Tag: Folk

LISTEN: Beth Snapp, “Easy to Love”

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Artist: Beth Snapp
Hometown: Kingsport, Tennessee
Song: “Easy to Love”
Album: Don’t Apologize (EP)
Release Date: August 31, 2018
Label: NewSong Recordings

In Their Words: “‘Easy to Love’ is a fun song, but for me, it’s a little deeper than a ditty about some girl planning for her future soulmate. It’s about someone who has fully accepted herself in all her strengths and weaknesses. In fashion with the EP, she is not apologizing for who she is, but instead sending out a disclaimer… she likes herself, she’s proud of where she came from, and if a certain someone can accept and love her for what she is, she’s open for discussion. Otherwise, she’s fine continuing down the path that she’s currently on!” — Beth Snapp

Photo credit: Justin Thomas

Palpable Joy: Newport Folk Fest 2018 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It seemed that this year’s unanimous refrain from Newport Folk Festival, from veteran attendees and newcomers alike, was a resounding, “I THINK I LOVE THIS FESTIVAL.” We think we do too. Based on these gorgeous images from NFF, we’d say each and every human being on site — on stage, in the crowd, or rocking on the waves — loves it, too. And that overwhelming love translates into palpable joy, from Mavis Staples’ first smile to Brandi Carlile’s final headbang, and in every strum, lick, and beat in between. 

 

Photos by Daniel Jackson

A Radical Woman: A Conversation With Lindsay Lou

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Lindsay Lou had some reservations about the cover of her new album, Southland, her first not to bear the name of her backing band the Flatbellys. That much is understandable, as the photo depicts the singer/songwriter/guitarist perched on a rock in the woods, nude except for a hat and her long hair.

“We woke up at 3 a.m. and snuck into Cummins Falls State Park, just outside of Nashville,” she explains. “There’s this beautiful waterfall that draws people from all over the area, people from different political backgrounds and religious backgrounds, all sharing in this common, unifying experience of submerging into nature, cooling down in the river. Everybody takes their clothes off to swim—not to the degree that I did, but what’s the difference?”

The photo stuck with her—partly because she liked how it conveyed both strength and vulnerability, or perhaps strength through vulnerability. “The thing I love about that image is the light of the sunrise coming over the waterfall and lighting up the mist. I like seeing myself as part of that beauty, as part of something much larger than myself.” But there is still a stigma attached to the nude female body, despite it being 2018 and all. So she called up her grandmother and asked her advice. “She said, if you’re not being radical, it’s a wasted life. Don’t shy away from it, because that’s what the world needs. Love is radical.”

Nancy Timbrook ought to know. Lindsay Lou says, “In 1969, after dropping out of high school to get married, she decided she wanted to be a teacher. She got her GED and went to college, all while raising eight children.” Taking a job at a school in Detroit, she heard her students routinely dropping the f-bomb, but rather than scold them, she turned it into a lesson, even writing FUCK in big letters on the chalkboard. She spent the night in jail; later, she was the subject of a Time magazine article called “Obscenity: The English Lesson.” Grandma Timbrook remains one of Lindsay Lou’s greatest influences, musical or otherwise.

“She’s a radical woman.”

That’s what Lindsay Lou aspires to on Southland: radical in every sense of the term. The album chronicles a period of great change in her life, not just the move from Michigan to Nashville and all the mixed emotions of leaving home, but an even more remarkable change in her music. Building off the bluegrass-stained acoustic pop of 2015’s Ionia, Southland is her boldest album, her most daring, with clever interpolations of pensive folk, spry rock, twangy country, high-flying jazz, old-school R&B, swampy southern soul, even a little bit of punk. Her confident synthesis of so many different styles and sounds may be the most radical aspect of Southland.

Lindsay Lou spoke with the Bluegrass Situation from her front porch in Nashville, where she occasionally jams with her neighbors (which is all the more fun when Billy Strings live across the street). “It’s elevating to be surrounded by so many people you admire and just to be part of what’s happening in the scene. Moving here felt like coming home even though we had never lived her before.”

You’re home again after a long tour of Europe and Australia.

We did a month in the UK, and then we did our first tour of Australia for another month. That was nice. I got to spend my birthday on the northern beaches in Sydney. What I found was that they’re really happy you’re there and really eager to hear you play, and I think the kind of music we play demands a certain degree of listening. We played this outdoor festival in Dorset, in southern England, and we played to this huge crowd of mostly young people. I was really floored by how everyone was engaged and listening to us, even though they were all drinking and partying. Once we started playing, they were all really engaged. And that is encouraging.

Was that the first time you’ve played some of these songs, or did you have a chance to work these songs out before recording the new album?

