Tag: Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

The Glittering Golden Grass of The Brothers Comatose

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bay Area five-piece The Brothers Comatose were actually founded by the brothers Morrison: that would be Ben on guitar and lead vocals and his brother Alex on banjo. The Morrisons came from a musical family and were influenced as much by classic rock as they were by country and bluegrass – their first album, Songs from the Stoop (2010), even contains a cover of The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” Initially, the band’s lineup included bassist Steve Height, fiddler Phil Brezina, and mandolin player Greg Fleischut.

In the 15 years since, they have stayed busy both in the studio and on the road. As anyone who has seen the band’s concerts can attest, The Brothers Comatose are anything but… comatose. Their live performances are known to be high energy and often include audience participation. They have supported everyone from Gillian Welch & David Rawlings to Yonder Mountain String Band to Trampled By Turtles. In addition, the group has played festivals like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands.

The Brothers Comatose returned at the end of July with their fifth studio outing, Golden Grass. The title track, which also opens the album, came from an unlikely source. “A fan started calling our sound ‘golden grass,’” explains Ben Morrison. “And the phrase just felt right.”

Golden Grass arrives three years after the band’s prior album and continues their mix of traditional bluegrass and rock. But behind the scenes, there have been some changes. The Brothers recorded Golden Grass in two separate installments with two different producers, Greg Holden and Tim Bluhm. While they were making the disc, mandolin player Greg Fleischut decided to leave the group. His replacement, Addie Levy, is the first woman in the band and, at just 23, significantly younger than her fellow members. “We always thought it would be cool to have a female voice to hit those high harmonies,” says Morrison. “Addie’s such an incredible mandolin and fiddle player, but she’s also a great singer and songwriter in her own right.”

Golden Grass is probably a bit more diverse than the band’s previous albums. Beyond being their first release to include a woman singer and mandolin player, it’s more collaborative in general. Ben wrote several songs, of course, but other tracks were penned by Levy, Brezina, and Alex Morrison. Still, Golden Grass maintains a pretty consistent sound over its 10 songs. The title track sounds like a lost Allman Brothers tune from back in the day and other highlights include lovely ballads like “Home Again” (featuring Lindsay Lou on guest vocals) and “My Friend” as well as the funny, rollicking “The IPA Song.”

I recently had the pleasure of catching up with Ben Morrison and Addie Levy for BGS.

To start with, tell me a little about the making of Golden Grass. I understand there were some changes between your last album and this one. Addie obviously is the new addition. And I guess Greg was the guy who left?

Ben Morrison: Yeah, Greg was in the band before. He left like halfway through the album. We recorded it in chunks. So we recorded half the album, we were working through the rest of the songs, and in that process, he left the band. Addie joined and recorded the second half of the album with us. But it’s funny. There are four mandolin players on [Golden Grass]. We had a couple of guest mandolin players on the album before Addie joined. Ronnie McCoury’s on there. It’s a good variety, I guess. [Laughs]

Tell me about the title track, which is also the first song on the album.

BM: That’s a good question. It started out with us trying to identify ourselves – that age-old question when you ask a musician what kind of music they play. “Well, it’s kind of hard to define. We’re jazz and pop and metal and boy band!” [Laughs] You know, it’s definitely pulling a lot from the bluegrass world. But also from a bunch of other influences.

We kept posting these things on Facebook and there’s this guy, Cyrus Clark, I believe his name is. He kept commenting about a lot of music coming from California – string band music specifically – going back to Old & In the Way. He kept saying, “Golden Grass! Brothers Comatose, Molly Tuttle, and AJ Lee.” We thought that was really cool.

I think I had just written it down in a notebook one day. And we did a cowrite – myself, our fiddle player Phil, and the guy that produced the second half of the record, Tim Bluhm. I was like, “What if we called it Golden Grass?” We started name-dropping different bands in the lyrics and kind of giving them a little shout out. We had fun with that and went with it.

“Home Again” – reading the press release, I know what inspired it. But just listening to the lyrics, I [probably] would have known anyway. For those of us on the East Coast, tell me a bit more about what [the wildfires] were like and how it affected the song.

BM: That wasn’t a personal story; it was about good friends of ours who lost their house in the Santa Cruz Mountains fires a few years back. For those of you not in California, there’s a fire season [here] where fires can just rip through and destroy communities. It’s pretty messed up and now it’s literally close to home. Some good friends of ours – all their property and their house got destroyed. I think it was during the pandemic and it hit me pretty hard. I was just really feeling for them and that song kinda came pretty quickly.

We had the song and thought about getting somebody to help sing it with us. Lindsay Lou’s been a friend for a long, long time and she’s such a great singer. We sent it to her and she was on it. It’s about a couple losing their house and building back together. So it made more sense to me as a duet.

I like the ballads on the album. Addie, I think you were the one who wrote “Blue Mountain?”

Addie Levy: I am.

Tell me a bit about the inspiration for that song.

AL: I’m from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I grew up in Appalachia my whole life. [The mountains] have always been a very big inspiration for my writing and who I am as a person.

I was driving to work one day and was listening to the Infamous Stringdusters’ [version of the Cure’s] “Just Like Heaven” and got really inspired by having a keen lick throughout the whole song. I was like, “I need to write a song like that.” It all came to me within the drive to work. I showed it to my mom when I got home and she kind of looked at me with concern. She was like “Are you and your boyfriend okay?” I was like, “What does that have to do with the song I just played you?” I accidentally wrote the entire thing about him – which is bad ‘cause he cheats on me in the song! But he doesn’t in real life! [Laughs]

There were all these little pieces. Like, I pass his exit to work every day. He knows my Starbucks order. I painted the walls blue in his bedroom in one of our first months of dating. I pulled all these little things I didn’t mean to. Then I had to show it to him. I was like, “I am so sorry I wrote this song about you!” But when you’re in a nice, healthy relationship – I don’t have that much stuff to complain about so I can’t really write about it!

