Tag: brad cook

Despite a Sad And Beautiful World, Mavis Staples Still Transcends

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Such words as “legendary,” “transcendent,” and “magnificent,” while accurate, only skim the surface in describing the greatness of vocalist Mavis Staples. There’s no idiomatic area where she doesn’t excel and no song, regardless of origin or writer, that she can’t turn into a personal triumph. She’s also a genuine survivor, both in the familial (she’s the last living member of the Staple Singers) and socio-political sense (she’s a cultural warrior and champion of the Civil Rights era whose resonant voice has inspired generations of listeners).

For many artists, claiming they’ve gotten better with age is at best polite overstatement, and at worst woeful exaggeration. But Staples at 86 still has the authoritative edge, tonal quality, and lyrical flair that’s always marked her performances. It seems hard to believe she’s been singing since childhood, and listening to the 10 tracks on her newest release, Sad And Beautiful World (released November 7 by Anti), you hear the confident, jubilant sound of a vocal titan.

That Staples can cover with equal distinction and flair songs penned by Tom Waits, Curtis Mayfield, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Leonard Cohen, and Frank Ocean reaffirms her versatility. Producer Brad Cook smartly lets her voice dominate through each setting, regardless of instrumental backdrops, tempo or lyrical setting. Her spoken word narrative adds additional punch to the cover of Ocean’s “Godspeed” and underscores its recurring themes of urgency and redemption that fuel the album’s sensibility.

But the album also contains prominent message tracks, most notably “We Got To Have Peace,” a number whose tone and lyrics couldn’t be more timely in an era where it seems lunacy often runs supreme. “Anthem” and “Satisfied Mind” are just as powerful and energetic in their declarations of the importance of persistence, kindness, and goodwill. “Everybody Needs Love” provides the perfect finale, with Staples superbly punctuating its theme and completing a 38-minute epic work. Indeed, songwriter Kevin Morby has offered perhaps the best tribute to Staples’ brilliance possible, when he gave a press statement about what it meant to have her doing his song “Beautiful Strangers,” which is another memorable and passionate number.

“It isn’t easy to put into words what it feels like having one of the best, most important vocalists and cultural figures of both the 20th and 21st century sing one of my songs,” Morby said. “But hearing Mavis sing ‘Beautiful Strangers’ is hands down the greatest moment and highest honor of my career. Far beyond any kind of accolade or acclaim – having one of my biggest heroes sing something I wrote is the most validating and flattering thing that could ever happen to me as a songwriter and person. Thank you, Mavis.”

Staples has been awesome for so long, sometimes it’s easy to forget how many different periods and genres her artistry covers. The original family unit the Staple Singers were gospel and folk song giants. The unit included her sisters Cleotha and Yvonne, plus her brother Pervis, her father Pops, whose roots reached back to the seminal days of Delta blues, and Charlie Patton, who served as anchor, both vocally and on guitar. The Staple Singers began singing in Chicago churches in the late ’40s, became recording artists in the early ’50s, and earned their first hit with “Uncloudy Day” in 1952, recorded for the Black-owned label Vee-Jay. By the ’60s they were a cornerstone unit of the Civil Rights Movement, often accompanying Dr. Martin Luther King at rallies.

Mavis began really getting noticed as a solo performer during their transition in the late ’60s and early ’70s to a soul and pop unit. The decision to sign with Stax Records and the shift to secular music was one Pops often acknowledged as a controversial one, but it ultimately paid off as the group’s status elevated into crossover stars. They had eight Top hits in the early and mid-’70s; “I’ll Take You There” and “Let’s Do It Again” were chart toppers and “Who Took The Merry Out of Christmas” reached number two. Mavis also cut her first solo single in the late ’60s, then a full self-titled release for Stax in 1969. Their songs were expertly produced, featuring the crisp and outstanding backing of Booker T. & the MGs. Other essential hits included “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself.”

Slowly but surely, Mavis began to establish herself outside the Staples family trademark. Her soundtrack LP, A Piece of the Action on Curtis Mayfield’s label, helped her reach some new audiences, as did another self-titled mid-‘80s LP. But it was a pair of releases produced by Prince in the ’90s that really helped her reach the next generation of listeners. The second by the duo, The Voice, was another masterpiece. It included her magical version of Prince’s “Positivity,” as well as a cover of “Melody Cool” from the film Graffiti Bridge. Staples returned to the church in 1996 for a marvelous release, Spirituals & Gospels: Dedicated to Mahalia Jackson, that personified the close friendship that Jackson had with the entire Staples family and her influence on Mavis, personally and professionally.