Even though we just released it, this album will be two years old in November. We made it and then we thought, “Let’s hang on to this and see if we can put together a proper team to release it.” I don’t know if I’ll ever do that again. The way the music industry works now, I think it’s best to release things right after you make them, when they’re fresh and they’re still real to you. So we played these songs for a year onstage before we ever released the record. But now I’ve already got a new batch of songs.

You could pull a Kanye and create the album cover on the way to the release party.

That’s basically how we did Ionia. We recorded it in October 2014 and we had it in hand for a Germany tour by November. It was a crazy feat, but it pays homage to that moment and to the realness of the music you’ve created. That’s the way to do it. But talk to me when we start the next one and maybe I’ll have a different opinion.

Southland seems to map out a period of great change. Does that protracted release schedule change your perspective on these songs?

Totally. My relationship with my songs is always changing. I find myself singing songs that I wrote years ago and feeling like, Man, this was such a truth to me at the time and now it means something completely different. But a record is a record of time. I love that when you listen to a song that you’ve been listening to since you were 10 years old, and all of a sudden you hear the lyrics for the first time. Whatever is happening in your life, your experiences—everything gives those lyrics a new context and a new meaning. I think of a song as a baby. When I write a song, it’s like, Oh, I have a new baby. And then I get to see that baby grow up and take in influence from all of the people who were part of its upbringing. It’s exciting to see a song take for from other people who aren’t me.

The title track on the new album, “Southland,” for example. We made the record in eight days in Maine with Sam Kassirer, but we felt like it needed one more track. I sent a handful of new songs to Sam, and we whittled it down to that one, “Southland.” I went back to Maine by myself and I recorded that song. I played electric bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and sang lead and all of the harmonies. That track is just a bunch of me on top of myself, like those early Joni Mitchell recordings where she’s singing all her own harmonies. But I can’t do it live. The band breathed their own life into the song, so it takes a new form.

And the band continues to change, which means the songs continue to evolve.

The band has been evolving since the beginning. What happened was, the Flatbellys was this cool, traditional bluegrass band of young college kids that I met and ended up marrying one of them. Josh [Rilko], who I married, is the only original Flatbelly left in the band. When we made that first record, it made sense to tour as Lindsay Lou and the Flatbellys, since we thought people already knew who they were. So when we were getting ready to put Southland out, we didn’t feel like that name was reflecting us anymore. We were going through another lineup shift and going out into some new territory. We couldn’t think of a better name, so we just dropped Flatbellys.

It’s not a complete change, and I’m not sure it was the right time to make that change. It might have ended up causing confusion for people, because people were coming up to me asking if I’d hired a new band. Josh got a haircut and PJ doesn’t have his beard anymore, so I guess it looked like I was with a whole new group of people. And we’ve added a drummer to our live performances, which is a huge change. But the music is what it is no matter what you call it.

But the music on Southland sounds very different from anything else you’ve done. Especially with music that might be described as traditional or acoustic, is there a risk in branching out that way? Is there a chance you might alienate a portion of your audience?

I think there definitely is. But as an artist you have to do what feels like your own truth. If it doesn’t feel like honesty, if it doesn’t feel like the art that you want to create for yourself, then it’s not going to have the elements of truth that art has to have. If you’re making it only to keep certain people in your audience, then it’s going to have a certain sense of falsity to it. But I’ve been on the other side that. I listened to a lot of punk rock when I was a kid, and I always hated when a band would start to sound more polished. It’s like they’re selling out because I love what they were and I don’t love what they’re becoming. But I’ve discovered as an artist, I have to put that aside. I have to do what feels right to me.

I was just talking to Andy Falco from the Infamous Stringdusters, and he was going on about how all of us are just trying to create art that we’re proud of. That’s what we’re all working toward. I find myself listening to a lot of my peers, like the Wood Brothers and Greensky Bluegrass and Billy Strings and the Stray Birds. When I listen to their music, I feel like I’m listening to right now. I’m listening to the world through their eyes. And that’s what I’m trying to do—create something that sounds like the world I’m living in.

I don’t think you could find a more compelling or complex subject than that, especially at this particular moment in history.

I don’t want to shy away from the ugliness. It’s a part of the truth, we’re all experiencing it, so there’s desperation and there is sadness and loss and it’s all in there right alongside the beauty and the positivity. I think on this record more than any other record I’ve embraced that sadness and instead of running away from it. In my youth I wanted to sugarcoat everything. I wanted to put a positive spin on everything. It felt like that was how you make it through a tough time: You just have to be super positive about it. But as I’ve come into myself as an adult, I’ve found that you can’t run away from it.

That reminds me of the line in “Go There Alone,” the one that goes, “All we are is blind, but if we can hear the music, we’ll be alright.”

