Tag: jazz

Basic Folk – Mali Obomsawin

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Y’all ready for a crossover? Basic Folk listeners will remember Mali Obomsawin from their work as a bassist, singer, and songwriter with folk trio Lula Wiles, but today we are celebrating Mali’s debut as a jazz bandleader/composer. Mali’s new album, Sweet Tooth, was inspired by field recordings of elders from Mali’s Wabanaki community.

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Mali’s improvisational approach to creating music results in a remarkable living piece of music that not only illustrates hundreds of years of their people’s history, but also illuminates their hopes for the rematriation of Native lands. One of the most insidious lies about Native people in the Americas is that they are relics of the past, not constantly-evolving communities. Through their music and activism, Mali refutes this claim. The record weaves field recordings with intense instrumentals and Mali’s stunning voice. They even co-wrote a Penobscot language chant to close the album. Sweet Tooth confronts heartbreaking history while insisting upon a path forward. It is at turns heartbreaking, jarring, tender, and fun.

Those who are interested in learning more about the concept of intersectionality will find this episode of Basic Folk fascinating. Mali and I dig deep into what it looks like to embrace gender freedom while remaining loyal to the bonds shared by women of color within a hostile colonial culture.

Editor’s Note: Basic Folk is currently running their annual fall fundraiser! Visit basicfolk.com/donate for a message from hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No, and to support this listener-funded podcast.

Photo Credit: Abby and Jared Lank

Tray Wellington Shares a List of Banjo Players Thinking Outside the Box

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

North Carolina musician Tray Wellington is fresh off a nomination for this year’s IBMA New Artist of the Year, following the release of his full-length debut album Black Banjo. Still in his early 20s, Wellington pulls from a myriad of influences — on his latest album he cites jazz as the major influence of his progressive bluegrass style. Many other banjo players of this younger generation are using the influence of genre and blurred genre lines, adapting and subverting narrative and traditions, and utilizing sheer unrestrained creativity to operate outside the traditional confines of the instrument.

In honor of BGS Banjo Month, Wellington gathered a collection of current artists who are thinking outside the box, creating their own voice on the banjo in new and innovative ways, and striving to make the banjo a better-known and appreciated sound.

Photo Credit: Dan Boner

We’re giving away a Recording King Songster Banjo in honor of Banjo Month! Enter to win your very own RK-R20 here.

Carolina Calling: the Wilmington Effect

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

From Blue Velvet to One Tree Hill, scores of movies & TV shows have been filmed in & around Wilmington, North Carolina. Perhaps the best-known is Dawson’s Creek, the popular late-’90s coming-of-age drama series. While the show tried to tackle progressive storylines, its stark lack of diversity made Dawson’s Creek frequently cited as the whitest show ever. Nearly two decades after it went off the air, tourists still come to Wilmington in search of the show’s landmarks.

But Wilmington has a more difficult, less visible side to its history, politically as well as culturally, going back to the 1700s. Long before North Carolina became one of America’s original 13 colonies, there were thriving Indigenous communities throughout the region. There was also a time when Wilmington’s most famous musician was a man of color, Frank Johnson: fiddler, composer, and bandleader – and one of the biggest stars in American music in the years before the Civil War.

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During Reconstruction, Wilmington was an unusually progressive, forward-thinking town. In contrast to the state of things elsewhere in the South, Wilmington elected a racially diverse local government, led by both whites and freed Black people.

That came to an abrupt end in 1898 with a white-supremacist coup, a bloody rampage that left numerous people of color dead and Black-owned businesses destroyed. Those the mob didn’t kill, they chased out of town. That left Wilmington with a mostly white population, an all-white local government – and a whitewashed version of the city’s history in which Black people’s contributions were erased from the official story.

This might seem like ancient history, but it’s not. Wilmington’s most famous native-born musician is probably Charlie Daniels, the country-music star who died in the summer of 2020. Daniels was born in 1936 – less than four decades after that 1898 uprising. The real story of the 1898 coup is finally coming to light in recent years, thanks to works like the 2020 Pulitzer-winning book Wilmington’s Lie. But it’s still not widely known.

In this episode of Carolina Calling, we explore Wilmington – a town that keeps its secrets even as they’re hidden in plain sight – through the life and career of Frank Johnson, whose his story and stardom were all but lost to time – or rather, to the erasing effects of the 1898 massacre on Wilmington’s history.

This episode features John Jeremiah Sullivan, a writer and historian who lives in Wilmington and has written extensively about the city’s music and history for The New Yorker and New York Times magazine, as well as Grammy winner Rhiannon Giddens, and musicians Charly Lowry and Lakota John.

Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Durham, Asheville, Shelby, Greensboro, and more.

