Tag: black

On These 10 Recordings, Willie Nelson and Black Musicians Share a Creative Vision

Posted on by Editor

Willie Nelson has long been not just an American musical treasure, but an iconic figure with far more appeal across racial and generational lines than often recognized. At 87, he’s achieved a perfect marriage of artistry and commercial success few have in any idiom. While certainly a country legend, and the only person in the genre to ever achieve a Top 10 hit in seven different decades, he’s also collaborated with an astonishing number of artists across a wide swath of musical styles and approaches. He’s penned numerous anthems that have been covered by jazz, blues, R&B, soul, rock and pop vocalists, and this month he released his 70th studio album, First Rose of Spring.

Nelson’s never been afraid to stand up for social justice, even when those words weren’t part of the popular vernacular. Early in Charley Pride’s career, Nelson actually gave him a kiss on stage in Louisiana, quieting an audience that was allowing some of its more verbally racist louts to heckle Pride on stage. He’s always included Black musicians in Farm Aid concerts, had one of his biggest albums ever (Stardust) produced by a Black man (Booker T. Jones, who raved about Nelson in his autobiography) and has maintained a friendship with Snoop Dogg since long before Lil Nas X appeared on the scene. He also enjoyed a very close relationship with Ray Charles, who Nelson lamented he could never beat at chess.

He’s in the same company with people like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Bill Monroe, whose output, personality and consistent brilliance has endured despite changes in production, audience preferences, and many other variables that can negatively affect the careers of popular musicians. Part of the reason for that longevity is Nelson’s undeniable skill in multiple areas. He’s penned a host of songs that are every bit as epic as those from the pre-rock canon he often samples. Had he only written “Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” or “On the Road Again,” that would have been enough for one lifetime. He’s also a very credible singer, highly effective in pacing and telling a story.

Nelson has consistently embraced and operated in other genres by neither sacrificing his musical individuality and integrity, nor seeming to pander or simply attempting to seem hip. Actually, he’s the epitome of that term, though in a vastly different way from someone like Miles Davis, who was known as much for fashion and fine cars as musical innovation. The fact that Nelson has appeared in more than 30 films just adds weight to his universal appeal.

Trying to pick the best of Nelson’s numerous collaborations with great Black singers and musicians is a tricky thing. One could easily select 10 one day, then come back and tab a different 10 another time. But these are some (far from all) personal favorites. They are ranked in order only by year, nothing more. We picked a mix of singles and LPs, but it’s just a small sample of the many wonderful things he’s done. By no means would we claim this is the definitive list for Willie Nelson’s collaborations with African American artists, but it’s a good sampler and an indicator of how widespread his impact and willingness to work with various musicians actually extends.

SINGLES AND ALBUM CUTS

“Man With The Blues” with Buckwheat Zydeco
From Five Card Stud (1994)

The greatest zydeco master since Clifton Chenier teams with Nelson for a smoky, delightful romp that sees Buckwheat Zydeco also find a comfort zone vocally and instrumentally. As is always the case, Nelson easily works himself into the arrangement, and the two sound right at home in this setting.

“Night Life” with B.B. King
From Deuces Wild (1997)

The King of the Blues sounds happy and engaged on one of Nelson’s earliest compositions, providing some taut guitar licks and outstanding lead and harmony vocals while Nelson doesn’t try to match the improvisational edge, instead easing into a nice zone that’s part complimentary, part quite different in style and sound, but ideal for the situation.

“Still Is Still Moving to Me” with Toots & the Maytals
From True Love (2004)

Toots brings some Jamaican soul and lots of energy to this collaboration, while Willie seems a bit more energetic as the song works its way through. This is one of many performances that earned this LP the Reggae Grammy, and Nelson had such a great time he made a follow-up of his own and paid Toots and company back by having them guest on it.

“Busted” with Ray Charles
From Genius & Friends (2004)

I know “Seven Spanish Angels” was a number 1 hit and more people remember it fondly, but this late redo of an early Charles hit has equal doses of warmth, reflection and edge in both voices. Charles was certainly not at his vocal peak, but he found a way to make his treatment effective, while Willie as always proves the ideal partner in multiple ways.

