Tag: Ian Noe

Ian Noe’s Imagination Runs Wild

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After a four-year wait between albums that included concert cancellations due to mental health struggles and a broken wrist, Ian Noe returns in full strength on Canyon Falls Trailer Band. The bold and exploratory project centers around an imaginary band that takes to the bright lights of Nashville for one night and one night only in search of industry approval.

With tear-in-your-beer tunes like “She’s Familiar (In the Strangest Ways)” as well as stories about peculiar mountain folk just trying to get by (“Redneck Mess”) and putting LSD on bananas (“Another Night Like That”), Noe’s mind runs wild throughout the album, which he recorded at The Bomb Shelter studio in Nashville with producer Andrija Tokic.

Although the Kentucky native has called Bowling Green home for over a decade, Noe says that the new album’s name comes from a small town about 15 minutes from his hometown of Beattyville in Eastern Kentucky called Canyon Falls. Noe grew up going there to hang with friends, but he didn’t include it in the album title based on nostalgia alone. He simply just thought it sounded good.

“I wrote the song about three and a half years ago and have played it at most of my shows since then,” Noe says. “As for the concept, I can’t remember when I decided to move ahead with the album like that, but I will say that it’s not my first song with Canyon Falls in the title. I have an old song called ‘Canyon Falls Bound’ that I recorded in Louisville 15 or so years ago. There’s a couple other songs I’ve mentioned it in as well, but they aren’t recorded yet and I barely play them live.”

Ahead of the album’s release, Noe spoke with BGS about the origins of his imaginary band, how honky-tonk star Gary Stewart and Nashville songwriter Craig Wiseman influenced the project, and where he got the idea for a lady of the night to take center stage in one of his songs.

BGS: What was this idea for an imaginary band playing one night only, looking for industry approval, born from? Was it a disdain of the music industry?

Noe: There’s no disdain at all. I just started knocking out song after song, knowing [“Canyon Falls Trailer Band”] was going to be the lead track and title of the record, so I wanted to have fun with it. Even though they are only playing for one night, they’ve been working at it for a long time and wrote all kinds of different songs. Some stuff they’re throwing at the wall and on many of them they don’t even have real instruments.

What do you mean they don’t even have real instruments?

If you look closely at the album cover, all the people on it in that “band” are actually my friends from back in Canyon Falls. The whole thing is a recreation of the second verse of “Canyon Falls Trailer Band” where everyone’s playing their instruments, but the only real one is a banjo and the rest of it’s weird objects like barbed wire, a torch, a lit Marlboro cigarette being tapped onto a Mountain Dew can and a windshield wiper that I’m waving around like a conductor. Then we made everyone but me look like silhouettes to play into the imaginary band dynamic even more.

Would you say the song “Kickin’ It in Nashville” is almost like an origin story for your imaginary band?

It is! And going back to what you said earlier about a disdain for the music business, it’s not really about me even though I did come from Kentucky with a Martin guitar like the song mentions. It’s really just a universal story about going to Nashville with the hopes of making it big. The main character in it is the same guy that on the song “Canyon Falls Trailer Band” is trying to jump on stage and join the band, then at the end of the record on this song he’s moving down to Nashville for good to play with them. For the most part though, it’s all fictional. I’ve not spent much time in mainstream Nashville but I just thought it was a funny song and one of the most different ones I’ve ever written.

You recruited an all-star cast of musicians for this imaginary band of yours. Tell me about them?

You don’t do anything alone, so to have everyone we did on this record was a blessing. I have my producer, Andrija Tokic, to thank for all that. I had recorded a couple songs before with Billy [Contreras on fiddle] and always wanted to let him stretch out more, which he did all over Canyon Falls. Then when I finished “She’s Familiar (In the Strangest Ways)” I sent [Andrija] the demo and told him I wanted some country, cross harp harmonica on it because I’d never had one before. I wanted that late ‘70s, early ‘80s vibe to the song and he nailed it, bringing in Charlie McCoy to fill the part.

