In recent years, Tami Neilson has been learning to carry both great joy and great sorrow simultaneously. The New Zealand-based, Canada-born powerhouse’s new album, Neon Cowgirl, is named after the towering electric figure on a sign that’s overlooked Broadway in Nashville watching over Tami’s career since she was 16 years old. The songs were born from a five-month family road trip combined with a major musical tour that would allow Tami the once-in-a-lifetime chance to really give it her all with her career. It was the chance for her children to experience what her life was like at their age, when she toured the country with her family’s band, led by her eccentric and wildly lovable dreamer-father, Ron Neilson. Before she got the chance to hit the road for that trip, Tami landed in the ICU with sepsis and nearly lost her life. She blessedly recovered, but found that all her priorities centered around trip/tour had changed.
In our Basic Folk conversation, we talk about the songs on Neon Cowgirl, her dear friendship and collaborations with Willie Nelson, and Tami’s exciting performances at the Grand Ole Opry. One of the songs on Neon Cowgirl, “Keep On,” was inspired by a cosmic conversation she had with Wynonna Judd. Judd, to her surprise, quoted the same exact phrase – “Keep on, keep on, keep on” – that Tami’s late father had written in one of her most cherished letters.We also talk a lot about her brother, Jay Neilson. For all of her career and life, Jay has been by her side as her guitarist, co-writer, and musical partner. Last July, Jay suffered a rare and debilitating brain injury that he is still recovering from. Tami and Jay have not been able to perform together since that injury. She shares what it’s been like to be without Jay and how it’s been for him to be so public about his condition.
Tami Neilson and I first connected during the pandemic. She was a guest on the podcast after she released her 2020 album, Chickaboom!and again after she released her fifth album, Kingmaker, in 2022. Since those chats, I have loved following her career, listening to her new music, and experiencing her highs and lows with her. She’s one of my favorite guests and I’m thrilled to welcome Tami back to talk about her wonderful new record.
Ghosts are so much more than spooky or goofy animations; they represent lived histories, past selves, and the ever-unfolding work of becoming. With her latest album, Every Ghost, country singer-songwriter Kelsey Waldon gives grace to all the women she’s been along the way, entertaining their urgent lessons as she considers who she is today.
“There’s good ghosts and there’s bad ghosts. Some of them have unfinished business and maybe they feed off fear, or maybe they feed off your happiness. I certainly have them, I have a lot of ghosts,” Waldon says. “It’s those types of ghosts, but also the ghost of every version of yourself that you’ve been and just being proud of where you came from, where you’re going, and honestly, where you’re at; meet yourself there.”
On the album’s first track, “Ghost of Myself,” she lays out how she got here:
I had to get tough so I could get wise I’ve been a thousand women in my own time Been a thousand women and I’ve loved them all I had to get low so I could walk tall
From the album’s first lush, ebullient guitar run, Every Ghost is thick with layers of twang, accompanied by driving fiddle and classic country sounds. Waldon’s velvety voice, which has always been self-assured, sings clear and powerful. She’s standing on her own two feet; this is the album she’s been working toward over the last decade of hard work and meticulous touring.
Modern pop country is rife with men behaving badly or selfishly while extolling the unholy virtue of big truck worship. But long before their unceremonious relegation to the role of disingenuous machines, good for little else than scoring sex and drinking cheap beer, truck songs (usually about big rigs, not pickups) made poetry out of the long haul and produced some of country music’s most interesting characters. Look no further than Red Simpson and C.W. McCall’s catalogues, Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down,” Red Sovine’s “Phantom 309,” the Willis Brothers’ “Gimme 40 Acres to Turn this Rig Around,” or Kay Adams’ “Little Pink Mack.”
“Comanche,” track 2 on the new album (named after the 1988 Jeep Comanche Waldon bought recently) joins that lineage. “The rumble of the engine feels like my soul smooth when it’s runnin’/ A little rough when it’s not movin’,” Waldon sings.
Get behind the wheel on the open road, relax, blast some music, sort out your thoughts – there’s nothing like it. “We’ve all got our own amends to make/ We’ve all got our own hearts to break/ That’s the way it is,” Waldon continues, letting go of someone no longer in her life.
Spending time with an old, well-crafted object is a privilege and a joy in a commodified quick-fix world, one which Waldon manifests throughout the album as she tackles lessons and ghosts from a life lived deeply and broadly. The specters of Every Ghost include lost loves, of course; demons and vice; and also loved ones who are no longer earthside.
“Tiger Lilies” was written for her grandmother, whose beloved lilies she now tends in her own garden. Gardening and growth figure heavily in Waldon’s lyrics and worldview (notably “Season’s Ending,” off No Regular Dog and her cover of Jean Ritchie’s “Keep Your Garden Clean” on There’s Always a Song). “I think it’s sexy to know how to feed yourself and grow things,” she says. “What’s more country than that?” Later, she dwells more broadly on what we inherit generationally on “My Kin.”
The ghosts of vice have a particular way of lingering. “Happy new year, I’m scared to death/ My ol’ demons, they give me no rest,” Waldon sings on “Lost in My Idlin’.” Waldon has been, as she puts it “booze sober” for four years, but for her, the allure of letting loose and getting drunk lingers: “Wishin’ I was fucked up in some honky tonk/ Where they let me play my music way up loud.” Beyond an ode to temptation – and in some ways to simpler times – it’s an acknowledgement of those who’ve slipped and the hard work of holding the line. (Not to confuse resisting vice with moral superiority, addiction is a disease.) “I loved getting tore up from the floor up, that’s in my blood,” Waldon says; but staying sober is what’s best for her.
“I don’t wish for pain/ And I don’t dream of war/ When will it all end?? What are we killin’ for?” Waldon demands on the chorus of the wrenching, mournful “Nursery Rhyme.” “I honestly wrote that song after seeing pictures of children being bombed,” she says. Pertinent and direct, Waldon’s premise is simple: please, be kind and decent to each other. “How can you climb when you ain’t got a dime? / Workin’ your life away till you die/ Can’t pay what you owe ‘em, not in this lifetime/ Darlin’, it’s a nursery rhyme,” she continues in the song, lamenting the dissolution of the “American Dream” and economic parity for average people. “I’m a very, very proud American, but I know that sometimes the ‘American Dream’ does feel like a nursery rhyme,” Waldon says.
In 2019, that ability to zero in on the human condition landed Waldon the first new artist slot in 15 years on Oh Boy Records, founded by John Prine, who was likewise rivetingly dialed in to suffering and joy. Waldon’s bona fides include a bevy of appearances with Prine before his death in 2020. Before this she’s released six albums – Every Ghost her seventh – including 2020’s They’ll Never Keep Us Down, a cover album of protest songs including Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” and Prine’s “Sam Stone.” More recently, she released 2022’s No Regular Dog and 2024’s There’s Always a Song, covering some of her greatest musical influences.
Waldon’s been named a Kentucky Colonel, too. The highest title of honor awarded by the governor of the state, it’s often given to artists who guard Kentucky’s cultural traditions and further their future. She’s toured with Vincent Neil Emerson and 49 Winchester, the latter of whom she will join at the Ryman later in the year. She’s also looking forward to a long list of headlining shows, including at Under the Big Sky and FloydFest.
“That’s the only place that I do feel true freedom, honestly, is in the studio and then on stage doing whatever the fuck I want to, singing my heart out,” Waldon says. “I want the show to be a force to be reckoned with.”
