Tag: fiddle

Watkins Family Hour, “Bella and Ivan”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“Bella and Ivan,” one of two instrumentals on our Artist of the Month Watkins Family Hour’s brand new LP, brother sister, begins with a folky, whirring Vitamix of notes. It’s a frenzied melody, one that allows the siblings’ bluegrass virtuosity to glint like a bright reflection off a sly smile. Sean’s aggressive, Tony Rice attack and the slight Celtic bounce of Sara’s bow are demonstrating that they, too, can accomplish the unlikely complicated ease of the duo’s tight, familial harmonies.

And they do. Ever since the first notes of Nickel Creek’s “Ode to a Butterfly” transformed an entire generation of listeners into bluegrass fans, Sean and Sara Watkins have been giving us these effortless-while-acrobatic instrumentals. Each one reminds us in its own way that no matter how far afield the pair may travel from their genre of origin, they carry it with them still — and can execute any of its aesthetics with immediacy and delightful, mocking aplomb. 

Named for a friend’s two dogs who love to wrestle, “Bella and Ivan” isn’t so much rough housing as it is a scripted, choreographed, pro fight. Their interplay is just as exciting to those of us who suspend disbelief as it is to those who don’t; the musical dialogue precariously and joyfully unfolds in a way that refuses to either feel rehearsed or totally off-the-cuff. 

In whatever iteration one encounters the music of Sean, Sara, and/or Watkins Family Hour, they’re giving listeners every last ounce of that ethereal “something” that sparked our love for them in the first place. While they constantly reinvent themselves and explore new sonic territories, somehow that “something” remains indelible. It’s just Sean and Sara Watkins.

Sara Watkins Wants Us to Ride Along on Watkins Family Hour’s ‘brother sister’

Posted on by Editor

Sara Watkins is up to something — or at least, there’s a pretty good chance she’s up to something. The singer/songwriter and fiddler first found international recognition with Nickel Creek, but these days she stays busy with a rotating lineup of other creative outlets, from her solo work (three albums and counting) to her harmony-singing supergroup, I’m With Her. Oh, and then there’s the raucous Watkins Family Hour, an act with her brother, Sean, that holds regular residencies at LA’s Largo with a delightfully irregular cast of collaborators liable to join them.

This time, though, they wanted to focus on the core of the group. Their new album, brother sister, marks the first time that the siblings have sat down to write together. “We were both in a place where we wanted to focus on the potential of the Family Hour in a different way, a totally new approach than what we’d done before,” says Sara. “Apart from a few shows every year, we had never really focused on just us — particularly in writing.”

BGS caught up with Sean and Sara individually to hear more about how brother sister came together. Read the interview with Sara below, and take a look at Sean’s interview from earlier this week.

BGS: This is your first album as Watkins Family Hour in five years. What made you decide to prioritize this particular project again?

Sara Watkins: The first record that we did was sort of an accident. We made it when our friend offered us some free studio time, just to document what we’d been doing for a while. That record was very natural arrangements to songs that we’d been playing for a long time, cover songs. It was about a year and a half ago when we started talking about doing this record. We were catching up on what we’d each been up to, and as we were talking — I don’t remember who suggested it first — it became clear that we were both really interested in digging into the potential of the Family Hour, but focusing on the core element that’s always been there, which is my brother and me. This record is the first example of our collaboration as co-writers outside of a band format. Maybe as a reaction to the first Family Hour album, but also as a reaction to being in the projects that we’ve been a part of, we wanted to really focus on the potential of this combination.

Is there something specific about writing with a sibling that is either a positive that can’t be replicated, or an obstacle you don’t face with other people?

I think that any time you can be completely honest or you communicate well, it plays to your advantage. I don’t know if it’s sibling-related. For the first twenty-seven years of my life, which was the first twenty years of my musical existence, we shared our musical experience pretty closely. Sean and I have the advantage of a shared foundation — a shared musical foundation, a shared personal foundation — but I think at this point in our lives, what made writing together intriguing is actually how much time we’ve spent apart.

Instrumental tracks are rarely the ones held up as singles or played on the radio, but they’re a huge part of the bluegrass tradition — and something you and Sean do really well. In the writing and recording process, where do you begin in expressing a feeling without lyrics?

