Tag: Country

The Earl Scruggs Revue Made a Movie Soundtrack

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The Earl Scruggs Revue’s only movie soundtrack, Where The Lilies Bloom (1974), is not well known. That’s a pity because in 1973, when it was recorded, the band had been together for four years and was a very solid outfit. At the beginning of 1973 the group included Earl, Randy, and Gary Scruggs, Josh Graves, and Jody Maphis. Steve Scruggs was an occasional member. Vassar Clements’ last credited appearance on record with the Revue was on Earl Scruggs‘ Dueling Banjos (C 32268), released early in 1973, and he was still with them when they recorded the soundtrack.

The movie was filmed between May and August 1972 and released in 1974 through United Artists. The soundtrack album, Columbia KC 32806, is credited to the Revue and their longtime producer, Ron Bledsoe. Movie soundtrack recordings are made after the film has been edited; the musicians perform in a studio setting while the film is rolling. This is a precision business, obviously; I have yet to find accounts of the Revue’s involvement in this process, which must have taken place in early 1973.

Soundtrack albums focus on eliciting memories of the film. Viewing and listening are, in the final analysis, two very different things. The music in Where The Lilies Bloom was, in the first instance, the musicians’ responses to the visuals, shaped by the movie producer and director.

Earl came up with new tunes and restatements of old ones; Randy contributed deft and creative electric and acoustic guitar, both flatpicked and fingerpicked; Vassar performed masterful fiddle from a point in his career when he was doing the old-time tunes brilliantly while developing his new jazz-inflected style; and Josh played the creative and brilliant Dobro that a generation would follow.

The film’s producer, Robert B. Radnitz, based the picture on Vera and Bill Cleaver’s award-winning young adult novel of the same title. It tells the story of the struggle of the Luther family siblings, four young Appalachian country youths – the oldest is 16 – to live at home together following the death of their widower father. They do this by “wildcrafting,” gathering and selling wild herbs as health supplements. The narrative focuses on the two teen daughters’ growth and relationships.

Where The Lilies Bloom was shot on location in Watauga County on North Carolina’s northwestern border. Producer Radnitz strove to employ workers from Appalachia, such as screenplay writer Earl Hamner Jr. and actor Harry Dean Stanton, who had a leading role as the older “Kiser Pease.” The young actress who had the leading role as 14-year-old “Mary Call Luther,” Julie Gohlson, was a Georgia native chosen after a nationwide search. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1975. This was her only movie appearance.

Radnitz worked with toymakers Mattel on this co-production, their second. The first was Sounder, released in 1973. That acclaimed film about young teens in Black Mississippi propelled Cicely Tyson to stardom and featured blues star Taj Mahal for its soundtrack. For his second movie’s soundtrack, Radnitz again sought music reflecting the cultural background of the film’s narrative – in this case, the oral traditions of Appalachia. He chose the Earl Scruggs Revue.

The film got a good reception, with prizes and nominations of various sorts. It’s well worth watching – not only is there a DVD with commentary, it’s also available VOD on YouTube and is available to watch via select streaming services. The album, on the other hand, pretty much sank like a stone – no ripples. But if you want to hear what the Earl Scruggs Revue sounded like when they were together just playing by themselves, with no added stars in the studio, this is the album to try. There’s plenty from them to appreciate on the film’s soundtrack, as well. A lot of nice creative moves here!

This was a hard album to find. By the time I finally got it in the ’80s I wasn’t as interested in the band as I’d been earlier. I listened once, filed it away, and only listened again recently. Holding and looking at the album cover during this playback reminded me why I only listened to it once before. The liner notes must have been composed by some 9-to-5er at United Artists. There’s nothing there about the music. Who’s the female vocalist? What’s the band doing? No mentions. The visuals and most of the copy are from the movie. Not much of a musical souvenir!

The album cover of Columbia KC 82806 announces at the top: “The Original Soundtrack Recording.” Below that comes “Radnitz /Mattel Productions presents, where the lilies bloom (all in large lowercase), then: “Music Performed by” and finally “The Earl Scruggs Revue.” All this is printed over a collage of color shots of herbs, along with nine little black and white stills from the film – one of which is the Revue.

On back of the album cover, we are told this is a ”Soundtrack Album Produced by Ron Bledsoe [for] A Robert B. Radnitz Film.” Cast members (but not band members) are listed. Next to this info are small columns, left and right, that list the tracks. Filling the center below all this is a large still of the film’s young lead actors; on either side of this are illustrations of wild herbs – three on each side.

In spite of the Revue’s lack of prominence on the album’s notes, I think that the band did a good job of coming up with new compositions and old-time tunes that represent their music in imaginative arrangements relating to the context of the film.

After relistening to the LP, I bought the film’s DVD, which was remastered and released in 2022 with an audio commentary by filmmaker and historian Daniel Kremer. The film opens (as does album track A1) with song “Where The Lillies Bloom” sung by its composer, Barbara Mauritz.

Singer-songwriter Mauritz (1949-2014), originally from Texas, was the vocalist with Lamb, an avant-garde folk-jazz-rock fusion group active in San Francisco in the early ’70s. Her first solo album, Music Box, was released on Columbia in 1972.

How did she end up on this movie’s soundtrack? I wish I knew! Being a Columbia artist was probably not coincidental. As we hear, she’s paired with another Columbia artist, Earl Scruggs, on the theme song at the opening. The Revue is laid-back in the track’s background at the start; eventually Randy’s guitar plays the melody, while Earl’s banjo sneaks up to end with beautiful 6/8 triplets in the background, and a few of Josh’s Dobro licks can be heard.

This is music meant to be heard in accompaniment to the visuals that open the film, aptly demonstrated by its trailer, which opens with the character “Devola Luther” (the oldest sister, played by Jan Smithers) singing “A Long Time Traveling” a cappella. The guitar is very much in the background, as is the banjo, which comes up only at the end.

The album contains three “Narrative” tracks by lead character Mary Call Luther which explicate the dramatic turning points in the film’s story. Following the first narrative track, A2, comes “Turkey Chase”, track A3, which plays beneath a scene in which the Luther children are trying to catch wild turkeys.

The Revue is actually playing the traditional fiddle tune “Chicken Reel,” led by Earl with brief interludes by Randy (lead guitar) and Josh Graves (Dobro). This is two minutes of really good straightforward old-time music, which the Revue knew well but rarely recorded.

The next track (A4) presents slow, moody instrumental music that plays behind scenes pertaining to the father’s death: “All My Trials,” a traditional spiritual with Bahamian connections popularized by Joan Baez in the ’60s. Randy’s lead guitar mixes with some nice piano, probably by Mauritz. It’s a pretty performance.

Track A5, “I Love My Love,” which plays behind a romantic sequence, was also popular in the folk revival. English composer Gustav Holst described it as a “Cornish folksong” in his arrangement of it. It’s sung here by Mauritz, over a finger-picked guitar which could be hers, or maybe that of Randy or Earl.

Track A6 repeats the theme, “Where The Lilies Bloom,” as a slow instrumental piece in 4/4 time. Randy’s finger-picked guitar plays it twice, and then Gary’s bass and Earl’s banjo join for two more verses. It really demonstrates Earl’s artistry – such control, economy, lyricism!

In the film’s soundtrack, The Revue plays Earl’s “Flint Hill Special” behind several action scenes – countryside automotive rambles – as Mary Call and the family are in conflict with Kiser. Here’s what that sounds like as played by Earl, Josh, and Vassar on the soundtrack:

The original pressing of the LP diverges from the movie soundtrack at this point, on Track A7, which is also identified as “Flint Hill Special.” No doubt that garnered Earl some royalties for his composition of that name, but the tune played on the original album is the traditional “Sally Ann,” a piece Earl recorded on his 1961 Foggy Mountain Banjo release. (This seems to have been corrected on digitally distributed versions of the album. Hear the LP’s version of “Sally Ann” below.)

It’s an interesting new version, opening with a couple of fiddle licks and then shifting to the percussive sound of the banjo strings being played with right-hand fingerpicking (a “roll”) while the strings are muted with the heel of the left hand. Then the fiddle steps up while at the same time Dobro, bass, and guitar enter – a powerful old-time bluegrass sound. Earl’s banjo takes over second time through, then the fiddle returns and finally Earl closes as he began, percussively. The “shave and a haircut” ending is dominated by Randy’s fancy guitar.

Side two of the album (track B1) opens with music from a scene in which the four Luthers, who’d been at the grocery store learning about wildcrafting, get a ride home from the store owner “Mr. Connell” (played by Tom Spratley). Here, the Revue is heard playing “Carolina Boogie,” basically an update of Earl’s up-tempo blues in G, “Foggy Mountain Special.” It features the entire Revue with a considerable amount of call-response between Randy and Vassar and a great ending.

The family’s funeral for the mountainside burial of their father includes “Been A Long Time Traveling” (track B2) sung a cappella by oldest daughter character, Devola. It’s heard twice, at the beginning and the close of the burial scene.

Following this, the film’s narrative shifts to wildcrafting, with Mary Call’s next visit to the grocery store to sell herbs backed by the Revue playing (track B3) Earl’s “Stash It,” a catchy banjo tune which starts slowly and speeds up.

Next, Mary Call’s poem about witnessing a starburst is heard on track B4, with subtle guitar and piano backup. It’s followed (track B5) by “All The Pretty Little Horses,” a traditional lullaby of African American origin, performed solo here by Randy’s fingerpicked guitar. In the film this plays behind a tender scene in which the Connells visit the Luther home.

Later, as the Luther children are depicted gathering herbs, the melody of the old Carter Family song “Keep On The Sunny Side” (track B6) is heard. First, it’s finger-picked by Randy on guitar, then Earl’s banjo comes in doing harmony. Neat! This is the ultimate father and son duet; Gary, on bass, is close by.

As the narrative approaches climax, we hear Barbara Mauritz singing her “All The Things Inside of Me” (track B7), accompanied by fingerpicked guitar, probably by Randy but possibly by Mauritz herself.

Mary Call’s final narrative (track B8) leads to the full band playing the theme; it’s heard at length as the film’s credits roll.

The preceding description, based on the album, does not point out all the places where the Revue’s music is heard on the film soundtrack – scenes where Randy’s guitar, Gary’s harmonica, Josh’s Dobro, and Vassar’s fiddle add aural nuances to the screenplay. Throughout the film, music editor Robert Takagi places in the aural background little quotes taken from performances like the final version of the theme. Randy’s guitar, in particular, is heard behind several scenes.

Other musical segments in the film are not heard on the album at all, but play a central role in evoking the film’s cultural milieu. Thus, while rambling in the car, they turn on a local radio station: the Revue is heard playing county-rock. Elsewhere, as they are walking home from wildcrafting, there’s a nice a cappella performance of “Feast Here Tonight” by youngest Luther daughter “Ima Dean” (played by Helen Harmon).

These musical segments remind us that the Revue, while featured on the album, is really playing in support of a story, a visual drama. As such their music here is different from that found on all their other albums. It does not sell the sound of the band – it speaks for images of the region’s atmosphere and its culture that emerge in the film’s narrative.

Read more about the Earl Scruggs Revue and find our entire archive of Neil’s Bluegrass Memoirs column here.