Over the course of the 21st century, Mavis Staples has unquestionably become an iconic figure. The roster of artists with whom she’s worked over the course of her remarkable career is an astonishing one, both in terms of talent and musical approach. She’s recorded with jazz guitarist John Scofield, Los Lobos, Bob Dylan, Johnny Paycheck, Natalie Merchant, George Jones, Delbert McClinton, Aretha Franklin, Nona Hendryx, and Ann Peebles, to cite only a handful. Staples has also continued making emphatic message albums, among them the 2017 dynamo If All I Was Was Black. Her voice has been sampled by rappers and hip-hop and pop artists like Salt ‘N’ Pepa, Ice Cube, Ludacris, and Hozier.

Mavis also been featured in a host of television shows and films, among them The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show With David Letterman, Conan, and “CBS Saturday Morning: Saturday Sessions,” and she was the featured performer on the very first episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Her film resume includes appearances in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz and Antoine Fuqua’s documentary Lightning in a Bottle, about the Salute to the Blues concert at Radio City Music Hall in February 2003.

Mavis!, the first feature documentary about Staples and the Staple Singers, was directed by Jessica Edwards and had its world premiere at SXSW in March 2015. It was later screened in theaters and was broadcast on HBO in February 2016, eventually winning a Peabody Award. Her appearance with Mahalia Jackson at the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival is among the many highlights in the award-winning documentary Summer of Soul, which was released in 2021. Staples has even been portrayed on film, played by Laura Kariuki in the 2024 hit film, A Complete Unknown.

Staples has rightly won numerous awards. The array includes three GRAMMYs and a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award, induction into the Rock and Roll, Gospel Music, and Blues Halls of Fame, and having been a Kennedy Center Honoree. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame honored her a second time in 2019 with the inaugural Rock Hall Honors Award for her solo work. Rolling Stone named her 56th among the “100 Greatest Singers of all Time” in 2008, though there was already no question about her inclusion in that select company.

Amazingly, there doesn’t seem to be any slowing down for Mavis Staples. She celebrated her 80th birthday at the Apollo Theater in 2019, returning to the famed venue where she first appeared as a teenager 63 years before that date. She did a series of collaborative birthday concerts that year with special guests that included David Byrne and Norah Jones. She also collaborated with Run the Jewels on the track “Pulling the Pin” from their studio album RTJ4. In 2022, Staples released Carry Me Home, a collaborative effort with the late Levon Helm that they recorded together at Helm’s Midnight Ramble in 2011.

She’s already announced upcoming tour dates for 2026 at three famous sites: Chicago’s Chicago Theatre, Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, and New York’s Beacon Theatre. Mavis Staples also remains a voice for social justice. Way back in 2010, she performed at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear alongside singer Jeff Tweedy. In 2011, she was joined onstage at the Outside Lands Music And Arts Festival by Arcade Fire singer Win Butler. The two performed a version of “The Weight” by The Band. Shortly after the release of her 2016 LP Livin’ On A High Note, produced by M. Ward with songs written for her by Nick Cave, Justin Vernon, Neko Case, and others, Staples issued these prophetic words:

I’ve been singing my freedom songs and I wanted to stretch out and sing some songs that were new. I told the writers I was looking for some joyful songs. I want to leave something to lift people up; I’m so busy making people cry, not from sadness, but I’m always telling a part of history that brought us down and I’m trying to bring us back up.

These songwriters gave me a challenge. They gave me that feeling of, “Hey, I can hang! I can still do this!” There’s a variety, and it makes me feel refreshed and brand new. Just like Benjamin Booker wrote on the opening track, “I got friends and I got love around me, I got people, the people who love me.” I’m living on a high note, I’m above the clouds. I’m just so grateful. I must be the happiest old girl in the world. Yes, indeed.

Anyone paying attention to the songs on Sad And Beautiful World knows that’s still the case with Mavis Staples’ music.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth De La Piedra

Briscoe Hit The Road and Wrote a Country Album

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Through the windshield of their Ford Transit van, the duo Briscoe drew songwriting inspiration from the Southwestern landscape during a long, meandering road trip after graduating from the University of Texas. However, this trek was more than just a rite of passage, as band members Philip Lupton and Truett Heintzelman were launching their first national tour. In those seemingly endless miles between show dates, they would trade lyrical ideas to flesh out once they got back home to Austin.