I remember wondering if he’d actually show up to the studio to record with us. I was standing outside waiting when he came around the corner carrying his harmonica case. He had to be at the Grand Ole Opry in an hour and a half but was so courteous and professional, knocking out his part in just two passes. He’s easily my favorite country harmonica player of all time, so having him be a part of this was a real treat.

This was your third time working with Andrija. What drew you back to him, and is there any new ground you feel like y’all broke together this time around?

He’s very good behind the board and knows what goes where. We’ve always worked well together, but we’re not consciously saying out loud, “Let’s make sure we do this or that.” We’re just trying to match in the studio how the songs sounded in my head. Because of that we stretched out the tunes on here more than on any other record I’ve done. There’s also a lot of harmonies on this album and I’m a big lover of the French horn, so we put some of those on “Tobacco Moon” as well. I wouldn’t call that one breaking new ground, though, because we also used the instrument on [the 2022 album] River Fools & Mountain Saints with “One More Night,” but it was fun to revisit again with all the other experimenting we were doing this time around.

On River Fools & Mountain Saints you recalled rising waters on “Road May Flood / It’s a Heartache.” Is “Kentucky Hurricane” from the new record a similar story of making it through a natural disaster?

Not at all. That one’s actually about a semi-truck driver who has become obsessed with a lady of the night who goes by the name Kentucky Hurricane. “One by one they slide in hot / Crowding up the parking lot / Darling, how I wish they’d let you be.” He loves her, only sees her, and wants her all for himself. The song started with the melody, then I had Exit 22 [which he mentions in the song’s first verse] on my mind because it’s where I get off the highway coming home to Bowling Green and the song took off from there.

 

 

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I understand that the song “The Heidelberg Fisherman’s Ball” was a catalyst for much of this record’s sonic palette. Care to explain?

Heidelberg is a place located about 15 minutes from where I’m from in the opposite direction of Canyon Falls that has a lock wall where people fish. Last summer I was sitting there picking a minor chord and was beginning to get a bit bored and frustrated with it, so I began watching videos of Craig Wiseman on YouTube. He didn’t give a whole lot of interviews, but I did find one where he gave a speech on self-awareness and not overthinking that really struck a chord with me. It’s something I heard at just the right time, so after watching it I shut the phone off, began playing what became the opening riff to that song and quickly wrote it.

Earlier you mentioned going for a late ‘70s and early ‘80s vibe with “She’s Familiar (In the Strangest Ways).” I couldn’t help but pick up a Gary Stewart sound when listening to that tune. Would you say he was an inspiration for it as well?

110 percent, that’s exactly what I was going for. I was listening to a lot of early Gary Stewart and even George Jones’ I Am What I Am record, the latter of which Charlie McCoy is all over. I love writing narrative songs and am a sucker for trying to come up with crazy characters. That being said, the song is very short on paper and naked in the lyrics, so I didn’t want it to be out of place on the album. It’s easily the most straight-up country song I’ve ever written.

“Whiskey to Work” also seems like a very Gary and Jones-esque tune. Would you agree?

I’d absolutely put them in the same category. I was listening to a lot of [Jones’] “She’s My Rock” when writing that one. Neither song runs over three minutes but both get the job done. I’m hoping to get [“Whiskey to Work”] on one of those compilations where every song mentions beer. [laughs] I’d never written a song before with beer or Jack Daniel’s in it. It’s an old country trope but you can revive any of that stuff as long as the melody’s right.

This album has been described as the conclusion of a trilogy of projects dating back to 2019’s Between the Country. When did you realize this was the case, and where do you go from here?

I didn’t recognize that until I was almost completely done recording. We were getting ready to send the record off for mastering when I first noticed that my last three albums all focus heavily on subject matter related to Kentucky. I’ve written a lot about where I’m from and I’m not necessarily done doing that, but when you write as often as I do naturally you’re going to move into different territory at some point.

