GIVEAWAY: Enter to Win Tickets to Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival (Oak Hill, NY) 7/16-7/20
Tag: i’m with her
The Many Journeys of I’m With Her’s Second Album, ‘Wild and Clear and Blue’
More than eight years since the February 2017 release of their acclaimed debut album See You Around, Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz, and Sara Watkins have come back together with an abundance of history, both individual and shared, on which to reflect as they began to craft I’m With Her‘s second full length album, Wild and Clear and Blue.
The three multi-instrumentalists and songwriters are beloved in folk and bluegrass circles and known cumulatively for a treasure trove of work as solo artists, in ensembles, and as co-writers and producers. Internationally renowned live performers, they were most recently celebrated under their collaborative moniker as part of the 62nd GRAMMY Awards, when their original single, “Call My Name,” was awarded Best American Roots Song. This accolade alone showed just how creatively in sync these women continued to be, even as time marched forward and each turned their focuses toward individual projects and significant personal life changes – marriage, next generations, moving homes, passing on of family – all while discerning unique perspectives about the broader transformations of society around them.
Once they felt the spark to start a second album, finally reuniting in 2024 to write and record, the embers of Wild and Clear and Blue grew not only from Watkins, Jarosz and O’Donovan’s pool of collectively evolved musicianship and artistry, but from their sharing of experiences and emotions as they cheered each other on from afar. The candid nature of the trio fully reuniting opened new paths of empathy and resonance between them – paths which go beyond their stunning musical chemistry and into a deeper space of what Jarosz earnestly calls “chosen family.” The songs tell assorted stories, nodding to the familial bonds and identities the three women hold dear in their respective lives but as a unified album, Wild and Clear and Blue is also an eloquent expression of the profound appreciation O’Donovan, Jarosz, and Watkins have for each other, as well as for the support and understanding they have realized and embraced in their ever-evolving bond.
Continuing our Artist of the Month coverage, O’Donovan, Jarosz, and Watkins spoke with BGS about the organic spirit of creativity built into Wild and Clear and Blue, how the preciousness of different relationships in their lives is embodied in the music, the one-of-a-kind nuances that make the experience of listening to the album especially distinct, and more.
You mention the album providing a focus on “connecting with your past and figuring out what you want for your future.” How did each of you decide what parts of your past you felt most inclined to explore and what feels most important to you going into the future?
Sara Watkins: When we came together to write the album, there was a time of just reconnecting. We haven’t seen each other or really been with each other for a couple of years and we wanted to reconnect in a way, [asking ourselves] “Who are we now?” You know, now that we’ve all gone through so much since our last record. A lot of things that we were talking about and processing in our personal lives were overlapping with each other and so it felt clear to us. The things that came up in the songwriting process all felt like it was self evident that that’s what we wanted, or desired, to share and to mine [through] a little bit.
And so it’s less of an abstract strategy of, “I’m going to share this about myself. I’m going to open up this chapter of my life for this album,” and more like, “What’s coming to the surface right now that’s affecting me and that I’m sorting through?” We found that a lot of what we were sorting through overlapped or that we related to each other, and that was the stuff that we ended up writing about.
You express that there’s an “ease to letting go when something isn’t working.” What does it look like when things are “working,” versus when something doesn’t fit and you collectively decide to move on?
Aoife O’Donovan: I think when we’re in the writing room, it’s always such an exciting moment when something starts to click and we start jamming on it and we start figuring out the groove and figuring out the melody. Then we’ll maybe get into a vibe [where] we’ll all kind of put our heads down on our laptops and be typing out words and be like, “Okay, let me try something.” When you sort of bring a line or change your melody note here, or add a harmony part, or it says this – it’s an exciting sort of burst. It’s like the champagne bottle pops and you’re like, “Okay, yes! Let’s keep going, let’s keep going!” It really fuels the next thing. And I think that with this trio, one of my favorite things to do is write music with Sarah and Sara. It doesn’t feel like a chore in the way that sometimes writing [solo music] for me can feel like a chore. When we’re together writing, it’s almost like you get to the party and you see what’s going to happen at the party.
Sarah Jarosz: The songwriting process has always felt like an extension of the vocal arranging process in a way, because I feel like that’s how we started out before we ever tried to write together. We arranged songs together. We arranged “Crossing Muddy Waters” together and that was a really cool precursor to know how we communicate with each other with a pre-existing song. Then that sort of carried over into the songwriting process to be this amazing, like Aoife said, light bulb movement. When it’s flowing, it’s just flowing so well and things that don’t work are just sort of easily falling aside. It’s really special. We’ve all worked with a lot of other people, so I think we all know how rare that is when it does just flow.
The way you all talk about the dynamic of working with each other has this very uplifting, very, “it’ll all work itself out in the end,” kind of mentality, which I think speaks a lot to your collective experience with each other.
SJ: Just to add to that, the three of us, I think, have pretty similar work ethics. It’s not just, “Oh, well, this is all free and easy and breezy.” I think part of the reason that it feels easy is that we put a similar amount of effort into it. Really showing up for each other, energetically giving each other the attention and the love. A lot of these songs start out as conversations, like Sara said, just that shared energy.
SW: I think it’s important to note that, yes, it’s magic and it works. We are so compatible. But part of that work ethic that Jarosz was talking about is staying at the table and not giving up on something completely. Maybe putting something aside and coming back to it later while you work on something else.
I love working with with these two who, if something’s not right, if any one of us isn’t completely excited about something or feels confused about the direction of a song or lyric, we all are very willing to stay at the table until things come together, until we’re all happy, or it’s really clicking on all sides. I think working and staying with it while it’s not working is what makes those beautiful moments [happen] when things are all yesses and when we are in flow. It shows the magic, because it doesn’t always happen but we were able to work through it in a way that’s crucial, I think, for ultimately getting something that we’re really proud of.
AO: It also gives a really unique sense of ownership over all of the material in this band, for each of us. I feel like when we finish a song and when we finish this album, we really can listen to the entire thing and be like, “Yep, I stand behind it” – at least that’s how I feel. Like, “I stand behind all the decisions, and I fully support how every single song turned out. And I really feel like this is our thing, and it’s not just one person’s thing.”
Sarah Jarosz mentions there’s something “beautiful” about having “Ancient Light” start the album, because it’s “addressing the heavier themes of the album in a way that’s more a celebration of life rather than grieving what’s been lost.” Yet,“Wild and Clear and Blue” was the first song written for the project and it establishes your shared embrace of generational connection as the inspired theme. These two songs feel like they could be fraternal twins of introductory tracks. To that end, how was the process of deciding track sequence, particularly given how it can significantly affect the trajectory of an album and how it’s received?
SW: We were at Outlier Studio, listening back to a couple of things and one of us started writing, maybe it was Jarosz, a sequence. We were passing this little paper back and forth. I still have this paper that has like, three separate sequences that we were considering as initial ideas. I think that it ended up somewhere close to what we came to, that first day of writing sequences, because it is so, so important. One thing that I really love, that I think we all really love, starting with “Ancient Light,” [it’s] a little bit more produced. It’s one of the more produced songs on the album or, it’s in the more produced half of the album. We wanted people to hear that. Going to “Wild and Clear and Blue” afterwards, it felt like we were letting people come back to a sound that felt more like the live shows we did on the last tour and more like the first album. It was a nice way of connecting the projects, I think. But we really wanted to have an arc, in terms of the content, and to consider all those things that then make an album feel more like a unit than a series of segmented songs.
