Artist:Reckless Kelly Hometown: Austin, Texas Latest Album:The Last Frontier
(Editor’s Note: Answers supplied by Willy Braun.)
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memory of being on stage is usually the last song at the Braun Brothers Reunion. We always close with a Bob Dylan song, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” It’s been a tradition for a long time and that’s always the end of our set. Reckless Kelly always closes Saturday night of the festival. We bring all of our artist friends out to do a big grand finale jam on that song. It’s always really fun, because it’s following a week of great times, great shows, great music, and people getting together having a ball. The crowd is always singing along with it. It’s just a good little crescendo to end the BBR every year. So that’s one of my top ten right there for sure.
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
I get a lot of inspiration for songs from reading. Actually, I borrow lines from books and maybe story lines or direct quotes. Not sure if that’s considered stealing or not, but haven’t been sued yet; so that’s good. But no, I try to read a lot, especially when I am up in Idaho in the wintertime and I keep a notepad by the chair or by the fire where I’m reading. I’ll jot down lines that jump out at me or you know sometimes when you’re reading a story you’ll get an inspiration for a song. But yeah, I take a lot of inspiration from reading books.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
The nature element that inspired me the most is probably just being in the mountains up in Idaho. Kind of out in the middle of nowhere in the high desert. My place is pretty secluded, so I don’t have a lot of people stopping by, especially in the wintertime. I’m able to just kind of shut the phone off and do some writing. It’s just a great place to just sit and stare out the window at the mountains and just be inspired by the solitude and silence of it all. So I would say the mountains are my number one place to go and get away from it all.
Does pineapple really belong on pizza?
This is two questions rolled into one. First question being, “What’s the most random question you’ve been asked in an interview?” followed by, “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” I think that’s the most random thing I’ve been asked, so we’re going to answer it for you.
The answer is, yes, pineapple belongs on pizza. If you don’t think so, then you’re only fooling yourself, you’re trying to be cool, and trying to be a little more Italian than maybe you are. I can just tell you this from experience. When we have more than one pizza delivered to the bus and one of them contains pineapple, it’s the first one to go. Even though half the guys in the band claim they don’t like pineapple on their pizza, like it is some kind of abomination. So, I’ll take my pizza with pineapple, canadian bacon, and jalapeño, thank you very much. Preferably on thin crust and if you don’t like it, you can go back to Sicily.
If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?
If I didn’t work in music, I would probably be a carpenter. I’ve always liked building stuff. My grandpa was a carpenter; he taught me how to build stuff when I was a kid. I just enjoy creating things; whether it’s a coffee table, a cabin, a house, or a picture frame, whatever – if it’s made out of wood. It’s fun, I like to build stuff out of wood. I’m not much of a mechanic, but I can work with wood. Yeah, I’d be a woodworker/carpenter if this whole music thing doesn’t work out.
Willie Watson has been a solo act for well over a decade, since leaving Old Crow Medicine Show way back in 2011. And while he’s put out records since then, in many ways his self-titled third release marks a new beginning. A lot of that comes from the fact that it’s Watson’s first solo work with original material, following two volumes of Folk Singer albums drawing from The Great American Folk Song book.
Watson worked with a co-writer on the original songs on Willie Watson, Morgan Nagler from Whispertown 2000, and the results sound like the sort of songs you’ll hear traded around folk festival campfires for years to come. The co-production team of former Punch Brothers fiddler Gabe Witcher and Milk Carton Kids guitarist Kenneth Pattengale capture the tracks in spare, elegantly understated arrangements with the spotlight firmly on Watson’s voice.
The album begins with a literal trip down to hell on “Slim and The Devil” (inspired by 2017’s white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia) and ends with “Reap ’em in the Valley,” an autobiographical talking gospel about Watson’s own long, strange trip. In between are songs about love, fear, the occasional murder. One of them is another cover, Canadian folkie Stan Rogers’ stately “Harris and the Mare,” and you’ve never heard a song that’s both so beautiful and so horrific.
BGS caught up with Watson on the eve of his album’s release.
So after so many years playing old folk songs, what got you into writing your own?
Willie Watson: I’ve always written songs, but never thought of myself as a “real” songwriter, like Gillian Welch or Dylan or Ketch [Secor]. That just didn’t seem like what I was engineered toward. I wanted to be that kind of songwriter, but told myself I didn’t measure up. So I got into traditional music. When I’d get together with friends at parties, I’d be more likely to sing songs that were traditional or someone else’s. Being in Old Crow was great, because I got to write with other people, mostly Ketch. Co-writing was easier on me.
Once I found myself on my own, I was very scared to write by myself. Being completely responsible for everything is scary and for whatever reason I could not bring myself to do that. Now I understand that no matter how simple, complicated, mature, childish or anything else I put into a song might be, it’s okay. I don’t have to tear apart and criticize, say terrible things about it before I’ve even written it down on the page. Left on my own, that’s typically what I’d do. It’s only now at age 44 that I can get past that. What a long road.
Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?
“Roll On” when I was 15 or 16. It was wintertime at my house in Watkins Glen, late one night when everybody else was asleep. I went out to smoke in the back yard and it was quiet. As I looked at the nighttime winter sky, I had this story come into my head about a cowboy in an old town. I wrote the words out quick, almost as I would have been playing it. Just looked up at the sky and thought of it and it washed over me fast. It was a pretty powerful first song, but I ignored it and have the most regret about that. For whatever reason, there was something in my life that made me not give it enough credit.
How did you connect with your co-writer, Morgan Nagler?
She’s a great songwriter who has made a few records, does a lot of co-writing with people you know. You’ve heard songs on the radio that she co-wrote. I was afraid to sit down on my own and write, and Dave Rawlings said I should call her. I was apprehensive about presenting ideas and words and parts of myself to a person I didn’t know, but it was immediately fruitful. The first day, four hours later we had a song I really liked, “One To Fall” – it’s on this record. That we came up with something I felt strongly about right a way got me fired up, so we kept going. Every time we got together we wrote a good song.
What was it like to appear in the Coen Brothers movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs?
It was amazing. They had me audition for another movie I did not get the part for, but they already had me in mind for the one after that. But it was terrifying. Little cameras scare me enough and the big gigantic ones are even scarier. Like a gigantic eye and you’re not supposed to look at them even when they’re right in your face. I’m no actor. I knew my lines, but did not know what to do. I called Joel [Coen] a month before to ask if there was anything he could tell me to prepare me. “The only thing I’ll tell you is your first instinct is probably right,” he said. Which didn’t help at all. On-set, I was still scared. I had to learn to get on the wrong side of the horse because of the camera shoot, which was awkward. So I was not knowing what to do until they took me to wardrobe. Once I had on the costume and the hat and looked in the mirror, I suddenly knew exactly what to do. When I saw how I looked, it all made sense: Just go out and be Clint Eastwood.
Fear, even terror, seems like a recurrent theme in your life as well as your work.
It’s a recurring thing for every human, if they’ll admit it. It’s so freeing to admit I don’t know what’s going on, I’m scared, I need help. So much of the time I’ve done the opposite and gotten nowhere. The only person making my life hard was me. Touring with different people, I see them get into stressful situations and I think, “It must be hard to be them today.” I was just like that for a long time, tearing through things everywhere I went. I was afraid and my way of dealing with that was to try and control things. A lifetime of that proved disastrous.
I got to the point of trying other things and eventually learned about humility. That started me changing and growing and recognizing that the only reason I made my life so hard was being afraid of everything. It’s so risky doing this and I am scared of it. I’m apprehensive about even saying that. The public wants you to be confident onstage and I am that. Sometimes not, though. It’s hard to put it out there and not be afraid. I’m gonna cry a lot in front of people onstage, and that’s brave and good for me. This record is me understanding that there’s power in those uncomfortable moments, and embracing them. There’s a lot of healing in being able to go ahead and do that.
Who are you dancing with in the video to “Real Love”?
That’s my wife Mindy and the song’s about her. Once we got together, it went quick with us. But there was not romantic interest when we met, we were just working together. She’d quit her job as a fast fashion designer wanting to do something fun, cool, more fulfilling. A mutual friend was trying to get us together, knowing she was interested in getting into denim work and that’s what I do. The friend knew I needed help. So she started as an apprentice, got good fast, and we ended up working together. For a year we sat and sewed together and became best friends, she’s the best I ever had.
I was careful about that relationship, didn’t want to ruin it. So that song’s about how it started and what it meant, how true our love feels. It outdid everything else I’ve experienced my whole life. It shows how every other relationship I’ve ever had, I wanted the wrong things and, I daresay, they all wanted the wrong things from me, too. It went both ways. I’m not even talking about romantic love. It ends up being about everyone in my life. The story of my love life is the story of my life, love in all its forms. It’s a bold statement that she is the only real love in my life so far.
How did you come to know Stan Rogers’ “Harris and the Mare”?
