Tag: Good Country

You’re Looking At (Feminine) Country

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Sign up here to receive Good Country issues when they launch, direct to your email inbox via Substack.)

Eight years ago, in 2016, the harp-playing half of Brooklyn-based folk duo Devil & the Deep Blue Sea, found herself filing away songs for a solo project.

“There were certain songs… [that] would tell me who Lizzie No was going to be,” she explained in a recent phone interview.
“There were songs that felt very personal, very femme, and a little more country and a little more pop than would be appropriate in my band. Those songs started getting categorized into the ‘new solo project’ category. And then, I just had to come up with a name, you know. Like, I needed my Sasha Fierce alter ego, to be able to stand in myself.”

The name she landed on, Lizzie No, was a doozy. Considering the femininity she noticed her new songs projecting, the decision to include the word “No” in her name was no small thing. Women, especially feminine women – especially Black feminine women – have a special relationship with the word. It was important to No that her solo singer-songwriter persona reflect the energy she wanted to project, the space she wanted to carve for herself and her songs.

“I think there’s a real difference between singing songs that you wrote in the context of a band versus being a solo artist and having people literally look at you, in your physical body, and associate the songs with you and yourself. So I needed an identity, a performer identity, that would be able to encapsulate the confidence and the directness, and yes the femininity, that I wanted to present with these songs that I was writing.”

The idea of mindfully presenting femininity is nothing new, of course. Women in all professions must decide how they’d like to present; how many minutes or hours they will spend before each workday putting on their face and dressing to impress. But, there is a special place in the history of country music for artists taking the stage while female.

It was far less than a century ago that female country singers were expected to travel with a husband, brother, or other male family member as their escort. Women country singers were expected to eschew ambition and to primarily be a pretty face with a pretty voice.

All that started to shift when Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters made their Grand Ole Opry debut in 1950 – the first all-female band on that storied stage. In fact, well aware of how women were perceived and received by the country music establishment, Mother Maybelle nonetheless insisted her daughters become masterful on their instruments, develop independent business acumen, and forge a career on the stage.

For the 74 years hence, women who can and do shred have been of great interest to country music critics and fans alike.
Author and critic Marissa A. Moss dove deep into this subject with her 2023 book, Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Busted Up the Old Boys Club. Meanwhile, on social media, fans and artists alike routinely return to the evergreen topic of how much airplay women get (or, rather, don’t) on country radio.

To consider what it means to show up wholly oneself while feminine in country music can feel like engaging with a Groundhog Day loop through tired, generations-old expectations. Granted, the options for women have broadened a bit since the Carter Sisters showed up in their gingham checks and transcended what one might have expected from pretty women who sing and play. (A new documentary by Kristen Vaurio on Paramount+ about the youngest Carter Sister, JUNE, is well worth a stream.)

The modern answer to the Carters’ quietly subversive embodiment is a cadre of demonstrably feminine women like Allison Russell, Margo Price, and Amanda Shires. Recent Grammy winner Russell comes off like a clarinet-wielding, angel-voiced supermodel, self-made from equal parts awful trauma and infectious joy. Price appears as a cross between Willie Nelson and Cher, riding her biting narrative lyricism on the vehicles of magic mushrooms and low-cut, glittery fringe. Shires saunters about in spiked heels and leotards, a finer fiddler/poet than you’ll find anywhere else on God’s green earth.

That each of these women is stunningly talented as a lyricist, multi-instrumentalist, and performer, is inarguably the most important thing. But the messages they convey by leaning hard into how they wear their gender, remind us that women in country music no longer need to amplify the pretty and take the brilliance behind the scenes. There’s more than enough space for both/and.

It wouldn’t be a leap to suggest this is thanks in part to a rising tide of queer country artists. Lizzie No, Russell, and others – Jaimee Harris, Brandy Clark, Jaime Wyatt – prioritize songcraft as equivalent to crafting persona. Other queer artists like Paisley Fields subvert the masculine/feminine binary with candid expressions of personhood that transcend traditional femininity while remaining sonically adherent to traditional country music.

All of this raises numerous questions, including: What does 21st century femininity bring to the cis-het boys’ club of country music? Shouldn’t women get country airplay while also being free to show up as the full human they are?

Lizzie No is a good example of a walking answer to both questions.

A rising country singer whose music lands warmly – a stew of Dolly and Emmylou, a twinge of Kris, just a pinch of Sleater Kinney – her new album, Halfsies, is a mostly-country and occasionally rock and roll rumination on the intersections of love, identity, and freedom. While it may resonate for plenty of men and folks who don’t identify as feminine, it is, in other words, about the numerous conundrums and longing-for-transcendence of womanhood.

“There’s a patriarchal anxiety around performance and illusion, and we associate that with femininity,” No says. “[I’m] actually leaning into that and saying, ‘It’s all a mask. Gender is a mask for me and for you.’ That’s a big part of how I’ve constructed my identity as Lizzie No. I am one thousand different things and [you shouldn’t] try to narrow it down musically, or in terms of gender.”

She goes on to affirm that the way she constructed her performer persona is similar to drag. Considering country music is most often associated with Nashville (where No recently relocated from New York City), it’s worth considering that this new wave of feminine people in country music has risen at the same time as a push-back against drag performers in the same state and across the country. The tension between these two phenomena is mostly political and definitely charged.

When indie band Yo La Tengo played a show in Nashville shortly after the state passed its anti-drag bill, their decision to wear dresses onstage was a funny, tongue-in-cheek protest. An overt resistance, an assertion of allyship. This is different from when someone like nonbinary country singer Paisley Fields steps out in a sheer top and jewelry, or a dress. The former is clowning on politicians; the latter is throwing on something comfortable to engage in vulnerable, intensely personal creative expression. The former is playing to its indie rock audience, replete with left-leaning, ironic hipsters; the latter is forging a path of their own in the country music world, where femininity is a little more… complicated.

“The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to femininity in country music is just how misogynistic of a genre it is,” Fields said in a recent interview.

For example, they added, “The first time I wore a dress [onstage], I noticed the way people treat me is very different. Even if I’m just in a more, like, sort of flamboyant or more feminine look—maybe hot pink pants or something – I’m treated very differently. If I’m wearing a dress, it’s almost a little scary.”

Over the past couple of years, since coming out as nonbinary, Fields has been exploring what it means for a person assigned male at birth to express authentic femininity on a country stage. Indeed, they are just as likely to appear in the jeans-boots-hat costume of a country man as they are in a sparkly net top and purple chaps – an outfit nobody would look twice at, were it donned by Margo Price or Lizzie No. In the process, they’ve firmed up their own convictions around country music’s relationship with femininity.

“It would be better for a woman to be masculine [in country music] than for a man to be feminine,” they say. To clarify: “Some of the most successful women in country music are obviously very feminine and embrace their femininity, like Dolly Parton and [Shania] Twain. But there is this sort of like, tough as nails [persona], which I guess is perceived a lot of times as masculine.”
Granted, this tough-as-nails persona is often an outcropping of the mountains these women have needed to climb in order to make it onto the big stage.

In her 2022 memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It, Price detailed a few shady encounters with Nashville songwriters and executives who saw her as a young, hopeful girl who deserved to be exploited. That she survived these instances and earned success with her music on her own terms, in the end, perhaps lends itself to a tough-as-nails persona. But it is one that comes from being a woman with well-marked boundaries in a misogynistic boys club. When she rode into the 2022 Stagecoach Festival in a crop top and glitter skirt, on horseback, she knew she’d earned the right.

This balance of toughness and femininity (often used in a context where it’s synonymous with “weak” or “fragile” or “naïve”) is indeed not a stretch, but rather the innate characteristic of a woman with a strong moral center and the desire to get hers.

Lizzie No explains perhaps better than this writer can.

“I feel my most feminine when I am in some way using my physical body to achieve political ends,” she says. “To me, that’s my ideal of femininity. It’s like the women who lured Nazis to their death by being hot. When I want to post about taking down the government, you know, I will always use a bikini pic. … Because it’s like, hey, look over here, you’re going see my midriff and you’re going to learn about how capitalism has alienated us from ourselves.”

Photos of Lizzie No by Cole Nielsen.

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Moving & Returning

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Sign up here to receive Good Country issues when they launch, direct to your email inbox via Substack.)