SJ: I feel like sometimes making records, I have a sense much earlier on of what should be where, but I feel like this one it took until that last day or so to have this feeling of the arc. But, with that being said, I feel like a lot of us were saying, “Oh, ‘Ancient Light,’ it’s kind of an obvious opener for setting the stage.”
AO: I think also the opening lyric of “Ancient Light,” to me, is the biggest reason why I love that the song opens the record. “Better get out of the way/ Gonna figure out what I’m gonna say/ It’s been a long time coming…” – I just love that idea, that it has been seven years since our last record. Maybe it’s too on the nose, but I think it’s a great opening to bring people in, to sort of invite people back into our world.
You talk about a sense of unspoken synergy but conversely, how much would you say you lean into individual qualities of your writing that make each of your styles memorable?
SJ: I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot of conscious effort going into thinking, “How would each of us represent our own style?” I think that just largely happens naturally. At the end of the day, we’re trying to incorporate musical and lyrical decisions that make us stoked, that get us excited.
When we’re writing, it’s just the three of us. So I think we’re trying to utilize musical tools. That sounds really sterile, but [we’re trying] to make it interesting within the confines of just three people. And then, kind of figuring out, “How do you make a song come alive?”
This album totally feels so, so deeply visual. I feel like we were more tapped into that with this record than with the first. Utilizing those [visual ideas] in a way throughout the songwriting process that make us have a chill moment or maybe a moment where you’re moved to tears, or just doing the thing that gets you excited about the song.
Family, motherhood, and sisterhood make up prominent undercurrents of the album, but especially the latter. As you’ve formed these different bonds and have related to one another in these different ways over the years, how have these identities impacted your shared experience as a group, especially while working on Wild and Clear and Blue?
AO: Two of us are mothers and Sarah Jarosz is not a mother at this point in her life, but I think what’s been really beautiful about this record and about the themes that you brought up – the themes of sisterhood, motherhood, and the themes of being an only daughter – something that I’ve loved to point out to people is that Sarah Jarosz is an only daughter and Sara Watkins and I both have only daughters. When I was listening to this album for the first time with my daughter Ivy Jo, she was listening to it and when the song “Only Daughter” came on she said, “Mommy, is this about me?” It makes me almost cry, retelling that story, because in many ways, yes, it’s this universal experience that our daughters share with our dear friend and bandmate as an only daughter and I love that sort of circle of being.
We’re at different points in our lives within this band. Over the last several years, there’s been a lot of things that we’ve experienced – like huge life events since our last album came out. I lost my father. Sarah Jarosz got married. There have been many big moments that we’ve walked through alongside one another and I think those experiences have definitely shaped who we are, who we were when we went into the studio, and who we continue to be.
SJ: As this band has evolved and grown, those kind of shared family moments have absolutely drawn us closer as a band and allowed the music to reach this deeper level. I think one of my favorite memories as a band was actually in 2018 at Telluride, when all of our families were there. I think it was the only time when everyone was in the same place. Just getting on stage and seeing my parents, all of our parents and children, it was incredibly special and kind of rare. I feel like it has inevitably affected the music in a truly beautiful and full circle way.
In “Sisters of the Night Watch,” the verses mention things about personal sinfulness, being forced to crawl in the mud on your knees, and running into ghosts, with respite from all these things only being found in sisterhood. What inspired these particular images and personal trials?
SW: A lot of this song is about getting through the wilderness that is life and finding your respite, finding your people, or your place – even if it’s not a final destination and just along the way. I think that could take any form in someone’s life. But it does feel sometimes like we’re crawling through the mud in life, making very little progress, like everything is just wilderness around you, and you’re trying to make sense of it all. I think we’ve all felt like that at various times and are just looking for a moment or a day, where you feel safe. It could just be emotionally safe or it might just be some rest – just a break from feeling like everything is hard. I think it’s trying to find those people and trying to find that thing that makes you feel like you can rest for a little bit and you’ll be okay.
SJ: This also feels slightly related to “Only Daughter” in a way, at least for me, this idea of “Sisters of the Night Watch” that was sort of emerging in the writing process. For me, I am an only child and daughter and this band is the closest thing I’ve felt to having sisters, something we talked about a lot. I believe Aoife’s beautiful statement about our shared deep connection with our families is so amazing in this band. But also, your chosen family, as you go through life and who you walk and processes and choose to do life with, I feel like we’re this band of sisters, but then it can be so much more than that as well.
Much the same way you connected with particular artists and songs that your families shared with you in the past, what do you hope that younger generations and generations yet-to-come will connect with through this album?
AO: I hope that people will listen to Wild and Clear and Blue and be able to see themselves in these songs. This album is such a journey – I hate to use the word because it’s so overused – but it really is. There are so many songs, even when you guys are talking about the lyrics of “Sisters of the Night Watch” and crawling through the dried out river on your knees, that song is a journey. It’s one character on that journey. “Find My Way to You” is maybe a different character on the same on the same journey, but maybe experiencing it from a different perspective. Even in “Ancient Light,” you’re trying to get to that clearing and you’re trying to say that when you get there, you’re not going to put up a fight.
It’s sort of like, what is the end goal here? I think that listening to that, people who are young, old, people who are yet to come, I hope that this album does stand the test of time and that people can pick it up in an apocalyptic world, put it on, and be able to relate to it.
Find more of our Artist of the Month content on I’m With Her here.
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen
Basic Folk: Sara Watkins
Sara Watkins joins Basic Folk to talk about Wild and Clear and Blue, the new album from I’m With Her, her band with Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan. The new LP was inspired by looking back on your life in order to move forward, with a very witchy manner of speaking that encompasses the ancient, mysterious, and spiritual. Sara shares insights into the unique telepathic connection they feel within the band, which was palpable from their first public appearance in 2014. Watkins is at it again with her incredible vocal performances on this album, bringing to mind Fiona Apple – especially on the “Sisters of the Night Watch.”
LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • AMAZON • MP3
A longtime Angeleno, Sara gets into the meaning of another song, “Standing on the Fault Line,” which finds her reconsidering what’s safe, what’s permanent, and what is essential in order to remain in California. She also explains how the group’s tight-knit sisterhood and collaborative efforts have strengthened over the years. Elsewhere, we talk about the meaning of a “supergroup” versus a cohesive band, artistic processes, and how personal history and motherhood have impacted their music. Additionally, we explore the challenges of balancing life on tour, the importance of small talk, the necessity of doing music as a hobby for personal fulfillment, and the massive annual band party that inspired “Year After Year.”
Explore more of our Artist of the Month content on I’m With Her here.
Listen to Sarah Jarosz on Basic Folk here. Listen to Aoife O’Donovan with Dawn Landes on Basic Folk here.
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen
Artist of the Month: I’m With Her
Do you remember the human being you were in 2017? When the “first” North American total solar eclipse of the 2000s criss-crossed the United States, stunning millions of sky-gazers? Do you remember how dissimilar life felt then? When you look back, do your memories contain the same person you are now, or is there a vast difference between who you were then and who you are today?
In 2017, I’m With Her – an iconic assemblage of award winning roots musicians Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins – were already a band, but a tangible group identity had yet to fully coalesce – and external viewers, listeners or fans or industry professionals, couldn’t tell if this was a temporary “supergroup” or something greater and long-lasting. Yes, they first collaborated as a trio in 2014 at Telluride Bluegrass Festival and their chemistry, musically and otherwise, was immediately palpable. They wrote, toured, and released music together in 2015, 2016, and 2017, appearing on Prairie Home Companion, Live From Here, and festival and venue stages all across the country and around the world. “Crossing Muddy Waters,” a John Hiatt cover and their first release together under the “I’m With Her” moniker, was released in ’15; “Little Lies” followed in ’17. Then, their acoustic cover of Adele’s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover)” performed live with Paul Kowert on tour with Punch Brothers became a smash viral hit later that same year, barely a month after the moon then blocked out the sun.
