Tag: Folk

A Desire to Inspire: A Conversation With Molly Tuttle

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I can’t pin down the year I first heard Molly Tuttle picking a few tunes in a Sugar Hill Records suite at the IBMA’s World of Bluegrass, but I know it was before the event’s 2013 move to Raleigh, and I know I wasn’t the first to pay attention to her guitar playing. Indeed, it was only a few more years until Bryan Sutton called her name as a picker to listen to in the course of accepting one of his ten IBMA Guitar Player of the Year trophies—and just two years after that, last fall, she accepted the same award herself.  

Even so, her growing recognition among bluegrassers has led to a higher profile for Molly in the broader musical world; she earned the Folk Alliance’s Song of the Year award in February, and a nomination for this year’s Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year title, too. Between that, her own eclectic outlook, and the predispositions of journalists unfamiliar with the bluegrass world, it’s not hard to see why the musical substance of her engagement with the genre can sometimes be given short shrift. Yet the fact is, she appears to be as happy tearing through a bluegrass classic in the company of her youthful contemporaries—or with a certified bluegrass legend or three—as she is playing anything else.

I was reminded of this shortly before our interview, when Instagram presented me with a snippet of video that showed her sitting in with the East Nashville Grass, a collection of pickers who mostly work in other bands, at a ‘grass-friendly’ Madison club—and since the next Molly Tuttle record is still likely months away, it seemed like a good place to start the conversation.

Just this morning, I saw a video of you sitting in with the East Nashville Grass guys, ripping on some bluegrass—“White Freightliner Blues,” which I know you’ve been doing for a while—and it got me to wondering. Your dad was a music teacher when you were growing up; was he more of a folk guy, or an acoustic guy generally, or a bluegrass guy?

What my dad always loved was bluegrass. He grew up playing bluegrass, and that’s really what he studied and what he loves. But he did end up playing some folkier music; he played in a band called the Gryphon Quintet, which was all people who worked at Gryphon Music, the store he teaches out of. And that was jazzier stuff, some swing stuff, four-part harmony arrangements, and some of their stuff was kind of folky, too. So he ended up playing a bunch of different styles, but he really comes from bluegrass.

So when the family band got started, it was a bluegrass band.

Yeah!

You’re getting out beyond the bluegrass audience these days, into the larger musical world, and there’s been a whole line of people over the years who have done that. What do you think you’ve learned as a bluegrass musician that you carry with you when you do all this other stuff?

I think one of the most valuable things I learned was improvising and making up my own solos. Just being creative, really, because it’s such a creative genre. Some of the most incredible improvisers in the world are bluegrass musicians and you can really carry that into any genre—those improvisational concepts, you can take those in so many different directions. So that’s something I feel bluegrass really taught me, something I can use for the rest of my life.

And also, technique. I think it’s so important in bluegrass to have great technique, to be able to play fast, slow…I think that was really helpful for me to learn. And the style itself is so authentic. It has this raw feeling to it, and my favorite bluegrass is old bluegrass, where it’s all so live and energetic—just real, authentic stories from their lives. I think that’s really inspiring.

I’ve heard from some younger musicians that when they found a bluegrass jam or something like that when they were getting started, the older guys were really encouraging and supportive—and then, when they started getting into other kinds of music, those folks weren’t so supportive. Have you run into that?

A little bit. People just like what they like, so people who love traditional bluegrass aren’t as supportive as others about me branching out and doing new stuff. But I haven’t run into too many people who are openly discouraging me from doing what I want—it’s just not their cup of tea, so they’re not as excited.

When you started putting the Molly Tuttle Band together, how did you decide what you wanted? Was that a question in your mind—am I going to have a banjo player?

It kind of was! But it was like the right musicians just sort of presented themselves to me. I’ve played with Wes [Corbett] for three years now and he’s such an amazing musician—he’s so versatile. He plays amazing stuff on my songs that are more singer-songwritery, but he’s an incredible bluegrass musician, too. So it’s been a great fit for me. I think the bluegrass band just made sense. But then, I’ve been working on a new album that has drums on everything, and electric guitars, so I think going forward I’m going to be trying out different band lineups.

Are you working on your new record a few days at a time, or did you set aside a big block of time to make a whole record?

We had six days where we got all the tracks done; eleven songs, all with the same band. We did that at Sound Emporium and it was mostly all live. And then I went in and did harmony overdubs, I overdubbed some vocals, put some other instruments on, tracked strings—that was really fun. Nathaniel Smith worked out these really great string arrangements with Rachel Baiman and Mike Barnett, so they came in. And then we got some special guests on it—Sierra [Hull] came in and played, which was fun. So it’s just been going into the studio and finishing things up whenever I’m back from touring.

So maybe the next big release coming out that you’re on is a Roland White tribute project. And there was definitely an element there of you kind of playing the part of Clarence White on the tunes that you did. How do you prepare for that, for playing the part of Clarence White?