Ultimately, I’m just wanting to be in the studio as much as possible putting out more records. It was a four-year wait to release this record, and typically I don’t like to harp on things that much. And I actually already have my next record done, so you definitely won’t be waiting that long to hear from me again.

Photo Credit: Jace Kartye

Ian Noe’s Musical Inspiration Begins With the Sounds and Characters of Kentucky

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Kentucky musician Ian Noe is a writer of experience and an experienced writer. An appreciation for the people, places, and moods in his hometown of Beattyville – first introduced with striking emotional depth on Noe’s 2019 debut, Between the Country – remains a narrative cornerstone on River Fools and Mountain Saints. Yet this new collection reveals more self-assuredness around his artistic decisions.

Not limiting himself to the acoustic folk framework leaned upon for Between the Country, Noe (pronounced “NOH”) and producer Andrija Tokic broadened the scope of which instruments would best support Noe’s stories this time around. One of the most notable shifts in tonal prominence comes via the electric guitar. Heard in the latter halves of songs like “Burning Down the Prairie” and “P.O.W. Blues,” the electric guitar is more than just present. It holds a central role, giving Noe’s songwriting a sonic swagger and a heavier musical temperament. Additional coloration and emotional influence atypical of his rootsy musicality comes by way of a French horn solo and the surprising flash of reverse-phased piano heard on “One More Night.”

All this being said, for Noe, the foundation for a song doesn’t start with an instrument, or even a memorable personal story. Instead, his songwriting fire often ignites with a hook and a particular set of chords. While the stories shared on River Fools and Mountain Saints present an intriguing peek into the human condition, what gives this album its most unexpected and fascinating layer of substance is Noe’s approach to composition and production. It’s one thing to verbally recount a directly lived or socially common experience. It’s another matter entirely to determine the path a melody takes – or how that melody ought to be transformed in size, space, dynamics, or sonic shape – based on the pursuit of reflecting one’s own perceptions of an experience.

The very sounds and sonic character of River Fools and Mountain Saints were chosen in such a way that they too can serve as a window into how Noe sees the world, giving the album a whole new autobiographical quality.

BGS: What kind of awareness did you have of bluegrass when you were young and getting into music? What do you remember about the impression that style made on you at the time?

Noe: I got my bluegrass fix from my grandma. I took a lot of road trips with her and it was Ralph Stanley. It was Bill Monroe. It was mainly those two. But she was a huge Ralph Stanley fan. I’d say it definitely made up a good 40 percent of what I was hearing when I was first coming up. I mean, the first thing that made me want to really play was Chuck Berry, specifically “Johnny B. Goode” – it’s the first song I ever learned how to play. Hank Williams’ “I Saw the Light” was number two, and with “The Wildwood Flower” I learned how to pick.

I was on that for a long, long time, until I got into John Prine. You want to talk about a song that has definitely been captured by the bluegrass world, it’s definitely his song “Paradise,” which has an amazing bluegrass feel to it. So I’d say after I figured out that I wasn’t going to be able to play like Chuck Berry, which was my first big letdown around the age of 6 or 7 – my fingers just wasn’t big enough to play that those famous leads, those famous licks … that’s when I started getting into Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, which was the first album I ever bought and I ever owned. I just started getting really into people who could write their own songs and move me in that way.

Much of River Fools and Mountain Saints conveys its stories through character narratives. How did you create and subsequently shape the characters in these songs?

With each song, I was really trying to make it so when you took any one of these songs off this album and set it aside, that it could stand on its own. I definitely use “river” and “mountain” a lot on this whole thing, obviously. But I did want to make it to where they stood alone. Some of the songs just came, and some of them I had to work on for a second. But the very first thing that I had was the album title itself, before I even had a song like “River Fool” or “Mountain Saint.” That was a blessing because if I can get a good title, then I can see something in it, you know? I can see a vision in it, to where I’m able to put it together.

