BGS 5+5: Whitehorse

Artist: Whitehorse (Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland)
Hometown: Toronto, although the band was conceived while we were living in Hamilton, Ontario — and we’re temporarily living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, for a year. I know… simple question; complicated answer.
Latest Album: I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying (out January 13, 2023)
Rejected Band Names: Yellowknife (also a city in the north of Canada)

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Our band and this record in particular (I’m Not Crying, You’re Crying) was really informed and inspired by our long love affair with Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, which began in earnest when we were living in Nashville over a decade ago. We’ve made lots of detours into different corners of the Americana landscape since then, and now maybe for the first time, we’re tying ourselves back to that time and place. There’s a sort of Beauty and the Beast element to Gram and Emmylou that we have always related to — or sought solace in. His vulnerable warble and her impossible majesty bring the songs to life in a way that is hard to define but there’s something beautiful in that juxtaposition. We’ve gleaned a lot from them over the years.

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

We have a fairly simple pre-show ritual and that is: one drink; no more, no less. There’s a sweet spot where you’re just loose enough to get lost in the songs and make brave choices but not so loose your playing stinks. And yeah, maybe bring one on stage with you…

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

We are spending a year living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, or “Winter-Peg, Man-it’s-cold-out” where as I write, the temperature is a frosty -20°C. We are a walking family — we don’t own a car — so we all have excellent winter parkas and boots to trundle across the frozen prairie city. Manitoba is also a sun bathed province so a blanket of snow and a vast bright blue prairie sky can make for a rare kind of beauty and mystery. We find ourselves leaning on that big sky ambience in the production choices we employ in the studio. Reverb-drenched guitars, midtempos and big spaces are all tributes to the Canadian winter. You hear them in records by Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Blue Rodeo, k.d. lang, Colter Wall and The Sadies, too. Coincidence? Dunno.

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

The best career advice actually came from a running coach on the eve of my (Luke’s) 2013 Boston Marathon race: “The hay is in the barn” is what my coach Tanya Jones offered me when I called her in a panic over my impending pre-race insomnia. She reminded me that the work had been done, the miles had been logged, and that the difference between success and failure would come down to training and hard work — which I had done. Add a dollop of adrenaline and a sleepless night won’t matter, since “the hay is in the barn,” i.e., the harvest had been collected. She was right (2:55:11, meaning I finished my race a full hour before the horrifying detonation of the two bombs that marred the event that year) and that advice has helped me (and us) ever since.

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

Follow the muse wherever she wanders, know that this game is a long one, spend more time on the finer points than you think you need to, assume your fans to be smarter than you and never forget that if you’re lucky, the very act of playing the show is tantamount to stopping to smell the roses.


Photo Credit: Lyle Bell

8 of Our Favorite Underrated Sitch Sessions

Since our first excursion to Bonnaroo in 2013 BGS has been filming, crafting, and releasing Sitch Sessions with the absolute best and brightest musicians and artists in roots music. We’ve been so fortunate to work with new and old friends, freshly discovered and up-and-coming artists, and legendary performers with enormous legacies. After nearly eight years, we’ve amassed quite an archive of sessions, and within that archive more than a few stellar songs and performances have seemingly fallen to the wayside. 

These 8 Sitch Sessions from the BGS archives are a few of our most favorite, underrated moments from our years of shooting sessions. We hope you’ll enjoy a few of these “reruns” — and take a deep dive into our past featured videos yourself!

Nathan Bowles – “Burnt Ends Rag”

One of our favorite shooting locations is a rooftop in downtown Los Angeles, where countless BGS Friends & Neighbors have taped their Sitch Sessions over the years. One of our favorites is this clawhammer banjo performance by Nathan Bowles, which demonstrates that old-time music and its trappings can be perfectly at home in modernity — and in urban settings, too. More banjos in DTLA, please and thank you!


Andrew Combs – “Firestarter”

One fine AmericanaFest week in Nashville in September a few years back we partnered with Crowell Floral, Jacob Blumberg, and Dan Knobler on The Silverstreak Sessions, a series of Sitch Sessions set in a vintage Airstream and flanked by gorgeous flowers and verdant foliage. At the time, “Firestarter” had not yet been released — now you can hear it on Combs’ 2019 release, Ideal Man. For this session all Combs needed was his guitar, this heartfelt song, and that honey sweet, aching voice. 


Alice Gerrard – “Maybe This Time” 

Every opportunity we’ve had to collaborate or speak with Bluegrass Hall of Famer and living legend Alice Gerrard, we’ve taken it! This session is two of a pair we shot with Gerrard, the other a stark, awe-inspiring a capella number that was quite popular on our channels. This Alice original, “Maybe This Time,” is cheerier, lighter, and has that charming old-time bounce in its bluegrass bones. 

With a new documentary film available, You Gave Me a Song, perhaps it’s about time for another session with this hero of ours!


