Carolyn Kendrick’s latest project explores complex themes of moral panic, tradition, and the figure of the devil (AKA Satan, AKA Lucifer). The LA-based songwriter opens up about the inspiration behind her album, Each Machine, which is accompanied by a thought-provoking zine. In our Basic Folk conversation, she discusses the significance of the color red in her work, symbolizing themes of anger, danger, and familial ties, and how it contrasts with the black and white imagery used throughout the project.
Carolyn also shares her unexpected journey into researching the devil, sparked by a podcast project that ended up overtaking her life, leading her to interview the leader of the Satanic Temple, among many others. This deep dive into the topic became a way for her to process the overwhelming political and cultural landscape. She candidly discusses the challenges of maintaining balance while being consumed by such a heavy subject matter (spoiler alert: she did not maintain balance at all).
We also touch on Carolyn’s work in podcasting (You’re Wrong About, You Are Good) and how it has influenced her approach to music. She reflects on the importance of integrating culture and music, creating a world-building experience that connects various aspects of her life. Carolyn’s creation of the Gender Equity Audio Workshop, along with co-producer and Each Machine collaborator Isa Burke, highlights the power of women supporting each other in the music industry, fostering an environment where questions can be asked without fear of judgment.
She expands on her exploration of traditional songs through a devilish lens, which allowed her to examine how their meanings shift when viewed in this context. She also discusses her dual versions of the hymn “Are You Washed in the Blood,” inspired by Naomi Klein’s book ‘Doppelganger,’ and how they represent different facets of her musical identity.
Throughout this episode of Basic Folk, Carolyn Kendrick offers insights into forgiveness and harm, emphasizing the need for solution-focused actions in today’s society. Our chat concludes with a fun and quirky Satan-themed lightning round, where Carolyn shares her favorite pop culture depictions of Satan and imagines a music festival in hell. The devil is fun again!
Carolyn Kendrick is known among folk and roots fans as a fiddler with legitimate trad bona fides and as a singer-songwriter prone to introspective, observational songwriting. In the podcast zone she has carved a place as producer, researcher, and composer for several shows, including the award-winning You’re Wrong About podcast hosted by Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes.
In fact, it was while Kendrick was researching the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s for an episode of You’re Wrong About that she became obsessed with cultural panics in general. That obsession ultimately led to her haunting new album, Each Machine, which released December 6 on Occulture Records.
Last month, from her home in Los Angeles, Kendrick explained the album’s genesis.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about lineage and tradition lately,” she says. “… I’ve been thinking of all of these songs that have these deep traditional roots, that I’ve been listening to and learning and singing around campfires with, you know, friends at bluegrass festivals and folk festivals for years and years and years.”
The songs that were standing out to her all carried some darkness, a little shadow of the devil. She started wondering what might happen if she decided to reinterpret some of them in a way that asserted her personal instincts. “That includes things like more electric instrumentation, more sound design, more world building,” she says. “Not for it to sound inflated, but what if it was part of a more extended concept rather than just, you know, individual songs?”
To explore these curiosities, she enlisted the collaboration of her friend, multi-instrumentalist, and fellow Berklee grad Isa Burke (Aoife O’Donovan, Mountain Goats) to help her flesh out the sonic landscapes that are sure to envelop Each Machine’s listeners in a creepy, devilish fog.
Indeed, the album’s swallowing darkness even pervades on deceptively welcoming songs like “Sumer (Sing Cuckoo)” –sung here in the traditional round, a cappella except for some decidedly spooky timpani wallops. As a result, and in the context of so many songs about the devil, the duo’s approach feels particularly untouchable, like the story of a photograph of a memory of lighter times.
Then again, Kendrick felt compelled to include it amid her exploration of panic. As if to say: Perhaps the light is gone for now, but the nature of summer is that it returns.
To that end, she notes: “It was really, really fun to be able to take these older songs that have such a rich lineage and reinterpret them with the lens of … the issues that we’re going through as a people right now.”
