Tag: feature

Is ‘Little Blue’ Kristina Murray’s “Ten Year Town” Breakout Moment?

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Patience and persistence have long been traits embodied by the music and songwriting of Kristina Murray, but with her new album, Little Blue, she can add another “P” word to the mix: perseverance.

Now a decade into her time in Nashville, Little Blue (out May 9 on New West Records) is poised to be her “ten year town” breakout moment. Through its blend of old school country twang and swampy southern R&B she ruminates on everything from the grind, pursuing her honky-tonk dream, to finding love, and the unseen burdens placed on women. She shows off her formidable knack for storytelling in the process. The project is also direct evidence of the inroads she’s made in Music City, with artists like Erin Rae, Logan Ledger, Sean Thompson, Miss Tess, Frank Rische, and John Mailander all lending a hand.

Originally from Atlanta, Murray was introduced to country as a child via a cassette of Patsy Cline’s greatest hits in her mother’s car. She eventually got her first guitar in high school, but didn’t play it anywhere outside of open mics and church camps until she moved to Colorado in the mid 2000s to pursue a degree in recreational therapy. While there, she became immersed in the regional bluegrass scene and began playing out more, slowly gaining confidence and building toward her eventual move to Nashville in 2014. While she was only in Colorado for six years, Murray still looks back on her time out west as foundational for her direction in life and the art she’s pursuing now.

“I’d never lived outside the South before and had a couple mentors of mine tell me I should give it a try for a little bit,” recalls Murray. “It was out there where I realized that being a musician is what I wanted to do with my life. Once you get bit by the playing-on-stage bug, there’s no going back. It’s so much more than just playing for people, too. It’s also being in sync with your band and performing at a high level and the energy feedback loop that can come from that.”

Since relocating to Nashville, Murray has become a linchpin of the city’s dive bar and juke joint scene, frequently popping up at places like Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge and Bobby’s Idle Hour, and became one of the first women to front a full band at Santa’s Pub. But despite all this, she was starting to feel stuck as the pressure of things like her father’s sudden death, car wrecks, watching others have the success she’d been waiting on began to weigh her down. But in that darkness she was able to find a glimmer of light, and Little Blue was born.

Leading up to the album’s release, Good Country caught up with Murray to discuss imposter syndrome, expectations in the music business, the healing power of music, and more.

If going from open mics and church camps in Georgia to diving into Colorado’s bluegrass scene was a big step, then moving from there to Nashville must’ve felt like being on another planet. What was that transition like?

Kristina Murray: My time in Colorado was foundational in some ways. I learned the Nashville number system, how to play with a band, and how to execute a bunch of different songs really well while I was there. But, eventually, it got to being a big fish, small pond kind of thing. You can make a living out there just by playing cover songs in bars, but what I wanted was to write songs and be around people my age who were also writing the kind of songs I like, wanted to listen to, and wanted to write. Moving there was a big step because Nashville is the place where the music I love was and is still being made.

You’ve been grinding away in Nashville for a decade now as an independent musician, but this new record marks your debut with New West. How’d that partnership come about?

Southern Ambrosia [was] the first record I put out after moving to Nashville and, quite frankly, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had seen a lot of my peers kind of take off and naively I thought, “Well, this is a really good record full of great players and good writing and I’m in this kind of circle community; because all those things are true, then this record should get me to the next place that I wanted to go.”

It was actually on the radar of Normaltown and New West back in 2018, but things fizzled out because I didn’t know how to go about having conversations with business people about my music – I’d never done anything like that before. Fast forward a few years, this record was done in 2023 and by early 2024 I was talking with them again about picking it up. Their support means a lot, because it’s really difficult to get your record and your career to the places that you want to go without it.

New West and Normaltown are also based out of Athens, Georgia, and I’m from Atlanta, so it means a lot to be involved with them on that level as well. I was a huge Drive-By Truckers fan in my 20s and can’t get enough of Jaime Wyatt, Lilly Hiatt, Nikki Lane and others. There’s just a lot of people that I love and respect on that record label and I’m happy to be a part of the family.

Better late than never, I suppose! You just mentioned the feedback for Southern Ambrosia not meeting the lofty expectations you had for it. I imagine seeing friends and colleagues having success with their music – from signing with labels to getting on bigger and bigger shows to nailing down high-profile writing sessions – doesn’t help to keep the imposter syndrome at bay.

It’s funny, because during my decade in Nashville I really have seen so many people just skyrocket, and it’s all been so deserved, like Erin Rae – nobody sings or writes like her – or Sierra Ferrell, I mean who else sings like that? Logan Ledger, who also joins me on this record, is one of my favorite singers and songwriters around. During my time here there’s been so many times when I’ve thought that something must be wrong with the way I sing or write to not be getting all those opportunities for myself. But I’ve come to realize that having all that isn’t what will validate me as a musician, writer, performer, and person who simply loves this music, because at the end of the day, if I still get something out of it, shouldn’t that be enough? It’s something I’ve grappled with a lot through the years and continue to do on this album.

Speaking of expectations in the music business not always being reality and the illusion of success, are those things you’re tackling head on in the song “Watchin’ the World Pass Me By”?

What’s funny about that song is it started out as me just trying to see if I could write a basic “outlaw” country song. It obviously evolved a bit from a writing exercise parody to a commentary on getting “so tired of watching ‘em livin’ my dreams” and “daddy’s bankroll to make the rules” nepotism and suddenly being a country singer, because you threw on a cowboy hat. But I also poke a bit of fun at myself, too, with lines like “She’s just a bitter, jaded, helpless fool.”

Another tune I’ve really enjoyed is “Phenix City.” In many ways it seems like an outlier on the record, a story song amid a sea of deeply personal, autobiographical tales. With that in mind, what was your intention for including it here?

Most of this record is autobiographical or composite sketches of me and those around me, but that one specifically is a story song. It very much paints a picture of small-town circumstances in Phenix City, a small town in Alabama along the Georgia border. One time I was driving down to a gig in Columbus, Georgia, and instead of going through Atlanta I decided to head straight down from Nashville through Alabama. I rented a car because my van was out of commission, and about a half hour outside Columbus I broke down after running out of gas because I had my music so loud I couldn’t hear it beeping. I eventually got it to a mechanic shop in Phenix City where the man told me I just needed some gas, which was both a relief and a moment that made me feel like the biggest idiot around, but briefly getting stuck there did inspire the song in a roundabout way.

Similar to “Phenix City,” another outlier of sorts on Little Blue is the lead track, “You Got Me,” which seems to revolve around the early, butterflies-fueled stages of love. Mind telling me a bit about it and the mood it sets for the remainder of the project?

I’m not one for writing love songs too much. The only other real love song I have is “The Ballad Of Angel & Donnie” from Southern Ambrosia, which is another story song about a meth dealer and his girlfriend. I wrote “You Got Me” early on in my relationship with my now-partner. It’s a very true-to-life song and I knew if it was going to be about him that it had to be a really cool-sounding song. My guitarist, James Paul Mitchell, came over one night when I was writing it and helped to come up with that signature lick you hear on it right at the beginning, which I loved. I really wanted it to be like a Band song with the Clavinet sounds that they twin throughout the song. My partner, Corey [Parsons], also plays percussion on this one, which is really sweet that he got to put some of his touch on a song about him.

The song also starts with the word “and,” which came from a writing exercise after listening to Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain.” It begins with “And I followed her to the station.” I thought it was so cool to start a song with “and,” because it’s like you’re just dropping someone into the middle of a story.

While “You Got Me” is a bright spot, a lot of this album leans more toward the somber and dark. What are your thoughts on the catharsis and healing that can come from writing through difficult times such as the ones you’re encountering here?

The album is titled Little Blue for a reason. We are remiss to forget how significant the pandemic was and how devastatingly sad that period of time in our collective human history was. A good chunk of these songs were written during that two-year period along with general ruminations about the sad and unjust world we live in that even the music industry isn’t immune from. It feels silly at times to whine and cry about the music industry when there’s so much other crazy stuff happening, but that’s the world I live in so I have to write through that.

I wouldn’t say that writing songs is cathartic for me as much as sharing in the collective. What grabs me about music is when it feels real and is relatable to me and I hope that I’ve done that here with what I’ve written about. Music is magical, so the fact that I get to do this at all is amazing and continues to drive me. I’m never not going to be amazed by music. For instance, I took a harmonica lesson the other day with Ilya Portnov, who also plays on the record. I’ve done a little bit of Bob Dylan-esque singer-songwriter harmonica, but I really wanted to understand the harp a little bit better. It’s a magical feeling when the music and notes and scale are all working together. I feel endlessly humbled by it and very proud that I get to be a small ripple in the river of music.

What did the process of bringing Little Blue to life teach you about yourself?

That I’m gonna keep doing it regardless of if it makes any sense at all. I didn’t get my record deal until after everything for this album was done, meaning that I funded it all myself. It was a lot to handle, because making records isn’t cheap, especially if you’re paying people what they deserve to get paid. I feel very lucky and grateful for all the folks that lended their talent to this record. It made me realize that the more I keep pushing ahead to more everything will begin to make sense around me. It’s a mix of perseverance and understanding that good things take time and intention. I feel really good about this record and even though it’s only my third, and first in six years, I’m glad to put it out in the world because we need art now more than ever.

