Tag: Interview

Guitarist Jackie Venson Charges Down a Path of Joy, Vulnerability, and Shredding

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Jackie Venson, Austin, Texas’s resident singer, songwriter, guitar shredder, and joy dispenser, took a couple of months to restart the locomotive momentum of her career after it was halted by the coronavirus pandemic in March of 2020. A summer of stepping up her touring and festival appearances trashed, she had to purposefully and intentionally consider a way forward. 

She chose the path less traveled, but she never trekked it alone. By the end of 2020, Venson’s totally independent team had landed her at number 10 on Pollstar’s Top 100 livestreamers chart for the entire year — higher than superstars Luke Combs, Brad Paisley, and even K-pop, heartthrob boy band BTS’s stream counts, with streams totaling more than 2.8 million viewers. 

“It felt like the train stopped and then I created work for myself,” Venson admits, describing an intentional pivot to virtual, streaming shows and alternative programming that never felt like she was giving up the most important parts of her art and expression. Just the opposite. Venson is a rare example of a musician who has utilized the pandemic to not only discover a new, novel way forward in an industry that promises burnout, extractive power dynamics, and the commodification of selfhood even in the best, most profitable cases. She also grew her fan base, her community, and found enough time to release five projects in the last calendar year, as well. 

Jackie Venson’s Shout & Shine livestream (viewable in the player above or here) — which highlights many of the entrancing, charming, entertaining aspects of Venson’s music, creativity, and most of all her stunning improvisation — will debut on BGS on Wednesday, February 3, at 4pm PST / 7pm EST. We began our interview talking about joy, which is not only present in every note of Venson’s playing, but is the first song of her Shout & Shine concert and the title track of her 2019 album. 

I wanted to start by asking you about joy. It feels so obvious and palpable in your music, especially in your playing style. Not just in how you’re so engaging and charismatic, and not just because it’s the title of your 2019 album, Joy. On “Surrender,” for instance, you sing, “Feet are so tired, but I keep running/ Heart is so heavy, but I keep singing.” That sounds like the radical act of choosing joy, to me.

JV: Well, it’s literally what I’m feeling while I’m actually playing the music. It’s just really cool to be able to play the guitar. I worked really hard to be able to play the guitar and when I look in the mirror I see the same face who started guitar, I guess ten years ago now, except this person can play the guitar! This person can play the guitar, and everybody likes listening to this person who can play the guitar. Not only is this person having a really good time doing something she set out to do ten years ago, but everybody else is enjoying it and having a good time on a base level — and by base level I mean, often they’ve just walked in the room. [Laughs] They weren’t there ten years ago! They’re enjoying it, objectively, and I’m sitting here looking at the depths of [the music] and then I’m watching other people, who don’t even know the story, just having a good time. That is pretty awesome and actually, I’m pretty sure that’s why most people set out to play instruments. They see somebody having fun doing it and they want to have fun, too. 

It sounds like gratitude is equally important to you. You’re clearly expressing so much gratitude for being able to do this thing that creates so much joy in your own life and in others’.

Well, absolutely. Gratitude is the foundation of joy. You can’t really have joy if you don’t have gratitude. 

One thing that jumped out at me from your livestreams and performances is the way you sing along with your guitar lines, the way you’re constantly in dialogue with yourself and your own voice. It made me think of the age old tradition of fiddling and singing along with yourself — and of course, it makes me think of jazz and bebop solos as well — but I wondered where singing along with the line in your head came from for you? 

My dad told me the best way to learn how to improv solos. I had been working on trying to improv from even the time I played piano from when I was like fifteen. I remember getting another piano teacher who knew jazz so that they could teach me how to improvise. Obviously, [Laughs] that’s the wrong angle. I was four years into playing guitar before I learned that I was approaching improvisation the wrong way. The funny thing is that my dad told me, when I was fifteen, he was like, “All you need to know about improvising is that you just think of a melody and you play it, and after you play the melody you thought of a few times, you start messing with it.” So you play it, and add a note here or subtract a note there, and he’s like, “That’s all you’ve got to do and then it’s a great solo!” Because a melody isn’t just playing notes randomly, it has purpose. You want your solos to have purpose. My dad told me that fifteen years ago and I just didn’t hear him. I wasn’t ready to hear him. It took the guitar and years and years of singing, as well, to put it all together and arrive at the destination my dad tried to usher me to. 

I’m a picker and a teacher as well, and I’m sure you’ve had this happen, you’ll get students who are so intimidated by the idea of improvising, I’ve had students just cry when you say, “Can you try improvising something?” 

It’s a touchy subject! It’s like singing, how people are way more sensitive about their singing. They’ll show you their drum licks all day, but you ask them to sing and they’re like, “Noooo!!” 

It’s the vulnerability! 

It’s a new level of vulnerability. But here’s the thing, it’s not very hard, all you have to do is just listen to a crapload of music, stuff a bunch of melodies into your brain, and then, just think about all of the melodies you know and think about them a lot. Always listen to music. Keep listening to the music you already have listened to and listen to new music. If you’re constantly listening then you’re going to be sitting on stage and everyone’s going to point to you to solo — say Cm going to F — BOOM! All of a sudden you’re playing, [Sings] “They smile in your face/ All the time they wanna take your place” on the guitar. You’re playing “Back Stabbers,” because suddenly  you’re going from Cm to F7 and you know it will sound good. You know? [Laughs] Because you’ve heard that melody and it’s not very hard! A beginner could play it. [Hums line] But you’re crushing it with some tone and everybody in the audience is thinking you’re a master. When really, what you’re playing is not that hard. It’s just musical. 

My jaw literally dropped when I was doing my research for this interview — you released five projects in 2020. Two double, live albums, the two volumes of Jackie the Robot, and also Vintage Machine. You also landed in the top ten of Pollstar’s livestream chart for the entire year. I hear you say “the train ground to a halt,” and I see a new train that didn’t just start up, but is roaring. I’m sure you see that, too. What does that pivot feel like now that you’ve got some retrospect. 

In that moment, it felt really busy, but it also felt kind of maddening. I was busy, but I was never leaving my house. Then it felt crazy. And in the next moment after that, the numbers started to juice. For a couple of months it was full stop, for a couple of months it was maddening like, “Wow, these numbers are really rad, maybe this is the way.” A couple of months after that I knew this was definitely the way. I stumbled upon the way. I was walking along on a path and then that path had like, a giant tree fall over it and I couldn’t go down it anymore. I saw this side path — you know when you’re in the woods and you see a path but you’re not sure it’s a path or if your eyes are just tricking you? 

“Is that a deer trail or is that actually a trail?”

Right. Is that really a trail? It’s like, “I don’t know… but there’s also a giant tree over the path I was on. Can’t go that way. I guess I’m going to go down this path, I hope there’s not too much poison ivy…” [Laughs]

That was the livestream path. There was maybe one creature that walked down this path, one way, one time. It appears there’s a path, but it clearly hasn’t been followed very often. That’s what it felt like, to be on this uncertain path, which then ends up opening up and it turns out I was right the whole time. The way I feel now is not the way I felt when it was all happening. The way I feel now is all because of having retrospect on my side. And the development — the direction things are going in. It’s a lot more clear than it was six months ago. 

 

I have found myself repeating throughout the pandemic that we should be building the world we want to exist after the pandemic while we’re in it. To me that’s what it sounds like you’re describing, finding this other path. Looking to the future, what will you be bringing with you from this time, into whatever a post-COVID reality looks like? 

The thing I’m taking with me is the fact that there’s never any need to be desperate, there’s never any reason to act out of desperation. There’s no person or contract to be signed that holds the “keys to the kingdom.” There is no kingdom. We are IN the kingdom. We just exist within different perspectives of it. Maybe your perspective in the kingdom right now is that you’re a baby band, you’ve just established yourself. You’re in the same kingdom as Beyoncé! You’re just standing in a different spot than her. There are thousands of spots you can stand in this kingdom. Beyoncé’s spot isn’t the only one that’s good. There are lots of places to stand! Millions of artists, that you don’t know about, are standing in pretty sweet spots in this kingdom that we all exist within, together. 

