(Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Reissue series! For the next several weeks, Basic Folk is digging back into the archives and reposting some of our favorite episodes alongside new introductions commenting on what it’s like to listen back. Enjoy!)
Listening back, I feel like this 2018 interview with Anaïs Mitchell holds up. Originally published on January 10, 2019, Hadestown was about to debut on Broadway, the pandemic was still over a year away, and we were young and full of autumn. Our Basic Folk interview includes a really interesting discussion about feminism (with just one squeamish reference to fourth-wave being about “non-binary” from yours truly. Eeek!). Anaïs talks about her childhood on a sheep farm in Vermont. She unpacks her love for and loyalty in her collaborations and the mystical way she found her visual artist (Peter Nevins) for Hadestown.
We also talk about Hadestown receiving some “viral” attention in 2016, thanks to a Tr*mp campaign promise to build a wall on the southern border. People latched onto her 2006-penned song, “Why We Build the Wall,” which is one of the pinnacle tracks from the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Anaïs opens up about how she met her husband, Noah Hahn, and her early musical beginnings in Boston at Club Passim.
This episode was recorded just as Hadestown was set to open at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway in March 2019. This was also a year before her band, Bonny Light Horseman, would release their debut album. I’m proud of our conversation, which includes some chiming in from Anaïs’ guitarist Austin Nevins, who was on tour with her at the time of the recording. We three are old friends and we were trying to record the interview and hang out at the same time. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if we succeeded!
Basic Folk is making trouble at sea with Ani DiFranco and Carsie Blanton! Hosts Lizzie and Cindy had the opportunity to speak with the two like-minded radical songwriters aboard the 2025 edition of Cayamo, a roots music cruise. Our conversation kicks off with Ani sharing her transformative experience performing as Persephone in the Broadway show Hadestown, delving into the challenges of acting and the lessons learned from stepping outside her musical comfort zone. We navigate through Ani’s journey of independence, discussing Unprecedented Sh!t, her first album with a producer besides herself in 23 years – BJ Burton – and what it means to relinquish control in the creative process.
In Ani’s memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, she writes about how her creativity is aligned with her menstrual cycle. She described the most creative part of her cycle as “THE WINDOW.” Cindy asked all three artists onstage to reflect on how their creativity relates to their periods. What resulted was a discussion on how creativity is impacted by not only menstrual cycles, but menopause and ovulation and how that has evolved over time. The conversation also touches on the significance of hair as a form of self-expression and how societal perceptions of women change with their appearances.
Ani and Carsie speak to the power of songwriting in addressing historical and political issues, emphasizing the importance of music as part of a larger movement for justice. They share insights on the necessity of community and collaboration among artists in a challenging industry, encouraging listeners to find strength in solidarity rather than competition. To wrap up, they reminisce about their parallel wild, youthful experiences and how those versions of themselves continue to influence their art today. As Ani had to leave the stage early, Carsie brought it home with an Ani DiFranco-themed lightning round.
To celebrate Black History Month – and the vital contributions of Black, Afro-, and African American artists and musicians to American roots music – BGS, Good Country, and our friends at Real Roots Radio in southwestern Ohio have partnered once again. This time, we’ll be bringing you weekly collections of a variety of Black roots musicians who have been featured on Real Roots Radio’s airwaves. You can listen to Real Roots Radio online 24/7 or via their FREE app for smartphones or tablets. If you’re based in Ohio, tune in via 100.3 (Xenia, Dayton, Springfield), 106.7 (Wilmington), or 105.5 (Eaton).
American roots music – in any of its many forms – wouldn’t exist today without the culture, stories, skills, and experiences of Black folks. Each week throughout February, we’ll spotlight this simple yet profound fact by diving into the catalogs and careers of some of the most important figures in our genres. To kick us off, RRR host Daniel Mullins shares songs and stories of Big Al Downing, Yola, Cleve Francis, Charley Crockett, Elizabeth Cotten, Dom Flemons, and Lead Belly.
We’ll return each Friday through the end of the month to bring you even more music celebrating Black History and the songs and sounds we all hold dear. Plus, you can find a full playlist with more than 100 songs below from dozens and dozens of seminal artists, performers, songwriters, and instrumentalists from every corner of folk, country, bluegrass, old-time, blues, and beyond.
Black history is American roots music history; the two are inseparable. As we celebrate Black History Month and its legacy, we hope you’ll join us in holding up and appreciating the artists who make country, bluegrass, blues, folk, and Americana the incredible and impactful genres that they are today.
Big Al Downing (1940 – 2005)
Big Al Downing was an engaging entertainer whose winding career included forays into many genres, including country music. An Oklahoma boy, Downing played piano on Wanda Jackson’s signature rockabilly hit, “Let’s Have A Party,” before pursuing a solo career, finding some mainstream success, dabbling in R&B, and even scoring a Number 1 disco hit, “I’ll Be Holding On.”
However, Downing made history in country as one of the earliest Black artists to find success in the genre. Beginning in the late ’70s, he would have a string of fifteen singles hit the Billboard country charts over the next decade, three of which reached the Top 20. He was nominated by the Academy of Country Music for their Top New Male Vocalist award in 1980. Big Al would be a frequent guest on the Grand Ole Opry, Hee Haw, Nashville Now, and more.
Downing’s soulful singing on hardcore country songs like “Bring It On Home” and “Touch Me (I’ll Be Your Fool Once More)” endeared him to fans, while his story song “Mr. Jones” has remained beloved by country enthusiasts. His career spanned five different decades of country, rockabilly, and more, remaining active in the country music world until shortly before his passing in 2005 after a brief battle with leukemia. Downing is a member of the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and Rockabilly Music Hall of Fame, and his legacy is still remembered by longtime fans of country music.
Yola is a soul, country, and roots powerhouse! Born in the United Kingdom, Yola’s voice is a force of nature – rich, soulful, and packed with emotion. She started as a songwriter and backing vocalist before stepping into the spotlight with her 2019 debut album, the GRAMMY-nominated Walk Through Fire! Featuring contributions from Vince Gill, Molly Tuttle, Charlie McCoy, Ronnie McCoury, and more, the project was produced by Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and quickly endeared her to roots music lovers everywhere. She even appeared as a guest vocalist with all-star group The Highwomen.
With her unique blend of country, rock, and soul, Yola shatters boundaries. In 2021, she dropped Stand for Myself, an album full of bold, genre-blending anthems that brought her more GRAMMY noms. She has even dabbled in acting as of late, appearing on Broadway in Hadestown and playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe in the hit blockbuster Elvis. Do yourself a favor and check out this bon a fide star in roots music.
Do you remember Cleve Francis? He grew up listening to Hank Williams in Louisiana as a child before making his first guitar out of window screen wire and a King Edwards Cigar Box on his way to becoming an inspiring country artist. Cleve isn’t just a singer – but he’s a songwriter, a dreamer, and a doctor? That’s right, before he hit the stage, Cleve was saving lives.
Dr. Cleve Francis was a practicing cardiologist before he pursued his passion for country music full-time in the late ’80s. Cleve brought a fresh voice to the genre in the 1990s with his smooth voice and heartfelt lyrics that resonated with country fans, resulting in four singles on the Billboard country charts. Cleve’s style of country earned him appearances on major stages like the Grand Ole Opry, The Today Show, and more.
Though he eventually returned to medicine, Francis left an enduring legacy, inspiring many Black country artists who have followed in his wake. He was instrumental in the curation of the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum’s “From Where I Stand: The Black Experience in Country Music” exhibit while also helping found the Black Country Music Association in the mid ’90s.
In 2021, he was recognized with a Black Opry Icon Award, and his album Walkin’ is on display at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington D.C., where he could still been seen frequently performing at the legendary Birchmere music club until his retirement in 2021.
One of the most authentic voices in modern American roots music, Charley Crockett has a story that sounds borderline mythical. A descendant of Davy Crockett who grew up in Texas, Crockett spent his early years busking on street corners from New Orleans to Dallas to New York, learning the art of storytelling from life itself. His travels took him to California, Paris, Spain, and Morocco before returning to Texas and releasing his debut album in 2015. Crockett’s recording output has been impressive, frequently releasing multiple albums a year and balancing his records with heartfelt originals and a deep catalog traditional songs from the likes of Tom T. Hall, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, George Jones, Johnny Paycheck and more.
The common denominator is Charley – his voice carries a raw, timeless quality that cuts straight to the heart. Now performing at the Ryman Auditorium and on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Charley’s rise hasn’t gone unnoticed. He’s earned critical acclaim and has racked up accolades from the American Music Association and a GRAMMY nomination. With black, Cajun, Creole and Jewish heritage, Crockett’s unique take on country and American roots music is sure to speak to music lovers everywhere for years to come.
An underappreciated hero of American folk and blues, Elizabeth Cotten was born in 1893 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Growing up in a musical family, by the time she was 7 Elizabeth taught herself to play guitar left-handed. She flipped the guitar upside down, creating her own unique picking style, now known as “Cotten picking,” which featured alternating bass notes played with her fingers while her thumb played the melody.
