Tag: mandolin

With ‘Arm in Arm,’ Steep Canyon Rangers Give Everyone Time to Shine (Part 2 of 2)

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Steep Canyon Rangers’ Arm in Arm, their first collection of all-new material in two years, is a set of highly grown-up songs, some with storylines that you’d expect from the likes of Drive-By Truckers or Bruce Springsteen. It’s more loose-limbed and less traditional than past Rangers albums, with fine ensemble playing throughout.

BGS caught up with co-leaders Woody Platt and Graham Sharp in separate conversations leading up to the release of Arm in Arm. After starting with Platt yesterday, here is the conversation with Sharp.

BGS: With the band off the road, have you been able to do any songwriting during this time?

Sharp: I started off writing on a real tear the first few months. But then I slacked off a bit, in part because that coincided with me starting to make an album of my own. Switching from writing to recording slowed down that end of it, but working on my own stuff is kind of out of necessity. For the band to survive this and come back when it’s time, we’ve all got to look out for ourselves a little more.

It’s a strange new hustle, but we’re holding up pretty good. We’ve all been forced to sort of pivot, after having not stopped moving in 20 years. This is the longest any of us have stayed put that whole time. It takes a moment to settle, but it’s been eye-opening. Forced me into some new directions that have been good and ought to pay dividends once we can get the band back together. I’m trying to pull out as many silver linings as I can.

That’s a bit of news, about the solo album. What can you tell us about that?

I don’t know where or when it will ever come out, but the solo album is close to done. I’ve been working with Seth Kaufman from Floating Action in his little basement studio here in Black Mountain. It’s mostly new songs, and a handful of tunes the Rangers have been kicking around a while without getting to them. Nothing bluegrassy about it, mostly country to country-soul, because I have definite tendencies in that direction and a deep love for country music of the ’60s, ’70s, ’50s. That’s still among my favorites.

After Charles Humphreys III left the Rangers in 2017, this is the first album where you’ve written all the songs, not just most of them. Was there more pressure on you?

Not necessarily. It did not change my process much, anyway. I always just try to compile as much good material as I can. It is neat that with a band as organic as this one, a song can kick around for years where we’ll never find a place for it and then suddenly it’s revived. The last song on the album “Crystal Ship” was like that. I had that one for a long time and then backstage one day, [Mike] Ashworth just started playing that melody because he remembered it from a year or two earlier. It’s cool to have the band’s collective memory to draw on, where everybody is part of the process.

The first song “One Drop of Rain” is another. I probably wrote that one six or seven years ago and I’d just never taken the time to find the right groove and place for it. Then one night Woody and I were backstage, I had this little banjo roll, he had the phrasing to go with that and we put it together. A lot of songs come together over time like that. The process is more cumulative than me bringing something in, “Hey, I’ve got this new song.”

Do you have any particular favorite songs on this one?

Probably “One Drop of Rain” and “Honey on My Tongue,” for different reasons. I can remember exactly where I was and the situation I was trying to capture with “One Drop,” just shortly after my father-in-law had died very unexpectedly — 64 years old. What it gets at for me is, try to love your way through the hardest situations. And “Honey” is one I wrote with my daughter in mind. She was giving me a hard time, saying I never write songs for her — not true! But yeah, okay, that was written specifically for her. There are several songs about resilience, dealing with loss, setbacks. All to different degrees, tied to different moments in time.

This record sounds very, dare I say it, mature and grown up.

Well, we’re all passing into the point in our lives where we see a lot of past decisions come to fruition as everyone’s lives play out, our own as well as others. That perspective figures into it. As a songwriter, I’m maturing and trying to hone in on the emotional center of a song – and trying not to write about fluff. We were all very aware while making this album that a lot of the songs aren’t necessarily sad, but a little bit heavier.

And on this record, you’ve also got the first lead vocal from new bassist Barrett Smith.

It’s been cool, having him take on a bigger vocal role. With Woody or myself, it’s just us singing songs at this point. But with Barrett, there’s this ability to tailor songs to a new voice in the band. The song he sings, “Everything You Know,” we talked through the lyrics and the story. Woody and I have always done that, gone through songs in detail. Although sometimes, I don’t necessarily want to influence the pictures anybody else sees in their head while singing.

Once a song is written and out there, it belongs as much to the listener as the singer or the writer. Sometimes they come up with something different, too. “Can’t Get Home” from the last record, Woody thought I wrote that for soldiers coming home and he wasn’t the only one. I had not necessarily meant it that way, but I talked to enough other people about it that it kind of changed the song’s meaning for me, which was cool.

Did taking on the production yourself make Arm in Arm more collaborative than past albums?

I feel like what we do on stage is try to give everybody in the band moments to shine while keeping things moving. Producing this record ourselves was like that, more so than us playing while someone else producers. There are songs where I remember, so and so arranged this part, so and so suggested this harmony, so and so came up with the idea for this mix. So many different pieces where I can see everybody’s fingerprints. I’m proud of that.

I’m just psyched to have something to roll out into the world, reach out a little bit. You know, it’s not the best time to be releasing a record because we can’t tour. So I hope this will reach and touch people. I’m definitely prouder of this record than anything we’ve ever done.

Read part one of our Steep Canyon Rangers Artist of the Month interviews here.

Editor’s Note: David Menconi’s Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Popular Music, from Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk will be published in October by University of North Carolina Press.

