Tag: lgbtq artists

Never Be Lonesome: The Bluegrass Inclusion Movement Sweeps Raleigh

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Well after midnight on Thursday at World of Bluegrass in Raleigh, North Carolina, Molly Tuttle and her quartet took the stage of the Lincoln Theater for a surprise show. The room quivered with anticipation because, a few hours before, Tuttle had been named the IBMA Guitar Player of the Year — the first woman to ever be nominated for the prize.

Women have won in the instrumental categories of banjo, bass, fiddle, and mandolin (Sierra Hull earned her second trophy on the same September night). But lead guitar felt like a bluegrass Rubicon. Weighing against Tuttle, and fellow feminine flatpickers like Courtney Hartman and Rebecca Frazier, are decades of societal coding of guitar in rock ‘n’ roll as a phallic proxy for masculine sexuality. But even beyond that, the bluegrass world, as good as it’s been cultivating its youth, has strongly suggested that girls coming of age should play rhythm and sing. Playing machine gun solos a la Tony Rice or daredevil cross-picking like David Grier seemed anathema for way too long. Where there reasons for this? Anything physical, emotional, or intellectual? Uh, no.

Tuttle’s win coincided with a few other signifiers of progress in the long slog toward full inclusion for women in the music. Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard were inducted last week (belatedly) into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. A smart display in the foyer of the Raleigh Convention Center depicted the history of women in bluegrass, from Sally Ann Forrester to Alison Krauss and the abundant riches of today’s scene.

Feminism was bluegrass music’s first go at civil rights and inclusion, and it took a long, grinding time to arrive at something resembling parity in the modern world. As Murphy Hicks Henry points out in her 2013 book, Pretty Good for a Girl: Women In Bluegrass, one early scholarly work on the genre literally defined the bluegrass band as “four to seven male musicians (Henry’s emphasis) who play non-electrified stringed instruments.” And that was after Bessie Lee Mauldin played bass for Bill Monroe for eight years. Henry’s definitive history set out, she wrote, “to lay that tired myth of bluegrass being ‘man’s music’ to rest. Bluegrass was and is no more ‘man’s music’ than country music was ‘man’s music,’ than jazz was ‘man’s music,’ than this globe is a ‘man’s world.’”

Carry that to its logical and uproariously banal conclusion, and one might dare to propose that bluegrass is everybody’s music. And, in fact, that premise is being put to the test nationally, including in the hothouse environment of IBMA. The most pressing issue and exciting conversations at World of Bluegrass 2017 were about inclusion and diversity in a genre that has, for decades, presented an almost uniformly white, straight, Christian face to the world. Ain’t nothing wrong with any of those things. I’m two of them and love many who are all three. But that is clearly not everybody, and it would be cool if LGBTQ+ people and people of color could, you know, skip ahead to the good part without the decades of hand-wringing and foot dragging that women endured. Hazel & Alice didn’t go the distance for themselves alone or for women alone, after all. They bid the stranger, per the Carter Family, to “put your lovin’ hand in mine.” They sang for the marginalized, all of them.

Alice Gerrard, flanked by Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, at Shout & Shine

Over the past 12 months, the inclusion movement has been on a forward roll. The most talked about event at the 2016 IBMA convention was the semi-sanctioned, upstart Shout & Shine diversity showcase, with musicians who were Black, brown, and queer throwing down on banjos and fiddles. If any one thing put a new face on bluegrass music in modern times, it was this. Organizer Justin Hiltner (the BGS’s social media director) stepped up in a leadership role, not only by example as an openly gay banjo-playing dude from Nashville, but by challenging the IBMA institutionally and professionally to be explicitly and publicly inclusive, or risk leaving new generations of potential members uninterested.

Minor controversy broke out last spring when members of the California Bluegrass Association sponsored a float in the June San Francisco Pride Parade. A thread on the association’s forum is full of respectful conversation and overwhelming support for putting a float with a live bluegrass band in one of the Bay Area’s biggest public gatherings. While there seem to be no reports of outright hostile homophobia, a minority of the membership took the more oblique path of objecting to their music and association being tied to “religion and politics.” One fellow wrote, “I see the gay pride parade as a promotional event for the gay lifestyle and the in-your-face display of that lifestyle.”

The CBA contingent went ahead, of course, and besides having a triumphant day, the float went on to win the SF Pride Best of the Best Overall Award, the highest honor for Pride participants. In the end, a small handful of people resigned from the CBA, but even more appear to have joined. And Bluegrass Pride’s rainbow forward t-shirts and buttons became the hot thing to wear at Raleigh’s World of Bluegrass.

Likewise, this year’s second Shout & Shine concert was a hit, with performers that included the African-American string band the Ebony Hillbillies and openly gay Kentucky folk singer Sam Gleaves, plus his mentors, married folk duo Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer. Gleaves told me he found the event “heartening and really fabulous,” but this most humble gentleman tends to emphasize the aspirations of others more than his own identity, be it a more prominent place for people of color or old-time folk music itself.

Melody Walker, whose band Front Country led the show-closing super jam, said that the “Shout and Shine showcase was the most diverse stage and audience I’ve ever seen at IBMA. It was really beautiful and it kind of feels like a window into the future of what IBMA could be, if we express love and openness to the world and let people know that it’s safe to fall in love with bluegrass and they have a place here.”

