Tag: Goat Rodeo Sessions

Artist of the Month: Aoife O’Donovan

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

There’s a confidence and ease to Aoife O’Donovan‘s music making, brought forward throughout her career by her languid, tender, and emotive voice. Just as striking and crystalline as it is cozy and comforting, her voice is a truly iconic instrument in Americana, bluegrass, and new acoustic music. Still, as she readies her new solo album, All My Friends (out March 22 on Yep Roc), it feels as though O’Donovan is decidedly stepping into a new era of confidence and self-assuredness, devoid of any sense of desperation or flightiness or unfettered ambitions. There’s a steady, intentional march to the blossoming of her catalog and her artistry and it’s on full display on All My Friends.

The album was conceived as a sort of tribute to or reckoning with the cross-generational struggle for women’s rights, highlighting the passage of the 19th Amendment over 100 years ago and picking up that timeless mantle of ever-striding towards justice. It’s a perfect project to highlight during Women’s History Month; the intellectual and political messages within it are softened – though never outright whitewashed, revised, or sanitized – by O’Donovan’s perspective as a mother of a young daughter. With All My Friends, she is continuing her journey with another timeless tradition in string band music: the role of mother-activist-songwriter-composer.

One of the record’s lead singles, “Daughters,” was heralded in a press releases as “a meditation on the eternal quest for women’s rights and equality.” Meditative qualities might be the most tangible and original through line of O’Donovan’s songwriting, song collection, composition, and her vocal affectations – from as far back as her days with Crooked Still, or evidenced by the songs she brought to her supergroup trio, I’m With Her, with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. As on “Daughters,” O’Donovan more often than not opts for quiet-and-impassioned, subdued-while-soaring vocals. She’ll wrap you in the gauze and glitter of her one of a kind voice and, in doing so, prepare you ever so gently and kindly to receive the messages in her lyrics – however demonstrative or abstract they may be.

O’Donovan’s latest era of confidence is also well marked by her vast and varied resume of musical collaborations. Besides Crooked Still and I’m With Her, she’s released music with Goat Rodeo (Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile), Noam Pikelny, the Milk Carton Kids, Taylor Ashton, Donovan Woods, and so many more. In more recent months and years, she’s featured Allison Russell on a track (on 2022’s Age of Apathy), collaborated with mind-boggling guitarist Yasmin Williams and step-dancer Nic Gareiss on a stunning number entitled “Dawning,” and even “came back” to straight ahead bluegrass with a recent single feature on a Becky Buller track, “Jubilee.”

Her output is ceaseless, her art is prolific, but here – as in the new album, and across her discography – the hallmark of O’Donovan’s work isn’t volume, but intention. This is not breakneck, music industry ladder climbing, this is an artist deliberately expanding the universe of her music bit by bit, voice by voice, collaboration by collaboration. It’s part of why she’s such an effective voice and influence in control rooms, too. (Though her production credits are relatively few, they are mighty.) And it’s part of why, as you scroll through our Essential Aoife O’Donovan playlist, you’ll find as many surprising and eyebrow-raising selections as you will her mighty, familiar modern classics.

All My Friends – with appearances by The Knights, The Westerlies, Anaïs Mitchell, Sierra Hull, Pikelny, and more – is yet another demonstration of O’Donovan’s community, her central role within it, and her confidence in inhabiting that role wholly and completely. This is meditation without stagnation, orchestration without machinations, softness and tenderness, but with a steel spine. These are challenges to the status quo while knowing real progress is made with one foot placed in front of the other – and with many other footsteps following her own.

Throughout the month of March, as we highlight Women’s History Month, we’ll be celebrating the new album, All My Friends, and Aoife O’Donovan as our Artist of the Month. Stay tuned for a special “In Conversation” Artist of the Month feature to come later in March featuring an amazing artist and collaborator of O’Donovan, and we’ll also be dipping back into the BGS archives to resurface so many amazing songs, videos, articles, and stories that highlight the incredible music of Aoife O’Donovan.

Photo Credit: Sasha Israel

For Chris Thile, Instrumental Music Excels in the Cracks of Language (2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Chris Thile has always woven religious references into his songwriting, but never so much as on Laysongs. Recorded in solitude in an old church with just a mandolin and a sound engineer, the new album offers lyrics that question our impulses and references that span the Bible (“Ecclesiastes”), Hungarian composers (a take on Bartok’s “Sonata for Solo Violin, Sz. 117: IV. Presto”), and bluegrass legends (a cover of Hazel Dickens’ “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me”) in service of a higher truth.