There’s no person that’s going to give you her spot. She got to her spot by her own weird, twisty trail to get there. Maybe a deer walked down it once! She took her own path. You’re not going to be able to recreate that, but she just took a path to get to a spot, not the kingdom itself. You consider that spot the kingdom, but we’re all in the kingdom already. The way we used to live had this weird illusion that we all had to climb these ladders, but really you just need to get where you want to be. You don’t need to climb that same ladder just because someone else climbed it, and they’re famous, and you’ve got to do what they did. It doesn’t make any sense, it’s completely futile, and you’re going to just be spinning in your hamster wheel, stuck in the same vantage point. There’s not one guy or gatekeeper who can unlock everything for you. There are people who will say they can, but what happens? You end up stuck at one spot, one vantage point. There’s no one person, one artist who has it all.

All photos: Ismael Quintanilla III

With a Country and Soul Groove, Marcus King Drives ‘El Dorado’ to the Grammys

Posted on by Editor

Thanks to a Grammy nomination for Best Americana Album, Marcus King is getting a second chance to make a first impression.

At the dawn of 2020, he’d been poised to become a breakout star in roots music, able to deliver an electrifying show with the soul chops to match. After three albums billed as The Marcus King Band, his solo debut record, El Dorado (produced by Dan Auerbach), received positive notices just about everywhere, including BGS. But as the year unraveled, so did his touring plans. In response, he turned his attention to songwriting, ended up booking some socially-distanced shows at drive-in movie theaters, and even landed a spot on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. And with attention from the Grammys, he’s back in the game — although he’s been surrounded by music from the time he was a kid.

“I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t entirely prominent in my life,” he tells BGS. “Just a focal point of every conversation or thought that I had.”

In the interview below, the 24-year-old performer talks about the family influence of his father and grandfather (who were both musicians), his earliest years on the stage, and the advice he’d give to teenagers with an equally burning desire to pursue a life in music.

BGS: There’s a lyric in “Wildflowers and Wine” that refers to an “old scratchy record.” I’m assuming you’re a vinyl collector. How did you go about building your collection?

King: It started when I was about 11 years old. I started with my mother’s collection and my dad’s collection, because in the early ‘90s that was dead technology, you know? They had tapes and CDs, so I inherited everybody’s collection. I inherited my Grandpa Pete’s big old stereo from the ‘50s when nobody wanted to carry it around anymore. The first record I bought on my own was Robin Trower, Bridge of Sighs. I just remember that smell of the record store and all those gatefolds and tools that went with it for cleaning your records. You know, the care that goes into it.

Who are some of your country influences?

Man, my grandfather spoon-fed me on all the good things country when I was growing up. We lost him when I was 14. He was a big country music proponent his whole life. He played in the Officers Band when he was in the Air Force in the ‘60s and he and his band backed up Charley Pride when he came over and played Ramstein Air Force Base [in Germany]. He backed up a number of legends over there. They asked him on the base television that they had over there, what he had to say to all the troops, and he said, “Long live country music!” So, he started me young on Charley Pride, of course, and George Jones was our jam. That’s what we listened to the most. Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings… The list goes on and on, you know how that is.

Who are your influences when it comes to showmanship?

As far as showmanship’s concerned, I mentioned that my grandfather was really into country music and I grew up listening to country music with him. And my father turned me on to the Allman Brothers and Southern rock and blues guitar players like Albert, B.B., and Freddie King. What I discovered on my own was soul music. And the first artist I remember really, really digging was James Brown. I just loved the way that he controlled the stage and the way he controlled his band.

You know, to speak about my grandfather, Bill King, again, his biggest advice to me was that you’ve got to dress for the show, never get on the stage without your boots on, and you just need to dress like you’re not there to see the show – but you’re there to put the show on. Showmanship was always instilled in, early on. Well after the importance of knowing how to play your damn instrument, but it was an important one.

I’d read that you started playing professionally at 11 years old. What kind of gigs were those?

It was a lot of Christian bookstores, a lot of coffeehouses. We just played anywhere that would take us. My father is a born again Christian and a blues guitar player, which was a really niche market at the time. So, he wanted to play Hendrix covers but he would rewrite the lyrics from like “red house” to “church house.” And that would be our foothold into the Christian community. He went through his fair share of hard times with that, trying to be accepted into a gospel music community. Because he had long hair and played “the devil’s music.” But that was the kind of venues I started playing.

Were you with your dad’s group, or playing with your own group?

I started playing with my dad’s band when I was about 8 years old. I was playing what I knew. He would let me come up and play. That’s where I cut my teeth. When I was 11, I got my first experience in the studio, playing with my dad’s group. That’s when I started going out with his group.

From there, I tried to be whatever he needed. If he needed a rhythm guitar player, I’d do that, or if his drummer couldn’t make it, I’d play drums. Or his bass player, same situation. I was just there for whatever needed to be done. I just liked to play. When I was 13, that’s when I took on the leadership role, or started the process.

At what point did you start driving? Did they put you behind the wheel when you had gigs?

I was real tenacious about that, man. I had a real roaming nature about me. I was a Bassett Hound. I’d put my nose to the ground, look up, and be lost as hell. I wouldn’t know where I was. So, I was just ready to go and didn’t care where. I got my learner’s permit when I was 14 in South Carolina. The only stipulation was that I could drive as much as I wanted in the daytime, but in the evening, if I needed a licensed driver in the car with me.

So, to me, that meant I needed to hire a band of adults who could act as chaperones for me in the bars, and that could be licensed drivers in the car. Then I could be the sober driver at the end of the night. I had a good situation for anybody who wanted to come play with me. I would drive them there. You could drink as much as you want because I’d drive us home. And I’d get you paid good because I kept us working, at least four or five nights a week. I’d book us under a fake name, through my email, so people would take us more seriously.

What was it like being 14 years old, up on a stage in a club? Did you like it?

Oh man, I loved it! I saw my future ahead of me when I got there. I had to deal with my first drunk audience member. Or I had to play louder than a drunk argument. Or I had to have my first encounter with a lousy club owner that didn’t want to pay us. I saw my first bar brawl. I loved it, I ate it up. You go in there and you’ve got to have an assertiveness about you, but then again, you don’t want to be a 15-year-old asshole that nobody wants to work with.

I’m glad that that didn’t happen. But you had to be assertive because, being 15 years old, there was a lot of opportunity. You know, I have a lot of faith in human beings but there is the opportunity that people will try to rip you off. There was a lot of navigating those waters and it worked out good. I had a lot of great experiences in those days.

Were you going to high school during this time?

I was. I was going to high school and playing four or five nights a week. But, you know, I wasn’t up to no good, so my dad didn’t really see much harm in it. He was supportive of my dreams, but he was torn, though, because I was having trouble in school. I was just not interested and I was hyper-focused on music, so that was difficult for him as a parent but also as a supporter of my dreams. But it worked out.

For teenagers now in that same situation, what message would you send out to a kid who’s frustrated at the moment, but knows they wants to have a career in music?

I’ve always said, you knock on every door, and if they don’t answer the door, knock ‘em down. It’s sometimes better to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission in this industry. You know, it’s a thin line you’ve got to walk. You’ve got to know your worth but you can’t have a big head. You should never be overly confident. Never be your biggest fan, but be your second-biggest fan.

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

LISTEN: ‘Once Upon a River’ Soundtrack

Posted on by Editor

Written and directed by Haroula Rose and based upon a best-selling novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, the award-winning indie film Once Upon a River tells the story of Margo Crane, a Native American teenager who sets out to find her mother as her own life takes one dramatic turn after another. Margo is portrayed by Kenadi DelaCerna, in her screen debut.

Shot to evoke rural Michigan in the 1970s, the mood of Once Upon a River is frequently elevated by original music from Rodney Crowell, JD Souther, Will Oldham, Bridget St. John, Fran Farley, Peter Bradley Adams, and Haroula Rose, as well as an atmospheric score by Zac Rae. Hear the soundtrack below, and enjoy an exclusive interview with Haroula Rose.

BGS: This story is set in 1977. How did that influence the music you chose for the movie?