Playing instrumentals scratches a specific itch for me. It’s less guaranteed [with an instrumental song] that someone’s gonna get the gist of what you’re saying, but I don’t know that that matters. Even with lyrics, Sean and I have found that we get different things out of the same song — more cynical for him and more optimistic for me, or vice versa. People might hear a lyric completely differently, and that doesn’t make it a failure of expression. Maybe that’s a success.

When I listen to instrumentals, I really enjoy things that I can grab hold of. I enjoy a melody or a hook that comes back around. And I enjoy feeling like I’m along for the ride as a listener: that the person who’s playing is taking me with them. Sometimes you can sense, when someone’s soloing, that they’re also along for the ride — that maybe they don’t know where it’s going. I think a lot of us get that from like a Dave Rawlings solo. That’s really exciting.

So I think that’s the goal, for me: to take the listener, give them enough to hold onto, and invite them along for the ride. When we’re writing an instrumental, we want to try and take somebody’s hand and bring them with us. Otherwise, they’re just listening to a flurry of notes.

The melody and cadence on “Fake Badge, Real Gun” could be just as at home in a pop song. What were you going for when you sat down to record?

Sean has a real knack for melodies that have a pop sensibility. He has a really great way of blending and marrying that with the foundation and the scope of his bluegrass background. I think he’s uniquely good at that. This song is really hard to sing. [Laughs] It’s probably the most challenging song that I sing. Because of where the melody goes in my register, I’m always just singing it with my fingers crossed.

We were consciously trying to satisfy what the song wanted, which was percussion and some low end, but we wanted to give that to the song in a way that didn’t make it feel detached from the record. We kept the drums tight and to one side, and gave it bass that wasn’t too percussive. Then, when we recorded some of the other songs on the record that are much quieter — like the Warren Zevon song, “Accidentally Like a Martyr” — we recorded to tape, and Clay [Blair], who was our mix engineer, hit the take really hard. That means there’s some distortion on the tape, but it gives it a presence that I think matches the intensity of the songs that have a bigger instrumentation.

“Neighborhood Name,” a song about gentrification by Courtney Hartman and Taylor Ashton, is a newer number that you decided to cover on this album. What drew you to it?

It speaks to what a lot of people are aware of and sensitive to right now, as the world is changing and neighborhoods are changing. Some of us don’t know what our place is in that and others are being pretty directly affected. It’s also something that has happened for generations. This song doesn’t put an ethical stamp on it, to my ear, as much as it just speaks to the relatability of the sadness of being displaced. In addition to that, it speaks to the question of wondering if anybody’s gonna remember you — if you made a mark at all. And that’s something that’s always relatable, to everyone.

The song I’ve listened to the most is “The Cure.” What does that song mean to you, specifically the phrase “I avoided the cure, but it found me anyway”? Does it have any special meaning?

Life has a way of being persistent in the lessons that you need to learn. We might procrastinate on things that we know are going to be valuable for us or to start things that might be beneficial. Life pokes and prods in a way that often will bring you to those places, whether you like it or not. It’s a funny thing that a lot of us are so reluctant to do the thing that we know is going to bring us the outcome we’re looking for. It’s a strange but calming phenomenon that I think a lot of us can relate to.

Absolutely. It’s kind of a hopeful message. What’s one thing that has made you feel hopeful recently?

That’s a hard question, not because I’m devoid of hope, but because you could be so pessimistic in so many ways: The resilience of nature gives me hope, but we’re also being so mean to nature, and maybe it’s not going to be resilient forever. One thing that I have been enjoying is a lot of family time lately. I think digging into relationships and feeling the invaluable place that relationships should have in our lives, remembering that, feeling attached to that in a new way has made me hopeful. I feel that there are a lot of people realizing that again, and I think that’s really good for the world.

(Read our interview with Sean Watkins here.)

