Tag: bob dylan

Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert Let Their Music “Be What It Wants to Be”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Volume 4 is a beginning and end for Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert. It’s a beginning in that it’s the duo’s newest release, which means new songs, a new tour cycle, and a new round of interviews. It’s an end – “the end of an era,” as they put it – for Dead Reckoning Records, the label Kane and his bandmates in The Dead Reckoners launched 30 years ago. The independent venture grabbed the attention of other artists whose recordings they released, in addition to The Dead Reckoners’ first and only album, A Night of Reckoning, and the band members’ various other projects.

“Over the 30 years, [The Dead Reckoners] drifted into their own worlds, their own lanes,” says Kane. “Tammy Rogers and the late Mike Henderson started doing The SteelDrivers, Harry Stinson has been with Marty Stuart for years, and Kevin Welch is in Australia. For a long time, I was just putting out my solo records on the label, and then Rayna and I put our records out.

“30 years seemed like a nice, round, anniversary number to give everybody their work back, their masters back, and dissolve the company. It’s been great. I’m quite proud of the work we’ve done over the years and that it’s still a functioning label. We’ve managed to survive all kinds of digital flare-ups and breakthroughs and ways of sharing music. The company makes a little bit of money every year, but it seemed like, ‘Yeah, let’s call it a day.’ I called everyone and everybody was like, ‘That’s fine.’”

Bringing Dead Reckoning Records full circle is sweet rather than bittersweet, says Kane, “in that the label was started by an album of mine [Dead Rekoning, 1995] and thirty years later, on the same date [April 11], we released Volume 4. To me, it serves as bookends for the label.”

Gellert and Kane met at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. Their first collaboration was co-writing for Kane’s Unguarded Moments [2016] and Gellert’s Workin’s Too Hard [2017]. The following year, they released their first duo album, The Ledges, followed by When The Sun Goes Down [2019], and The Flowers That Bloom In Spring [2022]. This year brings Volume 4, which they produced, recorded, and mixed, with Kane on vocals and guitars, Gellert on vocals, guitar, and fiddle, and Kane’s son Lucas on drums.

I thought we’d start by introducing you to readers, but instead of telling us about yourselves, tell us about each other.

Rayna Gellert: Kieran is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with a long, awesome career doing all kinds of musical things ever since he was a child. The thing that other musicians immediately say about him is they comment on his sense of groove that seems to be a through line in his musical output. And he’s awesome. He’s the funnest person to write and perform with.

Kieran Kane: Musically, we are so much on the same path, and have been on the same path, for both our individual lines. But out of all the people that I’ve ever worked with, Rayna, in the same way she talks about groove when talking about me, I would have to say the same thing about her, in that it’s just so … I want to say reliable, and that sounds sort of pedestrian, but it is.

It’s like having a drummer and a bass player playing the fiddle, in that the pockets and the grooves are so strong and well established that I can drift away and they’re just there. And it’s all been unusually compatible in writing and playing and performing. We genuinely enjoy doing what we do together. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s creatively fulfilling, and all those things.

Rayna, in an interview with WYSO you mentioned there are differences in your songwriting processes. Could you tell us about those differences and how they work as a duo?

RG: Kieran’s the first person I’ve consistently co-written with. I mostly wrote on my own. I occasionally noodled around with a friend on something, but I had no consistent co-writer. I was very much a newbie to actual co-writing when Kieran and I started writing together.

He approaches songwriting from a completely different angle than I do and that makes it extra fun and adventurous. I’ve always started with some bit of lyric and melody that come at the same time together and I go from there. Kieran usually starts with some kind of instrumental riff that becomes the seed of a structure of something. Lyrics come later for him.

The combination of the way we come at a song is very compatible because it’s different. We bring different strengths to the table. I tend to be super verbose when it comes to lyrics. I spill a lot of stuff out, and he’s a great editor. He is really good at finding the key phrases, figuring out the hook, and creating a structure around that.

My background is in old-time music, so the idea of a long ballad where there’s no chorus and it’s just inspiration that goes on and on and on is totally normal to me. For Kieran, it’s like, “What’s the hook? What’s the chorus? What’s the instrumental riff that’s going to tie the thing together?” And it works together very well.

KK: I agree with that. A lot of times what I’m hearing, along with a song, is a record. So much of what we do is based on an intro, in a way, or, as she said, a little musical hook that’ll tie things down. I’ve almost never sat down with an idea about a song. It’s more like I sit down and start playing banjo or mandolin or guitar until something catches my ear and then a lyric will be a free association to get started.

With us, that’s true to some extent, as well. A lot of times we don’t know what the song is going to be about until we wade into the waters and go, “Oh, it could be this.” It seems to work. Whatever the two different approaches are, it comes together.

How is Volume 4 the next step in your journey? You’ve talked about the songwriting process. When it’s time to record, do the arrangements happen organically?

RG: His view of the song tends to be a little more zoomed out than mine. What he’s saying … he is not just thinking about the song, he’s thinking about the record – I think that’s about arrangement. That’s about, “How are the pieces fitting together here?”
It does evolve organically. We always have to decide, “What’s the instrumentation? What feels right for this? Am I playing guitar? Am I playing fiddle?” If he comes up with a riff on an instrument, usually it stays on that instrument. But we’re working with so few pieces that we make a lot of use of space, because that’s one of the biggest colors in our palette.

KK: A way for us to build things in terms of arrangements often – since, as Rayna said, there’s so few pieces – is to eliminate something, like, “We’ll drop out here, which will bring the song down,” because if we start off with the two of us singing and playing at the same time, there’s no place to go, other than to start removing things.

As I’m saying this, I realize that my mission, if there is such a thing, in writing and making records has always been about removing things, making it simpler, and cutting off all the fat, anything that’s unnecessary.

RG: One of the things that’s different about this project is, in a way, we approached the whole album sort of like we would approach a song, as in letting it be what it wanted to be.

On past albums, we approached it more like we were writing a set list for a show, where it’s, “Have we included different instrumentation? Do we have a balance of lead singers? Do we have uptempo and downtempo?” This album is structured more like the way we write a song, which is, “What does this want to be?” Regardless of instrumentation, regardless of who’s singing, regardless of whether we wrote the songs. It evolved into this little sonic package that feels like you go in there and it’s a room you hang out in for the length of the album. To me, that’s a different experience than our past records.

KK: I’ve never thought of it like that. Yeah. We’ve been writing a lot. We wrote three albums, I did an EP that we had written a couple of songs for, and Rayna did an EP that I helped out on a couple of songs and produced. So we’ve done a lot of work in the last eight years, or however it is, that we’ve been doing this. Before Volume 4, there were three albums and two EPs, which is a lot more work than I’ve ever done in that amount of time.

This record, to me, was a little bit more of a grab-back in a way. Rayna was talking about wanting to do a fiddle album at some point and I was like, “Let’s play more fiddle tunes.” So we did that and pulled some older songs that were, as Rayna was saying, “Let’s just do it.” In my mind, it’s almost cleansing in a way to have taken this “just let it be what it wants to be” approach. Now we can move on to something else … and I don’t know what that is.

Tell us about the recording process and gear choices on this album.

RG: We have a very simple home recording setup that we’ve refined over the years. We got some good mics that we like a lot a couple years ago, Soyuz mics. We use those for everything, for instruments and vocals, the same mics. We have four of those.
We have a Zoom R16 board that we can either record directly onto or use as an input into Logic for recording. It’s a very mobile rig. We spend our summers in the Adirondacks at a cabin and we do a lot of recording when we’re up there. Some of this album was recorded there and some of it was recorded here in Nashville, in our house. We can take the board with us and do a nice, clean, digital field recording.

KK: It’s a wonderful piece of gear and shockingly inexpensive. As far as instruments and things like that, this record is a departure for me in terms of guitars, because I’ve basically used the same Guild M-20 on every record and every show I’ve done with Rayna, and before that for the last twenty-five years. For some reason, on this record, I picked up a couple of different guitars that I’ve had lying around the house for years. It was like, “Let me try this song on this guitar. Oh, that’s fun.” Whether or not I would do that again, I don’t know, because the guitar I’ve used all those years I love and it’s so reliable.

There’s three different acoustic guitars for me on this record. One is a Martin 00-16 classic, an early-’60s gut-string guitar that I played on “Keep My Heart in Mind.” The other is an early-’60s D-28 that I played on “The Mansion Above.” The other guitar songs are all on the Guild M-20. Rayna played the same guitar that she’s been using, an early D-28.

Last year, I was listening to a lot of ’60s folk music. I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Ian & Sylvia, Bob Dylan, and things like that, and hearing these really simple guitars where there’s no real guitar solos or anything like that. “I Can’t Wait” fits into that mold – as does “Keep My Heart in Mind,” and “Imagine That” – in that there’s no solos, but there’s a repetitive musical vein that goes through it all. It’s just two people playing guitars and singing. It’s that simple, which is something that really appeals to me.

Is it accurate to say there’s a connecting thread of faith in some of these songs?

KK: Yeah, I think that maybe is a thread through it.

RG: Not from that specific angle, but we definitely talked about hoping that people, in listening to the album, felt comforted.

KK: “I Can’t Wait,” to me, is very much is about faith – not in a religious way, but in a general sense of hope. As bad as things are right now, I remain hopeful and I keep looking towards the light. I’m aware of the dark, profoundly aware of the dark, but I don’t think that’s the end. I think there’s light as well and there’ll be more light as time goes by.

There are a couple of songs, specifically “Whatcha Gonna Do About It” and “Short Con,” that people could easily interpret as political – and they are. There’s no doubt about that. “Short Con” we look at as written from the standpoint of the Constitution. It’s like, “Why don’t you believe in me now?” There are other songs we have that certainly people have told us, “We’re not interested in your political views.” There’s a few floating around that just turn out … it’s not like we sit down and try and write about politics, or faith, for that matter. It’s just where our mental space is at the time.