Music featured in this episode:

Paula Cole – “I Don’t Want To Wait”
“Saraz Handpan C# Minor”
Charlie Daniels – “Long Haired Country Boy”
Traditional – “The Lumbee Song”
Lakota John – “She Caught The Katy”
Ranky Tanky – “Knee Bone”
Lauchlin Shaw, Glenn Glass & Fred Olson – “Twinkle Little Star”
Marvin Gaster, Rich Hartness, Beth Hartness & Harry Gaster – “Rye Straw”
Evelyn Shaw, Lauchlin Shaw, A.C. Overton & Wayne Martin – “Money, Marbles and Chalk”
Marvin Gaster, Rich Hartness, Beth Hartness & Harry Gaster – “Chickens Growing at Midnight”
Rhiannon Giddens w/ Franceso Turrisi – “Avalon”
Rhiannon Giddens w/ Franceso Turrisi – “There Is No Other”
Joe Thompson & Odell Thompson – “Donna Got a Rambling Mind”
The Showmen – “39-23-46”

BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.

Portrait of Frank Johnson via the National Portrait Gallery

Tray Wellington Conquers World of Bluegrass With His Five-String Banjo

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A few short weeks ago the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, were once again filled with bluegrass lovers at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass conference and festival. Banjoist and Momentum Award winner Tray Wellington was everywhere to be found during the festivities — performing, hosting this year’s Momentum Awards luncheon, and playing a main stage set at the Red Hat Amphitheater. This is remarkable because if you had looked for Wellington at IBMA just a few short years ago, you might not have run into him except on the youth stage or in the halls, jamming.

Catapulted by his prior work with the talented young band Cane Mill Road, his studies at East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass program, and a stable of accomplished and connected mentors and peers, Wellington went from a newbie to a seasoned veteran faster than a global pandemic could subside — and during it. Efforts for better and more accurate representation in bluegrass have contributed to his momentum (no pun intended), but above all, his talent and his envelope-pushing approach to the five-string banjo are the root causes of his mounting and well-deserved notoriety. 

Last year, during World of Bluegrass, Wellington performed as part of our Shout & Shine Online virtual showcase. For 2021’s edition of the biggest week in bluegrass, we connected via phone after the conference to talk about these leaps and bounds in his career, the ever-increasing tempo of his music-making and performing, and what’s coming up next for the young picker. We also discuss why making the bluegrass community more inclusive is so important — and how his own progress in the industry over a few short years reinforces that point. 

BGS: You were so busy at IBMA this year! Let’s start there — can you talk a bit about the growth that you’ve experienced over the past few years? Because this year you were everywhere and doing everything in Raleigh!

Tray Wellington: [Laughs] Yeah, it was kind of a crazy week! It was a lot of new things, like you said, that I’ve never done before. But I think it really opened me up to a lot more ideas of what I can do in the music industry. I started out the week going to the business conference and then on Wednesday I hosted the Momentum Awards. And that was kind of a crazy thing for me, you know, I’ve never done anything in that regard, as far as hosting a whole awards show. I got asked to do it and I was kind of nervous about actually doing it. I remember getting up there like, “Dang! I can’t back out now!”

It’s a cool experience! Especially when people come up to you afterwards and tell you you did a good job. It makes you feel good about your progress over the last couple of years and I’m glad that people put faith in me and thought I would do a good enough job at it so they did ask me to do it. 

You’re going from being an instrumentalist, a sideman, and a technician of the instrument to being a frontman and a recording artist. I wonder how that shift has felt to you? How does it feel to be in charge and “guiding the ship?” 

It’s been a really weird experience. Before, when I was just being a sideman, I had a great time with that, because it did open me up to a lot of different types of music and getting to learn a lot of music. But that’s something I still try to do with my band now. I try to incorporate those ideas from my band members, because I did learn so much [when I was in other bands]. I think the most important thing in a band is hearing other people’s perspectives. I love the other band members bringing songs to me and being like, “Hey, can we do this?” Working up their music [is just as important] as working up my music and the arrangements for my stuff. 

There have been people who do great front work who choose all of the material for their bands — I’m not saying that doesn’t happen. I just think that when I’ve seen bands that really get along and take each other’s musical perspectives in, it’s been a much more natural and calm feeling. Versus the feeling of, “Oh, somebody messed something up!” That was something I felt more when I was a sideman, I was so serious. It’s good to be serious, but it’s also good to stay relaxed.

To me, you have a very traditional approach to banjo playing while at the same time, you don’t necessarily seem too concerned with what is or isn’t bluegrass. Can you talk about what musically guides you and inspires you as you’re playing more in the bandleader headspace? How do you want to sound and why do you want to sound that way? 

It’s interesting that you mention that, because most of the time I usually get feedback that I’m more of a progressive musician, like 95 percent of the time. So it’s interesting that you say that — I love everybody’s observations. I would say, when I was playing with Cane Mill Road I definitely had more of a traditional approach to the banjo. I still get a lot of my attack from that. When I’m thinking about music, though, I love all forms of music and I want to play all forms of music. That’s something I really try to do. I try to incorporate sounds from jazz — I studied jazz a little bit in college. That was a big thing for me, taking in those sounds and inspirations. As well as taking from other forms of music, because that’s the way the genre grows. 