I just went and listened to recordings of Clarence. And with “I Am a Pilgrim,” there’s this great YouTube video of Clarence and Roland playing it, and Clarence was playing the coolest stuff ever. I teach at camps sometimes, and last summer, I thought it would be fun to teach a workshop on Clarence White, so I transcribed his rhythm playing on that, and was teaching it to people. So that was a good one to get to do, because I already knew some of the licks, and I’m obsessed with his playing on that song—it was fun to try to get into that mindset.

It seems like you really succeeded in being Molly Tuttle, but also Molly Tuttle playing Clarence White.

That’s what I was trying to do, so that’s good to hear.

We played a house concert a few weeks ago, where [12-year-old fiddler] Clare Brown and her dad came out and opened for us. I heard her doing a soundcheck with “White Freightliner Blues,” and I thought, I’ll bet I know where she learned that. Does it freak you out that there are even younger musicians coming up who are influenced by you?

I think that’s so exciting and that’s what I wanted to do with my music since really early on: inspire the younger generation, especially younger girls. I think it’s really important for them to see the generation of women before them doing it. So that’s one of the things that keeps me going with my music, to see something like that.

Who were you seeing that way? Who did you look up to?

When I was a kid I looked up to Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, Keith Little, Bill Evans, my dad—all these Bay Area people. There’s a really great scene there and they were all so supportive of me. But especially Laurie and Kathy, seeing them lead their own bands and play shows. They were my biggest heroes and I thought they were the coolest, and I still do.

Is it important to you to keep an eye on and try to inspire young musicians to play bluegrass in particular?

I think it’s a really great tradition, especially for kids, because it’s such a supportive community. And there are jams, so you can get together with other kids your age. That’s a really healthy thing for kids to do for fun. For me, it was really great in high school to have that, to go to festivals, and get together for jams, and play shows—that was a great outlet for me. It’s a great genre for kids to play, and it’s really important to keep carrying on the bluegrass tradition, to keep it alive, so I think it’s great to encourage kids to play it.

Photo credit: Kaitlyn Raitz

Allowing Herself to Be Free: A Conversation with Erin Rae

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Quiet may come off as meek, but don’t be fooled; strong doesn’t necessarily present in overly clamorous ways. That’s the central truth Erin Rae unearths on her new album Putting on Airs. Across twelve hushed tracks, her haunting voice depicts the ways in which the past looms over the present, especially how the scenes we witness as children build their own imposing edifices in the psyche. On the title track, she sings with bare-bones honesty, “I never did learn to like myself/ Been chasing down anyone that might could help/ Lure them in with charm, come out stealing.”

Putting on Airs is as much about calling out herself as exploring the circumstances that formed her, but through it all the Nashville-based songwriter’s honesty is manifested through her clear-eyed vocals and deft lyricism. She wants to heal, and her music, functioning like a salve, allows her to do exactly that. For example, on “Bad Mind,” she sings about a lesbian aunt who faced discrimination decades ago in the Alabama court system and how that, and other adolescent experiences, shaped the perception of her own sexuality.

Recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin, during winter’s muted apex, Erin Rae worked with co-producers Jerry Bernhardt and Dan Knobler to make full use of the space—a former Franciscan monastery known as The Refuge. As a result, the production lives, breathes, and echoes, giving her the room to use her voice, both literally and lyrically.

These songs are so tender, and that descriptor strikes me in two ways: Tender like a bruise, and tender as in full of care. When you were writing them, did one apply more than the other?

I think it’s a little bit of both. With “Putting on Airs” in particular, I was like, “Am I just being harsh on myself?” My mom’s Buddhist now, so I’m really [thinking] like, “Is this being kind? Is this causing harm?” It’s been helpful to me to own that behavior and, yeah, it is uncomfortable to feel the reality of that and the consequences of that and how it affects other people and myself. But also, by owning it and saying it, my hope is to continue to get more free from that. It’s a little bit of both: It’s tender temporarily.

How have you seen your songwriting shift on this album?

I guess I’ve always used songwriting to process through my own stuff; it’s been very cathartic for me. My last record was tying my own experience in with that of my parents or close friends. There’s still an element of that, but I feel like this record has become more directly about me. I didn’t really intend for these songs to be that, like “I’m going to call myself out.” “Putting on Airs” is about people-pleasing where it’s harmful to myself and other people, where eventually you just become dishonest in a way.

No kidding. That line, “Lure them in with charm, come out stealing,” got me right in the gut. It almost hurts to hear but it’s so true.

It’s like, “I want you to like me!”

It’s almost like a safety mechanism at first, but it’s interesting how you say it can become self-harming at a point.  

My dad is super outgoing. He’s one of those people who’s never met a stranger. That’s how I am as well, but learning in a way to make sure…especially as far as it goes with relationships. That’s really what I’m focusing on in that song.

