I hate surprises. However, Oklahoma’s pride and joy John Moreland surprised us in April with his latest album, Visitor, and I guess I’m okay with it. Moreland’s gone back to a sparse acoustic instrumentation, unlike the electronic sound (which I also loved) on his previous release, 2022’s Birds in the Ceiling. Recently, he took a page from his wife Pearl Rachinsky’s and musician (and recent tour buddy) Chris Staples’ books and quit his smartphone, took a social media break, and stopped all touring for six months. What ensued was an incredible psychic change discovered through living electronically off the grid. Another thing that came about during this simplicity in life: An album full of songs. He would take long drives at night, bringing along his guitar and making field recordings of his new writing. All this culminated into his beautiful new record.
During our Basic Folk chat, Moreland talks about the process of unraveling himself from his smartphone, reconnecting with the acoustic guitar, and getting to know himself again during this period of quiet. He talks about how playing live is very vulnerable for him, to the point where he started taking (and loving) beta-blockers to stave off anxiety and adrenaline. He is very candid with his current thoughts on body image – he has been known to experience body shaming online after performing live. We also get into something that’s been on my mind all year: Is climbing the professional songwriting ladder worth it? Pretty sure we figured out the answer. LOL
Izzy Heltai is an indie-folk artist whose songs touch on themes like growing older, feeling lost, and finding yourself – his music resonates with many people. Izzy played the first Queerfest event, a virtual festival in 2021 hosted in partnership with Club Passim. His latest single, “My Best Friend Sam,” came out on April 25.
Izzy has a debut New York headline show coming up. If you’re in the area, be sure to check out his show at Union Pool in Brooklyn on Friday, June 21. Our Out Now conversation covers work-life balance (a large theme in his new single), his favorite LGBTQ+ artists, and his current state of mind. We’re so excited to highlight this phenomenal artist, Izzy Heltai!
Your lyrics cover themes that many people can relate to such as being anxious, growing older, self-esteem, feeling lost, etc. Do you write with the listener in mind for the relatability of these topics? Are you mostly thinking of your own experiences and emotions? Or are you considering both during the creative process?
Izzy Heltai: I think a lot of what I experience is universal. I think as we get older we all deal with issues of identity, anxiety, a sense of feeling lost, etc. I don’t really think about writing, or creating, for the purpose of being relatable. I think inherently what I write about is relatable, but the only way I can keep it authentic is by simply saying exactly what I’ve experienced. I don’t claim to know, or want to tell other people what they’ve gone through, all I can do is talk about what I experience.
Your single that came out last month, “My Best Friend Sam,” includes the lyrics, “I’ve wasted close to a decade chasing dreams and expectations / I wanna leave, I wanna stop everything / I wanna be hanging out with my best friend Sam.” How are you balancing a demanding career in the music industry with taking time for yourself and personal relationships?
Honestly, it’s been tough. This work exists in oscillations of highs and lows. One day it can feel like you have everything at the tips of your fingertips and the next day it can feel like everything’s falling apart. I’m trying to block out a lot of that. I’m trying to focus on what makes me happy about all of this, creating music with my friends, playing shows and connecting with people.
Recently, I’ve just been focusing on being in one place. Trying to be present, spending time with people I love, working on my next body of work and doing things throughout the day that make me feel the most present I can be. Reading, riding my bike, climbing, and writing songs.
What is your current state of mind?
If I’m honest, it isn’t the best it’s ever been. I broke my hip about a year ago and some things changed in my life that I had a hard time adjusting to. I’ve been refocusing recently and just putting energy into making things I love. Working on new songs I’m really proud of, investing in my friendships, riding my bike a lot, climbing with my friends. Things that make me feel grounded and most myself!
What’s your ideal vision for your future?
I love making my music, I love my friends here in Nashville and my routine, but I also love touring. Touring and playing shows, connecting with people, seeing new things, is such a big part of this for me. My ideal future consists of a balance between a routine at home, bike rides, yoga, rock climbing, writing and creating my next body of work, and a consistent sustainable touring schedule.
What would a “perfect day” look like for you?
This one’s easy. A sunny hot day, a very long bike ride, and cooking with my friends.
Why do you create music? What’s more satisfying to you, the process or the outcome?
I make music, because at one point I was a lonely, confused kid, and for some reason this was the way I processed the world. I’ll always make music regardless of who’s paying attention, but it’s easy to lose sight of that sometimes. I’m fully aware, with my identity, if my music reaches a certain level of success it has the power to really impact a marginalized population quite powerfully. I think my music becomes much more than “just for me,” because of that.
Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ artists and bands?
Lucky and honored to call her a close friend, Katie Pruitt is absolutely at the top of that list. Leith Ross, Ethel Cain, and Chappell Roan are other favorites of mine.
Ruth Moody has a singular voice, whether she’s joining the soaring three-part harmonies of the Wailin’ Jennys, or carving her own path on her new solo album, Wanderer (released May 17.) The project was almost a decade in the making and finds Moody betting on herself as a songwriter, co-producer, and now-label head for her own Blue Muse Records. The album is parallel to Moody’s own journey at continuing to define herself, with its emphasis on confronting the past and carving away detritus that is no longer needed.
Moody splits her time between Nashville and Vancouver Island. The pull between her sense of place, as well as her identities as artist, wife, and mother, characterize Wanderer. The album was recorded at the legendary Sound Emporium in Nashville and was co-produced with Dan Knobler (Allison Russell, Lake Street Dive) and mixed by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, First Aid Kit, The Decemberists).
As discussed below, Moody waited until the time was right to bring her favorite musicians together for the record: her partner Sam Howard, who plays upright bass and provides backing vocals; her older brother Richard Moody; The Wailin’ Jennys’ touring band member Anthony da Costa (guitars); Jason Burger (drums); Kai Welch (keyboards); Russ Pahl (pedal steel); Adrian Dolan (string arrangements); and duet partner Joey Landreth (on “The Spell of the Lilac Bloom”). Moody’s patient commitment to executing Wanderer the way she wanted to shows in its transcendent arrangements.
