Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, this weekly radio show and podcast has been a recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the digital pages of BGS. This week, we bring you new music from our Artist of the Month, Allison Russell, an exclusive live performance by Madison Cunningham from BGS’ Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, and much more. Remember to check back every week for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour.
Coming out of COVID isolation with fingers crossed and masks on, many artists are releasing new and exciting music. We’re particularly thrilled about Sunny War’s latest release, Simple Syrup. We caught up with the LA-based guitarist and singer for an edition of 5+5 and talked everything — from Elizabeth Cotten’s guitar playing to eating black-eyed peas with Nina Simone.
Singer-songwriter Ted Russell Kamp originally wrote “Lightning Strikes Twice” in the style of Billy Joe Shaver, as a honky tonk number. But, for his upcoming album Solitaire, he decided to rework the track, bluegrass style.
A student of singer-songwriter, multimedia artist, and scholar No-No Boy (AKA Julian Saporiti) once called his song “Gimme Chills” a “fucked up love letter to the Philippines.” No-No Boy agreed. The track is part history lesson and part tribute.
Yola’s roots-pop outing “Diamond Studded Shoes” is a song that explores the divides created to distract us from those few who are in charge of the majority of the world’s wealth. It calls on all of us to unite and turn our focus to those with a stranglehold on humanity.
BGS recently caught up with Kentucky’s own Dale Ann Bradley, discussing her recent album, Things She Couldn’t Get Over — her first release since departing group Sister Sadie. Each of the songs on the project deal with hard times, and finding the courage that gets us through. “Yellow Creek,” a song about the forced removal of Native Americans from their land, finds Bradley giving us a reminder to walk with empathy.
“Where I Belong” by singer-songwriter Josephine Johnson was inspired by characters from British Navy novels set during the Napoleonic wars. Love and high seas adventure, to be sure!
Inspired by their song “Gold,” The Wandering Hearts created a Mixtape for BGS, entitled The Golden Tonic, it’s a selection of songs that have helped them through tough situations, inspired them, and take them back to specific moments in time. They hope that the Golden Tonic will work its magic on the listener after this heavy and hard year.
In a recent 5+5, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Eli West discusses the influence of Paul Brady and Irish folk music, understated chaos in visual art, and drunk BBQ with Sting and Mark Knopfler.
Our Artist of the Month Allison Russell has already made a mark on the modern roots scene through various powerhouse groups, like Birds of Chicago and supergroup Our Native Daughters. Now, she’s stepping out with her first solo record, Outside Child. Stick around all month long for exclusive content from Russell.
Bhi Bhiman reimagines iconic rock song “Magic Carpet Ride” in the style of old country blues players – artists like Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and others who’ve played a huge role in Bhiman’s evolution as a guitarist.
Parker Millsap, one of our recent guests on The Show On The Road, is a gifted singer-songwriter who grew up in a Pentecostal church and creates a fiery gospel backdrop for his tender (then window-rattling) rock ‘n’ roll voice.
Last spring, on our debut episode of Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, Los Angeles-based, Grammy-nominated guitarist and singer-songwriter Madison Cunningham kicked off the entire series with an acoustic rendition of “L.A. (Looking Alive).”
From bluegrass mad scientist Stash Wyslouch, formerly of progressive string band the Deadly Gentlemen, here’s a traditional number turned upside down, taking a Bill Monroe tune and contrasting it with polytonal backup. Wyslouch told BGS that while he gravitates towards gospel standards in the bluegrass world, his own style drifts to the absurd and unexpected. Like a bluegrass Frank Zappa!
Singer-songwriter and pianist Bob Malone wrote “The River Gives” after the devastating 2016 flooding in West Virginia, but he never had a chance to produce the track like he wanted to – until now!
Marty Stuart’s new project, Songs I Sing In The Dark, is a collection of twenty songs that he curated that helped him through the tough times that we all saw in 2020. Stuart says this Willie Nelson song has followed him around since he first heard it over twenty years ago. “I think of it as an old friend, same as Willie. It’s a friend for the ages, and an excellent song to sing in the dark.
Photos: (L to R) Madison Cunningham by Claire Marie Vogel; Yola by Joseph Ross Smith; Allison Russell by Marc Baptiste
We hope, wherever you’re reading this from, that snow, frost, and the cold are truly retreating, giving way to longer days, warmer weather, and the gorgeous, humid, cicada-soundtracked days of summer. But, before we get to full-blown bluegrass season – and, hopefully, our first live music forays since COVID-19 shut the industry down in early 2020 – let’s take a moment to intentionally enjoy spring with these 12 bluegrass songs perfect for collecting a wildflower bouquet, romping and frolicking in the meadow, and pickin’ on the back porch while the evenings are still cool.
“Wild Mountain Flowers for Mary” – Lost & Found
A classic via Lost & Found, bluegrass certainly does not lack metaphors and analogies for love built around spring and the flowers re-emerging – see “Your Love is Like a Flower” below – but this somewhat melancholy track is an exceptional example of the form. And that banjo solo by Lost & Found founding member Gene Parker will stop you dead in your tracks.
“There Is a Time” – The Dillards
Famous for the rendition sung by Charlene Darling of the ever-popular Darling family on The Andy Griffith Show, this haunting, seemingly timeless folky melody from The Dillards – who also played members of the Darling clan – cautions, “…Do your roaming in the springtime/ And you’ll find your love in the summer sun.” The suspensions in the banjo roll linger on the minor chord, echoing this sentiment and categorizing spring not by its own, shining qualities, but by the darkness in winter and fall. A true classic.
A staple of impromptu pickin’ parties and jam circles, “Little Annie” is properly ensconced within the bluegrass canon, but is infused with new life in this application by Tuttle’s lead vocal, a slight queering of the lyric that’s perfectly at home in the hands of this veritable supergroup, assembled by D’Addario at Folk Alliance International’s conference in 2018.
“Texas Bluebonnets” – Laurie Lewis
Laurie Lewis is effortlessly, archetypically bluegrass even, if not especially, in applications that infuse other genres into the music, like this Tex-Mex flavored, twin fiddle arrangement of “Texas Bluebonnets” that truly never gets old. Yes, that’s Peter Rowan and Sally Van Meter guesting, and Tom Rozum jumping onto lead during the choruses so Lewis can utter the tastiest tenor harmony vocal. Stick around for the Texas double-fiddle break and do yourself a favor and bookmark the track for easy reference. You’ll be returning to it often, as this writer does.