Justin Hiltner and Sam Gleaves join Front Country for the Shout & Shine super jam

I kept looking for somebody to break out in hives. Because, seriously, people in bluegrass will do that over the wrong kind of banjo tone ring. But even amid the hustle and bustle of the convention center and town hall meeting, I heard not a discouraging word. Somehow, with a mixture of diplomacy, facts, humanity, and appropriate assertiveness, the Bluegrass Pride movement made its impression and the ecosystem took it in stride.

Likewise, for the Thursday afternoon keynote address by Rhiannon Giddens, founding former member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the 2016 winner of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize. IBMA officials who conceived of and worked on the invitation described some board members as wary, for reasons that are hard to discern. Nobody went public. Nobody’s come up to me and said, “What’s she doing here?” But was IBMA truly ready for an authoritative African-American figure with a major label deal, an acting role on CMT, and other high-profile platforms to come to their stage and talk candidly about bluegrass and race?

Apparently so. Reaction to the Tuesday afternoon speech was, spitballing here, 90 percent rapture and 8 percent relief. (I’ll assume 2 percent unspoken upset or non-attendance.) Sounding for all the world like Barack Obama, with her biracial family story and her sense of only-in-America (for good and otherwise), she spoke of bluegrass music as honestly and completely as I’ve heard it told. I expect that fans, musicians, and scholars will replay and review its layers for years to come because it was dense with truth and a powerful revision of our standard origin story. She offered her own account of growing up in and near Greensboro, North Carolina with a white uncle who played bluegrass and a Black grandmother who simply adored Hee Haw. Her carefully documented recounting of Black string bands and the appropriation of the banjo were full of similar counter-intuitive revelations.

“In order to understand the history of the banjo and the history of bluegrass,” she said, “we need to move beyond the narratives we’ve inherited, beyond generalizations that ‘bluegrass is mostly derived from a Scots-Irish tradition with influences from Africa.’ It is, actually, a complex Creole music that comes from multiple cultures, African and European and Native — the full truth that is so much more interesting and truly American.”

This was the wind-up to the line that’s been most widely quoted, the thesis sentence, if you will: “Are we going to acknowledge the question is not ‘How do we get diversity into bluegrass?’ but ‘How do we get diversity back into bluegrass?’” This line resulted in one of a half-dozen of rounds of mid-speech applause that led to the ultimate standing ovation.

Member of Bluegrass 45 lead the Japanese Jam

For years, my joke about bluegrass is that it’s very diverse. It attracts all kinds of white people. The serious sentiment behind that veil is is my early and ongoing impression that, besides being an exciting and powerful musical form with an American heartbeat, bluegrass attracts what pundit and podcaster Ana Marie Cox calls an “uneasy coalition.” Bluegrass festivals are one of the rare places I’ve seen rural Red Staters and urbane Blue Staters enjoying life and mingling together. The scene is somewhat like Willie Nelson’s ecumenical shows of the 1970s, with Christians and hippies and farmers and nerds. This variety show can also be found in sports, but frankly at NBA or NFL or MLB contests, you can easily arrive, cheer, and leave without engaging with anybody not of your tribe. In the musically charged environment of bluegrass, that’s far less likely. We go to church apart. We vote apart. But we all love Flatt & Scruggs and Sam Bush.

This is more than merely cool. It’s important. Immediately outside IBMA’s confines, as all this was going on, in real time, President Trump was fanning flames of anger over peaceful, protected protest of police brutality. Issues of LGBTQ+ inclusion regularly produce cascades of vitriol and culture war, where all that was hoped for was the same thing artists hope for on stage — listening — and maybe some empathy and vulnerability for good measure.

Shout & Shine takes its name from a Christian hymn written in the 1950s that’s been covered by gospel groups and bluegrass bands. The first verse is heavy-handed with its promise of being issued a robe and crown upon entry into paradise. But the second and final verse has a nicer prophesy for the musically minded:

I’ll never be lonesome in that city so fair

And all will be so divine.

Many of my loved ones and neighbors will be there.

In heaven, we’ll shout and shine.

We want people to sing about being lonesome in bluegrass. But actually being lonesome? Not so much.

Photo credit: Willa Stein. Lede image: The Ebony Hillbillies headline Shout & Shine.

Craig Havighurst is music news director and host of The String at WMOT Roots Radio in Nashville. Follow him on Twitter @chavighurst
 

Karen Pittelman: Bring Your Truth

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A queer Jew from Brooklyn seems like the most unlikely candidate to front a country band, right? If you factor in Karen Pittelman’s past experience singing and performing punk and queercore, her current old country-influenced, honky tonk-inspired group, Karen & the Sorrows, seems even more implausible. Addressing these kind of assumptions about who “owns” country or who is allowed “admission” to country — by the mainstream country machine, country radio, country writers, or country fans at large — is why the following conversation is so important. On the surface, it would be easy, even hackneyed, to presume that Pittelman and company came to country as opportunists on the waves of the Americana tide. But considering LGBTQ+ identities and perspectives in roots music necessitates digging deeper. Doing so in our laughter-filled dialogue with Pittelman was both enlightening and encouraging.

Before Karen & the Sorrows, you were singing in a punk band. I wonder how you bridged the gap between punk and country — it sounds like it was something of a homecoming for you. Did identity play into you leaving country behind? Did you feel that in punk you would be more free to be yourself rather than in country?

