Tag: Jamestown Revival

It’s a Great Time for Roots Music on Broadway

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Utter the phrase “Broadway musical” and most folks are likely to assume you’re referring to the jazz-hands-inspiring works of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein; the emotionally manipulative drama of Andrew Lloyd Weber; or the inventive playfulness of Steven Sondheim. But folk and roots music have a long legacy on the great white way — and a bit of a folk boom has been happening in those storied theaters lately.

Granted, Broadway producers have long presented shows that pull in the music of roots-informed artists. Folk-pop singer-songwriter Duncan Sheik delivered a stunning musical score for the groundbreaking Spring Awakening, cementing the careers of Broadway stars Lea Michelle and Jonathan Groff back in 2006. Let’s not forget brief runs of musicals that pulled from the catalogs of Dolly Parton (2009’s stage adaptation of 9 to 5) and Bob Dylan (Girl from the North Country, which debuted in 2020).

Of the shows currently occupying midtown theaters, Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown has run the longest, having just passed its five-year mark. With eight Tony Awards from its 2019 debut, the musical pairs the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with that of Hades and Persephone. Though its original cast has scattered to other projects, beloved folksinger Ani DiFranco spent a bit of her winter and spring this year offering a stunning run as Persephone.

Ani DiFranco and Anaïs Mitchell outside the Walter Kerr Theater in New York City. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Fans may know DiFranco trained for many years as a dancer, even as she was building her singer-songwriter street cred. She proves to be a triple threat in the role, embodying the storied arbiter of summertime with a deeply rooted, empathic swagger. And though her June 30 departure feels like the end of an era for the musical, her latest album Unprecedented Sh!t (released May 17 on Righteous Babe Records) charts some new sonic territory via her political POVs.

Further, it’s hard to mourn DiFranco moving on when it was recently announced that British country favorite Yola will replace her in the role of Persephone, beginning July 2.

Hadestown was briefly joined last year by fellow roots musical Shucked, which came and went too soon. Awash in silly corn puns and Tampa-centric storyline, its earworm score was penned by Nashville mainstays — and Grammy darlings — Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally.

Last month, Illinoise opened at the St. James Theater on 44th St. Pulling tracks from Sufjan Stevens’s sprawling, ambitious 2006 album of the same name, the show reorders the songs to depict a group of friends sharing stories around a campfire. There is no dialogue. Instead, a 12-piece band and a trio of vocalists in magical butterfly wings perform the music in the background.

Upstage, Illinoise tells its stories through exquisite choreography that runs the gambit from lyrical contemporary to hip-hop, some sweet Broadway jazz, and even one number (“Jacksonville”) with a lightning-fast tapper in pinstripes. Dancers touch on love and loss, fear and transcendence.

“Zombies” becomes a scene about the immigrant experience, as dancer Jeanette Delgado (“Jo”) tries to outrun the ghosts of America’s founders, whose complex legacies still haunt the present day. “The Man of Metropolis” becomes a comical superhero-themed character romp. And former Billy Elliot star Ben Cook (“Carl”) delivers a heartbreaking and inspired series in Act II to track an emotionally complex love triangle.

By show’s end, there is a pervasive sense of the opportunity art grants us to transcend our selves and build a better world together. It’s no wonder the show was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. If it wins, it will be the first time a dance musical has won the prestigious award.

The Outsiders, meanwhile, is running now just one block away, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. It sets to music the novel by S.E. Hinton, which was immortalized in a 1980s film by Francis Ford Coppola. Produced in part by Angelina Jolie, with a book by New York theater fixture Adam Rapp (Wolf in the River, The Sound Outside) and music by Americana mainstays Jamestown Revival, this musical version unfortunately doesn’t measure up to the other two roots musicals in the neighborhood.

Granted, perhaps it doesn’t have to. The Broadway League and American Theater Wing don’t seem to be anything less than impressed, having nominated the musical for a whopping 12 Tonys this year. It may not translate seamlessly to the Broadway stage, but The Outsiders is a story that has been beloved by numerous generations. It was a treat to witness members of Generation Alpha giddy with excitement to take in the narrative arc of Ponyboy and the other Curtis brothers — a story that feels to this writer as though it’s rooted in Gen X sensibilities, despite being set in the 1960s.

Choreography by Rick and Jeff Kuperman was athletic and stunning — plenty of leaps and jumps and long, denim-clad legs spinning in the air like human helicopters. The Kuperman brothers’ martial arts background comes through even beyond the inventive dance-fight scenes. There is water on the stage, somehow, and it splashes up from time to time, for some reason. It doesn’t matter why. The effect is properly dramatic.

Brent Comer, who plays “Darryl,” steals the show with his powerful Zac Brown-reminiscent twang. He has some of the most compelling solos, embodying the exhaustion of a stay-at-home-mom as he folds clothes and laments his lot in life, “somewhere between brother and father” since their parents died. Jason Schmidt as “Sodapop” matched his rootsy musicality with the second-act heart grabber, “Throw in the Towel.”