“Family Bible” with The Blind Boys of Alabama
From Take the High Road (2011)

The album title indicates precisely what Nelson does here, singing with verve and fire while the Blind Boys bring some of their characteristic Golden Age gospel energy and intensity to this rendition that’s alternately wistful, memorable and poignant. This composition dates back to Nelson’s late ’50s catalog, while he was trying to get heard as a songwriter.

“Grandma’s Hands” with Mavis Staples
From To All the Girls (2013)

Mavis Staples has one foot in the church and the other in the street with her customarily powerhouse voice setting the tone. Nelson manages not to get overridden or canceled out in the process as they do their own special version of the Bill Withers hit, which the Staples Singers cut for their 1973 Stax LP, Be What You Are.

“Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream” with Charles Lloyd and the Marvels
From I Long to See You (2015)

The great Memphis jazz man Charles Lloyd and his newest group provide the backing for what comes off as a cross between a nightmarish vision and a marvelous revelation, sung in emphatic fashion by Nelson and punctuated by Lloyd adding some nifty licks underneath and the Marvels adding some musical punch.

ALBUMS

Country Man (2005)

A follow-up to his appearance on Toots’ LP the year before, Nelson goes full bore into reggae territory. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but all of it is performed with enthusiasm and joy. Nelson vocally handles the skittering reggae rhythms well, and on the disc’s best songs surpasses what he did on True Love.

Two Men and the Blues (2008)

Wynton Marsalis as a youthful prodigy had a lot of negative things to say about a lot of things back in the ’70s and early ’80s, and country music wasn’t spared in his broadsides. But fast forward all these years later and his gorgeous trumpet solos (both full and muted) made a great musical partner and support system for Nelson, who by now was so familiar with pre-rock, blues, and even traditional jazz tunes and rhythms that it was super smooth sailing from first note to the end. Also recommended: the DVDs Live From Jazz at Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis (2008) and Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis Play the Music of Ray Charles (2009).

Here We Go Again: Celebrating the Genius of Ray Charles (2011)

Marsalis and Norah Jones joined Nelson to pay homage to his friend Ray Charles, doing wonderful renditions of both hits and more obscure Charles tunes before a rousing audience. Nelson sounded especially energetic throughout, while Marsalis, who’s often been accused of being more technically expert than emotionally powerful, delivered crushing solos and accompaniment, and Jones was equal parts alluring and engaging. As always, Nelson comes across as sincere and genuine, a marvelous mix of down-home sensibility and attitude.

Photos: Pamela Springsteen

New Movement Music: A Black American Soundtrack of Struggle and Protest

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For Black Americans, this day, Juneteenth, has long been a celebration of the momentous historical event of emancipation from slavery — and the nearly two and a half years it took for that news to reach all enslaved peoples in this country. Juneteenth is belatedly gaining wider recognition and arrives at a time of reckoning with systemic patterns of white supremacy, especially police brutality, that remain deeply entrenched.

Like many waves of national protest before it, the uprising in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and many others has spurred the creation of its own soundtrack, and the following list spotlights the contributions of seven roots-savvy, Black music makers. Some draw on lessons learned from how songs gave spiritual succor to those on the front lines of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle, with righteously raised fists and declarations of passion and purpose. Others opt for expression that feels far more personalized or particular, articulating an adamantly complex range of emotions and letting profoundly unsettled, and unsettling, questions hang in the air. All of them are fleshing out their own vivid, timely incarnations of movement music.

Leon Bridges specializes in sophisticated soul, sometimes artfully retro in presentation and other times landing at the thoroughly contemporary end of that musical lineage. His new song “Sweeter” is an example of the latter, two minutes and 50 seconds during which his buttery vocals glide over a lean drum machine pattern, delicate, gospel-dusted bits of guitar, keyboard, piano and bass and Terrace Martin’s saxophone figures. Bridges’ words land with the devastated finality of a black man whose life is leaving his body, taken from him by police. “I thought we moved on from the darker days,” he sings, his cadence fluttery and tone ruminative. “Did the words of the King disappear in the air, like a butterfly?” The blame-laying next line arrives in a burst: “Somebody should hand you a felony.”