I bet in the next few years, an expert taxonomist will come by and tell us exactly what country music is – and that this definition will create endless arguments. In the last few months, this argument about what exactly country music is has been growing louder. Jason Isbell has been fucking around with Nashville for decades, playing the field between rock, country, southern rock, country rock, and classic country. (He has recently said that he considers himself a rock singer). Adeem the Artist, the infamous cast iron pansexual, says that they are a folk singer. Willi Carlisle, a folk up-and-comer, has released Critterland, a certainly country album. On the other hand, Maren Morris released two singles last fall which were about burning Nashville to the ground, yet they’re perhaps the most country songs of her career – in terms of how she tells stories, how the bridges work, her vocal tones, and even some of the instrumentation. It seems lately, country is both everything and nothing.

Amanda Fields’ 2023 project deepens this ongoing problem. The album, What, When and Without, is a complex artifact of her own wrestling with genre, history, and biography. It slides into that complex sorting of genre and feeling that is key to Nashville right now. Fields calls this a country album – lushly produced, thick with strings, and dense with vocals, reminding one of an updated countrypolitan record – but sorting out what that means comes with a history of playing and listening.

Fields has a reputation on the bluegrass circuit, often an insular genre with an insistence on a certain kind of purity. She recognized how those questions of purity often don’t pay the bills, and her first major recordings were on a series of bluegrass cover records, called Pickin’ On – recorded by prominent bluegrass studio musicians, there are dozens of them, the artists covered include the expected (Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash), the unusual (Blink 182), to the fully flummoxing (Modest Mouse). Though Fields did not play on all of these records, she talks about them as an integral understanding of herself as part of a musical team: “When I look back on my experience within the ‘genres’ I’ve taken part in, I think about the groups of people I worked with… When I worked on Pickin’ On, I got that gig because of who I was hanging out with and playing music with at the time. I sang ‘gospel’ when I was growing up, because that was the community within my proximity.”

Proximity is a complex question for Fields. She has close ties to the bluegrass community, and there is something intriguing about the idea that genre is a social category – one about who one is near, or what the audience and the performer agrees to participate in. Yet there is a kind of roving that occurs here too; for Fields, roving is both a history of moving around geographically and, as she says here, moving from music that she considers bluegrass or gospel or country.

Fields moved around a lot as a child. Though she was born in Appalachia and currently lives in suburban Nashville (right next to Loretta Lynn’s old house), the line between these two legendary destinations was not direct.

Asking Fields about these roots – expecting a standard line in response – she honestly describes the complexity of her raising: “I’m originally from the mountains and it was my anchor growing up, but my dad moved us around a lot. He was one of those people who felt there was more to life than what was available to us living in that area, so he took job opportunities that carried us away from the mountains. I didn’t like that, because I was always longing to be ‘home’ with the rest of our family. I lived for summers and holidays when I got to be in Virginia and East Tennessee. Playing and listening to country and bluegrass music was my way to experience home when I couldn’t be there physically.”

This moving and returning is a common note for country musicians. Listening to her talk about the juxtaposition of moving, returning, being forced to leave, and finally finding home in an idea more than a place, I am reminded of Tanya Tucker or Merle Haggard. Tucker’s early childhood had a father who moved her from Arizona to Las Vegas to finally Nashville, chasing an acting and singing career. She broke out as a singer who fused a desire for rock and for country. It is similar to Haggard’s talk of moving – to California with his family as a consequence of economic disenfranchisement – and spending the rest of his career chasing economic stability. That idea was perhaps best written about in his tragic ballad “Kern River,” with its opening line, “I grew up in an oil town, but my gusher never came in.” (A Fields original from well before What, When and Without, “Brandywine,” strikes a similar note.)

This connection to Tucker, Haggard, and other classic country singers suggests that Fields landed not necessarily in a place, but as she says, in a music which has tight connections to place. What, When and Without, a classic country album, is infused with this kind of nostalgic listening.

Asked about her relationship to figures like Loretta Lynn or Haggard, she answers carefully: “Most of the music that really stirs my soul is older. I listen to all my friends’ new music and I’m always hunting something fresh to connect with, but on a day-to-day basis, I’m usually listening to the same stuff I’ve always loved. I’m talking Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty just about everyday. Classic country is what excites me (especially when I discover something I haven’t heard) and those familiar sounds and voices help me regulate my body’s nervous system.”

The album, rooted in those sounds, contains a deep knowledge of genre. Its ability to move between old school country, bluegrass chops, and deep, modern desire is one of its strengths. Figuring out how to sound both modern and historical is something Fields achieves with some skill. If her commitment to genre has a loose, rootless quality – or at least one which floats and lands depending on aesthetic or social need – then how she considers time has a similar quality.

Maybe her early commitment to bluegrass, a genre who remembers more than it forgets, and faces backwards as much as it faces forwards, and which was complicated by how hungry those covers were, suggests one way of bridging eras. But, her recent work, crafting contemporary studio craft with the careful polish of Studio A aesthetics is another. Asking her about memory and nostalgia, she again answers carefully: “One thing that was very intentional with the album was the pace. I think that going slowly is nostalgic in a way, because society and industry move so fast nowadays. I usually walk slowly and I talk slowly compared to most of my peers. My body responds to tempo and dynamics and I wanted to invite the album’s listeners to slow down with me.”

The slowness of the album can be heard in how she starts many of the tracks. There is often an instrumental intro where one waits a significant time for the vocals to be introduced and on occasion there are gaps, where her vocals recede and the band takes over – though the band itself is also quiet. There is a quality, listening to the work, of a kind of courtly two-step, the band asking Fields to dance, and vice versa.

The very first song, “What A Fool,” begins with brushed drums, and has a quite lovely open-ended moment where the pedal steel becomes central. On “I Love You Today,” the old-fashioned cheating song, heartbreak is introduced via an elegant, western swing sound, not outside of Lovett at his best. The last song, “Without You,” plays drums as solid and regular as a heartbeat. It’s another heartbreak song.

The pedal steel is crafted by Russ Pahl, who has been playing for decades. He has been nominated by the Academy of Country Music for his work on the steel guitar three times and for specialty instrument once, between 2004 and 2021. Before that, aside from being an in-demand studio musician, he was part of legendary Great Plains, another band who was excellent at moving between genres, across time, and throughout modes.

Talking to Fields about Pahl, she noted how good he was at not only playing, but matching vibes in the studio: “He came across very quiet and contemplative in the studio and I think he ‘got’ the vibe right away. After a song or two, he said, ‘…this ain’t Zip A dee Doo Dah.’ And it wasn’t. It was an album created in the midst of global pandemic [and] a time of great suffering for society and for myself personally.”

What, When and Without sounds like Fields has had some rough times, even outside of the lockdowns (regardless of how dense the record sounds, there is a yearning in the vocals that have a certain lockdown edge); but there is also an irony in this loneliness. Megan McCormick, who co-wrote on and produced the record and plays in Fields’ band, shows great intimacy throughout the project – there is a reason for this, McCormick and Fields are personal as well as professional partners. They sound good together, and the track where McCormick sings backing vocals, “Moving Mountains,” is the highest energy, most open of the entire record. It’s a great love song – but it’s a love song which calls to Mother Maybelle Carter as an avatar of country music, as a figure outside of space and time, which can tell the narrator how to love after years of heartbreak.

When asked about McCormick, Fields is still a little coy, but her commitment to their lives and sounds is made clear: “She really has a special gift and believing in her as a producer, as well as trusting her intuitions and abilities, has allowed me to grow as an artist. She’s my toughest critic, because that’s what I’ve asked of her. She’s also my constant cheerleader. We thrive when we get to travel together and both enjoy that feeling of being untethered that you get when you’re on the road.”

One can hear some of the untethered quality in Fields’ work, the road as untethering as much as time or genre, but the closeness that she has with McCormick is another kind of tethering, be it a consensual one.

Throughout the album, there is a quality of choosing which traditions are valuable, which are worth keeping, and which ones might have outlived their usefulness. When she talks about her childhood as a Pentecostal, she says: “I am very spiritual, still, and that energy I saw in church growing up is no different than the energy I feel when I’m composing music or playing music with other people with whom I am ‘tuned in.’”

She is definitely tuned with McCormick, their close contribution seen in how they work together – the harmonies without necessarily the negative consequences of some of that church life. She continues: “Those are universal aspects of the human experience that transcend dogma, class, and denomination and that’s what I carry on and value from my experience in church.”

One can see the universal quality in Fields’ work, and it contains interesting juxtapositions. A rootlessness across genre or time, which lands on something contemporary sounding; or a heartbreak record which rests on multiple commitments to one person; or even a religious tradition which widens and deepens.

Maybe we don’t need that taxonomy. An audience knows what a country record is.