Photo credit: Jacob Boll

WATCH: Mile Twelve, “Long Done Gone”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Mile Twelve
Hometown: Boston, Masschusetts
Song: “Long Done Gone”

In Their Words: “Back in February we had a few days off the road and decided to spend one of them in Brooklyn, New York, playing music and making videos with some friends. We called up Michael Daves, Jacob Jolliff, and Tony Trischka and ended up having this epic afternoon of arranging a few bluegrass standards for eight people to jam on. Things got pretty wacky, including this video, which is a mashup of the bluegrass song ‘Long Gone’ and the fiddle tune ‘Done Gone.’ We decided to try this medley at first because we thought it would be funny but it turned out they’re both in the key of Bb and it ended up working great. Hope you enjoy!” — Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Mile Twelve

Photo credit: Kaitlyn Raitz

WATCH: The Slocan Ramblers, “New Morning”

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Artist: The Slocan Ramblers
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Song: “New Morning”
Album: Queen City Jubilee
Label: SloMusic

In Their Words: “I wrote ‘New Morning’ right after our second album Coffee Creek came out, and it came to me pretty quick. There’s this funny period after you put out an album — a moment of calm and then the crashing realization that it’s on to the next one. It’s that push to get back to work that got me writing again, and this song came out first. I was listening to Béla Fleck’s Tales from the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2 endlessly around that time, so maybe you can find some bits of inspiration in there. Big thanks to Trent Freeman (check out his awesome band The Fretless) for the videography.” — Adrian Gross, The Slocan Ramblers

Photo credit: Jen Squires

MIXTAPE: Anthony da Costa’s Quarantine Chill Out Roots-Grass Mix-Up

Posted on by Editor

I know what you’re thinking, Anthony da Costa doesn’t really bluegrass…but hey, I live in Nashville and I have friends and I even say “y’all” now. And there’s something about roots music that cuts to the core of everything and deeply influences what I do…even if it doesn’t always sound like it. Here are some tracks to not go outside to! — Anthony da Costa

David Francey – “Border Line”

David Francey is one of my favorites ever and nothing will change that. I lucked out by sharing a stage with him at the Tønder Festival many years ago. He blew me away with his simple approach, golden voice, and powerful storylines. He stood there like a bard and held our hearts in his hand. After our show, I asked his guitarist which album I should start with and he emphatically stated Torn Screen Door. “Border Line” is track one from David’s debut album, which he made when he was 45 years old. Let’s take a journey with him, since we can’t really go anywhere else.

Jordan Tice – “Chicken Dog”

This playlist has a lot of mood, interspersed with that spontaneous dance party that we could all use right now. You don’t even have to put on real clothes, just dance. Jordan Tice is one of my best friends and also happens to be my one of my favorite acoustic guitar players on planet Earth. He has a fabulous new album that will be coming out soon… but until then, let’s jump to this scorcher of a bizarre bluegrass song called “Chicken Dog.” I still don’t know what it’s about, but also, like, who cares?

Molly Tuttle – “When You’re Ready”

This playlist wouldn’t really be complete without something from Molly Tuttle. I had the pleasure of touring with Molly for her album release in 2019. When the bluegrass kids all told me that Molly had made a “pop” album, my first thought was “ALRIGHT. Calm down, kids. What, are there drums or something? Are you scared?” But the young “queen” of the bluegrass world and honestly craziest picker out there made one of the best albums of last year: pop in the ’90s Aimee Mann singer-songwriter kinda sense. Molly knows how to write a poignant, catchy chorus — and then somehow squeezes in some pretty insane bluegrass runs –in the SAME SONG. Are you ready?

Bill Frisell – “I’m So Lonesome, I Could Cry”

Because, you know, quarantine sucks, right? And I live alone. And it HAS gotten lonesome at times… so lonesome that I could pull up this great compilation entitled The Best of Bill Frisell, Vol. 1: The Folk Songs and just mellowly and totally NOT CRY to myself. ♥

Sam Amidon – “Blue Mountains”

Speaking of Bill Frisell, he features on this pretty mesmerizing track from Sam Amidon. This record made me a believer. I don’t know that anyone else can do what Sam does with folk music. I don’t even know what this music is. It’s Sam Amidon music.

