The Show on the Road – The Tallest Man on Earth

This week, we take The Show On The Road to the countryside of Sweden for an intimate talk with Kristian Matsson, a poet-songwriter and masterful acoustic multi-instrumentalist who has released five acclaimed albums and two EPs over the last decade and a half, performing as The Tallest Man on Earth.


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Growing up in the small hamlet of Leksand, a three hour trek from Stockholm, Mattson was in rowdier indie-rock outfits like Montezumas before breaking out with his own dreamier acoustic material and gaining international notice with his breakout solo offering Shallow Grave in 2008. Tours with Bon Iver across North America gained Matsson an adoring audience in the states, where he ended up setting up shop in Brooklyn.

Most often performing solo even on the biggest stages, Matsson is known to have seven or more intricate tunings for his guitars and banjos, and with his high, cutting voice and cryptic, nature-inspired lyrics, he has been compared to some of his heroes like Roscoe Holcomb, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, but with a Swedish-naturalist touch. Songs like “Love Is All” or “The Gardener,” while gaining tens of millions of steams on folky playlists, pack quite a punch, often detailing how the cold cruelty of the animal kingdom filters into human life with its many frailties.

In 2019, Matsson found his marriage to a fellow Swedish singer-songwriter ending and he holed up in his Brooklyn apartment to write, produce, and engineer his newest Tallest Man On Earth LP, I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream. Like Springsteen’s eerie and emotional Nebraska, Matsson’s collection is a clear-eyed view of our current state of interpersonal (and even societal) isolations. Standout songs like the warm guitar and echoey harmonica opener “Hotel Bar” — though written before he knew what would happen with our current pandemic — seem to capture the lost closeness and romance of our very recent past, where one could fall in love with a new stranger every night in a new town and think nothing of it.

Sequestered in a small house in the middle of Sweden since the world shifted last year, a new Tallest Man On Earth album is sure to be on its way. Admittedly Matsson is going a bit stir-crazy away from the road, but really he’s grateful to be able to have the time to explore and create new sounds without any distractions. A fall tour of the states is in the works (fingers crossed), including an opening slot at Red Rocks joining Mandolin Orange and Bonny Light Horseman.


Photo credit: Kaitlin Scott

Artist of the Month: Valerie June

Valerie June is broadening her horizons with The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions For Dreamers, a new album arriving this month on Fantasy Records. Upon revealing the project, she stated, “For this album I wanted to see how we could bring some modern elements into that band-in-the-room approach I’ve taken with my records in the past.”

To achieve that concept, she worked with producer Jack Splash, who incorporated a spectrum of sonic textures into her familiar folk approach. They recorded in Los Angeles and Miami without losing sight of her West Tennessee roots. Indeed, Stax Records legend Carla Thomas makes a guest appearance on one of the album’s early singles, “Call Me a Fool.”

According to June, who’s now based in Brooklyn, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers marks a moment of clarity: “With this record, it finally became clear why I have this dream of making music. It’s not for earthly reasons of wanting to be awarded or to win anybody’s love — it’s because dreaming keeps me inquisitive and keeps me on that path of learning what I have to share with the world. When we allow ourselves to dream like we did when we were kids, it ignites the light that we all have within us and helps us to have a sort of magic about the way we live.”

In the weeks ahead, we’ll have an exclusive interview with this remarkable singer-songwriter, who is also our BGS Artist of the Month for March. Until then, we’re prescribing this BGS Essentials playlist of Valerie June’s music just for you.


Photo credit: Renata Raksha

Whether Your Dream Is Big or Small, Valerie June Dedicates This Song to You

Valerie June blends her roots writing and singing styles with a markedly modern production quality in her new single, “Call Me a Fool,” giving the music a fresh yet familiar feeling. The upcoming album, titled The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, was produced by June and Jack Splash, whose resume includes powerhouse names like Kendrick Lamar, Alicia Keys, and John Legend.

“With this record, it finally became clear why I have this dream of making music,” says June, who was raised in Tennessee and now lives in Brooklyn. “It’s not for earthly reasons of wanting to be awarded or to win anybody’s love — it’s because dreaming keeps me inquisitive and keeps me on that path of learning what I have to share with the world. When we allow ourselves to dream like we did when we were kids, it ignites the light that we all have within us and helps us to have a sort of magic about the way we live.”