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Photo Credit: John Brown

Artist of the Month: Willi Carlisle

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s not hard to imagine Willi Carlisle’s latest album, Critterland, as a decrepit-but-lovable roadside attraction, but here, the side show has decidedly taken center stage. Carlisle, a folksy, pastoral poet and songsmith, has invited all of us inside the big tent he pitched with his last record, Peculiar, Missouri, and to celebrate all of the beautiful ugliness we find in the spotlight. Produced by Darrell Scott, Critterland finds redemption in proudly – and holistically – owning and just as often subverting expectations around rurality, authenticity, community, and belonging. It’s a deft and artful confluence of schtick and performance, vulnerability and obscurity, artifice and genuineness, that could only be accomplished by a creative like Carlisle.

In Ryan Lee Cartwright’s book, Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity, the author and academic makes an astonishing case for the American societal and imperial construction of the “rural idyll,” and thereby, the co-construction of its antonym: the rural “anti-idyll.” The rural idyll is our general understanding of how rurality and the American dream intersect; of goodness and work ethic and respectability, of insiders and good ol’ boys and our kinda folks. The anti-idyll is the amorphous, intangible opposite of those white supremacist and capitalistic constructs.

Critterland is a joyous and liberated inhabitation of the latter concept, reveling in queerness, counter culture, other-hood, and so many kinds of rural, agrarian, and American anti-idylls. What are queer folks, poor folks, Black folks, brown folks, disabled folks in the country – and in country music – besides, first and foremost, antithetical representations of the American dream? The overlooked, enshadowed folks who inhabit the American anti-idyll… who is singing music for them? Who is inviting those very folks to step into the spotlight?

Willi Carlisle is certainly one. Tracks like “When the Pills Wear Off” and “The Money Grows on Trees” synthesize broad, generational, socio-economic realities that are often discussed, understood, and intellectualized – but rarely with their subjects first in mind. Carlisle is clearly making these songs for the people most impacted by their content; any translation they have in more zoomed-out contexts or to wider audiences is simply an added bonus. Others, like “Dry County Dust,” “Two-Headed Lamb,” and the titular “Critterland” seem to wink at the rural cosplay worn by all songwriters and music makers in roots music, but again, winking first to those who already understand it was always cosplay, from the very beginning.

Whether inhabiting the character of his onstage persona, which often but not always aligns with the human himself, or merely reflecting the pantheon of folks in his own life and communities, there’s a quality to Carlisle’s music and to Critterland that’s saying, “This music is for our kind of people.” And in the words of another backwoods poet, Jimmy Martin, “It takes one to know one, and I know you.” That could almost be the entire thesis statement of the album.

Darrell Scott’s production – and his own multi-pronged relationship to the anti-idyll – makes the clumsiness and haphazardness of this set of songs feel fully like a feature and not a bug. This is Critterland, after all, these side show animatronics are on their last legs and that’s why we love them. This sort of charm is certainly carried over from Peculiar, Missouri – which has delightfully variable production styles across the tracks – and really from all of Carlisle’s releases to date. (Including, if not especially, his hugely popular sessions with Western AF.)

Critterland, in the end, may not be the most magical place on earth, but it doesn’t want to be. And, it’s still a place you’ll end up returning to again and again. Because Willi Carlisle’s big tent is really, actually big enough for all of us. On our best and on our worst days and on all of the many days in between.

BGS will spend all of February celebrating Willi Carlisle as our Artist of the Month. Watch for an in-depth feature by music journalist and author Steacy Easton coming soon and, for now, enjoy our Essential Willi Carlisle playlist. Plus, don’t miss Willi and Critterland in the debut issue of Good Country, a new bi-weekly email newsletter from BGS.

Photo Credit: Madison Hurley

ANNOUNCING: Louisville’s Bourbon & Beyond 2024 Lineup

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Today, Bourbon & Beyond, the world’s largest music and bourbon festival, announced its lineup for their 2024 event, to be held in Louisville at the Kentucky Expo Center September 19 through 22, 2024. With headliners such as Neil Young, Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, and many more, the festival promises a roster filled-to-bursting with the best acts from country, Americana, bluegrass, and beyond.

BGS will return to the festival for ours and the festival’s sixth consecutive year, once again curating the musicians and bands that will grace the Bluegrass Situation Stage. Housed in the Kroger Big Bourbon Bar, the BGS stage will feature bluegrass, line dancing, and as much bourbon as you can drink from dozens of distilleries. Each day of the festival our stage will culminate with performances by Sam Bush Band, the Jerry Douglas Band, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Tony Trischka’s Earl Jam. Plus, don’t miss exciting acts like IBMA Entertainer of the Year winners Sister Sadie, newly-minted Black string band New Dangerfield, and KY neighbors the Local Honeys and the Kentucky Gentlemen. See the full list of performers for the Bluegrass Situation Stage below.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, via press release, had this to say about the festival: “The Commonwealth of Kentucky is honored to be hosting Bourbon & Beyond in Louisville this September,” he said. “The festival brings in fans from all over the world and showcases the best of Kentucky; highlighting our rich culture of bourbon, the best in local culinary, and a top tier musical lineup. We can’t wait to welcome fans once again for this great tradition that we all in Kentucky are proud to call our own.”

First-rate bands and artists from across the American roots music community can be found throughout Bourbon & Beyond’s lineup, not only at the Bluegrass Situation Stage. This year, Bourbon & Beyond adds two new secondary stages, as well as the usual BGS Stage and the Oak and Barrel main stages. From Tedeschi Trucks Band and Black Pumas to Melissa Etheridge and Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, there’s truly something for everyone. Don’t miss sets by Larkin Poe, Josh Ritter, Jade Bird, Lyle Lovett, Sierra Ferrell, Devon Gilfillian, Vincent Neil Emerson, Robert Finley, Hiss Golden Messenger, and so many more.

Another highlight of Bourbon & Beyond each year are the bourbon and culinary events, workshops, and activations that feature celebrity chefs and food-and-drink experts such as Chris Blandford, Amanda Freitag, Ed Lee, Chris Santos, and more. All in all, Bourbon & Beyond promises to yet again be your complete music, bourbon, and food festival in beautiful Kentucky. Tickets are on sale now – we hope you’ll join us in Louisville for another year of Bourbon & Beyond!

The Bluegrass Situation Stage Lineup

Sam Bush Band
The Jerry Douglas Band
Yonder Mountain String Band
Tony Trischka’s Earl Jam: A Tribute to Earl Scruggs
Sister Sadie
New Dangerfield
Big Richard
Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley
The Brothers Comatose
The Local Honeys
Tray Wellington Band
Chatham County Line
The Kentucky Gentlemen
East Nash Grass
Mountain Grass Unit
Jacob Jolliff Band
…and more to be announced!

Photo Credit: Nathan Zucker, courtesy of Bourbon & Beyond.

NEWS: BGS Announces New Brand, Good Country

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

BGS is proud to announce the launch of a new brand in 2024: GOOD COUNTRY. By this point, you may have seen or heard mentions of Good Country on our site, at our events, and on our socials feeds as we prepare this exciting new expansion for our readers and fans.

Launching in mid-January 2024, Good Country is a curated, bespoke email newsletter that will highlight all good country from across the roots music landscape. Every other week, GC will deliver high-end country music reporting, long reads, playlists, videos, and exclusive content from your favorite country artists direct to your email inbox. As you scroll, you’ll dive into the deep and broad world of Good Country, from gritty and raw Americana to glitzy and glamorous radio hits, from bluegrass supergroups to southern rock ensembles and swampy string bands. Sign up for Good Country now.

“Good Country is a brand new horizon for BGS,” says managing editor Justin Hiltner. “But, at the same time, it’s nothing more than a reinforcement of our values as a media company and roots music community. Country – like its family members bluegrass, folk, and Americana – is more than just music, it’s a lifestyle, an identity, a way of being. There’s so much good country being made out there right now and we know our audience agrees. Whatever ‘good country’ means, you’ll know it when you hear it. And you’ll hear plenty of it in this newsletter!”

Each issue of Good Country will center features, think pieces, and interviews penned by the best writers and thinkers in country music highlighting not just the biggest names in the genre, but new and upstart artists as well. Exclusive newsletter content will live alongside deep dive playlists, sonic explorations, and thoughtful examinations of what country is, who makes it, and to whom it can belong – everyone.

BGS co-founder, actor, activist, and musician Ed Helms, will be featured in each issue as well with “Ed’s Picks,” artists and bands selected by Helms himself, direct from his own listening.

“From the very beginning, BGS was forged on a foundation of celebrating the full spectrum of roots music fans and artists,” explains BGS co-founder Amy Reitnouer Jacobs. “This community has never been one thing, nor has it been static. It’s a diverse, expansive, and ever-changing art form. The same can and should be said for country music. And that’s why now is the perfect time to create a more representative media landscape. It’s time for Good Country.”