And I like character songs anyways. I found it pretty fun to work on. It was fun to work on a song like “Ballad of a Retired Man.” And as much as I wanted to make the characters of each song stand alone, I did the same thing with the music. “P.O.W. Blues” is a lot different from “River Fool” or “Ballad of a Retired Man.” So, I didn’t concern myself too much with, “Well, is this going to be too rockin’ to go with ‘River Fool’?” I just wanted to make sure that each song stood alone.

That’s quite the fine line to walk. On one hand, any track can thrive on its own, but they fit together so seamlessly that you have this cohesive flow, both narratively and musically.

Yeah, and you might have just a short little melody – not even a bridge, not a chorus, nothing – and you remember that. It’s not always easy. I mean, this album originally wasn’t even gonna be called River Fools and Mountain Saints. I had a whole completely different album recorded and shelved – it just wasn’t doing it for me. It wasn’t any of these songs; it was a whole bunch of different stuff. But this title just came to me and I was like, “That’s good enough to stick on the front of the cover. So, I think I can do something.” And that’s the little formula that I’ve made up. Even if nobody else gets it, and even if it’s not a real thing, it helps me finish the [music].

How did you and/or Andrija Tokic discern some of the production decisions to reflect your vision of life in Kentucky?

It’s whatever I thought those characters or those places sounded like. … A song like “River Fool” is gonna sound like that because that’s what somebody sitting around a river sounds like to me. If I had to guess what that sounded like, that’s what it would be. The real openness of a song like “Ballad of a Retired Man” leaves you enough space to when you produce it like that, that you can really feel something about it, and the lyrics connect with that type of production because you want it to have air to breathe. And especially in a song like that where the lyrics suit that mood.

The music is just however I think it’s supposed to sound and that’s just how I’m going to do it. Like, even though the little drone-ness of a song like “Appalachia Haze” – that’s, to me, what a rainy day in Kentucky sounds like. That’s the way I hear it. So that’s why I produced it that way.

On “’The Road May Flood,” I was trying to capture a sound like when you see old cars, like maybe mid ‘70s, at a grocery store. Pictures of those older days – especially in Eastern Kentucky or any place like that. That’s what I thought something like that would sound like. I just take the picture of whatever the song is, and I have to look at the picture, and I think, “What does that sound like?” I try to get as close to that as I can. Luckily, I enjoy sound effects. I didn’t get to use as many on this album as I did on Between the Country but sound effects are important. Like in the beginning of “Strip Job Blues,” you hear that truck going. I always knew that song was going to be closer to a bluegrass style – the same with “River Fool.” I stick the character in my head and I have to figure out what he, or she, or they sound like.

What would you say makes the spirit of Kentucky unique from other rural, community-driven places in the U.S.?

I’m not so sure if it is as unique as what you might think as far as lived experience, you know? I can only speak for me growing up there, and loving growing up in Eastern Kentucky, and just honestly always having a life full of music and loving where you grow up and come from, and the people you live around. It’s not that hard to write about when it’s like that. But I’m not so sure that wouldn’t be that different from any other rural place.

As you were talking about being transported to somewhere you’ve never been, I felt the exact same way the first time I heard Neil Young sing “Helpless.” “There’s a town in North Ontario …” I’ve never been to North Ontario. Still haven’t. But it sounded like someplace that I was familiar with and he made you feel like you do. So, it was important for me to get a feeling like that, specifically out of the song “River Fool,” which I’m pretty sure is my favorite song on this album.

But you know, struggles are struggles. They really are, no matter where you’re at. I just try to put the happiness and the bad times in the literal geography of where I’m from, which is the mountains. That’s kind of how I think about it. Let’s take these day-to-day lives, and the stuff that you know, and let’s stick it around all this geography and let’s weave all this stuff together because it goes hand in hand as far as I’m concerned.

