Tag: jazz

How the Wood Brothers Made an Album out of a Print Shop Jam Session

Posted on by Editor

The Wood Brothers have been together as long as they were apart. For fifteen years or so Chris and Oliver Wood pursued separate careers — Oliver out of Atlanta as a blues/rock guitarist and singer, and Chris out of New York as the bass player with the uncanny jazz/jam success story Medeski, Martin & Wood. Then they sat in together and felt a pull energized by family ties and musical curiosity, and their folk duo was born, about fifteen years ago.

Chris jokes that over seven studio albums and uncountable miles on the road, they’ve been on “a slow rise to the middle” but that’s far too self-deprecating. Their last opus, 2018’s One Drop of Truth, was nominated for a Grammy, and not long after it was released the band headlined the Ryman Auditorium and Red Rocks Amphitheatre (their hometown shrine, as they grew up in Boulder, Colorado). In September, they released their fourth live album, culling songs from a two-night stand at the Fillmore in San Francisco, where their highly developed musical telepathy — between the brothers and with drummer/keyboard player Jano Rix — was on vibrant display in a warm sonic atmosphere.

Newly minted is Kingdom In My Mind, an 11-song collection inspired largely by the feel of a new studio. The band and their sound engineer Brook Sutton had to move out of the old church-like studio where they’d made One Drop of Truth, but they found a new place nearby on Nashville’s west side. The brothers spoke to BGS about how that new destination shaped the sound of their latest project.

BGS: I understand that shaking down your new recording space produced proved unexpectedly productive?

Oliver: In our downtime we’ve always had some sort of rehearsal space, whether it was Chris’s basement or something, where we would just improvise and come up with musical ideas. I think all of us enjoy the art of improvising and playing music without thought and without purpose. We’re not trying to write a song. We’re not trying to sound good even. We’re just trying to play something new. Chris and I will react off each other, or off Jano, and do that musical communication that can happen if you just listen. We’ve always done that. And we’ve always recorded it on a phone or on a laptop just to remember. Whereas this time we set up and did the same process but we had a professional studio and an engineer miking everything up so it was usable.

Chris: Yeah, we didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t know this was going to be the beginning of a record. We’d got a studio and put a lot of work into getting it up and running and sounding how we wanted it with baffles and things like that. But then it was, well, this is a huge room. Where do you set up? Where do you put the drums? Let’s put them over here. Let’s see what that sounds like. And we set up near each other and threw some mics up intuitively. I think we were struck immediately as soon as we heard playback. Even with that haphazard setup, it sounded great. Something about the room made us play a certain way. It felt magical and inspired. So immediately we looked at each other and said, “Maybe this is how we make this record.” So we did maybe five sessions where we set up and improvised in different parts of the studio. There’s a big A room, which you could almost fit an orchestra, and then a smaller, dryer room. So we had fun with all kinds of different variations.

Can you give us a visual and the background of the place and why it became home?

Chris: It’s an old print shop. So what we call the B room is smaller. It’s probably where people came in and got stuff photocopied.

Oliver: And then the back room — after it was a print shop and before we got it — was a dance studio with a dance floor and high ceilings. It was probably a warehouse at some point. This is not a fancy building. It’s cinder block.

So you had to look at this print shop/warehouse/dance studio and imagine a plan?

Chris: It was easy, and it had to do with the layout. It was very clear immediately. The control room goes here. From that room you have access to both tracking rooms. There’s even a lounge. There’s a room with a loading dock that can also be an isolation room. And it’s all in a circular layout. Everything about it was easy to imagine how we could be up and running quickly once we got our stuff in there.

Oliver: It was luck. And it was cheaper than we expected. But I’ll add to that process that Chris was talking about. The improvising we like so much, almost never can you use that stuff on an album. Normally you perform songs to make albums. So Chris got really good at editing these improvs. These are just jams, maybe in the key of A for 20 minutes. Maybe we switch chords every once in a while. Maybe we don’t. But Chris started chopping them up (in audio software). And we realized that we could arrange these improvisations.