Photo credit: David Simchock

New Grass Revival: Four Members Look Back on Their ’80s Albums (Part 2 of 2)

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A beloved band that was perhaps ahead of its time, New Grass Revival will be inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame during the IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards on October 1. In the second half of our oral history with New Grass Revival, we hear from band members Sam Bush, John Cowan, Béla Fleck and Pat Flynn. Read the first half of the interview, which is part of our celebration of the 75th anniversary of bluegrass.

In 1981, founding members Courtney Johnson (who died in 1996) and Curtis Burch left the band after a long tour with rock ‘n’ roll star Leon Russell. As a result, New Grass Revival began its newest incarnation with Béla Fleck and Pat Flynn.

Sam Bush: Courtney and Curtis were older than me and John and they were just burned out. We had worked harder on the road with Leon than we’d ever worked in our lives.

Pat Flynn: New Grass Revival had established a following on the circuit in the late ’70s, but Leon Russell had sucked them into his orbit and taken them away from the bluegrass world. So by the time that band [lineup] broke up, they really had to start over.

SB: I had met Béla in a band he played in called Tasty Licks, and Béla had hired me as the fiddler on his first album, Crossing the Tracks.

PF: Béla was a smart kid. He thought, “If I’m going to come out with a solo album and nobody knows who I am, why don’t I hire high-profile people to play on it?” That’s a smart move!

Béla Fleck: I liked the original band when I heard it, but I admit I was attracted to smoother and jazzier stuff at the time. I have matured a bit since then and now I am a huge fan of the early band, their bravery and iconoclastic spirit, and a poetic expression of their time and place. They were committed to the moment and improvising, and taking the music to a new place that resonated with a lot of folks who loved bluegrass, but it didn’t totally represent them.

SB: Pat and his friend Scott Myers had opened for New Grass Revival on the Colorado tours we did. We loved his guitar playing because it wasn’t like the bluegrass players. He was a rock electric guitar player that could do it on acoustic.

PF: I’d moved from Los Angeles to Aspen, Colorado, and got to know the band at Telluride. Sam had a hand in writing some songs, but they really didn’t have an in-house songwriter. I had always written songs for the bands I was in. And Béla brought a unique and original instrumental vision. So all of a sudden you had two new people that could supply original material.

SB: They were the two musicians who could bring the next step of another sound for us. I called Garth [Fundis, the band’s producer] and said, “You’ve got to come hear these new pickers we’ve got, this is something, this is really good.” I knew it was too hot for me to handle — I didn’t feel I was qualified to produce the four of us. We needed another ear, an outside opinion, because we had so many ideas between the four of us.

PF: On the Boulevard was the first album we released in the US, but we’d done a live album in France almost a full year prior. Technically Live in Toulouse was the first album we made as a new band.

JC: We’re playing like a well-oiled machine; it’s really a good record. It has one of Sam’s instrumentals on there called “Sapporo” that might be 11 minutes long!

SB: The idea of “Sapporo” started when the band went to Japan for the first time. It was my favorite city over there; it was also my favorite beer. A mandolin player over there taught me a five-note Japanese scale and that is a recurring riff you hear us play as we jam.

JC: The first year we were together with Béla and Pat, the energy and the love and everything was way up, confidence was high. And On the Boulevard is one of my favorites. There’s no drums, it’s just the four of us.

PF: It was very fresh. I remember the recording sessions at Jack’s Tracks studio in Nashville. We had a decent budget from Sugar Hill, enough to record comfortably and take our time. I experimented with different guitars and arrangements. We were able to bring the music into the magnifying glass of a studio and really look at it in depth.

JC: The dynamic of the band had changed so much, because Béla was already miles ahead of everybody in terms of his ability to play. He practiced all the time. In the old band, I was in charge of shoveling coal into the engine and Sam was flying around on top painting whatever picture he wanted to paint. Courtney and Curtis, they were kind of like myself, advanced support players. But now you’ve got two other players who can play at the same level of Sam. So we could take this train anywhere. We could get off the tracks.

PF: I had brought some songs with me to the band and I was very happy with “On the Boulevard.” I had written it prior to joining. It was pretty much autobiographical. I’d been living in Thousand Oaks, California, and there’s a boulevard that runs through the middle of the Valley, and as I watched it from the window it was like its own little world, a parade of passing people. It was one of the earliest things we worked out.

SB: My songwriting partner Steve Brines had died a sudden death of a heart ailment he didn’t know he had. So Steve was gone and I was still writing instrumentals, but I lost my enthusiasm for songwriting.

PF: I was especially happy with “One of These Trains,” the way the material came out, and the band took to it so naturally. I was encouraged that I was in the right place with the right people. I loved Sam’s instrumental “Indian Hills,” and John did a great blues number called “Just Is.” We were discovering each other’s powers and personalities as musicians and friends. I remember it very fondly. We were struggling for employment to connect with the old fans and that album was a big help — when it came out, we created a pretty big buzz.

SB: Toni Foglesong told her husband Jim, who was the president of Capitol Records Nashville, “I heard a band that makes a sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before.” So, Jim came to hear us and he said, “I want you guys to record. I don’t know how we’re going to sell you but I want you to be yourselves.”

Two studio albums followed: New Grass Revival in 1986, and Hold to a Dream in 1987.

SB: Every time new people joined, we encouraged them to bring their influences into the music. When Pat joined he was influenced by those Southern Californian songwriters like Jackson Browne, and the country-rock Telecaster picking he knew. One song where I specifically hear Pat’s southern rock influence is “In the Middle of the Night,” on the ’86 album.

