Artist: Nashville Covers Dylan for SAFPAW Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “All I Really Want to Do” (Bob Dylan) Release Date: November 18, 2019
In Their Words: “Each person involved with this project donated their time and skills to make this happen. We all see what Laurie Green of Southern Alliance for People and Animal Welfare (SAFPAW) is doing for our community, and we love the spirit and songs of Bob Dylan, so we have merged concepts and talents to raise awareness for something truly worthwhile.” — Tim Easton
Editor’s Note: New West Records artist Aaron Lee Tasjan, ANTI- artist Darrin Bradbury, Cafe Rooster Records artists Brian Wright, Sally Jaye, Jon Latham, and Nikki Barber of The Minks, spearheaded by Tim Easton and producer Gabe Masterson, gathered at Club Roar Recording studio to record Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do” to raise awareness for SAFPAW (Southern Alliance of People and Animal Welfare). Directed and edited by Stacie Huckeba, the live video session marks the fifth consecutive year that Easton, Huckeba, and Masterson have partnered to record and film a Bob Dylan cover for a Nashville-based charity.
Artist:Jeremy Ivey Hometown: Still looking for it Latest Album:The Dream and the Dreamer Nickname: Jivey Old band names: The Lunar Ticks, Riverbottom, and Horse Sense.
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I was influenced early on by poetry. Poets like T.S. Eliot, Poe, Dickinson, Keats… all those ones you get exposed to in high school. I put a tune to Longfellow’s “The Fire of Driftwood” And would play and sing it. Later I got into the Beats and that really twisted my head in the best way. After that it was Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and all the song poets.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
The first time I got to join John Prine for “Paradise” and more recently, I did my first encore. That was surreal.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I think of everything as an influence. I mean, when I was a toddler I watched Captain Kangaroo, when I was 9 my uncle was struck by lightning, when I was in high school I had a deep infatuation with a girl I was invisible to. That’s all living art and I think it affects the art we in turn make. Film is definitely important because of dialogue. There’s dialogue in songs too. I like Sam Peckinpah.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I’m still not sure I want to. It’s more of a calling I guess…a nervous twitch I can’t seem to shake
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
Oh I don’t know, I probably blocked it out. I try not to try when comes to writing. There’s no bigger drag than hitting that high stone wall of effort over inspiration. I try to stay inspired period. If it’s not happening in a song I’ll go find it in nature or in a book.
In public radio and podcast fandom Jad Abumrad’s voice is not only immediately recognizable, it’s iconic. As a host of WNYC’s hit show, Radiolab, Abumrad has explored myriad topics ranging from secret World War II missions to the social and cultural impacts of contagious diseases. He has a knack for storytelling, uncovering and contextualizing minute details that many other writers and journalists may have simply shrugged at or glossed over.
This instinct, a sixth sense that guides him to these subtle nuances that often rest undisturbed just below the surface or hide in plain sight, is focused on a new subject in his brand-new podcast (also produced and distributed by WNYC), Dolly Parton’s America. The nine-part series lives up to the oft-invoked, seldom accurate characterization of “a deep dive,” covering ground that even the most ardent Dolly experts and fans may have never trod.
A self-described “new initiate” of country music, Abumrad grew up in Nashville, but given Dolly’s standing as an almost omnipresent cultural touchstone he realized much later that during those Tennessee years he almost couldn’t see the Dolly Parton forest for the Dolly Parton trees. “I knew her music, in terms of the crossover stuff — ‘9 to 5’ and ‘Islands in the Stream,’” he admits. “But the first place I started was going back to ‘60s Dolly and ‘70s Dolly. That’s a very different Dolly.”
Though what he found in those early decades of her career was often unexpected, it was never truly shocking or surprising, especially given the pop culture monolith that Parton has become since those years. A monolith that Abumrad describes as being able to bring people together across all manner of divides — something particularly remarkable in this current global moment.
“You see these stories emerge of not only her changing over time, but what was happening around her in the south, in Appalachia, and in America,” he continues. “The early Dolly music and lyrics became almost like a portal that I could step through to talk about history, to talk about politics, to talk about culture, to talk about feminism. It’s all there in her music.”
And so, it’s all in the podcast. In the two already released episodes Abumrad et. al. cover topics as broad and varied as Dolly’s constantly being undervalued as a songwriter, her being “typecast” as a secondary character (a “dumb blonde”), her shift from the sad, forlorn songs of her early career to her jubilant, encouraging anthems later on, and even her own struggles with suicidal ideation.
With such an entity as Parton, a bystander might assume that any approach to unspooling the many tendrils of her vastly variable and dynamic career would be insufficient, myopic, and/or excruciatingly intimidating. Abumrad faces this daunting task with aplomb, acknowledging the many ways such a project can go awry, but not allowing that acknowledgment to dissuade him. Rather than shy away from storytelling that might open him and the podcast up to criticism about omissions or oversights or missteps, he leans into the humanity that allows for those scenarios. “This is a project where I was trying to see Dolly through other people’s eyes, so that I could understand them and understand their lives and their experiences… I wanted to understand Dolly not simply as a performer and an icon, but as somebody who’s created all this culture… Why do they love it? What do they see in it? What is it about it that calls them? I felt like that was a way to understand the country at this moment.”
BGS editor and contributor Justin Hiltner spoke to Abumrad on the phone about Dolly Parton’s America; the two took turns picking their favorite Dolly tracks, as if standing in front of a Dolly-only jukebox in a Dolly-themed dive bar.
JH: If you and I were standing in front of a jukebox full of Dolly Parton songs what would be your “pick” if you were asked to play Dolly Parton for a room full of people? What would be the first song you would think of?