By all measures, I’m With Her were a very different group 8 to 10 years ago. Neither Watkins nor O’Donovan were yet mothers. The trio had not yet been nominated for a GRAMMY (“Call My Name” would snag a gramophone for Best American Roots Song in 2020). They wouldn’t put out their debut album, See You Around, until 2018. Yet today, on the precipice of what is somehow only their sophomore album, Wild and Clear and Blue (out May 9 on Rounder Records), whether deliberately looking back or relying solely on one’s memories and recollections, it might seem like I’m With Her has always had this outsized presence and impact in bluegrass, folk, and Americana.
View this post on Instagram
Auspiciously, the celestial and grounded, fantastic and natural Wild and Clear and Blue was tracked in New York State coincidentally during/under the more recent total solar eclipse of 2024. The track of that heavenly alignment almost directly crossed the studio where the trio were crafting the new album with producer Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, the National). Leave it to the stars, the universe, and these three otherworldly musicians to convene to build yet another masterwork under such an unlikely omen as an eclipse. The results are truly magical. O’Donovan, Jarosz, and Watkins are already writers and pickers who draw heavily on the natural world, the earth, and their own bodies, hearts, and minds not only as intellectual tools, but also as biological beings to fashion their particular style of roots music. It’s difficult not to see how the ’24 eclipse – along with their journeys together over the last decade – greatly informed this new collection.
Solidarity, women uplifting women, motherhood and family, communion with the world around them, connection to nature, challenging the painful realities of our current day-to-day, and – perhaps above all – convivial, heartfelt fun run through Wild and Clear and Blue like shimmering, cosmic rays of light. Where their past releases together have been quite stark and stripped down, often utilizing only as many voices and instruments as the trio themselves could wield in realtime, Wild and Clear and Blue is expansive, confident, and bold. Are these the same humans who first began creating together only just over a decade ago?
Of course not. None of us are the same beings we were back then. Certainly not I’m With Her. They’re GRAMMY winners now, all three married and beginning families, O’Donovan and Watkins by now veteran moms. They’ve had multiple eras together as a band and multiple solo releases unto themselves, individually, too in the meantime. The miles have sped away underneath their feet as they code switch between being an ensemble and being individual artists – while racking up accolades, awards, and listeners as a collective and separately, too. They’re seen alongside other so-called supergroups like boygenius, Bonny Light Horseman, and more; not as novelties or accessories to the “real” artistry of their constituent work unto themselves, but as a sum greater than their parts. Rightfully so!
How lucky are we to be witnesses to that growth, to each of these women’s ceaseless commitment to challenging themselves – and their communities – to move forward, to crest that next mountain, to sculpt that as-yet-undiscovered song from shapeless musical clay? How lucky are we that these three women bathed in the ancient, timeless light of a solar eclipse and alchemized their experiences into this resplendent album?
The path of this incredible trio, unlike the planets in the sky, has been anything but linear – or concentric, or predictable. Still, there’s endless insight and so much joy to be gained from inhabiting this intersection, the confluence of so many occurrences: the trajectory of the group; the track of a total solar eclipse; the Wild and Clear and Blue writing and recording sessions; the terrifying and shocking burning of our planet; the rapid return of abject fascism in this country; the consideration of how to be artists – family members, mothers, community builders – amid all of these realities. It’s a bewildering intersection, but one we’ve all become undoubtedly familiar with since 2014… since 2016… since the sun disappeared in 2017 and 2024.
Wild and Clear and Blue is a soundtrack for togetherness. For being present. For capturing the infinitesimal moments that make life what it is. It’s no surprise I’m With Her were able to create such an awe-inspiring and heartening second album with these celestial (and terrestrial) ingredients. It’s impeccable roots music made for bathing in the ancient light, for standing at the fault line, for staring into the wild and clear and blue with courage, with love, and with songs.
I’m With Her, for the very first time, are our Artist of the Month! Dive into our Essentials Playlist below and make sure to spend time with our exclusive interview with Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins on the making of the project. Plus, Watkins is a guest on Basic Folk talking about the album this month, as well – and you can listen to archive episodes with Jarosz and O’Donovan, too.
And, we’ll be dipping back into the BGS archives for all things I’m With Her throughout the month of May! Each of the trio’s members have been featured as AOTM individually and/or in other groups and we have plenty of playlists, articles, interviews, and even Sitch Sessions to return to featuring their supreme talents. Buckle up for a transcendental Artist of the Month celebration.
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen
BGS Bytes: Your Roots Music Social Media Round-Up
Welcome to the second edition of BGS Bytes! From up and coming artists on TikTok to conversations the biggest artists are having online, we’re here to round up any important things happening online in roots music — so you can save your thumbs a few scrolls!
In no particular order, let’s take a look back at a few notable highlights from bluegrass and country social circles in the last few weeks.
Spotify Stopped Paying Out to Small Artists On Its Platform
Spotify has now changed which tracks are eligible for monetization. Tracks with under 1,000 streams will earn nothing from the streaming giant.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 3, 2024
In early April, More Perfect Union reported that Spotify has stopped paying out for artists whose songs don’t top 1,000 streams. While this change won’t impact musicians who top the charts, it reduces profitability for smaller up-and-comers. Of course, this also impacts all genres, not just roots music, a genre that has already historically struggled with a digital era. We might have posted some satirical news about Spotify recently, but this is all too real.
I’m With Her Celebrates the Eclipse
View this post on Instagram
Could there possibly be new music on the way?? I’m With Her posted a reunion photo with all three members: Sara Watkins, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz, as the golden trio took in the eclipse through solar viewing glasses!
Black Opry Hit Mainstream News Talking About Beyoncé’s New Album
Tanner Davenport, co-director of The Black Opry, spoke with MSNBC in March about the record-breaking album, ‘Cowboy Carter,’ that’s been setting tongues wagging since its debut.
“She has always been country”: Critic on Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter”
Tanner Davenport, co-director of The Black Opry, spoke with MSNBC’s @AlexWitt following the release of the music idol’s record-breaking new album. pic.twitter.com/BFubaNCig1
— MSNBC Reports (@MSNBC_reports) March 31, 2024
A Star-Studded Cast Paid Tribute to Jimmy Buffet
@amandapaulak the craziest video youll see today #jimmybuffett #maragaritaville #harrisonford #paulmccartney #juddapatow #woodyharrelson #theeagles #pitbull #brandiecarlile #sherylcrow #bonjovi #joewalsh ♬ original sound – Amanda
One of the wildest social media videos you’ll see this week features a surprising crew — watch Harrison Ford, Paul McCartney, Will Arnett, Brandi Carlile, Mac McAnally, Jon Bon Jovi, Vince Gill, and Pitbull on stage singing “Margaritvaille” together. That’s not an exhaustive list, of course, so let us know who else you can spot! It’s hard to count all the celebs in this Jimmy Buffet tribute.
Orville Peck Celebrated His New Release With Willie Nelson
If you missed it, Orville Peck recently released a recording and accompanying music video for “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” with Willie Nelson. The video has already racked up more than half a million views on YouTube! Turns out there must be many a cowboy feeling the vibes Peck and Nelson are putting out.