Ok, we have to talk about “June Bug.” That transition to the old-timey piano at the two-minute mark is stunning. That riff says so much, and coming after all you’ve confessed, hangs even all the more beautifully.

At the Refuge up there in Appleton, there’s this giant chapel and all these monks’ quarters, 60 little individual bedrooms, and a lounge area on the first floor. It was in the middle of winter, it was still snowing, and the Fox River is right out the back. The room has a wall of windows, so you could see the snow and the bald eagles. There are two hallways, and in the center of that is where we had a lot of tracking stuff set up and the computer and all the gear. Then we ran guitar amps and put the drums in the chapel, so you hear that huge open sound. We tracked vocals in there so we had the room sound.

I have these fond memories of everyone being super sweet to each other. Basically, Jerry played everything. I think he had tracked that piano part and then Dan, when he was mixing everything, surprised Jerry by putting that into the end of the song, because the song otherwise would just be a minute and a half long. We had this beautiful piano track that Jerry had done in this space, and Dan surprised us with the old timey piano outro, and I thought Jerry was going to cry. It was really great.

I’m especially interested in the labels that circulate around Southern women. To that end, “Mississippi Queen” is such a striking song. How have you attempted to battle against the labels about who women should or shouldn’t be?

Nashville is like a blue spot surrounded by red. It’s a town full of creatives. I’ve got a family member that lives in Mississippi and my dad grew up in Missouri, but whenever you go back to more traditional Southern cities, it’s kind of like, “Oh yeah, people more or less adhere to these cultural norms that feel a little outdated to me.” But I’m always drawn to a sense of tradition. The only way I’ve known how to challenge anything is personally, like internally making sure that I’m clear.

That’s what a lot of this record’s about—allowing myself to be free to see what my own personal truth is, so that, hopefully, I’m able to lend that to others and give other people that space. Even in thinking that that’s a way I want to live, it’s still difficult. I empathize with people that have grown up in a more traditional city; I feel like it takes a conscious effort to grow up and be open-minded if it’s not the norm.

Right, if it’s not modeled for you it’s even harder to practice.

My parents are super open-minded and I still grew up in the South and absorbed a lot of the social norms, so I can’t imagine how hard it is for someone else [who didn’t] to feel free enough. With a more conservative or strictly religious background, it’s hard work for everybody to be more open-minded.

The past six months have been fruitful for singer-songwriters wishing to challenge heteronormativity, including projects from H.C. McEntire and Sarah Shook. Why do you think now is such a powerful moment for such visibility?

So much progress that had been made was starting to feel uncertain with this new administration. It kind of worked out to be a timely thing, especially with the song “Bad Mind,” and that story being born out of the state of Alabama. When Roy Moore was almost elected, I was like, “It’s all happening in the same time.” I think it’s so important to keep the conversation going and make opportunities to heal around this stuff, around sexuality, while it’s all being threatened.

It does feel like a backlash, similar to what took place in the ‘80s after women had made significant strides in the ‘70s.

Music helps us process. One image that came to mind while you were talking about a backlash is the Women’s March—the second one that happened recently in Nashville. It ended with a big concert at Bicentennial Mall, and Alanna Royale and Becca Mancari were both performing there. Alanna has always represented real womanhood for me, being a strong and powerful woman. She’s full of life. It was this really beautiful moment to walk with all these people—dads, and little kids, and folks old and young—through Nashville, and then end up at this powerful, beautiful concert with people that I admire in our community. It was such a beautiful way to tie it all together.

Photo credit: Marcus Maddox

Mike Block, ‘Final Night at Camp’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Summertime = summer camp, doesn’t it? To musicians, though, camps of summer are only marginally related to The Parent Trap or Wet Hot American Summer motifs. Music camps borrow the familiar grounds, dormitories, and wood panel-clad mess halls and classrooms for a week or two here and there, when they would otherwise be left vacant, and then fill them with pickers and tunes. It’s an entirely different summer camp category, but they’re never less nostalgic, or memorable, or convivial, or sweltering than their more mainstream counterparts, even if they are a special breed of their own.

Mike Block, an acclaimed and traveled cellist, is a founder, proprietor, and curator of just such a music camp, and an experienced instructor at many others as well. His latest album, Final Night at Camp: Deluxe Edition, plays exactly like an end-of-week faculty concert, drawing on musicians and pickers who are just as familiar with the wonders and woes of folk music camps as he is. The title track seemingly mirrors a week a camp, for just as you begin to become comfortable and familiar with your surroundings, the craziness (sleep deprivation? One crazy, all-night jam? That one student who refuses to ask an actual question, opting for, “This is more of a comment, really…” instead?) sets in! On the cello-centered, original instrumental, that “craziness” is a wildly dissonant, dynamic breakdown, that reharmonizes the tune’s melodic hook fantastically and frenetically mid-song. But, just like camp, when everything settles, everything is finally sorted out and the time has elapsed, we’ve learned something — and we wish that the “Final Night at Camp” hadn’t come to a close so soon.

