Tag: Interview

Brandi Carlile: An Interview from Doc Watson’s Dressing Room

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Give or take, it’s about 2,800 miles from Brandi Carlile’s native Seattle, Washington, to Wilkesboro, North Carolina, home to the renowned music gathering known as MerleFest. (See photos.) And as the Saturday night headliner this year, the award-winning singer-songwriter took to the Watson Stage during the 32nd annual MerleFest, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and an overzealous audience in the neighborhood of 30,000.

Backed by her rollicking Americana/indie-rock band, which includes founding members Phil and Tim Hanseroth (aka: “The Twins”), Carlile held court during an unforgettable performance that led to one of the festival’s finest moments — Carlile around a single microphone with North Carolinians Seth and Scott Avett for an encore of the Avett Brothers’ “Murder in the City.”

But a few hours before that performance, Carlile found herself standing backstage alone in the dressing room of the late Doc Watson, the guitar master who founded MerleFest. Gazing around the small square space, she looked at old photos of Watson and other legendary Americana and bluegrass performers that have played MerleFest over the years: Earl Scruggs, Alison Krauss, Peter Rowan, Rhonda Vincent, Tony Rice, and so forth.

Carlile smiled to herself in silence, truly feeling humbled in her craft and taking a moment to reflect on her wild and wondrous journey thus far, all while possessing a once-in-a-generation talent — something broadcasted across the world during her staggering performance of “The Joke” in February at the Grammys, and amid a standing ovation from the music industry. Remarkably she also picked up all three Grammys in the American Roots Music categories.

We met Carlile in Watson’s dressing room before the show for our interview and surveyed the steps she’s taken from Seattle to the MerleFest stage.

BGS: It seems as big as your career has gotten, the humble nature of where you came from still remains within you, as a headlining performer now.

Carlile: It does. Part of that reason why I feel that is part of who I am is because of the people that I’ve surrounded myself with — The Twins, our families, our kids, and our folks. They’re not going to let anybody get too heady or too ahead of themselves. Everybody puts you right back in your station if you’re getting there.

Growing up around Seattle, was Kurt Cobain’s songwriting or specifically the Unplugged in New York album by Nirvana ever a big influence on you as a performer?

It was later in life. It’s so funny, like when you live in the [Pacific] Northwest, the intensity that was directed towards country music for me was big because I didn’t have proximity to it. I was so far away from it. People in the South, I think so often they love country and western roots music, bluegrass, folk, and Americana music. It’s not that they take it for granted, but they don’t realize sometimes that they’re so close to it — it’s right here. And we don’t have that proximity, so I think we love it a little more intensely in the Northwest.

Because you’re seeking it out maybe?

Yeah. And [it’s] even more concentrated in the [United Kingdom]. I mean, if you want to meet some of the most potent country music fans, you go to the UK. And Seattle is kind of that same vibe. So, when I discovered grunge music and rock ‘n’ roll music, it was after it had already happened in my city, which had its own grief period with it, but also kind of an intense celebratory thing because I had missed it. I wanted to know everything about what happened in my city. And what I came away with was realizing we came up with something new. We didn’t repeat anything. We didn’t throw back to an era. We didn’t put on a Halloween costume. We did something brand new.

So, how does that apply to where you are today, in terms of what you want to create with your art?

I’m kind of a hybrid thinker, in general. I like putting ideas together and posing thoughts, things like that. I’ve never really been a great or very successful genre person.

You don’t want to be pigeon-holed…

It’s not that I don’t want to be pigeon-holed, it’s just that I don’t know if I’m able to be. Unfortunately I’ve always wanted to fit in, but I don’t know if I ever will.

Well, to that point, this last year, at least from an outsider’s perspective, has seemed like a whirlwind in your career, with the trajectory it’s on now. Has it been a slow burn to this point or is this a whirlwind, and how are you dealing with all of that?

That’s a good question. It’s both. It’s been a slow burn to this point. I’ve been working for a long time. But it was a really big change. That Grammy moment changed my life, and in a really, really big way. I can’t even catch up to it yet — I don’t even know how to catch up to it yet.

Or if you even want to embrace it. I mean, how do even wrap your head around something like that?

No, dude, I want to embrace it — I love it. I’ve always loved everything about music and the music business since I was such a little girl. I sat in my room wanting the biggest and the best of opportunities for myself, my family, and my friends. And so I’ll find a way to embrace it. And I want to — I’m really insanely grateful for it.

What do you remember from that moment? I was thinking, the stunning way your voice and the energy was going up and down, any frustration, any love or sadness you’ve experienced was put out through that microphone at that moment…

Yeah. I think I’m going to live to be 100 because that is how I do it, you know? I just let it all out. And in that moment, I don’t know — I was just so ready for it. I’m 38. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not going to get too nervous or too excited and come undone. But, I am going to enjoy it while it’s happening. Like so many big things in your life you don’t really get to enjoy it.

Or maybe in hindsight you realize how important it was…

Yeah, man. Like loving everything in retrospect, enjoying everything in retrospect. And I was just so right there, right in the moment at the time — more so than maybe ever before while performing.

So, does that mean you subscribe to the idea of “the now,” to learn to be present, rather than worry about what was and what could be?

Yeah, but I’m horrible at it. But for some reason, that day I was able to get there. And I think it’s because I had been so nervous and then I won those three [Grammys]. I was like, “What do I got to lose? I’m just going to do this. I’m just going to show everybody [who I am].”

What is the role of the songwriter in the digital age, in all this chaos that is the 21st century?

To try to be as permanent as you can in a temporary environment.

In all the years you’ve created and performed music, traveling the world and meeting people from all walks of life, what has it taught you about what it means to be a human being?

Well, it’s taught me so much. I think you need to travel, in general, in life. You cannot stay put and not see the way that people live and then try and create an assumption about the way the world works. Travel, in general, has taught me so much about social justice and empathy. It’s enhanced me spiritually as a person, and that’s the thing I think I’ve garnered the most out of it. But I’ve met some really wise and special people as well. And to get to meet your heroes, people that you’ve admired – to find out if you were completely wrong about how much you admire them or being completely right — has been so enlightening.

And what about being in Doc Watson’s dressing right now, being at Merlefest?

Being in Doc Watson’s dressing room is really moving. I’ve been looking around at the pictures and the gravity of it. And when you’re here at this festival, you feel the reverence and you understand what it’s all about. And it’s something I’m coming to later in life. Just like I missed the greatest rock ‘n’ roll genre of all-time — grunge — in my very own city, I missed this experience, too — and I’m looking forward to diving in with both feet.

All photos: Michael Freas

JJ Cale’s Unheard Songs Collected on ‘Stay Around’

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When it came to guitars, gadgets and such, JJ Cale bought plenty of stuff and more often than not wound up giving it away eventually. When it came to his music, however, Cale was not one to cast anything aside. Over the decades of his long and storied career, he amassed hundreds of recordings of songs, fragments, alternative mixes and other sonic ephemera. Fifteen songs, all complete and finished by Cale himself, have been rescued from his hard-drive vaults for the posthumously-released new album Stay Around.

