Tag: feminism

LISTEN: The Ballroom Thieves, “Homme Run”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Ballroom Thieves
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Homme Run”
Album: Unlovely
Release Date: February 14, 2020 (album)
Label: Nettwerk

In Their Words: “How do you put words to how powerful women are? How do you hinder what they learn, if they read, who they can become, or what they do with the organs in their bodies? When a piece of the population’s voices are quieted there can be no conversation about how to guide society. As the avalanche of our man’s world finally finishes its incredibly destructive crumble downward, we can see that this issue is devastatingly simple. Any words used to govern a person must be said by a relatable ally, or the rules are empty and harmful.

“We can’t earn equality in this world for men, we have to make it ourselves. Women are the creators and sustainers of human life. We’ll use the power of our voices not to control others, but to liberate ourselves to create and sustain humankind more effectively. This is everybody’s world now.” — Calin Peters, The Ballroom Thieves

Photo credit: Anthony Mulcahy

Alice Gerrard: Unearthed Tapes and Unintentional Activists

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A cursory scan of the track listing for the new Free Dirt Records release, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard Sing Me Back Home: The DC Tapes, 1965-1969, doesn’t reveal any sort of agenda or political bent, though that might be expected. The duo has long been celebrated for their unabashed approach to not only being women in a male-dominated genre in a male-dominated world, but also for writing and recording protest songs and feminist old time anthems, performing at political and activist events, and touring the South with integrated show bills. Hazel and Alice were so impeccably equipped to lift up these working class and feminist issues, because, at their core, they were always simply expressing their own lives, their own truths, and their own stories. No overt, obvious rallying cry of a song would be necessary. (Though they do have many, many of those sorts of songs in their catalogs.)

The undeniable legacy of protest and activism and lifting up the forgotten among us, continued and propagated by Alice Gerrard still today, is a striking reminder of the limitless value of allowing personal voices, true self-expression, and individual advocacy to shine clearly and crisply through art — especially roots and vernacular musics — without editing, or shame, or fear.

We began our conversation travelling back to the ’60s, examining this set of songs, how they came to be, and how the organic activism of Hazel & Alice blossomed of its own accord through their music all along, whether they knew it or not. 

I wonder, what goes through your mind when you listen to this album? What is it like to go back and revisit those points in history when you were working up those songs, figuring out your voices, and what you wanted to accomplish musically — and how you wanted to position yourselves, musically?

You know, I had totally forgotten that I even had those tapes, I just came across them. I was giving a bunch of stuff, a bunch of tapes and stuff like that, to the folks at UNC (University of North Carolina), so in the back of my closet was this box, I pull it out, and there were these reel-to-reel tapes. Some of them said, “A&H Practice.” So, I listened, and the first thing I thought was, “Well oh my god, some of this is really nice!” Then I realized that it was a lot of stuff that we had never recorded.

 We had just agreed to go on this tour that Anne Romaine had put together, this Southern tour. She was from Gastonia, North Carolina, living in Atlanta at the time. She was very into the civil rights movement and was friends with Bernice Reagon, who was also in Atlanta. Bernice was an African American woman who was the founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock. Anne wanted to start this tour, the idea being that if a tour of traditional music went around the South, it would be kind of a new thing. And it could be political in the sense that it could be traditional musicians, it could be integrated, black and white, and it could go around and speak to the struggles of working people. At that time, a lot of these musicians, like Dock Boggs and Lily May Ledford, they were being “discovered” and taken up north — to New York, and Newport Folk Festival, Philly Folk Festival, stuff like that. They were definitely sort of underappreciated in their home regions in the South. The idea was to just stay in the South, with this tour. It was always going to be a few white and a few black musicians.

She had asked Hazel and me to be on it, but she couldn’t afford [for us] to have a band, so we were trying to figure out stuff that we could do, just the two of us. I think that’s why we were kind of messing around with me doing some breaks, and Hazel playing guitar, which she didn’t usually do. What it sort of brought back — she had moved from Baltimore to Washington and I was living in Washington. My husband had been killed in this automobile accident, so I was living in this house with my four kids and she moved in for a while, before she got an apartment. It was those years [that we made the tapes], in D.C., when I was living there. We were just practicing stuff, like, “Let’s try this, see if maybe I can play an autoharp break” or, “See if I can play the banjo.” I’d work up these little guitar breaks for some things, and it just brought all that back to me when I listened to it. Some of that stuff seems pretty good! Although, it was definitely field recording quality. [Laughs] The kids would come in, doors would slam, stuff like that.