PF: I was very involved in the country-rock sound like the Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers and the songs I wrote were well-fitted for a bluegrass approach. I didn’t have to make adjustments musically or lyrically, just in the area of arrangements. I had to make sure the songs I wrote had great solo spots for the instrumentalists and I had to fit the songs to whoever was singing, either John or Sam. So I started to instinctively shape my material where there was plenty of room for improvisational playing and also good range of vocals for those two.

BF: This band was full of guys with very different musical influences. If you didn’t want to be challenged, it was the wrong place for you. Some folks surround themselves with people that love all the same stuff they do, and that can work too. But in New Grass Revival, we were all into different stuff, which we brought to the band to see if we could get our favorite stuff included.

SB: Béla is a jazz player and when he came in his favorite musician was Chick Corea. I had his records, but they didn’t make so much sense to me until then.

BF: I think my interest in jazz gave me some cool tools to work with in a bluegrass context. I wrote a tune called “Metric Lips” [on Hold to a Dream], which was partly in jig time. I feel like that main melody had some Chick Corea influence. Sam was highly influenced by John McLaughlin and his great bands. One of them was Shakti, a collaboration with Indian musicians. This seemed to encourage his interest and ability in odd meters, which I also was quite fond of exploring. So if you look at “Metric Lips,” you have Irish music, Indian music, and fusion jazz represented, along with some raging bluegrass. It’s puzzling that it actually works, but in my opinion, it does.

PF: When you’re in a bluegrass band, it’s blend or die! You’re cramped inside a van together and you’re sleeping feet to nose. You’re in a very confined space together more than you are with your significant others back at home.

JC: We called our bus The Bread Truck. We’d bought it from a dry cleaning business. It wasn’t like the 36-footers I had in the Doobie Brothers; it was less than half of that, closer to a van.

PF: John slept half the time, I would be reading a book or writing a song, Sam would be listening to reggae or some weird eclectic thing, Béla was always fiddling with a new tune.

BF: For me it’s the intention and commitment to the ideas that make them work in this band. The same ideas might not work for a band that didn’t play so confidently. Of course we loved bluegrass and that was the common denominator. Each guy also played with a savage fervor or intensity, and perhaps that was another denominator.

PF: We could really charge each other up with the solos. We admired each other, and when somebody threw a flaming ball out there it would be a challenge. And in that exchange, gosh, we became so much better players. I remember listening back to tapes and thinking I lifted myself up and above myself. We all did.

BF: The new band with me and Pat was a somewhat cleaned-up version of the band. We still improvised and pushed hard, but we also were going for a supercharged, seamless tightness.

PF: The thing I remember that we developed between the first two albums was a hardcore consistency. We could turn it on and it would just come on full-bore despite whether or not there was a good sound system or the weather was bad or the crowd was sluggish. We could always count on each other to present a united front. There were no weak links. We just locked into that energy and never lost it.

BF: And we made singles for country radio, which is hard to imagine the early group doing.

SB: We knew we were going into a country market, but I think there’s a misconception that Capitol Records changed us, when in fact the change came from us. We were the ones that said, “We’ll try this song,” and maybe we wouldn’t have tried it in the past.

BF: We were still too out there for it to work, but we were trying to take the music closer into the mainstream, and that was bringing a lot of new people into the scene and showing them what bluegrass could produce.

PF: We would laugh about that in a sad way. The jocks would come to us and say, “I love your stuff, I listen to it at home,” and we’d say, “What about playing it on air?!” They’d say “Yeah, but it’s bluegrass….” We finally got “Callin’ Baton Rouge” into the top 40 which opened up a lot of shows and airplay for us. But we ended up disbanding before we could really bring that home.

SB: For our last album, Friday Night in America, Wendy Waldman became our producer and we really tried all kind of things on that. It’s hard for an athlete to know when to stop, but I really think our last record might be our best one.

PF: I saw a deepening musically. John’s vocals had got better and better, but he also doesn’t get the props for his bass playing. He was a terrific player — listen to his work on Friday Night in America, see how he connected the melodies, the tone he got and the way he tied together the four instruments. They would get noticed, but the glue was John.

SB: John and I had been together 15 years and we were burned out. We lived on the road and I was suffering responsibility overload. And we couldn’t possibly accommodate all that Béla was writing, the type of tunes he was writing. I physically couldn’t play them and neither could the rest of us! We all loved each other, but it was time for him to go on, he needed to express himself. Because at that point it’s not about making money, it’s about musical happiness and your satisfaction.

PF: We’d got together in 1981, and we played our last job as a band on New Year’s Eve, the last day of 1989. We were opening for the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum, 10,000 people inside and 5,000 outside. That night was particularly memorable — on the right side of the stage sitting nearest Béla was Bonnie Raitt, on the left side, near to me, was Jane Fonda — and I’d always thought what a shame we didn’t release that. Years later someone walked up to me and said, “Remember when you guys opened for the Dead?” I said yes. He said, “Have you got a copy of that set?” I said no. He said, “Do you want one?” A tape of our concert had leaked out among the Dead fans. I contacted a friend at Capitol Records and then that set was remastered and released on a two-CD set called Grass Roots, which has stuff you wouldn’t find on our records. It had its rough spots as a live tape, but you’ll hear that energy and visceral connection we had with each other on stage, you sure will.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our New Grass Revival Bluegrass 75 feature.)