“I wanted to make sure everything on this was really ‘new,’ songs that people hadn’t already heard,” says his widow, Christine Lakeland Cale, who oversaw the project. “You know, you go on YouTube and there’s a bad-sounding grainy video from a gig somebody recorded on their phone. I tried to find things that hadn’t even been out that much. I was looking for the most Cale I could give people.”

Cale, who died from a heart attack in 2013, was a marvel of consistency as a recording artist. Well beyond “After Midnight,” “Cocaine,” and his other signpost compositions, he left behind more than a dozen albums long on relaxed, amiable grooves. So it should come as no surprise that Stay Around offers that same level of quality, even though it consists of recordings spanning more than three decades.

The album’s tracks range from solo recordings to full-band arrangements, with highlights including the loping ode to road life “Chasing You” to the title track’s romantic crooning. Christine compiled the material in collaboration with her late husband’s longtime manager Mike Kappus, who was well-versed in Cale’s working methods. It wasn’t unusual for Cale to leave songs sitting around for years, or even decades, before releasing them. “Roll On,” the title track of Cale’s final 2009 studio album, was a song he’d had in the bag since the mid-1970s.

“I was kind of in on the complete evolution of it all,” Kappus says. “He would send me cassettes, with something like a picture of his driver’s license as artwork, just this private little clever thing between us. We’d be talking about the next album and not everything he sent would make it. At one point I told him, ‘Man, you’ve got a couple of really good, solid records here.’ But the temptation for any artist is to do what’s fresh and that’s what would happen. So there was all this material left over.”

Christine admits it took her “a couple of years of walking around foggy and not all there” until she felt up to diving into Cale’s recorded archive, which was not stored on a pile of tapes. Instead, Cale left behind about 50 hard drives on Alesis HD24 machines, a format Christine says has been obsolete for years. But Cale didn’t upgrade beyond that because the format worked and he was comfortable with it.

“He used to joke to people, ‘I’m too old to learn something new, I like what I have and I use my ears, not my eyes,’” Christine says. “So he never made the transition to Pro Tools. He could hear peaks of distortion that had to come out, instead of seeing a line on a screen to edit. He liked the familiarity of his home studio because he didn’t have to spend any time setting things up — just flip the switch and get creative.”

But just because Cale’s recording methodology was to set it and forget it, one shouldn’t conclude that he was any sort of behind-the-times Luddite. Cale was a skilled studio technician who “loved engineering more than anything else,” according to Kappus, and he had a lifelong fascination with the tools of his trade. After buying new gear or instruments, Cale would usually take them apart and rebuild them. He’d do the same thing with records, after a fashion, going to record stores and buying the entire top 10 bestsellers to study.

“He’d want to check out whatever people were buying,” Kappus says. “Not to try and copy, but to check the engineering and production aspects. We were at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Los Angeles once, where most of the people working were pretty into acoustic or folk music. And Cale starts talking about the mixes on ‘Back That Ass Up’ and some new Britney Spears record. Everybody there was going, ‘What?!’ They figured he’d only know about Willie and Waylon. But he had a lot of curiosity and he’d appreciate the mixing and recording of that stuff in a very true, knowledgeable way. It was the furthest thing from snobbery.”

Of particular note on Stay Around is its one song that Cale didn’t write, “My Baby Blues” — which Christine calls “my nod of self-indulgence,” because she wrote it herself. “My Baby Blues” is a song she and Cale recorded in 1977 at the first session where they met. Cale’s version here dates back to 1980 and Christine considers it a real find. But her favorite cut on the album is the title track, a meditation on the pleasures of being with the one you love (“Stay around, stay around, girl/And let’s make love one more time”).

“That one just floored me when I found it,” Christine says. “I couldn’t believe that one, and the guys at the label came up with the idea to make it the title because, ‘We hope his music stays around.’ That’s brilliant, how come I didn’t think of it? But I was too close to it. It takes a village.”

Some of the solo recordings are particularly intimate, especially “If We Try,” which comes by its kitchen-table feel honestly. That was one of his favorite places to record when he was home alone, and the track feels “as if you’re right there sitting at the table with him,” Christine says.

While Christine isn’t yet thinking about a follow-up, there’s more than enough material still in the vaults to make another album, which could be 100 percent previously unheard material the way this one is. And she thinks that the spirit of her late husband, who would have turned 80 last December, probably approves.

“I have had a lot of weird things happen,” she says. “Probably more so during the foggy period. But even now, things happen where I think, ‘Somebody’s just making sure things go this or that way.’ This world can’t just be it. I do think there’s something once we leave here, I just don’t know what. There’s got to be another level of intelligence in the universe because we’re such a flawed species. Without sounding too much like an old hippie, it seems like there’s the ability to let somebody know it’s okay. And he has.”

Photo credit: Stephane Sednaoui

Over the Rhine Hold on to Hope in ‘Love & Revelation’

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In the 30 years since Karin Bergquist and Linford Detwiler made their debut as Over the Rhine, the husband-and-wife duo have established themselves as thoughtful storytellers painting cinematic scenes with their poetic lyrics, pastorally beautiful soundscapes and Karin’s sultry vocal delivery. On Love & Revelation, Bergquist and Detwiler take a nuanced approach, exploring grief as it relates to saying goodbye to loved ones and questioning what it means to hold on to hope as an American in 2019.

BGS: Love & Revelation begins with “Los Lunas,” a song about saying goodbye to a longtime love. That theme of dealing with loss seems to open up and run throughout the album.

Detwiler: A lot of what we’re processing on our new record is this idea that certain things are carried with you for a lifetime. The record opens with the words “I cried.” It sort of tips our hand to the fact that there’s a fair bit of grief on this record. When I mentioned that to my 87-year-old mother, she said, “Well, Linford, that sounds like the Psalms.” All of us like to sort of tout our roots and older music that we’re listening to. I like the fact that my mom immediately went to the oldest songbook that I know of, which would be The Psalms in the Old Testament and immediately began talking about how so many of those songs and poems begin with some kind of lament.

The lyrics of “Los Lunas,” like so many Over the Rhine songs, have a cinematic quality, though the specific details of what led to these two people parting ways in that song isn’t clear. Other songs’ meanings seem to open up after repeated listens. They paint pictures that don’t necessarily solidify into something that can be explained using literal description. How do you pull that off?

I don’t like listeners to feel lost and sort of at sea when they’re listening to our songs. I like them to have some sense of what they’re participating in. [Laughs] That being said, our friend Joe Henry talks about “abiding the mystery” and sort of welcoming and recognizing the mystery that’s part of the process and art of songwriting. There is something on an intuitive level that’s sometimes being communicated.

As somebody that’s marking 30 years of writing, recording and life on the road now, I do find myself trying to simplify my writing. What is the most concise, direct way I can break a heart wide open? [Laughs] I hope our songs are like that. There’s something immediate that invites anybody on any level to enter in and begin participating, but I hope there’s some fine print in there, too, where you have to work a little harder.

There’s a line in “Let You Down” that describes grief as “love with nowhere to go,” which really stopped me in my tracks. What inspired that concept?

I was thinking about some friends and family members that were struggling. So many of us have been called upon to lay loved ones to rest. We have friends who have lost children or friends and family that are facing chronic illness or some kind of daunting cancer diagnosis. Just from my perspective now, I realize it’s so much more important just to show up and be with somebody and listen. I don’t necessarily come from the orientation that everything can be fixed.