Myriad wonderful songs have been written about ramblin’, but they’re all about men, Waldon says. She ends the album with one of the few exceptions, Hazel Dickens’ “Ramblin’ Woman.” At its release in 1976, the song represented a bold manifesto for female independence. As an album closer for Waldon, it acts as a bookend with “Ghost of Myself.” Waldon started the album telling listeners where she’s been and concludes with where she’s going.
“Hazel’s just saying ‘I got shit to do,’” Waldon says. “Women can ramble, too. I feel like we’re more than a girlfriend, a wife, a mother, even – and all these things that are so beautiful. We know we stand on our own. And we don’t have to explain it to anybody.”
Editor’s Note: Each issue of Good Country, our co-founder Ed Helms will share a handful of good country artists, albums, and songs direct from his own earphones in Ed’s Picks.
Couldn’t have said it better, ourselves. GEORGE F****** STRAIT! Good Country song of the season? We think so – and the internet does, too. You don’t wanna miss Laci on tour with Parker McCollum this summer and fall.
You’ll find New Orleans-based brothers Wes and Ocie Crowe at the intersection of country, indie, and rowdy millennial alt-folk. Their debut album’s title, Made To Wander, doesn’t just speak to their packed international tour schedule, it draws from their youthful days traveling with their family band, too.
We’ve been fans of the Kentucky Gentlemen and we remain fans of the Kentucky Gentlemen! The Kentuckian twin brothers’ latest, Rhinestone Revolution, is out now, continuing to bring their energy, sparkle, and fun to mainstream country lovers the world over.
From Sonora, Mexico to the GRAMMYs; to CMA Fest; to the cover of Billboard. Carín León exemplifies what we mean when we say “country & western” has always included Latin folk, Mexican music, and all of the roots music traditions of North America, no matter what language or any arbitrary borders. The deluxe version of his most recent smash hit album Palabra De To’s (Seca) is out now – it’s a must-listen.
Country soul rooted in Hawaii and the Pacific islands – that’s what Maoli offers on his latest, Last Sip of Summer. You’ll be forgiven for assuming the steel guitar is the only country input offered from the vast Pacific Ocean. Maoli shows island country sounds – his being a bit like Buffett meets Chesney meets reggae – are best when grown directly in volcanic soil.
This fan favorite Ashley McBryde track, “Rattlesnake Preacher,” has been a staple of her live shows for… well, forever. Now, a studio cut is available for the very first time. McBryde worked with producer John Osborne (of Brothers Osborne) to ensure this long-awaited rendition captured the magic of her live performances of the number. It does!
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Photo Credits: Laci Kaye Booth by Natalie Sakstrup; Crowe Boys by Nick Swift; the Kentucky Gentlemen courtesy of the artist; Carín León courtesy of Sacks & Co; Maoli by Reggie Villa; Ashley McBryde by Katie Kauss.
Dallas Ugly is not a country band. Except that they are?
More than a decade ago now, college classmates Eli Broxham, Owen Burton, and Libby Weitnauer began playing together as a new acoustic band, bluegrass and old-time chops combined with jazz and jammy virtuosity. Eventually, via COVID pandemic cloistering together, they crafted a collective identity as Dallas Ugly, a vibey and tight alt-country group built around original songs that made a splash with their 2022 debut, Watch Me Learn.
On that album you can hear bluegrass grit, the tenderness of folk and indie songwriting, influences of Southern rock and pop, and dashes of Texas twang – perhaps supplied by confirmation bias thanks to their moniker. On their latest album, See Me Now (released in April), the trio are abandoning any and all claims to Americana and country. But this collection – one of the best roots albums of the year – still listens like so many classic artists and albums at the intersection of indie, country, and the vast musical horizon.
When you ask the Nashville-based band how they’ve landed in this new, borderless, agnostic genre territory, they seem as surprised by their own chosen style markers and aesthetic vocabulary as their audiences. “It’s an accident,” says Weitnauer – with delight. “We don’t know why we sound this way. We’ve been able to loosen up more, build on the experience we’ve gotten just as musicians. … With this iteration, I feel like it shows a full development of our sound.”
In truth, however See Me Now and Dallas Ugly strike your ears, it’s quite a straightforward task to trace their journey through genres. (Though it’s not the most straightforward to discuss!) The trio simply follows each song down their own individual creative rabbit holes, trusting the music and each other to find or carve out sounds that encapsulate the feelings, textures, and stories that they craft together. They don’t lead the songs, the songs lead them. As a result, Dallas Ugly alchemically transform barn burning old-time fiddle, endless country twang, deep honky-tonkin’ pocket, earnest, sentimental songwriting, and pop-informed sweet tooths into smooth, artful, endlessly interesting indie rock.
Dallas Ugly’s brand of roots music – if you can call it that – is downright beautiful. We spoke to the group via phone between tours in May about making the album, claiming genre (or not), and the sometimes passive, sometimes overwrought process of shepherding these songs into the world.
I wanted to start with getting the genre conversation out of the way, as it were. Y’all have been very forward with communicating that this isn’t really a country album; that you don’t really see yourselves as a country band. You call it indie, indie-pop-rock. I hear you as decidedly Americana and country, personally. Obviously you have those indie-pop touches – plus, we know you have string band bones as well – but can you talk a little bit about your relationship to genre and how you intentionally stepped into this much more free, borderless sonic space with this project?
Libby Weitnauer: It’s funny, because as I’ve had more conversations with people since the album’s come out I’m like, we definitely marketed it wrong. [Laughs] The other way we could’ve gone – everyone is like, “Do you ever listen to Sunbelt?” “Do you ever listen to Wilco?” “What about like The Breeders?”
But you asked what were the intentional steps that we made – and I would say there have been no intentional steps towards any genre. Which is why we are having trouble pinning it down, because I think we decided to market it the indie route. Honestly, the Americana world seemingly wants to have nothing to do with our music. [Laughs] So we were like, “Okay, then, I guess it’s not Americana, I guess it’s not country.” Every time we bring it to those people they turn it away.
I would say our relationship with genre is very passive. When we’re making decisions and writing songs, genre isn’t a consideration. It’s always been that way. When we started playing together as the very goofy band that we were before this band, that was a sort of attempt at new acoustic music. It was the same thing, we just make decisions [based on] things that we like, or think we’re supposed to do sometimes, or sound good. Then it comes through this Dallas Ugly Eli-Libby-Owen filter, no matter what.
We’ve honestly tried so hard to fit into a genre. Where we’re like, “Okay! We’ve done it this time. You guys, we made a song that sounds like something else that exists.” Which is a funny thing to aspire to. Just trying to create stuff that we like and then it’s, “Oh, nope, nevermind. There it is. Just as weird as ever.”
Do you feel like the songs are what’s guiding you in that passive way? That you’re just trying to give the songs the treatment they each want or are asking for or deserve? Do you feel like it’s taste? Or is it just how it ends up is how it ends up? What do you think is the process for how it ends up being borderless and amorphous and not quite any one thing?
Owen Burton: Yeah, I think those are all in there. I think it isn’t as if we’re striving when we’re writing, it’s not like we’re intentionally pointing to a specific genre. There’s just things that we don’t realize are so genre-coded that are kind of inescapable about our musical voices. When we are asking how to start a song it’s, “Let’s do a fiddle kick.” It’s not, “Let’s do a country thing.” It’s just, “I feel like a fiddle kick would make sense.” And then, on the other end of that is people being like, “This is a country record now!”
It’s fair enough. But I think with this record, too, [as] I’ve learned with our first album – which we were like, this is a country record – I feel like we learned, in how it was received, how actually regimented the Americana style is. And how we weren’t within certain signifiers that are pretty regimented. Indie rock is way more broad, in terms of what it tolerates stylistically.