Photo Credit: David McClister

BGS 5+5: Elizabeth Cook

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Artist: Elizabeth Cook
Hometown: Wildwood, Florida
Latest album: Aftermath
Personal nicknames: Shug

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Forgetting that I’m on stage and then coming to and being like, “Oh my god, I’m on stage!” That, and one night in Phoenix, this group of young girls stood at the front of the stage and sang along to every one of my songs.

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

I didn’t really know that I wanted to be. I was a kid singer — so, I came to it from a funny angle. I fought it for years and tried to do other things, but never found a really gratifying way to fit into the world. I got asked to open for Todd Snider once in Wilmington, North Carolina, at this outdoor amphitheater. He threw a one-man acoustic folk show party riot throwdown. I’d never seen anything like it and really haven’t since. But I thought if this is on the table — I will try it.

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

All of it. I’m always collecting details that ping me in some way… and it can be something that I see, read, taste, touch or hear.

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

I wrote a song about my mama’s funeral. And of course it’s not something you want to write about, because it’s not something you want to even happen in the first place. But it did. And I was really dreading this event, and the responsibility I felt in the throes of my grieving. I was resenting the whole process. But then, it turned out to be a really beautiful day and it was helpful and healing. And I owed it to the world, almost a right to the wrong for my attitude towards it in the beginning. The song is called “Mama’s Funeral” and it’s on Welder.

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

I have a “hard hat” bag! I can get really fussy and anxious right before I go on and dig neurotically for things I think I need. So I made this little bag… it has all the comforts from Advil to throat sprays and drops, a neck and hand massager, extra guitar picks, my lucky rock and some dice.

Photo credit: Electropogram

Ian Noe Finds Carnage and Compassion in ‘Between the Country’

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Folk rocker Ian Noe captures both beauty and ugliness on his debut album, Between the Country, populating his isolated Eastern Kentucky home with vivid portraits of human carnage.

Heavily influenced by John Prine, the 29-year-old writes with insight and deep compassion for what some might describe as the dregs of society. Meth-addled junkies, alcoholic drifters, and the gangs that prey on them dominate his songs, but he says shock and awe has never been his real goal. Instead, it’s to write songs reflecting the hardscrabble truth of his hometown. It’s a great place to grow up, he explains, but there’s no denying the dark reality which lurks down almost every holler.

“I guess it’s just the environment and the stuff you see growing up in Eastern Kentucky,” Noe says of his inspiration. “There’s a vibe to it. I hate to be so vague, but there’s a definite vibe.”

Noe has articulated that vibe so well he was invited to serenade Prine during a pre-Grammy Awards tribute at Los Angeles’ iconic Troubadour in February, and this summer he’ll open a series of shows for the legend in Europe. But for now he’s touring the U.S. with a batch of tunes that make traditional murder ballads sound like lullabies.

Noe spoke with The Bluegrass Situation about his admiration for Prine’s work and how it led to Between the Country, as well as his connection to the doomed souls of his songs and producer Dave Cobb’s help in creating a full-band sound.

BGS: Your vocal and the literary quality of the lyrics remind me of John Prine, which I’m sure you get a lot. How big of an influence was he on you?

Noe: Oh, he was huge. I would have to say he’s definitely the biggest influence for me. I started out wanting to be Chuck Berry on guitar, but it didn’t take me long to realize I wasn’t Chuck Berry. [Laughs] Then I heard John Prine through my dad, who would play his songs all the time in between Merle Haggard and Neil Young. But when he went to Prine songs, they would stick out … and I was just obsessed ever since.

What was it that stuck out about Prine?

He can just take simple things and make them profound. He’s the best at that. He can look at a sidewalk and write a song about it, make you laugh and think at the same time.

You’ve done something similar with Between the Country, but there’s a lot of dark themes – songs about substance abuse and self-destructive behavior. Why are those topics given so much prominence in your own writing?

I imagine it would have to be all the stories and people I know, as well as people I didn’t know but heard stories about. Just stuff that you hear happening in a town of six or seven thousand. Lee County is not that big, and it’s a cliché, but you hear everything that goes on in a small town.

Were you exposed to that stuff personally?