Photo Credit: Schuyler Howie

Folk Trio the Wildwoods’ New Album is a Love Letter to Nebraska

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The Wildwoods are not shy about the pride they hold for their home state, Nebraska. The Lincoln-based trio – guitarist/vocalist Noah Gose, violinist/vocalist Chloe Gose, and bassist/vocalist Andy Vaggalis – named their gorgeous new album, Dear Meadowlark (out April 11), after the state bird, while songs like “Sweet Niobrara” and “I Will Follow You To Willow” represent odes to specific Nebraska towns.

“The album really is about our home here in Nebraska,” elaborated Noah, who is the group’s principal songwriter.

The Wildwoods have been together, in one form or another, for over a decade. Noah and Chloe, who are now married, first started performing together as teenagers, while Andy had played in the Wildwoods on and off for several years before officially joining them as a trio in 2022. Dear Meadowlark is their fourth full-length, but the first with Andy as a full-time member, and this album showcases their marvelous vocal chemistry throughout its set of gentle, pastoral acoustic music.

Before heading out on an East Coast tour, the three spoke to BGS about their new album, their growth as a band, and how the pandemic actually helped them become more widely known.

You all have been really upfront with how the new album reflects your deep affection for your home state, Nebraska.

Noah Gose: You know, living in a place like Nebraska, you hear a lot about people wanting to move away. But we’ve just grown to really appreciate our life in Nebraska and appreciate having had the opportunity to grow up in a place like Nebraska.

Chloe Gose: As much as we leave, I think we’ve all always appreciated our home.

Dear Meadowlark also has a very smooth musical flow to it. The title track opens the album like a lovely overture, while the contemplative closer, “Postcards From Somewhere,” bookends it as something like a reflective travelogue-type tune.

CG: It kind of felt like [“Postcards From Somewhere”] was the perfect fit to tie everything all together.

Andy Vaggalis: I think it works super well at the end, too, because [the album] is almost like little stories being written on the postcard with the last song for the postcard to be sent off.

NG: And that song originally wasn’t going to be a part of the album. It was just going to be a single. I wasn’t too keen on adding it to the album, but you know what Chloe says goes, so it was her decision to put it on, but now I’m really happy that we decided to do that.

The album’s music is really rooted in your acoustic instruments; however, drums, keyboards, and cello are used to nicely fill out the arrangements. Was that a conscious choice?

CG: I’m glad that you say that, because with our last album, Foxfield Saint John, I feel like each song is very epic-sounding in the sense that it just has a lot going on in all the arrangements, and we really wanted this album to sound more like us like how we sound live.

NG: All those extra instruments don’t really have the main spotlight at any point throughout the album, but they’re definitely kind of underlying things that brought certain parts of the arrangement out.

Noah, you are the primary songwriter – how did you approach writing the songs for Dear Meadowlark, which sounds like it is a quite personal album?

NG: Yeah, our first two albums, Sweet Nostalgia in 2017 and then Across the Midwest Sky in 2019, were all songs that were music first, lyrics second. And Foxfield was kind of half and half. Most of the songs on Dear Meadowlark were lyrics first. I feel like the songs mean more to me personally when the lyrics are first, because all the lines feel more purposeful.

CG: Things that are happening in our life are inspiring the words. So, all the words are very truthful and mean something in real time… I can tell when certain songs were written.

NG: I don’t like writing songs that just feel like everything’s completely made up. I like to just relate every song I write to things that happened in real life.

Are the vocals something that you think about when you are writing the songs, Noah?

NG: I very rarely have Chloe’s vocal range or Andy’s vocal range in mind when I’m writing the initial bones of the song, because I don’t want anything to get in the way of whatever kind of creativity goes into the initial writing. Most of the songs though, I arrange with Chloe singing the melody. I just don’t feel as confident in my own voice as I do in Chloe’s voice. And just with her being the only female voice, I feel like her voice stands out the most and works the best most of the time as singing the melody.

Your wonderful harmony singing seems to have become central to your sound now.

NG: The whole album of Dear Meadowlark was written around three-part harmony being kind of the main focus of the album.

AV: When I joined the group, I had it in my head – “I’m playing bass.” I wasn’t envisioning doing all these three-part harmony stuff. … When I first came back into the fold, it was like learning the songs and just finding a part in between [their voices] that fit. I remember like one night we were trying to make a fun ad for a show, so we switched around the words to “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. And I remember just feeling way easier than I normally would at [how] to put the three-part harmony together, and just like, “Oh, shit, that sounds good!”

Andy, while Dear Meadowlark was your first full album in the band’s trio setup, you have been with Chloe and Noah frequently over the years?

AV: I started playing with these guys in 2017. We were like a six-piece band. So, I was on Sweet Nostalgia and Across the Midwest Sky. Through the years, I’ve been lurking around.

CG: We’ve had different musicians playing with us throughout the years, but Andy has always been like a core member – basically since the beginning. … We were in choir together in high school. I think there’s kind of like an epiphany with Andy still playing with us. We’ve had other members and clearly that wasn’t like their dream to be doing that anymore. I feel like the reason why we are all still together and doing it is because we all have the same appreciation for what we’re doing.

Okay, speaking of beginnings, I must ask about the beginning of your musical partnership, Chloe and Noah. You two have been making music together since you were both teenagers.

CG: Noah and I met in 2012 when we were 14. I was playing music with my brother and we just like played for fun basically at farmers markets and stuff. [Noah] joined my brother and me, and we played all throughout high school [as] the Wildwoods.

NG: If you were to see videos of us playing at 14, you would probably turn your computer off. … I only really ever had this acoustic guitar that was my dad’s. So, I didn’t ever dive into any other kind of music other than songs that I would play on the acoustic guitar. And when I met Chloe and I learned that she played the violin, I think I just immediately felt like we should play music together. We really enjoyed each other’s company. And playing together so much over the past 13 years, I think it’s just there was no kind of epiphany at first; I think it’s been a 13-year-long epiphany

Andy, when you decided to formally join the band, you still hadn’t finished college yet – was that a big decision?

AV: I was going to college for music. When I would think about what I wanted to do after graduating college, it was travel around and play music. So, I figured might as well. I didn’t necessarily need college to do that at the moment. I can always go back, right? We’ve been great friends since before I was even playing with them. And then, after years of playing with them, it was a pretty easy decision to talk myself into it.

When you rebranded as a trio, it was also when your group started to get a lot of attention during the pandemic for the cover song videos you put up online.

NG: When we started posting his videos, the response that we were getting from the trio videos was just far better than anything that we had ever done in the past, and so we just felt, “This is what works best!”

AV: Then when the “Home” video (a cover of the 2010 Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros hit song) blew up, I think it was Halloween night. All of our phones were just notification after notification after notification, and we’re like “This is insane!” And then the next day, it dawned on us, “Okay, this is exciting, but also this is like a little opportunity here that we need to maximize.” We were trying to still practice together, because we were still kind of in the infancy of playing together as a trio.

CG: Yeah, it was kind of a stressful time during that time, because all three of us were teaching music lessons as well as doing the Wildwoods full time. So, we would meet up early in the morning. We’d start our days at like 8 a.m. and just go until 3 or 4, and then we’d all go and teach lessons. Then we would meet up after lessons to finish what we were working on.

Did the viral success of your cover song videos change what the makeup of the audiences coming to your shows?

CG: We went on tour not really knowing what to expect after our social media blew up. And then [on] our first tour, it was really amazing to see. We started just selling a bunch of tickets in cities that we had never even gone to…

@thewildwoodsband ‘Home’ by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros🏠 #edwardsharpe #edwardsharpeandthemagneticzeros #home #folk #folkmusic #trio #folktrio #bass #uprightbass #fiddle #acousticguitar #harmonies #eartrumpetlabs #acousiccover #acousticmusic #vibes #sweatervest #fun #love #nebraska #tambourine #guitar ♬ Home by The Wildwoods – The Wildwoods

Did you fear that your cover of “Home” might become your “Free Bird”?

NG: Yeah, it was definitely a worry at first, just because we usually throw in one cover, maybe two. We’re mainly an originals band.

CG: I think it has evolved, now that it’s been a couple of years, where people are finding our original music. And they’re requesting them at shows more so than the cover songs.

AV: Even some deep cuts, too.

The songs on Dear Meadowlark, besides drawing inspiration from your home state Nebraska, also holds a warm, woodsy vibe that suggest to me about being out in nature. How would you describe your sound?

CG: Yeah, I think that’s the vibe we’re trying to go for, like aesthetically and musically. I feel like our music too is very soothing – even our upbeat songs. I don’t know if that’s just because of the harmonies fitting together. It’s very calming and soothing music.

Photo Credit: Emma Petersen

David Ramirez Shares His Dreams on ‘All the Not So Gentle Reminders’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The first key to All the Not So Gentle Reminders, the sixth album by singer-songwriter David Ramirez releasing on March 21, is “Maybe It Was All a Dream,” the moody, elegiac song that opens his first LP in five years.

There are no lyrics to spell it out for the listener. It’s an instrumental, mostly a synthesizer riff over drums and a stately organ interspersed with a muffled, mysterious, and unintelligible voice. It’s more about mood – think Twin Peaks – than anything specific.

“The connection I have with it, which is a little too personal for me to share, it just felt right to open the record,” Ramirez said. “I had already gone into it knowing that I wanted some very long and dreamlike intros and outros to some of these songs. So it just seemed like a very fitting thing to have it all tie in by introducing the record with a musical number.”