So, that concept of grief being a kind of love with no place to go, that’s a conversation I’ve had with people that have lost children. There is this sense of holding this love for somebody and not knowing really what to do with it. At this point, if you lose a child, that’s not something that you should get over. You should carry that with you. That’s part of your life experience. That’s something that you’re going to think about every day.

Another thing about “Let You Down” is you, Linford, are singing a full-on duet with Karin, which I don’t think I’ve heard before on an Over the Rhine album. You’re also singing together on “Betting on the Muse.” What led you to step out as a vocalist after all these years?

I had a real stumbling block about singing. I didn’t like my voice. I’m sure some smart therapist could help me figure out where the seed of that was planted. It’s not like I didn’t want to sing, necessarily. I just didn’t enjoy it, and it didn’t feel good. So, Karin was very patient with me and encouraged me for years to remain open to the idea of singing more.

I remember five or six years ago, there was a little bit of a breakthrough, and I said, “Well, actually, when I sing for any extended period of time, I have some physical pain.” She said, “Well, why don’t you try singing through that and just see what’s on the other side?” I accepted the fact that maybe something painful was part of this process, and at some point, I began to let go of some of that and began to tentatively sing some harmony with Karin. It’s so amazing to sing harmony with somebody.

Karin wrote the title song, “Love & Revelation,” which has a very propulsive feel to it. Lyrically, it conveys a belief that even with all this grief, hope can still break through. Tell me about creating the music to complement those lyrics.

When Karin and [drummer] Jay Bellerose began sort of leaning into the song in the studio, we all just sort of backed away slowly because it felt like something so vivid and complete was happening, which is the voice, acoustic guitar and drums. So, I thought it was a powerful moment on the record. It’s very unadorned. It’s kind of that righteous parade and Karin’s voice, and that’s it.

I think a lot of Americans are feeling a little off balance, to put it mildly, and feeling the need to be sort of vigilant and a very necessary instinct to sort of stand against almost a daily tide of cruelty and deception that’s coming at us. We’re looking around and saying, “Well, this is not who I believe we are.” In this kind of environment, sometimes I think we forget to circle back to what it is we actually do stand for, or believe in. So, Karin sort of planted this reminder that actually it comes back around to love and revelation. I like that idea of remembering what we’re for.

That’s a pretty evolved way to look at what’s going on in America in 2019. How do you get to that point of making an album that goes beyond just running around screaming with your hair on fire about injustice?

I was not opposed to recording a protest record. Maybe on some level it is, but it’s interesting that the record we really ended up making was a record that acknowledged that we are grieving. It’s a record that acknowledges that people we love are hurting, and it’s engaging that on a heart level. It’s a little bit less about being on the street corner with a megaphone. I did write some megaphone songs, and maybe they’ll come back around. At some point, speaking softly can be just as powerful as yelling.

As always, you and Karin are credited as solo writers on most of your songs, but you seem to be on the same page in grappling with these ideas of grief and hope. Does that through-line in the theme happen organically because you’re living and working together as husband and wife?

We are sharing a lot of these experiences, and our lives feel pretty integrated. After two or three decades of trying to write a good song, eventually I begin to think, well, what I’m really trying to write is a good life. It becomes kind of inseparable. So, Karin and I, yeah, she’s a trusted editor. It’s a real gift to have somebody close by to bounce ideas off of and process ideas with. We are one of them there musical couples. It’s too late to turn back now. [Laughs]

2019 marks the 30th anniversary of your debut album. What conversations is that milestone bringing up for you and Karin?

We’re thinking a lot about sustainability. One thing we’re working on is restoring a historic barn on our old property, and we’re hoping to open our own 200-seat venue in the next couple of years. We’ve begun hosting our own music festival, and sort of inviting this community that have found our music to begin coming to us more. One nice thing about this possibility of owning our own music venue is we could offer some concerts throughout the year where we go back and take a fresh look at some of these records we made 20 years ago or whenever.

Some of the songs we still carry with us and play on a pretty regular basis, but we’re not really a nostalgia act. We’ll be very focused on Love & Revelation this year, and that’s the way people who engage our music want it. They are hungry for more.

Photo credit: Kylie Wilkerson

Jeff Scroggins & Colorado: Over the Line and Across the Divides

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Bluegrass is barely older than rock and roll, but it’s a lot smaller. The problems that small size can engender are obvious, but there’s also a bright side, where a fan seeking to understand how the music has grown can more quickly see musical lineages, trends, and tendencies — for the same reason it’s easier to see the trees in a sparser forest. Even today, the influences of most artists are pretty easy to trace, no matter how creatively they’re built upon.

So it is with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, whose new release, Over The Line, offers a delicious update of one long-running bluegrass strand. Produced by the band’s occasional bass player, Mark Schatz, Over The Line’s folk-leaning material gets a treatment that isn’t afraid to invite comparisons with the sounds of the Country Gentlemen, a group that navigated its way through the bluegrass and folk revival scenes of the late ‘50s and ‘60s (and beyond) so successfully that they were inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame years ago.

Even so, the pronounced individuality and musicianship of banjo man Scroggins and each of his band members (Greg Blake, guitar; Ellie Hakanson, fiddle; Tristan Scroggins, mandolin) ensures that the sound is fresh and unique — and it’s that sort of double vision, where you can see at one glance how these artists relate to those who came before and what new, distinctive things they’re bringing, that is one of bluegrass music’s most endearing characteristics. In that respect alone, the album is a triumph.

Another consequence of bluegrass’s small scale is the persistence of geographical variety. I’m not talking about bogus efforts to claim that only those from a certain area have the capacity to play “real” bluegrass, but rather about variations that range from the attitudinal to the climatic to the economic, all of which combine to make the experience of bluegrass surprisingly different from one part of the country to another — most broadly, from east of the Great Plains to the Front Range and points west.

Whether for cultural, economic or musical reasons, there are plenty of bands that stay on their own side of the divide, so although he’s been a staple of the western scene for a long time, Jeff Scroggins’ name is just now starting to ring in the ears of the rest of the country. With that in mind, gathering a little background seemed like a good way to start our conversation.

I suspect that for a fair number of readers, this is probably the first time that they’ve heard much about you and the band, so let me jump back to the beginning — you’re a westerner by birth?

I was born in Oklahoma, I suppose that’s pretty far west.

It is from the Nashville perspective! How did you come across bluegrass music?

Probably the first time I heard it was when my parents would take me on little vacations in the Ozarks; I didn’t know anything about it, but I always liked it. And then, when I was 20, I bought a banjo at a garage sale. I was playing heavy metal music at the time — but six months later, I liked it so much I sold my Les Paul and my Marshall amp and bought a better banjo. So that kind of ended my rock and roll career.

So how’d you learn to play?

The guy who had always been my music store guy, he was a bluegrass guy. So when I brought the banjo in, he kind of fixed it up a little, and he sold me the Earl Scruggs instructional book and record, and he sold me a Peter Wernick book and a Tony Trischka book, and I went home and started figuring it out. Then a couple of years later, I ran into Alan Munde, who was teaching lessons in a music store in Norman, Oklahoma, which was about 20 minutes from where I lived. That was my real first serious connection to bluegrass, seeing him do it correctly.