Described by the band as “Texas folk-rock,” those cinematic songs have now surfaced on Briscoe’s second album, Heat of July. Produced by Brad Cook and released by ATO Records, the collection is a generally optimistic highway companion set against the backdrop of sunsets somewhere south of Alpine, Texas, long drives to Denver, and Mexican eagles circling overhead.

During a brief break from the road, Briscoe spoke with Good Country about how banjo fits into their sound, discovering bluegrass through YouTube videos, and the John Prine classic that set it all in motion.

I found it interesting that you were writing this album as you were driving around the country. You’re going 80 miles an hour as these songs are coming to you. Can you set the scene of what that looked like?

Philip Lupton: Yeah, that’s a great question. A lot of this record was written on the road just because we were touring hard on our debut album, West of It All. You’re in the van for so many hours a day that you eventually get tired of listening to music, no matter how much you like music. You just need some silence. I think that’s when Truett and I can find a little bit of inspiration. Like, “OK, cut the music.”

“Arizona Shining,” the second song on the record, is very much written as I’m taking in the landscape through the window. You just start to mumble a few things under your breath. And then you hold up your phone and take a little voice memo. You get back home in a couple weeks, you come back to that idea, and then, finally, get to put it to a progression and bring it to life.

When you’re out on tour, coming out of your hotel, and you see that van hooked up to a trailer, does it ever strike you, like, “We’re really out here making this happen”?

PL: Yeah, absolutely it does! There’s this old Hayes Carll song called “I Got a Gig.” I listen to that song and I’m like, “OK, we’re doing it. We’re road dogging it.” We’re staying at the cheap hotels and playing gigs for cash at the door and whatever. We’ve seen a lot of growth and success in a lot of markets, but when you’re taking it all across the country, up into Canada, there’s a lot of those same stories you can experience any time on the road.

The opening song, “Saving Grace,” seems to set a tone for the album. There’s a very positive tone in that song. Is that a fair statement, do you think?

Truett Heintzelman: Super fair, yeah. A lot of this record is written over the last year and a half to two years and one of the big components of that time for both of us is that we both got married. So that’s what we were wanting to convey. We view marriage in a positive light and, God willing, we’ll always view it in a positive light. “Saving Grace” was written about marrying our respective wives.

For me, that song was about meeting my wife and realizing early on, “OK, this feels different and I don’t want this to go away.” We just tried to write as much as we could about our lives and experiences and our time between now and the last record. And, obviously, getting married is something that takes up a lot of your brain, you naturally end up thinking about it a lot.

You’ve got a cool banjo vibe on “Saving Grace” and a couple other songs on the album, too. Philip, what pulled you into the sound of the banjo?

PL: It goes back to learning guitar when I was middle school-age. I just had a desire to learn an instrument that was different and would allow me to jam with my buddies. So, I bought a banjo at a secondhand music store in San Angelo, where I’m from, for like 150 bucks, and I ended up really falling in love with the Avett Brothers. Back in the day, when Truett and I were both learning to play guitar and sing, I’d play the banjo and Truett would play the guitar and we’d cover the Avett Brothers. That was how we fell in love with playing together.

The banjo always had a strong presence. When we started writing, it was almost second nature to incorporate the banjo in some way. If Truett was handling most of the rhythm guitar, I picked up the banjo in lieu of a lead guitar. We just kind of rolled with that, way back when.

You mentioned middle school. Is that around the same time you guys met?

PL: Yeah, I was a year older than Truett in school and we met at summer camp. We just hit it off and we were both learning guitar and both interested in similar music. We saw each other every year after that at camp and became really close in high school. San Angelo is a smaller town and we’d have to go to a major city for any big need, like a big hospital system. So, my family would go to San Antonio quite a bit. I’d get dropped off at Truett’s house and we’d play guitar until my family was ready to go back to San Angelo.

Do you guys remember the first time you sang together?

TH: Oh yeah, that first summer we met at camp, we met on the first day of the session, which was two weeks long. We both brought acoustic guitars, so it was like, “All right. You play, I play.” “What do you like to play?” “Oh, I like that song too.”