Good Country’s first issues will feature music, art, and content featuring Zach Bryan, Sierra Ferrell, Amanda Fields, Veronique Medrano, Shania Twain, Chris Stapleton, Vincent Neil Emerson, Brittney Spencer, and so many more. No matter your entry point to this music, with our new brand and newsletter you will find endless Good Country to enjoy. Interact with content in your email inbox, on our website, and on our social media – wherever you are, Good Country will meet you there.

Good Country isn’t about deciding what is or isn’t good country music. Good Country is a place. It’s a way of looking at the world, a way of enjoying music. If you think it’s good and you think it’s country, then you’ve found Good Country.

Sign up now to be one of the first readers to receive Good Country direct to your email inbox. And, begin your exploration of Good Country with our BGS Class of 2023: Good Country year-end list.

Photo Credit: Zach Bryan by Trevor Pavlik; Vincent Neil Emerson by Thomas Crabtree; Sierra Ferrell by Bobbi Rich.

With ‘Do You Recall’ Dori Freeman Demonstrates Appalachia is Not a Monolith

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

One of the most stunning and enjoyable albums of 2023 was released in mid-November by Galax, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Dori Freeman. Entitled, Do You Recall, it’s a vibrant and energetic collection of eleven original songs that also feel cozy and down home, like a back porch jam or guitar pull – there’s a buzz in the air, but no overhanging urgency. It’s pure fun, but it’s also earnest and, at times, devastating.

That homey sense, pervasive and enveloping on Do You Recall, is thanks in no small part to Freeman and producer, her husband, drummer Nicholas Falk, having tracked the entire album in their backyard studio. But these tracks don’t feel antiquated or pastoral, and they certainly do not evoke a revisionist, white-washed, or sanitized rural ideal. There’s no preaching or authenticity signaling undergirding these songs, they’re simply genuine representations of Freeman and Falk intentionally following or guiding each song to its best, natural endpoint.

Freeman has decidedly re-centered her career and her music making away from so-called Music Cities – like Nashville and New York City – over the course of her five critically-acclaimed albums. She clearly feels no need to peacock or to raise a middle finger to the Music Industry, or play to “outlaw” narratives in country. Rather, she and her creative community have deliberately shifted the focal point of her songs and albums away from industry currencies and social or political structures bit by bit, click by click. As a result, her music truly shines – and certainly reaches audiences that see and appreciate that deliberation. Each of her prior albums are testaments to this growth and action, but Do You Recall may be Freeman’s best to date.

Our Cover Story conversation began discussing this shift away from music industry models and naturally and languidly, as the album, touched on agency, nuance and complication in Appalachia, solidarity and class consciousness, and so much more.

BGS: I wanted to start by asking you about how your priorities maybe have shifted in relation to the music industry? I sense that there’s this insulation between you and the capital M, capital I, “music industry,” whatever that means, right? It feels like you care less about what matters to the industry and more about what matters to you. And that feels so tangible in the music. Do you agree or disagree with that?

Dori Freeman: I do agree with that. I think I kind of always have written music from a perspective of not really caring – I never approach music through the lens of what would please a record label or what is going to be a song that people want to play on the radio or anything like that.

But I do think that perspective has only gotten stronger as I’ve gotten older. The longer I’ve written music, [the more] I write music that means something to me and that I hope will resonate with other people, because I find that the music that I’m drawn to is written in that same way. It’s music that is honest in the best way possible.

That honesty you’re talking about feels so homey, so grounded in your everyday. I think that’s part of what makes it feel like you’re not just giving a middle finger to the industry. It’s more that you’re re-centering what you do away from the industry record by record.

I would agree with that. It’s not that music isn’t a big part of my life – I mean, it obviously is, it’s the career that I’ve chosen – but as far as day to day goes, the majority of my life is spent living in a small town and raising a young daughter. That’s [why] I write a lot about both of those things. I don’t necessarily think those are really topics that record labels are begging to have more songs about, but that’s just what my life is and so those are the things that I write and sing about.

Can you talk a little bit about where you live? You live in Galax proper, yes?

Yeah, I live in Galax proper. I’m actually the last house on the street that I live on that’s technically still in Galax. The population in Galax is around 10,000, so it’s not very big. I’ve moved around a little bit in my life, but the majority of my life I’ve spent here in Southwest Virginia. And Galax in particular is a town that’s known for music. It’s like the self-proclaimed old-time music capital of the world, and we have a Fiddler’s Convention every year that’s one of the oldest. It’s known for music.

I mean, even the way that we – my husband and I – made this album [was] literally in our backyard. He built a timber-frame studio during the pandemic, so we recorded it here too, and at a much slower pace than I’ve ever had the privilege of making a record. In the past I’ve always had a strict timeframe, we have these four or five days and we have to have everything recorded in that amount of time. This time, it was just much more relaxed, and we could go out to the studio and work on one song for a couple days and then do another one the next week. It was just really refreshing to be able to approach it that way, compared to the way I’ve done it in the past. There are things that are really fun about recording in both of those ways. The pressure can be good, too, but it was nice to have a change of pace.

It may just be the time of year where all I want to do is cook something simmering on the stove all day long, but “Soup Beans Milk and Bread” — there’s so much in it that I, and I’m sure other listeners, can relate to. Especially the line, “You can’t lose something you don’t have.” That line bitch-slapped me, for real. In the best way. Can you talk about writing that one and where that line and that song came from for you?

I always find it a little difficult to articulate when I’m talking about Appalachia, just because I find it easier to write about it in song form, but I will do my best to try to talk about that.

It’s such a nuanced issue. I wrote that one – and then there’s another song on the record that’s also about growing up in Appalachia – and about the different layers of that and the different experiences you have here. The good and the more complicated.

In particular, the line, “You can’t lose something you don’t have.” I wouldn’t say I grew up poor, but I grew up not necessarily having a ton of stuff. But, in a lot of ways, I feel like I had a really happy childhood. Part of that line [is positive]. I mean, you can take it in a negative or more sad way, but it’s also, “Well, you can’t be unhappy about something that you didn’t ever have.”

If you grew up with less, a lot of times you just make the most of that and it ends up being better for you in a lot of ways. That line is definitely meant to be a double-edged sword. This area has been so taken advantage of by the government and by big business that it’s clear, yeah, you can’t lose something you never had, because we were never allowed to have it in the first place.

Another one that was my a favorite on the record is “Why Do I Do This to Myself.” I feel like I asked myself that question all the time!

It’s just such a universal feeling, I think. We all do these things to ourselves, certain things are good for you, certain thought patterns aren’t good for you – and you just can’t help it.

What you were hoping to accomplish musically and sonically with that one? Because it reminds me of classic Patty Loveless or like Terri Clark, very trad ‘80s or ‘90s country. Can you talk a little bit about what you were trying to get out of the production style on that?

Well, ‘90s country was definitely what we were going for with that one. I’m glad that came across with that track. I’ve got to give Nick a lot of credit for the production on a lot of these songs and for just picking out the musicians and for directing and deciding what the vibe would be for a lot of these songs. Our guitar player, Adam Agati, Nick hired him and they both came up with that real country lick, they kind of led the charge on that one.

You’re really playing with agency, I feel like it’s such a character in these songs – what are you choosing for yourself, what is being chosen for you, what’s being handed down to you, and how the speaker in your songs is kind of dancing around these things and talking about them.

I don’t know if I consciously approached it in that way, but I do think that it’s interesting – ‘cause you’re not the first person to bring that up. Someone else that I did an interview with said they felt the songs sort of felt like short stories that were part of the same book. After the fact, sometimes it’s like that. Sometimes you just write the batch of songs and then afterwards it becomes clear.

So I do see that in hindsight, but I don’t know necessarily if I was looking at it that way when I was writing songs, because I just write songs so individually. I’m not thinking of a theme when I approach writing songs for an album. It’s more just work on the songs individually and then hopefully they sort of come together in some sort of cohesive way.

Another thing, which I actually think has been a blessing in disguise, is that I’ve only had one album on an actual label. The subsequent four I’ve self-produced and put out on my own little label at home. I think that’s actually ended up being a good thing, because it has just left me without a lot of boundaries or feeling boxed in. I feel like I’ve had a lot more freedom to write about the things that I wanted to. It may be a smaller audience that I’m reaching and it may be a slower growth and a slower track, but actually, in the long run, I’m glad that I have done it the way that I have.

There are a couple more songs I wanted to ask you about. One is “Movie Screen.” It’s the one that feels most bluegrassy to me in some ways, and it feels very “mountain music,” which is always a nebulous term to me. “Movie Screen” is a story song, and it feels very specific, but it also feels so general and zoomed out and aspirational. It kind of reminds me of Dolly [Parton] and the way that she’d write songs about wanting to be the girl in the movie or on the radio or on stage.