Yeah, I think that that’s true. I came up around queercore, a place where making music and building queer community are all one thing. But I also think the distance between country and punk isn’t as far as people like to think. Who’s more punk than Johnny Cash? Johnny Cash is punk as fuck. I think, in terms of genres that give you a space to tap into anger and make something out of that, punk and country are two of the best. Punk isn’t so good for heartbreak and that’s what took me back to country. Really, what I love the most are sad songs. My heart was broken and, I dunno, I guess when my heart breaks, pedal steel comes out. [Laughs] Different things happen for different people’s hearts, but that’s what’s in mine, so I had to come back to country, whether I wanted to or not.

What was the beginning of country for you? Did you grow up listening to it?

I guess I’m not the average country music listener. I grew up in New York City. Being a queer Jew, I’m not whatever is supposed to be the stereotype of a country music listener. [Laughs] I think lots of people who love country music don’t fit the stereotypes. My dad, when I was growing up, ran a company called Heartland Music and he made compilation albums that were sold on TV. He was working, through my childhood, mostly with country music stars. He would be making these commercials with Conway and Loretta, and George Jones, and Don Williams, and then come back home and play me everything — and force me to listen to everything and learn it. I was kind of resistant, but it all sunk in. I guess it was just in there waiting to come out later.

I always find it interesting that a lot of people who might be opposed to LGBTQ+ rights feel that, because these identities are becoming more visible in more traditionally conservative spheres — roots music, country, bluegrass, old-time — that people with othered identities are “infiltrators.” But when I have these conversations with diverse people, their stories are exactly analogous to anybody else’s experience getting into these genres. Where do you think this disconnect is happening?

I think that’s a kind of stance that happens not just in this situation, but in a lot of different situations where people are feeling afraid of anyone who feels like an “other” to them. Not just LGBTQ, but anybody who is outside of who they define as their community. It always feels like people are infiltrating, because the “others” feel scary. Almost always, whoever is being termed the “other” has been there all along. Especially in America, we’re all mixed up with each other whether we understand it or not. Depending on where you live, maybe things are less racially or religiously diverse, but you don’t have to travel very far before that changes. And certainly you can’t get away from LGBTQ people; we’re everywhere. We’re 10 percent of the population. So, whether someone realizes it or not, we’re always there. We’re your friends and your community. Maybe that makes it even more scary — people having to redefine who they are and who they think everyone else is in relationship to themselves.

I think that’s what I grapple with the most in trying to unpack these issues with people who may stand in opposition. Because of the way the narrative has been told for so long, it’s easy to think that these ideas have only cropped up in the past 30 to 40 years. It’s hard to undo the revisionist history that everyone holds so closely, because it’s a linchpin to their worldview.

When the history of queer people in music is erased, of course nobody knows that it’s actually there. Queer people have been making all kinds of music all along, of course. If you’re not used to hearing that, I get it. You’ve been told your whole life that somebody is the enemy, that somebody is dangerous to you because of who they are — no matter how you define that “other” — you’ve got a lot to disentangle and unpack before you can see me or somebody else as a fellow musician, your neighbor, your friend, or your family.

I noticed, when I first started reading about your band and your album, that you’re clearly labeled and tagged “queer country.” In the course of these interviews and conversations, I’ve found a whole continuum of visibility and display of artists’ identities in what they create. I wondered how you got to the point where you wanted it to be overtly queer?

To me, first and foremost, it’s about the music. First, second, and third it’s about the music — and I just want people to hear the music. As a woman, though, I already don’t get to have that luxury (of being less visible). It’s already going to be, “Ah, women in music.” [Laughs] It happened because I was just craving the space for queer country to exist and I so missed having that space in queercore and queer punk shows. Not that queer space is the only space that I can feel comfortable in or the only space I want to play, but it really feels like home to me. I felt like I needed to make that space for myself and then other people, too, especially when other people were saying, “Yes! We need this, too.” That inspired me and made me feel like I had to keep going. That’s how we started calling it queer country.

Obviously, like we were just talking about, queer people have been making country all along — we’re going to play our record release show with Lavender Country and Patrick Haggerty made his out, proud, queer country album in 1973! I needed this community and, in order to make community, you have to be willing to announce it. “Okay, this is going to be queer country and that’s who we are and anyone else who feels the same way, come play this show with us!” [Laughs]

I can totally relate to that. I grew up in bluegrass — traditional, straight-ahead bluegrass. I didn’t realize that I craved a space to be queer within bluegrass until I tripped into such a space. You feel this burden lifted that you didn’t realize you were carrying around, just from feeling like the odd person out. It feels so good!

Especially in the way that roots music wants to claim a sort of “home” — a space where everyone can feel welcome, where it isn’t about putting on some kind of airs. This is music that’s about telling the truth about your life, about telling the truth of who you are and where you come from, so it’s important that we’re creating a space together where our lives feel known. I think it’s hard to realize, when you grow up with a certain kind of music, that you’re not being included in it. You know, but you don’t know in your bones, until you’re in a space where you are included. Then you realize how lonesome it felt all along.

That really resonates with me. It feels like the LGBTQ+ community in roots music is starting to network and weave together this strong fabric with each other. I love that.

I feel like we’re making it together right now! It’s amazing!