 

Bluegrass Turns 75

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We’re taking a different approach to the Artist of the Month concept this September, as we acknowledge the upcoming 75th anniversary of bluegrass music. Many historians consider its origin to be that December night in 1945, as bandleader and mandolin master Bill Monroe established guitarist Lester Flatt and banjo picker Earl Scruggs as part of the Blue Grass Boys lineup during a Grand Ole Opry show at the Ryman Auditorium. At that pivotal moment, a new American art form was born.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BzLtd0NAoJE/

Although bluegrass is unquestionably rich in history, it is still evolving to this day. In an effort to cover all the decades since then, BGS will offer five posts this month about the evolution of bluegrass, from that indispensable first generation to the newest class of talented pickers. [Read about the first generation.] [Read about Rodney Dillard and the Dillards.] [Read part one of our New Grass Revival oral history. Read part two here.] [Read about 10 women who made bluegrass better in the ’80s and ’90s.] [Listen to our 21st Century Bluegrass playlist.]

Our staff has also collected our personal favorites from the immense bluegrass canon in the playlist below. We owe a lot to Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and all the musicians who have led us to this milestone, and we’re proud to reveal our theme this month as Bluegrass 75.

 

Interviewed by His Daughter, Mac McAnally Recounts a ‘Lifetime’ in Music

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Mac McAnally is a highly-decorated and prolific multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter, and artist. He tours with Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band, plays on countless sessions in Nashville and Muscle Shoals, and produces a number of independent artists, too. But more important to me, he’s my dad. And he’s a great one. On the occasion of the release of his new album, Once in a Lifetime, we discuss guitars, bluegrass, moments of social change, why he covered a Beatles song, and the process of making this record amidst a pandemic. And though I get to talk to him most days of my life, it is heartening to hear him put a fine point on his eternal optimism.

BGS: Growing up, music was constant in the house and one of the most pervasive cover songs you played was “Norwegian Wood.” What do you think it is about that song that sticks in your craw and drew you to record it?

Mac McAnally: As you know, I’ve always loved that song. In the very first line, from a lyric standpoint, “I once had a girl/Or should I say/She once had me,” you can tell any story in the world after that. That is something that I subconsciously try to do and have since the beginning.

Specifically, why I recorded it is because I bought an octave mandolin about four years ago. I did a show with Sarah Jarosz and she had one and let me play it and I thought, “I am going to have to get me one of these.” I always feel like I have to do something to justify the purchase so I play it on as many sessions as I can to try to amortize the cost, but I also came up with this new way to play it that is kind of a cool arrangement that I’ve never heard. I don’t in any way challenge the Beatles version and don’t mean any disrespect; I’m trying to find ways to justify the guilt of buying an octave mandolin.

On almost every record that you’ve made there’s a nod to bluegrass, like “Brand New Broken Heart” on this record. Who are some of your biggest bluegrass influences?

I have to preface this by saying I am a bluegrass fan, I am not a bluegrass player. Anything that I might be doing would just be trying to pay homage to what the greats can do. I’ve gotten to play with some of them, which I count high among the blessings of my life. When I wrote “Brand New Broken Heart,” I envisioned I would someday pitch it to Ricky Skaggs or Dailey & Vincent. I recorded it because I was a lazy song plugger who never pitched it to anybody.

Doc Watson was one of mine and my dad’s heroes. He was sort of my intro to real bluegrass. And all the way through my life, Emmylou Harris. We played her songs in bands when I was a teenager. Bryan Sutton is just frighteningly good. I can’t even fathom what he is doing, let alone try to do it myself. He inspires me to go get a pick out and play differently than I play because I love so much of what he does. And I’m crazy about I’m With Her.

What brought about recording “Changing Channels” for this record?

I have always loved that song. It is the second song that Jimmy (Buffett) and I wrote together. We wrote it in one my favorite places I have ever been. He had a spot down in Thomasville, Georgia, with a big porch. As you know I’m a porch guy. We sat out on the porch and wrote that song. He did a great version of it on Off the See the Lizard and I honestly never imagined myself cutting it but I love to play it. It has worked its way into my shows over the last ten years and his fan base will come up after and ask which one of my records the song is on. They had cash out trying to buy it and I don’t have it. You know better than anybody how terrible of a businessman I am, but eventually enough people tried to buy a version of it that I listened.

You have collected a lot of guitars, and in various ways: some saved from landfills, some gifted, some cast for you by friends and colleagues. How do you pick which guitars make your records?

It is certainly not an exact science but sometimes it is the guitar that the song came out of. The main thing that has always made me select guitars is if I think they have songs in them. I would happen to be holding them and a couple of my stories got mashed with them. In more cases than not, if I wrote a song on a guitar, that’s the one I’ll record. You end up learning over the years. In the same way when you are photographing someone, you learn what the best side of their face is. … A Gibson with dead strings is an awesome rock ‘n’ roll rhythm guitar. A Martin with new strings is an awesome fingerpicking guitar.

We are in a moment of social change. Music has the power to both inspire and record change. You moved to the Shoals in the ‘70s. Thinking back on those early days in the studio, what was it like in those moments?

Playing music in Muscle Shoals was extremely encouraging from the standpoint of equality. They didn’t really think of it in terms of race. Music transcended that. And I love that. And I still love that. I’m standing in Muscle Shoals right now proud to be part of that. You can be encouraged on some levels and discouraged on some levels and I am both of those things. I haven’t in my life ever thought that I was better or worse than anybody else and I look forward to that being a more prevalent vantage point for everyone.