Viewers Have Been Digging Tyler Childers’ Live Performances on TikTok
@itscristal.g Most amazing concert 💓#tylerchilders #tylerchildersconcert #mulepulltour #country #countrymusic #concerts ♬ original sound – ⚡️Cristal⚡️
A handful of Tyler Childers’ videos have gone viral in the last few weeks, including the above that’s racked up more than 179,000 likes and nearly two million views. Hey, we can’t blame y’all for loving his music, especially when it’s performed live!
Gary the Snail Sang “Fast Car”
@ai.concerts This version should’ve been performed at the Grammys.. Gary the Snail sings Fast Car by Tracy Chapman #fyp #aicover #spongebob #tracychapman #gary ♬ Gary the Snail Fast Car – AI Concerts
With nearly three million views, Gary the Snail’s version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” has been taking over TikTok. Just a silly little cover, you’re sure to get a good chuckle, even if you’re not a huge SpongeBob fan.
It’s pretty obvious — a lot happened in March and the beginnings of April! We’ll continue rounding up the hottest social media conversations and goings-on for BGS readers every month — let us know on social media and tag us in a post if you think something deserves to make the next list.
Photo Credit: Jackson Browne, Paul McCartney, Woody Harrelson, and more perform on stage at the Jimmy Buffett tribute on April 11, 2024 shot by Randall Michelson / Live Nation – Hewitt Silva.
Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins Discuss the Making and Meaning of ‘All My Friends’
Bearing witness to friends and collaborators Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins in conversation is reminiscent of listening to their frequent musical partnerships, like their trio I’m With Her (with Sarah Jarosz). In moments, they blend perfectly, finishing each other’s sentences. They dance around each other, giving space for thoughtful responses and further questions.
In an artful, deeply reverent, and candid conversation, they delved into the intricacies of creating O’Donovan’s new release, All My Friends. The project originated from a commission by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra in 2019 and blossomed into what O’Donovan refers to as a “song burst,” inspired by the life and work of American Suffragette, Carrie Chapman Catt, and the centennial of the 19th Amendment.
The project propelled O’Donovan into unfamiliar territory as a songwriter and what emerged is a beautiful elegy to the women of the past who fought for the right to vote. It’s an homage to women of today – and future generations.
“What is it that we’re fighting for? You have to put a name on it, try to figure it out. Otherwise you're just stumbling blind.”
BGS spoke via Zoom with Artist of the Month O’Donovan from her home in Orlando and with Watkins joining from her home in Los Angeles.
Aoife O’Donovan: Hey! How are you?
Sara Watkins: I’m good. How are you doing?
AO: I’m so good. I love that I’m having an official conversation with one of my best friends. It’s sort of weird.
SW: When they called me to ask if I would be interested in interviewing you, it was an hour after I had just sent you that raving text about how much I adore the album and the music. I’m so blown away by it.
AO: Oh, my gosh! You’re so sweet! I love you!
SW: I’m not sweet, and you know that.
AO: You are. You’re a nice person. You just sometimes don’t hug strangers. That’s like your only quirk.
SW: I’ve been listening to the record since you sent it to me. But this week, I’ve been getting to really dive in and have the fun of trying to get inside your head a little bit. From that opening line, from the opening gesture at the beginning of the album, it’s just this gorgeous way of encompassing the whole record so beautifully. But it’s also so open. It’s not a thesis statement, but it powerfully contains the whole album. And I just wonder, where did that particular thing come from? And when did you know that that was going to be the way to start?
AO: It’s funny, that opening phrase, just the idea of “All my friends, all my friends,” that idea came to me many years ago, like maybe in 2018. I just had the melody and the chords and I kind of sat with it. It never was anything except for that. When I started working on the idea of this record, when Orlando (Philharmonic Orchestra) asked me to write 5 songs to commemorate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, I didn’t even go back to that tiny phrase immediately. I started elsewhere.
I started to write this other music, and then I remember sitting at the piano, actually at Full Sail, in the studio that I worked at here and I remember those words, “All my friends,” that was all that it was. I started thinking about what that meant, as even just a very simple, very kind of trite, almost overused lyric. There are tons of songs called “All My Friends.” There are movies called All My Friends. There’s a book that I just read called All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers. It’s not a very original 3-word statement. But there was something about those words together with those chords, that all of a sudden felt like they belonged in this project. This is about the women who were before and the women who are yet to be born. It felt like this big circle all of a sudden of humanity and womanhood.
SW: It’s powerful on its own and then also with the context of the movement. I don’t often think of movements like that with friends. We think about it for younger generations. Let’s change policies to help younger generations, or to help the American people, but to put the word “friends” on it just makes it so heartbreaking. I just get sisterhood through this whole record in the most powerful way.
In “Daughters,” I have these 2 different visions of what’s happening in that song. With the way the band and the orchestration wrap around your guitar playing – the band does such a great job. You’ve played with Griffin Goldsmith, and with Alan Hampton a ton. The trio entity is so complete and so complementary to the songs and then to add to it, the way that you have the orchestration coming into play and the choir in such supportive ways. I had two images. One was this vision of a battlefield. Like when we were in grade school, where we talked about Gettysburg, or these legendary Revolutionary War battle sites and you see that field where the people are, and then you see these flanks coming in from the sides. That’s how that song feels to me.
AO: That’s like exactly what I was imagining when I wrote it. I’m not joking; that exact image of just being on a battlefield. And then, like the other voices coming in, or like the other people coming in to sort of fill the ranks. That’s exactly what I was envisioning. That’s so funny.
SW: It’s incredible.
AO: I’m so glad that that came across.
SW: It does. And it’s a credit to the arrangement, where you have the choir come in and there’s this rumbling support, or this foundational support from the orchestration before. When that chorus comes in, it just feels like you’re surrounded by kinship or by the sisterhood of support. And then the next verse opens up, and you’re alone again, or like fairly alone and you have to carry this battle by yourself, for yourself. It’s an individual fight. But then, going back to that “all my friends” lyric, it just feels like all of those entities are your friends coming to support you in your time of need.
AO: Exactly. That’s it exactly it. I feel like for me, when I made this record, and even now getting ready to put it out, it’s so specific and it’s so deeply personal. And it’s so not a record of like, “Check out this jam!” It’s just not that kind of record at all. And it’s not meant to be. I’m so glad that you listened to it in this way. This is what my hope for this record is, that people will be able to have the time to sort of process what it is. And these images and that exact thing of going into a battlefield. But then, there are moments when everything is stripped back, and you are sort of alone. But you’re also singing for your friends and for your community and for your mothers and your grandmothers and their mothers and their grandmothers. But also for the daughters of the daughters of the daughters. It just feels like this circle keeps on going.
In that song, specifically having the girl’s chorus, and on the whole record it was such an important thing for me to have the voices of young women, and not necessarily harmony vocals by my peers. I just felt there was something about the innocence of this young voice. The experience of getting to do it live with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and in Massachusetts, and even getting to do it in Glasgow with the girls’ chorus, it’s really powerful. It’s hard not to cry, even as a performer. It’s something about seeing young girls up on a stage, ready to give something. It just feels deeply emotional.
SW: And they are giving to you and you are getting to experience that support literally. Being on stage can feel very alienating and very vulnerable. It is a little bit of a fight sometimes within yourself if nothing else.
I feel like this is just such a powerful statement: grappling with change and growth. And obviously, that’s something that needs to be continually grappled with. It’s not like, “Oh, the change happens, and now we’re done. Check it off the list.” It’s a continual engagement, and it’s hard.
With “America Come,” when you get to that point in the album, it feels like the industrial revolution to me.
AO: Yes. I love that.
SW: Especially because you’re singing the words, “manpower, womanpower.” I feel like the machine is running.