Rose: Having it set in the 1970s made me excited about being able to use my favorite era in both music and cinema as inspiration. It was one of the reasons I loved the source material for this very unique kind of road movie, because I knew at once that I could use some psych folk, soul, country and ambient sounds to get into this tale and characters. My film partner at Thirty Tigers (David Macias) was literally the first person onboard for this project, while composer (Zac Rae) and music supervisor (Mike Turner) were also among the first people creatively involved once I had the shooting script. As a musician first, I am always thinking about it as a central element even as I am writing, and the music is deeply embedded into the process from the beginning. I used certain themes Zac had created to play for the actors while we were on set and they were very moved by hearing them.

There are moments of quiet in this movie, too. It reminds me of the adage that a good musician knows when to play a solo, as well as when not to. Can you tell me about your process for placing the music into the film without distracting from the storyline?

I love that analogy! I feel that silence can be as potent as noise, and the pauses in the film all have a voice and are communicating something as well. Margo is not the most traditionally vocal character but is so expressive, thus the music had to parallel that… such that we are still able to feel her subjective experience through the pregnant moments of quiet as much as the action scenes. Ultimately it was about continually paring the story down, sculpting it to its very essence, and the music supported that goal since we were always allowing it to evolve and not give too much away too soon. There was this balance we had to strike with regard to supporting the story and not giving away the emotions before their time. I’m really happy to hear you say it worked!

The placement for Will Oldham’s “Always Bound” works especially well in this film. Can you describe why you felt that scene and that particular recording synched up so well?

Will was the first person to write an original song for the film upon reading the script, and it was this magical piece. In fact “Always Bound” was what I used for our very first scene we shot of the film, which was Margo by the fire when she is eating canned food and camping. I brought these bluetooth speakers out to the woods and played it as we filmed, so we all dropped into this same emotional zone. It was a special moment, having Will as a creative force of support right then at the start. So I already knew which space it would inhabit in the film right when I heard it.

As you were writing dialogue, were there any characters whose perspective, or “voice,” that you particularly enjoyed?

Writing Smoke and Fishbone’s dialogue and banter was super fun, because like so many other parts of this story that inspire me, it is a unique relationship. I loved it in the book too. In terms of perspective/voice, writing Luanne because she is someone who is very complicated and all too easy to depict in a one-dimensional way, was a cool process. I really liked trying to find a way into her that is more complex and nuanced, more empathetic in seeing and understanding her pain, as she struggles to communicate and to exist in the world.

There’s a Rodney Crowell song here, too, and it’s filled with imagery. How did that song, “The Damage,” make its way into the film? And what do you remember about hearing that song for the first time?

Well, Rodney was one of the people considered for acting in the role of Smoke! David Macias reached out and then Rodney and I had a conversation about it. It was surreal because I have long been a Rodney fan. Hearing him play years ago at the Old Town School of Folk literally changed the stream of my life. When he found out he couldn’t do the role, Rodney kindly offered up the idea of a song. I was tremendously honored and then upon hearing it, with its visceral imagery and his manner in singing it, I got very emotional.

He got to the heart of two lonely but loving souls we don’t often see, and their connection. And then recording it — I sang harmonies with him — was so special in many ways. It was similar with JD Souther who wrote a song that Smoke (John Ashton) sings in one of his final scenes. It feels like a dream how this all came together, very fulfilling in terms of making music and making films. I co-wrote a song with Peter Bradley Adams and Zac Rae for the soundtrack as well, that plays in the final scene; that song always gets me emotional too.

To me, cultural identity seems to be a significant theme in this film — in a sense of racial identity, but also privilege. Was that element of diversity part of what attracted you to adapting this film?

Definitely. Bonnie’s novel alludes to Margo’s bloodline, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to showcase talent that would also add a dimension of depth to what the story is saying about “otherness” in her character as well as others, like her father (Tatanka Means) and Will (Ajuawak Kapashesit), who she meets along the way. It’s also part of her journey in coming to know herself and who she will be, that she knows where she came from. Will is the first person who asks her about her own potential, and hence why she makes the choice she does towards the end (no spoilers). In terms of privilege, I think it’s also depicted in terms of the Murrays and how they have interacted with and abused the land and the community, but I hope it’s conveyed that Margo is also someone with skills and talents that she learned from her father, which are a great gift. She has the depth and the comfort in being in the wild, knowing how to survive.

This film will be finding its way to even more viewers in the months ahead. Watching it now, more than a year after you completed it, what are some of the emotions you feel?

I still feel very inspired and emotional, especially at the ending. I also feel beyond proud of every single person involved and their hard work. It’s hard making an independent film and it’s my job to bring out the best in everyone. I hope the world out there sees that as they experience the film, the story, the music. A year after it premiered, 40 festivals and 19 awards later and many years after first reading the book, well it has been a wild and ambitious ride all to support a story that I truly believe we could see more of — seeing one another with compassion, empathy… Margo’s nonjudgmental and generous philosophy of live and let live… even or especially for those who cause you pain. It helps you find your own way.

Once Upon a River is available to watch via Film Movement. You can listen to the soundtrack on all streaming platforms.

Through His Music, Charley Crockett Speaks to ‘Hard Times’ We’re All Facing

Posted on by Editor

“Welcome to Hard Times,” the opening and title track from country crooner Charley Crockett’s eighth album is Crockett at his finest. He is pensive and pitch perfect, relevant and retro. “The dice are loaded, and everything’s fixed,” he sings. “Even a hobo would tell you this.”

It’s hard to tell if the 36-year-old Crockett is the hobo he references in that line, though it’s entirely plausible. As contemporaries cut their teeth at Belmont and Berklee, Crockett was busking on the streets of New Orleans and New York. While there, he learned how to entertain an audience in pursuit of a tip; perhaps more importantly, he learned the ways of this world, how we’ve all been ushered into a 24/7 casino where the house is telling lies and the gamblers are predestined to sin.

Welcome to Hard Times, comprised of 13 tracks of searing anguish set to slick, ’60s-style, country-western production, culminates with the particularly sorrowful “The Poplar Tree.” It’s a song that Crockett says has been received differently by different audiences, even as he — a man living somewhere between Black and white, privileged and not — feels that his message is obvious. “I have, many times, on this album cycle, said to press folks, ‘Yes, we’re all oppressed folks, but some folks just have it harder,’” he says. “And you have to recognize that.”

By phone, we talked to Crockett about his album, the role of artist as activist, and, of course, these very hard times.

Welcome to Hard Times sounds like you wrote it for this moment — in the midst of a pandemic, with widespread racial unrest — but you actually wrote it before everything went down. What inspired you?

You didn’t need this shit going on this year to know about these problems that we’re talking about. I don’t know how you could travel this world as an artist and not see it. I think that says everything about the nature of people. I recognize people are in different positions, but there are a lot of people who are in positions to not see what’s going on, and there are no consequences for them. Then there’s everybody else who’s forced to see it, who deals with it and suffers for it.

You’ve definitely been vocal in interviews and in your music. But even as you speak now, I get this sense that there’s a push and pull, or a toeing of some line that you’re subconsciously doing.

I’m trying to walk this line that is strange because I have been identified by a lot of my audiences as just a regular white man. Then there are a lot of people that look at me strangely as the complete opposite, as African-American. But I can’t speak for the Black community and I don’t really feel like I’m speaking on behalf of the white community either. I never saw myself as Black but I never liked my whiteness.

What does it mean when you say that you never liked your whiteness?

I dreamt of myself and viewed myself as not white from probably 5 years old. And then I look at myself now in videos and stuff, and I just… I feel like I look strange.

I guess what I’m saying to you is: My issues with my own identity tie to the kind of James Baldwin viewpoint that whiteness is just a metaphor for power, and that my identity as somebody who is uncomfortable in my whiteness says a lot about the relationship between Europeans in America and African-Americans and Natives. The romanticization of genocide is an unbelievable crime, but I think what is probably more savage and brutal is the assimilation through rape, through bondage, through [people like] my grandmother [who was mixed].

The easy thing for somebody to do is say, “Well, you can’t skip white responsibility for institutional and structural privilege.” I see that, so I’m not saying, “Hey, whiteness isn’t real, therefore nothing that’s happening to you is valid.” I’m saying you have to recognize that it’s happening, and then, if you truly wanna change it, at what point in the future do whites need to stop looking at whiteness as meaning anything? That’s the step that I feel is completely absent in the national conversation.