I want to challenge you on that a bit. One of your dear friends and longtime collaborators, Ralph MacDonald, told you that he never felt comfortable coming to Muscle Shoals and we’ve heard from more folks that it wasn’t an inviting place to come collaborate, so a lot of those musicians opted for Detroit or Miami. With that added perspective, does it make you feel differently about the time?

Absolutely, it makes me more aware of the context. As I said, Muscle Shoals would have been advanced in terms of racial relations in the music community in the South. As I look back now, I realize that doesn’t mean it was great. It was just better relative to the surroundings.

Ralph and I, we were like brothers. He told me he would’ve been scared to death of a big red-headed dude from Mississippi. And he was a Black man from Harlem. I could not have imagined that we would connect on as many levels as we did. We both had misconceptions that got better. He was one of my heroes. He was one of the best percussionists that ever played. And I loved him. It is hard to get into racial discussions without stirring stuff up. But we made each other better. Music is one of the best ways to bridge across preconceptions. I think it’ll play a big part of getting us the rest of the way home. ‘Cause we ain’t there yet.

Stirring stuff up is the way we make progress.

That’s true and they are not easy discussions. I don’t think of myself as someone with prejudices, but when I think back, some of the things I laughed at growing up as a kid in Mississippi I’m embarrassed of. And I was mainly laughing because everyone around me was laughing, but when I think of what it was we were laughing at, it is embarrassing. I don’t really want to talk about it, I just want to be a better person, because I know it was wrong. But you are right. Talking about it is better. Air it out.

What does it feel like to release an album in a pandemic?

Well, not speaking ill of either thing, but I hope it is a one-time thing. I hope I never have to try to beat a pandemic album with a second pandemic album. My records are normally made in what I call “the cracks of time.” I make them in the cracks of my schedule because I work full-time as a Coral Reefer, a fair amount of time as a session musician for other people, writing songs for other people and producing other folks. But because of the circumstance of this record, it is really special to me because I got to sit and think about what I felt was important and what was not. I wouldn’t wish a pandemic on the world just to get extra time to make my record. I think maybe next time I’ll just take the time on my own.

Even in your darkest lyrics, there is a balance that shows your shining optimism. We are surrounded by a heavy dose of dark right now. Are you feeling optimistic?

Absolutely. I absolutely am. I wish we weren’t where we are right now and that everyone could see that it is better to find a way to coexist than it is to hate one another. I’m not someone who has any room for hate. As you recall, I don’t even like the word. I’ve probably pestered you about it for your entire life. Actual hate hurts me. We’ve been celebrating the life of John Lewis the last few weeks and John is a great example of figuring out a way to make it better by not hating the people who hated him. I think things are going to get better and I intend to try to help.

Erin McAnally is a regular contributor to The Bluegrass Situation

Photo Credit: Jeff Fasano

WATCH: The Foreign Landers, “Put All Your Troubles Away”

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Artist: The Foreign Landers
Hometown: Split between Co. Armagh in Northern Ireland and South Carolina at the moment.
Single: “Put All Your Troubles Away”
Release Date: August 24, 2020

In Their Words: “Since we’ve known each other, Tabitha and I have had a foot in two different worlds — Tabitha being from Northern Ireland and myself having grown up in the States. During the past five months we’ve finally had the time and space to make some music together and to try to combine our backgrounds to create something different. The result is a new project that we’re calling The Foreign Landers. This is a song with a very timely message from John Hartford, and it will be the title track from our forthcoming EP to be released later this year. Be on the lookout for more singles soon.” — Tabitha and David Benedict, The Foreign Landers

Photo credit: Tabitha and David Benedict

LISTEN: Bella White, “All I Gave to You”

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Artist: Bella White
Hometown: Calgary, Alberta, Canada; now living in Nashville
Song: “All I Gave to You”
Album: Just Like Leaving
Release Date: September 25, 2020

In Their Words: “‘All I Gave To You’ feels explicitly gentle to me. However, underneath all that sweetness, there is definitely a tinge of heat. A little fire burning in 18-year-old Bella. I wrote it about being far away from something that I wanted so badly and for all I know, irrationally. A puppy love interest. It talks about wanting to be wanted, or better yet wondering if you’re wanted… a common theme in songwriting. Something I believe to be extremely human. Wanting to feel revered and liked. Especially by those that you’re fond of. In retrospect, I wrote ‘All I Gave To You’ when I was 18 and liked a boy, wasn’t sure if he liked me back, and then tried to be a poet about it.” — Bella White

Photo credit: Sheena Zillinski

BGS 5+5: Twisted Pine

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Artist: Twisted Pine
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Latest album: Right Now (August 14, 2020)
Personal nicknames: Kathleen Parks is KP or Kat. Dan Bui is Fireball or Bu Nasty. Anh Phung is Lil Phungus. Chris Sartori is Moose.