The second key to the album is “Waiting on the Dust to Settle,” the second track, where Ramirez confides he doesn’t yet know where he’s headed.

“Amen, I can see it in the distance, the potential for a new beginning,” he sings. “I don’t recognize this place anymore … [I’m] waiting for the dust to settle.”

In our BGS interview below, you’ll learn the identity of the third key song on All the Not So Gentle Reminders, why it took so long to record and release the new material, and how the album’s lush string arrangements are a sign of the maturation of the artist.

The string arrangements on the album are very prominent, a counterpoint that duets with the lyrics. What brought that on?

David Ramirez: Yeah, for sure. I’ve never worked with strings before and just to kind of stay in the same lane of this dream world that I was trying to build, it made sense. … I’ve been doing this thing for a while now, but I feel like bringing strings into an album, I felt very adult for the first time. It felt good. It was really exciting.

Why did it take you five years to get this album out?

It was COVID and a breakup that kind of paralyzed me from being creative. I didn’t want to directly reference [the breakup]. There is one song on the album called “Nobody Meant to Slow You Down” that is direct from my last relationship. But the rest of it, I wanted to explore some other things.

You have Mexican heritage. Things are going badly for Mexicans and Mexican Americans — and immigrants and their families from many nations and backgrounds — in the U.S. now. Any reason you didn’t tackle that?

I have a couple of political tunes on past records and it’s something that I address during shows. This record for me, especially with the state of my heart recently going through a pretty big breakup that was extremely world-shaking for me, I didn’t want to put out for personal reasons a heartbreak record. … I did write some songs that were more social and politically heavy and I’m reserving those for an EP or my next album. I have this new song that I’ll release sometime later this year, called “We Do It for the Kids,” which is probably my most political tune to date and it’s a pretty heavy one.

To get the full effect of your songs, close attention must be paid to the lyrics. Is that a challenge during shows where people are also socializing?

I’m lucky enough to have people here in the states who’ve been following me for a while and they enjoy the lyrics. They enjoy how meditative it is. But the shows aren’t just that. I do not like going to see a songwriter and they sing for two hours and it’s just dark and depressing the whole time. So we mix in a lot of music from a lot of different records and make sure that there’s a dynamic and it’s fun and it’s funny and it’s upbeat.

Sure, there are slower and more contemplative moments. But we like to put on a show. … In Europe, they’re very polite and you can put on the most rocking show and they’re going to give you a golf clap. They’re there for the songs and the stories. So I generally have to curate a different set when I’m overseas.

You’re based in Austin, Texas. Did you grow up there?

I was born and raised in Houston, playing baseball growing up. It wasn’t until my senior year in high school that I met these fellow students who were all in theater and choir, and those relationships led me to stop playing ball and join choir and join theater and pick up an instrument and start writing my songs. I went to Dallas for a brief time to attend [Dallas Baptist University], and that’s where I started playing out in front of people for the first time, whether it was just open mics or the midnight slot at a metal club where they allowed an acoustic songwriter guy to show up and close out the evening. I was just so desperate to play that I didn’t really think twice about it. In 2007 and 2008 I lived in Nashville and then I moved here to Austin, Texas, in December of 2008 and I’ve been here ever since.

A third key track on the album is “The Music Man,” where you credit your father for helping spur you to make music.

“The Music Man” is a song I wrote about my father who gave me a Walkman when I was 10 years old. There are many people I can thank and [to whom I can] attribute my passion and my love for not just music itself, but for writing and performing it. But if I’m really upfront and honest, I think it goes back to when my father gave me his favorite cassette tapes and how that led to this life as a 41-year-old where I make records and tour the world full-time.

Who were the artists on those cassettes?

The Cars Greatest Hits. That’s obviously a rock band, but the song that I was so obsessed with was [the downbeat] “Drive.” Then I went to the Cranberries, and then to Fiona Apple, and then I went to Sarah McLachlan and that led to Radiohead.

… There’s this melancholy nature and mood that all those records have that at such a young age made a deep impression on me. I didn’t start playing music till seven, eight years after that, but by the time I did pick up a guitar or pick up a pen or piece of paper and start writing down my feelings, I think all those influences from such a young age really started to show their faces.

Any one artist in particular that inspired you to take up songwriting?

When I was 21 I got Ryan Adams’ Gold and that was just a big, massive influence musically for me. … That really locked in for the first time how I wanted to tell stories and what kind of stories I wanted to tell. Ryan and I don’t know each other, but his records led me to folks like Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan. He was the doorway to a lot of a lot of greats that weren’t really coming my way when I was in high school.

Are you comfortable with your music being categorized as Americana?

I don’t mind it, but I don’t really understand it either. If you say it’s Americana, people assume that it’s more country and I don’t feel that way at all. The more I do it, [I prefer] just “singer-songwriter,” because at least that offers freedom. Because every record I’ve released sounds different than the last. So at least with singer-songwriter, I can kind of have the freedom to evolve and change.

Photo Credit: Black Sky Creative

With New Double-Album, Nefesh Mountain Send Out ‘Beacons’ for Dark Times

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s been a decade since Doni Zasloff and Eric Lindberg became musical and life partners, melding her background in musical theater and singer-songwriter music together with his blues, jazz, and banjo-picking roots. Now, with a new double album, Beacons, their band Nefesh Mountain dives deep into the myriad ways music can serve as a light in dark times.

The album’s eighteen tracks across two discs convey not only a ferocious command of numerous roots styles, but also a level of compassion and empathy lacking from so much topical music.

“We’re always trying to … walk that high wire between trying to provide an escape … and not neglect[ing] what’s so clearly happening day by day to all of us, as we watch the news and look at our phones and feel this fear and anger and depression,” says Lindberg. The news, he adds, has become “this thing that we can’t run from.”

For many artists on the folk/roots continuum, this desire to comment on the state of the world might mean focusing entirely on our current political leadership. For Nefesh Mountain, though, it means relating with their audience on an even more personal level than usual.

“That’s really part of our job, I think, as artists right now,” Lindberg says.

This echoes a message of “revolutionary love” that many other artists have gotten behind, courtesy of author Valerie Karr.

“Wonder is where love begins,” Karr wrote in her 2020 memoir, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. “When we choose to wonder about people we don’t know, when we imagine their lives and listen for their stories, we begin to expand the circle of who we see as part of us.”

This notion is what inspired Ani DiFranco’s 2021 album Revolutionary Love and seems to be echoed on Beacons, with Nefesh Mountain’s determination to weave radical love into their approach to progressive bluegrass and Americana music. Indeed, Beacons seems to strive toward illuminating our common humanity.

Granted, this mission of “radical love” began with the name Lindberg and Zasloff chose for their band in the first place. “Nefesh” is a Hebrew word denoting life force, the sentience that pervades all living things. Radical love requires as much vulnerable expression as it does being open to the array of scary, emotional, dark trepidation so many people have in common. Among the topics Lindberg and Zasloff breach on Beacons: coming clean about a history of substance use, discussing the hard truths around their seven-year fertility journey, and their shared determination to maintain a sense of wonder in a world that can feel relentlessly staid. (“If we’re looking for some heaven, babe/ There’s some right here on the ground,” Lindberg sings in “Heaven Is Here.”)

The first disc of Beacons features a deft exploration of the group’s Americana tones. Though Lindberg and Zasloff are from the Northeast, their Nashville connections and twang-centric improv skills deliver a set of songs that could play just fine on say WSM, the radio home of the Grand Ole Opry.

The set begins with “Race to Run” – a radio-friendly country song about overthinking the struggles of the creative life (“I’m tired of trying to stay out in front/ But you remind me … it’s your own race to run”). “What Kind of World” is a rumination on a sense so many folks share these days, of powerlessness in the face of climate change. (“Is it just me? Can you feel it too?”) But, the song’s lyrics extend into geopolitics and the sense of divide that leaves so many feeling unstable.

Asked about the song’s vulnerable and rather personal honesty, Lindberg notes: “Remember, it was a year and a half ago when the fires from Canada kind of made their way down. We live in the New York area … so the line in the song is, ‘I saw the golden hour at 11 a.m./ They say it’s from the fires, it’s not us or them.’

“Now, a year later or so,” he adds, linking last year’s fire headlines with those of 2025, this time in California. “We had to sing this in Orange County a few weeks back while they were [still seeing smoke].”

As Lindberg’s proverbial camera pans out, the song considers the role of the average citizen in the face of such behemoth powers as climate and politics. “What’s it all for if we’re not all free,” the lyrics ask, shifting from fear about climate disasters to a purpose of climate justice. This ability to move from complaint to action item in a single verse, all couched in infectious twang, is what sets Nefesh Mountain apart from many others in the country space.

The Americana disc’s finest moment, however, is “Mother,” a song written by Lindberg that addresses so many of motherhood’s side effects. “I’ve lived many lives,” Zasloff sings. “…It’s all part of the job as a mother.”

Zasloff notes that her first two children – from a previous relationship – were practically grown when she and Lindberg began trying for a child of their own. What ensued was a seven-year fertility process that echoes what so many women encounter when they discover becoming pregnant is not always as easy as it seems.

“I burst out crying when [Eric] first shared [‘Mother’] with me,” she says, “because it was so personal and so empowering and beautiful for my husband to write that about me.”

