Tag: bob dylan

A Spirit of Activism Informs Son Volt’s New ‘Union’

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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.

Photo credit: David McClister

Track by Track: Tom Russell’s ‘October in the Railroad Earth’

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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

For Mandolinist Andy Statman, Music Is the Great Unifier

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Mandolinist Andy Statman is quick to deny that his identity — he’s a devout modern Orthodox Jew — has anything to do with his music. “To tell you the truth,” he says, “it never entered the picture. I was just into the music…”

However, his latest album, Monroe Bus — an exploration of traditional mandolin techniques utilized in contexts as familiar as Bill Monroe standards and as far-reaching as klezmer and jazz-infused originals — belies that denial. And, as we converse about his history in music and the harlequin nature of the album it becomes obvious that his work isn’t devoid of his identity at all. In fact, the opposite is demonstrable.

Statman’s music is, of course, archetypically and idiosyncratically his own. He, as much or more so than any other mandolinist on the scene today, is truly original. He’s reached this destination not through purposeful attempts in his music to express his identity — religious, cultural, and otherwise. Instead he simply focuses on playing the most meaningful music he can, while remaining in the moment and establishing human connection with his fellow musicians. The rest, his whole identity, shines through his art organically and effortlessly as a result. Statman is a testament to roots music’s ability — whether consciously or subconsciously, overtly or covertly — to allow its purveyors’ souls to be the keystones on which entire albums, catalogs, and genres are built.

BGS: Your record strikes me as “melting pot” music. Whether you’re playing more jazzy music or bluegrass or klezmer, you’ve always considered your music to be quintessentially American. Why is that?

Statman: First of all, I’m an American, so the culture I grew up in was an American culture. I heard things through an American ear, I saw things from an American eye, and while there might be certain regional differences, all in all it’s all pretty much the same. I grew up right after World War II, my father was a veteran. I was born in 1950, so I grew up in the early 1950s in an area in Queens, New York called Jackson Heights. It was a diverse neighborhood. Everyone got along. Everyone grew up together. The other kids were just other kids, and it didn’t matter what their background was. The music played at this time was classical music, or jazz, or square dance music, or other stuff. As a kid we used to have square dances every week in public school. I remember every year we used to have a Lebanese American come and play songs for us. At that era you were able to sort of culturally imbue almost all of the last one hundred years of American culture. It was all there to be touched and heard and seen and lived. It was there, in the air, but it was America so it was live and let live.

What was your entry point to bluegrass, then?

My brother is about eight years older than me. He went to college in the ‘60s — 1960 I guess was his first year. He got very involved in listening to like the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters, the beginning of the folk revival. Then he started bringing home records of Dave Van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez. That wasn’t really so much for me, but then he started bringing home some New Lost City Ramblers records and this other record that Mike Seeger was involved in, Mountain Music Bluegrass Style, which basically was recordings of the incredible bluegrass scene in Baltimore, Maryand, and Washington D.C. in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s — people like Earl Taylor and Smiley Hobbs, just an amazing collection. I really gravitated to that. I remember for my birthday he got me Foggy Mountain Jamboree, a compilation of the early, classic Flatt & Scruggs Columbia 45s. He was also involved in what they used to call jug and skiffle bands and they used to rehearse at the house. He played guitar and sang and there was a banjo player in the band who played some bluegrass and I was just very excited by that whole thing. That just did it for me. All I wanted to do was play bluegrass.

What was it about the music that grabbed your ear?

On a very simple level, emotionally, I was excited and moved by the music. It really spoke to me. The singing, the harmonies, the instrumental playing. There was an excitement to it that I really liked. I was very moved by the slower, ballad types of things, also. I started listening on the AM radio to WWVA out of Wheeling, West Virginia, which was a bastion of country music back at that time. We had a guitar in the house, my brother’s guitar, so I started learning the Doc Williams guitar method, I learned some chords, but I really wanted to learn banjo. I finally was able to get a banjo and started taking lessons.

On Sundays back then in Washington Square Park people would go down and play outside in different groups. There’d be a group playing bluegrass, a group doing topical songs, a group doing blues, so I started meeting people doing bluegrass. On these records that I liked I was getting more and more moved by the mandolin playing — it was really exciting me. Earl Taylor’s playing and I think on the Scruggs records it was Everett Lilly playing one or two solos that were just like, wow. I was getting chills from hearing this stuff. I decided I would make the switch and become a mandolinist. I had already been playing banjo and guitar for a few years. I was still in my early teens, so when I stepped into the mandolin role I already had some muscles developed and some understanding of the music.