John Mailander – “Forecast”

John Mailander is one of the nicest people in the world, but PLEASE don’t tell him that I said that… it might go to his incredibly large and insufferable ego. All kidding aside, John released his debut solo album (as far as I’m aware) last year. It’s called Forecast and this is the title track… and it’s one of those “get up off your couch and dance” songs I was talking about before. John is as versed in Phish as he is the oldest of old-time fiddle and bluegrass. He is very dear to me and his music endlessly inspires me to push things further.

Rachel Baiman – “Something to Lose”

I met Rachel Baiman within the context of her duo with Christian Sedelmeyer, 10 String Symphony (check them out, they’re out of this world). I’m so glad that Rachel has been doing a lot of her own music these days in addition. This record, produced by Andrew Marlin from Mandolin Orange, has a warm, “right there in the room” kinda feel to it. This song makes me cry. There, I said it. Love is fine, OK? Will I ever see anyone again!?

Aoife O’Donovan – “Pearls – Live”

I recently revisited this live album I got to make with the inimitable Aoife O’Donovan. Lots of people know Aoife from her work with Crooked Still, as well as her more recent recordings and travel as part of I’m With Her. I toured with Aoife as her guitarist and harmony singer from 2016 into 2017. We toured her album In the Magic Hour, which was produced by Tucker Martine and features gorgeous arrangements of strings, horns, fuzzed out guitars, drums, voices… We had to recreate Aoife’s music live with three people and no bassist… which means we made it our own. This particular song is a favorite deep cut of mine.

Paper Wings – “As I Walk Down”

I’ve been saying to anyone who will listen, and I will say it to you now: Paper Wings is currently my favorite band. This is as rootsy as I get and I’m quite alright with it. Wilhelmina Frankzerda and I met when we were touring in Joy Williams’ Front Porch band. One night in Houston, Wilhelmina gave me a pair of headphones and showed me some mixes from what became Paper Wings’ Clementine album. It’s my favorite album of 2019. They’re clearly drawing from a very deep well of tradition but with new, crooked and inventive melodies…plus, they’re writing SONGS! New songs. Great, great songs.

Mipso – “Coming Down the Mountain”

Because we’re all going to come out of this eventually, right? Here’s a song to take off your mask to. See you all on the other side. ♥

Photo credit: Jacqueline Justice

Aaron Jonah Lewis, “A Banjo Frolic”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Ask ten banjo players this question: “Who is the Mozart of the banjo?”

You’ll probably get ten different answers. If any were to double up, perhaps one would be Béla Fleck (a banjo player more than most will remember has conquered many a classical composition on the instrument) and perhaps another would be Earl Scruggs (given that “Mozart of” could easily morph into “a style-originator of” to others.) Fiddle champion and banjo virtuoso Aaron Jonah Lewis posits a much more pragmatic — and almost actually analogous — candidate on his new album, Mozart of the Banjo, tributing a banjo player a step closer to Mozart in more than a few ways, but chiefly in that he did not perform bluegrass.

Joe Morley was a “classic fingerstyle” banjo player, composer, performer, and instruction book author who lived and made music at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, at which time banjos were central to popular music in Britain and the United States. “A Banjo Frolic,” one of twelve Morley pieces performed by Lewis on the album, demonstrates this “golden age” sound, oozing ragtime and musical theatre and Vaudeville and minstrelsy. While Morley’s compositions weren’t technically “classical” music, Lewis explains in the project’s in-depth liner notes, “…[It] did occupy an interesting space in that it appealed to royalty, the upper and middle classes and the lower classes of society as well.” A truly banjo notion. Morley also paralleled Mozart in that they were both child prodigies, both left enormous bodies of work, and both died poor and were buried in unmarked graves.

We may be enjoying a current renaissance of the banjo, where more and more players, fans, and even casual passers-by of the instrument understand its important role in American history and its folkways and art forms. Still, it’s fascinating that so many forgotten or overlooked facets of the instrument’s past and its legacy remain excluded from that greater, better-understood narrative. Mozart of the Banjo: The Joe Morley Project and Aaron Jonah Lewis are attempting to tell more of the banjo’s full history, and purposefully connect it to its Black and African inputs, as well as its extant forms in the U.S. and around the world, reminding all of us banjo fans — and at such an apropos time, as well — that none of our favorite forms of music, banjo-y or otherwise, exist in a vacuum.