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo Credit: Terri Thomson Rosenberg

Edited by Justin Hiltner.

Basic Folk: Tony Kamel

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

You may recognize the voice, face, and vibe of wonderful human being Tony Kamel from his acclaimed bluegrass group, Wood & Wire. But Tony is on Basic Folk to talk about his wonderful solo albums, including his latest, We’re All Gonna Live. The project, which just came out, is a realist-optimist’s guide to navigating a complex and often heartbreaking world. There’s something remarkably encouraging about the songs, which are so humane and so empathetic. The music is rooted in bluegrass, but I found it to be really well-rounded contemporary country-folk with great singing and songwriting. It’s actually a super fun album even though it deals with some heavy topics.

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One of the most though-provoking parts of the interview was talking to Tony about the differences between being in a band and being a solo artist. When he got into bluegrass, he really just wanted to be able to gel with and collaborate with other musicians. He claimed that they let him hang out because he was a great singer and then he started really figuring out the guitar. There’s a culture in bluegrass where people want to master being a picker and Tony didn’t wanna show up and not have the goods. He had his voice to get his foot in the door, then he just got to work and honing all of his skills. While he says he’s still not a good guitarist, I really enjoyed his playing on this album.

Photo Credit: Josh Abel

Ketch Secor
Contains Multitudes, Too

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

After a quarter century fronting the frenetic bluegrass and jug band outfit Old Crow Medicine Show, Ketch Secor is finally breaking out on his own with his solo debut Story The Crow Told Me. The retrospective record looks back on the past few decades, from his own journey to stardom spurred by a chance encounter with Doc Watson to the certified platinum hit “Wagon Wheel,” through the lens of a soundtrack that’s equal parts bluegrass and contemporary country.

“Because the band [recently] celebrated 25 years, I was already in the mindset of a retrospective look,” Secor tells BGS. “I was thinking about everything that’s happened and transpired over that time and started writing about it. In fact, at first I really thought it was going to be a spoken word record before the music eventually took over.”

Talking over the phone, Secor spoke about the timing for his debut project, its connections to both Old Crow and contemporaries like Dierks Bentley, becoming the new host of Tennessee Crossroads on Nashville PBS, and more.

You mentioned this album was initially envisioned as a spoken word compilation. What led to its transformation into a fully realized album?

Ketch Secor: I was working with Jody Stevens. We had written a couple songs that were largely based around spoken word and others we were looking to add background sounds on. Those sounds started getting more and more like what I already do, which is writing songs with choruses and verses and hooks. It just evolved out of the beat poetry version of the album, which was probably a little less listenable but closer to what I was striving for. The musicality of it is a bit of a compromise to be like “Well, I’m going to make this an actual record people might want to listen to” because the spoken word records I enjoy are not highly listened to.

I recently was trying to find them again since my record collection got lost in the 2010 floods we had in Nashville. I went on Spotify, which I’d never used before, to find all these songs in my head like Amiri Baraka’s “It’s Nation Time” or Moondog – a 1950’s renegade beat poet from New York – in trying to get an understanding of how the spoken word music I heard as a kid was being utilized today. It quickly became clear that nobody listens to that stuff anymore. [Laughs] So it seemed like making it musical would make it more fun for people.

It seems a bit ironic that you had to look up all these songs – many of which would be considered part of the Great American Songbook – on a digital streaming platform like Spotify. Talk about two very different worlds colliding!

I talk a little bit about that phenomenon on the song “Junkin’.” A lot of the experience of making music with Old Crow, especially in the beginning when we were still developing a canon, was about music’s physical form. When the band first started the internet was still new and we were still selling cassettes. The last time I made a solo record was on tape, the band didn’t have a website and none of us even used email when all of this started. It meant that searching for the physical was really important.

There’s another song on the album called “Thanks Again” that highlights the personal relationships that you develop out on the road – these chance encounters that are very much real and put the wind in your sails. There’s something to be said about having to come of age in a time when information was so tactile and often involved a human touch.

With the emergence of the internet and things like streaming and social media it really is an entirely different world for artists to navigate nowadays.

I realized that I had a kind of time capsule in my mind I had yet to crack open in the days before going in to make this record, which was done quickly and often with me writing the songs as we were recording them. Opening it up was really cathartic and essential for me to process and move past because the experience of coming to Nashville when we did and the kind of band we were in was, at times, slightly traumatic. It was a very intense quest similar to a military deployment, being a minor league ball player fighting your way through the ranks or even being a teenage whaler in Moby Dick. You end up leaving everything else behind in search of this one pursuit.

It’s not unique to come to Nashville to make it big, but what made our experience unique was that we were trying to do it with these traditional sounds in an era in which technological changes were happening as we were doing it. It was almost like we were going against the literal tide with our choices and artistic motivation.

You just mentioned writing these songs as you were recording them. Is that something you’d done before?

That was a very new way of going about things. I understand that record-making has changed a lot since we first started – our most popular Old Crow records that gave us a career were the early ones we made with Dave Rawlings on analog tape that we cut with a razor blade. Making a record the way Gillian [Welch] and Dave do is very studious, labor and time-intensive. But now the technology exists to do it super fast.

This record almost felt like a throwback to the seminal recordings of the 1920s and ‘30s that are the headwaters of our sound. Those records were made in three minutes oftentimes without knowing what the arrangements would be. Three minutes wasn’t the time frame of hillbilly music until the record company said it was – they just sat there, watched the light turn on and played. Writing a song and building a track like that actually felt really on par with what it would have been like going to Camden, New Jersey, in 1928 on a train when you’d never left your county before that. The challenge is keeping one foot in the past and one in the present. When you play fiddles and banjos and blow harmonica for a living the instrument kind of does it for you.

You name dropped Jody Stevens a few minutes ago. How’d y’all come together and what was it like working with him?

We met through my publishing company. I was going to do a co-write with him and knew he’d written a lot of songs for contemporary country artists, so I brought my bag of tricks that I bring out when I try to pretend I’m going to write the next big, top 10 country smash, except for this one time with Darius [Rucker]. I love country music even though I feel that in the past 25 years I have a whole lot less in common with it than I did when I was a kid, in terms of what it sounds like today in its mainstream output versus when I was singing along to Jo Dee Messina when I was 19. It was interesting to circle the wagons with Jody because he brought such a unique perspective in record making that comes from contemporary country music even though his roots are in hip-hop.

The other thing that brought us together was that Jody had seen Old Crow a lot, especially in our early days from 2000-2005, which is the sweet spot I try to explore on this record. He’d been there at the Station Inn and the festival Lightning 100 used to do downtown and some of these other places that have since been replaced by high rises. The fact that he had been a first-account witness to the band was really helpful to bounce ideas off of. His sister was also a big Old Crow fan and even though I’ve never met her I thought about her as my target demographic – someone who saw us back in 2001 and wanted to know what that time capsule looked like.

The fact that Jody had done all this work with people that rapped – only to find that 25 years later the tapes and demos he’d made with Jelly Roll were now part of a pop culture consciousness that hadn’t been there when he first started working on them – gave him a similar orientation to country music that I have about Americana. When I got started there was nothing called Americana and nobody lived outside of contemporary country music unless you were alt-country. Coming into this period of time in Nashville where it wasn’t yet determined that anyone with a banjo could make it that wasn’t bluegrass is another place where Jody and I shared commonality. The rap game has since become a massive component to contemporary country music similar to how Americana has become the tastemaker for anything roots-related.

In terms of the sound on this record, the way you move between more Old Crow-esque bluegrass and those pop country flavors reminds me a lot of Dierks Bentley, another person who excels at showcasing the best of both sides of roots music.

I came up with Dierks and remember witnessing his arrival. Before [“What Was I Thinkin’”] came out there was an issue of CMA Up Close that had a story about us on the page opposite one about Dierks and I thought to myself, “Well, if a guy named Dierks Bentley can make it, then probably a guy named Ketch Secor can, too.” Surely Nashville has the appetite for two oddly-named boys. [Laughs] Then I went on and took a moniker that wasn’t my name. Because of that I feel very much like a brand-new artist now and have developed a strong sense of empathy for the young guns who are out there trying to put their stuff out for the first time, because it’s so much harder now than when I was a kid.

What are some of those major hurdles you’ve noticed for new artists today compared to what you first encountered with Old Crow?

Now the way you stand out in a crowd is through visual means that often require the least amount of artistic acumen and the most amount of social media acumen. So far, I’m not sure it’s helping the cream rise to the top, though. The skill set should be how good can you pick a banjo, not how good can you pick the keypad on your iPhone, even though you have to do both to be successful today. When I was a kid it was about making these connections with people, knocking on doors so many times that every time something good came to me [it did] on account of me showing up and being in the right place at the right time.

Seeking a viral moment has an undue effect of potentially limiting the number of new entrants into the arena. For one generation, what was once divinized is now digitized. I’m sure that if there’s a God above that He or She can use the binary code to reach people and connect their children. I can pick up The New York Times and feel like there’s a closeness with the loss in Texas right now, which is only amplified by me having swam in the Guadalupe before and having a personal connection to the area. If you’ve plunged in the waters yourself then you’ll share something so much more vital with those who are experiencing the loss.

It’s really a metaphor for how we all have a shot at playing the Grand Ole Opry or going from the Station Inn to the Ryman like I did. There’s a turnstile in front of that and I want to see it spinning wide so that artists of all stripes can find their way up to that stage where they belong. As a steward of those stages, I want to see the people show up who have found music as the great connector that, regardless of the speed of the computer in your pocket, the speed of music breaks all other forms of sonic barriers.

In terms of personnel, what motivated you to bring in past and present Old Crow members like Willie Watson, Critter Fuqua, and Morgan Jahnig to record these songs with?

I really wanted to have all the past members of Old Crow on the record, because it felt like a bit of an offering to the gods to say “thanks.” So I really wanted a little bit of all their spirits on it. Not only that, but I read through a lot of old journals and called up some people I’d met hitchhiking, but hadn’t talked to in 25 years. I went and visited the guy who coined the term “Wagon Wheel,” because that song was always called “Rock Me Mama” until I met James Sizemore – a wonderful rascal and drug-dealing Vietnam vet.

I went to see him on his deathbed and recorded phone conversations late at night with old friends. While none of that stuff is necessarily on the record in its physical form, it all went into the process of trying to bake something that really felt like I was living in the past and bringing it to the present through these songs. I think a lot about cairn stones that the Inuit people up north call inuksuit, which are like sign posts that tell you where to turn, but they’re also spiritual. So imagine a road sign that could say “300 miles to Memphis,” but also told you the ancestral route of the settlers who first brought buffalo down 7,000 years ago, sort of like the duality of a time signature.

That duality of time reminds me of one of the album’s songs, “What Nashville Was,” which highlights how much Nashville has changed over the decades while also highlighting how no matter how many venues are replaced with condos, music will always be the city’s heartbeat.

A lot about the way Bob [Dylan’s] record Nashville Skyline had a way of pointing out Nashville for the first time to anyone who didn’t live in the South or listen to country music. He was really pointing to Nashville from a unique perspective and certainly Bob Dylan’s Nashville was the kind of Nashville that I was looking for when I first started playing on the street corner there in 1996.