“The First Whippoorwill” –Bill Monroe
The birds returning in spring are a sure sign of the seasons changing and the warm weather returning, though the whippoorwill’s role in folk music has always been as a bittersweet harbinger, never quite viewed without at least some semblance of suspicion, perhaps an acknowledgement of the whippoorwill’s mournful tendency of singing long into the dead of night. This recording of “The First Whippoorwill” is a tasty example of Monroe’s iconic high lonesome sound, with acrobatic breaks into entrancing falsetto woven into the harmonies.
“Sitting on Top of the World” – Carolina Chocolate Drops
Whether you know this common blues, old-time, and bluegrass number from the Mississippi Sheiks, Doc Watson, John Oates, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, or any other of its many, many sources the fact still stands: Don’t like peaches? Don’t shake the tree. Demonstrably a song for spring, summer, and beyond.
“Roses in the Snow” – Emmylou Harris
Though BGS calls sunny southern California home – and BGS South is relatively temperate and mild in Nashville, TN – we know there are climes across this continent where spring promises snow as reliably as thaw. Emmylou Harris released her iconic bluegrass album in 1980 and its title track is another homage to love bringing warmth, newness, and growth even in the cold: “Our love was like a burning ember/ It warmed us as a golden glow/ We had sunshine in December/ And grew our roses in the snow…”
“Each Season Changes You” – The Osborne Brothers
Love is as fickle as the breeze! There’s a small irony in the song’s central conflict, that the singer’s love changes their mind as often as the seasons change – which, when taken whole, seems like a much more stable, predictable love than most? Even so, and done in so many different iterations, the central metaphor still holds, forever baked into the vernacular of these folk musics.
“One Morning in May” – Jeff Scroggins & Colorado
If you’ve been a bluegrass fan over the past five to ten years and you don’t immediately hear Greg Blake’s voice singing “One Morning in May” whenever it pops into your head, something must be awry. During Blake’s stint with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, this spring-centered track was a highlight of their live show, a clean, modern rendering of what’s a properly ancient folk lyric. Lost love, war, nightingales, and yes, springtime – it has everything!
“Your Love is Like a Flower” – Flatt & Scruggs
Perhaps the song that defines the form. Flatt’s languid, lazy phrasing seems to underline the leisure of spring that grows into the laziness of summer. The rhythm of love, tied to the seasons and the budding blooms. Another timeless sentiment, distilled into a favorite, stand-by bluegrass number.
“Springtime in the Rockies” – Lead Belly
You know the film and the country hit, but have you heard Lead Belly himself tell the story of hearing the tune from “Gene” coming by and playing him some music? Worth a listen and worth inclusion on this list, which would suffer if it didn’t include “When It’s Springtime in the Rockies” in one form or another!
“Spring Will Bring Flowers” – Balsam Range
Processing grief and loss through the ever- and unchanging seasons is a common thread through rootsy songs about spring. This more recent recording from powerful North Carolina bluegrass vocal group Balsam Range hearkens back to springy, ‘grassy numbers from across the ages – its intermittent banjo licks a call back to Jimmy Martin’s “world filled with flowers” in “Ocean of Diamonds.”
Artist:Christopher Jones Hometown: Morgantown, West Virginia Album:Bach: The Goldberg Variations Release Date: May 7, 2021
Editor’s Note: Christopher Jones is director of the Appalachian Music Ensemble, a performing group at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He got his start, however, in the classical world. He holds a bachelor’s degree in cello performance, and a master’s and doctorate degree in music composition from West Virginia University. For his newest project, he has reworked Bach’s iconic Goldberg Variations for mandolin, banjo, and guitar.
In Their Words: “This project is something that I had thought about for a long time. Not necessarily that I wanted to record it myself, but that it was something that I really wanted to hear. When everything shut down last year and the world was upended, I made a split-screen video of the ninth variation, and then the second, and realized I might as well do a studio recording of the entire thing. I think I turned to this piece as something that had that satisfying and comforting sense of order and normalcy, even though the scope of the whole thing can feel chaotic. Each variation is an exercise in perspective, begging the question of ‘How many different ways can I look at the same problem?’ It was a lens to try and make sense of things.” — Christopher Jones
Boiling Springs, NC on Saturday, September 26, 1987: My workshop in the Gardner-Webb College Library with Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Sherrill and the Hired Hands ended at 4:30 that afternoon when Dan X. Padgett presented Snuffy with a hat. From my diary:
Afterward I hung around and listened for a while to the Hired Hands’ young banjo picker Randy Lucas play the Bach “Bourrée,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and another classical piece expertly on the banjo.
Here’s a nice example, from Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor, of Randy’s recent work in this milieu:
Then, supper time came.
I went for some barbecue (big regional difference thing — this barbecue was red, vinegary; with shredded pork) with Tom [Hanchett] and Carol [Sawyer] and then was kind of enticed away by Dan X Padgett…
I’d met Padgett the afternoon prior, when I first arrived in Boiling Springs; a respected local banjo elder, he was the teacher of the young banjo player in Horace Scruggs’ band whom I’d met earlier today. Padgett had a long and interesting career, with deep connections to Earl Scruggs and Snuffy Jenkins, as well as memories of an earlier generation of banjo greats. He was interviewed for the Earl Scruggs Center by Craig Havighurst in 2010.
I went with him…
…to his car (an old Cadillac) to look at various memorabilia like photos of him with various important country and bluegrass people. He also showed me a very worn copy of the very first F&S songbook and when I expressed a strong interest in copying it he loaned it to me. I also talked with him about the possibility of obtaining a banjo like one he played during the afternoon, a miniature Mastertone about the size of a mandolin with an actual tone ring, flange, and resonator. He said he’d see about it and we ended up standing at his trunk trying out various instruments.
I was picking away on “St. Anne’s Reel” when I noticed there were some people standing around me, and when I finished and looked around there was Doug Dillard looking at me with that big smile. Quite an introduction!
In an edition of the Shelby Star a week or so earlier, Joe DePriest wrote of Dillard’s association with Earl Scruggs, telling how in 1953 the Salem, Missouri teen first heard “Earl’s Breakdown” on the car radio. It hit him so hard “he ran off the road into a ditch.” Dillard got his folks to take him to Scruggs’s Nashville home. “We knocked on the door, and he came, and we asked him to put some Scruggs tuners on my banjo. He invited us in.”
