Tag: Clare Reynolds

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Amythyst Kiah, Jordie Lane, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The last Friday of July came up fast, didn’t it? To close out the month, we’ve got another excellent round up of bluegrass, country, and Americana premieres that you won’t want to miss.

In the bluegrass department, we’ve got a brand new track from bluegrass hitmaker Ashby Frank featuring his labelmate Jaelee Roberts, Dallas Moore gives an intimate solo performance of “Up On That Mountain,” and we close our DelFest Sessions series with IBMA Award nominees Sister Sadie.

Coming from Americana and country camps, don’t miss a hilarious video from Jordie Lane paying homage to an East Nashville favorite, Nashville Biscuit House, Cole Gallagher shares a track that dropped earlier this week entitled “Traveling Man’s Blues,” and Mike Montrey Band serve up a quintessentially country love song, “Holdin’ on to Nothin’.”

Plus, Amythyst Kiah has just announced her upcoming Butch Walker-produced album, Still + Bright, with a lead single that features S.G. Goodman entitled, “Play God and Destroy the World.”

It’s all right here on BGS and you know what we think – You Gotta Hear This!

Ashby Frank, “God Gave Me Horses”

Artist: Ashby Frank
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “God Gave Me Horses”
Release Date: July 26, 2024
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘God Gave Me Horses’ was co-written by one of my favorite Nashville songwriters, the great Connie Harrington, along with Leigh Nash, who is well-known for her solo recording career as well as being the lead singer for the band Sixpence None The Richer. A mutual friend of mine and Leigh’s played me her original cut of this song when she released it and I was blown away by the lyrics and instantly knew I wanted to record it with a rootsy bluegrass treatment. There are a lot of classic ‘prison songs’ that are considered bluegrass standards that talk about despair, hopelessness, and regret, but this composition has a more contemporary and positive message that I think will resonate with listeners of every generation. I’m so pleased with how this track turned out, and especially grateful for my great friend and Mountain Home Music labelmate Jaelee Roberts for lending her voice to this track. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it.” – Ashby Frank

Track Credits:
Ashby Frank – Mandolin, vocals
Seth Taylor – Acoustic guitar
Travis Anderson – Bass
Matt Menefee – Banjo
Jaelee Roberts – Harmony vocals

Cole Gallagher, “Traveling Man’s Blues”

Artist: Cole Gallagher
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Traveling Man’s Blues”
Release Date: July 25, 2024
Label: Raggy & Balls

In Their Words: “In order to really understand what ‘Traveling Man’s Blues’ is about, you’ve got to understand that I spent almost two years on the road with my father a few years back. Earlier this year, I moved from LA to Nashville, so when I got back out on the road to shoot a video for this song, I had nothing but nostalgia shooting through every frame of this video. I wasn’t much older at the time than I was driving across with my dad. But it was enough time to have forgotten how beautiful the sun looks setting in Arizona or an amazing bright blue sky over the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, Texas. I felt like I was both discovering and re-discovering myself at the same time.” – Cole Gallagher

Track Credits:
Barry Billings – Guitar
Chad Gamble – Drums
Cole Gallagher – Guitar, vocals
Jimbo Hart – Bass
Jon Eldridge – Keys
Sadler Vaden – Guitar

Video Credits: Shot by Cole Gallagher.
Produced by Cole Gallagher.
Edited by Abe Barrington.

Amythyst Kiah, “Play God and Destroy the World” (Featuring S.G. Goodman)

Artist: Amythyst Kiah
Hometown: East Brainerd, Tennessee
Song: “Play God and Destroy the World” (Featuring S.G. Goodman)
Album: Still + Bright
Release Date: July 26, 2024 (single); October 25, 2024 (album)
Label: Rounder Records

In Their Words: “This song is about coming of age as a misfit in suburbia. At home, I was encouraged to be curious to and express myself, and pursue whatever interests I wanted to regardless of gender, race, sexuality, or beliefs. However, I was not always met with this same attitude out in the community I lived in and it was frustrating to feel like I couldn’t really be myself. Being a naive kid, I would sometimes fantasize about being all-powerful and changing things the way I saw fit, but it is not up to me, or anyone, to tell everyone else how to live their life. We are all from this green and blue dot in space and will return to it all the same. There’s enough suffering in life as it is, why make it worse by policing each other’s way of life?” – Amythyst Kiah

Track Credits: Written by Amythyst Kiah, Sadler Vaden.
Produced by Butch Walker.
Amythyst Kiah –  Vocals, background vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar
S.G. Goodman – Vocals, background vocals
Butch Walker – Bass guitar
Ellen Angelico – Electric guitar, baritone guitar, mandolin
Matty Alger – Drums, percussion