You can look at these new songs as being political, but we’ve started thinking about them as being patriotic. It’s patriotic to stand up and say, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t just pull someone out of their car and throw them in a jail in El Salvador or whatever.” That’s not a political statement to me and I think for us at this point, as much as it is a patriotic statement, it’s our duty as citizens to say something. We’re given that right and we’re taking advantage of it.

And then something like “The Mansion Above,” which I wrote fifty years ago, somehow fits in there. There is a thread between those songs. So yeah, I think to see a line through of faith is good.

You’ve mentioned before that you’re doing what you call “three-day-weekend touring.” What are your upcoming “weekend” plans?

RG: Our approach to touring is very chill. We do two or three dates in a row, sometimes just one-offs. That’s our usual mode. I think the most we’ve ever done in a row is four dates. It’s all compact and it’s all about being humane and kind to ourselves.

KK: We have a good time. We have a comfortable car, I do all the driving and Rayna does all the navigating and mans the phone. I like to get onstage and play, but I don’t think either one of us wants to go, “Let’s book a month.” I look at other people’s schedules sometimes and go, “I remember doing things like that,” but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

We are gentle on ourselves. Our performances– we’ve cut that down in the sense that we don’t use any monitors onstage. We sit as close as humanly possible together and still be able to move the instruments around. Sound people really like us because sound people hate monitors. You say, “No monitors,” they rejoice. Doing it that way, if a soundcheck takes more than 15 minutes, we’re in trouble. Two instrument mics, two vocal mics, no monitors. “Can you hear us? Great. We’re done.” It makes life simpler.

RG: So yes, we do have gigs. There’s some stuff for the summer that will be posted on our website and I’m working on fall right now.

KK: And we are open to offers.

RG: Yes, we’re always happy to hear from venues!

Photo courtesy of the artist.

GC 5+5: Southern Avenue

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Southern Avenue
Hometown: Memphis, Tennessee
Latest Album: Family
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): We don’t remember any rejected band names, but being from Memphis we definitely call everybody “mane.”

Answers have been provided by Tierinii Jackson, Southern Avenue lead vocalist and songwriter.

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

It wasn’t one moment, it was the absence of one. I never imagined not being a singer and a songwriter. I grew up singing in church with my sisters and family and even when I ran away from all of that, the music stayed with me. Beale Street gave me my second education. That’s where I chose to be a full-time musician, even if the world didn’t choose it for me.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

I love musical theater. It’s drama, it’s storytelling, it’s emotion on 10. I used to want to be on Broadway. Sometimes I still do. The song “Flying” on our new album is just about that. My mom actually turned the plane around mid-air so I wouldn’t fly to New York to make my dream come true. I do believe that it all connects and I have plenty of time to still do something special in that world.

What’s one question you wish interviewers would stop asking you?

People always ask how we met and how the band started. It’s everywhere online already. We just hope to get asked about new things now, go a little deeper. But it’s all good, no hard feelings at all. We love it when we have an interview where the person in front of us already has an understanding of who is in front of them.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

When we toured with Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, and John Mellencamp, it was already unbelievable. But then we found ourselves on stage at FarmAid, after two weeks on the road with them for the Outlaw Tour. I remember standing there thinking, “Am I dreaming?” It was one of those moments where everything just hits you, how far we’ve come, and how real it all is.

Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?

We like to describe our music real simple. It’s Memphis music. That’s what raised us. We’re a mix of where we come from, how we grew up, and everything we dreamed of becoming. It all comes together in the sound.

Photo Credit: Rory Doyle

David Ramirez Shares His Dreams on ‘All the Not So Gentle Reminders’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The first key to All the Not So Gentle Reminders, the sixth album by singer-songwriter David Ramirez releasing on March 21, is “Maybe It Was All a Dream,” the moody, elegiac song that opens his first LP in five years.

There are no lyrics to spell it out for the listener. It’s an instrumental, mostly a synthesizer riff over drums and a stately organ interspersed with a muffled, mysterious, and unintelligible voice. It’s more about mood – think Twin Peaks – than anything specific.

“The connection I have with it, which is a little too personal for me to share, it just felt right to open the record,” Ramirez said. “I had already gone into it knowing that I wanted some very long and dreamlike intros and outros to some of these songs. So it just seemed like a very fitting thing to have it all tie in by introducing the record with a musical number.”

The second key to the album is “Waiting on the Dust to Settle,” the second track, where Ramirez confides he doesn’t yet know where he’s headed.

“Amen, I can see it in the distance, the potential for a new beginning,” he sings. “I don’t recognize this place anymore … [I’m] waiting for the dust to settle.”

In our BGS interview below, you’ll learn the identity of the third key song on All the Not So Gentle Reminders, why it took so long to record and release the new material, and how the album’s lush string arrangements are a sign of the maturation of the artist.

The string arrangements on the album are very prominent, a counterpoint that duets with the lyrics. What brought that on?

David Ramirez: Yeah, for sure. I’ve never worked with strings before and just to kind of stay in the same lane of this dream world that I was trying to build, it made sense. … I’ve been doing this thing for a while now, but I feel like bringing strings into an album, I felt very adult for the first time. It felt good. It was really exciting.

Why did it take you five years to get this album out?

It was COVID and a breakup that kind of paralyzed me from being creative. I didn’t want to directly reference [the breakup]. There is one song on the album called “Nobody Meant to Slow You Down” that is direct from my last relationship. But the rest of it, I wanted to explore some other things.

You have Mexican heritage. Things are going badly for Mexicans and Mexican Americans — and immigrants and their families from many nations and backgrounds — in the U.S. now. Any reason you didn’t tackle that?

I have a couple of political tunes on past records and it’s something that I address during shows. This record for me, especially with the state of my heart recently going through a pretty big breakup that was extremely world-shaking for me, I didn’t want to put out for personal reasons a heartbreak record. … I did write some songs that were more social and politically heavy and I’m reserving those for an EP or my next album. I have this new song that I’ll release sometime later this year, called “We Do It for the Kids,” which is probably my most political tune to date and it’s a pretty heavy one.

To get the full effect of your songs, close attention must be paid to the lyrics. Is that a challenge during shows where people are also socializing?

I’m lucky enough to have people here in the states who’ve been following me for a while and they enjoy the lyrics. They enjoy how meditative it is. But the shows aren’t just that. I do not like going to see a songwriter and they sing for two hours and it’s just dark and depressing the whole time. So we mix in a lot of music from a lot of different records and make sure that there’s a dynamic and it’s fun and it’s funny and it’s upbeat.

Sure, there are slower and more contemplative moments. But we like to put on a show. … In Europe, they’re very polite and you can put on the most rocking show and they’re going to give you a golf clap. They’re there for the songs and the stories. So I generally have to curate a different set when I’m overseas.

You’re based in Austin, Texas. Did you grow up there?

I was born and raised in Houston, playing baseball growing up. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I met these fellow students who were all in theater and choir, and those relationships led me to stop playing ball and join choir and join theater and pick up an instrument and start writing my songs. I went to Dallas for a brief time to attend [Dallas Baptist University], and that’s where I started playing out in front of people for the first time, whether it was just open mics or the midnight slot at a metal club where they allowed an acoustic songwriter guy to show up and close out the evening. I was just so desperate to play that I didn’t really think twice about it. In 2007 and 2008 I lived in Nashville and then I moved here to Austin, Texas, in December of 2008 and I’ve been here ever since.

A third key track on the album is “The Music Man,” where you credit your father for helping spur you to make music.

“The Music Man” is a song I wrote about my father who gave me a Walkman when I was 10 years old. There are many people I can thank and [to whom I can] attribute my passion and my love for not just music itself, but for writing and performing it. But if I’m really upfront and honest, I think it goes back to when my father gave me his favorite cassette tapes and how that led to this life as a 41-year-old where I make records and tour the world full-time.

Who were the artists on those cassettes?

The Cars Greatest Hits. That’s obviously a rock band, but the song that I was so obsessed with was [the downbeat] “Drive.” Then I went to the Cranberries, and then to Fiona Apple, and then I went to Sarah McLachlan and that led to Radiohead.

… There’s this melancholy nature and mood that all those records have that at such a young age made a deep impression on me. I didn’t start playing music till seven, eight years after that, but by the time I did pick up a guitar or pick up a pen or piece of paper and start writing down my feelings, I think all those influences from such a young age really started to show their faces.

Any one artist in particular that inspired you to take up songwriting?

When I was 21 I got Ryan Adams’ Gold and that was just a big, massive influence musically for me. … That really locked in for the first time how I wanted to tell stories and what kind of stories I wanted to tell. Ryan and I don’t know each other, but his records led me to folks like Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan. He was the doorway to a lot of a lot of greats that weren’t really coming my way when I was in high school.

Are you comfortable with your music being categorized as Americana?

I don’t mind it, but I don’t really understand it either. If you say it’s Americana, people assume that it’s more country and I don’t feel that way at all. The more I do it, [I prefer] just “singer-songwriter,” because at least that offers freedom. Because every record I’ve released sounds different than the last. So at least with singer-songwriter, I can kind of have the freedom to evolve and change.

Photo Credit: Black Sky Creative

Ron Pope Chases His Dream On ‘American Man, American Music’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It may look rough around the edges, but Ron Pope’s journey through life encapsulates the American dream. He buffs out those spots, uncovering a hefty dose of humility, wisdom, and empowerment on his 11th studio record — American Man, American Music.

On it, the New Jersey-born, Georgia-raised singer uncovers moments from his childhood (like waking up before school to unload semi trucks) to the present day that have shaped him into the man he is and made his musical dreams a reality. But despite its title, the album is anything but exclusionary. Just like our nation’s diversity, American Man, American Music is a patchwork quilt of sounds, stories and experiences that serve to remind us that we’re all dealing with the same struggles and desires no matter what we look like or where we came from.