JA: I think [with] any jukebox selection you have to disclaim: There’s no way to be comprehensive, so any selection you make is going to be one tiny sliver of a tremendous catalog of thousands and thousands of songs.
But, I think the first one I’m going to have to pick is “Muleskinner Blues.” I think it was 1970? I think that’s right. 1970. I would play this one because that song is just… it is pure fire. The rhythm section is so badass and her on top of it, you just cannot — you have to move when you hear it. And I say this as somebody who didn’t grow up with this genre. I grew up in a house full of opera and bad hair metal. Country music was not my jam. But this is one of the first songs that when I heard it I was like, “Oh my god. This SONG.”
The moment that she ad-libs, “I’m a lady muleskinner–”
Oh my god, it’s so good.
It’s so good! And I think about it all the time. When we talk about bluegrass, [people like to say,] “Oh, you know, we don’t have that many women forebears, we don’t have many [women] to point to.” I hear that [ad-lib] and I hear her telling the history of women in roots music and American music. “I’m a lady muleskinner” is like, “I’m not just singing this song that’s always been sung by men, this song is MINE now.” I love that.
Let me follow that inspiration, because one of the things that I think about that song is where it falls in her history. She was on the Porter Wagoner show, right? She’s this crazy prolific songwriter, but she’s kind of under the thumb of this guy, who’s a legend and an amazing hitmaker in his own right, but he was kind of holding her back. At that point she’s starting to bristle. We talked to a bunch of people… I think of them as “Dolly-ologists,” these new academics who think about Dolly a lot, before this song it was a lot of sad songs, often sung from the perspectives of little girls, about something that had been done wrong to them. This is the first song that she grabs her power, in some way.
When she holds that first note she holds it as long as she wants and the band has to follow her. So she’s like, “Y’all gonna follow me.” Then as soon as she lets go the band follows her. It’s literally her taking charge of the band. You feel that power, you feel that energy. It’s such a good song. I’ve been listening to it non-stop.
I think my first jukebox pick, what might be my favorite Dolly cut ever, is “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” with Chet Atkins. Have you heard this?
Yeah!
It’s just two guitars, it’s just them. They’re kind of conversing while they play. There’s this subtle moment where Chet makes a joke like, “Why don’t you pick one, Dolly?” Then he continues to pick a solo and Dolly laughs like, “That’s not me, that’s not me!” But there’s this sort of respect in his voice, where he’s telling the listeners that she’s a picker. Like, “Don’t forget, don’t sleep on Dolly Parton. She can play guitar!” She’s the real deal.
They mix up the words at one point, they aren’t singing the right harmonies together. Then at the end, they’re just laughing together, and Dolly sighs, “Oh, I love you Chet.” He’s like, “Oh, I love you Dolly.” I think it’s my all-time favorite Dolly Parton recording ever. And for a song that she’s re-recorded so many times, to hear it pared down like that — definitely my number one pick.
Wow. That’s awesome.
What’s another one for you?
Let’s see, I’m really zoned in on ‘70s Dolly right now. I hope you don’t mind that most of my picks are going to be in that era.
Nothing wrong with that!
I just love the moment that her songs go kinda funky and percussive. I’ve always been less of a lyric guy and more of a music/tambour kind of guy. I love from “Jolene” on when she starts adding different instrumentations to her songs.
I have a couple of picks here… let’s go with “Joshua.” Again, it’s a song she did right after “Muleskinner” and I feel like that’s the moment when she truly becomes [a star] — if you want to look at her ascent to global superstardom, I think it begins in those few years and “Joshua” was her first number one. I just love the production of the song, I love how her voice was recorded, it’s a little bit distorted. I love how all the instruments are panned hard left or right. The rhythm guitar is over on the right and Dolly’s voice is on the left — or maybe it’s vice versa. I love the whole ‘70s production of it.
It’s such a weird story! It’s [about] an orphan girl meeting a crazy old man living by himself in the woods and they fall in love. There’s something kind of offbeat and oddball, but also kind of poetic about it. When it modulates, it goes up a semitone, like somewhere in the middle. It’s just cookin’. I love it.
My next pick, and really this is hard, I would probably pick something off of The Grass is Blue. And I think that my favorite one is “Train, Train.” I mean, you can’t be upset at a bluegrass song about a train, for one, but also that album means so much to me. You have this woman who has conquered every genre, has hits on so many different charts, and for her to come back to bluegrass — and I always make sure to emphasize the “back” to bluegrass because she’s been based in this. Her music since day one has been bluegrass music, the mountain music, as she calls it.
And the band on that record, the band that she toured with doing promo for that record, they were ridiculous! Chris Thile was in the band, if Chris Thile wasn’t, Sam Bush was. Jim Mills — it’s everybody. Jerry Douglas. This stacked roster of bluegrass pickers and then she takes that band to like, the CMA awards. To see bluegrass in primetime, in the mainstream like that always means so much to those of us who have always loved bluegrass first and foremost. I keep beating the drum of, “Induct Dolly Parton into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame! Induct Dolly Parton into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame!” I think it’s a no-brainer, and “Train, Train” is the perfect distillation of that for me.
Totally! You know, it’s interesting, what I remember is being in the UK — we went to the UK to shadow her for the premiere of 9 to 5 the musical — and on the way to the show I had to be in the car [with her] posse from the Dollywood Foundation and the Imagination Library, like David Dotson and some of these folks. They all were echoing basically what you just said. That album, more than any other album of hers, is most meaningful to the people around her. I think a lot of people feel like you feel. I don’t want to say it was one of her less successful [records], but it didn’t have the crazy crossover [appeal.] That album meant a lot to a lot of people.
Do you have another one? Maybe to close us out? One more for you, one more for me.
Sure, let’s see. I’ll give you a choice and you can tell me which one will be more interesting. “Love is Like a Butterfly” or “He’s Alive.”
