Recording artist Brei Carter is currently enjoying the best of both worlds for any performer. She’s found her niche artistically and is thriving in it, excelling in a hybrid sound she calls “country soul,” one that nicely blends each genre’s special characteristics: soul’s emotional fury and country’s narrative focus. Louisiana born, she relocated to Nashville in 2019 is now working on an upcoming LP that she promises will really show listeners how much these two genres can be combined into her own distinctive style.
“I’ve always kind of gravitated towards all kinds of music, but vocally I’ve found that soul and country are the styles that work best,” Carter said during a recent interview. “For me, it’s no stretch to say that I love soul and I love traditional country. Those are the styles and songs that I grew up listening to and those are the ones that really are suited for the types of things that I want to sing.”
Considering the long history of performers who’ve taken soul tunes and made them into country hits or vice versa, Carter’s certainly in good company.
But, she’s also enjoying commercial success in a different vein. Her single, “Boots Get To Talking,” has quickly become a line dance staple. An energetic, engaging number that’s also a collaboration with the person she calls “my mentor and inspiration,” Elektrohorse, the song has generated its own line dance, something that Carter immediately credits Elektrohorse with enhancing and developing.
“When I first played him the song and told him what I wanted to do, I had my own ideas for how it would work as a line dance,” Carter continued. “He told me, ‘Brei, I’ve got some ideas, too. I think we can really do something with this.’ He took it and did some things with it that I never would have considered and he made it into something huge.”
“Boots Get To Talking” is one of those songs that really has something for every taste. It certainly has a catchy backbeat, equal parts honky-tonk and hip-hop. There’s some underlying blues feel to it as well, but when utilized in the line-dance environment the tune has an added energy and fury. “It’s my new anthem,” Carter adds, “And I’m so happy that it’s getting such a great reaction and response everywhere. It’s also a signal that people will always respond to good music and songs that make them happy and make them feel good.”
That desire, to reach across boundaries and unite people through music, has always been a big part of Carter’s performing mission. Her musical background growing up in Monroe, Louisiana included equal parts Loretta Lynn, Aretha Franklin, Charley Pride, and gospel music: “Plus a healthy dose of Cajun and Zydeco,” Carter adds. “That’s where my love of dance was developed. In those dance halls, no one ever sits down.”
Carter’s earned impressive academic credentials: a Bachelors in Business from University of Louisiana in Monroe, a Masters in International Relations from Webster University, and a Doctorate in Theology from New Foundation Theological Seminary. She’s also a proud U.S. Army veteran, having served as an enlisted soldier and as an officer.
After deciding that music would be her career path, Carter’s been carefully crafting her style. Her first single, “Gave Him A Girl,” got enough positive attention to lead to appearances on RFD-TV, WSMV-TV, WoodSongs’ Old-Time Radio Hour, among others. She made her CMA Fest debut in 2022, and released her debut album, Brand New Country, which featured a fine cover of Charley Pride’s “Kiss an Angel Good Morning,” and the powerful biographical piece, “Stronger Than That.” Carter released her most recent single last year, “Straight Up Country Crazy,” as well as her first Holiday EP, the critically acclaimed Twinkling Tales of Christmas.
Still, she acknowledges it took a while before she really understood exactly what she wanted to do from a technical perspective. “I realize now that my voice really does fall right in that middle area between country and soul,” Carter continued. “That’s a territory where I’m comfortable, and that’s really the area that I want to emphasize now.” With an upcoming series of concert dates set to begin this month, plus her new LP that will be coming later this year, Brei Carter feels really confident about the future.
“I’m really happy about where things are going for me musically, and what the future holds,” Carter concludes. “I’ve found the right mix musically, and the line-dance hit has really been a blessing, as has working with Elektrohorse. I’m very much ready to see what’s coming next.”
In country and roots music, authenticity is treated like the most valuable currency of all. Maybe that’s because the genre has always been caught between the fiction that this music is frozen in amber and the reality that it has always borrowed liberally from current musical trends in order to have commercial value. The earliest popular country music was an amalgamation of regional music from rural white artists, music stolen wholesale from Black and Indigenous artists, and plenty of nods to prevailing pop (i.e., urban or non-rural) trends – looking back at the places young laborers and listeners that had been drawn to cities came from, and the exciting present and future they found themselves in once they arrived.
Can anyone or anything truly be considered “authentic” in America, a country whose identity is built on masking fundamental historical truths?
While artists like Zach Bryan are hailed for their “authenticity,” the vast majority of the current class of mainstream country and Americana artists grew up in suburbs, in postmodern America, in the internet age, and are graduates of major colleges – like Nashville’s Belmont University or Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Their experiences are also authentic, of course, to each individual artist – just as Bryan’s initial motel room demos are electrifying for the soul he brought to them. But these origins bring up questions around how country and Americana construct “authentic” narratives, especially to market roots music.
Still, it’s noticeable that certain types of creators are automatically considered “authentic” country artists – and they often match the complexion of the first generations of country singers, when “race records” and “hillbilly music” were originally split and whose most famous individuals wore cowboy cosplay on stage.
We want to tip you off to some real Good Country music: Music that portrays life in its complexity and a deep appreciation for one’s roots, whether they lie in the Bronx, rural Arkansas, or anywhere else on this rich blue marble we live on. Because authenticity in country doesn’t necessarily equate to rurality, to back roads and red dirt and farm trucks; real country music is real not because it’s built to be “authentic,” but because it’s honest.
Hurray For the Riff Raff
Hurray For the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra is from a little bit of everywhere, but the Bronx is where they grew up and the punk houses of the Lower East Side raised them. Between their jazz artist father and picking up a guitar as they rode the rails, Segarra’s approach to folk music began with a traditional bent and has since exhaled into an expansive approach, as with their astonishing 2022 album Life on Earth. Their upcoming album The Past Is Still Alive finds Segarra focusing more on twang, but their philosophical core has always remained the same: breathing life into unspoken pain and empowering people that society would like us to forget.