Canon Fodder: k.d. lang, ‘Ingénue’

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For better or for worse, k.d. lang’s 1992 breakout album Ingénue will always be associated with her coming out. Throughout the late 1980s she had established herself as an unlikely country star, a traditionalist who sang like Patsy Cline and worked with Owen Bradley but whose short punk haircut and androgynous persona branded her as an eccentric like Lyle Lovett. Also, she was Canadian—not a roadblock to country stardom (see: Anne Murray, Shania Twain), but certainly another way in which she was an outsider in Nashville. Nevertheless, she made a place for herself in the country mainstream, winning a Grammy for “Crying,” her 1989 duet with Roy Orbison, and the album Absolute Torch and Twang, released the same year, proved a more-than-modest hit, peaking at No. 12 on the country charts.

And yet, there were rumors that lang was… well, you know. She had come out to her family, but had not made that an explicit part of her public persona, despite playing a lesbian in the independent film Salmonberries. So the media pried into her personal life, posing uncomfortably direct questions to which she carefully measured her answers. lang was going to be made a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ community whether or not she wanted that responsibility. The pressure came from within that community as well as from without. According to Newsweek, Queer Nation, an activist organization founded in 1990, put up posters around New York with photos of entertainers branded with the words Absolutely Queer. The Advocate outed a top-ranking military official at a time when gays were not welcome in the military, just prior to President Clinton’s infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” waffle.

To preempt being forcibly outed—essentially, to take control of her own story rather than let someone else come out for her—in 1992 lang gave a lengthy, at times very tense interview to The Advocate. Her sexuality was discussed only generally throughout the exchange, with lang officially calling herself a lesbian near the end of the article. “I feel like it’s a part of my life, my sexuality, but it’s not—it certainly isn’t my cause. But I also have never denied it. I don’t try to hide it like some people in the industry do.” This was largely unexplored territory for any artist, especially one in a traditionally conservative genre and especially one who was going to so radically change her sound.

In retrospect it’s hard to convey just how chancy and therefore how pivotal Ingénue was for lang, who rejected absolute twang for torch songs rooted in jazz and pop, in chanson and klezmer, in Gershwin and Weill, Holiday and Dietrich. She described it at the time as “postnuclear cabaret.” Especially in the 1990s when changing your sound or courting a wide audience could be viewed as selling out, the album was a calculated risk, a means of shedding a long-held persona that might alienate old fans without attracting new ones. Gone were the fringed Western wear and the Stetsons; what remained was that haircut and, most crucially, a voice that sounds like a starry midnight.

The personnel didn’t change, but her approach certainly did. lang worked with co-producers and co-songwriters Greg Penny and Ben Mink, the latter a member of her backing band the Reclines. But this is not a case of treating country songs to new arrangements. The change happens at a conceptual level. Ingénue is lang’s first collection of entirely original material. She and Mink wrote songs outside the country format to find new ways to use her voice and new emotions to express. “Season of Hollow Soul” sounds like a Weimar torch song, as though the singer is playing both Annie Bowles and Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret. “Miss Chatelaine” is an exuberant love song that cheekily references lang’s own iconography, in this case the cover of Chatelaine magazine, which in 1988 named her Woman of the Year. To contrast the photograph’s Nudie suit glory, lang toyed with her own androgynous look, even performing in a formal gown on Arsenio Hall.

Deep into the twenty-first century, of course, country music seems by nature a porous genre, one which artists drift into and out of constantly, whether it’s a pop star looking for a career renewal (Darius Rucker), a tourist taking snapshots of Music Row (Sheryl Crow), or a country star looking to broaden their audience (Taylor Swift). But perhaps no artist has made that transition with more grace and finesse—with more sense of the inevitable—than lang, whose voice was so much bigger than one genre could contain. Ingénue not only showed how artfully she bend that voice and suppress that twang, but also demonstrated how she could use it to inhabit a very different desire than the pop charts typically allowed. For that accomplishment she’ll receive the 2018 Trailblazer Award at the Americana Music Honors & Awards in September.

The album has been tied to her coming out, a vehicle for her ascension not merely as a pop star but as a gay pop star. This is, of course, not the only interpretation of the album, but it’s one that lang herself reasserted in interviews. She was forthright about the inspiration for the album, confessing that it was inspired by the end of an affair with a married lover. lang was still in love, but accepted that the relationship was impossible; that contradiction became the spark that illuminated these new songs. No names were given, but the implication was that this married lover—the subjects of the lyrics, the object of desire—was a woman. This seems even more radical than the Advocate interview, a means by which lang insisted these songs were personal, first-person, and grounded in gay desire. “Can your heart conceal what the mind of love reveals,” she sings on “Mind of Love,” and if you miss that she’s talking to herself, she calls herself by name: “Why do you fight, Kathryn? … Why hurt yourself, Kathryn?”