Ben Sollee – “Pretend”

Maybe you’ve seen Mark O’Connor play fiddle while skateboarding, or Rushad Eggleston performing all manner of acrobatics and avant garde silliness with his cello, but do you remember when Ben Sollee toured America by bicycle? In this 2016 session, Sollee demonstrates his cello-while-pedaling chops. 

We’re firm believers that the world needs more bluegrass, old-time, and Americana cello and we’re happy to return to this archived Sitch Session for that reminder!


Caroline Spence – “Mint Condition”

Another session filmed on our home turf in Los Angeles, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Caroline Spence brought “Mint Condition” to her taping fresh off her debut, eponymous release on Rounder Records in 2019. “Mint Condition” displays Spence’s unique skill for writing strong, unassailable hooks that on almost any other songwriter’s page might trend cheesy or trite. Spence instead displays the simple profundity in her lyrics, a skill evidenced plainly in this session.


Laura Veirs – “July Flame”

Over the years, we’ve partnered with festivals, companies, and brands on tailor-made sessions — like our Portland series, where we partnered with our friends at Ear Trumpet Labs on some of our most popular, most viral Sitch Sessions ever! This beautiful, sunny, summery rendition of “July Flame” by Laura Veirs certainly deserves a re-up. 

In 2016, after this session was published, Veirs went on to release case/lang/veirs with Neko Case and k.d. lang. Remember that!? 


Kelsey Waldon – “Powderfinger”

We first filmed a Sitch Session with Kentuckian country singer and songwriter Kelsey Waldon in 2015 — after the release of her debut album, The Goldmine, in 2014. In the time that’s elapsed since, Waldon has followed her golden debut with two more impeccable studio albums, the latest being White Noise / White Lines, which was released on the late John Prine’s Oh Boy Records in 2019. On the tail of White Noise / White Lines, Waldon gave us this gorgeous cover of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” displaying her talent for cover song interpretations as well as original song sculpting.


Sunny War – “He Is My Cell”

Guitarist and singer-songwriter Sunny War has just released a brand new album, Simple Syrup, as charming and entrancing as ever and built firmly, yet again, upon her unique and idiosyncratic guitar picking style. In 2018 she released With the Sun, an album that included “He Is My Cell,” which ended up featured in a Sitch Session in early 2019 on BGS. 

War recently appeared as a guest on our Shout & Shine series – read our interview here


 

Canon Fodder: k.d. lang, ‘Ingénue’

For better or for worse, k.d. lang’s 1992 breakout album Ingénue will always be associated with her coming out. Throughout the late 1980s she had established herself as an unlikely country star, a traditionalist who sang like Patsy Cline and worked with Owen Bradley but whose short punk haircut and androgynous persona branded her as an eccentric like Lyle Lovett. Also, she was Canadian—not a roadblock to country stardom (see: Anne Murray, Shania Twain), but certainly another way in which she was an outsider in Nashville. Nevertheless, she made a place for herself in the country mainstream, winning a Grammy for “Crying,” her 1989 duet with Roy Orbison, and the album Absolute Torch and Twang, released the same year, proved a more-than-modest hit, peaking at No. 12 on the country charts.

And yet, there were rumors that lang was… well, you know. She had come out to her family, but had not made that an explicit part of her public persona, despite playing a lesbian in the independent film Salmonberries. So the media pried into her personal life, posing uncomfortably direct questions to which she carefully measured her answers. lang was going to be made a spokesperson for the LGBTQ+ community whether or not she wanted that responsibility. The pressure came from within that community as well as from without. According to Newsweek, Queer Nation, an activist organization founded in 1990, put up posters around New York with photos of entertainers branded with the words Absolutely Queer. The Advocate outed a top-ranking military official at a time when gays were not welcome in the military, just prior to President Clinton’s infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” waffle.

To preempt being forcibly outed—essentially, to take control of her own story rather than let someone else come out for her—in 1992 lang gave a lengthy, at times very tense interview to The Advocate. Her sexuality was discussed only generally throughout the exchange, with lang officially calling herself a lesbian near the end of the article. “I feel like it’s a part of my life, my sexuality, but it’s not—it certainly isn’t my cause. But I also have never denied it. I don’t try to hide it like some people in the industry do.” This was largely unexplored territory for any artist, especially one in a traditionally conservative genre and especially one who was going to so radically change her sound.

In retrospect it’s hard to convey just how chancy and therefore how pivotal Ingénue was for lang, who rejected absolute twang for torch songs rooted in jazz and pop, in chanson and klezmer, in Gershwin and Weill, Holiday and Dietrich. She described it at the time as “postnuclear cabaret.” Especially in the 1990s when changing your sound or courting a wide audience could be viewed as selling out, the album was a calculated risk, a means of shedding a long-held persona that might alienate old fans without attracting new ones. Gone were the fringed Western wear and the Stetsons; what remained was that haircut and, most crucially, a voice that sounds like a starry midnight.