A newspaper clipping from a 1987 edition of the ‘Shelby Star’ of an article by Joe DePriest on Doug Dillard
Earl welcomed banjo pickers to his home, especially if they wanted Scruggs Pegs. In the “Suggestions for Banjo Beginners” on the first page of Flatt & ScruggsPicture Album — Hymn and Songbook from 1958, Earl invited those interested to contact him in Nashville, and many did:
The first page of the 1958 ‘Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook’
In 1962 Doug and his brother Rodney went with their band The Dillards to LA, where they were “discovered” at the Hollywood folk club The Ash Grove. With best-selling Elektra LPs, they toured extensively in the West and appeared on CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show as “the Darling Family.”
In 1966 Doug left The Dillards and ventured into what would soon be called “country-rock,” touring with the Byrds and forming a band with former Byrd, Gene Clark. Dillard’s banjo playing had been strongly shaped by his close listening to Scruggs. In the ’60s when players like Bill Keith and Eric Weissberg were pushing banjo boundaries in bluegrass, Doug was pushing boundaries in a different way by finding a place for Scruggs-style banjo in rock. He fitted solid, straight-ahead rolls into pieces like Gene Clark’s “The Radio Song”:
Dillard was heard often on popular Hollywood studio recordings and movie soundtracks during the ’70s. He even had on-screen roles in Robin Williams’ Popeye and Bette Midler’s The Rose.
DePriest’s article quoted Dillard: “During all this time, ‘I never said goodbye to bluegrass.'” He moved to Nashville in 1983 and started a band.
The bluegrass music business was booming in Nashville. A bunch of young pickers were there, touring in bands and doing studio sessions. New Grass Revival featured newcomers Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn; John Hartford, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas — all were in town. The Nashville Bluegrass Band started in 1984; that year Ricky Skaggs won a Grammy for his version of Monroe’s “Wheel Hoss.” Up in the Gulch district, between the Opry and Vanderbilt, the Station Inn was serving bluegrass seven nights a week.
I was introduced to the Doug Dillard Band this afternoon right there where Dan X Padgett and I had been jamming. His four-piece outfit drew from a pool of talented bluegrass musicians.
Rhythm guitarist, vocalist and emcee Ginger Boatwright was a seasoned veteran. During the ’70s she’d toured and recorded with Red White and Blue(grass), and later formed The Bushwackers, an all-female group that began as the house band at Nashville’s Old Time Picking Parlor. Her story is told well in Murphy Hicks Henry’s book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. Henry calls her “The first ‘modern’ woman in bluegrass” alluding to her folk revival roots, her styles of humor and dress, and, most importantly, “a softer, smoother, more lyrical quality” of singing.
Having a second guitar as a regular lead instrument in a four-piece band was uncommon at this time. When I met Doug’s young lead guitarist I was surprised to discover he was the son of Lamar Grier, whom I’d hung out with twenty years earlier when he was a Blue Grass Boy. David Grier was 26. He’d studied the lead guitar work of Clarence White (there’s a photo of him with White in Bluegrass Odyssey), Tony Rice, and Doc Watson. He was already an experienced pro.
Playing the electric bass, which was unusual for the time, was Roger Rasnake, a singer-songwriter from Bristol on the Tennessee-Virginia border.
In 1986 Flying Fish released this band’s first album, What’s That? (FF 377). Here’s the title cut. The band is augmented to six pieces by Vassar Clements on violin and Bobby Clark on mandolin; both played on the album. What we see and hear first is Ginger’s dynamic emcee work. Doug’s composition shows a banjo picker who knew fiddle music — a melodic “A” section followed by a punching Scruggs-style “B” part.
Rasnake made a point of telling me Roland White had sent his regards.
Roland was an old California friend, whom I’d met in 1964 and gotten to know when he was playing with Monroe. He’d just joined the Nashville Bluegrass Band. It was a pleasant surprise to hear from him.
Roger wanted to buy a copy of my book, so I took him up to the library and he bought one which I autographed. I signed several others during the day, including several that people brought with them.
I rested a bit before heading over to Gardner-Webb’s Lutz-Yelton Convocation Center.
That evening was the Doug Dillard concert in the gym. It was good, with Ginger Boatwright doing the MC work, Lamar Grier’s son David picking some nice lead guitar, and good singing by Roger, Doug, and Ginger.
Rasnake did one of his own songs from their album, “Endless Highway.”
It’s familiar today because Alison Krauss covered it in her 1990 album, I’ve Got That Old Feeling.
There was a grand finale at the end with picking by Horace and the boys, and also fiddler Pee Wee Davis, whom I heard briefly in the back room for a while. I bought a souvenir photo of the Dillards with Andy Griffith. Home and in bed by 11.
On Sunday morning:
Up and away by 7:30, carried my bags to Tom and Carol’s dorm. We hit the road and drove to Shelby where we went, on Joe’s advice, to the Pancake House, a local place on the strip which was sure to have livermush. We went in and sat at a table and when the menu came I eagerly perused it. Sure enough, at the top of the list on the right-hand side was “Livermush and Eggs.” And, in case I’d missed it, about halfway down the same list was “Eggs and Livermush.” So I ordered that and actually ate some. Very peppery, other than that not much taste and what there was didn’t really excite me. I mixed it with eggs, like one does with grits. Maybe it’ll help my banjo-picking, who knows.
In Chapel Hill I stayed the night with Tom and Carol and had a bit of time to visit friends and relations and buy a box of instant grits at a supermarket. Next day I was back home in Newfoundland, writing up my diary.
The weekend at the Earl Scruggs Celebration brought me face to face with a music culture in which bluegrass nestled. Seeing, hearing and talking with Snuffy, Pappy, Horace, and Dan put me in touch with generations older than mine, what Bartenstein has called “The Pioneers” and “The Builders” of this music. I feel fortunate to have seen, met and heard them all. Just as important for me was hearing new younger performers like Ginger Boatwright, David Grier, and Randy Lucas.