I’m a Stan Rogers fan and that song comes from Between The Breaks, a live album recorded at McCabe’s in Santa Monica. I was thinking, “Do I want to put this on a record with my songs?” I’d written simple rhymes, couplets that are almost kinda childish – and I’m gonna put them next to a well-crafted song by a master songwriter? But Kenneth and Gabe had heard me sing that one at shows for a while and really wanted it on tape, and I guess I did, too. And after the recording came out so awesome, how could it not be on the record? I found out it did tie into my life. We made this record and I was unsure if any of it made any sense. Once it was sequenced and I lived with it for a month or two, it came into focus. That’s a violent song about a man who doesn’t want to be angry and violent. And I’ve been that man in my life. I relate to this guy.
The other cover, “Mole in the Ground” – did you know that one from Anthology of American Folk Music?
Yes. I love Bascom Lamar Lunsford, he’s so weird and interesting to listen to. Those old recordings, I can’t listen to a lot of Carter Family or Blind Willie McTell. Three or four songs and I don’t want to hear more. But Bascom, I can listen to a good 30 minutes and that says a lot. Like “Harris,” that was a big puzzle piece where I was unsure how it would fit. What made it were the string arrangements. That tied it in with “Harris” and “Play It One More Time.” Gabe directed the string arrangement, but let them find their own way. It was a cool every-man-for-himself arrangement.
The closing song, “Reap ’em in the Valley,” really tells a lot about how you came to be who and where you are, describing an early encounter with a singer named Ruby Love.
I’ve always talked too much at my shows. But being alone onstage, I had to find ways to make it more interesting. Switching from guitar to banjo is a great tool in the arsenal, but people still got bored of that. Folk singers traditionally tell stories and lead sing-alongs. So I learned how to talk to people in a real personal way about mundane things, relating our lives to find common ground rather than tear each other apart. Just me up there, whether it’s in front of 15 or 50 or 1,500 people, it becomes a battle if it’s not working. Me against them. Sometimes it was a disaster, when I was not speaking from experience or the heart, places I knew. But once I started telling stories about me simply walking down a country road, they’d perk up and listen. So I became a storyteller. I figured I’d put one on this record, and that was one Kenneth and Gabe really wanted me to do.
I hope it translates. It’s my experience of looking back at evidence of what I call God in my life, how you can’t deny it. What I am now, Mr. Folksinger. That’s what people recognized me as, the place I ended up. It could have gone differently, but this is what I’m here for. Those impactful moments. I didn’t think much about Ruby Love over the years, until I started thinking more realistically and honestly the further I got from it. Meeting Ruby Love when my heart was so broken and how that felt, that’s what I never forgot about that night.
That’s the thing that stayed with the picture of it all, like a scene in a movie. That’s what vivid memories look like, movies. All that imagery rattling around my head. I relate a lot of that to the nature of God and God’s power in my head. It goes hand in hand with the moon and lake and sky, and how the moon affected Ruby Love. What Ruby Love did for that party and what the orchard did for his guitar.
Nearly 50 years after the Earl Scruggs Revue concert I saw at the University of Maine, an internet search led me to Jaime Michaels of the opening act, Beckett. He still has vivid memories from that night in Orono. I sent him a copy of my report. He wrote back, saying:
I have no idea about the song titles but it was nice that my ’63 Gibson J50 got a mention … I still have it.
He has vivid memories of his time backstage with Scruggs.
… at the very end of Earl’s set as he walked back out for his 3rd or 4th encore he stopped and said to me “If I’d just play the darned thing right, I wouldn’t have to keep going back out …”
A little later as we were all loading out Earl came up to us and said, “Do you guys want to see my new bus?” He took us for the grand tour. I was still pretty young and had never seen a real tour bus before.
He was such a sweet guy with this humble self-effacing humor.
Earl was proud of that bus, I reckon; he’d named an instrumental after it.
When I saw them in 1975, the Earl Scruggs Revue was a polished Nashville rock act that had been together since 1969. Debuting at a folk festival that May, not long after Scruggs split from Lester Flatt, it featured Earl’s sons.
The two oldest, Gary (then 20) and Randy (then 16) were already Nashville recording studio veterans. They’d been in the Columbia studios multiple times (Gary 11 sessions, Randy 15 sessions) since May 1967, helping on the last three albums Lester and Earl made before their split (Changin’ Times, The Story of Bonnie & Clyde, Nashville Airplane).
Also new to Flatt & Scruggs, in the fall of 1967, was Columbia producer Bob Johnston, then 35. Concerned about declining record sales, Columbia had replaced Frank Jones and Don Law, highly regarded Nashville veterans who’d been producing F&S since the fifties, with Johnston, who was producing Bob Dylan.
Dylan had stunned the folk world when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. He first recorded in Nashville in 1966, completing Blonde On Blonde there using mainly Nashville studio musicians. In the next two years he returned, making John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline.
Flatt & Scruggs’ final albums reflected their move to Johnston, a leading producer at forefront of Columbia’s move from acoustic folk into electric folk rock.
Later, when asked about what led to the split with Earl, Flatt spoke of his difficulty in singing the band’s new songs. “Johnston,” He said, “…also cut Bob Dylan and we would record what he would come up with, regardless of whether I liked it or not. I can’t sing Bob Dylan stuff. I mean, Columbia has got Bob Dylan, why did they want me?”
Of the final three F&S albums, both Changin’ Times and Nashville Airplane had folk-rock repertoires. At the very first session for Changin’ Times, four folk-rock favorites were cut, three Dylan hits, one by Ian Tyson: “Don’t Think Twice,” “Four Strong Winds,” “Blowin’ In the Wind,” and “It Ain’t Me Babe.” Here, Earl’s boys Gary (singing) and Randy (lead guitar) were together for the first time in the studio with Flatt & Scruggs and Johnston.
Imagine the dismay of Lester (who, soon after splitting with Earl, would record “I Can’t Tell The Boys from the Girls“) at this session! It seemed as if the young longhairs with their strange new music were taking over.
Released in January 1968, the back cover of Changin’ Times was filled with the image of a rock poster. Unsigned notes beside it read:
With their smash appearance at the Avalon Ballroom (a West Coast temple of rock and light-shows) when they turned on the whole of San Francisco, there are no new worlds left for Flatt and Scruggs to conquer. Flatt and Scruggs are for everyone.
One of the album’s 11 tracks was a remake of Earl’s “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” which had just become a hit through the soundtrack of Bonnie and Clyde. Five tracks were by Dylan; the album closed with Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.”
Gary and Randy Scruggs personified the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Nashville Cats,” but also in the studio for that album were other, older, Nashville cats – Charlie Daniels, Grady Martin, Bob Moore, Charlie McCoy and other A-team studio musicians. Randy and Gary would come to know these men well as they built life-long careers in the Nashville studios. These careers were forged during their years (1969-82) with the Earl Scruggs Revue.
Fortunately, the Revue’s earliest days were chronicled in a television documentary. David Hoffman’s ninety-minute NET TV special, Earl Scruggs: The Bluegrass Legend – Family and Friends, was recorded in 1969-70. It has been issued on DVD several times since then and can be seen on YouTube.
It’s fascinating to watch Hoffman’s documentation of Scruggs as he narrates his past, voices his present, and sets out his future directions. Along the way, Hoffman captures Earl’s music-making with a wide variety of performers and audiences. By the end of those 90 minutes, Scruggs’ cultural and political perspectives are manifest; likewise the breadth of his musical tastes.
Hoffman filmed in New York, North Carolina, Nashville, Washington, D.C., and California. The documentary opens with a five-minute jam session: Earl, Gary, and Randy are in upstate New York visiting Bob Dylan at the home of illustrator and sculptor Tom Allen, who had done many Flatt & Scruggs album covers. After Bob sings “East Virginia Blues,” Earl asks him if he’d like to hear their version of “Nashville Skyline Rag,” the instrumental title track from Dylan’s most recent album. I don’t know when this jam took place, but in mid-August of 1969, when Earl was in the studio with Lester to record Final Fling: One Last Time (Just For Kicks), an album they’d agreed to make after their split, the first track they recorded was “Nashville Skyline Rag.”
The tune became a fixture in the Revue concert repertoire, used, for example, as the show opener at Orono in 1975 and in 1977 when they played PBS’s Austin City Limits. Earl had recorded it again in 1970 for his first solo album, Nashville’s Rock.
After the jam with Dylan, the film’s next twenty minutes take the viewer with Earl and the boys to his North Carolina home with visits to the Morris Brothers (the first group he’d worked with), Doc Watson, and Scruggs family and friends in the Flint Hill community. It closes with a shot in which Earl speaks of how he’d taken the banjo to different types of music: “Now it’s easy to blend with today’s music. It works very well. I’m really happy. I had dreams of this.”
The next five minutes come from a jam session with the Byrds at a ranch outside Nashville. It begins with them doing “Nothing To It” (the title Earl used for “I Don’t Love Nobody,” when he recorded this tune with Doc Watson) followed by “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” a Dylan tune that was on the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo, the 1968 album that is often thought of as a foundational statement of country rock.