The personnel didn’t change, but her approach certainly did. lang worked with co-producers and co-songwriters Greg Penny and Ben Mink, the latter a member of her backing band the Reclines. But this is not a case of treating country songs to new arrangements. The change happens at a conceptual level. Ingénue is lang’s first collection of entirely original material. She and Mink wrote songs outside the country format to find new ways to use her voice and new emotions to express. “Season of Hollow Soul” sounds like a Weimar torch song, as though the singer is playing both Annie Bowles and Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret. “Miss Chatelaine” is an exuberant love song that cheekily references lang’s own iconography, in this case the cover of Chatelaine magazine, which in 1988 named her Woman of the Year. To contrast the photograph’s Nudie suit glory, lang toyed with her own androgynous look, even performing in a formal gown on Arsenio Hall.

Deep into the twenty-first century, of course, country music seems by nature a porous genre, one which artists drift into and out of constantly, whether it’s a pop star looking for a career renewal (Darius Rucker), a tourist taking snapshots of Music Row (Sheryl Crow), or a country star looking to broaden their audience (Taylor Swift). But perhaps no artist has made that transition with more grace and finesse—with more sense of the inevitable—than lang, whose voice was so much bigger than one genre could contain. Ingénue not only showed how artfully she bend that voice and suppress that twang, but also demonstrated how she could use it to inhabit a very different desire than the pop charts typically allowed. For that accomplishment she’ll receive the 2018 Trailblazer Award at the Americana Music Honors & Awards in September.

The album has been tied to her coming out, a vehicle for her ascension not merely as a pop star but as a gay pop star. This is, of course, not the only interpretation of the album, but it’s one that lang herself reasserted in interviews. She was forthright about the inspiration for the album, confessing that it was inspired by the end of an affair with a married lover. lang was still in love, but accepted that the relationship was impossible; that contradiction became the spark that illuminated these new songs. No names were given, but the implication was that this married lover—the subjects of the lyrics, the object of desire—was a woman. This seems even more radical than the Advocate interview, a means by which lang insisted these songs were personal, first-person, and grounded in gay desire. “Can your heart conceal what the mind of love reveals,” she sings on “Mind of Love,” and if you miss that she’s talking to herself, she calls herself by name: “Why do you fight, Kathryn? … Why hurt yourself, Kathryn?”

Yet, Ingénue is about desire, not orientation. These songs express a sexual, physical, and emotional yearning that is specific to her as an individual, specific to her as a lesbian, but she conveys it in such a way as to be universal on some level: something that might resonate with any listener, regardless of their orientation or even their opinion on orientation. In 1992 this might have had a humanizing, normalizing effect, because the risk paid off and then some: Ingénue was an immense crossover hit, anchored by the smash “Constant Craving.”

That song in particular has stuck with lang ever since: her signature tune, a mainstay of every concert she performs. “I knew it was a hit, and I was mad at it for that. I felt that it was a sellout at the time,” she told the New York Times earlier this year. But it’s not hard to see why the song would resonate with her audience, as it expresses a resilience in the face of prejudice or suspicion. “Even through the darkest phase, be it thick or thin,” lang sings in that voice, which sounds neither angry nor outraged but observant, matter-of-fact, as though a “darkest phase” was natural. “Always someone marches brave, here beneath my skin.” lang draws out those syllables in the chorus, pushing against the backing vocals, putting her words on the off-beats, drawing out those syllables—the consonants in “constant,” the long vowel and sensuous V in “craving”—to hint at possibilities: Craving for what or for whom? Constant as both heroic and burdensome, never satisfied?

Whatever it might mean to any one potential listener, it “has always been.” This craving is natural, lang insists, coded deep into all humanity, as constant in 2018 as it was in 1992.

k.d. lang: Flawless, Fearless

Just about a year ago, legendary music journalist Holly Gleason asked me to contribute an essay to a book she was editing titled Woman Walk the Line: How the Women in Country Music Changed Our Lives. The premise was to have a bunch of female writers explore female country artists and the impact they had on our lives. It didn’t take long for me to pick k.d. lang, as I simply would not be who I am today without her. The book — which includes essays by Taylor Swift, Rosanne Cash, Grace Potter, Aubrie Sellers, Kim Ruehl, Ronni Lundy, and many others — comes out on September 15 via the University of Texas Press, and I couldn’t be more proud to be part of it. In honor of its release — and the 25th anniversary of k.d.’s seminal album, Ingenue — here’s an excerpt from my piece.

It wasn’t the first time I heard k.d. lang’s voice that carved out a forever place for her in my heart. It was the first time I saw a photo of her for, in it, I saw a reflection of who I was or, more likely, who I wanted to be. It was 1990, maybe 1991, and media representation of those of us who are “masculine-of-center” was sparse, at best. But there was k.d., handsome and heartfelt, staking a claim for all of us … even those still nestled safely in our closets.

Actually, in 1991, k.d. wasn’t out yet, either. Not publicly, at least.