[Laughs] Thank you for the Dolly comparison. I mean, I will always take that.

Yes, that is a really specific song. I wrote that song after becoming really obsessed with, during the pandemic, watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix and just having such a crush on Cillian Murphy, the lead actor in that. It’s pretty funny, because I wrote the song and my husband is one of the first people, if not the first person, I always share songs with. I play him this song and he immediately was like, “Oh, okay– so this is about that guy from Peaky Blinders?” Which is just so funny, because, my husband has brown eyes and there’s a very distinct line in the song about blue diamond eyes. It didn’t take him long to put that together. He likes to give me a hard time over that song. But it’s also about entertainment and movies and TV shows and books, as like an escape from reality and anxiety and all those things.

The other song you mentioned as being about growing up in Appalachia, “They Do It’s True,” it reminds me of Charles Booker’s political action group in Kentucky, Hood to Holler. There’s a line: “If you’ve ever lived on a mountain side/ in a little shack or a double-wide/ Then there ain’t no seat at the table for you.” That line is so striking, especially because it then continues by naming solidarity with women and with Black and Brown folks. It mades me think of Hood to Holler and this idea that in the holler and in the hood, we are more similar than we are different. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that line in that song and where it came from for you?

That’s definitely what I was trying to write about in that song. I think one of the tactics that conservatives and people in higher positions in government love to use is to pit poor white people against poor Black people just to use that for their own gain. It’s another perspective that I think gets lost when people talk about the Appalachians. They think it’s just 100% white and people have this very specific idea of what it is, but there’s a large Black population. West Virginia has one of the most concentrated populations of transgender teens. There are Appalachian queer film festivals – there are a lot of things that get lost in that bigger message, because people [in power] don’t want us to have solidarity, because that would mean there would be actual change.

Another example of that is the way prisons often end up in poor and working class white communities, and then that’s how they pit Black and white people against each other again, because the white people are afraid of losing the work from the prison. So they want it to stay there, and it’s just a very vicious cycle. I think that it’s something that we should talk about more, because I think the wider audience doesn’t realize a lot of these things about Appalachia.

The class consciousness in the album and the way that you wove class into these songs feels so artfully done.

Appealing to the commercial side of things has never been something that I’ve felt the need to do. That goes back to what I was saying as far as having the freedom to write about what I want to and not being beholden to record labels or anything like that or agents. But it’s also because those are all just important things to me. I grew up in a really rural area and I’m bringing up my daughter in a rural area. I don’t ever want to romanticize the area in an unrealistic way, but I do think it’s important to have conversations as much about the negative things that we do need to improve as all the positive things.

I think that’s it’s really important for people from the area to continue to talk about all of this. In music and writing – and whatever other mediums. So that the rest of America can see that [Appalachia] is not just one stereotypical picture that they have in their heads.

Photo Credit: Kristina Lynn

Bluegrass, Folk, and Country Communities Made Jobi Riccio

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: This interview first appeared in full on Basic Folk. Listen on BGS or wherever you get podcasts. The following has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.)

Jobi Riccio has only begun to scratch the surface of what they have to offer on their debut album, Whiplash. The songwriting is centered around self discovery and mourning past lives, laid alongside super-smart country and pop melodies. Our hero grew up an outdoor kid amongst the woods of Red Rocks Parks Amphitheatre in Colorado.

A strong bluegrass community encircled her playing from a very young age in a way that encouraged her to pursue music as a career. She spent time in Boston attending Berklee College of Music, nestled in the folk community centered around the historic venue Club Passim. March 2020 hit. Jobi had to leave her newfound community and found herself back in her childhood bedroom.

While wrestling with all the complications of finding herself and her place in the world, they were letting go of their childhood and the sense of grounding that came with it. Eventually, they made their way to Asheville, North Carolina to work on Whiplash.

In the studio, she took her time making the album and discovered that indeed, she had a strong sense of vision for the music. The trust of her collaborators allowed her to trust in herself and create an album that is turning heads and making Jobi Riccio one of the most exciting young songwriters of 2023.

BGS: Thank you so much for being on Basic Folk.

Jobi Riccio: Thank you for having me.

Alright, let’s start. I wanted to talk about identity and give you the opportunity to talk about your identity, like how do you identify pronouns, orientation, any of that stuff that we want to address.

JR: Yeah, I use she/they pronouns. I identify as queer and identity has been something that feels like it’s been important and very complicated for me. It feels like something that I have spoken about and made a part of my career, and now I’m kind of feeling, a little bit, like it’s become too much of a focus in my career, actually.

It’s funny, because I was listening to your other podcast that [you do], I can’t remember–

It’s [Basic Folk Debate Club], an occasional crossover series with Why We Write.

Yes! I was like, you’ll know the person to plug – and I’m so sorry to Why We Write.

It’s based on actually something that Lizzie No was saying. I just really resonated with something that she said, which was it’s about who is asking those questions of me. It can feel like a fine line. It’s kind of “cool” right now to be a queer artist or a Black artist or an artist of color in the folk space.

When you’re with your community, that feels one way, or with people who are truly great. And then when you’re with people who it just seems like they need to check that box. It’s so obvious and it’s so painful and it feels like a betrayal of yourself. And [Lizzie] put it a lot more eloquently than all that, but if we’re really going down the discussion of identity, it’s important to me that I am open with my identity, but I also feel like there have been times where it’s been so hyper-focused on. In a way that it’s like, “Did you even listen to any of my songs or did you know what I mean?”

I really enjoyed that answer. Doing these interviews, sometimes I feel like I’m gonna ask and I think that the interview is gonna go one way or a question is gonna go one way and it goes the complete opposite way. I just get to enjoy the ride.

You are from Morrison, Colorado, which is outside of Denver – the same place as Red Rocks Parks and Amphitheatre. You were an outdoor kid. How do you think your early experience in nature has impacted the person you became?

I think that it’s something that I really value and need and it’s a processing tool for me, being out in nature. It’s almost equivalent to songwriting and writing in my journal. It’s honestly super hard here in Nashville, because I don’t feel like I can get that, in the way that I used to be able to walk to a hiking trail five minutes from my house. I was absolutely supremely spoiled with outdoor access as a kid. [I didn’t] know any better. Like, there’s going to come a time where you’re going to live somewhere the nearest mountains are two and a half hours away. That is rough. It’s something I have to really intentionally build into my life now.

I think that nature heavily informs me as a person. Musically, I feel like it shows up in my lyrics [and] images from home, talking about coyotes and cactus and etc. I feel like it’s so intrinsic to who I am as a person.

So nature ruined you.

For real. The nature ruined me. Colorado ruined me.

There has always been this strong draw to music for you – country radio, your parents and sister’s collection of music, and also making music on your own. Can you set the scene for what music looked like in your house? And when did you get a grasp on your own taste in music?

My parents definitely – we had like a home stereo and a big collection of CDs and I spent a lot of time just sort of putzing around my house as a little kid, opening cabinets, and looking at things and opening the encyclopedia and reading. I don’t know if anyone else feels like a really intrinsic part of childhood was just looking at things.

The CD collection in like, a big wicker basket was definitely a huge one for me. They felt like little gifts. I could open up the CD and then there was this extra thing I could pull out and there were liner notes and lyrics and I could read along. That was really big for me, because I was always really interested in lyrics.

My dad’s a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. We love the Boss and sometimes we can’t understand the Boss. And like, his lyrics are wonderful, too. I really feel like that was pretty formative to me, looking through my parents’ CDs and my sister’s CDs as well. My oldest sister had like a clear, hot pink, very early 2000s lockbox thing that she kept her CDs in. I very vividly remember going into her room and stealing CDs – The Killers, Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head was a big one for me, Sheryl Crow, Tuesday Night Music Club, Yellow Ocean Avenue. Then like Emmylou Harris, Bruce Springsteen, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, James Taylor.

There is a strong bluegrass community where you’re from. You found it at an early age, playing mandolin when you were like eight or nine years old. Since then you’ve sought out musical community, so what did you learn from that first musical community? 

The bluegrass community was a big part of feeling supported for me in music. I was always a kid who sang and was like, the girl with a good voice in like my elementary school class or whatever, but I didn’t see myself as a musician until I really started playing mandolin. I had a teacher and he was super supportive and was like, “You’re really great at instruments, too.”

I feel like the bluegrass community in my hometown took me seriously even though I was a little kid running around at RockyGrass – and by “a little kid” I mean 16. I didn’t go to my first bluegrass festival until I was a teenager. I would go and sit and jam with adults and be taken seriously. I really looked up to [those who were] offering their support to me, that was immeasurable to [growing] my own self confidence at that age.