I’ve been really getting away from trying to sound like anybody, necessarily. That’s been my big thing. I want to be one of those musicians that tries to make my own voice on the instrument overall and gives my own ideas to it. A lot of that came from studying different players, like Béla Fleck and Scott Vestal and Noam Pikelny. Not just studying them, but studying the old school kind of stuff as well. 

You just took IBMA by storm, you’re signed to Mountain Home Music Company — so much is coming down the pipeline for you it almost feels like too big of a question to ask, but I have to ask: What are you excited about? What are you looking forward to as you just finished this really busy, business-y week? 

There’s a lot of stuff going on! It’s something I’m still thinking about myself, like what is my next major step? What’s the next move? That’s something I think a lot about. I’m looking forward to getting out and playing music live again next year. I’m playing more music live this year, but not as much with the pandemic. It’s slowed everything down. I’m also looking forward to getting into the studio at Mountain Home and recording — well, finishing my album. We’ve got some stuff recorded, but we’re kind of in the process of planning and trying to finish that project. I think it’s going to be really fun. I’m really trying to get away — not to like, disagree with what you said earlier! [Laughs] — but I’m really trying to get away from people perceiving me as more of a traditional player. 

You’re trying to sound like Tray Wellington.

Exactly. I’m trying to branch away. I’m more drawn to the modern sounds, so when I present this new album I am wanting it to be more of an eclectic kind of thing. 

I’m also excited about this upcoming performance I did for CNN on W. Kamau Bell’s program, United Shades of America with Nikki Giovanni. We did it at the Highlander Center, which is a historical civil rights school [in East Tennessee]. We went up there and I got to sit with Kamau and Nikki and a lot of great organizers from the area and get to play music for them. It was super fun. I’m wanting to do more stuff there in the future. It’s such a historic place. It’s crazy, before this shoot I didn’t know what the Highlander Center was and I grew up an hour and twenty minutes from there. The government of Tennessee hates the Highlander Center for their work there. It’s such a taboo thing to talk about in East Tennessee. I had never heard of it. They gave me a whole tour of the place and told me a ton of the history and I was like, “I’ve never even heard of this!” They had a building burnt down like two years ago by white supremacists. 

I know!! And this is after the state and the KKK trying so many times to run them out. It’s shocking so few people know about it, but that’s all by design. I’m so glad to hear you’re connected there! Especially with the current movement for inclusion in this music, it makes so much sense to partner with an organization like the Highlander Center, which is based in the home region of these musics and has always been a leader in the fight for justice. 

Yeah, absolutely. With diversity and inclusion in bluegrass, there needs to be more focus on it. Because the typical bluegrass fan base is white people, no matter what walk you’re from. It’s a lot of white people and white men, just to be honest. I think it’s one of those things where, if you want to get outside people into the music you need to encourage people who are of diverse backgrounds that this music can be inclusive. That’s the way that you move towards more people doing it.  There have been a lot of factors that have contributed to this. The biggest problem I’ve seen is not a whole lot of nationwide outreach. There are a few great programs, like Jam Pak in Arizona by Anni Beach, she’s doing great work right now.

We just interviewed Fair Black Rose, of Jam Pak, for the other part of our special IBMA Shout & Shine coverage! 

That’s great work they’re doing there! It’s a band of all diverse people from all walks of life. That’s such a great thing to see. I listened to one of their sets and I thought, “This is such a great thing.” Even when I started music I didn’t see anything like that at IBMA. It was such an interesting thing, despite the pandemic and this being a pretty low-attended year of World of Bluegrass. This was the most diverse year I’ve ever seen. … I remember going to IBMA five or six years ago for the first time and looking around and being like, “I’m the only person of color here.”

It’s that way at a lot of bluegrass festivals I go to — which is crazy, cause if you think about it, this is the International Bluegrass Music Association. There are supposed to be people from all over, as well. I’m not talking bad about IBMA, but I think the biggest need is more outreach. To people of color, but the LGBTQ+ community, too. Sometimes it’s a difficult thing to do, it can be easier said than done, but definitely I think it can be done, because other music forms have done it. For years! And they’ve had very big success. I think it just takes that initiative and drive to do it. 

Photo courtesy of Mountain Home Music Company

Béla Fleck: “It’s Clear to Me That Bluegrass Is Still My Defining Element”

Posted on by Editor

Novelist Thomas Wolfe famously declared that you can’t go home again. But then again, Wolfe is not remembered as a musician who played bluegrass, a style that’s all about going home again.

So it is that Béla Fleck’s new album is a homecoming, and an ambitious one at that. A third installment in Fleck’s long-running bluegrass trilogy, My Bluegrass Heart (Renew/BMG Records) is his first bluegrass album of this century. It’s a double-disc effort with an all-star cast – from old hands like Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas to new stars including Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Chris Thile, Billy Strings, and more – with a running time not much shorter than the first two volumes put together.