I want to ask you about “Take Me for a Ride” off of your new record, The Narrow Place. I love that it’s basically bro country, but queer. While listening to it, though, I could imagine someone hearing the lyric “I wanna kiss that pretty mouth and keep on kissing south” sung by a woman to a woman and being appalled by how “inappropriate” it is. Meanwhile, Sam Hunt’s “Body Like a Back Road” has been at number one for a record-breaking 25 weeks!

[Laughs] Yeah, “Body Like a Back Road” is way dirtier! It’s funny: I wasn’t sure, when I was working on that song, how dirty it would end up being, but I knew what I was going for. I think it ended up pretty sweet, as far as saying dirty things go! [Laughs] But “Body Like a Back Road” is filthy! And so catchy.

So how do we bridge this logical gap for people? We talked about this a little bit before — queer people have always been in country; queer people come to country music the same ways as everybody else. How do we show people that don’t want us to “flaunt it in their faces,” that it’s really not any different than Sam Hunt singing about “driving with his eyes closed”?

[Laughs] Hmm. I had this really interesting experience with someone writing a comment on one of our videos on YouTube. They wrote this really nice comment about how much they love the song and the band, but then they basically said exactly what you just said: “I don’t understand why you have to be putting all of these identity politics and labels on things.” I wrestled with it for a while, but then I wrote back saying, “Thank you so much. You know, I wouldn’t describe it as ‘putting labels.’ I would just say that all of my favorite country music and musicians just try to bring the truth of their lives to the music.” The person wrote me back saying, “Oh, I get that. Thank you for taking the time.”

Now, obviously, it doesn’t always go like that! [Laughs] That was like the world’s best case scenario of that conversation. He felt heard, I felt heard, everything went great. I mean, why do you want to hear Tim McGraw and Faith Hill sing “It’s Your Love”? It’s because they love each other! For real and in real ways. It’s beautiful, and you feel the truth of it. Yes, there’s an entirely different question here of how authenticity gets constructed. It’s complicated. That said, I do believe in bringing your truth to the music. If we all agree that that’s something we love about country music, then we’re going to need to find a way to let everybody who makes the music bring their truth.

Photo Credit: Carole Litwin — (from left to right) Tami Johnson, Karen Pittelman, and Elana Redfield

From Appalachia with Love: A Conversation with Sam Gleaves and Tyler Hughes

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Sam Gleaves and Tyler Hughes are very proud to have grown up in southwestern Virginia, a swathe of Appalachia that birthed the Carter Family, the Stanley Brothers, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and so many more icons of roots music. Released in June, their self-titled duo album is a collection of old-time, traditional country, and mountain music that, on the surface, feels like an album exhumed from a time capsule of southwest Virginian music from bygone eras. But, when you begin to unpack Sam and Tyler’s perspective — yes, they’re native Virginians steeped in their homeland’s musical heritage, but they’re also young and openly gay — you begin to fully appreciate the subtlety, the thoughtful care, and the love that they’ve put into curating and recording this set of tunes.

Speaking to Sam and Tyler was a welcome reminder that, in a time when phrases like, “middle America,” “silent majority,” and “forgotten middle class,” have become daily buzzwords and when the divisions between urban and rural, rich and poor, right and left are seemingly at their greatest, it’s more important than ever that we have these difficult conversations, that we listen to each other, and that we love one another.

So much of what you guys are doing on the record is simply putting a spotlight on perceptions of and presuppositions about people who come from central Appalachia in general. On “Stockyard Hill,” an original song and the first track on the album, you sing, “I’m proud of the way that I came up …” How did your families inspire this song through watching you grow up in the music and grow up to be who you are, living truly and openly?

Sam Gleaves: I wrote this song based on the words and experiences of my great aunt, Corrine Thompson — my grandmother’s sister. She’s an amazing woman, a real matriarch, a really loving, good presence in my life. I feel like she’s a great example of a really open-minded, intelligent, progressive person from southwest Virginia. She’s a great example of someone who defies a lot of stereotypes about people from central Appalachia. I’ve only ever known her to be loving and accepting of all people. She would think that a lot of the political discourse — this really hateful, divided situation that we have now — is so contrary to who she is as a person, the culture that she comes from, and the culture that I come from.

Tyler Hughes: As far as family influence, I grew up in an average, working/middle-class family. They are real people. I think that’s what influences my music and specifically the music that we put together on this album the most. I come from a strong union family: My grandpa was a union coal miner for over 30 years. My family is much like Sam’s in being very accepting and loving. There’s not really a judgmental side to them. They have a great appreciation for the place we come from, but they also have a wider view of the world beyond just what happens in southwest Virginia. I think that’s what influences me most and what makes me most proud to say that I am from southwest Virginia. Probably the number one thing I want to tell people when I meet them is that I’m from southwest Virginia, because people do have such misconceptions, but there are people out there that don’t fit into these exaggerated beliefs and misconceptions.

SG: I came out when I was in high school and I had a really close community of friends around me between my classmates in school, people that I played music with in the old-time music community, and also my family. When I came out to my family, they all knew other gay people. It wasn’t an unfamiliar or unexpected thing, when I came out. [Laughs] I think my parents gave me permission to be who I am. Not only as a gay man, but as an artist and a human being. A lot of people don’t get that permission from their parents. They never discouraged me from singing professionally, and they never told me my writing wasn’t important, but just the opposite. They wanted me to write and they wanted me to travel, to sing, to get to know musicians.