I mean, I was so insecure at like 15, 16. The first year I ever went to RockyGrass, which sort of became my home festival, I didn’t even go out and play with anyone. I just sat in my camper with my mom, because I was so scared and so nervous and having trouble with confidence. The next year, I was out like playing every night ’til like 2 or 3 a.m.

That’s a huge shift!

Yeah. I feel like community and music– I mean, no musician is an island. We’re nothing without the musicians who came before us and those who’ve supported us. Sometimes I look back on that time and wonder if I hadn’t gotten that nod in that jam from that older kid who was really good, who I thought was awesome; or from that artist who I worshipped, who told me I had a beautiful voice; or I had shared one of my songs with them, and they were encouraging of me writing. I wonder if I would have taken it this far?

Then I got to be in a really beautiful community space working at Club Passim in college, too. That also further helped bolster my confidence, especially playing solo. Because – as you know, as also somebody who worked there in a much different capacity – it’s very much like a solo listening room, singer-songwriter space.

I play solo [a lot] now on tour, because I can’t afford to bring out a band. I feel like I really garnered some valuable skills watching other people like Mark Erelli and Lori McKenna play solo at Passim and also having to do that myself, learning how to speak about the songs I had written and not be painfully awkward, but doing that in the loving embrace of that room.

You’ve talked about Sheryl Crow and The Chicks as having a huge impact on you. You picked up the mandolin after you first heard Nickel Creek – can you talk more about the influence Chris Thile and Sara and Sean Watkins had on you?

So, I first heard Nickel Creek on the radio on KBCO, which is like the AAA station.

Hell yeah, that’s a huge station. That’s where AAA was born!

Where AAA was born, famously, yes! That was my local radio station that I listened to as a kid. And they would play “Smoothie Song” by Nickel Creek. This was around the same time that I heard the Home album by The Chicks. I was listening to Top 40 country music and also hearing mandolin here and there. It’s so strange, because I don’t play the mandolin anymore. It’s just something I’m not interested in now – it makes me almost kind of sad to think of how this was such a big part of my life.

Then I really pivoted – and it’s like, I’ll never say never, but yeah, I started playing mandolin when I was 15, I wanted to play mandolin when I was about eight or nine years old, because that was when we got Why Should the Fire Die on CD as a family. When I started opening up the CD and reading the booklet and listening – that album is so cool, because there’s a little bit of almost a pop-punk thing to some of the songs, like “Somebody More Like You.” That was so of-the-time and I loved it. I couldn’t get enough of that.

Being introduced to this new palette of instruments that I really hadn’t heard played in this way. I was familiar with bluegrass to some extent, but it like bluegrass for me and my like angsty little 12-year-old self. And, you know, everybody’s angsty selves at any age. That struck such a chord in me…

The first song I heard by them was that Pavement cover.

And Pavement’s super emo! “Spit On a Stranger,” right?

Yeah, that’s it.

I loved that album, too. They were all older than me, but I didn’t really know that either because, like, they’re pretty young on the CD case. They’re probably [around] my older sister’s age, who is now 28. They’re not that close in age to me, but I did feel a kindred-ness that I feel like a lot of roots artists talk about, hearing them and the Chicks and being like, “Oh, this is cool! This is of the moment.” They’re incorporating sounds that we like from other genres, which is really what I think I’m trying to get with the whole pop-punk thing, though I know that can be kind of a “dirty” word, like pop country. I don’t think it should be, I don’t think any genre word should be.

And I definitely had like a three month period where I was like, “I’m in love with Chris Thile. I’m going to marry him.” That was a little, you know, short lived, but it was strong. His high, angelic voice really spoke to my prepubescent soul.

That’s so sweet.

You’re like, “I don’t know what to say about that!”

Thank you for sharing. No, it turns out it was Sara Watkins the whole time!

Right, yeah! Hiding in plain sight!

Your bluegrass wife.

(Editor’s Note: Listen to the unabridged Basic Folk episode featuring Jobi Riccio here.)

Photo Credit: Monica Murray

Texas, Townes, and the Truth

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: Sign up here to receive Good Country issues when they launch, direct to your email inbox via Substack.)

In advance of the release of Vincent Neil Emerson’s latest, critically-acclaimed album, The Golden Crystal Kingdom – which dropped on November 10 – BGS moderated a conversation between VNE and his friend and peer, country & western singer-songwriter and song-interpreter Charley Crockett.

Both artists cut their teeth in music venues in Texas a decade ago. In our conversation, they tell the story of how they came to know each other and discuss ways they protect each other within the business. They talk about covering and cutting each other’s songs and the importance of telling their truths.

Emerson’s new album, produced by Shooter Jennings, veers his sound toward warm ’60s rock and folk influences. He opens up to Charley and BGS about its creation process and what is on the horizon for him.

Charley Crockett: What’s up, Vincent?

Vincent Neil Emerson: What’s up, my boy?

CC: Another day, another dollar.

BGS: Tell me where you both are in the world right now.

VNE: I’m in Asheville, North Carolina, right now, at an Airbnb.

CC: I’m up here in San Luis Valley in Southern Colorado.

Both really nice places to be in the fall.

VNE: You ain’t wrong.

Can you give us a little bit of context about your relationship, where you know each other from, and how long you have been working together?

VNE: Charley, you wanna go?

CC: Oh man, I always tell that story; I wanna hear it from you.

VNE: I met Charley in Deep Ellum. We were playing around town, playing a lot of shows around there and Fort Worth. That was over 10 years ago, maybe?

CC: I was trying to think about it this morning. I think it had to be ’13 or ’14.

VNE: That’s crazy, man.

CC: He remembers it being at Adair Saloon; I remember it being at the Freeman. It really don’t matter, ’cause I’m sure it was both places.

VNE: I’m sure we went and had a drink at Adairs or something like that.

CC: I remember I walked up on him and said, “I like all them Justin Townes Earle songs.” And he said, “I only played one.” I always liked what he was doing, and he used to play solo and do the guitar pools up at Magnolia Motor Lounge all the time. He’d be up there smoking a cigarette, picking through them songs like Townes Van Zandt, and I thought, “Oh lord have mercy, this boy is a force to be reckoned with.”

VNE: Man, I felt the same way as soon as I heard you, brother. I remember a couple of nights I saw you at the Freeman with this band. You had a bunch of guys up on that tiny little stage, and you were just ripping through all these songs, taking all these old honky tonk songs and flipping them on their head and turning them into blues and vice versa. I always thought that was so cool, man.

CC: I don’t remember that well, but I guess you’re right. In those days, every gig we played for both me and Vincent, we ended up getting booked by the same folks, or they were all standing together in some bar, no matter if it was Ft. Worth or Nashville or Los Angeles. One way or another, all them same business folks been standing pretty close to me and Vincent. And that’s the truth.

Well, that’s convenient if you like to work together, I guess. Charley, do you have questions you want to dig in on?

CC: You know, Erin, I don’t even know what the hell we are doing?

Let’s talk about the release of Vincent’s new album.

CC: Well, let me just do this then. Everything he’s been putting out with Shooter [Jennings], like everything else he’s ever done…If you sit there looking at Vincent and he surprises you, it’s like, “Oh damn, I didn’t know old boy was gonna do that.” The very next thing he does, it just happens again — every single time. I remember when he was playing “7 Come 11” way before anybody gave a damn about him and was looking out for his interests or his career. He had all them songs in his pocket way before anybody had ideas or designs on him and his business. I’ve said for a long time that “7 Come 11” is one of the best folk songs written out of Texas in 20 years. Remember Central Track, Vincent?

VNE: Yeah, they did a lot of write-ups on music.

CC: I will never forget that stuff when you did that record and what you were doing live. Erin, he was playing for 50 bucks and a case of Lone Star in them dive bars in Fort Worth, you know? He was living in a 10×10 room. He was hardly ever even standing inside of the damn joint.

A handful of us showed up at the same time, and we are all moving on our own paths, but we’ve all stayed pretty close, or we damn sure weave it together quite a bit even if we get way out there, you know, in the territories, we always come back to each other. I think I met Leon Bridges right around the same time that I met Vincent. I met him in Deep Ellum, too. There is a guy who plays guitar with me now named Alexis Sanchez. He had a band back then, and he was playing at Club Dada there for some little festival, and Leon Bridges was standing there in a trench coat and a bowler hat. I venture to guess that me and Leon and Vincent met each other damn near about the same time. There were a lot of other folks like that. Ten years later, especially for some Texas guys, you know, we’ve all grown a lot, and I think we have always supported each other and loved each others’ music. That’s only grown, and Vincent is standing there as one of the premier, original, authentic talents to come out of Texas since the turn of the damn century. I’m not blowing smoke. I’m just stating what is already happening.