We started going back and forth, kind of jamming all throughout that week. At the end of that week, we played “Paradise” by John Prine at our camp talent show, which was really just for us. We joke that I don’t think anyone else in that camp auditorium had any idea what we were saying, but they were just excited that we were singing and we were too.

How did John Prine hit your radar in middle school?

TH: There’s a guy named Joshua Lee Turner who’s in a band called the Other Favorites and he has this YouTube channel, it’s like a gold mine. He’s super talented, an awesome artist, and he and his buddies cover all these incredible songs. I owe watching Joshua Lee Turner on YouTube for a good chunk of the artists and the music that I love. I consume a ton of bluegrass music and a lot of that is because of him. The song “Old Home Place” is one that I fell in love with after watching him. When Philip and I put it together that we both loved him, that served as a blueprint, too, for us to start posting videos on YouTube.

How did you come up with the name Briscoe?

PL: Briscoe was my grandfather’s middle name. I never met that granddad, but I always loved that name. It’s a name that goes back in my family on that side a few generations. It was in consideration for my name before I was born, but my grandma on the other side of the family didn’t like it. I always liked the name and I started Briscoe in San Angelo before we got to UT, just as a name to put music under. I knew someday Truett and I would be able to do it together, so I just chose Briscoe and rolled with it and then we never had any reason to consider changing it. And that was that.

You guys have seen the whole country by now, touring coast to coast. What is it about living in Texas that makes you want to settle there?

TH: I’ll just get this out of the way now – when you’re born in Texas and raised in Texas, you’re just inherently proud of that. So, from the get-go, you probably have an inflated sense of pride to be from Texas. But we’re now at this place where we’ve gotten to see everything in North America, pretty much. There are so many beautiful parts of this country, and of Canada and Mexico. In all these cities, you’re like, “Wow, this is such a great city. It would be fun to live here.” But I have never found a place where I’ve been like, “I would rather live here than where I live in Texas.” This is where our roots are.

Philip, how about you?

PL: The older I get, the more I appreciate Texas’ contribution in the music world on all different levels, and especially this Texas country/outlaw kind of thing. To name a few guys in particular, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, and Robert Earl Keen. The more we appreciate them, the more that we want to resemble what they did. No matter what level of popularity or success they achieved as musicians, they never forgot where they were from. We respect those guys a lot for that, and how they blazed their own path.

We are very proud to be part of the greater Texas subgenre of Americana, folk, and country music, and we feel like that’s where we’re always going to want to be.

Photo Credit: Justin Cook

Mavis Staples Finds a Place to Call Home in Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed”

Posted on by Editor

Mavis Staples counts herself among the legion of Frank Ocean fans and she’s just released her rendition of “Godspeed” as a sign of her admiration. Of course Staples is an iconic voice of her generation through her groundbreaking music with the Staple Singers on “I’ll Take You There,” as well as the family group’s participation in the 1960s civil rights movement alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For this heartfelt track, Staples and producer Brad Cook bring in songwriter and Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson for spoken word vocals.

“Channel Orange was my first introduction to Frank Ocean and I was just amazed at the writing and soulfulness coming from his voice,” Staples said. “And I loved Blonde when that record came out. That first line in ‘Godspeed’ of ‘I will always love you’ just crushes me every time I hear it… or sing it. It’s just such a beautiful song and he sounds amazing on it so I was a little nervous if we could pull it off. I was honored to sing his words.”

This weekend in Canada, Staples will sing at jazz festivals in Ottawa, Toronto, and Montréal before crossing back over the border for shows in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Brevard, North Carolina. After a number of American concerts in July, she’ll pause just long enough to celebrate her 86th birthday. Then she’s bound for dates in Norway, the Netherlands, and Sweden in August, with even more stops scheduled throughout the U.S. through early October.

Yes, she’ll take you there… but only if you can keep up. Check out the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member’s cover of Frank Ocean’s “Godspeed” released by ANTI- Records below.

Photo Credit: Myriam Santos

Charley Crockett, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Waxahatchee Among Americana Nominees

Posted on by Editor

The Americana Music Association has announced the nominees for its 24th annual Americana Honors & Awards. This year’s nominations were revealed by Brandi Carlile, Kashus Culpepper, S.G. Goodman, Jim Lauderdale, Kacey Musgraves and Molly Tuttle in a social media announcement.

