Tag: folk-rock

The Kernal, ‘Tennessee Sun’

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A little over four years ago, I found myself wandering the streets of Asheville on a Sunday night, not too long after I left New York for Nashville, somewhat drunk on Spanish red wine from the local tapas place, and in search of mountain music. For someone new to the South, Asheville — tucked on a hilltop with winding, vaguely European corridors — felt almost mythical, and what happened next sort of was. I’d wandered into a bar and there, on the stage, was a man in a red suit, singing country music. It was past midnight, but couples in cable knit sweaters were waltzing in circles — not just to the slow songs, but the fast ones, too. I’d never quite seen that sort of earnest swing, short of ironic line dancing I’d witnessed once at a warehouse party in Brooklyn, where far too many people were wearing far too many things made out of bandana fabric.

That man in the suit, I would discover, was the Kernal — a name I’d see pop up again around Nashville as a solo artist, bass player for Andrew Combs and Jonny Fritz, and generally enigmatic figure who served a key role in the local music scene while refusing to actually live in it. On March 3, the Kernal will release his debut record, Light Country, officially introducing his breed of smart, often witty twang that infuses that sense of locomotive, gospel-tinged mystery. “Tennessee Sun,” premiering exclusively here, shows his skills at the lyrical ramble, conjuring up Bob Dylan and, in a certain kind of sonic onomatopoeia, a ’70s-era refrain that just feels like those warm Tennessee rays kissing the skin. “Lettin’ go of everything that I don’t need on my way down,” he chants, and you believe him. The Kernal doesn’t need much to be convincing … except, maybe, a red suit and a room full of people ready to dance.

The Essential Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Playlist

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The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were born out of the burgeoning Southern California folk-rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s. The band was the brainchild of the singer/guitarist duo of Jeff Hanna and Bruce Kunkel, who had worked together as members of the New Coast Two and the Illegitimate Jug Band. Along with Ralph Barr, Les Thompson, Jimmie Fadden and, briefly, Jackson Browne, the band started gigging around Long Beach, California, in early 1967.

After Browne departed for his solo career and John McEuen signed on as a multi-instrumentalist, the band released their eponymous debut disc and won themselves enough attention to score a Top 40 hit, appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and open for a strange melange of performers that ranged from the Doors to Jack Benny.

The next several years were difficult for the band as they released a string of commercially unsuccessful records, struggled with disagreements about the band’s direction, and found themselves being treated much like a novelty act. That all changed in 1972 when Jimmy Ibbotson joined the band and they embraced the sound of traditional country and bluegrass. They released their most commercially successful album, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, won another Top 40 hit (“Mr. Bojangles”), and opened the door to recording what was their career-defining album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Tracked in Nashville, Will the Circle Be Unbroken was a monumental triple album that paired the long-haired, anti-establishment California boys in the band with country legends like Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, and Maybelle Carter. By making that record, the band effectively bridged the gap between two generations of country musicians … and produced amazingly beautiful music in the process.

By the early '80s, the band had changed its name (to just the Dirt Band) and winnowed its roster down to four key members: Hanna, Fadden, Ibbotson, and keyboardist Bob Carpenter (with McEuen leaving in ‘86 and returning in 2001). Musically, the band adopted a contemporary country sound that played well on the radio — and at the record stores — scoring themselves three Top 40 and two Top 10 albums. Their quirky left-of-center style remained even as their sound softened, as witnessed by their appearance in Steve Martin’s hit, “King Tut,” as the Toot Uncommons.

In ‘89, Will the Circle Be Unbroken II was recorded (with contributions from John Hiatt, John Prine, Levon Helm, and Bruce Hornsby) and a third Unbroken collaboration was created in 2002 with a guest list that included Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, and Dwight Yoakam. In the midst of these collaborations, the band spent the 1990s and 2000s making records that blend country, rock, and string music into their own unique sound.

Herein, we offer a brief playlist of tunes that we consider essential to knowing the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from their days as cosmic cowboys through their latter-day hits (and, of course, all three versions of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken.")

The Past Isn’t Finished: An Interview with Blind Pilot’s Israel Nebeker

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For Blind Pilot's third record, front man/songwriter Israel Nebeker had no choice but to dig deep, having just come through the death of his father and the end of a relationship. Moments like those tend to make or break a person. Certainly, Nebeker let the whims of the grief that followed bend him, but he never let them break him, choosing instead to let them make him a more potent songwriter, as evidenced time and again on And Then Like Lions. Produced by Tucker Martine, the album rises and falls along with the ebbs and flows that never fail to come in the wake of great loss.