In our BGS interview, Moody discusses how she establishes her sense of self amidst the competing demands in her life, the factors that give Canadian roots music their own special quality, and the lessons she’s learned from doing Wanderer exactly the way she intended to.
What do you think it is about Canadian roots music in particular? It does have a different feel than roots music in the States.
Ruth Moody: You know, I’ve been asked this question for so long. It’s a very valid question, because I think there is something, but it’s really hard to have a clear answer. In Canada there’s such a range of geography and music culture. You can’t really pin it to one thing.
I grew up in Winnipeg and the winters are so harsh that I think music and art are one of the things that get people through. It’s something you can do in the winter. I also think that there’s something about the landscape and the winter that creates a certain work ethic because you’re so small against the elements, really. So consciously or subconsciously, that enters into the picture for people. And so I think people tend to work hard and really apply themselves. And when it comes to touring, especially if you’re from Winnipeg, it takes some effort to get to the next town. It’s a six-hour drive before you get to the next major town. So I think right from the start, young musicians know they have to go out in the world to tour and get their music out.
We’re pretty diverse and we’re also influenced by so many different cultures and types of music. So I think there is a very exploratory aspect to Canadian music. And a lot of cross-pollination between genres and scenes. We are very lucky to have government support for the arts and I think that helps artists thrive, obviously, but it also helps to create music communities and bring artists together in collaborative situations.
Well, it’s always good to start an interview out by asking you to speak for your entire country! But Wanderer focuses on the idea of home, and I know you’ve lived many different places. Did I read that you grew up in Australia?
I was born in Australia, and my parents are Australian, but they came back to Canada when I was only a year old. I grew up in Winnipeg, but, as an adult, I’ve moved around a ton and that was what inspired the title track. I’ve been touring for over 25 years at this point. “Wanderer” is a love song that I wrote for my partner, because he helped me have that feeling of home for the first time in my adult life.
There are a number of songs about young love and new love on the album. Was there something that was making you reminisce about those times in your life?
These songs were all written across a long time-span – over 10 years really – since my last record. So the songs come from different stages and sides of love, right into motherhood. Some songs deal with heartbreak too and some are more reflective about the past. During the pandemic, I was reflecting a lot about how we internalize the messages we receive from society, how as a woman I took on the expectations of others and how that has affected my life. I was looking back, looking for clues, curious about where fear comes from, where strength and resilience come from. How we learn how to be our authentic selves when there are so many outside pressures and confusing messages. “Seventeen” isn’t about that, at all, but it ended up coming out of that period of reminiscing. It’s a song that came from my own experiences but that is essentially about being in love and not being ready or able to face it or express it, which I think is probably a pretty common experience.
These are all things I’m thinking about a lot now that I have a child, too, because they become very relevant. You’re trying to model behaviors for a young person and it really makes you face yourself. You have to look at why you do and say certain things and what you want to teach and how you want to be.
Speaking of wandering, I read that you split your time between Nashville and Vancouver Island.
I just got back from British Columbia, and I’ll be back in BC in the summer, so yes, I’m back and forth. I tour a lot, so I try to get home to BC when I’m already out traveling. But I work a lot in Nashville and so does my partner, so we’re still figuring that out.
Do you feel you are different when you are in these two different places?
Definitely. That’s been a real theme becoming a mother, really. Suddenly, you’re responsible for another human life. You have to let go of a lot of ways that you used to do things and prioritize what matters. I’m always shifting modes.
When I’m on tour, I operate in a certain way. When I’m in BC, I’m close to my parents and that brings out certain things. When I’m on my own, I have a bit more freedom to maybe be my creative self and when I’m in parenting mode, that goes out the window. Additionally, a partnership requires a lot of work and time, too. There are a lot of different parts of life that I’m juggling. But it keeps it interesting.
This isn’t meant to be a conversation about being a musician and motherhood and “having it all,” but it is a big theme of the record!
It has been a big theme of my life of late. Actually, I wanted to make this record about eight years ago and then I put it on hold, because I wasn’t able to line up all the musicians I wanted involved. I thought, “I’ll do it next year.” And then I had my son and I just didn’t know that motherhood would be such an all-consuming thing. It doesn’t have to be – and everyone’s different!
I really want to do a good job at everything that I do, and so I found it hard [to balance everything.] I felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job at being a parent and I wasn’t doing a good enough job at performing. That was really hard on me. And I think now, with this new way of looking at things, I’m just being easier on myself and thinking to myself, “Maybe I was enough. Maybe we can’t be perfect at every single thing.” Maybe we don’t have to attempt to be perfect at everything.
First and foremost I think that any woman should have the choice to [balance motherhood and work] in the way she wants to do it. I am still figuring out how to juggle everything – especially since for this record, I decided to put it out on my own label. It’s really exciting and I think will be really rewarding, but it is a ton of work and the learning curve is quite steep.
Wanderer is your fourth solo album. Do you feel this process is different than when you’re working with another artist or with The Wailin’ Jennys?
It is different. The Jennys – I mean, we’ve been together for so long and we have a certain way of working. We’re talking about making a new record, which is really exciting. It’ll be different, because it’s been a while and we’re all changing all the time, you know? That feels like it will be an exciting new experience.
But it is of course different working on my own, especially in this case, because I co-produced this record. When you’re on your own, you draw on a different part of your brain and even your heart. Wanderer is a really personal collection of songs. With the Jennys, we tend to maybe gravitate towards songs that call for three part harmony, so they end up being a bit more anthemic. With these really personal, intimate songs, I connect to them in a different way.
What lessons do you feel like you can take away now that you’ve finished making Wanderer that you want to take with you on your next project?