Elizabeth wrote her iconic song, “Freight Train,” when she was just 12 years old. This classic has been recorded by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tommy Emmanuel, Doc Watson, and dozens more artists across multiple genres. But her music remained largely unheard for decades as she spent much of her life working as a domestic housekeeper. It wasn’t until she reached her 60s, while working for the Seeger family – yes, that Seeger family – that her incredible talent received a proper platform. Working for a family that loved and appreciated music inspired Elizabeth to resume playing. With the Seegers’ encouragement, Elizabeth recorded her first album, Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar, in 1958, recorded at home by Mike Seeger, a member of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
Cotten went on to perform at major festivals thanks to the folk revival, w0n a GRAMMY at age 90, and inspired countless musicians before passing away in Syracuse, New York at the age of 94. Elizabeth Cotten was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
Let’s shine a spotlight on a modern-day troubadour, the Grammy-winning musician, historian, and storyteller Dom Flemons, The American Songster. An avid folk music fan, Flemons was a busker in his home state of Arizona before moving cross country to North Carolina to help found the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a band that revived the nearly forgotten legacy of Black string band music.
Flemons has been a successful solo artist for the last decade-plus. He is a master of multiple instruments – banjo, bones, guitar, harmonica – you name it! His music blends old-time, folk, blues, jazz, and country, tracing the deep roots of African American contributions to American music. From the Grand Ole Opry to Carnegie Hall, Flemons brings history to life with every note.
His 2018 album, Black Cowboys, uncovered the often overlooked stories of African American pioneers in the West, earning critical acclaim and a GRAMMY nomination. Today, whether performing solo or collaborating with legends like Taj Mahal, Sam Bush, and Rhiannon Giddens, Flemons keeps the rich traditions of American roots music alive. In addition to educating audiences about the origins of roots music, Flemons creates great original music as well, truly embodying his moniker.
As The Boston Globe said, “most folk artists go by ‘singer-songwriter’ or simply ‘musician.’ But ‘American Songster’ speaks to a greater truth about the work Flemons, a multi-instrumentalist, has accomplished.” We couldn’t agree more.
He was a man of legend, his voice as powerful as the chains that once bound him. Born Huddie Ledbetter in 1888, the world knows him as Lead Belly. Imprisoned and pardoned multiple times, Lead Belly carried his music from the prison yards of Louisiana to the streets of New York City.
Legend has it that his musical gift led to his release. His background makes his prison, chain gang, and work songs even more haunting, including “Midnight Special.” His original song, “Goodnight Irene,” has been recorded more than two hundred times, including versions by Ernest Tubb & Red Foley, Moon Mullican, Frank Sinatra, Jerry Reed, and Johnny Cash. It is viewed as a verified country standard.
“Duncan and Brady,” “In the Pines,” “Cotton Fields” – his songs told stories of hardship, freedom, and the American experience. Lead Belly’s music shaped folk, blues, rock, and country inspiring legends like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, The Johnson Mountain Boys, and Nirvana.
Lead Belly died in 1949, but his music lives on. His voice still echoes in every blues riff and folk song today. Lead Belly was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.
Releasing a new album is stressful enough for most artists, but releasing an album, a documentary, and a book almost simultaneously – while singing and dancing in a Broadway musical? That sounds crazy even to Ani DiFranco, who released her 23rd album, Unprecedented Sh!t, in May, while performing as Persephone in Hadestown, reprising the role she sang on the same-titled Anais Mitchell album that became the folk opera. (The album was released in 2010 on DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records label; the show opened on Broadway in 2019 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.) DiFranco wrapped her nearly five-month acting debut on June 30, just after performing at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of director Dana Flora’s documentary, 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, filmed as DiFranco recorded her 2021 album, Revolutionary Love.
On August 27, DiFranco will release her second children’s book, the timely and inspiring lyrical narrative, Show Up and Vote, illustrated by Rachelle Baker. (Her first, The Knowing, was released in 2023.) For most of these endeavors, including Unprecedented Sh!t – only her second album produced by someone else (BJ Burton) – DiFranco did something she’s not used to: giving up control.
Who decides to be in a play, release an album and a book and have a documentary premiere at the same time?
Ani DiFranco: No one would decide that. That’s fate just laughing at me, just fucking with me. But it’s exciting. It’s exhausting. And my hamstrings may or may not hold me up through it all. [Laughs] But I wouldn’t be anywhere else.
Obviously, you’ve spent time in front of audiences. What’s different about doing it in a musical?
I’ve realized that performance has, at least for me, two big components. One is improvisational; it’s of the moment. It’s interactive. The other is putting on the show. I’ve always leaned into the interaction and improvisation. This is very much leaning in the other direction. Doing the same shit every night, eight times a week, for months, is a whole other approach. … What I think I love most about this super unique experience, besides the work itself – Hadestown is such an epic work, and I couldn’t think more highly of it – I’ve never done something where it’s such a group effort. I really have been amazed by [the] collective experience. Like we all became one organism, sort of this collective energy field.
Do you think you would get involved in another production like this?
I’m pretty open to anything. I’m most enamored by the new and terrifying, so I have no idea.
I would think a documentary is exciting, too.
Yeah. Yes …
You don’t sound so sure.
I’m just going with exciting as the adjective. [Laughs] For me, it’s very disconcerting.
In what way?
I actually haven’t seen it and I’m not sure if I will. It’s a lot, to show yourself.
That’s got to be a challenge. But you have led what I consider to be a singular life and have had a really impactful career. It seems like it would make sense to put that onscreen.
It’s not a career-defining, expansive retrospective. Of course, there’s some historical context. But it’s just a walk in the shoes of a woman who’s trying to be an artist in the world, and also a mother and have a relationship and be accountable to everyone that wants her to be at any given moment.
Let’s talk about the voting book. I’m so charmed by the concept, because it’s such an important one to teach. What inspired you to do that?
Exactly what you said. I feel like young people being inspired to vote in this country, in this moment, is the difference between having a democracy tomorrow and not. So when I was invited to make a book for children, I thought, “Hey, maybe I’ll try to talk to some future voters.” It’s from a kid’s point of view about going to vote with her mom. The book is a tool with which parents can engage their kids about voting.
I’m somebody who takes my kids with me to vote so that they see it modeled, so that they understand it as a part of being grown and a member of a society. But even more than a teaching tool, I hope that it will inspire kids, that it will get them excited about this thing that they get to do when they’re grown up, because they’re part of a democracy. It’s a really important, empowering, profound thing that connects them to everybody else, and is a way that we take care of each other, a way that we express our love for each other, and all of these really cool things. I guess I most hope that it lights a fire in a kid.
That brings me to the album. I noticed that “The Thing at Hand” and “The Knowing” seem to share similar concepts, but the latter one apparently was describing the ideas to a child. Is there a connection?
They are very related, but “The Knowing,” I wrote specifically to a child. When I was faced with making my first children’s book, I was having a hard time, and the only way I made it through was to pick up my guitar and make a song that was also a book. And “The Thing at Hand,” those themes of identity and ego, and the vast realms that exist beneath that or beyond it, are themes that run through the record.
I totally caught that, and I loved the lyric, “I defy being defined”; that sums up a lot of your career – and your life. How hard has it been to maintain that stance in a society and music industry that seem to be all about definitions, and judging based on them?
It’s been really hard, every step of the way. People want to define and describe you in very finite terms, and they’re often very reductive. Holding onto a sense of myself as this ever-changing field of infinite possibility, so to speak, is a hard thing to do. There are pressures from every direction to be something very concrete, that thing that this person or that person or the other wants you to be or insists that you are. It’s been a real dance of negotiating that all the way along.
What do you do when it gets really frustrating?
I’ve had to just develop this – I mean, I’m as thin-skinned as the next guy, when it comes right down to it. I am as lost in seeking affirmation from the world around me instead of from inside myself as the next guy, so it’s a constant challenge to go beyond all of that and to keep yourself at a distance, no matter what the world is saying about you. I’ve learned that you can’t rely on the world to tell you that you’re worthy and you’re good and you’re great and you’re wonderful, which sometimes it does, because then when it turns around and says you’re unworthy, you’re terrible, you’re horrible, you’re a sham, your whole premise of yourself comes crumbling down. So it’s still a challenge that I am trying to rise to, to self-love. The older I get, the more I believe that the ways that we harm each other all come home to our lack of self-love. So it’s not some kind of trite endeavor; it’s not self-centered or indulgent. It is extremely important to peace on earth that we learn to find our inherent worthiness within ourselves in order that we not turn our self-hatred on each other.
Back to the concepts you address in these songs. “New Bible” sounds almost like a manifesto; there’s so much to unpack there. In other songs, you just allude to an idea; for instance, in “Baby Roe,” you say, “I think we might be wrong about all of that,” which raises the question, wrong about what?
That’s another song that is interrelated on the theme of ego and identity; it’s … stepping back from this debate about abortion and reproductive freedom and going, this is ridiculous. Like, projecting your ego onto a potential human; it’s like, I am a being of light. I am consciousness and that’s what you are. And this is one of many, many lives and manifestations of this unified field of consciousness that unites us all, that we are coming from and returning to infinitely, that we are all one within. This idea that consciousness need be born right now, into this exact body, in order to be manifesting, is really silly. The whole premise of forced reproduction is based in this very stunted understanding of what we are and what life is and what death is. I think a lot of the traps that we fall into that are entrapping us more and more, sociopolitically, environmentally – it’s all ego-based delusion.