Jordie Lane, “Biscuit House”

Artist: Jordie Lane
Hometown: Thornbury, Australia (Based in Nashville, Tennessee)
Song: “Biscuit House”
Album: Tropical Depression
Release Date: July 25, 2024 (single); August 16, 2024 (album)
Label: Blood Thinner Records, under exclusive license to ABC Music/The Orchard

In Their Words: “As with so many of my songs, I started out writing ‘Biscuit House’ with co-writer Clare ‘Lollies’ Reynolds about something external… somebody else. It’s a way to trick yourself into feeling less vulnerable. And it’s a way to observe the character in a more realistic and less biased way. But long story short, ‘Biscuit House’ is about imposter syndrome. Something so many people feel at some point in their lives, but especially creatives in the arts. And so the idea to dress up as this weatherman character, Tom Willing, to play in the video felt very fitting to explore being an imposter in a literal sense and get completely ridiculous and over the top.” – Jordie Lane

Track Credits:
Jon Radford –Drums, percussion
Jon Estes – Bass, pedal steel, keys
Jeremy Fetzer – Electric guitar
Clare ‘Lollies’ Reynolds – Backing vocals
Jordie Lane – Acoustic, tenor, piano, vocals

Video Credits: Directed by Mackenzie Brassfield & Jordie Lane.
Camera, editing & color by Mackenzie Brassfield.
Assistant Director of Photography, Mikey Haydon.

Mike Montrey Band, “Holdin’ on to Nothin'”

Artist: Mike Montrey Band
Hometown: Spotswood, New Jersey
Song: “Holdin’ on to Nothin'”
Album: Love, Time & Mortality
Release Date: August 2, 2024

In Their Words:“‘Holdin’ on to Nothin’ is about the process of love. It seems, more often than not, the story of love in songs is about the beautiful beginning, the tragic end, or the celebration of sustained love. However, it is often what we choose to hold on to or let go of in the most critical moments of a relationship that allows us to move forward or move on. Sometimes we just hold on to hope and sometimes we’re holdin’ on to nothin’.” – Mike Montrey

Dallas Moore, “Up On That Mountain”

Artist: Dallas Moore
Hometown: San Antonio, Texas
Song: “Up On That Mountain”
Album: Gems & Jams
Release Date: August 9, 2024
Label: Sol Records

In Their Words: “I’ve always loved bluegrass and really cut my teeth and learned guitar sitting in on countless bluegrass jam sessions back in Kentucky and southern Ohio when I was kid first starting out. My mama Madgelee played mountain dulcimer and she turned me on to a lot of bluegrass, Appalachian, and gospel music. Jimmy Martin, The Carter Family, John Hartford, The Osborne Brothers, and Flatt & Scruggs were some of my favorites to jam on and definitely influenced my style of playing and songwriting.

“‘Up On That Mountain’ is a song that I had written several years ago and that I have always called ‘a little bit of heathen preachin’.’ I even had a version of it that was recorded live in the Bullitt county jail but it’s been out of print for a while now. This song has been a staple of my live shows for many years and I’m always excited and proud that my 7 year-old daughter Victory Lee Moore joins us on stage for this one. I had a lot of fun with this solo acoustic arrangement and it felt like a perfect fit for the closing of this Gems & Jams album. Wherever I am this song always takes me back home.” – Dallas Moore

Track Credits:
Dallas Moore – Vocals, guitar
Brian DeBruler – Producer, engineer

DelFest Sessions: Sister Sadie

We are so excited to unveil the final installment of our DelFest Sessions, featuring Grammy-nominated bluegrass supergroup Sister Sadie. Over the course of the Memorial Day festival in Cumberland, Maryland, BGS contributors and videographers I Know We Should shot a half dozen superlative live performances on the gorgeous banks of the Potomac River. From festival hosts the Travelin’ McCourys, Big Richard, and Wood Belly to East Nash Grass, Mountain Grass Unit, and now the Sadies, each edition of our DelFest Sessions has been an audio swatch of the incredible national string band scene we all adore.

With a raucous “WOO!” shouted to the festival-goers floating by in their inner tubes and kayaks on the river, Sister Sadie stepped up to the mics to deliver two gentle, burning, emotive tracks pulled from their critically-acclaimed album, No Fear, which was released earlier this year. The first, “Blue As My Broken Heart,” was written by Dani Flowers – who sings lead on the number – with co-writers Victoria Banks and Rachel Proctor. Evocative imagery and detailed text painting here feel more than appropriate for the setting, in the verdant foothills of Appalachia on the cusp of spring and summer. You can almost feel the blue sky above and you can certainly grasp, immediately, why this group is up for eight IBMA Awards this year – including Entertainer of the Year and Vocal Group of the Year…

Watch the full session here.