So the next one, this one, certainly can fit in that big tent. Now, the way it’s been perceived that way too, [I’ve realized] indie rock’s pretty regimented in ways that I didn’t understand, too. Mostly about singing. I think just none of us sing like indie boys. [Laughs]
LW: Or country voice. That’s the thing, I think what it comes down to is if different people were singing our songs, maybe it would be clearer. But I think, especially Owen and I, we have acquired taste, stinky cheese voices. [Laughs] It’s definitely not for everybody. Eli, obviously he doesn’t sing quite as much, but weirdly I would say Eli has the most familiar voice.
I happen to love stinky cheese.
LW: Exactly! Me too.
How does Justin Francis play into the genre paradigm here as your producer, as somebody who effortlessly walks between those sonic worlds? Can you talk a little bit about working with him and having him in the control room?
OB: He understood what we were going for. When we started, we intentionally controlled less variables going into the studio for this one. It’s not as if we had a strategy meeting about what kind of album this was gonna be before we started, making creative decisions on it. The songs were vaguely written before we went into the studio, but not arranged and not figured out like across the band ahead of time.
I feel like even just that process– I guess that’s a bit of a question, is that more of an Americana process or more of an indie rock process? I see that as more of a rock process; I feel like rock bands often go into the studio with songs not even written and they just write it in the studio. With [Justin] on board, he had all kinds of ideas when we were writing in the studio, little bits of studio vocab that we don’t have ourselves. [He] pushed and pulled in different genre directions, for sure.
LW: Part of the reason that we worked with him is we did these two singles with him, “Big Signs” and “Born Crying” just to try working with another producer and see what happens. I don’t even know that we were really [thinking] we could make an album with him, because honestly, he’s the real deal! We were like, “He’s famous, so he probably won’t make an album with us, but let’s just see what these things will sound like.” It was so effortless and he let us do our thing on those two. I feel like those [songs] are just as unhinged as anything else that we’ve made and he was right there with us with the ideas.
I would say, generally, working with him was really effortless. That’s the word I would use. The whole time, even the pre-production meetings.
Let’s talk about some of the music. My favorite is “Bad Feeling.” I know the lyric may say, “It’s a bad feeling, I don’t like it at all…” but I do like it. I like “Bad Feeling” a lot. I heard you guys play this song live a bunch before the album, too, but can you talk about the origin of it, its writing, how it came together in the studio?
LW: That’s the one song I think on the whole album that we had been performing [before recording]. Maybe “You Can Leave,” but it changed a lot. “Bad Feeling” we had been performing pretty much as it is, for the most part. I’m glad that you like it, because that was the song I was like… not disappointed in, but I had so much trouble breaking out of the live arrangement that we had. We had played it so much that I felt like the track suffered a little bit from how attached we were to the live arrangement.
But the making and the writing of that song, I feel like I wrote it [because] I’d been listening to a lot of Judee Sill. I guess I was inspired by that and was trying to capture how some of her songs, the chords move with the lyrics a lot. I didn’t end up really sounding like her at all, but some of the original harmonies we had for that song, played [off of] some of the harmonies in her music.
I feel like that song is like the epitome of my writing style, which is pretty autobiographical. Every time I try to write like feathery stuff, it sounds really goofy. And so with lyrics, I just try to find the most straightforward way I can say something. Usually that ends up being the most poetic, from my voice.
How do you know when you have a hook or you have the bit of the song that’s gonna be what everybody shouts along with? To me, it doesn’t feel like any of you are writing songs because you think they’re gonna be a hit. But at the same time, when I hear a really hooky song or a really catchy song – like basically this whole album – whether it’s “Bad Feeling” or “Sugar Crash” or “Circumstances” or “See Me Now,” I can picture a “light bulb moment” when you find that hook or line that ends up being the sing along.
LW: When I’m writing, I don’t really consciously think about hooks like this. That being said, a lot of my songs start with either a phrase or a melody. I’ll be on a walk or doing something in the kitchen just singing little thing. Like “Circumstances” – “I put a letter in the mail…” – that just happened in my brain when I was doing something. Then usually I’ll grab onto that and write the song around whatever little melody piece comes to me. I guess what ends up being the hook, a lot of the time, is what comes to me. And then I find myself singing it and I let it take off and do what it’s gonna do.
Eli Broxham: I feel like something that comes up, a question we end up asking ourselves that I’ve heard Libby ask a bunch of times is, “Is this super cheesy?” [All laugh] Which, we definitely ride the line of cheesiness, but at some point, you have to just be like, “I don’t know. I like it. And that’s good enough.” If it’s borderline to me, maybe it’ll be over the line for somebody else, but clearly, within bounds for another listener.
At some point, trust your instincts and be like, “It might be cheesy, but that’s okay.” And yeah, I think melodically is where I have my surest footing [writing hooks]. I still feel as a songwriter, if I hit the mark, it’s maybe by chance or something.
I also want to talk about “See Me Now,” because it’s the title track, because it’s a great song, but also because I feel like it epitomizes the journey y’all have been on, from Watch Me Learn to this album. Not just musically and creatively, but also genre, and also politically and socially. This song is “of the moment” in a really interesting way, because you can listen to it down and it’s a love song and it’s a song about seeing and being seen, but it’s also about perception and, “Is my existence valid?”
All of that is really deeply resonant, but if you zoom out and view the song in the context of the band, it changes its meaning. If you zoom out yet again and you view it in the context of y’all really coming together during COVID to do this project as Dallas Ugly, being friends for more than a decade, it changes the meaning of the song again. It’s a tesseract of a track where you guys are writing in four dimensions – it’s not too intellectual or conceptual, but it has endless depth. How!?
OB: I actually wrote that very quickly, because Elise Leavy was having like a songwriting circle. I hadn’t written a song terribly recently, so I was just gonna write something real quick for this. That was the song I wrote and at the time – this is years ago – I was very into that Kacey Musgraves album, Golden Hour, and the lead track, [“Slow Burn”]. That acoustic intro thing, I was messing around with that, because the chords are really simple, but the voicings are so interesting.
Those two things – “hurry up and write a song” and the somewhat new vocab I had just learned – came together. That first draft of it was soft, crummy – plus those lyrics, it’s hard to say what they’re about, because I wrote them very quick. Sometimes this spiel I give on stage is:
It’s three people meeting each other after some kind of apocalypse. In the universe of the apocalypse, because nobody has anything anymore, it’s very hard to [determine] what status anyone was before the apocalypse. It’s three different kinds of people with different former social status, wishing that people they interacted with could tell what status they used to have. People are very comfortable in their status, I feel like whether it’s high status or low status, people find comfort in both. Personal comfort in your own status and the comfort in feeling like you know how to treat people once you derive their status.
I feel like audiences never understand that spiel and it’s maybe too heady to be worth anything. [Laughs] Maybe that’s also why it feels like there’s so many different reads you could have of that song.
I think the most interesting thing about it – and maybe I’m projecting y’all – is the sentiment, “Can’t you see me now? I want you to see me.” Maybe that’s just the millennial condition. All of us having nostalgia for something that never existed, generationally, and being like, “I need you to see me. I need you to perceive me. But also I’d rather you perceive me from the golden era, from the before times. From when things were right.”
Also the “Can you hear me now?” reference of it all feels very millennial, very of the 2000s in a great way. Again, is this cheesy? No, of course not. Listen to it! But also, yes it is.
OB: Yeah, that’s where we live.