“I want to make music that other people can take and put into the moments in their lives,” says Pope. “The goal is that if I’m doing it right they’ll feel less alone. I want to put that back into the universe because I’ve taken so much of it out that it’s part of what buoyed me to get me to this point.”

This manifests itself in heartfelt vignettes centered around his family and recently discovered meaning of “home” on songs like the ode to his wife, “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” as well as “Mama Drove a Mustang,” an homage to his mom’s “let it ride” attitude that he wound up carrying into his own musical pursuits. But he’s also not afraid to get political on songs like “Klonopin Zombies,” a story about losing his grandmother that directly calls out the callousness of the pharmaceutical industry and sees him painfully pleading, “I swear there must be a heaven, ’cause where the hell else would someone like you go?”

Speaking by phone from his Nashville home between a mid-morning job and picking his daughter up from school, Pope spoke with BGS about home, family, platforming the next generation of artists and the experience that make up American Man, American Music.

You duet with Taylor Bickett on “I’m Not The Devil.” What spurred you to bring her aboard for it?

Ron Pope: Lately I’ve been finding so much inspiration in new artists. Growing up you tend to fetishize the stuff that came before you, almost like hero worship. Luckily I’ve come up in an era where so many of my contemporaries are masters, from Jason Isbell to John Moreland, which is really cool. But now I’m at a phase in my life where I’m getting more and more inspired by the artists coming in behind us. I remember first hearing Taylor’s songs, reading her lyrics, and seeing people making posts about sunsets and storms with her songs in them and was blown away. That’s what I love about music – you’re always finding new ways to be inspired.

What are your thoughts on the practice of platforming younger artists and what you stand to benefit from it as well?

If you make records your whole life, it’s going to be an ongoing challenge to find things that keep you engaged and excited about making music. It’s like a game that I’m always playing with myself. I want to find things about music that make me feel the way I did when I was a kid. Sometimes when people imagine an artist, they assume you’re only listening to people who sound like the same handful of songs that they know and that’s it, but I listen to all different sorts of music. Just the other night I was making pasta with my daughter in our kitchen listening to Dean Martin. On any given day I’ll move from that to some Tony Rice, Jason Isbell’s new song, Turnpike Troubadours, people like Taylor on Instagram, and then John Prine. I find inspiration everywhere and love that the music I make still feels fun and exciting because of it.

You just mentioned your daughter. I know family plays a big role on this record, from “In The Morning With the Coffee On,” to “Klonopin Zombies,” “Mama Drove a Mustang,” and others. Mind telling me about how that helps to serve as a through line on this project?

The central message is that we all share so many of the same sorts of experiences. For instance, in “Klonopin Zombies” I’m talking about this point in my life when my grandmother passed away eight days after my grandfather, leaving me wildly devastated. In life, we’re all going to experience powerful loss in that way; it’s just a matter of if it has happened to you yet or not. It’s the nature of living. My goal for doing that was to reach people on a more general level. If you are blessed enough to love people, then one day you will suffer because you lose people.

When I was first starting out, one of the complaints that music industry people would have about my music was that my songs were too specific and didn’t feel general enough, which was weird because for me those are the [kind of] songs that I always felt the most attached to.

Think about the Eagles’ – “Standing on the corner Winslow, Arizona/ Such a fine sight to see/ It’s a girl, my lord, and a flatbed Ford/ Slowin’ down to take a look at me…” or James Taylor’s – “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone/ Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.” You’re in the room, but you don’t know who he’s talking to or why. It’s like, how many times in your life have you watched someone struggle with the expectations people put on them? Even though he’s telling a very personal and very specific story, you’re brought in and it reminds you that there’s a human being on the other end of this.

We got to go to all these places and meet a lot of people, and what I have found as I have done that is most people want the same things – they want opportunities for themselves and for their children. They want to know that they’re safe, and that their kids are safe and are going to get educated. We have a lot more in common than we do that separates us, which can be hard to see when you’re just watching videos of people yelling or complaining about how differently they believe your neighbor is.

How does that idea tie into the album’s title – American Man, American Music?

It’s inherently political to say “I am an American man and this is American music.” It’s inherently political, but I didn’t want to make something to bash people over the head, because it’s hard to write stories that are both protest songs that feel like they matter and are actually good songs. So I decided to, with the exception of “I Gotta Change (Or I’m Gonna Die)” – which is a pretty open rebuke of the pharmaceutical industry expresses my anger towards it about the opioid crisis – I try to speak in more sweeping terms and not focus in on the things that I was angry about, instead focusing more on humanity and openness.

I’m following myself from when I was a child in these stories all the way to this moment in my life. I’m singing about the car my mother drove when I was six years old in “Mama Drove a Mustang,” then I’m singing a little prayer for my family that I wrote while I was out on the road in “The Life In Your Years” or how my wife and I have been together for almost 18 years on “I Pray I’ll Be Seeing You Soon.” It makes me realize that I have lived the American dream.

I’m just a regular person from a blue-collar family born to very good-hearted, well-intentioned teenage parents who didn’t have a lot of resources and did their best with the opportunities that were in front of them. There was no reason to believe at the start of my story that I would end up in this place. All of that is in there because I am an American and I am an American man, and I am making American music, but I don’t mean any of that to be exclusionary. So many people that are using all of those words do so to exclude others and I have lived the American dream and want others to be able to do the same. On this album I wanted to focus on telling great stories that highlighted my journey and my humanity and what it took for me to get to this place where I got to as a way of showing that I don’t think it’s something that we should hold hostage. We should want other people to be able to reach these things in a nation built by immigrants on stolen land.

What does “home” mean to you – both as a physical place and as an idea – in relation to this album?

My mom loved us a lot, but we also moved often, which can be destabilizing. When I got to the point in my life where I was out on the road I almost felt engineered to do it, because I never had a real sense of home growing up. When I went on tour it felt like I was supposed to be there, which made it easy to wake up whether I was in Lincoln, Nebraska; Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, or Pompano Beach. For a long time I thought you had to live that way to write songs.

At one point I was living in New York and hung out with my wife during a break from the road, who at that point I’d known since we were kids in Georgia, but had never dated. Suddenly everything changed and I started feeling her no matter where I was and yearned to be back in New York. I didn’t feel at ease unless I was with her, before realizing that she had become home for me. I’d never understood that homesick feeling that others get until then.

I feel that even more now with our little girl. It’s different, because my wife chose me and knew what I was and what I wasn’t, whereas we chose to bring our daughter into this world. Because of that I feel an even stronger pull from home than I have in the past because this little girl doesn’t care that I sing songs for people, and at the end of the day she doesn’t need that – she just needs me to be her father. It’s important that I’m able to make a living with my music, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that I wasn’t there to witness her losing her first tooth and other core memories. You have to grapple with that every day if you’re going to do this for a living. At the end of my life, if people say I’m a family man before they say I’m a musician, then I did it right.

What has the process of bringing American Man, American Music to life taught you about yourself?

There are points in the process of making any record where you look at yourself in the mirror and ask “Am I full of shit? Or can I actually land this thing?” The content on this album, what I’m talking about, it felt heavier and deeper than some of what I’ve done in the past. And I hate the idea of taking myself too seriously. At the end of the day, I’m an entertainer; everyone who makes music is supposed to be one, no matter how much they call themselves poets and stare at their expensive loafers oh-so-thoughtfully. Whether you’re Bob Dylan or Jackie Wilson or Tom Waits, at your core, you’re fundamentally the same as a clown or a breakdancer. Your job is to bring people joy, to entertain them. Walking around with this understanding has always made me sort of sick to my stomach whenever I find myself taking any of this noisemaking I do too seriously.

But on this album? I surprised myself. We are making music about serious things and I didn’t feel embarrassed or disgusted by it. It’s serious because it’s supposed to be serious; I’m not being a self-important asshole. Somebody needs to talk about the opioid epidemic and no one else was doing it in a way that I felt satisfied with. I did it because I felt like I had to, not to feed some inflated notion I had of myself as a capital A “artistè.” So I guess I learned that I’m not full of shit. Or at least, not entirely full of shit.

Photo Credit: Blair Clark

For Guitarist Jordan Tice, “Perfect” Recordings Are Never the Goal

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass. Newgrass. Chambergrass. Jamgrass. Thrashgrass. So many sub-genres, so little time. For guitarist Jordan Tice – solo artist and longtime member of Nashville-based Hawktail – there’s no time at all, because labels don’t define art and they don’t factor into his creative process.

“I don’t necessarily think about it,” he says. “I mostly do what I feel like doing and incorporate sounds that feel relevant, that I have a personal connection to and an excitement to explore, and the ability to replicate and share. I’d like to think that personality can unite disparate things if the heart is pure.”

Tice weaves a thread of musical connectivity on his new release, Badlettsville. The EP features two covers, Bob Dylan’s “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” and Randy Newman’s “Dayton, Ohio – 1903,” as well as the originals “Mean Old World” and the instrumental title track. The four are staples of his live shows, but only now have they been committed to recordings.

“They’re all fundamental to my show and are requested as much as my other songs, but they didn’t have a place on either the last record or the next one, so they belonged in Badlettsville,” he says. “They fit together sonically as well. As soon as we got those four things down, I was like, ‘This is something.’”

Ever busy, Tice isn’t slowing down in 2025, although the emphasis is shifting somewhat. After two hectic years, Hawktail is dialing back a bit on gigging and Tice is devoting time to another solo album. “Hawktail has an EP in the can that will hopefully get out sometime soon,” he says. “We’re doing a few festival gigs but taking a much lighter year. I’m doing some dates in support of [Badlettsville], in addition to festivals with Hawktail. But I’m trying to take a little bit of a step back to focus on making this new record.”