Embracing an experimental approach, Valerie June and Jack Splash recorded the project at Los Angeles and Miami studios. She notes, “For this album I wanted to see how we could bring some modern elements into that band-in-the-room approach I’ve taken with my records in the past.” To compound that marriage between old school and new, “Call Me a Fool” features none other than the Queen of Memphis Soul, Stax legend Carla Thomas. Crisp yet warm, sleek yet comfortable, Valerie June’s new music is everything we’ve been waiting for and then some. The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers will be available on March 12 on Fantasy Records.

Upon releasing the video, she wrote on Instagram, “Have you ever been a fool for a dream? It might have been a little dream like a kiss from a lover or a big one like the dream of peace that Dr. King, John Lennon, and so many others have had for humanity. No matter how big or how small your dream may be, keep believing, and let the world call you a fool!”


Photo credit: Renata Raksha

WATCH: Taylor Ashton (Feat. Rachael Price), “Alex”

Artist: Taylor Ashton (featuring Rachael Price)
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York via Vancouver B.C.
Song: “Alex”
Album: Romanticize
Release Date: February 5, 2021
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: “Rachael and I traveled to On Deck Sound Studio in Connecticut to do a streaming show from their live room just after the new year, and before the show started broadcasting we filmed this stripped down version of ‘Alex,’ which is a song on my upcoming EP Romanticize (a companion to my album The Romantic which came out last year). The produced version is lush, with piano, electric guitar, drums, bass clarinet and synths, but I love the way this song feels just stripped down to the skeletal banjo part and the two voices. Rachael and I singing together has definitely been a hallmark of this quarantine time, since we would usually be too busy with our respective schedules to make it work. So the song ‘Alex’ and this stripped-down live video are a record of this time and this silver lining of an otherwise extremely weird year.” — Taylor Ashton


Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

LISTEN: Taylor Ashton, “Alex” (Featuring Rachael Price)

Artist: Taylor Ashton (Featuring Rachael Price)
Hometown: Vancouver, Canada & Brooklyn, New York
Song: “Alex”
Album: Romanticize EP
Release Date: February 5, 2021
Label: Signature Sounds

In Their Words: “’Alex’ is a duet between two people living in a house with a bunch of other housemates and a thriving backyard garden. They’re both named Alex and they haven’t admitted their feelings for each other yet, and I don’t know if they ever will. These characters came to me in a dream, although I recognize in them aspects of myself and people from my past, and I imagine their house as some combination of all the ones I’ve lived in or stayed at over the years. Each time I imagine them, things change: they age forwards and backwards, their gender identities shift, and their reasons for keeping their feelings secret change.

“It’s a treat to sing this with the great Rachael Price, who I happen to be married to — we are roommates in a sense, but we definitely don’t have the same name and our feelings for each other are not a secret.” — Taylor Ashton


Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

LISTEN: Sarah Dooley, “Is This Heartbreak?”

Artist: Sarah Dooley
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Song: “Is This Heartbreak?”
Album: Is This Heartbreak?
Release Date: October 23, 2020

In Their Words: “This song is kind of the thesis statement of the album. I wrote it when I was falling for someone, and terrified. I’d been burned badly fairly recently and yet there I was, making myself vulnerable again. You feel like an idiot. Like, will I ever learn? It’s about that terrifying moment where you lose control and let emotions take over. Your brain’s instinct is always to protect your heart, and attempt to prepare for the two options that every relationship presents: ‘is this love? is this heartbreak?’ But ultimately, living a full life means taking that plunge, regardless of future pain, fully knowing the devastation that may wait for you on the other side.” — Sarah Dooley


Photo credit: Carly Hoogendyk

LISTEN: Delta Spirit, “What Is There”

Artist: Delta Spirit
Hometown: NYC, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Austin, Montreal
Song: “What Is There”
Album: What Is There
Release Date: September 11, 2020
Label: New West Records