Yet, Ingénue is about desire, not orientation. These songs express a sexual, physical, and emotional yearning that is specific to her as an individual, specific to her as a lesbian, but she conveys it in such a way as to be universal on some level: something that might resonate with any listener, regardless of their orientation or even their opinion on orientation. In 1992 this might have had a humanizing, normalizing effect, because the risk paid off and then some: Ingénue was an immense crossover hit, anchored by the smash “Constant Craving.”

That song in particular has stuck with lang ever since: her signature tune, a mainstay of every concert she performs. “I knew it was a hit, and I was mad at it for that. I felt that it was a sellout at the time,” she told the New York Times earlier this year. But it’s not hard to see why the song would resonate with her audience, as it expresses a resilience in the face of prejudice or suspicion. “Even through the darkest phase, be it thick or thin,” lang sings in that voice, which sounds neither angry nor outraged but observant, matter-of-fact, as though a “darkest phase” was natural. “Always someone marches brave, here beneath my skin.” lang draws out those syllables in the chorus, pushing against the backing vocals, putting her words on the off-beats, drawing out those syllables—the consonants in “constant,” the long vowel and sensuous V in “craving”—to hint at possibilities: Craving for what or for whom? Constant as both heroic and burdensome, never satisfied?

Whatever it might mean to any one potential listener, it “has always been.” This craving is natural, lang insists, coded deep into all humanity, as constant in 2018 as it was in 1992.

WATCH: Lorkin O’Reilly, “Huckleberry Finn”

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Artist: Lorkin O’Reilly
Hometown: Catskill, New York
Song: “Huckleberry Finn”
Album: Heaven Depends
Release Date: August 24, 2018
Label: Team Love Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this song about spending summer holidays with my grandparents in Ballantrae. It’s a small town in the southwestern armpit of Scotland with one pub, a gas station and little else. Their house was full of cigarette smoke, the TV was always on and the fridge was always full of soda. Us kids would jump the wall into the junkyard next door and break old car windows with slingshots or kick a football against the garage door. I’ve been harboring a lot of guilt about leaving my family in the UK. It’s been almost 6 years since I moved to the US and a lot has changed. Writing this song was an attempt to reconnect with some of the better memories of my childhood.” – Lorkin O’Reilly

Photo credit: Patrick Glennon

BGS 5+5: Wild Rivers

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Artist: Wild Rivers
Hometown: Toronto, Canada
Latest album: Eighty-Eight
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Wolf Island, Chancey Shoegaze (Andrew’s guitar pedal obsessed alias), Cortez the Killer (Khalid’s wannabe cowboy persona)

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

The primary influences that inform our music are really our musical heroes. Many of the songs I write come out of listening to some piece of music, getting inspired by one part of it and examining and working around that. Film and TV are other inspirations that I think find their way into the songs. I’m intrigued by movies and TV that examine a specific character. There are so many movies right now that do an amazing job of showcasing a complex, flawed character, while allowing the audience to empathize with them. I think a lot of songwriting is doing just that, telling a story while unapologetically showing both the good and ugly sides of it. — Khalid Yassein

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

There have been many tough times writing songs. Not so much in an emotional sense, often the most difficult songs emotionally songs are the easiest for me to write. A lot of times in the last few years we’ve written songs where one part of it is really strong, so writing the rest of it to live up to that standard can be exceptionally hard. I’ve got some songs that have been in the works for a few years now, and you can absolutely hit a wall. It can be a lot of frustration, and sometimes 90% [of your time] can be spent toiling and thinking, and then in the span of a few minutes it suddenly becomes perfectly clear what you have to say. It’s about persistence and trying not to put too much pressure on what should be an organic experience. — KY

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

We start every show with an off-stage huddle. We get into a circle, and whoever is feeling the most energetic will say a few words to pump us up. Then we count to 3, bonk our heads together and say “team!” It sounds pretty ridiculous, but it really gets us focused and in tune with one another. We haven’t developed many studio rituals yet, other than consuming lots of coffee and making Khal drink some whiskey when we want him to sound more raspy. — Andrew Oliver

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Living in Toronto, we experience the extremes of each season. From harsh winters to hot summers, and the beauty of mild springs and falls, it’s easy to be inspired by the changing landscape. Having distinct seasons also allows for memories to be tied to a specific time of year. I think this definitely informs my songwriting, as it creates a sort of nostalgia associated with each season. I know I definitely write more sad songs in the winter when I’m longing for a little sun. — Devan Glover

