Tag: folk-rock

An Otherworldly Landscape: A Conversation with Gregory Alan Isakov

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You could call it an epiphany of sorts. Gregory Alan Isakov was riding an elevator with the rest of his band when the doors slid open and a woman got in. She noticed their instruments and asked the question musicians dread. “What kind of music do you play?”

Isakov chuckles. “I never know what to say to that question, you know? So I said, ‘Oh, like, sad songs about space.’” It was, the band immediately agreed, as perfect a genre definition as Isakov could have given.

The singer-songwriter’s new album, Evening Machines, is undeniably dark and cosmic. Atmospheric, opaque, and layered with texture, its electronically accented folk-rock is a departure from the spare, intimate sound Isakov has favoured in the past. And while he is perfectly upbeat today, looking out from his kitchen window onto his four acres of Colorado fields and handful of sheep, he admits that his latest music came from “a pretty dark birth.”

On the face of it, Isakov’s life was going great. But even as he had just fulfilled one of his most fantastic career goals – orchestrating his work for the Colorado Symphony – he was beginning to suffer from a debilitating physical anxiety. “When you’re touring, and trying to figure out how to put out records, you forget about peace and quiet for long periods,” says Isakov, who admits to being a natural introvert. “You’re just hustling all the time. I did that for so long I forgot how to unplug. And it caught up to me in a way I’ve never experienced before.”

And then, on the plane home from Scotland after a six-month tour of Europe, he heard the news that Donald Trump had won the presidential election. “I’ve never had a sense of overwhelming darkness and anxiety like I had that year. You can’t ignore it on an emotional level, whether you read the news or not. And it does make it into the landscape of music or anything that you’re doing. You’re going to feel that stuff. It’s part of being alive.”

Songwriting was a focus and a release; it was also, he says, a reminder that he was someone who needs space and quiet built in his life. Hence the sheep. Isakov took 12 months off from touring and immersed himself in the life of the land he has been working for some years now, supplying vegetables to restaurants and markets. When Isakov was not in his recording “barn” with engineer Andrew Berlin, he was out in the fields, planting salad greens, turnips, and cucumbers, feeding and watering his 10 sheep. “They’re great, they have good vibes when you want to chill,” he smiles. “They’re so easy to look after.”

While the songs on the album draw from what Isakov calls an “otherworldly landscape,” the farm itself is a very real character in his recording process. Apart from the live symphony recording, every album he has released has been made in his own home – “because I really don’t like studios,” he laughs. “I don’t like the glass, I don’t like going into another room to listen, I like to have the words to the songs up everywhere, and all the stations ready to go.”

For Isakov, the key factor is speed: the ability to capture, as quickly as possible, the emotions and sensations he is exploring. Evening Machines, it turns out, is full of first takes. “To maintain whatever feeling you’re having is really important. In the moment you say, ‘This is just an idea, but later I’ll do this good,’ you know? And then I’ll come back to it and something’s different and I can never get back that initial emotive, ineffable something.”

So Isakov developed his own mantra – “sketch to keep” – and created a working space nimble and nearby enough that he could to capture inspiration whenever it struck. The ‘evening machines’ of the title are actually the blinking lights of his electronic equipment, which he visited mostly at night. By the time he came to create the record, he had more than 40 tracks to choose from.

The songs that made the final cut – the ones that felt, to Isakov, to “live together” – share a common, haunting feel. Images return in numerous songs, stars and weightlessness, gunpowder and bullet holes, while the sounds of the machines – a Juno synth from the ‘80s, a compressed drum kit, an Orcoa pump organ that sounds like a toy – provide an unnerving and ethereal backdrop. It is a sound far heavier and, dare one say, dirtier than Isakov’s previous albums. And yet the lyrics remain fraught with the fragility of human essence.

Some, like “Powder,” read off the page like poems – “were we the hammer/were we the powder/were we the cold evening air” – which pleases Isakov to hear. “That’s the goal!” he laughs. “Powder” in particular was inspired by one of Isakov’s favourite poets, Billy Collins. “I bring his poems out with me on the road because I tend to slow down whenever I read them.” And if meaning can feel mysterious in Isakov’s songwriting, it’s not only obscured to the listener: Isakov says he often doesn’t know what his songs are about until after he’s written them.

Take “Berth,” which he wrote with his brother Ilan – a film score composer and “one of my all-time favourite songwriters.” The pair often spend the summers together, engaged in all-night-co-writes. “We start after dinner, and this time I had a melody in my back pocket, that crooked piano part, and I went to one end of the building and he went to the other and we wrote as many verses as we could and then met back up, and mixed them together. The original song was 17 minutes long!” It was only when they edited it down to its final version that they realised what they’d written. “And then we were like: I think this is an immigrant song. We didn’t see that coming.”

Isakov was born in South Africa at the heart of the apartheid era – “a pretty rough situation” – and his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was a young child. For the first couple of years, he lived in a one-bedroom apartment with his parents, his granny, and his two brothers. “A lot of friends I made growing up were immigrants and I really connected to their families a lot. They had a different vibe to the American kids I knew.

“Even now – in no way is our country somewhere that feels safe all the time, or going in a good direction at all – but, man, we are lucky to be in a place where we can have a sense of freedom and be able to work and create whatever we want. That doesn’t exist hardly anywhere and it’s a nice perspective to have.”

His upbringing also created a close bond with his brothers, who would play instruments together in the basement: “I was always excited to get back home from school to play with them. That was the fun part of my day.” Not that music has made any of them any less introverted, Isakov admits. “When we’re hanging out, we don’t even talk,” he laughs. “One of us will ask, ‘Who’s he dating now?’ and the others will be like, ‘I don’t know, we don’t talk about that.’”

But then, Isakov is happy to live with uncertainty. It’s a principle that’s central to his creativity. “I’ll read an interview with another artist saying ‘I wanted to write a song about this or that,’ but that’s never happened to me,” he says. “I never set out to write a song about anything.

“I feel like I’m sort of holding on, not even driving. You just hope you can get it all. Sometimes you do, and when you do it’s the greatest feeling, you’ve struck gold or something. But there’s plenty of times I don’t get it. My trash can’s pretty big.” It makes him reluctant, he says, even to take credit for his songs – and even more so to imbue them with too much narrative. For instance, “Was I Just Another One” can sound to the unknowing ear like a simple love-gone-wrong story. “To me that song’s about a relationship with someone on heroin but it never says that. And it’s not interesting what I think it’s about.”

His fascination with roots – from jazz and blues standards to the old-time clawhammer banjo he learned to give him a break from guitar – has not left him. “Some of the traditional songs that are so relevant today, stuff like Mississippi John Hurt, you can listen to it and they could have been written right now.” And now that his own dark period is, happily, over – “I’m so lucky to be on the other side of that” – the lighter tracks he recorded over the past year will be repurposed into a new, more country-influenced collection. If this record has taught him anything, however, it’s never to assume. “Songs have minds of their own,” he laughs. “And I’m just following them along!”