In addition to the way the song tackles their infertility journey, it also reckons with Zasloff’s history with alcohol – something she chose to leave behind in order to become a mother. “I decided in that moment of having that song come into the world,” she says, “that I was wanting to talk about something personal that I had never talked about publicly, ever. Which is the fact that I am sober. I’m an alcoholic and I just celebrated 20 years of sobriety. And I actually became sober to become a mother. It’s part of my whole story.”

Livin’ with that drink, Lord,
Always left me wanting more
But I was saved
When I became a mother

After that high point, the group moves into the traditional “Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning,” which Lindberg notes has long been a part of their live show. “We’d always mess with the arrangement,” he says. “I kind of just called it in the studio. We had a little bit of extra time. I didn’t know it was going to be on the album, but it’s one that the band knew when we were down in Nashville and we kind of arranged it on the fly.”

“We’re all New York guys and jazz players,” he adds. “So we wanted to lean into that a little bit and bring this real Americana spiritual into a different sonic space, really let improvisation take over, and help that add to the obviously beautiful meaning of the song.”

Nine tracks in, Beacons switches to bluegrass, bringing in giants of the form to round out the band. Of course, anytime Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Rob McCoury, Cody Kilby, and Mark Schatz come together in any room, the sound is bound to slap. Toss in Lindberg, whose pre-Nefesh background is jazz improvisation, and something truly special crops up.

“Regrets in the Rearview” opens this second disc, feeling like a bluegrass answer to the Americana set’s opener, “Race to Run.” Its instrumental section sets a high bar for the rest of the collection, as the band hands around lead duties, featuring some of the finest bluegrass instrumentals in the biz.

But it’s “This Is Me,” coming in at bluegrass track number three, that delivers one of the double album’s finest moments. Capitalizing on the band’s commitment to building connections and “radical love,” “This Is Me” tells the bluegrass side’s most personal story.

“A question that’s been thrown at us for years now, and especially to Eric,” says Zasloff, “is: How did a Jewish kid from Brooklyn get into bluegrass? … He came to me and he said, ‘I think I wrote a response song so that people will stop asking me that question.”

“I was thinking about it,” Lindberg says. “How did I get into bluegrass? [“This Is Me” is] more about if we’re lucky enough to find that thing that really makes us come alive and makes our soul kind of catch fire –whether it’s writing a song … or painting or sculpture or any trade anyone does. If that’s the thing, then it doesn’t matter, geographically, where we’re from.

“I’m of the belief, nowadays especially, with what we’re trying to do in the roots world, [that it’s important to] try to break down all the barriers,” he continues. No matter where people are from, he adds, “there are people that find this music and go, ‘Wow, that is lighting me up!'”

With that, Lindberg hearkens back to the title of the album. That music might be a light in dark times is, of course, no new concept. (Consider “This Little Light of Mine.”) But the fact that the idea has been floated before doesn’t mean it’s not worth mentioning. At a time when so many folks feel powerless to the onslaught of news and information coursing through the internet and the real world alike, it can be easy to feel like none of us are enough to meet the moment. But Beacons is a reminder that there is no darkness without light.

“No one knows how we become who we are,” Lindberg says, before offering a word of advice. “Everyone just be yourself –regardless of the questions you get or the pain or the hate that you see. You’ve just got to stay true.”

Photo Credit: Kelin Verrette & Rafael Roy   

Roots Pop Quartet TopHouse Contrast ‘Theory’ With ‘Practice’ on New EP

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With a self-made story spanning from their founding in Montana down to Nashville and beyond, roots pop quartet TopHouse know the difference between “theory” and “practice” all too well. But with their intriguing new two-part recording project, they might be some of the first to capture that difference in song.

Comprised of Joe Larson (lead vocals/guitar), Jesse Davis (guitar, mandolin), William Cook (violin) and Andy Lafave (piano), the band first released the hopeful, eminently uplifting Theory EP in 2024, and have now followed up with Practice, which dropped on Valentine’s Day (February 14). But what is the difference, really?

Both EPs fuse grass-roots simplicity with an experimental spirit – plus a rush of kinetic Celtic and Appalachian influence, just for good measure. With nearly 10 years behind them, the band have seen periods of unbridled optimism just to get a gritty reality check in the end; their songs live somewhere in the middle. Over 12 tracks in total, they cycle through warm, everyman vocals, spacious sounds, and live-in lyrics, and seem to conclude the concepts aren’t really opposites at all – more like two sides of the same coin

Where Theory is bold, bright and optimistic, Practice might be darker and a bit more reflective. Yet both are part of the broader truth – and both continually feed off of each other. Speaking with BGS ahead of Practice’s release, Larson and Davis explained where the new six-song set comes from and how it contrasts with its Theory companion.

This whole idea I think is pretty ambitious. Why don’t you tell me how the Theory and Practice EPs came about? Where’d that idea come to split this thing into two parts?

Joe Larson: Honestly, it was kind of an accident. I think Jesse and I were just hanging out one day. … We really wanted to do a full-length LP and we probably had, I don’t know, 14 or 15 songs and we were trying to find a common thread and get some idea of what this album might look like, what the concept of it might be. It just felt natural to split them into two lists. We’re like, “Alright, over here these songs are all about ideals and just optimistic worldview and all that. And then you’ve got these other songs about heartbreak and hardship and all that.” We just put ‘em into two lists and went back and forth for what felt like an eternity trying to decide what to do with this information. Eventually we were like, “Well, let’s just do a double thing.”

Do you see Practice as a more pessimistic kind of project? Or is it something different?

Jesse Davis: I wouldn’t say pessimistic. I’d say realistic. I think with Theory being sort of the ideals, maybe Practice is how they land in the real world, and it’s not pessimistic either in the sense that the EP ends with a tinge of hope. We’re big fans of hope here at TopHouse-the-band, LLC, and the EP ends with a little tinge of hope – in sort of a recognition of this cycle of striving for an ideal, falling a bit short, and maybe you fall quite a ways short. But then you pick yourself back up again and it’s almost like it’s a practice in itself.

I think also the two EPs are supposed to go together in the sense that it’s not like you listen to Theory and then you’re like, “All right, now I’m going to listen to what’s actually true and listen to Practice.” They’re supposed to kind of be combined in the sense, “Okay, there’s Practice, but the Theory is just as important to apply to the Practice.” It’s like, “Yeah, the realistic hard nature of the world is going to kick you in the teeth, but there’s a hope that you should bring to all of that, and ideals and standards that can be applied even in the hardest moments.”

JL: You might say that Theory is fake optimism, and Practice is real optimism. [Laughs]

How is the sound evolving on this one. Your fans really love that uplifting mix of rootsy, Celtic/Appalachian stuff. Has the vibe changed at all?

JD: I remember Joe and I had always had in the back of our minds writing a cowboy EP. We’re fans of artists like Colter Wall and I don’t know what you’d call it – maybe new country or underground country, whatever the term is. We just always had a little soft spot for that kind of a tone, I guess. So while we weren’t setting out to do that with this EP, I think it inevitably bled through a bit. It’s funny because sometimes the sound doesn’t line up with the lyrical message, if that makes sense. But when it doesn’t, I think I kind of enjoy that all the more.

Do you feel like your Montana roots still show up in the band? Maybe just in the willingness to think outside the box a little?

JD: I definitely think so, and for me, I think a lot of that has to do with what I’m visualizing. Maybe it’s not necessarily a musical thing so much as just a lyrical thing. But I think maybe the biggest factor with the Montana connection is that I just miss Montana, so a lot of songs point to this idea of going home or having a place. It kind of feels like we’re all wandering around right now, being away from our roots, which I think many people probably know that feeling.

The EP starts on “Meteor” and it’s got this simple, spacious sound. I just wonder, how does the image of a meteor fit in with the overall theme?

JD: It’s definitely metaphorical – or wait, sorry. Technically, it’s a simile, because it features “like” or “as.” [Laughs] It’s definitely the feeling of coming crashing down. It’s one I wrote, just sitting with my acoustic guitar and kind of strumming, and I remember feeling like it was pretty cheesy at the time I was writing it, because it was just catharsis. But sometimes either your tastes grow or things just develop into something a little bit more.

After that you get into a little bit more energy with tracks like “I Don’t Wanna Move On.” Where did that come from?

JD: “I Don’t Wanna Move On” and “Meteor” are almost sister songs in that those were two I wrote. They were written roughly around the same time and I was feeling some kind of way. “Meteor” is simile. There’s a picture to it. But “I Don’t Wanna Move On” is more of the incessant feeling of not wanting to move on. The chorus is not very ornate in its lyricism. It’s literally just that phrase repeated four times. And I feel like that fits the way sometimes an emotion just won’t leave you alone.

You guys mentioned finishing on a hopeful note, and “Falling” is definitely that. A really dreamy, beautiful song about being in awe over the ability to fall in love again, right?

JD: I think a lot of us struggle with periods of – maybe even if it’s not a full-on depression, just like a numbness to the world or just struggling with feeling anything at all. I mean, I know I definitely go through these phases. …“Falling” is about that. You wake up one morning and you’re like, “Oh, I feel my heartbeat again.” I think I wrote that one coming out of one of those seasons and just being just so grateful to get to feel joy or hope. It was funny because it was supposed to be a depressing song and then I finished it and I was like, “Huh, it’s hopeful.” But that’s probably a good thing. [Laughs]

With it being so uplifting, why did you include it on Practice and not Theory?