That was a cool songwriting experience writing that song. It carries a lot of weight for me as an artist. I wrote half of it, and when I got together with the guys for a musical retreat—which we do periodically—I played them as much of that song as I had. I told them that when I stop, just say the first things that come to your mind. They did that, giving me some good words and phrases to play with. When everybody else went to bed, I stayed up all night putting it all together. That was where that line came from. And I believe that’s true. Music is a way of moving forward, but also a ways of creating beauty in the face of all the roadblocks we run into. It illuminates our blind spots. Creating beauty is a radical exercise.

Don’t miss Lindsay Lou on the Bluegrass Situation Stage at Bourbon & Beyond, held Sept. 22-23 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Photo credit: Scott Simontacchi

BGS 5+5: AHI

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Artist: AHI (pronounced “Eye”)
Hometown: Brampton, Canada
Latest album: In Our Time
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Alleycat

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Marley has by far been my greatest influence. Coming from a Caribbean background (Jamaican/Trinidadian) there’s an obvious cultural connection, but for me it goes a little deeper than just music. I don’t sound like Bob, and I don’t try to, but there was a time in my life when I felt no music was satisfying in the way Bob Marley and the Wailers made me feel, so I decided that if it didn’t exist then I would create it. Bob Marley for me is like a messenger of good and an uplifting revolutionary.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Music is something I’ve always enjoyed and I’ve wanted to be a musician as far back as I can remember. But there really weren’t any musicians in my family so becoming a musician wasn’t really an option in my house. I come from a family of educators and I was probably going to end up being a teacher or professor myself. Writing was a big part of my childhood and my teen years so I naturally gravitated to poetry and rapping, but nothing musical other than my off-key belting as I ran through the hallways of my school.

It wasn’t until my early 20s that I decided to really focus on singing and learning how to play the guitar. Then came the moment I truly knew I was going to be a musician, while I was backpacking across Ontario and I met a kind stranger just outside of Thunder Bay who helped me realign my life and purpose. But even then I really didn’t decide to make music a serious profession until my first child turned 1, about 8 years ago. That first year of fatherhood put a lot into perspective for me, and it gave me the drive to establish myself as a credible artist.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I try to stay away from tough songs to write. Any song that has been really tough to write was probably scrapped and will never see the light of day. I don’t think writing a song should be a tough process; if it’s not flowing or you don’t feel like you’re making progress, then put it down.

However, of all the songs that have landed on any of my projects, I will say that “Just Pray” may have gone through the most revision. A lot of folks are going to assume the song is autobiographical, but I much rather say it’s “autobio-fictional.” I spent a lot of time with the lyrics on that one because I really wanted to draw on as much of my life as possible, so that I could sing it with a conviction and passion, but I didn’t want it to become a verbatim retelling of my childhood. So finding the right balance took a lot of edits and rewrites.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

My career mission statement would be “When you’re walking in your purpose, the Heavens bow down to honour your footsteps.” My music career is very closely attached to my faith, values and lifestyle. A great part of my life has been focused on uncovering my purpose and that comes out in my music. What I’ve learned is that when you are working towards your goals and you’re really zoned in on your purpose, people will feel that energy coming off you and they’ll want to help you accomplish more. The coolest look in the world is when you see someone who you know is doing what they are meant to do.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I hope I never feel like I have to hide behind a character in a song. Whatever I write, even if it’s not about me, I want to be able to empathize with the story so much that the listen thinks I’m singing my own song. My music is the opposite of hiding behind a character. I would sooner jump into the skin of a character and try to express what they may be feeling. I want people to believe every word I say, even if I’m speaking on behalf of someone else.

Photo credit: Jess Baumung

Coming Around: A Conversation with Andrew Duhon

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Andrew Duhon took a winding road to get to False River, his first album in five years. The New Orleans musician endured a crushing breakup that prompted the new suite of songs, then came up dry while looking for the right producer. Finally, the tide turned when he met Eric Masse, who ultimately helmed the sessions in his East Nashville studio, The Casino.

They both had a lot to live up to, as Duhon’s prior album, The Moorings, received a Grammy nomination for best engineered album. However, with touring band members Myles Week on bass and Max Zemanovic on drums, Duhon immersed himself in False River. With Masse’s guidance, the dynamics of Duhon’s voice are never drowned out. Instead, on thoughtful ballads and exuberant songs alike, his compelling baritone effortlessly converges with the band. He caught up with the Bluegrass Situation during a coffee break in Nashville.

I’m curious about the studio vibe for this record. How would you describe The Casino to somebody who’s never been in there?

Well, it is a garage recording studio, but of the finest standards. They did a good job to build it out and get some good sound in there. But as [Eric Masse] said, and I appreciated on our first phone call, he said, “You know, I call it The Casino because I gamble with artists’ careers.” He laughed immediately and I laughed. But I appreciated that because in our first phone call he made it very clear that he understood the gravity of what he was taking from me to create.

