“Music has always been a source of hope in the most difficult seasons of life. It possesses that strange quality to make mosaics out of even the most broken places and emotions. As we face this pandemic as a world community, I pray this music fills your heart and gives you quiet hope from home.” — Marie Miller
The Collection – “Becoming My Own Home”
I remember the first time I heard this whole album, and I honestly gasped in joy! This song is about finding home within yourself. I think it speaks to this time as many of us are reconnecting with ourselves in our homes.
Brandi Carlile – “The Mother”
We have all lost something in this pandemic, but we haven’t lost who we are. Brandi Carlile I will love you forever.
Marie Miller – “Little Dreams”
I’m going to be super awkward and put myself on here for two reasons. 1. This song is about believing in your dream when EVERYTHING is falling apart. 2. I just want to be near Brandi in any way I can.
Lowland Hum – “I Will”
I can’t count how many nights I have looked at the sky and listened to this with wonder at the dark sky and bright stars. It just makes me feel like we are going to be OK.
Kelly Hunt – “Across the Great Divide”
Speaking of soothing music, Kelly Hunt makes truly lovely and peaceful music. Also I have yet to meet her, but I imagine she would be the kindest person in the world.
Punch Brothers – “Soon or Never”
I don’t think I will ever get tired of this song. It’s almost hauntingly beautiful. It breaks my heart, but puts it back together before the end of the song.
Joy Williams – “Front Porch”
Going with theme, I feel like I am at the front porch of forgiving myself and loving myself and that’s still home even if its not quite inside. “The light is on. Whatcha waiting for?”
Josh Ritter – “Change of Time”
As we all let go of what we thought this year would be, I am allowing Josh Ritter to serenade me and remind me all will be well.
Fleet Foxes – “White Winter Hymnal”
The first time I heard this song I was in love with this boy, and I felt like he might like me. I don’t know that boy anymore, but I feel that hope every time I hear it.
Robby Hecht and Caroline Spence – “I’ll Keep You”
I think Robby Hecht could fill any heart with hope. This song is about keeping things that matter, and I think it’s a great song for today.
The Wailin’ Jennys – “Glory Bound”
This song is about heaven, and the Wailin’ Jennys sing like angels. It would be hard to find something more hopeful and beautiful.
Michelle Mandico – “1,000 Feet”
The world needs to braver and kinder than its ever before to make beauty out of this sorrow. I believe we are far kinder and braver than we know. This song reminds us of just that.
The Lil Smokies’ long-awaited album Tornillo reflects the vast openness of the Texas desert town in which it was recorded, possessing all of the energy that comes with a renewed creative spirit. In a phone interview with lead singer Andy Dunnigan, BGS discussed rule-bending, burnout, and how recording at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas revitalized the Montana-based band.
BGS: It sounds like this album is really special to you. Can you tell me about the process of making it? What’s memorable about this one?
AD: Yeah, this is a special one. We were coming off of two or three solid years of extensive touring. We were pretty road-worn and dare I say a little burnt out. When we came into this session we needed to become a little more unified than we had been while on the road. We were looking for somewhere that we could go and get outside of the box creatively.
Texas was somewhere we had never spent a lot of time. We wanted to go down to the desert and we wanted to be able to live on the compound. These were all [realities] that Sonic Ranch in Tornillo was able to provide us, so when we got down there we didn’t really leave for ten days.
We lived a stone’s throw away from the studio. We’d wake up and eat huevos rancheros and then head over to the studio. We were kind of autonomous in the fact that we could make our own hours. It really brought us back to life. We were really unified in our work and the production of this album, and I think that’s really ostensible throughout the songs.
How much does a new album like this, where you have brand-new material and are fresh off the experience of recording, help motivate you to keep going out on the road?
I think it’s just that we toured the last album for a couple years and got a little tired of some of those songs. We were playing so much that we didn’t have all that much time for writing. I found myself trying to juggle between writing, being on the road, solitude, hobbies, and having a girlfriend. I was thinking, “Man, there’s just not a lot of time.”
So now that we were able to hammer out some new songs, getting back out on the road seems so much more enjoyable. I think when we’re having fun on stage there’s a direct correlation to the audience. They’re feeding off us and the pillars of reciprocity are strong.