Musically, k.d. put her reverence and respect for the form and its icons at center stage — her first band was called the Reclines, after all. But, stylistically, she injected a sharp wit and a cow-punk ethos into her earliest works, much of which she learned from another country legend — Minnie Pearl. On her first few albums, k.d. still considered herself to be a performance artist, playing with gender by sporting a crew cut while donning a cowgirl skirt and horn-rimmed glasses. By the late ’80s, her look had settled into the tomboy version of a cowboy, letting denim, boots, and short hair frame her prairie-born good looks.

Because her talent was undeniable — and she wasn’t yet waving a rainbow flag — country music fans could abide by their own version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and just enjoy her utterly stunning voice. Heck, Patsy Cline’s beloved producer, Owen Bradley, helmed Shadowland and recruited Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and Brenda Lee to sing on it. Doesn’t get much more classic country than that.

But then, in 1990, the avowed vegan caused an uproar among said classic country folk for appearing in a “Meat Stinks” ad for PETA, earning herself a lifetime ban from country radio. A sign proclaiming Consort, Alberta, to be ”Home of k.d. lang” was even burned in effigy. Naturally, k.d. was bothered by it all, but she never wavered from her convictions. Instead, she doubled down.

Within a couple of months of that kerfuffle, k.d. was waltzing toward the adult contemporary music space with a contribution to the Red Hot + Blue Cole Porter tribute compilation benefitting AIDS research and relief. Her performance of “So in Love” was a highlight of the platinum-selling album, showcasing her extraordinary gift as an interpreter of song. She finalized her transition in March of 1992 with the absolutely captivating collection that is Ingenue. Flourishes of pedal steel here and there were, really, the last remaining vestiges of country music in k.d.’s sound.

In June of 1992, before “Constant Craving” led the album to multi-platinum sales and a third Grammy Award, k.d. came out as gay in The Advocate, confirming the open secret that everyone already knew, but dared not speak. That year — along with the Indigo Girls’ — k.d.’s courage and conviction, artistry and activism made a bigger impact on my life than anyone before or since.

I still remember sitting on the edge of my seat in the first row of the balcony on August 7, 1992 for the entirety of her first-of-two performances at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. Having already come out, k.d. introduced the gender-play that is “Miss Chateleine” with a comic bit meant to put everyone in the crowd at ease: “There’s been something I’ve been meaning to tell you, something that’s been on my chest for quite some time. So I’m just gonna conjure up the gumption and spit it out.” [drum roll] “I… AM… A… LLLLL… AWRENCE WELK FAN!”

The show was one of the best I’ve ever seen. EVER. And it was a show: k.d. is not just an incredible singer; she’s a captivating entertainer, paying attention to every detail, from the punchlines to the performances. Summing up his review of the show for the Los Angeles Times, Chris Willman wrote, “Even the most die-hard meat industry activist would be hard-pressed not to switch-hit and walk away from this one a close t… LLLLLLLANG FANATIC.”

Less than a month after that fateful night, I too became an avowed vegan and, in November, I became an out queer. Doubtful I could’ve, or would’ve, done either without having k.d.’s lead to follow, without having her image to reflect. Seeing k.d. stand so gloriously in her truths inspired me to find and live my own. Though I didn’t yet have the capacity to understand or accept it, I’d known since I was a kid that I was queer. But growing up in rural Louisiana did more damage than good, where understanding and acceptance were concerned. (Funnily enough, the same could be said of not eating meat: Of all the left-leaning things in my life — moving to Los Angeles, working with rock stars, being a homo, living in a meditation ashram, and being a vegan — the one thing my Southern-born and bred father could never get a handle on was me not eating meat.)

So when I finally saw someone who looked like me, lived like me, and loved like me, I started moving toward the light that she was shining. Turning toward that light meant turning into myself — digging into my own identity and drumming up my own courage. That process of discovery, sparked almost entirely by k.d., uncovered who I was at my core … and who I continue to be today — an Eastern philosophy-abiding, activist-minded queer who works in music and doesn’t eat meat.

Though I haven’t been as dedicated a follower as I should have been, the past 15 or so years have seen the release of several more k.d. collections and collaborations, including her 2016 project with Neko Case and Laura Veirs, aptly monikered case/lang/veirs. When their tour brought them to Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on August 6, 2016 — the Mother Church of country music and long-time home of the Grand Ole Opry — k.d. greeted the crowd with a big ol’ Minnie Pearl-style “HOOOOOW-DYYYY!” before reminiscing about how she’d been kicked out of the Ryman on several occasions. Both Case and Veirs seemed to understand the gravitas of k.d.’s triumphant return, and everyone else in the room understood it, too, by the end of her rafter-raising cover of Neil Young’s “Helpless.”

As soon as I heard the song’s opening plunks, I let out a big ol’ “WHOOP!!!” and moved to the edge of my front-row balcony seat, just as I’d done 24 years (minus one day) earlier. And I hung on every note, remembering all that she has meant to me over the passing decades. Quite simply, k.d. lang is one of the greatest singers of any generation, with flawless pitch and fearless control. She is also one of the greatest influences on my life, with flawless talent and fearless style.