VNE: Man, that is high praise. I appreciate you sayin’ that, Charley.

CC: Well, they want all this shit to write about it, but that’s just the truth. He was playing in Fort Worth and like I said, playing for all that low money. They were calling him Lefty. Why did they call you Lefty? I figured it was because you had a black eye or something.

VNE: Yeah, I had my left eye knocked out of the socket one time, and the nickname stuck for a while.

CC: I remember they wrote about you pretty salaciously there in the Fort Worth Weekly. I know a thing or two about that myself.

VNE: I would say it was because they were trying to sell papers, but it was a free publication.

CC: Shit, they are selling advertisements. I think the Dallas Observer is still doing that to me.

He was playing them bars, we were playing them bars. I don’t know which one of us is which, but more often than not, he sure seems like if I’m Waylon, he’s Willie. I have felt like that for a long time. You could change the names. I think about this stuff a lot. The business folks, it is always hard to tell what they are doing, but you can be sure they are rolling dice and betting and gambling on folks. It ends up being, a guy like Vincent that somebody like me can lean on a lot more. We can trust those guys, and I’m real happy with who I’m working with, and I’m sure Vincent is, too. It is the other artists living life for the song that gets us through. I know I feel like that about Vincent, and I feel like that about a lot of other guys I don’t know as well as him.

Kind of like Johnny Cash said, “We are all family, even though some of us barely know each other.” I think it is because we can see each other and know we are in the same boat and in that way, care more for each other than other people would. I think it is pretty serious. It is life and death.

VNE: That’s a good feeling to not feel so alone in that way and have people out there and doing things similar to you. They probably think a lot of the same thoughts. Me and you are good buddies, Charley, and I feel that way, too. I feel like some guys out there like Tyler Childers – I really respect him, and I feel like he is in the same boat as us. I’m not as well known as you guys, but I think none of that really matters. I think what it comes down to is that we are all songwriters trying to make our own stories happen and be true to ourselves and honest to the world. I think that the reason we can relate to each other is the same reason the fans can relate. Honesty will cut through anything and bring people together.

CC: One way or another, them folks we are selling tickets to, they know.

VNE: You can’t fake the funk, I guess.

CC: Eventually, it comes through. Speaking of Tyler Childers, we ended up on the same plane flying from Nashville to Austin recently… I was there for the Country Music Hall of Fame induction and I didn’t want to go. I get real antisocial and want to hide out from everybody and shit, and I went to Nashville kicking and screaming. Tanya Tucker was getting inducted to the Hall of Fame with a couple of other people. Patty Loveless and Bob McDill, who I wasn’t that familiar with. I had thought that he’d written the Jimmy C. Newman song, “Louisiana Saturday Night”, which I know real well. To be honest with you, it is the only reason I agreed to go out there, ’cause I love singing that song. I made a lot of money writing songs off of that song, so I figured I owed whoever the songwriter was. Long story short, there in the last week, I found out it was a different “Louisiana Saturday Night,” regularly mistakenly attributed to Bob McDill cause he wrote a totally separate song called “Louisiana Saturday Night” that Mel McDaniel had a big hit with, and that’s the one that goes,

“Well, you get down the fiddle and you get down the bow
Kick off your shoes and you throw ’em on the floor
Dance in the kitchen ’til the mornin’ light
Louisiana Saturday night”

That was a big ol hit, right Vincent? He did “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On,” and a bunch of shit like that that I just didn’t realize. My naive, ignorant ass goes up there to Nashville kicking and screaming, and that’s how I feel. A horse gets led to water or something like that. I saw Tanya get inducted. I damn near built my career off of my version of “Jamestown Ferry” when I was younger, and I realized that she had blazed that trail for me, and I had not shown her enough respect. I really hadn’t. Same thing with Bob McDill. All those songs he wrote and the advice he gave in his speech, and my dumbass could really shut up and pay attention to these folks.

Then I ran into Tyler going from there. He was flying to Austin to do a John Prine tribute. That’s how it is. When I see Tyler, I’m on a plane. When I see Vincent, it is at Monterey Fairgrounds. We are ships passing in the night. All these guys like Tyler, Colter [Wall], Leon, Vincent. Whenever I see them, they got a big light around them, and it is shining. You just want it to keep shining for them, and for myself, to keep it going,

I don’t know exactly where you want to go with this, Erin, but I’m excited about this record. Shooter was telling me about your songs and offered to send them and I was like, “No, I ain’t gonna do that. I wanna be like everyone else.” I wanna watch this thing get rolled out, and I wanna be excited. I’m looking forward to going through the songs.

Vincent, can you tell us about working with Shooter on this record?

VNE: I met Shooter a few times. Me and Charley were at this festival in Iowa hanging out, and Shooter came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I’d met him before at another festival but I’d never talked to him. He turned me around and said, “Hey man, I really like that thing you did with Rodney Crowell.” He paid me a lot of compliments, and since then, we talked, and when it came time to make another record, Shooter was the first guy I thought of. I thought it would be such a cool idea to work with him on an album. One thing about him is he really is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and he is a genuine fan of music. He’s trying to make cool things happen. I’m so lucky I got to work with him on it. That is the big takeaway from the whole thing for me was making a real good friend like that and meeting someone who gets me excited about songwriting and about making an album and making music in general.

Since Charley cut “7 Come 11” and you cut one of Charley’s songs for this record, can you talk about what prompted “Time of the Cottonwood Trees” winding up in this pile of songs?

VNE: Oh man – that song. Me and you were on tour together for three months, was it last summer? We did a bunch of dates, and we were on the road a long time, and I was listening to Charley do that song every night. It was a brand new song that hadn’t come out on his record yet. I got to hear him sing that song every night by himself, and I just think it is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. It is one of my favorites from you, Charley. I think it is a fine example of songwriting. When it came time to make this album, I always wanted to pay tribute to you and cut one of your songs on a record because you cut “7 Come 11.” That really ties back into that whole Willie and Waylon and all those old timers who cut each others’ songs and lifted each other up like that. I just wanted to pay tribute to you, and that’s why I put it on the album.

CC: Shit, I appreciate it. I’ll be excited to get the check in the mail. You surprised the hell out of me with that one, you really did. I’ve always wanted people to cut my songs. Sometimes, I think I’d be better off that way. I have so many. I’ve always cut a lot of songs that weren’t mine, probably about half of them. And I got about a 250-song catalog of published shit. I would guess about 40-50% are songs I didn’t write. I feel like I’ve caught a lot of heat for that. People have an idea about me that I never wrote a single song. I think that’s because we live in an era where, like what Vincent was talking about, where all those folks back in the day, across genres, and it wasn’t just country it was pop, folk, soul, R&B. It was everything. Everyone was cutting each other’s songs. I just really think that to write a great song, you have to learn great songs from other people.

You have to watch out for these publishers these days. They’ll just put any piece of junk out as long as they’ve got control over it. They figured out they can make money selling junk. If you can make more money than ever before selling junk and you aren’t principled, and you aren’t that close to the music, well, they don’t see the reason not to do it that way. I think it feels like a renaissance.

VNE: Specifically in the genre of country music, there is a lot of junk out there. I don’t want to put anyone down. Most of the time, I just try to ignore whatever I don’t like. I think that’s the best way to go about it. I think there is room at the table for everybody, whatever you are into. I just think it is so cool that Sturgill and Charley and Colter and Tyler, all these other guys that are out here putting out real, honest-to-goodness songwriter songs. And not just that, but real country music. It doesn’t matter if it is your song or someone else’s; if you are telling that story honestly, I think that’s great. I’ve always appreciated you for that, Charley. I think you are a great interpreter of songs, and I think you are an even better songwriter, man.

CC: Damn, I’m glad I talked to y’all this morning. I feel better.

I’m glad that we are talking about cutting songs because that is such a huge part of country music, interpreting other people’s songs or reinterpreting a song. It feels like that art was lost in the past 20 years or so and it is having a resurgence. I’m excited that you guys are at the forefront of that, because great songs have more than one life. And it is an opportunity for songwriters to make more money.

VNE: I think it is one of the greatest compliments that a songwriter could receive – to have an artist who they love and respect cut one of their songs.

CC: There is no question about that. That is the best feeling.

VNE: It is, cause you know that your songs has legs and can go places that you can’t, which is a great feeling.