Similarly, I was also looking for Dolly Parton’s Nashville. I wanted the Nashville that Dolly got when she stepped out of the pickup truck and married the first guy that honked his horn at her, the kind of Nashville where Willie Nelson was laying down in the street in front of Tootsie’s thinking he’s gonna kill himself because nobody wants his songs.

I used “Girl From The North Country” as the template for a love letter to a changing place and a cityscape that has gone on to do so much stuff that it itself is largely oblivious to the price it pays for its constant reinvention. And the price is that who we’re ushering in … is probably because you were on a reality TV show more consistently than because you had a song that people couldn’t stop singing at summer camps. Not that those things are good or bad, they just change. But we’re at a point now where the legend and lore of Nashville has grown so much that we’re at risk of the bubble bursting and it being something like Seattle after grunge or Austin after it wasn’t weird anymore – which is a glass, monolithic, industry executive business center. Oftentimes those forces stand in opposition to the ability of songwriters, hucksters, showmen, and the survival spirit that goes into creating the next Bob Dylan of a generation. I’m hoping that we, the architects of Nashville, can endeavor to build a place that still allows a hearty hero or heroine to come through the gates just like Loretta Lynn or Jack White did.

You were recently named the new host of Tennessee Crossroads on Nashville Public Television. How’d that opportunity come about and what’s it mean to you?

When PBS called me about this unique role that had come available with the sudden and sad loss of Joe [Elmore] – who ran the show for 30 or so years – it only made sense to find someone else to step in who’s also run a business for around 30 years that’s similar to Tennessee Crossroads. Old Crow Medicine Show has been criss-crossing the American south getting inspired by quilters, gee-haw whimmy diddles, carvers, and folks that plant by the lunar signs – those are the kind of folk heroes that go into our music. They’re also the same kind of stories that this show loves to tell.

I love public broadcasting and care a lot about access to it in this country. I made my television debut on our local PBS affiliate up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia when I was in fifth grade. I fell in love with my own backyard because Ken Burns showed me what was so rich about it and so frightening and tragic, which was the bones of the Union and Confederate armies right here, just past the fence. Ken Burns really illuminated that for me and ever since I’ve been the biggest fan of public broadcasting.

What has the process of bringing this record to life taught you about yourself?

I was born about 35 miles outside the birthplace of Walt Whitman and always wondered why I like the guy so much. Then I recently rode my bicycle there and thought, “God, this guy’s place is really popular!” There were people sleeping on a stoop and waiting for a free sandwich in the parking lot. And it turns out where Walt Whitman used to live is like the center of the drug-addled corpse that is parts of Camden, New Jersey. It looks a bit like the Dickerson Road corridor, at least as it was in about 1999.

I feel like Walt really said it best when he said he contains multitudes on “Song Of Myself, 51.” I feel as a picker of banjos and fiddles and guitars and dulcimers and auto harps; and a blower of jugs and juice harps and harmonicas; and a singer of ballads and lamentations pretty songs; and [an attender of] corn shuckins, frolics, and cotillions, that I am like you, a container of multitudes.

Photo Credit: Jody Stevens

The Roots Music of
Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Explained

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Writer’s Note: If you haven’t seen Sinners yet, be warned – there are significant spoilers below.)

 

“There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death, conjuring spirits from the past and the future…”

 

So begins the film Sinners, the epic Southern gothic horror film from acclaimed director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station, Black Panther). Sinners tells of twins Smoke and Stack Moore (both played by a fantastic Michael B. Jordan), who open a juke joint with the help of their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) in their small Mississippi hometown in 1932. Driven by a love for blues music and a desire to create a safe gathering place for other Black people, the twins establish Club Juke at a defunct sawmill, unwittingly setting into motion a sinister chain of events.

That opening narration, which points to Sammie and his prodigious musical gifts, accompanies an evocative montage of folk imagery, as the narrator outlines the importance of musical storytellers within tight-knit communities. One such folk figure is the West African griot, a protector of oral tradition who also often served as leaders in their communities. The montage is backed by haunting resonator guitar, a musical motif that will repeat throughout the film.

Coogler tapped the GRAMMY- and Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson to score Sinners, continuing the creative partnership the two began with Coogler’s 2013 film Fruitvale Station (which also stars Michael B. Jordan). Rootsy and atmospheric, the score takes blues influences and ratchets up the tension with strings and percussion to suit the horror themes that unfold midway through the story.

Artists who perform on the Sinners soundtrack include Brittany Howard, Cedric Burnside, Rhiannon Giddens, Alice Smith and Rod Wave. Players on the Sinners score include Buddy Guy, Bobby Rush, Justin Robinson, and Leyla McCalla. Roots musician and actor Lola Kirke appears in the film as Joan, a member of the KKK who becomes a vampire.

Sinners is set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a Delta city famous for its rich blues music history and for its role in the Great Migration, which, on the whole, found over six million Black Americans leaving the Southeast for large cities in other regions – including Chicago, Detroit, New York City and Cleveland – in order to flee racial segregation, Jim Crow laws and racial violence like lynching.

Dense with musical references, Sinners incorporates blues history into the naming of its characters, too. Stack’s name likely references the classic American folk song “Stagger Lee,” also known as “Stagolee” or “Stack O’ Lee Blues.” That tune tells the story of a real-life man and professional procurer, Lee Shelton, who lived in St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 1800s. Friends called Shelton “Stag” because of his perpetual bachelorhood, and, at times, “Stag” became “Stack.” On Christmas Day, 1895, Stack shot and killed a man named Billy Lyons after Lyons stole Stack’s Stetson cowboy hat, and the rest would soon become musical history.

Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and as Stack, in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners.’

The song’s original writer is unknown, and it has been recorded and performed by a bevy of artists in the intervening decades. One of the most popular recordings is performed by Mississippi John Hurt, a pioneering blues artist. In 1957, Louisiana-born R&B singer Lloyd Price rewrote the song as an upbeat rock number, scoring a number one Billboard pop hit. When Price performed the song on American Bandstand, host Dick Clark had him tone down the “violent” lyrics by giving the song a happy ending.

While Stack’s name is loaded with meaning, the name Smoke is more ambiguous, though as a pair the twins’ names could point to “Smokestack Lightning,” a 1956 song by another Mississippi blues artist, Howlin’ Wolf.

The plot kicks off in earnest when Stack and Smoke return to Clarksdale from Chicago, where they hoped to escape the Jim Crow racism of their home state. Disillusioned by the racism they still encountered once there, the brothers decide to move home to establish Club Juke, recruiting their cousin Sammie to be part of the house band. Sammie is rarely seen without his guitar, a 1932 Dobro Cyclops resonator that Göransson used to record much of the film’s score.

Stack claims that the guitar he and Smoke give to Sammie once belonged to Charley Patton, the Mississippi-born singer and guitarist widely considered to be the “father of the Delta Blues.” (At the movie’s end, Smoke reveals the truth to Sammie: that the guitar actually belonged to his and Stack’s father all along.) Showing Stack his chops, Sammie performs “Travelin’,” a song original to the film.

The emotional and artistic high point of Sinners is a surreal, mid-party musical number that connects the blues to Black music traditions from past and future eras, including hip-hop and rock and roll. The scene begins at Club Juke, with Sammie performing the original song “I Lied to You.” The character Delta Slim soon delivers a short monologue, telling Sammie, “Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought this with us from home. It’s magic, what we do. It’s sacred, and big.”

When the opening narration replays after Slim’s speech, things get psychedelic. An electric guitarist dressed in ‘70s rock and roll regalia appears, shredding licks while Club Juke dances around him. A DJ booth appears, with a man in ‘80s hip-hop-inspired clothing behind the boards. B-boys dance among club-goers, and a West African griot appears carrying a drum. Time dissolves as boundaries between musical traditions blur, capturing the essence of 20th-century Black music in one stunning scene.

Trouble starts when a trio of vampiric folk musicians (yes, you read that right) tries to enter Club Juke, hoping to perform. That image of a literal blood-sucking monster in no small part resembles the white colonization of Black music, particularly blues music, adding gravitas to the unexpected plot development. The trio tries to woo their way in with a folksy version of the traditional blues song “Pick Poor Robin Clean,” made popular by Virgninia-born blues artist Luke Jordan in 1927 and the artists Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas – from Louisiana and Texas, respectively – in 1931.

(L to R) Peter Dreimanis as Bert, Jack O’Connell as Remmick, Hailee Steinfeld as Mary, and Lola Kirke as Joan in Warner Bros. Pictures’ ‘Sinners.’

After being denied entry to Club Juke, the trio retreats, performing a hypnotic rendition of the Scottish/Irish folk song “Wild Mountain Thyme” outside the club grounds. The song was especially popular during the American folk music revival and has been recorded by Bonnie Dobson, Judy Collins and Joan Baez, among many other artists.

As the vampire plot unfolds, the musical story takes a bit of a backseat, though a major fight scene between the remaining Club Juke revelers and the ever-growing contingent of vampires does include another major musical number. Led by Remmick, the group performs a chilling, spirited version of the hop jig “Rocky Road to Dublin,” an Irish folk music standard with roots dating back to the mid-19th century.

The next big musical moment comes after the film’s end when, taking a cue from his MCU days, Coogler includes a post-credits scene. Set in Chicago in 1992, the scene features two familiar faces: blues legend Buddy Guy, who plays elderly Sammie, and contemporary blues star Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, a member of the elder Sammie’s band.

Guy, who also performs a version of “Travelin’” on the Sinners soundtrack, was born in 1936 to Louisiana sharecroppers and moved to Chicago to pursue music when he was 21. Shortly after relocating, Guy would meet Chicago blues legend – and Mississippi native – Muddy Waters, who would become his friend and mentor. It’s a full circle moment to close out the film, and one that reinforces the importance of lineage to the blues music tradition.

Unsurprisingly, Sinners is a movie that rewards rewatches. Coogler and his collaborators built a musical world rich with detail and allusion, and did so with what was clearly an enormous amount of love and passion. If you’re a music fan, Sinners is well worth your time – just be careful if you hear a late-night knock at your door.

Sinners is now available to stream on HBO Max and is available to rent VOD. The film is also still showing in a limited number of theaters in select markets.

All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Lead Image: Miles Caton as Sammie Moore in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Sinners.

Brent Cobb
Ain’t Rocked In a While

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

He might be a renowned lyricist and self-proclaimed songwriter-singer (not singer-songwriter). His typical sound may simmer with a supremely chill mix of country, blues, and soul. But Brent Cobb got his start with the crunchy thunder of guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll and his seventh album takes him back.

Tapping the raw rage of garage rock, the distorted domination of ‘70s proto-metal, and more, Ain’t Rocked In a While finds this GRAMMY-nominated master of phrase returning to a world where the guitar riff is king – his first love as a musician. Co-produced with Oran Thornton and recorded live, 10 songs combine Cobb’s laid-back style with the immortal edge of bands like Black Sabbath, Metallica, and heavier inspirations still. But while old metalheads do tend to get rusty, this project is razor sharp.

Speaking with Good Country, Cobb explains the change of pace, as well as his abiding love for the rock ‘n’ roll spirit and new appreciation for classic-rock lyrics. Plus, the long-haired country boy explains how Ain’t Rocked In a While could fairly be considered “dad rock.”