This was my first opportunity see my folk guitar hero, Etta Baker. It came near the start of her late-in-life performance career. In 1989 the North Carolina Arts Council gave her the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; in 1991 she won an NEA National Heritage Fellowship. Wayne Martin produced her first CD, for Rounder, in 1991. Later she collaborated with Taj Mahal. Meanwhile Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization “fighting to preserve American musical traditions,” gave her the support she needed to pursue her career as a musician up to her passing at the age of 93.
It was also my first time to see Doug Dillard. If Snuffy and Pappy personified the era when bluegrass emerged from old-time, Dillard’s new band blended the contemporary sounds of an era when classic, progressive, and newgrass elements were shaping and blending the sounds heard as bluegrass thrived in a festival-dominated scene.
Instead of an alpha male lead singer/emcee/rhythm guitarist, he had an alpha female. Replacing the mandolin or fiddle one expected in a band with a banjo was an acoustic lead guitar. Instead of an old “doghouse” upright the bass player had an electric. The lead vocals were shared between male and female. Repertoire ranged from bluegrass classics through old pop and rock favorites to band member compositions. The group was touring widely. State of the art bluegrass, 1987.
So how did all this fit together for me? I recalled the start of my visit when Joe DePriest took Tom, Carol, and me to visit the Shelby graveyard.
He showed us three graves: first that of Thomas Dixon, the local writer whose The Clansmen was turned by D.W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation. Not far away was the grave of W.J. Cash, author of the immensely influential The Mind of the South. Joe and Tom pondered how the two men would have felt about being buried so close to each other; the image that sticks with me is one of Cash glaring at Dixon.
Joe gave us copies of the Greater Shelby Chamber of Commerce’s glossy full-color brochure, Shelby…it’s home. In it Thomas Dixon is identified as the author “whose novel Birth of a Nation became the first million-dollar movie” thus avoiding the fact that book and movie inspired the racist revival of the KKK. It describes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist W.J. Cash simply as “author,” not mentioning his progressive stances in print against the Klan and Nazism.
Tom wondered, what if the paths of Cash (who lived in Boiling Springs) and the young Scruggs had crossed at the time? He told us:
Cash … thought that the South had no “Culture” to speak of — what would he have had to say about Scruggs’s contribution?
Joe took us to a third gravesite, that of a local Confederate colonel killed in a Civil War battle; after detailing that part of his life its headstone:
… describes him as a lover of the arts who twice rode by horseback all the way to a far-off northern city (Baltimore? New York?) in order to hear Jenny Lind sing. This tells you where Cash’s mind was when he spoke of Culture.
The Shelby brochure ended its historical section saying “Cleveland County has also produced two North Carolina governors and an ambassador, but our most famous son is country singer Earl Scruggs.”
So much for official culture in 1987!
Gardner-Webb’s decision to honor Earl Scruggs reflected a shifting intellectual landscape. A local musician of humble origins — a mill worker — had taken on new meaning and significance because of his national and international recognition and popular culture success. He deserved honor and celebration in his home. I was glad to help.
I don’t know if there were any further Earl Scruggs Celebrations at Gardner-Webb, but today there’s an Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, which is planning to hold its inaugural Earl Scruggs Music Festival in September 2022.
Artist:Sunny War Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Latest Album:Simple Syrup Personal Nicknames: Syd
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
That’s a tough question for me… I would have to say I was probably most moved by Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten. I really started getting into old blues when I was 13, and that’s when I first discovered Elizabeth Cotten. When I learned that she was around my age when she wrote songs like “Freight Train” I was very inspired. Just a couple years after learning to play “Freight Train” I actually started hopping freight trains! So the song has become even more meaningful to me over the years as well as her extremely unique guitar style.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memory from being on stage was when Aroyn (my bassist) and I played with a new drummer at Live Oak Music Festival in San Luis Obispo. We only managed to get one rehearsal in and the whole performance was a bit of a gamble. The drummer was a friend of mine who we asked to play just a few days before the gig. With such short notice we had to totally wing it and ended up playing the most aggressive version of my songs… ever! But the crowd loved it and we had a great time. On stage it felt like a disaster, but afterwards the audience let us know they really enjoyed how chaotic it was.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I have wanted to be a musician for as long as I can remember. However, I didn’t realize I wanted to pursue music professionally until I was about 23 years old. I had four roommates at the time, a full-time minimum wage job at a mall and no college education. I was so busy working at the mall I had no time for music. I knew that the only way I could afford to be a musician was to either get a degree or figure out how to get paid to play music. I busked on the streets for many years, but slowly broke into the club scene and started touring.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
Before a show my biggest ritual is running through my entire set a couple times. I don’t rehearse vocals but I always rehearse my guitar parts. My guitar style is so silly that I struggle a lot with remembering how I originally played certain songs.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I would pair Nina Simone with black eyed peas, rice and cornbread. Cos that meal is church and so is Nina. Southern Blacks have been eating that meal religiously to welcome the new year since long before my grandma made it for me and my cousins, and Nina has a way of giving me a “fresh start” with every listen.
This week, we feature a conversation with one of the rising stars in our current roots music renaissance: Parker Millsap, a gifted Oklahoma-born singer-songwriter who grew up in a Pentecostal church and creates a fiery gospel backdrop for his tender then window-rattling rock ‘n’ roll voice.
When you’ve been touring hundreds of days a year down southern backroads from Tulsa to Tallahassee since you were a teenager like Parker Millsap has, you know a thing or two about how to keep your head when things go off the rails. But it was the forced year-long break during the pandemic that really made him stop and accept how far he’s come from his intense, anxious, folky debut Palisade in 2012, which was released when he was 19. His soulful, self-assured new record Be Here Instead displays a relentlessly hard-working performer who no longer has to chase the next gig for gas money, or has to worry if the world will accept his work. Holed up outside of Nashville with his wife, Millsap let the songs do the talking.
His brawnier, self-titled record from 2014 showed his rebellious electric side coming to the fore, followed by his beloved, fire-and–brimstone bopping breakout The Very Last Day two years later, which confronted our country’s obsession with destruction. Then there was the toothier, glossier, pop-leaning Other Arrangements, which finally brings us to his soulful newest record, Be Here Now. It’s not hard to see that this young songwriter is coming into his prime years. With a new maturity and wisdom behind his writing, standout, incendiary songs like “Dammit” are allowed to unfold in a distortion-dipped, John Lee Hooker meets U2 slow-burn build; never resolving, never relenting while he confronts the tough truths and hypocrisies that are threaded into our modern lives. What is our purpose? What can we do about the violence and greed all around us? Without pushing or preaching, the song is trying to convince its listener to never give up in making our broken world a little better every day.