Oh shoot, do both.
Okay, I’ll do both in one shot. So, “He’s Alive” is not the kind of song I’d ordinarily choose to put on, as a — I’ll be completely transparent — godless liberal. I come from a country that was torn apart by religion and my parents are scientists, so when we came from Lebanon my parents were like, “Don’t you damn set foot in a church!” [Laughs]
The first time I heard “He’s Alive” I got goosebumps. I hadn’t been that moved by a song in a long time. We were driving from Knoxville to Dollywood, actually, with one of Dolly’s biggest fans, and she put that song on for us. It was crazy, driving through the hills seeing signs like “Jesus saves you” and “Jesus loves you.” Then that song comes on and, as you know, the first few minutes are kind of a little bit overblown and orchestral and there’s this bombast going on, but when the chorus and the gospel chorus come in? Oh my god. That is more intense than any techno DJ drop. We were all just pinned to our seats for that. It feels like she’s alive, right? [Laughs]
I played it for my wife and my family the other day and they were like, “You like this?” But when it gets to the chorus they were like, “Oh, I get it.”
I’ll throw in “Love is Like a Butterfly” because when she had a string of number ones going from Dolly the “girl singer” to being Dolly the superstar, that was one [important song.] I don’t know, there’s something about her voice on that song. She’s describing this almost trance of love, she’s in love with someone and she’s weightless and entranced the way a butterfly is in the wind. The song isn’t as poetic as some of her others, but there’s something in the way she sings it that I just feel what she’s describing without even hearing the words. Something about her voice that is so… it literally flies. It’s like a butterfly. Her voice captures that. I’m so mystified by her voice on that recording.
I think my last choice would be, “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That,” not only because it’s just a really good jukebox song — it is a perfect rollicking country song for a night at the dive bar. But also I realized — I’m openly gay, I’m a career banjo player who happens to moonlight (during the day) as a music writer, and so I went through this whole dynamic [when I was younger] of discovering my sexuality after I had already been in this music for my whole life. I realized, “Oh wait, I don’t think I belong here. I don’t think this space is for me. I play banjo, I love bluegrass.”
Something that I really appreciate about Dolly, from long ago, before I even knew she was a queer icon — and rightly so! — I could project my queerness onto and into her art and see myself in it. There’s something about “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That” that’s just like, “Why does this straight man have to come up in my business and remind me that he’s unavailable to me?” That’s what I hear listening to that song, and it’s funny that I could go down a list of like ten other Dolly songs that feel like that to me. That feel like the queer experience realized through Dolly’s lens.
That’s really interesting… how so many of her songs create that space, so you can read it that way. I love that you have a list that goes beyond that. I might have to call you back and ask you to elaborate on that. [Laughs]
It was something that I really didn’t want to have this conversation happen without mentioning. I mean, even if you don’t count the rhinestones and the false nails and the big boobs, and everything. Boiled down to just nuts and bolts, and thinking of her as just a songwriter, she’s still allowing space for people to see their own experiences in her music. That’s not a very common thing in country. It is because heartbreak is all through country and everybody’s heart gets broken all the time, but other than that it really takes that sort of [approach] — well, what you’re talking about through this whole entire project. She touches on all of these issues that are sort of endemic to our culture, in a way that’s so organic that we ingest them almost without realizing it until now, in retrospect, I look back thinking, “Well of course she’s a queer icon, she’s creating space for us to relate to her music.” Even if it’s coming from such a specific place.
She, as a songwriter like you say, has created that space. Even without having to look at the persona in any way.
She still has not gotten her due as a songwriter, and it’s painful at times. To see that be such a big part of what you’re doing [is important.]
Yeah, I appreciate that, that’s where we start the series is taking her seriously as a songwriter, cause I agree. Robert Oermann said in one of our episodes that if she had been born two hundred years ago she’d be Mozart. (I think maybe he means more than two hundred.) Because she’s that touched by that creative spirit. That’s never been acknowledged. Bob Dylan gets it, Johnny Cash gets it, but she hasn’t.
Photo of Jad Abumrad: Bo Jacober Illustration: Christine de Carvalho
American folk music truly has a global audience, and J.S. Ondara is proof. This young singer-songwriter is from Kenya, and in a relentless pursuit of the music he loves, Ondara moved to Minnesota in 2013 to be close to Bob Dylan’s roots and to get a taste of what shaped America’s finest folk singer. (Read the BGS interview.)
Since then, Ondara has been making a name for himself across the country, earning himself a recording agreement with Verve Label Group and a nomination for Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2019 Americana Honors & Awards. Performing “Lebanon” from his 2019 album Tales of America, here is J.S. Ondara on CBS This Morning‘s Saturday Sessions.