In many of these songs, you sing so sweetly, and yet there’s these undertones, like in “More or Less Free.” I was surprised to read that was about somebody in prison; I thought of it as possibly directed to oppressors.
“More or Less Free” is intentionally open-ended, but yes, it’s written from within prison walls, as a free person inside a prison, visiting and having very human moments and connections with people who live in cages all the time. But it’s a tricky business to talk about songs and what is this about and what is that about? I hate doing that, because songs are supposed to reach you the way they reach you and you’re supposed to hear what you hear, or not. And that’s not for me to say, really. They’re about what you decide they are.
But you know what I’m saying. Technically, that’s where it comes from, but it is very much about being born into a society, that dichotomy of – we are all born free, as my friend Utah Phillips would say, and then you wait for somebody to come along and try to take away that freedom. He always said the degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free. So yeah, we are all born free, and yet, we’re not. That’s all that it’s about.
What was different about doing an album with somebody else calling the shots?
Everything of this particular record and process was unique. The remote thing, for one, which is just how it worked out. He and I would have loved to have spent endless hours in a room together vibing off each other, but we did it interacting through many levels of machines. In retrospect, that’s maybe exactly apropos for a record where I was really trying to bring the machines in. BJ, of course, is the one with the machines and the facility to be intuitive and creative with them, but we sort of worked vicariously with each other.
Because I was not in the room with him, I couldn’t say, “Ooh, a little to the left. Oh, a little louder.” It was like, I record the songs, he fucks with them royally, and what comes back is – I mean, we had a little back and forth, but really, it was overwhelmingly a process of giving over. Just saying yes to his artistry, like he was saying yes to mine. I was not prepared to do [that] at 20 or 30 or 40, and with album one or six or 10. But this is album 23. I’m 53 years old, and I’m more than ready to say yes and really delegate.
People have gone back and redone previous albums. Maybe 10 years from now, you might decide that you want to redo it.
Well, I’ve been in this music game and song-making game for 30-plus years, and one thing that I’ve learned from experience is that songs have long lives. And, that even when I was in charge and doing everything “the way I thought it should be done,” which was most of those other records, I don’t necessarily “get it right,” or the album version is not the definitive version of any song of mine, necessarily. In fact, I have no memory of making any of them. And sometimes when I hear them, I’m like, “Whoa, what?” because the song as it’s lived onstage and in the world is not necessarily that moment. When I had misgivings about BJ’s tendency to turn my guitar into some other sound, or eliminate it altogether, or sort of deconstruct what I sent him or something, I would think, “Whoa, is this cool?” And then I was thinking, “Well, who cares? That’s just how it sounds on this little piece of vinyl.” The song, it’s like a snapshot of a human; the human has many faces.
I love the line in “Unprecedented Sh!t,” “the bigger the heart, the more it bleeds.” But it also sounds like there’s an attempt to ignore that [i.e., “I got a lot of heart/ But I can’t afford to let it bleed”]. Sometimes, for example, with animal rescue, I have to stop myself from reading another story about this poor …
Oh, yeah. Dude. That’s all I’m talking about there, is how much we have to numb ourselves to survive being surrounded by pain and suffering and feeling helpless, if not being helpless, to stop it.
It’s a shame that we have to numb ourselves, but on the other hand, do you ever feel like that character in The Green Mile, where it’s just all going into you, and it’s too much to hold sometimes?
Yes, very much. I think anybody whose heart is not dead inside their chest is trying to deal with that.
That’s what I got from “New Bible,” too. There are some really pessimistic statements in there, but there’s also some real optimistic ones, a sense of, yeah, you can let this stuff overwhelm you, or you can look for ways to do something. That, to me, is a really good thing to put out there.
Yeah. Which brings us back around to the children’s book. The tools of nonviolent revolution are right there in our pocket, actually. What do you know? What do you know?
(Editor’s Note: To mark the occasion of Bonny Light Horseman’s brand new double LP, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free – which were released in June – we invite our readers to be as flies on the wall during a special exclusive interview, an entertaining and joyful conversation between the members of this folk supergroup, Eric D. Johnson, Josh Kaufman, and Anaïs Mitchell.
Read about the band’s memories of their first gigs played for money, about popular bands they don’t really “get,” and so much more below. Plus, dig into their deep and broad discography – together and separately – with our in-depth exploration of their catalog of recordings here.)
Eric D. Johnson: We totally love each other a lot and we spend a lot of time together and we talk about everything, and I know everything about you guys, pretty much. I got some deep shit on you guys!
But, one question that I didn’t know the answer to, because I have a really funny answer for it is, what was the first show that you ever played where you got paid money? Do you remember?
Anaïs Mitchell: Oh wow!
EDJ: Can you guys remember that?
Josh Kaufman: I can remember. I don’t know if it was the very first, but it was certainly early. I played a yogurt shop in Port Jeff. I definitely played a lot of Grateful Dead songs. I think I played “Peggy-O” and like “Friend of the Devil.” I may have tried an ambitious solo acoustic version of “St. Stephen.”
EDJ: Tell me more though, was it a band? Was it you solo? And did you go just under the name Josh Kaufman?
JK: Just me. I don’t know if I was even booked. I don’t know. I may have just shown up.
EDJ: And what was the yogurt shop?
JK: I can’t remember the name of it either. I feel like I have a couple of friends that definitely would remember and definitely were there. That was the ‘90s, that was the era of the yogurt shop. It was basically a cafe, but let’s face it, it was a yogurt shop. I don’t know what I got paid, but I did get paid. I was probably 16; at a yogurt shop playing Grateful Dead songs for money.
AM: I want to see you then, Josh!
EDJ: I totally want to see him! I want to find the bootleg of that show. How did you get hooked up with the yogurt gig?
JK: Well, I was kind of in bed with big yogurt–
EDJ: You’re a big deal going way back–
JK: Going way back now! Well, how did I know about [it]? I think my friend Kevin Jones worked there. I think this is what happened. My friend Kevin Jones worked there, who you guys will meet when we play in California, because he just moved to the Bay Area. He’s going to come to our show. I think they were looking to up their game [at the yogurt shop]. And he was like, “Let’s see what happens. Let’s bring in a professional.” It must have been such a hot mess.
EDJ: I bet you were good from the jump. That’s my guess.
JK: That’s generous.
EDJ: Anaïs, what about you?
AM: I think the first time I made money for music was [when I was] 18 years old and I took a gap year. I was going to go to school, but I took a gap year and then I moved to Boston. You guys know this. I know you know this about me.
JK: You were a waitress.
AM: I was a waitress. Right. At this diner and then later as a waitress at this Cajun/Mexican place, which really sucked. It was in Central Square and I remember I had that job, because I quit it when I realized that I could make money playing in the subway. I could make equal money to what I made as a waitress. Basically, I would go down – I want to say that I played an Ovation Guitar. I’m sorry. [Laughs]
EDJ: Classic! Love this. I’m just gonna say: Ovation Guitar; yogurt shop. Just as visuals.
AM: Totally. [Laughs] I love this. They go together.
JK: You can actually eat yogurt out of an Ovation Guitar.
EDJ: They are designed for eating yogurt out of – in the ‘90s!
AM: I had a little portable [amp], my first amp. I just started playing electric on tour with you guys, but that’s not my first amp. My first amp was a little Crate amp. Do you know what those are? It was bright yellow. And it was cool. For plugging in your Ovation Guitar when you played in the subway, they were amazing.
So I did that. And the cool thing was I was really just getting going. I had written maybe a handful of songs – that I’ve repressed [since]. Like they were really not good, but if you’re playing in the subway, the audience turns over every 10 minutes. I played the same songs. I would just play them again and again. It was mostly my new songs that I had written. And I think I played a couple of folk songs that I learned from the Rise Up Singing folk music bible.
EDJ: But were people like throwing in money? What was your haul? Not because I care that much about money, but I’m just asking, is this your first profesh gig? Do you have your case? Do you have a little hat box?
AM: You got your case open and you put a couple dollars in there. You put like a five [dollar bill] to show people that. You don’t put coins, because then that’s what people put. I actually can’t remember, with inflation, like, what was that? I want to say I would go down there for an hour or two and make fifty to a hundred bucks.
JK: Oh, that’s really good. That sounds really good to me.
AM: That’s why I quit my waitressing job! I was like, this sucks. I’m just gonna do this.
EDJ: You’re 18, what is that, the year 2000?
AM: Or something… it was ‘99. Yes.
EDJ: Okay, sick. With inflation, I think that’s good. I think you did really well
AM: I might be misremembering, might be adjusting for inflation [wrong] in my memory.
JK: I think I got paid, by the yogurt shop, like $46 or something like that, which when I think about it now it’s almost like the tooth fairy or something. I think somebody just felt bad for me. They’re like, “This is 36, 46 bucks, just take it, go.” You know that, “Here’s some gas money.”
EDJ: I like that it was $46.