New Singer, Same Edge: The SteelDrivers Deliver on ‘Bad For You’

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The SteelDrivers’ new lead singer, Kelvin Damrell, already grasps the driving force behind the band, which is marking its 12th year with a brand new album, Bad For You.

“You couldn’t play our songs if you weren’t passionate about what you were doing,” the Berea, Kentucky, native believes. “It wouldn’t sound right at all, in any position in the band. From the mid-range harmony part to the hardest-playing guitar riffs, to the hardest-playing fiddle, it wouldn’t sound nearly as good as it does if you didn’t love what you were doing, and playing with as much passion as you could.”

On Bad For You, Damrell steps into a role once filled by Gary Nichols and Chris Stapleton for the group’s first album since winning a Grammy with 2015’s The Muscle Shoals Recordings. All five of the SteelDrivers — Richard Bailey, Damrell, Mike Fleming, Tammy Rogers (whose daughter discovered Damrell on YouTube), and Brent Truitt — invited BGS over for a chat.

Kelvin, how long had you been in the band by the time you went into the studio?

Kelvin: Goodness, how long has it been now? I joined in October 2017. I was just so looking forward to the release date of the album that I’d forgotten when we went in.

Mike: He had to go to boot camp first. [Laughs] Bluegrass boot camp! We had to take him out of Kentucky. He had his first airplane flight. You saw the ocean for the first time, right? You left a lot of things laying around. [All laugh] You went through airports with knives when you shouldn’t have. But listen, it was good! We all got comfortable with each other, and we needed some time just to feel that, and it got to that point.

Kelvin: When I joined the band, I was really unsure about what was going on, about my position. I had made the cut as far as getting to be in the band, but Brent kept telling me we needed a couple of months to see how we jibe together. I thought that was just him saying that, but it was the truth. We switched vehicles pretty regularly and I rode with different people. We really saw how we jibed together before we made a full decision on whether we were going to keep me, or if I was going to go back to sweeping chimneys.

The song “Bad For You” has such a cool groove. You sent it out as your first single and you named the album after it. What is it about that song that is special to you?

Brent: To me it was the perfect fit for this band. It was the song that hit me right out of the chute. It encapsulates the sound. It’s really edgy, and we’re a little bit on the edgy side of bluegrass.

Mike: It was one of the strongest songs, as far as that kind of feel. It’s like a “Here we are!” kind of song. You know, “Look out!” The way Kelvin sang it, Tammy told him, “Sing it like a rock ‘n’ roll singer.”

Kelvin: I almost got emotional when we played it for the very first time. I really did, that’s the truth. The first night we debuted it, after we hit that last big note, I almost did get a little emotional because it’s like something is finally coming to fruition with my position in the band. I’d done all this other stuff that vocally belonged to Gary and vocally belonged to Chris, and now this one vocally belongs with me at the lead. And man, that three-part harmony! Everything about it was good, and it really did make me emotional.

I’m glad you mentioned harmony because that’s a really important component of this band that doesn’t get talked about enough — how well you can stack those voices.

Tammy: Thank you. But you’re exactly right, I think that’s always been a really strong facet of the band. It’s this rock ‘n’ roll lead singer with this really strong three-part harmony coming in on the chorus. From a writer’s perspective on this album, I thought about that a lot, and how that was still a big part of the sound, and to keep that consistent because I think that does set us apart.

Brent: In our live set, I’m thinking of one or two songs that end with the vocal trio by itself, doing the swell and bending into a note, and the crowd loves it every time. It’s a big part of bluegrass, period, but it’s a big part of our music too.

Brent, how would you describe the SteelDrivers’ sound?

Brent: For me, personally? It’s gritty, grind-y bluegrass. With a lot of soul.

Tammy: Think about the Rolling Stones if they were to play with bluegrass instruments. That’s us.

Mike: With a blues/rock ‘n’ roll singer. … It’s intense! I’m tired after our set. It’s a workout. We keep the emotion and the intensity going quite a bit, but we let up occasionally and do a nice song.

On this record, you do have that slower moment on “I Choose You,” which brings out another side of the band.