All three of us went to college in Seattle at a school tucked between Fremont and Queen Anne. At the time, pre-Amazon, we knew the city best for its bridges and sailor vibes and constant grey blanket of melancholy. When you’re driving around at night on top of Queen Anne Hill, thinking about your unrequited love (just me?) the city views of blinking lights are spectacular and the LiveJournal entry is brewing in your mind. These are the songs you’re listening to. – Joseph (Natalie Schepman, Allison and Meegan Closner)
Nick Drake – “From the Morning”
I chose the song with “morning” in the title as the first track of this Night Drive mixtape. Sequence is very important in a mix for a night drive. The first verse says “A day once dawned from the ground / Then the night she fell.” It sets the stage and delivers the opening monologue. — Natalie
Laura Veirs – “When You Give You Give Your Heart”
One of my favorite songwriters:
“My stampeding buffalo Stops in her tracks and watches the snow Falling through the old oak tree When you give your heart to me.” — Natalie
Blanco White – “Ollala”
I found this song on a curated Spotify playlist and I haven’t been able to stop listening to it. It’s become one of my partner’s and my favorite songs to listen to together. — Allie
Fleetwood Mac – “Sara”
My friend showed me this song and told me her Mom used to sing it to her as a kid while she was tucking her into bed. I’ve never been able to shake that childhood movie moment when I hear this song. I listen to it as though that were my own comforting memory. — Meegan
Iron & Wine – “Naked as We Came”
This is a mood, isn’t it? I bet anyone who loved this song gets taken back to where they listened to it. It’s the quintessential Night Drive feeling. — Natalie
John Moreland – “Hang Me in the Tulsa County Stars”
This song means 1,000 things to me, but mostly it’s always felt like coming home. In a lot of uncertain times I returned to this song over and over again to ground me. — Meegan
Death Cab for Cutie – “A Lack of Color”
When I was first curious about how to write songs, Death Cab was big for me. He starts the song with “and” like you’re already in a conversation and that wowed me. — Natalie
Bob Dylan – “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”
I heard this song later on in life (within the last year) and fell in love with Bob Dylan’s voice. I know… took me a minute. I love the tongue-in-cheek feel of it and it has given me many special listening moments. — Allie
Sufjan Stevens – “Casimir Pulaski Day”
Sufjan. Mind blowing for me. I’m amazed by his matter-of-fact, deadpan delivery while singing about scenes that combine the horror of cancer right next to “the complications you could do without when I kissed you on the mouth.” It feels like acceptance. It’s devastating but it feels true in my chest. — Natalie
Nickel Creek – “Sabra Girl”
I listened to this song in headphones every night as I fell asleep in my dorm room freshman year. The acoustic guitar, the mandolin, the violin, Sara’s voice. Perfect. — Natalie
There are more trees than people in San Isabel, Colorado, where the Wet Mountains poke the sky and Jamestown Revival’s Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay set up a makeshift recording studio in a cabin. The Texas natives emerged with San Isabel, a gorgeous new album that marks both a return to Jamestown Revival’s acoustic roots and a bold step forward into more topical lyricism.
While addressing the unease now shaping the country’s collective mindset is a first for the pair, the record maintains Zach and Jonathan’s anchors of empathy and hope – along with their now-signature Southern folk harmonies that are woven together with that unexplainable richness usually reserved for families.
With a day off from touring, Jamestown Revival called in for a conversation with the Bluegrass Situation.
BGS: Location seems important to you guys. Take your album titles, for example. Utah was your first, and now, with San Isabel, you’ve returned to an album title that documents where you recorded. You’re not from or living in Utah or Colorado, but you sought them out. Why?
Jonathan Clay: Colorado is a place we’ve always loved. Long story short, we had access to a summer cabin in Colorado, and we thought, Gosh, we should take advantage of this.
Zach Chance: It’s kind of twofold. It was access to those places and trying to record in a guerrilla fashion. We enjoy the adventure of it — going and setting up in these settings, being removed — it just makes for a really fun process for us.
JC: For us, the city is not really conducive to creativity. It’s just not where I feel compelled to create.
ZC: The city has its own flavor of inspiration. It does inspire us at times, but it’s not really where we like to record, so…
JC: We have a habit of getting out into the woods when we’re ready to make an album.
Why did you guys decide to return to a more acoustic sound this time around, compared to The Education of a Wandering Man?
ZC: We weren’t touring as much as we had been the past couple of years. We’d been writing for some other things, and we just really wanted to go back to two voices – to write songs that could work with one guitar and two voices, back to the roots of what we were doing. I don’t know if it was all the noise of the time we live in right now, but we wanted something more centered around traditional folk storytelling. We were listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young – stuff like that. We felt compelled to live in that world.
Do you have favorite songs on the new record?
ZC: I don’t know. As soon as we start talking about them, I’ll tell you all the reasons I love them. Maybe I’m too diplomatic. I love “Harder Way” and “Who Hung the Moon.” That was a song we wrote in Colorado and recorded in a day. They’re like children. We love them all equally but differently. This might sound really dumb [Laughs], but there have been times playing “Crazy World” that I get kind of choked up. I start thinking about everything, and I get a little sad. The first few times we played it out, I got really emotional. We want to write stuff that ages like we’re aging — that matures a little bit.
JC: I think that’s a good point. We want our art to grow with us and mature with and without our listeners. I really like “Who Hung the Moon.” “Harder Way” is a pretty special song. I’m actually pulling my three-year-old boy on the scooter right now, humming melodies that I don’t know. It’s a special thing. When I sing the line about my boy, it’s coming from a real place. I have to hold back emotions sometimes because I think, I’ve got an audience to perform to. I can’t get choked up because that makes it hard to sing.
It seems like more and more artists feel obligated to address the uneasiness in the country right now. San Isabel does it – not necessarily explicitly, but it is still more topical than your previous work. Did you feel obligated to do that?
JC: I don’t think it was out of obligation more than it was just compulsion. We just felt compelled. It’s on everybody’s mind –everybody’s consciousness. As an artist, I think your consciousness manifests in your songs. That’s what happened with us.
First, you take a beat to acknowledge the despair a lot of folks are feeling in “Crazy World.”
JC: Zach and I have always been careful not to speak from some place of moral high ground. We don’t want to be just one more person preaching to somebody, as if we’ve got all the answers, because I think the problems plaguing our country are very complicated. If you oversimplify them and place blame, you’re falling victim to the very thing you’re proclaiming to rally against.
In a lot of our songs, we just point out what we see. It’s almost a lament rather than a judgment. We’re all in this together. All of our countrymen and women, we created this – we all played a hand in it. We’re trying to point out our observations and underscore the fact that we’re all on the same team, when you really get down to it. We all do care about each other. I feel like we’ve got more in common than we realize sometimes. It seems like sometimes the world is wrapped up in greed and malice and angst and vitriol rather than peace and — not to sound cheesy, but — harmonious things, the things that really give us happiness.