AO: Right. I feel like that song with the, “dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun,” it becomes very steady. It is like the machine is running. That’s one of the songs on the record that really is so much about Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffragist who I was inspired to write about and write from the perspective of. That song is really heavily lifted from an actual speech that she gave. Some of those phrases are verbatim from her speeches.
That idea of this question, “What is this democracy for which the world is battling?” I feel like that’s a question that we can still ask ourselves. What are we doing here? What does this mean? What is America? I feel like that’s just such a deep question, and to be asking that in 1919 or 1918, or whenever that speech was from, and then to still feel it in 2022 – when I was writing this, it felt so relevant I feel like it’s almost eerie. We can’t give up the fight. We can’t stop. You don’t just check something off the list. As you said, it just kind of keeps going.
SW: And in that way, the album encompasses all the humanity, the micro versions of this, where for instance, in the institution of marriage, or a long-term relationship, or friendships, family, or whatever, it is about checking in every so often: “Wait! Life is running away with us. What do we want? What do we want in choosing this city, this school, this town, this job, this house?”
And that happens on individual levels. Like in my own life, I think, “Have I gotten away from this thing that I cared about five years ago? Have I checked in about this?” I feel like with the content of this album, I found myself thinking about the country, and I found myself thinking about me. Especially, with the more introspective song “The Right Time.” That’s the one where she talks to herself a little bit?
AO: Yeah, exactly. She’s like, “Don’t give them anything to laugh about.”
SW: Like a pep talk.
AO: Yeah, exactly that. It is a pep talk. That’s kind of my idea, about what she or anybody in her position would be going through as a woman with so much to offer, such a big brain, and so much potential. But, what do you have to climb over when you’re living in a time where you’re not valued and the only jobs available are to be a teacher in a one-room school house, or to leave the town that you grew up in? And people are going to look at you. People are gonna make fun of you if you’re a smart woman. People still make fun of smart women. It’s so weird.
Sara, we’ve talked about this a lot, being women in music, about how I feel like I’ve been so lucky and so respected throughout my career as a musician. You know I’ve always felt very valued and have very rarely been made to feel “less than” due to my gender. I feel so lucky that I’ve been in a community of musicians who have really supported me. But I know that that’s not the case for many musicians, and across other fields it is absolutely not the case.
SW: Yeah. I feel I have had a similar experience with that support. I can only imagine that in that era, when community really was the people around you – not people somewhere on the internet, in a town across the country that you can kind of connect with. She could physically rally the people in her region by convincing newspapers to publish things.
AO: By like getting up on stage and giving speeches or by writing a letter to the President and getting responses. Obviously, she’s not the only one. There were many women who were powerful and were doing amazing things. They just had to try so much harder, and that is what’s interesting. I think having a daughter in this time of life, in the 2020s, you want to give them the tools to always feel that they have the confidence and awareness to think of themselves as equal and powerful.
SW: Tell me about the research you did for this. So, the idea was presented to you and commissioned by The Orlando Philharmonic. Is that right?
AO: By the Orlando Phil, yep! So the OPO asked me in 2019. They said, “It’s the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment.” A lot of orchestras in the U.S. were asking female composers to write music for concerts they were doing. They were trying to diversify their programming. And when OPO asked me to do a piece, I was sort of like, “Why me?” That’s something I’ve never done before, writing an orchestral piece to be performed as a commission. It just felt like, that’s not how I operate. You know what I mean, I’m a songwriter. But I said, “Yes, that would be a good challenge.”
I didn’t think about it for a while, and then COVID happened, and everything kind of got crazy. I was like, “I’m never gonna write another song again, maybe this is it, maybe I’m done making music.” And then when I got down here to Florida, I started to regain some sense of artistic confidence and inspiration. I started to write a little bit of Age of Apathy that fall and then started to work on this 20- to 25-minute piece of music. So I went into the studio and really started to write it. But without text. I didn’t really even know what the text was going to be about yet. I wrote all the music first, because I had to get it to the orchestrator, Tanner Porter, who orchestrated all the charts for me. That was gonna take a lot of time.
That was November and the concert was supposed to be in May. I needed to get her the music. So I was working, working, working, and didn’t have any text. I wrote all the vocal parts and all the music sketched out to what I wanted it to be. We talked a ton about, “Hey, I want this to open with brass, and I want strings to come in here, and I want this line to be played on cello, and these are the brass lines that I want.” I would make these demos where I would play all that stuff for her, and then she orchestrated it. She also put together all the interludes that sort of stitch the songs together, which are so cool.
It was really fun to have this blank slate without any lyric goal or hesitancy to hold me back. I had simultaneously been doing research, reading, and figuring out what I wanted it to be. “All My Friends” is really just an imagining of the moment when these movements met up in Tennessee to get these votes ratified. And they did march. And they did plead their case and were ultimately successful. But those images are from my own head, like a reimagining of vague historical events.
SW: Let me just jump in really fast just to say that I love how much space you gave for yourself in imagining that imagery. I feel like my own temptation would be to report and do the research and make it rhyme. I feel like you’re the perfect artist for this kind of commission, because of the way that your melodies can float above or without the constraints of rigid time that a lot of us songwriters are tempted to do. The way you carry a line – I don’t think you always realize how extraordinarily unique it is. I think that because of the way that you do music like that, it lends itself to an orchestral project where we’re not dealing with 8-bar phrases and the occasional extra 2 bars and things.
I feel like you are the perfect singer-songwriter to receive this kind of commission. I am so happy that you indulged in that vision of the world, of the people descending into Tennessee, and what the fog was like and what the air was like. Because that is what the feeling was like and that’s the story. It’s not just, “on this date this happened.” I’m glad that you put yourself in the story, because that gave so much room for the arc and the heart of the thing and makes me wanna listen. If I had done this, it would sound like an eighth-grade book report.
AO: No, come on, give yourself more credit, Sara! I don’t have any idea what Carrie Chapman Catt was like personally, because I didn’t know her, but I felt like I could give her dialogue. You can make her personality be whatever it is that you want her to be.
I just read this amazing book called Wolf Hall. I was so fascinated by how the writer, [Hilary Mantel], makes Thomas Cromwell, this character, from the 1500s, feel like this modern, empathetic, shrewd, conniving, and complicated character. That also could have felt like an eighth-grade book report about Thomas Cromwell, but the author injected life into him. That’s the cool thing when you are an artist and when you are a writer, that’s what we do for people who were real or people who we’re making up. You’re taking these embellishments, and you’re telling a story with them.
With the song “Crisis,” [Carrie Chapman Catt] gave a speech called “Crisis” in 1916, and I read that speech and thought, “Oh, my God! This!” Yes, she’s using archaic language, and nobody speaks like this, but how can I imagine her as almost like a bluegrass singer getting up there and saying, “Alright, gather around girls. I’m gonna tell you about what’s going on and what we’re gonna do about it.”
Once I realized I could make it my own because this is my piece, it sort of like set me free into this new creative territory.
SW: And the way that you’re talking about “Crisis,” just the word itself makes you think of ominous minor chords and tension. And with those beautiful horns and flutes, it is just this wonderful, hopeful dawn of a movement. The dawn of a new time is here while you’re singing about the crisis. I love the optimism that’s contained in that and how you acknowledge that everything is all together.
AO: Exactly. One of my favorite things about “Crisis” is I really wanted there to be mandolin on it. It just has that folky feel to it. I had connected with Sierra Hull, who obviously, I’ve known for years and years, but we hadn’t really played that much music together, and I remember being on Cayamo in 2022, and really jamming with her for the first time. And then, you know, fast forward to eight months later I was like, “Oh, I think Sierra would totally kill this song.” I love her playing on it. It just has the right amount of weight to it.