Your website bio begins, “Jordan Tice is a musical seeker of the most dedicated sort.” What does the term “musical seeker” mean to you?

Jordan Tice: I’m always exploring my own interests and creativity, and also exploring the music that I do play, the roots of that. I want to understand myself and everything I do, and everything that came before me, better.

Part of the art of music is communicating to anybody, not particularly musicians. The more you understand about music in general, the more you understand what works and what doesn’t. The more you do it, get out there, and play and make records, the more you understand how things register and land with people – different types of thoughts and sentiments, things like that. Music is the art of sculpting sound within a given amount of time for someone who’s giving you their ear.

How has that manifested itself over the course of your solo albums and Hawktail?

With everything you do, there’s something you want to repeat about it, but there’s also things you want to do differently. I mostly grew up writing instrumental music and Hawktail is entirely instrumental. Long about 2015 or 2016, I started writing songs like crazy, just out of nowhere, and I realized I needed an outlet for that. But the instrumental stuff is still near and dear. Keeping a foot in both doors allows me to scratch this itch and this love for both of these things I do.

Did moving to Nashville have something to do with your songwriting?

I think so. I can’t provide concrete evidence, but the coincidence is too great – the fact that I started writing songs right when I moved to Nashville. So the answer is yes, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how. I also started hanging out with a lot more songwriters. My community was more instrumental-based in Boston and New York, where I lived before, so there’s definitely the influence of some new friends I made upon moving down here.

You’ve been playing guitar since you were 12. Does it sometimes feel the same today as it did then?

Yeah. I actually started taking lessons again, from a classical guitar teacher, just because I have some time off the road this winter. There’s things I wanted to improve and I decided I needed some help. I’m always trying to improve, always listening to things, and even in the music I love, there’s still the same sense of mystery of, “How did they do that?” The breadth of everything you’re aware of and assimilated expands, but at the same time it’s the same old [thing].

What led you to classical training?

We’re not doing classical music per se, I should clarify. But a lot of the things I was hoping to work on were technical-based, and classical guitar has such a codified, rigorous, technical study and a pedagogy related to technique in a way that other genres don’t necessarily have.

I’ve studied a lot of facets of music, but I’m not formally trained by any stretch. I took some jazz guitar lessons here and there, and I studied composition, but in terms of guitar I’ve never had formal technical training. I felt I was up against some roadblocks and walls with my playing and decided I needed the help of an expert, a teacher. This [teacher] came strongly recommended from my friend Chris Eldridge from Punch Brothers, and it’s been rewarding to expand the technical facility side of things.

You played a Preston Thompson Brazilian Rosewood and your main guitar, a Collings, on Badlettsville. Tell us about those guitars.

I was at Laurie Lewis’s house in Berkeley with Brittany [Haas] from Hawktail. We were in town playing and we were helping her move some furniture. She had this Preston Thompson in the corner that she was trying to sell and I was interested. It’s from 2016. She hand-selected the cut of Brazilian rosewood, a beautiful piece of wood, and had them make it with this wood that she had sourced. I absolutely love it. It’s going to be my main touring guitar for my solo stuff coming up.

The Collings is a D1A mahogany dreadnought that I bought in 2014. It’s perfectly balanced. It almost sounds like an old guitar. The overtones are exactly right. I have a relationship with Collings, but I bought this one at The Music Emporium in Boston because I liked it so much. It’s been my main axe for the last ten years. It’s what I play in Hawktail and what I recorded my last solo record on.

I brought both of those guitars to the studio, in addition to this new Yamaha FG Indian rosewood guitar that I’ve been working with them for the last couple years to promote and develop. They’re great guitars, and it was a fun process getting to work with them and help get the word out. They’re really fantastic.

How do your picking styles with Hawktail, on your solo work, and with other artists come together to create your style?

I write a lot of music, so my identity as a writer maybe puts those things in the same world. So I would say that it’s filtered through the same mind, and also the conceit is that it’s my music. Hawktail is collaborative, obviously, but it’s part of the same musical world.

I’ve always looked up to Norman Blake and Doc Watson. Norman Blake does a lot of different things, but you don’t really think about it. He plays fingerstyle, flatpicking, traditional music, writes his own music, but it all makes sense in the context of his world. I’ve always admired that as an archetype for a folk musician. He’s himself first. He’s not a historian. He picks and chooses things that work in his musical world, as opposed to something outside of himself. He’s an artist that happens to combine all these folk music techniques and sources into something that’s his own.

You’re thought of primarily as an acoustic player, but you also play electric guitar. Which ones?

I grew up playing rock and roll, in addition to bluegrass and things like that. My first music was the Allman Brothers. I got together with this guy in my church and he showed me the twin lead thing. We’d learn the two leads and then we’d switch. That music is near and dear to me – Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers. So I’ve always played a little electric too. I think it’s going to work its way into the next album.

My main electric is an American Standard Telecaster that I swapped out some of the pickups and modified a little bit. I put a higher-output Seymour Duncan pickup in the neck position and I made it a four-way switch, so you have the humbucker setting in addition to the normal three settings.

Also I have a Yamaha Revstar Professional that they just sent that I’ve been having fun with as well.

What do acoustic and electric guitar each bring out in your playing?

An electric allows you the opportunity to fill up a room with less effort. You can saturate a room with sounds with less notes, with less physical effort. An acoustic is a parlor instrument. It’s meant to be played in a small room with your head right up against it. As soon as you stop making noises with your hands, the noise goes away. With electric, a lot of times less is much more, and with acoustic, a medium amount is a medium amount.

With this new record, I’m going to do it with drums, so I’ve been messing around with pickups on electrics and … I don’t want to say effects, but ways to expand the breadth of the sound, get a little bit of that electric expanse, but still treating it like it’s an acoustic. That’s been a fun and interesting pursuit.

How does collaborating with other musicians push you musically?

I have a little home studio setup, but I love going to the studio. I love there being, “This is the time that we’re making the record. What happens, happens.” I think that urgency puts you into a superpower mode. Also the camaraderie. There is truly no substitute for live chemistry. AI can try all it wants, but it will never get it. The communication and sound that happens … there’s so much subconscious and physical factors that are changing constantly. You can’t substitute it.

I love the element of not trying to perfect things, of a record being a snapshot in time. Treating it that way helps you bring your A-game because it’s, “I need to be able to do this at any given time.” It makes you focus on delivering a performance, crossing all your T’s and dotting your I’s, so that it’s all there when it’s time to push “play,” or when it’s time to play with other people, or time to get in front of people.

What snapshot does Badlettsville represent?

The tunes weren’t created or arranged with the idea that they’d be on a record, so in some ways it’s like a snapshot of the live show I’ve been doing over the last couple of years. It’s really organic in that regard.

All these arrangements came about from playing live, specifically with Paul Kowert and Patrick M’Gonigle. Patrick’s been playing a lot of shows with me, and Paul is my BFF partner in crime in Hawktail and beyond, so it represents my relationship with those two guys in a big way.

Also my interests, the fact that there’s cover songs by Randy Newman and Bob Dylan. If I had to pick my two favorite songwriters, it would be them. It’s a snapshot in time of the manner in which I’m playing and thinking about music and the people I’m doing it with right now.

Photo Credit: Cameron Knowler

BGS 5+5: Lily Talmers

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Lily Talmers
Hometown: Birmingham, Michigan and Brooklyn, New York
Album: It Is Cyclical, Missing You
Personal nicknames: To most people I’m just Lily or LT. Though… I’ve long been just a hair away from changing my moniker from my real name to “Scary Magdalene.”

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

Judee Sill has been so huge for me – there is such musical intricacy to her work and to the metaphors she works with in writing. She just goes beyond the script of singer-songwriter in every way. She is really playing! With texture and tone and size and scope on every level – lyricism, meaning, arrangement, melody, harmony. She was just so devoted to every facet of the craft, and her songs thematically are themselves devotional.

As far as contemporaries go, though, Madison Cunningham has also totally changed my hopes and dreams. Her ways of being and writing have granted me permissions and reminders as simple as, “Women can be forces on the guitar!” and as wide as, “You can trust your audience to hold depth and complexity!” Her devotion to craft, like Judee’s, is the underlying thing that moves me.

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

Does teaching count as an art form? I have taught or studied literature formally for the last 10 years off and on. I could rattle off a bunch of titles or something, but to be honest a huge part of my music and craft has to do with performing. I’ve learned so much about the type of performer and space holder I want to be by trying and failing at teaching and witnessing some really brilliant colleagues. It’s influenced everything – my body language, my attention, my ability to embody and to really mean what I’m saying or singing.

I taught literature to college students for four years at an alternative/outdoor education program called the New England Literature Program. I’ve been hugely impacted by the many ways one can go about instructing someone else to undergo a creative act, be it writing or interpreting writing. I’m always floored by what can be done by a group of people just paying attention to a work of art or piece of writing. And that practice of noticing and paying attention is like 80% of how I’ve gotten any good at writing songs or playing music.

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

In a word, “often”! I think we’re only really capable of seeing in others the things that we most intimately witness in ourselves. So, if a song is about betrayal, it’s writing both of the betrayer and the betrayed, as if they’re separate people. But, usually, I’m reporting with a real understanding of both sides because I am both, the betrayer and the betrayed, at once! And, if I don’t realize at the time of writing the song that I am both, usually my life reveals it to me somewhere down the line. I hear the accusations and questions and outcries of the songs differently with time. People in my life have a deep impact on me, but a lot of my best songs emerge from the many binaries and paradoxes of my internal world and less often from literal features of my life.

Does pineapple really belong on pizza?