Then, Bridges elongates his phrasing with righteous indignation, before steadying himself to spell out the loss: “‘Cause you stole from me/my chance to be.” The elegance he chose gives his performance subtly striking, emotional heft. “From adolescence we are taught how to conduct ourselves when we encounter police to avoid the consequences of being racially profiled,” Bridges wrote in a statement. “I have been numb for too long, calloused when it came to the issues of police brutality. The death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. It was the first time I wept for a man I never met. I am George Floyd, my brothers are George Floyd, and my sisters are George Floyd. I cannot and will not be silent any longer. Just as Abel’s blood was crying out to God, George Floyd is crying out to me.”

Chastity Brown has been honing her ability to create space for emotional resistance within her songs for a while now. She draws on the pointed, confessional potential of folk and soul and the digital texturing techniques of contemporary pop and hip-hop, while depicting the patient pursuit and safekeeping of self-knowledge as a sign of strength — one that differs wildly from the sort of dominance modeled by systemic power.

In her new song “Golden,” created on her iPad in her garage studio and shared with the world this week, Brown sounds willfully unhurried singing over a skittery programmed beat: “I’ve got joy, even when I’m a target/If ya think that’s political, don’t get me started/You know I’m golden and I flaunt it.” That savoring of selfhood is in striking contrast to the furious question she circles around during the chorus: “Why have I got to be angry?”

In the artist notes accompanying the song, Brown explained that she began writing it when her nephew was beaten by four white cops while walking home in Harlem, mere weeks before George Floyd died in her adopted hometown. “This collective trauma that black, indigenous, immigrant, and queer/trans folk feel is real,” she spelled out. “It’s every god damn day. Yet, we still thrive and flourish in our nature beauty, we still have swag and songs for days. We still have wild and wondrous imaginations like we are all the children of Octavia [Butler]. …This is for me, my people, and the UPRISING to defund police here in Minneapolis and thereby set a new standard for how communities want to be protected.”

Shemekia Copeland, one of the brightest stars in contemporary blues, has been deliberate for years about broadening her repertoire and approach to encompass countrified styles, singer-songwriter song sources and statement-making folk and soul sensibilities and, in the process, positioning herself in the midst of roots music discourse. That’s the insightful perspective she brings to her just-released “Uncivil War,” whose string band style accompaniment boasts the contributions of Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas.

Coming from Copeland, and delivered with measured, dignified vibrato, the simple flipping of the name of the nation’s most notorious war to “uncivil” slyly strips a veneer of respectability from the racist and romanticized Lost Cause religion. She strikes a tone of weary but resolute optimism throughout. “It’s not just a song,” she clarified in a statement. “I’m trying to put the ‘united’ back in the United States. Like many people, I miss the days when we treated each other better. For me, this country’s all about people with differences coming together to be part of something we all love. That’s what really makes America beautiful.”

Kam Franklin, on her own and with her Houston horn band The Suffers, has the wide-ranging musical instincts, imagination, nerve, and ear for earthy verisimilitude to make big statements while zeroing in on small interactions. A couple of weeks back, she posted a brand new, self-recorded song fragment to SoundCloud, a platform well suited to off-the-cuff expression, and with it, this comment: “I saw a photo of Breonna Taylor with her homegirls earlier today, and it gutted me. I won’t forget her. I wrote this birthday song for her, her friends that wondered where she was before the news came out, and everyone that loved her.”

Titled “Happy Birthday Breonna,” it’s a pensive, sinuous bit of ‘70s soul that drives home the fact that Taylor was ripped from a web of close relationships. The first, and only verse, lands like a voicemail from a friend who grew worried when she couldn’t reach Taylor. Franklin’s graceful trills and softly insistent phrasing have an understatement that suggests fretful preoccupation. Then she moves into a point-counterpoint refrain, murmuring birthday wishes to Taylor in her breathy upper register and making a devastating declaration beneath: “You should be here.”