This album definitely sounds like you’re having fun and doing things your way. You sort of bend the rules of bluegrass, but always in a way that adds something to the music. How do you keep an open mind about trying new things without being gratuitous about it?
We wanted to think outside the box for this record, but we didn’t want to do it in a contrived way where we say, “OK, this is going to be a weird album, so we’ll just make it intentionally weird.” We wanted to cater to the songs and adhere to what each song needs.
On the title track, “Tornillo,” we had originally worked up our traditional way of doing it with the bluegrass ensemble, but when we started playing it, it sounded like something that should be on the soundtrack of Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary. We were thinking, “This just isn’t going to work.”
Then Rev, our guitar player, worked up a piano arrangement and brought it to us towards the latter part of the session and we were like, “Oh man, this is so awesome. We have to use this.” We were just serving the song, and that was the ethos. Once we had the piano foundation, we started experimenting with drums and horns and some baritone guitar.
It was really fun for us. We intentionally gave ourselves a surplus amount of time in the studio so we could tinker around a little bit. We wanted to experiment sonically, and I think the results are really fun. It opened our minds to what you can accomplish in the studio if you have enough time and patience.
This album has a clear overall sound. Big, open, and full of space. Is that something you went into the studio wanting to accomplish, or did it develop more on the fly?
It’s a little bit of both. We wanted to create something big from the get-go, but we weren’t sure how we were going to do that. We knew we wanted to record live because that adds a little more energy, we had it in mind to drench a lot of it in reverb to create sort of a Fleet Foxes vibe or something a little more alt. That’s the kind of music that a lot of us have been listening to and getting inspired by for the last few years. We’re all listening to a lot of different music and we wanted to expand outside of the bluegrass domain in the production at least.
In your bio it’s mentioned that you “draw on the energy of a rock band and the Laurel Canyon songwriting of the 1970s.” How did bluegrass become the avenue that you express those influences?
Well, I think we all started out playing bluegrass. I came to it in my latter years of high school. I went down to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I had gotten an electric guitar from my dad. He plays music for a living, so he gifted me a Strat, and then a lap steel. I listened to a lot of David Lindley and Ben Harper. Those were kind of the gateway into bluegrass music. Then when I went down to Telluride it blew my head open.
I think we all have our pioneer stories of how we got into the music. That’s how you meet the community of players. There’s this whole vocabulary attached to it but as you get older you expand your musical library. I think we listen to a lot of songwriters and a lot of rock. We still happen to play these bluegrass instruments, and we love bluegrass, but we’re just trying to express what we want to say while wielding bluegrass instruments.
Do you find that you’re an introduction to bluegrass music for a lot of your fans?
I do, and it’s one of my favorite remarks after shows. People say, “Man, I hate bluegrass, but I love you guys.” I hear that a lot and I think it’s funny and ironic, but it’s cool because I think there has to be somebody to pull you in and make you realize that you’ve been wrong about the stigma perhaps. I know I was that person at one time. I thought, “Man, bluegrass music? My dad plays the banjo. This is really lame.”
I think we’re seeing bluegrass kind of blossom into its adolescence and beyond, because for a while I think it was restricted by the staunch purists who were slapping everyone’s wrists for playing minor chords. Now we’re seeing Punch Brothers, Greensky Bluegrass, Infamous Stringdusters, and of course now Billy Strings, who all have obviously done their homework religiously and can pay homage to the traditional godfathers, but they’re also putting their spin on it. It’s really cool and it’s getting people excited. I think to be included in that group is really awesome and I think it’s an exciting time to be riding the wave.
How much do you rely on melody, texture, and other instrumental factors to further the meaning or story within a song?
A lot of it happens in the arranging as well, but a lot of times when I’m writing a song there will be a hook line, and that’s sort of from a rock standpoint. You have your verse-chorus and then there’s a riff or something. You know, this band was almost an instrumental band for a short period in the beginning. We were listening to a lot of David Grisman, Strength In Numbers, and a lot of that music.
We loved writing instrumental music, and then when I started singing and writing songs we kind of fused the two worlds together. Those little melody parts and arrangement parts are still so fun to incorporate in songs. In a tune like “Giant” on this album, we wanted something kind of spacy to create a dream-like state, so we tried to write something that sounded kind of spacey and sleepy.
