Tag: Little Richard

Ben Sollee’s Renewed ‘Long Haul’ Perspective on Earth, Life, and Music

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Seven years have elapsed between Ben Sollee’s last studio release, his 2017 album with Kentucky Native, and his new one, Long Haul (arriving August 16). Much has happened in Sollee’s life since ‘17. His family has grown by two children. He worked on a number of soundtracks, even winning an Emmy Award in 2018 for his score on the ABC special, Base Ballet. The Kentucky born and based singer/songwriter/cellist, who has long been an advocate for environmental and other social causes, also helped launch a nonprofit named Canopy, which helps businesses in his home state positively impact people, the planet, and the future.

When COVID hit, it hit Sollee hard. “I was one of the early folks to get COVID in fall of 2020 and it stuck with me in a way that didn’t stick with other people.” During his prolonged recovery, he had to change how he ate, what he drank, how he slept, and how he exercised. “It turned into a journey of inward exploration and changing my external life. I really changed pretty much everything… It wasn’t until I started emerging from long haul [COVID], I was like, ‘Oh, I think I’ve got something to say about this.’”

While this album grew out of Sollee’s personal health crisis, it also was greatly affected by the death of his close friend and long-time collaborator, Jordon Ellis, who died by suicide in early 2023.

Always ready to blur genres, Sollee felt more free to expand his sonic palette on Long Haul, which includes a gospel-style choir, a Little Richard-inspired rock ‘n’ roll rave-up, West African rhythms, and Caribbean grooves. He purposely wanted to have lively, rhythmic melodies to balance deeply thoughtful lyrics.

“The same way,” he explained, “That Michael Jackson would have these big statements in the middle of these dance songs.” Sollee also recorded a special Dolby ATMOS Spatial Audio version for this album – a first for him – to underscore Long Haul’s immersive sound quality.

Part of what the title Long Haul refers to is your serious battle with long COVID and it also addresses life as being a long haul. How did the two interrelate for you, personally?

Ben Sollee: [COVID] definitely put me in relationship with my body in a way that I had never been before and once you start that relationship with your body, you realize just how interconnected everything is. I mean, we’re all on this long haul together… and I realized that maybe the most radical thing that I could do was to care for myself. That really shifted how I think of my live performances and really my purpose for being out on the road, [which] is to help people connect with themselves. Because once they connect with themselves, then they can have the capacity to be in relationship with nature, other people, animals, you name it. How I be in the world has shifted. It’s subtle from an external view, but internally it’s pretty profound.

How did this all affect your approach in making this album?

I realized that I had a very exploitative relationship with my creativity over the years, where it was just like: Here’s a project, just make stuff. And that was just really eye-opening.

I took a couple of different approaches in the making of this record. The passing of my friend and musical collaborator, Jordon, in the process of writing this record was really profound, because he was such a keystone to my creative process. It kind of forced me to think about how I was approaching music-making in the record without him.

So, I tried a couple different mantras, and one of them was “follow the resonance.” If it said something to me, I didn’t need to figure out why it said something to me, even if that is Polynesian flute playing or this sort of strange Tejano Caribbean groove – just follow it. In the past, I would kind of hedge; like I would hear something, I’d be really into that sound, but I wouldn’t feel like I could, for whatever reason. Like it’s not part of my cultural heritage. I would come up with a reason to be like, I shouldn’t make music with that sound or influence.

Another mantra was “show our fingerprints.” The way that we recorded the record – it was about hearing the hands and the strings and hearing the breath. I chose instruments that would really feature those human aspects of breath and touch. We incorporated woodwinds, which you can hear prominently on the first single, “Misty Miles.” We incorporated choirs in this record for the first time, because I really wanted that breath and sound. Much of the percussion is hand percussion. It’s a very tactile record… very high touch record.

You produced Long Haul. What was the recording process like?

It was a very intuitive, collective approach, and it meant that not only did the music turn out as a surprise to me and others, but it also meant that it was a very engaged, emotional journey. Adrienne Maree Brown [author of the book, Emergent Strategy] is really the inspiration for this – instead of having a singular artist’s vision, you really bring together a group of people in a facilitated way.

It made me maybe a little bit more brave and confident that wherever things went, we could execute that… I mean, musicians left the sessions crying, because they had such a good time and they felt seen and heard. And that, to me, means as much as the music that came out.

Did your experiences composing film soundtracks serve at all as an influence?