SW: On “War Measure,” I’ve never heard you sing like you do on that chorus. The way you pull down those notes!
AO: It’s hard. It’s actually really hard for me to sing like that. It hurts my voice. But that’s actually my favorite one to do live, because there’s something about singing those lines, “If they pass this amendment to our constitution, we are gonna be talking about revolution.” That’s funny, because I had written that song without the lyrics. And then when I put the lyrics in, I was like, “Oh, this is actually, really rad.” It made it fun.
SW: I bet that was really fun. It makes sense that you wrote the lyrics after a lot of the music, because you get so much in there. It feels like you have room to expand the lines in ways that you might not if you’re writing it down on paper, right? And you get to really chew on certain lines for longer. I feel like there are some lines that get the time that they want to have rather than the time that might have been allotted to them.
AO: Exactly. It was odd, but I’m really glad that it worked out like that.
SW: I love “Over the Finish Line.”
AO: With Anaïs [Mitchell], who is a genius.
SW: And such a wonderful voice to have on here, both in terms of tonality – because you sound amazing together – but also because her songwriting voice has been a voice of movement, a voice of awareness. I love that choice.
AO: The idea kind of came after the fact. I recorded the song and I wanted there to be another voice. I didn’t want it to be me singing harmony with myself. I wanted something starkly different, tonally, from my voice. I’ve known Anaïs for almost 20 years. We’ve been in this same scene and the same world, but we’ve never really done anything together. It worked out so well. I love what she did and how she moves around through the melody and the unison part at the end of the song. I felt connected to her.
SW: I love how it is not the kind of harmony part where you are trying to blend them together. It is very much two individuals choosing to sing together. There are places where your phrasing is different and you’re shortening different lines. It is a perfect example of what you have throughout this record with the children’s choir and the orchestration. To have this lovely duet moment is another version of the sisterhood of letting everyone be themselves rather than needing to have it all looking so pretty and clean and tidy. It is like, “We are existing together, and it’s a beautiful thing.”
AO: Exactly.
SW: It is so well done.
AO: Thank you so much, Sara.
Photo Credit: Sasha Israel
Artist of the Month: Aoife O’Donovan
There’s a confidence and ease to Aoife O’Donovan‘s music making, brought forward throughout her career by her languid, tender, and emotive voice. Just as striking and crystalline as it is cozy and comforting, her voice is a truly iconic instrument in Americana, bluegrass, and new acoustic music. Still, as she readies her new solo album, All My Friends (out March 22 on Yep Roc), it feels as though O’Donovan is decidedly stepping into a new era of confidence and self-assuredness, devoid of any sense of desperation or flightiness or unfettered ambitions. There’s a steady, intentional march to the blossoming of her catalog and her artistry and it’s on full display on All My Friends.
The album was conceived as a sort of tribute to or reckoning with the cross-generational struggle for women’s rights, highlighting the passage of the 19th Amendment over 100 years ago and picking up that timeless mantle of ever-striding towards justice. It’s a perfect project to highlight during Women’s History Month; the intellectual and political messages within it are softened – though never outright whitewashed, revised, or sanitized – by O’Donovan’s perspective as a mother of a young daughter. With All My Friends, she is continuing her journey with another timeless tradition in string band music: the role of mother-activist-songwriter-composer.
One of the record’s lead singles, “Daughters,” was heralded in a press releases as “a meditation on the eternal quest for women’s rights and equality.” Meditative qualities might be the most tangible and original through line of O’Donovan’s songwriting, song collection, composition, and her vocal affectations – from as far back as her days with Crooked Still, or evidenced by the songs she brought to her supergroup trio, I’m With Her, with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz. As on “Daughters,” O’Donovan more often than not opts for quiet-and-impassioned, subdued-while-soaring vocals. She’ll wrap you in the gauze and glitter of her one of a kind voice and, in doing so, prepare you ever so gently and kindly to receive the messages in her lyrics – however demonstrative or abstract they may be.
O’Donovan’s latest era of confidence is also well marked by her vast and varied resume of musical collaborations. Besides Crooked Still and I’m With Her, she’s released music with Goat Rodeo (Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile), Noam Pikelny, the Milk Carton Kids, Taylor Ashton, Donovan Woods, and so many more. In more recent months and years, she’s featured Allison Russell on a track (on 2022’s Age of Apathy), collaborated with mind-boggling guitarist Yasmin Williams and step-dancer Nic Gareiss on a stunning number entitled “Dawning,” and even “came back” to straight ahead bluegrass with a recent single feature on a Becky Buller track, “Jubilee.”
Her output is ceaseless, her art is prolific, but here – as in the new album, and across her discography – the hallmark of O’Donovan’s work isn’t volume, but intention. This is not breakneck, music industry ladder climbing, this is an artist deliberately expanding the universe of her music bit by bit, voice by voice, collaboration by collaboration. It’s part of why she’s such an effective voice and influence in control rooms, too. (Though her production credits are relatively few, they are mighty.) And it’s part of why, as you scroll through our Essential Aoife O’Donovan playlist, you’ll find as many surprising and eyebrow-raising selections as you will her mighty, familiar modern classics.
All My Friends – with appearances by The Knights, The Westerlies, Anaïs Mitchell, Sierra Hull, Pikelny, and more – is yet another demonstration of O’Donovan’s community, her central role within it, and her confidence in inhabiting that role wholly and completely. This is meditation without stagnation, orchestration without machinations, softness and tenderness, but with a steel spine. These are challenges to the status quo while knowing real progress is made with one foot placed in front of the other – and with many other footsteps following her own.
Throughout the month of March, as we highlight Women’s History Month, we’ll be celebrating the new album, All My Friends, and Aoife O’Donovan as our Artist of the Month. Stay tuned for a special “In Conversation” Artist of the Month feature to come later in March featuring an amazing artist and collaborator of O’Donovan, and we’ll also be dipping back into the BGS archives to resurface so many amazing songs, videos, articles, and stories that highlight the incredible music of Aoife O’Donovan.
Photo Credit: Sasha Israel
Strings of Support: Sarah Jarosz’s Mentors and Co-Writing Magic
Sarah Jarosz is what happens when young women are taken seriously. A huge part of the mandolinist’s story is that she had supportive male mentors and that has added to her confidence. We all know the age old story of “Young woman shows promise, gets exploited by the patriarchy and it affects her work.” We need to hear stories like this. Starting in her hometown of Wimberley, Texas, just 45 minutes outside of Austin – the live music capital of the world – Sarah found the mandolin at 10 years old. Labeled a prodigy, and thanks to the encouraging spirit of folk music, she found mentorship with seasoned professionals like David Grisman, Ricky Skaggs, Tim O’Brien and Béla Fleck. Following her time at The New England Conservatory of Music, she moved to New York and would go on to collaborate with people like Chris Thile in the Live From Here House Band and her trio I’m With Her, featuring Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins, and won four Grammys.
LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • AMAZON • MP3
After making the move to Nashville, on her latest album, the very impressive and sonically expansive Polaroid Lovers, Jarosz collaborated with producer Daniel Tashian, which originally was just a low-stakes co-writing project. The success of her first co-writing experience with Daniel led her to pursue other songwriting sessions with Ruston Kelly and Natalie Hemby. The collaboration found on the record has opened Sarah up to new sounds and new experiences. In our conversation, we talk about Sarah stepping into her own voice with confidence on this record and knowing her musical self enough at this point in her life. She describes her experience with confidence using the Dunning–Kruger effect, in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. AKA “fake it till you make it,” AKA “leap and the net will appear.” She also talks about her parents’ influence on her early musicality and how her mom is doing with her cancer remission. An overall theme of this conversation is that Sarah never lost sight of her goal: Keep it all about the music and don’t let noise get in the way of your important work.