Absolutely. I feel like people who can’t accept this are still crying themselves a river over Dylan going electric. Things that seem like they shouldn’t work often do work! Get with it!! Having a pineapple-goes-on-pizza attitude bodes well with making music too – you should always say yes to inspired ideas that sound weird or impossible. And if it works, it just does. There doesn’t need to be theoretical sense-making of it all.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

HA! I love this question. May the world know that I love Celine Dion. Particularly her French records – D’eux or On Ne Change Pas. When I’m sad I like to watch this video of her singing a Christmas song on TV when she was a teenager and being surprised by her family. I was shown her music in high school French class and have always loved her drama and the way she really dignifies the figure of “singer.”

Photo Credit: Alex Gallitano

MIXTAPE: A Soundtrack of Life for Another Glory’s Nathan Trueb

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Growing up in a musical family, I was exposed to a lot of different sounds from an early age – a lot of them, not by choice. I had a dad who preferred country radio and led gospel music at our church. My mom played classical and Civil War songs on the piano daily while I played with my toys. Next were two older siblings using seniority to lord over the dials at every chance – they also both played classical piano.

As I got older and carved away at my own musical sensibilities, these dictates became accidental influences to the soundtrack of my life and shaped who I have become as a songwriter and musician. This playlist includes some early influences along with music that has turned me on for one reason or another, which I’ll do my best to explain. Thank you to everyone who has helped shape the soundtrack of my life so far, especially my family and mentors. – Nathan Trueb, Another Glory

“Surfer Girl” – The Beach Boys

Some of my earliest memories growing up involve the Beach Boys. I remember the Endless Summer cassette tape and its painted album cover distinctly. We would listen to it on road trips and I remember my dad and his friends playing guitars and singing these songs. My older brother got really into the Beach Boys and I remember he loved this song. Even though he told me he didn’t know why, but it made him sad. It also became my 2-year-old daughter’s favorite song and band.

“Why Not Me” – The Judds

As much as I didn’t want to like country music, it started to become harder to make excuses as to why just as soon as I started to play the guitar and take music more seriously. If you were to ask anyone in my grade school what music they liked, the only acceptable answer was, “Everything BUT country.” The more discerning my ear became I couldn’t deny the masterful playing and even, dare I say, “shredding” of the players on these then-contemporary records. The other thing that country brought to the table were some perfectly crafted, three-minute-and-twenty-nine second pop masterpieces like this one. Although I couldn’t show it outwardly to my family, I was rocking out on the inside.

“Black Cadillac” – Lightnin’ Hopkins

We used to go over to my uncle’s house from time to time when my mom was at work. On one visit, around the time when I had just started playing guitar, I found out my uncle played a left-handed acoustic guitar that I really admired. I also had no idea that he had been learning some blues and showed me a few licks and we jammed together. He had a few records laid out and this one leaped into my hands. He put it on and I couldn’t believe my ears. The voice, the guitar, the storytelling and humor. I did that thing where I didn’t let go of the record until my uncle suggested I take it home. I still play that same copy to this day.

“Going to California” – Led Zeppelin

I owe the most to my brother as a musical influence – I guess just influence in general. He was always there with the next record I needed to hear. It was a pipeline from his friends to him, him to me, and then me to my friends. I’ll never forget the day that he played me Led Zeppelin and it completely blew my mind. Growing up in a conservative household, I had never heard anything like it and everything changed after that. I became obsessed with Led Zeppelin like people get obsessed with Harry Potter or WWII. “Going to California” came to me around the time of first loves and I really got it. “Sell the Farm” off of the Another Glory record is a direct hat-tip to this song. I love the way it made me feel and how it still transports me to long phone calls in my attic room in the summer time.

“Michelle” – The Beatles

My first memorable crush was named Michelle. She was my sister’s friend and would visit our house often. We grew up on a farm and that meant that my brand of flirting was often hurtling cow pies at my sister’s friends. Somehow that first love was unrequited.

I remember a trip to the Puget Sound where my brother loaned me his Beatles 1962-1966 disc (the red one with the whole apple/cut apple on the compact disc), popping it in the Discman, putting the headphones on, and listening to that song over and over. I loved it, but it made me sad. Now I knew how my brother felt when he listened to “Surfer Girl.” I sing this song to my daughter and it’s still amazes me that they wrote it. Like, how? I’m sure there’s a story about it somewhere, but I don’t think I really want to know. My wife and I have been together since high school and the first time I visited her bedroom she had every single Beatles album in a dedicated, spinning CD tower.

“Naptown Blues” – Herb Ellis

My mom was driving me to school one day my freshman year and I had the local jazz radio station on, 89.1 KMHD. I think playing the guitar a lot when I was homeschooled for a couple years took me on a trajectory from Led Zeppelin to Steely Dan to trying to understand jazz by listening to the radio. This song came on as she dropped me off. I said, “I don’t know what this is, but I want to play like that.” Bless her heart, she must have written it down as the DJ read that title after the song ended (in their soft, publicly-funded morning voice), because I unwrapped this CD for my next birthday and I remember listening to it while I went to sleep until I had every part memorized.

“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” – Bob Dylan

Speaking of girlfriends, my first real girlfriend in high school had an older brother who was a Dylan fanatic. I remember looking through his 72-disc Case Logic CD case. I opened up the first page, Dylan. Second page, Dylan. The entire thing was filled with Bob Dylan. He asked me if I was a fan and I remember saying, “not yet.” For some reason I had a feeling I might be someday.

Well, I don’t remember how, but when I moved out of my folks’ place this song hit me like a freight train. Dylan’s influence is so obvious in any modern music, especially when you are a guy fingerpicking a guitar, but we have to give credit where it’s due. I’d like my old girlfriend’s brother to know that I finally crossed the Rubicon.

“My Funny Valentine” – Bill Evans & Jim Hall 

I’ve had a few guitar teachers in my life and had the pleasure of taking some lessons in college from Jerry Hahn. He had his own books and I think was a big fan of Jim Hall. He turned me on to this record and this style of walking bass with chords. He also taught me to keep a list of “must-have” or “must-find” records in my wallet for the record store. I still have a list to this day in my notes. He said this one should be on there. Years after taking from him, I found an original copy somewhere in California. This is one of my all-time favorite records.

“Run That Body Down” – Paul Simon

I got pretty into this record at some point and into Paul Simon’s writing in general. I used to have two enormous PA speakers that we used for band practice in my basement. Late at night I would sit between them and listen to music very loud. This song was on and the guitar solo caught me by surprise. I looked up the song to find out who played the solo. It was my old teacher, Jerry Hahn!

I ran into him at a jazz club not too long after and asked him about it. He recalled it perfectly and said he turned down the offer to come to the studio because he was “too busy.” They kept calling, so he went and remembered being frustrated. Take after take, Paul wasn’t getting what he wanted. Finally Jerry took the solo in a totally different direction, against his good sense, with the wah pedal and all. After the take Paul exclaimed, “That’s it!”

“One Mo’Gin” – D’Angelo

After listening to all of the Motown one can get their hands on, you start to wish there was more. Or, that it continued to evolve into modernity with class and style instead of flaming out, morphing into disco dances by designer drugs. Like when your parents started “raising the roof.” At some point you just have to put it down, like Old Yeller. Then decades later someone comes along who has filled themselves to the brim with that old tonic and others that had filled up on the same, and it comes spilling out in biblical proportions in a perfect statement. Voodoo is that album. D’Angelo is that prophet. I have listened to this record so much in my life that it’s hard to state exactly what influence it has had on me. “Fool For You” was a song written a long time ago and it was a direct attempt to do something in that vein.

“I Don’t Know” – Nick Hakim

As you get older it gets harder to get the same high from music that you did when stuff first really freaked you out – or maybe that’s just me. So, when you find that something or someone, it might become an instant obsession. Nick Hakim had that effect on me. I loved everything he was doing; it was so different, sonically, than most of the bedroom pop stuff or neo-soul. It felt like a modern psychedelic Voodoo, but also just heartbreakingly beautiful. His ability to mix his jazz-school-kid sensibilities with gospel and indie-rock set a high bar and still does.

“The Only Thing” – Sufjan Stevens

It seems that everyone has a favorite Sufjan. His prolific list of albums seem limitless in their scope and bending of genres. The only Sufjan for me is Carrie & Lowell. I don’t think there is an album that equals it in creating a soundtrack for sadness, grief, regret, love, life, and death – at least not that I have found. His lyrical imagery seems to be divinely inspired and it’s hard to pick one part of the song, so I’ll quote the first words:

The only thing that keeps me from driving this car
Half-light, jack knife into the canyon at night
Signs and wonders: Perseus aligned with the skull
Slain Medusa, Pegasus alight from us all

“The Magician” – Andy Shauf

This song came on the radio while I was driving in Portland over a bridge with a view of the river and the city behind it. (I often remember an exact time I heard a song with perfect clarity. Maybe everyone does? “Mo Money Mo Problems” I was passing the Chevron on Molalla Ave., Oregon City, circa 2001.)

After the 8-bar intro to this intriguing new single on the local indie radio station, I nearly crashed my car. I instantly remember being like, “OKAY!” and banging my head when the beat dropped. It’s a perfect song to me and a perfect recording that is perfectly produced. You can’t say that about every song you love.

“If I’m Unworthy” – Blake Mills

Every guitarist sooner or later was exposed to Blake Mills. A friend of mine turned me onto his first album early, before all the hype, and I quickly became a fan. His songs and voice weren’t typical and were totally unique to him. I had watched a lot of videos of him playing and he quickly became the best living guitarist that I was aware of.

His long-awaited sophomore album was finally announced. When he came to town to support the record he was booked in a small room, seated. His name was so unknown I couldn’t find anybody to go with me. I also had inside knowledge that his then girlfriend, Fiona Apple, was likely to make an appearance. So I stood silently in line to the sold-out night and kept my mouth shut.