Photo Credit: Amythyst Kiah by Kevin & King; Jordie Lane as “Tom Willing” by Mackenzie Brassfield.

Four Women Producers and Engineers On Studio Challenges and Successes

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Over the past couple of decades, the music industry has seen more women rising to become leaders in audio engineering and producing. However, even as access, acceptance, and opportunity continue to improve, women are still painfully underrepresented in these career paths, making up just five percent of engineers and producers worldwide. Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to a handful of these remarkable women, in person at coffee shops, over the phone, and via email, about how they built their careers and the challenges they have faced in a male-dominated industry. These women are trailblazers, often without career models to follow, often the only woman in the room when they work. Their tenacity, talent, and dedication are evident, and I feel honored to share their stories.

As a musician who came up in the the bluegrass scene, the first female producer I ever knew of or worked with – and now that I think of it, the only female producer I’ve worked with who was not hired by me – is the legendary Alison Brown, virtuosic banjo player and co-owner of Compass Records. Since Brown has seen a lot of generational change over her tenure in Nashville, I thought I should start by getting her perspective.

Brown had already solidified her reputation as an instrumentalist, winning IBMA’s Banjo Player of the Year award in 1991 and touring with Alison Krauss, when she decided to start a record label along with her husband, Garry West. “We were talking about how to have a sustainable life in music,” she said, “And it was one of those napkin drawing in a coffee shop moments.”

The two were on tour in Sweden with Michelle Shocked, for whom Brown was the bandleader. “When I look back, I can see how a lot of the opportunities I had were carved out for me by other women. I was about to go to law school when Shocked asked me to be her bandleader and then we went on a world tour. At Compass, I never thought of myself as a producer, Garry was more interested in that role. But when Dale Ann Bradley was going to make an album she asked me to produce it, so I said yes, and that’s how I started producing.”

Since then, Brown has produced seven Grammy-nominated records, as well as winning a Grammy for her own song, “Leaving Cottondale,” off of her 2000 record, Fair Weather.

When asked about her production style, Brown interestingly observes that she may come at it from a traditionally female perspective, by observing and predicting other people’s feelings and needs. “Especially in the studio, you need to make people feel at ease…” she explains. “Ultimately your job is to draw the best out of the musicians. Everyone has that thing they’re afraid of having to do under the microscope, but the goal is to make the musician feel comfortable enough to reach out and hit something new.”

“Sometimes with the older guard guys, I’ll say, ‘OK, lets try to play through the chart’ and they will act like they don’t understand me. ‘What did she say? What does she want to do?’ … Like they want someone to translate it for them, because it’s coming from a woman. It’s annoying, but I know they’re acting that way because they are nervous and they don’t want to look stupid. So when I’m producing, I try to intuit those things about people, and stay focused on the end goal of making a great record.”

Engineer and producer Shani Gandhi has been in Nashville since 2011, and has been been nominated for two Grammys, winning Best Engineered Album (Non-Classical) for her work on Sierra Hull’s 2020 album, 25 Trips, which she engineered, mixed, and co-produced with Hull. Originally from Singapore, Gandhi was raised in Perth, Australia. She moved to the U.S. in 2007 to attend Ithaca College, where she received a BA in music with a concentration in sound recording technology.

Gandhi was drawn to engineering and production because of her love of music and her simultaneous dislike for performing. “As a kid, I didn’t even know that that side of music existed as a career, but once I found the Audio Engineering Society, I immersed myself in it, I was obsessed.”

Gandhi told me about her philosophy for building a community you can learn from and create with. “It’s really important to have a strong community of both mentors and peers,” she explains. “I had people that I was looking up to that were holding me to a very high standard, and then I had friends and colleagues where we were all working really hard and trading favors, and that’s how I built my freelance career. So you need really good people at all levels to make it work. You don’t want to feel like the smallest person in the room all the time, but you also need someone around to tell you, ‘I know you think what you’re doing is really cool, but it’s really not,’” she laughs.

Although she works on every stage of recording and producing, Gandhi’s great love is for mixing. “My approach is to always remember that it’s not my record, it’s the artist’s art when it comes down to it and they’re the ones who have to live with it for the rest of their lives. I do like things to be lush and tall and wide and pristine. I don’t go immediately to that tape or garage sort of sound, but I can do it. If that’s what the artists wants, that’s what the artists gets.”

