Tag: jeff buckley

BGS 5+5: Lauren Morrow

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Artist: Lauren Morrow
Hometown: Hometown is Atlanta, Claimed town is Nashville
Latest Album: People Talk
Personal Nicknames: “LoMo”

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

When I was 15, I won a contest to sing with a band called Marvelous 3 (now defunct, but formally fronted by Butch Walker) at a massive Atlanta festival called Music Midtown. I think there were something like 90,000 people there, and I was blackout nervous and a total mess the whole day, but as soon as I stepped on the stage, it was like I was possessed. I’d been interested in playing music for a little while before this, but from that night on, it was all I ever thought about — how to recreate that feeling, how to create my own songs that would move people the way music moved me. I guess I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Butch and I have been friends since then and I’m eternally grateful for this mentorship on this journey.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I was an English major in college with a minor in British & American cultures, so literature (specifically British literature) is a big influence on my music and my writing. It’s not so much that I write specifically about books or stories I’ve read, but I’ve always loved to write, and I’ve always loved words. I spend a lot of time on my lyrics — I want them to make sense and have a point, not to be an afterthought — and I know that comes directly from my love of the written word. I want my lyrics and the melody they’re encapsulated within to feel fluid like the two things are fused together, and I want them to be relatable like you’re reading a book about my life and experiences that you can find yourself within.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I think navigating these last few years with a completed album during a pandemic has taught me the power of surrendering and expecting less. I don’t mean for that to sound depressing — it’s actually quite freeing when you think about it. There’s only so much you can do for yourself as an artist, and I advocate for myself and this record every single day. I do what I need to do, and I work really hard, but at the end of the day, there’s not a whole lot I can control. When you fixate on those things (“Why didn’t that journalist write about me?” “Why wasn’t I asked to play that festival?” “Why wasn’t my song included on that playlist?”), it can really drive you insane and make you miss all of the great things that are happening for you everyday. So much of this industry is controlled by things that are outside of your control, so I just try and put my faith in myself, my product, my team, my tenacity, and the Universe (or God or Source or whatever you choose to call it.) Everything else will fall in line the way it is meant to.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

My favorite band of all time is U2 — a fact that shocks most people when they hear it, but I’ve been obsessed with them since I was a child. Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of shit for being such a big fan of theirs (thank you Apple album upload!), but I don’t care — their songs, melodies, ideas, shows, all move me in ways that are hard to describe in words. It feels bigger and deeper than me. Sure, all of it reminds me of my childhood, but their songs are huge, anthemic, and meaningful, with something new to discover in every listen. I tried to recreate some of that vibe with People Talk.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

My old band, The Whiskey Gentry, toured heavily with the band Cracker, and my husband Jason and I became very close with their lead singer, David Lowery, and his wife, Velena Vego. Both are veterans of the music industry, and they offered us some great advice through a really tumultuous and confusing time in our careers. Personally, I was in a place in my life where I thought I’d paid enough dues and I felt like success was something that I’d already earned (little did I know about the years of invaluable growth that were still to come), but David and Velena were both very adamant that Jason and I have other jobs and side-hustles to help us make money while we were pursuing our dreams. This, coming from people as successful in music as David was/is in Cracker and Velena who has booked the legendary 40 Watt Club in Athens for almost four decades. Jason has always had a successful residential/commercial painting business, and I always worked jobs or helped him, and that’s how we’ve been able to keep our mortgage paid, stay on the road, and self-fund the release of People Talk on our own label, Big Kitty Records. I believe there will come a time when we won’t have to hustle so hard in other areas of our lives, but we aren’t there yet. And even if we don’t ever get there, we know the value of hard work and where that’s taken us in our lives thus far.

Photo Credit: Jace Kartye

BGS 5+5: Ondara

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Artist: Ondara
Hometown: Nairobi, Kenya
Latest Album: Folk n’ Roll Vol. 1: Tales of Isolation

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I accidentally discovered Bob Dylan’s music after losing a bet about the authorship of the song “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” I was 17 years old at the time, a confused and troubled teenager, uncertain about his future. I enjoyed writing stories, but I didn’t know how to turn any of that into a career. The pressures from everyone I knew, to pursue a more traditional career such as law or medicine were mounting; but I felt an itch for something else. Something I was unable to name, unable to imagine, and with no guidance or encouragement I had no way of discovering what it was.

Finding Dylan was like a scratch to that itch. After listening to records such as Freewheelin’, Highway 61, and Blonde on Blonde, and being completely taken by the writing, I was hit by a burst of inspiration. I had this very wild thought that perhaps I could turn the stories I’d been writing into songs, then I could travel the world and play those songs, and perhaps I could turn that into some kind of a career. It was a crazy and impractical thought since there was no path from where I was to anything like that, but it was something to dream about. Whether the dream came true or not was irrelevant, sometimes as a boy you just need a dream, and finding Dylan is what showed me that dream. “A boy’s devices will always create mayhem, therefore a boy needs a dream, because without a dream the boy is left to his devices.”

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I played a show in Paris last year at a venue called Élysée Montmartre. It was a very memorable show for a few reasons. At the time, I was touring Europe playing shows solo with my guitar, but for that Paris show I wanted to do something different since it was going to be a bigger concert than the rest. I decided I would put together a band. I asked my team to contact some musicians and we assembled a last-minute band just a few days before the show. None of the musicians knew the songs prior, and we only had time for one short rehearsal.

Despite being entirely unprepared it ended up being one of my favorite shows. There was a magical feeling that we were all speaking the same language. The musicians and I understood the language as we played the songs as though we had been playing them for years; the audience understood it as well as they listened to us play. By only communicating in this universal language of music we all had a communion of spirit. This communion is what I miss the most, now that concerts have become rare.