Photos of Gregory Alan Isakov: Rebecca Caridad

A ‘Sunset’ Toast: A Conversation with Amanda Shires

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When Amanda Shires throws a party, it’s a crackling and cackling affair. The singer-songwriter has often enjoyed lacing her candor with a biting sense of humor, and her new album To the Sunset offers listeners a celebratory and sharp-tongued toast to all the bits—the good, the bad, the ugly—that have shaped her. Beyond giving birth to her daughter Mercy (with husband Jason Isbell), she completed her MFA in creative writing, but that was after someone stole her thesis and she faced the nightmare of starting over. To the Sunset presents many lessons, but central among them is learning how to accept both sides of the coin because together they pay your way.

Shires once again worked with Dave Cobb, the two aiming for a larger sound than what she’d previously accomplished. For longtime listeners, the result strikes a different chord. She and Cobb hit upon a headier pop sound, integrating slick vocal production, wild rhythms, and scorching, electrified solos. There’s a greater lightning running through To the Sunset, which comes, in part, from the use of pedals to elevate Shires’ fiddle from its folk roots. Between her new sonic direction and razor-edged lyricism—thanks to that MFA—her latest album raises a glass in raucous style. To the Sunset is a dark fête, the kind of party that only occurs when you truly let go and learn to be yourself.

Let’s talk about your MFA. How long did it take you to recover from having your thesis stolen?  

I cried and then I got mad. Jason said, “You know, whatever you write will be better than what you already wrote because you’re practicing writing,” and at the time I thought that was the most stupid thing I’d ever heard somebody say, but it’s true. The more practice you get, the better you get, and it all works out in the end. If you really want something, you’re going to find a way to make it happen.

It’s so exciting to hear what you’ve written on this album.

I think it’s pretty cool because I can tell a difference from other records, where I was working with basically instinct. Going to school, I got what I wanted, which was to learn the reasons why I should go with one choice over another, or at least have a way to argue with myself, and a way to back myself up when I’m editing. They teach you there’s no such thing as writer’s block. If that was a thing then nobody would graduate.

Who are some of your favorite poets?

I like Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Mark Strand, and then, you know, regular favorites like Octavio Paz and all the greats.

What would you say you look for in other poets’ writing?

It’s a time to be quiet and reflect and think deeply. You are the audience of one at the time, really. I like poetry because it can go pretty deep and it’s not three minutes long. It’s as long as it takes you to understand it. Songs are such different animals. You have a lot of things that you don’t get with poems, like, you get a sonic landscape and a mood can be provided, whereas on the page it has to be presented with such precision and such intention that you can understand it without anything else helping you.

You recorded your prior album, My Piece of Land, two weeks before giving birth, and you mentioned having to hide in a closet to write this album. Mercy has, in a way, impacted your last two albums. How do you continue to carve out space—besides the closet—for your creative side to flourish?

I’m lucky because Jason’s an excellent co-parent, so if I need to write and do stuff, he’s all hands on deck, and if he needs to write, I’m right there. When I had to be in the closet, I had to make use of a small space, and it wound up leaking into my bedroom, too, so I was taping everything to the walls, so it wouldn’t accidentally get smashed or crumbled by the two-year-old. I learned how to accept things in their early stages. Before, I was real, like, “Nobody sees what I write until it’s all done.” This was a cool thing where I learned to accept my very shitty lines as they faced me every day and tried to make them better. When I was done, I shredded them and I put them in a composter and that goes into my garden.

Have you found that your plants are growing better because of it?

I don’t know. It’s toward the end of the season until that composter’s done cooking. That was a lot of shredded letters. I’m an editor over and over. Some people can write real fast, but I think everything needs tweaking all the time.

Does the editor side of your brain gets in the way of your natural instinct?

It does, it sure does. I found a thing that helps me with that. It’s called FlowState, it’s an app. You set a timer and if you don’t keep typing it erases your work, so it removes the editing process; you can leave it up there and get your free association going, and really try to put your thoughts into words. When I first got it, I started out doing five minutes at a time, now I do 30 minutes at a time. The further you go with it, it’s like a door in your mind opens and you figure which things you need and which things can wait.

Turning to space, that theme—the space between people—surfaces throughout your catalogue. Here, on “Leave It Alone” and “Charms,” it functions in compelling ways. What particularly interests you about space and relationships?

On “Charms,” my mom’s mom abandoned her at a young age, and that’s where that song came from, and just thinking about how hard that would be for both parties. A lot of times as individuals, I know we all often deal with feeling alone or that nobody understands us. You’re born alone, and you die alone. It’s a thing I think about a lot, and that’s why it presents itself in the work.

As a touring musician, as much fun as it is, things get sacrificed. All that’s to say, writing about it and dealing with it makes me a happier person, and if there’s anybody else that feels like me, then I feel I’ve done a better job because it is a way of connecting in the end.

On the My Piece of Land track “I Know What It’s Like,” the desire to run away comes up, and that theme surfaces again on “Charms.” Except running has turned into forward momentum. When did that shift occur for you? How do you push against the desire to cut and run?

[For “I Know What It’s Like”,] I had a person in my life that was telling me these things, like, “I know what you’re going through, just keep talking to me about it.” To have a comrade in that was nice, and I wanted to keep that conversation, I wanted it to be preserved. The running thing, we all want to run away, but then we’re like, “Nah, our problems aren’t really that bad.” It’s really better for you to not run way, to pick up your big girl underwear or your big boy underwear, or whatever. Put your head down and do the work.

I appreciate that you took the momentum that would cause someone to run and shifted it to a positive momentum on “Charms.”

All this stuff is all inherited—you know, how we do life. I will now cite Philip Larkin: “Your mom and dad, they fuck you up.” So in that one I was moved that even though my mom experienced abandonment, she didn’t fall into that learned thing. I think it’s wild to break habits that have happened in your family, generationally. You can’t let fear be the thing that owns you. It’s just silly. This is such a vague thing to describe, fear and doubt and all that stuff—thinking about hypotheticals for situations—it’s so useless; it’s such a waste of time and energy because you can’t control the future, and you can’t control what’s already happened. It’s about trying to accept what’s happened and move forward, and if you fuck up, you fuck up. At least you tried.

Right, you need to make mistakes in order to figure it out. It’s like editing. You never write something perfect the first time.

Yeah, you’ve gotta find a way to trust yourself.

That’s hard when you’re younger.

Totally because you don’t have much experience with it, so you gotta do all the things that give you experience and wrinkles. They’re worth it. Then you start figuring out that, even as you get older, you were this person and now you’re this person. You’re always changing. You might look back and say, “I don’t even recognize that person.”

Joan Didion had that fantastic quote about making peace with your former selves because you’ll never fully leave them behind.  

That’s a whole thing I’m trying to say with To the Sunset, that sort of a cheers or toast. It takes all the things to make you who you are and who you want to be, rather than just ignoring it, or putting it in a box under the bed.

It’s hard to fight, though, because there can be messy parts of yourself that you don’t want to admit.