Here, in the second installment of a two-part interview, BGS catches up with Thile about co-producing an album with his wife, finding inspiration in good wine, and why great instrumental music should emulate a warm dinner conversation.

Read the first half of the BGS Artist of the Month interview with Chris Thile here.

BGS: Your wife, [actress Claire Coffee], co-produced this album with you. What did that lend to the final product, and how did it influence the process?

Thile: Pretty much since we met, she’s graciously been my unofficial editor. It was high time to just formalize that. [Laughs] When you’re doing something like this — a pure solo record, no overdubs, absolutely nothing between me and your ears — it really helps to have someone involved who is absolutely 100 percent unimpressed with you. She has heard every one of my tricks and can see straight through them, can hear straight through them.

As an actor and someone who’s made a lot of film and television, Claire cuts straight to the chase: “Is this meaning something? Does one and one equal two here? Are we starting somewhere and ending somewhere — and how is the ride between those two points? Are we engaged? Is this clear enough, and does it ever get too painfully clear? Are we leading the witness, are we telling people the punchline before we give them the setup?” I can really gild the lily when left to my own devices. Musically, I can sort of be the guy in the theatre, like, elbowing you — like I’ve seen it six times and I’m like, oh, you’re going to love this part! And so Claire, I think, is so good at being like, “Hey. Don’t do that.” [Laughs]

And perhaps, also, letting you know when it’s warranted.

Right. Sometimes I won’t pull the trigger on what would be a really interesting decision because I’m worried that I’m just swinging too hard. I sort of gingerly put the idea of doing the fourth movement of Bartok solo violin sonata. Thinking, well, this is kind of a bridge too far. I sent it to Claire like, “What if I learned this on the mandolin?” and she was like, “Absolutely. Do that. That’s gonna be amazing.” Which was just so shocking to me! I thought I had probably lost my mind. [Laughs]

It was also her idea to put it after “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth.” I mean, I feel like everyone thinks they’re gonna get a big ol’ chance to exhale after “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth,” and instead… I mean, think of it like these Peloton instructors: You think, “Surely, surely this is it. Surely this is the hardest I’m gonna have to go.” And they’re like, GIVE ME FIVE MORE ON YOUR RESISTANCE!!

I feel like it’s that kind of move, going from “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” to the fourth movement of the Bartok sonata. It’s as if the demon in “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” just took my mandolin from me. But that’s the kind of perspective someone who loves you—but isn’t taking any of your shit—can help you with, especially someone who also has a deep and wide skill set that is compatible with mine. It was so fun to work with her on that.

You’ve always got multiple projects going. Is there anything you learned specifically from performing in groups and making music in that atmosphere that you feel gave you an advantage when you set out to record an album alone?

The accountability — the musical accountability, artistic accountability — that you feel in a collaborative context is noticeably absent in a solo context, so you need to pick up the slack there. You need to start roleplaying those people in your life who hold you artistically accountable. Thank God I had Claire involved in this project, but on the deep I-dotting and T-crossings that you encounter at every step along the way of the record-making process, I would also assume the role of an Edgar Meyer or Gabe Witcher or a Sara Watkins. I’d tease out a little fake conversation between myself and them, all by myself in the practice room. “In what way am I not being clear enough right now? In what way am I being self-indulgent right now?”

There are so many things that you learn from the people around you. But there are also things that you can learn in the silent retreat of making music solo. There are things that I can take back to each of those projects — things I can take back to Punch Brothers, or Nickel Creek, or the Goat Rodeo Sessions — that I think could be illuminative in those contexts.

Do you enjoy talking about religion outside of your art?

People have such strong feelings about religion. You wanna bust open a conversation, bring up God — like, in a real way. People are gonna quit mincing words and they’re gonna start talking about shit. I love that. I really love talking to people about that kind of stuff, from wherever they are. I find it endlessly instructive in my own journey. I find someone’s total disinterest in it just as interesting as total interest in it. If I bring up God and you’re like, “I don’t wanna talk about that shit, come on,” then I love you for that. Let’s go with that. Let’s talk about that.

And if I bring up God and you’re like, “Ugh, you know what? I was just praying about that this morning, I feel like the Lord brought you to me,” I’m in. Let’s go there. Why do you feel that way? Let’s go there. At this point, I have no reservations about bringing up God. It’s always been an instinct of mine to infuse whatever I’m thinking about with a little of that kind of imagery and language and thought, and so this was cathartic for me to just turn all the taps on and let it run.