Some of these songs are intentionally ambiguous in their origins. What is the intent behind that ambiguity?
I went to school at the University of Montana for creative writing and poetry and I love the way words sound together as much as I love melody. Sometimes the words and just the assonance, what they sound like, will dictate the melody and vice versa. Once I have a word in my head and I’m kind of ad-libbing on the guitar I try to steer away from some words and how they sound.
I like to write stories and have some ostensible narratives, but I also just love words and how they sound. “World’s On Fire” has a couple meanings in there but I also like to keep it intentionally ambiguous because I think it’s fun for people to create their own story.
You’ve said your time at Sonic Ranch “encapsulates all of the good things about being in a band and making music.” How did the band grow from the experience of making this album?
To circle back on what I said in the beginning, it’s a huge a sacrifice to be in a band. There’s the greatest ups and the greatest downs, kind of married to each other. Coming off of those past three years of touring we were all a little tired and burnt out, and maybe questioning if we were on the right path. During our studio session in Tornillo I think we were all realizing that this is why we do it.
When you make an album it’s like setting a bug in amber. It’s this fossilized preservation of your life at that point. The word tornillo literally means “to fasten” and refers to a screw. We named it after that place. The place really tightened us up together as friends and as a band. I remember leaving there and feeling really proud of what we had accomplished. I think it’s the most unified we’ve ever been as a band.
Pete Seeger would have turned 100 this month, but he fit well over a century’s worth of impact into the ninety-four years he had. His accomplishments as an activist, musician, folklorist, and organizer have long been numerous enough to fill an anthology—and this month, Smithsonian Folkways has finally released one, complete with six CDs, a 200-page book, and twenty previously unreleased recordings.
The release, Pete Seeger: The Smithsonian Folkways Collection, is just one way to celebrate his centennial. Fans and admirers have also marked the occasion with “Spirit of Seeger” concerts nationwide, and a special set at this summer’s Newport Folk Festival, an event where Seeger’s impact is perhaps most evident.
But Pete’s legacy is about more than a single release or celebration. Jay Sweet, executive producer at Newport Folk and a friend to Seeger, says the late folk music icon wouldn’t want any fanfare for his birthday—he’d rather see a new generation put that energy towards helping others. Here, in the first of a two-part interview, Sweet recalls conversations and memories with Seeger and discusses the way Pete’s egalitarian spirit and fiery pursuit of truth continues to propel the Newport Folk Festival forward.
BGS: You met Pete for the first time after he was a well-established icon in the American folk scene. What was that like for you?
Sweet: They say to be careful when you meet your heroes. For me, with Pete, it was the exact opposite, and it was mostly because he wasn’t Mister Positive. When I met him in his late eighties, he was a bit of a curmudgeon. I actually really liked that. He was feisty, he was disgruntled with the state of everything that was happening in the world, and he was questioning why the younger generations weren’t doing more. I think he kind of considered them soft, and I liked that he was calling it like it was.
Did that attitude reveal itself more as you grew closer over the years?
A story that I love happened few years after I met him, at Newport the first time I brought the Decemberists there. I was really excited to see them—they were going to do a funny reenactment of Dylan Goes Electric, including Pete with an axe. (I’d even told them it’d have to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, because, y’know, uh, Pete’s here.) But during the set, I get this security guard running up to me: “We’ve lost Pete. You told us to keep an eye on Mr. Seeger. We don’t know where he is.” Then, immediately, there’s another security guard running up to me. “There’s somebody in the scaffolding up on stage left, thirty-five feet up in the air. We’ve asked him to come down, but the music has started and we don’t want to interrupt the band on stage. What do we do?”
So I go, and I look, and lo and behold—in his Wranglers and a purple-pink button-down work shirt, with his little hat—was Pete Seeger at ninety-plus, thirty-five feet up in the air, looking down at the Decemberists. I remember being terrified, thinking, Well, the best thing to do is to not scare him, to wait til he comes down. There were no stairs or anything, he had just climbed.