The record, Monroe Bus, really clearly illustrates the value and the beauty that comes from allowing our musical art forms to reflect our identities. How do you think we can help foster the idea that any background or identity is valid and can be showcased through these art forms?

You know, I don’t think that way. Forgive me. I’m just into playing music, playing the best music that I can, and I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been able to study with a lot of musicians of different cultures and different backgrounds, both playing American music and music that maybe isn’t played here so much. To me, it’s all about the music. When I’m playing, I’m just playing. Identity or background is really meaningless to me. It was always like that, but at this point in my life even more so. When I’m playing I’m just looking to play the most meaningful music I can play. Those are my only real concerns.

 

Bill Monroe (foreground) and Andy Statman at Fincastle Bluegrass 1966. Photo by Fred Robbins

You are always blending different musical forms in these crazy, unexpected ways. How do you respond to folks that are worried that that dilutes bluegrass or that it will kill the genre in the long run? What’s your response to the typical, “That ain’t bluegrass” kind of gripe? Do you have one?

First of all, this is not a bluegrass record, obviously.

But there are undeniable bluegrass threads throughout.

Of course, but I’m not presenting myself as [pure bluegrass.] I spent a lot of time studying bluegrass, and there are always new insights and things to learn, but for me, the original blossoming of bluegrass is where it’s at, where it reached its fullest expression. If I’m going to listen to bluegrass, I’m probably going to listen to bluegrass from before 1970. Not to say that what came after is bad, this is just my preference. The feelings and creativity of that particular period, to me, are really unsurpassed. And while the technical level might have gotten better, this doesn’t necessarily make for a more meaningful, deeper music, it just makes for a more athletic music. [Laughs]

Listen, people have to be who they are. It’s just music. There are always going to be people who hear things differently, who want to add or subtract things, and if you don’t like it, then you don’t like it. I can see that there’s a strong core of people who are really interested in playing music in the mode of what was played in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. I think there isn’t any danger of that not continuing.

I do believe, though, that it’s important for musicians to really try and master a traditional style. Because, if you’re going to try to build on something, you really need to understand where it’s coming from, to be able to relate to that music on its own terms. Which is getting back to the roots of all this music and being able to speak that language naturally, in your own way and find your own voice in it. You’ll understand phrasing, variation, improvisation, how to play melodies, how to bring out what’s in the melody, how to play rhythm. Without that firm grounding in a particular style, particularly when we’re talking about folk music, it won’t click.

It’s interesting that you say that, because I think that a song that perfectly illustrates what you’re talking about on the record is “Raw Ride,” a sort of version of Bill Monroe’s “Rawhide.” I love this version because the song is so iconic, but you’re still turning it on its ear. You’re demonstrating that foundation that you’re talking about, but you’re finding your own voice in it. How did you come up with this arrangement?

Well, I’ve been playing the tune for years. “Rawhide” is one of those tunes that, if played in the traditional Monroe manner, requires a lot of energy. It’s always a question of is it worth the energy for the payoff? [Laughs] It usually is. There’s obvious extensions of the melody or the chords that you hear if you’ve been involved in playing other types of music. So I just sort of followed those. As with all of these things, it reflects who I am, my musical experiences, and my studies.

…When you’re writing music and playing music it really just reflects who you are and what your experiences are and how you live. It’s a reflection of that. That’s what Bill Monroe did. His music was a synthesis, an ongoing synthesis, and he developed a certain kind of aesthetic.

When I came out of the closet and was going through that process of coming to terms with my identity as a gay man, I had a moment where I doubted my place in bluegrass. I thought maybe bluegrass wasn’t the place for me, it wasn’t a place where I could belong. Did you ever feel like your Jewishness made you question your place in bluegrass?

Not really, no. To me, it was all about the music. All the musicians I know are wonderful, thoughtful, and kind people — in the bluegrass scene and in others as well. We’re all in this together and we all have a common passion for the music. It’s a uniting force. It has a real life of its own, and we’re just sort of passing through it, so to speak. If you’re worried about the thoughts or beliefs of the people you’re playing music with, then you can’t really be playing music. Music, in its essence, is the great unifier. It can unify people in terms of ideas and feelings and speak to the commonality of everyone. At that point, all of these other things melt away.