JD: That was definitely very intentional, because at least to me I think viewing the real-life things in just a doom-and-gloom view is pretty detrimental. And I don’t think that that’s realistic either. I mean, I know we said that Practice is sort of the realistic album where things go wrong, but I think that realism also includes the Theory. Realism includes the things that we strive towards because that is just as much a part of our life as the breakup or the loss or the addiction. The good things in life are just as real as the bad things.

Also, I think fits with the cyclical nature of the two EPs. If you go back to what Theory ends with, it’s a song that kind of descends into questioning things about life and maybe has a bit of a somber attitude to it. And if you were to go straight from that song into Practice, I think the feeling would continue. Then, as you get through Practice, you get to “Falling” and there’s a tinge of hope. If you go back to Theory from there, it begins with a song called “Better is the End,” which is maybe the most forward-thinking, hopeful tune in the whole collection. So maybe I’m connecting dots that aren’t necessarily there, but honestly, the song order sort of fits with the idea of it being cyclical.

JL: Yeah. We’re just trying to get people to listen to the EPs on repeat forever. [Laughs]

Don’t miss TopHouse performing on the BGS Stage at Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville, KY this September.

Photo Credit: Electric Peak Creative

Authenticity & Collaboration: We’re All Invited to be The War and Treaty’s ‘Plus One’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The mercurial husband/wife duo The War and Treaty are now riding a wave of success with an outstanding new LP, Plus One. Their fourth album, it’s out today, Valentine’s Day, on Mercury Nashville. They are also about to embark on a 30-city tour in March.

Two words recur throughout any conversation with Michael and Tanya Trotter, as they did during our extensive phone interview: Authenticity and collaboration.

“We titled it Plus One, because it’s really all about collaboration,” Michael said, getting things started. “That’s really been the key for us, especially since we came to Nashville and began working with the country community. They have been so open and willing to work with us, to listen and to hear what we have to say when we’re writing or when we’re in the studio.”

“For us, it’s really always important that we be true to who we are and what we do,” added Tanya. “That’s really been what we strive to do and the audiences really seem to enjoy it.”

Indeed, the pair earned multiple standing ovations during the opening night of a recent three-night engagement at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. Backed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra, they went through a powerhouse nearly 90-minute performance, doing both fresh material from Plus One along with tunes from their earlier LPs such as the masterful “Blank Page,” as well as the glorious “Can I Get an Amen,” and a host of other numbers. They even performed a trio of Ashford & Simpson compositions, among them “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.”

“Working with the Symphony was really inspiring, but it was also different for us,” Michael said. “They were so great and we just had to make sure that we were on pace in terms of timing and keeping things going.”

“They were really fantastic,” added Tanya. “They really give you a lot of energy and they were so great playing behind us.”

It’s been quite a ride for the Trotters ever since their debut album, Love Affair, was released. Prior to that, from 2003 to 2007, Michael was in the United States Army. He was a Private First Class assigned to the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Division and served in Iraq and Germany. During his deployment, his unit was encamped in one of Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, which had a piano in its basement. Michael learned how to play the instrument when his company commander, Captain Robert Scheetz, encouraged him to toy around with the piano knowing he had a passion for singing. Scheetz was killed on a mission shortly after, and Michael wrote his first song in Scheetz’s honor and sang it at his memorial. He then began performing at the services of other fallen soldiers.

When they began working together the couple were initially known as Trotter & Blount. A year later, with their new name the War and Treaty, they released an EP, Down to the River, which was a superb combination of multiple idiomatic references. It had blues and soul feeling in the lead vocals and harmonies, the intensity of gospel in the performances, and the storytelling charm and acumen of country in its lyrical treatments.

Yet, it also identified the one characteristic about the War and Treaty’s music that has proven perplexing. Because they are so naturally eclectic in terms of musical choice and performance style, they were immediately embraced by the Americana audience. Later they were subsequently welcomed by the country market. But they’ve never been able to generate much momentum or traction within the urban contemporary (what was once termed the soul or Black) market. Despite having a sound as soulful as it gets, and being deeply entrenched in traditional Black music (both popular and secular), that market has been slow, at best, to recognize and welcome their music.

“Well, we know who our tribe is and we accept that,” Tanya said. “Certainly we want to reach as many people as we can, and we clearly want to have our songs played on those stations. But we also understand how the industry and marketplace work, and those are things we have no control over.”

“I’ll say this, when we go to our concerts, we have all types of fans,” Michael added. “They’re across the board, old, young, Black, White, Latino, just people who love good music. We really stress being authentic and staying true to what we do and love. That’s all you can do. But I will add that if these stations would play our songs – [and] play songs by people like Kane Brown, Mickey Guyton, Jimmie Allen – I think they’d find a receptive audience, because there’s an authenticity and feeling there that transcends things, yet also is very much a part of the Black experience.”

That’s been the mission since their 2018 debut release, Healing Tide. They quickly became a sensation in Nashville with their second LP, 2020’s Hearts Town, which included a dynamic collaboration with the great Emmylou Harris on the single “Five More Minutes.”

Two years later they were signed to UMG Nashville. Their first effort for the label, Lover’s Game, was in 2023. That same year, they graced a Top 20 hit, “Hey Driver,” a collaboration with Zach Bryan. It led to them being the first Black duo to be nominated for both the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music’s Duo of the Year awards. It was also an indication that they had been accepted into country’s inner circle, something that hasn’t always been the case with Black performers.

“From the beginning we’ve never received anything other than respect, kindness, and first-class treatment from the country community,” Michael said. “I know that there are some other acts out there who can’t say that, but that’s really been true for how we’ve been treated.”

“Oh yes, everyone’s been so wonderful,” adds Tanya. “I can’t say enough about how great we’ve been treated and what a thrill it’s been working with people like Emmylou Harris, Chris Stapleton, Zach Bryan.”

That theme of joining forces and working together permeates the War and Treaty’s latest, Plus One.

It’s an 18-song masterpiece recorded at the legendary FAME studios in Muscle Shoals and co-produced by the Trotters along with A-list names like John Shanks, Jesse Frasure, and Jonathan Singleton. There’s a host of notable numbers, among them the poetic and inspirational “Love Like Whiskey,” co-written with Miranda Lambert; “Drink From Me” which also spotlights guitarist Billy Strings; as well as the aforementioned “Can I Get an Amen,” “Called You By Your Name,” and “Carried Away.”

Frasure, Strings, and Jonathan Singleton are among the other contributing writers, but much of the material was co-penned by the Trotters. “Some of these go back a ways, while others are recent,” Michael explained. “We really had about 50 songs by the time we finished and we had to cut it down.”

“I think we’ve got the best of the ones,” added Tanya.

With a biopic now in the works that chronicles their storybook rise to fame, the War and Treaty are looking ahead to the tour and future projects. There’s actually one thing they haven’t done yet that they’d like to do.

“We want to do a bluegrass album some day,” Michael says, in conclusion. “We think there’s a lot of material in those old mountain songs, both the gospel and the secular, and we’d like to try our hands at doing them our way. ”

“I think our fans would be delighted,” added Tanya. “They really enjoy some of the other older type material we do, and I think there’s a lot of good material there that really fits what the War and Treaty’s all about, doing strong and good songs our way.”

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Photo Credit: Sophia Matinazad

BGS 5+5: Lily Talmers

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Lily Talmers
Hometown: Birmingham, Michigan and Brooklyn, New York
Album: It Is Cyclical, Missing You
Personal nicknames: To most people I’m just Lily or LT. Though… I’ve long been just a hair away from changing my moniker from my real name to “Scary Magdalene.”

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

Judee Sill has been so huge for me – there is such musical intricacy to her work and to the metaphors she works with in writing. She just goes beyond the script of singer-songwriter in every way. She is really playing! With texture and tone and size and scope on every level – lyricism, meaning, arrangement, melody, harmony. She was just so devoted to every facet of the craft, and her songs thematically are themselves devotional.

As far as contemporaries go, though, Madison Cunningham has also totally changed my hopes and dreams. Her ways of being and writing have granted me permissions and reminders as simple as, “Women can be forces on the guitar!” and as wide as, “You can trust your audience to hold depth and complexity!” Her devotion to craft, like Judee’s, is the underlying thing that moves me.

What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?

Does teaching count as an art form? I have taught or studied literature formally for the last 10 years off and on. I could rattle off a bunch of titles or something, but to be honest a huge part of my music and craft has to do with performing. I’ve learned so much about the type of performer and space holder I want to be by trying and failing at teaching and witnessing some really brilliant colleagues. It’s influenced everything – my body language, my attention, my ability to embody and to really mean what I’m saying or singing.

I taught literature to college students for four years at an alternative/outdoor education program called the New England Literature Program. I’ve been hugely impacted by the many ways one can go about instructing someone else to undergo a creative act, be it writing or interpreting writing. I’m always floored by what can be done by a group of people just paying attention to a work of art or piece of writing. And that practice of noticing and paying attention is like 80% of how I’ve gotten any good at writing songs or playing music.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

In a word, “often”! I think we’re only really capable of seeing in others the things that we most intimately witness in ourselves. So, if a song is about betrayal, it’s writing both of the betrayer and the betrayed, as if they’re separate people. But, usually, I’m reporting with a real understanding of both sides because I am both, the betrayer and the betrayed, at once! And, if I don’t realize at the time of writing the song that I am both, usually my life reveals it to me somewhere down the line. I hear the accusations and questions and outcries of the songs differently with time. People in my life have a deep impact on me, but a lot of my best songs emerge from the many binaries and paradoxes of my internal world and less often from literal features of my life.