This side of the 2024 election, most topical interpretations are probably incidental – she wrote the album long before votes were cast. But, while Each Machine implies a general warning about what happens when humans become wrapped up in an historical moment, it also becomes specific, for at least one track, on the topic of women’s health.
Track nine is a spoken-word piece Kendrick has titled “Sugar and Spice.” For fifty-five seconds, the listener is treated to a collection of recordings about what it is to be a woman in America. From the nursery school rhyme from which the track gets its name to a news report about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the track ends with a distant crowd of protestors chanting about abortion. This is followed by the artist’s take on the trad song “Wind and Rain,” about a pair of sisters competing for a man’s attention: In pursuit of her prize, the one shoves the other into a river to drown.
Kendrick isn’t wasting anyone’s time being subtle about her views here. Then again, where’s the room for subtlety amidst panic?
As The New York Times reported in 1994, the Satanic Panic encompassed “12,000 accusations of group cult sexual abuse based on satanic ritual.” The same Times article clarified that none of these events seem to have actually occurred, but the fear they provoked in the public was definitely real. As a folk singer drawn to moments of cultural import, digging into the Satanic Panic caused Kendrick to consider the way these “panics” might be connected.
That she tied in songs about the devil; ruminations on a view of Earth from space; what womanhood requires of us; and even the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke means this is not an album meant to be background music. To be sure, the musicianship and arrangements are lovely, but the spoken word bits are necessarily jarring.
Over and over, the disc interrupts itself with interludes that pull one’s attention back – from feeling to meaning – before moving into another song. This tennis match between the heart and the head reaches its apex about halfway in, when Kendrick pivots between two separate recordings, “Are You Washed” and “In the Blood.” Between them sits a spoken word piece (the title track) which feels intimidating and disorienting.
Her decision to include two interpretations of the one song was inspired by Naomi Klein’s Doppleganger. That book, Kendrick explains, “really changed how I’m thinking about how we receive information.”
“As Americans,” she adds, “our media diets are so different and atomized from one another. And there’s also this confusion within the conspiracy landscape that we live in right now. … How can we be receiving the same information and interpreting it so differently? … [So that song is] an experiment. How do I approach one thing and look at it from all different angles? And how will that make me feel differently?”
Indeed, Each Machine is clearly trying to get through a whole lot of questions. And in just eight songs, it somehow achieves its goal. In addition to the questions already mentioned, there’s the Satanic Panic of it all. What, then, does fear – of the devil, of freedom, of technology, of one another – teach us?
As she sends Each Machine out into the world, Kendrick is clear that the lesson she learned is that she’s grateful to have a creative outlet to help her find light in darkness.
“I had been going through all of this really difficult subject matter,” she says. “… I had so many feelings of distress and worry – and also of hope. [I was in] this flurry of all the big emotions that we go through [when] we’re dealing with reality. I needed a place to put all of my feelings about moral panics, I guess.”
Oh, how I’ve longed to talk to Liv Greene. Every once in a while you come across a young artist that seems older and wiser than her 26 years. Liv’s been giving me that impression since I met her in 2019, when she was at Club Passim waiting tables and breaking hearts on the stage at just 21 years. Ok, enough about being young.
Liv’s been writing, studying music, and going to music camps since she was 12. Arguably she’s been studying music all her life with her Americana loving parents, who were filling the house with the sounds of Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and Shawn Colvin, to name a few women in heavy rotation at the Greene house. Being the only of her friends that liked that kind of music, Liv attended many D.C.-area concerts with her mom, taking in the magic of live music at a very tender age. Speaking of tenderness, that’s what Liv Greene is all about and she digs into it in our conversation.
Liv started writing and playing shortly after she was inspired by a Taylor Swift concert. From there, she took off on the instrument and even sought out music education in camps like Miles of Music in New Hampshire. It was at that camp, as well as the arts academy Interlochen High School, where she started meeting peers with similar interests. She found herself living for summers with her music camp friends. Prior to her senior year at Interlochen, Liv was a closeted queer at her all-girls Catholic school mostly writing fictionalized stories into her songs because she could not deal with who she was.