LW: That’s where we live! And I would say, before this, before the version that’s on the album, it had a very different flavor. I can’t even remember how it sounded exactly, but it was definitely more country – almost like country rock – and that was over the line. I’m glad we found [this style] and Justin helped us find that. Just pulling it back to the other side a little bit, because yeah, lyrically and melodically, it’s so solid and awesome. But we had to go to the drawing board a few times to get the setting right for it.
EB: That one is like the musical ideas are blocks that are put in place. I remember when we were doing this – after some of the drawing board stuff that Libby was talking about – but I was listening to that Mac Miller album, Circles – which I think is maybe the best Mac Miller album. I was listening to how the elements didn’t change, they just turned on and off to make the song, which I feel like is pretty common in pop and rap production. But often, especially in this band or in Americana and rock, things tend to sneak in and out and evolve.
But for that song in particular, the bass line just turns on, then turns off for a little part. It turns on and turns off. There’s different parts of different sections, but they are like binary, which I think is an interesting approach – and a first for us, in that sense. Somehow, that takes it out of the realm of cheesy country and accentuates the lyrics in a nice way. Even that final chorus, where it’s just a big pause and then the chorus turns on.
LW: That’s interesting that you say that, ’cause I feel like for my fiddling, that was the approach I took on this whole album. Honestly, until we got to the pre-production meetings I was like, “I don’t even think I’m gonna play fiddle on this album.”
I took more of [an approach like] I’m a sample of a thing, rather than being a fiddle in a band. Like even on “You Can Leave,” which is the more fiddle-y of the tracks, in the verses I’m not doing traditional fills. I’m doing this one rhythmic hook every time this comes around and that’s what I’m playing on this song.
It was the idea of turning things on and off rather than trying to be part of the whole song. And I let myself punctuate things and not feel like I need to play the whole time.
Jesse Daniel is carrying on a family tradition with his fifth studio album, Son of the San Lorenzo. As a kid growing up in Northern California, specifically in the San Lorenzo Valley, Daniel spent hours upon hours in his dad’s truck, listening to the songs that defined ‘70s rock and country radio. When the opportunity arose to create a new album inspired by those sounds, Daniel booked the Bomb Shelter studio in Nashville, recorded live with his band, and enlisted harmonica player (and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee) Charlie McCoy to add an unmistakable flourish to the new recordings.
Just as country fans have come to know their favorite singers as the Coal Miner’s Daughter, the Possum, or the Storyteller, Daniel’s hometown is enthusiastically embracing his alter ego: the Son of the San Lorenzo. Daniel dialed up Good Country to talk about how bluegrass music played a role in his musical development, the silver lining of his checkered past, and what he’s looking for in his fellow musicians when it’s time to hit the road.
For this album, you wanted to go back to the music you grew up on, which is ‘70s country and rock. How did you get introduced to that era of music?
Jesse Daniel: My dad was – and still is – a musician. Growing up, he was playing in bands and always just raised me with a guitar in my hand. Whenever we’d go on road trips, or we’d drive up to Oregon to go see family, we would be listening to Led Zeppelin or the Eagles, bands like that. There was a classic rhythm & blues influence on rock and roll, but a lot of that stuff had a very country influence, too, from Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Eagles. A lot of the bands were California bands, also.
I just heard that music growing up. That’s what was played by my dad’s band, and at birthday parties, events, and school gatherings. That was just good-time music, aside from what we were listening to as kids, when we were getting into metal and punk rock. But I guess that’s what all our dads were listening to, and the older people. So I went back to that, now that I’m in my 30s. That music has such a spot in my soul for that nostalgia, and it’s just so good.
Can you describe the experience of having Charlie McCoy on these sessions?
That was incredible. He showed up on his day to cut some harmonica and he was a very humble, unassuming dude. He told us the coolest stories about old Nashville, all the stuff he’s cut on, and all the people’s personalities back in the day that he used to know. I asked him all kinds of questions, soaking it all in. From the moment he blew on that harp and played some licks, Andrija [Tokic, the studio engineer] and I looked at each other like, “Yep! That’s the sound right there.” He just nailed it.
When I listened to “Child is Born,” the first track, I sensed you’re making a statement with this record. It’s a powerful way to open it. What was on your mind as that song was taking shape?
That song is about generational traumas or generational patterns within families and raising children. I pretty much wrote it from the perspective of trying to give some advice on how to raise a child, almost like a template. Throughout the verses, it talks about the pitfalls and what will happen if you focus on yourself and don’t raise your children right. That’s happened in my family and to so many other people. These fathers and mothers aren’t there for their kids, and when it ends up being their time to be taken care of, when they’re elderly, nobody’s there for them because they weren’t there in return. It becomes this vicious cycle that’s perpetuated. That’s where I was at with writing that one. It was an emotional one. It’s an emotional type of record in general, but I just wanted to start it off with that, for sure. A good, heavy starting place.
One of my favorites is “Son of the San Lorenzo.” I think you have had that title for a while.
Yeah, that one is a special one, too. I wrote that song in 2019 and I included it as the last song on my Rollin’ On record. I decided to re-cut it for this one and name the record after it, because since I wrote and released that song, it’s become a fan favorite all over the place, but especially where I grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley.
Whenever I would go back home for hometown shows, people would call me “the Son of the San Lorenzo” after that song. They would always sing that song. That became my nickname over the past five or so years. I thought, what better title for the record than that? With this record going back to my upbringing, to where I’m from, and identity and all that.
You’ve got references on this album to Highway 9, the Sierra pines, and the redwoods. You’re skilled at setting the scene in your songwriting. Why is it important to bring Northern California into these songs?
With my identity as a songwriter and an artist, it shaped a huge, huge amount of that. I always do things through the lens of being from Northern California. Going back to that sound, so much of the music I grew up on was from that exact area – bands like The Doobie Brothers, Larry Hosford, guys like that, who were making this country-rock and roll-blues stuff that really influenced me a lot.
Painting a picture of where you’re from, and of these things that are important to me and my music – I feel like that’s something that’s lost in music nowadays. People don’t do that as much, or if they do, it’s pretty well dominated by Appalachia or Texas. They have a lot of identity and pride in their musical heritage there and I just feel like it’s missing from California in general. And it shouldn’t be. It’s an amazing place, an amazing landscape, an amazing musical history. I see it as my cross to bear to try to carry on that legacy as best as I can.
Has bluegrass been an influence on you?
It definitely has. When I was in high school, I had a teacher for a short period of time who had a bunch of burned bluegrass mix CDs. She was the person that turned me on to bluegrass. I remember listening to that Tony Rice and Norman Blake song, “Eight More Miles to Louisville,” and I was like, “This is incredible!” The songwriting, the picking, the tempo. That made me fall in love with bluegrass. I’d been playing guitar for quite a while at that point, but that’s when I started learning the banjo rolls and trying to emulate some of those bluegrass things I’d heard and adding them into my chord progressions. Even though I don’t explicitly do bluegrass, I always have a bluegrass song on my records, or something that’s at least along those lines. For this record, it’s “Mountain Home” It’s got the banjo and fiddle and a little bit more bluegrass texturing. It’s a big part of my influence.
I was listening to “One’s Too Many (And a Thousand Ain’t Enough)” on Spotify and I couldn’t help but notice your mug shot from Santa Cruz County [as the Spotify Canvas] in the player. How did that come to be?
Yeah, that’s my mug shot from one of the times I went to jail. During that period of my life from 18 through my early twenties, I was a heroin addict, a methamphetamine addict. I was in a vicious cycle of addiction I had gotten into in high school. Once I was out of high school, it accelerated and I became a full-blown junkie, a full-blown drug addict. So that took me on frequent trips to jail for a week here, a week there. I never did any serious time, thank God. I should have, but I didn’t. I was constantly in and out of jail or rehab programs.