You push beyond your own religious upbringing, too — you also included a song, “Dionysus,” named for the Greek god of grapes and wine. What inspired you to write about that figure?

I’m always looking for encouragement, as a human being, about human beings. We see a lot of evidence of our failings right now, and I want to see evidence of our success. Wine — the existence of good wine — is evidence of our success as a species. That is a beautiful relationship with the earth. We have occasionally exploited that relationship, but the best wine comes from the healthiest relationship with the soil. The best winemakers have this beautiful balance of science and mysticism. It sounds silly, but I find the whole thing very inspiring.

Ecclesiastes 2:24 seems like it’s along those lines, too: “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God.” Why express that instrumentally rather than through lyrics?

Think about the last great dinner that you had with friends. Could you really, with words, describe to me why it was so great? Could you say, “And then we talked about this” or “Next, we gossiped about that”? When you walk me through that, or when I walk you through the last dinner I had, it’s gonna sound trite. And yet, there was something holy about it, you know? Maybe there was a new person that you sat next to, and you got a little light into a different corner of life that night. But could you say with words what that was? I don’t think you could, necessarily, say what can be so transcendent and transportive about a great dinner with friends. That’s where instrumental music excels — in the cracks of language. What language is incapable of properly expressing, instrumental music steps up and says, “I got this.”

Photos: Josh Goleman

Chris Thile Considers His Community and Christian Upbringing in ‘Laysongs’ (1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

For a while, Chris Thile might have been the busiest man in bluegrass. The former public radio host has snagged four Grammy awards and a prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant,” all the while maintaining his status as a founding member of Punch Brothers, the Goat Rodeo Sessions, and Nickel Creek, collaborating with plenty of other Americana firebrands along the way. But on his latest album, Laysongs, Thile slowed down.

A solo album in the truest sense — it’s just Thile and a mandolin, after all — the album was recorded by engineer Jody Elff at Future-Past, a studio housed in an old church in Hudson, New York. The setting was a perfect match for the religion-influenced album, which ranges from the biblical passages of Thile’s Christian upbringing to mythological ideas about gods and gathering from the Greeks and the Romans. Below, in the first of a two-part interview, BGS caught up with Thile about recording the new album, finding inspiration in memories from his adolescence, and the dearly missed joy of a packed concert hall.

BGS: You recorded this album in a church in upstate New York. What did that atmosphere lend to the album, whether purely sonically to the recording or more generally as inspiration?

Thile: That was such a stroke of luck in a time that felt like it was a little thin on luck overall. [Laughs] We were weathering the earlier stages of the pandemic in Hudson, New York, and someone told me about a church right in the middle of town that had been converted into a studio. I went and checked it out and played a few notes in there and absolutely loved it. It’s not the most awe-inspiring church, but there were stain-glassed windows and very odd paintings that all brought me right back to my childhood.

I never attended a grand, elegant church growing up. This was still a beautiful church, but it was helpful that it wasn’t, y’know, St. Patrick’s in downtown New York — that it had a whole lot of that whole human-beings-just-trying-to-do-the-best-with-what-they-have kind of a vibe. Getting to be there was really helpful in terms of getting into character for the songs that I was recording. So much of the record comes from solitude… Actually, the solitude of the pandemic felt a lot like the solitude of spending one’s adolescence in a church pew.

What do you mean by that?

I spent so much of my adolescent time in church wondering if I was the only person there who was doubting the existence of God, or who couldn’t not think about how attractive the girl two pews over was. “Wait, I’m going to hell now probably, right?” Or, “Wait, is there hell? What is going on?” The pandemic thrust me and a lot of other people that I know back into that sort of lonesome, existential monologue: “Has every single choice I’ve made up to this point been wrong, perhaps?”

The sort of strange dialogue that we have with ourselves late at night started reminding me of those weird dialogues I would have with myself in church. I could well imagine at 16 years old sitting in this pew at Christian Community Church in Kentucky. I could well imagine there was a little angel and devil on my shoulder kind of duking it out. The centerpiece of the record, “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” is very much a grown-up version of that feeling—but you know, also, how grown-up, really? I’m 40 now, and so much of the time, this felt like a rebirth right back into adolescence, smack in the middle of the most awkward period of our lives.

I loved being in that church for all those reasons. It was so easy to put myself in the headspace I was in when I had written the lyrics or when I discovered the power of those songs that I didn’t write that are on the record. It just lent a certain weight to those performances.

Why did it feel like the right time to approach religion specifically here? Was there anything you felt you had to tread carefully around?