And the beautiful thing — which usually gets lost — is your first impression of things. Like when you’re inspired. You play something, and you’ll never do it again. But we actually captured those moments and were able to use them on the album. And so the things that all of us love about albums are these anomalies, little mistakes or weird things that bleed together — things that if you were thinking about a song you’d never have played. To us, that had a freshness that Chris was able to chop up, and we were able to write lyrics over these new collage-y things.

Chris: Like Sly Stone said, there’s a rhythm when you don’t know what you’re doing. And we really take that to heart. I think that’s why a lot of musicians who have been doing this a long time really cherish first takes. Because before all the musicians really know the song, they’ll play things that they’d never play once they really know the song. For a lot of us, I mean for me certainly, it’s always a red flag when we do a take and I feel like I really nailed (it). It’s almost a guarantee that that’s not the take. Not the good one. The good one was the one before, when I was searching and didn’t quite know what was happening next.

Oliver: Discomfort is good.

Chris: A little bit, yeah. You don’t want to know too much.

Right out of the box on “Alabaster” there’s this over-driven sound like a Rhodes piano and I wonder if maybe that was just an accident that worked?

Oliver: Absolutely. That was recorded the first day we set up. Jano was playing drums and keyboard at the same time. He had this keyboard rig with a crappy little amplifier and it just sounded like that. And again, we weren’t thinking about a song at all. We were all in one room in a circle, and it just happened to be cool.

Chris: We were thinking sounds more than anything. Oliver had this great Stella guitar that he recently got set up. I’m sure Jano played that sound on purpose because he liked it. It was very intuitive and in the moment. So he didn’t have to worry if it was fitting a song or not. He just liked the sound. That’s kind of what we were going for.

You both come from improvised music backgrounds, one jazz and one blues-based. When I heard these tracks, I felt like the Medeski, Martin & Wood approach and the Wood Brothers approach have never been closer. Also, Jano plays with even more freedom. This feels like a jazz record in many ways.

Chris: I absolutely agree. This is the most meshed those worlds have ever been. It was definitely a long-term goal to get to this point. Little by little, not only integrating the MMW background with the songwriting, but also, just as you said, Jano is such a talent and can do so many things. Great drummer. Amazing keyboard player, percussionist. Great singer and producer. So to integrate all of his talents into what we were doing as a duo took some time, you know?

I think that’s why it works. When you improvise, all your knowledge, all the music that’s inside you, can come out. It’s not restricted by a song that’s been written already. Jano’s drumming and all of our playing is featured more because we were improvising to create the source material for the songs and were able to keep that. In the past I loved all the songs, but there’s a lot more that we can do. Improvising is a way to showcase that.

Oliver: It does inform how you play live too. We learned that you don’t always have to be right on the money. It’s fun to pretend like you’re in a punk band for a minute or something and kind of let loose and try something different.

Here it is about 15 years into this journey. Maybe it’s been an even bigger force in your lives than you thought. What have you learned, as musicians and family?

Oliver: I bet we take it for granted doing it all the time and being busy with it, but certainly in the last 15 years I feel like Chris and I were slightly estranged in that we were living in different places and playing with different people. We had sort of lost touch. So initially, yeah, the music brought us back together and we were able to combine our shared interests and experiences. That was awesome, and it was how we reconnected as brothers. And it’s nice to have a family business, especially a creative one, where we get to do that together and make a living too.

Chris: Yeah, people usually frame the beginning of this band as if it must have been a casual side project. But I never thought about it that way. It was exciting from the beginning. And for both of us, in different ways, coming full circle. We grew up with our dad playing music live around the house, you know, folk songs. Playing and singing. And that was, we realized, a huge influence.

I always liked singing when I was younger and ended up in Medeski, Martin & Wood, an instrumental band, for 20 years. I hadn’t been singing, so it was scary, but it was something I was really excited about getting into again. And just the way we write songs and composing with my brother is really fun and different. Whereas MMW was, as you said, a lot of improvisation, I also like writing. It was nice to get into that too.

Pulling back, MMW was a band that took real jazz to the jam band audience. And I feel like there are bands that hover between the world of the jam audience, which loves freedom and surprise, and the songwriter audience, which focuses more on the lyrical emotion. And maybe those bands never quite get totally accepted by either camp. How have you all mapped that?