I’ve learned so much in doing this. Because it took so long to make it and these songs were waiting in the wings for so long, it felt really important for me to make it. The stakes felt high, because it had been so long in the making.
Now that it’s done and I’m putting it out, I am really excited and proud of it. I want to just keep releasing expectations and I’m very excited to dig into creative work again.
A deep reflection born from a time of the extreme silence and noise of the pandemic, Kaïa Kater’s new album, Strange Medicine (out today, May 17), digs into the feelings society tells us not to feel, imagines healing and revenge from abuses, and reckons with themes of racism and sexism of the past and today. While the undercurrents are heavy, the arrangements are gentle and flowing, juxtaposing our expectations of what we think it means to process the darkness in life with the truth that many emotions can exist simultaneously.
Written from home in Montreal, Strange Medicine takes us on a cathartic journey imagining characters interwoven with parts of Kater and parts of the world she observes. Drawing on inspiration from artists like Steve Reich, Brian Blade, and Johnny Greenwood and partnering with Montreal-based producer Joe Grass (The Barr Brothers and Elisapie), she took a different musical path than in the past.
Leaning into her primary instrument, banjo, Grass and Kater built the framework for each of the tracks slowly, starting with bedroom tracks and expanding to include arrangers like Franky Rousseau (Andrew Bird, Chris Thile) and Dominic Mekky (Caroline Shaw, Sara Bareilles) and musicians Rob Moose (Bon Iver, Phoebe Bridgers, Paul Simon), Robbie Kuster (Patrick Watson), and Phil Melanson (Andy Shauf, Sam Gendel). Kater spoke to BGS via Zoom.
Hi! How are you?
Kaia Kater: I’m okay! A couple of days ago I dropped my phone directly onto my laptop screen and it cracked. I had to go to Apple. So I am without a laptop, but thankfully have my 10-year-old iPad, bless her!
Apple is coming in clutch. Also, Apple product destroying Apple product is kind of funny.
Yeah, it’s an Apple-on-Apple hate crime. It’s terrible. I feel so weird about it. But I have AppleCare, which is good.
With the couple of sentences that you just said it’s no wonder the Department of Justice is looking into Apple as a monopoly. Vertical integration. Well, how are things going other than Apple problems?
The record is out in a week, so I’m excited. Thank you for doing this piece. I never take any press for granted, especially after the pandemic, when things were so terrible and hard.
What a weird time. Is that when you started writing this record?
Yeah, pretty much. I wrote my first song in April of 2020. We finished the record in 2023. So I would say like 2020 to 2022, was the writing window.
This album is a pandemic baby!
It is. Yeah, I’m proud of my little pandemic baby. Born out of a lot of feelings of stasis and confusion, but also just so fun to record. I think that there’s a lot of grief in the lyrics. But you can still vibe to sad songs, especially when they feel groovy. So that was the intent.
So when did you start recording it?
Let’s see, we went in to record in October of 2022 but the official recording days were preceded by a ton of demo days. So throughout 2021 and into 2022, I would go to my co-producer Joe’s studio in Montreal. We would just track stuff and either bring people in or ship the songs out to people and pay them a demo fee and have them kind of like splash around and see what their interpretation of the song was. That was kind of like how we selected personnel. I think we had a pretty strong idea of what we wanted to do by the time we got into the studio, which is so different from other projects I’ve been part of and other records I’ve done.
How was it different?
I guess, with the pandemic, I had the blessing of time, which I never had before really. With Nine Pin, I recorded on my winter break from college in my senior year, and then Grenades was done from start to finish in two weeks. And so with Strange Medicine, it was about two years. There are advantages and drawbacks to that. It is very easy to start second guessing some choices that you’d made in the previous calendar year, but I think it was to me such a novelty to be able to write and then listen back, and send the arrangement to someone and have them send their work back. It was so much more thoughtful because we had the time to do that.
That makes total sense. So you started writing it during the pandemic. What was your writing process like? Did you have ideas that you came into the lockdown with, or were you processing things in real time?
Well, originally I was like, “I’m never gonna play banjo again.” I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I was trying, to a certain extent, to escape my roots, transform, or do this phoenix thing. Where people are like, “Whoa! She was a banjo player and now she’s an electronic pop musician.” That was maybe a facet of my mid-20s to late 20s, having that crackling feeling that all the different paths your life can take feel like they’re narrowing. And so you’re kind of like fighting against that and going, “No, I still can transform again, musically.”
Really what led me to write more songs on the banjo, especially for Strange Medicine, was that it was really comforting to me. I think I went back to it after wanting to spread my wings. Once I was alone in a room I was like, “What do I want to do right now? I just wanna play banjo.” And for a long time that’s all I did. I didn’t really write. The songs trickled in bit by bit. But you know I definitely gave up that idea of trying to metamorphosize in the way that I thought I was going to. I think I did it in a different way.
Can you talk a little bit about what it meant to be in Montreal writing this record and just in general? What influence did the town have on this particular record? And how does the music community there influence you?
Well, it’s very experimental there. And there’s a kind of freedom and risk-taking. People are not afraid to have things fail or to have things not quite work. Even now, I’m sort of deconstructing the idea that I grew up with, this idea of what a songwriter is, which is that you work really hard at your craft, you play the song down. And the way that you improve every night is how you perfect and tighten the song as much as possible. I’ve been getting into this idea of improvisation.
I don’t know if it’s because the rent is cheaper there, so you don’t have to hustle as much. I just felt so much more space to play around.
While we’re on the subject of Montreal, you collaborated with Allison Russell on “In Montreal” about your shared hometown. I was curious since Aoife O’Donovan is from Massachusetts and you’re talking about witches on “The Witch” – was that a purposeful choice?