If there’s a silver lining of this whole incredibly disorienting and distressing affair, it’s the chance to gain a little context: to have been forced to take a massive step back and to take a look at our lives, whether we wanted to or not. One of the things I saw, in the midst of missing the community that I’d inserted myself into, was that community often ends up acting in ways that are similar to my experience of organized religion.

How so?

A lot of people who grow up with religion and veer away from it at a certain point are veering away from what they — what we — perceive to be a poisonous exclusivity, or habitual exclusionism. I think that’s one of the main turn-offs for my generation on organized religion. You start meeting people who aren’t welcome in the flock, and you start wondering why. Having taken a step back, I see the same kind of exclusionary behavior in my current community. If you take a look at your own community, it’s probably full of people who think a lot like you do, and who feel very similar to the way that you do about whatever’s going on right now, and who live in a very similar way. I worry that we, as human beings, are trading one messed-up thing for another messed-up thing.

I adore community. I love it so, so much. For instance, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival: I feel like those are the high holy days of my acoustic music-making community, and to be deprived of them is so painful. You feel cast adrift, untethered. I can’t wait to get back and I’ll never take that for granted again. But I also want to go back there with my eyes wide open as to whom I have habitually not welcomed into that community. What barriers am I being a part of unknowingly placing between people and that community that I love so much? And what harm is that doing that community?

Tell me about how that harm appears on the record.

There’s a lot in the record about coming together, but there’s also a lot in the record about our compulsive need to compare ourselves favorably to other people. In an effort to feel better about ourselves, we look for someone to feel better than. That’s what “Salt (in the Wounds) of the Earth” is about. I took a look at this thing that had been a big deal for me in my adolescence, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, and I was wondering: What would those demons be up to with me, right now? They would be preying on this compulsive desire to feel good about myself. One of the easiest, dirtiest ways to feel better about yourself is by looking at someone else and going, “Well, I’m better than that guy.”

In “Laysong,” the lyrics mention “drown[ing] out the enemy.” It made me wonder what it is that you consider the enemy — maybe it’s this comparison trap, maybe not — and how you drown it out.

When I wrote that lyric, the enemy was he or they that would talk loudest regardless of whether they had the best idea. “I’m gonna say whatever I have to say louder than anyone is saying anything else, and therefore it will be all that’s heard, and the discussion will be on my terms.” That felt like the enemy. And at that moment, in that lyric, I had to write it. It fit with the shape of the melody. The idea of drowning out the enemy — I couldn’t shake it, even though it’s not what I believe to be right. [Laughs] Hopefully you can get a sense of that in the performance, that it’s coming from an angry and not altogether balanced place. In that moment, I was pursuing the idea of drowning out the enemy with beauty, with restructuring, with anything, really. Let’s get a love song, let’s get a hard-times song, anything but a song about the front page of the newspaper.

The record starts there and ends with the Hazel Dickens song, “Won’t you come and sing for me.” When I get back into the concert hall, there’s no way I’m not ending my solo set with that song, the performance is going to be sincere—especially at the end of all this solitary music-making. [Laughs] But “Laysong” is very much like an altar call for the record. “Here’s what we’re gonna discuss.” Who knows where we’re gonna come out? I know that when I listen to a record, there’s a collaboration that starts there. I would love to imagine that happens when people listen to my records, too—that it starts a conversation. I can’t wait to feel that in the concert hall. No piece of music is done until you [the audience] hear it. And I am so dearly looking forward to that completion of this little bit of work.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of the BGS Artist of the Month interview with Chris Thile.

Photos: Josh Goleman

Chris Thile Keeps His Goat Rodeo Bandmates From Falling Out of Trees

Posted on by Editor

For more than a quarter of a century, Chris Thile has been constant force in the American music scene — and he’s still shy of 40. The musical polymath always seems to have some project going on: whether as a duo (pairing most prominently with both Michael Daves and Edgar Meyer), a trio (Nickel Creek), quartet (Goat Rodeo), and quintet (Punch Brothers). And he has won Grammys in all of those groupings.

Last summer, Thile rendezvoused with his Goat Rodeo brethren — fiddler Stuart Duncan, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and bassist (and fellow MacArthur “Genius Grant” honoree) Edgar Meyer — to record their long-anticipated sophomore effort, Not Our First Goat Rodeo, which came out in June. What Thile finds is so special about this collaboration is that it features musicians who are, he says, “excited by, and invigorated by, discomfort. Like a good stretch. I think this project is defined by the willingness of its participants to stretch outside of their perceived comfort zones.”