That mug shot is a reminder of that past and of that period of my life I wrote about in that song. That song is comprised of all the advice I had gotten from older people who had gotten their stuff together over the years, including some of my own family members who have been sober. They would tell me all these little bits of wisdom and try to help me, and I was just too deep in it to really see. But that song is basically the advice I’d give to somebody now, made up of all the advice I got back then when I was in that position.
Do people who know your story approach you for advice when you’re out on tour?
Quite a bit. There’s a cool, cathartic element to it for me, because I get to put my story and struggles into these songs and they help me. Then it becomes that for other people. I had a woman come up to me at a show, and she told me that my song “Gray” helped her mother get clean. She sent this song to her mother and it broke her down so much that her daughter was sending it to her, saying, “Hey, listen to the lyrics of this song. I care about you and I want you to get help.” And she did. She’s been clean for a couple years now and she says it’s because of that song.
I’ve had a lot of people reach out with similar stories, that they’ve gotten their stuff together after hearing my story or listening to my music. That’s the ultimate form of redemption for me, that I could take my destructive past and turn it into something constructive in helping people. That’s my whole mission. Aside from making the music I love, that’s my mission in my contribution to music.
That’s interesting to hear your mission statement, because you’re the head of your own organization now. I don’t know if you think of yourself that way, but you’re a businessman.
Yeah, more recently I’ve started to think of it that way. And it’s true, especially doing it independently like we have for so long. We’re just now starting to work with a bigger booking agency, a bigger management. We’re stepping things up. But my fiancée Jodi and I really built this together ourselves, brick by brick.
I’ve often heard you shouldn’t get in a relationship with someone until you know you travel well together. What do you remember about those early years with Jodi on the road?
In the early years, even before we started touring in a band together, I would play regionally and Jodi and I would go on road trips together, camping trips, whatever. We just wanted to keep going. That was always part of our relationship. We traveled really well together. We had similar interests. We’d just listen to music and talk and go pull off at roadside swimming holes up in the mountains. We loved that sense of adventure and going places. It was one of the main things that drew me to her when we first got together. She had just as big of a sense of adventure as I did.
So, in the music aspect of it, that’s really helped because we both have that wanderlust and we’re just down to be on the road and to go play new places. When one of us gets tired and burnt out, or maybe sick of being on the road, or something’s not going right, we have the other one to put it in perspective and help balance things out. You lean on that person, which not a lot of people have. A lot of times, your wife or your husband or whoever is at home and you’re out there, alone, missing them. So, I do have the luxury of being with my person out there.
What did Jodi think about the song “Jodi” when you played it for her?
She loves the song. Just like I say in that first line, “To write a love song for you was not an easy thing to do.” It really was a hard subject to tackle, because it’s so vulnerable and true. I had to sit with that one and try to make it as meaningful as possible, so it didn’t come off as a corny love song or too cryptic. I wanted it to be straightforward, but really meaningful.
What do you look for in musicians as you start to put together a band for a tour?
First off, they’ve got to be a great musician. That’s number one. They’ve got to understand the styles and the stylings that I like to go for with my music. I know it’s not for everybody. Sometimes the guitar style is a little bit outside of their bubble, so the playing has to be there.
On top of that, personality-wise, it helps to have people with good attitudes. That’s a huge one I’ve learned over the years. If somebody isn’t there for the right reason, or if they’re halfway in, halfway out, or maybe they’re partying a whole bunch on the road. I’m clean and sober on the road, I don’t do anything, but my guys will go out and have a beer or whatever. That’s totally fine. But if guys are going out and doing drugs or drinking and having it affect their performance or attitude… That is something that happened in the past, so I have a pretty strict policy with that. If you’re going to be in my band, you don’t have to be a teetotaler, but just try to keep it pretty mellow. It’s about the music. That’s what the focus is.
When you listen to Son of the San Lorenzo front to finish now, what goes through your mind?
I see a pretty complete body of work. Sometimes I’ll listen to some of my earlier records and I’ll look back and think, “Oh, I’d change this,” or “I’d do this a little different,” or “Maybe I would have put this song here…” I think that’s easy to do, to pick things apart, especially when you’ve grown as an artist and a songwriter. But when I listen to this record, I put so much time into the song arrangement and into each lyric and each part of the production. I wrote all the guitar licks. Well, ninety percent of the ones you hear on here are ones that I wrote, and then I showed them to the guitar player and he played them better than I was able to play them. [Laughs] All these little things, I put so much effort into this record that I listen back and I’m just really proud of it.
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(Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Reissue series! For the past several weeks, Basic Folk has been digging back into the archives and reposting some of our favorite episodes alongside new introductions commenting on what it’s like to listen back. This is our last Reissue for now, so please enjoy!
This episode featuring separate interviews with The Indigo Girls – Amy Ray and Emily Saliers – and host Cindy Howes was originally posted winter 2019.)
Back in 2019, my now-wife and I attended the inaugural Girls Just Wanna Weekend in Cancun, Mexico, which featured an all-women lineup curated and hosted by Brandi Carlile. I was lucky enough to be able to interview The Indigo Girls there in two separate solo interviews. I still feel nervous thinking about the scene of talking to both Amy Ray and Emily Saliers in each of their (very nice!) hotel suites on my new little Shure mic that connected to my phone. Lucky for me, both Amy and Emily were really into my new mic, so it served as the best possible icebreaker. Both were very generous with their time and with their answers to my unorthodox questions.
First I got to speak to Amy Ray, who talks about growing up in a conservative, modest Southern family with her radiologist father and a smart, scholarship-attaining mother. She speaks to how her suburban upbringing and intake of conservative values of the South has influenced her identity. She shares about her father’s deep involvement in community service and the impact of her father’s generosity on her own activism. I also asked Amy about her sense of fashion and how it challenges traditional gender norms. She talks about her love for creative clothing and that her historically unconventional approach to style serves as a form of activism.
Next up: Emily Saliers. She talks about her relationship with guitar playing, tracing it back to childhood lessons at the YMCA and musical members of her family. She also points out how playing electric guitar changed the game, particularly through collaborations with Amy Ray. Emily talks about first solo album, Murmuration Nation. Released in 2017, it took a long time to come to fruition due to challenges and emotional hurdles she faced during its creation. Lyris Hung, longtime Indigo Girls friend, collaborator, and producer – including on that solo album – brought her expansive musical imagination and played a critical role in shaping the record. We also get into Emily’s love for hip-hop, specifically political hip-hop, and the profound impact the genre has had on her. Emily ends with talking about her other great love, food, by drawing parallels between the communal nature of music and cuisine, illustrating how both bring people together in meaningful ways.
On Saturday, July 26, BGS and Good Country will return to Newport Folk Festival for another very special benefit aftershow, The Good Country Goodtime, featuring actor-comedian-musician James Austin Johnson (of SNL) and special musical guests. Each year, in the evenings after the festival winds down at Fort Adams State Park, Newport Folk hosts a variety of aftershows at venues around Newport, Rhode Island, each benefitting the Newport Festivals Foundation. Tickets went on sale today at 1pm EDT / 10am PDT – and sold out immediately. Join the wait list and get more info here.
Last year, BGS and our co-founder Ed Helms hosted A Bluegrass Situation at the Jane Pickens Theater on Saturday night of the festival. The sold-out superjam styled show featured performances by Helms and his Lonesome Trio, Langhorne Slim, Tony Trischka, Billy Bragg, Rhiannon Giddens, Madison Cunningham, Andrew Bird, and many more.