ZC: Yeah, it’s funny. “Crazy World (Judgment Day)” and “This Too Shall Pass” are back to back on the album. And those are like two sides of the same coin, you know? “Crazy World” is the day you wake up and think, I have zero hope for humanity. The idea was you’re sitting in a bar, and you’ve had a few to drink. Stuff is coming across the news, and you’re just discussing the state of affairs, like, “Yeah, man. It’s still a crazy world. Not much has changed.”
I love that you just brought up that it’s like those two songs are two sides of the same coin because it does feel like “This Too Shall Pass” offers some comfort.
ZC: Yeah, as dark as I can get, I recognize that I’m probably a glass is half full person. John, I think you are too.
JC: Oh, I’m a hopeless optimist.
ZC: [Laughs] So, that song speaks to that. No matter how dismal it is, we have to find a silver lining. Friendships and family are where the true joys in your life come from, more often than not.
What’s the best thing you’ve encountered or experienced back on the road this time?
ZC: Oh gosh, I have so many good ones. Eating dumplings in New York in this little shop in Chinatown. We crammed in with all our people, sat with strangers, and the beers were flowing. Those nights are fun. The camaraderie of being on tour again: You’re just living together, and you come home with a million new inside jokes and phrases.
JC: One thing that was really cool about this tour is we brought somebody out in our crew as a roadie who had never been out of Texas. We saw the world through his eyes. His parents brought him here from Mexico when he was six years old. He hasn’t had the opportunity to do much traveling. I met him and thought he seemed like a cool dude, so we gave him a job as a roadie.
ZC: We’re all a bit more advanced in age and have made a few more laps around the country, so in some ways, you can be jaded by that. But he’s 21, and experiencing all these things for the first time. It was really fun to relive some of this stuff through his eyes.
On this album, it feels like you have found your sound, at least for now. Comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel are inevitable, but ultimately, you don’t sound like anyone else out there right now.
JC: Well that’s a huge compliment. I appreciate that.
ZC: We definitely look up to Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers and would gladly take a comparison, but humbly say those guys are masters. We’re trying to figure it out.
JC: Yeah, those guys are masters, but we want to be masters. Somebody’s got to carry the torch. I’m not saying that in a cocky way, but I would love to be somebody that attempts to carry the torch. It’s what we love to do, and it’s what we love to sing. Singing without harmony — I don’t enjoy it half as much. When I sing with Zach, my voice feels complete. So it’s almost like a musical necessity for us.
If it were just the harmonies, the comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel would still come, but it’s your writing too, which is so strong.
JC: A lot of people still ask, “Are y’all brothers? The way y’all harmonize, I feel like you have to have grown up with each other.” Well, we’re not brothers, but we have been singing together since we were 15 years old, so I guess that’s about as close as you can get without being blood-related. It’s like a vocal marriage.
As far as the writing goes, we try to be thoughtful and not say things in a way that’s been said before. We knew early on that we wanted to be the kind of writers who are not overly esoteric or hard to understand. We wanted to speak in a way that’s plain and understandable but at the same time, maybe put in a way that you haven’t quite heard it put before.
Artist name: Griffin House Hometown: Springfield, Ohio; currently resides in Nashville, Tennessee Latest album:Rising Star Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): “Balls” was my nickname, which is part of why I named my 2013 album Balls. I guess you could say it was kind of like a self-titled album. My friend (when we were younger) thought it was funny to add the suffix “balls” onto everything. All nouns, common and proper, including people’s names. Griff-balls apparently had a nice ring to it, since it stuck. Eventually it was shortened to G-Balls and eventually just Balls. It was fun when that album “dropped.” The jokes were endless.
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
So many influences, but I think probably Woody Guthrie is the greatest. I do a little more singing than I heard him do, being influenced by guys like Bono and Jeff Buckley, but Woody passed down an American tradition to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Wilco, etc; his songwriting influenced [and] shaped how we’ve all done things. I relate to him particularly being a guy with his guitar traveling all around America and singing and telling stories about what’s going on around him. He really paved the way for all of us modern day troubadours singing any kind of folk songs.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
One of the first shows I played when I started was opening for John Mellencamp. I was so nervous I told the crowd I was going to go back behind the curtain and “When I come back out,” I said, “Can you just pretend like you are all here to see me and go crazy?” They gave me a standing ovation and went wild before I even played a note. On the last song, I did a victory lap around the audience of 5,000 people and high-fived everyone and then finished the last song. I mostly did it because I didn’t know if I’d ever if I’d ever have an opportunity like that again and I wanted to make the most of it (and have a good story to tell). It felt like something you’d see happen in a movie.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
Lots of film. I love watching movies and disappearing into the scenes that I’m watching. It’s a great escape for me and sometimes inspires a song. Going to museums and looking at paintings and sculpture is a wonderful joy for me too. I also love books; I majored in English Literature in college and learned to really appreciate writing during that time. Poetry and literature probably have the biggest direct influence.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I saw Rattle and Hum and wanted to be Bono, circa 1988. [U2] were just so unbelievable. That set the bar pretty high, but I’m also content just making a living, telling my stories, and being a singer and storyteller playing for smaller crowds.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
“Yesterday Lies.” I think it took me a couple years to write. But the toughest ones were the ones I couldn’t write at all. Every one I finish is easier than the ones that never happened.
This summer, BGS UK is celebrating the festival makers – the men and women who put their time, their finances and their sanity on the line to bring us the music we love. For the past decade, Israeli-born Uri Kohen has been flying the flag for roots music in the west of Ireland with his Westport Folk and Bluegrass Festival in County Mayo. What started out as a labour of love has become an event that draws people back, year after year, from across the globe. We caught up with Uri to find out more.