Oliver: That’s well put, and I think we ride that fence, and enjoy it for the most part. It’s a nice balance. Personally I like to hear somewhere in the middle. I like to hear a good song, but I also like to hear some musical interplay. I think a balance of those things is really cool.

Chris: Yeah, one of the things that can be amazing about music is when there’s some mystery. You don’t quite understand what’s happening up there but it still is engaging. And how do you do that? There’s no formula. Nobody knows. Which is why we never get tired of this job. You know, you can’t figure it out. You stumble upon it sometimes, but it’s not always obvious how you get to that magical balance between the two.

Oliver: It’s always a fun challenge for us to take a good simple song but set it apart and give it its own sound. So use a weirder guitar. Use a broken thing. But make it something you haven’t done before and you haven’t heard somebody else do before. That’s kind of what we’re always doing.

We talk about this all the time. Sometimes we’ll write a song and use just cowboy chords and write it like a country song. Then [we’ll] mess up the music completely and make it our own thing somehow. So it’s a combination of all this classic stuff we love. And then, how can we make a new classic?

Craig Havighurst is host of The String from WMOT Roots Radio in Nashville and a longtime journalist covering roots music.

Photos: Alysse Gafkjen

The Haden Triplets Share Their Musical Legacy in ‘The Family Songbook’

Posted on by Editor

“No,” says Tanya Haden, to a question pertaining to the new album she and sisters Petra and Rachel have made. “We don’t yodel.”

She thinks about it a second, as her siblings, sitting to her left around a right-angle sectional in the living room of her Los Angeles home, watch her warily.

“We kind of pretend-yodel sometimes,” she says.

To prove her point, she lets out a half-hearted yodel-ay-eee, to mild laughter.

The subject came up because there are a few songs on the Haden Triplets’ new album, The Family Songbook, in which yodeling would not have been out of place. These songs — “Who Will You Love,” “Ozark Moon,” “Gray Mother Dreaming” and “Memories of Will Rogers” — were written in western style by their grandfather, Carl E. Haden, and were very likely sung by the family band he oversaw.

That included their dad, Charlie Haden, who went on to be one of the most respected and influential jazz double-bassists of the modern era, working with Ornette Coleman, Keith Jarrett and his own groundbreaking groups. But back then he was a very young (and yes, yodeling) tot billed as Little Cowboy Charlie, held up by his mom to the microphone of radio station KWTO, “Keep Watching The Ozarks,” in Springfield, Missouri.

Those songs form the heart of the album, through which the sisters evoke the spirit of that legacy, filling it out with an array of folk/gospel/country/old-timey tunes that were quite likely in the family group’s repertoire. This follow-up to the first album they did together, 2014’s The Haden Triplets, draws heavily on stories passed down of those radio days.

That comes through strongly in such chestnuts as “Wildwood Flower” (the signature song of Mother Maybelle Carter, who rocked young Charlie as a baby when the Carters and Hadens hung out together), “I’ll Fly Away,” “Flee as a Bird” and an incredibly moving version of the gospel challenge “What Will You Give,” all likely part of the old Haden Family repertoire. Connecting this to current times, there’s a beautiful version of “Every Time I Try” (written by the triplets’ older brother Josh, who leads the band Spain) and, more of a wild card, a gorgeous take on Kanye West’s “Say You Will.”

The idea was not to recreate the old days, but to interpret and pay homage. The result is a lovely set of songs full of atmosphere, with contributions from, among others, guitarists Bill Frisell, Greg Leisz, and Doyle Bramhall II, bassists David Piltch and Don Was (as well as Josh on “Every Time I Try”) and drummer Jay Bellerose, all under the watch of producer Woody Jackson.

Yodel or no, they give their grandpa’s songs a tremendously vibrant run, centering on the evanescent harmony blends that can only come from siblings (and, specifically in their case, triplets).

“Those were the most straightforward songs,” says Tanya, who notes that she tends to be the most talkative in the group interviews.

“That’s more like the hillbilly songs on the first record,” Petra adds.

Yes. But figuring out how to approach them was a bit tricky. For most of the songs on the album, there are recorded versions on which to model, some of them many versions. Not these four.

“They’d never been recorded,” Tanya notes. “So we’d never heard them. We only had the sheet music.”