It’s followed by four minutes with electronic music pioneer and composer Gil Trythall, who plays along on Moog synthesizer with Earl and Randy doing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
Then comes an interview with Charlie Daniels, at the time an associate of Bob Johnston, soon to become one of country rock’s leading figures. The focus shifts as he, Earl, and the Revue attend the second Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam, held in Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1969 – generally considered to be the largest demonstration ever in Washington. After performing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” there, Earl speaks of his opposition to the war.
Back in Nashville, Daniels is co-producing (with Neil Wilburn) All The Way Home, the first Scruggs Brothers album, for the New England folk and classical label Vanguard. The film follows them into a Nashville studio.
Earl is also working on an album, his first post F&S solo project, Nashville’s Rock. After listening to a demo of one track at the Scruggs home, we see an old friend of Earl’s, Dr. Nat Winston, give testimony to his character, and then Earl demonstrates how he creates his music, explaining that he’s self-taught. Next, we meet Earl’s wife Louise, who’s worked as his manager for fifteen years. She points out that Earl was immersed in the music from age five and that their son Randy has had the same experience.
A shift of focus to Randy follows, as we see him picking “Black Mountain Rag” (a guitar performance reflecting the Scruggs affinity for Doc Watson), and then go with him to class at Madison High and have a chat with his principal, who talks about Randy’s “skipping school.”
After hearing from Louise about how she met Earl at the Grand Ole Opry, we drive on a spring afternoon (in 1970) with the Scruggs family from home to the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville. Inside, Earl, with Randy, joins Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys in a backstage dressing room for a jam and then we witness the Revue’s debut on the Opry stage.
In the center is Earl on banjo, flanked by Randy on guitar and Gary on bass and vocals. Also in the band is Jody Maphis, a contemporary of the Scruggs brothers and son of country stars Joe and Rose Maphis, on guitar. He would subsequently move to drums and remain in the Revue for about a decade. On piano and tambourine is Leah Jane Berinati. Except for Earl, this was a group of kids, dressed like young flower power types. They perform two very conservative old traditional songs, “Nine Pound Hammer” and “Reuben,” to an enthusiastically appreciative audience.
The last twenty-five minutes of the documentary follow the Scruggs family as they travel, early in 1970, to California’s Bay Area for a visit and a jam in Joan Baez’s home. Joan, with her young newborn son Gabriel nearby, chats with Earl about their 1959 meeting at the first Newport Folk Festival. She sings two songs (both are Dylan compositions) and then, while photos are shown of her husband – Gabriel’s father David Harris, whose Vietnam protests had led to federal imprisonment for draft refusal – she sings “If I Was A Carpenter” with Gary. A heady mix of politics and music.
The film closes with Earl back in North Carolina talking again about his musical aspirations:
Keep up with the times and make as much progress with the banjo along with other instruments as long as it blends in as possible.
As the credits roll, we hear Earl playing “Folsom Prison Blues” using his tuners.
This documentary, aired at the height of the Vietnam war, included a forthright statement of opposition from a leading figure in Nashville, where there was considerable support for the war. The documentary was also a carefully crafted showcase of the Revue’s folk/country rock repertoire, musical style, and cultural connections.
The albums that Earl and his two oldest sons were working on while Hoffman was making the documentary released before its broadcast and both contain songs and tunes that appear in the film. A couple of examples: “Train Number Forty-Five” (F&S’s radio theme in the early days), which is heard in Earl and Randy’s backstage jam with Bill Monroe, is also heard on Earl’s album Nashville’s Rock. Similarly, Randy’s version of “Black Mountain Rag,” an acoustic guitar solo in the documentary, is heard on the Scruggs Brothers’ album, All The Way Home, in an extended version with not only acoustic and electric guitar breaks but also a banjo break in his father’s style.
In the next Bluegrass Memoir we’ll see how, by 1971 and 1972 when this documentary was broadcast, the Earl Scruggs Revue was appearing on a series of albums that realized Earl’s aspirations and helped launch his touring.
There is no disputing that Tom Paxton is a living music legend. In the early 1960s, he was a major player in the vibrant Greenwich Village folk scene, along with the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Peter, Paul & Mary. The writer of such classic tunes as “Last Thing On My Mind,” “Bottle Of Wine,” “I Can’t Help To Wonder (Where I’m Bound),” and “Ramblin’ Boy,” Paxton has earned Lifetime Achievement Awards from the GRAMMYs, ASCAP, and the BBC. The beloved songwriter has had his tunes covered by a wide spectrum of acts, ranging from Harry Belafonte and Neil Diamond to the Pogues and Norah Jones. While several fellow singer-songwriters (notably Carolyn Hester and Anne Hills) have devoted entire albums to Paxton music, it took a group of admiring bluegrass musicians to deliver the first multi-artist tribute album of his songs.
Bluegrass Sings Paxton, which came out August 30 on Mountain Home Music Company, offers an impressive lineup of contributors that cuts across several generations of bluegrass musicians. Performers include celebrated acts, such as Alice Gerrard, Claire Lynch, Laurie Lewis, and Tim O’Brien along with younger stars, like Sister Sadie, Della Mae, Steep Canyon Rangers’ singer/guitarist Aaron Burdett, Unspoken Tradition’s Sav Sankaran, and current IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year Greg Blake.
Paxton, speaking to BGS from his home in Virginia, said that he had a mostly hands-off role in the making of Bluegrass Sings Paxton. “I just sat on the sidelines in amazement”; however, he confided, “I was just blown away” after listening to the entire album for the first time. The 86-year-old singer-songwriter was also being a little modest about his own contributions. This collection contains two new Paxton tunes, and he sings on a pair of tracks as well.
The genesis for Bluegrass Sings Paxton started with a conversation that GRAMMY-winning musician/producer Cathy Fink had some years ago with Paxton, who she has worked with since the early 1980s and has known even longer. “I know Tom’s catalog really well and have often thought there was great material there for bluegrass,” she shared with BGS. “I could hear this album before we even began.” The idea further evolved a while later when Fink brought up the idea to award-winning songwriter, producer, and Mountain Home executive Jon Weisberger at IBMA a few years back, and he immediately came aboard.
Several of Paxton’s tunes have been very popular in bluegrass circles over the years. A half century ago, Kentucky Mountain Boys covered “Ramblin Boy” while the Dillards and the Kentucky Colonels were among those who have recorded “The Last Thing On My Mind.” More recently, “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” was a hit for Ashby Frank and “Leavin’ London” is a live staple of Billy Strings’ concerts. However, both Fink and Weisberger thought the project was a terrific way to get Paxton’s deep songbook better known in the bluegrass world. As Weisberger explained, “I had no doubt that there were more [songs] – both already written and yet to be written – that would work well within bluegrass, and that bringing them to light would encourage artists looking for songs to look to his catalog.”
Several acts came into the project with specific songs that they wanted to do. Blake, who fatefully was sitting at the same table with Weisberger and Fink at IBMA, quickly put dibs on “Leaving London.” Danny Paisley, who remembered his dad, ’80s bluegrass star Bob Paisley, taking him to the Philadelphia Folk Festival as a child and seeing Paxton play there, requested “Ramblin’ Boy,” because it was a song his father had performed. “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” was already part of Della Mae’s live repertoire, so doing that tune was a natural fit for them.
When it came to what songs other acts took on, Fink gave the performers a lot of free rein to delve into Paxton’s vast treasury of tunes, a decision that worked out wonderfully. “Each artist made the song their own and it really worked,” she confided. Claire Lynch chose “I Give You The Morning” and Alice Gerrard selected “The Things I Notice Now” from Paxton’s 1969 The Things I Notice Now album. Chris Jones picked “The Last Hobo” from 1986’s And Loving You. Paxton’s 2002 album, Lookin’ for The Moon, was the source for both Aaron Burdett’s selection of and Sav Sankaran’s rendition of the title track. Laurie Lewis, meanwhile, found “Central Square” from 2015’s Redemption Road. In case you haven’t done the math, these songs alone cover nearly 50 years of Paxton’s recordings.
Paxton, too, was thrilled with the selections, proclaiming “I liked every one of the songs that they chose.” While he expected tunes like “Can’t Help But Wonder,” “Ramblin’ Boy,” and “The Last Thing On My Mind” would be part of the set, Paxton said he “was just tickled to death” over the inclusion of such lesser known numbers as “Central Square,” “The Same River Twice,” and “The Last Hobo.”
Chris Jones revealed to BGS that he picked “The Last Hobo” because the tune “felt like a classic Tom Paxton third-person story song, sort of in the spirit of ‘Ramblin’ Boy,’ in a way. It has a kind of tenderness that is so often present in Tom’s songs.”
Jones was also a member of the de facto “house band” that played on the majority of Bluegrass Sings Paxton’s tracks. A secret weapon behind the album, this team of bluegrass all-stars includes IBMA award-winners banjo player Kristin Scott Benson (the Grascals), fiddler Deanie Richardson (Sister Sadie), and Jones on guitar, along with mandolinist Darren Nicholson (formerly of Balsam Range), bassist Nelson Williams (Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, New Dangerfield) and harmony singers Travis Book (The Infamous Stringdusters) and Wendy Hickman.