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez
Explore the Essential Songs of Sarah Jarosz’s Discography
Stripping away convention, honing in on narrative, and keeping complex melodies afloat with her ethereal vocals, Sarah Jarosz is a superlative presence in the roots music landscape. The daughter of two schoolteachers hailing from Wimberley, Texas, she began learning to play the mandolin at age 9. By the time she turned 12, Sarah was already gracing stages alongside the likes of musical giants David Grisman and Ricky Skaggs.
Her multi-instrumentalist capabilities and songwriting proficiency only grew from there; at the age of 16, Jarosz signed a deal with Sugar Hill Records and released her first album, Song Up in Her Head, in 2009. This critically acclaimed record would be the first of what now surmounts to seven full-length, tremendously lauded projects. Polaroid Lovers, Jarosz’s latest and the muse of her current tour, is set to be released on January 26, 2024.
Over the span of nearly two decades spent recording and touring, Sarah Jarosz has established herself as a foundational thread in the tapestry of modern roots music. From impeccable collaborations (with Punch Brothers, David Grisman, Sierra Ferrell), to forming a supergroup alongside Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Watkins (I’m With Her), to a whopping 5 hours and 45 minutes of music published under her name, Jarosz stands firmly in her power. As she forges ahead, she only continues to outdo herself.
While her entire catalog is sure to edify any listener, this compilation showcases some of Jarosz’s most essential tracks. Tracing the arc of her musicianship from adolescence to adulthood, the following 17 songs demonstrate the particular sonic maturity, lyrical astuteness, and emotional evocation that span all she creates.
“Mansinneedof”
From Jarosz’s first album, Song Up in Her Head, this indelible instrumental boldly answers the question, “Can a mandolin be a lead instrument?” with a resounding, “Of course!” The first of many Grammy nominations acquired throughout her career, this tune was considered for Best Country Instrumental in 2009. Impossibly advanced beyond her years, Jarosz’s nimble and articulate melody is akin to a sonic coast through star-studded galaxies.
“Come On Up To The House”
In a clear demonstration of the range of her musical influences, the most-streamed song from Sarah’s inaugural album is a cover of Tom Waits’s “Come On Up To The House.” Her cool, slippery voice lends a new angle to the iconic tune. Paired with astute backing vocals from Tim O’Brien and a slick fiddle solo by Alex Hargreaves, this song grooves right along – an ingenious, albeit unlikely, bluegrass cover.
“Annabelle Lee”
Jarosz’s sophomore album, Follow Me Down, is latent with a mystical quality that reaches towards the ethers, shepherded into expansiveness by a creative spectrum of influences. The third track, “Annabelle Lee,” features lyrics adapted from the illustrious Edgar Allen Poe poem of the same name. Jarosz sets the eerie tale against a conglomerate of haunting textures – the heightened pace and drums evoke a sense of urgency while Jerry Douglas makes his lap steel wail, a somber cello moans, and Dan Tyminski’s backing vocals lend fullness to the ravenous depths of this dark tune. It is also worth noting that Jarosz performed and recorded this tune, very fittingly filmed in an old hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, for the Transatlantic Sessions in 2011. (Watch above.)
“The Tourist”
Sarah sure knows how to pick a cover. From Prince to the Decemberists to Joanna Newsom, she can masterfully braid her grace and artistry into anything. “The Tourist” offers Jarosz’s take on Radiohead, an influence cited among many of Jarosz’s contemporaries, including Madison Cunningham and Chris Thile. In fact, Punch Brothers provide the musical backdrop on this track, their syncopated rhythms and blustery fills meeting Jarosz and Thile’s airtight harmonies to create a sense of whirling, palpable, delicate angst.
“Build Me Up From Bones”
Off of her Grammy-nominated third album, this titular track received an additional nom for Best American Roots Song of 2014. This song is SJ’s most popular of all time, having racked up a total of 70.7M streams on Spotify. Here, Jarosz’s songwriting forges into new territory; her lyrics are both poetic and measured, imbued with textures of velvety longing. The form matches the content, from Aoife O’Donovan’s dewy harmonies to the pizzicato string section to the gorgeous cello solo. Effectively, listeners are bathed in a most intimate listening experience that beckons infinite re-listens.
“1,000 Things”
In another track off of Build Me Up From Bones, here SJ shares songwriting credits with the legendary Darrell Scott. The result? Pure synastry. Underscored by pulsating Celtic rhythms, this uptempo earworm says 1,000 things despite its brevity.
“House of Mercy”
This tune, along with the album carrying it – Undercurrent – won Sarah her first two Grammys in one night. “House of Mercy” was crowned Best American Roots Performance of 2017, and it was indubitably worthy. Jarosz shares songwriting credits with Australian singer-songwriter Jedd Hughes, and together they achieve a dark story arc as the encumbered narrator addresses an unwanted visitor. Jarosz opens up her sound into cutting, fierce Americana twang – effectively offering audiences a new layer to her multitudes of sound.
“Jacqueline”
The closing track of Undercurrent is stark, honest, and bewildering. The song is named after the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in New York City where Jarosz, who once lived nearby, would often do her pondering. Accompanied solely by an electric guitar, Jarosz’s voice is agile and glimmering as liquid silver. She muses over the reflective surface and projected companion while disclosing her own state of unease, immersing listeners in an intimate, unyielding pensiveness.
“Your Water” (with Parker Millsap)
The first of a two-single release titled the Luck Mansion Sessions (2017), SJ here collaborates with fellow singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Parker Millsap. The track, written and originally released by Millsap, is delivered as a duet. The groove opens up into a soul-type feel, allowing for Sarah to showcase a more raw, bluesy, unmeasured latitude of her voice.
“See You Around”
“See You Around” is the title track off of supergroup I’m With Her’s first and – to every listener’s chagrin – only full-length album. In 2018, Jarosz linked up with two of the most astounding women in roots music, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins, to form a trio of unadulterated excellence (it should be noted that that group won Americana Music Association’s Music Duo/Group of the Year). The album waffles between the three songwriters’ contributions, with each vocalist singing lead on an approximately even number of tracks. “See You Around” is driven by Jarosz’s signature poetic lyrics and fluttery melody, elevated to new horizons by the pristine, angelic blend of harmonies from Watkins and O’Donovan. The musical chemistry these women share evokes the divine; every single song on this album delivers listeners into the sublime.
“Johnny”
For her also Grammy-winning fifth studio album, World on the Ground (2020), Sarah Jarosz invites listeners to experience an array of vignettes; her songs on this album, more than ever, become vehicles for potent storytelling.“Johnny” is the second of three tracks on the album named, presumably, for a character the song aims to illustrate. Jarosz has said that during this album, she “[Tried] to take a step back and look out at the world in my songwriting, rather than looking inward,” and spent much time constructing the album as a patchwork of memories from her hometown in Texas, both faithful and fictionalized.
“Johnny” conveys the psychological landscape of a slightly drunk, slightly disillusioned man who is “just waitin’ on the stars/ that will never align.” It’s all slightly devastating, yet the melody latches onto an unforgettable earworm of a hook uplifted by its folk-pop flavor. Jarosz incorporates a strings section alongside drums, electric guitar, and mandolin, seamlessly using the nuances of sound to bolster the complex mundanities of Johnny’s life.