They’d heard a couple of recordings by the Haden Family, though no transcriptions of the regular radio broadcasts seem to exist. After a lot of research hoping to come up with something they did find some KWTO pamphlets and flyers with photos of their ancestors. But little else.

So they made their best guesses as to how best to evoke the aura of those times, with their own sensibilities. The result on those four songs is a sort of cowgirl-harmony effect — you could almost picture the three of them in gingham and ranch hats, leaning against a split-rail fence as they sing.

They’re not sure how their father, who died in in 2014 just months after the triplets released their first album, would have assessed it, though.

“If our dad was around, he probably would have said, ‘Oh no, you don’t do it like that,’” Tanya says.

But they got a strong thumbs-up from their uncle, Carl Jr., who was also part of the family group.

“I sent Carl Jr. the CD and he said he loved it,” Petra says. “He said it brought him to tears.”

Tears also figured into the choice of Josh’s “Every Time I Try,” originally on the 1999 Spain album She Haunts My Dreams, and used by director Wim Wenders in the soundtrack of his movie, The End of Violence.

“[Josh is] such a good songwriter,” says Tanya.

Petra adds, “Our dad used to say all the time that Josh should be rich and famous through that.”

“When he wrote that song, I just related to it so well,” says Tanya. “It’s [about] a relationship that is push and pull. I just love that song. It’s so beautiful. I remember when we were listening to it for the first time. He was all excited, and our grandfather on our mom’s side was listening to it. And he just teared up. He was crying.”

“I hope we did it justice,” says Rachel.

“Because I feel like it’s got this quietness when Josh sings it,” says Tanya. “But it’s hard to get with the three of us.”

And that leads to a key question. Given their close tie to their family, given their family history and given that they’ve been singing together pretty much since the moment they left their mother’s womb: Why did it take them so long to make an album as the Haden Triplets — they were 42 at the time — and why is this only the second one?

The fact is, Petra, Rachel, and Tanya are very different people, with very different lives. Petra has in recent years been in demand as a singer and violinist with artists from Bill Frisell (a frequent collaborator and guest on the album) to the Decemberists, as well as her own covers projects in which she recreates elaborate arrangements of classic songs all with her own layered voice. Rachel, a bassist, has been in various bands, currently including the reunited L.A. indie band, that dog (which, in its original form also included Petra). Tanya, a cellist who has played regularly with Silversun Pickups and numerous other L.A. bands, is mostly active as a visual artist and the mom of two boys.

“It took us a while,” says Tanya. “Between the three of us, we’re so busy. And we’re not like, you know, take the reins and say, ‘Let’s do this.’”

She pauses for a second.

“We also tend to fight a lot.”

Petra and Rachel laugh knowing laughs.

“We all give each other wounds — flesh wounds,” Tanya explains. “It’s hard to work together and get along.”

This is, of course, no surprise to anyone with siblings. Or who is the parent of siblings. Or who knows anyone who has siblings. But those differences are key to making the harmonies on these songs that can only be made by siblings, and here could only be made by triplets. That’s the signature of this album as much as the last one. Pointedly, the album begins with a somberly atmospheric version of the American standard “Wayfaring Stranger,” sung not in harmony, but in unison, the three voices together as one.

That proved a bigger challenge than doing the complex harmonies.

“Yeah, it is really hard,” Petra says.

It happened not so much by design, Rachel starting working out a melody for herself to start.

“Then Petra automatically started singing it too,” Rachel says. “And then it was like, ‘Oh darn! It started!”

“It started to sound good!” Petra says. “It was like, ‘Wow, this sounds really pretty.’”

“And on it there are moments where we’re not singing it exactly on time, you know,” Tanya says. “But it just shows we’re human.”

“It always feels great to come home,” Petra says.

“Come home to the family,” Tanya adds. “There’s nothing like singing with your siblings. We’re all locked in and we sound great together. And I do a lot of singing with other people, but it’s with my sisters that is most special to me.”

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Barbaro Brighten the Midwest Bluegrass Scene

Posted on by Editor

Barbaro’s first full-length studio album, Dressed in Roses, stands as a true testament to their musical identity and the sound that has launched one of the Midwest’s most in-demand acoustic acts. In a phone interview with Kyle Shelstad, the Minnesota group’s guitarist and lead singer, BGS discussed the arranging process behind these songs, how the band has grown, and the current state of the Midwest bluegrass scene.