MIXTAPE: Kelly Jones and Teddy Thompson’s Favorite Duets

Hey everybody! Teddy and I had ball writing and recording our album of duets, Little Windows. While preparing for the sessions, we couldn’t help but reflect on our favorite duets from our contemporaries and heroes/heroines of the past. Here is a list of tracks that stand out to both of us as examples of how irresistible the male-female collaboration can be. Enjoy!

xo Kelly and Teddy

KELLY’S PICKS

Meryl Haggard & Bonnie Owens — “Just Between the Two of Us”
I love how so many classic country songs will take a cliché or a well-worn phrase and turn it on its ear. This song does that so well. It also addresses a very real phase while falling out of love — the dreaded malaise of indifference. What an appropriate theme for both a man and woman to sing together.

Buckingham Nicks — “Frozen Love”
This is the one and only song co-written by both Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on their self-titled duo album from 1973. The entire album is GREAT. It’s filled to the brim with sweet melodic nuggets in both the vocals and the guitars, but this song, in particular, showcases both to great effect.

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell — “Keep on Lovin’ Me Honey”
This song from 1968 is an example of some of the finest singing, arranging, and playing in the history of American music. Marvin and Tammi trade lines, harmonize, and sing in unison alongside the accompaniment of expert musicians performing excellent arrangements. My heart skips a beat every time the bridge comes around and Marvin exclaims, “Oh Tammi!” … It’s the little things, I guess.

The Mastersons — “If I Wanted To”
Even if these guys weren’t my friends, I’d still dig their music. This song is so infectious, it always fills me with pure joy as I drive down the highway, windows down, speakers blaring … It’s a great song to add to your “Wow, I’m falling in love with someone” playlist.

John Travolta & Olivia Newton John — “You’re the One That I Want”
"Oo, Oo, Oo, honey!" Watching the movie Grease was the first time I heard and saw the power of the boy-girl duet. John was so cute in his blue jeans and black leather, and Olivia could not be stopped in those spandex. After June 1978, every good girl would try to go bad singing along to this one — me included.

Buddy & Julie Miller — “Keep Your Distance”
Americana at its finest. Buddy and Julie are the king and queen of this kind of Texas country-rock, as far as I’m concerned. Their voices are a match made in music heaven; Buddy’s guitar playing is some of the best you’ll hear; and this song (coincidentally written by Teddy’s dad, Richard Thompson) is fantastic songwriting — clever, coherent, and emotionally accessible.

TEDDY’S PICKS

Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty — "After the Fire Is Gone"
A great contrast in styles here that works a charm. Loretta is so keening and righteous, and Conway is the most laid-back dude in the world. I like to imagine him sitting on the edge of a stool singing this, possibly eating a ham sandwich between lines. Why is no one named Conway anymore? Such a great name.

Allison Krauss and Robert Plant — "Gone Gone Gone"
A modern take on an Everly’s classic. It’s a vocal pairing that shouldn’t work, really, isn’t it? Somehow they glue together gloriously, though. I think a great deal of the credit for this track goes to producer T Bone Burnett. Whatever he did in the studio to get these sounds, especially the vocal sounds, justifies his place as one of the great modern-day producers.

Richard and Linda Thompson — "A Heart Needs a Home"
Mum and dad killing it on a song that breaks the hearts of all who hear it. It is a tremendous song, and they are at their peak here as a duo. It’s something of an anomaly for them, too, as it’s a positive sentiment. Shock horror!

George Jones and Tammy Wynette — "Someone I Used to Know"
One of my all-time favorite songs and one that Kelly and I sang together early on in our relationship. A top-notch, classic country song. Reminds me a bit of "She Thinks I Still Care." I love that conceit, "Oh her/him? I barely remember them. They mean nothing to me." Ha!

Linda Rondstadt and Aaron Neville — "Don’t Know Much"
You’ll have to excuse the guitar solo — it was the '80s. Linda is a monster of a singer. It’s a great loss that she can no longer do it due to a Parkinson's diagnosis. But she left us with hundreds of great records. This is another case of two very different voices combining to make something extraordinary. Linda is such a strong singer and very straight whereas Aaron Neville is the king of the soft and melismatic. Heavenly stuff.

Roy Orbison and k.d. lang — "Crying"
This was the first version of "Crying" I ever heard. It was quite a hit when it came out in the late '80s. It was on Top of The Pops in the UK! Roy was the greatest. Top five singers of all time for me, and there aren’t many that can hang with him, but k.d. holds her own and then some.


Photo credit: Sean James

The Producers: Tucker Martine

Tucker Martine had to move as far away from Nashville as he could before he could have a career in music. Just out of high school, he headed to college in Colorado, then kept heading west until he reached water. He settled in Seattle in the ‘90s, when that city was a center for American alternative music. Then he moved down the road to Portland, Oregon, just as that city was becoming a hub for indie rock.