I started playing in some local bands, around where I grew up, and I ended up moving to Irving, Texas, to be in a band — which was short-lived. But I moved into the Dallas area, and it was an amazing scene for a short time there. There were a lot of people who were really good who were all there at once; I was seeing people like Brad Davis and Greg Davis, Scott Vestal — in fact, I replaced Scott Vestal in a little family band. And that was sort of my learning, going there and being around a lot of people who did that; I was learning it all as I went.

And you’re a contest winner, too, right?

I grew up in Oklahoma, but it wasn’t that far to Winfield, Kansas. I started going to the big festival there, and decided I wanted to win that banjo contest — and I did, and won a bunch more along the way.

Talk about the difference between what you think about and focus on when you’re playing contests, and what you think about and focus on when you’re playing in a band.

Well, it certainly is different. For me, I watched the contest, and I tried to figure out what I needed to do to win the contest. I think the most important thing is to be a good Scruggs style player, because if you’re not doing that, I don’t think the rest of it is going to help you much in a contest, honestly. So I really focused on that, and I also tried to get the melodic and single-string; I specifically started getting the single-string stuff because people who were winning contests were doing that.

But yeah, I think when you’re doing contests…I was recording everything every few days and listening to it, and just trying to really perfect these tunes. And it ends up being reasonable training for doing the other thing, but it is certainly different. I felt like I developed the techniques I was going to need to play bluegrass, but I didn’t really know how to do that.

People who have played a lot of contests have told me that there, it’s all about you and not much else, but in a band, you’re playing backup. You learn that the space you make for other people is at least as important as what you’re doing — that it’s a real mental adjustment to not be the center of attention.

I found for myself that I didn’t really want to be the center of attention. I was pretty shy. And to this day, if people compliment me on my backup playing, it’s sort of the thing that makes me the happiest. Because I figured out a long time ago, that’s what you’re going to be doing 90 percent of the time. So I decided that if I was going to do it 90 percent of the time, I was going to try to get really good at it. And obviously that really is one of the main differences, is learning how to work without the ball, as they say in sports.

I think I first saw your name with the Blue Canyon Boys. Was that the last thing you did before you got Colorado started?

It was. I was getting divorced, and coming to Colorado, and I was looking for some sort of musical thing to do. That was the thing that fell in my lap. I had known the bass player for a long time — in fact, he went back to my Texas days — so it was based on friendship. I didn’t necessarily feel that it was an awesome fit for me, but they were looking for a banjo player and I was looking for a band, and so I did it for a few years. And by then, Tristan — he was 14 at the time — was becoming pretty amazing, so we decided to start a band.

Who else did you have in the band?

Greg Blake, Tristan and I were the founding core. And then we had Annie Savage playing fiddle, and a guy playing bass who had a business, and he was the first one to bail when it started to get busy. It’s funny, we’ve had one banjo player; one guitar player; one mandolin player; three fiddle players and 37 bass players.

How did you meet Greg?

I met him in 2011, at a mutual friend’s wedding where he was doing the music. The reception was a bluegrass jam, and we jammed for seven hours until they threw us out of the place. Sort of played every song we knew. At the end of the night, I said, “I’m starting a band, and I think you should join it.”

So you’ve been working pretty hard since then, putting four albums out.

I had written out a business plan, and written goals five years before this, when I first decided I was going to get serious about this. I had a very specific idea of what I wanted to accomplish, and so when I asked people to join the band, I just handed them these pages and said, “Read this, and if it seems like something you’d like to do, then join this band.” But I was out of work and looking for a way to make a living. I had applied for a million jobs, and none of them came through, and I took that as a sign from somewhere that I was going to do this. So when we started, I started out immediately trying to make it pretty serious, and within a couple of years we were working full-time.

When I was younger, I hadn’t been very smart about it; I’d never thought about doing that sort of thing, so I never tried to make a lot of connections with promoters. But over the few years that I was playing with the Blue Canyon Boys, I made connections and kept them. I also had a lot of older connections, too. When I had been younger, I’d been in a lot of bands, but I’d never called in all the favors I’d had, because I figured that at some point I was going to have a project that I was going to pull out all the stops on. So I called everything in all at once, and that got us working really fast.

Photo credit: Clyde Clevenger

STREAM: Maya de Vitry, ‘Adaptations’

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Beginning in 2016, The Stray Birds’ fiddler and vocalist Maya de Vitry found herself writing songs that didn’t fit with the band’s aesthetic. At the time, the prospect felt confusing, even a touch frightening. “It was really scary because I didn’t know what that meant,” she says over the phone from Pennsylvania. “The band was all consuming.” De Vitry had been performing with the The Stray Birds for nearly a decade, releasing — at the time — four albums and an EP. What were these songs, if not for them?

As it turns out, her solo debut Adaptations moves away from the sound — and structures — that defined her folk and traditional inclinations with The Stray Birds. Producer Dan Knobler and a backing rock band layer each song with flourishes of electric guitar phrasing and soft brushes on the drum, all of which open the door for de Vitry’s strikingly deep and at times stately voice to infiltrate new spaces. (Stream Adaptations at the end of this story.)

Writing for herself rather than a group, de Vitry’s lyrics lean towards inclusivity, humanity, and other unitive concepts. There are also themes of love, but not exactly the romantic kind. On “The Key” de Vitry writes about the necessity of friendship at a time when romance felt burdensome (she and The Stray Birds’ Oliver Craven had broken up following the release of the band’s 2016 album Magic Fire). Whatever misgivings de Vitry had about walking her own path, Adaptations showcases a remarkable voice set to scale new heights. As she sings on “Wilderness”: “It’s time to leave the trail behind.”

BGS: You’ve said that these songs emerged from a period of self-exile. Can you tell me a bit about that time?

de Vitry: When I first started songwriting when I was younger, it felt extremely vulnerable and scary to me. Around 2010, when I started playing with Oliver and Charlie and we made The Stray Birds, that was a really natural place for me to put my energy at the time.

You had the protection of the group.

Yeah, and I had the camaraderie of the group. I’m trying to figure out how I want to navigate telling the story because it’s hard. The group broke up, and I’m still processing how much I want to share.

So what was it like to write outside the bounds of the group?

In a way, making this record was revelatory to me. Writing these songs, being alone, insisting on space, and insisting on stopping the motion and commotion of being on the road with that band, that’s what I was craving. If you just keep moving, you think that’s the way you’re going to survive, that maybe things will change and you’ll find yourself in the right place. But writing the record and that self-exile took realizing that you can’t just keep moving. Sometimes you have to stop and look inward.

The exile was… I felt like I was doing something wrong by stepping away and doing something creative outside the band. Ultimately, it was a cocoon that needed to be exited. Now I feel really bright and strong — about the record and the place that I’ve come to. At the time, I felt I needed to escape. I was going to a land that was really unknown, which was myself.

There’s a sense of serendipity surrounding this project: You were supposed to go to Nashville and instead retreated to your grandparents’ cabin; then you were supposed to make a demo and instead recorded half of the album. What’s the most important takeaway you’ve learned as a result?