No, but that occurred to me about a week ago. I was making dinner, and I was like, “Wait. Aoife’s from Massachusetts!” It must have been in some way subconscious. I kind of see people as the roots that they’ve grown from. And definitely, when thinking about the features I wanted, I wanted it to make sense with who that person is. For example, with Taj Mahal, he’s who I learned about the black roots of the banjo from first. He was doing that in the ‘60s, and he has a lot of Calypso and Caribbean influences and heritage. Bringing him into a song about a Caribbean revolutionary felt like, “Well, of course.” I even wrote him a little letter explaining the song, because he’s 80. He doesn’t need to be on anybody’s record. And so I was like, “Let me tell you what the song is about, and maybe you’ll want to sing on it.”
That’s so cool. And how did the collaboration on “The Witch” come about?
Aoife has always been really supportive of me as a person and as an artist, going back to 2017. She’s kept me in mind for a lot of things and she’s suggested me for opportunities. She’s also really community-oriented. She’s very cognizant of supporting women musicians and young musicians. I’m a mega fan of hers.
I had written “The Witch” and I thought she would sound great on it. Fast forward to the end of the process, when all we had left to do was harmony vocals and I was really nervous to ask her because I think I was scared to get a no. But I’ve been practicing. You have to ask, because if you don’t ask you don’t receive anything. I texted her, and she immediately responded yes without even hearing the song. Then she laid down all these like really intricate harmony parts. She’s a genius.
Your voices are beautiful together. It works really well. And the Massachusetts thing — it’s perfect. While we’re on the subject of that song, what connects you to the stories of these women who were accused of witchcraft or adultery and were punished for it?
To me, it is the juxtaposition of having this perceived power in the minds of men as being capable of influence, capable of seduction and luring, and superseding a man’s high intelligence and thoughts of himself and overtaking will power. But then, when women were accused of being witches, their already limited power just absolutely disintegrated and they were executed by mobs. I was thinking a lot about these kind of polar ideas of women having so much power over men, but then we’re struggling to be taken seriously in a workplace or struggling to feel like we are on equal footing.
I think sexism and racism today are much more insidious – as are homophobia and transphobia. It’s so palpable. Being able to give voice to someone in history who may meet a different fate; maybe they try to kill her, and she’s like,”Ha! I survived. And now, aren’t you scared of me?”
The influence came from a lot of different places; the witches from Macbeth, and the Roald Dahl witches. They are all in our popular consciousness to a certain extent, and I think we have a fascination with them.
Absolutely. Let’s talk about the song “Floodlights.” It reminded me of Joni Mitchell for two reasons. One is the sonic palette and the orchestration reminded me of her. Second, I saw a video of her recently and she was talking about how a good song should make a listener think of themselves rather than of her. That’s obviously an objective idea, but this song, though focused on a romantic relationship, reminded me of some of my own, but also friendships and working relationships and how the dynamic of one person’s power over another can be so incredibly detrimental. But there is hope and life on the other side of that. It is a special way you tell the story in a cafe where the protagonist is feeling herself rise over a past love for the first time. I was wondering if you find that you have clarity around power dynamics yourself as you grow older as the protagonist does?
I’ve recently turned 30. And to me, that seems to be the absolute blessing of your 30s, that you have this kind of clarity and understanding of who you are and what you are willing and not willing to tolerate. That song itself is about an age-gap relationship that I was in. We had an 11-year age difference. I was super young. I was 18 or 19 when we got together, and this whole conception that I had was, “I’m mature and I’m actually better than the other women my age, because I have someone who is super mature and who thinks that I’m interesting. I’m also better than the women his age. There’s something special about me,” like I felt chosen.
That was such a powerful feeling at that time when so much of my self-esteem was dependent on what other people thought of me. Slowly, through the course of this relationship, I realized that he chose me, but not for the reasons that I thought I had been chosen.
I mean he was a walking red flag and I just did not trust my intuition to understand that. This wasn’t a good scenario, and now, on the other side of it, at 30, I couldn’t imagine dating a 20-year-old. There’s an inherent power dynamic there. I wrote the beginning of the song two years before I finished it, because in the beginning, I couldn’t think of an ending. I couldn’t have seen him at a bar (which really happened) and just been scared and left. I wanted to give the protagonist a better ending than that.
It sounds like you did a lot of processing on this record through your writing, like maybe you released some frozen anger. I think most women can relate to that in general, because we are so often encouraged or told to suppress that emotion. I was wondering how your relationship with anger and revenge evolved and shifted through the creation of this album?
I think therapy seems to be a theme in a lot of artists’ albums these days. I didn’t realize how much anger I carried until I went to therapy. I had always grown up thinking that any kind of anger is debasing yourself. You’re losing power and you’re not being your highest, most evolved self.
Every time I got angry, I felt like I’d failed to access my more evolved emotions. It was through therapy that I learned that anger is, in many ways, necessary. We are refusing to be treated a certain way.
I think adventuring through these ideas of revenge where it’s like, “Well, what if I don’t choose forgiveness? What about that? Why do I have to be the peaceable one? Why do I have to be the one to absorb all of your violence, and then somehow process it out so that we’re good?” I have to say, it was really fun to write these lyrics and not shy away from some more violent imagery, especially in “The Witch.”
I heard someone say something like, “Anything that’s human is mentionable. And anything that’s mentionable is manageable.” I think singing it out is so nice because it’s mentionable. It’s manageable.
Speaking of, this is a great segue. How does it feel to perform these songs live?
It feels really good. It feels vulnerable too, having lived with them so long during the pandemic. It’s interesting to start sharing them with people. I have this ritual where the day before a single comes out, I listen to the song on a walk. And I’m like, “Okay, this is the last time this is gonna be only mine.” I think that ritual has really helped me. It’s a really personal album in a lot of ways for me.
I’m looking forward to trying it out in many different configurations, continuing the idea of play that we started out with this record, and seeing the different ways it can evolve and change.