We don't know each other, but is it okay if we just go for it, here? Because I, too, lost my father to cancer, as well as my dear, soulmate of a dog. It's a life-altering experience, going through that.

Yeah, definitely.

In what ways did it change you?

[Pauses] Yeah. Okay. [Laughs]

Is that too much to start with? [Laughs]

No, no. It's not. I'm just trying to think of the biggest ways it changed me. I think the biggest was just gaining perspective on our place here in this life and what it means — what things matter the very most. That was the biggest. It also changed my perspective a lot, the idea of death and how it relates to our lives. And, also, I was completely surprised by how many beautiful moments I had with my dad while he was sick. They were, by far, the most intimate and revealing and closest moments I'd ever had with him.

Also, I was surprised that the process of losing somebody close to you like that has a lot of beauty in it. There's a lot to be shared and given with my family and people closest to me. Those were the biggest things that were unexpected and definitely changed me.

That sounds about like my experience. Are there a lot of things you let slide now that you may have fought for in the past?

I think so. Yeah. I think that's right. It does put it in perspective that this life is finite and, even more than that, for me, it put into perspective that, if we do hold onto anything, it's in the connections that we make with people closest to us. I don't really understand it, but I just get a feeling that those connections persist past death, in whatever way you want to think about that — whether it's through ancestry and lineage or the stories we make or whether it's in a spiritual sense. But that's the feeling I get.

Yeah. One of the biggest take-aways I had was — I did this during that time and ever since — really being present in each moment and trying to bring my best self to each moment. But I feel like most folks don't know what to do with that. As I engage with people now, because it's so unusual for someone to not have ulterior motives or not be trying to get something out of somebody, they're a little bit put off by it.

Yeah. [Laughs] I had that exact same motivation during that time, that last year I had with my dad. I was incredibly present and that was my biggest motivation was to bring my best self and be as present as I possibly could be. I don't know if you found this, but I found it kind of relieving, in moments, to be forced into that kind of presence … whereas, usually in life, we're just trying to get there.

Yeah. Absolutely. I feel like we should always be as tender with ourselves and with others as we are in times like those.

Definitely. That's a good way to put it.

That wasn't the only upheaval you experienced. In what ways were the loss of your father and the end of your long-term relationship similar and different? Loss is loss, to a certain extent.

Right. Yeah. It kind of all came in one month. It was three different kinds of love important to me in my life and experiencing, in one form or another, losing it. My closest group of friends for a long time, we had a falling out. Separate from that, the end of that long relationship. It was all kind of wrapped up because I was going through it all at the same time.

It is interesting, looking back, how loss — as a bigger idea — is pretty relatable to all three of those experiences and to more. I guess what was useful about it coming at the same time was that it made me look more at the idea of loss as bigger than any of those situations — what it means to go through this life and experience loss and, especially, how we share it with each other and how we can give strength to each other through it.

As you were listing off those things, I flashed on Tig Notaro. Do you know her story?

Yeah, not super-closely. But I remember she had that incredibly brave performance when she found out she was diagnosed with cancer.

Yeah. She got sick with C. diff and her mom died and her girlfriend left her and she got diagnosed with cancer, and it was all in about a month. Her whole joke was the thing of how people say God never gives you more than you can handle. She has this bit about, “He looked down and said, 'Yeeeeeah, she can handle one more.'” [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah. That's funny.

So, I read a piece in which you stated — and I love this phrase — that “the past isn't finished with us yet.” That's a great way to put it because every moment we've ever lived is rumbling around inside us and comes out, sometimes, when we least expect it. Unpack that a bit for me, in terms of what you were going for.

Sure. NPR asked me where the song “Umpqua Rushing” came from. That was the first song I wrote on the album and it was dealing, specifically, with the break-up of this long relationship that was filled with a lot of meaningful memories for me, of course. I was looking at this decade of my life, thinking, “Okay. What do I do with all these memories now?” I had friends and family members saying, “You gotta just let it all go and just get over it. The sooner you get over it, the better. Just let all that stuff go.”

I think I was wrestling with this idea that I felt like I would be losing so much of myself and my identity and the things most important to me by throwing everything out and going with that motivation. So, I think, at that time, I was really trying to do that and I hadn't yet discovered that, for me, the real way through it was to embrace how important all those moments were and will always be with me. That was a much better way for me to be present and moving forward and okay that that was the past and it's not anymore.