During his set, I popped out to the bar to get a drink and bellied up to the bar. I let the woman to my left go ahead of me. It was Fiona Apple. She laughed when I nearly spit out my drink. “If I’m Unworthy,” in the moment it was released, became the new “guitar song” for guitar nerds. Every single guitarist has to learn it, as a rite of passage; like Stevie Ray Vaughan or “Sweet Home Alabama.” The song is a snapshot of the Blake Mills that revolutionized guitar once again and then quickly retired, confounding dad-rockers with little tube amps and glass slides adorned to their fingers. Will the real Blake Mills please stand up?

“Body” – Julia Jacklin

MLK & N Fremont, near the Chevron. That’s where I first heard this song. Maybe I only have autobiographical, photographic memories of songs if they involve a gas station, specifically Chevron. We were riding in a friend’s Subaru, which we always drove around in. A peace-sign necklace swinging from her rearview mirror, rain hitting the windshield, the music always blasting. I had never heard the song before and I was all-in from the downbeat. Such a heavy song and so personal.

Julia’s lyrics make you feel like it was you yourself on that Sydney tarmac. And the haunting question, “Do you still have that photograph?/ Would you use it to hurt me?” Like the photograph, the song is naked and circles around a singular progression, building tension until finally quietly cracking open for some light at the end.

“I guess it’s just my life, and it’s just my body…” which, on the first listen, could sound sarcastic, but on the repeat she sounds relieved or at least vindicated. And of course it is probably both. The progression gives hope that this chapter of her life, or ours, is closed. In my experience, that is what a lot of good songs do: close a chapter for the artist and the listener.

“Are You Looking Up” – Mk.Gee

Not a secret any more. Still mysterious, but not just the guitar-guy in the Dijon video. Still shy, but now he’s in the spotlight. The leap from his 2018 album to Two Star & the Dream Police might as well have been a tightrope walk over the Grand Canyon. I loved the old stuff, but when I saw the live video of “Are You Looking Up” with Mk.gee hanging out of a tour bus or train car – whatever it was – I nearly fell out of my chair. I had a hard time explaining why to some who just heard Doogie Howser synths.

His way of playing might not sound outwardly complex or groundbreaking, but in my opinion, it is. Everything about the homespun, demo-quality recordings reminds of me of how a Wu-Tang record sounds completely superior to anything else on MTV at the time, not due to its polish, but rather its grit. Mike’s voice has the perfect dichotomy of rasp and softness. He has a unique ability to sing almost indecipherable lyrics over such memorable melodies that the words could be an afterthought, not unlike Bon Iver.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mike when he came through Portland. He is shy and a lot of lyricists seem to guard their lyrics due to insecurity, but the lyrics are so good, too. I see Mk.gee as the new guitar gunslinger with his outlaw jacket as his cape. He’s single-handedly doing for guitar what The Mandalorian did for Star Wars.

Photo Credit: Ryder Medeles

Bluegrass Memoirs: The Earl Scruggs Revue Early Recordings

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In our last Bluegrass Memoir, “Beginnings,” I described David Hoffman’s documentary, Earl Scruggs with his Family and Friends. By the time NET aired it, the Revue was already off and rolling with Earl’s new music.

In 1970, bluegrass festivals – the first was in 1965 – were becoming quite popular. The music’s supporters had discovered that such events could present their favorite music to broader, younger, urban audiences. These larger crowds brought their tastes and preferences with them. At these booming festivals, new acts like the Earl Scruggs Revue spoke to musical perspectives shaped by contemporary popular music.

The Revue played to large numbers at Monroe’s Bean Blossom Festival that spring and to Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs Festival on Labor Day weekend. Earl’s solo album, Nashville’s Rock, and Randy and Gary’s solo album, All the Way Home, were released that year.

The Earl Scruggs Revue at Bill Monroe’s annual Bean Blossom festival, Bean Blossom, Indiana, June 1970. (L-R) Unidentified bassist, Jody Maphis, Randy Scruggs, Earl Scruggs, Gary Scruggs, and Leah Jane Berinati. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer.

In 1971, Columbia released Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends (C 30584), a soundtrack album that included much of the content of Hoffman’s documentary along with two additional fine vocals by Doc Watson. In its liner notes, Don DeVito characterized the show’s topic:

Earl Scruggs is a man who has paid his dues. You can forget the generation gap … Earl has always been an innovator and an adventurer…

Also in 1971, newgrass music emerged. Its key figure at that time was singer-songwriter and banjoist John Hartford, whose “Gentle on My Mind” had been a 1967 Glen Campbell hit. John had flourished in the LA television business as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and a performer on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.

Hartford and Scruggs – they’d met in 1953 – had developed what Bob Carlin, in My Memories of John Hartford (University Press of Mississippi) calls “a deep friendship.” When Hartford returned to Nashville in 1971, he recorded what is now considered the first newgrass album, Aereo-Plain. The Revue’s Randy Scruggs played bass on this ground-breaking disc alongside Tut Taylor, Vassar Clements, and Norman Blake.

The Revue and Hartford were at the center of Nashville’s jam-based music, which embraced musicians from new scenes blending rock and older genres – folk, bluegrass, and country. Both bands appeared at a number of bluegrass festivals in 1971 and the Revue was busy recording in Nashville.

I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends (1972)

Earl was working on his next album, I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends: Earl Scruggs with Special Guest Stars. The back liners of the album (Columbia KC31354) described it as “Earl Scruggs and The Earl Scruggs Revue in performances with Linda Ronstadt/The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Stacey Belson and Arloff Boguslavaki.”

Stacey Belson was a pseudonym for blues singer Tracy Nelson, then with the band Mother Earth. Arloff Boguslavaki was Bob Dylan’s pseudonym.

Bill Williams’ liner notes describe the fabulous jam sessions that were happening at the Scruggs family house – hence the album’s concept:

Picture, if you will, the group sitting around together at the Scruggs home (although the actual locale was shifted to Columbia Studios) …

For this album, the studio became the living room and the producer was Don Law, the Nashville vet who’d worked in the ’30s with blues legend Robert Johnson and western swing pioneer Bob Wills and in the ’50s with Flatt & Scruggs.

At this Scruggs family jam session were Earl and sons along with their Madison High School contemporary, drummer Jody Maphis. Also in the room were fiddler Vassar Clements, in the process of moving from Hartford’s band to join the Revue, and several others who’d later join the Revue, including pianist Bob Wilson, a Detroit R&B musician who’d moved to Nashville and subsequently recorded with Bob Dylan.

Each of the featured star guests are heard in solo, sometimes singing in harmony with each other. Earl plays on every cut. Great to hear his backup work with all its nuances! Randy’s lead guitar and Vassar’s fiddling appear throughout.

It was as if these people had showed up at the Scruggs home one evening to play for and with each other – an old-fashioned domestic music session, with the host going around the room inviting each to perform and providing musical backups for all. The evening’s repertoire was the kind of stuff you might expect at such an event: mostly recent country, folk, blues and rock – things you might have heard on the radio lately in 1971.

The sound was that of contemporary popular music, suggesting that this was what you’d hear if the Earl Scruggs Revue came to your living room, festival, or auditorium.

The album’s first side opens with an LA country soul rock tune, Bonnie and Delaney’s “Lonesome and a Long Way From Home.” Gary is singing lead and playing bass; Nelson adds harmony. This is rocking R&B – Wilson’s piano opens the break and, with fiddle and drums, keeps it rocking to the end. Earl’s banjo is out front throughout.

Next comes Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings,” sung by Linda Ronstadt with harmony by Nelson. The backup piano and Dobro are joined by a fiddle break. Straight-ahead Nashville country.

Track three features “Boguslavaki” (Dylan) singing Charles E. Baer’s 1896 hit, “It’s a Picture From Life’s Other Side,” a song that had gone into the folk tradition and been frequently recorded by hillbilly and gospel singers in the ’20s and ’30s. The laid-back fiddle, bass, and drums, along with Nelson’s harmony on the chorus, mark this as a parlor folksong.

It’s followed by Nelson’s performance of “Motherless Child Blues,” where accompanying musicians Earl, Norman Blake, Randy, and Vassar stretch out with some nice blues breaks.

This side closes with Mike Nesmith’s “Some of Shelley’s Blues,” performed with members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, with Gary Scruggs and Jeff Hanna doing the singing and Earl and Randy both taking instrumental breaks.

The second side of the album opens with a vocal by Gary on another Bonnie and Delaney cover, “Never Ending Song of Love.” Ronstadt sings a county cover, Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”

Dylan brings out another pre-war country folk oldie, a great “Banks of the Ohio.” While Nelson is featured singing folksinger Bruce “Utah” Phillips’ “Rock Salt and Nails,” a song first recorded by Flatt & Scruggs in 1965, with Ronstadt adding harmony on the chorus.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band contributes another Nesmith song, “Propinquity.” The side closes with the album’s title track, a sing-along for everyone, “I Saw the Light.” The album was released in 1972.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1972)

Around the same time as I Saw The Light was made, banjoist John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band asked Earl to be on their new three-LP concept album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Scruggs was playing in Denver with the Revue when he and McEuen met. The Dirt Band’s sound, with McEuen’s skilled Scruggs-style banjo, appealed to him, as did their project to honor and make music with the earlier generation’s pioneers. That had been his own goal in bringing Maybelle Carter into the studio to record with Flatt & Scruggs back in 1961.

Earl, well-connected in Nashville as an Opry star with record, television, and movie hits, helped bring a number of his country music friends into the project. Both Gary and Randy were also involved, as were several of Hartford’s Aereo-Plain band members, notably fiddler Vassar Clements and Dobro player Norman Blake.

Unlike Earl’s Nashville’s Rock album, which covered recent rock and pop hits on the banjo with Nashville studio backing including electric instruments and, on several cuts, a soulful female vocal trio and a string section, this album had completely acoustic backup by the Dirt Band as they covered legacy hits by country, bluegrass and folk pioneers like Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, and Jimmy Martin.