The winners will be announced during the Americana Honors & Awards on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. The celebrated program is the hallmark event of AMERICANAFEST, which returns for its 25th year on Sept. 9-13, 2025.

A full list of categories and nominees for the Americana Music Association’s 24th annual Americana Honors & Awards is below the video player.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR:

Lonesome Drifter, Charley Crockett; Produced by Charley Crockett & Shooter Jennings

Foxes in the Snow, Jason Isbell; Produced by Jason Isbell & Gena Johnson

Manning Fireworks, MJ Lenderman; Produced by Alex Farrar & MJ Lenderman

South of Here, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats; Produced by Brad Cook

Woodland, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings; Produced by David Rawlings

ARTIST OF THE YEAR:

Charley Crockett

Sierra Ferrell

Joy Oladokun

Billy Strings

Waxahatchee

DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR:

Julien Baker & TORRES

Dawes

Larkin Poe

The Mavericks

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

EMERGING ACT OF THE YEAR:

Noeline Hofmann

MJ Lenderman

Medium Build

Maggie Rose

Jesse Welles

INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR:

Fred Eltringham

Alex Hargreaves

Megan Jane

Kaitlyn Raitz

Seth Taylor

SONG OF THE YEAR:

“Johnny Moonshine,” Maggie Antone; Written by Maggie Antone, Natalie Hemby & Aaron Raitiere

“Ancient Light,” I’m With Her; Written by Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan & Sara Watkins

“Wristwatch,” MJ Lenderman; Written by MJ Lenderman

“Sunshine Getaway,” JD McPherson; Written by Page Burkum, JD McPherson & Jack Torrey

“Heartless,” Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats; Written by Nathaniel Rateliff

Photo Credits: Charley Crockett courtesy of the artist; Gillian Welch & David Rawlings by Alysse Gafkjen; Waxahatchee by Molly Matalon

A Sadness and a Sweetness: Hiss Golden Messenger in Conversation with the Weather Station

Posted on by Editor

North Carolina figures prominently into the music that Tamara Lindeman and M.C. Taylor make as the Weather Station and Hiss Golden Messenger, respectively. Its musical traditions as well as its current scene have shaped their songs …

Taylor moved to North Carolina about 10 years ago, following the demise of his band, the Court & Spark. Music became more than a hobby but less than a full-time job, and he wasn’t necessarily thinking about a career in the industry when he started making music with a few friends as Hiss Golden Messenger. But then he made an album whose failure ensured his success.

“I made an album called Poor Moon at the request of a small record label in London, and they didn’t like it!” Taylor says with a laugh. “That was a blow to my ego, and I thought, ‘What am I gonna do now?’” Full of lively country-folk songs with imaginative arrangements and hard insights on the nature of faith, the album was finally released by a North Carolina indie label called Paradise of Bachelors. “When Poor Moon came out, it was a surprise to a lot people that I even lived in North Carolina. I had lived there for a couple of years, but nobody really knew who I was.”

The record left a big impression on Lindeman, whose own music career was just getting started. “I was invited down to Raleigh to play the Hopscotch Festival around that time,” she says. “I was shocked to be invited. It was the first time anyone had asked me to play a show outside Canada. I was only there for a couple of days, but basically all anyone talked about was Poor Moon. I went to a radio station to do an interview, and they were playing that record. I went somewhere else, and it was playing there, too. It was the talk of the town.”

Lindeman had never played outside of Canada before. “I played a show with Hiss Golden Messenger and the Mountain Goats, and that’s when I met all these musicians. They were like, ‘Come down and make a record with us!’ They were very convincing.” While in town, she recorded songs for an EP with Taylor and other regional musicians. Eventually, she. likewise, signed with Paradise of Bachelors.

Both found the region a warm and inviting place to make music, and both have spent the ensuing years touring and recording almost nonstop. As the center around which Hiss Golden Messenger revolves, Taylor writes incisively and movingly about the joys of music and family, the South as its exists and the South as he imagines it. His latest, Hallelujah Anyhow, finds reasons for celebration amid the wreckage of America in the late 2010s. Similarly, Lindeman’s new album, simply titled The Weather Station, is a vivid account of a year in her life; it’s a collection of songs that burst at the seams with words and ideas. The pair remain avid fans of each other’s work.