“It’s hard to get around,” Fleck says. “As much as I may pretend to be something else, I am bluegrass at heart and that’s okay. It’s something I’m proud of and have come to embrace more as time goes on. Part of that is aging – do something when you’re young and you may not want that to be what defines you. Bluegrass just seemed like too obvious a pigeonhole for a banjo player when I was starting out and there was so much other music I loved, too. But after a lot of exploring, it’s clear to me that bluegrass is still my defining element.”

The album title of My Bluegrass Heart is actually a riff on an unexpected source, the late jazz pianist Chick Corea, a sometime collaborator of Fleck’s. One of Fleck’s favorite Corea albums was 1976’s My Spanish Heart, an ironic title because Corea was of Italian rather than Spanish descent.

“He was a guy from Boston with a natural affinity for Latin music, which was central to who he was even though he did not have legit entry in terms of ethnicity,” Fleck says. “That resonates for me. I’m from New York, of Eastern European and Russian descent with no natural connection to folk or bluegrass. So I’m defining myself with music that’s not necessarily my heritage, but being an outsider helps you bring new things to the idiom. When I go off to study Indian music, I can come back and write this album’s ‘Vertigo,’ which has very Indian rhythmic devices. Finding a way to insert Indian music or jazz or classical into bluegrass is very satisfying.”

The roots of My Bluegrass Heart go all the way back to Fleck’s first bluegrass album, 1988’s Drive, which he made with a core group including Bush, Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Mark Schatz, and most notable of all the late great guitarist Tony Rice (to whom the new album is dedicated, along with Corea). That same cast appeared on the 1999 follow-up, The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2.

Had Fleck had his way, the same crew would have convened for volume three, and it would have come out many years ago. But the holdup was Rice, the troubled but brilliant guitarist who died in 2020 on Christmas day after years of health struggles.

“Playing bluegrass with Tony Rice was such a profound, dramatic upgrade from anything I’d ever experienced before,” Fleck says. “I wanted to do it again and reached out a lot over the years, but there was no response. I was puzzled and disappointed. Hurt, even. But come to find out that a lot of his other friends were going through the same thing with him as he started to isolate. He was not confident about playing anymore, so he shut it down and withdrew. And at a certain point, I heard about some close musician friends of mine who were starting to have hand problems. I thought, ‘If I don’t do this soon, some people I want to play with might not be able to anymore.’”

To that end, Fleck convened the surviving cast from his first two bluegrass forays, while adding young guns like Strings and Tuttle as well as other longtime pals including Tony Trischka, David Grisman, and Michael Cleveland. There’s plenty of firepower throughout these 19 tracks, especially on “Slippery Eel” — the first-ever studio work featuring the pairing of Strings and Thile. Fleck did his best to come up with something that would challenge those two, but notes that, “Of course they made it look easy.”

All 19 tracks are instrumentals, with a conservatory feel akin to Punch Brothers (several of whom appear) or the Kruger Brothers. But there are vocals of a sort, between-song quips and jokes by various players.

“This is such a community record and I thought it’d be cool for people to know this bluegrass community through these voices,” Fleck says. “You know, Sierra Hull talking, Tony Trischka and Jerry Douglas laughing, Sam Bush being silly, David Grisman being David Grisman. I think people in the bluegrass world will know every voice. When I’d play the record for people, they would always tell me, ‘I hope you keep that stuff in. It really humanizes it.’ I’m really excited and satisfied with everything about this record. The community aspect, hearing everybody play and talk, makes me happy. It’s like a love letter to the bluegrass community. If there’s ever been any doubt I love this music, there’s this.”

Editor’s note: Read about more about our Artist of the Month, Béla Fleck, here.

Photo credit: Alan Messer

The Show on the Road – Sammy Rae & The Friends

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we talk to Brooklyn-based bandleader and jazz-roots singer extraordinaire Sammy Rae, who for the last four years has barnstormed the country with her kinetic octet, The Friends.

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Look, when you’re young and inspired, you drop out of college, you’re waiting tables and you’re thinking about starting a jazzy pop band — most people (as well as common sense and basic economics) tell you to start small. Get a few like-minded musicians in a room, work and work on your best songs, try packing out a few local shows, put some radio-ready singles on the internet, do a music video or two. See what happens. But Sammy Rae does her own thing — and has done pretty much the opposite.

Much like your host of this fine program, Z. Lupetin (who went against all advice and began Dustbowl Revival as an 8 to 10 piece genre-bending, New Orleans-string band mashup in 2008), Sammy has harnessed the open-minded, countercultural energy of Broadway musicals, the slinky funk-pop of the 1970s AM radio, and her own rapid-fire poetic style to create a massive sound that’s made with three singers, two saxophones, and a fearless, seasoned rhythm section. Plus, they are all friends who don’t just treat this as a temporary weekend gig. Too much too soon? Well, ask the packed houses up and down the Eastern Seaboard if they care about playing it safe.