Jones felt that everyone “clicked well together” and gave the music “a natural sound, which helped give the impression that these were bluegrass songs to begin with, even if they weren’t.” He also credited producers Weisberger and Fink for “coming up with arrangements that really fostered that feeling, too.”
Bluegrass Sings Paxton opens with one of the tunes that Paxton sings on. He was able to join Della Mae on “I Can’t Help But Wonder (Where I’m Bound)” as the band was recording in Maryland, not too far away from Paxton’s home base in Virginia.
“We did it live in the studio. No overdubs or anything,” he revealed. “I had a ball doing that track with them.” Paxton also sang with long-time collaborators Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer – the three did a double album, All New, together in 2022 – on the up-tempo love tune, “All I Want,” which is also one of the two of new Paxton tunes on the project. The other new number, “You Took Me In” is a co-write with Tim O’Brien and his wife Jan Fabricius. One of the first tunes he wrote with the couple, Paxton said that “it had to be chosen. It’s such a good song.” He described it as “gospel without being gospel,” adding, “I took the literal gospel out of it and kept everything else.”
Fink & Marxer and O’Brien & Fabricius are among the handful of musicians that the still highly-active octogenarian collaborates with via Zoom each week. Folk luminary John McCutcheon, Colorado troubadour Jackson Emmer, and the rising Pittsburgh band Buffalo Rose are also among his regular online songwriting coterie. Paxton says he sometimes writes three to five songs a week. “Lots of folks would retire to the golf course at this point in their lives,” Fink marveled, “but Tom is driven by writing the next song.”
Over the years, Paxton has penned hundreds and hundreds of songs, and more than 60 albums bear his name, beginning with 1962’s I’m the Man That Built the Bridges that was recorded live at New York City’s fabled Gaslight Club. Even from the start, Paxton filled his records predominately with originals, which wasn’t typical at that time. Dylan’s 1962 debut, for example, contained only two originals. Dave Van Ronk, in fact, famously proclaimed in his memoir that it was Paxton who kicked off the folk scene’s “New Song Movement,” not Dylan as often credited.
The best-known songs from his debut, somewhat curiously, are three tunes that might best be described as children’s music: “My Dog Is Bigger Than Your Dog,” “Marvelous Toys,” and “Going To The Zoo.” Writing and performing kids songs was not an isolated occurrence for Paxton, who went on to release several children’s albums, including the GRAMMY-nominated Your Shoes, My Shoes, and to write books for kids. Paxton very much sees himself as continuing the legacy of his heroes, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and The Weavers – artists who performed all types of songs, from story songs and ballads to children’s tunes and political songs.
“Everything I do is really rooted in traditional music,” Paxton elaborated during his phone interview. “I’m always going back to that well of traditional folk music, Appalachian music, cowboy music. It’s a wonderful tradition – great, great songs, and I just keep trying to write songs that feel the way they felt.”
Paxton cites one specific musician – the late, great Doc Watson – to explains his “best route” to bluegrass music. He saw Watson when Ralph Rinzler first brought him to play in New York City and came away so impressed. “I was very fond of him and adored his music. I think he liked me, too. Doc recorded many of my songs over the years.” He also remembered sharing a bill with Watson once in Tampa and being brought out on stage to perform “Bottle Of Wine.” Paxton was rather intimidated over Watson’s and his guitarist Jack Lawrence’s virtuosity. “Why do I feel like I’m wearing painter’s gloves,” he recalled saying while admitting “it was a lot of fun.”
Weisberger describes Paxton’s place in American music as a unique one. “He was an integral part of the transition from wholly traditional folk music to the more modern conception of the field, with its inclusion of performing songwriters, but where a lot of his contemporaries moved on in one way or another, he went deep rather than broad… I think that’s what makes so many of his songs sound so natural and organic and almost effortless. That is an artistry that is really easy to overlook or under-appreciate, so I’m happy to have put together a collection that will, I hope, bring more attention and appreciation to that still ongoing legacy.”
When asked how his songwriting has changed over the years, Paxton replied that he hopes it’s deeper and more developed, adding rather humbly that “I’m still the same writer I was when I wrote ‘Last Thing On My Mind.’ It’s like a farmer who puts in the same crop every year. It’s the same farmer.”
Photo courtesy of Fleming Artists. Album cover courtesy of Crossroads Label Group.
With a sound that’s like rain in the desert for fans of early rock and country, the Cactus Blossoms let their modern-classic vibe bloom on their latest album, Every Time I Think About You. But with pair of big shows to help celebrate the launch, this band is living very much in the present tense.
Made up of Minneapolis-based brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum, the duo’s new project arrives August 30 and once again captures the full, timeless magic of spacious melodies, tasteful twang, and tightly-wound harmony. That night, they’ll mark the release with a long-overdue debut at the Grand Ole Opry – where they ought to find a few like-minded fans of keeping music’s traditional cool factors alive – and then head home for a milestone gig in St. Paul.
After a trio of well-received albums and more than 10 years of riveting shows, it’s the perfect setup for a duo who seem totally at ease blurring the American roots timeline – and who promise they couldn’t fake it if they weren’t.
“I don’t think we’re very good at striving,” Torrey says, speaking from the verdant midsummer shores of Lake Superior on a much-needed break from the road. “I do think [this record] has a comfort level, especially since we’ve been able to start touring again, and really hit it. It’s been feeling like we’re a unit and we can kind of read each other’s minds a little bit.”
Speaking with BGS ahead of the release of Every Time I Think About You, Torrey and Burkum filled us in on what that telepathic bond helped create, and where it’s coming from.
A lot of Every Time I Think About You features the “modern-classic” sound you have both made a calling card – like it would sound fresh a few decades ago and today as well. But is that dangerous territory for a band? You don’t want to be pigeonholed as a throwback, right? So how do you walk the tightrope?
Jack Torrey: I think there’s an interesting aspect of that from our perspective. I got super into Bob Dylan and Hank Williams and I was singing songs by both of those guys way back, 18 years ago or whatever. Page was into Jimmie Rodgers and those other super old country things. We start singing together and it’s like if you harmonize on a Hank Williams song, it kind of starts to sound like an Everly Brothers song. You’re kind of accidentally falling into that and getting into territory that people went into 60 years ago – but it’s new for us and I think that has kind of kept happening. We’re not recreating or trying to do anything like listening to records and imitating it. It’s almost like we’re carving our own mini canyon, that resembles some of the other ones from the past.
Page Burkum: I was kind of thinking about this as a way of summing up our style and influences: The Band, The Traveling Wilburys. Those are like my four main food groups or something. I love where all those guys are coming from – a little Roy Orbison, a little Bob Dylan. They balance each other nicely. And I was thinking, when that’s your diet, you’re going to make something that comes out [like Every Time I Think About You]. … But we love other totally different kinds of music outside of that realm too, and I hope a little bit of that gets in there, too.
Where is the title track, “Every Time I Think About You,” coming from? It’s got that lovely, warm-and-fuzzy feel of a mid-century romance ballad to it, but maybe something more, too …
JT: That one is kind of a love song to losing a friend – it’s kind of a heartwarming grief, where you’re almost being consoled by the memory of someone. And that’s where that song came from. The way we wrote it, I just had a couple lines, and then Page jumped in and started singing the beginning of the chorus, and then I sang back the next line, “Every time I think about you …”
PB: Sometimes Jack and I have made fun of biopic movie scenes like in Walk the Line, where it’s like Johnny and June or whoever sit down with a guitar and they’re just writing a song in real time. Like, they sing one line and then pause dramatically, and then sing another line and then it cuts to them playing it for a thousand people or something. But in a funny way, that was kind of the closest to that. [Laughs]
JT: I was like, “I didn’t ask you to jump in and work on my song … but that’s pretty good idea. Let’s do it.”
The album kicks off with “Something’s Got a Hold On Me” – which almost has a Southern rock swagger to it. Where does that come from? Is that your Tom Petty influence showing?
PB: When I first had the idea for that one, the very original idea that set it off was actually a weird little piece of a Jimmie Rodgers song. So, I stole that line and that melody, which is about two notes or something, but it kind of inspired the whole song in a weird way. To me there’s some blend of Lead Belly and The Beatles or something in my mind, but then it ends up just sounding like a country-rock two step. That’s just what happens. It’s fun to roll with stuff. … I threw in another Jimmie Rodgers line, that “T for Texas, T for Tennessee,” to kind of keep that tribute going.
Oh that’s right, I should have known. Why did you end up finishing on “Out of My Mind (On Sunday)”? Is there a reason that seemed to wrap things up?
JT: It wasn’t a big dramatic decision, but it seemed like a nice bookend from “Something’s Got a Hold on Me” to end with being a bit of a crazy person. [Laughs]
PB: To me it actually kind of leaves the door wide open. I don’t know if you want to cap things off with the sweetest, most-concise thing you have, you know? There’s something about it that’s a little bit out there to me.
You’ll make your Grand Ole Opry debut the night this album drops. Then you’re having a big hometown party with show at Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul [on September 13]. What does that mean to you?