I always hate the word “autobiographical” or even something as vague as “personal,” but these two records do feel like they’re from very fixed perspectives.

Tamara Lindeman: For sure. My record was all finished, and I was thinking a lot about what it meant to me. This record is my way of expressing an understanding that things will not be okay. It’s my way of realizing that, somehow, you figure out how to be okay when things are not okay. It was funny: When I saw your record announcement and saw that the title was Hallelujah Anyhow, I was like, “Oh man, that’s a perfect title! I wish I’d thought of that title myself for my record!” That gets at something that I was trying to express.

M.C. Taylor: Yeah, I have a handful of people in my life who were like, “Damn, that’s a good album title!” [Laughs] Let me say, I think your record is so brilliant. I am just like totally in love with it. It has a sadness and sweetness, at the same time. Anyone that can figure out how to speak sadly and sweetly at the same time is always going to have my heart. That’s a language I am so curious about, and it’s a realm that I’m trying to work in. That has almost been my entire mission with Hiss Golden Messenger — how to convey light and dark at the same time, how to encompass as much richness of emotion in three to five minutes. And your record does that so, so well. There’s a certain propulsive, almost breathless feeling to some of the songs, like you’re trying to get more emotion in than the song can quite allow, which I find really, really moving. How did you make this record? How long did it take you to make this, and what was your process with it?

TL: It was actually pretty simple, in a way, because it was the first time in a long time that I just had a plan and a vision. I came home from my first tour in Europe and I just started writing songs. They were totally different from anything I’d ever done. And I was like, “Alright. This is going to be a record, and it’s going to have this kind of bass playing, it’s going to have this kind of drums. It’s going to have strings. So we’re going to have to write string arrangements.” I just had to go through all of these studios until I found one that felt right and picked the musicians.

We recorded in Montreal at a studio called Hotel2Tango, which is a classic — all the Godspeed You Black Emperor! and the early Arcade Fire stuff was done there. It was honestly quite simple: I just went in and recorded it as a trio, and then we did overdubs and strings and mixed it and mastered it. It wasn’t really a wild scenario of recording.

MT: It’s nice when it works that way.

TL: Totally. That hadn’t happened in so long, where I just knew the vocal sound I wanted, I knew the guitar sound I wanted. It was a matter of learning to not listen to all the other voices around me. I had to tell myself, “Alright, this is what it’s gotta be.” And that’s not something that I’ve ever known how to do before, so it was a funny battle. It was like, “Great idea, but I’m not gonna listen to it.” That kind of thing. How was your record made? You seemed to make it really quickly.

MT: It was the same, pretty much. We set aside a week to do the main recording and as many of the overdubs as we could, and then we had a couple more days to add all the minute stuff we didn’t realize we were gonna want in the first week. Then we mixed it in three days and mastered it. The whole thing didn’t take more than two weeks. Fortunately, various versions of the band had played most of the songs a bunch of times. We had been on a bunch of tours and were starting to creep new songs in, because we knew we wanted to make this new record. Honestly, by the second day of that first week, all of the basic tracks were done, which I was surprised by. I think it’s a testament to the people in the band — and also a testament to Brad Cook, who produced this record with me. He had a very optimistic vision — more so than me, I would say — about how much we could accomplish. And we did it!

TL: Amazing.

MT: There’s really something huge to be said for making a record quickly, following your first thought, and living with the moments you put to tape. I’ve watched friends and peers struggle to make the “perfect record,” and they’ll take anywhere from three to five years to do it. That really has a detrimental effect, I think. I wanted a different feeling. Because you just can’t make a perfect record! That’s not even something that should even cross your mind. But the options are so unlimited now that it gives us the illusion that we can put everything in its right place.

TL: Absolutely. If you listen to any of the records that we all love, especially when you’re in mixing mode, you’re like, “Oh, man, if I was given the track, I’d bring down the backing vocals, change the drum sound.” That sort of thing. The records you love, they’re always so imperfect.

MT: Totally. What we really changed, when we went into the studio, was that we tried to really understand the sound each person was making. We knew what those sounds were at the front end of the process: I knew what guitar was going to work on which song; we knew what Darren Jessee’s drums sounded like. I think that’s why we were able to mix the record in two or three days: We didn’t do anything other than mess with levels. There are definitely some moving parts and some arrangement things that we did on the record, but all of it was meant to serve the song. So it’s transparent in that way.