There are conversations happening though, right? And white people, at least some of them, appear to be really listening.

There’s a combination of white consciousness, and then there’s this other, fake, white virtue signaling. I just can’t stand some of that stuff ‘cause I see a lot of these people playing politics with their public image who are not doing anything in their life about shit. It’s whites signaling to other whites, and that’s what Martin Luther King was talking about at the end, you know? He really was. I think Malcolm X saw it at the end; I think James Baldwin, because he was so intellectual, was saying it to everyone, but he managed to get away with it because I think he seemed like he was mostly speaking within that kind of elite, intellectual world.

“Blackjack County Chain” is a song written in the ‘60s about a Black chain gang in Georgia that kills their supervising sheriff. Word on the street is that Red Lane, the writer, offered it to Charley Pride, but he passed on it because he didn’t want to stir up controversy. You covered it on Welcome to Hard Times, and it’s the only song on the album that you didn’t write. Why’d you decide to cut it?

I sung that song mostly ‘cause I listened to the words and identified with it. I feel like I’m dragging chains, you know? I just do. I always have. I think that that’s the other weird thing about America that is really hard to recognize, for a lot of us. It’s, like, no matter how much better a lot of these people have it, the insane thing that I’ve seen about America is, even among all these people in positions of power and privilege, they all view themselves as discriminated against and oppressed.

Your song “Poplar Tree” discusses lynching. Was there a concern about going too far when you wrote it?

I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking a whole lot about where that song was gonna go. It just went there.

Right, because you said this stuff dominates your mind.

It just does. And it’s who I am. I am in the public eye on some level and people got all kinds of crazy shit to say about that. And it is not lost on me that, for whatever reason, these people saying the crazy shit that they’re saying about me, they got nothing like that to say about these people that I’m getting compared to in the independent, Americana country scene. Even if I can sing ‘em under the table, they don’t criticize how they sound, but they criticize me up and down. And I’m not blaming them; I’m not mad at ‘em, I’m asking for it, in a way. I know that I’m asking for it, ‘cause I can just pack up and stop doing this shit.

 

Like, let’s talk about folk music. Let’s talk about blues, back in the day. When these guys were singing about their situation, it was all code. It had to be code because if it wasn’t, that might mean your life. So I’m stepping up and down to say this shit loudly, but I’m trying to build my audience to a place beyond where it is now. I’m just saying, I don’t exactly know who I’m speaking for, really, because of how completely outside of this society that I feel.

How did playing on the streets for so long shape you as an artist?

To me, that’s the best education I could’ve ever gotten in my life. It was unfortunate circumstances and difficult living that brought me there, but I would never wanna go another direction. It’s informed what I’ve done, and I learned about folk music, hip-hop, and everything else. I just absorbed it all on the street, and I made it into what it is now.

I have people in country who look at me like, “This guy’s an imposter! Look at this video of him on the subway train ten years ago! He’s wearing a beanie and tight pants; he’s not a real cowboy! He’s not country music!” And I’m like, who is more authentic than me? I never got a leg up in the business, period. I never opened up for anybody of note. I built my career out of the most unlikely of circumstances.

Do you think artists have a responsibility to speak up about social issues?

It’s like this: If your art isn’t saying shit, I don’t care about your political opinion. Like, if your art isn’t making an impact, your political opinion, to me, is little more than you trying to get ahead. And I mean that about white people; I mean that about everybody. If the art isn’t doing anything, then what’s the point?

Photo credit: Laura E. Partain. See the full photo story.

Lori McKenna Shows Love of Every Kind on ‘The Balladeer’

Posted on by Editor

When it comes to capturing life’s big loves — romantic ones, sure, but also the love between siblings, parents, children, and friends — Lori McKenna is one of the strongest songwriters of our time. The Stoughton, Massachusetts-based singer finds fodder in the everyday moments that most of us overlook, reminding us that every day is worth singing about.

Her new album The Balladeer, produced by Dave Cobb, embraces the same openness, expert wordplay, and quiet wisdom that have become her hallmarks. “This Town Is a Woman” uses extended metaphor to reflect on the push-pull of a hometown. Perceptive songs like “When You’re My Age” and “Til You’re Grown” offer hope and direction to a younger generation, while “Good Fight” is an ode to hard-won, imperfect, lifelong love. The Balladeer shows McKenna at her best.

BGS caught up with McKenna by phone about where she found the courage to try open mic night, the advice she’d give to aspiring artists, and the family moments that keep her centered.

BGS: How did you first begin writing songs?

McKenna: I started writing songs with my two older brothers that were songwriters. They always wrote songs in their bedrooms and that’s what I would always do with my siblings. I grew up just outside of Boston and we were listening to singer/songwriters and talk radio and things like that, but not a lot of country music. But strangely enough, the first song I wrote was a country song about… a rodeo? [Laughs] My mother was like, Where did this come from? I joke now that I must’ve brought it along with me from another life.

How did that evolve into performing and writing professionally?

It was really unexpected. I’m sure my husband would say this as well, but I didn’t know that I could do music for a living. I never sang outside of our house, because I had such a strange voice — certainly, compared to my siblings, I have like the weirdest voice out of all of us. My siblings all sing so beautifully. [Laughs] I never thought that I really could do it.

I always say my kids really gave me the courage to really step out and try. I started doing open mics around here in the Boston area because we have this really great community of venues and a great acoustic or live music scene. But it was especially a surprise to me more than anybody else, that I could do this. It has been such a big part of my life since and I’m very thankful for it.

“This Town Is a Woman” finds so many ways to drive home the metaphor: “You curse her every time she tries to change / and when you’re not happy, you swear that she’s to blame,” which sounds like a tumultuous relationship, or “The way you talk is partly her fault / From the back roads to the church parking lot,” which sounds more motherly. What was the first example that clicked for you, that told you this was a comparison you could make?

The song came to me in a strange conversation that I had with Dave Cobb on the phone one day. He called, and he was talking about putting together a record of women singer/songwriters in the Nashville community. The next day, I was driving my daughter to school, and it just occurred to me that if a town could have a gender — you know, the way they name storms after women, or boats, or whatever — surely a town would be a woman. I mean, there’s just no question.

It’s very motherly, in my brain. She’s gonna let you grow up and push you out, but she’s gonna wait right there for you to come home if you need her. She’s always gonna see you as yourself. She’s gonna know things about you that nobody else knows. It’s that calling; that call of the blood, the call of the hometown. Springsteen talks about it in Springsteen on Broadway, how he couldn’t wait to get out of there and now he lives five minutes from where he grew up. We all have that in us. And if so, it’s definitely because … well, it’s a woman.

And you live in the same town where you grew up. What do you love about where you live?

I think there’s just something in my bones about New England; it would be hard for us to leave here. I live just up the road from where I grew up in this town — I could walk to my dad’s house — and my husband grew up here as well. Our kids had some of the same teachers we had. Family is such a big part of both of our lives. I’m the youngest of six kids. My mom passed away when I was little, and when that happened my family just hunkered in on each other. The older I get, the more I realize that my siblings are such a big part of my life. I need to be around them.

You write a lot about family, specifically about motherhood. You were young when your mother passed away, but is there any specific way you feel she shaped you, particularly as a writer?

There’s some sort of button that was pressed when we lost my mother. I had just turned seven, and when there’s a death of someone that big in a family, and you’re that young, everyone’s going to come up to you and explain that your emotion is warranted: This is a real emotion, you should have it, it’s your right to have it and own it. When kids have really blissful lives, everyone’s brushing off their emotions a lot. You’ll be okay. You fell, but you can get up. You don’t need a Band-Aid. You’re tough. But because at such a young age, I had this family around me that said, “You’re sad, and it’s okay,” it stuck with me. I gave my emotions, when they came to me, a little bit more space than some people are able to. Me having the right to a very powerful emotion at such a young age informed a lot about being a songwriter.

What advice would you give someone who’s just embarking on a career as a songwriter and artist?