This Artist of the Month interview is the third of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians of Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

In a BGS interview a couple years back, you said, “I think any album worth listening to is a concept record.” Was there a concept or an overarching theme behind the new album?

Thile: I don’t know if I would, at this point in my life, back myself up on that no worthwhile album has been made without a concept. If indeed I said that I would walk that back just a touch. But the vast majority of records that have made a serious impact on me have had some sort of perceptible topics of conversations, governing principles, or thematic glue. With instrumental records, the themes start to become the play of contrasts and similarities between the individual participants, and the characteristics they assume in concert with one another.

The two actual lyrical vocal songs [on Not Our First Goat Rodeo] — there’s one other vocal song that has no lyrics — are both meditations on work/life balance. They both zoom the lenses in on the less-written-about parts of the relationships. We tend to write songs about the beginnings and ends of relationships, but we don’t necessarily write songs about the middle. Because the beginnings and ends can be so explosive. Hopefully, if your relationship is successful, your relationship will be in the middle until one of you dies.

Certainly the five of us together often talk about work/life balance. How our families are. How we are doing in context of our families, and how our families are doing in the context of our various endeavors. Lyrically that was something that Aoife and I talked about writing in the midst of those kinds of discussions and thoughts. Instrumentally, the themes are more abstract, but no less present. This project has a built-in [structure] of Stuart, Yo-Yo, Edgar, and me bouncing off of each other. Like, what’s it going to sound like when you smear those four people together? And when you get Aoife into the mix, it becomes a whole other thing.

Is writing lyrical songs for Goat Rodeo different compositionally than in other songwriting situations?

It is different. Since the project is so instrumentally focused, it’s ultimately an instrumental project that happens to have a couple of vocal moments in there. We came up with the music together, then Aoife [O’Donovan] and I went off, having discussed the various things we wanted to write about. But when we are writing that music, it is still kind of like instrumental music that happens to have some vocals on it. “The Trappings” being slightly more like you might expect a vocal song to be. “We Were Animals” came right in sort of the middle.

“Every Note a Pearl” was very much an instrumental, then we wanted some more instruments that could slide around. Also, we wanted some more stuff [happening] while Edgar was pizzicato and Stuart playing tenor banjo and me on the mandolin. We wanted Yo-Yo to have some friends in Sustaining Instrument-land. So, we felt, “OK, Aoife and I can help with that.” But we were never tempted to add words to that one. Because the project is driven by instrumentalizing, the vocals are more balanced in terms of where the interest is coming from. Often, if there are vocals in a piece of music, we are focusing on the vocals, and in this music we are not necessarily playing to those expectations.

The voices then are like fellow instruments?

Yes, absolutely. And they’re not given a place of greater prominence than any one instrumentalist is.

Can you talk about Aoife’s unique contributions to Goat Rodeo projects?

When we first did the project, it was an all-instrumental project. And then, I think it was Yo-Yo’s idea. During our practice, he said, “Chris, you sing. Why don’t you sing a little bit?” And I said, “OK.” It was pretty organic. It was like, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have another singer on these ‘singing songs’?” Aoife and I had never done anything officially together. It had always been at music festivals. Late-night jam sessions. Those type of things. I think both of us had so much fun singing together that I instantly thought of Aoife and I sent everybody recordings of her. Everyone was into it and off we went. It was still with the full knowing that it was an instrumental record.

That fits in with the group’s general philosophy of not conforming to any genre or expectations — to include anything into the music that makes it work.

That’s absolutely right. Nothing’s off limits. If one of us is interested in something, then it’s like, “Hell yeah!” I love that this record can go from something like “Every Note a Pearl” to “Not for Lack of Trying,” and the idea we’re going to be playing around with sliding slowly from one diatonic chord that is well within diatonic harmony to another — but we’re going to pass through all the points along the way, just very slowly. As if the music is melting/spontaneously generating.

And that’s a thing we’re going to pursue — we’re going to see what happens when we chase a thought. More so [on this album] than the first one, actually. This time through the composition process, more was on the table. We had already pursued our first instincts. It was time to really open up to what the possibilities were — having a foundation to begin with in the form of the first record.

Goat Rodeo features four exceptional musicians and it feels like you all try to bring out more in each other.

I love the ways in which it challenges me. I think it challenges each one of us. Maybe the defining characteristic of this ensemble is that what might stretch one of its members might be the absolute comfort zone of another. What might stretch Stuart as far as he’s ever been in one direction is a walk in the park for Yo-Yo. And vice versa. What might be absolutely stretching Yo-Yo to the point the farthest reaches of his exploration is like falling off a log for Stuart.