That’s how I feel about your record, too. When I really started listening to arrangements on your record, I realized there’s a bunch of stuff on there — string arrangements, piano lines — but when I am just listening with my unconscious mind, it’s a super straight-ahead record. Everything the band is doing on your record is following the lead vocal melody. It’s almost like the rhythm section is chasing your voice around, which I love. Your rhythm section is so fucking good! Is that Ian Kehoe playing drums?

TL: Ian plays with me and is my favorite drummer, but because he’s my partner, I was really anxious about having to be the boss. I’d never been the boss of a band and not screwed it up. But I knew I had to be the boss. We wound up talking it through, and I told him I didn’t think I could have him be the drummer because it’s too much emotion in the room. It’s too many feelings because he’s my partner. I just needed to go in with this different way of being as a person that’s uncommon to the way I am in life. So I wound up using a fellow named Don Kerr, who is amazing. He’s in his 50s and he’s been around every block there is to go around. He’s produced records, he’s written records, he’s played on records, toured. So he wound up being a really great presence in the room with the maturity to be patient with me, when I was making a mistake or forcing us to play a song for the 30th time. That wound up being the right decision and, since then, Ian and I have gotten to a place where I think we could make a record together. We weren’t ready then.

MT: It sounds like maybe he has listened to your other records to get that sort of galloping thing that you’re very good at. It’s a very specific type of drumming.

TL: It is, yeah. We talked about this a lot, too. I did play with a few different drummers, but I realized I didn’t want modern drums. I didn’t want a modern drumming style or sound. When we were making the record, I was obsessed with this Impressions record and I kept thinking, “More tom fills!” I became obsessed with tom fills. In the ‘60s, people played tom fills constantly. If you listen to a Bob Dylan record, the drummer is literally just constantly playing fills and barely playing cymbals.

MT: No cymbals! That’s definitely a big thing with us, too. We don’t play any cymbals. There are some times when we take the cymbals out of the room entirely. Everybody that plays in Hiss is very no cymbals. It’s a thing. Too much cymbals can really destroy a record.

TL: And it’s hard to record them, too, and get them to sound good without them taking over the rest of the band. Something I was thinking about: Rhythm is so important in your music. It feels like it’s almost more rhythm over melody.

MT: I don’t know exactly where that came from. I always thought of my dad as someone that had really good time, and I was always just really fascinated with rhythmic music. When I was a kid, there was this moment when my friends had to pledge allegiance to either heavy metal or rap, both of which were kind of new at the time. “Are you into rap or into heavy metal?” It never occurred to my friend group to just be into both. All of my friends got into metal, and I was like, “You guys are crazy! Rap is clearly so much better! Metal is lame! There’s no rhythm to metal.” This is what I was thinking when I was like 10 or 11 and, if I’m being totally honest, I still sort of feel that way. It was something important to me, just that backbeat.

TL: Listening to your music, of course it would be rap and not heavy metal. The groove is there, for sure.

MT: It feels very clear to me. I’ve grown and changed and all kinds of stuff, but there’s still a clear connection to the early backbeats I heard when I was a kid. That’s still stuff I love, and that’s the foundation of my musical brain. If I hear a record, no matter how brilliant the writing or the melodic content is, if it doesn’t have a clear rhythmic identity, then it’s almost guaranteed that I’m not gonna connect with it. I always feel like a rhythm section has to have a purpose. They can’t just be in a band because bands have bass players and drummers. To my thinking, the rhythm section is the most important part of the band, so they have to carry something really integral.

TL: Right. Lots of music is very rhythmic without drums or bass. But it’s funny you like my music because, as a musician, I have terrible rhythm. It’s something that I’m working on and thinking about a lot, and I have so much respect for rhythm. My rhythm is very strange. What I hear as being straight is totally not straight. And, to me, if the song doesn’t speed up or slow down, it sounds wrong.

MT: That’s not really what I’m thinking about when I’m thinking about rhythm, though.

TL: You said purpose.

MT: Purpose, yes. There’s a confidence to the way a song steps that is rhythmic to me. And that’s why I would maybe push back on you thinking that you don’t have good rhythm, because I don’t know that we would be talking, if you didn’t have good rhythm, honestly. I’ve always thought that your records have incredible rhythm.

I’ll second that. I was listening to “Thirty” today, and it made me feel like I was seeing a magic trick. I kept wondering, “How did she do that?”