It really has to do with heart. It’s a spiritual thing. In Hasidic teachings they say that music, particularly instrumental music, can go higher than anything. A song without words isn’t even bound by the concepts of those words. In certain ways, it’s a universal heartbeat. You can see the tremendous life force that music carries. To me it’s something that’s very sacred.

Photo credit:Bradley Klein 

BGS 5+5: Taylor Alexander

Posted on by Editor

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

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

LISTEN: Andy Hedges, “Song of the Cuckoo”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Andy Hedges
Hometown: Lubbock, Texas
Song: “Song of the Cuckoo”
Album: Shadow of a Cowboy
Release Date: April 16, 2019

In Their Words: “I first heard the name Billy Faier in Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s song ‘912 Greens’ about an epic road trip he and some friends made across the Southern United States. I met Billy after playing a show in Alpine, Texas, immediately recognizing his name from ‘912 Greens.’ Billy was born in Brooklyn, spent most of his life based in Woodstock, but always wanted to live in the desert so as an old man he moved to Marathon, Texas. Billy had traveled with Ramblin’ Jack and Woody Guthrie on Woody’s last trip across the US. He was the first person to interview Dylan on the radio. He taught a song to Dave Van Ronk and Pete Seeger once said that he was the best banjo player he had ever heard. Billy and I became fast friends and had some great adventures together. When he passed a few years ago, I ended up with his beautiful old guitar. I played Billy’s guitar on this recording of his song and it seemed fitting to tag it with a line from ‘912 Greens,’ the song that connected me to Billy in the first place: ‘Did you ever stand and shiver just because you were lookin’ at a river?'” — Andy Hedges

Photo credit: David Tau

BGS 5+5: Fate McAfee

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

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

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

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BGS 5+5: Danny Schmidt

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

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carrie Elkin – “Berlin”

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

Anaïs Mitchell – “Why We Build the Wall”

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

Mississippi John Hurt – “I Shall Not Be Moved”

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

Ayub Ogada – “Obiero”

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

Photo credit: Chris Carson

Inspired by Dylan, J.S. Ondara Spreads His Own ‘Tales of America’

Posted on by Editor

Six years ago just about now, J.S. Ondara landed in Minneapolis on a pilgrimage, lured by his love of Minnesota native son Bob Dylan’s music. He made his way north to Duluth, where Dylan was born, and Hibbing, where the singer-songwriter was raised. It was not quite what he expected.

“I thought I’d go to Hibbing and it would be a magnificent city with music coming from all over the place,” he says, now, laughing at his thoughts of the small town as the Emerald City. “There wasn’t much to find.”

We can forgive him his youthful fantasies. He’d never traveled like that before. He’d never seen snow before, let alone a Minnesota winter. He’d never really been away from home, and home was a long way from there — Nairobi, Kenya, where as a teen he’d fallen completely for the music of Dylan. But at just 20, he impetuously decided to trek to where his hero’s story began.

“It was all very romantic for me,” he says. “I just said, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this. It makes sense right now.’ It was all a very romantic choice, a thing I tend to do regularly in my life, make all these romantic decisions and not have any expectations out of it other than, ‘Let’s see how it goes.’”

That, uh, freewheelin’ spirit went pretty well for him. This month sees the release of his own debut album, Tales of America, on Verve Records. It’s a collection of moving, personal folk-influenced songs drawn from the journey he’s made and the observations along the way, produced by veteran Mike Viola (who as vice president of A&R at Verve signed him to his deal) and featuring appearances by such fellow Dylan acolytes as Andrew Bird, Dawes’ Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith and Milk Carton Kids’ Joey Ryan. The release comes on the heels of his first major tour, opening for no less than Lindsey Buckingham, and a subsequent European jaunt.

And while the Dylan influence is present, this is in no way an imitation or even homage, per se. With an almost jazzy looseness, often swaying around stand-up bass played by Los Angeles stalwart Sebastian Steinberg, there’s a closer resemblance to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. At the center is Ondara’s high, pure, finely controlled voice, an instrument unlike any of his heroes’, though you might hear some Jeff (and Tim) Buckley in it, at times piercing the heavens with an otherworldly falsetto, movingly unguarded on the haunting a cappella “Turkish Bandana.”

Hibbing wasn’t Oz, but he’s definitely not in Kenya anymore. And what swept him to this new life was, of all things, grunge and indie-rock.