“The IPA Song” is a fun track. Anything either of you want to share with me about that?

BM: When we play shows, we like to get people onstage to help us out – you know, for sing-alongs or whatever it might be. I think we’ve had more children onstage for “The IPA Song” than any other song, which is ridiculous. But they make signs and stuff – like the IPA circled with a line through it. We had a 15-year-old last night playing mandolin with us for that song! I mean, the lyrics are goofy, but I guess it’s a catchy one. It’s been a fun song to play live.

Going back to the Bay Area music scene. In the late ‘60s, it was known for bands like The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and the whole psychedelic thing. And in the late ‘70s, there was something of a punk scene. Even in the ‘90s, there were bands like Counting Crows that recorded in San Francisco.

What is the scene like now? And with all these different musical sounds that have come from the city, how did you settle on more of an Americana/bluegrass sound?

BM: The band got its start in 2008 in San Francisco. My brother and I were living in a house on Haight Street – right in the thick of it. Phil lived a few blocks down, so he would come over. We continued to live in the city for a long time and there was a bustling scene. With bluegrass too – like this [past] weekend was the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I kind of credit that festival with my direct interest with this kind of music. It’s massive, three-quarters of a million people throughout the weekend. It’s all free. Huge headliners. It’s not all bluegrass but it definitely leans in that direction.

It was so cool being exposed to different kinds of music that I hadn’t really listened to before. What was also cool was watching artists play – Del McCoury, John Prine, Emmylou Harris – all these players that were older. It seemed like the older you get, the more respect you get in this world. [That] was interesting, because I felt like in the rock world there was sort of a shelf life. Like “Oh, you’re in your late 20s in a rock band? Give it up, kid.” That kind of thing. But in this world, when you’re 70, you’re doing it! That was always so cool to me.

So San Francisco does have a pretty cool scene. Probably 10 years ago, a lot of people started moving out because tech started moving in [and it became] more expensive. But I’ve heard that it’s getting cool again. I don’t hang out there as much anymore ‘cause we’re on the road a lot and I’ve got two kids. I mean, Addie probably hangs out there more than I do.

AL: Anytime I’m in town, I try to find a bluegrass gang. There’s a couple of bars [where] I’ve made some good friends. Sometimes there are jams, sometimes they’re just drinking. But there are some really cool musicians in town.

Ben, I know your brother is also in the band. Tell me what Alex brings to The Brothers Comatose that is unique.

BM: Alex has swagger beyond belief. [Laughs] Is that what you would call it?

AL: Yeah. [He’s] the most photogenic, most in the vibe of every situation.

BM: And the way he plays, too. To me, he plays banjo like Keith Richards plays guitar. You know, he’s not trying to be the Yngwie Malmsteen of the banjo or anything. He’s just trying to make it groovy, stanky, in the pocket. It’s just got such good feel to it. And also, he’s a great songwriter and singer. But a lot of his influences come from [bands like] The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. We used to listen to a lot of classic rock when we were kids.

Addie, I guess I wanted to ask you what it’s like so far as the new member of the band and also the first woman. Crashing the boys’ club, as it were.

AL: My very first show with them was in Idaho. I had never met any of them, I had one phone call with them and I had never been west of Nashville! You know, I grew up traveling up and down the East Coast and never really left. I remember touching down in Sun Valley and the realization hit that I knew two people there and they were leaving the next day. And I was like, “I’m gonna get murdered. I am gonna die out here!” [Laughs] I never heard of the festival, it was in the mountains somewhere… I was like, “This is the end.”

[I was] super anxious to start. I mean, our first show was a headlining slot that Sunday. That was terrifying. But [the Brothers Comatose are] just the greatest people. They’re so welcoming. And I’m an only child. So they’re really the siblings [I never had]… They’re the best.

Photo Credits: Lead image courtesy of Burning House Management. Alternate image by Jessie McCall.

Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert Let Their Music “Be What It Wants to Be”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Volume 4 is a beginning and end for Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert. It’s a beginning in that it’s the duo’s newest release, which means new songs, a new tour cycle, and a new round of interviews. It’s an end – “the end of an era,” as they put it – for Dead Reckoning Records, the label Kane and his bandmates in The Dead Reckoners launched 30 years ago. The independent venture grabbed the attention of other artists whose recordings they released, in addition to The Dead Reckoners’ first and only album, A Night of Reckoning, and the band members’ various other projects.

“Over the 30 years, [The Dead Reckoners] drifted into their own worlds, their own lanes,” says Kane. “Tammy Rogers and the late Mike Henderson started doing The SteelDrivers, Harry Stinson has been with Marty Stuart for years, and Kevin Welch is in Australia. For a long time, I was just putting out my solo records on the label, and then Rayna and I put our records out.

“30 years seemed like a nice, round, anniversary number to give everybody their work back, their masters back, and dissolve the company. It’s been great. I’m quite proud of the work we’ve done over the years and that it’s still a functioning label. We’ve managed to survive all kinds of digital flare-ups and breakthroughs and ways of sharing music. The company makes a little bit of money every year, but it seemed like, ‘Yeah, let’s call it a day.’ I called everyone and everybody was like, ‘That’s fine.’”