What I’m continuing to learn is that our bodies are at least a few steps ahead of where our brains are. Our instincts and our gut feelings — the way that we’re sometimes physically pulled towards things — you can’t explain it. It sounds kind of out there, but I think I’ve learned to trust intuition a little more. That’s important to me in thinking about being. Paying attention to that.

It gets distilled into that opening line on “Wilderness”: “It’s time to leave the trail behind.”

As much as society or careers or trajectories—the dreams that we have for achievement—might be linear, I don’t think we can get away from the fact that we are actually a part of nature, so therefore we are sort of beholden to cycles, and we might have cycles of rest.

 

You share beautiful and necessary messages on “Anybody’s Friend,” “Slow Down,” “The Key,” etc. Why did these in particular register for you?  

“The Key” I wrote while I was up at the cabin, for that first writing retreat session, and that one was really personal. It was a love song to a few friends of mine. I was feeling really thankful for friendship. It’s a heralded kind of love, but I was forgetting how important it had been to me. With friends you can grow apart and grow together. There’s a lot more gray areas that are accepted in friendship. At the time, I was really disenchanted with any kind of romantic relationship.

I went to Cuba in January of 2017. It was around the time of the inauguration in the U.S. and I was seeing this divisive language and leadership, and power over people. One of my friends [in Cuba] was so patient with my Spanish. I asked him why, and he was like, “I want to know you.” I think the temporariness of that, and “Take a deep breath and try to tell me what you’re trying to say in this language,” was such permission. I felt like I was experiencing the power of listening and the power of vulnerability. I was like, “That divisive power has nothing on this.” I think that’s how I was interpreting the world, in a hopeful way.

That makes sense. Even on “Go Tell a Bird,” it seems like the current political climate influenced those lyrics.

Yeah, and it’s not like I’m a perfect person. I guess I just wanted to challenge the language, and challenge the boxes, and challenge the idea of freedom.

Every song has such a different kind of soundscape compared to what we’ve heard from you before with The Stray Birds. When you got into the studio with your producer Dan Knobler, what was it like building each one?

Working with Dan was probably an interesting choice on my behalf. It wasn’t like I was really attached to some catalog of work that he’s done, though he’s got a great catalog of work as a producer and engineer. I was really just operating on this feeling I’d had. Before I’d asked him to produce, I was doing a compilation CD and The Stray Birds were a part of it. I was singing and the way he spoke to me about my voice and my phrasing, and the way we interacted while I was singing, I felt really heard in a new way. I never forgot that feeling.

How did he push your voice on this album?

I felt freer. The Stray Birds, as much as they weren’t strictly tied to a genre like folk or bluegrass, I think there was a certain dialect of singing that we did. Especially with harmony singing, the blend is dependent on how everyone is singing. With this, I felt the more I stepped into feeling free, the more Dan would be there to encourage that.

Also, with the sonic palette — the fullness that’s around it — that’s not an idea I had going into this. That is something I would really thank Dan for hearing. I was surprised when he said, “I think we should get some strings, and see what Russell Durham has to bring to these songs.” The band that we tracked it live with was pretty much just a rock band—upright bass, drums, and two guitars. Anthony da Costa has really tasteful electric guitar playing.

But there was no genre. There was nothing I was trying to prove. I wasn’t even really trying to make a record — it was supposed to be a demo. So it was very playful. Dan and I are really particular about songs, and I feel more and more if I can trust the song 100 percent and if the song feels indestructible to me and also very flexible then we can go play with it and it’s going to be fun. The studio was such a joyful time.

With The Stray Birds, endings themselves are naturally fraught, and obviously you’re still parsing through a lot of what took place there, but what are you proud of as you begin a new phase of your career?

I’m really proud of what we learned together, and our willingness to take risks together, and our willingness to just show up. Sometimes there was less reflection in what we were doing — there was more action. I’m really most proud of the last record that we made together.

It sounds like it was immensely collaborative.

Yes, that’s what I’m most proud of in that band. It’s a beautiful record. It was so difficult to write it, but it was so fulfilling to write it. Everyone’s voice is present in all the songs, melodically and lyrically. I think that record was the most empowering experience for everyone in the band.

Photo credit: Laura Partain

Huck Finn Jubilee Makes Big Return for 41st Year of California Bluegrass

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For bluegrass fans in Southern California, Huck Finn Jubilee has been a destination for more than 40 years.  After a two-year hiatus, the long-celebrated family event returns to Ontario, California, on Oct. 5-7. This year’s lineup features headliners such as the Infamous Stringdusters, Yonder Mountain String Band, and The Lone Bellow, and BGS will be on site all weekend to present the BGS House Party jam after the main stage sets wrap up…

Leading up to next weekend, the festival’s new owners, Roger and Nikki Malinowski, chatted with The Bluegrass Situation.

Don’t miss our special video sessions highlighting some of the acts you’ll see on the lineup below!

Fans can discover music in so many ways now. What is it about a music festival that is special?

The wonderful thing about music festivals is that they’re shared experiences. They bring people together. Those moments when the audience sings together with the artist, and each other, or when you literally feel the music move you – times like those can’t be beat. Music festivals create communities where neighbors can meet, families reunite and spend time together, where we can get away from it all for just a little while.

What have you learned about the process of booking festivals that has really surprised you?

We’ve been surprised by the amount of love and support from the Huck Finn audience. The festival has a 40-year-plus history, yet it almost ceased to exist. I remember when we made the announcement on Facebook that Huck was back, the messages of gratitude were overwhelming. We’ve also found that putting on a festival of this size is a significant amount of work. The time, energy and effort behind pulling off an event of this size is enormous. The support and love from the bluegrass community and fans of Huck Finn continues to motivate us to create the best experience we possibly can.

When you are selecting artists, do you have a certain audience in mind? In other words, is there a common thread that runs through your lineup and/or your ticket holders?

Absolutely. We want to take our audience on a musical journey. It is important that we honor the traditions of bluegrass music while ensuring that we give space for the evolution of the music. Our hope is that our younger audience gets exposure to the roots of bluegrass and appreciates the amazing musicianship, harmonies and tradition of the genre. We also hope that the entire audience will enjoy how the music itself is progressing, exploring the unique textures and sounds of acoustic instrumentation in more modern takes on the style.

For someone who has never been to Ontario, California, and the area, how would you describe it to them?

Ontario is essentially a suburb of Los Angeles. It has all the amenities one might want in traveling to a new place: great places to eat, drink, shop and stay. It has a small airport and a great number of hotels in the area. The park where Huck Finn is held is a little oasis tucked away within the city. It is absolutely beautiful with two stocked lakes for fishing, a zero-depth splash play area, a sizable playground for kids, and plenty of quiet shaded areas to relax and unwind. There is ample parking, great spots for tent camping and expansive area for RVs. It’s easy to get to, yet far from the busyness of LA. Ontario provides all the conveniences for anyone looking to spend a single day or the whole weekend with us.

People get hungry! How did you choose the vendors for Huck Finn?

The word that has driven all of our decisions this year has been ‘balance.’ We want to accommodate for all tastes, simple and more refined. We wanted to provide the types of foods you might expect at a festival, but also provide some more elevated offerings as well.

What do you hope that attendees will take away from the Huck Finn experience?