“We really didn’t have much growing up,” he says. “Had food, a place to sleep and that’s about it. And a tiny little radio, about the size of my iPhone. That was all we had.”

Through that little radio came Nirvana, Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, transmissions from another world in a language the Swahili-speaking youth didn’t understand. It was magical.

“I was intrigued by the music and language, all these sounds,” he says. “I couldn’t make any sense of it. To me it was a spaceship to another universe.”

He tried imitating those sounds, though not knowing the language he sang gibberish — well, maybe not that far off with some of Kurt Cobain’s often hard-to-decipher mumbling. But it worked its way into him.

“I heard all these songs and developed a kinship for a long time, and used them to study English because I wanted to understand what Cobain was saying, or [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke or [Death Cab’s] Ben Gibbard,” he says. “I was curious about the language and the spirit and that spurred me to learn English, and I built my vocabulary listening to these songs.”

Another song that caught his ear was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — the Guns ’N Roses version, which he assumed was an original by that band. It was only after losing a bet to a school mate about the song’s authorship that he discovered the music of Dylan himself. It was an epiphany.

“I wrote stories and poems, from a very young age,” he says. “I wrote about a puppy, about school, I wrote a lot about the sun for some reason. I was fascinated by the universe in general and wasn’t really receiving the answers I needed. So I would write poems and stories about it as a way to process it and learn about the world. But I never wrote songs. One reason I believe I was drawn to Dylan was listening to his records I thought, ‘These are poems with melodies! I could probably do this!’ I felt I saw a path for me. ‘Perhaps there is hope. I can take these stories and poems and put them in melodies and perhaps people could like them in a grand way. This is something people like? Great! Maybe I’m not lost in my path!’”

He soon set his sights on America, where he had a few relatives and friends scattered about, including an aunt in Minneapolis. But finding a way was rough.

“I started by applying to the University of Minnesota and looking for work opportunities in the state, but nothing bore any fruit,” he says. “As I ran into a wall and was running out of options, I was suddenly awoken, quite rudely, in the wee hours of the morning to be told that I had won a green card lottery and could move to the States. Turns out an aunt had applied for these green cards for a few of us and mine went through. I had no idea. The mischief of the universe!”

His family helped get the money together for the trip after he told them that he was going to become a doctor. That was a fib, he admits. Once settled in Minneapolis, he dove into music-making seriously.

“I picked up a guitar and learned a couple Dylan songs, a couple Neil Young songs, then would go back to those melodies and these poems I’d written, turn them into a melody, call it a song and then go out and try to play for people. That’s how it began for me.”

He hit up the open mic nights around town, started getting some small club bookings, “gradually, very gradually trying to get these songs in front of people.”

And with some money he’d saved from work via a temp agency, he made an acoustic EP that he put online. Soon a local public radio station put his songs in regular rotation. Word spread and contacts started to come in from the music business, both in Minneapolis and around the country.

Among those reaching out was Viola, a veteran musician (the band the Candy Butchers, as well as singer of the title song from the movie That Thing You Do) who had recently taken the job at Verve. The two hit it off right away.

“I had done meetings with others, but with Mike there was a connection,” he says. “I’d do meetings and mention favorite Dylan records and no one knew what I was talking about. Freewheelin’ remains my favorite. When I met with Mike I brought this up, the idea of trying to make a very stripped-down record like that. A few things happen, but not crazy, doesn’t take away from the stories. And I brought up Astral Weeks, which does the same thing. A few things on it that embellish the stories. Those two records. He went, ‘Oh yeah! Those are my favorite records, too!’ There was just chemistry I hadn’t had before.”

From there it was simple.

“It was the old troubadour style of making folk records,” he says. “You get into the studio — you wrote a bunch of songs and maybe get some people around you and play this, and that’s the record.”

The result is an album that portrays the wonder and delight — and also the struggles and heartbreaks — of his time in America, with a facility for language that escapes most native speakers. (An essay he wrote about his life, “The Starred and Striped Fairy of the West,” shows another facet of that.) The opening song, “American Dream,” is equal parts welcoming embrace and distancing suspicion, his poetic images boiling the national spirit to an intimately personal level, a dream world, as it were. That inner view is there throughout the album.

It all came naturally from his experiences.