I want to get the story behind this record. Ain’t Rocked in While is one of those projects that really seems to do what it say it’s going to do. How much of a creative release was this for you?

Brent Cobb: Well, this project was cool because I was focused more on riff and just really digging back into the foundation of what I grew up on. My first band was a rock band with my best friend Justin, who played guitar. He was real into Pink Floyd and AC/DC and Black Sabbath, and had me learning all those songs to sing. So when I was writing riffs and lyrics for this album, I sort of went back and was rediscovering those songs that I grew up learning.

Back then, even though I was learning the lyrics, I was just learning them to sing it. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying and I didn’t think of those songs as very lyrical songs. I just enjoyed the groove. With this go ‘round, it really took all the pressure off of trying to write a lyrical song – which in turn made the lyrics come way easier. It also made me aware of just how lyrical those old classic rock songs were.

Oh, right!

I didn’t notice it or I didn’t appreciate it, but I don’t guess you would as a teenager. So that was the whole process – I was just trying to write a riff album and wanted to rock a little and show the audience a reference for a live show when they came, but wound up writing lyrical songs anyway.

I guess you just can’t help it. You’ve always been known as a storyteller and a songwriter first, and you even did a gospel record just a few cycles ago. Where does hard rock fit into your listening habits?

It all has always coexisted in my little world. My mom’s from Cleveland, Ohio, and my uncles – her brothers – they were all rockers into Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and just the classic stuff. But then here, my dad was in a band with his brother – my other uncle – and my dad would cover the early ‘50s and ‘60s rock ‘n’ roll and my uncle would do classic country. So I grew up around that, but if you looked at any of my playlists, it’s just always been real eclectic that way for sure. For this album, Master of Reality [by] Black Sabbath was probably the biggest influence and the one that I would keep returning to for inspiration. And not just in riffs, but in the way that they structured that album to ebb and flow.

This might be a hard question to answer, but how heavy do your tastes get? What do you think would be the hardest hitting band in your collection?

Oh man. Well, [for] modern [artists], I’d probably say the band Sleep. Have you ever listened to much of them?

I don’t think so. I’m going to have to check that out right after this.

It’s like stoner metal. That’s probably the hardest stuff that I’ll listen to right now. But I don’t know – I mean, Sabbath is so hard still to this day. Those first five albums are unreal. … With Sleep, that’s some heavy stoner metal.

Yeah, I’m looking on Spotify right now. They’ve got songs like “Marijuanauts’s Theme.” [Laughs] That’s an awesome title.

Dude, I know! But that stuff is like, you can go find sections of old Sabbath songs and it’s kind of like [Sleep] built a whole sound on little sections of Sabbath songs. But then if you go further, it’s all blues – that’s all it is.

For any true rock record, the recording itself is so important – trying to capture the energy. I know you recorded live-to-tape and that seems like the rock ‘n’ roll dream, right? Was that experience different from digital recording?

Well, honestly, each of my albums have always been recorded to tape except Keep ‘Em On They Toes. But with that said, it is a modern world and we still record to tape and then dump all that into Pro Tools to where it’s easier to edit, then take that and dump it all back to tape. You get the original physical, sonic difference that is recording to tape when each tape is completely different, because the needle’s hitting different, the amp was hotter, or whatever. But then we fast forward to the modern world to where we can just really be quicker and more efficient.

I think we had 10 days blocked off to record, and then I got sick on the first two days. And then Oran [Thornton], my co-producer and head engineer, he got sick for two days. And so we wound up recording in seven or eight days.

That is a plus of the modern age for sure. In any case, it came out sounding really tight – you recorded as a band, right?

That’s right. It’s the touring band [The Fixin’s] I’ve had for a while now. … The studio we recorded at in Springfield, Missouri, was this little bitty, almost broom-closet size live room, and they were all in the main live room together. I did want to isolate myself, so I was in an even smaller little isolation booth with a window where we could still see each other. … I obviously am not as experienced in singing those type songs and playing those type riffs at the same time, so I knew I was going to screw up some lyric phrasings and I didn’t want to mess everything else up. So I was the only thing I isolated.

Where’d that title track come from? “Ain’t Rocked In a While” – this definitely has that Black Sabbath feel, stretching out to five minutes.

Straight up. It started because I had bought my son a little drum kit for his fourth birthday a couple years ago. He just loves the drums … and then I would set my amp up and get my guitar out and we’d just be jamming in his room. One day he was like, “Dad, play some rock ‘n’ roll guitar.” And I’d hit a little lick and he’s like, “No, no, rock ‘n’ roll.” I’d play another little lick. And he said, “No, dad, like Mattman” – which is [the Fixin’s guitar player] Matt [McDaniel]. I was doing the best I could, really just trying to prove to him that daddy could rock.

That’s funny!

So I came up with that “Ain’t Rocked In a While” riff and then it turned into me proving to my son, “I have rocked before, boy. It just ain’t been a while.” I thought it would be funny, but I also thought, “Well, all of us are sort of that way.” I’m nearly 40 and a father of two, so you could definitely consider this album Dad Rock, but all our kids don’t know. We all had some rock eras, whether that be in life or musically or whatever it is.

Well, you still got the hair, so I think it’s easier to make that case.

[Laughs] Hell yeah. It’s funny you say that. My mama just yesterday, she used to be a hairdresser and had her own business, and she was like, “You need to let me cut your hair.” And I was like, “Look, I’m going to keep it growing until it don’t grow no more.” I’m barely gray and I ain’t thinning too much yet. Until that happens, I’m going to keep rocking the long hair.

A little earlier you mentioned how [hard rock is] all blues at the bottom, right? I think that really comes through in a song like “Do It All the Time.”

Man, I’m going to have to give my son some co-writing credit on this album, I guess. That riff did come out very Skynyrd-esque, but … I was actually trying to do my best James Gang feel with the riff, the melody, and the double vocals on that chorus. That early James Gang stuff is so badass – but I think Skynyrd also was probably trying to do their best James Gang on some of their stuff.

Anyway, the idea of that song is from when [my son] Tuck was even younger, we’d be like “Oh man. Look dude, you ate all your food!” And he would say, “I did it, and I do it all the time.” So I always had that. I started saying “I do it all the time!” And then I don’t know how much I should say, but sometimes when you’re parents, you and your other half may not be on the same page. … You’re just both sleep-deprived and sometimes it’s hard to see. And so I think we were having a little moment of that and I was going, “I tried then and I try now and I try all the time. I did it and I do it all the time, babe!” So that’s where it came from.

Okay, one more thing here. For fans who come out and see you live, do you think this is going to change the shows? Are you guys going to rock out more or what?

I mean the only way that we’ll rock out more is we just have more songs to rock out to. But no, in every album that I’ve ever put out all the way back to 2006 with No Place Left to Leave, there’ve always been rock leaning songs in my catalog – including songs that others have recorded; some of the Whiskey Myers stuff, or The Steel Woods stuff. For a little bit there seemed like a disconnect, because I don’t think [people at my shows] were aware of that rock stuff, but it’s just a funner show to me and for us especially.

Now we just have more to pull from, and for people who show up, it’s the same show. I try to do songs from every album and I’ll take requests, too. I don’t turn those down. But now, I think people will show up and they won’t be taken by surprise at all if it does drop.

Photo Credit: Jace Kartye

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Tray Wellington, Dallas Burrow, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Country and folk, bluegrass and new acoustic music all come together in this week’s edition of our new music and premiere roundup!

First up, country singer-songwriter Dallas Burrow is joined by Ray Wylie Hubbard on a brand new music video for their duo track, “Read ‘Em and Weep,” from Burrow’s upcoming September release. The song was inspired by classic gambling songs, so of course Ray Wylie was the perfect special guest to tap for the track and the country & western-styled video. Also bringing a new music video this week are Americana/folk trio The Last Revel, of Minneapolis. “Static” is about the overwhelm and confusion of new love.

In bluegrass, Chris Jones & the Night Drivers tap Jim Lauderdale for a new track, “How Small of Me.” Despite knowing each other for decades, it’s the first time Jones and Lauderdale have collaborated in the studio. Jones’ labelmates Deanie Richardson & Kimber Ludiker debut another new twin fiddle tune, this time offering their take on a Frank Wakefield classic, “New Camptown Races,” with a mighty backing band.

From experimental string band fringes we have a few stellar selections, as well. Award-winning banjoist Tray Wellington readies a new EP – set for release August 8 – with a performance video of an original song, “Man on the Moon,” continuing his creative relationship and fascination with the earth’s celestial relative. It’s jammy, expressive, and contemplative and shows a blend of many of the different styles of ‘grass he often employs. Mandolinist and composer Ethan Setiawan has new music on the way, too. His next project, Encyclopedia Mandolinnica, arrives mid-August and to celebrate, he’s shared a track featuring Joe K. Walsh called “Mount Holly.”

Finally, you won’t want to miss the return of Thompson the Fox, Tokyo’s quartet of mind-bending pickers who combine jazz, bebop, new acoustic, bluegrass, and so much more. Volume 2 of The Fox In Tiger’s Clothing – entitled TIGER – drops next month, so we’re sharing “Minute Waltz Rag,” the group’s reimagination of Chopin’s quintessential composition that’s ragtime, bluegrass, classical, and jazz altogether. Still, it’s incredibly easy to listen to – and impressive in technique and artfulness, both.

It’s all right here on BGS and, truly, You Gotta Hear This!

Dallas Burrow, “Read ‘Em and Weep” featuring Ray Wylie Hubbard

Artist: Dallas Burrow
Hometown: New Braunfels, Texas
Song: “Read ‘Em & Weep” featuring Ray Wylie Hubbard
Album: The Way The West Was Won
Release Date: July 18, 2025 (video); September 26, 2025 (album)
Label: Forty Below Records

In Their Words: “This song, which serves as the opening track of the album, is actually a musical sequel to a song I wrote with my good friend Charley Crockett called ‘The Only Game in Town,’ which I wrote all the verses for after he brought me a chorus and a chord progression. In that song’s third verse the narrator tells us, ‘The dealer is [his] friend and the house always wins.’ This song you might say serves as a challenge to its prequel, with the opening verse declaring, ‘I heard the dealer was your friend, I heard you know him well.’ Both, stylistically, were inspired by great gambling songs like ‘Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold’ by Townes Van Zandt and ‘Dust of the Chase’ by Ray Wylie Hubbard. It was only fitting then that Ray Wylie would sing on this tune. I gave him the whole record to listen to and this was the one he picked out to sing on. It was quite the honor to have him sing the entire second verse, since he’s always been one of my biggest inspirations and heroes. The tune opens with producer Lloyd Maines counting it off and playing a striking harmonic guitar part. As the track continues to build it is further brought to life by Lloyd’s legendary Dobro playing, and Katie Shore’s immaculate fiddle work.” – Dallas Burrow

Track Credits:
Ray Wylie Hubbard – Vocals
Dallas Burrow – Vocals, acoustic guitar, songwriter
Katie Shore – Fiddle
Lloyd Maines – Dobro, bass, acoustic guitar, producer
Pat Manske – percussion

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, “How Small of Me” featuring Jim Lauderdale