At that same concert, the lights went out towards the end of the show; for about 15 minutes of black out the audience lit the room with their phones and took over the show by singing a new song I had taught them. A memorable night it was. It always is in Paris.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

We go through most of life on autopilot. The piloting mechanism being cultures, trends, upbringing, education, trauma, and many other things that define us yet we have no control over them. Stories and other forms of art are a mirror to this subconscious state of the society, a way for us, the participants of life, to view ourselves. In a way it is how we watch ourselves sleep. And as we view ourselves, we see our folly.

We have a better chance of fixing our faults if we can see them. If we can’t see them, then we’re not consciously aware of them, and if we’re not aware, then there is nothing to fix. So then people remain oppressed because we have become hateful and uncaring but we can’t see it. Stories are a conduit to compassion, and I am of the mind that compassion is the medicine, so if I had a mission statement, it would be to tell many stories and to tell them far and wide.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?

Gazing at paintings is one of the things that bring my ever-racing mind a few moments of quiet. I get lost in them in a meditative way. When I was younger I thought paintings spoke to me; not in a figurative way, but in a literal fashion. They would tell me the sorrows and joys of the world, and I would write them down in the form of stories. Now in my adulthood, I still hear them, I’m just more aware that it’s my mind being slightly insane.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I accidentally found a song called “Forget Her” by Jeff Buckley when I was about 9 years old. It was the early 2000s and back home in Nairobi, pirated music was as prevalent as the ubiquitous roasted maize, sold on the streets. Music vendors would set up shop in markets or by the streets; they would go online and download random songs, put them on a CD and sell them. Oftentimes, nobody knew the songs they were selling, not even the vendors knew them. They just downloaded random songs online, an attempt at finding something interesting to sell to increase their income at a time of economic difficulty. In the streets, they would advertise the music by playing it loudly to invite customers, sometimes they would call you as you walk past and ask you to listen to some of their new downloads. If you liked a song you would then buy the CD. It was like wine tasting but for music.

I found many bands that I fell in love with that way: Jeff Buckley, Death Cab for Cutie, Radiohead, among others. Finding that song “Forget Her” was a pivotal moment for me. I was so fascinated by Jeff’s singing that I would lock myself in my room and try to imitate him. I was always fascinated by words, but around this time is when my interest in singing began. Since then, I always knew I wanted to be a musician but because there was no path towards a career of that kind, that desire remained stifled until much later when I couldn’t ignore it anymore, and when the universe conspired to send me to America.

Photo credit: Ian Flomer

BGS 5+5: Vance Gilbert

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Artist: Vance Gilbert
Hometown: Born in the Philadelphia area, but Boston has been home for the last 40 years
Latest album: Good Good Man
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Bentfield Hucks

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I see much of my songwriting as writing a great script for a movie. I’m most often intent on telling a story and making it as visual as I can muster. However, literature plays a great role too, as word usage and wordplay get the tongue’s mind involved. I remember reading Louis de Bernières’ Corelli’s Mandolin, and wanting to sing the whole thing when I was done, like some slightly overweight Black Homer.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

My freshman year, while I was at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, a crew of us piled into a classmate’s yellow tonneau-topped Pontiac Sunbird and drove the 2 hours to Boston. We parked at another classmate’s house and took the MTA into town. At one of the stops on the “Red Line,” there was a guy playing jazz standards on a vibraphone, and I simply don’t remember the rest of my stay there (save for the lo mein in Chinatown). From that moment on, I wanted to be in Boston playing music.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

That would be writing “The Day Before November,” the closing piece to my new album, Good Good Man. OK, you asked — the tough part was fear. I had a storyline in mind, like a Rod Serling sci-fi movie about a neighborhood “spooky-old-man-in-that-house” and a loving prank a small, parentally-abused little boy plays on him at the urging of his group of friends. It has ended up as a spoken word piece, but I was afraid to even begin the thing for fear of screwing it up. Isn’t that something? To not even begin to create something for fear of doing it badly? The storybones of the piece existed in notebook after notebook and in my head for about 12 years. Yes, 12 years. Once I rolled it out in some kind of pentameter it took about 2 weeks to write and 2 1/2 months to memorize.

My poor dogs. Memorization repeats happened during late evening walks in the fall of 2016. Now that I think of it, neighborhood windows were open — maybe I should be apologizing to some neighbors too…

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Never mind the calendar. Things happen when they happen. If it takes 40+ years to figure out how to sing with nuance instead of bluster, write to tell the story rather than to just spit out alliteration, and to stop comparing myself to others that seem to have the whole package together at 23 years old, then that’s how long it takes.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

It would most certainly be chicken wings with some sort of awesome sauce/rub, a root beer, sweet potato fries with just a little heat, and Richard Thompson just hanging out and playing tunes at the table. I’d even share my wings with him. Do you know how far out of my zone that would be? Particularly the sharing the wings part? NO ONE, not even Richard Thompson, better reach across that plate uninvited. NO ONE. …What fool would do that to a brother anyway?

BGS 5+5: Luke Sital-Singh

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Artist name: Luke Sital-Singh
Hometown: Los Angeles, California (via Brighton, UK)
Latest album: A Golden State

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

The second time I played Glastonbury Festival I was opening one of the major stages and I was pretty nervous about it. I think I feared that no one would bother leaving their tents that early in the morning to come to the stage. And sure enough as I began to play there was only a small huddle of people and to top it off it started raining so I knew no one would come out. I just sighed, closed my eyes and got on with it. After a few songs I dared look up to see if anyone else has turned up and was so startled to find the crowd had grown as far as the eye could see! I was nearly thrown back by the shock of it. It was such a great feeling I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I don’t really like rituals in that way. Especially when touring. For me each day can be so much like the last that I find it more exciting to try and find differences between each gig. I’m not sure if I intentionally do this but I definitely don’t like to do exactly the same thing each night before I go on. I’m just not a routine kind of person.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