I think I could have gone much safer routes to put these songs down in their immortal form, but he helped us make a much bolder record and take some chances that I’m sure we wouldn’t have otherwise. On the first day of recording, he said, “We’re in Nashville right now and there’s 150 records being made today that are the singer-songwriter Nashville records. We can make one of those or we can make something else. We can make something different. We can try to make a cool record that’s never been made.” And there was no doubt that’s what we were there to do.

Well, that’s an interesting comment about the so-called Nashville songwriter record because that isn’t what you do at all. Have you ever lived here?

No.

No, so you wouldn’t even be that.

I did make my first record here. And you’re right, I think coming from New Orleans there’s more than osmosis from that place than from Nashville. But certainly I think I was first inspired by the stories in country songs. I would credit that as a reason why I’m trying to be a songwriter and not a poet. There’s something really special about the American songbook, so to speak.

What area of country music in particular are you thinking about?

Well, I remember that in my dad’s van, it was George Jones and Garth Brooks. Not everybody I was listening to was writing the songs, but there was an adherence to the story and they were really serving the song. So I appreciate that craft, for sure. … But I do enjoy, for the moment, only recording the songs I wrote myself. I’m open to the co-writing idea or recording other songs that just speak to you. But so far it’s been really a validating path to just figure out what I want to say.

Yeah. It seems to me that you figured it out, too.

No way, dude. I think I’m figuring out that I’m on the right path. You know, it still feels like I don’t see any rest stop up ahead or anything. It feels like, OK, if there’s two months, three months that go by where there’s not a new song to add to that path, then I start wondering what am I doing: “OK, wait, I’m out of balance, I need to go back to songwriting and stop putting on the business hat every day.”

I guess what I mean by that, it seems like you’re able to articulate after that breakup what was in your mind and that you were able to convey that on the record. Would you agree?

Oh, sure.

And I like “Comin’ Around” because it seems like you’re saying “Alright, I’m coming around to something better.” And then you explain where you’ve been, which I thought was an interesting way to structure that record. What was your frame of mind when you wrote that song?

Yeah, it has that little wordplay about the element of the spherical nature of the world, right? And this cute idea that if you walk in one direction you’ll end up back where you were, theoretically speaking. So to go away from something, but to be coming around in that physical sense, spherical sense, but also in a figurative sense like, “I didn’t like tomatoes as a kid, but I’m comin’ around.”

I love the idea that maybe coming around on that heartbreak means I’m coming around to that person – or I’m coming around to the idea that I’m just not going to be with that person. I like that there wasn’t really an answer in that song necessarily, but moving forward, what’s going to be the answer? At the time when I wrote that song, that’s what I needed. I needed to know that the only way back to her way straight ahead. I needed to go far enough away to really get an answer.

I wanted to ask you about melody. I think a lot of songwriters get asked about their lyrics so much but how much time do you spend on melody, making the songs stand apart?

I think I wander blindly through the dark when it comes to melody. I don’t think it’s innate to me, what a catchy melody is at all. I think I probably struggle to write something catchy. I will try things and especially on the road, I’ll try a lot of different interpretations. It was great for those years on the road with this band because they were always listening and I can hear them grunt with pleasure sometimes if I tried something they liked. “OK, grab that one and put that one in my pocket.”

And I think a lot of melodies were honed that way specifically, just improvising a new rendition of the same song and coming up with a new idea. … But then again, you know, the track is just another rendition that you sang. The producer picked his favorite version and I’ll sing it differently next time. I don’t always adhere to the same melody and I love the idea of writing a catchier melody, but it’s not my focus.

I think a lot of the music that I like has a sense of motion to it. That’s your life, basically, it seems like. Are you ever in one place for more than a couple months at a time?

No, that’s right. I love traveling songs myself, but not so obviously a traveling song, necessarily. But I think since getting out of college, it just started with me sleeping in my car and getting shitty shows that paid just enough to get gas and a meal and go to the next spot. But I thought that was going to introduce me to some new place that I hadn’t grown up in and I wouldn’t just be a product of my raising or the place that I grew up. I would find this new place.

And I learned two things since then. One, that I’m really lucky to be raised in New Orleans because that is a very special place. The other thing is, I think travel is more about changing everything around you while everything inside stays the same. So you really get a sense of “How do I react to all these different things?” You learn what’s in there, more than all these things that are changing, and you only get a snippet of.

It goes back to a line that I read in a homework assignment in English class in high school which was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self Reliance. And the line was, “To believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men — that is genius.” And that was a new idea for me. To me it said, “Wait a minute, so if my quest in life is to go and seek out the goal, wherever it is, maybe it’s not out there. Maybe it’s in here. And that was a special moment. And I think it introduced me to my artistic will.