Does pineapple really belong on pizza?

Absolutely. I feel like people who can’t accept this are still crying themselves a river over Dylan going electric. Things that seem like they shouldn’t work often do work! Get with it!! Having a pineapple-goes-on-pizza attitude bodes well with making music too – you should always say yes to inspired ideas that sound weird or impossible. And if it works, it just does. There doesn’t need to be theoretical sense-making of it all.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

HA! I love this question. May the world know that I love Celine Dion. Particularly her French records – D’eux or On Ne Change Pas. When I’m sad I like to watch this video of her singing a Christmas song on TV when she was a teenager and being surprised by her family. I was shown her music in high school French class and have always loved her drama and the way she really dignifies the figure of “singer.”

Photo Credit: Alex Gallitano

‘Welcome to the Plains’ and to the Red Dirt Universe of Wyatt Flores

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Each year, the country music machine and its many fans and acolytes turn over, again and again and again, the quintessential question of “What is authenticity?” We’ve asked that very question quite a few times on Good Country over the last year ourselves, and we know as long as roots music and folk music are made, listeners will continue to ponder what is or isn’t “real,” “raw,” or… “authentic.”

Wyatt Flores has been chosen as authentic. Country Music has spoken, and this quickly skyrocketing young artist has been riding a wave lately surfed by folks like Sierra Ferrell, Tyler Childers, Colter Wall, and Zach Top. Like these real country “poster children,” Flores’ music is realistic and grounded. It isn’t idealized revisionism in outlaw trappings. His songs never attempt to sugarcoat or mythologize, paving over the complications of rural life, red dirt realness, or the gritty patina of a rural places – like his homeland of Oklahoma.

Flores’ new album, Welcome to the Plains, is decidedly and delightfully trad country with nearly universal critical and listener acclaim. He currently racks up 3.5 million streams a month on Spotify alone, bolstered by a series of incredibly popular and consistently viral singles and EPs leading up to this, his full-length debut. For so many writers, diehard fans, and critics, Flores has long been “one to watch,” but that visibility stretches further and wider, to listeners across the country and around the world from so many different backgrounds and starting points.

Part of the reason why such a young artist with a relatively nascent career could have already amassed such a coalition of followers is that realistic, unguarded, “I know who I am, even though I’m still figuring out where I’m going” approach. It’s evident in his artistry, his performing prowess, and his skill for songwriting – all of which are evidenced prominently across this album.

Welcome to the Plains is one of the most remarkable records of 2024; it continues a tone long set in Flores’ career and music, even before this current inflection point and its substantial momentum. Wyatt Flores is bound for longevity, for many more successes, for many more millions of plays, as long as he remains exactly who he is: Wyatt Flores.

Your music has such a strong sense of place, so I wanted to start by talking about Oklahoma and growing up there. You’re down to earth in the way that you talk about Oklahoma from the beginning of the album, from the first notes of the title track. You’re viewing it in a very realistic way, not just in an idealized way. Can you talk about how Oklahoma inspired the album and what “home” means to you?

Wyatt Flores: When you think about Oklahoma, you have to [barely] scratch the surface to know that the history behind it is pretty screwed up, how Oklahoma came about, and we’re not one of the best states, if that makes sense? We’re 49th in education. And we’ve got a lot of people from California moving there just because it’s cheaper and everything else, but to live in Oklahoma, you gotta bear through the weather.

Then also, every year is a coin toss if things are going to grow, right? This year’s been a struggle up until this past couple of weeks, [during] which we just got like a foot of rain. But yeah, it’s been one of the hardest places to really build. And the people are so damn nice in Oklahoma, but it’s a tough place to live. Most people don’t want it. But I love it. “Welcome to the Plains,” it’s trying to describe [Oklahoma] … in the verses I really wanted to try and find more of a nature side to it, and then by the chorus just really tell the truth about it.

It feels really authentic and grounded, but you can still hear that you love Oklahoma in it, too. I think that’s a really interesting combination. Country is really good at rural America propaganda – and I love rural America, so I’m for it, to a degree – but to me, your album doesn’t feel like it has to close an eye to the history of Oklahoma to love it.

Yeah, it was a fun journey to try. I was sitting there just trying not to write songs about the road, because that was the only thing that I was doing. I was like, “This is the only life I’m living.” And not many people know what it’s like to be on a bus or on tour – at that time we were still in the van. It was more so daydreaming about home, missing the place, and then just trying to find the memories to piece everything together.

And I had a lot of weird influences, like “Little Town,” I was really trying to find the same feeling as listening to “Pink Houses” by John Mellencamp. I don’t write too many happy songs, and I was not in a good headspace in that time period. For some reason, I guess I was just daydreaming of a better life, and I kept writing about home, but in a different format of not always missing it.

Another song that really captures this topic is “Stillwater.” I love that it has this sort of dark, contemplative tinge and it feels gritty. Could talk a little bit about writing “Stillwater” and about your relationship with “home” and the construction of “home”? That’s such a country tradition as well, not just talking about home and missing it, but understanding that home is a nebulous, intangible thing, even if it literally exists.

There’s a lot of bands that say they come from Stillwater, but they really just started in Stillwater and they came from a different area, since it is a college town. But I was born and raised there in Stillwater. All my life the college has been my backyard. When I wrote that song in the summer of ’22, I had my guitar player with me and my fiddle player’s husband and we sat down to write that. It was more so just trying to give people a different perspective on what it’s like to actually grow up in a college town, because it’s a vicious cycle of the same shit – like, no one else sees it, because they’re living inside of the four years of going [to college].

And me also being a college dropout, I never got to actually go to [Oklahoma State University]. I went to OSUIT in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. And that did not last long. [Laughs] But yeah, I was like, “No one’s ever actually talked shit on a hometown and actually put the name in it.” So I was just being ballsy with it. I had to change quite a few lyrics, because I kind of went a little too far. I probably would have pissed a lot of people off.

The song was intentional. I don’t know, [I wanted to] make people think differently. Because that is my home. A lot of times, you just see people take advantage of the town, and the town keeps growing. Every single time I come back home now, there’s another chicken place and another damn car wash. I was like, “How many do we need?” Good lord. I was really pissed off in the mindset of it. I’m glad that we captured it, because for a while, I was scared to release it just because I was like, “People are gonna think that I hate Stillwater.” But really, it’s still a love song towards it.

It feels like you’re loving Stillwater, you’re loving Oklahoma, but your love for it requires you to look at it through an accurate lens and not an idealized version of it.

And it’s a relationship. My relationship with that town has just been back and forth. You’ll have that resentment, and you’ll have that frustration with it, but you still love it. It’s crazy to think about it that way, through that lens, but that’s what it is.

You touched on your co-writing process and I was excited to see how forward your own writing and your own perspective is on this album. Can you describe your co-writing and collaboration process for these songs? I noticed, too, that Ketch Secor co-wrote the title track.

When I wrote with Ketch, that was super cool. ‘Cause I had just gotten done watching Killers of the Flower Moon. I was already so inspired by that and wanting to really speak some truth. But not just by absolutely laying into people on the bad shit that’s going on – you can’t force-feed people. When we sat down [to write, Ketch] said that he wanted to write shit about Oklahoma and I was like, “That works out great!” The song just came together and it was it’s one of the coolest things, because I didn’t know how to feel about it quite yet. I was like, “This has some good shit in there…” and then when we went to record it, I was like, “Here it is! This is the way it’s supposed to go.”

But with the writing of this entire album, I was scared shitless. I didn’t think I was good enough, and I didn’t think these songs were good enough for an album. I started overthinking the entire thing. People can get mad at me all they want for doing co-writes, but I’m still writing. It’s not like I just sit in there and wait for these people to write these songs for me. This is all me.

The other thing is, my music taste [has] so much variety that I think it’s only better if I sit down with other people that have other strengths, to get to where I want to go – into these different styles of songs. I don’t want to do the same song, different chords, you know what I’m saying? I wanted it to be so unique and to keep it the way that I’ve always done it, which is to have different styles of songs. For that, I feel like you have to have different songwriters come in and give you different pieces.

I also have to ask you about bluegrass. One of the first things that we shared on our site of yours was a Tyler Childers cover that you recorded with Sierra Hull at Red Rocks. Our audience loved it so much. I think part of why your music resonates across diehard country fans to indie fans to bluegrass fans is that you’re not just a performer and a songwriter, but you’re a picker, too. What is your relationship like with bluegrass music? Is it something that’s prominent in your listening and in your influence?

So, I will first and foremost say this: I am not that good of a picker. [Laughs]

That stuff, that is something that I love. That is a different art. That is so beautiful. But my love for it– everyone in Oklahoma started listening to Tyler Childers and that’s when he came around, I want to say in my high school days. That’s when everything took a shift. I was like, “I don’t know what this is…” because we all grew up listening to red dirt [country], which is what I am. But my influence has really changed. In the summer of ‘22, Laurel Cove Music Festival was the first time that I had seen Nicholas Jamerson, Charles Wesley Godwin, Sierra Ferrell, Cole Chaney. That changed everything for me. It changed the entire way that I looked at music, and from that point on I started listening to every single one of those artists. It just led to more.