Amythyst Kiah
Amythyst Kiah’s music is a powerful force. Inspired by the blues and old time music, Kiah uses her art to prop the furnace doors open to make way for blasts of grief and abandonment. Kiah grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee and picked up the guitar while attending an arts magnet school. She fell in love with old time music at East Tennessee State University and never looked back.
I first saw Kiah in 2016 at Karen Pittelman’s Queer Country Quarterly, her first show in NYC. Karen introduced her by remarking, “trust me, she’s going to be famous.” When Kiah belted her powerful alto, we all knew we were in the midst of greatness. Kiah’s most recent work on Wary + Strange (2021) takes us in a more experimental direction, but her exploration of alienation – like a toy in her hands – informs her music no matter what she’s plugging into her pedalboard. Kiah’s “Black Myself,” originally recorded with supergroup Our Native Daughters, fiercely proclaims her love for herself and her ancestors.
Willi Carlisle
Willi Carlisle has seen a thing or two in his travels across the lower 48. Carlisle cut his teeth musically in DIY and punk rock, but his search for queer role models and love for poetry drew him to New York City. With disgust for the elitism of the poetry scene there – and their mockery of his roots in the Midwest – Carlisle went searching for a life of words in folk music.
Carlisle has a knack for painting complex portraits of down-and-out characters, refusing to be drawn into simple narratives of left and right, red and blue. His stunning “When the Pills Wear Off” from the upcoming Critterland demonstrates Carlisle’s ability to turn the personal into the political – and back into the personal again. This is not the blind invective of JD Vance, but the realization that only empathy can build bridges between people who think they have nothing in common.
ISMAY (née Avery Hellman) has spent their whole life around folk and bluegrass music – their grandfather is one of the founders of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival. As a contestant on Apple TV+’s short-lived My Kind of Country competition series, ISMAY is very much a representative of roots music’s vanguard. With their sparse arrangements and winsome vocals, ISMAY’s music feels like deconstructed folk music. They understand the core elements of the sound thanks to a lifetime immersed in it, and they create something wholly unique from its constituent parts, as we hear on “Point Reyes.” There, ISMAY’s contemplative vocals are orbited by a gauzy cloud of pedal steel and gentle finger-picking. ISMAY’s upcoming album Desert Pavement speaks to their sense of place: all of their music is enamored by nature. “Golden Palomino” illustrates ISMAY’s love for their rural California upbringing, guiding us to realize how much our natural and inner worlds inform each other.
Buffalo Nichols
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more devastating songwriter or guitar player than Buffalo Nichols. Nichols, like many teenagers before him, picked up a guitar and played his way through the hip-hop and hardcore scenes in his Milwaukee hometown. He found himself drawn to blues music as he began to dig into his mother’s collection and connect with Cream City’s West African community. Nichols and musical partner Joanna Rose made a mark on the Americana scene with their duo Nickel and Rose, shining a harsh light on the ignorance on full display in the community’s supposedly liberal refuge on the song “Americana.”
With his most recent solo album The Fatalist, Nichols brings all of his experience to bear on a remarkable collection of songs that combine elements of all of his musical loves. On his rendition of the classic “You’re Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond,” Nichols’ guitar becomes an extension of his own body with lightning-fast licks. Buttressed by electronic drum samples and a haze of synths, Nichols shows that music is at its most vital when it is rooted in the past and embraces the future.
Ally Free
Ally Free is one to keep your eye on in 2024. They write in their bio that they see music as the universal language that can bring people together, and that’s clear on their versatile 2019 album Rise. From the nu metal-inspired chugging of “Fool’s Gold” to the craftsman’s approach to “Fast Train,” Free isn’t embarrassed to draw from any inspiration to make a damn good song. Free’s rich alto gives their music depth: from their performances, it’s clear that this is someone who has lived a lot of life. Free is one of the newest members of the Black Opry and has taken a few steps out of their Huntsville, AL hometown to playing more shows around Nashville. Here’s hoping that means the rest of us get to hear more from this remarkable performer soon.
William Prince
William Prince’s voice carries a warm, earthy timbre that is wholly unique. Prince grew up on Peguis First Nation (in what is now Canada) and is well-versed in the travails of people living under oppression. But that experience is translated into patience and warmth, a gentle perseverance that can only come from a keen observer. Prince’s stark breakout album Reliever (2020) has given way to the warm Stand in the Joy (2023), which details the travails and victories we most often find in daily life. “Tanqueray” is a gorgeous example of Prince’s dynamic, a story of two improbable lovers finally coming together to make it work.
Sabine McCalla
Sabine McCalla is readying for a breakout 2024. McCalla’s music is steeped in the sounds of New Orleans, which she has made her home. McCalla has performed with others, but her performance on Offbeat Magazine’s OnBeat Session from September 2023 shows us she’s ready to step out on her own. For now, we have her 2018 EP Folk, which sports arresting songs that feel timeless. Maybe it’s the gentle groove in her music that feels like the stately flow of the Mississippi River – discordant with the immediacy of her lyrics that protest violence and oppression, as demonstrated by “I Went to the Levee.”
Margo Cilker
Look – Margo Cilker is literally a cowboy, okay?? Isn’t that what you imagine when someone mentions “country music” and “authenticity” in the same breath? But Cilker’s music glorifies a life of searching, not a mythologized America of white picket fences, so you can also picture the quintessential Nashville executive saying, “We like cowboys, but no, not like that.”
Cilker’s latest album, critical darling Valley of Heart’s Delight, is nostalgic for her family orchard in California’s Santa Clara Valley – but not without a heavy dose of reality. “Mother Told Her Mother Told Me” caution the listener not to become too attached to any one place – and the cost of leaving it behind. Cilker’s impassioned “With The Middle” cuts to the core of her work – a weighing of the contrasts between pleasure and pain and yearning to find common ground between the two.