I’d have to say David Bazan is my biggest influence and has had the biggest impact on me as a songwriter, especially lyrically. He manages to write so wisely and honestly about some big subjects, like having faith, losing faith, what it means to be human, about politics, etc., and also the smaller, everyday stuff like marriage, having kids, etc., and most masterfully of all, he writes in a way that shows you that all those subjects are intertwined and interconnected. I hope to write songs that are as wise and open as his are.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I’m a big poetry fan. I steal all my best ideas from poems. Especially Billy Collins. I wish to write songs like he writes poems. Accessible, insightful, human. I also love the frame of mind poetry puts me in. They slow me down. There’s no point reading in a poem quickly whilst doing something else. For me it’s like a meditative position. I write my music with that in mind. I’m sure people have my music on in the background and whatever. but I hope my songs help you slow down.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Now technically I was already a musician at this point but I played a school concert when I was 15 or so and that was the first time I knew I wanted to pursue music as a career for the rest of my life. I was playing solo. A cover of a Damien Rice song and Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” At that point in my musical journey I knew I was pretty good but I still hadn’t done that many shows. This performance was the first time I really experience the silence. It’s a very specific silence, a noise that only an audience of people can make. When they are all tuned into the same thing. It’s an intoxicating feeling when you know you’ve got them in the palm of your hand. I got addicted to it that night and I have remained so ever since.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2PtdpFWTZBTG4NZgS1mobc?si=pWzZUCkhTuSrNdB0vWCO9Q

Photo credit: Hattie Ellis

Inspired by Dylan, J.S. Ondara Spreads His Own ‘Tales of America’

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Six years ago just about now, J.S. Ondara landed in Minneapolis on a pilgrimage, lured by his love of Minnesota native son Bob Dylan’s music. He made his way north to Duluth, where Dylan was born, and Hibbing, where the singer-songwriter was raised. It was not quite what he expected.

“I thought I’d go to Hibbing and it would be a magnificent city with music coming from all over the place,” he says, now, laughing at his thoughts of the small town as the Emerald City. “There wasn’t much to find.”

We can forgive him his youthful fantasies. He’d never traveled like that before. He’d never seen snow before, let alone a Minnesota winter. He’d never really been away from home, and home was a long way from there — Nairobi, Kenya, where as a teen he’d fallen completely for the music of Dylan. But at just 20, he impetuously decided to trek to where his hero’s story began.

“It was all very romantic for me,” he says. “I just said, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this. It makes sense right now.’ It was all a very romantic choice, a thing I tend to do regularly in my life, make all these romantic decisions and not have any expectations out of it other than, ‘Let’s see how it goes.’”

That, uh, freewheelin’ spirit went pretty well for him. This month sees the release of his own debut album, Tales of America, on Verve Records. It’s a collection of moving, personal folk-influenced songs drawn from the journey he’s made and the observations along the way, produced by veteran Mike Viola (who as vice president of A&R at Verve signed him to his deal) and featuring appearances by such fellow Dylan acolytes as Andrew Bird, Dawes’ Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith and Milk Carton Kids’ Joey Ryan. The release comes on the heels of his first major tour, opening for no less than Lindsey Buckingham, and a subsequent European jaunt.

And while the Dylan influence is present, this is in no way an imitation or even homage, per se. With an almost jazzy looseness, often swaying around stand-up bass played by Los Angeles stalwart Sebastian Steinberg, there’s a closer resemblance to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. At the center is Ondara’s high, pure, finely controlled voice, an instrument unlike any of his heroes’, though you might hear some Jeff (and Tim) Buckley in it, at times piercing the heavens with an otherworldly falsetto, movingly unguarded on the haunting a cappella “Turkish Bandana.”

Hibbing wasn’t Oz, but he’s definitely not in Kenya anymore. And what swept him to this new life was, of all things, grunge and indie-rock.

“We really didn’t have much growing up,” he says. “Had food, a place to sleep and that’s about it. And a tiny little radio, about the size of my iPhone. That was all we had.”

Through that little radio came Nirvana, Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, transmissions from another world in a language the Swahili-speaking youth didn’t understand. It was magical.

“I was intrigued by the music and language, all these sounds,” he says. “I couldn’t make any sense of it. To me it was a spaceship to another universe.”

He tried imitating those sounds, though not knowing the language he sang gibberish — well, maybe not that far off with some of Kurt Cobain’s often hard-to-decipher mumbling. But it worked its way into him.

“I heard all these songs and developed a kinship for a long time, and used them to study English because I wanted to understand what Cobain was saying, or [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke or [Death Cab’s] Ben Gibbard,” he says. “I was curious about the language and the spirit and that spurred me to learn English, and I built my vocabulary listening to these songs.”

Another song that caught his ear was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — the Guns ’N Roses version, which he assumed was an original by that band. It was only after losing a bet to a school mate about the song’s authorship that he discovered the music of Dylan himself. It was an epiphany.

“I wrote stories and poems, from a very young age,” he says. “I wrote about a puppy, about school, I wrote a lot about the sun for some reason. I was fascinated by the universe in general and wasn’t really receiving the answers I needed. So I would write poems and stories about it as a way to process it and learn about the world. But I never wrote songs. One reason I believe I was drawn to Dylan was listening to his records I thought, ‘These are poems with melodies! I could probably do this!’ I felt I saw a path for me. ‘Perhaps there is hope. I can take these stories and poems and put them in melodies and perhaps people could like them in a grand way. This is something people like? Great! Maybe I’m not lost in my path!’”

He soon set his sights on America, where he had a few relatives and friends scattered about, including an aunt in Minneapolis. But finding a way was rough.

“I started by applying to the University of Minnesota and looking for work opportunities in the state, but nothing bore any fruit,” he says. “As I ran into a wall and was running out of options, I was suddenly awoken, quite rudely, in the wee hours of the morning to be told that I had won a green card lottery and could move to the States. Turns out an aunt had applied for these green cards for a few of us and mine went through. I had no idea. The mischief of the universe!”