Singer-guitarist and actor Celisse Henderson began work on writing, recording, and filming a video for her song “FREEDOM” four years ago, following the slayings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, and watched as black deaths and protest momentum multiplied before she finally completed and released her project earlier this month.

In a message on her website, Henderson explained, “I, along with millions of people, watched video footage of these unarmed black men losing their lives in the most horrific ways. The truth that these unjust deaths revealed about our country, including the systemic failings of our criminal justice system, became my personal call-to-action. Then the 2016 election night happened, and the results added a whole new layer to the purpose of this song and project. Now, almost four years later, too little has been done, and the story remains the same. With the horrific and unjust killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd weighing heavily on our hearts and minds, it is time to release ‘FREEDOM’ as a rallying cry and a call to action to stand up and fight for our freedom.”

Historic footage of the March on Washington that opens the clip is a reminder of the buoying role that spirituals played in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, and serves the narrative function of positioning Henderson to measure the too-meager progress for Black Americans since. The track is gospel-schooled and hard-rocking, powered by a thunderous, syncopated drum pattern and grinding electric guitar attack. With gospel fervor and a touch of theatrical flourish, Henderson summons a spirit of urgency and extends a broad welcome to all who are affected or disturbed by injustice.

Joy Oladokun, a Nigerian-American singer-songwriter who’s quietly carving out her place in Nashville’s professional songwriting community with introspective, melancholy warmth, steered a co-writing appointment with Natalie Hemby toward an expression of grief. The result was “Who Do I Turn To?” a naked airing of fear and distrust.

Oladokun’s reedy, plaintive performance is accompanied only by minimal piano chords. She spends the chorus adding up horrifying realizations that lead her to a resounding question: “If I can’t save myself/If it’s all black and white/If I can’t call for help/in the middle of the night/If I can’t turn to god/If I can’t turn to you/Who do I turn to?” Her voice subtly catches on the word “help,” as though knowing that life-giving protection is unavailable to her constricts her breath. Oladokun underscored the importance of the chorus lyrics to an interviewer: “[I]t’s illustrating that I don’t trust the police since I’m black. I don’t trust the police enough to know that they would think I’m not robbing my own home. I don’t think a lot of people understand what that is like. The feeling sucks.” In a separate statement she summarized her intent: “I wanted to write a firsthand account of how I feel and the question black people like me ask when this happens over and over again while nothing changes. I want it out now to help an already traumatized people cope, heal, and put words to their struggle.”

Wyatt Waddell, a young Chicago music-maker who’s been expertly, wittily, and self-sufficiently arranging home recordings of classic covers and singer-songwriter soul originals for the past few years, wrote “FIGHT!” as an anthem of admiration and uplift for young, Black Americans putting their bodies on the line in the streets and facing off against police force to agitate for change. “This song is me looking at what’s happening and what I’d tell the people protesting,” he specified in a statement. “I had to look outside of myself at what’s going on and how people are being affected. Hearing people’s fears, anxieties, and watching everything happening on TV really helped me write the song. I hope that it can be an anthem for my people as they’re fighting for a better America.”

Waddell begins with gospel-style repetition, creating a call-and-response pattern made up of his own layered vocals over a churchly foot stomp and hand clap groove: “There’s already so much pain/So much pain/So much pain/There’s already so much pain/And there ain’t nothin’ else we can do.” It seems like he could be building up to a confession of helplessness; instead, his funky refrain is bolstered by a sense of resolve and inevitability: “Nothin’ to do but fight.”

Photo credit: (L to R) Shemekia Copeland by Mike White; Chastity Brown by Wale Agboola; Leon Bridges by Jack McKain.

BGS Long Reads of the Week // June 19

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Summer approaches, the heat and humidity are here, at BGS South in Nashville the fireflies are alight every night, and it’s the perfect season for a porch swing reading session (if you can stand a little sweatin’).