BGS: Uri, describe your hometown of Westport for those of us who haven’t been there.
It’s beautiful! It was voted as Ireland’s best town to live in and we still very much hold that title. It’s particularly famous for the mountain overlooking the town, Croagh Patrick, where St. Patrick sat 40 days and nights and banished the snakes from Ireland. We’ve got some of the best restaurants in the country, and they recently built an entire cycle lane all the way round called the Greenway which brings people in droves to ride their bikes. Brilliant pubs, too.
But it’s not where you’re originally from.
No, I grew up in a kibbutz in the west of Israel.
Is there a bluegrass scene in Israel?
Not particularly. I’d never heard bluegrass before I came to Ireland. But in the 1970s an English couple moved to a kibbutz called Ginosar, and they started a festival called Jacob’s Ladder. It was focused on Anglo Saxon music, so there was English folk, Scottish ballads, and American folk too. There was even a massive scale square dance! They’re still running it and it’s a super cool festival. You do hear bluegrass instruments getting into Israeli music now – pop albums with banjo.
What were your musical influences, growing up there?
My parents were socialists so the music they listened to in their early 20s was real workers’ music. My dad had spent two years in the US so he was influenced by that; he researched Alan Lomax and was a big fan of Leadbelly! And of The Weavers, Johnny Cash, and Peter, Paul & Mary… Pete Seeger came to Israel in 1964 and my dad actually got to meet him. But when I started stealing my parents’ records I chose the Bob Dylan and the Leonard Cohen.
You mention that they were politically inspired by the folk artists. Was there a lot of music making on the kibbutz too?
Yes, but bear in mind that most of the people that lived in my kibbutz were immigrants from Eastern Europe, so at that time Israeli music was heavily influenced by Russian music, led by accordion, clarinet and fiddle. The accordion was the main instrument and it’s still very popular to do public singing there – people pay good money to go and sing along with someone who leads them in communal singing. My granddad, who came from Austria, had played in a mandolin orchestra when he lived there, and I have a picture of him doing that which is cool.
You didn’t want to be a musician yourself?
I couldn’t play so I became a sound technician, which is the Failed Musician Syndrome. I loved rock and roll, and even as a little kid I was DJ-ing for friends and at school parties. I didn’t have equipment – I just used to sit all night and tape the songs from the radio. The ability to shape people’s mood by playing them good tunes is something I love to this day. Then at 14 I joined a sound company in my local village and I became fascinated by speakers and microphones. I really learned my craft touring the former Soviet Union as a sound engineer for the Israeli army’s bands. We had to work with whatever equipment we found there, and it wasn’t much.
Uri Kohen
How did you end up moving to Ireland?
It was like an actual dream. I woke up one day when I was about 16 with this epiphany and told my parents I was moving to Ireland. I didn’t know much about Ireland at all but I was charmed by it. Once I had the idea it was where I wanted to be, I read books and watched films about it and as soon as I saw The Commitments I knew that’s the way I wanted to live my life. Own a pub, live in the countryside. So that’s what I did! I flew to Dublin on a one-way ticket. I’m sure my parents were upset about it, but then again, my father went to kibbutz which wasn’t what his parents raised him to do… They’d taught us to do our own thing and so in a way they were probably proud of it.
Westport seems like a pretty remote part of the country to end up in.
There was an Israeli man by the same name, Uri, who lived here, and I knew of him, and he’d said sure if you’re in Ireland come over for a look. I went down and stayed in his house for three weeks! Within a week or two I got a job in a pub, and about the same time I met Leesa — who is now my wife. I don’t believe in fate but still, I couldn’t believe I ended up here, and that everything just worked out so well.
So you moved to Ireland, knew nothing about bluegrass — and now you run the country’s biggest bluegrass festival. Explain.
Well, I’d been running pubs and I’d almost left music production behind. Then one year some friends asked me to help them put on a Kurt Cobain tribute night and suddenly we had 200 people and six bands, something this small rural town had never seen before. Until then we’d just had a local band called the Kit Kat Boys because they’d play two songs and have a cigarette break. It inspired this idea to really develop the music scene in the town with a strong emphasis on production values and quality acts.
Anyway, I had the idea of doing a festival in the style of The Band’s The Last Waltz. I was imagining music like the Grateful Dead, and then someone said, “Why not do it with bluegrass?” I said, “I don’t have a clue what bluegrass is, but let’s do it.” And the great thing about Ireland is that the bluegrass family here is so keen that they came in droves. I couldn’t believe it. I remember the campers arriving on Thursday… I was so confused. I said “We don’t start til tomorrow!”
What has running the festival taught you about Irish bluegrass?
First of all it is way bigger than what we think. Both from a musician’s perspective and a fan’s one. Second, you don’t need to be an expert to enjoy this stuff. When I came to this music Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt meant nothing to me. What’s important for the crowds is that the acts are good — not whether you play Kentucky-style or California-style.
Festivals are famously risky from a business point of view. Did you ever feel out of your depth?
In the second and third years I lost a lot of money because I was determined to book the best bands I could. But the response was amazing and it just grew and grew. I think I hit the jackpot choosing this style because these musicians want to play all the time. I brought the Loose Moose String Band from Liverpool and they almost played for 72 hours straight. And I’ve seen Tim Rogers — who’s the number one fiddler in Ireland and the managing director of the festival — once do a session for 11 hours solid.