This year, it’s a brand new show, an exciting reimagination of our recent creation, The Good Country Goodtime, a variety show in the style of iconic old-timey radio shows, jamborees, and barn dances that’s a modern celebration of country, comedy, and everything beyond, below, and in between.
Hosted by Saturday Night Live cast member – and burgeoning Music Row songwriter – James Austin Johnson and written by comedy, radio, and podcast writer Greg Hess, the Good Country Goodtime will build on the show’s format as debuted by BGS and Good Country at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles in September 2024. (Watch a humorous house band performance of “Who’s Gonna Feed Them Hogs” from the Dynasty Typewriter edition of the show below.)
The Newport Folk Fest rendition of our variety show will feature a who’s who of musical and comedy guests from the festival lineup and beyond, with many a surprise and once-in-a-lifetime moment in store. Hilarious sketches, iconic collaborations, a stellar house band, classic songs from the country canon, and plenty of homages to Newport Folk Festival and its country legacy will be sure to charm the Jane Pickens Theater audience.
Tone: it’s the Holy Grail for musicians, and it’s the cornerstone of Sho-Bud, the iconic pedal steel guitar company founded in 1955 by Harold “Shot” Jackson and Buddy Emmons. When Emmons moved on, Jackson continued with sons Harry and David, handcrafting instruments integral to the sound of country music.
In the early 1980s, Sho-Bud was acquired by Fred Gretsch. In 2005, after twenty years away from the business, Harry and David Jackson, joined by David’s daughter, Dawn Jackson, resumed building instruments. As Jackson Steel Guitar Company, they introduced new pedal steel, lap steel, resonator, and slide guitars.
In December 2024, the third generation of Jacksons, siblings and co-CEOs Dawn and Will Jackson, reacquired the company name and family legacy. “We knew that the name carried a lot of weight,” says Dawn Jackson. “It’s our heritage, and we wanted to bring it back while Dad and Harry were still building.”
“I want to acknowledge Fred Gretsch, his wife Dinah, his family, and his team,” says Will Jackson. “A lot of people approached him to acquire the Sho-Bud name over the years, and he didn’t do it. He saved it for us. We very much appreciate what he did in terms of preserving the name, keeping it intact, and not selling it to someone else. We’ll be eternally grateful to him for that.”
Sho-Bud relaunched this year with new and classic gear, plus several projects across platforms and generations. The reach stretches from traditionalists devoted to the classic instruments they saw on the Opry stage, to young musicians incorporating steel in everything from country to metal.
Central to all of this, of course, are the instruments, which include the high-level, traditional, maple cabinet Pro V; bender-equipped, stand-up SlideKing LS lap steel; and best-selling Maverick II.
“It’s not the Maverick of old,” says Will Jackson of the Maverick II. “The original Maverick was designed to be a low-cost, entry-level, beginner guitar. With the Maverick II, our objective was to build one of the sweetest-sounding guitars. We developed a front and rear extruded aluminum panel that has a hard rock maple soundboard that sits between them. On top of that, the one-piece aluminum neck now binds the key head and tail plate together.
“When you sandwich all that together, this particular guitar, as Dawn describes it, cuts through all the other noise. It’s distinctive, it’s clear, it rings and resonates. It has that Nashville sound because we still utilize the exact same pickup design that Shot developed back in the ’50s. When you marry that to this modern design cabinet, it is incredible. The Maverick II definitely stands out in terms of its tonal qualities. It’s pretty much unmatched. It’s quite an advancement in terms of pedal steel guitar technology.”
Sho-Bud plans a reissue of the signature Lloyd Green model, the LDG, which the Jacksons describe as “a continuation of the original classic design,” and a limited-edition LDG, cut with modern components and updated mechanisms, each one signed by Lloyd Green, David Jackson, and Harry Jackson. Other reissues will follow, including Jimmy Day’s Blue Darlin’.
Sho-Bud co-CEOs and siblings Will Jackson and Dawn Jackson.
“Relaunch,” in Sho-Bud vernacular, is all about name recognition, product reputation, and upholding a decades-old legacy. “We built steels for the past twenty-five years under the name Jackson Steel Guitars,” says Dawn Jackson. “So the relaunch, for us, circles around the Sho-Bud name.
“What’s happened in the months since we secured the name again, the outpouring of support from the guitar industry in general has been overwhelming,” she says. “That lends itself to the weight this brand carried around the world, and how throughout the years of its ‘dormancy,’ it maintained a true following, and not only from older generations. Younger people love the brand too. When we mention Sho-Bud, every door is open. So that’s really the relaunch. We maintained building these amazing instruments during our Jackson Steel era, but the [Sho-Bud] brand itself has the leverage and momentum behind it.”
“A lot of people have asked, ‘Is this just a rebranding of Jackson Steel Guitars?’ Definitely not,” says Will Jackson. “We’ve been sitting on a few patents that we’ve obtained over the last couple of years. They’ve got about fifteen years or so left on them while we fine-tune these components.”
Those components include a tunable vibrato, on-the-fly D Drop, The EDGE® multi-bending system, and Core-Over™ strings, all of which they’ve introduced to Sho-Bud artists with positive response.
“When a traditional, fretted-instrument guitarist is, say, holding a chord, when they use an old-school vibrato — let’s say a Bigsby, for example — when they hit that thing, all those strings are falling out of tune,” says Will Jackson. “Our tunable vibrato doesn’t destroy the chord. When they’re holding a chord and they go down, all those strings fall in tune now.
“We’ve got a Drop D tuner that allows an artist, again on a fretted instrument, to simply roll their E down to a D while they’re playing. They don’t have to take their fretting hand off and adjust anything on the key head. They don’t have to stop and tinker around with their picking hand to adjust anything. They’re able to use the palm, the heel, of their hand, roll it right down to a D, and roll it right back up to an E. So it’s very novel, very easy to use.
“With our Core-Over strings, we take the winding off up to where it passes the bridge and on the pickup side of the nut, so it’s just the core of the string going across those two touch points. It creates incredible amounts of sustain. The sound profile of the string is much rounder, bigger, fuller. It’s amazing.”
(L to R) Kyle Ince, Bob Sheehan, Slash, Ted Stern, Andrea Whitt, Skunk Baxter, Dawn Jackson, Pavel, Hexx Henderson, Mark Tucker, Rocco DeLuca, and Will Jackson pose for a group photo at the Sho-Bud Showcase Live at the Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles.
On April 24, in Hollywood, the company celebrated the return of Sho-Bud Showcase Live, national concerts spotlighting steel-centric artists in all genres. The series kickoff, Sho-Bud’s first live event in over forty years, included, among its many participants, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, Robert Randolph, Andrea Whitt, Rocco DeLuca, Hexx Henderson, Hatfield Rain, Shooter Jennings, and Slash.
Sho-Bud Music is a record label and publishing company originally established by Dawn Jackson to release an album by her band, the aforementioned Hatfield Rain. “Around that time, I started working with Dad and Harry on Jackson Steel and never did anything with the [album] mixes,” she says. “It’s getting ready to come out after all this time, so I’m super-excited.” Along with that recording, Sho-Bud Music is promoting other Sho-Bud artists.
Coming soon is Shot Jackson’s Sho-Bud Showcase radio program, which will now become a podcast featuring music, interviews, and over 150 digitized reels from the original 1970s and early 1980s WSM broadcasts. “We have all the reels and we’re going to start releasing them,” says Dawn Jackson. “The podcast will also include interviews with today’s Sho-Bud artists and, of course, our dad and Harry.”