Bringing Dead Reckoning Records full circle is sweet rather than bittersweet, says Kane, “in that the label was started by an album of mine [Dead Rekoning, 1995] and thirty years later, on the same date [April 11], we released Volume 4. To me, it serves as bookends for the label.”

Gellert and Kane met at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. Their first collaboration was co-writing for Kane’s Unguarded Moments [2016] and Gellert’s Workin’s Too Hard [2017]. The following year, they released their first duo album, The Ledges, followed by When The Sun Goes Down [2019], and The Flowers That Bloom In Spring [2022]. This year brings Volume 4, which they produced, recorded, and mixed, with Kane on vocals and guitars, Gellert on vocals, guitar, and fiddle, and Kane’s son Lucas on drums.

I thought we’d start by introducing you to readers, but instead of telling us about yourselves, tell us about each other.

Rayna Gellert: Kieran is a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with a long, awesome career doing all kinds of musical things ever since he was a child. The thing that other musicians immediately say about him is they comment on his sense of groove that seems to be a through line in his musical output. And he’s awesome. He’s the funnest person to write and perform with.

Kieran Kane: Musically, we are so much on the same path, and have been on the same path, for both our individual lines. But out of all the people that I’ve ever worked with, Rayna, in the same way she talks about groove when talking about me, I would have to say the same thing about her, in that it’s just so … I want to say reliable, and that sounds sort of pedestrian, but it is.

It’s like having a drummer and a bass player playing the fiddle, in that the pockets and the grooves are so strong and well established that I can drift away and they’re just there. And it’s all been unusually compatible in writing and playing and performing. We genuinely enjoy doing what we do together. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s creatively fulfilling, and all those things.

Rayna, in an interview with WYSO you mentioned there are differences in your songwriting processes. Could you tell us about those differences and how they work as a duo?

RG: Kieran’s the first person I’ve consistently co-written with. I mostly wrote on my own. I occasionally noodled around with a friend on something, but I had no consistent co-writer. I was very much a newbie to actual co-writing when Kieran and I started writing together.

He approaches songwriting from a completely different angle than I do and that makes it extra fun and adventurous. I’ve always started with some bit of lyric and melody that come at the same time together and I go from there. Kieran usually starts with some kind of instrumental riff that becomes the seed of a structure of something. Lyrics come later for him.

The combination of the way we come at a song is very compatible because it’s different. We bring different strengths to the table. I tend to be super verbose when it comes to lyrics. I spill a lot of stuff out, and he’s a great editor. He is really good at finding the key phrases, figuring out the hook, and creating a structure around that.

My background is in old-time music, so the idea of a long ballad where there’s no chorus and it’s just inspiration that goes on and on and on is totally normal to me. For Kieran, it’s like, “What’s the hook? What’s the chorus? What’s the instrumental riff that’s going to tie the thing together?” And it works together very well.

KK: I agree with that. A lot of times what I’m hearing, along with a song, is a record. So much of what we do is based on an intro, in a way, or, as she said, a little musical hook that’ll tie things down. I’ve almost never sat down with an idea about a song. It’s more like I sit down and start playing banjo or mandolin or guitar until something catches my ear and then a lyric will be a free association to get started.

With us, that’s true to some extent, as well. A lot of times we don’t know what the song is going to be about until we wade into the waters and go, “Oh, it could be this.” It seems to work. Whatever the two different approaches are, it comes together.

How is Volume 4 the next step in your journey? You’ve talked about the songwriting process. When it’s time to record, do the arrangements happen organically?

RG: His view of the song tends to be a little more zoomed out than mine. What he’s saying … he is not just thinking about the song, he’s thinking about the record – I think that’s about arrangement. That’s about, “How are the pieces fitting together here?”
It does evolve organically. We always have to decide, “What’s the instrumentation? What feels right for this? Am I playing guitar? Am I playing fiddle?” If he comes up with a riff on an instrument, usually it stays on that instrument. But we’re working with so few pieces that we make a lot of use of space, because that’s one of the biggest colors in our palette.

KK: A way for us to build things in terms of arrangements often – since, as Rayna said, there’s so few pieces – is to eliminate something, like, “We’ll drop out here, which will bring the song down,” because if we start off with the two of us singing and playing at the same time, there’s no place to go, other than to start removing things.

As I’m saying this, I realize that my mission, if there is such a thing, in writing and making records has always been about removing things, making it simpler, and cutting off all the fat, anything that’s unnecessary.

RG: One of the things that’s different about this project is, in a way, we approached the whole album sort of like we would approach a song, as in letting it be what it wanted to be.

On past albums, we approached it more like we were writing a set list for a show, where it’s, “Have we included different instrumentation? Do we have a balance of lead singers? Do we have uptempo and downtempo?” This album is structured more like the way we write a song, which is, “What does this want to be?” Regardless of instrumentation, regardless of who’s singing, regardless of whether we wrote the songs. It evolved into this little sonic package that feels like you go in there and it’s a room you hang out in for the length of the album. To me, that’s a different experience than our past records.

KK: I’ve never thought of it like that. Yeah. We’ve been writing a lot. We wrote three albums, I did an EP that we had written a couple of songs for, and Rayna did an EP that I helped out on a couple of songs and produced. So we’ve done a lot of work in the last eight years, or however it is, that we’ve been doing this. Before Volume 4, there were three albums and two EPs, which is a lot more work than I’ve ever done in that amount of time.