But it is Joshua Boone’s “Dallas” who is perhaps the show’s greatest revelation, with his Bill Withers-esque vocals on solos like “Little Brother.” Brody Grant as Ponyboy seemed a bit lacking during the matinee performance this writer recently caught, but it could have been an off moment. Eight shows a week requires almost superhuman amounts of energy reserve.

Or perhaps it was a side effect of Grant being in his 20s while his character is supposed to be 14. Indeed, despite the electricity of The Outsiders’ score and choreography, the script doesn’t feel as authentic as its emotional realities demand. Hinton’s book offered readers a revolutionary view of teen struggles, written by a teenager. Perhaps the Broadway show should have brought in some teenagers to consult.

Regardless, both Grant and Boone were nominated for Tonys (as was Sky Lakota-Lynch, who delivers a haunting performance as Johnny). For folks just interested in what Jamestown Revival did for the show’s score, an Original Broadway Cast Recording is available now.

All told, there is no indication Broadway is going to break its love affair with roots music anytime soon. The Avett Brothers are set to make their Broadway debut with shipwreck-themed musical Swept Away this fall. The show has previewed in California and Washington, D.C., and has received critical praise already. Swept Away’s score is drawn from the Avetts’ 2004 album, Mignonette, plus four other songs from their canon — a treat for the band’s incredibly loyal fanbase and Broadway subscribers alike.

Further on the horizon is an adaptation of the classic labor movement-inspired film Norma Rae, with music by Rosanne Cash. In an email, her manager indicated a possible 2025 opening. One can only hope. And, just last week, Dolly Parton announced an upcoming original musical, Hello, I’m Dolly, set to arrive on Broadway in 2026.

The 77th Tony Awards will be held on Sunday, June 16, 2024 and will air on CBS. Find out how to watch here.

Playbill images courtesy of Playbill.com

With ‘Young Man,’ Jamestown Revival Take a Look at Their Life

Posted on by Editor

Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay, the two halves behind folk duo Jamestown Revival, aren’t brothers. But they’ve developed a reputation for singing like siblings, delivering close-knit harmonies that you’d typically hear in a bloodline. Thanks to that partnership, they’ve tended to keep Jamestown Revival all in the family, so to speak, and controlled the shape their Americana sound has taken since their 2014 debut album Utah. “We were pretty insular for a lot of years,” says Chance.

That insularity nearly defined the duo’s fourth studio album Young Man. Chance and Clay initially set up shop in Clay’s family barn in Texas, an open-air space that should’ve fueled the embers of their harmony-rich sound. Yet something wasn’t clicking. “It didn’t really go the way we wanted it to,” says Chance. “We were like, ‘Man, we think we need to re-record these songs and re-approach them.’”

Chance had heard that their friend, singer-songwriter Robert Ellis, had started producing with Joshua Block out of Niles City Sound in Fort Worth. After a conversation about working together, Ellis began driving to Austin, meeting at Chance’s house to discuss the songs the duo had written—a blend of deeply introspective fare and character-driven vignettes. “From the minute we decided to do this, he was sending us idea boards. The guy’s one of a kind,” says Chance.

“Zach and Jon singing together is bulletproof,” Ellis adds. “Seeing them play a live show, that’s super apparent. One of the things we talked about early on was how can we capture the vocals in a way that you see them singing?”

It became evident that Jamestown Revival’s new songs required a more intimate sound. For starters, they decided to put down the electric guitars. “We made that rule and gave ourselves that limitation,” Clay explains. They also decided to track everything live. The result, on Young Man, feels closer to a front porch gathering than the rock-informed sound of 2016’s The Education of a Wandering Man.

“It was like, if nobody’s playing it while we’re recording then we’re not going to go back and add to it,” says Chance. On “Young Man,” a song about losing sight of the person you used to be, Chance and Clay deliver hushed harmonies alongside an acoustic guitar. But the song doesn’t stay in that register long—it eventually explodes into an anthemic, keening search. “When did he lose that fire? / Did he just grow old, did he just grow tired?” Chance and Clay sing while a fiddle wends its way around their voices.

Fiddle appears throughout the album, serving as a stand-in for what the electric guitar once offered Jamestown Revival. “Moving Man,” a spare, jazzy folk song detailing the enticing call of a nomadic existence, was originally supposed to be a southern rock jam. But Chance and Clay saw a new possibility once they linked up with Ellis. “There’s a little solo section and I feel like on any other album the obvious thing to do was to grab an electric guitar and play,” Clay says.

Given the harmony-rich music Jamestown Revival make, fiddle partners with Chance’s and Clay’s voices as a third vocal element, adding a layer of nostalgia to the sepia-toned album. “I think fiddle has this really unique ability to hit you in the gut that few instruments can,” says Clay. “It’s a really vocal instrument because of the way intonation works. It’s beautifully gut-wrenching. Void of electric guitar, we really leaned on fiddle to introduce a lot of emotion into the album.”