Brittany Howard
Brittany Howard transcends pretty much everything – except the act of exploration with wild abandon. Having gained notoriety as the lead singer of the retro soul band the Alabama Shakes, Howard seemingly will not rest until she’s drawn with every musical crayon in the box. In her recent interview with NPR’s Jewly Hight, Howard cracks that she grew up in a trailer and would still be perfectly content to be working the land somewhere. But her music has led her elsewhere, perhaps everywhere. Howard has teased a few songs off her upcoming album, What Now, with the title track featuring hooky grooves and propulsive energy, but it’s “Red Flags” that astounds with its jarring drum loop, woozy vocals, and disorienting production that demonstrates how much mastery Howard has gained in her craft as an artist and storyteller.
Samantha Crain
Few artists in the last decade have shown the same growth and versatility as Samantha Crain. A part of the rich Tulsa music scene that has given us John Moreland, John Calvin Abney, and M Lockwood Porter, Crain follows a road all her own. Under Branch & Thorn & Tree (2015) found Crain exploring the pride and trauma of her Choctaw heritage through folk-inspired music. In 2017, Crain broke her own mold with the quirky indie-pop album You Had Me at Goodbye (2017.) Since her 2020 album, A Small Death, Crain has been playing in the spaces in between, utilizing woodwinds, pedal steel, pianos, and guitar to create a woozy soundscape as her spacious, gravelly voice helps us stay anchored in the real.
Nick Shoulders
Nick Shoulders rounds up the list with his commanding All Bad. While Shoulders’ music leans traditional sonically, it’s anything but. The Fayetteville, Arkansas singer begins his album with phaser blasts and a menacing invitation to a “conversation,” and that conversation is explicitly about all the “country” stylings that deserve to be thrown in the trash heap – and the many, many qualities we need to hold on to and claim for ourselves: grit, honesty, love, and togetherness. “Won’t Fence Us In” and “Appreciate’cha” speak to this theme most clearly, but the way Shoulders approaches the classic country canon with loving irreverence reminds us that we never have to be weighed down by tradition.
Artist:Stoll Vaughan Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky Song: “Fate” Album:Dream in Color Release Date: February 23, 2024 Label: Commonwealth Artist
In Their Words: “When my daughter was born, I was reflecting on the distance my wife and I had covered, welcoming the next chapter of raising our child and finding ourselves surrounded by the demands of parenthood. I realized how fortunate I have been to have such a gracious spirit as my partner. I had known this, but the song was a rediscovery. She has always been the responsible one, always the kindest among us. She softly carries me as I dance in the darkness with my fears and ambition. She could hold me to the fire, but she never does. She loves me unconditionally. I know she could have done better than me, but that’s not how this universe works. I believe in Fate.” – Stoll Vaughan
Over his entire Grammy-nominated career, Brent Cobb has made no secret of being guided by a “Southern Star” – a rootsy creative beacon shining high above and seeming to point straight down on his South Georgia home.
A native of the Peach state, Cobb has staked a claim on the organic side of country, with acclaimed projects like Shine On a Rainy Day, Providence Canyon, and even the 2022 gospel set, And Now, Let’s Turn to Page…. Each one paints a loving portrait of Southern life, looking far beyond the cliches for inspiration. But with his new album Southern Star, those pictures are more vivid (and more Southern) than ever.
Finding easy-going wisdom and big-picture beauty in the simple minutiae of everyday life, Southern Star is engrossed in all things Georgia. Ten tender tracks were recorded in Macon, using Georgian musicians and embracing the sonic history of the region. That means a warm, humid mix of back-porch country and rural R&B, with funky (but feather soft) bass lines and a casual vocal drawl, as Cobb invites listeners in to his personal world – a world full of unexpected contrasts, and undeniable human wonder.
Speaking with BGS from that South Georgia home on a sunny fall day – perhaps the last one of the lawn-mowing season, he says – the humble and homegrown singer-songwriter explains what makes his Southern Star shine so bright.
Every artist or songwriter goes through phases of how they think about their role. What’s important to you these days?
Brent Cobb: It really hasn’t changed a whole lot. I know that doesn’t sound good, but I always try to still focus on my roots of where I’m from, and I try to still be universally personal, personally universal. … I think there’s something so poetic about specifically the American South and rural life, but also something that if you do it right, anybody anywhere can relate to it. So that’s really what I try to do. I try to make music that my kids can enjoy and that my grandma could enjoy, and everybody in between.
Tell me a little bit about Southern Star, the imagery of that title, specifically. I mean, is this kind of a play on the idea of a North Star guiding you?
Partly, yeah. You always learn growing up, if you get lost out there, you look for the Northern Star, it’ll guide you and give you direction. But I’m from South Georgia, so I look for the Southern Star. [Laughs] … So partly that. Then there was also my buddy ‘Rowdy’ Jason Cope, who was the founding member of The Steel Woods and played electric guitar for Jamey Johnson from 2008 until 2014 or so. He’s no longer with us [Cope passed away at age 42 in 2021, after suffering “severe complications from diabetes”]. But during those days he lived about 45 minutes outside Nashville, and I’d go down there to his place and we’d go to this little bar and it was a pretty seedy little spot where we’d hang out, it was called the Southern Star.
Plus, I often thought about my buddy as someone who sort of behind the scenes had a lot of influence on a lot of people, but they may not even be aware of it. He never got to be a superstar, but if nothing else he was a Southern star. And I feel that same way about myself sometimes. So there are a couple different meanings behind it. … I miss him every day.
The other part of this album is what seems like a love letter to Georgia – and maybe just the whole region. It can be easy to misunderstand the Southern people and the area, and you’ve called it kind of a melting pot, right? What’s so inspiring to you about Georgia?