His family helped get the money together for the trip after he told them that he was going to become a doctor. That was a fib, he admits. Once settled in Minneapolis, he dove into music-making seriously.

“I picked up a guitar and learned a couple Dylan songs, a couple Neil Young songs, then would go back to those melodies and these poems I’d written, turn them into a melody, call it a song and then go out and try to play for people. That’s how it began for me.”

He hit up the open mic nights around town, started getting some small club bookings, “gradually, very gradually trying to get these songs in front of people.”

And with some money he’d saved from work via a temp agency, he made an acoustic EP that he put online. Soon a local public radio station put his songs in regular rotation. Word spread and contacts started to come in from the music business, both in Minneapolis and around the country.

Among those reaching out was Viola, a veteran musician (the band the Candy Butchers, as well as singer of the title song from the movie That Thing You Do) who had recently taken the job at Verve. The two hit it off right away.

“I had done meetings with others, but with Mike there was a connection,” he says. “I’d do meetings and mention favorite Dylan records and no one knew what I was talking about. Freewheelin’ remains my favorite. When I met with Mike I brought this up, the idea of trying to make a very stripped-down record like that. A few things happen, but not crazy, doesn’t take away from the stories. And I brought up Astral Weeks, which does the same thing. A few things on it that embellish the stories. Those two records. He went, ‘Oh yeah! Those are my favorite records, too!’ There was just chemistry I hadn’t had before.”

From there it was simple.

“It was the old troubadour style of making folk records,” he says. “You get into the studio — you wrote a bunch of songs and maybe get some people around you and play this, and that’s the record.”

The result is an album that portrays the wonder and delight — and also the struggles and heartbreaks — of his time in America, with a facility for language that escapes most native speakers. (An essay he wrote about his life, “The Starred and Striped Fairy of the West,” shows another facet of that.) The opening song, “American Dream,” is equal parts welcoming embrace and distancing suspicion, his poetic images boiling the national spirit to an intimately personal level, a dream world, as it were. That inner view is there throughout the album.

It all came naturally from his experiences.

“I wrote the words ‘I’m getting good at saying goodbye’ just a month after moving to America,” he says of the chorus of the somber “Saying Goodbye.” “They were just words at the time. I didn’t know what they meant. But after turning them into a song and singing them over and over, I can see that I was grappling with thoughts of the past and future. I could see that the totality of my past — being family, culture, upbringing, all of it — was stopping me from becoming not just who I wanted to be but who I’d be best at being, which is the true ‘self’ within.”

That said, he’s also found that echoes of his past can be heard in some of these songs, even if very faintly. He wasn’t a big fan of Kenyan music, traditional or modern while growing up, but it seems some of it crept in anyway. A few of the songs, notably the loping “Lebanon,” bear rhythms echoing those common in music of that region of Africa — the national benga or Nigerian highlife, Tanzanian taraab and Congolese soukous, all quite popular in Kenya. And there’s something ingrained in the vocals that even Ondara only heard after the fact.

“I was listening back to some of the songs and I can hear toward the end of some that I start to make some sounds influenced by my native language, which is not something I tried to do,” he says. “There is African influence there, but subconscious. The more I listen, the most I can track down those sounds.”

MIXTAPE: Madison Cunningham’s Songs I Hear in Purple

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It was difficult to narrow it down to just 12, but here are some songs that were turning points for me as an artist. Songs that made me first realize, and then remember, why I love music. I also hear songs and keys in color. Although it might sound strange all twelve of these songs have aspects that sound purple to me. Enjoy!

Jeff Buckley – “Grace”

My friend Izzi Ray told me about Jeff Buckley over lunch about four years ago. Being late to the game, as I usually am, I didn’t listen to a single song of his until a couple years later. I’ll never forget how astonished I was at his voice. Then come to find out what an innovative guitar player he was. It haunted me for months. Specifically “Grace.”

Radiohead – “Paranoid Android”

“Paranoid Android” was one of the first radio songs I listened too. I’m constantly inspired by how freely Thom Yorke creates and sings his melodies. This is one of those melodies.

Emmylou Harris – “Deeper Well”

“Wrecking Ball” was a life-changing record for me and continues to be in my top 10 favorites. The lyrics of “Deeper Well” make for a perfect song in my opinion.

Fiona Apple – “Fast As You Can”

I’ve never felt cooler than when I walk down the side streets of Los Angeles listening to this song blaring in my headphones. It’s also my airplane turbulence song. It shed a completely new light on songwriting, and songwriting tempos for me. I’ve always felt it was hard to say something important in a fast song. Fiona proved me so wrong.

Joni Mitchell – “Both Sides Now”

Joni was the first person who made me really want to be a songwriter. She set the bar so unreachably high that she made so many of us want to do our best even if we came just short of it. This song is one of few that make a timeless statement that could be sung by a 19-year-old and an 80-year-old.

Bob Dylan – “Just Like a Woman”

Here’s another example of a song that I think is absolutely perfect. Not a word or note wasted.

Ry Cooder – “Tattler”

Ry is another one of my guitar heroes. “Tattler” is my favorite song by him.

Nina Simone – “Feeling Good”

Nina Simone can’t play or sing a wrong note. All of her mistakes were in key somehow. Any song she plays instantly pulls me in. No other rendition of “Feeling Good” matches the sorrow, and power of this one.

Maurice Ravel – “String Quartet in F Major”

This is maybe one of my favorite pieces of music. I heard Chris Thile play it on Live From Here for the first time and it lifted me out of my seat.