We hope to forge connections, ultimately. Connections to the music and the artists performing. Connections to each other, and to their families, neighbors and friends. We hope that people come with an open mind, enjoy a great lineup of music that spans the bluegrass genre, and get to put the stresses and worries that they might have behind them. I hope that they smile at each other and meet new people during the show, eat great food, spend undistracted time with their loved ones and make it something that they will want to bring their friends and family to for years to come.

You can still purchase tickets to HUCK FINN JUBILEE here.

 

Allowing Herself to Be Free: A Conversation with Erin Rae

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Quiet may come off as meek, but don’t be fooled; strong doesn’t necessarily present in overly clamorous ways. That’s the central truth Erin Rae unearths on her new album Putting on Airs. Across twelve hushed tracks, her haunting voice depicts the ways in which the past looms over the present, especially how the scenes we witness as children build their own imposing edifices in the psyche. On the title track, she sings with bare-bones honesty, “I never did learn to like myself/ Been chasing down anyone that might could help/ Lure them in with charm, come out stealing.”

Putting on Airs is as much about calling out herself as exploring the circumstances that formed her, but through it all the Nashville-based songwriter’s honesty is manifested through her clear-eyed vocals and deft lyricism. She wants to heal, and her music, functioning like a salve, allows her to do exactly that. For example, on “Bad Mind,” she sings about a lesbian aunt who faced discrimination decades ago in the Alabama court system and how that, and other adolescent experiences, shaped the perception of her own sexuality.

Recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin, during winter’s muted apex, Erin Rae worked with co-producers Jerry Bernhardt and Dan Knobler to make full use of the space—a former Franciscan monastery known as The Refuge. As a result, the production lives, breathes, and echoes, giving her the room to use her voice, both literally and lyrically.

These songs are so tender, and that descriptor strikes me in two ways: Tender like a bruise, and tender as in full of care. When you were writing them, did one apply more than the other?

I think it’s a little bit of both. With “Putting on Airs” in particular, I was like, “Am I just being harsh on myself?” My mom’s Buddhist now, so I’m really [thinking] like, “Is this being kind? Is this causing harm?” It’s been helpful to me to own that behavior and, yeah, it is uncomfortable to feel the reality of that and the consequences of that and how it affects other people and myself. But also, by owning it and saying it, my hope is to continue to get more free from that. It’s a little bit of both: It’s tender temporarily.

How have you seen your songwriting shift on this album?

I guess I’ve always used songwriting to process through my own stuff; it’s been very cathartic for me. My last record was tying my own experience in with that of my parents or close friends. There’s still an element of that, but I feel like this record has become more directly about me. I didn’t really intend for these songs to be that, like “I’m going to call myself out.” “Putting on Airs” is about people-pleasing where it’s harmful to myself and other people, where eventually you just become dishonest in a way.

No kidding. That line, “Lure them in with charm, come out stealing,” got me right in the gut. It almost hurts to hear but it’s so true.

It’s like, “I want you to like me!”

It’s almost like a safety mechanism at first, but it’s interesting how you say it can become self-harming at a point.  

My dad is super outgoing. He’s one of those people who’s never met a stranger. That’s how I am as well, but learning in a way to make sure…especially as far as it goes with relationships. That’s really what I’m focusing on in that song.

Ok, we have to talk about “June Bug.” That transition to the old-timey piano at the two-minute mark is stunning. That riff says so much, and coming after all you’ve confessed, hangs even all the more beautifully.

At the Refuge up there in Appleton, there’s this giant chapel and all these monks’ quarters, 60 little individual bedrooms, and a lounge area on the first floor. It was in the middle of winter, it was still snowing, and the Fox River is right out the back. The room has a wall of windows, so you could see the snow and the bald eagles. There are two hallways, and in the center of that is where we had a lot of tracking stuff set up and the computer and all the gear. Then we ran guitar amps and put the drums in the chapel, so you hear that huge open sound. We tracked vocals in there so we had the room sound.

I have these fond memories of everyone being super sweet to each other. Basically, Jerry played everything. I think he had tracked that piano part and then Dan, when he was mixing everything, surprised Jerry by putting that into the end of the song, because the song otherwise would just be a minute and a half long. We had this beautiful piano track that Jerry had done in this space, and Dan surprised us with the old timey piano outro, and I thought Jerry was going to cry. It was really great.

I’m especially interested in the labels that circulate around Southern women. To that end, “Mississippi Queen” is such a striking song. How have you attempted to battle against the labels about who women should or shouldn’t be?

Nashville is like a blue spot surrounded by red. It’s a town full of creatives. I’ve got a family member that lives in Mississippi and my dad grew up in Missouri, but whenever you go back to more traditional Southern cities, it’s kind of like, “Oh yeah, people more or less adhere to these cultural norms that feel a little outdated to me.” But I’m always drawn to a sense of tradition. The only way I’ve known how to challenge anything is personally, like internally making sure that I’m clear.

That’s what a lot of this record’s about—allowing myself to be free to see what my own personal truth is, so that, hopefully, I’m able to lend that to others and give other people that space. Even in thinking that that’s a way I want to live, it’s still difficult. I empathize with people that have grown up in a more traditional city; I feel like it takes a conscious effort to grow up and be open-minded if it’s not the norm.

Right, if it’s not modeled for you it’s even harder to practice.

My parents are super open-minded and I still grew up in the South and absorbed a lot of the social norms, so I can’t imagine how hard it is for someone else [who didn’t] to feel free enough. With a more conservative or strictly religious background, it’s hard work for everybody to be more open-minded.

The past six months have been fruitful for singer-songwriters wishing to challenge heteronormativity, including projects from H.C. McEntire and Sarah Shook. Why do you think now is such a powerful moment for such visibility?

So much progress that had been made was starting to feel uncertain with this new administration. It kind of worked out to be a timely thing, especially with the song “Bad Mind,” and that story being born out of the state of Alabama. When Roy Moore was almost elected, I was like, “It’s all happening in the same time.” I think it’s so important to keep the conversation going and make opportunities to heal around this stuff, around sexuality, while it’s all being threatened.

It does feel like a backlash, similar to what took place in the ‘80s after women had made significant strides in the ‘70s.

Music helps us process. One image that came to mind while you were talking about a backlash is the Women’s March—the second one that happened recently in Nashville. It ended with a big concert at Bicentennial Mall, and Alanna Royale and Becca Mancari were both performing there. Alanna has always represented real womanhood for me, being a strong and powerful woman. She’s full of life. It was this really beautiful moment to walk with all these people—dads, and little kids, and folks old and young—through Nashville, and then end up at this powerful, beautiful concert with people that I admire in our community. It was such a beautiful way to tie it all together.

Photo credit: Marcus Maddox

Bringing It All Back Home: A Conversation With Luke Winslow-King

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Luke Winslow-King has been drawn to the blues since he was a kid growing up in Cadillac, Michigan. At 14 years old, his namesake blues band was playing clubs and festivals around the Midwest. Whatever he lacked in life experience, he made up for it with prodigious guitar work and an easy stage presence. Yet any lingering innocence would have eventually fallen away following 15 years of living in New Orleans, spiked with a couple of international tours.