Yeah, well you have to have that to be an artist or a songwriter. I would think you have to believe you can say something in a way specific to you but also that someone else would enjoy.

Without a doubt, that is true. Without that theory, I’m wasting my time.

Photo credit: Hunter Holder

LISTEN: The War and Treaty, “If It’s in Your Heart”

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Artist: The War and Treaty (Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blount-Trotter)
Hometown: Albion, Michigan
Song: “If It’s in Your Heart”
Album: Healing Tide
Release Date: August 10, 2018
Label: Strong World/Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “I had a friend who went through a terrible ordeal. I asked if she was ok and she said ‘yes’ but the truth was that she wasn’t and I felt it but didn’t act on it. ‘If It’s in Your Heart’ is everything I should’ve said to her to let her know that I was willing to go through the rain with her. I should’ve challenged her more and that’s what the song is about.” – Michael Trotter Jr.

Photo credit: David McClister

BGS 5+5: Lera Lynn

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Lera Lynn
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest album: Plays Well With Others

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I’ve actually been using music a lot lately to inspire visual art. When I discovered the work of Basquiat, I was so relieved by his use of words in his paintings. Somehow it had never occurred to me to mix the two. I started using my own lyrics as a gateway to visual works. It really opened the door for me. Now, I am painting more than ever and always use music to guide my hand and ideas… It’s difficult for me to answer the question the other way around. I think everything inspires my music in some way. We are all bombarded with so many images, films, songs, words… The latest challenge for me has been in turning the noise off and focusing on the stuff that’s real.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I will never forget performing Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea” on stage outside during Athfest in Athens, Georgia. Being from Athens, NMH was sacred music and I knew it was risky to cover one of their songs. At the end of the song, on the downbeat of the very last chord, lightning struck a building 20 feet from the stage. We’re all lucky to be alive! Several people were struck by bricks falling from the building–luckily no one was badly injured. There’s a video of the whole incident floating around on the net somewhere. I swore after that to never play that song again! Whether or not the gods were for or against our cover, we’ll never top that!

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I had planned on being an astronaut up until I found out that my vision is far too poor for such risky endeavors. Music had always been a regular part of my life as a child. So, I remember sitting in front of the TV, bummed out by the fact that I’d likely never make it to space, when Star Search came on. And the thought I had was, “Well, OK, I guess I’ll just do that instead.” If only it were that easy!

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I struggle regularly to write. I kinda hate the process of writing, but love having written. Sometimes they come easy and all is right with the world. But usually, I have to squirm my way through it. One song in particular that I remember fighting with was “Fade Into the Black.” I knew I had a great verse, melody, and lyric and just couldn’t find the right chorus. I must have written 3 or 4 choruses that I trashed before settling on the one that made the record… And over the course of months! I’d have to take breaks from it, lest risk losing my mind.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I’m sure my band is tired of hearing it by now, but I always sing the jazz standard “Lover Man” backstage about 30 mins before going on. I love that song because it’s beautiful and particularly well-suited for a vocal warm-up song since it covers so much ground range-wise. I also always have Throat Coat Tea with a splash of whiskey. On the last tour, I found it really helpful for my spirit to hoot and holler at the top of my lungs just before going on stage. Wow. That looks nutty in text.

Watch Lera Lynn’s Sitch Session.

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

All the Things: A Conversation With The Milk Carton Kids (2 of 2)

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In the second half of our conversation with the Milk Carton Kids, Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan openly shared their disagreement over some pretty serious issues. The pre-release publicity for their new album, All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do, revealed some of the life experiences the two have been through since their last album. Pattengale dealt with cancer and the painful end of a seven-year relationship; Ryan had a child. And they have a real difference of opinion on whether those things should be brought to listeners’ attention as the subject of these new songs. But beneath the bickering, you may still sense the milk of human kindness.

[Read the part one of our conversation with Milk Carton Kids.]

The fact that you guys live in different cities now [Pattengale has moved from L.A. to Nashville], does that help or hurt the relationship?

Kenneth: The jury’s still out on that one. [Laughs.] It seems to be fine, for now.

Obviously a big part of why people love you on stage is the rapport you guys have on stage. It must feel a little strange now when you have a band on stage and suddenly there are other people there waiting for you to talk.

Kenneth: It’s become such a part of our identity, and I’m kind of confounded as to why. Anything that anybody’s ever laughed at on stage that we’ve said, it’s just what we do in the car or on the phone. And sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s not, and we’ve learned how to make it read a little better for an audience with the timing, but it’s how we always are.

With you guys being in such different places geographically as well as probably emotionally, was it easy to sort of come together and write on the same page? There’s a pretty consistent mood to a lot of the album, or at least some sort of thematic undertow, despite your different experiences.