The biggest thing they have to be careful of is not changing themselves to bend toward what is in style at the moment. I was so lucky, in so many ways, that I started so much later than everybody else. I was too set in my ways to change very much. Your best asset is to be yourself — nothing is going to be always right for everybody, so you might as well. I think with any kid growing up, they have to learn not to look at social media and feel like it’s a lesson book on how to be. You have to be who you are right this minute, and it may be different next year, but you still have to be who you are as an artist — even if it’s an artist that’s not ready.

You recorded the title track a little differently than the others on The Balladeer, two vocals singing in unison throughout. Why?

That was one of my favorite production moves of the record. It was Dave Cobb’s idea and I’ve never done it on a whole song before. Making demos over the years, there are times where you’ll double your vocal on a chorus, but that song actually doesn’t have a chorus. [Laughs] That’s the reason he thought to do that. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it: We tracked live, and when we finished, he said, go ahead and sing it again. I said, What do you mean? It’s over! You’re crazy! And it just came out so good. To a producer, a song like that, without a chorus, is a little bit of a challenge. And he just brought it to life.

The main character in that song struggles with an insecurity — the idea that if she stops being sad, she won’t be able to write. Have you encountered that fear in the songwriting world — in yourself or in collaborators?

I definitely have had that conversation with people over the years, and I’ve always been kind of the opposite of it. I’ve been so lucky in my career and in my life, and I’ve had so many blessings — things I don’t even know how I got so lucky to do. People sometimes ask me, “How are your songs so sad when you’re so happy?” … But I think your job as an artist or as a songwriter is to learn how to not always need the pain to be able to write. Pain cannot always have to inform your craft. Once I discovered that character in “The Balladeer,” I liked the idea of her being challenged by that, and then coming back and realizing that there is pain in life no matter what — it just doesn’t have to be all of it.

So many of your songs are a good reminder of that balance, the good and the bad. Right now, is there anything in your life that centers you when things get tough?

That’s such a good question, especially now, because we don’t really know what’s next. Every day is like four days, emotionally. This whole time and space thing is like… you forget what day of the month it is, but you’ve had four emotions before lunchtime. For me, I still draw from music, and I’ve had really, really great dinners in the backyard with my kids, because everyone’s slowed down a bit.

In the past, my husband and I have taken the kids on vacation, tried to do all these things to make all these moments. But this year my favorite moments have been sitting in the backyard, with takeout, and talking to each other. We’ve all had to slow down a little bit, and as scary as that seems sometimes, I’ve tried to find the beauty in it. Watching most people around me find the beauty in it has been rewarding, too.

Photo credit: Becky Fluke

After Nearly Dying, John Anderson Adds ‘Years’ to His Life

Posted on by Editor

Over the past few years, country crooner John Anderson’s inimitable voice escaped him after suffering health issues and brushes with death. Through the creation of his new album, Years, he found it again.

In the album’s opening song, he opines, “There were people placing bets that I’d be dead and gone/But I’m still hanging on.” Although he does not disclose details, he does concede that the illness affected his hearing and, in his words, “I had nearly died a couple of times.” Listening through the album produced by Dan Auerbach and David Ferguson, it is clear that now Anderson is doing more than just hanging on; he’s creatively thriving. He tells BGS what it was like getting back in the studio, how he’s spending his time amidst the pandemic, and his feelings about making music these days.

BGS: Tell me a little bit about how Dan Auerbach came into your life.

Anderson: Actually we were introduced through a mutual friend by the name of Jeremy Tepper. He does a lot of work for Sirius/XM Radio. We’ve been friends a long time and he called me one morning and said, “I was with this guy the other day and we were talking about you and I would really like you to get together.” I said, “Well sure, I’m really not doing much these days.”

He asked if he could give Dan my number and I said, “By all means, give it to him!” The next day or so I got a call from Dan and we ended up setting up a meeting to get together and talk. Originally mainly just to talk about writing some songs together. At the time he was busy producing some other acts. I thought they might need some material and I thought I might help them write some.

What was your writing process like for this record? I’ve read you had some surprise co-creators on this one. What was that like?

We did. It was great. Looking back, I have to thank Dan and Dave Ferguson (aka Fergie). They were both involved in setting up the writing appointments. As it turned out, I got to write not only with some heroes, but some great old friends. It was really a joy. Writing these songs was a real pleasure for me. And it was at a time when I really needed to do some writing and get some music out of me. I’d been sick for a couple of years and hadn’t been able to do much writing or performing. At this point, I was recovering and really wanting to get back into my music.

This was all really good for me as far as writing the songs. We wrote for a couple of days, then the recording part came up. I remember saying, “Boys, I don’t know. That’d be great, but I’m really not sure I can do it.” I think it was Fergie who said, “We think you can.” I looked at him real serious and said, “Really?” And they both nodded. There wasn’t a lot said. It was a pretty solemn time there. I remember saying, “Well, if I do it, I’m going to treat it like it is the last one I’ll ever do.” Just because I was in that frame of mind at the time, mostly due to physical health reasons.

What was the moment like when you stepped up to the mic for the first time?

For me, singing is really something I’ve, thank the Lord, never really had to think about it, when it is time to step up to the mic. I do spend a lot of time thinking about singing, mind you. Most of my life I’ve walked around humming a tune. And maybe humming it a different little way. But when it is time to go into the studio or when I step up to the mic, I’m kind of on autopilot. I’m mainly trying to deliver the song, whatever the song is.

That certainly comes across in your singing.

Well, thank you. I want it to be real, in every kind of way. I’ve been a real stickler for that through my career. Sometimes you pay a price for that and sometimes it doesn’t turn out as good as you thought. On the other hand, when it is all over you can be proud of doing your own thing.

When you had those songs together, what was the recording process like? Did you cut them all at once or piecemeal?

We went in like three or four days one week and then we took a little break. I don’t even think we took a week break. We cut Monday through Thursday it seems and then took the weekend off and showed back up Monday. We had about 20 songs to choose from that we’d written over the previous months. I’ll always recall that as a really good time in my life. It really helped me to heal up. Even to the point today, I almost forget I was ever sick.

That’s so great.

It’s a blessing, is was it is. It took a lot of praying to get it. And now I am, and have been, well enough long enough that now the music is back on autopilot. I just do it all the time.

There’s a heaviness on this record as it deals so pointedly with mortality. On the flip side, it explores the simple pleasures in life and these elements really balance the record. Can you tell us some of the simple pleasures you are finding in life in these strange times?

I kind of found them a bit earlier through the songs and doing this record in a time when yeah, I had nearly died a couple of times. So, mortality is certainly in some of these songs, as far as my influence on them. Now there again, I can’t take the credit for any single song on the record because we had a lot of great help writing them. But my influence is a lot about mortality and the part in the songs about being thankful. That was kind of where I was at the time.

And you know what? As far as the situation right now and playing shows. … That’s been probably the biggest part of my life ever outside of my family has been going and playing the music to the fans. That’s pretty much all I have dealt with for the last fifteen years. As I’ve not been actively in the recording business, my live shows are what mean the most to me. It is a little bit difficult not knowing if or when or how we’ll be playing again to crowds. That’s been on my mind.

On the other hand, I feel very blessed to still feel healthy and have a great outlook. I’m still trying to write and sing most every day and doing a lot of gardening work and doing a lot of fishing. Fishing and gardening is what I’ve been doing and trying to play with my grandchildren. You have to save up energy to go do that.

How did the collaboration with Blake Shelton come about?

Blake is an old friend. I was a fan of Blake’s when I first heard him and then come to find out, he’s told people I was one of his biggest inspirations. At the time, when we were recording this record, low and behold we got a call from Blake’s people asking if we’d be interested in going on tour with him. For me, I did have to cancel tours previously on account of my hearing was nearly gone at the time. I didn’t have a working band. I hadn’t been on the road in a while.

I told them I didn’t have all that together and they said it was just for a few songs a night and his band will back you up. I said, “Really? That’d be a real treat. That’s like chocolate cake.” So it did work out and about the time the tour worked out we were finishing some of the tracks on this record and I said, “I’d love it if Blake could come in and sing with me on this.” We asked him and he was very gracious and did. Not only that, he invited me on the tour the next year also. Blake Shelton is a true hero of mine at this point. The tour was called Heroes and Friends and he’ll always be one of my heroes.