People think of the Hazel & Alice canon of material as having that through line of activism, Southern activism, and protest. Going down the list of songs on this record, one wouldn’t necessarily feel that any one of them would jump out at you as fitting those categories. But yet, you were working up all of these songs for a tour of the South, as an act of protest and activism. This is something so important to your and Hazel’s legacy — at the time, and maybe looking back now, how did that fit into how you were making music and why you were making music? How intentionally were you making that your mission statement?

I think when we started out, it was not intentional. We were kinda clueless. I’ll take the risk of speaking for Hazel. [Chuckles] I for sure was pretty clueless and I think, to some extent, she was too. We were surprised when we’d go do a concert somewhere and there’d be a whole lot of women in the audience. You know, “What’s going on?!” I remember being at some motel, we were around the swimming pool and I had my daughter with me, and the promoter of the event there came up saying, “I just came from the women’s liberation movement! It was really great!” And I said, “What’s women’s liberation?” [Laughs] Really! I think we were kind of surprised when there was attention coming to us and we would see lots and lots of women at the concerts we’d do. The first time we did this one festival in Canada we did a workshop and I sang the “Custom Made Woman Blues” for the first time and got a standing ovation and they made me do it again!

We were a little bit clueless. I think these things were happening because we had our own feelings about things and we started to express that. I don’t think we were aware of the effect that it was having. The other thing that happened when we started going on these tours, because they were so political in nature, we were tuned into what was going on. We’d do a tour of the Mountain South, then a tour of the Deep South, and sometimes we were playing in communities for various events like an anti-strip mining thing or this biscuit place in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, that was started by some nuns, so we were sort of tuned in. For me, for sure — I read Night Comes to the Cumberlands — it was a huge learning experience. I had never been in those types of situations before.

Hazel, of course, grew up with it. So I think what happened with her, being on those tours, it gave her permission to speak. It encouraged her giving voice to feelings that she already had. That’s why she really started writing a lot of songs. For me, it just introduced me to and raised my consciousness about a lot of things. Those tours got us started.

There’s a beauty in that it started so organically for you, because I think the most effective and visceral and immediate way to translate these messages of politics or activism through music is when the message is as natural and intrinsic in a human being as possible. Clearly you and Hazel were just being yourselves, expressing yourselves, through your music — that in itself was political and people responded to it. I think that’s the best way to effect change: to be ourselves, true and pure, unadulterated.

That was the whole point of those tours. It wasn’t to stand up and preach to people, but if Roscoe Holcomb gets up there and sings a song — by the way, those were the people going on these tours. Roscoe Holcomb, Dock Boggs, Bessie Jones, people who had lived these lives and had been affected by whatever had been going on, politically. Strip mining ruined Roscoe’s well, you know, so he could just stand up there and live his life. It was amazing. It was a great thing. Someone should write a book on that tour and organization!

Do you ever think back and wish that you could’ve just had the musical careers and experiences of your male contemporaries without all of the rest tacked on? Without the constant clarification and added phrases like: “Important women in bluegrass.” Do you ever wish you could do it all again and do it just for the music?

Well, you are what you are. I think you have to accept that. I don’t think I’d be who I am without that. So it doesn’t really bother me. What bothers me is when people call me “spry.” Like, “She’s 84, she’s really spry.” [Laughs]

[Laughs] So the ageism is more bothersome than anything else.

You know what, in a lot of ways, it really is.

Hazel, I know that she had many, many, really bad experiences before she and I teamed up. It was the usual kind of sexist crap. She’d put up with it most of the time, but she was very aware of it. But when we started singing together, I had become a part of this whole scene around Washington D.C. — and she became a part of it, too — which was a mix of young, sort of college-educated or at least high school-educated, middle-class folks. A bunch of young people who weren’t like [sexist]. I felt when we started that we were surrounded by a very supportive community. I never felt like they didn’t want us to do anything because we were women. They were really encouraging. I didn’t experience those things. I felt like we were lucky to have guys around us that were supportive.

I do remember, before Hazel and I started singing together, I would go with my husband– boyfriend? Whatever he was at that moment. We’d go to Baltimore to listen to Hazel and whomever she was playing with, she had a band, and we’d go listen to them practice. I did feel at those times sort of compelled to join the other women in the kitchen. [Laughs] Even though I really wanted to be in the other room!