What always set Millsap’s songwriting apart, though, isn’t just his ability to get us fired up with stomping roots-n-roll hysterics (though he’s pretty great at that), it’s the tender left-turns he takes when he goes acoustic, bringing the volume down and the emotion up. Reminiscent of a southern Paul McCartney, his scratchy, soulful tenor shines most on his gorgeous ballads — think “Jealous Sun” (from The Very Last Day) as his own “Yesterday” or on the newest record, the psychedelic and heart-string pulling “Vulnerable,” which asks us all to try and see our own weaknesses and past wounds as potential strengths.
While it is bittersweet to not be able to kick off his new record release this April with a typical cross-country tour, on April 23 Parker will be playing Be Here Instead in its entirety with his longtime band live on Mandolin — which you can stream from anywhere.
Artist:Alex Heflin Hometown: Los Angeles, California // Morgantown, West Virginia Song: “Guest Room” Album:Room for Everyone Release Date: March 26, 2021 Label: Hat Full of Rain Records
In Their Words: “Room for Everyone as an album was intended to highlight that inclusivity in both genre and personality always adds interest and excitement to a medium. ‘Guest Room’ is meant to represent the core of this message. In a somewhat nontraditional band setup, the mandolin is the focal point of this upbeat ‘Nashville funk’ tune. I played mandolin and guitar on this track and I was lucky enough to have Nick Campbell (bass), Jordan Rose (drums), and Swatkins (keys) fill out the rest of the song. I originally got the idea to write a tune in this style after hearing Chris Thile play with the Fearless Flyers. That idea sat in the back of my head for more than a year before I sat down to write what would become this song. From there I recorded the mandolin and guitar and the rest is history!” — Alex Heflin
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I am inspired by so many amazing musicians, but if I had to choose one it would be John Mayer. It is super inspiring for me to see someone who incorporates a hint of blues and folk music in their style become one of the world’s biggest artists. It is not often where you find people of his caliber carrying on the sounds of authentic music and incorporating it into their own songwriting and musical style. I also love the way he uses his instrumentation in his songwriting, and that is something I aspire to do as well. In my mind, he is one of the greatest guitar players alive. While his songs aren’t all super complex he succeeds at creating hits with simple soulful music. He does just enough to get the point across. I also love watching him blur the genre boundaries within the mainstream music industry, and that is something that I think about often too because I am inspired by so many different musical styles.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite live performance I have done was a Ted X showcase at the Schermerhorn Symphony Hall here in Nashville. Even though that performance was a couple years ago, and I have improved so much musically since then, it was such a special memory. I had gone to the symphonies ever since I was 2 years old. I remember one time going to the Schermerhorn to watch the symphony perform, and after I got to meet some of the players. I was always in awe of that stage, and I never would’ve imagined getting to play it some day. I had gone to see Punch Brothers and some other amazing acts perform on that stage when I was a little older. For me, when I got on stage I was so nervous just knowing that this was the exact same stage I had idolized since I was around 4. It was an amazing show that I will never forget, and it gave me inspiration to keep going knowing that I was able to make a dream come true.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I have been a music lover ever since I was born. I moved to Nashville when I was 4 years old, and I started taking violin lessons as soon as we moved. I then picked up mandolin, and later the guitar. I eventually moved away from classical music and I have been experimenting with different styles ever since. Only recently have I felt like I truly found my sound and style. Most of the music I write is within the folk/Americana genre with influences from other styles and sounds. I was around 4 or 5 when I first started going to concerts and as soon as I watched amazing artists, I knew that I was going to be a musician. My mind to this day has never changed. It was only when I started getting older, and when I began venturing into different styles such as bluegrass that I decided I wanted to be a touring musician. Someday I hope to tour the world with my guitar and my violin, and share my songwriting across the globe.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
There was one time a few years ago when I was getting down about wanting to be a musician. At the time there were many problems going on within the world, and I wanted to do something about it. I felt like my life would be useless unless I could help the world, and leave a mark somehow. At the time, I was lost regarding how I was going to do that with my music, but right around that same time I discovered songwriting. Ever since that day, I decided I would write about real world problems, and that when I didn’t write directly about world issues, I would use my music as a platform to do my part in making this world a better place. Even though I am still at the beginning of my journey in doing that, I will never lose sight of that vision. My songwriting is also my way of coping with life and the experiences I go through. Often I find that many other people feel the same way or have been through similar experiences. It is so amazing to me how songwriting has the ability to connect everyone no matter who they are, where they live, what they believe, or what they look like; and I believe that it is the greatest tool we can use to help connect human civilization.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I love the sun. Light gives me so much inspiration and happiness. There is something so inspirational about watching the sunrise and the sunset everyday. For me it never gets old. Especially while watching the sunset, I have found that I create my best work. It is a small reminder of how beautiful the world is out there, and it is hard to remember that nowadays because most of us have been stuck in our homes for more than a year. I love writing songs during the sunset, and I get the perfect view of it everyday from my room. I always try to get as much writing or recording done while the sunset is happening simply because it brings out the best artist in me.
Tim Stafford could be renowned for any one of his many contributions to bluegrass music over his prolific career, his talents as a musician and writer having been showcased in so many of its important creations. He is perhaps most well-known as a founding member of Blue Highway, one of the most influential and decorated bands in bluegrass. Prior to that, he formed Dusty Miller in the late 1980s, and Alison Krauss hired him in 1990 as part of her band, Union Station, with whom he recorded the Grammy-winning album, Every Time You Say Goodbye.
Stafford is also an accomplished author. In 2010 with Caroline Wright, Stafford issued Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story, the authorized biography of the flatpicking icon and Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame member. As a songwriter, Tim has placed more than 250 cuts and was named IBMA’s Songwriter of the Year in 2014 and 2017. He notably co-wrote IBMA’s 2008 Song of the Year, Blue Highway’s “Through the Window of a Train,” with Steve Gulley. Tim and Steve were frequent collaborators and released a duo album in 2010 called Dogwood. Ten years later, they created another album of co-written material, but Gulley passed away suddenly from cancer soon after it was completed, making the title, Still Here, all the more meaningful.