Artist: Chris Jones & The Night Drivers
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “How Small of Me”
Release Date: July 18, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “Jim Lauderdale and I have been friends for decades now, but this is the first time we have ever sung together on a recording, so I’m really happy about this. Meanwhile I co-wrote the song with John McCutcheon, somebody I first met when I was a teenager, and though more recently, he’s somebody who the band and I have performed with a few times at the Walnut Valley Festival in Kansas, we had never written a song together until last year, and ‘How Small of Me’ is one of our first results.” – Chris Jones

Track Credits:
Chris Jones – Acoustic guitar, lead vocal
Jim Lauderdale – Harmony vocal
Mark Stoffel – Mandolin
Grace van’t Hof – Ukelele
Jon Weisberger – Bass
Tony Creasman – Drums
Chris Scruggs – Steel guitar

The Last Revel, “Static”

Artist: The Last Revel
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Song: “Static”
Album: Gone For Good
Release Date: July 18, 2025
Label: Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “It’s a simple little song about how overwhelming and confusing love can feel especially in the beginning. It’s about losing yourself and everything you have just to spend time with the only person that seems to be vibrating at the same frantic frequency while everything else seems still and static.” – Lee Henke

Deanie Richardson & Kimber Ludiker, “New Camptown Races”

Artist: Deanie Richardson & Kimber Ludiker
Song: “New Camptown Races”
Release Date: July 18, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘New Camptown Races’ is a song that Kimber and I played together last year and it went so well we knew it was one we wanted on this record. I went to a recording from one of my fiddle heroes, Randy Howard, on this. I will admit, I did steal a few licks from Randy on this one. Love that my dear friend is with us on this track.” – Deanie Richardson

“We have long loved Frank Wakefield’s great mandolin tune ‘New Camptown Races,’ which quickly became part of the bluegrass canon when he first recorded it in 1957. We set out to create a twin fiddle reimagining of this classic Bb tune with the spirit of a high-energy late-night jam with phenomenal playing by Tristan Scroggins on mandolin, Kristin Scott Benson on banjo, Cody Kilby on guitar, and Hasee Ciaccio on bass.” – Kimber Ludiker

Track Credits:
Deanie Richardson – Fiddle
Kimber Ludiker – Fiddle
Cody Kilby – Acoustic guitar
Hasee Ciaccio – Upright bass
Tristan Scroggins – Mandolin
Kristin Scott Benson – Banjo

Ethan Setiawan, “Mount Holly” featuring Joe K. Walsh


(Click to listen)

Artist name: Ethan Setiawan
Hometown: Cornish, Maine
Song: “Mount Holly” featuring Joe K. Walsh
Album: Encyclopedia Mandolinnica
Release Date: July 23, 2025 (single); August 15, 2025 (album)
Label: Adhyâropa Records

In Their Words: “This one’s for the Fogels, at whose cabin in Vermont I spent a couple of great New Years, and who smoke the most delicious meat at all hours at festivals in the Northeast. I started to work on the tune in 2022 or 2023 up in Vermont and then finished it soon before tracking with Joe in early 2024. I finished it without a mandolin in hand, which lately has been a good exercise in letting my ear rather than my hands guide the composition. I’m playing mandola and Joe is playing octave mandolin, because we had to get in those low mandolins!” – Ethan Setiawan

Thompson the Fox, “Minute Waltz Rag”

Artist: Thompson the Fox
Hometown: Tokyo, Japan
Song: “Minute Waltz Rag”
Album: The Fox In Tiger’s Clothing, Vol.2: TIGER
Release Date: August 9, 2025
Label: Prefab Records

In Their Words: “Following our May release of The Fox In Tiger’s Clothing, Vol.1: FOX, we’re excited to announce the upcoming release of its sister album, Vol.2: TIGER, coming out on August 9.

“The album title is a play on two phrases from different cultures: the Japanese proverb, ‘The fox borrowing the tiger’s authority’ and the English idiom, ‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing.’

“While Vol.1: FOX consisted entirely of our original compositions, Vol.2: TIGER is a collection of cover tunes. Ahead of the album’s release, we’ve just shared a music video for ‘Minute Waltz Rag.’ It’s a reimagining of Chopin’s beautiful waltz, which I arranged in two-time for this quartet. We hope you enjoy it!” – Takumi Kodera

Track Credits:
Rie Koyama – Xylophone
Takumi Kodera – Banjo
Akihide Teshima – Bass
Tomohito Yoshijima – Drums

Video Credit: Takumi Kodera

Tray Wellington, “Man on the Moon”

Artist: Tray Wellington
Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina
Song: Man on the Moon
Album: Spatial Awareness (EP)
Release Date: July 18, 2025 (single); August 8, 2025 (EP)
Label: Free Dirt Records

In Their Words: “‘Man on the Moon’ is one of the most personal songs I’ve ever written. I wanted to capture how easy it is to hide struggle behind a smile and how many of us carry that weight silently. Writing has always helped me process things I hadn’t fully acknowledged and I hope it can do the same for someone else. This track was also one of my favorites for production as it’s one of the songs I feel like we really captured the feelings of the song throughout.” – Tray Wellington

Video Credit: Rob Laughter

Photo Credit: Tray Wellington by Heidi Holloway; Dallas Burrow by Melissa Payne.

Vandoliers Find Liberation
in Life Behind Bars

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Vandoliers are doing their part to keep the spirit of alt-country alive with their raucous blend of punk, country, and mariachi. In other words, they’re the quintessential Texas dive bar band.

They’ve long been outspoken supporters of the queer community, going viral for protesting the Tennessee Drag Band by performing in dresses as a protest; that was when lead singer Jenni Rose realized that she may be a member of the LGBTQIA+ community herself. And so, the band’s fifth and newest album, Life Behind Bars (released June 27), finds the Vandoliers exploring the wild desert landscape of the heart: sobriety, grief, gender dysphoria — and joy in liberation.

Good Country spoke with group members Rose and multi-instrumentalist Cory Graves in early June about collaborating as a six-piece band, working with producer Ted Hutt to push the band to ever-more lyrical honesty and musical proficiency, and the profound impact Jenni’s sobriety and coming out has had on the band.

The album’s title track, “Life Behind Bars,” deals in part with frustrations of life on the road – but Vandoliers are known for bringing the party. How do you balance these two realities?

Jenni Rose: I couldn’t be a lead singer of this band unless I got sober. I tried really hard to be the party person and be the lead singer and be able to do this hundreds of times a year. I just couldn’t do everything. Put the party down for a little bit, and that brought up so much in my life. It made the shows exponentially better. It made me a better singer. On this record, you’re really hearing me processing this new identity, this new life unfolding. It starts with the question, “Why can’t I get sober?” and then it’s like – “Oh my God, I’m in the wrong body.”

I was dealing with a lot. Cory was dealing with a lot, the whole band was dealing with a lot. We have made four records of us asking, “Where am I at in my life? What am I going through?” We’ve been able to conquer the humorous and the serious, so we weren’t really out of our comfort zone by talking about big feelings, but they’re in this album for sure.

The song has four co-writers: you two, Joshua Ray Walker, and John Pedigo – Texas royalty for sure. While it’s common for pop country songs to have many writers, it’s a bit unusual in the Americana world. How did you all even find yourselves in one place together?

JR: Josh Walker and I are really close. I was with him a lot during his cancer diagnosis. We were catching up and we were about to go to Sonic Ranch to record. I suggested we just go write a song and call up John, who used to produce our records. He pretty much has a co-write on every Vandoliers record except for the last one. We love writing together.

Josh Walker brought up the frustrations with touring and we were talking about how we can keep doing it. Then we thought, “Let’s say we didn’t do it. What else are we gonna do? What kind of jobs are hiring 40-year-olds for entry-level positions?” Cory and Josh had been talking about this line “life behind bars” as a double entendre for years. We all related to it and everybody just started throwing out lines. And then by the end of it, we were all screaming the hook and we had a song.

When you began working with producer, Ted Hutt, he said your songs were “superficial” and pushed you to go deeper. How was it to hear that feedback?

JR: It was wonderful. That conversation was like a year before we got to the studio. So I came in with like 40 tunes. Cory came in with like six or seven. Ted really took the time to listen to our writing and pick the songs that were right for the record. He pushed me so hard with my lyric writing and my vocal performance.

I was writing and rewriting things, clarifying, digging deeper into what I was trying to say and that opened me up to a lot of emotions. I knew I was gonna hit gender dysphoria, but I didn’t know I was gonna hit it there. Then [the] Pandora’s Box was completely opened.

Cory Graves: We’ve always craved a producer that would come in and be like a seventh voice in the room, like a tiebreaker voice or someone who could come in with other ideas. We’ve gotten that a little bit here and there in the past, but never as much as I think some of us wanted. He was heavy-handed, like suggesting we change a song from a punk song to a country song or changing the key.

We all knew that we wanted that. Going in, we all agreed that if Ted wanted to try something, everyone would just be happy about it and try it. That’s exactly what happened. It always worked out for the better.

What lessons do you think you’ll bring with you from this process?

JR: I’m already better at being fully vulnerable when I write. Life Behind Bars is me opening up, whereas some of my writing right now is pretty brutal. I’m excited about moving forward being fully aware and shameless in my writing now.

The band itself is so collaborative, by nature of the kinds of sounds you make. How does the band work together?

CG: We all have so many different influences. None of the songs ended up sounding like the demos. They ended up sounding like a piece of everyone. My song, “Thoughts and Prayers,” was more of a punk song, but ended up as a rockabilly song. “Life Behind Bars” started as an emo song while “Bible Belt” was kind of like a Green Day song. Now it’s like The Cars meets, like – I don’t know. So many different things. There’s a twang to it, but also ’80s rock, because Dustin [Fleming], our guitar player, was in a Cars cover band. So he’s got that in his blood.

There are different things that we each bring out from our past into the tunes.

Jenni, it sounds like for a while you isolated yourself socially from the band a bit. How do you both feel things have changed since you’ve come out?

JR: When I was trying to quit drinking, I changed all of my habits just to make sure that I could. It would have jeopardized my career if I kept going the way that I was going. I didn’t wanna do that, ’cause it’s not just my career, it’s everybody’s career. So I started going to the gym after the shows and then journaling during the day, having a ten-minute free write, word-vomit of poetry that I would send to Ted. I would do this every day and that would take me three hours – most of the van ride. So I’d be in my headphones, dead silent with everybody, and I was cocooning. I was going through a lot and I was trying to heal while in motion.

So everybody got to live with a hermit, essentially, for three years. I know it wasn’t cool, but I had to do it. I’m writing these songs. I’m reading every fucking self-help book I can possibly grab to figure out why I’m an addict. The dysphoria is starting to pick up and ramp up, because I’m starting to understand my emotions instead of dull them and ignore them. I am becoming more in tune with my body at the gym and noticing the dysphoria there and starting to understand myself better and better and better. While all of this is happening, I’m on fucking tour all over the world with six other people.

They’re watching somebody change the way that they eat. They’re watching somebody change what they do during the day. They’re watching my social life become pretty much non-existent. … Everybody becomes [at] arm’s-length on the road for a couple years. And then at a Taco Bell, I tell everybody I’m a trans girl and it’s like I’m right back to the party, I can like hang out again, I can go out after the show, or I can skip the gym. … I’m existing as my highest self after years of searching.