Earl played a pivotal role in the making of these recordings, playing guitar or banjo on sixteen tracks. The whole Scruggs family can be heard: Randy contributed guitar, autoharp, or voice on eleven tracks, Gary sang on eight, and Louise and Steve sang on one track.

Of the many interesting performances on this award-winning album, Randy Scruggs’ acoustic guitar version of “Both Sides Now” was perhaps the most remarkable; the final selection in the set, it followed a group sing-along of the title track, similar to the closing on the Earl’s I Saw The Light, in which all of the Scruggses sang. These recordings, released in 1972, were made in August 1971.

The Scruggs Brothers (1972)

Also recorded in 1971 was Gary and Randy’s second Vanguard album, The Scruggs Brothers (Vanguard VSD 6579). Some of the same musicians who played on I Saw The Light performed here, like Tracy Nelson, the Dirt Band’s Jeff Hanna and John McEuen, pianist Bob Wilson, and drummer Karl Himmel; but the album had more of a country rock sound. It opened with “Little Maggie,” a song Flatt & Scruggs had recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1962. With Gary’s bass and Jody Maphis’ drums leading the way, it sounded something like the Nashville studio A-listers Area Code 615’s 1969 version.

Throughout the album, Randy played a majority of the solo breaks, some on acoustic guitar but most on electric, in a heavy metal style similar to what I heard him playing in Maine in 1975. Four tracks were their own compositions, two by Gary and two collaborations.

On one, the instrumental “Trousdale Ferry Rag,” Earl played banjo. This up-tempo, bluegrass-style piece has an unusual ending, shifting to a slow blues beat. Most notable is Gary’s “Lowlands,” a great ballad set to the tune of Earl’s “Sally Ann,” which both brothers had been hearing at home all of their lives (Flatt & Scruggs recorded it in 1960). Gary plays guitar, Randy picks banjo.

Covers of older (dare we say traditional?) material includes a rocking version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “T for Texas,” and the other cut on which Earl played banjo, “Hobo’s Lullaby,” which features a sing-along chorus similar to that on the closing of the I Saw The Light and Will The Circle Be Unbroken albums. Another older piece was “The Johnson Boys” (Flatt & Scruggs did it 1962) on which John McEuen’s frailed banjo created the album’s most old-timey sound.

The Earl Scruggs Revue at Bill Monroe’s annual Bean Blossom festival, Bean Blossom, Indiana, June 1970. Randy Scruggs, Earl Scruggs, and Gary Scruggs. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer.

The boys’ continuing involvement with country rock is reflected in two songs that originated in 1967 with the LA band Hearts and Flowers. “Rock and Roll Gypsies,” which closes the first side of the album, seems to have been an attempt to garner radio play – it’s the only track on the record to include string section backup. The other Hearts and Flowers-connected track, “Bugler,” a sad song about the death of a dog, had recently been covered by Clarence White with the Byrds.

Live at Kansas State (1972)

During this year of extensive studio recording, the Revue was also out playing on the road. Although Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends included a few examples of the group in action outside the studio, Live at Kansas State (Columbia KC 31758) was their first full show album.

Many of the songs the Revue did at this 1972 concert remained in the band’s regular repertoire and showed up, for example, at the 1975 Maine concert, including “T for Texas,” “Paul and Silas” (they titled it “Bound in Jail All Night Long”), “Sally Goodin[g],” “Carolina Boogie,” “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven,” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

Several were on their recent albums, like “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and “Both Sides Now.” Bluegrass classics included “Good Woman’s Love” and “Bugle Call Rag.”

In 1998, a reviewer for No Depression wrote that Live at Kansas State was “probably their album most deserving of a full reissue … a surprisingly cohesive ‘bluegrass-rock’ blend, the likes of which has seldom been heard since.”

In 1972, the band included fiddler Vassar Clements and Dobroist Josh Graves, a bluegrass icon who’d just left Lester Flatt’s band. The album package has several photos of the band; these are notable in that they include everyone but pianist Bob Wilson, who is very much present in the album’s audio.

Wilson had moved to Nashville from Detroit’s R&B scene. His first years in Nashville were slow going, but that changed when Bob Dylan came to town to record Nashville Skyline and wanted “a funkier piano sound than the usual Nashville cat could produce.” The success of his work on Dylan’s album gave him plenty of studio work and he also found time to go on the road with Scruggs.

“When I was with the Earl Scruggs Revue,” he recalled, “Earl always introduced the band, and when he came to me, he always told the crowd, ‘And this is the man who played piano on Nashville Skyline, Bob Wilson.’ I must admit the applause felt really good.”

In his memoir, Bluegrass Bluesman, Graves spoke of the challenges he enjoyed while rocking with the Revue: “Earl and that bunch forced you to work up new licks. You had to come in there on the stuff they were playing. It was so loud I couldn’t hardly stand it, but I really enjoyed it. It opened a lot of doors for me. They were into a lot of things. …”

“Earl was doing the same old tunes with a little modern touch. Earl got bored with bluegrass – I’ll tell you that. He just didn’t want to play it anymore. They had that big beat, that sound behind it, and that’s what he liked.”

“He’d play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ with that band and people would go wild.”

I saw this, too, in Orono in 1975.

The Revue carried on into the early ‘80s, with albums that drew from contemporary pop music and brought younger country, folk, and rock stars in as guest artists. We’ll touch on a few of these next time.

(Editor’s Note: Read our prior Bluegrass Memoir on the Earl Scruggs Revue here.)

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg.
Inset black and white photos by Carl Fleischhauer, courtesy of Carl Fleischhauer.

Edited by Justin Hiltner.

Writer Ann Powers Discusses Her Acclaimed Joni Mitchell Book, ‘Traveling’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Journalist, author, and cultural critic Ann Powers released her latest book, Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, in June of this year. A thought leader in pop and pop culture criticism – and an occasional BGS contributor – Powers considers this legendary figure in folk and American music with deliberation and intention. Traveling isn’t merely a biography or a retelling of well-known and oft-repeated Mitchell lore; instead it’s a careful consideration of the artifice and sincerity, publicity and privacy, myth-making and universe-building of this iconic musician, songwriter, and celebrity.

“I wanted to think about how Joni Mitchell became JONI MITCHELL,” Powers relays in her conversation with BGS executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs. “How she fought against that in her own life, and how she reinforced the legend as well.”

And how well-timed is this book and conversation, with Mitchell’s mythos at perhaps its lifelong peak? With Brandi Carlile’s assist, Mitchell has been enjoying a “Joni-ssance” of late, with jaw-dropping public appearances over the past couple of years after an extended hiatus and star-studded Joni Jams delighting fans and acolytes from the Gorge in Washington state to Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.

Fresh off Mitchell’s headline-grabbing appearances at the Hollywood Bowl on October 19 and 20, we’re sharing our recent conversation with Powers about Traveling, its inception and writing, and how a truer telling of Mitchell’s life and creative journey requires a degree of skepticism – and may just result in becoming an even deeper fan of the one-and-only Joni Mitchell.

Right off the bat, I really connected with your hesitation to write this book, because I find that I have a complicated relationship and love of Joni, and I’ve never been able to put it into words. So when you start your introduction with that exact sentiment, I felt that really deeply.  What was your thought process in committing to the book?

Ann Powers: Well, Amy, you understand more than most the thorny relationship we as writers and as lovers and supporters of music have with not artists in particular, but kind of the edifice around the art, or as Joni herself says, “The star-making machinery.” I’m very aware of how artists exist in one space and then there’s like a room where the artist lives, and in between is this space where a lot of misconceptions can happen. A lot of fetishization can happen. I was kind of trying to walk between those rooms and think about her as a public figure, as a legend.

And then, also what I could know of her from a distance. I say from a distance, because I did not interview her for this book – which is not unusual for biographies, by the way – but I foreground that because I wanted to say, “Look, I’m also a stand-in for maybe not the average Joni fan, but for those of us who are kind of considering these people that we’ve made immortal through our love and adulation.”

I wanted to think about how Joni Mitchell became JONI MITCHELL, how she fought against that in her own life, and how she reinforced the legend as well. That was the strong thread for me and an attraction to the project. My hesitancy was that I wasn’t going to be able to overcome the legend.

You say multiple times in the book how you’re not a biographer, but despite the chronological order, the book felt almost like a guide to being a critical fan. How have you developed as a fan in this writing process? Are you still a fan?

I’m definitely more of a fan than I ever was before. I would count myself among those people who took Joni Mitchell for granted before I was approached to do this book. And part of it, I think, is my self-styled “outsider” status. That’s a weird thing to say, but [I say it] as a misfit or someone who came from punk. When I was at the right age to have my “Joni phase,” my idols were Kate Bush, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, women who I now realize were deeply influenced by Joni themselves, but at the time who seemed almost like an alternative to her and Dylan and Neil Young.

The ’90s [were] the natural time for me to go through another Joni phase and then I did. I did get to see her at that amazing show at the Fez [in 1995] with Brian Blade. I had some prime Joni moments and definitely was listening more than I had in the past, but that was sort of like that moment when Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, PJ Harvey, and so many amazing artists were breaking through the Lilith Fair generation.

And here’s Joni in the press, bad-mouthing them or saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with them.” So again, I’m like, “Oh, who is this person? Why is this person so hostile?” It’s like all these moments that would have been the one where I stepped onto that path turned me away from it – until much later, when I had an occasion, this book, to go beyond the surface of my fandom. Then I just went completely, fully in. So deep. And every step I took that was closer to her actual music and her actual words, not just her song lyrics, but interviews she’s given or the circumstances of her life, I became more and more of a fan.

In that way, this book is the story of me becoming that defender in the end, even if I’m still a skeptical defender, but I believe that that is something Joni teaches us to be – to yourself and as a skeptical defender of those people she admires.