If you’re not doing that, you’re probably ignoring something that you need to feel. You need to feel ashamed and humiliated sometimes by your own actions. It’s easy to rewrite the way things happened. Once you face it, you can learn yourself better.

Lastly, there are some beautiful portraits of women on this album. How has your sense of womanhood changed, if at all, since having Mercy?

I always felt like I had a responsibility, but I feel like I have that even more. Doing as much as I can and thinking more about the world for her and hopes for her and fears for her. I also feel like, for a long time, you couldn’t talk about things. Even the ugly parts of being pregnant or postpartum, you couldn’t talk about anything, and everything’s supposed to be dreamy and awesome. Now, it’s easier in that more and more women feel like it’s OK to talk about the ugly parts. I think that that might keep us going in the right direction, somehow. One of the coolest things on the record, woman-wise, is my only guest was Gillian Welch, and she sings the harmony part on “White Feather,” what I call the “God” part. Whatever your God is. That was pretty cool. That was a day I thought I was going to die.

Also, your album is coming out at a time when a lot of artists are challenging this sense of perfection.

Yeah, like we don’t need to write a lot of ballads or whatever. It is a cool moment. I’m so happy to see so many women putting out records this year. There’s always been a ton, but there’s not been as much attention or as much room. … It took all those people before us to get to this spot now; I definitely don’t think it’s just happened over the past few months. They’ve always been there, but to move together works better than to move singly.

Photo credit: Elizaveta Porodina

At Your Service: A Conversation With Nicki Bluhm

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Nicki Bluhm is venturing out on her own with her newly-released solo album, To Rise You Gotta Fall. The aptly titled album chronicles her life since her split from her husband and musical collaborator, Tim Bluhm, and subsequent departure from the Gramblers two years ago. Seeking a change of scenery and a new challenge, the lifelong California resident acted on impulse and made a cross-country move to Nashville in 2017.

To Rise You Gotta Fall, produced by Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell, Margo Price), features a collaboration with Ryan Adams (“Battlechain Rose”), as well as a Dan Penn cover (“I Hate You”). It was recorded in the legendary Sam Phillips Recording studio in Memphis and captures the raw emotion she poured into her writing over the two-year period. Each song is a different phase in a process of grieving and letting go — a testament that sometimes something beautiful comes out of our darkest times.

When you’re paying homage to that Memphis sound, you get something that’s tinged with nostalgia, but also totally its own and new. Did recording at Sam Phillips Recording play into that sound?

Yeah, I think so, for sure. Matt Ross-Spang produced the record and he’s a Memphian. He basically started working at Sun Records when he was a teenager. His parents got him a session for his birthday to record there. He quickly realized that he wanted to be on the other side of the experience, in the control room, and he started working at Sun as a young teenager.

Then when they started to understand his commitment and passion, and love of that era, and all of the gear that they were using at that time, the people at Sun were like, “Well, we’ve got Sam Phillips Recording Service.” which Sam built in 1958. It has really been left untouched. I mean, it looks the same. All of the decor is the same, everything short of the cigarette butts in Sam Phillips’ office. Sam’s office is exactly the same. So Matt has really been like a steward of reviving Sam Phillips.

How did that factor into you working together?

His love of that era of music is very pure and real. We have so much overlap of the things that we love in music. From my first meeting with him, I knew that we were going to agree on a lot sonically, and also pull inspiration from similar places. One of the records that he sent me to listen to was a Bobby Charles record, which, unbeknownst to him, is one of my favorite records. It’s just like, “Okay, we have a lot of commonality.”

Your record was all done analog, too, right?

Yep. We did it all to tape. We recorded it live and we tracked, I think, everything in five days. At the time, I didn’t really think – I thought that the band would get the songs and I would sing scratch. But I realized I had never met the band before. I entrusted Matt to choose the players and he did a spectacular job. I was beyond happy with the guys who played on the record but I hadn’t met a single one of them. They really hadn’t heard any of the demos either. Maybe Matt had shared the demos with them but it was really day-of stuff.

I realized really quickly that I was going to have to sing for real, because I needed to show them where I wanted the energy and where I wanted the arc of the song. It was a really cool experience. I had a straight sight line to all of them. Particularly Ken Coomer on drums. There was a realness to it. That was really inspiring. It made me fall back into that time where I knew I wasn’t going to, nor did I want to, overanalyze or bring out the microscope. I just wanted to capture the moment, and not get in my head about all the small details and nitpick stuff. So it was a great space, and a great group of people to make that happen.

Obviously, you’re a songwriter, so all songs are personal in some sense, but these are especially personal. Is there ever a fear when you’re writing that something is too personal? Or is it more of a relief that those thoughts and feelings are going to be out there for people to relate to?

Totally. It’s super vulnerable. I felt like I didn’t really have a choice. I tried not to be cruel, but I had to speak my truth, and that was important to me. I didn’t have the opportunity to have a lot of closure or conversations towards the end of this relationship that ended. So this was kind of my way of getting through that, and coming to terms with it, and getting those ruminating thoughts out of my mind, because I knew the toxicity of keeping them in. You have to allow those feelings to happen, you know?

Definitely.

They’re going to happen. And I felt like this was a healthy way for me to move through it. Now, singing them on the stage in front of a bunch of people — I’ve had to do that for the last six months by myself, because I’ve been on these solo tours, and I have solo tours opening for Lukas Nelson, and Josh Ritter, and just recently, the Wood Brothers. I’ve definitely felt what that was going to feel like.

Is it more difficult to do it in a live setting?

It was super vulnerable but at this point it’s almost like a service. It sounds weird but it’s almost like a service I’m providing because we all go through this stuff. For me, music has gotten me through so many hard times. It is comforting to know you’re not the only person that’s suffering and struggling.

While it’s really vulnerable and scary to get up and voice that in front of strangers, it’s really inspiring and comforting when, after the show, I go to the merch table, like I do every night, and people come up with tears in their eyes because they’re going through something similar. Or something has helped them.

For sure. One of the songs on the album that got my attention, and I think it’s because there’s such a cool juxtaposition, was “I Hate You.” It’s not what you expect it to be.

It’s a fantastic song. I didn’t write that. I wish I did. But it’s so good.

Your vocal on it is fantastic because it’s just so raw. But then, you’ve got that Hammond organ in the background, and it reminds me of walking into a Southern Baptist church or something. There’s such a cool contrast there, and that it could be such a melancholy kind of song, but it’s got this odd optimism behind it, too.

It’s interesting because there were definitely many conversations over that song between the creative and the business roles within my camp. The business side was like, “Oh, this is really harsh. This is really harsh language.” And from the creative side, we were like, “You’ve got to listen closer.”

It sounds at first listen like it’s scathing, and by the title, you might think that. But it’s not. It was written by a guy named Dan Penn. When I got together with Matt, he suggested we put a cover on the record. I was like, “Well, if we’re going to do that, I want to pay homage to Memphis. I want to do something that is of that area.” Matt is obsessed with Dan Penn. I heard that song, and I was like, “Wow. That’s it.” So we recorded it, and a month later, I was at my friend AJ Croce’s album release show, which turns out Dan Penn produced, and Dan Penn was there.