Now in his mid-30s, Winslow-King’s pedigree in the blues is far more defined after enduring a divorce, the loss of his father, a couple of friendships falling apart, and the deaths of more than a few musical influences. In other words, he’s no longer just a boy with the blues. In fact Blue Mesa is Winslow-King’s first new album since he moved back to Cadillac from New Orleans last year. Considering what he’s been though, his writing offers a streak of hard-won optimism in songs like “Better for Knowing You” and “After the Rain,” elevating Blue Mesa beyond just another breakup record.

At what point during the making of this record did you move back to Michigan?

It probably was right after we recorded it that I moved to Michigan. I went on tour for three months, so I didn’t live anywhere. Then I moved to Michigan after the tour. I was in transition at that time. I’ve spent the better part of 15 years in New Orleans. Some of that time was spent in New York or on the road, but I’ve been in New Orleans pretty solid since 2001 or 2002. I learned a lot; the city has been great to me. It’s been an incredible place to get my career started. I’ll enjoy going back there soon, but I’m just ready for something else right now.

Was there a moment where you said, “All right, I’m changing”?

Yeah. I went through a divorce there and did some editing as far as my friend group goes. Now I just want to be in a place with nature and family so I can focus on my career in a different way. When I’m home, I’m off. When I’m on the road, I’m on the road. In New Orleans, you come off the road and you’re in this music scene where you’re playing every night or every other night when you’re home. It’s nice, man. I’ve been enjoying fishing, and bowling, and canoeing, and cross country skiing. It feels real to be back home. I’m enjoying it.

Has that helped your creative mindset?

I think so. I’m feeling less pressured to write and do business and just being like, “You know what? This is my life.” I’m going to follow it through and do the best I can. If people like it, cool. If they don’t, then someone else will. just keeping at it and trying to keep it real rather than force anything. I think that’s how the record comes off a little too. I quit telling the band what to do and just let them do what they do best. If I didn’t like it I would tell them but usually I was just like, “Sure. Sounds great, let’s go for it.” I think there’s a certain breath of freedom in it.

You’ve got a lot of tasteful playing on this record. How did you learn the skill of not overplaying or just ripping through your songs?

Just listening, and years of playing, and learning how to speak through the guitar. The guitar doesn’t necessarily have to sound like a guitar. You can speak a language through it or sing through it. My guitarist Roberto Luti, who is not touring with us because he’s back in Italy, is my guitar maestro. He is our unicorn for gathering the spirit and learning how to be very tasteful and minimalist on a guitar. I’ve learned a lot watching him too.

How did the Italian recording sessions for this album come about?

Well, we were hitting the road pretty hard in Europe this summer for eight weeks or something like that. We had a five-day break in the middle of it and we were in Italy anyway. Roberto is from there, so he knew people who owned a really nice studio. It ended up being this cool getaway up in the mountains in Tuscany. We had the tunes ready enough. We had to rehearse a little to get ready for the session but the tunes were at that perfect point where they weren’t over-rehearsed.

We caught a really cool moment, which is really important in a session. We were comfortable with each other and the material. We all needed a break, but we were still excited about the music. Everyone was laid-back. This is the first album where I’ve kept all my live vocals. Usually I go back and do an overdub session, which a lot of people do, but it felt nice to be like, “This is natural and real.” All the takes on the solos and guitars are live. There are keyboard overdubs and edits here and there, but it’s mostly all live.

It makes sense to do it that way, rather than get it so perfect that it’s too polished.

There’s a sweet spot – you obviously have to know the songs well enough. I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan and listen to records like Desire. You can tell the rhythm section has maybe never heard the song before. It makes for an awesome recording. Everyone is on their toes.

You had a blues band when you were a teenager in Michigan, right?

Yeah. I grew up in northern Michigan and I started the Winslow-King Blues Band when I was 13. We played a few music festivals. My parents used to go see me play at bars on the weekend. I’ve come back to a sound that’s a lot more similar to what I was playing when I was 14 years old, which is like an electric trio with a Stratocaster playing blues. The difference is I’ve lived between then. I’ve explored folk music. I had classical string quartets on my first album. New Orleans jazz was mixed in there for a while. I tried jazz, a lot of different styles.

Now I’m playing original music that I can stand by. There’s a lot more diversity in it, of course, but it feels good to come full circle and be back to my roots. A lot of my friends back home were like, “When are you going to rock again? I remember when you were young you used to rock.” Even my dad was like, “I liked it when you rocked.” I’m back to that, so it feels good.

I wonder what that’s like for people who remember you as a teenager, and now you’re back home as an adult. They have to reevaluate you and you have to reevaluate them at this stage. Has that been the case for you?

Well, that’s what’s so great about going home and being back with your old family and friends. It’s a very understanding reevaluation. You are who you are. The friendships go beyond whatever music you’re playing or what notes you’re playing. I’m glad to be back home and have salt-of-the-earth friends. My best friend was a logger and now is a sand miner; my other best friend is a fishing guide and snow plow truck driver in the winter. It’s cool to have friends who are concerned with normal daily life. You can go fishing and hang out and not have everyone be into cool music everywhere you go.

This album has very cinematic moments too. A lot of it felt like it could be placed in movies on the closing credits. Are there soundtracks or composers that you consider primary influences?

Yeah. I’m a huge Ry Cooder fan. That’s one of his things that he’s been known for and made a career out of. I’m also a big fan of Neil Young’s soundtrack for the Dead Man movie. I’ve always really liked that and listen to that in the van sometimes. I went to school for classical music and I’ve always loved great classical music. I also love Clint Eastwood. I’ve been watching a lot of Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone movies and hearing that stuff too. It’s not necessarily stylistically what I want to do but I love how evocative some of those sounds are and how much they bring the listener to the setting. It would be cool to be able to do that in my own way with my music.

Are there any filmmakers other than Clint Eastwood that have affected the way you see your art?

I’ve watched all five Rocky movies and all the Rambo movies this winter, I’m embarrassed to say.

No, don’t be embarrassed. Rocky won an Oscar.

Chris Davis, my drummer, is a huge, huge Rocky fan. We just went to Philly and ran the stairs while we were there. Honestly we’re in this Stallone phase. Roberto, our Italian guitarist, always says ‘Stallone-ay’ which we love. Honestly, Rocky is a really inspiring movie. I appreciate that Stallone did that movie on a shoestring budget and was inspired to make it himself. Right now Rocky has been what I’m all about. It’s that underdog mentality. Even though everyone makes fun of Stallone and it is so cheesy, and some of the acting is so terrible, there’s a really beautiful sentiment in that movie about going the distance.

 

Photos by Victor Alonso

Live What You’re Singing: A Conversation with Sarah Shook

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Within the bounds of country music, pronoun play doesn’t come easy, but Sarah Shook believes listeners are more than capable of finding ways to see themselves in her songs. With her band, the Disarmers, she deals with gender in her songwriting as a means to challenge the heteronormative forms of representation within country music.

On “The Bottle Never Lets Me Down,” from the band’s new album, Years, she sings about becoming the man she used to be, while on “Parting Words,” she addresses a woman, her former lover, about the way things ended. Not only does she weave together traditional country, honky-tonk, blues, punk, and more, but she conscientiously flips country music’s perspective around in order to be more inclusive.

There’s a definite sense of who belongs and who doesn’t in country music, but that’s slowly shifting.

