asheville – but their music retains the laid-back beach vibe of its roots on the Carolina coast.
Positive, inquisitive, conscious and grateful, Dan Lotti is the kinda guy you wish would call you up to have a pint or take a walk in the woods. He’d probably make an amazing neighbor, too. He’s been at the top of my list since I launched this whole Happy Hour thing and it was great to finally get to spend the afternoon with this incredible human.
This episode was recorded live at 185 King Street in Brevard, North Carolina on September 10th, 2024.
Timestamps:
0:06 – Soundbyte 0:54 – Intro 2:08 – Intro by Bill K. 3:07 – “Waves” 9:10 – “We Push Mountains” 14:23 – “Thanks for bringing most of the band” 15:43 – “Western Skies” 18:48 – “Cicada” 25:13 – Interview 42:27 – “Sarsaparilla” 46:28 – on “I Will Never Forget” 47:17 – “I Will Never Forget” 52:25 – “Big Suit” 57:32 – Outro
Editor’s Note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast includes highlights from Travis’s interviews and music from each live show recorded in Brevard, North Carolina.
The Travis Book Happy Hour is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.
Oh, how I’ve longed to talk to Liv Greene. Every once in a while you come across a young artist that seems older and wiser than her 26 years. Liv’s been giving me that impression since I met her in 2019, when she was at Club Passim waiting tables and breaking hearts on the stage at just 21 years. Ok, enough about being young.
Liv’s been writing, studying music, and going to music camps since she was 12. Arguably she’s been studying music all her life with her Americana loving parents, who were filling the house with the sounds of Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and Shawn Colvin, to name a few women in heavy rotation at the Greene house. Being the only of her friends that liked that kind of music, Liv attended many D.C.-area concerts with her mom, taking in the magic of live music at a very tender age. Speaking of tenderness, that’s what Liv Greene is all about and she digs into it in our conversation.
Liv started writing and playing shortly after she was inspired by a Taylor Swift concert. From there, she took off on the instrument and even sought out music education in camps like Miles of Music in New Hampshire. It was at that camp, as well as the arts academy Interlochen High School, where she started meeting peers with similar interests. She found herself living for summers with her music camp friends. Prior to her senior year at Interlochen, Liv was a closeted queer at her all-girls Catholic school mostly writing fictionalized stories into her songs because she could not deal with who she was.
Liv attended and graduated from The New England Conservatory of Music and released her debut album (produced by Isa Burke) right in time for the pandemic in May of 2020. Shortly after that, she moved to Nashville and has spent the last several years on an intense path of self-discovery. Liv found her community, came out, wrote, and self-produced her new album, Deep Feeler (out October 18). On the album, you can hear the growth she’s experienced and you can hear her thriving in her corner of the Nashville music scene, including indie folk. We talk about all of this, including what it means to have a neurodivergent brain, music production, the roller skating community, and Liv’s favorite Taurus personality traits.
Oregon-bred indie folk music outfit Blind Pilot go on a deep spiritual journey on their new album, In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain, produced by Josh Kaufman. The music inspiration for frontman Israel Nebeker lay in his songwriting process. This is the first Blind Pilot album in eight years, because after struggling with writing for years, Nebeker set aside the songs he had been working on. (Which will be included on a new solo record in 2025.) He gave himself a month to write an album’s worth of songs to present to the band. He demo-ed the songs and headed out for a trip centered around spiritual growth in Norway.
Searching for ancestral connections and tracing his own roots, Nebeker sought out the Sámi – a semi-nomadic Scandinavian people – their culture and community. He participated in a Sámi shamanic journey exploring indigenous spirituality. A shaman took him on a drum journey and invited him to listen for ancestors and visions. His vision included his ancestors beckoning him to a path that led straight to a mountain, which was clearly his family legacy and origin. Back in the studio with the band, he re-listened to his songs and was very surprised to realize that the album was about his ancestors. The connection that the rest of the band felt in delivering the music is palpable. The special emotional dynamic that always exists with Blind Pilot is supercharged on In the Shadow of the Holy Mountain.
My little brother and best friend, Clay Hollis, is my guest on Only Vans today! Of course we talk about what he’s been up to and his latest song, and then dig deep into… our live sound rigs!? I hope this episode gives you a ton of new insight into the high level of knowledge that’s needed to tour like we do as independent artists, but (full disclosure) the second half might go right over your head if you’re not interested in the audio nitty gritty. Enjoy!
Editor’s Note: Only Vans with Bri Bagwell is the latest addition to the BGS Podcast Network! Read more about the podcast coming on board here. Find our episode archive here.