I love bluegrass and I try to have a couple songs [in that style], but I can’t call myself bluegrass. As much as I love what they’re doing and I try, I have my influences, I’m still red dirt. The way that those artists do what they do, it’s because they are them. I have my influences, but I am still just me. So whatever comes out, it’s just me loving and respecting it. But I can’t fully call myself a bluegrass musician, because I’m not. I’m jealous of it though, I’ll tell you that much. I’m jealous, I wish!

The production style and the different aesthetics that you’re utilizing on the album feel like classic country and old country plus dashes of country & western. There are moments that are really rocking and there are moments that are really subdued. It’s also really modern and crisp. How much of that is coming from you or from the ensemble and how much is coming from your producer, Beau Bedford?

A lot of that was Beau. I learned so much from him. [Before,] I really didn’t ever get the experience of being in a studio with musicians that are just wizards. Beau really took care of me.

It was a challenge, because we recorded in three different places. We were in Nashville, in North Carolina, in LA, and then we finished in Nashville. We were scared that it wasn’t gonna flow together, being in these different studios and then also just having this [group] of songs. Luckily, it all came together and as different as they do sound, they still flow. That was all just luck. We’re all we’re all sitting there going, “Huh? Hope this goes right!” I had my doubts, too, and [Beau] goes, “Wyatt, everything’s gonna be all right, because you are the main character that runs through this entire thing.”

That’s the constant throughout the entire project. I’m just lucky that it worked. When you go from different styles of songs – red dirt, and then you got this beachy [thing], old-time. It’s just crazy how they all go along together. Then it goes into this weird psychedelic rock and “Falling Sideways.” It was a wild adventure, and I’m so grateful for it. I just can’t believe the way that it turned out.

I ask this last question often, especially with people like yourself who are so effortlessly traditional country. There are a lot of folks out there who are excited about you – and artists like Zach Top and Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan – because these listeners sense that there’s this “new movement” that’s going to save country music, that’s going to renew country. That country is going to be what it used to be before “murder on Music Row.”

I wondered what your thoughts and feelings are on that paradigm? Because I sense that you don’t care so much about what is or isn’t traditional or what is or isn’t “inside” country. Does country music need to be saved? Do you see yourself as part of that saviorship? Do you care?

There’s something to be said about it, because yeah– I have my opinions about commercial country. There’s some really good songs and then I also think there’s some songs that say absolutely nothing. I guess as a songwriter, my goal is to keep writing about real shit and keep expressing myself with vulnerability. And to still write good songs.

I have a very important person in my life who’s been a mentor to me; his name’s Shane Lamb. I used to talk about writing these super-poppy melodies. And he goes, “Yeah, it’s because it’s popular music. … Who are some of your favorite artists?” We started going through Tyler Childers, early on in the days of me being in Nashville. [Shane] was like, “Listen to the fucking melody, Wyatt. It’s a pop melody. It’s for popular music. That’s why it works. But his arrangement is country.”

And I was like, “Oh… when you think about it that way, yeah, I guess you’re right.” So, I do try to have poppy melodies as much as I can, but I still try and keep my verses very needy, if that makes sense. I like putting a whole bunch of detail and really trying to focus in on the verses and let the chorus speak for itself.

That’s so perfectly put; yes, country has always been popular music. It’s one of my favorite Tyler Mahan Coe quotes, the creator of Cocaine and Rhinestones, the podcast and the book. He talks regularly about how country music has always been popular music. That’s not to say that fact absolves Music Row and Music City from all the truck and beer songs, but it certainly helps remind us that hand-wringing over “Is country music going to be okay?!” is not something that’s ever going to go away, but it’s also not something we really need to worry about.

And I think for the first time ever with social media, people are able to find new music that’s always been there. They’re just now finding out about it for the first time, because the radio stations aren’t playing it. That’s its own deal. But now they’re able to find all this new music and I feel like country is still going to be country. Like you said, when it comes to beer and truck songs, I think the thing that’s missing is them not explaining what they love about it. They’re just talking about it, not being vulnerable with it.

I think about “Drive” by damn Alan Jackson, dude. That is just talking about driving. That’s really all it is, but the sentiment is there, because it has to do with the father and the son. And then, all of a sudden, there’s the father and the daughter – that is fucking awesome country music that I still absolutely love! I wish that I could do that, like that Zach Top thing. I told him that whenever I met him, I was like, “Dude, I wish I could do it.” I really do. ‘Cause he’s fucking killing it. There’s so many different styles of music and I’d rather just do what I want to do, which is all of them, rather than just settle for one sound.

Photo Credit: Natalie Rhea

Writer Ann Powers Discusses Her Acclaimed Joni Mitchell Book, ‘Traveling’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Journalist, author, and cultural critic Ann Powers released her latest book, Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell, in June of this year. A thought leader in pop and pop culture criticism – and an occasional BGS contributor – Powers considers this legendary figure in folk and American music with deliberation and intention. Traveling isn’t merely a biography or a retelling of well-known and oft-repeated Mitchell lore; instead it’s a careful consideration of the artifice and sincerity, publicity and privacy, myth-making and universe-building of this iconic musician, songwriter, and celebrity.

“I wanted to think about how Joni Mitchell became JONI MITCHELL,” Powers relays in her conversation with BGS executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs. “How she fought against that in her own life, and how she reinforced the legend as well.”

And how well-timed is this book and conversation, with Mitchell’s mythos at perhaps its lifelong peak? With Brandi Carlile’s assist, Mitchell has been enjoying a “Joni-ssance” of late, with jaw-dropping public appearances over the past couple of years after an extended hiatus and star-studded Joni Jams delighting fans and acolytes from the Gorge in Washington state to Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island.

Fresh off Mitchell’s headline-grabbing appearances at the Hollywood Bowl on October 19 and 20, we’re sharing our recent conversation with Powers about Traveling, its inception and writing, and how a truer telling of Mitchell’s life and creative journey requires a degree of skepticism – and may just result in becoming an even deeper fan of the one-and-only Joni Mitchell.

Right off the bat, I really connected with your hesitation to write this book, because I find that I have a complicated relationship and love of Joni, and I’ve never been able to put it into words. So when you start your introduction with that exact sentiment, I felt that really deeply.  What was your thought process in committing to the book?

Ann Powers: Well, Amy, you understand more than most the thorny relationship we as writers and as lovers and supporters of music have with not artists in particular, but kind of the edifice around the art, or as Joni herself says, “The star-making machinery.” I’m very aware of how artists exist in one space and then there’s like a room where the artist lives, and in between is this space where a lot of misconceptions can happen. A lot of fetishization can happen. I was kind of trying to walk between those rooms and think about her as a public figure, as a legend.

And then, also what I could know of her from a distance. I say from a distance, because I did not interview her for this book – which is not unusual for biographies, by the way – but I foreground that because I wanted to say, “Look, I’m also a stand-in for maybe not the average Joni fan, but for those of us who are kind of considering these people that we’ve made immortal through our love and adulation.”

I wanted to think about how Joni Mitchell became JONI MITCHELL, how she fought against that in her own life, and how she reinforced the legend as well. That was the strong thread for me and an attraction to the project. My hesitancy was that I wasn’t going to be able to overcome the legend.

You say multiple times in the book how you’re not a biographer, but despite the chronological order, the book felt almost like a guide to being a critical fan. How have you developed as a fan in this writing process? Are you still a fan?

I’m definitely more of a fan than I ever was before. I would count myself among those people who took Joni Mitchell for granted before I was approached to do this book. And part of it, I think, is my self-styled “outsider” status. That’s a weird thing to say, but [I say it] as a misfit or someone who came from punk. When I was at the right age to have my “Joni phase,” my idols were Kate Bush, Debbie Harry, Chrissie Hynde, women who I now realize were deeply influenced by Joni themselves, but at the time who seemed almost like an alternative to her and Dylan and Neil Young.

The ’90s [were] the natural time for me to go through another Joni phase and then I did. I did get to see her at that amazing show at the Fez [in 1995] with Brian Blade. I had some prime Joni moments and definitely was listening more than I had in the past, but that was sort of like that moment when Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, PJ Harvey, and so many amazing artists were breaking through the Lilith Fair generation.

And here’s Joni in the press, bad-mouthing them or saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with them.” So again, I’m like, “Oh, who is this person? Why is this person so hostile?” It’s like all these moments that would have been the one where I stepped onto that path turned me away from it – until much later, when I had an occasion, this book, to go beyond the surface of my fandom. Then I just went completely, fully in. So deep. And every step I took that was closer to her actual music and her actual words, not just her song lyrics, but interviews she’s given or the circumstances of her life, I became more and more of a fan.

In that way, this book is the story of me becoming that defender in the end, even if I’m still a skeptical defender, but I believe that that is something Joni teaches us to be – to yourself and as a skeptical defender of those people she admires.

The funny thing about Joni is that she took every step she could to stay off of that pedestal throughout her career. Sometimes I think her desire to not be encased in amber came from her own anxieties, like her own unhappiness with what fame wrought. It’s a very delicate thing.

This is such an important part of her music and her songs as well, especially an album like The Hissing of Summer Lawns, which is basically a critique of Hollywood. She’s living in Bel Air. She’s hanging out with Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty and the glitterati. She is of the glitterati. But then she’s also the one who runs away, who goes, “I’m living a monk-like existence outside Vancouver for a while.” Or, “I’m getting in my car by myself and driving across the South and using aliases and checking into hotels and hanging out with whoever’s in the lobby.”