Do you ever revisit your old records? With all you’ve been through, do you view those songs in a different light?

Oh, I do. And I have been lately. That’s part of what I’ve been doing in this solitary time. What’s really been going through my mind lately are some of the songs that I thought were just as good as anything that I had ever written but really nobody got to hear them. Maybe I have twenty of them. I’ve been thinking about going in. It’s strange that you’d mention old stuff, and I’m talking about even from the time I was a teenager. Just things that I might go in and work on. Mainly just to pull it together and have that piece of work together, those songs. I’m thinking about that lately.

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Courtney Marie Andrews Blossoms Within the Solitude of ‘Old Flowers’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

As she releases an emotional and illuminating new album, Old Flowers, Courtney Marie Andrews finds herself facing the exact scenario in which she began the creative process: solitude.

Over the course of months writing the material that would become the 10-song LP, the only alone time she enjoyed was while crafting songs, tinkering with melodies, or teasing out narratives from her own subconscious, interrogating herself as a writer, as a narrator, and as a human. But instead of personally carrying her crop of new material out into the world, she’s tasked (like so many of us right now) with sharing these tender buds while she remains in place.

Listening to Old Flowers in this light is like receiving an artful and tenderly dried bouquet. Even as she reflects on the life-changing experiences of the last few years, this album feels made for this moment, bolstered by the sharp, intelligent compassion evidenced on every track and in every lyric. For our Cover Story, we connected with Andrews by phone and began our conversation, as we all do these days, commiserating over shared though separate isolation.

BGS: So much of your songwriting feels like mantra writing to me, particularly some of the choruses on this record. They feel meditative, especially in the ways they repeat and reinforce themselves — whether in the lyrical hooks, or just the themes in the lyrics. Where does that meditative quality come from in your songs?

Courtney Marie Andrews: It’s funny, when I was writing this record I felt like I was in my own personal “quarantine.” It was my first time being alone in over nine years, it was my first time living alone, I moved to Nashville, I was making new friends. I felt, in my own way, that I had found this island. There’s definitely an in-place feeling to the record more than my other records.

It’s really insightful that you said my songs are like mantras, because sometimes, as the narrator [of these songs], I am sort of giving myself therapy. Especially on this record. It does feel like a mantra, particularly on songs like “Carnival Dream,” where I just say over and over again: “Will I ever let love in again? / I may never let love in again.” It’s sort of me accepting that that may be the case.

Another line that may stem from the same idea: “I’m sending you my love and nothing more.” It’s as if you’re reminding yourself of that boundary, rather than the person you’re singing to. Do you agree? That’s the light bulb that went off in my head.

I’ve never thought about it that way, but yeah, it is a boundary. It’s absolutely a boundary. It’s the closing line for the record for a reason. It’s the closing chapter of this saga.

Like you said, writing the record, you were alone for the first time in a long time. I wonder how it feels to reckon with that solitude again with these same songs. Solitude that may feel similar, even if it has a completely different cause.

When I first wrote them, it was like these epiphany moments. More than May Your Kindness Remain I see this record as songs born out of necessity, to get these feelings out. I felt grumpy! The first year was just getting them out, overcoming that first obstacle — especially when you’re in a relationship with someone that long. There’s so much to process you can’t even see what’s in front of you. Now, when I’m listening to the songs in isolation I’m learning more about me as a narrator. More about, “Where do I stand in all of this?” and “Where do I stand now?” 

Last year, the only time I allowed myself to be alone was when I was writing songs. Otherwise I was mostly just trying to distract myself constantly with work, or music, or friends, or drinking. You know, everything you do to distract yourself. This learning about the narrator in these songs — that narrator being myself — has been my current isolation process.

Normally what we’d be talking about right now is how these songs change as they bounce off of audiences, as you’re feeling people besides yourself take ownership of them. Obviously that is still happening, it’s an inherent part of how humans consume music, but the way we relate to that phenomenon is so different now. It’s happening through live streams, through screens, across so much distance. What’s tangible to you about that difference?

As any human probably feels right now, I feel this is very nuanced, has many sides, and I have many days where I feel one way and many days where I feel another. Especially in regards to quarantine and being so uncertain of everything that’s to come. I will say, if I’m being 100 percent frank, so much of knowing people’s true feelings about my songs and how they’re connected to them, for me, is in performing. And talking to someone at the merch table or in the audience. It just feels so much more real. It feels like an AI [artificial intelligence] right now! [Laughs] I know that people are connecting to it, I’ve gotten so many lovely messages about the songs, but it just doesn’t feel as real. 

I will say, in the very beginning, when everybody was live streaming — musicians immediately took to those platforms — I was super inspired by that and by how quickly we can all adapt to “new norms.” I think it’s beautiful that our community feels so passionate about it that we found that outlet. And I’m so grateful that we have that outlet during this, but there’s nothing quite like being in a room with people and singing the songs. As far as my hope about it, I do have hope that this isn’t going to be the remainder of our lives, you know? I really do. If there’s anything I’ve learned by going through really dark, dark depressing moments is that right on the other side is usually the most beautiful moment. It really is. 

How, if at all, has your mission in music changed or adapted in the past few months? Or has it been re-centered? 

I feel like, if anything, it’s made my conviction for what I’ve always intended for my music truer. Since the very beginning I had many opportunities where I could’ve done this for different reasons, but I didn’t do them, because they weren’t what I felt my internal mission was. That internal mission has always been guided by connection — real, human connection. The very first shows I played where I was busking, if we got money that was a bonus. It was shocking, because to me it was more about, did somebody in the audience cry? Did I make somebody feel something? If anything, I’ve always been trying to get back to that. Especially in quarantine and COVID times. With everything that’s going on I feel even stronger about that conviction. And I feel silly for the moments where I’ve been afraid and done otherwise, in small ways. 

I wanted to ask you about “If I Told.” One word can be so pivotal, that “if” changes the entire tenor of the song. And it’s almost a swallowed lyric, too. The song — which is about the telling not the if — is so expressive and does a great job of detailing the phenomenon of having something you simply HAVE to tell someone. it’s just festering, but you still don’t feel that you can. But, literally speaking, there shouldn’t be an “if!” Why is there an if? [Laughs]

When I was writing a lot of these songs, especially the ones where I had left the relationship and started dating again and was meeting people — “How You Get Hurt” and “If I Told” are both rooted in that — I kept saying, “Oh my god these are millennial love songs.” I think the reason that they are is the “if.” I would say this is a big difference between Boomers in the ‘60s and us, culturally. We are all afraid to say it. To just say it. We feel so much, so much, if not more than [these other generations]… but we are all so afraid! Afraid to connect with each other. We’re afraid of rejection. Or afraid of what might reflect in it, because we are so self-aware. Maybe it would hurt us too much? More than anything!

It’s even more fascinating to me now, hearing this answer and knowing “How You Get Hurt” and “If I Told” come from that same period of time, where you’re opening that part of your life back up. That’s the moment when you’re like, “All right. I’m starting out fresh. New foot forward.” You can set the precedent that you’re now, going forward, communicating openly. But, again, you take that first step and right back into the old habit of, “If…” What do you see as a solution for that self-editing? How do we be radically vulnerable and eschew shame? I think our generation needs it so badly right now.

If I’m being completely honest, for me, personally, the problem was the lack of time. The lack of self-reflection. It was being catapulted from this nearly decade-long relationship with this person I essentially grew up with into these new, highly romantic situations. [It was] not having any time for me to rediscover who I was again. I’ve never been more ready to date in my life and to tell someone I love them than when I spent three months at home! [Laughs] With myself! Not drinking, not going out every night–

[Laughs] Every single one of us like, “Aw, shit I wish I didn’t want a boyfriend SO bad right now.”

I know! I know! [Laughs] Honestly, it’s because I’ve finally accepted myself! I think we all have problems, because we’re all so self-aware and have so much shame; there needs to be more conversation around imperfection because we’re all deeply flawed. We’re all human. It’s okay to forgive yourself and it’s okay to be wrong. Accepting those imperfections is something we all need to come to terms with. I think our culture, especially with social media, has a perfection problem. 