The funny thing about Joni is that she took every step she could to stay off of that pedestal throughout her career. Sometimes I think her desire to not be encased in amber came from her own anxieties, like her own unhappiness with what fame wrought. It’s a very delicate thing.

This is such an important part of her music and her songs as well, especially an album like The Hissing of Summer Lawns, which is basically a critique of Hollywood. She’s living in Bel Air. She’s hanging out with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and the glitterati. She is of the glitterati. But then she’s also the one who runs away, who goes, “I’m living a monk-like existence outside Vancouver for a while.” Or, “I’m getting in my car by myself and driving across the South and using aliases and checking into hotels and hanging out with whoever’s in the lobby.”

This is something she kept doing in order to check herself and check the mechanisms around her and not become complacent with where she was. Same in terms of her collaborators. Instead of just doing what you’re advised to do in the music industry, which is just stick with the formula, she just kept blowing things up. She’s like, “I want to play with these jazz guys. I want to bring in like Brazilian percussionists.” That’s her curiosity, as I say in the book, but it’s also her refusal to be a conventional pop star. She’s always kind of trying to keep that at bay.

There’s something that you mentioned about the women you did look up to. When I think about Kate and Chrissie and Debbie, these women stand on their own; holding their own in a male-dominated scene and being surrounded by male collaborators and bands, but not necessarily lifting up other women. I’m trying to think of a female collaboration that Kate Bush ever did and I can’t think of one. 

Well, when we look historically at the place of women, particularly in rock, there were labels attached to women who primarily collaborated with women – “women’s music,” right? That was lesbian music. And I think there was a lot of fear, and frankly, internalized homophobia, among a lot of women and people in general in the more mainstream music business.

So you didn’t want to be associated with too many women or people might think you don’t like men, you know? Read any interview with a woman star from 1967 to probably like 2020 and you’re going to see that phrase. “I love men,” you know, “I like male energy,” all this stuff. And there’s no shame in liking to work with male collaborators, but it’s amazing how fearful so many women and their teams – the people guiding their careers – were of female collaboration and female affinity. It was like a forbidden zone.

Of course, I also love the Go-Go’s and the Bangles, but girl groups were [their] own kind of zone. They were taking on these personae. These are great musicians, why did they have to dress up like ’50s pin-ups? It’s like they’re saying “Look, don’t worry! We’re real women! We can play instruments, but we can be girls too!” And despite what we think, that’s still so alive and well today. Though I do think there’s been a shift in the mainstream recently with artists like Chappell Roan and boygenius. There’s definitely younger millennials and Gen Z fighting against being confined by gender roles.

I have also noticed that younger artists are more eager to welcome their women heroes on stage and older women are more comfortable embracing it. Olivia Rodrigo is constantly pulling her heroes on stage. Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchee is like, “Where is Lucinda Williams? Let’s bring her out.” And that was something you actually didn’t see even during the Lilith Fair years. It didn’t happen. You didn’t really see older artists on the lineup.

I loved the line in the book, “A map maker must be open to new routes.” Were there any new routes that surprised you, or unexpected people that came out of the woodwork?

Definitely the whole Florida thing. When I found out she had spent time down there and met Bobby Ingram – who’s since passed away. And, I didn’t really know there was this whole kind of mirror folk scene in Florida to that in New York.

But I also didn’t know about how diverse the early folk revival was. This is something [for which] I give a lot of credit to Dom Flemons. He’s been doing the work on this, but it’s still so under-explored. When Joni started out, she wasn’t just seeing Pete Seeger wannabes. She was also seeing Caribbean musicians and people doing musical theater and jazz rock or jazz folk, and although it was still a predominantly white scene, there were very important nonwhite artists on that scene.

In my early days [of writing], I just wanted to write a book about that. Uncovering the stories of other musicians who we forget when we only talk about Guthrie or Seeger or Dylan or whatever. It’s like, how white and boring can it get? If it’s just that, it’s that same story every time and yet it was so much deeper and richer and more interesting. And it’s so important to understanding Joni’s music, because her music was never pure folk.

Somewhere in the last seven and eight years of putting this book together, Brandi Carlile kickstarted the “Joni-ssance” as you put it. How did that change your process?

I thought Brandi would stop at her Blue concerts [at Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2021], but suddenly it was like, “Oh wait, there’s so much more!” It’s been such an exciting story in and of itself that goes beyond music. It’s really the story of recovery, healing, and having this epic return. So on that level, it’s a like beautiful human story that’s been edifying to watch.

But I made the choice to stand apart [from the Joni Jam concerts] so I could continue to keep my perspective focused. Now with the book out, I can finally just enjoy this woman who gave us so much and is receiving her accolades. There’s a world of elders – and especially women elders – that I want to continually acknowledge. And if this project could be helpful in that, then I’ve done something positive for the world.

Photo Credit: Emily April Allen

Guitarist Jackie Venson on Her Instrumental Peer, Yasmin Williams

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: For a special Artist of the Month feature and op-ed, acclaimed guitarist, composer, and improviser Jackie Venson considers the impact, musicality, and originality of her peer Yasmin Williams. Read more about Venson on BGS here. Explore more AOTM content on Williams here.)

As someone who gets pigeonholed as a blues guitarist, I’ve publicly reckoned with what I feel is an othering of blues as no longer really art, but instead what might be seen as a wax museum-ification of a formerly revolutionary genre. Too many established musicians and fans alike don’t want blues to evolve, but to instead be preserved in amber. Yet, its sibling folk music has not only never entirely fallen out of fashion, it has evolved and even prospered specifically because its brightest figures have refused to let tradition and academic codification stagnate the genre. Whether you’re talking about Bob Dylan going electric or Bon Iver collaborating with hip-hop superstars, folk musicians understand that cross pollination and new ideas are vital to growth. To my ears, Yasmin Williams is a proud continuation of that tradition of evolving folk.

To listen to the music of Yasmin Williams is to listen to the thrill of musical mutation in action, to hear and feel playing that is in constant communication, not only with itself, but with myriad styles and personalities. Given how adventurous and playful Williams’ music is, it’s not too surprising that her gateway to music was in fact a video game, specifically Guitar Hero 2.

In a review of Williams’ breakout 2021 album Urban Driftwood for taste-making music site Pitchfork, writer Sam Sodomsky connected Williams’ percussive, tap-heavy fingerpicking style to the mechanics of that game, as well as folk guitar legend John Fahey. Rhythmic intensity and love for the thrill of performance are the unifying elements of Williams’ otherwise impossible-to-pin-down style; this isn’t folk as a study or stuffy examination of tradition, it’s folk as expression at its most pure, music for entertainment, communication, and friendly competition all at once.

Williams’ latest batch of singles from her just-released album, Acadia, impeccably illustrates this eclectic and freewheeling approach to folk. “Hummingbird” is a dazzling collaboration with banjo player Allison de Groot and fiddle phenom Tatiana Hargreaves that recalls Richard Thompson’s lush, melodic picking but marries it to the breakneck intensity of traditional bluegrass.

On the other end of the folk spectrum, “Virga” finds Williams teaming up with Darlingside for a gorgeous and stately slice of indie folk that would fit right in with the likes of Sufjan Stevens and Bibio. Somewhere in the middle is “Dawning,” a bluesy folk number that features Williams dueting on guitar with Aoife O’Donovan of Crooked Still fame, who also provides enchanting, wordless vocals that give the song an almost ambient quality, as if Sigur Rós moved to Appalachia.

Even on songs that are more traditional, Williams playfully inserts pop and experimental elements. Take “Sunshowers,” which opens Urban Driftwood with beautiful fingerpicking that in turn gives way to a simple yet addictive bass-like hook that wouldn’t be out of place on a Post Malone single. Or, consider the album’s title track, which features djembe playing by Amadou Kouaye and adds an almost IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) quality to the song. Or, “Nova to Ba,” a collaboration with Argentine musician Dobrotto that effortlessly transitions from cinematic grandeur to relaxing ambient textures.

As a musician, I can’t help but be entranced by the marvelous skill and tone on display in Williams’ music. But more importantly, as a listener, I’m struck by the immediacy and tunefulness of the songs. Like Williams’ early inspiration, Guitar Hero 2, these songs are hard to put down once you start, and the difficulty never gets in the way of the fun.

“Juvenescence,” one of Williams’ most popular songs, is a handy representation of her skills – the impeccable picking, the daredevil runs that would impress even Eddie van Halen, the self-dueting in the finale. But it’s also immensely listenable and never a chore. Equally impressive is “Swift Breeze,” where Williams utilizes her guitar as an organic drum machine, getting a booming kick drum sound out of the body and rim shot-like hits out of other components, all while arpeggiating like she just got off a tour as the lead guitarist for a Midwest emo outfit.

It might seem odd to bring up emo in a feature on a folk musician, but there is a considerable amount of drama and theatricality in Williams’ music, even though most of it is instrumental. “Adrift,” in particular, has just as many emotional pivots and anthemic hooks as a Panic! At The Disco song. Here, the guitar comes in first, then the strings, but the swaggering hooks and melancholic valleys are there. It’s not hard to reimagine “Restless Heart,” from Williams’ debut album, Unwind, as an emo anthem either; it has a killer riff to kick things off followed by a pick slide and some heavy ringing chords. Even the title sounds like something the Get Up Kids would have used. If Dashboard Confessional was ever looking for their own Tim Reynolds to do an acoustic tour with, all I’m saying is Williams’ name should be high up on the list.

Every genre should be so fortunate as to have an artist like Williams, a performer who challenges herself without losing sight of what makes music a pleasure to listen to. A musician who commits to pushing the boundaries of the genre they call home, rather than maintaining a status quo. No genre should be inflexible and we need more musicians like Williams – period – who push themselves musically just as much as they do technically.

(Editor’s Note: Continue your Yasmin Williams Artist of the Month exploration here.)

Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz