Tag: larry campbell

Buddy & Julie Miller, ‘In the Throes’ of a Joyful Creative and Life Partnership

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Deep in the throes of their multi-decade romantic and creative partnership, Buddy & Julie Miller continue to open their world to listeners with their fourth studio album, In the Throes. Entirely cooked within the walls of their home from song ideation to production, we get to hear their joyful admiration for each other alongside the frustrations of living, loving, and making music as a pair. There is still a youthful exuberance in the simplicity of the rhymes and meter that manages to capture subtle and profound aspects of life.

BGS caught up with the couple via phone at their home in Nashville to hear about the new album and their storied lives as co-creators.

What is the process of working together leading into production? How do you know when you have a Buddy & Julie Miller record?

Buddy Miller: Well, There have been records where we went into it thinking, let’s make a record. This one, we didn’t. We backed into it accidentally. We were wanting to do a gospel record with our friend Victoria Williams and our two friends Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams. Julie had written all these songs and then COVID hit. Victoria has M.S., and she lives in Joshua Tree. We realized, this isn’t worth killing Victoria for this record. We kind of put a hold on that and we had that song on the record called “We’re Leaving,” and it just kept going over and over in my head, and I loved it. Julie was just writing a ton of songs. I wanted to pilfer that song and use it as a cornerstone for this record. That’s the genesis of it.

Julie, I hear that these songs came from a profoundly creative writing time for you. What does your life look like when you are in the midst of a prolific creative output time?

Julie Miller: I don’t focus on it. It is more like, I’ll be going to the bathroom or walking to the kitchen or something, and I’m just humming something and it just kind of rumbles up in me. It comes out and my brain just says, “Oh, we are doing a record now, let’s think!” It turns on and starts thinking of subject matter. It is a real accidental sort of situation. I’m sure it is more purposeful than I realize. I am kind of closed off once it is hitting. I don’t talk to a lot of people for a while once I’m writing except for Buddy. I’ll get some musical thing in my mind and I can tell him how it goes, and he can play all the notes. He’s like my right-hand man.

Do you have a language that is only your own?

JM: Not exactly, not like that, but we understand each other. I understand him anyway. [Laughs]

Has that evolved a lot over time, how you communicate musically?

JM: Yeah, I’m more intuitive overall than he is. He is just really incredible. And I kind of prompt him on something I’m thinking, and he carries it away. I couldn’t imagine trying to work with anybody else. I just wouldn’t want to do it. He’s my team. We are really locked together on it.

In terms of the songs about relationships on this record, how autobiographical are they? You can feel the reverence and the frustration of being in a creative relationship.

BM: I was kind of a jerk to be in a band with, I think. I probably took things for granted. I would be insensitive enough on stage. I messed up our thing. She stopped playing. And then I took every gig that would come along, which was a lot. I didn’t expect it. At the time, I was playing with Emmylou, but then I got a lot of other production and tour offers. I left Julie at home for years. And that made her relationship with music and me something that needed to be repaired. So we started repairing it with the record before this.

And we spent a lot of time hanging out together and enjoying making the music together. By the time we were working on this, she was on a roll writing songs, and I just loved capturing them.

That’s really inspiring. Let’s be honest, when people hit walls in relationships or creatively, sometimes they quit. But pushing through it and finding healing through music, it’s awesome.

BM: Yes, and it happened through the music and spending time together. And me not taking any more outside work.

You can feel that. How autobiographical is this record?

JM: Well I guess every record is somewhat biographical. But there are certain songs that are pretty autobiographical, just emotions that I’ve been through that I turn into a song. I mean, “You’re My Thrill,” I was feeling it. I was feeling it about Buddy. And “In the Throes,” too. But “Don’t Make Her Cry,” now that was Bob Dylan. I can’t take credit for that line.

That’s a fun co-write!

JM: Oh yeah! I didn’t think I’d live that long. He and Regina [McCrary] are friends and they had this half a song sitting and he said, “Give it to Buddy.” And Buddy didn’t know what to do with it. But I knew what to do with it! I knew just what to do. I’m amazed now, when I look back, that I had the gall to do it. I had no fear or hesitation at all, just like it was anybody else. When I think about it now, I think, “What was I thinking!?”

This album feels like it was cut live, like I’m in the room with you when I’m listening. It seems rare these days that producers let the whole room into the record. I was wondering if you could talk about where you cut it and what the process was like for this one?

BM: The process was a little different, but we’ve made all our records at home. Back in our teeny weeny apartment in LA, Julie had a deal early on where they didn’t quite get the music and it wasn’t a good fit, but the person who signed her took her in the studio and quickly realized that they liked our home demos better. But we just had a little porta-studio. He gave what was left in the budget to buy a tape machine and a couple of mic pre-[amps] so we could do it ourselves. It was very kind of him, and it started us on our way of working together. We started on a four-track cassette, and then we graduated to a little reel-to-reel that had eight-tracks. But we have always made our records at home. Julie has always been super involved in every aspect, just the two of us.

Julie, what is recording like for you? Do you like the process?

JM: I do with Buddy. I don’t without Buddy. With Buddy I can yell. We have a studio downstairs, and we have one directly upstairs. There are pocket doors that open into the studio upstairs and so I sit on the bed and he sits in the actual producer’s chair with all the instruments around and we just play. I’ll have an idea to have him play and then he’ll play something and I’ll go, “Wait! Listen to that! Play that again!” We just play off of each other a lot. He lets me have as much leeway on the songs as I want, but then where I leave off, he is more than there to take it up. He blows my mind. I just can’t believe how fortunate I am to have someone like that to work with. But it is a joy. I don’t really like recording singing that much. It is tedious. It used to be easier. It is harder singing now.

Can I ask you what is harder about it?

JM: Well, I just don’t do it as much. I have this condition called fibromyalgia. It is a pain condition that affects your muscles. It goes into my jaw and under my tongue, and if I use it very much, it gets stiff and paralyzed. It is a good thing we do it at home. I have this concoction made out of tomato soup and hot sauce. Emmylou would have lemon and Altoids, and I have hot sauce and tomatoes.

Well, for what it is worth, one of the notes I made about this record was how exuberant and youthful your voice sounds.

JM: Thank you! I’ll chalk it up to immaturity.

Photo Credit: Jeff Fasano

At the Opry, Photographer Mark Seliger Takes Rusty Truck for Another Ride

Posted on by Editor

Mark Seliger has been to the Grand Ole Opry before, as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone, but this time he’s in Nashville to support the release of his country band’s self-titled album, Rusty Truck. To an empty house during soundcheck, he’s leading Rusty Truck through “Find My Way Back Home,” one of the three songs he’ll sing later that night with good friend Sheryl Crow. Meanwhile, an Opry camera crew is following him around — an ironic role reversal, considering that Seliger stands as one of the most recognizable and accomplished photographers of the last few decades, with numerous books to his name.

Within a few weeks time, he’ll shoot the Vanity Fair Oscars Party for the 10th year in a row, but for now, he’s comfortably backstage at the Opry, talking to BGS about his love for country music, the preparation that goes into photo shoots, and the turning point that led him to songwriting and eventually releasing three albums. Seliger recorded his latest project in guitarist-producer Larry Campbell’s home studio in Rhinebeck, New York.

“You’ve got to go out there and keep on reinventing yourself. You’ve got to keep on being curious, and keep your eyes open, soak up the information and be a part of the life,” he says. “I never really thought that I would make three records, right? I thought I was good with making books. But there’s something about how much better I feel when I’m making music in terms of my photography. And they work really nicely together. They complement each other. And when you go out and sing on top of that, at the Opry, I mean, come on! That’s the coolest.”