PB: We’ve got one of our favorite local bands, Humbird, joining us for that [St. Paul] show, so that’ll be really cool. We’re trying to get some of our collaborators to be involved too, if we can spice it up with an extra ensemble beyond our regular band. So we’re trying to get a piano on stage or something. I mean, it’s a theater show, so it’s a little different. And it’s our first time playing our own show at this theater. It’s a really beautiful building and I never thought I’d play there when I was a kid.
JT: It’s where [A] Prairie Home Companion used to be back in the day. Page and I actually played there when we were first getting started, which was a special time. So it’s cool, and should be fun. Some people can come that don’t like to stand, since we play a lot of clubs. [Laughs]
TULSA, OK – Generative AI company Altosphere released an album of “new” Woody Guthrie music, courtesy of their first artificially generated resurrection of the famous folk musician, who died in 1967.
“Artists like Woody Guthrie have been silent for years,” declared Altosphere CEO Blake Mundy. “So we thought, like, what if Woody dropped a new joint now? Wouldn’t that be sick?”
Guthrie, once a towering figure of American folk music, championed themes of equality, socialism, and anti-fascism and laid the groundwork for the socially conscious folk music later popularized by artists like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. But apparently, AI Woody didn’t get the memo.
After initial testing returned some positive song outputs, researchers quickly discovered that their creation, dubbed “WoodyBot,” departed sharply from the views typically associated with Guthrie.
While the flesh-and-blood Guthrie was best known for “This Land is Your Land” and a guitar with the inscription “This machine kills fascists,” WoodyBot cranked out tunes praising corporate consolidation, touting a lower minimum wage, and lauding police militarization.
In one tune called “Good Guy with a Gun,” the bot crooned, “I’m a fella who ain’t yella/ This country’s headed down/ I’ll get my AR-15/ Run the leftists outta town!”
Attempts to course-correct the model with additional data from the Guthrie canon were not received well by WoodyBot. “I tried to give some feedback when it wrote ‘No Women in the Voting Booth,'” said AI researcher Pico Dhaliwal. “But WoodyBot called me a commie pinko and doxxed my whole family. From then on, I just let it do its thing.”
Other WoodyBot “hits” included “Take a Ride in the Cybertruck!,” “Jesus Was a Snowflake,” “Unions Make You Gay,” and “A Jar of Monster Energy (Makes Me Feel Alive!)”
“We still have some tweaking to do,” Mundy admitted, before adding with enthusiasm, “But actually, I think these songs slap way harder than the original stuff.”
Greg Hess is a comedy writer and performer in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in The American Bystander, The Onion, Shouts & Murmurs, Points in Case, and he cohosts the hit satirical podcast MEGA.
(Editor’s Note: To mark the occasion of Bonny Light Horseman’s brand new double LP, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free – which were released in June – we invite our readers to be as flies on the wall during a special exclusive interview, an entertaining and joyful conversation between the members of this folk supergroup, Eric D. Johnson, Josh Kaufman, and Anaïs Mitchell.
Read about the band’s memories of their first gigs played for money, about popular bands they don’t really “get,” and so much more below. Plus, dig into their deep and broad discography – together and separately – with our in-depth exploration of their catalog of recordings here.)
Eric D. Johnson: We totally love each other a lot and we spend a lot of time together and we talk about everything, and I know everything about you guys, pretty much. I got some deep shit on you guys!
But, one question that I didn’t know the answer to, because I have a really funny answer for it is, what was the first show that you ever played where you got paid money? Do you remember?
Anaïs Mitchell: Oh wow!
EDJ: Can you guys remember that?
Josh Kaufman: I can remember. I don’t know if it was the very first, but it was certainly early. I played a yogurt shop in Port Jeff. I definitely played a lot of Grateful Dead songs. I think I played “Peggy-O” and like “Friend of the Devil.” I may have tried an ambitious solo acoustic version of “St. Stephen.”
EDJ: Tell me more though, was it a band? Was it you solo? And did you go just under the name Josh Kaufman?
JK: Just me. I don’t know if I was even booked. I don’t know. I may have just shown up.
EDJ: And what was the yogurt shop?
JK: I can’t remember the name of it either. I feel like I have a couple of friends that definitely would remember and definitely were there. That was the ‘90s, that was the era of the yogurt shop. It was basically a cafe, but let’s face it, it was a yogurt shop. I don’t know what I got paid, but I did get paid. I was probably 16; at a yogurt shop playing Grateful Dead songs for money.
AM: I want to see you then, Josh!
EDJ: I totally want to see him! I want to find the bootleg of that show. How did you get hooked up with the yogurt gig?
JK: Well, I was kind of in bed with big yogurt–
EDJ: You’re a big deal going way back–
JK: Going way back now! Well, how did I know about [it]? I think my friend Kevin Jones worked there. I think this is what happened. My friend Kevin Jones worked there, who you guys will meet when we play in California, because he just moved to the Bay Area. He’s going to come to our show. I think they were looking to up their game [at the yogurt shop]. And he was like, “Let’s see what happens. Let’s bring in a professional.” It must have been such a hot mess.
EDJ: I bet you were good from the jump. That’s my guess.
JK: That’s generous.
EDJ: Anaïs, what about you?
AM: I think the first time I made money for music was [when I was] 18 years old and I took a gap year. I was going to go to school, but I took a gap year and then I moved to Boston. You guys know this. I know you know this about me.
JK: You were a waitress.
AM: I was a waitress. Right. At this diner and then later as a waitress at this Cajun/Mexican place, which really sucked. It was in Central Square and I remember I had that job, because I quit it when I realized that I could make money playing in the subway. I could make equal money to what I made as a waitress. Basically, I would go down – I want to say that I played an Ovation Guitar. I’m sorry. [Laughs]
EDJ: Classic! Love this. I’m just gonna say: Ovation Guitar; yogurt shop. Just as visuals.
AM: Totally. [Laughs] I love this. They go together.
JK: You can actually eat yogurt out of an Ovation Guitar.
EDJ: They are designed for eating yogurt out of – in the ‘90s!
AM: I had a little portable [amp], my first amp. I just started playing electric on tour with you guys, but that’s not my first amp. My first amp was a little Crate amp. Do you know what those are? It was bright yellow. And it was cool. For plugging in your Ovation Guitar when you played in the subway, they were amazing.
So I did that. And the cool thing was I was really just getting going. I had written maybe a handful of songs – that I’ve repressed [since]. Like they were really not good, but if you’re playing in the subway, the audience turns over every 10 minutes. I played the same songs. I would just play them again and again. It was mostly my new songs that I had written. And I think I played a couple of folk songs that I learned from the Rise Up Singing folk music bible.
EDJ: But were people like throwing in money? What was your haul? Not because I care that much about money, but I’m just asking, is this your first profesh gig? Do you have your case? Do you have a little hat box?
AM: You got your case open and you put a couple dollars in there. You put like a five [dollar bill] to show people that. You don’t put coins, because then that’s what people put. I actually can’t remember, with inflation, like, what was that? I want to say I would go down there for an hour or two and make fifty to a hundred bucks.
JK: Oh, that’s really good. That sounds really good to me.
AM: That’s why I quit my waitressing job! I was like, this sucks. I’m just gonna do this.
EDJ: You’re 18, what is that, the year 2000?
AM: Or something… it was ‘99. Yes.
EDJ: Okay, sick. With inflation, I think that’s good. I think you did really well
AM: I might be misremembering, might be adjusting for inflation [wrong] in my memory.
JK: I think I got paid, by the yogurt shop, like $46 or something like that, which when I think about it now it’s almost like the tooth fairy or something. I think somebody just felt bad for me. They’re like, “This is 36, 46 bucks, just take it, go.” You know that, “Here’s some gas money.”
EDJ: I like that it was $46.
JK: I don’t think it was $50. I think I’d remember it if it was $50. That would have seemed like a lot of money to me. I will say, the guitar I was playing, Eric, and Anaïs, would have been the same guitar that I still play – the Guild that we made our records with and that Eric played on our recent tour.
AM: I spent some time with that guy.
Eric, I want to hear your story.
EDJ: I got you gonna beat financially by a couple bucks. When I was like 17, my friend Steve and I decided I was going to join Steve’s band just as a singer, but I was too scared to just sing and stand there. I did not know how to play guitar. So, I got a crash course in guitar from Steve. Steve came to one of our shows last summer, I think, or two summers ago when we opened up for [Bruce] Hornsby.
Steve gave me a crash course in guitar, but I didn’t really know how to apply guitar chords to cover songs, you know? I was like, “I guess I’m going to have to write.” I immediately became a songwriter, because I was too dumb to learn how to play a Pink Floyd song or something like that.
All of a sudden we became this folk duo that played a mix of covers and originals, as I was learning chords. I learned how to play some covers. I think “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead was the first – speaking of Grateful Dead, Josh. We played at this cafe in our little downtown of our funny little suburb called Caffe Trieste. It was actually really cool. It was very ‘90s. When I remember it, it smelled like clove cigarettes in there and herbal tea. It was literally a coffee house, like from the old times where you smoke cigarettes and drink coffee at night and watch music. I’m not saying it was like Greenwich Village or something like that, but it was cool.