Getting away to spend time outside of the city is something we all love to do. Clearing your mind by spending time in nature can be very therapeutic, and always helps to put me in a creative headspace, so it probably indirectly informs a lot of my music and writing. Sometimes when I’m feeling stuck creatively, I’ll drive up to my cottage for a change of scene. — KY

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

I usually write in first person, but I don’t think I’m fooling anyone with a sneaky pronoun change. If you think switching up “I” and “you” is going to protect yourself you’re probably in the wrong business! Most of our songs are really about us and our lives so we have to accept being vulnerable in a very public way. It can be difficult and scary but I think people can tell if you’re being authentic or if something is contrived. Some of my favourite writers say things in songs that are so raw and unashamed, and it’s incredible. Those are the lines that stick with you forever, they make you feel something. — KY

Photo credit: Laura Partain

WATCH: Worry Dolls, “Tidal Wave”

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Artist: Worry Dolls
Hometown: London, England
Song: “Tidal Wave”
Album: Go Get Gone (Deluxe Edition)
Release Date: July 13, 2018
Label: Bread & Butter Music / SFE

In Their Words: ​”​The first verse of the song was a voice memo on ​my phone for nearly a year that ​I kept coming back to but couldn’t really figure out what it was about. I knew tidal wave was a metaphor for when it feels like life is coming at you at full force and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. But it wasn’t until I lost an extremely close family member last summer, very tragically and suddenly, that I came back to the song and realised it was about grief. When you’re grieving they say it comes in waves, but for me it felt like a tidal wave.

Around the same time, I had just got my first Gibson and it was this gorgeous Sheryl Crow edition Southern Jumbo with this beautiful rich, warm bass. Zoe was using a vintage Earl Scruggs banjo and when we got the instruments home, this song just poured out. It was like the stars had finally aligned. Quite soon after finishing it, we produced it ourselves and recorded it live in a converted cowshed just outside of London!​” ​– ​Rosie Jones, Worry Dolls

Photo credit: Finlay O’Hara

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

Fink, Marxer & Gleaves: Connecting Songs, Connecting Stories

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Intersectionality is the keystone of activism and action. Banding together across whatever barriers our identities present strengthens and energizes the mission, stripping away the isolation that all marginalized folks feel on the day-to-day. In bluegrass and old-time, many, many activist-minded artists, creators, and songwriters have carried the banner for inclusion and an action-forward, open community since the very beginning of these genres.

Cathy Fink & Marcy Marxer are a prime example of those forebears, having fought for the inclusion of queer identities and women in folk music and bluegrass for decades. Shout & Shine, their new collaboration with youngster-yet-old-soul Sam Gleaves, is a perfect illustration of cross-generational mind melds — and musical melds. Messages of social justice, feminism, working class empowerment, and activism through music are so viscerally powerful because the trio shows that anyone can connect with each other across the rifts and barriers that many would assume were insurmountable. In this case, age and experiences are most strikingly disparate, but the core concept should apply to gender, religion, orientation, cultural background, or banjo right hand playing styles, too.

BGS is proud to be a place where these intersections are encouraged and celebrated, whether editorially or, for instance, on stage at our Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass showcase, held in Raleigh, NC during the International Bluegrass Music Association’s business conference for the past two years. Fink, Marxer & Gleaves — before they officially donned that moniker — performed for the showcase in 2017. The theme song they penned for the event is indeed the perfect ethos for their band, their album, the showcase itself, and the types of connections we’re all trying to foster as we press ever forward.

Some folks might not know that the Bluegrass Situation is already connected to this album and its title track!

Cathy Fink: I think it’s a pretty simple connection — I would even say that the Bluegrass Situation and the Shout & Shine showcase at IBMA were the reasons that brought Cathy & Marcy back to IBMA. [It gave us] a big feeling that the door was opening wider for more inclusion in every direction at the conference. Needless to say, once I found out about the showcase I made the connection with you about having us involved. And I made some suggestions for other artists [you] could have, which turned out well. We had worked with the Ebony Hillbillies and they came.

So I was just sitting on the back porch one day and I thought, “You know, this event needs a theme song!” Sometimes you think about a song for years and sometimes it takes a couple minutes and there it is. This happened to be one of those songs. It really popped out. There were several lines that I kept working on after that time, but that’s really what happened. In all serendipity, it fit our trio perfectly, in terms of what we stand for: loving traditional music, loving contemporary music that is formed on top of traditional music, and what we want to accomplish as a trio, playing bluegrass-related music that has a deeper meaning than, “I lost my girlfriend.” [Chuckles]

It often feels like this is a newer, growing movement for inclusion and diversity in bluegrass — it’s happening across roots music genres right now — but I wonder what it looks like to you, Cathy and Marcy, since you have been on the frontlines of this fight, this battle, this dialogue, for your entire lives? It’s often difficult for younger folks to appreciate how long and hard-fought these issues have been, and you two can bring this perspective, so I wonder, too, how this influences your mentorship?