 

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BGS: What was that experience like for you to walk out there on the Opry stage?

Seliger: Frightening! Absolutely frightening. But what’s really remarkable is the musicianship. We usually are in rehearsals for days to try to get anything near that. And to just be able to hear the song all of a sudden come together within three notes has been incredible. And the room sounds incredible.

I’m curious, what do you consider to be the golden era of country music?

Oh, that’s easy. I mean, I was pretty unfamiliar with country music when I was growing up. I grew up in Houston. And when I went to college in a small state school in Texas — East Texas State University in Commerce — probably around two months into being there, my RA loaned me his Hornet to drive to Dallas to go visit an old girlfriend. And he had the Stardust 8-track in his car. I knew the songs that were really big at that time, but I didn’t know the album. I played that and it was just like the lonesome, the phrasing, the voice… I just connected with that.

Then I started digging deep into Hank Williams. I started digging into Loretta Lynn, and into Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and that whole world. It all started to make sense to me. I fell in love with the double entendres and the stories behind the songs and how there are these twists and turns. That’s what really became evident to me — that songwriting to me was the hero. It gave me a chance to take all the visual information that I had gathered in the years as a photographer, kind of pull from it, and use that in order to be able to tell stories.

When you said you were digging into these artists, how did you do that?

I would make mixtapes so I could hear different artists together, which was really interesting to hear collections of singers coming together. And then, one of the turning points for me was I had heard a Gillian Welch recording kind of in the early days. I started to follow Gillian and Dave, and around 2000, I had met somebody that was involved in their team. And I said, “You know, I’m not asking to be hired for money. I want to just work with him if I have an opportunity.” They put it out there and I met them. I ended up doing a long film for them. I also did the photography for Revelator. So, Gillian, Dave and I really connected the dots.

At that time, I was working on our first record, not knowing it was actually going to be a full album. I had asked people that I had worked with in the photography world, not to sing on it, but just to produce it. And so, after I became pretty close to Dave and Gil, I said, “Hey, I’m working on this record. I know it’s kind of crazy. It’s certainly not my field, but it’s my art form.” And I said, “Would you be interested in producing a song or two?” And they were like, “Sure. We’ll just spend a day doing it.” They booked studio musicians and they did an incredible job producing the two songs. One was called “Civil Wars” and the other one was called “Tangle In the Fence.”

How old were you when you started writing songs?

I turned 40. I was a very late bloomer. I was breaking up with Rolling Stone as their chief photographer. And I had a lull. I was also in kind of a good state to be able to write. I was probably a little bit down in the dumps about moving on. I wasn’t sure about the next move in my career and I found a lot of support in writing. The first record, I had the luxury of being able to take my time, but once I started going, I started to write pretty quickly. But, you know, writing takes me a lot of time. I have to actually sit quietly, take a phrase, start to work it through, figure out what I’m doing on the guitar. I have no idea if it’s gonna stay that way or if it’s gonna move in a different direction. Sometimes I write acapella. It’ll just be me on a tape recorder, humming it through. Probably three or four songs I played for Larry were just straight vocals, before we figured out what the what the instrumentation was going to be.

When you started as a songwriter, how did you get feedback? Did you play your songs for people?

I went to open mics. I started to go out in ’97 or ’98. I remember the first time I went out and sang in public, a buddy of mine who was teaching me guitar introduced me to a band that was playing at the Rodeo Bar in New York. And I sang “Big City” by Merle Haggard. And I got OK accolades. (laughs) I was OK with that! Then I would go out and already have half a song that I could kind of fudge to be a whole song, even though it wasn’t. I would just repeat the same verse. But what I found was a camaraderie and a friendship in musicians that was very dissimilar from the relationships I had in photography. It’s a family and I loved that. The more I played, the more I found that that’s where I wanted to spend my time off. In music. I never really wanted to make it a career, right? I like what I do. So I labeled it like, photography is my wife and music is my mistress.

When did you get interested in guitar?

I took piano lessons when I was a kid. And I continued to play piano all through junior high school and a little bit in high school. And I traded in my Vox mini organ for an Alvarez guitar, which is now signed by pretty much anybody I’ve ever worked with. It was really about learning guitar, fingerpicking, everything from Eagles songs to Cat Stevens. You know, the usual suspects of early guitar playing. I wasn’t a huge Americana fan when I started in that world, but my older brothers turned me on to different phases of Dylan. They turned me on to the Band. They turned me on to things that were heading that direction. But it wasn’t until I started to write songs that I found my voice. I’m not really a guitar player. I accompany myself on guitar in order to sing my songs. My instrument is really my voice, and that’s the thing that I’ve been working on over the years — to be able to learn how to sing properly and to develop a style to where it really feels like what I consider to be Rusty Truck.

 

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When I was listening to this record, I heard the fiddle and banjo on “Ain’t Over Me.” Do you like bluegrass? Do you have any bluegrass influences?

Oh yeah! I think the Blue Sky Boys and a lot of the Louvin Brothers and a lot of the earlier stuff. You know, I actually got to meet Charlie Louvin and photograph him. That was pretty rad. I got to meet Bill Monroe and work with him. You can’t deny the foundation of how bluegrass has influenced everything.

How did you encounter Bill Monroe? What was your assignment?

My assignment in the early to mid ‘90s was to do a country portfolio for Rolling Stone. My buddy who was the creative director, Fred Woodward, pushed Jann Wenner to doing a country portfolio. We pulled together some pretty fantastic people. It was Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright. It was Bill Monroe. Earl Scruggs. Waylon. Willie. George. Tammy. Johnny. Merle. Buck Owens. I almost got to photograph Hank Snow, but he was reluctant. When I tried to kind of push my way into that, he refused us.

But we did come to the Opry. That was my first entrée into the Opry. We went backstage and we set up a little background. Mr. Monroe came out and he had a traditional, kind of tilted hat, a short Stetson, and he was wearing a big Jesus button on his suit. And then he said, “How’re you doing? I’m Bill Monroe.” I shook his hand and he CRUSHED my hand. I literally saw bruises for days.

That was actually a good indicator because then I saw him with his mandolin with a little cord wrapped around his neck. That was his strap, like a piece of rope, which was pretty awesome. And I sat here and I listened to him play and that was the picture where his hands were on his mandolin.

As in journalism, I would imagine you’d spend a lot of time on researching your subject. Tell me a little bit about what your preparation is for a photo shoot.

You want to fall in love with them, right? Regardless of whether you really love whatever they do, you have to take in everything you can to understand why they do what they do. A lot of it is research on the front end where we write down everything about them. I start to plan ideas. It could be something very reductive. It could be something very conceptual. But it is a process of collecting as much information as possible.

And trying to make them comfortable?

Oh, yeah. You have to invite them into an environment where they’re comfortable and then you have to observe them. And the observation is really from more of a conversation like we’re doing, right? I’m sure you can probably write 10 things about me that I just did that you thought were quirky and weird. I think when you’re working with people, just through conversation, you start to understand a lot about who they are. And the more you’re familiar with them, the better conversation you can have. We’re all journalists in that sense. It’s just a visual journal rather than a written word. We’re telling their story through our idea.

Photo Credit (Top of Story): Robby Klein. Photo of Bill Monroe’s hands courtesy of Mark Seliger.

How Bettye LaVette Finally Learned to Let The Songs Sound Like Her (Part 1 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

When Bettye LaVette covered “Your Time to Cry” nearly fifty years ago, she wrung every ounce of hurt and drama from the lyrics, but especially on the chorus. She stretches out the word “time” until it breaks into two syllables, implying a similar emotional break that doesn’t undercut the song’s determination, but shows what cost she has paid for it. It’s a riveting performance, a raw, southern soul slow burner that should have established her as one of the finest R&B voices of the 1970s.

During those same sessions, she also covered Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” and John Prine’s “Souvenirs,” among other tunes, yet for reasons that were never made clear, Atlantic Records shelved the project, declining to promote “Your Time to Cry” as a single or to release her debut album. That has been a defining moment in LaVette’s long career — and one she subtly and slyly addresses on her new album, Blackbirds. She is the woman wronged, the embodiment of the music industry’s disregard for talent, especially that of Black women. For three decades LaVette continued to work, developing and strengthening her voice and expanding her repertoire. She explains, “When people say I had a resurgence, I want to say, ‘No, I never stopped. You just didn’t come to where I was!’”

Now, nearly fifty years after recording “Your Time to Cry” in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, she has become one of the finest and most accomplished singers in R&B or any other genre for that matter, with a string of albums that showcase her stylistic range as well as her deep understanding of pop history. After releasing a comeback record on the tiny Blues Express label in 2003, she caught the ear of Andy Kaulkin at Anti- Records, who signed her as a new artist at the height of the soul revival of the 2000s.

Since then, she’s covered The Who for the Kennedy Centers Honors ceremony (famously bringing Pete Townshend to tears), recorded with Drive-By Truckers (back in the Shoals, for an album appropriately titled The Scene of the Crime), and reimagined Dylan tunes so thoroughly even his own bandleader didn’t recognize them. And those original Shoals sessions did finally get an official release, first in 2000 on a small Dutch label and again in 2018 from vinyl specialists Run Out Groove.

Blackbirds is among her most powerful albums: a collection of songs by female artists active from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, including Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone, whom LaVette refers to collectively as “the bridge I came across on.” It’s an album that celebrates these artists, but also emphasizes their shared experiences as Black women in the music industry. “Every broken promise broke my heart,” she sings on “Book of Lies,” a song made famous by Ruth Brown. Her voice is lower than it was in 1972, but no less expressive, and she makes that sentiment more than just romantic; it’s also a professional lament, addressed to the industry that derailed her career so long ago.

We spoke with LaVette about Blackbirds in our second half of the interview; here, she tells BGS about her early hopes and disappointments.

BGS: What was your impression when you were down in Muscle Shoals? Had you been there before you recorded?

LaVette: No! What would I be doing there?! What would you go there for, if you weren’t going to record? They had to win me over. I’d wanted to record in New York and Chicago. I always wanted to be very bougie. But after I had accepted how different my voice was — how un-girly-like it was — I identified more with Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. After I was down there for a day, I was absolutely as happy as I could be. They were absolutely wonderful — and wonderful to me. When I got back to Detroit, I could not stop talking about them, especially with the way they wrote and read music.

Were you ever told why your ‘72 sessions were never released?

That has been one of the big mysteries in my career. I can think of that album and my dog Mickey, that I had when I was 11, and just burst into tears at any time. I had Brad Shapiro, who was Wilson Pickett’s producer. I had the Swampers, who I had wanted. I was at the label that I had loved. But when they told me they weren’t going to release the album, I got up under the dining room table and stayed three or four days. My friends brought me food and wine and joints. I’m telling you, I’m about to cry now. It was to be my first album, after having already had a string of singles. For years, all I had was “Your Turn to Cry.” Whenever people would come in with their latest whatever-it-is at my house or at a party, I always kept that song handy, maybe on a cassette. I’d say, “I made a record that was really, really good one time. Y’all wanna hear it?”

I just found out — when I say “just found out,” I meant in the last twenty years, maybe — that it was a split between Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. Jerry Wexler was on my side and Ahmet was on Aretha’s side. For the longest time I never knew what happened. I had no idea, and it sounded so stupid, for thirty years, to tell people, “I have no idea.” Many people had heard “Your Time to Cry,” and they said, “If that stuff is anything like this, I can’t understand.” When Atlantic put “Your Time to Cry” out, it was just out. They didn’t mention it to anyone. They just put it out. What you wanted at a label was to have one of everything, and maybe a junior one of everything, too. So they could see where that wouldn’t work with me and Aretha. I think Diana [Ross] is probably the reason I was never at Motown. Those personalities wouldn’t have worked.

Judging by reissues from those sessions, you had already worked up a pretty diverse repertoire.

My manager, Jim Lewis, who was the assistant to the president of the musicians’ union in Detroit and a trombone player with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, was a hard, hard taskmaster. When we started to work this management thing out, he said, “You’re cute. You’ve got a cute little waistline and a cute little butt, but you’re going to have to learn some songs, because there’s a possibility you may not be a big star.” That’s not a given, but you can be a singer for the rest of your life, if you will learn a lot of songs. He said, “You’re a different kind of singer, and you should learn that.”

How so?

I’ve accepted that I sound more like James Brown than Doris Day. But I used to think I had to sound the way Nancy Wilson sounds, which discouraged me from even wanting to learn how to sing. The thought that I could sing it and it didn’t have to sound beautiful didn’t even occur to me, until Jim came along. He told me, “Just let ‘em come out of your mouth. They’re gonna sound like you.” So I had to satisfy myself with the songs. I had to choose songs that I really like, and I would tell people, “Do you like the song or do you like the record? Because those are two different things.”

Jim made me learn a lot of songs. He insisted I learn “Lush Life,” which permitted me to be comfortable at the Carlyle Hotel for ten years. He insisted I learn “Sweet Georgia Brown” and “God Bless the Child,” which put me in the lead role in Bubbling Brown Sugar. He made me learn country and western. Otherwise, I would have been fighting with the local songwriters over them giving songs to Aretha and not giving them to me, you know? I was able to say, “Hey, I can go on and just be real good.” So I approach what I’m doing a little differently. I thought Jim was telling me to sing these songs like these people, but he just wanted me to sing them how they came out of my mouth. However they come out, sing them like that. Now that I’ve accepted that, I’m not so concerned about how it sounds, but how I feel about the song. That helps me present it. I’m very grateful to him.

That comes through on these sessions from 1972, where you’re covering Neil Young and John Prine and doing a song that Bowie was doing at the same time. There’s that range.

Well, it was after that that I did “What Condition My Condition Is In” by Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. And that got me another record contract. Kenny Rogers came to Detroit and Jim said, “Why don’t you take it and let him hear it?” I didn’t think he’d like it, but Jim said, “You don’t know how it’ll sound to him.” So I took it to him and Kenny loved it. His brother, Lelan Rogers, was just starting a record label called Silver Fox, and they flew me down to Nashville. I was with them for four or five years, but still no album. All these albums were set to come out and didn’t come out.

After finally breaking out in the 2000s, you established yourself as an interpreter of songs. What do you bring to a song? How do you make something familiar sound like you? Or is that even something you’re thinking about at this point?

That isn’t something that I plan or set out to do. When I hear the song and start to sing it, that’s just the way I sing it. The thing that makes it new is that it’s different. I doubt I could come up with anything new. But it is different, and so I need for people to change their attitude about it. That was one of the things with Interpretations, my British rock album. The thing that helped me the most recording that album was that I didn’t know most of the songs. I had never heard most of them. They didn’t play them a lot on Black radio. So all I did was just lift the lyrics and sing them the want I wanted to.

Michael Stevens was brilliant, and he did the arrangement of “Love, Reign O’er Me” by The Who that I did for the Kennedy Center Honors. When I went to rehearsal, they got ready to go into the tune, and I told him, “I can’t sing it like that.” And he said, “Well, sing it the way you want to sing it.” So I sang the song to him a cappella, and he took a break and after a while came back and redirected everybody. He’d been listening to this song for thirty years — since he was a teenager! — and I’d only been listening to it for three or four days.

Something similar happened on the Bob Dylan album, Things Have Changed. We had Bob Dylan’s guitarist, Larry Campbell, playing on it, and he had a ball. He said, “I’ve wanted to hear these a different way for seventeen years!” Because he knew about the inner workings of each one of the tunes, more than any of us, he started to find clever little things, probably, that he had always wanted to play, and he played them for me.

How was working with these songs on Blackbirds different?

Working on this album was intimidating, in that I didn’t want to bastardize any of the songs or cast them off. I didn’t want to do anything to them just for the sake of doing something, you know? That was kind of daunting. But that’s the thing that makes Steve [Jordan, producer] so important to me. When we develop an arrangement, what I usually do is I’ll get my keyboard player to go in the direction that I want to take the song.

When Steve hears me with the piano, singing it the way I want to sing it, that speaks to him to put something else in there. He no longer hears Billie Holiday’s interpretation of “Strange Fruit,” and he arranges what he hears in his head, not what the other record was. I’m not going to change any of the notes — I’m just going to put them in different places and say them differently, so you can’t follow that trajectory that you know from the record. It has to be different.

(Editor’s Note: Read part two of our interview with Bettye LaVette.)

Photo credit: Joseph A. Rosen

Throwing Out the Rulebook: A Conversation with Bettye LaVette

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There are singers, there are songwriters, and then there’s Bettye LaVette. She prides herself on being an interpreter, on using her voice to guide new melodies out of lyrics that have become a second skin to many listeners. But don’t you dare call her a covers artist. The septuagenarian’s new album, Things Have Changed — her first major label effort since 1982 — marks the first time LaVette has ever released an album focusing on one artist exclusively, and it just so happens to be Bob Dylan.

The idea sprang out of her 2008 Kennedy Center Honors performance in which she interpreted the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me” and effectively stunned Pete Townshend. She eventually translated that moment into her 2010 album, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. But Dylan is a different beast. LaVette shape-shifts his Nobel Prize-winning words into growling, bluesy affairs and soul-laced R&B, each track so unlike its origin that it’s a wonder they ever came from his mouth in the first place.

LaVette uses her voice to guide her interpretations in ways that defy the traditional notion of covering a song. “I got with my keyboard player, and he played it the way I sung it,” she explains about her process on Things Have Changed. With that basic foundation in place, she approached her producer, Steve Jordan, and Dylan’s long-time guitarist, Larry Campbell — who plays on the album — to work out the arrangements. “It was going a completely different way, and they had to go with it,” she says.

One of Dylan’s most iconic songs, “It Ain’t Me, Babe” (from 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan), sounds like a soul-infused ditty straight out of the Stax era, while LaVette picks up on the menacing quality running throughout “Ain’t Talking” (originally “Ain’t Talkin’ from 2006’s Modern Times), lacing it with equally ominous strings. “I thought about these naked banshees running through the forest playing violins,” she says. Dylan being Dylan, there’s a certain aura surrounding his music, but LaVette strips away all that pomp and circumstance, and reimagines these songs as new possibilities for the modern age. After all, things have changed.

Even though the title of your album pulls from Dylan’s song, it seems so appropriate today. As an artist, how are you trying to cope with the changes we’re witnessing on an almost daily basis?

Well, my husband says I do better some days than I do others. Some days he tells me I’m just too angry about it and I have to calm down. When I do these lyrics to “Political World” and “Times They Are a Changing,” it sounds as though they were written for today, so I don’t know if Dylan is prophetic, along with brilliant, or if he just didn’t have any faith in anything getting better and he was right!

The central sentiment on “Things Have Changed,” how do you push past that to still care?

Oh, honey, I am 72 years old. I basically don’t give a fuck. Nothing at this point wears me down. I know that all of this going on right now, either it’s going to pass or we’re going to pass. Something’s going to stop, though. I hope it’s not us.

You said Dylan’s lyrics were almost prophetic in a way. How does contemporary art need to respond to this moment more than it has been?

I don’t know. I don’t really like for people to sing about what’s going on; I’d rather them say it. If you’re a big enough star, then go somewhere important and say something. I want our entertainers to be well informed and to know everything that’s going on politically really does affect all of us. I’d like to see us become a little more serious-minded, instead of sitting around and singing about it all day.

I was looking at something the other night — Jay-Z was on something — he and Snoop Dogg both are speaking so much better than when they first started, and about so many more important things. I watched them when they started, and to hear what they speak about now, it warms my heart. I still am not a fan of hip-hop, but I’m glad that, since they’re making so many millions, they’re trying to contribute something now.

Absolutely. It’s an interesting conversation taking place. So, can you take me back to the moment when you first started listening to Dylan?

I’ve always heard him, but he’s never sounded appealing to me. I’ve recorded four of his tunes — those were the only ones that I could break down to size. Otis Redding said he’d never do one. It’s too damn many words! [Laughs] He was not played a lot on Black radio, and I didn’t like, necessarily, the way he presented his songs, and I always had a whole bunch of other stuff to sing about. He hasn’t been a mainstay in my life.

As I understand it, the album’s executive producer, Carol Friedman, brought the idea to you. What was it that excited you from a creative perspective?

This was more than just a big musical opportunity. This was a big business opportunity, as well. This is my 57th year in show business, so I’m not fascinated or enamored with anyone right now. I was fascinated and enamored that I would get a chance to get a really big shot and, because the company thought it was a really great idea, I thought I would tackle it for that reason. When I started to choose the tunes — which was very difficult for me to do because there’s only so much of what he says that I want to repeat — it was quite a daunting thing. I wasn’t going to tributize him, and I don’t do cover tunes. I can sing, so I don’t have to do the song the way you do it.

Right. You’ve described yourself as an interpreter.

No. I am an interpreter. That is what I do. I had to write a whole bunch to make it fit into my mouth. I had to change the gender in a lot of places, and I got to know him a lot better. I understand him much better. I would like to talk with him, though, because I’d like to know why he feels the way he does.

Has he gotten wind of this project?

Oh, I’m sure. His manager loved it. He gave me license to change the lyrics and gave me license not to license it. So I assume Bob has heard it.

As we know, white folk artists in the ‘50s and ‘60s covered or referenced Black artists in their music. And, here, it’s thrilling to see a Black woman interpret a white man’s music. Did that ever strike you during the project?

Oh, yes! I definitely thought about it. I listened to John Lennon and Paul McCartney say that B.B. King is their idol, and I know that B.B. came very close to dying broke and unheard of, so when I did the Interpretations album, that was pure vengeance. I thought of it that way. I wanted to do the tunes well enough for whites who were in love with these guys to realize that they’re just writers. These songs are not hymns; they’re just songs. Having a husband who was a white teenager who grew up with all of these guys and has been enamored of them forever, one of the greatest joys of my life was for me to make Pete Townshend cry and for him to see it. So I enjoyed that tremendously. [Laughs]

They are considered sacred among a set, but I love what you’ve done on this album, because these songs don’t sound like what we know Dylan’s catalogue to be!

As I said, I had to sit and think about them for a long time, whereas the ones that I’d chosen to do by him before, they were just songs that I liked and I just did them. But with 12 of them facing me at one time, I said, “Now, here, let me think about them.” I had to really listen because they weren’t going to be a part of what I was doing. They were going to be what I was doing. I had to make them definitely fit into my mouth perfectly, squarely, just as if they’d been written for me. The greatest joy for me now is that the people I’ve been seeking out are Bob Dylan fans. I’m not asking my fans what they think about it; I’m asking Bob Dylan’s fans what they think about it.

And what’s the reaction?

I wanted them not to recognize them, and I wanted them not to be able to sing along with them.

You said you selected songs you could fit into your mouth. What did you want this project to say exactly?

The only words I don’t use are, “If you do this, I’ll die” and “Boy.” I’ve never said, “If you do this, I’ll die,” because that just ain’t gon’ happen. And, when I was 12, my boyfriend was 18, so boys have never been a part of my life. As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be grown. But I can’t think of anybody who can write a song that I couldn’t sing because you don’t have to sing it the way they write it. Sing it the way you sing.

I think some of the best songwriters are those that can be interpreted in any genre.

I find when people cover Bob Dylan songs, they worship. They don’t change them or do anything. That’s no fun!

It’s like you said, they’re not hymns.

Listen, I would not want anyone to say, “My goodness, she captured Bob perfectly.” No! No!

In terms of process, how much time do you need to spend with a song in order to hear it in a new way?

When I start to sing it without the recording, that kind of dictates the way mine is going to go. So, when I sat down with Larry Campbell, he knew immediately he could not play the way he’d played for Bob [Dylan] with the way I was singing it. I was really like a director in that, “This is no longer going this way. This is going this way.” When we did Interpretations, the first thing I said to all the musicians was, I said — all of them were white — ”I know all of you grew up with these tunes, but I want you to suspend thought about them, and don’t play anything other than what is on the paper. Play this as if it’s a song you’ve never heard before.” Some were easier for them to do than others.

Well, Things Have Changed is really something else. You’ve captured something, but it’s not his!

I’m so glad that you hear it. I wanted young people who have been given a Dylan album in their cradle when they were born, and they feel that that’s the way it should go to hear it. I would give anything to have seen [Dylan] hearing it.

To be a fly on that wall!

I would have liked to know did he recognize them all the moments they started playing, or if he didn’t recognize them, which ones didn’t he recognize? That would’ve been fun to me.

Living Your Passion: A Conversation with Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams

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Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams have been married for nearly 30 years, but they only turned their private song-making into a public affair with the release of their 2015 self-titled debut. (Though, before that, they played for seven years in Levon Helm’s band.)

Last year, they returned with their sophomore effort, Contraband Love, a darker affair that takes a hard look at love’s pocks in order to reveal its pearls. Original folk-driven songs like “Save Me from Myself” explore a strong relationship’s balm, while the title track promises to keep fighting past the hard-bitten instinct to keep love at bay. Williams’ voice leads the charge on the verses, while Campbell joins her on the harmonies, their voices showcasing their lengthy partnership together. The admiration and respect the couple exhibit for one another — and for the opportunities they’ve been given to live their passion in tandem — only adds to their music-making journey. As they’ve learned, not everything happens quickly. But some things are worth the wait.

You’ve been described as being a riskier slice of Americana. How do you see yourselves pushing against its status quo?

Teresa Williams: Are we pushing against the status quo of Americana? [Laughs] I guess we’re just not thinking about it and letting the chips falls where they fall.

Larry Campbell: That’s pretty much it.

TW: I don’t think that’s a good plan, if you have a trajectory. You just have to take the music as it comes.

LC: Yeah, the stuff we write and perform, ideally, it comes from an organic place where what we’re creating is a mixture of all our influences and, because of the genre that Teresa and I have both been attracted to most of our lives, what comes out fits in the Americana theme. But the goal has never been to make music that can be called Americana music.

TW: They called us Americana! We never did.

Right, I can see how the narrative springs up after the fact.

LC: Levon [Helm] affectionately called Americana “the trash bin of rock.”

TW: It’s a nice haven for all the outcasts, I think. I’ve heard Mary Gauthier say, “This is my tribe. I love my tribe.”

That’s perfect.

LC: Then, by that definition, it pushes against any kind of status quo. The beauty of it is, there really is no status quo for Americana. It’s a big tent. I would hope the underlying requirement to be placed in that category is complete artistic expression and, if you’ve got that, then you’re welcome in.

As opposed to a more commercial approach?

LC: Right.

TW: Or maybe if you’re trying to achieve what you think will go over. Like, “Oops, probably not smart.”

“Save Me from Myself” is such an interesting take on the love song. Can you tell me a bit about where that came from?

LC: It is a love song. We’ve all known people, or been people at times in our lives, who find it very difficult to face our own shortcomings. To me, it’s the idea of unconditional love, where you’re allowed to go through your own personal misery and someone will stand next to you and try to help you through it, but if nothing else, just be there for you. That’s a fascinating facet of love. I’m dabbling with that theme in that song and in the title song, “Contraband Love.” I’ve had issues in my life where I didn’t necessarily like the person I was. The idea that someone would still be there for you, while you’re trying to get all this stuff sorted out and get your stuff together, that’s just fascinating.

You also covered Carl Perkins’ “Turn Around,” which feels like an interesting companion piece to “Save Me.” One is pleading for help from a lover, and the other is offering that very thing. How has time been reshaping your own understanding of love?

LC: Wow.

Big questions today!

LC: Well, Teresa and I have been married for almost 30 years now.

That’s amazing.

TW: Especially in this business.

In the business, but also in this day and age. People don’t put in that kind of time anymore.

TW: It was a little later … I had just turned 32 when we got married.

LC: And I was 33. We’d been through a lot of the experiences that people have that they eventually regret and which causes the relationship to fall apart. We had exhausted most of those experiences. When we got married, it was a really good time in both of our lives where we both understood who were individually, and we both understood the other.

TW: We’ve been through enough to recognize … people use the word soulmate, throw that word around pretty loosely, but it truly felt like, from the first day I met Larry, that was it. What drove us musically was very similar, and that was a huge part of the attraction.

LC: What Teresa and I have between us, we’ve experienced so many facets and aspects of what love is — that it does change and it does morph. But there’s sort of a rock underneath it all. The longer you go, when you’re in a healthy relationship, the firmer that rock gets. I think both of us in this 30-year journey have really done the best we could to treat this relationship with the respect that it warrants.

TW: The irony is that neither of us was looking for marriage at the time.

Isn’t that always how it happens, though?

Both: Yeah!

TW: The day I met Larry, I was putting myself out on a limb, musically. When people talk about meeting the right person, I always say, “Do what you love and keep putting yourself out there with what you love to do.” I think that’s really part of it.

Larry, you’ve mentioned in another interview that songwriting isn’t an easy form of self-expression for you and, after your self-titled debut, you had to get comfortable with what you and Teresa were as a duo. How did you set about doing that?

LC: From my perspective, Teresa has always been a front person, in one respect or another; she was comfortable in that role. For me, I was always a back-up musician, and I was always comfortable as a studio musician or producer. From the first day we met, we would sing together for the love and the fun of doing it.

TW: Especially down in West Tennessee with my family and the local people there.

LC: It took me a long time to develop an appreciation for the notion of being out front and being a singer with original material. I would’ve never been able to develop this, unless I’d done it with Teresa. Fortunately, we had an incubator, which was with the Levon Helm band. He wanted everybody to step up front and do something. That gave me the opportunity to try that stuff with Teresa in public. There are people that are born to get out there and sing and throw themselves in front of the crowd, and it’s taken me an evolution to make that happen, for me to be comfortable. I get such fulfillment out of doing this thing with Teresa that that’s the point, rather than the point being wanting to be up there in front of someone.

It sounds like quite a gift. Talent can, in its own way, take people away from each other, and when you were playing with [Bob] Dylan that did happen.

TW: Yeah, it took its toll. But, at the same time, when I would be out there [visiting Larry on the road], we’d sit in the back of the bus after shows and play music, and Dylan’s manager said, “You guys oughta be making pay off what you have.” I’m not sure it really occurred to us before this. I kinda felt icky about a husband-and-wife team, for some reason. I grew up in the cotton patch — literally, working in the cotton patch. And it felt like [a creative life] was some other cast of people that did that thing out in the world.

Right, it’s such a big thing to think, let alone achieve.

TW: Yeah, like you can’t get too big for your britches. I hate to admit that, as I feel like a strong female.

What’s so interesting about both of your stories is, you didn’t set out looking for this, but you found it together. I love that circularity, that life could bring you what you needed.

LC: When Teresa and I made our first record, and it was starting to kick in that we were going to do this project — this Larry & Teresa thing — I had this feeling that just doing it makes it a success. We’re not going to be JAY-Z and Beyoncé. That’s okay.

TW: [Laughs]

“My Sweetie Went Away” and “Slidin’ Delta” are such fun songs because they stretch the bounds of what you do in more regional ways. I know, Teresa, you grew up in Western Tennessee, and you’ve both been in upstate New York. Is there a region that you feel most drawn to, musically?

TW: I realized, on stage some nights, that almost all the songs we’re singing — except the ones Larry wrote — are the ones from Tennessee. Larry was in New York, going to hear all these world famous artists, these rock ‘n’ roll artists and bluegrass artists passing through New York City. He had a friend who was getting him into the Fillmore East when he was 12. I’m so jealous! I’ll joke; I’ll say, “We weren’t getting that. They weren’t coming through the cotton patch.” But we were getting the music from the dirt, I like to think.

The people that Larry was hearing in New York, they were recirculating our music back to us. We’re technically in the Delta, where I’m from. We’re on the edge of it, so it’s kind of inevitable that Larry and I … I felt like the dirt met the city. His sensibility is from down there, too, obviously. He spent a couple of years down in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the only reason I thought it was okay to marry him. If he hadn’t spent that time, the cultural divide would’ve been too big.

It all feeds into the title: Contraband Love.

LC: Yeah. And what Teresa’s saying about the groups I was seeing in New York — Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead and Cream and Jimi Hendrix — all these bands, they had mixed with the cutting edge of rock ‘n’ roll in those days. But beneath that, rock ‘n’ roll did grow out of the South. It came out of all those influences: the country music, the gospel music, the bluegrass music, the old-time music, and the blues of the South. And I was always attracted to the distillation of rock ‘n’ roll. When I was growing up and I would hear someone like Doc Watson and Bill Monroe or Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters, that stuff would ring a bell in me even more than the rock ‘n’ roll I was seeing constantly.

TW: It was like the roots. And the bluegrass, too. Where I was located, we had the blues. We were getting the music coming up from Muscle Shoals. I’m right in the middle of all of that. We’d come in from the fields on Saturday, and we’d listen to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs — they had their Saturday evening show. And then daddy was playing this stuff in the living room after supper, and that’s how I learned. I wouldn’t even have to go to school: I’m doing what I learned at my parents’ feet.

Photo credit: Gregg Roth

Counsel of Elders: David Bromberg on Music’s Many Languages

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There’s no end to the adjectives ascribed to musicians and their styles, but few are, themselves, an adjective. With David Bromberg’s career-spanning 50 years in the industry — which include recording his own albums, guesting with a variety of artists, and producing others still — he has run the gamut when it comes to music making as a life calling. So then it makes sense that “Brombergian” would encompass that very spirit, defying any quick and fast label in order to create a path outside the “way things are.” It’s a designation his friend, collaborator, and producer Larry Campbell first used to describe Bromberg’s particular blues style, but it seems fitting to expand its use. Bromberg has gone about things differently, eliding the industry’s desire to fit him into a neat category by playing multiple instruments (and styles), as well as taking a significant hiatus from recording music in order to run David Bromberg Fine Violins in Wilmington, Delaware. His career is nothing short of Brombergian.

After rising to fame on his 1972 self-titled debut — which itself spanned various styles from the pondering, folk of “Dehlia” to the bluegrass-driven “Lonesome Dave’s Lovesick Blues #3” to the acoustic blues number “Pine Tree Woman” — he refused to be categorized and confined. Beyond defying a lone musical identity, though, Bromberg did what many a musician might balk at after achieving some level of notoriety. He took time off, beginning in 1980, to focus on learning the violin business … 22 years to be exact. “But who’s counting?” he chuckles, his matter-of-fact delivery belying his easy good humor. Bromberg returned to form in 2002 and hasn’t stopped his pace yet. With a new album, The Blues, the Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues, just out, he’s made what he describes as his most homogenous album yet, even though the different types of blues — Chicago, Delta, and more — on the album might suggest a more Brombergian approach. At 71 years old, he’s got a lot more to say and more than a few ways to say it.

You’ve recorded so many different genres of music. Each one reminds me of a language. If we’re sticking with this analogy, what do you consider your native tongue?

Oh, boy. That’s a difficult question. I mean, my first response is usually blues. However, a more correct response might be what’s now considered oldies radio. But, you know, I’m not really sure.

Okay then, what do you enjoy most playing?

Music.

That’s cheating!

I know that’s not what you wanted to hear. There are two kinds of music — good music and bad music. I prefer the good kind.

Besides styles, you play several different instruments. Do you find each suits a particular mood?

Yeah, absolutely, and that goes even for one guitar versus another guitar. Any two guitars, they’re going to be different and, if they’re guitars that you can talk to, then you can enjoy them both.

How much do they talk back?

An awful lot. I discover these days, when I start to play mandolin or a fiddle, my guitars yell at me, “You’re not done with us yet!”

What was it about the violin that attracted you?

I learned to play a little bit of fiddle pretty early on. I’m a terrible fiddler. I mean, I used to be just merely bad, but these days I don’t play enough to be anything more than terrible. What interested me about the violin … you know, people assumed that I wanted to be a violin maker and I never wanted to be a violin maker. What fascinated me was how someone could pick up a violin and, without referring to a label, which the labels are very often wrong, you can say when and where it was made and sometimes by whom. And that’s what I wanted to learn, and that’s what I do.

How do you measure success, then? It seems like many, if not most, wouldn’t have considered stopping for 22 years to make instruments.

I still stand by this: At the point where I could take a cab home at the end of the night instead of getting on the subway, that was all the success I needed.

Oh, I love that. But it’s so true.

It really is.

On the flip side of success, what does it take to survive in this business?

Persistence, and that’s not as much of a “blowing you off” answer as it may sound. I think persistence is tremendously important, and I kind of surprised myself by not showing that much, and actually stopping for 22 years, because I knew how important it was. I remember … Charlie Rich was a country or rockabilly singer and, in his 60s, had a huge hit. Persistence. “Behind Closed Doors” was the tune. It was a good tune, and he sang the hell out of it.

Here’s the thing: At one time, if you just stopped someone under the age of 40 on the street and said, “If you could do anything in the world, if you could be anything in the world, what would you be?” They would say, most of them, “Oh, I’d be a rock ‘n’ roll star.” Well, the people who become rock ‘n’ roll stars, they’re people who have to be rock ‘n’ roll stars. That’s it. That’s real. I’m sure it applies to a lot more than just rock ‘n’ roll. Any difficult, enjoyable profession, it’s gonna take a lot of drive. In my day, doing what I did entailed learning to sleep on other people’s floors. I think it’s actually harder today.

Well, there’s certainly a lot more noise today in that there are a lot more people able to get their music into listeners’ headphones.

Did you ever see that ad for the headhunting firm on television? They’re in a tennis stadium, and the guy’s about to serve, and some guy comes out of the crowd and swats at the ball with a briefcase, and then before you know it, the court is covered with people out of the stands, all of them trying to hit the ball. And this is a headhunting firm trying to tell you, “Look, we’ll get you the good people.” But that’s what’s going on. The record companies, which don’t really exist any longer, used to be a filter because you couldn’t just make your own record on an iPhone. It required money. Somebody who got far enough to actually make a recording, well, there might be something there. The odds were greater than they are on YouTube, and YouTube is the medium today.

And even something like Soundcloud, where you can upload an EP or a mixtape and put yourself out there. But there’s no filter.

There’s no filter to say, “Well, you should really listen to this, or you should really listen to that.” I don’t understand how anybody gets anywhere, except for money. I think one of the things that can work for you is, if you impress very wealthy people, maybe they back you. To be someone who does a modern stage show, I mean, that’s very expensive. It’s not an easy thing. Not that it was easy in my day, either, but I think it’s harder today. Anyone and everyone does put things out there, and nobody gets paid for anything any longer, and that’s a difficult thing.

I know even with the streaming services it’s some kind of paltry per-play fee.

I can tell you where this comes from and how this came to be. It used to be that radio stations paid nothing to the artist to play a tune. They might have a small royalty that would go to the writer of a song, but the artist got nothing. So this idea got moved over to the Internet. The Grammy people are trying to change it. I went down to DC and I was a lobbyist for a day, promoting the idea to different representatives that everybody is making the money except the people making the music.

Is there a big coalition?

Basically, in DC these days, no one can do anything. It’s all static — in the sense of not moving.

What’s the most surprising piece of advice you ever received? Or that you, yourself, picked up along the way?

I’ve given people some advice that is kind of surprising or surprises them a lot, people who want to break into music. I say, “Well, you have to be in either New York, Los Angeles, or Nashville.” And people generally don’t think about it, but if you become famous in Dubuque or Boston even, your fame will reach to the edges of Boston. It will take you the same amount of time to be famous in New York, but the New York press is nationwide. There’s your difference.

Those are the cities where the industry has headquartered itself.

Right.

On your latest album, you span so many different blues styles. It’s like you’re coloring outside the lines in a way. Why make this type of album?

This is the most homogenous album I’ve ever made. I never saw any reason not to play any music that I enjoyed. Why be limited? This is commercial suicide to do things that way. The first time I asked Larry Campbell to produce an album, I said “Let’s do an album of all Chicago-style blues.” And he said, “No, let’s do an old-fashioned David Bromberg album.” I never assumed that he’d listened to those records, but evidently he had, so that’s what we did for the first one we did together [2013’s Only Slightly Mad]. The latest one is me taking baby steps to being a little more homogenous.

In the old days, from a commercial point of view, it was suicide, because the record stores had no idea what bin to put me in, and the record company had no idea where and how to advertise me. “But what will we call you?!” “Call me anything but late for dinner.” [Laughs] Without question, it’s the most homogenous album I’ve ever done, and it was fun to do. I’m happy about it.

And I saw you re-recorded “Dehlia” for this album. What was it like revisiting that song?

I did it on my first album, but Larry Campbell plays so beautifully on it, I just had to do it again. After I did the first with Larry producing, Larry and I did some gigs together, just the two of us, and I’ve never wanted anybody else to play on that tune, but I did it one night. Larry was sitting there and he started playing the slide on it and it was so gorgeous. It just kills me every time.

 

For more wisdom from another bluesy elder, read Amanda’s conversation with Tony Joe White.

The 6 Best New Holiday Albums of 2016

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If you're like me, you've already been listening to holiday music for a solid month now, and your annual playlist, to which you gleefully add each year, has already gained another hour or two worth of music since this year's holiday releases began rolling out in October. If you aren't obsessed with all things festive and aren't sure where to begin with this year's holiday releases, breathe easy. We've rounded up six of the best roots-related holiday releases of the year.

Kacey Musgraves, A Very Kacey Christmas

This holiday album from Kacey Musgraves is pure joy — well, mostly, but we'll get to that in a minute. With cameos from Leon Bridges, Willie Nelson, and the Quebe Sisters, there's a little something for everyone in this collection of classics and original songs, and Musgraves' trademark charm shines through in every tune. The album's high point, though, is also its lowest — the tear-jerking "Christmas Makes Me Cry," a beautiful tune Musgraves penned with Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark.

She & Him, Christmas Party

The duo of M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel returns with a second holiday release, the follow-up to 2011's A Very She & Him Christmas. The cuts get a little deeper the second time around the tree, although you'll still find standards like "Let It Snow" and "Winter Wonderland."

Loretta Lynn, White Christmas Blue

Believe it or not, it's been 50 years since Loretta Lynn last released a holiday album. (In 1966, she put out Country Christmas.) This year, she has gifted us with White Christmas Blue, and it includes re-recorded versions of Country Christmas favorites, holiday classics, and a new song, the album's title track.

Various Artists, Christmas on the Lam and Other Songs from the Season

Red House Records ventures into holiday album territory for the first time with this collection of songs, featuring artists like Charlie Parr, the Wailin' Jennys, and Larry Campbell with Teresa Williams. Look for a good mix of new songs and old favorites in this bunch.

David Bazan, Dark Sacred Night

If you didn't collect all of the holiday singles David Bazan began releasing with Suicide Squeeze Records in 2002 (or if you'd enjoy the convenience of having most of them on one disc), you're in luck, as Bazan has compiled 10 of those 14 songs for this remastered collection.

Katie Melua, In Winter

Katie Melua is better known across the pond, but this stirring collection of holiday songs, featuring the Gori Women's Choir from Melua's native Georgia, should earn her some well-deserved recognition here in the States, too.

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Painting Sounds, Building Bridges, Eating Nachos: A Conversation with the Stray Birds

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The Stray Birds could have kept everything the same about their sound and their process and still have made an incredible record. The band — which revolves around members Maya de Vitry, Oliver Craven, and Charles Muench — had already hit number two on the Billboard bluegrass charts with their YepRoc debut, Best Medicine, in 2014, garnering praise for their rich harmonies and swift picking while building a name as songwriters, too.

But for the forthcoming Magic Fire, the Pennsylvania-based group willfully took steps in a different direction — not toward a different sound, but rather a growth from the straight-up string band they started with. Dabbling with a new percussionist and collaborating on songwriting in a new way, the band brought in Larry Campbell, the genre-jumping instrumentalist whose work specifically with Levon Helm and Bob Dylan made him the Stray Birds’ top choice for their first record with an outside producer. What resulted was a 12-song collection of commanding vocals led forward by a deftness on the strings that can only come from a tight-knit group that loves to play together. 

This album was a new experience for you guys in terms of the way it was recorded. Tell me about the decision-making when you were gearing up for this album. Did you have any specific goals in mind?

Maya de Vitry: We have always been a trio, a string band, trying to explore playing songs with string instruments. That’s the texture that we started out with — it’s what we were comfortable with, it’s what we knew. But it’s not the only sound that we love, and it’s not the only music we listen to; that has certainly never been limited to string bands, and certainly never been limited to those textures. When we started to get the songs together for this new record, it overlapped with us finding a percussionist who we were interested in recording with for the first time. We were never sure what instrument it would be that would pull us in the next direction, or who that person might be, or what the sound would be. But we met Shane [Leonard] and, as we were putting this new record together, we started to think about having drums on it — a more electric sound.

So we started putting those songs together and thinking about the person who might help us build that bridge. We thought that it would be somebody like Larry Campbell. I’d seen him perform a few times with Levon Helm’s band — he was the musical director for that — and I was familiar with some of [Campbell’s] work with [Bob] Dylan. Always it seemed like he was arranging music to really fit the song and to really communicate. Larry could live in all kinds of musical worlds, and we were excited to see what he thought. There were no limitations with what kinds of sounds we could paint with these songs.

Is there anything in particular that you’re most proud of now that you've tried something new?

I think this was our best singing on an album. I think we were relaxed, and we were inspired by Larry’s presence. We felt comfortable with him, and our singing, in particular — some of the phrasing, the tone, and the inflection that we have — I’m really proud of. It’s more free than it’s been in the past, and I’m really excited about that.

I’m really proud of the song “Mississippi Pearl.” It’s kind of tucked into the back of the record, and it’s the only waltz. But it didn’t start out as a waltz. It was in 4/4 time, and a totally different feel as a song. I was never totally in love with it, but I had the words and I had the melody and the chorus, so I had it on the table as a song that was possible to record. I wanted a waltz on the record and we didn’t have any, so Oliver suggested we turn that one into a waltz. Larry heard something in the melody of the song, the way that it opened up. It became much more spacious as a waltz. The story of the song fit better in that new feel. Larry heard something in the melody and wrote this whole melodic hook, this instrumental thing, and he just wrote this whole new part of the song, an instrumental bridge, right there in the studio in front of me. It was a new experience for me, to be open: to have this thing, and I don’t love it — yet — and for him to hear it and be like, "This thing that you don’t love yet? Listen to this idea." So Larry was my co-writer on that song and, in that moment, it was so inspiring. It’s like something cracked open — all of the ideas were available. The song lives as a waltz, and that’s the way it was meant to be. I couldn’t find that on my own.

You said something earlier about painting sounds, which brings me to another question I had about the album art. What inspired you to create that yourself?

I had no plan to do the artwork up until we got into the studio and we got inside of these songs. We naturally started talking about what we could possibly call the record. We wanted to find some words that captured the spirit of it without lifting them specifically from a single song. We didn’t want to have a title track; we just wanted to have a concept of a title. I sort of started dropping the idea to people that I might want to do a painting or some kind of cover art, but I really didn’t know how far into it I wanted to get, at that point. We were basically trying to find something to represent this music other than the three people who wrote it. [Laughs]

We finally came up with the name, which really drove the art forward, when Oliver and I were hanging out with his dad back in Pennsylvania, right after we had finished recording. We were just up late making nachos one night, and he was joking about how all you need to do to make nachos is to wave the magic fire stick around. My ears had been totally open for any word that someone was saying that could possibly fit for the title of this record — I wanted it to feel like it was kind of out on a limb, like it was up to the listener to build a bridge between the songs and the title. So we put the music on right away, the super-rough mixes, and we just listened to the whole thing in the kitchen.

We started drawing our own connections from those words, “magic fire,” to each individual song: “Oh, in this song the fire is love — it’s chemistry.” “In this song, it’s literal fire.” We’d find different meanings in each song that could be connected to it. If not just fire, at least connected to something with the elements, or something very old. We liked the idea of that because this whole record is something very new for us, and it’s nice to feel that juxtaposition. For me, where I started to love music was sitting around a campfire and sharing songs with people. Today, the way that most people have their musical intake is through their phone or computer or the soundtrack in a movie or on the radio. Still, for me, the most alive that I feel is often around a campfire with people. I think it’s less and less about the audience, but about taking things away and remembering what you liked to do as a kid and remembering how fun it is to build a fire and to do new things. That’s kind of what we were doing with this record: playing with fire.

So you had all of these songs before the concept brought them together?

We had it all written and recorded. We had these mixes, and we wondered what could possibly capture them. Then, it became a question of what visual thing could represent these words. Some of them were written collaboratively, but some of them were written individually — in many different settings and times and frames of mind. It wasn’t written as a concept album, but I do think that the inevitability of change is a theme that is there. From the first track to the last track, it’s a theme on the record.

Speaking of the writing, together and separately, tell me about how all of that began.

We started playing music together in 2010. Oliver and I got started at open mics, and also we would play at the farmers' market here. We would go in, and there’s a market master who we would get permission from to play at one of the empty stands at the market. We’d just play for tips, buy a couple of Italian subs, and call it a day.

That was how I started feeling comfortable singing my own songs and coming out of that shell. I had been a fiddle player for a long time, but would not have called myself a songwriter much earlier than those moments, so that was a pretty recent thing for me. Charlie and Oliver had been playing together a little bit in a band, a bluegrass band. I would go and see those shows and see those guys play, it was like four guys playing bluegrass and some original songs of Oliver’s. When that band parted ways, we became a duo and got Charlie, who was in River Wheel also.

It started as just a collection of songs we were doing. The harmonies sounded pretty good to us, so [we thought] maybe other people should hear them. Maybe we could have a CD release show in an art gallery in our hometown. It was not a very sculpted vision.

But we played a festival. We went up to Michigan, to Bliss Fest. It was the first thing. Jim Gillespie, who runs Bliss Fest, heard our little EP of five songs that Oliver and I had made back in 2010, and he hired us to come play Bliss Fest. So we said, “Charlie, do you want to go with us?” So we tried to scrape together enough songs to have another couple sets of songs that we could play throughout the weekend. We just drove to Michigan and we got to play on all of these stages in this beautiful festival. We met so many nice people, and we started loving life and thinking, "Maybe we should be a band. We should play more festivals." I think that experience — leaving home, playing for strangers in this beautiful new setting — was intoxicating. We thought, "We could do this together." Bliss Fest was the moment.

You mentioned something that I’m always curious about: that transition from being a musician, someone who’s comfortable performing, to being comfortable with playing your own music. Was that an immediate switch for you?

I think it was just a moment. I think I was so terrified that people would ask me to explain where exactly the song came from or what I was thinking or who the song was about. Not that I was afraid to answer or didn’t want to answer — I didn’t even know if I could answer that. Songwriting, to me … I was figuring out that it was this really mysterious and really kind of unexplainable thing. It kind of felt like magic!

And I didn’t want to explain it. I just wanted the song to be there and for people to take it or leave it and just listen to it and live in it with me for a couple of minutes, and have as their own. I think that was my fear, though: that I would have to explain something that I didn’t know. When I started actually playing my songs, I realized that people didn’t necessarily ask. That wasn’t a part of the job. I was scared of something that I didn’t have to be scared of, and I could just let the song be its own thing. [I realized] that it was okay for the inspiration to be from my dreams and my experiences and multiple people. It didn’t have to all come from a traceable point, and that was the huge earth-shattering realization for me.