Clay also got the chance to play around with a resonator, which structures the rolling hills landscape of “These Days.” Jamestown Revival had last used the instrument on “Wandering Man,” from their first album, and Clay had been itching to use it again. But nothing ever seemed just right. Until “These Days,” which deals heavily in memories—the kind that float behind you like a fog. “I enjoy playing resonator guitar more than I enjoy playing regular guitar,” Clay says. “It feels more cathartic. There’s a little extra bit that it can convey that a fretted or a keyed instrument just can’t sometimes. Resonator feels like it’s crying—and it’s so much fun to play.”

Memory informs the songs on Young Man. “Because we weren’t moving as much and experiencing as much, you start looking back at things and assessing where you’re going,” says Chance. And so does the Texas landscape. On the opening track “Coyote,” a soft pedal steel evokes a desert scene. Chance and Clay’s whisper-close harmonies thicken that sensation. “That song totally paints a picture,” says Clay.

Across all the tracks — both those that spin a story and those that take personal stock — Chance and Clay transform the dialogue they’ve long exchanged about Jamestown Revival and open up their ideas to a new perspective. “Robert always has an opinion, and I say that affectionately,” Clay says. “I need someone definitive in [the studio]. I need someone to be like, ‘Dude, that sucked, or that was awesome, or you know what that didn’t work but try this next time.’ Robert always has one of those three answers.”

It’s an approach Ellis was very specific about. “I think my role and what is helpful is to just always be the guy who has an answer and knows what he thinks,” he says. “I’m not saying that I’m right all the time, but I do think somebody saying, ‘That’s a good idea, let’s go in this direction,’ it creates a sort of forward momentum that you need.”

More than simply guiding the production, Clay says Ellis “got down in the dirt” with them. “We had two acoustic guitars going throughout every recording essentially—I was playing some acoustic and Robert was playing additional acoustic. He was putting it in these crazy open tunings and playing this abstract stuff. I don’t understand it; I don’t try to understand. Everybody’s got their own gifts. It was cool to appreciate him with his gifts and let him stay in his lane and do his thing. It was a folk-rock symphony of sorts.”

“They are both such good writers,” Ellis says. “And that’s where my heart is, that’s what I’ve spent my career going nuts about—songwriting and really narrative, character-driven stuff.”

Ellis also ended up co-writing “Old Man Looking Back” with the duo. It happened during one of the pre-production meetings around Chance’s kitchen table. Originally, Chance played a brief riff, intending it to serve as a reprise for “Young Man,” but Clay heard another possibility. “Zach played a line and a little strum and a little progression, and there was an element of it that I thought was awesome and really excited me,” says Clay. He offered a suggestion and from there things coalesced.

Rather than reprising the title track, “Old Man Looking Back” became a bookend for the album, sung from the perspective of an older father offering the adult son of “Young Man” his point of view. The song evokes Neil Young’s “Old Man,” in which a son pleads with his father to understand the parallels that run between their lives. “Old Man Looking Back” inverts that conversation. This time, it’s the father who needs his son to understand.

If the song was an accidental tribute, Clay wasn’t surprised. “There’s a little bit of Neil Young tribute in every Jamestown album, for sure,” he says. “I’m not even shy about it. Every single album.”

The growth Chance and Clay have experienced over the last two years pervades Young Man. In breaking out of the insularity that informed their earlier albums, Jamestown Revival has crafted their most evocative project yet. “It’s an exciting new turn,” says Chance. “A new way to approach things.”

Clay adds, “Every year or two that goes by, in between records, a lot happens and a lot changes in your life, so I think an album is a reflection of that and hopefully it’s a reflection of you growing as a human and experiencing more. I’m really proud of the writing.”

Photo Credit: Jackie Lee

Jamestown Revival Mine the Legacy of Louis L’Amour in “Prospector’s Blues”

Posted on by Editor

Folk-rock duo Jamestown Revival‘s new project provides an interesting study in the intersection of music and literature, as band members Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance wrote songs inspired by the work of American novelist Louis L’Amour. Titled Fireside with Louis L’Amour, the creative genesis of the EP brings to life an intriguing concept that will draw in any and all folk enthusiasts.

To tease the EP, the band released an official video for “Prospector’s Blues,” derived from the short story, “Trap of Gold.” The song follows a miner whose feverish hunt for riches finds him an early burial beneath the weight of his own recklessness. Like the story, the song imparts a nonchalant, “business as usual” attitude toward the tragedy of greed, as the train-like groove rumbles right through the parable in the lyrics. Acoustic guitar, pulsing rhythm, and Old West allegory — what’s not to love? Check out the video for “Prospector’s Blues” below.

Photo credit: Paul Pryor

BGS Podcast Roundup // May 8

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

In this week’s podcasts, we take you everywhere from Nashville’s Lower Broadway, to Compass Records, to the culinary scene in Montreal, and even back to a time when touring was a thing.