JK: I don’t think it was $50. I think I’d remember it if it was $50. That would have seemed like a lot of money to me. I will say, the guitar I was playing, Eric, and Anaïs, would have been the same guitar that I still play – the Guild that we made our records with and that Eric played on our recent tour.
AM: I spent some time with that guy.
Eric, I want to hear your story.
EDJ: I got you gonna beat financially by a couple bucks. When I was like 17, my friend Steve and I decided I was going to join Steve’s band just as a singer, but I was too scared to just sing and stand there. I did not know how to play guitar. So, I got a crash course in guitar from Steve. Steve came to one of our shows last summer, I think, or two summers ago when we opened up for [Bruce] Hornsby.
Steve gave me a crash course in guitar, but I didn’t really know how to apply guitar chords to cover songs, you know? I was like, “I guess I’m going to have to write.” I immediately became a songwriter, because I was too dumb to learn how to play a Pink Floyd song or something like that.
All of a sudden we became this folk duo that played a mix of covers and originals, as I was learning chords. I learned how to play some covers. I think “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead was the first – speaking of Grateful Dead, Josh. We played at this cafe in our little downtown of our funny little suburb called Caffe Trieste. It was actually really cool. It was very ‘90s. When I remember it, it smelled like clove cigarettes in there and herbal tea. It was literally a coffee house, like from the old times where you smoke cigarettes and drink coffee at night and watch music. I’m not saying it was like Greenwich Village or something like that, but it was cool.
We would play there, but for no money. That was kind of like open mics and stuff like that. We played “Tangerine” by Led Zeppelin and we played “Ripple” by the Grateful Dead. I think we played “Wish You Were Here.” And then we played sort of a smattering of my originals, which were terrible.
But, I was at home [one day] and this is in 1993. My mom was like, “You have a phone call.” And it was some lady and she says, “My daughter, Katie, she’s turning fourteen and she’s a huge fan of your music. And will you play her birthday party?” And I was like, “What?” We don’t have a band or like fans or anything like that. But apparently this girl had seen us at a school assembly – where all we played was the Cheers theme – and she’s turning fourteen. I was like, “What type of money do you usually get for things like this?” But I sort of fumbled and before I could finish and name a price, she was like, “Would $150 be good?”
That was like an unfathomable amount of money. But she also wanted us to play two sets and play for like literally two hours in their living room. We had about 20 minutes worth of material.We went to the house. Her dad owned an automobile dealership, so the house was nice. It was a room full of thirteen and fourteen year old, she was a freshman and we were seniors. I just remember that. So maybe she was turning fifteen.
When we walked in, it was like Beatlemania. They like, screamed and stuff. There were parents, friends, and stuff who were there and they were kind of these wealthy people. My house was very unsophisticated and it felt like we had sort of stepped into this sophisticated realm of our like dumb little suburb. These were the elites! We played our show, only we had not learned more songs in order to play. So we did the Anaïs thing, but without the audience turnover. We just played things over again. And they asked us to play “Rocky Raccoon” by the Beatles. Then there was a set break and we had no more songs. We went out to Steve’s Jeep and got super high and then came back in and just played literally the same set again and doubled up on “Rocky Raccoon.” We played it four times in one night.
Anaïs Mitchell: What were you wearing? Did you dress up?
EDJ: I’m sure I was wearing something weird. I had a very schizophrenic style at the time. It was the ‘90s! I would wear plaid ‘60s golf pants, but I had this shirt that was a bread truck delivery shirt that had the name “Byron” on it like a name tag. My hair looked like Jason Priestley from 90210. I hadn’t honed my style yet, but I’m sure I just tried to dress up cool.
It was quite a first taste.
AM: That’s amazing. You might be the only band to play “Rocky Raccoon” four times in a show.
JK: The Beatles never played it one time in a show, I don’t think. So you beat the Beatles.
EDJ: Someone asked me this question recently – and you don’t have to answer with a modern band, because it could be more controversial – but what’s a band that’s iconic, that people love, that you’re like, “Not that…”
JK: Oh, Annie has a list of these they’re called like, unimpeachable bands that she doesn’t want to listen to. That she wants to impeach.
AM: I want to know her list!
JK: For instance, I think the Stones are on there. She’s like, “I mean, sure, the Stones are great or whatever, but I don’t want to listen to them.”
EDJ: For the Situation readers, by the way, this is Annie, Josh’s wife [we’re talking about]. Annie Nero.
JK: Yeah! But, for my own… let me think about that for a second.
AM: I have one, maybe. Maybe it’s going to be the same.
EDJ: Mine’s a little bit The Smiths – I actually think that the band sounds great. It’s sort of like The Doors, for me, where I’m not as into the front person [as I am the band], and I have to believe in the front person.
My other one is that I love Bob Dylan, but he’s like my 18th favorite songwriter. It’s still really high up there in the pantheon of songwriters, but probably a very low ranking as far as Dylan goes. I know Dylan’s a big one for you, Josh, but for me I have seventeen others I put above him. That’s an arbitrary number, but yeah.
AM: I was gonna say Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I’d be interested in hearing Annie’s whole list, ’cause I do wanna say, I feel like it’s a gendered thing. I’m not even gonna be eloquent about it, but I do think we have deified certain male artisan bands.
Where it’s like, “Aren’t you into this?” And I’m like, “Actually no.” But I sort of feel like they’re unimpeachable. Like I’m supposed to be like, “Oh yeah, CSNY!!” But my feelings are complex about CSNY, because I love Neil Young and I love Graham Nash. I think it’s really David Crosby – rest in peace – that like, for somehow I’m [hung up on]. I read about how he produced the first Joni Mitchell record and, for me, Joni’s like the top of the totem. Reading about their dynamic, back in the day [is troubling.]
Everyone loved Crosby. She had to kind of be like, “Oh my God, it’s Cros!” You know, but she was Joni Mitchell! I couldn’t really feel that stuff. Yeah, that’s gonna be my band. It’s frustrating.
Sorry, we canceled. [Laughs]
EDJ: No, I think CSNY is a reasonable one!
JK: I was gonna say The Who, honestly. The Who are awesome and everything and certainly there’s ‘60s garage [rock] stuff that’s fun and everything.
EDJ: I think it’s okay to throw fire at those guys. Dylan can take it and be pissed. They can fucking take it!
JK: I guess I feel like that’s lazy of me.
I think Anaïs’ comment about this sort of Mount Rushmore of at the time, early 20s baby boomer white men [was well made]. When they were very young with guitars, for some reason, we’ve decided that those guys are the best.
EDJ: It’s like the Rolling Stone magazine “top 40 cool guys” list. It’s like a mural at a guitar center in suburban Atlanta that you stopped at on tour.
But also Anaïs, sidebar, in my seventeen songwriters above Dylan, Joni Mitchell is my number one, so…
JK: She’s at the top of my list for sure, but I think in the top zone. I don’t know if they’re like tiered necessarily, because since it is art and stuff, it does sort of depend on the opening that I have for it on any given day to enter my heart.
AM: I got a couple more. You guys, this is going to be wild. Well, maybe not. I mean, you guys know me pretty well, because it’s some of these things, the music is undeniable and has shaped other music, but it’s not for me, you know? I would put the Beatles in that category.
JK: I was waiting for you to say that!
AM: I would put both [CSNY and the Beatles] in there. And I sort of appreciate it when I hear it. Like when I hear it coming out of someone’s car or on the radio or whatever, but I will never put that music on myself.
EDJ: I feel like with Beatles, if it didn’t catch you at a certain moment it’s a tough, massive thing to dig into. I didn’t get into Joni until I was 30, and it was like one of the pivotal musical moments of my life.
That’s not to say, “I think you have to be 38 to get into Joni,” but I think for whatever reason, she’s so deep and cool and crazy that I think it took me having a little life behind me to sort of understand what it was about. Someone who had seen clouds from both sides now, like at that point, it hit me like super hard.
I think Beatles, talk about iconography and stuff like that! It’s like, I totally get it. But I can’t. I love the Beatles. It exists in my musical and our band’s musical DNA. I’m never not thinking about like a McCartney melody.
AM: I had some grand thought while you were just saying that, about when you encounter music and when it speaks to you. Because yes, if you’re fourteen, if you’re fifteen discovering Ani DiFranco as I was. She became like my whole raison d’etre, but then for someone discovering her later, at a different time in their life or whatever, it’s different. You had to be a certain age to get the Joni.
And, I wanted to talk about the Grateful Dead because, like the Beatles, I might’ve put them in [this category] if we had spoken a different time, but now I know and love you guys. I sort of became like a late-blooming deadhead, because of your love for the dead. I really got into it and really into the lyrics. I genuinely, really appreciate that music now, in a way that I didn’t like, ten years ago. Part of that is because I love you guys.
I kind of love how your love for people then transfers to your love for the things that they love. And that then becomes a thing that you love.
JK: I totally feel that. I’m not going to name any names here, because I feel like it could be misconstrued, but I do feel like I remember early on going out and opening up for bands with friends and at the beginning of it having already made up my mind about this music or something. But then, getting to know these people intimately over the course of a month and having these accelerated friendships as a result of being around each other every day and sort of falling for what they’re doing a little bit. Or maybe, at least being way more open to it than I ever would have been just hearing it on the radio or hearing it in a friend’s car.