CF: I want to start by saying the mentorship of Sam is a two-way street. We learn as much from him as he learns from us. Sam is an incredible inspiration to us, because he walks the walk, not just talks the talk — in terms of the songs that he’s written, the songs that he chooses, and frankly, how he treats people. These things are all interconnected.

Historically, for us, Marcy and I started to play out in the ‘70s, in days when women didn’t really play bluegrass music. I know that there are other women who had similar experiences, even though there were amazing women in country music on the radio beginning in the 1930s. One of our friends and mentors, Patsy Montana, was the first woman in country music to sell a million records. She was really the first woman in country music to start writing songs from the female perspective. Marcy and I spent ten years performing with and working with her, but we also played a lot of bluegrass festivals where people would come up to Marcy and say, “Wow! You’re a girl and you’re playing lead guitar!” They’d come up to me and say, “Wow! You’re a girl and you’re playing bluegrass banjo.” While we’d say, “Yeah, we’re people and we each have ten fingers that work!”

Marcy helped me with a release on Rounder Records in the late ‘80s called, The Leading Role. We did a lot of songs that people didn’t know had been recorded by these amazing women, like Ola Belle Reed, the DeZurik Sisters, Lily May Ledford, the Coon Creek Girls, and the Girls of the Golden West — there was an amazing heyday of women in country. Patsy made sure that they were getting the respect that they deserved. Then, later in the ‘80s, we did the Blue Rose album. Marcy and I put that together out of a desire to highlight some of the great women who we felt had been making amazing music but not getting any recognition. That included Sally Van Meter, Laurie Lewis, and Molly Mason.

Moving forward now, after thirty years, the cool thing is that we have the Justin Hiltner’s, and the Sam Gleaves’s, and the Jake Blount’s, and the Amythyst Kiah’s and a long list of people who are the next generation. They’re going to bring up the generation after them in a more inclusive world.

Marcy Marxer: My view is that in the early days of country music, the music better reflected who was actually out there playing. Then, when the record business got serious — not just 78s, but smaller, independent record companies started popping up and recording people — they might have recorded, say, just one or two fiddlers in an area, and because they were the two who got the record contract, that’s what people thought was happening over that whole area, when there could have been fifty other fiddlers within a mile. One of the reasons why it went to all-male was that that’s who was getting the record contracts. It wasn’t that women weren’t playing anymore, it’s that there were companies who were successful, then other companies wanted to copy that success, and it grew into being a male-dominated field.

This issue keeps coming up as I do these interviews. The reason we’ve ended up where we are today, with these ideas of who “owns” roots music, is largely because of revisionism and erasure. What I appreciate about what you three do, and what this record stands for — at least in my eyes — is that we’re avoiding that sort of erasure as we move forward, because you two are collaborating with Sam, who is almost four decades your junior, so we aren’t losing these stories and this institutional knowledge. I see this as the most important message of this record. Do you agree?

MM: I do agree. Absolutely. I think that, additionally, the bonding of the friendships is the best part of this record and the joy that we feel from this music is an extension of [that]. What Sam brings to this project — and music in general — is that he’s done such extensive research and background. Often we’ll meet younger players and they don’t have that background at all. Sam knows all of the greats and has gone to see everybody that he can. Not that one is better than the other, because you have to start somewhere, but with Sam, we feel like we bonded immediately artistically, musically, and emotionally.

Let me bring you in Sam, I don’t mean to talk about you so much as if you aren’t also on the line. [Laughs]

Sam Gleaves: No! My nature is to listen and I’m just very honored to work with Cathy and Marcy because they really are my She-roes. It’s the truth. I’ve always admired their work promoting diversity in roots music, with their presence in the community and their advocacy.

One difficult aspect of making roots music in this day and age is that so many listeners just write it off as nostalgic and they don’t see it as something that’s present and in the here-and-now. There are so many folks primed to hear this kind of protest music or counter-cultural music right now, but they write off these genres as being for someone else. As you formed this series of songs, how consciously did you work to make this music relatable in a modern era?

SG: I think it’s very organic for us. We love playing music together and we know what sort of material is fun and exciting for us to play and what kind of messages we want to promote. We recorded a song that Maybelle Carter wrote, “Buddy’s in the Saddle”; we recorded a song from Jean Ritchie’s repertoire and Elizabeth Cotten’s repertoire. There’s a theme of matriarchs in these songs, which always feels powerful to share. I was honored to get to record three songs that I wrote, one about moonshine, one about a hot pink house trailer — which is super fun and zany — and a song called “Welcome Table,” which uses lyrics from African American spirituals. Cathy’s “Shout & Shine” is kind of the [album’s] ethos, it brings the theme all together. All of the material seems to have a balance of the joy of playing music together and messages of social justice and lifting up voices from the traditional music community.

Let me put the same question to you, Cathy.