Liv attended and graduated from The New England Conservatory of Music and released her debut album (produced by Isa Burke) right in time for the pandemic in May of 2020. Shortly after that, she moved to Nashville and has spent the last several years on an intense path of self-discovery. Liv found her community, came out, wrote, and self-produced her new album, Deep Feeler (out October 18). On the album, you can hear the growth she’s experienced and you can hear her thriving in her corner of the Nashville music scene, including indie folk. We talk about all of this, including what it means to have a neurodivergent brain, music production, the roller skating community, and Liv’s favorite Taurus personality traits.
For this edition of Out Now, we’re honored to introduce an artist I’ve known for years. Liv Greene and I met in 2017 at Interlochen Arts Academy. It’s incredible to watch artists like Liv, who have been dedicated to their craft for years, develop careers in the industry. Following our time at a small arts school in Northern Michigan, Liv and I both moved to Boston. After a year at Tufts, grappling between following a traditional path or following her intuition, she transferred to New England College of Music. And we both eventually found ourselves in Nashville.
I have known a small handful of individuals who took this path – following music and intuition from their teen years into adulthood. That kind of persistence and dedication is rare.
I’ve known Liv from before they were out to even their closest friends to now, a time when they are publicly vocal about their identity. To some, these things may seem small. But to teens, up-and-coming artists, and the queer community, it’s incredibly important.
Liv has long been one of the most talented artists I’ve known – even in their teen years. But years of persistence and dedication to their craft have sculpted their music and work into something polished, professional, and bound to take off if they continue on this path. If you don’t know their music, you’re in for a treat: sophisticated guitar lines soaring melodies and reflective lyrics. We are so proud to present Liv Greene for Out Now.
Why do you create music? – What’s more satisfying to you, the process or the outcome?
Liv Greene: The process! I think I make music because I have an ever-burning curiosity and desire to learn new things. Ever since I was 11 and first discovered my ravenous appetite for learning songs on the guitar, my passion has burned brightly and shifted focus a number of times. Recently, the process of recording is really fascinating to me. I am quite new to it overall, and I feel lucky to have some mentors that have really helped me wrap my head around the daunting mystery of it. My first record was produced by my friend and mentor Isa Burke, (you may have heard her shred electric guitar and fiddle with Aoife O’Donovan), and watching her work, as both a session musician and producer on that record, was beyond inspiring. This past year I’ve been lucky to work on a record with legendary engineer Matt Andrews. Matt’s become a friend as well as a mentor and the process of making music with him has taught me more than I can even put into words.
What is your current state of mind?
Recently, it’s not the most positive. With the accelerating climate crisis, I’ve been grappling with big picture plans and visions and considering how it all may need to change in a different world. For example, touring, while once a main dream for my career, now doesn’t feel like the most important thing to me anymore, especially given all the carbon emissions from flying and the gasoline needed to drive. While connecting with people over sharing music on tour feels really sacred to me, I think being intentional about it and how often I’m doing it feels like the only thing that makes sense. With how scary things are these days, I’ve been trying to zoom in on the close-range and try to make it better. Brighten a corner in the space I’m already in now. I’ve been focusing on the things that have always held me, and trying to be the best I can in return to them. My loved ones, family and friends, and my craft.
What would a “perfect day” look like for you?
As much as I love the road, a perfect day would probably be an off day at home. The groundedness of home is unparalleled. I’d wake up around 9, have some coffee and avocado toast, read my book (right now I’m reading this stunning queer novel, Swimming in the Dark), then go out for my favorite 6-mile skate route through the woods near my home (I love rollerskating, particularly trail skating), then come home, and get ready for the day. Once dressed for the day, I’d play some guitar, work on a half-written song or two.