It sounds like your coming out has been a fairly positive experience so far.

JR: I saw immediately how quickly my relationships have been healing since coming out. Each person I told – before coming out publicly – it was great. Now I just get to be in a band with my friends again and they get to know me fully without me being scared of rejection.

I can’t manipulate anybody into accepting me. I can’t control how they feel about me. There’s nothing I can say that would make them either love me or not love me. You just kind of get to figure out who’s with you or not. I am so blessed that the people that are around me are at such a high quality. I think it’s a testament to just my exquisite taste in humans. I’ve been so blessed.

Everybody around me loves me and wants me to keep going and wants to keep being in my life, which is not what I thought that they would do. I assumed that I would be abandoned by everybody, because that’s the narrative that we’re all used to, but it’s been really beautiful. I’m really glad I did it.

Your coming out process has been very public. Your band went viral for protesting the Tennessee drag ban the day it was passed by wearing dresses on stage. And now, you’ve come out in Rolling Stone. So, how are you doing?

JR: Wearing the dresses was Cory’s idea. I have worn so many dresses behind closed doors. No one knew this side of me. When we went shopping for dresses, we all were having fun. When I put it on I was so nervous, but I was also really comfortable. And then we went out and played and I twirled. I had a great time. I thought only like 80 people were gonna see this, that I’d wear a dress for this one show and that would be it. Then everybody saw it.

That was kind of when I realized I had this aspect of me. It was the first time anybody had seen it and everybody kind of saw it at once. It made me wanna drink again, ’cause I didn’t want this to keep multiplying because I was scared. It wasn’t the first time I’d worn a dress and I knew that that wasn’t the first time that I felt comfortable doing so. I didn’t know if I wanted to accept that, or think that it was anything more than a kink or whatever. But I was sober and I did have to deal with it, and I did have to talk about it with my family and my wife.

If anybody’s reading this and they’re questioning if they should come out, you should. It’s good for you.

What are you each most excited about getting the album out in the world and touring it?

CG: I’m excited that people are gonna hear a little bit of a different side of us and to see what they think of it. I think more people are gonna be aware of us than ever, and I’m excited to see how people react to that.

Also, I’ve been doing music for, I don’t know, 20-something years. I’m 41 years old. I’ve never sung a lead vocal on any record in my entire life. I’m just excited for that [“Thoughts and Prayers”] to be in the world. That’s a big accomplishment for me, personally.

JR: I’m glad you sang it. You sang it much better than I was singing it!

I am most excited to be seen as 100% me on the road and to see what that does. So far, it’s been really magical. I think it’s been really positive. As I’m out and I’m playing, these bars or venues or theaters or little music series or festivals, they’re gonna see a trans person in a band, maybe at a country festival, maybe in a small town, maybe at a place that they wouldn’t usually see a queer person, and they’re gonna have to figure out how they feel about that.

I think the thing that I’m most excited about is posing that question to people and giving them a chance to react. I have faith in our fans, but I also have faith in our country, too. I don’t think hate has as much of a stronghold as we might think. It’s there for sure, but I think there’s a lot of love too.

Photo Credit: Vincent Monsaint

Planting By The Signs
Is a Way of Life

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Equal parts old soul and trailblazer, Western Kentucky singer-songwriter S.G. Goodman explores rural belief systems with a forward thinking, synth-heavy, swamp rock aesthetic on Planting By The Signs.

Released June 20, the record is the first for Goodman since 2022’s critically acclaimed Teeth Marks and sees her diving into tales of love, loss, reconciliation, and grief. The ancient Appalachian concept it draws its name from subtlety influences all aspects of rural life from farming to self-grooming. According to Goodman, the idea to center her fourth album around this idea came in late 2022 after stumbling across a section about planting by the signs in Foxfire, a collection of books first published in 1972 that delve into Appalachian philosophy and ways of life.

“When I got to the passage about moon planting or planting by the signs I started having all these memories of hearing about [moon phases and zodiac signs] throughout my childhood,” Goodman tells Good Country. “My family and a lot of the people in rural areas like Western Kentucky have been taught these things but don’t think or talk about them in everyday conversation.

“For instance, my brother cuts his hair by the signs and I remember old people saying to never pull a tooth when the signs are in ‘the head’ [an area of the sky attributed to Aries]. I was weaned by my mother to the signs, potty-trained even. It’s an old belief system that I wound up immersing myself in and felt a responsibility to pass on.”

We spoke with the Americana Music Association’s 2023 Emerging Artist Of The Year ahead of the release of Planting By The Sign via Zoom. Our conversation covered the inspiration for the album’s concept, the themes of grief and reconciliation within its songs, the sonic evolution of the singer’s sound, and more.

What was it like taking the concept of Planting By The Signs and making it a reality? Did it turn out to be everything you envisioned?

S.G. Goodman: There were elements that were given over to studio magic. Sometimes the circumstances of recording force you to try different things you weren’t planning on, but for the most part I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted this album to sound like before the songs were even written. This project leans toward a rougher sound that really hones in on the human element of the music. I also wanted to push myself sonically and add in new instruments that I normally don’t have in my music just to see what it would feel like.

In terms of trying new things, “Satellite” is a song that stands out. Is that a bunch of synths added to it or something else?

“Satellite” not so much. It sounds like synth, but it’s actually a little $150 makeshift Kent baritone guitar with a really wild, natural sound being played through a Fender Champ amp. There were a lot of synths elsewhere, but I’m just so ignorant when it comes to keys that I couldn’t tell you what they were. [Laughs] But I had [The Alabama Shakes’] Ben Tanner, a wizard on keys, come in to lay down and experiment some on organ, Wurlitzer, and other things.

For instance, because I do like an organic sound from my amps instead of using a bunch of pedals, we wound up playing along with the tremolos on the actual amps and ran the keys through that. But even with that, I’ve never had a record where there’s been keys on the majority of the songs, until now. That’s mostly been for economical reasons – I’ve been just a rock outfit with a lead guitarist, bass, drums and occasionally pedal steel, but it takes a minute before you can afford to not only have another player with you, but also a vehicle big enough to carry another person and their equipment. I was always leery to have songs focused around that, but with this album I was able to do it and shift around what kind of utility musician I wanted on the road with me and I’m really proud of it.

You mentioned working with Ben Tanner on these songs, but you also recorded down in Alabama as well. Tell me about what that experience was like?

Yeah, I was down in the Shoals, specifically the Sheffield area where Jimmy Nutt’s studio, The NuttHouse, is. It operates out of an old converted bank and felt really familiar to the small town I grew up in, where you could stand out in the middle of the road and pretty much bet a million dollars you wouldn’t get run over, because you’d never even see a car.

When you’re in the studio I’m not so big on doing destination recording, because in my opinion you should just be in a room working on music and not out seeing the sights. This was the perfect balance of not feeling like you’re missing something outside the room, but if you did walk out there it would be a calm environment.

Another sonic element on this album I wanted to touch on are the conversational audio recordings interspersed on tracks like “Heat Lightning.” What purpose were you trying to serve with those?

Going back to my mindset heading into this record and my desire to write about planting by the signs, I was really interested in the way that beliefs carry on and evolve over the years. We either accept, adapt to, or even stop telling these stories and letting them die, so [that was] one thing I wanted to showcase, either in a long narrative form or by adding elements you mentioned like the field recordings. I wanted to add those in because it’s another style we’ve used to capture stories and keep them alive. I’m a big fan of Alan Lomax’s field recordings – there’s a massive musical and oral history tied to them – so it was important for me to pay homage to that storytelling medium.

I even sought to do that through the album layout and artwork, too, by incorporating flash tattoos. Tattoos are a way that we have planted stories on ourselves and applied meaning to. Even its color scheme with red, yellow, and black – I don’t know if you’re ever heard this saying, but, “When red touches black you’re OK Jack, but when red touches yellow you’re a dead fellow.” That’s a sign from nature [about venomous snakes], so every element around this album, from allowing myself to write a nearly nine-minute song [with “Heaven Song”] while keeping this cohesive storyline to retelling a story from my youth in “Snapping Turtle.” I really wanted to showcase the history and art of passing down a story and drawing attention to that.

Someone whose memory you’ve preserved within these songs (as well as on older tunes like “Red Bird Morning”) is your longtime mentor and father figure Mike Harmon, who tragically passed away recently during a tree cutting accident. What kind of influence has he had on you, not just with this new record, but also on you as a person?

As far as Mike’s influence on my music goes, he was a huge encourager of me throughout the years going back to my days with The Savage Radley. I also played with him in a local Murray, Kentucky, band called The Kentucky Vultures. He was their bass player and we became fast friends and at one point even neighbors. He served as a father figure that I could bounce ideas off of musically, but more than anything it was his wisdom and support that impacted me most. He was such a go-getter and always an amazing person to have on the road with you.

One time I needed someone to help me get my van back from Boston, Massachusetts, to Western Kentucky, because the band and I had to fly out to Portland or Los Angeles in the middle of our tour before resuming the run a few days later in the Midwest. Mike simply asked when and where he needed to be and followed through. He was always down to help and be a part of things. It’s hard to wrap up exactly how meaningful his presence was during those early years. He was so proud of me and the boys when we were able to do this in a more professional way and regularly flew out to see our shows. In fact, in early 2023, he was supposed to be on tour with me in Austin for a sold-out show that I was particularly excited to have him at because he’d previously lived there for a time before losing his housing, only to die a week and a half later in a tree accident.

I continue to find myself thinking that Mike is still providing me with a lot of gifts and wisdom. When he passed away I was able to reconnect with my longtime friend and music collaborator of over 10 years, Matt Rowan. At that point we had a rupture in our friendship and musical relationship and hadn’t spoken in a couple years, but with Mike being the confidant, he was very aware of Matt and my falling out. [He] was always supportive around that and believed that we’d eventually reconcile with each other.

And that reconciliation is what you’re exploring on the song “Michael Told Me,” correct?

Correct. It’s a song that speaks to both Matt and Mike and kind of gives a snapshot of evolution and the processing of Mike’s death, but also the exact moment that Matt and I spoke after a few years of not.

You’re also singing with Matt on the album’s title track. What was it like getting to reunite in the studio with him for that?

Matt is also a co-producer on this album with me and Drew Vandenberg. He’s obviously been a longtime collaborator, so I thought it’d be interesting if he had an even bigger role on this album. I wasn’t wrong in my expectations of it working out really well.

Circling back to “Satellite” for a moment, lyrically the song seems to talk a lot about modern technology and human connection, or a lack thereof, in modern day society. What inspired you to explore those themes and how do you feel they fit into the record’s larger concept of planting by the signs?

I actually wrote most of the song in the studio. I didn’t start it there, but wasn’t expecting to have it on the album either. It’s something that came to me during the creative process of recording, which is not uncommon. When I was writing it I realized that one important thing for me to tie into talking about an ancient belief system was my curiosity of how that applies to our real, modern world. A lot of questions were coming up for me around that that I also tried to showcase within this album and my approach to talking about it with people. If Planting By The Signs revolves around paying attention to messages from nature, what does it mean for us as a society when we’re putting things between us and being able to see those signs?

For instance, we’re talking to each other right now through Zoom and are living in a world where more and more importance is being put on having more filters between us and nature – and even convoluting it. What are we gonna be [at] when I die, like 20G? [Laughs] How many satellites are going to need to be shot up into the universe to accomplish that?