So I was introduced to Dan Penn and his wife, and my friend was like, “Dan, I want you to meet Nicki. She just put your song, ‘I Hate You,’ on her record.” His wife’s face just lit up and she was like, “I love that song so much.” She goes, “It sounds mean but he said, ‘I’m trying to hate you.’ And I should know, because that song’s about me.”

It was just so cute, and such an amazing moment to have recorded that song — and to meet the very person who it was written about, and written by. It was this really amazing, full-circle Tennessee moment for me. It’s true. Emotions aren’t always straightforward. You can love someone and hate them at the same time, and that’s confusing. Human emotions are very complex. I think that song does a great job of displaying that in a really simple way. But you have to be open to hearing that juxtaposition.

The first thing that struck me listening to the title track was that it’s probably not one of the first ones you wrote. Was that one that came toward the end?

It did. I had moved out. I had moved into what I call my healing nest, which was this amazing studio in Sausalito, California, owned by my dear friend. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Sausalito but it’s beautiful and it’s on the water. I had this gorgeous view from where I lived, and it was just me and my cat. I was really feeling the support of my girlfriends and my family.

I had come out of such a dark place. Again, not that I didn’t return back to that dark place after I wrote that song, but it was definitely a respite in time, or a part of that process where I saw some blue sky, which was a huge relief. When you’re deep in it, any relief from that darkness is so welcomed, and for me, that song was a gift because it just made me feel better. I remember the day I wrote it. I was literally smoking a joint on my deck with my cat, and I got into that groove, and it just happened. It was one of those songs that happened quickly, and it just made me feel good.

This is a record that a lot of people could pull off the shelf and use it to make themselves feel better about anything they’re going through. What are some albums that you pull out when you’re going through a hard time?

Oh, well always Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, because I love her. Talk about articulating feelings and situations and scenes. She is a master of that. And then, I will just go and binge on J.J. Cale. I’ll listen to J.J. Cale for like a month straight. I love Stan Getz. I love a lot of jazz. I don’t know if it makes me feel close to my dad. But like, you know, a glass of white wine and some Coltrane or Getz, or something like that, always makes me feel relaxed and good. I mean, the list just goes on and on.

Photo credit: Noah Adams

Closer to Self-Acceptance: A Conversation with River Whyless

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bands grow. Styles evolve. Lineups shift. Genre identifiers morph to accept those changes while the music industry holds certain expectations for reinventions and reimaginations. It’s refreshing, then, when you happen across a band that isn’t bogged down by those precedents, choosing to just follow their songs and their true selves wherever they may lead.

The folk-pop outfit River Whyless finds themselves on this trajectory with their third album, Kindness, A Rebel. The product is not gratuitous, heavy-handed, or obvious, and it never stumbles or attempts to assert that “the old River Whyless is dead,” because true reinvention is never about demolition and rebuilding. It’s about finding the skeletal structure that was already there and allowing it to shine on its own, set apart. Drummer Alex Walters jumped on the phone to unpack the integral aspects of self-acceptance and self-celebration that blossomed on this beautiful testament to allowing oneself to just be.

This record seems to be as much about personal growth for each of you individually as it is about changes for the band as a whole. Why do you think those two things coincided here?

Alex McWalters: I think those things are always connected in some way. Whenever you make a piece of art, your life is always factored into that, there’s always growth. [It’s partly] because we’re now in our early 30s and feeling really lucky that we’re still able to make music and be a band. With that, there are a lot of adjustments you have to make as you head into the next phase of life. Ryan [O’Keefe] just got married, my girlfriend and I just bought some property and we’re working on building a house, and Halli [Anderson] moved to Oregon with her sweetheart. A lot of big life things are happening.

I guess this is a record about grappling with how to be a band in a different phase of your life. It’s honestly a little more challenging when you have more responsibilities outside of a band. Whereas, when we were in our 20s, it was like we were homeless. We lived on the road. Our whole lives were the band. It’s a much different way of operating professionally and creatively than it was 10 years ago. It’s exciting, but also challenging to continue doing it in this way.

How do you all feel that growth comes through the music, overtly? I hear it in “The Feeling of Freedom” and I hear it in “Another Shitty Party” — which I feel echoes my own personal growth through young adulthood — but how do you feel that perspective comes through?

I think “Another Shitty Party” is a great example. I hold this new record up against the one we did before, two years ago, in terms of the way it feels — I sort of have an inside view as to how it was made, so it’s a little hard to convey to someone who wasn’t there. It feels like we sort of embraced whatever came out of us this time and didn’t try quite so hard to be a certain way or accomplish a certain thing with the music. There were a lot more growing pains in the last record, as far as figuring out how to make three or four songwriters coherent.

This time we just went with it. We just let the songs be the songs. With that, the idea of “Another Shitty Party” is sort of connected to a bigger idea of coming a little bit closer to self-acceptance and trying to be honest with who you are in the world. The idea of going to a party and walking away from that feeling like, “There’s no reason I had to be there!” is a metaphor for the larger feeling of being in a band and trying to be cool. Let’s just stop trying to be cool and just be us.

Something that we aren’t necessarily taught as kids or teenagers is that sort of self-acceptance, that acknowledgement, is such an integral part of what we refer to as “maturity.” It’s getting to a point of being able to accept yourself as whomever you are, having been morphed by all of the factors of our lives. What brought that to the surface for you?

I’m not sure if it was conscious. Maybe it was also having reached some level of, I guess, gratification in terms like, “Oh, the last tour we did went really well.” I think part of maturity is you have to learn what works and what doesn’t. Some people aren’t as lucky to reach that point of self-acceptance to where you can say, “No, I don’t want to partake in this.” Or, “I don’t agree with that and I’m not going to do it.” It can sometimes require a lot of work to get to the point where you’re able to be mature. Some of that was just us being a little more confident than we were before.

Also, it’s just hard to avoid the elephant in the room as far as the current political situation and feeling like we didn’t say or do enough. Not that we could have done anything [specific], or that we even knew what to do, or maybe we shouldn’t have done anything, but we had that sense of, “Oh man, what just happened and how do we go forward?”

Taking responsibility of that and taking it onto ourselves is also a very mature idea.

Precisely.

And kindness really is a rebellious act right now. I think that was one of my biggest takeaways from the album. Like, “Oh shit, yeah, being just a kind human being at this point in this weird political, divisive period, is rebellious.”

Absolutely. You hit that right on the head.

I hear you reckoning with that on “Born in the Right Country.” This is something that I think about a lot right now, about how we can address these sort of personal perspectives we have while we also acknowledge our own privilege and our own complicity, too. How did you reconcile that conflict with yourselves and through that song?