So much music [from] growing up I associate with people that I love, for sure. Getting into Bob Dylan ‘cause I love my dad. At a young age like, “This guy’s obsessed with this guy!” And I guess I’m kind of obsessed with this guy who’s into this guy.
A funny one for me is They Might Be Giants. I love the songwriting of They Might Be Giants and I love that band so much, but I wouldn’t expect one of you guys to get into it now if you weren’t into it when you were fourteen. You know what I mean?
EDJ: I love the point you made Josh, about touring with bands or something, especially in the indie rock days, where you’re really like up in each other’s grills. You bond in a kind of a different way. …
You guys, we have four minutes left. What are your top three favorite foods, Josh.
JK: My top three favorite foods, um… Today I would say, I like Szechuan Chinese food. I like Greek food. And I like Italian food. You know, all the classic Northern Italian things and all the Roman pasta stuff. I mean, who am I kidding, right?
I’m going genres, not dishes, because for me, it’s definitely more about a palette than it is about a specific [dish]. You know, grilled fish and lemon and tomatoes and cucumbers. If I want something in that zone, then I want Greek food. If I want spicy, zingy Szechuan peppercorn, it doesn’t really matter what it is, it could be like shrimp or tofu or chicken, or it could just be string beans. I just get in the mood and go in that direction.
EDJ: Anaïs, what do you got?
AM: I just got so hungry when you described the fish with the lemon and then the tomatoes, Josh. Now that’s what I want. All right. The first thing I’m going to say is Josh’s food. I want not what you just said, but food that Josh Kaufman cooks. I would like the fluffy eggs that you make sometimes. And also one time you whipped up a chicken soup. Do you remember that? You just whipped it up so fast and it was the best chicken soup I’ve ever had.
JK: Oh, I love that. That’s so sweet. I love cooking for you guys.
AM: I also love and I recently had– do you remember the place Wang’s in Park Slope? It’s kind of like fried chicken, Southern stuff, but then also is it Korean?
JK: Korean fried chicken? I think, right?
AM: I had something like that with Ramona, my older daughter recently, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is very delicious.”
Eric, you tell us yours.
EDJ: Oysters, shrimp cocktail, nachos… uh, buffalo wings. And that’s it. Love you guys.
AM: Love you.
EDJ: Love you. Hopefully it’s all turned out awesome and we have so many cool things to talk about. I’ll see yous on Thursday night!
Bonny Light Horseman is an indie/folk supergroup that formed in 2018 at the Eaux Claires Music & Arts festival in Wisconsin. Composed of Anaïs Mitchell (Hadestown), Josh Kaufman (Bob Weir, Josh Ritter, The National), and Eric D. Johnson (Fruit Bats), together the band has released two full-length albums. On June 7, their new double album Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free expanded their studio album catalog by 100%.
Their first self-titled release, from 2020, features the band’s takes on traditional folk songs; the second, 2022’s Rolling Golden Holy, is a fully original body of work. Their music is tranquil, gorgeous, and breath-taking and their powerful blend of voices is just as striking. The trio bring a new light to the beauty of folk music, and truly makes each song their own.
To celebrate the new project, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free, we’ve handpicked a few favorite tracks from their past releases – together and separately – to highlight their musicianship, collaboration, and exactly why nearly everyone calls them a supergroup.
The title track off their first album and namesake of their band, it’s a heart-breaking ballad about a love lost to war that was found in the Roud Folk Index (#1185). The group’s arrangement features a low-tuned guitar and subtle textures of harmonica and saxophone which carry Anaïs’ and Eric’s transporting vocals.
“Deep in Love” – Bonny Light Horseman, Bonny Light Horseman
The second song off the band’s debut album is simply illuminating – it feels like a gust of wind on a warm day. Listening to Eric sing, you can hear vocal influences from Joni Mitchell in his jumps and leaps. It has a very freeing feel to it and breathes beautifully.
“The Roving” – Bonny Light Horseman, Bonny Light Horseman
The third track on Bonny Light Horseman also demands inclusion. It’s a song about the singer’s heartache over “Annie,” a woman who once said she would marry them, but over time fell out of love with the singer. The melody is subtle and sweeps the listener into a setting of tranquility. In the arrangement, the band switches between a single, double, and quadruple chorus which is a very sweet and simple way to convey the story to the listener.
“Jane Jane” was first recorded in 1939 by Lila May Stevens. This arrangement combines Stevens’ lyric with the African American spiritual and gospel classic, “Children, Go Where I Send Thee.” Bonny Light’s rendition is simply breathtaking; Johnson and Mitchell switch voices between the major and minor sections of the song, creating a raw and haunting sound.
The penultimate song off Bonny Light Horseman is a traditional Appalachian spiritual originally documented by Alan Lomax. This song holds the essence of a church choir belting for their audience and it’s one of the more simple songs on the album, in terms of arrangement. Having only three voices and a piano allows listeners to hear their trading voices on each verse and then the bright light of togetherness on the choruses.
“Gone by Fall” – Bonny Light Horseman, Rolling Golden Holy (2022)
“Gone by Fall” sits directly in the middle of Bonny Light Horseman’s second album, Rolling Golden Holy. Depicting a summer romance, it’s reminiscent of a 1960s folk song you might have heard on the radio during the folk revival. Yet, in listening to it, a veil is seemingly lifted and you can hear it’s an entirely fresh take on such a classic sound. Their voices, which blend so beautifully together, and the crystal clear guitar lines throughout add in the sweetness of a summertime love.
“Someone to Weep for Me” – Bonny Light Horseman, Rolling Golden Holy
Next up is “Someone to Weep for Me,” a song depicting a person going through life craving someone to care for them, but never finding that person. The driving force of the track is the mandolin’s beautiful rolling pattern, a genius touch that’s present throughout the song and adds a sense of stability and a unique texture. Another stroke of genius comes at about 1:40 in, when the electric guitar comes in wailing, bringing the song into a “jam” with Anaïs singing a little line over it. This is such an unexpected vibe change and at the same time it fits so incredibly well.
Off the band’s two-track EP release Green/Green comes “Greenland Fishery,” a reimagined traditional sailor song. Bonny Light’s version certainly allows you to float away. The clawhammer banjo throughout is lovely and it’s such a treat as a showcase instrument – it isn’t emphasized often throughout the band’s catalog. It’s also very sweet to hear the second part of the chorus as it echoes the chorus of “Bonny Light Horseman” in such a gorgeous, reminiscent way.
“Willie’s Lady (Child 6)” – Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer, Child Ballads (2013)
Delving into some of the band members’ other projects, we come to Child Ballads, an album of duets from Mitchell and collaborator Jefferson Hamer. The project reimagines seven songs from a 19th century folk song collection “The Child Ballads” collected by Francis James Child. “Willie’s Lady (Child 6)” tells the story of King Willie, who marries a woman his mother despises and, in turn, his mother curses the wife. The guitars on the track have such a strong, driving force, excitedly pushing the song while one holds down the rhythm and the other crosspicks during the instrumental sections. Anaïs and Jefferson use their guitars in a way that perfectly compliments the vocal work in the song; it’s sung entirely in duet, the two voices deepening the texture of the music.
“Cazadera” – Fruit Bats, Gold Past Life (2019)
Fruit Bats is Eric D. Johnson’s indie-rock band that he’s fronted since 1997. Off their seventh album, Gold Past Life, “Cazadera” is one of the grooviest songs around. About a person searching for meaning in life and finding it in love, it’s the kind of track that would help paint your surroundings on a joyful walk. It has a great sense of hope and beauty to it and the chill verses coupled with sharp choruses bring energy and excitement.
“Loser’s L-A-M-E-N-T” – Rocketship Park, Off and Away (2008)
Going all the way back to 2008 for a selection from Josh Kaufman’s band, Rocketship Park, a pop-folky project with the intention to play Josh’s original material. The song “Loser’s L-A-M-E-N-T” is off the group’s first album, Off and Away, and immediately displays a very mellow vibe. Jazzy little piano licks come together with electric guitar and pedal steel, creating a western-folk sound. You can truly hear how each instrument is talking to the others and how they all fit together in telling the story.
“When I Was Younger” – Bonny Light Horseman, Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free (2024)
From the group’s just-released double album comes “When I Was Younger,” which has a sound unlike most of their other music. Combining styles from artists like the Grateful Dead and Billy Joel, the intro riff sounds like it pulls some from the former, yet, once the verse starts, it sounds immediately like the latter – a kind of “Vienna” feeling.
It goes right back into the psychedelic riff before switching voices from Anaïs to Eric, again back to the Billy Joel vibe. The guitar and vocal solo following this verse are so rock and roll, gritty and not at all sparkly like the verses prior. “When I Was Younger” does an incredible job blending musical styles. It’s an absolutely astonishing piece of music, using such few words yet conveying such a strong and vivid story.
Utter the phrase “Broadway musical” and most folks are likely to assume you’re referring to the jazz-hands-inspiring works of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein; the emotionally manipulative drama of Andrew Lloyd Weber; or the inventive playfulness of Steven Sondheim. But folk and roots music have a long legacy on the great white way — and a bit of a folk boom has been happening in those storied theaters lately.