In the 21st, Martine has become a central figure in Portland’s bustling roots music scene, producing national hits by almost every major local artist. He has added a spacy shimmer to almost every album by singer/songwriter Laura Veirs (who happens to be his wife) and, when the Decemberists graduated from a regional indie label to a Capitol Records, they hired Martine to conjure detailed backdrops for their diorama-songs about Russian shapeshifters and Irish gangsters.

Martine anchors the West Coast roots scene so strongly that even non-locals head west to work with him. Abigail Washburn hired him to combine Asian and American folk traditions with indie-rock techniques on her 2011 breakthrough, City of Refuge. More recently, he produced The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket’s darkest and most daring album in years.

While Martine does not thrust any particular aesthetic onto his projects, he has developed a distinctive ambience: a clarity of sound that is both ethereal and earthy, elaborate and direct, engaging but somehow mysterious, as though he’s reluctant for any album to spill all of its secrets on your first listen. Emphasizing the distinct tones of each instrument in the mix, he helps to convey a rich intimacy, as though even an acoustic set can sound like a headphones album. One of his latest projects is also one of the most highly anticipated albums of 2016: a new collaborative record by Neko Case, Laura Veirs, and k.d. lang — out in June on Anti- Records.

At what part of the process did you come in on the case/lang/veirs record?

Shortly after k.d. had sent an email to Neko and Laura asking if they’d be interested in starting a group together — which I think mostly meant making a record together, perhaps doing a tour for the record. I don’t think it’s a band that is going to be a long-term project. k.d. sent an email to them, and Laura and Neko quickly responded with an enthusiastic "Yes," and then they had a little back-and-forth between themselves. Maybe a week later, they cc’d me on the email thread and asked if I’d be up for working on it with them which, of course, I was honored and excited to be roped in, so I said yes.

I think it made a lot of sense — I mean, hopefully, musically it made perfect sense. I had worked with Neko on her last record and, of course, I’ve worked on a lot of records with Laura. I was getting to know k.d. a little bit because she’s a Portland resident now, and she’d done a couple of things at my studio. That brought one common element into a project that maybe, at least on the surface, didn’t appear to have a lot of common elements to start with. I think the process of making that record was about discovering where the common ground was between all of them. And that was really so much of the excitement of that record — and the challenge of it, too.

So figuring out how those pieces fit together becomes part of that process.

I don’t think any of us wanted to make a record that sounded like four tracks that could have been on the next Neko Case record and four songs from the next k.d. lang record, four songs from the Laura Veirs record. They wanted to figure out where all their sensibilities converged and how they could challenge each other to find interesting places outside of their comfort zones. And there was plenty of that, because they’re all used to being the leader, the person who ultimately calls the shots. But this was a bit of a democracy, and the whole dynamic of the group was being discovered while we were in the middle of making the record. It wasn’t like they had discovered some common chemistry beforehand and then thought, "Well, this means we should make a record." I think everybody knew it felt kind of risky. None of us were talking to people about it beforehand, because we were reserving the possibility that maybe it just didn’t quite work. But it did, and it was apparent on the first day that it was going to work. Everyone was pretty thrilled with how it was sounding right out of the gate.

What does your role, then, become for artists who are still finding out how they relate to each other?

There are so many facets of it. Making them all feel comfortable, for one. Assuring each person that their point of view isn’t going to get steamrolled in this mostly democratic process. I’m always looking to find the strength and the uniqueness of the artist, so I’m constantly having conversations with them about what they’re excited about, and checking in with them all the time to make sure they feel like they are being represented. And I would sometimes have to challenge people to maybe not rush to judgment but let it play out a little longer, and listen to the result rather than not try something because the suggestion sounded like a direction they wouldn’t normally take.

I think that’s something that I knew, but never but a fine point on it — that you’re not just overseeing things in the studio; you’re negotiating aspects of the art and trying to usher this person into making the best thing they can or the strongest thing they can.

Absolutely. All three of these ladies have such different working processes. And I had a little insight into what those processes were, in some cases more than their other collaborators did, because I’d spent many weeks in the studio with Neko and made records for years with Laura. I had only done demos with k.d., and she had sung on one of Laura’s records. So it was really just a matter of trying to honor a bit of each of their processes while reminding all of us that this is a new experience and it’s not going to feel like the process of making one of their solo records.

And that was what was exciting about it. Sometimes, when I thought maybe they were reverting to something too safe, I just tried to remind all of us that the exciting part of a collaboration like this is that it pushes us into some places that we wouldn’t normally go. I think most or all artists ultimately do want to get into some territory that feels new to them, so they feel like they’re moving forward and progressing. And I can only guess that k.d. chose Laura and Neko as collaborators because of how different they are from her, yet she still had a lot of admiration for them and their music and, I think, was looking to shake up her own music-making process. And by accepting that invitation, I think Laura and Neko acknowledged that the same thing was true for them.

It does seem like two generations of artists going back and forth.