This record, to me, was a little bit more of a grab-back in a way. Rayna was talking about wanting to do a fiddle album at some point and I was like, “Let’s play more fiddle tunes.” So we did that and pulled some older songs that were, as Rayna was saying, “Let’s just do it.” In my mind, it’s almost cleansing in a way to have taken this “just let it be what it wants to be” approach. Now we can move on to something else … and I don’t know what that is.

Tell us about the recording process and gear choices on this album.

RG: We have a very simple home recording setup that we’ve refined over the years. We got some good mics that we like a lot a couple years ago, Soyuz mics. We use those for everything, for instruments and vocals, the same mics. We have four of those.
We have a Zoom R16 board that we can either record directly onto or use as an input into Logic for recording. It’s a very mobile rig. We spend our summers in the Adirondacks at a cabin and we do a lot of recording when we’re up there. Some of this album was recorded there and some of it was recorded here in Nashville, in our house. We can take the board with us and do a nice, clean, digital field recording.

KK: It’s a wonderful piece of gear and shockingly inexpensive. As far as instruments and things like that, this record is a departure for me in terms of guitars, because I’ve basically used the same Guild M-20 on every record and every show I’ve done with Rayna, and before that for the last twenty-five years. For some reason, on this record, I picked up a couple of different guitars that I’ve had lying around the house for years. It was like, “Let me try this song on this guitar. Oh, that’s fun.” Whether or not I would do that again, I don’t know, because the guitar I’ve used all those years I love and it’s so reliable.

There’s three different acoustic guitars for me on this record. One is a Martin 00-16 classic, an early-’60s gut-string guitar that I played on “Keep My Heart in Mind.” The other is an early-’60s D-28 that I played on “The Mansion Above.” The other guitar songs are all on the Guild M-20. Rayna played the same guitar that she’s been using, an early D-28.

Last year, I was listening to a lot of ’60s folk music. I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot, Ian & Sylvia, Bob Dylan, and things like that, and hearing these really simple guitars where there’s no real guitar solos or anything like that. “I Can’t Wait” fits into that mold – as does “Keep My Heart in Mind,” and “Imagine That” – in that there’s no solos, but there’s a repetitive musical vein that goes through it all. It’s just two people playing guitars and singing. It’s that simple, which is something that really appeals to me.

Is it accurate to say there’s a connecting thread of faith in some of these songs?

KK: Yeah, I think that maybe is a thread through it.

RG: Not from that specific angle, but we definitely talked about hoping that people, in listening to the album, felt comforted.

KK: “I Can’t Wait,” to me, is very much is about faith – not in a religious way, but in a general sense of hope. As bad as things are right now, I remain hopeful and I keep looking towards the light. I’m aware of the dark, profoundly aware of the dark, but I don’t think that’s the end. I think there’s light as well and there’ll be more light as time goes by.

There are a couple of songs, specifically “Whatcha Gonna Do About It” and “Short Con,” that people could easily interpret as political – and they are. There’s no doubt about that. “Short Con” we look at as written from the standpoint of the Constitution. It’s like, “Why don’t you believe in me now?” There are other songs we have that certainly people have told us, “We’re not interested in your political views.” There’s a few floating around that just turn out … it’s not like we sit down and try and write about politics, or faith, for that matter. It’s just where our mental space is at the time.

You can look at these new songs as being political, but we’ve started thinking about them as being patriotic. It’s patriotic to stand up and say, “No, you can’t do that. You can’t just pull someone out of their car and throw them in a jail in El Salvador or whatever.” That’s not a political statement to me and I think for us at this point, as much as it is a patriotic statement, it’s our duty as citizens to say something. We’re given that right and we’re taking advantage of it.

And then something like “The Mansion Above,” which I wrote fifty years ago, somehow fits in there. There is a thread between those songs. So yeah, I think to see a line through of faith is good.

You’ve mentioned before that you’re doing what you call “three-day-weekend touring.” What are your upcoming “weekend” plans?

RG: Our approach to touring is very chill. We do two or three dates in a row, sometimes just one-offs. That’s our usual mode. I think the most we’ve ever done in a row is four dates. It’s all compact and it’s all about being humane and kind to ourselves.

KK: We have a good time. We have a comfortable car, I do all the driving and Rayna does all the navigating and mans the phone. I like to get onstage and play, but I don’t think either one of us wants to go, “Let’s book a month.” I look at other people’s schedules sometimes and go, “I remember doing things like that,” but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

We are gentle on ourselves. Our performances– we’ve cut that down in the sense that we don’t use any monitors onstage. We sit as close as humanly possible together and still be able to move the instruments around. Sound people really like us because sound people hate monitors. You say, “No monitors,” they rejoice. Doing it that way, if a soundcheck takes more than 15 minutes, we’re in trouble. Two instrument mics, two vocal mics, no monitors. “Can you hear us? Great. We’re done.” It makes life simpler.

RG: So yes, we do have gigs. There’s some stuff for the summer that will be posted on our website and I’m working on fall right now.

KK: And we are open to offers.

RG: Yes, we’re always happy to hear from venues!

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Valerie June is Weaving Spells Again

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Valerie June’s new album – Owls, Omens, and Oracles (released on April 11 by Concord Records) – begins with a snare and a hi-hat. A simple, straight-forward rhythm. Something to wrest you from your chair and get you moving your body.

After a few bars, her distinct, earnest, energetic vocals enter and it feels as though you’re surrounded by a circle of Valerie Junes singing in delightful unison. Urging you on. It’s just her voice and the drum for thirty-five seconds, then she lands on the word “joy” and the whole song bursts open with a distorted guitar and so many cymbals.