I think it’s because, well, first of all the American South as a whole, there would be no music as we know it if not for the American South. And that comes with its blessings and the curses, and it wouldn’t be the same place without those things also. Specifically Macon is the home of Otis Redding and Little Richard, and then you have Ray Charles from right down the road, and then right up the road you got James Brown, and then of course the Allman Brothers. There’s so many endless artists that have influenced the whole world.
But then even just as day-to-day life, where I’m from, every school I went to, we’re all mixed in together down here. We’re living and praying and learning and working all together. It’s easy to be on the outside and look in, and go, ‘Man, the South, what a terrible place.’ And there are some terrible things that still happen to this day, and historically that are terrible, but for the most part we’re all living and working and eating and breathing together. You don’t hear about that side of the South so much. But I think that’s why the music from here is so influencing and so profound – it isn’t just one way. And you got people that obviously have had to struggle and people who still struggle to this day, but that’s where the good shit comes from. That’s where the great art comes from, for better or worse.
I read that this was your first self-produced record. Did it have a different vibe working that way, or did the sound come out any different?
Luckily I was able to use a couple of my friends as guinea pigs, so I got a little comfortable in the producer’s seat [on previous projects]. But more than anything I believe first of all, to make a great album, you need great songs, and then you can record them any way you want to record them. If it’s a great song, it’s a great song no matter what.
… I think the second most important part of making a great album is the drums and percussion. Once you have those two things, you can really leave it at that and it’s going to be great. Folks can sing along and might want to dance a little bit. You’re going to be fine.
Then you need a little funky bass part. And, being from that area of the music I heard my whole life – soul music and gospel music, it all has keys. So I knew I had to have some keys and organ on there. I don’t know that it was much different [from other records], except for this time I had nearly 20 years of experience.
“It’s a Start” is such an interesting track. On the surface, it’s just about simple things. But it seems to kind of point at a bigger truth, right? Where’d that come from?
Well, I appreciate you noticing that, because it’s with intent. I try to do that with most all of my songs – like I said earlier, to make something personal, make it universal. What is the core of that emotion or that experience? And vice versa, universally personal. That song particularly, I wanted to throw everybody off and not give that song a double meaning.
Really, why’s that?
I feel like sometimes I’m stuck in between two worlds. Sometimes I feel like people only think ‘Oh, there’s Brent writing another album about Georgia.’ And then I feel like some people go, ‘What is the deeper meaning here?’ Most of the time there is one for me, but that song is really about nothing and intentionally, it’s about exactly what it says.
People can get real meta about certain songwriters, but I just think that’s a mark of a really good artist.
Yeah I’m not ever complaining as long as anybody’s listening for any reason. I do think it’s funny though. Sometimes I feel like other songwriters may get the benefit of the doubt, like it’ll be a really on-the-nose double meaning, just real obvious that, “Oh, okay, you meant to give it this undercurrent.” Then other songwriters, sometimes I feel like including myself, they do not get that benefit. They only get the doubt. [Laughs]
Call me a simple man – I am. There should always be a little something extra in there if someone’s looking for it. But I also think a songwriter should do their best to craft it so that it can be enjoyed at face value.
“Shade Tree” seems like a fitting way to end things, then. It wraps the record up with a peaceful, soothing scene. Where did that come from?
Well, my sister and I had started that song two years probably before I even knew that I was going to make an album. My sister is such a wonderful singer and she’s got a lot of soul in her voice, but like me, she has a kid. It’s hard to just sit down and write a song together. Well, then I get studio time booked and I wanted to finish that song because I thought it really defined Southern Star as a way of life in the South – there was a pecan tree in my grandma’s backyard, so after church and after Sunday dinner, the whole family would hang out under it in the shade tree. A lot of things happened [under that tree] …
The day before going in the studio, I went over to my sister’s house and I had dropped my kids off at school, and we drank some coffee on her back porch amongst some pine trees. Then my wife, she threw in some lines and it became a family affair. And yeah, it seemed fitting.
The whole thing seems like it has so much personal meaning. What do you hope people take away from this one?
More than anything I always hope, like I’ve said, that it’s universally personal. I hope that anybody will be able to take away from it whatever they feel. And if nothing else, I hope they can just enjoy it in the background.
The career of singer-songwriter Ronnie Milsap has been remarkably inclusive from an idiomatic standpoint, even if it’s also accurate to say his greatest acclaim has come within country circles. But over the course of five plus decades in the performing and recording arena, Milsap has also toured with James Brown and Ray Charles, been a pianist for JJ Cale, had R&B hits – with songs penned by Ashford & Simpson or previously recorded by Chuck Jackson – cut successful gospel and adult contemporary songs and albums, and even worked the oldies circuit while covering ’50s classic rock and roll and doo-wop.
Still, it’s his poignant, soul-tinged country tunes that have made Ronnie Milsap so beloved, while earning him induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame and membership in the Grand Ole Opry. A two-time Country Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year, Milsap also helped induct longtime friend and mentor Charles (who once encouraged him to choose music over law school) into the Country Hall of Fame. During the ’70s and ’80s Milsap enjoyed a frequent presence on the country charts, and during the ’80s scored thirteen of his thirty-five number one hits.
Even as times and tastes changed, Milsap adapted and continued to enjoy success through the ’90s and into the next millennium. Now, at 80, he recently decided it was time to call a halt to performing in Music City. Pausing a couple of weeks before his final Nashville show at Bridgestone Arena October 3, Milsap told BGS that there’s one idiom he loves that folks don’t often cite or acknowledge when discussing his influences.
“Man I love bluegrass too,” Milsap said. “Those harmonies, the melodies, that’s a sound that I’ve always enjoyed. Some people didn’t understand exactly where ‘Smoky Mountain Rain’ came from, but that’s the influence. Also gospel is a big influence and of course, I’ve always loved country and soul music. All of it I just absorbed and worked into my own style.”