Harold “Shot” Jackson built Sho-Bud on a foundation of superior instruments, customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. Those values remain at the core of Dawn and Will Jackson’s goals, whether putting instruments in the hands of internationally renowned musicians or newcomers learning their way around pedal steel.
Sho-Bud CEO Dawn Jackson poses with Slash and a Sho-Bud Steel Guitar.
“These instruments are not like traditional fretted instruments,” says Will Jackson. “Fretted instruments don’t have moving parts per se. But these do. Because they have those linkages and mechanical pulling mechanisms, as they’re used, they wear. Anytime you make a change to these instruments, you have to be careful, because in the interest of trying to maximize performance or life on one end, you can impact tone on the other end, and that is something we can’t sacrifice.
“Sho-Bud has always been known for that Nashville sound, the tone that we got. The story I recall as a kid was Shot sitting there on a pickup-winding machine, which was made out of an old sewing machine motor. He had apple bushels next to his workbench. He would wind a pickup, plug it in, and if it gave him the tone he was after, performed the way he wanted it to, it went in the keeper bushel. If it didn’t, it went into the discard bushel.
“That is how our family has built these things. There are no Rhodes Scholars over here or MIT graduates in engineering. These guys developed these instruments through pure trial and error and using their ears to develop that tone. Again, we can’t sacrifice mechanical advantages over tone. Some guitar companies do, but we cannot do that. For us, it is about tone, tone, tone. We live and die by that.”
“We’ve always maintained the tradition and look of our guitars — the beautiful cabinets, our certain inlays, the finishes,” says Dawn Jackson, “but aesthetics are second. Tone has always been number one for us.”
“These instruments require maintenance,” says Will Jackson. “If there is a nut, a screw, a bolt, it will get turned by someone. When these things leave the shop, they’re set perfectly. People will start adjusting things, and that’s what they’re for. You need to fine-tune things ergonomically to make it fit. But, because these things can be very sensitive, sometimes they overdo it, or they have trouble chasing the tuning back to where they wanted it.
“We are here to support them in terms of Zoom calls, where they can show us exactly what they’re doing, what the instrument is doing, or what it’s not doing that they would like it to do. We can help walk them through that, using a blend of modern technology to help them fine-tune some of these traditional instruments. We’re always looking for ways to make it easier for them to keep these guitars maintained.”
As a family-owned and operated company, versus a multi-department corporation, the Jacksons are front and center when phones ring, texts chime, and emails arrive – no call centers, AI assistants, or being transferred through a half-dozen departments and hold times. They field calls, walk customers through setups, stay active via social media, keep up with forums, provide instructional videos, and cherish human-to-human relationships.
Slash plays a Sho-Bud Steel Guitar.
“Will and I have been a team since we were kids playing football in the backyard,” says Dawn Jackson. “We really believe in team efforts, and that’s why we’re so big on using the words ‘Team Sho-Bud.’ The dynamics between us, our father, and our uncle – we’re all creators and passionate about the things we do.
“We have the same objective in mind, which is to maintain our family heritage,” she says. “I am so proud that Sho-Bud is still a family business, and that people love and respect that. We work together, play off of each other, and it just works and works well.”
“I’m proud of my family – our dad, our uncle – for the sacrifices they made over the years to build these instruments, and to deliver the tone and the sounds that everyone enjoys,” says Will Jackson. “I’m very proud of the work they put into this, and of Dawn for rolling up her sleeves and helping them. I’m proud of the way Sho-Bud has evolved. It’s fun to be a part of the rebirth of Sho-Bud. These instruments, these new components, are going to be total game changers. I’m very proud to represent these products and wear the old brand. It’s exciting times.”
All Photos: Ashley Marie Myers, courtesy of Sho-Bud. Lead and alternate images: Slash plays a Sho-Bud pedal steel guitar.
Ismay travels to Anderson Fair in Houston, Texas, a famed music venue with a unique history that includes legends like Lyle Lovett and Nanci Griffith. Ismay tracked down a special character from Lucinda’s early career, who had largely been missing from the national music scene since the ’70s. There they discover how artists’ paths diverge and contemplate what we’re all looking for when we seek out careers in music.
Produced in partnership with BGS and distributed through the BGS Podcast Network, Finding Lucinda expands on the themes of Ismay’s eponymous documentary film, exploring artistic influence, creative resilience, and the impact of Williams’ music. New episodes are released twice a month. Listen right here on BGS or wherever you get podcasts.
Finding Lucinda, the documentary film that inspired and instigated the podcast, is slated for release in the fall. Both the film and podcast showcase never-before-heard archival material, intimate conversations, and a visual journey through the literal and figurative landscapes that molded Lucinda’s songwriting.
Credits: Produced and mixed by Avery Hellman for Neanderthal Records, LLC. Music by Ismay. Artwork by Avery Hellman. Houston Recordings: Recorded at Anderson Fair. Sound Recordist: Rodrigo Nino Producer: Liz McBee Director: Joel Fendelman Co-Director & Cinematographer: Rose Bush Special thanks to: Tim Leatherwood, Mick Hellman, Chuck Prophet, Don Fierro, Jacqueline Sabec, Rosemary Carroll, Lucinda Williams & Tom Overby
Find more information on Finding Lucinda here. Find our full Finding Lucinda episode archive here.
Ian Munsick carries Wyoming with him wherever he goes. Though he’s now based in Nashville, Munsick consistently documents his affection for the Cowboy State through his music. For example, he named his new album Eagle Feather, a title that alludes to a gift he received at his honorary Crow Native American tribal adoption last year.
The closing track on that 20-song collection, “The Gate,” is bookended by the voices of his father and his son, underscoring the life lessons within the poignant lyrics. He even enlisted Buck Brannaman, an inspiration for Nicholas Evans’ 1995 novel, The Horse Whisperer, to appear in the music video for “Horses, Not Hearts.”
On a rare break from touring, Munsick chatted with Good Country about moving to Nashville as an 18-year-old, his admiration for bluegrass musicians, and his most reliable piece of advice.
Let’s start by talking about the video for “Horses, Not Hearts.” Why did you like the treatment for that video?
Ian Munsick: When it comes to everything for the eyes, my wife has a huge part in that. She’s also my manager and she’s very good at branding. The majority of my imagery comes from her, and she had that idea of going back home to Wyoming. There’s an old cowboy in Wyoming that’s one of the best horsemen in the world named Buck Brannaman. We always try to incorporate and feature real people in the West that are very good at what they do. This is a common theme for us, and he was one that we hadn’t included yet. We’re from Sheridan, and his wife is best friends with my mom, and we go way, way back. Before I was even born, they knew me, so it was cool getting to work with him and his daughter and his wife.
We’re really trying to portray an accurate picture of the real West. That’s always been my goal as an artist, and there’s no better way of doing that than to have world class horsemen and cowboys.
I think you’re a visual songwriter, too. “Too Many Trees” has a lot of visuals in it, and it’s a love song, but there’s also that issue of where to settle down. Is that something you and your wife talk about – thirty years in the future, where you want to be?
Oh yeah, all the time. I lucked out in that my wife loves Wyoming and I knew that that was going to have to be a precursor, because that’s where I belong. That’s where I feel most at home. She’s from North Carolina and there’s a lot of trees and hills there. I started to think to myself, “What if she didn’t like Wyoming?” That’s how that song came about. Being from Wyoming, there’s no trees there. They’re only on the mountains and by the rivers and that’s it. So, moving to Nashville when I was 18, it was a pretty dramatic geographical change.
I always had that idea and that title and then I picked up my three-year-old nephew from the airport. He flew in a couple years ago with his parents and we were riding back home in the truck back to our house in Nashville. I don’t think that he had ever left Wyoming, so it was his first time out. The first thing that he told me in the truck on the way home was, “Man, there’s so many trees out here.” I was like, “I’ve got to write that song!” That’s what sparked it.