Like the “Joy, Joy” for which the song is titled, sound layers build and build, rippling out further and further until it all fades. By then, you’re well into the room. The colors are swirling. There seems to be joy and love hanging from the chandeliers. If you close your eyes, perhaps you can imagine the colors bursting forth from the guitar when it finally takes a solo.

Indeed, whether or not you experience synesthesia – a condition some musicians report where they associate sound and color – there is something undeniably colorful about the music June puts into the world. This is as true as ever on the new disc, which feels even more focused on joy’s pursuit and on holding joy aloft once it is within one’s grasp.

The celebrated poet and activist adrienne maree brown, who wrote June’s promotional bio for the project, notes: “This album is a radical statement to break with the skepticism, surveillance, and doom scrolling – let yourself celebrate your aliveness. Connect, weep, change, open.”

Indeed, connecting and weeping – through joy and heartache alike – is central to June’s artistic journey. This notion, that her music might be urging its listeners to celebrate aliveness, is particularly resonant on Owls. After all, June, who divides her time between Tennessee and New York, is a certified yoga teacher and mindfulness meditation instructor. One might extrapolate, then, that music, for Valerie June, is equal parts connective tissue and spiritual experience.

“No one who makes music can truly tell you where it comes from,” she said on a recent Zoom call. “We don’t know where we’re getting it from. It’s coming from someplace and I like to think that place is magical.”

Similarly, she adds, “Spirit is something that we don’t really know. We can’t really – exactly – put our finger on where it’s coming from. We just feel it. … I think that it’s a very spiritual thing to make music. It’s not necessarily religious, but it is definitely spiritual. It will connect you to a deeper part of yourself, but it will also connect you to deeper parts of other people – and to nature.”

Across her six albums in nearly twenty years, June has sung about nature plenty. The night sky, the creatures of the forest. From her rendition of a classic, “The Crawdad Song,” (2006’s The Way of the Weeping Willow) to the eagle and rooster in “You Can’t Be Told” (2013’s Pushin’ Against a Stone), to the “still waters” and “dormant seas” of “Stardust Scattering” (2021’s The Moon and the Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers), June has turned to nature for solace, clarity, and metaphor.

Lately, though, she has been somewhat haunted by owls.

“In Tennessee,” she explains, “we have a pond behind the house and there’s a lot of wildlife. There’s muskrats and frogs and snakes and fish and all kinds [of animals]. We just went and bought like ten carp fish to go in the pond to help keep the algae down and stuff. But one morning, I was walking into the kitchen. I start my day with black tea and there’s mist on the pond in the morning, and so everything’s kind of like foggy. I’m making my tea. It’s like five o’clock in the morning and my eyes are all puffy. … There’s a window where you can see right across the pond and see this mist and everything, and there is an owl on this post of the fence on the far side. It’s just looking in at me, and I’m looking out at it.”

She and this same owl had a few more encounters after that initial one and June started thinking there was something to it. Whether it was a spirit visiting her on purpose, or just a magical coincidence that she and this creature were in the same place at the same time on a planet so full of people and creatures, there was something to this brief, recurring coexistence.

While June admits she never sits down on purpose to write a song – she opens to them and they come – the owl started to worm its way into her periphery while she was writing. She started reading everything she could find about owls, learning about their habits and idiosyncrasies. She felt like she was harnessing some owl energy as she captured the melodies that would make up this album.

“You can listen to the old blues songs,” she explains, “and you will hear about the black snake, or about the mojo, or different things like that. There’s magic in the music, if you ask me. I … enjoy being a root worker and understanding that music can shift moods. It has that power. It can start movements. It can energize people or make them feel so tender that they’re able to cry when they need to.

“I definitely feel like I work with those energies. I don’t just sing, you know. Because, I mean, there’s a lot of singers who have more beautiful-sounding voices than me. I’m weaving spells.”

Indeed, June’s spells weave their way through Owls.

One moment, she’s turning off the news to remember we’re all indelibly connected “like branches of an endless tree” (“Endless Tree”). Then, she’s breathing through doubt with “Trust the Path,” a quiet, echoic piano song that sounds like it blew in on a breeze. There’s the spoken word piece, “Superpower,” with its meditative background and dreamlike soundscape built atop her voice and producer M. Ward’s guitar, among other things. Suddenly June is clawhammering a banjo and singing about misguided love (“My Life Is a Country Song”). And finally, there’s the folky earworm song “Love and Let Go,” with its horns and piano and layered unison vocals.

The album starts with joy and ends with acceptance – which is part of joy. Though it weaves through different styles and soundscapes, there is this throughline of keeping to the path, trusting the light, sourcing the joy.

Most of this is due to June’s songwriting and performance, of course. But at least some of it can be credited to her producer Ward – the chameleon-like guitarist and singer-songwriter who has produced for and collaborated with a who’s who of indie artists. As for her experience with this particular collaboration, June doesn’t hold back when lavishing Ward with praise.

“It was kind of the most amazing experience I’ve had in making records,” she says.

“He can play anything. He’s on the vibraphones. He’s on the keys. He’s on the guitar. I mean. … [For him,] whatever genre a song wants to be is what a song is and at the end of the day I enjoy rocking out. I like turning up my electric guitar and my amp and just going crazy with this kind of like a dirty blues-rock sound. And him – he got the best tones and sounds in his guitar playing.”

The pair first decided to make a record together when they crossed paths at Newport Folk Festival. June noticed that they were on the schedule for the same day, so she texted Ward and he invited her up to sing with him.