Also hailing from Australia, producer and engineer Clare Reynolds – AKA Lollies – came to Nashville via LA, where she was signed as a songwriter for hip-hop producer Timbaland’s company. She essentially taught herself production and engineering on the job. “I was in a lot of big studios with big producers over those three years. It was really intense, I was almost always feeling out of my element, but I learned a lot. I would be writing the song, but also watching the others work, asking questions like, ‘Why are you using that mic?’ ‘How are you getting that sound?’ And trying to absorb everything they were doing.”

In Los Angeles, Reynolds tells me, she learned how to enter a room like a man: “I was with so many different, very big personalities that were at the top of their game and their egos were massive. They were just hyped … and if you want to be respected, you can’t go in tentative, you can’t code yourself as female. You have to act how they act, which is to say, you can’t care if other people like you. I would have this attitude like, ‘We don’t need to be friends, but we’re gonna write the best song ever.’”


Reynolds says that she will always love writing songs, but at least for now, production and engineering have taken a hold on her. “I will be forever learning,” she says, “But I do think that my experience with writing helps me approach the audio side from a very musical and song-based perspective.”

Engineer and producer Diana Walsh echoed Reynold’s sentiment about the typical energy in a recording studio. “With women being so critically underrepresented in these technical roles, it can sometimes take a minute for the gender biases in the room to dissipate,” she told me. “My focus is always on doing great work, and treating everyone in the room with the same respect I expect in return.”

Growing up in Houston, Texas, Walsh played guitar, but was always more interested in how she could record her guitar than how she could perform with it. Her mom bought her very first Shure SM57 microphone, which still gets used today in her sessions.

Walsh recorded her own music at home before heading to Belmont University to study music business, with an emphasis on production. While in school she started freelance recording for friends and classmates and after graduating, she began working at the historic RCA Studio B, where she is now the Studio Manager, as well as maintaining a busy freelance engineering schedule.

 

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Her engineering and production credits include Matchbox 20, Amanda Shires, JD McPherson, and Sister Sadie. Walsh believes that representation is key for getting more women into the studio: “Working at RCA B, I have the opportunity to talk to a lot of school groups. After our sessions, I often speak with the students and ask about their goals for their future in music. Through these conversations, I’ve been thrilled to hear that more and more young women are taking an interest in engineering/producing.”

Throughout my conversations with each of these women, one point they all emphasized was the importance of staying focused on making great work in the face of difficult environments. “Nobody can argue with good work,” they each told me in their own way. And as we continue to see beautiful records being made by women, I have to agree.

Photo Credit: Alison Brown by Russ Harrington; Shani Gandhi by Joshua Black Wilkins.

Rachel Baiman On the Importance of Women in Studio Control Rooms

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: BGS contributor, picker, and singer-songwriter Rachel Baiman brings us into the production process for her new album, Common Nation of Sorrow — her first recording on which she’s credited as sole producer — for this op-ed feature.)

Take a look at the credits for your favorite records by artists of any gender, and you may notice that there are very few women listed. Maybe there’s a female singer, photographer, or graphic designer – possibly a violinist in a string section, but it probably stops there.  

While great strides have been made in the last decade with more women on festival bills, in radio programming, and even as instrumentalists in live bands, when you look behind the scenes, you rarely see women involved in making records, unless they are the featured artist or part of the featured band. That’s because the studio is invisible to the audience. 

Societal pressure is driving folks to do better when they are working in public lineups, but in recording studios, there’s nobody watching, and no face on the sounds that come out of the box. The audience sees a diverse band playing a live show, yet none of those musicians are featured on the record.

For example, I was thrilled to see Sarah Jones absolutely slaying the drums for Harry Styles live, but when I looked at the record credits, they had a male drummer listed. Why? It’s as if the industry is saying “We love to have you on stage, but when it comes to the real work, let the men get down to business.”

To Harry’s credit, there are a couple of female instrumentalists (violin and keys, and a conga player) and assistant engineers (“Move that microphone for me please!”) featured on his albums (which is huge progress, believe it or not), but I would have loved to see Jones included as a true backbone of the sound, especially when she’s such a fundamental part of the live show, and clearly more than capable. That kind of record credit is a career maker – not that Jones needs it, she’s doing great anyway – but why couldn’t she have that?

I’ve had a dream for a few years now of being a producer. Over the last decade of working in the studio in various roles, I’ve fallen in love with the production process: Starting with the songs, honing and editing until you’re left with only the meat, selecting the perfect musical voices to bring the song to life, and working with amazing engineers to get the sonic pallet perfect. I can’t get enough of it, and I want to do more.