TL: Well, that song starts out at around 100 beats per minute and it ends up at 120. It speeds up so much. That was the take where we went in and weren’t really sure of the song yet, so we just played it too fast. But it felt like it had this great spirit of discovery. The other takes just didn’t have that.

I want to double back to something that was said a minute ago about sweetness and sadness. I think that contrast applies to both of these albums, but I wonder how that affects the song and how you live with it over a long period of time. Does that mean that there are still things to discover about a song, even after you’ve toured it for a few years?

MT: Definitely. I don’t think I’ve ever put a song on a record that I knew everything about. I’m only really interested in ongoing work on songs that I don’t fully understand. Part of that might be feeling like the lyrics are a little unfinished, but I can’t quite think of the exact thing. Over time, it’s that ambiguity that leads to new understandings. The relationship with a song has to be an interesting and an ongoing one, in order to sing it every night in a way that feels genuine. And I need an emotional richness to a song to be interested in singing it every night.

TL: Sometimes, if I look back, I can see that I’m always trying to out-run myself in writing, because there’s a part of me that’s a perfectionist and wants to write a perfect song. But if I wrote a perfect song, I know I would hate it. I need the mystery, like you’re saying. The songs that stick with me are the ones that I don’t fully understand, or they speak to something in my life that I don’t fully understand, so they have this mystery about them. Those are the ones that pull me in.

MT: I agree.

TL: And in further answer to your question, I was thinking yesterday about ambivalence — about how I don’t even know that it’s my worldview, but my song view tends to be ambivalent in that I like to present sadness, joy, or whatever is happening and put equal weight on everything about the situation. I’m trying to present everything equally. In my lyrics, I never really make value judgments. It’s the opposite of a protest song, where you’re presenting some ideas and you’re also presenting how to feel about them. There’s a part of me that is just so drawn to a different perspective: “Here is darkness and here is sweetness and here is everything in between, so you can make up your own mind about how you feel.”

MT: I hear what you’re saying. It’s complicated because, sometimes, I can understand your personal perspective in the way you sing the words. Maybe that’s something that you do intentionally, or maybe it’s something you don’t realize you’re doing. But with a song like “Thirty,” I feel like I have a read on the character who’s singing the song, if that character is not you. I feel like I actually do have a slight read on your position about being a woman and being older and everything that comes with that. That makes it more interesting to me, because there is this rub between you trying to present all the facts and the way that you sing it. “Complicit” is another one that works in the same way.

TL: Maybe what it is, too, is that, in presenting all the facets of something, I’m often trying to get at the truth of something that I might not know. I might not know the truth of how I feel about something, and it’s in writing the song that maybe I do come to understand it. Maybe by embracing the aspects of something that I don’t know or feel ashamed about or afraid to express, you come to a truth about it.

It’s like writing to find a question as opposed to writing to find an answer.

TL: Or not writing about how I wish felt. Writing trying to figure out what it is you feel under all the layers of what you wish you were and the way you wish the world was. Which, to me, is uplifting. When I hear your music, it’s uplifting to me because there is a darkness to it. I don’t feel uplifted by music without a bit of sand in it.

MT: As I’ve become an adult and realized that I’m gonna carry these songs with me, I’ve realized that the songs have to be durable enough that I don’t mind singing them. Maybe that’s the weird, backhanded benefit of always flying under the radar: I’ve never had a song that I had to sing. I’ve never disappointed a crowd by not singing a song, I don’t think. And I do sing these songs differently — I mean, you have to, because you change as a person.

TL: That was the lesson I learned when I was playing shows for All That Was Mine, because there was just no way to play the shows other than to play them alone. So I was trapped in my biggest fear, which was to be alone in front of an audience with an acoustic guitar. I’m not a very good guitar player, so I would only play that half-hour of material, those 10 songs, and I wouldn’t play any other songs. So I was just sort of trapped inside this box of this one record. I realized right away I only had myself and my songs to rely on. If I was in a bar and people were talking and it sucked, then I needed to find a way to connect to that feeling of annoyance and then connect to the songs in that reality. Then maybe I could find something very real every night. Those songs had enough complexity to them that I could do that, and I could find how that song was true for that day. And that was how I started to know that they were good songs, because they had enough breadth to hold up.

Photo credit: Rui Oliviera (The Weather Station)