“When I got offstage, after watching him play that blues-rock like just a genius, [my] jaw [was] on the floor. Like, that was amazing. It was just him solo, too, with like three or four different guitars up there. So I said, ‘Well, when are we gonna make this record we’ve been talking about making?’”

Two months later, they crossed paths again, this time at San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. “We were on the same day again, so auspicious,” she remembers. “And so we worked together there. He said, ‘Okay, we have to make this happen now. We’ve seen each other two times in one year.’”

Before another year passed, they were in the studio, running with the genre-defiant sounds that were pouring out of June’s magic mind.

The phrase June used to employ for describing her music was “organic moonshine roots” – a description she’s stopped using since her friend who coined it passed away. Meanwhile, her life has taken on its own metamorphoses. She has found and lost love, has branched out in new directions, has pulled in guitar, ukulele, and banjo. She has made music with artists as variant as the Avett Brothers and Blind Boys of Alabama (the latter appear in the background on Owls). When not on the road, she hosts meditation retreats and teaches mindfulness at places like the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires. She writes poetry and has published a picture book for children.

Naturally, all of this has fed her appetite for melody and it’s all added to the tapestry of sound that defines her music. There is country in there, for sure. Also some semblance of jazz, R&B, pop, and just plain individualistic, raw grit. This time around, on Owls, Omens, and Oracles, genre seems like a silly thing to even try to pin down.

During a SXSW interview in 2023, writer Wajahat Ali asked June about the ineffability of her style and she didn’t hesitate. “It’s Valerie June music,” she told him. “I’m a singer-songwriter and whatever comes out, comes out. Sometimes it is honey, sometimes it’s vinegar.”

Sometimes it’s black tea and mist on a pond, crickets chirping and muskrats scattering, an owl standing still on a post, blinking its eyes as you stand there blinking yours. It’s a reminder of what truly matters.

To June, what matters is everything.

“Are you ready to see a world where we can all be free?” she asks. “I’m ready to see a world where we can learn to disagree with each other and still live together peacefully.”

“We’re ready to see this world be a place of togetherness,” she adds later. Learning to cooperate, she says, is “not just important for humans. It’s important for all of nature. … Nature will be okay, of course, without us. But it would be nice if we could figure out ways to move toward a more cooperative existence with all [things] in nature.”

Photo Credit: Travys Owen

MIXTAPE: Growing Up Hardly Strictly with ISMAY

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

I consider myself to be amongst the luckiest of music lovers. Growing up, I saw some of the most incredible roots artists from backstage while holding my Jack Russell terrier and playing with my cousins. When I was 8 years old, my grandfather Warren started a free bluegrass festival in San Francisco called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. These artists shaped me since they were the first ones I watched perform, but the connection went on to become even deeper. When my grandfather passed away in 2011 I started performing music, and the larger community of Hardly Strictly was where I found my encouragers and mentors.

This is a compilation of the artists who I heard from and listened to as a child, and those whose songs I learned when I first became a musician. – ISMAY (AKA Avery Hellman)

“Dark Turn of Mind” – Gillian Welch

Just after high school I spent time working on some small homesteads with a farm labor trade for room and board. This was the same time that The Harrow & the Harvest by Gillian Welch came out – a literary masterpiece. Every time I listen to this record it reminds me of those homesteads and my borrowed car with a faulty battery. It brings me back to the day I arrived late to a new farm in West Virginia while my roommate was still sleeping and how odd it felt to be in a house with a stranger. I got up in the morning to make sourdough toast with an egg wondering what that person who was asleep in the loft of that ’80s wood cabin would think of me.

“Concrete And Barbed Wire” – Lucinda Williams

In the ’90s I was fortunate that my mom had great music taste. She took us around in a magenta suburban car and played Lucinda Williams. She said us kids used to sing along with silly accents to the words “concrete and barbed wire.” It took me another 20 years to fully appreciate Lucinda Williams and the masterful lyricist she is. Over the last four years, I’ve been working on a documentary about her, and it’s been so rewarding, because Lucinda’s music is the kind that gets better the more you know it.

“Dallas” – The Flatlanders

My grandfather was not a professional musician for most of his life, but in the final years he played in a bluegrass band with his friend Jimmie Dale Gilmore. What a kind man Jimmie is, with a voice that reminds me of a dove fluttering away. Because of this relationship he had with my grandfather, I heard about this record Jimmie made with his band The Flatlanders that was lost for 40 years. It was raw and made me feel like I was under a tin roof in Texas. It’s said that this tape helped mark the birth of alt-country.

“The Times They Are A-Changin'” – Odetta

A few years ago I was asked to perform at an event that compared and contrasted Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. I’m more of a Cohen person, so I had more trouble finding a Dylan song that felt like it would fit my feel. That was when I came upon this remarkable Odetta cover and I was inspired. She changed the whole feel of the song to make it her own. In 2008, she performed at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass just two months before she passed away, it was one of the final times she ever performed.

“St. James Hospital” – Doc Watson

I know that most people know Doc for his flatpicking, but I’ve always been much more drawn to the fingerpicking style of guitar in general. “St. James Hospital” feels like a fascinating departure from the more well known Doc Watson performances, and I love hearing him playing in a less linear fashion. This shows he can do it all. In the music that I’ve recorded I sometimes feel a bit out-of-the-norm and nowhere-to-belong, but this song feels similar to one I recorded called “A Song in Praise of Sonoma Mountain.” Hearing “St. James Hospital” makes me feel less out-on-a-limb in roots music.