[Film work] also inspired me to explore Atmos. I really wanted this record to be an immersive experience, kind of like a sonic film. In keeping with that, there are a few songs that actually have sound design incorporated into them. It’s the first time I’ve done it in such an intentional and immersive way where we’ve got cars driving by with “Hawk and Crows.”

There is a real stylistic diversity to the sound of this album, like “Under The Spell” is one song with a funky dance groove to it.

[Laughs] I wasn’t trying to make a dance track. It started with that cello lick that you hear at the beginning. And it’s sort of this hypnotic West African loop of a lick that really began as kind of me trying to figure out some old-time banjo, like clawhammer music, on the cello.

The words are referencing this kind of duality… dealing with identity and self and how often we are under the influence of the stories that people tell of us. Every time I have this ambition, desire, and even just like the idea of me having something, it sets me down a path of being unsatisfied, which causes a lot of harm to other people and myself in the world. So, the words can go as deep as somebody wants to, but it’s also if people just want to release and have some sort of existential-like dance experience – then let’s go, let’s dance!

It touches on an evolution that I don’t expect anybody to notice in my music and career. My early records had a lot of direct social and political statements in the song. I realized that they were a little bit superficial and surface-y. They weren’t really getting it to the core of those issues. So, I’ve kind of moved into, I guess what I would call like a “post-activist” stance. My music has moved away from direct political commentary most of the time to more of a foundational, fundamental idea of togetherness, of connectedness.

“One More Day” stands out as a key song too.

I guess the original seed of that song emerged as I was beginning to travel again after Jordon had passed away – to places where he and I had traveled so many times. I started thinking about what would I have said had he called me in that moment of decision before he took his life? But the only thing that I would have really said to him is, “Listen, I hear you, I respect your decision, but what’s the rush? Like, if you’re going to do it, you’re going to do it, but you don’t have to do it right now. Just give it one more day, give it one more sunrise. Just get one last look.”

I think that’s what I would have said to him. And the song makes that case through different vignettes of our time together on the road. And, it does it over this Caribbean, Tejano groove that must have come from some jams that he and I did together. It must have. It just feels like a very Jordon groove. What I love about that is it has this real joyous, almost like early Police kind of vibe to it. There’s some really tough content in there and I just love the idea of people dancing at a festival – and just saying, “Give it one more day.”

The closing song, “When You Gonna Learn,” features a rousing gospel-style choir and addresses following your inner voice. It launches the listener out of the album and into the world in a very uplifting way.

I wanted to end with that message, because as a father I watch my four- and six-year-old who have yet to really settle into a sense of self or identity, and they are just so connected to their world and just basic truths about caring for things and protecting things and love and justice. And I think that it’s just more proof to me that there are things we know that get taught out of us. This song just is like: When are you going to learn that you already know?

You address a lot of tough issues on the album, but do so with a sense of humanism and spirited music that offer a hopeful way out of these challenging times.

I often reflect on that “Pale Blue Dot” image that Voyager took looking back at Earth and it’s just black and there’s just one little, tiny dot. And that dot really says it all, because it’s all there, as Carl Sagan says: every love, every heartbreak, every war, every church, it’s all on that one little dot.

So, we got to make it work here. And I think that’s the biggest challenge that we have right now. How do we make this work? I get that we’re going to make some big mistakes along the way. I sure have in my life. That’s where the grace comes in, but we got to make it work here. We don’t have another spot.

Photos courtesy of Big Hassle.

Brent Cobb Follows the Inspiration of His ‘Southern Star’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Over his entire Grammy-nominated career, Brent Cobb has made no secret of being guided by a “Southern Star” – a rootsy creative beacon shining high above and seeming to point straight down on his South Georgia home.

A native of the Peach state, Cobb has staked a claim on the organic side of country, with acclaimed projects like Shine On a Rainy Day, Providence Canyon, and even the 2022 gospel set, And Now, Let’s Turn to Page…. Each one paints a loving portrait of Southern life, looking far beyond the cliches for inspiration. But with his new album Southern Star, those pictures are more vivid (and more Southern) than ever.

Finding easy-going wisdom and big-picture beauty in the simple minutiae of everyday life, Southern Star is engrossed in all things Georgia. Ten tender tracks were recorded in Macon, using Georgian musicians and embracing the sonic history of the region. That means a warm, humid mix of back-porch country and rural R&B, with funky (but feather soft) bass lines and a casual vocal drawl, as Cobb invites listeners in to his personal world – a world full of unexpected contrasts, and undeniable human wonder.

Speaking with BGS from that South Georgia home on a sunny fall day – perhaps the last one of the lawn-mowing season, he says – the humble and homegrown singer-songwriter explains what makes his Southern Star shine so bright.