Sammy Rae knows the road ahead for The Friends won’t be easy, but so far, the response from listeners has been undeniable. Starting at tiny supportive clubs in New York like Rockwood Music Hall and graduating to the biggest rooms in one of the hardest towns to impress, the group struck a nerve with their debut EP The Good Life in 2018 — with the standout jazzy experiment “Kick It To Me” gaining nearly ten million steams and counting. “Don’t record songs over four minutes long,” they keep telling us. “No one will pay attention!” Yet their most listened-to track clocks in at nearly seven minutes.

What’s the lesson here? For Sammy it’s finally learning to trust her instincts and be herself. Their upbeat EP Let’s Throw A Party dropped in 2021. Make sure you stick around to the end of the episode to hear how Sammy’s experience as a queer teenager in a Connecticut girls’ Catholic school informed their new track, “Jackie Onassis.”

 

LISTEN: Andy Peake, “Hip Replacement”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Andy Peake
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Hip Replacement”
Album: Mood Swings
Release Date: August 20, 2021
Label: Biglittle Records

In Their Words: “A friend of mine was talking about needing a hip replacement and I immediately locked into the double meaning of the term. The music for the song was inspired by an often-heard melodic hook found on some of Miles Davis’ and other popular jazz compositions of the ’50s and ’60s. Lay that hook on top of a salsa rhythm and spice it up with some Middle Eastern modal rock guitar and you have a danceable international flare that is uniquely American. Regarding the lyrics/theme… Sometimes as we get older, we get set in our ways — and may need a jump start. ‘Hip Replacement’ is intended as a poetic, virtual set of jumper cables.” — Andy Peake

Photo credit: Karen Leipziger

The Show On The Road – Lake Street Dive

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, Z. Lupetin and The Show On The Road bring you a conversation with internationally loved soul-pop pioneers Lake Street Dive. Starting out as jazz nerds storming local folk festivals and tiny rock clubs around Boston, they’ve since become a well-oiled touring phenomenon, headlining Red Rocks, traveling across Europe, playing late night on Colbert and Kimmel, all while refusing to settle into an easily nameable genre. In 2021, after three years since their last release, they celebrated their much-awaited seventh studio album Obviously.

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Most notable bands are like sunsets: they flash their colors, they create a few memories and fade away. And most groups that attempt, somehow, to connect virtuoso players in the jazz, roots, and rock ‘n’ roll scenes never actually live in the same town. Each have a Beatles-esque knack for singing sublime harmony and writing effortlessly killer hooks (see fan favorites like “Go Down Smooth,” “Good Kisser,” or their new TikTok earworm, “Hypotheticals”) and also each have their own solo groups? Maybe they last a few fiery tours and finally disband. And yet Lake Street Dive have become a steady standard-bearer in the nascent Americana world — and only seem to be getting tighter and more creative 17 years in.

Founded in 2004 by luminous singer Rachael Price, upright bassist-songwriter Bridget Kearney, high-energy drummer Mike Calabrese, and the recently departed guitarist-trumpeter Mike “McDuck” Olsen at The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, the group caught new wind and inspiration after adding kinetic keyboardist/singer-songwriter Akie Bermiss in 2017.

After months of planning, we finally caught up with Calabrese and Bermiss on Zoom to discuss how they are forging a fresh path forward after a tough year and a half away. Make sure you stick around to end of the episode to hear how they meticulously created their knockout a-cappella pop gem, “Sarah,” which closes out their new LP.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

They’ve Got You Covered: 10 Tributes You Need to Hear

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

2020 was a year of many things – COVID-19, existential elections, the shuttering of the music industry, and on and on – but one common, non-catastrophic throughline of the musical variety was cover songs. Many musicians and artists, finding themselves with more free time than usual and more standard-fare albums and cross-continental tours back-burnered, took the opportunity to explore live records, collaborations, and yes, covers. From Molly Tuttle to Wynonna, livestreams to socially-distanced shows, covers became an unofficial pandemic pastime. 

Now, in 2021, many of these cover projects conceived and created in 2020 have made it to store shelves – digital and otherwise – and we’ve collected ten tributes worth a listen:

Shannon McNally covers Waylon Jennings

It’s fitting that Shannon McNally released The Waylon Sessions on Compass Records, whose headquarters now occupies “Hillbilly Central.” As Tompall Glaser’s former studio, the building helped give rise to country’s outlaw movement and it’s where Waylon himself recorded. With guests like Jessi Colter, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, and Lukas Nelson, the project recontextualizes Waylon Jennings’ material, which is usually associated with hyper-masculine wings of the country scene. As McNally puts it in a press release, “What Waylon Jennings brought to country music is what country music needs right now, and that unapologetic and vulnerable sense of self are what women are tapping into artistically right now as the industry evolves.” 