BGS: You’ve released singles and an EP in the past, but tell me a little about this album. What was the impetus for making Dressed in Roses?

Kyle Shelstad: In general, I feel like the album is a good testament to our sound right now, and also to where we’re hoping to go. We recorded this with the unit being together for about a year. Some of the songs Isaac [Sammis, on banjo] and I had for a couple years prior, before Rachel [Calvert, on fiddle and vocals] and Jason [Wells, on bass] joined the band. After they joined the band these songs kind of had a new life and developed their own sounds.

You re-recorded the songs “Barbaro” and “Loathe.” Did that experience shine a light on how you’ve developed as a band in the past few years?

Exactly. While the arrangement was pretty similar, I think the way we play it as a group has definitely changed. So I think our goal in doing that was to pay homage to the sound we have now and the work we’ve been doing on it.

I think this is your most consistent album yet. When the band first came together did you have an idea of what you wanted the sound to be like, or has that organically grown over the years?

It’s definitely organically grown, but I’ve also always had an idea of what I wanted to do. Isaac and I started playing together as just a guitar and banjo duo, and we had to find ways to make that… well, not super annoying. So we tried to focus on texture and arrangements.

I’m glad to hear that you think it has a consistent sound because part of it, for me, I was concerned. It has a lot of different thoughts and ideas thrown at it. In that sense I think this album is a lot about us trying to figure out our sound. Developing it that way.

Some of your songs seamlessly turn from folk ballads to sections of straight-up funk. How much discussion was there in arranging these songs that are so texturally complex?

I think it’s twofold on that. A lot of these songs I come into with an idea of how I want them to progress and where I hear the song going. But adding Jason on the bass throws some of these ideas on their heads, because he had literally never listened to bluegrass before we got him to play with us. He’s done a lot of studying and research on his own to figure out how that sound works, but at the same time that’s not necessarily what he wants to play. There will be times where I’ll say, “Hey dude, maybe you should just play the root note four-on-the-floor,” and he’ll say, “I don’t know, man, I don’t really like that.”

He really brings a different flavor. When I think the song is going one way he’ll take it a completely different direction. I’ll come in with the ideas and the direction of the tune. That main idea and where I want it to go. But sometimes how we get to that point changes because of the players we have, with Rachel and Jason having such a classical background. These songs moving in all these different directions is part of us trying to figure out our sound and how to cohesively bring these ideas that we enjoy together.

Also, I listen to a lot of jazz trios, and while there’s form there, it’s not like it’s verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-out. I guess part of me feels like I can’t write that kind of stuff very well. Or when I do it sounds too corny to me or something. I enjoy that certain jazz music goes somewhere. There’s always a little thing thrown in there to catch your ear or catch you off-guard.

One thing I’ve noticed when seeing you live is that, while you do have these very cerebral arrangements, you have no problems engaging the audience and taking them with you through these songs.

Yeah, that’s our goal and what we’ve always been trying to figure out. How to write a set list that can put forward what we’re trying to accomplish with these songs but also keep people engaged. I think that took us a little while to figure out. Unfortunately we can’t play songs that we want to play all the time. It depends on the crowd and we need to figure out how we’re going to best get these songs across to this crowd or that crowd.

Did you have any epiphanies or learning experiences in the course of making this album?

As far as epiphanies go, I used to play with Kitchen Dwellers, which is a completely different type of music from what I’m playing now, but a lot of it was based on improvisation and free-flowing. So when you bring in people like Jason and Rachel who are very classically-focused — that’s sometimes an uncomfortable place for them to be. That’s something where we’ve figured out how to work together. We can still have some solid structure, but then find opportunities where we can open up and allow the music to flow in whatever direction that might be.

Speaking of different types of music, what was it like working with your producer Adam Gruel? Horseshoes & Hand Grenades [Gruel’s band] is such a different sound from what you play. How did he influence you as a producer?