I love that aspect of this project. Something that’s super easy for me would be hard for Edgar. And something that’s super easy for Edgar would be hard for me. It runs through the whole ensemble like that. So you always have a guide. One of us can always teach the rest of the class about stretching ourselves as musicians.

Even within a piece.

Oh absolutely. Who’s the master of a given concept can switch throughout the course of a piece. And the learner can instantly become the master. And the master can become the learner, with the idea that we all get better at it as we go along. I love hearing the sound of when one of us is out on the limb right now but one of us totally has it. Don’t worry, that person is going to make sure you don’t fall out of the tree. Because you know that they will return the favor.

What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?

My world was totally blown open by Kendrick Lamar by How to Pimp a Butterfly. I think that is an extraordinary work. Talk about an album hanging together structurally. I think that is just a master class in developing one theme. I still have so much to learn from that record. That’s on the list. That’s definitely up there with the greatest records ever. It’s still opening my ears. The way I understood it when I first heard it is completely different from how I understand it now. One of the big differences is that I understand how little I understand about it. I think the best records do that. They open up your worldview — not just your musical view.

(Editor’s note: Read the remaining installments of our Artist of the Month interview series here.)

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

As ‘Goat Rodeo’ Returns, Edgar Meyer Makes Every Three-Note Chord Count

Posted on by Editor

Lucky is how Edgar Meyer says he feels that he and his Goat Rodeo collaborators — Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, and Stuart Duncan — were able to get together for the ensemble’s second album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo. They weren’t so lucky, however, when it came to their tour, which was supposed to start in August. “That’s not going to happen right now,” he tells BGS, adding, “We were looking forward to cherry-pick from both records.”

Along with their 2011 debut, which won two Grammy Awards, the Goat Rodeo albums represent two of the many high points in Meyers’ illustrious career. Renowned for his artistry on the double bass as well as for his compositional skills, the award-winning musician has been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize — the only bassist to have won either. Meyer also might be the man most responsible for Goat Rodeo’s existence. Having collaborated with both Ma and Thile, he introduced them to each other; later he and Thile recommended Duncan to Ma as the one to round out their quartet.

This Artist of the Month interview is the second of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians of Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

BGS: Was there less preparation time for Not Our First Goat Rodeo than for the first album?

Meyer: I’d say in terms of learning how to play the parts, yes. But Stuart, Chris, and I spent 20 days together writing and that’s very similar to the first one. That’s probably more important than learning how to play it. We were not particularly well rehearsed or knew the music when we [all] got together, but the important part — which is the writing — had about the same amount of effort.

How was it building these pieces together?

It’s a joy. It is a unique endeavor and we were able to go somewhere we probably wouldn’t go with another set of people.

And did songs evolve a lot once you all got into the studio?

Not much in terms of the actual notes. Maybe the feeling of it — that would evolve some. Occasionally, there might be a kind of loosely mandolin/bass improvised area that became more consistent in what it is. But there’s not a lot of that. Actually [the] music did not change immensely while recording, except in terms of it gelling. And in terms of people really understanding everyone else’s and their own roles, and making it into a whole.

All four of you had more familiarity playing with each other this time. Did that make it easier for everyone to gel?

Overall, yes. It’s tricky in that we attempted to try to find things that were wholly different from the first one. I wouldn’t say that we entirely succeeded in that, but I don’t think we were disappointed either. We just felt obligated to try and find brand new places to go. At the end of the day, it still sounds exactly like that same set of people — and I don’t think we were able to deeply change it. I think it is nine years later and I think we are all a little bit different. It is a different record, but very recognizable from the first one.

Were there musical territories that you all were specifically interested for this album?

For each piece we do, there’s always something that we are trying to explore that is new in some way for one or all of us — that’s almost a baseline. An esoteric example would be… I relate to harmony most centrally as a three-voice thing. For me if there’s more than three voices usually, no matter what the type of counterpoint is, most of these things are not going to track all four at the same time. But it is possible with good three-part writing to have the listener track all three voices almost all the time. That’s just what I find. Obviously somebody with enough skills will try to turn that on its head.

Depending on which way you count, there are either 19 possible three-note chords or there are 12. The modern music guys like to say 12, but their way of counting says that the major chord is the same thing as a minor chord. So, I prefer to count 19 and make those redundancies separate chords.