That sound, an inspired blend of mellow tone and emphatic delivery has made the list of unforgettable Milsap tunes a lengthy one: “(There’s) No Gettin’ Over Me,” “Pure Love,” “Only One Love In My Live,” “(I’m A) Stand By My Woman Man,” or “Daydreams About Night Things,” to cite just five of his numerous hits. Milsap has managed the difficult task of being both sentimental and evocative, never letting his vocals become maudlin or exaggerated, and always credible and persuasive in his stories and testimonies.
Milsap’s also maintained a healthy interest in contemporary happenings and performers, as evidenced by his 2018 LP TheDuets, which he called “one of my favorites.”
“Man I love that Kelly Clarkson,” he added. “She’s fantastic. Working with her was a thrill and I love how she sings. Ricky Skaggs, he’s one of the all-time greatest musicians I’ve ever seen and heard. He’s incredible. There are still so many good young singers out there and great musicians in Nashville. It’s a real pleasure to hear them, and I’m so happy about this show coming up. It’s such an honor.”
The last Milsap concert was billed as “The Final Nashville Show,” and a packed house filled Bridgestone Arena two weeks ago. Twenty-nine artists across the country spectrum performed 30 tunes to mark Milsap’s 50 years. The event was co-hosted by radio veterans Storme Warren (The Big 615) and Bill Cody (WSM), while such luminaries as Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton, Clint Black, and Luke Bryan whose schedules didn’t permit them to attend or participate sent videotaped tributes. In addition, prior to the show, new Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell declared it “Ronnie Milsap Day,” and Tennessee governor Bill Lee added an official proclamation honoring Milsap’s “Final Nashville Show.”
Depending on personal perspective and taste, there were multiple highlights. One contemporary star who got maximum exposure and delivered a powerhouse performance was Scotty McCreery, whose version of “Pure Love” was a big audience winner, as was Randy Houser’s “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (of Hurting Me)” and Trace Adkins’ “She Keeps the Home Fires Burning.”
Kelly Clarkson’s “It Was Almost Like a Song” was a show stopper, as powerful and dynamic as anything anyone did during the evening, and a rousing rebuttal to those who think her iconic daytime status protects another overrated celebrity. A pair of surprises were gospel vocalist/pianist Gordon Mote and contemporary Christian star Steven Curtis Chapman. Both took secular tunes and soared on them; Mote on “Lost In the Fifties Tonight (In the Still of the Night)” and Chapman on “What a Difference You’ve Made In My Life.”
Band of Heathen’s rendition of “Houston Solution” and Breland’s cover of “Any Day Now” got polite applause, while rousing songs performed by Sara Evans (“Let’s Take the Long Way Around the World,”), The McCrary Sisters (“Stand By Me,” and also appearing backing Clarkson), Terri Clark (“My Love”) and Lorrie Morgan (“I’d Be A Legend In My Time”) reaffirmed the appeal Milsap’s best tunes have had for both men and women vocalists. Elizabeth Cook’s “Nobody Likes Sad Songs” added another element, that of a fresh, lesser known but emerging artist enhancing her reputation with a strong and impressive performance.
Appropriately, the guest of honor closed the show, and while Milsap at 80 isn’t the singer he was in his prime, he remains an effective entertainer. His closing set began with “Smoky Mountain Rain,” and also included “America the Beautiful,” “Stranger In My House,” and “There’s No Getting Over Me.” The night ended with a stage full of the performers who’d previously paid homage to Milsap backing him on an engaging version of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman.”
Throughout the evening, all the performers were superbly supported by the Nashville session band Sixwire, augmented by special guests like the great Country Music Hall of Famer Charlie McCoy and saxophonist/steel guitarist John Heinrich, a longtime Milsap band member. It was a memorable night, and a wonderful celebration of a premier American musical talent.
At 77 years-old, singer and song interpreter extraordinaire Bettye LaVette just keeps going. Her new album, LaVette!, features a set of songs so perfectly suited to the recording artist’s voice and perspective many listeners assume she wrote the material herself. But this collection was all penned by Randall Bramblett, whose songs were first selected by LaVette’s husband of 20 years, Kevin Kiley.
“[Kevin] has actually sought out these tunes for me, about 100 tunes,” LaVette explains via phone. “He narrows it down to about 50 that he knows I’ll like and then I narrow it down to the 10 I’m going to record… But if I could write, these songs are exactly what I would have written.”
Whether she’s covering Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Van Morrison, or Bramblett, LaVette has a striking ability to make a song her own – a hallmark of her style since her earliest days as a recording artist, tracking singles like “He Made a Woman Out of Me” and “Nearer to You” as a teen, now more than 60 years ago. For this installment of First & Latest, we compare and contrast these two early singles from the late ’60s with LaVette’s latest album, which has a special vinyl edition dropping today, Friday, August 18, with a vinyl-exclusive track, “What You Don’t Say” featuring Reverend Charles Hodges of Hi Rhythm on organ. Hear a BGS-exclusive preview of “What You Don’t Say” above.
We reached LaVette via phone to chat about her First & Latest recordings and about what’s changed within her creative process and her perspective over the last 60+ years.
BGS: What goes through your mind when you listen back to those first recordings of yourself from the earliest days of your career? What comes back to you? What do you remember about those times and recording those tracks?
BL: I don’t think I look at it quite so sentimentally. They’re just fleeting. There’s no one big thing. From your questions, I immediately knew that you were probably very young. [Laughs] Because old people don’t think like that. That’s what you might think about, but do you know how many singles I had before I even had an album? The fact that I wasn’t having an album out was not a pleasing situation. Those singles made me think of various things, but it wasn’t on a trajectory, the way you may think about it.
I do know that since this journey of mine started when I was 16 years old, I was thinking something different during that period. You know you age in periods of about five years at a time, so from 16 to about 20 or 21 I saw one thing – and I kind of felt that way about everything! Not just a particular song or anything, that was just my mindset for about five or six years.