So when he got down, I was like, Pete… what?! And he said, “I was so sick of people asking me to take pictures with them and sign autographs. You told me that this band had a lot of good stuff—that their music was based in old-time sea shanties, had all these metaphors, took from these old tales. And I was fascinated. I had to see it. And they’re fantastic!” And I just remember thinking, I know Newport is onto something when Pete Seeger is climbing the scaffolding to be left alone, just to see good music.
I’ve heard that it was actually Pete’s idea, decades ago, to pay all of the performers the same fee to play—$50. And I know that’s not how it works now, but—
It’s pretty close! [Laughs]
What elements of that spirit are still around?
Well, we perhaps overpay up-and-coming artists — those who need it, really, in order to be able to take the dog-crap offers they get all over the place and still survive. If we don’t overpay them, we give them the opportunity to collaborate with somebody that is gonna help their star shine a little brighter, give them a platform to succeed. With anybody bigger than that, we basically ask to take a zero, or even more than a zero, away from their normal asking fee. And then we make a donation in their name to something that they believe in.
And the reason that works is because there’s an understanding. You can look at, say, the Avett Brothers, who I booked three or four times before they ever headlined. Hozier — his very first, basically, gig, in the United States? It was Newport. Courtney Barnett and Leon Bridges and Margo Price, all these amazing people that came to Newport before they became the names that you might recognize. We need to support the hell out of them, and not just for altruistic reasons. Bands like the Avett Brothers and Wilco and Hozier and the Alabama Shakes and My Morning Jacket, you don’t get those bands to come back year after year if you didn’t support them when nobody else did.
And I think that is all about that $50 model, and a general understanding of it. Fleet Foxes’ Robin [Pecknold] said it really well on a PBS special: He said, when we first came here, they didn’t pay us much, but we hadn’t proven ourselves. Then I think they paid us the exact same amount when we came back to Newport to headline. The interviewer was confounded by that, he asked — why? And [Robin] essentially said, “Because now there’s another band that Jay needs to book. They’re the Fleet Foxes from ten years ago, and they need that help. Me playing it, it’s a giving back.”
And that? It’s very rare. But it comes from the spirit of Pete saying that regardless of whether you’re Bob Dylan at the height of his popularity or church singers from Appalachia, you’re getting fifty bucks. That we’re-all-in-this-together mentality comes from that fifty dollars. And if during my tenure, if the whole thing is as close as I can get to the ideal of Pete Seeger, the better off the festival will be.
What were some of your last interactions with Pete, and how do they affect the way you move forward with Newport?
My last conversations with Pete were much more interesting than my first ones, in some respects. One is that he said to me, “Jay, if you’re not upsetting someone, you’re doing it wrong.” That’s a mantra I keep with me — a what-would-Pete-say kind of thing. That’s what makes Newport, this festival that Pete basically co-founded with George Wein, iconic in American music and around the world, even though it’s so small—why its name gets continuously mentioned in the same breath as the Glastonberrys and Bonnaroos and Coachellas. I remember him saying, “You’ve gotta keep challenging the ears of our audience. Unless you’re upsetting a certain faction, you’re doing it wrong. Take the opportunity.”
About four months before he died, he asked me, “How are you going to keep booking people that speak truth to power, speak on the human condition? Who is doing that now?” I said, “Well, at this point Pete, it’s hip-hop.” I sent him some lyrics—just lyrics at first, no music—and he wrote back and said, “These are fascinating. Does any of this stuff get radio play?” And I was like “Actually, no. It’s somewhat like when you started the festival.” Because when people like Pete and Joan Baez and others had lyrical messages that, due to the lingering effects of McCarthyism, were not “fit for radio,” Newport was created out of that blacklisting.
Pete figured, if I can’t get my message to the masses via these mediums, I’m just gonna do it in person, all over the country and all over the world. I’ll take it to union halls and VFWs and town assemblies, and whatever it is—gymnasiums at public schools. The festival was basically just a massive culmination of the grassroots effort to play for the island of misfits. So I think there was a lot of connection there, for him, with hip-hop—Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper. It was fascinating to me. But white Pete was alive, we could never bring that to fruition for him. Bring somebody to Newport in a free rhyme, just a beat and somebody freestyling. I think he actually would have climbed that scaffolding again: “Leave me alone—I want to go see this truth.”