CF: It did organically happen, but what organically happens between the three of us musically leans in the direction of wanting to make good music and speak social justice without having a hammer over people’s heads. We didn’t sit down and say, “Hey, we need to do a bluegrass album about social justice.” We sat down and said, “What are the songs we enjoy singing the most?” There was this list. There were some surprise songs, but they fit in beautifully. We knew that “Shout & Shine” was first and foremost, but the title of the album took on additional meaning when one night, after recording, I said, “Look Sam, I know you’re holding out on us, I know you have more songs and you haven’t shared them.” Sam in his usual, humble way played “Moonshine.” We said, “Bingo! Let’s figure that one out right now!” It made Shout & Shine more than just the agenda, but also just looks at real life for a lot of people and the fun — we all enjoy a little hit of ‘shine now and then! I think it shows Sam’s versatility as a songwriter. This song is just a great piece of Southern storytelling. One of the things we also did on this album is that we connected a bunch of stories that we felt drawn to. To a large extent, their about people that we know or knew.

Connecting stories is what keeps music that is focused on social justice from being bogged down by the weight of those topics.

CF: Exactly! I think you just nailed it. We try to do this in a celebratory way as opposed to a bogged down sort of way.

How do we take a message like this and connect it to people who maybe couldn’t automatically relate to a record, band, or collection of songs like this?

MM: For years I’ve felt like an icebreaker and I know that Cathy has, too, because we’re an openly gay couple and my being a woman in guitar and flatpicking, I found that by relaxing, being myself, and putting the best I have out there, people gain a glimpse of understanding and they don’t see stereotypes quite as much as they might have otherwise. One of the things that’s been on my mind is that I’ve been a cancer patient now for over three years and how that has really, totally changed my life and perspective. There’s one song called “Closer to the Light,” the last song on the record, that I really adopted. I did not write the song, but when I heard it I knew it spoke directly to me. That’s the beauty of a song. It doesn’t say “cancer.” It says, “I’m going through this dark time and I don’t mind as long as I keep moving toward the light.” That applies to everything. It applies to social justice; it reminds me of the days of the civil rights movement, when music would keep us going. There are so many individual songs that mean so much to individual people. It’s great to have open, gentle songs that just encourage us to keep going.

Photo credit: Michael G. Stewart

BGS 5+5: Chris Stills

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Chris Stills
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Latest Album: Don’t Be Afraid
Personal Nicknames: Stillsy

How do other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, and so on – inform your music?

My favorite way to get inspired is to go see other people play, because you see the human being on stage with their songs and not just the music. There is a depth there that informs you with so much more information on what the artist is about – the nature of their style, the way they wield that style and talent on stage and in front of their audience. I mean, you can get the record and listen to production, but to really get an artist, you see ’em live. It’s all about the banter which, to me, is actually the hardest part of playing in front of people.

Movies and docs are cool … paintings and poetry … I like watching people speak at readings. Anything can strike a chord, inspire a thought … it’s up to you to seize upon it and write it down, record it, spend time with it, honor it. It’s like a laser beam from the universe – not to sound too hokey but it’s true. You gotta put yourself in the position to not just receive it, but to translate and interpret it.

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

I heard “Little Wing” on the radio when I was about 10 years old. That song changed the way I listened to music forever and, from then on, I started to dive into playing more and wanting to recreate the magic that I was suddenly privy to.

If you could spend 10 minutes with John Lennon, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Sister Rosetta, or Merle Haggard how would it go?

Truth is, I have spent time with others like them and, when I was younger, I’d want to hide in a corner and just observe. I never thought I had anything important enough to say, or that they would ever want to hear what I had to say. Now, with age, I realize that it’s not about being important; it’s about being yourself. It’s that thing where you realize that your existence is no different than theirs and you just need to go with yourself. Be your badass self, no matter who you’re in the room with. That actually can be enough to attract the best of them. And with a cast like that, anything could happen. How would it go? Well, dinner would be nice.

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

The toughest time, for me, is mostly getting my shit together to actually finish them. There is a finality to songs that can sometimes fuck with me. Like I’m going to ruin it. I’m going to miss its potential. Dealing with some unrealistic fear that there will be no songs after that. Like when you don’t want your kids to grow up. Because when they grow up, they’re not yours anymore. I’m still finishing songs I started 20 years ago. Sounds crazy and stupid, but that’s my self-inflicted cross to bear. Still working on that one.

As you travel around the world, what is the overriding sense you get of the people?

When you start out, every crowd is different. They present different difficulties but every one is an opportunity. You learn to take the right chances at the right time to grab them and win them over. What’s funny is, when you come back around, those crowds are more than likely the same as they were when you were last there. Just more of them! I love the humanity in that. And it plays into local traditions, and local credence to music, and their understanding and love of it.

 

Photo credit: Laurence Laborie