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

I would definitely say dance has had a big influence on how I hear, feel, and listen to music. I started out as an Irish dancer before I picked up the violin and I studied dance up until the year before I had to pick what kind of art school I would apply for. Would I study music or dance? I guess you can figure out the outcome, but I’m thankful to have studied it for so long because it definitely has influenced my groove, and feel. Anh is a great dancer too! Who knows, maybe one of these days we’ll work up some moves for a TWP set! — Kat

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

I grew up with classical music lessons: first on piano and then violin. I wasn’t super passionate about it, but I didn’t hate it either. One Saturday, I happened to see Sam Bush playing on PBS, and knew I wanted a mandolin. As soon as I got it, a Fender A-Style with a pickup, a couple of friends came over with drums and electric bass. We jammed for hours and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a musician. — Dan

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

There’s obviously too many to choose from but maybe one of the more ridiculous ones was a 5 minute appearance in a choir singing “B*tches Ain’t Sh*t” by Dr. Dre on the “Just for a Laughs” live television special, “XXX: The Nasty Show,” accompanied by Ben Folds and hosted by Bob Saget. What a hoot! — Anh

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

I would take Prince to the Highland Kitchen in Somerville (Mass.) for brunch. We have a shared passion for breakfast; I wonder what he would think about their pancakes (they are the best ever). — Chris

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

Growing up in New York’s Hudson Valley I had pretty direct access to little mountains, trails, and the Hudson River. I always feel grounded after going for a hike, and being able to view a sunset, and a clear night sky really seems to impact my lyrics and how I get musically inspired. What I love most is when the band can stay in a cabin during tour, I feel cozy and comfy and I love being able to hear the sound of crickets nearby. That’s the stuff! — Kat

Photo credit: Joanna Chattman

From Goat Rodeo to Songs of Comfort, Yo-Yo Ma Believes Music Builds Bridges

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The world’s most famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma is spending the pandemic at home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his family. It has been a situation that he describes, rather humorously, as being an adjustment for everyone. “Two-thirds of my marriage has been on the road. Forty-two years and suddenly my wife sees me home every night, and every day and every morning.”

Yet he says the experience has been a real blessing, too. “All the tensions of being home and preparing to leave, or coming back home to recuperate and then leave again, are all gone,” he explains by phone, before adding “replaced by, of course, the incredible fractures and ruptures in our society.”

Besides pondering a “tsunami of crises,” Ma talks about the joys of getting the band back together — a lineup informally known as Goat Rodeo, which also encompasses Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile, and special guest Aoife O’Donovan. This Artist of the Month interview is the fourth of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians behind the ensemble’s second project, Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

BGS: Like the first album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo was recorded at James Taylor’s studio in the Berkshires. Was there a comfort level about returning there?

Totally. The studio is aesthetically beautiful. It is right there in the middle of the Berkshires, the middle of the woods, and it’s a barn that has been built for that reason. We work hard. We play hard. And going back to it is fabulous because everybody in the band is so busy. So, just to get the time from their busy lives to get together is a feat, but when we get together, it feels like we never left. So, add to the great acoustics and the set-up of the barn, another added feeling of “the band is getting back together again.”

Since it was in August, was there a summer vacation vibe?

It was like camp except we weren’t 12 years old. [Laughs] Adult camp! We spend all day together. We have meals together. But it was also work. I have to say that Edgar, Chris, and Stuart worked like dogs, way into the night. Working on scores, working on correcting things. They worked really, really, really hard, but we also had a really good time.

Although the four of you don’t play together often, it seems that a high level of trust exists within the group and with the audience.

That’s such a good question, because you are talking about both the external and internal relationship of building trust. It starts with the trust we have in one another, interpersonally. Between Chris and Edgar. Between Chris and Stuart. Stuart and Edgar. Edgar and me. If you were to draw a networking line between all of us, and Aoife included, it’s trust on every level. Trust and respect. I think the two go together. In that, if someone has a deep opinion about something, there’s going to be deep respect for that. We might try it and it might evolve into something else. There’s never an argument…

The trust also comes from the philosophy: it’s not “It’s my way, your way or the highway.” It’s more like “I know certain things and you know certain things and I love what you know and you like what I know and respect what I know.” So we are just working it out all of the time.

So that allows for the freedom of creativity, to follow a musical idea and see where it takes you?

You know, that other thing about that is where you place your ego. We live in a world where some people think their ego walks in front of them. And [with Goat Rodeo], every one of us has a pretty strong ego because otherwise we can’t go and perform. But the egos never lead. We actually make fun of our own egos or each other’s.

Another thing is, we all have strengths and vulnerabilities, [but] we never, ever pounce on anybody’s vulnerability. I’m the oldest guy there. I’m full of warts. You can probably make fun of me until the cows come home but I think they treat me nice. There’s respect but they never step on someone’s vulnerability. It’s like a great relationship — a great domestic relationship. We didn’t get into pushing buttons. We’re so clear about the work that needs to be done. That’s how you build trust. You accept the whole person, and you treasure the parts that they excel in. You don’t tramp on weaknesses. But while we have a lot of fun!

What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?

When you ask a question like that, I can’t help but think about different time periods. If the well-lived life is the life that has been explored, then obviously at all times in your life you will have had different influences that have sparked new interests.

I will give you a musical example of recent vintage. There’s this 23-year-old musician named Jacob Collier from England. He’s almost self-taught. He sings. He plays dozens of instruments. He goes and creates. I find more and more as I get older and older, I am just stupefied by young talent in a way I never was. So someone like Jacob Collier comes along and he does harmonies in ways that are so astounding. I think he studied with Herbie Hancock and his level of inventiveness is so astounding. I feel like Salieri hearing Mozart for the first time. This guy just appears and he can spin and juggle 36 balls in the air while he’s talking to you. I just can’t take this! It’s just so amazing!