“Overnight drives are the lifeblood of developing into a touring band. Leaving the comfort of street lights and neighborhoods and going into the void to get to the next town in time for soundcheck is as thrilling and mysterious as it is exhausting and daunting. It’s a ritual we share with bands all over the country and it teaches us to identify as the road dogs we are. It’s a powerful sympathy that unites us with others like us. Looking out at the nothingness and knowing there are many hours left without comfort is isolating and forces us to look inward.
“After conversation about the show earlier that night or what we miss back home diminishes, we’re left with the stars, the dashboard, and the radio to keep us company as we try to stay awake through the hypnotic rhythm of yellow lines passing beneath us. These are some of the songs that keep us going as we pass through the voids in between towns, we hope you enjoy.” — Jared & the Mill
Gregory Alan Isakov – “Stable Song”
The sonic qualities of this song are absolutely perfect for lonely nights away from home, and the lyrics inspire wanderlust just enough that I forget my homesickness and reinvigorate my excitement for adventure. It’s a godsend on long overnight drives.
James Taylor – “Sweet Baby James”
I was raised on ‘60s/’70s singer-songwriter music for a lot of my childhood, and this song brought my worlds together when I realized its subject matter covers the spirit of chasing a dream away from home and into the void. I come from a cowboying family and really love the idea of the traveling musician being the last of the cowboys.
–Jared Kolesar (vocals, acoustic guitar)
Feist – “Graveyard” Feist’s “Graveyard” is a slow build that’s always worth it. Lyrically I feel like it dances around the topic of death, the dead, our memories, and our relation to our past, and our past relatives. Great for a long pondering drive. What a wonderful and beautiful chance it is, to be alive and experiencing anything.
Ennio Morricone – “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – Main Title”
If this song doesn’t make you want to trip back to your previous life, strap on your shooting irons, and gallop down a dry arroyo to avenge your lovers death, then I don’t know what will.
–Michael Carter (banjo, mandolin)
Glen Campbell – “Wichita Lineman”
Glen is an amazing guitarist and the glittery arrangement of this great Jimmy Webb song always makes me long for home.
Jackson Browne – “These Days”
Sometimes thoughts of regret can creep in on those late-night drives. This song has an awesome way of acknowledging past mistakes while moving on from them.
–Larry Gast III (electric guitar)
The Wallflowers – “One Headlight”
Pretty sure this song that was scientifically created to make you feel like you’re in a driving montage in a movie. Maybe one of the best rhythm section grooves in the history of Americana to boot.
Kacey Musgraves – “Space Cowboy”
Kacey makes a stronger case for modern country music with every record she puts out. This is a perfect song for looking out the van window into the darkness of night and wondering why you are the way that you are.
–Chuck Morriss III (bass)
Fleet Foxes – “Helplessness Blues”
Lots of times on overnight drives you wonder if you have chosen the right path, or if a standard 9-5 could be more fulfilling. This song is a good way to consider the possibilities of that life, while the driving acoustic guitar keeps you alert at the wheel after an arduous day.
Robert Ellis – “Elephant”
I love the intricate plucking rhythms in this song, while the lyrics tackle relationship complications of being in a touring band.
Is it ever okay to take a public pause? The idea of taking a break, for whatever reason, is something that every creative person worries about: If we stop sharing our work, does it lose its power? Is art only defined by the very act of being seen, heard, absorbed, or touched? One has to image this was on the mind of Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, when he put the band on hold to go to college and move to New York City. And their newest single, “Third of May / Ōdaigahara,” from their forthcoming LP, Crack Up, tries to show that the music can pick up, quite literally, from exactly where it left off.
May 3 is the date that the Fleet Foxes’ last album, Helplessness Blues, was released. (It’s also the birthday of band mate Skyler Skjelset.) And the first line — set to the band’s familiar lush textures — is about the power of songs to linger on once the sun has risen on an evening of music. “Light ended the night, but the song remained,” sings Pecknold. Notes have a way of reverberating silently way past their last audible moment, getting caught in the awnings, sidewalks, and streetlights of the city — like cigarette smoke, its scent sticks to your hair well after the final ash. So is it ever okay to take a public pause? “Third of May / Ōdaigahara” is the Fleet Foxes’ answer to that loaded question: The end of things is only relative to when we tune out and just stop listening.
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