“Permanent” – Kenneth Pattengale & Joey Ryan (The Milk Carton Kids)

As I started playing music I found this record by The Milk Carton Kids before they had that name, and played under Kenneth Pattengale & Joey Ryan. Listening to this song now, it is still unreal that it was all recorded live at a concert. It was deeply inspiring to see artists like Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings generating a new live sound that was somehow very modern and yet felt like a continuation of original folk music. As if the ’80s and ’90s had never happened! What a gift. Then, seeing The Milk Carton Kids take that torch and carry it on was so exciting for me as a 19 year old.

“Boulder to Birmingham” – Emmylou Harris

I listen to Emmylou every year on Sunday night at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Her silver hair and steadiness feel beyond time. I can’t believe she is still here, with that same strong presence since I was just 8 years old. As a performer she has a strong sense of worthiness to the audience, a sense of mutual respect for the relationship between listener and performer. I hope that I can hold just a bit of her steadiness within myself.

“Restless” – Alison Krauss & Union Station

I was in 6th grade and didn’t much enjoy recess out on the playground. I brought my CDs over to an empty classroom, and sat in the back listening to Alison Krauss & Union Station. Sometimes I’d show these CDs to my friends. This was before I figured out that it was cooler to be listening to rock music. But I loved that music, and the songs were amongst the first I tried to learn in singing lessons.

“The Silver Dagger” – Old Crow Medicine Show

Old Crow Medicine Show was playing at Hardly Strictly as they rose up in mainstream culture. I appreciate the edge that this recording preserves. There’s even a moment where it sounds like someone might have dropped something or hit their instrument on another (01:35). I wish more recordings kept imperfections preserved within them.

“Pretty Bird” – Hazel Dickens

Part of the reason that my grandfather started Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was because of his love of Hazel Dickens. They were from very different backgrounds, but they became friends and saw the common humanity in one another through music. She played every year until she died. This is my favorite song of hers. What is beautiful to me about Hazel’s take on bluegrass is the imperfections and raw emotion. She brought her whole self to the song.

“Harlem River Blues” – Justin Townes Earle 

I can still picture Justin on the stage with his impeccably curated suits. Back around 2018, I opened a show for him in Santa Cruz, California. He drove up to the venue in a red convertible, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Just a guy and his ride. He was very kind to me and I wish I had more chances to see him play again. May his music never fade away.

“Tiniest Lights” – Angel Olsen 

When I was 20, I went into a record shop in Ohio. The guy there said they only really carry more obscure records. No problem, I thought, I was here for Captain Beefheart and PJ Harvey. But when I asked, he said those artists were too well known. He pointed me towards Angel Olsen and I heard something in songwriting I had never heard before. My world opened up, and I knew there was so much more that was possible after listening to “Tiniest Lights.” She performed at Hardly Strictly in 2015 and her voice was as real and penetrating as the recordings.

“If I Needed You” – Lyle Lovett

What’s better than Lyle Lovett playing a Townes Van Zandt song?? We listened to Lyle a bunch when I was a kid. No, I’m not from Texas, but I do love those Texas songwriters.

“Long Ride Home” – Patty Griffin

The first time I performed at Hardly Strictly (although somewhat tangentially) was at an artist after party. I chose this song, because it had a fun fancy guitar line I could play with my beginner fingers. Someone who was performing came up and said they thought I was talented. I think that might have changed my life right there. It was the first time anyone had come up to me and said I was good enough to do this as a job, not to mention amongst professional musicians.

“Are You Sure” – Willie Nelson

Willie played Hardly Strictly in 2003 and I remember that big black bus sitting behind the main stage. I can’t even imagine the thrill of the audience members, his fans are as dedicated as they come. I heard this song at a recently released film that is fantastic called To Leslie.

“Little Bird of Heaven” – Reeltime Travellers

This band was part of that wave of old-time style artists that came at the same time as Hardly Strictly. The vocals are so unexpected, but real and honest. One of their band members became a mentor of mine and helped me get my start in the music business and I am forever grateful.

“Essay Man” and “The Golden Palomino” – ISMAY

These are two songs from my latest release, Desert Pavement, that would never have happened if it weren’t for Hardly Strictly. I am trying to find my way with my own version of folk, and can’t help but be inspired at what a rich trove of artists I have to draw from.

Photo Credit: Aubrey Trinnaman

BGS 5+5: Logan Ledger

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Logan Ledger
Hometown: Born in Los Angeles, but I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area
Latest album: Logan Ledger
Personal nicknames: Double L, The Lorax

Which artist has influenced you the most and how?

This might surprise some people, but I’d have to say Bob Dylan. When I was about 12 years old, my dad started taking guitar lessons from a guy in town named Nick Shryock — a real mensch. I caught the bug and before long I started riding along with my dad. He would take his lesson first while I waited in another room and did homework, etc. Nick gave me a book of Bob Dylan songs — just chord diagrams and lyrics — to get me going with basic cowboy chords and the like.

But it had a much more profound effect on me. I became obsessed. I listened to every Dylan album I could get my hands on. I went deep. Before long I was trying to figure out where Dylan learned all that stuff. Through Bob I got into all sorts of old time folk music and blues: Roscoe Holcomb, Mississippi John Hurt, the New Lost City Ramblers, on and on. I became an old folkie at heart and it’s stuck with me. Finding Bob Dylan basically established the whole trajectory of my life in music.

What’s your favorite memory from being on a stage?