The song was written by Ryan and I think it’s interesting, because, like I said, we all had a very intense reaction to the election. There’s a lot to have to work through once you realize that Donald Trump is your president. We are four white people in a band and our life has been pretty peachy and, for the most part, is continuing to be pretty peachy, so anything we say about Donald Trump or the people who voted for Donald Trump has to be self-aware. You have to go through a process of recognizing where you’re coming from when you speak and how you sound and what your actions actually say without you realizing you’re saying it.

There was a point at which that song was introduced to the band and we all wondered if we even wanted to go there. What does this mean? How will it be interpreted? What good does it really do? What is this song really going to accomplish besides sounding like four white people complaining about Donald Trump? And maybe it still does, but I think an important part of it was trying to get into that three-minute song a part about us having a certain responsibility that we have to figure out how to own, as far as being who we are and what we could or could not have done more of.

Personally, I thought 100 percent that he was going to lose, so I was very complacent and complicit in terms of the whole thing. That alone says to me that I was kind of blind. There was a whole lot I wasn’t seeing or that I was refusing to see. And what does that say about my situation and how removed I am from the pain that people are feeling?

Talking about growth and maturity as a band, there’s an expected trajectory in these roots genres for bands to go from string band into more pop-influenced sounds. You guys seem to be on that track. But your music seems to be on this trajectory because it feels like this music is song-driven first. Why do you think that is?

I don’t know if I have a very concrete answer, but I think some of it has to do with the organic evolution. On our first record, we had a different bass player, so we introduced a new player to the band and that inevitably has an effect on how it sounds. With that, there’s also a shift in the power dynamic of the band, for lack of a better way of putting it, where one lead songwriter’s vision isn’t steering the ship anymore — at least not totally. That has a lot to do with how the evolution has happened.

Again, also just letting go. Just letting what comes out come out and not trying to steer it any direction, genre-wise or sound-wise. We obviously have influences and things we’re into and that’s what influences the sound of the moment we’re in, but outside of that I think we just kind of let go of what we want to be and just let it be what it is. It’s so much easier said than done.

Another outgrowth of self-acceptance.

I would say so. I never really thought of it like that, but now that you say it…

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Practicing What You Preach: A Conversation with Courtney Marie Andrews

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Courtney Marie Andrews has a wish for the world, as large swaths of it hold tight to the isolating practice that is hatred: Be kind. It’s a simple thought, but a complex action, and the inspiration behind Andrews’ new album, May Your Kindness Remain. The title track — like “Irene” from her 2016 breakthrough album, Honest Life — is advice-heavy, but the central tenet is an important one. Bad things will continue to upend your life. Don’t just stay strong in the face of it, stay kind. To emphasize that point, Andrews interlaces her new album with new influences, namely soul, gospel, and blues. As a result, the song resounds like the culmination of an especially fiery sermon — an organ accentuates the folk-rock through-line, while a choir backs Andrews’ expansive vocals.

Where Honest Life found Andrews reckoning with the sacrifices she’d made to pursue her craft, May Your Kindness Remain broadens that vantage point. Andrews culls perspectives from those she met on the road — a place where she has spent the majority of her time since she began touring, nigh on a decade ago — interlacing new characters, settings, and experiences under the umbrella of her voice. The ballad-esque “Rough Around the Edges” puts a name to a feeling — as minimal as malaise, as maximal as depression — that often exists in the shadows, while “Border” reminds listeners to withhold judgment and extend empathy instead. Andrews also pushes her vocal limits, stretching her voice to gospel’s high altar on “May Your Kindness Remain,” and returning it to earth on the sequined-stage country affair “Kindness of Strangers.” Preaching the gospel of kindness may seem like a departure from Honest Life, but Andrews proves there’s much to be gained from stepping outside her supposed stylistic lane. Her emotive voice and illustrative lyricism make her a necessary minister in these modern times.

Depression is a huge topic right now, especially in light of issues like gun control and the opioid crisis, but it continues to carry a stigma. How do we move beyond that kind of shaming?

I think it starts with talking about the issue and also just being open about it. I feel like, of course, there are a lot of things that need to change within the government, like aiding these sorts of things and taking it seriously. People talk about it a lot, but nobody actually makes any changes toward putting money toward research facilities to help guide those problems. My grandmother committed suicide, and the reason that she did is because it was around the time when she was basically a guinea pig for mental illness.

Oh, wow. Was she in and out of a lot of facilities?

Yeah, exactly, and they were giving her way too many pills and shock treatment and that sort of thing. I look at the path which we’ve come from, and it’s gotten better, but it’s been so long. It’s been 40 or 50 years since that happened — we really haven’t made any improvements. I mean we have, it’s just been small. It’s not very much for that long of a period.

Definitely. There’s still a persistent problem of patients not seeming to understand their own bodies. Not to criticize all doctors, but patients still seem to lack authoritative subjectivity over their experience.

Yeah, or that it’s not real because it’s hard to measure, if you can’t see it or feel it, and so many doctors — I, as well, don’t want to criticize all doctors — don’t have the time to really explore what’s the matter. I think it’s multiple things that need to change. Just day to day, one of the themes of the record — kindness, that sort of thing — I feel everybody is capable of changing, but also there are larger obstacles that lie within medicinal fields and the government, as well.

Absolutely. “Rough Around the Edges” is such a powerful way to put it, but it also peels back that layer of otherness. Where did that phrase come from?

That song definitely came from that phrase. When I was bartending a couple years ago, I saw a couple guys at the bar that are these old-timer type guys and not always appropriate, and I thought, “You know, they’re kind of just rough around the edges.” It was that lightbulb moment where I was just like, “Oh man, that is a perfect way to describe somebody who isn’t perfect and maybe knows it sometimes and wants to explain it to their partner.” It is sort of a way of describing depression, as well.

Right, and as you were saying earlier, since it’s so hard to properly convey this experience to someone, it creates a picture that gets us closer to a stronger level of communication.

Yeah, that’s my preferred way of telling.

There was an element of journalism that came to mind with this album — it was mainly the idea that you are reporting from the front lines, so to speak. It got me thinking about whether songwriting could be a new form of journalism by sharing stories that aren’t being covered or circulated in the mainstream press and, in turn, helping us build empathy toward difference.

Especially with this record, I feel like I grabbed from many different stories, and, yeah, it is sort of like journalism. I think songwriters are empathizers for the world, and sometimes a songwriter offers insight and empathy that maybe somebody who is a journalist might not achieve just because they’re trying to get a story as tried and true as possible. They need a story to grasp readers, whereas songs need a feeling to grab listeners. At the end of the day, I guess I’m a short story writer.

You produced your last album because you said you couldn’t find anybody you could trust. What led you to Mark Howard, besides the fact that he’s worked with all the greats?

Well, that’s what sort of led me to him. I kept seeing his name on records that I loved. I actually had booked some time in the studio that I did Honest Life in, and I just had this gut-wrenching feeling — I went in there two months before we were supposed to record in the studio and I was supposed to produce again — and we made a song, and I was just like, “This is cool, but this isn’t what I want.” My whole purpose, as an artist, is to completely explore and shake things up, and I didn’t get into this to have a formula, a 9-to-5 thing, where I’m like, “This is the sound that is me now, and I’m going to do this every time,” which some people might not like. Change scares them.