Brian Wilson – “Don’t Talk”

This one makes me tear up almost every time. The melodies and voicings on this tune are such a beautiful mystery to me. And the lyrics convey the power of not saying anything and resting in the arms of the person you love

Rufus Wainright – “Poses”

On my way back from the Sundance film festival it started to snow. My friend Mike and I made a wrong turn; as we found our way back he turned this song on. When it was over I asked him if he’d mind if we played it again.

Juana Molina – “Lo Decidi Yo”

Juana is one of my favorite guitar players/writers. She’s truly one of a kind. I listened to one song by her called “Eras” on repeat for four years straight until I uncovered the rest of her record. Here’s one of my belated discoveries.

Photo credit: Paige Wilson

BGS 5+5: Daniel Daniel

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Daniel Daniel
Hometown: Washington, DC
Latest Album: The Lonesome Hollow
Personal Nickname: Chef Dan

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

It is hard to pinpoint one artist. There have been so many that have impacted and inspired me along the way. The ones that truly dig down and touch my soul seem to evoke beauty, angst, and heartache with their writing — people like Townes Van Zandt, Son House, Little Walter, Simon and Garfunkel, Hans Zimmer, Jeff Buckley, Washington Phillips.

If you could spend 10 minutes with John Lennon, Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Sister Rosetta, or Merle Haggard how would it go?

I’d love to sit down with John Lennon, open a good bottle of wine, ask him a hundred questions on his songwriting, and then proceed to write one together.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I don’t have a distinct memory of one song, in particular, that was harder to pen than others. When I do encounter those songs that are stubborn, I have learned to lay them aside. If they are meant to be, they will come back around, when they actually want to work with you.

Since food and music go so well together, what would be your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Miles Davis was known to be a pretty solid chef and, since I enjoy cooking myself, I think we would have a grand ol’ time.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Who, me? I never do that.

Committing to Reality: A Conversation with Marlon Williams

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Marlon Williams staked his name on grandiose vocals and an adventurous sound stoked by the Americana fire. When the New Zealand singer/songwriter began touring the States behind his 2016 self-titled debut, his ramped-up “Hello Miss Lonesome” showcased a breathtaking sustain in that it quite literally took Williams a good deal of breath to hold the opening “Hello.” Yet, on his sophomore album, Make Way for Love, he sheds those theatrical moments to pursue a different sound. Williams lets his voice break, searching out quieter moments reflective of his inner anguish, as he worked his way through myriad passions: jealousy, possession, self-loathing, and the one fueling them all, heartbreak.

Heartbreak, as a theme, seems to be the modus operandi for many a singer/songwriter. If they’re not singing about love, they’re singing about its opposite. While Williams wrote his debut through the perspectives of several characters — letting their voices form a barrier to keep his true self private — Make Way for Love takes a different tack. The songs detail his breakup from fellow New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding. (Interestingly, Harding appears on the penultimate song, “Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore.” The duet, a conversation between former lovers, hangs with a haunting echo of all they’ll never be able to say to one another.) But beyond that overarching subject matter, Williams tackles issues of communication — how seemingly impossible it is to convey an entire truth to another person, let alone oneself.

If Williams was influenced by alt-country and indie folk on his debut, he shows threads of Roy Orbison, Scott Walker, Anohni, and even Jeff Buckley on Make Way for Love. “Can I Call You” begins with an antiquated piano, its keys plunked one by one in heartbeat fashion, before Williams practically pleads the title. One of the album’s standouts, “I Know a Jeweller,” touches on his former sound while nodding at turns to surf rock. With Orbison-like vocals, he demands with a voice oscillating between hope and despair, “Make me a ring for the one who is too afraid to try.” Heartbreak may be old hat for singer/songwriters, but Williams uses it to spin a new thread for his musical development. It is, at once, a man looking around at the wreckage, and a glimpse at a promising musician who’s finally letting his guard down and allowing listeners to get a touch closer.

Your debut involved so many characters and narrators. Besides the heartbreak radiating from the center, why did it feel necessary to peel back those narrative devices and insert yourself more personally this time?

I think the word “necessary” is a very on-the-point description. That’s really how the whole process felt. I didn’t feel I could be so removed this time around, and circumstances were such that I just felt compelled to make a record that was pretty much entirely coming from a personal point of view.

How did you handle the business of confessing and revealing just enough without giving too much of yourself away?

It kind of felt like a crime of passion, you know? I hadn’t really written a song at all in nearly two years and then, in the space of just over three weeks, 15 songs came out. There were ideas that had been floating around in my head for a long time, but there was a fear or reticence about committing them to any sort of reality. It really just happened and I sort of woke up a few weeks later with blood on my hands, and I didn’t know what had happened.

Do you think, if it hadn’t happened that quickly, you might’ve overthought that process more than you let yourself at first?

Yeah, it feels like I sort of blindsided myself. I have always had that relationship with songwriting, where it’s done very frantically and out of fear, really, and I’m left with the results. There’s not a lot of discipline or intentionality going into the way I do it.

I understand that underlying fear, though. You know you have to get it out, but the process can be so overwhelming at times.

Yeah, I don’t listen too closely to myself, so I came out with all these songs, and it wasn’t until right at the end of the process where I realized sort of what I was doing and how personal a body of work it was. I found myself having to choose to make this commitment, this, “Well, I’ve gotten so far with all these songs, is this the right way to do this?” I realized that I had to take the plunge and just commit to it.

It reminds me of the Polar Bear Plunge, where people dive into the icy water so quickly they don’t feel the pain.

That’s the artistic version of that, yeah. [Laughs]

I’m curious if there was any kind of emotional truth you were hoping to unfold over the course of this project, but maybe you weren’t even aware of it until it all came about.

Yeah! I really think it was a means of processing and as real a therapy as anyone ever receives.

Your first album contained such big vocals — both in terms of the volume and also your ability to sustain a note. This is quieter and more introspective for good reason. How did you see your voice serving this project?