I think I can speak for myself and Laura and Neko in saying that we’ve all been fans of k.d. for so long, but you have to remind yourself for a minute that, even though she’s this larger-than-life musical figure in our minds, she’s looking for a three-way collaboration between them. They all really got in there and had to fight for some of their ideas — in a healthy way. At the end of the day, each person got a final say in the songs that they were singing lead vocals on.

I had a moment when it was being planned when I wondered what I had to bring to a project for someone like k.d. lang, but she made it really clear that she wanted me to feel comfortable speaking up. I assured them, in the beginning, that I knew it was going to be a challenging record to make, but we weren’t going to call the record done until everybody was happy with it. It gets emotional, at times. It’s tricky to be giving people confidence while at the same time sometimes you’re asking them to be open to trying something new or to just trying to get a better take of it.

You mentioned that k.d. had recently moved to Portland, and I wanted to ask about that. There is certainly a strong roots scene there, and even though you’re from Nashville originally, I feel that you’re at the center of it … or at the very least a prominent figure there.

To me, the Portland community feels like the more immediate version of the larger music community. And a lot of the artists that I’ve been working with the last few years are not from here. Sometimes it’s artists from out of town, but there will be people from Portland who play on the record, or the artist is from Portland and we bring in some people from out of town to play on the record. There is just a ton going on in Portland, and there are some insular scenes — like the old-time music scene, the singer/songwriter scene, the indie rock scene, and all that — but also a lot of those people just overlap and play with each other.

I left Nashville the morning after my high school graduation because, as much as I loved growing up there, I just felt like there was a narrow-mindedness about music and what it could be — all the different ways it could be presented and written and explored. So it was healthy for me to leave at that time. Since then, of course, it’s transformed into something completely different, with all the transplants and musicians of every variety there. I think most of the Nashville scene is, and has always been, transplants. It’s just that they transplanted themselves there to do a specific type of music, where I think a place like Portland draws people — including myself — more for the environment and the lifestyle, and then that informs the music that comes out of it.

I hadn’t thought of Nashville that way. It’s like Portland — a city full of transplants.

Nashville’s a place where people go to make it. For the most part, Portland’s a place where people moved because it was inexpensive and it’s just a great place to live. You can bike or walk anywhere, and it’s gorgeous. You have access to the ocean and the mountains and the rivers. There aren’t a lot of labels and managers and industry stuff here. A lot of times the best music scenes just kind of come out of somewhere that’s affordable for young people to live. And, until recently, that’s been true of Portland.

It also seems like a place where more established musicians end up, like k.d. lang or Peter Buck or Patterson Hood.

If you’re in a position where you feel like you can be based anywhere and still do your work, then you just start looking at where you want to live regardless of what kind of infrastructure that place might have for your chosen field of work. It doesn’t make any sense that I moved away from Nashville and moved to Seattle and started producing records. I mean, to me it makes perfect sense, but people are always asking me why in the world I left Nashville, which is one of the premiere cities in the world for recording studios. But it just felt like a trap to me, at the time. I felt like, if I stayed, my growth would be radically stunted. I think it was the right move. I’ve always thought I might move back someday, because it’s still home to me. I couldn’t be more fond of it, even if it was necessary at that time in my life to be elsewhere and find my own identity outside of the familiar and comfortable.

And it does seem like you’ve developed a signature palette that I don’t hear in Nashville.

My sensibilities don’t seem to overlap a lot with what Nashville’s known for, although I certainly have loved some of the music that’s come out of Nashville. I’m not a fan of overly glossy productions, and certainly Nashville is known for that. But there are countless examples of records that have come out of there that weren’t that way. You had guys like Jack Clement making really interesting, soulful country records, and now you’ve got guys like Dave Cobb, who’s crushing everything he touches. It’s cool to see Nashville having a resurgence, but I feel like I’ve really found the right spot for myself.

But people don’t usually come to me because they’re chasing the latest, hottest sounds or because I have the latest chart toppers. Maybe there’s just some quality in the way the music is translated and presented that speaks to them. To me, my approach is different for every record and every artist; but for somebody less close to it than me, I guess you can hear some continuity — or, as you put it, a sound. And it’s convenient that people like Portland. Someone might be interested in working with me and, when they find out I’m in Portland, they usually get excited about the idea of coming here for a little while.

You mentioned that you approach every project differently, but are there elements that are common from one project to the other …

I really like to be surprised, so I always try to leave some room in the process for some things to happen that surprise all of us. Those often end up being favorite parts of records. I feel like, the longer I’ve done this, the less satisfying it is to just put up some mics and make everything sound perfectly nice, make sure that nothing sticks out, and there’s nothing that could possibly offend anyone. If it came to that, I feel like it would just be time to hang it up. I want to be moved by what’s coming out of the speakers, whatever that means. Sometimes, that means just blowing things up and making it sound ratty and raw. Other times, it means muting everything except for the vocal and the harpsichord.