Kenneth: I think that just might reflect a commonality of vision. Because truthfully the songs on this album are the most singular Joey and I have ever written. Outside of “One More for the Road,” which we wrote together in a different era before our band existed, every single song on this record was written by one or the other of us, lyrically. It was not like our song “New York” on Prologue where we sat down together and wrote lines and talked about what would happen to the story if we changed this or that. I showed up with that song “All the Things,” and Joey said, “Would you consider changing this word?” And I said, “Nope!” The same thing for “Unwinnable War,” “Blindness,” and “Just Look at Us Now” when he wrote those.

Joey: The thing that I’m really proud of in terms of the album having a commonality amongst the songs is the thing that the band brought to bear on it. I have a real fondness for albums that sound like they’re played by a band in a room, and where the whole album is sort of treated conceptually, not necessarily from a writing standpoint, but from a recording and production standpoint. And while we did have some musicians come in and out for certain songs, the core of the band that was there for the 11 days that we recorded gives such a strong identity to the record that ties songs together that could feel very disparate… as opposed to something where everybody said, “Okay, let’s take it one song of time. What does this song need? What does that one need?”

There are some very stark, end-of-relationship type songs in here, or maybe the ends of things that aren’t even relationships — looking back on the past, or doing something for the last time. Was it daunting to write in a really direct fashion where there is pretty emotional stuff happening?

Kenneth: Not daunting. Maybe where there existed more insecurity or preciousness in years past, there’s just maybe less f—s given, and maybe some confidence that’s come with artistic, if not financial, success. We seem to have an audience that’ll listen to us. I think that that engenders a specific amount of courage in digging deeper and being more honest, and it was maybe time to do that anyway, so the stars aligned on that front.

And as a songwriter, the hardest thing you can ever search for is honesty. And when you have these sort of traumatic events that happen, that’s a real easy way to sort of cherry-pick some relatable honesty. You don’t ever want to have to suffer to do that. That would be silly. But while it’s there, you might as well take advantage, you know, when you get dumped after seven years.

Joey: It’s true. There was some real stuff that happened.

Kenneth: But with Joey, when Joey had kids, it’s so funny — they write in the press release about him having kids like it’s some seismic shift that nobody’s ever gone through and experienced before. [Laughs.] It’s literally the basis of human existence, and somebody in our organization said, “Man, people are going to be really shocked that Joey had kids!”

Joey: I know. [Sarcastically.] I wish we would just focus on the unique heartaches, like, you know, a breakup.

Kenneth: I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about beating cancer.

Joey: Oh, yeah, that’s true. That’s something almost nobody’s ever done. [Long pause, followed by awkward laughter.] The whole point that you were making was that they’re relatable! That means that everybody goes through it. But some shit happened in our lives.

Kenneth: Yeah, but having kids…

Joey: My favorite part of Kenneth is when he talks about having kids — either like birthing them, or taking care of them. It’s really cute, Kenneth. Keep going.

Kenneth: Joey went from just wandering around life aimlessly with all this free time to then having kids and having a bunch of people hired to take care of ‘em so that he can just wander around aimlessly with all the free time, but having kids at home that somebody else is taking care of. Just a seismic experiential shift! Everything changed!

Joey: Anyway, to get back to the truth of it all, some shit happened in our lives over the course of the last few years, and there was something to write about. And…

Kenneth: I don’t know.

Joey: We’re not going to argue about this. It’s unquestionably true, and we can list them if you want, but they’ve already been listed in our press release, and…

Kenneth: I would argue that all that happened is we just became better writers.

Joey: Before you finish interrupting me…

Kenneth: You’re interrupting me, technically.

Joey: All right, well, let me finish interrupting you then before you jump back in. It’s the decent thing to do. I mean, you only have to listen to the songs to know what we’ve gone through, which is the whole point of the record. … A lot of things which were actually profound shifts in our lives and ways of perceiving reality happened, and so for me it became easier to write more directly and truthfully than it had been at least on the last record. It’s the reason that I like to write songs, to process things.

Kenneth: I have trouble seeing it, because… Sorry, I know Joey thinks I’m just sandbagging everything now, but I’m not. This is my honest take on it. I think Joey’s always written some really nice songs, and he’s writing them better than ever, and I don’t actually see a very different change. The same thing’s true with me. I’ve always written the best song that I’m capable of.

So whether or not I’ve gotten better at songwriting over the last few years, or if it needs to be contextualized for people to understand that it comes out of some life event, I call bullshit on it, because that to me is just a formal, contextualizing sales pitch for what’s actually just a collection of the best songs that we could write over the last three years. And I think it happens to be better than the ones that came before it, and we’ll see if everybody else agrees.