Every artist or songwriter goes through phases of how they think about their role. What’s important to you these days?

Brent Cobb: It really hasn’t changed a whole lot. I know that doesn’t sound good, but I always try to still focus on my roots of where I’m from, and I try to still be universally personal, personally universal. … I think there’s something so poetic about specifically the American South and rural life, but also something that if you do it right, anybody anywhere can relate to it. So that’s really what I try to do. I try to make music that my kids can enjoy and that my grandma could enjoy, and everybody in between.

Tell me a little bit about Southern Star, the imagery of that title, specifically. I mean, is this kind of a play on the idea of a North Star guiding you?

Partly, yeah. You always learn growing up, if you get lost out there, you look for the Northern Star, it’ll guide you and give you direction. But I’m from South Georgia, so I look for the Southern Star. [Laughs]  … So partly that. Then there was also my buddy ‘Rowdy’ Jason Cope, who was the founding member of The Steel Woods and played electric guitar for Jamey Johnson from 2008 until 2014 or so. He’s no longer with us [Cope passed away at age 42 in 2021, after suffering “severe complications from diabetes”]. But during those days he lived about 45 minutes outside Nashville, and I’d go down there to his place and we’d go to this little bar and it was a pretty seedy little spot where we’d hang out, it was called the Southern Star.

Plus, I often thought about my buddy as someone who sort of behind the scenes had a lot of influence on a lot of people, but they may not even be aware of it. He never got to be a superstar, but if nothing else he was a Southern star. And I feel that same way about myself sometimes. So there are a couple different meanings behind it. … I miss him every day.

The other part of this album is what seems like a love letter to Georgia – and maybe just the whole region. It can be easy to misunderstand the Southern people and the area, and you’ve called it kind of a melting pot, right? What’s so inspiring to you about Georgia?

I think it’s because, well, first of all the American South as a whole, there would be no music as we know it if not for the American South. And that comes with its blessings and the curses, and it wouldn’t be the same place without those things also. Specifically Macon is the home of Otis Redding and Little Richard, and then you have Ray Charles from right down the road, and then right up the road you got James Brown, and then of course the Allman Brothers. There’s so many endless artists that have influenced the whole world.

But then even just as day-to-day life, where I’m from, every school I went to, we’re all mixed in together down here. We’re living and praying and learning and working all together. It’s easy to be on the outside and look in, and go, ‘Man, the South, what a terrible place.’ And there are some terrible things that still happen to this day, and historically that are terrible, but for the most part we’re all living and working and eating and breathing together. You don’t hear about that side of the South so much. But I think that’s why the music from here is so influencing and so profound – it isn’t just one way. And you got people that obviously have had to struggle and people who still struggle to this day, but that’s where the good shit comes from. That’s where the great art comes from, for better or worse.

I read that this was your first self-produced record. Did it have a different vibe working that way, or did the sound come out any different?

Luckily I was able to use a couple of my friends as guinea pigs, so I got a little comfortable in the producer’s seat [on previous projects]. But more than anything I believe first of all, to make a great album, you need great songs, and then you can record them any way you want to record them. If it’s a great song, it’s a great song no matter what.

… I think the second most important part of making a great album is the drums and percussion. Once you have those two things, you can really leave it at that and it’s going to be great. Folks can sing along and might want to dance a little bit. You’re going to be fine.

Then you need a little funky bass part. And, being from that area of the music I heard my whole life – soul music and gospel music, it all has keys. So I knew I had to have some keys and organ on there. I don’t know that it was much different [from other records], except for this time I had nearly 20 years of experience.

“It’s a Start” is such an interesting track. On the surface, it’s just about simple things. But it seems to kind of point at a bigger truth, right? Where’d that come from?

Well, I appreciate you noticing that, because it’s with intent. I try to do that with most all of my songs – like I said earlier, to make something personal, make it universal. What is the core of that emotion or that experience? And vice versa, universally personal. That song particularly, I wanted to throw everybody off and not give that song a double meaning.

Really, why’s that?

I feel like sometimes I’m stuck in between two worlds. Sometimes I feel like people only think ‘Oh, there’s Brent writing another album about Georgia.’ And then I feel like some people go, ‘What is the deeper meaning here?’ Most of the time there is one for me, but that song is really about nothing and intentionally, it’s about exactly what it says.

People can get real meta about certain songwriters, but I just think that’s a mark of a really good artist.