The BGS archives will keep you stocked for just such an occasion! Each week, as we share our favorite longer, more in-depth articles, stories, and features to help you pass the time, we post our #longreadoftheday picks… yes, daily across our social media channels [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram]. But of course, here’s the weekly round-up, too. Get your long reads wherever you like!

This week’s stories cast daylight, share wisdom, get toes tapping, revisit old memories, and much more.

Grace Potter Sets the Scene with Dramatic Daylight

An excellent long read for starting us out, with this one you’ll get a bit of fresh air and a whole lotta Daylight, Grace Potter’s most recent album, which was released last fall. Our interview explores the cinematic quality of the album, how Potter built her band post-Nocturnals, and little things too — like how bluegrass and southern California resonate within her. Grace Potter’s voice is commanding, on the stage or on the page. [Read the interview]

Hear Six of Our Favorite Instrumentals on IBMA’s Second-Round Ballot

We debuted Tunesday Tuesday in January 2018 for a pretty simple reason. Roots music has a world-class stable of talented pickers, and unlike other more commercial genres, that talent is something of a prerequisite — especially in bluegrass! This short list-formatted Tunesday is a perfect long read/listen, and even though the IBMA Awards’ second-round ballot is now closed, you may need to do some studying for the final ballot still to come this summer! [Get listening]

Doc Watson: Live Memories and Moments

Anyone who ever had the extreme good fortune of seeing Doc Watson perform live can easily recount their favorite moments remembered from his time on stage. Lucky for any of us who can’t get enough of those memories, Watson put so many of them down on recordings and live tapes. Stroll a bit back through the catalog of those live performances with BGS. [Read more]

Counsel of Elders: Taj Mahal on Understanding the World

And he understands it! The wisdom and storytelling gifted to us by blues innovator and legend Taj Mahal in this 2016 interview is not only perfect for a long read pick, but it was perfect for a #ThrowbackThursday, too. The voices and perspectives of our elders are vital as we struggle for a more just future, and our musical elders have plenty of insight to pass on, as well. [Read the whole interview]

Bluegrass Pride Invites LGBTQ+ Roots Music Fans to Porch Pride Festival

In a little over a week our friends at Bluegrass Pride will hold their online Pride festival, Porch Pride, featuring performances by queer artists, musicians, and bands and their allies — such as Jake Blount, Tatiana Hargreaves, Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer, and Molly Tuttle. In advance of the event, we spoke to Bluegrass Pride’s Executive Director, Kara Kundert, and artist Amythyst Kiah about Pride, roots music, and what to expect from the festival. [Read more]

Photo of Amythyst Kiah: Anna Hedges

BGS Long Reads of the Week // June 5

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Welcome to another conglomeration of diverting, entertaining, and engaging long reads! The BGS archives never disappoint. As we share our favorite longer, more in-depth articles, stories, and features to help you pass the time, you should follow us on social media [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] so you don’t miss a single #longreadoftheday pick! But, as always, we’ll put them all together right here at the end of each week if you happen to let one sneak by you, too.

This week’s long reads are educational, meandering, inspiring, and much more. Read on:

On New Duet Album, Laurie Lewis Gathers Old Friends and Close Companions

May went by in a blink of an eye (how did this happen!?) and we had to say goodbye to our Artist of the Month, Grammy and IBMA award-winning multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Laurie Lewis. In our two-part May AOTM interview, Lewis gave us insight into the making of her new duet album, and Laurie Lewis, and talks a little bit about wanting to measure up to others’ view that she’s a trailblazer and role model in bluegrass. [Read more]

For First Solo Album, Sam Doores Opens the Map of Musical Influences

In a meandering feature we follow singer/songwriter and lifelong troubadour Sam Doores from the Bay Area to New Orleans to Berlin to his first solo album, which is filled with echoes of everything from Tin Pan Alley to the Mississippi hill country, from jazz to psychedelic-folk-rock. The Hurray for the Riff Raff alumnus has co-created some of the last decade’s most arresting socially-conscious anthems with HFTRR, and he’s also made sparkling folk- and country-derived excursions with his own band, the Deslondes. [Read more]