Tammy: Yeah, we’ve always had a song or two like that. On the first record, “Heaven Sent” has always been one of our most-requested and popular songs, and it has that great, easy, rolling feel to it. We call it the hippie dance. And when Thomm Jutz and I wrote “I Choose You,” that was definitely musically where I wanted to go with that, to have that feel to it. But it’s still a very serious lyric, even though it has a positive message, in a way. It has a lot of depth and meaning to it.

Richard, do you have a favorite track on this album?

Richard: Umm… “Forgive.”

What do you like about that one?

Richard: I like what I played on it. [All laugh]

Tammy: See, it’s all about the banjo! We joke about it but people love the banjo!

Mike: It’s got a great groove.

Brent: It’s one of my favorite songs too.

Kelvin: It’s funky. It’s like “Bad For You” is rock ‘n’ roll and “Forgive” is funky!

Kelvin, what were you listening to about three years ago, before joining the band?

Kelvin: Three years ago I was on a really big Cinderella kick. [All laugh] I’m still on the kick. I still listen to mainly rock ‘n’ roll when it’s just me in my truck, driving for hours on end.

Did the band prepare you for the honesty of bluegrass fans, and how they’ll tell you what they think?

Kelvin: I was ready for it before I started! I knew how much of a following they had. I know how much people loved Gary. I know how much people loved Chris. And I was ready for it – I prepared myself for people saying, “This guy sucks. You need to get somebody else.” [I’ve heard that] twice, I think, the whole time I’ve been with the band. It’s been great — because I was expecting it at every show!

Tammy, do you have young women coming up and telling how cool it is to see a woman on stage?

Tammy: Yeah, it’s really awesome and I appreciate it a lot. Because when I was growing up there were very few women playing, and the ones that did were usually bass players. Mama might be back there thumping on the bass or whatever. There were very few women role models for me, of that generation. There were a couple — I remember Lynn Morris was playing and Laurie Lewis was playing a few years ahead of me in those circles. Not many in the country world. I was a huge Mother Maybelle fan and part of that was because she played the guitar. That was fascinating for me as a kid.

And now in the generation after me, there’s just unbelievably talented women – not just singers, but instrumentalists. It’s phenomenal, the jump from mine and Alison Brown’s ages, to Sierra Hull, who is a genius on the mandolin, and Kimber Ludiker and all the Della Mae girls we love, and Molly Tuttle is absolutely slaying it on guitar. Sara Watkins, I’m With Her, Sarah Jarosz … it’s just on and on and on. If I in any way influenced any of those players, I am deeply honored.

What would you want bluegrass fans to know about this new record?

Tammy: We’re excited this year to get out and we’ll be playing a lot of different kinds of venues. We don’t play that many traditional bluegrass festivals anymore, but it’s my hope that people hear the music and still see the thread that’s in there. The subject matter that we choose to sing about is not as cleaned up as some other stuff, but to me it’s just another facet of the music, and I think we’re hopefully carrying it forward and carrying a torch.

Photo credit: Anthony Scarlatti

Possessed by Paul James: The Texas Schoolteacher Who Goes Wandering

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Long before Konrad Wert took the stage name Possessed by Paul James, he was a kid living in what sounds like a fable. Wert grew up amidst the marshes and palmettos of Immokalee, Florida, watchful of “gators” but delighting in a monkey that swung from a mangrove tree near his home. Alongside his sister and the children of Mexican and Haitian immigrants, he attended the small Mennonite chapel his parents founded, worshipping and harmonizing on sturdy, simple hymns at least three times a week.

As a young adult Wert left Southwest Florida and his conservative, religious past. Free to listen to whatever he pleased, he was drawn to punk and the blues. But he set his love of music aside to pursue a teaching career. And for the last 20 years he has devoted his life to teaching special education and advocating for students and teachers.

Several years ago, with two young kids and a meager teaching salary, music became a way of supplementing his teaching income. His energetic, multi-instrumental shows quickly gained popularity and soon Possessed by Paul James (a nod to Wert’s father and grandfather) was born.