According to a 2018 study by the University of Southern California, and reported on by GRAMMY.com, only 2% of music producers and 3% of engineers/mixers in popular music are women. These are roles that require real trust, as they are roles of power. There’s no turning down, editing, tuning, or washing out a producer or lead engineer. The project is in their hands.

Typically, male artists (as opposed to engineers, another role that leads to producing jobs) are asked to be producers when other musicians like the records that they’ve made or been a part of. It’s a role of mentorship and guidance, as well as artistic influence.  I started to realize, though, that because I am a woman, nobody was going to naturally think of me for that role, even if they liked my music. People fit people into the molds that we’ve been shown, and people trust people who others trust. Everyone wants to make the right decisions, and it’s hard to be the first one to believe in somebody – I know this trap because I’m guilty of it myself! If I wanted to be thought of as a potential producer, I was going to have to build my own platform and show people that I could do it. 

When it came time to make Common Nation of Sorrow, I saw it as an opportunity to take a bet on myself. Although it’s terrifying to produce one’s own music (you have to be both the speaker and the listener at the same time), I knew that if I could produce something great under my own name, perhaps others would start to see me in that role outside of my own music. After all, if you can’t trust yourself with your own work, how can you ask others to trust you with theirs? 

With the support of my awesome label, Signature Sounds, I was able to record this project exactly the way I wanted to. I had a variety of musicians in mind for the rhythm section, both male and female. I hypothesized that when considering the sessions, I needed to make sure that there was a feeling of social balance in the room, for my own sake as well as for my fellow musicians’ sake. Something that was interesting to me about this theory is the stark difference between “including” women on a project because you feel that you should, and believing that empowering women and asking for their contributions will actually result in the best art.  

When I get called for sessions to play fiddle or banjo, I am usually the only woman in the room. I walk in feeling like I have to be better than good in order to counteract the assumption that I will be sub-par, that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I won’t know how to read a chart, that I can’t solo, that I won’t know anything about sound or gear. Working from a position of insecurity, or “trying to prove something,” is a terrible way to make music. I might overplay, or underplay, or try to play the way I think men want me to play, not in my own voice. I might be trying to tamp down rage at a comment that somebody has just made about their wife being retired from music because, “She’s a mom now.”  

Contrastingly, when you’re suddenly the producer, the only one you have to impress is yourself. Everyone in the room has been hired by you, and therefore, it’s in their best interest to support your vision. Nobody has incentive to diminish your work. Suddenly, I’m able to work from a place of confidence and artistic integrity. In a position of power, it’s not as likely that I’ll overplay, or change my sound based on others, or second guess my abilities. I’ve taken the bet, and now I have to come through for myself. That’s the difference between token inclusion and empowerment. You’re going to be able to hear it in the album made this way, too. 

Recently, I was asked by a male musician who I love and admire to produce his next record. It was completely unexpected, and it took a minute for me to realize that my bet on myself was actually paying off. I’m starting to believe now that this could be a real career path for me. I think most people want to believe in, and support each other, but we, as women, have to have the courage to take those first steps and put ourselves out there for consideration. From my standpoint, it can work. 

I’m thrilled to see so many incredible women working as producers and engineers these days in Nashville. Mary Bragg, Rachael Moore, Clare Reynolds, Shani Ghandi, and of course Alison Brown at Compass Records, who has been leading the charge for years. I look forward to one day having the opportunity to work in a studio environment inhabited by only women, completely by chance. The more we can show each other what’s possible, the more likely that will become. 

(Editor’s Note: Rachel Baiman’s latest album, Common Nation of Sorrow, is available now wherever you stream or purchase music.)

Photo Credit: Natia Cinco

WATCH: Jordie Lane, “The Winner” (Feat. Clare Reynolds)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jordie Lane feat. Clare Reynolds
Hometown: Melbourne, Australia (Based in Nashville, Tennessee)
Song: “The Winner” – Live from Cobargo Folk Festival, NSW
Album: Lost EP
EP Release Date: June 7, 2019
Label: Blood Thinner Records / Tone Tree Music

In Their Words: “I started writing this song feeling sorry for myself, eating tacos and drinkin’ beers in a motel room in Joshua Tree, California. But when Clare Reynolds turned it into a duet with me, the whole thing took on a new perspective. It became less about self-pity and more about how to feel alive, and how to love. We were lucky enough to play recently in this rural town of 700 people, at the Cobargo Folk Festival in New South Wales, Australia, just a 12,500km stone’s throw southwest of California. And the good people at Yuin Folk Club & Pegleg Productions captured this live video in the local hall as the first of a series they are doing called the Cobargo Sessions.” — Jordie Lane

Photo credit: Tajette O’Halloran