Anyway, I was driving in a car with my manager listening to, I think it was World Without Tears by Lucinda Williams, and I was like, “I wonder who produced this.” I saw it was Mark Howard, and we sent him a message, and the next day he replied and, all of a sudden, we were making a record in L.A. I like his non-traditional way of working. It’s very inspired. It’s not very thought-out. Most of the stuff you hear on the record is us playing live in a room without a click. It’s us facing each other. We wanted to create a vibe and a mood, and I didn’t want to make Honest Life 2.0.

You mentioned doing some vocal stretching for this project. What kind of soul or gospel singers inspired you?

I’ve always had those influences. I’m a huge fan of Aretha Franklin, Odetta, and blues singers like Big Mama Thornton, and those ‘70s records that have gospel singers on them. I just never used those influences. I was also going to a blues bar in Seattle where they never had a singer, so I started singing for them because it was fun to use my voice that way. I was naturally interested in using my voice that way.

There’s a definite gospel foundation running throughout the album. How do you think that genre, especially, serves as a call for change?

Well, gospel is rooted in belief in something. I’ve always really connected with the music, even though I’m not religious, by any means. It’s like the gospel of being kind, you know? That’s sort of how I look at it. I guess the gospel of human connection. It’s the lesson I was taught as a kid, and sort of like any gospel, you’re always trying to get back to it.

Lastly, I absolutely adore your song “I’ve Hurt Worse.” I think it’s one of the best “love” songs I’ve heard in some time. Where did it originate?

It’s one of those messed up love songs, I guess. A lot of my family members have a knack for choosing the worst partners, and it’s a sort of sarcastic song. It’s just like, you’re so bad at choosing partners, I’ve hurt worse that I’ll choose you because you’re better than the rest, but you’re still kind of bad.

Right, the element of settling runs throughout it, but it’s not even a bargain.

Unfortunately, it’s almost a self-loathing song. You love who you think you deserve. Well, you don’t feel you deserve much, obviously, because you’re going for these people who are terrible partners. I always wanted to write a funny … I feel like so many people just revert to sad and, as great as sad is, I like to add other elements of the human psyche.

Photo credit: Laura E. Partain

This Never Happens: A Conversation with F.J. McMahon

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In June 2017, F.J. McMahon played his first show in a lifetime. He took the stage with the Boston psych-folk group Quilt as his backing band and ran through the nine songs on his lone album, 1969’s Spirit of the Golden Juice. Those songs had been collecting dust for nearly 50 years. “I had to go through the entire thing and re-learn everything — every chord, every lyric,” he says. To his surprise, and perhaps no one else’s, the songs sounded sturdy and strong, speaking as loudly in the 2010s as they did in the 1960s.

Fresh out of the Air Force, McMahon recorded Spirit of the Golden Juice in 1969 for Accent Records, a small L.A. label that had few ideas how to market a folk-rock singer/songwriter. No one heard it. No one cared. (The title, it should be noted, refers to whiskey, McMahon’s favored intoxicant at the time.) Decades later, it became a crate-digger’s treasure: one of those small-press releases that never finds an audience on its initial release and ends up at estate sales and dollar bins. Passed around from one vinyl collector to another, Spirit inspired an obsessiveness among fans who had no idea who F.J. McMahon was.

The renewed interest led to small reissues, but those pressings have become almost as rare as the original. That makes the new version by Anthology Recordings such a godsend to fans, new and old. “It’s very bizarre,” he says of his revived career. “The number of people I’ve run into, musicians and people in the music industry, they just look at me wide-eyed, shake their heads, and say this never happens. I don’t know what to make of it. It’s incredible.” 

When did you realize there was a cult built up around this album?

I didn’t realize that until I started reading a little thing here and a little thing there. I’m going, “Really? For real?” I knew something was going on around 2002, when a label called Wild Places issued a bootleg, and the guy who was running it told me a bunch of friends from around the world liked it. I had no idea. I stopped playing right around the end of 1974 although, in the ‘80s, there were a couple jam bands and rockabilly psychedelic bands that we got together for fun. We’d do open mic nights, stuff like that, but nothing serious.

When music didn’t work out as a career, what did you do instead?

I needed a job. Because I was a former hippie guitar player, I didn’t really have a trade. This was the mid ‘70s, and the hot thing was electronics and computers. That was what was making the world go round. Going to school would have been fine, but I knew it would take a long time. If you wanted to get the best education and do it quickly, you go to the Navy. You go to their schools and you work on their airplanes. It worked like a charm. I had a career for about 26 or 27 years as a field computer engineer.

What does that job entail?

We’re talking about computers in the ‘70s and ‘80s. It took an army of technicians to keep them going. We had to trouble-shoot and repair and replace parts constantly. It isn’t like now, where one breaks and you just throw it away and buy a new computer. You had to know all your software and languages and stuff like that. I was on the road all the time, going from customer to customer, repairing computers for everybody from Air Force bases to show business to lawyers to whoever.

That sounds like a lot like touring.

I would do anywhere from 400 to 500 miles a week.

Backing up a bit, how did you get into music in the first place?

I started off in surf bands in high school. That was right around the time the folk boom was happening, and I started picking up on that. I liked it because there’s a lot more depth and storytelling to it. Between 1964 and 1966, music just went through this huge revolution. That was the most wonderful thing. I had forgotten all about it until a few years ago, when some guy gave me a CD he had taped decades ago off a local AM radio station. It’s an hour program, and it was so cool because you get to hear the Byrds and Judy Collins and then you’d hear “Tequila” and something else. All this incredible music was being played on the same stations. That’s the way it used to be. You could hear all this different stuff.

From 1968 to 1970, there were so many amazing bands coming out, and the music was just staggering. There’s been nothing like it since. You didn’t have computers, so you actually had to play it and record it. If you wanted to cut and paste, you had to get the scissors and tape. Bands really had to get their chops up. And then you’ve got George Martin with a four-track doing these incredible things. He made Sgt. Pepper on a four-track. Just think about that for a minute. And the influx of folk music, especially Bob Dylan for lyrics and ideas, just changed everything.

Your album falls between those two poles. It’s obviously influenced by folk-rock, but the production is very innovative. I feel like I can tell the shape of the room when I’m listening to these songs.

I love that. The production of it was very bare bones. When we did the bass, drums, and rhythm guitar, we were in a fairly good-size room at this place called PD Sound Studios in the San Fernando Valley. Then we went back to Scott Seely’s studio at Accent Records, which had a little four-track machine. I did the vocals and lead guitar there. I can’t remember the name of the mastering studio, but I remember the Beach Boys had just left and in comes me with my little folk record. I was intimidated, to say the least.

Being out there in California, did you feel like part of a larger scene? Did you feel like you were involved in that revolution?