It’s been six years since Wert’s last album, There Will Be Nights When I’m Lonely. In that time, he has undergone two vocal surgeries, losing “two whole steps or three half-steps in terms of range,” he says. His latest album, As We Go Wandering, took nearly five years to complete. He would hum his compositions in school hallways, scribble lyrics on scratch paper or napkins and travel two hours northeast from his home in Kerrville, Texas, to Austin to record.

Finding common ground between the instrumental traditions of old-time music and a contemporary call to social action, As We Go Wandering is the collective work of 20 musicians. While Wert stayed consistent on banjo, fiddle, guitar and clogging, he wanted his friends and “picking pals” to add texture and feel on the record by contributing harmonies, mandolin, percussion and guitar.

He explains, “The greatest contribution to the participating musicians were the harmonies and choral effect such as in ‘Be at Rest,’ ‘As We Go Wandering,’ and ‘I’m So Good at Absolutely Nothing.’ … Their contributions added to the texture and feel tremendously. At the end of the day we’re all Possessed by Paul James. I like it like that. It’s not about the ‘me,’ it’s all about the ‘we.'”

BGS: Can you talk a little about the making of As We Go Wandering?

Wert: Our albums are very reflective of where we are in life. As We Go Wandering is really reflective of where we are as a family. My boys are 11 and 9. The kids are healthy, our relationship [with my wife] is strong, but where do we keep going?

I notice you say “we” and “our” when talking about the making of your music. Are you talking about your wife? The musicians you play with?

Yes. I’m a firm believer that the pronoun “we” is far more powerful than “I.” It’s never meant as the third person or some strange pretentious way of thinking. [Laughs] Rather, I can talk about how my family impacts the writing, how our friendships impact the writing, how life impacts the writing. I like to say, “We are Possessed by Paul James,” not “I am Possessed by Paul James.”

In the song “When It Breaks” you seem to be saying that when we hit our breaking points, we need to keep plugging away. What’s the story behind this song?

When I write, I’ll put songs on the shelf, and I’ll let it collect some dust until it feels ready to record it. We originally recorded this track on the album Feed the Family, and it was [recorded] just with me. It was very raw.

The sentiment when I wrote it then, and how we have reinvented it with this composition, has so much to do with, number one, my work as a schoolteacher. I had to take a year off in 2015 just for my mental health. It was starting to beat me down, that [feeling of] we’re not able to help these young people in the way that we want to help them. For me, some of these songs are reflective of, what am I going to do when I can’t take it anymore? What are teachers going to do when we can’t take it any longer? I get emotional about it.

Your performances always appear so cathartic, like you’re really just letting it all out. It sounds like your lyrics are a way of releasing emotions and inner struggles as well?

Oh, yeah. Maybe to a fault. Being raised a Mennonite, you were raised to recognize your weaknesses and your faults. You know the phrase would always be: Remember you’re broken and then you can have healing. Some people say, “When we come to your shows it feels like church.” Well, it’s meant to have people gather around and have a good time, share our burdens and talk with one another.

Many songs on this album feel nostalgic. Is that a reflection on where you are in life?

Yes. I understand how people sort of lose their footing in their mid-40s. There’s the adventures and excitement of your roaring 20s and then you’re balancing out in your 30s and quote-unquote growing up. Then in your 40s, the waters are calm and you’re thinking: What’s next? Am I just counting the minutes before I croak? I think there’s a lot of pondering, wandering in the album. I know I also wanted to slow things down. My wife is like, “Hey, can you have an album without cussing?” We wanted a more folk-y element, along with that theme of advocacy and hopefulness.

Some artists who have to have a day job to survive might compartmentalize those two things. You blend your job and your art together quite a bit.

Absolutely. I truly feel you can’t do one without the other. When I was [teaching] in elementary school, music was always in my classroom. I teach high school now, but on my wall there’s a picture of me teaching, my second-year teaching, with these little guys in school with a guitar. And there’s a little guy with a tambourine in his hand, a kid with Down syndrome, a sweet kid. So, music has always been in the class.

The song “Be at Rest” has been described as a social justice anthem related to education in this country. Is this a song you could’ve written in any other phase of your life?