We would play there, but for no money. That was kind of like open mics and stuff like that. We played “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin and we played “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. I think we played “Wish You Were Here.” And then we played sort of a smattering of my originals, which were terrible.
But, I was at home [one day] and this is in 1993. My mom was like, “You have a phone call.” And it was some lady and she says, “My daughter, Katie, she’s turning fourteen and she’s a huge fan of your music. And will you play her birthday party?” And I was like, “What?” We don’t have a band or like fans or anything like that. But apparently this girl had seen us at a school assembly – where all we played was the Cheers theme – and she’s turning fourteen. I was like, “What type of money do you usually get for things like this?” But I sort of fumbled and before I could finish and name a price, she was like, “Would $150 be good?”
That was like an unfathomable amount of money. But she also wanted us to play two sets and play for like literally two hours in their living room. We had about 20 minutes worth of material.We went to the house. Her dad owned an automobile dealership, so the house was nice. It was a room full of thirteen and fourteen year old, she was a freshman and we were seniors. I just remember that. So maybe she was turning fifteen.
When we walked in, it was like Beatlemania. They like, screamed and stuff. There were parents, friends, and stuff who were there and they were kind of these wealthy people. My house was very unsophisticated and it felt like we had sort of stepped into this sophisticated realm of our like dumb little suburb. These were the elites! We played our show, only we had not learned more songs in order to play. So we did the Anaïs thing, but without the audience turnover. We just played things over again. And they asked us to play “Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles. Then there was a set break and we had no more songs. We went out to Steve’s Jeep and got super high and then came back in and just played literally the same set again and doubled up on “Rocky Raccoon.” We played it four times in one night.
Anaïs Mitchell: What were you wearing? Did you dress up?
EDJ: I’m sure I was wearing something weird. I had a very schizophrenic style at the time. It was the ‘90s! I would wear plaid ‘60s golf pants, but I had this shirt that was a bread truck delivery shirt that had the name “Byron” on it like a name tag. My hair looked like Jason Priestley from 90210. I hadn’t honed my style yet, but I’m sure I just tried to dress up cool.
It was quite a first taste.
AM: That’s amazing. You might be the only band to play “Rocky Raccoon” four times in a show.
JK: The Beatles never played it one time in a show, I don’t think. So you beat the Beatles.
EDJ: Someone asked me this question recently – and you don’t have to answer with a modern band, because it could be more controversial – but what’s a band that’s iconic, that people love, that you’re like, “Not that…”
JK: Oh, Annie has a list of these they’re called like, unimpeachable bands that she doesn’t want to listen to. That she wants to impeach.
AM: I want to know her list!
JK: For instance, I think the Stones are on there. She’s like, “I mean, sure, the Stones are great or whatever, but I don’t want to listen to them.”
EDJ: For the Situation readers, by the way, this is Annie, Josh’s wife [we’re talking about]. Annie Nero.
JK: Yeah! But, for my own… let me think about that for a second.
AM: I have one, maybe. Maybe it’s going to be the same.
EDJ: Mine’s a little bit The Smiths – I actually think that the band sounds great. It’s sort of like The Doors, for me, where I’m not as into the front person [as I am the band], and I have to believe in the front person.
My other one is that I love Bob Dylan, but he’s like my 18th favorite songwriter. It’s still really high up there in the pantheon of songwriters, but probably a very low ranking as far as Dylan goes. I know Dylan’s a big one for you, Josh, but for me I have seventeen others I put above him. That’s an arbitrary number, but yeah.
AM: I was gonna say Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I’d be interested in hearing Annie’s whole list, ’cause I do wanna say, I feel like it’s a gendered thing. I’m not even gonna be eloquent about it, but I do think we have deified certain male artisan bands.
Where it’s like, “Aren’t you into this?” And I’m like, “Actually no.” But I sort of feel like they’re unimpeachable. Like I’m supposed to be like, “Oh yeah, CSNY!!” But my feelings are complex about CSNY, because I love Neil Young and I love Graham Nash. I think it’s really David Crosby – rest in peace – that like, for somehow I’m [hung up on]. I read about how he produced the first Joni Mitchell record and, for me, Joni’s like the top of the totem. Reading about their dynamic, back in the day [is troubling.]
Everyone loved Crosby. She had to kind of be like, “Oh my God, it’s Cros!” You know, but she was Joni Mitchell! I couldn’t really feel that stuff. Yeah, that’s gonna be my band. It’s frustrating.
Sorry, we canceled. [Laughs]
EDJ: No, I think CSNY is a reasonable one!
JK: I was gonna say The Who, honestly. The Who are awesome and everything and certainly there’s ‘60s garage [rock] stuff that’s fun and everything.
EDJ: I think it’s okay to throw fire at those guys. Dylan can take it and be pissed. They can fucking take it!
JK: I guess I feel like that’s lazy of me.
I think Anaïs’ comment about this sort of Mount Rushmore of at the time, early 20s baby boomer white men [was well made]. When they were very young with guitars, for some reason, we’ve decided that those guys are the best.
EDJ: It’s like the Rolling Stone magazine “top 40 cool guys” list. It’s like a mural at a guitar center in suburban Atlanta that you stopped at on tour.
But also Anaïs, sidebar, in my seventeen songwriters above Dylan, Joni Mitchell is my number one, so…
JK: She’s at the top of my list for sure, but I think in the top zone. I don’t know if they’re like tiered necessarily, because since it is art and stuff, it does sort of depend on the opening that I have for it on any given day to enter my heart.
AM: I got a couple more. You guys, this is going to be wild. Well, maybe not. I mean, you guys know me pretty well, because it’s some of these things, the music is undeniable and has shaped other music, but it’s not for me, you know? I would put the Beatles in that category.
JK: I was waiting for you to say that!
AM: I would put both [CSNY and the Beatles] in there. And I sort of appreciate it when I hear it. Like when I hear it coming out of someone’s car or on the radio or whatever, but I will never put that music on myself.
EDJ: I feel like with Beatles, if it didn’t catch you at a certain moment it’s a tough, massive thing to dig into. I didn’t get into Joni until I was 30, and it was like one of the pivotal musical moments of my life.
That’s not to say, “I think you have to be 38 to get into Joni,” but I think for whatever reason, she’s so deep and cool and crazy that I think it took me having a little life behind me to sort of understand what it was about. Someone who had seen clouds from both sides now, like at that point, it hit me like super hard.
I think Beatles, talk about iconography and stuff like that! It’s like, I totally get it. But I can’t. I love the Beatles. It exists in my musical and our band’s musical DNA. I’m never not thinking about like a McCartney melody.
AM: I had some grand thought while you were just saying that, about when you encounter music and when it speaks to you. Because yes, if you’re fourteen, if you’re fifteen discovering Ani DiFranco as I was. She became like my whole raison d’etre, but then for someone discovering her later, at a different time in their life or whatever, it’s different. You had to be a certain age to get the Joni.
And, I wanted to talk about the Grateful Dead because, like the Beatles, I might’ve put them in [this category] if we had spoken a different time, but now I know and love you guys. I sort of became like a late-blooming deadhead, because of your love for the dead. I really got into it and really into the lyrics. I genuinely, really appreciate that music now, in a way that I didn’t like, ten years ago. Part of that is because I love you guys.
I kind of love how your love for people then transfers to your love for the things that they love. And that then becomes a thing that you love.
JK: I totally feel that. I’m not going to name any names here, because I feel like it could be misconstrued, but I do feel like I remember early on going out and opening up for bands with friends and at the beginning of it having already made up my mind about this music or something. But then, getting to know these people intimately over the course of a month and having these accelerated friendships as a result of being around each other every day and sort of falling for what they’re doing a little bit. Or maybe, at least being way more open to it than I ever would have been just hearing it on the radio or hearing it in a friend’s car.
So much music [from] growing up I associate with people that I love, for sure. Getting into Bob Dylan ‘cause I love my dad. At a young age like, “This guy’s obsessed with this guy!” And I guess I’m kind of obsessed with this guy who’s into this guy.
A funny one for me is They Might Be Giants. I love the songwriting of They Might Be Giants and I love that band so much, but I wouldn’t expect one of you guys to get into it now if you weren’t into it when you were fourteen. You know what I mean?
EDJ: I love the point you made Josh, about touring with bands or something, especially in the indie rock days, where you’re really like up in each other’s grills. You bond in a kind of a different way. …
You guys, we have four minutes left. What are your top three favorite foods, Josh.
JK: My top three favorite foods, um… Today I would say, I like Szechuan Chinese food. I like Greek food. And I like Italian food. You know, all the classic Northern Italian things and all the Roman pasta stuff. I mean, who am I kidding, right?
I’m going genres, not dishes, because for me, it’s definitely more about a palette than it is about a specific [dish]. You know, grilled fish and lemon and tomatoes and cucumbers. If I want something in that zone, then I want Greek food. If I want spicy, zingy Szechuan peppercorn, it doesn’t really matter what it is, it could be like shrimp or tofu or chicken, or it could just be string beans. I just get in the mood and go in that direction.
EDJ: Anaïs, what do you got?