I definitely have had to think a lot about how I talk about these issues because, when I recorded my first album, Ain’t We Brothers, everyone that interviewed me asked me what it was like to be a gay man living in Kentucky and growing up in southwest Virginia. In rural places all across America, LGBTQ people need a lot of support. There are a lot of needs that aren’t met, in terms of communities not being able to come together and celebrate our identities, and also work for equal rights. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I’ve been very fortunate to have a good, welcoming experience being openly gay, in the old-time community, but also just living in Virginia and Kentucky.

Following on that then … I wonder if either of you considered that this project could potentially be that very permission for a listener? There are a lot of LGBTQ individuals in these spheres — Appalachia, the South, roots music — that aren’t out. Did you think this could be validation for other LGBTQ artists to be out and to lay claim to this music in a more assured way?

TH: I think about that quite often, even just for regular performance, even though we don’t stand on stage and advertise that we are gay musicians — that’s not exactly the shtick of our show. It’s nothing that we try to hide, but it’s not the main focus. I try to keep in mind that, to someone who might be struggling with their identity, it could be a very powerful moment for them to see someone they can relate to doing something that maybe society or someone around them is telling them they can’t do, or that something is only reserved for certain people. Any time that I’m playing music, whether it be working on this record or just being on stage, I think about that. Because I had a similar experience. When I first met other gay musicians, it really empowered me to think about how I could also live an open and full kind of life and still do the thing that I love the most.

As diversity becomes more of a hot-button topic in roots music communities, a lot of bystanders seem to assume that, because more LGBTQ individuals are becoming visible in bluegrass and old-time, we’re coming from the outside in or that we’re “infiltrators” and appropriators of the music. But here you both are, born and bred in this area of Virginia and Appalachia that’s such a hotbed for this music. How do you approach people with this perspective?

SG: I think it’s important that you mentioned that. We love the place that we’re from, but I think we have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of work to be done. I don’t know how else to say it. I see this especially in the bluegrass community, which we’re sort of on the fringes of. We also play old-time country music, which is just a blend of all of these things, so we end up in these environments where genre doesn’t keep us from playing in a wide, wide range of places. We want to represent our communities and the Appalachian region well, but we also have to acknowledge that there are people in these genres of music that do feel that it’s not right for gay people to be out in their performances — like just singing a love song about a same-sex relationship. I’ve never had any negative backlash from anyone at a concert or from any producer or from any person on stage that I’ve ever worked with. I’ve never had anyone say openly, “You shouldn’t sing that song, or you shouldn’t tell that about yourself.” I’ve only ever had like one or two people ever walk out of one of my shows that I knew was because of what I was singing.

I’ve had a lot of conversations about these topics in the past several years and that’s certainly not always the case. Why do you think that is?

TH: I don’t know … luck? [Laughs] No, every audience is different and every situation is different, but the number one thing that I think about, when I first walk out on stage or when I first get to a venue or when I go out to meet an audience after a show, is that, first and foremost, I’m a musician and I’m a performer. I think more about that than anything else. If somebody didn’t want to listen to my music anymore because they suddenly found out that I was gay, it wouldn’t hurt me any more or any less than if they found out that I didn’t like bananas so they didn’t want to listen to my music anymore. To me, it’s their qualm and, even if I feel that it’s a silly thing to let get in the way, they may not. I try to understand that — I would have to disagree with them — but I would at least try to understand their position. I think about the fact that I’m presenting myself more on the level of musician and a performer first. And also just being a person. Being gay is only a tiny sliver of my identity, when it comes to all of the things that make up who I am.

SG: You know, in country music, there’s a tradition and an expectation that performers be friendly, that they engage with audiences. I think that is a big reason why people don’t come up to us and say, in person, “I was upset that you all mentioned the women’s movement before you sang ‘Bread and Roses,” or “I was upset that you wished everyone a happy Pride month.” I think it’s because we really do try to be friendly and welcoming to people. Not that other people who experience discrimination and hatefulness are not being friendly — I’m not saying that. To some degree, what you put out can be what you receive back. We do try to be a part of that tradition of being good to people.

That makes me think of “When We Love” from the record. Tyler, what was it like to write this song and to sing this song while you are faced with this loud, mainstream, idea that a lot of people out there don’t love who you are as a person? How do you espouse this kind of love, when it’s not what everyone else is also putting out into the universe?

TH: I really don’t find it that difficult. That’s not to say that I’m not angry with the situation we find ourselves in or that I don’t get frustrated when there are setbacks. I don’t really know where I align myself religiously on most days, but I do think that, no matter who you’re worshipping or what kind of life mantra you’re following, we are all human and we’re all sharing in the human experience. Part of that, to me, is just loving one another. I still live in a small coal mining town, and I would say that at least a good 70 percent of my friends probably voted for the president. They may not agree with everything he says, but they feel that they are supporters of his. I know them as people and I know they’re not judging me — even if deep down in their hearts they may not really agree with LGBT rights or equality for all people. That’s not a big enough issue for me to let friendships or relationships go. Some of my best friends in the world align themselves with conservative values and conservative movements. It just doesn’t bother me, because I’d want them to look at me in the same way. At the end of the day, we still all need each other. These are differences I can put aside for most people, as long as they put them aside for me.

Photo credit: Susi Lawson

LISTEN: Chris Housman, ‘If You Were Mine’

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Artist: Chris Housman
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: "If You Were Mine"
Release Date: 2017

In Their Words: "'If You Were Mine' is that gentle way of saying, 'Hey person, look at me! We'd be soulmates!' to somebody that probably doesn't know you exist. I actually wrote it about a really attractive stranger while I was waiting for AAA to unlock my car in a liquor store parking lot." — Chris Housman

Photo credit: Caleb Sexton

Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass

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From its founding, the Bluegrass Situation has intentionally, thoughtfully explored and expanded roots music and the culture around it. That means proudly and purposely supporting artists who color and exist outside the imaginary lines of the historical genres. We've used the BGS platform to create a safe space for conversations with Sam Gleaves, Mipso, Kaia Kater, Amythyst Kiah, and more.

This week at World of Bluegrass, we're taking it to Raleigh's Pour House stage with our "Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass" showcase featuring performances by a wide array of outliers and allies. Banjo player Justin Hiltner, who helped us coordinate the event, will serve as the evening's host. "This event isn't something that's gratuitously political or activist," Hiltner says. "We're not trying to position ourselves in opposition to anyone. We're simply trying to carve out a place for representation in bluegrass and roots music that hasn't existed until recently. We want to celebrate diversity in bluegrass — not because bluegrass is becoming more diverse, but because bluegrass has never been as homogenous as the narrative might suggest."

With Headphones on the Floor: A Conversation with Chely Wright

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Though singer/songwriter Chely Wright made her name on the country charts back in the ’90s, her new album’s quiet confidence showcases what is probably the truest side of her: a conscious and caring, creative and compassionate woman rooted in faith and family above all else. Produced by Joe Henry, I Am the Rain features 12 tunes written by Wright, along with one Bob Dylan cover that feels right at home in the set. It also continues the artistic recalibration Wright began with her 2010 Rodney Crowell-produced release, Lifted Off the Ground.

Congratulations on a hell of a decade you’re having. Can I just say that?

[Laughs] Yeah. It’s been pretty crazy. I’ve been really contemplative in the past few weeks as I’ve been doing some press about, “Gosh, what has happened in the past decade?” It’s been pretty action-packed.

Check my timeline. I was just putting it together. In 2010, you came out publicly, Like Me was published, Lifted Off the Ground was released, and the LikeMe Foundation was established.

Yeah.

In 2011, you got married … happy anniversary, by the way.

Thank you! Yep.

And the Wish Me Away documentary … which, kudos. That was so brave.

Thank you. I’m really happy with it.

Then 2013, the boys.

Yeah. Wait. Hold on. Got knocked up in 2012.

Okay. We’ll put that in. [Laughs]

Well, I mean, being a lesbian, it’s a little bit more than a back-seat of a Pontiac and tequila. It takes some getting done. [Laughs] So that’s important for the timeline.

Indeed. Then, 2014 was your huge Kickstarter campaign. So did you make the record last year or this year?

We made it in 2015 — 2014 was Kickstarter and my mother died in May. That really was a seminal moment in the process of the itch. You’re a creative person, you know. If you’re thinking about a piece you want to write, you write a lot of it in your head, I’m sure: “What am I going to say? What does it mean? What’s the point? What’s the art?” Then you get an itch when you know to sit down and start typing. My mom’s death in May of 2014 was the itch that caused me to go to my pile of songs and start taking inventory of what I had.

Got it. That Kickstarter campaign must’ve made you feel REALLY great. Did you write the songs and plot the record after that? It probably directed a lot of how you went about things, yeah?

I’ll answer both questions: Did it make me feel great, the Kickstarter? It made me feel things I didn’t know I needed to feel. When my managers and I discussed crowd-funding, at first, I was like, “That sounds like something other people do. I don’t really think I want to do that.” But Russell [Carter] was like, “You have to pay attention to the way history is changing. It’s not begging for money. It’s, essentially, a pre-sale.” He said, “More importantly, it re-engages you with your fans.”

I didn’t really hear that, when he said it. So, in my mind, when we kicked the whole thing off, my thinking was that a successful campaign would be to get funded. I quickly understood that the success of it, for me, was to reconnect with fans that had been following me for 20 years and new fans that I could connect with. More sentimentally, I was reminded that I didn’t lose all of my fans. I didn’t even lose half. Maybe I lost 30 percent of my fans because there were people saying, “You don’t know my name, but I love your records.” Or, “I saw you in Bagdad.” Or, “I saw you at the Nebraska State Fair in 1996.” It was emotional for me, in that regard.

But you probably picked up just as many from the documentary and all the other stuff, I would assume.

Here’s the thing about those new fans coming aboard: More people, in other demographics, became aware of me because I’m the new lesbian on the street, right? And they would go to my Facebook page and hit “Like,” I think, out of support for my coming out. But there’s a big chasm between somebody who doesn’t typically like what we think of as country music and their clicking “Like” on Facebook. They’re like, “I’m going to click ‘Like’ because I like what she did, but I’m not going to buy a country record.” So, a lot of those new people aware of who I am because of coming out — it doesn’t necessarily translate into record-buying, concert-going fans. In some cases it did, though. And that’s great. I love it.

And, to answer your second question: Did I write the songs before or after the Kickstarter? I think 70 percent of the songs that ended up on the record, I wrote before. And 30 percent after.

This record, it’s polished and pretty, but it’s not slick, I guess.