Absolutely. I started playing a few old clubs and getting with some old friends to play bar-band gigs for weekend money. But I was also heavily involved in the anti-war thing, so I was trying to get my buddies who hadn’t gone yet not to go in the military. I didn’t want them going over there, so I was involved. Music was a big part of that movement. Everything was music at the time. There was a feeling in the ’60s that, if you saw somebody else with long hair, you knew they felt more or less like you did. There was a feeling guaranteed between the two of you that music could change the world. That may be naïve, but it was an honest-to-God feeling we had.

Is that a belief you still hold?

Well, you don’t always see things right away. It’s not like painting a barn white. Okay, it’s a white barn. You can see it clearly. But somebody may hear a song and it might spark an idea. It might change what they’re doing or how they’re thinking. That certainly happened to me.

One of my music heroes is Hoyt Axton. He’s best known as an actor, and you can see him in Gremlins and some other movies. But he was a folk singer in the ’60s, and I used to go down and see him at this place called the Troubadour, where pretty much everybody used to play. His sense of humor, his intelligence, and his insight were remarkable. He would put a political statement into his songs, but it would be a funny thing, a joke or something that wouldn’t ring true to you until after you’d left the concert and gone home. Then you’d think, “Yeah, he was right!”

Your album has worked in a similar way. It took 50 years to sink in, but it’s clear a new generation of listeners feel you have something to say.

I’ve been told that. I’ve been told that by people who weren’t even alive when it was recorded. I think it’s beautiful that music from a different time can still have an impact on people so many years later. It’s important, and I’m really happy to see it happen because, frankly, a lot of the same big problems that were happening then are still happening now. It’s the same thing. Maybe they’ve got different faces or different labels, but they’re still messing people up. They’re still messing the world up. Nothing’s changed.

I don’t disagree with you, but I do find it incredibly discouraging.

But, if you don’t know there’s a problem, you’re lost. If you can at least say, “Yes, you’re right, there is a problem and this is it,” then you can attack it. Or you can at least get some other people together to commiserate.

When you recorded Spirit of the Golden Juice, what were your expectations for it?

When I recorded, I was being completely naïve about the record industry: “Okay, I’ll record an album and we’ll put it out. I’ll go around and I’ll play some places, then it’ll get on the radio and I’ll make a little money. Maybe I’ll record another album. I’ll make my living as a folk-rock singer.” It was really vague. That’s what I wanted to do, but I had no clue about how to go about it. To be fair, Accent was a small label and they didn’t have a clue about it, either. Their biggest star was Buddy Merrill, the guitar player from Lawrence Welk. So they knew how to market him. They marketed to the retirement homes and what not. They sold his 2,000 albums a year, and it worked great for them. But they didn’t have a clue as to what to do with Spirit of the Golden Juice.

Was there a moment when you decided to move on from music? Or was it more of a gradual decision?

Certainly. I had gone up and down the California coast for the better part of three years. I had played gigs at bowling alleys and bars, wherever. Somebody I was talking to said, “You should do Hawaii. There’s all this money over there, all these tourist bars.” So I went to Hawaii and played some hippie parties, which was fine. But in order to make a living over there, you have to go down to Waikiki and Kalakaua Boulevard, and you have to play the tourist clubs. You have to put on the white plastic boots, the white pants, the aloha shirt, and the plastic lei. You have to do Don Ho songs. That’s how you make enough money to pay the rent there, which I did for the better part of a year.

Finally one night, I’m on stage and I’m looking out at all the grandmothers in the audience. I’m listening to the ice cubes clinking in glasses and I’m thinking, “This is not what I started out to do.” I was done. That was my last gig. I packed up my guitar and that was it. I had gotten away from playing music that was meaningful to me and had turned into a human jukebox playing music for money, which took the joy out of it. The 450th time you play “Mustang Sally,” it’s no longer exciting.

Did you go back to this record? Did you ever listen to it after the ’70s?

I didn’t hear this record again until 2009. From 1970 to 2009, I didn’t listen to it. I had a framed copy on the wall, and my family saw it hanging there, but they never listened to it, either.

Did you relate to the songs differently after so long?

To be really honest, they felt like old friends. I fell right into it, after I remembered what I was doing and remembered how the lyrics went. It was wonderful. At the concert with Quilt, we did “Black Night Woman” and my God, that thing came out like a rolling avalanche. It gave me chills.

But the meanings of the songs were essentially the same, because they’re so strong in the first place. But one song stood out — “Five-Year Kansas Blues” — because there’s no draft anymore. The overwhelming feeling I get today is that all these kids who are going out to the far corners of the earth and getting themselves killed, they’re doing it because there are no jobs. That thought devastated me when I was singing that song. I wrote it 50 years ago about guys who went to jail instead of going to war. That was their choice. But now I’m thinking about the kids who can’t get a job, so they go into the Army and they get shot up. That’s not okay. So things haven’t changed very much at all. As a matter of fact, they’ve gotten considerably worse in a lot of ways. Back when I did the album, as bad as things were, kids were pretty sure they could go to college, get a degree, get a decent job, and have a career. They’re not so sure anymore.

Are you planning any more performances?

There have been some people making noise about it, but nothing concrete. I think it would be fun. I wouldn’t look forward to getting on a bus for three or four weeks, but I’d love to do the occasional here and there. If I ever get a chance to play with Quilt again, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Other than that, I suppose what I’d probably have to do is sit down do some serious reworking and work out some kind of solo set. But that could be fun, too.

LISTEN: Samantha Fish, ‘Daughters’

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Artist: Samantha Fish
Hometown: Kansas City, MO
Song: “Daughters”
Album: Belle of the West
Release Date: November 3, 2017
Label: Ruf Records

In Their Words: “’Daughters’ is a song about rebellion and having those closest to you pushing against that. It’s also partially the story of how my parents got together. They eloped when they were really young, and my mom’s family took issue with it. When we were kids, we heard this really romanticized story. It’s about defiance and the fallout of that.” — Samantha Fish

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

STREAM: Eddie Berman, ‘Before the Bridge’

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Artist: Eddie Berman
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Album: Before the Bridge
Release Date: September 1, 2017
Label: Nettwerk

In Their Words: “Before the Bridge was written and recorded in the time between getting married and the birth of our first child, Bridget. This specific period forced us into a really focused introspection about the prospect of creating a life, and then how and where we’d try to make a home for ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world. No matter where you live there are structures in place that try, insidiously, to dictate what your value system should be, and these songs are (partly, at least) meant to be a kind of reminder, to myself, to reject them.” — Eddie Berman

Canon Fodder: John Mellencamp, ‘The Lonesome Jubilee’

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The Lonesome Jubilee was released on August 24, 1987, just a few weeks after Def Leppard’s Hysteria and a few weeks before Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven on Earth. But unlike those two albums, it is not getting a new 30th-anniversary edition. No remastering, no bonus tracks, no unearthed live cuts or alternate takes, no new liner notes, no think-pieces or take-downs. But John Mellencamp’s ninth album certainly deserves the deluxe treatment — and not only because it’s a rousing collection of politically barbed folk-rock songs. The best reissues allow us to hear old music in new ways, providing a fresh context in which artists might speak to a different moment and to a different generation. The songs on Jubilee speak very loudly, and they have as much to say in 2017 as they did in 1987.