Chris is someone like that. Chris has that kind of mind. And I think working with Edgar gives me that sense of him. Because here’s this mind who is a perfectionist mind, in that he works things out in the perfectionist mentality where the abstract is really close to the reality. Usually I have an image of something and I’m going to translate that into a feeling, into a sound, and here it is. Edgar likes manipulating things in the abstract. That’s hard to do, because most of us like to work in the visible world, [which is a] tiny part of the spectrum in the universe.

So the invisible world, whether it is the larger universe or the micro universe, is something that most of us can’t experience… To go to trusting the abstract world, which we can’t see, and say that it’s real is very difficult. And so the question is, What is our faith in the invisible? That’s a big question. For me it is not a political question. It is a human question. As in, who do you trust and on what subjects? That’s very difficult because the world has become so complex.

And the world is so immediate and immense, and you are inundated from so many sides.

So, I grew up in three cultures, and each culture said, “We are the best!” I grew up as a 7-year-old — that is when I came to the States — saying, “Are you all crazy? You can’t all be right because you are claiming you’re the most right and that’s not logical!” So I had to figure out what that means. Just like, is bluegrass music the best? Is classical music the best? Is jazz the best? Is R&B the best? Is hip-hop the best?

I decline to think that way because that just gets me in trouble. Just because it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense logically. It doesn’t make sense to me sociologically. It doesn’t make sense to me as an American citizen because I take pride in all of the inventions we have made to the expressive world. And every new invention we have is a combination of a number of worlds.

You posted some music performances to your pandemic-inspired project, Songs of Comfort, to bring a little solace to people. How gratifying is it that it’s taken on a life of its own, with people around the world uploading videos?

One of the things that I have found out in this first trimester of the pandemic is how deeply people need one another. How deeply they need community. After lockdown, we see the beaches fill up, the bars fill up, and some people say that the economy must move. It’s totally understandable that we have that drive to be together. My way of thinking about it is to say, let’s be a community given the means we have.

In music, in service, it is always asking the question, “How can we help?” So it came from that impulse. That is a very natural impulse, which so many people have added to, or responded to, because we are all going through different versions of the same thing. We’re losing people. We’re stressed. We can’t find food. We can’t earn our living. We can’t plan. We can’t move around. We can’t be with one another.

But guess what? Music travels lightly. This is where the ephemeral is an advantage. It’s not something that needs to be moved by FedEx or a delivery person, but something we can transfer anywhere we want. It goes through walls. That’s why I say, in culture, music builds bridges because the bridges are not physical. Music doesn’t build walls; it builds bridges, because I can send you a link and there you have it.

I relished not only doing Songs of Comfort, but being able to Zoom into hospitals or getting to play for one patient. To send some music to one specific person to say, “I hear this is what you are going through. I’m so sympathetic. I’d like to send you this piece of music. Here it is. I recorded it on my phone.” And then send it to someone. That’s pretty personal. That to me is the essence of the aesthetic experience.

(Editor’s note: Read the remaining installments of our Artist of the Month interview series here.)

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

Chris Thile Keeps His Goat Rodeo Bandmates From Falling Out of Trees

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For more than a quarter of a century, Chris Thile has been constant force in the American music scene — and he’s still shy of 40. The musical polymath always seems to have some project going on: whether as a duo (pairing most prominently with both Michael Daves and Edgar Meyer), a trio (Nickel Creek), quartet (Goat Rodeo), and quintet (Punch Brothers). And he has won Grammys in all of those groupings.

Last summer, Thile rendezvoused with his Goat Rodeo brethren — fiddler Stuart Duncan, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and bassist (and fellow MacArthur “Genius Grant” honoree) Edgar Meyer — to record their long-anticipated sophomore effort, Not Our First Goat Rodeo, which came out in June. What Thile finds is so special about this collaboration is that it features musicians who are, he says, “excited by, and invigorated by, discomfort. Like a good stretch. I think this project is defined by the willingness of its participants to stretch outside of their perceived comfort zones.”

This Artist of the Month interview is the third of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians of Not Our First Goat Rodeo.

In a BGS interview a couple years back, you said, “I think any album worth listening to is a concept record.” Was there a concept or an overarching theme behind the new album?

Thile: I don’t know if I would, at this point in my life, back myself up on that no worthwhile album has been made without a concept. If indeed I said that I would walk that back just a touch. But the vast majority of records that have made a serious impact on me have had some sort of perceptible topics of conversations, governing principles, or thematic glue. With instrumental records, the themes start to become the play of contrasts and similarities between the individual participants, and the characteristics they assume in concert with one another.

The two actual lyrical vocal songs [on Not Our First Goat Rodeo] — there’s one other vocal song that has no lyrics — are both meditations on work/life balance. They both zoom the lenses in on the less-written-about parts of the relationships. We tend to write songs about the beginnings and ends of relationships, but we don’t necessarily write songs about the middle. Because the beginnings and ends can be so explosive. Hopefully, if your relationship is successful, your relationship will be in the middle until one of you dies.

Certainly the five of us together often talk about work/life balance. How our families are. How we are doing in context of our families, and how our families are doing in the context of our various endeavors. Lyrically that was something that Aoife and I talked about writing in the midst of those kinds of discussions and thoughts. Instrumentally, the themes are more abstract, but no less present. This project has a built-in [structure] of Stuart, Yo-Yo, Edgar, and me bouncing off of each other. Like, what’s it going to sound like when you smear those four people together? And when you get Aoife into the mix, it becomes a whole other thing.

Is writing lyrical songs for Goat Rodeo different compositionally than in other songwriting situations?