Steve Earle covers Justin Townes Earle

Many a musical child has covered their parents’ catalogs in retrospect, but it’s rare that we see the reverse. A gorgeous, gutting, and laid-bare album, Steve Earle’s J.T. is a ten-song tribute to his son, Justin Townes Earle, who passed away suddenly in August 2020, shocking the Americana and folk communities. Earle’s signature emotion bristles and crackles throughout the project, giving Justin Townes’ songs an even stronger quality of visceral electricity. Proceeds from the album will go to a trust for Etta St. James Earle, Justin Townes’ daughter and Steve’s granddaughter. 

The Infamous Stringdusters cover Bill Monroe

Spread out from North Carolina to Colorado and beyond, the Infamous Stringdusters utilized home recording from their respective studios during the pandemic to accomplish musical creativity their jam-packed schedule hadn’t really allowed in the “before times.” Their brand new EP, A Tribute to Bill Monroe, returns the virtuosic jamgrass outfit to territory familiar to those who first found the group when they were cutting their teeth, striding out from traditional bluegrass into the vast, expansive newgrass-and-jamgrass unknown. The project illustrates that the true strength of this ensemble is found in utilizing traditional bluegrass aesthetics for their own creative purposes. For example, you might listen through the entire record without realizing the Stringdusters made a Bill Monroe tribute album without mandolin!

Mandy Barnett covers Billie Holiday

Mandy Barnett is a cross-genre chameleon; between her talent, her voice’s timeless Americana tinge, and her appetite for classics — from Nashville staples to the American songbook — she often finds herself reaching far beyond Music Row and classic country to R&B, standards, and in her most recent release, Billie Holiday covers. Every Star Above was recorded in 2019, pre-pandemic, and includes ten songs from Holiday’s 1958 Lady in Satin album – songs previously also covered by Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, and many, many others. The project feels akin to Linda Ronstadt’s pop and big band forays, never fully detached from Barnett’s country roots, but built atop their solid foundation. In another Ronstadt-esque move, Barnett partnered with recently departed jazz arranger Sammy Nestico; Every Star Above was the award-winning composer’s final project.

Charley Crockett covers James Hand

Country-western crooner Charley Crockett is truly prolific, having released nine full-length albums in the past six years. As the story goes, before his friend, acclaimed Texan singer-songwriter James “Slim” Hand passed away unexpectedly about a year ago, Crockett promised he would record his songs. “Lesson in Depression” captures the sly, winking quality of the best sort of sad-ass country, which isn’t burdened by its own melodrama. While it’s certain Crockett (as Tanya Tucker would put it) would have rather brought Slim his flowers while he was living, there’s a poignancy in how 10 For Slim – Charley Crockett Sings James Hand, like Earle’s J.T., immediately demonstrates how these impactful musical legacies will live on.

Lowland Hum cover Peter Gabriel

Lowland Hum’s album covering Peter Gabriel’s So — which they’ve cutely and aptly entitled So Low — began as a passing joke, but the folk duo of husband-and-wife Daniel and Lauren Goans followed the passion and fun that led them to Gabriel’s hit 1986 release, quickly unspooling the passing whim into inspiration for a full-blown project. “We already loved the iconic record, but in translating Gabriel’s melodies and otherworldly arrangements,” they explain on their website, “we fell even deeper in love with the songs, Gabriel’s voice, and his uncanny ability to fully inhabit both vulnerability and playfulness…” Their “quiet music,” minimalist approach is well suited to the material and the entire project is incredibly listenable, comforting, and subtly envelope-pushing.

Chrissie Hynde covers Bob Dylan

After The Bard released “Murder Most Foul” and “I Contain Multitudes” early in 2020 (and in the pandemic) founder, singer, songwriter, and guitarist for The Pretenders Chrissie Hynde was inspired to once again revisit Dylan’s catalog – a limitless fount of material with which she was already intimately familiar. Her new album, Standing in the Doorway, features nine Dylan tracks recorded with fellow Pretenders guitarist James Walbourne – almost exclusively via text message – and for their coronavirus YouTube video series. Hynde opts for deeper cuts, showcasing her affinity for swaths of Dylan’s career often overlooked by other would-be cover-ers. This classic, “Tomorrow is a Long Time,” feels appropriately sentimental and longing, a perfect encapsulation of the day-to-day of the realities of the pandemic, filtered through a Bob Dylan lens and Hynde’s distinctive voice. 

Various Artists cover John Lilly

John Lilly is a songwriter’s songwriter. Based in West Virginia, his original music has been covered by modern legends like Tim O’Brien, Kathy Mattea, and Tom Paxton. April In Your Eyes: A Tribute to the Songs of John Lilly gathers various artists from the folk, old-time, and bluegrass communities – in West Virginia and otherwise – spotlighting the incredible depth and breadth of Lilly’s catalog. The title track is stunningly rendered by Maya de Vitry and Ethan Jodziewicz, who were connected with Lilly originally through West Virginia’s iconic old-time pickers’ gathering affectionately referred to as “Clifftop.” Paxton, O’Brien, and Mattea all make appearances on the project, as do Brennen Leigh & Noel McKay, Bill Kirchen, and many other members of Lilly’s musical family and inner circle, giving the project an intentional and intimate resonance.