In Their Words: “’What is There’ is an acrostic poem that I wrote for the guys in the band, with each verse directed at a specific person. I wrote the song in the winter of 2018 while living in Oslo. We had just decided to give the band another go and I was feeling sentimental about the journey we had been on since 2005. We were all just kids trying to break into this business. Each of us had been burned by the major label system with other projects. Starting Delta Spirit with my best friends, traveling the world, and playing music that meant the world to us was such an improbable miracle, but then it felt inevitable. There were moments when we lost our way as brothers and as creative collaborators, but since the break, we have found new and better ways to communicate. And that feeling of inevitability is back.” — Matthew Logan Vasquez, Delta Spirit


Photo credit: Alex Kweskin

BGS 5+5: Zephaniah OHora

Artist: Zephaniah OHora
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Latest album: Listening to the Music
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Zeph

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

I must have been 5 or 6 years old the first time I saw a Zildjian cymbal. A drummer named Ed Nicholas who played in the house band on Sundays at the church I grew up in preferred that brand. I was drawn to it because it had a big Z on it. I thought he was just the coolest. He always wore a pressed shirt tucked in and a nice pair of slacks. He had that hip easygoing, cool jazz drummer presence about him, and that’s when I decided that music was it.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

One of the more recent memories on stage is when I performed at Neal Casal’s ‘There’s a Reward’ Memorial show at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y. It’s a stage that so many incredible bands and artists have performed on. Legendary shows that have gone down in history. And it’s a beautiful old theatre. So thinking about all those people who’d been on that stage and singing a tune to honor my friend Neal in front of a packed house was really something else.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song? I’ve had a few tough times.

Some songs just can’t be written down fast enough. And other songs you labor over for weeks or months. In most recent memory is the song “All American Singer” off my new record. It was to me one of the most important songs I’ve written. There’s a couple ways to interpret that tune and it was important to me that it said what I felt needed to be said. Unlike a righteous Twitter post that you often see these days, it’s a recorded song. There’s no way to delete it or alter your ideas. It’s permanent. So it was important to make sure my thoughts were coherent within the song.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I haven’t been spending a lot of time in nature. Sadly. I live in New York City so nature is scarce. However I am around an incredible amount of architectural history and beauty. There’s so much to see here, and so much you could walk right past and never pay any mind to. And then one day you finally stop to admire something you’ve passed by many times and realize there are so many stories within that building or space. I think that’s also simultaneously an analogy for life. I’m always trying to tap into some collective shared experience in my writing. I think architecture is a reflection or expression of human experiences and history so it directly shapes my work.

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

The mission I’m on is to create those moments in music live or recorded when you get chills or feel as though the narrator in the song is singing about your own life experience. It’s a lofty goal and one that’s pursued by many. That’s part of my greater goal of connecting with people and understanding my own unique experience in this life. And music is a great vehicle for that.


Photo credit: Jammi York

LISTEN: Joan Osborne, “That Was a Lie”

Artist: Joan Osborne
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Song: “That Was a Lie”
Album: Trouble and Strife
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Womanly Hips/Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “I get so enraged watching these polished, camera-ready mouthpieces for our government just straight up lying to us. And journalists seem unable use the word ‘lie’ when talking about this: their coverage is full of euphemisms like ‘falsehoods’ or ‘misstatements.’ But these are just blatant lies, and I think it’s important not to sanitize them, to call them what they are. People in power are abusing the public trust, whether it’s government officials or the insurance industry or the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and I believe we need to call them on it in no uncertain terms. To quote Bob Dylan, ‘I just want you to know I can see through your mask.'” — Joan Osborne


Photo credit: Jeff Fasano

LISTEN: Josh Ritter, “Time Is Wasting”

Artist: Josh Ritter
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Song: “Time Is Wasting”
Album: See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Label: Pytheas Recordings

In Their Words:See Here, I Have Built You a Mansion is a collection of songs and performances that I love from the previous several years. I did the artwork a while back, and the title just popped into my head. I’ve really been missing making music with my band. On record or live, it’s always an adventure.

“I wrote ‘Time Is Wasting’ for a movie. The song didn’t get used, but I ended up thinking about it again as COVID lockdown stretched away in front of us. The rest of the songs soon fell into place behind it. There is a lot of time and distance and farewell on these recordings.” — Josh Ritter


Photo credit: David McClister