My favorite way to work on songs is to pick up drafts and ponder them by improvising on them every few weeks until they take form. A perfect day of this would probably lead to a completed song and a demo, which I do on cassette on my Tascam portastudio 424mkii with an Ear Trumpet Labs Edwina mic. Four track demo-ing makes my heart happy. Something about the constraints, and the warmth and imperfection of tape, really helps to rise above the minutia and get to the heart of the song. I’d probably enjoy something tasty for lunch, maybe meet a friend or two for some antiquing or thrifting, and then end the day over delicious food with dear friends. Sharing songs, crafting, and drinking wine or tea on a night in, or dancing my boots off to motown or honky-tonk if on a night out in Nashville.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
There are two in particular that come to mind. The first is songwriting related, and it’s something I first heard when I was 16 at Interlochen songwriting camp in northern Michigan. My instructor at the time, an amazing North Carolina-based songwriter and community builder named Cary Cooper, shared with us the words of Mary Gauthier: “Sing the song that only you can sing.” That message has stuck with me ever since, for its sobering simplicity and its reminder to look for the story you can tell best, the one on your own heart.
In terms of non-song-related advice, my friend Jack Schneider introduced me to the Stephen Covey quote, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” This applies to production work, when you need to zoom out and make sure you haven’t lost the heart of the song, but also to life in general. If I’m ever getting too tied into or stressed over the details of something I try to remind myself, “It’s just music, focus on the music, enjoy it.”
Who are your favorite LGBTQ+ artists and bands?
This answer changes monthly, maybe even weekly, as we are so blessed to have so many artists who are out and proud these days. Growing up it was Brandi Carlile, and she will always be a huge influence for me not only as a writer and musician, but just as a person. Recently, it’s been a lot of my old friends/new friends/mentors, Jobi Riccio (killer classic-style songwriting meets honest new perspectives and modern production), Chappell Roan (kitschy, campy, brilliant pop artist), Olivia Barton and Corook (you may know the smash TikTok hit, “If I Were a Fish“), Mary Bragg (brilliant songwriting, production, and stunning vocals), Melissa Carper (queer woman queen of western swing/classic country), Rosie Tucker (brilliantly clever indie magic), and Izzy Heltai (indie-americana sad boy music that gets to the heart of it). For more pop, MUNA is also one of my all-time favorite bands, period, Saves the World being the record that got me into them. Their live shows are always a religious experience.
What does it mean to you to be an LGBTQ+ musician? And what are your release and touring plans for the next year?
Man, being an out LGBTQ+ musician means the world to me. Being queer is beautiful, it’s a blessing and a gift to be able to access the fullness of who you are without limitations, and I think it’s particularly special to me given how I am able to be proud of it after years of shame around it. Representation matters. I remember seeing Brandi Carlile when I was 14 and didn’t have any other tangible people I saw myself and my queerness in. In a lot of ways, seeing her live at such a young age helped me realize that it was ok to be me.
As for touring plans, you can catch me on the road this fall with fellow queer Americana artist Brittany Ann Tranbaugh, who just released an EP produced by Tyler Chester (Madison Cunningham) that’s damn good, as well as a couple shows in Tennessee in late October opening for one of my favorite songwriters, Margo Cilker. For release plans, I recently finished work on LP #2 and am burning with anticipation to get it out. It’s looking like spring of 2024. Good things take time.
Welcome to Folk Debate Club, our occasional crossover series with fellow folk-pod Why We Write! Today, to discuss Your Career vs. Your Soul, we welcome our panel of guests: music journalist and Why We Write host, Kim Ruehl, Isa Burke (Lula Wiles, Aoife O’Donovan), musician and Basic Folk guest host Lizzie No, yours truly, Cindy Howes, boss of Basic Folk and a very warm welcome to Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan of The Milk Carton Kids.