This is something she kept doing in order to check herself and check the mechanisms around her and not become complacent with where she was. Same in terms of her collaborators. Instead of just doing what you’re advised to do in the music industry, which is just stick with the formula, she just kept blowing things up. She’s like, “I want to play with these jazz guys. I want to bring in like Brazilian percussionists.” That’s her curiosity, as I say in the book, but it’s also her refusal to be a conventional pop star. She’s always kind of trying to keep that at bay.

There’s something that you mentioned about the women you did look up to. When I think about Kate and Chrissie and Debbie, these women stand on their own; holding their own in a male-dominated scene and being surrounded by male collaborators and bands, but not necessarily lifting up other women. I’m trying to think of a female collaboration that Kate Bush ever did and I can’t think of one. 

Well, when we look historically at the place of women, particularly in rock, there were labels attached to women who primarily collaborated with women – “women’s music,” right? That was lesbian music. And I think there was a lot of fear, and frankly, internalized homophobia, among a lot of women and people in general in the more mainstream music business.

So you didn’t want to be associated with too many women or people might think you don’t like men, you know? Read any interview with a woman star from 1967 to probably like 2020 and you’re going to see that phrase. “I love men,” you know, “I like male energy,” all this stuff. And there’s no shame in liking to work with male collaborators, but it’s amazing how fearful so many women and their teams – the people guiding their careers – were of female collaboration and female affinity. It was like a forbidden zone.

Of course, I also love the Go-Go’s and the Bangles, but girl groups were [their] own kind of zone. They were taking on these personae. These are great musicians, why did they have to dress up like ’50s pin-ups? It’s like they’re saying “Look, don’t worry! We’re real women! We can play instruments, but we can be girls too!” And despite what we think, that’s still so alive and well today. Though I do think there’s been a shift in the mainstream recently with artists like Chappell Roan and boygenius. There’s definitely younger millennials and Gen Z fighting against being confined by gender roles.

I have also noticed that younger artists are more eager to welcome their women heroes on stage and older women are more comfortable embracing it. Olivia Rodrigo is constantly pulling her heroes on stage. Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchee is like, “Where is Lucinda Williams? Let’s bring her out.” And that was something you actually didn’t see even during the Lilith Fair years. It didn’t happen. You didn’t really see older artists on the lineup.

I loved the line in the book, “A map maker must be open to new routes.” Were there any new routes that surprised you, or unexpected people that came out of the woodwork?

Definitely the whole Florida thing. When I found out she had spent time down there and met Bobby Ingram – who’s since passed away. And, I didn’t really know there was this whole kind of mirror folk scene in Florida to that in New York.

But I also didn’t know about how diverse the early folk revival was. This is something [for which] I give a lot of credit to Dom Flemons. He’s been doing the work on this, but it’s still so under-explored. When Joni started out, she wasn’t just seeing Pete Seeger wannabes. She was also seeing Caribbean musicians and people doing musical theater and jazz rock or jazz folk, and although it was still a predominantly white scene, there were very important nonwhite artists on that scene.

In my early days [of writing], I just wanted to write a book about that. Uncovering the stories of other musicians who we forget when we only talk about Guthrie or Seeger or Dylan or whatever. It’s like, how white and boring can it get? If it’s just that, it’s that same story every time and yet it was so much deeper and richer and more interesting. And it’s so important to understanding Joni’s music, because her music was never pure folk.

Somewhere in the last seven and eight years of putting this book together, Brandi Carlile kickstarted the “Joni-ssance” as you put it. How did that change your process?

I thought Brandi would stop at her Blue concerts [at Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2021], but suddenly it was like, “Oh wait, there’s so much more!” It’s been such an exciting story in and of itself that goes beyond music. It’s really the story of recovery, healing, and having this epic return. So on that level, it’s a like beautiful human story that’s been edifying to watch.

But I made the choice to stand apart [from the Joni Jam concerts] so I could continue to keep my perspective focused. Now with the book out, I can finally just enjoy this woman who gave us so much and is receiving her accolades. There’s a world of elders – and especially women elders – that I want to continually acknowledge. And if this project could be helpful in that, then I’ve done something positive for the world.

Photo Credit: Emily April Allen

‘Sweet Critters’ Shows a Deepening of Caleb Caudle’s Point of View

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On his new album, Sweet Critters, Caleb Caudle has no desire to reinvent himself. The North Carolina native has spent his career trying to move closer and closer to what is already inside of him. “This well is getting deeper… more nuanced,” he explains. “And I really enjoy that. I’m not trying to be repeat myself, I’m trying to be myself.”

Dedicated to friend and former bandmate Alex McKinney, who recently passed after a battle with cancer, the album rings out with appreciation for the everyday experience of life. With gratitude and grit, Caudle explores both his external and internal world as he continues to travel the hardfought and beautiful path of a touring troubadour.

Reaching Caudle by phone during his headline tour in support of Sweet Critters, he explained that on days off from the road his band likes to rent a spot out in the woods somewhere, hunker down, cook meals, and play music and board games to recharge for the shows ahead. It was during one of these recharge days that he caught up with BGS.

This album was produced by John Paul White, former member of The Civil Wars. How did that come about and what did he bring to the record?

Caleb Caudle: John Paul and I have been buddies for a long time and we had always talked about working together. For this record, our schedules finally synced up and we had the chance to do it. I traveled to Alabama with my road band. It was my first time recording with my live band and that brought something special to the record.

With John, he’s such a great singer and he pushed me harder than anyone has pushed me as far as the vocals on this recording. I think there are things he hears that other folks don’t hear, so I trusted him. I liked that atmosphere of being pushed to go further, and I really enjoyed the process.

You’ve been doing this work for a long time. This is your sixth studio album. Is there anything new, thematically, that you see in this collection, or any new places you tried to reach?

It’s kind of in a similar world to my other albums… you know, it’s love, it’s loss, it’s empathy, it’s addiction, it’s anxiety. I think there’s some more character studies than I have done in the past, which is an exercise I kind of started doing more of on my previous record, Forsythia. At this point, I’m not trying to reinvent myself so much as I’m trying to deepen it all. Some of the habits you create end up just being your style and I think that’s what’s kind of happening at this point in my career.

A lot of the record is about endurance, whether about me or through the eyes of another character – which is usually me, anyway. For example “The Devil’s Voice,” it’s an empathetic look at addiction, because I’ve dealt with that. I try not to judge the characters, I try to stay out of it in a way and let them just tell their stories. Another song, “The Brim,” is a love song that I wrote for my wife, which is also about endurance in a certain way, about endurance in a long relationship.

And then there’s career endurance. I think “Heaven Sometimes” is about that. You know you’re going to have an off night here and there, and this song is about trying to recognize that the art that I’m making is more important than any other money I might make from it and just focusing on that concept.

Sonically, where did you and White want to take this record? As far as production, did you have any specific references you were trying to achieve?

I have been trying to figure this thing out for a while where I’m trying to marry traditional instrumentation with less traditional instrumentation and sound. There’s not a lot of stuff going on in the world of music that I listen to which has vibes of fiddle and old-time string instruments blended with other electric sounds. I’m trying to mix it up and blend it to create something new and that was one of the great things about using my live band for this record. I’ve been able to bring that vision out on the road with me.

Generally, when it comes to production, I just try to stay open-minded and completely available in the moment. I try to go where the music is leading me, and stay out of it a little bit.

Speaking of your live shows, you’ve been on a big headline tour in support of this record. How has that felt?

The songs are already starting to feel more lived-in. We’ve all been playing together long enough where we aren’t really thinking about the songs anymore. We really know the material. So we are doing a bunch of different interlude stuff, and we aren’t really putting borders around anything, which feels really nice.

We are doing our Grand Ole Opry debut in November. I can’t remember not knowing what the Opry was, because everyone around me would listen to it when I was growing up. I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older that there is no one moment that can change the trajectory of your career, but I’ve gotten worse calls! And John Paul is going to come up and sing with me, so I’m excited to share that moment with the people I love.

I absolutely love the Allison Russell and Aoife O’Donovan features on this album! “The Brim” is my favorite track. Can you tell me how those guest appearances came about?

Allison came to an in-store performance I did and we talked afterwards. She was so great. I saw her again over in London and I asked if she wanted to sing on on my record and she said yes, so that was a treat.

With Aoife, I didn’t actually know her, but [she and] John Paul are friends and her voice was perfect for that song. I ended up meeting her at the Long Road Festival and got to thank her for making that recording more beautiful.

Before I let you go, I’d love to know what has been inspiring you lately?

Right now I’m kind of at a spot where this record is my entire existence. My days are: focus on the set, drive back to the AirBnb, and then get up, drive, and do it all over again. As far as art, I really like that new Waxahatchee record, and the new Dave and Gil record… there’s been so much great stuff out lately. We just heard the new Jerry Douglas record and really liked that.

But for me, nature is my number one inspiration and I’m always seeking it out. I like going to cities, but when I’m home I really like being home. I really like the land in North Carolina and when I’m there I feel like I’m back on my axis, I feel centered. It’s really nice and I always find my inspiration.

(Author’s Note: Between our interview and its publication, Hurricane Helene devastated Caudle’s beloved home region in North  Carolina and surrounding areas. We reached out to Caudle, who has been at the forefront of rescue and relief efforts, for comment and for folks who are interested in helping, he wanted to encourage donations to BeLoved Asheville. Find more ways to help Hurricane Helene relief here.)

Photo Credit: Joseph Cash