When you thought, “All right, I’m moving to Nashville,” what was your goal?
I didn’t really have a big goal. My main goal was to play music for a living. I knew that if I was making music, then I was gonna be happy. It didn’t matter if I was writing songs or if I was playing in a band, or if I was producing songs, or if I was being an artist. I just knew that I wanted to be playing music all the time. Then slowly after I got here, I started to realize everybody that’s an artist right now is from the same area. They’re from Georgia or Tennessee or Texas and that’s it. So it’s like, maybe I have a unique outlook on what country is. That’s what inspired my whole artistry.
Photo Credit: Raul Esparza
Did you get a lot of radio stations where you grew up?
No, man! As you can imagine. There were three stations, two of them were country and one was rock. That’s it.
Wow. Did you listen to rock and roll coming up as a kid? Did you like it?
Yeah, my dad – he’s just a very good musical mind. He plays a bunch of instruments, writes his own music, so he turned me and my two older brothers on to all kinds of music when we were young. So honestly, I didn’t really listen to country radio very much, just because my dad hated it. He’s like, “Oh, this isn’t real country music.” That’s always what he would say. So we didn’t really listen to much radio country. It was like old tapes of Merle Haggard and George Jones – and the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Chris Ledoux, all kinds of music.
Did you get up on stage a lot as a kid and play with your dad?
Yeah, my dad taught my two brothers and me how to play music at a young age. By the time I was about 10 years old, we were on stage all together as a family band. That’s how I started. We’d play rodeos and after-parties, dances, just whoever would have us. That’s how I came up playing music, learning through them.
From the videos I’ve seen, and looking at your videos on social media, it seems to me like you don’t have stage fright. Did you lose that early as a kid?
Yeah, my dad knows how to engage an audience very well, so I got to learn that at a really young age. And my two older brothers already knew, from him, how to engage a crowd. So I had three people I looked up to that were already really good at that and I definitely learned from them.
I found one of your songs on Spotify called “Me Against the Mountain” and I was surprised to hear banjo on there. What was on your mind as that song was taking shape?
Like most writers, I have my voice memos on my iPhone, just hundreds of them on there. During COVID, I was writing with two people that I had never written with that would quickly become two of my favorite people to write with, Jeremy Spillman and Randy Montana. I had this little thing that was just like [imitates twangy licks] and it felt very backwoods mountain bluegrass. So I just picked up my banjo and started to play that. I did have the word “mountain,” and Randy was like, “Man, that’s just a really cool vibe. I wonder if it’s ‘me against the mountain?’” The mountain could be an actual mountain, or it could be a metaphor for an obstacle that’s between you and the one you love. So that’s how it came to be.
I recorded the whole thing in my studio and I mixed it right there. My wife and I were about to get married and I played it for her in the car. She’s like, “This needs to be our wedding song.” I was like, “All right, sweet.” So we made that music video around our wedding, which is something I feel like only happens when your wife is your manager. [Laughs]
How did you acquire a banjo?
For that one, that might have been a ganjo. Right after I made that track, I was like, “Man, you have no idea how long it took me to get that thing to sound good.” Like all ganjos do! But after that, for my birthday, my wife went to Carter Vintage and bought me a Deering banjo. It’s a beautiful banjo! It’s honestly one of the nicest instruments that I own. I just keep that bad boy in my studio. I can play “Cripple Creek” and that’s about it. But when you’re in the studio, you have the advantage of tuning it weird and making weird noises with it and fooling around until it’s good. What a cool instrument that just immediately puts you in a vibe. The acoustic guitar obviously can do a lot of things, but when you hear a banjo, it’s like you’re there. It just takes you to that place. It’s a very special instrument.
Do you remember when you got introduced to bluegrass or learned about it?
Yeah, my dad’s primary instrument is fiddle. I remember him playing all those old fiddle tunes when I was growing up. He gave me my granddad’s mandolin at a young age and he would teach me how to play those old fiddle tunes on the mandolin. So that’s my first real intro to old traditional bluegrass music.
But then, through people like Yonder Mountain String Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, Doc Watson, and Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, I really started to navigate my own [path through] bluegrass music. I fell in love with harmonies, number one. Those were the main things that drew me in. I’ve always been a huge harmony guy. I love the Beach Boys. I love The Beatles. And bluegrass was that other thing that really played on those three-part harmonies. Being the youngest of the three brothers, that was our thing – to sing harmonies. That’s probably what drew me in, right out of the gate as a kid. And the older I get, the more I appreciate the playing. Those are some of the best musicians in the world playing bluegrass music.
On “Cheyenne,” you’re putting yourself out there with just a guitar and not much else. What stands out about that song for you?
Lyrically I really love that one. You probably know a little bit about that town, but Frontier Days obviously is when everyone comes to Cheyenne. People think that’s the big hot spot of Wyoming, through that rodeo, but really that’s the only two weeks that anything ever happens there. Other than that, it’s a total ghost town. Not a lot of action. Even though it is the state capital, nothing goes on there. I thought it was a cool idea, lyrically. I had that guitar riff going into the write and I’ve always been a huge believer in four-chord or five-chord change, back and forth, like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” How it never goes to the one, how it never resolves. That’s the vibe for that one.
I produced that with Jeremy Spillman, and him being older and much wiser than me, he’s like, “Man, this song doesn’t need much. It doesn’t need a kick drum. Just throw a little snare in there and maybe a steel guitar, and that’s it.” That’s what I’ve been liking, too. The older I get, the more I don’t like a bunch of noise, which is probably the human experience! [Laughs] I feel like overdoing it is pretty easy for producing music, and I think it can speak more if there’s less in it, and it allows the audience to have a little bit of room to imagine things.
Man, I’ll tell you what. Dude, I heard that maybe not for the first time in high school, but that’s the first time I remember hearing it. It was my freshman year. Holy shit, dude, it rocked my world. I listened to it on repeat on iTunes for two weeks straight. It was like, “I can’t get enough of this.” To this day, that’s probably my favorite country song of all time. So good.
There’s a lot of life lessons in your song, “The Gate.” You probably learned some of those lessons the hard way. Especially in the music business, no doubt. When people approach you for advice, how do you handle that?
I’m always really inspired to try and help people as much as I can through my experiences. First thing I tell them is that I’m a ranch dude from Wyoming. So if I can do this, you can do whatever you want. There’s no world that’s more opposite than ranching in Wyoming to the entertainment industry. That’s as opposite as it gets. So if I can do it, then they can do it.
Man, I just try and use my mistakes, so that hopefully they don’t have to make those mistakes. I’m still young, I still have plenty more mistakes to be made. But what the main thing is, growing up in Wyoming, you’ve got to work your ass off and you want to be around people that are good people. It’s great if they can help you, or if you can profit with them, but the number one thing is just making sure you’re with good people that have your back.
Photo Credit: Cam Mackey
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Sho-Bud co-CEOs and siblings Will Jackson and Dawn Jackson.
(L to R) Kyle Ince, Bob Sheehan, Slash, Ted Stern, Andrea Whitt, Skunk Baxter, Dawn Jackson, Pavel, Hexx Henderson, Mark Tucker, Rocco DeLuca, and Will Jackson pose for a group photo at the Sho-Bud Showcase Live at the Desert 5 Spot in Los Angeles.
Sho-Bud CEO Dawn Jackson poses with Slash and a Sho-Bud Steel Guitar.
Slash plays a Sho-Bud Steel Guitar.