Artist:Alisa Amador Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts Song: “Heartless Author” (featuring Madison Cunningham) Album:Multitudes Release Date: June 7, 2024 Label: Thirty Tigers
In Their Words: “Alisa has so much poise, playfulness, and honesty in her writing, with the most velvet voice. It checks so many boxes for me. I loved getting to sing and play guitar on this song.” – Madison Cunningham
“I love this song. I love it because it acknowledges all of the uncertainties and pain of life and it shines compassion on all of it. ‘It’s okay not to know.’ It was such a joy to sing this one with Madison Cunningham. She learned it right then and there in the studio, and her voice says so much.” – Alisa Amador
Track Credits: Written by Alisa Amador and Zia Amador Produced by Tyler Chester, Daniel Radin, and Alisa Amador Recorded by David Goucher, Tyler Chester, Daniel Radin, and Dave Brophy at Paperchaser Studio in North Hollywood, Brighton Hills West Studio in Watertown, and Studio Solitaire in Somerville
Artist:Malachi Graham Hometown: Portland, Oregon Latest Album:Caretaker
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
The Portland release show for my new album Caretaker in January was both surreal and sublime, in the best way. It was a month and two days after I had emergency brain surgery, necessitated by a rare blood infection called Lemierre Syndrome. I had only just regained use of my left side in rehab, I wasn’t allowed to lift more than 10 pounds or bend over and there was a historic ice storm in Portland just starting to thaw. Honestly, it was a little absurd to play the show and keep the date, but it didn’t feel reckless, because I had a community to catch me. Bandmates who insisted on lifting my gear, physical therapists who taught me how to play guitar again, a loving partner to change the bandages on my head, incredible parents who housed me and my band through the ice storm so we could all practice together, and so many supportive faces in the audience.
Caretaker is about trying to hold it all together, on behalf of other people, whether they ask you to or not. It’s about how that gets messy, about when that’s generous, and when that’s self-serving. My health crisis turned the meaning of the record on its head for me and taught me to receive care myself, to fall apart and trust I’ll be held. I tumbled into the web of care we weave for each other, that catches us when we least expect to need it. My friends, my family, my partner, and my bandmates were all there for me in every way that night. It was hard to make it through the songs without weeping with gratitude for being alive. I’ll never forget it.
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
I read once that the four qualities of excellent songwriting are texture, detail, wit, and truth. My very favorite songwriters are masters of all four — artists like Aimee Mann, Loretta Lynn, Eef Barzelay, Anna Tivel, and Jolie Holland.
Another art form that’s a study in the same principals? Miniature making! Lately I’ve been enthralled by dollhouse building and the creation of tiny worlds. Miniature artists pay attention to the smallest details that make something feel realistic and truthful, even if a scene is an imaginary place. The very act of building something tiny in meticulous detail is inherently whimsical and a bit absurd. It requires sharpness and ingenuity, and a scale of thinking that’s totally different than the day-to-day.
All of that feels akin to songwriting for me. I got to dabble in miniature making myself in the new music video for my song “We Made a Home,” which I built and filmed in a little yellow dollhouse at 1:12 scale. My favorite part was hand-building the tiny lifelike details of a cohabitating relationship in decline, from mini Rainier Beer cans, to mini self-help books, to mini dirty dishes. I also made a tiny Ear Trumpet Labs microphone case. (When I’m not making music, I’m the business manager at Portland microphone workshop, Ear Trumpet Labs.)
N.B., miniature making takes a lot longer than songwriting.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me?”
This has been an evolution for me. My early forays into songwriting felt more driven by an observational, sometimes academic curiosity, influenced by poetry, history, and family stories about my matriarchal ancestors. My first EP, Selfish, includes songs inspired by the 1934 Hays Code, Marconi’s theories of radio transmission, and my grandmother cleaning out the eaves of her house. I wrote and learned a lot from other people’s perspectives before I’d experienced much life myself. I still enjoy writing from other people’s perspectives as a practice in empathy and curiosity, but I find that my most emotionally resonant songs have more to do with my own experiences. It takes a different kind of bravery and vulnerability to write in the first person, and that has felt scary to do sometimes. On songs like “Montreal” and “Before Pictures,” even if the exact thing that’s happened to the narrator hasn’t happened to me, there’s a deeper truth or feeling I’ve experienced that I can get at best through a fictionalized story.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
Don’t be afraid to get weirder! My friend Jamie Stillway, a masterful guitarist and fearless sonic explorer, told me this about six years ago and it really stuck with me. I was feeling a bit trapped in particular instrumental and songwriting styles, because I assumed it was what people wanted to hear from me. I used to keep my musical selves neatly divided; I play and write in a synth pop band called Small Million and as a solo songwriter under my own name, and when I was younger I was more afraid to blend those worlds or explore the space between them. My musical start was all in folk and Americana music. The tradition and depth of songwriting in those genres is still a huge inspiration to me, but I’ve tried to give myself permission to be more faithful to a song and a feeling than to any genre in particular in my arrangements. The track “As Is” was written as a straight-ahead country song, but we recorded it played on an electric guitar looped backwards, played by two people at the same time with a screwdriver as a slide. A team of magical friends and collaborators helped me rip my songs apart and put them back together again to make them so much better, stranger, wilder than I ever could have imagined.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
Truth be told, I’m a bit of an indoor kid, so I guess… the air. But really, sincerely, I do spend a lot of time thinking about the air around me and inside of me, and how I interact with it through my breath. In singing, in practicing mindfulness, in both movement and stillness, breath is the element that calls me home into my own body. That helps me to remember that the body itself is an element of nature, and our breath is the place where the wild elements of the air and the self meet.
I often find myself exploring themes of both the body and the breath in my lyrics, as a window to intuition and self-trust, on songs like “Wonderful Life” on Caretaker, or “Be Wrong” and “Lightswitch” on my last Small Million record, Passenger. This really came full circle in my recent health crisis when I found myself on heavy oxygen in the ICU, and breath became something even more precious and sacred to me. My lung capacity as a singer really ended up saving my life— I’m still unpacking my gratitude and awe of that.