[“He Made a Woman Out of Me” and “Nearer to You,”] those songs were back to back and were meant to be an A side and B side. They were the first time I recorded in Nashville, with the people that became the Memphis Horns, with Wayne Jackson as leader. I was in love with him. And that’s what I remember most. [Laughs]
At that juncture, when you were recording those tracks, did you think you would still be singing this many years later? Did you hope you would be? What was your frame of mind?
No. I thought I was going to be a star right after that came out and that would be it. I didn’t think in long range at that point. I’m thinking in long range now. Like, “Am I gonna get through this next tour?” That’s long range now. I saw somebody with a t-shirt the other day that said, “Do not fuck with old people. Life terms in jail do not bother them.” I will kill you!! [Laughs] No…
If somebody had even come up to me and said, “At 77 you will have a new album out.” I would have been like, “Okay… and it’s been large talking to you.” [Laughs] You know, I don’t know that anybody – if they exist they are certainly more brilliant than I – who were thinking at 20 about what they were going to be doing at 77. We’ve got to force ourselves to think that way, we plan better.
Listening to your music made me think about how it has morphed and changed over the years, but also how it has stayed the same. I think there’s so much enjoyment and so much love in what you do, musically. Is that what’s kept you going and kept you in it?
Do you seriously believe, even if this was my husband we were talking about and I married him when I was 16 years old, do you seriously think I’d still be getting giddy every time I saw him? [Laughs]
I don’t know how to do anything else this proficiently! [Laughs] And I would look foolish trying to do something new. I do this well, it would be stupid for me not to do it. And since they didn’t let me get rich, I can’t not do it. But have you listened to the new recording? Have you listened to the lyrics?
Yes! I love it.
[Sings:] “I keep right on rolling, but the thrill is gone…” and I don’t say anything I don’t mean, at this point. [Laughs] No, honey! I’m somebody’s grandmother! If you think I want to put on real tight clothes, a lot of makeup, and go holler and scoot across the stage, you’re wrong. [Laughs]
But I would like at this point, I would like to have what I keep calling a “Ray Charles career,” where they pay a lot of money for the tickets. Everybody’s sitting down. It’s a beautiful venue. And I just sit there and talk to them and sing for an hour to two hours and a half. But, no! [The music business] isn’t even what I think about when I’m not doing it.
[Laughs]
Now, don’t laugh at old people… [Laughs]
The tracks that we chose from the latest album are “Lazy (And I Know It)” and “In the Meantime,” and I wanted to start talking about how you’re known kind of famously as being this song interpreter, somebody who takes songs and makes them your own. How do you find songs? What’s your process for collecting and putting together a collection of songs?
It took me 50 years and kissing a lot of frogs to find a husband. And he loves music. He has everything that everyone has ever recorded in the history of the world. [Laughs] I’m exaggerating, but he is a record historian and a record collector. This still thrills him, even if it doesn’t thrill me. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary and in the 20 years we’ve been together this career, this “fifth career,” I call it, has been going on that whole time. He has actually sought out these tunes for me, about 100 tunes. Then he narrows it down to about 50 that he knows I’ll like and then I narrow it down to the 10 I’m going to record. I could not sit at this point and listen to that much music for any reason in the world.
[Kevin] pretty much knows what I like. When I’m looking for a song, the lyrics have got to be solid. Absolutely solid. I’m too old to look in your face and say bullshit. As I said, I mean the lyrics that I sing. This young man, [Randall Bramblett,] he wrote all the tunes on this album, he said, “Do all the tunes have to be about you?” I said, “Yes.” [Laughs] He said, “Okay…”
But listen, I’ve lived 77 years now. There isn’t a genre of song you could write that wouldn’t pertain to me at this point. And that is why there are so many different genres of songs on the album. I picked the ones out of them that that pertain to me.
Everybody keeps saying in interviews, “Did you write the songs? Did you write them for you? Did you write them together?” None of those things are true! [Bramblett] and I are about two years apart in age. He’s the only person I know who’s had more flop records than I have. [Laughs] He’s done the same thing, devoted his whole life to it for 50 or 60 years, and he pretty much feels the way I feel about this. There were adjustments I had to make in the tunes, but if I could write, these songs are exactly what I would have written.
I’m very pleased with them. When you talk about the tunes, like when you when you were talking about “He Made a Woman Out of Me,” since I was 20, I have just become such a different singer now. The basics of me have always been there, but I’ve broadened so and become such a different thing, a different woman. “He Made a Woman Out of Me,” by now it’s almost a throwaway, a novelty [song] on stage. I sing it when I’m somewhere where people are familiar with it, but it’s no longer a part of my show. It’s now just a part of my life. And my recordings’ lineage.
I wanted to ask you about “Lazy (And I Know It),” because I make this joke constantly lately that laziness is a radical act–
You know what, I’m writing this down – and I’m slapping you! [Laughs] A radical act! [Turns to her husband,] He said “Laziness is a radical act!”
You know what? White people associate laziness with Black people so much, I took the tune out of the list 50 times. [Laughs] I’d take it off, then I’d put it back. I put it back [ultimately] because I was thinking about – girlfriend in Blazing Saddles… She’s laying in the bed. She’s like, “I’m just tired.” Wasn’t she named Lili Von… something? But I thought about it and I think that’s the attitude that I wanna have about it. Oh yes, Lili Von Shtupp!
Yes!!
I entertained myself with it. When I could make it entertaining to me and I got away from that initial feeling, then it was just fun. And it’s just fun to do on stage. I love it.
What do you do when you need to be lazy when you need to take a vacation? What’s your what’s your favorite way to relax?