When did you start feeling that change? When you met up with those folks in D.C.?

Yeah… more so. There weren’t a lot of women in what we were doing. I think part of what was going on was these guys, who’d moved up from the South, living in these hardscrabble places in the city, there was a lot of hard work involved, there was a lot of drinking, women had a perfect right to feel shit upon a lot of the time. Their husbands ran around on them, they’d get drunk. So it felt sometimes that we were treading a fine line in trying to be part of the music in that situation and context, and yet, not make the women dislike you because of it. It was a weird little thing going on there. But that didn’t happen in the D.C. scene.

Let’s talk about the present for second — what do we do in the face of the “shut up and sing” mentality that’s so rampant right now? This idea that if somebody on stage has political views that are different than somebody in the audience, that’s a problem. Roots music has always been built upon speaking truth and speaking to the most basic, concrete, ground-level needs of humanity. How do we translate the value of that in a modern context?

That seems to be the environment these times. I feel like I don’t care — I do pay attention to where I am. At the time, I do care about the context of where I am, usually, but I feel like you need to say what you have to say. It’s easier when it’s in a friendly environment, like Shout & Shine [the showcase]. That was a no-brainer. Everybody there was right behind me, one hundred percent. But if I went to… oh, I dunno…

Fill-in-the-blank.

Yeah.

That’s something we want to be cognizant of anyways, because reaching people that are further away from our frame of reference and our point of view requires us to be aware of context and to allow nuance into the situation.

Exactly.

Now there’s this local band, the New Deal String Band, college kids from around here back in the ’70s and ’80s. They were one of the first Southern hippie bands before the other hippie Southern band — I’m blanking on the name. [Laughs] They would go to the Galax Fiddlers’ Convention back in the day. They had long hair, but they were really good players and Leroy [Savage] was a really great singer. It was a little bit of a toxic environment. People didn’t like long-haired hippies and were likely to start a fight with you as not. Leroy used to say, “We’d get in there, with our long hair, but if we could get our instruments out and start playing before a fight broke out, we’d be okay.” [Laughs] Because of their music! It really does transcend a lot of barriers. You can start with the music and then maybe you can make some inroads.

…Getting to know people — it doesn’t hurt to make friends first and then play the music or take a position or whatever. I think sometimes that goes a longer way toward more permanent changes than busting in–

And raising hell.

Yeah. [Laughs] They have something to say, too. I might not agree with everything, but… [sighs] I don’t know, you know… it’s complicated!!

Photo credit: Betsy Siggins

The Raw Reckoning of Desire: A Conversation with Suzanne Santo

Posted on by Editor

Articulating desire can be a fraught act, especially for women. In many ways, the patriarchal mindset still undergirding society isn’t comfortable with women wanting things, let alone sharing what those things might be. Speaking about desire, therefore, denotes a kind of rebellion. Suzanne Santo, one half of the harmony-drenched duo HoneyHoney, sets loose her desires — all her longings, cravings, and lusts — on her debut solo album, Ruby Red. Named after Butch Walker’s studio where she recorded it, Ruby Red sees desire flicker up like a fire lapping at the atmosphere’s oxygen and growing bolder with each inhale.

The album’s first track, “Handshake,” is a raw, sensual reckoning that blurs the lines between want and need after a relationship ends. “I ain’t your friend, babe. I don’t want a handshake. I need a piece, I need a taste,” she sings, her voice practically quavering for her lover, who wants to shift their label. Santo isn’t prepared to fake it. She doesn’t want to be friends. “Don’t water down my whiskey, babe,” she crows, her voice full of a mettle that gives these declarations an intoxicating power. This is not a shy record.

Ruby Red runs electric with crackling confessions: about who Santo is, who she wants to be, and the many way she’s failed both those identities. But she continually bores beneath the surface, looking for answers that might offer some form of understanding in one song or a greater sense of empowerment in another. After 10 years with HoneyHoney and partner Benjamin Jaffe — both in the studio and out — by her side, Santo is shaking off any preconceptions and laying bare her desires.

What was it you set out to learn outside HoneyHoney?

It wasn’t so much setting out to learn — though I learned a lot — but we were just tired. We love each other a lot and, if you spend that much time with anybody, you start to not appreciate it anymore. The past year, we haven’t toured hardly at all, but we’ve had some great flat-out dates, and every time we’ve played together, it has been so much fun. That’s sort of what we set out to do — an absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of thing.