AM: I just got so hungry when you described the fish with the lemon and then the tomatoes, Josh. Now that’s what I want. All right. The first thing I’m going to say is Josh’s food. I want not what you just said, but food that Josh Kaufman cooks. I would like the fluffy eggs that you make sometimes. And also one time you whipped up a chicken soup. Do you remember that? You just whipped it up so fast and it was the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.
JK: Oh, I love that. That’s so sweet. I love cooking for you guys.
AM: I also love and I recently had– do you remember the place Wang’s in Park Slope? It’s kind of like fried chicken, Southern stuff, but then also is it Korean?
JK: Korean fried chicken? I think, right?
AM: I had something like that with Ramona, my older daughter recently, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is very delicious.”
Eric, you tell us yours.
EDJ: Oysters, shrimp cocktail, nachos… uh, buffalo wings. And that’s it. Love you guys.
AM: Love you.
EDJ: Love you. Hopefully it’s all turned out awesome and we have so many cool things to talk about. I’ll see yous on Thursday night!
Two weeks before the release of his new folk album, When I’m Called (available today via Fat Possum), Jake Xerxes Fussell’s sister, Coulter, who is a quilter, had a show of her work in Oxford, Mississippi. In this show, Coulter patchworked 24 small quilts with fabric sourced from her friends and fellow quilters. There was one quilt for every hour of the day.
Though Fussell has said that he and his sister do not talk about her work very much, there are some profound resonances between her quilts and his music – the idea of updating tradition by the use of unusual materials and freer forms, for example, or the idea of using old material to make new texts, but also something deeper. The songs and the quilts mark time, but not in conventional ways. Instead, they track time in a looping, stuttering fashion. Time is both abstracted and made concrete, as a quilt can appear like midnight and a song can be both a work song and a travel song; but also how a quilt or a song can be a mark of a 19th century technique using 21st century material.
The sources for these records and quilts are a network of people. They include those as close as their parents or close family friends, but also as wide as academic song catchers from the 1950s and 1960s, the folk revival of the same era, the careful annotaters of 1990s web forums, or 2020s Instagram accounts. In the time I spent talking to Fussell, he was careful to note these networks, where and who he learned from, the songs he picked up, but also the methods.
These methods were not only adapted from family and friends, but also professional contacts and music legends who pursue a similar ambition to extend what “folk” means. They include Blake Mills, who has been a session musician for everyone from Bob Dylan to the Avett Brothers; or Robin Holcomb, the avant garde vocalist and multi-instrumentalist whose estranging 1992 album, Rockabye, provides a conduit from artists like Bill Frissell and John Fahey to contemporaries like Blake Mills or Daniel Bachman.
For Fussell, the creation of a drawing, painting, quilting, or song-making can come from the same geographical site, the same kinship network, or the same historical records. His parents were academics who painted, sang, wrote, and quilted, but he also had friends like Art Rosenbaum, who painted, gathered songs, taught them in and outside of the University of Georgia, and won the 2008 Historical Recordings Grammy.
Rosenbaum died in 2022 and the songs on this album are in his memory, absorbing captured Scottish songs from the 1970s. The track “Feeling Day” is both bright and mournful, moving in the body of Rosenbaum from Georgia to Scotland and back, where it was taught to Fussell and then captured here. The intermingling of technology, memory, curiosity, professional competence, and ancestor work all made contemporary by skill and memory. (Like the quilts.)
Fussell talks about reclaiming and re-interpreting these songs, versions of versions, updated for contemporary listeners. The album includes the work of Rosenbaum, but it can also be seen on the very first track, about the Mexican painter Maestro Garry Gaxiola, whose decades-long (and most likely one-sided) feud with Andy Warhol centered on questions of what populist art is and what folk art is.
It can also be seen in how Fussell sings “When I’m Called,” a song partially composed from a found paper scrap (again, the quilting) containing a child’s to-do list. It reminds me of the folk anthologist Harry Smith, who spent a long time cataloging paper airplanes he found on the street. It can especially be seen on Fussell’s version of “Gone to Hilo.”
Depending on who you ask, the song’s original title is either “Johnny’s Gone to Hilo” or “Tommy’s Gone to Hilo.” For most versions, those who sing “Tommy” think that the song is about Ilo, Peru and those who sing “Johnny” think it is about Hilo, Hawaii. Fussell sings “Johnny.”
The song is not really a sea shanty, because they require a stronger beat to function as a work song; but it was intended as a song for sailors, a kind of lament, and the gap between forms here has deepened as it has moved further from the sea. The work quality dropped, and the lament quality ratcheted up. It has been sung by dozens of people, one of those tracks that criss-crosses the Atlantic with the folk – Peggy Seeger sang it when she was in England with Ewan McColl, for example.
Perhaps the saddest version of the song is by Paul Clayton. I think maybe three people in the world care about Paul Clayton, and Fussell is one of them. Clayton grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and collected songs about that town’s whaling history since before he was 20. He went to UVA and studied under the legendary song collector Arthur Kyle Davis, traipsing through Appalchia finding songs and then moving to the East Village, integrating himself with Van Ronk and especially Dylan. Fussell claims that his version of “Hilo” is directly in the tradition of Clayton – that how he weaves a song is how Fussell weaves a song.
Between 1954 and his too early death in 1967, Clayton made almost a dozen records of revolutionary war songs, sea shanties, timber shanties, songs of marital discord, songs which Dylan ripped off, and songs which are only remembered by enthusiasts. Fussell is an enthusiast, his version is the lament that Clayton created from the work song and the interweaving of the lament and the work song – the doubling down on the historical memory, the absorbing of a technique renewed in the knowledge of history – is key to the whole enterprise.
Listen to how Clayton emphasizes certain words – for example, “bully boy” – but also listen to how it’s just Clayton; a clarion voice, and a melancholy one. Listening to Fussell’s, with Robyn Holcolmb singing harmony, the sadness is still there, but the tradition is too. The tightness of the version traps tradition, that it is in the middle of the album, that it’s a single, marks a network of relation, an aesthetic about public choices, and a wrestling with tradition.
Folk music asks again and again, “Why are we making these choices?” and, “Whose choices are we making?” Fussell, at his best, makes choices that are smart, open, generous, and mark a time and place – be it Georgia or Hilo or Oxford, Mississippi or a room where Clayton and he can have a conversation with all those 19th century sailors.
Thinking again of Coulter’s quilts, they both mark time in an abstract sense – the idea of what noon or midnight looks like – but they also mark the time it takes to create a work. There is this idea that time is linear, that it marches forward relentlessly. The quilts mark the history of their creation, the actual moments that Coulter made them, but they also weave together the stories of those who gave her their scraps, the interlacing of decades of commercial and domestic enterprises intended to make an object which shows its sources/seams.
Everytime someone sings a traditional song, this kind of citational practice renews the song, the text, the material. Like a quilt, when Jake sings, time bends and loops, inviting other people’s time, other people’s lives. In a worst-case world, this could be greedy, or wolfish, consuming without respect; in Jake’s work, a much better world, this is a kind of kinship network, sharing and consuming mutually.
Whether you’re desperately scrambling for a karaoke number or seeking an anthem to unite your politically-opposed family this election season, Old Crow Medicine Show’s 2004 hit “Wagon Wheel” has been a safe bet for nearly two decades.
However, despite its widespread appeal, we’ve curated a list of scenarios where this ubiquitous ditty might do more harm than good. Here are five times you should firmly resist the urge to play it:
At the North American Cartographer’s Convention
Suggesting a westward journey through the Cumberland Gap will land a trucker in Johnson City, Tennessee is geographic heresy that will incite blind fury from the map-making community. Johnson City lies east, you directionally-challenged jackwagon. Prepare for fisticuffs.
During Daycare Center Staff Training
Regaling childcare workers with tales of rocking children “any way you feel” in “the wind and the rain” is a surefire way to get your facility’s license revoked.
As the Climactic Closing Argument in the Luciano Crime Family’s RICO Trial
Defending your allegedly innocent client by randomly bursting into a tune about boxcar-hopping and ramblin’ is a strategy that will absolutely undermine their chances of avoiding jail time. Your client is already a flight risk — don’t give them any ideas.
Over the Commlink During a Navy SEAL Covert Op
It turns out that the terrorists can win against an elite force’s meticulously-planned stealth mission when this ill-timed, rousing chorus echoes through the halls of whatever compound they are infiltrating.
At a Funeral for Your Stepdad Who Died Getting Crushed by His Own Station Wagon
You never liked your mom’s third husband Keith, but kicking off your eulogy by cheerfully strumming “Headed down South to the land of the pines” might miss the solemnity mark. Especially since it was an actual wagon wheel that took him.
Greg Hess is a comedy writer and performer in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in The American Bystander, The Onion, Shouts & Murmurs, Points in Case, and he cohosts the hit satirical podcast MEGA.