So, for “Not for Lack of Trying,” we experimented; there’s a chorale that it’s kind of built around — a three-part chorale. It has a repeated phrase. I think we tried to get one of each kind of chord. And maybe it’s a 24-note chorale [because] the last five chords are the ones that were used in the beginning. But there’s at least one of each of the 19 kinds of three-note chords in that chorale. That’s not something we did on the first record.

But there’s always some kind of something that somebody or all of us are trying to explore. And it’s not going to usually be something like, “Oh, we wanted to see if we could mix some bluegrass with some Caribbean music.” It’s going to be much more melodies, rhythms, harmonies — very specific musical questions.

What was your reaction listening to how Not Our First Goat Rodeo came together as a completed album?

I think mainly good… it’s a little more even than the first one. Maybe it doesn’t have some of the crazy highs, but it is a little more consistent. It’s more like somebody’s doing it for the second time.

This time everyone was a little more consistent with what instruments they played. Was that a conscious choice?

It’s just how it went down. The truth is on that count we were trying to emulate the first record. I probably like the variety of the first one slightly more. What we knew before we started the project was that an instrumentation of mandolin, violin, cello, and bass is not a very good instrumentation, and we knew the three of us would have to switch instruments in order to make the textures really work. Then when we are all on our main instruments, you can hear the comfort. You can hear all of us doing what we do best, but if you had to listen to those four instruments for a whole recording it wouldn’t work as well.

Song titles on both Goat Rodeo albums are very fun, like “Waltz Whitman.” Does one person tend to come up with the titles or are they batted around and one title rises to the top?

Chris and I had a session on the phone for about a half an hour the day before we turned in the album. “Waltz Whitman” was Chris’s, and he didn’t like it when he said it. I liked it a lot and made him stay with it. And, of course, he likes it now.

A lot of projects that Chris and I’ve done, and that I have done in general probably, have a lot of titles with useless meanings that the listener will never know about. Because we don’t put a lot of stock in titles. And so we could slap almost anything on there. This one actually didn’t have anything that we wouldn’t be afraid to have on the front page of the paper. There’s no hidden stories behind these titles. That’s unusual. Maybe it’s a new trend for me.

What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?

It’s a tough one because I will start by rejecting the question. What has had bigger impressions on me are particular pieces of music, and not particular recordings of them. The set of my favorite Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart pieces have had a bigger influence on me than single recordings have. My primary method of browsing in my formative years was less recordings than sitting at the piano and going through those composers’ scores. Although my list of influences is broad, at the top of it is Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, and my primary way of knowing them is not through recordings.

So it’s their compositions overall?

Yes, that is exactly right. And the scores themselves. Because that is what we have from them. Whereas with Stevie Wonder, the way I know him is through a recording; so that’s how I’m influenced by him. But with these classical composers, it is not through the recordings. Like I’ve said that’s the most important. It probably depends primarily on the vintage. It’s a tough one, because some people who lived during the times of recordings are not well-documented. Anyway, that’s a true answer though. That’s how it works for me. The essence of what moves me is the writing.

(Editor’s note: Read the remaining installments of our Artist of the Month interview series here.)

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

Aoife O’Donovan Finds Her Heart in the Verse of Others

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It’s not easy keeping up with Aoife O’Donovan. The 37-year-old Boston native grew up in a musical family, cutting her teeth with Crooked Still, a progressive bluegrass group she founded with four friends in 2001, and Sometymes Why, an Americana trio. She worked with Goat Rodeo Sessions (Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile) on an album that won a Grammy in 2013. Then, after an impromptu collaboration at Telluride Bluegrass Festival, she turned around and formed I’m With Her with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, winning a Grammy for “Call My Name.”

Meanwhile, it’s been ten years since O’Donovan released her first solo record, Blue Light, and since that time she’s released five more — with a new EP appearing this month. On Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs), she applies her soothing vocals and folk sensibilities to the poetic verse of others. The EP builds upon three numbers that bring to life the poetry of the late Peter Sears through songs O’Donovan wrote and arranged with Teddy Abrams and Jeremy Kittel for the 2015 Britt Festival in Oregon. Pared down from orchestral arrangements to a tour-friendly string quartet, she rounds out the five-song EP with two covers: Hazel Dickens’s “Pretty Bird” and traditional folk song “Lakes of Pontchartrain.”

BGS caught up with O’Donovan about what drew her to Sears’s poetry, the qualities of a great folk song, and how she stays grounded while throwing herself into so many creative endeavors.

BGS: What drew you to his Peter Sears and his poetry?