Joey: It’s interesting for you to reject that sort of attachment to it. But (the closing track) “All the Things” is about your breakup, as is “You Break My Heart,” and there’s no other way to say it than that’s you processing your breakup. I mean, that is a song that you wrote that’s about your breakup. So whether it’s better or worse than others…

Kenneth: Well, I have an issue with that, because it’s not that… Why are you laughing? I’ve being very serious here.

Joey: I’m excited to see how you’re going to say that your song “All the Things” is not about the ending of your relationship.

Kenneth: Because it’s exactly the opposite of that! It has nothing to do with the breakup. It’s about chronicling six years of my life that I look back on very fondly. It has to do with trying to say something that is maybe not able to be said out loud unless you put it in poetry and song. I don’t think that it resounds with people because the human experience is all about breaking up…

I mean, in some ways, yes, maybe it took the trauma of a breakup to put it into words, but it’s about celebrating what was a really beautiful relationship between two people. And frankly, if I’m half the writer that anybody thinks I am, I could have written that song at any moment during the six years, even before it all ended. That song is about reflecting the human condition as I see it and how it relates to me personally, and to couch it in some breakup thing seems like a headline that a publicist thinks would grab some attention. I think that’s crazy. [Pauses.] Did I do a sufficient job?

Joey: I think that was the best you could have done.

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

Dismissing the Suits: A Conversation With The Milk Carton Kids (1 of 2)

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The Milk Carton Kids have been about nothing if not duality. That’s down to their very name, which evokes both comedy and tragedy, and their stage presence, in which some of the stateliest and most delicate songs possible are broken up by riotously deadpan banter. They’ve always been about duo-ality, too — two voices and guitars, gathered around a single microphone, contemplative Everlys for the 21st century, unaugmented by anything that would have seemed rank or strange to the Stanley Brothers back in the 1950s.

But now, suddenly, almost everything you know about the Milk Carton Kids is wrong — at least the formal elements. They’ve dropped the formal suits and picked up separate mics… and a full band, too, while they were at it. Could this be their Dylan-goes-electric moment? Not to worry — there probably won’t be any cries of “Judas!” greeting their fifth album, All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do, or a touring ensemble that no longer fits in a single front seat. It’s not just that the new material is superb — although that never hurts — but that the fuller arrangements sound like a natural progression in what is still scaled for intimacy.

Before we get to the Kids, we queried producer Joe Henry for his thoughts about how necessary or smooth the transition was, going from duo to band configuration. He admitted there was at least the fleeting consideration of a backlash — “I don’t imagine it possible that the Kids weren’t individually and collectively pondering the response of an audience that has been so steadfast in their devotions to the band’s brazen and brave duo commitment to date.” But, Henry says, “I saw no evidence that the looming question gave them any pause… And no one involved that I’m aware of had any doubt that such a shift was now not only timely but imperative: they’d reached a point where the color of the light, so to speak, needed to reflect their growth as musicians and songwriters––this batch of songs being so particularly strong as to invite, nay, insist on a presentation equal in its evolution.”

The producer adds that the Kids are “still very much a duo in ethos and execution. There is real drama in the intimacy of Ken and Joey pushing up to a single mic in symbiotic solitude, and it was important to all three of us going in that that image remain intact ––even as new sonic weather kicked up and swirled around them.”

When we sat down with Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan at a Van Nuys coffee shop in June, we found that off-stage they’re just like they are on-stage… only more so.

As part of changing things up, you’ve decided this is also the right time to go for street clothes in concert, right?

Joey: Talk about decisions that were never actually made.

Kenneth: Yeah, that one’s still TBD. I mean, we get on the tour bus tonight. Joey’s near his closet, but I didn’t bring anything from Nashville, so if I’m wearing a suit tomorrow, I’m gonna have to go to the Men’s Warehouse in Tucson. The advice I’ve gotten from literally everybody on earth is that they’re gonna be saddened to not see me in a suit, and that we should be wearing them. But… f— ‘em. [Laughs.]

Joey: Well, I never wanted to wear a suit. The reason that we wore suits in the beginning was as a part of a collection of survival techniques.

Kenneth: Given your druthers, you’d dress like an ass-clown, that’s why. And you can quote me on that!

Joey: [Sighs.] See, how can people not love us? No, it was a part of a suite of survival techniques that we developed when we were playing in very…

Kenneth: Techniques or tactics?

Joey: Techniques.

Kenneth: There are survival techniques? I think they’re mostly tactics. It’s interesting to hear you’ve developed survival technique. It sounds like something they’d sell in the Valley.