Granted, Broadway producers have long presented shows that pull in the music of roots-informed artists. Folk-pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik delivered a stunning musical score for the groundbreaking Spring Awakening, cementing the careers of Broadway stars Lea Michelle and Jonathan Groff back in 2006. Let’s not forget brief runs of musicals that pulled from the catalogs of Dolly Parton (2009’s stage adaptation of 9 to 5) and Bob Dylan (Girl from the North Country, which debuted in 2020).
Of the shows currently occupying midtown theaters, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown has run the longest, having just passed its five-year mark. With eight Tony Awards from its 2019 debut, the musical pairs the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with that of Hades and Persephone. Though its original cast has scattered to other projects, beloved folksinger Ani DiFranco spent a bit of her winter and spring this year offering a stunning run as Persephone.
Ani DiFranco and Anaïs Mitchell outside the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City. Photo by Matthew Murphy.
Fans may know DiFranco trained for many years as a dancer, even as she was building her singer-songwriter street cred. She proves to be a triple threat in the role, embodying the storied arbiter of summertime with a deeply rooted, empathic swagger. And though her June 30 departure feels like the end of an era for the musical, her latest album Unprecedented Sh!t (released May 17 on Righteous Babe Records) charts some new sonic territory via her political POVs.
Further, it’s hard to mourn DiFranco moving on when it was recently announced that British country favorite Yola will replace her in the role of Persephone, beginning July 2.
Hadestown was briefly joined last year by fellow roots musical Shucked, which came and went too soon. Awash in silly corn puns and Tampa-centric storyline, its earworm score was penned by Nashville mainstays — and Grammy darlings — Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.
Last month, Illinoise opened at the St. James Theater on 44th St. Pulling tracks from Sufjan Stevens’s sprawling, ambitious 2006 album of the same name, the show reorders the songs to depict a group of friends sharing stories around a campfire. There is no dialogue. Instead, a 12-piece band and a trio of vocalists in magical butterfly wings perform the music in the background.
Upstage, Illinoise tells its stories through exquisite choreography that runs the gambit from lyrical contemporary to hip-hop, some sweet Broadway jazz, and even one number (“Jacksonville”) with a lightning-fast tapper in pinstripes. Dancers touch on love and loss, fear and transcendence.
“Zombies” becomes a scene about the immigrant experience, as dancer Jeanette Delgado (“Jo”) tries to outrun the ghosts of America’s founders, whose complex legacies still haunt the present day. “The Man of Metropolis” becomes a comical superhero-themed character romp. And former Billy Elliot star Ben Cook (“Carl”) delivers a heartbreaking and inspired series in Act II to track an emotionally complex love triangle.
By show’s end, there is a pervasive sense of the opportunity art grants us to transcend our selves and build a better world together. It’s no wonder the show was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. If it wins, it will be the first time a dance musical has won the prestigious award.
The Outsiders, meanwhile, is running now just one block away, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. It sets to music the novel by S.E. Hinton, which was immortalized in a 1980s film by Francis Ford Coppola. Produced in part by Angelina Jolie, with a book by New York theater fixture Adam Rapp (Wolf in the River, The Sound Outside) and music by Americana mainstays Jamestown Revival, this musical version unfortunately doesn’t measure up to the other two roots musicals in the neighborhood.
Granted, perhaps it doesn’t have to. The Broadway League and American Theater Wing don’t seem to be anything less than impressed, having nominated the musical for a whopping 12 Tonys this year. It may not translate seamlessly to the Broadway stage, but The Outsiders is a story that has been beloved by numerous generations. It was a treat to witness members of Generation Alpha giddy with excitement to take in the narrative arc of Ponyboy and the other Curtis brothers — a story that feels to this writer as though it’s rooted in Gen X sensibilities, despite being set in the 1960s.
Choreography by Rick and Jeff Kuperman was athletic and stunning — plenty of leaps and jumps and long, denim-clad legs spinning in the air like human helicopters. The Kuperman brothers’ martial arts background comes through even beyond the inventive dance-fight scenes. There is water on the stage, somehow, and it splashes up from time to time, for some reason. It doesn’t matter why. The effect is properly dramatic.
Brent Comer, who plays “Darryl,” steals the show with his powerful Zac Brown-reminiscent twang. He has some of the most compelling solos, embodying the exhaustion of a stay-at-home-mom as he folds clothes and laments his lot in life, “somewhere between brother and father” since their parents died. Jason Schmidt as “Sodapop” matched his rootsy musicality with the second-act heart grabber, “Throw in the Towel.”
But it is Joshua Boone’s “Dallas” who is perhaps the show’s greatest revelation, with his Bill Withers-esque vocals on solos like “Little Brother.” Brody Grant as Ponyboy seemed a bit lacking during the matinee performance this writer recently caught, but it could have been an off moment. Eight shows a week requires almost superhuman amounts of energy reserve.
Or perhaps it was a side effect of Grant being in his 20s while his character is supposed to be 14. Indeed, despite the electricity of The Outsiders’ score and choreography, the script doesn’t feel as authentic as its emotional realities demand. Hinton’s book offered readers a revolutionary view of teen struggles, written by a teenager. Perhaps the Broadway show should have brought in some teenagers to consult.
Regardless, both Grant and Boone were nominated for Tonys (as was Sky Lakota-Lynch, who delivers a haunting performance as Johnny). For folks just interested in what Jamestown Revival did for the show’s score, an Original Broadway Cast Recording is available now.
All told, there is no indication Broadway is going to break its love affair with roots music anytime soon. The Avett Brothers are set to make their Broadway debut with shipwreck-themed musical Swept Away this fall. The show has previewed in California and Washington, D.C., and has received critical praise already. Swept Away’s score is drawn from the Avetts’ 2004 album, Mignonette, plus four other songs from their canon — a treat for the band’s incredibly loyal fanbase and Broadway subscribers alike.
Further on the horizon is an adaptation of the classic labor movement-inspired film Norma Rae, with music by Rosanne Cash. In an email, her manager indicated a possible 2025 opening. One can only hope. And, just last week, Dolly Parton announced an upcoming original musical, Hello, I’m Dolly, set to arrive on Broadway in 2026.
The 77th Tony Awards will be held on Sunday, June 16, 2024 and will air on CBS. Find out how to watch here.
It was a week into lockdown last March that Robert Macfarlane got in touch with Johnny Flynn. The pair were already good friends. Macfarlane is a Cambridge University academic and a bestselling author; his many books, such as The Old Ways and The Wild Places, have helped shape a renaissance in nature writing. Flynn – as well-known for his acting as his albums – writes songs that reverberate with an inescapable yearning for the rural and the pastoral. Britain’s landscape is a place of solace and inspiration for both.
The early days of the pandemic were disturbing, disorienting, frightening. They were also quiet. The nation stayed home and traffic all but ceased: towns fell as silent as the countryside, birdsong had never sounded louder. Macfarlane asked Flynn if he’d like to write a song together and the act of creating together was something to cling to amid the tumult. “It started as just a song,” said Flynn, “and then it became a few songs… but it held me in place and kept me from completely spinning out.”
This May they released the result of their labours: an album, Lost in the Cedar Wood. The combination of Flynn’s folk sensibility with Macfarlane’s sense of place is so sympathetic that you can’t quite believe it’s their first collaboration. But then, Flynn had been reading Macfarlane’s books long before they first met. And Macfarlane was listening to Flynn’s albums like A Larum and Country Mile as he wrote. The author, in fact, thanked the musician in the acknowledgement pages, “because they were the songs I was listening to when I was out walking, and I knew every chord by heart.”
Eventually, a mutual friend introduced them; their first meeting was, in the most English of ways, at a friendly game of cricket. Their shared love of nature and passion for conservation sparked instant bromance. All three of those things manifest in the music they’ve made together.
“Rob was sending me articles about the pandemic being created by deforestation,” says Flynn, “but we were also talking about all the literature that people were reading with a new interest or perspective – Daniel Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year, or Shakespeare’s King Lear.” Thinking of Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown, based on the Orpheus myth, they wondered what other stories might be worth exploring. Flynn looks at Macfarlane and laughs: “And you said ‘There’s always Gilgamesh’ – as if that was too obvious.”
A 4,000-year-old poem about a Sumerian king, written in cuneiform and discovered on tablets in the ruins of an ancient Assyrian library, might not seem that obvious a starting point to everyone. But it is, as Macfarlane points out, “the oldest story in world literature,” and its potent themes cast extraordinarily contemporary parallels. In the poem two warriors, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, defy the gods by cutting down a sacred forest, bringing calamity upon themselves. “The most powerful myths have a prescient as well as a retrospective vision to them,” says Macfarlane. “And that combination of ancient and urgent pushed us on.”
The songs were written back and forth via WhatsApp and voice memos: “There’s an incredible ease to writing with Johnny,” says Macfarlane. “I never worry much, and we trust each other to say if something isn’t working. I call it the Johnny Flynn song machine. I type out a bunch of words, send them over and they come back as this unbelievable song.”