I’d like to think that the act of “selling out” ebbs and flows with the passing of time. As the earning power of the folk musician changes, so does the allowance of what is perceived as abandoning your principles for the almighty dollar. That doesn’t mean that it always feels great. Choices musicians have to make to further their careers can be exhausting and detrimental to their art. How do you strike that balance at the intersection of art and commerce in the folk music world?
Photo Credit: Sam Kassirer (Isa Burke); John Gillespie (Lizzie No); Rich Amory (Kim Ruehl); David McClister (The Milk Carton Kids)
Welcome to Folk Debate Club, our occasional crossover series with fellow folk-pod Why We Write! Today, to discuss Performance vs. Authenticity, we welcome our panel of guests: music journalist and former singer/songwriter Kim Ruehl, Isa Burke (Lula Wiles, Aoife O’Donovan), illustrious male folk singer Willi Carlisle, musician and Basic Folk guest host Lizzie No, and yours truly, Cindy Howes, boss of Basic Folk.
In music (and life), there is debate over authenticity versus performative. On stage, in written music, online and in person: what is the artist going for? Realness or entertainment? It doesn’t seem that simple. There are many examples of artists who do both very well and I think the best art is created at the intersection of the two.
There is no question: it’s hard to pull off. We want to try and break down what each of these elements is in music, how to achieve each and what is more important: to perform a personality or just be your genuine self?
Photo Credit: Sam Kassirer (Isa Burke); Cole Nielsen (Lizzie No); Rich Amory (Kim Ruehl); Joseph W. Brown (Willi Carlisle)
The Americana Music Association announced the nominees for its 22nd annual Americana Honors & Awards today at the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM) in Nashville. This year’s nominations were revealed by host Gina Miller, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MNRK Music Group and member of the Americana Music Association’s Board of Directors. The event was streamed live to the Americana Music Association’s Facebook page and also featured performances from S.G. Goodman, The McCrary Sisters, and Margo Price.
A full list of categories and nominees for the Americana Music Association’s 22nd annual Americana Honors & Awards is below:
ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Big Time, Angel Olsen; Produced by Angel Olsen and Jonathan Wilson
Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?, Tyler Childers; Produced by Tyler Childers
El Bueno y el Malo, Hermanos Gutiérrez; Produced by Dan Auerbach
The Man from Waco, Charley Crockett; Produced by Bruce Robison
Strays, Margo Price; Produced by Margo Price and Jonathan Wilson
ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
Charley Crockett
Sierra Ferrell
Margo Price
Allison Russell
Billy Strings
DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR:
49 Winchester
Caamp
Nickel Creek
Plains
The War and Treaty
EMERGING ACT OF THE YEAR:
Adeem the Artist
S.G. Goodman
William Prince
Thee Sacred Souls
Sunny War
INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR:
Isa Burke
Allison de Groot
Jeff Picker
SistaStrings – Chauntee and Monique Ross
Kyle Tuttle
SONG OF THE YEAR:
“Change of Heart,” Margo Price; Written by Jeremy Ivey, Margo Price
“I’m Just a Clown,” Charley Crockett; Written by Charley Crockett
“Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt; Written by Bonnie Raitt
“Something in the Orange,” Zach Bryan; Written by Zach Bryan
“You’re Not Alone,” Allison Russell featuring Brandi Carlile; Written by Allison Russell
Photo of Tyler Childers: David McClister Photo of Sierra Ferrell: Alysse Gafkjen Photo of Allison Russell: Marc Baptiste Photo of Charley Crockett: Bobby Cochran
Welcome to Folk Debate Club, our occasional crossover series with fellow folk-pod Why We Write! Today, to discuss Lyrics vs. Melody, we welcome our panel of guests: music journalist and former singer/songwriter Kim Ruehl, Isa Burke (Lula Wiles, Aoife O’Donovan), musician and Basic Folk guest host Lizzie No, and yours truly, Cindy Howes, boss of Basic Folk.