Singer-songwriter Leyla McCalla and her band (bassist Pete Olynciw, drummer Shawn Meyers, and guitarist Nahum Zdybel) join us onboard Cayamo to go through their incredible, righteous and fun new record Sun Without the Heat. It is a Leyla McCalla solo album, but no solo artist is an island! Once we saw Leyla perform with her band, with whom she has collaborated for the past six years, we had to get the whole collaborative outfit in on the interview.
The sounds on the album are inspired by Afrobeat, Haitian music, folk music, indie music, Americana music, Brazilian tropicalismo, amongst others. Leyla calls it, “A record that is playful and full of joy while holding the pain and tension of transformation.” McCalla’s liberatory politics find their way into the record, evidenced by the title – which comes from a Frederick Douglass speech given six years before the Emancipation Proclamation. Leyla explores her cultural heritage while reflecting the African diaspora using elements of Afrofuturism. She’s leaning into a concept that challenges women in music (particularly women of color) of how to free herself from labor that should not be hers, and fighting for her right to be joyful in her creative expression.
When asked about how these new songs feel through the lens of somatic experience, Leyla says the new music feels different and that she’s let go of the idea of perfectionism as a single mom of three kids. A lot of the record was informed by different authors she’s read recently like adrienne maree brown (Pleasure Activism) and Susan Raffo (Liberated To the Bone). Leyla’s really changing the game in Americana, when it comes to incorporating the academic into truly bitchin’ music.
Sidenote: we really loved hanging out with this crew at sea on Cayamo. They had great vibes, good laughs, and also very good outfits. Lizzie even recruited Pete to play bass in an impromptu trio while on board. More good times with Leyla and band, please!
This week, we’re excited to feature Joh Chase in Out Now. Joh is an artist from Seattle, Washington now rooted in Los Angeles, California. They’ve spent the past two decades developing their craft as a songwriter and performer and they’ve opened for artists like Noah Gunderson and David Bazan. Joh’s music steps outside the lines of any single genre and blends influences of blues, folk, pop, and indie rock.
Joh Chase’s brand new album, SOLO, was released today. It features diverse sounds, intimate lyrics, and an exploration of love, loss, self-discovery, and independence. Our conversation touches on why they create music, their greatest fear, and their process of self-funding tours and crowdfunding albums.
Why do you create music? What’s more satisfying to you, the process or the outcome?
I create music because I am lucky to have claimed music as something that I do. I just do music as much as humanly possible, because it makes me feel alive and helps me know who I am and how much I love the world and life and others. Both the outcome and the process are satisfying. The payoffs for showing up always feel rewarding, but the long game reward of gaining muscle memory around showing up when it feels like the last thing you wanna do, is its own kind of reward.
Do you create music primarily for yourself or for others?
I’m very “Oliver Sacks” about music. I unabashedly create music for selfish reasons – coping, pleasure, and connection. And then I love playing music for people or hearing the music of others because everyone has a “secret public song space” in their bodies and minds and they want to be there as much as possible.
Your songs cover a wide range of genres with traces of blues, pop, folk, and indie rock influences. How do you navigate genre diversity while maintaining a cohesive sound throughout the album?
I think the genre diversity and how that comes across in the different sounds is a reflection of the kinds of music I used to make and the sounds that have stuck with me throughout the years. Using the baritone saxophone, finding a way to express some soul music as well as some Americana licks amongst folky tunes indie folk/rock sounds are endemic to my musical expression. Over the years people have said, “Oh your voice would sound good singing… country, bluegrass, blues, soul…” and in this record I found a way to fit the genres to my voice, a bit. The surprising Flaming Lips-sounding party that is “Daniel” or the more jammy “Smoother” with its less Western sounding scale, are consequences of me feeling 100% happy with creating and releasing music that genre melds, as opposed to making sure I stay in some sort of shape, genre-wise.
The lead single, “Avalanche,” is both explosive and personal. What is the inspiration and significance of this track?
I honestly cannot remember the exactitude of where or when I wrote “Avalanche.” It was in the same set of songs as “Gone” when I first wrote it, but I can’t remember that session as well as I can remember the writing of “Gone.” The song centers itself around the powerful polarity of belonging and loss. Love is not just the “hot fire sex flame” of pop bangers, but also the unexpected mountain shelf of love that you didn’t know you had until it was gone.
This album, SOLO, reflects your do-it-yourself perspective as an artist. Could you share the challenges and rewards of self-funding tours and crowdfunding projects?
One of my favorite books that I was reading around the time that I decided to do the crowd funding that led to this record is the book Real Artists Don’t Starve. The book inspired me to go back to school while I was making this record. The record business is tough and very uncontrollable, but I will never stop making music. So it’s not a question of “do I want to keep making music”, but rather how and at which costs? I think some artists or bands are in a place where they feel comfortable sharing the financials of their music business with fans and some do not for many valid reasons. I feel comfortable sharing with my fans, I need $x to do this, will you help me make it happen. It’s much more acceptable now to have folks follow your Patreon or Substack or subscriptions than it was, so I feel grateful that there are things like Kickstarter and Patreon etc.
What would a “perfect day” look like for you?
Eating a Berliner from Black Forest Bakery in Los Feliz with my coffee, going home to the studio and making music or playing out with my band.
What’s your ideal vision for your future?
I’m sitting behind some tape machine or TEAC-2A, coming up with my next record and building more beautiful songs. I’m walking my dog and going to queer line dancing and the LA women’s soccer games with my city and then touring and meeting wonderful people and getting to play music for them. Definitely going back to Europe for more shows – I’d really love to do that.
What is your greatest fear?
My dog dying when I’m on tour.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
Get pet insurance.
What is your current state of mind?
I’m so deeply excited about playing these new songs for people this year and for people to hear this record. I couldn’t sleep last night after doing my taxes, ’cause I was so buzzed from the band rehearsal.
Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ artists and bands?
Brittany Ann Tranbaugh. Brennan Wedl. Bitch. Melissa Ferrick. Perfume Genius. Hand Habits. Sasami. Rhett Madson. Rachel Mazer. Ryan Cassatta. Brittany Howard. Sinead O’Connor. Jonnie Reinhart. Hurray for the Riff Raff.
For anyone reading this who might not be out of the closet, were there any specific people, musicians, or resources that helped you find yourself as a queer individual?
Willie Nelson’s “He Was A Friend of Mine” – I think struggling to come out of the closet or living in it or the aftermath of coming out revolves around loss of community and friendships. Nelson’s version of this song helps me still deal with some of the sadness around that loss. I was lucky enough to get sober and it was through the 12 step community that I met lovely, strong, vulnerable queers in LA who showed me the beauty and joy of what it’s like to be out and to be sturdy in your own way. I’m also spoiled with LA’s LGBT center – it’s an incredible organization with so many resources and events. Find the queers you want to be when you grow up. And then be the queer you want to be when you grow up.
What does it mean to you to be an LGBTQ+ musician?
I think it means that my music gets to be a safe LGBTQ+ place. That my shows and my music centers the queer experience.
What are your release and touring plans for the next year?
After touring this summer to promote the record on the West Coast, I’ll head east later in the year and jump into some Folk Alliance conferences. No release plans on the radar yet after SOLO.
How do you find a balance between the business and artistic aspects involved in your career as a musician?
I honestly don’t totally know. It’s intuitive and chaotic and intentional and has been part of my personality or my way of life for so long, now, that I don’t know if I can pinpoint one precise center of gravity. I have to protect my creative time, nurture my playfulness in life, let myself ditch friends or ditch overworking or ditch over-cleaning to let those creative moments remind me of who I am. I am lucky to have a manager, a team at Kill Rock Stars and friends who support me and my music. Inside of community, the glaring nature of the music industry is dulled out quite a bit.
Siri Undlin, better known as Humbird, is a talented singer-songwriter from the Twin Cities with deep roots in Minnesota music and the land that surrounds her. Growing up, she was a true cold-weather kid who loved hockey during winter, but also loved music and feeding her vivid imagination. Her interest in music was nurtured by her parents, religious music, church choir, and also her Aunt Joan, who taught Siri guitar at age 12. Hockey actually led her to her first band, Celtic Club, which would play at Irish Pubs, talent shows, and of course, at the local hockey rink. They introduced her to Celtic music and her first live performances.
In this episode of Basic Folk, Undlin shares her rich experience studying folklore and fairy tales, which greatly influence her musical journey. She discusses her intensive research in Ireland and Nordic countries, exploring how music intertwines with storytelling traditions.
Throughout the episode, Undlin reflects on her upbringing, her time at an art school, and her evolving approach to songwriting, blending traditional folk music with indie music and experimental sounds. On her new album, Right On, Siri is acknowledging and addressing white supremacy in middle America, as highlighted in her song “Child of Violence.” She talks candidly about what writing and releasing the song taught her about white supremacy. Touring has provided Undlin with unexpected challenges and valuable insights, shaping her perspective as a musician and performer. We talk about the importance of being open to chaos and disciplined in one’s mindset while navigating the music industry and life on the road.
Knowing how 2020 and the years that followed would unfold, the dynamism of Katie Pruitt‘s debut record is even more awe-inspiring. Expectations introduced the Nashville-via-Georgia singer-songwriter alongside her deepest aches and most intimate struggles as an openly queer individual raised as part of a devout Roman Catholic family in the conservative South. It would go on to earn a GRAMMY-nomination and ample praise for her lyricism, empowered performances, arranging, and instinct for production. In short, it’s undeniable that Pruitt set quite the high bar of expectations for herself and the music she would choose to share next.
Four years later, Pruitt has unveiled Mantras. While flashes of brilliance from a familiar autobiographical lens inform and inspire the 11 track recording, these aren’t simply more straightforward, memoir-style anecdotes. The truths and experiences Pruitt shares on Mantras feel more revealing than Expectations, as this time, Pruitt’s lens looks decidedly more inward at what she has lived through, reflected on, and learned from since writing her last album.
Not only is Mantras‘ thought process largely internal in nature, but each song leads to paths, stories, and developments that have yet to be fully resolved – if ever they will. The album showcases a great deal of inspiring perseverance in the self-contained conclusions of songs like “Self-Sabotage” and “Worst Case Scenario” and more generally, it unveils a journey of self-healing from start to finish.
However, while Mantras ultimately provides reassurance, peace, and closure, the takeaway isn’t meant to be one of permanent resolution or rigid perspective around anything Pruitt has seemingly conquered in each song. Like the recapitulating nature of a mantra, she is mindful of being continuously attentive and compassionate towards her inner struggles, rather than seeing them as singular moments of adversity.
Speaking with her by phone, BGS shared an insightful conversation with Pruitt about how her focus on inner-healing shaped the sound of Mantras, how her perspective around disagreement and connection has changed, how she cultivates inner strength, and much more.
How was it navigating the presence of expectations for Mantras, considering your intent to move away from a focus on external validation?
Katie Pruitt: On the first album, I was dodging different expectations, you know? I was dodging expectations of my parents or of how people in my hometown saw me and who I am now. I sort of accidentally set high expectations for this next record. I felt like I was competing against myself in a lot of ways and I really had to find moments to just surrender, come back to center, and just focus on the fun feeling in the present moment and talk about that, instead talking about things that I think people want me to say. I needed to focus on what I needed to say, which is maybe different than what other people expected or wanted to hear on this album.
Knowing this album is an expression of personal growth and a journey of sorts for you, what does it feel like to just now be talking about these songs after holding onto them for so long?
Coincidentally, I feel like everything on Mantras is lining up with my life as it’s coming out.