It is different. Since the project is so instrumentally focused, it’s ultimately an instrumental project that happens to have a couple of vocal moments in there. We came up with the music together, then Aoife [O’Donovan] and I went off, having discussed the various things we wanted to write about. But when we are writing that music, it is still kind of like instrumental music that happens to have some vocals on it. “The Trappings” being slightly more like you might expect a vocal song to be. “We Were Animals” came right in sort of the middle.

“Every Note a Pearl” was very much an instrumental, then we wanted some more instruments that could slide around. Also, we wanted some more stuff [happening] while Edgar was pizzicato and Stuart playing tenor banjo and me on the mandolin. We wanted Yo-Yo to have some friends in Sustaining Instrument-land. So, we felt, “OK, Aoife and I can help with that.” But we were never tempted to add words to that one. Because the project is driven by instrumentalizing, the vocals are more balanced in terms of where the interest is coming from. Often, if there are vocals in a piece of music, we are focusing on the vocals, and in this music we are not necessarily playing to those expectations.

The voices then are like fellow instruments?

Yes, absolutely. And they’re not given a place of greater prominence than any one instrumentalist is.

Can you talk about Aoife’s unique contributions to Goat Rodeo projects?

When we first did the project, it was an all-instrumental project. And then, I think it was Yo-Yo’s idea. During our practice, he said, “Chris, you sing. Why don’t you sing a little bit?” And I said, “OK.” It was pretty organic. It was like, “Wouldn’t it be lovely to have another singer on these ‘singing songs’?” Aoife and I had never done anything officially together. It had always been at music festivals. Late-night jam sessions. Those type of things. I think both of us had so much fun singing together that I instantly thought of Aoife and I sent everybody recordings of her. Everyone was into it and off we went. It was still with the full knowing that it was an instrumental record.

That fits in with the group’s general philosophy of not conforming to any genre or expectations — to include anything into the music that makes it work.

That’s absolutely right. Nothing’s off limits. If one of us is interested in something, then it’s like, “Hell yeah!” I love that this record can go from something like “Every Note a Pearl” to “Not for Lack of Trying,” and the idea we’re going to be playing around with sliding slowly from one diatonic chord that is well within diatonic harmony to another — but we’re going to pass through all the points along the way, just very slowly. As if the music is melting/spontaneously generating.

And that’s a thing we’re going to pursue — we’re going to see what happens when we chase a thought. More so [on this album] than the first one, actually. This time through the composition process, more was on the table. We had already pursued our first instincts. It was time to really open up to what the possibilities were — having a foundation to begin with in the form of the first record.

Goat Rodeo features four exceptional musicians and it feels like you all try to bring out more in each other.

I love the ways in which it challenges me. I think it challenges each one of us. Maybe the defining characteristic of this ensemble is that what might stretch one of its members might be the absolute comfort zone of another. What might stretch Stuart as far as he’s ever been in one direction is a walk in the park for Yo-Yo. And vice versa. What might be absolutely stretching Yo-Yo to the point the farthest reaches of his exploration is like falling off a log for Stuart.

I love that aspect of this project. Something that’s super easy for me would be hard for Edgar. And something that’s super easy for Edgar would be hard for me. It runs through the whole ensemble like that. So you always have a guide. One of us can always teach the rest of the class about stretching ourselves as musicians.

Even within a piece.

Oh absolutely. Who’s the master of a given concept can switch throughout the course of a piece. And the learner can instantly become the master. And the master can become the learner, with the idea that we all get better at it as we go along. I love hearing the sound of when one of us is out on the limb right now but one of us totally has it. Don’t worry, that person is going to make sure you don’t fall out of the tree. Because you know that they will return the favor.

What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?

My world was totally blown open by Kendrick Lamar by How to Pimp a Butterfly. I think that is an extraordinary work. Talk about an album hanging together structurally. I think that is just a master class in developing one theme. I still have so much to learn from that record. That’s on the list. That’s definitely up there with the greatest records ever. It’s still opening my ears. The way I understood it when I first heard it is completely different from how I understand it now. One of the big differences is that I understand how little I understand about it. I think the best records do that. They open up your worldview — not just your musical view.

(Editor’s note: Read the remaining installments of our Artist of the Month interview series here.)

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

WATCH: Mark Stoffel, “Shadowbands”

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Artist: Mark Stoffel
Hometown: My birthplace and original hometown is Munich, Germany. My adopted hometown is Murphysboro, Illinois
Song: “Shadowbands”
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This tune came to me relatively quickly while warming up for a show in Auburn, Alabama, in 2017. It also happened to be in the year of the wondrous transcontinental total solar eclipse and my chosen home near Murphysboro, Illinois, lay smack in the middle of the path. It seemed just right to name the tune after an amazing phenomenon associated with a total eclipse: ‘Shadowbands.’ (Google it.) My hobby astronomy friends assure me that the tune actually captures the mystique of shadow bands!

“The musicians, which I am honored to call very close friends of mine, all live scattered around the world, so we produced this video in an extreme socially-distanced fashion: Ross Sermons shot his bass part near Hobart, Tasmania. Niall Murphy, fiddle, posed for his part in South Armagh, Northern Ireland; and Gina Furtado, banjo, picked her scenic spot near her hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Josh, the guitarist, and I captured our parts in Alto Pass, Illinois. It was a lot of fun to put together, both the recording and the video. I hope it shows. Cheers, everybody!” — Mark Stoffel

Photo credit: Mary Stoffel