Our conversation begins with a case each for melody and lyrics from members of the panel. Some panelists are more fluid with their thoughts and feelings and at least one of us changes sides mid-discussion. Some interesting opinions emerge! For instance, manipulation in music is no good if the listener can see through your bullshit: “Part of the job [of songwriters] is to emotionally manipulate people. When you are feeling manipulated is when the person has missed,” says Kim. The panel talks about rawness: it can take lyrical editing before it can be presented to the public. “It’s sometimes hard to tell as the songwriter, like, how raw am I actually being?”, shares Isa, who goes on to talk about how being raw in melody can be very effective. She points to her emotional guitar solo (that was done during a difficult moment in her life) in the Lula Wiles song “The Way That It Is” as one of her most favorite musical accomplishments (listen below).
Bob Dylan comes up within 90 seconds of the debate! Don’t worry, Taylor Swift, Maggie Rogers, Stevie Wonder, Adele, and Paul McCartney also make cameo appearances. And Lizzie No ftw: “Lyrics are the hand-holding that we need to bring us into the glory of instrumental music.” Enjoy! We had a good time doing this, so we’ll see you again soon!
Photo Credit: Liz Dutton (Cindy Howes); Louise Bichan (Isa Burke); Bernie McAllister (Lizzie No); Kim Ruehl
Folky string band Lula Wiles’ brand new album immediately asks What Will We Do? The project’s title is the first of many thought-provoking questions and prompts sprinkled throughout the album, like tasty musical morsels that lead listeners to explore our culture’s social norms, power structures, and political realities.
But the three women — Isa Burke, Ellie Buckland, and Mali Obomsawin — aren’t being needlessly combative, pushing buttons or grinding gears to elicit equally combative and grinding responses. The goal, evident throughout the album, isn’t protest. It’s empathy. These conversations tease out the slight nuances that define each of us, rather than hiding them away for the sake of convenience and tidy generalisms.
What Will We Do has a quiet, introspective, power to provoke — or perhaps more accurately, evoke — a reality that is stripped of its normative, predictable infrastructures and replaced with person-to-person, human-to-human connection as its keystone. And without condescending even the least to offer a paramount answer to the album’s titular question, the music — and the nuances within — will guide open-minded and open-eared listeners to the answers.
BGS: In the press materials for the album, it’s described as “provocative,” but when I listen to it I don’t find it… incendiary. You aren’t necessarily just sticking a poker into the fire or fanning the flames; you’re trying to accomplish something more productive than that. In the writing process and the creative process what went into striking that balance? Was it conscious or subconscious? Was it overt or covert?
Mali Obomsawin: We had a lot of conversations about how to write political songs, or songs that capture certain elements of the political climate right now and the cultural climate in general. It is a really delicate thing to confront current issues that people aren’t agreeing on. It’s not like we’re talking about World War II. Yes, Germany was in the wrong, everybody knows that. I think we have a lot of listeners that agree with us politically, so to speak, but we still wanted to write about topics that have nuance. We didn’t want to be reductive. The most incendiary approach to talking about current issues is being reductive, deleting and erasing that nuance. We aren’t interested in doing that because that doesn’t get anything done.
“Hometown” feels like it’s painting a picture of a pretty normative, small-town America, but then you have lines like “Flip a coin and choose pride or shame” that really stick out to me. That’s the difference between a marginalized person and a privileged person growing up in the same place — it’s a coin toss whether they’ll feel that hometown pride or shame. How does that song relate to each of you? Where did that idea come from? What’s the connection or nuance in that line?
EB: First of all, “Hometown,” the whole song, is deeply personal to me. I think it was originally inspired by specific people in my family and the fact that I vote differently than a lot of people in my family, that I love. Then, as a lot of writers do, there are a lot of characters in the song that are not coming from my exact life, but come from my experience growing up in this place, going to high school with people who were using drugs and becoming addicted to drugs, girls who were having kids when they were fifteen or sixteen, and just a lot of working class people as well.