With me talking about my parents selling my childhood home [in “Naive Again”], yeah, my parents are selling my childhood home as we speak. And when I finished a lot of the songs about my partner slowly checking out and leaving, maybe a week after I turned in the record, we broke up. So I’m still experiencing a lot of these things in my life. It’s kind of a first for me, because when Expectations came out, I had kind of already patched things up with my parents and there were things in my personal life were kind of resolved. But then I was having to dive back into those issues every day on stage or whenever I sang those songs. This is different, honestly. It kind of feels good to be able to deal with what’s going on in my life with the songs in real time.
You’ve talked about building “the tracks from the ground up as opposed to cutting everything live, which gave so much more room to let the songs evolve and become what they needed to be.” What does that mean for you and what did those moments of full realization for the music feel like for you, and producers Collin Pastore and Jake Finch?
Jake and Collin’s workflow is very quick. And that was a challenge for me, but I felt like we challenged each other in the right ways. They move very fast and I was like, “Wait a second. Let’s take a look at this. Let’s sit with it for a second and make sure we like it.”
I think having the option [to record parts individually] instead of having all this pressure to be in the studio with a full band and having everyone play the right parts at the right time, was nice for us – to just build one part at a time and ask ourselves, “Is this correct? Does this fit?” And if it doesn’t, we’d say, “We can always mute it.” … There’s not necessarily a wrong answer. We’re just trying to evoke a feeling and if we feel it then other people will too.
What brought you together with Christian Wiman’s work, ultimately inspiring you to writing the album title track?
I was listening to this poetry podcast, [Poetry Unbound], I was really into that during the pandemic and that was obviously a tough time for a lot of people, [creating] a lot of points of contention, especially around beliefs and belief systems. I just felt like, my parents believe different things than me and my friends started to believe different things than me. So that poem, [“All My Friends,”] just really resonated as this “A-ha!” moment.
At the very end of the poem [Wiman] says something like, “My beautiful, credible friends.” In the first part of the poem, you almost feel like he isn’t mocking them, but like, he’s kind of poking fun at how many rabbit holes there are to go down, as far as spirituality goes or, finding yourself goes. Then at the end, he’s like, “And all of them are credible, all of them are valid.” And that really struck a chord for me and I just think that’s a really powerful statement.
Given the open and accepting mindset you impart through “All My Friends” and its juxtaposition with the piercing, personal insights you share in “White Lies, White Jesus, and You,” where would you say religion, particularly Christianity and Catholicism, exists for you now, compared to when you were writing Expectations?
I really try to make clear to my parents or to some of my friends who are still Christian, that [the song] is talking about people who take the Bible and abuse it for their own benefit – whether that be political or just to justify shitty behavior on their end, like saying, “Oh, well, it says that gay people aren’t allowed in heaven. So I’m allowed to say this.”
That’s the part of [Christianity] that really turns me off to it in general. And that’s a shame, because the dude in the Bible, Jesus, the version that I have kind of come to discover as I’ve gotten older, is a pretty progressive dude. And I don’t mean that in the political sense. I mean, in the sense of he’s accepting of everyone no matter what their background is. Like, Jesus himself never says anything about gay people. He’s friends with kind of some sketchy characters if you were going to look at it through a lens of today. So that’s the Jesus that I wish I were taught more about when I was growing up. I think “White Lies, White Jesus and You” was a way for me to process the [version of] Jesus that I have experienced as a closeted gay kid and how the ways that version hurt me and put that in the past and put that behind me.
In what way would you say your journey of self-healing helped you to stop seeing religion as having the power to dictate your worth?
I let go of religion dictating my self-worth a while ago. But then I let other things [take its place]. I used to seek external validation from the church or from my parents or from older mentors in my life. I let that go as I became a young adult and then I started giving other things power to do that. Like success and relationships. I let those things dictate my worth. But then I started delving into the power that intrinsic happiness has.
We really fully don’t have control over what happens in our life. We have some control, but very little. And if your worth can come from within, then those moving parts of life have less control over you or less effect on you … once I learned that, I was able to focus more heavily on, “Let’s have this voice in my head be kind and then I can go from there.” Just me practicing being kind to myself first kind of put this armor up around me and it helps me navigate the world.
What’s changed about your songwriting process since you’ve taken on more personal strength and inner compassion?
For a long time, when my inner voice was more critical and cutthroat and editorial, I couldn’t really write. I wasn’t able to get the thoughts just out of my head and onto the paper, which is the first step you know? Then you have something to work from when you’re able to just say what you feel. But I was just so scared to write a bad song that I wouldn’t write anything. And I think that’s the worst mistake you can make. There’s no harm in writing a bad song.
I think that it’s just about setting the bar, taking a chill pill and [remembering], “Oh yeah, songwriting is fun, songwriting should be fun.” It should be a way for me to get an outlet, a way for me to get this out of my head and look at it. So removing the critical voice is huge. And that was connected to therapy and to me slowly learning how to be kind to myself and slowly learning how to just enjoy writing songs again.
Where, with whom, or in what, do you find your hope and strength to persevere when life feels overwhelming or your inner reserves are running low?
The past or other people’s experiences really help me. I read a lot of Patti Smith and sometimes I’ll just open to a random page and it’ll be the piece of advice that I needed. So definitely words and art and poetry. Another thing would be when I’m feeling, “Okay, all hope is lost,” I have this urge to just run to nature and I just go to the mountains or go sit by a river for a long amount of time and think and meditate and try to put my problems and my fears and everything into perspective. I think, “Well, I’m on this planet right now and I’m sitting by a river. How cool is that?” Just kind of zooming out and not zooming in so closely – that helps me. And like, just good friends and just laughing and having buddies that you know you have a drink with or dinner with and just fuckin’ laughing about the crazy things that have gone wrong. Like, laughter is huge. I know it’s like, “Oh, laughter is medicine,” but it literally is.
Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen
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