BGS: How does it feel to release this record? With Steve’s unexpected passing I imagine it must be a more heavy feeling than a typical record release.
TS: Yeah, I’m really glad it’s finally out. Steve was really looking forward to this record coming out. We were both excited about the songs and it ended up being his last recording, which was hard on all of us. And now it’s part of his legacy. After Steve passed, I talked to the label about maybe coming up with a different title besides Still Here, but we decided it was a very appropriate title because his music is still here. He would have been proud of it. I know that for sure.
How long had you known Steve?
I didn’t know him when I was younger, although he was around and playing. He was mainly playing up at Renfro Valley in Kentucky and he didn’t travel much until he joined Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver which would have been in the late ‘90s or around 2000. I was playing a festival somewhere with Blue Highway and he came up to the record table and we started talking like we’d known each other forever because we knew a lot of the same people. We just hit it off. He was the one that first suggested we write and it was either the first or second time we got together we wrote four songs in one day. And all four of them got cut. I felt like at that point we had something special. We seemed to have a wavelength that we could touch off of each other. That’s really rare. You don’t get that with a lot of people.
The subject matter in the songs on this record seems very personal, and often about people you know. I would imagine that it’s sort of therapeutic, maybe in the same way that journaling might be, to write about personal things like that. Is that how you feel about it?
That’s a good way to put it and I did used to journal. Some of them, like “Back When It Was Easy,” are just about general topics that we know about. Whereas “Long Way Around the Mountain” and “She Threw Herself Away” are about things that actually happened that we chronicled about friends. And sometimes they are big stories that you just can’t stay away from. “She Comes Back to Me When We Sing” is a story we’d both seen on Facebook about this guy’s mother who was in advanced stages of Alzheimer’s and didn’t know anybody until she sang with her son. And when that happened, she remembered all the words and she could remember everything. We thought that was a really inspirational story and deserved to be a song.
You’ve been writing for so long that it seems like you’ve been able to build the skill of telling a story through song, rather than narrating a timeline to music.
Yes, that’s where it’s at. That’s where the craft comes in that you only develop by doing it. I really didn’t know how to write a song when I started. But you learn little things along the way through trial and error. It’s like anything but it’s really difficult to learn how to do something like write a song out of a book — although I have a whole collection of them here. I have lots of books about songwriting like Jimmy Webb’s Tunesmith and Sheila Davis’ The Craft of Lyric Writing which is really good. You can learn tips, but you’re not going to learn how to write from a book. So it’s a matter of doing it.
I don’t remember exactly where I heard it, but I think I remember Jimmy Webb talking about writing “Wichita Lineman” and him saying that it was fully fictitious. But that he felt like, as a songwriter, he should be able to write about people he didn’t know. That he should be able to understand people well enough to write a story that was convincing without it having to be true. I could be misremembering that, though.
You may not be. I think that there’s actually a book out about that song, “Wichita Lineman,” that I finished here last year and I believe you’re right and he’s right. I think that being able to tell a story about somebody you don’t know is important. There’s a song that I wrote really early on called “Midwestern Town” that Ronnie Bowman recorded. That song is totally fictional. I didn’t know anybody like the character in that song. But I’ve had a lot of people come up and say that they did know someone like that or that it could have been them and that song made a big difference to them. It was a comforting song. You’ve got to be able to get inside people’s heads and think the way that they would. You have to know what your character might do in any given scenario. I can’t remember all the times I’ve been co-writing and said, “What would this guy do?”
Have you written songs as long as you’ve been playing guitar? When did you started writing songs?
I guess I wrote all the way back when I first started playing guitar, but I wasn’t really serious about it. I had written some songs before I played with Alison in the early ‘90s and we actually recorded one of them, but it never came out which was my fault. She wanted to put an instrumental I’d written called “Canadian Bacon” on Every Time You Say Goodbye, but I talked her out of it. I told her we needed to record “Cluck Old Hen” because we were so psyched about Ron [Block] being in the band and his playing on that. And I don’t regret that though it probably would have meant more money.
You were in Union Station from 1990 to ‘92, right? That was a very cool lineup of that band. How did you feel about it at the time?
I was blown away by it. I loved it and it was really cool that it worked out because the first time she talked to me about playing with her, it was back when I was in a group called The Boys in the Band. We played at SPBGMA and her band was there but her guitar player, Dave Denman, was leaving. She called me a few weeks after that and asked if I’d be interested. At that point, she had only recorded Too Late to Cry and I was really impressed with the songs, with John Pennell’s writing, and her singing. I had already committed to playing with a different group though so I had to decline.
About two or three years later I had started a group called Dusty Miller that she was a fan of. That band had Barry Bales and Adam Steffey in it. The three of us kind of grew up together playing music. We’re all from Kingsport, Tennessee. I actually gave Adam his first mandolin lesson, which is such a joke. [Laughs] Adam didn’t know anything about the instrument at all at the time. I tried to show him some stuff and I just kept thinking, “That guy’s never gonna get it.” And I barely knew how to play myself but I tried to show him “Bluegrass Breakdown” and he just couldn’t get it. He got with a different teacher after that and got real serious about it. The next time I saw him play, I was like, “What happened here?” [Laughs] It was like the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I take absolutely no credit for that whatsoever.
Barry Bales was a student of James Alan Shelton. And James and I both taught at the Guitar Shop in Kingsport. That’s where I met Adam and gave him that lesson, and I met Barry down there, too. We all three ended up playing in The Boys in the Band. And then we started Dusty Miller. Alison liked that rhythm section so she offered the job to all three of us at the same time, and we took it. This was early 1990 and we played our first show in May — I think it was at the Station Inn. It was just incredible. We played some amazing places, but it was during the period of the band when we were all traveling in a van and staying in one hotel room.
I was playing with Alison when I met Tony Rice. We ended up playing a lot of shows together because he and Alison had the same agent and were on the same label. I never will forget the first time I really ever talked to Tony much. We were playing right before him at Winterhawk (which is now Grey Fox) and I broke a string on the last song we played. We got a standing ovation so I was backstage digging around, trying to find a string so we could do an encore. And Tony walks over with “the antique” and says, “Hey, man, here, play this.” I had a smile from ear-to-ear and Alison was smiling too.