Amy Helm has had one of the most fascinating lives that any person can have. As you might have guessed from her famous last name, she comes from roots music royalty. Amy is the daughter of Levon Helm, the beloved late drummer for the incredible groundbreaking Canadian-American group The Band. She also continues to run The Barn, a music venue and recording studio built by her dad and Garth Hudson, which served as Levon Helm Studios.
In her own career, she has created a new lineage of musical tradition, family, great songwriting, poetry, and a feminine power that emanates off of her. We’re talking about her new album, Silver City, but we’re also talking about songwriting. We’re talking about grief. We’re talking about single parenthood. We’re talking about family. We’re talking about being on the road. We’re talking about how our bodies change over time and how that changes us as a vocalist and as an artist.
Looking back at her wildly successful and always adventurous career up to this point, it feels inevitable that Lisa Loeb was always going to be a songwriter. But young Lisa probably could have done any creative job well. She grew up surrounded by music, yes, but she also had a passion for theater and got her degree in comparative literature. It was her theater and film side hustles that led Lisa to her first big break. Lisa’s friend Ethan Hawke shared her song “Stay” with Ben Stiller, who included the song in the soundtrack for the film Reality Bites. “Stay” was a massive hit and Lisa was the first-ever artist to have a Number 1 hit on the Billboard charts without a recording contract.
The second act of Loeb’s career is the main focus of our Basic Folk conversation. This chapter in the book of Lisa Loeb is all about… children’s music! As her latest album, That’s What It’s All About, demonstrates, Loeb has managed to keep playfulness and curiosity at the center of her life well into adulthood. She has figured out the delicate balance of making music for kids that adults can relate to as well. Happy memories of music from her own childhood, as well as nods to her elders, make this new record a sonic storybook that listeners of all ages will enjoy.
One of my favorite people on earth, Dallas Burrow, stopped by for this new episode of Only Vans to talk about owning a music venue, shamans, Charley Crockett, having a complicated past, and all the good vibes!
Editor’s Note: Only Vans with Bri Bagwell is the latest addition to the BGS Podcast Network! Read more about the podcast coming on board here. Find our episode archive here.
The names Bruce Molsky and Darol Anger have come up more often than not when talking to fiddlers on Basic Folk. The pair have single-handedly mentored hundreds of our favorites in fiddle music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Darol’s online music school, music camps, festivals, and more. The pair joined us on the occasion of their newest folk music collab, their new album Lockdown Breakdown. Folk music has often been associate with nerdiness, so we get right into their nerdy roots with Bruce’s love of fountain pens, his background in mechanical engineering, and all facts about American roots music, bluegrass, and fiddle music you can stand.
Both talk about their origins: Bruce in the Bronx and Darol in Northern California, which eventually led him to become a co-founding member of the David Grisman Quintet. We discuss the social aspect of the old time and bluegrass world and how that has translated into the way they each approach socializing. Then, we get into the thousands of fiddle lessons they’ve given younger players and why they like to mentor younger generations.
And of course, we chat about the album, which was recorded live in a Nashville studio in just a few days. Darol and Bruce talk about what the energy was like in the room for all their live takes during the session. It was a pleasure to speak with these two very funny, very influential musicians! They are doing incredible and important work.
Welcome to another edition of Folk Debate Club, our occasional debate series! To discuss ambition vs. acceptance, we welcome our panel: music journalist Kim Ruehl, Basic Folk boss Cindy Howes, and yours truly Lizzie No. We would like to extend a very warm welcome to our special guests singer-songwriter Michaela Anne and producer Aaron Shafer-Haiss, also hosts of The Other 22 Hours podcast. In our lively conversation we work through thoughts and feelings about the definition of ambition: a strong desire to do or to achieve something, typically requiring determination and hard work. We take the approach from a music industry, folk music and even dive into the audience perspective of how fans might feel about an artist’s ambition.
It is no surprise that capitalism gets rung right out as a reason that ambition goes wrong for artists. As Kim says, “Art is like the nervous system of humanity,” and mixing creation with ambition-gone-wrong is a dangerous game that a lot (most?) professional musicians play with at some point in their careers. This episode has everything: navigating our way out of toxic work environments, messy reactions to unpopular yet important political stances and how to not throw away the people who disagree with you. Listen along and enjoy the ride.
Photo Credit: Lizzie No by Cole Neilson; Cindy Howes by Liz Dutton; Michaela Anne and producer Aaron Shafer-Haiss; Kim Ruehl by Rich Amory
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