No. I think with the rise of school shootings, when those tragedies occur, as a schoolteacher or counselor or any kind of educator, you’re literally walking in the same shoes of those that were injured or killed. It takes such a toll on you. You start thinking, whoa, look at this environment we are working in and this is truly now part of our job. This is truly part of our professional development and training — how to handle if someone comes into the school with a firearm. That’s profound when it’s an educational setting and we’re trying to help people learn and grow. The song was a response that came out in a cathartic manner.

My intent is to remind myself to be at rest. To remind myself that I can persevere. Is it specifically about someone coming into my school with a firearm? Yes and no. There are a lot of conflicts right now in public education that we have to focus our energy on. And I think by singing about that — there are battles in these classrooms, there are battles in these hearts — it might just be a reminder. It’s preachy, possibly. But not too preachy. I feel like if I get too preachy I lose the listener. But you have to live your convictions without losing your audience. That’s the balance.

Photo credit: George Blosser

Sam Reider, “Trio Sonata”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

All disbelief suspended, composer and accordionist Sam Reider’s work is essentially string band music. Yes, he’s an accordionist (which shouldn’t really be remarkable, because… Sally Ann Forrester), and yes, Eddie Barbash plays saxophone on the most recent album, The Human Hands EP, but we’ve suspended disbelief here for a reason. Whether the rest of the band were rounded out by Dominick Leslie, Duncan Wickel, Alex Hargreaves, Dave Speranza, and Roy Williams or not, these tunes would feel fiddle-y. They’re folky and down-to-earth and approachable and danceable and they cheekily, defiantly traipse across the borders of bluegrass. 

The truly remarkable thing about this music is not this feat in the face of (gasp) an accordion and a saxophone!? It’s that these folky-feeling tunes are… composed. These melodies and ideas are directly tied to a musical history and tradition often regarded as devoid of any idea rootsy or vernacular. “Trio Sonata,” a two-part composition on the new The Human Hands video EP, draws from the Baroque trio sonata, a 400-year-old musical form that derived from popular dances of the day. The three parts of Reider’s “Trio Sonata” are I. Reel, II. Jig, and III. Breakdown, amounting to an unlikely, four-century-old parallel to modern fiddle contest song selections. 

In this way, there’s a satisfying sense of symmetry to Reider’s idiosyncratic approach to fiddle-oriented instrumental music. It defies any so-called logic we might try to use to justify certain genre designations, it mocks the idea that we ought try to delineate between “classical” versus “folky” approaches to writing and creating music, and perhaps above all else, the music centers dance. Movement is certainly a unifier, and in this case, it unifies all of these musical eccentricities — from squeezebox to Bill Monroe to Baroque compositions to sax — in a perfectly digestible package.

Gig Bag: Jeremy Garrett

Posted on by Editor

Welcome to Gig Bag, a BGS feature that peeks into the touring essentials of some of our favorite artists. This time around, Jeremy Garrett details the items he always has nearby when out on the road.

The main thing I take on the road in my gig bag is some reusable utensils and a water bottle. So much waste can be generated while traveling, and it’s important for us all to do our part to curb that waste as much as possible. Cutting down on one-time-use water bottles and plastic ware can be a great way to reduce our impact on the environment.

Another thing that I bring on the road always, especially when riding in a bus, is a very comfortable pair of “house shoes.” Sometimes even just bringing one small familiar thing from home on tour can help tie those two worlds together a little better and keep you grounded.

I always pack two raincoats. Especially during festival season. There’s been more than one occasion where the extra one has come in handy, for a crew member, band member, or even a second dry one for you to wear. They are small and light weight and wrapped up, take almost no room in a suitcase.

 

 

 

This extra insert cable never leaves my suitcase. These things can stop working on a pedal board sometimes and leave you in a bind. Not me!!

A multi-tool is a great thing to have along.

I throw this bottle of Benadryl in my case, because you never when you might eat something or get bit by something that you are allergic to. Last year I found out was allergic to shiitake mushrooms. The hard way. Having Benadryl on hand really helped with this matter.

One more thing that I’ll try to squeeze into my suitcase at the end if there is space, is a Theracane. Sometimes a back can get sore playing music a lot or sleeping in a different place every night and this has helped me to be able to work those playing knots out after the show.

Photo credit: J.Mimna Photography