What was it like getting to put that biography of Tony together? What led to that?
Well, a few years after that, after I left Union Station and started Blue Highway, I was still playing shows with Tony because Blue Highway had signed with Rounder, too. We were at a show with Tony and I said, “Man, have you ever thought about a biography?” And he said, “Well, actually, yeah, I have thought of that. But I’ll tell you what,” he said, “I think you’d be the ideal person to write it.” I said OK and started on it. That was about 2000 and it took 10 years to finish.
Three years into it, Caroline Wright came on board through Pam [Rice, Tony’s wife]. Caroline is a journalist and her mom was a member of the bluegrass community from New York state. Caroline lived in Hawaii at that time and had written a really well-done article about Tony in Listener magazine. I had started Tony’s book, but I was bogged down with it and wasn’t making a lot of progress and Pam suggested that Caroline come on board. We did four or five major, huge interviews with Tony that could have each been a book by themselves. And when we started transcribing them, we realized that Tony was so eloquent that we had to put it in Tony’s words. We couldn’t make it a narrative biography. That’s why it’s laid out the way it is. It’s chronological but in Tony’s words.
I’m really glad that we got to do it. Somebody would have done a book on him eventually, but I’m really glad that it came out before he left us. He’s one of those generational talents. I just don’t know that there’s going to be many people ever come along again who have an impact like that. He’s in the same league as Earl Scruggs, a top talent who created a language on the instrument.
So, it’s been a weird year, obviously. What have you been doing during this time?
I’ve been doing a lot of co-writing over Zoom. The other day I wrote my one-hundred-and-fourteenth song since the pandemic started.
Whoa!
Thomm Jutz and I’ve written 40 or so, just the two of us and, you know, you just get into the habit of doing it every week. I feel like Zoom is going to stick around and be the standard after the pandemic. I think it’s changed the way a lot of people think about co-writing. It makes you more disciplined and more productive. The technology just makes it easy. There’s no reason now for me to make a trip to Nashville, which is like four and a half hours, and get a hotel and all that when I can do all of it from home on my computer.
When you’re writing or doing work, are you the sort of person that has to change into regular people’s clothes to feel productive, or can you stay in your pajamas and be productive?
I think I’ve written at least a hundred of those 114 songs in my pajamas. [Laughs] I’m not going to dress up, I just want to be comfortable.
Guitarists spend lifetimes — often gleefully, sometimes manically, or at times frustratingly — finessing techniques, especially with their picking hand. Entire careers can be made or broken by the idiosyncrasies of one picker’s striking and sounding strings. Fingerstyle guitarist and composer Yasmin Williams has mastered myriad forms of right-hand styles, each complicated enough for multiple lifetimes’ worth of study. But she doesn’t merely alternate techniques between pieces; to a transcendentally perplexing degree she effortlessly alternates her entire picking hand approach mid-song.
On her 2021 release, Urban Driftwood, a collection of thoughtful, dynamic, and engaging instrumentals written for fingerstyle guitar and harp guitar, Williams makes many of these technique-swaps while the compositions charge forward, each one earning tailor-made right-hand approaches. As a result, the songs don’t feel encumbered when Williams, mid-melody, goes from right hand fingerstyle to bowing her strings with a cello bow, or plunking out notes on a kalimba taped to her guitar’s face, now positioned laying across her lap. She utilizes hand percussion and tap shoes to fill out arrangements, interposing Afro-descended instruments from around the world into her compositions, and she picks up, puts down, and readjusts her stable of musical tools in realtime — as a foley sound effect artist, prop master, or choreographer might.
In guitar-centered communities — which are, it’s worth pointing out, largely white, straight, and male — where the overwrought, complicated, and mind-bending are regarded as the highest value currencies, you might expect the intricacies of Williams’ compositions, and the physicality of these impressive, visually striking techniques, to be the entire point of the music. But, as Williams explains in our interview and demonstrates indelibly in her Shout & Shine livestream performance — which will air on BGS on March 31 at 4pm PDT / 7pm EDT (watch above) — the acrobatics of her playing are merely a means to an end. While entrancing, each fresh, inventive way Williams creates a dialogue with her instrument is merely a tool for her to execute each individual song, as close to how she hears it in her head as possible.
We began our conversation discussing this phenomenon and how it’s an active, deliberate choice on the part of Williams to serve her own songs.
BGS: There isn’t nearly as much variation in right hand or picking techniques in bluegrass and old-time as you use – tap, lap tapping, fingerstyle, harp guitar, I’ve even seen you bowing your guitar. So many of these contemporary guitar styles that you switch back and forth between are so different from each other, so what ties them all together for you? What does it feel like when you’re thinking about switching between these styles?
YW: I don’t really think about it much at all! Unless it’s logistically for a live performance, like, “Oh, I need to put my bow here, I need to put my kalimba here.” That [stage choreography] is really the only context in which I think about it. These different techniques, I just use them for whatever the song requires. They’re more like compositional tools. It’s more like I’m trying to find the sound that’s in my head or I’m trying to find a sound that’s different from [how] my guitar [already sounds], something to supplement whatever I’m writing. It’s not really like, “I want to make a lap tapping song!” It’s not conscious like that. These techniques are kind of my inventions and I only really come up with them to well, finish the song, basically.
I’ve never really been technique-forward – yeah, guitar culture is very nerdy and I’ve never been very into that, at least in terms of the techniques, I don’t usually care what people are doing. [Laughs] I care more about the result. However you choose to get there is cool, too! But I don’t really scout other people’s techniques or anything.
It makes me think of Elizabeth Cotten, who you have mentioned in past performances and interviews as an influence of yours. She was left-handed and played “upside down and backwards,” playing the guitar the way she needed to play it.
[Laughs] Yes! She just figured it out, she was determined! Elizabeth Cotten and Jimi Hendrix kind of served the same purpose for me. They’re both extremely unique, I love that about them, and they really didn’t care about how they were “supposed” to do things, they weren’t bogged down by tradition. Elizabeth Cotten, I love her because, somewhat obviously, she’s a Black woman who plays guitar fingerstyle, which is very cool — and banjo, too. How she played, I can’t figure it out! It’s fun to figure out and to watch, but it’s even cooler to not watch her play and just listen. All of her tunes are so catchy. She’s great, I’d love to be as great of a songwriter as her one day, hopefully.