Your songs are thoughtful and nuanced and emotional, with this quiet vulnerability, but your voice and the aesthetic of the music are usually so powerful. Especially in the way your vibrato comes through, you feel this sheer force. How did you strike that balance on Old Flowers? Here I don’t think it’s as prevalent as the past couple of albums, but it feels more deliberate and careful. 

Old Flowers, for all intents and purposes, was meant to be an intimate conversation. When I sang it, I wanted it to be that conversation you have where you aren’t blowing up at each other, threatening to jump out of the car. It’s the quiet conversation you have months later, when you’re catching up, and it’s delicate. You feel strange and disconnected, but still so close to this person you know so well. I think, in regards to my voice, on this record I was very intent on making it a quiet conversation, vocally. 

I’ve always been such a big fan of performative singers, singers who perform as the character, as the person they’re singing about. Aretha did it, Joni does it, Billie Holiday did it, Linda Ronstadt does it, all of these great singers. I’ve always really been drawn to that. You don’t sing every word this straight, same way, you put care into every word. You sing with the story in you. If you don’t sing with the story inside you, then how can anyone relate to it?

All photos: Alexa Vicius

BGS Long Reads of the Week // June 12

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Don’t look now, but we’re approaching the mid-point of June and another week has passed us by. YIKES! Luckily, we have another week’s worth of long reads for you, too!

The long-winding catacombs of the BGS annals and archives have so much to offer. As we share our favorite longer, more in-depth articles, stories, and features to help you pass the time, take a minute to follow us on social media [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] so you don’t miss a single #longreadoftheday pick!

This week’s long reads travel from the canyon drives above Hollywood to Pavement to a former Oregon poet laureate to everyone’s favorite five-stringed instrument. Check ’em out.

Stephen Malkmus of Pavement Ventures Down Acoustic Road on New Album

Stephen Malkmus, of the bristly, brainy 1990s indie rock band Pavement, joins a host of fellow alt-rockers in dabbling with folk and acoustic sounds. On a brand new album, Traditional Techniques, which was produced by Chris Funk of the Decemberists, Malkmus expands on the flickers of folk interest that have permeated his career, though he may not claim mastery of any of them. [Read our #CoverStory interview]

Sara Watkins Wants Us to Ride Along on Watkins Family Hour’s brother sister

Earlier this week we celebrated Sara Watkins’ birthday (June 8, for the record) with a revisit to our recent Artist of the Month interview where she walked us through her recent Watkins Family Hour album, brother sister. For the first time in their lifelong musical careers, Sara and her brother Sean focused on creating music centered on their own duo. brother sister was the result. [Celebrate Sara’s birthday with a read]

Aoife O’Donovan Finds Her Heart in the Verse of Others

Aoife O’Donovan’s latest EP, Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs), arrived in March. Our Cover Story unspooled the inspiration she gained via poet Peter Sears, the former poet laureate of Oregon, whose verse is utilized in three songs O’Donovan wrote and arranged with Teddy Abrams and Jeremy Kittel. The project is rounded out by a Hazel Dickens cover and a classic folk song, giving listeners a sampling of each of O’Donovan’s folky expertises. [Read the interview]

The Byrds’ Chris Hillman Reflects on Laurel Canyon and Why He Had to Leave

A new, two-part documentary, Laurel Canyon, traces the comings and goings of several generations of folk rockers down Sunset Boulevard and up into the hills. Chris Hillman (The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers), one of the canyon’s earliest and most famous residents, about the new film, the community, the music, the neighborhood, and why he had to leave. [Read the full story]

Mixtape: Ashley Campbell’s Banjo Basics

With her classic 2018 Mixtape banjoist and singer/songwriter Ashley Campbell reinforced the deeply held BGS belief that– MORE!! BANJOS!! From songs by her late, legendary father Glen and her godfather Carl Jackson to classics from folks like J.D. Crowe, John Hartford, and the Dixie Chicks, this mix has a little bit of everything and a whole lot of five-string. [Read & listen]

 

Sarah Jarosz Looks to Her Texas Hometown for Inspiration (Part 1 of 2)

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After years spent living in New York City and traveling the world on tour, Sarah Jarosz has turned to a source of inspiration she’s never mined before: her hometown.

With her fifth album, World on the Ground, the Grammy-winning artist gleaned her own folktales from the everyday rhythms of her life in Wimberley, Texas. Her time away from Friday night football games and the shadows of cypress trees allowed her to look on Wimberley’s details with fresh eyes, from the Ford Escape her parents drove and the dusty trails it kicked up to conversations about out-of-reach dreams with old friends (that she examines on “Maggie,” which came from an actual heart-to-heart she had with an old friend at her high-school reunion).

Jarosz found a breakthrough in the most familiar folds of her memory, but this perspective was also molded by the city that guided her as she retraced her steps through the Texas Hill Country in her lyrics. On “Pay It No Mind,” the single that gives World on the Ground its name, Jarosz alludes to this ability to find meaning and movement at a distance: she sings of the frightening, and often destructive, churn of life in our current moment from the point of view of a “little bird stretching her wings” who takes in the chaos from the seventh floor.

“I think being able to write and make this record mostly about my hometown, in New York, from far away, was an interesting part of the process,” she says. “It’s almost what allowed me to take on the role of the little bird on the seventh floor in a way, because I think it took leaving Wimberley and being away from it for quite awhile to be in a place where I could actually write about it in this way.”

In the first half of our two-part interview, Jarosz walks BGS through the little Texas town that became her muse, how her work with bluegrass supergroup I’m With Her left an impact on her creative process, and more.

For some people, going back to their hometown is a traumatic event, a negative, damaging experience. There’s clearly a lot of compassion for the voices you explore on World on the Ground, which was inspired by your own hometown. If you were to visit Wimberley with fresh eyes, how would you describe it?

Jarosz: One of the things that stands out about it compared to other towns of its size in Texas — and I think this would be obvious, even if you’d never been there and were taking a drive through town — it seems like it’s a little more balanced. It has one high school, and one football team, and a lot of the small town culture does revolve around that, around this sort of Friday Night Lights idea of a small Texas town.

But there’s also this incredible artsy kind of community in Wimberley. One of the big draws of Wimberley is its market days, which I think happens once a month — maybe it’s every weekend in the summer, I can’t remember. Arts and crafts and even the fact that there was a bluegrass jam every Friday night, that was why I fell in love with all this music in the first place. It feels a little more balanced in that way.

I truly feel, probably in a biased way, that it’s a very magical place. A lot of people who drive through it, if they’re driving around the hill country in Texas, would agree that it’s one of the towns that stands out from the rest. It has this kind of shimmery quality to it — that’s the word that comes to mind.

I love the contrast of “Maggie,” then, in which you’re singing from the perspective of a friend of yours from high school who can’t wait to leave the small town behind. I appreciate “Maggie” because it’s a real conversation you could be having with anyone who’s stuck where they are. The location is almost insignificant, because it’s about whatever’s holding you — it doesn’t necessarily have to be the town you’re in.

Exactly. The “football games and processed food” line definitely puts it in a place, but I feel like [the song] could also be anywhere. I purposely tried to make that happen. It was such an eye-opening thing for me to actually have this conversation with this friend — we were really close friends in childhood, then just drifted apart over the years, and ran into each other at my tenth high school reunion. She actually didn’t go to my high school, she went to a different school and that’s why we drifted apart.

She was asking me about my touring and my life and everything, and I think I was probably saying, “I wish I could be in one place more. I wish I had more of a home sense at this point in my life.” She was sort of saying, “All I want is to do what you do, travel and see the world.” It’s funny how sometimes the things that seem so obvious take just a simple moment of someone saying it to your face, and then you realize, “Oh! Duh!” That really happened for me there. That song is all about empathy and compassion for anyone who wants their circumstance to be different than it is and might not necessarily have the means to make that happen, but still having the dreams to hopefully one day change.

“What Do I Do” is a companion song to that, in a way: It’s sung by someone who wants to be home more, who wants to be still for a minute. What inspired that song?

A lot of these songs feel like gifts, in the sense that I generally feel like a very, very slow lyrical writer. The music comes more quickly to me, but that song and a lot of the songs that I wrote with John Leventhal were similar experiences. If he had the music written and sent it to me, the lyrics seemed to come very quickly. “Pay It No Mind” and “Orange and Blue” were two of those.