If you enjoy spending your weekend with the BGS Podcast Network, make sure to follow along on our social media [Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] and right here, where we’ll consistently gather our new episodes, as well as some past favorites:

The Show on the Road – Jamestown Revival

On the latest episode of The Show On The Road, we feature Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, two Texans and expert harmonizers who for the last decade have toured the world as Jamestown Revival.

Right before all tours got sent home, host Z. Lupetin was able to hop on the Jamestown Revival tour bus to discuss their intimate new record, San Isabel. While their previous record, The Education of a Wandering Man, saw them harnessing the muscular roots-rock that can be heard at their powerful live shows, San Isabel strips everything back to their intimate two-voices-around-one-mic, “southern and Garfunkel” sound that brought them together in the first place — and has rightfully won them hordes of fans coast to coast.

They say sibling harmony can’t be compared and we’ve had several sets of twin bands on the podcast, but what about soul-brother harmony? If one thing is clear just sitting on the bus and listening to them weave their stories and songs together, it’s that Clay and Chance were born to sing together.

San Isabel was laid down at Ward Lodge Studios overlooking the San Isabel National Forest in Buena Vista, Colorado and often includes the natural sounds of the nature all around them. Give it a listen — it’s peaceful and powerful and raw and maybe just what we all need right now.

Toy Heart – Alison Brown

Banjoist and record label head Alison Brown speaks with host Tom Power from her studio at Compass Records headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. They begin with her early records made with Stuart Duncan, “finding her people,” and winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship (as an American), then on to her time at Harvard, where playing banjo became “something you’d talk about at cocktail parties.”

She describes the moment she decided to leave investment banking and commit to music full time, her cocktail napkin dream, and the two talk women in bluegrass, women in banjo, and the First Ladies of Bluegrass. The story they dive into together is ultimately about figuring out what makes you happy, and pursuing it bravely, against all odds.

The Shift List – Chef Dyan Solomon (Olive et Gourmando, Foxy) – Montreal

This week, The Shift List closes out its miniseries focusing on the food of Montreal with chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author Dyan Solomon. If you’re from Montreal, Dyan Solomon needs no introduction. She’s the co-owner of multiple restaurants there, including Foxy, one of the city’s essential fine dining establishments. Back in November 2019 she released the Olive + Gourmando cookbook, a collection of 150 recipes from the namesake cafe that put Solomon on Montreal’s culinary map when it opened back in 1999.

Host Chris Jacobs checked in with Chef Dyan via email the other week to see how her restaurants have been affected by the stay-at-home orders in Canada. She replied with cautious optimism, saying that while all of her restaurants are closed until further notice, they are surviving and trying to remain positive about the future.

If you’ve listened to the last two episodes of The Shift List with Chef John Winter Russell of Restaurant Candide, you’ll know that he highlighted the work that’s being done to help support the Montreal Restaurant Workers Relief Fund, an organization set up to provide emergency relief to restaurant employees who are facing economic hardship due to COVID-19. Coincidentally, the fund was set up by Kaitlin Doucette, the Sommelier at Solomon’s fine dining restaurant Foxy, and donations are still being accepted at mtlrestorelieffund.org.

The String – Paul Burch, Thomm Jutz

Paul Burch moved from Indiana to Nashville in 1995 when his friend Jay McDowell (BR549) told him about the burgeoning indie country music scene on sleepy Lower Broadway.

In the 25 years since then, Burch has made uncompromising and original music with shades of classic honky tonk and timeless rock and soul. On the latest episode of The String, we talk with Burch about his role in the fascinating band Lambchop, the evolution of his band the WPA Ball Club and his new album Light Sensitive. Also in the hour, German-born bluegrass songwriting star Thomm Jutz.

 

The Show On The Road – Jamestown Revival

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week on The Show On The road, we feature a conversation with Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance, two Texans and expert harmonizers who for the last decade have toured the world as Jamestown Revival.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3 

Right before all tours got sent home, host Z. Lupetin was able to hop on the Jamestown Revival tour bus (sorry for the engine hum) to discuss their intimate new record, San Isabel, and their journey from meeting as curious singing teenagers in Magnolia, TX to their move out west and back home again. While their previous record, The Education of a Wandering Man, saw them harnessing the muscular roots-rock that can be heard at their powerful live shows, San Isabel strips everything back to their intimate two-voices-around-one-mic, “southern and Garfunkel” sound that brought them together in the first place — and has rightfully won them hordes of fans coast to coast.

They say sibling harmony can’t be compared and we’ve had several sets of twin bands on the podcast, but what about soul-brother harmony? If one thing is clear just sitting on the bus and listening to them weave their stories and songs together, it’s that Clay and Chance were born to sing together.

San Isabel was laid down at Ward Lodge Studios overlooking the San Isabel National Forest in Buena Vista, Colorado and often includes the natural sounds of the nature all around them. Give it a listen — it’s peaceful and powerful and raw and maybe just what we all need right now.