Macfarlane would like to make clear, at this point, that he can’t play a note; he describes himself as having “all the musical abilities of a deckchair” (“Not true!” says Flynn). When it comes to collaboration with musicians, however, this deckchair has an impressive résumé. He has written a libretto for a jazz opera, had his poems turned into protest songs, and worked with a supergroup of British folk talent – including Kris Drever, Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart – to create Spell Songs, a musical adaptation of his and Jackie Morris’s book The Lost Words.
Those experiences taught Macfarlane a great deal. “I’ve learned that good lyrics are about letting go, about cutting out order,” he says. “My teacherly prose writer’s inclination to bring grammar to everything has to be left at the door. And a year working with Johnny has brought me to the point where I’ve learned to let the light into language.” He’s particularly pleased with the song “Uncanny Valley,” to be released on seven-inch later this year, “about how things don’t join up with each other in the year we’ve just lived through.”
That sense of dissociation permeates Lost in the Cedar Wood, where melodies expand and contract like our perceptions of time during lockdown. The album doesn’t retell the Gilgamesh narrative – it’s more a series of meditations inspired by it – but Flynn and Macfarlane aren’t shy of tackling its epic themes like death and rebirth.
This should not imply that listening to it is a heavy experience: quite the opposite, in fact. What’s astonishing about the record is how much delight there is in it, from the instantly catchy resonator riff of the opening track “Ten Degrees of Strange” to the modal funk of “Bonedigger.” It often manages to be moving and funny at the same time, as in the plaintive lyrics of “I Can’t Swim There”: “My friend Harry’s got legs to spare/But I can’t find my body, I’ve looked everywhere.”
That sense of light and dark is beautifully mingled in “The World to Come,” which begins with an owlishly haunting melody and ends in a mighty accelerando, gathering speed until it’s a wild, whooping chorus of multiple voices – including Macfarlane’s. “In his wonderfully inclusive way Johnny did recruit me into some distant backing vocals,” he laughs. “And that song is effectively a party — not at the end of the world, but maybe at the beginning of a better world to come. So Johnny was encouraging us into the kitchen — whack the taps! jump up and down! There’s a cutlery basket that goes down at the end and the rawness of that in the record is wonderful to hear.”
The majority of the tracks were recorded in an off-grid cottage on the borders of Dorset and Hampshire, the recording equipment run off batteries powered by solar panels. “I love those albums like Music from Big Pink and The Basement Tapes,” says Flynn, “where you’re feeling the room where it was recorded. And for this one we were in the middle of forestry land, so there was the sound of chainsaws cutting pine trees coming through the windows, and we’d jump out of the window to record birdsong, and we were really in the sonic universe of the stories we were telling.”
Also singing on the album is Flynn’s nine-year-old son Gabriel. That inclusion was important to Flynn – not just because Gabriel is a promising young musician, but because parenting was such an intrinsic part of Flynn’s life, and even his creative process, in the past year.
“I was getting up before the kids in order to write and I’d be halfway through an idea when they piled down for breakfast,” he grins. “Often Rob would get a phone demo of me trying to sing a song and halfway through I’m shouting at the kids…”
“Daddy, where’s the marmalade?” says Macfarlane, recalling the interruptions.
“It was intense,” adds Flynn, “worrying about three kids, but the lovely thing about having them at home was getting to really go into every aspect of their thought process and their day.”
Macfarlane nods. “Stepping out of work into the arms of my eight-year-old, as he runs down the garden, that’s a nice commute.” He pauses. “I hope something like that stays, after lockdown.”
Because that’s the real question behind this album: what have we learned from humanity’s most recent crisis, and how will it change us? When Gilgamesh loses Enkidu as a result of their sacrilegious actions, he begins a new quest for the secret of eternal life. It’s no spoiler to reveal that he doesn’t find it: appreciating what he already has is more to the point.
It is not lost on Flynn and Macfarlane, for instance, that Gilgamesh is a story of close male friendship – even if, as Macfarlane jokingly points out, one of the characters dies horribly and the other’s a brutal despot. You can picture them together, Flynn and Macfarlane, on their much-prized walks through the English countryside, talking of this and that, and coming up with their next creative ideas.
It has, they agree, been a joyful process, and this joint project is surely the first of many. It may have forced them to confront some of their greatest fears for the natural world and the planet on which we live, but it has also endowed them with fresh hope.
Macfarlane also hopes that people don’t feel they need to know anything about Gilgamesh to enjoy the songs – or treat it as a pandemic album. “The days and months of lockdown do soak through its pores but they’re never named,” he says. “I hope in five years time anyone can put their ear to it and not feel they need a key to understand it.”
This week on The Show On The Road, we bring you a truly inspiring talk with the activist, author, and free-spirited feminist folk icon Ani DiFranco, who just released her lushly orchestrated twenty-second album: Revolutionary Love.
Many things have been said about the music Ani DiFranco has created for the last thirty years since she burst on the scene with her fiery self-titled LP in 1990. With her shaved head on the cover, fearlessly bisexual love songs, dexterous guitar work and hold-no-prisoners lyrics sparing no one from her poetic magnifying glass, DiFranco’s persona became almost synonymous with a rejuvenated women’s movement that blossomed in the late-1990’s Lilith Fair moment. And yet she was always a bit more committed to the cause than some of her more pop-leaning contemporaries, who faded away as soon as their hits subsided.
Framing herself somewhere between the rebellious folk-singing teacher Pete Seeger and the gender-fluid show-stopping rock spirit in Prince, (who she recorded with after he became a fan,) DiFranco was always just as passionate about raising awareness for abortion rights, ensuring safety for gay and trans youth and bringing music to prisons, as she was promoting her latest musical experiment. She began playing publicly around age ten, and as a nineteen-year-old runaway from Buffalo, NY, she started her own label, Righteous Babe Records, that allowed her to operate free of corporate (and overwhelmingly male) oversight. Indeed, despite gaining a wide international fanbase she has released every album herself since the beginning — as well as championing genre-defying songwriters like Andrew Bird, Anaïs Mitchell, Utah Philips, and others. It was DiFranco’s encouragement that helped Mitchell’s opus Hadestown become a Tony-winning Broadway smash. DiFranco may have been deemed a bit too left-of-center for pop radio, but her beloved 1997 live record Living In Clip went gold.
Let’s get something out of the way real quick: was this male podcast host initially a bit intimidated to dive into her encyclopedic album collection after admiring her work from afar and believing the songs were not meant for his ears? Indeed. I grew up with girlfriends and fellow musicians who rocked Ani’s Righteous Babe pins and patches on their jean jackets like they were religious ornaments. What I found during this mind-bending conversation, and after listening to her polished and mystical newest record especially, was that DiFranco has never tried to push away people that don’t look or talk like her — or tried to mock or belittle conservative movements she doesn’t agree with or understand. There is a deep kindness and empathy in her songwriting that I never expected and in her 2019 autobiography, No Walls And The Recurring Dream, she acknowledges how lonely and exhausting it can be trying to fight against a societal tide that doesn’t want to stop and give you space to be who you are.
What became increasingly clear during our conversation was that DiFranco wants to make music for everyone. She prides herself on her quirky, multi-generational fanbase — with grandparents and kids, dads and sons, daughters and aunties alike singing along to favorites like “Both Hands,” “Untouchable Face,” and covers like Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” at packed shows across three continents.
I had my own goosebumps-inducing moment singing with Ani that I’ll never forget. The oldest folk festival in America, The Ann Arbor Folk Fest, once put me on stage to sing harmony on “Angel From Montgomery” with DiFranco at the acoustically perfect Hill Auditorium. I attended the University Of Michigan years earlier and I saw John Prine sing that classic in that same room, and it felt like a full circle moment. Seeing how DiFranco transfixed the crowd that night, and how the women songwriters and musicians offstage especially watched her with such admiration made me want to see what her music — which I had never fully listened to — was all about.
If you have a chance, listen to Revolutionary Love start to finish, and stick around to the end of the episode to hear DiFranco read lyrics as poetry.
In June 2019, Anaïs Mitchell picked up her first Tony Award when Hadestown beat out bigger productions like Beetlejuice and Tootsie to snag Best Musical. It was an unlikely win for the eccentric and ambitious production — and the culmination of fifteen years of hard work bringing it to Broadway.
“I had no idea how long I was going to work on it,” she tells BGS. “I really didn’t. I just knew what the next step always was and just kept taking them.”
A folk musician born in Vermont and based in Brooklyn, Mitchell first staged Hadestown as a regional production around New England, and it resembled something like a traveling medicine show, as she and her friends toured it the way they might tour an album. In 2010, she released it as something like an Americana concept album, casting colleagues and collaborators in key roles: Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon plays the role of Orpheus, while Ani DiFranco is Persephone.
The story is old, even if the production is new. Mitchell borrowed characters from Greek mythology, combining the stories of Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the underworld and Persephone warring with Hades. But she filtered them through John Steinbeck and Upton Sinclair, imagining the underworld as an industrial hellscape, like a sooty factory or a mine, with Hades abusing both the natural world and his workers.