I'd say it's the same thing with the loss of my dad, too. I think our culture really does a great job of showing support when families lose somebody to death … for a couple of months. [Laughs] Then, it's …

[Laughs] Yeah. Nobody wants to hear about it anymore.

Yeah, and maybe even, kinder than that, people want you to get over it because they want you to be happy again. I think we can do some work, as a culture, to understand that it's through embracing the meaning of the past and through embracing how badly loss hurts that we can move forward in a stronger, more cohesive, complete way.

Absolutely. To me, the grief is just as deep as the love was. So, the deeper the love, the deeper the grief. And it is what it is and it's gonna take its own pace and its own route and you're just gonna have to ride it. But I agree that a lot of people, unless they've been through it — and even some people who have and maybe didn't deal with it that well — feel like you should just buck up.

Yeah. Yeah.

So, translating that all into songs … was that a natural process for you? And a necessary one, I would assume.

It was. It definitely helped me to process what was going on and, more than that, I felt like, while I was writing this album, it was … Let me back up. What we were just talking about … I found it culturally difficult for a lot of my closest friends and even family members. Like you said, some who have and some who haven't dealt with that kind of loss. I found it really difficult for them to talk about. And I wanted to write some songs that would give an invitation to my family and closest people in my community to talk about it in a way that wasn't scary, because I could tell that people were frightened to talk about it and really look at the idea of these kinds of losses.

And what I found was that I was making songs that were where I wanted to be with it, trying to give courage to myself. And, also, making songs that were intended to give that kind of courage to my family, too.

As you were writing, were you hearing the hopeful elements coming through or did Tucker [Martine] tease those out more with his production? It's a serious and somber record, but it's not depressing.

Yeah, yeah. Definitely. This was the first time in my life, writing songs, where I gave myself somewhat of an agenda. It's always been important to me to take songs exactly as they come. But it was important to me, with this album, when songs would come and I'd be kind of wallowing in sorrow and grief … it wasn't that I was ashamed of it, but it was that I wanted to give people more than that. I didn't want to share that, because it wasn't the whole truth of it. So it was important to me, from the first stages of making the songs, that they were looking at the complete spectrum of what was going on — not just the darker side, or more painful.

I think that was the one intention that persisted throughout the process, and recording and mixing, too. If a song seemed kind of somber, I could call in Dave [Jorgensen] to put some on synth and trumpet lines or stuff like that. And, yeah, Tucker definitely helped with that process, too.

Okay. Let's lighten it up a bit to close it out. Originally, you guys were a duo. Now, it's a six-piece. How are you feeling about the current line-up and the sound you're making? And what challenges come along with an expanded roster?

Six people … it's a lot of individual lives to coordinate. It was lucky that the timing happened the way it did. Luke [Ydstie] and Kati [Claborn], who are both in the band, had a daughter during the time that I was going through my dad being sick. I'd say all six of us, our lives have changed quite a bit in the past couple of years.

Over the years, one of the big benefits of it is, with six people, it's easy to distinguish between interpersonal relationships and the music because you can't stay always on good terms with everybody in a group of six people, when you're always together. There's a lot of chance for ebb and flow of closeness. But it also kind of shines a light on what you're really doing here, in the band, which is to give yourself to the music, regardless of whatever's going on.

 

To continue the thoughtful songwriter conversation, read Kelly's interview with Hayes Carll.

Photo credit: Ben Moon

Natalie Merchant and the Power of Reflection

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Natalie Merchant was only 18 years old when she first joined 10,000 Maniacs back in 1981. A handful of years later, the politically inclined folk-rock ensemble was taking the world by storm as part of a generation of musicians who used their art as activism. When Merchant departed the band in 1993, it was to find her voice … which also happened to be the voice of her generation. Finding it, becoming it was something she accomplished right out of the gate with 1995’s Tigerlily.

In the 20 years since that stirring solo debut, Merchant has mined Shakespeare, traditional folk music, environmental concerns, parenthood, and more to create a discography that is equally potent and poignant. This year, she turned her gaze back to Tigerlily, reworking the old compositions and releasing the new collection as Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings. She also made a companion documentary that serves as a visual memoir, tracing her footsteps back from here to there and bringing us all along for the journey.

The first thing you say in the documentary is about, essentially, do-overs — what they mean and if they are even possible. The premise is that, if you could do anything differently, the butterfly effect, everything after it changes. Though it wasn’t exactly a do-over, what have you gleaned from this experiment?