Ding, ding, ding! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah, yeah. It continues to stake your ground in the more roughly hewn Americana world, which may be surprising to people who only know you from the way-back radio hits. What would be your message to those folks, in terms of getting them to keep listening, or re-listen, or start listening?

I love that you say that it continues to stake a claim there in the Americana world. It’s not slick. When you make a record with Joe Henry, if you want to make a slick record, you might as well put your guitar back in the case and leave.

And go on home.

[Laughs] And go on. Because Joe Henry … I mean, I learned a lot on my last record with Rodney Crowell, and I learned a lot with Joe. It was terrifying, frankly, the notion of working with Joe because I know what he does. And what he does is, he brings in everybody and demands that they bring their A-game for every second that they’re in there. There’s no going back and fixing. There’s not a “We’ll do this, then put a real guitar overdub on later and you can tidy up your vocals.” You have to get it when the band gets it. That’s scary for a person who’s made 20+ years of records that you can make them slick.

Punch-ins and vocal comps galore, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I had to unlearn a lot. I wanted to unlearn a lot of that stuff. You know when you go play golf and everyone’s watching you hit the ball? You don’t want to use your new grip, you just want to go back to that old one you know you can hit it with. But, if you want to change your game, you really have to go out there and swing with your new grip.

[Laughs] Ummm … a golf reference?!

[Laughs] I know, right? That’s how I equate it. There’s that temptation to use your old grip. But I went in fully trusting Joe and, frankly, fully trusting myself that this was worth being courageous. For that, I feel like we have a record that sounds like somebody hit record at a really good live show.

Working with Joe and some of my favorite players ever … plus your voice … other than the nerves, that’s a recipe for success, right there — that combination.

Well, one would hope. Our intention, with this record, was that it’s a narrative. It’s not meant to be listened to on your computer speakers while you’re emailing. You put your phone down. You put your favorite headphones on. You lie flat on the floor. You hit play. And you take in … I don’t even know how many minutes the record is. Do you know?

Let’s see … 13 x four-and-a-half …

I’ve got some long songs on there, friend.

Yeah, you have that fiver at the end, but you have some fours and three-and-a-halfs …

Alright. Yeah. Well, what we intended and hoped for people to do is put their favorite headphones on and hit play and follow along and absorb it. I’m guilty, even these days … I bought somebody’s record the other day and had the nerve to listen to it on my iPhone speaker. Halfway through the second song, I was like, “Shame on me! What am I thinking?!” [Laughs] Isn’t that awful?

Headphones on the floor … with maybe a little wine or … something … that’s my favorite way to listen to a record. It just is.

[Laughs] That’s how you do it! That’s what I want. If you glean anything from our discussion today, please pass along that that’s what I really want is for people to take a moment and absorb it in the spirit it was intended. Because Joe and I are really proud of it and we hope people find something in it that moves them.

How did those groovy little cameos come about with Emmy, Rodney, and the Milk Carton boys?

Well, first of all, Rodney … I call him Shep because he’s my shepherd and he has been for a long time. He and I co-wrote one song on the record called “At the Heart of Me.” It’s a song I had written and I brought Rodney in on. It was completely finished and we decided to let Joe join us. We never shared with him the actual music of it. We gave him the lyric, and he helped re-shape the lyric and the new melody. So Rodney was on the record, but it didn’t seem like that was a song to put him on.

But Joe and I had written a song called “Holy War” and Joe called me about five days after I got home from the sessions and said, “Hey, I called Rodney. I’m going to have him come in and see what he can render on ‘Holy War.’” I said, “Of course! Why not?! That makes sense.” What I love about Rodney on the record, it really does sound like … Rodney and I have done a lot of shows together and we end up around one microphone in the middle just singing … and it really sounds to me like a live take of a show.

What’s funny is that I get press releases all the time claiming “This record features Emmylou Harris,” “This one has Rodney Crowell,” and “This one has Milk Carton Kids.” You got the trifecta!

[Laughs] I did! I’m telling you: I’ve always been the luckiest person I know. I don’t know why, but I’m like Forrest Gump. I walk into these really great situations.

So Joe called me, again, about a week or so after I got back, and said, “’Pain’ is really raising its hand. It’s really standing up for itself, wanting to be seen. I think I’d really like to get somebody special.” We did some talking and who doesn’t agree that Emmylou Harris is just about as special as it gets. What made me so happy about her vocal is that she said, “I just want to match where you are. I just want to match the emotion of what you’re singing.” Hearing Emmy’s heartbreaking voice, her haunting voice, on a record of mine … not to mention a song I authored … I made up these lyrics and SHE’S SINGING THEM! What?! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yep!

And it gets better when you know that, shortly after I moved to Nashville in 1989, I chased her around a Kroger at midnight one night. [Laughs] I came from a place where we didn’t have 24-hour grocery stores. When I got to Nashville, I worked at Opryland, and I got off my shift and needed groceries, so I went to Kroger. I’m buying my stuff and I see this beautiful woman that looks a lot like Emmylou Harris, so I start trailing her a little bit — like eight cart lengths behind her. Chased her down a couple of aisles and finally she turned around and said, “Yes. It’s me.”

[Laughs] Perfect.

[Laughs] I just nodded and turned around and ran the other way. So … 27 years later that she’s singing on a song I wrote … Isn’t that the American dream? Isn’t that what everyone wants?

I read in a Rolling Stone interview where you said, “Who doesn’t want to grow up to be Emmy or Loretta?”