BGS Top Moments of 2019

Posted on by Editor

If music happened in 2019, but wasn’t a “song” or an “album,” does it make a sound– er… does it warrant real estate in any of the many year-end pieces, wrap-ups, and lists hitting the internet on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis? Why, of course it does! Each year BGS notes Top Moments of roots music — whatever form they may take — as a way of reminding ourselves that the art we each consume, especially of the musical variety, is often at its best when it eschews the formats and media we expect and/or most closely associate with it. What changes about the way we view a year in music when we alter the context as such? First and foremost, we change just that — our viewpoint. Turns out that makes a world of difference.

Speaking of top moments, one of the best for the BGS team took place just last week, as we premiered a brand new look with an updated homepage and logo. A lighter color palate, clean modern lines, and updated fonts usher in a new era for the site, and hopefully a positive reading experience for you, our beloved fans and readers. Not unlike the state of roots music itself, our new look is constantly evolving, but what’s at the heart of it remains timeless. Now, read about more moments that turned our heads and caught our ears over the course of the past 12 months.

Chris Stapleton Creates LEGO Alter Ego

When Chris Stapleton’s music video for “Second One to Know” hit YouTube, I found myself musing, “What are the benchmarks we use to determine someone’s level of notoriety? What are their claims to fame? Owning a tour bus? Having your first number one hit? Being the musical guest on SNL? Having a highway named after you? Or perhaps a proclamation from your local public figures designating a [Named After You] Day?” Seriously, can you imagine getting to a point in your country pickin’ / singin’ / songwritin’ career where your Game of Thrones cameo falls into the background of your music video star LEGO-self?

I would be remiss if in this blurb I did not mention another real-ass country singer/songwriter/rabble-rouser who dabbled in alternative visual media this year, too — that would be Sturgill Simpson’s “Sing Along.” More of this oddball, non sequitur energy in country in 2020, please. – Justin Hiltner

Dolly Parton’s America Podcast Finds Common Ground

Epiphanies in the podcast series Dolly Parton’s America are too many to count, as host Jad Abumrad and his team explore the notion that the Tennessee songbird is a rare unifying force in the fractured socio-cultural universe — everyone loves Dolly! But the fourth episode, titled “Neon Moss,” finding the common ground of Dolly’s Tennessee mountain home and the Lebanon mountain home in which Abumrad’s dad (a doctor who became friends with Parton after treating her in Nashville) grew up is gripping on a cultural and emotional level. Bonus: BGS’ own Justin Hiltner and his banjo pop up as a key part of a later episode. – Steve Hochman

Duos, Duos, and More Duos

Were you seeing double this summer? Mandolin Orange, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and Shovels & Rope offered exceptional albums and sold tons of tickets. From the sweeping San Isabel from Jamestown Revival to the intimacy of Buddy & Julie Miller’s Breakdown on 20th Avenue South, roots duos were having their moment. Personal favorites included The Small Glories and Bruce Robison & Kelly Willis, but the true discovery for me was Dravus House, a Seattle duo who delivered an understated and beautiful album that blends Elena Loper’s vocal with Cooper Stouli’s soft touch on guitar to stunning effect. – Craig Shelburne

Del McCoury Turns 80

At 80 years old, Del McCoury has witnessed the rise of bluegrass while still being actively involved in it. (In fact, he’s got a gig this weekend in New York with David Grisman, Jerry Douglas, Drew Emmitt, Andy Falco, and Vince Herman.) An all-star tribute at the Grand Ole Opry provided perhaps the most musically satisfying night of music this year for me, mostly because The Del McCoury Band has still got it (and they make it look like so much fun). Check out their 2019 performance on Live From Here With Chris Thile. – Craig Shelburne

Hadestown Wins Big on Broadway

In an era when Broadway has seemingly been taken over by jukebox musicals that rehash the catalogs of legacy artists, watching Anaïs Mitchell pick up eight Tony Awards for Hadestown was a surreal triumph. For those of us who have followed Mitchell’s career over the past couple of decades, it was truly remarkable to see a grassroots musical that she first staged in 2006 reach the heights of Broadway, earning her a win for Best Musical and Best Original Score. “Wait for Me,” indeed. – Chris Jacobs

Ken Burns Digs Deep into the Roots of Country Music

Ken Burns has a long history of digging into America’s deepest roots, through documentaries like The Civil War, Jazz, Baseball, and The National Parks. In 2019 he took those roots in a more on-the-nose direction, exploring the long and varied history of American Roots Music through his PBS documentary series Country Music, which premiered in September. As the filmmaker himself said in a recent interview, “Country Music is about two four-letter words: love and loss.” Thanks to Burns, who looks unflinchingly at all of the different stories that have shaped this music, we get to see the love, the loss, and everything in between. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs

MerleFest and IBMA, Rediscovered

After a long break, I made an effort to reconnect with two of the preeminent roots music festivals  in 2019 – MerleFest and IBMA’s World of Bluegrass. With other obligations in Nashville, it had been five or six years since I’d attended either, and both surprised me for different reasons. At MerleFest, I was struck by the caliber and diversity of artists, in particular for landing a headlining set by Brandi Carlile in her breakout year. Five months later, I returned to North Carolina to see IBMA in action, amazed by the way that the city of Raleigh has embraced the musical experience, from the Bluegrass Ramble to the StreetFest with plenty of outdoor stages. North Carolina, I’ve got you in my 2020 vision. #ComeHearNC – Craig Shelburne

“Old Town Road” Can Lead Anywhere

Is “Old Town Road” country? Like millions, maybe even billions of fans, I’m inclined to answer that question with an emphatic “Of course it is!” But I’m also inclined to ask: What else is this song? Is it roots music? Is it folk? Blues? Yes, yes, and yes. That chorus is powerful in its simplicity, and it’s not hard to imagine Doc Watson singing those lines or Geechie Wiley intoning that sentiment mysteriously from some lost B-side, accompanied by a century of acetate scratches and surface noise. Almost accidentally existential, the chorus speaks to an unnamed American melancholy, and it can mean anything you want it to mean and be anything you want it to be. – Stephen Deusner

Roots Music Don’t Need No Man

No, like literally. After 2019 we can definitively say that roots music as a whole does not need any men. From the first albums of the year (say, Maya de Vitry’s Adaptations or Mary Bragg’s Violets as Camouflage), followed by two indomitable women of the Grammys (Kacey Musgraves and Brandi Carlile), then two universally regarded supergroups (Our Native Daughters, the Highwomen), the resurgence of true legends (like Reba McEntire’s Stronger Than the Truth and Tanya Tucker’s While I’m Livin’), to a Newport Folk Fest collaboration that combined nearly all of our favorites, this year in Americana, bluegrass, old-time, and folk has been defined by women. There were pickers (Molly Tuttle, Nora Brown, Gina Furtado), there were scholars (Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves, Our Native Daughters), there were poets (Caroline Spence, Jamie Drake) — repeatedly this year I found myself in musical spaces that, if all of the men were subtracted, I would still want for nothing. #GiveWomenAmericana – Justin Hiltner

Yola’s Meteoric Rise

Co-write sessions and frontwoman-for-hire gigs aptly prepared Yola for the non-stop successes she’s had in 2019, from sharing stages with childhood heroes Mavis Staples and Dolly Parton to nabbing a whopping four Grammy nominations, including a coveted Best New Artist nod. Kicking off the whirlwind year was her Dan Auerbach-produced debut solo album, Walk Through Fire, a beginning-to-end stunner and a sure sign that Yola’s star power will only continue to rise. The ample steel guitar on “Rock Me Gently,” the countrypolitan charm of “Ride Out in the Country,” and the buoyant old-school soul of a new bonus track “I Don’t Wanna Lie” show off an eclectic roster of influences and a striking vocal range. But the album standout might be its only number written solely by Yola, “It Ain’t Easier,” a slow-burner with a hell of a bridge that pays tribute to the hard work behind even the greatest of loves. On the stage, in the studio, and in everything she does, Yola is putting in the work — and we can’t wait to see what 2020 holds. – Dacey Orr

Jamestown Revival Find Their Sound on ‘San Isabel’

Posted on by Editor

There are more trees than people in San Isabel, Colorado, where the Wet Mountains poke the sky and Jamestown Revival’s Zach Chance and Jonathan Clay set up a makeshift recording studio in a cabin. The Texas natives emerged with San Isabel, a gorgeous new album that marks both a return to Jamestown Revival’s acoustic roots and a bold step forward into more topical lyricism.

While addressing the unease now shaping the country’s collective mindset is a first for the pair, the record maintains Zach and Jonathan’s anchors of empathy and hope – along with their now-signature Southern folk harmonies that are woven together with that unexplainable richness usually reserved for families.

With a day off from touring, Jamestown Revival called in for a conversation with the Bluegrass Situation.

BGS: Location seems important to you guys. Take your album titles, for example. Utah was your first, and now, with San Isabel, you’ve returned to an album title that documents where you recorded. You’re not from or living in Utah or Colorado, but you sought them out. Why?

Jonathan Clay: Colorado is a place we’ve always loved. Long story short, we had access to a summer cabin in Colorado, and we thought, Gosh, we should take advantage of this.

Zach Chance: It’s kind of twofold. It was access to those places and trying to record in a guerrilla fashion. We enjoy the adventure of it — going and setting up in these settings, being removed — it just makes for a really fun process for us.

JC: For us, the city is not really conducive to creativity. It’s just not where I feel compelled to create.

ZC: The city has its own flavor of inspiration. It does inspire us at times, but it’s not really where we like to record, so…

JC: We have a habit of getting out into the woods when we’re ready to make an album.

Why did you guys decide to return to a more acoustic sound this time around, compared to The Education of a Wandering Man?