Oh no, I just come home. I like to be at home. I’ve got 50 plants in the house and with summer, I’ve got 1,084! Me and the deer have been having a constant battle over whose hostas they are, mine or theirs. I love my home. If my mother had lived to know that I would love being at home, she could have lived to be 200 years old, because she could have just been so satisfied.
I don’t want to go out to dinner. I entertain at parties, at a place where people are having a good time. And I drink and I eat and I don’t want to do that when I come home. I want to taste my food that I cook and you know, but I’m not that anxious to look decent and go out and have dinner.
After decades writing and performing incredible music, soul icon Don Bryant has earned his first Grammy nod in 2020. This past Juneteenth, the veteran bluesman released his newest album, You Make Me Feel, on Fat Possum Records. Nominated for Best Traditional Blues Album, the record is nothing less than a physical incarnation of rhythm and blues.
The project is also aptly titled, as Bryant’s work imparts a gamut of feelings and emotions — love and joy most predominantly shine through the timelessness of his voice and story. With production and arrangements reminiscent of an old soul record, the simplicity of the music is on display in a recent Tiny Desk (Home) Concert by Bryant. Backed by only an electric guitar and a pianist, the songs fly out of the speakers with unbridled power and emotion.
A decorated songwriter, Bryant holds deep connections to the roots of such powerful music, singing life into just about anything. With only the first few notes of this performance you’ll be entranced! Listen to You Make Me Feel wherever you get your music and watch Bryant’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert below.
Artist:Yola, with Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby on backing vocals, Sheryl Crow on piano, and Jason Isbell on guitar Hometown: Bristol, England Single: “Hold On” Release Date: October 9, 2020
In Their Words: “‘Hold On’ is a conversation between me and the next generation of young black girls. My mother’s advice would always stress caution, that all that glitters isn’t gold, and that my black female role models on TV are probably having a hard time. She warned me that I should rethink my calling to be a writer and a singer…. but to me that was all the more reason I should take up this space. ‘Hold On’ is asking the next gen to take up space, to be visible and to show what it looks to be young, gifted and black.” — Yola
In the winter of 2019, bona fide soul man Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams made his return to Nashville after nearly 50 years away from Music City. His aim was to cut a new record, and a slew of artists joined him in collaboration, chief among them guitarist Jim Oblon, singer/songwriter Justin Vernon, and the late great John Prine. The music that came from those winter sessions feels like a time machine right back to the late 1960s.
The album, titled Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, is a shade more country than Swamp Dogg’s other material, but his warm, rough voice wears his many years on its sleeve, allowing him to sit comfortably in the common core of soul, country, and blues. Portions of the album have moxie for miles while others hold abundant sincerity and sadness. NPR’s Fresh Air reviewed one song, “Sleeping Without You is a Dragg,” which was joined by two other selections from other artists classified as beautiful, comforting songs. A reminiscent sound ties the whole record together beautifully.
A Noisey mini-documentary about the star-studded recording sessions for Sorry You Couldn’t Make It shows humorous, casual, behind-the-scenes moments from the album’s creation. While Dogg had the bad luck of the COVID-19 lockdown slow its rollout, don’t let this music slip through the cracks of your social media timelines!
When Bettye LaVette sings “I Hold No Grudge,” she brings the weight of all her years to it. The 74-year-old vocalist draws out certain notes, delivers certain lines almost in a speaking voice, as though she wants to show us how difficult, but also how essential, it can be to let things go. “Deep inside me there ain’t no regrets,” she declares, “but a woman who’s been forgotten may forgive but never, never forget.” She draws out that second “never” to underscore its harsh finality, to remind you that she’ll live with the memory of this slighting forever.
“I Hold No Grudge” has never been merely a song about romantic betrayal — not when Nina Simone recorded it for her landmark 1967 album, High Priestess of Soul, and not when LaVette recorded it more than sixty years later. This new version sounds like it’s addressed to anyone who stood in LaVette’s way so many years ago, in particular those executives at Atlantic Records who saw fit to shelve her debut album in 1972 without so much as explanation, much less an apology. That decision crushed her and thwarted her promising career. “That’s exactly what it is,” says LaVette. “I probably have some grudges, but they aren’t big enough to make me stop. I’ve not been defeated. I’m extending the olive branch once again.”
“I Hold No Grudge” opens her latest album, Blackbirds, which collects her interpretations of songs made famous by Black women in the 1940s and 1950s, including Dinah Washington, Ruth Brown, Nancy Wilson, and Billie Holiday. She calls them “the bridge I came across on,” referring to that era between big band blues of the 1940s and rhythm & blues of the 1960s, when these artists were pushing popular music in new directions.
With a small band led by producer-arranger Steve Jordan, LaVette runs through deep cuts like “Blues for the Weepers,” a song first sung by Ruth Brown (and later made famous by Lou Rawls). It’s a song dedicated to “all the soft-singing sisters and torch-bearing misters,” she sings. “They just come to listen and dream.” She understands that we go to songs now for the same reasons we did sixty or seventy years ago: to find sympathy and solace, but also to find a way forward, perhaps some promise of a better life.
The most familiar tune on Blackbirds is likely “Strange Fruit,” popularized by Billie Holiday ninety years ago at Café Society in New York City and covered by countless singers ever since. As a result it’s difficult to make the song sound new and urgent, yet LaVette manages to do just that. Against her band’s dolefully trudging rhythm, she tilts the melody forward just slightly, as though pulling us toward some horrific destination, and she shreds the syllables of the song’s climactic declaration: “Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
That middle word is frayed almost beyond recognition – “stra-ya-ange” – to make the song’s metaphor sound tragically real. LaVette recorded it nearly a year ago and was startled when it became so heavily relevant again. To hear her sing “Strange Fruit” in 2020 is to be reminded that the injustices so many Americans are protesting — the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many other Black men and women — are not new or specific to the current era.
In the second installment of our Artist of the Month coverage, LaVette talks about growing up with a jukebox in her living room, giving these formative artists their due, and how Paul McCartney fits into all this.