At the outset, it’s just dictated by whatever the material suggests to me. I try not to take on a project where the songs don’t suggest a lot to me about how they could be presented. You want to leave plenty of room for it to end up going a different direction if something presents itself that is maybe even more interesting than what I imagined. And no record ever ends up sounding like whatever I thought it was going to sound like at the outset. Still, I think it’s important to have some kind of vision as a launching point, or else you’re all just sitting there looking at each other like, “I don’t know — what do you want to do?” Nothing gets done, or what gets done is just lifeless.

Are there any examples that come to mind?

Oh man, it could be anything! You might have an idea of a nice drumbeat for a track, and then you get everything set up and the drummer starts playing some angular, syncopated thing where you can’t even find the one. At that point, you can either say, “No, man, this is like a straight-ahead kind of thing.” Or you could say, “Let’s check this out. And let’s see how the rest of the band responds to that idea.” More often than not, those things end up sticking and being some of my favorite parts.

The song “Down I-5” from the case/lang/veirs record is a good example. The demo was okay, but I think we all knew it needed something — some joie de vivre — and we all had our own vague ideas of what that might be. I had spoken to Glenn Kotche, who was playing drums on that record, and I just told him that it really needed a unique perspective and that the reason he was there to begin with — why Glenn was chosen to be the drummer for that record — was because his default mode is unpredictable. I told him that this was a perfect scenario for him to lean on his instincts. I didn’t want him to try to guess what the singers are expecting to hear, and he just pulled out that wild beat. There was a look of confusion on the faces of the people in the room, but within a minute it had transformed to elation.

So that’s what I mean by surprises. It’s easy to tell people something that’s safe and predictable, and then you can just get it done and check it off the list. But that’s not why I do this. And that’s not why I think most of the people who call me are doing this. I just try to keep myself and the artists honest.

When you were talking about that, one album that came to mind is City of Refuge by Abigail Washburn. Every song seems to have that sense of discovery to it, some new idea to get across.

For that record, we approached every song from scratch. That wasn’t a record where we had a band for five days, pick a song, knock it out, and go to the next one. We would just start with a song, and sometimes the song wasn’t even finished being written, so we would just start with the one thing we knew it needed. Maybe that was Abigail and her banjo. Maybe it was something else. By the time that we tracked that, it suggested the next layer. We really weren’t too concerned with it all sounding like it happened in a short time span with the exact same people set up the same way.

In fact, one thing Abby and I found out was that we both love old Alan Lomax recordings and Folkways stuff, where there might be talking before a song. We approached “Bright Morning Stars” like a field recording. We just went into a church and told a bunch of people to meet us there. Abby showed them the songs, and they’re of course all playing into one mic, which means you can’t fix anything. Other songs, we meticulously put together. We hoped that if we committed to giving each song its own singular treatment, then the variety of production sensibilities would actually be a strength rather than a weakness.

Very often, you start in on the process, and things are pretty ambiguous. You don’t really know what the identity of the record is yet. But gradually, over time, it starts to show you. In that case, once we had enough songs, I started tinkering with the sequence, and once the sequence started making sense, the whole record started making sense. That helps you figure out what the songs do and don’t need, or which songs might transition well into the others, at which point you might add some extra layers to bleed over into each song. That’s the fun of it. You just take the next step and then it shines the light on where to go after that.

It seems like that might be pronounced when you’re working with an artist for the first time, but how do you keep it fresh for somebody like Laura Veirs or the Decemberists, with whom you’ve produced several albums over the years?

It’s unspoken with each artist that you don’t ever want to make the same record twice, even if you loved the last record you made together. With the Decemberists, when it really felt like we needed to shake things up, we went to a barn and just set up some gear out there. That can have a profound effect on the process in a lot of ways, technically and emotionally, for people. The one thing all the best records that I’ve worked on have in common is that we went into them wanting to do something we’d never done before. You do have to be conscious of that, but it’s a very natural thing to make sure that you’re not just rehashing old territory. We always have a dialogue early on about how to approach it in a way that’s unique compared to what we’ve done in the past.

And that starts with the songwriting. I try to be honest with the artists upfront, if I feel like we don’t have the material to make something that’s up to the standard of what we’ve made in the past, or if it just feels like rehashed versions of something we’ve already done. Often, when I hear demos, six of them sound like the bulk of a really strong record, and four or five seem like maybe they don’t fit in. But I do think when the artist really goes to bat for a song that I’m not feeling, it’s important to record it and try it out. About half the time, just on the strengths of their convictions for it, we find a way to get something we all feel is special. So there is a theme here: It’s important to have a vision, it’s important to have convictions for your ideas, but the second you stop being open to other ideas is the moment you stop being a good collaborator. And, for me, producing records is a collaboration.

There is an adrenaline rush when you start a record. It’s like you jump off a cliff into a river. You’re pretty sure everything’s gonna be fine, but you still get a rush the moment you jump, because you don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. At the start of every record, I’m always a little bit scared, but I’ve learned over the years that that’s a good thing. It always ends up working out, and it never turns into a disaster — no one ever dies, or makes a record that they regret or are embarrassed about. So it’s just that kind of excitement of not having any idea what’s going to happen.


Photo credit: J Quigley