I’ve known Adam and the Horseshoes guys for a while. I first met them when we were in the Telluride band competition years back, so he’s always been a buddy of mine. He heard that we were recording an album and reached out to let us know that he had done some producing work and would be super interested in working with us.

That was kind of my first thought, too: “The kind of music you do is completely different from what we’re doing.” But I thought about who Adam is as a person and I thought having that type of energy in the studio would really help us out. Sometimes we’ll sit in rehearsal and spend four or five hours on one section of a song and just beat it to death. To the point where we hate each other and we hate the song.

So bringing Adam in there was a good idea because he knows when to move forward and he has this incredible energy and positivity that allowed us to not fall into that dark hole. After two takes he’d be like, “All right, we got it, let’s move on.” I think that really helped us accomplish what we needed to accomplish in the amount of time that we had.

The Midwest is a hidden gem for bluegrass music with bands like yours, Barbaro and Horseshoes & Hand Grenades. What do you wish people knew about the bluegrass scene in the Midwest?

I think there’s a lot of different bands and a lot of people who are passionate about the music. I moved out here because of the scene. I moved to Minneapolis because of Pert Near Sandstone and what they’d done here. I think that knowing there’s a lot of really great music up here and a lot of big music fans.

There are amazing local bands that play really good tunes and bring people out and keep it full at the bar until the end of the night. It’s a lively scene and it’s only growing. One of our goals is to bring more diversity to the scene and open people up to the idea that this music spreads really wide. There’s lots of different ways that this music can be interpreted. We’re just trying to grow and build this scene even more.

Photo credit: Jeff Mateo

Pet Yeti Bring Bluegrass (And a Michael Bolton Ballad) Into UK Music Scene

Posted on by Editor

Pet Yeti is a UK-based bluegrass band made up of some of England and Northern Ireland’s finest pickers. Their debut album, Space Guitars, is a collection of original tunes and reimagined takes on classics like Michael Bolton’s “Said I Loved You…But I Lied” and Ola Belle Reed’s “I’ve Endured.”

The band includes Benjamin Agnew on bass, Reuben Agnew on guitar, John Breese on banjo, Kieran Towers on fiddle, and Joe Tozer on mandolin. In an email interview with we learned more about the group, what they hoped to achieve with this album, and where they’re headed.

BGS: Was there anything particularly memorable or special about making this album? What was the experience like?

Pet Yeti: The most memorable thing about recording this album was probably recording the Michael Bolton cover “Said I Loved You…But I Lied.” The decision to record that track was very last minute but everyone jumped into it with enthusiasm. Seeing it come together was surprising because we had not really known what a bluegrass cover of such a track would sound like. The result had us really satisfied, such to an extent that I think it suits the album nicely and we would really miss it if it was not included.

It was also a real privilege to record with Josh Clark of Get Real Audio. Not only as a friend of ours but also because he brings a finesse and professional ear for bluegrass music that is hard to find, even with comparisons to great recording engineers from the US. He also took a lead production role in the making of the album, which by itself would usually be big undertaking, so that we can say the album really has been shaped by him.

What was your goal with this album, musically speaking?

The original goal of the album was to be a voice for what Pet Yeti could do to authenticate ourselves in the bluegrass scene. However, it turned into a representation of all the band members’ individual tastes and interpretations. It is not often that a song like “Space Guitars,” based on the story of Doc from the Back to the Future movies, is on the same album as Michael Bolton covers and old-time music! I think the goal became the enjoyment of playing music and trying to put that across in every track that we could.

Do the five of you come from differing musical backgrounds? If so, how do you think those differences influence the overall sound of Pet Yeti?

Every band member in Pet Yeti comes with an appreciation of bluegrass music and we have all been followers of bluegrass growing up, though we all have our own genres that we enjoy delving into — whether that be the likes of old-time to Oasis to gypsy swing. I think it’s a really healthy mix to have a core interest but also to bring in the diverseness of individual interests because it means everyone in the band has a voice, even if we are not all singing. I think it’s this mix that separates Pet Yeti from a lot of other bluegrass ensembles.

You cover a lot of ground with this album, from carefully crafted gems like “I’m Turning Away” to high energy barn-burners like “Drinking Since the Day I Was Born.” Has that wide array of sounds added a new dynamic to your live shows?