BGS: This record is rooted in the history of popular music. Can you tell me about this particular period and what it means to you?
LaVette: People — especially white people — they throw “rhythm and blues” and “blues” together a lot. And now today, they’re throwing “rhythm and blues” toward young blacks and young whites who want to sound black. When people talk about rhythm and blues, they go back about as far as Etta James, but these women are the bridge that Etta came across on as well. Rhythm and blues was a music that came from blues, of course, and from gospel. When people ask me the difference between “blues” and “rhythm and blues,” I always tell them that you can cry to blues, but you can dance and cry to rhythm and blues.
It’s a short bridge, from about 1948 or ’49 to the burgeoning of Atlantic and Motown’s rhythm and blues, which was about ’61 or ’62. That’s when I came along. We took away the saxophones and added more guitars. We took the blues guitar and sped it up and put it in our tunes. The people who took us from the late ‘40s into the early ‘60s are rarely mentioned, and that’s why I chose this group of women.
I didn’t even know there were Black women who sang, other than Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge. And then, hearing LaVern Baker and Ruth Brown and Little Esther, I don’t know whether it gave me hope or whatever, but it really surprised me. I didn’t know that women who sung in such a bawdy way even existed.
When did you first hear these women?
When rhythm and blues came about, that was when I was young and I was dancing. That was when I was coming up and my sister was a teenager. We had a jukebox in our living room in Muskegon, Michigan, which is where I was born, and it had all the current tunes of the day, which my sister played daily when she got out of school. They were all rhythm and blues songs. You know, they weren’t into jazz — they were either blues or rhythm and blues songs on the jukebox. And gospel and country-western, no less. At one point, my favorite singers used to be Doris Day and Dale Evans.
Wait, you had a jukebox in your living room?
My parents sold corn liquor in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Muskegon was extremely segregated, so if you wanted a drink after dinner or after work, you had to come by my house. These were homes that had been built for the soldiers returning from the Second World War. So they were theoretically projects, but they hadn’t started making them out of brick yet. They looked more like barracks, and everybody’s house was just alike.
It was living room, dining room, small kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. My parents sold corn liquor and chicken sandwiches and barbeque sandwiches. There was no gambling. Nobody could cuss but my mother. But they could get shots and pints and half pints. And the jukebox was there in the living room where most people’s couch probably was. I was about 18 months old when I learned all the songs on the jukebox — all of them.
How did you choose the songs for this record?
I keep several files. Or, I should say, my husband keeps them for me. I’ve got all kinds of files. I’ve got a country and western file. I’ve got a strictly George Jones file. What I do is, I offer my label two or three ideas based on these files, and they tell me which one they like best. So I have some ideas that I like, and that way I don’t have to take their suggestions. If they find one they believe in and are willing to spend money on, I’ve got the songs already in.
I had this file here of standards, some of which I had done when I did little gigs in places around, just me and a keyboard player. Some of them, like Nancy Wilson’s “Save Your Love for Me,” I had done in other venues that most people haven’t seen me in, because they didn’t come where I was. A song like “I Hold No Grudge, which I heard eighteen years ago, it’s been in my file since then. I thought, if I ever get a chance to do that kind of album, I will do that tune. I wasn’t going to throw it away.
When did you discover that song?
I was living in Detroit, and I was getting my hair done. Usually in Black salons, there’s a radio on that plays Black music, and this song came on. I had never heard it before! And because Detroit is one of the places where I can pick up the phone and call whoever is playing whatever it is and I’ll know them, I called them up and she told me it was Nina Simone. And I said, well, if I ever get the chance, I’m gonna record that tune. That was eighteen years ago.
Just a few years ago I performed at a party for David Lynch, the movie producer, and this gentleman came up to me and said, “I loved your performance. My name is Angelo Badalamenti, and I do all the music for David Lynch’s films.” My husband, who loves David Lynch’s films, was ecstatic. Angelo says, “I have a tune. Years ago, I used to work with Nina Simone, and I wrote this tune for her that I think would be perfect for you.” I said, “What’s the name of it?” “‘I Hold No Grudge.’” I said, “I know you aren’t going to believe this, but I’ve had plans to do that tune for the last fifteen years!” So when I got the opportunity to do this album for Verve, I got in touch with Angelo and sent it to him, and he said he could hear Nina listening to it, closing her eyes, and saying, “Yeah, she got it.” Of course that made me feel very good.
Another song I wanted to ask you about is “Strange Fruit,” which seems sadly very timely right now.
But it just became timely! When we recorded it back in August, it was one of the oldest tunes on the album. And then all of this mess broke out, and the tune became timely! But all of this wasn’t going on when we recorded it. That’s not why we recorded it. We recorded it to fill in the Billie Holiday slot. While we were waiting for the album to come out, all of this happened. And it was just timely — as if we went to look for a tune to describe what’s going on now. So it’s bad that it’s timely — it’s awful that it’s timely — but it’s timely.
I knew the tune had not lost any of its power, and I knew I had to do it completely different from Billie. I’m blessed to work with Steve Jordan because he doesn’t hear these songs the way they were originally recorded. He hears them the way I sing them, because his age is closer to mine. He was born and raised in Harlem, and he grew up with these rhythm and blues tunes. He knew that I wanted “Strange Fruit” to be terse and sad and black and dark, and when we finished recording the music, I said, “Steve! I didn’t want it to sound exactly like they’re standing by the tree playing this song,” but it does. It’s just haunting. That’s the thing that makes Steve so important to me.
The outlier on the album is your interpretation of the Beatles’ “Blackbird.” What made that song fit this project?
The reason that I chose it — and I chose it for the title — is because many Americans don’t know that Brits call their women birds, and Paul is talking about a Black girl that he saw standing up on a picnic table singing one night in a park. He’s talking about a Black girl singing and I thought that that would just be perfect for it.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