But at the same time, when I was in the studio without Ben, I was blown away by what I was capable of. We both played these roles in the band for a really long time, and you get used to a certain gear; then you take the other element out of the equation, and it was amazing. I never thought I could do arrangements. I never thought I could produce as much as I did (with Butch). Butch and I worked together a lot; he’s such a safe place to try stuff. This was such a bonus to have all those things revealed to me. I’m really interested in engineering now and working on my own stuff in that way because I never thought I could do that. I don’t want to approach this from a feminist standpoint, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I’m usually the only woman in the studio. I don’t want to do things “just because,” but I did have that reignited sense, like, “Oh, wow, I can do this.” I found my boner for it. It’s super scary because it’s like learning a new language.

If you only ever remain in your comfort zone, you never learn what you’re truly capable of.

That’s kind of where I feel the whole world is at right now. Even though some of it is really scary, it’s par for the course of real change that needs to happen. This is when the most extraordinary things happen, and I hope people will continue to evolve toward the happier, more positive things rather than all this shit.

Hopefully! Whether or not it comes to fruition, I don’t know. But hopefully.

I have to tell you something really funny: I have this one friend who really started throwing himself into the brick wall of politics by writing diatribes. Yes, it’s good to be informed, but the vehemence of his blogs … But in the interim of his meltdown, his girlfriend thought it was a good idea to foster a litter of kittens. There’d be these heinous posts and these adorable photos of kittens.

So, he’s basically running Twitter.

Yes, totally. I had to tell you that because I think it’s amazing.

There are definitely people who are angry at what they’re seeing, but they’re not channeling it properly into action. It’s just more verbiage we need to parse through. So, yeah, we could all use more kittens.

What’s even funnier … he’s a very talented engineer and, when I got my test pressing for my vinyl a couple weeks ago, I went to his house. What was so great is that I got to sit and listen to my record surrounded by kittens. I had three in my lap. It was one of the greatest days of my life.

What a contrast between what you’re singing and what you’re experiencing with the kittens.

Oh, it was not lost on me. It was hilarious.

Actually, so speaking about your friend’s writing … I’m interested in your relationship with words. In “Best Out of Me,” you talk about words as shrapnel. And you also mention you’re unloading your gun in “Bullets,” which I took to be you being quiet and not using words in such an aggressive way. How are you thinking of your own writing and its power and its impact, especially in this day and age?

I, too, have anger, but I internalize it a little bit more, and I usually make war on myself. That’s something I struggle with and work really hard to get through. The overall recurrent theme of this record is accountability and recognizing these things, and being okay being wrong, and making sure I know where the source is coming from. “The Wrong Man” is really important to me because, much like the political word vomit that comes out, a lot of time, you’re shooting the wrong man. It’s really easy to be angry about this one thing, but in general, there are other things going on that we all need to figure out. We have to be accountable, we have to be able to recognize our own shortcomings, to say “I’m sorry” and mean it. “Bullets,” especially, is about letting it go.

In some of the songs you’ve done as HoneyHoney, that nuance gets played out in really compelling ways. You’re never willing to lay blame on someone; it’s always about culpability. I’m thinking of “Yours to Bear” off 3. I can see how this theme is playing out in Ruby Red. How, then, are you pushing it even further now that you’re writing more on your own?

I’ve never been drawn to “fuck you” music. Don’t get me wrong: I love Rage Against the Machine, but that’s a different kind of songwriting. I have a lot of really great friends, and I’ve been through some traumatic stuff in my life and have had to go into some serious therapy to reconcile some really difficult stuff. I’ve never been drawn to victimizing myself, or it’s really hard for me to connect with someone whose definition is what’s happened to them. At the same time, what’s happened to you molds who you are. It’s your relationship to it. I heard this quote once when I was really grieving, and it was so hard, but it’s so true: “Suffering is an invitation for wisdom.” But it’s only an invitation. It’s not like, once you start suffering, you have this gateway of knowledge. You have to sit with that shit and clean it off and understand it; it usually comes back when you don’t expect it to. I think, if I didn’t play music, I would want to be a therapist or always working with people in a psychiatric way.

You seem really interested in sorting things out, digging beneath surfaces.

Yeah, and giving everybody the benefit of the doubt, too. I don’t push my therapy on other people. I don’t push my specific journey. I see that a lot, where people are like, “Oh my God, I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been through that, too.” I think that’s a really insensitive thing to say to somebody because you never know how someone is feeling. Know that you can talk and be a comfort — it’s welcomed — but everybody’s got a different suitcase.