I feel like, with this album, I wasn’t writing vocal parts; I wasn’t consciously trying to crack little vocal tricks. All the vocals are serving the song first, so my voice ends up in different and interesting situations that it wouldn’t normally end up in because some of these songs, I guess, represent feelings I’ve never had. “I Didn’t Make a Plan” is just, “This song feels like it wants to be sung down here.” It’s not a part of my personality, but this is what the song wants to do, so it’s what I’ll do.

There are so many styles taking place on this album. What were you listening to ahead of time to shift your mindset away from what you’d recorded in the past?

A lot of stuff. A lot of Scott Walker, obviously. That intensive vocals and tone that’s slightly off and darker than the more obvious Roy Orbison and …Well, obviously Scott Walker is a strange dude. Trying to listen to stuff that really brings my own sense of what I do, of what I’m capable of doing, and how I want to use my voice and present songs. It sort of shifted.

Make Way for Love has been touted as a heartbreak album, but of course any kind of label can be restrictive in a sense. Did you find yourself pushing past those limitations in any way?

The term “heartbreak album” sort of smacks a little bit of sensationalism into it, in a way. But also I’m really curious and really enjoy watching the album squirm under the moniker of “breakup album.” It’s interesting when you give labels to things how you see … I heard someone refer to it as a heartbreak album, and then I listened back to the album myself, and it’s a really interesting re-learning process for me as the album is heard by more and more people.

The song “Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore” is beautifully bleak. Have you reconciled yourself to living with that understanding?

Well, look, that sort of resignation is not eternal nor should it be. It was in the context of the subject matter of the album. I’d sort of come to live with that, I guess. [Laughs]

You can be happily melancholic, as they say.

Yeah, exactly. You can wear sadness well, and it’s fine.

Most of the album is written from a certain perspective, but “Nobody” turns into a dialogue. Why choose to have another character speak on the matter?

I found myself in a unique position of being able to give a voice to … if we’re speaking frankly, there aren’t many breakup albums that are engaged with the subject that the album is about, and kudos to Aldous [Harding] for agreeing to do that. We always had that sort of thread running through our relationship from the get-go, so it didn’t feel that weird to potentially do that.

What was the recording process like?

It was detached and weird. It was one of the last songs we recorded, when we were [recording] in California. I had my parts all done, and then the last thing we needed was her part, but she didn’t record it for another couple of months. She did her part while she was in Cardiff and Wales, and I was in Portland, and we sort of talked it through on the phone. It was a very fitting way to do it.

No kidding, especially considering all the themes of communication that run across the album. To have this significant moment run across time zones and continents …

Exactly, yeah. I would’ve rather we’d done it in person, but it kind of fits.

Speaking of communication, have you thought much about the ongoing struggle to communicate with yourself, and what you’ve learned as a result of this album?

I need some time to think about that one. It’s big.

Save the big ones for the end.

Real big one, yeah! I do feel how I imagine people feel when they’ve been doing a bunch of therapy, where therapy is about picking away the scabs and having a good look at the wounds. I have this weird, manic ecstasy from thinking that you’re confronting these sorts of things. It’s like I’m an alcoholic, and I just want to tell everyone how great AA is. That weird ecstasy that comes from drastic perspective shifts.

I’m just trying to be slow with it and learn to be alone softly and without any pomp and circumstance. I’m having a really interesting and exciting time, where I am starting to feel some sense of individual completeness, which is kind of a new feeling for me.

And a hopeful one, too, I imagine. How do you slow yourself down when you talk about writing an album so quickly? It seems like it’d be tricky to make that momentum shift.

Yeah, it’s tricky, because you make something so quickly and then, by the very nature of what you’re doing, you have to spend so much time talking about it and pouring over it, and I believe you end up inventing the truth afterward. For that reason, I’m either discovering it or inventing it, as I go along. It’s constantly shifting in my hands. You need to be thoughtful and have some degree of slowness and a sense of space and respect for what you’re doing, at that stage.

Lastly, what kind of strings do you use on your guitar?

That’s a very functional question after …

I know!

I just use the Martin Retro strings when I can. Actually, the second album I recorded with an acoustic guitar — an old, beat up one — that I found in the studio because I forgot my guitar.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, and I guess you can’t go back for that once you reach California after leaving New Zealand.

I was kind of stuck.

It sounds beautiful on the album, so good find. That’s lucky.

Aww, thanks. Well, it was a shitty guitar, but sometimes shitty guitars are the ones you want.

Photo credit: Steve Gullick

Canon Fodder: Joni Mitchell, ‘Court and Spark’

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I originally didn’t want to write this column.

When I first asked the Bluegrass Situation’s wise and heroic editor if she had any album suggestions for the next Canon Fodder, her immediate response was: Joni Mitchell. “Maybe Court and Spark,” she recommended. I think I wrote something curt and casually dismissive back to her, something about being allergic to Joni Mitchell. And it’s true: I’ve never been a fan. At various times in my life, I’ve heard various albums by Joni, and they washed over me unnoticed just as often as they actively irked me. She was, in other words, the last person I wanted to write about.

And yet, here I am writing about Joni Mitchell.

Between that email exchange and this column you are currently reading, I became more and more intrigued by such an assignment. Why, I’ve been wondering lately, have I nursed something akin to a grudge against an artist who enjoys the respect and admiration of so many people I respect and admire? What was at the root of my disdain for such a well-regarded artist, one who has earned the label “genius” throughout her career? Is everybody else in the world wrong? Or is it me? Is there a correct answer here?

It occurs to me that every listener has a major artist they cannot abide. Not everyone can like everything they hear, and I certainly wouldn’t want to get stuck on a long road trip with someone who has no strong opinions. I’ve had heated — thoroughly enjoyable and critically rejuvenating — conversations with people who think Dylan is a terrible singer. Van is a hack. Springsteen is a goofball. Kendrick is a terrible rapper. The Beatles are boring.