Yeah I’m not ever complaining as long as anybody’s listening for any reason. I do think it’s funny though. Sometimes I feel like other songwriters may get the benefit of the doubt, like it’ll be a really on-the-nose double meaning, just real obvious that, “Oh, okay, you meant to give it this undercurrent.” Then other songwriters, sometimes I feel like including myself, they do not get that benefit. They only get the doubt. [Laughs]

Call me a simple man – I am. There should always be a little something extra in there if someone’s looking for it. But I also think a songwriter should do their best to craft it so that it can be enjoyed at face value.

“Shade Tree” seems like a fitting way to end things, then. It wraps the record up with a peaceful, soothing scene. Where did that come from?

Well, my sister and I had started that song two years probably before I even knew that I was going to make an album. My sister is such a wonderful singer and she’s got a lot of soul in her voice, but like me, she has a kid. It’s hard to just sit down and write a song together. Well, then I get studio time booked and I wanted to finish that song because I thought it really defined Southern Star as a way of life in the South – there was a pecan tree in my grandma’s backyard, so after church and after Sunday dinner, the whole family would hang out under it in the shade tree. A lot of things happened [under that tree] …

The day before going in the studio, I went over to my sister’s house and I had dropped my kids off at school, and we drank some coffee on her back porch amongst some pine trees. Then my wife, she threw in some lines and it became a family affair. And yeah, it seemed fitting.

The whole thing seems like it has so much personal meaning. What do you hope people take away from this one?

More than anything I always hope, like I’ve said, that it’s universally personal. I hope that anybody will be able to take away from it whatever they feel. And if nothing else, I hope they can just enjoy it in the background.

Photo Credit: Jace Kartye

The Show on the Road – Low Cut Connie

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

This week, we call in to Philadelphia for a conversation with the highly-theatrical pianist and tireless, much-adored performer Adam Weiner, who for the last decade has gained a cult following around the world fronting his soulful bizarro-rock outfit, Low Cut Connie.


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Some artists have retreated into obscurity during the pandemic shut-down, some have turned lemons into personalized, livestream lemonade. But Adam Weiner took it to another level when he launched his often twice-weekly vaudevillian interactive web show “Tough Cookies” in March. Charging around his small home stage like a schvitzing piano preacher, often losing clothing along the way, Adam has learned nearly six hundred covers in the last eight months alone — from Barry Manilow to Cardi B’s “WAP” to Macho Man to an entire Little Richard set, which he performed to honor his hero after his passing. He then interviews anyone from Beyonce’s dad to members of Sly and the Family Stone. In short, it’s a rollercoaster every week — one that you kind of have to watch to believe.

Alongside his 2020 LP Private Lives, Low Cut Connie’s heartfelt and sweat-dripping sets have gained Weiner some famous supporters: Elton John for one, fellow New Jersey-born hero Bruce Springsteen for another. Up-and-coming playlist presenter Barack Obama unexpectedly placed Low Cut Connie’s defiant cabaret rocker, “Boozophilia,” on his must-listen list. Indeed, this taping, which often showed Adam jumping from his piano to his guitar to play favorites (like the Kinks-esque, “Revolution Rock N Roll”) initially had to be delayed so he could play an inauguration event for new president and Philly-piano lover Joe Biden.

While Weiner is basking in some much-earned attention, it hasn’t always been an easy road. He readily admits to scraping by on side jobs into his mid-thirties, for years playing around dim New York City piano bars as his sequined alter-ego, Ladyfingers. If Low Cut Connie has learned anything during this strange era, it’s that people desperately still need live music. In all its spur-of-the-moment, sweaty glory. One of the more moving stories he tells is seeing groups of nurses in beleaguered hospitals taking a much needed break to watch his livestreams. Much like his role model and patron Elton John, Low Cut Connie’s songs can leap from intimate folk-rock to greasy soul to bombastic musical theater and back with ease and his relentless spontaneity keeps fans waiting for that he will do next.

Photo credit: Skylar Watkins

BGS 5+5: Paul Burch

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Paul Burch
Hometown: Currently Nashville, Tennessee. I was born in Washington, D.C.
Latest album: Light Sensitive
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): The members of Lambchop call me WP

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan and Hank Williams were the twin Apollos of songwriting in my youth. And I loved the fearlessness of Roger Miller. Elvis Presley — when inspired — gave his audience his soul. But the four writers who most echo my temperament and drove me to compose are Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson, John Prine, and Sam Cooke.