Well, I just made a record of everything I’ve gleaned over the last 20 years about these songs. The catalyst for the whole project was the string arrangements that I’d had written over the years for some orchestral shows. People really enjoyed the orchestral versions, so we decided to adapt them to string quartet and put them on the album. And then the 20th anniversary came up and it seemed like the right time to release the record.

If you had to pick one word to describe how the process went, how it felt revisiting these songs, what would it be?

Educational.

Even working off those arrangements, were you and the players able to go in without any other preconceived notions about how the songs have always been? Sort of deconstruct and rebuild them anew with your more mature musical vocabulary?

It’s interesting because several members of the band weren’t even born … [Laughs]

[Laughs] I was thinking that as I watched the documentary, actually.

[Laughs] They were in diapers when this record was made. And they had never listened to it before they started playing with me, so they had no preconceived notions of the songs, which was great. They may as well have been brand new songs. Then there were some of us in the band who have played them for years, like Gabriel [Gordon] who has been playing with me for 17 years, so he’s been here for almost the whole ride.

I think we sort of reinvented the songs over the years every time we went on stage and played them. They’ve evolved into the versions we’re doing now. A few of the songs, like “Where I Go” and “I May Know the Word” and “Jealousy,” had been sort of left by the wayside years ago. And it was actually fun to rediscover them, especially “I May Know the Word.” That was kind of an illumination. It was a song that I never felt I completely captured and then I left it behind. I think it turned out to be my favorite song on the whole project.

“Beloved Wife,” in particular, hits me that much harder with 20 more, or maybe fewer, years on my relationships clock. Was that a similar thing for you? It’s tricky, because you’ve been with these songs all along, but …

When I wrote that song, I was observing my grandfather’s grief. Since then, I’ve lost my parents and other people I had decades-long relationships with, so I understand death now in a different way. I’ve sat with many people who died. It’s just part of the age, I think, and experience. My father actually just passed away in September. And, since it was his father I wrote the song about, it made the feeling in the film different for me — seeing that photograph of my grandfather, having just watched my father pass. It makes the circle complete, in a way.

Right. How do you process having touched so many people with your songs, especially “Wonder”? Is that something you can get your head around, or your heart?

It continues to astound me, how many people have been impacted by that song. I think it’s also — it’s a powerful song — but it’s also such a scarce topic. There aren’t a lot of songs about children, to begin with. [Laughs] If you were to make a bar graph of how many songs are about break-ups, initial romance, and sexual craving … and then when you got to what all that leads to, which is children … [Laughs] Nobody has anything to say about that. Maybe they’re too busy picking crumbs off the floor, but …

[Laughs] The romance is gone, at that point.

But the romance, for me, really began with my child. The greatest love of my life is my child. And, to write a song about a child with special needs, takes it into an even scarcer part of the graph with a fraction of a percentage of songs. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yes. Exactly one song. We can probably safely say there’s just this one song.

Yeah. There’s one song. And I wrote it. And people have radar for that. They are looking for their own experience in art. When they see it and recognize themselves, it’s powerful. And it’s positive.

That’s the other thing: So many people with a special needs child feel like they are the object of pity. And they really feel their experience is so much more than the challenges. There’s so much joy and connection … and achievements. Incredible achievements. And they are made even more profound and more powerful because of the challenges. I think they are valued more. I think those kids, when they do achieve … like in the film, when Kate and Kelly graduated from college, I was there. It was a massive accomplishment for them to get those bachelor’s degrees. They would have agonizing nursing care, sometimes eight hours a day, and they were still able to write the papers and study for the exams. And they both graduated with honors.

Wow. Those kinds of stories certainly put so much into perspective. Not to belittle anyone else’s strife or compare people’s pains …

And that’s the thing that Kate and Kelly used to say to me all the time: “We don’t quantify pain around here. Pain is pain.” I would always say, “Oh, you don’t want to hear about my problems.” And they’d say, “We don’t put it on a scale. We understand pain, so you can talk to us about it.” [Laughs]

If In My Tribe or Blind Man’s Zoo came out today, how do you think those would be received? “Gun Shy,” “Jubilee,” and “Hateful Hate” … they are just as relevant and could all certainly stand a comeback right now with everything that’s happening.

I don’t know. The music industry is a very mysterious creature these days. There’s an artist like Adele who can sell millions of records in a week, and artists like myself who used to sell millions of records and now … It’s just harder to reach the audience. I don’t know. I don’t know how receptive the culture is to more serious pop music that examines the soul or examines society.