Some of the songs on Urban Driftwood feel so huge and expansive, but some feel so introspective and meditative, despite the fact that most tracks have very similar, stripped down, simple instrumentation and arrangements. It’s not a lot of production and arranging. How do you accomplish that dynamic range? What is your own dialogue with your instrument like during the creative process, during recording and writing?
That’s a really interesting question! But, I don’t know! [Laughs] Sorry to say that, but I really need to think more about this.
Some songs, I definitely did want to be more introspective, like “I Wonder.” That was definitely one I wanted to be very intimate. And I did think about, in a live setting, how I wanted the song to feel more quiet and more intimate than other arrangements. “Swift Breeze” is another one I wanted to have an edgier sound. I don’t really think about it, I guess I’m just extremely tunnel-visioned. At the time of writing or recording a song I only think about what the song needs. Whatever that particular song that I’m working on in that moment needs. I didn’t think about live performance at all until after the album was already out and finished, which was probably not the best idea, [Laughs] I’m kind of regretting it now, but I’m working it out.
I did think about the arrangement for “Urban Driftwood” a lot. I didn’t want to use tons of overdubs or multi-tracks on many of the songs [on the album], because I don’t really “believe” in it, I guess. That one, I wanted it to sound expansive, but also I wanted it to be able to work in a more intimate setting, too. But even so, I’m not really thinking about it that much.
The guitar, when you take it out of the context of the average player’s experience — which is usually playing with a pick and using three or four chords — when you remove it from that context so many new and exciting ideas have to start flowing, like when you pick up a bow instead of a pick. What is your experimentation like when you’re composing/writing?
I tend to repeat things I like over and over again. I can do that for hours. [Laughs] It’s a bit of a mess, it’s not the most efficient way to write something, but I can make up a melodic line that I really like and play it for hours and hours and hours. Other things will start to form while I’m playing that. Then I’ll record it, or write it down in notation, whatever I need to do to remember it. That process can go on for months before I even finish a song.
I love experimenting. I love finding new, different things to use. Like a hammered dulcimer hammer or a bow or tap shoes, which are something else I use. Those were another example of problem solving. Now I’m into pedals a lot more so I’m experimenting with those, too. There are tons of great pedals out there, so it can be pretty difficult. It’s another world on its own! I’ve always been an experimental player, ever since I started playing.
Who are you listening to now who inspires you? And who – you already mentioned Jimi Hendrix and Elizabeth Cotten – do you look to and who influences you from past generations?
I kind of want to go back to where I’m from [in Northern Virginia], Chuck Brown is an influence — maybe not directly, I don’t really model my playing after his at all. He’s a guitar player from the D.C. area, he plays go-go music, a kind of regional style of music here. I’ve always loved him, from when I was a kid.
Libba Cotten, obviously, is a huge influence. I wish I had known about her when I was younger. I think I could’ve saved a lot of time by not trying to be something I was never going to be. I really wanted to be a shredding, metal-type guitarist. I think that’s what I associated the guitar with–
Is that where the tapping came in?
Yeah!
That’s amazing. There are a lot of post-metal pickers in bluegrass! We have quite a few.
[Laughs] I mean, I used to play Guitar Hero and that had so many rock songs and metal songs on it and tapping stuff. A bit of southern rock, too. But it was really rock- and male-centered and it would’ve been great to find Elizabeth Cotten sooner. That would’ve been great. I still like Paul Gilbert, I still like Buckethead, all of them, but it definitely would’ve been better if I had found Libba Cotten or Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Algia Mae Hinton sooner.
Ah! I love Algia Mae, when you mentioned tap shoes earlier I immediately thought of her and the tradition of buck dancing and clogging connected to finger-picking.
I know! I didn’t know anything about that until recently! I didn’t really know anything about that until the past couple of years, I’ve definitely gone down the rabbit hole of all of that now, though.
I guess I am listening to more guitar music these days than I ever have before. When I first started playing I didn’t really listen to any, because I didn’t really like it, the fingerstyle stuff and the technical stuff. Whatever you want to call it. But now, it’s great. There are a lot of contemporary players I really enjoy, I love Daniel Bachman’s stuff. [The band] The Americans have cool stuff. Chuck Johnson and Sarah Louise. There are a lot more people releasing music that isn’t just a derivative of what already exists in the guitar canon or in traditional guitar scenes.
This topic has come up recently — in my interview with Jackie Venson and also with Sunny War — but more and more when I find myself engaging with contemporary guitar music, it’s made by women. To a degree, I think the music women are making in fingerstyle guitar and in “guitar culture” right now is just not what you hear like… in the halls at NAMM. As a queer person, I think I avoid guitar culture a lot because it feels so toxically masculine. Do you feel that, too?
Yeah, I feel that now that I’m in the scene more. When I released my first album — and before that, when I was just learning and coming up — I didn’t feel anything like that, because I think I just ignored it. I didn’t really care. (I still don’t really care.) [Laughs] There are nicer sections in the guitar world as well as more “competitive” or kind of douchey sections. [Laughs again] Like the guy who will turn my amp on, cause he thinks I can’t turn it on. That happens a lot.
Looking ahead to the future, with vaccines rolling out and it feeling like we’re at this transition point from pre-COVID to the beginning of post-COVID — and you’re gaining so much momentum with this record even during the shutdown — what are you looking ahead to? And what does this transition from “before times” to “after times” feel like to you?
I’m actually kind of thankful for it. It’s giving me time to reflect — not only on the album’s success, but it’s giving me time to not worry about shows. I can plan and build a team around me and become more “professional” [to be ready] when touring does start up and venues do start opening again.
Creatively and musically I am all OVER the place! [Laughs] I’m writing a piece for a berimbau group called Projeto Arcomusical, the berimbau is an old, Afro-Brazilian instrument. I’m really excited for that, I can finally use my college degree and be a composer for once. I’m working with another group, based in NYC, called Contemporaneous, arranging songs from my new album for a summer concert, which is fun. I’m working on new music, trying to write more harp guitar stuff, playing my twelve-string guitar more. My head’s all over the place, really.
I definitely feel a sort of rejuvenation now that I’ve gotten past the “WTF is going to happen?” Now I’m just like, “Whatever happens happens,” and I’ve gotta make new music!
Photo credit: Kim Atkins Photography
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