Every night we have a gala concert but everything other gig is free and bluegrassers are so approachable that seasonal musicians who just have a fiddle lying in their house can come and join the sessions with the headline acts. It’s like playing on the street with Bruce Springsteen – when people see it for the first time they are blown away. For instance, in 2012 Roni Stoneman played an afternoon set, and there was a young feller, 13 years of age. Roni, in her 70s, plays “Dueling Banjos” with him. He returned to the festival year after year, and now he’s one of the most sought-after banjo players in the country.
So who excites you in this year’s line-up?
Brennen Leigh and Noel McKay, a country folk duo from Austin, Texas, are going to close the main stage on Saturday night with some special guests. And I can’t wait to see The Local Honeys, a duo doing old-time music from East Kentucky, doing a gospel hour on the Sunday morning. We’re also bringing over a six-piece from Alaska called Big Chimney Barn Dance, and Blue Summit from California, with the brilliant AJ Lee. It’s their first-ever visit across the water! There’ll be sixteen different acts including bands from Paris and the Netherlands and of course Ireland and the UK.
Sounds like you’ve got the beginnings of your own Bluegrass Eurovision.
As I like to say, it takes an Israeli man to bring a French band to play traditional American music in Ireland. I truly believe in world peace through bluegrass! We have all the worlds’ problems sorted here.
Jay Farrar took a field trip to make Union, Son Volt’s ninth studio album. Rather than book more sessions at Red Pill Recording Studio in St. Louis — where the long-running alt-country band recorded 2017’s Notes of Blue — he wanted to take his songs out into America and find fresh inspiration. So the band trekked west to Tulsa, where they cut tracks at the Woody Guthrie Center, then road-tripped north to Mt. Olive, Illinois, to record at the Mother Jones Museum.
The spirit of activism embodied by those two figures informs the thirteen songs on Union, an urgent and at times angry account of American life at the close of the 2010s. More naturally than on any other album, Farrar balances the political and the personal, penning songs about how the media-industrial complex profits by dividing the country alongside songs about how his children are growing into adults.
BGS: Why did you want to record at the Woody Guthrie Center and the Mother Jones Museum?
Farrar: I felt like it was a little too comfortable in the studio where I had recorded before. I was writing about topical issues, so I felt like some of the songs needed to be taken out of the studio. I wanted to take them out into the world. I wanted to record them in a more challenging environment, so we went to Tulsa and Mount Olive to remind ourselves of the contributions Mother Jones and Woody Guthrie made, how each in their own way helped get us where we are today. We just felt like we needed to be inspired.
Those are two very different places. How were those experiences different?
The Mother Jones Museum is pretty small. It’s connected to the City Hall, I think. It’s evolved a lot since I was younger. I remember seeing hand-painted signs on the side of Interstate 55 going north. It was like folk art. Over the years it’s evolved, and I guess they got some funding from the city. They’re continuing to grow and build on it. I think she’s buried in the cemetery there as well.
At the Woody Guthrie Center, they have the new Bob Dylan archives, and we were able go by there after the recording. Amazing stuff there — the tambourine that inspired “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Dylan’s address book from ’63 or ’64. He’s got Lenny Bruce in there. Stuff like that. We geeked out for sure. It’s pretty comprehensive, too, because they have everything archived digitally as well as the physical objects. They wouldn’t actually let us touch anything, of course.
That sounds amazing. And, as you said, inspiring.
It was. And we were looking through some of the materials and had a question about one of the videos we were watching. So the curator said, “Wait one minute and I’ll get an answer for you.” He called Bob Dylan’s business office and talked with someone there. He got an answer straight from the source.
How did those places inform the songs on Union?
The songs were ready to go prior to going in. I didn’t write anything there, but with some of the heavy topical subject matter, this batch of songs needed to be taken out of the studio where I recorded Notes of Blue. We needed to be challenged in every way, but maybe I was just looking for a field trip. But I think those two people really did inspire some of the writing, in a roundabout way. Mother Jones and Woody Guthrie really helped shape our society and really stressed the importance of pushing society forward and not backwards.
How much of a conscious decision is it to write topical songs? Do you sit down and think, “I’m going to write a song about the media”?
It goes in cycles for me. I’ve done some topical writing in the past, but this time around it felt like it was my job to take it on. There’s a lot of turmoil in our society right now. I did a lot of the writing in November 2016, right before Notes of Blue was released in the spring of 2017. So I had a few months to put pen to paper and woodshed, and that’s when a lot of these songs came out.
Probably midway through the writing process, I decided I needed some songs that represented a regular rock ethos — essentially, non-topical songs. There needed to be a balance between topical and non-topical songs. I was thinking about the Replacements, who would fall off the stage on the first note of a song. Or The Who. I was thinking about the essence of what a rock band is. “Devil May Care” came from that approach.
Do you find new shades of meaning the more you live with a song, the more you play it night after night after night?
These new songs will probably evolve a bit from rehearsals to when we start the tour. That’s always one aspect of being on the road that I enjoy: reinventing older songs and playing them in new ways, just to keep things interesting. Certain songs just want to evolve, especially if you’re playing them every day in rehearsals and soundchecks. “Windfall” is one that has changed a lot. There’s a CD out there called Artifacts that has a reggae version. We change that one up pretty regularly, and we changed it up again over the holidays. Actually I think we’ve got reggae versions of almost every Son Volt song. But that one in particular is so well-suited to that style that we put it out on a live CD.
Why reggae?
“Windfall” is conducive to reggae. It’s just a couple of chords. But I think from one day to the next you like to stretch out and just try out different kinds of music that you’re not necessarily playing every night. I think some of the guys in the band would probably like to try some experimental jazz-fusion versions of some songs.
Can we expect to hear “Caryatid Easy” done in the style of Bitches Brew?
That’s one song we plan on resurrecting for the tour, so who knows?
Can you talk about “The Reason”? That song seems to suggest that travel and music can be salves in hard times, which makes me think it’s somewhere between topical and non-topical.