The Ebony Hillbillies: Becoming Part of the Music

In 2017, Henrique Prince and Gloria Thomas Gassaway — of the legendary and long-running New York-based, Black string band, the Ebony Hillbillies — gave us an excellent primer on how Black folks ostensibly invented bluegrass music. We could all use a reminder of this fact, given how Black contributions to old-time, bluegrass, and string band musics are more often than not erased — and this true, more fleshed out narrative enables us, the roots music community, to unabashedly lift up Black stories and Black lives in full voice at this current moment of crisis. [Read the interview]

7 Bluegrass Family Bands You Need to Know

Bluegrass Bands

From the Monroe Brothers and the Stanley Brothers to Cherryholmes and Flatt Lonesome, the matching outfits, tight harmonies, and long-lasting careers of family bands are an integral part of what makes bluegrass bluegrass. Here are a few lesser-known, underrated, or too-often-forgotten family bands that you ought to spend some quality time with — a classic from the BGS archives. [See the list]

Canon Fodder: Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman

Tracy Chapman’s music is ceaselessly relevant, it’s true. Still, her self-titled, 1988 album has a much more broad, eclectic musical palette than we often give it credit for. Its themes surrounding her Blackness continue to distinguish her from her peers and most common comparisons, demanding a more nuanced approach to considering the ongoing impact of Tracy Chapman. [Read our archived edition of Canon Fodder]

 

Aaron Jonah Lewis, “A Banjo Frolic”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Ask ten banjo players this question: “Who is the Mozart of the banjo?”

You’ll probably get ten different answers. If any were to double up, perhaps one would be Béla Fleck (a banjo player more than most will remember has conquered many a classical composition on the instrument) and perhaps another would be Earl Scruggs (given that “Mozart of” could easily morph into “a style-originator of” to others.) Fiddle champion and banjo virtuoso Aaron Jonah Lewis posits a much more pragmatic — and almost actually analogous — candidate on his new album, Mozart of the Banjo, tributing a banjo player a step closer to Mozart in more than a few ways, but chiefly in that he did not perform bluegrass.

Joe Morley was a “classic fingerstyle” banjo player, composer, performer, and instruction book author who lived and made music at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, at which time banjos were central to popular music in Britain and the United States. “A Banjo Frolic,” one of twelve Morley pieces performed by Lewis on the album, demonstrates this “golden age” sound, oozing ragtime and musical theatre and Vaudeville and minstrelsy. While Morley’s compositions weren’t technically “classical” music, Lewis explains in the project’s in-depth liner notes, “…[It] did occupy an interesting space in that it appealed to royalty, the upper and middle classes and the lower classes of society as well.” A truly banjo notion. Morley also paralleled Mozart in that they were both child prodigies, both left enormous bodies of work, and both died poor and were buried in unmarked graves.

We may be enjoying a current renaissance of the banjo, where more and more players, fans, and even casual passers-by of the instrument understand its important role in American history and its folkways and art forms. Still, it’s fascinating that so many forgotten or overlooked facets of the instrument’s past and its legacy remain excluded from that greater, better-understood narrative. Mozart of the Banjo: The Joe Morley Project and Aaron Jonah Lewis are attempting to tell more of the banjo’s full history, and purposefully connect it to its Black and African inputs, as well as its extant forms in the U.S. and around the world, reminding all of us banjo fans — and at such an apropos time, as well — that none of our favorite forms of music, banjo-y or otherwise, exist in a vacuum.

16 Stories to Celebrate Black History Month

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: black history isn’t just American history, it’s American roots music history — they are inseparably intertwined. As such, one month out of the year simply cannot do this cause justice. To mark the occasion we’d like to travel back over a year’s worth of writing and reporting to revisit just a few of the incredible black artists, creators, and activists whose indispensable perspectives and awe-inspiring work moved us.

 

Angelique Kidjo’s reimagining of the Talking Heads’ landmark album, Remain in Light, was not only one of our top albums of 2018, it was the subject of an exhaustive deep dive for an edition of our Small World column, which points out the stunning amalgamations and consistencies that made the record a perfect vehicle for Kidjo’s singular talents and sensibilities.