“I wrote the words ‘I’m getting good at saying goodbye’ just a month after moving to America,” he says of the chorus of the somber “Saying Goodbye.” “They were just words at the time. I didn’t know what they meant. But after turning them into a song and singing them over and over, I can see that I was grappling with thoughts of the past and future. I could see that the totality of my past — being family, culture, upbringing, all of it — was stopping me from becoming not just who I wanted to be but who I’d be best at being, which is the true ‘self’ within.”

That said, he’s also found that echoes of his past can be heard in some of these songs, even if very faintly. He wasn’t a big fan of Kenyan music, traditional or modern while growing up, but it seems some of it crept in anyway. A few of the songs, notably the loping “Lebanon,” bear rhythms echoing those common in music of that region of Africa — the national benga or Nigerian highlife, Tanzanian taraab and Congolese soukous, all quite popular in Kenya. And there’s something ingrained in the vocals that even Ondara only heard after the fact.

“I was listening back to some of the songs and I can hear toward the end of some that I start to make some sounds influenced by my native language, which is not something I tried to do,” he says. “There is African influence there, but subconscious. The more I listen, the most I can track down those sounds.”

BGS Top Books of 2018

Posted on by Editor

As we turn the page on another year, the Bluegrass Situation has compiled ten music-related books from 2018 that may appeal to fans of bluegrass, roots, classic country, and yes, even alt-country.

A&R Pioneers: Architects of American Roots Music on Record
Authors: Brian Ward and Patrick Huber
Some musicians just have that “it” factor – as true 100 years ago as it is today. This historical volume looks at the men and women who shaped raw talent for record labels as A&R (“artists and repertoire”) scouts. With an emphasis on roots music, the book focuses on important figures like Ralph Peer, Art Satherley, Frank Walker and John Hammond, as well as many less-celebrated figures. It also acknowledges that some of these A&R executives were not exactly virtuous. Authored by two professors, the project is jointly published by Vanderbilt University Press and the Country Music Foundation Press.

Bill Monroe: The Life and Music of the Blue Grass Man
Author: Tom Ewing
In addition to spending 10 years on the road as Bill Monroe’s bandleader and guitarist, author Tom Ewing may be the foremost expert on the Father of Bluegrass. At 656 pages, this biography ties together Monroe’s personal and professional life without glossing over the tougher times. Ewing writes with the knowledgeable bluegrass fan in mind, making this an especially rewarding book for students of bluegrass and those who are familiar with Monroe’s contemporaries. With hundreds of new interviews and rare access to Monroe’s archive, Ewing is able to build a comprehensive narrative that is likely to become the definitive account of an American music legend.

The Blue Sky Boys
Author: Dick Spottswood
Born and raised in North Carolina, the Blue Sky Boys emerged as one of the first and finest brother duos in country music. As teenagers, Bill and Earl Bolick riveted radio listeners in the Southeast with a stunning harmony blend. Earl sang baritone lead and acoustic guitar, while Bill sang tenor vocal and played mandolin, although their music was never fast and high like bluegrass. A deal with RCA Records in 1936 led to appealingly understated recordings such as “The Sunny Side of Life.” Drawing on archived interviews and Bill’s written accounts, this biography also compiles vintage photos and a complete discography.

Bluegrass Generation: A Memoir
Author: Neil V. Rosenberg
Author and historian Neil V. Rosenberg vividly recounts his own experiences with Bill Monroe and many other memorable characters at the Brown County Jamboree and the Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival in the early 1960s. Through these recollections, Rosenberg shows how these seminal concert events helped solidify Bill Monroe as a bluegrass icon. Rosenberg’s scholarly reputation is already well-established, thanks to his prior books and the title of Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Yet this volume is more personal, as it describes how an eager college student in Indiana became entrenched in bluegrass banjo and the festival scene.

Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography
Author: Andrea Warner
In February, Buffy Sainte-Marie will receive the People’s Voice award at Folk Alliance International in Montreal. Presented to an individual who unabashedly embraces social and political commentary in their creative work and public careers, the songwriter known for the poignant 1964 anti-war anthem “Universal Soldier” fits that description neatly. This approved biography portrays the Cree musician as an advocate for Indigenous rights, as well as a woman who endured a traumatic childhood and intimate partner violence. Feminist author Andrea Warner distilled more than sixty hours of original interviews into an insightful story that illuminates Sainte-Marie’s activism and art.