Mellencamp recorded the album in late 1986 and early 1987, taking his road-tested touring band into his Belmont Mall Studio outside of Bloomington, Indiana. As usual, he worked with his long-time producer Don Gehman, who had helmed his breakthroughs during the transition from Johnny Cougar to John Cougar Mellencamp. Two crucial things had changed in the singer/songwriter’s life, one professional and the other personal. First, his longtime label Riva Records had gone out of business, leaving him briefly homeless. He soon signed with Mercury, where he remained for the next decade. Second, his uncle, Joe Mellencamp, died from lung cancer, and his passing lends the record an intense mortal resignation. While many of these songs may sound like they’re about other people, in fact they are about John Mellencamp delving into his family’s personal demons. According to a 1987 New York Times feature, he wrote first single, “Paper in Fire,” about “my family’s ingrained anger.”

By all appearances, it didn’t look like he had very much to be angry about. Mellencamp was coming off an incredible run that had established him as one of the biggest stars of the decade, alongside such well-remembered celebrities as Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Michael Jackson. Starting with 1982’s American Fool, he had devised a form of heartland rock that was unpretentious yet inventive, universal enough to appeal to anyone who heard it, yet eccentric enough to show the man behind the music. He had an easy way of rolling social and political issues into his songs, avoiding the all-caps melodrama of Springsteen, as well as the studious obscurity of R.E.M.

Sound followed setting. Mellencamp hailed from Indiana, where small towns were suffering, farmers were hurting, and regular Americans were shouldering the burden of corporate greed with nothing to show for it. In 1986, together with Willie Nelson, he co-headlined the first Farm Aid concert and testified before Congress in support of Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin’s Family Farm bill. In that same New York Times article, he explained that the giant corporations are “willing to exploit John Doe and let America become a third-world country, economically, if it benefits them.”

Throughout the 1980s, his populist mission informed songs that were based in strictly rock and pop sounds, in particular electric guitars. His catalog is littered with sharp and evocative riffs: the ominous growl of “Scarecrow,” the scene-setting rhythm of “Jack & Diane,” the horizon-expanding fanfare of “Rumble Seat.” While present on The Lonesome Jubilee, the electric guitar is primarily an accent to an arsenal of folk instruments largely foreign to MTV and the Billboard pop charts: fiddle and hammer dulcimer, autoharp and mandolin, penny whistle and accordion, dobro and lap steel. It wasn’t country, but it wasn’t folk either. Mellencamp called it a form of “gypsy rock,” rooted in his Dutch and German ancestry.

That musical palette gives The Lonesome Jubilee a special place in Mellencamp’s catalog and perhaps an even more impressive spot in pop music, more generally. Thirty years later, it might be one of the best-selling roots rock albums of all time, a bigger risk than the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack; there is something brazen about Mellencamp’s embrace of these sounds, something ornery in his insistence that these traditions had a place in mainstream pop music. And yet, it still sounds like nothing else. His band deploys these instruments in unexpected ways, giving what might otherwise be guitar riffs to John Cascella’s accordion or Mike Wanchic’s dulcimer or, most often, to Lisa Germano’s fiddle. In particular, the strident urgency of “Paper in Fire” is grounded in her sharp bowing, which is industrial in concept if not in sonics: like squealing brakes on a car, or grinding gears in a factory, or perhaps a quarry saw through a block of limestone.

Mellencamp’s gypsy rock does a lot to tease out the meaning in his lyrics, whether evoking a specific regional setting in which these stories play out or simply providing an optimistic counterpart to his sometimes pessimistic worldview. If Springsteen (to whom Mellencamp is too often and unjustly compared) wrote about dreamers either escaping or succumbing to the drag of life, Mellencamp is much less romantic about the ordinary Americans who populate his songs. Rarely do they even have dreams or vistas that extend beyond the city limits. As Robert Christgau wrote in his A- review, “His protagonists don’t expect all that much and get less, but they’re not beautiful losers — they’re too ordinary, too miserable.”

When his characters reflect on their lives, they do so with a generational nostalgia that often obscures the source of their despair. “Cherry Bomb” is a gentle song about looking back to a more promising time in life. “We were young and we were improvin’,” he sings, but the implication hangs heavy in the melody: Age has brought personal stagnation. They’re just getting by, focused more on the golden past than the uncertain future. It’s easy to mistake the song for exactly what it lambasts — a rosy view of the past as paradise, when America was “great” and life was full of possibility. It’s a deceptive illusion: “That’s all that we’ve learned about happiness,” he realizes. “That’s all that we’ve learned about living.”

A politically left-of-center missive from the heart of the Reagan era, The Lonesome Jubilee requires almost no adjustment for the late 2010s. Mellencamp begins every verse in “Down and Out in Paradise” with the same refrain — “Dear Mr. President …” — before relating some poor soul’s story. It’s a ploy that recalls Woody Guthrie without being precious about the reference or, worse, deferential. Mellencamp knew Reagan wasn’t listening, just as he knows that our current president doesn’t have the capability to empathize with or understand the hard lives of the everyday Americans who inexplicably voted for him. Meanwhile, those same small towns wither, those farmers have long ago sold their fields, and regular Americans shoulder an even greater burden with less to show for it.

Perhaps even more impressive than sneaking dulcimers and autoharps into the mainstream is smuggling this brand of American fatalism into arenas and concert halls around the world. The ordinary Americans suffer while the rich stuff their wallets. Maybe you could have once argued that some things never change, but the discrepancy between 1987 and 2017 suggests that some things actually get worse. “Generations come and go, but it makes no difference,” goes the Bible verse that Mellencamp quotes in the liner notes. “Everything is unutterably weary and tiresome. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied … So I saw that there is nothing better for men than that they should be happy in their work, for that is what they are here for, and no one can bring them back to life to enjoy what will be in the future, so let them enjoy it now.”

Maybe it’s not the most generous vision of human existence, but it’s certainly one that motivates Mellencamp’s empathy. Life is short, and we should make it as enriching as possible for as many people as possible. We should live squarely in the moment because yesterday, today, and tomorrow will all play out more or less the same. It’s a potent brand of cynicism, yet beautiful and American, too.

STREAM: Jennifer Knapp, ‘Love Comes Back Around’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jennifer Knapp
Hometown: Chanute, KS
Album: Love Comes Back Around
Release Date: June 23, 2017
Label: Graylin Records / United For Opportunity

In Their Words: “Perhaps one of the greatest adventures in my life has been the quest for love — how to get it, give it, and keep it going. For me, love’s reward is more bountiful than just passionate romance; it’s rich and worth the labor of keeping it alive. From the most mundane of life’s circumstances to the most arduous, love and its hope is the one ingredient I can’t imagine living without. I’m captivated by it and wanted to focus on that while writing these songs. I wanted to celebrate the luxury of resting in it, as well as the beauty of the work it takes to make it happen.” — Jennifer Knapp