One of the coolest things I’ve ever gotten to do is play in T Bone Burnett’s band at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. It’s especially meaningful to me having grown up there. I think the first time I went to the festival I was fourteen years old. We played it once in 2016, and again in 2017. Just so cool. My parents came out, a bunch of people I knew from high school… The first time was only a few months after I met T Bone — totally surreal. I’ll always be grateful he asked me to be a part of it.

In 2016 the band had a more traditional lineup — bass, drums, guitar, fiddle, etc. — but in 2017 T Bone decided to play material from his album The Invisible Light, a wild mix of spoken word and electronic music, material that didn’t exactly fit the expectations for a rootsy festival. It was an incredible experience, totally transgressive. Some people didn’t quite know how to take it. It cemented my respect for T Bone as a consummate artist unafraid to take chances. Standing up there on the stage, it felt like we were really doing something. It was a tremendously inspiring experience.

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

Before I was doing the whole move-to-Nashville thing, I was a film student at Columbia University. I was a huge film geek all through high school and although I didn’t start out in college thinking I would get a film degree, eventually the pull was too strong and I switched majors. It’s sort of strange to think about now, but that experience definitely altered my brain. I tend to approach songs like soundtracks for mini movies running in my head.

I don’t know if that means they’re cinematic per se, but I’m hyper conscious of the sonic mise-en-scène songs evoke. Sometimes I’m really just trying to put over the feel of a specific place or time or place. There are also particular films that have stuck with me that have most certainly formed my aesthetic predilections. Really I’m probably just trying to transform Paris, Texas into a song over and over again.

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

Even though I didn’t pick up the guitar until I was 12 or so, I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I would put together little impromptu performances for my parents. After that, I graduated to school musicals and whatnot. I was always performing. However, I think the first time I became fully conscious of what it meant to be a “singer” and a stylist was when my grandmother gave me a CD of Elvis hits. I must have been 8 or 9. That was a total epiphany. I wanted to be just like Elvis. I studied his delivery, and definitely did a lot of imitating. But it was a learning process. So much of my early childhood days as a musician were spent doing that kind of thing. I think it was valuable training. Eventually though I had to find my own style.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

I would love to get together with Willie Nelson over a bowl of real-deal ramen. I don’t know if he’s a ramen guy, but this is my fantasy, and who doesn’t like ramen? There also might be, shall we say, certain botanicals involved… In all seriousness though, Willie Nelson is a huge hero of mine. He showed us all how to push the creative boundaries of country singing and songwriting. Such a tremendous gift to music and humanity, a full-spectrum artist. And he’s still going strong.

Photo credit: Laura E. Partain (See the photo story.)

BGS 5+5: Ben Morrison

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Ben Morrison
Hometown: Oakland, California
Latest Album: Old Technology
Personal Nicknames (or rejected nicknames): Bunjo, Murray, Snowflake

Which artist has influenced you the most and how?

I’d have to say Huey Lewis might be my all-time favorite artist. His was the first music I ever bought for myself when I was a kid and I always admired his music and his outlook on performing. I saw an interview with him a while back and he talks about how lucky he was to get a break and had some hit songs, but if he hadn’t he said he’d still be playing his harmonica and singing in bars every night.

I really loved that outlook and his passion for playing music. Not to mention he wrote some great tunes…and that voice! I had the honor of meeting him a couple years back at a festival up in Canada. A band I play in called The Brothers Comatose covered one of his songs and it turned out he really loved our version. They got us tickets and backstage passes to their show and we got to hang with them afterward. He and his whole band couldn’t have been nicer dudes and their show was amazing.

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

This isn’t the toughest time I had writing a song but it’s definitely the oddest and most serendipitous. I had been working on this song (“I Hope You’re Not Sorry,” from this album) about a stalker that I had that all of a sudden stopped coming to our shows and how I surprisingly felt wrecked by it. I thought writing a song about losing your stalker to someone else was kind of funny and I had a couple verses but was stuck.

It wasn’t until I traveled across the world and was playing a festival in Australia, where I was hanging at the bar after our show and met a musician, that I finished the song. We got to talking at the bar and he’s like, “Let’s be Facebook friends,” and when he pulled out his phone and plugged in my name he looked at me and said, “We have a mutual friend,” with a freaked out look on his face. Turns out my ex-stalker had become his new stalker. Right there I got the bridge to my song…but I had to go halfway across the world to find it.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My fondest memory of being on stage is playing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival several years back. We had a great time slot on a Saturday afternoon playing to around 20,000 people and as I looked out into the crowd, I saw that it was littered with familiar faces from old co-workers and teachers I had back in elementary school, family and friends that I hadn’t seen in forever and tons of people were singing along to the words of our songs. It was such a beautiful moment that will be seared into my brain forever.

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

My mom was in a band when I was a kid and my brother and I used to sit and watch them rehearse all the time. That was the first seed that was planted. But it wasn’t until I was a young teenager and my parents took me to a holiday party at a local recording studio called Prairie Sun Recording and a bunch of musicians showed up, not knowing each other, and just started playing songs together and that was magic to me. I wanted to be able to do that and I knew right then and there that being a musician is what I wanted to do with my life.

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

I have two things that I always do before a live show and people think it’s weird but it feels great to me. I always like to brush my teeth before I go onstage. Singing a lot dries my mouth out and brushing before I hop up for a show gives me that clean and fresh feeling. I also like to breathe in steam before singing at a show — it really helps lube up the ol’ vocal cords for singing. I carry a collapsible water kettle with me and before I go on stage you can usually find me with my face over that thing breathing in deeply.

Photo credit: Michael Bonocore