The Cash and Carter Family Cookbook: Recipes and Recollections from Johnny and June’s Table
Author: John Carter Cash
John Carter Cash is a foodie and it shows in this lovely cookbook dedicated to his parents, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Family recipes abound, with the first two recipes being June’s biscuits and Mother Maybelle Carter’s tomato gravy. This isn’t all Southern cooking, however. Johnny and June also liked Asian flavors and vegetarian dishes, including their own veggie burger (a.k.a. Cashburger). The full-color photos are beautiful but the coolest pic is in the front, where the Man in Black presides over a barbecue wearing a white apron and shorts. His famous recipe for Iron-Pot Chili is in here, too.

Dixie Dewdrop: The Uncle Dave Macon Story
Author: Michael D. Dubler
Considered the first superstar of the Grand Ole Opry, Uncle Dave Macon is remembered as one of the finest banjo players of his era. This well-researched biography by his great-grandson, Michael D. Dubler, also captures the entertainer’s complex personality. Pulling from original and archived interviews, the narrative provides a detailed account of Macon’s recording output, as well as crucial personal moments, such as his father’s murder in Nashville. Because Macon’s career didn’t really take off until he was 50, the book also conveys just how much strength – both physical and emotional – it took for Macon to stick with it.

Dylan by Schatzberg
Author: Jerry Schatzberg
Bob Dylan seems the epitome of cool when gazing at the lens of photographer Jerry Schatzberg, who took innumerable pictures of him in the 1960s. Now in his 90s, Schatzberg has compiled personal stories and never-before-seen photos from that era for Dylan by Schatzberg. Inside, the enigmatic subject is documented in recording studios, concert stages, and city streets. For example, Schatzberg snapped the famously blurry Blonde on Blonde album cover in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan. Some believed it was a metaphor for drug use, but Schatzberg says it’s out of focus simply because both men were shaking in the cold.

John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes
Authors: Matt Combs; Katie Hartford Hogue; Greg Reish (Author), John Hartford (Illustrator)
One of acoustic music’s most treasured talents, John Hartford left behind a brilliant legacy that is ceaselessly resonant. This full-color book goes a long way to explain why generations of bluegrass fans continue to admire him. Co-authored by accomplished fiddler Matt Combs, Hartford’s daughter Katie Hartford Hogue, and musicologist Greg Reish, the volume expands beyond career landmarks like writing “Gentle on My Mind” and recording Aereo-Plane. Readers can also peruse 176 original compositions (some never before published), more than sixty of Hartford’s personal drawings, interviews with musicians who still consider him an essential player of American music, and Hartford’s own ruminations on playing the fiddle.

Waiting to Derail: Ryan Adams and Whiskeytown, Alt-Country’s Brilliant Wreck
Author: Thomas O’Keefe
Time has been kind to Whiskeytown’s 1997 album, Strangers Almanac, with country-tinged tracks like “16 Days” and “Yesterday’s News” paving the way for the Americana movement. (Back then it was usually called “alt-country.”) But why didn’t the band have more national success? This candid book written by their former tour manager makes it obvious that Ryan Adams didn’t care about playing nice to fans, venue owners, influential radio programmers or the music industry. Still, there’s an important scene where Adams silences a North Carolina club with “Avenues,” serving as a potent reminder of just how powerful his music can be.

BGS WRAPS: Bob Dylan, ‘Christmas in the Heart’

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Every year, the winter season is filled with countless new Christmas albums from the latest cavalcade of pop artists. Meanwhile, some legacy acts recycle the holiday classics for an easy paycheck. Of course, there are those timeless records we revisit again and again, with songs so deeply ingrained in our brains they can take us back in just a few short notes — Kenny & Dolly’s Once Upon A Christmas, anyone??

But for me, there is one album that outpaces all of them: Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart.  Maybe it’s the soft gravel of his voice that contrasts the downright cheery disposition of the songs — all supported by Bob’s super-tight backing band. Maybe it’s the fifteen tracks themselves, which range from the most traditional, like “O’ Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night,” to the absurd — you have not experienced glee until you’ve seen this video of “Must Be Santa.” More than anything, I think it’s the sheer joy that comes across in every note. It’s what Christmas should be all about: silliness and happiness and cheesiness mixed with solemnity and tradition and memory.

Naturally then, to kick off our first-ever BGS Wraps series, we present the album in its entirety. Hopefully it becomes a holiday tradition in your family too.