American Aquarium cover ’90s Country Hits

BJ Barham’s American Aquarium dropped a surprise album, Slappers, Bangers, & Certified Twangers: Volume One in May. Featuring ten covers of some of the band’s favorite ‘90s country hits, it’s a dose of all-star-tribute-concert packaged in a pandemic-friendly stay-at-home-form – and available on John Deere Green vinyl, of course. One particularly sad casualty of the coronavirus pandemic has been these sorts of musical nostalgia bombs – when was the last time any of us attended a theme night or tribute show at say, the Basement East in Nashville or Raleigh, NC’s The Brewery? – and Slappers, Bangers, & Certified Twangers has us in the mood to attend the first ‘90s country covers live show possible now that things are finally reopening.

Various Artists cover John Prine

A year without Prine seems far, far too long to travel with such a Prine-shaped hole in our musical hearts. But his presence and legacy certainly still loom large; the Prine family has announced “You Got Gold: Celebrating the Life & Songs of John Prine,” a series of special concerts and events held across various venues in Nashville in October. Oh Boy Records is also planning to release a new tribute record, Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine, Vol. 2, to coincide with You Got Gold. The first two tracks from the project that have already been unveiled feature Sturgill Simpson performing “Paradise” and Brandi Carlile’s rendition of “I Remember Everything,” which you can hear above. Each month until October, the Prine family and Oh Boy will release another song from the project, unveiling special guests who each pay tribute to Prine, his songs, and the enormous vacuum his loss has left in the roots music industry.

 

On ‘American Quilt,’ Paula Cole Wraps Herself in Music That Reflects Her Life

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Paula Cole has long explored the musical territories that inform her work, making it nearly impossible to define her. Singer-songwriter? Yes. Pop star? Yes. Interpreter of jazz standards? Yes. She’s collaborated with country legends, toured with internationally acclaimed artists, and occasionally dropped completely out of sight. Because she’s so hard to pin down creatively, Cole has managed to transcend her commercial zenith of the ’90s, when songs like “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and “I Don’t Want to Wait” were inescapable.

Twenty-five years later, Cole is in the spotlight again with American Quilt, which sets her impressive vocal range to standards like “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” It isn’t quite a jazz album, and although her writing skills are on display in “Steal Away/Hidden in Plain Sight,” it isn’t quite a folk record either. Instead it’s a reflection of the influences that shaped her musical direction early on.

“Even when I explore jazz, I like it to be a little more raggedy and raw and rootsy,” she says. “I just wanted the album to reflect all that I am, and I realized, gosh, all of these songs are different from another. How do I unify it? That’s when I remembered my mom, who is a visual artist and she’s a quilter. And I realized that the quilt is the perfect metaphor for the album, that they’re all patches of an American quilt. That’s how the title was born.”

The metaphor works for the spectrum of songs on the album, yet it’s also appropriate for the warmth and comfort it provides. Some songs are more familiar than others – and her rendition of “Shenandoah” is particularly exquisite – but it’s an album best enjoyed as a whole. By dismissing the expectations of how long a song should be, and by showing reverence without replicating what everybody else has already done, Cole has produced a sweeping and immersive listening experience. She called in to BGS from the music room in her Massachusetts home, with a photo of Dolly Parton smiling over her shoulder.

BGS: Your version of “Wayfaring Stranger” is beautiful. What made you want to record it for this album?

Paula Cole: I learned of it through listening to Emmylou Harris, and loving and adoring her. Her Roses in the Snow album was really important to me developmentally. We were on Lilith Fair together in the ‘90s and would sing on each other’s sets. And I’ve been on a few benefit concerts that she’s asked me to play. I love her so dearly. I think she’s an important American voice and we should all be talking about her much more. She kind of saves music because she brings it back to the traditional aspect of it. She keeps us whole and she keeps us real by bringing integrity back to the music.

The song came to me very intuitively and I thought, “A ha!” I can reveal some of my influences and also bow to someone who was important to me. Also I was so fed up and traumatized by the music business and it was Emmylou who told me, “Don’t quit.” You know, I took a seven-and-a-half year hiatus and thought about leaving the music business, but she was the one who said, “Hang in there.” It just happened too fast. She had this motherly wisdom for me and it made sense, and I’ve thought of her so much over my life. I love her very much.

Roses in the Snow is a familiar bluegrass album for a lot of our readers. Are you a bluegrass fan?