“What Do I Do” was another one where it almost felt like a dream to write. It’s similar to “Maggie” in the sense that it’s that same sort of longing for wanting something else than what you currently have, but then it’s also a thankfulness and acceptance in that. It almost feels like a mantra-type song where it’s repeated and it goes to a different place — very simple chords in the verses, and then it opens into this washy vibe in the, “What do I do, what do I do?” It was one of those gifts of a song.

You’ve been collaborating with your friends Sara Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan for years. Now that you’ve written albums and toured together, do you hear, or did you feel, the imprint of your time with I’m With Her going into this record in a new way?

I felt it in a creative way, personally. I think all of us were just so positively influenced by that experience [of] touring and putting out that record. What that allowed all of us — I’m speaking for myself, but I’d imagine they probably feel a similar way — was just the chance to step back and take a breath. Not in a busy sense, because we were just constantly working and on tour, but creatively.

I had never been in a band before; I had only ever put out my solo records. I think after Undercurrent, I couldn’t really imagine going straight into another solo record or album push because I just wasn’t inspired to. I had reached a point where I had wanted to experience something new. There was something so rewarding about feeling like I was a part of a team. We were all on each other’s team and carrying the load together. It was just so wonderful and magical. It definitely gave me the creative juice to just be so psyched about making this record.

With Sarah and Sean making their Watkins Family Hour duo project, and Aoife making Bull Frogs Croon, I love those projects so much because [we] all seem so inspired. I think that is because we all allowed ourselves this chance to step back from our own things, be a part of a team and give ourselves the gift of this renewed inspiration, almost. I definitely felt that. I hope they do, too. I’m so grateful for them.

Editor’s Note: Read the second half of our interview with BGS Artist of the Month Sarah Jarosz here.

Photo credit: Josh Wool

Jesse Daniel: ‘Rollin’ On’ After Rocky Times

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To quote the title of his new album, Jesse Daniel is indeed rollin’ on, moving past the setbacks of his past and now celebrating three years sober. One thing that hasn’t changed? His dedication to classic country music. With its echoes of Buck Owens, Ray Price, and other legends of the ‘50s, Rollin’ On simply extends the traditional country sound Daniel explored on his self-titled debut album in 2018. He recorded it in San Antonio with producer Tommy Detamore.

“I’ve been telling people that the record I did before was songs that I had written over a period of years that dealt with a lot of past stuff,” he says. “This one has some of that, but it’s a lot more about moving forward, and to me, even physically driving, moving forward. It’s symbolic of that. I think it naturally fell into place with the theme of this record.”

That drive is evident in “Tar Snakes,” “The Mayo and the Mustard,” and the rousing title track. He knows something about mileage, too. Raised in a rural mountain town near Santa Cruz, California, and now living in Austin, Texas, Daniel caught up with BGS during a tour stop in Nashville.

BGS: I hear a positive attitude coming through several of these songs, like “If You Ain’t Happy Now (You Never Will Be)” as an example. Do you consider yourself an optimist, or in a pretty good place these days?

JD: Yeah, definitely. I’ve been a pessimist before in my life. I know what that’s like, but at this point, yeah, I definitely consider myself an optimist. And that song, it’s funny, the title of the song might seem almost like a slam on someone or something. When you listen to the lyrics, I wrote that song as a reminder to myself. You could have everything in the world and still be miserable if you’re not focusing on the here and now and what matters.

At what point did you begin to write songs?

I’ve been writing songs and short stories since I was a young kid in elementary school, and I would always write wild stories. You know, I had a crazy imagination as a kid, and then I got into punk rock when I was in my teen years. And country songwriting and writing in this style started as a cathartic thing because I always loved country music, but it naturally progressed.

How do you progress from punk to country? How did that happen?

I’ve seen there’s a common thread. I’ve talked to a lot of other musicians who play country music now that were into punk rock, and I think that there’s something about the spirit of it that was similar, that called me to it. …For me, I was introduced when I was really young to Buck Owens and Hank Williams and guys like that, and I always loved that music. There’s a lot of older punk rock guys that I knew that were listening to Black Flag and things like that. But they were also listening to old Hank Williams records. I got influenced by that. To me, it was almost the turning point, a maturity thing. I didn’t feel quite as angry, and even if I was, I wanted to do something constructive about it. And that, to me, was a more constructive form of expression.

Do you remember when you wrote your first country song you liked?

Mm-hmm [Affirmative]. I had been writing for a while and none of them really got completely finished. They were all ideas and things that turned into other things later on. But the first one that I finished that I remember liking was a song called “Don’t Push Your Luck.” I wrote that in a hospital bed in a rehabilitation center in Oakland, California. I was going through a lot of rough times in my life, and that was the head of everything where I decided to really start pouring myself into that. That was the first country song I was ever really proud of.

Was there a turning point where you got healthy or decided to take care of yourself?

Definitely, yeah. There was a guy who was in that program, and he worked there, and he’d come in and play guitar for us. I was sick for about a week detoxing, and I would hear him playing guitar in the other room. He’d come in playing Hank Williams songs and Emmylou Harris and all kinds of classic country songs. I went in and talked to him when I started feeling good enough to get up and walk around. I remember I said, “Man, I want to play music like you someday and do what you’re doing and play country music.” And he was like, “Why don’t you?” And he said it matter-of-fact, just like that. It really stuck with me and I always looked at that as a big turning point when he said that.

So I was sitting at a diner in Austin the other day, and I see this guy walk by, and I knew it was that guy, looked just like him. So I chased him down the street and it turned out that was the guy who told me that. He lives in Austin now, and I told him, “You changed my life, man. You really set this whole thing that I’m doing in motion.” And he is actually a musician and he’s going to sit in with us, hopefully, coming up at a couple of our shows. Pretty crazy twist of fate.

The musicianship on this record is really good. You and Tommy must’ve gotten along pretty well. What do you like about working with somebody a few generations older than you?

I’ve always had an affinity for older people and picking people’s brains, and I figured that it’s life experience. There’s something I can usually learn from those people, and with Tommy, that was definitely the case. He was full of stories and wisdom and experience. So yeah, working with him, with his age and experience, was awesome. Not to say that somebody younger wouldn’t have been great, too. My partner Jodi always jokes around that I will go someplace, and I’ll find the nearest 89-year-old person, and I’ll latch onto them. We’ll be hanging out and catching up.

Are you a bluegrass fan?

Yeah, I love bluegrass.

Tell me about how you discovered bluegrass music.

Oh, man. Actually there’s a lot of bluegrass where I grew up, up in the mountains and stuff, and there’s tons of players. But I first got my hands on a bluegrass compilation from a teacher I had, and she had a bunch of burned CDs. And one of them was a bluegrass mix. I remember she put it on one day, and my ears perked up. I was like, “I love that.” And it was Flatt & Scruggs, or something like that. I ended up borrowing it from her and taking it home and listening to it. I didn’t even know who all the artists were, but that was my intro to bluegrass. And then, over the years, I got exposed to it a lot growing up there.

How did you learn about who the artists were? Did you just start buying records?

Yeah, exactly. Buying records and finding records. I used to shop in the bargain bins a lot, and they had a bargain bluegrass section and country section at the local record shop. So I’d find a lot of stuff there. A lot of the guys that I’ve had in my bands over the years have also been bluegrass players. They’ve introduced me to a lot of that stuff. There’s also a really big old-time scene in Santa Cruz, so there’s an overlap with the old-time and bluegrass.

“Son of the San Lorenzo” is a neat way to close the record. It seems like a very personal song. What was on your mind when you were writing that?

“Son of the San Lorenzo” was really autobiographical. More than any of the other ones on the record, I think that is the most about myself and where I grew up in the San Lorenzo Valley. I didn’t mention it in the song outright, but I’ve had a lot of friends that I grew up with from that area pass away in the last four or five years. There’s a whole lot of drugs in that area, and that song was about leaving that area and leaving not those people, but those issues and past things behind. I’m glad that was the last one on the record, too. That’s why we put it there. It’s like a cathartic, moving forward type of thing.

Photo credit: Molly Gisholm