CC: It really is. It is such a political world, and it is so divided. There is a lot of pressure on people that you step out there into the great mirror of society, and the more out there in front of the public that you get, there is a mirror that starts projecting on you, and it is tough to deal with. It is hard to know what to do, but the thing about it is – being able to write honest songs and tell the truth in your writing; that is the most rewarding feeling. That is why I always look forward to what Vincent is doing. There aren’t a whole lot of people that I anticipate their new works as much as him, if anybody really. That’s the whole deal. You look over, and he’s writing better and better, and it makes me want to write better, too.

Speaking of, Vincent, can you talk a bit about your writing process for this record?

VNE: I kind of pieced together songs over time. Sometimes they jump out real fast; sometimes it takes a while. And thanks for saying that Charley, brother. Damn.

CC: I’ve been saying it for 10 years.

VNE: That’s kept me going a lot of times and I don’t think you realize that. These songs – damn, what was I saying?

CC: You were saying sometimes they come quick, sometimes they come slow.

VNE: I’m very influenced by the music that I’m listening to and that is why I try to be real careful about what I listen to. I think it is like if I’m making a smoothie. I gotta put certain ingredients in my brain, and it comes out me on the other end, hopefully. I was listening to a lot of Neil Young and Steven Stills and David Crosby. A lot of the ’60s rock and roll and a lot of Bob Dylan stuff. That’s just where I was in my headspace, so I was taking in all that. I try to put it all together to make it my own. That’s where I was at when I was making this album.

By the way, I’m excited about this rodeo we are playing together, Charley.

CC: Which one is that?

VNE: The National Finals in Las Vegas.

CC: Oh shit yeah! At the Virgin Theater there? Yeah man, I’m excited about it, too. Thanks for doing it.

VNE: Thanks for having me on.

CC: When it comes to money and shit like that, just any time, whatever you gotta do to make it work cause I wanna keep playing with you as much as we can and build up. I’ve played in some arenas recently, and I really don’t like it. I don’t know if country music belongs in arenas. And I just mean opening. I can’t sell tickets to no damn arena. And I take a cue from Colter cause he and Tyler and them boys, they could be in arenas all day long if they wanted to be. I would rather play rodeos and municipal auditoriums and really special theaters and stack ‘em up. I think we need to get a goddamned Dripping Springs reunion tour going. A real one.

VNE: Man, that’d be great.

CC: You know what I mean, just do some of our own shit. My aunt and uncle and a bunch of people who haven’t been out to see me play in a long time are coming out to Vegas. I used to live with my uncle when I was a kid in Louisiana and Mississippi and shit. He’s gonna flip his shit when he sees you.

VNE: I can’t wait, man, I’ve heard so many stories about him.

CC: He’s wild. We gonna show these folks what country music actually sounds like. They might not be able to tell who is left or right. Nahhh I’m just kidding it is a bunch of cool people.

Thank y’all for letting me be a part of this. I’m just happy to help out or talk about this. I’m real excited about the album for real. The imagery in your writing, man, it’s like everything you write is getting more and more vivid. You paint such a picture. I’ll stop blowing smoke up your ass.

I’m gonna get back on the trail and Vincent, I’ll talk to you soon.

VNE: Thank you for doing this brother, I appreciate you.

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Photo Credit: Vincent Neil Emerson by Thomas Crabtree; Charley Crockett by Bobby Cochran

MIXTAPE: Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It is a tale as old as time itself. As above so below. Yin and Yang. The explored and the unexplored. The hero’s journey, any and all of them, are exposed to the eternally enduring dance of chaos and order. We must leave the garden, enter into the forest to find the gold, kill the dragon, and return back to where we began, returning back more harmonized, realized, and higher frequency than we began.

Musically, Cosmic Country takes this pattern and uses it as its sole fuel for the soul and all of its musical fruits. Cosmic Country is an approach that uses simplicity, complexity, and truth to tell stories of life that bring beauty and goodness into reality. This 9-track mixtape I have assembled for your enjoyment and exploration today covers some ground of the far-flung lands of music that is Cosmic Country, where the high frequencies fall like rain and blossom like lilies in the fields that never end nor never began. Let’s get Cosmic. – Daniel Donato

“Honky Tonk Night Time Man” – Merle Haggard

This is a country song. But just like any country, there is more nuance to be discovered and brought to light than meets the eye. This is an archetypal honky-tonk song. A few of these will be on here. Honky-tonk songs cover truthful states of life that apply to all of our brothers and sisters sojourning in space and time together down on this chaotic planet. This song talks about relief from the grind and finally getting around to what is right for the soul when quittin’ time comes around.

“Doggone Cowboy” – Marty Robbins

This is also a country song, but it is also more nuanced than that. This is a cowboy song. The cowboy is one of the great American archetypes. The cowboy embraces a life of service, hard work, endurance, adventure, and most enduringly, faith. It takes faith to stay patient and persistent in pursuing your work through realms of chaos that you must travel through and come out on the other side stronger than you did prior. Marty had a way of personifying sorrow, acceptance, reflection, and hope in his delivery of these transcendant, simple lyrics.

“Mystery Train” – Jerry Reed

It can’t be fully Cosmic Country unless it moves you. Internally, songs move us, but sometimes the pocket and groove move us externally, which is a brilliant expression of personality. What I love about this song is that Jerry Reed always had a vision in his mind that could create a groove for people to dance to and for players to have fun-expression in. Everyone knows “Mystery Train,” but this version can make any club, honky tonk, theatre, or arena dance and move all together. Bonus points for a train song. Everyone loves a train song.

“Everybody’s Talkin’” – Harry Nilsson

The bottomline is that we are on our own trip. It is an individual experience of life, personality, and dynamics that only you experience. No one will ever live your life for you or as you. Songs that find promise and truthful reflection on the truly individualized nature of existence are my favorite. The movie Midnight Cowboy turned me onto this song when I was 16. I’ve never wished I had written another song as much as this American classic.

“I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still In Love With You)” – Hank Williams

The Shakespeare of country music. The man who was able to take the power of the word – through a Western lens of faith, hardship, and hard living – and deliver to us some of the most truthful and beautiful songs composed of themes ranging from love, loss, religious experience, jail time, honky tonkin’, and the universe. This song specifically has a brilliant form to it, just one verse and two B sections, coupled with that classic lap steel signature sound from Don Helms.

“Waiting for a Train” – Jimmie Rodgers

Any storyteller of American songs, country songs, any songs based in truth and experience, must tip their “Slouch Hat” to Jimmie Rodgers in one way or another. A lot of everything country begins with the songbook of Jimmie Rodgers. This song is just a fantastic story through and through. The lyrical furniture, the sophisticated use of actual terms of water tanks, brakemen, boxcar doors, all bring the listener into the simulated reality that this song conjures.

“Long Black Veil” – Lefty Frizzell

Murder songs are a necessity. The reaper takes his toll, and with that, law and order speak their truth. One of the brilliant elements of this song is that the perspective is from the deceased character. That is innately Cosmic, especially given the window of time this song was released. Lefty was one of Merle’s favorite vocalists, and was the band leader with which Roy Nichols and Merle Haggard first played together when Merle was 16.

“You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – The Byrds

Even though Bob Dylan penned this one on the side of the road, in the rain, waiting for a motorcycle fix, The Byrds – with Gram Parsons and Clarence White – deliver to us one of the most archetypal Cosmic Country recordings there will ever be. The instrumentation, the vocal melody, and harmonies on this song alone explain this sentiment, but the lyrical detail is another universe worth noting with great reverence. The olden language of the great folk songs of America inform the meter and colloquialisms in this song, giving it an ability to exist in the past through its roots, the present through its great orchestration and arrangement, and the future through its seeds of truth, beauty, and goodness – the only values in any creation that endow it to persist through the fleeting episodes of space and time.

“Truck Drivin’ Man” – Buck Owens

If I left out truck driving songs, then everybody from my time at Robert’s Western World would be ashamed of me. The truck driver is a minister of the highways, the great vehicle of true exploration and discovery. The eternal, long white line drags on and on, and the road songs of her fruits just keep coming, but some of the great ones came from Capitol Records in L.A. in the early ’60s.

An element of Cosmic Country that this song relates to is the overall “sound.” What is “the sound?” It is ultimately unqualifiable – it cannot be fully explained or qualified by words – especially when The Sound is doing what it can be doing in potential, which is rendering feelings that hit deeper than words can describe. With the Transcendant Twang of Don Rich’s Telecaster, the immensely clean and powerfully compressed sound of Mickey Cantu’s snare drum, along with that Tic-Tac Fender Bass playing, Buck Owen’s vocal and story rests upon a divinely simple and reverberated landscape of country gold. If there ever was a record that “sounds” like a country song, this one certainly qualifies.

Photo Credit: Jason Stoltzfus