Right now as a person, I’m in that weird land of [having been] a child in the early days of the world wide web when my parents got their first computer with dial-up internet. I didn’t start texting until I was 18. Nowadays I can pull up a waterfall on YouTube and hear the sounds of it in my living room without ever going somewhere like Cumberland Falls. Or I can go to a bar in public and not talk to a single person, because I’m just staring at my phone. I’m definitely a grandma when it comes to communicating with people.

I’ve noticed in the last 15 years that people are very hesitant to get back to a real human connection. There’s so many barriers nowadays to us having tangible connections with other people and nature. With that comes implications with AI and in the media, so it’s no wonder that a person who’s been watching the same creek bed over the course of 20 years evolve and cut differently and rise and fall may have a better idea that the weather patterns have drastically changed than a person who’s only receiving their information through technology.

Is “Nature’s Child,” which you sing with Bonnie Prince Billy, also touching on those themes?

That’s actually the one song on the album that I didn’t write. It was written by my friend Tyler Ladd. I first came across it over 10 years ago at an open mic in Murray and was floored by its lyrics. Everyone has different opinions on what makes a good song, but for me it’s really simple – a good song is one that you remember after hearing it.

Not long after that night, Tyler took off hitchhiking across the United States. Then years later I got a message from him saying that he was in Europe traveling and was writing to me from a hospital bed in Germany after getting his guitar stolen and beaten up pretty badly. I told him to get on home and about a year after that he showed up on my front porch in late 2016. I had him sit in my living room and play that song to me before asking him if I could start playing that song too and making it my own.

I’ve covered it live for years at this point, so when it came time to begin writing and thinking about this album Tyler’s lyrics and emotion he evoked in that song were a placeholder for me. He was gracious enough to let me record it. The song encapsulates everything this album is about.

Through the process of bringing Planting By The Signs to life, what is something that music taught you about yourself?

With each album you find yourself at a different place in life. I don’t necessarily have a lot of people ask me about my process of writing. It’s not linear and I’ve always held the belief, even though I’ve doubted it at times, that a story’s gonna go about its business. That was told to me years ago by a writing mentor, and a song does the same thing. Through that process one thing I’ve had to come to terms with with the fact that being an artist in 2025 is having pressure to keep churning out content and material, which has never been natural for me. I’ve never written that way, so being OK with and waiting for something to be in place where you feel you’ve said everything you need to say and not just succumbing to the pressures of putting something out while also being genuinely proud of what I created is a testament to the fact that I let this come when it was supposed to.

Photo Credit: Ryan Hartley

Sister Sadie Are
At Their Strongest, Together

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The last time BGS spoke at length with Sister Sadie, in December 2020, they were two-time IBMA winners, GRAMMY nominees, and clearly on their trailblazing way with two albums to their credit. Fast-forward five years and the group, now in its thirteenth year, is back as BGS Artist of the Month with their new and fourth album, All Will Be Well, following last year’s No Fear.

Sister Sadie 2025 includes founding members Gena Britt (banjo, vocals) and Deanie Richardson (fiddle) with Jaelee Roberts (guitar, lead vocals), Dani Flowers (guitar, vocals), Rainy Miatke (mandolin, vocals), and Katie Blomarz-Kimball (bass, vocals). Along the way to solidifying this lineup, the band notched a few more personal and professional milestones. Since becoming the first all-female band to win IBMA Entertainer of the Year in 2020 they’ve won three Vocal Group of the Year awards from the trade organization as well; performed at The Grand Ole Opry numerous times, fulfilled what they describe as “our ongoing bucket list” of goal festivals and other dates they hoped to play; charted several Number One singles; and were among the artists requested to perform at Patty Loveless’s Country Music Hall of Fame induction.

All Will Be Well is the band’s second project for the Mountain Home Music Company label. It was tracked at Crossroads Recording Studios in Arden, North Carolina, with Clay Miller engineering and Richardson producing. While the band did not set out to write a concept album, All Will Be Well is in many ways just that in its explorations of life lessons, experiences gained, and finding closure – the latter powerfully represented in “Let The Circle Be Broken,” a revealing take on ending the cycle of generational trauma.

Sister Sadie gathered together from various points to speak with BGS. Their six-member Artist of the Month interview, following, has been edited for space and clarity.

How have your many accomplishments to date brought the band to this point?

Deanie Richardson: We never intended to be a full-time band. We were friends who played a one-off at the Station Inn. That went so well that we decided to do another one. Gena started getting phone calls from promoters and we thought, “That might be fun. Let’s do it.” From there, we got a call from a record label and it grew organically, doing everything ourselves, because we weren’t looking to do it a hundred percent.

With every person that’s come into Sister Sadie, the whole band has shifted. The energy changes every time you bring in a new vocalist, a new player. You have to just let this thing guide itself. With each personnel change comes a new sound and you have to rebuild and regroup. I feel like that has happened since the last time we spoke with you guys. With Katie and Rainy here now, the energy feels perfect.

We finally have this team around us – booking agents, management, publicists – helping now and we get to focus more on the music and the amazing women in this band. So, for me, it feels like every step led to where we are right now, and it feels so right.

Gena Britt: With these personnel changes we’ve gained some wonderful songwriters, and they bring this creativity to the band. Like Deanie said, we’ve evolved into what we are today and that has a lot to do with being together, being creative together, growing as a band, and Deanie and I growing as businesswomen. It’s incredible to think of where we were when we first started and had no intention of doing this. And here we are. We have an incredible team behind us and it’s working. All the ingredients are here.

Let’s talk about the theme of All Will Be Well and sequencing the songs to tell that story.

Dani Flowers: When we went in to make the record, we definitely did not go, “This is [the title], this is the theme, and this is what it’s going to be about.” But it almost feels like we did.

We all write songs and send them to each other in Dropbox, an Apple Music playlist, and listen to them over and over. We put our opinions in as to what we might want to sing, what we hear other people singing, what songs we think are a good fit for the band, and it comes together into this thing that we almost never could have planned.

I do feel there is an overarching production style, even a theme, throughout the sequencing. But it wasn’t planned, which is the crazy thing. Deanie did the sequencing, and even outside of the band we’ve had so many folks comment on how it’s such a journey. I think the sequencing on this record is really something.

DR: The title No Fear was about Gena and I facing fears of losing some powerful personnel and deciding, “Do we want to quit? Do we want to keep going?” We decided we wanted to be all in, no fear, let’s get a team around us and do this thing. When Dani brought “All Will Be Well,” the Gabe Dixon song, I thought instantly that would be a great title, coming from No Fear: “We’re going all in on this thing, and whatever happens, all will be well.”

Once we finished the record, I started listening to the tunes. I would go on walks around the neighborhood, listen to the record over and over, and it felt like a journey. It felt like you’re taking a trip or a drive, starting with “Winnebago.” Jaelee’s singing is so powerful – that had to be the first song. You step in this Winnebago, you’re going through your drive, and then “I Wish It Would Rain” just felt like the next thing.

I imagined this person going through … call it a trip or just life in general and that being the case with this sequencing. It’s telling a big story. There’s a lot of personal connections in the writing and the song choices, from “Let The Circle Be Broken” to “First Time Liar” to all of it. This record is a representation of the deepest parts of all of us.

DF: Sister Sadie members had a hand in nine out of these thirteen songs. So there’s a lot of originals here, there’s a lot of our personal stories, our personal feelings and experiences, and it’s not perfect. I love that the record is called All Will Be Well. It’s not “all is well at this very moment.” It’s that even when we make mistakes, when we are in good moods, in bad moods, we have this overall feeling that we are going to get where we want to go. It might not be butterflies and daisies right now, but we know we’re going to get there.

Jaelee Roberts: The sequencing really is quite something, because these songs means so much to all of us individually. Even though I didn’t have a hand in writing them, at the time that I was in my life, some of these songs meant so much to me. The fact that I got to sing some of them, that they trust me to sing their songs, is so cool. I was excited when Deanie sent the sequencing to listen to our final mixes in that order, because it really is like going on a journey. The sequencing is absolutely perfect.

Can you select one track and walk us through the recording process?

DR: We all play acoustic instruments, so from sitting in my kitchen with our instruments, working out arrangements, that’s how we walk into the sessions. We recorded at Crossroads and we trust Clay Miller a lot. He’s great. He sets up the mics, we walk in and record. There’s not a lot of discussion as far as gear and mics.

The song lets you know what it needs. It will arrange itself and produce itself. “Winnebago,” for instance, has dissonant chords. I heard right away a B-3 organ accenting that. So on that song there’s electric guitar, steel guitar, the B-3, some piano. We brought things in that add an incredible amount of texture to our bluegrass instrumentation, our acoustic instruments.

GB: When we got to the studio, I had just acquired a baritone banjo that I hadn’t had an opportunity to play very much. It really lent itself to the sound of “Winnebago” and “Do What You Want.” I don’t know how to explain the feel of that song, but it just fit so well. So I played baritone banjo on a couple of tunes, which was great.

How do your playing styles and backgrounds come together to create the band’s sound?

DF: We are all such music fans, and through our upbringings and our own exploration of music, we’ve all been exposed to the best songs. We have pretty high standards when it comes to writing our lyrics and what we want to sing. We love a good lyric. We love creative harmonies. We have great instrumentalists in this band, so we especially love a melody with a really cool hook.
You can find that in any genre. Onstage we quite often cover rock and roll songs, pop songs, old and new country songs. Katie comes from a jazz background. Rainy comes more from West Coast bluegrass. Gena and Jaelee and Deanie all come from traditional bluegrass. I come strictly from a country background. You can find a good song, good lyrics, good melodies, in any genre.

Katie Blomarz-Kimball: My background is in jazz. I didn’t really grow up with country or bluegrass music. Since I’ve lived in Nashville for about ten years now, I’ve definitely dipped my toe into the genres, but it’s hard when you’re playing with some of the best bluegrass musicians on the scene to come in and not be like, “Am I good enough for this? Can I do this?”

One of the very first things Deanie said to me at the rehearsal two hours before the first show I ever played with them was, “I want you to play like you would play it.” That was important to me, because there is a really interesting perspective that can happen when people from different backgrounds come together in one group. And I think it can change, depending on what naturally migrates as a group. Adding some of my quirky bass playing can influence one way or another for things to have a different feel or vibrancy behind it that maybe shifts the music slightly. It’s definitely a fun part of this experience for me.

DR: We all come from different genres of music that we love, but we have country and bluegrass as a deep-rooted passion. That’s basically why we’re here. Because we are so creatively different, I think that’s a plus. Each of us brings something to the situation that changes it, adds to it, and you have to figure out ways to highlight or bring to the table everyone’s strengths. Once you do that, the sound starts coming together.

Deanie, you produced All Will Be Well. What does the term “producer” mean to you? Is it a democratic process?

DR: It is democratic up to pushing the red button. Everybody has input, but there comes a time when you have to call it, when you have to say, “That’s brilliant. I’m sure you think you could do it better, but I don’t need better. I need feel; I need it to feel a certain way.” This is a killer band, and they don’t need me to tell them how to play or sing. But there has to be some person that says, “You just wrecked me, you just turned me into a puddle on the floor, and I’m not going let you do it again because of that.” That’s what a producer is for me.