Joey: Those words are synonyms. It’s a survival tactic and a technique. In any case, in the early days, we were playing this really sonically fragile show, and the only places that would book us were like the smallest rock club or bar or coffee shop sometimes in town. In a dive bar, we would wear suits to visually indicate that it was just something different than what they would maybe expect to see in that room, so that you could have some chance for the first couple minutes of people taking note and going, “Alright, what is this gonna be? I’m going to shut up and listen for one song.” You at least have a song. You have that chance to get ‘em to stop talking loudly in the bars that they’re used to talking in and maybe pay attention to the show, because our show required that.

It’s not like an attention-seeking preciousness. It’s like a physical, sonic fragility that we had, because we mic-ed our guitars, and you just can’t turn it up that loud. The perfect example is how we played at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio, many times. It’s a great place but the beer fridge is louder than we could get the PA, so we had to ask the bar to unplug their beer fridge, and they were so accommodating. I don’t know what happened to the beer. And they would also bring in rows of folding chairs, which literally no other band would ever even ask them to do. But we always wanted to be in a theater where people would be able to receive what we were trying to present, and the suits were just part of that. Now, with the band…

Kenneth: You’re gonna go back to flip-flops!

Joey: With the band… [Long, exasperated pause.] See, people always say we’re antagonistic. I think it’s just him. No, with the band, we don’t have the sonic fragility that we had before. … And so the whole misdirection of wearing a suit in unexpected places is not required. That was a long way of saying: I’m excited to not wear suits.

How early or late in the process did you decide to go with a band for this album?

Joey: We decided three years ago in Dusseldorf, Germany that we weren’t going to make the next album as a duo… It was just a moment. It wasn’t like we even talked it out. [To Kenneth:] You were like, “I think we should probably do the full-band thing next.” And I was like, “Oh, thank God you said that, because I’ve been worrying about how to bring that up.” But you always break the ice.

Kenneth: Yeah. I’m a talker.

I’m always interested in how people who are identified with a very specific thing decide to change it up… or not. A lot of times, people back away from giving up the thing that people identify as unique.

Kenneth: It’s always risky to go down these philosophical rabbit holes in interviews like this, because invariably they come out not reading exactly as intended, but I’ll go anyway, because who gives a shit? One of our blind spots -– and I think it’s a common blind spot for artists specifically — is that Joey and I for a long time had a complete inability to understand what was good about our band, while also knowing it in our core. And it’s necessary. If we knew what that was, I think that we would lean into it, and it would get tired very quickly and wouldn’t mature and evolve.

But for the first year and a half of our band, Joey and I didn’t realize that we were good just because when we sang together, it sounded like something that people either had never heard before or hadn’t heard in a while, or it bore a trueness that was just apparent in its physics. Joey and I thought that it was a result of all the hard work we do about making sure our harmonies are tight or about phrasing or about all these marginal things that we quibble over. You really lose sight of what the fundamental thread is that actually is the reason the whole thing exists. And we still have that blind spot. There’s something that’s just innate in what you do from the beginning that we take for granted.

So what is the thing you have the blind spot about, that your audience totally gets?

Kenneth: To put it really simply, when Joey and I sing together, it reminds people of Simon and Garfunkel, the way they actually physically combine, like alchemy in the air, or the way the Everlys did it, or the Louvin Brothers. When Joey and I sing together, there is some physical chemistry that is actually, like, we have to try hard to f— it up. And we have from time to time, but we’ve got an advantage coming out of the gate to other people singing harmony together, in that there’s something that just works about it.

And then there’s a similar shared vision in our writing and stylistic choices, and even essential life administration, where, outside of a few blowouts where we figured out what the problem was, the way they rub together results in this strange band that people haven’t kicked out of life yet.

Read the second half of this interview.

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

LISTEN: Hot Buttered Rum, “Sitting Here Alone”

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Artist: Hot Buttered Rum
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “Sitting Here Alone”
Album: Lonesome Panoramic
Release Date: July 20, 2018

In Their Words – “I’d long had the dream of having a cabin in the woods. Removed from the busy rat race, I’d be able to have a clear vision to make my masterpiece, right? Well, I got the opportunity a few years ago to do this on my friend’s 100-acre farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I poured a foundation, built a wall tent, doors, an outdoor kitchen. I put in a desk, wood stove, a bed, a couch. It was a ten-minute walk uphill through a redwood forest to reach the place. Epic! Remote! Serene! I’d finally have the headspace to make my best music…I did write a lot of music there (most of Limbs Akimbo), but I was also struck by how life feels about the same even when your dreams come true. I’m still an insecure, distractible dude, no matter where I am! “I thought I’d have it made if I could only get away/and find a little cabin in the woods/I’ll be so content with no entanglements/and life will flow freely as it should.” All this fits into a general trend in my life of being less of an aspiring loner and more engaged with and committed to other people, and all the good and bad things that come with them.” – Nat Keefe

Photo credit: Matt Sharkey