ZC: We weren’t touring as much as we had been the past couple of years. We’d been writing for some other things, and we just really wanted to go back to two voices – to write songs that could work with one guitar and two voices, back to the roots of what we were doing. I don’t know if it was all the noise of the time we live in right now, but we wanted something more centered around traditional folk storytelling. We were listening to a lot of Bob Dylan, Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young – stuff like that. We felt compelled to live in that world.

Do you have favorite songs on the new record?

ZC: I don’t know. As soon as we start talking about them, I’ll tell you all the reasons I love them. Maybe I’m too diplomatic. I love “Harder Way” and “Who Hung the Moon.” That was a song we wrote in Colorado and recorded in a day. They’re like children. We love them all equally but differently. This might sound really dumb [Laughs], but there have been times playing “Crazy World” that I get kind of choked up. I start thinking about everything, and I get a little sad. The first few times we played it out, I got really emotional. We want to write stuff that ages like we’re aging — that matures a little bit.

JC: I think that’s a good point. We want our art to grow with us and mature with and without our listeners. I really like “Who Hung the Moon.” “Harder Way” is a pretty special song. I’m actually pulling my three-year-old boy on the scooter right now, humming melodies that I don’t know. It’s a special thing. When I sing the line about my boy, it’s coming from a real place. I have to hold back emotions sometimes because I think, I’ve got an audience to perform to. I can’t get choked up because that makes it hard to sing.

It seems like more and more artists feel obligated to address the uneasiness in the country right now. San Isabel does it – not necessarily explicitly, but it is still more topical than your previous work. Did you feel obligated to do that?

JC: I don’t think it was out of obligation more than it was just compulsion. We just felt compelled. It’s on everybody’s mind –everybody’s consciousness. As an artist, I think your consciousness manifests in your songs. That’s what happened with us.

First, you take a beat to acknowledge the despair a lot of folks are feeling in “Crazy World.”

JC: Zach and I have always been careful not to speak from some place of moral high ground. We don’t want to be just one more person preaching to somebody, as if we’ve got all the answers, because I think the problems plaguing our country are very complicated. If you oversimplify them and place blame, you’re falling victim to the very thing you’re proclaiming to rally against.

In a lot of our songs, we just point out what we see. It’s almost a lament rather than a judgment. We’re all in this together. All of our countrymen and women, we created this – we all played a hand in it. We’re trying to point out our observations and underscore the fact that we’re all on the same team, when you really get down to it. We all do care about each other. I feel like we’ve got more in common than we realize sometimes. It seems like sometimes the world is wrapped up in greed and malice and angst and vitriol rather than peace and — not to sound cheesy, but — harmonious things, the things that really give us happiness.

ZC: Yeah, it’s funny. “Crazy World (Judgment Day)” and “This Too Shall Pass” are back to back on the album. And those are like two sides of the same coin, you know? “Crazy World” is the day you wake up and think, I have zero hope for humanity. The idea was you’re sitting in a bar, and you’ve had a few to drink. Stuff is coming across the news, and you’re just discussing the state of affairs, like, “Yeah, man. It’s still a crazy world. Not much has changed.”

I love that you just brought up that it’s like those two songs are two sides of the same coin because it does feel like “This Too Shall Pass” offers some comfort.

ZC: Yeah, as dark as I can get, I recognize that I’m probably a glass is half full person. John, I think you are too.

JC: Oh, I’m a hopeless optimist.

ZC: [Laughs] So, that song speaks to that. No matter how dismal it is, we have to find a silver lining. Friendships and family are where the true joys in your life come from, more often than not.

What’s the best thing you’ve encountered or experienced back on the road this time?

ZC: Oh gosh, I have so many good ones. Eating dumplings in New York in this little shop in Chinatown. We crammed in with all our people, sat with strangers, and the beers were flowing. Those nights are fun. The camaraderie of being on tour again: You’re just living together, and you come home with a million new inside jokes and phrases.

JC: One thing that was really cool about this tour is we brought somebody out in our crew as a roadie who had never been out of Texas. We saw the world through his eyes. His parents brought him here from Mexico when he was six years old. He hasn’t had the opportunity to do much traveling. I met him and thought he seemed like a cool dude, so we gave him a job as a roadie.

ZC: We’re all a bit more advanced in age and have made a few more laps around the country, so in some ways, you can be jaded by that. But he’s 21, and experiencing all these things for the first time. It was really fun to relive some of this stuff through his eyes.

On this album, it feels like you have found your sound, at least for now. Comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel are inevitable, but ultimately, you don’t sound like anyone else out there right now.

JC: Well that’s a huge compliment. I appreciate that.

ZC: We definitely look up to Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers and would gladly take a comparison, but humbly say those guys are masters. We’re trying to figure it out.

JC: Yeah, those guys are masters, but we want to be masters. Somebody’s got to carry the torch. I’m not saying that in a cocky way, but I would love to be somebody that attempts to carry the torch. It’s what we love to do, and it’s what we love to sing. Singing without harmony — I don’t enjoy it half as much. When I sing with Zach, my voice feels complete. So it’s almost like a musical necessity for us.