Double-, triple-, quadruple-threats are not uncommon in country music, not in the least. It’s a frequent occurrence, tripping over or into a country artist that’s a songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, writer, thinker, and so much more. In fact, until more recent decades, wearing many hats was seen as a sort of prerequisite to making hillbilly music. After all, this is “just” country music, it’s got a wide and deep DIY tradition, and the folks who make it often have to also load in the gear, sell the merch, post on social media, and produce the albums, play the demos and scratch tracks, write the lyrics, and otherwise steer the creative ship.
Some of the most successful artists and most original voices in country music are perfect examples of how multifaceted skill sets translate directly to star power. You may not need to be a Telecaster shredder to make it onto the radio or you may not need to be able to pick like Mother Maybelle to make a living, but if you can back up your songs with mighty playing, it certainly translates with audiences.
From Chet Atkins, Dolly Parton, and Wanda Jackson to Charlie Daniels, Willie Nelson, and Bonnie Raitt, here are just a few legendary examples of hugely successful country artists who are or were excellent musicians and instrumentalists, too.
Chet Atkins
A record company executive, producer, and pioneer of the “Nashville Sound,” Chet Atkins was also a one-of-a-kind guitar picker, renowned across the globe for his unique style – which was inspired by Merle Travis. Atkins certainly made “Travis picking” his own, arguably eclipsing all of his predecessors and continuing to influence guitarists today. An inductee of the Country Music, Rock and Roll, and Musicians’ Halls of Fame, Atkins’ impact is hard to understate and his resume includes work with Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Hank Snow, Waylon Jennings, and countless others.
DeFord Bailey
One of the first superstars of the Grand Ole Opry, DeFord Bailey was a world-class harmonica player who was also the first Black performer on WSM’s fabled stage. Some sources also credit Bailey as being the first musician to record music in Nashville. However you approach his career and music, Bailey was a seismic presence in the earliest days of country. Born in 1899, Bailey faced constant racism, bigotry, and marginalization on the Opry, in Nashville, and as he traveled and performed. He passed away in 1982 and was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
Glen Campbell
Even at the highest heights of Glen Campbell’s superstardom, he refused to let his superlative instrumental skill take a backseat to his roles as frontman, songwriter, Hollywood actor, TV star, and tabloid veteran. Campbell’s approach to country music as a true multi-hyphenate celebrity bridged generations, connecting the hardscrabble, DIY generations where multiple skills were necessary to make a living to the modern era, where he helped pave a way for famously multi-talented picker/singer/writers like Vince Gill and Brad Paisley to not be pigeonholed as one thing or the other.
Ray Charles
Any conversation around or collection of superlative country pickers and musicians would be glaringly incomplete without the inclusion of Ray Charles. His incursions and experimentations in country music are many and infamous. His 1962 album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music is routinely listed as one of the best country albums of all time. He’s worked with and performed with Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, Johnny Cash, Glen Campbell, and many, many more. Plus, his country forays demonstrate a deep, holistic understanding of the genre. Charles is a quintessential country multi-hyphenate and country-soul in the modern era would feel especially lacking without his seminal contributions to that tradition.
Charlie Daniels
It’s hard not to wonder what young, hippie, “long-haired,” Vietnam War-opposing fiddler Charlie Daniels would have thought of his older self, and his more harebrained and often hateful beliefs later in life. But the controversial and outspoken musician, at all points of his career, was a picker’s picker. Over the course of his life he performed and recorded with Earl Scruggs, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and many more. But his chief contribution to American roots music may just be his fiery, unhinged fiddling on “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Just wander down Lower Broadway in Nashville on any given Saturday night to feel the impact of that particular show-stopper. In this clip, he chats and performs “Uncle Pen” with Scruggs and Del McCoury.
Vince Gill
That buttery voice, that stank-face inducing chicken pickin’, that high, lonesome sound – Vince Gill is all at once country and bluegrass, Nashville and Oklahoma, western swing and old-time fiddle. Whether with The Eagles, preeminent pedal steel guitarist Paul Franklin, the Time Jumpers, or so many other outfits, bands, and iterations, Gill is simply right at home. Because, at his core, he’s just a picker. He may play arenas, but he knows he belongs at 3rd & Lindsley or the Station Inn. Or Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman. A quintessential picker-singer-frontman, Gill continues to define the myriad ways country stars can maintain their selfhood and personality – instrumentally and otherwise – even in their wild successes.
Merle Haggard
Speaking of chicken pickin’, country’s most famous Okie was a shredder, too. A sad song, a glass of (misery and) gin, a Telecaster, and the Hag – that’s all we need, right there. Merle’s playing style, even at its most technical and impressive, was simple and down to earth. You could tell he cut his teeth playing bars, fairs, and honky tonks. You could almost hear him pulling himself up by his bootstraps as he played.
Wanda Jackson
The Queen of Rockabilly has been slaying rock and roll, hillbilly music, and the guitar for more than seventy years. In 2021 she released her final album, Encore, when she was 84 years old. It features her signature passion and fire – and performances by Elle King, Joan Jett, Angaleena Presley, and more. Jackson has been representing the vital contributions of women to rockabilly and rock and roll for her entire career, just as often commanding the stage with her growly, entrancing voice and her powerful right hand.
Willie Nelson
Who would Willie Nelson be without Trigger? Without a tasty, less-is-more, nylon-string guitar solo? For decades, Nashville, Music Row, and guitar players around the world have been emulating his particular sound as a guitarist – whether they know it or not. Sure, he’s a hit songwriter, a star and front-person, a collaborator of Snoop Dogg and Frank Sinatra, and a connoisseur of fine bud, but perhaps more than all of these accomplishments, Willie is an impeccable picker. He can hold his own with the best of the best, because he is the best of the best.
Brad Paisley
Brad Paisley’s fame crested at perhaps the perfect time for him in country music, combining a rip-roarin’ guitar playing style with a sound that was entirely trad while carrying touches of the bro country wave that was about to inundate the genre. As such, he was able to build a career on the diversity of his skill set, before Music Row and the power behind it began prioritizing music that didn’t need to be musical and voices that didn’t need to be singular. Luckily, Paisley is both those things and more, and despite the many eyebrow raising moments across his career, our faces more often show shock at his mind-bending skill as a guitarist than anything else.
Dolly Parton
How is it that Dolly Parton can play so many instruments so impeccably with those iconic acrylic nails!? Nowadays, you are just as likely to hear Dolly performing to a track – yes, she does lip sync and pantomime playing along with recordings – but don’t get it twisted, she absolutely can play a passel of instruments from her beloved “mountain music” traditions. She plays guitar, banjo, auto-harp, dulcimer, and has even been known to pick up a bedazzled saxophone from time to time – though we can’t guarantee she actually knows how to play that one, we’re still blown away.
And what about thatone viral video with Patti LaBellewhere they play their acrylics like washboards? Dolly can make music with just about any instrument.
Bonnie Raitt
How many people do you think enjoy Bonnie Raitt’s soulful blues and Southern rock sounds without knowing she’s also often the one playing the guitar solos and making that bottleneck slide weep? Raitt is a Grammy winning songwriter, a fantastic vocalist and song interpreter/collector, and – above all, in this writer’s opinion – a superb guitar picker, especially playing slide. She can hold her own with just about anyone, and she has. Her phrasing and use of melodic space demonstrates that she’s been honing her craft for her entire life. That taste can’t be taught, it has to be found. Boy, has she found it.
Marty Stuart
Marty Stuart’s long, fabulous, superlative career began with him filling the role of sideman for such luminaries as Lester Flatt, Johnny Cash, Vassar Clements, and Doc Watson. He plays guitar and mandolin, working up his chops as a youngster with pickers like Roland White as his mentors. When his solo career took off after his Columbia debut in the mid-eighties, his ear for fine picking remained present throughout his music – however far afield from those early bluegrass and country days he may have traveled, stylistically. Whether bringing in psychedelic surf sounds or Indigenous flavors of the American West, Stuart’s catalog of music centers virtuosity that’s never gratuitous. And his band, the Fabulous Superlatives, featuring crack guitarist Kenny Vaughan and multi-instrumentalist Chris Scruggs, represent a high level of picking prowess, too.
Tedeschi Trucks Band
By many measures, Derek Trucks is the world’s foremost living slide guitarist, but don’t overlook powerhouse vocalist and co-band leader, Susan Tedeschi in order to venerate Trucks! Both started playing as youngsters – Trucks when he was a kid and Tedeschi when she attended Berklee College of Music. These two are guitar and blues royalty, helming one of the most impactful modern blues and Southern rock orchestras on the planet. They’re consummate musicians, knowing just how to surround themselves by players who support and challenge, both. Even with their laundry list of personal accomplishments, together, Tedeschi & Trucks – who are also married – are so much greater than the sum of their parts.
Keith Urban
Keith Urban brings a scruffy, down to earth guitar playing style to his polished and glam mainstream country sound. Yes, even as far away as Australia, having instrumental chops means having country currency. When he moved to Nashville in the early ‘90s, with a few Australian radio hits and awards under his belt, he immediately found work as a side musician and co-writer in Music City. It wasn’t long until his star ascended stateside, too – and then, as quickly, around the world – bolstered by arena-ready guitar. Now readying his first album since 2020, Urban shows no signs of slowing down, with the music or the picking!
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