I remember thinking about the divide that people feel about being on welfare. Specifically, this idea that of the people who are so critical of welfare and feel that it is just people mooching off the government, in fact, a lot of those people would greatly benefit from welfare because they are struggling financially. But they feel a sense of pride on their own. Like, “I will pull myself up by the bootstraps. I will follow all of these sort of rules that will create. I am the American dream, I am the future millionaire.” They’re critical, they think it’s shameful to accept these benefits.
IB: Also, I think a lot of the time pride is like armor against shame. The force of pride can be, “I’m choosing to be proud of this thing, because I’ve been made to feel ashamed of it.”
MO: Right now, for instance, there’s a lot of Indian mascot drama going on in Maine. We Natives almost have a superiority complex in that we’re so proud of who we are and where we come from. We have to be, because we’re so shamed by things like mascots. I think a lot of marginalized people feel this way. It’s a form of self-protection.
I do want to spend a little time talking about Indigenous rights and issues, because it’s been a topic that through the lifespan of this column we haven’t been able to cover yet. I think that in itself is indicative of what I want to talk about, which is — and I wanted to say Indigenous rights are the “final frontier” of intersectionality, but even that is colonialism! This is how deeply entrenched colonialism is. How would you like to see the music community respond to these issues that you’ve brought up in the music and on the album?
MO: It is so entrenched in American society to be anti-Indigenous. It’s in so many of our colloquial, everyday phrases even. Like, “the final frontier” or “have a pow-wow.” Even smaller things like, “lower on the totem pole.” Natives are used as tropes… which just adds to the erasure. This is all a product of the erasure we’re taught by textbooks: “Indians are history, Indigenous people don’t exist anymore, it’s not even something you need to think about anymore.” It’s to a point that if you bring up any Indigenous rights topic, or address any issue, you instantly become the most radical person in the room. You end up disassembling the whole house of cards of social norms in which we exist.
[In] the folk scene, the songwriter scene, there are things to be done. Maybe someone wants to do a land acknowledgement in a new town. That’s fine, that’s good, I encourage it, but also just look at your colloquialisms and the tropes you use in your lyrics. There are so many! Natives are used for imagery and turns of phrase to give your lyrics a little hip touch.
Authenticity signaling.
MO: Yeah. People use it so much! And all of my favorite artists do it! Every time it happens I’m just like, it’s Tom Petty with, “Til an Indian shot out the lights” and Joni Mitchell with “Little Indian kids on a bridge.” It happens all the time, when we’re just driving in the car, like, “Oh shit, damnit. Paul Simon’s out, too?”
I want to end with “Shaking As It Turns” and make it our call to action for this column. How do we take an album like this, and a song like “Shaking As It Turns,” and help people understand that this poor fucking world has been shaking all along? We’re just at the point where we’re feeling it shake more and more and so intensely. What do we do now that we have this awareness? What do we do now that our thoughts have been provoked?
IB: What will we do?! [All laugh]
EB: What will we do? It’s almost like this is what the record is about!
IB: I feel like the last verse is the closest we get to protest music, to that galvanizing call to action type of thing. That’s the “Don’t talk about love if your love won’t burn” verse. I wrote the song in July of 2017, right after the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where [Heather Heyer] was murdered. That verse was kind of a response to all of the “love trumps hate” rhetoric that was going around at the time. That phrase always rang hollow to me, especially when it was in response to something like murderous neo-Nazis. I think sometimes you can’t just respond by saying, “Well, just be loving to them and that will fix it.” Because it won’t fix it!
That verse is trying to say that love is a good response to hate, but it has to be the kind of love that calls you to do something. The “love trumps hate” thing always felt like a cop out. [We’re] trying to get people to not disengage, but to go deeper into these issues, get down to the very foundation of why things are the way they are. If confronting Indigenous rights means questioning the very nature of reality, then do that. Ask those tough questions. Ask them of the people that you love, ask them of people you disagree with, and do it in a way that’s honest and isn’t disingenuous.
Photo credit: Laura E. Partain
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