While I do think the dynamic of Pet Yeti set list shows off the diverseness in our musical ability, a big aim of the set is that the audience enjoys the music. Not only with the energetic numbers, but also with lighthearted back stories of the originals.

Did you have a plan or idea of how this album should come together, or did it come together more organically while recording?

The album really is a product of a very organic process. We came together shortly before recording and developed how all of us would like the album to be recorded. However, a lot of the best parts of the album came during recording and because of the input of our excellent sound engineer. I think you need to allow this sort of organic process to keep things fresh.

You all have experience playing in other musical projects (Cup O’ Joe, Cardboard Fox, Kieran Towers & Charlotte Carrivick, etc.). What are some ways Pet Yeti is unique and different from your other projects?

Elaborating on an earlier question, Pet Yeti gives everything that you would expect from our other musical projects but with a lot more of each band members’ individual personalities and experience. Not one member of Pet Yeti is the “front man”, which is clearly seen in the album, giving each track in Space Guitars some other member the spotlight. Every band needs teamwork but Pet Yeti really relies on each member to create the overall sound of the band.

How has this album challenged you to grow as musicians?

The album has given us the opportunity firstly, as friends, to develop a unique sound together and have fun doing it. It also let us enjoy recording on a level that’s not as stressful and serious as other projects while maintaining musical integrity and making production enjoyable. Perhaps one challenge we have gone away with is how to put that enjoyment into all the music we produce and play from now on.

If you could perform this album at any venue, where would it be? Why?

While playing at any bluegrass festival in the UK, the US, or otherwise would be a privilege, the possibility to play as part the wider Glastonbury Festival would be a great opportunity and more ideal space for our unique flavour of bluegrass.

BGS WRAPS: Andrew Bird, “Skating”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Andrew Bird
Song: “Skating”
Album: HARK!

In Their Words: “I’ve never had the impulse to make a holiday record until last February. I found myself enjoying the Vince Guaraldi Peanuts records and thought I’d book a few days in the studio. It was an excuse to play some classic jazz with my favorite musicians. A lot of folks have a hard time with the holidays, but they serve a purpose to us as a people — to create comfort, warmth, and atmosphere within the darkness and the cold that can crush one’s spirit. There are a couple originals in here that address this idea of light and warmth in the darkness as well as some classics that have some nostalgic resonance with me. Hark! What sounds come flowing alabaster?” — Andrew Bird

The Show On The Road – Madison Cunningham

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week Z. Lupetin welcomes Madison Cunningham — a gifted songwriter, singer, and guitar slinger who has quickly risen from shy Southern California prodigy to a nationally admired, Grammy-nominated, major label recording artist redefining what could be a new genre between the fertile plains of pop, jazz, and new wave folk music.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3

As the eldest daughter of a big family, maybe Madison Cunningham was always meant to be an old soul. And as a young star on the rise, she thankfully hasn’t had to toil long in dive bars and retirement community gymnasiums, as many new artists do. She has already dazzled on large stages, opening for her heroes like the Punch Brothers, Iron & Wine, and Andrew Bird, all while teaming up with luminaries like Joe Henry to bring her songcraft to a new level.

If you have an hour, lock yourself in a dark room and listen to her newest release, Who Are You Now, and forget the failed love affairs and credit card debt and smoky bars of your youth and put your faith in the new generation. We are in good hands, no doubt about it.

Shaun Richardson & Seth Taylor, “Chisholm”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

An expansive generation of simply ludicrous flatpickers has rendered bluegrass, old-time, Americana, and folk replete with acoustic guitar virtuosos. Pickers like Jake Stargel, Molly Tuttle, Presley Barker, and Billy Strings each have in common commanding right hands and withering technique. Others, like Jake Workman, Trey Hensley, and Chris Luquette play at incomprehensible, blistering speeds with pristine precision that defies explanation — down to the most infinitesimal note durations. We can clearly see the shredtastic legacies of Clarence White, Tony Rice, Dan Tyminski, and others living on, even if chiefly through their more mathematical, aggressive, and adventurous methods and tones. 