We all arrange these songs, pick these songs, write these songs, and at the end of the day, we’re making great records that I am so proud of. That’s not because of something I did. That’s because of something this band did. It’s a group effort. It is six very talented, capable women who I respect and value tremendously. It’s just that there has to be someone calling the shots, if you will.

Could we talk about writing “Let The Circle Be Broken” and presenting it to the band?

DR: We spend a lot of time in the car together, riding up and down the road, so we talk about everything. We know each other’s deepest, darkest secrets. We know the pain we’ve been through, the love we’ve been through, the relationships we’ve been in. We know everything about each other. I love being with a group of people you’re that connected to and that close with, and getting to be creative with them and make music together. That’s the ultimate thing for me. That’s honestly why I stay in tears all the time – because I love these women so much.

Dani, Erin Enderlin, and I got together right after my dad died. We were talking about all the shit I went through as a child growing up with him and all that Dani went through having an abusive mother. Each of the women in this band has experienced some form of generational trauma or abuse from someone in our lives. When we brought the song to the band, everyone knew my story and Dani’s, so it wasn’t a surprise.

Everyone was very supportive about telling the story and getting the song out, and it felt like the right time to do it. Once he passed away, I was ready to finally talk about it. It’s a very personal story, but it doesn’t say anything specific about what I went through. The song hopefully relates to anyone who’s experienced any sort of abuse.

We didn’t write it to make a statement. We wrote it because that’s where we all were, having that conversation that day. The more we talked, the more the song came to life. It was a beautiful thing and very therapeutic to write. I am extremely proud of how it came out, what each girl brought to this tune, and how they supported and loved me through it.

How do you protect yourself, mentally and emotionally, when performing the song live?

DR: Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I get upset. I just want to feel the song as I feel it every night. Some nights it’s just a song for me, some nights I just want to get through it, some nights I feel so much peace with it, and some nights I feel like he’s there. We played in Ogden, Utah, recently, and I could feel his presence and I got very upset.

One night in a theater I looked over at the girls while we were playing the song and I thought about each of them individually and how I know all these things about them. I know the struggles they’ve been through, the people who’ve hurt them, all the things they’ve felt, and struggled with, and beat, and have experienced in their lives.

At that moment, the song was theirs too. It was their experience as well. That night, walking across the stage as I’m playing that play-out at the end, I looked at each of them and told them I loved them as I walked by them. I’ve been doing that every night since, because I don’t feel like it’s just my song. I feel like it represents each of us. These are strong, amazing, talented women, and I’m so grateful to be in their presence every day.

DF: For me, this song is about the fact that we are in control now. We have the ability to stop the cycle that’s happened through our families and could very well carry on to our own children, if we didn’t take accountability, stand up, and say, “This goes no further.” So, for me, there’s not really a need for protection. It’s more letting it all out. Watching the crowd’s reaction every time we perform it is so therapeutic because you can tell there’s always somebody that really needed to hear what we had to say.

You both used the word “therapeutic.” What part does music play in your healing, in your mental health?

DR: It’s the only reason I’m still alive.

DF: To put it in perspective, imagine going through one of the worst things a person could go through, then to live your life and get to a place where … like, for Deanie, her dad passing away … to be able to sit down with two other women that are going, “I know almost exactly what you’re talking about. I have been through this as well. We are going to get it all out through the thing we all love the most.” And then to take that song you wrote that’s so honest and so vulnerable, play it for the people you’re in a band with, and have them all react with such compassion, saying, “Yeah, we have to do this.” And not only record the song, but there also was a conversation about how much we’re going to say about what the song is about, because some of us are really ready to talk about the things that happened to us, and we know that affects the entire band.

To have everybody embrace that, and then to get onstage and perform that with those people every night, to look at these women and tell them you love them — I can’t think of anything more therapeutic than to be able to say, “This happened to me,” and have so many people — the people that you wrote the song with, the people in the band with you, the people who made the record with you, and the people in the crowd listening and buying the record and all the comments we get on this song … I cannot think of anything more therapeutic for a person who has gone through something so traumatic. Other than actual therapy — I’m an advocate for actual therapy!

Rainy Miatke: Music plays such a huge role in my mental health and my healing journey. At times in my life when I’m not playing as much music, I can really feel the difference. Since I was a little kid, I’ve used music, writing melodies, writing songs, playing, and singing as a way to process the emotions I was going through. Now, being part of a band that is on a similar journey and path as I am, in my life and musically, and playing these powerful songs that the band has written about very personal subjects, it feels like we’re all in this together and here for each other, and it feels so healing.

When Deanie’s up there playing that part at the end of “Circle,” I sometimes find myself feeling really emotional and having to almost compartmentalize it, but also sometimes just letting it happen and processing some of the things that I’ve been through, too. I’ve found these people that I can do that with, and that I can process that stuff with through music, so it feels really special.

Read more on our Artist of the Month, Sister Sadie, here.

Photos courtesy of the artist.

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From The Brothers Comatose, Goldpine, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s a golden weekly roundup of new music and premieres! You Gotta Hear This.

Kicking off the collection, San Francisco-based bluegrassers the Brothers Comatose unveil “25 Miles,” a single from their upcoming album, Golden Grass. The full project arrives in September, but you need not journey that far to hear “25 miles,” which is available everywhere today. Listen below.

Then, Nashville Americana duo Goldpine keep the shimmering, golden aura going with “Space,” a blend of futurism and roots music about craving a break from the rat race and the “real world.” Goldpine’s brand new album, Three – their third, indeed – releases today, so we’re happy to spotlight a track from the project in celebration.

Alaskan bluegrass and country artist Josh Fortenbery shows off his new, expanded sound with “City Lights,” a song – and accompanying music video – about aging, opportunity, and anxiety that’s twangy and danceable even wrapped up in existential pondering. Plus, Mountain Home Music Company recording artist Jesse Smathers declares “If It Ain’t Broke (Don’t Fix It)” in his latest single, a tongue-in-cheek number that you’re sure to find hilarious and top notch.

To close us out on New Music Friday, Duluth, Minnesota’s Ross Thorn brings us “Baby, That’s All I Need.” With a folky sound and backed by lovely finger-picked guitar, the song is about empathy and, as Thorn puts it, “…Seeing the divine in everything, and seeing the divine in yourself.” It’s a perfect bookend for this week’s roundup.

We appreciate you joining us each week for new music. Because you know what we think – You Gotta Hear This!

The Brothers Comatose, “25 Miles”

Artist: The Brother Comatose
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “25 Miles”
Album: Golden Grass
Release Date: July 16, 2025 (single); September 12, 2025 (album)
Label: Swamp Jam Records

In Their Words: “’25 Miles’ was born out of a late-night drive from the SF Bay Area to LA, up and over the Grapevine, and a feeling that most of us know all too well: the weight of the world pressing down as we’re trying to outrun it. It’s about restless energy, being burned out and broke, with only dreams and close friends guiding you to your destination.

“It was written during a time of uncertainty and mental noise, and explores the tension between responsibility and freedom, and momentum and stillness.

“The line, ’25 miles to go and we’re running out of gas,’ is a metaphor for the transitional moments when you’re not quite sure where you’re headed, but you know you can’t turn back. There’s a subtle ache and a longing to escape not just a place, but also pressure, expectation, and the past. It’s about how getting lost is part of the plan, and survival sometimes looks like singing too loud with the windows down.” – Ben Morrison

Josh Fortenbery, “City Lights”

Artist: Josh Fortenbery
Hometown: Juneau, Alaska
Song: “City Lights”
Album: Tidy Memorial
Release Date: July 11, 2025 (single); October 10, 2025 (album)
Label: Muskeg Collective

In Their Words: “This melody has been kicking around since I was in high school and I’ve returned to it and slowly tweaked the lyrics over the years. It definitely captures the expansion in my sound since the last record, but also highlights that internally, I feel as lost as ever. My anxiety around aging is pretty new – I think I’m finally recognizing that some doors are closed or closing, and I’m trying to decide if I’m still having fun.

“I worked with a videographer in Juneau, David Rossow, to visually capture the feeling of standing still in a small town while the world moves rapidly past. We probably weirded out some tourists walking in slow motion while singing the song at .2 speed, but it definitely shows off my local haunts and the local life that sometimes haunts me.” – Josh Fortenbery

Track Credits:
Josh Fortenbery – Vocals, guitar
Erik Clampitt – Pedal Steel
Kat Moore –Fender Rhodes, Hammond B-3
Sam Roberts – Bass
Todd Vierra – Drums
Kennedy Jo Kruchoski – Vocals
Taylor Dallas Vidic – Vocals

Video Credits: Directed by David Rossow.

Goldpine, “Space”

Artist: Goldpine
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Space”
Album: Three
Release Date: July 11, 2025

In Their Words: “We spend a lot of time on the road these days… it’s just become our regular life now. It seems like we drive so much, and do so much computer work, and are on the move so often that we just really cherish our breaks and time off. ‘Space’ is kind of like a stream of consciousness song about the desire for a break from the real world stuff. It’s a space-aged dreamy Americana tune with futuristic sounds and a rockin’ guitar solo. This tune was recorded from a compilation of live takes from shows on the road last year and mastered by engineer Dave McNair (Shovels & Rope, Brandi Carlile). We really captured the raw live performance feel on this tune, which is what we specialize in.” – Goldpine

Jesse Smathers, “If It Ain’t Broke (Don’t Fix It)”

Artist: Jesse Smathers
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “If It Ain’t Broke (Don’t Fix It)”
Release Date: July 11, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This tune was fun as could be to write and record. ‘If It Ain’t Broke (Don’t Fix It)’ is a common saying most folks have heard. I know I’ve heard it my whole life. However, the family in this tune must not be up to speed on the old idiom. This tune is a tongue-in-cheek reminder that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – just leave well enough alone.” – Jesse Smathers

Track Credits:
Jesse Smathers – Guitar, lead vocal
Hunter Berry – Fiddle
Corbin Hayslett – Banjo
Nick Goad – Mandolin, harmony vocal
Joe Hannabach – Upright Bass

Ross Thorn, “Baby, That’s All I Need”

Artist: Ross Thorn
Hometown: Duluth, Minnesota
Song: “Baby, That’s All I Need”
Album: Fitting In
Release Date: July 11, 2025 (single); August 8, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “I began writing this one morning after I went for a walk in the graveyard, a swim in Lake Superior during a storm, and came home to see a robin in the yard. It’s a song about radical empathy, seeing yourself in everything, seeing the divine in everything, and seeing the divine in yourself. We recorded the song live at the fabled Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. To me, the song feels like John Prine collaborated with the rooster from the old Robin Hood cartoon (AKA Roger Miller), with a blend of honesty, humor, and some good old-fashioned whistling.” – Ross Thorn

Track Credits:
Ross Thorn – Vocals, acoustic guitar
Clark Singleton – Bass
Cassandra Sotos – Violin, vocals
Jacob Mahon – Banjo, vocals
Ian Hopp – Drums
Kyle Orla – Acoustic guitar, vocals

Photo Credit: The Brothers Comatose by Jessie McCall; Goldpine by Raechel Curtis.