I had never heard of Peter Sears before getting a call to write a piece for the Britt Festival in Oregon. My friend and colleague Teddy Abrams suggested that we look to the poet laureate of Oregon for inspiration, so I got a book of Peter Sears’ poems at my local bookstore and was immediately in love with his writing. I absolutely loved his work. I loved the way he was able to write about simple things, everyday things, everyday feelings — it felt like these were the thoughts of my own heart. I loved it so much. In sifting through these books, I found these three poems — that didn’t go together, weren’t from the same collections — and I put them together. I was lucky to get to meet Peter Sears at the premiere of the piece in Oregon, back in 2015. He passed away a couple of years later. But he was a really special guy.

You didn’t write these lyrics, but did any of these lines or themes coincide with something you were going through personally?

The whole song cycle of Bull Frogs Croon has that. I set these songs to music at a very different time in my life, four years ago, five years ago. They’re three songs that are incredibly relevant to the human experience. The opening song, “Night Fishing,” is a meditation on stillness, on finding comfort in your own solitude. That’s definitely a human experience — I go through that all the time. “The Darkness” [describes] the idea that waves of emotion can come over you. The final song, “Valentine,” is a love song. It’s a two-stanza poem about the simple act of being in love with somebody, and I think that’s also universal — I hope people can relate to that!

In addition to the trio of songs inspired by Sears, you included two covers — one of which is “Lakes of Pontchartrain,” which is an Irish folk song you’ve included in live shows for a while. What are your roots with that song?

It’s one of my all-time favorites. My uncle James sings this song at certain jam sessions; as I was growing up, I would hear him sing it all the time. Every time I sing it at a concert, it’s the one song that people come up to me afterward and say, “I love that song! I love that song!” I hadn’t yet recorded it. The Paul Brady version of this song is the main recorded version, in my mind. It’s just the most beautiful song.

You grew up playing folk music with your family, and you performed many traditional songs early in your career with Crooked Still. From your perspective, what makes a good folk song?

“Lakes of Pontchartrain” is a classic example of what makes a folk song good: It has a long story, and you can really follow along with this guy. You can see yourself in his shoes. He’s lonely, he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t recognize anybody. And then he meets this beautiful girl who just shows him kindness. It’s not like it has a happy or a sad ending: It’s just an ending that could happen to anybody. She’s engaged to somebody else. But that doesn’t stop her from being kind and from them having a beautiful connection. I actually love that part of the story: “Fair thee well… I never will see you no more, but I’ll ne’er forget your kindness.” I wish there were more songs in the world that were about that.

You also included a Hazel Dickens song. Tell me about your relationship with her and her music.

Hazel Dickens is a very special person in the bluegrass and folk community. There aren’t tons of women who are as lauded as she is, of that age certainly. She wrote beautiful songs, and she was an incredible performer, singer, and musician. “Pretty Bird” is a very tragic song. I recorded it years ago for a Hazel Dickens tribute record that never came out, and then we re-recorded it with Crooked Still, just violin and voice. I wanted to have a string quartet recording of this. Jeremy wrote this arrangement years ago, and I think it’s just stunning. I’d been doing it live — any time I was around a string quartet, I would do “Pretty Bird” — and I just wanted to have [a recording of] it.

What’s someone or something you’ve seen in music recently that makes you feel excited or hopeful?

I have been listening non-stop to the Bonny Light Horseman record. I saw that live a few weeks ago and was absolutely floored. I had not enjoyed a live concert so much in a long time. The singing was so good. The record is so good, and the live show was just even better — more enhanced, and oh my God it was just so good. I just can’t even… I loved it so much. It was like the record on steroids. Everybody should be listening to that.

You’re involved in so many ongoing projects. What keeps you going on a daily basis?

One thing I love to do daily is go for a run. When I’m running, often I’ll get song ideas, or have some lyrics pop into my mind. Sometimes I don’t remember them, or I’ll remember them days later I’ll say, “Oh, I had that idea, I had that idea” and I’ll write it down. But I think making sure to carve out at least a little time for yourself is crucial, as an artist and as a musician.

And then of course, getting to connect with my husband and my family — little tiny things, like when my daughter does something amazing. Surrounding myself with people that I love and friends and family are a huge part of that for me. When I am home, one thing we’ve been doing is trying to have meals together, even when the timing is inconvenient. Maybe it means we have lunch at 11, or we have dinner at 5:30 — earlier than most musicians would probably like to be eating — but we’re really sitting down and talking about our day. I love that. My two-year-old is now saying things like, “Tell me how your day was! Tell me how your day was!” It’s a nice moment to just put the phones away, put aside everything not at the table, and really talk to each other.

Photo credit: Rich Gilligan