Absolutely. And navigating an artistic career that can take you away from a sense of stability means that you’re more reliant on yourself.

Right now, I’m kind of going through some loneliness. Ben and I are still partners in HoneyHoney and we still have HoneyHoney stuff, but there’s definitely this lone wolf thing. I still have really good friends, but you have to go through your stuff on your own. I’ve also lost some friends. When you get older and people change, that’s been really hard. I don’t have a crew. I think that loneliness gets enhanced the more I’m gone. It’s up to me to make sure I maintain contact with people, which I have no pride about. That’s totally fine. I have that loneliness to contend with, but it doesn’t sink my ship.

It’s definitely a space to figure out as you get into your 30s when friends are making different life choices. If you’re going to walk a different path, you have to be comfortable with who you are.

You know, Ben and I were together romantically, and it was so hard. We got to a point where we had to make this separation — I haven’t told anybody this, but I think it’s probably a little obvious — and we needed to heal. We still talk all the time, and we have business decisions to make, and if he needs me, I am there, and if I need him, he is there. But there’s still this parting of ways that we’re consciously doing to have a healthier life. Being in my 30s, there’s a lot of rebuilding happening in order to facilitate that empty space. What’s really cool is, we love the band, and we want the band to continue making records, but we’re not ready for that yet. Don’t get me wrong: There’s no ill will. To become privy to how beautiful of a separation it is, and that people can do it, I feel so lucky that that’s what I have.

And also the space that it’s opened up for you to get to know yourself again and find new creative fulfillments.

It’s great and, like I said, whenever we get together we’re making the best music we ever made. We’re not buried in it anymore, now it’s a choice. That’s how it started, originally. Like a lot of things in life, if you get too much of something, it gets overwhelming.

So true. Well, women are still criticized for expressing their desires and, to me, you so perfectly slap that in the face, especially that line in “Handshake” about “Don’t water down my whiskey, babe.” How long did it take you to find that strength and wear it so proudly?

Wow, thank you. I’ll be honest, when I wrote it and recorded it, I had a real freak out afterward. I was like, “This is so raw. This is so revealing. There’s sex in here. There’s drugs.” I had to sit with it for a minute and find my courage, I guess. I sent it to my parents, and I got a voicemail from my dad. He started crying at some point — I still have it — and he said, “Just got done listening to your filthy, raunchy, beautiful, incredible record. I’m so proud of you.” He told me, “You’re so brave, and please don’t stop telling stories.” For my dad to be, like, “It’s okay. You’re human.” I feel comfortable having these stories as a reflection of myself, but it’s also a piece of art. That is empowering because I think sometimes people have a hard time separating the actor, but they’re a different person in real life. I think music is similar to that, in a way, but I feel really comfortable now. But definitely, at first, I shocked myself. Like, “Oh, shit. Okay, this is very sexy.”

That is the perfect word for it.

I want to write happy songs, but they just keep coming out like this! I think that’s a real anthem for most of my life: authentic. Any of the fabrications or subterfuge that’s created, it never feels right, and even if it’s hard to accept the truth or it’s not as romantic, I’d so much rather have that than some watered down version or something that’s not real.

Photo credit: Marina Chavez

Squared Roots: Rhiannon Giddens Studies the Songs of Dolly Parton

Posted on by Editor

Dolly Parton turns 70 in January. And, while that might seem impossible, it takes that span of time to accomplish all that she has over the course of her various careers as a songwriter, a singer, an actress, and a businesswoman.

Rising out of the ashes of unspeakable poverty in east Tennessee, Parton blazed a trail like none other. From her early days with Porter Wagoner through her unrivaled run in the '70s and '80s to her artistic eclecticism of the '90s to today, Parton has composed more than 3,000 songs (by her own admission), charted 42 Top 10 country albums, and garnered more awards than anyone can count. She even has a TV movie of her life, Coat of Many Colors, slated for release in December.

In contrast, Rhiannon Giddens emerged only a decade ago as part of the Carolina Chocolate Drops after studying opera at Oberlin Conservatory. Though the Drops were known for their passion for and handling of old-time music, Giddens has taken a different tack with her solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn, and her guest appearance on Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes. But, with everything she does, Giddens keeps one eye on the past and one eye on the now.

I gotta say … for whatever reason, I thought your pick would be maybe a little less polished — like Hazel and Alice or Ola Belle Reed or somebody like that. So why Dolly?