That song reminds me of Dylan’s “Forever Young” or Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’.” I think it relates to watching your kids become adults, that sort of sentiment. It’s certainly informed by them, to the same degree that those Dylan and Petty songs were informed by their kids. But yeah, in troubled times getting out and traveling is good. You have to find hope wherever you can.
On the other hand, “Union” was inspired by my dad. The chorus goes, “He said national service will keep the union together.” National service is something my dad used to advocate for. Maybe he’s right, I don’t know. There’s a lot of money being made today by media conglomerates hawking divisiveness. It seems like there needs to be a counterbalance somewhere.
You’ve written topical songs in the past, with Uncle Tupelo and on 2005’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot. How different is it to write this kind of song in 2019 than when either of the Bushes were in office?
It’s not the process itself that was different, although I will say I was more focused this time. I had a block of time and was thinking about these issues, so I could be more focused on getting these songs written, maybe more so than I had been in the past. A few topical songs wound up on records in the past, maybe one or two. Okemah had a good amount of them. I guess I’ll keep cranking them out.
Cowboys, T-Bone steaks and wolverines — there’s no forgetting Tom Russell’s passion for the West in his latest album. At 72, Russell is long established as one of America’s most poetic of troubadours, and the images he evokes throughout October in the Railroad Earth are as powerful as ever. But where does he get his ideas? Read on as Russell reveals the inspirations behind each track.
1. “October in The Railroad Earth”
Title taken from the prose poem by Jack Kerouac. Jack recited it on The Steve Allen Show, on a jazz record, and parts of his recitation appear on my record Hotwalker. Jack’s prose (and this song) highlight Kerouac’s time working as a railroad brakeman in San Francisco. Bill Kirchen plays the freight train/ truck-driving Telecaster parts here. Jack’s books (most never published in his lifetime) are called out in the outro…he died with 62 bucks in the bank.
2. “Small Engine Repair”
An older song of mine I never recorded — until now. Scottish actor Iain Glen sang the song in the Irish movie Small Engine Repair, based around my song title. Iain Glen has gone on to star in Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey, and other major films and TV series. I wrote the song about the man who fixed my lawn mower in El Paso. Funny it ended up as an Irish film.
3. “T-Bone Steak and Spanish Wine”
A few years ago I drove up an old canyon in Northern California and rediscovered a steakhouse and bar I’d played in over forty years back. Nothing had changed. The dinner special on the outside sign remained the same over the years. I sat down with the owner for a glass of wine and we sang the old songs and escaped into the past.
4. “Isadore Gonzalez”
A Tex-Mex corrido based on the true story of Isadore Gonzalez, a Mexican vaquero (cowboy) who appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the late 1880s. He died in a horse accident when the show was in England and he’s buried in Bristol in an unmarked grave. He tells his story in the Mexican-corrido style with the Grammy Award-winning Los Texmaniacs (Max and Josh Baca) providing the music.
5. “Red Oak Texas”
A sad but true tale of two twin boys from Red Oak, Texas, who were rebels and delinquents in high school — but straightened out when one twin joined the Army and the other the Marines. They were sent to the Middle East and became heroes, but they never adapted to regular life once they returned home. One twin locked himself in his room for a year and read the WWI poetry of Robert Graves, a famed English poet. Graves may have invented the phrase War is Hell. The Red Oak Texas twins lived it. I left out the grisly parts.
6. “Back Streets of Love”
My GPS (Global Positioning System) love song. Where are we now, who are we anyhow? I’ve never adapted well to the idea of taking map orders and directions from a satellite, or a voice screaming: proceed to the route! My global position? Artist and musician, sir, driven by a signal deep in the blood, like every poet in the game my direction stays the same, lost on the backstreets of love.
7. “Hand-Raised Wolverines”
Years ago I was touring in Canada and the booking agent was a friend named Louise. We had a few days off on the tour and I challenged Louise to find us something interesting to do. She booked us into Edmonton Maximum Security Prison for a concert, and the next day took us out to a private game park where a friend of hers let me inside a cage with semi-tame wolverines, the fiercest animals, pound for pound, on earth. I use that experience as a metaphor for modern times.
8. “Highway 46”
A nod towards the ’50s and ’60s music out of Bakersfield. I heard Bob Dylan on the radio in 1962 the same night I heard Buck Owens. I thought it was all the same — sort of hillbilly/folk music with voices that cut through the fog. Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart…voices from a Wurlitzer jukebox. Telecaster guitars and pedal steels. Searing treble. Highway 46 runs from the California Coast towards the San Joaquin Valley, the road where James Dean died in a car crash.
9. “When the Road Gets Rough”
We were stuck in heavy traffic somewhere in England and the guitar player was complaining about his cold hotel room, the driver was coughing and chewing aspirin, and the cafes along the rest stop route didn’t offer much in the way of cuisine. We’d been out for two weeks and spirits were raw…my wife, Nadine, turned to me and said, “That’s when the road gets rough.” Then we wrote this song.
10. “Pass Me the Gun, Billy”
Back in the mid 1960s I was living with my cowboy brother, Pat, on his ranch on the edge of San Luis Obispo, California. He was watching TV on night when he heard gunshots in the far pasture. “Poachers,” he yells. Someone was shooting at his cows. Pat was always ready for a Wild West adventure. And, kids, we got our adventure. Big time. It reminded me of something out of James Dickey’s novel Deliverance.
11. “Wreck of the Old 97”
One of the first songs I learned to play on guitar. I heard it on Johnny Cash’s first Sun Record release: The Hot and Blue Guitars of Johnny Cash. The song tells the true tale of the wreck of a Southern Railway mail in route from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina, on September 2.
Photo credit: Nadine Russell
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