Not really, to be honest. I never did go to a meth house or anything like that, or even see anybody using it. But it’s one of those not-really secrets. Everybody knows it’s around.

I think that’s interesting because you seem so good at getting into these characters’ skin. How do you make that happen without first-hand knowledge?

I just think about them. Just think about it and picture in my head how it might be to live that way. It starts with a melody. I like to get the melody going in my head and if it’s a good one, try to see what’s going on with it.

I guess what I’m getting at is even though there’s bad stuff going on, it never seems like you’re judging anyone, or the area, for it.

Yeah, I tried to be real careful not to do that or come off as holier than thou. “Meth Head” is harsh, but I just wanted to be as extreme as I could be because it’s such an extreme drug, you know?

Tell me about coming up with that song. It’s really specific, I mean the imagery of this guy hunting for scrap metal and the woman covered in sores is chilling.

That song used to be about a war hero who was coming home, or at least the melody did anyway. I thought I was wasting the melody because I had already written some songs about battlefields and stuff like that, so I scrapped all of that and started again with the melody. I came up with that first verse pretty quick and just kept going.

How did you get so vivid with it?

It just comes with there being an actual junkyard in Lee County and thinking about the sound of the junkyard, thinking about the rest area that’s down the road and all the smells and sounds, things like that, just trying to get as descriptive as I could be.

Tell me about the title track. What does that phrase, “Between the Country,” mean to you?

Just being in the country, and everything that’s going on in between it. In between this hill or mountain, or what’s going on up in this holler, that’s what it means.

Why did you decide on that for the title track?

My grandmother used to say stuff like “If you treat your parents well, your days will be long on this earth,” which I’m not saying right but it’s from the Bible. She used to say stuff like that all the time, and I got to thinking about it, like “On down between the country, where deer lay along the road / On down between the country, where a long life’s a blessed one, I’m told.” It was like some people don’t make it past 40, you know? And that’s everywhere, it’s not just in a small town. But I didn’t grow up everywhere. I grew up in Lee County.

“Irene (Raving Bomb)” is about an alcoholic who’s not hiding it so well, even though she seems to think she is. How hard is it for you to find compassion for a character like that?

Not hard at all. We’ve all had our issues with this or that or the other, and I grew up seeing a lot of things like that. It wasn’t hard to have compassion for somebody whose disposition turns them to something like that.

How about “Letter to Madeline”? It’s about this guy who’s on the run and he’s carrying a letter he never mailed. What’s his backstory?

I was and still am a big fan of [the FX series] Justified, and I think it’s season two or three where there’s a story arc about the Detroit Mafia. I wanted to make it sound as if it was older. “A Detroit general” just meant a Detroit Mafia boss, and then his company just refers to his gang. It just came from that and people like D.B. Cooper — thinking about somebody robbing this guy and him trying to make it back to Kentucky.

Tell me a little about the sound here. It’s got this mix of folk rock and even a touch of ‘70s psychedelia at times. I know you’ve mostly worked solo in the past but teamed up with Dave Cobb for the album. Did he have a big impact?

It was pretty natural and easy. We were going back and putting in some of the electric lead you hear on “Dead on the River,” and he had bought a specific amp from Carter Vintage [Guitars in Nashville] the day we were mixing and overdubbing, and I believe he said he’d been listening to The Byrds that week. It was off the cuff, but the tone fit the themes, if that makes sense. … I like that there’s not a whole lot of crazy guitar solos, but every one of them suits the song. We don’t have congas or whatever, and it just has enough to breathe. Anything we overdubbed didn’t get in the way of any of the stories.

What do you hope people will take away from this first record?

Like everybody always says, when you make an album you just want people to appreciate it as much as you appreciate it. You want them to listen from track one all the way to the last track, and not everybody does that, which is all right. But the subject matter is all a common theme through the whole thing, and the cohesiveness is important. That’s what I love about all my favorite albums.

Photo credit: Kyler Clark