Well … I'm kind of obsessed with her right now. I guess I've been focused so much on the non-commercial parts of country music and old-time music — you know the Ola Belle Reeds and the Hazel and Alices. I love that so much, but as of now, I'm a more commercial artist. I'm not making CDs while doing something else. It's what I do for a living and I've had a bit of radio play. So I've been really thinking about what Dolly did — and she still does. I mean, she's not writing as much as she was. She definitely had a golden period of songwriting.

The thing that fascinates me about her is how she worked feminism into pop songs. That's kind of what I'm fascinated with right now because, as I look at being a songwriter myself, as I've developed over the last couple of years as a songwriter with definite activist urges, wanting to figure out how to say things while making them effective to as many people as possible … I've been really digging into her early stuff and been kind of amazed at the strength of writing and the really strong feminist themes wrapped up with this sort of smile. I've just been kind of fascinated with it. I've been talking about her every night because I do one of her songs in my show.

So according to the Gospel of Wikipedia, she has written more than 3,000 songs over the span of her career. What does it take to hit a milestone like that?

I mean … what I think is … of course, you'd have to ask her to get the answer. You can't pull all of that … I mean, you can pull all of that from yourself. But I think you'd probably go crazy in the process. I think you have to observe and see what's happening to other people, find things to write about that maybe nobody else ever thought of. If you're really engaged with life, you see that. That's what I think.

Yeah, it seems like the level of empathy that she must have — especially coming from … it's crazy to think of where she came from and where she is now. She's the most honored female country artist in history … and so much more.

Yeah.

I was reading that she got some early words of encouragement from Johnny Cash, then the gig with Porter Wagoner, and off she went. Now here we are 50 years later.

And, still, you think about how she's written that many songs and yet, is she known as a songwriter?

Right!

I know. She's not. And I think part of that's her image. That is sort of the image that she's put out there. I still think people have a hard time seeing a pretty smile and a pretty voice, and they have a hard time connecting that she has a razor-sharp brain … and those songs!

Yeah, you don't get where you are — where she is — by not having the razor-sharp brain.

She is so freaking smart. Oh my God! She's such an inspiration. Just watching what she's done with her career, how she's taken care of her family and people at home … how she's all-successful. Stuff doesn't come up and then collapse, you know? Books for children all over the world? And she does it all without fanfare.

And it's hard to imagine — because she did start as a songwriter with the songs for Bill Phillips and Kitty Wells and stuff — but it's hard to imagine a world where she rested on that, on those songwriting laurels, and didn't pursue being a performer. But what if she had just kept to songwriting? What do you think …

Oh, that would be a sad loss! There are people out there who can write but can hardly sing. But her voice is beautiful. Her phrasing's gorgeous. She's such a great performer and a great actress. She's a real triple threat. There are not many of those out there, really, where each thing is just as great as the other.

She's also — even just within music, taking aside Dollywood and acting — she's had so many different musical lives, as it were. I'm a child of the '70s, so I have to confess to loving 9 to 5 and Best Little Whorehouse in Texas … that was my childhood.

Oh yeah!

But your favorite era is the early stuff? Which cuts?

Right now, I'm obsessed with the early stuff. There's one record that's got a ton of stuff on it … which isn't really fair because I have a bunch of songs on my iPod, but … "A Little Bit Slow to Catch On," "Just Because I'm a Woman," "I'll Oilwells Love You." I've been writing all the lyrics down, studying how she does this stuff. "The Only Way Out (Is to Walk Over Me)" … just so good! That's the stuff that's not known, in addition to “Jolene” and "Coat of Many Colors" and that kind of stuff … you know, "9 to 5."

I first was introduced to her through her second bluegrass record, Little Sparrow. That was the first time I really … I had seen that stuff growing up, and I knew “9 to 5,” but the first time I really got a sense of Dolly as an artist was Little Sparrow. I loved it. I thought it was beautiful. One of my first introductions to old-time music was actually at the end of "Marry Me" — there's this like little old-time jam that kind of fades off. And I was like, "That sounds so good!" It's funny to think about that, before I knew about old-time or anything.

Everything old is new again, I guess.

You know? The lyrics of "I'm a I'm a little bit slow to catch on, but when I do I'm caught on. I'm a little bit slow to move on, but your baby's a-movin' on" … I mean that early stuff, I'm really into it right now.

Rhiannon Giddens photo by Dan Winters; Dolly Parton photo courtesy of RCA