Smokey has a gift for literacy. “I Second That Emotion.” John, like Hank Williams, had the gift for sincerity. The taller the tale, the greater the parable. John was seldom at the center of his songs so much as caught up in the center. He could be both in the story and above it. Sam was easy on the ears. “Cupid.” “Having a Party.” “A Change Is Gonna Come.” A Sam Cooke title was exactly what the song was about. By all accounts he was a man of sharp intelligence, a true believer in decency, a hater of bullshit, and a fan of all kinds of music. Chuck could make the past contemporary and the here-and-now heroic. “Johnny B. Goode” is like a film coming into focus — so much detail delivered in less than 20 seconds. “Deep down in Louisiana close to New Orleans / way back up in the woods among the evergreens / there stood a log cabin made of earth and wood / where lived a country boy named Johnny B. Goode.”

All of these writers feel like my relatives. Something bubbles inside me when I hear them. All four had a touch of melancholy which they employed to remind you to keep having that party. Chuck is the poet of rock ‘n’ roll. Smokey is the poet of time and place. John was Jimmie Rodgers crossed with Mark Twain and inspired Sam Phillips to come out of retirement. And Sam — well — Sam was Mr. Soul.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I was playing on my own in a bar in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, one Saturday night. It was about 90 degrees at midnight. All I had was a microphone and an electric guitar and a little 15-watt amp. To try to keep the show dynamic, I kept a tick-tack rhythm on the bass strings when I sang and then added loud accents in between the verses. There were about 10 couples or so dancing in front of me and I could hear the scrape of their shoes on the dance floor.

I thought to myself: “This must have been what Charley Patton heard when he played a dance — the sound of the dancer’s shoes on the floor.” It was so wonderful to think I was doing well enough with what little I had that I could keep them dancing. It made me appreciate that audiences are willing to meet you more than halfway. The intensity of what you’re doing is more important than volume.

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

I get dreamy over paintings and great photography. I love the photography that Sheila Sachs and Catie Baumer Schwalb took for Light Sensitive.

Film noir is great for a sense of place and for the dialogue. So much had to be conveyed by gesture or innuendo. It was years before I realized that when Ilsa goes to see Rick in Casablanca for the letters of transit, the spotlight tells you they made love one last time. Every time I see it, the ending feels different. I used to think he gave her away. But then you remember Rick said he doesn’t deal in buying and selling people — and that extended to love, too. Now I see that Ilsa was always going to be trouble. She was right for Paris, just nowhere else. And life can never just be about Paris. Even if you live in Paris.

Also, in a film — like in songs — everybody has a job. The cab driver is important when you need that cab. Lately, I’ve been paying close attention to plays and musicals, listening for the rhythm and syncopation in dialogue. Frank Loesser’s songs for Guys and Dolls are spectacular. “I got horse right here / his name is Paul Revere…can do!” Louis Jordan’s songs sounds like musicals to my ear. I’m always on the hunt for an idea. I’m a flint and life is a white-tipped match.

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

If I’m recording, I love walking into a studio with a fresh reel of tape under my arm, knowing that when I walk out the door, we will have created something that didn’t exist on Earth a few hours before. When I perform, I take time to walk all around the venue to get an idea of what the show will feel like from every vantage point. I like to talk to the sound engineer — usually someone I’ve never met — to get an idea what their job is like, if it’s a hard venue to deal with.

I ask them if they think the sound in the venue will respond to the kind of show I want to do. I try to make them feel like it’s our performance, not mine. Before the show, I think about my favorite people and my favorite performers. I’ll often write old friends just before a show — “How ya doin?” — just to demystify the whole thing. Other than having a new song in your pocket, there are few better feelings than walking on a stage at the beginning of a show.

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

I often imagine a perfect day of music would be some kind of outdoor event with a pile of fried catfish, margaritas, and then a show at twilight with a great lineup of the WPA Ballclub. In reality, outdoor shows are usually a drag. Bugs, bad sound, the drummer falls into the generator. I do think loud guitars and BBQ go together pretty well.

I used to stare at a photo of Little Richard playing at Wrigley Field with his band in the ’50s and thought it was the perfect gig. It must have been hot because the band were all wearing plaid shorts. Now that I’m older, I realize they were probably miserable — with an out-of-tune piano, distorted amps, and a lousy PA. But you know that first beer and smoke after the show must have been delicious.

As for a particular musician and food pairing, I hear that in the 1930s, all the jazz joints served Chinese food. If I could have seen Charlie Christian play guitar or heard Billie Holiday sing in a little joint with Teddy Wilson on piano over a hot plate of home-cooked crispy duck, I would have been very happy.

Photo credit: Emily Beaver