If it were just the harmonies, the comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel would still come, but it’s your writing too, which is so strong.

JC: A lot of people still ask, “Are y’all brothers? The way y’all harmonize, I feel like you have to have grown up with each other.” Well, we’re not brothers, but we have been singing together since we were 15 years old, so I guess that’s about as close as you can get without being blood-related. It’s like a vocal marriage.

As far as the writing goes, we try to be thoughtful and not say things in a way that’s been said before. We knew early on that we wanted to be the kind of writers who are not overly esoteric or hard to understand. We wanted to speak in a way that’s plain and understandable but at the same time, maybe put in a way that you haven’t quite heard it put before.

Photo credit: Paul Pryor

Robert Earl Keen Explores Americana in New Podcast

Posted on by Editor

Years before the term Americana entered the musical lexicon, Robert Earl Keen was out on the road that goes on forever, playing his unmistakable blend of folk, country, and Texas roots music. With decades of insight to provide, he’s launched Americana Podcast: The 51st State, where he sits down with some like-minded artists for warm conversation. His first two guests are Jamestown Revival (listen) and Lucero (listen).

“Is there a substitute for close-up, in-the-same-room communication?” Keen remarks. “I’ve spent my entire career on the interviewee side of the microphone. We are trying to replicate the environment that in my experience I’ve felt the most comfortable. I’m sure as we move through this podcast journey that we’ll make exceptions or compromises, but for now we want to be up close and face to face with the artists. It’s more real.”

Keen answered some questions by email for BGS.

BGS: What prompted the idea for you to launch a podcast?

REK: As a touring band it’s easy to spend all your time working the road. One can become isolated from the current music culture. Consequently, I keep my eyes and ears open for things that keep me connected.  My producer, Clara Rose, suggested a podcast. We decided Americana was our best route. She secured the name, and started making calls to artists. It’s been an accurate way to keep in touch with the current music culture. We are standing on the precipice of an artistic revolution overlooking the most creative group of artists in the last hundred years. I didn’t know this before our podcast. I’m sure some will argue to the contrary, but because of this podcast, I’m able to contribute to the discussion.

What is it about this community of songwriters and musicians that appeals to you?

I love the warts-and-all quality of Americana. I lived in Austin, Texas, in the ’80s and it was home to the richest artistic and chaotic neutral environments anywhere. Of course, there were world-class songwriters and guitar players (Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan), and there were legendary folk heroes (Kenneth Threadgill and The Grey Ghost) but there were unclassifiable things as well. The Uranium Savages, Spamarama, the O’Henry Pun-off, Eeyore’s Birthday Party, Max for Mayor, and an untold amount of crazy music venues. One night I went into what might be considered the first craft beer emporium in the Southwest, Maggie Mae’s, and there was a guy on stage playing pots and pans from his kitchen. Maybe Americana doesn’t encompass a pots and pans player, but I love the kitchen-sink quality of Americana.

Is there a common thread among your guests for far?

Most all the artists were either guitar players or in a guitar sound-driven band. The thread that is most apparent to me is these are all seasoned and passionate musicians. They are all committed for the long haul. Not in for the money or fame, but like me, play music because the idea of any other kind of life doesn’t appeal.

What has surprised you the most as this podcast project has come to fruition?

The interest and positive reinforcement are overwhelming. When I told family I wanted to play music for a living, except for my mom, they were less than encouraging. Even she tried to talk me into going to piano-tuning school to have something as a backup. When I told my friends in the music industry that I wanted to jump from an independent label to a major label, they asked, “Why?” When I tell people that we’re doing a podcast, they send me confetti texts before they even ask what kind of podcast. I don’t know what the difference is but it’s a big difference.

What do you hope the fans will take away from the first two episodes of Americana Podcast?

I hope they hear in the first three minutes of this podcast that we’re dedicated to the highest quality of production values and we are adamantly committed to shining a ten thousand candle power light on the beauty and magic of Americana music. Anything less means we should up our game.

Top photo (L-R): Jonathan Clay of Jamestown Revival, Robert Earl Keen, Zach Chance of Jamestown Revival
Middle photo: Lucero’s Brian Venable and Ben Nichols with Robert Earl Keen
Photos used with permission.

LISTEN: Jamestown Revival, “Harder Way”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jamestown Revival
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Harder Way”
Album: San Isabel
Release Date: June 14, 2019
Label: Thirty Tigers

In Their Words: “This song is about feeling isolated in a room full of people. It’s about missing your 3 year old son when you’re on a month-long tour. It’s about the cost of achieving your dreams, and the bittersweet reality that exists throughout the journey. Its not a gripe; just a peek in to our heads when the shows over, the lights are out, and we crawl back in to our bunks — missing home.” — Jonathan Clay, Jamestown Revival

Photo credit: Paul Pryor