In 2015, she began working with a stage director named Rachel Chavkin, who brought the award-winning Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 to Broadway. Together with a team of producers, musicians, actors, set designers, choreographers, and many others, they began to rework Hadestown for a bigger stage, streamlining the story and rearranging the music for maximum impact. In some cases they rewrote entire characters or scratched entire songs, searching for the best possible way to tell this complicated story.
When it debuted at the Walter Kerr Theater in March 2019, Hadestown barely resembled the production Mitchell staged around Vermont. It was bigger, flashier, more accessible, but also truer to the big ideas that inspired her in the first place. At its heart is an America defined by conflicts between industry and environmental conservation, between commerce and art, between various forms of love and labor. Yet, in its most innovative stroke, the production retained its roots in folk music and its populist ideas. The original cast recording just earned a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
“It’s a little crazy to be on the other side of it,” Mitchell says. “I’m still trying to bend my head around what that means. Like, what kind of songs do I write now?” For the moment she’s focusing on her new band, Bonny Light Horsemen, which is something like a supergroup trio with Fruit Bats mastermind Eric D. Johnson and multi-instrumentalist/producer Joseph Kaufman. Featuring members of Bon Iver, the National, and Hiss Golden Messenger, their self-titled debut album resituates centuries-old folk songs in new settings. “Bonny Light Horsemen has been this really assuring kind of space to be creative in and make music and not feel like it’s my new statement,” she says. “Because it’s not.”
As she was packing to launch a lengthy tour with Johnson and Kaufman, Mitchell spoke with BGS about Greek and American mythologies, creative uncertainties, and songs that straddle the line between personal and universal.
BGS: You lived with Hadestown for more than a decade, during which time it morphed into a brand-new creature. What kept it compelling for you?
Mitchell: I would say that like the simplest answer to that question is that it never felt done. The studio record that we made in 2010 felt done for a studio record. It felt like a complete statement. But the show began as a stage performance piece and I always wanted to see it that way again. As soon as I started the next phase of development with Rachel Chavkin it was one chapter after another: We’re going for off-Broadway. Then we’re going for regional. Then we’re going for Broadway. And it always was like, “It can be better, it can be better…”
And the people kept the wind in the sails of the project. At a certain point it became so much bigger than me. Maybe it always was bigger, because there’s the orchestrators and the singers and all the people in the different cities. It became something like a whole community of people just chipping away at the same piece of stone. It was very exciting to be in the room with those actors and with Rachel and seeing the choreography and the sets coming into focus. It was like a hive. I couldn’t have turned my back on it.
Do you feel differently now that it’s up and running in its current form?
Now that it’s up and running, I don’t even go. It’s happening every night and I get a little report by email here in Brooklyn. It really has a life of its own. It’s become its own animal. And I think I did max out what I could give it in that period. So it feels great to just be making folk music with Bonny Light Horseman right now. It definitely feels like the right place to be.
Why did you want to pursue this story as a stage production? What made it something different than an album or even a book?
From the earliest moment of starting to work on the piece, I was excited by the idea of telling a dramatic, long-form story with larger-than-life characters. I love songs so much, but I remember noticing that even at my favorite concerts by my favorite songwriters I would start to get bored with all these tiny climaxes in the songs. There was a disconnect from one song to the next.
I will watch a terrible movie all the way to the end because there’s that question: How is this going to end? What’s going to happen next? That is so powerful and it will carry you through. I wanted that for this piece. I wanted all the songs to lean on each other, so that you had to watch the whole thing and get through to the end.
That took you well outside what most folk musicians and singer/songwriters are doing. What did you learn during that process?
There was so much learning in terms of writing a song that felt like it was structurally perfect for the album, like “Wedding Song.” It’s just three verses and a little interlude. I would play that at my songwriter shows and think, yeah, it’s so tight. But it fell flat as a dramatic scene. I had to find a way to explode the form without breaking what works about it.
I also learned about putting space into a song. You might put space into a song so that a musician can improvise or express themselves. The same is true for drama: There was to be space for the actor to create the character. As a write, I tend to want to fill that space with words. I think both of these mediums are really similar in the sense that you’re building something for someone else to inhabit. You’re building a house that someone else can live in.
If you can write a song that’s good enough that other people are going to sing it and cover it and let it live in the world, you’re creating something that is similar to a play, which can be revived just by other people’s involvement in it. It’s bigger than you. And hopefully it’ll outlive you.
That’s interesting, because right now it seems like most people prize the singer/songwriter model, where the song is heard as an extension of the person and means less when it’s covered by someone else. The idea of somebody telling their truth seems to have more validity right now than a song that can change and accommodate new interpretations and maybe means something different when different people sing it.
I think we’re approaching an idea that feels really important to me. I haven’t talked about it enough to have language about it, but I do think things need to be true emotionally for the person who’s writing them. I would say all of the songs in Hadestown came from a place of personal truth even though they maybe took on the clothing of the character or the needs of the scenario. There has to be some emotional truth. That’s a sacred thing. But there’s something intersecting that idea. What is universally true or part of some collective unconscious stuff can be exciting.
You could go about trying to write something like a hit or a standard as a kind of exercise, and it might not feel true to you. To be honest, I think a lot of Nashville co-writing scenarios end up this way, where you get something that feels structurally tight but is missing some kernel of personal truth. But you can go too far in the other direction where it’s like the person is totally self-expressing. How does that mean anything to me or to someone else?
It’s that middle ground you’re looking for, where you can sing from your own heart and experience, but you’re also singing from the heart of the world, from the world’s experience. Folk music is really interesting for that, right? Because it’s like water from a deep well. Those songs tap into a universal experience, and those archetypes and images are going to live forever. So if I can find a way to write that taps into that but also feels true to me, then that’s the zone I want to live in.
Do you feel like you reached that with this iteration of Hadestown? Is this the final form it will take, or will you keep developing the story?
There was a moment when I thought I was going to revise it for the tour that we’re doing in the fall. But we just put out this cast recording, which is beautiful and has all the material in it. I think people might want to go to the regional version and be able to experience the show that they’ve listened to on that recording. I do fantasize about a film version, but that’s maybe years down the line. For the time being I think it’s best for me to take a step away, but I could see getting really excited to roll up my sleeves again for what would essentially be another phase.
I’ve actually been working on a book, which has been very therapeutic. It’s coming out sometime this year and it’s basically the history of the project, the evolution of the lyrics. It’s called Working on a Song. I was able to go back and look at a lot of these songs and see where they came from and how they evolved. I often would say I felt like I was banging my head against the wall: The idea was wrong, the thing was wrong. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, and then suddenly it’s right. At the time it didn’t feel like those wrong choices I had made meant anything. But when I look back on the process, I can see more clearly the way certain lines came up or certain songs or ideas came about. They didn’t come up quite right, so they went back into the soil. They nourished the ground that then the right thing could grow out of.
So much of the time you feel like everything is futile. Like, I can’t believe I just sat here for however many hours and made only one rhyme that might not even be good. That happens to me all the time. So the metaphor that I came up with has to do with gardening. You have to rake around, and the raking is sort of aerating the soil. You’re preparing the ground for the right thing to come up. And when they do come up, they’re beautiful, like flowers. And then they go back into the soil and eventually nourish the next thing.
That definitely seems to fit with the story Hadestown is telling, about an artist who literally goes into the soil to rescue his beloved and finish this unfinished song. From a creative perspective, how much did you identify with or relate to the character of Orpheus?
Totally. It’s interesting that that character took so long to come into focus. Ever since our off-Broadway version of the show, Orpheus confused a lot of audiences. People weren’t falling in love with him. They found him and Eurydice to be less fully drawn and therefore less compelling than the older couple Hades and Persephone. I always thought of Orpheus as this really crazy optimist. He’s got this faith in the world and in his own music, but then he ends up besieged by doubt at the end, which is supposed to be crushing. But he has a lot of lines that if they were delivered wrong — even just by a tiny fraction of a percentage wrong — they felt swagger-y and cocky, which is not what I intended for him.
I always thought of him as this sensitive soul, and that kind of machismo was not in keeping with that idea. His first line was, “Come home with me.” And people were like, who is this guy? Why’s he trying to pick up this chick? Why should we love him? People weren’t identifying with him, and they didn’t care if he won or lost. Obviously, if you don’t love him and want him to succeed, then the story falls flat. You’ve got to love Orpheus.
After we debuted in London, there was a crisis moment when we had this awful nagging feeling that something was not quite in focus. People don’t love this hero. It came up in a lot of reviews. So we went into triage mode, me and the director and the producers. How can we fix this? So we decided that for Broadway, we would really lean into his naiveté. He’s a boy who’s lost in his own world. He undeniably has a gift to give the world but he’s not very good at living in the world the way it is. He’s socially inept. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Suddenly that made him appear much younger and much more innocent. It’s not like he’s so brave to stand up to Hades. It’s more that he just doesn’t know any better. He’s an innocent who finds himself in the belly of the beast, and he doesn’t know any better than to call out what he sees as true. What we fall in love with is his purity of heart. That’s what comes through in his singing. That was a really fascinating journey with that character for me. That song that Orpheus could never finish was also the song that I felt I could never finish.
(Read our second installment of our Artist of the Month coverage on Anaïs Mitchell tomorrow.)
Photo credit: Shervin Lainez
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