I just love music. So, if you asked me, “Do you like jazz?” I would say, “I love music.” [Laughs] My dad played bass in a polka band on weekends when I was little, then he would go home and play Duke Ellington on the piano or he would play obscure folk songs on banjo in my house growing up. It was always a mixture. I love all music. I love bluegrass. I love acoustic music. I love music where musicians are playing real instruments, so that’s one defining factor to me — real instruments! I’ve been touring with upright bass now for several years and I can’t go back.

Did your dad teach you how to play banjo?

No, darn it! [Laughs] I guess I could have picked it up. I mean, he played everything. He could do hambone and play nose flute and upright bass and guitar and banjo and piano. Just really a renaissance man. He exposed me to all music and there were no classifications. That was something more that non-musicians did. Musicians would fluidly move from music to music and just find the joy in all of it. He taught me that.

When I was listening to “Nobody Knows You (When You’re Down and Out),” I was curious, does that mirror your own experience to some degree? Like, you’re living the good life as a millionaire, then you find that your friends vanish when the circumstances change.

Oh sure, I’ve known that. False friends, false fans, false everybody comes to you when you’re successful. They’re flattering and they’re obsequious. They have ulterior motives, so it’s hard, and of course I’ve experienced that because I’ve been up and down and side to side…. [Laughs] All over the business! And I wanted to come back home and have a personal life and have truth and family and let the trappings fall, and to be honest.

So, I chose to walk away in a sense from that shiny pop world because it wasn’t me. I was introverted and shy. I didn’t feel like this big pop star. I was very much a musician of integrity that wanted to have a long career and a rich catalog. I had to walk away to reset and reinvent myself. So, yes, of course I relate to that song. Also I relate to Bessie Smith, and so many fantastic singers are coming from the river of Bessie Smith. You hear Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin — Bessie Smith was their favorite singer. She combines all of that beautiful roots music. And the songs from the Prohibition era speak to me, those hard times, they speak to me.

Sometimes I will ask musicians about their first guitar, but for you, I’m wondering, do you remember your first piano?

Yeah, I remember the first piano, oh my gosh. It was covered in chipped, baby blue paint. I grew up in Rockport, Massachusetts, and my dad was a teacher at a state college, and we did not have much money. I wore hand-me-downs and we got things at Goodwill. In New England — freezing cold New England — we would really skimp on the heat to save money, and they put the piano in what they called the cold room. It was like a mud room. You walk into that room and take off your coat, and the piano was in the back. And it was cold! It was cold-ass cold! And there’s my first piano.

I was quite dedicated to music, to be playing in a freezing cold room in New England. Literally, we had some fish at one point and they froze! That’s how cold our house was. We had a potbelly stove and it was just hard. We were looking for ways to save money. It wasn’t always that hard. My dad ended up changing jobs and doing better, but my childhood was formative for me. I started working at a really young age. I was waitressing at 14 and I’ve always worked. It’s not nice, struggling like that, but that piano is indelibly etched in my mind with the back of the cold room. The chipped blue piano, out of tune! [Laughs]

Did you grow up with a lot of songbooks around?

Yes, and one of my missions while my father is still alive on the planet is to comb through his fake books and real books, especially of his folk standards. He has some really interesting, cryptic and eclectic, folk books that I would love to go through. That’s on one of my do lists of life.

To me, “Good Morning Heartache” sounds like it could be a sad country song, but it was made famous by jazz singers. How did you learn that one?

It’s in the real book of standards. Those books were around, and I have a real book of standards on my piano now. Even when I was touring, or had hits, or didn’t have hits, or mothering and not being in music, I would go back to the real book just for comfort and learning. I’d let my hands go on the piano and the shapes of the chords and learn songs. I first learned “Good Morning Heartache” by reading it out of a book but then I heard Billie Holiday and even modern singers do it. A lot of people have done it. But I love it because it feels to me like one of those songs that crosses genre, just like you said. It feels to me like it could be a jazz ballad, a country ballad, a soul ballad – and often it’s recorded by R&B singers. I love that it’s universal, and I love sad music. I’m not very good at happy music. [Laughs]

You close this album with “What a Wonderful World,” which offers a lovely and optimistic message. Was that an intentional decision for you to wrap up the album with that song?

Sequence is extremely important to me, so I probably spent at least a month listening to heads and tails of the songs, and all the different possibilities and combinations. And yes, it is the perfect punctuation of the journey of an album format. I love albums – I think in albums. I don’t think I’ll ever be a singles releaser. I’ll always be an album writer and album producer. I love the art of sequence.

Again, this is a song that transpires over genre and it appeals to all audiences. It unifies people. And it was written specifically for Louis Armstrong because he unified Black and white audiences. He was a genius if ever there were one. His ability to improvise within chord changes was profound. He was joyful and elevating. I play it in a somber way, and I hear sadness in my voice, and I think it’s melancholic and ironic in a way, but yeah, we must hold on to hope. We must hold on to that thread of hope for our children and our grandchildren to make this world better.

Photo credit: Ebru Yildiz