Okay, that last one is me, again. But my point is this: What we don’t like is usually as essential to how we define ourselves as what we do like. That’s certainly true online, where hating the latest Star Wars is a vocation. We define ourselves against certain kinds of music, or possibly in opposition to the fans of that music — which is why many people don’t think they like country music or jam bands. I spent much of my youth doing just that: cultivating dislikes, waging personal wars against the Beatles or whomever else I deemed “overrated.” As I’ve grown older, my viewpoint has softened and I’ve developed an appreciation for what the Beatles achieved, even if I think they should be a gateway band rather than an endpoint. That’s a lot different than just shouting, “The Beatles suck!” at random passersby. It’s hopefully a more nuanced critical take on that band — although some might call it “dumb” and, honestly, I wouldn’t argue.

That’s what happens as we get older. Or, it’s what should happen. We ought to allow our tastes and opinions to grow much more complicated as we integrate more experiences and more knowledge into our identities. We don’t want to get soft or dismissive, but we also don’t want to stop growing or considering other perspectives. Perhaps that’s why I felt compelled to write about Court and Spark for this column: I wanted to see if I’ve grown up any more since the last time I listened to Joni … and, if so, how much. I’ve been curious if my perspective has changed on the album and on the artist at all. I chose this album for various reasons: It’s her commercial breakthrough, her biggest-selling album, and one that introduced a new phase in her career. Actually this record introduced the idea that her career would have phases — that she wouldn’t forever be the wallflower West Coast folkie of Ladies of the Canyon and Blue, renowned for her fragility, as well as for her lyricism. She recorded with Tom Scott and L.A. Express, a jazz fusion outfit that allowed her to dramatically rethink her songwriting — what words she chose, which stories she told, how she phrased her vocals rhythmically and melodically. Court and Spark expanded what singer/songwriters could do and how they could sound, wrestling the vague genre away from the rootsy and the folksy and creating something more urban, more modern.

As such, it’s impossible even for me to deny her influence on pop and roots music, even R&B and hip-hop. Prince gave her song “Help Me” a shout-out on “Ballad of Dorothy Parker,” and she was, perhaps, the only artist who could make him tongue-tied. Aimee Mann and Sufjan Stevens have both covered “Free Man in Paris.” Katharine McPhee covered “Help Me.” Jeff Buckley did “People’s Parties” on Live at Sin-é. And I’m not the first to argue that Taylor Swift’s entire career is based on Mitchell, specifically on her tendency to turn lovers into lover songs.

Mitchell, of course, is much more acerbic and painterly in her love songs, often writing lyrics as conversations between herself and these famous men. If Swift turns her albums into tabloids about herself, Mitchell, to her immense credit, used this tack to push against expectations of herself as a female singer/songwriter and to establish herself as an independent and individual artist. There is something powerful in how swiftly and efficiently she dispatches a lover, especially on “Help Me. “You’re a rambler and a gambler and a sweet-talking ladies’ man, and you love your lovin’ but not like you love your freedom.” As Dan Chiasson recently observed in The New Yorker, “Men often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her.”

So I gave Court and Spark another listen. Several listens, actually. For the purposes of this experiment, I listened to the album in as many different settings as possible: I listened on headphones in the grocery store and walking the dog in the park. I played it in the car running errands. I played it on my computer while I sat at my desk. I gave it various amounts of my attention, following closely along with the lyrics, then letting my mind wander, then letting myself get distracted by the task of scooping up dog poop. And do you know what happened?

Nothing.

I experienced not great epiphany. Lightning didn’t strike me through my earbuds. I remained cold to her singing. I remained unmoved by her lyrics. I remained unconvinced by the jazz arrangements. Certain elements stuck out to me as more compelling than I remembered, in particular the mise-en-scène on “People’s Parties,” which conveys a fragmenting anomie that puts me in mind of Joan Didion. The intro to “Raised on Robbery” reminded me of the Manhattan Transfer, but I like the groove she finds, which reinforces the sexual confidence of her narrator: “I’m a pretty good cook, sitting on my groceries,” she sings, as the song bounces along. “Come up to my kitchen, I’ll show you my best recipe.”

But there were passages that gnawed at me a bit. The hook on “Free Man in Paris” sounded fussy, a garbled melody. In “The Same Situation,” there was “a pretty girl in your bathroom, checking out her sex appeal” — a phrase that ground awkwardly against my ears. And while I appreciate that she is using “Twisted,” a hit in 1952 for the British jazz singer Annie Ross, as a winking commentary on the psychoanalytical relationship between herself and her listener, the song itself is ghastly, sounding more like a parody of jazz than jazz itself.

And yet, I can’t make any of these criticisms add up to a bad album. Perhaps not liking Court and Spark is a physical phenomenon rather than a psychological or emotional reaction. Perhaps it occurs on a cellular level, the way popping bubble wrap is ecstatic or the feel of frosted glass is unnerving. Perhaps it really is something like an allergy — a physical rejection of something that might otherwise cause pleasure. Whatever it is, whatever its cause, I’m now convinced that it is my own loss.

Squared Roots: Jane Siberry in Praise of Leonard Cohen

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True songwriting heroes are a rare breed and, in roots music, a few names take up more space than all the others combined — names like Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Dolly Parton, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and John Prine. For artists on the darker end of the spectrum, from Jeff Buckley to Amanda Shires, Leonard Cohen would also make that list, if not top it, because of how Cohen's incredibly mystical and oddly majestic way with a pen burrowed its way deep into the souls of his listeners. For proof of how the song is often bigger than the singer, look no further than the power and proliferation of "Hallelujah," his best-known composition which has been covered by dozens of singers over the past few decades. Tenderness and thoughtfulness pervade Cohen's work, winding their way around and through his sometimes eccentric, always captivating perspectives.