Well, that’s true.

Did she pass along any advice to get you there?

Not directly. But one only has to watch what she’s done. That’s the perfect advice. When Rodney and I made Lifted Off the Ground, that was part of the discussion: I want to be a 55-year-old, 60-year-old woman sitting on a stool with 200 people showing up wherever I decide to play singing songs that I can believably sing. And say something. And feel good about saying something. She’s the gold standard — she and Loretta and Dolly. That’s as good as you get.

And then those crazy Milk Carton Kids … Joe Henry has a relationship with them. It was his idea to make the Bob Dylan song really jump off the page and I think they did magical work on it.

Speaking of … watch what I do here: Same Rolling Stone piece, you talked about how the pronouns in your songs wouldn’t suddenly go gay. But on the Dylan song — “Tomorrow Is a Long Time” — you sang it like he wrote it, which I always appreciate. I hate it when singers flip it so they don’t come off as … whatever. The beauty of storytelling is setting yourself aside and allowing space for listeners to insert themselves into the story. Is that your thinking, too?

First of all, I just love the craft in that sentence. That was really beautiful, a really great couple of sentences that you just spoke there. [Laughs] That is, I think, the beauty of storytelling. If you listen to my last record, there’s nothing on there, except for the song “Like Me,” where it’s clear I’m talking about a woman with whom I’m having a relationship. It’s not clear, in the other songs, if I’m singing as a straight woman or a gay woman. For this record, I’m singing a song called “Mexico” and I’m not singing as me. I’m the waitress in the song.

But, as far as the Bob Dylan song, I didn’t want to change it … for a couple of reasons. Bob Dylan is perfect and how dare I alter anything. But I really loved … it’s so intimate and it’s so truthful for me to say, “If only she was lying next to me, I could lie in my bed once again.” To me, it would’ve felt too cheeky to change it.

It’s interesting, though, isn’t it? Like, Patty Griffin, her pronouns are all over the place and nobody ever brings anything up. But as soon as you or Brandy Clark sing something either way …

The thing about Patty Griffin — which, by the way, when I say her name, I sign the cross on my chest — she was never part of the commercial machine that would dare question something so trivial and small. … Patty is the ultimate … she is the character singer. We don’t know anything about Patty Griffin, the person, really.

No. And she won’t give it up in an interview, either. I can tell you that.

She won’t. That, to me, is just a different way of approaching her art. And, boy, it’s paying dividends for her listeners. We love it, right?

We really do. Talk to me about the difference in feeling you get from impacting someone’s life with your activism or your charitable endeavors versus your music.

That’s another … you’re on fire today!

Thank you!

Without a doubt, receiving a letter or speaking to somebody … I got a beautiful letter today from somebody in Washington state, a young person, that said my book saved their life and my film helped start a repair with their parents. There’s no comparison. That’s it. That’s the most gratifying, the most heart-warming, the most invigorating, humbling thing I can experience.

And you wouldn’t have that platform without the music, so they are really kind of inseparable, in a lot of ways.

That’s a great point. That’s a really great point. There was criticism, when I first came out. I remember seeing a few things. People’s rants about “She did this for attention” … which is ridiculous. I don’t know of anyone … that’s obviously spoken from a straight person. Or people who say, “I didn’t get an award for coming out as straight!”

Yeah, because did their family disown them for that? Did they contemplate suicide for that? Really, guys?!

Right. Yes. When people have been critical, and I don’t hear it so much anymore, but when people have been critical about my coming out publicly the way I did, my feeling is, “I’ll tell you what: You go move to a city, from a podunk Kansas town, with thousands of other people who want the job that you want. You get the publishing deal. You get the record deal. You go on all the radio tours. You do all it takes and work with the record label and bust your tail end and you get a couple of hit records and then you decide what you’re going to do with that.”

I made my decision and it was the best thing I ever did — not just to come out, but to come out the way that I did. I look at my life now … my wife and I are celebrating five years and I just know I wouldn’t be alive, had I stayed in the closet. So, life is good.

 

For more on country singers going Americana, read Kelly’s interview with Wynonna Judd.

Not Charley: A PRIDE Playlist

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In the wake of tragedy, like the senseless killing of 49 people at the Orlando LGBTQ nightclub Pulse on June 12, music is often one of the best sources of comfort and understanding. In songs, we can find hope; we can vent anger; we can be moved to tears. Perhaps most importantly, though, we can find a much-needed sense of community with the simple push of a button.

What happened in Orlando was a direct attack on a gay safe space, a place where people could go to be themselves and be with those they love without fear of judgment or hatred. That the attack took place during Pride month sought to further unravel the very fabric of the gay community, but, as seen in the many vigils, benefits, and gatherings hosted in honor of the attack’s victims over the last week, it accomplished anything but. 

When a specific community is attacked, as was the case with the gay community in Orlando, it becomes especially important to honor that community's cultural touchstones, which is why we put together this playlist of songs that we feel exemplify what it means to celebrate Pride. The playlist shows not only a wide range of takes on what it can mean to make roots music, but also how diversity has become an integral part of roots culture itself. The artists below represent some of the most important LGBTQ voices in roots music, past and present, and we couldn’t be prouder to have them as part of our community here at BGS.

Listen to our Pride playlist below. Support victims of the Orlando attack here. 

Photo credit: tedeytan via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

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