It’s a really very cool and exciting time for women making country music, especially the sort of throwback traditional country. There’s a lot of buzz centered around this new wave of women outlaw country artists. I think that’s a really good thing, and industry-wide it’s a lot more prevalent than you realize. One of the things that was frustrating for me last year when we put Sidelong out, I probably did 50-some odd phone interviews, and two of them—two of them!—were with women. I had a whole conversation with my manager, like it’s hard enough being a woman playing music, but it’s a tough field to be a woman in journalism. This year with this release, I feel like there’s been more of a balance as far as speaking with male and female journalists, and that’s been encouraging too.

You’ve been mentioned along with country outsiders like Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price. How do you see your relationship within the genre?

I think that we’ve been branded outlaw, and I feel like people interpret that in different ways. Of course outlaw country is the super old school Waylon Jennings beat, but I think the term is evolving pretty rapidly into something that is more inclusive to people doing it their own way. That’s one of the things that was really cool about country music in its heyday, when it was first starting out and all those classic artists were on the radio. As soon as the song started—a few bars in—you could tell whose band it was because all those bands had such a distinct sound. That is really hard to find today, everything sounds the same. It’s very clear that people are just looking for patterns that have achieved success and are popular. And then you have folks out there like Margo Price and Kelsey Waldon and Kacey Musgraves, and they’re kind of doing their own thing. Their bands have respective sounds that are unique and identifiable. That is really cool and very exciting.

You’ve been forthright about your sexual identity. How do you navigate your personal story within the larger scope of representation?

To a degree, I feel like there are certain points in time where it’s paramount to be very outspoken about that stuff. Most of the time, I feel like doing what I’m doing—touring relentlessly, putting out records, and being unapologetically myself—is a very powerful and political maneuver as well. Sometimes it’s more effective in a palpable way to live what you’re saying and be the person that you’re talking about. I think it’s a cool and different way for people to realize, especially within country music, which has a certain, specific demographic of people, that, yes, you can be a pansexual atheist vegan making country music, and does that affect the music? Sometimes lyrically, yes, but the overarching theme is just that I don’t necessarily have to have everything in common with my fans. We can have differences. It’s really cool to have interactions with people who are like, “I never felt comfortable with the idea of homosexuality or bisexuality, and I meet you and we’re talking and hanging out and having a good time. You’re just a regular person.” I’m like, “Exactly, we’re regular people, believe it or not.” [Laughs]

When you put it like that, it’s so depressing, but it rings true. Every time I meet someone who’s uncomfortable about anything outside heterosexuality it’s usually because they haven’t spoken to anyone who’s different from them.

Exactly. And that is such a big thing. We can play New York City and that’s a totally different experience than playing a small town in Alabama. I think consistently being the person who is always willing to talk to fans after a show and be real and be myself and form unlikely friendships, I think that’s a really cool way to create change.


I always thought action over verbiage is the way to go about it. But then looking back, we’ve seen from the Dixie Chicks how speaking your mind can be dangerous. Do the repercussions ever concern you?

You know, I’ve never been concerned about that because I feel it’s important to be honest and forthright as a human being, and as an artist and certainly lyrically as well. The other thing to me that’s really important, from the word go I’ve been very strategic about how I wanted to grow this band and how I wanted to see success. It’s never been my prerogative to go after the country music fan base—and certainly that’s the majority of our fan base. My thing was, “Yes, this is country music, but this is music for anyone who likes it.” It’s inclusive, and anyone that these songs resonate with, it’s for you. Taking that stance and being strategic about it has certainly helped. It’s really encouraging to be a country band playing outlaw country and have a very diverse audience, and I think that’s a thing a lot of traditional artists struggle with. They get pigeonholed. Being outspoken in an honest fashion but not a combative fashion, I feel that’s really helped push our music to demographics that it wouldn’t necessarily otherwise reach.

All this talk of the new outlaw makes me excited for a tour one day, or even a festival.

We need our own cruise. [Laughs] That would be amazing.

An outlaw lady cruise.

Exactly. Oh my god, that’d be a lotta fun.

Critics have referenced the underlying sense of menace in your voice, but your vocals on “New Ways to Fail” have such a biting, sarcastic note. Where does that darker sense of humor come from?

I’m very nihilistic. [Laughs] I’m one of those people that thinks life is way too short to take yourself too seriously. Within this world, there’s this huge danger of being, “I’m so and so, do you know who I am?” I’m just a person playing music and having a good time. Music should be fun, and, yes, it’s business too, but if it’s all business you’re going to get burnt out. You gotta have fun with it.

There’s also a tone of defiance in both your voice and music, which requires constantly stoking that fire inside you in order to stay angry enough to fight. How do you find yourself doing that?

I definitely have a lot of personal experiences that certainly stoke the fire. I have a lot of trans and non-binary friends here at home in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill is a progressive little community, but even within the context of a progressive community, I’ve been out at bars before and had people give them shit about how they look. That’s a real thing. It’s so wild to me that the trans community is what’s being targeted because they’re already vulnerable to begin with and they’re probably the most non-combative people. They’re not putting up fights, they’re just trying to exist and have a life and be comfortable, like everyone else wants to do. You witness injustice like that firsthand, and you try and de-escalate situations like that. It’s a very real thing and there’s still a lot of work to be done in terms of showing people that we’re not the enemy, and yeah we’re kind of freaks but we’re not out to destroy morality.

Everyone can exist together.

Exactly, yup.

I noticed you play with gender a lot in your lyricism, either by not using specific pronouns or by flipping them in other interesting ways. Can you talk a bit about that process?

I’ve always liked pushing the boundaries with that. I think blurring gender lines is really important because it totally leaves the story open to listener interpretation. People can be like, “Well, I’m not really sure if this song is written from a man’s point of view about a woman, or a woman whose woman lover left her.” Leaving that open to interpretation and letting people wonder and figure it out for themselves and how it applies to them personally, I think that’s a cool way to let people arrive that their own conclusions, and also realize that they feel perfectly OK not really knowing.

Photo credits: John Gessner

3×3: Greg Graffin on Old Mountains, Lady Pleasers, and Excellent Filters

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Greg Graffin
Hometown: Ithaca, NY and Los Angeles, CA
Latest Album: Millport
Personal Nicknames: Garth, Glenn

 

Schwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon, Year 2000

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If your life were a movie, which songs would be on the soundtrack?

“In the City” by Joe Walsh, and “Country Boy” by Ricky Skaggs.

How many unread emails or texts currently fill your inbox?

Zero (excellent filters) if I do say so myself.

How many pillows do you sleep with?

I’m married, so …

 

Erratics. Boulders left behind. Rocky Mountain N.P. Colorado, 2013.

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How many pairs of shoes do you own?

Five: fieldwork, hiking, city slicker, stage, sports, walk around.

Which mountains are your favorite — Smoky, Blue Ridge, Rocky, Appalachian, or Catskill?

Allegheny! Real old time.

If you were a liquor, what would you be?

A lady pleaser.

 

Chi Town at dusk. Sept 2016

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Fate or free will?

Each ranks high on the bullshit scale.

Sweet or sour?

Sour.

Sunrise or sunset?

One hour after and one hour before each one.