One of the singer/songwriters who came up in the wake of Cohen is Jane Siberry. A fellow Canadian, Siberry has also blazed her own artistic trail littered with mysticism. Reaching back to songs like "Bound by the Beauty," "Love Is Everything," and "Calling All Angels" all the way through to her latest release, Angels Bend Closer, Siberry never shies away from life's big questions and contemplations. Rather, like Cohen, she pours herself into them, exploring every nook and cranny through song and serving as a docent for those willing to follow.

As folks have reminisced about him since his passing, it seems like almost everyone has a Leonard-related tale to tell … either a personal encounter or a meaningful musical moment. You taught yourself guitar with his songs, right?

Yes. When I was 16, I moved away from home. I had played piano up til then. So I bought a cheap guitar and started learning from my sister's guitar songbooks. She had Leonard Cohen's, which had a very clear tablature. It even showed the rhythm of the finger-picking, which was fantastic and easy, so I learned to play his songs. The only songs I learned were from Songs of Leonard Cohen — “Sisters of Mercy” and “Suzanne” and all of those.

Did you have any interactions with him as you were coming up in music?

No, I didn't really. I just always really respected him, when I'd hear him speak in public. I think we met once or twice.

What do you think it was that made him not just so great, but also so special?

What's the difference?

Well, I think there are great artists, but there are also ones who are really special in terms of who they are and how they affect people. To me, it seems like many of the ones we've lost this year — David Bowie, Prince, Sharon Jones, and Leonard Cohen — they were all both great and special. And I think their passings have hit people especially hard. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I think it's pretty simple. It's not just about being great. We love them. We love ourselves through them.

In addition to both being Canadian, you are both more than just musicians. Authors, poets, performance artists … was he a bit of a role model for you?

I've never liked the term “performance artist,” but “entertainer” …

Got it.

A role model, as a musician, yes. I really thought he was underrated as a musician. I found his chord changes really beautiful and his phrasing beautiful. I think there's a similarity in what we draw from in the musical atmosphere, in that some people say he used a lot of “church chord changes.” That really isn't what it is. It's that there's a completion at the end of the song or at the end of choruses, like Irish folk songs. Like “The Water's Wide,” I think a lot of people would call it “churchy” in the way that the chorus lifts and the way you're allowed to draw out the end like a soft touch on a cheek when you say goodbye to someone.

There's also the similarity in that you both explore deeper emotional and spiritual themes in your songs. Neither of you are afraid of those. So, even a simple-sounding song isn't necessarily simple-minded. It feels like, to me, with both of you, that music is always sacred or has the potential to be. Is that maybe part of that church-sounding potential?

Most of the world, other than the First World, uses music as a way to pray. I think it's natural and organic. Drawn up from our primal selves. I consider music as one of the few ways to connect in a way that's meaningful to so many people. If it works on a lot of levels, it's generous and people can draw more from it — as much or as little as they want because it works on a lot of levels. To me, a good song should sound good, even if you don't know what it's about. It should feel good, whether it's the chording or the rhythm that you tap your fingers to. But, if you look deeper, it's also … I guess I'm saying that a song can be as rich as life is or humans are, if you want it to be. That's multi-purpose, so I guess that's why I said “generous,” if you're offering something in that way. I also consider humor as sacred. Those are the only two places where I go slightly bonkers. Humor and music are sacred to me.

Thinking of those layers of what a song can do … “Hallelujah” feels a perfect song. And not just due to its technical structure or melodic beauty, but also because it can be interpreted so differently depending on who is singing and who is listening.

Yeah. The first time I heard it, I loved that he was describing what he was doing musically — “the fourth, the fifth.” I thought, “Oh, yeah, that's how they do that. Amazing!” [Laughs] Then I started listening to the words … I remember being in Belfast and the opening guest was a choir from Belfast and they sang “Hallelujah.” They all had smiles on their faces. After I said, and I didn't mean to make people feel embarrassed, but I said, “That's the best version I've heard of a song about erotic requests and orgasm and its manifestation.” Because it is about that. And it's like, “WOW. You sing 'hallelujah' and it becomes” … [Laughs] He must have had a good laugh about that, too. Maybe people in the choir knew that and were having their own laugh about it, too. But it's very funny, I think, to hear a choir sing it with a smile on their face. [Laughs]

[Laughs] It was interesting to read up on the song. Different people who've done it have different interpretations of what it means to them. Jeff Buckley agrees with you, but k.d. lang has a slightly different take. But, I mean, he wrote more than 80 verses for the damn thing.

Did he?!

Yeah! Different people have picked different verses to sing and I think maybe the Jeff Buckley version has become a bit of a standard model.

That makes so much sense. I think that's the real way to operate as a musician. You offer different verses to different people and they make it their own. I think that's great. People get so precious about the right words. That's so cool.

I feel like your “Calling All Angels” is also a perfect song.

Someone took the publishing rights to “Suzanne,” so he never got money from it. But, later, his understanding was that that wasn't the kind of song he should ever benefit from monetarily. I see “Calling All Angels” the same way. But, every now and then, when it's in a film, I benefit from it, which I really like. [Laughs] But everything I make goes into more music.

I do feel like there's a constellation of musicians wherein our stars are a bit closer. And I feel that about me and Leonard Cohen and the people who influenced me when I was young, like Joni Mitchell and Neil Young — people I really trusted when they spoke to my 15-year-old ears. I trusted them. There was a connection.

I do connect with Leonard Cohen in that way. I know he talks about how everyone's “in service.” The first temptation is sort of getting the word “service” clear. It's not, “I'm gonna go out and fix the world.” It's more like, “I think I need to clean up my own backyard before I ever use the word 'service.'” I feel so lucky in my life. I always feel rich and that I need to give back. I want to spread the wealth, so to speak.

Jane Siberry photo by Sophia Canales. Leonard Cohen photo courtesy of the artist.