 

For Canon Fodder, we examined the remarkable success of Tracy Chapman’s self-titled, debut album. In 1988, Chapman appeared as the culmination of pop’s newfound social engagement, and the record captures the sound of a young artist clinging to her optimism, even in the face of so much cynicism.

 

Our inaugural season of The Show On The Road, hosted by The Dustbowl Revival frontman Z. Lupetin, included many black voices, including husband-and-wife duo, Birds of Chicago. Their special brew of soulful rock and roll and goosebump-raising secular gospel is a much needed shot of pure positive energy.

 

Alt-folk singer/songwriter AHI answered five questions and gave us five songs to go with them in an edition of BGS 5+5 that touches on Bob Marley, Thunder Bay, and oh so much more.

 

Writer, storyteller, historian, and songster Dom Flemons released Black Cowboys in 2018, an album whose depth and breadth rivals that of a museum exhibition. For our Shout & Shine interview he unpacked the forgotten histories and untold stories of black identities that shaped the American “Wild West,” and thus, the country as a whole.

 

The Journey, the latest album from Benin native, guitarist Lionel Loueke, tells stories of migration historic and modern, with musical textures and flavors that demonstrate our world — musically, culturally, and otherwise — is entirely interconnected. We featured Loueke in our Small World column.

 

Guitarist and songwriter Sunny War gave us a stripped-down, stunning rendition of “He Is My Cell” for a Sitch Session, showcasing her unique picking approach and the complicated emotions channeled through her writing.

 

Kaïa Kater’s most recent album, Grenades, was an exercise in self-love and self-learning. Our Cover Story unpacks how the project spans generations, hemispheres, and textures, and left the singer-songwriter “swimming in her own shadow.”

 

In 2018 we lost one of music’s brightest lights and most ethereal talents when Aretha Franklin passed. We did our best to tribute her everlasting legacy by diving into her best-selling album, Amazing Grace, for an edition of Canon Fodder.

 

Americana duo Nickel&Rose premiered their EP, aptly titled Americana, on BGS after being inspired by touring across Europe, noting the way international audiences reacted to and consumed American roots music. They offer their own personal musings on perseverance, loss, and compassion without empty promises that everything is going to be okay.

 

Charismatic, dynamite performers the War and Treaty (AKA Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount) told us the stories that led to the making of their latest album, Healing Tide — from the beginning, with a piano in Saddam Hussein’s palace basement, to the pair meeting at a festival, to the present, as their music and mission of love gain steam across the country.

 

In another edition of Small World, we take a look at cellist and songwriter Leyla McCalla’s brand new album, The Capitalist Blues, and the myriad themes and influences from around the globe that went into the writing, production, and execution of the songs and stories therein.

 

Gospel singer/songwriter Liz Vice balances intensely personal experiences with universal ideas like the Golden Rule on her album, Save Me, and our conversation with Vice gets into the nitty gritty of that balance and the personal growth and reckonings behind it.

 


Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton made his case for why down home blues and old-time American music are not simply relics of bygone eras in his Shout & Shine interview. He is not merely a preservationist mining bygone decades for esoteric material or works that fit a certain aesthetic or brand. He simply takes music that is significant to his identity, his culture, and his experience and showcases it for a broader audience.

Host Craig Havighurst spent some time with Cedric Burnside on his podcast, The String, where they discuss the blues, soul, and regional folk’s growing influence and representation within the Americana community — as well as Burnside’s own commitment to the spread of Hill Country blues.

Legendary song-interpreter Bettye LaVette’s first major label release since 1982 focused on the work of one artist and songwriter, who just happens to be Bob Dylan. In our interview LaVette gives us a frank and engaging peek inside her mind: “Oh, honey, I am 72 years old. I basically don’t give a fuck. Nothing at this point wears me down. I know that all of this going on right now, either it’s going to pass or we’re going to pass.”

Photo of Kaïa Kater: Raez Argulla