I came up with 10,000 Maniacs, R.E.M., Tracy Chapman, and Indigo Girls as my influences and idols. And I’m not sure I see the same kind of art as activism pouring out of younger musicians these days. Do you feel like the upcoming generation has that in them? Or is your group still carrying the flag for now?

I recently met Aloe Blacc and I think his music is definitely of the same character as Tracy Chapman’s or my music. I’ll be honest with you, I’m not as aware of pop music as I used to be. But someone like Ray LaMontagne is out there making thought-provoking music.

I think there are certainly singular examples, but it felt to me, back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, that there was a whole class of artists who were in the same vein. But maybe I was in a little bit of a bubble.

There’s also someone like Billy Bragg. He really remained true to his principles and became very active in politics. I can remember the first time I saw Billy Bragg. I was playing a club in Brixton with him and he was passing a bucket for the miners who were on strike. I’d never seen that before. It felt like something from the Woody Guthrie days.

Is it safe to say that artists like Mavis Staples, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie … are those elders some of the artists you look up to? Because they are all still going. They all have new projects.

Yeah. I’m hugely influenced by them, especially Joan Baez. Talk about someone who has remained true to her principles since day one. She’s a powerhouse of integrity. When Pete Seeger died and everyone said, “No one will ever take his place!” I was like, “What about Joan Baez?” [Laughs] She’s still playing in prisons.

Yeah. They’re still carrying the flag, themselves. Considering all that’s going on in the world, is your perspective at all different whether you’re looking at it as an artist, an activist, a parent, or a woman? Does one of those identities feel more or less pressure to step up? Or are they indistinguishable?

I think that, over the last six years, my activist facet of my work and life has become much more pronounced. It’s a result of feeling older and more responsible and more experienced — knowing how to accomplish things like organizing big benefit concerts or making films about something. I made a film about domestic violence and I was really involved, for four years, in the the campaign to have fracking banned in New York. We succeeded and everyone credits the film we made, and I was the person that decided we needed to make that film, that we needed to have that concert and have those filmmakers collect the film and photographs that presented evidence and the testimony of people whose well water had been contaminated in other states where hydraulic fracking was already happening. I just didn’t have the skill set and the confidence to do that [when I was younger].

And the film about domestic violence was the same thing. When I was in my 20s or 30s or, even, 40s, to have the wherewithal to contact special prosecutors from two counties and have them at the table with me and say, “I need to know what the statistics are in our region.” And say, “I want to create an event and a film around that that’s going to be moving and motivate people.” I just didn’t know how to do that then. The music, as in making albums and going on tour and promoting my own work, has taken a back seat to the work that I’ve done trying to use music as a tool for advancing social justice.

And, yet, two records in two years from you.

Yeah … [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fertile time or fluke timing?

I feel like the domestic violence film and the campaign around that was the moment … When I finished that, I realized, “I need to make a record again.” [Laughs] I really hadn’t made one since Leave Your Sleep in 2010. It’s funny because people would say, “Oh, you’re not very prolific.” And I’d say, “Well, for somebody who’s not prolific, I feel like all I do is work!” [Laughs] But the work that I’ve been doing is more community organizing and creating these multimedia protest pieces and being a mom.

Photo credit: Dan Winters

LISTEN: Jeff Crosby, ‘Carved in Sandstone’

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Artist: Jeff Crosby
Hometown: Donnelly, ID
Song: "Carved in Sandstone"
Album: Waking Days
Release Date: November 6

In Their Words: "I found myself obsessed with the sound of the pedal steel and definitely made an effort to feature more of that on this record. I'm in a much different head space now than the last record, musically — more soundscapes and stretched out the atmospheric tones floating around the songs. I really enjoy recording the quiet songs — singing it where you can be so quiet and really get every little characteristic in the voice. In the end, I just love being in the studio and seeing all these songs and ideas come to life.

'Carved in Sandstone' was written in Friusa, Dominican Republic, and then recorded in Nashville. It's about jealousy and struggles with forgiveness. There's this giant cross that looks over Boise, ID, that people drive up to … look out over the city and make out or whatever. Carved names litter the sandstone all around the cross — names with a heart around them … other stuff reminiscent of high school like 'I love Amy' or 'John Gilbertson loves men.' It's a compromise to a relationship that ultimately won't work out. And the Tennessee reference is to drinking too much during this relationship." — Jeff Crosby

Photo credit: Nokes Photography