That adventurous aggression might just be why “Chisholm,” a new tune composed by guitarists Shaun Richardson and Seth Taylor, feels like such a calming breath of fresh air. It’s a welcome counterpoint and complement to the repeated face-peeling-off that we all enjoy in this current golden age of flatpicking guitar. Richardson and Taylor are both veterans of Dailey & Vincent’s bluegrass-based rootsy stage show, giving them ample experience in musical code-switching, from fiddle tunes and swinging numbers to country ballads and passionate gospel. Richardson has performed with Michael Martin Murphey as well, and Taylor is a member of the long-running, heady, Americana-tinged bluegrass group Mountain Heart. 

The versatility lent by these diverse experiences gives “Chisholm” a well-traveled, though relaxed, voluminous vibe. The melodies are resonant and tactile, conjuring six-string players and composers such as John Carlini and Beppe Gambetta — with just a dash of Tommy Emmanuel. Jazz complexities are utilized here not in a gratuitous way, but rather anchored in expressiveness and musical dialogue. Richardson and Taylor’s expertise is very clearly centered not on simply displaying prowess, but in musicality. In this calmer, more subdued setting, that dynamic is especially refreshing and subtly striking.

Photo and video shot by James Shipman

The Show On The Road – Robert Ellis

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks with Robert Ellis, the restless, tuxedoed, Texas piano-man who has paired his fleet-fingered, high-humored, “jazz in an Austin roadhouse” keys playing with machete-sharp lyrical turns of phrase — all backed up with his smile-through-the-apocalypse country-rock band.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3

Ellis has gained a beloved international following all the while creating a persona that is half the tender brilliance of early Billy Joel, and half high-hatted, Southern huckster who might tell you a story that will make you cry one minute, and then steal your watch when you’re not looking the next.

Z. met up with Robert Ellis on the road together in the Netherlands.

Michael Cleveland, “5-String Swing”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Yes, Michael Cleveland’s brand new album, Tall Fiddler, includes a track called “5-String Swing,” and yes, perhaps the world’s foremost banjo player, Béla Fleck, is a guest on the song, but do not be fooled. This is not a banjo tune, this is is not an incendiary breakdown or a Scruggs-conjuring, “Foggy Mountain Special”-esque number. This is a fiddle tune. A five-string fiddle tune.

An eleven-time winner of IBMA’s Fiddle Player of the Year award (and current nominee for what may be his twelfth honor), Cleveland’s “ax” of choice has long been a fiddle with five strings — instead of the standard four — with a low, C-tuned string beyond the usually-lowest G string, essentially combining a viola and a violin on a violin’s frame.

In more standard, traditional bluegrass that fifth string doesn’t always jump out, but in a song such as this — skipping, gallivanting swing with a touch of Texas and a dash of Django bolstered by bluegrass — it can change a fiddler’s entire mindset, leading them toward sumptuous, lush double and triple stops that defy any sort of quantification. Cleveland is well known for milking these jazzy harmonies, leaning into quarter tones that no fretted instrument — and very few other fiddlers — could ever accomplish with such exact, scientific precision.

Besides Fleck, and his similarly innovative approach to combining rootsy aesthetics, Cleveland is joined by producer Jeff White on guitar, Tim O’Brien on mandolin, and Barry Bales on bass, perfect pals with which to swap licks over this cheery, energetic, toe-tapping tune.

LISTEN: Staci Griesbach, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Staci Griesbach
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “Blue Moon of Kentucky”
Album: My Patsy Cline Songbook

In Their Words: “This classic country staple from Bill Monroe is one that has been covered by so many artists, we wanted to really take it in a new direction by adding more of a funk beat to it. The tempo and groove allow for the musicians to really dig in, and whenever I’m listening back to this, I find myself in the groove completely. Michele Weir helped me with the arrangement and first we started with the bass line. I knew I wanted something funky, but also that we could incorporate pedal steel, guitar and fiddle. Once we had that groove established with the bass line, we knew we had it.

“As I’m thinking about it, it could also be fun to do a little traditional bluegrass feel up front and then go into the funk or vice versa for the solos. Perhaps that’s something I’ll think about for the live performances. Again, to me, a good song can present a playground for many interpretations and that’s the joy of creativity right there at its purest form.” — Staci Griesbach

Photo credit: Kim Thiel