“Pay It No Mind”
Jarosz shares the songwriting credits on “Pay It No Mind” (also off of World on the Ground) with the renowned John Leventhal, who also produced the album and plays a slew of instruments sprinkled throughout. The song begins with just Sarah and a pensive guitar riff, musing upon a bird and her ponderings. The song then builds in dynamics, layering percussion and eventually a full orchestration of instruments and vocals. It’s slick, it’s sly, and it looks at the world with a cool sense of distance.
“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” / “my future”
In the midst of quarantine, Sarah Jarosz committed to staying connected with fans by using Garageband and her home microphone to record one cover each week from July to October of 2020. In January 2021, she released two of the covers, U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and Billie Eilish’s “my future,” on streaming services. These barebones covers are a time capsule of a moment drenched in emotion, isolation, and fear. Catharsis swells through the minimalistic recordings – Jarosz cradles her whole soul into these songs, and the results are absolutely astounding.
“Mama”
For her sixth full-length studio album, Blue Heron Suite (2021), Sarah Jarosz released a song cycle that she first premiered at Freshgrass in 2017, whereupon she was awarded with the Freshgrass Composition Commission. At the time, Sarah was reckoning with her mother’s cancer diagnosis and reflecting upon childhood trips to the town of Port Aransas, Texas, which at that time had recently been severely affected by Hurricane Harvey. Named for the Great Blue Herons she and her mother used to observe along the town’s shore, this album is imbued with love and hope in its deepest forms. “Mama,” the opening track, is an utterly gorgeous, pared-down arrangement of voice and guitar – a most gentle and tender ode to Jarosz’s mother, who is thankfully now in remission.
“For Free” (with David Crosby)
An astonishing songwriter and pioneer of three-part harmony in American roots/folk music as we know it, David Crosby was a long time supporter of Sarah Jarosz’s work up until his passing last January. Sarah graced the title track of Crosby’s final full-length solo album, For Free (2021). The two sing the entirety of this Joni Mitchell cover in tight harmony, their voices mirroring one another perfectly. The pared back solo piano accompaniment highlights the duo’s vocal finesse; every riff is intertwined with precision and elegance.
“Jealous Moon”
“Jealous Moon” was the first of four singles SJ released from her upcoming album, Polaroid Lovers (out this Friday). Co-written alongside Daniel Tashian, the record’s producer, Sarah remarks of the song, “I’m always seeking to push myself into new sonic territory, and this song gave me permission to not hold back.” In this track, she boldly steps away from her traditional acoustic tethers and moves towards a more pop-rock-twang fusion. Jarosz successfully elicits a sense of novelty while still embodying the sense of fullness and depth she puts into all she creates – reminding us that we still have yet to see the full bloom of her artistry.
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez
Artist of the Month: Sarah Jarosz
The songs of Sarah Jarosz have always been snapshots. Each, whether literally or obliquely, is a tableau – a window into a moment in time, an attempt to capture but never contain the intangible present. Whether demonstrable story songs or abstract, poetic text paintings, Jarosz’s catalog of material shows a ubiquitous skill – a writerly athleticism – for ushering her listeners into the scenes she inhabits or constructs. From her earliest release to her newest, Polaroid Lovers (out January 26 on Rounder Records), Jarosz’s point of view has been confident, relatable, and inviting.
Simultaneously, the expansive body of work she’s produced since her 2009 Sugar Hill debut, Song Up in Her Head, tells a tale as much of uncertainty as of skill and finesse and, within that uncertainty, a commitment to relishing the journey – rather than rushing toward an arbitrary destination.
A teenager when she first gained national notoriety, Jarosz was often compared to her mentor-peer-friend Chris Thile and her contemporary, Sierra Hull. While child bluegrass, Americana, and string band stars – proverbial and oft-mythologized prodigies – have a much more gentle route to adulthood than say, their Hollywood counterparts, it’s still a time hallmarked by experimentation, growing pains, exploration, and a prerequisite amount of floundering. Musically, Jarosz may have “floundered” a bit less than say, Hull or Thile or any kid whose teen years may have had a recorded, audio history. Nevertheless, you can trace a through line of angst, introspection, and finding oneself underlying the precocious self confidence of her early albums.
By the time Jarosz reached 2013’s Build Me Up From Bones, which gained her her first Best Folk Album Grammy nomination, that uncertainty was no longer an undertone, but a focal point in her music. On both Bones and the follow up full-length, Undercurrent, which then won the Grammy for Best Folk Album, Jarosz picks up and runs with those musical expectations, whether overt or projected. She plays with the dichotomy between the public nature of her growing up a heart-on-her-sleeve songwriter and bluegrass picker and the individual, private nature of seeking and finding her own agency within those paradigms. She purposefully built broad and appealing, commercial songs that are both assured in their sincerity and unconcerned with virtuosity or authenticity for their own sakes. She knows exactly what she’s doing, even – if not especially – when she does not.
Needless to say, the following projects World On The Ground and Blue Heron Suite feel like they are both indelible home bases built on the steady foundation of the albums that led to them. Each are distillations of Jarosz’s musical commitment to bringing her audience inside the turmoil and delight, growth and doubt, beauty and bittersweetness of life and song. Jarosz had arrived at her destination, hadn’t she? In her beloved New York City, a Grammy winning artist, picker, and songwriter who knows who she is and why she does what she does.
Ah, but remember, it’s the journey Sarah Jarosz is after and not the destination. Polaroid Lovers is a lens into the new growing pains, the new uncertainty, the new uprooting and, eventually, re-rooting Jarosz finds herself in the middle of now. She recently moved to Nashville, building a life with her new husband, bassist Jeff Picker. Polaroid Lovers, like its predecessors, brings the listener into how living in Nashville has reshaped Jarosz’s songwriting and creative and recording processes.
It may not sound like a Music Row album – it sounds, as all of her work does, exactly like Sarah Jarosz. Whatever that sounds like! – but it’s a collection that has the Row tangled among its roots and certainly in the water. Polaroid Lovers was recorded at Sound Emporium and produced by Daniel Tashian, plus it has many a credited co-writer, a bit of a departure for the songwriter who, besides in her work with Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins in I’m With Her, rarely co-writes material for her own albums, preferring to pen most lyrics and tunes herself. Music Row and Americana hit writers like Ruston Kelly, Natalie Hemby, Jon Randall, Gordie Sampson, Tashian, and others each lent their own fingerprints and touches to this set of song snapshots.
Does Polaroid Lovers sound new? Does it sound like Nashville? Yes, it certainly does, but it doesn’t sound instant or ready-made either, and it always sounds like quintessential Jarosz. This is evidenced nowhere on the record as strongly as one of its lead singles, “Columbus & 89th.” Among more than a few masterworks in Jarosz’s catalog that center on her beloved, transplanted (former) hometown, New York City, “Columbus & 89th” is perhaps the best example of the form. Wistful and hopeful, with a tinge of bittersweetness from the wisdom that comes with age, it paints such a specific picture – of a literal street corner – but, as in all of her snapshots, this polaroid is not confining or finite, it’s resplendent and limitless. Following the photography metaphor one step further, it’s not difficult to see how the perspective Jarosz has gained by moving away from the city might have enabled her to render such a picture perfect homage to New York.
This is a vibrant, animated collection of Polaroid Lovers. This is Sarah Jarosz at her best– for now.
Watch for our Artist of the Month interview feature with Jarosz to come later this month, plus we’ll do a catalog deep dive and showcase plenty more content pulled from the BGS archives. For now, enjoy our Essential Sarah Jarosz Playlist:
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez